by Jerry
He emerged, hours later, into a tree-roofed tunnel piercing the forest. He had taken but a dozen steps along this narrow way, when a tangle of vines and braided ropes of hide and grass, fell about him.
He struggled despairingly, his keen-edged stone slashing madly. Yet for every strand he severed., two or three more nooses fell about him. At last he lay helpless.
Three of the crooked beast-men of the lost cavern gathered about him, prancing proudly, and thumbing the points of their rusty dagger-like knives suggestively. And then a pleased gurgle of laughter made him turn his head in the other direction.
Lois Banton bent over him and began loosing the cocoon of ropes. She had changed greatly in the short time they had been apart, and Lee wondered if perhaps more than four or five days by Martian reckoning, had passed. For under her flapping ragged garments the muscles moved lithely, and the superfluous flesh had melted from her face.
“Have you loose in a minute,” she said. “O’Lar, you and K’Tton help me. B’Ron can keep watch.”
“Glad you’re still free,” grunted Lee. And was amazed to discover that he really meant it.
“We’ve been trying to locate you,” said Lois. “But this eternal dayshine is bad. Only at the sleeping hour did we dare venture from the forests.”
The last of the ropes fell away and Lee stood up. He saw now that Lois had an ancient-looking, cross-hilted sword in a clumsy scabbard of dried black leather, and that two of the squatty, club-armed hunters wore floppy sleeveless jerkins of battered chain mail.
“Found the armory of one castle,” explained Lois, noting his curious gaze. “Never did get to rescue you, though. Our friend with the beard kept a guard posted.” She cocked an eyebrow. “How’d you do it?”
Lee explained his escape. She nodded.
“I’ve been in the other cavern once. Frogs aren’t friendly any more since O’Lar”—she indicated the largest of the three renegade dwarfs—“refused to let them eat his woman.”
“They understand English then and speak it!”
Lois grinned in a superior fashion. “Naturally. Ashley tried to teach them modern English among other things. He was horribly crippled, often lay helpless for weeks. Result of spacer’s crash. So his brief attempts at schooling them accomplished little.”
Lee dug into his inner pockets, his hand emerging at last with the useless clip of biaton needles for his captured hand gun. He showed them to the girl.
“If you’ll let me have that dagger,” he said, pointing to the blade she carried thrust through her sword-belt, “I’ll try manufacturing a bomb.” Lois handed it over reluctantly. “Needles are dangerous to tinker with, aren’t they?” she demanded.
“Uh huh. But we can’t cut our way through to the dome-lifts with just clubs and a sword. Not against an expoder and a high-powered rifle.”
Lee seated himself beside the trail, and, motioning the others away, set to work on the delicate task of exposing the metal-encased pinpoint of explosive biaton at the tip of three needles. In his hand gun the razor-edged trimmer key armed the needles only as they were expelled, to explode upon contact with anything more substantial than air. But this way he was holding in his hands a death more susceptible than nitroglycerin to sudden jolts.
With sticky gum from a bruised tree he gingerly sealed all the needles into their clip, leaving the three armed needles projecting further. Then he looped a slender strip of hide about the deadly thing and ran the thong up and over a low limb, securing the other end with a loosely driven peg.
Directly beneath the clip of explosive needles lay a barely exposed reef of greenish-gray rock where only lichens and moss could root. Last of all he knotted another thin strand of hide about the peg and ran it, knee-high, across the trail where he quickly and properly secured it to another limb.
His death trap, clumsy though it was, was complete. Now he must lure the childish bearded giant into it.
Even as he plotted the man’s destruction he could not but feel pity for the poor brute. Had the man been unarmed or alone he would have risked capturing him with snares, or even attempted to escape from the cavern without further conflict.
But he could take no chances on the bearded giant recapturing or killing them. News of this plentiful supply of the fluid life-blood of Mars must be carried outside whatever the cost.
G’Ash must die.
