by Andre Norton
We abruptly came to a sharp turn in the path, the first we had encountered. Cautiously rounding the bend, we found ourselves on the edge of nowhere....
Chapter Seven
The Thing from the Gulf
The path ended abruptly on the lip of an immeasurable gulf. From its depths came a faint sighing murmur, a distant hum as if some form of life crawled and had its being far beneath us.
“The end,” said Zacat. “Our choice was the wrong one.”
“I wonder,” I mused. Something suspended out in the gulf had caught my eye. Two long chains, of the same substance as that which walled the Ways, hung taut and steady as if they supported some unseen weight. I unhooked my ray rod and held it before me so that the pencil of light from the still burning charge could pick out what might hang between the chains.
“Ah — “ Zacat purred like a giant Ana, for the ray revealed a bridge of some light-resisting substance, a bridge that ran on out into the curtain of darkness.
Moving the ray I traced the outlines of the bridge to see where it touched on our side of the gulf. It did not touch. A good three feet away it ended in a mass of broken splinters. Whether the break was new or centuries old we had no way of telling, but it might prove an effective barrier.
I measured the length of the tunnel behind us. A man, if he were dexterous and had a good head for heights, might cross the gap with a running leap — if On were good to him. But, let the bridge be with smooth surface, let it display the curved ridge which had proved a hindrance to us from the first, and the gulf yawned below.
Zacat was as quick as I to see our only chance.
“One must stay here,” he said, “and hold his ray upon the end of that death trap while the other tries for it. Then, if by the Favor of On he makes it, he must hold his torch in position until the other joins him. Simple but deadly.” He laughed.
His solution was the only one. Tightening my belt and lashing my provision bag firmly to my shoulders, I made ready. Then, before he could protest, I thrust my ray rod into his hand and turned back down the corridor. With a leaping run I passed Zacat, who was crouched to one side with rod firm, to light up my landing place.
Then I was out over the depths, my heart pounding with a sickening beat in my ears. My feet touched the glassy surface of the bridge — and slipped. With a scrambling lunge, I threw myself forward, my straining fingers closing upon that middle ridge. And the curve, which had seemed our greatest hazard, saved me. I clutched it grimly, laying facedown on that faint shadowy surface until my wildly pumping heart quieted. Then, with the aid of one of the giant supporting chains, I was able to regain my feet.
From my provision pouch I drew two coils of the thin tough hide rope with which Thran had had the wit to provide us. With one I lashed myself to the chain, the other I weighted with a tin of the supplies and tossed it across the void to Zacat. He tied my ray rod to it and I pulled it back.
While it was swinging through space to me I endured perhaps the weirdest experience that any man upon my world had ever imagined. For when the ray no longer beat upon the bridge it disappeared from sight and I seemed to be standing on thin air out over empty space, although I could feel the hard pavement beneath my feet.
In a moment the torch was in my hand. Again the splintered end of the bridge appeared out of nothingness.
Zacat made his preparations and disappeared back along the way we had come. Then he came hurtling out of the mouth of the corridor toward me. Perhaps he had exerted some force I had lacked for he landed well in and I was able to draw him to his feet in safety.
“A demon’s nest if there ever existed one,” he puffed when he again stood upright. “And I do not care to think of a return journey. Nay, let us light both torches. I, for one, have no desire to tread upon empty air, even if my feet say otherwise.”
I unfastened myself from my chain anchorage and we set out on that incredible journey over the abyss. Master builders and engineers the Older Ones must have been, but how alien their minds to those of the human race. I marveled at the courage of that Kem-mec who penetrated these Ways alone, protected only by the feeble equipment of his time. Perhaps that break in the bridge explained why he had not returned from his last venture.
“That stench is growing stronger,” Zacat broke in upon my thoughts.
He raised his torch and flashed it on far ahead. Just within the circle of light something moved. Zacat stopped short.
“This is indeed a well-cursed place. Something awaits us there, it seems. I never thought I would come to believe in night demons. Yet that thing, or shadow, appeared in my light. Do you realize what that means?”
I did only too well. That something was invisible in ordinary light, as invisible as the bridge when not under infrared rays. And it was coming toward us.
“I say remain here,” Zacat continued when he saw that I had caught the significance of his words. “It is better to allow the unknown to reveal its strength first so that you can smell out its weakness. And speaking of smells —”
The odor of corruption and obscene decay was heavy on the dead air and growing stronger with every passing moment. And now it seemed I could catch a faint sound, a sullen scraping.
Again Zacat raised his torch and shot its ray before us. A sizable something lumbered backward out of the beam.
“Well, whatever it is, it has no liking for this light,” observed my companion with satisfaction. “That is a weakness we can take advantage of. Charge your other rod and we will force it back.”
With four rods beaming we strode forward. And always that which disputed our passage gave way before us. We never saw more of it than a dark bulk moving clumsily but swiftly out of the edge of our rays.
The end came soon enough. That which fled from us regained its courage, or perhaps solved the secret of our lights, for the next time we advanced it did not move, but squatted there, awaiting us.
