13
Robert and Professor Palmer found that they had been presented with an entire suite of rooms, the one into which they had been escorted serving as a sort of drawing room. The two attendants looked after their every want.
About noon a simple lunch was served them. It consisted of a dish resembling baked yams, some artichokes (at any rate they looked and tasted like artichokes), a bit of greens, and some very good wine.
That afternoon they were visited by an intelligent-looking Martian who quickly succeeded in making them understand that he was sent to act as instructor in the Martian tongue and also as an interpreter while they were learning. He signified that the emperor (the striking personage to whom they owed all this hospitality) had sent him.
The same evening they accepted the emperor’s invitation to dinner.
To their relief, Robert and the professor found that the dinner was to be attended by few besides themselves. The emperor sat between them at the head of the table. The interpreter sat next to Robert. But three other persons partook of the meal with them. These they understood to be certain learned men, probably astronomers.
The food seemed to be made up chiefly of well-cooked vegetables, several of which were quite similar to our own. A savory bit of roasted meat was also served them. This dish puzzled them. It did not seem to be of a fowl, though it certainly had the flavor of one, tasting much like duck. Not until some time later did they find out that this meat was that of an animal identical with our dog! It was, however, considered a delicacy by the Martians, who raised these animals with great care, they being quite scarce.
Though conversation was as yet very difficult, they managed to exchange a surprizing amount of information with the Martians, the interpreter proving quite resourceful. The emperor, especially, was intensely interested in them.
So keen was the interest of the Martians, that, after the repast was cleared away, paper of excellent texture was produced, and Robert and the professor were urged to do some sketching. Their hosts clearly were eager to overcome the barrier of languages and to partly satisfy their curiosity at once regarding our planet. A sort of stylograph was handed to Professor Palmer, and with it he proceeded first to make a simple diagram of the universe, showing the Earth and Mars thereon in their orbits round the sun, and indicating their journey from the Earth to Mars. This was followed by prompt nods of understanding and ejaculations on the part of the three Martian astronomers, as if their expectations had been confirmed. The professor then drew maps of the Earth’s continents, rivers and seas, and made sectional drawings of mountain ridges, volcanoes and ocean beds. The Martians’ intelligent minds seemed to grasp everything with remarkable perception.
The three technologists apparently would have been content to keep Robert and Professor Palmer up all night in their zeal for information, but the emperor had more consideration for his guests, insisting finally upon seeing them back to their comfortable quarters, where he took leave of them for the evening.
That night they rested in the welcome softness of luxurious beds. The day’s travel and excitement had fatigued them, and they slept soundly in spite of the strangeness of their surroundings.
Robert dreamed again of his maid of the desert. As before, she faded suddenly away, even as he reached out eagerly to assure himself that she was real. One vivid impression that he received and retained upon waking was that she was in peril. The look of entreaty in her eyes, the repeated startled glances that she cast over her shoulder, convinced him that she needed him.
But, why should he worry over a mere dream! His practical mind reasserted itself. Of course the girl did not exist in reality. Still, there was no denying that the girl of his first vision and of the last one were one and the same. He could never forget a single detail of her exotic beauty and charm. For the first time in his life Robert felt the awakening of real love.
He laughed. In love with a dreamgirl! Nonsense. Nevertheless, his thoughts returned to her continually throughout the day. Unconsciously he found himself hoping to see her, somewhere, somehow. And more and more, in spite of his commonplace reasoning, he came to feel that there was such a girl.
That day they saw nothing of the emperor. The interpreter labored faithfully with them part of the morning and again during the afternoon. Already they felt that they were making some genuine progress toward an understanding of the Martian tongue.
Their every comfort continued to be administered to. As they sat before the windows looking out upon the lawn bathed in the late afternoon sunlight, it required an effort indeed for them to fully realize that they were gazing upon a strange planet millions of miles from the Earth.
“What do you think we had best do about the Sphere, Robert?” asked Professor Palmer.
