The Fiery Wheel Page 8

  “Thank you, Paul,” she replied, blushing. And their eyes met, shining with confidence and love—a love as yet unexpressed in words. In spite of the threat of danger, they felt impregnated by a great happiness, an indescribable and profound joy. In that moment, silently, Paul and Lola had given themselves to one another.

  The whistles became louder and louder. Soon, they filled the air, and the echoes in the cloud multiplied them a hundredfold.

  Suddenly, in the relative gloom of the forest, a red eye shone—then twenty; then a hundred; and then an incalculable number, incessantly increasing. And they heard the sharp rustle of pedal talons on the metallic leaves strewn on the ground.

  The circle of little black monsters was tightening incessantly. The first in line were no more than ten paces from the group of Terrans. As far as their sight could reach, the four men and the woman saw flat heads in succession, trunks waving and thousands of red eyes sparkling between the tree-trunks.

  “They’re going to attack us, Paul,” said Bild.

  “We have no weapons,” said Brad.

  “Nor have they,” said Francisco.

  “They have their claws!”

  Terrified, Lolla Mendès clung to Paul, whose arm was around her waist. The young man quivered with joy in hugging Lolla, even though he was thinking about the danger of an attack by the Mercurians.

  “What do we do?”

  “Let’s try to negotiate.” And Civrac, with his free arm, began gesturing.

  Shrill whistles cut through the air, though; the first rank of Mercurians surged forward, flowed by the innumerable host.

  Bild grabbed a monopod by the leg and, using it as a club, started striking out ahead of him. Brad did likewise. By that means, they opened up a passage.

  “Follow us!” cried Bild.

  “Move backwards!” howled Brad.

  Francisco brandished his Catalan knife, stabbing red eyes. Lifting Lola, who had fainted, on to his shoulder, Paul de Civrac defended himself awkwardly with his free arm. And both of them, moving backwards, followed Bild and Brad.

  But what could four humans do against that multitude of clawed monsters? Amid a racket of cries and whistles, which reverberated indefinitely in the sky, the Mercurians rushed after Paul and Francisco. Those in front of Bild and Brad moved aside to avoid their blows, but they rejoined those behind them, so effectively that the Frenchman, the Spaniard and Lolla were soon separated from the two Americans.

  Suddenly, Francisco’s knife, striking a glancing blow against the skull of a monopod, snapped. The blade fell. Instinctively, Francisco tried to bend down to pick it up, but twenty monopods leapt on top of him, grabbed him and immobilized him.

  “Help me!” he cried.

  “Help!” shouted Civrac, at the same time. He had just slipped and fallen. In the blink of an eye, he too was pinned to the ground by the monsters. He put both arms around Lola and did not put up any more resistance. They could have killed him, though, before snatching the inanimate body of the young woman away from him.

  Meanwhile, in response to their companions’ cries, Bild and Brad had turned round. They saw that it was impossible to go to the aid of the captives. They were more than a hundred meters away, and the Mercurians were filling that space tumultuously, claws extended. Every fallen monopod was replaced by another. In the meantime, the Mercurians were dragging the captives even further away.

  “We’ll never catch up with them, Bild!”

  “No, Brad, no!”

  “The best thing is to get away!”

  “We can search for them later.”

  “Exactly!”

  “Grab another monster, Brad—yours is demolished.”

  “So’s yours.”

  “All right!”

  And, throwing away the useless cadavers that had served them thus far as clubs, each of them grabbed a living monopod, and, brandishing it like a flail, began striking out again.

  They were covered in wounds, however. The Mercurians’ terrible claws had made profound incisions in their arms, thighs and hips, from which blood was flowing.

  “Head for the red prairie, Brad!”

  “Let’s go, Bild!”

  And the two men bounded away, striking out and howling, heading for the vast red grassland. They were able to run faster than the monopods now. They hoped, once they were in the open, to escape them more easily than in the forest, where the densely-packed tree-trunks were continual obstacles.

