Hell Stuff For Planet X

by Raymond Z. Gallun

  She did not see him at all, and for that he was glad in a way, for he was ashamed of his impotence. Oh, he could have raved and mouthed, and torn at his chains, but to what purpose? The cool cunning, and the savage hope for vengeance, still held out within him. But he knew that Tota was marked for death. At best, she could last only a few days more. He never saw her again.

  His knowledge, however, was increasing rapidly. He knew at last exactly what it was that worried his captors: for in spite of the vigilance of the guards, the Cro-Magnons managed to converse a little in the sleeping pens. Some of them, slaves for many years, understood the speech of the Atta Lan, and thus, by unobtrusive listening, had been able to learn much.

  During warm ages the lowlands to the east had been flooded with salt water. But when ice ages came, the ocean level had always dropped, because of the vast quantities of moisture tied up in the form of glaciers. During those periods, the lowlands, kept warm by winds from the south, had dried to a large extent, for the outlet to the ocean proper no longer existed. The ground at the strait was then too high to be passed over by the shrunken hydrosphere.

  In consequence, a vast valley was produced, far below the normal level of the outer seas. Into it, with the coming of the latest glacial period, the primitive Atta Lan had drifted, there to submit to the sway and the genetic experiments of the Po-see-da, who, flood or no flood, had made their home there for uncounted aeons.

  Now, however, the glaciers were all but melted. Unless the oceans could be held in check, the deluge would pour back through the ancient strait, covering the cities of the Atta Lan, destroying most of their numbers, and wiping out all but a dim memory of their civilization.

  TARC, too, was now the possessor of much potentially useful local knowledge. He knew the outlay of the encampments and the workings of the project fairly well, for slaves thirsting for freedom are keen observers. He also had part of a scheme—a wild part, which no Cro-Magnon other than himself would have dared to think of putting into effect. This statement is no reflection on the courage of the others of his kind; but they lacked a special fragment of Tarc’s experience.

  The one thing he lacked was freedom from the eternal vigilance of the matchlock-armed guards, and from the stout anklet and chain, which, always, day and night, limited his movements.

  He seldom saw any of the members of the small tribe he had ruled; and the sullen suspicion now within him prevented him from making fresh human contacts. He guarded his thoughts with jealous secrecy.

  But then Moob came into his life. Moob was not a man, but a magnificent mammoth, who, like the unskilled slaves, drew sledges back and forth between the ocean wall and the quarries. Moob was a magnificent specimen of his kind, his giant shape tufted with long, reddish-black hair. His curving tusks had never been removed, for frequently his regular task was broken by a few hours of handling scaffold timbers, and here, as with the Indian elephants of a later time, his natural armament was very useful.

  Tarc—he was on a day shift now—first saw Moob one afternoon when some Atta Lan whim or purpose caused the mammoth to be transferred to the quarry and road where he was employed. At once Tarc was intrigued. At first this feeling must have been only the attraction an artist experiences for a favorite subject. Often, in the past, Tarc had painted murals of these splendid brutes on the walls of his tribal refuge. Anyway, a vagrant impulse caused the Cro-Magnon chief to hiss softly, as the sledge to the crew of which he belonged passed Moob’s sledge on the roadway.

  The result of the attracting sound was rather remarkable. In spite of the Atta Lan driver, who crouched on his tufted head, Moob stopped. His little eyes roved this way and that. Then his trunk lifted, and a querulous, questioning grunt, with almost a note of hope in it, gurgled up from somewhere within his mighty carcass. “Are you a friend?” he seemed to say.

  Tarc received a beating for his breach of discipline; but at the next opportunity, a few hours later, he gave the mammoth another hiss of salutation. Perhaps it was only a fierce defiance that prompted him to do so; but then, maybe it was something deeper—a yearning that was indefinable.

  Again Moob stopped, and this time trumpeted a lusty greeting. Tarc was punished more severely than before, and though, from then on, he made no attempt to call the attention of the mammoth to himself, Moob was still disposed to continue the amicable relations. His keen sense of smell had already cataloged the scent of his human acquaintance, and always, when it came into his nostrils, he voiced a sonorous bellow. Somehow, the heavy sound made Tarc's blood tingle with a wild surge of nameless ecstasy.

