by Don Wilcox
And where was Sully, and why hadn’t he come to Bandyworth’s rescue? Sully was running around through the dark caverns, shouting that he was the Evil Scravvzek. The caverns echoed back at him, and they might go on echoing his hollow cry for years, Sue thought. For his strange behavior of the past hour had convinced her that Sully had gone off the beam. He had at last entered the dream world of his great ambition. In his crazed mind he believed that he was the Scravvzek.
“Don’t look at him,” Pakkerman said, leading them on toward the Red Room. “He’s gone.” Then, “Wait for me here. She’s calling,”
Pakkerman went dashing up the tower stairs. Sue and Jimmy waited. Another delay.
The brilliance of the great diamond showered through the tower and sifted down through the broken floor. Today, for the first time, Sue realized, the light of the sun, passing through the eye of the tower, was falling directly onto the cone of two billion little mirrors. For the first time—
Sue was struck by the thought. Something that Pakkerman had told Madam Lasanda last night now returned to her thoughts.
Pakkerman had built that great diamond-like structure in the wall of the tower. He had used the Scravvzek’s might for some of his own purposes. His theory had been that the sunlight from the outside world would give the mirrors a different quality . . . But he had never completed his plan.
“Why not?” Madam Lasanda had asked.
“Because the Scravvzek influence had begun to dominate me. My plan had been to remove the floor. I was going to be able to see the world through rose colored glasses, so to speak. But the disillusionment of watching the people through the dark light of the Scravvzek influence got a grip on me. So I never went through with the plan . . . But look! Allan Burgess has done it in his first hours of Scravvzek power. And I believe he knew what he was doing. He had every reason to know that the cone was directly beneath the tower, and that only a sheet of red stone held back the good light. Tomorrow, when the sun shines down through, a new influence will begin. It may take years—”
So Doc Pakkerman had spoken last night, up there on the little tower platform where he had stationed Madam Lasanda for safe keeping.
As Sue and Jimmy waited, they remarked upon those words. Looking down into the vast cone room, they wondered whether a new influence had begun that would take years.
“The orange light is kinda thin down there now,” Jimmy said. “I can see some mirrors, but I’m darned if I see ‘em very far. There’s a big cloud packin’ in all around. You see it, Sue?”
“Sure. You mean’ all that greenish gray stuff. Gee, I wonder if Allan’s still down there alive.”
“Let’s go down, Sue. It can’t more’n kill us. We’ve waited fer Doc Pakkerman, an’ waited—”
“Listen!” Sue said, looking up into the tower. “You hear what I hear? The mayor and the madam are having an argument. It’s a good thing Pakkerman’s, on his way up. Look, Jimmy!”
They could see the mayor and Madam Lasanda at the edge of the little platform. She was backing away from him. He was trying to get something away from her. Yes, and he got it, and threw it over the edge.
The object came flying down through the center of the hollow tower.
“Yeah, it would be that!” Jimmy grunted. “He hated that gadget.”
They watched the little Egyptian fire tender as it fell past them. Sue could see the little arm still waving back and forth in rhythm. The low blaze was burning. It flared brighter as the little statue descended into the shadows of the cone room.
“It’s gonna fall into that greenish cloud,” Jimmy said. “Look at it blaze—”
It struck the sponge-like cloud, and fifty trails of yellow flame leaped out wildly in all directions. Sue and Jimmy jumped back.
Suddenly the whole immense world beneath them heaved with a thunderous explosion. The fire billowed up with an angry roar. Sue started to fall backward. Jimmy caught her and buried her face in his chest. Together they hugged the wall. Sue held her ears.
Minutes later she was still holding her ears when Jimmy yelled for her to come on.
“Where?”
“Up the tower. Pakkerman called us. He said to come up.”
“Pakkerman!” Sue said shaking her head dizzily. Why hadn’t Pakkerman tried to get Allan out before this dreadful thing happened. “No, I won’t go. I’m going to find Allan.”
“No,” Jimmy shouted. “You and I are going up. Pakkerman’s going down. Look!”
