Slaves of Ijax. John Russell Fearn
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“Mmmm...,” Peter mused. “I just wondered. Had Shaw known what was coming he might have done something to Lanning as a sort of advance revenge.”
The girl shook her head as though she doubted the possibility; then Peter sat up actively and gathered in his robe sleeve with its insignia.
“I think we ought lo be on the move, Alza. This lying down may be a good idea but I’m more accustomed to exercise. Coming?”
The girl rose and stood up, question in her grey eyes. “Where would you like to go now, Excel...Peter?”
“Well, I’ve been thinking.” He took her arm deliberately as they left the place and felt pleased by the fact that she did not resist his action. “Have you anywhere in this city where you keep information? I mean a sort of reference library, or a place where records are kept?”
“We have the Historian’s Hall, about a mile from here. What are you seeking, exactly?”
“Moondust,” Peter said, with an amiable grin. “I want to find out about it. I know I’ve heard of it somewhere.”
Alza nodded and they continued walking down the street. Peter had the impression that exercise did not appeal to the girl, for she kept glancing wistfully towards the floating air-taxis. But since he did not give word to summon one she obviously could not. In five minutes they reached a corner of the pedestrian level and the girl pointed over a bridge spanning the nearest canyon of street to a building with a door at pedestrian street level.
“That’s it,” she said. “Quite an interesting place....”
They crossed the bridge and entered a wide hall of many windows admitting the afternoon sunshine. There was nobody in sight and the emptiness echoed with their footfalls as they crossed the richly tiled floor to a door in the distance. Beyond it they entered a room of breathtaking dimensions—and for a moment Peter found himself gazing about in awestruck wonder.
As the girl directed him towards the reference library his pace slowed. He just could not get over the fascination of the exhibit cases. There was a wry smile on his face as he looked at a genuine antique automobile of 2050. Then there were parts of a hydrogen bomb, described as man’s most devastating weapon in the twenty-first century. Had he not had another purpose in mind he could have lingered for the rest of the day over such offerings.
He entered the reference library to find that the girl had already summoned a robot, which was placing a truly colossal book of fine metal leaves on a desk. It was a giant encyclopedia covering every conceivable thing in the world from A to Z. Rubbing his hands gently together Peter sat down in front of it and the girl stood watching over his shoulder.
“M for moondust,” he murmured, turning the pages and marvelling at the clearness of the coloured illustrations, “Moon. Moonbeam—Moonblind—Moon-daisy— Ah. moondust! Here it is!”
Alza followed his finger to a thick paragraph of type—
Moondust—a mineral allied to quartz, silica, and silicon dioxide, crystallizing hexagonally after the fashion of quartz. According to Webster and other prominent scientists it is unique in that it is photogenic to the action of moonlight, revealing a definite energy-excitement when stimulated by the rays of the full moon. In sunshine it lies dormant. Moondust possesses much of the capacity for varying electrical resistance in light and dark as does selenium.
“So that’s what it is!” Alza exclaimed, mildly surprised. “I never bothered to find out.”
Peter closed the book slowly. “I remembered my friend Michael Blane referring to it once. The name of ‘Moondust’ has such a lyrical sound I couldn’t easily forget it.”
“I wonder,” Alza mused, “why the Task demands that we should fill the Grand Tower hemisphere with moondust? It’s—peculiar.”
“It’s not the only thing which is peculiar,” Peter responded. “Why all the channels from the Grand Tower? Why a Grand Tower at all, if it comes to that? There’s a whole heap of things in this age that I don’t understand, Alza, but since circumstances have made me the figurehead, I mean to find things out. The trouble is I’m not a good scientist. How about you?
“I’ll do my best to explain anything scientific that puzzles you,” she responded.
“Good!” Peter got to his feet with a grin. “Let’s start with moondust itself. Is it being mined somewhere in readiness for the Tower, or what?”
“I believe it has been mined for the past two years. As I told you, that’s Mr. Lanning’s chief concern.”
“Well, I’m no wiser,” Peter sighed, tugging at his underlip. “All right. Let’s kill a little more time by taking a look at the museum. It may bore you but it’s fascinating to me. The stuff you class as ancient I’ve never even seen.”
She followed him back into the exhibition hall, and apart from the ‘ancient relics’ there were other scientific marvels that fascinated him. Chief among them, out of date though it was, was an automatic Eclipse-Forecaster that after the touch of a button went through mystic inner calculations and finally revealed the date in a small display, underneath the word ‘Sun’ or ‘Moon’.
After checking back on eclipses he had seen during his lifetime, he felt assured of the instrument’s accuracy and cast ahead in time yet to come. For 2746 one solar eclipse, partial, was due on the 8th November, and one total lunar one on September 28th.
“Pretty good,” he said at last, wagging his head admiringly. “Could have done with something like this in my day. Incidentally,” he added in surprise, “what’s the date today? And the month?”
“It’s the thirty-first of July, Twenty-Seven Forty-Six,” the girl responded. “And, Peter, I think its time we had some refreshment. We have been in here over four hours.”
“Time flies when you’re interested,” Peter apologized, smiling. “All right. And thanks for waiting for me. I’ll bet you’ve been bored—I used to be with museums at home.”
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