The Fiery Wheel Read online

  By that time, Paul and Francisco had arrived at the far end of the gorge, which opened abruptly on to an immense slate plateau. The Frenchman spotted and overhanging mass under which there was a measure of shade.

  “Let’s take a rest there,” Paul said. “I can’t do any more...”

  “The fact is that such exertion, in this heat...”

  “Oh, I’m so thirsty! How thirsty I am!”

  Suffocating, their bodies dehydrated, unable to produce a drop of sweat, Paul and Francisco lay down in the shade.

  In front of them, the black plateau extended into the distance, all the way to a second chain of exceedingly high mountains to the flanks of which the eternal green clouds clung as they tore apart.

  “What a desolate terrain!” Paul murmured.

  “They’re coming,” Francisco panted. “Listen!”

  As if emerging from the bowels of the mountain, whistles and the sounds of falls were audible.

  “Let’s run again,” said Paul, getting to his feet.

  “Where?”

  “Toward the mountains out there.”

  And in spite of their horrible lassitude, in their determination to escape and find Lolla again, the two desperate men started running again, taking huge bounds.

  Suddenly, Francisco shouted: “Señor!”

  “What is it?”

  “Look over there to the left. May I lose an arm if it’s not rain, falling on the mountain.”

  At the word “rain,” and without thinking that the liquid products of the sky in that strange planet might not be water, Paul felt new blood circulating more strongly in his limbs.

  “Yes, yes!” he said, joyfully. “It must be rain...”

  There was, in fact, in the distance, something like a curtain of barely-transparent mist: a mist thicker than distant rainstorms are on Earth, slightly tinted green…but which might be rain, might be water...

  “Quickly! Quickly! Run that way!”

  They were gripped and carried away by frenzy. They bounded like balloons inflated with gas, finding a new lightness with every brief landing.

  Suddenly, they felt an indisputable freshness.

  “Señor! It’s water, Señor!”

  And Francisco showed Paul the back of his large brown hand. A large drop of water had just crashed into it. Almost immediately, they were under the downpour. It was falling from an enormous dark green cloud with black depths. Voluptuously, with no other thought than taking in the vivifying liquid, they lay down on their backs, mouths open, receiving drops of water as large as pigeon’s eggs over their entire bodies. As the drops hit the ground they made a crackling sound. They drank, slowly but without interruption, and felt with an indescribable joy, the water moistening their burned skin, insinuating itself into all their open pores.

  “Ah! Ah!” Paul moaned—and was intoxicated by the formidable deluge.

  Their thirst was eventually sated. They sat up.

  “Francisco,” said Paul, animatedly, “we need to collect the falling water. We need to save it!”

  “But how?”

  “What about your flask?”

  It was suspended around the Spaniard’s neck. He took it off, opened it, and presented it to Paul. “Drink! There are still a couple of mouthfuls of cognac left—one each.”

  When the flask was empty, he held it up in the air in both hands. It did not take long to fill up, because—alas!—it was not very capacious.

  Almost immediately, the rain-cloud passed over, carried by the wind of the upper atmosphere. The implacable light and heat replaced its cool shade.

  “Look, Señor! Over there!”

  With his extended arm, Francisco pointed at a small gap in the slate, where the water had collected. The two men saw the water become tainted in less than a minute, becoming turbulent, then taking on a yellow tint, becoming golden yellow. There was a bizarre seething, and a rapid congelation, like molten gold in a crucible. Paul touched it with his finger; it was hot and resistant.

  “Quickly!” he cried. “Look in the flask.”

  Francisco uncorked it, and they peered into the neck. The little circle of liquid gave every appearance of water, and retained it for three minutes, during which the two men watched. Then the surface of the water blemished slightly.

  “Cork it, quickly!”

  Francisco drove in the stopper.

  “I understand now,” said Paul. “The water falling on the ground combines with some element unknown to us and is transformed into that yellow substance, half-liquid and half-solid, which constitutes the rivers of this planet. The heat and the air must also have an influence on the chemical reaction, since the water in the flask began to transform after three minutes of contact with the atmosphere. But because the transformation is much less rapid than that of water on the ground, I think we can keep our modest provision intact for some time. And now...”

