Part 10 (2/2)
”I divined that we were approaching the center of the city. Soon, indeed, I saw before me the sparkling walls of the amphitheatre I had descried from the hill of Observation at the locks. Here it is, that the great plays, the gigantic concerts, the operas, and services of the Pan-Tan are held. It was a seraphic, astounding picture. It rose in the midst of a great square of many acres in extent, where the light, purposely subdued, allowed its dazzling beauty subdued isolation. How wonderful! I stopped. For one instant, before hurrying on, I gazed upon a miracle of constructive and decorative art. One hundred columns of red gla.s.s rose upward, and between them was a wall, in tiers of green gla.s.s arches, and on the keystone of each a pink globe of fire. From the pillars sprang, in an inverted terrace formation, metallic brackets, carrying gorgeous chandeliers of a red bronze; the largest chandeliers were at the very upper edge of the building, and the cascade of light thus shed upon the splendid fabric was indescribably magnificent.
”But there was small time for wonder or examination. We swept on through the shadowy gardens about it, and my guide quickly brought me to the Hall of the Council, a low, inconspicuous building of yellow brick, one of the few discordant architectural notes in the whole city.
”The doors of the single chamber, which embraced all the interior s.p.a.ce, swung open, and I stood on the threshold of a shallow, rectangular depression, surrounded on all sides with benches, and holding in its central area a long table, at which, beneath tall lamps, sat, perhaps, a dozen men and one woman. Opposite to my point of view, in a niche upon the further wall, was the colossal figure of the Deity I had seen in the Patenta at the City of Light.
”The faces of the twelve men turned to us as we entered. The herald announced my errand with the customary salutation of 'Hebori bimo.' I was invited to descend to the central table. I advanced, and laying Chapman's chest, with its sealed communications upon the table, spoke:
”'I am a stranger. I have come to your world from the Earth. I bring news, celestial news, from the astronomers of the City of Light. I had a companion to whom all this was entrusted.' He was killed in the quarries of Tiniti. I came on, bidden so to do by Alca, the Superintendent. The papers of the Wise Men of the Patenta are here.'
”I laid the chest upon the table. My speech was yet unformed, and perhaps upon the delicate and intellectual faces before me, there dwelt, with the transient influence of a pa.s.sing thought, a smile of sympathy or amus.e.m.e.nt. Then a young being at the head of the table exclaimed in Martian:
”'Welcome, stranger. All who come to us are soon made one with ourselves. The Martian spirit is that of salutation and friends.h.i.+p. We have heard of the discoveries in the new commotions in planetary s.p.a.ce.
Our own astronomers have announced them. This great City of Scandor, the product of many centuries' toil and invention, is apparently doomed. It lies in the path, certainly defined and determined by observers, of a small cometary ma.s.s, which will plunge upon it a rain of rock and iron.
Even now this approaching body grows more and more visible in the sky.
The astronomers are working at the problem, hoping some deflection, some interpositional mercy will carry off this disturbing incidence. But if we are to be destroyed, if there is no escape from the singular fortune of annihilation by an inrus.h.i.+ng stream of meteoric bodies, then warning, through proclamation, shall be made, and our citizens will move out of the city to Asco, and the islands of Pinit.'
”He ceased; upon him the expectant faces of the others, a.s.sembled about the table, were fixed, and a visible tremor of dismay and grief seemed to convulse them. A few covered their faces with their hands, others stood up and gazed at the benignant colossus in bronze at the end of the room, while others, motionless, still maintained their att.i.tude of attention.
”The presiding officer, with a slight inclination of the body, raised his hand, and addressing me, said: 'You shall be the guest of our City, and if it must be that this great capital of Mars must succ.u.mb to this mysterious invasion, if this place, so long a marvel of beauty, shall be succeeded by a heap of burning stones, then you shall be our companion in pilgrimage. Remain with us until the end of this strange circ.u.mstance is known.'
”As he finished, a noise of indescribable lamentation from a mult.i.tude of voices broke upon our ears--the sound of running feet and sharp cries of amazement, crashed in upon the half ominous silence about us.
”I turned instinctively to my guide. He stood statue-like beside me, with a stealing pallor crossing his face, and then, the doors of the apartment swung open, and loud voices were heard crying, 'The Peril comes. Stand forward. To the Hills!'
