Читать книгу The Ray Cummings MEGAPACK ®: 25 Golden Age Science Fiction and Mystery Tales - Ray Cummings - Страница 29

CHAPTER 27

AURA

The Very Young Man involuntarily took a step backward as he met Targo’s eyes, glaring at him across the old man’s body. The girl in the corner gave another cry—a cry of fright and horror, yet with a note of relief. The Very Young Man found himself wondering who she was; then he knew.

His first impulse was to leap across the room towards her. He thought of the chemicals and instinctively his hand went to his armpit. But he knew there was no time for that. He hesitated one brief instant. As he stood rigid Targo stooped swiftly and grasped the dagger in his victim’s breast.

The girl screamed again, louder this time, and like a mask the Very Young Man’s indecision fell from him. He stood alert, clear-headed. Here was an enemy threatening him—an enemy he must fight and overcome.

In the second that Targo bent down the Very Young Man bounded forward, and with a leap that his football days had taught him so well how to make, he landed squarely upon the bare, broad back of his antagonist. The impact of his weight forced Targo down upon the floor, and losing his balance he fell, with the Very Young Man on top of him. They hit the leg of the table as they rolled over, and something dropped from it to the floor, striking the stone surface with a thud.

The knife still stuck in the dead man’s body. The Very Young Man thought he could reach it, but his opponent’s great arms were around him now and held him too tightly. He tried to pull himself loose, but could not. Then he rolled partly over again, and met Targo’s eyes above, leering triumphantly down at him. He looked away and wrenched his right arm free. Across the room he could see the girl still crouching in the corner. His right hand sweeping along the floor struck something heavy lying there. His fingers closed over it; he raised it up, and hardly knowing what he did, crashed it against his enemy’s head.

He felt the tense muscles of the man relax, and then the weight of his inert body as it pressed down upon him. He wriggled free, and sprang to his feet. As he stood weak and trembling, looking down at the unconscious form of Targo lying upon the floor, the girl suddenly ran over and stood beside him. Her slim little body came only a little above his shoulder; instinctively he put his arm about her.

A voice, calling from outside the room, made the girl look up into his face with new terror.

“Others are coming,” she whispered tensely and huddled up against him.

The Very Young Man saw that the room had two doors—the one through which he had entered, and another in one of its other walls. There were no windows. He pulled the girl now towards the further door, but she held him back.

“They come that way,” she whispered.

Another voice sounded behind him and the Very Young Man knew that a man was coming up along the passageway from the front entrance. Targo’s men! He remembered now the skulking figure he had seen outside the house. There were more than two, for now he heard other voices, and some one calling Targo’s name.

He held the girl closer and stood motionless. Like rats in a trap, he thought. He felt the fingers of his right hand holding something heavy. It was a piece of stone—the stone he had looked at through the microscope—the stone with which he had struck Targo. He smiled to himself, and slipped it into his pocket.

The girl had slowly pulled him over to the inner wall of the room. The footsteps came closer. They would be here in a moment. The Very Young Man wondered how he should fight them all; then he thought of the knife that was still in the murdered man’s body. He thought he ought to get it now while there was still time. He heard a click and the wall against which he and the girl were leaning yielded with their weight. A door swung open—a door the Very Young Man had not seen before. The girl pulled him through the doorway, and swung the door softly closed behind them.

The Very Young Man found himself now in a long, narrow room with a very high ceiling. It had, apparently, no other door, and no windows. It was evidently a storeroom—piled high with what looked like boxes, and with bales of silks and other fabrics.

The Very Young Man looked around him hastily. Then he let go of the girl, and, since locks were unknown in this world, began piling as many heavy objects as possible against the door. The girl tried to help him, but he pushed her away. Once he put his ear to the door and listened. He heard voices outside in the strange Oroid tongue.

The girl stood beside him. “They are lifting Targo up. He speaks; he is not dead,” she whispered.

For several minutes they stood there listening. The voices continued in a low murmur. “They’ll know we are in here,” said the Very Young Man finally, in an undertone. “Is there any other way out of this room?”

The girl shook her head. The Very Young Man forgot the import of her answer, and suddenly found himself thinking she was the prettiest girl he had ever seen. She was hardly more than sixteen, with a slender, not yet matured, yet perfectly rounded little body. She wore, like Lylda, a short blue silk tunic, with a golden cord crossing her breast and encircling her waist. Her raven black hair hung in two twisted locks nearly to her knees. Her skin was very white and, even more than Lylda’s, gleamed with iridescent color.