  But he was interrupted by Francisco, who grabbed his pike, leapt to his feet and shouted: “Here they come again Señor! They’re chasing us.”

  Far in the distance, in the direction of the gorge rising up from the golden river, a dark moving mass appeared, drawing rapidly nearer.

  “Run!” said Paul.

  And the two men, tracked like hunted animals, but stronger now, and animated by some confidence in the future, recommenced their bounding flight toward the high mountains, which were still a long way off...

  Chapter Three

  Which reveals stupefying phenomena

  They had been running and bounding for nearly an hour when Paul de Civrac uttered a loud cry and sprawled on the ground. Francisco, who had already launched himself into a new leap, doubled back. Leaning over his companion, who was trying to get up again, he said: “Are you hurt, Señor?”

  Paul stifled a groan of pain.

  “My right foot hit a rocky ledge. I might have sprained the ankle. Take off my boot, Francisco.”

  Laid bare, the foot only seemed to be slightly bruised on its outer edge, near the ankle. Francisco rubbed it with his broad hands.

  “It’s nothing. Just twisted nerves, probably.”

  “I hope so. The pain’s already lessening. But can I walk?”

  Supported by Francisco, he raised himself up on his left foot, but when he tried to put his right foot down, an intolerable pain drew a moan from him.

  “You need to rest it,” said Francisco. “Lean on me and hope as far as that cleft over there. We’ll be in the shade.”

  It took them five minutes to cover the hundred meters that separated them from the refuge indicated by Francisco, although, but for the accident, they would have crossed that distance in two bounds, in four seconds.

  Once he had laid his companion down in the shade, Francisco moistened the palms of his hands with saliva and patiently began a vigorous massage. Then he sat beside the injured man and said: “Go to sleep! If the Mercurians are still chasing us, they won’t get here for a good half-hour. I think you’ll be able to walk by then, if not run. We’re at the foot of the mountain. As you can see, it isn’t steep and we can climb it easily. Once we’re up there, I think we’ll wear out the determination of those dirty black monsters. In any case, once we’re on the far slope, out of sight, we’ll be able to hide in some cavern and give them the slip. Sleep—I’ll stay awake. Give me the watch.”

  The hands stood at quarter past four. The two men had, therefore, been walking and running for five hours since they had manufactured their weapons in the little wood on the prairie with the red flowers.

  Paul immediately fell into a heavy sleep, populated with nightmares, though which Lolla and the monopods, together with Bild, Brad and the Fiery Wheel, passed in turbulent confusion.

  Francisco kept watch. At half past four, he heard a distant and tenuous rumor in the great silence. Ten minutes later, far away, he saw the moving host of Mercurians, very tiny at that distance.

  As the plateau over which the monopods were hopping rose in a gentle slope toward the mountain at whose f
oot the fugitives were stationed, Francisco was overlooking the entire extent.

  “Ha ha!” he said. “They’re beginning to tire, the dirty monsters! There aren’t as many of them. At five o’clock I’ll wake the poor young man. As long as Lolla isn’t dead! Oh, if I ever give up trying to find her, I’ll go back to the city in the valley and massacre as many as possible, so long as a breath of life remains in me...”

  The Spaniard continued his monologue until the hands of the chronometer indicated five o’clock.

  The host of monopods was still some distance away.

  “Señor!” Francisco called, putting his hand on Paul’s shoulder. “Señor!”

  “Ah! yes…Lolla!”

  Poor young fellow, Francisco thought. He loves the Señorita and he’s dreaming about her. Will he ever see her again, alas? He shrugged his shoulders and said, aloud: “It’s me, Señor. The dirty beasts are coming. We have to go.”

  Paul raised his head swiftly.

  “Let’s go!” he said, blinking his eyes to reaccustom them to the intense light.

  But the condition of his foot had hardly improved. The swelling had increased and darkened, and was very painful to the touch.

