by Don Wilcox
Allan made the break, then. He bounded up over the edge, just as Sully lifted something as heavy as an anvil. Allan sidestepped. A dozen men must have blocked his path. They crowded him toward Sully, and the anvil stone was raised to strike.
“Push him back into the pit!” Sully ordered.
The arms gave a heavy thrust and Allan took the fall, rolling, anticipating the crush of death before he could regain his feet.”
He came up to his full height, Jimmy was in front of him, waiting to catch the blow.
But Sully stood like a statue, his arms upraised. He was listening to a sound from a distant tunnel. Everyone was listening.
A siren-like wail echoed dimly through the cavern. It was one of their guards signaling from a distance. Signaling something that made Sully forget all about the murder he meant to commit. He lowered the stone slowly. In his tense, hoarse voice, he uttered words that struck chills through Allan’s spine.
“The Scravvzek is coming! Take your places for the Scravvzek!”
CHAPTER XXII
This was an event. Sully had been looking forward to this for weeks.
Allan and Jimmy slumped quietly to the side of the pit, breathing hard. Allan wanted to close his eyes and faint away. He wished someone would dash another bucket of cold water over him. The stifling air of the pit was thick with the smells of dust and mud and perspiration. Poor Jimmy! He sank to his knees and allowed himself to flop over the heap of the rubble.
The White Sharks hastily bound them hand and foot, and hurried off to give their attention to more pressing matters.
Death had come close. A man had no chance in this world; no chance to fight, much less to speak.
Allan watched a pair of Green Coats help Bandyworth to his feet and lead him away. They were vowing vengeance for that injury.
But the rest of the crew were paying no attention to the casualties of past battles just now. The Scravvzek was coming!
Whooing signals rang back and forth through the neighboring tunnels. Sully was shouting orders. The crowd around the pit was on its toes.
“Stand by for orders,” Sully yelled. “Call the guards. I want everyone present or accounted for. Count those dead natives—and make sure they are all dead. I don’t want any possums coming to life to spoil things. They’d tell the wrong story. Scour the Arena grounds again. Just once around, fast. We don’t want any natives busting in on our party . . .”
Amid the clatter of footsteps and that welter of voices, Allan and Jimmy exchanged words. They were stuck in the pit. Cautiously the y moved closer together and began working at their ropes. Men were stationed close around, and Sully’s orders had teeth of the sort provided by steel knives. But everyone’s first thought now was the approaching Scravvzek.
“Relax,” Allan whispered. “Our time will come. This Scravvzek thing seems to have them half paralyzed already.”
Allan wondered what it would be like. A spirit? A monster? A creature of fire or lightning or mist? An animal—or a man—or something invisible? A deadly gas? A host of microbes?
“Do you reckon it’ll eat us?” Jimmy whispered.
“How should I know?”
“He wanted those bodies counted. Maybe it feasts on people.”
Allan tried to scoff at the idea. Still, there was a certain justification for it. The eighty men were showing the nervousness of a cage full of canaries expecting a visit from a cat.
“Whatever the damned business is,” Allan muttered, “it doesn’t come because it’s hungry. It comes to see how much these boys have accomplished in the way of bad behavior. A spirit of evil—that’s what it is. It glorifies killing and violence.”
“How do you know?”
“I’ve listened to Sully’s talk. He’s been getting set for this event. His deal with the tribe was some sort of show-off experiment for the Scravvzek’s benefit. Watch him. He’s getting puffed up to make a report.”
A few minutes later Sully was repeating his previous curtain lecture. Most of the last minute preparations were complete, and the men had gathered around him for final orders.
Sully had managed to slick up his appearance and put on a fresh white tunic. He stood erect hands on hips, as if he were the owner of this region, Allan thought. Or maybe he thought of himself as the captain of a ship. He had just committed an act of piracy and was ready to appear before the king. His blustering airs made Allan gag.
Sully pointed to the dark-skinned tribesmen lying around, and how he boasted over that achievement! His voice grated and growled and occasionally shrieked, until the very stalagmites seemed to grow nervous from the echoes. Allan wondered if any of his scores of listeners were bothering to sift the truth of his words.
