Flight
It was not strange that in this moment of peril, when the chips were
down, Ramey Winters should be the one to seize the reins of command.
He was a soldier, a trained fighting man. It was sheer instinct that
spurred him into action. Once, several hours before, he had studied
this room with the wondering eyes of one baffled by mystery. Now he
studied it again, this time with the sharp, critical gaze of a fighter
appraising a salient.
The hall in which they stood was a closed square, roughly, fifty by
fifty, on the lowest level of the temple. Its walls were two feet
thick, and it had no windows, but it was still precariously vulnerable
because at the center of each of three walls gaped wide, arched
doorways, and the fourth wall was fed by a smaller entrance.
Ramey asked swiftly, "These doorways--where do they lead?"
Syd O'Brien pointed to each in turn. "North wall--outer staircases from
the moat. West wall--terrace. The south entrance is the way we came in.
The little door leads to the inner court. They'll come from the west
and south."
"Okay. That's where we'll concentrate our defense. Red--you and Lake
and Dr. Aiken guard the west entrance. Syd and Grinnell and I will hold
the south."
"How about me?" demanded Sheila Aiken angrily. "I'm as good a shot as--"
"You have the most important job of all," Ramey told her grimly.
"Keeping the guns loaded for us. Put all the guns and ammunition on
the table between us. Here--" With a heave he cleared the surface of a
massive laboratory desk. Dr. Aiken winced as piles of carefully sorted
ceramics, heaps of precious notes, spilled helter-skelter to the floor.
"Sirabhar will help you. I suppose we can't count on Sheng-ti. No?
Then you and Sirabhar will have to keep an eye on the north and east
entrances. Not much chance of their getting in that way, but--"
Red said, "Lot of furniture in this room, Ramey. Chairs and tables and
stuff. Make good barricades."
"Good idea! All right, everybody, hop to it! Time's getting short."
Time was getting short. So treacherously short, in fact, that working
feverishly they had barely succeeded in setting the rude beginning of
their barricades before the vulnerable doorways when the attackers hove
in view. Johnny Grinnell gave the alarm.
"Here they come, Ramey! Around the edge of the terrace wall. Six ... a
dozen of them. I don't see the captain, though."
"You won't," bellowed Red. "'Cause he's over here. They done what you
figured, Ramey; split up. They're coming at us from both sides. Well--"
"Wait!" snapped Ramey. "Don't shoot unless they do!"
Red lowered his rifle reluctantly. "Damn if you ain't the--the
_pacificest_ guy I ever saw! Always letting the other guy get the drop
on you. It gives me a pain in the--_Wow!_ There it comes! Well, I can
shoot, _now_!"
For his sentence had been punctuated by a simultaneous opening fire
from both attack parties. His own gun barked answer. And this time,
more ruthlessly, more determinedly than it had waged before the battle
begun on the upper causeway continued.
* * * * *
There was no time for the details of that fight to register coherently
upon Ramey Winters' brain. But later he found etched in his memory
sharp, indelible highlights of those frenzied moments.
His own gun, spluttering and coughing against his cheek as he crouched
at the edge of the doorway, firing at figures that slipped, wraithlike,
through the murky corridor. The incessant, crashing echo of what seemed
like a thousand guns; here in these vaulted depths sound smashed back
upon itself thunderously, seemed to merge with the thickening, acrid
smoke and roll about the room in reverberant waves. Red Barrett,
holding his heavy rifle pistol-wise in one hamlike paw, dripping curses
in a loud, prolific stream as with his free hand he tucked into place
the edge of a raveling bandage. Syd O'Brien, scowling at his side,
methodically pumping his shots where they would do the most good. Lake
O'Brien, across the room, achieving the same result with roars of
boisterous glee.
Other details. Dr. Aiken's plaintive moan rising above the crash of
gunfire. "Those carvings! Those priceless carvings! Ruined!" A glimpse
of Sheila Aiken, an angel yet, but an avenging angel now; face smudged
and sweating, white hands flying like shuttles as she reloaded the hot,
empty rifles and lined them again within reach of the fighters. The
whining sing-song of Sheng-ti, stalking up and down the room, invoking
something of his placid, contemplative god; whether a blessing or a
curse Ramey could not tell.
Then Sheila's voice rose, shrill, alarmed. "Johnny! Ramey! At the court
gate!"
Ramey spun to the small east doorway, rifle leveled. But even as his
sights centered on a yellow face, Syd O'Brien's arm knocked up his
gun. The bullet gouged flecks from a priceless mosaic. "Don't! It's
Tomasaki! Call him, Sirabhar! Get him to help!"
Sirabhar slipped from table to doorway, called to his companion in
their native tongue. An answer quavered back, highpitched with terror.
Sirabhar turned.
"He say he no dare, Master sahib. He say he do not wish to fight the
Little Ones. They too many and too strong."
There was anger and contempt in the loyal aide's voice. He called again
to his fellow-countryman, his words a liquid blur in the tumult. An
answer piped back. Sirabhar's small frame stiffened, his soft brown
eyes were suddenly dark bits of flinty shale. His face contorted;
he spat into the gloom and whirled to Dr. Aiken, his voice shrill,
accusing.
