Читать бесплатно онлайн книгу  A Voyage to Arcturus

автор David Lindsay

I The Seance

On a march even­ing, at eight o’clock, Back­house, the me­dium—a fast-rising star in the psychic world—was ushered into the study at Pro­lands, the Hamp­stead res­id­ence of Montague Faull. The room was il­lu­min­ated only by the light of a blaz­ing fire. The host, ey­ing him with in­dol­ent curi­os­ity, got up, and the usual con­ven­tional greet­ings were ex­changed. Hav­ing in­dic­ated an easy chair be­fore the fire to his guest, the South Amer­ican mer­chant sank back again into his own. The elec­tric light was switched on. Faull’s prom­in­ent, clear-cut fea­tures, metal­lic-look­ing skin, and gen­eral air of bored im­pass­ive­ness, did not seem greatly to im­press the me­dium, who was ac­cus­tomed to re­gard men from a spe­cial angle. Back­house, on the con­trary, was a nov­elty to the mer­chant. As he tran­quilly stud­ied him through half closed lids and the smoke of a ci­gar, he wondered how this little, thick­set per­son with the poin­ted beard con­trived to re­main so fresh and sane in ap­pear­ance, in view of the mor­bid nature of his oc­cu­pa­tion.

“Do you smoke?” drawled Faull, by way of start­ing the Con­ver­sa­tion. “No? Then will you take a drink?”

“Not at present, I thank you.”

A pause.

“Everything is sat­is­fact­ory? The ma­ter­i­al­isa­tion will take place?”

“I see no reason to doubt it.”

“That’s good, for I would not like my guests to be dis­ap­poin­ted. I have your check writ­ten out in my pocket.”

“After­ward will do quite well.”

“Nine o’clock was the time spe­cified, I be­lieve?”

“I fancy so.”

The con­ver­sa­tion con­tin­ued to flag. Faull sprawled in his chair, and re­mained apathetic.

“Would you care to hear what ar­range­ments I have made?”

“I am un­aware that any are ne­ces­sary, bey­ond chairs for your guests.”

“I mean the dec­or­a­tion of the seance room, the mu­sic, and so forth.”

Back­house stared at his host. “But this is not a the­at­rical per­form­ance.”

“That’s cor­rect. Per­haps I ought to ex­plain. … There will be ladies present, and ladies, you know, are aes­thet­ic­ally in­clined.”

“In that case I have no ob­jec­tion. I only hope they will en­joy the per­form­ance to the end.”

He spoke rather dryly.

“Well, that’s all right, then,” said Faull. Flick­ing his ci­gar into the fire, he got up and helped him­self to whisky.

“Will you come and see the room?”

“Thank you, no. I prefer to have noth­ing to do with it till the time ar­rives.”

“Then let’s go to see my sis­ter, Mrs. Jameson, who is in the draw­ing room. She some­times does me the kind­ness to act as my host­ess, as I am un­mar­ried.”

“I will be de­lighted,” said Back­house coldly.

They found the lady alone, sit­ting by the open pi­ano­forte in a pens­ive at­ti­tude. She had been play­ing Scriabin and was over­come. The me­dium took in her small, tight, pa­tri­cian fea­tures and por­cel­ain-like hands, and wondered how Faull came by such a sis­ter. She re­ceived him bravely, with just a shade of quiet emo­tion. He was used to such re­cep­tions at the hands of the sex, and knew well how to re­spond to them.

“What amazes me,” she half whispered, after ten minutes of grace­ful, hol­low con­ver­sa­tion, “is, if you must know it, not so much the mani­fest­a­tion it­self—though that will surely be won­der­ful—as your as­sur­ance that it will take place. Tell me the grounds of your con­fid­ence.”

“I dream with open eyes,” he answered, look­ing around at the door, “and oth­ers see my dreams. That is all.”

“But that’s beau­ti­ful,” re­spon­ded Mrs. Jameson. She smiled rather ab­sently, for the first guest had just entered.

It was Kent-Smith, the ex-ma­gis­trate, cel­eb­rated for his shrewd ju­di­cial hu­mour, which, how­ever, he had the good sense not to at­tempt to carry into private life. Al­though well on the wrong side of sev­enty, his eyes were still dis­con­cert­ingly bright. With the se­lect­ive skill of an old man, he im­me­di­ately settled him­self in the most com­fort­able of many com­fort­able chairs.

“So we are to see won­ders to­night?”

“Fresh ma­ter­ial for your auto­bi­o­graphy,” re­marked Faull.

“Ah, you should not have men­tioned my un­for­tu­nate book. An old pub­lic ser­vant is merely amus­ing him­self in his re­tire­ment, Mr. Back­house. You have no cause for alarm—I have stud­ied in the school of dis­cre­tion.”

“I am not alarmed. There can be no pos­sible ob­jec­tion to your pub­lish­ing whatever you please.”

“You are most kind,” said the old man, with a cun­ning smile.

“Trent is not com­ing to­night,” re­marked Mrs. Jameson, throw­ing a curi­ous little glance at her brother.

“I never thought he would. It’s not in his line.”

“Mrs. Trent, you must un­der­stand,” she went on, ad­dress­ing the ex-ma­gis­trate, “has placed us all un­der a debt of grat­it­ude. She has dec­or­ated the old lounge hall up­stairs most beau­ti­fully, and has se­cured the ser­vices of the sweetest little or­ches­tra.”

“But this is Ro­man mag­ni­fi­cence.”

“Back­house thinks the spir­its should be treated with more de­fer­ence,” laughed Faull.

“Surely, Mr. Back­house—a po­etic en­vir­on­ment …”

“Par­don me. I am a simple man, and al­ways prefer to re­duce things to ele­mental sim­pli­city. I raise no op­pos­i­tion, but I ex­press my opin­ion. Nature is one thing, and art is an­other.”

“And I am not sure that I don’t agree with you,” said the ex-ma­gis­trate. “An oc­ca­sion like this ought to be simple, to guard against the pos­sib­il­ity of de­cep­tion—if you will for­give my blunt­ness, Mr. Back­house.”

“We shall sit in full light,” replied Back­house, “and every op­por­tun­ity will be given to all to in­spect the room. I shall also ask you to sub­mit me to a per­sonal ex­am­in­a­tion.”

A rather em­bar­rassed si­lence fol­lowed. It was broken by the ar­rival of two more guests, who entered to­gether. These were Prior, the pros­per­ous City cof­fee im­porter, and Lang, the stock­job­ber, well known in his own circle as an am­a­teur pres­ti­di­git­ator. Back­house was slightly ac­quain­ted with the lat­ter. Prior, per­fum­ing the room with the faint odour of wine and to­bacco smoke, tried to in­tro­duce an at­mo­sphere of jo­vi­al­ity into the pro­ceed­ings. Find­ing that no one seconded his ef­forts, how­ever, he shortly sub­sided and fell to ex­amin­ing the wa­ter col­ours on the walls. Lang, tall, thin, and grow­ing bald, said little, but stared at Back­house a good deal.

Cof­fee, li­queurs, and ci­gar­ettes were now brought in. Every­one par­took, ex­cept Lang and the me­dium. At the same mo­ment, Pro­fessor Hal­bert was an­nounced. He was the em­in­ent psy­cho­lo­gist, the au­thor and lec­turer on crime, in­san­ity, genius, and so forth, con­sidered in their men­tal as­pects. His pres­ence at such a gath­er­ing some­what mys­ti­fied the other guests, but all felt as if the ob­ject of their meet­ing had im­me­di­ately ac­quired ad­di­tional solem­nity. He was small, mea­gre-look­ing, and mild in man­ner, but was prob­ably the most stub­born-brained of all that mixed com­pany. Com­pletely ig­nor­ing the me­dium, he at once sat down be­side Kent-Smith, with whom he began to ex­change re­marks.

At a few minutes past the ap­poin­ted hour Mrs. Trent entered, un­an­nounced. She was a wo­man of about twenty-eight. She had a white, de­mure, saint­like face, smooth black hair, and lips so crim­son and full that they seemed to be burst­ing with blood. Her tall, grace­ful body was most ex­pens­ively at­tired. Kisses were ex­changed between her and Mrs. Jameson. She bowed to the rest of the as­sembly, and stole a half glance and a smile at Faull. The lat­ter gave her a queer look, and Back­house, who lost noth­ing, saw the con­cealed bar­bar­ian in the com­pla­cent gleam of his eye. She re­fused the re­fresh­ment that was offered her, and Faull pro­posed that, as every­one had now ar­rived, they should ad­journ to the lounge hall.

Mrs. Trent held up a slender palm. “Did you, or did you not, give me carte blanche, Montague?”

“Of course I did,” said Faull, laugh­ing. “But what’s the mat­ter?”

“Per­haps I have been rather pre­sump­tu­ous. I don’t know. I have in­vited a couple of friends to join us. No, no one knows them. … The two most ex­traordin­ary in­di­vidu­als you ever saw. And me­di­ums, I am sure.”

“It sounds very mys­ter­i­ous. Who are these con­spir­at­ors?”

“At least tell us their names, you pro­vok­ing girl,” put in Mrs. Jameson.

“One re­joices in the name of Maskull, and the other in that of Night­spore. That’s nearly all that I know about them, so don’t over­whelm me with any more ques­tions.”

“But where did you pick them up? You must have picked them up some­where.”

“But this is a cross-ex­am­in­a­tion. Have I sinned again con­ven­tion? I swear I will tell you not an­other word about them. They will be here dir­ectly, and then I will de­liver them to your tender mercy.”

“I don’t know them,” said Faull, “and nobody else seems to, but, of course, we will all be very pleased to have them. … Shall we wait, or what?”

“I said nine, and it’s past that now. It’s quite pos­sible they may not turn up after all. … Any­way, don’t wait.”

“I would prefer to start at once,” said Back­house.

The lounge, a lofty room, forty feet long by twenty wide, had been di­vided for the oc­ca­sion into two equal parts by a heavy bro­cade cur­tain drawn across the middle. The far end was thus con­cealed. The nearer half had been con­ver­ted into an aud­it­or­ium by a cres­cent of arm­chairs. There was no other fur­niture. A large fire was burn­ing halfway along the wall, between the chair­backs and the door. The room was bril­liantly lighted by elec­tric bracket lamps. A sump­tu­ous car­pet covered the floor.

Hav­ing settled his guests in their seats, Faull stepped up to the cur­tain and flung it aside. A rep­lica, or nearly so, of the Drury Lane present­a­tion of the temple scene in The Ma­gic Flute was then ex­posed to view: the gloomy, massive ar­chi­tec­ture of the in­terior, the glow­ing sky above it in the back­ground, and, sil­hou­et­ted against the lat­ter, the gi­gantic seated statue of the Pharaoh. A fant­ast­ic­ally carved wooden couch lay be­fore the ped­es­tal of the statue. Near the cur­tain, ob­liquely placed to the aud­it­or­ium, was a plain oak arm­chair, for the use of the me­dium.

Many of those present felt privately that the set­ting was quite in­ap­pro­pri­ate to the oc­ca­sion and sa­voured rather un­pleas­antly of os­ten­ta­tion. Back­house in par­tic­u­lar seemed put out. The usual com­pli­ments, how­ever, were showered on Mrs. Trent as the de­viser of so re­mark­able a theatre. Faull in­vited his friends to step for­ward and ex­am­ine the apart­ment as minutely as they might de­sire. Prior and Lang were the only ones to ac­cept. The former wandered about among the paste­board scenery, whist­ling to him­self and oc­ca­sion­ally tap­ping a part of it with his knuckles. Lang, who was in his ele­ment, ig­nored the rest of his party and com­menced a pa­tient, sys­tem­atic search, on his own ac­count, for secret ap­par­atus. Faull and Mrs. Trent stood in a corner of the temple, talk­ing to­gether in low tones; while Mrs. Jameson, pre­tend­ing to hold Back­house in con­ver­sa­tion, watched them as only a deeply in­ter­ested wo­man knows how to watch.

Lang, to his own dis­gust, hav­ing failed to find any­thing of a sus­pi­cious nature, the me­dium now re­ques­ted that his own cloth­ing should be searched.

“All these pre­cau­tions are quite need­less and be­side the mat­ter in hand, as you will im­me­di­ately see for yourselves. My repu­ta­tion de­mands, how­ever, that other people who are not present would not be able to say af­ter­ward that trick­ery has been re­sor­ted to.”

To Lang again fell the un­grate­ful task of in­vest­ig­at­ing pock­ets and sleeves. Within a few minutes he ex­pressed him­self sat­is­fied that noth­ing mech­an­ical was in Back­house’s pos­ses­sion. The guests re­seated them­selves. Faull ordered two more chairs to be brought for Mrs. Trent’s friends, who, how­ever, had not yet ar­rived. He then pressed an elec­tric bell, and took his own seat.

The sig­nal was for the hid­den or­ches­tra to be­gin play­ing. A mur­mur of sur­prise passed through the audi­ence as, without pre­vi­ous warn­ing, the beau­ti­ful and sol­emn strains of Moz­art’s “temple” mu­sic pulsated through the air. The ex­pect­a­tion of every­one was raised, while, be­neath her pal­lor and com­pos­ure, it could be seen that Mrs. Trent was deeply moved. It was evid­ent that aes­thet­ic­ally she was by far the most im­port­ant per­son present. Faull watched her, with his face sunk on his chest, sprawl­ing as usual.

Back­house stood up, with one hand on the back of his chair, and began speak­ing. The mu­sic in­stantly sank to pi­an­is­simo, and re­mained so for as long as he was on his legs.

“Ladies and gen­tle­men, you are about to wit­ness a ma­ter­i­al­isa­tion. That means you will see some­thing ap­pear in space that was not pre­vi­ously there. At first it will ap­pear as a va­por­ous form, but fi­nally it will be a solid body, which any­one present may feel and handle—and, for ex­ample, shake hands with. For this body will be in the hu­man shape. It will be a real man or wo­man—which, I can’t say—but a man or wo­man without known ante­cedents. If, how­ever, you de­mand from me an ex­plan­a­tion of the ori­gin of this ma­ter­i­al­ised form—where it comes from, whence the atoms and mo­lecules com­pos­ing its tis­sues are de­rived—I am un­able to sat­isfy you. I am about to pro­duce the phe­nomenon; if any­one can ex­plain it to me af­ter­ward, I shall be very grate­ful. … That is all I have to say.”

He re­sumed his seat, half turn­ing his back on the as­sembly, and paused for a mo­ment be­fore be­gin­ning his task.

It was pre­cisely at this minute that the manser­vant opened the door and an­nounced in a sub­dued but dis­tinct voice: “Mr. Maskull, Mr. Night­spore.”

Every­one turned round. Faull rose to wel­come the late ar­rivals. Back­house also stood up, and stared hard at them.

The two strangers re­mained stand­ing by the door, which was closed quietly be­hind them. They seemed to be wait­ing for the mild sen­sa­tion caused by their ap­pear­ance to sub­side be­fore ad­van­cing into the room. Maskull was a kind of gi­ant, but of broader and more ro­bust physique than most gi­ants. He wore a full beard. His fea­tures were thick and heavy, coarsely mod­elled, like those of a wooden carving; but his eyes, small and black, sparkled with the fires of in­tel­li­gence and au­da­city. His hair was short, black, and brist­ling. Night­spore was of middle height, but so tough-look­ing that he ap­peared to be trained out of all hu­man frailties and sus­cept­ib­il­it­ies. His hair­less face seemed con­sumed by an in­tense spir­itual hun­ger, and his eyes were wild and dis­tant. Both men were dressed in tweeds.

Be­fore any words were spoken, a loud and ter­rible crash of fall­ing ma­sonry caused the as­sembled party to start up from their chairs in con­sterna­tion. It soun­ded as if the en­tire up­per part of the build­ing had col­lapsed. Faull sprang to the door, and called to the ser­vant to say what was hap­pen­ing. The man had to be ques­tioned twice be­fore he gathered what was re­quired of him. He said he had heard noth­ing. In obed­i­ence to his mas­ter’s or­der, he went up­stairs. Noth­ing, how­ever, was amiss there, neither had the maids heard any­thing.

In the mean­time Back­house, who al­most alone of those as­sembled had pre­served his sang­froid, went straight up to Night­spore, who stood gnaw­ing his nails.

“Per­haps you can ex­plain it, sir?”

“It was su­per­nat­ural,” said Night­spore, in a harsh, muffled voice, turn­ing away from his ques­tioner.

“I guessed so. It is a fa­mil­iar phe­nomenon, but I have never heard it so loud.”

He then went among the guests, re­as­sur­ing them. By de­grees they settled down, but it was ob­serv­able that their former easy and good-hu­moured in­terest in the pro­ceed­ings was now changed to strained watch­ful­ness. Maskull and Night­spore took the places al­lot­ted to them. Mrs. Trent kept steal­ing un­easy glances at them. Throughout the en­tire in­cid­ent, Moz­art’s hymn con­tin­ued to be played. The or­ches­tra also had heard noth­ing.

Back­house now entered on his task. It was one that began to be fa­mil­iar to him, and he had no anxi­ety about the res­ult. It was not pos­sible to ef­fect the ma­ter­i­al­isa­tion by mere con­cen­tra­tion of will, or the ex­er­cise of any fac­ulty; oth­er­wise many people could have done what he had en­gaged him­self to do. His nature was phe­nom­enal—the di­vid­ing wall between him­self and the spir­itual world was broken in many places. Through the gaps in his mind the in­hab­it­ants of the in­vis­ible, when he summoned them, passed for a mo­ment tim­idly and aw­fully into the solid, col­oured uni­verse. … He could not say how it was brought about. … The ex­per­i­ence was a rough one for the body, and many such struggles would lead to in­san­ity and early death. That is why Back­house was stern and ab­rupt in his man­ner. The coarse, clumsy sus­pi­cion of some of the wit­nesses, the frivol­ous aes­thet­i­cism of oth­ers, were equally ob­nox­ious to his grim, burst­ing heart; but he was ob­liged to live, and, to pay his way, must put up with these im­per­tin­ences.

He sat down fa­cing the wooden couch. His eyes re­mained open but seemed to look in­ward. His cheeks paled, and he be­came no­tice­ably thin­ner. The spec­tat­ors al­most for­got to breathe. The more sens­it­ive among them began to feel, or ima­gine, strange pres­ences all around them. Maskull’s eyes glittered with an­ti­cip­a­tion, and his brows went up and down, but Night­spore ap­peared bored.

After a long ten minutes the ped­es­tal of the statue was seen to be­come slightly blurred, as though an in­ter­ven­ing mist were rising from the ground. This slowly de­veloped into a vis­ible cloud, coil­ing hither and thither, and con­stantly chan­ging shape. The pro­fessor half rose, and held his glasses with one hand fur­ther for­ward on the bridge of his nose.

By slow stages the cloud ac­quired the di­men­sions and ap­prox­im­ate out­line of an adult hu­man body, al­though all was still vague and blurred. It hovered lightly in the air, a foot or so above the couch. Back­house looked hag­gard and ghastly. Mrs. Jameson quietly fain­ted in her chair, but she was un­noticed, and presently re­vived. The ap­par­i­tion now settled down upon the couch, and at the mo­ment of do­ing so seemed sud­denly to grow dark, solid, and man­like. Many of the guests were as pale as the me­dium him­self, but Faull pre­served his stoical apathy, and glanced once or twice at Mrs. Trent. She was star­ing straight at the couch, and was twist­ing a little lace handker­chief through the dif­fer­ent fin­gers of her hand. The mu­sic went on play­ing.

The fig­ure was by this time un­mis­tak­ably that of a man ly­ing down. The face fo­cused it­self into dis­tinct­ness. The body was draped in a sort of shroud, but the fea­tures were those of a young man. One smooth hand fell over, nearly touch­ing the floor, white and mo­tion­less. The weaker spir­its of the com­pany stared at the vis­ion in sick hor­ror; the rest were grave and per­plexed. The seem­ing man was dead, but some­how it did not ap­pear like a death suc­ceed­ing life, but like a death pre­lim­in­ary to life. All felt that he might sit up at any minute.

“Stop that mu­sic!” muttered Back­house, tot­ter­ing from his chair and fa­cing the party. Faull touched the bell. A few more bars soun­ded, and then total si­lence en­sued.

“Anyone who wants to may ap­proach the couch,” said Back­house with dif­fi­culty.

Lang at once ad­vanced, and stared awe­struck at the su­per­nat­ural youth.

“You are at liberty to touch,” said the me­dium.

But Lang did not ven­ture to, nor did any of the oth­ers, who one by one stole up to the couch—un­til it came to Faull’s turn. He looked straight at Mrs. Trent, who seemed frightened and dis­gus­ted at the spec­tacle be­fore her, and then not only touched the ap­par­i­tion but sud­denly grasped the droop­ing hand in his own and gave it a power­ful squeeze. Mrs. Trent gave a low scream. The ghostly vis­itor opened his eyes, looked at Faull strangely, and sat up on the couch. A cryptic smile star­ted play­ing over his mouth. Faull looked at his hand; a feel­ing of in­tense pleas­ure passed through his body.

Maskull caught Mrs. Jameson in his arms; she was at­tacked by an­other spell of faint­ness. Mrs. Trent ran for­ward, and led her out of the room. Neither of them re­turned.

The phantom body now stood up­right, look­ing about him, still with his pe­cu­liar smile. Prior sud­denly felt sick, and went out. The other men more or less hung to­gether, for the sake of hu­man so­ci­ety, but Night­spore paced up and down, like a man weary and im­pa­tient, while Maskull at­temp­ted to in­ter­rog­ate the youth. The ap­par­i­tion watched him with a baff­ling ex­pres­sion, but did not an­swer. Back­house was sit­ting apart, his face bur­ied in his hands.

It was at this mo­ment that the door was burst open vi­ol­ently, and a stranger, un­an­nounced, half leaped, half strode a few yards into the room, and then stopped. None of Faull’s friends had ever seen him be­fore. He was a thick, shortish man, with sur­pris­ing mus­cu­lar de­vel­op­ment and a head far too large in pro­por­tion to his body. His beard­less yel­low face in­dic­ated, as a first im­pres­sion, a mix­ture of saga­city, bru­tal­ity, and hu­mour.

“Aha-i, gen­tle­men!” he called out loudly. His voice was pier­cing, and oddly dis­agree­able to the ear. “So we have a little vis­itor here.”

Night­spore turned his back, but every­one else stared at the in­truder in as­ton­ish­ment. He took an­other few steps for­ward, which brought him to the edge of the theatre.

“May I ask, sir, how I come to have the hon­our of be­ing your host?” asked Faull sul­lenly. He thought that the even­ing was not pro­ceed­ing as smoothly as he had an­ti­cip­ated.

The new­comer looked at him for a second, and then broke into a great, roar­ing guf­faw. He thumped Faull on the back play­fully—but the play was rather rough, for the vic­tim was sent stag­ger­ing against the wall be­fore he could re­cover his bal­ance.

“Good even­ing, my host!”

