“She was with Keogh all the time,” he, muttered. “She was working for him. When I ran into her in his hideout, she sized up the situation and played me for a sucker, trying to find out what I wanted with Keogh. I wonder—”
The sudden thought struck him: When he had left her at her hotel, had she promptly phoned Keogh, telling him where Harden could probably be found? Had Keogh, acting on her information, planted thugs to wait for him? Was that the explanation of the shot from the alley?
Keogh hadn’t been just lucky then. He had known where Harden would likely be.
“I could wring her neck!” Harden said.
“Whose neck?” Ambrose queried.
“The girl who suggested we be put here.”
“You’ll have to take your turn on that,” Ambrose said.
They tramped on.
* * * *
The tunnels twisted and turned. Where the ancient river had dug deep, the tunnels dipped. At other places they went up. Once they came to a place where a straight drop lay before them. Harden tossed a pebble into the darkness. No sound of it striking bottom ever came back.
“That hole goes down to the bottom of the planet,” he said.
They turned back, retracing their steps, chose another tunnel at random.
The candle was burning shorter and shorter. Hot grease was running over Harden’s hand. “An hour more,” he estimated mentally.
One more hour and they would be without light. Before they had been dropped here, they had been carefully searched. Weapons, matches, flashes, had been taken from them.
The hour passed. All that remained of the candle was a tiny bit of the wick. It gave off a small smoky flame.
“When it’s gone, we’ll feel our way,” Harden said grimly. “There is a way out of this place and we’ll find it, even if we have to feel for it.”
Ahead of them the tunnel opened out into a round chamber.
“Maybe we’ve finally found the way out!” Harden said.
He stepped into the chamber, stopped. A sudden electric thrill shot through him.
“Footprints in the dust!” he whispered. “We’ve reached a part of the cave where the Martians have been. They know their way out. All we will have to do is follow them.”
Red Ambrose eagerly ran forward and examined the footprints. When he looked up all hope had gone from his face.
“Martian footprints, hell!” he blurted out. “These are our own footprints. This is the chamber where we started. We’ve gone in a circle and are right back where we started from!”
The maze had brought them back to the same chamber where they had been dropped.
The flame of the candle burned Harden’s hand and he did not feel it. Back where they had started from! There was the tunnel they had taken, the skeleton he had tripped over. There was no mistaking the chamber. It was the same place from which they had started.
Not quite the same. Something was, different. For a second Harden could not determine that difference. Something was charged. He could not tell what.
Then he saw what it was.
A scarf, a piece of silk, was lying on the dusty floor. He picked it up.
The four ends had been tied together to form a tiny parachute. Attached to the parachute was an instrument that looked like a compass.
“What the heck is this?” Harden whispered.
He turned the little instrument over in his hands. It wasn’t a compass, yet it looked something like one. It was made of gold. Inside the top, behind a bit of glass, a tiny needle danced. He turned it in his hands. No matter how he turned it, the needle came back to point in the same direction.
“Let me see that thing,” Red Ambrose demanded. “By the Lord Harry, it’s—”
For the first time since they had been dropped in the maze, there was hope in the voice of the engineer. A man dying of thirst in the desert, coming suddenly and unexpectedly upon a spring of cool sparkling water, might cry out as Red Ambrose cried out, and for the same reason.
“What do you mean?” Harden asked.
In a trembling voice, the engineer explained what he meant.
CHAPTER VII
In the Temple of the Lost God
Keogh entered the chamber where the statue of the Little Lost God stood in its niche.
“Lights,” he said.
The fluorescents began to glow, then leaped to full illumination. Keogh had had this lighting system installed here. He needed light to sort the loot the gangs of Willies brought to his place.
Loot was piled here now. For centuries, grateful Martians had brought gifts to this temple. These gifts the priests had hidden in the vaults below. Now Keogh and his gang were rooting them out of their hiding places.
Vases of delicate china, worth a fortune in the smart antique shops on Earth, tapestries, their colors faded, the cloth dried and rotted, golden ornaments, bracelets, jeweled combs made for the use of some Martian lady of the long ago, jugs of silver, golden plates, tiny figurines of the Little Lost God, made of gold and encrusted with jewels—the loot of centuries was here.
The Spaniards, looting the treasure vaults of the Incas, never made a richer haul than this. There was wealth here to tempt any pirate. And Keogh, though he did not sail under the skull and crossbones, was a pirate. When he saw the pile of loot that had been collected in his absence, he grinned from ear to ear.
“We’re going to clean up,” he said to the person who was following him.
Marion Gray did not answer. She glanced speculatively at the pile of treasure, then looked uneasily around the room.
“You don’t seem very pleased,” Keogh muttered.
This brought a swift smile to her face. “But I am pleased,” she insisted. “I was just thinking—”
“—about those two fools we dropped, into the maze?” Keogh questioned shrewdly.
“Well, yes.”
“Forget about them. They’re done for by now. It’s been two days since we dropped them down that hole and if they haven’t already blundered into some pit and gotten themselves killed, they’ve gone raving mad. To hell with them. They got exactly what they deserved when they tried to butt into my business.”
