Collected short fiction, p.199
Collected Short Fiction, page 199
One was very tall; the others appeared almost squat beside him. They all wore high boots and white laboratory jackets. Each of them carried a powerful rifle, each wore a revolver at his hip. Their eyes roved the unearthly vegetation, questingly, as if they had come to hunt.
The tall man, Jason recognized, with a leap of his heart, was Iskandar!
The Oriental genius had descended into the eldritch hell of his laboratory, perhaps to investigate the results of some experiment.
The green men, alert, rifles ready, advanced cautiously into the jungle of horror, straight toward the mass of weird violet vines in which Jason lay concealed.
4. Hunters of Horror
UNDER the tangle of wide violet leaves, Jason lay on his face in sticky black muck. A forest of nightmare rose behind him: lush, bright mountains of violet vines; thick, snake-like lianas, rioting madly over incredibly colossal white-and-purple fungus. It hummed and crawled with the fearsome fruit of an evolution gone insane.
He shuddered, as horror soared over his head—a thing like a huge white vulture, with forehead and eyes and hair, above its black beak, that unmistakably had been human.
And he waited, breathless, tense, as the three armed men came cautiously near him, strange hunters stalking stranger game, beneath the terrible green radiance of the globes under the dome. Iskandar the Wizard, creator and master of this swarming hell of obscene perversion, strode ahead of his two squat Chinese guards.
Straight toward Jason they came, until he could see the massive, ivory-hued face of Iskandar, with its full red lips, womanish; until he looked, trembling, into the long, magnetic, jet-black eyes, aflame with strange power.
He tensed himself, ready to spring to his feet in another second. Even completely unarmed as he was, he would not wait, he resolved, to be shot down like a rabbit. Iskandar, he was certain, could not know he was here—there would be an instant of surprize. And in that instant he would spring, snatch at a gun. . . .
It was a desperate determination. The men were alert. They would surely fire before he could reach them. But, even so, he might live to snatch a gun, to kill Iskandar before he died, to save Tonia Hope from the unspeakable metamorphosis into some companion monstrosity to that soaring white vulture with the eyes and the skull of a man.
He caught his breath. They must see him soon. Now! . . .
His body had tightened for the leap. The three men were not twenty feet from him. But the slanted black eyes of Iskandar, roving the green-lit, nightmare vegetation, had seen something afar. His musical voice spoke a swift command to the others. They turned abruptly, moved away, guns ready. They were hunting, stalking some creature that Jason had not yet seen.
Jason let them get some distance from him, then followed, slipping through tangled, luxuriant violet vines that flamed with crimson blood; creeping among towering, white-and-purple mushrooms, upon whose rotten flesh avidly feasted gigantic scarlet maggots.
The Wizard was stalking game. Jason would, he decided, stalk the Wizard. If he could catch him a little apart from the others, slip up on him! . . . His frank nature rebelled at thought of striking silently from ambush, but it was the only way that gave him even the possibility of a chance to end the sinister projects of the mad Oriental.
He searched again for something that might serve as a weapon. But the stems of the violet vines were too lush and watery to be of any use; the stalks of the mushrooms were soft and rotten. Finding nothing else, he scooped up full hands of the soft black muck. Perhaps he could fling that into a man’s face, blind him until he could grapple with him.
He was thirty yards behind the three men, when they found the fearsome thing they had come to hunt. They still walked in a compact group, Iskandar ahead, all with rifles ready. Jason had been offered no opportunity to attack.
Scuttling out of the dense violet undergrowth of the unearthly jungle it came, a monster of madness and terror. The three men stood in front of it, blazing away with their rifles. The reports crashed and reverberated like thunder against the high dome.
A centipede, it was, increased to horrific, incredible dimensions by the uncanny science of the Wizard of Life—grown so terrible, Jason guessed, that it had now to be destroyed. Its red-black, segmented body, glistening strangely in the weird green light, was fully thirty feet long. Two vast poison fangs spread above its great hideous head like black horns. It came straight on, in the face of roaring rifles.
