by Earl
Overhead, swift Martian rocket craft outmaneuvered American pursuit ships and shot them down steadily. Earth artillery pounded briefly, and then the guns exploded as creeping neutron-rays touched off shells prematurely.
Finally, across no-man’s-land came a wave of Martians, with long-range kill-beams. On all sides of Paige and Sparky soldiers threw up their hands with choked cries and fell as corpses, as neutron-beams drilled a one-inch hole through lungs and spine.
The regiment stood its ground, under orders. Men fought grimly, with a doomed look in their eyes. And so it had gone for two months, with the Earth forces steadily being decimated. The Martians, an older race, were maddeningly scientific, equipped with superweapons and superships. Earth’s defenses were toylike in comparison. Complete extermination of the human race seemed the enemy’s aim, so that they might take over the new world for their own.
“It’s no use, Sparky!” groaned Paige, resting his automatic gun for a moment on the knoll behind which they crouched. His voice was filled with the hollow bitterness that he and all humans felt. “Earth is licked. Extinction faces humanity. There isn’t a chance in the world of winning out against the Martians. It’s just a matter of months—”
“We’re not licked till the last man goes,” Sparky retorted grimly.
Paige looked around. In back of the thin line of doomed fighters the way was clear. Paige suddenly clutched the little man’s arm.
“Come on, Sparky.” His voice was dry, defeated. “We’re deserting.”
“Deserting!” Sparky repeated the word with a good soldier’s utter loathing. “To save our skins? Almighty, Sarge—not you—”
“Not to save our skins,” Paige said savagely. “To take the one chance left to save Earth!”
“You mean that funny-sounding underworld business? Sarge now you’re cracked, too.”
But Paige was already crawling back, away from the line of fighters. Sparky looked up in the war-torn sky, as though for guidance, then followed.
“Sarge, I’ll stick with you. That makes me a deserter, a skunk and a maniac. Funny, what a man will do at times.”
They crept back, through bushes and grass, deserting the regiment that was being cut down to the last man. They hid in a woods till night, and then sneaked through the secondary line hastily digging into trenches. In back of its constantly melting front line, the Earth forces were setting up further lines. A hopeless, bitter fight to try and stem the invincible invaders.
They were shot at several times by sentries, but escaped.
“Shot at by our own people!” Sparky sobbed brokenly. “We’ll die yet, with bullets in our backs. They’ll kick our bodies and spit at them.”
Paige winced, but led the way adamantly. To die without honor was horrible. But to die without hope was worse.
The desertion was easier than they might have thought. The country was disorganized, under the encroaching menace. They stole from farmer’s vegetable patches for food, avoiding cities. They slept in the day, among trees, and moved at night. In a week they had trudged through Tennessee, up into Kentucky.
“Sarge!” Sparky stopped stock still suddenly. “We’re really fools. What can we do when we get back to the lab in Cincinnati? There’s no electrical power for our radio!”
“We’re not going there,” Paige returned quietly. “We’re going to Mammoth Cave. We’re going down in the underworld ourselves!”
THEY entered the yawning portals of mighty Mammoth Cave.
Tour-parties had long been suspended, with the coming of the Martians. It was deserted. A forest of stalagmites loomed in the dimness ahead.
“People have gone in here and never come out,” shivered Sparky. “They went in circles. How do we find the way?”
“Aronson’s markings,” reminded Paige, pointing to a stalagmite on which had plainly been scratched an arrow with a large “A” beneath it.
They followed the arrows. The cave-mouth receded, became lost. Utter tomblike silence surrounded them. Their footfalls sounded like the tread of mammoths. At times they were startled by bats skittering through the air. High overhead, from the vaulted ceiling of rock, hung gigantic stalactites that seemed poised for an instant drop.
There was fantastic beauty in it. Light from the hidden cave-mouth reflected through the gloom in stabbing beams, sparkling from a thousand crystalline facets. In the dim distance, great arched corridors spread in all directions, like the halls of a cyclopean cathedral. Strange rock formations loomed magnificently, the wildly artistic sculpturings of a wonderland of nature.
