Two Thousand Miles Below

by Charles W Diffin

  From the distance came faintly a booming chant, two thousand voices raised in unison. "Tur—gona! Nu—tur—gona!" The last of a once mighty people were marching to their death.

  Rawson and Loah turned with one accord. Victory was theirs, but there was no time to taste the fruits of victory. They ran with straining muscles and gasping breath toward the distant mountain and the marching host beyond.

  * * *

  y plans are made," Rawson spoke quietly. "I must go. I shall take the shell—the jana—and go back to the mole-men's world. I shall go alone, and I shall die, but what of that?" His eyes lit up for a moment. "I'll try to find Phee-e-al first. If I can get him before they get me, that will help."

  They were standing on the mountain's lower slope, Gor and Leah and the servants of the mountain gathered near. Below, the White Ones were massed in worshiping silence. Had not Dean-Rah-Sun saved them? And now what else would come to pass?

  The same question had been asked by the Wise Ones, and now Rawson turned and spoke to them. "Rotan was right," he told them. "His vision was true. There is work I must do here before I go. Your lands, or some of them at least, will be restored. And you will be safe forever from what we have seen to-day. Gor will lead you wisely, and Loah...." His voice faltered; he had kept his eyes resolutely away from the slim figure of the girl, who had been wordless, scarcely breathing. Now she stepped swiftly before him.

  "You must go, Dean-San," she said gently. He knew it was a term of endearment. "You must go if you say you must. But you do not go alone, nor die alone. Long ago the voice of the mountain spoke beautiful words. I know now it was one of your priests telling of a woman of your own race. Always have I remembered. 'Wheresoever thou goest, I shall go; thy people....'"

  But Dean Rawson had gathered the slender figure, starry-eyed and sobbing into his arms.

  * * *

  CHAPTER XXIII

  Oro and Grah

  Then there were footsteps approaching the chest.

  he Place of Death!" said Dean Rawson. "Whoever named it had the right idea."

  As part of their titanic plan, Rawson and Loah-San return to sacrifice themselves in the flaming caverns of the Red Ones.

  He looked out across the wide stretch of ground with its covering of white salt almost entirely stripped of the carpet of vines. The bodies of the mole-men lay where they had fallen; their flame-throwers still tore futilely at the earth or stabbed upward in vain, thrusting toward the green-gold sun that shone pitilessly down.

  "Still I do not understand," said Gor. "My people pressed the strong, burning water from the vines and poured it into the pool as you directed. But the Red Ones did not touch it—how could it burn them?"

  "I'll say it was strong!" said Rawson. He looked at his hands, red and burned where the liquid had touched. "And it got stronger by standing. It was an acid, and when it touched the white earth a gas was formed—hydrocyanic acid gas. And that's nothing to fool with."

  He walked cautiously out where the liquid had been poured over the white ground. No odor remained; the air was clean. Then he picked up one of the flame-throwers and experimented with it until he found the sliding sleeve that shut off the blast.

  "All right," he called to Gor. "Bring on your men; we've got to clean up this place and get rid of the bodies before the sun gets in its work. They're the ones that will go into the ocean instead of you." He moved carefully along the straggling line of bodies, salvaging the weapons and turning off their fearful blasts.

  They worked and slept and worked again before their gruesome task was done and Rawson was ready to begin the other work that he had in mind.

  Beside the mouth of the great shaft, resting on the rocks, was a cylinder, almost exactly a counterpart of the one Loah had used. But this was larger—fully fifty of the red savages could have crowded inside.

  "It is the only one they had," said Loah. "I have seen, and I know."

  "But they can make more," Gor argued. "This one and the one we have," he told Rawson, "were made thousands of years ago. There were masters of metal-work among them, and they had learned to use Oro and Grah. Even then the people were divided. He who was then Gor and his followers fought with the others. But he left them one jana—this very one here. Then Gor followed the Pathway to the Light, though he sealed it as you know. But—but they will build others. Sooner or later they will come."

  "I think not," said Rawson. "Now what about this Oro and Grah material? What was it you called them—the Sun-stone and the Stone-that-loves-the-dark? I must know how they work." But Loah was reluctant to experiment with the jana of the Reds; she had her own shell brought instead—and then Rawson learned the secret of what seemed its miraculous flight.

  A cylindrical metal bubble, just buoyant enough to lift itself above the ground—Gor and some of the others brought it from the village. Gor brought, too, a little box which he carried with great difficulty.

  * * *

  t is Grah," he said, when he showed Rawson a little scattering of black dust within the box. "Always it tries to fall back under the ground. Both Oro and Grah grow deep down near the Zone of the Fires; we find them in the caves, Oro on one side and Grah on the other. Oro is as heavy in its upward falling as Grah is in its downward.

  "Then"—he pointed to the central vertical tube in the shell—"we put both of them in here, bringing it a few grains at a time. One falls to one end and the other to the other. And then, with these simple valves, we let out a little of whichever we wish—release it a grain at a time, if that is best. We let out a few grains of Grah, and Oro, being stronger, draws us upward; or we let a little of the Oro escape, and we fall downward swiftly. You see it is simple, as I said."