“And good even­ing to you too, my lad!” he went on, ad­dress­ing the su­per­nat­ural youth, who was now be­gin­ning to wander about the room, in ap­par­ent un­con­scious­ness of his sur­round­ings. “I have seen someone very like you be­fore, I think.”

There was no re­sponse.

The in­truder thrust his head al­most up to the phantom’s face. “You have no right here, as you know.”

The shape looked back at him with a smile full of sig­ni­fic­ance, which, how­ever, no one could un­der­stand.

“Be care­ful what you are do­ing,” said Back­house quickly.

“What’s the mat­ter, spirit usher?”

“I don’t know who you are, but if you use phys­ical vi­ol­ence to­ward that, as you seem in­clined to do, the con­sequences may prove very un­pleas­ant.”

“And without pleas­ure our even­ing would be spoiled, wouldn’t it, my little mer­cen­ary friend?”

Hu­mour van­ished from his face, like sun­light from a land­scape, leav­ing it hard and rocky. Be­fore any­one real­ised what he was do­ing, he en­circled the soft, white neck of the ma­ter­i­al­ised shape with his hairy hands and, with a double turn, twis­ted it com­pletely round. A faint, un­earthly shriek soun­ded, and the body fell in a heap to the floor. Its face was up­per­most. The guests were un­ut­ter­ably shocked to ob­serve that its ex­pres­sion had changed from the mys­ter­i­ous but fas­cin­at­ing smile to a vul­gar, sor­did, bes­tial grin, which cast a cold shadow of moral nas­ti­ness into every heart. The trans­form­a­tion was ac­com­pan­ied by a sick­en­ing stench of the grave­yard.

The fea­tures faded rap­idly away, the body lost its con­sist­ence, passing from the solid to the shad­owy con­di­tion, and, be­fore two minutes had elapsed, the spirit-form had en­tirely dis­ap­peared.

The short stranger turned and con­fron­ted the party, with a long, loud laugh, like noth­ing in nature.

The pro­fessor talked ex­citedly to Kent-Smith in low tones. Faull beckoned Back­house be­hind a wing of scenery, and handed him his check without a word. The me­dium put it in his pocket, buttoned his coat, and walked out of the room. Lang fol­lowed him, in or­der to get a drink.

The stranger poked his face up into Maskull’s.

“Well, gi­ant, what do you think of it all? Wouldn’t you like to see the land where this sort of fruit grows wild?”

“What sort of fruit?”

“That spe­ci­men gob­lin.”

Maskull waved him away with his huge hand. “Who are you, and how did you come here?”

“Call up your friend. Per­haps he may re­cog­nise me.” Night­spore had moved a chair to the fire, and was watch­ing the em­bers with a set, fan­at­ical ex­pres­sion.

“Let Krag come to me, if he wants me,” he said, in his strange voice.

“You see, he does know me,” uttered Krag, with a hu­mor­ous look. Walk­ing over to Night­spore, he put a hand on the back of his chair.

“Still the same old gnaw­ing hun­ger?”

“What is do­ing these days?” de­man­ded Night­spore dis­dain­fully, without al­ter­ing his at­ti­tude.

“Sur­tur has gone, and we are to fol­low him.”

“How do you two come to know each other, and of whom are you speak­ing?” asked Maskull, look­ing from one to the other in per­plex­ity.

“Krag has some­thing for us. Let us go out­side,” replied Night­spore. He got up, and glanced over his shoulder. Maskull, fol­low­ing the dir­ec­tion of his eye, ob­served that the few re­main­ing men were watch­ing their little group at­tent­ively.

II In the Street

The three men gathered in the street out­side the house. The night was slightly frosty, but par­tic­u­larly clear, with an east wind blow­ing. The mul­ti­tude of blaz­ing stars caused the sky to ap­pear like a vast scroll of hiero­glyphic sym­bols. Maskull felt oddly ex­cited; he had a sense that some­thing ex­traordin­ary was about to hap­pen “What brought you to this house to­night, Krag, and what made you do what you did? How are we un­der­stand that ap­par­i­tion?”

“That must have been Crys­tal­man’s ex­pres­sion on face,” muttered Night­spore.

“We have dis­cussed that, haven’t we, Maskull? Maskull is anxious to be­hold that rare fruit in its nat­ive wilds.”

Maskull looked at Krag care­fully, try­ing to ana­lyse his own feel­ings to­ward him. He was dis­tinctly re­pelled by the man’s per­son­al­ity, yet side by side with this aver­sion a sav­age, liv­ing en­ergy seemed to spring up in his heart that in some strange fash­ion was at­trib­ut­able to Krag.

“Why do you in­sist on this simile?” he asked.

“Be­cause it is apro­pos. Night­spore’s quite right. That was Crys­tal­man’s face, and we are go­ing to Crys­tal­man’s coun­try.”

“And where is this mys­ter­i­ous coun­try?”

“Tormance.”

“That’s a quaint name. But where is it?”

Krag grinned, show­ing his yel­low teeth in the light of the street lamp.

“It is the res­id­en­tial sub­urb of Arcturus.”

“What is he talk­ing about, Night­spore? … Do you mean the star of that name?” he went on, to Krag.

“Which you have in front of you at this very minute,” said Krag, point­ing a thick fin­ger to­ward the bright­est star in the south­east­ern sky. “There you see Arcturus, and Tormance is its one in­hab­ited planet.”

Maskull looked at the heavy, glean­ing star, and again at Krag. Then he pulled out a pipe, and began to fill it.

“You must have cul­tiv­ated a new form of hu­mour, Krag.”

“I am glad if I can amuse you, Maskull, if only for a few days.”

“I meant to ask you—how do you know my name?”

“It would be odd if I didn’t, see­ing that I only came here on your ac­count. As a mat­ter of fact, Night­spore and I are old friends.”

Maskull paused with his sus­pen­ded match. “You came here on my ac­count?”

“Surely. On your ac­count and Night­spore’s. We three are to be fel­low trav­el­lers.”

Maskull now lit his pipe and puffed away coolly for a few mo­ments.

“I’m sorry, Krag, but I must as­sume you are mad.”

Krag threw his head back, and gave a scrap­ing laugh. “Am I mad, Night­spore?”

“Has Sur­tur gone to Tormance?” ejac­u­lated Night­spore in a strangled voice, fix­ing his eyes on Krag’s face.

“Yes, and he re­quires that we fol­low him at once.”

Maskull’s heart began to beat strangely. It all soun­ded to him like a dream con­ver­sa­tion.

“And since how long, Krag, have I been re­quired to do things by a total stranger. … Besides, who is this in­di­vidual?”

“Krag’s chief,” said Night­spore, turn­ing his head away.

“The riddle is too elab­or­ate for me. I give up.”

“You are look­ing for mys­ter­ies,” said Krag, “so nat­ur­ally you are find­ing them. Try and sim­plify your ideas, my friend. The af­fair is plain and ser­i­ous.”

Maskull stared hard at him and smoked rap­idly.

“Where have you come from now?” de­man­ded Night­spore sud­denly.

“From the old ob­ser­vat­ory at Stark­ness. … Have you heard of the fam­ous Stark­ness Ob­ser­vat­ory, Maskull?”

“No. Where is it?”

“On the north­east coast of Scot­land. Curi­ous dis­cov­er­ies are made there from time to time.”

“As, for ex­ample, how to make voy­ages to the stars. So this Sur­tur turns out to be an as­tro­nomer. And you too, pre­sum­ably?”

Krag grinned again. “How long will it take you to wind up your af­fairs? When can you be ready to start?”

“You are too con­sid­er­ate,” said Maskull, laugh­ing out­right. “I was be­gin­ning to fear that I would be hauled away at once. … However, I have neither wife, land, nor pro­fes­sion, so there’s noth­ing to wait for. … What is the it­in­er­ary?”

“You are a for­tu­nate man. A bold, dar­ing heart, and no en­cum­brances.” Krag’s fea­tures be­came sud­denly grave and ri­gid. “Don’t be a fool, and re­fuse a gift of luck. A gift de­clined is not offered a second time.”

“Krag,” replied Maskull simply, re­turn­ing his pipe to his pocket. “I ask you to put your­self in my place. Even if were a man sick for ad­ven­tures, how could I listen ser­i­ously to such an in­sane pro­pos­i­tion as this? What do I know about you, or your past re­cord? You may be a prac­tical joker, or you may have come out of a mad­house—I know noth­ing about it. If you claim to be an ex­cep­tional man, and want my co­oper­a­tion, you must of­fer me ex­cep­tional proofs.”

“And what proofs would you con­sider ad­equate, Maskull?”

As he spoke he gripped Maskull’s arm. A sharp, chilling pain im­me­di­ately passed through the lat­ter’s body and at the same mo­ment his brain caught fire. A light burst in upon him like the rising of the sun. He asked him­self for the first time if this fant­astic con­ver­sa­tion could by any chance refer to real things.

“Listen, Krag,” he said slowly, while pe­cu­liar im­ages and con­cep­tions star­ted to travel in rich dis­order through his mind. “You talk about a cer­tain jour­ney. Well, if that jour­ney were a pos­sible one, and I were given the chance of mak­ing it, I would be will­ing never to come back. For twenty-four hours on that Arcturian planet, I would give my life. That is my at­ti­tude to­ward that jour­ney. … Now prove to me that you’re not talk­ing non­sense. Pro­duce your cre­den­tials.”

Krag stared at him all the time he was speak­ing, his face gradu­ally re­sum­ing its jest­ing ex­pres­sion.

“Oh, you will get your twenty-four hours, and per­haps longer, but not much longer. You’re an au­da­cious fel­low, Maskull, but this trip will prove a little strenu­ous, even for you. … And so, like the un­be­liev­ers of old, you want a sign from heaven?”

Maskull frowned. “But the whole thing is ri­dicu­lous. Our brains are over­ex­cited by what took place in there. Let us go home, and sleep it off.”

Krag de­tained him with one hand, while grop­ing in his breast pocket with the other. He presently fished out what re­sembled a small fold­ing lens. The dia­meter of the glass did not ex­ceed two inches.

“First take a peep at Arcturus through this, Maskull. It may serve as a pro­vi­sional sign. It’s the best I can do, un­for­tu­nately. I am not a trav­el­ling ma­gi­cian. … Be very care­ful not to drop it. It’s some­what heavy.”

Maskull took the lens in his hand, struggled with it for a minute, and then looked at Krag in amazement. The little ob­ject weighed at least twenty pounds, though it was not much big­ger than a crown piece.

“What stuff can this be, Krag?”

“Look through it, my good friend. That’s what I gave it to you for.”

Maskull held it up with dif­fi­culty, dir­ec­ted it to­ward the gleam­ing Arcturus, and snatched as long and as steady a glance at the star as the muscles of his arm would per­mit. What he saw was this. The star, which to the na­ked eye ap­peared as a single yel­low point of light, now be­came clearly split into two bright but minute suns, the lar­ger of which was still yel­low, while its smal­ler com­pan­ion was a beau­ti­ful blue. But this was not all. Ap­par­ently cir­cu­lat­ing around the yel­low sun was a com­par­at­ively small and hardly dis­tin­guish­able satel­lite, which seemed to shine, not by its own, but by re­flec­ted light. … Maskull lowered and raised his arm re­peatedly. The same spec­tacle re­vealed it­self again and again, but he was able to see noth­ing else. Then he passed back the lens to Krag, without a word, and stood chew­ing his un­der­lip.

“You take a glimpse too,” scraped Krag, prof­fer­ing the glass to Night­spore.

Night­spore turned his back and began to pace up an down. Krag laughed sar­don­ic­ally, and re­turned the lens to his pocket. “Well, Maskull, are you sat­is­fied?”

“Arcturus, then, is a double sun. And is that third point the planet Tormance?”

“Our fu­ture home, Maskull.”

Maskull con­tin­ued to pon­der. “You in­quire if I am sat­is­fied. I don’t know, Krag. It’s mi­ra­cu­lous, and that’s all I can say about it. … But I’m sat­is­fied of one thing. There must be very won­der­ful as­tro­nomers at Stark­ness and if you in­vite me to your ob­ser­vat­ory I will surely come.”

“I do in­vite you. We set off from there.”

“And you, Night­spore?” de­man­ded Maskull.

“The jour­ney has to be made,” answered his friend in in­dis­tinct tones, “though I don’t see what will come of it.”

Krag shot a pen­et­rat­ing glance at him. “More re­mark­able ad­ven­tures than this would need to be ar­ranged be­fore we could ex­cite Night­spore.”

“Yet he is com­ing.”

“But not con amore. He is com­ing merely to bear you com­pany.”

Maskull again sought the heavy, sombre star, gleam­ing in sol­it­ary might, in the south­east­ern heav­ens, and, as he gazed, his heart swelled with grand and pain­ful long­ings, for which, how­ever, he was un­able to ac­count to his own in­tel­lect. He felt that his des­tiny was in some way bound up with this gi­gantic, far-dis­tant sun. But still he did not dare to ad­mit to him­self Krag’s ser­i­ous­ness.

He heard his part­ing re­marks in deep ab­strac­tion, and only after the lapse of sev­eral minutes, when, alone with Night­spore, did he real­ise that they re­ferred to such mundane mat­ters as trav­el­ling routes and times of trains.

“Does Krag travel north with us, Night­spore? I didn’t catch that.”

“No. We go on first, and he joins us at Stark­ness on the even­ing of the day after to­mor­row.”

Maskull re­mained thought­ful. “What am I to think of that man?”

“For your in­form­a­tion,” replied Night­spore wear­ily, “I have never known him to lie.”

III Starkness

A couple of days later, at two o’clock in the af­ter­noon, Maskull and Night­spore ar­rived at Stark­ness Ob­ser­vat­ory, hav­ing covered the seven miles from Hail­lar Sta­tion on foot. The road, very wild and lonely, ran for the greater part of the way near the edge of rather lofty cliffs, within sight of the North Sea. The sun shone, but a brisk east wind was blow­ing and the air was salt and cold. The dark green waves were flecked with white. Throughout the walk, they were ac­com­pan­ied by the plaint­ive, beau­ti­ful cry­ing of the gulls.

The ob­ser­vat­ory presen­ted it­self to their eyes as a self-con­tained little com­munity, without neigh­bours, and perched on the ex­treme end of the land. There were three build­ings: a small, stone-built dwell­ing house, a low work­shop, and, about two hun­dred yards farther north, a square tower of gran­ite ma­sonry, sev­enty feet in height.

The house and the shop were sep­ar­ated by an open yard, littered with waste. A single stone wall sur­roun­ded both, ex­cept on the side fa­cing the sea, where the house it­self formed a con­tinu­ation of the cliff. No one ap­peared. The win­dows were all closed, and Maskull could have sworn that the whole es­tab­lish­ment was shut up and deser­ted.

He passed through the open gate, fol­lowed by Night­spore, and knocked vig­or­ously at the front door. The knocker was thick with dust and had ob­vi­ously not been used for a long time. He put his ear to the door, but could hear no move­ments in­side the house. He then tried the handle; the door was looked.

They walked around the house, look­ing for an­other en­trance, but there was only the one door.

“This isn’t prom­ising,” growled Maskull “There’s no one here. … Now you try the shed, while I go over to that tower.”

Night­spore, who had not spoken half a dozen words since leav­ing the train, com­plied in si­lence, and star­ted off across the yard. Maskull passed out of the gate again. When he ar­rived at the foot of the tower, which stood some way back from the cliff, he found the door heav­ily pad­locked. Gaz­ing up, he saw six win­dows, one above the other at equal dis­tances, all on the east face—that is, over­look­ing the sea. Real­ising that no sat­is­fac­tion was to be gained here, he came away again, still more ir­rit­ated than be­fore. When he re­joined his friend, Night­spore re­por­ted that the work­shop was also locked.

“Did we, or did we not, re­ceive an in­vit­a­tion?” de­man­ded Maskull en­er­get­ic­ally.

“The house is empty,” replied Night­spore, bit­ing his nails. “Bet­ter break a win­dow.”

“I cer­tainly don’t mean to camp out till Krag con­des­cends to come.”

He picked up an old iron bolt from the yard and, re­treat­ing to a safe dis­tance, hurled it against a sash win­dow on the ground floor. The lower pane was com­pletely shattered. Care­fully avoid­ing the broken glass, Maskull thrust his hand through the aper­ture and pushed back the frame fasten­ing. A minute later they had climbed through and were stand­ing in­side the house.

The room, which was a kit­chen, was in an in­des­crib­ably filthy and neg­lected con­di­tion. The fur­niture scarcely held to­gether, broken utensils and rub­bish lay on the floor in­stead of on the dust heap, everything was covered with a deep de­posit of dust. The at­mo­sphere was so foul that Maskull judged that no fresh air had passed into the room for sev­eral months. In­sects were crawl­ing on the walls.

They went into the other rooms on the lower floor—a scull­ery, a barely fur­nished din­ing room, and a stor­ing place for lum­ber. The same dirt, musti­ness, and neg­lect met their eyes. At least half a year must have elapsed since these rooms were last touched, or even entered.

“Does your faith in Krag still hold?” asked Maskull. “I con­fess mine is at van­ish­ing point. If this af­fair isn’t one big prac­tical joke, it has every prom­ise of be­ing one. Krag never lived here in his life.”

“Come up­stairs first,” said Night­spore.

The up­stairs rooms proved to con­sist of a lib­rary and three bed­rooms. All the win­dows were tightly closed, and the air was in­suf­fer­able. The beds had been slept in, evid­ently a long time ago, and had never been made since. The tumbled, dis­col­oured bed linen ac­tu­ally pre­served the im­pres­sions of the sleep­ers. There was no doubt that these im­pres­sions were an­cient, for all sorts of float­ing dirt had ac­cu­mu­lated on the sheets and cov­er­lets.

“Who could have slept here, do you think?” in­ter­rog­ated Maskull. “The ob­ser­vat­ory staff?”

“More likely trav­el­lers like ourselves. They left sud­denly.”

Maskull flung the win­dows wide open in every room he came to, and held his breath un­til he had done so. Two of the bed­rooms faced the sea; the third, the lib­rary, the up­ward-slop­ing moor­land. This lib­rary was now the only room left un­vis­ited, and un­less they dis­covered signs of re­cent oc­cu­pa­tion here Maskull made up his mind to re­gard the whole busi­ness as a gi­gantic hoax.

But the lib­rary, like all the other rooms, was foul with stale air and dust-laden. Maskull, hav­ing flung the win­dow up and down, fell heav­ily into an arm­chair and looked dis­gustedly at his friend.

“Now what is your opin­ion of Krag?”

Night­spore sat on the edge of the table which stood be­fore the win­dow. “He may still have left a mes­sage for us.”

“What mes­sage? Why? Do you mean in this room?—I see no mes­sage.”

Night­spore’s eyes wandered about the room, fi­nally seem­ing to linger upon a glass-fron­ted wall cup­board, which con­tained a few old bottles on one of the shelves and noth­ing else. Maskull glanced at him and at the cup­board. Then, without a word, he got up to ex­am­ine the bottles.

There were four al­to­gether, one of which was lar­ger than the rest. The smal­ler ones were about eight inches long. All were tor­pedo-shaped, but had flattened bot­toms, which en­abled them to stand up­right. Two of the smal­ler ones were empty and un­stoppered, the oth­ers con­tained a col­our­less li­quid, and pos­sessed queer-look­ing, nozzle-like stop­pers that were con­nec­ted by a thin metal rod with a catch halfway down the side of the bottle. They were la­belled, but the la­bels were yel­low with age and the writ­ing was nearly un­de­cipher­able. Maskull car­ried the filled bottles with him to the table in front of the win­dow, in or­der to get bet­ter light. Night­spore moved away to make room for him.

He now made out on the lar­ger bottle the words “Solar Back Rays”; and on the other one, after some doubt, he thought that he could dis­tin­guish some­thing like “Arcturian Back Rays.”

He looked up, to stare curi­ously at his friend. “Have you been here be­fore, Night­spore?”

“I guessed Krag would leave a mes­sage.”

“Well, I don’t know—it may be a mes­sage, but it means noth­ing to us, or at all events to me. What are ‘back rays’?”

“Light that goes back to its source,” muttered Night­spore.

“And what kind of light would that be?”

Night­spore seemed un­will­ing to an­swer, but, find­ing Maskull’s eyes still fixed on him, he brought out: “Un­less light pulled, as well as pushed, how would flowers con­trive to twist their heads around after the sun?”

“I don’t know. But the point is, what are these bottles for?”

While he was still talk­ing, with his hand on the smal­ler bottle, the other, which was ly­ing on its side, ac­ci­dent­ally rolled over in such a man­ner that the metal caught against the table. He made a move­ment to stop it, his hand was ac­tu­ally des­cend­ing, when—the bottle sud­denly dis­ap­peared be­fore his eyes. It had not rolled off the table, but had really van­ished—it was nowhere at all.

Maskull stared at the table. After a minute he raised his brows, and turned to Night­spore with a smile. “The mes­sage grows more in­tric­ate.”

Night­spore looked bored. “The valve be­came un­fastened. The con­tents have es­caped through the open win­dow to­ward the sun, car­ry­ing the bottle with them. But the bottle will be burned up by the Earth’s at­mo­sphere, and the con­tents will dis­sip­ate, and will not reach the sun.”

Maskull listened at­tent­ively, and his smile faded. “Does any­thing pre­vent us from ex­per­i­ment­ing with this other bottle?”

“Re­place it in the cup­board,” said Night­spore. “Arcturus is still be­low the ho­ri­zon, and you would suc­ceed only in wreck­ing the house.”

Maskull re­mained stand­ing be­fore the win­dow, pens­ively gaz­ing out at the sun­lit moors.

“Krag treats me like a child,” he re­marked presently. “And per­haps I really am a child. … My cyn­icism must seem most amus­ing to Krag. But why does he leave me to find out all this by my­self—for I don’t in­clude you, Night­spore. … But what time will Krag be here?”

“Not be­fore dark, I ex­pect,” his friend replied.

IV The Voice

It was by this time past three o’clock. Feel­ing hungry, for they had eaten noth­ing since early morn­ing, Maskull went down­stairs to for­age, but without much hope of find­ing any­thing in the shape of food. In a safe in the kit­chen he dis­covered a bag of mouldy oat­meal, which was un­touch­able, a quant­ity of quite good tea in an air­tight caddy, and an un­opened can of ox tongue. Best of all, in the din­ing-room cup­board he came across an un­corked bottle of first-class Scotch whisky. He at once made pre­par­a­tions for a scratch meal.

A pump in the yard ran clear after a good deal of hard work­ing at it, and he washed out and filled the an­tique kettle. For fire­wood, one of the kit­chen chairs was broken up with a chop­per. The light, dusty wood made a good blaze in the grate, the kettle was boiled, and cups were pro­cured and washed. Ten minutes later the friends were din­ing in the lib­rary.

Night­spore ate and drank little, but Maskull sat down with good ap­pet­ite. There be­ing no milk, whisky took the place of it; the nearly black tea was mixed with an equal quant­ity of the spirit. Of this con­coc­tion Maskull drank cup after cup, and long after the tongue had dis­ap­peared he was still im­bib­ing.

