She hesitated, then that bright light of youthful intelligence came again to her gray eyes. Definitely she was a girl who loved something out of the ordinary.
“So be it,” she said briefly. “Come.”
She broke into a tripping run through the thick grass, Jerry and Sid close behind her. With long accustomedness she found a beaten trail through the flowers, went across a rubbly slope, turned into a direct path leading to the desired spot on the mountain side— Then suddenly she stumbled and fell headlong, hands outthrust to save herself. Her fingers struck a terrific blow against an upjutting chunk of rock.
“Hesther! Hes, are you hurt—?” Horrified, expecting to see her right hand cut to the bone, Jerry dropped beside her with his handkerchief already out. He gathered her up, and she gave a faint smile.
“Nay, I am not hurt… See!” Her hand, as she stretched it out, was only slightly red from the impact but otherwise not even grazed. “I am never hurt,” she went on, as Jerry helped her to her feet. “None of us is ever hurt. Perchance that ist strange? Truly, when in England we wert often hurt— But not here.”
“Funny? It’s incredible!” Jerry exploded. “Let me look again!”
Again he turned her hand over, then he felt the stone. It was as rough as a barnacle. The first presentiment of the incredible drove across his brain. He looked at the girl queerly.
“Have any of you folks ever died since appearing in this valley?”
“Nay.”
“Ever been ill? Any of you cut or injured yourselves?”
“Nay—But I have said, it was not always thus. Before the sleep on the Springflower—”
“Yeah—you told me. Hm-m!” Jerry cocked a significant eye on Sid, then shrugged. “Okay, let’s keep going.”
They went on again with the girl to the front. Falling back a little way, Jerry said:
“This joint piles up mystery on mystery, Sid. First we get folks who come back to life after four hundred years—then we find out their flesh is so tough a blow can’t even graze it. And a girl’s at that!”
“A few of these folks would be an asset in a front line of infantry,” Sid commented. “Maybe the Old Man again…”
They fell into puzzled silence, following the girl’s slender form. She stopped at last on a narrow ledge and pointed to a smoke-blackened fissure on the sheer mountain wall.
“This ist the spot,” she pronounced. “Listen! Thou canst hear the roar of the God himself!”
They stood still for a moment or two and quite distinctly to their ears came the sound of deep internal rumbling, rather like the roar of a tremendous wind. Jerry frowned, studied the fissure carefully. It was jagged, a rough oval which traced out a massive piece of rock.
“Naturally pivoted rock,” he said slowly. “At intervals, I’d say, some inner pressure must swing it round and leave an opening—Like Old Faithful—always works dead to time. You are sure these folks of yours turn up at regular intervals, Hes?”
“Of a certainty!”
“Then I am right. Some bright guy on the other side of this range is playing games—and it seems to me we’d better see what he’s up to—”
“Look here!” Sid exclaimed, on his knees. “Here’s a black mass of discharged magnesium, and leading back from it two thin grooves in the soil—Looks to me as though a magnesium charge was fixed here and fired by electric wires. Then the wires were withdrawn. Happened a lot of times too to judge from the smoke-black on that rock. These valley folks know nothing of explosives, even less of magnesium, so it looks supernatural— We’ve got something, Jerry!”
Jerry nodded, then to the girl’s alarm threw his weight against the jagged line of black that marked the pivoted rock’s edge. He stood back with gleaming eyes as it budged slightly.
“We don’t have to wait for volcanic force to shift it: we can do it ourselves—enough to get through anyway. Come on!”
“This ist madness!” Hesther cried in anguish. “To probe too far into the secrets of the God—”
“We know what we’re about, Hes,” Jerry said briefly, patting her arm affectionately. “Tell you what—skip off back home and we’ll join you later. Right now we’ve got tough work ahead.”
“But I—I—” It was clear her adventurous spirit was torn between superstitious fear and the desire to explore. Fear won. She held back nervously, sat down. “I wilt wait,” she said seriously.
“Oke. Okay, Sid—push with all your power!”