I have seen the nightmare reptiles of the underground Lapidian swamps and the flying horrors of the Holian salt plains, but what faced us on the invisible bridge in the Ways was far more loathsome to human sight than those. In the first place it was all but impossible to see, existing only as a faint cloudy outline except in the light of our rods. It possessed no concrete shape, for its body structure seemed oddly fluid as if it could change its appearance at will.
But the most terrifying thing about it were the eyes which burned like dull purple lamps in the rolls of its pudgy gray flesh. It seemed to have no limbs, only massive chunks of fat tipped with suction pads with which it drew its fiend- conceived body along.
“By the foul night birds of Dept,” swore Zacat, “there crawls that which would make a man disbelieve his own eyes. If such was what Kem-mec feared —”
Exhibiting none of the speed with which it had previously eluded us, it began to crawl forward, its pads making that thin scraping sound which I had noted. But the eyes held us fast in a web of horrified fascination.
The thing before us had a thinking brain. Far removed from ours perhaps, but one which was even greater in the powers it possessed. There was intelligence of a high order lighting those strange eyes.
As yet the crawler was as puzzlad by us as we were by it. I could feel the wave of curiosity which exuded. It was not, I felt, evil as we know evil. For as I faced those burning eyes I was granted a glimpse of a terrifyingly alien race and its incredible civilization. A race far removed from our own standards of morality. So, though I felt nausea and a certain horror, I did not feel fear.
While it was still some distance from us it drew itself together and reared up, giving the impression of one pausing to sit and think out a bewildering problem. Briefly it eyed us and then, turning its round, worm-like head, looked down into the gulf.
From far below came a thin wailing cry. Then up out of the darkness whirled a streak of shining silver, soaring on wide pinions. Gracefully it wheeled and fluttered about the bridge and at last closed its wings and came to stand beside the formless mo
nstrosity.
It was human in form; that is, it possessed a shapely body and limbs which corresponded to our arms and legs. But all four limbs ended in suction pads like those of the crawler. Its head was round and seemed to have no features except large purple eyes. A fringed membrane served it for hair. This latter slowly waved erect as it faced us, until the skin stood out about the round head like a nebula of light.
A message beat in upon my brain.
“Why do you tread the ancient Ways, human?”
I knew something of thought transference as practiced by the Learned Ones so now I carefully thought out my answer instead of speaking it aloud.
“I trail an enemy of my own world.”
The silver one turned to the crawler and I received an impression of some question asked and answered between them. Then again came inquiry.
“He has passed this way?”
“So I believe.”
My answer seemed to arouse the creatures. I knew somehow that they were disturbed, shaken out of their usual serenity. But now I had a question of my own to ask.
“You are of those we call the Older Ones?”
I could feel their amused disdain. “Nay, we are but the clay they shaped upon their potter’s wheels. The Older Ones have long since gone. We remain. There is something we must do. Fool, fool! To waste your days hunting down enemies when doom is falling fast upon this puny world!”
“What do you mean?”
“Ask the one who has passed through the forbidden Ways before you. Seek him, human.”
Then all communication between us ceased, for suddenly opalescent lights played along the bulk of the crawler. It reared and plunged. Through its fatty folds appeared great gashes. Its flesh sloughed away in pieces. I trembled under the impact of thought waves beating out untold agony. Its companion rose and hovered above it for an instant, then turned and darted away.
Again the crawler reared and, seemingly blinded, wallowed toward the edge of the bridge. For a moment it tottered there and then plunged over and was gone. We stood alone.
Zacat shook himself as one who would throw off an evil dream.
“What was that all about?” he demanded.
“The creeping thing met death as these underworlders know it, but not a natural one,” I replied. “The other probably went to search out the cause.”
“Let us leave this place.” Zacat shuddered as he looked down into the void which had swallowed up the dying crawler.
We set out again on that slippery track and now we put aside caution, for we wanted to feel the firmness of solid ground under us again. The choke in my throat and sharp pangs in my middle urged me to seek nourishment but Zacat would not pause, saying that it would be best to reach the end of the bridge before we halted again. We saw no more of the winged figure nor did we come upon another crawler and I might almost have come to believe that we had been the prey of our own imaginations had it not been for later happenings.
In time we came to the end of that eerie bridge and this time stepped with ease from invisibility to solid surface. But Zacat stumbled, pitching forward to his knees. When he scrambled up again, he held a slender metal cone, the distributor of a destructive ray.
“I think but for the crawler we would have felt the breath of this.” He fingered it reflectively. “That death was meant for us. The Master of Koom has ceased to regard us as amusing.”
There was a whir and flutter in the air above our heads. Supported on wide-stretched wings hung the silver shape from the gulf. It lingered there for a second and then was gone again, but in that moment I had endured the chill of a cold and deadly hatred, directed not toward me but against the one who had dropped that telltale cone.
Zacat looked at me with no small satisfaction. “It seems that two hunters have become three. And that thing from the gulf is not a pleasant enemy. Kepta has stirred up the depths of Hell itself now. But may On grant that we reach him first!”
