ASTOUNDING STORIES OF SUPER-SCIENCE
VOL. I No. 1 JANUARY, 1930
W. M. CLAYTON, Publisher
HARRY BATES, Editor
DOUGLAS M. DOLD, Consulting Editor
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_Painted in Water-colors from a Scene in "The Beetle Horde."_
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CONTENTS
EDITORIAL THE EDITOR 7
_An Introduction to a New and Unique Magazine._
THE BEETLE HORDE VICTOR ROUSSEAU 8
_Only Two Young Explorers Stand in the Way of the Mad Bram's
Horrible Revenge--the Releasing of His Trillions of Man-sized
Beetles upon an Utterly Defenseless World._ (Part One of a Two-part
Novel.)
THE CAVE OF HORROR CAPTAIN S. P. MEEK 32
_Screaming, the Guardsman Was Jerked Through the Air. An Unearthly
Screech Rang Through the Cavern. The Unseen Horror of Mammoth Cave
Had Struck Again!_
PHANTOMS OF REALITY RAY CUMMINGS 46
_Red Sensua's Knife Came up Dripping--and the Two Adventurers Knew
that Chaos and Bloody Revolution Had Been Unleashed in that Shadowy
Kingdom of the Fourth Dimension._ (A Complete Novel.)
THE STOLEN MIND M. L. STALEY 75
_What Would You Do, If, Like Quest, You Were Tricked, and Your Very
Mind and Will Stolen from Your Body?_
COMPENSATION C. V. TENCH 92
_Professor Wroxton Had Disappeared--But in the Bottom of the
Mysterious Crystal Cage Lay the Diamond from His Ring!_
TANKS MURRAY LEINSTER 100
_Two Miles of American Front Had Gone Dead. And on Two Lone
Infantrymen, Lost in the Menace of the Fog-gas and the Tanks,
Depended the Outcome of the War of 1932._
INVISIBLE DEATH ANTHONY PELCHER 118
_On Lees' Quick and Clever Action Depended the Life of "Old Perk"
Ferguson, the Millionaire Manufacturer Threatened by the Uncanny,
Invisible Killer._
_Introducing_--
ASTOUNDING STORIES
What _are_ "astounding" stories?
Well, if you lived in Europe in 1490, and someone told you the earth was
round and moved around the sun--that would have been an "astounding"
story.
Or if you lived in 1840, and were told that some day men a thousand
miles apart would be able to talk to each other through a little
wire--or without any wire at all--that would have been another.
Or if, in 1900, they predicted ocean-crossing airplanes and submarines,
world-girdling Zeppelins, sixty-story buildings, radio, metal that can
be made to resist gravity and float in the air--these would have been
other "astounding" stories.
To-day, time has gone by, and all these things are commonplace. That is
the only real difference between the astounding and the
commonplace--Time.
To-morrow, more astounding things are going to happen. Your children--or
their children--are going to take a trip to the moon. They will be able
to render themselves invisible--a problem that has already been partly
solved. They will be able to disintegrate their bodies in New York and
reintegrate them in China--and in a matter of seconds.
Astounding? Indeed, yes.
Impossible? Well--television would have been impossible, almost
unthinkable, ten years ago.
Now you will see the kind of magazine that it is our pleasure to offer
you beginning with this, the first number of ASTOUNDING STORIES.
It is a magazine whose stories will anticipate the super-scientific
achievements of To-morrow--whose stories will not only be strictly
accurate in their science but will be vividly, dramatically and
thrillingly told.
Already we have secured stories by some of the finest writers of fantasy
in the world--men such as Ray Cummings, Murray Leinster, Captain S. P.
Meek, Harl Vincent, R. F. Starzl and Victor Rousseau.
So--order your next month's copy of ASTOUNDING STORIES in advance!
