The Golden Age of Science Fiction Novels Vol 01

by Anthology

  He had a hundred of them in the room when at last he was through--one hundred fearful instruments of destruction. And still he told no one of his plans; he only told Gor what he wanted done later on. "It may not work," he had to admit to himself. "I'm just guessing at the thickness of the rock and the power of these machines. It's a gamble, nothing but a gamble."

  He arranged the flame-throwers in a circle along the outer wall. The tops of the cylinders were curved, but the bottoms were flat and they set solidly on the rock. But he tipped them backward and braced them firmly with fragments of stone until every crooked-neck tube was pointed upward and toward the center. Finally he was done.

  * * * * *

  It was only a matter of a few hours later when Rawson stood on the island's end by the mouth of the shaft. In his ears was the ceaseless rush of the air as it entered the pit; it was the only sound in a silent world. And for the first time there came overwhelmingly upon him a realization of what this moment meant.

  The time had come. Loah was beside him, her lovely eyes unnaturally bright in her face from which all the blood seemed to have flowed. He felt the slight trembling of her body as she pressed against him; he knew she was struggling to keep back the tears. Then Rawson half turned with one final entreaty that she let him go alone; but he left the words unsaid--he had argued it several times before.

  Before them stood Gor, then the Wise Ones, the Servants of the Mountain, deserting their post for the first time since the Mountain had been given a voice. Beyond them all the people of this little world were gathered.

  It had seemed only a fanciful dream, this thought of going; in fact, he had been too busy, too pressed with his own preparations, to give it thought. Now he was learning to his own surprise how closely he had identified himself with this world and its people. It had given him Loah; it had been a haven, a sanctuary.

  He let his eyes slowly take in the full splendor of that emerald sea, the shining land under a green-gold sun, the Mountain in white, crystal purity against a green-blue sky. And he was leaving it, he and Loah; they were going to--death!

  * * * * *

  "You will remember," he said to Gor. His voice sounded dull and heavy; it hardly seemed himself who was speaking. "You know the day and the hour. This is the nineteenth. It is now noon--twelve o'clock in my world. When the Voice of the Mountain says that noon again has come you will do as I said."

  "The Mountain speaks without ceasing now," said Gor, "telling always of what the Red Ones do. We will count the hours as they pass. In twenty-four of those hours Gor will descend in the jana of the Reds to do as Dean Rah-Sun has commanded."

  Rawson held out his hand. He was suddenly wordless. Then Loah threw herself into Gor's arms in one last passionate embrace--but it was she who entered the jana first.

  "Come," she said to Dean. "Oh, come quickly, Dean-San!" Then he, too stepped inside and made the heavy door fast.

  Men of the White Ones had been holding the big cylinder down. But Rawson, staring through the window, saw that it was Gor's own hands that swung them out at last above the pit.

  Their craft hung quivering for an instant in the rushing air; then Loah moved one of the levers a trifle and the blackness took them, and only the little bull's-eyes in the metal ceiling showed the fading glow of the Inner World, the home of the People of the Light, which their eyes never again would see.

  CHAPTER XXIV

  The Bargain

  Rawson had taken one flame-thrower with him. He tied it securely inside the shell so it could not shift with the changing gravity, or be accidentally turned on. Again he clung to the curved bar against the wall. Loah stood at the center, directing the craft.

  Once again he floated in air, then found himself standing on what had been the ceiling of the room. The girl had released a considerable quantity of the lifting element in the jana's end, and now the black powder in the other end of the central tube was dragging them at terrific speed as it rushed away from the earth's center.

  Over six hundred miles, Rawson had figured, from that inner surface to the neutral zone where the red substance of the earth, that was neither rock nor metal, under terrific pressures, glowed with fervent heat or formed pools like the Lake of Fire.

  Perhaps a hundred miles thick, that zone of incessant energy, and their little craft tore through it at tremendous speed. Even so, he was gasping for breath in the heated room when the glow faded and again he swung over and down upon the floor as Loah checked the speed of the flying projectile and the little ship crept slowly up into the room where first he had seen it.

