“Hit the ground,” Rick snapped. He went down and he felt Peter beside. “Okay?” he grunted.
“Still lucky,” Peter said.
“Lento!” Rick hissed.
There was no answer. There was only the noise of the Japs behind them.
“Lento!”
The darkness was silent.
Rick touched Peter on the arm. “Let’s go. He’s taken off.”
THEY got to their feet and went ahead, hands outstretched, feet touching the ground cautiously. Gradually the sound behind them faded. About them a faint light was gathering. They pressed on, hurrying now that they could see their way. The light was increasing, shedding radiance in an ever widening arc, but it’s source was a mystery. It seemed to flow from the walls and the floor and the ceiling.
The corridor widened gradually and as they went on the ceiling began to arch slowly. Soon they were hurrying through a vast cavernous hallway that was bathed in luminous brilliance. Ahead of them finally appeared massive doors. Worked with strange figures hewn from the solid rock, soaring to a height many feet above their eyes, the great doors stood before them, closed and silent.
They stopped and looked about them, wondering. They were in a spreading room, immense, lighted. Water seeping from the rock reflected light in grotesque patterns. There was silence about them and the strange brilliant light that seemed without source.
Peter took Rick’s arm in fingers that tightened convulsively.
“Look!” he whispered.
The great figured doors were opening slowly.
CHAPTER VI
THEY went forward, entranced. The door swung back revealing a great misty cavern that was full of the strange misting light. Ahead of them a great urn was sunk in the rock floor; before it a black altar had been built.
The room stretched into infinity. Vapors swirled about like brilliant, varicolored clouds in the strange light. The walls were mists and the ceiling was a mass of tinted changing fog. Reality was confined to the few square feet about them. The sunken urn, the black altar and the rock ground under their feet.
Now they saw that the vapors were rising from the urn. A strange liquid bubbled angrily in the great sunken vase sending a column of pale smoke toward the vaulted ceiling.
“This is a dream,” Peter said slowly. He looked around shaking his incredulously. “A living dream.”
“I’m awake,” Rick said tersely. “We’ve got things to do and I’m damned if I know where to start. I don’t know where we are or how to get back to the Japs. But that’s where we’ve got to go.”
“I know,” Peter said. He ran his hand over his forehead wearily. “They have an atom ray here. I learned that much. They did cause those plane crashes. Just experimenting. They’ll be ready for more than that in a few months. We’ve got to stop them. They may make Deveer talk . . .”
“They won’t have to,” Rick said. “Deveer sold out. That’s one reason we’ve got to get back. I want to see him again.”
“How about the girl?”
“I don’t know what they’ve done with her.”
“I’d pray to God they haven’t sent her to Major Kok.”
Rick felt sick and helpless. The thought of the girl in the hands of a twisted monster was enough to make him physically ill.
A creak behind them caused them to turn. The great figured doors were closing inexorably. Peter started for the narrowing opening but Rick shouted at him to stop. They watched the doors close shut, and the silence of the grotto seemed then to deepen.
“Why did you stop me? Peter asked.
“I don’t know,” Rick said. He was puzzled. He wanted to stay here in this great cavern for a while and he didn’t know why.
He turned back to the sunken urn and the black altar. On top of the altar was a small black stone, perhaps an inch in diameter. He hadn’t noticed it before since its color perfectly matched the background of the altar. He picked it up and turned it around in his fingers. There was deep red fire in its depths and the touch of its cold surface excited him strangely.
Peter looked at it and then glanced wistfully at the sunken urn. “Maybe I’m a fool,” he said, spacing his words carefully, “but it seems I’ve always been looking for a place like this. I feel I’ve dreamt about it, or longed for it in some other life. That sounds pretty silly, doesn’t it?” he said, grinning sheepishly at Rick.
“No sillier than a lot of things in the world.”
