Writhing, Wriggling Ramphs
To prevent Toplinsky from sending a swarm of crickets out of the
crater hole Epworth planted an army beneath the opening. The soldiers
were armed with the longest range chloroform guns, and many of them
were placed on the mountains that thrust up their summits near the
crater. Then the young man turned his attention to solving the problem
of seeing in the dark.
Tearing apart the cavern lamps he had hidden when he left his glider
at this place he called in the brightest of the Selinite scientists
and studied the lamps carefully. Fortunately he had worked with ofen
glass in his aviation work, and now he discovered that the outer lens
of the lamps were made of this quartz glass, and the scientists
informed him that behind the glass had been placed a coat of rhodamine
dye. Thus an invisible image had been formed by ultra violet rays, and
had been held by the rhodamine dye in a way that the darkness could
not dissolve the image before it reached the eye.
When this discovery was made and the secret of the cavern lamps
exposed he ordered two hundred thousand cavern lamps made as quickly
as possible.
While he was doing this Toplinsky came down near the crater opening on
the back of a crawling cricket, discovered the army camped beneath
him, and dropped two large bombs on the Selinites.
“That’s just a reminder,” the giant shouted through a huge megaphone,
“that I am getting busy. In two weeks—ah, ha! perhaps in two weeks—I
shall come again.” The Selinites shot up at him and his crickets with
their chloroform guns, and were rewarded by a loud laugh, and then
silence.
A terrifying, baffling gloom settled down on the Selinites. They had
won a great victory, they had chased the crickets out of their country
and had captured the Land of Taunan, and yet they realized that a man
who could drop bombs out of the sky in the end would defeat them.
Epworth, who was also puzzled deeply over a way to get into the
crater, heard this underground rumbling, and felt his own spirits
dampen. He and his sister, Joan, and Billy, of all the people in the
Lunar world, knew just how dangerous Toplinsky was.
It was during a period of his deepest gloom that the leader of the
Sons of the Great Selina came out of his mountain retreat and called
on him.
“You wish to go up into the crater?” the councilman inquired with a
sly smile.
Epworth did not like the smile. There seemed to be hidden treachery
behind the smirk. But he was in a desperate hurry. He felt sure that
if given time he could finally build an airship operated by
electricity with a wire line attached to a power plant constructed
beneath the crater to run an electric motor on the plane but this
could only carry a limited number of soldiers, and what he had to do
must be done at once. “I certainly do,” he answered abruptly, putting
aside his suspicions.
“It will take courage.”
“I am not boasting of courage,” the young American said quietly.
“The path leads through a nest of ramphs—many thousands of the most
vicious reptiles known.”
Epworth shuddered. The fights he had had with this monstrous Thing on
the bridge, and inside of the crater were still fresh in his mind.
“If it is the only way,” he responded.
The councilman of the Great Selina patted him on the shoulder.
“Certainly you have courage. It is a pity you are not a Son of the
Great Selina. Perhaps if you clean out the dangers of this world we
may make you an honorary member. You remember the dark chasm beneath
the bridge that is near the retreat of our order?”
“I should say. I was just thinking of the terrific battle we had with
one of the monsters on that bridge as you were speaking of them.”
“It came up out of that chasm. Drop down to the bottom of that chasm,
follow it inside of the planet into a narrow tunnel until you come to
the Chamber of Horrors, clean out the Chamber of Horrors, cross it and
enter another corridor that leads straight ahead and upward, and if
you live you will come to the home of the crickets.”
“Did you ever make that journey?” Epworth demanded sharply.
“No, I care not to meet those terrifying reptiles.”
“How then do you know that this chasm will lead me to the crickets?”
“Other Sons of the Great Selina, more hardy than our present council,
made the trip ages ago, and left records.”
* * * * *
Epworth put himself at the head of an army of two hundred thousand
Selinites armed with chloroform guns and long sharp steel spears, and
with their heads covered with gas masks, and their eyes aided by
cavern lamps, lowered the soldiers into the chasm on long ropes,
gliders, and various devices of a temporary character. At a point
where the chasm extended into the earth and the light of day was shut
out he stopped in a narrow defile, and addressed the army briefly.
“We are going into that hole,” he said slowly, instructing all who
could hear to carry his words on to the rear ranks. “If we come out
your country will be saved. If we do not come out your wives and
children will know that you are dead, and become the slaves of the
crickets and Taunans.”
