Collected short fiction, p.385
Collected Short Fiction, page 385
Craig stared up into Maddrey’s black face. He tried to meet those cold, blazing blue eyes. They seemed to shake his very soul, with an insane and ruthless violence.
“Nonsense, Maddrey!” Craig’s voice trembled, in spite of his effort to keep it steady. “You’ve got to turn back.”
“Turn back, Mr. Engineer?” Maddrey’s voice was as ruthless as the booming of an angry sea. “Turn back—when we are bound for the center of the Earth! Do you know what the core of the Earth is?”
Craig himself shuddered, from the mad violence of that voice.
“Well, Mr. Engineer, I’ll tell you! The heart of the Earth is a ball of precious metals, separated by flotation. Gold, platinum, radium!
“Your temporary prison, Mr. Engineer, is also the treasure room of the Subterrane. We have auxiliary disks, to cut sections of the Earth’s heart to fill it. And your share can be your weight in gold—if you will promise to make any necessary repairs to the disruptors.”
“I don’t want any share—not from you,” Craig told him.
But Maddrey’s insanely blazing eyes had left Craig. They moved to the girl’s slim, whip-marked loveliness. And Craig saw the terrible glare of an insane lust kindle in them. Maddrey chuckled, thickly.
“My darling, I told you not to come here.” His voice had sunk to a thick gloating rasp. “You have disobeyed me. I must punish you for that.” He chuckled again. “Or perhaps you enjoy the taste of the whip?”
Deliberately, the giant thrust the gun back into his belt. The sleek black serpent of the whip rippled through his enormous thick fingers. It came hissing down through the narrow opening, and coiled around the girl’s white throat.
It left a red welt, and she screamed.
“Don’t you think that I am expert, Mr. Engineer?” boomed the great voice of Maddrey. “I used to skin a twelve-mule team, from the silver mines. I have cut off a Mexican wench’s ear, at thirty feet.”
A crimson rage tensed Craig. Reason told him he could do nothing. But fury drowned reason. Unarmed, swaying from that wedge of pain in his head, he swarmed up the flimsy ladder.
Maddrey was waiting for him, chuckling thickly. A great hobnailed boot crushed against his temple. It drove that wedge of agony deeper. The pain was intolerable, paralyzing.
Sick and dazed, Craig fell off the ladder. He dropped back to the metal floor. His head struck the wall. New agony half-blinded him. He lay breathless, half unconscious.
But still he could hear Maddrey’s voice, like the roar of far-off surf:
“Darling, I see that your engineer is going to be no use to me. I think I’ll shoot him.” Craig heard no sound from the girl. But the bellow came again: “So you don’t want him to die? Then strip yourself, and stand up to take your medicine.”
Desperately, Craig fought to rise. He slipped back into a red sea of pain. His mind floated groggily on crimson waves, and he felt very ill. But he could see Ann, as if she were far-off.
HE saw her slipping the garments from the rich-curved slimness of her red-welted body. Once she hesitated, with a little sobbing protest. And the whip flicked down. With a pistol-sharp report, it cut a tiny silken strap, and left a tiny fleck of red upon her satin skin.
Then, naked, she stood up to wait for the whip. Craig heard the cruel hissing of it, and the vicious cracks. He saw red marks spring across the firm upturned breasts of the girl, her smooth white back, and the gleaming columns of her thighs.
She held her breath, and uttered no cry. Lifted up to Maddrey, her bloodless face was queerly composed. She was held in an ecstasy of pain.
Wincing from every report, Craig counted the strokes of the whip. It fell nine times, and stopped. The girl made a soft, sobbing moan, and dropped down upon the floor beside him.
Maddrey chuckled, and coiled the red whip in his hands. Craig heard the far booming of his voice:
“Remember, both of you—I am the master. The Subterrane is a little world, outside the law. And I am its king. Don’t forget that. If you forget, the whip will remind you—”
Sick, helpless horror drove that agonizing wedge deeper into Craig’s brain, and once more extinguished his awareness.
