Authentic Science Fiction, No. 23 — page 32: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

60 THE SINGING SPHERES able to make it in daylight, even if Makkub himself had been after me with his own personal force-beam at the ready. Young Hartnell only chuckled when I mentioned this to him. “Til bet you would, Pop!” Tabs on the Karlin line read “1,250 feet” when at last the sheer wall commenced slowly to curve out from beneath our aching feet and betrayed the fact that here again the enor- mous excavation formed the inevitable ellipsoid. The mon- strous size of an invisible arch over our heads set me tremb- ling, although I tried not to think about it. Hartnell turned up his outside microphone-set to full power and shouted, but the place was too vast for echoes to survive. Once on the floor of this incredible grotto, Fuzzy-bubble led us to where a small hole provided admission to a recess with an almost level floor. The hiding place provided me with the first easy moment for a long time. At least we would be safe here from Makkub and his minions. “There is trouble,” said Fuzzy-bubble, unhappily. “Trouble such as we have not known on Kardoon in my time—” | “Don’t tell me,” Isaid. “Let me guess. It’s Makkub and his demand for—for sacrifices. The populace cry out in protest.” | He seemed astonished. “How could you know?” An alarming possibility entered his mind. “Would Makkub he aware of this, also?” I doubted it and asked him to tell me more. A section of the council hadn’t been happy about Makkub for some time, I learned. Now, with his insane demand for the population to be decimated in order to satisfy a vain and crazy ambition, they had decided something must be done. “Treason!’’ laughed Hartnell, delightedly. ‘Sheer trea- son! We'll get away from. here yet!” I didn’t think the situation at all funny. Neither did he the next instant when a yellow sphere bobbed through the entrance and we all feared the guards were upon us. “Make no alarm,” said Fuzzy-bubble, reassuringly. “It is Fandar.” And surprisingly enough I then recognised the yellow visi- tor as the Witness to the Archives, who had said his piece in the assembly. “Two thousand!” said Fandar, aghast. “I have been THE SINGING SPHERES 61 ordered to provide two thousand sacrifices from my already under-staffed department. It is wicked—monstrous—” _Despite the demonstrations of enthusiams, far from suffi- cient candidates had applied for the honour of sacrifice, see Makkub had introduced some sort of conscrip- ion. “Our precious records!” wailed the yellow sphere. “How can they possibly be spared?” _Kardoon possessed no written history. All data con- sidered necessary of preservation remained stored in the minds of the Witness to the Archives and his large staffs, who, approaching the end of their days, transferred their quantum of information to new, young spheres. But if two thousand must go, and insufficient other spheres came from the nursery to receive the knowledge, how could the records be pre- served? “Well,” said Hartnell, in a gratified tone. “He’s the very chap we want to talk to. He’ll know how they faked those Pea in the inachine. Maybe mass hypnotism or some- 1ing— There are times when he has the wildest ideas. and I felt rather glad to hear Tubby pour large gushes of cold water over his latest effort. “You can’t take pictures of hypnotic ec he said, discouragingly. “My stuff turned out all right. : Naturally, Hartnell wasn’t in the least abashed. He waved a hand and said airily: “Go on, Pop, ask him. He’ll know how it was done.” _ As it happened, Fandar didn’t take kindly to the sugges- tion that trickery entered into the working of the machine and Fuzzy-bubble had to do a lot of soothing and explain how the insult was due to our ignorance and so forth. No matter what they thought of Makkub, the spheres didn’t in- tend to stand for reflections being cast in the integrity of the Wise Ones. “This I tell you,” said Fandar, solemnly. “I am old, and 1 have witnessed the Machine of Revelation operated in days even before Makkub became our ruler. All that it has ever porate has eae te pass in identical terms.” O, also, have I stated,” declared Fuzzy-b gathered he didn’t like to be forced into salting sitecdeacaaeh his own people. “Yet the strangers hesitate to believe. Per- comichbooks.co