--_The Editor._
The Beetle Horde
A TWO-PART NOVEL
_By Victor Rousseau_
[Illustration: _Dodd and Tommy realised that they were powerless against
the monstrous beetles._]
[Sidenote: Only two young explorers stand in the way of the mad Bram's
horrible revenge--the releasing of his trillions of man-sized beetles
upon an utterly defenseless world.]
CHAPTER I
_Dodd's Discovery_
Out of the south the biplane came winging back toward the camp, a black
speck against the dazzling white of the vast ice-fields that extended
unbroken to the horizon on every side.
It came out of the south, and yet, a hundred miles further back along
the course on which it flew, it could not have proceeded in any
direction except northward. For a hundred miles south lay the south
pole, the goal toward which the Travers Expeditions had been pressing
for the better part of that year.
Not that they could not have reached it sooner. As a matter of fact,
the pole had been crossed and re-crossed, according to the estimate of
Tommy Travers, aviator, and nephew of the old millionaire who stood
fairy uncle to the expedition. But one of the things that was being
sought was the exact site of the pole. Not within a couple of miles or
so, but within the fraction of an inch.
It had something to do with Einstein, and something to do with
terrestrial magnetism, and the variations of the south magnetic pole,
and the reason therefore, and something to do with parallaxes and the
precession of the equinoxes and other things, this search for the pole's
exact location. But all that was principally the affair of the
astronomer of the party. Tommy Travers, who was now evidently on his way
back, didn't give a whoop for Einstein, or any of the rest of the stuff.
He had been enjoying himself after his fashion during a year of
frostbites and hard rations, and he was beginning to anticipate the
delights of the return to Broadway.
Captain Storm, in charge of the expedition, together with the five
others of the advance camp, watched the plane maneuver up to the tents.
She came down neatly on the smooth snow, skidded on her runners like an
expert skater, and came to a stop almost immediately in front of the
marquee.
Tommy Travers leaped out of the enclosed cockpit, which, shut off by
glass from the cabin, was something like the front seat of a limousine.
"Well, Captain, we followed that break for a hundred miles, and there's
no ground cleft, as you expected," he said. "But Jim Dodd and I picked
up something, and Jim seems to have gone crazy."
* * * * *
Through the windows of the cabin, Jim Dodd, the young archaeologist of
the party, could be seen apparently wrestling with something that looked
like a suit of armor. By the time Captain Storm, Jimmy, and the other
members of the party had reached the cabin door, Dodd had got it open
and flung himself out backward, still hugging what he had found, and
maneuvering so that he managed to fall on his back and sustain its
weight.
"Say, what the--what--what's that?" gasped Storm.
Even the least scientific minded of the party gasped in amazement at
what Dodd had. It resembled nothing so much as an enormous beetle. As a
matter of fact, it was an insect, for it had the three sections that
characterize this class, but it was merely the shell of one. Between
four and five feet in height, when Dodd stood it on end, it could now be
seen to consist of the hard exterior substance of some huge, unknown
coleopter.
This substance, which was fully three inches thick over the thorax,
looked as hard as plate armor.
"What is it?" gasped Storm again.
* * * * *
Tommy Travers made answer, for James Dodd was evidently incapable of
speech, more from emotion than from the force with which he had landed
backward in the snow.
"We found it at the pole, Captain," he said. "At least, pretty near
where the pole ought to be. We ran into a current of warm air or
something. The snow had melted in places, and there were patches of bare
rock. This thing was lying in a hollow among them."
"If I didn't see it before my eyes, I'd think you crazy, Tommy," said
Storm with some asperity. "What is it, a crab?"
"Crab be damned!" shouted Jim Dodd, suddenly recovering his faculties.
"My God, Captain Storm, don't you know the difference between an insect
and a crustacean? This is a fossil beetle. Don't you see the
distinguishing mark of the coleoptera, those two elytra, or wing-covers,
which meet in the median dorsal line? A beetle, but with the shell of a
crustacean instead of mere chitin. That's what led you astray, I expect.
God, what a tale we'll have to tell when we get back to New York! We'll
drop everything else, and spend years, if need be, looking for other
specimens."
