The A. Merritt MEGAPACK ®. Abraham Merritt
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From the anteroom came shouting, a rush of feet.
Yolara’s face was white, her eyes strained—but her voice was unshaken as she called to the clamouring guards:
“It is nothing—go to your places!”
But when the sound of their return had ceased she stared tensely at the Irishman—then looked again at the shattered vase.
“It is true!” she cried, “but see, the Keth is—alive!”
I followed her pointing finger. Each broken bit of the crystal was vibrating, shaking its particles out into space. Broken it the bullet of Larry’s had—but not released it from the grip of the disintegrating force. The priestess’s face was triumphant.
“But what matters it, O shining urn of beauty—what matters it to the vase that is broken what happens to its fragments?” asked Larry, gravely—and pointedly.
The triumph died from her face and for a space she was silent; brooding.
“Next,” whispered O’Keefe to me. “Lots of surprises in the little box; keep your eye on the opening and see what comes out.”
We had not long to wait. There was a sparkle of anger about Yolara, something too of injured pride. She clapped her hands; whispered to the maid who answered her summons, and then sat back regarding us, maliciously.
“You have answered me as to your strength—but you have not proved it; but the Keth you have answered. Now answer this!” she said.
She pointed out into the garden. I saw a flowering branch bend and snap as though a hand had broken it—but no hand was there! Saw then another and another bend and break, a little tree sway and fall—and closer and closer to us came the trail of snapping boughs while down into the garden poured the silvery light revealing—nothing! Now a great ewer beside a pillar rose swiftly in air and hurled itself crashing at my feet. Cushions close to us swirled about as though in the vortex of a whirlwind.
And unseen hands held my arms in a mighty clutch fast to my sides, another gripped my throat and I felt a needle-sharp poniard point pierce my shirt, touch the skin just over my heart!
“Larry!” I cried, despairingly. I twisted my head; saw that he too was caught in this grip of the invisible. But his face was calm, even amused.
“Keep cool, Doc!” he said. “Remember—she wants to learn the language!”
Now from Yolara burst chime upon chime of mocking laughter. She gave a command—the hands loosened, the poniard withdrew from my heart; suddenly as I had been caught I was free—and unpleasantly weak and shaky.
“Have you that in Ireland, Larree!” cried the priestess—and once more trembled with laughter.
“A good play, Yolara.” His voice was as calm as his face. “But they did that in Ireland even before Dalua piped away his first man’s shadow. And in Goodwin’s land they make ships—coria that go on water—so you can pass by them and see only sea and sky; and those water coria are each of them many times greater than this whole palace of yours.”
But the priestess laughed on.
“It did get me a little,” whispered Larry. “That wasn’t quite up to my mark. But God! If we could find that trick out and take it back with us!”
“Not so, Larree!” Yolara gasped, through her laughter. “Not so! Goodwin’s cry betrayed you!”
Her good humour had entirely returned; she was like a mischievous child pleased over some successful trick; and like a child she cried—“I’ll show you!”—signalled again; whispered to the maid who, quickly returning, laid before her a long metal case. Yolara took from her girdle something that looked like a small pencil, pressed it and shot a thin stream of light for all the world like an electric flash, upon its hasp. The lid flew open. Out of it she drew three flat, oval crystals, faint rose in hue. She handed one to O’Keefe and one to me.
“Look!” she commanded, placing the third before her own eyes. I peered through the stone and instantly there leaped into sight, out of thin air—six grinning dwarfs! Each was covered from top of head to soles of feet in a web so tenuous that through it their bodies were plain. The gauzy stuff seemed to vibrate—its strands to run together like quick-silver. I snatched the crystal from my eyes and—the chamber was empty! Put it back—and there were the grinning six!
Yolara gave another sign and they disappeared, even from the crystals.
“It is what they wear, Larree,” explained Yolara, graciously. “It is something that came to us from—the Ancient Ones. But we have so few”—she sighed.
“Such treasures must be two-edged swords, Yolara,” commented O’Keefe. “For how know you that one within them creeps not to you with hand eager to strike?”
“There is no danger,” she said indifferently. “I am the keeper of them.”
She mused for a space, then abruptly:
“And now no more. You two are to appear before the Council at a certain time—but fear nothing. You, Goodwin, go with Rador about our city and increase your wisdom. But you, Larree, await me here in my garden—” she smiled at him, provocatively—maliciously, too. “For shall not one who has resisted a world of goddesses be given all chance to worship when at last he finds his own?”
She laughed—whole-heartedly and was gone. And at that moment I liked Yolara better than ever I had before and—alas—better than ever I was to in the future.
I noted Rador standing outside the open jade door and started to go, but O’Keefe caught me by the arm.
“Wait a minute,” he urged. “About Golden Eyes—you were going to tell me something—it’s been on my mind all through that little sparring match.”
I told him of the vision that had passed through my closing lids. He listened gravely and then laughed.
“Hell of a lot of privacy in this place!” he grinned. “Ladies who can walk through walls and others with regular invisible cloaks to let ’em flit wherever they please. Oh, well, don’t let it get on your nerves, Doc. Remember—everything’s natural! That robe stuff is just camouflage of course. But Lord, if we could only get a piece of it!”
“The material simply admits all light-vibrations, or perhaps curves them, just as the opacities cut them off,” I answered. “A man under the X-ray is partly invisible; this makes him wholly so. He doesn’t register, as the people of the motion-picture profession say.”
“Camouflage,” repeated Larry. “And as for the Shining One—Say!” he snorted. “I’d like to set the O’Keefe banshee up against it. I’ll bet that old resourceful Irish body would give it the first three bites and a strangle hold and wallop it before it knew it had ’em. Oh! Wow! Boy Howdy!”
I heard him still chuckling gleefully over this vision as I passed along the opal wall with the green dwarf.
A shell was awaiting us. I paused before entering it to examine the polished surface of runway and great road. It was obsidian—volcanic glass of pale emerald, unflawed, translucent, with no sign of block or juncture. I examined the shell.
“What makes it go?” I asked Rador. At a word from him the driver touched a concealed spring and an aperture appeared beneath the control-lever, of which I have spoken in a preceding chapter. Within was a small cube of black crystal, through whose sides I saw, dimly, a rapidly revolving, glowing ball, not more than two inches in diameter. Beneath the cube was a curiously shaped, slender cylinder winding down into the lower body of the Nautilus whorl.
“Watch!” said Rador. He motioned me into the vehicle and took a place beside me. The driver touched the lever; a stream of coruscations flew from the ball down into the cylinder. The shell started smoothly, and as the tiny torrent of shining particles increased it gathered speed.
“The corial does not touch the road,” explained Rador. “It is lifted