"The Black Cloud of Death!" I turned to Georg and Maida. "Alarm the city! Arouse them all! Alarm--"

Maida's face was white: she flung off Georg's arm which had been protectingly around her. "The siren--"

Terrible moments, those that followed. Confusion; panic; death!

The public siren in the tower by the lagoon entrance shrilled its warning. The danger lights blazed out. The city came to life. Lights sprang up everywhere. People--with the daze of sleep still upon them--appeared at the cas.e.m.e.nts; on the roof-tops; on the ca.n.a.l steps they appeared, fumbling with their boats. Panic!

A pandemonium. Aircraft, such as could so hastily be mustered, swept overhead. A glare of lights everywhere. The shrill voice of the siren stilled, to make audible the broadcast warnings--stentorian tones screaming: "The Black Cloud of Death! Escape from the city! Escape to Industriana!"

Warning, advice, command! But over it all, the breath of the black cloud now lay heavy. The lights were dimmed by it. Everywhere--to every deepest recess of the city--to every inner room where to escape it many had fled--its deadly choking breath was penetrating.

Within the palace was turmoil. We had an air-vehicle on a landing-stage nearby; but Georg and Maida would not leave at once. Rulers of the Central State, as a Director might stick to his crumbling Tower, they stayed now in the Great City. Encouraging the people. Maida's voice, futilely attempting to broadcast over the uproar. Georg commanding the official air-vessels to load with refugees; himself struggling to direct the jam of boats toward the embarking stages.

We were in the instrument room of the palace. The air was pale-blue, though I had closed every cas.e.m.e.nt. Ourselves, choking already; then gasping; and with no time or thought to procure a mask. The chemical room, from whence we might have secured apparatus to purify our air, had been abandoned before we thought to seek it out. I dashed into it, my breath held. Its cas.e.m.e.nts were open; its air thick-blue with the fumes; its staff long since fled. I ran back to Georg and Maida, gasping, my lungs on fire, my head roaring.

"No use! Abandoned!"

The department of weather control where--had we been forewarned--we might have found means to divert the wind by another of our own creation--was deserted by its staff at the first alarm.

"No use! Georg--Maida--let us go!"

The mirrors all about us in the instrument room were going dark; the horrible scenes of death throughout the city which they pictured were vanishing. The public lights were going out; the broadcast voices were ceasing.

The city now was out of control. But still the lagoon outside was packed with boats--overloaded boats.... Screams of terror, choked into silence ... boats with frenzied occupants leaping into the water to find a quicker, happier death ... a woman with a babe in her arms on a housetop across the lagoon--the infant already dead; the crazed mother flinging it down into the water, herself following with a long, gasping scream...

At last Georg pulled at me--no longer could we speak--pulled at me, and with Maida between us, we fled. The air outside was worse. In the dimness, our landing stage seemed _belans_ away. The flagged area between us and the stage--a s.p.a.ce of square-cut metal flagging, bordering the lagoon--was littered with bodies. Dead--or dying. People even now staggering from landed boats--staggering blindly, stumbling over bodies, falling and lying always where they had fallen.

With our own senses fading, we groped our way forward. Soon we were separated. I saw Maida fall and Georg pick her up, but I was powerless to reach them.

The landing stage seemed so far away. The dead and dying beneath my feet obstructed me as I staggered over them. A woman, reeling toward me, flung her arms about my neck with an iron grip of despair. I stared into her face, purple almost with its congested blood, her mouth gaping, her blood-shot eyes bulging; and even with the terror distorting them, I saw beneath it their look of despairing appeal...

Her arms clinging to me desperately; but with a curse I flung her to the ground and reeled onward.

Without knowing it, I had come to the brink of the water's edge. The flagging seemed to drop away. I fell. Dimly I heard the splash as I struck the water; and felt a grateful cooling sense as it closed over me.

I am a strong, instinctive swimmer. I did not breathe, and when I rose to the surface, the single swift breath I took was purer than any I had had for half an hour past. My head cleared a little; swimming instinctively, and with cautious breaths, I found that I was able to go on.

I know now that by some vagary of chance--of fate if you will--I had struck a surface area where breathable air still remained. I swam, striving to plan, to think where I might be swimming. Yet it was all a phantasmagoria, with only the strength of my muscles and the instinct to preserve my life remaining to direct me. Swimming endlessly ... swimming ... taking a half-gasp of breath ... swimming ... trying to think ... or dreaming ... was it all a dream?...

When I came to myself I was lying upon a bank of ferns in the outskirts of the city. It was still night; the black cloud of death had pa.s.sed on; the air was pure. Like a man for days bereft of water, I lay and drank in the air, pure at last, as the Almighty distils it for us.

Bodies were lying around me on the bank. A dark, silent house stood nearby; and a deserted boat. All darkness and silence--the brooding silence of death. I was still dazed. Maida--Georg; they seemed like people in a dream long faded. Industriana! They were going to the _Rhaal_ City of Industriana. _I_ had been trying to get there. I must get there now--join them. I climbed to my feet; the edge of a forest was nearby and with wavering steps I started toward it.

