black figures filled the car with bodies and the gruesome machine spread its wings and rose slowly till it was clear of the domes and pinnacles of the palace, and then flew away westward.
Other machines came, and, one after another, received their ghastly burdens and departed. In a short time all the dead was removed, and hundreds of workmen came from the palace and began repairing the fallen masonry.
Thorndyke went back to his couch and tried to sleep, but in vain. Slowly the hours of night passed, and as the purple of dawn rose in the east he dressed himself and went up on the roof. The moon had gone down and the stars were fading from the sky. The dark earth below showed no signs of life; but as the purple light softened into gray he saw that the streets of the city were filled with silent expectant people, all watching the eastern sky. And, as the gray light flushed into rose, and the rose began to scintillate with gold, they began to stir, and a hum of joyful voices was heard. The promised day had come.
XV
The sun was, indeed, slowing up. The two men peered out at the door.
“It would be unlucky for us if it should not come so near to the earth as it did on the other side,” whispered Branasko.
“I can hardly feel any motion to the thing at all,” replied the American. “Look! for some reason it is not so dark below. I can see the rocks. Surely we have already passed over the wall.”
“That's so,” returned the Alphian. “Come; we must be quick and watch our opportunity to land. I can't imagine where the light comes from unless it be from the people waiting for the arrival of the sun.” Every instant the speed was lessening. Overhead the cables were beginning to creak and groan, and, now and then, the great globe swung perilously near some tall stony peak, or passed under a mighty stalactite. Slower and slower it got till, when within a few feet of the ground, it stopped its onward motion and only swung back and forth like a pendulum.
“Quick,” whispered Branasko, “we must get down while it is swinging, no time to lose—not an instant!” And as the sun moved backward, with his hand on the doorsill, he leaped to the earth. Johnston followed him. They were not a moment too soon, for about fifty yards away they saw a body of sixty or seventy men with lights in their hands hastening toward them.
“Just in time,” exulted Branasko, and he quickly drew Johnston into a little cave in the face of a cliff. Crouching behind a great rock, they saw and heard the men as they approached.
Some of them walked around the sun, and two, evidently in authority, entered the door. The others were placing ladders against the side of the sphere, when suddenly there was a loud clattering in the interior, a whirling of wheels under the platform above, and the surface of the sun burst into light.
The two refugees were momentarily blinded. Branasko had the presence of mind to quickly draw his companion down close to the earth behind the rock. “They could see us in the light,” he whispered.
There was a joyous clamoring of voices among the men, and they withdrew several yards to look at the sun. This drew them nearer the hiding-place of the two refugees.
“Only an accident,” said a voice; “it won't happen again.”
Then one of them went into the sun and the lights died out. In a moment the sun began to move. Slowly and majestically it swept over the rocky earth, followed by the crowd, till it reached a great hole and sank into it.
“Gone into the tunnel,” said the Alphian, as the crowd disappeared behind the cliff.
“What are we to do now?” asked Johnston. “We certainly can't go through with the sun.”
“Wait till the next trip,” grimly replied Branasko.
The rumbling noise from the big hole gradually died away, and the two men left their hiding-place.
“What is that?” asked Johnston. He pointed to the west, where a red light shone against the towering cliffs.
“It must be the internal fires,” answered Branasko, with a noticeable shudder. “Let's go nearer; I have heard that there is a point near here where one can look down into the Lake of Flame.”
“The Lake of Flame!” echoed the American, “What is that?” “It is where all of the dead of Alpha is cast by the black 'vultures of death.'”
Johnston said nothing, for it was difficult to keep up with the Alphian, who was bounding over rocks and dangerous fissures toward the red glow in the distance.
At every step the atmosphere got warmer, and they detected a slight gaseous odor in the air. Finally, after an arduous tramp of an hour, they climbed up a steep hill and looked sharply down into a vast bubbling lake of molten matter more than a thousand yards below. Branasko noticed a stone weighing several tons evenly balanced on the verge of the great gulf, and pushed it with both his hands. It rocked, broke loose from its slender hold on the cliff and bounded out into the red space. Down it went, lessen-ing as it sank till it became a mere black speck and then disappeared.
“That's where the dead go,” said Branasko gloomily.
Just then the American, happening to glance up, saw something like a huge black bird with outspread wings circling about in the red light over the pit. Branasko saw it, too, and his face paled and a tremolo was in his voice when he spoke.
“It is one of the 'vultures of death;' don't stir; we won't be seen if we remain where we are!” The strange machine sank lower over the lake of fire, till, as if buoyed up on the hot air, with faintly quivering wings, it paused. A man opened a door of the black car and carelessly threw out the bodies of a woman and a child.
The bodies whirled over and over and disappeared in the pit, and the man closed the door. The machine then rose and gracefully winged its flight to the east. In a moment others came with their grim burdens, and still others, till the mouth of the pit was dark with them.
“Something has happened,” whispered Branasko, “some great calamity, for surely so many people do not die in Alpha in a single day.”
For an hour they watched the coming and going of the vultures, till, finally the last one hovered over the lake of fire. Suddenly the machine swerved so near to Branasko and Johnston that they shrank close to the earth to keep from being seen. Something was evidently wrong with the machine, for there was a wild look of desperation on the driver's face as he tugged excitedly at the pilot-wheel. But all his efforts only caused the air-ship to dart irregularly from side to side, and, now and then, to strike the rocks of the pit's mouth, to shoot up suddenly, or to sink dangerously down toward the fire.
“He is losing control of it,” whispered Branasko, “he does not know what to do. See, he is trying to lighten the load, by kicking out the body.”
That was true, and, as the machine made a sudden plunge toward the cliff a few yards to the left of the refugees, the dead body, which the driver had managed to move to the door with his feet, fell out and lodged upon the edge of the cliff instead of falling into the fiery depths. The machine bounded up a few yards and paused, now apparently under the control of its driver. The man looked down hesitatingly at the corpse for a moment and then lowered the machine to the sloping rock near where the body lay. He alighted and cautiously crept down the steep incline to the body. He raised it in his arms and was about to cast it from him when his foot slipped, and with a cry of horror he fell with his burden over