Lee started down the trail toward the castles and then retraced his steps. He tore the cord from the limb and knotted other lengths to it. The blank-faced beast-men and the girl regarded him curiously.
At a distance of a hundred yards, well inside the tunnel toward the Venusian cavern, he posted Lois with the looped end of the cord in her grip.
“We must be sure it is their leader,” he said. “A wandering animal or dwarf might set off the bomb. Can you do it?”
The girl’s lips tightened, but her grave eyes were steady on Lee’s.
“Certainly,” she said simply.
Twice Jud Lee showed himself briefly, he could not be too obvious, before G’Ash and ten of his brute-men came charging out of the ruined castle after him.
At first he ran easily, allowing G’Ash to gain on him, and then he was sprinting desperately to keep safely in advance. The prodigious bounds of G’Ash put him far in advance of his hairy followers.
He passed the ledge of exposed stone but a dozen paces in advance of the bearded savage, a lead that was swiftly being whittled down, and then flung himself to the left behind a sheltering inky black boulder.
There was a terrible explosion.
He stood up at last, ears ringing, and looked back toward the shallow pit in the trail. He saw G’Ash weaponless and broken, his eyes and forehead a bloody mass of ripped flesh, crawling sightlessly toward him!
Lois had given the rope too late a tug, probably waiting for him to reach shelter, and G’Ash was beyond its full fury.
He ran around the blinded man to where the satiny metal of his hand gun shone and sent a burst of explosive needles over the cowering heads of the hairy men. They broke before this new menace, raced back along the way they had come.
Then he turned back toward the crawling bloody mass of flesh that was G’Ash, reluctant to destroy him, yet knowing that the man was better dead. In all the Earth cavern only G’Ash might lead an attack against them.
But the bearded savage had disappeared. Nor did a half hour of searching uncover his trail.
“I’m glad he escaped,” said Lois, as they climbed the winding ramps to the upper gallery and the lifts. “We have the guns now. In a few minutes we’ll be in the dome.”
“I feel the same,” admitted Lee. “He couldn’t stop us now.”
They hurried along the shining corridor, the three rebellious beast men accompanying them, and Lee had time to consider the future. The storm would be long over now. He could tunnel out through the sand and burn outsized symbols on the dome. Then they could return to the depths until help arrived.
They passed the unlighted strip of tunnel, where the clean-stripped bones of the two beast men lay, and came to the lift.
Lee halted, his throat constricting, and the girl squeezed his arm sympathetically.
The huddle of equipment, pressure suits, helmets, sand spade, and spare belts, was gone! The dusty floor of the passage was empty. Where it had lain, the imprint of splayed naked feet was yet visible. G’Ash and his warriors had carried them off and they might never be found again.
In fact the curiosity of G’Ash might impel him to tear the suits and pumps apart, to ruin them hopelessly.
He looked at Lois, and her eyes were steady and calm. Like him she must have been digesting the knowledge that they were trapped here now for a long time. For he doubted his ability to contrive a workable pressure suit and pumps out of the crude materials at hand.
The thought of enduring her constant companionship was not unpleasant, now that privation and danger had revealed the real character that years of self-indulgence had failed to destroy.
They’d quarrel, and she would insult him and bully him unmercifully at times, he knew.
She must have sensed what he was thinking. Wordlessly she came closer and lifted her face toward his.
“Break it up,” a muffled voice sounded behind them. They turned.
“Lopez!” cried Lee. “How’d you find us?”
Lopez finished removing his helmet, revealing a trim moustache and handsome features. His smile was dazzling and all for the girl.
“This fortune-hunter making trouble?” he inquired maliciously.
Lee shook his partner’s shoulders. “How?” he demanded.
Lopez waved an airy hand. “That? Nothing! Plotted direction of storm’s path and your last position. Discovered dome, explored same, and here I am.”
He turned again to the amused girl.
“Now,” he said warmly, “you are safe at last, Miss Banton. I, Vincent Lopez, will see that no harm befalls you. There is nothing to fear . . .”