The arrows pointed on and on.
“How did Dr. Aronson know the way?” Sparky chattered.
“By his new geologic theory about the crust and all Earth,” Paige informed. “That Mammoth Cave, at some point, must connect to lower caverns.”
Abruptly a riven gash ran before them across the cave floor. An arrow at the edge pointed down. They clambered down thirty feet. A water-worn passage a hundred yards beyond led out—to where?
At one point, they had to crawl through a natural tunnel so narrow that Paige’s broad shoulders almost stuck. The passage widened and soon they stood upright, looking out upon a breathless sight.
On a lower level than Mammoth Cave, and connected to it only by that narrow passage, was a cavern yet more gigantic. Even a small lake lay gemlike in the center, glowing with phosphorescent algae. And beyond stretched corridors, twining through the rock, going on and on, and down and down.
“The beginning of the underworld!” Paige whispered. “No wonder Dr. Aronson was so excited when he reported this to us.”
Sparky grunted. “And no wonder he went nuts. Sarge, look. This is all crazy. There can’t be any people down here, no matter how far it goes I Let’s go back, Sarge, and be sensible.”
For a moment Paige hesitated. Was he being a fool? Could there be a buried race down here? Or was it all hallucination, in a man driven insane? Should he go on this wild goose chase? Or go back to duty? And death!
What choice was there? They would go on. Sparky accepted the decision with a resigned shrug.
THEY scrabbled down the slopes, passed the lake, and followed the arrows into the passage beyond. In the following days they hunted and shot fat cave rats, salamanders and jackdaws for food, toasting them over fires of dried moss. The signs of life increased, rather than diminished, as they went on. They were all albino forms, pigmentless, living without sun.
They plodded uncountable miles, in the underground maze, unmapped by the upper world. It became like a dream to Paige. He sensed they were going down, ever down, as much as forward. It was as if gravity lured them down into its lair, where there was a choice of grades. Phosphorescent plants and radio-active deposits in the walls lighted the way, dimly.
The upper world seemed remote. Even the terrible struggle going on up there faded from their thoughts, as though it had happened centuries ago.
“A new world!” Paige murmured more than once, his voice echoing hollowly through the caverns.
“Maybe so, Sarge,” Sparky admitted. “But we won’t find any people. I still don’t believe that.”
Temperature had risen, gradually, steadily. Now, at the end of ten days, it was abominably hot. They peeled their coats, ripped their collars open. They skirted pools of bubbling, steaming water. The soles of their boots became blackened and scorched. Waves of blistering heat radiated from the walls about them. At times they saw lava-flows, like creeping amoeba, reach up from cracks and holes.
“The heat-zone Aronson mentioned,” Paige said thoughtfully. “Watch your step. Here’s where his three men lost their lives!”
It became worse. Small rivers of lava flowed sluggishly by. Curtains of steam half blinded them. The air was furnace hot. Stumbling, sweat-soaked, throats seared dry, they were barely able to find the arrows that led on and on into the virtual inferno.
“Can’t go on!” panted Sparky, his limp dragging at his speed. “Sarge, we can’t go on. We’ll burn al
ive!”
But Paige grabbed Sparky’s arm and staggered on grimly. If Dr. Aronson had won through, so could they. Sparky cursed lividly, but said no more.
Suddenly he screamed: “Look! That lava-flow—it’s coming straight for us!”
A portion of the wall had broken open to let a flood of smoking molten rock pour out over the passage they were treading. Croaking hoarsely with fear, Sparky tried to run back. But the lava had cut off retreat.
Paige stood still with hammering pulses, trying to figure out an escape. The damnable vapors cut off vision. A lake of lava began crowding them toward the burning-hot walls. Wasn’t there any way out?
“We’ll die here like trapped rats!” Sparky shouted. Then he laughed wildly. “We left the Martians, for a death like this!”
Echoes of the laughter mocked them, ringing back from the cavern walls.
SUDDENLY Paige lifted his bleary eyes. One sound hadn’t been an echo. It had sounded like a shout—a human shout!
