"That, gentlemen," I said hoarsely, after a long silence, "will make
the blackest entry ever spread upon the log of the _Ertak_--upon any
ship of the Service. Let us dismiss this thing from our minds, and
proceed."
But that was easier, by far, to propose than to accomplish.
* * * * *
It was late indeed when we finished our deliberations, but the plan
decided upon was exceedingly simple.
We would simply enforce our authority until we located definite
resistance; we would then concentrate our efforts upon isolating the
source of this resistance and overcoming it. That we would find Liane
at the bottom of our difficulties, we knew perfectly well, but we
desired to place her in a definite position as an enemy. So far, we
had nothing against her, no proof of her activities, save the rather
guarded report of the Chief, and the evidence given us by Fetter.
There were three major continents on Lakos, but only one of them was
inhabited or habitable, the other two being within the large northern
polar cap. The activities of The Worshipers of the Flame were centered
about the chief city of Gio, Fetter had told us, and therefore we were
in position to start action without delay.
Force of men would avail us nothing, since the entire crew of the
_Ertak_ would be but a pitiful force compared to the horde Liane could
muster. Our mission could be accomplished--if, indeed, it could be
accomplished at all--by the force of whatever authority our position
commanded, and the outwitting of Liane.
Accordingly, it was decided that, in the emergency, all three of us
would undertake the task, leaving the ship in charge of Sub-officer
Scholey, chief of the operating room crew, and a very capable,
level-headed man. I gave him his final instructions as we left the
ship, early the next morning:
"Scholey, we are leaving you in a position of unusual responsibility.
An emergency makes it necessary, or at least desirable, for Mr.
Correy, Mr. Kincaide and myself to leave the ship. Mr. Hendricks has
already departed; therefore, the _Ertak_ will be left in your charge.
"Remain here for five days; if we do not return in that time, leave
for Base, and report the circumstances there. The log will reveal full
authority for your actions."
"Very well, sir!" He saluted, and we passed through the air-lock which
protected the _Ertak_ from the unpleasant atmosphere of Lakos, armed
only with atomic pistols, and carrying condensed rations and menores
at our belts.
* * * * *
We went directly to the largest of the mines, the natives regarding us
with furtive, unfriendly eyes. A great crowd of men were lounging
around the mouth of the mine, and as we approached, they tightened
their ranks, as though to block our passage.
"We'll bluff it through," I whispered. "They know the uniform of the
Service, and they have no leader."
"I'd like to take a swing at one of them," growled Correy. "I don't
like their looks--not a bit. But just as you say, sir."
Our bluff worked. We marched up to the packed mass as though we had
not even noticed them, and slowly and unwillingly, they opened a path
for us, closing in behind us with rather uncomfortable celerity. For a
moment I regretted we had not taken a landing crew from the _Ertak_.
However, we won through the mouth of the mine without violence, but
here a huge Lakonian who seemed to be in authority held up his hand
and blocked our way.
"Let me handle him, sir," said Correy from the corner of his mouth. "I
understand a little of their language."
"Right," I nodded. "Make it strong!"
Correy stepped forward, his head thrust out truculently, thumbs hooked
through his belt, his right hand suggestively near his automatic
pistol. He rapped out something in unpleasant gutturals, and the tall
Lakonian replied volubly.
"He says it's orders," commented Correy over his shoulder. "Now I'll
tell him who's giving orders around here!"
He stepped closer to the Lakonian, and spoke with emphatic briefness.
The Lakonian fell back a step, hesitated, and started to reply. Correy
stopped him with a single word, and motioned us to follow him. The
guard watched us doubtfully, and angrily, but he let us pass.
"He told me," explained Correy, "that _she_ had given orders. Didn't
name her, but we can guess, all right. I told him that if she wished
to say anything to us, she could do it in person; that we weren't
afraid of her, of him, or all the Lakonians who ever breathed green
soup and called it air. He's a simple soul, and easily impressed. So
we got by."
"Nice work," I commended him. "It's an auspicious start, anyway."
* * * * *
The mouth of the mine was not the usual vertical shaft; as Fetters had
told us, it was a great ramp, of less than forty-five degrees, leading
underground, illuminated by jets of greenish flame from metal brackets
set into the wall at regular intervals, and fed by a never-failing
interplay of natural gas. The passageway was of varying height and
width, but nowhere less than three times my height from floor to
ceiling, and it was broad enough at its narrowest so that ten men
might have marched easily abreast.
The floor, apparently, had been smoothed by human effort, but for the
rest, the corridor was, to judge from the evidence, entirely natural
for the walls of shiny black rock bore no marks of tools.
At intervals, other passages branched off from the main one we were
following, at greater and less angles, but these were much narrower,
and had very apparently been hewn in the solid rock. Like the central
passage, they were utterly deserted.
"We'll be coming out on the other side, pretty soon," commented Correy
after a steady descent of perhaps twenty minutes. "This tunnel must go
all the way through. I--what's that?"
We paused and listened. From behind us came a soft, whispering sound,
the nature of which we could not determine.
"Sounds like the shuffle of many feet, far behind," suggested Kincaide
gravely.
"Or, more likely, the air rushing around the corners of those smaller
passages," I suggested. "This is a drafty hole. Or it may be just the
combined flarings of all these jets of flame."
"Maybe you're right, sir," nodded Correy. "Anyway, we won't worry
about it until we have to. I guess we just keep on going?"
"That seems to be about all there is to do; we should enter one of the
big subterranean chambers Fetters mentioned, before long."
* * * * *
As a matter of fact, it was but a minute or two later, that we turned
a curve in the corridor and found ourselves looking into a vast open
space, the roof supported by huge pillars of black stone, and the
floor littered with rocky debris and mining tools thrown down by
workmen.