  What is the nature of the strange ties of kinship which sometimes spring up, unheralded, between man and beast? Does any one truly know? Does some mysterious telepathic process establish a bond of understanding? Here were two savages, one of them human, the other perhaps almost human in mind, and little short of Gargantua himself in physical strength. Both, though sullenly docile on the surface, must have longed to be free with a longing that was torture.

  Can the relationship of Moob and Tarc be explained thus? Maybe, maybe not.

  Anyway, for three days the mammoth, regardless of the goadings of his driver, greeted the Cro-Magnon chief lustily at every opportunity. The Atta Lan saw not only inconvenience but possible danger in this habit; and so, inevitably, Tarc was transferred to another sledge crew on a different road.

  VI.

  LIFE went on as before. Tarc grew thin and gaunt, but his remarkable stamina enabled him to keep his strength.

  A month went by, and the work on the ocean wall progressed slowly. Then came the storm from out of the west. It began toward midnight, a howling, screaming holocaust of wind and driving rain.

  Tarc was in the sleeping pen occupied by his crew, at the time; but he awoke when the first raindrop struck his flesh. One glance told him what he might expect in a few moments, and his first thought was to seek shelter. None was available, however. The sleeping pens were wooden inclosures, all of them open to the sky. Within them the slaves were chained to long, horizontal rails of wood supported a foot or so off the ground by massive blocks. Thus they could move only in a narrow arc, prescribed by a short length of chain.

  Tarc could only cover himself with the reed bedding with which the floor was sprinkled, and watch and wait. Second by second the wind mounted in velocity. Then, with a terrific flare of lightning and a deafening crash of thunder, the deluge from the sky began.

  For a few seconds Tarc received the hammering weight of it with his head buried in his arms, the terror of the beast for elemental forces, upon him. But presently curiosity conquered. He raised his eyes and looked out over the encampment, toward the wall. All building operations, conducted by the night shift, had, of course, ceased. Men were scurrying hither and thither, seeking refuge. Great bonfires, pounded by the rain, were dying. Shouts and screams were lost in the yammering of the hurricane.

  Above the sea dyke white caps were lashing. Would the barrier hold? Savagely, he hoped that it would not, even though he would perish with the Atta Lan, if it were broken. But no; unless there was a mishap of some kind, it probably would withstand the shock of the storm, since, in the past, it had undoubtedly withstood the shock of other, similar storms.

  He waited, wishing that he could find something to snap his chain, as he had often wished before; but the Atta Lan guards still stood in their wooden shelters, cruel eyes watching, matchlocks ready.

  Then came the hail, hurtling down like volcanic stones. Stoically he endured the bruising impacts of it, his head covered with his arms. After several minutes there were sounds of a commotion near the sleeping pen: squeals, grunts, bellows, and the splintering of wood. Then the sharp roar of matchlocks. The guards in his pen, and in others, were discharging their weapons for some reason.

  Tarc looked up, protecting his head against the pounding hail with his upraised arms. Out through the storm, where the checkerboard of the sleeping pens began, he saw a full score of great, gray backs, and ponderous elephant
ine heads. Mammoths! Mammoths amok, terrified by the hurricane! Madly, their line of flight blocked, they were heaving and thrusting at the outer stockade of the pens.

  Now, in spite of the volleys of matchlock balls, which could have done little damage to the great tough-hided beasts, unless very accurately placed, the stockade collapsed, and the monsters rushed in. Slaves, trampled under foot, screamed in wild agony. The lesser, inner barriers of the pens, crumpled like paper before the frightened rush of the Juggernauts, who had broken out of their own quarters.

  TARC was on his feet now, heedless of the battering hail and the fierce, tearing wind.

  A half dozen Atta Lan guards were waving their empty matchlocks above their heads, shouting futile orders to the maddened Pachyderms. In their flow of jargonic words Tarc caught the name, “Moob!” repeated over and over again. This name, voiced by other Atta Lan on other occasions, was one which he could never forget.

