CHAPTER XVI
_The Metal Shell_
_She was motioning for him to follow._]
[Sidenote: The Voice of the Mountain heralds Rawson's Messianic comingto the White Ones in their hour of need.]
Dean Rawson had passed through a nerve-racking experience. It was nota question of courage--Rawson had plenty of that--but there are timeswhen a man's nervous system is shocked almost to insensibility bysheer horror. Not at once did he realize what was happening.
Perhaps it was the sound of pursuit that jarred him out of the fogclouding all his thoughts and perceptions. It was like the sound offighting animals--cat-beasts--whose snarls had risen to screaming,squalling shrieks of rage. It was sheer beastliness, the din thatechoed through that narrow passage.
Ahead of him the girl was running. She held a light in her hand. Softwrappings of cloth hung loosely from her waist; like her golden hair,it was flung backward in the strong draft of air against which theywere struggling. She was outlined clearly before the red, rock-likemasses where her light was falling; she was running swiftly,gracefully, like a wild, woodland nymph.
Two men, their milk-white bodies naked but for the thick folds oftheir loin cloths, were beside Rawson, helping him along. Two othersfollowed. And, by their haste and their odd whispered words of alarm,he knew that pursuit had not been expected; they must have thought toget away unobserved.
Rawson felt his strength returning. He shook himself free from thosewho tried to aid him. He was amazed at how easily he ran: his weightwas a mere nothing; his efforts were expended in driving his bodyagainst the blast of wind. The air seemed dense, thick; he had almostthe feeling of forcing himself through water.
Ahead of him the girl darted abruptly through a narrow crack in thewall. Rawson followed--and then began a wild race through a network ofconnecting passages, a vast labyrinth of caves, more like fractures inthis strange red substance which Rawson could think of only as rock,for lack of a more accurate name, until at last there was no soundexcept that of their own hurrying feet.
* * * * *
They stopped and stood panting in one of the wider passages. He heardnothing but the endless rush of the wind. For the first time Rawsonbecame aware of his own almost naked condition.
The mole-men had prepared him for the sacrifice. They had decked himwith a loin cloth of woven gold. It felt cold to the touch, and Rawsondid not doubt its being made of fine threads of the precious metal.About his neck hung a gold chain with a heavy object suspended; hetore it off, and found again a representation of a golden sun. Thecopper priests had arrayed him to meet their fire-god, and againRawson wondered at the emblem they employed.
"What in the name of the starlit heavens," he demanded silently ofhimself, "could this buried race know of the sun?"
The others were watching him. In the glow of that strange light heldby the girl he saw them smiling. They were congratulating one anotherwith odd, soft-syllabled words. And Rawson, ignorant of their tongue,was mute, when his whole soul cried out to thank them.
He gripped the hands of the men. They were as tall as himself, theirgaze level with his own. Their faces were human, friendly; their eyessparkled and smiled into his. Then he turned to the girl.
She had seen the method of greeting this stranger employed. Sheextended her hand--a white hand, slim, soft, cool. And Rawson, chokingwith emotion, knowing that here was the one who had first seen him andwho had returned to save him, a stranger, bent low above that hand,held in his own so rough and burned, and pressed his lips to theslender fingers in a quick caress.
When he raised his head she was looking at him oddly; her eyes weredeep, serious and unsmiling. He wondered if, blunderingly, he hadoffended her. He could not know; he did not know their customs.
Again the slim girlish figure turned; her jeweled breast-platesflashed as she led the others on where always the way led upward andthe wind pressed against them unceasingly.
* * * * *
The White Ones wore sandals that seemed woven of glass. Rawson's barefeet were bruised and sore, for those narrower clefts had been pavedonly with broken fragments of the red walls. He moved less easily now.The heavy, beating air tired him; the lightness of his body made itall the more difficult to fight the steady wind. Still he followed thewhite figure of the girl where her light was flashing on endless wallsof red.
In his ears a new sound was registering. Above the rush of the air,that now was soft and warm, a new note had risen to a hollow,unremitting roar. He knew that for some time he had been hearing itfaintly. It grew louder, one long, steady, unchanging note, as theyadvanced. It was a deafening reverberation that seemed shaking thewhole earth when they came at last to an open room.
It beat upon him thunderously. As deep as the deepest tone of a mightyorgan, like a thousand gigantic organs welded in one, it roared andshook him through and through with its single note.
Exhausted by his wild flight, surrounded by this maelstrom of sound,he sank to the floor and let his laboring lungs have their way. Buthis eyes were searching the big room.
* * * * *
The great cave was too regularly formed to have had a natural origin.The light that the girl had carried gave only feeble illumination inso great a space that had so evidently been hollowed out of the solidred matter.
