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Updated: June 25, 2025
He leaped forward, but before he could half clear the distance, O'Keefe had leaped too, had caught the Norseman by the shoulders and toppled him backward, where he lay whimpering and sobbing. And as I rushed behind Marakinoff I saw Larry lean over the lip of the Pool and cover his eyes with a shaking hand; saw the Russian peer into it with real pity in his cold eyes.
The hand at his side made a swift, surreptitious gesture, so fleeting that I hardly caught it. The red dwarf stared at the Russian, and there was amazement upon his face. Swiftly as Marakinoff, he returned it. "Yolara," the red dwarf spoke, "it would please me to take this man of wisdom to my own place for a time. The giant I would have, too." The woman awoke from her brooding; nodded.
Wonderingly, I took the bottle; dipped it down into the Pool. The liquid was extraordinarily light; seemed, in fact, to give the vial buoyancy. I held it to the light. It was striated, streaked, as though little living, pulsing veins ran through it. And its blueness, even in the vial, held an intensity of luminousness. "Radioactive," said Marakinoff.
He did not seem unduly interested. I wondered if the Russian had told him as yet of the girl of the rosy wall of the Moon Pool Chamber and the real reasons for our search. Then I answered as briefly as possible omitting all reference to these things. The red dwarf watched me with unmistakable amusement and I knew Marakinoff had told him.
Marakinoff's earnestness became intense; O'Keefe interrupted appeared to question. Marakinoff glanced at me and as his gaze shifted from O'Keefe, I saw a flame of rage and horror blaze up in the latter's eyes. At last the Irishman appeared to consider gravely; nodded as though he had arrived at some decision, and Marakinoff thrust his hand to him.
Now about the tables passed other dusky-haired maids, fair bosoms bare, their scanty kirtles looped high, pouring out the wines for the feasters. My eyes sought O'Keefe. Whatever it had been that Marakinoff had said, clearly it now filled his mind even to the exclusion of the wondrous woman beside him.
His gaze turned upon Yolara, rested upon O'Keefe, and instantly his face grew dreadful there is no other word than that for it. Marakinoff leaned forward from the centre of the table, near whose end I sat, touched and whispered to him swiftly. With appalling effort the red dwarf controlled himself; he saluted the priestess ironically, I thought; took his place at the further end of the oval.
At its end was a carved vine, a vine of five flowers" the fire died from the red dwarf's eyes, and I could have sworn to a swift pallor. "I rested a hand upon these flowers, and a door opened. But when we had gone through it and turned, behind us was nothing but unbroken cliff. The door had vanished." I had taken my cue from Marakinoff.
The rose-glow in which we stood was cut off by the blackness as though it had substance; it shimmered out to meet it, and was checked as though by a blow; indeed, so strong was the suggestion of sinister, straining force within the rayless opacity that I shrank back, and Marakinoff with me. Not so O'Keefe. Olaf beside him, he strode to the wall and peered over. He beckoned us.
"It was natural that," he said, "logical, da! Here is a very great secret, perhaps many secrets to my country invaluable " He paused, shaken by some overpowering emotion; the veins in his forehead grew congested, the cold eyes blazed and the guttural voice harshened. "I do not apologize and I do not explain," rasped Marakinoff. "But I will tell you, da!
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