Night­spore looked at him queerly. “Do you in­tend to fin­ish the bottle be­fore Krag comes?”

“Krag won’t want any, and one must do some­thing. I feel rest­less.”

“Let us take a look at the coun­try.”

The cup, which was on its way to Maskull’s lips, re­mained poised in the air. “Have you any­thing in view, Night­spore?”

“Let us walk out to the Gap of Sor­gie.”

“What’s that?”

“A show­place,” answered Night­spore, bit­ing his lip.

Maskull fin­ished off the cup, and rose to his feet. “Walk­ing is bet­ter than soak­ing at any time, and es­pe­cially on a day like this. … How far is it?”

“Three or four miles each way.”

“You prob­ably mean some­thing,” said Maskull, “for I’m be­gin­ning to re­gard you as a second Krag. But if so, so much the bet­ter. I am grow­ing nervous, and need in­cid­ents.”

They left the house by the door, which they left ajar, and im­me­di­ately found them­selves again on the moor­land road that had brought them from Hail­lar. This time they con­tin­ued along it, past the tower.

Maskull, as they went by, re­garded the erec­tion with puzzled in­terest. “What is that tower, Night­spore?”

“We sail from the plat­form on the top.”

“To­night?”—throw­ing him a quick look.

“Yes.”

Maskull smiled, but his eyes were grave. “Then we are look­ing at the gate­way of Arcturus, and Krag is now trav­el­ling north to un­lock it.”

“You no longer think it im­possible, I fancy,” mumbled Night­spore.

After a mile or two, the road par­ted from the sea coast and swerved sharply in­land, across the hills. With Night­spore as guide, they left it and took to the grass. A faint sheep path marked the way along the cliff edge for some dis­tance, but at the end of an­other mile it van­ished. The two men then had some rough walk­ing up and down hill­sides and across deep gul­lies. The sun dis­ap­peared be­hind the hills, and twi­light im­per­cept­ibly came on. They soon reached a spot where fur­ther pro­gress ap­peared im­possible. The but­tress of a moun­tain des­cen­ded at a steep angle to the very edge of the cliff, form­ing an im­pass­able slope of slip­pery grass. Maskull hal­ted, stroked his beard, and wondered what the next step was to be.

“There’s a little scram­bling here,” said Night­spore. “We are both used to climb­ing, and there is not much in it.”

He in­dic­ated a nar­row ledge, wind­ing along the face of the pre­cip­ice a few yards be­neath where they were stand­ing. It av­er­aged from fif­teen to thirty inches in width. Without wait­ing for Maskull’s con­sent to the un­der­tak­ing, he in­stantly swung him­self down and star­ted walk­ing along this ledge at a rapid pace. Maskull, see­ing that there was no help for it, fol­lowed him. The shelf did not ex­tend for above a quarter of a mile, but its pas­sage was some­what un­nerv­ing; there was a sheer drop to the sea, four hun­dred feet be­low. In a few places they had to sidle along without pla­cing one foot be­fore an­other. The sound of the break­ers came up to them in a low, threat­en­ing roar.

Upon round­ing a corner, the ledge broadened out into a fair-sized plat­form of rock and came to a sud­den end. A nar­row in­let of the sea sep­ar­ated them from the con­tinu­ation of the cliffs bey­ond.

“As we can’t get any fur­ther,” said Maskull, “I pre­sume this is your Gap of Sor­gie?”

“Yes,” answered his friend, first drop­ping on his knees and then ly­ing at full length, face down­ward. He drew his head and shoulders over the edge and began to stare straight down at the wa­ter.

“What is there in­ter­est­ing down there, Night­spore?”

Re­ceiv­ing no reply, how­ever, he fol­lowed his friend’s ex­ample, and the next minute was look­ing for him­self. Noth­ing was to be seen; the gloom had deepened, and the sea was nearly in­vis­ible. But, while he was in­ef­fec­tu­ally gaz­ing, he heard what soun­ded like the beat­ing of a drum on the nar­row strip of shore be­low. It was very faint, but quite dis­tinct. The beats were in four-four time, with the third beat slightly ac­cen­ted. He now con­tin­ued to hear the noise all the time he was ly­ing there. The beats were in no way drowned by the far louder sound of the surf, but seemed some­how to be­long to a dif­fer­ent world. …

When they were on their feet again, he ques­tioned Night­spore. “We came here solely to hear that?”

Night­spore cast one of his odd looks at him. “It’s called loc­ally ‘The Drum Taps of Sor­gie.’ You will not hear that name again, but per­haps you will hear the sound again.”

“And if I do, what will it im­ply?” de­man­ded Maskull in amazement.

“It bears its own mes­sage. Only try al­ways to hear it more and more dis­tinctly. … Now it’s grow­ing dark, and we must get back.”

Maskull pulled out his watch auto­mat­ic­ally, and looked at the time. It was past six. … But he was think­ing of Night­spore’s words, and not of the time.

Night had already fallen by the time they re­gained the tower. The black sky was glor­i­ous with li­quid stars. Arcturus was a little way above the sea, dir­ectly op­pos­ite them, in the east. As they were passing the base of the tower, Maskull ob­served with a sud­den shock that the gate was open. He caught hold of Night­spore’s arm vi­ol­ently. “Look! Krag is back.”

“Yes, we must make haste to the house.”

“And why not the tower? He’s prob­ably in there, since the gate is open. I’m go­ing up to look.”

Night­spore grunted, but made no op­pos­i­tion.

All was pitch-black in­side the gate. Maskull struck a match, and the flick­er­ing light dis­closed the lower end of a cir­cu­lar flight of stone steps. “Are you com­ing up?” he asked.

“No, I’ll wait here.”

Maskull im­me­di­ately began the as­cent. Hardly had he moun­ted half a dozen steps, how­ever, be­fore he was com­pelled to pause, to gain breath. He seemed to be car­ry­ing up­stairs not one Maskull, but three. As he pro­ceeded, the sen­sa­tion of crush­ing weight, so far from di­min­ish­ing, grew worse and worse. It was nearly phys­ic­ally im­possible to go on; his lungs could not take in enough oxy­gen, while his heart thumped like a ship’s en­gine. Sweat coursed down his face. At the twen­ti­eth step he com­pleted the first re­volu­tion of the tower and came face to face with the first win­dow, which was set in a high em­bras­ure.

Real­ising that he could go no higher, he struck an­other match, and climbed into the em­bras­ure, in or­der that he might at all events see some­thing from the tower. The flame died, and he stared through the win­dow at the stars. Then, to his as­ton­ish­ment, he dis­covered that it was not a win­dow at all but a lens. … The sky was not a wide ex­panse of space con­tain­ing a mul­ti­tude of stars, but a blurred dark­ness, fo­cused only in one part, where two very bright stars, like small moons in size, ap­peared in close con­junc­tion; and near them a more minute plan­et­ary ob­ject, as bril­liant as Venus and with an ob­serv­able disk. One of the suns shone with a glar­ing white light; the other was a weird and aw­ful blue. Their light, though al­most solar in in­tens­ity, did not il­lu­min­ate the in­terior of the tower.

Maskull knew at once that the sys­tem of spheres at which he was gaz­ing was what is known to as­tro­nomy as the star Arcturus. … He had seen the sight be­fore, through Krag’s glass, but then the scale had been smal­ler, the col­ours of the twin suns had not ap­peared in their na­ked real­ity. … These col­ours seemed to him most mar­vel­lous, as if, in see­ing them through Earth eyes, he was not see­ing them cor­rectly. … But it was at Tormance that he stared the longest and the most earn­estly. On that mys­ter­i­ous and ter­rible Earth, count­less mil­lions of miles dis­tant, it had been prom­ised him that he would set foot, even though he might leave his bones there. The strange creatures that he was to be­hold and touch were already liv­ing, at this very mo­ment.

A low, sigh­ing whis­per soun­ded in his ear, from not more than a yard away. “Don’t you un­der­stand, Maskull, that you are only an in­stru­ment, to be used and then broken? Night­spore is asleep now, but when he wakes you must die. You will go, but he will re­turn.”

Maskull hast­ily struck an­other match, with trem­bling fin­gers. No one was in sight, and all was quiet as the tomb.

The voice did not sound again. After wait­ing a few minutes, he re­des­cen­ded to the foot of the tower. On gain­ing the open air, his sen­sa­tion of weight was in­stantly re­moved, but he con­tin­ued pant­ing and pal­pit­at­ing, like a man who has lif­ted a far too heavy load.

Night­spore’s dark form came for­ward. “Was Krag there?”

“If he was. I didn’t see him. But I heard someone speak.”

“Was it Krag?”

“It was not Krag—but a voice warned me against you.”

“Yes, you will hear these voices too,” said Night­spore en­ig­mat­ic­ally.

V The Night of Departure

When they re­turned to the house, the win­dows were all in dark­ness and the door was ajar, just as they had left it; Krag pre­sum­ably was not there. Maskull went all over the house, strik­ing matches in every room—at the end of the ex­am­in­a­tion he was ready to swear that the man they were ex­pect­ing had not even stuck his nose in­side the premises. Grop­ing their way into the lib­rary, they sat down in the total dark­ness to wait, for noth­ing else re­mained to be done. Maskull lit his pipe, and began to drink the re­mainder of the whisky. Through the open win­dow soun­ded in their ears the train­like grind­ing of the sea at the foot of the cliffs.

“Krag must be in the tower after all,” re­marked Maskull, break­ing the si­lence.

“Yes, he is get­ting ready.”

“I hope he doesn’t ex­pect us to join him there. It was bey­ond my powers—but why, heaven knows. The stairs must have a mag­netic pull of some sort.”

“It is Tor­mantic grav­ity,” muttered Night­spore.

“I un­der­stand you—or, rather, I don’t—but it doesn’t mat­ter.”

He went on smoking in si­lence, oc­ca­sion­ally tak­ing a mouth­ful of the neat li­quor. “Who is Sur­tur?” he de­man­ded ab­ruptly.

“We oth­ers are gropers and bun­glers, but he is a mas­ter.”

Maskull di­ges­ted this. “I fancy you are right, for though I know noth­ing about him his mere name has an ex­cit­ing ef­fect on me. … Are you per­son­ally ac­quain­ted with him?”

“I must be … I for­get …” replied Night­spore in a chok­ing voice.

Maskull looked up, sur­prised, but could make noth­ing out in the black­ness of the room.

“Do you know so many ex­traordin­ary men that you can for­get some of them? … Per­haps you can tell me this … will we meet him, where we are go­ing?”

“You will meet death, Maskull. … Ask me no more ques­tions—I can’t an­swer them.”

“Then let us go on wait­ing for Krag,” said Maskull coldly.

Ten minutes later the front door slammed, and a light, quick foot­step was heard run­ning up the stairs. Maskull got up, with a beat­ing heart.

Krag ap­peared on the threshold of the door, bear­ing in his hand a feebly glim­mer­ing lan­tern. A hat was on his head, and he looked stern and for­bid­ding. After scru­tin­ising the two friends for a mo­ment or so, he strode into the room and thrust the lan­tern on the table. Its light hardly served to il­lu­min­ate the walls.

“You have got here, then, Maskull?”

“So it seems—but I shan’t thank you for your hos­pit­al­ity, for it has been con­spicu­ous by its ab­sence.”

Krag ig­nored the re­mark. “Are you ready to start?”

“By all means—when you are. It is not so en­ter­tain­ing here.”

Krag sur­veyed him crit­ic­ally. “I heard you stum­bling about in the tower. You couldn’t get up, it seems.”

“It looks like an obstacle, for Night­spore in­forms me that the start takes place from the top.”

“But your other doubts are all re­moved?”

“So far, Krag, that I now pos­sess an open mind. I am quite will­ing to see what you can do.”

“Noth­ing more is asked. … But this tower busi­ness. You know that un­til you are able to climb to the top you are un­fit to stand the grav­it­a­tion of Tormance?”

“Then I re­peat, it’s an awk­ward obstacle, for I cer­tainly can’t get up.”

Krag hunted about in his pock­ets, and at length pro­duced a clasp knife.

“Re­move you coat, and roll up your shirt sleeve,” he dir­ec­ted.

“Do you pro­pose to make an in­cision with that?”

“Yes, and don’t start dif­fi­culties, be­cause the ef­fect is cer­tain, but you can’t pos­sibly un­der­stand it be­fore­hand.”

“Still, a cut with a pock­etknife—” began Maskull, laugh­ing.

“It will an­swer, Maskull,” in­ter­rup­ted Night­spore.

“Then bare your arm too, you ar­is­to­crat of the uni­verse,” said Krag. “Let us see what your blood is made of.”

Night­spore obeyed.

Krag pulled out the big blade of the knife, and made a care­less and al­most sav­age slash at Maskull’s up­per arm. The wound was deep, and blood flowed freely.

“Do I bind it up?” asked Maskull, scowl­ing with pain.

Krag spat on the wound. “Pull your shirt down, it won’t bleed any more.”

He then turned his at­ten­tion to Night­spore, who en­dured his op­er­a­tion with grim in­dif­fer­ence. Krag threw the knife on the floor.

An aw­ful agony, em­an­at­ing from the wound, star­ted to run through Maskull’s body, and he began to doubt whether he would not have to faint, but it sub­sided al­most im­me­di­ately, and then he felt noth­ing but a gnaw­ing ache in the in­jured arm, just strong enough to make life one long dis­com­fort.

“That’s fin­ished,” said Krag. “Now you can fol­low me.”

Pick­ing up the lan­tern, he walked to­ward the door. The oth­ers hastened after him, to take ad­vant­age of the light, and a mo­ment later their foot­steps, clat­ter­ing down the un­car­peted stairs, re­soun­ded through the deser­ted house. Krag waited till they were out, and then banged the front door after them with such vi­ol­ence that the win­dows shook.

While they were walk­ing swiftly across to the tower, Maskull caught his arm. “I heard a voice up those stairs.”

“What did it say?”

“That I am to go, but Night­spore is to re­turn.”

Krag smiled. “The jour­ney is get­ting no­tori­ous,” he re­marked, after a pause. “There must be ill-wish­ers about. … Well, do you want to re­turn?”

“I don’t know what I want. But I thought the thing was curi­ous enough to be men­tioned.”

“It is not a bad thing to hear voices,” said Krag, “but you mustn’t for a minute ima­gine that all is wise that comes to you out of the night world.”

When they had ar­rived at the open gate­way of the tower, he im­me­di­ately set foot on the bot­tom step of the spiral stair­case and ran nimbly up, bear­ing the lan­tern. Maskull fol­lowed him with some trep­id­a­tion, in view of his pre­vi­ous pain­ful ex­per­i­ence on these stairs, but when, after the first half-dozen steps, he dis­covered that he was still breath­ing freely, his dread changed to re­lief and as­ton­ish­ment, and he could have chattered like a girl.

At the low­est win­dow Krag went straight ahead without step­ping, but Maskull clambered into the em­bras­ure, in or­der to re­new his ac­quaint­ance with the mi­ra­cu­lous spec­tacle of the Arcturian group. The lens had lost its ma­gic prop­erty. It had be­come a com­mon sheet of glass, through which the or­din­ary sky field ap­peared.

The climb con­tin­ued, and at the second and third win­dows he again moun­ted and stared out, but still the com­mon sights presen­ted them­selves. After that, he gave up and looked through no more win­dows.

Krag and Night­spore mean­while had gone on ahead with the light, so that he had to com­plete the as­cent in dark­ness. When he was near the top, he saw yel­low light shin­ing through the crack of a half-opened door. His com­pan­ions were stand­ing just in­side a small room, shut off from the stair­case by rough wooden plank­ing; it was rudely fur­nished and con­tained noth­ing of as­tro­nom­ical in­terest. The lan­tern was rest­ing on a table.

Maskull walked in and looked around him with curi­os­ity. “Are we at the top?”

“Ex­cept for the plat­form over our heads,” replied Krag.

“Why didn’t that low­est win­dow mag­nify, as it did earlier in the even­ing?”

“Oh, you missed your op­por­tun­ity,” said Krag, grin­ning. “If you had fin­ished your climb then, you would have seen heart-ex­pand­ing sights. From the fifth win­dow, for ex­ample, you would have seen Tormance like a con­tin­ent in re­lief; from the sixth you would have seen it like a land­scape. … But now there’s no need.”

“Why not—and what has need got to do with it?”

“Th­ings are changed, my friend, since that wound of yours. For the same reason that you have now been able to mount the stairs, there was no ne­ces­sity to stop and gape at il­lu­sions en route.”

“Very well,” said Maskull, not quite un­der­stand­ing what he meant. “But is this Sur­tur’s den?”

“He has spent time here.”

“I wish you would de­scribe this mys­ter­i­ous in­di­vidual, Krag. We may not get an­other chance.”

“What I said about the win­dows also ap­plies to Sur­tur. There’s no need to waste time over visu­al­ising him, be­cause you are im­me­di­ately go­ing on to the real­ity.”

“Then let us go.” He pressed his eye­balls wear­ily.

“Do we strip?” asked Night­spore.

“Nat­ur­ally,” answered Krag, and he began to tear off his clothes with slow, un­couth move­ments.

“Why?” de­man­ded Maskull, fol­low­ing, how­ever, the ex­ample of the other two men.

Krag thumped his vast chest, which was covered with thick hairs, like an ape’s. “Who knows what the Tormance fash­ions are like? We may sprout limbs—I don’t say we shall.”

“A-ha!” ex­claimed Maskull, paus­ing in the middle of his un­dress­ing.

Krag smote him on the back. “New pleas­ure or­gans pos­sible, Maskull. You like that?”

The three men stood as nature made them. Maskull’s spir­its rose fast, as the mo­ment of de­par­ture drew near.

“A farewell drink to suc­cess!” cried Krag, seiz­ing a bottle and break­ing its head off between his fin­gers. There were no glasses, but he poured the am­ber-col­oured wine into some cracked cups.

Per­ceiv­ing that the oth­ers drank, Maskull tossed off his cup­ful. It was as if he had swal­lowed a draught of li­quid elec­tri­city. … Krag dropped onto the floor and rolled around on his back, kick­ing his legs in the air. He tried to drag Maskull down on top of him, and a little horse­play went on between the two. Night­spore took no part in it, but walked to and fro, like a hungry caged an­imal.

Sud­denly, from out-of-doors, there came a single pro­longed, pier­cing wail, such as a ban­shee might be ima­gined to ut­ter. It ceased ab­ruptly, and was not re­peated.

“What’s that?” called out Maskull, dis­en­ga­ging him­self im­pa­tiently from Krag.

Krag rocked with laughter. “A Scot­tish spirit try­ing to re­pro­duce the bag­pipes of its Earth life—in hon­our of our de­par­ture.”

Night­spore turned to Krag. “Maskull will sleep through­out the jour­ney?”

“And you too, if you wish, my al­tru­istic friend. I am pi­lot, and you pas­sen­gers can amuse yourselves as you please.”

“Are we off at last?” asked Maskull.

“Yes, you are about to cross your Ru­bicon, Maskull. But what a Ru­bicon! … Do you know that it takes light a hun­dred years or so to ar­rive here from Arcturus? Yet we shall do it in nine­teen hours.”

“Then you as­sert that Sur­tur is already there?”

“Sur­tur is where he is. He is a great trav­el­ler.”

“Won’t I see him?”

Krag went up to him and looked him in the eyes. “Don’t for­get that you have asked for it, and wanted it. Few people in Tormance will know more about him than you do, but your memory will be your worst friend.”

He led the way up a short iron lad­der, mount­ing through a trap to the flat roof above. When they were up, he switched on a small elec­tric torch.

Maskull be­held with awe the tor­pedo of crys­tal that was to con­vey them through the whole breadth of vis­ible space. It was forty feet long, eight wide, and eight high; the tank con­tain­ing the Arcturian back rays was in front, the car be­hind. The nose of the tor­pedo was dir­ec­ted to­ward the south­east­ern sky. The whole ma­chine res­ted upon a flat plat­form, raised about four feet above the level of the roof, so as to en­counter no ob­struc­tion on start­ing its flight.

Krag flashed the light on to the door of the car, to en­able them to enter. Be­fore do­ing so, Maskull gazed sternly once again at the gi­gantic, far-dis­tant star, which was to be their sun from now on­ward. He frowned, shivered slightly, and got in be­side Night­spore. Krag clambered past them onto his pi­lot’s seat. He threw the flash­light through the open door, which was then care­fully closed, fastened, and screwed up.

He pulled the start­ing lever. The tor­pedo glided gently from its plat­form, and passed rather slowly away from the tower, sea­ward. Its speed in­creased sens­ibly, though not ex­cess­ively, un­til the ap­prox­im­ate lim­its of the Earth’s at­mo­sphere were reached. Krag then re­leased the speed valve, and the car sped on its way with a ve­lo­city more nearly ap­proach­ing that of thought than of light.

Maskull had no op­por­tun­ity of ex­amin­ing through the crys­tal walls the rap­idly chan­ging pan­or­ama of the heav­ens. An ex­treme drowsi­ness op­pressed him. He opened his eyes vi­ol­ently a dozen times, but on the thir­teenth at­tempt he failed. From that time for­ward he slept heav­ily.

The bored, hungry ex­pres­sion never left Night­spore’s face. The al­ter­a­tions in the as­pect of the sky seemed to pos­sess not the least in­terest for him.

Krag sat with his hand on the lever, watch­ing with sav­age in­tent­ness his phos­phor­es­cent charts and gauges.

VI Joiwind

It was dense night when Maskull awoke from his pro­found sleep. A wind was blow­ing against him, gentle but wall-like, such as he had never ex­per­i­enced on Earth. He re­mained sprawl­ing on the ground, as he was un­able to lift his body be­cause of its in­tense weight. A numb­ing pain, which he could not identify with any re­gion of his frame, ac­ted from now on­ward as a lower, sym­path­etic note to all his other sen­sa­tions. It gnawed away at him con­tinu­ously; some­times it em­bittered and ir­rit­ated him, at other times he for­got it.

He felt some­thing hard on his fore­head. Put­ting his hand up, he dis­covered there a fleshy pro­tuber­ance the size of a small plum, hav­ing a cav­ity in the middle, of which he could not feel the bot­tom. Then he also be­came aware of a large knob on each side of his neck, an inch be­low the ear.

From the re­gion of his heart, a tentacle had bud­ded. It was as long as his arm, but thin, like whip­cord, and soft and flex­ible.

As soon as he thor­oughly real­ised the sig­ni­fic­ance of these new or­gans, his heart began to pump. Whatever might, or might not, be their use, they proved one thing: that he was in a new world.

One part of the sky began to get lighter than the rest. Maskull cried out to his com­pan­ions, but re­ceived no re­sponse. This frightened him. He went on shout­ing out, at ir­reg­u­lar in­ter­vals—equally alarmed at the si­lence and at the sound of his own voice. Fin­ally, as no an­swer­ing hail came, he thought it wiser not to make too much noise, and after that he lay quiet, wait­ing in cold blood for what might hap­pen.

In a short while he per­ceived dim shad­ows around him, but these were not his friends.