“Remember my plan!” Sully called out. He pointed to the nearest corpses “They did it themselves. We didn’t do it. We only stood by and watched them destroy themselves. Can you remember that, you rocky-chested dopes? They murdered each other. That’s our story. Who started it? The two pojaks. We only planted a little hatred and they did the rest. When they came together they battered each other to death.”
One of the thick-skulled Rocky Chests didn’t get it. He blurted that that wasn’t the way he had seen it.
Sully snapped him off cold.
“Throttle him, someone. We stick to my story. Take my word for it, this Scravvzek is something to deal with. You don’t know how. It’s all I can do to handle him. Leave the talking to me. You men should all know by this time that most of us are here on probation. So far we haven’t made much of a showing. But our work today ought to look better. We ought to get credit—”
“Our work, huh? I thought we didn’t do it,” someone interrupted. “I thought you said—”
“Get this!” Sully reared. “They murdered each other! We planted the hate for an experiment. They got into a jealous stew. Distrust, jealousy, suspicions, hatreds—that’s our stock in trade from here on in. If we can convince the Scravvzek that we can dish it out scientifically all over the world, we’re set. See what I mean? All the bonds that hold people together can be made to cave in—”
Another Rocky Chest almost spoiled Sully’s fine speech. He demanded to know how the hell anyone could say the Bunjojops murdered each other. “Listen, Sully, I almost slung my arm outa joint, throwin’ rocks for you, and here you don’t give me no credit.”
Someone struck the fellow across the mouth to quiet him. Sully applauded the action.
Allan thought they would all be too cowed to ask any more questions, for fear of being laughed at if not roundly dressed down. But a Green Coat spoke up with the question that Allan was asking himself.
“Can the Scravvzek be fooled that easy?”
It was obvious that Sully didn’t know. He dodged neatly. He gave the questioner a condescending smile, then drew himself up into a puffy toad and began to bluff his way past the question. Another call from the nearby tunnel spared him. The guard warned, with a long singing “whooo!” that the Scravvzek was coming closer.
“It’s time to scatter, men!” Sully ordered. “Take care! Look out for the ceilings. Get moving!”
CHAPTER XXIII
The men looked to the walls and scattered themselves around among corners where no loose hanging stones would be likely to fall on them. Some crouched behind large stalagmites as if taking protection against tree trunks. Some ducked into alcoves in the cavern walls. A few remained on the cavern floor near the pit where Allan and Jimmy waited as prisoners.
A low sullen glow of light presently showed through the dark purple opening of one of the larger cavern passages.
Other lights seemed to dim down and lose their color. The brilliant yellow over the Arena faded. Purple walls deepened into blackness.
The approaching light grew brighter, a reflected glow of deep orange. As if an angry sun were about to rise through a black canyon.
As yet, its source couldn’t be seen. Allan and Jimmy watched from the edge of the pit. One of the guards shot a hard glance at them
and must have guessed that they were loosening their bonds. He started over toward them, swinging his sword. But at that moment the low roar of the Scravvzek’s approach rumbled through the caverns. The guard shrank back, and decided to forget about Allan and Jimmy.
The rumble was followed by a clatter of stones falling here and there like scattered hailstones. Flakes of stone that the cavern weather had loosened from the walls and ceiling were beginning to shake down. Clack! Clack! CRASH!
The floor was vibrating strangely. The edge of the pit, against Allan’s bound wrists, was quivering and shuddering. Leaning backward with his elbows hooked over the edge, Allan looked at the row of murdered black men. Stone dead, and all too oblivious to this approaching pandemonium.
He noticed one who was lying face down, with one arm extended upward from the elbow, the hand hanging limply over his head. Now the trembling floor caused the hand to sway. “That dead man’s started wavin’,” Jimmy remarked. “Do you reckon he, is dead?”
“I don’t think he’s hailing a cab.”
“Well, I wish his hand would quit wobblin’. It makes me nervous. You got a funny feelin’, Captain?”
