The Fiery Wheel Read online

  Suddenly, they perceived simultaneously that their glide was accelerating and that, about a hundred meters downstream, the river divided into two branches that plunged into two different tunnels.

  “I’m scared!” sighed Lolla Mendès, involuntarily.

  “Let’s stop, Francisco!” Civrac exclaimed.

  “Bueno!”

  And their enveloped hands reached for the wall.

  While thinking about impeding their progress, however, they did not see a rocky projection that advanced two meters into the river’s course. Paul bumped into it first. The shock knocked him over, caused him to let go of Lolla’s hand, and threw him into the middle of the current.

  Without pausing for thought, Francisco tried to go to his aid. He too released his mistress’ hand and bounded toward Civrac—but they had reached the point where the river divided. The faster current dragged the two men into one tunnel, while Lolla continued into the other, her glide becoming solitary.

  “Paul! Paul! Help me! Help!”

  The young woman’s desperate cry chilled her two defenders with fear.

  “Lolla!” shouted Paul, rising to his feet.

  “Demonios!” Francisco swore—and tried to launch himself upriver, to get back to the fork and take the arm of the river that was carrying the young woman away. It was in vain. With Paul, he was dragged along by the current, with increasing rapidity. A sudden surge of heavy waves tipped the two men over, and they collided as they fell. For an immeasurable interval they rolled in the darkness, groping, grabbing hold of one another, and then being pulled apart by the waves, before finding one another again.

  Suddenly, a bright light dazzled them. They had the sensation of coming to an abrupt stop in their vertiginous course—and when they were able to take account of things, they saw that the waves, tumultuous in that location, had thrown them on to a bank covered in scarlet flowers.

  “Lolla!” Paul shouted, madly.

  Face down, with his head in his hands, Francisco was sobbing. Civrac looked at him stupidly, and only then did he understand the frightful misfortune they had suffered.

  Chapter Two

  Fully occupied by the vicissitudes

  of a fantastic chase

  It was as if his entire being had been torn in two. Lolla was lost. At that moment, he saw the full horror of the ardent and mysterious planet—and felt a frisson of terror. So long as the young woman had been with him, so long as he had been able to guide her, protect her and defend her. Paul de Civrac had had been hopeful. For what? He did not know himself. Perhaps he had been hoping for a providential return to Earth, or, at least, a progressive adaptation to the conditions of this new world. With Lolla Mendès, he could have lived there happily...

  Now, vague hopes, illusions, confidence in the future—all of it had been scythed down. Lola Mendès had disappeared, dragged away by the river into the depths of the incomprehensible planet…and he would never see her again! If she escaped some gulf, she too would be hurled on to an undiscoverable shore, and would fall prey to the filthy Mercurians!

  At that thought, Paul de Civrac surrendered to the craziest despair. He fell on to the burning ground, tore it with his fingernails, bit it...

  “Lolla! Lolla!” he screamed.

  All that responded to him were Francisco’s sobs and the ironic echoes of the eternal green clouds...

  But human grief has its limits. Succeeding his fit of insensate despair, a crisis of prostration descended upon the young man. Aided by his bodily fatigue, it plunged him into a death-like sleep.

  He woke up unconscious of everything. The implacable light closed his eyes again immediately, and he heard a grave voice saying: “Señor! Señor!”

  A painful labor racked his mind. Gradually, he remembered everything....

  “Lolla!” he murmured.

  “We’ll find her again, if it takes every last drop of my blood!”

  At these words, forcefully pronounced, Paul blushed at his own weakness. He raised himself up on his elbow and, his eyes gradually becoming accustomed to the intense light of the eternal day, he opened them entirely. He saw Francisco sitting beside him. The Spaniard’s ordinarily comical face was so severe and grave that it made a deep impression on him.

  “We’ll get her back, Señor...”

  “We must, Francisco.” And a confession, stronger than any reserve, emerged from his lips: “I love her, Francisco…I love her!”

