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Title: Shadow Gold
Date of first publication: 1936
Author: Ray Cummings (1887?-1957)
Date first posted: Aug. 8, 2013
Date last updated: Aug. 8, 2013
Faded Page eBook #20130817

This eBook was produced by: Delphine Lettau, Mary Meehan
& the online Distributed Proofreaders Canada team at http://www.pgdpcanada.net




                                  SHADOW GOLD

                                By RAY CUMMINGS


                            THRILLING WONDER STORIES

                                 VOL. 8, No. 2

                                 OCTOBER, 1936


     Johnny Hall Boards the Transition Express for Bhana, the City
     Beyond Space, Where Treasure Is Cheap as Dirt and Enemies Lust for
     Power!




CHAPTER I

_The Unknown_


Johnny Hall sat alone, and with trembling fingers opened the letter.
Nearly a hundred pages were here in this communication from his dead
father which had been lying in the Trust Company for fifteen years. He
scanned the top page.

Weird, incredible message! So many things of mystery in his own
boyhood memories of his father now were being explained. That night,
for instance, when as a little boy he had joined his father in the
mysterious workshop. Three milky, fluorescent beams of light converging
on a little screen. Then the screen had turned into a dim yellow vista
of darkness; and then things were to be seen. As though from a height,
he had gazed far down upon a placid landscape, alive with shimmering
yellow water.

A glimpse into another realm. But his father never would explain it. And
then, a week later, that horrible scene of his father's death.

Johnny, six years old then, had awakened in the night; had sneaked into
the laboratory room to find his father. Sight most horrible! His father
was lying on a couch. He was wearing some kind of headgear; a sort of
bathing suit; and there were wires running down his arms and legs. Not
dead; his eyes were open, and one of his hands was fumbling at his
chest. His whole figure was dissolving. A ghost shimmering there. It
seemed drifting slowly down through the bed. And then it was gone!

Weird, never-explained mystery. But this letter was explaining it now:

     When you read this, Johnny, I will have been gone into
     a new Time-realm, for what of your life will be fifteen
     years--a different state of matter, because it has a different
     Time-dimension. The same Space as that which our own world
     occupies, but held separate by that mysterious stream we call Time.
     The two realms--ours and this Unknown--are swept close together
     now. It is my opportunity. Another such proximity will come shortly
     after your twenty-first birthday. If I am not back with you before
     then I may have perished. Or I may be alive--but unable to return.

     I want you to come and join me, Johnny. The trust fund will
     give you four thousand dollars. In a vault at the bank you will
     find, and now must claim, a small metal casket. No one but us two
     know what is in it. Take it to a place as near the couch in the
     laboratory of our old home as you can manage. The casket contains
     two transition mechanisms. At midnight of the tenth day after your
     birthday, from this designated place, I want you to come after
     me. I will have kept track of your Earth Time-flow if I possibly
     can--and if I am still alive I will meet you. Come to me, son. A
     great adventure....

There followed ten busy days for Johnny. The old frame house of his
boyhood was still standing; empty of furniture now, shabby and decrepit.
He got a temporary rental of the premises. By night he brought in the
metal, coffinlike box. He put it in his father's laboratory room, with
a board table and chairs. He worked almost entirely at night studying
his father's technical instructions.

Then came the last night. Ten o'clock. Johnny was ready; he sat waiting
for midnight. There was only one person here on Earth, whom Johnny was
leaving with any pang of regret. Anne Johnson. He had just come back
from saying good-by to Anne. Swearing her to secrecy, he had told her
what he was about to do. His six-foot bulk had towered over her as she
stood suddenly shrinking against him. Then she was crying--and he had
torn away and run from her home.

A knock sounded at the front door of the house! It startled Johnny so
that he sat transfixed, frozen. It came again; insistent. Johnny padded
into the dark front hall. He called gruffly through the barred door:

"Who is it? What you want?"

"Johnny! Johnny, dear--"

Anne's voice! He flung open the door. She scurried in like a dark little
shadow, and he banged the door closed and barred it again.

"I was so afraid I'd be too late--"

She was breathless, pallid, tense; beautiful little dark-haired
girl--but she was disheveled, wildly excited now. She held a small
bundle under her arm, enveloped by her blue cloak.

"I came--to go with you, Johnny."

"Anne, you're crazy--" But the thing set his heart pounding.

He said at last, "All right--you win. You go in there. Put on one of the
suits. Call me when you're ready."

He stood waiting.

"All ready, Johnny."

She stood in a sleek black bathing suit; her clothes lay in a little
heap at her feet. Admiration for her swept him. Slim, sleek little
Diana. She shivered a little as he buckled the heavy wire mesh belt
around her slim waist. The adjustable headgear slipped over her coiled
black hair and strapped under the chin. Wires connected it with a
flexible necklace; wires were strung down her arms to bracelets; and
others down her legs, fastened at the knees and ankles.

His own equipment was similar. And then they sat down to wait until
midnight. Johnny found himself queerly breathless. Soon he and
Anne would be gone from this room. Vanished. Yet, scientifically,
mathematically, they would still be here. The same dimensions of length,
breadth and thickness. But a different factor of Time. No two material
bodies may occupy the same Space at the same Time--

He thought, "We're explorers of the shadows--" It was like dying. He
shook off the thought. This was a scientific thing; a change of bodily
density--a different quality of Matter, altered by the mysterious
electronic current of the mechanism. A change of Time-flow. Not a change
of time, like yesterday compared with today or tomorrow. An alteration
of the _flow of Time_--so that his human existence would move forward to
its destination of death at a different rate.

A factor so fundamental, so vital, that its alteration altered every
quality of Matter itself, to create another realm of existence. A
scientific thing--frightening to do only because he had never done it
before.

Midnight. Johnny shook himself into alertness. Anne's face was pale and
grim; her dark eyes stared at him.

"Over there on the floor--lie down there," he said. He gestured. "That's
where father's couch stood. He started from there. I'll blow the light
out now."

He lay down beside her. It seemed that with the puffing out of the light
they had cut themselves off from the world. She was clinging to his
hand. He said, "I'll tell you when to throw the switch on your belt. To
the first intensity only--we've got to start slowly--avoid any great
shock. Understand?"

"Yes." He could hear her quickened breathing.

"Move your switch--just a little--"

She did it. He heard the hum of the circulating current, her gasp, and
in the darkness he saw the silvery glow of her mechanism. Instantly he
moved his own switch.

A tingling thrill shot through him. His senses reeled.

       *       *       *       *       *

In a moment Johnny's senses steadied. The network of wires on him
tingled his flesh. They were vibrating with an oscillation, tiny,
infinitely rapid. It seemed, all in that instant, that the vibration
communicated to his body. It brought a thrill. A sense of excitement.
But it was more than that. His whole being seemed tingling. It was a
physical vibration, so that every tiny cell within him seemed quivering.

