Collected short fiction, p.461
Collected Short Fiction, page 461
“You will know soon enough. I wish I had never seen. It is not a good thing to talk about.”
HE WOULD tell me no more. Presently I left him and went down to bathe in the stream of water that flowed back of the camp. The water was sluggish and tepid, certainly not invigorating, but it was cleansing. When I got back Melvar and Naro were up.
The girl was very glad to see Austen again. She was talking with him vivaciously. When I saw her I loved her, if possible, more than ever.
As soon as we had eaten, Austen began to dismount the spectrometer and other equipment to pack them.
“I can go no further with the experiments here,” he said. “I am going to take the outfit to a place where we can see one of the engines of the Krimlu where the silver liquid is broken up. There I may be able to get the clue I need.”
In an hour we were ready to depart. Austen led the way, silent and preoccupied with the details of his work. We went down a narrow trail through the stagnating marshes, in the eldritch gloom of the weird red jungle, under the dull purple mist. For many hours we were on the way, until the purple dusk began to thicken, and a distant sighing whistle told us that night had fallen. The evil masters were abroad again.
Austen called out in a guarded tone for us to halt. We all crept forward cautiously until we could see over the brink of a vast, circular chasm. Sheer black walls, ringed by the red jungle, fell for a thousand feet. The round floor was a half-mile across. Upon it was the most gigantic and amazing mechanical device I have ever seen. The thing was incredibly huge, and throbbing with strange energy. It made little sound, but the space about us seemed vibrant with power.
In the center of the pit was a titanic, shining green cylinder, perhaps a hundred feet in diameter and five hundred in length. A river of gleaming silver fluid ran from an opening in the rock, through a great open aqueduct to pour into the cylinder in the middle of the upperside. At each end of the colossal cylinder rose a metal tower. At the top of each tower was a fifty-foot globe of blue crystal, slowly turning. Between and above the spheres arched a high-flung span of white fire, a great pulsing sheet of milky opalescent light that roared and crackled like a powerful electric discharge, lighting the chasm with an unearthly radiance.
Toward the farther side of the floor was a second enormous machine, apparently unconnected with the first, resembling a vast telescope. The white metal tube was a full two hundred feet in length and mounted on massive metal supports. It did not seem to be in action. The barrel of it pointed at the sky like a cannon.
I saw a row of openings low down in the side of the vast green cylinder, with shafts of bright green light pouring from them. Tiny human figures working feverishly about them. They had escaped my observation at first, so far away was the floor of the pit. Now I saw that they were taking great blocks of a luminous green substance from the doors in the cylinder and carrying them to the tube that was pointing at the sky.
The bodies of the toilers were purple. There was something in their motion that reminded me of ants. I was amazed at their strength and agility, at their ceaseless, machinelike activity. They never looked about, never paused, never rested. They were like machines, or animated corpses, driven to endless toil by some strange force.
I remembered the time I had splashed the white fluid on my arm, turning it purple, and the strange excitement of my nerves. At once I linked up the raids on Astran, the bracelet that Naro had found on the dead purple beast, and what Austen had told me of superior beings who enslaved the purple things. I knew that I looked upon the captured men and women of Astran! They were simply man-machines in this strange place!
Perhaps they were already dead. Certainly they moved, not by their own volition, but by a stronger mechanical power. They must have been under the absolute hypnotic control of the higher intelligences, who treated their unfortunate captives, perhaps with the argent liquid, to convert them into unearthly machines of super-human strength.
WE TURNED away into the night that had fallen on the red jungle while we watched. I was sick with horror. Austen’s face was white and his hands were trembling. There was a stern, fierce light in his eye.
Now I knew, in spite of what he had said, that were the opportunity given him, he would not hesitate to wipe out the masters of the purple slaves. He said nothing, but his hands worked spasmodically. He muttered under his breath, and his dark eyes snapped with angry determination.