  “So much the better, Señor—you’ll have all the more courage in searching for her. Me, I saw her born. I’ve served her father for twenty-three years, and I’d be serving him still if that accursed Fiery Wheel, may Hell crush it...but let’s leave the past behind. We need to be strong. And first, you need to eat. Look, do as I’m doing. While you were asleep, I tasted the red flowers. It’s not good, but they’re nourishing. One might think one were eating iron. Copy me!”

  While speaking, the Spaniard was picking red flowers, reminiscent of monstrous poppies and rolling them into balls. He threw them into his mouth and chewed vigorously.

  Paul followed the advice. It seemed to him that he was chewing a handful of the ferruginous pills that Earthly physicians prescribed for anemia.

  “Is there anything to drink?” he said, when he was sated. “I’m thirsty.”

  Francisco pointed at the yellow river, which was seething heavily a few paces away.

  “I’ve tried that too,” he said. “It’s not a drink, though. Have you ever had a drop of the mercury they put in thermometers in your mouth? I’ve done it more than once, in Barcelona, to amuse the Señorita. Well, the liquid of the golden river gives the same sensation—yellow mercury...”

  “What are we going to do?”

  “We need to search. Get up”—the action followed the words—“and let’s act like men!”

  Gradually, under the vivifying influence of the red flowers, Paul recovered all his energy. He got up and clasped his companion’s hand. “We’re going to find Lolla, Francisco!”

  “I hope so, Señor. We’re going to make a start. I think we ought to continue going downriver to begin with. The current that dragged Lolla away might join up with it, at a bend in these mountains.”

  “You’re right. But we’ll certainly run into Mercurians—we need weapons of some kind.”

  “I’ve thought of that. Let’s walk as far as that little gray wood over there, on the edge of the river. We’ll see whether there’s a means to break a couple of trees to make clubs. And I still have some matches. If the trees are made of a substance that will burn, we can sharpen stakes—that would be excellent for ramming into the eyes of the dirty black beasts. Do you still have the Señorita’s watch? What time is it?”

  Paul took the little watch from his belt. He could not look at it without an emotion that brought tears to his eyes.

  “Half past eleven,” he said.

  “When the watch was at twelve we were in the tunnels. We lost the Señorita about half an hour later... Bueno.”

  Without explaining what conclusions he had drawn from that information, or even whether he had drawn any conclusion at all, Francisco headed toward the wood. Both of them reached it in a few bounds.

  The Spaniard picked up a handful of gray leaves from the ground, sought out a shady corner, and struck a match. He put it under the leaves, and they caught fire immediately, burning with a bright white flame.

  “Caramba!” he exclaimed.

  “Those leaves burn like magnesium!” said Paul.

  “I don’t know about that,” Francisco said, “but they burn—that’s the main thing.”

  “But there are no branches on these trees,” Paul continued. “Let’s set fire to a big heap of leaves around two trunks of a suitable thickness...”

  “Yes, Señor.”

  A few minutes later, two small white fires, maintained with care and rapidity—the masses of leaves burned very swiftly—had communicated their incandescence to two trunks as thick as terrestrial telegraph poles. They burned
very rapidly, melting as they did so. When they saw they were breaking, Paul and Francisco sent them crashing to the ground with a push. It only took them half an hour to sharpen one end of each trunk to a point in the flame. Spikes at that end, they were clubs at the other.

  The two men carried these weapons over their shoulder without the slightest difficulty. The pikes were three meters long, and the half-ligneous, half-metallic substance of which they were made was compact, dense and hard. They weighed as much as enormous staffs, but on Mercury, the weight of materials was reduced to half of the weight they would have had on Earth, so Paul and Francisco could handle their weapons without difficulty.

  “Oh, if only Bild and Brad were here!” said Paul, regretfully.