With this he adjusted his cavern lamp, and darted forward. The moment
he left the light of day and looked downward he saw that the floor of
the cavern was slightly sandy. Soon he discovered evidence of gigantic
bodies having been dragged through the sandy soil. Examination
disclosed the fact that they had been made by lizard-shaped ramphs
over a hundred feet long with six feet on each side of their bodies.
When Epworth and Joan saw the imprint of these feet cold chills passed
down their backs. Very likely there were thousands of these Things
ahead of them, and every time they thought of the fight they had had
with one of the Things near the cricket home Epworth shook with fear,
and Joan thought that her mind would be shattered.
Nevertheless they marched bravely into the hole in the moon.
Onward, climbing steadily upward, hour after hour, moving like silent
shadows in order that their presence might not be betrayed, the
Selinites marched with Epworth, Joan, Billy, and Queen Moawha at their
head. They traveled with their chloroform guns in their hands, and
their eyes straining ahead, the way being given additional light by
strong electric flash lights. The danger Epworth was aware would not
have been as great if he had had room to spread out his army but the
corridor was so narrow in places that he could march his men only a
hundred abreast.
* * * * *
They had been climbing upward fifteen hours, pushing earnestly ahead,
when they were warned that they were approaching something by a
noisome smell that came to their nostrils. Joan was the first to get
the scent, and she stopped with a shudder.
“I know now what that smell means,” she whispered in a frightened
voice, “and I can also feel the invisible movement of the Things
ahead. They are preparing for us.”
The idea that innumerable great and mysterious monsters were preparing
to do battle against them caused Epworth and Billy to pause also and
shoot their flash lights far ahead.
“There is something uncanny, terrifying, unnatural, inhuman about the
Things,” Epworth answered. “I feel as if I were going forth to battle
with gigantic spiritual monsters of evil. They move so swiftly, so
silently. They are on you before you know it.”
Billy’s teeth chattered, and Joan trembled violently. The horrors of
that dark underground world were upon them notwithstanding the fact
that they were backed by a splendid army.
Epworth waited until several hundred soldiers were around them, and
then gave orders to march forward with all their flash lights hurling
flames ahead.
The cavern heretofore had been a long, narrow corridor. Now it
suddenly flared out into an immense underground chamber, and at the
entrance of this chamber, lying flat and the color of their bodies
changing like variegated lizards to fit into their surroundings, were
twelve round-bodied, scaly backed animals with polygonal plates
covering their heads. They had their tongues sticking out, and their
three red eyes glared savagely.
“Flash every light into their eyes,” Epworth shouted. “Blind them.”
Instantly a hundred flashes of steady crimson shot into the eyes of
the ramphs, and their tails began to lash up and down on the gray
floor. Their changing colors made this motion barely perceptible.
“Now let twenty chloroform guns shoot into their eyes and nostrils.”
The gas guns were long straight tubes that carried repeated shots of
chloroform, and by the time the twenty guns had fired one shot each
the twelve ramphs had dropped their heads.
“Glory be!” Joan cried. “It works.”
“Advance and use your spears.”
One hundred men rushed forward, and began to thrust at the doped
reptiles. Their thrusts were seemingly useless, the hard gristle of
the lizards turning the spears easily. For a moment Epworth was
nonplussed. They could chloroform the Things but how could they kill
them?
“Stab them in their eyes!” he commanded sharply, stepping up to one of
the monsters, which was over a hundred feet long, and jabbing his own
weapon into the monster’s middle eye. “Perhaps that will get them.”
It did. The animal, stricken, doubled up suddenly, and lashed downward
with its tail then quieted down. Epworth stepped over its immense leg,
and looked into the chamber. What he saw caused him to draw back
hastily.
He was looking into a large subterranean world alive with hideous
Things. Thousands of them were slinking back against the floor,
changing their color to suit the rugged rocks around them until they
were almost invisible; others were standing on their rear feet gazing
toward the entrance; others were fastened to the walls of the chamber
with their fierce eyes glaring fire. The young American felt his blood
run cold.
Would it be possible to wipe out this pest hole with his army of
little children—small men who depended entirely on his leadership?
A little thought convinced him that it was imperative that they must
take the ramphs by surprise. But the fact that there had been twelve
reptiles at the entrance indicated that there was some sort of a
military organization that knew the value of sentinels.