The light flashed here and there as the girl and her companions movedaway. They were circling the room. Rawson saw the irregular outlinesof entrances to many dark passages like the one through which they hadcome. The red rock-mass seemingly had been riven and torn, andapparently in front of each opening the white figures fought againstthe rush of outgoing air. Rawson felt the same current sweeping andwhirling gustily about him.
Now his companions were across the room, and between him and them inthe center of the floor he saw the mouth of a black well, a pit sometwenty or more feet across. Directly above, where the red rock stuffformed a domed ceiling, he found a counterpart of the pitbelow--another great bore or open shaft, roughly circular. Apparentlyit went straight on up and was a continuation of that lower pit.
"This room was cut out," Rawson was thinking, "by the white people orthe mole-men--Lord knows who, or when, or why. Cut out around this bigshaft...."
His thoughts trailed off. Even thinking seemed impossible under thebattering of the roaring noise that pounded about him. Then anotherthought pierced through the bedlam. He had found the source of theuproar.
* * * * *
That upper shaft, the hole that went on up, must be plugged. There wasno outlet that way, and this air that drove endlessly upward from theroom must be coming from the lower shaft. It was striking up into thatupper cavity.
An organ pipe, truly. But whence came the unending blast of air tokeep that gigantic instrument in operation? Rawson dropped to hisknees and crept slowly across the floor toward the pit. He must testhis theory--see if that was where the air was driving in.
Just short of the brink he stopped. The girl had called--a cry ofalarm. She was running swiftly toward him, circling the pit. AndRawson, as she tugged at him, trying to draw him back, knew that shehad mistaken his motive. She had thought he was going to cast himselfdown.
He did not need to go farther. He was close to the edge. And now, evenabove that roaring sound he heard the rush of the column of air. Heseated himself on the stone floor and smiled up at the girlreassuringly. Her eyes that had been dark with fear changed swiftly toa look so sweetly, beautifully tender that Dean Rawson found himselfthrilled and shaken by an emotion that set his nerves to quiveringeven more than did the sonorous vibration from above.
Her companions had joined her. Dean saw her eyes regarding themsteadily. Then, as if reaching some sudden final conclusion in herown mind, she dropped swiftly to her knees beside him, raised one ofhis hands in hers and pressed her soft lips against it.
And Dean, even had he known their language, could not i
n that momenthave spoken. There had been something in the look of her eyes and thesoft touch of her lips that of themselves went far beyond words.
"You darling," he was whispering softly to himself as the girl sprangto her feet and walked swiftly away, the others following.
"An angel, no less--down in this damned place!"
* * * * *
He wondered, as he watched the flickering light far across the room,what destination they could be bound for. Surely no one so radiantlybeautiful could inhabit a world of endless dungeons like that wherethe mole-men lived. But if not that, then what? Where would their nextjourney take them? And in what direction would they go?
Again Rawson's thoughts were submerged beneath his own weariness. Thisair that beat about him had seemed cool after the terrific heat thatdrove in off the Lake of Fire. Now he realized that the air itself washot. His one spurt of strength and energy had been expended.
He watched the men disappear into one of the passages, but he rousedhimself when they returned. They were clinging to a strange device, ametal cylinder that floated in air above their heads like a dirigibleon end. It was about eight feet in diameter and some fourteen feet inheight; both upper and lower ends were rounded. A cage of parallelbars enclosed it from end to end; like springs of steel they extendedfrom top to bottom where they curved in and were attached to therounded ends.
* * * * *
Rawson sat up quickly and stared in startled amazement at the thingglinting like polished aluminum in the light. And his engineer's mindresponded as much to that smooth finish and the evident workmanshipthat had entered into the making of this thing as it did to the objectitself.
The girl placed her light on the floor. She, too, reached up andgripped a bar of the protecting cage to which the others were holding.With her added weight and strength they drew it down almost to thefloor. Rawson knew by their efforts that they were dealing withsomething actually buoyant, a metal balloon. One of the men, stillputting his weight on the bars, reached in and opened a door in thesmooth shell. He stepped inside, and a moment later the big shelldropped to the floor and, still vertical, stood on the lower roundedend of the protecting cage, rocking gently as the hot whirling windhit it.
They were communicating among themselves by signs. Rawson saw themmotioning. Speech was useless in that roaring, pandemonium-filledroom.
She was motioning for him to follow. One of the men circled thatcentral pit, came beside Rawson and helped him to his feet, steadyinghim as they crossed the room. The girl had entered the big metalshell. Dean saw the glow of her torch shining through the open doorwayand through two other windows of crystal glass.
The big room had grown dimmer. The high ceiling was lost in murkyshadows. All the room was dark save where that light struck upon wallsand floor to make them glow blood-red. The waiting lighted shellseemed a haven of refuge. To get inside, close the door, lock out someof this unendurable, battering sound--it was all Rawson asked, all hecould think.
The door closed. He was within the shell, standing on a smooth metalfloor. The others were beside him. Dully he wondered what wildadventure was ahead.
