IV
Beneath the descending cruiser the roof of the forest gleamed in russet and emerald splendor above a labyrinth of wooded archipelagoes.
It still seemed a little like a dream to Langford, but he knew that it wasn’t. The vision that he had experienced three days before, standing beside his wife in a white-walled room, had taken on the bright, firm texture of reality.
He stood before the controls, with a thrumming deck under him, and studied the shifting landscape through the White Hawk’s viewport. He had never before flown directly over the Amazon Basin, and a river of shining wonder seemed to flow into his mind as he stared.
It was Joan who broke the spell. She tugged gently at his arm, her face anxious. “I don’t see any sign of the three rivers!” she exclaimed. “Do you?”
Langford swung about. “We haven’t passed the great cataract of Itamaraca yet,” he said. “It rushes straight along for five or six miles. Then it becomes the most impressive waterfall in South America. A few miles below the falls the river spreads out into a lake.”
Langford turned back to the viewport. “When we see the lake we can look for another branching and the island. The island is right in the middle of the three rivers you saw in your vision. But it’s just a dot on the electrograph. Are you sure it has a distinctive shape?”
“It has a high, rocky shoreline,” Joan assured him. “The central tributary cuts it in half and the other rivers flow around it. It’s heavily forested, but the rent in the foliage where the ship came down is so wide you should be able to see it from ten thousand feet. The treetops are charred over a half mile radius.”
Langford smiled and squeezed her arm. “I bet you’d be happy mapping the Amazon in a bark canoe like a twentieth century explorer,” he said.
He grinned wryly. “A big rock island, mysterious as a cave of vampire bats, bisects the largest tributary west of the Tocantins, and it’s just a dot on an electrograph to us. We’ve explored every crevice of every world in the System, but sometimes I envy our ancestors; they had elaborate pictorial maps to guide them.”
After a moment the ship leveled off, and the Great Cataract swept into view. It was a shining whiteness between two towering walls of foliage festooned with hanging vines, and flame-tongued flowers upon which the red sunlight seemed to dance.
It foamed and cascaded over jagged rocks, swept around little clumps of submerged vegetation, and tore at sloping mud banks glimmering in the sunlight.
Then the cataract became a receding blur and the wide river split up.
Langford heard Joan cry out.
The island which loomed below was about eight miles in circumference and so heavily forested that it resembled a single shrub of wilderness proportions growing from a cyclopean stone flowerpot.
Its high banks were almost vertical, its summit a charred mass of foliage cleft by an enormous rent which funneled the sunlight downward to a circular patch of bare, scorched earth.
Something glittered on the forest floor, far below the blackened foliage. But whether it was the alien ship, or merely the glint of sunlight on the river which flowed completely through the island Langford could not determine from his aerial vantage point.
A divided island was really two islands, but Langford was in no mood for geological hairsplitting. Erosion had failed to efface the original, hoary uniqueness of that towering mass of jungle, and for all practical purposes it was one island still, its high banks and far-flung aerial traceries hemming it in, and sealing its teeming life in eternal solitude.
Langford turned and looked at Joan with eyes that were meshed in little wrinkles of confidence. “I’m going to gun her down through that gap!” he said. “We could crash through anywhere, but the best way to locate a wreck is to hew close to the cinder line!”
He bent grimly over the controls, in his mind a vision of a great host of alien creatures rushing toward him through the forest, swarming over the ship, refusing to let him emerge.
He feared their weapons, which he had never seen. He remembered the little statue with its suicidal impulses, and its ability to shed force-shell replicas of itself.
The ship thrummed as it swept downward, the lights in the control room blinking on and off. Lower it swept and lower. The blood was pounding in Langford’s temples when a black-rimmed funnel of swirling brightness yawned suddenly before the viewport. The same instant the cushioning pressure of the anti-gravity jets made itself felt, holding the ship suspended above the roof of the forest until its atomotors ceased to throb.
The ship descended under its own weight amidst a slowly dissolving pressure field. Sweeping down between the fire-blackened trees, it circled slowly about and settled to rest on the soggy forest floor.
When Langford and Joan emerged a warm breeze, laden with jungle scents, swept toward them. They stood for an instant close to the airlock, staring about them.
No sound broke the stillness except the insistent hum of insects and the rustling of the vegetation on both sides of the ship. A few yards from where they were standing the ground sloped to the brown waters of a swift-running river, its surface flecked with white foam, and studded with little whirlpools that swirled with a darkly writhing turmoil as dry leaves fluttered down, twisting and turning in the breeze.
Twisting and turning above a limp form that lay sprawled on the riverbank, its bare shoulders horribly hunched, its head immersed in the muddy brown water.
Joan screamed when she saw it.
She broke from Langford’s restraining clasp and went stumbling forward until she was knee-deep in the swirling current. She was stooping and tugging in desperation at the half-submerged figure when Langford’s hand closed on her shoulder.
“Let me handle this,” he said, firmly; “it’s no job for a woman.”