  Tarc felt a strange, paradoxically pleasant thrill quickening his pulses. With hunched head and narrowed eyes, he peered through the storm. Hopeful suspicion became ecstatic certainty. Leading the runaways was the colossus of all mammoths. There was no mistaking those great, curving tusks, which only one of these giant draft animals that he had ever seen had been allowed to carry.

  For a moment it was impulse and not reason that ruled the Cro-Magnon chief. But even then, at the edge of his consciousness, there must have hovered the ghost of an almost smothered scheme.

  His arms were flailing to attract his monstrous friend’s attention. “Moob!” he yelled, and the mighty wind tore at his mouth and throat. “Moob!”

  The leader of the mammoths stopped, his feet spread wide apart, as if to brace himself against the storm. His ragged ears rose ludicrously as he listened. His long trunk was raised as he tried to sniff, through the bucketing rain and hail.

  “Moob!” Tarc shouted again.

  It was enough. The Pachydermic memory has become proverbial. Perhaps Moob could scent, even through the tortured air, the odor of his human friend. Or maybe telepathy and keen intuition took a part in what happened next. With a bellow, Moob trotted forward, crashing easily through the wooden sides of the intervening pens. He did not even seem to notice the dozen hapless slaves, both men and women, that he stepped on in his progress.

  Thus he reached Tarc’s pen. The wooden tether rails to which the slaves were chained, snapped easily when his great blundering feet tripped against them. A sudden tautening of the linked tether fastened to the iron ring which encircled Tarc’s left ankle, hurled the chieftain prostrate.

  But in the next second he realized that, except for a short piece of chain, loose at the opposite end now, he was free. The rail around which it had been looped was broken in several places, and the loop had slipped from the splintered pieces. Similarly, the other slaves, both in his pen and in others through which Moob had passed, were at liberty, or would be so in a moment, after they had extricated themselves from the wreckage.

  Automatically, Tarc had bounded erect once more. Now he stood, a little dazed, facing the monster who had granted his dearest wish. But primitive minds are swift in thought, and primitive bodies are quick in action.

  The herd of runaway mammoths were close on the heels of their leader now. Cro-Magnons were screaming from fright and injury. Moob stood still, sniffing at his chosen master; but a similar docility could not be expected from his fellows. Frightened at the fury of the storm, they might blunder anywhere, with disastrous results.

  Again Tarc’s hitherto chimerical plan glimmered clear in his brain. It was now or never. The Atta Lan guards in their shelters, were hurrying to reload their matchlocks.

  And so Tarc seized Moob’s trunk, a gesture which the trained beast understood. At once the chieftain was hoisted to a position atop Moob’s head. Doing as he had seen the Atta Lan drivers do, Tarc reached forward, grasping the mammoth’s ears, and plying them just as one plies the reins on a horse’s bridle. Thus guidance was quite easy.

  Directed by his rider, Moob turned about, advanced the way he had come, pushing his fellows before him.

  AS NEVER BEFORE, Tarc felt himself a leader of his kind. Buffeted by wind and water and hail, he turned a little on his swaying perch.

  “All slaves who can, follow!” he screamed. “We can be free forever! We can have our revenge, if we are brave! Kill the Atta Lan guards, lest they find the means to betray us! Kill the guards, and follow!”

  Faintly audible behind him, muffled by the yammering of the storm, were the noises of a brief altercation. Three shots were fired. Then there was only the triumphant voice of the mob, to mingle with the voice of the hurricane. Tarc did not even look back. He was looking ahead, wondering what danger must next be met and surmounted. A few Atta Lan scattered before the horde he commanded. There were several reports from matchlocks, but most of these weapons were too drenched with water to be of any use.

  The party, almost two hundred strong, the majority of them men, won clear of the inclosure that surrounded the sleeping pens. Tarc, guiding Moob, whose fellows still hovered in the background, led the way up the slope of a hill.