"Like fun you will!" shouted Higby, the astronomer of the party. "Lemme
tell you right here, Dodd, nobody outside the Museum of Natural History
is going to care a damn about your old fossils. What we're going to do
is to march straight to the true pole, and spend a year taking
observations and parallaxes. If Einstein's brochure, in which he links
up gravitation with magnetism, is correct--"
"Fossil beetles!" Jim Dodd burst out, ignoring the astronomer. "That
means that in the Tertiary Era, probably, there existed forms of life in
the antarctic continent that have never been found elsewhere. Imagine a
world in which the insect reached a size proportionate to the great
saurians, Captain Storm! I'll wager poor Bram discovered this. That's
why he stayed behind when the Greystoke Expedition came within a hundred
miles of the pole. I'll wager he's left a cairn somewhere with full
details inside it. We've got to find it. We--"
* * * * *
But Jim Dodd, suddenly realizing that the rest of the party could hardly
be said to share his enthusiasm in any marked degree, broke off and
looked sulky.
"You say you found this thing pretty nearly upon the site of the true
pole?" Captain Storm asked Tommy.
"Within five miles, I'd say, Captain. The fog was so bad that we
couldn't get our directions very well."
"Well, then, there's going to be no difficulty," answered Storm. "If
this fair weather lasts, we'll be at the pole in another week, and we'll
start making our permanent camp. Plenty of opportunity for all you
gentlemen. As for me, I'm merely a sailor, and I'm trying to be
impartial.
"And please remember, gentlemen, that we're well into March now, and
likely to have the first storms of autumn on us any day. So let's drop
the argument and remember that we've got to pull together!"
* * * * *
Tommy Travers was the only skilled aviator of the expedition, which had
brought two planes with it. It was a queer friendship that had sprung up
between him and Jim Dodd. Tommy, the blasé ex-Harvard man, who was known
along Broadway, and had never been able to settle down, seemed as
different as possible from the spectacled, scholarly Dodd, ten years his
senior, red-haired, irascible, and living, as Tommy put it, in the Age
of Old Red Sandstone, instead of in the year 1930 A. D.
It was generally known--though the story had been officially
denied--that there had been trouble in the Greystoke Expedition of three
years before. Captain Greystoke had taken the brilliant, erratic Bram,
of the Carnegie Archaeological Institute, with him, and Bram's history
was a long record of trouble.
It was Bram who had exploded the faked neolithic finds at Mannheim,
thereby earning the undying enmity of certain European savants, but
brilliantly demolishing them when he smashed the so-called Mannheim
stone pitcher (valued at a hundred thousand dollars) with a pocket-axe,
and caustically inquired whether neolithic man used babbit metal rivets
to fasten on his jug handles.
* * * * *
Bram's brilliant work in the investigation of the origin of the negrito
Asiatic races had been awarded one of the Nobel prizes, and Bram had
declined it in an insulting letter because he disapproved of the year's
prize award for literature.
He had been a storm center for years, embittered by long opposition,
when he joined the Greystoke Expedition for the purpose of investigating
the marine fauna of the antarctic continent.
And it was known that his presence had nearly brought the Greystoke
Expedition to the point of civil war. Rumor said he had been
deliberately abandoned. His enemies hoped he had. The facts seemed to
be, however, that in an outburst of temper he had walked out of camp in
a furious snowstorm and perished. For days his body had been sought in
vain.
Jimmy Dodd had run foul of Bram some years before, when Bram had
published a criticism of one of Dodd's addresses dealing with fossil
monotremes, or egg-laying mammals. In his inimitable way, Bram had
suggested that the problem which came first, the egg or the chicken, was
now seen to be linked up with the Darwinian theory, and solved in the
person of Dodd.
Nevertheless, Jimmy Dodd entertained a devoted admiration for the memory
of the dead scientist. He believed that Bram must have left records of
inestimable importance in a cairn before he died. He wanted to find that
cairn.
