by Jerry
“Not a chance,” Bayley said. “We’d be sliced for sure. Watch out! Here they come!”
The lamas had recovered from the first shock, and were coming with a deadly rush. The long, keen knives gleamed wickedly in the uncertain light.
Bayley had had experience with religious fanatics before.
“Can’t stop them now,” he said to Saunders as they pumped bullets into the compact mass as fast as triggers could jerk. Gaps appeared and filled up almost immediately. Suddenly the Scotsman stopped.
“No more bullets,” he said casually. “It’s been a pleasure to meet you. Good-by.”
Bayley had two bullets left. The lamas were almost on them. He could hear the whistling of their breaths, see the glare to their eyeballs. The knives were plunging downward. Saunders had his gun clubbed, ready to sell his life as dearly as possible.
Bayley took a last careful aim and fired. In the background, the bearer of the torch howled dismally, and the smoking wood dashed to the ground, scattered sparks, and was extinguished. The cavern was in pitch darkness again.
“This way, Saunders,” Bayley shouted, and threw himself sideways. A knife ripped down through his coat. Something red-hot seared his side, and warm fluid ran in a smear. The next instant he was the center of a struggling, howling mass. Luckily, in the dark no one knew his neighbor. The lamas were slashing at each other indiscriminately. Bayley tried to break through the weaving horde, but there was another rush, and he was borne backward, fighting desperately with fist and gun butt.
Back and back he went, ducking, weaving, feeling sudden stabs of pain as knives slashed at him and skinny hands gashed with razor-sharp nails. There was cold air on his back, a steady, strong wind. Bayley knew what that meant; his brow beaded with sudden horror. He tried to smash his way clear, but a solid wall of flesh pressed him remorselessly back.
Far away he heard a cry. It sounded like Saunders’s voice, shouting words that were indistinguishable. Then something struck him—the concerted heave of fifty lamas. He was hurled back. His left foot tried to plant itself, found nothing. The wind was cold and dawn-fresh on his brow. Bayley staggered, clutched desperately. Then both feet went over, and he was falling. He had been pushed out of the cave opening, high up on the smooth, perpendicular wall of the mountain.
SAUNDERS found himself separated from the American almost immediately as the light crashed out. He heard Bayley’s shout to follow him, but he was in the middle of as pretty a dog fight as he had ever experienced during the War. He smashed out with fist and gun, heard the grunts of pain, felt a knife wound in his shoulder, broke clear and dashed for what he thought was the direction of the tunnel.
He ran headlong into a wall, and the breath was knocked out of him. To the other side he heard the thuds and shouts of battle. He groped along, trying to find the path, when something gave way suddenly. He called out Bayley’s name just as the wall opened. He found himself thrown into an irregular chamber in the rock, dimly illuminated with unseen light. Saunders shook his head and came to his feet with a bound. The wall had glided smoothly into position behind him. He was cut off from Bayley.
A whistling sound made him turn around sharply, and duck at the same time. That saved his life. A knife blade ruffled his hair with the speed of its flight, and ground with a dull thud into the wall beyond.
The lama in the yellow robe was standing close to a fat, obscene, potbellied idol that represented the Tibetans’ degraded caricature of Buddha. He gibbered foul phrases as he plucked frantically at his sleeve, where another knife lay hidden.
Saunders’s eyes slid past him to the mysterious girl, sitting rigidly upright on a cushioned dais next to the idol. She was not bound, and her eyes were open, but they had the peculiar stare of a person under the influence of drugs. Saunders’s gaze jerked back to the lama. His arm was bent back! It held a knife.
The pilot raised his gun.
“Drop it,” he said sharply. The gun was empty, and Saunders knew it.
The bluff worked, but in surprising fashion. The steel blade clattered to the ground, and the lama moved like a striking snake. He scooped up the immobile girl with one hand; the other went behind him. The Scotsman jerked forward with a cry of alarm, but it was too late. The huge belly of the idol swung open on hinges, disclosing a hollow interior. The Tibetan monk glided backward in a single flowing motion, the girl in his arms, and the idol closed with a brazen clang.
