The Door to Saturn by Clark Ashton Smith Read Free Book Online

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.
    Volmar and his crew watched it in a fascinated silence, as the ether-ship drove on and the strange planet became an ever-swelling globe. Its mystery grew with its apparent bulk, for there were no geographical or geological markings, no indications of seas or sea-beds, of mountains or hills, of valleys or elevations or depressions of any kind. It was an unbroken expanse of glowing red that dazzled the eyes and left an after-image of changing colors. It was somehow suggestive of heated metal, and also gave the impression of an artificial rather than a natural body.
    The space-voyagers had approached many planets in their journeying; they had even landed on a number; and they knew the limitless variations of planetary development. They had found worlds that were shrouded with mist or snow, with clouds or ice, or were belted with auroral flames or seas of burning bitumen. They had found ocean-covered worlds where gigantic algae towered like forests above incalculable leagues of water; they had seen others that were riven from pole to pole with typhonian fissures and chasms, where etiolated fungi large as hillocks grew in the sunless river-bottoms; they had seen still others that were lob-sided with their burden of colossal mountains. But they had never before encountered a world that in any way resembled this.
    “What do you make of it, Captain?” queried Jasper.
    “I don’t know.” Volmar’s slow, deliberate voice was frankly puzzled. “Fly nearer—as near as you can.”
    The Alcyone dipped in a long spiral descent toward the monotonous ball that was now directly beneath. Soon it hung above the gleaming surface at an elevation of less than a mile. The red world was larger than Mars, though it lacked the dimensions of the Earth or Venus. But as far as the eye could see its horizons were perfectly smooth and level, and its plains were like a sheet of some luminous and deeply tinted copperish metal. The eyes of Volmar and his men were almost blinded with its glare. However, their approach to the weird orb had not occasioned any rise in the temperature of the space-vessel’s interior; so evidently the first impression of glowing heat was erroneous.
    “Still nearer—but be careful. We don’t know what it is, or what properties it may possess.”
    The Alcyone descended until it almost skimmed the ruddy plain. Now it could be seen that the surface was apparently made of innumerable tiny darting sparks and coruscations, interweaving like a dance of fiery atoms at a speed which the eye could hardly follow.
    “It must be some new form of matter,” suggested Roverton. “It looks like a million quintrillions of red-hot filings chasing each other in a field of magnetic force.”
    “Perhaps.” Volmar was studying the strange surface intently; and it seemed to him that directly below the vessel the gyrations of the dazzling particles were becoming slower, and that many of them disappeared and did not return to visibility. Then, with incredible suddenness, a deep and yawning pit revealed itself below the Alcyone, forming a circular shaft in the unknown substance. At the same time the ether-ship pitched violently downward, though Jasper had not moved the clutch that should have held it perfectly level and motionless in space. It sank dizzily into the shaft, as if all the gears and engines and levitative mechanisms had become utterly powerless. Jasper switched on the full force of the electromagnetic turbines, and sought to reverse the descent, but all in vain. The vessel shook and trembled as though it were fighting some irresistible power that drew it nadir-ward; but it continued to fall at an undiminished rate between the red walls of the shaft. A second more, and it plunged into a vast open space, where a