  A cave yawned before him—the magazine where the explosive used for blasting in the quarries was kept. Lithely, he bounded down from Moob’s head and advanced. A bullet whizzed in his direction—then another. But six guards, even when armed with matchlocks and knives, were hardly a match for nearly two hundred Cro-Magnons, filled with the lust of murder.

  A little torch, carefully protected by a metal grid, burned inside the cave, where many boxes were piled.

  “This shall be a holiday for the demons of fire and water,” Tarc declared to the horde that crowded about him. “I understand the gray substance which bursts with a loud sound and great force, for I have made it myself, to use as a magic charm. I did not know half of its magic before my capture, but one can learn much from the Atta Lan. The sparks and the smell of their sorcery told me that it was the same as mine, and so I do not fear it. Load yourselves with this stuff that is ill luck to our enemies, and come with me!”

  Before leaving, Tarc took the gridded torch from its sconce in the wall, and wrapped the cloak of a murdered guard around the cylindrical grid, to protect the flame from the storm. He would presently have a grim use for the torch, when the sea barrier had been reached.

  Burdened with cases of gunpowder—in that was, of course: a simple mixture of saltpeter, sulphur, and charcoal, such as Tarc had accidentally invented long before his captivity—the mob moved silently down the slope and toward the wall, against which the ocean hammered thunderously. The chieftain, mounted once more on Moob’s broad pate, led the way. The storm had abated slightly; but it was still a howling inferno. Fortunately, the boxes which contained the powder, were fairly water-tight.

  Tarc knew the weakest point in the gigantic dyke. At the junction of the old, earthen section, with the new rampart of stone, was a place where the barrier was made unsafe by construction work. But a great temporary buttress was in place here as a strengthening element. Under the buttress, which was of wooden beams, and against the dyke at this point, the Cro-Magnons piled their cases of explosive. Before they had finished, scattered shots from Atta Lan shelters began to pour into their midst. But they paid scant attention, until their work was done.

  With a rock, Tarc smashed one of the stout boxes at the base of the pile. Then he jerked the covering from the torch he carried and tossed it into the exposed explosive. With a hiss, the latter burst into violent flame, which, in a moment would ignite the other boxes. These, being sealed and firm, would explode with great force.

  Except for Moob, who stood stolidly waiting, Tarc was the last to retreat. Once more perched on the head of the mammoth, he guided his mount away at a rapid run.

  THE DETONATION was ragged and long, being composed of many lesser detonations; but it did its work. The huge buttress collapsed with slow majesty. The earthen part of the dyke cracked jaggedly to its base. Mingled with the roar of the s
torm was the vibrant and crescendoing hiss of sea water.

  Ribbons of brilliant lightning revealed the spectacle to Tarc, who dared to look back briefly over his shoulder. Soon now—a matter of minutes at best—the battering whitecaps would break through the weakened rampart, that had been the pride of Atta Lan engineering.

  Tarc’s followers were scattering like scared rabbits. There was no time to think of freeing the Cro-Magnon slaves still chained in the sleeping pens. Atta Lan, too, were racing about wildly, but there was no battling. There was a truce now, between enemies—a truce of fear.

  At a lumbering gallop, his best gait, Moob bore Tarc toward the north. They had just reached the near-by highland foothills when the crash came. The barrier had broken. The few red flares that the Atta Lan had kindled hastily, that they might see to attempt futile repairs, winked out suddenly, smothered by the roaring maelstrom of ocean brine.

  Tarc laughed in gleeful triumph, as he drove Moob higher into the safe hills. His revenge would now complete itself. The Atta Lan would pay dearly for the lives of Tota and little Kudo. Tarc did not know that he had changed history. He did not know that the great rock, far to the west, looming dimly through the ebbing storm, would one day be called Gibraltar.

  Very low overhead, beneath the scudding, lightning-creased clouds, a bird-like form, grotesque and mechanical, circled without haste. At the windows of the craft, illumined by a green glow within the cabin, were several fragile monstrosities, peering down with great, mild orbs. The creatures looked a bit like the modern conception of future men. But their immense craniums were covered with fine scales instead of hair. They were reptiles, belonging to a species which had begun its march to civilization during the dim Mesozoic, thirty million years before.