  Rawson's reply was not an answer to Gor so much as it was an argument with himself. "Heavy," he said. "Specific gravity beyond anything we've ever known. Osmium, the heaviest substance we have, would be light as a feather compared to this. But wait. This Grah, as you call it, falls downward, but that means it falls toward the outside of the earth. With us it would be light—light! And Oro would be heavy. New substance—new matter! One feels only the attraction of our normal gravitation; the other doesn't react to that at all, but is driven outward with tremendous force by counter-gravitation, the repulsion of this Central Sun. You've used it cleverly, but we'd have done more with it up on top."

  * * *

  e was lost in thought for some minutes, muttering figures and calculations half aloud. "Two thousand miles from the Central Sun to us; two thousand more through the solid earth. And if that repelling force follows Newtonian laws it will decrease as the square.... But, coming down from up on top, normal gravity would decrease directly as the distance!" He made scratches with one small stone upon a larger one in lieu of paper and pencil, but, to his listeners, his muttered words could have meant nothing.

  "Around six seventy-six hundred and seventy miles to the neutral zone, the Zone of Fire. And a column of water—it would carry on by, plug the shaft, check the back-pressure, and then...." For the first time since that night when the mole-men had poured out into the crater, his eyes were alight with hope, though his face seemed tense and grim. Then the lines about his lips relaxed; he smiled at Loah.

  "I would like to investigate this under-world," he said, "—not very far down. Will you take me?"

  The girl's adventurous spirit had led her on many exploring trips in that subterranean world. She laughed happily when Rawson told her what he wanted. "But, yes," she said; "of course I know such a place." And from some two or three miles below, after anchoring the jana securely, she led him through a winding tunnel where he knew he was steadily climbing.

  * * *

  t was a wide corridor that they followed, where the walls came together high above their heads; he could hardly see where they met by the light of Loah's torch. Now and then there were lateral passages, but they were narrow, hardly more than cracks; and Rawson, looking into them, nodded his head with satisfaction.

  Occasionally his foots
teps rang hollowly on the stone, and he knew that the floor was thin between this and other caverns below. "What an old honeycomb it is!" he exclaimed. "And we had it all figured as being solid. The weight is all here, of course, but it's concentrated in that red stuff down near the neutral zone. But anyway, Loah has shown me just what I wanted."

  He had gathered a handful of little fragments, and, keeping count of his steps, had shifted a bit of rock to his left hand for every hundred paces. By this he knew they must have gone five or six miles when he reached the tunnel's high point. Many times it had widened. Here, too, was a cave more than a hundred feet across.

  From the farther side the tunnel continued, pitching sharply downward, but Rawson did not explore farther. "I can seal that off with a flame-thrower," he said. "I've seen how they use them." Then he took Loah's light and looked with every evidence of approval at the rocky walls and the roof that seemed heavy with dew.

  He had wondered about the air, but he found that it seeped through from that central shaft, although Loah told him that in some deeper passages the air was bad. Here, although it was moving gently, it seemed wet as if charged with moisture. Rawson, staring upward, felt a drop strike him in the face, dripping from the rocks above.

  "It's a gamble," he said, "just a gamble. But the stakes are worth while. And now, Loah-San, we will return."

  * * *

  e made crude work with the flame-throwers at first but finally he got the knack, and the mouth of the tunnel beyond the big room was sealed. Then, with the help of Loah and some few of the others, he brought in more and more weapons of the Reds. He was curious as to their construction, but his curiosity had to go unsatisfied. They were only cylinders, so far as he could see, cylinders a foot long and six inches through, of some metal with the dull lustre of aluminum. But they were sealed, and he dared not cut one open with another flame-thrower for fear of what might come forth.

  On the top of each cylinder a tube was connected that ended in a lava tip; but at the base of the tube, where it joined the cylinder, was a sliding sleeve that checked the flame to nothing when it was moved, or opened it to the full blast.

  He had a hundred of them in the room when at last he was through—one hundred fearful instruments of destruction. And still he told no one of his plans; he only told Gor what he wanted done later on. "It may not work," he had to admit to himself. "I'm just guessing at the thickness of the rock and the power of these machines. It's a gamble, nothing but a gamble."

  He arranged the flame-throwers in a circle along the outer wall. The tops of the cylinders were curved, but the bottoms were flat and they set solidly on the rock. But he tipped them backward and braced them firmly with fragments of stone until every crooked-neck tube was pointed upward and toward the center. Finally he was done.

  * * *

  t was only a matter of a few hours later when Rawson stood on the island's end by the mouth of the shaft. In his ears was the ceaseless rush of the air as it entered the pit; it was the only sound in a silent world. And for the first time there came overwhelmingly upon him a realization of what this moment meant.

  The time had come. Loah was beside him, her lovely eyes unnaturally bright in her face from which all the blood seemed to have flowed. He felt the slight trembling of her body as she pressed against him; he knew she was struggling to keep back the tears. Then Rawson half turned with one final entreaty that she let him go alone; but he left the words unsaid—he had argued it several times before.

