“But we can escape—you and I. When the earth shakes, we can fly above it in your flying ship and when it has ended, we can land again upon a new world that will be all our own.”
“But what are those quakes planned to accomplish?” Markham demanded, holding her trembling figure. “What is their goal, up there, in starting a catastrophe of that kind? Why were those pillars of metal built and started vibrating in the first place?”
“To bring back the moon.”
Her calm matter-of-factness in her words, even more than the incredible answer, rocked Markham to his heels. “Wha-a-at?”
“Or course. But I forgot that you had not been told the nature of the Great Attainment. Many ages ago, my people dwelt upon their great continent in the western ocean—the land that no longer exists.”
“Mu!” Markham exclaimed. “The lost continent of Lemuria. Then the legends are true!”
“I know not that name,” Tolkilla said simply, and continued: “My people built ships that flew through the air, borne by the power of the sun-force. At last they built a great ship, larger than any before, and in it, a group of our greatest scientists flew up until they reached the moon which they had long desired to explore. But in landing, their great ship was smashed and when they came to rebuild it in order to return, they found that the sun-force on the moon was of a different character and could not be used for their power.”
Markham nodded, completely absorbed in the vast scientific implications of the incredible tale.
“With no atmosphere on the moon, naturally the sun’s rays would be different.”
“So, other scientists in my land started at once to construct another great ship with which to fly up and rescue those marooned on the great globe. But, before the new ship could be completed, a great calamity visited the world and the land of my people vanished under the sea. With them went the unfinished rescue ship and all knowledge and plans.”
“But how did your people know about the trouble on the moon? How did they know those scientists were still alive?”
“We visited them daily, of course, projecting our soul-form to them exactly as Tutul Xac and I projected ourselves to you. We still converse with them daily, for it is their wisdom and knowledge that is directing the Great Attainment.”
“You mean…Markham’s eyes bulged in the darkness, “you mean those people on the moon are still alive—and that you and Tutul Xac talk to them?”
“Surely. After the catastrophe that destroyed the homeland, sparing only those of us who dwelt in this far colony, the scientists directed us to find this spot where the moon was torn from the earth many ages ago. Here, they told us, we would find the moon metal in great quantities for the construction of the shafts which would at last return our scientists to earth. So my people abandoned their great colonial cities and moved here, vanishing from the sight of mankind to fulfill our destiny.”
Markham’s brow felt feverish. It was all so hellishly, undeniably logical.
Too logical to be idly dismissed as legend or fantasy.
“Tolkilla,” Markham whispered dazedly, “how were the shafts of vibrating moon metal supposed to affect the rescue of your scientists?”
“By shaking the earth with a regular rhythm until at last it was driven far enough from its course for the moon to be caught and drawn back.”
“My God!” The thought was like a cold hand squeezing at the pit of Markham’s stomach. “But that would mean terrible earthquakes, floods, a smashing impact that would destroy all humanity.”
“That is true. All except we who, upon this great rock, would be above the floods and cushioned against the quakes. The scientists have calculated everything. I do not understand most of it, but I know that the Great Attainment is so timed that the moon will strike upon the opposite side of the earth. The scientists themselves have constructed cushioned cells far in the heart of the moon in which they will stay, unharmed, until after the landing.”
“It’s insane!” Markham cried hoarsely. “You can’t wipe out a whole civilization just to save the descendants of some ancient explorers.”
“Not descendants, my Steven. The scientists who will return are the same ones who went, ages ago. We, who dwell within the influence of the life vibrations, remain ever youthful. That is the whisper which you hear constantly in the air, the pulsing of smaller spires within the pyramids.”
“Tolkilla!” Markham’s words were no more than a gasping whisper. “Tolkilla, how—how old are you?”
“Old?” She hesitated. “I know not, my Steven. But I was twenty-two years old when the Mother Land was destroyed and I moved here, within the sphere of the life-pulse.”
Markham staggered back at her answer, a moan rising to his lips. This lovely, desirable creature thousands of years old? What would happen to her vibrant beauty, once she left the zone of life-renewing vibrations?
His shocked horror was swept away by a sharp cry from Tolkilla. In the absorption of their talk, both had forgotten for the moment the purely physical danger that still menaced.
“Steven! The beam! That means Tutul Xac and his warriors are leaping into the shaft to drop down here. We must flee down the tunnel at once.” Markham cast one look at the swirling, vaporous glow filling the well-shaft. Then, he whirled and raced after Tolkilla into the blackness of the tunnel.
They took perhaps ten steps, running hand in hand, and then jolted to an abrupt halt.
Ahead of them, down the tunnel, another golden glow of light was growing, spreading, moving toward them. Markham’s eyes identified it as the reflection of a sharp beam approaching around a distant bend in the tunnel.
And as they stood, uncertainly, their ears caught the whispered beat of running feet coming with the growing light.
“Trapped!” Tolkilla whispered hopelessly. “There is a smaller private shaft midway between the well and the outer ledge. Warriors have come that way also to block our escape. It is the end, my Steven. The end!”
