Two Thousand Miles Below
Page 24
CHAPTER XXIII
_Oro and Grah_
[Sidenote: As part of their titanic plan, Rawson and Loah-San returnto sacrifice themselves in the flaming caverns of the Red Ones.]
_Then there were footsteps approaching the chest._]
"The Place of Death!" said Dean Rawson. "Whoever named it had theright idea."
He looked out across the wide stretch of ground with its covering ofwhite salt almost entirely stripped of the carpet of vines. The bodiesof the mole-men lay where they had fallen; their flame-throwers stilltore futilely at the earth or stabbed upward in vain, thrusting towardthe green-gold sun that shone pitilessly down.
"Still I do not understand," said Gor. "My people pressed the strong,burning water from the vines and poured it into the pool as youdirected. But the Red Ones did not touch it--how could it burn them?"
"I'll say it was strong!" said Rawson. He looked at his hands, red andburned where the liquid had touched. "And it got stronger by standing.It was an acid, and when it touched the white earth a gas wasformed--hydrocyanic acid gas. And that's nothing to fool with."
He walked cautiously out where the liquid had been poured over thewhite ground. No odor remained; the air was clean. Then he picked upone of the flame-throwers and experimented with it until he found thesliding sleeve that shut off the blast.
"All right," he called to Gor. "Bring on your men; we've got to cleanup this place and get rid of the bodies before the sun gets in itswork. They're the ones that will go into the ocean instead of you." Hemoved carefully along the straggling line of bodies, salvaging theweapons and turning off their fearful blasts.
They worked and slept and worked again before their gruesome task wasdone and Rawson was ready to begin the other work that he had in mind.
Beside the mouth of the great shaft, resting on the rocks, was acylinder, almost exactly a counterpart of the one Loah had used. Butthis was larger--fully fifty of the red savages could have crowdedinside.
"It is the only one they had," said Loah. "I have seen, and I know."
"But they can make more," Gor argued. "This one and the one we have,"he told Rawson, "were made thousands of years ago. There were mastersof metal-work among them, and they had learned to use Oro and Grah.Even then the people were divided. He who was then Gor and hisfollowers fought with the others. But he left them one _jana_--thisvery one here. Then Gor followed the Pathway to the Light, though hesealed it as you know. But--but they will build others. Sooner orlater they will come."
"I think not," said Rawson. "Now what about this Oro and Grahmaterial? What was it you called them--the Sun-stone and theStone-that-loves-the-dark? I must know how they work." But Loah wasreluctant to experiment with the _jana_ of the Reds; she had her ownshell brought instead--and then Rawson learned the secret of whatseemed its miraculous flight.
A cylindrical metal bubble, just buoyant enough to lift itself abovethe ground--Gor and some of the others brought it from the village.Gor brought, too, a little box which he carried with great difficulty.
* * * * *
"It is Grah," he said, when he showed Rawson a little scattering ofblack dust within the box. "Always it tries to fall back under theground. Both Oro and Grah grow deep down near the Zone of the Fires;we find them in the caves, Oro on one side and Grah on the other. Orois as heavy in its upward falling as Grah is in its downward.
"Then"--he pointed to the central vertical tube in the shell--"we putboth of them in here, bringing it a few grains at a time. One falls toone end and the other to the other. And then, with these simplevalves, we let out a little of whichever we wish--release it a grainat a time, if that is best. We let out a few grains of Grah, and Oro,being stronger, draws us upward; or we let a little of the Oro escape,and we fall downward swiftly. You see it is simple, as I said."
Rawson's reply was not an answer to Gor so much as it was an argumentwith himself. "Heavy," he said. "Specific gravity beyond anythingwe've ever known. Osmium, the heaviest substance we have, would belight as a feather compared to this. But wait. This Grah, as you callit, falls downward, but that means it falls toward the outside of theearth. With us it would be light--light! And Oro would be heavy. Newsubstance--new matter! One feels only the attraction of our normalgravitation; the other doesn't react to that at all, but is drivenoutward with tremendous force by counter-gravitation, the repulsion ofthis Central Sun. You've used it cleverly, but we'd have done morewith it up on top."
* * * * *
He was lost in thought for some minutes, muttering figures andcalculations half aloud. "Two thousand miles from the Central Sun tous; two thousand more through the solid earth. And if that repellingforce follows Newtonian laws it will decrease as the square.... But,coming down from up on top, normal gravity would decrease directly asthe distance!" He made scratches with one small stone upon a largerone in lieu of paper and pencil, but, to his listeners, his mutteredwords could have meant nothing.
"Around six seventy-six hundred and seventy miles to the neutral zone,the Zone of Fire. And a column of water--it would carry on by, plugthe shaft, check the back-pressure, and then...." For the first timesince that night when the mole-men had poured out into the crater, hiseyes were alight with hope, though his face seemed tense and grim.Then the lines about his lips relaxed; he smiled at Loah.
"I would like to investigate this under-world," he said, "--not veryfar down. Will you take me?"
The girl's adventurous spirit had led her on many exploring trips inthat subterranean world. She laughed happily when Rawson told her whathe wanted. "But, yes," she said; "of course I know such a place." Andfrom some two or three miles below, after anchoring the _jana_securely, she led him through a winding tunnel where he knew he wassteadily climbing.