Saunders came crashing into a metallic, rounded idol just as mocking laughter floated hollowly up to him. He glared at the obscene visage, raised a huge fist to crash into its stomach, but withheld his blow. He would only break his hand. There must be a button concealed somewhere on the bulging belly.
He was fumbling clumsily when another sound burst on him. He whirled. The secret entrance from the greater cavern was open, and a horde of red lamas came pouring through.
THE AIR rushed upward as Bayley fell through the void. He knew it was a good thousand feet to the long, irregular slope beneath, yet he felt strangely calm. Events of over three decades of existence flashed through his mind as he dropped. The exploration of hitherto unknown portions of Afghanistan and the Gobi; the acclaim of learned societies; the last trek out of Nepal; the rumors of the god that had come to Tibet; the determination to seek him out after consulting with a learned friend in Calcutta who knew all the intricacies of Lamaism; the courteous air official at Peshawar; the dour pilot, glum at the thought of flying company; the strange storm; the god himself; and—the girl he had seen twice.
It was on the thought of her that he felt the sudden slackening of his speed. He looked upward. The orange sphere dazzled against the pale dawn light; the stars were burning low. Even as he looked, a cylinder of flame darted down toward him. It caught him in mid-flight, spun him round and round. Then he felt himself come to a breaking halt, hesitate, and start to rise again. He was being lifted through the air toward the waiting globe.
MARIAN TEMPLE came dizzly out from under the influence of the drug. By a tremendous effort of will she managed to force open leaden eyelids. She found herself lying in a luxuriously furnished room, the walls of which were covered with Ispahan carpets of intricate weave. The floor was piled thick, and the odor of incense hung dense in the chamber. At the farther end the yellow lama, his back turned, was engaged in mixing something in a brass mortar with a stone pestle.
The girl tried to rise, but the leaden weight of lethargic limbs held her down. She closed her eyes again to clear her head, then reopened them. Life was slowly flowing back into her numbed body.
The past twelve hours had been filled with horrors. Her lovely face, with the eyes that had been the toast of New York, was pallid now, drawn with fine lines of unending terror. From the time that their round-the-world plane had been drawn into the mysterious black storm over southern Siberia, she had not known a moment’s peace.
This, she reflected bitterly, was the result of trying to be different. Bored to tears by the dull round of New York’s gayety, she had snatched at Maxton’s offer to take her as the first passenger on a globegirdling trip. The papers had featured it—“Society Girl Seeks New Thrills.”
She had them. Poor Maxton was dead under the crashed plane. The fantastic figures in red had risen out of the earth to seize her; the strange column of flame beat around her. The rest was mounting terror! The weird rites; the god in the crystal; the bound figures beside her; the sudden appearance of the white man. Then the battle—a bony arm lifting her, the sweetish capsule pressed between her lips, and unconsciousness.
She felt better now. She moved a leg cautiously, and the warm blood raced through it. She glanced around the room. The four walls stared back, unrelieved by door or other opening. Still, there must be one. The lama’s back was still turned. She looked wildly around. There was no weapon handy. Yes, there was!—a small ointment jar of exquisite workmanship that stood on a pedestal at the head of her couch.
The girl slowly reached over for it, trying to make no s
ound. The grind of the pestle in the mortar filled in the rhythm of her movements. With infinite care she raised herself, raised the fragile jar. She hurled it.
As the missile left her fingers, the monk dodged suddenly. The precious vase thudded into a rare Ispahan, shivered into a thousand fragments. Yellow ointment streaked the reddish surface of the rug.
The lama whirled around, a scornful sneer on his brown parchment face. The skin was tight and smooth over high cheek bones; the lean, high nose was quite unlike the usual squatness of the Tibetans. His black eyes flashed commandingly. There was a knife in his hand.
In despair the girl looked around for another weapon.
“I shall have to kill you if you persist,” the monk spoke surprisingly. “See!” He raised the keen blade and made a significant gesture across his throat.
