Jane turned from the window. "You heard us, Tolla?"
"Yes, I heard you! You with your crooked look staring at him--"
"Why, Tolla, I did not!"
"I saw you! Staring at him so that he would think you beautiful!
Asking him, with a boldness beyond that of any woman I could ever imagine--asking him if he planned you for his harem!"
She stood over Jane, staring down with blazing eyes. "Oh, I heard you! And I heard him telling you how n.o.ble are his motives! One woman, just for him!"
"But, Tolla--"
"Do not lie to me! I heard him sneering at me--telling you of this one woman just for him! And you are that woman! Hah! He thinks that now, does he? He thinks he will make you love him as I love him. As I love him! And what does he know of that! What woman"s love can mean!"
"Tolla! Don"t be foolish. I didn"t--I never had any desire to--"
"What do your desires concern me? He thinks he will win you with tales of his conquests! A great man, this Tako, because he will devastate New York!"
This was the fury of a woman scorned. She was wholly beside herself, her words tumbling, incoherent, beyond her will, beyond her realization of what she was saying.
"A great conquest to make you love him! With his giant projector he will subdue New York! Hah! What a triumph! But it is the weapon"s power, not his! He and all his army--these great brave and warlike men--why I alone with that weapon could turn--"
She stopped abruptly. The red flush of frenzied anger drained from her cheeks.
Jane leaped to her feet. "What do you mean? With that giant projector--"
But Tolla was standing frozen, with all her anger gone and horror at what she had said flooding her.
"What do you mean, Tolla?" insisted Jane, seizing her. "What could you do with that giant projector?"
"Let me go!" Tolla tried to jerk away.
"I won"t let you go! Tell me what you were going to say!"
"Let me go!" Tolla got one hand loose and struck Jane in the face.
But Jane again seized the wrist. In the scuffle they overturned a chair.
"I won"t let you go until you--"
And then Tako, Don and I, hearing the uproar, burst in upon them.
Jane let go her hold, and Tolla broke into sobs, and sank to the floor.
And both of them were sullen and silent under our questioning.
CHAPTER X
_Weird Battleground!_
"We have it going very well," said Tako, chuckling. "Don"t you think so? Sit here by me. We will stay here for a time now."
Tako had a small flat rock for a table. On it he had spread his paraphernalia for this battle--if battle it could be called. Weird contest! Opposing forces, each imponderable to the other so that no physical contact had yet been made. Tako sat at his rock; giving orders to his leaders who came hurrying up and were away at his command; or speaking orders into his sound apparatus; or consulting his charts and co-ordinates, questioning Don and me at times over the meaning of shadowy things we could see taking place about us.
A little field headquarters our post here might have been termed.[8]
[8] The detailed nature of the scientific devices Tako used in the handling of his army during the attack never has been disclosed. I saw him using one of the eye-telescopes. There was also a telephonic device and occasionally he would discharge a silent signal radiance--a curious intermittent green flare of light. His charts of the topography of New York City were to me incomprehensible hieroglyphics--mathematical formula, no doubt; the co-ordinates of alt.i.tudes and contours of our world-s.p.a.ce in its relation to the mountainous terrain of his world which stood mingled here with the New York City buildings.
We were grouped now around Tako on a small level ledge of rock. It lay on a broken, steeply ascending ramp of a mountainside. The mountain terraces towered back and above us. In front, two hundred feet down, was a valley of pits and craters; and to the sides a tumbled region of alternating precipitous cliffs and valley depths.
Upon every point of vantage, for two or three miles around us, Tako"s men were dispersed. To us, they were solid gray blobs in the luminous darkness. The carriers, all arrived now, stood about a mile from us, and save for their guards, the men had all left them. The weapons were being taken out and carried to various points over the mountains and in the valley depths. Small groups of men--some two hundred in a group--were gathered at many different points, a.s.sembling their weapons, and waiting for Tako"s orders. Messengers toiled on foot between them, climbing, white figures. Signals flashed.
Fantastic, barbaric scene--it seemed hardly modern. Mountain defiles were swarming with white invaders, making ready, but not yet attacking.
We had had as yet no opportunity of talking alone with Jane since we left the carrier. The incident with Tolla was to us wholly inexplicable. But that it was significant of something, we knew--by Jane"s tense white face and the furtive glances she gave us. Don and I were ready to seize the first opportunity to question her.
Tolla, by the command of Tako, stayed close by Jane, and the two girls were always within sight of us. They were here now, seated on the rocks twenty feet from us. And the two guards, whom Tako had appointed at the carrier, sat near us with alert weapons, watching Jane and us closely.[9]
[9] There was a thing which puzzled me before we arrived in the carrier, and surprised me when we left it; and though I did not, and still do not wholly understand it, I think I should mention it here. Traveling in the carrier we were suspended in a condition of matter which might be termed mid way between Tako"s realm and our Earth-world. Both, in shadowy form, were visible to us; and to an observer on either world we also were visible.
Then, as the carrier landed, it receded from this sort of borderland as I have termed it, contacted with its own realm and landed. At once I saw that the shadowy outlines of New York were gone. And, to New York observers, the carriers as they landed, were invisible. The mountains--all this tumbled barren wilderness of Tako"s world--were invisible to observers in New York.
But I knew now how very close were the two worlds--a very fraction of visible "distance," one from the other.
Then, with wires, disks and helmets--all the transition mechanism worn now by us and all of Tako"s forces--we drew ourselves a very small fraction of the way toward the Earth-world state. Enough and no more than to bring it to most tenuous, most wraithlike visibility, so that we could see the shadows of it and know our location in relation to it, which was necessary to Tako"s operations.
In this state, New York City was a wraith to us--and we were shadowy, dimly visible apparitions to New York observers.
But in this slight transition, we did not wholly disconnect with the terrain of Tako"s world. There was undoubtedly--if the term could be called scientific--a depth of field to the solidity of these mountains. By that I mean, their tangibility persisted for a certain distance toward other dimensions. Perhaps it was a greater "depth of field" than the solidity of our world possesses. As to that, I do not know.
But I do know, since I experienced it, that as we sat now encamped upon this ledge, the ground under us felt only a trifle different from when we had full contact with it.
There was a lightness upon us--an abnormal feeling of weight-loss--a feeling of indefinable abnormality to the rocks. Yet, to observers in New York, we were faintly to be seen, and the rocks upon which we sat were not.
There was just once after we left the carrier, toiling over the rocks with Tako"s little cortege to this vantage point on the ledge, that Jane found an opportunity of communicating secretly with us.
"Tolla told me something about the giant projector! Something about how it--"
She could say almost nothing but that. "The projector, Bob, if you can only learn how it--"
Tolla was upon us, calling to attract Tako"s attention, and Jane moved away.
The giant projector! We had it with us now; a dozen men had laboriously carried it up here. Not yet a.s.sembled, it stood here on the ledge--a rectangular gray box about the size and shape of a coffin, encased now in the mesh of transition mechanism. Tako intended to materialize us and that box into the city when the time came, unpack and erect the projector, and with its long range dominate all the surrounding country.