MIRACLES, SCOURGE OF FLAME
His form, sitting there at the desk—his face wearing an odd smile—had already begun to grow less distinct. It seemed as if the light surrounding him had faded, though everywhere else in the cabin it still gleamed with its accustomed brilliance. And as this light around him began to blur into a russet dimness, forming a sort of screen between him and visibility, the definition of his outlines began to melt away.
The Master still remained visible, as a whole; but the details of him were surely vanishing. And as they vanished, faintly a high-light, a shadow, a bit of metal-work showed through the space where he sat. He seemed a kind of dissolving cloud, through which now more and more clearly objects beyond him could be distinguished. Impossible though this seemed, it was indubitably true.
As he disappeared, he kept speaking. The effect of that undiminished voice, calm, slow, resonant, issuing from that disintegrating vapor, stirred the hair on the captive Frenchman's neck and scalp.
"Vibration, mon cher monsieur," said he, "is everything. According to the researches of the Ecole Polytechnique, in Paris—no doubt you, yourself, have studied there, n'est-ce pas?—vibration of the first octave from 2 to 8 per second, give us no sense-impression. From the fourth to the fifteenth octave, 16 to 32,768 per second, we get sound. The qualities of the 16th to the 24th are—or have been, until I investigated—quite unknown. The 25th to the 35th, 33, 554, 432 to 34, 859, 738, 868 vibrations per second, give us electricity. Thence to the 45th, again unknown.
"The 4th to the 48th give us heat. The 49th gives light The 50th, chemical rays, vibrating 1, 125, 899, 906, 842, 624 per second. The 51st to the 57th have never been touched by anyone save myself. The X-ray group extends from the 58th to the 61st octave. The 62d, with 4, 611, 686, 427, 889, 904 vibrations per second, is a field where only I have worked. And beyond these, no doubt, other octaves extend with infinite possibilities.
"You will note, monsieur," he continued, while the dun penumbra still more and more withdrew him from Leclair's sight, "that great lacunae exist in the scale of vibratory phenomena. Some of the so-called lower animals take cognizance of vibrations that mean nothing to us. Insects hear notes far above our dull ears. Ants are susceptible to lights and colors unseen to our limited eyes. The emperor-moth calls its mate—so says Fabre—by means of olfactory vibrations totally uncomprehended by us. The universe is full of hues, tones, radiant phenomena that escape us, because our senses are not attuned to them."
Steadily he spoke, and steadily the humming drone that filled the cabin kept its undertones that lulled, that soothed. The Frenchman, staring, hardly breathed. Rigid he sat and pale, with sweat now slowly guttering down his face, his jaws clamped hard and white.
"If the true nature of the universe could suddenly be revealed to our senses," went on the Master, now hardly more than a dull blur, "we could not survive. The crash of cosmic sound, the blaze of strange lights, the hurricane forces of tempestuous energies sweeping space would blind, deafen, shrivel, annihilate us like so many flies swept into a furnace. Nature has been kind; she has surrounded us with natural ray-filters of protection."
His voice now seemed issuing from a kind of vacancy. Save for a slight darkening of the air, nothing was visible of him. He went on:
"With our limited senses we are, in a way, merely peeping out of little slits in an armored conning-tower of life, out at the stupendous vibratory battles of the cosmos. Other creatures, in other planets, no doubt have other sense-organs to absorb other vibratory ranges. Their life-experiences are so different from ours that we could not possibly grasp them, any more than a blind man could understand a painting.
"Nor could those creatures understand human life. We are safe in our own little corner of the universe, comfortably sheltered in our vestments of clay. And what we cannot understand, though it is all perfectly natural, we call religion, the supernatural, God."
From a great vacancy, the Master's words proceeded. Leclair, tugging in vain at the bonds that, invisible yet strong as steel, held him powerless, stared with wild eyes.
"There is no supernatural," said the now disembodied voice. "What we call spirit, psychic force, hypnosis, spiritualism, the fourth dimension, is really only life on another scale of vibration. If we could see the whole scale, we would recognize it as a vast, coherent, perfectly natural and rational whole, in which we human beings fill but a very insignificant part. That, monsieur, is absolutely true!
"I have investigated, I have ventured along the coasts of the unknown vibratory sea, and even sailed out a little way on the waters of that unknown, mysterious ocean. Yet even I know nothing. What you are beholding now is simply a slightly new form of vibratory effect. The force that is holding you paralyzed on that chair is still another. A third, sent down the air-squadron. And—there are many more.
