Hell Stuff For Planet X

by Raymond Z. Gallun

  The piles of rushes were sleeping pallets. Moving forward. Tarc peered down into one. Tota was there—Tota and little Kudo. Tota’s reddish hair was rumpled like a coppery wave over a pillowing wolf skin, and her features, broad and comely beneath her white forehead, were relaxed like a child’s. In sleep. Kudo’s chubby face wore a baby frown of seeming concentration.

  Tarc was scarcely a sentimentalist, yet something that was like the concerned whine of a big dog trilled deep in his massive chest as he looked down upon the two who, beneath his harsh ways and his adventurous detachment, formed the center of his life.

  Perhaps it was the thought of them that directed his attention to a bit of magic, which he deemed specially effective in warding off evil. It was a magic of his own, which he had discovered quite accidentally, while attempting to make new kinds of paint, for the fresco work of his leisure.

  From a rock shelf projecting from the smoke-grimed wall of the cave, he took a dried bison bladder, half full of a simple mixture of three ingredients: powdered charcoal, saltpeter from a niter cavern, and sulphur, procured near a hot spring.

  Taking a small quantity of the grayish stuff in his fingers, he tossed it on the still-glowing remnants of a fire, in one corner of his habitation. At once there was a hissing flash of red sparks, and a puff of pungent smoke. Tarc muttered a spell, and the ceremony was at an end. The chieftain did not know that if he but placed his discovery in a solid container before igniting it, he would have a giant at his command—a giant widely used in the warfare of future ages.

  III.

  HE WENT BACK into the natural courtyard, and, clutching his spear, crouched in a corner, on guard. He looked capable in that capacity, with the flame of the lamp emphasizing, in shadow and light, the muscle ridges of his powerful body. But the ways of the Atta Lan were subtle and treacherous beyond any method of defense employed by the Cro-Magnons.

  He heard no sound except the sough of the night breeze in the skyward opening. He smelled no warning odor, for though such an odor existed, it was quite like that of the smoky refuge. He did not know when he began to doze unnaturally. His dozing became drugged sleep.

  In the silence above there were noises like the chucklings of trolls, sonorous and gleeful. And the things that descended from the opening overhead, on dangling ropes, during the next few moments, were like trolls in many respects, though outwardly they were human. Their faces, though clear-cut and handsome, bore a definitely satanic cast. Their skins were bluish, instead of white, black, or brown. They were the people of a lost legend.

  They were clad in short tunics of white fabric, sewn with threads of gold, and there were heavy ornaments of gold about their wrists and ankles. Attached to their belts were knives, and crude firearms of matchlock design. Over their mouths were leathern masks which must have been intended as a protection against the narcotic smoke they had used against the Cro-Magnons. The smoke had been produced by the burning of an extremely potent drug, extracted from certain lowland plants. The retort employed for this purpose was somewhere at the top of the sky opening. It was specially designed for the purpose of stupefying cave dwellers in their lairs.

  Tarc was presently aware that his arms were bound firmly behind his back, and that other adults of his tribe were in a similar predicament, around him. But to his drugged mind this knowledge was like the jangled illusions of a horrid dream. He heard moans and whimperings, and he saw the small, brown bodies of children, too young to be useful to the slavers, raised on high by their ankles, and put to the sword.

  He was too dazed to be angry until he heard little Kudo’s expiring scream. Gasping with insane fury, he tried to rise, but the stock of an Atta Lan matchlock struck the base of his skull. When, a few moments later, he had recovered a trifle from the stunning effect of the blow, he could hardly remember what had happened, for his thoughts were too vague. Tota, his wife, was weeping hysterically, as were other women.

  There were twenty Atta Lan, and about a hundred prisoners. With their necks tied to a long rope at intervals of about a yard, the latter were prepared for the exodus. Still drunken and clumsy, they were dragged into the dark tunnel.

  Out in the night, the cold air refreshed them and brought realization.