On the bank Joan swung about to face him. “It’s a job for a mutant!” she protested, her lips shaking. “You don’t know how close he is to death. He’s still breathing, but if we don’t get him out—”
She broke off abruptly when she saw that Langford needed no urging. He was already on his knees, tugging at the sprawled form. For a moment he tried to succeed from the bank, his knees sunk deep into the mud, his neckcords swelling. Then, with a gesture of fierce impatience, he waded deep into the water and lifted the unconscious man on his shoulders.
Langford carried the man up the sloping bank, eased him to the ground and rolled him over. A small, wiry man, darkly bearded, his mouth hanging open! Staring down at the familiar face, Langford experienced a sense of irony so sharp and overwhelming it interfered with his breathing.
He leaned forward, and started working the man’s arms slowly up and down. He knelt in the soft mud, a murk of depth and shadow looming behind him, a grim anticipation in his stare.
Suddenly the man on the riverbank stirred, groaned and opened his eyes. “Hey, cut that out!” he grunted. “What in blazes are you trying to do, you devil? Wrench my arms from their sockets?”
“Good morning to you, Commander!” Langford said, chuckling.
“Langford!” Commander Gurney’s eyes began to shine, as though lit by fires from unfathomable depths of space. A convulsive shudder shook him. Digging his fists into the mud, he sat up straight.
“You stole my ship!” he rasped, staring at Langford accusingly. “What made you think I couldn’t trace my own cruiser? You can’t rip out infra-radiant alarm installations unless you know where to look. Didn’t you know I’d follow you in a fast auxiliary cruiser and get here ahead of you?”
“I was afraid you might, sir!” Langford smiled ruefully. “But it was a chance I had to take.”
Gurney’s eyes narrowed. “Your ship was sending out more automatic alarm rays than a chunk of radium. My men had orders to close in the instant you brought her down.”
“Just where are your men now, sir?” Langford asked.
Something happened to Gurney’s face. His features twitched and the strained intensity of his stare increased so sharply he seemed to be staring right through Langford into space.
“Those devilish things attacked us!” he muttered. “Exactly as that little statue did! There were dozens of them, ten feet tall, and they kept coming. We blasted, but the charges went right through them; they lifted my lads up in their devilish preying arms and dumped them in the river!”
Sweat gleamed on Gurney’s brow. “It was ghastly, Langford. In the river—like pieces of dead timber. The current carried them downstream. I was helpless. I—I kept blasting, but I couldn’t save them!”
“How did you save yourself?” Langford asked.
Gurney passed a dripping hand over his brow. “I was struggling with one of them when everything went blank. That’s all I remember.”
Langford stood up. “I don’t understand it. Why did that creature go away and leave you with your face submerged? Why didn’t it make sure you’d drift downstream too?”
“I’m sure I don’t know, Langford!” Gurney jerked a tremulous hand toward the wall of foliage on the opposite bank. “Why don’t you swim over to their ship and ask them? You’ll find the ship in a clearing about three hundred yards from the bank. They’ve cleared a path to it.”
“That’s just what I intend to do!” Langford said.
Joan paled and moved swiftly to his side, her eyes wide with alarm. “Ralph! You’re not going alone—”
Langford nodded. “I’m a pretty good swimmer,” he said.
Joan stared at him. “But why?”
“It’s a little hard to explain,” Langford said. “You’ve got a picture in your mind of something pretty horrible happening to me. Somehow I feel that everything about that picture is wrong. I’ve got to cross that stream, darling; I’d be a pretty poor specimen of a man if I turned back now, when we’re so close to the answer.”
Joan said nothing. She would have argued and pleaded, but she knew that it would have been of no use.
Five minutes later Langford was stripping on the riverbank. He slipped into the water quietly, and struck out with powerful, even strokes. On the opposite bank he turned an instant to flick a wet strand from his forehead, and wave to his wife. Then he struck off into the forest.
He was a hundred feet from the bank, walking with his shoulders squared, when something bright and incredible swirled up from the forest floor directly in his path.
“For your forbearance, your kindliness, thank you, Langford!” a voice said.
It was not a spoken voice. It was still and small and remote, and it seemed to come from deep inside Langford’s head. Langford stopped advancing; he stood utterly rigid, his temples pounding, his eyes riveted on a darting shape of flame.
“Don’t be alarmed, Langford,” the voice said. “I’m not a shape of flame. But I can wrap myself in blinding flame so that the human eye cannot see me as I am.”
“Who are you?” Langford heard himself asking.
“A traveler blown from his course by ill cosmic winds!” the voice said. “A lone and bewildered stranger from a universe so remote its light has not yet reached you. A genuinely frightened stranger and—a telepath, Langford.”
The voice paused, then went on. “I made you come to me just now. A promise of medals could not have done it, but I got inside your mind, and drew you to me. Medals, rewards, promotions; you prize them, don’t you? What a pity that I cannot stay until your tunic gleams with ribbons.”