"Tomasaki no good friend, Master Doctor. Him coward. Him--"
His words ended suddenly. Too suddenly. Ramey, who had turned again to
the defense of his post, risked a backward glance--and was in time to
see the staunch little Cambodian reel and topple forward, clutching,
with fingers that seemed to spurt blood, at a gaping hole in his chest.
Sheila screamed, and beside Ramey, Syd O'Brien growled a thick curse.
They were the brown man's obsequies. He was dead before he hit the
floor.
* * * * *
But there was no time to mourn him now. For Barrett, who had swung
from doorway to table for a recharged weapon, roared suddenly, "The
ammunition! Is that all we have left?"
The girl nodded. "That's all here. There's more in storage, but--"
Ramey, sweeping the table with a glance, saw that their supply had
dwindled to a lone container of cartridges. Enough to account for every
one of their attackers, yes--if every shot could be trusted to take its
toll. But with six people firing steadily, indiscriminately, against a
diverse attack--
"We can't defend this place any longer," he roared. "They'll take us in
five minutes. Too many entrances. Doc, is there any other--?"
It was Lake who answered. "Yes! That underground chamber I found. It
has only one entrance. One armed man could defend that for a week."
"But--can we get there?"
"Through the court exit."
"That's the ticket, then," shouted Ramey. "Lake, you lead the way.
Then Sheila and Dr. Aiken. Somebody grab Sheng-ti and take him along.
They'll murder him if we leave him behind. Ready, everybody? Go, now.
Orderly. We'll all make it."
There came one contradictory voice. Out of a sudden, ominous hush that
descended as briefly no rifle anywhere was barking, came the faint,
dissenting voice of Johnny Grinnell.
"Not ... all of us, Winters."
Ramey, swiveling, saw with horror that the youngster was no longer on
his feet. He lay asprawl on the hard stone floor behind the barricade.
His rifle was still clenched in one white-knuckled hand, but his other
hand gripped his belt as if to stifle a gnawing fire there. And the
fingers of that hand were dark with a slowly spreading stain.
* * * * *
In a flash Ramey was on his knees beside the younger man. Dr. Aiken,
too, and Sheila.
"Johnny, what's the matter? You're not--"
Grinnell tried to grin. An unfortunate attempt, for with the effort
suddenly he coughed and the corners of his lips leaked blood. He spat
and shook his head angrily.
"Lucky ... shot! But I guess ... it did ... the trick."
"You'll be okay," Ramey told him gruffly. "Barrett! Syd! Give me a hand
here--"
But even as he gave the order his eyes found Dr. Aiken's, and the old
man's head shook slowly from side to side. His lips formed soundless
words.
"No use, Ramey."
The voice of Grinnell echoed. "It's no ... use, Ramey. I was a ...
med student once." His eyes hardened to a granite doggedness. "You
others ... beat it! Get out of here while ... you can!" Again a
paroxysm of coughing seized him. When it ended his shirtfront was not
pretty. He wiped at his lips with a grimy forearm, cried feverishly,
"Get out ... damn it! Get out ... I say!"
Then a sudden thought struck him. He turned to Ramey. "No, wait! Lift
me ... to the doorway there--"
Red spoke warningly from the west entrance. "They're closing in, Ramey.
I think they're going to rush the joint."
Ramey bent, raised, and cradling the mortally wounded Grinnell in his
arms like a gangling child, carried him to the spot he had begged to be
taken. Grinnell's lips twitched in a feeble smile. "This is ... swell.
Now give me a ... rifle, Winters ... and get the hell ... out of here.
All of you."
Ramey looked at Aiken--the doctor nodded. One by one they abandoned
their posts, slipped into the narrow corridor beyond the prostrate
figure. Sheila was sobbing softly. Syd O'Brien's face was a mask of
pain and rage; even Lake was grim as he stopped to wring Grinnell's
hand in last farewell.
Only over Grinnell's white lips hovered the ghost of a smile. Ramey and
Dr. Aiken were the last to pass him. He searched their faces with eyes
already uncertain. "Don't worry about ... me ... Doc," he whispered.
"Just get even." A shudder trembled through him; he drew a faltering
breath. "Wish I could go with you ... though. It's ... a strange
journey ... you're going on. A strange journey...."
Dr. Aiken tapped his forehead significantly. "Delirium," he whispered.
Then Red's voice boomed from the background. "Ramey! Doc! Come on!
They'll be busting through in a minute."
And he was right. Already figures were closing in on the abandoned
barricade. Ramey gripped the old man's arm, propelled him by sheer
force down the corridor. They had covered perhaps a hundred yards when
they heard the lone, explosive crack of a rifle, Johnny's rifle. Then
another shot ... then a volley. Then silence....
* * * * *
Their way led them from wide corridors to smaller ones, then down
a slow ramp to a passageway narrower still and almost completely
lightless. The only illumination came through squares of stone fretwork
high on the walls.
