8
It seemed that the small room had a very faint radiance showingthrough my vizor pane. Narrow enclosing walls were visible. It was atriangular-shaped space, fifteen feet or so down one side, with aconcave ceiling overhead. I was lying on the floor. The darkness atfirst had been impenetrable. The figures which had flung me down andseized my knife were gone; I had not seen them nor where they went.
For a moment I lay cushioned by my bloated suit. When I struggled tomy feet, I was almost weightless. The movement of getting uprightflung me upward as though I were a tossed feather. My helmet struckthe metal ceiling, so sharp a blow that I feared for an instant I hadsmashed the helmet.
From the ceiling, with flailing arms and legs, I sank back to thegrid-floor; and in a moment I was able to stand upright with so slighta feeling of weight that I could have been a bit of thistle ready toblow away in the least wind.
There was, as I stood there balancing myself, a queer feeling oftriumph within me. A triumphant hope; for coming down in the ship'scapacious funnel--larger than it had seemed from a distance--I hadseen what appeared to be a small projectile, resting in some strangelanding gear. The disc bearing me had settled on a stage alongside it.Was that the projectile from Earth?
A growing air pressure was around me; the tiny Erentz dials within myhelmet had been immovable, but now they were showing outside pressure. Istood waiting. Whatever sounds were here I could not tell. Thenpresently the dials stopped. They registered seventeen pounds--whateverthat might mean here. I loosed the helmet and took it off.
With the first gasping breath my senses reeled. I sank to the floor,and though I tried to replace the helmet, it was too late. My thoughtswere fading. A strange chemical odor was in my nostrils. It was likebreathing a thin, perfumed water.
The drifting away was pleasant.
Tortured dreams came with my awakening. I found myself in the same dimroom upon the floor. I could breathe better now, and in a few morehours the strangeness had almost gone. I found now that I was notinjured, but I was ravenously hungry.
Again, gingerly as before, I stood up and slid my space-suit from me;and now I was aware of movement and sound. The floor-grid vibrationswere apparent. And there was a dim, distant, tiny throbbing; it wasmuch like the interior of the _Cometara_ while in flight.
And there were other sounds, indescribably faint, yet strangely clear.I thought they might be distant voices.
I took a cautious step. I could see a dim blank wall nearby with whatseemed a bowl-like article of furniture on the floor against the wall.For all my caution, I sailed upward; but this time I held my balance.And I found that with my negligible weight, I could almost swim inthis strange air! I hit the wall and slid slowly down it to the flooragain, like a man sinking to the bottom of a tank.
It suddenly occurred to me to put my ear against the wall. At once thesounds all became incredibly louder. It was a confusion of sound: themechanisms of the vessel, some of which I thought I could identify,and some not; the strange swish and thump of what might have beenpeople moving; and there were voices.
The voices seemed mingled babble coming from everywhere. The timber ofthe sound was very strange. It held no suggestion of how far away fromme the voices might be. There were so many of them I could only thinkthey were scattered about the ship; and yet they all seemed together.After a moment, the blend was less confusing. Again, very strangely myhearing seemed able to separate one from the other.
I was to learn that the atmosphere handled sound vibrationsdifferently from that of Earth. Voices had a muffled tone, as thoughthey were smothered. There was undoubtedly a vibrational distortion;and a sound-wave speed slower than Earth's normal-pressure rate of1,050 feet a second, perhaps as slow as 700. Yet sounds remainedaudible over longer distances than on Earth.
In this instance now, as I listened with my ear to the wall of theship, I was hearing all its sounds picked up and carried by the metal.
Now I heard a strange tongue: two types of voices, slow, measured,carefully-intoned phrases, and voices of a curiously sepulchral,hollow sound. My mind went back to the Red Spark restaurant room.
And suddenly I realized that amid the babble I was hearing English. Aman's voice, talking English. I caught, very clearly the phrase:
"Master, yes. She means well. Can you not see it?"
Molo's voice! Then the girls must be here also.
Another voice: "I am not sure. Perhaps. The Great Intelligence willtalk with her when we are arrived." It was the slow measured voice ofone of the brains.
"When will that be? Pretty soon now, won't it, Molo?"