In a few minutes we set about preparing our apparatus for the work of the night. The spectroscope was set up with telescopic condensers to collect and analyze the radiation of the arch of crackling, milky flame. We took care to screen ourselves in the jungle fringe, to expose no more of the equipment to the sight of the beings below than was necessary. Austen set up his drawing board in a convenient place behind our shelter, and he alternatly peered through the telescope at the spectrum and turned to make intricate calculation in the light of a shaded flashlight. We sat up all night at work.
All night long the white flame played between the spinning blue crystal spheres above the vast green cylinder, filling the air with its ghostly crackle and whisper. All night long the tireless purple humanmachines toiled in the pit, carrying the great green blocks and stacking them in the vast cannonlike tube at the side. Whenever Austen did not need me with the analysis I spent the time searching that amazing scene, but not once did I catch a glimpse of anything that might have been the directing intelligence of all that marvelous activity.
Melvar being very tired, I had contrived a hammock for her from a great sheet of fibrous bark torn from the trunk of one of the red trees. She spent the night asleep there while Austen and I carried on the work. Naro, not having scientific inclinations, contented himself with a couch composed of a few feathery branches torn from the undergrowth.
CHAPTER XI
What the Analysis Showed
Just before daylight Austen completed his calculations and stated the result. He was weary and his eyes were red. He had worked for a day and two nights since we had found him. He gave his conclusion in a colorless monotone.
“You know,” he said, “that there are several rare gases in the air, in addition to oxygen and nitrogen. The inert gas, argon, comprises nearly one percent of the atmosphere. There are, in addition, smaller quantities of helium, neon, xenon, and krypton, not to mention carbon dioxide and water vapor. Those gases are monatomic and do not ordinarily enter into any compounds at all.
“Lightning in the air causes a union of nitrogen and oxygen, forming nitrous and nitric acids which may later release their energy in the explosion of gun-powder or nitroglycerin. In much the same way the force that forms the silver fluid utilizes the photo-chemical effect of sunlight to build up a complex molecule containing oxygen, nitrogen, and the inert gases of the helium group.
“It is very unstable, and may be disrupted with the release of a great amount of energy. I was able to detect the characteristic lines of most of the gases in the luminous spectrum of the purple gas, but not until I had analyzed the light of the opalescent flame and made my deductions from that, was I able to derive the equations and arrive at the precise structural formula, and at the exact wave length necessary to break down the molecule.”
He proceeded to launch into a detailed technical discussion of the process of analysis he had used, and of the methods of inductive reasoning by which he had arrived at his conclusion. It was rather deep for me. Something more important was on my mind.
“Have you found out enough?” I asked. “Can you blow up the stuff? Can you wipe out the Krimlu?”
“I am not sure,” he said gravely, “but I think, if I could get at that machine with a little of my equipment I could detonate the thing like a thousand tons of dynamite. The silver stuff runs into the cylinder and is converted into pure, vibrant energy. If I could just speed up the process a bit!
“The Krimlu seem to live underground like ants. A month ago I found an opening into their world near the cliffs, south of the fall. There are the shafts where their ships come out, their ventilator tubes and funnels for the purple smoke from their engines. I will go down one of the shafts and see what can be done.”
“You mean we will go,” I told him.
“There is no need for you to risk your life,” he said in a voice purposely brusk to hide his emotion. “I can do as well by myself. Then there is Melvar. We must get her out of here if we can. I think a great deal of her. If we both should go—and not come back—. No, I want you to stay on top. I know I can trust you to treat her fairly. If I can blast down the earth on their underground world, we may all be able to make it back around the Silver Sea, and eventually to the outside.”
“You can trust me, sir, to care for her to the best of my ability,” I told him, looking at the sandal on my right foot and trying without notable success to keep my voice even and casual.
“Really,” he cried, looking at me intensely, “do you love her?”
Startled, I admitted that I did, simply and frankly.
“I had hoped so,” Austen said. “She and you are the dearest ones to me in the world. If you were out and safe, I could go—if I must—in peace.”
