The Fiery Wheel Read online

  “No,” the thaumaturge replied. “Given that, if I’ve killed one human body, I’ve resuscitated another.”

  “In fact,” said the Abbé, “it’s merely a substitution.”

  The five friends sat down on the divan again.

  “Now, Messieurs,” said Ahmed Bey, whose expression had become grave again, “Permit me to shake you by the hand, and wish me bon voyage. In five minutes, deprived of my heavy terrestrial envelope, I shall be flying through interplanetary space, a pure soul.”

  These prodigious words did not astonish the five listeners. What they had just seen had hardened them. They shook the hand that their host held out to them, and the astronomer expressed their common thought in saying: “We hope that our journey will be brief and that you’ll return from it. Try to clarify the mystery of the Fiery Wheel.”

  “I shall return,” said Ahmed Bey “As for the duration of the voyage, I don’t know that. I shall go via Venus, in order to disincarnate the souls of Messieurs Bild and Brad and take them with me. All three of us will travel to Mercury, where it will be necessary for us to search for Lolla Mendès, Paul de Civrac and Francisco. We shall be reincarnated, probably in Mercurian bodies. Everything depends, therefore, on the time required by that search.”

  “And how long will it take to go from here to Venus, and then to Mercury?” asked Dr. Payen.

  “A flash of lightning,” Ahmed Bey replied. “The pure soul travels as rapidly as thought. Your thought only takes a second to transport itself to the most distant star. Now, Messieurs, I ask you for the most absolute silence, and I permit myself to remind you of your promise.”

  Having pronounced these words in a grave and imperious voice, Ahmed Bey extinguished the chandeliers again, only leaving the central lamp dimly lit.

  Immediately, he lay down on one of the marble slabs. He closed his eyes. Incomprehensible words emerged from his lips. They saw him go pale, quivering with tremors that gradually diminished in strength, and then remain immobile. A pink foam appeared between his lips. A convulsion shook him, his mouth opened—and a white spark emerged, which danced momentarily before the eyes of the five petrified scientists, rose rapidly toward the ceiling, and suddenly disappeared.

  A few minutes of tragic silence went by.

  The five friends gazed at the body of Ahmed Bey, rigid and motionless on the slab.

  Then a door opened, and Ra-Cobrah advanced toward his mater’s body. As he passed close to a column he turned an electric switch and the chandeliers illuminated the laboratory brightly once again.

  “Messieurs,” Ra-Cobrah said, “the Master’s soul has departed. Please allow me to give his body the prescribed care...”

  The first to recover his composure, Dr. Payen, got up and went over to Ahmed Bey’s body. He touched it, felt for a pulse, placed a small pocket mirror over the lips, applied and stethoscope to the location of the heart and listened...

  “My friends,” he said, in a tremulous voice, turning to his four companions, “it’s inconceivable: Ahmed Bey’s body, lying here, is a corpse. We have seen…now we have only to wait...”

  After putting on their normal clothing, saluted by Ra-Cobrah, the five scientists left the laboratory. Preceded by a Hindu servant, who took back the five linen tunics, they went back up the stairs, traversed a long corridor and a vast antechamber, went through the garden and a gate, and found themselves confronted by their five carriages, lined up at the edge of the sidewalk. They separated, after shaking hands, without a word, their minds in turmoil.

  It was four o’clock in the morning, and the first glimmers of dawn were climbing the side of the Panthéon.

  Chapter Two

  In which an individual as interesting

  as Ahmed Bey is found

  In the desolate regions of the planet Mercury, on the crepuscular plateau on the edge of the immensity of darkness, Paul and Francisco were continuing their struggle against death.

  Ten Mercurians they had killed furnished blood and fire for fifty-six hours. The blood appeased their hunger and thirst; the fire diminished the mortal cold falling from the somber sky and coming from the infinity of darkness.

