Murdach said, “Listen! I think they’re speaking to us—”
“Speaking?”
“With their minds. They’ve developed telepathy. Don’t you feel some sort of message?”
“I do,” Alasa broke in. “They’re curious. They want to know who we are.”
Mason nodded. “I don’t think they’re dangerous.” He opened the port, stepped out into the thin, icy air. A cold wind chilled him. Among the plant-men a little wave of panic came. They shrank back. Mason lifted his hand, palm outward, in the immemorial gesture of peace.
Within his mind a wordless message stirred. “Who are you? You are not of the Deathless Ones?”
At a loss, Mason answered aloud. “We are friends. We seek food—”
Again the strange fear shook the creatures. They drew back further. One stood his ground, blind glistening head turned toward the man, tentacles dangling limply.
“Food? What sort of food?”
They understood Mason’s thoughts, apparently. Conscious that he was on dangerous ground, he said, “Anything you can spare. What you eat—”
“Who are you?”
“We come from the past,” Mason answered at a venture. Would they understand that?
“You are not Deathless Ones?”
“No.” Mason sensed that the Deathless Ones, whoever they were, were enemies of the plant-men. And his reply seemed to reassure the creatures.
They conferred, and again their spokesman stood forward. “We will give you food, what we can spare. We are the Gorichen.” So Mason translated the plant-man’s thought message. There was more confidence in the creature’s mind now, he sensed.
“You must hurry, however. Soon the Wave will come…”
Puzzled, Mason nodded agreeably. “Bring what food you can spare, then.”
“You must come with us. We may not carry food to the surface.”
Mason considered, glanced back at the ship. “How far must I go?”
“Not far.”
“Well, wait a minute.” He went back to the others and explained what had happened. Murdach shook his head.
“I don’t like it.”
“They seem harmless enough. I’m not afraid of ’em. It’s probably the other way around. They’ll be glad to see the last of us. They’re in deadly fear of some creatures they call the Deathless Ones, and they think we’re related to them somehow.”
“Well—” Murdach rubbed his lean jaw. “If you’re not back soon, we’ll come after you.”
With a smile for Alasa, Mason leaped out through the port and approached the Gorichen. “I’m ready,” he told them. “Let’s get started.”
Keeping a safe distance from the man, the plant-creatures led him to the edge of the great earth-crack. A sloping ladder led down into the depths. Several of them began to descend it swiftly, and more gingerly Mason followed.
It grew darker. A hundred feet down the ravine narrowed to a silt-covered floor, into which Mason’s feet sank. The Gorichen led him toward a round metal disk, ten feet in diameter, that protruded from the ground. One of them fumbled at the disk with its pinkish tentacles. Silently metal slid aside, revealing a dim-lit hollow beneath.
Another ladder led down. At its bottom Mason found himself in a sloping corridor cut out of rock, leading into hazy distances. The plant-men urged him along this.
“How far?” Mason asked again.
“Soon, now.”
But it was fully half an hour later when the Gorichen halted before a gleaming door at the end of the passage. It opened, and beyond it Mason saw a vast and shining cavern, hot with moist warmth. A musky, strong odor blew dankly against his face.
“We feed here,” one of the Gorichen told Mason. “See?”
At a little distance was ranged a long row of flat, shallow basins let into the stone floor. Intense heat blazed down upon them. With the basins was a black-scummed, oily liquid. As Mason watched a plant-man marched forward on his tentacles and lowered himself into a tank. He remained there unmoving.
“The rays from the great lamps overhead give us strength,” a Gorichen told Mason with its thought-message. “Within the pits we have food, created artificially and dug out of our mines, dissolved in a liquor that aids the transmutation to chlorophyl.”
The arrangement was logical enough, Mason realized. Plant-food, absorbed through the roots—radiation from the huge lights in the cavern’s roof, a substitute for solar radiation, waning with the inevitable cooling of the Solar System. But such food was useless for human beings.
Mason said so. One of the Gorichen touched his arm with a soft tentacle-tip.