  Tarc uttered a low growl of hatred. No, it was more than hatred. It was madness—madness that was as incurable now as that of a cave bear, dying of a festered, maggoty wound. Gone was Tarc’s fierce joy of living, burned out of him by grief. Yet the cunning of the beast within him prevented him from making any wild protest. Violent death was a common thing in the primitive world in which he lived; but this fact did not lessen his fiendish lust for vengeance.

  Somewhere behind him in the tethered column of captives, Tota was whimpering pitifully. But for the moment there was no compassion in his heart even for her. “Silence, woman!” he hissed savagely, and for a time she was still.

  THE NIGHT wore on, and the wretched company of slaves, and their dark-skinned guards, continued with their tedious march. They were headed south, making their way through wooded hill country that sloped gradually toward the lowlands, which was the horror country of every Cro-Magnon tale and legend. There were the cities of the Atta Lan, and there dwelt those cryptic and little-known demons of incredible learning: the Po-see-da.

  Occasionally, there were distant, disquieting noises to mingle with the whisper of the wind and the crunching of twigs and pine needles underfoot. Somewhere an aurochs bellowed. A herd of the small wild horses crashed through a thicket. A Cro-Magnon tom-tom awoke to life suddenly, beating a rustling tattoo of fearful excitement. Then there was a volley of reports from crude matchlocks, followed by silence, ominous and deathly. Another band of primitives had yielded their souls and bodies to superior wisdom.

  In spite of these various disturbances, however, the night seemed strangely tranquil. There were no lurid reflections of signal fires. There were no war cries. Cro-Magnon morale had melted before the power of the Atta Lan.

  There was nothing for Tarc to do but plod on and think, and try to plan. He did all of these things with the dogged stoicism of the beast. But in his heart, mingled with his black hatreds, was fear; ghastly, aching, superstitious fear, which even a man of the twentieth century, thrust into his position, might have felt.

  The lowlands—beautiful, wild, hazy, and warm—but dreadful. Why? First, of course, because of the Atta Lan. Yet, after all, the Atta Lan were human. Behind them were the Po-see-da, whom rumor had said were not human. The Po-see-da were aloof. They kept their own council, revealing only such knowledge as they saw fit, even to their favored people. So, at least, was the story, which, by grapevine telling, had found its way all over paleolithic Europe.

  Perhaps, thought Tarc, the truth would soon be revealed to him. Perhaps he would soon see with his own eyes the real texture of the horrid mystery. Off to his right, in the forest, a large, nocturnal bird uttered a raucous cry, its wings thrashing in the foliage. And Tarc, courageous fighter that he was, started as if touched unexpectedly by a hot coal.

  After that he fell to testing the cord which fastened his neck to the long rope that tethered all the captives, his fingers fumbling with it gingerly. But an Atta Lan, moving a little behind him and to his left, spied his action, and with sadistic pleasure, struck his shoulders with a thorny branch. Dark blood oozed, revealed by stray dapplings of moonlight which sifted through the forest, now, from the eastern horizon.

  For a second Tarc’s bristly jaw hardened, and his narrowed eyes took on a gleam of murder. Then reason conquered. His time was not yet. Maybe a chance would come, later, before the Atta Lan had slaved him to death in that vast, unknown project of theirs, to the southwest. Tarc relapsed again into sullen, reserved docility, beneath which smoldered hell.

  The hours of darkness passed without remarkable incident. Twice, babbling streams, racing down toward the great salt lakes of the lowlands, were forded. And once, not so far overhead, a red light drifted. But Tarc had looked upon this strange phenomeno
n before, and, in consequence, it had lost some of its power to awe him.

  Above the light there was a bulbous thing, showing gray and ghostly in the moonlight. The Cro-Magnon chief had never heard of the Archimedes Principle, and he had never seen a balloon at close quarters. But any layman of the twentieth century would have recognized the thing of the drifting light for what it was: a fire balloon, buoyed in its flight because of the lowered density of the heated air within it. The Atta Lan had found a limited use for them as vehicles of experiment and travel.

  IV.