Jason’s skin prickled; cold sweat came out upon his grimy body; he was trembling on the sheer brink of panic—but this, he realized, with a pause of his thudding heart, was the opportunity he had prayed for.
His chance! If he could interfere with the defense of the three men, let the hideous centipede reach them, it would do the task. There would be a certain justice in the destruction of the Wizard of Life by this nightmare creation of his own.
STRIVING to fling away his terror, Jason sprang to his feet and plunged toward the three men stolidly standing their ground before the black, many-limbed monstrosity scuttling at them from the other direction. A naked, haggard man, balls of black mud clutched in his hands, he leapt toward them, toward the centipede, yelling wildly.
Hideous death, he knew, would be the reward of success. He would die, with the others, at the fangs of the black horror; but it would be a willing death, if it saved Tonia Hope from the unutterable designs of Iskandar.
He was within ten yards of the three before they seemed aware of him. And the colossal centipede, a mind-breaking horror under the green, terrible rays that poured down from the dome, was not twice that far beyond.
One of the two shorter men, then, glanced back. His yellow, impassive face did not change at sight of Jason, but he whirled, leveling the smoking rifle in his hands.
Jason hurled his balls of black muck, twisted himself aside. The rifle thundered in his face; the bullet went screaming past his ear. His mud had gone true; it plastered tire grim yellow visage. Jason leapt to grapple the man as he fired again, blindly.
The bullet went whining off toward the wall of the dome. As they came to grips, Jason saw that the scuttling eldritch monstrosity was upon the others. He saw the smaller man tossed, screaming hideously, upon a black, venomous horn, saw Iskandar calmly firing a last shot. Jason was conscious, even, of an ungrudging flash of admiration for the Oriental. Inhuman monster that he was, evil, pitilessly cruel, the man had unmistakable courage, to face so steadily that many-limbed horror.
Jason and his mud-spattered opponent went down together. Neither was a large man; both were quick and strong. The Chinese had been momentarily blinded by the mud, but he soon had flung it from his eyes—and Jason soon felt the weakness born of hunger and exhaustion.
They rolled over in the black muck, Jason’s hands seeking the throat of his opponent. Before he realized what the man was about, the Chinese had whipt out his revolver and fired it close to Jason’s body. Jason felt stinging pain in his side.
But he was not, he thought, seriously hurt. He struggled for the weapon. It went off again. The bullet drove into the mud. Then he had the man’s wrist, twisted it until muddy fingers dropped the weapon.
The Celestial, then, gouged pitilessly at his eyes. Jason flung back his head, knocked away the gouging fingers, drove his elbow into his opponent’s middle. The man gasped, relaxed. Jason staggered up, looking for the dropped weapon with eyes that streamed tears of pain, blindingly.
If he could reach the gun, another second would end the menace of the Wizard of Life, if the centipede had not already——
“Ah, Mr. Wade, so we meet again!”
It was the voice of Iskandar, musical, softly deep, expressionless save for a hint of mockery.
Jason flung the stinging tears out of his eyes. He saw the man, standing two yards from him, a tall, immobile figure in his white laboratory jacket. The massive face was calm. A slight smile curved the full red lips with new cruelty. Under the bulging, ivory forehead, the long, jet-black eyes stared at him, inscrutable, with a magnetism in them, a fascination, a power.
A rifle, steadily held in the Wizard’s slender, long-fingered, ivory hands, covered his heart.
The Chinese that the centipede had struck lay in the mire beside him, contorted, still quivering in his last agony. And the black monster was a little beyond, still terrible in the intense green light, flinging itself about in furious, aimless, spasmodic struggles; dying.
“I presume, Mr. Wade,” the low, musical tones inquired, “that you share the hostile attitude toward my plans of your unfortunate friend, Mr. Gerald Travers?”
Iskandar chuckled, and Jason tensed with horror at memory of the sobbing thing in the pit, the gigantic red scorpion with the head of a man; at memory of Jerry’s face, drawn with wo and unutterable, hopeless horror.
He reeled a little, with horror and weakness and pain; desperately he gathered his resources for a last attempt. . . .
He looked suddenly past the black almond eyes of Iskandar, at the colossal centipede still thrashing about. He tried to feign dismay. He shrank back, mouth sagging, hands lifting.
