Stricken with terror, as the aircraft swooped not a hundred feet above him, Tarc shook his horny fist at the weird demons aboard it.
“Po-see-da!” he screamed, and Moob trumpeted defiance.
But the audience of the primitive pair paid them little heed. Perhaps the Po-see-da felt neither fear nor regret at what had happened. Maybe they were only bystanders, engaged in interested observation from behind the bulwarks of their ancient science.
Now the flying machine turned eastward and sped swiftly away. Above the horizon in that direction, incandescent streaks that were not lightning, appeared suddenly, flashing at irregular intervals. They were the paths of distant rockets—rockets leaving the earth. The Po-see-da were done with the planet that had spawned them. They could have survived the flood, as they had survived other floods in the past; but such was not their choice. Some restless yearning urged them on to new adventure.
For many minutes Tarc and Moob continued their retreat into the highlands. Then, in the gloom, the chieftain’s shoulder brushed against the limb of a tree. The latter caught in the piece of rawhide around his neck. The cord snapped, and the obsidian pendant, which he had worn since before the beginning of his captivity, dropped to the ground. Tarc dismounted to search for his treasure, but he could not find it. The bauble had slipped into a deep crevice in the rocks, where it was destined to lay buried in sediment until 1952 A.D.
Tarc was not particularly worried about his loss, however; he felt no special need of protecting charms now. He groped around for pieces of stone with which to break the chain that dangled from the iron ring about his ankle. The ring he’d keep—
VII.
THERE WAS only darkness, now, in the screen of Josef Gaetz’s remarkable apparatus. The two savants looked at each other with weary, fevered eyes.
Fred Gorgone was the first to find his voice. “Atta Lan,” he said huskily. “Atlantis! What we just saw was the beginning of the mythical continent’s destruction, of course. But Atlantis wasn’t a continent at all! It was just the exposed bed of the Mediterranean, well below the normal level of the Atlantic. During ice ages there’s an isthmus at Gibraltar, not a strait. If Tarc hadn’t blasted that dyke—”
“I know!” Gaetz broke in. “We might all be slaves of the Atlanteans to-day, and science would be advanced beyond our dreams. But the Atta Lan are extinct. The survivors of the catastrophe, even with the weapons at their command, couldn’t face the raw wilderness. They were already too civilized. And the Po-see-da are gone. I’m a scientist, Fred, but I’m glad for the way things turned out—damned glad!—in spite of the loss to science!”
“So am I!” the old archaeologist declared, his voice unsteady with emotion. And then in a calmer tone, “It’s strange how legend distorts facts, and yet manages to keep a grain of truth.”
“Just what do you mean by that?” Gaetz questioned.
“Po-see-da—Poseidon!” Gorgone responded. “Poseidon is the ancient Greek god of the sea. Remember?”
The End
***************************
Red Shards on Ceres,
by Raymond Z. Gallun
Thrilling Wonder Stories Dec. 1937
Short Story - 4228 words
They Seemed Harmless Enough, These Broken
Pieces of Glass on a Deserted Asteroid— But
Strange, Crimson Menace Glowed in Them!
THAT it was Ronnie Iverness who found the devilish Red Shards was a trick of chance. He was not even a legitimate member of the Farnsworth Expedition to airless Ceres. He was just a freckle-faced twelve-year-old with nerve enough to stow away on their ship, the Antares. Dave Iverness, the pilot, happened to be his brother.
Ronnie was dragged out of his hiding place two days after the Antares left Earth. For the balance of the trip, and for a while after the landing on the asteroid, he was kicked around by the whole outfit.
Then fortune seemed to smile on the youthful culprit.
“He’s a game little imp,” Professor Farnsworth said to Dave Iverness, when the two were alone in the specimen room. “Maybe it would be the right thing to ease up on the hazing, and to give him a bit of freedom, eh? So far he hasn’t even been out of the ship.”
Dave, big and bronzed, chuckled softly.