Ramey judged they were below ground level now. Sheila Aiken, behind
whom he stumbled, verified his guess.
"We're beneath the main altar room. Ventilation ducts at bases of
statues there. That's how Lake discovered this place."
Then abruptly they turned a corner and the subterranean chamber lay
before them. It, unlike any of the other chambers Ramey had seen at
Angkor Vat, was doored with a great barrier of bronze. They tumbled
into the room, Syd O'Brien and Tomasaki, Red Barrett and the still
bleating _bonze_, Sheng-ti, Lake and Sheila, Ramey and Dr. Aiken
bringing up the rear. Ramey shut the huge door after them, clanged into
place a ponderous lock-bar, and with a sigh of relief, turned to view
his new surroundings.
This was a small room, barely more than twenty feet on a side and of
equal height. A pallid light filtered down from a grilled mosaic at
roof level. Lake O'Brien augmented this illumination by igniting a
flambeau ensconced on the wall. The torch crackled and flamed high,
casting a fitful, tawny gleam over carven walls, and--something else.
The object Dr. Aiken had mentioned. The inexplicable cube of wrought
metal standing in the middle of the room.
Ramey stared at the thing incredulously.
"Why, that--that thing's _modern_!"
Dr. Aiken nodded somberly. "By all laws of reason and logic," he
assented, "it should be. But its location and the inscriptions argue
differently, Winters."
Ramey tapped the thing with his pistol. It echoed metallically,
hollowly. "But the ancients didn't know how to work with metals like
this. This isn't silver or brass or even iron. It's--it's steel!"
"Guess again," grunted Syd. "It's not even steel. We haven't been able
to figure _what_ it is. Some unknown alloy."
He was, Ramey thought suddenly, getting almost as bad as Dr. Aiken.
Fretting over archeological problems at a time like this. He abandoned
the question for the time being.
"Well, no time to worry about it now. We've given the Japs the skip for
the time being, but we're still not out of the woods. Now that we're
down here, what do we do next?"
* * * * *
Lake grinned at him. "We sit," he said, "tight. And wait for them to
get tired looking for us. We hightailed it down here so fast, Ramey,
you probably didn't notice the passageway we came through was a
veritable labyrinth. It took me months to locate this place, and _then_
I only stumbled across it by accident. The Japs are nervous, impatient
little devils. They'll never find us here. In a few hours, a day at
the most, they'll decide we must have somehow escaped from the temple
grounds, beat it back to ask their base commandant what they should do
next. When we're sure they're gone, we'll lam out of here."
"Sounds good. Meanwhile, what do we do about food and drinking water?"
"We do without, I guess," admitted Lake.
For the first time since their flight from the room above, the little
native spoke up.
"Excuse, please, Master sahib, sir. _I_ will go topside. Bring back
food and water."
Ramey stared at him in astonishment. A little while ago Tomasaki had
been limp with terror. Now he was offering to take a foolhardy risk
on their behalf. It didn't make sense. The little man had undergone a
complete change of heart or--
Suddenly Ramey thought he understood. For his keen gaze detected
jittering nerves in the native's hopeful offer. The rising intonation
of Sheng-ti supplied the missing clue.
"_Aiee!_ Doom!" the shaven _bonze_ was crying. "Woe to all men when the
chamber of change be violated; when the gods of the past shall walk!"
Lake, too, understood, and stopped the little man as he edged toward
the doorway. "No, come back here, Tomasaki! It's too risky. They might
see you." He grinned at his friends. "I don't know how the rest of you
feel, but me, I'd rather have an empty belly than a full carcass."
Red Barrett had been staring in awed wonderment at the mysterious metal
cube ever since Ramey had tapped it. Red was a great guy, but he was
not the world's fastest thinker. Now comprehension seemed to dawn on
him with an almost audible sound of gears meshing. He said to Ramey,
"Hey, Ramey! That thing's _hollow_!"
Dr. Aiken said, "Yes, Barrett, we know that. But so far we have been
unable to find any way to open it."
Red started to scratch his brick pate automatically, winced as his hand
touched bandages. "You know what? I bet I know what that thing is.
I seen a picture once, back in the States. Bela Lugosi in _The Wife
of the Werewolf_. He was one of them whacky scientists--'scuse me,
Doc--and he had a cabinet something like this. Only it really wasn't no
cabinet at all. It was a secret entrance to an underground tunnel.
"I betcha that's what this is, too. A passageway which goes down under
the moat, maybe, and out beyond the temple. Them old priests used to be
keen on things like that. Course they didn't mess around with keys or
nothing. They had trick doors you had to work out on like an osteopath.
Like you'd punch on this little knob here, and maybe wriggle this hunk
of carving--_Holy cow!_ Lookit, Ramey!"
He leaped back, startled. Nor was he the only one whose jaw dropped in
sudden wonder. Call it coincidence, call it Fate, call it an incredible
permutation of chance--but while explaining, Red's fingers had fumbled
upon the combination required to unlock the gate of this ancient
mystery. With a groan of protest, one outer face of the strange cube
was swinging open!