Looking back on it now I realize that I was even then half crazed. In a daze I must have stumbled through the forest for hours. Unreasoning, with only that one idea--to get to Industriana; and in the background of my consciousness the vague belief that Elza would be there to greet me.

Into the depths of the untrammeled forest with unguided steps I wandered.

At last I found myself wondering if the dawn were coming; the tri-night hour was long since pa.s.sed; the auroral lights as I could sometimes see them through the tangle of vegetation overhead, were low in the sky.

Insects--and sometimes larger beings--leaped and slithered unseen before my advance. But I did not heed them. Eyes may have peered at me as I stumbled through the blackness of the undergrowth; but if they did, I did not notice them.

And then at last I was brought abruptly to full rationality and consciousness. Stumbling through a tangle of low growth--a black thicket which tore at my garments and scratched my flesh--I was transfixed by a woman's scream. It came through the darkness from near at hand. A crashing of the underbrush, and a woman's scream of terror. It stopped my breath, turned me cold.

Elza!

CHAPTER x.x.x

_The Monster_

I stood frozen with horror; but as my brain cleared--awake at last to full rationality and consciousness--beneath the horror came a surging joy of the knowledge that at last Elza was near me. The scream was repeated; inactive no longer, I dashed the thicket branches apart with my arms and plunged forward through the darkness.

Ahead of me the thickets opened into a sort of clearing. I saw the sky, the stars--paling stars with the first flush of dawn overpowering them.

I stood at the edge of an open s.p.a.ce in the dim, flat-grey illumination of morning twilight.

Elza! She was there, standing near a huge isolated tree; Elza, pale, trembling, a hand pressed against her mouth in terror; disheveled, her garments dirty and torn with her wanderings through the forest.

A swift glimpse as momentarily I paused; a second or two only, but the scene was impressed upon my brain as actinic light upon a photo-screen.

Close by Elza, partially behind her, I saw something small, no taller than Elza's waist. A naked thing of sleek, glistening skin. The monstrosity of a human child; a bulging head, wavering upon a neck incapable of supporting it; a thick round body; twisted, misshapen limbs. A face ... human? It made my gorge rise with its gruesome suggestion of humanity. Nostrils--no nose; a mouth, lipless, but red like a curved gash with upturned corners to make the travesty of a grin; a triangle of watery eyes, goggling. Senselessly, it stood watching Elza with a dull, vacant curiosity. Not human, this thing! Yet monstrously repulsive in its hideous suggestion of an idiot child.

Elza was not facing it; my gaze instinctively followed hers to the tree.

Crowning horror! The adult of this thing upon the ground hung swaying by a thick hand and arm from a low limb; hung, then dropped. Growling, mouthing as though it would try and form human words of menace, it picked itself up and shambled toward Elza.

I leaped for them. Elza seemed too terrified to run. The thing reached her, towered over her; seized her in its arms. She screamed--the agony of revolt and terror; but over her voice rose my own shout of rage, and abruptly the thing dropped her and turned to confront me. Snarling, glaring with its three hideous blood-shot eyes; waving its thick, bent arms.

I had no weapons save those with which nature had endowed me. The regret of that came as a fleeting thought; and then I crashed into the thing; my fist, pa.s.sing its awkward guard, struck it full in the face. I sickened. Even in the heat of combat a nausea swept me. For no solid flesh and bone met my blow, like the sh.e.l.l of an egg, my fist crashed into and through its face.

Warm, sticky moisture ... a stench ...

The thing had toppled backward, with me sprawling upon its bloated bulk.

It struggled, writhed ... Its arms gripped me, its huge fingers clutched my throat ... I caught a glimpse of its smashed face ... so close, I turned away ... a face of yellow-white pulp ...

My fist cracked and sank into its chest. I pounded, smashed; broke the sh.e.l.l of its distended body ... noisome ... the revulsion, the nausea of it all but overcame me.

At last the thing lay still; and from the wet, sticky foulness of it I rose and stood shuddering. Elza lay on the ground; but she had risen upon one elbow and I saw that she was unharmed save for the shock of terror through which she had pa.s.sed--a mitigated shock with the knowledge now that I was with her, and that I too was uninjured.

The infant thing had vanished. I hastened forward.

"Elza! Elza, dear--"

Joy lighted her face.

"Jac!"

I would have lifted her up; but the consciousness of my own foulness--the yellow-white slime streaked with red which smeared my arms, splattered my clothing--gave me pause. In the growing light, beyond the clearing, I caught the silver sheen of water. Without a word I ran for it; a shimmering pool the existence of which no doubt had drawn these grewsome beings of the forest into its vicinity. To the cleansing water I ran, plunged in, purged myself of that horrible foulness which human senses could not endure.

When I returned, Elza was upon her feet. Recovered at last she flung herself into my arms. Impulsive; seeking protection as she clung to me; fear; the let-down of overwrought nerves as she stood and clung and sobbed upon my shoulder.