The Fire People Part 11

I think I was just a little ashamed of myself for a moment. But I knew my feeling had been only human. I _did_ want her to fly, to keep those beautiful wings. And in that moment they came to represent not only her freedom, but my trust in her, my very love itself.

I stroked their sleek red feathers gently with my hand.

"I shall never feel that way again, Miela," I said earnestly.

She laughed once more and kissed me, and the look in her eyes told me she understood.

The landscape, from this wider viewpoint, seemed even more bleak and desolate than before. The valley was perhaps half a mile broad, and wound away upward into a bald range of mountains in the distance.

The ground under my feet was like a richly metallic ore. In places it was wholly metal, smooth and shining like burnished copper. Below us the valley broadened slightly, falling into what I judged must be open country where lay the city of our destination.

For some minutes I stood appalled at the scene. I had often been in the deserts of America, but never have I felt so great a sense of desolation.

Always before it had been the lack of water that made the land so arid; and always the scene seemed to hold promise of latent fertility, as though only moisture were needed to make it spring into fruition.

Nothing of the kind was evident here. There was, indeed, no lack of water.

I could see a storm cloud gathering in the distance. The air I was breathing seemed unwarrantably moist; and all about me on the ground little pools remained from the last rainfall. But here there was no soil, not so much even as a grain of sand seemed to exist. The air was warm, as warm as a midsummer's day in my own land, a peculiarly oppressive, moist heat.

I had been prepared for this by Miela. I was bareheaded, since there never was to be direct sunlight. My feet were clad in low shoes with rubber soles. I wore socks. For the rest, I had on simply one of my old pairs of short, white running pants and a sleeveless running shirt. With the exception of the shoes it was exactly the costume I had worn in the races at college.

I had been standing motionless, hardly more than a step from the car in which we had landed. Suddenly, in the midst of my meditations on the strange scene about me, Miela said: "Go there, Alan."

She was smiling and pointing to a little rise of ground near by. I looked at her blankly.

"Jump, Alan," she added.

The spot to which she pointed was perhaps forty feet away. I knew what she meant, and, stepping back a few paces, came running forward and leaped into the air. I cleared the intervening s.p.a.ce with no more effort than I could have jumped less than half that distance on earth.

Miela flew over beside me.

"You see, Alan, my husband, it is not so bad, perhaps, that I can fly."

She was smiling whimsically, but I could see her eyes were full of pride.

"There is no other man on Mercury who could do that, Alan," she added.

I tried successive leaps then, always with the same result. I calculated that here the pull of gravity must be something less than one-half that on the earth. It was far more than father had believed.

Miela watched my antics, laughing and clapping her hands with delight. I found I tired very quickly--that is, I was winded. This I attributed to the greater density of the air I was breathing.

In five minutes I was back at Miela's side, panting heavily.

"If I can--ever get so I breathe right--" I said.

She nodded. "A very little time, I think."

I sat down for a moment to recover my breath. Miela explained then that we were some ten miles from the fertile country surrounding the city in which her mother lived, and about fifteen miles from the outskirts of the city itself. I give these distances as they would be measured on earth. We decided to start at once. We took nothing with us. The journey would be a short one, and we could easily return at some future time for what we had left behind. We needed no food for so short a trip, and plenty of water was at hand.

Only one thing Miela would not part with--the single memento she had brought from earth to her mother. She refused to let me touch it, but insisted on carrying it herself, guarding it jealously.

It was Beth's little ivory hand mirror!

We started off. Miela had wound the filmy scarf about her shoulders again with a pretty little gesture.

"I need not use wings, Alan, when I am with you. We shall go together, you and I--on the ground."

And then, as I started off vigorously, she added plaintively from behind me: "If--if you will go slow, my husband, or will wait for me."

I altered my pace to suit hers. I had quite recovered my breath now, and for the moment felt that I could carry her much faster than she could walk. I did gather her into my arms once, and ran forward briskly, while she laughed and struggled with me to be put down. She seemed no more than a little child in my arms; but, as before, the heavy air so oppressed me that in a few moments I was glad enough to set her again upon her feet.

The valley broadened steadily as we advanced. For several miles the look of the ground remained unchanged. I wondered what curious sort of metal this might be--so like copper in appearance. I doubted if it were copper, since even in this hot, moist air it seemed to have no property of oxidation.

I asked Miela about it, and she gave me its Mercutian name at once; but of course that helped me not a bit. She added that outcroppings of it, almost in the pure state, like the great deposits of native copper I had seen on earth, occurred in many parts of Mercury.

I remembered then Bob Trevor's mention of it as the metal of the apparatus used by the invaders of Wyoming.

We went on three or four miles without encountering a single sign of life.

No insects stirred underfoot; no birds flew overhead. We might have been--by the look of it--alone on a dead planet.

"Is none of your mountain country inhabited, Miela?" I asked.

She shook her head.

"Only on the plains do people live. There is very little of good land in the Light Country, and so many people. That it is which has caused much trouble in the past. It is for that, many times, the Twilight People have made war upon us."

I found myself constantly able to breathe more easily. Our progress down the valley seemed now irritatingly slow, for I felt I could walk or run three times faster than Miela. Finally I suggested to her that she fly, keeping near me; and that I would make the best speed forward I could. She stared at me quizzically. Then, seeing I was quite sincere, she flung her little arms up about my neck and pulled me down to kiss her.

"Oh, Alan--the very best husband in all the universe, you are. None other could there be--like you."

She had just taken off her scarf again when suddenly I noticed a little speck in the sky ahead. It might have been a tiny bird, flying toward us from the plains below.

"Miela--look!"

She followed the direction of my hand. The speck grew rapidly larger.

"A girl, Alan," she said after a moment. "Let us wait."

We stood silent, watching. It was indeed a girl, flying over the valley some two or three hundred feet above the ground. As she came closer I saw her wings were blue, not red like Miela's. She came directly toward us.

Suddenly Miela gave a little cry.

"Anina! Anina!"

Without a word to me she spread her wings and flew up to meet the oncoming girl.

I stood in awe as I watched them. They met almost above me, and I could see them hovering with clasped hands while they touched cheeks in affectionate greeting. Then, releasing each other, they flew rapidly away together--smaller and smaller, until a turn in the valley hid them entirely from my sight.

I sat down abruptly. A lump was in my throat, a dismal lonesomeness in my heart. I knew Miela would return in a moment--that she had met some friend or relative--yet I could not suppress the vague feeling of sorrow and the knowledge of my own incapacity that swept over me.

For the first time then I wanted wings--wanted them myself--that I might join this wife I loved in her glorious freedom of the air. And I realized, too, for the first time, how that condition Miela so deplored on Mercury had come to pa.s.s. I could understand now very easily how it was that married women were deprived by their husbands of these wings which they themselves were denied by the Creator.