He glanced again into the chamber. This time he steeled himself to
meet the horror. The monsters, while many of them had their heads
lifted, had not discovered the presence of enemies.
Fearing that the flash lights might arouse them he ordered all lights
closed, and made an investigation with his cavern lamps. In front of
him the enormous chamber extended as far as the eye could reach, and
the walls went up to a ceiling he knew was there but could not see. At
the outer edge of his vision he could make out a pool of black water.
The pool and the chamber were full of writhing, wriggling, monstrous
reptiles. Old lizards, young lizards, male lizards, female lizards,
baby lizards, lizards in all stages of growth, crawled like ants
around the chamber and into the lake.
A wave of despondency swept over the young man. A single lizard,
crashing into the narrow corridor where his army was concealed, could
wipe it clean of human life. He must get his men out of the corridor
where they could spread out, and he must do it without letting the
lizards know they were in the chamber.
Quietly, with desperate courage, he placed himself at the head of his
soldiers and gave whispered orders, and slipped cautiously into the
ramph chamber. The smell was awful, nauseating, sickening, almost
death-dealing.
“A Chamber of Horrors, truly!” Joan gasped. “Will we ever get out?”
However the Selinites moved with such caution that several hundred
soldiers were in the room, and lined up along the sides of the walls
nearest the entrance before their presence was noticed.
“We must protect the entrance,” Epworth urged. “The second a lizard
starts into it we must get him, and keep the door open for our
companions to come in. Fire obliquely with your chloroform guns.”
He had hardly ceased speaking when the battle began.
One who has seen a lizard dart up the trunk of a tree can form an idea
of the incredible swiftness of these great monsters. Before Epworth
was aware a huge Thing dropped from the ceiling in front of him with a
shrill siren call to its companions. Its eyes were flaming red; its
mouth was foaming; its split tongue, protruding in evil menacing,
twisted to and fro swiftly. It came with such awful quickness that
Epworth was paralyzed for a second.
Joan saved him.
With remarkable calmness she extended her long light chloroform tube,
and squirted the gas into the reptile’s snorting nostrils. It sent out
a flaming, overpowering smoke, snorted fearfully, and toppled over
immediately in front of Epworth, who jumped back hastily against the
wall, and thrust his sharp spear into its eye. Then with a little gasp
of horror he grabbed Joan and dropped down behind the animal’s body,
making it a fortress against another attack. Thus protected the two
began to use their dope guns with deadly effect. Their example was
followed by the soldiers under their command.
In the meantime Billy and Moawha, who were leading the attack on the
opposite side of the entrance, were having an experience very similar,
although Billy dropped the first reptile quicker than Epworth had
done, and protected his men with greater ease.
In a short time the lizards were piled up around the entrance for
several hundred yards, and were climbing over each other in a vain
attempt to get to the soldiers. This enabled the Selinites to run out
of the narrow corridor and join their companions, thus pushing the
tide of battle back on the lizards, and piling them high around. While
many of the Selinites were hurt, in two hours the entire army was
inside of the Chamber of Horrors, and the battle was won.
Soon the great chamber was full of chlorine gas, and the ramphs were
choking, snorting, snapping death (without knowing where it came from)
while the Selinites were protected by their gas masks. Now Epworth
commanded a company of soldiers to circle around the place, find the
tunnel on the other side that led to the Cricket World, and bar it up
with stones in order to keep the gas inside of the ramph chamber.
When this was accomplished the reptiles were driven from the walls and
floors into the lake of black water. This lake, Epworth found out, was
several miles long and over a mile wide but the water was shallow, and
proved of little aid to the lizards. When the reptiles stuck their
heads under the water they gained some respite but not understanding
what was troubling them they lifted their heads immediately, again to
be caught by the breath of chloroform. Then they sank never to rise.
When the dope had cleaned them out, the Selinites calmly plunged their
spears into their eyes.
At the end of a day’s hard fighting the work was done. Not a single
ramph was left to start another race of monsters, and Epworth, opening
the tunnel on the opposite side, led his soldiers out of the
terrifying place, and sealed it up again in order that the fumes
should be confined to the area occupied by the lizards.
Then, after a long rest, he turned his face toward that nightmare of
horror—the home of the crickets. Here he expected to meet Toplinsky
armed with gun cotton, huge guns, and powerful explosives, an
intelligent man leading a multiple host of soulless insects—insects
that ate flesh of all kinds of men and animals.