Peter walked closer to the altar and stared at the bubbling liquid in the cauldron. “Isn’t it odd we haven’t asked each other what sort of a place” this is? We just accept it. We don’t ask why the altar is here and why the liquid in the vase is boiling. It just seems right.
“I’m sounding wild right now. You know, my brother was killed in the war and I wasn’t in. I was too young. And I wanted desperately to be in it, too. After he was killed I felt that I had let him down. I felt if I had been in the war maybe he wouldn’t have had to die.”
“That’s not very good logic,” Rick said.
“I KNOW,” Peter said. He smiled a little. “But it was the way I felt. I felt lonely when I knew he was dead. And I was lonely ever since. But now, while here I don’t feel that way. It’s like I’ve been cured of some disease.”
“I don’t get it,” Rick said. “There is something I can’t put my finger on. It’s—”
Peter gestured suddenly with his arm. “Rick, look!”
Rick stared in the direction he was painting. In the direction of the great sunken urn. The column of pale smoke was changing hue, deepening to a violent scarlet. It was thickening too, pouring forth in a thick crimson stream, billowing toward the dim ceiling.
Through its mist a dim figure was forming!
A tall slim body was appearing magically in the crimson column of smoke. From the boiling liquid’s vapor they saw a face materialize.
The face of a wondrously beautiful girl! Red hair flowed to bare shoulders in bright waves, green eyes flashed against the scarlet smoke.
Her slim, molded body was encased in shimmering gold; the slim feet that almost touched the fiery liquid were shod in thonged sandals. A diadem of blinding white light made a halo about her head. In her upraised hand was a long thin wand.
“I am Lellamy.”
They hadn’t seen her lips move. Her head was thrown back, her green eyes stared upward to the immense vault of the ceiling.
The voice filled the cavern. It rolled over them like far-away thunder. In its depths was pride and scorn and violence.
She raised both hands in the air and she seemed to be breathing deeply, exultingly. Her breasts lifted and she threw her head back in triumph. Under its shimmering golden sheath the muscles of her body writhed and stretched luxuriously, as if revelling in a sensuous, newly found freedom.
She looked down then and the green eyes flashed brilliantly. Peter was staring at her, stunned and dazed. Rick took one step backward, then halted. His jaw hardened and he snapped the revolver from its holster.
“I don’t believe in miracles,” he said. “There was never a ghost or an apparition that could stand a good dose of lead.”
He raised the gun but the girl stiffened, and a blinding beam of light sprang from the tip of her wand. The beam hit his wrist, numbing his arm to the elbow. The gun clattered to the floor.
“What do you believe in now?” The voice again filled the cavern.
Rick massaged his wrist and for the first time in his life he felt fear. This was something he couldn’t fight. Something that went against every concept of his thinking.
“I am Lellamy.” The green eyes were fixed on Rick alone. “I can give you safety and freedom. I can give you things from your dreams. I can show you a world your imagination could never visualize. I can give you such happiness that your senses will reel and shudder in ecstacy. All this you may have if you love me. Love me and come to me.”
SHE raised her arms again and the green eyes were veiling now and a maddeningly seduc
tive smile played about her lips. She breathed deeply, filling her lungs in a self-induced rapture. She was desire incarnate. There was an invitation to passion in the undulation of her hips, in the exquisite formation of her body.
The golden sheath that was molded to her body was more stirring that complete. It revealed the slim, gently swelling thighs, the curving valleys of her hips, the high firm breasts. She was an instrument formed to gratify the frenzy of love, the ravishment of passion.
“Love me,” she said, and smiled at him. “Do not leave me now. Stay and learn the enchantments of the grotto.”
Rick caught Peter by the arm. “Back toward the door,” he said in a harsh, unnatural voice. “This is the work of a devil. We’ve got a big job ahead of us. There are lives depending on us.”
The voice of the girl rolled again like thunder.
“Stay with me. Stay with Lellamy in the grotto of love. I will give you raptures beyond the wildest dreams.