“Except you,” supplied Lee, grinning. “Come along, Lois. Let’s show our friend what paradise looks like.”
Lois came to him, her eyes smiling, and they led the way again to the stone balcony overlooking the valley.
1951
THE UNDYING ENEMY
F.G. RAYER
Only machines roamed the Earth—searching, searching—while underneath the Sleepers waited for them to rust.
The dim rock tunnel ended at a thick glass door against which the boy pressed his nose. Beyond, under long illumination tubes, stood in shadowy mystery many rows of bunks and he gazed, fascinated, at the silent figures, each with hands clasped upon its stomach and covered with a white sheet, and at the cables and tubes which rose from the headpiece concealing each face to the ceiling-high gloom. A thin humming filtered through the thick glass door, but inside nothing moved. The bunks extended out of sight in receding perspective, each with its covered figure and descending leads. A whisper of slow footsteps came along the passage and he started away in guilt.
“Here again, boy?” The old man was fragile and stooped, with many wrinkles and a beard of glinting white silk.
The boy looked down, evading the reproving eyes. “It’s so—lonely,” he said.
The other nodded, his hairless head an egg that could not reach equilibrium. “Yet why look in upon them? It is not prudent.”
“Why, wise one?” Eager blue eyes looked up into the sad, aged grey. “They sleep so soundly——”
“That is our danger—we must not envy them.”
A frail hand fell upon the lad’s shoulder, guiding him away. “Come. I will tell you the story.”
The boy nodded eagerly, hastening so that the hewn corridors and empty chambers echoed to his feet, and to his quick voice and thousand questions. They traversed the long corridor up which he had crept to gaze at the Sleepers and went into a room with two bunks. A bulb glowed overhead, lit by power he knew was generated below, for he clearly remembered the deep chambers where enormous automatic mechanisms whirred sleepily. The old man closed the door and sat upon the bunk.
“I was once a lad like you,” he said slowly, “except that I had dark hair and you have blonde. You, in turn, will open the door and wake a child, who will come to manhood as you grow old, learning all you tell him.”
The boy was wide-eyed with wonder, though he had heard this story many times before.
“You’ve been into the Chamber of the Sleepers?” he pressed, his hands tightly against his sides on the bunk with excitement.
“Yes, once. There is a key which you will see when you are older. But remember that the door is double and that compressed between its panels lies a gas, so that to break it is death.”
The boy nodded. “The story,” he urged. “Tell me the story again.”
The old man smiled. “When I was young I, too, was impatient. I walked these halls and chambers, going curiously to the glass door and through all the tunnels. Who had made them, I wondered, and why? What lay behind the far limits of our passages? Could the rock go on for ever infinitely? An old man was with me, and when I could read I learnt many new things. I was so eager for knowledge I would scarcely leave the library. When I was fifteen I was given the key to a shut room and I learned strange, unbelievable things.”
He shook his head heavily and the boy fidgeted with excitement. These words hinted at new secrets to be unfolded. “I am nearly fifteen,” he breathed.
“True, lad. My tutor said that he, too, had once been a lad, with an old man to teach him, and that the old man, in his turn, had said that long ago he himself was a boy, with a helpful, wise old man as companion. In the locked room will be instructions to be read by none but you. When the year draws near you will arouse one of the Sleepers, but your loneliness must not hurry that day, nor must you forget, leaving humanity to die.”
The boy frowned. “Humanity? Many people?”
“Yes, many like you and I,” the old man said. “Once there were many people so that each had a name. You will learn of such things. At first I did not understand, but understanding came. So it will with you. Many people thronged these halls, but they had not lived here always.” He stopped with great emphasis.
The boy was silent with wonder. He realised that at each telling a tiny fragment was added to the story, so that he should learn slowly and understand fully.
“Once these many people walked fields and towns, seeing the sky and feeling the sun upon them.” The aged voice grew dreamy. “They saw the sun and the heavens——”
“You use strange words!” Wriggling with the fear that he would not understand, the boy bounced upon the edge of the bunk, his blue eyes wide and his face anxious. “Tell me what these things are like!”