“Sure,” he replied. “Ronnie’s taken his medicine like a man, and he’s regular. Not a trouble-maker, either. He’s just so doggoned interested in space ships and other worlds that he can’t help himself sometimes!”
Master Iverness was called from the rocket compartment where Hansen, the engineer, was keeping him needlessly busy polishing metal. Presently, though he was expecting anything but favors, he found himself provided with a regulation space suit. When his good fortune was explained to him, he was too flabbergasted to say much, but his eyes became very large, indeed.
“G-gosh! Thanks!” was about all he could stammer just then.
The space suit was many sizes too big for him. The vast, bloated legs of the contraption made walking, and even standing, somewhat difficult for the boy, for he found it necessary to keep his feet spread wide apart. But Ronnie was quite willing to undergo physical discomfort for the thrills of exploration.
With Farnsworth’s full permission, he left the ship, along with six men, Dave Iverness among them. The group moved off toward the near horizon, and presently entered a jagged gorge that looked like the burrow of an angry Titan. Their purpose now, and in fact the entire purpose of the Farnsworth Expedition, was to collect mineral samples for the Smithsonian Institute.
For five hours the kid was in his glory, while he and his companions bounded and clambered over the rough, mysterious landscape, where shadows were as sharp and black as the fangs of fiends. The massiveness and clumsiness of Ronnie’s attire was largely made up for by the fact that the gravity of tiny Ceres was very slight.
Nothing special happened until the sallying band had almost completed their circuitous return to the Antares. Then Ronnie noticed something off to his right. It was a cleft in the rusty ground. The other members of the party were straggled out ahead of him now; for he hadn’t been able to move quite as fast as they in his ill-fitting space armor.
THE cleft offered no unusual promise. The men had ignored it. Nevertheless, youthful whim sent Ronnie hopping to its brink. Thick gloom enveloped its depths. But close to the torn lip of the cleft there were curious, broken fragments lying in the dust. They were flat and flaky, like pieces of shattered, red glass. As any adult would have done, Ronnie stooped and picked one of them up. Inside the thin, translucent texture of the shard, there slumbered a deep, bloody glow.
Ronnie wanted to yell out about his find to his brother up ahead; but something unfathomable restrained him. No physical circumstance should have prevented him from doing this, for his oxygen helmet, and the oxygen helmets of all the other space suits belonging to the expedition, were equipped with radio receivers and transmitters.
Nevertheless, for some eerie and unknown reason, Ronnie held his tongue. It was as though, somewhere, beyond and yet within himself, a hidden entity was considering the situation cautiously, in an effort to determine the very best way to cope with it, with the least chance of making a mistake.
Master Iverness did not quite realize this at once, however. His own feelings were strange. He stood for a long moment, the red shard clutched in his gloved hand, his brows, his lips, and his freckled nose puckered in vague puzzlement. During that moment a subtle web of intangible but very real power ensnared his faculties. Ancient Ceres, barren, burnt out, and seemingly lifeless, still harbored magic of which man had no inkling.
Presently Ronnie felt a peculiar tingling sensation in the hand which held the glassy fragment. The sensation warned him that the piece of red mineral was probably not entirely safe to hold onto. But when he decided to drop the thing, he was surprised and frightened to discover that his fingers did not respond to his will!
Just then he heard his brother’s voice shouting in his earphones: “Hurry
up, Ronnie! Where are you anyway?”
The kid really wanted to answer his brother this time, for he was badly scared. He wanted to forget everything that had just happened, and go bounding over the ridge which now hid his companions and the space ship from view. Words formed in his mind automatically, but there they stayed! They couldn’t get past his tongue and vocal cords!
It was the same with his sturdy legs. They refused to obey the commands of his brain! It was as though somebody else had suddenly taken possession of his entire body! And Ronnie, with a youngster’s quick intuition, knew that the wicked red shard he clutched and couldn’t let go of was somehow responsible.
