The Leprechaun

: The Moon Pool

The shell carried us straight back to the house of Yolara. Larry was

awaiting me. We stood again before the tenebrous wall where first we

had faced the priestess and the Voice. And as we stood, again the

portal appeared with all its disconcerting, magical abruptness.



But now the scene was changed. Around the jet table were grouped a

number of figures--Lugur, Yolara beside him; seven others--all of them

f ir-haired and all men save one who sat at the left of the

priestess--an old, old woman, how old I could not tell, her face

bearing traces of beauty that must once have been as great as Yolara's

own, but now ravaged, in some way awesome; through its ruins the

fearful, malicious gaiety shining out like a spirit of joy held within

a corpse!



Began then our examination, for such it was. And as it progressed I

was more and more struck by the change in the O'Keefe. All flippancy

was gone, rarely did his sense of humour reveal itself in any of his

answers. He was like a cautious swordsman, fencing, guarding, studying

his opponent; or rather, like a chess-player who keeps sensing some

far-reaching purpose in the game: alert, contained, watchful. Always

he stressed the power of our surface races, their multitudes, their

solidarity.



Their questions were myriad. What were our occupations? Our system of

government? How great were the waters? The land? Intensely interested

were they in the World War, querying minutely into its causes, its

effects. In our weapons their interest was avid. And they were

exceedingly minute in their examination of us as to the ruins which

had excited our curiosity; their position and surroundings--and if

others than ourselves might be expected to find and pass through their

entrance!



At this I shot a glance at Lugur. 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. But clearly Lugur had

kept his information even from Yolara; and as clearly she had spoken

to none of that episode when O'Keefe's automatic had shattered the

Keth-smitten vase. Again I felt that sense of deep bewilderment--of

helpless search for clue to all the tangle.



For two hours we were questioned and then the priestess called Rador

and let us go.



Larry was sombre as we returned. He walked about the room uneasily.



"Hell's brewing here all right," he said at last, stopping before me.

"I can't make out just the particular brand--that's all that bothers

me. We're going to have a stiff fight, that's sure. What I want to do

quick is to find the Golden Girl, Doc. Haven't seen her on the wall

lately, have you?" he queried, hopefully fantastic.



"Laugh if you want to," he went on. "But she's our best bet. It's

going to be a race between her and the O'Keefe banshee--but I put my

money on her. I had a queer experience while I was in that garden,

after you'd left." His voice grew solemn. "Did you ever see a

leprechaun, Doc?" I shook my head again, as solemnly. "He's a little

man in green," said Larry. "Oh, about as high as your knee. I saw one

once--in Carntogher Woods. And as I sat there, half asleep, in

Yolara's garden, the living spit of him stepped out from one of those

bushes, twirling a little shillalah.



"'It's a tight box ye're gettin' in, Larry avick,' said he, 'but don't

ye be downhearted, lad.'



"'I'm carrying on,' said I, 'but you're a long way from Ireland,' I

said, or thought I did.



"'Ye've a lot o' friends there,' he answered. 'An' where the heart

rests the feet are swift to follow. Not that I'm sayin' I'd like to

live here, Larry,' said he.



"'I know where my heart is now,' I told him. 'It rests on a girl with

golden eyes and the hair and swan-white breast of Eilidh the Fair--but

me feet don't seem to get me to her,' I said."



The brogue thickened.



"An' the little man in green nodded his head an' whirled his

shillalah.



"'It's what I came to tell ye,' says he. 'Don't ye fall for the

Bhean-Nimher, the serpent woman wit' the blue eyes; she's a daughter

of Ivor, lad--an' don't ye do nothin' to make the brown-haired coleen

ashamed o' ye, Larry O'Keefe. I knew yer great, great grandfather an'

his before him, aroon,' says he, 'an' wan o' the O'Keefe failin's is

to think their hearts big enough to hold all the wimmen o' the world.

A heart's built to hold only wan permanently, Larry,' he says, 'an'

I'm warnin' ye a nice girl don't like to move into a place all

cluttered up wid another's washin' an' mendin' an' cookin' an' other

things pertainin' to general wife work. Not that I think the blue-eyed

wan is keen for mendin' an' cookin'!' says he.



"'You don't have to be comin' all this way to tell me that,' I answer.



"'Well, I'm just a tellin' you,' he says. 'Ye've got some rough

knocks comin', Larry. In fact, ye're in for a devil of a time. But,

remember that ye're the O'Keefe,' says he. 'An' while the bhoys are

all wid ye, avick, ye've got to be on the job yourself.'



"'I hope,' I tell him, 'that the O'Keefe banshee can find her way here

in time--that is, if it's necessary, which I hope it won't be.'



"'Don't ye worry about that,' says he. 'Not that she's keen on

leavin' the ould sod, Larry. The good ould soul's in quite a state o'

mind about ye, aroon. I don't mind tellin' ye, lad, that she's

mobilizing all the clan an' if she has to come for ye, avick, they'll

be wid her an' they'll sweep this joint clean before ye go. What

they'll do to it'll make the Big Wind look like a summer breeze on

Lough Lene! An' that's about all, Larry. We thought a voice from the

Green Isle would cheer ye. Don't fergit that ye're the O'Keefe an' I

say it again--all the bhoys are wid ye. But we want t' kape bein'

proud o' ye, lad!'



