CHAPTER II
_The Face at the Window_
With heavy, sluggish engines I panted down and came to rest in the dullyellow glow of the field lights. A new world here. The field was flat,caked ooze, cracked and hardened. It sloped upward from the shore towardwhere, a quarter of a mile away, I could see the dull lights of thesettlement, blurred by the gathered night vapors.
The field operator shut off his permission signal and came forward. Hewas a squat, heavy-set fellow in wide trousers and soiled white shirtflung open at his thick throat. The sweat streamed from his forehead.This oppressive heat! I had discarded my flying garb in the descent. Iwore a shirt, knee-length pants, with hose and wide-soled shoes of thenewly fashioned Lowland design. What few weapons I dared carry werecarefully concealed. No alien could enter Nareda bearing anythingresembling a lethal weapon.
My wide, thick-soled shoes did not look suspicious for one who plannedmuch walking on the caked Lowland ooze. But those fat soles werecleverly fashioned to hide a long, keen knife-blade, like a dirk. Icould lift a foot and get the knife out of its hidden compartment withfair speed. This I had in one shoe.
In the other, was the small mechanism of a radio safety recorder andimage finder, with its attendant individual audiophone transmitter andreceiver. A miracle of smallness, these tiny contrivances. Withbatteries, wires and grids, the whole device could lay in the palm ofone's hand. Once past this field inspection I would rig it for use undermy shirt, strapped around my chest. And I had some colored magnesiumflares.
* * * * *
The field operator came panting.
"Who are you?"
"Philip Grant. From Great New York." I showed him my name etched on myforearm. He and his fellows searched me, but I got by.
"You have no documents?"
"No."
My letter to the President of Nareda was written with invisible ink uponthe fabric of my shirt. If he had heated it to a temperature of 180 deg.F.or so, and blown the fumes of hydrochloric acid upon it, the writingwould have come out plain enough.
I said, "You'll house and care for my machine?"
They would care for it. They told me the price--swindlingly exorbitantfor the unwary traveller who might wander down here.
"All correct," I said cheerfully. "And half that much more for you andyour men if you give me good service. Where can I have a room andmeals?"
"Spawn," said the operator. "He is the best. Fat-bellied from his owngood cooking. Take him there, Hugo."
I had a gold coin instantly ready; and with a few additional directionsregarding my flyer, I started off.
It had been hot and oppressive standing in the field; it was infinitelyworse climbing the mud-slope into the village; but my carrier, trudgingin advance of me along the dark, winding path up the slope, shoulderedmy bag and seemed not to notice the effort. We passed occasionaltube-lights strung on poles. They illumined the heavy rounded crags. Atumbled region, this slope which once was the ocean floor twentythousand feet below the surface. Rifts were here like gulleys; littlebuttes reared their rounded, dome heads. And there were caves andcrevices in which deep sea fish once had lurked.
* * * * *
For ten minutes or so we climbed. It was past the midnight hour; thevillage was asleep. We entered its outposts. The houses were smallstructures of clay. In the gloom they looked like drab little beehivesset in unplanned groups, with paths for streets wandering between them.
Then we came to a more prosperous neighborhood. The street widened andstraightened. The clay houses, still with rounded dome like tops, stoodback from the road, with wooden front fences, and gardens and shrubbery.The windows and doors were like round finger-holes plugged in the clayby a giant hand. Occasionally the windows, dimly lighted, stared likesleeping giant eyes.
There were flowers in all the more pretentious private gardens. Theirperfume, hanging in the heavy night air, lay on the village, making oneforget the over-curtain of stenching mist. Down by the shore of theNares Sea, this world of the depths had seemed darkly sinister. But inthe village now, I felt it less ominous. The scent of the flowers, thestreet lined in one place by arching giant fronds drowsing and noddingoverhead--there seemed a strange exotic romance to it. The sultry airmight almost have been sensuous.
"Much further, Hugo?"
"No. We are here."
He turned abruptly into a gateway, led me through a garden and to thedoorway of a large, rambling, one-story building. The news of my cominghad preceded me. A front room was lighted; my host was waiting.
Hugo set down my bag, accepted another gold coin; and with a queersidelong smile, the incentive for which I had not the slightest idea,he vanished. I fronted my host, this Jacob Spawn. Strange fate thatshould have led me to Spawn! And to little Jetta!
