John Russell Fearn Omnibus

by John Russell Fearn

  In the course of their journey they glimpsed only a few people, people that had in their eyes a dull expression of fear. Both men and women seemed to be laboring under an intense anxiety, the exact reason for which was not altogether plain. Here and there, too, there were visions of actual slave gangs of men and women, most of them clad in rags, shackled together by chain and manacle. At their head there invariably marched a heavily muscled, ape-faced taskmaster.

  Indeed, the only natural thing about the whole place seemed to be the volcano, smoldering redly against the night sky. Blake bitterly reflected how slim would be the chances of escape if the thing ever chose to erupt—how slim too would be the hope of ever getting out of this infernal valley, surrounded by primeval jungle for hundreds of miles on every side.

  He thought again about Dalaker’s story as he marched along—and as before he still didn’t believe it. He couldn’t for one thing, reconcile Dalaker’s perfect English-speaking voice with that of a multimillion-year old Venusian. From what he’d seen of the man he was after something, something he was determined to get no matter what the cost… An innately cruel nature, a crafty brain, a smooth manner they were deadly weapons for any man to own, and Dalaker had them in plenty.

  Then Blake found his meditations cut short as he was bundled into an elevator alongside his father and the passive Ranji. The guards still kept their revolvers leveled, never once relaxed their attention as the cage began to hurtle downwards at dizzying speed, falling into blackness that became warmer and warmer as the seconds snapped by.

  Blake judged they had dropped a full eight hundred feet into the earth by the time the fall ended and they were pushed out into a region of brilliant blue arclight and suffocating warmth.

  Blake gasped involuntarily. The heat struck him like a physical blow. His eyes traveled over a bewildering industry of figures, sweating men and women in dirty blue overalls, men stripped to the waist controlling titanic furnaces, overseers hovering with set, malignant faces in the midst of the hazy expanse… The place seemed to recede into remoteness—a hive of pounding, hammering, thundering activity.

  “We’re to work—here?” gasped Henthorne haltingly, darting an anguished glance at Blake’s set, perspiring face.

  “Looks like it,” he answered curtly. Then bitterly, “By Heaven, if I could only get my hands round Dalaker’s neck—”

  He broke off as he was seized and pushed forward, his protesting father beside him. Ranji still said nothing. The heat didn’t seem to bother him very much; being a Pathan he was better fitted by Nature for the conditions…

  An overseer came forward and the three halted. He listened to the guard’s strange language, then nodded briefly. He spoke in American, a satisfied leer on his shining, bulbous face. Obviously he was one of the imported guards Dalaker had spoken of.

  “Henthorne, huh?” he sneered. “The old guy who figured he was smart enough to guess where those storms came from… And his son, too!” He appraised Blake’s massive form and spat on the floor. “O.K., you’ll have plenty of time down here to think things out. And this dirty Indian guy too. You can all work at them furnaces, and if you start letting up—” He stopped, patted his revolver holster and extended a vicious whip clamped in a hairy paw. “It’ll be just too bad,” he finished venomously.

  He shoved Blake violently. “Well, what the hell are you waiting for?” he roared. “Get movin’ to that furnace!”

  Blake bunched his fists, hesitated an instant, then relaxed. Starting a fight would only make matters worse. He turned slowly, bitterly, stripping off his shirt and vest as he moved, revealing the broad, muscular tautness of his massive chest, the steel-corded strength of his heavy arms.

  “Looks like we’ve got to stop here, for a bit anyhow,” he muttered, glancing at his father. “Take it easy, dad—I’ll do most of your work.”

  Dr. Henthorne groaned, stripped off his clothing so far as decency permitted and took the shovel thrust towards him by the overseer. Ranji took his without a word, but his dark eyes were glittering coldly. The reference to “dirty Indian” was burning across his mind.

