Children of the Sun

CHAPTER II Citadel of Mystery

AS the echoes of Curt Newton’s voice died away the four looked at each other in troubled wonder. The rank ferns drooped unstirring in the weird half-light over the broken arches and falling colonnades. Somewhere in the jungle a beast screamed harshly with a sound like laughter.

Otho finally broke the silence. “What could Carlin have found?”

“Something big”, Captain Future said slowly. “So big that he was afraid of anyone else finding it. That’s why he wrote this in the language of the Old Empire that no one but Simon and I could read.”

Simon said practically, “The Belt is what the natives call the strip burned out by the Beam, isn’t it? Well — we can soon find out.”

“Shall we take the ship?”

Newton shook his head. “Too tricky navigating in here. The Belt isn’t far away.”

Grag flexed mighty metal limbs. “What are we waiting for?”

Presently the quartet was moving through the jungle of giant ferns. All about them was silence in the heavy gathering twilight. The bright sword of the Beam was fading, angling away as the opening in the crust was rotated away from the Sun.

Newton knew the direction of the Belt, that seared blackened strip in which the terrible heat of the Sun’s single shaft permitted nothing to live. He steered their course to head around the end of the Belt.

Again a beast-scream came from far away. There seemed no other sound in the fern jungle. But presently the Brain spoke softly. “We are being followed”, he said.

Curt Newton nodded. Simon’s micro— phonic ears, far more acute than any human auditory system, had picked up faint rustlings of movement among the ferns. Now that he was listening for it Newton could hear the stealthy padding of many naked feet, moving with infinite caution.

“I don’t understand it”, he murmured. “These Vulcanian natives were friendly before. This furtiveness —”

“Shall we stop and have it out with them?” Otho demanded.

“No, let’s go on. We have to find that citadel before dark. But keep alert — a thrown spear can be jus t as final as a blaster.”

“Not to me it can’t”, rumbled Grag.

“Curt didn’t mean you — he meant us humans”, gibed Otho.

“Listen, plastic-puss”, Grag began wrathfully. “I’m twice as human as you and —”

“That’s enough”, Newton rapped. “You can carry on that old argument some other time.”

They went on and the unseen escort went with them. Soon they encountered the end of the Belt.

Black calcined soil, smoking rocks, a wave of dull heat from the ground itself attested to the awful heat of the Sun whose single great ray once each day traveled across this strip of Vulcan’s interior.

They made Captain Future feel again the terrible power of the gigantic solar orb so close by that could reach in through a single loophole and wreak this flaming devastation where it touched.

They crossed the end of that blackened strip, Curt and Otho hastening over the hot rocks, Grag plodding stolidly, Simon gliding ahead.

Before them the fern jungle rose into olive-colored hills, growing dark as the dusk deepened. Almost at once Newton noticed something on the slope of the nearest hill. It was a raw lumpy scar where a landslide had recently occurred.

“Simon, look at that landslide! Notice anything?”

The Brain hovered, his lens-eyes surveying the dusky hillside. “Yes, the outline. Definitely unnatural.”

Otho and Grag were staring now, too. “I don’t see anything unnatural about it”, boomed the metal giant.

“It covers a building that stood on that hillside”, Newton informed him. “Look at the symmetry of it, even masked by soil — the central cupola, the two wings.”

Otho’s bright eyes flashed. “The citadel Carlin mentioned?”

“Perhaps. Let’s have a look.”

They moved on. In a brief time they were climbing the slope to that great lumpy scar of new soil.

Newton looked back down at the jungle. No one had followed them out of it onto the bare slope. The giant ferns stretched far away and he could catch the tawny gleam of Yellow Lake in the distant dusk.

Through the twilight jungle, the Belt stretched like a stygian river of deepest black. He could see no building or ruin of any kind on his side of the ebon strip.

“This must be the citadel Carlin meant”, he said. “Apparently a landslide has covered it since he was here. We’ll have to dig a way in.”

They found flat stones in the loose soil of the slide. Using them as hand-spades Newton and the android and robot began pushing aside the ocher soil above the cupola of the buried building.

Something flashed and hissed in the dusk. Curt Newton whirled. A long quivering spear stuck in the slope some distance below them.

“I thought the Vulcanians were still with us!” Otho muttered.

Newton said quietly, “Just stand still. Let me talk to them.”

He faced down the slope toward the fern jungle. He called out in the language he had learned on his first visit to this lost world — a debased form of the once— beautiful language of the Old Empire, sunk now into barbarism like the men who spoke it.

“Show us your faces, my brothers! We come as friends and our hands are empty of death!”

There was utter silence. In the distance the fading shaft of sunlight lay like a tarnished sword across the dusk. The dense jungle below was untouched by wind or motion of any kind. Even the beasts were stilled by that strong human voice, speaking out across the desolation.

Newton did not speak again. He waited. He seemed to have endless patience, and complete assurance. After a time, half furtively and yet with a curious and touching pride, a man came out of the jungle and looked up at them.

He was clad in garments of white leather and his skin was white and the falling mane of his hair was white and his eyes were pale as mist. His only weapons were a knife and a spear.