  As the penultimate monopod was burning, Francisco said: “You stay here, Señor, while I go hunting. Sixty hours have gone by since the last message; we won’t receive another for thirty-six hours. We need to ensure that we don’t freeze to death before then. Not one of these monsters has stayed in the gorge, as you can see. When they saw that we were drinking their blood and burning their bodies, they ran away. They must have gone back down to the valley. I’ll go after them. In the meantime, you can burn the last one—that will keep you warm until I come back. I’m agile, I won’t be running any risk. You wouldn’t be any use to me, with your foot still hurting. It’s better for you to stay here. In three or four hours I’ll come back, and bring half a dozen of these monopods, as you call them. And perhaps I’ll also bring back news of Lolla!”

  “It’s all right—go!” said Paul. He was absorbed by thoughts so sad that, without the hope of finding and rescuing Lolla as soon as his foot was completely healed, he would have let himself die. The arrival of Bild and Brad seemed to him to be very problematic; he dared not believe, in spite of the phenomenon of the projections, that the Venusians would find a way to allow Bild and Brad to travel from Venus to Mercury. In any case, all the strange adventures that he had lived through since his abduction from Bogota seemed so exorbitant that he still believed himself to be the victim of an interminable nightmare, and his energy was gradually declining.

  Already, Francisco—who was more inclined to action than thought—had grabbed his pike and set off toward the mountain gorge.

  Before leaping on to the luminous slope of the mountain, he turned toward Paul, waved his weapon and shouted: “See you soon, Paul!” And while the aerial echoes reverberated his cry with rolls of thunder, he jumped. Skillfully, he aimed for a spot twenty or thirty meters ahead, calculating his leap carefully, and set off. He scarcely touched the ground; his muscular and elastic legs flexed and straightened again, and he went down the mountain with vertiginous rapidity. Once again he had the sensation of the blinding light and the stifling heat; he was suffocating slightly—but he knew that the malaise would be temporary and did not pay much attention to it.

  Without stopping, he traversed the broad plateau where Paul had been injured. There was not a single Mercurian to be seen.

  They must have gone back to their city on the river bank, he said to himself.

  He headed for a depression that seemed to him to be the place where the gorge that led to the water’s edge opened on to the plateau. When he arrived there, however, he leapt back violently and uttered an exclamation. A steep precipice opened up before his eyes, at the very bottom of which the river was shining. It was like an enormous crevasse, whose two edges, about a hundred meters apart, overhung the abyss.

  “Demonios!” Francisco swore. “I nearly jumped into that!”

  Immediately, however, he remembered that he had fallen from much higher when quitting the Fiery Wheel; he reflected on his own lightness, the density of the air and all the scientific matters that Paul had explained to him, and started to laugh at his instinctive fear.

  “Bah!” he said, gaily, “I keep forgetting that I’m not on Earth. I don’t have to start searching for the path by which we came up. I can jump down…I’ll land in the river; it’ll make a mattress. Since I didn’t come to any harm falling from the Fiery Wheel, there’s every reason to suppose that jumping from the top of the cliff to the bottom of the valley poses no danger—and I’ll get there more rapidly. Then again, on seeing me arrive in that manner, the Mercurians will be so bewildered that I’ll be able to grab half a dozen of them without a fight. Escaping from the others won’t be as easy, of course…but perhaps they won’t dare to chase me. Come on—hup!”

  And he jumped, looking down.

  It seemed to him that the river was rising up to meet him, and he started to laugh.
Immediately, however, he uttered an oath. He had jumped too far from the edge of the cliff, and he was not going to fall in the river but on the bank, in the midst of the pyramidal houses.

  He scarcely had time to take account of that unforeseen accident. If I hit the rock or a house, he thought, I’ll break my ankles, at least...

  At that moment, he landed, not on his feet but on his back. He felt a violent shock, but he retained all his presence of mind.

  “Good,” he murmured. “I haven’t broken anything, although the impact was hard....”

  He was about to get to his feet when he saw monopods surging forward from all directions. He brandished his pike—but before the weapon had come down, twenty claws had seized his legs, his arms and his entire body. He struggled, but it was in vain. A rough cord wound around him, immobilizing his limbs, circling his torso and his neck. Half-strangled, he felt himself lifted up and carried away, in the midst of a riot of furious whistles.

