WHEN FREEMEN SHALL STAND
By NELSON S. BOND
Earth was conquered by Venus and her master. But
the mysterious faces of Mt. Rushmore became the gods
that gave hope and fighting courage to beaten Man!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Fantastic Adventures November 1943.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
"That," said Stephen Duane, "is that!" He wiped his hands on an
acid-stained apron, turned to his assistant. "We all set now, Chuck?
Got the stuff?"
"Right here, Lootenant."
"What? What's that you called me?" Stephen Duane's voice flattened.
"I said--" Chuck began.
"I heard you. Chuck, for Pete's sake, won't you lay off that
'Lieutenant' nonsense? I've got a front handle; one you've been using
for three years. What's the matter? Don't you like it any more?"
Chuck Lafferty shrugged. "Them," he said patiently, "was the good old
days. But times has changed. We're in the Army now. You've got bars
on your shoulders--remember?--and I'm just a sergeant. Which makes a
difference."
"Nuts!" snorted Steve. "I'm still a chemist, Chuck, and you're my lab
assistant. And so far as you're concerned, I'm still just plain old
Steve Duane. Get it?"
"Yeah. Yeah, sure, Lootenant."
"_Wha-a-at?_"
"I mean, yeah, sure--er--Steve."
"That's better. Now, let's get to work on the final experiment. If
this gas does what I _think_ it will, World War II is going to end all
of a sudden, and a madman named Hitler is going to be caught with his
_panzers_ down. Let's find out. Bring that flask over here while I get
one of the guinea pigs from the cage. Put it on the--Wait a minute! Who
left that door open?"
Chuck, gingerly lifting a small, stoppered vial from its shockproof
rack, glanced over his shoulder wonderingly.
"Not me!" he denied. "I always make sure it's shut. Maybe the guard
outside--?"
"Well, whoever did it," frowned Duane, "must be more careful. Our
country's at war, and there's been entirely too much enemy sabotage and
espionage around these parts already! You outside there! Guard!"
A khaki-clad figure appeared in the doorway, saluted smartly.
"Yes, Lieutenant?"
"Close that door, soldier, and see that it's kept--say! What _is_ this,
anyway? Why the gas-mask?"
The guard's voice was weirdly muffled by his rubbery face covering.
"Orders, sir. Trial blackout and mock gas attack in fifteen minutes,
sir. All men on duty have been ordered into masks, sir."
"So?" Steve Duane stared at the guard thoughtfully. "Well, in that
case, you may resume your post. But this time close the door carefully.
Oh, and by the way, soldier--"
He spoke with studied casualness as the guard turned away. The other
man glanced back.
"Yes, Lieutenant?"
"You might be kind enough to--_Achtung!_"
* * * * *
His voice shifted abruptly from a tone of easy _camaraderie_ to one of
sharp command. It was an old ruse--but it worked! Reflexes conditioned
into the soldier's body through long years of training exercised
themselves. The man's heels clicked together, his frame stiffened.
On that instant, his suspicion verified, Steve Duane hurled himself
forward.
"I thought so!" he roared. "A spy at our very door, eh? Grab him,
Chuck!"
But the room was wide, and the Nazi spy had realized his mistake the
moment he made it. He, too, swept into swift action. A tug wrenched the
.44 from his holster; impetuously he ripped the mask from his face to
reveal eyes gleaming with fanatic determination. Malice thickened the
heretofore well-concealed guttural accent which bespoke his ancestry.
"Stop! Another step, _Leutnant_, and you die! We are alone here. That
has been arranged. _We_ are not so foolishly overconfident as you
stupid Americans. _Ja_--" He laughed--"it was _I_, Eric von Rath, who
opened the door, the better to watch your progress, hear your braggart
claims. _Zu_, you have a new weapon to end the war, _nicht wahr_? But
our _Fuehrer_ is the one who will use that weapon. Now--" He swung the
ugly muzzle of his automatic to bear on Chuck Lafferty--"bring me the
vial! Quickly, _bitte_! I have no time to waste--"
Dazed by the sudden turn of events, Chuck faltered a half step forward,
stopped, turned questioning eyes to Duane. Steve nodded imperceptibly.
