by Don Wilcox
“We’re going to crash! We’re going to crash!”
Her wild cry was seemingly without reason. Her long painful shriek of warning preceded the disaster by seconds. The mayor and his two boys looked ahead and saw nothing. The pilot apparently had all the altitude he needed. Was Madam Lasanda’s cry only a trick to divert Bill Gavor from his own scheme? If so, it was effective. Let her keep her little statue if she was going to make that much fuss over it. He’d find out later—
At the last split second they all saw. The plane was plunging for a jagged needle-like spire of rock. A blaze of color flared all around, and the Mayor caught a glimpse of the “eye”—a diamond that blazed like Fourth of July fireworks in the city park.
The eye was about a hundred feet below them. But the rocky spire from which it shone stretched up like a huge inverted icicle squarely in front of them. It was too late to dodge. The pilot shouted, “Hold tight!” He roared ahead full blast.
The propellors ripped into the spire. The concussion sounded like a crash of thunder. The plane folded up like an accordion at the top of the world.
CHAPTER XXXVIII
Footsteps sounded from somewhere back of Allan. He quickened his pace. He had left the glide-walk at the Black River Bridge and had turned “northward”—upstream. The “skeleton spring” would be found in this direction.
He hurried as fast as the dark narrow trail would permit. The thin blue lines along the water’s edge crowded him hard against the ragged perpendicular walls. The stream’s surface was only two feet below him. A slip into the deep would offer no danger, he decided, unless he made the mistake of swallowing some water. And for all he knew, the poison it contained was too greatly diluted to be dangerous here in the main stream.
At every moment’s pause he could hear the advancing beat of footsteps. He looked for a chance to climb to a higher level. The territory was all unfamiliar. It would be a bad bet to be overtaken by an enemy on this narrow trail.”
Soon he knew that it was Sully in pursuit. Sully and two or three others. They were talking in low, excited voices.
Allan came into a wide patch of light, bluish white like sunlight.
The path had opened into a sort of sky-lighted plaza. He bounded across the open space, knowing that for a moment he would be a visible target, if anyone cared to shoot at him. It was high time to give them the slip. He must leave the trail and climb. He clambered through the jagged rocks that gave him a path upward into temporary hiding. Thirty feet above the floor he secluded himself in the shadows. He could go higher if necessary. The ragged walls went up, up, up. There were miles of walls leading up to the open sky! What a sight! A patch of blue. It seemed weeks since he had seen the sky.
He was breathing heavily from the chase. He would wait here and take his chances. His pursuers would have to come out into the open for a moment when they reached this plaza. He could look down through a crevice and see them without being seen.
The footsteps were approaching cautiously now. Along with the sounds of the advancing party, Allan noted the soft sough of the winds high, high above him, echoing down like the murmur of waves inside a seashell.
Rain could descend into this deep well. Mountain animals might even stumble down through the crevices. Along the shadowed edge of the plaza floor only twenty yards from his hiding place he could distinguish the white ribs of a skeleton—a luckless mountain goat that had chanced to climb down, or perhaps had fallen.
Again Allan bent forward to get the best possible view of lofty walls. The spire was visible.
The well was so deep, the spire must have reached to an elevation nearly two miles above him. It stood clearly etched in sunlight and shadow—a magnificent sight. The blue shadows of a passing cloud floated over it. The brilliant colors from the diamond were there, blazing their radiance out at the world.
Allan’s attention was brought back sharply. His pursuers were stalking into the lighted opening. Through his barricade of stones Allan could see them without being seen. They were a party of three—Sully and two Green Coats—armed with ropes and clubs. Sully wore that certain savage look. He was pretty sure he would be dragging Allan back at the end of a rope in another minute or two.
“Careful, now,” Sully said in a low voice, trying to look in all directions at once. “There’s where I thought he would be. Right there at the skeleton spring.” He pointed to the heap of white bones. “He came this way. He couldn’t have come any more directly if he’d been a fish . . . But where is he?”
