“I’m Lifania. Remember me?”
Bull puzzled. “Damned if I do; never met a dame of that name…”
He became silent, aware of her lithe body faintly visible by the cage door. In a moment the door was open. Gratified, he walked through the opening and her soft hand closed on his wrist.
“I’m releasing you for two reasons,” she breathed softly. “Just listen—you fool!” she burst out in alarm as he unthinkingly flamed a match in his fingernails. Instantly she dashed it to the floor and stamped on it.
But in that instant, Bull had seen that she was vividly blonde and apparently young, attired in softly rustling blue silk, a golden band gleaming in the halo of her fair hair. These evidences stirred no remembrance in his memory—only an appreciation of her charm.
“Say, you’re the goods!” he confided. “What about—”
“Will you keep quiet?” she pleaded earnestly. “I’m doing this because you once rescued me. I got trapped in a street drain when I was in miniature size. You pulled me out. I recognized your face tonight when my father had the infra-red screens tuned on you for the purpose of study. Remember me?”
“No; I guess you’ve been dreaming,” he answered. “I pulled you out of a drain? When?”
“Some time ago. I was joining my people and I got into the drain by accident—I should have looked where I was going… But I can’t tell you more here. Any minute now my father will have you released, and that means your finish. We’ve got to get away from these islands while your spaceship is still handy. I made sure that it’s still where you left it before coming here.”
He chuckled grimly. “So it ought to be. I locked the controls.”
“All the better. Come on…”
Bull hesitated on the questions that naturally rose to his lips, but before he could utter them, the girl had practically pulled him to the flood-lit exterior. For a time, she crouched in the shadows cast by the shed, looking about her, then with a little nod of her fair head, she began to advance.
Little by little, sometimes dropping flat on their faces, they managed to circumvent the occasional men and women they encountered. Dodging around the buildings, slipping through jet-black shadows, they at last gained the shore and clambered swiftly into the space machine. Once within, Bull quickly twisted the air-lock screws.
“Where to?” he asked briefly, swinging to the control board.
“Set your course for the moon,” the girl instructed in a curiously resolute tone. “I’ll tell you why later.”
“The moon!” Bull stared at her beautiful face for a moment, then he shrugged.
“O. K., sister, if that’s how you want it…”
He unlocked the controls, clamped his hairy hands down on the main switches. With a terrific zooming rush of power, the vessel catapulted upwards into the night sky, cleaved the stratosphere and hurtled into the outer moon-ridden dark.
Only when his course was definitely set on the gleaming satellite did he set the robot steerage in commission, then turned to the girl with questioning eyes.
She was seated now on the wall bunk, half smiling, half serious, swinging her shapely legs. She had the oddest Grecian appearance about her, as though she had been lifted bodily from the classics.
“Well, suppose you tell me a few things?” Bull questioned, setting the floor-gravitators to work. “Suppose you tell me what you and your playmates are doing on the Azores—where you came from in the first place?”
“It’s not a very difficult story,” she answered quietly. “And to clear up one particular point, I might as well tell you that I learned English, in common with the others of my race, in a trifle under two weeks by the expedient of mind-reading. You see, my people and I—the forty of us at least who are at present on the Earth, came originally from a block of gems you brought from the moon.”
“You—you what?” Bull yelled. “You don’t mean that those gems which I found melted—”
“Exactly that. We were inside each gem in miniature form, like—like flies in amber. One night when you were intoxicated, you unwittingly saved me from death. Since you don’t remember the incident, it doesn’t matter—but it enabled me, on seeing your face in the screens, to remember you had a reliable nature. What matters is that your whole civilization is in danger, threatened with extinction by my people. That menace will grow to invincible proportions when the rest of my people come from the moon, and are enlarged.”
Bull still stared. “After all, Lif, I’m only a plain man of space,” said ruefully. “I don’t get your angle at all.”
“You will soon,” she said steadily. “Actually, my race is from the city your legends call Atlantis. We lived in that city thousands of years ago before a gigantic rupture in the Atlantean continent—which was then volcanic—produced tremendous changes. At that time we were the most scientific race on the Earth—the virtual masters of it. The coming of the disaster demanded that we must leave hurriedly. The nearest place of safety was the moon. Once inside the satellite, protected by artificial air and warmth, we could continue our lives until such time as the earthly tumults and earthquakes ceased. So we buried our most important treasures in Atlantis in sealed containers, incorrodible by sea water and able to stand terrific pressures. The metal also was semi-magnetic, detectable by special instruments no matter to what depth it sunk in the passage of time. Then we set out for the moon just before the city was overwhelmed…”
“And then?” Bull questioned thoughtfully.
“Well, we domiciled ourselves in the core of the moon, erecting all manner of machinery within an enormous central cavern which must be standing even today exactly as we left it. But we were fighting a losing battle—one that led to no purpose. Another hundred years would see the end of our air supply. We debated whether it was better to spend that hundred years trying to prevent the seepage of air into the void, passing through the metal of our central home and thereafter through the pumice rocks of the moon—or whether it would be better to call a halt until something new should happen. Study of Earth revealed it still in the throes of great changes, overrun by hordes of savages, survivors of the fine races overwhelmed in the cataclysm. No other planet was suitable for us, and so we came to our decision.