A pale, milky va­pour over the ground began to suc­ceed the black night, while in the up­per sky rosy tints ap­peared. On Earth, one would have said that day was break­ing. The bright­ness went on im­per­cept­ibly in­creas­ing for a very long time.

Maskull then dis­covered that he was ly­ing on sand. The col­our of the sand was scar­let. The ob­scure shad­ows he had seen were bushes, with black stems and purple leaves. So far, noth­ing else was vis­ible.

The day surged up. It was too misty for dir­ect sun­shine, but be­fore long the bril­liance of the light was already greater than that of the mid­day sun on Earth. The heat, too, was in­tense, but Maskull wel­comed it—it re­lieved his pain and di­min­ished his sense of crush­ing weight. The wind had dropped with the rising of the sun.

He now tried to get onto his feet, but suc­ceeded only in kneel­ing. He was un­able to see far. The mists had no more than par­tially dis­solved, and all that he could dis­tin­guish was a nar­row circle of red sand dot­ted with ten or twenty bushes.

He felt a soft, cool touch on the back of his neck. He star­ted for­ward in nervous fright and, in do­ing so, tumbled over onto the sand. Look­ing up over his shoulder quickly, he was astoun­ded to see a wo­man stand­ing be­side him.

She was clothed in a single flow­ing, pale green gar­ment, rather clas­sic­ally draped. Ac­cord­ing to Earth stand­ards she was not beau­ti­ful, for, al­though her face was oth­er­wise hu­man, she was en­dowed—or af­flic­ted—with the ad­di­tional dis­fig­ur­ing or­gans that Maskull had dis­covered in him­self. She also pos­sessed the heart tentacle. But when he sat up, and their eyes met and re­mained in sym­path­etic con­tact, he seemed to see right into a soul that was the home of love, warmth, kind­ness, ten­der­ness, and in­tim­acy. Such was the noble fa­mili­ar­ity of that gaze, that he thought he knew her. After that, he re­cog­nised all the love­li­ness of her per­son. She was tall and slight. All her move­ments were as grace­ful as mu­sic. Her skin was not of a dead, opaque col­our, like that of an Earth beauty, but was opales­cent; its hue was con­tinu­ally chan­ging, with every thought and emo­tion, but none of these tints was vivid—all were del­ic­ate, half-toned, and po­etic. She had very long, loosely plaited, flaxen hair. The new or­gans, as soon as Maskull had fa­mil­i­ar­ised him­self with them, im­par­ted some­thing to her face that was unique and strik­ing. He could not quite define it to him­self, but sub­tlety and in­ward­ness seemed ad­ded. The or­gans did not con­tra­dict the love of her eyes or the an­gelic pur­ity of her fea­tures, but nev­er­the­less soun­ded a deeper note—a note that saved her from mere girl­ish­ness.

Her gaze was so friendly and un­em­bar­rassed that Maskull felt scarcely any hu­mi­li­ation at sit­ting at her feet, na­ked and help­less. She real­ised his plight, and put into his hands a gar­ment that she had been car­ry­ing over her arm. It was sim­ilar to the one she was wear­ing, but of a darker, more mas­cu­line col­our.

“Do you think you can put it on by your­self?”

He was dis­tinctly con­scious of these words, yet her voice had not soun­ded.

He forced him­self up to his feet, and she helped him to mas­ter the com­plic­a­tions of the drapery.

“Poor man—how you are suf­fer­ing!” she said, in the same in­aud­ible lan­guage. This time he dis­covered that the sense of what she said was re­ceived by his brain through the or­gan on his fore­head.

“Where am I? Is this Tormance?” he asked. As he spoke, he staggered.

She caught him, and helped him to sit down. “Yes. You are with friends.”

Then she re­garded him with a smile, and began speak­ing aloud, in Eng­lish. Her voice some­how re­minded him of an April day, it was so fresh, nervous, and girl­ish. “I can now un­der­stand your lan­guage. It was strange at first. In the fu­ture I’ll speak to you with my mouth.”

“This is ex­traordin­ary! What is this or­gan?” he asked, touch­ing his fore­head.

“It is named the breve. By means of it we read one an­other’s thoughts. Still, speech is bet­ter, for then the heart can be read too.”

He smiled. “They say that speech is given us to de­ceive oth­ers.”

“One can de­ceive with thought, too. But I’m think­ing of the best, not the worst.”

“Have you seen my friends?”

She scru­tin­ised him quietly, be­fore an­swer­ing. “Did you not come alone?”

“I came with two other men, in a ma­chine. I must have lost con­scious­ness on ar­rival, and I haven’t seen them since.”

“That’s very strange! No, I haven’t seen them. They can’t be here, or we would have known it. My hus­band and I—”

“What is your name, and your hus­band’s name?”

“Mine is Joi­wind—my hus­band’s is Panawe. We live a very long way from here; still, it came to us both last night that you were ly­ing here in­sens­ible. We al­most quar­relled about which of us should come to you, but in the end I won.” Here she laughed. “I won, be­cause I am the stronger-hearted of the two; he is the purer in per­cep­tion.”

“Thanks, Joi­wind!” said Maskull simply.

The col­ours chased each other rap­idly be­neath her skin. “Oh, why do you say that? What pleas­ure is greater than lov­ing-kind­ness? I re­joiced at the op­por­tun­ity. … But now we must ex­change blood.”

“What is this?” he de­man­ded, rather puzzled.

“It must be so. Your blood is far too thick and heavy for our world. Until you have an in­fu­sion of mine, you will never get up.”

Maskull flushed. “I feel like a com­plete ig­nora­mus here. … Won’t it hurt you?”

“If your blood pains you, I sup­pose it will pain me. But we will share the pain.”

“This is a new kind of hos­pit­al­ity to me,” he muttered.

“Wouldn’t you do the same for me?” asked Joi­wind, half smil­ing, half agit­ated.

“I can’t an­swer for any of my ac­tions in this world. I scarcely know where I am. … Why, yes—of course I would, Joi­wind.”

While they were talk­ing it had be­come full day. The mists had rolled away from the ground, and only the up­per at­mo­sphere re­mained fog-charged. The desert of scar­let sand stretched in all dir­ec­tions, ex­cept one, where there was a sort of little oasis—some low hills, clothed sparsely with little purple trees from base to sum­mit. It was about a quarter of a mile dis­tant.

Joi­wind had brought with her a small flint knife. Without any trace of nervous­ness, she made a care­ful, deep in­cision on her up­per arm. Maskull ex­pos­tu­lated.

“Really, this part of it is noth­ing,” she said, laugh­ing. “And if it were—a sac­ri­fice that is no sac­ri­fice—what merit is there in that? … Come now—your arm!”

The blood was stream­ing down her arm. It was not red blood, but a milky, opales­cent fluid.

“Not that one!” said Maskull, shrink­ing. “I have already been cut there.” He sub­mit­ted the other, and his blood poured forth.

Joi­wind del­ic­ately and skil­fully placed the mouths of the two wounds to­gether, and then kept her arm pressed tightly against Maskull’s for a long time. He felt a stream of pleas­ure en­ter­ing his body through the in­cision. His old light­ness and vigour began to re­turn to him. After about five minutes a duel of kind­ness star­ted between them; he wanted to re­move his arm, and she to con­tinue. At last he had his way, but it was none too soon—she stood there pale and dis­pir­ited.

She looked at him with a more ser­i­ous ex­pres­sion than be­fore, as if strange depths had opened up be­fore her eyes.

“What is your name?”

“Maskull.”

“Where have you come from, with this aw­ful blood?”

“From a world called Earth. … The blood is clearly un­suit­able for this world, Joi­wind, but after all, that was only to be ex­pec­ted. I am sorry I let you have your way.”

“Oh, don’t say that! There was noth­ing else to be done. We must all help one an­other. Yet, some­how—for­give me—I feel pol­luted.”

“And well you may, for it’s a fear­ful thing for a girl to ac­cept in her own veins the blood of a strange man from a strange planet. If I had not been so dazed and weak I would never have al­lowed it.”

“But I would have in­sisted. Are we not all broth­ers and sis­ters? Why did you come here, Maskull?”

He was con­scious of a slight de­gree of em­bar­rass­ment. “Will you think it fool­ish if I say I hardly know?—I came with those two men. Per­haps I was at­trac­ted by curi­os­ity, or per­haps it was the love of ad­ven­ture.”

“Per­haps,” said Joi­wind. “I won­der. … These friends of yours must be ter­rible men. Why did they come?”

“That I can tell you. They came to fol­low Sur­tur.”

Her face grew troubled. “I don’t un­der­stand it. One of them at least must be a bad man, and yet if he is fol­low­ing Sur­tur—or Shap­ing, as he is called here—he can’t be really bad.”

“What do you know of Sur­tur?” asked Maskull in as­ton­ish­ment.

Joi­wind re­mained si­lent for a time, study­ing his face. His brain moved rest­lessly, as though it were be­ing probed from out­side. “I see … and yet I don’t see,” she said at last. “It is very dif­fi­cult. … Your God is a dread­ful Be­ing—body­less, un­friendly, in­vis­ible. Here we don’t wor­ship a God like that. Tell me, has any man set eyes on your God?”

“What does all this mean, Joi­wind? Why speak of God?”

“I want to know.”

“In an­cient times, when the Earth was young and grand, a few holy men are re­puted to have walked and spoken with God, but those days are past.”

“Our world is still young,” said Joi­wind. “Shap­ing goes among us and con­verses with us. He is real and act­ive—a friend and lover. Shap­ing made us, and he loves his work.”

“Have you met him?” de­man­ded Maskull, hardly be­liev­ing his ears.

“No. I have done noth­ing to de­serve it yet. Some day I may have an op­por­tun­ity to sac­ri­fice my­self, and then I may be re­war­ded by meet­ing and talk­ing with Shap­ing.”

“I have cer­tainly come to an­other world. But why do you say he is the same as Sur­tur?”

“Yes, he is the same. We wo­men call him Shap­ing, and so do most men, but a few name him Sur­tur.”

Maskull bit his nail. “Have you ever heard of Crys­tal­man?”

“That is Shap­ing once again. You see, he has many names—which shows how much he oc­cu­pies our minds. Crys­tal­man is a name of af­fec­tion.”

“It’s odd,” said Maskull. “I came here with quite dif­fer­ent ideas about Crys­tal­man.”

Joi­wind shook her hair. “In that grove of trees over there stands a desert shrine of his. Let us go and pray there, and then we’ll go on our way to Pool­ing­dred. That is my home. It’s a long way off, and we must get there be­fore Blod­sombre.”

“Now, what is Blod­sombre?”

“For about four hours in the middle of the day Branch­spell’s rays are so hot that no one can en­dure them. We call it Blod­sombre.”

“Is Branch­spell an­other name for Arcturus?”

Joi­wind threw off her ser­i­ous­ness and laughed. “Nat­ur­ally we don’t take our names from you, Maskull. I don’t think our names are very po­etic, but they fol­low nature.”

She took his arm af­fec­tion­ately, and dir­ec­ted their walk to­wards the tree-covered hills. As they went along, the sun broke through the up­per mists and a ter­rible gust of scorch­ing heat, like a blast from a fur­nace, struck Maskull’s head. He in­vol­un­tar­ily looked up, but lowered his eyes again like light­ning. All that he saw in that in­stant was a glar­ing ball of elec­tric white, three times the ap­par­ent dia­meter of the sun. For a few minutes he was quite blind.

“My God!” he ex­claimed. “If it’s like this in early morn­ing you must be right enough about Blod­sombre.” When he had some­what re­covered him­self he asked, “How long are the days here, Joi­wind?”

Again he felt his brain be­ing probed.

“At this time of the year, for every hour’s day­light that you have in sum­mer, we have two.”

“The heat is ter­rific—and yet some­how I don’t feel so dis­tressed by it as I would have ex­pec­ted.”

“I feel it more than usual. It’s not dif­fi­cult to ac­count for it; you have some of my blood, and I have some of yours.”

“Yes, every time I real­ise that, I—Tell me, Joi­wind, will my blood al­ter, if I stay here long enough?—I mean, will it lose its red­ness and thick­ness, and be­come pure and thin and light-col­oured, like yours?”

“Why not? If you live as we live, you will as­suredly grow like us.”

“Do you mean food and drink?”

“We eat no food, and drink only wa­ter.”

“And on that you man­age to sus­tain life?”

“Well, Maskull, our wa­ter is good wa­ter,” replied Joi­wind, smil­ing.

As soon as he could see again he stared around at the land­scape. The enorm­ous scar­let desert ex­ten­ded every­where to the ho­ri­zon, ex­cept­ing where it was broken by the oasis. It was roofed by a cloud­less, deep blue, al­most vi­olet, sky. The circle of the ho­ri­zon was far lar­ger than on Earth. On the sky­line, at right angles to the dir­ec­tion in which they were walk­ing, ap­peared a chain of moun­tains, ap­par­ently about forty miles dis­tant. One, which was higher than the rest, was shaped like a cup. Maskull would have felt in­clined to be­lieve he was trav­el­ling in dream­land, but for the in­tens­ity of the light, which made everything vividly real.

Joi­wind poin­ted to the cup-shaped moun­tain. “That’s Pool­ing­dred.”

“You didn’t come from there!” he ex­claimed, quite startled.

“Yes, I did in­deed. And that is where we have to go to now.”

“With the single ob­ject of find­ing me?”

“Why, yes.”

The col­our moun­ted to his face. “Then you are the bravest and noblest of all girls,” he said quietly, after a pause. “Without ex­cep­tion. Why, this is a jour­ney for an ath­lete!”

She pressed his arm, while a score of un­paint­able, del­ic­ate hues stained her cheeks in rapid trans­ition. “Please don’t say any more about it, Maskull. It makes me feel un­pleas­ant.”

“Very well. But can we pos­sibly get there be­fore mid­day?”

“Oh, yes. And you mustn’t be frightened at the dis­tance. We think noth­ing of long dis­tances here—we have so much to think about and feel. Time goes all too quickly.”

Dur­ing their con­ver­sa­tion they had drawn neat the base of the hills, which sloped gently, and were not above fifty feet in height. Maskull now began to see strange spe­ci­mens of ve­get­able life. What looked like a small patch of purple grass, above five feet square, was mov­ing across the sand in their dir­ec­tion. When it came near enough he per­ceived that it was not grass; there were no blades, but only purple roots. The roots were re­volving, for each small plant in the whole patch, like the spokes of a rim­less wheel. They were al­tern­ately plunged in the sand, and with­drawn from it, and by this means the plant pro­ceeded for­ward. Some un­canny, semi-in­tel­li­gent in­stinct was keep­ing all the plants to­gether, mov­ing at one pace, in one dir­ec­tion, like a flock of mi­grat­ing birds in flight.

Another re­mark­able plant was a large, feath­ery ball, re­sem­bling a dan­delion fruit, which they en­countered sail­ing through the air. Joi­wind caught it with an ex­ceed­ingly grace­ful move­ment of her arm, and showed it to Maskull. It had roots and pre­sum­ably lived in the air and fed on the chem­ical con­stitu­ents of the at­mo­sphere. But what was pe­cu­liar about it was its col­our. It was an en­tirely new col­our—not a new shade or com­bin­a­tion, but a new primary col­our, as vivid as blue, red, or yel­low, but quite dif­fer­ent. When he in­quired, she told him that it was known as ulfire. Presently he met with a second new col­our. This she des­ig­nated jale. The sense im­pres­sions caused in Maskull by these two ad­di­tional primary col­ours can only be vaguely hin­ted at by ana­logy. Just as blue is del­ic­ate and mys­ter­i­ous, yel­low clear and un­subtle, and red san­guine and pas­sion­ate, so he felt ulfire to be wild and pain­ful, and jale dream­like, fe­ver­ish, and vo­lup­tu­ous.

The hills were com­posed of a rich, dark mould. Small trees, of weird shapes, all dif­fer­ing from each other, but all purple-col­oured, covered the slopes and top. Maskull and Joi­wind climbed up and through. Some hard fruit, bright blue in col­our, of the size of a large apple, and shaped like an egg, was ly­ing in pro­fu­sion un­der­neath the trees.

“Is the fruit here pois­on­ous, or why don’t you eat it?” asked Maskull.

She looked at him tran­quilly. “We don’t eat liv­ing things. The thought is hor­rible to us.”

“I have noth­ing to say against that, the­or­et­ic­ally. But do you really sus­tain your bod­ies on wa­ter?”

“Sup­pos­ing you could find noth­ing else to live on, Maskull—would you eat other men?”

“I would not.”

“Neither will we eat plants and an­im­als, which are our fel­low creatures. So noth­ing is left to us but wa­ter, and as one can really live on any­thing, wa­ter does very well.”

Maskull picked up one of the fruits and handled it curi­ously. As he did so an­other of his newly ac­quired sense or­gans came into ac­tion. He found that the fleshy knobs be­neath his ears were in some novel fash­ion ac­quaint­ing him with the in­ward prop­er­ties of the fruit. He could not only see, feel, and smell it, but could de­tect its in­trinsic nature. This nature was hard, per­sist­ent and mel­an­choly.

Joi­wind answered the ques­tions he had not asked.

“Those or­gans are called poigns. Their use is to en­able us to un­der­stand and sym­path­ise with all liv­ing creatures.”

“What ad­vant­age do you de­rive from that, Joi­wind?”

“The ad­vant­age of not be­ing cruel and selfish, dear Maskull.”

He threw the fruit away and flushed again.

Joi­wind looked into his swarthy, bearded face without em­bar­rass­ment and slowly smiled. “Have I said too much? Have I been too fa­mil­iar? Do you know why you think so? It’s be­cause you are still im­pure. By and by you will listen to all lan­guage without shame.”

Be­fore he real­ised what she was about to do, she threw her tentacle round his neck, like an­other arm. He offered no res­ist­ance to its cool pres­sure. The con­tact of her soft flesh with his own was so moist and sens­it­ive that it re­sembled an­other kind of kiss. He saw who it was that em­braced him—a pale, beau­ti­ful girl. Yet, oddly enough, he ex­per­i­enced neither vo­lup­tu­ous­ness nor sexual pride. The love ex­pressed by the caress was rich, glow­ing, and per­sonal, but there was not the least trace of sex in it—and so he re­ceived it.

She re­moved her tentacle, placed her two arms on his shoulders and pen­et­rated with her eyes right into his very soul.

“Yes, I wish to be pure,” he muttered. “Without that what can I ever be but a weak, squirm­ing devil?”

Joi­wind re­leased him. “This we call the magn,” she said, in­dic­at­ing her tentacle. “By means of it what we love already we love more, and what we don’t love at all we be­gin to love.”

“A god­like or­gan!”

“It is the one we guard most jeal­ously,” said Joi­wind.

The shade of the trees af­forded a timely screen from the now al­most in­suf­fer­able rays of Branch­spell, which was climb­ing stead­ily up­ward to the zenith. On des­cend­ing the other side of the little hills, Maskull looked anxiously for traces of Night­spore and Krag, but without res­ult. After star­ing about him for a few minutes he shrugged his shoulders; but sus­pi­cions had already be­gun to gather in his mind.

A small, nat­ural am­phi­theatre lay at their feet, com­pletely circled by the tree-clad heights. The centre was of red sand. In the very middle shot up a tall, stately tree, with a black trunk and branches, and trans­par­ent, crys­tal leaves. At the foot of this tree was a nat­ural, cir­cu­lar well, con­tain­ing dark green wa­ter.

When they had reached the bot­tom, Joi­wind took him straight over to the well.

Maskull gazed at it in­tently. “Is this the shrine you talked about?”

“Yes. It is called Shap­ing’s Well. The man or wo­man who wishes to in­voke Shap­ing must take up some of the gnawl wa­ter, and drink it.”

“Pray for me,” said Maskull. “Your un­spot­ted prayer will carry more weight.”

“What do you wish for?”

“For pur­ity,” answered Maskull, in a troubled voice.

Joi­wind made a cup of her hand, and drank a little of the wa­ter. She held it up to Maskull’s mouth. “You must drink too.” He obeyed. She then stood erect, closed her eyes, and, in a voice like the soft mur­mur­ings of spring, prayed aloud.

“Shap­ing, my father, I am hop­ing you can hear me. A strange man has come to us weighed down with heavy blood. He wishes to be pure. Let him know the mean­ing of love, let him live for oth­ers. Don’t spare him pain, dear Shap­ing, but let him seek his own pain. Breathe into him a noble soul.”

Maskull listened with tears in his heart.

As Joi­wind fin­ished speak­ing, a blurred mist came over his eyes, and, half bur­ied in the scar­let sand, ap­peared a large circle of dazzlingly white pil­lars. For some minutes they flickered to and fro between dis­tinct­ness and in­dis­tinct­ness, like an ob­ject be­ing fo­cused. Then they faded out of sight again.

“Is that a sign from Shap­ing?” asked Maskull, in a low, awed tone.

“Per­haps it is. It is a time mirage.”

“What can that be, Joi­wind?”

“You see, dear Maskull, the temple does not yet ex­ist but it will do so, be­cause it must. What you and I are now do­ing in sim­pli­city, wise men will do here­after in full know­ledge.”

“It is right for man to pray,” said Maskull. “Good and evil in the world don’t ori­gin­ate from noth­ing. God and Devil must ex­ist. And we should pray to the one, and fight the other.”

“Yes, we must fight Krag.”

“What name did you say?” asked Maskull in amazement.

“Krag—the au­thor of evil and misery—whom you call Devil.”

He im­me­di­ately con­cealed his thoughts. To pre­vent Joi­wind from learn­ing his re­la­tion­ship to this be­ing, he made his mind a blank.

“Why do you hide your mind from me?” she de­man­ded, look­ing at him strangely and chan­ging col­our.

“In this bright, pure, ra­di­ant world, evil seems so re­mote, one can scarcely grasp its mean­ing.” But he lied.

Joi­wind con­tin­ued gaz­ing at him, straight out of her clean soul. “The world is good and pure, but many men are cor­rupt. Panawe, my hus­band, has trav­elled, and he has told me things I would al­most rather have not heard. One per­son he met be­lieved the uni­verse to be, from top to bot­tom, a con­jurer’s cave.”

“I should like to meet your hus­band.”

“Well, we are go­ing home now.”

Maskull was on the point of in­quir­ing whether she had any chil­dren, but was afraid of of­fend­ing her, and checked him­self.

She read the men­tal ques­tion. “What need is there? Is not the whole world full of lovely chil­dren? Why should I want selfish pos­ses­sions?”

An ex­traordin­ary creature flew past, ut­ter­ing a plaint­ive cry of five dis­tinct notes. It was not a bird, but had a bal­loon-shaped body, paddled by five webbed feet. It dis­ap­peared among the trees.

Joi­wind poin­ted to it, as it went by. “I love that beast, grot­esque as it is—per­haps all the more for its grot­esque­ness. But if I had chil­dren of my own, would I still love it? Which is best—to love two or three, or to love all?”

“Every wo­man can’t be like you, Joi­wind, but it is good to have a few like you. Wouldn’t it be as well,” he went on, “since we’ve got to walk through that sun­baked wil­der­ness, to make turbans for our heads out of some of those long leaves?”