His quick mind had appraised the gravity of the situation, found but
one slim chance of coming out on top.
To take the flask from Lafferty's hand the Nazi must for a split
second, at least, relax his guard. It was narrow figuring, but if in
that second he could move....
"Go ahead, Chuck. Give it to him," he ordered.
"B-but--" hesitated Chuck.
"Give it to him!"
The enemy agent laughed coarsely. "Your _Leutnant_ is no fool. A
coward, yes; but, then, all Americans are cowards at heart, _nein_?
Bring the flask here! _Ach_--be careful, you blundering _eisel_!"
The last sentence broke in a gasp from von Rath. He was not the only
one to shout warning. Steve's fearful voice echoed his cry.
"Good Lord, Chuck, be careful! Don't drop that! We will all be--_look
out! Be care_--"
_The cold sweat of sudden fear broke on his forehead. Not fear of his
foeman, but of what might now seize them all. Even as he shouted, the
glass shattered upon the floor. From if rose a pale, chill, ominous
mist. A sharp, unidentifiable odor assailed his nostrils; black vertigo
staggered him. The world reeled and tumbled into wells of seething
darkness; the darkness was peopled with gray, swirling phantasms; he
sensed motion within and about him; a multitude of half-heard sounds
rolled like surging waters past his ears. This for a fearful moment.
Then_:
"--_ful!_" he cried. "That's dangerous, Chuck--"
* * * * *
His hands groped forward, governed by an instinctive motion, to catch
the falling flask. But, amazingly, they met and clutched nothing! More
frightening still, the muscles of his well-knit, athletic body flamed
with sudden agony, racked in protest as if they had been welded for
months in a plaster cast.
Over straining sinews and bones that ached horribly, Lieutenant Stephen
Duane had no more control than has a month old baby. With a gasp more
of shock than of fear, he pitched headlong to his knees, his chest, his
elbows.
He tried to roll, that his shoulders might break his fall, and
succeeded in a measure, but concrete grated against one cheek
painfully. The jolt shook him like the impact of a sledgehammer. He
spat dry dust flavored with the warm, salty taste of blood and cried
again:
"Chuck! Chuck, what--?"
Then the paralysis which had held him lessened; with an effort he
lifted his head and stared about him, eyes stark with incomprehension.
The laboratory was gone! The bright-gleaming lights had vanished,
as had the rows upon rows of glistening beakers and retorts ... the
work-benches and hooded range ... the centrifuge and tubes and hissing
Bunsens ... the vast intricate array of chemical paraphernalia that
should be here ... all were gone!
There was only this dingy, windowless room, bare and musty, lighted by
the feeble flames of candles guttering upon worn wall-sconces.
A sense of panic fear tugged at Steve Duane's heart. He cried yet
again, "Chuck! Chuck Lafferty! Where are you?"
The answer came from behind him. Drowsily at first, as if the speaker
were wakening to respond from the depths of drug-numbed slumber,
then more coherently, the answer gaining speed like the disc of a
hand-started phonograph.
"--grab it, Steve! It slipped! _Look out! The gas is escap_--"
Steve turned just in time to see his subordinate and lab assistant
strain frozen muscles forward in futile attempt to stay the fall of
a non-existent bottle. Chuck's eyes were open, but their blankness
mirrored nothing. He was toppling, as grotesquely as had Duane a moment
before, to the floor.
Clenching his lips against the pain that flooded him with every motion,
Steve inched forward to cushion his chum's fall. Chuck's body, locked
as if in _rigor mortis_, was a dead weight. Not only that, but--a
sudden realization heightened Steve's sense of eerie--cold!
Chuck's body was cold! Not with the soft clamminess of a drugged or
shellshocked invalid, but with the all-pervading iciness of carven
marble!
But stiff or limber, cold or quick, Lafferty's white lips were moving.
And they framed Steve's own query.
"Steve--what happened? Where are we? And what are we doing _here_?"
Steve said, "Flex your fingers, chum. That's right; work 'em. Yeah, I
know it hurts, but it unfreezes 'em. Now, try moving those knees and
elbows."
* * * * *
Chuck performed, obediently, the exercises Steve had found loosened his
own rigid body. Soon he, too, was able to lift his head and stare about
him. He turned to his superior officer, but Steve's shake of the head
answered his questions before they were given voice.
