But my ruminations were cut short, for abruptly a door opened into the room, and a light entered. I say a light entered, for that is exactly the impression I got. It was an ordinary lamp, and it seemed to float along without human guidance. But as it came closer, I saw that it was held aloft by a very little man, certainly of that same company which had only so recently slain the men and animals of the Hawks Expedition! The creature advanced solemnly and put the lamp, which gave off a weird green light, on a stone table near the bed in which I lay. Then I saw something else.
In my amazement, I had failed to notice the man who walked behind the creature carrying the lamp. Now, when the little man bowed suddenly in his direction, and scurried away, closing the door of the room behind him, I saw what in proportion to my first visitor seemed a giant, yet the man was in reality only slightly over six feet in height.
He stood at the side of my bed, looking down at me in the glow of the green lamp. He was a Chinese, already well past middle age. His green-white face seemed to leap out from the black of his gown, and his white hands with their long, delicate fingers seemed to hang in black space. On his head he wore a black skull-cap, from beneath the rim of which projected a few straggling white hairs.
For a few moments he stood looking down at me in silence. Then he spoke and to my astonishment, addressed me in flawless English.
“How do you feel now, Eric Marsh?”
The voice was soft, sibilant, pleasant. The man, I felt, was a doctor; I looked at him more intently, seeking to draw him closer. There was something alarmingly familiar about his face.
“I feel better,” I said. “There is still slight pain.” The man offered no comment, and I went on, after a brief pause. “Can you tell me where I am? How you know my name?”
My strange visitor closed his eyes reflectively for a moment; then again came his soft voice. “Your baggage is here; it identifies you.” He paused. Then he said, “As to where you are, perhaps if I told you, you would not know. You are in the city of Alaozar on the Plateau of Sung.”
Yes, that was the explanation. I was in the lost city, and it was not deserted. Perhaps I should have guessed that the strange little people had come from this silent city. I said, “I know.” Abruptly, as I looked at the impassive face above me, a memory returned. “Doctor,” I said, “you remind me of a certain dead man.”
His eyes gazed kindly at me; then he looked away, closing his eyes dreamily. “I had not hoped that any one might remember,” he murmured. “Yet… of whom do I remind you, Eric Marsh?”
“Of Doctor Fo-Lan, who was murdered at his home in Peiping a few years ago.”
He nodded almost imperceptibly. “Doctor Fo-Lan was not murdered, Eric Marsh. His brother was left there in his stead, but he was kidnapped and taken from the world. I am Doctor Fo-Lan.”
“These little people,” I murmured. “They took you?” I thought for a fleeting instant of his standing among them. “Then you are not their leader?”
The suggestion of a smile haunted Fo-Lan’s lips. “Leader,” he repeated. “No, I am their servant. I serve the Tcho-Tcho people in one of the most diabolic schemes ever formulated on the face of the Earth!”
The astonished questions that came to my lips were abruptly quieted by the silent opening of the door, and the entrance of two of the Tcho-Tcho people. At the same moment, Doctor Fo-Lan said, as if nothing had happened, “You will rest until tonight. Then we will walk about Alaozar; this has been arranged for you.”
One of the little people spoke crisply in a language I did not understand; I did however, catch the name “Fo-Lan.” The doctor turned without a further word and left the room, and the two Tcho- Tcho people followed him.
Presently the door opened once more, and food and drink were brought me. From that time until Fo-Lan returned at dusk, I was not interrupted again.
The short walk in the streets of Alaozar which followed fascinated me. Fo-Lan led me first to his apartments, which were not far from the room in which I had spent the day, and there allowed me to look out over the city to the plateau beyond. I saw at once that the walled city was indeed on an island in the midst of a lake, the surface of which was covered by heavy moving mists, present, I was informed, all day long despite the burning sun. The water, where it could be seen, was green-black, the same strange color of the ancient masonry that made up the city of Alaozar.
Fo-Lan at my side said, “Not without base do ancient legends of China speak of the long-lost city on the Isle of the Stars in the Lake of Dread.”
“Why do they call it the Isle of the Stars?” I asked, looking curiously at Fo-Lan.
The doctor’s expression was inscrutable. He hesitated before answering, but finally spoke. “Because long before the time of man, strange beings from the stars — from Rigel, Betelgueze — the stars in Orion, lived here. And some of them — live here yet!”
I was nonplussed at the intensity of his voice, and then I did not understand, did not dream of his meaning. “What do you mean?” I asked.
He made a vague gesture with his hands, and with his eyes bade me be cautious. “You were saved from death only so that you might help me,” Fo-Lan said. “And I, Eric Marsh, have for years been helping these little people, directing them to penetrate the deep and unknown caverns beneath the Lake of Dread and the surrounding Plateau of Sung where Lloigor and Zhar, ancient evil ones, and their minions await the day when they can once more sweep over the earth to bring death and destruction and incredible age-old evil!”
I shuddered, and despite its monstrous and unbelievable implications, I felt truth in Fo-Lan’s amazing statement. Yet I said, “You do not speak like a scientist, Doctor.”
He gave a curt, brittle laugh. “No,” he replied, “not as you understand a scientist. But what I knew before I came to this place is small in comparison to what I learned here. And the science that men in the outer world know even now is nothing but a child’s mental play. Hasn’t it sometimes occurred to you that after all we may be the playthings of intelligences so vast that we are unable to conceive them?”
Fo-Lan made a slight gesture of annoyance and silenced the protest on my lips with a sign. Then we began the descent into the streets. Only when I was outside, standing in the narrow streets scarcely wide enough for four men walking abreast, did I realize that Fo-Lan’s apartment was in the highest tower in Alaozar, to which, indeed, the other turrets were very small in comparison. There were few high buildings, most of them crouching low on the ground. The city was very small, and took up most of the island, save for a very inconsiderable fringe of land just beyond the ancient walls, on which grew the trees I had seen at sunset the day before, trees which I now noticed were different from any others I had ever seen, having a strange reddish-green foliage and green-black trunks. The sibilant whispering of their curious leaves accompanied us in our short walk, and it was not until we were once more in Fo-Lan’s apartment that I remembered there had been no wind of any kind; yet the leaves had moved continually! Then, too, I had remarked upon the scarcity of the Tcho-Tcho people.
“There are not many of them,” Fo-Lan said, “but they are powerful in their own way. Yet there are curious lapses in their intelligence. Yesterday, for instance, after spying your party from the top of this tower, and after going out and annihilating it, they returned with two of their number dead; they had been shot. The Tcho-Tcho people could not believe them dead, since it is impossible for them to conceive of such a weapon as a gun. At base, they are very simple people; yet they are inherently malevolent, for they know that they are working for the destruction of all that is good in the world.”