by Jerry
“Saunders!” he called weakly.
The sound of his voice drummed in his ears. There was no answer. The pilot was dead, or still unconscious. Bayley closed his eyes wearily against the unbearable dark. Something rustled, something dry and crackly. He forced his lids open again. Nothing! The sound ceased.
A shriek tore jaggedly through his failing consciousness, cleared his head of the groping pain like a douche of cold water. He thrust himself upright with a superhuman effort. The shriek was repeated. A woman’s voice in the last extremity of terror! The clogging veil split open in a long gash, revealing a mountainside in weird half light. A girl crouched against a huge rock, her hand outthrust in an agony of horror, every limb instinct with unutterable fear. Her face could not be seen.
She shrieked a third time, and Bayley staggered to his feet, ripping his side unheeded against a jutting strut. He took a wavering step forward, when the walls of the darkness rushed soundlessly together, blotting out mountainside and girl and the accents of horror as if they had never been. The world was void of light and movement once again.
Bayley stood rooted.
“Saunders!” he shouted, and the sound mocked him. Was he, Bayley, dead, too, and all this but a dream of the beyond? Terror flooded him; strange terror he had never known in a long, adventurous life. Something made a stealthy pad-pad close by. He started to run, stumbling, crashing, in the impenetrable blackness. The pad-pad behind him quickened and grew in intensity. He was being pursued. He ran on blindly. They were gaining on him. He tried a last desperate spurt, and his foot slipped. He was falling. He thrust his arms out wildly, caught at a projection, swung precariously a moment, and lost his hold. Down again into chaos, until something came up with a thud, and the blackness without gushed into his brain.
When Bayley recovered consciousness it was night—normal, natural night, with stars and a dim sliver of moon overhead. A great thirst tormented him; his left shoulder was stiff and caked, and his head ached oddly. He tried to move, and almost went toppling into the abyss. One leg was dangling clear. Clawing awkwardly, he managed to pull himself back to safety. For a moment he lay panting; then he looked cautiously.
He was perched amid the rotted roots of a tree that had long since whirled into the tremendous depths below. It was a sheer precipice; the feeble starlight disclosed no bottom. Bayley shuddered as he thought of what might have happened had he not caught in the matted roots. He looked upward.
The lip of the cliff slanted backward from where he lay, not more than fifteen feet above. He had not fallen far. The slope could be negotiated. Slowly, painfully, he pulled himself up over the roots, testing each hold with infinite caution, pausing when a stone dislodged beneath his unwary feet to hear the sound of its thud at the bottom of the gorge. But no smallest noise came up through the still night. At last he stood at the top, disheveled, clothes slashed and torn, blood caked stiff.
What had happened? Where was he? Where was Saunders? It had been noon when they left Peshawar; now, by the stars, it seemed close to midnight. What had caused that strange, weird storm, that supernatural column of light? He had been pursued, too. Did those invisible padding feet belong to animals or men? The girl, disclosed a moment by a rift in the black curtain, and swallowed up forever—what did it all mean? The questions beat furiously through his mind and evoked no answers.
Force of habit dictated his next moves. All his life he had wandered in the out-places of the world, amid strange tribes and savage customs, and caution was second nature to him. He dropped quickly behind a huge boulder that teetered on the edge, so that no hostile eye could spy him in the shimmer of the stars. Now he was able to take stock of his surroundings.
He was on the outthrust of a huge mountain, perched seemingly at the edge of the world. The ground descended slightly away from the cliff, then rose again in a long slope of a thousand feet, and ended abruptly in a towering granite wall, whose top was lost in the thin darkness. All around, to north, east, and south, tumbled mountain range on range, higher, more breathtaking than the Himalayas themselves. To the west, however, there was nothing; a pool of blackness that disclosed neither land nor sea.
Bayley shivered. There was only one range of mountains in the entire world that compared with this—the fabulous, sinister, almost unknown Gangi Mountains of northern Tibet. That meant that they had been swept a thousand miles east and north, over the Himalayas themselves, into a land of jealous seclusion, of strange lama rites, of unknown horrors. He would never get out alive!
