by Anthology
* * * * *
To Rawson the unwavering, simple faith of the White Ones was only an added misery. Rotan's vision was accepted by them unquestioningly; their adoring eyes followed Rawson wherever he went, while the children carpeted his path to the holy mountain with golden flowers.
And there Rawson would sit, cursing silently his own helplessness, while the voice of the mountain told of further devastation up above. His plans for leading a force against the mole-men were abandoned. On the island, all that was left of this inner world, were only some two thousand persons, men, women and children. And the children were few; the population had been rigorously kept down. Their present number was all that the island would support, though every possible foot of ground was tilled.
"Only a handful of them," Rawson admitted despondently, "and not a weapon of any sort. They've kept by themselves. Only Loah and a few of the others had enough curiosity and nerve to scout around where the mole-men live. She even understands their talk! Lord, what I'd give for a thousand like her, a thousand men with her nerve! Then, with weapons, and means of transportation...." But at that he stopped, aware of the futility of all such thoughts.
He had tried to talk to Gor, tried to tell him of his own limitations. And Gor had only smiled pleasantly and repeated "Rotan has spoken. It will come to pass!"
Ceaselessly his thoughts revolved about the hopelessness of his situation. He was alone. Whatever was to be done he must do single-handed--and there was nothing he could do! But he would not admit to himself that the aching loneliness came to a focus in the memory of a girl's smiling eyes, the touch of her soft hand.
"They're fighting up there," he argued, "fighting for their lives, and I can't help. What right have I to think of Loah or myself?" In spite of which he sprang abruptly to his feet, left the mountain and the voice of the mountain behind him, and went in search of the girl.
"I've got to make her understand," he exclaimed. "I've got to have someone to talk to. But I can't make her out. She's so confoundedly respectful--acts as if I were a little tin god. And yet--she wasn't always that way!"
* * * * *
At the home of Gor he found Loah, slim and beautiful as always. She had just come from the bath. The creamy texture of her skin had flushed to rosiness in the cold fountain. Her jeweled breast-plates sparkled. A cloth that shone like silk enwrapped her hips in soft folds of pale rose and hung in an absurd little skirt. She might have been the spirit of youth itself, a vision of loveliness; yet Rawson felt an almost uncontrollable desire to take her in his two hands and shake her when she bowed humbly and treated his request as if it were a royal command.
"To walk with Dean-Rah-Sun! But certainly, if that is his wish!"
In silence they left the village and walked toward the island's end where Rawson had emerged from the under-world.
The island was not large. On either side were low hills, mere knolls, of white crystal, where, in every hollow, men and women were harvesting strange grain. Between the two ranges of hills were flat fields of green, reaching out toward the point some three miles distant.
Rawson made no attempt to talk as he led Loah along the roadway that cleft the green expanse in half. Other workers were there, and Dean acknowledged their smiling, worshipful salutations. He did not want to talk now; he wanted to find some place where he and Loah could be by themselves. There was so much he must tell her. He must try to make her understand. And after that, perhaps, with her help, he could find some way to be of aid to his own beleaguered people--something he could do even single-handed.
* * * * *
Where the fields ended, and from there on toward the point, had been an expanse of glistening white. Rawson remembered it plainly. So now, when he found it a place of flaming crimson, he stared in amazement. Across the full width of the valley a brilliant carpet had spread itself, a covering of flowers. A blossoming vine had sprung up in the few days since his arrival and had woven a thick mat of vegetation.
He wanted to go on out to the extreme end of the point. There they would be alone. But Loah objected when he started to enter the red expanse.
"No!" she said in quick alarm. "We must not cross. It is the Place of Death. We will go around it, following the hills."
"We crossed it the other day when it was a plain of white salt," argued Rawson.
"But now the flowers have come. Even now it might be safe--but when they die then nothing can cross here and live."
