Chapter XXI: Back to the Haunted Hill

On the morning--if one may speak of morning in that world of eternal day--after we had slept off the fatigue of our visit to the hill where we had seen the lights of terror, Sam took me aside for a short talk.

"Mel," he said, "we can't forget what we've come here for! My generator is still keeping up the interference in the ether; but, sooner or later, the force we have come to fight--and it must be that 'Lord of Flame' of Xenora's, and the thing we saw from the hill--will break down the interference! And then the earth--will freeze!"

"But what can we do against--that? And Xenora! Sam, I can't leave her. She's worth more to me than the earth! There's plenty of room in here for us to live our lives out. I've been thinking about it--and I can't go!"

He nodded sympathetically. "I know, Mel. She means a lot to you. But perhaps we will win and save our lives, too."

"Not a chance!" I said bitterly. "Not against that thing we saw! It means death--or worse! But I suppose we have to go on and do our best!"

The old man was beaming. He patted me on the shoulder. "I knew you would be with me, when you had time to think," he said. "Now, when the life of the world is at issue, we can't consider ourselves."

"What do you think we can do?"

"What can't we do? We have the Omnimobile. We have machines and tools. We have knowledge, and our hands. We can go anywhere, and do anything! But the first thing is to study, to find out what we have to deal with, and how to fight it."

"I suppose so."

"Mel, we must go back to that hill."

"No! no! Not there! It was only a miracle--and Xenora--that saved us before!"

"I've some theories. We'll be better prepared next time."

A sudden thought struck me. "Say, couldn't we pay a flying visit to our own world again, and tell what we've found? Then the world would still have a chance, when we are--gone. A half-million Americans, with tanks and heavy artillery, would look mighty good down here. And it would just take a day or two to go."

"No," Sam said. "The world would hardly believe it all, even if we carried out what evidence we could. And nothing could be done in time. Then, I'm not sure we could get out. In fact, I'm pretty sure we couldn't. The rockets might carry us three miles high, all right; but we could never break through that water from beneath. We would fall back. Mel, it's up to us!"

During the days that followed, Sam spent most of his hours in the little laboratory. He spent much time on those great machines that controlled his forces in the ether. And he invented and developed another device that was more nearly within my understanding.

"You know, Mel," he said one day, "I think I can rig up something to protect us from that--fear--that came so near getting us. Ever since you made your telepathic contact with the Green Girl, I have had the idea that the brain sets up disturbances in the ether. We know that the action of the nervous system is electrical in nature, and all electric discharges set up ether waves. It happened that you and she had great minds, created in perfect synchronism, so that each was sensitive to the vibrations of the other. Hypnotism is best explained by such electric theories.

"Now, I am convinced that the 'Lord of Flame' is a brain--whether in a human body or not I cannot attempt to say. It creates such powerful etheric disturbances that it was able to affect us at a distance. If that is the case, it ought to be a fairly simple matter to provide insulation against its vibrations. You know that induction or electric action cannot penetrate a conducting cage. I ought to be able to fix a conducting helmet that will prevent the induction of neuronic currents in our brains."

A short time after he showed me three helmets, as he called them. They were little more than bags of wire gauze to be put over our heads. He demonstrated that an electroscope draped with one of them remained entirely unaffected by charges brought near it; but it seemed a ridiculously inadequate protection against that terror.

We went hunting several times, for the benefit of the little plant. After the first few days, Sam let it go along, hanging on his coat. It was growing very fast, and developing remarkable characteristics. It showed surprising intelligence. Sam seemed to have a real affection for it, and it, in turn, seemed to love him.

I never ceased to feel the strangeness of those expeditions over the rolling green grasslands, among the sparsely scattered flowering trees, in the hot damp air and the intense red light. We shot two more animals like the first, and three others of a smaller variety, which somewhat resembled large rabbits.

Very shortly after Sam had perfected his electro-screen helmets, he planned another expedition to the hill where we had so nearly met incredible disaster. We carried a telescope, electrometers, spectroscope, and a few pieces of Sam's recently developed and highly complicated apparatus, which he had neglected to name, for detecting and analyzing etheric waves.

Xenora insisted on going with us, and there seemed no reason for leaving her behind, since Sam had perfect confidence in the efficacy of his new helmets, and since the girl herself was an excellent woodsman, and could undertake to keep us from getting lost.

We had a long hot march of it across the green plateau among the purple trees, with the fierce beams of the crimson sky pouring down upon us. Burdened with the heavy instruments, we were worn out when we reached the summit. I had suggested that we come in the machine, but Sam wanted to keep it out of the sight of the weird enemy we fought.

Once more we gazed across the vast valley of purple and green, to the mists of ruby light over that abyss beyond the distant lake, in which the violet beams still danced and pulsed. And hardly did we have our apparatus set up when we saw that unearthly, serpent-like beam of green fire writhe up out of the vale of mystery into the rosy haze!

We had on the insulating shields, and I felt nothing of the inexplicable horror of the former occasion; though, of course, the whole adventure was certainly terrible enough. But now that strange thing of green seemed distant and devoid of menace. By way of experiment, I ventured to raise my helmet. The terror caught me like a cold and rushing torrent that swept me almost off my feet! I was glad enough to get the wire gauze fastened back about my head again.

"It is the Lord of Flame," Xenora cried, "looking over toward the city of my people, to see who will be taken to become his slaves. This is a wonderful thing, Barsoni Sam, that lets us not feel its power!"--Barsoni being a word that means 'great man,' in the tongue of Lothar.

For many minutes the amazing shape of twisting green radiance hung in the air. Sam was busy with his apparatus, squinting at the thing through telescope and spectroscope, and reading his other devices. At last the awful, throbbing thing faded away, and died into nothingness. Only the violet lances were left in the mist.

"Many of my theories were substantiated," Sam informed me, almost jubilant. "And I got a lot of new data! It is rather odd, but the light from that thing shows the helium lines as luminous bands, not as the dark lines that might be expected to rise from the absorption of the helium in this atmosphere! I can hardly understand it!"

He said nothing more, but was sunk deep in thought as we quickly gathered the instruments and hastened silently down the hill. I felt that he had won a notable victory in the invention of the thought-insulating helmets. We arrived at the machine again without accident.