“Only this one door,” said the girl. The words brought the Very Young Man to himself with a start.

No other way out of the room! He knew that Targo and his men would force their way in very soon. He could not prevent them. But it would take time. The Very Young Man remembered that now he had time to take the chemicals. He put his hand to his armpit and felt the pouch that held the drug. He wondered which to take. The ceiling was very high; but to fight in the narrow confines of such a room—

He led the girl over to a pile of cushions and sat down beside her.

“Listen,” he said briefly. “We are going to take a medicine; it will make us very small. Then we will hide from Targo and his men till they are gone. This is not magic; it is science. Do you understand?”

“I understand,” the girl answered readily. “One of the strangers you are—my brother’s friend.”

“You will not be afraid to take the drug?”

“No.” But though she spoke confidently, she drew closer to him and shivered a little.

The Very Young Man handed her one of the tiny pellets. “Just touch it to the tip of your tongue as I do,” he said warningly.

They took the drug. When it had ceased to act, they found themselves standing on the rough uneven stone surface that was the floor of the room. Far overhead in the dim luminous blackness they could just make out the great arching ceiling, stretching away out of sight down the length of the room. Beside them stood a tremendous shaggy pile of coarsely woven objects that were the silk pillows on which they had been sitting a moment before—pillows that seemed forty or fifty feet square now and loomed high above their heads.

The Very Young Man took the frightened girl by the hand and led her along the tremendous length of a pile of boxes, blocks long it seemed. These boxes, from their size, might have been rectangular, windowless houses, jammed closely together, and piled one upon the other up into the air almost out of sight.

Finally they came to a broad passageway between the boxes—a mere crack it would have been before. They turned into it, and, a few feet beyond, came to a larger square space with a box making a roof over it some twenty feet above their heads.

From this retreat they could see the lower part of the door leading into the other room and could hear from beyond it a muffled roar—the voices of Targo and his men. Hardly were they hidden when the door opened a little. It struck against the bales the Very Young Man had piled against it. For a moment it held, but with the united efforts of the men pushing from the other side, it slowly yielded and swung open.

Targo stepped into the room. To the Very Young Man he seemed nearly a hundred feet high. Only his feet and ankles were visible at first, from where the Very Young Man was watching. Three other men came with him. They stamped back and forth for a time, moving some of the bales and boxes. Luckily they left undisturbed those nearest the fugitives; after a moment they left, leaving the door open.

The Very Young Man breathed a long sigh of relief. “Gosh, I’m glad that’s over.” He spoke in a low tone, although the men in the other room seemed so far away they would hardly have heard him if he had shouted at the top of his voice.

Alone with the girl now in this great silent room, the Very Young Man felt suddenly embarrassed. “I am one of your brother’s friends,” he said. “My name’s Jack; is yours Aura?”

“Lylda’s sister I am,” she answered quietly. “My father told me about you—” Then with a rush came the memory of her father’s death, which the startling experiences of the past half-hour had made her forget. Her big, soft eyes filled with tears and her lips quivered. Involuntarily the Very Young Man put his arm about her again and held her close to him. She was so little and frail—so pathetic and so wholly adorable. For a long time they sat in silence; then the girl gently drew away.

At the doorway they stood and listened; Targo and his followers were still in the adjoining room, talking earnestly. “Loto they have captured,” Aura whispered suddenly. “Others of Targo’s men have taken him—in a boat—to Orlog. Tomorrow they send a messenger to my brother to demand he give up these drugs—or Loto they will kill.”

The Very Young Man waited, breathless. Suddenly he heard Targo laugh—a cruel, cynical laugh. Aura shuddered.

“And when he has the drug, all of us will he kill. And all in the land too who will not do as he bids.”

The men were rising, evidently in preparation to leave. Aura continued: “They go—now—to Orlog—all but Targo. A little way from here, up the lake shore, a boat is waiting. It will take them there fast.”

With a last look around, Targo and his followers disappeared through the back door of the room. An outer door clanged noisily, and the Very Young Man and Aura were left alone in the house.

Reoh murdered, Loto stolen! The Very Young Man thought of Lylda and wondered if anything could have happened to her. “Did they speak of your sister?” he asked.

