第51章

"'Don't ye worry about that,' says he.'Not that she's keen on leavin' the ould sod, Larry.The good ould soul's in quite a state o' mind about ye, aroon.I don't mind tellin' ye, lad, that she's mobilizing all the clan an' if she HAS to come for ye, avick, they'll be wid her an' they'll sweep this joint clean before ye go.What they'll do to it'll make the Big Wind look like a summer breeze on Lough Lene! An' that's about all, Larry.We thought a voice from the Green Isle would cheer ye.Don't fergit that ye're the O'Keefe an' I say it again--all the bhoys are wid ye.But we want t' kape bein'

proud o' ye, lad!'

"An' I looked again and there was only a bush waving."There wasn't a smile in my heart--or if there was it was a very tender one.

"I'm going to bed," he said abruptly."Keep an eye on the wall, Doc!"Between the seven sleeps that followed, Larry and I saw but little of each other.Yolara sought him more and more.

Thrice we were called before the Council; once we were at a great feast, whose splendours and surprises I can never for-get.Largely I was in the company of Rador.Together we two passed the green barriers into the dwelling--place of the ladala.

They seemed provided with everything needful for life.

But everywhere was an oppressiveness, a gathering together of hate, that was spiritual rather than material--as tangible as the latter and far, far more menacing!

"They do not like to dance with the Shining One," was Rador's constant and only reply to my efforts to find the cause.

Once I had concrete evidence of the mood.Glancing be-hind me, I saw a white, vengeful face peer from behind a tree-trunk, a hand lift, a shining dart speed from it straight toward Rador's back.Instinctively I thrust him aside.He turned upon me angrily.I pointed to where the little missile lay, still quivering, on the ground.He gripped my hand.

"That, some day I will repay!" he said.I looked again at the thing.At its end was a tiny cone covered with a glisten-ing, gelatinous substance.

Rador pulled from a tree beside us a fruit somewhat like an apple.

"Look!" he said.He dropped it upon the dart--and at once, before my eyes, in less than ten seconds, the fruit had rotted away!

"That's what would have happened to Rador but for you, friend!" he said.

Come now between this and the prelude to the latter half of the drama whose history this narrative is--only scattering and necessarily fragmentary observations.

First--the nature of the ebon opacities, blocking out the spaces between the pavilion-pillars or covering their tops like roofs, These were magnetic fields, light absorbers, negativ-ing the vibrations of radiance; literally screens of electric force which formed as impervious a barrier to light as would have screens of steel.

They instantaneously made night appear in a place where no night was.But they interposed no obstacle to air or to sound.They were extremely simple in their inception--no more miraculous than is glass, which, inversely, admits the vibrations of light, but shuts out those coarser ones we call air--and, partly, those others which produce upon our audi-tory nerves the effects we call sound.

Briefly their mechanism was this:

[For the same reason that Dr.Goodwin's exposition of the mechanism of the atomic engines was deleted, his description of the light-destroying screens has been deleted by the Executive Council.--J.B.F., President, I.A.of S.]

There were two favoured classes of the ladala--the soldiers and the dream-makers.The dream-makers were the most astonishing social phenomena, I think, of all.Denied by their circumscribed environment the wider experiences of us of the outer world, the Murians had perfected an amaz-ing system of escape through the imagination.

They were, too, intensely musical.Their favourite instru-ments were double flutes; immensely complex pipe-organs;harps, great and small.They had another remarkable in-strument made up of a double octave of small drums which gave forth percussions remarkably disturbing to the emo-tional centres.

It was this love of music that gave rise to one of the few truly humorous incidents of our caverned life.Larry came to me--it was just after our fourth sleep, I remember.

"Come on to a concert," he said.

We skimmed off to one of the bridge garrisons.Rador called the two-score guards to attention; and then, to my utter stupefaction, the whole company, O'Keefe leading them, roared out the anthem, "God Save the King." They sang--in a closer approach to the English than might have been expected scores of miles below England's level."Send him victorious! Happy and glorious!" they bellowed.

He quivered with suppressed mirth at my paralysis of surprise.

"Taught 'em that for Marakinoff's benefit!" he gasped.

"Wait till that Red hears it.He'll blow up.

"Just wait until you hear Yolara lisp a pretty little thing Itaught her," said Larry as we set back for what we now called home.There was an impish twinkle in his eyes.

And I did hear.For it was not many minutes later that the priestess condescended to command me to come to her with O'Keefe.

"Show Goodwin how much you have learned of our speech, O lady of the lips of honeyed flame!" murmured Larry.

She hesitated; smiled at him, and then from that perfect mouth, out of the exquisite throat, in the voice that was like the chiming of little silver bells, she trilled a melody familiar to me indeed:

"She's only a bird in a gilded cage, A bee-yu-tiful sight to see--"And so on to the bitter end.

"She thinks it's a love-song," said Larry when we had left.

"It's only part of a repertoire I'm teaching her.Honestly, Doc, it's the only way I can keep my mind clear when I'm with her," he went on earnestly."She's a devil-ess from hell --but a wonder.Whenever I find myself going I get her to sing that, or Take Back Your Gold! or some other ancient lay, and I'm back again--pronto--with the right perspective!

POP goes all the mystery! 'Hell!' I say, 'she's only a woman!'"