Will you stay with me?”
Rick felt anger stirring. Anger at himself, anger at this devil’s mirage.
He knew it was ridiculous. He knew he was living some mad fantasy. To take it seriously was simply to make a fool of himself.
But he shook his head.
“No, I won’t stay,” he said.
There was a sudden wild music in his ears. The column of column vapor disappeared in a soft puff. The light in the cavern dimmed, then flamed more brilliantly than ever.
When his eyes adjusted to the light the last of the smoke was fading. And standing before him, her back to the altar, was a slim red-haired girl with green eyes.
She was smiling.
CHAPTER VII
THE misty walls of the cavern receded; the column of smoke faded and the high rock ceiling came into relief. The light lost its strange brilliance; quiet settled over the grotto.
The girl continued to smile at Rick. She was just a girl, a slim beautiful red haired girl, but that was all. She was a flesh and blood creature.
“What kind of hocus pocus is this?” Rick asked her.
She came closer to him, still smiling. “I am Lellamy,” she said. Her voice was no longer like far-off thunder. It was soft and sweet. “I was imprisoned here by my father many centuries ago. He was a very strange and powerful man. I disobeyed him one day. That was very serious. As punishment he confined me here forever, to dwell in the mists of the grotto.
He was a devious, subtle man and he was not content with denying me the fields and the flowers I loved so dearly. He decreed that I must Offer myself to all men who came here. The condition of my freedom was this; I would be released from this hateful bondage only when a man refused me.”
She looked sadly down at her slim body. “That never happened, of course.”
Rick didn’t know whether to face the fact that he had gone insane, or to listen to her. He took a deep long breath and tried to steady his reeling mind.
“You were freed then, because I refused you?”
She nodded, but there was sadness in her face. “My father knew that might happen someday. With his curious streak of cruelty and hatred for me he planned against that, also. He provided that I should become the slave of the man who would refuse me. Thus my fate was to spend these centuries longing for a man who would not want me; even though I knew I would then become the slave of this man who despised me.”
“I wasn’t unappreciative,” Rick said.
He swallowed hard and tried to fight down the feeling that he was participating in a monstrous fantasy. “You’re lovely and desirable. But I have things to do. There are enemies of ours here in the cave.”
“You don’t despise me, then?”
“Certainly not.”
The girl smiled softly and sighed. From somewhere there came a chord of swelling music. It surrounded them, rising for a moment; then fading slowly until it melted into silence.
Peter looked at Rick, then at the girl. “What was that?”
She was smiling. “Who can tell? Maybe my first moment of happiness “in centuries. Maybe, something else.”
She stretched her arms in the air, continuing to smile. “I think it is because I’m happy.”
Rick thought of the American girl then, for no understandable reason. He remember the antagonism that flared between them; he remembered her courage and stamina. And he knew there was something about the girl that had got to him.
“If you’ve had one moment of happiness,” he said bitterly to the red-haired Lellamy, “you’re luckier than most of us.”
“You are not happy, then?”
“I’m mad,” Rick said. “I want to get my hands around a few necks and start squeezing. That’ll do for happiness until something else comes along.”
He shook his head then and glanced at the wand she held in her hands. He remembered its numbing effect on his arm.
“What kind of a weapon is that?” he asked her.
“Weapon?” She wrinkled her forehead. “It is “merely a weapon to enforce my will I didn’t mean to hurt you. Had I wanted to hurt you it would have been different.”
“Will you help us?” Rick demanded suddenly.
“I will do whatever you ask,” she said simply. “I must obey you. But,” she smiled and came still closer to him, “I would do what you ask whether I was your slave or not. I like you.”
Rick stopped and picked up his revolver, replaced it in its holster. Lellamy was watching him expectantly. In his left hand he still held the black stone which he had removed from the altar.
“What is this?” he asked.
She sighed in disappointment. “That is the agent that materialized me. Keep it with you. It is very important.”