"I am not really vanishing. That is but an illusion of your senses, unable to penetrate the screen surrounding me. I am still here, as materially as ever. Illusion, mon cher monsieur, yet to you very real!"
The voice seemed moving about. The Frenchman now perceived something like a kind of moving blur in the cabin. It appeared a sort of hole of darkness, in the light; and yet the light shone through it, too.
Every human eye has a blind spot in the retina. When things pass over this blind spot, they absolutely vanish; the other eye supplies the missing object. To the French ace it seemed that his eyes were all blind spots, so far as the Master was concerned. The effect of this vacancy moving about, shifting a chair, stirring a book, speaking to him like a spirit disembodied, its footfalls audible but its own self invisible, chilled the captive's blood. The Master said:
"Now I have totally disappeared from your eye or any other material eye. I cannot even see myself! No doubt dwellers on some other planet would perceive me by some means we cannot imagine. Yet I am materially here. You feel my touch, now, on your shoulder. See, now I put out the lights; now I draw aside this curtain, and admit the golden morning radiance. You see that radiance, but you do not see me.
"A miracle? Pas du tout! Nothing but an application of perfectly natural laws. And so—well, now let us come back to the matter under discussion. You have come hither to arrest me, monsieur. What do you think of arresting me, now? I am going to leave that to your own judgment."
His voice approached the desk. The chair moved slightly, and gave under his weight. Something touched the button on the desk. Something pressed the iridescent metal disk. The humming note sank, faded, died away.
Gradually a faint haze gathered in the chair. Dim, brownish fog congealed there. The chair became clouded with it; and behind that chair objects grew troubled, turbid, vague.
The ace felt inhibitions leaving him. His eyes began to blink; his half-opened mouth closed with a snap; a long, choking groan escaped his lips.
"Nom de Dieu" he gulped, and fell weakly to rubbing his arms and legs that still prickled with a numb tingling. "Mais, nom de Dieu!"
The Master, now swiftly becoming visible, stood up again, smiled, advanced toward his guest—or prisoner, if you prefer.
A moment he stood there, till every detail had grown as clear as before this astounding demonstration of his powers. Then he stretched forth his hand.
"Leclair," said he, in a voice of deep feeling, "I know and appreciate you for a man of parts, of high courage and devotion to duty in the face of almost certain death. The manner in which you came ahead, even after all your companions had fallen—in which you boarded us, with the strong probability of death confronting you, proves you the kind of man who wins and keeps respect among fighting men.
"If you still desire my arrest and the delivery to you of this air-liner, I am at your complete disposal. You have only to sign the receipt I have already written. If—" and for a moment the Master paused, while his dark eyes sought and held the other's, "if, monsieur, you desire to become one of the Flying Legion, and to take part in the greatest adventure ever conceived by the mind of man, in the name of all the Legion I welcome you to comradeship!"
"Dieu!" choked the lieutenant, gripping the Master's hand. "You mean that I—I—"
"Yes, that you can be one of us."
"Can that be true?"
"It is!"
The Master's right hand closed firmly on Leclair's. The Master's other hand went out and gripped him by the shoulder.
To his feet sprang the Frenchman. Though still shaken and trembling, he drew himself erect. His right hand loosened itself from the Master's; it went to his aviator's helmet in a sharp salute.
"J'y suis! J'y reste!" cried he. "Mon capitaine!"
The day passed uneventfully, at high altitudes, steadily rushing into the eye of the East. In the stillness and solitude of the upper air-lanes, Nissr roared onward, invincibly, with sun and sky above, with shining clouds piled below in swiftly retreating masses that spun away to westward.
Far below, sea-storm and rain battled over the Atlantic. Upborne on the wings of the eastward-setting wind, Nissr felt nothing of such trivialities. Twice or thrice, gaps in the cloud-veil let dim ocean appear to the watchers in the glass observation pits; and once they spied a laboring speck on the waters—a great passenger-liner, worrying toward New York in heavy weather. The doings of such, and of the world below, seemed trivial to the Legionaries as follies of dazed insects.
No further attack was made on Nissr, nor was anything seen of any other air-squadron of International Police. The wireless picked up, however, a cross-fire of dazed, uncomprehending messages being hurled east and west, north and south—messages of consternation, doubt, anger.
The world, wholly at a loss to understand the thing that had come upon it, was listening to reports from the straggling Azores fleet as it staggered into various ports. Every continent already was buzzing with alarm and rage. In less than eighteen hours the calm and peaceful ways of civilization had received an epoch-making jar. All civilization was by the ears—it had become a hornet's nest prodded by a pole no one could understand or parry.