  “It’s more than a twisted nerve,” Paul said. “I’ll never be able to get my boot back on.”

  Without making any reply, Francisco hung the useless boot from his belt, tore up the last shreds of his shirt and carefully bound the wounded foot.

  “There,” he said. “Stand up. Lean on me on one side, on your staff on the other. You’ll be able to walk at least as fast as the Mercurians. We only have to maintain the lead that we have.”

  Paul got up without too much difficulty. Holding on to Francisco’s shoulder with one hand, and holding hard to his pike with the other, he started hopping on one leg. He quickly mastered the necessary rhythmic movement, and the two men moved forward rapidly enough.

  The mountain was steep and fissured. By means of the ravine that seemed the least difficult, the fugitives began the difficult ascent. From time to time they turned round and looked back at the host of running Mercurians down below.

  “They’re gaining on us!”

  “Alas, yes,” Paul groaned, “and my foot is hurting badly. Soon, I won’t be able to walk any more. Lolla! What will become of Lolla?”

  “A little more courage, Señor. We’ll get there!”

  Paul stiffened himself against the fatigue and the pain, and strove to move more rapidly. It was in vain. The Mercurians were eating into their lead incessantly. The two fugitives saw them pile into the ravine in a disorderly fashion; their horrible whistling rent the air.

  “Courage! Courage!” repeated Francisco.

  Already, the gorge was coming up to an abrupt ridge between the two steep cliffs, doubtless to slope downwards thereafter on the other side of the mountain.

  “Another five minutes of walking,” he said. “Another five minutes, Señor.”

  But Paul, defeated, let himself collapse. He held a hand out weakly toward his companion and said, in a faint voice: “Save yourself, Francisco, for Lolla’s sake. Find her, and tell her that my last thought, as I died, was for her. Go. They’re going to catch me and kill me, but you can get away. Hurry. Tell Lolla that I love her and would have given my life for her. But go! Go!”

  “By San Cristo!” cried Francisco. “You’re losing your mind, Señor! Leave you here! And what would the Señorita say when I told her that I’d abandoned you to the cruelty of those dirty beasts?”

  “You can tell her that I ordered you to leave me. Do as you’re told. Go!”

  Exhausted by pain and physical fatigue, and by the mental torture he had been enduring for so many hours, Paul de Civrac was on the point of fainting when Francisco, uncorking his flask, made him drink a large gulp of water, slightly scented by rum. Then, growling an invocation to his usual protector, the “santissimo,” Santiago de Compostela, he took hold of Paul, lifted him up, loaded him on to his shoulders, and without paying any attention to the young man’s orders, he started running.

  It only took him five minutes to reach the place where the gorge, ceasing to climb, cut a passage through the high cliffs and descended in a steep slope. Accelerating his pace, Francisco began running down the steep and rocky slope.

  He made numerous detours, his vigilant eye allowing him to avoid loose boulders, his ears attentive to the sounds of the mountain. But the whistles of the monopods could no longer be heard, and the gorge suddenly opened out on to a narrow plateau—and the spectacle that abruptly emerged was so prodigious, so inconceivable, that Francisco came to a halt and murmured: “Demonios! What’s this new infernal place?”

  He did not hear Paul’s voice ordering him to put him down. At a slow pace, he resumed his march and headed for the far end of the rocky platform. Having arrived almost at the ended of a precipice he stopped again. Only then did he hear Paul. Francisco set the wounded man down, gently, on the rock, and embraced the immensity with a broad gesture and simply said: “Look, Señor!”

  Paul, his eyes wide open, did not have the strength to speak, so impressive and terrible was the spectacle.

  The platform on which they were located was in a kind of green-tinted twilight, which began at the edge of the ravine—which was glittering itself with the dazzling Mercurian daylight.

  An enormous void was hollowed out steeply beyond the platform, and the bottom of that precipice was a plain that extended until it was lost in the unknown. The strangeness of the spectacle consisted, above all, in the fact that the precipice, although open to the sky, was dark and gloomy; even darker and gloomier was the plain, which suddenly plunged into night—an immobile and fascinating night, dotted with myriads of stars. From that mysteriously tenebrous immensity came a cold wind: a wintry night-wind.