Loah could not give the reason. Dean gathered from what she could tell that a gas of some sort was formed, perhaps by the decomposing vegetation. Perhaps it combined with the sparkling white shale. But all this was of no consequence compared with his own problems. He did not argue the matter but followed where Loah led.
"Where is the shell?" he asked, when they stood at last near the open mouth of the great shaft into which the air was rushing. "Where is the machine that we came here in? I wanted to see it--thought perhaps I could use it later on.
"The jana--the shell, as you call it--is safely locked in a great room of Gor's house. Not all understand its use; it must be kept away from careless hands."
* * * * *
Then Rawson put that thought aside. He took Loah's hand and led her some distance away toward the shore. Beyond a rocky, crystalline mass, where fragments had been heaped, the sound of the rushing air was lost; only the flashing emerald waves whispered softly on the shore beyond. And there in that quiet place, under the brilliance of the central sun, Rawson told her of himself and of the great outer world. He told her of his work, of everything that had happened, of how he was only one of many millions of men and women like, and yet unlike, the People of the Light. And at last he knew that she understood.
He had spoken softly, though he knew there were no other listening ears. Loah had been seated before him on one of the white blocks. She rose to her feet. Her eyes were troubled. Vaguely he sensed behind them a conflict of emotions.
"I must think," she said. "I will walk by myself for a time; then I will return."
Rawson reached for her hand. "You're a good sport," he said huskily. Then he felt the trembling of that hand in his; and, as if it had been an electric current, his own body responded.
Shaken in every nerve, his poise deserted him. He could not think clearly. He knew only that that horrible loneliness was somehow gone. By force of will alone he kept his arms from reaching out toward that radiant figure. Instead, he raised her hand toward his lips.
She withdrew it sharply. "No," she said, "our Wise Ones were mistaken. For years they have listened to the mountain; they have written down its words. Slowly they have learned their meaning. A kiss, they said, was a symbol of love in your world. They were mistaken--as was I. Now I will walk alone for a time."
* * * * *
Rawson let her go. She seemed hardly looking where she went; her eyes were downcast. She moved slowly around the sheltering rock and on toward the level ground and the rushing winds of the shaft.
His own thoughts were in a whirl, too confused with emotion for clear thinking. "A symbol of love!" And back there in that cave world she had pressed her lips to his hand. Then they had come here, and he had been transformed to a god, a being who could never have more than an impersonal affection for one as humble as she.
The rising flood of happiness within him was abruptly frozen, changed to something which filled his veins with ice. For, from beyond the crystal barrier that hid Loah from his view, her voice had come in one single cry of terror. Then, "Dean!" she called. "Dean San!" But by then, Rawson was throwing himself madly around the barricade of rocks.
Like a sensitized plate when the camera's shutter is opened a merest fraction of a second, Rawson's brain took the imprint of every detail that was there. The black mouth of the shaft, and, on the rock beside it, something metallic, brilliantly gleaming--a flame-thrower! Beyond the pit was Loah, half crouching, her slim body tense as if checked in mid-flight. She had been running toward him, coming to warn him. And betwe
en her and the shaft, his back turned squarely toward Rawson, was the hideous figure of a mole-man, one of the Reds! His grotesque, pointed head was bent forward toward the girl; his arms were reaching, the long fingers like talons.
* * * * *
Rawson did not know when he called the girl's name. But he knew the instant that he had done it and he knew it was a mistake. He should have crept quietly, seized the weapon--and now his feet tore madly on the white rock floor as he raced toward the shining implement of death. From beyond, the red figure, whirling at his call, leaped wildly for the same prize.
The taloned hands were on the flame-thrower first. Rawson saw the red body straighten, saw the weapon swing, glistening in air, swinging over and down. From its tip green fire made a straight line of light.
He leaped in under the descending flame, felt the nozzle of the projector as it crashed upon his right shoulder and the green fire spat harmlessly beyond his back. That last spring had thrown him bodily against the red monster. They were both knocked off balance for a moment, then Rawson caught himself and swung with his left. He set himself in that fraction of a second, felt the first movement of that shining, crook-necked tube that meant the green flame was being drawn back where it could reach him; then his fist crashed into a yielding jaw.
