"The machines are operating," Shorty said. "Hear them? That means only
the Great Mind, or Ratan will be down there in the Cavern?"
"Yes," the young Lei agreed.
"It's most likely not Ratan," I said. "Blaine got him--struck him
insensible. Or would he be recovered by now?"
Taro had no way of guessing. With an ordinary Radak the shock
would have lasted longer than this. "But Ratan's mind is
trained--developed--more powerful as you would say. He could recover
more quickly."
"Are there other entrances?" Shorty asked. "They'd have guards at them.
If we make any commotion down there, and a bunch of Radaks come rushing
us--"
"This is the only entrance."
"Right," Shorty chuckled. "Come on then, let's finish off these
fellows." He fingered his knife. "You tackle 'em with that gun, Bob.
But if you miss, trust me--I'll slip this knife into them--"
With Taro and Shorty behind me I crept soundlessly forward. In my hand
the pot bellied little Radak gun, so unfamiliar, gave me an uneasy
feeling. Suppose I should miss. An uproar from these guards might bring
dozens of others.
"How close do I have to get?" I whispered to Taro.
"This now--close enough."
One of the Radaks was standing up, lounging with his back to the wall.
The other was lying down. To send my flash clinging to the heads of
both of them, I would have to shift my aim, and fire twice. My hand
trembled a little. Then I pressed the lever.
There was that vaguely visible flash. The gun-hilt in my grip vibrated,
and at the muzzle of it there was a faint little hiss. A hit! The Radak
on the ground seemed to stiffen. He raised his head, staring blankly.
The Radak who was standing noticed it. He started, whirled around
toward us. It took all my will power to withhold my second flash for
that instant. But I did; and then as the standing figure steadied, I
fired again.
"Got him!" Shorty murmured. "Good work, Bob! Come on!"
We ran forward. The standing Radak was motionless, gazing with vacant
stare. Shorty dashed up to him. "Lie down, you're asleep! If you're
not, you ought to be."
But the Radak did not move, just turned his empty gaze toward the sound
of Shorty's voice. I got it. "They don't speak English! Tell them,
Taro."
The Lei murmured commandingly in his own language, and in a moment the
two guards were lying inert with closed eyes.
"Mighty neat," Shorty whispered. "Come on--here we go."
Beyond the guards an earthen ramp led sleepily downward, winding to a
circular spiral. Then presently we emerged upon a little ledge with the
great Cavern of Machines spread out before us.
"Crouch down! We will see who is here," Taro whispered. There was awe
in his voice. "We must not be seen until we attack."
It was a huge, vault-like cavern, with glowing roof high over our
heads, and we were about twenty feet above its lower level, with a
narrow, steep ramp leading down from near us. I saw that it was a
weird, dim grotto, lurid with swaying, prismatic glows of colored
radiance, and throbbing, humming with a myriad mechanical voices.
Distant railed terraces held frameworks of metal, where opalescent
tubes were glowing. Beams of light-radiance seemed to carry the power
from one strange mechanism to the next, like wires connecting them
in series. No Lei, no ordinary Radak, and certainly least of all us
Earthmen, could by any chance have understood the scientific details of
what we were seeing.
I recall there was a convergence of beams, high up in mid-air at
the center of the cavern, where a shower of tiny electrolyte sparks
glittered like a fountain of pyrotechnics. And out of it a narrow
concentrated beam of violet-purple glow shot upward to a grid in the
ceiling--the gravitational force, doubtless, which from there was
conducted to some point above where it was hurled into Space.
How long I stared, awed, I have no idea. Then I was aware of Taro
beside me, whispering, "It is the Great Mind who is down there. He has
just come into sight--down by that yellow glow."
The floor of the cavern held a dozen or more of the huge mechanisms,
and in the center of them there was a throbbing space that seemed
to hold the controls of all these intricate machines. Down there in
the weird glow we could now see the lone figure of the ancient Radak
leader--shriveled and bent, he moved around, occasionally reaching to
shift some lever or make some adjustment.
"He must not see us coming!" Taro whispered. His voice was tense.
And on his face now as the multi-colored glow bathed it, there was
unmistakable terror. This young Lei, like all his people, born and bred
to fear the dominance of the Great Mind--to attack that little figure,
to Taro was almost unthinkable. Taro had planned this; dreamed of it.