“We possessed machines to produce contraction by narrowing the electronic orbits of any organic or inorganic body. We had also a peculiar type of crystal found on the moon—identical in many ways to the crystals that form the rays and streaks of the main craters. These crystals resemble gems so long as they remain in an airless state, but after exposure to oxygen for a period of roughly ninety-six hours, they break down and melt, mingling with the oxygen and visibly melting into shapeless masses.
“It was decided that we would leave our laboratory sealed until such a time as it would be needed again, and pass into a state of suspended animation until some chance brought us to life to take up the threads. We placed ourselves in the hands of robots, who had full instructions as to what to do. We were all shortened to an inch in height, clothed just as we were; magnetic fields rendered us dead yet alive, emptied our bodies of all life substance, leaving enough chemical deposits only to start life going if we ever contacted normal atmosphere again. Our clothes, too, were similarly treated. The crystals were divided by fusion, their interiors hollowed out, and our bodies placed inside them and sealed up—gem-like coffins. Then, still carrying out their orders, the robots took the whole lot of gems and affixed them to the wall of an upper cavern by cohesive powers. Putting them there made it probable that some day they would be found; deep down in the moon, there was hardly a chance.
“You know the rest. After thousands of years, we were resurrected by you. We hypnotized several Earth people to make machines for us and domiciled ourselves on the Azores so as to be close to the site of Atlantis for dredging purposes in order to recover our treasures. You understand?”
Bull nodded slowly. “Yeah—ninety-six hours would
be just about the time that passed between my finding the gems and them breaking open in my bedroom. But where does the menace come in?”
“From my father. He was among the jewels you brought to Earth and is now making his final plans. But he can’t put them into full effect without the remainder of the lunar jewels containing the rest of our people. I know what that means. My father is a ruthless and brilliant scientist; he will stop at nothing to bring about the return of Atlantean dominance. Our science is still far in excess of yours. I for one do not agree with my father and never have. I’ll go to any lengths to stop him. Our race has run its course and there is no excuse for the subjection of a happy thriving world. I saved you for one very good reason, besides gratitude. You have a spaceship, and only you could unlock the controls. Also you’ll have the strength to swing open a piece of wall existing in the moon jewel cavern. Single-handed, with so slight a gravity, I could not do it. To you it will be simple. I intend, briefly, to destroy the rest of my race and all the machines that are still buried in the moon…”
Bull grimaced, glanced out of the window at the fast-receding Earth.
“Sounds ambitious! Pity is I haven’t my flame gun with me with which to do it.”
“You won’t need it,” she answered steadily. “The plan I have in mind is perfect. It will not only mean the destruction of all the moon contains, but it will cause the Azores to be wiped off the face of the Earth.”
“Suppose your old man chases you into space?
“He can’t. We haven’t built space machines yet…”
Bull gave it up. There was something almost frighteningly purposeful about this newly risen maid from an age long forgotten. Quietly he turned to the controls, took away the robot steerage, and settled himself to guide the flyer towards the enlarging moon.
CHAPTER IV
Sacrifice
During the moonward journey, the strange girl spoke but little; she seemed entirely absorbed in her own grim speculations. It struck Bull as odd that she never once attempted to eat or sleep until she casually explained she and her people had overcome such primitive necessities ages before.
Bull himself slept at intervals and always woke to find her lost in thought—then as the pull of the moon became evident, she began to issue brisk directions.
Not that they were really needed. Bull brought his vessel down near the Appenines once more—clearly the jewel cavern was to be their first point of call.
He was right. He loaned the girl a spare spacesuit and the pair of them headed across the blinding sun-drenched lava desert, gaining the jewel cavern fifteen minutes later. Once within its depths, the girl headed to its furthest wall and studied it for a while in the light of her helmet torch. Then her voice came through the phones.
“This is the movable portion just here—on a natural pivot—but it will take your strength to move it…”
She moved to a portion slightly rougher than the rest and pressed her shoulder against it—without avail. Then Bull swaggered forward, but even he had to add his weight to the girl’s against the weak gravity before the barrier gave. Then an immense oval pivoted around and left beyond a tunnel leading into the honeycomb that comprised the moon’s interior.
Still governed by unflagging purpose, the girl led the way, head-lamp shining on the pumice walls. She and Bull moved rapidly against the light gravity, traversed tunnel after tunnel, sometimes allowing themselves to float hundreds of feet down seemingly bottomless shafts.
Once Bull found himself conjecturing on how they were going to get back, until it occurred to him that perhaps the girl had no intention of them ever getting back! He could not decide whether that prospect was alarming or not.
Then his speculations were finally cut short as he and the girl entered the last and lowest cavern, nearly at the core of the satellite. With clumsy gloved hands, she operated a complex mechanism set deep in the rocky wall. There was no sound in that airless emptiness, but at length a portion of the wall slid back to reveal beyond a thick metal valve.