* * * * *
Spawn was a fat-bellied Dutchman, as the field attendant had said. Afellow of perhaps fifty-five, with sparse gray hair and a heavy-jowled,smooth-shaved face from which his small eyes peered stolidly at me. Helaid aside a huge, old-fashioned calabash pipe and offered a pudgy hand.
"Welcome, young man, to Nareda. Seldom do we see strangers."
The meal which he presently cooked and served me himself was lavishlydone. He spoke good English, but slowly, heavily, with the gutturalintonation of his race. He sat across the table from me, puffing hispipe while I ate.
"What brings you here, young lad? A week, you say?"
"Or more. I don't know. I'm looking for oil. There should be petroleumbeneath these rocks."
For an hour I avoided his prying questions. His little eyes roved me,and I knew he was no fool, this Dutchman, for all his heavy, stolidlook.
We remained in his kitchen. Save for its mud walls, its concave,dome-roof, it might have been a cookery of the Highlands. There was atable with its tube-light; the chairs; his electron stove; his orderlyrows of pots and pans and dishes on a broad shelf.
I recall that it seemed to me a woman's hand must be here. But I saw nowoman. No one, indeed, beside Spawn himself seemed to live here. He wasreticent of his own business, however much he wanted to pry into mine.
I had felt convinced that we were alone. But suddenly I realized it wasnot so. The kitchen adjoined an interior back-garden. I could see itthrough the opened door oval--a dim space of flowers; a little path to apergola; an adobe fountain. It was a sort of Spanish patio out there,partially enclosed by the wings of the house. Moonlight was strugglinginto it. And, as I gazed idly, I thought I saw a figure lurking. Someonewatching us.
* * * * *
Was it a boy, observing us from the shadowed moonlit garden? I thoughtso. A slight, half grown boy. I saw his figure--in short ragged trousersand a shirt-blouse--made visible in a patch of moonlight as he movedaway and entered the dark opposite wing of the house.
I did not see the boy's figure again; and presently I suggested that Iretire. Spawn had already shown me my bedroom. It was in another wing ofthe house. It had a window facing the front; and a window and door backto this same patio. And a door to the house corridor.
"Sleep well, Meester Grant." My bag was here on the table under anelectrolier. "Shall I call you?"
"Yes," I said. "Early."
He lingered a moment. I was opening my bag. I flung it wide under hisgaze.
"Well, good night. I shall be very comfortable, thanks."
"Good night," he said.
He went out the patio door. I watched his figure cross the moonlit pathand enter the kitchen. The noise of his puttering there sounded for atime. Then the light went out and the house and garden fell intosilence.
I closed my doors. They sealed on the inside, and I fastened themsecurely. Then I fastened the transparent window panes. I did notundress, but lay on the bed in the dark. I was tired; I realized it now.But sleep would not come.
I am no believer in occultism, but there are premonitions which onecannot deny. It se
emed now as I lay there in the dark that I had everyreason to be perturbed, yet I could not think why. Perhaps it wasbecause I had been lying to this innkeeper stoutly for an hour past, andwhether he believed me or not for the life of me I could not nowdetermine.
* * * * *
I sat up on the bed, presently, and adjusted the wires and diaphragms ofthe ether-wave mechanism. When in place it was all concealed under myshirt. As I switched it on, the electrodes against my flesh tingled alittle. But it was absolutely soundless, and one gets used to thetingle. I decided to call Hanley.
The New York wave-sorter handled me promptly, but Hanley's office wasdead.
As I sat there in the darkness, annoyed at this, a slight noise forceditself on me. A scratching--a tap--something outside my window.
Spawn, come back to peer in at me?
I slipped noiselessly from the bed. The sound had come from the windowwhich faced the patio. The room, over by the bed, was wholly dark. Themoonlight outside showed the patio window as a dimly illumined oval.
For a moment I crouched on the floor by the bed. No sound. The silenceof the Lowlands is as heavy and oppressive as its air. I felt as thoughmy heart were audible.
I lifted my foot; extracted my dirk. It opened into a very businesslikesteel blade of a good twelve-inch length. I bared the blade. The clickof it leaving the flat, hollow handle sounded loud in the stillness ofthe room.
A moment. Then it seemed that outside my window a shadow had moved. Icrept along the floor. Rose up suddenly at the window.
And stared at a face peering in at me. A small face, framed by short,clustering, dark curls.
A girl!