  Suddenly, he found himself on the ground, alone, in darkness. A square of light at ground level disappeared; a door had just closed. Francisco was a prisoner in one of the pyramidal houses of the Mercurian city.

  To begin with, he was gripped by such a fit of rage that he writhed in his bonds, trying hopelessly to bite through them, and hurling all the curses available to a Spaniard at his enemies. That crisis of impotent wrath gradually calmed down, however, and Francisco stopped shouting and swearing—which permitted him to hear, with astonishment, his name pronounced in a low voice...

  “Santa Virgen!” he said. “Who’s calling me?”

  “Francisco, it’s...”

  “Señorita!”

  “Don’t shout like that! Don’t shout!”

  “Señorita, Señorita!” exclaimed the poor man—and tears welled up in his eyes when, in the gloom of his prison, he saw the face of Lolla Mendès lean over him.

  “Señorita, it’s you! You! I’m not dreaming?”

  “No, Francisco, you’re not dreaming. I’ve been shut in here for a long time. But what about Paul? Where is he?”

  “What? Oh, Señorita, untie me...”

  “My hands and feet are bound too. Answer me—what’s become of Monsieur de Civrac?”

  “Safe and sound, Señorita, safe and sound on the mountain. And he’s waiting for me! Oh, if he knew that you were here! He’d come running! He’d let himself be captured in order to be with you...”

  “You think so?” said Lolla. Her tremulous voice betrayed her emotion.

  “Señorita,” Francisco replied, “he thinks of nothing but you. But tell me, how do you come to be here?”

  Briefly, Lolla Mendès told him that the golden river had taken her into a cavern. She had been seized by Mercurians and put under the safeguard of a chief. They had come back upriver, and she had been imprisoned in this dungeon. Twice a day, they brought her a sort of white cream in a yellow metal bowl; she drank it with her eyes closed—in order to live! She hoped that Paul and Francisco were looking for her and would save her. No monopod had touched her. Sometimes, the chief, recognizable by the flexible golden ring circling his trunk, came into the hut, closing the door behind him, crouched down in the shadows, whistled, gesticulated, and went away again.

  When Lolla had finished speaking, Francisco told her about the adventures he had gone through with Paul. When he reached the episode of Bild and Brad’s projections, Lolla could hardly believe her ears. Francisco had to repeat the story three times. Weeping with joy, Lolla exclaimed: “But what about Monsieur de Civrac’s injury?”

  “Nothing! In a matter of hours, the foot will have healed completely. But what is Monsieur de Civrac going to do now? When I don’t come back, will he set out to look for me? Or will he stay on the plateau to wait for the projections? If he does, he’ll suffer badly from cold and hunger!”

  “My God, my God, what can we do?” Lolla moaned, twisted her beautiful arms, joined at the wrist by thick bonds.

  “Caramba! If I could just get free! Señorita, have you tried to tear the cords that bind you with your teeth?”

  “Yes, but my teeth are too weak. I can’t even fray the diabolical ropes.”

  “I have an idea, Señorita. It seems to me that the cords are made from woven stalks of the russet grass. My teeth are solid, but the monsters have trussed me up so tightly that I can’t move my head. Put out your arms. Put your bonds next to my teeth. There! Don’t move.”

  Vigorously, Francisco set about biting the cords binding Lola’s hands with his incisors. Soon, one fiber snapped, then another, and then a whole sheaf. Francisco redoubled his efforts—and suddenly, the bonds fell away.

  Lolla uttered a cry of joy as she raised her liberated hands.

  “Oh, if I had my matches!” Francisco said. “I left them with Monsieur de Civrac. Quickly, Señorita, look around for a stone or a piece of slate—something hard. Hurry! Those black bandits will doubtless be back before long...”

  Lolla had soon located a splinter of slate on the floor of the hut.

  “Bravo! Scrape the cord around my neck…yes, that one…scrape hard, Señorita. Don’t be afraid of scratching me—I’ve got hard skin...”