Not five feet from the brink of that nearly bottomless shaft he stood wavering in the rush of air. He knew that the ugly red figure had toppled sideways, that the weapon had fallen with him, the blast swinging upward in a vertical, hissing arc--then man and weapon had dropped silently into the pit.
He was alone, save for the girl, who, her eyes wide with horror, threw herself upon him and clung trembling, while she murmured incomprehensible endearments in her own tongue wherein his own name was mingled: "Dean, dear! My own Dean-San!"
But the mole-men! Dean Rawson's mind was aghast with the horror of it: the mole-men had now found the way.
CHAPTER XXI
Suicide?
Gordon Smith, sometimes known as Smithy, was to remember little of the happenings that followed the crash of the big Army dreadnought. It was Colonel Culver who dragged him from the pilot-room wreckage, Colonel Culver and one of the pilots whom he had restored to consciousness. They lowered Smithy carefully to the ground, then explored the rest of the ship.
Their hands were red when they returned--and empty. Captain Farrell and the rest of the crew had ceased to be units of the United States Army Air Force; henceforth they would be only names on a casualty list grown ominously long.
"Stood plumb on her tail," said the pilot, staring at the wreck. "They hit us just once, and the left wing crumpled like cardboard. Last I remember was pulling her up off the trees." He stared at the mass of twisted metal and the center section where the wing had torn loose; it stood upright, almost vertical, resting on the crushed tail.
"Funny," said the pilot in the same flat, level tone that seemed the only voice he had since that last pull on a whipping wheel. "Damn funny--mostly we get it first up there."
"Come here!" snapped Colonel Culver. "Lend a hand here with Smith; we've got to carry him. And don't talk so loud--those red devils will be out here any minute."
* * * * *
Smithy was taking a more active interest in his surroundings when he sat a week later in the Governor's office.
"There's a detachment moving in there from the south," said the Governor. "We're going to follow your advice, to some extent at least. We're sending troops to Tonah Basin. If the top of that dead crater is closed they will blast it open; then a scouting party's going down. Call it a reconnaissance, call it suicide--one name's just as good as the other. Colonel Culver, here, is going. But you know the lay of the land there; you could be of great help. How about it?"
"Are you asking me?" Smithy inquired.
He stood up, flexed his arms, while he grinned at Colonel Culver. "Hinges all greased and working! As a flier, Colonel, you're a darn good first-aid man. I'll say that! When do we start?"
Which explains why Smithy, some time later, hidden under the grotesque disguise of a gas mask, was one of fifty, similarly attired, who stood waiting about the black open maw in the great cinder-floored crater of one of the peaks that surrounded Tonah Basin.
Night. And the big stars that hang so low in the black desert sky should have been brilliant. They were lost now in the white glare that streamed upward. The crater was a fortress. Around the circle of the entire rim, on the inner side of the rough crags, men of the 49th Field Artillery stood by their guns. Lookouts trailed their telephone wire to the higher peaks, where they perched as shapeless as huddled owls; and, like owls, their eyes swept the mountain's slopes and the desert at its base, where the searchlight crews played long fingers of light incessantly--and where nothing moved.
But the empty silence of the desert was misleading, as the men in the crater knew.
* * * * *
They had begun arriving with the earliest light of morning. Smithy had come in with the first lot. And when the first big auto-gyro transport had settled and risen again from the crater, another had taken its place, and another and many others after that.
That first crew had been a machine-gun battalion, and Smithy had smiled with grim satisfaction at the unhurried way in which their young captain had snapped them into position without the loss of a second. And their guns, Smithy noticed, were trained inward upon the crater itself.
Inside that protecting circle the other transports landed one by one: men, mobile artillery, ammunition cases, big searchlights, and a dozen engine-generator outfits. The last transports brought in strange cargo--short sections of aluminum struts with bolts and splice plates to join them together: blocks, and tackle and sheaves; then spools of steel alloy cable at least ten miles in length.