  Meanwhile, a hundred monopods carried Francisco, Paul and Lola away. They had tied them up with some kind of fibrous yellow cord. With their joined arms, twelve Mercurians formed a sort of lattice-work stretcher on which the young woman as carried. Twelve others were transporting Francisco in the same fashion and a further twelve Paul de Civrac, who had let go of Lola’s body once he understood that the unfeeling brutes would have torn her apart with their claws in order to get her away from him.

  Following a broad path with numerous turnings, they went rapidly and silently, without any whistling sounds. Soon, Paul and Francisco, who had maintained their presence of mind, could no longer hear the battle that Bild and Brad were sustaining.

  “Where are they taking us, Señor?” asked Francisco.

  “Doubtless to one of their cities—for there’s no longer any doubt about it; these horrible monsters are intelligent beings.”

  “And Brad and Bild?”

  “Alas…!”

  “The Señorita is still unconscious, Señor.”

  “That’s probably better. You can’t see any wounds on her, can you?”

  “None. What about you?”

  “I only have a couple of scratches on my right thigh. You?”

  “Nothing, Señor, nothing—a scratch on each arm, hardly worth the trouble of mentioning. But tell me, Señor, these scoundrels don’t appear to intend doing us any harm...”

  “Not for the moment, no. We’ll have to be patient.”

  “Patient! Santiago de Campostelo protect us! We’ve fallen into a hellish land.”

  Suddenly, the two men could no longer see the vault of the trees above them. The sudden light blinded them and they felt the horrible heat of harsh light.

  “Señor! The forest’s ended...”

  Paul turned his head. “We’re on the bank of the golden river, Francisco.”

  The sight of that river was so strange that the two captives forgot their situation in order to feel astonishment and admiration.

  At their feet, along a low bank covered with russet grass, an amazing liquid was flowing; it was bright yellow, opaque, and its heavy, blistered waves were rolling along as if in an uneven channel of molten gold.

  At that place the river was about a hundred meters wide; its depth was impossible to estimate, since the liquid was not transparent.

  “Look, Señor!” shouted Francisco.

  While the two men were admiring the river, the Mercurians had arranged themselves in a compact triangle, with the porters and the captives in the middle. One Mercurian was standing on its own at the point of the triangle, orientated in the direction of the current. That Mercurian seemed to be a chief, to judge by its taller stature and a large flexible gold ring circling its trunk. It gave voice to a prolonged whistle and raised its arm. Immediately, the entire phalanx leapt into the river.

  It did not sink into the liquid. Carried away like a raft, drawn by the current, it glided along, with the undulations of the waves, traveling at some sixty kilometers an hour.

  At the base of the Mercurian triangle, ten monopods were lined up at right angles to the flow; they were kneeling down, plunging their arms entirely into the yellow liquid. Paul, who could see them clearly, noticed that they were modifying the inclination of their arms in accordance with whistles uttered by the chief standing at the point of the triangle.

  “Can you see how they’re making a rudder, Francisco?” said Paul.

  “I can see, Señor.” The Spaniard was squinting his bewildered eyes, as much as the intensity of t
he light permitted.

  When they had arrived, diagonally, in the center of the river, the arms of the ten monopods emerged from the liquid, and they moved in a straight line from then on.

  In spite of the solicitations issued to their curiosity by the landscape and the extraordinary events, Paul and Francisco did not lose sight of Lola Mendès. She was still unconscious, but just as the forest gave way on one bank to the russet prairie and on the other to the first escarpments of the slate mountains, Paul saw that she was struggling in the arms of her captors. Almost immediately, she opened her eyes.

  “Lolla!” he shouted. “Don’t be afraid!”

  “Paul!”

  “Don’t be afraid, I beg you, and don’t struggle. We’re prisoners of the Mercurians. I don’t know where they’re taking us, but they don’t appear to have any evil intentions in our regard.”

  “What happened? Where’s Francisco? Where are Bild and Brad?”

  “I’m here, Señorita!” said the Spaniard.

  “In a few words, Civrac gave an account of the battle and its outcome; he described the passage over ground and on the river. He had scarcely finished when Francisco shouted: “The Fiery Wheel! The Fiery Wheel!”

