CHAPTER XXIV.

THE CRIMSON RAINBOW.

“You shall interpret for me, child Nereid, if we wish to talk at a distance.” Rhana stood before us. “And you, Jeff Grant, are you ready? You shall see me, the great woman conqueror!”

She was garbed rather differently now. At first I did not understand the reason. Ah, but I was soon to know! The same sheathlike body shield; same type of cloak; same grotesque metal headdress. But on her gray bare limbs a strip of flexible metal was fastened, hinged at the knee to bend as she walked; a metal plate like a broad collar was on her neck and shoulders. The chains that usually dangled from her wrists were gone. Along her arms, as on her legs, were strips of gray metal, wound, it seemed, with tiny white wire.

She stood regarding me with impassive face. “You are ready, Jeff Grant?”

“Yes.”

She moved away. I thought as she walked, that her arms were joined to her body-shield by folds of black fabric.

It was late afternoon. Against the fading daylight Rhana wore dark-lensed glasses. She offered a pair to me, but I refused them. She adjusted a pair on Nereid. Strange woman! Impassive, expressionless now; calmly imperturbable. Yet within her there was that obvious vanity. I should see her triumph; she wished even Nereid to witness it.

We boarded the aëro. A crowd of Gian women stood silently in the passage and watched us off. We lifted gently; moved forward, up and into the afternoon twilight of the Lowlands.

We were all in the forward control room. There seemed no one aboard save us who were here. Nereid and I, and Rhana; and two Gian women, and two men. One of the men was Bhool. He had no glasses. He sat crouched in a corner, shading his eyes, and did not speak. Occasionally Rhana issued him some gruff order. He moved to obey, and stumbled in the light.

The others all wore the glasses. The two women were at the controls; the other man stood alert with a weapon upon Nereid and me.

The control room was about twenty feet square and ten feet high to its curved cabin roof. It occupied the full width of the aëro, except for the narrow deck which flanked it on both sides. There were several wide transparent window panes.

Looking forward to where the bowsprit glowed luminous ahead of us was a broad streamline window, V-shaped.

The controls were there on a table--a row of small switches and domelike buttons, with an array of strange instruments of navigation on a board over them.

To one side, in the front pane, a projector was mounted, a bowl-like black projector with a grid of wires across its face. Its mechanism stood separate on a table near it--a range-finder like a small telescope swung in a universal; dials, and levers, and a coil, with wires to a storage tank that lay along the wall.

It was a short flight--we had not far to go. My heart was unreasonably pounding as I sat by Nereid, watching and waiting. The details of the meeting had been carefully arranged; there could be, Nereid was sure, no error. A lone, unarmed plane with a white banner to meet us at the Zero-level. The foreign minister would take off from it in a small helicopter and descend to us. He would come aboard, at Rhana’s mercy, trusting to her honor.

The world would offer every conciliation to her; land should be hers, for her people to live here in our world, at peace with us. There would be, when the meeting took place, another earth plane in the far upper distance. It would carry Dr. Plantet, Polly and a corps of observers with a telescopic image-finder by which our world would see in the mirrors this friendly meeting. Propaganda to insure a friendly public spirit, so that the new race could come and settle and be welcomed.

Nereid had been very earnest. “Do you understand all that I say?”

And Rhana had said: “Yes, of course,” with impassive face and a tone devoid of any feeling.

* * * * *

We flew away from the setting sun, upward in a long slant toward the Zero-level. The control room was silent. Rhana sat alone to one side. Bhool crouched in a corner. The two Gian women were intent at their instruments. Near the center of the room Nereid and I sat together, with our guard watching us.

The windows were broad and clear. The abyss moved past us, their gaunt, rounded cliffs moving backward and dropping away as we mounted. To the west, high above our level, a golden glow marked the setting sun. It was behind us, and we faced a silver night, moonlight streaming above the dark elevations in the murky distance.

Occasionally Nereid would whisper to me. “It will be all right, Jeff?” A hope, a prayer. But I noticed that she was very watchful, her gaze roving the cabin, remarking all its details.

Once Rhana turned. “Nereid, child, do you hear from them now?”

“No. But I am sure they are coming.”

At last we saw ahead of us, a thousand or two thousand feet above us, the plane with its streaming banner. It circled like a giant bird, with motionless outspread wings. The gold of the sun and the silver of the rising moon mingled upon it. But the yellow faded; it soon turned silver, ghostlike.

An added tenseness had come to all of us in the cabin. The goggled women at the controls looked questioningly for Rhana’s orders. Our flight slackened; we hovered, with the plane almost over us. Its banner fluttered, a long silver streamer in the moonlight. The shadows of the abyss gathered beneath us; the cabin, to my eyes, was dim; moonlight came in the side windows and lay in white liquid pools on the floor; it bathed the control table; it etched with silver lines the dark figures of the two women sitting watchfully there.