And he knew, what a number of Bram's enemies knew, that the dead
scientist had been a morphine addict. He believed that he had wandered
out into the snow under the influence of the drug.
* * * * *
Dodd, who shared a tent with Tommy, had raved the greater part of the
night about the find.
"Well, but see here, Jimmy, suppose these beetles did inhabit the
antarctic continent a few million years ago, why get excited?" Tommy had
asked.
"Excited?" bellowed Dodd. "It opens one of the biggest problems that
science has to face. Why haven't they survived into historic times? Why
didn't they cross into Australia, like the opossum, by the land bridge
then existent between that continent and South America? Beetles five
feet in length, and practically invulnerable! What killed them off? Why
didn't they win the supremacy over man?"
Jimmy Dodd had muttered till he went to sleep, and he had muttered
worse in his dreams. Tommy was glad that Captain Storm had given them
permission to return to the same spot next morning and look for further
fossils, though his own interest in them was of the slightest.
The dogs were being harnessed next morning when the two men hopped into
the plane. The thermometer was unusually high for the season, for in the
south polar regions the short summer is usually at an end by March.
Tommy was sweating in his furs in a temperature well above the freezing
point. The snow was crusted hard, the sky overcast with clouds, and a
wind was blowing hard out of the south, and increasing in velocity
hourly.
"A bad day for starting," said Captain Storm. "Looks like one of the
autumn storms was blowing up. If I were you, I'd watch the weather,
Tommy."
* * * * *
Tommy glanced at Dodd, who was huddled in the rear cockpit, fuming at
the delay, and grinned whimsically. "I guess I can handle her, Captain,"
he answered. "It's only an hour's flight to where he found that fossil."
"Just as you please," said Storm curtly. He knew that Tommy's judgment
as a pilot could always be relied upon. "You'll find us here when you
return," he added. "I've counter-manded the order to march. I don't like
the look of the weather at all."
Tommy grinned again and pressed the starter. The engine caught and
warmed up. One of the men kicked away the blocks of ice that had been
placed under the skids to serve as chocks. The plane taxied over the
crusted snow, and took off into the south.
* * * * *
The camp was situated in a hollow among the ice-mountains that rose to a
height of two or three thousand feet all around. Tommy had not dreamed
how strongly the gale was blowing until he was over the top of them.
Then he realized that he was facing a tougher proposition than he had
calculated on. The storm struck the biplane with full force.
A snowstorm was driving up rapidly, blackening the sky. The sun, which
only appeared for a brief interval every day, was practically touching
the horizon as it rose to make its minute arc in the sky. A star was
visible through a rift in the clouds overhead, and the pale daylight in
which they had started had already become twilight.
Tommy was tempted to turn back, but it was only a hundred miles, and
Jimmy Dodd would give him no peace if he did so. So he put the plane's
nose resolutely into the wind, watching his speed indicator drop from a
hundred miles per hour to eighty, sixty, forty--less.
The storm was beating up furiously. Of a sudden the clouds broke into a
deluge of whirling snow.
In a moment the windshield was a frozen, opaque mass. Tommy opened it,
and peered out into the biting air. He could see nothing.... The plane,
caught in the fearful cross-currents that swirl about the southern roof
of the world, was fluttering like a leaf in the wind. The altimeter was
dropping dangerously.
Tommy opened the throttle to the limit, zooming, and, like a spurred
horse, the biplane shot forward and upward. She touched five thousand,
six, seven--and that, for her, was ceiling under those conditions, for a
sudden tremendous shock of wind, coming in a fierce cross-current, swung
her round, tossed her to and fro in the enveloping white cloud. And
Tommy knew that he had the fight of his life upon his hands.
