The Ghost Riders Affair

by Robert Hart Davis

  The atmosphere cooled in this seemingly endless corridor. It was quieter; there was none of the fevered activity of the tunnels.

  Finally, they reached a bright green door before which stood two green-clad guards.

  The green door slid into the stone wall; the guards stepped back, standing at attention. The dun-clad soldiers ordered Solo and Illya through the door, but did not follow.

  The green door closed behind them and they were alone in a green-hued grotto. They saw that this place, like all other chambers, tunnels, caverns and corridors, was lighted by the endless fluorescent tubing, but the softer hue came from the green walls.

  Across the far wall was three-foot thick, green tinted glass. Without speaking, Solo and Illya walked toward it. Strong light filtered through the glass from beyond.

  They paused, seeing that beyond the glass wall, a rushing river swirled, alive with odd mud-colored fish and marine life.

  "Blind," Illya whispered. "They don't even have eyes. We must be miles below ground—"

  "Interested in marine life, gentlemen?"

  A subdued voice spoke from behind them. They wheeled around in time to see a ten-foot door in a third wall closing. For an instant they glimpsed suites of incomparable luxury, all done in restful hues of pale blue, violet, tan.

  Then the doors closed and they concentrated upon their host, a most remarkable looking man.

  He was unforgettable.

  One saw first that he'd been many years underground, and that the life had altered him, almost faster than he could force himself to adapt.

  Clearly, he was almost blind. His eyes appeared monstrous, magnified behind thick lenses in black-rimmed frames. He'd been a big man, but he seemed to have slumped inward and his body had become pear-shaped. His legs were round like watermelons and he moved languidly.

  Any movement appeared to exert him beyond endurance, and he breathed loudly with every step, gasping for breath. He wore green coveralls, zippered tightly, and sheep-lined slippers upon feet far too small for his round form.

  When he spoke it was with this same gasping effort, a few words, then a fight for breath. But he help himself as erect as possible. Clearly he was a man of consequence, and knew it.

  "You must be our leader," Illya said.

  The huge man rolled forward slowly, agonizingly, peering at them through near-sighted eyes which gave him the look of a mole.

  "I am the master here," he said, voice rasping.

  "We're flattered, I'm sure," Solo said. "But to what do we owe your august attention?"

  The round man paused a few feet from them. He drew a deep breath, spoke slowly, gaspingly: "You were watched on television, gentlemen, in the chamber—and unless you get ideas which must prove fatal to you, you are being watched at this moment by my men.

  "It never occurred to us we weren't," Solo said, bowing slightly.

  "You should have thought of this when you were in the chambers, Mr. Solo. We take the people from that chamber, Mr. Solo, and we make good citizens of them, in our own good time. We—would have done as much for you—and Mr. Kuryakin—if we had not monitored your attempt to escape."

  "And now you're angry at us," Illya said in irony.

  The stout man nodded, gasping as he spoke: "We have learned who you are. I am afraid this means you must die… Too bad, too. When I first glimpsed you, I had hopes of including such fine young men as you are—in my plans for the brilliant new existence I envision for the world."

  ACT III: INCIDENT OF THE PREHISTORIC RIVERS

  "Oh?" Illya said. "Sort of your own version of the Great Society?"

  "A greater society," said the gasping voice, a note of pride vibrating it.

  "I can't be very impressed by what I've seen," Solo said, needling the rotund man.

  The round head nodded. "Perhaps this is because you have not seen enough. Isn't a little knowledge always a dangerous thing, Mr. Solo?"

  "Maybe," Solo said. "But I don't think you're doing people any favors by turning them into half-blind moles, like the ones I've seen, or the zombies in that chamber over there."

  The man waved a stout arm languidly. "Temporary, Mr. Solo. I assure you, it's all only temporary."

  "I'm sure of that."

  "I detect your sarcasm, sir. But if you could have been allowed to stay here awhile, you would have been impressed—despite yourself."