CHAPTER III
THE KINGDOM OF HELL
CRAIG was once more dimly conscious, when the Subterrane fell. Ann Tancred was gone from the little steel-walled room. His throbbing head lay on a pillow, and a blanket covered his stiff body. The girl, he knew, must have brought him those.
The machinery was drumming again. That meant, he realized vaguely, that the metal mole was boring on down toward the Earth’s core. And Ann was still at the mercy of Maddrey—insane with his ungoverned impulses, and his lust for unimaginable treasure.
The drumming abruptly stopped—
and the Subterrane fell.
Craig had a sick feeling in his stomach. He clutched wildly at the metal ladder. It seemed to him that the fall lasted an endless, terrible time. Somewhere above he heard Maddrey’s bull-like voice, bellowing with fear and rage.
Then the mole struck, with a savage, crushing force. Craig’s splitting head was driven against the metal floor again. But this time he clung doggedly to consciousness.
He heard the crash and shriek of tortured metal. He thought that the machine must have fallen to the floor of some cave, crushed itself with the impact. But it didn’t lie still.
For a little time Craig suspected that the toss and pitch that sickened him was all in his own battered head. But the measured creak of metal plates and the roll of his body convinced him at last that the Subterrane was adrift upon underground waters.
Nerved with a desperate hope that Maddrey might have been injured by the fall, he dragged himself up the flimsy ladder. But the door above had been locked upon him. His empty hands battered upon it, in vain.
He shouted, and listened. But there was no sound save the creak of the plates and the slap of waves. At last, exhausted, Craig dropped back to the steel floor of the little treasure-room.
A TERRIBLE cold fear was growing in him. Was he the only one left alive? Was he doomed to slow death in a metal coffin, floating upon black buried waters that no eye had ever seen?
But, at least, Ann was freed from the whip.
So Craig told himself. But presently the iron deck above him rang once more to heavy foot-falls. Again he heard the bellowing tones of Maddrey. He heard a vicious crack—and then the scream of Ann.
The old, numbing despair settled back into him.
Again he climbed the ladder, battered against the door. But the only response was the distant bellow of Maddrey’s laughter, and another scream from Ann.
At last Craig heard the clang and grate of rocks beneath the machine’s steel shell. He knew that they must have drifted to the edge of this unknown water. The Subterrane lay still.
Another time of intolerable suspense went by. Then Craig heard the click of a key in the lock above, and blue light blinded him. Maddrey’s whip hissed, burned across his shoulders.
“Wake up, Mr. Engineer!” bellowed the giant. “I’ve got a job for you. You had better get about it—unless you want your hide peeled off!”
Craig blinked against the light, stared up into Maddrey’s mad blue eyes.
“What’s the job?” he demanded.
“The main transformer slipped off its mount, when we fell into this damned sea,” Maddrey told him. “And the big disruptor disk burned out. It has got to be re-wired—or we’ll all die in this damned hell.”
Hope kindled in Craig again. Maddrey had never learned much about the invention he had stolen. Here was a chance to bargain for life. He caught his breath, and his shoulders drew straight.
“If I repair the disk,” he said, “we’re going to turn back to the surface. And you’ll have to surrender your gun—and the whip.”
Maddrey’s blue eyes glittered cunningly.
“Perhaps I will,” he said. “But first we’ll inspect the damage. You must convince me that you know how to make the repairs. Come on out.”
Craig climbed up the metal ladder. Reeling with exhaustion, suddenly aware of torturing hunger, he walked ahead of Maddrey along a narrow metal deck. They peered down into the engine room, in the nose of the machine.
A chaos of broken machinery and tangled cables lay tumbled about the huge rectangular case of the fallen transformer. Craig surveyed the damage, and slowly shook his head.
Maddrey’s voice was lowered, hoarse:
“Can you fix it?”
“Maybe,” Craig told him. “But it will take weeks. Possibly months. If you want me to try it, hand over the whip and the gun.”
Maddrey stepped back from him, and the mad eyes grew cunning again. He made an animal chuckle.
“I think you’ll fix it, anyhow, Mr. Engineer,” he said thickly. “I think you’d rather do that than see my whip skin the girl alive—one square inch at a time.”
Cold blue eyes drilled into Craig.
“Hadn’t you, Mr. Engineer?”