"I don't know, Chuck. It's all--fantastic! What's the last thing you
remember? Before you woke up, I mean."
"Woke up?" repeated Lafferty wonderingly. "I wasn't even asleep. What
do you mean, woke--?"
"That," commented Steve queerly, "is what _you_ think! You weren't
asleep, eh? Well, take a look at the hunk of statuary behind you."
Chuck turned and gulped. "The--the Jerry!"
"Right! That's what _you_ looked like, chum, a moment ago. And me, too,
I suppose. But I wouldn't know about that, and I wasn't on deck to
watch myself unfreeze--as he's doing right now. Catch him, Chuck!"
"The hell with him!" said Chuck. "Let him break his dirty Nazi neck!"
But he obeyed. The German woke blubbering with pain and fright, howled
for mercy when he discovered his hands no longer held a weapon of
destruction. But no thought of vengeance motivated Steve at the moment;
his sole interest was in learning what weird fate had befallen them.
There was time and enough to handle their enemy as he deserved; now
the problem was to find out what had happened. Therefore he gave
the German the benefit of his advice, and in a short time the three
erstwhile "statuettes" sat staring at each other in dim perplexity.
"This is not peace between us," he warned the German agent. "Only a
truce until we find out what's happened. One false move, and--" He
stopped significantly; then, to Chuck, "All right, Chuck. Your story.
You were saying--?"
"I don't know," wailed Lafferty, "from nothing! All I know is that just
a couple of minutes ago you ordered me to hand this lug a flask of that
new anesthetic we were working on. I--I stumbled, and the flask slipped
from my hands. As I fell, I tried to grab it--"
"And I yelled, 'Be careful!'"
"That's right. And then--and then all at once here I was, stiff as a
board and falling flat on my puss. In _this_ place--whatever it is!
Steve--" Chuck stared at the young officer fearfully--"you don't think
we--we're _dead_, do you? I mean, maybe the gas asphyxiated us, or
something--?"
"If we are," stated Duane bluntly, "my Sunday-school teacher had the
wrong steer on the afterworld. I _hurt_ when I came to. And disembodied
spirits don't have nervous systems; not that I know of. Anyhow, have
you noticed your clothes?"
Chuck did, now, for the first time. He stared, then fingered wildly at
the apparel in which he was clad. Perhaps unclad would be more apt.
For his garments--like those worn by Steve and the spy--consisted of a
metal harness about the loins, a short, metal-cloth cape suspended from
the shoulders, and a pair of doeskin sandals.
He gasped, "Hell's bells, Steve! Superman duds!"
"Except," pointed out Duane, "that Superman, even in his balmiest days,
never decked himself out in cloth like the stuff we have on! Don't you
recognize the metal?"
* * * * *
Chuck squinted more closely at the material of which their garments
were woven, then: "Gold!" he croaked. "Solid gold! Sweet Moses, Steve,
now I know I'm off my nut! I drop a flask of gas, draw a blank--and
snap out of it flopping on my pan with 18 karat panties on! What makes
here? A gag?"
"It's no gag," said Steve soberly. "I don't pretend to know all the
answers, Chuck, but there are several facts I _can_ deduce from what I
see in this room. The first one is--our new gas worked."
"W-worked?"
"Better," nodded Steve, "or _worse_ than we ever dared hope. There's
only one logical explanation for the situation we find ourselves in.
You dropped the flask, the anesthetic knocked us out, slowing down our
basal metabolism--according to my expectations--and we fell into a
state of catalepsy.
"That is why our muscles were stiff, our bodies cold and our joints
rigid. Our minds recognized no lapse of time. That does not mean
there has been none. All of our functions--breathing, digestion,
elimination--have been slowed." He turned to the third member of their
party. "Can _you_ remember what happened? You were farthest from the
fumes. You--Hey! What do you think you're doing? Come back here!"
Von Rath had been inching away from them stealthily. Now, well out of
arm's reach, he leaped suddenly to his feet, raced toward a doorway at
the far side of the chamber.
