The Door to Saturn (10 page)

One of the monsters had wrapped itself around the Koum’s enormous head, and had muffled his whole face from sight. He staggered blindly, and fell in a mad convulsion of clattering limbs; and his fall loosened one of the monster’s folds for an instant, revealing a large irregular hole that had been eaten in his forehead. A rill of ruby liquid was gushing forth and a mass of bluish and deeply convoluted brain-matter was projecting from the hole beneath the suction of the organism, whose multiple mouths were dripping with dissolved metal as well as the sustenance it had drawn from within. Then, as the Koum lay still, the fold returned, covering his entire head like a massive caul, and was re-applied to its frightful labor.

All this had happened in a few moments, while the platform was rising from the balcony. The helpless disorder of the Tloongs, and the diabolical speed and expedition shown by their assailants, were like something beheld in an evil delirium, and were strangely unreal at the time. Afterwards, the men were to recall the sight with profound terror, and were often to awake sweating from dreams in which its unexampled horrors were repeated.

The platform soared in air with a growing momentum, as the throng of metal beings reached the tilting edge in their mortal combat. Some of the Tloongs went hurtling into space with their formless and multiform adversaries from the pressure of the mêlée behind them; and it could now be seen that the shaken building had slanted like a falling column. As the platform rose to a level with its roof beneath Jaspers’ guidance, the great tower assumed an even sharper list; and then, with a detonation that was like a million peals of never-ending thunder, it plunged from the high cliff into the sea-drained abyss. The platform was nearly caught by its toppling verge, and was tossed like a feather in the maelstrom of gulfward-rushing air engendered by its fall. It was all that Jasper could do to right the vessel and steer it free from that atmospheric torrent.

The platform retrieved the level it had momentarily lost, only to plunge amid an elemental chaos. There were sudden hurricanes that began in mid-air, there were tornadoes that swooped from above or surged from beneath to buffet the vessel as it flew athwart the riven and reeling plain that was still shaken by incessant seismic throes. All the forces of nature, as well as the buildings and mechanisms of the Tloongs, were being thrown into catastrophic disorder, as the monster-eaten soil collapsed or was upheaved over hemispheric areas. The Murms were teeming everywhere, the plain was mottled with their spreading armies, and every new fissure vomited forth its boiling hordes. Other vessels, laden with Tloongs, were passed by the earth-men; but few of them were making any effort to fight the organisms. Their crews were apparently so demoralized with terror that they could not even guide the platforms in the mounting tempests; and many vessels pitched to the ground, where they were instantly overrun and buried from sight by the avid monsters, mad for the metal-sharded brains that they esteemed above any other delicacy. To see those creatures sucking forth the cerebral matter of the Tloongs like meat from a shell-fish, was enough to sicken the earth-men for life.

Jasper steered as directly as he could toward the far-off edifice on which the
Alcyone
was held captive. It was a voyage through an aerial bedlam, through an ever-rising frenzy of elements with planetary paroxysms of doom and destruction. The earth-men saw the downfall of more Babelian towers, and others that soared in air and careened away toward the tossing and rolling horizons when their magnetic engines went wild beneath the assault of the escalading organisms. There were realm-wide areas that had fallen in, leaving unfathomable pits; there were new chasms that seemed to divide the entire topography of the planet or even descend to its core; there were water-spouts and volcanoes that aspired in typhonian columns of flame and vapor to the ruddy vault; there were thick clouds of an ebon blackness that gathered in mid-air with legerdemainic speed, and lightnings that netted or sheeted the whole welkin with violescent fire; there were brief intervals of sudden darkness, and momentary brightenings of the red vault to an insupportable candescence.