“It does not matter.”
“What?” A chill premonition shook Mason. He glanced around swiftly at the blankly shining heads of the plant-men. “What d’you mean?”
“You are to be used in our experiments, that is all.”
“Like hell!” Mason snarled—and struck. His fist crashed out, pulping the body of one of the Gorichen. Its flesh was horribly soft and fungoid. Moist, soft stuff clung to Mason’s hand. The Gorichen, a gaping hole in its torso, halted and then came forward again, apparently uninjured. And the others pressed toward the man, tentacles waving.
The battle was brief. Mason’s muscles were toughened with fury and desperation, but he had no chance against overwhelming numbers. So at last he went down; was bound tightly, still struggling, with flexible metal ropes. Then the plant-men retreated, and Mason saw something that made his throat dry with horror.
A group of Gorichen were carrying a figure into the cavern—the body of Alasa, bound and silent, bronze hair hanging in disheveled ringlets about her pale face. She saw Mason.
“Kent! They attacked us after you left! They killed Erech, I think. They—”
“Are you all right?” Mason asked, trying to regain his breath. “You’re not hurt?”
She shook her head. “No. But Murdach escaped in the ship.”
The Gorichen waited silently.
“Murdach escaped?” A little flare of hope mounted within Mason. Alasa seemed to read his thought.
“He can’t help. We’re under the ocean. These demons took me underground just as a great wave came out of the east…”
Now Mason realized why the plant-men dwelt underground. The Moon’s nearness caused giant tides that swept resistlessly over the surface of the planet. Now they were far beneath the sea—and would be, until the tide retreated.
Mason grimaced. He tugged unavailingly at his bonds. One of the Gorichen came forward. His thought-message was clear.
“We bear you no hatred. You say you are not of the Deathless Ones, our enemies. Yet you are very like them. For ages we have tried to find a way of defeating the Deathless Ones, and never yet have we succeeded. They cannot be captured. We cannot experiment on them. But you—if we find how you are vulnerable, we may use that knowledge on the Deathless Ones. Certain things we already know. Steel is useless. So are poisonous gases. But there are certain combinations of rays…”
The creature fell silent. His tentacles gestured, and the two captives were lifted, borne toward a glass block that towered near by. A door was opened in its side; Mason was thrust into its hollow interior. Cursing, he struggled with his bonds as the plant-men retreated with Alasa. Rolling over on his side, he peered through the transparent walls. And, watching, he went cold with horror.
To the Gorichen the two humans were guinea-pigs, valuable only as material for their experiments. They dragged Alasa to an altar-like block of stone. Vainly she fought.
The tentacles of the monsters reached out, deftly removing the girl’s clothing. In a moment she lay utterly nude, chained to the stone block so that she could scarcely move. A Gorichen wheeled a lens into position. From it a pale ray-beam fingered out, enveloping Alasa’s ivory body in lambent moonglow.
She was unconscious, or seemed so. For a second the ray was visible; then it snapped out. Working hurriedly, the plant-men unbound the girl, carried her to Mason’s prison, and thr
ust her within. They remained in little knots outside the glass walls, their blankly glistening heads inclined forward as though they stared attentively at the results of their experiment.
Cursing, Mason struggled to free himself. Useless attempt! The unyielding metal merely chafed and cut his wrists, and presently he stopped to glance at the girl. She was regaining consciousness.
She moaned, lifted a slim hand to brush bronze hair from her face. Slowly she opened her eyes. In them was a blind dreadful staring that made Mason catch his breath, his throat dry.
The girl dragged herself to her hands and knees. Her gaze moved questingly about the prison. She saw Mason.
Silently she crept forward. An angry flush was mounting in her face and bosom, and the glaring eyes grew wider.
“Alasa!” Mason called. “Alasa!”
No answer. The nude girl crawled toward him—and stopped. She arose.
Her breasts rose and fell more swiftly. A harsh cry came from her lips.
Then suddenly she sprang at him.