They were drifting downward. It was a sensation utterly strange.
Weightless bodies hovering in a soundless void. The world above was gone
now. The outlines of the room had flickered, tenuous as a wisp of smoke
above them--and vanished.

He murmured, "We'd better try the higher intensities of the current.
Ready now! We must keep together. Second! Third! Fourth!"

It swept them into an intensification of all the weird sensations. The
humming within them increased.

An interval of Time passed. Time? A blurred, queer interval--Time of a
new quality--a new rate of flow, coming into their being now. Johnny
saw clouds whirling toward them--imponderable clouds through which they
passed and could feel nothing. It was a grey scene, not empty now but
filled with shadowed shapes, blurred and indefinite. A monochrome of
grey. Then presently a little color was coming to it. A distant yellow
glow.

He remembered his father's detailed directions. The first color would be
yellow. A golden tinge. "We've got to slow down," he said. "Third ...
Second ... First! Stop there!"

They were no longer in a void of emptiness. Distant shapes were taking
form. The faint golden light was a blur overhead, but beneath them now
were shapes of apparent solidity.

Off to one side, something solid--huge as a great golden
mountain--reared itself up. And things were moving here in the air.
Was that a slowly swaying human shape, off there not far away? He
heard Anne suck in her breath as she saw it. The thing was a blob, with
swaying arms and legs. It was human. A man. The daylight gleamed golden
upon him.

The surface was steadily rising. It was only fifty feet under them now
as they wafted gently down. Off in the distance there was a broad spread
of water, rippled by a breeze. A mile or so away was a golden-glowing
city, set back from the lake shore.

From the ground came a dim, red beam. The signal! His father's letter
had arranged it.

Johnny cried, "He's alive, Anne! We're arrived! Normality!"

They turned their switches. Normal now to this new environment. They had
arrived in the new realm. It was day. Not sunlight. The sky everywhere
was flooded with a bright but diffused golden light. The red signal beam
was extinguished. The figures by the fern-clump scattered as Johnny and
Anne drifted down. Solid ground touched Johnny's feet. He scrambled,
clutched at Anne, and they stood erect, swaying.

Strange, weightless bodies! It struck Johnny with a sudden mental shock.
Gravity was hardly apparent here. He stood balancing, swaying as though
the gentle breeze would waft him away. His body weighed hardly more than
a few pounds.

"Johnny! Thank God you're safe!"

His father's voice. Familiar timbre, out of the memories of his
childhood. And he saw a man's figure come with rhythmic swaying arms and
legs in a glide through the air toward him.




CHAPTER II

_Strange New World_


Night had come. Through the big oval open windows of the Government
Castle where they were having their first meal in this strange new
world, Johnny could see the golden daylight fading into a golden
twilight; and then into night.

A dozen people of this world sat with Johnny and Anne and Hall senior.
Some of them spoke English, which Hall had taught them. And Johnny
listened to his father's account of this adjacent realm, to Earth, and
the strange menace impending here. This was not the convex surface of a
globe, but the concave inner surface of a void. A small realm. A void
no more than a hundred or so Earth miles in diameter, with a thin layer
of atmosphere hardly a mile in depth clinging to the concave surface.
The light was inherent to the air--like a phosphorescence, yet waxing
and waning to give an alternating day and night somewhat longer than the
corresponding Earth interval.

Only one race of people were here--and this, the city of Bhana, was
their largest settlement. A scientific realm, perhaps the equal of
Earth, yet so different that there could be no basis of comparison.

Tenuous, giant structures loomed upward, so that the city seemed as high
as it was wide and long. Giant flowers and trees growing in gardens on
the rooftops. Weird lack of gravity! The whole city was a tangled metal
maze of trellises, balconies, rooms, windows, doorways.

Johnny stared around the dinner table now. Strange food; strange people.
He saw his father no older. But he was thinner, almost ill-looking. His
thin figure now was encased in a glistening mailed garment that could
have been woven blue metal.

New world to Johnny. But the same jealousy, greed and the lust for gain
characterized it. Johnny sat tense, eagerly listening.

Some twenty years ago--before Hall arrived--it was decided here in Bhana
not to jail but to banish all important men criminals. A city in the
distant forest was established for them. Hall was saying:

"There is a colony out there now. Several hundred. No one from here
had ever tried to visit it--until recently. And now we find that it's
fortified! Some unknown leader, with a ghastly, diabolical plot--we have
not enough gold-gas available to combat it--"

Taro said, "Your father must tell you the science of our world--"

This Taro was a young scientist. Hardly young, perhaps, for though his
face was unlined, his bearing and poise of manner gave him the aspect
of a man nearly forty. His position undoubtedly was important; Johnny
could not miss the note of command about him. Like these other men, his
skin was bronzed. A hawklike face, with high-bridged nose, a wide, firm
mouth, and a queerly pointed chin. His eyes were dark under heavy black
brows. Weapons hung at his belt.

When Hall first came he had worked with the scientists, adding his
Earth knowledge to theirs. He found this air heavily charged with a
new atomic type of oxygen, hydrogen, carbon dioxide; and also "heavy"
with a strange, gaseous form of several of the familiar earth minerals.
Gold, in particular. A free electron type of gold was inherent to this
air. Unmeasurable pounds of Earth's normal heavy-atom solidly congealed
mineral gold were here expanded millions of times in volume and diffused
through this atmosphere, forming its gold-content, and giving to it the
golden light.

       *       *       *       *       *

Shadow Gold! "Yellow gas-light," Johnny's father called it. And in this
air it was as vital to human life as oxygen is in the air of Earth. It
held, indeed, a very similar position, for without the gold-gas this
air was vitiated; the yellow glow was gone; and all living organisms,
breathing such air, would die.

For the first few years after Hall's arrival this had been, as always, a
very peaceful realm. He had voluntarily stayed; studying it. He saw very
clearly that only harm could come from any close connection between it
and Earth. So he had said that his transition mechanism was broken. He
was marooned here--but there would be a time when his son would come.

Someone of this realm must have stolen the mechanism--for it vanished
after a year or two. The plot of this unknown villain must have had its
inception then; and possession of the transition mechanism made his
plan possible of fruition.

Of them all at this dinner it was a youth named Nido who most had
engaged Johnny's attention. A slim, graceful figure--a young man
certainly of not over twenty. His single clinging garment covered him
from shoulders to knees. His skin was smooth and bronzed, curiously
sleek. His face was slim, yet firm of chin--a face foreign to anything
Johnny had ever seen on Earth.

Nido said, "A thousand of our people have been killed."

"Yes," Hall agreed. "These banished criminals for ten years now must
have had spies here in Bhana. This diabolic apparatus which they have
built is hidden in the heart of the forest. Nido saw it. He flew there
by night a week ago. He got in--but he could do nothing--and he barely
escaped with his life."