Weston Craig tried to meet that savage glare of ice and madness. Fear sent a prickling numbness over him. He tried desperately to remember things he had heard about how to deal with madmen. Nothing very hopeful came to mind.
“Speak up!” roared Maddrey.
Craig started, swallowed. He must pretend to yield. That was the only way. Perhaps he would have some opportunity to overpower Maddrey. He licked his lips, and nodded slowly.
“I’ll try to make the repairs,” he said.
“You will make them!” Maddrey boomed. “If you care about the girl—”
A sudden apprehension stiffened Craig. He peered into Maddrey’s dark-bearded face, gasping:
“Where is she? If you’ve—”
Maddrey’s answer was a bellowing call:
“Darling—we are ready to dine.”
ANN TANCRED came out of a narrow door, and across the metal deck. She looked pale with fear, and her dark eyes were cast down. She carried a tray, and the dishes on it rattled to the trembling of her hands.
“Lively, now!” boomed Maddrey. “And don’t spill it!”
The whip cracked, rifle-like. The pale girl cried out, and started. A glass of water danced out of the tray, splashed and splintered on the deck. Maddrey chuckled thickly.
“Darling—I warned you!”
His terrible eyes stared thirstily at the front of her tight silken blouse, swollen to the full contours of her breasts. The whip flicked out, slashed the fabric like a knife. Firm white flesh pushed through the slit, marked with a line of red.
The girl choked back her sob of pain. Tears fell into the dishes on the tray. And fury rose against Craig’s fear. Fists knotted, he swung upon Maddrey.
The giant reached for his automatic.
“Strike me, and you die!” he boomed thickly. “But she shall be the one to pay—”
His roar was abruptly stopped.
Clan-n-n-n-ng!
The iron hull above them rang to a crashing impact. It throbbed again, to a series of battering blows. Gripping whip and gun, Maddrey moved uneasily aft, toward the valve.
“It’s something alive!” he croaked hoarsely. “We’ll see—”
His great hairy hands spun a wheel. The small, massive oval door swung inward. There was an inrush of air. It was hot, heavy, musty—the fetid, overpowering breath of a rank and teeming jungle.
Peering over Maddrey’s great shoulder, Craig looked out into the cave—and shuddered from a sense of evil nightmare.
The Subterrane lay upon a flat dark beach. Beyond it was the jungle. A towering wall of livid, luminous, hostile forest. The shapes of the monstrous plants, and their pale glowing colors, were eerily strange.
Above the jungle rose the cave’s rugged wall. It was pitted with the dark openings of cliff-dwellings. The glowing wings of huge, bat-like things flitted unpleasantly before them.
The dark and cragged roof was low above the Subterrane. But, in the distance, beyond a jutting salient of the cliffs, it lifted to an illimitable arch. Beneath it lay the vastness of the underground sea. The uneasy waters shone darkly, like blood made luminous.
“The mother of caves!” Maddrey’s whisper seemed apprehensive. “This is the sea into which the underground waters drain. It seems that the things of the Earth’s abyss, like those of the deep sea, make their own light—”
Horror choked off his voice.
The automatic crashed four times, deafening in the heavy air. Maddrey stepped fearfully back, and Craig saw the thing that he had shot.
A great, bat-like creature, like those soaring before the caves. As it tossed on the beach, in the agony of death, Craig could see that it was reptilian. Its body was scaled. The broad, leathery wings glowed as if lined with green flame. The teeth were hideous fangs, the lower limbs armed with fearful talons.
THE thing still gripped a heavy copper sledge, with which it must have been hammering on the hull of the Subterrane.
Craig swung protestingly on Maddrey.
“Why kill it?” he demanded. “Probably it meant no harm. May have been trying to signal, with the hammer. But now—God knows what will happen!”
Maddrey snapped a full clip into automatic. He gulped—a little fearfully, Craig thought. But then all the roaring violence of his voice came back: “I’m the master, here! You say we may be here for months. Well, I’ll show these winged devils who is their ruler.”