The girl said nothing. Keogh looked keenly at her, then busied himself with something that interested him even more than she did—the sorting of the loot.
The tapestries he tossed contemptuously aside. “We can’t ship this junk,” he said.
“There are museums back on Earth that would pay a very good price for them,” the girl suggested.
“So what? The damned things fall to pieces if you touch ’em. We can’t fool around with junk for some damned museum. What we want is the gold and the jewels.”
He began sorting. The girl watched him for a few minutes, then laid aside the sub-machine gun she was carrying and began to help.
Keogh’s round fat face beamed with jovial good humor as he put the golden ornaments in small packing cases. Wealth to ransom half a planet was here. Wealth was what he wanted. Wealth was what he had come to Mars to seek. He had what he wanted.
“When we return to Earth, we’ll go places and do things, me and you,” he promised.
“Yes,” the girl answered. “But before we leave Mars, I must complete gathering the material for my thesis.”
“Are you still thinkin’ about that thing?” Keogh demanded. “Forget it. What the hell good is a thesis for some stuffy college when you can help me spend this?” He gestured toward the treasure.
“But that was the reason I came here. That was why I entered the land of serenity—to gather material on Martian customs. My school is expecting me to complete the thesis. It will have a great deal of value, to students of Mars.”
Keogh laughed. “What the hell a cute little babe like you wants to monkey around with that educational stuff is beyond me. This college
business is all the bunk anyhow. Me, I never went past the seventh grade and I can’t see where it’s hurt me. I’ve done a lot better than all right.”
* * * *
A file of Martians entered the room. Keogh greeted them joyously. They were bringing more treasure to be sorted.
“This load finishes everything found in the last hiding place,” their leader told Keogh.
“That’s fine,” Keogh answered. “As soon as we get this back to my headquarters, we’ll divide and pay off. After that, I’m shaking the dust of this place off my feet. I know when I’ve got enough. I’m clearing out.”
The Willies squatted on the floor, resting, talking among themselves about what they would do with the money they would receive from this treasure. Suddenly one of them stood up, “Humans!” he said.
Instantly every Martian eye was focused on him.
“What are you talking about?” Keogh demanded.
“I sense humans,” the Martian said. “There are humans near us.”
“Of course there are humans near you,” Keogh answered. “Miss Gray and I both are human.”
“I am not referring to you. There are other humans near by.”
“Nonsense!” Keogh laughed.
But the Martian was not satisfied. He went snooping around the chamber, poking in corners, looking, feeling for something he thought he sensed. Only one place he avoided—the statue of the Little Lost God. Like all Martians, he was intensely superstitious. Evil might lurk in the statue. The Little Lost God might return here and blast these blasphemers of his sacred places. The other Martians watched the one who thought he sensed something.
A feeling of uneasiness seemed to run through them. One by one they stopped their talking, their hushed voices dropping away into silence. Their eyes followed their comrade who searched through the temple chamber. Marion Gray glanced up at them, then went on about her work. Keogh paid no attention. At their best, he regarded the Martians as dopey fools. At their superstitious worst, he thought they were little better than savages.
Then—it happened.
From everywhere and from nowhere, from the floor, from the ceiling, from the four walls of the temple chamber, especially from the niche where the statue of the Little Lost God stood, there came a burst of wild, mad laughter. If all the demons in hell laughed at the same time, they would make a sound like this. It roared through the temple.
The Martians leaped wildly to their feet.
“The Little Lost God!” one whispered.
“—is laughing,” a second added.
* * * *
The sound struck fear to their hearts. They had dared to enter a place sacred to a god, to disturb the treasures that belonged to a god, and the god was laughing at them.
The laughter died. A voice came. It was a raging voice, hot with anger; and it spoke in tones of thunder. It spoke the language of Mars as only a native of the Red Planet could speak it.
“Woe unto you!” the voice said. “You have trespassed within my sacred places; you have looted my temple of its treasure. Now the hour of my vengeance is come. Woe unto you!”
The voice was a roaring torrent of sound.
“I will strike you with my thunder. I will blast you with my lightning,” the voice roared. “Wherever you go, I will follow you. My vengeance will overtake you, no matter how far or how fast you run.”
Terror gouged grooves in the superstitious minds of the Martians. They knew in their hearts that they had done wrong in entering this place. They had been afraid here, and it had taken the combination of Keogh’s forceful persuasion and the lure of loot to get them into this vast system of caverns.
“It is the Little Lost God!” one whispered.
“He will destroy us.”
“Run!”
“Halt!” This was Keogh speaking now. Keogh might be many things but he was not superstitious. He sensed a trick. “You damned fools!” he raged at the Martians. “Don’t pay any attention to that voice. Somebody is fooling you. Here, I’ll show you it’s a trick, that somebody is hiding behind that statue.”