  WHEN the beautiful dawn, flaming and golden because of the heavy, humid atmosphere of the lowlands, was breaking, the weary party of captives descended a steep slope, at the bottom of which spread out flat, cultivated land, interspersed with groves of trees, and dotted with fortified habitations of gray stone. Here the caravan continued along a paved road, reaching at last a gigantic, battlemented edifice on the bank of a canal which ran in an east-west direction.

  Thousands of other Cro-Magnons were here, brought in by bands of fierce Atta Lan, who had probably been scouring the highlands for days.

  With tense, clinical attention, Tarc watched the proceedings. There were vast, flat barges on the canal. The slaves were herded aboard them. Barking commands were given. Thorn branches swung viciously, biting into flesh. The women were driven into pens; the men were divided into groups to ply the immense sweeps which propelled the craft. Somewhere in the turmoil, Tarc lost sight of Tota.

  Driven by the sweeps, to which the slaves who worked them were securely chained, the ponderous barges moved westward. Once Tarc attempted to converse with his grim-faced, sweating fellows, but a tall Atta Lan, ever watchful for trickery, administered a swift, silencing blow with a thorny stick.

  Shortly after noon the canal boats came to a halt beside a tremendous depression in the ground. Water and food, the latter a thin gruel made of a millet-like grain, was given to the slaves. The white-tunicked guards spent considerable time looking down into the hollow, in attitudes which seemed to express reverence and worship.

  Tarc, sprawled on the rough planking, looked too, first only in mild interest. But then his mind captured an awesome thread of the meaning of the thing he beheld. As if startled, he jumped to his feet. Here, within view, he felt sure, was the central pivot of all that was malignant and evil!

  At the bottom of the pit was a circular structure perhaps three hundred yards across. To the primitive mind it suggested a colossal turtle; but it was more like the gun turret of a battleship. Its hue was a drab, metallic gray. Its walls and top, though still looking tremendously stout, were deeply pitted and scored, as if by ages of corrosion, perhaps in submerging sea water. Several doors and hatches were visible in the structure’s flanks, but all were sealed.

  NOTHING moved around the structure; but in the air, warm and still under the bright sun, Tarc thought he detected a faint, unrestive odor, such as he had smelled around hills and kopjes infested with snakes. Snakes, however, could not have constructed this queer, forbidding thing which looked more ancient and weathered, even, than the surrounding hills. Tarc, quaint and naive though his reasoning often was, was aware of that.

  He could talk now, if he were careful; for the attention of the worshiping Atta Lan was not now so keenly directed at the slaves.

  “Po-see-da?” he questioned the man nearest him, his word a low whisper.

  “What else?” the other responded. “Here in this habitation, so I have heard, dwell the entire race, perhaps a thousand in number. Never were there many Po-see-da, though once there were more than now.”

  “What goes on to the west?” Tarc demanded. “What must we do when we arrive there?”

  “We will doubtless find out soon enough,” Tarc’s fellow captive replied.

  Tarc saw that his informer’s cheeks were not as brown as they should be, and that his eyes were very big. Probably he was still thinking of the dread nearness of the Po-see-da, as was Tarc himself. But the latter was also concerned with the problems of revenge and escape, though as yet no solution was in sight and the future held little promise.

  The Atta Lan ate. Then the barges moved on again, toward the west. Sometime after nightfall, the crews at the sweeps were allowed several hours of slumber. Then toil began once more, in the flickering, smoky illumination of torches. Ruled by a similar routine, four days went by.

  NEAR EVENING, on the fourth day, the barges entered a place that was like a deep gorge, along the bottom of which the canal meandered. Ahead were busy sounds of Titanic engineering operations: clangings, thuddings, shouts, explosions. And over it all was a steady, threatening roar, new to Tarc’s experience.

  Tired though he was, he still surged more valiantly on the gigantic sweep, as if by so doing he might hasten the moment of revelation, which he sensed was at hand.

  The barge that bore him rounded a sharp bend in the canal, and moved beyond the obstructing crags, which seemed to be sullen reminders that man and all his labors were petty indeed.

  With eager, narrowed eyes, Tarc stared at the spectacle before him. Though born of an age which we think of always as being primitive and uncivilized, what he looked upon would have thrilled the heart of any modern engineer.