“The very thing that has been puzzling me. These people seem to be such an intellectual race that I can hardly believe them dangerous, though there is a certain elusive suggestion about the emperor’s face that I don’t fancy. However, I think the Sphere would be just as safe or safer here, and with Taggert staying with us.”
“My idea exactly. Now that you mention it I think there is something in what you say about the emperor, but we’ll have to make the best of things. Let’s try to find out through our interpreter where it will be agreeable to keep the Sphere hereabouts and then send a message to Taggert to bring it.”
So it was agreed. Explanation to the interpreter proved a comparatively simple matter. A few sketches and gestures and he signified his understanding. A short while later he returned to inform them that the emperor had assigned them a structure near the palace in which they could keep the Sphere. Further, that the emperor would be delighted, not only to view the Sphere, but to welcome their companion.
A note to Taggert was dispatched at once by a courier supplied by the emperor. The courier was instructed to accompany Taggert back in the Sphere, guiding him to the palace. As Taggert had thoroughly mastered the operation of the Sphere under Robert’s tutelage, during the watches of their long journey through space, they felt no uneasiness about his ability to fly it to where they were.
This matter settled, Robert and the professor sat down before a sumptuous dinner served in their suite. They were becoming accustomed to the well-cooked Martian food, and they relished it.
The confinement in the building since the middle of the previous day, however, was becoming irksome. The interpreter had not encouraged any suggestion about going out, and they had politely refrained from pressing the matter. Left to themselves after dinner, they decided to take a stroll outdoors.
Robert had observed a secluded nook behind the palace. The windows of their bedchamber opened on this enclosure, which was entirely surrounded by a wall about twelve feet high. Apparently the wall was without any gate. A number of small trees marked the smooth lawn within, casting long shadows in the gathering twilight.
It was in this nook that Robert proposed they take a stroll.
As they reached the exit leading out upon the enclosure, one of their attendants appeared rather abruptly at a door to their left. He paused there a moment as if about to speak, then disappeared as suddenly as he had appeared.
“So—we are under surveillance, eh?” remarked Professor Palmer.
“I wonder. He did look at us rather suspiciously.”
“Well, let’s go ahead and see whether they stop us.”
But they were not molested as they stepped out upon the lawn.
The cool dry air refreshed and invigorated them. It was free from the dampness of the dew which we are accustomed to feeling on our clear terrestrial nights, while the rarity of the Martian atmosphere was probably made up by a greater percentage of oxygen, as evidenced by the ease and enjoyment with which they breathed it. This they later affirmed. Tubercular diseases upon Mars were virtually unknown. In fact, the Martians were afflicted with little sickness of any kind.
For perhaps fifteen minutes they walked about, smoking cigars from their slender store which they had carried from the Sphere in their pockets. The fleeting Martian twilight was replaced by darkness—that is, if one can call night filled with the soft radiance of millions of stars “darkness.” Over the edge of the wall at the western end of the garden hung Phobus, one-half its disk lit in a dull orange glow. It appeared about one-quarter the size of our moon.
A strange feeling of oppression, which he could not understand, possessed Robert. Try as he would he could not shake it off. Then he realized for the first time the intense silence which pervaded the night. There was a total absence of the countless sounds of nature which we are so accustomed to associating with summer nights. Apparently there were no insects upon Mars, or, if there were, they were voiceless. Their own voices startled them when they broke the stillness, and unconsciously they took to speaking in hushed whispers.
A few feet to the right of their doorway the palace wall ran out into the garden at a right angle for about fifty feet, thence it again turned off at a right angle to the right. The garden ran around this extension and back into a recess on the other side like the lower part of a large letter L.
Suddenly a woman’s stifled scream tore the silence apart. It ceased abruptly, suggestive of the clapping of a hand over the mouth of the one who had screamed. The sound seemed to come from the recess at the far side of the garden.
In a dozen lithe bounds Robert had rounded the wing of the palace, and was in sight of the far end of the garden. He fancied that he caught a fleeting glimpse of some light, loose garment in the dark shadows of the recess. A faint sound as of the stealthy turning of a lock followed and all was again quiet.