He ran across the temple, leaped up to the alcove where the statue rested. Keogh was convinced somebody was hiding behind that statue. He did not know who it might be, but the purpose of the voice was obvious: to scare hell out of his Martians.
The Martians saw him disappear behind the statue. A second later they saw him appear on the other side. There was a blank, bewildered look on his face. He had expected to find someone hiding here. He had gone all around the statue and had found no one. Except for the statue, the alcove was completely barren, without furnishings of any kind. Other than behind the statue there was absolutely no place for anyone to hide.
There wasn’t anyone behind the statue. This fact bewildered Keogh. His bewilderment showed on his face.
“Hah hah hah hah,” the laughter rang through the temple. “Hah!” it abruptly ended.
Keogh was standing behind the statue. He was looking up at it, trying to understand what the hell was happening. The Martians below were watching him. They didn’t know whether to run or to stay.
Keogh couldn’t see what happened until after it happened. The Willies could see it. The sight drove hot irons of terror through their minds.
A great hand reached out from behind Keogh and grabbed him by the shoulder.
“Hah. Got you!” the statue roared.
The Martians saw the hand grab Keogh. That was all they needed to see. Keogh had defied the god and the god had grabbed him. They were scared to death already. A split second after the hand grabbed Keogh there wasn’t a Martian left in the temple. If devils had been following them, they could not have run faster.
An ordinary attacker, they would have fought to the death, if necessary. But a god who laughed at them, and grabbed their leader—this, they could not fight. They ran like drunken fools pursued by demons.
Keogh must have suffered an awful shock when he felt that hand grab his shoulder. The soul-wrenching agony of that moment must have been terrific. Keogh was neither a coward nor a fool. But he had been behind that statue and he knew no one was there. Then a hand that could only have come from nowhere grabbed him. Even his shock-proof brain was not proof against this. He screamed, jerked free, leaped down from the raised alcove where the statue stood.
Panic struck him. Completely forgotten were the two needle guns in his pockets. In that mad moment, with wild, panicky fear raging through his brain, Keogh could think of only one thing—to run.
He ran. The Martians had gone in one direction. Keogh did not follow them. He dived into the nearest tunnel.
Even as he started to run, he knew he was being followed. Before he was in the tunnel, he heard the footsteps start. Hot and furiously they were coming after him. For a short distance, the lights from the temple illumined the tunnel. Before he was out of the glow cast by the lights, Keogh recovered enough from his panic to look back.
In the depth of his mind was the fear that he was somehow being followed by an angry god. What he saw frightened him even more than a god would have done.
Red Ambrose, great bushy beard thrust forward, was right behind him. Running beside Red Ambrose, head thrust forward, straining every muscle to overtake him, was Bruce Harden.
Two ghosts out of hell!
Unlike ghosts, they had knives, sharp pointed, keen edged, long bladed knives, the terrible fighting knives of Mars, razor edged and deadly. Keogh saw the knives. He knew what the blades would do to him. He saw the fierce, resolute anger on the faces of the men who followed him. He knew he had wronged these men. From the look on their faces, he knew what they would do to him if they caught him.
He screamed, tried to run faster. The floor seemed to open up-under him. He plunged down, down, down. His scream ended in a sudden thud. Then there was silence.
* * * *
Br
uce Harden and Red Ambrose stood beside the round hole in the tunnel. They had barely managed to stop in time to keep from following Keogh. His scream had come back to them, and the thud that ended it.
“Well,” Red Ambrose, panted, “the dirty dog! He finally got exactly what was coming to him. He fell into the same hole that he had us lowered down, the hole that leads to the maze. And did he squash when he hit bottom!”
Like Lot’s wife, Keogh had looked behind him and had run headlong into the hole that led to the maze of the temple of the Little Lost God. To the bottom of that hole was a long drop. Keogh had splashed to his death at the bottom of the hole.
“Well, that’s that,” Red Ambrose panted. “For a minute, when he came charging up into the alcove, I thought he had us spotted. After all, he might have known about the hidden door behind the statue, and the trick voice amplification system the old priests used to scare hell out of their followers. He might have known about that.”
“He might,” Harden admitted. “But he didn’t. But darn you! Why did you open that door and grab him? If you had missed, we’d have been left in a hell of a spot.”
“I just couldn’t help it,” the engineer admitted. “When I looked through the peephole and saw how close he was and when I remembered all the suffering he had caused me, I wanted to cut his throat then and there. Which reminds me. There is another matter that needs our attention.”
“I know,” Harden said. “I’m going to attend to it right now.”
* * * *
She was still waiting in the temple.
Backed against the wall, submachine gun held ready, she was waiting for them. She had seen everything that had happened. Some of it she had understood. There was much she hadn’t. The gun covered them as they entered.
Harden ignored the weapon. He walked straight up to her, took something from his pocket.
“Is this yours?” he asked.
It was a bit of gayly-colored silk, a scarf, such as a woman might wear to hold her hair in place. She looked at it.
“I’m so glad you found it,” she said. “I’m so glad. I’m so glad. I was afraid.”
The Space Opera Novella Page 17