Around him was his laboratory; bright metal and glass had been fabricated there into devices which enabled him better to understand nature and to control it a little.
Without that control this savant of Earth would have long since ceased to be. That was obvious to the two observers who watched and heard what was evidently intended for other ears and eyes than theirs.
There were massive, steel-ridged windows in the walls of the terrestrial laboratory. Visible beyond them was a yellowish twilight, like faint sunshine seeping through a curtain of miasmic fog. Hills could be seen, marked with the gaunt stumps of dead trees that thrust their broken tops through a morass of green slime which throbbed and pulsated with a restless and malevolent animation.
The slime was everywhere, and it was alive. Other life had succumbed to its noxious onslaught. The girders of buildings, grotesquely twisted like nightmare fingers against the drab sky, were wrapped in quivering shreds of the stuff. Acids produced by it had corroded them, eating away their substances, until nothing but a fragile relic remained of their former strength.
And the fate of this refuge, of which the laboratory was a small part, seemed destined to be the same. Its lower walls, braced by gigantic concrete buttresses, were covered with the slime. The smallest chink and cranny were being spread by invading pseudopods of this fiendish protoplasm. Slowly the structure was being weakened, the very ground beneath its foundations being softened by seeping acids.
Reinforcing metal was crumbling away. Strained by sagging foundations, the walls seemed inevitably doomed to fall. If they did, the slime would ooze swiftly into the refuge, and though its inhabitants might not perish violently, the machines which made their continued existence possible would soon afterward be acid-eaten and useless, and their masters would die of starvation.
Many men, clad in grotesque, bulging attire, were out there beyond the walls, battling the slime with small flame throwers and seeking to make repairs of the damage done; but their fight against the brainless, viscous flood which knew no fear, was like trying to dam a river with one’s bare hands.
In the sky several planes moved back and forth steadily, spraying thin clouds of poison, which might have been more effective in protecting the refuge, except for the frugality with which the chemical was used. Evidently the supply was low and tottering resources could not even meet the demands of necessity.
The speaker continued with his odd jargon, rasping to ears accustomed to the soft language and more highly developed vocal organs of Wan. Raah and Treb kept their gazes riveted on the television screen.
For many minutes there was no one in the laboratory chamber but the gray scientist. Then a door opened, and the click of footsteps announced the arrival of another person. Presently she was beside the old man.
Sight of her, to Raah, was almost as great a surprise as the first words which had issued from the radio. Never before had he seen an Earthgirl; so her pert, blond presence worked a subtle and startling magic, such as few of his kind have ever quite felt, on the young Earthman.
She spoke, and he who was accustomed to the beauties of Wan’s speech, still thought her voice as beautiful as her face and figure. Her words were controlled and poised, but in her amber eyes there was a grief that could not be mistaken.
“Roland has just come back, father,” she said. "The Pittsburgh refuge has fallen. They are trying to bring the survivors in, but there are so few planes left, and so little food. How much longer can we hold out, father?”
John Maynard’s lips trembled with emotion, whose weight Treb and Raah could perceive. They listened to feel the intensity of his reply even though they could not understand his words. But destiny canceled their expectations, and grim facts which directly concerned themselves took the upper hand.
The floor beneath them rattled with a jarring shock. The fiery forces under Ikaah were at last really breaking loose. The first jolt of the quake was followed by twenty seconds of swaying, tooth-cracking vibration. All around them they heard the growl of churning water, fighting the heat of molten lava. The view in the television screen trembled and fluttered. The lights in the submerged space craft winked out, then burned again briefly, before lapsing forever into darkness.
The quartz screen of Earthly visions was now eternally dark, too, and there was no sound in the black box of the radio apparatus. Perhaps strain of the ship’s weakened hull had snapped some power cable. Anyway, marvelous equipment that had remained intact and in working order after long years of disuse, had at last lost its capacity to function.