  Blake for his part measured the overseer with bitter eyes then slung his shovel into the compressed wood fuel nearby and took his place among the sweating workers…

  The overseer took a seat and mopped his face. Blake spoke now and again to one or other of the haggard workers, but they failed to respond. Probably they didn’t understand his language. He watched his father with anxiety, the old man was working mechanically, forcing a body long past active service to a crushing ordeal. Somehow he kept going… Ranji, without removing a single article of clothing, shoveled with a calm, malignant precision…

  Then suddenly Blake stopped shoveling into the raging inferno of flame in front of him. He twisted round at the scream of a girl. Puzzled, he stared across the industry; his father and Ranji stared with him. Work stopped momentarily as every eye focused on the figure of a girl lying prone on the floor, her slender body quivering under the lashing tails of a whip.

  “By God, it’s our overseer!” Blake panted, darting a momentary glance at the now empty place where the man had been. “Thrashing a helpless girl—” His jaws clamped shut; he dashed the dripping sweat from his face and began to scramble over the fuel heap.

  “Blake, don’t do anything rash—” his father cried anxiously… But Blake wasn’t listening. His smoldering fury was at white heat.

  As he leapt lithely towards the disturbance he saw that the girl was held to the floor by a massive girder, her overall trapped beneath it. Evidently it had fallen as she had tried to raise it.

  “Get up from that floor!” screamed the taskmaster, white with fury. “By heaven, we’ll see if you’ll get away with this!” He raised his whip in a whining arc and the girl’s hands smothered her fair head in terror. But Blake got there first.

  His left hand tore the whip away and flung it through space. His right shot out like a steam piston, smashed clean in the center of the overseer’s astounded, brutal face. He didn’t fall: he went sailing backwards with blood spurting from a broken nose.

  “Guess I owed you that,” Blake panted, striding over to him. “Want| some more…?”

  The overseer couldn’t speak; he was numbed with pain—so numbed her hardly noticed that Blake turned away and that a lithe, dark, bearded figure slid from the knot of interested but scared workers. It was Ranji, short but deadly Afghan knife in his hand. Without a second’s hesitation he stooped before the groaning man, drove I the blade clean into his heart, then withdrew it sharply.

  “Filthy infidel,” he whispered. “Offspring of a million infidels. Pig of an unbeliever. You sleep with your vile ancestors in purgatory. Allah is just… Allah is powerful, and Mohammed is his prophet.”

  He stood up, slid the knife back into his broad sash so that the hilt was hidden. By the time it was discovered that the overseer was stabbed to death Ranji was back at Blake’s side.

  Without effort Blake heaved aside the offending girder with a metallic clang, lifted the sobbing girl to her feet. She raised a youthful face that was dirty and tear-stained, framed by bushy yellow hair. Her eyes were a curious misty blue, her mouth still young and full even though it trembled with emotion.

  “O.K., honey,” Blake murmured reassuringly. “Our charming friend got what was coming to him… Say, you speak English by any chance?” he asked anxiously.

  She nodded. “Many of us here speak it. I—I want to thank you for… My name’s Lania, and I—”

  “Hey, you!”

  Blake twisted round, faced another overseer. He was pointing back at the bloodstained, dead body on the floor.

  “You did that!” he bellowed. “Murdered him! And there’s only one answer for murder down here!” The man’s revolver flashed out of its holster, but in that second Blake was upon him, lifted his struggling body by shoulders and trousers seat and flung him over the heads of the nearest workers. They went down like skittles under the impact.

&n
bsp; But in doing that Blake started more than he intended. The workers, realising control had been twice flouted, surged forward to assist the crazy American. The air of tenseness suddenly disrupted into a babble of battling figures, the thwack of fists on flesh, the screech of whips, the banging of guns… Ranji, knife in hand, stood waiting at Blake’s side.

  “I consigned the animal faced infidel to his ancestors,” he stated tonelessly. “It was Allah’s will.”

  “Looks like Allah’s started something too…” Blake looked about him anxiously on the battling, milling figures. Still clutching Lania he began to return to where he had left his father—but long before he got there he saw the old man go down before the revolver shots of an overseer.

  “Dad!” Blake screamed, plunging forward. “Dad—!” He released the girl, dropped by the side of the old man’s quivering body. Ranji mysteriously vanished.