THE rude hammock in which Melvar had been lying sprang into violent motion. The girl’s slender, beautiful figure came running toward me.
“I am sorry,” she gasped. “No, I mean I am glad. I was awake, Winfield. I heard you—”
Her further statements were not particularly coherent, since she was kissing me, and I was holding her in my arms and returning the caress. Some minutes later, when I came back to earth, I observed that Austen was taking the equipment down. Naro was standing and looking at us with an expression of extreme and comical disgust on his frank and boyish face.
By that time it was light. Soon, by the brightening of the purple haze above, we knew that the sun was rising. Austen went to look into the pit. Melvar and I walked to the edge. The great metal tube which the purple beings had been all night loading with the green bars was being swung slowly about its mounting. Presently it was pointing at the sky above the Silver Sea.
For a moment nothing happened. Then a low, deep, humming drone reached our ears, coming apparently from the complex machinery at the base of the tube. Steadily the sound rose in pitch until it was an intolerably high and painful scream. When the high rhythm of it had become unsupportable, we simply ceased to hear it. It had passed up the scale beyond the range of our ears, and was sounding still.
Abruptly the colossal tube flashed into green incandescence and a broad beam of yellow light, blindly brilliant and pulsing with strange energy, poured up into the dusky purple sky. Then I knew that it was this machine that made the amazing electrical display above the Silver Sea, from which the white liquid fell.
As we watched, bright patches of red and green shot up the beam. Slowly the bright yellow faded from the ray, but still the green luminosity clung about the tube, and still I felt that the flood of radiant, purposeful energy was flowing up into the sky. It was not long before I heard, far above us, in the distant west beyond the red-clad hill, the splash of the first great drop of silver into the argent lake. Below us the white torrent was still pouring into the vast green cylinder; the white fire was still arching between the crystal globes; and the purple slaves were still rushing about the pit with feverish and machinelike energy.
We turned away from the place and walked back into the semi-darkness of the scarlet jungle, still beneath the shadow of the evil intelligence that ruled the crater. I had the knowledge of Melvar’s love to sustain me, but I felt the unholy power of the jungle already closing about to crush us.
We reached the camp long before night, and Austen and I went to sleep. The old scientist was up again at daylight. I was amazed at his energy and vitality. He got ready the equipment he intended to take, and we were soon ready to set out for the entrance to the underworld.
Austen insisted that we leave Melvar and Naro behind. There was no use, he said, to expose them to the hardships and dangers of the journey, and it wasn’t likely that harm would come to them at the cabin. I did not like to leave Melvar, but she was very courageous about it, smiling through her tears.
Melvar walked with me to the edge of the clearing. And there we left her, taking a dim trail that led through the dense jungle to the south. Austen was lost in meditation. But I knew that when the time came for action he would waste no time in thought. But how could I guess the noble thoughts that were passing in his mind? How could I realize that he was marching willingly to his doom?
After several hours Austen stopped.
“It is not a half-mile to the shafts,” he said. “We shall have to make a rope. I have made cords from the tough bark of the red trees which does very well. I want to reach the bottom of the pit before night. But I have reason to think that the masters are active in their underworld at all hours of the day, emerging only at night because the magnetic vibration of sunlight interferes with the operation of the delicate machinery of their bodies.”
OBEDIENTLY I helped weave a rope of strips of the leatherish bark torn from the mighty red trees. We worked until we had many hundred feet of the tough strands. As we worked Austen began to talk a little, his voice low and a little husky, of his boyhood on a western farm, and of the bright spots of his life. He told a few stories of his college days, spoke of the girl he had loved and lost. But when the rope was finished and coiled he fell silent again and grimly examined his automatic. He adjusted his pack, got out his pipe and filled it with my tobacco, and grinned.