  The rotund man held his breath a moment, then waved his arm toward the lighting tubes. "Look at our lights! We've lighted the core of the earth! Continuous tubing atom-generated power. Have the bungling scientists on the earth's surface accomplished any such miracle? No. But the scientists I brought here were able to do it, because I set them to that one task until it was completed."

  Illya stared at him. "Do you really think men will lead better lives in a world like this?"

  "Ah, no. We shall return to the earth's surface when we are ready—soon now."

  Solo stared at the green-clad mole-round man. Like every power-mad being, he was an egomaniac—whether this was cause or result, Solo had never been able to determine. But it had been true since time began, from Alexander, through Attila, Hitler and every mad creature lusting to control his fellow beings and enslave them.

  "Ready to take over, are you?" he said.

  The stout man smiled. "At last. We have made alliances with surface-forces—we are ready to strike and nothing can stop us."

  "THRUSH, no doubt, is your upperworld alliance?" Solo suggested.

  The green-clad shoulders lifted slightly. "I don't mind admitting to you that THRUSH has aims sympathetic and parallel to our own."

  Illya bust out, "Who are you, that you'd believe an international conspiracy like THRUSH could mean well for anyone except themselves?"

  The round face pulled into a smile. "Perhaps THRUSH stands to lose—when other powers on the earth's surface lose. THRUSH has been most cooperative. I'm sure they will continue to be, until we no longer have any use for them."

  Solo laughed suddenly. "Wonderful. It should be great when the jackals turn on each other."

  "I'm afraid you don't understand, Mr. Solo. There will be no jackals—to quote your estimate of THRUSH—remaining above ground. That day will come soon. Don't you understand? I have atomic power down here. For every peaceful use—look at the huge stone doors in solid rock walls that glide open with the ease unheard of before.

  "Look at our lighting. All atomic-powered. And I have atomic warheads. They are ready for use. No, Mr. Solo, when we strike at the earth-surface cities, only those beings lucky enough to be down here with us will survive. And when the earth's crust is safe for human inhabitance again, we shall rise up there—with the magnificent kind of society the earth should have!"

  Solo whispered it. "So you've been choosing your people carefully—people you mean to save for your new existence? People like Harrison Howell?"

  "Him among others. A man like Howell will mean a great deal in the new order. And so will the others we have chosen. I must say we have acted cleverly. Some were reported dead—by heart attack, by drowning, by lost planes, accident, lost at sea. We wanted them; we brought them down here, one way or another."

  "Who are you?" Illya said again, gazing at the gasping man.

  "Haven't you guessed?" the man inquired, breathing heavily. "Who else could have found this world, made it ready?"

  "I've guessed," Solo said. "But I can't believe it."

  "Ah, you know me, then, Mr. Solo?"

  "Leonard Finnish," Solo said, shaking his head. "The UCLA geology professor. But you're not the sort of man the world has been mourning for the past five years."

  The doughy, gray face flushed. "Those people! What do they know? They laughed at me five years ago, ten years ago, fifteen years ago. Another foolish professor, too stupid to come in out of the rain! Well, we shall see now if I was right. I tried to tell them about the world inside the belly of the earth. They wouldn't listen! They laughed!"

  Solo sighed. "They should have l
istened."

  Leonard Finnish laughed. He sucked in agonizing breaths. "Yes, Mr. Solo, they should have listened. Oh, they listened as long as I talked only the stupid, elementary geology facts they wanted to hear—the inner crusts of the earth. They were so please when I proved to them the age of the very areas of the earth by the difference in those layers.

  "But I was no longer interested in the Basement Complex and its relatively short span of a half-billion years in the making, or the deposits of the Paleozoic Era. There was no long any excitement in fumbling around Triassic, Jurassic or Cretaceous formations. I knew as long as fifteen years ago that there was an inner world undreamed of by your less imaginative geologists."

  "And so you set out to find it," Illya said. "Only—I remember now. You were lost in a geologist expedition, five years ago, in Death Valley."