"An' I looked again and there was only a bush waving."



There wasn't a smile in my heart--or if there was it was a very tender

one.



"I'm going to bed," he said abruptly. "Keep an eye on the wall, Doc!"



Between the seven sleeps that followed, Larry and I saw but little of

each other. Yolara sought him more and more. Thrice we were called

before the Council; once we were at a great feast, whose splendours

and surprises I can never forget. Largely I was in the company of

Rador. Together we two passed the green barriers into the

dwelling-place of the ladala.



They seemed provided with everything needful for life. But everywhere

was an oppressiveness, a gathering together of hate, that was

spiritual rather than material--as tangible as the latter and far, far

more menacing!



"They do not like to dance with the Shining One," was Rador's constant

and only reply to my efforts to find the cause.



Once I had concrete evidence of the mood. Glancing behind me, I saw a

white, vengeful face peer from behind a tree-trunk, a hand lift, a

shining dart speed from it straight toward Rador's back. Instinctively

I thrust him aside. He turned upon me angrily. I pointed to where the

little missile lay, still quivering, on the ground. He gripped my

hand.



"That, some day I will repay!" he said. I looked again at the thing.

At its end was a tiny cone covered with a glistening, gelatinous

substance.



Rador pulled from a tree beside us a fruit somewhat like an apple.



"Look!" he said. He dropped it upon the dart--and at once, before my

eyes, in less than ten seconds, the fruit had rotted away!



"That's what would have happened to Rador but for you, friend!" he

said.



Come now between this and the prelude to the latter half of the drama

whose history this narrative is--only scattering and necessarily

fragmentary observations.



First--the nature of the ebon opacities, blocking out the spaces

between the pavilion-pillars or covering their tops like roofs, These

were magnetic fields, light absorbers, negativing the vibrations of

radiance; literally screens of electric force which formed as

impervious a barrier to light as would have screens of steel.



They instantaneously made night appear in a place where no night was.

But they interposed no obstacle to air or to sound. They were

extremely simple in their inception--no more miraculous than is glass,

which, inversely, admits the vibrations of light, but shuts out those

coarser ones we call air--and, partly, those others which produce upon

our auditory nerves the effects we call sound.



Briefly their mechanism was this:





[For the same reason that Dr. Goodwin's exposition of the mechanism

of the atomic engines was deleted, his description of the

light-destroying screens has been deleted by the Executive

Council.--J. B. F., President, I. A. of S.]





There were two favoured classes of the ladala--the soldiers and the

dream-makers. The dream-makers were the most astonishing social

phenomena, I think, of all. Denied by their circumscribed environment

the wider experiences of us of the outer world, the Murians had

perfected an amazing system of escape through the imagination.



They were, too, intensely musical. Their favourite instruments were

double flutes; immensely complex pipe-organs; harps, great and small.

They had another remarkable instrument made up of a double octave of

small drums which gave forth percussions remarkably disturbing to the

emotional centres.



It was this love of music that gave rise to one of the few truly

humorous incidents of our caverned life. Larry came to me--it was just

after our fourth sleep, I remember.



"Come on to a concert," he said.



We skimmed off to one of the bridge garrisons. Rador called the

two-score guards to attention; and then, to my utter stupefaction, the

whole company, O'Keefe leading them, roared out the anthem, "God Save

the King." They sang--in a closer approach to the English than might

have been expected scores of miles below England's level. "Send him

victorious! Happy and glorious!" they bellowed.



He quivered with suppressed mirth at my paralysis of surprise.



"Taught 'em that for Marakinoff's benefit!" he gasped. "Wait till that

Red hears it. He'll blow up.



"Just wait until you hear Yolara lisp a pretty little thing I taught

her," said Larry as we set back for what we now called home. There was

an impish twinkle in his eyes.



And I did hear. For it was not many minutes later that the priestess

condescended to command me to come to her with O'Keefe.



"Show Goodwin how much you have learned of our speech, O lady of the

lips of honeyed flame!" murmured Larry.



She hesitated; smiled at him, and then from that perfect mouth, out of

the exquisite throat, in the voice that was like the chiming of little

silver bells, she trilled a melody familiar to me indeed:



"She's only a bird in a gilded cage,

A bee-yu-tiful sight to see--"



And so on to the bitter end.



"She thinks it's a love-song," said Larry when we had left. "It's only

part of a repertoire I'm teaching her. Honestly, Doc, it's the only

way I can keep my mind clear when I'm with her," he went on earnestly.

"She's a devil-ess from hell--but a wonder. Whenever I find myself

going I get her to sing that, or Take Back Your Gold! or some other

ancient lay, and I'm back again--pronto--with the right perspective!

POP goes all the mystery! 'Hell!' I say, 'she's only a woman!'"