His acting must have been fairly convincing, for the black, sloping eyes wavered for an instant, toward die tossing, dying horror.
In that instant Jason lunged forward, pushed aside the rifle. Iskandar, recognizing the ruse, turned back. The rifle exploded, an instant too late. He went down into the mud, with Jason’s hard fingers closing on his throat.
Savage exultation flamed up in Jason. He, no doubt, would be killed by the Wizard’s swarming acolytes. Probably Tonia, too, would die, but she would lie spared the hideously worse fate of metamorphosis into some unearthly shape of this monster’s planning; and humanity would be free of the menace of his mad genius.
Avidly, Jason’s fingers tightened on the smooth ivory throat.
Blinding darkness, then, exploded abruptly at the back of Jason’s head. As he sank down into unconsciousness, he realized that the other Chinese, the one he had grappled, had recovered, dubbed him. Victory, so near, was gone.
WHEN he came to himself, he was lying in a narrow cell, on a cold metal floor. His wrists and ankles were shackled with steel. Complete darkness surrounded him; he found the cramping walls only by struggling about until he touched them. He was thirsty, gnawingly hungry—it was nearly two days since he had eaten. Mud of the jungle still caked his naked body, stiff and unpleasant. His head throbbed from a new bruise, where the Chinese had struck him. Pain stabbed from the shallow wound in his side.
For some hours he lay there, helplessly bound; still half dazed, sick with despair, he wondered dimly why he had not been killed. It must be, he knew, because the Wizard designed him for some fate less pleasant than immediate death.
He heard no footsteps without, but a deluge of cold salt water descended abruptly upon him; it stung the contusions on his head, the slight wound in his side, and shocked him out of his semi-daze. He was still flinging the water out of his eyes, when he looked up and saw the face of Iskandar.
There was, he now saw. a tiny high window in the wall of his cell, closely barred. Behind the bars, the face of the insidious Oriental had become visible, illuminated by a soft rosy light. It was the only thing he could see. A strange face, heavily impassive, pale as ivory. Red, full, girlish lips, whose curve more than hinted of cruelty. Prominent nose, with nostrils that flared a little. Enigmatic slanting eyes, dark as night, with a mockery in them, and a menace. Bulging pale forehead, beneath glistening black hair. Ivory throat, smooth as a woman’s, still faintly marked with Jason’s fingers.
The face was all he could see, lit with a dim, rosy light; tire rest of his world was black.
The long, magnetic eyes stared down, until Jason felt that they could almost see his body, in the gloom of the cell. Then the full lips moved, and he heard the voice of Iskandar, impassive, deeply musical.
“Jason Wade, you hear me?”
“Yes,” he whispered, half overcome with awe and dread inspired by the magnetic, inhuman power of those strange eyes.
“You have presumed, Mr. Wade, to oppose the plans I have made for the future history of humanity. You have injured my person. You have cost the life of a devoted servant. You have yarned a punishment.
“And there is a precedent, Mr. Wade,” the low, musical voice throbbed on, “for your punishment. There was another who ventured openly to dispute the power of Iskandar. You have seen his fate.”
“You mean,” Jason breathed, “you mean—?”
His voice failed him, out of sheer horror. Something in the uncanny silence of the cell, in the utter darkness, in the implacable, ivory mask staring at him through the bars, chilled him with a shuddering, consuming terror that he would never have felt if action, of any kind, had been possible.
Even before the slow, musically deep voice came again from the taunting red lips, he was sick with memory of the thing that had been Jerry Travers.
“You seem, Mr. Wade, to anticipate your sentence. You will be placed in the chamber now occupied by Mr. Gerald Travers. The necessary injections will presently be given you. The radiations and the chemical content of the air will be duly regulated. In a very few months, Mr. Wade, you will have become a fit companion for Mr. Travers.
“Have you anything, Mr. Wade, to say for yourself?”
Jason might have cursed at that ivory, inhuman mask. He might, in his extremity, have pleaded. But his voice was gone, his throat rough and dry as parched leather. He was faint and giddy with horror. The impassive, insidious face seemed to whirl above him.