He dropped it in his pocket and said, “We had better get started.”
She sighed again. “Do you have nothing to say about the fact that I like you?”
“That isn’t important,” he said irritably. “There is a hell of lot to do and we can’t get it done talking about who likes who.”
“There is someone else?” she persisted.
“Yes,” he said shortly. “There is someone else.” He hadn’t admitted it to himself until now. But he knew it was true. The American girl was what mattered.
“Is it she we are going to save?”
“Not alone her. There are others,” Rick said.
“But she is the reason for your impatience?”
“Are you going to help or not?” Rick said bluntly.
“I must help,” Lellamy said with a sad smile. “Follow me.”
SHE led them toward the double doors. She raised the wand in her hand and the door swung open. They went through the vast cavernous hallway that led back toward the section of the caves in which Japs had set up their headquarters.
The corridor narrowed swiftly. Rick was walking with Peter. The girl was in the lead. Finally they came to the place where the corridors intersected.
“This is where we lost the old man,” Rick said. “I wonder what happened to him.”
“He probably got away,” Peter said. “He knew his way around.”
Lellamy turned. “Is this the way?” She nodded down the dark corridor. This was the way Peter and Rick had made their escape from the cul de sac. “This is it,” Peter said.
“We’d better take it easy from here on,” Rick said. He glanced at Lellamy. “Just how much of a wallop does that wand carry?”
She smiled confidently. “Enough, I think.”
“Okay,” Rick said. “We’ll probably know in a little while.”
They went carefully down the hall until they reached the place where the sliding section stood open. Rick dropped to his knees and cautiously crawled into the connecting corridor. The light had been repaired. A sentry stood on guard fifty yards away where three corridors met.
Rick took his gun from the holster and checked the ammunition. There were three rounds left in the clip. Not much. He crawled back, rejoined Lellamy and Peter.
“There’s one sentry in s
ight,” he said. “We can take care of him but I don’t know what we’ll run into then.” Lellamy smiled impishly at him.
“You have no faith in Lellamy,” she said.
She dropped to her knees in a graceful move and disappeared through the opening. Rick followed her quickly. He climbed to his feet in the lighted corridor. The girl was ten feet away, advancing toward the lone sentry. He turned and saw her and began shouting. He clawed at the gun at his hip.
Lellamy raised the wand and a blazing ray speared from its tip. The ray caught the Jap sentry across the forehead. He stiffened, a cry strangling in his throat. He glared wildly, sightlessly for a second, then sprawled forward on his face.
Lellamy turned and smiled at Rick. “Simple, isn’t it?”
“It’s a good trick. But we’re going to run into plenty of Japs before long.”
Lellamy laughed. “They won’t be any trouble. Tell, me, could this girl you are thinking of do that for you?”
“No,” Rick said.
“Maybe you’ll appreciate me more after I’ve done your work for you.”
Peter came up beside them then. “Let’s go,” Rick said.
They walked to the intersection and started down the main corridor.
“Everything looks quiet,” Rick said.
“Maybe it’s too quiet,” Peter said worriedly.
Ahead of them a sentry appeared. He had stepped from another corridor. He looked at them for a moment in comic bewilderment. Then he began shouting wildly.
Rick snapped a shot at him from his hip. The guard went down, clutching at his stomach.
“Fool!” Lellamy said, but she smiled. “You’ll let them know we’re here.”
SHE was right. From a distance they heard a questioning shout. Then more voices added to the noise, and finally they heard the rush of heavy booted feet.
Around the corner spilled a squad of Japs. Short, ugly men with blank faces and the light of fanatic zeal in their eyes. Lellamy stepped back and raised her wand.
Rick dropped to one knee and fired another shot from his gun. The Jap in the lead went down with a cry of pain. Over Rick flashed Lellamy’s ray, turning the corridor into a shaft of blazing light.
Collected Fiction (1940-1963) Page 233