  The first that he noticed was the absence of the roar. The janadrifted slowly to one side, and Loah let it come to rest upon the floor. Staring from the open door, Rawson saw the same familiar red walls and floor and the black opening of the shaft from which they had come. But the reverberating roar of the great organ-pipe was gone. He knew that the air, for the greater part, was driving on past through the upper shaft that was now open. The way was clear for them to ascend. He turned to the girl.

  * * * * *

  "If my figures are right, it's some thirteen hundred miles from here on. How did you get up there before?"

  Loah pointed to the passage where the jana, on that other excursion, had been hidden. "We went through there," she said, "taking the janawith us. We went up many miles through a great crack, but it was not straight; we had to go carefully till another passage opened through to the shaft far above where it was sealed."

  "And the mole-men never found it?"

  "Oh, yes," said Loah, "they must have known of the crack, but they did not know where it led. Its air was bad--a gas that choked; one could not breathe it and live. But in our little jana we were safe. They could not use theirs; it was too large. Besides, only the priests came down. They had their Lake of Fire, where they did horrible things. They did not know that the shaft began again below."

  "O. K.," said Rawson, and closed the door.

  "But I wish to get out," Loah protested, "to gather more of the Oro. We may need more, should we return."

  "We will never need it," Rawson spoke softly. "From the time we left Gor we had just twenty-four hours to live. We must go on, and go fast."

  * * * * *

  They had no way of measuring time, and Rawson could only guess at the hours that passed while their little ship tore swiftly upward through the dark. He wondered if the occasional shrill shriek that followed the touching of their metal guides on the glassy walls could be heard up above.

  Then, at last, Loah was driving the jana slowly while she held her light so it would shine through a window. Rawson had to restrain himself to keep from pacing the little room like a caged animal while the precious minutes slipped by. Now that the enemy was near he wanted nothing but to drive on up to the end of the shaft, come out into that world wherever the shaft ended, then try to fight his way through to the great hall where he hoped to find Phee-e-al. And his haste made him overestimate the passing time; their journey had been swifter than he knew.

  "I may have passed it," Loah was saying doubtfully. "I may have come too far." Then she interrupted herself and sprang to the controls.

  They drifted slowly back. "It is different now," Loah said; "the air rises more swiftly than before." She stared from the windows while she drove the jana slowly up and down, trying to bring it to equilibrium in the strong up-draft.

  The air entered the shell through a little opening with the same pungent tang Rawson had noticed before. He had wondered about the air. Down near the neutral zone it was dense, yet he had not minded the pressure too greatly--and that had been puzzling.

  "Rock pressure and air pressure," he had reasoned; "they are two different things. If the rock flowed, any air that it trapped would be squeezed to a liquid. But it doesn't flow--that red stuff is solid; so the air pressure is only the weight of the air column itself. But even that should be enormous."

  He could only conclude that the lessened pressure came from that strange counter-g
ravitation, the repelling force from the center of the earth. Perhaps it tended to dissipate the molecules, held them farther apart, prevented their squeezing in together, and battering with a thousand little impacts on a point where one had hit before.

  Their jana swayed gently as if the smooth air currents were disturbed and were drifting them sideways; and then, at last, Loah, peering from a window, sprang back and moved a lever. Beneath them was the softly-cushioned thud of the shell seating itself on firm rock.

  * * * * *

  They were in another of the interminable caves, Rawson found when he opened the door. The jana was resting a few feet in from the edge of the shaft. Cautiously they got out, but even without their weight it had a slight negative buoyancy.

  "Oro is pulling more strongly than Grah," Dean said, and smiled. Already the names seemed familiar to him.

  The two lifted the jana and carried it back some twenty feet more before Rawson realized how unnecessary this was.

  "We'll never be using it again," he said. "If I've guessed right it will stay here as long as the rocks; if not--but we'll never know the difference anyway."

