The Golden Amazons of Venus Part 14

As though that first laugh had somehow eased the necessity for a carefully enforced silence, there came a whole burst of unseen and eerie merriment. There was a murmur of many voices. Then it died away again.

There was still nothing visible, and the silence was once more unbroken.

"For Lord's sake, let's get out of here!" Portok gasped. "This place is ghost ridden!"

"There are no ghosts here, little red-faced man!" boomed a voice.

The sound had seemed to come from somewhere overhead. From the empty void above, where there was nothing at all until the cloud canopy was reached many thousands of feet up. One of the _Viking's_ crew bared his teeth in a sudden panic and lifted his ray-gun to fire blindly upward.

Before he could pull the trigger there was a blinding blue flash and a crash like summer thunder. Captive lightning! The ray-gun flew from the man's hands and landed a few feet away, its wooden stock badly charred and its barrel a glowing ma.s.s of fused metal.

"Let your weapons rest, for they are useless here!" commanded that same booming voice from above. "Whence came ye, strangers in odd clothing who have traveled in a s.h.i.+p like a blue whale? What do ye seek here in the Outer Isles?"

Gerry stepped forward, a few feet ahead of the group. He shouted that they were a scientific exploring party who had come from Earth in a s.p.a.ce-s.h.i.+p. There was a brief period of silence, as though men consulted in whispers. Then the voice called him again.

"You there--the leader! The Council of Elders will talk with you. Go fifty paces to your right, to where there are two white stones, and then come forward between them. Do not be afraid. You will not be harmed."

"Are you going to take the chance, Chief?" Steve whispered. Gerry nodded.

"I'll have to."

About fifty yards to his right Gerry saw two white stones. They were set some twelve or fifteen feet apart, on the very edge of the invisible barrier. Gerry walked over, turned left, and then walked squarely in between the stones. He held one arm protectingly in front of him, but this time his hand did not encounter any barrier. Instead--he found himself standing under the arch-way of a gate with a mighty city spread before him!

The city had simply appeared in a flash, with its mighty towers soaring up to the sky, as soon as he stepped over the outer line of the arch.

Whatever it was that held the place invisible from outside, it had ceased to function for him as soon as he came within the limits of the outer surface of the walls. Glancing back, he saw that his companions were still staring blankly at the spot he had just quitted. They were evidently unable to see either him or any part of the city.

"It's all right, Steve!" he shouted. "Just hold everybody there till I come back."

Doors of heavily carved gla.s.s slid noiselessly out of recesses within the wall to close the gate through which Gerry had just entered. The arch in which he stood was inside the thickness of the wall, faced with white marble, inlaid with designs in gold. Ahead, he could see a broad avenue that ran from the gateway down through the center of the city. It was tree lined and pleasant, thronged with people. Flowers grew in little plots in front of the gold and white houses. Small furry animals, dogs, were evidently kept as pets. They drowsed on the doorsteps or scampered about the neat gardens.

Half a dozen men were standing around Gerry, within the arch of the gate. They were slight in stature though wiry, with heads a little larger than normal and exceptionally high foreheads. Their skin bore a tawny tinge, similar to that of the Amazons of Savissa. Two of them, who immediately took up posts just inside the gla.s.s portals of the gate, wore a semi-military uniform that included a gilded helmet. The others wore white cotton tunics and high leather shoes. It suddenly struck Gerry that this was the first place on Venus that he had visited where the majority of the citizens did not go heavily armed at all times.

Perhaps it was a good omen.

One of the men stepped forward, a bearded and gray-haired man who bore a gold-tipped staff.

"I am Gool, chairman of the Council of Elders of Moorn," he said in the deep voice that Gerry had heard outside. "The Council has decided to see you at once. You are the first outsider who has been permitted to enter the city of Moorn--White Queen of the Outer Isles--in countless generations. It would not have been permitted even now if you had been a man of this planet. Come with me."

They went up a flight of steps and climbed into a metal car that hung from an overhead rail supported by columns along the street. Gool touched a b.u.t.ton, and the car shot ahead at high speed along the overhead mono-rail. The old man, who had settled comfortably back on one of the upholstered seats, was faintly smiling as he watched Gerry's face.

"You are puzzled, stranger?" he asked at last.

"Yes. There seemed to be nothing on the plain but a lot of holes bored in the rock, and now...."

"And now you find yourself in the city of Moorn," Gool said. "A knowledge of dimensional control is one of the reasons why we of this city have lived in peace and safety for so many centuries while the rest of the planet is torn by constant wars."

"Dimensional control?" Gerry said slowly. Gool nodded.

