They could, at this distance, clearly see gigantic cyclones of flame raging across the surface of the mighty orb. Into those vortices of fire all Earth could have been dropped and from around them exploded burning geysers that could have shrivelled worlds.
Sweat was running down Curt Newton’s face now and he gasped a little for each breath. “Temperature, Otho?” he asked without turning his head.
“Only fifty degrees under the safety limit and the anti-heaters running full load”, said the android. “If we’ve miscalculated course —”
“We haven’t”, said Captain Future. “There’s Vulcan ahead.”
The planetoid, the strange lonely little solar satellite, had come into view as a dark dot closely pendant to the skyfilling Sun.
Newton drove the Comet forward unrelentingly now. Every moment this close to the Sun there was peril. Let the anti-heaters stop one minute and metal would soften and fuse, flesh would blacken and die.
Otho suddenly raised his hand to point, crying out, “Look! Sun-children!”
They had heard of the legendary “Sun— children” from the Vulcanian natives, had once glimpsed one far off. But these two were nearer. Newton, straining his eyes against the solar glare, could barely see the things — two whirling little wisps of flame, moving fast through the blinding radiance of the corona.
Then the two will-o-wisps of fire had disappeared in the vast glare. The eye searched for them in vain.
“I still think”, Simon was saying, “that they’re just wisps of flaming hydrogen that are flung off the Sun and then fall back again.”
“But the Vulcanians told of them coming down into Vulcan”, Otho objected. “How could bits of flaming gas do that Curt NEWTON hardly listened. He was already whipping the ship in around Vulcan in a tight spiral few spacemen would have risked. Its brake rockets thundering, it scudded low around the surface of the little world.
The whole surface was semi-molten rock. The heat of the planetoid’s stupendous neighbor kept its outer skin half-melted. Lava sweltered in great pools, infernal lagoons framed by smoking rock hills. Fire burst up from the rocks, as though called forth by the nearby Sun.
Grag first saw what they were looking for — a gaping round pit in the sunward side of the planetoid. Presently Captain Future had the Comet hovering on keel-jets above the yawning shaft. He eased on the power-pedal and the little ship dropped straight down into the pit.
This shaft was the one way inside the hollow solar satellite. At the planetoid’s birth gases trapped within it had caused it to form as a hollow shell. Those gases, finally bursting out as pressure increased, had torn open this way to the outer surface.
The ship sank steadily down the shaft. Light was around them for this side of Vulcan was toward the Sun now and a great beam entered.
Then, finally, the shaft debouched into a vast space vaguely lighted by that beam — the interior of the hollow world.
“Whew, I’m glad to be in here out of that solar radiance”, breathed Otho. “Now where?”
Newton asked, “The ruins near Yellow Lake, wasn’t it?”
“Yes”, answered the Brain’s metallic voice. “It was where the ship left Carlin and where it was to pick him up.”
The Futuremen had been here inside Vulcan once before. Yet they felt again the wonder of this strangest world in the System as the Comet flew low over its inner surface.
Beneath their flying ship stretched a weird landscape of fern jungles. It extended into a shrouding haze ahead, the horizon fading away in an upward curve. Over their heads now was the hazy “sky” of the planetoid’s central hollow, cut across by the tremendous, glittering sword of the giant beam of sunlight that gave light to this world.
As their ship slanted down over the fern jungle toward their destination a feeling of gray futility came upon Curt Newton. Months had passed since Philip Carlin had disappeared here. Could the scientist have survived alone so long in his wild world?
A city wrecked by time lay beneath them, almost swallowed by the giant ferns. Only scattered crumbling stones of massive dimensions had survived the ravages of unthinkable ages. It was like the flotsam of a lost ship, floating up out of the past.
The Comet came to rest upon cracked paving surrounded by towering shattered monoliths. The Futuremen went out into the steamy air.
“It was here that Carlin was to meet the ship when it came”, said Captain Future. “And he wasn’t here.” He spoke in a lowered voice. The brooding silence of this memorial of lost greatness laid a cold spell upon them all.
These broken mighty stones were all that remained of a city of the Old Empire, that mighty galactic civilization mankind had attained to long ago. On worlds of every star its cities and monuments had risen, then had passed — had passed so completely that men had had no memory of it until the Futuremen probed back into cosmic history.
Long ago the mighty ships of the star— conquering Empire had come to colonize even hollow Vulcan. Men and women with the powers of a brilliant science and with proud legends of victorious cosmic conquest had lived and loved and died here. But the Empire had fallen and its cities had died and the descendants of its people here were barbarians now.
“The first thing”, Newton was saying, “is to get in touch with the Vulcanians and find out what they know about Carlin.”
Grag stood, his metal head swivelling as he stared around the ruins. “No sign of them here. But those primitives always are shy.”
“We’ll look around first for some trace of Carlin here then”, Newton decided.
The quartet started through the ruins — the man and the mighty clanking robot, the lithe android and the gliding Brain.
Newton felt more strongly the oppressive somberness of this place of vanished glory, as he looked up at the inscriptions in the old language that were carved deep into the great stones. He could read that ancient writing and as he read those proud legends of triumphs long sunken into oblivion he felt the crushing sadness of that greatest of galactic tragedies, the fall of the Old Empire.
Simon’s sharp, metallic voice roused him from his preoccupation. “Curtis! Look here!”
Captain Future instantly strode to where the Brain hovered beside one of the towering monoliths.
“Did you find some trace, Simon?”
“Look at that inscription! It’s in the old language — but it’s newly carved!”
Newton’s eyes widened. It was true. On that monolith, a few feet above the ground, was a chiseled legend in the language that had not been used for ages. Yet the characters were raw, new, only faintly weathered.
“It was carved less than a year ago!” he said. His pulses suddenly hammered. “Simon, Carlin knew the old language! He had me teach it to him, remember!”
“You mean — Carlin carved this one?” Otho exclaimed.
“Read it!”cried Grag.
Curt Newton read aloud, “To the Futuremen, if they ever come — I have discovered an incredible secret, the strangest form of life ever dreamed. The implications of that secret are so tremendous that I am going to investigate them first hand. If I do not return be warned that the old citadel beyond the Belt holds the key of a staggering power.”
CHAPTER II
Citadel of Mystery
AS the echoes of Curt Newton’s voice died away the four looked at each other in troubled wonder. The rank ferns drooped unstirring in the weird half-light over the broken arches and falling colonnades. Somewhere in the jungle a beast screamed harshly with a sound like laughter.