* * * * *
The compasses, which required considerable daily adjusting to be of use
so near to the pole, had now gone out of use altogether. The air speed
indicator had apparently gone west, for it was oscillating between zero
and twenty. The turn and bank indicator was performing a kind of tango
round the dial. Even the eight-day clock had ceased to function, but
that might have been due to the fact that Tommy had neglected to wind
it. And the oil pressure gauge presented a still more startling sight,
for a glance showed that either there was a leak or else the oil had
frozen.
Tommy looked around at Dodd and pointed downward. Dodd responded with a
vicious forward wave of his hand.
Tommy shook his head, and Dodd started forward along the cabin,
apparently with the intention of committing assault and battery upon
him. Instead, the archaeologist collapsed upon the floor as the plane
spun completely around under the impact of a blast that was like a
giant's slap.
The plane was no longer controllable. True, she responded in some sort
to the controls, but all Tommy was able to do was to keep her from going
into a crazy sideslip or nose dive as he fought with the elements. And
those elements were like a devil unchained. One moment he was dropping
like a plummet, the next he was shooting up like a rocket as a vertical
blast of air caught the plane and tossed her like a cork into the
invisible heavens. Then she was revolving, as if in a maelstrom, and by
degrees this rotary movement began to predominate.
Round and round went the plane, in circles that gradually narrowed, and
it was all Tommy could do to swing the stick so as to keep her from
skidding or sideslipping. And as he worked desperately at his task Tommy
began to realize something that made him wonder if he was not dreaming.
* * * * *
The snow was no longer snow, but rain--mist, rather, warm mist that had
already cleared the windshield and covered it with tiny drops.
And that white, opaque world into which he was looking was no longer
snow but fog--the densest fog that Tommy had ever encountered.
Fog like white wool, drifting past him in fleecy flakes that looked as
if they had solid substance. Warm fog that was like balm upon his frozen
skin, but of a warmth that was impossible within a few miles of the
frozen pole.
Then there came a momentary break in it, and Tommy looked down and
uttered a cry of fear. Fear, because he knew that he must be dreaming.
Not more than a thousand feet beneath him he saw patches of snow, and
patches of--green grass, the brightest and most verdant green that he
had ever seen in his life.
He turned round at a touch on his shoulder. Dodd was leaning over him,
one hand pointing menacingly upward and onward.
"You fool," Tommy bellowed in his ear, "d'you think the south pole lies
over there? It's here! Yeah, don't you get it, Jimmy? Look down! This
valley--God, Jimmy, the south pole's a hole in the ground!"
And as he spoke he remembered vaguely some crank who had once insisted
that the two poles were hollow because--what was the fellow's reasoning?
Tommy could not remember it.
But there was no longer any doubt but that they were dropping into a
hole. Not more than a mile around, which explained why neither Scott nor
Amundsen had found it when they approximated to the site of the pole. A
hole--a warm hole, up which a current of warm air was rushing, forming
the white mist that now gradually thinned as the plane descended. The
plateau with its covering of eternal snows loomed in a white circle high
overhead. Underneath was green grass now--grass and trees!
* * * * *
The fog was nearly gone. The plane responded to the controls again.
Tommy pushed the stick forward and came round in a tighter circle.
And then something happened that he had not in the least expected. One
moment he seemed to be traveling in a complete calm, a sort of clear
funnel with a ring of swirling fog outside it--the next he was dropping
into a void!
There was no air resistance--there seemed hardly any air, for he felt a
choking in his throat, and a tearing at his lungs as he strove to
breathe. He heard a strangled cry from Dodd, and saw that he was
clutching with both hands at his throat, and his face was turning
purple.
The controls went limp in Tommy's hands. The plane, gyrating more
slowly, suddenly nosed down, hung for a moment in that void, and then
plunged toward the green earth, two hundred feet below, with appalling
swiftness.
Tommy realized that a crash was inevitable. He threw his goggles up over
his forehead, turned and waved to Dodd in ironic farewell. He saw the
earth rush up at him--then came the shattering crash, and then oblivion!
CHAPTER II
_Beetles and Humans_
How long he had remained unconscious, Tommy had no means of determining.
