Strange Conflict (15 page)

Instantly they realised that this was the enemy astral and that he was now memorising the convoy route as the Captain held it open in his hand.

Within a split second de Richleau had changed himself into a great blue dragon-fly of the highly-poisonous variety that is found in the forests of the Amazon. Almost as quickly Marie Lou converted herself into a fat black-and-yellow queen wasp. Together they launched themselves upon the Negro, while Simon, whose processes on the astral were much slower, was still struggling to equip himself suitably for participation in such a battle.

Although they streaked at him from behind, the negroid astral must have sensed the presence of an enemy. He suddenly changed form, becoming a huge black flying beetle which zoomed up to the roof of the cabin so that the dragon-fly and queen wasp shot past underneath him. Dropping like a plummet, he would have severed Marie Lou's pointed tail with his powerful pincers had not Simon, in the guise of a hornet, come hurtling towards him at that instant.

For the space of an aircraft dog-fight the four winged astrals circled about one another with amazing speed, the three bright champions of Light endeavouring to pierce the beetle's guard and bury their stings in his body. But his back was armoured, so they could not get at him from above, and each time they darted at him he drove them off with swift slashes of his formidable knife-like claws.

Suddenly the beetle changed, swelling in size and assuming the appearance of a large black bird with a vulture-like beak. One snap of that beak would have cut any of his three enemies clean in half, and his movements were so swift that Marie Lou and Simon had to zip with lightning speed to sanctuary in corners among the white-painted girders where the great bird could not get at them.

While they were both striving to formulate in their minds a more suitable astral the Duke had already changed to a golden eagle and one slash of his strong claws tore half a dozen feathers out of the black vulture's tail. The bird screeched with rage and next second was gone from the cabin with the eagle sailing swiftly in pursuit.

Both Simon and Marie Lou knew that they were leaving
Earth to continue this astral battle in other spheres and, converting themselves into powerful feathered creatures, they made off in the track of the two birds. As she left the cabin Marie Lou caught a last glimpse of Captain Carruthers. He had not seen or heard the faintest indication of that strange fight which had raged within a few feet of his head, and he was still sitting there holding the open order, evidently conscientiously committing its contents to memory.

The Evil entity led them to a dark country on the astral plane which has no replica on Earth. It was a place of black mountains and great gorges; yet it had a tropical richness of strange verdure in its valleys. Many of the plants were forms of cactus; others were like huge toadstools. Instead of grass the ground was covered with poison-ivy and fly-eating plants and the whole of this thick vegetation swarmed with poisonous insects and reptiles.

As yet the enemy had not thrown off his disguise and still appeared as a black vulture that flew screaming through the dark valleys which were lit only by a faint, uncanny, moon-like radiance. De Richleau, too, had continued his semblance of an eagle.

Suddenly the vulture dropped like a stone and disappeared among the leprous-looking foliage. De Richleau plunged after it and was lost to sight. The other two then knew that unless they were to lose their quarry they must assume forms which would enable them to follow through the seemingly impenetrable tangle of hideous undergrowth.

Marie Lou again became a queen wasp and Simon, with a great effort of his tired will, changed back into a hornet. Swiftly they flew between the needle-like cactus spines and darted in and out among the giant funguses until they reached a small, stony clearing where a terrible conflict was raging.

A whirl of claws, sharp teeth, fur, legs and tails made it impossible to distinguish at first which of the two animals was the Duke and the Evil astral; and the difficulty was increased by the fact that the two beasts changed their forms a dozen times in sixty seconds.

After an agonised snarl one beast detached itself from the other, and, whipping away, slithered swiftly along the rock in the form of a king cobra, by which the two watchers
at once knew that this must be the enemy; but in an instant de Richleau had changed into a mongoose and was after the snake like a flash of light.

The cobra reared up, hissed and stabbed with its heavy, bespeckled head, but missed. The mongoose got its teeth into the snake's scaly body; the victim's tail began to thresh but it drew in, changed form and became one of the many great hairy legs of a huge tarantula.