  Paul shivered, as much from horror as cold.

  “I wasn’t mistaken, Francisco,” he stammered. “We really are on the planet Mercury. There, at our feet, and then at the bottom of the precipice, is the twilight zone, which extends as far as the hemisphere of eternal night.”

  Raising his head, he saw that the clouds, green and luminous behind him, darkened as they passed overhead, descending lower in the atmosphere and going on to lose themselves, like black apocalyptic monsters, in the region of darkness, eternal ice and nameless fears. And there they congealed, in a thick line, beyond which appeared the profundity of nocturnal space, swarming with innumerable stars.

  Francisco had sat down beside Paul, and the two men shivered, their eyes staring avidly ahead of them and their teeth chattering. The heat and animation of their race gradually abandoned them; the green light no longer warmed them. On the slope on to which they had come, the temperature, in the shelter from the icy wind, was hotter than that of the equatorial regions of Earth; here, facing the region where the sun never shone, there was a temperature in the final strip of light more glacial than that of the poles.

  As sometimes happens during forceful mental disturbances, the physical pain of his injured foot no longer affected Paul de Civrac. Gradually, his customary energy and presence of mind chased away his weakness and the disarray that his inability to escape the monopods had caused him.

  He put his hand on Francisco’s arm and said: “What are we going to do?”

  As if he were waking up from a nightmare, the Spaniard looked at the young man distractedly.

  “What are we going to do?” Paul repeated. “Behind us, there are the Mercurians, captivity, perhaps death—but also light, heat, nourishment and the hope of finding Lolla. Ahead of us, there’s the absolute desert, the eternal darkness, the snow and ice, and certain death. What are we going to do?

  “Señor, I don’t...” Francisco stammered. A horrible volley of whistles cut him off.

  The two men turned round, and saw the multitude of Mercurians massed on the edge of the gorge, climbing the cliff—and all the swarming monopods were whistling and agitating, crowded in the narrow corridor or hanging on to some spur of ric
k. But they were all in the full glare of light, or the shadow of the cliff, and none advanced on to the twilit platform.

  Mute, the two Terrans gazed at their enemies and wondered what the reason was for their sudden halt, the interruption of such a long pursuit, when it would have been sufficient for a hundred monopods to make ten leaps to capture their prey.

  The Mercurians did not come forward. They were agitated, whistling and gesticulating, but whenever one of them, pushed by those behind, set foot involuntarily on the somber plateau, it immediately bounded backwards, and there was a cacophony of shrill whistles and frantic gestures of trunks and arms. The monsters’ red eyes seemed swollen, as if wide-eyed with terror. What could they see that was so extraordinary?

  “I understand, Francisco!” Paul said, with a surge of vague hope. “The Mercurians are afraid of their planet’s unlit zone. Doubtless, for them even more than for us, it’s a region of danger and death. Look—they’re whistling at us, and threatening us with their furious arms, but they aren’t coming forward, even though it would be easy to capture us now. We’re out of danger here, Francisco.”

  “The danger of being captured and having our blood sucked by these vampires, no doubt!” said the Spaniard, calmly. “But they only have to stay there, threatening us and blocking our path, and we’ll die of hunger and cold. Look at my lips, Señor. I’m sure they’re blue, as I can see yours are…and we’re both shivering. No matter what the cost, we have to return to the light and the heat.”

  “Yes, we must. For Lolla, above all.”

  And the two men searched for a mean of escape. After long minutes of reflection, during which the monopods stopped whistling, Paul murmured: “I can’t think of anything.”

  “Me neither.”

  This time, the situation appeared to both of them to be utterly hopeless.

  Thirty paces away, in the gorge and on the edges of the back rocks, all the monopods were sitting down, in the fashion that Mercurians sat—which is to say, with the knee bent and the base of their spine resting on the hind talon of their foot.