Heartily echoing that wish I stepped into the curved track. Having confirmed, by the death of the crawler, that we were on the right path, I felt at liberty to snap off the rays from our rods, so conserving that portion of the charge yet remaining.
Our journey for long hours was merely a repetition of that we had made on the other side of the broken bridge. The trail ran straight on between blank walls. There was naught to see or hear. Three times we rested and ate, then went on again. I wondered if Thran, true to our bargain, was following us and what he would make of the way across the gulf.
I had lost all track of time in that sunless, lightless burrow, but it must have been several days after last meeting the silver thing that we came abruptly into a region where the walls gave off a soft phosphorescent glow. This increased as we advanced until at last we were able to discard our masks altogether.
The corridor we were following ended at the foot of a ramp and without hesitation we began the ascent. At the top a heavy door of some substance foreign to that which lined the Way stood closed.
We threw our weight against it and, after a space of straining effort upon our part, it began to give. Having edged it open until the crack was large enough for us to squeeze through, we drew our rods and entered.
The doorless corridor in which we stood was wholly modern and of our own world; the alien atmosphere of the Ways was gone. Stealthily we slipped along, our scale-clad feet making, in spite of all our efforts, faint whispering sounds on the floor.
At the end of the corridor we were confronted by another door. Here again we were forced to exert our full strength to move its massive bulk.
I could not still the cry of utter amazement which came to my lips as we huddled inside that second door. A gigantic laboratory lay before us. My untrained mind could not grasp the meaning of one thousandth of the monstrous appliances which were gathered there. We stood in the secret workroom of Kepta where even the Learned Ones had never penetrated.
Zacat, refusing to be impressed by what he did not understand, advanced along a lower runway in this collection of super-scientific apparatus. But a moment later his confidence oozed from him with a single stifled exclamation. And when I joined him I saw a row of crystal-lidded boxes lining that narrow passage. Even now I will not allow myself to dwell on what those boxes contained. It will suffice to say that the brain responsible for the contents must have been utterly, inhumanly mad.
With eyes averted from that gruesome sight, we ran down the passage, our caution gone from us. If I had not hated Kepta before to the innermost core of me, I would have loathed him after that single glimpse of the results of his beastly experiments.
Again we came to a ramp winding upward. Eager to be gone from that place of mad horrors, we ascended. The hall at its head was a short one, a mere anteroom for some chamber behind a masking curtain. The murmur of voices stopped me as I reached to brush aside the fabric.
“Thus it lies, my dear Thrala. Is it not clear?” Kepta’s suave voice came through to us.
But the answer was muffled as if the speaker gazed upon some terrifying sight “It is clear.”
“Then you will agree with me that our hope lies—”
The words slurred into an indistinguishable mumble was if Kepta had moved away from us. I waited no longer. Reaching out, I tore away the curtain.
Chapter Eight
World Doom
“Garan!” Thrala’s eyes, wide with astonishment, held mine.
Kepta whirled, a snarl distorting his hps.Sept! I thought you —
“Dead, Kepta? Not yet — your ray killed another.”
“Thran!” Again Thrala cried out
“No. A thing out of the gulf. Its companion has smelled out your guilt. I would keep far from the Ways, Kepta. That is, if you live to cross the threshold of this chamber. What shall it be for us? Steel against steel, or naked strength? This is the reckoning.”
He laughed in my face, his momentary disturbance gone.
“Do you think I would stoop to exchange blows with such as you,
soldier? Here I am master, as you shall speedily learn.”
He stepped back toward the far wall. I did not need Thrala’s cry to warn me. I leaped, but I was too late. Under his hand the wall seemed to melt and he was gone. I struck a solid surface to be thrown back, bruised, to the pavement
“He’s as slippery as a saurian of the depths,” observed Zacat with heat.
Thoroughly enraged at my own clumsiness I would have tried to beat in that wall had not the uselessness of such an endeavor been apparent from the first Instead I set upon a search for some door which would let me through to track down the Master of Koom.
“No!” Thrala pulled me back.There remains no time for private feuds or vengeance. Look!”
She pointed down at a plate set in the pavement. On a dull black surface glimmered and glowed tiny pin pricks of light.
“What is it?” I asked stupidly.
“Krand’s doom has come upon her and all of us!” Never have I heard such a tone of stark finality as that which ravaged Thrala’s voice.
“Do you not understand? This is a map of the heavens, the stars, the myriad worlds that share with us this universe. And now one of those far distant worlds has been thrown out of its accustomed path, hurled into space, a missile aimed by the gods at Krand! For untold centuries it has been traveling toward us and there was a time when we might have escaped — She hesitated and her finger plucked at her torn gown.
“Might have escaped, do you understand? Stood free and watched destruction pass us by! But Kepta lost us that chance, our one chance. He needed power for his loathsome experiments so he committed the unpardonable act, the deed which the Learned Ones pledged themselves a hundred thousand years ago never to attempt. He harnessed the power of our sun!
“And because the rhythm of our solar system was so delicately balanced, he ruined us. Inch by inch through the past years our orbit has changed. We Learned Ones knew, knew it from the first, but we could not find the cause. And now that cause lies plain before us — too late!”