Venza! A great wave of thankfulness swept me. And then I heard Anita."Your two captives, where are they? You're not going to kill them, areyou?"
"No," said Molo. "Perhaps not. No one has inspected the new one yet.The other is being cared for. The Great Intelligence will question himwhen we arrive."
"We are arriving," said Venza. "That's your world, Wandl, down there,isn't it?"
"Yes. We are dropping fast."
The voice of the brain: "Come, Wyk. The instruments are showing eventson our captured worlds. Take me to watch. I am tired of movement."
"Yes. Master."
It seemed that the brain was being carried away; Molo and the twogirls were being left alone. I had thought at first that they were inthe adjacent room to me, but they could have been far distant. Theyhad mentioned two captives. One, obviously, was myself. Was the otherSnap?
"Come," Molo was saying, "stand here with me and we will watch thisworld. Not mine, Venza _chia_, as you just called it, But my adoptedworld. And it will be yours, until we rule the new Mars."
I heard them moving to gaze through the window-port. Then came Anita'svoice: "If it's anything like this ship, it will be very strange."
"Strange indeed, little dove. I was there only once, a month ago, andfor a few hours only. The Great Intelligence, as they call him, talkedwith me, absorbing my knowledge: they call it that. And he was muchimpressed by me, and made very wonderful promises in exchange for myfidelity. And for my sister, too."
I learned further how Molo and Meka became identified with theWandlites; it was as we had suspected.
"You will rule Mars?" Venza was saying. "When this is over, you meanyou will really be given Mars to rule?"
"I would rather live on the Earth," said Anita. "There was a young manthere."
"He will not be there much longer." Molo laughed. "You are very luckythat I fancy you!"
"Lucky indeed," Venza echoed. "No death for me. I'm too young."
"But all those millions dead. It seems so terrible."
"It is, for them!" Molo was in high good humor, pleased with himselfand with these girls. "See down there; that blurring is the heavy air.We're almost down into it now."
I heard the sound of someone joining them, and then the hollow voiceagain: "Molo! Bad tidings come from Mars. One of the Masters wascaptured there in Ferrok-Shahn. They tortured him as they did the oneon Earth. But he did not die unyielding. He spoke and told our plans!"
"Hah! Did I not advise you to keep those helpless things on Wandl?"
"But it is done now. The worlds know our purpose. They are preparingspaceships. Already some are rising from Ferrok-Shahn, from Grebharand from Greater New York."
"We knew they were doing that."
"But now they know our purpose. The Master Intelligence fears thatthey will come raiding Wandl. Our vessels are being made ready to goout and repel them."
The hollow voice ceased.
"Your purpose discovered?" asked Anita. "What does that mean? Won'tyou tell us now? Twin queens for your future Mars, and you treat uslike children!"
"That light-beam he so cleverly planted in Greater New York," Venzahinted.
"Yes, I will tell you. Without me in New York and my men who went withthese Wandlites to Ferrok-Shahn and Grebhar, the vital gravity beamscould never successfully have been planted. The apparatus wascomplicated; you saw it. You saw the labor I had mak
ing the contact?"
"But what are the light-beams for?"
I listened, breathless, as he told them. The electronic beams couldnot be destroyed; a disintegration of the rock atoms had been set up.With each rotation of the Earth it was sweeping the sky. From a greatcontrol station, Wandl was flinging attraction gravity upon that beam,using it as a monstrous lever upon the rotation of Earth. With everydaily passage now the force was being exerted. The rotation wasslowing. In a few days it would stop, with the end of the beam drawnto Wandl and held there.
And the beams from Grebhar and Ferrok-Shahn were the same. Three giantchains! Then Wandl, traveling of its own gravitational volition, wouldwithdraw from our solar system. The gravitational chains would pullthe Earth, Venus and Mars after it!
Titanic tow-ropes! The destruction, not of our worlds, but of all lifeupon them, for the cold of interstellar space would leave no livingorganism. Three dead worlds; Wandl would draw them to her own Sun andthen free them, send them, with new orbits, around the distant blazingstar. Three new worlds brought home triumphantly by Wandl to join thelittle family of inhabited planets revolving around this other Sun.Three fair and lovely worlds, warmed back by the other sunlight to begreen mansions untenanted, ready to receive the new beings who wouldcome and possess them.