And the Master, sitting at his desk with reports and messages piling up before him, with all controls at his finger-tips, smiled very grimly to himself.
"If they show such hysteria at just the initial stages of the game," he murmured, "what will they show when—"
The Legion had already begun to fall into well-disciplined routine, each man at his post, each doing duty to the full, whether that duty lay in pilot-house or cooks' galley, in engine-room or pit, in sick-bay or chartroom. The gloom caused by the death and burial at sea of Travers, the New Zealander, soon passed. This was a company of fighting men, inured to death in every form. And death they had reckoned as part of the payment to be made for their adventuring. This, too, helped knit the fine mass-spirit already binding them together into a coherent, battling group.
A little after two in the afternoon, Nissr passed within far sight of the Azores, visible in cloud-rifts as little black spots sown on the waters like sparse seeds on a burnished plate of metal. This habitation of man soon slipped away to westward, and once more nothing remained but the clear, cold severity of space, with now and then a racing drift of rain below, and tumbling, stormy weather all along the sea horizons.
The Master and Bohannan spent some time together after the Azores had been dropped astern and off the starboard quarter. "Captain Alden" remained in her cabin. She reported by phone, however, that the wound was really only superficial, through the fleshy upper part of the left arm. If this should heal by first intention, as it ought, no complications were to be expected.
Day drew on toward the shank of the afternoon. The sun, rayless, round, blue-white, lagged away toward the west, seeming to sway in high heaven as Nissr took her long dips with the grace and swiftness of a flying falcon. Some time later the cloud-masses thinned and broke away, leaving the world of waters spread below in terrible immensity.
As the African coast drew near, its arid influences banished vapor. Now, clear to the up-curving edge of the world, nothing could be seen below save the steel-gray, shining plains of water. Waves seemed not to exist. All looked smooth and polished as a mirror of bright metal.
At last, something like dim veils of whiteness began to draw and shimmer on the eastern skyline—the vague glare of the sun-crisped Sahara flinging its furnace ardor to the sky. To catch first sight of land, the Master and Bohannan climbed the ladder again, to the take-off, and thence made their way into the starboard observation gallery. There they brought glasses to bear. Though nothing definite could yet be seen through the shrouding dazzle that swaddled the world's rim, this fore-hint of land confirmed their reckonings of latitude and longitude.
"We can't be more than a hundred and fifty miles west of the Canaries," judged the major. "Sure, we can eat supper tonight in an oasis, if we're so minded—with Ouled Naïls and houris to hand round the palm-wine and—"
"You forget, my dear fellow," the Master interrupted, "that the first man who goes carousing with wine or women, dies before a firing-squad. That's not the kind of show we're running!"
"Ah, sure, I did forget!" admitted the Celt. "Well, well, a look at a camel and a palm tree could do no harm. And it won't be long, at this rate, before—"
A sudden, violent concussion, far aft, sent a quivering shudder through the whole fabric of the giant liner. Came a swift burst of flame; black, greasy smoke gushed from the stern, trailing on the high, cold air. Long fire-tongues, banners of incandescence, flailed away, roaring into space.
Shouts burst, muffled, from below. A bell jangled madly. The crackle of pistol-fire punched dully through the rushing swiftness.
With a curse the major whirled. Frowning, the Master turned and peered. Nissr, staggering, tilted her beak sharply oceanward. At a sick angle, she slid, reeling, toward the burnished, watery floor that seemed surging up to meet her.
A hoarse shout from the far end of the take-off drew the Master's eyes thither. With strange agility, almost apelike in its prehensile power, a human figure came clambering up over the outer works, clutching at stays, wires, struts.
Other shouts echoed thinly in the rarefied, high air. The climber laughed with savage mockery.
"I've done for you!" he howled exultantly. "Fuel-tanks afire—you'll all go to Hell blazing when they explode! But first—I'll get the boss pirate of the outfit—"
Swiftly the clutching figure scrabbled in over the rail, dropped to the metal plates of the take-off—now slanting steeply down and forward—and broke into a staggering run directly toward the gallery where stood Bohannan and the Master.
At the little ladder-housing sounded a warning shout. The head and shoulders of Captain Alden became visible there. In Alden's right hand glinted a service-revolver.
But already the attacker—the stowaway—had snatched a pistol from his belt. And, as he plunged at full drive down the take-off platform, he thrust the pistol forward.
Almost at point-blank range, howling maledictions, he hurled a murderous fusillade at the Master of the now swiftly falling Eagle of the Sky.