Essential Science Fiction Novels - Volume 6 - Richard Jefferies Essential Science Fiction Novels

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wait!” replied Tradmos. “This is as safe a place as you could find. Perhaps the trouble may be averted. Look!”

      The disk of the veiled sun was aglow with a faintly trembling light; but it went out. The silence was profound. The populace seemed unable to grasp the situation, but when the light had flickered over the black face of the sun once more and again expired, a sullen murmur rose and grew as it passed from lip to lip.

      It became a threatening roar, broken by an occasional cry of pain and a dismal groan of terror. There was a crash as if a mountain had been burst by explosives.

      “The swinging bridge has been thrown down!” said Tradmos.

      Light after light flashed up in different parts of the city, but they were so small and so far apart that they seemed to add to the darkness rather than to lessen it.

      “The moon, it will rise!” cried the princess.

      “It cannot,” said Tradmos in his beard, “at least not for several hours.”

      “They will kill my father,” she said despondently, “they always hold him responsible for any accident.”

      “They cannot reach him,” consoled Tradmos. “He is safe for the present at least.”

      “Is it possible to make the repairs needed?”

      “I don't know. When the accident happened long ago the sun was just rising.”

      “Has it stopped?”

      “I think not; it has simply gone out; the electric connection has, in some way, been cut off.”

      The tumult seemed to have extended to the very limits of the city, and was constantly increasing. The smashing of timber and the falling of heavy stones were heard near by.

      Tradmos leaned far over the parapet. “They are coming toward us!” he said; “they intend to destroy the palace; we must try to get down, but we shall meet danger even there.”

      XIII

      Johnston and Branasko looked down at the great ball of light below them in silent wonder. Johnston was the first to speak. He pointed to the four massive cables which supported the sun at each corner of the platform and extended upward till they were enveloped in the darkness.

      “They hold us up,” he said, “where do they go to?”

      “To the big trucks which run on the tracks near the roof of the cavern; the endless cables are up there, too, but we can not see them with this glare about us.”

      “We can see nothing of Alpha from here,” remarked Johnston disappointedly, “we can see nothing beyond our circle of light.”

      “I should like to look down from this height at night,” said the Alphian. “It would be a great view.”

      “What is this?” Johnston went to one side of the platform and laid his hand on the spokes of a polished metal wheel shaped like the pilot-wheel of a steamboat. Branasko hastened to him.

      “Don't touch it,” he warned. “It looks as if it were to turn the electric connection off and on. If the sun should go out, the consequences would be awful. The people of Alpha would go mad with fear.”

      The American withdrew his hand, and he and Branasko walked back to the centre of the platform. Johnston uttered an exclamation of surprise. “The light is changing.”

      And it was, for it was gradually fading into a purple that was delightfully soothing to the eye after the painful brightness of a moment before.

      “I understand,” said the Alphian, “we are running very slow and are only now about to approach the great wall, for purple is the color of the first morning hour.”

      “But how is the light changed?” asked Johnston curiously.

      “By some shifting of glasses through which the rays shine, I presume,” returned the Alphian; “but the mechanism seems to be concealed in the walls of the globe.”

      Not a word was spoken for an hour. They had lain down on the platform near the iron railing which encompassed it, and Branasko was dozing intermittently. Again the light began to change gradually. This time it was gray. Johnston put out his hand to touch Branasko, but the Alphian was awake. He sat up and nodded smiling. “Wait till the next hour,” he said; “it will be rose-color; that is the most beautiful.”

      Slowly the hours dragged by till the yellow light showed that it was the sixth hour. Branasko had been exploring the vast interior below and came back to Johnston who was asleep on the floor of the platform.

      “I have just thought of something,” said Branasko. “This is the day appointed by the king to entertain his subjects with a grand display of the elements.”

      “I do not understand,” said Johnston.

      “The king,” explained the Alphian, “darkens the sun with clouds so that all Alpha is blacker than night, and then he produces great storms in the sky, and lightning and musical thunder. We may, perhaps, hear the music, but we cannot witness the storm and electric display on account of the light about us. It usually begins at this hour; so be silent and listen.”

      After a few minutes there was a rumble from below like the roar of a volcano and an answering echo from the black dome overhead. This died away and was succeeded by a crash of musical thunder that thrilled Johnston's being to its very core. Branasko's face was aglow with enthusiasm.

      “Grand, glorious!” he ejaculated, “but if only you could see the lightning and the dawn in the east you would remember it all your life. The sunlight is cut off from Alpha by the clouds, and there is no light except the wonderful effects in the sky.”

      Johnston had gone back to the wheel and was examining it curiously.

      “I have a mind to turn off the current for a moment anyway,” he said doggedly; “if the sun is hidden they would not discover it.”

      Branasko came to him, a weird look of interest in his eyes. “That is true,” he said; “besides, what matters it? We may not live to see another day.”

      Johnston acted on a sudden impulse. He intended only to frighten Branasko by moving the wheel slightly, and he had turned it barely an eighth of an inch, when, as if controlled by some powerful spring, it whirled round at a great rate, making a loud rattling noise. To their dismay the light went out.

      “My God! what have I done?” gasped the American in alarm.

      “Settled our fate, I have no doubt,” muttered the Alphian from the darkness.

      Johnston had recoiled from the whirling wheel, and now cautiously groped back to it, and attempted to turn it. It would not move.

      “It has caught some way,” he groaned under his breath.

      “And we have no light to find the cause of the trouble,” added the Alphian, who had knelt down and was feeling about the wheel. Presently he rose.

      “I give it up,” he sighed, “I cannot understand it. The machinery is somewhere inside.”

      “It has grown colder,” shuddered Johnston.

      “We were warmed by the light, of course,” remarked Branasko, “and now we feel the dampness more. We are going at a frightful speed.”

      Just then there was a jar, and the sun swung so violently from side to side that the two men were prostrated on the floor. The speed seemed to slacken.

      “I wonder if we are going to stop,” groaned the American, and he sat up and held to Branasko. “Perhaps they will draw us back to rectify the mistake, and then——”

      “It cannot be done,” interrupted the Alphian. “The machinery runs only one way. We shall simply have to finish our journey in

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