His searching eyes raked the rumpled terrain of the shallow valley. There was nothing—no sign of the wrecked plane or of Saunders. A black cloud passed suddenly over the horned moon; its shadow raced gigantically over the valley, straight up the precipitous slope on the other side. Bayley’s gaze followed it involuntarily. In spite of his caution, a low exclamation escaped him.
Something was moving in the heart of the shadow, a confused, wavering blob that seemed to be climbing the long slope. The cloud over the moon veered sharply to the east, and the obedient ground shadow moved with it. A procession disclosed itself momentarily—a long, threadlike movement of toiling doll figures. They were carrying something. Almost at the same time, toward the westerly slope, another group dissociated from the shadows, converging at an angle with the first. They, too, were carrying a burden. Then the cloud shifted back again; and the streaking shadow made one vast blob on the mountainside, blotting out all sight and sound in darkness as palpable as that first weird storm.
But Bayley had seen enough. It was not merely the processions. There had been something else. High up on the precipitous wall, the focal point of the converging parties, his eye had caught a light, a steady pin-prick of orange flame that seemed to emanate from the black mouth of a cave. The heart of the mystery of the night’s strange, untoward events was there.
Bayley felt grimly for the gun under his torn, dirtied jacket. It was still in its holster, unharmed in the smash. He stepped out from the shadow of the protecting rock, and started down into the valley, gliding from rock to rock with the practiced ease of an Indian on the trail, careful to make no sound in his passage, merging indistinguishably with the blurred outlines of the rubbly steep. Whatever unholy mess was brewing, he was going to be present. There was Saunders, the pilot—he had been monosyllabic and dour enough, offended at the American the Peshawar officials had thrust upon him, but he was a white man. There was the girl, too. Her face had been hidden, but he was sure she was no Tibetan. Those stories of the frightened hill tribes came home to roost now; tales of strange rites and of a stranger god whom the lamas were worshiping in the hidden recesses of innermost Tibet.
He was past the valley now, and climbing steadily. There was no further sign of the two weird processions, but the orange flame gleamed steadily far above. The moon was gone; the cloud was spreading and blotting out the stars one by one. An hour of tortuous climbing brought him to the end of the trail. The granite wall of the mountain loomed perpendicularly overhead, a smooth, towering massif, unscalable, insurmountable. The unwinking flame had snuffed suddenly out.
Bayley searched desperately about. He must find a way in a hurry, before the shadows crept on him. Where had the processions gone; how had they scaled the tremendous cliff? There was not even a single hold on that smooth, vertical surface. The blackness was closer now, coming up in a wall of dead lightlessness. A last swift, despairing glance, and Bayley was engulfed. He seemed suddenly bodiless; a floating brain in a sea of nothingness.
But before the last sightless blotting out, he had seen something. Two huge boulders like giant guards at a portal, and a black hole that yawned between. It was only a dozen feet away, and he was facing it.
Without hesitation, he started forward, right arm extended, eyes closed to avoid the uncanny dark. Pebbles made odd noises beneath his feet. Then his outstretched arm hit with a thud. He felt around the smooth stone. He was on the verge of the opening. He paused a moment, cursing the fact that he h
ad no flash. How deep was the orifice; was it a sheer drop or a path? There was no way of telling.
Bayley took a deep breath and inched his way in. It descended, but gently. A cold wind was blowing steadily outward. He kept close to the invisible side of the tunnel. It was going upward now. The wall seemed to angle sharply, and far ahead was a pale glimmer. There was an orange tinge to it. Bayley sucked his breath in with a gusty murmur, made sure his gun was easy-sliding in its holster.
There was light enough now to move a little faster. But the American redoubled his caution. He crept slowly along the wall. There was something artificial about its smooth, unbroken surface, about the well-worn condition of the path beneath.
The orange glow ahead grew stronger in intensity. There was movement beyond, and a confused murmur of sound. Bayley had his gun out, and his caution increased. He seemed but a shadow creeping along the wall. The flaming orifice ahead expanded; the murmurs took on shape and form. A chanting pulsed and fell. Drums throbbed in staccato unison.