“They are my people,” Raah shouted above the groan of tortured metal. “They are in danger. I want to go to them, Treb. Why can’t I? Why must it be impossible? Or is it?”
He gazed around the trembling, gloomy compartment with new vision. His attention centered on a great black lever, dimly visible in the glow of his flame mantle. The lever was the most conspicuous of all the controls here.
“Maybe I can go to them!” he shouted. “This monstrous thing came across the emptiness to Wan. Why can’t it return, whence it set out, taking me with it?”
Savage impulse sent him, in one lithe bound, to the housing from which the lever projected. His fingers closed on the massive grip. Without thought of consequences, he jerked it back. In the flooded rocket tubes there must still have been a residual trace of fuel; for from somewhere astern there came the crashing thud of a heavy explosion.
Half dazed, Raah and his companion were both hurled prostrate. There was a moment of conspicuous silence, followed by the gurgle of entering water. A seam had opened somewhere in the rusted, crumpled hull. It had withstood much abuse in the past, but now the limit of its endurance had been reached. Soon the entire ship would be flooded.
Then Treb toppled his way to the Earthman’s side. “We are not yet defeated,” he said. “There is the little craft resting in the groove on the back of its parent. It is intact, and doubtless your mother brought it with her for a purpose. The sphere of the ancients will enable us to lift it out of Ikaah. Who knows that we shall not be able to carry it to a point from which it can be hurled to the world of your parents?”
“Then we shall try!” Raah stated fiercely.
Treb opened the inner valve of the air lock. A moment later he and his companion were out in the seething chaos of Ikaah. There was a sort of illumination now. The murky water looked like a flickering, red-lighted fog. Somewhere, the bottom of the lake had split open, and white-hot lava was oozing up from the depths of the world of Wan. The swirling, battling water could not cool it at once, and so there was light.
With their copper bars, the adventurers contrived to pry the metal straps loose from the little space craft, nestled into the streamlining of the larger ship. The ancient hoisting globe, in the excitement of discovery, they had left carelessly on the lake bed; but they located it now without special trouble.
Raah, staggering in the uncertain currents of the hot flood around him, carried it to the sunken vessel and held it against the curved top of the little craft. Treb manipulated the boss of the globe cautiously, to achieve the desired result. Too much energy must not be used, else this hoisting device of the ancients, influencing all surrounding substance, would try not only to lift the small rocket but the larger one as well, and that would mean—
At last the lesser craft broke free from its mountings. With Raah and Treb on its back, held close to the sphere, it began a swift rise through Ikaah. The water, being a much better conductor of sound than air, now throbbed with ear-splitting vibrations.
Then the rocket, still supported by the globe, was floating upward through the air. About it swarmed and bobbed myriad hosts of Tegati, whose senseless determination seemed to fear nothing—not even the red glow that burned in the depths of Ikaah, or the hot chunks of volcanic material which shot upward like a geyser of flame from one spot in its turbulent surface. Only the reek of poisonous vapor could keep them from approaching too close to the hell of tortured fire and water.
/> Beyond the crumbling, shaking cliffs that surrounded the lake, nature seemed deceptively peaceful by contrast. The dusk had deepened a little, but not much, for the world to which Wan belonged rotated very slowly. The stars were bright and motionless.
In the shadows, it was not easy to see the valley floor buckling and crumbling. But shrill, birdlike screams could be heard above the tumult of Ikaah. They were the screams of fear and death. Treb’s people had been driven out of their lairs by the quake, to meet more horrible ends under the fangs and claws of the Tegati.
V.
The space boat floated perhaps two hundred yards above the lake now. Treb, crouching on its hull, looked about. Pity for his strange, decadent fellows was in his eyes; but he could do nothing for them.
Slowly, pulled by the hoisting sphere, the rocket gained another hundred yards of altitude. Tegati circled and bobbed around it, their thin bubblelike bodies pulsing, their tendrils lashing, their beady eyes, almost hidden in fleshy folds close to their mouths, agleam with brainless malice.