  Before them stood Gor, then the Wise Ones, the Servants of the Mountain, deserting their post for the first time since the Mountain had been given a voice. Beyond them all the people of this little world were gathered.

  It had seemed only a fanciful dream, this thought of going; in fact, he had been too busy, too pressed with his own preparations, to give it thought. Now he was learning to his own surprise how closely he had identified himself with this world and its people. It had given him Loah; it had been a haven, a sanctuary.

  He let his eyes slowly take in the full splendor of that emerald sea, the shining land under a green-gold sun, the Mountain in white, crystal purity against a green-blue sky. And he was leaving it, he and Loah; they were going to—death!

  * * *

  ou will remember," he said to Gor. His voice sounded dull and heavy; it hardly seemed himself who was speaking. "You know the day and the hour. This is the nineteenth. It is now noon—twelve o'clock in my world. When the Voice of the Mountain says that noon again has come you will do as I said."

  "The Mountain speaks without ceasing now," said Gor, "telling always of what the Red Ones do. We will count the hours as they pass. In twenty-four of those hours Gor will descend in the jana of the Reds to do as Dean Rah-Sun has commanded."

  Rawson held out his hand. He was suddenly wordless. Then Loah threw herself into Gor's arms in one last passionate embrace—but it was she who entered the jana first.

  "Come," she said to Dean. "Oh, come quickly, Dean-San!" Then he, too stepped inside and made the heavy door fast.

  Men of the White Ones had been holding the big cylinder down. But Rawson, staring through the window, saw that it was Gor's own hands that swung them out at last above the pit.

  Their craft hung quivering for an instant in the rushing air; then Loah moved one of the levers a trifle and the blackness took them, and only the little bull's-eyes in the metal ceiling showed the fading glow of the Inner World, the home of the People of the Light, which their eyes never again would see.

  * * *

  CHAPTER XXIV

  The Bargain

  awson had taken one flame-thrower with him. He tied it securely inside the shell so it could not shift with the changing gravity, or be accidentally turned on. Again he clung to the curved bar against the wall. Loah stood at the center, directing the craft.

  Once again he floated in air, then found himself standing on what had been the ceiling of the room. The girl had released a considerable quantity of the lifting element in the jana's end, and now the black powder in the other end of the central tube was dragging them at terrific speed as it rushed away from the earth's center.

  Over six hundred miles, Rawson had figured, from that inner surface to the neutral zone where the red substance of the earth, that was neither rock nor metal, under terrific pressures, glowed with fervent heat or formed pools like the Lake of Fire.

  Perhaps a hundred miles thick, that zone of incessant energy, and their little craft tore through it at tremendous speed. Even so, he was gasping for breath in the heated room when the glow faded and again he swung over and down upon the floor as Loah checked the speed of the flying projectile and the little ship crept slowly up into the room where first he had seen it.

  The first that he noticed was the absence of the roar. The jana drifted slowly to one side, and Loah let it come to rest upon the floor. Staring from the open door, Rawson saw the same familiar red walls and floor and the black opening of the shaft from which they had come. But the reverberating roar of the great organ-pipe was gone. He knew that the air, for the greater part, was driving on past through the upper shaft that was now open. The way was clear for them to ascend. He turned to the girl.

  * * *

  f my figures are right, it's some thirteen hundred miles from here on. How did you get up there before?"

  Loah pointed to the passage where the jana, on that other excursion, had been hidden. "We went through there," she said, "taking the jana with us. We went up many miles through a great crack, but it was not straight; we had to go carefully till another passage opened through to the shaft far above where it was sealed."

  "And the mole-men never found it?"

  "Oh, yes," said Loah, "they must have known of the crack, but they did not know where it led. Its air was bad—a gas that choked; one could not breathe it and live. But in our little jana we were safe. They could not use theirs; it was too large. Besides, only the priests came down. They had their Lake of Fire, where they did horrible things. They
did not know that the shaft began again below."

  "O. K.," said Rawson, and closed the door.

  "But I wish to get out," Loah protested, "to gather more of the Oro. We may need more, should we return."

  "We will never need it," Rawson spoke softly. "From the time we left Gor we had just twenty-four hours to live. We must go on, and go fast."

  * * *

  hey had no way of measuring time, and Rawson could only guess at the hours that passed while their little ship tore swiftly upward through the dark. He wondered if the occasional shrill shriek that followed the touching of their metal guides on the glassy walls could be heard up above.

  Then, at last, Loah was driving the jana slowly while she held her light so it would shine through a window. Rawson had to restrain himself to keep from pacing the little room like a caged animal while the precious minutes slipped by. Now that the enemy was near he wanted nothing but to drive on up to the end of the shaft, come out into that world wherever the shaft ended, then try to fight his way through to the great hall where he hoped to find Phee-e-al. And his haste made him overestimate the passing time; their journey had been swifter than he knew.

  "I may have passed it," Loah was saying doubtfully. "I may have come too far." Then she interrupted herself and sprang to the controls.

  They drifted slowly back. "It is different now," Loah said; "the air rises more swiftly than before." She stared from the windows while she drove the jana slowly up and down, trying to bring it to equilibrium in the strong up-draft.