  The face pulling in a doughy smile. "Ah, yes. Death Valley. The key. This was the key! Far below the surface of Death Valley, I found what I have been seeking—one of those incredible, prehistoric river beds, long dry, forgotten for eons, but linked with other huge chasms. I had to follow it. And that's why I disappeared. That's why I am here now, finally, with secrets of the inner earth that will make me master of the world."

  "You proved all your theories, Professor?" Solo prodded.

  Exhausted from the exertion of talking, the stout man settled into a reclining leather chair, and lay for some moments, breathing from small oxygen flasks.

  "We are many billions of years inside the earth's crust, gentlemen. Difficult even for a body that's anxious to adapt, to learn to live in such an alien atmosphere… But to answer your question, Mr. Solo. Yes, I proved all my theories beyond my most frantic dreams. Rib-like valleys and huge river beds, dwarfing anything known on the surface today; unbelievable subterranean freeways to every part of the western hemisphere.

  "Perhaps a wall to blown away here, another there; but the links existed, I had only to find them, open them, and then lace them with railings—a few hours from Chicago to New Orleans, from San Francisco across to New York."

  "And once you had them—there was only one use for those underground freeways—move fast and secretly, transporting anything you wished, including atomic destruction," Solo said.

  Finnish smiled. "You simplify it, but that's the main idea. THRUSH was pleased to aid me in recruiting labor through Mexico, nuclear components through Canada, and the best scientific minds. At first we could take trains only car by car, an engine here, another there. But our atomic—powered elevators have made anything possible!"

  Finnish swung out his leaden arm to an oblong table beside his chair. He took up one of the dozens of palm-sized rectangles that Illya and Solo now saw were placed on every table in the room—for instant use by a near sighted man.

  Finnish pressed the button on the instrument.

  At once a door slid open in a wall and a stout-bodied servant appeared there. He entered, bowing before Finnish.

  Solo grinned: "Things were never like this at UCLA, eh, Professor?"

  Finnish jerked his head up. He did not smile. "Some beings are mentally inferior, Mr. Solo, born to be servants." He spoke to the waiting hireling: "Serve drinks."

  The man left the room, the door sliding open at a movement of Finnish's hand upon the small instrument in his palm. Moments later, the servant returned with decanter, glasses. He poured, served them to Finnish, Solo and Illya.

  Finnish leaned forward in his leather chair, gesturing with his glass. "A toast, gentlemen. To my magnificent new society."

  Solo shrugged, but drank. "If you're to have inferiors and masters, it looks like the same old rat race, with just different fat rats running things."

  "Things will be run as they should be," Finnish said. "Too bad neither of you will live to see it."

  Illya held his glass, but did not drink. "Mind saying how you hope to accomplish this take-over of world power?"

  "Not at all. If your intellects fail to grasp the potential of underground freeways opening up this hemisphere to me, I'll be glad to explain. Your deaths have been set; you can no longer hope to interfere: Underground trains will carry our nuclear warheads—all traveling, unheard, undetected, deep inside the earth, at more than a hundred miles per hour.

  "They will strike simultaneously from beneath! Chicago, New York, Washington. San Francisco. All blown to fragments at the same instant. Can your minds encompass the magnitude of this? The so-called free-world brought to its knees in one mighty operation!"

  Illya stood as if considering this for some moments. He sipped at his drink, liked it, smiled vaguely and drank again.

  Finnish peered at him near-sightedly. "My plan begins to appeal to you?"

  Illya strode about the room, sipping glumly. "Not particularly."

  "Then why have you decided to drink with me?"

  Illya shrugged. "Oh. I decided I was thirsty. Besides, your plan is shot full of holes. I tell you frankly, Professor, it's not going to work."

  Finish sat forward, gray face flushed. "Is that why you smile? You think I can be stopped now?"

  "I think so," Illya continued prowling.

  "Stand still and talk to me! I could have you killed at this moment!" Finnish cried.

  Illya shrugged again. "This might bolster your ego, Professor, but it won't improve your plan. No. I see that as doomed, and you along with it. Unless you call it off now!"

  Raging, the rotund man swung up from his chair, pressing the buttons of his signal-sender. The doors slid open and dun-clad soldiers double-timed into the room, armed. They came to attention, stood waiting.