  He took the flame-thrower from the car in sudden haste. "Quick, dear," he told Loah. "God knows when the end will come. Quick, show me the way."

  Loah knew every step of the route that took them on and upward through a maze of twisting passages, and Rawson marveled at her sense of direction. She flashed her light at times--the little bar of metal that had in one hollow end a substance which absorbed the light-energy of the Central Sun. Rawson knew how it worked. Even the lights in the mountain room were taken out from time to time and exposed to the sunlight that brought them back into glowing life. He had seen similar phenomena on earth. But, for the most part, Loah kept the little metal cap in place on the end of her torch, and they moved cautiously through the dark.

  * * * * *

  Sounds of the Red Ones came to them at times. And once they hid in a narrow branching cleft that came abruptly to a dead end, while a force of red warriors marched hurriedly through the passage they had just left. Back in their hiding place Rawson stood tense and ready, with his weapon till the last of the enemy was gone.

  Always he was frantic at thought of the time that was slipping past--until, at last, the narrow passage that they followed cut transversely through another large runway that glowed faintly from some distant light.

  With that first gleam of light there came over Dean Rawson an odd change. Something within him had been cold with fear. Fear of the flying minutes. Fear that Loah might have lost her way in this tangled labyrinth of winding ways. And now, suddenly, he was care-free, filled with an absurd joy. Nothing mattered. They were to die, but what of that? Loah had chosen death; he would see that when it came to her, it would be quickly and without pain. And as for himself, if before he died he could remove this ruler of an enemy race....

  So when Loah leaned close and whispered, "The light--it shines from the council room of Phee-e-al," Dean replied almost gaily; "I've got to hand it to you--you sure do know all the back alleys." Then he stuck his head cautiously out into the dimly-lighted corridor.

  It was broad. He saw where their own little passageway went on from the opposite side. But the light--the light! At his left, not a hundred steps away, was a room, brilliantly lighted. And across it, in gleaming splendor, stretched a low wall--a barrier of gold. It was the council room, where once before he had faced Phee-e-al in all that savage's hideous splendor.

  * * * * *

  He listened. All was silent. Then Loah whispered: "Phee-e-al comes this way when he goes to the council room. But when he comes, or how often, I do not know."

  Dean pressed her back into the narrow way with his hands. "Wait here!" he said, and gave her the flame-thrower. "I've an idea!" He stepped softly out into the broad passage and on naked, noiseless feet, moved swiftly toward the lighted room.

  It was empty. Beyond the barrier were no red figures, nor were there whistling voices to echo as he had heard them before. Here was the throne where Phee-e-al had sat; here the priests had stood; there, along the wall, were the chests.

  Fully twenty of them, each eight feet long, they stood ranged along the three walls of that part of the room protected by the barrier. No two of them alike; all of them were oddly carved and studded with jewels.

  The chests were ranged in a straight row a foot or more out from the wall. He crossed to them swiftly. About here was where that priest must have gone. He raised one of the heavy lids till the light struck within.

  Bones! Only fragments of a skeleton, blackened by age; a necklace of teeth from some animal's jaw; worthless trifles for the mummery of the priests. Then, beneath them, he saw two great fangs, a foot in length. They were curved, sharply pointed and yellow as old ivory.

  What was it Gor had said of legends that told of ancestors coming from the outer world? Rawson knew that he was looking at priceless relics of the tribe, at the tusks of man's long extinct enemy, the great sabre-toothed tiger.

  * * * * *

  But he had neither time nor thoughts to spare for marvels new or old--he must find his gun. Yet, even then, he wondered what undreamed-of treasures the other chests might hold--what jewels, what paraphernalia of ancient kings.

  He must be silent! Perhaps the next great glittering container might hold the blue gleam of his gun. And this time as the gem-studded lid was swung upward and back to rest noiselessly against the rock wall, Dean could not repress the audible gasp that came to his lips.

  His own pistol! He had expected to find the one weapon, but, instead, the chest was filled with all it would hold of rifles and side arms and cartridge belts, all mingled in one indiscriminate heap.