* * * * *
It was a wide corridor that they followed, where the walls cametogether high above their heads; he could hardly see where they met bythe light of Loah's torch. Now and then there were lateral passages,but they were narrow, hardly more than cracks; and Rawson, lookinginto them, nodded his head with satisfaction.
Occasionally his footsteps rang hollowly on the stone, and he knewthat the floor was thin between this and other caverns below. "What anold honeycomb it is!" he exclaimed. "And we had it all figured asbeing solid. The weight is all here, of course, but it's concentratedin that red stuff down near the neutral zone. But anyway, Loah hasshown me just what I wanted."
He had gathered a handful of little fragments, and, keeping count ofhis steps, had shifted a bit of rock to his left hand for everyhundred paces. By this he knew they must have gone five or six mileswhen he reached the tunnel's high point. Many times it had widened.Here, too, was a cave more than a hundred feet across.
From the farther side the tunnel continued, pitching sharply downward,but Rawson did not explore farther. "I can seal that off with aflame-thrower," he said. "I've seen how they use them." Then he tookLoah's light and looked with every evidence of approval at the rockywalls and the roof that seemed heavy with dew.
He had wondered about the air, but he found that it seeped throughfrom that central shaft, although Loah told him that in some deeperpassages the air was bad. Here, although it was moving gently, itseemed wet as if charged with moisture. Rawson, staring upward, felt adrop strike him in the face, dripping from the rocks above.
"It's a gamble," he said, "just a gamble. But the stakes are worthwhile. And now, Loah-San, we will return."
* * * * *
He made crude work with the flame-throwers at first but finally he gotthe knack, and the mouth of the tunnel beyond the big room was sealed.Then, with the help of Loah and some few of the others, he brought inmore and more weapons of the Reds. He was curious as to theirconstruction, but his curiosity had to go unsatisfied. They were onlycylinders, so far as he could see, cylinders a foot long and sixinches through, of some metal with the dull lustre of aluminum. Butthey wer
e sealed, and he dared not cut one open with anotherflame-thrower for fear of what might come forth.
On the top of each cylinder a tube was connected that ended in a lavatip; but at the base of the tube, where it joined the cylinder, was asliding sleeve that checked the flame to nothing when it was moved, oropened it to the full blast.
He had a hundred of them in the room when at last he was through--onehundred fearful instruments of destruction. And still he told no oneof his plans; he only told Gor what he wanted done later on. "It maynot work," he had to admit to himself. "I'm just guessing at thethickness of the rock and the power of these machines. It's a gamble,nothing but a gamble."
He arranged the flame-throwers in a circle along the outer wall. Thetops of the cylinders were curved, but the bottoms were flat and theyset solidly on the rock. But he tipped them backward and braced themfirmly with fragments of stone until every crooked-neck tube waspointed upward and toward the center. Finally he was done.
* * * * *
It was only a matter of a few hours later when Rawson stood on theisland's end by the mouth of the shaft. In his ears was the ceaselessrush of the air as it entered the pit; it was the only sound in asilent world. And for the first time there came overwhelmingly uponhim a realization of what this moment meant.
The time had come. Loah was beside him, her lovely eyes unnaturallybright in her face from which all the blood seemed to have flowed. Hefelt the slight trembling of her body as she pressed against him; heknew she was struggling to keep back the tears. Then Rawson halfturned with one final entreaty that she let him go alone; but he leftthe words unsaid--he had argued it several times before.
Before them stood Gor, then the Wise Ones, the Servants of theMountain, deserting their post for the first time since the Mountainhad been given a voice. Beyond them all the people of this littleworld were gathered.
It had seemed only a fanciful dream, this thought of going; in fact,he had been too busy, too pressed with his own preparations, to giveit thought. Now he was learning to his own surprise how closely he hadidentified himself with this world and its people. It had given himLoah; it had been a haven, a sanctuary.
He let his eyes slowly take in the full splendor of that emerald sea,the shining land under a green-gold sun, the Mountain in white,crystal purity against a green-blue sky. And he was leaving it, he andLoah; they were going to--death!
* * * * *
"You will remember," he said to Gor. His voice sounded dull and heavy;it hardly seemed himself who was speaking. "You know the day and thehour. This is the nineteenth. It is now noon--twelve o'clock in myworld. When the Voice of the Mountain says that noon again has comeyou will do as I said."
"The Mountain speaks without ceasing now," said Gor, "telling alwaysof what the Red Ones do. We will count the hours as they pass. Intwenty-four of those hours Gor will descend in the _jana_ of the Redsto do as Dean Rah-Sun has commanded."
Rawson held out his hand. He was suddenly wordless. Then Loah threwherself into Gor's arms in one last passionate embrace--but it was shewho entered the _jana_ first.
"Come," she said to Dean. "Oh, come quickly, Dean-San!" Then he, toostepped inside and made the heavy door fast.
Men of the White Ones had been holding the big cylinder down. ButRawson, staring through the window, saw that it was Gor's own handsthat swung them out at last above the pit.
Their craft hung quivering for an instant in the rushing air; thenLoah moved one of the levers a trifle and the blackness took them, andonly the little bull's-eyes in the metal ceiling showed the fadingglow of the Inner World, the home of the People of the Light, whichtheir eyes never again would see.