"A trick, _nein_? You are trying to make me reveal my _Vaterland's_
secrets? You don't catch me in your dirty, democratic trap. I--"
His words ended with the same dramatic suddenness as his headlong
flight. For as if stricken by lightning, all at once he dropped to the
floor and lay still! Blood burst from his nose and mouth.
In a flash, the two Americans were at his side. Awe weighted Chuck
Lafferty's words.
"Goddlemighty, what hit him? He went down just like he was pole-axed,
Steve!"
But Steve, having satisfied himself that the spy was only unconscious,
had already found the answer. He swept his hands before him, felt cool
smoothness beneath their palms.
"Glass!" he said. "A solid wall of it! We're caged like animals under a
bell!"
"What?" Lafferty, too, pawed wildly at the crystal-cool invisibility
that bound them. "But air, Steve! There's air coming through
somewhere--"
Duane's questing eyes had found the answer.
"Up there," he said. "See--near the ceiling? It's a wide crack in the
glass. Chuck, I'm beginning to piece the puzzle together. It's mad, but
it all ties in.
"That crack up there may be the thing that caused us to waken! From the
appearance of this chamber, it used to be hermetically sealed! Then the
dome split, air seeped in, and we wakened. But if that is true, what
has seemed to us but a second's time may in reality have been weeks ...
years...."
"Years!"
"Possibly," warned Steve, "longer than that! It was experimental work
we were engaged in, Chuck. _Methioprane_ was a compound about which
nothing was known. Set yourself for a shock. While we slept, not only
years but _centuries_ may have passed!"
"Centuries!" echoed Lafferty bleakly. "B-but, Steve--the war? Who won?
And where are we now? How--?"
Steve Duane shook his head.
"You know as much about that as I do. I'm guessing, anyway. There _may_
be another explanation. But--" His head turned--"I think we'll know the
answer in a few minutes."
"Eh? What do you mean? How?"
"Because," replied Steve tautly, "unless my ears are deceiving me,
we're about to entertain guests. I heard footsteps coming down the
outer corridor a moment ago, and--see? Now the door is opening!"
CHAPTER II
Priestess Beth
What manner of men Steve Duane expected to see enter the cavernous
chamber, he could not have really told. Men of a future era--for by now
he was firmly convinced that it _was_ a future era in which he and his
companions had roused--might differ from men of the Twentieth Century
in great or in no degree. He could even conceive of looking upon
members of the long-heralded race of supermen, and was fully prepared
to greet such arrivals.
This presumptuous logic, based on hunch, was typical of Duane.
Unorthodox, perhaps--but it was this high, swift, imaginative quality
of thought which had set him apart as one of his country's ablest young
chemical engineers. If hunches like these occasionally led him to
error, more often they led him to success in fields where others had
failed.
But this time his surmise was completely wrong. For it was no
lofty-browed race of supercultured beings who stepped through the
doorway. It was, instead--
"_Babes!_" choked Chuck Lafferty. "Holy cow--_dolls_!"
"Quiet!" breathed Steve swiftly. But he, too, gazed at the corps of
newcomers with numb astonishment. Women they were--but _what_ women!
Steve Duane was a scientist. As such he had allotted no place in
his scheme of life for the weaker sex. But he knew now, in a single
blinding moment, that this was only because never before had he looked
upon such a woman as she who headed this group.
From the top of her dust-golden head to the soles of her doeskin
sandals she was perfection. Tawny hair, shorn to shoulder-length,
cascaded down over firm neck and shoulders to frame features strong
with dignity and grace. Breast-cups of filigreed gold highlighted
the smooth, golden sheen of her flesh. From beneath the folds of a
sarong-like loincloth her long, straight limbs carried her forward in
pantherine grace.
Her manner was at once imperious and oddly humble as she led the way
to the dais upon which Steve and Chuck stood. Approaching them, she
intoned a curious chant in a voice warm and mellow as the dimly-heard
thrum of harpstrings.
With an effort, Steve wrenched his eyes away, and in a whisper warned,
"Steady, Chuck! Don't move a muscle. It's dark in this corner. Hold the
pose you were frozen in before we woke. They may not notice our change
of position, or him. We'll play 'possum ... try to learn something
about...."
