Astounding Science Fiction Stories Vol 1

by Anthology

  "We go to the Temple of the Shaft," Lurain called to Clark. "My father, the lord Kimor, will be there."

  They rode after her toward the huge, black-domed temple that brooded at the center of the city. It loomed massively in front of them, incomparably the largest and most ancient building they had seen in this land. For it was old, the stone paving in front of it worn deep by ages of tramping feet, its slot-windows crumbling at the edges.

  Guards took their horses, and swung open the high bronze doors of the temple. Lurain led the way inside, her slim, boyish figure striding with her sheathed sword rattling on the stone floor. Clark and his men, following her inside, paused for a moment, thunderstruck.

  The interior of the temple was one co lossal room, dim and dusky and vast, its only illumination shafts of sunlight from the slot-like windows. And it was throbbing and quivering to a thunder of bellowing sound that was deafening, an unbroken, tremendous roar of waters.

  The racing river from outside ran right into the temple, through a gap in one wall. The waters rushed with blinding speed across the floor of the vast room, in a deep, wide canal, toward a round, black opening a hundred feet across that yawned at the center of the floor. Into this gaping abyss, the river tumbled with a reverberating thunder.

  Clark and his men moved nearer the pit, stood on the very edge of the abyss. He peered down into an impenetrable darkness that seemed to go down to the bowels of the earth. He could make out that the vertical sides of the pit were of rough rock, in which had been carved the steps of a narrow, spiraling stair. The head of this stair was closed by a barred gate guarded by Black warriors. And the raging cataract of waters, leaping out over the edge of the pit, tumbled down its center in a tremendous waterfall, dropping into the dark.

  "Good God! this must be the way down to the cavern far below—to the Lake of Life!" exclaimed Clark, stupefiedly.

  "Say, I don't hanker to go down there," said Mike Shinn, awed. "It looks to me like the doorway down to purgatory."

  Lurain was coming around the edge of the pit now, bringing with her a half-dozen Dordonan men in black armor.

  "My father, Stannar!" she said.

  Clark turned to confront Kimor, the ruler of Dordona.

  Kimor was sixty years old, at least, a tall, arrow- straight, superbly muscled man with white hair and pointed white beard, and fierce, shaggy white eyebrows over keen, watchful blue eyes.

  "Strangers, you are welcome!" he told Clark. "My daughter has told me how you helped her escape K'Lamm and bring us warning of the attack which Thargo plans for three days hence. We expected no attack for weeks—there is hardly time to prepare.

  "We of Dordona will be grateful for your help in the coming battle." Kimor continued. "Lurain informs me you are from outside the mountains, and bear weapons of great and strange power. You can aid us much, and any reward we can give you will be yours."

  "Why, we ask but one reward," Clark said, looking puzzledly at Lurain. "It is what I told your daughter—that we be allowed to go down that stair in the pit to the Lake of Life, and bring back a flask of its waters. For that reward, we have joined you."

  Kimor's fierce face turned dead-white as he heard. His eyes blazed fire of outraged, fanatical fury, and he ripped out his sword from its sheath. And from the Dordonans behind him came wrathful, raging cries as they too drew their weapons, their faces contorted.

  "You ask that?" thundered Kimor to Clark. "You ask leave from us to commit the supreme sacrilege that no man may commit and live? Your very request is a sacrilege to this Temple of the Shaft! Nobles of Dordona, kill these men for their blasphemy!"

  10. Down the Stair

  Blacky Cain's gun leaped into his hands, and the others followed his example swiftly as the Dordonan warriors leaped forward with upraised swords, wild wrath on their faces.

  "Don't shoot!" Clark yelled tensely.

  For Lurain had sprung in front of the charging nobles and her fanatical father, halting them with an urgent gesture.

  "Wait!" she cried. "These are strangers from outside our land—they do not know that it is blasphemy they speak. They will not ask for such a thing when they understand that it is a sacrilege."

  "So this," Clark grated to the girl, "is how you keep the bargain you made with me!"