Treb and Raah struck out at the encumbering masses of them with flailing arms, as before; yet, for the moment, the adventurers felt less revulsion for the things, and accepted their attack more stoically. Perhaps the destruction and death going on in the world below had temporarily dulled their emotions.
A tiny breeze was blowing them toward the west. But it was only an atmospheric eddy caused by the heat from Ikaah; and even if it were active over a large area, its speed was so low that it could not carry them far.
Treb knew that the energy supply of the supporting globe was limited. If the power ran down, they would settle into Wan to die with its other inhabitants.
“There is only one way for us to attempt escape, Raah,” said the wizard. “It might be successful, and it might not.”
He moved gingerly over the curved back of the rocket, presently locating a double hatch which operated like the air lock of the larger ship. He crept through it, beckoning Raah to follow. The latter closed the hatch behind him, to keep the Tegati from entering.
The controls of the craft differed in no important respect from those of its parent rocket. Treb, lying prone in the low cylindrical compartment, pulled the throttle lever a trifle. For half a minute there was no result. In fact, there seemed small reason to hope for any result, considering how long this fantastic machine from across space had lain submerged.
But hard, costly alloys had resisted corrosion very well; besides, the fuel tanks of the little ship, unlike those of the ether shell that had brought it here, were full.
And so, when the heat of an electric spark had dried hidden ignition points, normal action came. There was a ponderous, soughing roar accompanied by a powerful forward thrust.
Treb’s small, furry visage registered a grotesque travesty of a grin. He had not known how this terrestrial fabrication was meant to propel itself; he had had only Raah’s experience with the lever aboard the larger ship to prompt him to move this other lever. Yet the effect, as far as he could see, was satisfactory.
The space flier, still supported by the hoisting sphere, and driven now by blasting streamers of flame from the vents at its stern, shot steeply westward through swarms of Tegati, toward the nearer ramparts of Wan. It was pointed in a good direction, and its natural stability kept it on a straight course; hence there was no need to steer.
Its tiny airfoils, no doubt, provided a lift which, had it been guided by a skilled pilot, would have been adequate alone to maintain its flight. But Treb was not a skilled pilot; he was only a daring experimenter who, so far, had been lucky.
Using his judgment as best he could, he kept the rocket’s mechanism active for several minutes. The sensations he experienced were quite as thrilling as any he had ever known; so he did not pull the throttle any farther, though there was plenty of room to do so.
As matters were, the craft soon attained a speed rivaling that of a bullet. Finally, because of the danger of collision with the mountain barrier, and because energy must always be conserved, the wizard shut off the driving blasts. The flier glided on steadily. In the thin air of the altitude that had been attained, there was only a gradual loss of velocity through friction.
Raah, who had gone through this latest piece of adventure without a word of comment, continued to crouch stonily beside a small, round window, absorbed with his own thoughts.
Wan passed beneath, a blurred hole filled with elusive, gloomy shapes, that flickered in the waxing red light from Ikaah. At last the mighty western barrier loomed close ahead. Some seconds later the rocket, its velocity now much reduced, bumped heavily against stone.
Raah clambered through the hatch; Treb went closely after him. They fastened rope about their middles, tethering themselves to ring bolts in the space boat’s flanks. Then they sought footholds in the vibrating walls before them and began to climb, drawing the vehicle upward in their wake.
The buoyancy of the hoisting sphere, strained by a load and an ascent beyond its intended capacities, was beginning to wane; and so, if the energy of the mechanism was to hold out for coming work, it must be supplemented.
Upward the two went, risking the danger of great chunks of rock, which, dislodged by the quake, frequently came tumbling down from above. In actual distance it was not far to the top of the inner barrier from the place where the rocket had struck; but the going was almost vertical all of the way.