  “God alone knows where they are,” said Francisco. “Perhaps we’ll never see them again. Perhaps…for everything is so extraordinary in this mad world. For the moment, though, they’re not here, and we have to do without them. Your hand, Señor. Let’s jump!”

  And, holding on to one another firmly, Paul and Francisco jumped into the golden river. It was less bloated there than upriver, so the travel was easier, rapid and without jolts. Imitating the Mercurians, the two men made use of their staffs like rudders and maintained themselves in mid-stream, where the current was faster and smoother.

  To their left extended a limitless plain, entirely covered in russet grass and red flowers; those two plants, along with the gray trees, seemed to be the only vegetation in the region, and perhaps the entire sunlit hemisphere of the planet. Here and there, the plain was dotted with little woods.

  To their right, falling almost sheerly into the river, high black mountains rose up; their summits were lost in the heavy crumbly mass of the green clouds. The light filtering through the clouds was still as intense, the heat still as torrid, but the two Terrans were gradually getting used to both. The light still made them blink incessantly, though, and the heat had roasted their bodies into one vast area of sunburn, which turned the skin red, then brown. Their adaptation to the strange environment was rapid, and they were soon able to pay no attention to the prickling of their tormented flesh.

  While they traveled along the rapid river, a terrible impression of solitude weighed upon them. As far as the eye could see, no other living thing animated the desert of russet grass and red flowers. There was not a single bird or a fly in the air, not a single animal on the ground. Death was sovereign, and the wind, in the upper reaches of the dense atmosphere, always blew the enormous gen clouds toward the desolate mountains. The wind did not descend as far as the ground; it did not give any appearance of life to the rigid stalks of russet grass, the immutable red flowers or the rusty trees bearing their fixed plumes of metallic leaves, by agitating them.

  There was silence and immobility, the dryness of the desert and death.

  “But where do the Mercurians live?” Francisco said, suddenly, in a voice that revealed his profound anguish.

  Paul de Civrac made no reply.

  Perhaps the Mercurians lived in the dark entrails of their planet, or perhaps their cities were hidden, sheltered from the eternal and implacable light in narrow valleys, in the shade of the black mountains that loomed up steeply to unknown heights.

  The landscape, too, luminous and yet dead, showed no evidence of cultivation, or any sign of intelligent life. The strangeness of the prairie of russet grass, the magnificence of the fields of scarlet flowers, the prodigious phantasmagoria of the green clouds—all those appearances that might have seemed enchanting—were mere desolation, because one sensed that they were futile, too continuously similar...

  On the banks of the river, the scenery did not vary: black mountains on one side, russet grass and scarlet flowers on the other, to infinity.

  “I’m thirsty!” Paul said. “If we don’t find something to slake our thirst soon, we’ll die.”

  “I know,” said Francisco.

  And silence fell again.

  Suddenly, as the river described an abrupt curve, the monotonous prairies disappeared, and the Terrans veered between two high cliffs of slate. Shiny, they reflected light harshly. The encased river flowed in a single mass, without a single wave or sound.

  “If the current that carried Lola away emerges from the mountain and joins up with this one,” Paul said, “it won’t take long for us to meet up with it, for the curve is taking us in that direction—provided that it doesn’t veer again!”

  As he finished pronouncing these reflections, highly problematic in their accuracy, Francisco squeezed his hand and murmured: “Mercurians!”

  Two hundred meters downstream, an inlet was hollowed out in the cliff, forming a beach where a hundred Mercurians were gesticulating.

  “We’ll strike hard if they attack us,” said Paul.

  “Yes, Señor.

  Already, the two Terrans were arriving level with the beach. They noticed a large hole at the back hollowed out into the mountain, doubtless another tunnel.

  “Let’s keep to the middle of the stream...”

  “Yes…”

  They went past the Mercurians rapidly. They expected to see the monopods leap into the river in order to chase them, but the black monsters with red eyes contented themselves with waving their repulsive trunks and clawed arms, and filing their air with a racket of whistling.