Somehow, beneath the skillful hand of Jasper, the platform held its course through all this elementary pandemonium. It was flung back and forth in the instantaneous hurricanes, it was tossed from level to level of the wild and shrieking air, it was mantled with cimmerian night and shrouded with electric fire. There were queer alternations of temperature; there were zones of insufferable heat through which the vessel passed to an absolute etheric or trans-arctic zero that would have turned the earth-men into statues of ice if it had lasted for more than a moment. The sound-phenomena that accompanied and followed all these cataclysmic manifestations were equally stupendous: the thunder of winds and lightning was mingled with, and surmounted by, the roar of widening rifts and chasms and the falling towers and wrecked or deranged machinery of the Tloongs. There were brazen clangors that climbed above the storm like the trumpet-calls of some demonian army in disaster; there were dull thuddings and pulsations of subterrene mechanisms that gave an unceasing ground-note to the whole infernal symphony; and from out the air on every side, there came the ringing of frantic gongs and the desperate moaning and wailing of the Tloongs, doubtless conveyed on disordered force-waves from widely remote areas, to add an overtone of supernatural terror.

At length the platform neared its destination. The tower on which the
Alcyone
was held began to heave from a horizon that was notched and serried with fissures. Soon it could be seen that the tower was pitching dangerously, and that its downfall was imminent. A great crack was broadening in its lower stories, and the plain around it was tossing like a sea, when Jasper landed the platform beside the space-vessel. Tloongs were running aimlessly about the roof; and some of them were battling with organisms who had already climbed the innumerable tiers of rooms and galleries to seek them out. But to all this the earthlings paid no heed, as they sprang from the platform and mounted one by one the steel ladder of the ether-ship.

Volmar came last; and he had no sooner closed the man-hole, when the building’s roof began to tilt like the prow of a sinking ship.

“Quick! We must start the engines!” Volmar cried.

A half-minute of utmost dubiety and anxiety followed, as Jasper set the machinery going and seized the steering-rod. If the ship were still thralled by the magnetic attraction that had drawn it down, they would plunge to destruction with the tower and its people. But if the force were broken, they might escape.

To the supreme relief of the earth-men, the
Alcyone
rose with a familiar lightness, and lifted above the tower. Even as it rose, the entire plain beneath appeared to collapse, as if the red world had caved in upon its hollow center, leaving a gulf that was hundreds of miles wide, and from which there issued a sound that was like the thunder of stricken planets. The
Alcyone
was tossed in an irresistable vortex of roaring and warring elements; and then, from the heavens above, there fell an inundating wave of darkness that was not darkness, but rather a red cloud of unknown origin and nature. The cloud enveloped the ether-ship, it clung to the ports till it blinded them, and the men within could see nothing. Then, in a flash of unhoped-for illumination, they were free from the red darkness and were lifting into the cold light of Polaris. There was no longer any sign of the ruddy vault; and looking back at the planet they had left, they saw that the red cloud was settling down on its cloven and pitted surface. Its ruinous mountains and towers were beginning to re-emerge; and among them a dull and lifeless dust of dark copper was swirling in twisted columns, was dancing like a million devils, to fall at last in a universal shroud on the dying world.

T
OLD IN THE
D
ESERT

O
ut of the fiery furnace of the desert sunset, he came to meet our caravan. He and his camel were a single silhouette of shadow-like thinness that emerged above the golden-crested dunes and disappeared by turns in their twilight-gathering hollows. When he descended the last dune and drew near, we had paused for the night, and we were pitching our black tents and lighting our little fires.

The man and his dromedary were like mummies that could find no repose in the subterranes of death, and that had wandered abroad beneath the goading of a cryptic spur, ever since the first division of the desert from the town. The face of the man was withered and blackened as by the torrefaction of a thousand flames; his beard was grey as ashes; and his eyes were expiring embers. His clothing was like tatters of the ancient dead, like the spoils of ghoulish rag-pickers. His camel was a mangy, moth-eaten skeleton such as might bear the souls of the damned on their dolorous ride to the realms of Iblis.

We greeted him in the name of Allah and bade him welcome. He shared our meal of dates and coffee and dried goat-flesh; and later, when we sat in a circle beneath the crowding stars, he told us his tale in a voice that had somehow taken on the loneliness, the eerie quavers and disconsolate overtones of the desert wind, as it seeks among infinitely parching horizons for the fertile, spicy valleys it has lost and cannot find.