  "I do not understand you, stranger," she said coldly, and turned back to Kimor. "You will forgive their ignorance, father?"

  "They should be slain for such blasphemy," said Kimor fiercely. But slowly, reluctantly, he sheathed his sword, and said, "They are forgiven because they are strangers who know not the law. But let them repeat their blasphemy, let them even but glance at the sacred shaft, and it shall mean their deaths."

  "Looks like the girl's double-crossed us," rasped Blacky Cain. "Shall we try to crash our way down into that pit? It looks like suicide to me to go down that damned stair, but we'll do it if you say."

  "Put away your guns," Clark said quickly to the gangster and the others. "There are too many of them here for us, and the whole city would come running. Later on, we may be able to enter the pit."

  Then he turned back to Kimor and Lurain. The girl showed no sign of emotion as she met his bitterly accusing gaze.

  "We withdraw our request, since it is against your law," Clark told the fierce old Dordonan ruler.

  "Well that you do," said Kimor grimly, "for I tell you no man for ages has been permitted to enter the sacred shaft."

  He continued, "You shall be given a dwelling for your use, and food and wine. If you wish to help us against the Reds, your help is welcome. But whether you help or not, you cannot go near this pit. You are forbidden from now on to enter this temple, under pain of death."

  "We understand," Clark said tightly. His gaze again sought Lurain's face, charged with his bitter scorn.

  Two of the black-armored warriors, at Kimor's command, led Clark and his men out of the temple. They conducted them along the crumbling streets, whose occupants watched the strangers curiously.

  Clark's thoughts were bitter. Lurain had tricked him neatly—had had no intention of fulfilling the promise she had made him. They were here in Dordona, but as far from the shining lake as ever.

  The two Dordonan guides left them outside a weathered, one-story building of black stone, with a promise that food and drink would be brought them. The interior of the building, they found when they entered, was one of dark, gloomy rooms, its furniture and floor covered with dust, everything here exuding antiquity.

  "Just as lief bed down in a mausoleum!" grunted Mike Shinn in disgust as he tossed his pack into a corner and sat down.

  "What," Lieutenant Morrow asked Clark keenly, "are we going to do now?"

  "We're going to get into that pit, somehow, by force or stealth," Clark declared. "We'll wait until tonight, steal into the temple, and overpower the guards at the head of the stair. Then we can get down the shaft, and I think they're too superstitious to pursue us."

  "But they'll be waitin' for us when we come back up," reminded Link Wilson. "That is, if we do come back up."

  "It will be up to us then to fight our way through them," Clark said grimly. He added bitterly, "Lurain broke her bargain with us; so our promise to help them in the coming war no longer holds. If we get back up with the flask of water from the lake, we'll get out of Dordona as soon as we can."

  The day passed slowly. Clark Stannard and his men went out into the streets of the crumbling black city for a time. Apparently they sauntered idly, but in reality were mapping a route to the temple, one that they could follow with less chance of being observed. He noticed the Dordonan people now shunned them, looking at them in half-veiled hate. News of their blasphemy had apparently spread in the city.

  Night fell, and Clark watched the moon rise over the ancient city. Then after some hours had passed, he led the others into the dark back rooms of their dwelling, intending to slip out that way. But as he entered the darkness there, he glimpsed a moving figure in the blackness. Instantly he leaped at the other,
grasped him by the throat.

  "It's a spy!" he grated. "If they've found out what we're planning, we're sunk." And he rasped in the language of Dordona to his prisoner, "One shout and you die."

  "Release me—I will not shout," gasped a voice.

  "Lurain!" he exclaimed. "What in the world——"

  He dragged the girl over to one of the windows, where the moonlight illuminated her white, strange face and distended eyes.

  "What are you doing, spying on us?" Clark demanded, his face hardening as he remembered.

  "No, I came to fulfill the promise I made you, to lead you down to the holy lake!" she gasped. Her words poured forth in a torrent as Clark stood in stunned surprize. "Stannar, why did you tell my father Kimor you wished to descend to the lake? That was madness!"