Then he stopped in obedience to his own command, and held himself
rigidly motionless as the tiny band drew nearer. He saw, now, that not
all of the group shared the delicacy of the dust-golden Diana who led
them. Only one other--and she a maid of thirteen or fourteen--wore the
kirtle and peculiar amulet which he judged to be a badge of office.
The others fell into types as sharply diverse as day and night. First,
waddling meekly behind the chieftain, came a huddle of pale and
flabby-fleshed matrons, grossly obese of figure, flaccid of breast,
vacant of eye. These moved with a slow, tantalizing undulation of hip
and thigh which disgusted rather than enticed Steve.
Encircling these, tense as fighting falcons, marched the second
distinctive type. No weakling billows of fat were these, but lean, hard
warriors, granite-jawed, with eyes that stared straight forward in
uncompromising challenge.
These Amazons wore no gold-cloth habiliments. Their breachclouts were
of coarse, sweat-stained leather, and their flat, dry, masculine
breasts were stifled beneath straitlaced halters, giving freedom of
movement to their sword arms.
* * * * *
A third type brought up the rear. Neither masculine nor cloyingly
feminine were these. They might have been dull husks of neuter gender
for all the physical emotion the sight of their thick, peasant bodies
aroused. Their flesh was dark with long exposure to burning sun and
driving sleet, they had gnarled, calloused fingers and strong, broad
wrists.
They were heavy of jowl and brow, their stringy hair was crudely hacked
to the neck-line, then caught in a clubbed knot. Aprons of shoddy felt
were their only garments. Their legs bulged, sturdy and asensual as
limestone pediments, from beneath these grimy skirts.
This much Steve Duane saw with growing wonder. Then the band drew still
nearer, and the chant of the golden Diana became audible.
At first the words meant nothing. They were part of an intoned,
indistinguishable blur, signifying nothing. Then suddenly--as if one
strophe of a sacred ritual had ended and another begun--the chant
slowed. Halting words emerged from the meaningless drone--and it was no
longer meaningless. As one mesmerized, Steve hearkened incredulously to
the chant of the dust-gold maiden.
"_Osé, can you see by the Daans' surly light_--"
The American national anthem! Steve's eyes narrowed in dazed
bewilderment. Francis Scott Key's immortal words--immortal indeed!--but
phrased all wrong, curiously accented, broken in the wrong places!
Behind him, Chuck emitted a tiny gasp, but it went unnoticed as the
voice of the cantor lifted sonorously.
"--_the rockets' red glare-bombs bursting in air_--"
There it was again! The right words, or right syllables, but improperly
cadenced so that the whole true meaning of the song was distorted!
Holding his peace was the hardest task Steve Duane had ever undertaken.
Every fretful instinct urged him to interrupt this grotesquely mangled
hymn.
But it was wiser, reason warned him, to just listen. Listen and learn
more. The girl had lifted her head now, and was looking directly at
him. A mist of reflected candlelight enmeshed her hair with a halo
of golden glory. And there was radiance in her eyes, too; a bright,
high burning, with which was somehow strangely mingled desperation
and--hope! Liquid fire flamed in her throbbing voice.
"_Osé, does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O'er the land, O, Thou Free? Or
Thy_ hoam, _O, Thou Brave_?"
The last note of the chant dwindled into silence. A strange, strained,
watchful hush settled over the little band of women as if they were
waiting for--for what? Steve Duane did not know. A manifestation of
some sort? Quite possibly. It was perfectly obvious by now that to
these women, for some obscure reason, he and his companions were
objects of worship. The glass-encased dais upon which they stood was an
altar--a shrine!
But--Lord! If this were so, for how many countless decades or centuries
had they been immured here? What mighty evolutionary or sociological
force had wrought these physical changes upon one-time fair and lovely
womankind? And--where were the _men_ of this day?
* * * * *
As if in answer to his unvoiced query, was presented the next act of
this weird tableau. The circle of obese matrons parted, disgorging
from their midst one whom, in the wan light, Steve had not noticed
before. A tiny, withered parody of a man with painted lips and
cheeks, _kohl_-blackened lashes, elaborately ringletted hair tumbling
shoulder-deep to a white samite frock.
