The Valley of the Flame - Henry Kuttner (a book to read .TXT) 📗

between Craddock’s thought-patterns and her own. But with Raft as mentor, the secret wisdom was slowly, painfully pulled into the light.

They did not sleep. Some drug like benzedrine, Raft guessed, kept them alert and stimulated for their long sessions. There was technical equipment in the castle, and there were scientists as well, though their knowledge lay chiefly in the realm of the psychic. Many allied sciences were represented among the cat-people. Surgery was, highly developed, as was biology.

It was Craddock’s subconscious they were probing, and it was like fishing in a teeming pool. Too often they caught the wrong fish, till they learned the right sort of bait to use. But finally symbols began to take form on the pad that was always ready to Craddock’s hand. He scribbled a line—hesitated, corrected himself—and, step by step, pieced out the record he had read only once, thirty years before, but which his subconscious mind had never forgotten.

“If Parror hadn’t opened the way, we’d never be able to do this,” Janissa said later as she was standing on a balcony with Raft, taking a well-earned breathing-space after a particularly arduous session. Before them the slow cloud of mist hung like an enormous tower.

Raft looked at her. He remembered his half-mocking question of long ago, whether two species could mingle. But logic did not seem so important now. The warm, living presence of Janissa was more vital.

Till lately he had not known her, really. She had been a paradoxical, fascinating girl who had revealed few of the traits that make humanity human. But now, since they had been working together, he had come to understand her more, and to know that he would never be able to understand her fully.

That sweetly curved, softly malicious little face, with its hint of diablerie, its lovely, feline strangeness, was more attractive than he dared admit to himself. The aquamarine, shadowed eyes were turned up to his… Eyes of Bast, whose velvet aloofness guards the night of Egypt. Yet she could be playful too, gay as a kitten might be, and with the same endearing charm.

Now as he stood there, something hidden and secret flashed between them. There was no need for a physical embrace. It was subtler than that. But, briefly, it seemed as though a veil had been lifted, a veil that hung between two beings who had been alien.

His hand stole out and touched hers. They looked out across Doirada Gulf, to the colossal columns of giant trees that supported the sky of Paititi.

He thought, Only here in this lost land beyond space and time, could I have found Janissa.

They were silent. Speech was not necessary. Hand jn hand they stood, lost in the warm, comforting awareness of each other’s presence, until Craddock’s voice called them back to the work of harnessing the Flame.

What could harness such a tremendous force, a power which burned in the heart of the spiral nebulae and kindled giant suns? The chain that bound Fenris-wolf? What was the Flame?

They did not know. But men do not know what electricity is, either. Yet they can tame it with insulated wires. What was needed here was insulation, but not only that. There must also be a means of stimulating the Flame. A safe way.

That was not easy to find. First the last fragments of the lost record had to be taken from Craddock’s mind. Time after time hypnosis probed into his memories, and gradually the cryptic symbols made longer lines on the recording pad. Janissa could read those symbols for her own language was founded upon it, as her own civilization was built on the earlier culture of the vanished First Race. Also technicians were helpful.

For there were semantic difficulties. Raft knew the Indio dialect thoroughly, but he did not know the intricacies of Janissa’s more highly developed language. There were symbols she could not explain to him. Then a chemist, perhaps, would sketch charts, electro-chemical hookups, or atomic patterns, until the answer clicked in Raft’s mind.

He was no technician, though, and could not have built the device alone. Nor could Janissa. But his different background of human science was invaluable in casting light from another angle on the problem. There was the matter of the amulet, for example.

“When you turn the stone, it slows down metabolism,” Raft pointed out. “That means the radiation is blocked at a variable rate. What blocks it? Something opaque to the vibration, eh?”

“The metal?” a physicist hazarded. “It’s-an alloy of chrom-ite. Vanadium, perhaps. We’ll have it tested.”

For, though the last secrets of the records in Craddock’s memory had been discovered by now, there were still gaps. In the days of the First Race, different elements had existed in the valley, elements which were now exhausted.

They found that the truth lay not only in the material of the amulet’s setting, but in the intricate interlocking of alloys, a very tiny machine powered by the induced radiation of the energy-source itself, the spark in the crystal. That crystal was simply quartz, but how the radiant atom had been put into it Raft couldn’t guess.

The secret, then, lay in a complicated arrangement of various alloys that seemed to block the energy-output of the spark. Part of this knowledge they gleaned from Craddock’s hypnotically-stimulated memories; the rest they found by simple analysis. There was, finally, a dead end.

For they knew what elements they needed, and some of them no longer existed in Paititi.

Then the practical value of an alien culture was demonstrated. Raft thought of the possibility first. He had brought considerable equipment to Paititi in his rucksack, medical supplies, concentrated food in little tins, and there were his personal belongings, as well as Craddock’s.

His watch yielded platinum, which was vital. There was tin to be found in the rucksack, and the firearms were taken apart to provide a treasure of necessary metals.

The laboratories of the technicians swiftly analyzed the loot, broke it down, and formed new alloys. Given the raw material, they could, at last, work out the equation.