  A huge dyke was there—a dyke miles in length, holding back the gray ocean expanse, visible to the west. For the most part, the barrier was of crude construction and doubtful strength, being composed mostly of earth. Its building had begun centuries before, when the threat of climbing waters had first been noticed; and, at odd intervals, it had been repaired, and its height and strength increased.

  Now, since it no longer afforded adequate protection, it was being replaced by a colossal, time-defying, sea-defying wall of stone! In the gathering, fire-dotted dusk, thousands of Cro-Magnon slaves were at work. A large number of them, chiefly domestic servants of the Atta Lan recruited for the purpose, must have been busy here for several months, at least.

  Tarc could not have grasped, at a glance, all the implications of the tremendous undertaking. He could not have understood the position of the lowlands behind him, relative to the rising level of the western ocean, swollen by the melting of the polar ice caps of the receding glacial age. But comprehension would come to him, inevitably, if gradually.

  THAT NIGHT the education of the raw recruits began. They were granted no sleep—only the slight refreshment of a little cold gruel. Then they were put to work, dragging sledges loaded with stone. There were shaggy mammoths, too, for this purpose; but their numbers were insufficient, and though these animals were plentiful in the wild state, still the process of domesticating them was long, tedious, dangerous and doubtful. And so the Cro-Magnons, both men and women, must be beasts of burden.

  A half mile east of the wall lay the quarries, and between them and the barrier ran several paved roads, along which the creaking sledges were drawn.

  With a hundred or more of his kind, both male and female now, Tarc was chained to the stout, wooden tongue of one of the sledges. Thus his freedom was as limited as before.

  Tota was somewhere among the horde of workers, he knew; but he could not find her. This was not remarkable, for the throng must have numbered two hundred thousand at least, perhaps one third of which were Atta Lan. With a savage ache in his heart, he wondered if he would ever see her again.

  But as he tugged to pull the great sledge, his curiosity could still respond to the appeal of the witching spectacle around him. Under bright stars, torches and bonfires cast a flickering illumination over the scene. Levers of wood creaked as gigantic blocks of stone were pried and jockeyed into position at the top of the sea barrier. Thorny sticks whistled through the air, landing on broad backs that glistened with sweat. In the quarries there were sharp explosions of blasting, and puffs of red sparks—the latter more intriguing and less fearful to Tarc than to any of his fellows.

  The methods employed in the construction of the dyke were primitive and unscientific, when compared with those familiar in the t
wentieth century; but progress was being made, nevertheless. Necessity was there—pressing, urgent necessity—and that was enough to stir the Atta Lan to phenomenal heights of achievement.

  Three times during that first hellish night, a ponderous, droning sound approached from out of the east, and something which should have been drawn from a future dream, even in the twentieth century, circled in the air above, its grotesque form limned against the paleolithic stars. It was like a great bird, but it was not a bird, for no living thing could have possessed that dull, metallic luster.

  Were there Po-see-da aboard the monster? Po-see-da who looked down critically upon the efforts of their devotees? Doubtless. Yet their greater wisdom was not brought into play to help build that which, otherwise, must take years of human effort. But perhaps, in actual fact, the Po-see-da were not vitally concerned. They had lived long before there had been either Cro-Magnons or Atta Lan. They could take care of themselves. Maybe, then, their watching was only the observational part of an experiment.

  V.

  DAYS PASSED—weeks. Still Tarc slaved, and still he yearned madly for revenge. The sight of men and women dying around him, and of the body strength of others ebbing away under the strain of the life-sapping toil, aroused in his tough, phlegmatic nerves but little feeling of horror. He only resented with a bitter fury the fact that almost all of those who perished belonged to his own race.

  He saw Tota but once, and at too great a distance for him to risk speech with her, since he feared she might be punished if he did so. He could scarcely recognize his mate in the wasted, dust-grimed creature who tugged feebly to help draw the sledge to the crew of which she belonged. Her body bore the marks of many beatings, administered, no doubt, to excite her failing energies.