We were evidently just beneath the Zero-level; the abyss was a dark void some ten or twelve thousand feet down to an undulating rocky floor. I gazed up at the cabin ceiling. Through the transparent pane there I could see the plane with its white banner. Slowly circling, evidently making ready to put out its helicopter.

Nereid whispered: “Did you see the newscasters’ aëro, as they call it?”

“Yes.”

I had seen it, indeed. The plane carrying Polly. It could still be seen--a tiny dark speck up in the distant silver sky. Nereid said aloud to Rhana:

“There is the aërocar watching us.” Her voice was earnest, tense, vibrating with her emotion. “You see it off there? This world watching us, great Rhana--to see your friendly greeting--to welcome you--”

Rhana moved toward us in the shadows with her soundless, catlike tread. “So? Yes, I see it. You say they have instruments to see us clearly from such a distance? That is very good.” Her tone was emotionless.

She moved away like a gray shadow. For a moment I did not notice her. My attention was fixed on the ghostly outlines of the plane over us. It bore now a small light; in the glow I saw the helicopter in its bracket; the figure of the kindly gray-haired foreign director--I recalled him well--showed in the helicopter seat.

My heart stopped, and then wildly plunged. Incredible, this that I was seeing! From our cabin a light sprang upward. It glowed, narrowed to a beam. It caught the plane up there. The fluttering white banner of truce shriveled and burned. The plane rocked. It tilted; rocked and swayed in the grip of the light.

Incredible! I was on my feet with Nereid clinging to me in stupefied horror. The Gian man sprang, a gray menacing shadow in the gloom of the cabin--sprang and crouched between me and Rhana. His weapon was leveled upon me. Rhana was bending tense over the projector mechanism. It hissed, snapped and hummed with its current.

The plane up there was rocking, struggling in the grip of the beam like a wounded bird. Coming down.

It only lasted an instant. Then Rhana snapped off the light. I stared, transfixed with horror. The silver shape of the plane swayed crazily. It was on fire; red tongues of flame licked at it. The light sprang again; caught it; tilted it over--left it. The plane flopped in an arc, righted, and flopped again. At our level now. Then below us. With its crazy swoops the red-yellow flames streamed from it.

Down--then I saw it whirl in a dive. A red-flaming torch, dropping, spinning downward with a line of flame and smoke like a tail streaming above it. Down--dwindling as it fell into the abyss. A tiny red spot down in the darkness--a flaming falling torch. A soundless impact down there, with a faint red glow where it lay.

* * * * *

In the dark tenseness of our cabin Rhana’s voice rang out. Triumphant now. “You see, Jeff Grant, how Rhana rules this world?”

A minute. It had taken no more than a minute. Sixty seconds is sometimes an eternity. I stood confused, my senses groping with the shock of these whirling events.

“Oh, Jeff!” Nereid’s voice; her hand plucking to turn me. I saw through the side window, far off to the west where the sun had been golden, but now there was only the purple night--saw a white flare puff like a bomb. The Gian encampment was off there.

Rhana’s voice came sharply. “What is that?”

It was no Gian light-flare. She was surprised, and she rasped: “What is that?”

It caught little Nereid; confused with horror, she blurted: “The earth attacking you--you have broken faith!”

And then there was a red-yellow spot like a bursting shell in the distant darkness. It seemed, after an interval, that we could hear very faintly in the heavy air of the abyss, the muffled explosion.

“You--have broken faith--”

Amazement swept Rhana; amazement and a dawning wild anger. “Attacking? Your earth dares attack--me?” She stood half crouching behind the Gian man whose weapon was still levied at Nereid and me. “Attacking?” The moonlight caught her hawklike gray face, showed it distorted now with fury. “So? I will show them! Why, there will be millions of them dead in another day--”

She straightened; issued swift orders to the women at the controls. Our aëro began rising. My thoughts whirled. Sixty seconds. It had been enough time for that watching plane to radio Washington; and for Washington to order its army, already assembled in the abyss, to the attack. Another red explosion showed off there.

We were rising swiftly. I whispered: “Nereid, what is she going to do?”

“She--oh, Jeff, she’ll rush to the Highlands, find some great city, loose the disease broadcast, pollute your great cities!”

To-night, in one flight, spread death over the world. Thoughts are swift-flying things. The red spot in the abyss where the plane had fallen was still almost beneath us. Nereid was whispering to me vehemently, but my thoughts flew afield.