Year by year other criminals must have clustered in the forest
stronghold, lured by the scheme. And now this plot was at its
culmination. In the criminal Forest City colony there were established
now giant absorbers, condensers, for the isolation of gold. They were
withdrawing the gold-content from the air, doubtless for transportation
to Earth. Disaster to this little realm here. There were natural air
currents here, unalterable save for occasional infrequent storms.
Hall likened them to trade winds--a steady drift circulating over the
concave curvature of this inner globular surface. And the prevailing
drift was from the Forest City stronghold, toward Bhana and its neighbor
settlements. The condensers would vitiate the air--steal the gold from
it. And the empty, poisonous air would drift on down to these populous
cities, bringing lethargy and death.

It had already come. Three times now in the past two weeks. Dark,
goldless air. It had not lasted long--as though the criminals still were
perfecting their apparatus. But it was enough to strike death here. The
aged, the sick and the very young were all who had died thus far.

Johnny demanded, "Is there no cure for this terrible, deathly sickness?"

"Oh, yes," Taro said gravely. "There is a cure--but we cannot apply it."

"It is like being slowly asphyxiated on Earth," Hall said. "You die,
breathing air that is impure. The cure here? On Earth we would say air
with more oxygen. Here it is air with more gold-gas. We can expand
mineral gold into gas. There is no metal, here or on Earth, which cannot
be rendered gaseous. But we are faced with a gold-mineral shortage.

"Our power is the expansion of the electro-atoms of gold mineral back
into gold-gas. You've already seen our rocket engines. We take small
quantities of the gold from the air--and put it back with the exhaust of
our engines. The reverse of Earth. Every engine on Earth exudes poison.
But here--our rocket streams are the very essence of life."

Nido said, "It is the vapor from our gold fuel which can cure the
sickness--nothing else, of course."

"Why haven't you sent an army to round up these criminals?" Johnny asked.

"In three weeks?" Hall retorted. "Again, gold is at the crux of it. Our
weapons, too, use gold-gas. And now we have no real weapons--"

"We can make an army ready," Jeoh, the governor, said.

Hall said, "We sent a ship through the air to the Forest City--and it
was assailed by a gold-bomb. The first explosive weapon ever used in
this world. With unlimited gold now, these criminals have devised a
bomb--an ultra-rapid expansion of the mineral into the gas."

       *       *       *       *       *

The meal was finished, but the discussion went on. The Forest City
criminals were still experimenting--or waiting for something. Or, at
least, not running the giant apparatus continuously. But at any moment
they might start. And Hall believed, by what was vaguely known of their
equipment, these giant absorbers running at full power might in a few
days--or even hours--vitiate all the air of this little void.

The vague beginnings of a plan were coming to Johnny. Plans he wouldn't
dare mention to his father--or to any of these grave officials. But
tomorrow he would tell them to this young fellow, Nido; who had already
been to the Forest City. If he and Johnny could get there secretly--make
away with some of that gold mineral which the criminals had already
extracted from the air--and bring it back here--

Johnny's thoughts were stricken from his mind by a newcomer to the room.
A woman entered. She came with a glide graceful and sinuous as a panther.

She joined the group. What her position was no one told Johnny, but he
saw that Jeoh was obviously fascinated by her.

And well he might be, Johnny thought. A woman who seemed to be
beyond thirty. A figure sleek of hips, full-breasted--an indefinably
foreign face framed by platinum-white flowing hair with black strands
intermingled. It was a heavy face, full-lipped, sensuous, reckless.

The woman did not join in the discussion; she just sat with confident
poise, listening. And she stared often at Johnny, regarding him with
dark eyes.

In a small bedroom on the second level of his father's house, adjacent
to the Government Castle, Johnny lay in a metal bed, with a soft fabric
covering on it.

He lay drowsing. Suddenly he awakened. He started up on one elbow and
the bed creaked with his movement. The sharp sound brought him to full
alertness....

The sense that someone was here in the room with him came strongly.
Obvious! It was a waft of perfume. And then he saw, down by the floor
under the window portière, something white. An ankle!

Johnny still had on his suit, and his clasp knife was at his belt. He
lay, propped up on one elbow, and the fingers of his other hand silently
drew out the knife and opened it.

He said softly, "Come out of that. I see you."

The portière moved aside. The woman, Rua, stood smilingly before him.

"What do you want?" Johnny demanded, and through an interval he returned
her gaze. Her hair, with its black strands, was coiled and piled now on
her head--a headdress like a great cone.

"I wanted to talk with you." Her voice was a full, rich contralto. Then
she said with sudden directness: "About what your father told you about
the Forest City--I heard your questions. I could guess you act for
yourself when you have plans. And you are daring. Do I guess right?"

His heart leaped. Had he been so transparent, back there during the
supper? He said, "Act for myself? Perhaps." And a caution swept him. He
added, "Speak out. Don't talk riddles."

She seemed to reach a sudden decision. "What I tell--you will keep in
your own heart?"

Johnny shifted in his chair. "You mean, not repeat what you say?"

"Yes. Do not talk so loud. I--find you very interesting." She seemed
breathless. "I go tonight on a journey. To him who is leader in the
Forest City--they call him the Master." At Johnny's start, she said: "I
go to the Forest City. I used to have--influence over this Master. I
think to use that influence now. He has not seen me--a long time. And I
think to make him stop the sending these clouds of sickness."

Johnny asked: "You can get there?"

"I can get there," she said. "I have a flying boat. It is here now--not
far from here. Not even hidden--it is at your father's dock."

       *       *       *       *       *

Johnny was leaning forward toward her. "You're offering to take me?"

Outside the window there was a sound. And Rua heard it. With a swift,
silent swing she was at the casement, and Johnny drew himself beside
her. But the garden outside seemed empty.

"How long will this journey take?" Johnny demanded.

"Not long."

"I'm ready," he said.

They left by the window, wafting themselves with a leap down through the
leafy foliage to the ground. Rua glided cautiously, keeping within the
heavy shadows of the shrubbery. The lake shore was near by. At Hall's
long dock an open boat was lying moored. Its stern was decked over for
a few feet into a tiny cabin, with the little engine amidships, and a
control set in the bow.

They sat in the bow, with Rua at the controls. The boat started
smoothly, almost silently. Exhilarating, weightless flight. An hour
passed and it seemed to Johnny presently that the wind was increasing.

Another cloud of death coming from the Forest City.

Before Johnny could voice his startled question there came a sharp
sound. Back along the dark canoe interior an upright figure showed, just
emerging from the shadows of the little cabin at the stern. A third
passenger; a stowaway!

It was Anne!

"Well, we're going back," Johnny declared grimly.