They shot a flashlight beam around in the shadows beyond the skeleton, and Allan saw that here was the string he had come to find. It was a shallow five-foot pool, bubbling with black waters that overflowed into the river. Several decaying skeletons of mountain animals could be seen in the dark corners.
“I don’t see his foot tracks. Do you think he went on?”
“He might have gone up,” Sully suggested.
“He’d have to do some tall climbing to get out of this pit. He’d better go back and take the glide-walk up.”
“He couldn’t do that without bumping into us—unless he’d swim the river.”
They looked at the river and shot the flashlight beam over the inky waters. Sully shrugged and looked up again. He shook his head.
“No, he wouldn’t be fool enough to try to climb back to the Red Room from here. Besides, he’d come out on the outside of the tower instead of the inside. No, he wouldn’t—”
Allan chanced another look into the opening that pointed to the sky. He was putting two and two together. Sue had been right, the glide-walk must have taken them through a long downward spiral that led, eventually, from the Red Room beneath the tower, to the vast chamber containing the cone of mirrors—also beneath the tower. In other words, the cone within the mountain, rising to a height of a mile and a half, pointed up to the red rock ceiling which was in turn the floor of the Red Room. The Red Room, where Gallagher held forth, was the base of the tower.
Accordingly, Allan reasoned, the giant diamond must be directly above the mirrors of the world. How many hundreds of feet above, Allan could hardly guess, viewing it from this difficult angle. But there it was—the under-edge of the “eye”—flashing back the brilliant colors that it caught from the wide world.
His observations were interrupted by a sound that was like the roaring of an airplane.
He heard the Green Coats utter an exclamation of surprise. Sully cut them off. It was a plane. Its echoes thundered down through the opening.
It was coming closer, closer—
Allan saw it happen.
The twin motors darted into view. A small passenger plane. It plunged across the patch of blue like a bullet. It might have been magnetized by the tower. It struck like an arrow aiming for a bull’s eye.
Allan saw the dust and smoke of the concussion long before he heard any sounds. The tower swayed with the impact. It appeared to bend like a steel spring. He couldn’t be sure, for the upper end had swung out of sight; but he saw the fan of colored light from the diamond swinging through a swift upward arc, slowly, gradually, and still more gradually returning to its original position.
Then the upper part of the spire, returned to view. Stones and debris sifted down its walls slowly. Near the top was the plane, stuck like the tail-end of a weathervane on a lightning rod. Gleaming in the sun, it had a sadly crumpled look; but miraculously it hung tight. The tower had served as a catapult in reverse, Allan thought.
The sounds of the crash now ricocheted down, like the crackle of thunder. Some bits of stone or wreckage kept falling, so that the deep well of rock fused the noises into a low din of echoes. Allan wondered how the mountain goat would have sounded, coming down through that series of perpendicular walls.
Most of the falling stones were absorbed by the strangely plastic walls before they ever reached Allan’s level. A few fell all the way to a sloping heap of landslide sand, only ten feet from his hiding place.
“More visitors!” he heard Sully say. �
��What the devil next?”
“They’re getting out of the plane. I can see them,” one of the Green Coats said. “Hell, they’ll fall and break their fool necks.” He passed his binoculars to Sully.
For his own part, Allan could barely distinguish the little ant like movements in the neighborhood of the plane. Was it possible that its passengers would come out alive? The plane hadn’t ignited, fortunately. At any moment Allan expected it to come plummeting down the outside of the tower wall, bumping over the spikes of stone that ornamented the shaft like spears.
The plane stuck tight. So did the people. Some tiny object was falling, however, and as it neared the lower part of the opening, Allan thought it looked like a bottle on a tray. It was a coppery brown something, shiny, metallic.
A moment later it skidded along the sloping surface of the landslide heap and came to a harmless stop almost within Allan’s reach.
The Ksentajaiboa! The midget version—the little fellow that Madam Lasanda used in her studio!
Well, that was that. If Allan had had any doubt whatever concerning the identity of the party of invaders, this item clinched his best guess.