As this futile creature was loosed, terror glittered in his beady
eyes; he emitted a small, high-pitched bleat and strove to break from
his guards. But the warrior women, grim and adamant as stone, formed
a phalanx about him, a barricade of hard flesh which stood unyielding
before the panic thrusts of his soft, white fists.
Then it was the dust-gold maiden turned to the young neophyte, accepted
from her an object which gleamed evilly in the sallow light; then it
was the voices of the loose-fleshed matrons rose in mournful keening;
then it was that two of the apron-girt women stepped forward to seize
the struggling male in oaken grip, tearing the samite frock from his
body, baring his soft, hairless chest to the knife.
And then it was that Steve Duane horribly understood the meaning of
this ritual. Chuck Lafferty got it, too. His voice exploded in Steve's
ear.
"Hell's flaming fire, Steve, they're sacrificing the little guy--_to
us_!"
* * * * *
But Duane had already recognized the finale to which the drama was
moving, and was already in motion. He raced to the transparent barrier.
"Stop!" he cried. "Stop--!"
There was no way of knowing whether or not his words were audible to
those outside. True, the glass dome of their prison was cracked, but
even so the curved surface might mute all sounds. But communication is
not a matter of sound-waves alone; action has a tongue. Steve lifted
his arm--as he had seen the golden priestess raise hers a moment
before--in the universal symbol for cessation.
His gesture saved the doomed man's life. The raised blade stayed ...
then clattered to the floor from the dust-gold maiden's nerveless
fingers. Heads turned, and faces hard and soft adopted one expression
of awed terror. Voices rose in a bedlam of confusion; then, as one, the
women tumbled to their knees!
Cringing, they cowered there prostrate. But one had the courage
to raise her eyes again: the leader. On her brow was a furrow of
perplexity as if she were trying to recollect some once-heard,
half-forgotten instruction. Then her visage lighted; her voice lifted
in clarion call.
"Jain! The Slumberers have awakened--at last! The Day of Freedom
dawns! To the Sacred Wheel, swiftly!"
A flame of joy burst in the eyes of one of the grim-faced warrior
women; her lean flanks tensed as, leaping to her feet, she hurried
across the chamber to a huge, metal wheel on the farther wall. Sweat
sprang from her forehead, her sinews knotted in cords as she tugged at
this device. It held fast. Again she wrenched its spokes, white lines
of strain upon her jaw. This time red flakes of rust showered to the
floor, the wheel groaned protest at being thus rudely roused from an
age of disuse--and slowly turned!
As it did so, Steve was conscious of a draft of cool air about his
ankles, his knees, his thighs. Looking sharply he saw that the nether
rim of the glass prison was separating from the edge of the dais; the
whole structure hoisted upward like the gigantic bell it was.
Slowly as it had started, the movement stopped. And Steve and
Chuck--along with the wide-eyed von Rath, whom the fresh air had
revived, and who had now lurched to his feet--stood face to face with
their worshippers!
Now the leader dropped to one knee; in a voice which even determination
could not steady quavered:
"Hail, O Slumberers! _Aie_, look with mercy upon us, Thy children, for
lo! we have tarried and kept the faith, even as was ordained!"
Chuck stared at the speaker.
"Hey, what makes here? A revival meeting? How come this 'faith and
ordained' chatter?"
The German was equally taken aback. So much so that for the moment he
quite forgot the neo-paganistic pretensions of his creed, and relapsed
into the speech-habits of one-time Christian Germany.
"_Gott im Himmel!_" he exclaimed. "_Vas--?_"
* * * * *
Only Steve Duane had the acuteness to comprehend the lofty place to
which he and his companions had been elevated, and the quickness of
mind to take advantage of it. Aside, he whispered hurriedly, "Don't you
get it? We are their gods--or the symbols of their gods! Quiet, now!"
And to the girl, in a gravely commanding voice:
"Rise, O Priestess!" he said. "The Slumberers hear, and are merciful.
Is there one in command here?"
The priestess rose with slowly returning assurance.
"Not _here_, O Wise One; but elsewhere in Fautnox sits the Mother in
everlasting wisdom."