"Suits me," Anne said. She sat on one of the cross seats, still in her
tunic, with a dark garment of gossamer fabric, which evidently she had
taken from her bedroom in Hall's home, thrown over her.

So that was the noise they had heard at the window of Johnny's room!
Anne had heard them talking of this trip--heard Rua say her boat was
at the dock. And she had preceded them through the garden and hidden
herself there.

Rua sat silent, regarding the girl with a smoldering flush.

How to handle this situation puzzled Johnny. He sat silent, trying to
plan; but soon whatever plans he could guess at making were swept from
his mind. The gale was blowing directly from the Forest City, back
toward Bhana. And the normal yellow night glow in the air was steadily
darkening. The giant condensers were operating at full capacity. That
was obvious now.

The darkness of the air steadily intensified as Rua's vehicle darted
like a soaring bird forward into it. They were flying now some five
hundred feet above the top of a gigantic forest--a dark, tangled,
matted jungle. Another interval. Had Johnny dozed? Or was this damnable
vitiated air making him lose consciousness? Rua said, "I can fix that."
She opened a little valve in one of the glowing conduits which ran along
the inside of the gunwale--conduits which carried the gold-gas from the
engine to the several rocket-stream exhausts. Some of the engine exhaust
streamed out. It was like inhaling whiffs of pure air in a room which
had been stifling.

Ahead of them now the river widened and divided into two narrow channels
with an island between them. The island was about a mile long and six or
eight hundred feet at its widest.

       *       *       *       *       *

And here on the island was the Forest City of criminals. There were a
few metal landing stages down among the trees. But no sign of human
habitation. Then, from a closer viewpoint, Johnny saw mound-shaped
earthen buildings, like little forts, at intervals along the island
shore--a cliff shore, with the river some fifty feet lower.

"The Master and his men live underground," Rua was saying. But Johnny
hardly heard her. His attention was focused to the center of the island,
where there was a hundred-foot circular pit. It was a glare of yellow
fluorescence. Two great conduits rose from it, one forking toward Bhana,
the other in the opposite direction. They were two hundred feet high at
least, widening into great round funnels, held by skeleton framework and
guy ropes.

The pit sheltered the mechanism of the huge condensers. The funnel away
from Bhana was the intake of pure air; the other was pouring out its
black, polluted stream. The hum and throb of the giant mechanism was
audible.

They were almost over the island now. He saw Rua fumbling with
her instrument panel. From the bow, a light flashed. On and off.
Puffs of intense red glare. It was her signal to the men below--the
identification that this was not an enemy ship.

But Rua had been too distracted in piloting her craft; she had delayed
the signal too long. From one of the forts came a puff of yellow light.
A golden cylinder mounted upward. A gold-bomb. It burst before it
reached its mark.

There was a dazzling yellow glare. The explosion was some forty feet
away, but the air-pressure struck like a solid wall. One of the wings
of the vehicle was torn away. They were falling and turning end over
end--falling more rapidly than normal to this realm, drawn down
doubtless by some sucking air current.

Then there was a rending crash. Johnny's senses slid into an abyss of
black empty silence, with only the consciousness remaining that he was
holding Anne in his arms.




CHAPTER III

"_I Can Conquer the Earth!_"


Johnny did not quite lose consciousness. He was aware of returning
sounds, and that fragments of the wrecked craft were lying on him. He
called, "Anne! Anne, where are you?"

Agonizing until he heard her voice. "Here, Johnny."

Then he heard Rua's voice. None of them killed. The light gravity had
saved them. They scrambled up.

The top surface of the island showed now in the yellow nightlight--a
rocky area, with trees, small landing platforms, and little metal kiosks
leading down underground.

Rua murmured, "Don't move--they might fire on us!"

They stood motionless, docile, while men came up and surrounded them.
None seemed to speak English, and imperiously Rua talked in her own
language. Then the men took them through the kiosk entrance, down a
dimly-lighted metal incline and along a length of tunnel. And then into
a draped and padded grotto apartment.

Then the Master appeared before them. He came through a rift high up on
the side of the grotto. They saw his figure stoop at the low entrance;
then he straightened and came walking slowly down a narrow steep slope
of rock.

It was Taro, the soldier-scientist, trusted as a friend by the officials
in Bhana--he who had sat with Johnny and the others at the dinner only a
few hours ago. Strange commanding figure, this Taro. His expression had
a queer Satanic cast, the peak of hair in a triangle on his forehead,
his slightly upturned eyebrows and narrow, pointed chin.

"So? You come to visit me, young Johnny?" His mailed garment was of
black and white metal. One of his hands toyed at his belt where weapons
were hanging. He was ironically polite. "Sit down. We will talk."

"Thanks," said Johnny. He gestured to Anne and she sat beside him on
a padded bench. Taro remained standing before them, swaying slightly
forward and backward. His gaze swung to Anne, and for a moment clung.
Then he turned to Rua, who was standing here. "You did well, Rua, to
bring him. And this girl, Anne--"

"I bring not her," said Rua. "She came of herself."

Taro's gesture dismissed her. He swung his arm, from which a string of
ornaments hung clinking. "Enough. Go, Rua. Soon I will send this girl
Anne to your care." He watched her as she slowly left the apartment. A
guard moved aside to pass her, and a heavy metal door swung open and
closed.

And Johnny stared. Prisoners?

       *       *       *       *       *

He saw now that the woman Rua had tricked him. Where was her vaunted
power over Taro? Johnny had at least half believed what she said. In
reality, it was obvious now, she was no more than one of Taro's spies,
ordered to bring Johnny here.

"Now we will talk," Taro was saying. He was still smiling faintly. He
swung all his body as though it were pivoted at the waist and knees, and
addressed Anne.

"What is your name?"

She found her voice. "My name is Anne Johnson."

Her tone was low and steady. Strange little Anne, with courage not to
show her fear. Johnny saw admiration leap into Taro's eyes.

"And what are you to him? His friend?"

"Yes--his friend."

"You are the first Earth woman I have ever seen. I think I like you." He
turned to Johnny. "I have to talk of--my plan to go to your Earth, very
soon. Your father, he thinks to send an army against me." He laughed
harshly, sardonically. "I work with your father when I am young. Rua
knows him since a little girl--he make good his job to teach us your
language. But he is an old man--a fool to help everyone and not himself.
But you, perhaps--"

"You want help from me?" Johnny said quickly.

"I tell you. On Earth I will be very rich--perhaps richest of any man in
your world. That brings great power--not so?"

"Yes," Johnny agreed. "Just about."

"I understand that." His grin came again. He lowered his voice a little.
"We are over two hundred of us here. I have always tell my men I take
them with me. I can conquer the Earth! That is true. But I do it alone."

His face was intense. "I--Taro--how could I ever be powerful here? Gold
means nothing here. Your great Earth--who shall say, with all this gold,
what Taro may do?"