“The ground’s shaking my knees, if that’s what you mean.”
“Oh, is that how it is? Gozzle-dingit, I kept thinkin’ my knees was shakin’ the ground.”
A moment later the dead man stopped waving. A bucket-sized stone fell from the ceiling a few feet from him and his hand came down with a bounce.
“Look, Jimmy, the walls are moving!”
Allan forgot to breathe. It was the weirdest sight he had ever seen stone walls stretching, widening, rising slowly like rubber balloons gradually expanding.
“Gosh, I wonder what’s happening to the tribe back there in the green cave,” Jimmy mumbled, trying to turn for a long backward glance. “I hope they don’t git caught in a squeeze play.” Suddenly he was frantic. “Geegee-gad! Look at ‘em! Look at ‘em! Those walls! Anything can happen, Captain. Anything—”
His outburst was nearly violent, and Allan shuddered at the thought that he might lose his head completely. But his fury went to his hands, and his tough fight against the bonds was suddenly won. A hand slipped free.
“Good for you, Jimmy! Take it easy now,” Allan whispered. “No, don’t untie me yet. Wait till you’re sure no one’s—”
Their words were swallowed up in the groaning of cavern walls and the thunder-like crashing of rocks. No one was looking now. Allan and Jimmy worked fast. In a moment they were free.
“Hold tight!” Allan said. “Wait till the time’s right, and we’ll pop out of this spot like a couple of rockets.”
It came from all directions at once. It was fire and earthquake, and wind and the roar of avalanches, all sweeping in together. A single blaze of orange light came through the big purple cavern like a knife blade. Like an angry sun leaping into sight, it suddenly filled out into the shape of a ball. It was surging forward through the tunnel.
The uproar subsided momentarily. The blazing ball of light softened into a dull, melancholy sphere. That was what Allan and Jimmy saw as they bounded across the white tile plaza. The moment of semi-darkness was right for them. The quieting of sounds was’ less favorable. Their footsteps beat an audible tattoo.
But no one followed them. Just now everyone was looking out for himself, and the devil with the prisoners.
They stopped short when a new flare of orange light suddenly burst through a wall in the distance. An eye of fire. It broke through the solid rock. It gazed like the eye of a giant. One, two, three, four seconds—then if flashed off. Only the blank black wall was there where it had been. The bare rock, a wisp of steamy smoke, a wave of heat, and a spilling of lava. The thing had come from nowhere and had vanished before Allan could catch his breath.
“Spots!” Jimmy gulped. “There it comes again!”
They ran back. They dodged behind a stalagmite that had just been deserted by two White sharks. They dropped down. Jimmy was gulping.
Another eye appeared, and another. They were bursts of flame. They spurted out of the wall without warning and left a spilling of melted lava in their wake. The wall then stared back blankly, and Allan tried to believe what he had seen was only an illusion.
It couldn’t be denied. Neither could it be understood. Was there a fiery power underlying all of this mountainous region? A power that was everywhere at once? That moved through rocks as if they were nothing?
How could such a Power ever exert any intelligent force over people? How could it be more than an uncontrolled volcano? How? Allan shook his head dizzily. They had called it evil. There’s nothing evil about a tornado or an avalanche or an earthquake, he thought. No man in his right mind should ever bow down to blind force. Was there more? A living, breathing spirit, with a will directed by some diabolical intelligence?
One of the· eyes had burst forth close enough for Allan to see plainly the veins of fire. The flame vanished, yet there lingered a thinner image—the ball of “cotton candy” that Jimmy had described.
It hung there against the wall, as large as any bass drum—fluffy and steamy, like a million tiny neon tubes woven into a pattern of glowing veins. It sifted along the rock, steam-like and gradually melted away. Lava streamed down the wall with a sullen swish and stiffened like candle drip.
Fire-eyes flashed. Walls groaned. Dust swirled. Ceilings stretched and grew to new heights. The mountains over this region must have been lifting their heads higher into the sky, Allan thought. And earthquakes must have rocked the valleys for miles around.