Hours passed, and weariness gradually took its toll. The inner barrier was scaled, but the end of effort had by no means been reached. The country still rose, and though the ascent was less steep, the way was continually encumbered by masses of broken stone. Temblors were much less violent here, however, and this was some advantage.
Treb led the way. Still aided by the sphere, they carried the rocket up a deep, winding gorge in which once, during this planet’s warm youth, a mountain torrent must have cascaded. There was no light here except the amber glow of their flame mantles and the cold starlight.
Fine snow sifted down, whitening rock pinnacles. The silence was deathly. A few Tegati bobbed sluggishly in the gorge, like lost spirits.
The air was so thin now that it was very difficult to converse, except with hands in contact. The sound waves could travel along the channel of flesh and bone thus established, enabling the two from Wan to understand each other’s speech.
While they were taking a brief rest from their exertions, Raah clasped hands with his tiny friend. “You do not know that we shall find what you are looking for, Treb,” he stated quietly. “You only hope. Yet you do not wish to tell me that this is true.”
“Your comprehension is complete, child of the unknown,” Treb replied. "The land of the ancients is very big, and I have covered but a small part of it. I have never been in this place before.”
They continued with their quest. More torturing hours dragged by. The minds of Earthman and Wanite became hazed with weakness. Treb staggered noticeably, his eyes glassy behind his flame mantle. Yet they could spare themselves only occasional moments of rest. The energy supply of their protecting auras, vitally necessary here in the cold, rarefied atmosphere, was not beyond exhaustion, and so they must make their time count.
And at last their search was rewarded. They arrived at an open space between towering crags. Several tunnel mouths were visible in the starlight. The surface on which they stood was of smooth metal. Grooved tracks marked it in crisscross pattern, and curious vehicles stood motionless and deserted in the tracks. Treb had used such vehicles before, during the explorations of his youth.
“We go now to the metropolis?” Raah demanded anxiously.
“Perhaps, if to do so lies in the path of the future,” the wizard replied.
He hobbled weakly about this ancient transport station, studying the odd symbols stamped at track junctures and above tunnel openings, seeking out among them the odd, irregular trapezoids which were the hieroglyphics for the chief city of the ancients. Finally he selected a car designed to carry freight.
It was fitted with a curious, cradlelike rack.
Using the sphere, Raah and he hoisted the rocket ship into the vehicle. Then they entered the Earth-made shell, sealing themselves within. There were no controls to adjust, for the operation of the car was automatic; or maybe there was some delicate guiding apparatus which could respond to the telepathic waves of a living will.
In a moment the vehicle was moving toward a tunnel mouth. The vibration of its progress became almost impossible to detect as it tore on at mounting velocity through heavy darkness. It was looping back toward the east, through the successive ramparts of Wan which rose to ever greater and greater heights, mounting toward a region as airless, nearly, as space itself.
The exhausted bodies of the wizard and his companion cried out for sleep; but they felt thirst, too, and hunger. Since they had been forced to act on impulse, they had made no preparation to meet either.
A tentative exploration of the rocket’s interior revealed only a small flash of water and a box of strange wafers of concentrated nourishment, which neither of the two primitives could recognize as food. There were several flasks of oxygen, however; and Treb’s chemical knowledge was sufficient to recognize the gas and to understand its importance.
The adventurers moved switches on their metal caps, dissolving their auras momentarily while they wet their lips with moisture from the flask. Then they lay down to sleep, with their flame mantles active. Treb was suspicious of using the Earthly oxygen, thinking it best to conserve it.
VI.
WHEN Raah awoke, the ancient vehicle was shooting along its grooved track, under bright stars. It was clear of the tunnel. Shadowy rocks and mountain crags fled past. After several more minutes of progress the car slanted down into a deep pit. It passed through a circular gateway in a vast wall of black stone. Looming all around now were the spires and domes of a slumbering antiquity.
Godson of Almarlu: A Collection of Science Fiction Novellas Page 17