  "But you had promised me that you would see that I got down the shaft," Clark said bewilderedly.

  "You do not understand," Lurain told him. "I made that promise, yes—but what I meant was that I would secretly take you down the shaft; for if my father knew of it he would slay us instantly for the sacrilege—yes, even me, his daughter. I thought you understood that and would be silent about the lake until I could fulfill my promise."

  "Lord,* I've misjudged you, Lurain," Clark told her impulsively. "Come to think of it, it was rather asinine of me to blurt out my whole business without making sure how things stood. But I hadn't had time to think, I guess, in the rush of our escape."

  "And I had to pretend ignorance when you reproached me," she said. "But I have come now, Stannar. I shall fulfill my promise and take you down to the cavern of the Lake of Life. The sin will be on my head, not on my father and people. And my sin will be expiated, for surely the Guardians will slay us down there for our sacrilege."

  She was trembling violently, though her voice was steady. Clark Stannard stared at her, frowning.

  "You believe that?—believe we're both going to die down there, Lurain? And yet you're willing to keep your promise?"

  "Yes," the girl told him. "I gave you my word, and you brought warning to Dordona as you promised. My death matters not,"

  Clark suddenly put his arms around her, and as he held her quivering figure he could feel the pounding of her heart.

  "Lurain, you're not going to die—neither of us will die," he told her reassuringly. "There are no Guardians down there—that is legend only. Even if they were there, I have my weapon."

  She said nothing, but he knew she was convinced of the futility of all human weapons against those mysterious warders. He turned to his four men, who had listened tensely in the dark room.

  "You'll stay here," Clark told them. "I should be back by morning with the waters from the lake, if all goes well."

  "Why don't we go with you?" Blacky demanded.

  But when Lurain understood the question, she shook her head. "No, I promised but to take you, Stannar. Your men would only be destroyed down there as we will be, and their help will be needed here when Thargo comes to attack Dordona."

  "Remember, you're bound by my promise to help these Blacks against Thargo," Clark told his men, "whether or not I return."

  Then Clark brought from his pack the leaden flask he had brought so far, along such a dangerous trail in preparation for this time. He paused then for a moment, before the silent quartet.

  "Good luck, boys, if I don't come back," he said.

  "The same to you, chief, and it's me thinks you're going to need it," muttered Mike Shinn, as they shook hands.

  "We go out the back of this dwelling," whispered Lurain, to Clark. "Follow me—and be very silent."

  He emerged with her into the checkered moonlight and shadow of one of Dordona's silent streets. The girl, he saw now, carried a short, pointed metal bar. She led by deserted alleys of crumbling ruins, not toward the great temple, but toward a ruined, deserted stone building a quarter-mile from the great dome.

  Clark followed her wonderingly into the ruin. She led across a room strewn with debris of crumbling stone, and knelt on the corner of the stone floor. He knelt puzzledly beside her, turning his tiny flashlight beam on the weathered blocks of the floor.

  "Dig out these blocks," whispered Lurain, pointing to the floor. "I will hold the light."

  "But I don't " Clark began, then halted and obeyed. It was evident that Lurain knew what she was about.

  With the metal bar she had brought, he soon dug out four of the big blocks. There was revealed beneath them a dark, burrow-like opening in the earth, the mouth of a horizontal underground passage. Lurain dropped quickly down into this, and Clark followed. Turning his beam, he discovered the passage was shoulder-high, extending away through the solid rock.

  "This passage," Lurain whispered, "was dug secretly many generations ago, by plotters in the city who wished to reach the pit and go down the stairs to the Lake of Life. They were of the rebels of that time who finally left Dordona to found the city K'Lamm. They could not enter the pit from the temple, for the stair-head there is always guarded, as you saw. So they dug this passage, opening into the pit below.

  "Just as they finished their sacrilegious work," she continued, "their plot was detected. They were slain before they could make use of the passage, and it was blocked up and its existence kept secret. But the rulers of Dordona have known of it, and as daughter of the present ruler I knew of it. It is the one way we can enter the pit, for if we tried to enter it in the temple, the guards there would kill us at once."