Sue shook her head. The fire was all down below, now, burning all around the base of the cone. Heat was crackling up through the broken floor into the open shaft, which acted as a flue. She peered upward dizzily to where Jimmy was pointing. She saw Doc Pakkerman climbing over the rail of the little observation platform. Madam Lasanda made a futile gesture of trying to hold him there.
Pakkerman dived down through the shaft, through the broken floor, into the flames.
CHAPTER XLIX
The tower itself did not burn, but it slowly melted away at the base, so that gradually it sank.
Sue and Jimmy waited with Madam Lasanda, the mayor, and the pilot, on a little shelf, on the outside, a few feet below the edge of the diamond. From this lookout point they watched the Bunjojops come to their rescue. While most of the tribe waited on the mountain trail, Koo-Jop and thirty picked men came back to the ledge across the pit from the sinking tower. It was a matter of timing, Jimmy observed, but also a matter of good muscles. And most of all, a matter of every man’s faith in every other man. For the Bunjojops were building a human bridge.
When the time was right, they swung out and attached the lower end of their human chain to the side of the tower. They climbed to keep pace with the tower’s sinking.
When the time was right, Jimmy and the pilot ushered Madam Lasanda and Sue and the mayor across to the ledge safely. Jimmy followed the pilot across and planted his feet on the firm mountainside. The mayor grumbled that it was a damned undignified way to get out of a jam, and he cast unappreciative eyes toward the natives who had risked their lives to help him. Jimmy bristled and thought, “Just one slurring remark out of him an’ he’ll go down in that pit, the same as his boys did.”
Fortunately for the mayor, he said no more; and when he stood by silently while Sue and Madam Lasanda expressed their appreciation to Koo-Jop, Jimmy decided that maybe—just maybe—the mayor was a little bit ashamed of himself.
Sue wouldn’t go on. She was all for going down into the caverns again, and so was Jimmy.
Madam Lasanda tried to restrain them. She followed them back to the nearest cavern entrance, pleading with them not to take the risk.
“Please, friends . . . I’ve studied the Scravvzek ever since I came here two years ago hoping to recover Pakkerman . . . Listen to me. I’ve never told anyone this before, but when I made that former trip to this region, I left heartbroken. You see, I went into these caverns. I called for Val, and he knew I was there looking for him . . . But he never came out to see me. Can you imagine how heartbreaking that was for me? Believe me, if Allan’ is still down there, alive, in the hands of the Scravvzek, he will not let you find him, even though you look for days.”
“And if he isn’t alive?” Sue asked.
Madam Lasanda nodded. “It’s much better to believe him dead . . . For a long time I believed Val Pakkerman to be dead . . . But when I learned how to understand the little Ksentajaiboa, given to me by some pojak who had explored this cavern world, I began to know that there was still a chance.”
Sue straightened, though she was trembling. Jimmy stood strong at her side. She drew a slow breath of resignation.
“I guess I understand,” she said slowly. “You really aren’t foreseeing any hope at all, are you?” She studied the mysterious light in Madam Lasanda’s eyes. Was the fortune teller holding back something. “Or are you?”
“There’s just one thing I can tell you that looked hopeful for a moment. My last communication from the Ksentajaiboa, before the mayor t
ook it out of my hands and threw it down, was something about Allan.”
Allan—” Sue echoed. “What was it?”
“He was moving back and forth between two groups of mirrors. School children giving the flag salute, and some foreign group of singers, singing a song of hope for a better world. There was hope in that for Allan, don’t you see. A Scravvzek servant who stops to get interested in things like that simply doesn’t fill the bill . . . So—”
“So you think—”
“I don’t know. But I believe Val Pakkerman wouldn’t have dived into that fire if he hadn’t believed the Scravvzek was ready to take him back.”
A shout from the cliff echoed down to them. Buni came on the run bearing news.
“Tower stops melting! Stops sinking. Tower stands still again.”
A few minutes later everyone was shouting, for up from the cavern entrance came Val Pakkerman and Allan Burgess, arm in arm. They were half naked and streaming with sweat, but they were alive and they were both free.
