The Red One | Page 9

pearl, with the depth of
iridescence of a pearl; but of a size all pearls of earth and time, welded into one, could not
have totalled; and of a colour undreamed of in any pearl, or of anything else, for that
matter, for it was the colour of the Red One. And the Red One himself Bassett knew it to
be on the instant. A perfect sphere, full two hundred feet in diameter, the top of it was a
hundred feet below the level of the rim. He likened the colour quality of it to lacquer.
Indeed, he took it to be some sort of lacquer, applied by man, but a lacquer too
marvellously clever to have been manufactured by the bush-folk. Brighter than bright
cherry-red, its richness of colour was as if it were red builded upon red. It glowed and
iridesced in the sunlight as if gleaming up from underlay under underlay of red.
In vain Balatta strove to dissuade him from descending. She threw herself in the dirt; but,
when he continued down the trail that spiralled the pit-wall, she followed, cringing and
whimpering her terror. That the red sphere had been dug out as a precious thing, was
patent. Considering the paucity of members of the federated twelve villages and their
primitive tools and methods, Bassett knew that the toil of a myriad generations could
scarcely have made that enormous excavation.
He found the pit bottom carpeted with human bones, among which, battered and defaced,
lay village gods of wood and stone. Some, covered with obscene totemic figures and
designs, were carved from solid tree trunks forty or fifty feet in length. He noted the
absence of the shark and turtle gods, so common among the shore villages, and was

amazed at the constant recurrence of the helmet motive. What did these jungle savages of
the dark heart of Guadalcanal know of helmets? Had Mendana's men-at-arms worn
helmets and penetrated here centuries before? And if not, then whence had the bush-folk
caught the motive?
Advancing over the litter of gods and bones, Balatta whimpering at his heels, Bassett
entered the shadow of the Red One and passed on under its gigantic overhang until he
touched it with his finger- tips. No lacquer that. Nor was the surface smooth as it should
have been in the case of lacquer. On the contrary, it was corrugated and pitted, with here
and there patches that showed signs of heat and fusing. Also, the substance of it was
metal, though unlike any metal, or combination of metals, he had ever known. As for the
colour itself, he decided it to be no application. It was the intrinsic colour of the metal
itself.
He moved his finger-tips, which up to that had merely rested, along the surface, and felt
the whole gigantic sphere quicken and live and respond. It was incredible! So light a
touch on so vast a mass! Yet did it quiver under the finger-tip caress in rhythmic
vibrations that became whisperings and rustlings and mutterings of sound--but of sound
so different; so elusively thin that it was shimmeringly sibilant; so mellow that it was
maddening sweet, piping like an elfin horn, which last was just what Bassett decided
would be like a peal from some bell of the gods reaching earthward from across space.
He looked at Balatta with swift questioning; but the voice of the Red One he had evoked
had flung her face downward and moaning among the bones. He returned to
contemplation of the prodigy. Hollow it was, and of no metal known on earth, was his
conclusion. It was right-named by the ones of old-time as the Star-Born. Only from the
stars could it have come, and no thing of chance was it. It was a creation of artifice and
mind. Such perfection of form, such hollowness that it certainly possessed, could not be
the result of mere fortuitousness. A child of intelligences, remote and unguessable,
working corporally in metals, it indubitably was. He stared at it in amaze, his brain a
racing wild-fire of hypotheses to account for this far-journeyer who had adventured the
night of space, threaded the stars, and now rose before him and above him, exhumed by
patient anthropophagi, pitted and lacquered by its fiery bath in two atmospheres.
But was the colour a lacquer of heat upon some familiar metal? Or was it an intrinsic
quality of the metal itself? He thrust in the blue-point of his pocket-knife to test the
constitution of the stuff. Instantly the entire sphere burst into a mighty whispering, sharp
with protest, almost twanging goldenly, if a whisper could possibly be considered to
twang, rising higher, sinking deeper, the two extremes of the registry of sound
threatening to complete the circle and coalesce into the