“You’ll have your chance, looks as if,” Craig commented. “Right now.” With a trembling arm, he pointed. A horde of the bright-winged troglodytes were gliding down from the cliffs beyond the jungle. Snarling, hissing, grunting, cackling, they swarmed about the machine.
Maddrey fired half a dozen shots into the fantastic bedlam that they made. A copper spear came clattering through the opening. Hastily he spun the wheel, to close the valve again.
Dry-voiced, Craig demanded:
“What now, Mr. Conqueror?”
“Frightened?” Maddrey boomed scornfully. “The beasts have nothing better than copper. The Subterrane is an oyster they can’t open—not in a thousand years.”
Craig tried to wet his throat.
“I am afraid,” he whispered. “Maybe they can’t open the oyster—but they’re going to cook us in the shell! Didn’t you see them—carrying torches, and broken branches?
“We’ve no power to move the Subterrane. And fire, in the oxygen of this super-dense atmosphere, will be about ten times more effective than any blaze you’ve ever known.
“Listen!”
Faintly, through the thick steel hull, they heard the eager crackling roar of flames.
CHAPTER IV
THE POISONED WHIP
THE plates of the Subterrane grew hot. Paint began to bubble and crack and smoke. The air became searing, stifling. The fire outside made a steadily mounting roar.
Maddrey paced up and down the hot metal deck, cursing in a hoarse and frightened voice. Ann Tancred had quietly fainted, from terror and exhaustion and heat. Her white body lay sprawled on the floor, beside the tray she had dropped. Maddrey, passing, cut at her viciously with the whip. She made a sleepy little moan, but did not move.
“Stop it!” choked Craig. “You devil!”
The mad blue eyes of Maddrey swung to him.
“Well, Mr. Engineer,” his thick voice mocked, “what else do you suggest? I may die uncomfortably. But at least I intend to have the pleasure of witnessing agony greater than my own.”
The whip flicked out again, to make a thin red mark on the exposed curve of Ann’s white thigh. Her leg drew up a little, and she moaned again. Maddrey looked back at Craig.
“Unless, Mr. Engineer,” his great voice said, “you can repair the disruptor disk and form a new neutronic film to protect us from the heat.”
Craig’s fists were knotted with impotent wrath. His lean body quivered. That old wedge of pain was driving into his head again, and he swayed from a weakness that he could not overcome.
“I can’t fix the main disk.” His voice came faint and husky. “But I think I can do something else—if you’ll leave Ann alone.”
The mad eyes of Maddrey gleamed cunningly.
“What can you do?”
“The auxiliary disks—the ones intended to cut samples from the rocks—don’t seem to be injured,” Craig told him. “And a rather simple change in the wiring will project the disruption field as a tubular vortex.”
He was remembering the laboratory accident, four years ago, and the green ray that had cut through-the wall. Perhaps, he thought wearily, it would have been better if he hadn’t come along to save Ann.
“Then get at it!” Maddrey’s ruthless hand seized his shoulder. “Before we’re all cooked alive!”
For an instant Craig resisted. He would only be saving Ann to face further tortures. Then a spark of hope came to his pain-dulled brain. Perhaps he could turn the new weapon upon Maddrey, first.
But the cold eyes of Maddrey watched him, with a cunning alertness, as he dismounted the instrument from its armored port, and labored to alter the wiring behind the shining, foot-wide terminal disk.
The roar of flames without grew louder as he worked. The heat inside the hull passed the limit of endurance. Craig’s clothing was drenched with sweat, then dried again. Hot metal blistered his fingers, and the air burned his lungs. A sick weakness dragged him toward oblivion.
Ann moaned again, on the hot deck. Once she struggled, as if suffocating. Unconscious fingers ripped away her blouse. Her whip-scarred breasts stood out naked, jeweled with tiny drops of sweat, quivering to her gasping breath.
Craig swayed over his task. Covertly he watched Maddrey. He hoped that the giant would collapse, give him one second’s opportunity. But Maddrey seemed unaware of the heat. His blue cunning eyes never wavered.
That crimson wedge was driving deeper, dulling Craig’s brain. His blistered fingers grew lifeless and numb. Maddrey’s great hairy hands helped him make the last connection.
And Maddrey seized the disk, gasping:
