The Fire People by Ray Cummings (recommended ebook reader .txt) 📗

we started back across the channel. Lua, Mercer and Anina were separated from us. All had been captured, perhaps, by our enemies! Things were, indeed, in a very bad way.

Without unusual incident we sighted the Light Country shore. Three girls were winging their way swiftly toward us.

"They wish to speak with us, Alan," said Miela. "From the Great City they seem to come. Perhaps it is Anina."

Our hopes were soon dispelled, for Anina was not one of them; they were three of the girls we had directed to patrol the seacoast.

When they neared us Miela flew off the platform and joined them. They circled about for a time, flying close together, then Miela left them and returned to me, while they hovered overhead. Her face was clouded with anxiety as she alighted beside me.

"They were near the Water City a short time ago. And they say the light‑ray is being used there. They saw it flashing up, and dared not go closer."

The light‑ray in the Water City! My heart sunk with dismay. The cylinder I held in my hand I had thought the only one in use in all the Light Country. With it I felt supreme. And now they had it also in the Water City!

One of the girls flung up her hand suddenly and called to Miela.

"See, Alan—a boat!"

I looked down to where Miela pointed. The sea was still rough from the storm, but no longer lashed into fury. Coming toward us, close inshore and from the direction of the Water City, I saw a boat speeding along over the spent waves. And as I looked, a narrow beam of light, green, shading into red, shot up from the boat and hung wavering in the air like a little search‑light striving to pierce the gray mist of the sky!

[Pg 149]
CHAPTER XXII.
THE THEFT OF THE LIGHT‑RAY.

The touch of soft, cool hands on his face brought Mercer back to sudden consciousness. He opened his eyes; Anina was sitting beside him, regarding him gravely.

"Wake up, my friend Ollie. Time now to wake up."

He sat up, rubbing his eyes. The same dim twilight obscured everything around. For an instant he was confused.

"Why, I've been asleep." He got to his feet. "Do you think it's been long, Anina? Maybe the men have started off. Let's go see."

Anina had already been to see; she had awakened some little time before and, leaving Mercer asleep, had flown up ahead over the tree‑tops.

The men were just then breaking camp, and she had returned to wake up Mercer. They ate their last remaining pieces of bread, drank from the little pool of water, and were soon ready to start on after their quarry.

"How long will it take them to reach the gorge, Anina?"

"Not very long—four times farther reach Lone City."

By which Mercer inferred that within three or four hours, perhaps, they would be at the place where they hoped to turn the men back.

They started off slowly up the trail, Mercer carrying the folded blanket, and Anina wearing the fur jacket. They soon came upon the smoldering fire that marked the other party's night encampment. The men were, Mercer judged, perhaps a mile or so ahead of them.

They continued on, walking slowly, for they did not want to overtake the slow‑traveling men ahead. The look of the country, what they could see of it in the darkness, was unchanged. The trail seemed bending steadily to the right, and after a time they came to the bank of a river which the trail followed. It was a broad stream, perhaps a quarter of a mile across, with a considerable current sweeping down to the sea.

[Pg 150]

They kept to the trail along the river bank for nearly another hour. Then Anina abruptly halted, pulling Mercer partly behind a tree trunk.

"Another fire," she whispered. "They stop again."

They could see the glow of the fire, close by the river bank among the trees. Very cautiously they approached and soon made out the vague outlines of a boat moored to the bank. It seemed similar to the one in which they had come down the bayous from the Great City, only slightly larger.

"Other men," whispered Anina. "From Lone City."

Mercer's heart sank. A party from the Lone City—more of Tao's men to join those he had set free! All his fine plans were swept away. The men would all go up to the Lone City now in the boat, of course. There was nothing he could do to stop them. And now Tao would learn of the failure of his plans.

Mercer's first idea was to give up and return to the shore of the sea; but Anina kept on going cautiously forward, and he followed her.

The fire, they could see as they got closer, was built a little back from the water, with a slight rise of ground between it and the boat. There were some thirty men gathered around; they seemed to be cooking.

"You stand here, Ollie," Anina whispered. "I go hear what they say. Stand very quiet and wait. I come back."

Mercer sat down with his back against a tree and waited. Anina disappeared almost immediately. He heard no sound of her flight, but a moment later he thought he saw her dropping down through the trees just outside the circle of light from the fire. From where he was sitting he could see the boat also; he thought he made out the figure of a man sitting in it, on guard. The situation, as Mercer understood it from what Anina told him when she returned, seemed immeasurably worse even than he had anticipated.

[Pg 151]

Tao had been making the Water City the basis of his insidious propaganda, rather than the Great City, as we had supposed. He had been in constant communication by boat with his men in the Water City; and now affairs there were ripe for more drastic operations.

This boat Mercer had come upon was intended to be Tao's first armed invasion of the Light Country—some twenty of his most trusted men armed with the light‑ray. Joining his emissaries in the Water City, and with the large following among the people there which they had already secured, they planned to seize the government and obtain control of the city. Then, using it as a base, they could spread out for a conquest of the entire nation. Mercer listened with whitening face while Anina told him all this as best she could.

"But—but why does he want to attack the Light Country, Anina? I thought he wanted to go and conquer our earth."

"Very big task—your earth," the girl answered. "Light Country more easy. Many light‑rays in the Great City. Those he needs before he goes to your earth. More simple to get those than make others."

Mercer understood it then. The large quantity of light‑ray ammunition stored in the Great City was what Tao was after. This was his way of getting it, and once he had it, and control of the Light Country besides he would be in a much better position to attack the earth.

The idea came to Mercer then to steal the boat and escape with it. If he could do that, the enemies would have to return to the Lone City on foot, and the threatened invasion of the Light Country would thus be postponed for a time at least. Meanwhile, with the boat he could hasten back to me with news of the coming invasion.

These thoughts were running through his head while Anina was talking. It was a daring plan, but it might be done. There was apparently only one man in the boat, and the slight rise of ground between it and the fire made him out of sight, though not out of hearing, of the others.

"Can you run the boat, Anina?"

The girl nodded eagerly. Mercer drew a long breath.

[Pg 152]

"We'll take a chance. It's the only way. They've got that cursed light‑ray." He shivered as he thought of the danger they were about to invite.

Then he explained to Anina what they were to do. She listened carefully, with the same expectant, eager look on her face he had seen there so often before.

They left the blanket and fur jacket on the ground, and, making a wide detour around the fire, came back to the river bank several hundred yards above the boat. They stood at the water's edge, looking about them. The boat was just around a slight bend in the stream; the glimmer of the fire showed plainly among the trees. Intense quiet prevailed; only the murmur of the water flowing past, and occasionally the raised voice of one of the men about the fire, broke the stillness.

Mercer stared searchingly into the girl's eyes as she stood there quietly at his side. She met his gaze steadily.

"You're a wonderful little girl," he whispered to her, and then abruptly added: "Come on. Don't make any splash if you can help it. And remember, if anything goes wrong, never mind me. Fly away—if you can."

They waded slowly into the water. The current carried them rapidly along. Side by side, with slow, careful strokes, they swam, keeping close to shore. The river was shallow—hardly over their heads. The water was cold and, Mercer thought, curiously buoyant.

It seemed hardly more than a moment before the shadowy black figure of outlines of the boat loomed ahead. They could make out the figure of its single occupant, sitting with his arm on the gunwale. They swam hardly at all now, letting the current carry them forward. As silent as two drifting logs they dropped down upon the boat and in another moment were clinging to a bit of rope that chanced to be hanging over its stern.

The bow of the boat was nosed against the bank; it lay diagonally downstream, with its stern some twenty feet from shore. Its occupant was sitting amidships, facing the bow. Mercer drew himself up until his eyes were above the stern of the boat and saw him plainly. He was slouching down as though dozing. His elbow was crooked, carelessly over the gunwale.

[Pg 153]

Mercer's heart gave an exultant leap as he saw a little cylinder in the man's hand. There was a little projection on the boat at the water line, and, working along this with his hands, Mercer edged slowly toward the man. He knew he could not be heard, for the murmur of the water slipping past the sides of the boat drowned the slight noise he made.

He edged his way along, with not much more than his face out of water, until he was directly beneath the motionless form in the boat.

Mercer's heart was beating so it seemed to smother him. Slowly he pulled himself up until the fingers of his left hand gripped the gunwale hardly more than a foot or two behind the man's back. His other hand reached forward. He must have made a slight noise, for the man sat suddenly upright, listening.

Mercer's right hand shot out. His fingers closed over the little cylinder and the hand holding it. He bent it inward, twisting the man's wrist. His thumb fumbled for the little button Anina had described. There was a tiny puff of light; the man's body wavered, then fell forward inert. Mercer climbed into the boat. He looked back. Anina was pulling herself up over the stern. A long pole lay across the seats. He picked it up and started with it toward the bow. And then he tripped over something and fell headlong, dropping the pole with a clatter.

As he picked himself up there came a shout from the men in the woods. Mercer hurried forward and cast off the rope that held the boat to the bank. It had been tied more or less permanently at this end. As he fumbled at the knots he heard Anina's soft, anxious voice calling: "Hurry, Ollie, hurry!"

The shouts from the woods continued. The knots loosened finally. The boat slid back away