They flung their united strength on the rock and it turned slowly, enough to give them ingress anyway. Jerry pulled out his torch and flashed the beam down the tunnel ahead. From the walls and floor spurted puffs of steam.
“Volcanic is right,” Jerry commented, moving along. “And some guy with a hundred percent brain knows how to turn it to account… Take it easy!” he finished suddenly, catching Sid’s arm.
The tunnel had ended at a mighty pit in the depths of which they beheld a volcanic heart of fire. Heat of overpowering force beat up and around them, set their bodies streaming. Clinging to each other they edged their way along the ledge that overhung the hell-crater, only breathed freely again when they got to the tunnel’s continuation beyond it.
“Obviously our unknown playmate figures that pit will keep the folks away,” Sid remarked. “Guess he’s not far wrong, either. But they must come up the tunnel in the first place to appear in the valley. Wonder how they got the nerve? There are old folks in the community too—”
He broke off. The tunnel had right-angled suddenly and brought them into daylight streaming through an open cave hole in the mountain side… But they were not facing an Arctic waste but another valley, warm and temperate as the one they had left. A broad swift flowing river passed through its center, and along its nearer bank sprawled a long, roughly constructed wooden building not unlike a military barracks. The valley was rockier that its neighbor and possessed no flowers.
Then there was something else the two saw as they went down the mountain slope. Something was moored in the river alongside the wooden building… A submarine!
“Now I know we’ve got something!” Jerry snapped, lips tight.
Their journey down towards the riverside sheds took them past several newly made excavations on the way. Jerry halted and surveyed the first one as they passed it: it was full of metallic veins which spelt something to his eye immediately.
“Wow, take a look!” he whistled. “That’s a gold vein of amazing richness unless I’m mistaken— That’s silver higher up! Good God, this valley’s an absolute crucible of wealth…”
They hurried on again, past further excavations which gave obvious yields of bitumen, bauxite, copper, zinc, lead…a veritable storehouse such as any nation would give its soul to own.
“No wonder some bright baby wants to keep this place bottled up,” Sid commented finally. “We’ll just see how much legal right he—or they—have to it.”
For safety’s sake they drew their guns as they neared the sheds. At close quarters it was revealed that there were not many sheds—but one exceptionally long one, a sectional building of the type common in the outer world…
From the center doorway as they approached it a tubby figure in soiled white ducks suddenly emerged, battered Panama-hat pushed on the back of his head of gray hair. He was a big man, his figure belied somewhat by his babyish face. It was weather beaten, dissolute of mouth. The eyes were blue and rather vague.
“This is really quite unexpected,” he remarked in perfect English. “Quite unexpected. Strangers are rare in my little habitat.” He straightened suddenly and saluted. “Captain Bilton at your service.”
“What navy?” Jerry asked briefly.
“Navy? My dear sir, I belong to no Navy. I am a scientist…a very great scientist. I am the master of life and death!”
“Yeah?” Jerry looked unconvinced.
“I’m Jeremy Marsden of the Marsden Arctic Expedition: this is my colleague Sid Calvert. Our traveling unit was lost and we’
re the sole survivors. We got into the adjoining valley by accident.”
“Really? How unfortunate…” Bilton’s expression did not change, but his eyes wandered to the leveled revolvers. Then he smiled. “Come inside, won’t you? I am forgetting my manners.”
They followed into a fairly large and sparsely furnished living room. The furniture comprised mainly steel tubing chairs and a metal portable table, obviously from the submarine. Oddly enough the table was already laid for three people. There were fruits, canned meat, bread, and a light wine. Also cutlery, again presumably from the submarine.
“Modest, but serviceable.” Bilton shrugged. “Sit down, won’t you? And I assure you, Mr. Marsden, there is no need for you to keep pointing that revolver at me. I am quite harmless—really.”
“Apparently,” Jerry said, thrusting his gun away and sitting down. “You knew we were coming? Table all laid.”
The Captain gave his babyish smile. I saw you up on the valley side—through my telescope, so I decided to prepare a little welcome. Eat, my friends. The fruit is all from the woods atop this valley.”