_The Mother_, thought Steve swiftly. _Then his surmise as to the
sociological organization of this race had not been wrong. It was a
matriarchy, divided into groups of warriors, workers, and--what else
could the flabby-fleshed ones be but breeders? That accounted for the
sole male being a pampered, bedizened pet._
_But--"Fautnox"? Doubt clouded his eyes; he bit his lip. Then
his trusted ally, hunch, came to his rescue. Why, of course! A
concrete, subterranean chamber of massive size. A wild wealth of
gold used lavishly, almost negligently, by a civilization obviously
semi-barbaric. A language which owned English as its parent, but was
changed by untold ages of misuse and elision. Fautnox was--Fort Knox,
Kentucky!_[1]
[Footnote 1: Fort Knox, Kentucky, in addition to being an army post is,
in 1942, a bastioned repository wherein is stored seventy-five percent
of the entire world's gold.--Ed.]
The next words of the priestess brought verification of his guess.
Humbly she said, yet proudly, too:
"Come, O Slumberers! Let Thy handmaiden, Beth, lead Thee to the Mother
of the Tucki Clan."
She made a sign of obeisance, whirled, issued orders to those who
followed her. Instantly the kneeling ones rose. The warriors formed an
avenue before the dais; metal _clanged!_ on metal as a score of bright
blades whipped from scabbards.
Chuck Lafferty started. "Now, wait a minute, Steve! I don't like them
swords, _nohow_! You sure this Mardi Gras is on the level?"
"Positive!" asserted Duane. "Keep your tongue still and follow me.
The Marines have landed, and the situation is well in hand. You, von
Rath--come along! And don't forget, I don't need much of an excuse to
slug you. So watch out!"
Thus marched the trio of "Slumberers," surrounded by a triumphant band,
upward from the cavern through the strong, bastioned corridors of a
citadel which had once served as the repository for a mighty nation's
riches, to meet the Mother.
In one expectation, Steve Duane was disappointed.
He considered it a foregone conclusion their journey would take them
to the surface, into sunshine or moonlight as the case might be. But
though they rose several levels, they never left the subterranean
depths. News of their awakening, spreading swiftly and mysteriously as
only tidings of evil or great joy can spread, had somehow gone before
them; clansfolk poured from everywhere to crowd the passageways through
which they traveled.
* * * * *
In vain were drawn the warriors' swords, futile were the commands
of the soldier-captain, Jain. The crowd pressed forward, screaming
wild paeans of joy, to look upon, to touch the garments of their
demigods. Had there been a rigid caste system in this community, it
was forgotten now. Laborers and breeders stood shoulder to shoulder,
weeping openly with joy. Here a towering warrior lifted a spindling
male that he might see, above the heads of the throng, the Deliverers.
There an awed worker stood with gaping mouth in the midst of a bevy of
shrill-piping breeders, a dirty blot against their immaculate whiteness.
It was with relief, and barely with whole skins, that the small
procession wound its way finally through a guarded door into the
sanctuary of the Mother's _hoam_.
There was nothing pretentious about the chamber. It was just another
room, barren as any they had passed through, simply furnished with
the scant necessities of life. But two things served to differentiate
it from other dwelling-places: the tremendous heap of parchment rolls
overflowing from loose racks in one corner--and the woman who rose to
greet them as they entered.
For her, Steve Duane could conceive no other feeling than one of
instant affection. A ruler she was, a tyrant she might be, but
there was goodness, honor and truth in the gaze she bent upon them,
gentleness in her voice as she spoke.
"Then it is true!" she breathed. "You _have_ wakened, and after all
these long and weary years, I have lived to see the ancient prophecies
fulfilled. Now am I, Mother Maatha of the Tucki Clan, content to die.
For at last you have come to free us, as was promised--"
Her white head bent, her soft eyes filled with tears of happiness, and
she stretched forth a lean, tremulous hand. Steve moved forward, took
it between his own.
"Yes, Mother," he said gently, "we have come. But I do not understand.
You speak of freedom as if it were a lost thing. Who holds you captive?
Not--" A sudden fear struck him--"not the Nazis?"
The old woman shook her head.
"The word you use is strange to me, O Wise One. But surely, you, who
are All-Wise and Eternal, know that all Earth lies crushed beneath the
heel of the vandals from Daan?"