This knowledge did him no good, however.
Now he spoke, and though the words were undoubtedly copied from his memory in some manner, still he had no willful part in their utterance. Their tone was cunningly calm.
“Be with you in a minute, Dave,” he said into his microphone. “Just wait up for me.”
Then, impelled once more by a weird and irresistible impulse which seemed to originate in the substance-less ether surrounding Ceres, he selected more of the shards from the ground about him with his free hand, and stuffed them into the pouch that was part of his equipment.
THOUGH he did not realize it, he now had fourteen of the mysterious fragments, besides the one which he held tightly in his right hand. Perhaps this was just a coincidence; but then again, perhaps, it was not, for there were fourteen men in the Farnsworth Expedition.
Now he proceeded toward the ridge, his movements entirely beyond his control. He crossed the ridge and descended into the little valley where the Antares rested. With a cunning not his own he scanned the group of men beside the ship. The entire company—fourteen—was in sight. Those who had not gone afield were busy excavating a shallow pit in the hard crust of Ceres, their purpose being to obtain samples of the minerals beneath the surface.
Ronnie’s actions, now that he had an audience, were deceptively normal.
“Hey!” he shouted. “Everybody! I found something!”
The men turned to look at him as he bounded clumsily into their midst.
“What’s the matter?” Dave Iverness questioned.
“I’ve got some red stuff, like pieces of glass!” Ronnie’s voice piped. “I found ’em over the ridge. Look!”
He held up the fragment which his right hand clutched in a viselike grip.
Dave Iverness scrutinized his kid brother closely. He saw that the youngster’s face was pale behind the glass front of his oxygen helmet; but this might only be the natural result of excitement.
“Let’s have a look at the thing,” Dave Iverness invited, extending his hand.
“No!” Ronnie’s guiding entity replied. “This one’s mine! But I’ve got a lot of other pieces in my pouch. One for everybody. Wait!”
It was a bad moment for Ronnie Iverness. He alone had an idea of what was about to happen; but in spite of his tremendous inner struggle, he could not so much as give a tiny squeak of warning. His will was an impotent nothing imprisoned in a body not his own.
As though he were watching the actions of another person, he saw himself remove the baleful shards from his pouch, and pass them around, one to each of his companions, Dave and Professor Farnsworth among them.
What followed was as strange as the dark wisdom that produced it. A subtle spell of unearthly wizardry conquered the men as easily as it had conquered the boy. By the time that each individual knew that all was not well, it was too late. Fingers clutched the shards in grips that no human will could break. The channels between brain and muscle were seemingly severed, and something invisible and intangible assumed complete control.
Nevertheless, the activity of each human brain went on unhampered. Thoughts of fear and dread and wonder were not checked. The men were scientists; this being so, each of them tried to construct a theory which might explain the weird miracle. All of them must have arrived at approximately the same conclusions.
The shards were composed of a material which acted as the receiver for some eerie neuronic control, perhaps propagated through space by a form of etheric impulse. These impulses, when received, acted upon nerve tissue, probably first contacting the nerves of the fingers that held the shards, and traveling thence to the spinal cords and brains of each individual. The strength of the impulses was sufficient to dominate completely the normal neuronic messages by which a man guides the movements of his body.
CLEARLY, what had happened was the work of an intelligent agent with a definite purpose. The red fragments must have been planted beside the cleft in the hope that they would trap unsuspecting space wanderers.
Professor Farnsworth was now the first human marionette to respond to the silent commands of the hidden unknown. While the others waited stiffly, he entered the Antares and proceeded to the radio room. There he sent out a call to Earth in code:
Marvelous discovery on Ceres. Organize large expedition and dispatch to Ceres at once. Arnold Farnsworth.
He learned then that not only his body, but his memory as well, was a slave to the unknown. The glassy red fragment he held was not merely a receiver of commands. It could be used to probe his mentality as well. Else the message in English could never have been composed.