"Yes. It is hard to put it into language that will be clear to one who has no knowledge of our science. Perhaps I can explain it by saying that the human eye is a three-dimensional organism, and therefore capable of perceiving only things that fall into that same category. There are a great many things in the universe, some of the greatest importance, that the ordinary man's senses are incapable of perceiving. We have learned how to cast a protective screen of fourth-dimension rays about our city, and the effect is that it becomes completely invisible to the human eye.

Do I make myself clear?"

"Not entirely," Gerry grinned. "But I do know that your screen works!

But, since your science is so far ahead of the other people of Venus, why don't you rule the entire planet?"

"The other races are all barbarians," Gool said with a sort of disdainful gravity. "We prefer to live here in our peaceful isolation and not bother with them. That is an essential part of our philosophy."

The speeding mono-rail car mounted higher as it neared the center of the city. The track seemed to end on the blank wall halfway up the tallest of the buildings, but as the car came near a circular doorway suddenly opened just in time to let it through. They halted in a circular chamber where heavy springs caught and allayed the last of the car's momentum, and a pair of gold-helmeted guards saluted Gool as they helped him to alight.

"The Council is ready and waiting, my Lord," said one. Gool nodded over his shoulder to Gerry.

"Follow me," he commanded.

The Council of Elders of Moorn sat at a U-shaped table in a high-ceilinged room whose walls were hung with heavy and very ancient tapestries. The dozen members of the council were all old men, gray-beards who seemed dwarfed by the high-backed chairs in which they sat. They listened with grave attention to Gerry's account of what he had seen of conditions on Venus, but their austere faces showed no sign of animation when he again suggested that they should intervene in the planet's affairs.

"We are not interested," Gool said listlessly.

Suddenly the short-wave alarm in Gerry's helmet buzzed loudly. He pressed the receiving switch.

"Listen, Chief!" Steve Brent's voice was tense and excited as it came from the ear-phones, "I just got a message from Tanda back in Larr.

There's h.e.l.l to pay back there! The Scaly Ones have in some way managed to storm one of the barrier forts, and now they're pouring over the borders of Savissa in great hordes. They're armed with supode rays, too!"

Gerry switched off the radio, and leaned forward with his hands on the carved table.

"Now is the time for you to act!" he snapped. "Lansa is a mad-man. He plans to overrun all Venus. If you come to the aid of the Amazons at this time, it will...."

"Our isolation of centuries is not to be broken," Gool interrupted.

Watching the emotionless faces of the Council of Elders, he felt as though he were wading through mud. He was getting nowhere! The inertia of these gray-beards was a leaden and tangible thing.

"But if Lansa wins he may come after you!" he urged. "Your walls are invisible, but they're there. I could feel them with my hands. Now that Lansa has the equipment to project the supode ray, he may bring them down and...."

"We take no part in what goes on outside our walls," Gool repeated firmly. "We will give you the metal to repair your own s.h.i.+p. If you and some of your men wish to return quickly to the mainland in the meantime, we will send you across in our flying cars. That is the most that we can do."

Half a dozen flying cars rested on a broad platform on top of one of the walls of the city of Moorn. Many bells were tolling the noonday chimes as Gerry Norton led his armored men from the _Viking_ aboard the compact little flying machines. There was room for six men in each car, the pilot and five pa.s.sengers. Only Angus and the necessary a.s.sistants had remained behind to repair the s.p.a.ce-s.h.i.+p with the materials supplied by the men of Moorn. Gerry leaned from his car to shake hands with Gool, who was leaning on his gold-tipped staff.

"Thanks for this much help," Gerry said. "Next time we meet I'll tell you...."

"We shall not meet again, my friend," Gool said with a half smile. The words seemed definitely ominous to Gerry, but before he could say anything more the old man had bowed ceremonially and then stepped back off the landing platform.

The flying cars of Moorn were shallow bowls of some gleaming blue metal, oval in shape and with three comfortably upholstered seats. They had no visible means of propulsion. Curved winds.h.i.+elds of heavy gla.s.s protected the pa.s.sengers from the air-blast of swift motion. Gerry got in beside the pilot of the leading car, who was a slight and taciturn Moornian with the big head and high forehead of his race. A complicated control board was fixed in place before him. Closana and Portok were in the seat next behind, while two more members of the _Viking's_ crew occupied the rear seat.

"Ready?" the pilot asked. Gerry nodded.

The pilot touched a switch on the control board before him, and three globular dials glowed with an iridescent light. The s.p.a.ce-car rose easily from the landing platform, moving upward and outward at a steep angle. There was neither noise nor vibration. The city vanished as soon as they pa.s.sed outside the zone of dimensional-control on its outer walls. Looking back and down, Gerry saw only the pitted rock of the foundations far below. A cart was moving toward the beach with some bars of metal for the _Viking_.