by Earl
York leaped up.
“Radium—energy!” he cried. “Energy for the telekinesis! There it is, all around us! Vera, I’m going to fry it. My brain wave should be able to utilize this energy as well as that of a human body.”
He offered up a prayer to all the gods in the Universe that he was right.
Vera, sobered by hope, watched him. York stood facing one wall, his face drawn into a pucker of fierce concentration. The same intangible force with which he had impelled the councilors to sit down and listen to him now sprang against the rock. York had never fully tested the mental ray’s possibilities. Could he command matter to fall away before him?
New beads of sweat joined those from the heat, on his brow. Nothing visible, nothing of which he even knew the formula, hurtled against adamant rock. Radioactive energy lay pulsing there. Could he tap it, mold it to his use, with nothing more than pure mentality?
Aching minutes passed. Then slowly the rock began to slough away into a depression. There was a rustle, as of billions of crystals rubbing against one another, changing position.
Matter obediently aligned itself in a circular wall, forming a tunnel.
York walked forward, step by step, like a god before whom nothing could stand. Foot by foot, the tunnel shaped itself.
“Follow me!” York said to Vera, in clipped phrases, without turning his head. “It’s working—mind over matter—telekinesis, energized by radium.”
YORK fashioned his mind-wrought tunnel on the steepest upgrade they could climb. It was no use to bore to the ship’s tunnel, as that rose almost perpendicularly. He would have to push on at a slant, through perhaps a hundred miles of rock, before reaching the Sun. A problem arose—that of thinning air, as the tunnel extended. York stopped to command oxygen to spring out of the rock. It did, in gusty abundance.
“Chemical telekinesis!” he said to Vera. “Even the electrons and protons shape new atoms, under this mental force. Vera, this is a true miracle of science!”
He went on, shaping his tunnel. The lack of radium in certain strata, later, did not stop York, for his mind had subtly found the way to extract even the locked energy in non-radioactive rock. In foresight, he made the tunnel oval-shaped, distributing the tremendous pressures in the rock around Nature’s sturdiest geometrical design. The unbolstered cavern held, for the same reason that a fragile-shelled egg can resist terrific pressure.
Back of them, a while later, they heard a sudden rumble, as their former prison space collapsed. York stopped, facing Vera.
“Quick!” he said, in inspiration. “Will your broadcast thoughts blank. Let the Three Eternals think we died!”
For an hour they remained quiet. They could feel the strange mental probe darting about their closed minds—the Three Eternals trying to discover some mental sign of life from their recent prisoners. York cautioned Vera to hold out, even when the tunnel back of them progressively collapsed.
At last the psychic finger left. The Eternals were convinced of their deaths!
CHAPTER VII
The Ultimate in Forces
HOPEFUL now of true escape, York forged ahead. His mental chisel, powered by mighty demons of energy, forced the creaking, groaning rock aside, against blind, brute gravity. When his mind began to reel, drained of energy, he transferred his brain wave concentrator into Vera’s ear. Her progress in forming the tunnel was little slower than his.
Later, when food and water became necessity, York commanded these. Water dripped from the rock overhead, into their mouths. Food, though a more stubborn problem, was solved when York dug up from memory the exact chemical formula of starches, proteins and sugars, which he had determined as an esoteric research, centuries before. At command, the pliant rock molecules gathered into globules of these nutritious compounds and fell into their hands.
“It’s so incredible!” murmured Vera, munching, as though unable to believe all this had happened.
“The tool of mentality!” responded York. “I’ve hit upon it by accident. It is probably the ultimate in forces, if it is fully developed.”
Some hours later, when they had progressed miles, York almost fell forward on his face. His tunnel had broken through into a large chamber. They stepped forward and saw, in the weird glow of radioactive walls, a gigantic ovoid cavern, its walls and ceiling braced with ten-foot-square ribs of metal.