He checked Johnny's interruption.

"You listen--you ask my plans--I tell to you. My condensers here, I will
run them until all the gold in this little world is mine. Are you rich
on Earth?"

"No," said Johnny.

"That is good. You will be, living with me. I need you. I am a fellow
practical. I will get to Earth with much gold. What then? I look
strange. I need clothes. I need a house. I need--" Again his gaze swept
Anne. "I need a woman to keep my house. I need my raw gold changed into
money to buy what I want."

Johnny nodded. Then he said abruptly, "Did you steal the transition
mechanism my father brought here, fifteen years ago?"

"Yes," Taro smiled. "And I fool them all in Bhana that I have to make
many journeys to other cities on government business."

He paused; then he said, "And here I have a surprise for you--" He
called to one of his men. The fellow came with the black sack Johnny had
left in the wreckage, laid it at Taro's feet and went back to his post.

Taro opened the sack and took from it the two mechanisms which had
transported Johnny and Anne from Earth! Johnny understood now. And
Anne gasped, and stared. Rua's midnight visit to Hall's home--to get
Johnny--had also been to get these mechanisms.

"How did that accursed woman know where father hid them?" Johnny
demanded.

It made Taro laugh. "She explain to me--your father, naturally he tell a
thing like that to Jeoh, the governor."

And Johnny remembered Jeoh's fatuous look at Rua when she had come to
the dinner.

       *       *       *       *       *

Taro added, "We have now three of the mechanisms here. This realm is
doomed. Everyone here will die--except myself--and you and this girl.
You do not want to die? You will go gladly to Earth--out of death here."

"Yes," Johnny agreed. "Why wouldn't I?"

He added cautiously, "I would like on Earth to share your gold. I can
certainly help you."

"Of course," Taro smiled. "And I will have this Earth girl."

With two backward sweeps of his arms, he wafted himself closer to Anne,
who had moved a few feet away. Every muscle in Johnny was tense for a
leap.

Taro added, with his slow smile, "You will find me a man you can like
very quickly. I know how to please women. Are you afraid of me? Do not
be."

She had lost her cloak; she was garbed only in her suit. His fingers
brushed lightly over her neck and throat. She did not shrink, but
suddenly a cry burst from her. And Johnny leaped, head first, like a
diver taking a plunge. His head struck Taro's shoulder; the force of
Johnny's leg-thrust against the rocks knocked both their bodies half a
dozen feet from Anne.

Johnny floundered, clutching at his adversary. He felt his fingers
reach Taro's belt; but Taro's hand caught his wrist, twisted it with
surprising strength. They struck the rock floor.

But this was Taro's natural environment. He jerked loose. His hand
was at his belt. A weapon came out. Anne screamed again. A guard from
outside was sailing across the apartment in an arc.

In Taro's hand was a small cylinder. A coiled wire sprang from it,
struck Johnny's chest, and, uncoiling, wrapped itself around him,
pinning his arms. And in another second Taro fired again. Another wire
struck his knees. Lashed them. And Taro, pouncing, lifted and flung him.
Helpless, all in those few seconds, bound by the tightening wire into an
inert bundle, Johnny's body sailed backward across the grotto.

And then the guard, with a black stone knife in his hand, came like a
giant bird and pounced, but did not strike, for Taro shouted a command.

The grotto was in an uproar. Other guards hurtled through the air and
landed on Johnny. Then they lifted him; held him balanced erect on his
feet.

And Taro was standing now, grinning. He called: "I would not hurt
you--this time. We will talk again when you have less foolish anger."

The men carried the bound Johnny away into a dim, cavelike cell. They
unbound him. The metal door closed; clanked with outer bars. The voices
faded.

Johnny was left alone, with only the steady distant hum of Taro's giant
condensers breaking the silence.

Johnny could find no way of getting out of here. He shoved at the door,
but it was unyielding. A tiny glow of reflected light came from the
vaulted ceiling, and he could presently see that he was in a small
eroded cave whose walls, ceiling and floor were patched with metal. A
small ventilator grid, breast high, admitted a stream of pure air.

In a corner of the cell there was a small metal bed, with a fabric
mattress. Johnny lay down. He was bruised and tired. And both hungry and
thirsty. He supposed someone would come, eventually.

He drifted off into restless slumber, and was awakened by a voice. He
started up, confused. There were faint murmured words, in English.

"Johnny! Johnny Hall! You in there?"

It was coming through the small ventilator grid which was only a few
inches wide; it seemed some four or five feet away.

"Johnny--I'm waiting--trying to get you out." There were other sounds.
Other, more distant voices. The murmuring voice said hurriedly, "I come
again--" It stopped.

       *       *       *       *       *

The heavy barred door moved inward. Rua came through, with a metal
platter of food and drink.

"Thanks," Johnny said. "Look here, have you been with Anne?"

"Yes. She is all right. She ask me about you. Taro, he was pleased that
I bring you. He will take us all to Earth--"

"Good," said Johnny. "Tell him the sooner I get out of here, the better."

She leaned forward. "Once I love Taro very much. But you--I think I like
better. You are angry that I trick you?"

He shoved her violently off. "Get out of here!"

She swayed to her feet. "No man has ever said that to me before."

Fury of a woman scorned. Upon her heavy face was a look of smoldering
anger. "You love that pale Earth girl. Yes--you love her, love her!"

He grinned. "Go on--beat it. Get out!"

She moved through the doorway, and was gone. The men swung the door
closed. Johnny went on eating. And then cold fear struck at him. What a
fool he was--what an accursed fool! He had sent Rua away in a vengeful
fury--and it was she who had charge of Anne. And whose voice was it
which he had heard through the ventilator? A friend here--

Then at last Taro came. He stood in the doorway with the guards behind
him. He smiled. "You feel more with reason now?"

"Oh yes," Johnny agreed. "Is Anne safe?"

He held his breath. "But yes," said Taro. "I have to go and inspect my
condensers. You hear that they still operate? I was thinking to take you
now to see them. We must plan how best we are to transport the gold to
Earth. The time is almost here--"

It made Johnny's heart leap. A chance--

"I'd like that very much." He was standing, with Taro facing him; and he
saw that Taro was alert to his least move.

Johnny grinned. "I'm not fool enough to jump on you again."

"You are a fellow I like," Taro responded. "We shall have no trouble.
There are many details to arrange. Come now."

They went up an ascending passage. It seemed not more than fifty feet
until they stood in the shelter of a metal kiosk on the island surface.
A guard was here. The giant forked funnel towered overhead. The luminous
pit under it hummed and throbbed.

Taro and Johnny were clinging to a low railing. It led from here across
the rocks to the lip of the condenser-pit.

"Hold tight," Taro murmured. "You could blow away so easily."