Sue tried to yell “Yippee,” but she broke down and cried instead. Jimmy Ruggles did a little harmless blubbering himself. Koo-Jop had to take the whole party under his wing to get them started back toward the village of Bunjojop, where everyone would have a chance to eat, and sleep, and get a change of clothing, and figure out a way to get back to the United States of America.
Somewhere along the way, Doc Pakkerman and Allan told the fuller story. They had both been rejected by the Scravvzek as unfit. The light of day had found its way into the crater, and the impact of Pakkerman’s eye of the world had struck hard.
“I’m not saying that the Scravvzek won’t find some new servants to help him rebuild his damaged property,” Pakkerman said, “it’s still got a pair of Maple City citizens down there, and those two boys are Scravvzek I look into the looking glass. I may have kept those two boys for seed. But we all know that eternal vigilance is the price of safety. An occasional working over of the sort that Captain Burgess contributed ought to keep the Scravvzek under a good tight lid. How about it, Captain, shall we keep an eye on that cone in the years to come—you and I?”
“It’s a deal,” Allan smiled.
“Me too,” said Jimmy. “But wait a minute. You never did tell us what happened to Sully and Bandyworth. Gosh-ding-it, are they still runnin’ around alive down there?”
“They’re pretty well equipped to go on living,” Doc Pakkerman said. “They’ve got Gallagher too. His floor is broken through but he still has his bed and his drink. He’ll go on making believe he’s keeping guard . . . Sully went mad over his unfulfilled ambition. The echoes of his ravings might have been heard for a long time to come if he had lived. But I think he is gone.”
“Did the explosion get him?”
“No. In fact,” said Pakkerman, with a kindly glint in his deep eyes, “he lost his life doing a little favor for me. You see, I had long ‘foreseen’ the possibility of an explosion of that heavy gas, and I had built a water gate that would enable me to flood the mirror zone with water from the Black River, in case of such a fire. In the thick of the fire, Sully, mad though he was, helped me open that gate. Unfortunately, his mad antics carried him into the stream. He went down with it. Where, no one knows.”
“Ironically,” Allan added, “I owe my life to his last act.”
“And Bandyworth?” Jimmy asked presently.
“When last seen, Bandyworth was sitting in a pit, playing peek-a-boo with the green fingers of an invisible Scravvzek hand. Nothing serious. After he gets over his scare, he’ll declare himself governor, commander-in-chief, and king over the caverns, and he’ll have the time of his life lording it over his one subject, Gallagher.”
Pakkerman chuckled lightly and excused himself to talk with Madam Lasanda. He wanted to let her know that he had seen her, on her previous trip to the caverns two years before, and had been unable to talk with her for Scravvzek reasons—and that scars from that emotional strain would last as long as the white line over his eye.
The most worried person on the plane trip back to America was Mayor Channing. Sue learned that he was in so many deep dilemmas he couldn’t eat or sleep. He was going to have to give Maple City a bang-up meeting of some sort, but how could he talk fast enough to whitewash himself and his boys while he bestowed the honors to the deserving?
“Worst of all,” he moaned, “I can’t figure out who’s going to get that ten-thousand prize for unselfish service in the name of Maple City . . . No, that’s not the worst. Worst of all is, what are the rest of the boys going to say when I tell them they don’t get it for themselves? Oh, hell, help me, Sue. Help me, Madam Lasanda.”
Sue wasn’t listening. She had just edged unobtrusively into another conversation of much greater interest to her. She heard Jimmy speaking in the seat just ahead of her.
“But gosh-ding-it, I can’t get up the nerve to propose to her. How ‘bout you proposin’ for me?”
“Okay,” Allan said, very cheerfully and with an artificial note that made Sue suspicious. “Okay, I’ll propose . . . You want me to marry her for you too?”
“Well, I’m awful bashful,” Jimmy said. “Would you do it for me?”
“Anything for a friend, Jimmy. Fact is, it’ll be a pleasure.”
And that was when Sue almost upset the plane by leaping over the back of the seat, grabbing Allan around the neck, and shouting a “yee-ippeee!” that would echo all the way across the Atlantic.