Читать книгу Wings of Icarus - Raymond King Cummings - Страница 5

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Despite the fact they were burdened with the heavy baskets the men of Neptune managed to carry us along at a fair rate of speed. Yet even at the time I noticed a certain awkwardness, an air of uncertainty, which seemed strange to me at the time. It struck me that men like these, who had literally been born with wings like birds, ought to fly better and to make speedier progress.

Underneath the baskets the landscape began to change. It grew more wildly mountainous, although it had been rough enough before. At certain spots I noticed small areas where the soil had been gathered, as if for the growing of food.

We rounded a mountain peak, came in sight of a small city built in the side of one of the crags. Under the yellow glow of twilight as we approached I had a glimpse of fantastic crystal houses, built on terraces. The mountain itself was flat topped, and beyond the shining city, in the distance I could see a black looking lake, and a forested island, far out. Later we learned the city was called Aerita.

On the top of the mountain, in the center of a fantastic spindly forest, stood a single large crystal building. We swooped over near it and came down.

Then our captors let go of the handles of the baskets, produced sharp pieces of crystal, and cut the withes which bound our hands and feet.

Evans, Boyle and I stood up and began to stamp and rub our wrists to restore the clogged circulation. Then I noticed another thing. Upon restoring us to liberty the Neptunians seemed to have lost their surly dispositions. They were smiling and cheerful once more. Perhaps they had not really been so angry as they had pretended. It may be these men merely wished to show us they meant business and would stand for no foolishness on our part.

Ahla also reappeared once more. She seemed much relieved to see we were no longer tied and that we had come to no harm. She waved her arm.

“Arton,” she said. “Him, Arton.”

We turned and caught sight of a shriveled man, with white hair, advancing toward us. He was very old. Even his wings seemed moulted with age. Walking beside him was a younger man, tall, with long, wavy black hair. His white feathered wings were tipped with black. By Neptunian standards he might have been called handsome, for he had a high-bridged nose and deep-set eyes.

“Him, Charlon,” explained Ahla. “Charlon.”

Charlon reached for Evans and twisted him about to inspect the Earth man. Evans flung off Charlon’s hands with a snarl.

“Keep your paws to yourself, my bucko,” he warned.

“Easy,” I said, in the flier’s ear. “No use of starting more trouble. Once was enough.”

“I don’t like him,” growled Evans, with flashing eyes. “I’ll end up by taking a poke at him.”

The old leader had advanced to look us over and decide what to do with us. At this moment a sudden commotion broke out. Everyone whirled and began to gaze at a green-yellow blob in the sky. Another group of flyers were arriving. Presently I could see that the group consisted of eight of the Aerite men. And they were bringing in a prisoner. More Neptune inhabitants appeared until the crowd numbered about eight hundred.

Grim men with the captive landed, and again those sparks flashed from their feet. At the sight of the sparks a murmur of dismay arose from the Neptunians near me. Queer! I had thought of course the sparks were a natural thing. But it did not seem so.

The excitement over the arrival of this captive turned my attention to him. He was a gray-black, sinister looking man, obviously of a different breed from everybody else here. He wore a black garment of woven flexible metal and his wings were bound with rope. Furthermore they were not feathered wings; they were black, greasy, shiny membrane. Wings like those of a huge bat. I had a glimpse of his defiant face as he lay on the ground, his bullet head of close-clipped black hair, and oval face. A pointed chin with a hawk nose and arched brows, gave him a villianous appearance.

“Him, a Gar,” Ahla said.

He certainly did not seem popular. With angry cries a half dozen of the winged girls fluttered forward, trying to maul the man on the ground. But the old leader and Charlon waved them back.

“Wonder what it all means,” said Boyle. “They sure seem to hate that bat-winged fellow.”

That remark was never answered, because at this moment the winged men conducted us into the crystal palace and began to act the part of hospitable hosts.

They fed us and gave us a room under a roof of saffron glass. It was old Arton’s dwelling, where he lived with half a dozen or so of his Counselors, some servants and others. Ahla signified she lived here also. And so, evidently, did this fellow Charlon. The building was a big, two-level affair, divided into corridors and many rooms. The one we had was furnished with three couch-like affairs, and low reclining chairs with sides, but not much back, where our wings should have projected.

After being in it for a while we found we certainly did not like this room. We rolled and tossed on the couches. Occasionally I could hear Boyle’s complaints.

“This light,” he groaned. “How can anybody sleep in a place like this?”

Trying to sleep on a flood-lighted stage would have been easy compared to this. The whole crystal city of Aerita was built of crystaline blocks. Whether they are radioactive or not I do not know. Weird, luminous transparent slabs. They glowed with a vivid yellow radiance. After a while it got you. There are mines of this luminous stuff off in the mountains, we later learned, and the Aerites cut out the slabs and laboriously cart them to the city.