“Man-made!” whispered Vera in awe, her voice reverberating back in amplified echoes. She sniffed. “Breathable air, but musty. The place seems old—terribly old!”
“I think I know what this must be!” cried York, eyes lighting. “Remember the Three Eternals’ story—Atlantis undermining Mu, in their war? This must have been an underground headquarters, from which the Atlantides drilled upward for their frightful task!”
Though they had seen many strange things, in the worlds of space, none struck them with more eerie wonder than this relic of an ancient folly on their own world.
Nothing remained in the chamber of twenty thousand years before save the metal ribbing which had withstood subterranean pressures for an age. Two great metal doors once leading the way in and out, still held, though by now masses of rock must press against them. The Atlantides had built well.
Yes, one thing remained, they saw. An enormous square block of metal squatted in the exact center of the floor, of no discernible purpose. York and Vera walked past it, on their way to start their new tunnel in the opposite wall.
Vera stopped abruptly, her face shocked. Slowly she turned this way and that, finally fastening her eyes on the metal block as though hypnotized.
“Tony, I heard a telepathic voice—from within this metal block!”
York, at first skeptical, turned back, knowing his wife was more, sensitive to faint impulses than he was. Standing close to the side of the block, concentrating, they seemed to hear a dim voice. It was an inarticulate psychic mumble, exactly as though some one were day-dreaming.
“Someone is in there!” gasped York, walking around the block to find it solid metal on all sides, and at the top.
Finally he stood back, on straddled legs, and fixed his eyes on the metal. A depression formed, matter sloughed away, as his telekinetic beam ate inward. It was York, the scientist who did this, unable to pass by the mystery of a mind voice from within a metal block.
Suddenly there was no more reaction. His mental ray had struck something it could not penetrate, halfway in. Then they heard strange stirrings, and the psychic mumble clicked off, A dim form crept out of the opening York had made. Vera trembled and slipped her hand in his. What unbelievable Thing, imprisoned in metal, had survived—how long—and was coming out?
“A robot!” breathed York, when it stood clear.
It was obviously built in the image of man, but grotesquely disproportioned. Its body, though metallic-looking, seemed to be as flexible as rubber. Its faceless head bore two gleaming eye mirrors over which shutters blinked rapidly, as though even the dim glow of the cavern blinded it after total darkness.
It looked around slowly, with a queer air of bewilderment. Finally its eyes turned to them.
“No, not entirely a robot,” it telepathized clearly, but haltingly. “I have a human brain within my skull-case. My name is Kaligor. Now tell me, what—what world is this?”
“Earth!” returned York, surprised. “What else could it be? You are from Atlantis, or perhaps Mu, Kaligor?”
“Atlantis? Mu?” The telepathic voice was uncertain. “Yes, Mu, of course. Now I remember! You must forgive my slowness. I have been buried in that block of metal for a long time—since the sinking of Atlantis and Mu. How long is that?”
“Twenty thousand years!” breathed York.
“Only twenty thousand years?” The man-robot seemed astonished. “I had thought it to be much longer—almost eternity!”
York and Vera looked at each other. Before, after only one hour, they had felt themselves going mad. How had this mind, human though metal-housed, survived two hundred centuries!
Kaligor caught their amazement.
“It is a long, queer story,” he vouched. “I nearly did go mad, in the first few hours. Then I took hold of myself and saw that I could save sanity only by rigid mental discipline. There was only one answer—escape fantasies of my own devising. I must have some one thing, a complicated path, along which my thoughts could wind slowly. In those twenty thousand years I have devised, mentally, an entire new Universe! In a framework of six-dimensional geometry!”
He paused, then went on. “I meticulously thought out each separate sun, its weight, size, brilliance, spectrum, and so on. Finishing this, possibly within a century, I took one particular sun, pictured a mythical system of planets around it, and worked out all the elaborate details of their orbits, satellites, eclipses, and such. Still I found I must go on!”
“You hoped for rescue all that time!” cried York. “For twenty thousand years?”