A moment later Professor Palmer joined him.
“What’s up?” he asked huskily, puffing from his exertion of attempting to keep pace with Robert.
“Don’t know. Imagined I saw a woman’s garment fluttering a moment ago. Suppose we have a look over there in that black corner.”
A solitary dark window looked out sinisterly from the recess. Robert had an uncomfortable feeling that they were being watched from it as they approached.
As they drew close to the wall where it joined the building Robert caught sight of something they had failed to notice before in the darkness. This was a massive, closed door in the corner of the wall.
“The door I heard locked a minute ago,” whispered Robert.
He put his shoulder to it, but failed to move it.
The night again was as silent as a grave. In vain they listened for some sound beyond the locked door till finally they gave it up and returned to the comfortable warmth of their suite.
That night Robert tossed about nervously until he despaired of sleeping. He envied the professor, whose measured breathing he could hear from the adjoining room. Later he dropped off into troubled slumber and dreamed once more of the maid of the desert.
This time the scene was a different one, the palace garden the setting instead of the desert. Step by step the incident of that evening was enacted again with this difference: in some strange manner he could see all that occurred in a garden which was on the other side of the wall with the locked door.
A maid—his maid—emerged from a door in the palace and hurried across the garden. Reaching the wall she fumbled among a mass of vines which clung to its side. She pulled something from behind them which he could not at first make out in the shadow. As she propped it against the wall he recognized it as a small ladder.
This she mounted quickly, looking back several times as if fearing pursuit. Just as she reached the top of the wall a man ran out of the doorway from which she had first appeared, and looked around swiftly. He was immediately joined by another. Both caught sight of the girl as she paused to drop on the other side of the wall.
Held by some invisible force Robert found it impossible to go to her assistance. He was obliged to remain merely a spectator.
The girl’s pursuers dashed across the garden and scrambled over the wall after her. She tripped over her long gown and fell. Before she could recover, one of them was upon her.
Together they lifted her struggling form and carried it back toward the massive door in the wall. There they halted while one of them fitted a key to the lock. A moment later it swung open. Just as they were taking her through the door, she screamed, and one of her captors clapped his hand over her mouth roughly. Then the door shut softly, but the sound of a heavy lock shot home reached Robert.
With the shutting of the door Robert suddenly was released from his trance. With a mighty bound he made for the wall—only to find himself standing awake in the middle of the floor of his bedchamber!
The vividness of his dream had left him trembling with excitement. He felt convinced that he had just visioned a review of the actual events of earlier in the evening. Prompted by the impulse of the moment, and realizing the impossibility of further sleep that night, Robert donned his clothes and quietly passed out into the garden.
He shivered as the chilled atmosphere struck him, and turned up his coat collar. The glory of Phobus no longer lit the crystal-clear sky, but in the soft light from the brilliant stars he could make out the wall running into the recess.
He found the stout door as securely locked as before.
Remembering his increased agility on Mars, Robert decided not to be restricted by a mere door while his reckless mood lasted. A jump and a clutching of the cornice quickly put him astride the wall with no discomfort save a bumped knee. A drop on the other side and he found himself in the garden of his dream.
“Now that I’ve arrived, what next!” he mused.
Looking round the enclosure he observed that it corresponded exactly in size and shape to the one on their side of the wall. All windows were dark. There was nothing to suggest the disturbance of the early evening. The ladder—if indeed, there had been a ladder there—was gone. But the mass of vines on the wall corresponded exactly to that in his dream!
“I suppose if I were a real hero I would dash in and rescue the distressed maiden in some way or other,” Robert muttered, scratching his head in perplexity.
As if in answer to his quandary a window above scraped lightly. A folded piece of paper fell at his feet. He looked up just in time to see a graceful, ivory-white hand being withdrawn. Was it the draperies or her garments that he saw behind the pane as the window was lowered gently!
The paper was crammed into his pocket and, after a swift glance around, he hurriedly scaled the wall, realizing the uselessness and folly of attempting there to read by the light of a match a note written in a still unfamiliar language.