Chapter XXII: The Silver Sphere

For several days longer, Sam continued his labors in the laboratory. During that time "Alexander," the flying plant, developed remarkably. Before we moved, it had a wing-spread of two or three feet. I have spoken of its intelligence. It soon learned to flutter to the guns when we were preparing to hunt. Sam talked to it incessantly, and declared that it could understand him. He said it could even make its thoughts known by the varying pattern of colors on its fringe of brilliant membrane. Presently he had it trained to dry dishes and to do other similar tasks in the galley.

Of course the thing never learned to speak. In fact, it was devoid of vocal organs, and incapable of making a sound, though its hearing seemed to be good enough. It appeared to communicate its emotions and thoughts by means of changes of color in the tissue-like membrane that I have termed a flower. And, from a strictly scientific point of view, communication by light, or sight, is quite as logical as communication by sound.

Sam examined the black, rod-like organs projecting from the flower on the thing, and said that each of them bore thousands of tiny eyes, like the compound eyes of an insect.

After we had been in the vicinity for perhaps two weeks by upper world time, we started the Omnimobile's great motors again, and moved northward. I had not told Xenora about my talk with Sam--our minds were too closely attuned to require much conversation. I knew that she understood that our maneuver would probably mean our sacrifice to the cause of the world. She said nothing of it, but I thought I detected a sadness in her manner.

During all the hours that Sam had been in his laboratory, alone or with Alexander, I had spent most of the time with Xenora. We wandered together about the meadows, or sat in the cabin to escape the almost intolerable heat. Always I loved her more, brimming as she was with humor and sympathy and love. And bitterly I cursed the fate that was dragging us both to our doom!

Even at the beginning, Sam's scientific achievements had been so far above my understanding, that I would scarcely comprehend them, and his later speculations regarding the menace of the abyss were so abstruse that I quite failed to follow them. His little workshop forward was crammed with strange machinery, some of it humming incessantly. Indeed, his apparatus was still keeping up the interference that prevented the freezing of the earth!

Sam had been signally unsuccessful in getting any scientific information from Xenora, for the simple reason that she had none to impart. But, from her geographical knowledge, he attempted to draw a map, showing the locations of Lothar, of Mutron, and of the pit of the Lord of Flame.

It seemed that there was a strip a score of miles in width between the farther blue walls of the abyss and the great lake we had seen. The pit of Xath seemed to be a great crater lying in that strip. On the brink of the crater Xenora located her "City of the Sleepers," or Mutron. The domain of the last city of Lothar, where she had spent her childhood, lay along the cliffs far to the west of there.

Our boldest plan of action would have been to hurl the machine, by means of the rocket tubes, into the abyss in a direct attack on the Lord of Flame; but Sam, for reasons he did not divulge, doubted the success of such a maneuver. He wished to keep up his researches, and possibly to visit the city of Lothar. His apparatus told him that hidden forces were again stirring in the ether.

For ten hours we moved toward the north, making a long detour to westward to keep within a valley, and always trying to take advantage of such cover as was offered by the purple trees. The country was, for the most part, rolling and green, with the great flowering trees dotting the hills and plains but sparsely. The blazing radiation of the eternal crimson day was undiminished, but the temperature fell slightly with increased altitude.

Xenora and I were together at the cabin control-board, driving the machine; and Sam was in the conning-tower, with the little gun, ready for emergencies. When we had been moving for some ten hours, we mounted a low, bare hill, and saw in the little green valley before us a thicker forest of the bright purple trees, offering good cover for the machine.

We had crossed the summit, and I had increased the speed to ten miles per hour in haste to reach the trees, in spite of Sam's fear that the operation of the motors at anything like full capacity would create a disturbance in the ether that our hidden enemies would pick up.

Suddenly I saw a strange thing skimming along over the bright forest before us--in our direction! It looked like a bright silver globe, many feet in diameter! It floated a few hundred feet above the trees, drifting smoothly along like a bright metal balloon in a very swift wind. There was no visible propulsive mechanism.

I shouted a warning to Sam through the speaking tube, to stand by his little gun.

Xenora laid a light hand on my shoulder and said, in a tense voice: "It is the Sleepers of Mutron, the slaves of the Lord of Flame! They will fight to death--they know not fear!"

As the silver sphere drifted swiftly and silently down upon us, as though borne by an invisible wind, twice I caught a glimpse of a slender ray of purple flame, that darted out of it and moved searchingly over the bare greensward below. And then a rich purple beam fell suddenly and intensely upon the Omnimobile!

When that misty finger of purple light discovered us, I saw a strange vortex of pale green fire spring up about the globe and reach out in our direction. Suddenly I realized that this ship was of the same appearance as the weird thing that had destroyed our cottage! Small hope, I thought, if that force of atomic disintegration were to be released again!

I heard the rapid crashing of the machine gun, as Sam began to fire, and presently bursts of smoke appeared about the gleaming sphere. But to hit a relatively small and rapidly moving target even a mile away is no mean feat of marksmanship. I drove rapidly for the purple wood, but with little hope of getting there before the terrible red disintegration had melted us away.

Suddenly I heard the drone of some of Sam's new machinery going into action. He had mounted his switches and dials in the conning-tower, so he could control it from where he stood. Vivid blue electric flame quivered and flashed over the metal parts of the machine as his new weapons went into play!

The floating globe of silver drifted nearer, and the misty vortex of green fire about us grew more intense. A strange red glow stole over the vegetation around us, and a solitary purple tree ahead burst into crimson flame. Then the sparkling fingers of purple fire reached out at us again from the sphere. I wondered vaguely why the strange force was not acting upon us. I did not know, until it was all over, that Sam's vacuum tubes had set up a repulsive screen in the ether, protecting us from the electronic vortex!

Abruptly an intensely bright, blinding tongue of white flame leapt toward the silver thing from the great platinum electrode on the nose of the Omnimobile! Sam had turned loose his electric arc! The flame struck the globe, impinging upon it like a jet of fire, converting it into a ball of supernal light!

Then it fell! It plunged toward the forest in a gleaming curve! The green vortex of the disintegrator ray was gone, and the purple fingers shone no longer! The incandescent shell crashed out of sight beyond the purple trees!