Luckily the wall curved slightly as it reached the opening. Bayley threw himself down flat and wriggled forward, keeping to the curve. The sounds grew louder, the glow brighter. He inched his head warily around the bend, his gun extended a bit, ready to shoot at the first cry of alarm. The scene sprang full-orbed into view.
Bayley almost cried out, though his life hung by a thread. Never in all his wanderings had he come across such a sinister, blood-chilling sight.
The great cavern, hollowed out to the shape of a perfect hemisphere, was aglow. Seated in concentric circles, like an audience in a stadium, were hundreds of Tibetans, lamas by the red robes of them, all facing inward toward the center, their dark faces aflame with the fires of fanaticism. Within the inner circle weaved a dance, red-clad figures swaying and drumming on tiny drums. A lama in a yellow robe, emblematic of a high order, face uplifted, back to Bayley, was chanting. “Om mani padme hum hri!” Bayley recognized that much; it was the sacred sentence of Lamaism.
But it was not the yellow lama, the drummers, or the crowded priests, that drew his startled gaze. It was the figure in the very center, the cynosure, the point of adoration of the assembled monks. Bayley had all he could do to stifle the shriek that rose to his lips, to control his limbs from jerking upright and carrying him in a mad race from that cavern.
A huge globe of crystal poised lightly on the ground. It was hollow, thin-walled, like a bubble. Within its clear depths, at the very center, unsupported, floated a figure. It was not a man. Bayley was positive of that—yet it held some vague resemblance to the human form. The body was elongated, and deep-orange in color. Sinuous appendages that might have been arms and legs hung limply down. The head was round and bald, and Bayley caught two round, unwinking orbs staring straight outward. The eyes, if eyes they were, were not malign. On the contrary, their inscrutable depths seemed filled with passionless wisdom, with infinite knowledge. Bayley had seen plenty of the leering, hideous idols the Tibetans worshiped in their religion. This was indubitably none of them. And it was alive!
The sphere glowed outwardly with a colorful iridescence, and immediately behind was the opening to the outer world through which Bayley had first noticed the flame.
Three figures lay bound on the ground before the globe. Bayley was just able to see them through a gap in the serried ranks. At the risk of discovery, he raised his head. His heart gave a great bound. One of them was a naked Tibetan, browned and dirty, his scrawny limbs trembling uncontrollably against the cords. The second was Saunders, his clothes in tatters, a red gash across his forehead. His dour Scotch features were more sullen than ever, eyes upturned to the great living idol. The third was a woman—the girl who had shrieked on the mountainside. She, too, was bound, prone on the ground. She was dressed in mannish clothes, breeches and puttees, and she wore a leather jacket. Her profile was pale and pure. A strand of glossy black hair escaped from under a close leather cap. She was not shrieking now, but Bayley caught a glimpse of even teeth clenched over a lower lip before he sank back to his hiding place.
The American’s first impulse was to turn and run; his second to open fire. The first was rejected even before it was fully formed; the second was suicidal, and could achieve nothing. Yet something hideous was about to take place; of that he was sure. Wild thoughts flashed through his brain of that strange figure in the globe, of the weird ceremony.
But before he could evolve any plan, the chanting ceased; the drums stopped their monotonous throb. A hush fell over the cavern. The figure did not move, yet Bayley had a horrible intuition that it was speaking. Queer sounds beat within his mind; the tongue, the language, was unknown. It was not Tibetan; it had no counterpart on earth. Yet the Tibetan lama seemed to understand. He snapped out orders. Two red-clad natives stepped forward. They lifted the captive Tibetan, their countryman, high above their heads, while he struggled and twisted in his bonds. Bayley could see him plainly now. His hollow, dark features worked convulsively, foam dribbled from his lips, and scream after scream ripped through the stillness.
The supporting natives suddenly loosed their hold, and the unfortunate captive remained suspended in mid-air. His struggles ceased; he was rigid. The eyes of the sphered being turned to him. To Bayley, crouched and panting, there seemed a cool understanding in their depths. A bubble formed around the suspended Tibetan, a thin-walled globe. The light glowed stronger. It beat out of the opening into the void! Bayley had seen a star a moment before. Now a column of light extended out and up—up to infinity.