Surely, in all eternity, there had never been a longer wait!
“I’ve been justified, haven’t I?” returned the robot-mind, with grim lightness. “Since you stand before me, my rescuers! Ah, but how slow-footed was time! I dared not stop building my fantasy world. At that moment I would go insane, realizing my hopeless predicament. To get into greater detail, consuming more time, I peopled one of the worlds with intelligent beings, far different from humans. I devised their complete biological background, to the last cell.
“Sometimes, for what must have been days, I would wrestle with one single problem—for instance, the number of blood vessels in an inner organ. These intelligent beings, though their appearance would strike you with horror, are almost as real to me as you two now! In fact—”
He broke off, began again, his telepathic voice only now beginning to smooth its first halting pace.
“I had these imaginary beings—Wolkians.
I called them—war with one another, explore their world, trade, and all the other activities of a busy civilization. But still time hung endlessly before me—perhaps all eternity! So I conjured up single characters, in my dream world, and followed their lives from birth to death. I sketched out thereafter dozens of individual histories in complete detail. Some of my creations I grew to hate; some to love. There was brave Mirbel, and lovely Binti, for whom he fought—”
Kaligor’s psychic voice trailed away into an inarticulate mumble again. He started suddenly.
“But you would not understand,” he resumed, “how real these children of my brain are to me. On and on I spun my formless dream, to keep that crushing thought of my rockbound prison, from my conscious thoughts. I have lived a thousand lives, adventures, dreams. I am even now half wondering if this may not be part of my dream!”
“No, this is real.” York smiled, but at the same time realizing a character in Kaligor’s dream might say the same thing.
And in that way had Kaligor kept from going mad.
HE shook himself suddenly, as though throwing off the last shreds of his age-long dream.
“Who are you?” he asked. “How did you happen to come to this forgotten chamber?” York told their story. At mention of the Three Eternals, Kaligor started and seemed to listen with rapt-interest.
“The Three Eternals!” he burst out, when York had finished. “They are the same three who imprisoned me here! It came about in. this way. I am of Mu, not Atlantis. I discovered the life-elixir, independently, partook of it, and in my utter zeal, decided to house my already immortal brain in an indestructible body, so that even accidental death could not claim my life. I would live forever! Ah, it was a foolish aim, not knowing at the time how palling life can become.” For a moment Kaligor radiated the same ultra ennui of the Three Eternals. York and Vera realized that perhaps some day they too would long for escape.
Kaligor went on. “We had skilled surgeons in our civilization, and one of these I had transfer my living, immortal brain into this robot housing. I had previously devised a solution surrounding my brain that drew energy from space itself, which pervades all things. I had spent two centuries constructing my robot body. It is not metal, as it appears to your eye. It is not matter at all, for matter can be destroyed. I wanted something absolutely indestructible. This body of mine is made of—what shall I call it?—interwoven energy. A sort of fibroid cloth of fundamental warped space time. When you destroy an atom, what is left? Its energy, which cannot be destroyed—ever. Of this is my body made.”
York faintly understood. “I see why my brain wave stopped so suddenly when it struck, your form. I was commanding pure energy to vanish, with pure energy. A figure telling its mirror image to begone!”
Kaligor waved a stumpy hand, in dismissal and went on.
“Thus finally and truly immortal, I began to think of the future. Plans of leading Mu’s civilization to astounding heights formed. And then, before I could begin, Mu crashed down into the sea, in that Titanic struggle for mastery with Atlantis, our bitter enemy.
“Tons of masonry fell on me, with no effect, of course. I found myself at the bottom of the sea, eventually, all my people drowned, murdered. Walking over the sea bottom to the shores of Atlantis, filled with blind horror, I was prepared to wreak vengeance. But Atlantis went down of itself, and civilization was done!”