  Immediately after the little beach, there was an abrupt bend in the river, as if it were doubling back on itself, and the strangest and most frightful spectacle was offered to the Terrans’ eyes.

  On both sides of the river the mountain drew back slightly, leaving broad banks on which thousands of small slate pyramids rose up. Mercurians were emerging from all the pyramids, hopping and whistling, lining up on the edge of the river. The immense city, which extended to the limit of vision, was in the shade. It was in the shade because the mountain rose up sheerly on either side, overhanging increasingly, the two walls almost touching at a prodigious height. High up, directly above the river, between the crests of the two prodigious cliffs, there was a long narrow band of light and green cloud.

  Immediately, Paul and Francisco experienced a horrible choking sensation, even though the ambient temperature had diminished as much as the intensity of the light. They were hypnotized by the spectacle of those two frightful mountains hanging over their heads, when a furious volley of whistles fortunately brought them round.

  Everywhere, the innumerable host of Mercurians lined up on the banks was jumping into the river. It was like the invasion of a golden road by black beasts. In front and behind, the monopods launched themselves forward, crowding, and the crowds departing from either side of the river drew together, becoming more tightly packed. They would soon form a single compact multitude, in the middle of which Paul and Francisco would be trapped.

  “This time, we’re doomed,” said the Spaniard, lifting his club, “but they’ll know what my life will cost them!”

  “Francisco!” Paul shouted. “It’s not necessary to fight—it’s necessary to escape! Think about Lolla!”

  “Escape! How? Where? We have no alternative but to die—and to kill as many as possible before!”

  “No, no, Francisco! Do as I say!”

  “That’s all right be me,” the Spaniard replied, calmly. “Give the order!”

  As the first ranks of Mercurians were almost within arm’s reach, he made a broad windmill movement with his spear, which caused the aggressors to pause.

  Paul did likewise.

  The continuous whirling kept the monopods at bay, but it was obvious that it could not last, for although the front ranks hesitated before the danger, the crowd behind them kept coming forward, pushing, and the entire multitude soon surged forward irresistibly..

  “Francisco,” said Paul, without interrupting his windmill motion, “look at the mountain to the right.”

  “Well?”

  “Do you see that gorge opening in the cliff face?”

  “Yes.”

  “It leads upwards.”

&nbs
p; “So what?”

  “Well, I think we could reach the bank in one bound. These monsters won’t be expecting that. Let’s jump—we have one chance.”

  “What?”

  “To land on the ground and not on the Mercurians’ heads. Just there, on the bank, the crowd is spaced out. Another leap will take us toward the gorge. They’ll follow us, but we can run faster than they can.”

  “God preserve us! Let’s jump!”

  “Wait...are you ready?”

  “Yes.”

  “Hup!”

  Concentrating all their strength in their legs, the two men leapt. They passed over the swarming host that had invaded the river and landed between two pyramids, in the middle of a group of Mercurians, which had instinctively drawn apart.

  “Hup!” said Paul.

  “Hup!” repeated Francisco.

  And they leapt again.

  The sonorous valley resounded with horrible whistles. With a furious ardor, the entire immense crowd of monopods had hurled themselves in pursuit of the fugitives.

  “They definitely have no weapons,” said Francisco, bracing himself for a third leap.

  “No, fortunately.”

  With a lead of more than a hundred meters over the first pursuers, the Terrans reached the entrance to the gorge hollowed out in the vertiginous cliff; it rose up in a steep but practicable slope.

  “We can get away!” said Francisco.

  “Yes, but what about Lolla?”

  “God alone knows where she is now...”

  “And if she’s still alive...”

  Paul fought back the tears of despair that welled up in his eyes, and launched himself into the gorge first.

  While they bounded without a pause, they two men could hear the Mercurian host pursuing them, but they were getting further and further ahead of them. The sound of whistling became fainter; then it was no more than a vague murmur. Finally, they could no longer hear it.