He picked up an apple, bit into it with schoolboyish delight, then leaned back lazily and champed his flabby jowls.
“I’ll skip the eats and come to the point,” Jerry said briefly. “You are in possession of an exceptionally rich valley here. How come? Did you get here by accident or what?”
“Decidedly an accident,” Bilton said imperturbably. “I came originally to explore the Pole— The recent Bilton Expedition, if you recall? A trick of the current carried me under the mountain range into here. I stopped to look around.”
“I don’t remember your Expedition or anything about it,” Jerry said bluntly. “What happened to your crew? You can’t drive a submarine single-handed.”
“The poor fellows died…” Bilton spat out a piece of apple skin casually. “Poor unhappy boys!” he sighed. “Little by little they found this lonely place getting too much for them and their reason snapped…one by one they went. I was the only one who kept sane, so naturally I did the merciful thing and shot them, also one by one. At last, only I was left.”
“And being the only one left you then set about convincing the innocents in the next valley that you are a God, eh? Why?”
Bilton beamed “Why not?” He got to his feet, still munching his apple. “Suppose I show you exactly? Come with me …”
CHAPTER III
Powerhouse of the Earth
Jerry and Sid followed their host from the living room through a doorway that led into a long, well stocked laboratory. So well stocked indeed that Jerry found himself wondering how on earth Bilton had gotten all the stuff together, especially if he had come by accident.
Bilton’s next words helped a little to clear the puzzle.
“As you’ll know, for Polar exploration I needed a submarine fitted with all manner of apparatus. Most of it was machine-tool stuff which I have since utilized to make necessary instruments. The valley is rich in every conceivable element and raw material. The river works my turbo-generator: I have an electric blast furnace. In other words, a little scientific town all on my own… Quaint, isn’t it?”
Jerry and Sid glanced at each other. Bilton went on with his apple languidly.
“I don’t doubt you’ve seen some of my excavations,” he said. “I intend to advise the proper quarter in America when I can get out of this damned landlocked valley. Until then, I shall continue to experiment… As to the people in the valley, that is a matter of biological science. Know anything of if?”
“Try us out,” Jerry suggested briefly.
“Well, as I said I arrived here by accident—but as I was pushed through an underground stream in the outer ice I saw an ancient ship buried, virtually locked, in the ice. Possibly it had been there for centuries, overwhelmed, the people still on its decks, the cattle still in their pens—frozen, encompassed, solid… You know, it is a fact that life can be preserved in ice indefinitely—even for generations.”
Jerry’s eyes gleamed. “Yeah, I know. Go on.”
“I thought little of the incident at the time, but as my men died and I became lonely I wanted company. One day I recalled the statement of Darwin that life itself probably began in the Arctic—right here, in this very spot, might exist the catalytic elements necessary to beget life. I had already found the valley to be immensely fertile in its yield of raw material—but there were also other elements unclassified by civilized science. Suppose among these elements there existed in practical form the chemical reagents which Darwin had once theorized…? I found such an element.”
Bilton nodded his straw-hatted head to a bottle on the shelf, half full of deep green liquid.
“I call it Biltonis,” he said fatuously. “It exists in a mineral element and is Element 87, one of our missing numbers in the Periodic Table. No wonder, since it has been here all the time… It can be ground down, pulverized, and made into a potent liquid. When absorbed into the human system—or any organic system for that matter—it has the effect of super-adrenalin. It stimulates the heart first, then as it sweeps on through the bloodstream it checks the normal effects of cell-breakdown—ketabo-lism—and instead builds up the epithelial cells to granite toughness. Life is not extended, but mortality is reduced by the comparative imperviousness to injury. Even bloodless amputation is possible because of the instant coagulation of blood at the severed points.”
“Very interesting,” Jerry said slowly, glancing at Sid’s keen face. “What happened then?”