And all the while, the eighty men who had made this weird world their home were waiting, half hidden, like frozen rabbits—waiting for the Scravvzek to come to them—to—to weigh them in the balance. Before this blind power they were on probation, Sully had said. They were waiting to know whether they had grown strong enough in the arts of evil to win the Scravvzek’s approval. What a strange ambition!
And all the while, the one deep orange sun was moving forward slowly through the largest passage that opened into the great room.
From one side Allan caught the motion of white. Sully. Sully in his starchy uniform. He was walking forward, half defiant of the thundering powers that had threatened. His jaws were tight. His hateful eyes were narrowed against the flares of light. He walked with a tenseness, as if he expected the ceiling to break over his head.
Sully stopped. Along with the advancing orange fire-ball, a series of green lights had come into view. They reflected in his hard face. His eyes widened. He continued his advancing steps in an attitude of crouching.
Along with the approaching blaze of orange light, huge fingertips of green were advancing. Fingers of green light. Some of them were crawling along the floor of the cavern. Each blob of green was as large as a lion’s paw, yet a thing of light. Thin, steam-like, luminous substance. Allan thought he could see through them. He saw them in groups, like fingers of a hand. Groups of five or six or seven. He could visualize a huge shapeless invisible giant crawling—crawling blindly—feeling his way. But there were only fingertips to be seen. Three groups of them crawling ahead. Three invisible hands.
Back of the crawling ones, the shell of orange fire advanced with rhythmic motion like the stride of a man, walking slowly, confidently. Allan fancied he could see a man holding the shell of light over his head and, shoulders.
Yes, there was a man . . . A pair of long legs, walking as a human being walks . . . Green rows of giant’s fingers moving him along in the right direction.
Like the fingertip of two giant hands about to touch, the two vertical rows of fiery green lions’ paws urged the man forward. They had him. With a light touch they guided him. He made no attempt to twist out of their grasp. He didn’t writhe from pain, or shrink from the heat of their colored fire.
“It’s Pakkerman,” Jimmy whispered. “I saw him before.”
“Pakkerman!” Allan echoed without any breath at all. “Yes . . . Yes, of course . . . No one else in
the world walks like that!”
“That’s the Doc, all right,” Jimmy whispered excitedly. “He’s bringin’ the fire right along with him. Or it’s bringin’ him, I can’t tell which, fer sure.”
“It’s got him! It’s got him! Damn! How’d he get himself into that? How did he—”
Allan hardly knew what he was saying. The thing was moving along, coming closer, striding easily toward Sully, who stood waiting for it, arms folded, face white with tension. Forty feet of white tile floor separated Sully from the advancing fingers . . . and Pakkerman.
“The poor guy!” Allan whispered.
“He was always the unluckiest mortal that ever lived. But how did he ever get himself wrapped up in that?”
The clattering and groaning of rocky walls subsided into distant rumbles, like a storm that has decided to hold off its fury. A weirdly quiet moment. An ominous quiet. A quiet of waiting for something—an explosion—a bolt of lightning—a collision of worlds—
“Can you see his face?” Jimmy whispered.
“Faintly. He’s in there, all right.”
Pakkerman’s costume was mostly nakedness.· His muscular legs were coppery red from the glow of the fire he carried, cut by horizontal stripes of green from the great fingertips that lined his figure from ankles to chest. His shoulders and head could be discerned dimly through the shell of light. Deep-set eyes, a high forehead, waves of hair like carved ebony . . . But now the shell of orange fire that surrounded him like a ball of illuminated cotton candy grew brighter, and brighter, so that the smoky image of the man within was lost.
The halls of stone fell silent. The eyes from the surrounding walls had disappeared. The melting, hissing lava quieted. There was only the one ball of orange fire visible, now, burning into Allan’s eyes like a baleful sun that had burned its way through a stormy sky.
The Scravvzek had come to a focus at last. It spoke.
CHAPTER XXIV
It spoke in a low, rumbling voice—Pakkerman’s voice! Pakkerman’s voice, amplified, as if rising out of a deep volcano.