The observing plane with Polly and Dr. Plantet could never follow our nearly thousand-mile-an-hour flight. A few hours in the moonlight over the Highlands, loosing the germs of that foul disease, polluting the air of our great cities! It would sweep our continents. What use if, in her demoniac, unreasoning fury, Rhana was finally brought down? What if our attacking army back there were able to annihilate the Gians? They would drive the Gians out of the grottos in a few days, no doubt. What of it? An uncontrollable plague would be sweeping our world, bringing death to millions.

But what was Nereid saying? Her vehement whispers penetrated my consciousness; her fingers were digging into my arm.

“That little coil, there at the edge of the control table--you see it? I can get to it with a sudden leap. I know what that coil controls. If I could tear it with my fingers--”

The confusion of my thoughts dropped away. Death? There is a calmness comes to one who finds death at hand. It seemed that all my thoughts were sharpening--all my senses sharp and clear to hear Nereid’s whispered words of death.

“--tear it, rip it away. It controls the current in the side pontoons, Jeff. If I break it, we will fall. You see? Fall the way the plane fell--kill us all.”

Was the burning plane still almost beneath us? An eternity passed in these few whispering seconds.

* * * * *

“I’ll jump at the table, Jeff. You leap on the guard. He’ll fire at you--he’ll forget me. You see?”

“Nereid--death, now?”

“Yes. We’ll fall--but Jeff, those millions of people!”

Death? Why, Polly was in that distant plane--Polly! I would never see her again.

“Death, Nereid? You are right. Those millions of people or just us.”

“Arturo--and your Polly--will remember us.”

Her fingers seemed pressing a good-by. I answered it. Polly’s face was shining in my mind. Good-by, Polly--

“Jeff, when I start to move, you leap. Now--”

“You wait, Nereid! A second after the guard has come after me! Your best chance then.”

The figure of Bhool had come crouching toward us. He shouted a warning: “Rhana!”

It may have distracted the guard. A rush of confusion was in the moonlit cabin. I leaped low at the guard’s legs; the upward desperate sweep of my arm struck his weapon; its stab missed me. Nereid’s leap landed her at the control table. The two women and Rhana were upon her; but her frantic clutching hands ripped and tore at the little coil. The cabin seemed to lurch; the shafts of moonlight swayed. Through the windows the abyss was turning over.

We were falling, irrevocably. Every one in the cabin knew it. Death! The strife among us ceased abruptly; the women cast Nereid away and Bhool gave a long piercing scream of terror.

Falling.

But I saw Rhana spread her arms. Black folds of fabric hung like wings from them to her body. The metal strips on her limbs and her metal collar glowed green with a current in them. She flung open the door, gripping its casement to steady herself. I heard her words clearly. “So you wish death, you fools!”

Realization swept me. She wore a device like the pontoons of this aëro to protect her, as a parachute once protected the old-fashioned aviator. She was on the deck.

I recall snatching up Nereid, then leaped with her and caught Rhana at the rail. We three went over into the uprushing void. Rhana was struggling silently, and her arms flapped like a frantic bird. The wind rushed up at us. An endless fall. Momentarily I was aware of a gray shape like an arrow plunging past. A muffled, splintering crash came from below, where the aëro lay, mangled metal upon the rocks.

Rhana fought to cast me off, but I was far stronger. My arm was crooked about her throat, and I held Nereid with the other. The glowing metal on Rhana burned against my flesh. We fell--a fluttering gray bird with two enemies clinging to it, pulling it down with their weight. Rhana’s fingers tore at me futilely. I tightened my grip about her throat. I think I recall a crack. Rhana went limp.

A black surface of rock rushed up at us and struck us.

* * * * *

“Jeff! Come back to me.” Soft, whispered, woman’s voice; soft arms were holding me. “Jeff, dear--please!”

I struggled back to consciousness as though from an emptiness remote. This was Polly’s voice; these were her arms. I murmured: “Polly, dear?”

There was a dark confusion around me; but in the midst of it I lay and knew that I was unhurt. And Polly was here, with me at last. Dr. Plantet was examining me; he said I was unharmed. I remembered Nereid.

“Polly, where is she?”

Then Dr. Plantet’s voice: “She’s all right, Jeff. Here she is.”

And Nereid’s voice: “Is he safe? I--I was afraid it had killed him.”

All like a dream. My head was whirling with it, and my ears roared. But I found myself sitting up, with Polly helping me. Dark rocks; heavy air, making me gasp. Grim dark shadows, but the moonlight hung a great silver canopy far overhead.

Other figures were here, and Dr. Plantet’s plane stood near by. Its engine smoked; its navigators were moving about it anxiously. A red glow a mile away showed where the other plane had fallen. And nearer, there was a tangled mass of gray-white metal. Rhana’s aëro.

“No one left in it alive,” said some one. “We’ve been there.”

And Rhana--she lay here on the rocks, broken, crumpled. I did not go to look at her.