They edged along the railing; and now three dark-robed men with goggles
followed after them. Johnny felt now the impurity of this tumbling
air--eddies of the poisonous cloud of death overhead which were swept
down here. Taro was telling his plans for transporting the gold to
Earth. They would begin that soon, and meanwhile keep the absorbers
steadily running.

"We'll need the transition mechanisms handy," Johnny said.

Taro chuckled. "I have them safe."

"Where?" said Johnny. He tensed for the answer; but Taro only laughed.

"Suit yourself." Johnny said. "Where is Anne? Let's take her now and
show her the gold. Tell her our plans."

"She is coming," Taro said readily. "Rua brings her."

They started again along the railing. It joined a similar rail at the
lip of the pit. And edged black against the glare, were the figures of
two women. In a moment Johnny and Taro--and the three guards--joined
them. Johnny was aware of Anne's quick anxious glance, and a smoldering
gaze from Rua.

Taro said, "The wind is very strong. My condensers make a disturbance
world-wide."

       *       *       *       *       *

The light from the pit was so intense that Johnny could not look into
it. He edged over to Anne; he put his arm around her. The three guards
had approached. Taro and Rua were donning goggles. One of the three
guards handed a pair to Anne, and then one to Johnny--goggles with dark
lenses to dim the glare. Then the black-robed, goggled man swayed away
from him, gripping the railing. But his body brushed Johnny--and his
hand, just for an instant, gripped Johnny's arm. A warning? A signal?
Was this the mysterious friend? A friend here, masquerading as one of
Taro's men? Johnny was alert.

With the goggles, Johnny could see comfortably into the glare. A metal
incline led over the lip of the pit, and then a few feet down to a
railed platform. It was in a back-eddy of the wind, partly sheltered.
And from there they gazed down at the strange, forbidding scene spread
below them.

The pit was circular; about a hundred feet in diameter. It was, in
effect, a giant cone, set point downward into the ground. The two
overhead forked funnels came down, narrowed into twenty-foot conduits
which branched into a system of small tubes and pipes. They stretched
like tangled pythons over the steeply sloping inner surface of the great
cone whose central bottom point, Johnny judged, was a full hundred and
fifty feet below him.

Metal handrails on the cone's inner surface were strung between the vats
and conduits. But Johnny saw no men down there. He leaned toward Taro.

"Where do you control this?"

Taro answered the question readily. The control house was up on the
island surface. Fifty men were there; and all the others were spread at
various points along the channel bluff, manning the island's defense
weapons.

"The gold--" Taro added; and he gestured down toward the bottom of the
pit, where the conduits led to smaller vats and converged at last into
one. And there, the gold was visible. Mineral gold. It came sliding
like yellow sand, through a grid, down a little chute and into an open
container. The narrow yellow stream gleamed and sparkled in the light.

Taro was saying, "I will show you the volume of our treasure. For the
transportation to Earth--"

A goggled man came plucking at him. They talked excitedly in their own
language. Then in English, Taro exclaimed:

"One of my men found killed! His clothes and weapons taken! There is a
spy lurking here--"

He moved a few feet away, talking with several other excited men who
had joined him. Johnny stood tense, with a hand on Anne's shoulder. The
original three guards blocked the nearby exit from the balcony ledge,
though they moved a little from it to listen to what Taro and the others
were saying.

Suddenly a swish of air sounded. Rua's body came sailing head forward
and struck both Anne and Johnny together. They had been standing
clinging to each other. Rua's jealousy! It flared now to an uncontrolled
frenzy. Her onslaught knocked Johnny away from Anne. He fell sideward;
he saw Anne fighting the older woman's clutch, and a knife blade glint
in the yellow light. He shouted wildly.

"Anne! Look out--her knife--"

In that second Johnny gripped a handrail, and with a pull of his arm,
flung himself at Rua. He saw the black glinting blade over Anne's
breast; he caught Rua's wrist; twisted it; the knife fell--and they sank
in a struggling heap.

       *       *       *       *       *

And in that second, the commotion had spread. Taro came lunging upon
Rua. Johnny glimpsed his face, distorted by a wild fury. He had a knife,
and with a sweep plunged it into the whiteness of Rua's breast and left
it there. Johnny jerked free of the mêlée; his hand had snatched Rua's
knife from the floor. He gained his feet, holding Anne under his arm.
But in that second half a dozen bodies struck him. He saw knives coming
at Anne; he warded them off, and suddenly yielded.

He relinquished Anne as Taro drew her upright. Rua's body lay inert on
the ledge. Limp, dead thing, stained now with crimson. Sensuous, heavy
face, beautiful once, but now with staring eyes and fallen jaw.

On Taro's face was a cold contempt. "The end--for her." He steadied
himself on his feet; he lifted Rua's body and heaved it violently upward
past his head. It rose above the nearby vats, sailed upward and outward.

An eddy of wind caught it; then an outgoing circular rush. It was sucked
up; dwindled by distance--a little oblong blob. The draperies waved;
the head and long hair dangled. It was sucked up; dwindled by distance,
whirling end over end. Then it lunged into the upper gale of rushing
wind--a dot, and it was gone.

Taro was smiling. He turned his grim smile upon Johnny. "She was right
when she think you and Anne are lovers. Not so? Well--she is out of my
way, now."

And, for the same motive as Rua's, would he not dispose of Johnny? The
thought was knocked from Johnny's mind. There came a distant shout from
Taro's men overhead.

Sudden, startling news; so startling that it rang with a turmoil over
all the fortified little island. From off in the direction of Bhana, the
fluorescent comet-tails of oncoming flying ships were visible--a great
luminous crescent across the golden sky!




CHAPTER IV

_Combat in the Giant Cone_


Anne and Johnny were being shoved upward from the cone-interior. Taro
left them clinging to the upper railing with a group of goggled men
guarding them. And Taro himself darted away to take command of the
island's defenses.

What a different scene was here now! The great forked funnel still
belched its foul cloud into the dimly golden sky. A haze was off toward
Bhana, blurring now the great fiery crescent which marked the line of
distant oncoming vessels. They were flying high; still many miles away.
To Johnny it seemed that there must be a hundred or more of them.

But Hall and Jeoh had tricked Taro with a surprise. Ahead of this main
squadron a smaller fleet had secretly come and landed in the nearby
forest. The ships were hidden, but the men from them had already sallied
forth to the attack.

Across the channel there was a radiance of light a mile away. The nearer
forest was dark; and from the darkness on the opposite river bank,
human figures were rising, like human birds in this realm of so little
gravitational force. A few came at first; then a flock of them. Men
impelled individually by small rocket engines. They lunged up into the
wind. They were flung away by crazy wind-eddies; but struggling, they
mounted over the channel.