Of a sudden he found himself lying on the ground beside the shattered
plane, with his eyes wide open.
He stared at it, and stared about him, without understanding where he
was, or what had happened to him. His first idea was that he had crashed
on the golf links near Mitchell Field, Long Island, for all about him
were stretches of verdant grass and small shrubby plants. Then, when he
remembered the expedition, he was convinced that he had been dreaming.
What brought him to a saner view was the discovery that he was enveloped
in furs which were insufferably hot. He half raised himself and
succeeded in unfastening his fur coat, and thus discovered that
apparently none of his bones was broken.
But the plane must have fallen from a considerable height to have been
smashed so badly. Then Tommy discovered that he was lying upon an
extensive mound of sand, thrown up as by some gigantic mole, for burrow
tracks ran through it in every direction. It was this that had saved his
life.
Something was moving at his side. It was half-submerged in the
sand-pile, and it was moving parallel to him with great rapidity.
A grayish body, half-covered with grains of sand emerged, waving two
enormously long tentacles. It was a shrimp, but fully three feet in
length, and Tommy had never before had any idea what an unpleasant
object a shrimp is.
Tommy staggered to his feet and dropped nearer the plane, eyeing the
shrimp with horror. But he was soon relieved as he discovered that it
was apparently harmless. It slithered away and once more buried itself
in the pile of sand.
Now Tommy was beginning to remember. He looked into the wreckage of the
plane. Jim Dodd was not there. He called his name repeatedly, and there
was no response, except a dull echo from the ice-mountains behind the
veil of fog.
* * * * *
He went to the other side of the plane, he scanned the ground all about
him. Jimmy had disappeared. It was evident that he was nowhere near, for
Tommy could see the whole of the lower scope of the bowl on every side
of him. He had walked away--or he had been carried away! Tommy thought
of the shrimp, and shuddered. What other fearsome monsters might inhabit
that extraordinary valley?
He sat down, leaning against the wreck of the fuselage, and tried to
adjust his mind, tried to keep himself from going mad. He knew now that
the flight had been no dream, that he was a member of his uncle's
expedition, that he had flown with Jim toward the pole, had crashed in a
vacuum. But where was Jim? And how were they going to get out of the
damn place?
Something like a heap of stones not far away attracted Tommy's
attention. Perhaps Jim Dodd was lying behind that. Once more Tommy got
upon his feet and began walking toward it. On the way, he stumbled
against the sharp edge of something that protruded from the ground.
It cut his leg sharply, and, with a curse, he began rubbing his shin and
looking at the thing. Then he saw that it was another of the fossil
shells, half-buried in the marshy ooze on which he was treading. The
ground in this lower part of the valley was a swamp, on account of the
very fine mist falling from the fog clouds that surrounded it
impenetrably on every side.
Then Tommy came upon another shell, and then another. And now he saw
that there were piles of what he had taken to be rock everywhere, and
that this was not rock but great heaps of the shells, all equally
intact.
Hundreds of thousands of the prehistoric beetles must have died in that
valley, perhaps overcome by some cataclysm.
* * * * *
Tommy examined the heap near which he stood; he yelled Dodd's name, but
again no answer came.
Instead, something began to stir among the heaps of shells. For a moment
Tommy hoped against hope that it was Dodd, but it wasn't Dodd.
_It was a living beetle!_
A beetle fully five feet high as it stood erect, a pair of enormous
wings outspread. And the head, which was larger than a man's, was the
most frightful object Tommy had ever seen.
Jim Dodd would have said at once that this was one of the Curculionidae,
or snout beetles, for a prolongation of the head between the eyes formed
a sort of beak a foot in length. The mouth, which opened downward, was
armed with terrific mandibles, while the huge, compound eyes looked like
enormous crystals of cut glass. Immediately in front of the eyes were
two mandibles as long as a man's arms, with feathery processes at the
ends. In addition to these there were three pairs of legs, the front
pair as long as a man's, the hind pair almost as long as a horse's.