He could guess, too, the sinister purpose of the radiogram. More human beings were wanted here on Ceres. As slaves? For food? Only time would tell.
Unable to resist the guiding compulsion that gripped him, he left the Antares and joined his company. Then the trek toward some cryptic destination began. In single file the fifteen members of the expedition marched back over the ridge. No one spoke. No one could speak. Minds still could function; but they were as impotent as if sealed in blocks of metal.
The party reached the cleft that Ronnie had discovered. They clambered down into its gloomy shadows. There was a rough-cut tunnel there, leading steeply down toward the bowels of Ceres. They began their descent.
In a matter of minutes complete darkness enveloped them. But presently this was relieved a little by light which luminous lumps of radioactive ore in the walls of the passage emitted.
For weary hours the descent continued. Slight though the gravity of the asteroid was, still the task of clambering down a passage in many places almost vertical, made serious inroads on the energies of the adventurers. Professor Farnsworth felt the effect most, for he was old. Yet he could not stop to rest. The insidious power that had mastered him forced him on as no lash could ever have done.
At last a huge metal door was reached. Ponderously it opened to admit the men. They entered a narrow chamber which must have had the function of an airlock, for in its opposite wall there was a second door, similar to the first, which had now closed.
The second portal swung inward. Brilliant light, like that of the sun, stabbed by as it moved. Automatically the members of the Farnsworth Expedition entered the tremendous cavern beyond it.
Far up toward its roof an incandescent sphere shone brilliantly, giving abundant artificial light to this strange place. The floor of the cavern was covered with odd, luxuriant vegetation, planted in orderly plots. This was farm land, then, buried within the heart of dead Ceres.
And now the men saw what manner of creatures inhabited this artificial world. From out of the shadows of spidery, grotesque trees, loaded with green fruit, came a group of furry, spheroidal monsters with thick legs and delicate, tentacular arms. Their mouths were toothless orifices in their globular bodies. Their eyes, set close to their mouths, were cruel and keen. That intelligence looked out through those orbs could not be questioned.
Each creature wore a harness decorated with fragments of the red substance which had been the undoing of the Earthmen, and odd, pistol-like weapons dangled in holsters fastened to those harnesses.
THE Cereans allowed the Earthmen to advance along the road which led across the cavern floor. Then they fell in behind them, like a military escort.
Finally the huge cave was crossed. A short tunne
l was traversed. Now the humans found themselves in a second cavern, smaller than the first. The air throbbed with the smooth vibration of colossal, gleaming engines. Molten metal hissed and cascaded from vast retorts. Cereans were everywhere, engaged in intricate work which only a high order of intelligence could have directed. Each of them wore a harness richly decorated with the mysterious Red Shards.
They glanced briefly at the Earthmen. Their curiosity seemed small; but in their cold, lidless eyes there was a promise of death, or worse.
Ronnie and Dave Iverness walked behind Professor Farnsworth, who was close to the head of the column. Like the rest of the group, they could not converse, they could not even turn their eyes to look at each other. Their muscles could only do what the guiding force that held them prisoner directed.
But their minds worked unhampered. Dave Iverness was still trying to devise some plan for escape, though he could see how hopeless their position was. Even if the spell which had enslaved them could be broken, there were still the Cereans.
Ronnie was scared. What had happened was his fault, he was sure. If he had not found the shards, all would have been well. But this feeling of responsibility must have sharpened his wits. The kid was made of that kind of stuff.
Professor Farnsworth felt weak and faint after the exertion of the long descent. Specks of color flitted before his gaze. But the scientist in him persisted in trying to understand the inexplicable. He was still observing keenly everything that passed within his line of vision.
The party traversed the cave of machines, and entered a third cavern, smaller than the others, but still of gigantic size. It was thronged with hundreds of Cereans facing its center in ranks arranged like the spokes of a wheel. There was no artificial light here—only a sullen, reddish glow originating from something in an open space at the center of the packed ranks of monsters.
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