“We are here,” he said soberly. “We are ready to play our hand, win or to lose. And if we lose—”
He thrust out his hand. I shook it and we walked on silently. We had gone more than a hundred yards when the scarlet forest thinned, and we walked out on a level stretch of bare, white sand. Along the western side rose a dark, precipitous cliff, like that over which the silver fall plunged a line of red brush ran along the top. At the foot was a great sloping bank of talus, scattered with gigantic boulders. The cliff and the lofty crimson forest that rimmed the open space on the other three sides, seemed to reach into the dusky purple obscurity of the low-hanging sky.
Spaced irregularly about the center of the flat were perhaps a dozen low, circular metal structures—evidently the mouths of great white metal tubes projecting from the earth. From five of them dense clouds of purple vapor were pouring.
We left the shelter of the jungle and quickly approached the nearest of the wells. The metal curbing was about four feet high around a circular pit some twenty feet in diameter. We leaned over and looked into it. The tube was lit faintly for a few feet down the walls, but we saw no light toward the bottom of the tube. A faint humming sound came up out of the darkness, and I felt a strong current of air flowing down the tube. It was altogether stranger and more terrible than I had anticipated.
“Is the rope long enough?” I whispered. “Yes,” he replied in a cautious undertone. “On the day I discovered the place I dropped a pebble in the well and timed its fall with my watch. The depth is just over five hundred feet.”
I put the end of the cord over the metal rim and paid it out until only enough was left to hitch around my body. With a smile of forced cheerfulness, Austen looked to his pack, knocked out his pipe, and put it in his pocket.
“Winfield, my boy, I hope to see you again,” he said. “It may take only an hour or two to lay my mine and return to the shaft. But, of course, I know nothing of what I am to encounter. You wait and hold the rope, and if I need to send you any message I will jerk it three times, and you can pull it up. The note will tell when to put it down again for me to climb out. Good-by, my boy.”
He started to say something more, but his voice broke, and he turned abruptly to the well. I braced myself against the curbing, and he climbed over and started down. I looked over and watched him. In a few moments his head and shoulders had shrunk to a little blot against the darkness of the well. Soon he was out of my sight, although for a long time I felt the tugging of the rope.
Suddenly the tension relaxed. He had reached the bottom, or—fearful thought!—he had lost his grip on the rope and was hurtling down through the darkness. I listened in an agony of suspense. It was several minutes before I was reassured to feel three twitches of the cord. I pulled it up. On the end was tied a piece of paper, with these words penciled upon it:
Dear Winfield, I hate to leave thus without telling you as I intended to do. But I could not tell you. Go back, get Melvar, and travel as far as you can from this accursed place. May you and she survive to lead a happy life together—in Astran, if you cannot reach the world beyond.
I will give you twenty hours. In that time you can go far north of the silver fall. I am sure, with the equipment I have with me, I can explode one of the engines and send all this part of the valley skyward—if I live long enough to carry out my plan. Good-by.
Austen.
Then I saw that he had been planning all along to sacrifice his life. The note had been written some time before he left. I cursed the stupidity that had kept me from perceiving his intention. If I had but though, I would have known it was impossible for the aged scientist to climb the rope from the bottom of the pit. Dear old man that he was, he had taken all decision out of my power. The truest friend I ever had! His wrinkled, smiling face, his kind, blue eyes, his low, familiar voice, were gone forever!
CHAPTER XII
The Forest Aflame
I have a very confused recollection of what happened immediately afterward. My own actions seem a vague, disordered dream. My bitter grief at Austen’s self-sacrifice was the only thing real to me. I started to carry rocks from the boulder-strewn slope at the foot of the cliff, with the idea of securing the rope to them so I could go down in search for him. But my memory of that is very faint.
The first thing I remember clearly is that I was staggering back to the shaft with a heavy rock in my arms when I caught a whiff of acrid smoke and awoke to the realization that the purple sky was darkened with drifting clouds, and the air was already heavy with the suffocating pungent odor of the burning red vegetation. My instinctive alarm at the thought of fire served to bring me to myself, and I was suddenly fearful for the safety of Melvar.