Bilton munched reflectively. “Well, as I tell you, I was lonely. I got around to figuring I might try and revive the people preserved in the ice. With Biltonis I might manage it… They had merely died from cold and the ice had built up around them, preserving them without harm. I recovered some of them, and the cattle, and injected the fluid into them, using also an artificial respirator to start the heart action. They lived! And the cattle! For an hour after revival however the people were vacant—perfect hypnotic subjects. No doubt due to the shock. I realized I could keep my little secret from them if I sent them into the next Valley. I knew from their vacant droolings they still thought themselves in the Sixteenth Century. So, while they remained capable of being hypnotized I gave them orders in post-hypnotism, which would be obeyed the moment they came to. I told them how to build houses, roads, set themselves up. I even took the tools there myself in readiness for them…
“Then,” Bilton chuckled, “I decided to preserve my little secret by building up a seemingly mystical power. After the first ones went to the next valley I sent others to the accompaniment of a magnesium flash. All hocus-pocus of course, but it looks Godlike to those poor innocents. A volcanic pressure opens the mountain and—”
“And hypnotism was the reason why none of those people feared to walk past that boiling crater in the tunnel leading between Valleys?” Jerry asked briefly.
“Correct, Mr. Mardsen. The hypnotic subject is never aware of his danger.”
“Hm-m! There are definitely no flies on you, Cap! And how many more have you got to revive yet?”
“No more. The last group went through not so long ago.”
“And you pulled away the wires which fired the magnesium afterwards?” Jerry asked slowly.
“Of course…” Bilton threw away his apple-core. “All very simple you see… And, I think, rather wonderful! Ultimately I plan to go and live among these people, spend the rest of my days in paradise, as their God. Happy sentiment, is it not?”
Jerry eyed him. “You seem dead sure there’s no way out of here.”
“Of course I am sure. You cannot get out, and neither can I— Oh you may try to leave by the way you entered, I know—but without a base camp you’d perish. And one cannot even radio for help because radio neither goes nor comes from this spot— Atmospheric disturbance, you understand.”
Sid gave a start. “But we—”
“It boils down,” Jerry interrupted him, “to the fact that you are pla
ying God to a bunch of Puritans, captain?”
“I only desire to live in peace and be their benefactor. Have I not restored them to life, given them a valley, a town, even a king?”
Jerry gave a slow smile and a final glance around the lab. He shrugged.
“Well, it’s been good meeting you,” he said. “Maybe we can help you forget your loneliness now and again?”
“Maybe,” Bilton acknowledged gravely.
“Well—We’ll be getting along. We want to take a thorough look at that other valley—then we’ll probably drop around and see you again. Inevitable I guess—since we’re neighbors until death.”
“You put it very aptly, my friend.” Bilton smiled, then he accompanied them back to the living room door. They left him leaning against the doorway munching another apple, waving his hand now and again as they made their way back to the mountain tunnel.
“Well, any ideas?” Jerry put the question brusquely as they tramped along.
“Darned if I know. Seems to me that that guys only one jump ahead of a strait-jacket. Nuts, obviously.”
Jerry’s face was grim. “He’s not nuts, Sid. That’s a pose: at least I think so—to throw us off guard. He’d no doubt have killed us had it not meant that the people in this next valley would have come to look for us and make things awkward for him. No, he’s not insane: he’s damned clever, and scientific too. All that chatter about wanting to be a God was so much bunk to build up the insane angle… And besides, he’s a proven liar. He said radio could neither come nor go from here. We know that’s wrong from our own radio—and you, you mug, nearly let the cat out of the bag by telling him we have a radio. The less he knows of that the better.”
“Hm-m,” Sid said, pondering.
“Something else too,” Jerry mused. “He said his submarine crew died of loneliness. What is more likely is that he happened on the place not by accident but by design—He could have gotten the location of the place from some scientific treatise somewhere, like those approximate positions of Atlantis one often sees. It happened to be right. Once he knew that he still kept his crew beside him to return to civilization for tools and necessities. Then on the second return he killed them all off… Naturally there is a way out. I don’t credit his story that there isn’t. Probably under the ice…”
The John Russell Fearn Science Fiction Megapack Page 30