"This is where they take out the temite ore, I imagine," said
Kincaide, picking up a loose fragment of rock. He pointed to a smudge
of soft, crumbly gray metal, greasy in appearance, showing on the
surface of the specimen he had picked up. "That's the stuff, sir,
that's causing us all this trouble: nearly pure metallic temite." He
dropped the fragment, looking about curiously. "But where," he added,
"are the miners?"
"I'm inclined to believe we'll find out before we get back to the
_Ertak_," said Correy grimly. "Everything's moved along too sweetly;
trouble's just piling up somewhere."
"That remains to be seen," I commented. "Let's move on, and see what's
beyond. That looks like a door of some sort, on the far side. Perhaps
it will lead us to something more interesting."
"I hope it does," growled Correy. "This underground business is
getting on my nerves!"
It was a door I had seen, a huge slab of light yellow-green metal. I
paused, my hand on the simple latch.
"Stand to one side," I said softly. "Let's see what happens."
I lifted the latch, and the heavy door opened inward. Cautiously, I
stared through the portal. Inside was blackness and silence;
somewhere, in the far distance, I could see two or three tiny
pin-pricks of green light.
"We'll take a look around, anyway," I said. "Follow me carefully and
be ready for action. It seems all right, but somehow, I don't like the
looks of things."
In single file, we passed beyond the massive door, the light from the
large room outside streaming ahead of us, our shadows long and
grotesque, moving on the rocky floor ahead of us.
Then, suddenly, I became aware that the path of light ahead of us was
narrowing. I turned swiftly; the door must be closing!
As I turned, lights roared up all around us, intense light which
struck at our eyes with almost tangible force. A great shout rose,
echoing, to a vaulted ceiling. Before we could move or cry out, a
score of men on either side had pinioned us.
"Damnation!" roared Correy. "If I only had the use of my fists--just
for a second!"
* * * * *
We were in a great cavern, the largest I have ever beheld. A huge
bubble, blown in the molten rock by powerful gases from the seething
interior of the world.
The roof was invisible above our heads, and the floor sloped down
gently in every direction, toward a central dais, so far away that its
details were lost to us. From the center of the dais a mighty pillar
of green flame mounted into the air nearly twenty times the height of
a man. All around the dais, seated on the sloping floor of the cavern,
were Lakonians.
There were hundreds of them, thousands of them, and they were as
silent and motionless as death. They paid no heed to us; they
crouched, each in his place, and stared at the column of greenish
flame.
"It was a trap," muttered Kincaide as our captors marched us rapidly
toward the dais in the center of the huge amphitheater. "They were
waiting for us; I imagine we have been watched all the time. And we
walked into the trap exactly like a bunch of schoolboys."
"True--but we've found, I believe, what we wished to find," I told
him. "This is the meeting place of the Worshipers of the Flame. There,
I imagine is the Flame itself. And unless I'm badly mistaken, that's
Liane waiting up there in the center!"
It was Liane. She was seated on a massive, simple throne of the
greenish-yellow metal, the column of fire rising directly behind her
like an impossible plume. In a semicircle at her feet, in massive
chairs made of the odd metal, were perhaps twenty old men, their heads
crowned with great, unkempt manes of white hair.
And standing beside Liane's throne, at her right hand,
was--_Hendricks!_
* * * * *
His shoulders drooped, his chin rested upon his breast. He was
wearing, not the blue-and-silver uniform of the Service, but a simple
tunic of pale green, with buskins of dark green leather, laced with
black. He did not look up as we were ushered before this impressive
group, but Liane watched us with smiling interest.
Liane, seated there upon her throne, was not the Liane of those days
in the _Ertak_. There, she had been scarcely more than a peculiarly
fascinating young woman with a regal bearing and commanding eyes.
Here, she was a goddess, terrifyingly beautiful, smiling with her
lips, yet holding the power of death in the white hands which hung
gracefully from the massive arms of the throne.
She wore a simple garment of thin, shimmering stuff, diaphanous as
finest silk. It was black, caught at one shoulder with a flashing
green stone. The other shoulder was bared, and the black garment was a
perfect foil for the whiteness of her perfect skin, her amazing blue
eyes, and the pale gold of her hair.
She lifted one hand in a slight gesture as our conductors paused
before the dais; they fell away and formed a close cordon behind us.
"We have awaited your coming," she said in her sibilant voice. "And
you are here."
"We are here," I said sternly, "representing, through our Service, the
Supreme Council of the universe. What word shall we take back to those
who sent us?"
Liane smiled, a slow, cruel smile. The pink fingers of one hand tapped
gently on the carven arm of her throne. The eyes of the semicircle of
old men watched us with unwavering hatred.
"The word you carry will be a good word," she said slowly. "Liane has
decided to be gracious--and yet it is well that you have full
understanding of Liane's power. For while the word Liane shall give
you to bear back is a good word, still, Liane is but a woman, and
women have been known to change their minds. Is that not so, Commander
Hanson?"
"That is so, Liane," I nodded. "And we are glad to hear that your
wisdom has led you to be gracious."
She leaned forward suddenly, her eyes flashing with anger.
"Mark you, it is not wisdom but a whim of mine which causes me to be
graciously minded!" she cried. "Think you that Liane is afraid? Look
about you!"
* * * * *
We turned slowly and cast our eyes about that great gathering. As far
as the eye could reach, in every direction, was a sea of faces. And as
we looked, the door through which we had entered this great hall was
flung open, and a crowd of tiny specks came surging in.
"And still they come, at Liane's command," she laughed. "They are
those who played, to disarm your suspicions, at blocking your entry to
this place. They did but follow you, a safe distance behind."
"I thought so," murmured Correy. "Things were going too smoothly. That
was what we heard, sir."