CHAPTER IX
Fight for Life
“The approach of a menace that was physical, tangible, had a steadying effect on Markham’s mind, wiping away the horror of the unbelievable things he had heard and seen. He was not, normally, a fighting man, but now he welcomed the thought of conflict. It was a solid reality to cling to in a nightmare world of impossible unrealities.
He said grimly: “Maybe it is the end. But it’s just the beginning of the damndest fight those birds ever got into. When they finally take us, they’ll know they’ve taken something. You’re sure there isn’t a niche or a side passage around here to hide in?”
“Only a very short, unfinished section of tunnel just ahead. But the warriors know of its existence and they will send someone to search it thoroughly. It leads nowhere but to solid rock. There is no hiding place anywhere within it. We would be trapped there.”
The light in the tunnel was growing stronger as the vengeful warriors approached the bend.
Markham could see Tolkilla quite clearly, now, although the dim light still gave her slender figure an appearance of unreality, like a phantom.
“Hey!” He whirled and dug impulsive fingers into her shoulders. “Can you project your—your image down here, the way you came to my apartment that time?”
“Yes, but—”
“Quick! Send your image down that tunnel to where they can see it. Make them think it’s really you, trying to get away. Then, when they chase you, make your image decoy them into that blind tunnel. I’ll bet you ten to one that the whole mob races in there and gives us a clear chance to duck past them down the main tunnel without being seen.”
“Oh, I can! That will surely work. It is the way to freedom, my Steven.”
She closed her eyes, went rigid in concentration. Markham held his breath. The light and the sound of running feet were ver
y close to the last concealing turn.
And at any moment, another horde of blood-thirsty fighters would come plummeting down the shaft of the well to trap them between the two forces. A single blast of the deadly sunlight force would mean their finish.
“Hurry!” he panted.
Abruptly, the light down the tunnel wavered and the steady rhythm of pounding feet was broken. A chorus of wild yells echoed down the passage and then were suddenly muffled and distorted.
“You did it!” he cried as Tolkilla opened her eyes, swaying with exhaustion. “They’ve raced off into the blind tunnel. Come on. Run!”
Hand in hand, they dashed forward.
At the bend in the passage, Markham drew Tolkilla back and crept cautiously forward.
He peered around the sharp turn and looked straight into the startled eyes of a warrior left alone to guard the main passage.
The warrior’s mouth opened to bellow an alarm and his hand jerked at the sun-force weapon on his belt. Markham’s driving fist caught the warning yell unuttered and drove it and numerous teeth back down the warrior’s throat. Another blow to the angle of the bronzed jaw ended the fight before it had begun.
The small sounds of the scuffle were lost in the echoing yells of searchers inside the smaller passage. Markham snatched the sunlight case, hoisted the limp body to his shoulder and jerked his head for Tolkilla to follow.
“Come on. I’ll drop this fellow down the passage a ways where he won’t be discovered right away. In the general milling around, when they come out of the blind tunnel, they may not miss him right away and we’ll need every minute of time we can gain. Lead on to this smaller shaft you mentioned—the one these fellows used to flank us.”
“Straight down this tunnel,” Tolkilla said, and added hopefully: “This is also the way to your flying ship which we could use to escape.”
“That will be something to remember after those spires are smashed once and for all,” Markham growled.
A few yards down the corridor he laid his limp burden against the wall and raced after Tolkilla. As the darkness thickened, he followed her pattering footsteps, trusting her knowledge of the passage and her weird faculties to guide him. In his hand, the flat bulk of the captured sunlight gun was wonderfully comforting.
“Wish I had a flashlight,” he grunted, stumbling over a heap of loose rock on the floor.
“A light?” Tolkilla’s voice floated back to him. “I forgot that you have not the power to see with your mind as I do. On your weapon, you will find a small button upon one side. Press that, and you will produce a faint beam that gives light but has not the power to inflict burns.”
“Hell!” Markham’s exclamation of surprise turned to a grunt of satisfaction as his exploring fingers found and pressed the button. “This is better.”
A dim, golden glow of light swept out from the blunt muzzle to flow along before him like a ball of luminous vapor.
“There is still another button,” Tolkilla explained further, “that produces mild sun-stroke. That was used upon you out on the ledge when you sought to attack Tutul Xac.”
“Thanks,” Markham panted, “but from now on, I’m playing for keeps. Anybody who tries to stop us is due to get the strongest beam this thing can put out.”
A moment later, he added grimly: “And that’ll come too soon, I’m afraid. I can hear a lot of yelling behind us, and it isn’t getting any fainter.”
They burst around another turn and into a great, domed rock chamber that swallowed their feeble light without revealing either walls or ceiling. Markham could see the shadowy outlines of boxes and bales piled high on each side of the path they were following.
“A storehouse,” Tolkilla explained. “Sometimes men go out into the outer world and bring back things needed for our work.”
“Hey!” Markham’s eyes were glistening at the sight of a familiar, squat wooden box. “There’s my dynamite. They must have lugged it in here from the plane.”