He peered into the steamy gloom around them. Again the shout, and two figures racing toward them. Humanlike figures! The foremost was a female form, long ash-white hair streaming back. Her skin, too, was alabaster white, and her eyes pink. She was an albino. She was like a white angel darting through the steam curtain.
“I’ve gone daffy, like Aronson,” moaned Sparky. “I think I’m seeing angels.” The two figures came up. The white girl-creature grasped Paige’s arm and forced him to stumble through the blinding vapors. Her male counterpart hustled Sparky along. They could see.
Paige’s bloodshot eyes saw the sudden upwelling of hot, molten rock, sweeping toward them like a tide, threatening to cut them off. They made it to a side passage with just seconds to spare. It was like an infernally detailed nightmare.
Paige felt coolness touch his fevered brow in the new corridor. The white angel half dragged him along another hundred yards, then stopped. The white male let Sparky go, as he leaned against a wall. In dim radioactive glow, the four people looked at each other.
Sparky’s eyes were bulging. He reached out to touch his rescuer.
“He’s real!” Sparky gasped. “My Lord, Sarge, they’re real!”
“Of course,” panted Paige. “These are the albino people.”
“Then Aronson wasn’t cracked—” Sparky began.
They both started as the albino girl spoke quickly. “Aronson,” she repeated in a lilting tone nodding her head. “Dr. Aronson—” The rest was a flood of her own tongue.
“You know Dr. Aronson?” Paige queried. “Do you know any of our language?”
The girl seemed puzzled, her eyes on him. Suddenly she smiled, and Paige smiled back. Somehow, the ache of his muscles, the burning of his skin seemed all worth while to meet this marble-white girl of another world.
Sparky was shaking his arm. “Don’t you hear me? I said—oh, never mind.” He grinned suddenly. “Quite a nice number, eh? But her boy-friend’s kind of jealous.”
Paige started and looked around. The albino man was frowning. He gestured for them to move on.
The way wound erratically down. At times it was rough going. The girl helped Paige’s staggering legs, while the man helped Sparky. Sure-footed as goats, the albino-people never faltered.
A few minutes later they were standing at the lip of a cavern more gargantuan than any Paige and Sparky had yet seen. They gasped. There was a city in it.
Dwellings had been hollowed out of the rock walls, with stone steps leading to the entrances. The center space, surrounding a mirror-like lake, was a checkerboard of tilled fields bearing albino-crops, tended by albino people. Sounds arose, the welcome noises of a busy, civilized community, sweet to their ears after the ghastly echoing silences of the cave above. The farther wall was pockmarked with tunnels; man-made passages from which came the roar of machinery.
It was a fairy-like scene, weirdly lovely in a radioactive glow shed by huge globe-lamps, again man-made, hanging in the high vaulted ceiling. Paige thrilled. Civilization after all, in this sunless world, and albino people identical to humans except for lack of skin pigment.
“Well,” he told Sparky, “Dr. Aronson was right.”
Sparky for once had nothing to say. They were led to one of the cliff-dwellings, overlooking the community. Utterly worn out by their ordeal through the fire-zone, they thankfully climbed into hammocks, and slept the sleep of the dead-weary.
III
PAIGE awoke, feeling wonderfully rested. He swung his eyes to look through an open window, down at the albino people’s city.
And there were more cities. Two billion human souls, if Aronson were right, living like moles. A hustling, teeming world here within Earth’s core! As many humans living without the sun as under its rays! Suddenly the whole thing seemed fantastic, incredible.
But here it was!
And then, Paige felt a queer satisfaction stealing through him. The Martians up above were only killing off one-half of the human race. They didn’t know either of this mysterious underworld.
In a way, it was almost a joke on those heartless monsters from another planet. Joke? It would be more than a joke, soon.
“You awake, Sarge?” came Sparky’s voice. “I’ve been lying here wondering if it’s all true.”
“It’s an amazing riddle, Sparky. Civilization below Earth’s surface. Wonder if Dr. Aronson knows all the answers? We’ll have to get to him, somehow, at the center of Earth.”
“Center of Earth!” scoffed Sparky. “I won’t believe that yet.”