She smiled rather pathet­ic­ally. “You will think me fool­ish, but every tear­ing off of a leaf would be a wound in my heart. We have only to throw our robes over our heads.”

“No doubt that will an­swer the same pur­pose, but tell me—weren’t these very robes once part of a liv­ing creature?”

“Oh, no—no, they are the webs of a cer­tain an­imal, but they have never been in them­selves alive.”

“You re­duce life to ex­treme sim­pli­city,” re­marked Maskull med­it­at­ively, “but it is very beau­ti­ful.”

Climb­ing back over the hills, they now without fur­ther ce­re­mony began their march across the desert.

They walked side by side. Joi­wind dir­ec­ted their course straight to­ward Pool­ing­dred. From the po­s­i­tion of the sun, Maskull judged their way to lie due north. The sand was soft and powdery, very tir­ing to his na­ked feet. The red glare dazed his eyes, and made him semi-blind. He was hot, parched, and tor­men­ted with the crav­ing to drink; his un­der­tone of pain emerged into full con­scious­ness.

“I see my friends nowhere, and it is very queer.”

“Yes, it is queer—if it is ac­ci­dental,” said Joi­wind, with a pe­cu­liar in­ton­a­tion.

“Ex­actly!” agreed Maskull. “If they had met with a mis­hap, their bod­ies would still be there. It be­gins to look like a piece of bad work to me. They must have gone on, and left me. … Well, I am here, and I must make the best of it, I will trouble no more about them.”

“I don’t wish to speak ill of any­one,” said Joi­wind, “but my in­stinct tells me that you are bet­ter away from those men. They did not come here for your sake, but for their own.”

They walked on for a long time. Maskull was be­gin­ning to feel faint. She twined her magn lov­ingly around his waist, and a strong cur­rent of con­fid­ence and well-be­ing in­stantly coursed through his veins.

“Thanks, Joi­wind! But am I not weak­en­ing you?”

“Yes,” she replied, with a quick, thrill­ing glance. “But not much—and it gives me great hap­pi­ness.”

Presently they met a fant­astic little creature, the size of a new­born lamb, waltz­ing along on three legs. Each leg in turn moved to the front, and so the little mon­stros­ity pro­ceeded by means of a series of com­plete ro­ta­tions. It was vividly col­oured, as though it had been dipped into pots of bright blue and yel­low paint. It looked up with small, shin­ing eyes, as they passed.

Joi­wind nod­ded and smiled to it. “That’s a per­sonal friend of mine, Maskull. Whenever I come this way, I see it. It’s al­ways waltz­ing, and al­ways in a hurry, but it never seems to get any­where.”

“It seems to me that life is so self-suf­fi­cient here that there is no need for any­one to get any­where. What I don’t quite un­der­stand is how you man­age to pass your days without en­nui.”

“That’s a strange word. It means, does it not, crav­ing for ex­cite­ment?”

“So­mething of the kind,” said Maskull.

“That must be a dis­ease brought on by rich food.”

“But are you never dull?”

“How could we be? Our blood is quick and light and free, our flesh is clean and un­clogged, in­side and out. … Be­fore long I hope you will un­der­stand what sort of ques­tion you have asked.”

Farther on they en­countered a strange phe­nomenon. In the heart of the desert a foun­tain rose per­pen­dic­u­larly fifty feet into the air, with a cool and pleas­ant hiss­ing sound. It differed, how­ever, from a foun­tain in this re­spect—that the wa­ter of which it was com­posed did not re­turn to the ground but was ab­sorbed by the at­mo­sphere at the sum­mit. It was in fact a tall, grace­ful column of dark green fluid, with a cap­ital of coil­ing and twist­ing va­pours.

When they came closer, Maskull per­ceived that this wa­ter column was the con­tinu­ation and ter­min­a­tion of a flow­ing brook, which came down from the dir­ec­tion of the moun­tains. The ex­plan­a­tion of the phe­nomenon was evid­ently that the wa­ter at this spot found chem­ical af­fin­it­ies in the up­per air, and con­sequently for­sook the ground.

“Now let us drink,” said Joi­wind.

She threw her­self un­af­fectedly at full length on the sand, face down­ward, by the side of the brook, and Maskull was not long in fol­low­ing her ex­ample. She re­fused to quench her thirst un­til she had seen him drink. He found the wa­ter heavy, but bub­bling with gas. He drank co­pi­ously. It af­fected his pal­ate in a new way—with the pur­ity and clean­ness of wa­ter was com­bined the ex­hil­ar­a­tion of a spark­ling wine, rais­ing his spir­its—but some­how the in­tox­ic­a­tion brought out his bet­ter nature, and not his lower.

“We call it gnawl wa­ter,” said Joi­wind. “This is not quite pure, as you can see by the col­our. At Pool­ing­dred it is crys­tal clear. But we would be un­grate­ful if we com­plained. After this you’ll find we’ll get along much bet­ter.”

Maskull now began to real­ise his en­vir­on­ment, as it were for the first time. All his sense or­gans star­ted to show him beau­ties and won­ders that he had not hitherto sus­pec­ted. The uni­form glar­ing scar­let of the sands be­came sep­ar­ated into a score of clearly dis­tin­guished shades of red. The sky was sim­il­arly split up into dif­fer­ent blues. The ra­di­ant heat of Branch­spell he found to af­fect every part of his body with un­equal in­tens­it­ies. His ears awakened; the at­mo­sphere was full of mur­murs, the sands hummed, even the sun’s rays had a sound of their own—a kind of faint Aeolian harp. Subtle, puzz­ling per­fumes as­sailed his nos­trils. His pal­ate lingered over the memory of the gnawl wa­ter. All the pores of his skin were tickled and soothed by hitherto un­per­ceived cur­rents of air. His poigns ex­plored act­ively the in­ward nature of everything in his im­me­di­ate vi­cin­ity. His magn touched Joi­wind, and drew from her per­son a stream of love and joy. And lastly by means of his breve he ex­changed thoughts with her in si­lence. This mighty sense sym­phony stirred him to the depths, and through­out the walk of that end­less morn­ing he felt no more fa­tigue.

When it was draw­ing near to Blod­sombre, they ap­proached the sedgy mar­gin of a dark green lake, which lay un­der­neath Pool­ing­dred.

Panawe was sit­ting on a dark rock, wait­ing for them.

VII Panawe

The hus­band got up to meet his wife and their guest. He was clothed in white. He had a beard­less face, with breve and poigns. His skin, on face and body alike, was so white, fresh, and soft, that it scarcely looked skin at all—it rather re­sembled a new kind of pure, snowy flesh, ex­tend­ing right down to his bones. It had noth­ing in com­mon with the ar­ti­fi­cially whitened skin of an over-civ­il­ised wo­man. Its white­ness and del­ic­acy aroused no vo­lup­tu­ous thoughts; it was ob­vi­ously the mani­fest­a­tion of a cold and al­most cruel chastity of nature. His hair, which fell to the nape of his neck, also was white; but again, from vigour, not de­cay. His eyes were black, quiet and fathom­less. He was still a young man, but so stern were his fea­tures that he had the ap­pear­ance of a law­giver, and this in spite of their great beauty and har­mony.

His magn and Joi­wind’s in­ter­twined for a single mo­ment and Maskull saw his face soften with love, while she looked ex­ult­ant. She put him in her hus­band’s arms with gentle force, and stood back, gaz­ing and smil­ing. Maskull felt rather em­bar­rassed at be­ing em­braced by a man, but sub­mit­ted to it; a sense of cool, pleas­ant lan­guor passed through him in the act.

“The stranger is red-blooded, then?”

He was startled by Panawe’s speak­ing in Eng­lish, and the voice too was ex­traordin­ary. It was ab­so­lutely tran­quil, but its tran­quil­lity seemed in a curi­ous fash­ion to be an il­lu­sion, pro­ceed­ing from a rapid­ity of thoughts and feel­ings so great that their mo­tion could not be de­tec­ted. How this could be, he did not know.

“How do you come to speak in a tongue you have never heard be­fore?” de­man­ded Maskull.

“Thought is a rich, com­plex thing. I can’t say if I am really speak­ing your tongue by in­stinct, or if you your­self are trans­lat­ing my thoughts into your tongue as I ut­ter them.”

“Already you see that Panawe is wiser than I am,” said Joi­wind gaily.

“What is your name?” asked the hus­band.

“Maskull.”

“That name must have a mean­ing—but again, thought is a strange thing. I con­nect that name with some­thing—but with what?”

“Try to dis­cover,” said Joi­wind.

“Has there been a man in your world who stole some­thing from the Maker of the uni­verse, in or­der to en­noble his fel­low creatures?”

“There is such a myth. The hero’s name was Pro­meth­eus.”

“Well, you seem to be iden­ti­fied in my mind with that ac­tion—but what it all means I can’t say, Maskull.”

“Ac­cept it as a good omen, for Panawe never lies, and never speaks thought­lessly.”

“There must be some con­fu­sion. These are heights bey­ond me,” said Maskull calmly, but look­ing rather con­tem­plat­ive.

“Where do you come from?”

“From the planet of a dis­tant sun, called Earth.”

“What for?”

“I was tired of vul­gar­ity,” re­turned Maskull lac­on­ic­ally. He in­ten­tion­ally avoided men­tion­ing his fel­low voy­agers, in or­der that Krag’s name should not come to light.

“That’s an hon­our­able motive,” said Panawe. “And what’s more, it may be true, though you spoke it as a pre­var­ic­a­tion.”

“As far as it goes, it’s quite true,” said Maskull, star­ing at him with an­noy­ance and sur­prise.

The swampy lake ex­ten­ded for about half a mile from where they were stand­ing to the lower but­tresses of the moun­tain. Feath­ery purple reeds showed them­selves here and there through the shal­lows. The wa­ter was dark green. Maskull did not see how they were go­ing to cross it.

Joi­wind caught his arm. “Per­haps you don’t know that the lake will bear us?”

Panawe walked onto the wa­ter; it was so heavy that it car­ried his weight. Joi­wind fol­lowed with Maskull. He in­stantly star­ted to slip about—nev­er­the­less the mo­tion was amus­ing, and he learned so fast, by watch­ing and im­it­at­ing Panawe, that he was soon able to bal­ance him­self without as­sist­ance. After that he found the sport ex­cel­lent.

For the same reason that wo­men ex­cel in dan­cing, Joi­wind’s half falls and re­cov­er­ies were far more grace­ful and sure than those of either of the men. Her slight, draped form—dip­ping, bend­ing, rising, sway­ing, twist­ing, upon the sur­face of the dark wa­ter—this was a pic­ture Maskull could not keep his eyes away from.

The lake grew deeper. The gnawl wa­ter be­came green-black. The crags, gul­lies, and pre­cip­ices of the shore could now be dis­tin­guished in de­tail. A wa­ter­fall was vis­ible, des­cend­ing sev­eral hun­dred feet. The sur­face of the lake grew dis­turbed—so much so that Maskull had dif­fi­culty in keep­ing his bal­ance. He there­fore threw him­self down and star­ted swim­ming on the face of the wa­ter. Joi­wind turned her head, and laughed so joy­ously that all her teeth flashed in the sun­light.

They landed in a few more minutes on a promon­tory of black rock. The wa­ter on Maskull’s gar­ment and body evap­or­ated very quickly. He gazed up­ward at the tower­ing moun­tain, but at that mo­ment some strange move­ments on the part of Panawe at­trac­ted his at­ten­tion. His face was work­ing con­vuls­ively, and he began to stag­ger about. Then he put his hand to his mouth and took from it what looked like a bright-col­oured pebble. He looked at it care­fully for some seconds. Joi­wind also looked, over his shoulder, with quickly chan­ging col­ours. After this in­spec­tion, Panawe let the ob­ject—whatever it was—fall to the ground, and took no more in­terest in it.

“May I look?” asked Maskull; and, without wait­ing for per­mis­sion, he picked it up. It was a del­ic­ately beau­ti­ful egg-shaped crys­tal of pale green.

“Where did this come from?” he asked queerly.

Panawe turned away, but Joi­wind answered for him. “It came out of my hus­band.”

“That’s what I thought, but I couldn’t be­lieve it. But what is it?”

“I don’t know that it has either name or use. It is merely an over­flow­ing of beauty.”

“Beauty?”

Joi­wind smiled. “If you were to re­gard nature as the hus­band, and Panawe as the wife, Maskull, per­haps everything would be ex­plained.”

Maskull re­flec­ted.

“On Earth,” he said after a minute, “men like Panawe are called artists, po­ets, and mu­si­cians. Beauty over­flows into them too, and out of them again. The only dis­tinc­tion is that their pro­duc­tions are more hu­man and in­tel­li­gible.”

“Noth­ing comes from it but van­ity,” said Panawe, and, tak­ing the crys­tal out of Maskull’s hand, he threw it into the lake.

The pre­cip­ice they now had to climb was sev­eral hun­dred feet in height. Maskull was more anxious for Joi­wind than for him­self. She was evid­ently tir­ing, but she re­fused all help, and was in fact still the nim­bler of the two. She made a mock­ing face at him. Panawe seemed lost in quiet thoughts. The rock was sound, and did not crumble un­der their weight. The heat of Branch­spell, how­ever, was by this time al­most killing, the ra­di­ance was shock­ing in its white in­tens­ity, and Maskull’s pain stead­ily grew worse.

When they got to the top, a plat­eau of dark rock ap­peared, bare of ve­get­a­tion, stretch­ing in both dir­ec­tions as far as the eye could see. It was of a nearly uni­form width of five hun­dred yards, from the edge of the cliffs to the lower slopes of the chain of hills in­land. The hills var­ied in height. The cup-shaped Pool­ing­dred was ap­prox­im­ately a thou­sand feet above them. The up­per part of it was covered with a kind of glit­ter­ing ve­get­a­tion which he could not com­pre­hend.

Joi­wind put her hand on Maskull’s shoulder, and poin­ted up­ward. “Here you have the highest peak in the whole land—that is, un­til you come to the If­dawn Marest.”

On hear­ing that strange name, he ex­per­i­enced a mo­ment­ary un­ac­count­able sen­sa­tion of wild vigour and rest­less­ness—but it passed away.

Without los­ing time, Panawe led the way up the moun­tain­side. The lower half was of bare rock, not dif­fi­cult to climb. Halfway up, how­ever, it grew steeper, and they began to meet bushes and small trees. The growth be­came thicker as they con­tin­ued to as­cend, and when they neared the sum­mit, tall forest trees ap­peared.

These bushes and trees had pale, glassy trunks and branches, but the small twigs and the leaves were trans­lu­cent and crys­tal. They cast no shad­ows from above, but still the shade was cool. Both leaves and branches were fant­ast­ic­ally shaped. What sur­prised Maskull the most, how­ever, was the fact that, as far as he could see, scarcely any two plants be­longed to the same spe­cies.

“Won’t you help Maskull out of his dif­fi­culty?” said Joi­wind, pulling her hus­band’s arm.

He smiled. “If he’ll for­give me for again tres­passing in his brain. But the dif­fi­culty is small. Life on a new planet, Maskull, is ne­ces­sar­ily en­er­getic and law­less, and not sed­ate and im­it­at­ive. Nature is still fluid—not yet ri­gid—and mat­ter is plastic. The will forks and sports in­cess­antly, and thus no two creatures are alike.”

“Well, I un­der­stand all that,” replied Maskull, after listen­ing at­tent­ively. “But what I don’t grasp is this—if liv­ing creatures here sport so en­er­get­ic­ally, how does it come about that hu­man be­ings wear much the same shape as in my world?”

“I’ll ex­plain that too,” said Panawe. “All creatures that re­semble Shap­ing must of ne­ces­sity re­semble one an­other.”

“Then sport­ing is the blind will to be­come like Shap­ing?”

“Ex­actly.”

“It is most won­der­ful,” said Maskull. “Then the broth­er­hood of man is not a fable in­ven­ted by ideal­ists, but a solid fact.”

Joi­wind looked at him, and changed col­our. Panawe re­lapsed into stern­ness.

Maskull be­came in­ter­ested in a new phe­nomenon. The jale-col­oured blos­soms of a crys­tal bush were emit­ting men­tal waves, which with his breve he could clearly dis­tin­guish. They cried out si­lently, “To me! To me!” While he looked, a fly­ing worm guided it­self through the air to one of these blos­soms and began to suck its nec­tar. The floral cry im­me­di­ately ceased.

They now gained the crest of the moun­tain, and looked down bey­ond. A lake oc­cu­pied its crater-like cav­ity. A fringe of trees partly in­ter­cep­ted the view, but Maskull was able to per­ceive that this moun­tain lake was nearly cir­cu­lar and per­haps a quarter of a mile across. Its shore stood a hun­dred feet be­low them.

Ob­serving that his hosts did not pro­pose to des­cend, he begged them to wait for him, and scrambled down to the sur­face. When he got there, he found the wa­ter per­fectly mo­tion­less and of a col­our­less trans­par­ency. He walked onto it, lay down at full length, and peered into the depths. It was weirdly clear: he could see down for an in­def­in­ite dis­tance, without ar­riv­ing at any bot­tom. Some dark, shad­owy ob­jects, al­most out of reach of his eyes, were mov­ing about. Then a sound, very faint and mys­ter­i­ous, seemed to come up through the gnawl wa­ter from an im­mense depth. It was like the rhythm of a drum. There were four beats of equal length, but the ac­cent was on the third. It went on for a con­sid­er­able time, and then ceased.

The sound ap­peared to him to be­long to a dif­fer­ent world from that in which he was trav­el­ling. The lat­ter was mys­tical, dream­like, and un­be­liev­able—the drum­ming was like a very dim un­der­tone of real­ity. It re­sembled the tick­ing of a clock in a room full of voices, only oc­ca­sion­ally pos­sible to be picked up by the ear.

He re­joined Panawe and Joi­wind, but said noth­ing to them about his ex­per­i­ence. They all walked round the rim of the crater, and gazed down on the op­pos­ite side. Pre­cip­ices sim­ilar to those that had over­looked the desert here formed the bound­ary of a vast moor­land plain, whose di­men­sions could not be meas­ured by the eye. It was solid land, yet he could not make out its pre­vail­ing col­our. It was as if made of trans­par­ent glass, but it did not glit­ter in the sun­light. No ob­jects in it could be dis­tin­guished, ex­cept a rolling river in the far dis­tance, and, farther off still, on the ho­ri­zon, a line of dark moun­tains, of strange shapes. In­stead of be­ing roun­ded, con­ical, or ho­g­backed, these heights were carved by nature into the semb­lance of castle bat­tle­ments, but with ex­tremely deep in­dent­a­tions.

The sky im­me­di­ately above the moun­tains was of a vivid, in­tense blue. It con­tras­ted in a most mar­vel­lous way with the blue of the rest of the heav­ens. It seemed more lu­min­ous and ra­di­ant, and was in fact like the af­ter­glow of a gor­geous blue sun­set.

Maskull kept on look­ing. The more he gazed, the more rest­less and noble be­came his feel­ings.

“What is that light?”

Panawe was sterner than usual, while his wife clung to his arm. “It is Alp­pain—our second sun,” he replied. “Those hills are the If­dawn Marest. … Now let us get to our shel­ter.”

“Is it ima­gin­a­tion, or am I really be­ing af­fected—tor­men­ted by that light?”

“No, it’s not ima­gin­a­tion—it’s real. How can it be oth­er­wise when two suns, of dif­fer­ent natures, are draw­ing you at the same time? Luck­ily you are not look­ing at Alp­pain it­self. It’s in­vis­ible here. You would need to go at least as far as If­dawn, to set eyes on it.”

“Why do you say ‘luck­ily’?”

“Be­cause the agony caused by those op­pos­ing forces would per­haps be more than you could bear. … But I don’t know.”

For the short dis­tance that re­mained of their walk, Maskull was very thought­ful and un­easy. He un­der­stood noth­ing. Whatever ob­ject his eye chanced to rest on changed im­me­di­ately into a puzzle. The si­lence and still­ness of the moun­tain peak seemed brood­ing, mys­ter­i­ous, and wait­ing. Panawe gave him a friendly, anxious look, and without fur­ther delay led the way down a little track, which tra­versed the side of the moun­tain and ter­min­ated in the mouth of a cave.

This cave was the home of Panawe and Joi­wind. It was dark in­side. The host took a shell and, filling it with li­quid from a well, care­lessly sprinkled the sandy floor of the in­terior. A green­ish, phos­phor­es­cent light gradu­ally spread to the fur­thest lim­its of the cav­ern, and con­tin­ued to il­lu­min­ate it for the whole time they were there. There was no fur­niture. Some dried, fern­like leaves served for couches.

The mo­ment she got in, Joi­wind fell down in ex­haus­tion. Her hus­band ten­ded her with calm con­cern. He bathed her face, put drink to her lips, en­er­gised her with his magn, and fi­nally laid her down to sleep. At the sight of the noble wo­man thus suf­fer­ing on his ac­count, Maskull was dis­tressed.

Panawe, how­ever, en­deav­oured to re­as­sure him. “It’s quite true this has been a very long, hard double jour­ney, but for the fu­ture it will lighten all her other jour­neys for her. … Such is the nature of sac­ri­fice.”

“I can’t con­ceive how I have walked so far in a morn­ing,” said Maskull, “and she has been twice the dis­tance.”

“Love flows in her veins, in­stead of blood, and that’s why she is so strong.”

“You know she gave me some of it?”

“Other­wise you couldn’t even have star­ted.”

“I shall never for­get that.”

The lan­guor­ous beat of the day out­side, the bright mouth of the cav­ern, the cool se­clu­sion of the in­terior, with its pale green glow, in­vited Maskull to sleep. But curi­os­ity got the bet­ter of his las­sit­ude.

“Will it dis­turb her if we talk?”

“No.”

“But how do you feel?”

“I re­quire little sleep. In any case, it’s more im­port­ant that you should hear some­thing about your new life. It’s not all as in­no­cent and idyllic as this. If you in­tend to go through, you ought to be in­struc­ted about the dangers.”

“Oh, I guessed as much. But how shall we ar­range—shall I put ques­tions, or will you tell me what you think is most es­sen­tial?”

Panawe mo­tioned to Maskull to sit down on a pile of ferns, and at the same time re­clined him­self, lean­ing on one arm, with out­stretched legs.

“I will tell some in­cid­ents of my life. You will be­gin to learn from them what sort of place you have come to.”

“I shall be grate­ful,” said Maskull, pre­par­ing him­self to listen.

Panawe paused for a mo­ment or two, and then star­ted his nar­rat­ive in tran­quil, meas­ured, yet sym­path­etic tones.

