As if for the edification of the earth-men, their guides flew lower still, where the monsters could be studied in detail ere all of them were wiped out by the lethal rays. They possessed no visible organs except the round, sucker-like mouths with which they were entirely covered; their substance was extremely elastic and without any rudiments of a bony framework; and they took from minute to minute a multitude of forms, turning themselves into gibbous globes, or lengthening like serpents, or developing numerous projections like the trunks of elephants, or flattening themselves along the ground in horrible mats. They were ineffably weird and hideous, their vitality was more than sinister, and their activity was supremely terrifying. Their innumerable mouths dripped continually with a colorless semi-viscid fluid; and the plants to which they applied themselves seemed literally to melt away beneath the assiduous suckers.
These organisms were impossible to classify; for, apart from their animal traits, there was something about them which suggested a swift-growing fungi. It would seem that they propagated themselves by means of a spore which developed with infernal celerity; for even when most of them were seemingly blotted out of existence, new organisms began to spring up. It was seen that the ray-weapons could achieve only a temporary victory; for time after time, when the infested area had been wholly cleared to all appearance, another horde of monstrosities would leap to life.
More of the air-ships appeared, and the Tloongs on some of them began to drop a sort of vegetable pulp which was eagerly devoured by the organisms. It must have contained a virulent poison; for the masses withered and blackened immediately, and lay dead without renewing themselves in their former manner. It was now seen that they had emerged from a large hole in the ground beneath the jungle; the last of them was slain as it crawled forth; and the hole was carefully sealed by means of atom-integrators which filled it with an adamantine material.
The legion of air-vehicles now dispersed, and the conductors of the earth-men resumed their journey. Soon the platform approached a building larger than any that Volmar and his crew had yet beheld, and landed on a midway terrace higher above the ground than any skyscraper. From this the men were led through numberless doors and unending corridors to an immense room at the heart of the edifice.
Here, on a high seat of some dazzling crystalline mineral wrought with arabesques that suggested the signs of an unfamiliar transcendental algebra, a being was enthroned who bore upon the gigantic orb of his head a superimposed sphere which afforded the sole illumination of the room. He held in one of his members a cone-shaped object which was probably a vessel of some Polarian chemical use; and other vessels, having a vague, fantastic likeness to retorts and cupels and test-tubes, were arranged beside his throne on lofty tables.
Making gestures of profound obeisance, the guides addressed this being with a long and curiously modulated form of salutation in which the word koum was repeated several times. Volmar and his men surmised that this term was perhaps equivalent to “king” or ‘‘emperor.”
In a voice more musical than a finely keyed and chorded dulcimer, the seated being began to question the guides, and a long dialogue ensued. The earthlings were thrilled by the celestial tones, and awed by the gaze of this entity, behind whose many-faceted diamond eye they felt the workings of a colossal brain embued with incalculable knowledge and illimitable power. And they were somehow conscious that a decision was being made concerning themselves, and that their ultimate fate was now in process of determination. And when, at the close of the conversation, the throned being uttered after a significant pause a sentence of terrible and thrilling melody, they knew with a sense of esoteric fear and marvel that their fate was sealed, though what that fate might be they could not even conjecture.
The sentence had probably included, or implied, their dismissal. They were led back through the eternal corridors to the balcony where the flying platform had been left, and were then borne through mid-air above the retrograde horizons to the roof of that edifice on which the Alcyone had been drawn down. Here they were suffered to re-enter the space-vessel, and were even permitted to close the man-hole. The guides then departed; and though a throng of the metal people passed continuously about the Alcyone, or paused to stare and confer among themselves regarding it, the earthlings were not disturbed for several hours.
V
They were extremely glad to be back in the Alcyone; for their peregrinations in the red world had consumed the major part of a day; and they were hungry and thirsty, and were more than fatigued by their novel experiences and sensations. No food had been offered to them; and it was likely enough that no substances edible by human beings were to be found on the red planet.
“Perhaps,” said Volmar, “the Tloongs realize our need of rest and nourishment, and have brought us back to the spaceship for that reason. But I don’t think that they are going to let us depart in a hurry; something tells me that the Koum, or whatever they call him, has other intentions regarding us.”
There was much discussion anent the unique wonders and prodigies they had witnessed. The corporeal organization of the Tloongs and their virtual immortality, their mechanical and biological masterdom, and their amazing racial and planetary history, were enough to stagger not only the human reason but also the human imagination. Then too, there was the Tloongs’ disposition toward the crew of the space-flier, the meaning of their capture and detention, and their conjectural destiny—all of which were problems that defied solution.
Time passed in this manner; till the throng of metal-bodied beings around the flier began to disperse. Soon all of them had vanished from sight in the cupolas covering the shafts of ascent and descent. Then, abruptly as the going out of a lamp, the light faded from the ruddy sky and darkness fell upon the world. In half an hour, however, the vaulting luminescence returned as suddenly as it had departed; and some of the Tloongs re-appeared on the roof shortly afterwards. It was learned later that the half-hour of darkness was artificially induced by the use of a black ray which occluded the light; and that this time of occultation was the space required for sleep by the people of the red world.
After eating, and after the discussion that accompanied and followed the meal, the earthlings snatched a few hours of much needed slumber. When they awoke, another delegation of the Tloongs was standing outside the space-flier and was evidently trying to attract the attention of the occupants with flashes of light projected through the ports from some sort of ray-apparatus. These flashes, they realized, had served to awaken them. This time, doubtless through consideration for the respiratory needs of the earth-men, the Tloongs had not opened the man-hole. But it was obvious that they wished their visitors to come forth again, so, donning their masks and air-tanks, Volmar and his crew complied with the signalled request.
Their conductors took them on an air-platform to another of the great Babelian-piles, lying at a considerable distance on the shore of a bright purple sea whose environing cliffs were like builded walls. Indeed, it was afterwards learned that they were really such, and that the waters of the sea had been created, or at least replenished, by means of a chemical process.
The building on which they now landed, and through whose various apartments they were systematically conducted, was plainly a scientific laboratory. Hundreds of the Tloongs, with the aid of unsolvably strange and recondite machinery, were engaged in all manner of mystifying labors or experiments, many of which seemed to involve the creation of protoplasm and its development into numberlessly varied forms. The earthlings shuddered at the masses of pulsing life which crawled or lumbered in crystalline cages. Some were without limbs or verifiable organs, and others were extravagantly equipped with a myriad eyes, ears, mouths, members, and sense-organs whose use was not to be apprehended by any being with so limited a range of sensation as man.