Edward Bulwer-Lytton - Essential Science Fiction Novels - Volume 5

A hand touched Kenton's shoulder. He looked up into the shadowy eyes of the woman called Sharane; no goddess now, only woman. In her eyes he read amazement, startled disbelief.

Kenton sprang to his feet. A thrust of blinding pain shot through his head. The deck whirled round him. He tried to master the dizziness; he could not. Dizzily the ship spun beneath his feet; and beyond in wider arcs dizzily spun turquoise sea and silver horizon.

Now all formed a vortex, a maelstrom, down whose pit he was dropping —faster, ever faster. Around him was a formless blur. Again he heard the tumult of the tempests; the shrillings of the winds of space. The winds died away. There were three clear bell notes—

Kenton stood within his own room!

The bell had been his clock, striking the hour of six. Six o'clock? Why the last sound of his own world before the mystic sea had swept it from under him had been the third stroke of that hour clipped off in mid-note.

God—what a dream! And all in half a bell stroke!

He lifted his hand and touched a throbbing bruise over his right temple. He winced—well, that blow at least had been no dream. He stumbled over to the jeweled ship.

He stared at it, incredulous.

The toys upon the ship had moved—new toys had appeared!

No longer were there four manikins on the black deck.

There were only two. One stood pointing toward the starboard platform near the mast, his hand resting on the shoulder of a red-bearded, agate-eyed soldier toy clad all in glittering chain mail.

Nor was there any woman at the rosy cabin's door as there had been when Kenton had loosed the ship from the block. At its threshold were five slim girls with javelins in hands.

The woman was on the starboard platform, bent low beside the rail!

And the ship's oars were no longer buried in the waves of lapis lazuli. They were lifted, poised for the downward stroke!

THE SHIP RETURNS

One by one Kenton pulled at the manikins, each toy. Immovable, gem hard, each was, seemingly part of the deck itself; no force he could exert would move them.

Yet something had shifted them—and where were the vanished ones? From where had the new ones come?

Nor was there any haze around the little figures, nor blurring; each lineament stood out clean cut. The pointing toy on the black deck had dwarfed, bowed legs; his torso was that of a giant; his bald pate glinted and in his ears were wide discs of gold. Kenton recognized him—the beater of the serpent drum.

There was a tiny silver crescent upon the head of the bending woman toy, and over its tips poured flood of red-gold hair—

Sharane!

And that place at which she peered—was it not where he had lain on that other ship of his dream?

That—other ship? He saw again its decks ebon and ivory, its rosy cabin and its emerald mast. It had been this ship before him—no other! Dream? Then what had moved the toys?

Kenton's wonder grew. Within it moved a sharp unease, a sharper curiosity. He found he could not think clearly with the ship filling his eyes; it seemed to focus all his attention upon it, to draw it taut, to fill him with a tense expectancy. He unhooked a hanging from the wall and threw it over the gleaming mystery. He walked from the room, fighting with each step an imperative desire to turn his head. He dragged himself through the doorway as though hands were gripping his ankles, drawing him back. Head still turned away Kenton lurched shoulders against the door; closed it; locked it.

In his bathroom he examined the bruise on his head. It was painful enough, but nothing serious. Half an hour of cold compresses fairly well removed all outward marks of it. He told himself that he might have fallen upon the floor, overcome by the strange perfumes—he knew that he had not.

Kenton dined alone, scarce heeding what was set before him, his mind groping through perplexities. What was the history of the block from Babylon? Who had set the ship within it—and why? Forsyth's letter had said that he had found it in the mound called Amran, just south of the Qser or crumbled "palace" of Nabopolasser. There was evidence, Kenton knew, that the Amran mound was the site of E-Sagilla, the ziggurat or terraced temple that had been the Great House of the Gods in ancient Babylon. The block must have been held in peculiar reverence, so Forsyth had conjectured, since only so would it have been saved from the destruction of the city by Sennacherib and afterwards have been put back in the re-built temple.

But why had it been held in such reverence? Why had such a miracle as the ship been imprisoned in the stone?

The inscription might have given some clue had it not been so mutilated. In his letter Forsyth had pointed out that the name of Ishtar, Mother Goddess of the Babylonians—Goddess of Vengeance and Destruction as well —appeared over and over again; that plain too were the arrowed symbols of Nergal, God of the Babylonian Hades and Lord of the Dead; that the symbols of Nabu, the God of Wisdom, appeared many times. These three names had been almost the only legible words on the block. It was as though the acid of time which had etched out the other characters had been held back from them.

Kenton could read the cuneatic well nigh as readily as his native English. He recalled now that in the inscription Ishtar's name had been coupled with her wrathful aspect rather than her softer ones, and that associated always with the symbols of Nabu had been the signs of warning, of danger.

Forsyth had not noticed that, evidently—or if he had he had not thought it worth mentioning. Nor, apparently had he been aware of the hidden perfumes of the block.

Well—there was no use thinking of the inscription. It was gone forever with the dust into which it had turned.

Kenton impatiently thrust back his chair. He knew that for the past hour be had been out temporizing, divided between the burning desire to get back to the room where the ship lay and the dread that when he did he would find all that adventure had been illusion, a dream; that the little figures had not really moved; that they were as they had been when he had first loosed the ship; that it was only a toy manned by toys—nothing more. He would temporize no longer.

"Don't bother about me any more to-night, Jevins," he told his butler. "I've some important work to do. If there are any calls say that I am away. I'm going to lock myself in and I don't want to be disturbed for anything less than Gabriel's trumpet."

The old servant, a heritage from Kenton's father, smiled.

"Very well, Mr. John," he said. "I'll let no one bother you."

To reach the room wherein was the ship, Kenton's way led through another in which he kept the rarest of his spoils from many a far away corner of the world. Passing, a vivid gleam of blue caught his eye and stayed him, like a hand. The gleam came from the hilt of a sword in one of the cabinets, a curious weapon he had bought from a desert nomad in Arabia. The sword hung above an ancient cloak in which it had been wrapped when the furtive Arab had slipped into his tent. Unknown centuries had softened the azure of that cloak, through whose web and woof great silver serpents writhed, cabalistically entwined.

Kenton unhooked the sword. Silver serpents, counterparts of those on the garments, twined about its hilt. From the hilt sprang a rod of bronze, eight inches long and three thick, round as a staff. This rod flared and flattened out into a leaf shaped blade two feet long and full six inches wide across its center. Set in the hilt had been one large stone of cloudy blue.

The stone was no longer clouded. It was translucent, shining like an immense sapphire!

Obeying some half-formed thought that linked this new enigma with the ship's shifting toys, he drew down the cloak and threw it over his shoulders. The sword in hand, he unlocked the further door, closed and fastened it behind him; walked over to the shrouded ship; swept off its covers.