Presently this, too, slid aside, enabling them to enter, by means of three airlocks, the incredible machine interior beyond—a mighty natural cavern shielded by a tremendous dome of absolutely incorrodible and pressure-resisting metal. For a time, the girl fussed around, operating strange levers and valves—then, suddenly, light gushed forth from bowls in the lofty ceiling.
Her voice came through the phones. “We can take our spacesuits off in here. Air pressure, warmth and light are all normal.”
She set the example, and once she was unencumbered, set in action machinery which slid a mighty wall of metal across the closed door valve.
Bull stared about him in utter bewilderment. That such machinery could exist in the core of a dead hulk like the moon was something he could hardly believe. Machines were everywhere, from wall to wall of the great place, covering a floor area of some five acres. Much of the machinery he did not understand, nor did the girl attempt to explain it—until she led the way to two vast metal pillars supporting hooped magnets of truly enormous proportions, both of them connected by snaky wires to lensed devices resembling super television projectors. Beyond these again, connected by further myriad wires, were machines which Bull recognized as transformers, armatures, dynamos, and electrical equipment transcending the scope of his limited knowledge.
“You’ve heard of cosmic rays, of course?” the girl asked suddenly.
“I’ve done more—I’ve felt ’em,” he answered laconically. “The damned things penetrate eighteen to thirty feet of lead out in space.”
“Quite right, which is one reason why on the moon here, even at this depth, they penetrate freely and are unimpeded by atmosphere. These two pillared magnets are cosmic wave attractors. They gather cosmic waves and pass them on to the transformers and other equipment. After that, they pass into the projectors and focus directly into the center of this globe through specially designed apertures.”
She indicated the enormous sphere that reposed between the two projectors, composed of some metal of almost unimaginable hardness.
“The effect of the cosmic rays is to produce terrific heat such as exists only in the core of the sun itself,” the girl went on. “It is produced by increasing the pace of electron change to the point of actual coincidence with the nucleus. Inside the globe is a matrix, designed to hold a small piece of metal. As the metal is increasingly heated, the globe also contracts by the passage of an electrical field through its oddly fashioned atoms. It continues to contract with inconceivable power, producing a pressure that easily withstands the actual utter annihilation of copper itself… So far, my people have never really annihilated matter; they have only used the device for the fusing of very tough metals—such as the metal which gives this cavern its support. They refrained from absolute annihilation of matter because they knew it would bring about the very thing I’m hoping for.”
“What’s that?” Bull questioned—and she smiled vaguely; asked an odd question, yet somehow half expected.
“Are you afraid of death, Bull Cassell?”
“Me? Hell, no! I’ve been playing with it all my life. Why?”
“Because if you are, you’d better head back for the surface and leave me to work alone. After all, you’ve done your part of the work. Being human Bull was slightly afraid, but to admit it to a slim Atlantean girl with immeasurable scientific knowledge and courage? Lord, no! Besides, he mightn’t find his way back anyhow…
“Better get started, sister,” he growled. “I’m not heading back.”
She said nothing, only smiled gratefully. Bull watched while she opened the giant globe and made adjustments to the complicated matrix within, fixing inside it a selected four-inch square cube of copper.
Satisfied, she clamped the sphere shut and for a time contemplated the foci of the projectors, made infinitely delicate adjustments—then at last threw in the massive bladed power swi
tches. The peculiar transformers and dynamos hummed a mounting song of steady power, concentrating two faintly visible violet beams through the sphere’s special apertures, focusing identically on the cube within.
Bull watched interestedly, and after a while the view through the open inspection plate revealed the block as a blinding mass of flame.
“Two thousand degrees Centigrade,” she said briefly. “The pressure, as it increases, will achieve that of two million tons to the square inch. That and the heat will destroy the copper utterly, blast its matter right out of being… Here, you’ll be needing these.” She handed him a pair of heavily smoked goggles.
In silence, they continued watching. Beating waves of tremendous heat began to enfold them. The huge machine cavern became intolerably hot as the temperature inside the contracting globe rose to terrific heights.
With startling speed, the temperature rose to 6000° Cent. The thing in the matrix was no longer safe to gaze upon, even through glasses.
Bull waited tensely, only glancing sideways ever and again at that searing, unimaginably hot piece of copper. Higher rose the temperature, switching over automatically to the tens of thousandths scale. The flaring energy that had been copper was forced to give up battering radiations of X-rays, and then gamma rays.
Bull turned and glanced at the girl’s face. She endeavored to speak, but her voice did not carry over the searing, crackling din of inconceivable heat and pressures.
The copper was being entirely annihilated. The nuclei of the very atoms themselves were collapsing—protons and electrons being forced conceivable heat and pressure.
The thousandths thermometer stopped at maximum, but the heat still rose—into the millions of degrees, building up into the inconceivably furious energy existing only in the cores of the hottest stars.
It must have ranged somewhere around 150 million degrees Centigrade when something abruptly happened. Bull only glimpsed it for a moment. At that identical point, the matter of the copper ceased to be, was changed absolutely into pure energy…but with it went the vast compression globe. Titanic shiftings of matter itself followed as a literal wedge of new energy was forced into the normal structure of matter gathered on every hand.
The John Russell Fearn Science Fiction Megapack Page 45