But faced with it now, there was only terror sweeping him, so that had
he been here alone, easily he could have turned and fled.
Shorty and I had no such inhibitions.
"What in the devil," Shorty murmured. "He's got a Radak-gun--sure, I've
no doubt of it. We've got to duck that. But once I get close to him--"
Shorty's gesture with his knife was significant.
For minutes more we tensely waited. Then we got down the ramp without
being seen, and on the lower floor we crouched between two of the giant
whining machines.
"Easy now!" I whispered. "You two--keep behind me--"
I held the Radak-gun in my hand. We waited another moment; then ducked
forward and crouched again, behind a great glowing mechanism through
which two beams of colored light were passing. We were only some
twenty feet from the leader now. Close enough for my shot, or for us
to rush him. He was bending down over a glowing dial. Green light
from it streamed upward, bathed his weird mummy-like countenance so
that suddenly he seemed like some horrible ghoul intent upon a task
diabolic, gruesome.
"Let him have it!" Shorty whispered. "Now's your chance!"
I must confess my heart was racing, with a sudden nameless premonition
of terror. Thoughts are instant things. I tried to tell myself that
this was just a weazened old man. Helpless, with three of us about to
leap on him. Of course he was helpless! With sudden relief I saw that
he had discarded his belt. It hung on the peg of a rack, several feet
away from him--his belt, with his Radak-gun! Shorty saw it at the same
instant.
"There's his gun, Bob! He can't reach it! We've got him!"
Of course ... I leveled my weapon. I was sighting it ... I shall
always wonder if my racing thoughts were projected then to warn the
Radak leader. Or did he sense us in some other way? I was standing a
little out into an aisle between two big mechanisms when suddenly he
lifted his head, turned and saw me. The movement, and my own startled
reaction, spoiled my aim ... Mustn't fire until I was sure....
I recall that in that split-second I was aware that the old Radak had
not moved. He was just staring at me with glittering eyes and his
shrunken grey face horrible with the intensity of his menace. He knew
of course that he couldn't reach his weapon. He didn't try....
* * * * *
Just a helpless, weazened old man. But as I sighted my gun I was aware
of the power radiating from him. The power of his mind, pitted now
against mine; his will commanding me to drop my weapon and my own brain
demanding my muscles to sight it, to fire it. Conflict most horrible.
It was as though every fibre of me was being outraged, seared and torn.
My nerves screaming.... And my mind was screaming--kill him! Got to
kill him now!... Don't drop the gun! Hold your fingers tight!
But I could feel my fingers loosening their grip. The muzzle was
swaying. Everything seemed blurring before me, swimming into a
phantasmagoria of horror.... It was all in a second or two. I heard
Shorty mutter a startled oath beside me. But it was Taro, despite that
he must have been unutterably frightened, who kept his wits. He uttered
a grim shout, jumped to his feet, sidewise away from me.
It did what Taro had hoped. For just an instant that baleful gaze left
me, fastened on Taro. Then it swung back--but in that instant I had
recovered myself, leveled the gun and fired.
New horror! The Radak leader's gaze, again on me, seemed to meet the
flash of my gun in mid-air between us. I could imagine there must have
been a conflict there--a little almost soundless, almost invisible
puff of deranged vibrations. And the derangement must have been forced
backward to me. All in the flash of a thought. To my conscious mind
there was only my pressing the gun-lever, and then a bursting explosion
at my hand as the Radak-gun flew into fragments! One of them struck my
forehead; I staggered back, went down. But I was aware that Shorty,
with Taro close after him, had leaped--Shorty, with knife upraised, his
catapulting body hitting the crouching, ghoul-like figure.
Shorty thinks now his knife never reached its mark. There was just the
impact of his body, knocking the weazened figure backward. The Radak
screamed a shrill, weirdly horrible cry. But it ended in a gurgle--just
for an instant, a gruesome, liquid gurgle. Then there was only Shorty's
gasp of horror.
I was scrambling to my feet. I crouched, stricken, staring. Shorty had
drawn back, standing staring. And Taro too had checked his rush. All
three of us, frozen with revulsion. On the floor, weird in a green-red
glow from a nearby machine, the weazened, mummy body of the Radak lay
huddled. A thing which had been nearly all of mental quality. And now
it had encountered a physical blow, to which every atom of its weird
makeup was foreign.
