_The Darkness_
Darkness; and red fires that seemed whirling about him as his body
twisted in air. To Dean Rawson, plunging down into the volcano's maw,
each second was an eternity, for, in each single instant, he was
expecting crashing death.
Then he knew that long arms were wrapped about him, holding him,
supporting him, checking his downward plunge ... and at last the
glassy walls, where each bulbous irregularity shone red with reflected
light, moved slowly past. And, after more eons of time, a rocky floor
rose slowly to meet him.
His body crashed gently; he was sprawled face downward on stone that
was smooth and cold. The restraining arms no longer touched him.
He lay motionless for some time, his mind as stunned and
uncomprehending as if he had truly crashed to death upon that rocky
floor. Then, at last, he forced his reluctant nerves and muscles to
turn his body till he lay face upward.
Darkness wrapped him as if it were the soft swathing of some black
cocoon. The world about him was at first a place of utter night-time
blackness; and then, far above him, there shone a single star ...
until that feeble candle-gleam, too, was snuffed out.
A hand was gripping his shoulder; it seemed urging him to arise. He
felt each separate finger--long, slender, like bands of steel. The
nail at each finger-end was more nearly a claw, the whole hand a thin,
clutching thing like the foot of some giant ape. And, even as he
shrank involuntarily from that touch, Rawson wondered how the creature
could reach out and grip him so surely in the dark. But he came to
his feet in response to that urging hand.
The night was suddenly sibilant with eery, whistling voices. They came
from all sides at once; they threw themselves back and forth in
endless echoes. To Rawson it was only a confused medley of conflicting
sounds in which no one voice was clear. But the creature that held him
must have understood, for he heard him reply in a sharp, piercing
tone, half whistle, half shriek.
* * * * *
What had happened? Where was he? What was this thing that pushed him,
stumbling, along through the dark? With all his tumultuous questioning
he knew only one thing definitely: that it would be of no use to
struggle. He was as helpless as any trapped animal.
He was inside the earth, of course; he had fallen he had no least idea
how far; and, in some strange manner, this long-armed thing had
supported him and eased him gently down. But what it meant or what lay
ahead were matters too obscure for him to try to see clearly.
He held his hands protectingly before him while the talons gripping
into his shoulder hurried him along. He stumbled awkwardly as his foot
struck an obstruction. He would have fallen but for the grip that held
him erect.
For that creature, whatever it was, the darkness held no uncertainty.
He moved swiftly. His shrill shriek and the jerk of his arm both gave
evidence of his astonishment that his captive should walk so
blunderingly.
Then it seemed that he must have comprehended Rawson's blindness. A
green line of light passed close behind Dean's head. It was
cold--there was no radiant warmth--but, when it struck the face of a
wall of stone some twenty feet away, the solid rock turned instantly
to a mass of glowing yellow-red.
The cold green ray swung back and forth, leaving a path of radiant
rock behind it wherever it touched. And the rock was hot! Once the
green light held more than an instant in one place, and the rock
softened at its touch, then splashed and trickled down to make a fiery
pool.
* * * * *
Abruptly Rawson was able to see his surroundings. Also, he knew the
source of the red glow that had seemed like volcanic fires. There had
been others like his captor; they had been down below, and had played
their flames upon the rocks deep in the volcano. It was thus that they
made light.
With equal suddenness, and with terrible clearness, Dean found the
answer to one of his questions. He wrenched himself about to stare
behind him at the creature that held him in its grip. And, for the
first time, the wild experience became something more than an
unbelievable nightmare; in that one horrifying instant he knew it was
true.
Only a few minutes before, he had been walking across the cindery sand
of the crater top, walking under the stars and the dark desert
sky--Dean Rawson, mining engineer, in a sane, believable world. And
now...!
He squinted his eyes in the dim light to see more plainly the beastly
figure, more horrible for being so nearly human. He had seen them
briefly up above; the closer view of this one specimen of a strange
race was no more pleasing. For now he saw clearly the cruelty in the
face. It was there unmistakably, even though the face itself, under
less threatening circumstances, might have been a ludicrous caricature
of a man's.
Red and nearly naked, the creature stood upright, straps of metal
about its body. It was about Rawson's height; its round, staring eyes
were about level with his own, and each eye was centered in a circular
disk of whitish skin. The light went dim for a moment, and Dean,
staring in his turn, saw those other huge eyes enlarge, the white
covering of each drawing back like an expanding iris.
Some vague understanding came to him of the beast's ability to see in
the dark. They used these red-hot stones for illumination, but this
thing had seemed to see clearly even when the stones had ceased to
glow. And again, though indistinctly, Dean knew that those eyes might
be sensitive to infra-red radiations--they might see plainly by the
dark light that continued to flood these rocky chambers, though, to
him, the rocks had gone lightless and black.
* * * * *
Even as the quick thoughts flashed through his mind, he was thinking
other thoughts, recording other observations.
The rest of the face was red like the body; the head was sharply
pointed, and crowned with a mass of thin, clinging locks of hair. The
mouth, a round, lipless orifice, contracted or dilated at will; from
it came whistling words.
Out of the darkness, giant things were leaping. They clutched at
Rawson, while the first captor released his hold and drew back.
Taller, these newcomers were, bigger, and different.
In the red light from the hot rocks Dean saw their faces, in which
were owl eyes like those of the first one, but yellow, expressionless
and stupid. Their great bodies were yellow: their outstretched hands
were webbed.
For one instant, as Rawson's hand touched his pistol in its holster,
a surge of fighting rage swept through him. His whole being was in a
spasm of revolt against all this series of happenings that had trapped
him; he wanted to lash out regardless of consequences. Then cooler
judgment came to his aid.