* * * * *
Paralyzed with horror, Tommy watched the monster, which had apparently
been disturbed by the vibrations of his voice, extract itself from among
the shells. Then, with a bound that covered fifteen feet, it had
lessened the distance between them by half.
And then a still more amazing thing happened. For of a sudden the hard
shell slipped from the thorax, the wing-cases dropped off, the whole of
the bony parts slipped to the ground with a clang, and a soft,
defenseless thing went slithering away among the rocks.
The beetle had moulted!
Tommy dropped to the ground in the throes of violent nausea.
Then, looking up again, he saw the girl!
* * * * *
She was about a hundred yards away from him, very close to the fallen
plane, and she must have emerged from a large hole in the ground which
Tommy could now see under a ledge of overhanging rock.
She seemed to be dressed in a single garment which fell to her knees,
and appeared to fit tightly about her body, but as she came nearer,
Tommy, watching her, petrified by this latest apparition, discovered
that it was woven of her own hair, which must have been of immense
length, for it fell naturally to her shoulders, and thence was woven
into this close-fitting material, a fringe an inch or two in length
extending beneath the selvage.
She was about six feet tall, and apparently made after the normal human
pattern. She moved with a slow, majestic swing, and if ever any female
had seemed to Tommy to have the appearance of an angel, this unknown
woman did.
She was so fair, in that flossy, flaxen covering, she moved with such
easy grace, that Tommy, gaping, gradually crept nearer to her. She did
not seem to see him. She was stooping over the very sand heap into which
he had fallen. Suddenly, with lightning-like rapidity, her arms shot
out, her hands began tunneling in the sand. With a cry of triumph she
pulled out the shrimp Tommy had seen, or another like it, and, stripping
it off the shell, began devouring it with evident relish.
In the midst of her meal the girl raised her head and looked at Tommy.
He saw that her eyes were filmed, vacant, dead. Then of a sudden a third
membrane was drawn back across the pupils, and she saw him.
She let the shrimp drop to the ground, uttered a cry, and moved toward
him with a tottering gait. She groped toward him with outstretched arms.
And then she was blind again, for the membrane once more covered her
pupils. It was as if her eyes were unable to endure even the dim light
of the valley, through whose surrounding mists the low sun, setting just
above the horizon, was unable to diffuse itself save as a brightening of
the fog curtain.
* * * * *
Tommy stepped toward the girl. His outstretched hand touched hers. It
was unquestionably a woman's hand he held, delicately warm, with
exquisitely moulded fingers, in whose touch there seemed to be, for the
girl, some tactile impression of him.
Again that membrane was drawn back from the girl's pupils for a fleeting
flash. Tommy saw two eyes of intense black, their color contrasting
curiously with the flaxen color of her hair and her white skin, almost
the tint of an albino's. Those eyes had surveyed him, and appeared
satisfied that he was one of her kind. She could not have seen very much
in that almost instantaneous flash of vision. Queer, that membrane--as
if she had been used to living in the dark, as if the full light of the
day was unbearable!
She drew her hand away. Soft vocals came from her lips. Suddenly she
turned swiftly. She could not have seen, but before Tommy had seen, she
had sensed the presence of the old man who was creeping out of the hole
in the mountainside.
He moved forward craftily, and then pounced upon the sand pile, and in a
moment had pulled out another of the big shrimps, which he proceeded to
devour with greedy relish. The girl, leaving Tommy's side, joined him in
that unpleasant feast.
And in the midst of it a flood came pouring from the hole--a flood of
living beetles, covering the ground in fifteen-foot leaps as they dashed
at the two.
To his horror, Tommy saw Jimmy Dodd among them, wrapped in his fur coat
like a mummy, and being pushed and rolled forward like a football.