  Clark's hopes bounded. "Let's get on, then."

  He led the way, flashing his beam ahead. As they advanced in the passage, they heard a dull roar that became louder and louder. Clark knew it was the sound of the cataract falling into the sacred shaft, and his excitement increased. Lurain, pressing on behind him, was shivering.

  They readied the end of the passage. They crouched, petrified by the stupefying view ahead. The opening in which they crouched was twenty feet below the floor of the temple, in the rock side of the stupendous pit. Right below and outside this opening lay the narrow steps of the spiraling stone stair.

  Out there in the pit, not ten yards from them, there gleamed in the faint light from above the falling waters of the thundering cataract, the river from far away that tumbled headlong down into this unguessable abyss. Its roar seemed to shatter their cars, and its flying spray was cold on their white faces.

  Clark gripped his nerves and crawled out onto the stone steps. The steps were not four feet wide, grown with the slimy green moss of ages, drenched and dripping with spray. Looking up, he could just glimpse the moonlit interior of the great temple, could just see the heads of the armored guards on duty at the head of the stair.

  Looking down, he could see nothing—nothing but an unplumbed abyss of darkness into which the waters tumbled, and round whose side dropped the coils of the spiral stair. Clark's nerves shrank, appalled for the moment from the thought of venturing down into that enigmatic gulf, along tli at slippery, ancient way. Then his jaw set in renewed resolution. Below lay what he had come so far to seek.

  "Lurain, we go downward now," he told the girl, raising his voice over the roar. "Would you rather wait here?"

  "No, Stannar—I go with you," she cried. "My promise was to lead you to the lake itself."

  Cautiously, every nerve strung taut, Clark stepped downward, feeling with his foot for the next step. He dared not use the flashlight here, so near the surface. The wet, mossy stone was slippery under his feet, threatening to send him slipping and sliding off the unrailed stair. Sick dizziness swept him as he visualized himself plunging downward, racing those tumbling waters in a nightmare fall.

  Now he and Lurain had followed the spiral stair twice around the falling cataract, were deeper below the surface. They were in almost complete darkness. Spray stung their cheeks, gusty air-currents howled up the great shaft, the thunder of the falling waters beside them was brain-numbing. Still down and down they crept, feeling for each slippery step, groping down through somber, eternal night toward the my
stic Lake of Life and its legended warders.

  * * *

  Contents

  THE LEGION OF LAZARUS

  By Edmond Hamilton

  Being expelled from an air lock into deep space was the legal method of execution. But it was also the only way a man could qualify for--The Legion Of Lazarus

  It isn't the dying itself. It's what comes before. The waiting, alone in a room without windows, trying to think. The opening of the door, the voices of the men who are going with you but not all the way, the walk down the corridor to the airlock room, the faces of the men, closed and impersonal. They do not enjoy this. Neither do they shrink from it. It's their job.

  This is the room. It is small and it has a window. Outside there is no friendly sky, no clouds. There is space, and there is the huge red circle of Mars filling the sky, looking down like an enormous eye upon this tiny moon. But you do not look up. You look out.

  There are men out there. They are quite naked. They sleep upon the barren plain, drowsing in a timeless ocean. Their bodies are white as ivory and their hair is loose across their faces. Some of them seem to smile. They lie, and sleep, and the great red eye looks at them forever as they are borne around it.

  "It isn't so bad," says one of the men who are with you inside this ultimate room. "Fifty years from now, the rest of us will all be old, or dead."

  It is small comfort.

  The one garment you have worn is taken from you and the lock door opens, and the fear that cannot possibly become greater does become greater, and then suddenly that terrible crescendo is past. There is no longer any hope, and you learn that without hope there is little to be afraid of. You want now only to get it over with.

  You step forward into the lock.

  The door behind you shuts. You sense that the one before you is opening, but there is not much time. The burst of air carries you forward. Perhaps you scream, but you are now beyond sound, beyond sight, beyond everything. You do not even feel that it is cold.