  “Bild and Brad!” exclaimed Paul de Civrac at the same time.

  The Mercurians had seen the aerial phenomenon too, for they began whistling and waving their trunks and arms.

  And what happened then was truly the most exorbitant episode in the entire exorbitant adventure.

  Bild and Brad were running across the russet prairie, pursued by a host of Mercurians. Above them, at a height that was difficult to estimate, the Fiery Wheel was turning in a direction parallel to that of the golden river.

  Suddenly, drowning out the whistles of the monopods, a rumble resounded, reverberated to infinity by the echoes of the eternal green clouds.

  The Fiery Wheel increased its glare, and the captives saw Bild and Brad, clinging together, rising up toward the Wheel, drawn in as in Bogota, followed by twenty gesticulating monopods...

  The flying bodies disappeared into a fulguration of the Wheel, and the Wheel itself, with a noise like a thousand thunderclaps, abruptly vanished into the clouds.

  Meanwhile, rapidly, the golden river drew the three distressed, sweating, blinded captives into the unknown, on the arms of the whistling Mercurians.

  PART THREE

  THE MERCURIANS

  Chapter One

  In which horrific scenes conclude with

  a terrible accident

  The rapid glide along the current of the golden river lasted for a long time. The intensity of the torrid heat and the dazzling light had overwhelmed Paul de Civrac, Lola and Francisco. Unconscious, their eyes closed, they remained lying on the arms of their porters, without the strength to exchange their impressions.

  From time to time, however, they called out to one another and drew a little courage from the mutual observation that they were alive. None of them knew how many hours that agony in the heat and light lasted; Lolla was the only one who had a watch, but the little chronometer had stopped and the young woman, with her hand tied, could not take it from her belt.

  The silence around them was absolute. All they could hear, at long intervals, was the whistling of the monopod with the gold-ringed trunk.

  Suddenly, darkness succeeded the daylight, and coolness the torrid temperature. The three Terrans opened their eyes at the same time, and saw that they had entered a subterranean channel. The obscurity was not complete, however. The golden river, on which they were still traveling, radiated a yellow-tinted light. They were moving even more rapidly. The captives saw the black, uneven walls of the tunnel gliding vertiginously rearwards.

  Where were they being taken, on this hectic journey?

  “How are you, Lolla?” Paul asked—and his voice resounded in the depths of the unfathomable tunnel.

  “Much better! This coolness is doing me good. I thought I was going to die in the heat and light outside.”

  “Santiago de Compostela be blessed!” said Francisco, signaling his contentment by means of his habitual invocation. “But where the devil are we?”

  Abruptly, the glide came to a halt, and the prisoners perceived that their porters had leapt on to solid ground. The entire troop of monopods plunged into a lateral tunnel, and the Terrans saw the yellow glow of the golden river fading away behind them. It was now pitch dark.

  “Lolla!” Paul shouted.

  “I’m here!”

  “Francisco!”

  “Present, Señor.”

  “These monsters can see in the dark,” Civrac went on, “like nyctalopic animals.”9

  “They’re evidently ignorant of the use of candles, lamps and torches,” murmured Lolla Mendès.

  “And probably of the use of fire. If we’re eventually obliged, and able, to seek salvation in flight, how can we get out of these dark caverns? Oh, how I regret now losing my electric torch when I fell out of the Fiery Wheel!”

  “I’ve got a box of matches in my pocket, Señor,” said Francisco, laughing.

  A distant whistle was heard, to which the chief, who was marching in the lead, replied with a similar whistle. Paul raised his head slightly, and saw a pale light some distance away.

  “Patience!” he said, philosophically.

  A few moments later, the troop of Mercurians emerged into a prodigiously vast space. It was vaguely illuminated but the radiation of a narrow stream of yellow liquid meandering over the floor. Several times, with a simultaneous leap, the porters jumped over the luminous stream.

  Suddenly, they stopped, deposited their captives on the ground one after another, removed their bonds, and moved away from them. Then they all started whistling, in a perfectly rhythmic fashion.