In his carriage, in the fine modeling of his head, Newton could still see lingering traces of the heritage that had given the men of the Old Empire supremacy over two galaxies. And it seemed sad that this man should look up at him with the shy feral untrusting eyes of a wild thing.

Simon Wright said quietly, “Do you not know him, Curtis?”

“Of course.” In the Vulcanian dialect Newton said, “Is the memory of Kah so short that he does not know his brothers?”

They had had dealings with Kah before. He was lord over a third of the tribes of Vulcan and had proved a man of his word, aiding the Futuremen in many ways. But now the suspicious catlike eyes studied them, utterly without warmth or welcome.

“Kah remembers”, said the man softly. “The name of the great one is Grag — and you are the flame-haired one who leads.”

Behind him, by twos and threes, his men gathered silently at the foot of the slope. They were all the same tall snow-haired stock, wearing the white leather, bearing the sharp spears. They watched, and Newton saw that their eyes dwelt in wonder upon the towering Grag. He remembered that they had been much impressed by Grag before.

Kah said abruptly, “We have been friends and brothers, and therefore I have stayed my hand. This place is sacred and forbidden. Leave it while you still live.”

Newton answered steadily, “We cannot leave. We seek a friend who came here and was lost.”

The Vulcanian chieftain voiced a long, harsh Ah-h! and every man with him lifted his spear and shook it.

“He entered the forbidden place”, said Kah, “and he is gone.”

“Gone? You mean he’s dead?”

Kah’s hands shaped an age-old ritual gesture. Newton saw that they trembled. The Vulcanian turned and pointed to the fading Beam, which was to him a symbol of godhead.

“He has gone there”, Kah whispered, “along the path of light. He has followed the Bright Ones, who do not return.”

“I do not understand you, Kah!” said Newton sharply. “Is the body of my friend in this buried place? What happened? Speak more clearly.”

“No, I have talked too much of forbidden things.” Kah raised up his spear.

“Go now! Go — for I have no wish to slay!”

“You cannot slay, Kah, for your spears will not fly this far. And the great one called Grag will be as a wall against your coming.”

Rapidly, under his breath, Newton spoke to the robot. “Keep them back, Grag! They can’t harm you, and it’ll leave us free to dig.”

Clanking ponderously down the slope, a terrifying gigantic form in the dusk, Grag advanced on the Vulcanians. And Newton cried aloud to Kah, “We will not leave this place until we have found our friend!”

Kah flung his spear. It fell short by no more than two paces but Newton did not stir. The Vulcanian drew back slowly before the oncoming Grag, who spread out his mighty arms and roared and made the ground tremble under his feet.

“The big ham!” whispered Otho. “He’s enjoying it.”

There was a wavering among the ranks of the natives. A ragged flight of spears pelted up the slope and some of the obsidian points splintered with a sharp ringing sound on Grag’s metallic body. Grag laughed a booming laugh. He picked up a slab of stone and broke it in his hands and flung the pieces at them.

“That does it”, said Otho disgustedly. “I’m going to be sick.”

Kah screamed suddenly, “The curse will fall on you as it fell on the other who entered there! You too will go out along the Beam, lost forever from the sight of men!”

He turned then and vanished into the jungle.

“I have been studying this landslide”, said Simon Wright irrelevantly. “I believe that it was artificially caused by the natives to seal this place after Carlin entered it.”

“Very likely”, Captain Future answered. He stood for a moment in deep though. “I wonder what Kah meant by the ‘Bright Ones who do not return’?”

“Probably an euphemism for the dead”, said Otho pessimistically. “We’ll know better when we’ve found a way inside.”

They turned to and began to dig again. The citadel stood on a sort of promontory, partly blocked now by the slide, so that the natives could only come at them up the slope, and Grag effectively barred the way. Now and again a spear whistled harmlessly into the dirt but there was no attack.

The last glowing thread of the Beam narrowed into nothingness and was gone. Utter darkness descended on the hidden world of Vulcan. Newton and Otho worked on by the light of belt-lamps.

They struck the solid stone of the building, and the work went faster. After a few minutes Otho cried, “There’s an opening here!”

They discarded their improvised spades. The loose dirt flew under their hands and presently they had uncovered the upper arches of a triple window. From there the way was easy.

Curt Newton was the first one inside. A great quantity of dirt had poured in through the open arches but most of this upper level was clear. Otho slid agilely after him, and then the Brain.

The lamps showed them a circular gallery, high up in the central cupola. Below was a round and empty shaft. Newton leaned out over the low carved railing. Far down in the pit he could see a soft and curdled luminescence, like spectral sunlight veiled in mist. The source was hidden from him by the overhang of other galleries lower down.

The silence of age-long death was in the place and the mingled smell of centuries and of the raw new soil. Newton led the way around the gallery, his footsteps ringing hollow against the vault of stone.

He found a narrow stairway, going down.

They descended, passing the other galleries, and came at last into a small chamber. It had had a door to the outside, a massive, age-tarnished metal door that had buckled somewhat with pressure and had let dirt sift through the cracks.

Opposite the door was a low, square opening in the stone wall. Above it was an inscription. Holding his lamp high, Curt Newton read slowly, “Here is the birthplace of the Children of the Sun.”