Taro's little forts were in action now. From some, small golden
projectiles mounted, and burst among the fluttering aerial figures.
Puffs of intense golden glare illumined the night. The sizzling little
thunder-cracks mingled with the roar of the wind and the humming throb
from the cone-pit. The rising, struggling figures were blown and
scattered by the raking bombs. But some survived, struggled higher, got
above the channel, then over the island and were fluttering down.

From the dark forest, every instant, more were rising. And the crescent
of Bhana ships swept nearer, sank to the forest to reinforce the others
which were already there.

A desperate, frenzied attack. From one of Taro's forts, a jet of black
goldless air was now hissing up into the struggling enemy figures.
It swung back and forth. It seemed to cut a swath through them, so
that hundreds of them, limp like dead birds, were hurled away by the
wind. But there were too many now. They began landing upon the island;
floundering down, mailed men with glinting swords, fluttering to the
island surface. Scrambling; gaining their feet; struggling toward the
forts where in a moment hand-to-hand fighting was in progress.

The goldless air jet came down, wavered and for a moment raked the
island surface. Johnny caught a stifling whiff of its fumes, which the
wind tore away. Then the jet went up into the air again. A bomb, badly
directed, burst near at hand.

A hundred or more men of the Bhana forces seemed to be on the island now.

And still more every moment were dropping from the cloud of them
overhead. The bombs from Taro's forts were wavering. The interiors of
many of the little stone buildings now were engulfed by hand-to-hand
combat. There was a low squat building a hundred feet away. Johnny
thought it perhaps the control room of the giant absorbers. The Bhana
men were massing in front of it, but horizontal air jets were tossing
them back, frustrating their attempts.

Then Taro again was here. He came between Johnny and Anne. The golden
glare painted his face and there was no mistaking its grimness. He said,
"I had no thought they would attack with suicide desperation like this.
I kill ten to every one who lands here--"

       *       *       *       *       *

Yet more were steadily coming. A little group of them fluttered down
and caught a railing near at hand. A tiny gold-bomb flung horizontally,
burst and scattered them. Its air pressure tore at Johnny; its light
dazzled him. He turned confused, and his heart leaped wildly. He was
alone here! Taro and Anne were gone!

Then a mailed, goggled figure was struggling with him. One of Taro's
guards. He fought. He called, "Anne! Anne, where are you?"

"Johnny!" This man he was fighting, murmured, "Johnny! Wait! Don't--"

Not fighting him! Holding him--trying to ward off Johnny's blows. His
antagonist's goggles came off. "Johnny--I could not get to you. Only
just now--"

A familiar voice. The voice through the ventilator. The glare now showed
Nido's face--Nido, the young man whom Johnny had so liked in Bhana.

"Your father was so worried over you, Johnny. You and Anne--and Rua's
boat gone. Always, we have suspected Rua. So I came here--landed in the
river. I got down here, killed a guard--"

Johnny gasped, "Anne is gone! Anne and Taro--"

"Yes. I saw them. Into the cone, just a minute ago." He pulled at
Johnny. "This way; watch that the wind does not blow you."

They drew themselves from the island surface. It was only a few steps
to the glowing cone-rim. They plunged down into it. There seemed no
following figures. The invaders were all assailing Taro's forts and the
control house.

Nido plunged ahead, with Johnny after him. They passed the metal ledge
where before Johnny had gazed down into the cone. No one here. They
scrambled down a metal stair incline. They were on the steep inner
surface now, sliding, floundering, clinging to the metal handrails.

Johnny gripped his companion. "The transition mechanisms--he would keep
them by the gold. Take her to Earth--"

Taro's getaway. Abandoning everything--escaping with Anne.

Nido was panting: "The gold--near the bottom. Let me lead you."

The confusion, the dazzling glare, the plucking wind, made it difficult
for them to keep their feet. They were sliding, half falling down the
narrow railed pathways between the vats. It was eerie here.

Then Johnny found that they were by the open vat of the gold-mineral.
There was less wind here, and less glare. A great pile of yellow sand,
and the trickle from the metal chute steadily adding to it. He felt Nido
thrust a long metal bar into his hands; and saw Nido scramble and wrench
another from the apparatus nearby.

Then they saw Taro! He was perched on a ledge partly behind a nearby
vat. Taro and Anne. He had already forced her to don one of the
transition mechanisms. He was starting to put one on himself. His
clothes were bulging, bloated with the gold-sand which he had stuffed
into pockets and pouches of a garment in which now he was robed. Anne
was crouching, terrified. Then she saw Johnny and Nido come plunging.

She lunged, but Taro caught her; cuffed her face. He was reaching for
the transition switch at her belt. Then suddenly he must have realized
his own peril. Anne was desperately fighting him; and abruptly he seized
a knife from his belt. Its blade flashed over Anne's breast.

All in a second or two. Nido was in advance of Johnny as they hurtled
their bodies through the air. And Nido, more skillful, was plunging
with truer aim. His body struck between Anne and Taro, and twisting,
he caught the knife in his own breast and sank down, partly on top of
Anne, still trying to shield her.

       *       *       *       *       *

Taro was erect, swaying, fumbling for another weapon to meet Johnny's
plunge. Johnny struck him. They rolled and bounced on the ledge,
kicking, scrambling. Taro had another knife in his hand; it slashed
Johnny's shoulder and then was gone--knocked away in the struggle though
Johnny tried to catch it. Taro's fingers clutched at his throat, then
shifted, gouging at his eyes, knocking away the goggles.

"No you don't!" Johnny panted. "Give me that!" Taro was now clutching
from his belt a strangely-fashioned cylinder weapon. They struggled for
possession of it. Johnny was the stronger. He found himself with the
heavy, sharp-pointed cylinder in his hand. He had no idea how to use it,
save to stab with its point.

Taro was wildly squirming, lunging his body, twisting his head. Johnny
saw that his grin had faded, and a wild terror was in his eyes. The
stabbing cylinder struck his forehead. There was a sizzling flash that
seared Johnny's hand. Taro's forehead had cracked like the shell of an
egg. The cylinder had exploded.

There was only a gruesome headless thing writhing in Johnny's arms. He
cast it away. He lunged for Anne. "You wait, Anne--I'll be back in a
moment."

A frenzy was on Johnny. He remembered that iron bar which Nido had
thrust at him--and Nido's purpose then had been to smash all this
damnable mechanism.

The bar was where Johnny had dropped it. He seized it; whirled and
plunged for a great, coiling pipe which was white with snow and ice
congealed upon it. The coil smashed under his blows. It seemed that all
the world here was bursting into light. Then he was pounding a vat, with
a vast hissing roar and glare engulfing him. The vat exploded with a
great upflung sheet of yellow light; and Johnny staggered back, crouched
and leaped again to his task.

But soon he saw his efforts were not needed. Deranged mechanism. The
derangement now was spreading of its own momentum. The broken icy coil
hissed with yellow vapor. Another vat went up into a sheet of flame. The
pythonlike conduits were bursting. The heat momentarily was blistering,
but the wind sucked it away.

