Richard Jefferies - Essential Science Fiction Novels - Volume 6

“I must see your mistress,” he said; “tell her to come to me at once; we are in great peril!”

The girl swept her eyes over the balconies and the throne and said: “She is in her apartments, sir; I shall bring her.”

“Tell her to meet me at the fountain where we last met,” and he hastened back to the spot mentioned.

She soon came. “What is it?” she asked excitedly.

“Johnston is back,” he replied. “He is in the wood there with a fellow who escaped with him in a disabled flying-machine. He says the sea has broken through over in the west and is streaming into Alpha in a torrent.”

“Surely there is some mistake,” she said; “such a thing has never happened.”

“It may have been caused by the explosives during the storm,” went on Thorndyke. “Branasko, the Alphian who was with Johnston, says we are in imminent peril.”

“There must be some mistake,” she repeated incredulously, as she looked to westward. The green glow of the second hour of the afternoon lay over everything. She stood mute and motionless for a long time, looking steadily at the horizon; then she started suddenly, changed her position, and shaded her eyes from the sunlight.

“It really does seem to me that there is a cloud rising, and it is unlike any cloud I ever saw.”

“I see it too!” cried the Englishman; “it must be that the water has already reached the internal fires.”

Bernardino was very pale when she turned to him.

“My father must know this at once; come with me.”

Into the palace, through the vast rotunda, past the throne, and into the very apartment of the king himself she led him hastily. A royal attendant met them and held up his hands warningly. “The king is asleep,” he said in an undertone.

“Wake him—wake him at once!” commanded the excited girl.

“I cannot, it would offend him,” was the reply.

She did not pause an instant, but darting past the man and running to the king's couch, she drew the curtain aside and touched the sleeper. He waked in anger, but her first word disarmed him.

“Alpha is in danger.”

“What!” he growled, half awake. “The sea is breaking through in the west, and running into the internal fires.”

“How do you know that?”

“A dense cloud is rising in the west, and:——”

“Impossible!” the word came from far down in his throat, and he was ghastly pale. He ran to the table and touched a button and, to the astonishment of Thorndyke, the walls on the western side of the room silently parted, showing a little balcony overlooking the street below. The king went hastily out and looked toward the west. The others followed him. The princess stifled a cry of alarm when she glanced at the sky.

Great black, rolling clouds were rapidly spreading along the horizon.

The king looked at them as helplessly as a frightened child. “The air!” he groaned. “It is hot!” and then he held out his hand to the princess, and showed her a flake of soot on it, and he dumbly pointed to others that were falling about them.

“How did you discover it?” he asked, and Thorndyke saw that he was trying to appear calm.

“Mr.—this gentleman's friend has returned from banishment, and——”

“Returned! has the wall been destroyed?”

“No; he accidentally discovered the danger, and came in a flying-machine to warn you.”

“Where is he? bring him to me, quick!”

“But you will not ——”

He waved his hand impatiently. “Go; if Alpha is saved he shall be at liberty—if it is not, what does it matter?”

Thorndyke hastened away after Johnston, who, when he was told of the king's words, readily accompanied his friend to the presence of the ruler. They found him with his daughter still on the balcony.

“How did you discover this?” asked the king, turning to the American.

As quickly as possible, Johnston related his adventures, and particularly the story of the shooting fountain and the fall of salt water. The king did not wait for him to conclude. He ran back into his chamber, touched another button, and the next instant alarm-bells were ringing all over the city.

“A signal to the protectors,” explained the princess to Thorndyke; “by this time they are ringing all over Alpha. Oh, what will become of us?” as she spoke she leaned over the balustrade and looked down into the street. Vast crowds had gathered and were motionless, except at points where the purple-clad “protectors” rushed from public buildings to assemble in squads on the street corner.

Bernardino turned to look after her father as he was leaving the room.

“He is going to the observatory,” she said to Thorndyke and Johnston. “Let us go also.” And they followed the king into the room with the glass roof and walls covered with mirrors which he had shown the strangers several days before. A white-headed old man stood at the stand, his fingers trembling over the half circle of electric buttons. In a mirror before him he was studying the reflection of a town of perhaps a hundred houses. The streets were filled with excited citizens, and a squad of protectors stood ready for action near a row of flying-machines.

“Ornethelo,” said the king, and at the sound of his voice the old man turned and bowed humbly.

“All right,” went on the king, “I will take your place a moment.”

He went to the stand and touched a button. Instantly the scene changed; fields, forests, streams and hills ran by in a murky blur, and then a larger town flashed on the mirror. Here the same stir and alertness characterized the scene. The gaze of every inhabitant was fixed on the threatening horizon. Rapidly the scenes shifted at the king's will, till a hundred cities, towns and villages had been reviewed.

“Enough! They are all ready—all faithful,” groaned the king, “and, Ornethelo, they may all have to perish to-day, and all for our ambition. Poor mortals!”

Ornethelo's face was half submerged in the beard on his breast, but he looked up suddenly and spoke:

“For their sakes, then, we ought not to delay; there may yet be hope.”

“You are right, Ornethelo.” There was a ring of hope in the voice of the king. “Quick! show me my capitol, that I may see if all the protectors are ready.”

Ornethelo touched another button, and, as if seen from a great height, the fair and wondrous city dawned before the eyes of the spectators. In every street policemen and protectors and flying-machines stood in orderly readiness. The housetops were colored with the variegated costumes of men, women and children. Over all lay the wondrous sunlight, through the green splendor of which the flakes of soot were falling like black snow.

The king touched the old man's arm. “I must see beyond the walls; are the connections made?”

“Ready, sir.”

“Try them; they must not fail me now!”

The old man tremblingly unlocked a cabinet on the table, and another row of electric buttons was displayed. Ornethelo touched one. Immediately there was a sharp clicking sound under the stand, and the view was swept from the mirror. Nothing could be seen but a dark suggestion of towering cliffs and yawning caverns.

“Not the east, Ornethelo,” cried the king impatiently. “Go on! the west! the west!”

The black landscape flashed by like a glimpse of night from a flying train, and then a blur of redly illuminated smoke in rolling billows seemed to swell out from the surface of the mirror into the room.

“There, slow!” cried the king, and then a frightful scene burst upon their sight. They beheld a great belching pit of fire and flames. The sky from the earth to the zenith was a vast expanse of illuminated smoke, and the black landscape round about was cut by rivulets of molten lava rolling on and on like restless streams of quicksilver.