From the last ship they took a hoisting engine and an assortment of aluminum plates and bars which were bolted together by waiting mechanics, and which grew magically to a crude but exceedingly substantial elevator, on which fifty men, by considerable crowding, could stand.
Only a floor of bolted plates, with corner posts and diagonal bracing and a single guard rail running around the four sides--but for the first time Smithy began to feel that he was actually going down; that this was not all make-believe, or a futile gesture. He would stand on that platform; he would go down where Dean had gone. And then.... But what would come after he knew he could never imagine.
* * * * *
A little crane swung the first metal work into position above the shaft. One end of the assembled framework of aluminum alloy dragged loosely on the ground; the other end swung out and projected above the shaft, swayed for an instant--and then came the first direct knowledge of the enemy's presence. The end of a metal strut, though nothing visible was touching it, grew suddenly white hot, sagged, then broke into a shower of molten, dazzling drops that rained down into the pit.
"Good," said Colonel Culver, who was standing beside Smithy. "Now we know they are there--but it means we will have to go down there with our gas masks on."
To Smithy it was not immediately apparent how gas masks were to protect them from the deadly invisible ray. He got the connection of thoughts when a bomb was slid over the edge. The dull thud of the explosion quickly came back to them.
"They popped that one off in the air--hit it with their heat ray," said a cheerful voice beside them. "But the phosgene will keep on going down. Give them another!"
The interval this time was longer. "Now for a dirty crack," said the cheerful voice. "Time this one."
* * * * *
A youngster nearby snapped a stop-watch as the bomb was released. He held some printed tables in his hands. Odd receivers from which no wire led were clamped over his ears. This time the dull thud was long in coming. It was hardly perceptible when the young man with the stop watch announced: "Fifty thousand feet, sir."
"Give 'em another. Time it again." A second high explosive bomb was released.
"Fifty thousand feet, sir."
; "Good. That measures it. And those last bombs have knocked the devil out of whatever machinery they've got down there. Now we'll give them a real taste of gas. Two of the green ones there, men. Put ten miles of cable on the drums. Get that hoisting frame into place."
But night had come, though searchlights outside the crater and floodlights within had robbed the night of its terror, when Smithy, with Culver beside him, climbed over the guard rail of the lift that hung waiting just over the pit.
A gas mask covered his entire face. Through its round eye plates he looked at the others who crowded about him. Grotesque, almost ludicrous--twenty men, armed with clumsy sub-machine guns; the others would follow later. A searchlight was on a tripod at the center, and a spool of electric cable.
The light sizzled into life and swung slowly about. Then the platform jarred, and the spool of cable began slowly to unwind. Beside him Colonel Culver was returning the salute of an officer outside on the ashy ground. Smithy raised his hand, but the brink of that pit had moved swiftly up--there was nothing before him but a glassy wall.
Reconnaissance? Suicide? One word was as good as another. But he was going down--down where Dean Rawson had gone--down where there was a debt to be paid.
CHAPTER XXII
The Red-Flowering Vine
"Rotan," said Gor slowly, sadly, "was wrong. His vision was not the truth. The Red Ones have come. And now--we die."
"Without a fight?" Rawson demanded incredulously.
"We are not a fighting people. We have no weapons. We can only die."
Rawson turned to Loah. They were inside the mountain, and the servants of the mountain, with terror and dismay written plainly on their faces, were gathered about. "At the Lake of Fire," said Rawson, "when you saved me, there was an explosion and clouds of white fumes. What was it?"
"It was like water," Loah said. "We found it deep inside the earth in a place where it is very cold. When warmed it turns to white clouds. We threw a flask of it on the hot rocks, hoping to reach you while they could not see."--she paused and shook her head slowly--"but we can get no more. The Pathway of Light is closed to us, now that the Red Ones are there."