It could be a refined and neat form of torture. But the Aerites did not mean it that way. I tackled Ahla about it when she brought us our breakfast, consisting of various vegetables resembling mushrooms in taste.

Several miserable days and nights passed. We felt like prisoners in that glaring room. Then Ahla came and led us proudly out across the city roof.

Here we found three shacks, standing near each other, one-room affairs built of dried, woven vegetation. There was a cabin room for each of us.

How many days went by now, like this, I have forgotten. Although we were not considered to be prisoners, usually an Aerite guard watched us when we roamed around the city garden to make sure we did not fall off the cliff or hurt ourselves.

These things made Chick Evans bitter.

“I thought we came here to get Uradonite, Alan?” he complained. “How can you even begin looking for it unless some of these people carry us around?”

Boyle had fallen into sullenness. He did not talk much but did suggest we persuade them to carry us to the Nomad so we could try and repair it.

“That’s my idea exactly,” I agreed: “They’re learning our language fast. We’ll be able to make some plans in a little while.”

Old Arton came to see us nearly every day. So did Ahla, of course; and several of the others. Charlon came also, with his contemptuous smile.

Soon we learned something about these Aerites, and about their enemies, the Gars. It came to us bit by bit, as Ahla and Charlon and the others learned our language.

Then we discovered an enigma. The Aerites were the dominating race of Neptune. They were not advanced in science but seemed to go in for the arts. Like the Golden Age of Greece. There were several of these crystal cities, of which Aerita here was the largest.

The Aerites had the best region, the best land of Neptune.

“Gosh,” Chick Evans exclaimed when Ahla told us that. “If this is the best, what must the rest of it be?”

“There are Black Forests,” Ahla said. “But in them, no human can live. And there is the land of the Gars. The Gars live underground.”

Except for savages that flew—and nested in nomadic style on the distant metal deserts, only one other race existed—the Gars. So far we had seen only one Gar, the bat-winged fellow. The Gars were a less numerous people, but far more scientific than the Aerites. Their main city, called Mok, was far up in the mountains, built entirely underground.

“Well, what’s wrong?” Chick Evans demanded of Ahla, “You people are in some sort of trouble. We saw that the first night we got here. You’re afraid, of the Gars?”

She smiled her whimsical smile.

“No, it is not that. We are now having trouble to fly.”

“Trouble flying?” Chick Evans echoed. “That would be a catastrophe here, sure enough. Was that why you fell on that ledge, the night you found us?”

She nodded. “Yes. We feel so heavy in the air now. For one of your Earth years we have grown heavier. Soon our wings will not carry us.”

“An intensification of gravity,” I said.

“That’s what hit us when we were trying to land the Nomad,” Boyle agreed. “Some phenomenon of nature.”

Now we had the explanation of those sparks, when the flyers’ feet touched the ground. What a weird enigma. Certainly it was a thing of menace ... Wings of Icarus. The phrase occurred to me. Just as the Spaceships of Earth were becoming useless, so here on Neptune these harassed Aerites were in much the same plight.

“Now that we do not fly so well,” Ahla said, “the Gars have begun to raid us.”

We had heard about those raids. Several times during the time of sleep, small parties of the Gars had come. Food concentrates and several of the young Aerite women had been carried off. They had been isolated, small raids so far. There had been talk among the Aerites of reprisals, but nothing had come of it. Old Arton, we could see for ourselves, was a peace-loving, impractical fellow.

What was worse, so far as we could learn, the Aerites apparently had no weapons.

Our own weapons—just a few of the Pierrot-type, oscillating-current flash-guns—were in the Nomad. They would be de-charged by now, useless unless the chargers which we had in the Nomad’s little workshop had not been damaged by the fall.

“Do you think the Gars will try and conquer you?” I asked Ahla. “It’s dangerous to be without weapons.”

We were in the garden outside my hut. Charlon had come to join us. He had been sitting silent, with his great white wings, black-tipped, spread out behind him.

“Never would the Gars do that,” Charlon put in abruptly. “Such talk of danger does not make sense.”

“That’s what I think,” Boyle agreed. I noticed his gaze now upon Charlon, filled with admiration and awe for the supercilious Aerite.

Boyle certainly seemed to like Charlon.

“Anyway,” Boyle added, “when you start reprisals, you get into more trouble.”

“Maybe. Maybe not,” Chick Evans put in. “Maybe, if we let the Gars alone, they’ll get to thinking they can do anything to us they like. Then there’ll be trouble for a fact.”

A cold sneer curled Charlon’s features. “You Earthmen are just cripples,” he said. “Cripples do not live long here.”

This comment sent a ripple of fear down my spine. What did Charlon mean by that?