He slipped out of his hiding place silently and crawled back of a protecting rock to a position within four feet of the little copper doll. They hadn’t seen him. He hardly breathed. Had they forgotten him?
Sully’s order to one of the Green Coats put a crimp in Allan’s maneuver.
“See what the devil it is,” Sully said, giving the fellow his orders to climb up the rocks. “Don’t touch it if it looks like a bomb.”
“It’s no bomb. It’s an oversized bookend,” said the fellow with the binoculars. “Why don’t you loop it with your rope, Sully?”
One Green Coat was halfway up to Allan’s level when Sully began tossing the loop of rope. One lucky shot, Allan thought, and the prize would go out of his reach. But Allan intended to have that little fire tender, even if he had to come out of hiding to get it. It was something he remembered with high respect, and he didn’t care to have it fall in the wrong hands.
The trouble was, he was encumbered by the glass bottle that hung from the “skeleton spring.” The breaks had gone against him. He could imagine what a target he’d be for his pursuers, with a bottle of poison in one hand and a precious little copper statue in the other. In a fist fight he’d be about as efficient as a blind man on crutches.
He sprang out of his hiding place just as Sully’s loop of rope slithered up through the air. The rope fell over the Ksentajaiboa—a perfect catch! Sully gave a shout. “There! There! That’ll—hey, let go, you—”
The roar of curses that followed were only the excited accompaniment to Sully’s actions. He and the Green Coats were surprised out of their shoes, almost literally, at the sudden darting appearance of the man they had momentarily forgotten. Allan grabbed the rope and the statue at the same instant. He gave the rope a whipping jerk, and the end jumped out of Sully’s hand.
With another whirl of his arms, Allan succeeded in lashing it out of reach of the Green Coat who was leaping for it. It was the third man—the Green Coat who had climbed up toward Allan’s level—who made the daring trapeze flight. He caught the sailing end of the rope as he dove from the wall, and all his weight went down with it. He intended to jerk Allan and the statue down together.
Allan held tight to the rope and caught the fellow’s weight over the projecting rock against which Allan’s feet were braced. As the slack went over the edge, he slid it toward the sharp corner, holding back. The rope shredded and cut and fell apart with a pop.
Allen didn’t wait to see the Green Coat spill. The break of that rope had been his lucky break. His left hand hugged the little statue close to his body, and it hadn’t taken a scratch. Now the problem was to make an exit. But fast.
The upper level path was lighted for a distance of something less than a stone’s throw. Allan went charging around into the darkness where the path bent away from the blue-sky opening. Stones’ throws were being measured in a very real way before he got around the curve. Clack! Clack! Thunk!
He was ahead of them. They couldn’t throw anything fast enough to keep him from rounding the corner. Now he raced over a narrow catwalk twenty feet above the river. The semi-darkness was in his favor.
A bouncing missile struck at his feet, and he almost tripped and fell. He was tempted to make a dive of it. Would Sully remember how well he could swim under water?
The footsteps were pounding around the lower path into the darkness. Sully was mad. He would overtake Allan on this side of the glide-walk bridge or break a leg in the attempt.
Something lying on the faintly lighted catwalk showed Allan a possible way. It was a loose stone as large as a shoe box.
He put the statuette down and picked up the stone with both hands. He hurled it out into the river, whose dark waters showed as inky blue lines many feet below him.
Splusssh! The stone plunged in with the sound of a deep dive. The inky waters threw out a circle of nervous waves.
“There he goes!” came the shout from one of the Green Coats. Allan crouched and waited.
The pursuers, hurrying along the lower path, slackened their speed, Sully yelled for the flashlight. The beam cut back and forth across the surface.
“He went in right about there,” Sully said, steadying the light on a chosen flurry of waves. “He’ll swim with the stream.”
“Hell, he’ll go all the way to the bridge.”
“Or will he go across?”