  They were twisted, some of them, and bent; discolored, too, evidently by flames. On some the stocks had been burned off.

  Rawson's hands were suddenly trembling. There was one rifle that seemed unharmed; he brought it out, and hardly heard the little clatter that it made among the other weapons. An ammunition belt--he slipped out a clip of cartridges, made sure they fitted his gun, and threw one up into the firing chamber. He was fumbling for more of the clips when there pierced through his tumultuous thoughts the realization that he was hearing sounds not made by his own suddenly clumsy hands.

  * * * * *

  Marching feet, whistling voices--they came from beyond the room's farther end, beyond the entrance through which he had once been brought a captive. He took one step back toward the broad tunnel, then knew there were others coming there.

  There was no possible avenue of escape. He threw himself in one wild dive into the narrow space between the chests and the wall, and pulled himself forward under the shelter of the one back-turned lid. The rifle was still gripped in his hands.

  By the sounds that came to him, he knew that the outer room had filled with red warriors, and that another smaller group had come scuffing from the passage where he had just entered. And, by the echoing cry of shrill voices that shouted, "Phee-e-al! Phee-e-al!" he knew that the ruler was near.

  Then there were footsteps approaching the chest. A priest no doubt; shrill whistling told of his anger. The concealing cover was jerked outward and down, and Rawson, staring above him, saw not the coppery face that he had expected, but the hideous white visage of Phee-e-al himself.

  For an instant the ruler of the mole-men stood half stooped in petrified astonishment, and in that moment Rawson dragged himself to his feet. No chance to use the gun--the other was upon him, his gripping talons tearing Rawson's bare flesh. In one flashing thought, Dean cursed himself for the uselessness of his weapon--he should have taken a pistol, an automatic. Then, body to body with the savage, he was dragged out over the chest.

  * * * * *

  He had been holding the rifle above him, as he struggled from his cramped quarters. The savage had grabbed him about the shoulders, but his hands were still free; they held the gun on high. And in the second when he found his feet under him, as Phee-e-al dragged him clear of t
he chest, Rawson brought the breech of the gun crashing down upon the pointed skull.

  He felt the talons release their hold. The priests were rushing upon him. Phee-e-al, too, had been only momentarily stunned--he was springing. Then Rawson whipped the rifle down in line, and the clamoring shrieks that filled the room with tumult were drowned under another roar.

  He saw Phee-e-al fall. Even then, through all the pandemonium within his own mind, he thrilled with satisfaction at sight of a little dot and a spreading stain above Phee-e-al's heart, where only bare skin had been before.

  The next shot took the foremost of the priests. The others paused, hesitant for a moment, ranged out in an irregular line. Past them, beyond the golden barrier, Rawson caught a confused glimpse of a sea of red faces. Green flames were stabbing upward from their ready weapons. The priests were between him and them, and there came to Rawson in that instant, through all the chaos of fighting and half-formed plans, the knowledge that these priests were a living barrier that held off the flames.

  He fired once more to check them, then sprang for the wide entrance of the tunnel. He fired again back of him, shooting wildly as he ran, then saw Loah as she came from her hiding place with the flame-thrower ready in her hand.

  "Quick!" he gasped. "Get back!" Then, with her, he was running stumblingly through the dark.

  * * * * *

  There could be no escape; even while they fled he knew it. And yet they almost made it--though the end, when it came, was one that neither could possibly have foreseen.

  They were following a wide passage, one of the countless thoroughfares of the Reds. It was deserted. Loah flashed her light freely. Ahead of them the passage turned. Just short of that bend was a rift in the rocks.

  "There!" Loah gasped. "Turn there. It will take us back to the jana." But the words were followed by a flash of green from dead ahead.

  The flames that made it came quickly after and a dozen of the red warriors were before them, the light of their weapons slanting just above Rawson's head. His rifle was half raised--they would at least fight to the last. Then he realized that the green death was not swinging downward.