The machine, when finished, was not large. Specifications had clearly indicated its proportions. It stood on a tripod, coming approximately to Raft’s chest, a surprisingly simple device of crystal, metal, and hollow tubes.

The integral part of it was the fuse, which floated free in a mercury bath atop the gadget. This was the safety, the innocuous-seeming footlong tube that had the power to control the tremendous radiations the rest of the machine was built to stimulate.

“Parror’s bound to fail,” Raft said. “Those special alloys—they don’t exist in Paititi. He can’t possibly make the safety control, and without it he’d know the experiment would be too dangerous.”

Janissa was less certain.

“Parror has a blind confidence in himself. He might try to substitute other materials. The sooner we test this, Brian, the better I’ll feel.

But the test was not spectacular. The thing was handled by remote control, to minimize the danger. Even with the tiny spark of energy in the amulet, there was peril.

Raft used a scanning glass to examine the amulet, five hundred feet away on the mossy plain. He looked briefly around the crowd that surrounded him—Craddock, Janissa, the technician and, with a silent prayer, turned on the power. Nothing happened. Machine and amulet remained as they had been.

“Doesn’t it power the spark?” Janissa breathed.

“It ought to stimulate it,” Raft said, and moved the needle on his rheostat device. He moved-it too far. From the amulet a spear of light shot straight up, and simultaneously the moss for a hundred feet around sprang into—life! It writhed and crawled visibly, the ordinary progress of growth accelerated incredibly by die radiation of the stimulated spark.

Hastily Raft adjusted the rheostat. But he was smiling. He knew, without the need for further experiment, that the machine was a success. It remained now only to discover whether its power could control the Flame itself. Raft thought it could, since it would, via induction, have all the Flame’s power.

But the danger struck too soon.

CHAPTER XIII. FLYING DEMONS

BRIAN RAFT WAKENED to see Janissa’s face above him. The light she carried glowed through the darkened room.

“Brian!”

He blinked at her.

“Janissa—what’s wrong?”

“It’s Parror,” she said. “I’ve touched his mind. He’s on his way to the Flame.”

That brought Raft bolt upright. “Good god! You’re sure?”

She nodded, her eyes shadowed with fear.

“His barrier slipped for an instant. I had been watching my mirror and, suddenly, I felt his thought. He goes by a secret way to waken the Flame.”

“Where is he now?”

“In the forest somewhere. I could not tell. I could see only what he intended, and the secret way he will take. Brian, we must stop him somehow!”

“We will,” Raft said. “Wake up Craddock. Then we’ll rouse the king.”

Janissa slipped away, and Raft hastily donned his garments. His mind was working at top speed. He could not have guarded against this contingency, yet he felt at fault. Parror must have a duplicate machine, but it could not possibly be successful, without the special alloys that did not exist in Paititi. If Parror aroused the Flame, disaster would result.

The three of them went to Darum’s suite. Vann was guarding the entrance, since it was the hour for sleep. He stared at them curiously, his scarred soldier’s face hard. But when he heard the nature of their errand, he let them pass.

“Nevertheless, I’d better go with you,” he said, falling in at their heels. “Assassinations have been cleverly managed before this.”

Lights softly illuminated Darum’s chamber. The king himself was there, relaxed on the cushions of his dais. He sprang awake instantly as they approached. His hand dropped toward the silks and came up with a long-bladed dagger. But he said nothing.

“There’s no need for weapons” Raft growled. “Parror’s got his own and he’s ready to use it.”

“Parror?” Darum let the knife fall. “You mean—the Flame?”

“Tell him, Janissa.”

She explained swiftly. The king frowned in indecision.

“You say his machine will not work?”

“Oh, it’ll work all right, but it will wreck things without the safety device,” Raft pointed out. “Our only chance now is to get there before him, if we can. And if we can’t, we’ll take our own instrument. We may be able to check the Flame before it’s too late.”

“I was dreaming a strange dream,” Darum said slowly. “I lay dead, I thought, here in my own chamber, and a shadow hung over Paititi. A shadow of light. Of life. But it could not bring life back to me, and it had power only to destroy. I wonder, now, if the vision will come true.”

His voice was remote and strange, as if the memory of the dream had carried him back into the dream itself.

“It was a true dream, so far as the shadow goes,” Janissa said. “There will be death for all of us, unless Parror is stopped.”

“Death!” the king murmured as if he had heard only that one word out of all she said.

“Death.”

Raft thought he recognized something in the timber of the soft, deep voice. He had heard Darum speak that way before. If the madness was coming back upon the king, at this moment of all moments when action and clear thinking were needed, ghastly things might happen.

“Parror will reach the Flame before you,” Darum said in a soft monotone. “That much I—see.” He dropped his head suddenly and hid his face in his hands. “I see no further yet.” His voice came muffled. “Death—death in my dream. This room is full of death!”

The voice was wild now, but his face was still hidden. Madness wailed in the deep resonance of Darum’s words, and yet there was conviction too, as if even in his madness