  When Francisco sensed that the cord had been partly frayed, he tensed his muscles prodigiously, and the worn cord snapped. The Spaniard was able to move his head...and from then on, the task proceeded rapidly. With his teeth, Francisco freed his hands. His strong fingers removed the cords binding Lola’s legs, and then those that were wound around his body and legs.

  The two prisoners stood up together.

  “I don’t have a weapon!” Francisco groaned. “Oh, my pike, my pike! How useful it would be now. It’s impossible to flee without a weapon to open the way for us. Is there nothing in this cabin? Have you seen anything, Señorita?”

  Francisco made a rapid tour of their prison. It was square at the base, the four triangular walls shrinking as they rose up and coming together at a height of two meters. The sides of the square floor were three meters long. There was no furniture and there were no utensils of any kind. There were a few fragments of slate on the smooth floor, about the size of a five-franc coin.

  “What about the door?” Lolla asked. “What is it made of?”

  “A block of slate,” Francisco replied. “I’ve already thought of that—it’s too awkward to manipulate. Since there’s nothing else, though...”

  The Spaniard was about to look to see how the door was attached when the block of slate fell inwards. The light from outside invaded the hut, and the prisoners were able to see a vast crowd of monopods tightly packed all the way to the river bank. On the threshold, upright and motionless, stood the Mercurian with the shiny gold-ringed trunk.

  By means of gestures and whistles it manifested an excitement presumably caused by seeing its prisoners’ arms and legs free. As the Mercurians were now aware of the dangerous strength of the extraordinary beings of unknown origin, however, none of the monopods advanced, and even the chief looked back frequently to see whether retreat would be possible in case of an attack.

  Bracing himself, with his fists forward, almost crouching on his heels, in order to be able to see what was happening outside through the low door, Francisco reflected. Lolla was standing behind him, ready to obey as soon as he gave an order—for in this situation, the mistress left the domestic the prerogative of making a decision.

  Could they flee through that crowd? Impossible without a weapon—all the more impossible because the opening of the doorway was only about a meter high, and Francisco and Lolla would have to duck down to get through it. Once outside, before they could brace themselves for a further leap, they would be grabbed by claws and knocked down, perhaps injured.

  Francisco was taking account of all that when he noticed a pronounced disturbance in the crowd of monopods. Arms were gesticulating, whistles resounding.

  “What are they going to do?” Francisco growled.

  At that moment, however, the prisoners saw, to their astonishment, the slate hut r
ose up into the air and fall on to its side, and they were grabbed from behind. Twenty monopods leapt on them, knocked them down and immediately carried them into another pyramidal house.

  Francisco realized that the huts were simply resting on the ground, without foundations. The Mercurians had lifted up the one in which they were enclosed, and others had attacked them from the rear in order to capture them, taking advantage of the surprise occasioned by the movement of the house.

  Chapter Three

  Which seems phantasmagorical,

  and yet is scientifically real

  After four hours of solitude, Paul de Civrac was astonished that Francisco had not returned. The penultimate monopod had been entirely consumed. The young man struck a match and set fire to the feet of the last Mercurian that remained to him. He was not suffering from hunger, for the blood of the monopods was satisfying nourishment, and he was scarcely feeling the cold, sitting against the rock that sheltered him from the wind and in front of the Mercurian, burning with cheerful spitting flames that provided light and heat, but Francisco’s prolonged absence worried him.

  Another four hours passed, and Francisco did not reappear.

  I’ll go down as far as the large plateau, Paul said to himself. My foot’s almost better; if I pay careful attention to the terrain, I can still walk quickly enough. The Venusian projection won’t shine for another forty-eight hours, so I have plenty of time.

  He waited, however, until the monopod was completely consumed. When the last sputtering flame has gone out, he got up, picked up his pike, and set off for the entrance of the gorge.

  He did not notice that just as he got to his feet, two white sparks had raced across the infinite darkness, and that, while he crossed the twilit platform, he was followed by the two minuscule sparks, which were floating in mid-air, horizontally aligned, at shoulder height.

  He walked on. In measured bounds, he went down the steep slope of the gorge into the full Mercurian daylight. Now, if he had turned round, he would not have been able to see the two sparks, which had become invisible in the intense light.