In an instant the mongoose had become an armadillo, whose thick armour protected it from the tarantula's poisonous bite. Suddenly the tarantula seemed to disappear, but the armadillo routed furiously among the loose stones and narrowly escaped being stung in the boot by a baby scorpion. With a swift flick the armadillo half-crushed the scorpion beneath a stone but it changed into a crab that increased in size with extraordinary rapidity, forcing the stone upwards with its great back of solid shell and at the same time seizing the armadillo's long snout between one pair of its powerful pincers.

The Armadillo gave a screaming grunt, but Simon shot forward like a golden bullet and buried his hornet's sting in the soft part of the crab's great body. It made no sound, but its bulbous eyes on their long stalks jerked upward and it released its grip as the armadillo turned back into an eagle, having prevented its snout from being severed by this swift transformance of it into a steely beak.

For a moment the eagle circled above the crab and then swooped to attack its eyes, but the crab had changed into a great black panther which bounded into the air to meet the eagle's onrush. At that, Marie Lou saw her chance and took the form of a lion. As she sprang all three of them went down in a whirling ball of fur and feathers, while Simon, unable to change himself so easily as the others, gyrated above them in frantic circles.

The panther, bested by his two powerful antagonists, the King of Beasts and the King of Birds, saved itself by shrinking and a quick transformation into a deadly little black-widow spider. Both the lion and the eagle jerked away from it. Next second it was a hare, which bounded from them with such speed that they were compelled to disintegrate their astrals again into dragon-fly and queen wasp in order to keep up with it.

The effort of the new chase proved too much for Simon. He had now utterly exhausted all his powers of sleep. Although he fought with all his will to continue the pace, he found himself dropping behind and that the scene of those grim valleys was fading. Next moment he shuddered and was awake.

De Richleau outdistanced the hare, resumed the form of an eagle and suddenly pounced upon it, but the hare swerved, evaded the striking beak and raced on. Next moment it had gone under ground.

Marie Lou knew now what was ahead of them, and it was one of the tests which she loathed and dreaded more than anything else on the astral plane. They would have to follow through some long, narrow tunnel far below the soil, with the awful feeling that at any moment the tunnel would cave in upon them and that they would be buried alive. She knew perfectly well that in her astral form that could not occur, but it was a fear which she had carried over with her from her dreads as a mortal and had not yet conquered, so it was none the less real. Steeling herself to the ordeal she followed the Duke's example, changed herself into a ferret, and disappeared after him down the hole.

The tunnel was only just large enough for them to wriggle along it and it was useless for them to reduce their size because each time they did so the Evil thing ahead caused the walls of the tunnel to close in round them. It was abominably hot and stuffy and the darkness was impenetrable even to their astral eyes because they were surrounded by what—for lack of a better term—may be called astral matter, through which it was beyond their powers to see; and down in that foul warren the air was poisonous with the stench of decaying bodies.

The chase seemed interminable and hardly a minute passed without both the pursuers having the impressions that they were stuck underground and could go no further; only the extreme exercise of their will-power enabled them to do so.

Suddenly Marie Lou caught a muffled shout of warning from the Duke, and almost instantly he was swept back upon her as a strong current of water rushed against them and submerged them both.

They gasped and for a moment knew the first horror of drowning in an underground cavern, until they turned themselves into fish and determinedly struck forward against the current. As they darted along, Marie Lou caught a thought that de Richleau sent out to encourage her, ‘We're wearing him down—he must be tiring or he would never have used that trick,' and a little further on the tunnel broadened until it grew in width to a great cleft which came out under water in a cave faintly lit by daylight.

The second they debouched into it the slimy tentacles of a huge octopus seized them, but both had the same inspriation and changed themselves before they could be crushed into electric eels. The giant squid released them as swiftly as it had seized upon them and disappeared in a cloud of inky fluid which it shot out to cover its retreat; but de Richleau was after it in the form of a swordfish, while Marie Lou quickly turned herself into a shark.