“Still skeptical?” Paige laughed. He sobered. “After what we’ve seen, we can’t doubt anything. And thank Heaven for it. Don’t forget what we’re here for, Sparky—to enlist the albino people in the fight against the Martians. They—”
He stopped, as the man and girl who had rescued them appeared, smiling a greeting.
Paige took a longer look at them. He stared at the girl till her almost colorless eyes, dropped. A vivid scarlet blush touched her marble-white skin. Cosmetics were known to these people, for her eyebrows and eyelashes were tinged with black paint, and her cheeks and lips with a red tint, to relieve otherwise uniform white features. She looked very human.
Sparky was more practical. “We’re hungry,” he said. “Very, very hungry.”
The two stared in perplexity till Sparky pantomimed eating, at which the girl nodded quickly, left, and returned with steaming bowls of gruel-like food. Paige and Sparky gulped it down as fast as they could, finding it enigmatically tasty. New strength flowed through their bodies, wasted by the trek through the endless caverns and the hell-hot fire zone.
Paige gave a sigh of satisfaction, and introduced themselves, wishing he could launch a flood of questions that plagued him.
“Evan Paige! Sparky Donovan!” repeated the girl, nodding, apparently with a quick ear for new words. “Names—him Tal Rithor. Me—Reena Meloth.” Her hand touched Paige’s momentarily.
Paige noticed again the quick frown in Tal Rithor’s face, and grinned a little. “Don’t worry, Tal,” he said. “I’m not your rival.”
“Yet!” Sparky added under his breath. Aloud he exclaimed, “But, Sarge, she used a couple of English words! She must have learned some from Aronson.”
Paige nodded, wondering how much English they knew. “How far underground are we?” he asked.
“No understand,” returned the girl blankly, after a moment of thought.
“Where are you people from?” essayed Paige, speaking slowly and distinctly.
“No understand.”
Paige checked the turmoil of further questions on his lips. Which didn’t they understand—his words or the ideas behind them?
The girl leaned forward. “We learn all your words. From Dr. Aronson.”
“Where is he?” queried Paige. “At the center of Earth?” That thought, in spite of the astounding confirmation of the subterranean world, still seemed stretching a point.
The girl shook her head without a shred of comprehension. “Hi
m Center. Sick place. Him there.”
It might mean anything. “Can we go to him?” Paige asked patiently.
“No,” Reena Meloth emphasized the flat negative with a shake of her ash-blonde head, Tal Rithor following suit.
“Why?” demanded Paige.
The albino man spoke this time. “You fighters! You fight!”
“I don’t like his tone,” Sparky asserted in a low aside. He had always formed quick likes and dislikes. “I wouldn’t trust him.”
Paige nudged his friend quiet but didn’t like the albino man’s tone either. He took a breath. Now that he had found out they vaguely understood English, he prepared to launch into the most important aspect of their mission.
“Listen,” he said slowly. “We must see Dr. Aronson. We have come down from the upper world for a purpose—a grave purpose. An enemy is wiping out the human race up there. We need help. Do you understand?”
“No.” Both shook their heads in absolute lack of comprehension. Again Paige had the nagging thought that it was his meaning they failed to grasp.
Sparky was shaking his head, too. “We’ll never get anywhere this way, Sarge. We’ll have to teach them our language better, or learn theirs.”
Paige grunted. “We’ll learn theirs. I hate to take the time, with Earth being blasted day by day, but we’ll have to.” He turned to the girl. “Wil you teach us your language?”
She nodded brightly. This she seemed to understand. “Start now,” she said. She spoke to Tal Rithor rapidly in their flowing speech. He nodded, rather reluctantly, shot a glance at Paige, and left.
“I still don’t like him,” Sparky murmured.
“Forget it!” Paige snapped. “It’s trivial. We’re here to learn the language first, contact Aronson, and get help for Earth!”
In his mind, he pictured what was happening up in the world they had left. New York, London, Paris, Berlin—falling before giant forces spawned in Martian minds. Humanity facing extinction.
The girl began pointing to objects, giving their names in her strange tongue.