Black smoke swirled, turgid, rushing upward in the wind, and Johnny
still could breathe. There was an instant when he saw the headless body
of Taro sucked upward into the maelstrom, ironically following Rua, a
dark blob; then it vanished.

Through the chaos of electric glare Johnny fought his way back to Anne.
She was bending over the body of Nido; she seemed oblivious to the
inferno around her. She gasped:

"He's alive, Johnny, but he's--"

Nido's glazing eyes saw Johnny; his bloodless lips parted into a faint
smile. His faint words were audible as Johnny and Anne bent low over him.

"You did it, Johnny. Saved my world--that's good. And I saved Anne for
you. She is--she is very beautiful."

His gaze clung to Anne's face--the last thing he wanted to see as the
eternal darkness closed in upon him.

Anne and Johnny crouched together, over the shell of what had been Nido,
with the chaos of glare and roaring, blasting tumult of sound bursting
around them. Then the glare slowly died. A puff of light here, then
another far away, dimmed by the smoke.

The throb of the condensers was gone. The diabolical mechanism at last
was stilled. Darkness and silence came, with only the wind sucking and
whining across the top of the giant cone.




CHAPTER V

_Johnny's Treasure_


For an interval Johnny and Anne crouched dazed, huddled together in the
smoke-filled gloom at the bottom of the cone-pit. Then they became
aware that the air was clearing; the normal breeze across the cone-top
brought a lessened pressure which continued to suck up the fumes. Lights
and sounds were distinguishable up there now. A blurred turmoil.

And presently they climbed laboriously through the tangled smoking
wreckage to the island surface. The golden night was brighter now; the
giant branching funnels were still standing, but only a normal breeze
was passing through them. The island-top, no longer gale-swept, was a
turmoil of lights and men, with a last remnant of the fighting still in
progress, so that Johnny and Anne crouched in hiding, fearful that the
victorious Bhana forces might kill them before they could proclaim their
identity.

Bhana ships had landed here on the island now, disgorging fighting men.
Overhead, others were circling, zooming past with the glare of golden
rocket-tails.

Then the fight was over. The strewn bodies everywhere here were mute
evidence of its brief but savage fury. One last spurt of goldless
air-jet leaped from the nearby control building where a last remnant of
Taro's men still were fighting; and then the Bhana warriors, massed here
on the rocks, swarmed forward and engulfed them.

The confusion was passing. Men came and peered into the wrecked cone.
Then they climbed down into it to get Taro's gold--to bring it up and
transport it to Bhana, where all the available engines, running full,
would put it back as fast as they could into the polluted atmosphere.

Normality to this realm. Taro's menace was past. Then Johnny and Anne
disclosed themselves. They were taken to Jeoh, and then to Johnny's
father, who had come here with the Bhana forces.

The gold-sand was strangely light, almost weightless. There was only
its bulk to handle. Johnny watched the men carrying and loading it. On
Earth, it would be fabulous wealth.

"Yes," Hall said. "And we are going back to Earth now--without it.
Contact with our Earth can bring nothing but harm here."

"You did magnificently, Johnny. Poor Nido--he deserved to live to see
all this triumph." Hall sighed. "I just want to get back to Earth now,
Johnny. Destroy my damnable transition mechanisms."

He seemed like a man utterly tired, at the end of a task which abruptly
was finished.

They stood watching while the gold-sand was loaded into a Bhana ship.
All the Bhana craft were still exuding golden streams, circling off over
the forests and back. Johnny had secured the transition mechanisms from
the cone-pit. Anne had been wearing one of them; Johnny and his father
donned the others. The flight to Bhana was a few hours' trip down a
steady wind. Triumphant, returning fleet. Johnny did not see the main
sections of Bhana itself.

       *       *       *       *       *

The city, damaged by the storm, was dark, with all its lights cut
off--its transportation system stilled by lack of gold fuel. The ships
took some of the gold there now. The lights winked on. The city emerged
from darkness and impending death. The thousands of stricken people were
treated by small exhaust-jets, as on Earth, oxygen tents are used.

Hall, from his own home, had gathered just a few trinkets, mementoes of
his years here in this world. He felt that he could not stand saying
good-by to his friends here. Hastily, he, Johnny and Anne got into
Hall's little car, to go to that spot outside the city where Johnny and
Anne had landed. They would leave from there.

And in the car, they found Hall's little serving maid. Her name was
Neena. Johnny had met her when he first came; he had hardly noticed
her. Nido's sister. A feminine duplicate of the gentle Nido. The same
bronzed glistening skin; the same patrician aspect of delicately moulded
features. Johnny stared at her now and thought he had never seen so
quaintly beautiful a girl anywhere.

She had been crying; the shock of losing her brother; and now, to lose
Hall, her master. Hall said gently:

"It's best for us to go, Neena. Our Earth must never know of your little
world. I came here, but I brought you nothing but tragedy and death."

She just sat staring. Hall piloted the car out over the golden lake. The
light was growing with the coming dawn. Johnny told himself he had never
seen so beautiful a sight as this glorious golden landscape.

Hall landed near the clump of giant ferns, a mile or so outside the
golden-glowing city.

"You can fly the car back, Neena," he said. "You'll explain for me? Tell
everyone I always knew they were my sincere friends."

Neena gulped and nodded. "You--won't ever come back?"

Hall suddenly said, "I won't ever let anyone else on Earth have the
secret of the transition. But maybe--sometime--we might come."

Neena turned abruptly, and from the car produced a small sack which she
had hidden there. And under her arm was a rolled bundle of fabric. With
a quaint, pathetic smile, she gazed at Hall as she unrolled it.

"My brother Nido had planned with me to do this when you left. He--he is
not here, but I am doing it for him. These clothes from your house--they
are yours."

She handed Hall two metallic robes, fashioned with many pouches and
pockets. Hall took them, surprised but smiling.

"Why yes, Neena, thank you." He was puzzled. He said, "I made them
years ago, Johnny, anticipating your coming. I was collecting a little
gold-fuel I had forgotten, and I used all of it since, in rocket
engines."

But Neena was lifting the small white sack. "A present from our world;
you were very good to us always. Nido gathered it from the little
engines. It is not much. Our world will not miss it--or need it."

Little golden treasure. Johnny was standing with his arm around Anne. He
glanced down and met her glowing misty eyes, shining with the happiness
of her love. Treasure so much more precious than all the gold of all the
realms in all the Universe.

"I thank you," Hall was saying gently. "We all thank you very much,
Neena."

Then presently they were ready to start. Neena's quaint little figure,
waving farewell in the growing golden dawn-light, was the last thing
they saw as they swept away into the transition.


[The end of _Shadow Gold_ by Ray Cummings]