  Then, like a flock of nocturnal animals, they dispersed into the immense subterranean cavity and disappeared into cavities, the orifices of which formed disquieting dark holes in the lighted walls.

  The three captives found themselves alone, their arms and legs free—but that solitude was of such short duration that they did not even have time to exchange their impressions.

  In tight masses, hundreds and hundreds of monopods surged out of the dark holes. They huddled around the captives, who had backed up against the rocky wall, and their semicircle became more and more compact. Their red eyes were shining like little mobile beacons, their trunks were waving and whistling, and their arms were making jerky gestures. Suddenly, however, without any apparent cause, the most absolute silence and immobility descended upon the innumerable host of black monsters.

  Then Paul, Lolla and Francisco saw two monopods leaping over the heads of the multitude, advancing rapidly toward them. With one last bound, the two Mercurians fell to the ground four paces in front of the Terrans. Their trunks were entirely surrounded by flexible gold thread. Undoubtedly, they were the great chiefs of the Mercurian society,

  While the great Monopod potentates stood motionless and upright, each of them staring with its unique red eye. Paul took Lolla’s hand and said: “Don’t be afraid.”

  “No, Paul, I’m not afraid. Nothing can happen to us that’s worse than death.”

  “And we’d die together, Lolla,” Paul said, in a grave voice.

  “Thank you,” the young woman said, in a whisper.

  “Before one of these dirty beasts touches you, Señorita,” Francisco growled, “I’ll have demolished a good few of them.”

  “Not a single gesture without my permission, Francisco!” the courageous Spanish woman ordered.

  One of the chiefs raised its arm, and let it fall back—and immediately, it uttered a sequence of whistles of varying length, cadenced and separated by pauses. It was speaking—but did it imagine that the prisoners could understand it?

  Its companion took over, and whistled for a long time in its turn. Then it seemed to be waiting.

  Lowly, Paul straightened up. He wanted to reply, in accordance with his means. Accompanying his words with expressiv
e gestures, he simply said: “We’re hungry and thirsty.” Then he sat down.

  The two chiefs conferred, shaking their rat-like heads, moving their trunks and whistling. Then they turned to the crowd and made a gesture.

  The packed ranks of Mercurians parted, and four monopods appeared, moving rapidly, carrying a black mass larger than themselves. They put it down in front of the three Terrans and withdrew.

  The circle of the multitude closed again, almost touching the two chiefs. Thousands of red eyes were still staring; evidently, they were waiting to see what the prisoners would do.

  Meanwhile, Paul examined the black mass that had been set down in front of him.

  “But it’s a Mercurian,” he said, devoid of claws on its arms and legs, and fatter than the others.”

  “It looks to me like a fattened Mercurian,” said Francisco.

  “Do you understand it, Lolla?”

  “No.”

  They reflected momentarily, and then Paul murmured: “I’m afraid I might understand.”

  The Mercurians’ conduct did go unexplained for long.

  Confronted by the inaction of their prisoners, the two chiefs conferred again. Then one of them knelt down beside the head of the recumbent monopod—and what the Terrans saw then caused them to cry out in horror.

  Into the enormous bulging red eye of the monopod lying on the ground, the kneeling chief plunged the sucker of his trunk, with a single stroke, and while the mass stirred convulsively, from that eye, now punctured—from which a whitish liquid was running that was doubtless Mercurian blood—the chief avidly pumped his nourishment.

  “Oh, Paul!” groaned Lolla, hiding her face in her hands.

  Paul and Francisco were frozen. In a flash, the Frenchman understood numerous things. The Mercurians ate one another. Presumably, there was nothing living on their ardent soil but themselves. They must reproduce prodigiously, pullulating like terrestrial rats and rabbits, and, in order to live as well as to compensate for the intensive overproduction of their species, the Mercurians ate one another. What were the laws or customs regulating the choice, captivity and fattening of their nutritious victims? It would require a long sojourn on the Mercurian world, the understanding of their language, and the observation of their mores to discover that. But the fact itself was incontestable: the Mercurians ate one another!