He swerved, caught up a half-dozen of the deadly cylinders with caps and fuse and stuffed them into his pockets. “Now, if I could only find my Luger—” Behind them, the dark shaft of the tunnel erupted a burst of light and the tight-packed mass of half a hundred feathered warriors. At the sight of their victims, a great roar bellowed up toward the hidden dome of the chamber and a dozen light beams lanced out.
Markham, throwing himself in front of Tolkilla as a shield, felt the tingling impact of heat but nothing worse.
“Run!” Tolkilla sobbed, tugging him toward the black circle where their passage ran on from the far side of the big chamber. “Their weapons are not deadly at this range, but the warriors are trained to run swiftly.”
Diving for the momentary protection of the further tunnel, Markham glanced back. The feathered horde was putting on a fresh burst of speed that was eating up the distance between pursuers and pursued with deadly haste.
To get more speed out of his own tortured legs was impossible. Already, his lungs were sucking in liquid fire and his muscles were beginning to rebel against the insistent demands for more speed. Tolkilla, too, was wavering from the sapping exertion. It was only a matter of moments until one of the fleeter warriors, racing ahead, got close enough for one annihilating blast Markham’s eyes caught the shadowy outline of his dynamite box, lying beside the path half-way between them and the racing warriors.
“Run!” he roared at Tolkilla. “Hold your ears and run for that next bend in the passage.”
He leveled his sunlight gun at the distant box and pressed the lever.
BLAM-M-M-M!
The storehouse, the tunnel, the oncoming horde of warriors—all vanished in a blinding cloud of smoke and flame. An invisible, irresistible force, acrid with the fumes of powder and rock dust, plucked Markham from his feet and slammed him down the corridor into the rock wall of the bend with crushing force.
“Steven! Steven Markham, are you hurt?”
Markham shook the clouds from his brain and stumbled to his feet, leaning heavily on Tolkilla until his rubbery muscles stiffened. From the direction of the big chamber there was only an ominous silence, broken now and then by the sharp clatter of falling rock. There were no shouts, no sounds of movement. Not even a groan.
Markham found his sunlight case. It was uncomfortably hot, and when he pressed the buttons, nothing happened. The force of the explosion had evidently unleashed the stored sun-force.
“Lead on,” he said soberly, shocked by the vast destruction he had wrought. “We’ve got to get up that other shaft before Tutul Xac figures out what happened.”
“It is but a short way ahead.”
They went on toward another faint glow of light that grew into a narrow vertical shaft filled with the luminescence of the sun-force. The tunnel they were following skirted one edge of the shaft, around a narrow rock ledge, and vanished into the far wall.
“That is the passage out to where your flying ship is waiting,” Tolkilla said hopefully, pointing to the other end of the ledge.
Markham ignored the hint.
“How can we make that light lift us up to the surface?” he demanded. Tolkilla’s face blanched.
“We—we cannot. I did not realize before—but I can no longer command the Keeper of the Force to raise us. He knows by now that I have become a—a traitor.”
“Damn!” Markham glared at the lighted shaft. “Will that beam support our weight at this level?”
“Oh, yes. But it is only strong enough to stop a falling body opposite this passage. The lifting force has not been turned on.”
To demonstrate, Tolkilla stepped from the ledge and floated gently in the golden radiance.
“In other words,” Markham grunted, half to himself, “our bodies weigh practically zero at this ledge and the weight increases as we go up above the focal poi
nt. Are there other passages between here and the surface?”
“Only one. Half-way up, there is a shorter one. From it, stairs rise through the rock to the inner chamber of Tutul Xac’s own private quarters. But that way is always guarded, night and day.”
“Guards or no guards, it’s worth a try. Come on.”
He stepped clear of the ledge, caught hold of a bit of rock projecting from the rough shaft wall and pulled his weightless body upward. With a gasp of comprehension, Tolkilla floated to his side and dug slender fingers into the rock to match his progress.
For the first few yards it was easy, a mere matter of keeping their drifting bodies close to the wall and literally walking up with their hands. But the higher they climbed, the less support was offered by the dwindling beam and there was a corresponding increase in the weight of their bodies. Soon, they were panting, bathed in perspiration, their fingers raw from the increasing effort necessary to keep pulling themselves higher.
“Here’s—a—good—spot—to—rest,” Markham panted at last, settling himself against a jagged outcropping that offered hand and foot-holds for them both. “How much farther?”
“Not far. But at any moment, Tutul Xac may order this beam cut off. Then, we will fall helplessly to the rocks many thousands of feet below.”
“That,” Markham said through locked teeth, “is the thing I’m trying not to think about. Tell me, Tolkilla, just why are you, a High Priestess, fighting against your own people, helping me destroy a project you say they’ve been working on for centuries?”
In the semi-darkness, Tolkilla’s eyes were luminous.
“Tell me, my Steven,” she whispered. “Can’t you read the answer to that question in your own heart?”
“But the first time we ever—er, met, you asked me to help you escape. Was that just bait to draw me here?”
The Adventure Novella MEGAPACK® Page 20