The old man shook his head sadly. “I have never seen them, but there are pictures in the locked room and you must be patient, learning all in the fullness of time. Once, my guardian said, there had been an apparatus, a machine, with which things above could be seen. He had never used it, for it was broken, but he said his tutor spoke of it. One day I will show it you, for there are many things you must begin to understand. Other places exist. There is the great above where the many people were, and vast beyond our understanding, for a man could travel for many days and not reach its end, not even if he had a machine to ride such as you will see in the pictures, and which went with terrible speed on wheels and in the sky.”
He was abruptly silent, listening. The bulb dimmed; the undertone of the generators below sank in diminuendo and the boy was still. Before, but seldom, this had happened. As always, he saw the old man’s face grow pale.
“The warning,” he breathed, aged limbs shaking.
The boy was motionless except for a tiny involuntary tremor, remembering he had been taught that he must always be still when the light suddenly dimmed and the generators whirred at their lowest, quietest level. Sometimes they waited many hours, sometimes only minutes. In the dimness he could see the old man trembling, and in the silence hear his own heart’s beat. Above, perhaps half imagined, was a heavy scraping as of the movements of some ponderous body beyond vast thicknesses of rock. Minutes passed; the sound grew inaudible and the generators began to turn at normal speed. In the increased light the boy saw that sweat glistened on the old man’s face and that he looked very tired.
“It was—them, lad,” he said.
His voice was hushed and the boy trembled.
“Tell me more,” he breathed.
“No, you will learn when the time comes. It is a terrible knowledge, and I am tired. You must prepare our food.” He began to rock himself slowly on the bunk, his hands tight between his knees and his head bent so that his beard touched his chest. His cheeks were grey and the terror which had come as the sound scraped above seemed to have robbed him of strength. Once before he had lain upon the bunk, breathing heavily, the boy recalled, then had lifted his head and touched a thong about his neck.
“If you ever find me asleep, not waking, lad, take this key.” His voice ha
d been a sigh in the room. “You have often looked upon the door it fits, asking what is beyond. Take it, open, and learn what lies there. Remember your duty is great. You must not fail. Now go, for I must rest.”
The boy had gone through the winding passages to a great steel door. Behind, the old man said, was stored terrible knowledge. The boy longed to enter, afraid yet fascinated, but understood the time had not yet come. Afterwards he had crept away to gaze at the Sleepers, then, tiring of even that, had gone into the room the old man called the children’s library, which had been opened to him when his fifth birthday had come.
Now, as he prepared the food from coloured jellies and stringy substances hard to the teeth, he thought of the old man’s words, wondering what the broken apparatus could be. Until recently he had accepted life as he found it, eating, sleeping and learning, but with each passing year the legends from his companion’s lips interested him more and more, filling him with a wild, strange excitement. It all seemed some fantastic fairyland of which the old man spoke: some strange myth passed on by word down the ages, half unremembered, half unbelieved, yet evoking a poignant longing, and often bringing melancholy into the old man’s eyes and voice as he talked on.
“What are—they?” the boy asked as he took in the meal.
Tears stood in the old man’s eyes. “It is a terrible knowledge, lad, and you are young. Forget while you can. Afterwards we will see the machine of which I spoke.”
They ate, facing each other in the hewn room with a single bulb above. Once, when it had ceased abruptly to shine, leaving the room so dark the power of vision might have ceased, the boy had changed it, bringing a new one from the store the old man had shown him.
“All the machines work by themselves?” he said, half questioningly, as he chewed a succulent vegetable which grew in warmed tanks below.
“Yes. They are self-controlling and very delicate, rarely needing adjustment. One day you may see them, but they are behind great glass doors and we must not walk among them. Many wonderful things are there, and a great clock with a huge hand. Legend says that when it has turned full circle the Sleepers will arise, but the Library tells nothing of that. It was told me by my tutor, but may be untrue.”