“Targo said—he—he would put her to death,” Aura answered with a shudder. “He said—she killed his brother today.” She turned to the Very Young Man impulsively, putting her little hands up on his shoulders. “Oh, my friend,” she exclaimed. “You can do something to save my family? Targo is so strong, so cruel. My father—” She stopped, and choked back a sob.

“Did they say where Lylda was now?”

“They did not know. She grew very big and went away.”

“Where is your brother and my two friends?”

“Targo said they were here when he—he took Loto. Now they have gone home. He was afraid of them—now—because they have the drugs.”

“Tomorrow they are going to send a messenger from Orlog to demand the drugs?”

“He said tomorrow. Oh, you will do something for us? You can save Loto?”

The Very Young Man was beginning to formulate a plan. “And tonight,” he asked, “from what they said—are you sure they will not hurt Loto?”

“They said no. But he is so little—so—” The girl burst into tears, and at every sob the Very Young Man’s heart leaped in his breast. He wanted to comfort her, but he could think of no word to say; he wanted to help her—to do the best thing in what he saw was a grave crisis. What he should have done was to have taken her back to the Chemist and his friends, and then with them planned the rescue of Loto. But with the girl’s hands upon his shoulders, and her sorrowful little tear-stained face looking up to his, he did not think of that. He thought only of her and her pathetic appeal. “You will do something, my friend? You can save Loto?” He could save Loto! With the power of the drugs he could do anything!

The Very Young Man made a sudden decision. “I don’t know the way to Orlog; you do?” he asked abruptly.

“Oh yes, I know it well.”

“We will go to Orlog, you and I—now, and rescue Loto. You will not be afraid?”

The girl’s eyes looked into his with a clear, steady gaze. The Very Young Man stared down into their depths with his heart pounding. “I shall not be afraid—with you,” said the girl softly.

The Very Young Man drew a long breath. He knew he must think it all out carefully. The drug would make them very large, and in a short time they could walk to Orlog. No harm could come to them. Once in Orlog they would find Loto—probably in Targo’s palace—and bring him back with them. The Very Young Man pictured the surprise and gratification of the Chemist and his friends. Lylda would be back by then; no sooner would she have heard of Loto’s loss than he would bring him back to her. Or perhaps they would meet Lylda and she would join them.

The Very Young Man produced the drug and was about to give Aura one of the pellets when another thought occurred to him. Targo would not harm Loto now because he was valuable as a hostage. But suppose he saw these two giants coming to the rescue? The Very Young Man knew that probably the boy would be killed before he could save him. That way would not do. He would have to get to Orlog unseen—rescue Loto by a sudden rush, before they could harm him.

But first it would be necessary for him and Aura to get out of Arite quietly without causing any excitement. Once in the open country they could grow larger and travel rapidly to Orlog. The Very Young Man thought it would be best to be normal size while leaving Arite. He explained his plan to Aura briefly.

It took several successive tastes of the different drugs before this result was accomplished, but in perhaps half an hour they were ready to leave the house. To the Very Young Man this change of size was no longer even startling. Aura, this time, with him beside her, seemed quite unafraid.

“Now we’re ready,” said the Very Young Man, in a matter-of-fact tone that was far from indicating his true feeling. “Take the way where we are least likely to be noticed—towards Orlog. When we get in the open country we can get bigger.”

He led the girl across Reoh’s study. She kept her face averted as they passed the body lying on the floor, and in a moment they were outside the house. They walked rapidly, keeping close to the walls of the houses. The streets were nearly deserted and no one seemed to notice them.

The Very Young Man was calculating the time. “Probably they are just getting to Orlog with Loto,” he said. “Once we get out of Arite we’ll travel fast; we’ll have him back in two or three hours.”

Aura said nothing, but walked beside him. Once or twice she looked back over her shoulder.

They were in the outskirts of the city, when suddenly the girl gripped her companion by the arm.

“Some one—behind us,” she whispered. The Very Young Man resisted an impulse to look around. They had come to a cross street; the Very Young Man abruptly turned the corner, and clutching Aura by the hand ran swiftly forward a short distance. When they had slowed down to a walk again the Very Young Man looked cautiously back over his shoulder. As he did so he caught a glimpse of three men who had just reached the corner, and who darted hastily back out of sight as he turned his head.