Panawe’s Story

“My earli­est re­col­lec­tion is of be­ing taken, when three years old (that’s equi­val­ent to fif­teen of your years, but we de­velop more slowly here), by my father and mother, to see Brood­viol, the wisest man in Tormance. He dwelt in the great Womb­flash Forest. We walked through trees for three days, sleep­ing at night. The trees grew taller as we went along, un­til the tops were out of sight. The trunks were of a dark red col­our and the leaves were of pale ulfire. My father kept stop­ping to think. If left un­in­ter­rup­ted, he would re­main for half a day in deep ab­strac­tion. My mother came out of Pool­ing­dred, and was of a dif­fer­ent stamp. She was beau­ti­ful, gen­er­ous, and charm­ing—but also act­ive. She kept ur­ging him on. This led to many dis­putes between them, which made me miser­able. On the fourth day we passed through a part of the forest which bordered on the Sink­ing Sea. This sea is full of pouches of wa­ter that will not bear a man’s weight, and as these light parts don’t dif­fer in ap­pear­ance from the rest, it is dan­ger­ous to cross. My father poin­ted out a dim out­line on the ho­ri­zon, and told me it was Swaylone’s Is­land. Men some­times go there, but none ever re­turn. In the even­ing of the same day we found Brood­viol stand­ing in a deep, miry pit in the forest, sur­roun­ded on all sides by trees three hun­dred feet high. He was a big gnarled, rugged, wrinkled, sturdy old man. His age at that time was a hun­dred and twenty of our years, or nearly six hun­dred of yours. His body was tri­lat­eral: he had three legs, three arms, and six eyes, placed at equal dis­tances all around his head. This gave him an as­pect of great watch­ful­ness and saga­city. He was stand­ing in a sort of trance. I af­ter­ward heard this say­ing of his: ‘To lie is to sleep, to sit is to dream, to stand is to think.’ My father caught the in­fec­tion, and fell into med­it­a­tion, but my mother roused them both thor­oughly. Brood­viol scowled at her sav­agely, and de­man­ded what she re­quired. Then I too learned for the first time the ob­ject of our jour­ney. I was a prodigy—that is to say, I was without sex. My par­ents were troubled over this, and wished to con­sult the wisest of men.

“Old Brood­viol smoothed his face, and said, ‘This per­haps will not be so dif­fi­cult. I will ex­plain the mar­vel. Every man and wo­man among us is a walk­ing mur­derer. If a male, he has struggled with and killed the fe­male who was born in the same body with him—if a fe­male, she has killed the male. But in this child the struggle is still con­tinu­ing.’

“ ‘How shall we end it?’ asked my mother.

“ ‘Let the child dir­ect its will to the scene of the com­bat, and it will be of whichever sex it pleases.’

“ ‘You want, of course, to be a man, don’t you?’ said my mother to me earn­estly.

“ ‘Then I shall be slay­ing your daugh­ter, and that would be a crime.’

“So­mething in my tone at­trac­ted Brood­viol’s no­tice.

“ ‘That was spoken, not selfishly, but mag­nan­im­ously. There­fore the male must have spoken it, and you need not trouble fur­ther. Be­fore you ar­rive home, the child will be a boy.’

“My father walked away out of sight. My mother bent very low be­fore Brood­viol for about ten minutes, and he re­mained all that time look­ing kindly at her.

“I heard that shortly af­ter­ward Alp­pain came into that land for a few hours daily. Brood­viol grew mel­an­choly, and died.

“His proph­ecy came true—be­fore we reached home, I knew the mean­ing of shame. But I have of­ten pondered over his words since, in later years, when try­ing to un­der­stand my own nature; and I have come to the con­clu­sion that, wisest of men as he was, he still did not see quite straight on this oc­ca­sion. Between me and my twin sis­ter, en­closed in one body, there never was any struggle, but in­stinct­ive rev­er­ence for life with­held both of us from fight­ing for ex­ist­ence. Hers was the stronger tem­pera­ment, and she sac­ri­ficed her­self—though not con­sciously—for me.

“As soon as I com­pre­hen­ded this, I made a vow never to eat or des­troy any­thing that con­tained life—and I have kept it ever since.

“While I was still hardly a grown man, my father died. My mother’s death fol­lowed im­me­di­ately, and I hated the as­so­ci­ations of the land. I there­fore made up my mind to travel into my mother’s coun­try, where, as she had of­ten told me, nature was most sac­red and sol­it­ary.

“One hot morn­ing I came to Shap­ing’s Cause­way. It is so called either be­cause Shap­ing once crossed it, or be­cause of its stu­pendous char­ac­ter. It is a nat­ural em­bank­ment, twenty miles long, which links the moun­tains bor­der­ing my home­land with the If­dawn Marest. The val­ley lies be­low at a depth vary­ing from eight to ten thou­sand feet—a ter­rible pre­cip­ice on either side. The knife edge of the ridge is gen­er­ally not much over a foot wide. The cause­way goes due north and south. The val­ley on my right hand was plunged in shadow—that on my left was spark­ling with sun­light and dew. I walked fear­fully along this pre­cari­ous path for some miles. Far to the east the val­ley was closed by a lofty table­land, con­nect­ing the two chains of moun­tains, but over­top­ping even the most tower­ing pin­nacles. This is called the Sant Levels. I was never there, but I have heard two curi­ous facts con­cern­ing the in­hab­it­ants. The first is that they have no wo­men; the second, that though they are ad­dicted to trav­el­ling in other parts they never ac­quire habits of the peoples with whom they reside.

“Presently I turned giddy, and lay at full length for a great while, clutch­ing the two edges of the path with both hands, and star­ing at the ground I was ly­ing on with wide-open eyes. When that passed I felt like a dif­fer­ent man and grew con­ceited and gay. About halfway across I saw someone ap­proach­ing me a long way off. This put fear into my heart again, for I did not see how we could very well pass. However, I went slowly on, and presently we drew near enough to­gether for me to re­cog­nise the walker. It was Slo­fork, the so-called sor­cerer. I had never met him be­fore, but I knew him by his pe­cu­li­ar­it­ies of per­son. He was of a bright gam­boge col­our and pos­sessed a very long, pro­bos­cis-like nose, which ap­peared to be a use­ful or­gan, but did not add to his beauty, as I knew beauty. He was dubbed ‘sor­cerer’ from his won­drous skill in bud­ding limbs and or­gans. The tale is told that one even­ing he slowly sawed his leg off with a blunt stone and then lay for two days in agony while his new leg was sprout­ing. He was not re­puted to be a con­sist­ently wise man, but he had peri­od­ical flashes of pen­et­ra­tion and au­da­city that none could equal.

“We sat down and faced one an­other, about two yards apart.

“ ‘Which of us walks over the other?’ asked Slo­fork. His man­ner was as calm as the day it­self, but, to my young nature, ter­rible with hid­den ter­rors. I smiled at him, but did not wish for this hu­mi­li­ation. We con­tin­ued sit­ting thus, in a friendly way, for many minutes.

“ ‘What is greater than Pleas­ure?’ he asked sud­denly.

“I was at an age when one wishes to be thought equal to any emer­gency, so, con­ceal­ing my sur­prise, I ap­plied my­self to the con­ver­sa­tion, as if it were for that pur­pose we had met.

“ ‘Pain,’ I replied, ‘for pain drives out pleas­ure.’

“ ‘What is greater than Pain?’

“I re­flec­ted. ‘Love. Be­cause we will ac­cept our loved one’s share of pain.’

“ ‘But what is greater than Love?’ he per­sisted.

“ ‘Noth­ing, Slo­fork.’

“ ‘And what is Noth­ing?’

“ ‘That you must tell me.’

“ ‘Tell you I will. This is Shap­ing’s world. He that is a good child here, knows pleas­ure, pain, and love, and gets his re­wards. But there’s an­other world—not Shap­ing’s and there all this is un­known, and an­other or­der of things reigns. That world we call Noth­ing—but it is not Noth­ing, but So­mething.’

“There was a pause.

“ ‘I have heard,’ said I, ‘that you are good at grow­ing and un­grow­ing or­gans?’

“ ‘That’s not enough for me. Every or­gan tells me the same story. I want to hear dif­fer­ent stor­ies.’

“ ‘Is it true, what men say, that your wis­dom flows and ebbs in pulses?’

“ ‘Quite true,’ replied Slo­fork. ‘But those you had it from did not add that they have al­ways mis­taken the flow for the ebb.’

“ ‘My ex­per­i­ence is,’ said I sen­ten­tiously, ‘that wis­dom is misery.’

“ ‘Per­haps it is, young man, but you have never learned that, and never will. For you the world will con­tinue to wear a noble, aw­ful face. You will never rise above mys­ti­cism. … But be happy in your own way.’

“Be­fore I real­ised what he was do­ing, he jumped tran­quilly from the path, down into the empty void. He crashed with ever-in­creas­ing mo­mentum to­ward the val­ley be­low. I screeched, flung my­self down on the ground, and shut my eyes.

“Often have I wondered which of my ill-con­sidered, ju­ven­ile re­marks it was that caused this sud­den res­ol­u­tion on his part to com­mit sui­cide. Whichever it might be, since then I have made it a ri­gid law never to speak for my own pleas­ure, but only to help oth­ers.

“I came even­tu­ally to the Marest. I threaded its mazes in ter­ror for four days. I was frightened of death, but still more ter­ri­fied at the pos­sib­il­ity of los­ing my sac­red at­ti­tude to­ward life. When I was nearly through, and was be­gin­ning to con­grat­u­late my­self, I stumbled across the third ex­traordin­ary per­son­age of my ex­per­i­ence—the grim Mure­maker. It was un­der hor­rible cir­cum­stances. On an af­ter­noon, cloudy and stormy, I saw, sus­pen­ded in the air without vis­ible sup­port, a liv­ing man. He was hanging in an up­right po­s­i­tion in front of a cliff—a yawn­ing gulf, a thou­sand feet deep, lay be­neath his feet. I climbed as near as I could, and looked on. He saw me, and made a wry grim­ace, like one who wishes to turn his hu­mi­li­ation into hu­mour. The spec­tacle so astoun­ded me that I could not even grasp what had happened.

“ ‘I am Mure­maker,’ he cried in a scrap­ing voice which shocked my ears. ‘All my life I have sorbed oth­ers—now I am sorbed. Nuc­lamp and I fell out over a wo­man. Now Nuc­lamp holds me up like this. While the strength of his will lasts I shall re­main sus­pen­ded; but when he gets tired—and it can’t be long now—I drop into those depths.’

“Had it been an­other man, I would have tried to save him, but this ogre-like be­ing was too well known to me as one who passed his whole ex­ist­ence in tor­ment­ing, mur­der­ing, and ab­sorb­ing oth­ers, for the sake of his own de­light. I hur­ried away, and did not pause again that day.

“In Pool­ing­dred I met Joi­wind. We walked and talked to­gether for a month, and by that time we found that we loved each other too well to part.”

Panawe stopped speak­ing.

“That is a fas­cin­at­ing story,” re­marked Maskull. “Now I be­gin to know my way around bet­ter. But one thing puzzles me.”

“What’s that?”

“How it hap­pens that men here are ig­nor­ant of tools and arts, and have no civil­isa­tion, and yet con­trive to be so­cial in their habits and wise in their thoughts.”

“Do you ima­gine, then, that love and wis­dom spring from tools? But I see how it arises. In your world you have fewer sense or­gans, and to make up for the de­fi­ciency you have been ob­liged to call in the as­sist­ance of stones and metals. That’s by no means a sign of su­peri­or­ity.”

“No, I sup­pose not,” said Maskull, “but I see I have a great deal to un­learn.”

They talked to­gether a little longer, and then gradu­ally fell asleep. Joi­wind opened her eyes, smiled, and slumbered again.

VIII The Lusion Plain

Maskull awoke be­fore the oth­ers. He got up, stretched him­self, and walked out into the sun­light. Branch­spell was already de­clin­ing. He climbed to the top of the crater edge and looked away to­ward If­dawn. The af­ter­glow of Alp­pain had by now com­pletely dis­ap­peared. The moun­tains stood up wild and grand.

They im­pressed him like a simple mu­sical theme, the notes of which are widely sep­ar­ated in the scale; a spirit of rash­ness, dar­ing, and ad­ven­ture seemed to call to him from them. It was at that mo­ment that the de­term­in­a­tion flashed into his heart to walk to the Marest and ex­plore its dangers.

He re­turned to the cav­ern to say good­bye to his hosts.

Joi­wind looked at him with her brave and hon­est eyes. “Is this selfish­ness, Maskull?” she asked, “or are you drawn by some­thing stronger than your­self?”

“We must be reas­on­able,” he answered, smil­ing. “I can’t settle down in Pool­ing­dred be­fore I have found out some­thing about this sur­pris­ing new planet of yours. Re­mem­ber what a long way I have come. … But very likely I shall come back here.”

“Will you make me a prom­ise?”

Maskull hes­it­ated. “Ask noth­ing dif­fi­cult, for I hardly know my powers yet.”

“It is not hard, and I wish it. Prom­ise this—never to raise your hand against a liv­ing creature, either to strike, pluck, or eat, without first re­col­lect­ing its mother, who suffered for it.”

“Per­haps I won’t prom­ise that,” said Maskull slowly, “but I’ll un­der­take some­thing more tan­gible. I will never lift my hand against a liv­ing creature without first re­col­lect­ing you, Joi­wind.”

She turned a little pale. “Now if Panawe knew that Panawe ex­is­ted, he might be jeal­ous.”

Panawe put his hand on her gently. “You would not talk like that in Shap­ing’s pres­ence,” he said.

“No. For­give me! I’m not quite my­self. Per­haps it is Maskull’s blood in my veins. … Now let us bid him adieu. Let us pray that he will do only hon­our­able deeds, wherever he may be.”

“I’ll set Maskull on his way,” said Panawe.

“There’s no need,” replied Maskull. “The way is plain.”

“But talk­ing shortens the road.”

Maskull turned to go.

Joi­wind pulled him around to­ward her softly. “You won’t think badly of other wo­men on my ac­count?”

“You are a blessed spirit,” answered he.

She trod quietly to the in­ner ex­tremity of the cave and stood there think­ing. Panawe and Maskull emerged into the open air. Halfway down the cliff face a little spring was en­countered. Its wa­ter was col­our­less, trans­par­ent, but gaseous. As soon as Maskull had sat­is­fied his thirst he felt him­self dif­fer­ent. His sur­round­ings were so real to him in their vivid­ness and col­our, so un­real in their phantom-like mys­tery, that he scrambled down­hill like one in a winter’s dream.

When they reached the plain he saw in front of them an in­ter­min­able forest of tall trees, the shapes of which were ex­traordin­ar­ily for­eign look­ing. The leaves were crys­tal­line and, look­ing up­ward, it was as if he were gaz­ing through a roof of glass. The mo­ment they got un­der­neath the trees the light rays of the sun con­tin­ued to come through—white, sav­age, and blaz­ing—but they were gel­ded of heat. Then it was not hard to ima­gine that they were wan­der­ing through cool, bright elfin glades.

Through the forest, be­gin­ning at their very feet an av­enue, per­fectly straight and not very wide, went for­ward as far as the eye could see.

Maskull wanted to talk to his trav­el­ling com­pan­ion, but was some­how un­able to find words. Panawe glanced at him with an in­scrut­able smile—stern, yet en­chant­ing and half fem­in­ine. He then broke the si­lence, but, strangely enough, Maskull could not make out whether he was singing or speak­ing. From his lips is­sued a slow mu­sical re­cit­at­ive, ex­actly like a be­witch­ing adagio from a low toned stringed in­stru­ment—but there was a dif­fer­ence. In­stead of the re­pe­ti­tion and vari­ation of one or two short themes, as in mu­sic, Panawe’s theme was pro­longed—it never came to an end, but rather re­sembled a con­ver­sa­tion in rhythm and melody. And, at the same time, it was no re­cit­at­ive, for it was not de­clam­at­ory. It was a long, quiet stream of lovely emo­tion.

Maskull listened en­tranced, yet agit­ated. The song, if it might be termed song, seemed to be al­ways just on the point of be­com­ing clear and in­tel­li­gible—not with the in­tel­li­gib­il­ity of words, but in the way one sym­path­ises with an­other’s moods and feel­ings; and Maskull felt that some­thing im­port­ant was about to be uttered, which would ex­plain all that had gone be­fore. But it was in­vari­ably post­poned, he never un­der­stood—and yet some­how he did un­der­stand.

Late in the af­ter­noon they came to a clear­ing, and there Panawe ceased his re­cit­at­ive. He slowed his pace and stopped, in the fash­ion of a man who wishes to con­vey that he in­tends to go no farther.

“What is the name of this coun­try?” asked Maskull.

“It is the Lu­sion Plain.”

“Was that mu­sic in the nature of a tempta­tion—do you wish me not to go on?”

“Your work lies be­fore you, and not be­hind you.”

“What was it, then? What work do you al­lude to?”

“It must have seemed like some­thing to you, Maskull.”

“It seemed like Shap­ing mu­sic to me.”

The in­stant he had ab­sently uttered these words, Maskull wondered why he had done so, as they now ap­peared mean­ing­less to him.

Panawe, how­ever, showed no sur­prise. “Shap­ing you will find every­where.”

“Am I dream­ing, or awake?”

“You are awake.”

Maskull fell into deep thought. “So be it,” he said, rous­ing him­self. “Now I will go on. But where must I sleep to­night?”

“You will reach a broad river. On that you can travel to the foot of the Marest to­mor­row; but to­night you had bet­ter sleep where the forest and river meet.”

“Adieu, then, Panawe! But do you wish to say any­thing more to me?”

“Only this, Maskull—wherever you go, help to make the world beau­ti­ful, and not ugly.”

“That’s more than any of us can un­der­take. I am a simple man, and have no am­bi­tions in the way of beau­ti­fy­ing life—But tell Joi­wind I will try to keep my­self pure.”

They par­ted rather coldly. Maskull stood erect where they had stopped, and watched Panawe out of sight. He sighed more than once.

He be­came aware that some­thing was about to hap­pen. The air was breath­less. The late-af­ter­noon sun­shine, un­ob­struc­ted, wrapped his frame in vo­lup­tu­ous heat. A sol­it­ary cloud, im­mensely high, raced through the sky over­head.

A single trum­pet note soun­ded in the far dis­tance from some­where be­hind him. It gave him an im­pres­sion of be­ing sev­eral miles away at first; but then it slowly swelled, and came nearer and nearer at the same time that it in­creased in volume. Still the same note soun­ded, but now it was as if blown by a gi­ant trum­peter im­me­di­ately over his head. Then it gradu­ally di­min­ished in force, and trav­elled away in front of him. It ended very faintly and dis­tantly.

He felt him­self alone with Nature. A sac­red still­ness came over his heart. Past and fu­ture were for­got­ten. The forest, the sun, the day did not ex­ist for him. He was un­con­scious of him­self—he had no thoughts and no feel­ings. Yet never had Life had such an alti­tude for him.

A man stood, with crossed arms, right in his path. He was so clothed that his limbs were ex­posed, while his body was covered. He was young rather than old. Maskull ob­served that his coun­ten­ance pos­sessed none of the spe­cial or­gans of Tormance, to which he had not even yet be­come re­con­ciled. He was smooth-faced. His whole per­son seemed to ra­di­ate an ex­cess of life, like the trem­bling of air on a hot day. His eyes had such force that Maskull could not meet them.

He ad­dressed Maskull by name, in an ex­traordin­ary voice. It had a double tone. The primary one soun­ded far away; the second was an un­der­tone, like a sym­path­etic tanging string.

Maskull felt a rising joy, as he con­tin­ued stand­ing in the pres­ence of this in­di­vidual. He be­lieved that some­thing good was hap­pen­ing to him. He found it phys­ic­ally dif­fi­cult to bring any words out. “Why do you stop me?”

“Maskull, look well at me. Who am I?”

“I think you are Shap­ing.”

“I am Sur­tur.”

Maskull again at­temp­ted to meet his eyes, but felt as if he were be­ing stabbed.

“You know that this is my world. Why do you think I have brought you here? I wish you to serve me.”

Maskull could no longer speak.

“Those who joke at my world,” con­tin­ued the vis­ion, “those who make a mock of its stern, eternal rhythm, its beauty and sub­lim­ity, which are not skin-deep, but pro­ceed from fathom­less roots—they shall not es­cape.”

“I do not mock it.”

“Ask me your ques­tions, and I will an­swer them.”

“I have noth­ing.”

“It is ne­ces­sary for you to serve me, Maskull. Do you not un­der­stand? You are my ser­vant and helper.”

“I shall not fail.”

“This is for my sake, and not for yours.”

These last words had no sooner left Sur­tur’s mouth than Maskull saw him spring sud­denly up­ward and out­ward. Look­ing up at the vault of the sky, he saw the whole ex­panse of vis­ion filled by Sur­tur’s form—not as a con­crete man, but as a vast, con­cave cloud im­age, look­ing down and frown­ing at him. Then the spec­tacle van­ished, as a light goes out.

Maskull stood in­act­ive, with a thump­ing heart. Now he again heard the sol­it­ary trum­pet note. The sound began this time faintly in the far dis­tance in front of him, trav­elled slowly to­ward him with reg­u­larly in­creas­ing in­tens­ity, passed over­head at its loudest, and then grew more and more quiet, won­der­ful, and sol­emn, as it fell away in the rear, un­til the note was merged in the death­like si­lence of the forest. It ap­peared to Maskull like the clos­ing of a mar­vel­lous and im­port­ant chapter.

Sim­ul­tan­eously with the fad­ing away of the sound, the heav­ens seemed to open up with the rapid­ity of light­ning into a blue vault of im­meas­ur­able height. He breathed a great breath, stretched all his limbs, and looked around him with a slow smile.

After a while he re­sumed his jour­ney. His brain was all dark and con­fused, but one idea was already be­gin­ning to stand out from the rest—huge, shape­less, and grand, like the grow­ing im­age in the soul of a cre­at­ive artist: the stag­ger­ing thought that he was a man of des­tiny.

The more he re­flec­ted upon all that had oc­curred since his ar­rival in this new world—and even be­fore leav­ing Earth—the clearer and more in­dis­put­able it be­came, that he could not be here for his own pur­poses, but must be here for an end. But what that end was, he could not ima­gine.

Through the forest he saw Branch­spell at last sink­ing in the west. It looked a stu­pendous ball of red fire—now he could real­ise at his ease what a sun it was! The av­enue took an ab­rupt turn to the left and began to des­cend steeply.

A wide, rolling river of clear and dark wa­ter was vis­ible in front of him, no great way off. It flowed from north to south. The forest path led him straight to its banks. Maskull stood there, and re­garded the lap­ping, gurg­ling wa­ters pens­ively. On the op­pos­ite bank, the forest con­tin­ued. Miles to the south, Pool­ing­dred could just be dis­tin­guished. On the north­ern sky­line the If­dawn Moun­tains loomed up—high, wild, beau­ti­ful, and dan­ger­ous. They were not a dozen miles away.

Like the first mut­ter­ings of a thun­der­storm, the first faint breaths of cool wind, Maskull felt the stir­rings of pas­sion in his heart. In spite of his bod­ily fa­tigue, he wished to test his strength against some­thing. This crav­ing he iden­ti­fied with the crags of the Marest. They seemed to have the same ma­gical at­trac­tion for his will as the lode­stone for iron. He kept bit­ing his nails, as he turned his eyes in that dir­ec­tion—won­der­ing if it would not be pos­sible to con­quer the heights that even­ing. But when he glanced back again at Pool­ing­dred, he re­membered Joi­wind and Panawe, and grew more tran­quil. He de­cided to make his bed at this spot, and to set off as soon after day­break as he should awake.