They shot the light upward for a glance at the probable diving platform. Then contenting themselves that they were on the trail, they made tracks for the glide-walk bridge. There, they believed, they could overtake him—unless he tried to pull a wise one and crossed the stream ahead of them. He wouldn’t go upstream; there would be no future in that. If they kept the light busy they’d locate him within the next three and one-half minutes. He couldn’t stay under long.
“Later,” Sully said, “we’ll scour that upper trail. He probably hid that book-end thing before he dived.”
The footsteps pounded away.
Allan took his time about filling the bottle at the “skeleton spring,” and he was plenty slow about returning to the cone. Half an hour later the coast had cleared, and he moved back, walking and gliding by turns, with two prizes in his possession.
CHAPTER XXXIX
He missed Sue and Jimmy as he came to the station entrance to the vast cone room. He would find them later. He must take care of Pakkerman first.
He hurried past the base of the cone toward the arches far around the way. He had guessed that Pakkerman would come back for a rest as soon as his orgy of spark-throwing had subsided; and Allan had reasoned that after such a strenuous ordeal, a man’s first act would be to slacken his thirst.
Was Allan still in time to plant the death trap? He saw no flying arts of fire now. Pakkerman might have already retired, to take refuge at the fountain and the statue.
But when Allan slipped along toward the middle arch and peered through, he saw no signs of any occupants.
He set the little Ksentajaiboa down by a shadowed projection in the wall. He reached for the earthen water glass that rested on the ledge, near the built-in fountain.
He poured liquid from the bottle into the glass—about two-thirds full. He returned the glass to the ledge.
Then he moved back into the shadowed columns and found a place where he could hide the bottle with reasonable assurance that no one would ever find it. From the shadows he watched. He was just in time. Pakkerman was returning.
The globe of orange light came moving along with the well-known bounce of Pakkerman’s walk. The globe burned dimly, like a setting sun through a thick haze. The Scravvzek’s energies—or Pakkerman’s—were spent, Allan thought. This would be the right time for it to happen. Allan moved back a little as the tall form advanced toward the wall. The stride slackened.
Pakkerman paused. Allan saw him standing there tall
and powerful, and tired. He drew a deep, relaxing breath. The faint sun around him quivered. It was thin, like a halo on the form of a globe. The scar over his right eye showed plainly through it. Deep-set, eyes. Prominent features, at once wise and cynical and fatigued. The droop of his mouth, Allan thought, betrayed something of disgust. He must have hated himself for what he had to go through . . . or was his cynical look the result of his mirror-studies—the weaknesses of the human race—the hopelessness of man’s struggle—the bitterness?
That would all be over in a moment, Allan thought. All of this man’s painful realizations of the tragedies of an embittered world would soon be done.
Pakkerman reached slowly to the ledge. He hardly noticed that he was reaching, the action was so much a matter of habit.
His fingers took the water glass casually. He lifted it through the thin bubble-like fire-globe toward his lips.
His mouth straightened. His lips went tight. He had not sipped the liquid. He had seen something. Something on the floor in the shadow of the wall.
He set the glass aside, and like one hypnotized he moved toward the object that Allan had forgotten to hide. The Ksentajaiboa! Pakkerman might have been picking up explosives that were in danger of blowing his hands to atoms. He might have been picking up a pet kitten. He lifted the copper object slowly, turned it about in the light.
The thin globe of orange fire around his head and shoulders vanished.
“Well!” Allan heard him say. “So! . . . It must be! . . . It is!. . . Well!”
The Scravvzek had released him for the moment, Allan knew. That sort of talk was Doc Pakkerman himself, speaking out of the deep memories of his friendship with Madam Lasanda. Allan held his breath, watching. Now would he reach for the poison?
Could Allan stand to see it happen—now?
Holding the little statue carefully in his hands, Pakkerman abruptly turned and marched toward the nearest sloping area of the cone with the two billion mirrors.
Allan followed him at a discreet distance. It was a sure thing that Pakkerman meant to examine the area of the cone where a certain fortune teller would be found.