Mason was caught unawares. He felt soft flesh pressed against his face, fever-hot, caught a glimpse of Alasa’s flashing teeth, bared in a snarl. What madness had the Gorichen’s hellish ray worked?
Mason rolled away just in time as Alasa’s teeth drove at his throat. Finger-nails raked his face. Then Alasa leaped again, eyes blazing.
“God Almighty!” Mason groaned. Would he have to kill Alasa to escape being murdered? He drove the thought from his mind; he knew that he could never harm the girl even if she were insane. Yet, for her own sake, he must subdue her somehow. And he had little chance of doing that, bound as he was.
“Alasa!” he called again.
The girl did not heed. Her body glistening with perspiration, she flung herself on Mason, fingers clawing, teeth seeking his throat. He tried to roll over, but could not.
A sharp pain lanced through his neck. He felt the warm stickiness of blood trickling across his skin.
Agonizingly the girl’s teeth drove deeper…
CHAPTER VIII
The Deathless Ones
Dimly, through a red haze, Mason realized that the girl’s weight no longer bore him down. Two plant-men held her writhing body in their tentacles, dragging her toward the door. A trickle of blood wormed from her lips. In silence she struggled, striving to break free.
The Gorichen pulled her outside. As Mason watched he saw her body suddenly sag limply in unconsciousness. A pang darted through him. Was Alasa—dead?
The same idea had come to the plant-men. Tentacles were waved excitedly. They lowered the girl to the floor, examining her carefully. A movement of Alasa’s arm reassured Mason; the girl tried feebly to get to her feet.
The Gorichen dragged her back to Mason’s prison. They thrust her within it. Again the door was shut.
Alasa ran to the man.
“Kent! What happened?”
“You—” Mason hesitated. In the girl’s eyes he read the knowledge that she remembered nothing of her nightmare attack on him. The madness of the plant-men had passed from her brain. “Nothing much,” he finished. “Can you untie me, Alasa?”
She bent forward, fumbled at the metal ropes. Would the Gorichen permit her to free the man?
At last the task was finished. Mason got to his feet, rubbing his legs to restore circulation. He went quickly to the door, kicked it tentatively.
The plant-men outside seemed to watch undisturbed.
Again Mason kicked the glass, but it did not shatter. He crashed his shoulder against it, but only bruised his arm. The cell was empty, and there was nothing he could use as a weapon.
A cry from Alasa made him turn. She was pointing to a corner of the cell, where walls joined ceiling. Greenish-white, a plume of vapor was entering the prison, coiling ominously in the still air.
Fear gripped Mason. He sprang forward, tried to reach the valve. If he could manage to stuff it closed—but it was too high. Baffled, he retreated to the door and renewed his onslaught on it.
But the substance, tougher than steel, would not yield. Mason paused only when he could scarcely see the door through a thickening cloud of greenish mist. Alasa touched his arm.
“Kent? What is happening?”
“I don’t know,” he said slowly. “They’re experimenting on us. What they expect—well, I just don’t know. Maybe it’ll kill us. If it does, I hope it’s a quick death.”
With a soft little cry Alasa moved close to Mason, and he put protecting arms about her. She buried her face on his shoulder, and for a while they stood there, while the green mists thickened—
There came a time when Mason was completely blinded. Oddly he had no trouble with his breathing. There was a slight exhilaration, due, he thought, to oxygen in the strange gas, but he was not discommoded. Perhaps the vapor—admittedly experimental—would have no effect on human beings.
He dropped to the floor, cradling the girl in his arms. In that blind emerald emptiness they waited, and Mason soothed and calmed Alasa as best he could. In spite of himself his pulses mounted at the nearness of the girl’s warm, satiny body. The weird gas, he knew, was exciting him; yet the madness grew on him. And Alasa, too, felt the intoxicating effect. Her hands crept up, touched Mason’s hair. She drew down his head, guiding his lips in the green blindness till they touched her own. Flame of dark passion blazed up within Mason…
Desperately he fought it down. The girl’s breathing mingled with his own, hoarse and uneven. His fingers touched the silken smoothness of rounded flesh, and the touch was like fire. Suddenly his muscles were weak as water.