He drank at the river, washed him­self, and lay down on the bank to sleep. By this time, so far had his idea pro­gressed, that he cared noth­ing for the pos­sible dangers of the night—he con­fided in his star.

Branch­spell set, the day faded, night with its ter­rible weight came on, and through it all Maskull slept. Long be­fore mid­night, how­ever, he was awakened by a crim­son glow in the sky. He opened his eyes, and wondered where he was. He felt heav­i­ness and pain. The red glow was a ter­restrial phe­nomenon; it came from among the trees. He got up and went to­ward the source of the light.

Away from the river, not a hun­dred feet off, he nearly stumbled across the form of a sleep­ing wo­man. The ob­ject which emit­ted the crim­son rays was ly­ing on the ground, sev­eral yards away from her. It was like a small jewel, throw­ing off sparks of red light. He barely threw a glance at that, how­ever.

The wo­man was clothed in the large skin of an an­imal. She had big, smooth, shapely limbs, rather mus­cu­lar than fat. Her magn was not a thin tentacle, but a third arm, ter­min­at­ing in a hand. Her face, which was up­turned, was wild, power­ful, and ex­ceed­ingly hand­some. But he saw with sur­prise that in place of a breve on her fore­head, she pos­sessed an­other eye. All three were closed. The col­our of her skin in the crim­son glow he could not dis­tin­guish.

He touched her gently with his hand. She awoke calmly and looked up at him without stir­ring a muscle. All three eyes stared at him; but the two lower ones were dull and va­cant—mere car­ri­ers of vis­ion. The middle, up­per one alone ex­pressed her in­ner nature. Its haughty, un­flinch­ing glare had yet some­thing se­duct­ive and al­lur­ing in it. Maskull felt a chal­lenge in that look of lordly, fem­in­ine will, and his man­ner in­stinct­ively stiffened.

She sat up.

“Can you speak my lan­guage?” he asked. “I wouldn’t put such a ques­tion, but oth­ers have been able to.”

“Why should you ima­gine that I can’t read your mind? Is it so ex­tremely com­plex?”

She spoke in a rich, linger­ing, mu­sical voice, which de­lighted him to listen to.

“No, but you have no breve.”

“Well, but haven’t I a sorb, which is bet­ter?” And she poin­ted to the eye on her brow.

“What is your name?”

“Oceaxe.”

“And where do you come from?”

“If­dawn.”

These con­temp­tu­ous replies began to ir­rit­ate him, and yet the mere sound of her voice was fas­cin­at­ing.

“I am go­ing there to­mor­row,” he re­marked.

She laughed, as if against her will, but made no com­ment.

“My name is Maskull,” he went on. “I am a stranger—from an­other world.”

“So I should judge, from your ab­surd ap­pear­ance.”

“Per­haps it would be as well to say at once,” said Maskull bluntly, “are we, or are we not, to be friends?”

She yawned and stretched her arms, without rising. “Why should we be friends? If I thought you were a man, I might ac­cept you as a lover.”

“You must look else­where for that.”

“So be it, Maskull! Now go away, and leave me in peace.”

She dropped her head again to the ground, but did not at once close her eyes.

“What are you do­ing here?” he in­ter­rog­ated.

“Oh, we If­dawn folk oc­ca­sion­ally come here to sleep, for there of­ten enough it is a night for us which has no next morn­ing.”

“Be­ing such a ter­rible place, and see­ing that I am a total stranger, it would be merely cour­teous if you were to warn me what I have to ex­pect in the way of dangers.”

“I am per­fectly and ut­terly in­dif­fer­ent to what be­comes of you,” re­tor­ted Oceaxe.

“Are you re­turn­ing in the morn­ing?” per­sisted Maskull.

“If I wish.”

“Then we will go to­gether.”

She got up again on her el­bow. “In­stead of mak­ing plans for other people, I would do a very ne­ces­sary thing.”

“Pray, tell me.”

“Well, there’s no reason why I should, but I will. I would try to con­vert my wo­men’s or­gans into men’s or­gans. It is a man’s coun­try.”

“Speak more plainly.”

“Oh, it’s plain enough. If you at­tempt to pass through If­dawn without a sorb, you are simply com­mit­ting sui­cide. And that magn too is worse than use­less.”

“You prob­ably know what you are talk­ing about, Oceaxe. But what do you ad­vise me to do?”

She neg­li­gently poin­ted to the light-emit­ting stone ly­ing on the ground.

“There is the solu­tion. If you hold that drude to your or­gans for a good while, per­haps it will start the change, and per­haps nature will do the rest dur­ing the night. I prom­ise noth­ing.”

Oceaxe now really turned her back on Maskull.

He con­sidered for a few minutes, and then walked over and to where the stone was ly­ing, and took it in his hand. It was a pebble the size of a hen’s egg, ra­di­ant with crim­son light, as though red-hot, and throw­ing out a con­tinu­ous shower of small, blood-red sparks.

Fin­ally de­cid­ing that Oceaxe’s ad­vice was good, he ap­plied the drude first to his magn, and then to his breve. He ex­per­i­enced a caut­er­ising sen­sa­tion—a feel­ing of heal­ing pain.

IX Oceaxe

Maskull’s second day on Tormance dawned. Branch­spell was already above the ho­ri­zon when he awoke. He was in­stantly aware that his or­gans had changed dur­ing the night. His fleshy breve was altered into an eye­like sorb; his magn had swelled and de­veloped into a third arm, spring­ing from the breast. The arm gave him at once a sense of greater phys­ical se­cur­ity, but with the sorb he was ob­liged to ex­per­i­ment, be­fore he could grasp its func­tion.

As he lay there in the white sun­light, open­ing and shut­ting each of his three eyes in turn, he found that the two lower ones served his un­der­stand­ing, the up­per one his will. That is to say, with the lower eyes he saw things in clear de­tail, but without per­sonal in­terest; with the sorb he saw noth­ing as self-ex­ist­ent—everything ap­peared as an ob­ject of im­port­ance or non-im­port­ance to his own needs.

Rather puzzled as to how this would turn out, he got up and looked about him. He had slept out of sight of Oceaxe. He was anxious to learn if she were still on the spot, but be­fore go­ing to as­cer­tain he made up his mind to bathe in the river.

It was a glor­i­ous morn­ing. The hot white sun already began to glare, but its heat was tempered by a strong wind, which whistled through the trees. A host of fant­astic clouds filled the sky. They looked like an­im­als, and were al­ways chan­ging shape. The ground, as well as the leaves and branches of the forest trees, still held traces of heavy dew or rain dur­ing the night. A poignantly sweet smell of nature entered his nos­trils. His pain was qui­es­cent, and his spir­its were high.

Be­fore he bathed, he viewed the moun­tains of the If­dawn Marest. In the morn­ing sun­light they stood out pictori­ally. He guessed that they were from five to six thou­sand feet high. The lofty, ir­reg­u­lar, cas­tel­lated line seemed like the walls of a ma­gic city. The cliffs front­ing him were com­posed of gaudy rocks—ver­mil­ion, em­er­ald, yel­low, ulfire, and black. As he gazed at them, his heart began to beat like a slow, heavy drum, and he thrilled all over—in­des­crib­able hopes, as­pir­a­tions, and emo­tions came over him. It was more than the con­quest of a new world which he felt—it was some­thing dif­fer­ent. …

He bathed and drank, and as he was re­cloth­ing him­self, Oceaxe strolled in­dol­ently up.

He could now per­ceive the col­our of her skin—it was a vivid, yet del­ic­ate mix­ture of car­mine, white, and jale. The ef­fect was start­lingly un­earthly. With these new col­ours she looked like a genu­ine rep­res­ent­at­ive of a strange planet. Her frame also had some­thing curi­ous about it. The curves were wo­manly, the bones were char­ac­ter­ist­ic­ally fe­male—yet all seemed some­how to ex­press a dar­ing, mas­cu­line un­der­ly­ing will. The com­mand­ing eye on her fore­head set the same puzzle in plainer lan­guage. Its bold, dom­in­eer­ing egot­ism was shot with un­der­gleams of sex and soft­ness.

She came to the river’s edge and re­viewed him from top to toe. “Now you are built more like a man,” she said, in her lovely, linger­ing voice.

“You see, the ex­per­i­ment was suc­cess­ful,” he answered, smil­ing gaily.

Oceaxe con­tin­ued look­ing him over. “Did some wo­man give you that ri­dicu­lous robe?”

“A wo­man did give it to me”—drop­ping his smile—“but I saw noth­ing ri­dicu­lous in the gift at the time, and I don’t now.”

“I think I’d look bet­ter in it.”

As she drawled the words, she began strip­ping off the skin, which suited her form so well, and mo­tioned to him to ex­change gar­ments. He obeyed, rather shame­facedly, for he real­ised that the pro­posed ex­change was in fact more ap­pro­pri­ate to his sex. He found the skin a freer dress. Oceaxe in her drapery ap­peared more dan­ger­ously fem­in­ine to him.

“I don’t want you to re­ceive gifts at all from other wo­men,” she re­marked slowly.

“Why not? What can I be to you?”

“I have been think­ing about you dur­ing the night.” Her voice was re­tarded, scorn­ful, vi­ola-like. She sat down on the trunk of a fallen tree, and looked away.

“In what way?”

She re­turned no an­swer to his ques­tion, but began to pull off pieces of the bark.

“Last night you were so con­temp­tu­ous.”

“Last night is not today. Do you al­ways walk through the world with your head over your shoulder?”

It was now Maskull’s turn to be si­lent.

“Still, if you have male in­stincts, as I sup­pose you have, you can’t go on res­ist­ing me forever.”

“But this is pre­pos­ter­ous,” said Maskull, open­ing his eyes wide. “Gran­ted that you are a beau­ti­ful wo­man—we can’t be quite so primeval.”

Oceaxe sighed, and rose to her feet. “It doesn’t mat­ter. I can wait.”

“From that I gather that you in­tend to make the jour­ney in my so­ci­ety. I have no ob­jec­tion—in fact I shall be glad—but only on con­di­tion that you drop this lan­guage.”

“Yet you do think me beau­ti­ful?”

“Why shouldn’t I think so, if it is the fact? I fail to see what that has to do with my feel­ings. Bring it to an end, Oceaxe. You will find plenty of men to ad­mire—and love you.”

At that she blazed up. “Does love pick and choose, you fool? Do you ima­gine I am so hard put to it that I have to hunt for lov­ers? Is not Crim­typhon wait­ing for me at this very mo­ment?”

“Very well. I am sorry to have hurt your feel­ings. Now carry the tempta­tion no farther—for it is a tempta­tion, where a lovely wo­man is con­cerned. I am not my own mas­ter.”

“I’m not pro­pos­ing any­thing so very hate­ful, am I? Why do you hu­mi­li­ate me so?”

Maskull put his hands be­hind his back. “I re­peat, I am not my own mas­ter.”

“Then who is your mas­ter?”

“Yes­ter­day I saw Sur­tur, and from today I am serving him.”

“Did you speak with him?” she asked curi­ously.

“I did.”

“Tell me what he said.”

“No, I can’t—I won’t. But whatever he said, his beauty was more tor­ment­ing than yours, Oceaxe, and that’s why I can look at you in cold blood.”

“Did Sur­tur for­bid you to be a man?”

Maskull frowned. “Is love such a manly sport, then? I should have thought it ef­fem­in­ate.”

“It doesn’t mat­ter. You won’t al­ways be so boy­ish. But don’t try my pa­tience too far.”

“Let us talk about some­thing else—and, above all, let us get on our road.”

She sud­denly broke into a laugh, so rich, sweet, and en­chant­ing, that he grew half in­flamed, and half wished to catch her body in his arms. “Oh, Maskull, Maskull—what a fool you are!”

“In what way am I a fool?” he de­man­ded, scowl­ing not at her words, but at his own weak­ness.

“Isn’t the whole world the handi­work of in­nu­mer­able pairs of lov­ers? And yet you think your­self above all that. You try to fly away from nature, but where will you find a hole to hide your­self in?”

“Besides beauty, I now credit you with a second qual­ity: per­sist­ence.”

“Read me well, and then it is nat­ural law that you’ll think twice and three times be­fore throw­ing me away. … And now, be­fore we go, we had bet­ter eat.”

“Eat?” said Maskull thought­fully.

“Don’t you eat? Is food in the same cat­egory as love?”

“What food is it?”

“Fish from the river.”

Maskull re­col­lec­ted his prom­ise to Joi­wind. At the same time, he felt hungry.

“Is there noth­ing milder?”

She pulled her mouth scorn­fully. “You came through Pool­ing­dred, didn’t you? All the people there are the same. They think life is to be looked at, and not lived. Now that you are vis­it­ing If­dawn, you will have to change your no­tions.”

“Go catch your fish,” he re­turned, pulling down his brows.

The broad, clear wa­ters flowed past them with swell­ing un­du­la­tions, from the dir­ec­tion of the moun­tains. Oceaxe knelt down on the bank, and peered into the depths. Presently her look be­came tense and con­cen­trated; she dipped her hand in and pulled out some sort of little mon­ster. It was more like a rep­tile than a fish, with its scaly plates and teeth. She threw it on the ground, and it star­ted crawl­ing about. Sud­denly she dar­ted all her will into her sorb. The creature leaped into the air, and fell down dead.

She picked up a sharp-edged slate, and with it re­moved the scales and en­trails. Dur­ing this op­er­a­tion, her hands and gar­ment be­came stained with the light scar­let blood.

“Find the drude, Maskull,” she said, with a lazy smile. “You had it last night.”

He searched for it. It was hard to loc­ate, for its rays had grown dull and feeble in the sun­light, but at last he found it. Oceaxe placed it in the in­terior of the mon­ster, and left the body ly­ing on the ground.

“While it’s cook­ing, I’ll wash some of this blood away, which fright­ens you so much. Have you never seen blood be­fore?”

Maskull gazed at her in per­plex­ity. The old para­dox came back—the con­trast­ing sexual char­ac­ter­ist­ics in her per­son. Her bold, mas­ter­ful, mas­cu­line egot­ism of man­ner seemed quite in­con­gru­ous with the fas­cin­at­ing and dis­turb­ing fem­in­in­ity of her voice. A start­ling idea flashed into his mind.

“In your coun­try I’m told there is an act of will called ‘ab­sorb­ing.’ What is that?”

She held her red, drip­ping hands away from her draper­ies, and uttered a de­li­cious, clash­ing laugh. “You think I am half a man?”

“An­swer my ques­tion.”

“I’m a wo­man through and through, Maskull—to the mar­rowbone. But that’s not to say I have never ab­sorbed males.”

“And that means …”

“New strings for my harp, Maskull. A wider range of pas­sions, a stormier heart …”

“For you, yes—But for them? …”

“I don’t know. The vic­tims don’t de­scribe their ex­per­i­ences. Prob­ably un­hap­pi­ness of some sort—if they still know any­thing.”

“This is a fear­ful busi­ness!” he ex­claimed, re­gard­ing her gloomily. “One would think If­dawn a land of dev­ils.”

Oceaxe gave a beau­ti­ful sneer as she took a step to­ward the river. “Bet­ter men than you—bet­ter in every sense of the word—are walk­ing about with for­eign wills in­side them. You may be as moral as you like, Maskull, but the fact re­mains, an­im­als were made to be eaten, and simple natures were made to be ab­sorbed.”

“And hu­man rights count for noth­ing!”

She had bent over the river’s edge, to wash her arms and hands, but glanced up over her shoulder to an­swer his re­mark. “They do count. But we only re­gard a man as hu­man for just as long as he’s able to hold his own with oth­ers.”

The flesh was soon cooked, and they break­fas­ted in si­lence. Maskull cast heavy, doubt­ful glances from time to time to­ward his com­pan­ion. Whether it was due to the strange qual­ity of the food, or to his long ab­sten­tion, he did not know, but the meal tasted naus­eous, and even can­ni­bal­istic. He ate little, and the mo­ment he got up he felt de­filed.

“Let me bury this drude, where I can find it some other time,” said Oceaxe. “On the next oc­ca­sion, though, I shall have no Maskull with me, to shock. … Now we have to take to the river.”

They stepped off the land onto the wa­ter. It flowed against them with a slug­gish cur­rent, but the op­pos­i­tion, in­stead of hinder­ing them, had the con­trary ef­fect—it caused them to ex­ert them­selves, and they moved faster. They climbed the river in this way for sev­eral miles. The ex­er­cise gradu­ally im­proved the cir­cu­la­tion of Maskull’s blood, and he began to look at things in a far more way. The hot sun­shine, the di­min­ished wind, the cheer­ful mar­vel­lous cloud scenery, the quiet, crys­tal forests—all was sooth­ing and de­light­ful. They ap­proached nearer and nearer to the gaily painted heights of If­dawn.

There was some­thing en­ig­matic to him in those bright walls. He was at­trac­ted by them, yet felt a sort of awe. They looked real, but at the same time very su­per­nat­ural. If one could see the por­trait of a ghost, painted with a hard, firm out­line, in sub­stan­tial col­ours, the feel­ings pro­duced by such a sight would be ex­actly sim­ilar to Maskull’s im­pres­sions as he stud­ied the If­dawn pre­cip­ices.

He broke the long si­lence. “Those moun­tains have most ex­traordin­ary shapes. All the lines are straight and per­pen­dic­u­lar—no slopes or curves.”

She walked back­ward on the wa­ter, in or­der to face him. “That’s typ­ical of If­dawn. Nature is all ham­mer blows with us. Noth­ing soft and gradual.”

“I hear you, but I don’t un­der­stand you.”

“All over the Marest you’ll find patches of ground plunging down or rush­ing up. Trees grow fast. Wo­men and men don’t think twice be­fore act­ing. One may call If­dawn a place of quick de­cisions.”

Maskull was im­pressed. “A fresh, wild, prim­it­ive land.”

“How is it where you come from?” asked Oceaxe.

“Oh, mine is a de­crepit world, where nature takes a hun­dred years to move a foot of solid land. Men and an­im­als go about in flocks. Ori­gin­al­ity is a lost habit.”

“Are there wo­men there?”

“As with you, and not very dif­fer­ently formed.”

“Do they love?”

He laughed. “So much so that it has changed the dress, speech, and thoughts of the whole sex.”

“Prob­ably they are more beau­ti­ful than I?”

“No, I think not,” said Maskull.

There was an­other rather long si­lence, as they trav­elled un­stead­ily on­ward.

“What is your busi­ness in If­dawn?” de­man­ded Oceaxe sud­denly.

He hes­it­ated over his an­swer. “Can you grasp that it’s pos­sible to have an aim right in front of one, so big that one can’t see it as a whole?”

She stole a long, in­quis­it­ive look at him, “What sort of aim?”

“A moral aim.”

“Are you pro­pos­ing to set the world right?”

“I pro­pose noth­ing—I am wait­ing.”

“Don’t wait too long, for time doesn’t wait—es­pe­cially in If­dawn.”

“So­mething will hap­pen,” said Maskull.

Oceaxe threw a subtle smile. “So you have no spe­cial des­tin­a­tion in the Marest?”

“No, and if you’ll per­mit me, I will come home with you.”

“Sin­gu­lar man!” she said, with a short, thrill­ing laugh. “That’s what I have been of­fer­ing all the time. Of course you will come home with me. As for Crim­typhon …”

“You men­tioned that name be­fore. Who is he?”

“Oh! My lover, or, as you would say, my hus­band.”

“This doesn’t im­prove mat­ters,” said Maskull.

“It leaves them ex­actly where they were. We merely have to re­move him.”

“We are cer­tainly mis­un­der­stand­ing each other,” said Maskull, quite startled. “Do you by any chance ima­gine that I am mak­ing a com­pact with you?”

“You will do noth­ing against your will. But you have prom­ised to come home with me.”

“Tell me, how do you re­move hus­bands in If­dawn?”

“Either you or I must kill him.”

He eyed her for a full minute. “Now we are passing from folly to in­san­ity.”

“Not at all,” replied Oceaxe. “It is the too-sad truth. And when you have seen Crim­typhon, you will real­ise it.”

“I’m aware I am on a strange planet,” said Maskull slowly, “where all sorts of un­heard of things may hap­pen, and where the very laws of mor­al­ity may be dif­fer­ent. Still as far as I am con­cerned, murder is murder, and I’ll have no more to do with a wo­man who wants to make use of me, to get rid of her hus­band.”

“You think me wicked?” de­man­ded Oceaxe stead­ily.

“Or mad.”

“Then you had bet­ter leave me, Maskull—only—”

“Only what?”

“You wish to be con­sist­ent, don’t you? Leave all other mad and wicked people as well. Then you’ll find it easier to re­form the rest.”

Maskull frowned, but said noth­ing.

“Well?” de­man­ded Oceaxe, with a half smile.

“I’ll come with you, and I’ll see Crim­typhon—if only to warn him.”

Oceaxe broke into a cas­cade of rich, fem­in­ine laughter, but whether at the im­age con­jured up by Maskull’s last words, or from some other cause, he did not know. The con­ver­sa­tion dropped.

At a dis­tance of a couple of miles from the now tower­ing cliffs, the river made a sharp, right-angled turn to the west, and was no longer of use to them on their jour­ney. Maskull stared up doubt­fully.

“It’s a stiff climb for a hot morn­ing.”

“Let’s rest here a little,” said she, in­dic­at­ing a smooth flat is­land of black rock, stand­ing up just out of the wa­ter in the middle of the river.

They ac­cord­ingly went to it, and Maskull sat down. Oceaxe, how­ever, stand­ing grace­ful and erect, turned her face to­ward the cliffs op­pos­ite, and uttered a pier­cing and pe­cu­liar call.

“What is that for?” She did not an­swer. After wait­ing a minute, she re­peated the call. Maskull now saw a large bird de­tach it­self from the top of one of the pre­cip­ices, and sail slowly down to­ward them. It was fol­lowed by two oth­ers. The flight of these birds was ex­ceed­ingly slow and clumsy.

“What are they?” he asked.

She still re­turned no an­swer, but smiled rather pe­cu­li­arly and sat down be­side him. Be­fore many minutes he was able to dis­tin­guish the shapes and col­ours of the fly­ing mon­sters. They were not birds, but creatures with long, snake­like bod­ies, and ten rep­tilian legs apiece, ter­min­at­ing in fins which ac­ted as wings. The bod­ies were of bright blue, the legs and fins were yel­low. They were fly­ing, without haste, but in a some­what omin­ous fash­ion, straight to­ward them. He could make out a long, thin spike pro­ject­ing from each of the heads.

“They are shrowks,” ex­plained Oceaxe at last. “If you want to know their in­ten­tion, I’ll tell you. To make a meal of us. First of all their spikes will pierce us, and then their mouths, which are really suck­ers, will drain us dry of blood—pretty thor­oughly too; there are no half meas­ures with shrowks. They are tooth­less beasts, so don’t eat flesh.”

