Since he spoke in the dialect of the Bhlemphroims, which differed somewhat from their own, it is doubtful if the Ydheems altogether understood the first part of his utterance. But Hziulquoigmnzhah was their tutelary deity; and they knew the language of the gods. At the words: “Iqhui dlosh odhqlonqh,” there was a most remarkable resumption and increase of activity, a ceaseless running to and fro on the part of the Ydheems, a shouting of guttural orders, and a recrudescence of new heads and limbs from the avalanche. Those who had issued from the temple re-entered it, and came out once more carrying a huge image of Hziulquoigmnzhah, some smaller eikons of lesser though allied deities, and a very ancient-looking idol which both Eibon and Morghi recognized as having a resemblance to Zhothaqquah. Others of the Ydheems brought their household goods and furniture forth from the dwellings; and, signing the Hyperboreans to accompany them, the whole populace began to evacuate the town.
Eibon and Morghi were much mystified. And it was not until a new town had been built on the fungus-wooded plain at the distance of a full day’s march, and they themselves had been installed among the priests of the new temple, that they learned the reason of it all and the meaning of: “Iqhui dlosh odhqlonqh.” These words meant merely: “Be on your way,” and the god had addressed them to Eibon as a dismissal. But the coincidental coming of the avalanche and of Eibon and Morghi with this purported message from the god, had been taken by the Ydheems as a divine injunction to remove from their present location. Thus the wholesale exodus of people with their idols and domestic belongings.
The new town was called Ghlomph, after the one that the avalanche had buried. Here, for the remainder of their days, Eibon and Morghi were held in much honor; and their coming with the message, “Iqhui dlosh odhqlonqh,” was deemed a fortunate thing, since there were no more avalanches to threaten the security of Ghlomph in its new situation remote from the mountains.
The Hyperboreans shared the increment of civic affluence and well-being resultant from this security. There was no national mother among the Ydheems, who propagated themselves in a far more general manner than the Bhlemphroims, so existence was quite safe and tranquil. Eibon, at least, was really in his element; for the news which he brought of Zhothaqquah, who was still worshipped in this region of Cykranosh, had enabled him to set up as a sort of minor prophet, even apart from the renown which he enjoyed as the bearer of the divine message.
Morghi, perchance, was not entirely happy: though the Ydheems were religious, they did not carry their devotional fervor to the point of bigotry or intolerance; so it was quite impossible to start an inquisition among them. But still there were compensations: the fungus-wine of the Ydheems was potent though evil-tasting; and there were females of a sort, if one were not too squeamish. So Morghi and Eibon both settled down to an ecclesiastic regimen which, after all, was not so radically different from that of Mhu Thulan or any other place.
Such were the various adventures, and such was the final lot of this redoubtable pair in Cykranosh. But in Eibon’s tower of black gneiss on that headland of the northern sea in Mhu Thulan, the underlings of Morghi waited for days, neither daring to follow the high-priest through the magic panel nor daring to leave in despite of his orders. At length they were recalled by a special dispensation from the hierophant who had been chosen as Morghi’s temporary successor. But the result of the whole affair was highly regrettable from the standpoint of the hierarchy of Yhoundeh. It was universally believed that Eibon had not only escaped by virtue of the powerful magic he had learned from Zhothaqquah, but had made away with Morghi into the bargain. As a consequence of this belief, the faith of Yhoundeh declined, and there was a wide-spread revival of the dark worship of Zhothaqquah throughout Mhu Thulan in the last centuries before the onset of the great Ice Age.
THE RED WORLD OF POLARIS
I
As he studied the slowly changing configuration of the stars in the huge reflectors of his ether-ship the Alcyone, Captain Volmar was now seized by a memory of his younger years, when he had been first officer of a trans-Atlantic liner. He recalled the broken mists and unclouded icy sapphire of nights when he had watched the pole-star from the vessel’s bridge. For now, amid the scattered flecks of light that formed the rearranged and scarce identifiable constellations, a single flaming point had began to emerge beyond the rest and was taking on the proportions of a remote sun; and this point, as he knew from his astronomical chart, was Polaris.
His thin face, sharpened by the fires and rigors of well-nigh sacerdotal consecration to an ideal, was lit as with a reflection of the approaching orb. He watched it with the thrill of a mystic devotee as well as the eager curiosity of a scientist; and felt a renewal of all his pristine ardors, together with an actual sense of consummation. The terrestrial nights which he remembered so vividly, here in the everlasting night of space, had been marked by the inception of that unearthly vaulting ambition which had led years later to his first intersidereal voyage and then to his present project of circumnavigating the known universe. In those earlier times he had looked to Polaris as a far-off, unattainable goal; it had been the symbol of his dreams, the lodestar of his aspirations; and now he was nearing it, after more than a decade of cosmic voyaging among the illimitable systems.
To Jasper, the first mate of the Alcyone, to Roverton the second mate, to the five members of the crew, Polaris was only one of a myriad array of suns; and they regarded it with no more than the quotidian interest accorded to the others. Jasper was guiding the controls of the Alcyone; and without express comment he turned to Volmar and asked for instructions:
“We shall pass Polaris in about four hours, sir. Shall we keep the straight course, to the left?”
“No—steer to the right. I want to take a look at Polaris. Also, there may be a planetary system; and if so, I’m curious to see it.” The dry, formal voice betrayed no evidence of Volmar’s internal eagerness.
“Yes, sir.” Nothing more was said, as Jasper turned the heavy steering-rod of neo-manganese steel, and the vessel responded with inconceivable lightness, leaping through tremendous gulfs in the mere changing of its course, at more than the speed of any cosmical vibration.
Burning with preternatural whiteness in the black ether, Polaris broadened hour by hour to a huge incandescent disk. Soon the flames of its corona were visible, soaring in the face of the measureless night; and, falling through the crystalline ports of the ether-ship, its rays mingled weirdly with the violet-tinged illumination of the electric bulbs, and cast their supermundane gleams on the pale faces of Volmar and his crew.
Volmar, peering ahead with aquiline keenness, was the first to see the planets. Three of them were now discernible, one quite close to Polaris, at a distance comparable to that of Mercury from our sun; and the others travelling in more remote and widely divergent orbits. The inner world was very small; and the voyagers soon saw that it could be no more than a desert of torrid stone, of continental sands and gauntly rising mountains, with no trace of water or vegetation anywhere. The second world, as the Alcyone neared it, was found to differ little from the first; and Volmar and his men gave it merely a casual inspection, for all their interest was now centered on the third and outmost world, in its aphelion on the farther side of Polaris.
This world, even as seen from afar, was plainly remarkable. It glowed with a deep red that was both sullen and fulgurant, in opposition to the livid grey of the other two; and since it revolved in a far-ulterior orbit, at a distance where the reflected light of Polaris should be proportionately feeble, the brilliance of its ruddy luster was mysterious and difficult to explain.