His psychic tones were dull. “I must have sat on a mountain top, overlooking the broad seas that covered Mu, for a century, brooding, thinking I was the only human mind alive. But one day, in this newly arisen continent, I saw human forms. Some had survived! I questioned them. Though half savage, and the sinking of Mu and Atlantis already a legend to them, I found they were descendants of Muan survivors. My own people! My spirits sang and I began teaching them, building a new Muan civilization in place of the old.”
He paused, his thoughts darkening. “Then the Three Eternals came. I met them for the first time. They had been in space, as they told you, and had come back to find their land and mine in limbo. Being Atlantides, they hated the thought of Muans inheriting the new world. We battled. I could not vanquish them, without weapons, nor could they destroy me, though they blasted me with every hellish force of their devising.
“At last, chaining me, they took me down to this chamber, buried me forty miles below Earth’s surface in a solid, metal block, knowing that as long as Earth existed, I would live and think and never be free. Even insane, I could not die! Their last words to me were that they were going above to hunt down the Mu-descended savages. Every last one. Rather an Earth peopled only by dumb animals than Muans, was their bitter text.”
“They obviously failed.” York smiled grimly. “Since human life went on and civilization rose again, in time—Egypt, Sumeria, Maya, and so on.”
Kaligor’s bright mirror eyes looked at them strangely.
“And you, Anton York, are of my race. We have a bond between us, linking us across an age of time. And we have a common enemy,—the Three Eternals. You can see what their present plan means—to destroy once and for all the second Muan race and civilization. They will be forced to use Muan stock in their proposed civilization, but inculcated with the ancient Atlantide ideology, which was ever a belief in rule of the many by the favored few. We of Mu believed always in communal cooperation.”
York nodded.
“We will go to the surface and fight the Three Eternals,” he said, glad to have an ally of such merit. “At present, they think we are dead and—”
York stopped short.
Vera gave a vocal cry, feeling the delicate mental probe of the Three in her femininely sensitive brain.
In a split second of time, before the probe had focused, she warned her husband and Kaligor to close their minds.
York commended her with his eyes, and they forced their minds in a telepathic short circuit.
Kaligor had caught on instantly, and likewise stood mentally inert.
CHAPTER VIII
Pure Energy Against Energy
VERA heaved a sigh an hour later. The probe had gone.
“Lead the way,�
� Kaligor said to York. “Up to the surface world, with your brain wave excavator.”
It took them a month, York and Vera alternately forming the tunnel slanting upward. They became skilled in producing, food, water and air, when needed. Kaligor stalked after them silently, needing none of these necessities of life. Deathless he truly was.
As they neared the surface, he betrayed increasing excitement. To see the Sun again, the bustle of life, after twenty thousand years of caged dreams! At times, however, Kaligor seemed wrapped in a: mental fog. The artificial vocal cords with which he was equipped murmured his ancient tongue. York and Vera caught the tailings of their mental origins—brief flashes of a strange, incredible Universe, peopled with non-existent beings!
Once the robot-bodied man stopped, confused, and it was an hour before York could convince him it was Earth, and not the dream stuff of Wolkia. Kaligor shook his head sadly.
“I live in two worlds,” he murmured. “I will never be sure which is real! Too long, too long have I dwelt in that other land!”
Vera was invaluable as their sentinel against discovery by the Three Eternals’ periodic, suspicious probings with their long-range mental detector, from their laboratory on Mount Olympus. Her quick mind detected instantly what the two blunter male minds might have noticed seconds too late. At her signals, they locked their minds instantaneously.
They emerged in Australia, as York had carefully planned, for it would have been disaster to burst through into the Pacific’s watery bottom. York and Vera breathed free air thankfully, exulting in the warm sunlight that bathed their skins.
Kaligor leaned against a rock, his strangely flexible body trembling. Free at last of his horribly entombed fate, his was the emotion of a resurrected soul, mistakenly buried, a million times intensified.
Their thoughts expanding, free of the underground, they were not on guard.
“The mental probe!” Vera screamed suddenly.