“As you show such ad­mir­able sang­froid,” said Maskull dryly, “I take it there’s no par­tic­u­lar danger.”

Never­the­less he in­stinct­ively tried to get on to his feet and failed. A new form of para­lysis was chain­ing him to the ground.

“Are you try­ing to get up?” asked Oceaxe smoothly.

“Well, yes, but those cursed rep­tiles seem to be nail­ing me down to the rock with their wills. May I ask if you had any spe­cial ob­ject in view in wak­ing them up?”

“I as­sure you the danger is quite real, Maskull. In­stead of talk­ing and ask­ing ques­tions, you had much bet­ter see what you can do with your will.”

“I seem to have no will, un­for­tu­nately.”

Oceaxe was seized with a par­oxysm of laughter, but it was still rich and beau­ti­ful. “It’s ob­vi­ous you aren’t a very heroic pro­tector, Maskull. It seems I must play the man, and you the wo­man. I ex­pec­ted bet­ter things of your big body. Why, my hus­band would send those creatures dan­cing all around the sky, by way of a joke, be­fore dis­pos­ing of them. Now watch me. Two of the three I’ll kill; the third we will ride home on. Which one shall we keep?”

The shrowks con­tin­ued their slow, wob­bling flight to­ward them. Their bod­ies were of huge size. They pro­duced in Maskull the same sen­sa­tion of loath­ing as in­sects did. He in­stinct­ively un­der­stood that as they hunted with their wills, there was no ne­ces­sity for them to pos­sess a swift mo­tion.

“Choose which you please,” he said shortly. “They are equally ob­jec­tion­able to me.”

“Then I’ll choose the leader, as it is pre­sum­ably the most en­er­getic an­imal. Watch now.”

She stood up­right, and her sorb sud­denly blazed with fire. Maskull felt some­thing snap in­side his brain. His limbs were free once more. The two mon­sters in the rear staggered and dar­ted head fore­most to­ward the earth, one after the other. He watched them crash on the ground, and then lie mo­tion­less. The leader still came to­ward them, but he fan­cied that its flight was altered in char­ac­ter; it was no longer men­acing, but tame and un­will­ing.

Oceaxe guided it with her will to the main­land shore op­pos­ite their is­land rock. Its vast bulk lay there ex­ten­ded, await­ing her pleas­ure. They im­me­di­ately crossed the wa­ter.

Maskull viewed the shrowk at close quar­ters. It was about thirty feet long. Its bright-col­oured skin was shin­ing, slip­pery, and leath­ery; a mane of black hair covered its long neck. Its face was awe­some and un­nat­ural, with its car­ni­vor­ous eyes, fright­ful stiletto, and blood­suck­ing cav­ity. There were true fins on its back and tail.

“Have you a good seat?” asked Oceaxe, pat­ting the creature’s flank. “As I have to steer, let me jump on first.”

She pulled up her gown, then climbed up and sat astride the an­imal’s back, just be­hind the mane, which she clutched. Between her and the fin there was just room for Maskull. He grasped the two flanks with his outer hands; his third, new arm pressed against Oceaxe’s back, and for ad­di­tional se­cur­ity he was com­pelled to en­circle her waist with it.

Dir­ectly he did so, he real­ised that he had been tricked, and that this ride had been planned for one pur­pose only—to in­flame his de­sires.

The third arm pos­sessed a func­tion of its own, of which hitherto he had been ig­nor­ant. It was a de­veloped magn. But the stream of love which was com­mu­nic­ated to it was no longer pure and noble—it was boil­ing, pas­sion­ate, and tor­tur­ing. He grit­ted his teeth, and kept quiet, but Oceaxe had not plot­ted the ad­ven­ture to re­main un­con­scious of his feel­ings. She looked around, with a golden, tri­umphant smile. “The ride will last some time, so hold on well!” Her voice was soft like a flute, but rather ma­li­cious.

Maskull grinned, and said noth­ing. He dared not re­move his arm.

The shrowk straddled on to its legs. It jerked it­self for­ward, and rose slowly and un­couthly in the air. They began to paddle up­ward to­ward the painted cliffs. The mo­tion was sway­ing, rock­ing, and sick­en­ing; the con­tact of the brute’s slimy skin was dis­gust­ing. All this, how­ever, was merely back­ground to Maskull, as he sat there with closed eyes, hold­ing on to Oceaxe. In the front and centre of his con­scious­ness was the know­ledge that he was grip­ping a fair wo­man, and that her flesh was re­spond­ing to his touch like a lovely harp.

They climbed up and up. He opened his eyes, and ven­tured to look around him. By this time they were already level with the top of the outer ram­part of pre­cip­ices. There now came in sight a wild ar­chipelago of is­lands, with jagged out­lines, emer­ging from a sea of air. The is­lands were moun­tain sum­mits; or, more ac­cur­ately speak­ing, the coun­try was a high table­land, fis­sured every­where by nar­row and ap­par­ently bot­tom­less cracks. These cracks were in some cases like canals, in oth­ers like lakes, in oth­ers merely holes in the ground, closed in all round. The per­pen­dic­u­lar sides of the is­lands—that is, the up­per, vis­ible parts of the in­nu­mer­able cliff faces—were of bare rock, gaud­ily col­oured; but the level sur­faces were a tangle of wild plant life. The taller trees alone were dis­tin­guish­able from the shrowk’s back. They were of dif­fer­ent shapes, and did not look an­cient; they were slender and sway­ing but did not ap­pear very grace­ful; they looked tough, wiry, and sav­age.

As Maskull con­tin­ued to ex­plore the land­scape, he for­got Oceaxe and his pas­sion. Other strange feel­ings came to the front. The morn­ing was gay and bright. The sun scorched down, quickly-chan­ging clouds sailed across the sky, the earth was vivid, wild, and lonely. Yet he ex­per­i­enced no aes­thetic sen­sa­tions—he felt noth­ing but an in­tense long­ing for ac­tion and pos­ses­sion. When he looked at any­thing, he im­me­di­ately wanted to deal with it. The at­mo­sphere of the land seemed not free, but sticky; at­trac­tion and re­pul­sion were its con­stitu­ents. Apart from this wish to play a per­sonal part in what was go­ing on around and be­neath him, the scenery had no sig­ni­fic­ance for him.

So pre­oc­cu­pied was he, that his arm partly re­leased its clasp. Oceaxe turned around to gaze at him. Whether or not she was sat­is­fied with what she saw, she uttered a low laugh, like a pe­cu­liar chord.

“Cold again so quickly, Maskull?”

“What do you want?” he asked ab­sently, still look­ing over the side. “It’s ex­traordin­ary how drawn I feel to all this.”

“You wish to take a hand?”

“I wish to get down.”

“Oh, we have a good way to go yet. … So you really feel dif­fer­ent?”

“Dif­fer­ent from what? What are you talk­ing about?” said Maskull, still lost in ab­strac­tion.

Oceaxe laughed again. “It would be strange if we couldn’t make a man of you, for the ma­ter­ial is ex­cel­lent.”

After that, she turned her back once more.

The air is­lands differed from wa­ter is­lands in an­other way. They were not on a plane sur­face, but sloped up­ward, like a suc­ces­sion of broken ter­races, as the jour­ney pro­gressed. The shrowk had hitherto been fly­ing well above the ground; but now, when a new line of tower­ing cliffs con­fron­ted them, Oceaxe did not urge the beast up­ward, but caused it to enter a nar­row canyon, which in­ter­sec­ted the moun­tains like a chan­nel. They were in­stantly plunged into deep shade. The canal was not above thirty feet wide; the walls stretched up­ward on both sides for many hun­dred feet. It was as cool as an ice cham­ber. When Maskull at­temp­ted to plumb the chasm with his eyes, he saw noth­ing but black ob­scur­ity.

“What is at the bot­tom?” he asked.

“Death for you, if you go to look for it.”

“We know that. I mean, is there any kind of life down there?”

“Not that I have ever heard of,” said Oceaxe, “but of course all things are pos­sible.”

“I think very likely there is life,” he re­turned thought­fully.

Her iron­ical laugh soun­ded out of the gloom. “Shall we go down and see?”

“You find that amus­ing?”

“No, not that. What I do find amus­ing is the big stranger with the beard, who is so keenly in­ter­ested in everything ex­cept him­self.”

Maskull then laughed too. “I hap­pen to be the only thing in Tormance which is not a nov­elty for me.”

“Yes, but I am a nov­elty for you.”

The chan­nel went zig­zag­ging its way through the belly of the moun­tain, and all the time they were gradu­ally rising.

“At least I have heard noth­ing like your voice be­fore,” said Maskull, who, since he had no longer any­thing to look at, was at last ready for con­ver­sa­tion.

“What’s the mat­ter with my voice?”

“It’s all that I can dis­tin­guish of you now; that’s why I men­tioned it.”

“Isn’t it clear—don’t I speak dis­tinctly?”

“Oh, it’s clear enough, but—it’s in­ap­pro­pri­ate.”

“Inap­pro­pri­ate?”

“I won’t ex­plain fur­ther,” said Maskull, “but whether you are speak­ing or laugh­ing, your voice is by far the love­li­est and strangest in­stru­ment I have ever listened to. And yet I re­peat, it is in­ap­pro­pri­ate.”

“You mean that my nature doesn’t cor­res­pond?”

He was just con­sid­er­ing his reply, when their talk was ab­ruptly broken off by a huge and ter­ri­fy­ing, but not very loud sound rising up from the gulf dir­ectly un­der­neath them. It was a low, grind­ing, roar­ing thun­der.

“The ground is rising un­der us!” cried Oceaxe.

“Shall we es­cape?”

She made no an­swer, but urged the shrowk’s flight up­ward, at such a steep gradi­ent that they re­tained their seats with dif­fi­culty. The floor of the canyon, up­heaved by some mighty sub­ter­ranean force, could be heard, and al­most felt, com­ing up after them, like a gi­gantic land­slip in the wrong dir­ec­tion. The cliffs cracked, and frag­ments began to fall. A hun­dred aw­ful noises filled the air, grow­ing louder and louder each second—split­ting, hiss­ing, crack­ing, grind­ing, boom­ing, ex­plod­ing, roar­ing. When they had still fifty feet or so to go, to reach the top, a sort of dark, in­def­in­ite sea of broken rocks and soil ap­peared un­der their feet, as­cend­ing rap­idly, with ir­res­ist­ible might, ac­com­pan­ied by the most hor­rible noises. The canal was filled up for two hun­dred yards, be­fore and be­hind them. Mil­lions of tons of solid mat­ter seemed to be raised. The shrowk in its as­cent was caught by the up­lif­ted debris. Beast and riders ex­per­i­enced in that mo­ment all the hor­rors of an earth­quake—they were rolled vi­ol­ently over, and thrown among the rocks and dirt. All was thun­der, in­stabil­ity, mo­tion, con­fu­sion.

Be­fore they had time to real­ise their po­s­i­tion, they were in the sun­light. The up­heaval still con­tin­ued. In an­other minute or two the val­ley floor had formed a new moun­tain, a hun­dred feet or more higher than the old. Then its move­ment ceased sud­denly. Every noise stopped, as if by ma­gic; not a rock moved. Oceaxe and Maskull picked them­selves up and ex­amined them­selves for cuts and bruises. The shrowk lay on its side, pant­ing vi­ol­ently, and sweat­ing with fright.

“That was a nasty af­fair,” said Maskull, flick­ing the dirt off his per­son.

Oceaxe staunched a cut on her chin with a corner of her robe.

“It might have been far worse. … I mean, it’s bad enough to come up, but it’s death to go down, and that hap­pens just as of­ten.”

“Whatever in­duces you to live in such a coun­try?”

“I don’t know, Maskull. Habit, I sup­pose. I have of­ten thought of mov­ing out of it.”

“A good deal must be for­given you for hav­ing to spend your life in a place like this, where one is ob­vi­ously never safe from one minute to an­other.”

“You will learn by de­grees,” she answered, smil­ing.

She looked hard at the mon­ster, and it got heav­ily to its feet.

“Get on again, Maskull!” she dir­ec­ted, climb­ing back to her perch. “We haven’t too much time to waste.”

He obeyed. They re­sumed their in­ter­rup­ted flight, this time over the moun­tains, and in full sun­light. Maskull settled down again to his thoughts. The pe­cu­liar at­mo­sphere of the coun­try con­tin­ued to soak into his brain. His will be­came so rest­less and un­easy that merely to sit there in in­activ­ity was a tor­ture. He could scarcely en­dure not to be do­ing some­thing.

“How se­cret­ive you are, Maskull!” said Oceaxe quietly, without turn­ing her head.

“What secrets—what do you mean?”

“Oh, I know per­fectly well what’s passing in­side you. Now I think it wouldn’t be amiss to ask you—is friend­ship still enough?”

“Oh, don’t ask me any­thing,” growled Maskull. “I’ve far too many prob­lems in my head already. I only wish I could an­swer some of them.”

He stared stonily at the land­scape. The beast was winging its way to­ward a dis­tant moun­tain, of sin­gu­lar shape. It was an enorm­ous nat­ural quad­ri­lat­eral pyr­amid, rising in great ter­races and ter­min­at­ing in a broad, flat top, on which what looked like green snow still lingered.

“What moun­tain is that?” he asked.

“Dis­scourn. The highest point in If­dawn.”

“Are we go­ing there?”

“Why should we go there? But if you were go­ing on farther, it might be worth your while to pay a visit to the top. It com­mands the whole land as far as the Sink­ing Sea and Swaylone’s Is­land—and bey­ond. You can also see Alp­pain from it.”

“That’s a sight I mean to see be­fore I have fin­ished.”

“Do you, Maskull?” She turned around and put her hand on his wrist. “Stay with me, and one day we’ll go to Dis­scourn to­gether.”

He grunted un­in­tel­li­gibly.

There were no signs of hu­man ex­ist­ence in the coun­try un­der their feet. While Maskull was still grimly re­gard­ing it, a large tract of forest not far ahead, bear­ing many trees and rocks, sud­denly sub­sided with an aw­ful roar and crashed down into an in­vis­ible gulf. What was solid land one minute be­came a clean-cut chasm the next. He jumped vi­ol­ently up with the shock. “This is fright­ful.”

Oceaxe re­mained un­moved.

“Why, life here must be ab­so­lutely im­possible,” he went on, when he had some­what re­covered him­self. “A man would need nerves of steel. … Is there no means at all of fore­see­ing a cata­strophe like this?”

“Oh, I sup­pose we wouldn’t be alive if there weren’t,” replied Oceaxe, with com­pos­ure. “We are more or less clever at it—but that doesn’t pre­vent our of­ten get­ting caught.”

“You had bet­ter teach me the signs.”

“We’ll have many things to go over to­gether. And among them, I ex­pect, will be whether we are to stay in the land at all. … But first let us get home.”

“How far is it now?”

“It is right in front of you,” said Oceaxe, point­ing with her fore­finger. “You can see it.”

He fol­lowed the dir­ec­tion of the fin­ger and, after a few ques­tions, made out the spot she was in­dic­at­ing. It was a broad pen­in­sula, about two miles dis­tant. Three of its sides rose sheer out of a lake of air, the bot­tom of which was in­vis­ible; its fourth was a bot­tle­neck, join­ing it to the main­land. It was over­grown with bright ve­get­a­tion, dis­tinct in the bril­liant at­mo­sphere. A single tall tree, shoot­ing up in the middle of the pen­in­sula, dwarfed everything else; it was wide and shady with sea-green leaves.

“I won­der if Crim­typhon is there,” re­marked Oceaxe. “Can I see two fig­ures, or am I mis­taken?”

“I also see some­thing,” said Maskull.

In twenty minutes they were dir­ectly above the pen­in­sula, at a height of about fifty feet. The shrowk slackened speed, and came to earth on the main­land, ex­actly at the gate­way of the isth­mus. They both des­cen­ded—Maskull with aching thighs.

“What shall we do with the mon­ster?” asked Oceaxe. Without wait­ing for a sug­ges­tion, she pat­ted its hideous face with her hand. “Fly away home! I may want you some other time.”

It gave a stu­pid grunt, el­ev­ated it­self on its legs again, and, after half run­ning, half fly­ing for a few yards, rose awk­wardly into the air, and paddled away in the same dir­ec­tion from which they had come. They watched it out of sight, and then Oceaxe star­ted to cross the neck of land, fol­lowed by Maskull.

Branch­spell’s white rays beat down on them with piti­less force. The sky had by de­grees be­come cloud­less, and the wind had dropped en­tirely. The ground was a rich riot of vividly col­oured ferns, shrubs, and grasses. Through these could be seen here and there the golden chalky soil—and oc­ca­sion­ally a glit­ter­ing, white metal­lic boulder. Everything looked ex­traordin­ary and bar­baric. Maskull was at last walk­ing in the weird If­dawn Marest which had cre­ated such strange feel­ings in him when seen from a dis­tance. … And now he felt no won­der or curi­os­ity at all, but only de­sired to meet hu­man be­ings—so in­tense had grown his will. He longed to test his powers on his fel­low creatures, and noth­ing else seemed of the least im­port­ance to him.

On the pen­in­sula all was cool­ness and del­ic­ate shade. It re­sembled a large copse, about two acres in ex­tent. In the heart of the tangle of small trees and un­der­growth was a par­tially cleared space—per­haps the roots of the gi­ant tree grow­ing in the centre had killed off the smal­ler fry all around it. By the side of the tree sparkled a little, bub­bling foun­tain, whose wa­ter was iron-red. The pre­cip­ices on all sides, over­hung with thorns, flowers, and creep­ers, in­ves­ted the en­clos­ure with an air of wild and charm­ing se­clu­sion—a myth­o­lo­gical moun­tain god might have dwelt here.

Maskull’s rest­less eye left everything, to fall on the two men who formed the centre of the pic­ture.

One was re­clin­ing, in the an­cient Gre­cian fash­ion of ban­queters on a tall couch of mosses, sprinkled with flowers; he res­ted on one arm, and was eat­ing a kind of plum, with calm en­joy­ment. A pile of these plums lay on the couch be­side him. The over­spread­ing branches of the tree com­pletely sheltered him from the sun. His small, boy­ish form was clad in a rough skin, leav­ing his limbs na­ked. Maskull could not tell from his face whether he were a young boy or a grown man. The fea­tures were smooth, soft, and child­ish, their ex­pres­sion was ser­aph­ic­ally tran­quil; but his vi­olet up­per eye was sin­is­ter and adult. His skin was of the col­our of yel­low ivory. His long, curl­ing hair matched his sorb—it was vi­olet. The second man was stand­ing erect be­fore the other, a few feet away from him. He was short and mus­cu­lar, his face was broad, bearded, and rather com­mon­place, but there was some­thing ter­rible about his ap­pear­ance. The fea­tures were dis­tor­ted by a deep-seated look of pain, des­pair, and hor­ror.

Oceaxe, without paus­ing, strolled lightly and lazily up to the out­er­most shad­ows of the tree, some dis­tance from the couch.

“We have met with an up­lift,” she re­marked care­lessly, look­ing to­ward the youth.

He eyed her, but said noth­ing.

“How is your plant man get­ting on?” Her tone was ar­ti­fi­cial but ex­tremely beau­ti­ful. While wait­ing for an an­swer, she sat down on the ground, her legs grace­fully thrust un­der her body, and pulled down the skirt of her robe. Maskull re­mained stand­ing just be­hind her, with crossed arms.

There was si­lence for a minute.

“Why don’t you an­swer your mis­tress, Sature?” said the boy on the couch, in a calm, treble voice.

The man ad­dressed did not al­ter his ex­pres­sion, but replied in a strangled tone, “I am get­ting on very well, Oceaxe. There are already buds on my feet. To­mor­row I hope to take root.”

Maskull felt a rising storm in­side him. He was per­fectly aware that al­though these words were uttered by Sature, they were be­ing dic­tated by the boy.

“What he says is quite true,” re­marked the lat­ter. “To­mor­row roots will reach the ground, and in a few days they ought to be well es­tab­lished. Then I shall set to work to con­vert his arms into branches, and his fin­gers into leaves. It will take longer to trans­form his head into a crown, but still I hope—in fact I can al­most prom­ise that within a month you and I, Oceaxe, will be pluck­ing and en­joy­ing fruit from this new and re­mark­able tree.”

“I love these nat­ural ex­per­i­ments,” he con­cluded, put­ting out his hand for an­other plum. “They thrill me.”

“This must be a joke,” said Maskull, tak­ing a step for­ward.

The youth looked at him se­renely. He made no reply, but Maskull felt as if he were be­ing thrust back­ward by an iron hand on his throat.

“The morn­ing’s work is now con­cluded, Sature. Come here again after Blod­sombre. After to­night you will re­main here per­man­ently, I ex­pect, so you had bet­ter set to work to clear a patch of ground for your roots. Never for­get—how­ever fresh and charm­ing these plants ap­pear to you now, in the fu­ture they will be your dead­li­est rivals and en­emies. Now you may go.”

The man limped pain­fully away, across the isth­mus, out of sight. Oceaxe yawned.

Maskull pushed his way for­ward, as if against a wall. “Are you jok­ing, or are you a devil?”

“I am Crim­typhon. I never joke. For that epi­thet of yours, I will de­vise a new pun­ish­ment for you.”

The duel of wills com­menced without ce­re­mony. Oceaxe got up, stretched her beau­ti­ful limbs, smiled, and pre­pared her­self to wit­ness the struggle between her old lover and her new. Crim­typhon smiled too; he reached out his hand for more fruit, but did not eat it. Maskull’s self-con­trol broke down and he dashed at the boy, chok­ing with red fury—his beard wagged and his face was crim­son. When he real­ised with whom he had to deal, Crim­typhon left off smil­ing, slipped off the couch, and threw a ter­rible and ma­lig­nant glare into his sorb. Maskull staggered. He gathered to­gether all the brute force of his will, and by sheer weight con­tin­ued his ad­vance. The boy shrieked and ran be­hind the couch, try­ing to get away. … His op­pos­i­tion sud­denly col­lapsed. Maskull stumbled for­ward, re­covered him­self, and then vaul­ted clear over the high pile of mosses, to get at his ant­ag­on­ist. He fell on top of him with all his bulk. Grasp­ing his throat, he pulled his little head com­pletely around, so that the neck was broken. Crim­typhon im­me­di­ately died.

The corpse lay un­der­neath the tree with its face up­turned. Maskull viewed it at­tent­ively, and as he did so an ex­pres­sion of awe and won­der came into his own coun­ten­ance. In the mo­ment of death Crim­typhon’s face had un­der­gone a start­ling and even shock­ing al­ter­a­tion. Its per­sonal char­ac­ter had wholly van­ished, giv­ing place to a vul­gar, grin­ning mask which ex­pressed noth­ing.

He did not have to search his mind long to re­mem­ber where he had seen the brother of that ex­pres­sion. It was identical with that on the face of the ap­par­i­tion at the seance, after Krag had dealt with it.