“Alasa!” he whispered. “Alasa!”
In a surge of newfound strength he pressed the girl’s form against him, sought her lips. Fantastic visions flashed through his mind. Weird madness of the plant-men’s poisoned gas…
Alasa seemed to slide away, to vanish in a green-lit abyss. She was gone. Mason was alone. The clouds whirled about him, and very faintly he heard a distant throbbing, steadily growing louder. With the portion of his brain that remained sane he knew that this was unreal, a drug-born hallucination, as the deep pounding roared louder in his ears and dark shadows moved slowly down the emerald distances. Clearer the shadows grew, and clearer … Bat-winged horrors that mocked and tittered obscene laughter as they raced down on him … and ever the drumming roar grew deeper, louder, crashing like the tocsin of a demon in his ears…
Faster the green mists swirled. They were a whirlwind of chaotic, blinding brilliance. The devils danced a grotesque saraband, screaming a mocking chant.
It swelled to a frightful crescendo of sound and motion that rocked Mason’s giddy senses. He felt blackness creeping up and overwhelming him.
And it was with gratitude that he sank down into deepest unconsciousness!
Slowly Mason awoke, with a blinding headache and an acrid, unpleasant taste in his mouth. He opened his eyes, stared up at the transparent roof of his prison. He was still imprisoned in the crystal cage, but the green gas had been pumped out. Alasa’s still body lay beside him. Head swimming, Mason tried to revive her. He stripped off his cloak, wrapped it about the girl.
A grating overhead made him look up. The roof of the cage was sliding aside, leaving a gap four feet wide, running the length of the prison. Plant-men were busy with a kind of crane, swinging its burden, an enigmatic metal block, into place so that it could be dropped into the two human’s prison. There came an interruption.
The Gorichen sprang into frenzied activity. Mason could not interpret their thoughts, but he sensed sudden, deadly danger. Frantically the plant-men went racing toward the corridor that led into the upper world. A stray thought-fragment flashed into Mason’s mind.
“The Deathless Ones! They have broken the gateway—”
In five minutes the cavern was deserted. Now, if ever, was a chance to escape. Mason looked up once more. The smooth sides of the cell were unscalable. But above, the gap in the roof hung the metallic block from the crane’s arm, too high to be
reached—unless—
A rope? Mason wore only the loincloth Erech had given him in Al Bekr, and neither that nor the cloak would support his weight. His glance fell on the metal ropes that had bound him, now discarded in a mound on the floor, and Mason knew he had solved the problem. If only they were long enough!
Picking them up, he paused to examine Alasa. Already assured of her safety, it was with relief that he saw the girl’s lashes flutter, and her golden eyes open. She saw Mason.
“Oh, Kent! Help me up!” She clutched his arm, got unsteadily to her feet. “We’re not dead, it seems. I thought we were both slain and in the Pit of Abaddon—”
“Maybe you’re right about the last,” Mason said grimly. He told her what had happened. “If I can loop the rope over that metal block, we can climb out, I think.”
“Can you do it?”
He shook his head doubtfully. “I can try…”
But only after repeated attempts did Mason manage to loop the doubled end of the metal cord over the suspended block. Then a careless move undid his work, and for another ten minutes he tried, a fury of apprehension mounting within him, till at last the anxious work was done. The two ends of the rope hung down within the cell. Mason knotted them together.
“I’ll go first. Then I’ll pull you up—”
The metal cord was slippery, scoring Mason’s skin. He twisted his legs about it, fought his way up, while Alasa held the rope steady from below. And at last he reached the roof of the cell, swung on to it, sweating with exertion.
“Hurry!” he told the girl. Distant sounds of conflict made him fear that the cavern would not be isolated for long.
His muscles, weary with exertion and lack of food, cracked and strained as he hauled Alasa painfully to his side. But it was easier thereafter. They slid down to the floor of the cavern, and swiftly made for the passage that led to freedom.
The Time Trap Page 6