The sphere with its inclosed prisoner trembled and moved. It slid out along the orange column, as though it were a greased way. Higher and higher it fled, until it was a tiny speck in the glow; then it disappeared. Bayley again had that wild impulse to flee. This was not of the world of men and natural forces. But he was held, taut, cold, senses attuned like a fine violin.
The girl was being lifted!
She did not struggle. But, as she was turned in the movement, her finely chiseled face disclosed to Bayley blue-black eyes, large with repressed fear. A thoroughbred! Saunders, the dour, hard-bitten Scotsman, lapsed from his sullen silence—violently. He heaved at his bonds, his tongue loosened with a flow of hard, sulphurous profanity that would have warmed Bayley’s heart under any other circumstances.
“Leave that girl be, you heathen swine!” he barked.
No one paid any attention to him; least of all, the orange creature of the globe.
The girl was halfway up when Bayley went into action. He flung himself erect, took careful aim, and shot at the great sphere. The roar of the .44 crashed, echoing through the cavern. Bayley raced forward, gun in hand.
At once the great sphere went black, and the entire cavern plunged into thick darkness. Bayley had a quick glimpse of startled lamas clambering to their feet. Then he was in the thick of a press of shouting, milling, sweaty, invisible bodies.
Left elbow stiffly advanced, gun clubbed, Bayley plunged on his way, straight for the spot where he had last seen the sphere and the bound victims. Cries of alarm gave way to screams of pain as he battered a path through the shaken mob. Hands clutched at his invisible progress, but he shook them off, and the gun butt rose and fell with deadly precision. Then he was through into a clearing. He stopped short. This must be the circle that had held the sphere. He groped around, finger on trigger for another shot. Back and forth he ranged in the blackness, arm blindly extended, while the clamor around rose to a solid roar of rage. A torch flamed in the distance. It was moving swiftly up the passageway. He must work fast before the light came, before the enraged lamas could locate him.
But the sphere was gone! There was no question about it. He ran in quick circles, and found nothing but thick darkness. The torch was nearing, bobbing and flickering with the speed of its carrier. Forgetting the mystery of the sphere, Bayley thrust desperately at the ground. He must free the girl first; then Saunders. But where was the girl? He was sure she had fallen somewhere around this particular spot, bu
t his frantic groping disclosed nothing.
Just then the runner with the flaming wood burst into the cavern. A howl of triumph rose from a hundred throats. There was a rush of fantastic red figures to the area of illumination. Then the torch commenced bobbing forward. Its smoky illumination cast but a feeble light of long, flickering shadows, and the blood-lusting lamas who crowded in its wake seemed like a pack of demons on the trail of a damned soul. It wouldn’t take long to discover the intruder.
The girl, like the sphere, had disappeared. Bayley paused. He could not orient himself to find Saunders. Seconds were precious now. A voice came up almost at his feet.
“Whoever you are, devil or man,” it said in angry tones, “cut these cords so I can die with my fists going.
Bayley grinned and bent over, his hand questing. A large, wriggling body was underneath. He whipped out his penknife, flipped open the blade, slashed at interminable cords.
“Hurry, man!” the invisible voice expostulated. “They’re coming fast.”
Bayley sliced the last knot just as the searching, sooty flare caught at his bent form. The lamas saw him almost simultaneously. A howl of frenzied execration burst from the Tibetans. Arms upraised, they rushed forward. Steel glittered in brown fists.
Bayley ripped frantically, tugged Saunders to his feet. The pilot could hardly stand, so weak was he from the long confinement.
“Got a gun?” the American whispered fiercely. Saunders nodded. The sweat was pale on his brow, but he got at it somehow. His voice grew strong.
“Let the beggars have it!” he shouted.
The two guns flamed together. Steel-jacketed death tore through the massed onrushing ranks; the heavy slugs slammed and crashed through half a dozen brown-skinned bodies. The roars of hatred mingled with screams of pain and the groans of the dying.
“Think we can fight our way through the passage?” Saunders grunted as they fired again.