Another pause. Then the voice said: “It is difficult to get the intimate feel of your language. You must forgive me if my speech seems a little strained.”
“Your speech. You—”
“You’re not afraid of me, Langford? No, you mustn’t be; you are the kindest of men. How can I convince you that I am—you have a phrase for it—letting down my hair? I shall leave you soon, my friend. I have repaired my ship, and I must try to return to my own people. But before I go I will tell you the truth.”
Another pause while the brightness pulsed. “You could have destroyed my ship when we met in the Asteroid Belt with a single blast; but you refused to do so. And I, not knowing you as I do now, tried to frighten you. There are so many worlds where intelligent life is cold and merciless that I was prepared for any emergency. I am rather proud of that little multiplying creature I shot out into the void. It was a child’s bauble in my world, Langford—a toy!
“I am alone, my friend. Alone in a ship that utterly dwarfs me. But you like large ships, too; we’re curiously alike in some respects. We’d never be satisfied with mechanical mastery on a puny scale!”
“Mechanical mastery?” Langford’s lips had gone cold. “Just what kind of mastery? Why did you attack Commander Gurney and his men?”
The shape of flame seemed to pulse with a curious, inward merriment. Langford could feel the merriment beating into his brain, waves upon waves of it.
“I didn’t attack them. I can no more divide by fission than you can. But when I saw them crouching by the river, their faces merciless, waiting to seize you, I got inside their minds and drove them into the river.
“Like chattering monkeys they fled from the terrifying images I planted in their minds. They were prepared to believe I was not one, but many, a swarming multitude. They floundered and swam until their strength gave out. When they could no longer swim they dragged themselves from the river, and went floundering through the jungle, fleeing from shapes that had no real existence.
“Good Lord!” Langford muttered.
“Their weapons are now at the bottom of the river. That stern and silly little man, who is nothing more than a jumble of bones, fell face down in the river; before I could reach his side you were lifting him up. You have won his undying gratitude. He will grumble and fume, but when he sees my ship disappearing into deep space you will wear ribbons, my friend. You will become—yes, a senior commander!”
“A senior—”
“Perhaps you’d like to see me as I really am, Langford, my friend! You’ll promise not to laugh? I may look a little ridiculous to you.”
Langford’s eyes were suddenly moist. “You couldn’t possibly look ridiculous to me,” he said.
“Well … I wouldn’t like to show myself to just anybody. Certainly not to Skin-and-Bones! But it’s terribly important that you know how completely I trust you. How else can I prove my gratitude?”
Slowly the shape of flame began to contract. Its edges became brighter, sweeping inward to become a small, dazzling circle of radiance that hovered in the air like a blazing signet ring.
In the middle of the ring a tiny form appeared. Amidst Langford’s rioting thoughts one thing stood out with mind-numbing clarity. The form was minute, so tiny that the mantis shape it had shot into the void would have utterly dwarfed it. The form was minute, and yet—it did resemble a mantis. Its arms were upraised, and its pinpoint eyes fastened on Langford with a blazing intensity that seemed to bore deep into his brain.
But there was no enmity in that stare. Only complete gratitude, trust and friendship. Yes, and a certain greatness!
“Now you see me as I really am!” the voice said. “I am so small that you could crush me between your thumb and forefinger. But I would not hesitate to alight on your thumb, my friend!”
A strange wonder throbbed in Langford’s brain. And suddenly he found himself thinking: “Jimmy Cricket!”
Yes, that was it! The tiny shape was as friendly, as puckish, as noble in essence as that little nursery rhyme will-o’-the-wisp, Jimmy Cricket. And it did look like a cricket; a chirping, gleeful, truly great cricket.
Suddenly down the long sweep of the years Langford saw two small human figures advancing over a path of golden bricks toward a glittering distant palace.
One of the forms was himself, the other his sister. They moved in awe and terror, because the palace was inhabited by a mighty wizard with truly terrifying powers. But when they reached the palace they met a human, likeable little man who wasn’t terrible at all. And they knew then that the mighty wizard was a humbug. But somehow in his simple humanness the wizard seemed even greater than he had been. Greater, but no longer terrifying.
Jimmy Cricket was—the Wizard of Oz. And he was something more. A lonely, wayfaring stranger, blown from his course by ill cosmic winds, taking reasonable precautions, but seeking only a responsive friendliness in the gulfs between the stars.
For a moment Langford felt a swirl of energy brush his fingertips, like the clasp of an intangible hand. Then the mental voice said: “Good heavens, Langford! You’re dripping wet! See how the dry leaves of the forest cling to your feet!”
Startled, Langford lowered his eyes.
When he looked up the circle of radiance was gone.
“Forgive me, Langford!” a faint, diminishing voice said. “But partings should not be prolonged! Goodbye, my friend!”
When Langford emerged on the riverbank, sunlight struck down over his tall, straight body, giving him the aspect of a Greek god emerging from a forest glade in the morning of the world.
He paused for an instant on the sloping bank to wave to his wife. Then he plunged into the river and swam straight toward her.