”Panic, that nameless a.s.sociated mental terror of the unknown and the impending, which on Earth spreads fever-like through mult.i.tudes, had arisen amongst the Martians, and hurrying crowds were hastening in a wild retreat from the City to the hills.
”All thought of the Council, of my errand, or of the new relation I had been graciously accorded, disappeared from my mind. Frightened by the sudden premonition of destruction, bewildered by the torrent of new sensations, and even yet only half confident that my existence in the new world was altogether real, I was impelled to spring forward.
Reaching the doors, hands shot out around me, and I was swept in the tide of running forms.
”It was a living stream of manifold complexity. Only for one moment did I lose consciousness. The next I was struggling to escape from the spreading tentacles of this involved current. I leaped to the projection of a low pedestal, upon which an unfinished construction or group of statues was in progress. Holding my exposed position for an instant, I wrenched myself clear of the pulsating throngs, and succeeded in gaining the low summit above me. Here I was free to look around me. My guide was gone, the Council House was lost to view; I was alone. Below pa.s.sed the surging crowd, made up of youths and girls, with few older men or women, many beautiful, all expressing the Martian distinction, but now strangely bewildered and uncontrolled. It was a reversed emotional picture from that buoyant, frenzied throng that a few weeks ago carried me into the Hall of the Patenta.
”Faces were turned toward the sky, and hands, as if in e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n, were waved up and down, or thrust in significant indices toward that fatal blurred blot of splendor in the heavens. I followed their direction. The approaching nebula had grown sensibly since an hour ago. It glittered, the size of a s.h.i.+eld, and a light coruscation seemed emanating from its edges. The faces of the mult.i.tude were justified. The ma.s.s above us was a train of celestial missiles, hurling toward Mars. Its contact seemed more and more imminent. I felt a nameless terror. The thought of isolation in this new world, the unknown awfulness of this planetary disturbance, the sudden extinction of the hopes that were feeding my heart with a new life, and the forecasting of the impossible agonies of universal death in this great, strange place I had so wonderfully entered, overcame me. I fell sobbing to the gla.s.sy floor on which I was standing. It was again a new proof of my a.s.sumption of the ecstatic nature of these children of light and music, impulse and inspiration.
”The convulsion pa.s.sed. I felt stronger, and was quickened with a keenly prudent determination to escape from the city, find my way back to the Hill of Observation, and if possible, send you, my son, my last experience before all had become silence.
”I could see the regular ascent of the rockets from the distant hill. I found the streets about me almost emptied, the white, l.u.s.trous river of life had pa.s.sed. I descended to the pavement. The way past the splendid Amphitheatre was easily found, and then I hastened, guided by a dumb instinct of direction, toward the still ascending rockets. I came to the broad Boulevard which led to the Hill of Observation, and went on, now plainly controlled by the sweeping avenue of lamps about, and in front of me.
”I shall not pause to recount the success of my application to the astronomers to use the transmitters of the wireless telegraphy, which are as fully perfected here as at the City of Scandor.
”As my message ends, the dawn ascends from the wide margins of the Ribi country. I am stunned with drowsiness. The Sun's rays have extinguished the scintillant peril in the skies. But the order has gone forth to leave the City, to camp upon the hills, the City of Scandor is doomed, and the area of destruction it embraces is the diametral measure of the----”
I heard no more. Overcome with fatigue, exposure and increasing pulmonary weakness, of which I had had painful premonitions, I fainted at the table, and fell to the floor of the damp and inclement room.
My a.s.sistants aver that the transmission ceased almost the next moment upon my collapse, and the unfinished sentence of my father's message can be readily understood as implying that the foreign body, or Swarm, which was destined to strike Mars, had been determined as having about the amplitude of the City of Scandor.
Days lengthened into weeks, weeks to months, but though unflinchingly watched by night and day, no further message was received. I had become weaker, pale and lifeless. The terrible malady made its inroads upon a frame unable to meet its savage or insidious attacks. This weakness was aggravated by the excitement produced by the singular experience I had pa.s.sed through. My nerves had undergone a strain quite unusual, and the interior sense of elation, reacting its fits of extreme mental despondency dislocated my system, and accelerated the gliding virus of disease inundating the capillaries of circulation and breaking down the tissues with fever and consumption.
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