“Presumably, Mr. Wade,” the low, deliberately suave voice mocked him, “your silence gives assent to the justice of your sentence. . . . You informed me, I believe, that you and Mr. Travers had been friends. It will be a pleasure to you, I hope, to renew acquaintance with him.”
The ivory face turned half away, came back; the voice spoke again:
“Since you professed a concern for the young woman you saw in the other ray chamber, it might interest you to know that our preliminary research has been completed. In a few hours, now, Tonia Hope will be given the first injection, which will begin her transformation into the mother of the coming race.”
Iskandar chuckled goldenly, said finally:
“Since the young woman appeared to display a reciprocal interest in you, Mr. Wade, perhaps I shall arrange a meeting between you, when you have the body of a scorpion, and Tonia Hope has become the first member of the new species.”
The pallid ivory face vanished silently, then, from beyond the bars. And the rosy light faded. And Jason Wade was left in complete silence and utter darkness, a prey to unspeakable, soul-consuming horror as he waited for the execution of his sentence of inconceivable doom.
5. “You Win . . . and Lose!”
JASON was awake when the men came for him, some hours later. In the end of his cell a door was unlocked. Four stocky, impassive Chinese, armed with revolvers, made him drag himself out—their leader gave him curt orders in excellent English, with a slight Oxford accent Outside, in the gloomy, metal-walled hall, which was glaringly lit at intervals by naked electric lights, this man removed his leg irons and manacled Jason’s right wrist to his own left.
“If you will please come with us, Mr. Wade,” he said, “we shall have the honor to conduct you to the ray chamber.”
Jason nodded, hopelessly. The man led the way along the hall, the three others following alertly.
The cell, Jason inferred, must have been in the depths of the floating island, beneath the floor or deck covered by nightmare life, for the guards led him into an automatic elevator that carried them swiftly up for some hundreds of feet.
In the hours of waiting, Jason had put down his horror. He was coldly resolved to snatch at the slightest chance of escape. Danger, now, was nothing. Death in any immediate form would be preferable to the hideous metamorphosis that waited in the ray chamber—and, once there, he would never have another opportunity to strike for Tonia Hope.
His guards, however, took extravagant precautions that he should have no opportunity to leave them. With every step forward, as he walked beside the squat, inscrutably silent yellow man fettered to him, his heart sank. What opportunity, now, could come?
They left the elevator and traversed another hall, wider, less gloomy, illuminated at intervals by gray light that seeped through a roof of heavy glass. They were back, Jason knew, just under the top of the huge glass dome.
The men stopped, at last, in front of a door of solid steel, impregnable as the door of a vault. It was massively locked. The other men surrounded Jason and their leader, alert, cautious.
“Please wait a moment, Mr. Wade,” requested the leader, courteously. “I must open this door. Beyond is the ray chamber, to which we have the distinction of conducting you.”
Trembling, Jason looked away. Desperately his eyes roved for some weapon, for some hint, for anything that could offer the slightest hope of escape. There was nothing. . . . The bare metal wall of the passage. . . . Gray light filtering through the glass ceiling. . . . The four alert Celestials. . . .
The lock snapped; the door swung open; the green, terrible rays of change burst through the opening. Jason swayed with black despair. This was . . . the end. . . .
“It is my signal privilege,” came the smooth English of the man fettered to him, “to invite you to honor the chamber before you with your distinguished presence.”
Controlling a shudder of anticipatory horror, Jason looked ahead—into the eyes of Jerry Travers.
Beyond the massive steel door was the square, metal-walled tank, roofed with die vast sheet of glass through which he had first seen the horror. On the metal floor, in a foully reeking litter of indescribable filth, Sprawled the brain-wrecking nightmare that once had been his friend.
A colossal scorpion, its horny-plated, crimson body, larger than a man’s, glistened strangely in the terrible green light. The formidable pincers, powerful enough to clip a man’s leg in twain, were dashing restlessly. The slender, crimson tail, barbed with a black, venomous fang, slashed back and forth in the disgusting filth upon the floor, as if with agony Or rage.
