Veda turned and pointed ahead without a word. A dark island, seemingly torn off from the earth, was floating in streams of heated air. A few minutes later the platform approached a small hill, probably the slag-heap of what had once been a mine. There was nothing left of the buildings and the pit — just that slag-heap overgrown with wild cherry, The round flying platform suddenly listed.
Darr Veter, acting like an automaton, seized Veda by the waist and jumped to the opposite, rising side of the platform. It straightened out for a fraction of a second only to crash down flat at the foot of the hill. The shock absorbers took the shock and the recoil threw Veda Kong and Darr Veter out on to the hill-side where they landed in a clump of stiff bushes. After a minute’s silence the stillness of the steppe was broken by Veda’s low, contralto laugh. Darr Veter tried to picture the look of astonishment on his own scratched face. The moment of surprised stupefaction passed and he joined in Veda’s merriment, glad that she was unharmed and that there were no ill results from the accident.
‘‘There’s a good reason for forbidding these platforms to fly higher than eight metres,” she said with a slight gasp, “now I understand.”
“If anything goes wrong the machine drops down in a second and you have to rely entirely on the shock absorbers. What else can you expect, it’s the price you have to pay for little weight and compactness. I’m afraid we’ll have to pay a still higher price for all the safe flights we’ve had,” said Darr Veter with an indifference that was slightly exaggerated.
“In what way:’“‘ asked Veda, seriously. “The faultless functioning of the stabilizing instruments presupposes very intricate mechanisms. I’m afraid I should need a long time to find out how they work. We’ll have to get away from here in the way the poorest of our ancestors did.”
Veda, with a sly glint in her eyes, held her hand out to Darr Veter and lie lifted her out of the Lushes with an easy movement. They went down to the wrecked platform, put some healing salve on their scratches and glued up the tears in their clothes. Veda lay down in the shade of a bush and Darr Veter began to study the causes of the mishap. As lie had suspected, something had gone wrong with the stabilizer, and it, had cut out the engine. No sooner had Darr Veter opened the lid of the apparatus than he realized that there could be no question of repairing it — it would take him too long to delve into the nature of the intricate electronics before he could even start on it. With a sigh of annoyance he straightened his aching back and glanced at the bush where Veda Kong had curled herself up trustfully. The hot silent steppe, as far as the eye could see, was devoid of people. Two big birds of prey circled over the waving blue mirage of the grass.
The obedient machine had become nothing more than a dead disc that lay helpless on the dry earth. Darr Veter experienced a strange feeling of loneliness, of being cut off from the whole world, something that came from inside him where it had existed apart from his mind in the dull memory of his body’s cells.
Al the same time lie was not afraid of anything. Let night come, the naked eye would see over greater distances and they would certainly see a light somewhere that they could make for. They had been flying without luggage and had not even taken a radiotelephone, torches or food with them.
“There was a time when we could have died in the steppes if we had not had a sufficient supply of food with us… and water!” thought Veter, shielding his eyes from the bright sunlight. He noted a patch of shade under a cherry bush near Veda and stretched himself, carefree, on the ground, the dry grass stalks pricking his body through his light clothing. The soft rustling of the wind and the heat brought forgetfulness, thoughts flowed drowsily, and pictures of long-forgotten days passed slowly, one after another, through his memory, a long procession of ancient peoples, tribes and individuals…. It was as though a gigantic river of time were flowing out of the past, with the events, people and clothes changing every second.
“Veter!” Through his sleepiness he heard the voice of his beloved calling him; awakening he sat up. The red ball of the sun was already touching the darkening horizon and not the slightest breath of wind was to be felt in the still air.
“My Lord Veter,” said Veda playfully bowing before him in imitation of the women of ancient Asia, “would you deem it unworthy to awaken and remember my existence?”
Darr Veter did a few physical jerks to drive away sleep. Veda agreed with his plan to await darkness. Nightfall found them engaged in a lively discussion of their past work. Suddenly Darr Veter noticed that Veda was shivering. Her hands were cold and he realized that her light clothing was not much protection against the cold nights of those high latitudes.
The summer night on the sixtieth parallel was quite light and they were able to gather a fairly large pile of twigs.
An electric spark discharged by the machine’s big accumulator gave Darr Veter fire and the bright flames of burning brushwood soon made the surrounding darkness blacker as it showered its life-giving warmth on the travellers.
Shivering Veda soon opened out again like a flower in the sunlight and the two of them fell into a sort of almost hypnotic reverie. Somewhere deep down in man’s spirit, left over from that hundred thousand years during which fire had been his chief asylum and his salvation, there remained an eradicable sense of comfort and calm that came over man sitting by a fire surrounded by cold and darkness.
“What’s worrying you, Veda?” said Darr Veter, disturbing the silence; there were signs of sorrow in the lines of his companion’s mouth.
“I was thinking of that woman, the one in the kerchief…” answered Veda, quietly, her eyes fixed on the burning embers that were collapsing in a shower of gold.
Darr Veter understood her immediately. The day before their trip on the flying platform they had completed the opening of a big Scythian hiirgan or grave mound. Inside the well-preserved log vault lay the skeleton of an old man, a chieftain; the vault was surrounded by the bones of horses and slaves lying round the fringe of the mound. The old chieftain lay with his sword, shield and armour beside him, and at his feet was the skeleton of a quite young woman in a crouching position. Over the skull lay a silk kerchief that had at some time been tightly wound about her face. Despite all their efforts they had not managed to preserve the kerchief although, before it had fallen to dust, they had succeeded in copying the outlines of the beautiful face impressed on it thousands of years before. The kerchief preserved another awful detail — the imprint of eyes starting out of their sockets; the young woman had undoubtedly been strangled and then thrown into her husband’s tomb to accompany him on his journey into the unknown world beyond the grave. She could not have been more than nineteen, her husband no less than seventy, a ripe old age for those days.
Darr Veter recalled the heated discussion that had taken place between the younger members of Veda’s expedition. Had the woman married him willingly or had she been forced to it? Why? For the sake of what? If she married him for a great and devoted love, why had she been killed instead of being treasured as the best memorial to him in the world he was leaving?
Then Veda Kong spoke. For a long time she had been looking at the grave mound, tier eyes shining, trying to penetrate mentally into the depths of the past.
“Try to understand those people. The great expanse of the steppe was to them really boundless, with horses, camels and oxen as the only means of transport at their disposal. These great spaces were inhabited by little groups of nomad herdsmen that not only had nothing to unite them but who were on the contrary, living in constant enmity with one another. Insults and animosity accumulated from generation to generation, every stranger was an enemy, every other tribe was legitimate prey that promised herds and slaves, that is, people who were forced to work under the whip, like cattle…. Such a system of society brought about, on the one liand, greater liberty for the individual in his petty passions and desires than we know and, dialectically, on the other, excessive limitation in relations between people, a terrible narrow-mindedness. If a nation or tribe consisted of a small number of people capable of feeding themselves by hunting and the gathering of fruits, even as free nomads they lived in constant fear of enslavement or anniliilation by their militant neighbours. In cases when the country was isolated and had a big population capable of setting up a powerful military force the people paid for their safety from warlike raids by the loss of their liberty, since despotism and tyranny always developed in such powerful states. This was the case with ancient Egypt, Assyria and Babylon.