  Henthorne fought for breath. “Per-perhaps it’s better this way, Blake… I’m finished—finished, anyway. I—S-stop Dalaker, Blake—” He choked over his sentence, made a desperate effort to rise, then relaxed limply. Dazed, Blake felt the still heart.

  “He’s dead!” he shrieked hysterically, leaping up—and found himself gazing into the sad, sympathetic eyes of the girl. She grasped his brawny forearm gently.

  “I’m so sorry—” she began quietly, but Blake cut her short.

  “Where’s that damned overseer?” he breathed in quivering fury. “Where’s—” He broke off as Ranji suddenly came into view. He was smiling in his beard, sliding his stained knife into his sash.

  “Allah is just,” he murmured, with a little obeisance.

  “You killed him?” Blake whistled in satisfaction, and Ranji nodded. Then he looked quickly round on the struggle.

  “I would suggest, sahib Blake, that dangerously close finish to our lives is imminent. We might suffer same fate as sahib Henthorne, and—”

  “There’s a way out of here,” the girl interrupted quickly. “Up through the storage tunnels. Usually it’s guarded but in the present upset we might manage it. Come on—this way.”

  With Blake’s pile driver fists and Ranji’s wicked knife to clear the way they finally fought clear of the main body of the mutiny into the comparative quiet of a small tunnel, leading away into draughty warmth and blackness.

  CHAPTER V

  Escape

  The girl moved onwards with unerring steps, holding Blake’s hand. He in turn held Ranji’s—until at last, after perhaps half a mile of progress, they came into a roomy, man-made cavern lined with cases and lighted with a single bulb of glowing yellow.

  The girl closed and bolted the massive yellow metal door, blocking the tunnel up which they had come. On the opposite wall was the hole of the tunnel’s continuation.

  “We’ll be safe enough here,” she said, turning. “The tunnel’s continuation is never used. It’s an old conduit as a matter of fact. But there is a way out, as you’ll see later. In the meantime, we can rest and regain strength.”

  She perched herself on a crate and breathed deeply. Blake squatted down and sat in silence for a time, moodily going over his father’s last moments. Then at last he gave a resigned shrug and studied the girl, noted again the details of her slim, youthful body in its inappropriate, filthy dirty overall.

  “I suppose,” he questioned at length, “that you’re a Venusian?” And he said it on purpose because he expected a denial. To his surprise, however, the girl nodded.

  “By heritage, yes. Aren’t you?”

  “I’m an American, Lania. This chap here is an Indian—my servant.”

  Her misty eyes opened wide. “Oh, an American!” she cried. “Now I begin to understand—especially about your companion. I could not quite understand why he was so dark…”

  Blake smiled, briefly considered. Then he asked, “How old are you, Lania? Millions of years?”

  Her fair head shook. She had a most somber manner for so youthful a person. Like the rest of her people she was curiously downtrodden, afraid—and the experiences in the escape of the furnace room hadn’t helped much to restore her confidence either.

  “No, I’m not old,” she answered slowly. “I’m twenty-three perhaps—maybe twenty-four. Certainly no more. I was born here in this city.”

  “But I thought you said—”

  “My Venusian origin? I said ‘by heritage’. These people in the city, except the overseers and Dalaker, are all Venusians by heritage, but Earth people by birth. The only true Venusians left are the Eternal Sleepers.”

  “Then Dalaker is not a Venusian?” Blake asked deliberately.

  The girl’s sad face became hard. “No! He is an Earthman—an Englishman, I think. He is self-appointed dictator of this city and these taskmasters are people he’s brought here…”

  “Ah…!” Blake got up and sat at the girl’s side. She glanced at him in surprise as he looked at her very directly.

  “Lania, there’s probably a lot you can clear up for me,” he mused. “Dalaker is the main reason for my being here—but his story doesn’t match up with yours…” He related as briefly as possible all that Dalaker had said, then asked, “Now, how much of that is true?”