“Neck broken,” said Dr. Plantet. “Broken when she struck.”

I let it pass.

A man came up. “I don’t know if we can get up out of here with that engine. The Allen climber is the worst type for a depth like this.”

“We’ll start.” Dr. Plantet helped me up. “Good enough, Jeff--you’re fine. You want to start now, Smithby--we’re ready.”

Nereid, unhurt and gently smiling, stood before me. My body, and perhaps Rhana’s, had broken her fall. She murmured to Polly: “We said good-by to you and Arturo up there. I’m so glad, Jeff, it did not have to be good-by--not for you and Polly.”

But Arturo?

There was a distant shout. Two figures, half a mile away, were clambering down the rocks, shouting weakly.

They came. Our men from the plane here rushed out to meet them, and came back, carrying the two bloodstained, tattered figures, covered with mud and slime. Their torn and bleeding feet were wrapped with cloth into bulky bundles.

Reunion. A babble of voices. I stood confused, my ears still roaring, my legs weak from the shock of the fall. I heard Tad’s cheery, tired voice. I saw Arturo carried past me, and glimpsed his haggard white face, his eyes burning with fever. The man set him down. Arturo stood; he called; and I saw Nereid run like a child into his opened arms.

* * * * *

One scene more--an hour later, as from the cabin of the Allen climber we gazed down into the abyss. We had come up laboring. At the Zero-level we soared to the west. The full moon was well above the horizon behind us. Beneath, the Lowlands were white with patches of moonlight, black with inky shadows. Ahead some twenty miles and a few thousand feet down, the jagged ridge of the Moon Mountains lay white and black, sharp-etched as a lunar landscape.

The abyss was like a great deep bowl, rising everywhere to a dim high horizon. To the south the tremendous slope rose toward the Carolines. Our earth artillery had been sent there--a precautionary measure if the truce should fail.

We could see now the bombardment proceeding--the Essen fire-shells rising in a tremendous hundred-mile arc, dropping, pounding the Moon ridge; some of them releasing their gases.

Over the ridge a covey of war-planes hung, directing the range. Occasionally a light-flare was dropped. Bombs were dropping. We could see them strike. The noise was like a muttering muffled thunder in the distance.

The Gians had evidently remained inactive. Then we saw their attacking light-beams spring up. The planes scattered--some of them were caught. But the slow bombardment from a hundred miles away, went methodically on. It would take days.

Smithby, at my elbow, babbled of the earth plans. And questioned me avidly.

With my information to give our authorities, we could land planes closer; send in an army, fighting in the grottos--or perhaps the artillery could pound this porous ridge to pieces in a week or two.

Could the enemy retreat farther underground? We would have to stop that.

If we could get the wind right, our gas-shells would fill those caverns--smoke the enemy out like bees. And if we could get them out into the daylight, blinded--

Nereid’s cry silenced him. “The Middge! Look!”

From the dark northern horizon a crimson light came in a beam. Light, or fire? A beam of something, crimson as a blood-stream. It rose from the northern distance; like a gigantic crimson jet of fluid it arched up and fell. An arc, huge as a rainbow--a rainbow of blood across the void of the abyss. Its distant source we could not see; its end fell here upon the Mountains of the Moon and drenched them with its crimson.

The planes overhead winged away; the earth bombardment stopped. We approached within ten miles or so, with our image-finder trained upon the scene.

Smithby could never forget his mission; our snapping sender flashed out the image to be caught and relayed over the world. Hundreds of millions of people everywhere sat tense at their mirrors watching the silent red scene.

Rainbow of blood-light falling upon the dark Moon Mountain ridge. A great round pool glowing at the end of the rainbow. The mountains were melting; as though they were molds of black and white wax under the heat of a pressure torch, they melted.

The rainbow end moved over, slowly traveling along the ridge, melting it away--wax fuming, bubbling and plowing in lava streams down the slopes. The nearer end of the ridge where first the blood-light had struck was a depression now--a great caldron where the ridge had been; a caldron of fused molten rock, viscous, cooling from yellow-red to red and then to black. Along the whole length of the ridge the blood-red rainbow sprayed its penetrating heat.

A silent, red inferno. And presently there were dim muffled sounds as underground gases exploded; and the hiss of the licking gas flames.

We could feel the heat. The glare rose and painted all the sky with blood.

Abruptly the crimson rainbow was gone. The Moon ridge shad vanished into a boiling trench of lava, topped by hungry licking red-green tongues of flame, with a huge black gas-cloud, rolling up.

The fires cooled and died. The red turned slowly black. The trench lay naked and dead in the moonlight--fused rock cooling into shapes fantastic. A dead, empty trench with a gray mantle of ashes sifting down upon it, to mark where the Gians had been.