As they darted towards the entrance of the cavern they could see, by the full daylight which now percolated through the greenish waters, the red coral fans and the brilliant-coloured fish beneath them. During a few anxious moments they lost the octopus, but just in time Marie Lou saw it shrink into a tiny shrimp and, darting forward, snapped at it with her huge jaws. For a second the shrimp was actually in her mouth, but before she could crush it between her seven rows of teeth it slipped out again and began to swell to giant proportions, assuming the form of a vast hammer-head whale.

The great beast had only a tiny gullet so could not attack either opponent successfully with its mouth, but by threshing wildly it sought to smash them with its tail.

Marie Lou buried her sharp teeth in one of its fins, but de Richleau again sent out a mental message to her, calling her off with the words: ‘Keep away from him and he can't harm us. Now that he's on the defensive we've got him beaten, but we must stick to him until we find out where he goes.'

While the whale plunged in and out of the waves like some gargantuan porpoise, churning the waters into foam, they drew off a little, then the Black astral, apparently realising that he could not overcome them, suddenly left the water to take his human form.

As the seascape dissolved they saw him far above them; a brawny Negro clad in white, with a row of human skulls tied about his girdle and several necklaces of shark's teeth about his neck. They had no means of knowing if this was the earthly form of their antagonist or just another disguise which his astral had adopted, but they instantly changed themselves into humans equipped for battle on the astral plane, and gave chase.

With incredible swiftness another scene opened up before them and they knew that this was no astral creation but that they had returned to some portion of Earth. Far below them, set in a gently moving sea, was a great promontory of land.

The towns were widely scattered and the villages few and far between; inland there were rugged mountains in the higher parts and the beaches appeared long and desolate. So much they could see with their astral sight but they knew that in fact this land was still shrouded in the darkness of night.

As they raced on they came over a great bay which in shape was not unlike a widely-opened lobster claw. It was then, high above the deserted beach, that their enemy suddenly turned and charged at them.

De Richleau met the shock and momentarily went down under it, his will failing him to resist the power of his dark adversary; but Marie Lou had not encountered evil entities on her previous astral journeys during many centuries without learning something about them. She knew that except in very rare cases they have the lusts of humans. In consequence, with one swift thought she changed herself from a warrior of the Light to her own earthly form and appeared there, dazzlingly beautiful and stark naked.

The big Negro's eyes glinted redly. He half released the Duke and stretched out a great hand to grab her, but she slipped away and the second's respite was enough for de Richleau to recover.

Another second and Marie Lou was back again in her form of a young warrior, and at the same instant she and the Duke flung themselves upon the Adversary. He gave back in desperate fear as they seized upon him to bind him and hurl him into Hell. In his extremity he used the
only remedy left to him and called aloud in an ancient tongue upon his Satanic Master.

As his scream for help rent the air it seemed as though a dark cloud was forming and rising up from the land below, and de Richleau knew that all the followers of the Left-Hand Path in that place were hurrying to the assistance of their hard-pressed confrère.

Against such odds he and Marie Lou were utterly powerless. Too late he realised that having driven the evil entity into a corner they had been guilty of the most frightful rashness, and as the hosts of Satan rushed upon them he was terribly aware that it might now be beyond their powers to save themselves.

Even on Earth thought processes can be incredibly rapid, so that the human brain is capable of covering an enormous amount of ground in the space of a few seconds, yet this is slow compared with the speed with which an intelligence on the astral, being entirely free of matter, can carry out it's mental functions. In a split second de Richleau was conscious of many things.

The acquisition of occult power requires study, training, and regular practice, like any other art, and no art can be mastered to a considerable degree in one short lifetime. It takes many incarnations of devotion to any subject to achieve the status of genius in it, and that is why it is by no means unusual for very young children to astonish their parents by showing an extraordinary aptitude for music, drawing or certain languages. In their last incarnations they have already reached an outstanding proficiency in these particular things and so, when born again, appear as child prodigies. Then, having in that incarnation gone as far in their special subject as is possible for any human, in their next incarnation they take up some other subject for a number of Earth lives until they have mastered that; so that over a period of many milleniums we each graduate in every art and acquire all knowledge in our true selves, of which we are conscious only when we are either dead or sleeping.