Of my birth, my youth, and the appellation by which I was known and perhaps renowned among men, it would now be bootless to speak: for those days are one in remoteness with the reign of Al Raschid, they have gone by like the Afrit-builded halls of Suleiman. And in the bazaars or in the harems of my natal city, none would recall me; and if one spoke my name, it would be as a dying and never-repeated echo. And my own memories grow dim like the fires of hesternal wanderings, on which the sand are blown by an autumn gale.

But, though none will remember my songs, I was once a poet; and like other poets in their prime, I sang of vernal roses and autumnal rose-leaves, of the breasts of dead queens and the mouths of living cup-bearers, of stars that seek the fabled ocean-isles, and caravans that follow the eluding and illusory horizons. And because I was fevered with the strange disquietude of youth and poesy, for which there is neither name nor appeasement, I left the city of my boyhood, dreaming of other cities where wine and fame would be sweeter, and the lips of women more desirable.

It was a gallant and merry caravan with which I set forth in the month of the flowering of almonds. Wealthy and brave were the merchants with whom I travelled; and though they were lovers of gold and wrought ivory, of rugs and damascus blades and olibanum, they also loved my songs and could never weary of hearing them. And though our pilgrimage was long, it was evermore beguiled with recital of odes and telling of tales; and time was somehow cheated of its days, and distance of its miles, as only the divine necromancy of song can cheat them. And the merchants told me stories of the far-off, glamorous city which was our goal; and hearkening to their recountal of its splendors and delights, and pondering my own fancies, I was well content with the palmless leagues as they faded behind our dromedaries.

Alas! for we were never to behold the bourn of our journey, with its auriphrygiate domes that were said to ascend above the greening of paradisal trees, and its minarets of nacre beyond waters of jade. We were waylaid by the fierce tribesmen of the desert in a deep valley between hills; and though we fought valiantly, they bore us down from our hamstrung camels with their over-numbering spears; and taking our corded bales of merchandise, and deeming us all securely dead, they left us to the gier-eagles of the sand.

All but myself, indeed, had perished; and sorely wounded in the side, I lay among the dead as one on whom there descends the pall-like shadow of Azrael. But when the robbers had departed, I somehow stanched my streaming wound with tatters of my torn raiment; and seeing that none stirred among my companions, I left them and tottered away on the route of our journey, sorrowing that so brave a caravan should have come to a death so inglorious. And beyond the defile in which we had been overtaken with such dastardy, I found a camel who had strayed away during the conflict. Even as myself, the animal was maimed, and it limped on three legs and left a trail of blood. But I made it kneel, and mounted it.

Of the hours that ensued I remember little. Blinded with pain and weakness, I heeded not the route that the camel followed, whether it were the track of caravans or a desert-ending path of Bedouins or jackals. But dimly I recalled how the merchants had told me at morn that there were two days of travelling in a desolation where the way was marked by serried bones, ere we should reach the next oasis. And I knew not how I should survive so arduous a journey, wounded and without water; but I clung dizzily to the camel.

The red demons of thirst assailed me; and fever came, and delirium, to people the waste with phantasmagoric shadows. And I fled through aeons from the frightful immemorial Things that held lordship of the desert, and would have proffered me the green, beguiling cups of an awful madness with Their bone-white hands. And though I fled, They dogged me always; and I heard Them gibbering all around me in the air that had turned to blood-red flame.

There were mirages on the waste; there were lucent meres and palms of fretted beryl that hovered always at an unattainable distance. I saw them in the interludes of my delirium; and one there was at length, which appeared greener and fairer than the rest; but I deemed it also an illusion. Yet it faded not nor receded like the others; and in each interval of my phantom-clouded fever it drew nearer still. And thinking it still a mirage, I approached the palms and the water; and a great blackness fell upon me, like the web of oblivion from the hands of the final Weaver; and I was henceforth bereft of sight and knowledge.

Waking, I deemed perforce that I had died and was in a sequestered nook of Paradise. For surely the sward on which I lay, and the waving verdure about me, were lovelier than those of earth; and the face that leaned above me was that of the youngest and most compassionate houri. But when I saw my wounded camel grazing not far away, and felt the reviving pain of my own hurt, I knew that I still lived; and that the seeming mirage had been a veritable oasis.