Other figures, with faces red and ugly, expressive of nameless evil,
were gathered beside the one who still played the jet of cold fire
upon the walls. Like him they were naked save for a cloth at the waist
and the metal straps encircling their bodies. They, too, had
flame-throwers--he saw the long metal jets and their lava tips. Yet
the temptation to fire into that group as fast as he could pull
trigger was strong upon him.
Instead he allowed these other giant things to grip him with their
webbed hands and lead him away.
* * * * *
The wavering light had shown many passages through the rock. Glazed,
all of them. Either they had been blown through molten rock which had
then solidified to give the glassy surfaces, or else--and this seemed
more likely--the flame-throwers had done it. Rawson, scanning the
labyrinth for some recognizable strata, had a quick vision of these
caverns being cut out and enlarged, and of their walls melted just as
they were being melted now--melted and hardened again innumerable
times by succeeding generations of red and yellow-skinned men.
Yes, they were men. He admitted this while he walked unresistingly
between two of the giants. Another went before them and lighted the
way with the green ray of a flame-thrower on the melting rock. These
were men--men of a different sort. Evolution, working strange changes
underground, had made them half beasts, diggers in the dark, mole-men!
They were passing through a long tunnel that went steadily down.
Cross passages loomed blackly; ahead of them the leader was throwing
his flame upon the walls of a great vault.
Rawson had ceased to take note of their movements. What use to
remember? He could never escape, never retrace his steps.
He tried to whip up a faint flicker of hope at thought of Smithy.
Smithy had seen him go, had seen the red mole-men, of course. And he
had got away--he must have got away! He would go for help....
But, at that, he groaned inwardly. Smithy would go for help, and then
what? He would be laughed out of any sheriff's office; he would be
locked up as insane if he persisted. Why should he persist--for that
matter, why should he go at all? Smithy would not believe for a single
minute that Rawson was still alive.
* * * * *
His thoughts ended. Webbed hands, wrapped tightly about his arms, were
thrusting him forward into a great room. The green flame had been
snapped off. One last hot circle on the high wall showed only a dull
red. But before it faded, Dean saw dimly the outlines of a tremendous
cavern. He saw also that these walls were unglazed, raw; they had
never been melted.
Below the rough and shattered sides heaps of fragments were piled
about the room.
Fleetingly he saw the shadowed details; then darkness swallowed even
that little he had seen. Clanging metal told of a closing door; a line
of red outlined it for an instant to show where it was welded fast. He
was a prisoner in a cell whose walls were the living rock.
For a long time he stood motionless, while the heavy darkness pressed
heavily in upon his swimming senses; he sank slowly to the floor at
last. He was numbed, and his mind was as blank as the black
nothingness that spread before his staring eyes. In a condition almost
of coma, he had no measure or count of the hours that passed.
Then a fever of impatience possessed him; his thoughts, springing
suddenly to life, were too wildly improbable for any sane mind, were
driving him mad. He forced himself to move cautiously.
* * * * *
On the floor he had seen burnished gold, shining dully as he entered.
There had been a thick vein of yellow in the rock. The floor, at that
place, was rough beneath his feet, as if the hot metal had been
spilled.
His hands groped before him as he remembered the heaps of rock
fragments. Then his feet found one of them stumblingly, and he turned
and moved to one side. He remembered having seen a dim shape off there
that had made a straight slanting line. His searching hands
encountered the object and kept him from walking into it.
The feeling of helplessness that drove him was only being increased by
his blind and blundering movements. He told himself that he must wait.
Silently he stood where he had come to a stop, hands resting on the
object that barred his way--until suddenly, stiflingly, his breath
caught in his throat. Some emotion, almost too great to be borne, was
suffocating him.
Slowly he moved his hands. Inch by inch he felt his way around the
smooth cylinder, so hard, so coldly metallic. Then, with a rush, he
let his hands follow up the slanting thing, up to a rounded top, to a
heavy ring and a shackle that was on the end of a cable, thin and
taut. And, while his hands explored it feverishly, the metal moved!
* * * * *
He clung to the smooth roundness as it slipped through his hands. It
was the bailer, part of his own equipment. That slender cable reached
up, straight up to the world he knew. And Smithy was there--Smithy was
hoisting it!
He clung to the cylinder desperately. The bore, at this depth, had
been reduced to eight inches; the bailer fitted it loosely. And Rawson
cursed frantically the narrow space that would let this inanimate
object return but would hold him back, while he wrapped his arms about
the cold surface of the metal messenger from another world.
It lifted clear, then settled back. This time it dropped noisily to
the floor. And suddenly Dean was tearing at the ring on one of the
swollen fingers of his left hand.
It came free at last; it was in his hand as the cable tightened again.
Swiftly, surely, he worked in the darkness to jam the ring through the
shackle at the bailer's top. Then the bailer lifted, clanged loudly as
it entered the shattered bore in the rocks above, and scraped noisily
at the sides. The sound rose to a rasping shriek that went fainter and
still fainter till it dwindled into silence.
But Dean Rawson, standing motionless in the darkness of that buried
vault, dared once more to let himself think and _feel_ as he stared
blindly upward.
Up there Smithy was waiting. Smithy would know. And with Smithy
fighting from the outside and he, Rawson, putting up a scrap below....
He smiled almost happily as his hand rested upon his gun.
Hopeless? Of course it was hopeless. No use of really kidding
himself--he didn't have the chance of a pink-eyed rabbit.
But he was still smiling toward that dark roof overhead as the
outlines of a metal door grew cherry red. They were coming for him!
He was ready to meet whatever lay ahead....