The girl fell back.
“You speak English?” she panted.
He bowed mockingly. “Among many other tongues. I saw every move you made in here.” He pointed to a tiny mirror set in the wall directly above the mortar.
Marian Temple stood erect. If the man knew English, then——
“What do you wish of me?” she asked. “If it’s ransom, my people will pay——”
The lama interrupted scornfully. “Ransom! Ha! What do I need with that trash? Bits of gold that you Westerners kill and lie and cheat over!”
The girl was forgetting her terror in her curiosity.
“You’ve killed, too,” she said pointedly.
“Yes, but for a different, a holier purpose. For power! Power over all men—the only real thing in a world of illusions.”
“Why was I taken captive, then?” Marian asked.
The yellow monk smiled grimly.
“You will be the instrument of my power,” he said.
She stared at him aghast. He did not seem insane.
“How?”
He threw up an arm.
“The Buddhas of Lamaism are outworn. Every lamasery has one; there is no merit in them. You are beneath one now. Can he breathe, or speak, or move? He is but an idol of wood and precious metal. I—I shall set you up, a warm, breathing, living goddess. You will be decked in gorgeous robes and gems. You will smile. The people will see—and adore.”
Marian Temple tried to envisage herself as a goddess. Somehow she felt an odd sense of relief.
“Then the strange being in the crystal was just a mummery?” She breathed freely. That scene had lain like a hidden pool of terror in the back of her mind. “The whole ceremony was a fraud?”
The change in the lama astounded her. The arrogant, ambitious monk shrank fearfully away; his features worked horribly. There was a light froth on his lips.
“He—he was a god!” The words burst from him unwillingly. He was suddenly shrunken and old.
“Nonsense.” Marian tried to put a positiveness into her voice that she did not feel.
The yellow lama glared at her. For one awful second she thought he was going to plunge the knife into her bosom. Then the words flowed.
“He came from above, I tell you, clothed in the globe and in light. Here to our monastery. The red monks bowed. I refused, and he struck me down. He ordered us to do his bidding. He spoke no language, yet I understood. I hated the god, but I dared not disobey.”
Suddenly he laughed, mockingly, horribly.
“You are right,” he told the terrified girl. “He is no god; he is but some mummery. The white man’s bullet destroyed him.” He advanced sardonically. “Goddess! You shall be worshiped, and I shall be the power in the land!”
The girl shrank back as far as she could. He came closer; she could feel his rapid breathing.
It commenced as a rumble and ended in an ear-splitting crash that sounded as if the mountain had been split asunder. The room heaved and rocked; the carpets fell violently off the walls. Luckily Marian was already flat against the wall; she was thrown, but not badly hurt. The yellow monk, however, was caught in mid-stride. He lay huddled against the farther side. The contents of the mortar, a greenish powder, spilled over his immobile face. Blood trickled slowly from the left eye.
The roaring ceased. The room trembled once more, as though the mountain had given itself a final shake, and there was silence.
The girl arose unsteadily, panting. Now, if ever, was her chance to escape. She took one step forward when a voice slashed through her brain. It was no outward sound, yet it said commandingly, imperatively: “Come”.
There was no denying the summons. She felt an irresistible impulse to obey. Her feet started to walk mechanically. The body of the lama rose slowly, rigidly, the green poison flecking his lips. It moved forward with deliberate, rigid steps.
He was dead—she was sure of that—the eyes were the eyes of a dead man, and the pallor of the face was a corpse pallor. Yet the dead man heard and obeyed!
She may have screamed. She was not quite certain of just what took place. The horror mercifully blotted out part of her memory. But she, too, went ahead, in back of the dead monk. Without a falter, he ascended a winding passageway, the girl directly behind. He pressed unerringly on the right spring within the hollow of the idol. The brazen belly opened outward, and they passed through—the dead man and the live girl.
The chamber of the idol was a veritable devil’s caldron. The mountain-quake had sent huge fragments of ceiling rock thudding to the ground. The Buddha’s head had broken off jaggedly at the neck, and the lolling, painted face leered wickedly up at them. But it was the procession that startled the girl almost out of her hypnotic obedience.