  The girl’s smile was weary, bitter. “Very little of it,” she answered, thinking. “I can tell you the truth because I’ve nothing to gain by lying. I’m a slave: I live in filthy little workers’ hovels underground. I—But my life doesn’t interest you. It’s Dalaker you want to know about… Well, the story of the Venusians starting life on Earth is correct—so too is the story of them making the moon, returning to Earth, and bringing the Eternal Sleepers with them…

  “Where the story goes wrong is in Dalaker saying that the Sleepers are trying to destroy humanity and start a new experiment. The Sleepers are peaceful: they created life on Earth to see if synthetic man and woman could evolve and survive against the beast. They proved it right—and they’ve no desire whatever to wipe out humanity.”

  “Then what do these Sleepers do?” Blake insisted.

  “Have you never liked to lie and dream?” Lania questioned reflectively. “Do not some people in the outer world take drugs that give them pleasant dreams—cut them off from the woes of the physical being?”

  “Oh, sure. Some even take drink. But how—”

  “The Sleepers dream,” the girl said steadily, her eyes just a little—a little envious. “They have lain like that for untold generations—suspended animation, of course. Their minds are studying the cosmos, and the only way to do that is to have absolutely no connection with worldly things. That is why, according to record, they were removed so carefully when my ancestors abandoned the Moon for Earth. They have lain like that ever since, deep in an underground hall. The remnants of the true Venusians lived on in this city, minding their own business, hostile to nobody—until at last the true Venusians died out and birthright of necessity became Earthly, but of Venusian stock… One day the Sleepers will awake. It may be millennia: it may be tomorrow…”

  The girl became silent, pondering absently. She started a little at Blake’s voice.

  “Where does Dalaker fit into this, anyhow?”

  “Oh, he came here two years ago on an exploration trip, found our valley by accident. He seemed cordial enough and gave his word to leave us alone—but a year later he returned in a large airship and brought a collection of men with him. Criminals, I believe, absolutely in Dalaker’s power… Of course, we were utterly defeated. Dalaker became dictator, using his scientific knowledge against us—turning our own machines upon us. Invasion was a thing almost unknown to us and we were caught unprepared.

  “Dalaker set up an iron dynasty, invented new destructive scientific machines from our own cherished inventions, forced all the young and fractious ones—like myself—into newly opened pits. Others he forced into collusion with himself on pain of instant death; guards and so forth. He claims that he is the ambassador of the Sleepers—a deliberate lie of course—and says that the Sleepers have ordered
the destruction of humanity and their cities. So he has been at work with electrical apparatus which produces storms sufficiently violent to bring about the slow destruction of all civilization.”

  “But why?” Blake cried helplessly. “Is he mad, or what?”

  Lania gave a hollow laugh. “Mad! Good heavens, no. He’s distinctly ingenious. You see, the storm method will destroy most of the cities of the outer world, but it is not possible that every living person will be wiped out. There will be thousands of survivors, all of them demanding new homes—storm proof homes… That’s where ynium comes in.”

  “This yellow metal that’s around everywhere?”

  “Yes. It’s ordinary iron ore mated to an imperishable ingredient which is the product of our science. Down here we mine the iron ore, smelt it. In the surface laboratories it becomes ynium. No known thing can destroy it entirely… It’s proof against explosive, acid, fire, pressure—almost everything you can name. This very city, built of it, has hardly changed in all the time man has evolved to a state of intelligence: it has survived earthquakes, storms—everything, and even now it is hardly tarnished.

  “You’ll see, then, that being in control of such a metal, springing it on the world after storms have shattered most of civilization, Dalaker can become a virtual world-dictator, name his own price for the stuff—and what’s more, supply it. He will corner the market. That’s why we are all mining iron ore, why Dalaker lets nothing slip. He has a vast fortune and world power in his grip, and means to get it…”

  “So that’s it,” Blake murmured, musing. “A commercial and scientific giant gone wrong. Nice going… But maybe he’ll slip up somewhere before I’m through with him.” He turned back suddenly to the girl. “Thanks a lot, Lania, for the information—And say, while we’re about it, how come you know English?”