And what a second before had been living, solid substance now was
dissolving! The clothes sagged, deflated. A bubbling ooze was where
the face had been. Just a brief moment, and then before us the
Radak's garments lay crumpled and flat in a little pool of stenching
putrescence!
I turned away, sickened. Then Shorty recovered himself. "It--that
damned thing screamed! Others will come--"
"Hurry now! Smash the machines! It is what we came for--" Taro gasped.
I made a leap for the control panels; then stopped, whirled around.
There was a cry from behind and above me. On a narrow, railed little
balcony which connected with the ramp down which we had come, the
figure of a Radak was standing! A tall grey shape! It was Ratan, though
I did not know who it was then. He had a knife in his hand, and he was
in the act of leaping over the rail to land upon me! I had no time to
avoid him. His body came sprawling, landed on my shoulders, bore me
down.
* * * * *
Simultaneously I was aware that Shorty and Taro were smashing at the
control apparatus. It crackled, tinkled like breaking glass, with
a huge flash of colored light and sparks that sent Shorty and Taro
reeling backward, dazed so that they did not see what was happening
to me. Then they were up, at it again, hurling broken fragments of
the controls at the nearby grids, tubes and prisms. And in that same
second, the multi-colored flash spread--deranged--weird current. Like
burning powder-trains it leaped everywhere around the grotto. Puffs,
sparks of fountain-glare, the hissing, whining, screeching of breaking
machines....
On the floor I struggled with Ratan on top of me. He had no gun--just
a long, thin knife with polished blade that glittered as he tried to
thrust it into my throat. My own knife was gone. I reached, clutched at
the grey wrist, turning the knife so that it went past my throat. Then
I heaved upward. In the struggle Ratan dropped his knife and neither of
us could reach it. Locked together we rolled, pummeling, scrambling.
Then I knew that I had him. My fist landed on his hawk-nosed grey
face--a solid blow that made him scream with revulsion and pain.
Then I had heaved him off, staggered to my feet. I seemed to be in a
cloud of yellow-green, choking, acrid vapour through which only dimly I
could see Ratan struggling erect. And there was Shorty's voice:
"Bob! Bob, where are you? Got to get out of here! Taro--Taro--"
It seemed that somewhere near me, Taro was coughing, choking. Then I
realized that the shape of Ratan was plunging at me through the heavy
chemical smoke. I was swaying, but I squared off, hit him solidly in
the face again. He went down, and I leaped on him, lifting his head
and shoulders, then banging his head back against the corner of a
mechanism-frame--pounding it again and again until suddenly I was aware
that it had smashed and was dripping upon me.
With a shudder I cast the inert body away and leaped to my feet.
"Bob! Got to get out of here! Taro--" Shorty was still shouting.
Green-yellow vapour was swirling around me. Electrolyte flashes seemed
everywhere--the whole grotto, an inferno of pyrotechnics. Then I saw
the figure of Shorty staggering to help Taro from where he had fallen.
I swayed and joined them.
"That ramp," I gasped. "Behind us! Come on--"
We tried to hold our breath as we staggered up the ramp. Then there
seemed a little puff of breathable air. As we plunged into the exit
tunnel, for an instant I turned. The big grotto was alive with swirling
turgid smoke and flames and leaping, bursting light-fire. And a bedlam
of weird bursting sounds. The death of the monstrous Radak science,
screaming with its agony of dissolution.
Coughing and choking, we ran up the tunnel, with the sounds and the
glare fading behind us; and the pure air reviving us.
"All the Radaks will be after us," Shorty panted. "Faster, Taro!"
Distant cries were all around us in the maze of tunnels. The alarm was
spreading everywhere. We saw a few plunging Radak shapes, but were able
to avoid them.
Taro was leading us; I gripped him as we ran. "You say you know where
they keep their space-flyer?"
"Yes. Not far from Blaine and the others."
Then we reached the girls and Blaine, who were crouching in that tunnel
recess with the still unconscious Mack. Vivian and Tahn just stared at
us white-faced, with little cries of relief.