* * * * *
He had expected--he hardly knew what. But there should have beenmachinery of some sort. If this weird balloon thing was actually tocarry them, there must be some mechanism, some propelling power. Andinstead he saw nothing but the shining walls of the circular room andat the exact center, reaching from floor to ceiling, a six-inch metalpost that thickened to a boxlike form on a level with his eyes. Therewas a plate on the side of that box, a cover, and clamps that held itin place, and on an adjoining side two little levers, one near the topof the box, the other near the bottom.
His one all-inclusive glance showed him bull's-eye windows in theceiling. There were more of them in the floor. One curved bar,circling the room, was mounted on brackets against the wall. They weretelling him by signs that he was to put his hands on it and hang on.One of the men was beside that central post. He too gripped at aprojecting hand-hold. His other hand was on the lower lever.
Rawson knew his disappointment was unreasonable, but his weary mindwas tired of mysteries. Some understandable bit of machinery wouldhave been reassuring. And then in his next thought he asked himselfwhat difference did it make. If this childish balloon thing werereally capable of carrying them somewhere, what of it? It could onlymean more of this hideous inner world that grew more unbearablyfantastic with each new experience.
His life had been saved. True, but for what end? The girl's eyes wereupon him, reading the expression on his face. She smiledencouragingly. Then Rawson's hands tightened upon the metal bar. Theman who stood by the central post had moved one lever the meresttrifle. Rawson felt the floor lifting beneath him. Then the shell,like a bubble of metal, pitched and tossed as the powerful aircurrents caught it.
* * * * *
His own lightness saved him from injury. He gripped the bar and heldhimself free of the wall. The round top of their strange craft gratedagainst the domed roof. Then again the ship steadied and seemedmotionless, and Rawson knew they had slipped up into the still air ofthat upper shaft.
For one wild instant, filled with impossible hope, Rawson saw this asa means of ascent to his own world. Then reason tore those wild hopesto shreds.
"It's closed up above," he thought. "It must be. That's why it soundedthat way. That's why the air drove off through those side passages."
The next instant held no time for thought. Rawson's whole attentionwas concentrated upon the bar to which he clung. For, quicker thanthought, the metal shell, the little cylindrical world in which he andthese others were, fell swiftly beneath them.
His body twisted in mid-air. He knew the others were being thrown inthe same manner. Then, what an instant before had been the ceiling wasnow a floor beneath his feet, pressing up against him and giving himweight--and by the whistling rush of the air that tore past theirshell he knew they had fallen with marvelous swiftness straight downthrough the throat of that lower shaft.
And now what had been down was up. The ceiling of this strange roomwas now their floor, but Rawson was not deceived. "Acceleration," hesaid. "It's crowding us. The shell tends to fall faster than we do.It's like an elevator traveling downward at a swifter rate than a freefalling body."
* * * * *
He had glimpsed the glassy-side of that well into which he knew theyhad been flung. He knew that the shrieks that filled the room time andagain were caused by the touching of their shell's guiding andprotecting bars against one glassy wall. Those sounds came always fromthe same side and Rawson found momentary satisfaction in his ownunderstanding of the phenomenon.
"We're falling free," he argued within his own mind, "falling towardthe center of the earth. And a falling body wouldn't follow a verticalcourse. It would tend to hug against one wall." And by that he knewsomething of their speed. The necessity for it was apparent a momentlater.
Above his head the bull's-eyes pointing forward in the direction oftheir flight were faintly red. Swiftly they changed to crimson. Rawsonwas standing beside a window in the wall of their craft. That, too,grew quickly to an area of dazzling brightness. Slowly the heat struckin. The air in the little room was stifling. He saw the girl turn herhead and give a sharp order.
The man by the central post responded with another slight movement ofthe lever. Beneath Rawson's feet the floor pressed upward in a surgeof speed that bent his knees and bore him downward. Under his handsthe rod to which he clung was hot. The shining walls were dimlyglowing. They were being hurled through the very heart of hell....
* * * * *
And then it was past. The crimson horror beyond those windows grewdull and then black. In the blunt nose of their craft a tiny crevicemust have opened. The one who drove that projectile in its shriekingflight had touched another control that Raw
son had not before seen.And with a piercing shriek a thin jet of cold air drove down into thehot room.
No wine could have been one-half so potent. That thin jet filled theroom with buffeting whirlwinds that grew quickly cold.
Then their speed was checked. Abruptly Rawson was weightless, his bodyhanging in air, moved only as he moved his hand upon the bar. Only afew feet away was the body of the girl floating weightless likehimself. The others were shouting loud words of satisfaction, but herface was turned toward Rawson, her eyes were smiling into his; while,outside the little shell that fell in meteor flight, were onlyshrieking winds and the blackness into which they plunged.
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