The red monks were marching. The living, the wounded, the dead; with faces rigid, with movements like mechanical dolls, they filed toward the opening that led to the great cavern where the god had been. In the very center of the strange procession strode Saunders, as rigid and as staring as any. He was bleeding from a dozen wounds. The lamas had not seized him without a struggle, and his dour face was set and hard. There was no flicker of recognition in his eyes.
The girl tried to faint, but a driving force impelled her on. Dead men walked along with her, corpses that moved their limbs up and down with regular tread. The living were but little better.
“If only I could faint and shut out all these horrors!” she moaned repeatedly—and walked ahead with steady pace.
They were through the orifice, streaming into the great cavern. The place was ablaze with orange light, and in the center, lightly poised, rested the great sphere. Within its bubble sheerness floated the god, the strange, elongated being with limp appendages and round, bald head. His eyes, Marian decided, had lost their inscrutability; there was a hint of weariness about them.
But more startling even than this was the sight of the stranger, the white man who had attacked the god and the lamas just as she was about to be sacrificed. He was standing close to the huge globe, nonchalantly, pistol in hand, and grinning! Yes, in the midst of that chamber of horrors he was grinning. A likable grin, thought Marian, the hypnotic power almost gone from her. He was tall, weathered, and lean.
The lamas, corpses and pseudocorpses, dropped heavily to the ground, and bobbed at once to sitting positions. The girl found herself constrained downward, next to the lama in the yellow robe. The glare in his eyes was fixed, the green poison on his lips, meant for others, had served as Nemesis. She shuddered and tried to move away, but could not.
Then the god spoke. Again there was no outward sound; the bald head did not move, nor were there any lips from which speech could issue; but the girl heard and understood plainly. There was the feeling of immense boredom.
“People of earth,” he said, “insects of a tiny speck in the great void—of all the inhabitants on planets and suns, you are the dullest, the slowest witted, the least important. Sharkis will not thank me for the specimens I have returned for his curiosity. I am going. An infinity of worlds and an eternity of time await me; the very thought of your existence will be lost in the vastness. Sharkis will remember you no longer on my ret
urn. Farewell.”
The sphere glowed into a flame of orange, and the being within rotated once, slowly. Marian noted suddenly that Bayley’s grin had not left him; that the gun was still in his hand.
A long, fiery cylinder extended outward like a released jack-in-the-box, through the orifice into the outer world—up through unimaginable distance to alien universes.
The sphere commenced whirling, slowly at first, then faster and faster. The strange being within was but a blur of movement. Then the rotating sphere commenced to slide up the path of light piercing the sky like a flaming sword. Out it fled into the early morning, where men toiled in the accustomed fields and women went about their homely household tasks; up the shining path through the pale-blue of dawn sunshine, until it was only a mote of shining dust in infinity. Then it was gone. The alien being was on his far-wandering travels again.
Within the cavern, as the ambassador from Sharkis spurned the earth from under him, there was an indescribable confusion. The strange hypnosis departed suddenly, and the upheld dead went limp, sprawling into loose-limbed heaps—corpses. The odor of corruption rose like a miasma.
The living rubbed their eyes, and were suddenly awake. A united susurrous of terror burst from the lama’s throats, and with one movement they cast themselves prone on the rocky floor.
“The devil was with us!” they cried, and groveled in fear.
Bayley was striding toward the girl.
“Thank heavens you are safe,” he said fervently. “I’m Ward Bayley.”
“I—I’m all right,” she gasped, with a little shudder. “My name is Marian Temple. Please—let’s get out of this horrible nightmare.”
“If we can,” he answered grimly. His eye roved over the prostrate horde—the dead and the living.
“Saunders!” he shouted.
A figure tried to rise, and collapsed. Bayley was there in three steps, the girl right behind him. He caught the pilot in his arms. He was bleeding profusely.
“Not hurt much,” muttered the Scotsman feebly, and fainted.