  Finnish hesitated, gasping for breath. Not taking his peering gaze from Illya's face, he said, "Now, if you hope for one extra moment alive—tell me why I shall fail."

  Illya nodded. He set down his empty glass, then inserted his finger in it, wiped it around the bowl, licked it with delight. "A pleasure. You see, Professor, it occurs to me that the train I rode that night—even if communications failed, once it was within the rock-bound inner crust of the earth—still it sent bleeps out until that instant.

  "Don't you see, Professor? They know exactly, precisely, the spot where my train left the earth's surface. They may be confused for a spell. But soon they'll discover the break. Once they do, it's a matter of time—time running out for you."

  "Do you think we would have boldly taken two huge streamliners when nothing on earth could hope to stop us?"

  "Sorry, Professor," Illya said, his tone saying he was not al all sorry. "It won't work that way. You could have hoped for success, only as long as no one above ground suspected from where you'd strike. They'll find the way down here now and they'll stop you, whether Solo and I live to see that or not."

  "Get them out of here!" Professor Finnish's voice rose, cracking. He pressed the small signal sender again, frantically. "Throw these men in the dungeons until the warheads are ready to roll. We'll allow these noble meddlers to deliver at least two of the atomic warheads they're so certain will never be delivered!"

  TWO

  Solo prowled the dungeon into which the dun-clad guards had thrown him and Illya. This was a breathless cavity holed out of solid rock. He found the small round disc through which oxygen was pumped into the ten by ten foot cave. He pounded his fists against the door, finding this as solid as the walls.

  He turned, glancing at Illya. "I'll say one thing. You talked us into a real hole this time."

  Illya moved with puma-grace along the walls, tracing his hands along them, listening. He looked over his shoulder, grinned. "Disagree. Maybe what I've done has prolonged our lives. Finnish had us marked for instant death. Now he plans to let us ride prisoners on a couple of those atomic-warhead trains."

  "A delightful development," Solo said.

  "Maybe not. What's that old Hungarian proverb?"

  "There's no place like home?"

  "Almost. The one I had in mind goes, 'Where there's life, there's a way out.'"

  Solo scowled at the s
mall air opening in the wall. "I hope you find that way out quickly, Illya. They're flooding this place with that gas again. We're on our way to being zombies."

  "How do you know?" Illya pressed against the wall, staring at him.

  "They're doing it all right. That nerve gas is odorless, colorless, tasteless, but it's being pumped in here right now instead of oxygen. I'm getting that headache and eye-burn. That's the first warning And this time, old friend, we're fresh out of any antidote for it."

  Illya straightened slightly. "Maybe one of these will help."

  Solo's eyes widened with relief and wonder when Illya took one of the fountain-pen sized oxygen flasks from his jacket pocket. He extended it. "Just press the nozzle, as our friend the professor did."

  Solo grinned incredulously as Illya produced another oxygen flask and fitted the nose cone against his own nostrils.

  "Where'd you get these things?" Solo said.

  Illya grinned. "Got dozens of them while I was at it. They looked like the handiest little gadgets we could collect in a place like this. They were all over Finnish's room. He had to have them were he could grab one quickly. Didn't you notice?"

  "I noticed. But how did you get away with them? It's a wonder you didn't get us killed on the spot."

  Illya smiled. "I figured the odds on our escaping weren't too good anyhow. And there's one good thing about being in a room with a half-blind man—he's not continually watching every move you make."

  Solo exhaled. "But he warned you that he had closed circuit television cameras fixed on you."

  Illya shrugged. "More half-blind men. That's what I told myself."

  "And you took them, knowing they were watching you?"

  "I figured I'd let my nearsighted friends learn the hard way that other old Hungarian proverb—the hand is quicker than the eye. They watched me drink, sip, lick my fingers, wave one hand. They should have been watching both my hands."

  Solo grinned at him, continued using the pressure-flask. There was not much hope in his smile. He moved along the walls, seeking a weakness, a break. He found none and the flat tone of his voice betrayed his frustration.