For a moment Tommy hesitated, torn between his solicitude for Jim Dodd
and that for the girl. Then, as the foremost of the monsters bounded to
her side, he ran between them. The vicious jaws snapped within six
inches of Tommy's face, with a force that would have carried away an
ear, or shredded the cheek, if they had met.
* * * * *
Tommy struck out with all his might, and his fist clanged on the
resounding shell so that the blood spurted from his bruised knuckles. He
had struck the monster squarely upon the thorax, and he had not
discommoded it in the least. It turned on him, its glassy, many-faceted
eyes glaring with a cold, infernal light. Tommy struck out again with
his left hand, this time upon the pulpy flesh of the downward-opening
mouth.
An inch higher, and he would have impaled his hand upon the beak, with a
point like a needle, and evidently used for purposes of attack, since it
was not connected with the mandibles. The blow appeared to fall in the
only vulnerable place. The monster dropped upon its back and lay there,
unable to reverse itself, its antenna and forelegs waving in the air,
and the rear legs rasping together in a shrill, strident shriek.
Instantly, as Tommy darted out of the way, the swarm fell upon the
helpless monster and began devouring it, tearing strips of flesh from
the lower shell, which in the space of a half-minute was reduced simply
to bone. The most horrible feature of this act of cannibalism was the
complete silence with which it was performed, except for the rasping of
the dying monster's legs. It was evident that the huge beetles had no
vocal apparatus.
For the moment left unguarded, Jim Dodd flung down the collar of his fur
coat, stared about him, and recognized Tommy.
"My God, it's you!" he yelled. "Well, can you--?"
He had no time to finish his sentence. A pair of antenna went round his
neck from behind. At the same instant Tommy, the old man, and the girl
were gripped by the monsters, which, forming a solid phalanx about them,
began hustling them in the direction of the hole. Resistance was utterly
impossible. Tommy felt as if he was being pushed along by a moving wall
of stone.
Inside the opening it was completely dark. Tommy shouted to Dodd, but
the strident sounds of the moving legs drowned his cries. He was being
pushed forward into the unknown.
* * * * *
Suddenly the ground seemed to fall away beneath his feet. He struggled,
cried out, and felt himself descending through the air.
For a full half-minute he went downward at a speed that constricted his
throat so that he could hardly draw breath. Then, just as he had nerved
himself for the imminent crash, the speed of his descent was checked. In
another moment he found that he was slowing to a standstill in mid-air.
He was beginning to float backward--upward. But the wall of moving
shells, pushing against him, forced him on, downward, and yet apparently
against the force of gravitation.
Then of a sudden Tommy was aware of a dim light all about him. His feet
touched earth and grass as softly as a thistledown alighting.
He found himself seated in the same dim light upon red grass, and
staring into Jimmy's face.
CHAPTER III
_Ten Miles Underground_
"What I was going to say when we were interrupted, was, 'Can you beat
it?'" Jimmy Dodd observed, with admirable sang-froid.
They were still seated on the red grass, gazing about them at what
looked like an illimitable plain, and upward into depths of darkness. It
was warm, and the light, furnished by what appeared to be luminous
vegetation, was about that of twilight.
On every side were clumps of trees and shrubs, which formed centers of
phosphorescent illumination, but for the most part the land was open,
and here and there human figures appeared, moving with head down and
arms hanging earthward.
"No, I'm damned if I can," said Tommy. "What happened to you after we
crashed?"
"Why, first thing I knew, I found myself riding on the back of a fossil
beetle, apparently one of the _curculionidae_," said Dodd.
"Never, mind being so precise, Jimmy. Let's call it a beetle. Go on."
"They set me down inside the hole and seemed to be investigating me,
the whole swarm of them. Of course, I thought I was dead, and come to
my just reward, especially when I saw those beaks. Then one of them
began tickling my face with its antenna, and I drew up my fur collar.
They didn't seem to like the feel of the fur, and after a while the
whole gang started hustling me back again, like a nest of ants carrying
something they don't want outside their hill. And then you bobbed up."
"Well, my opinion is you saved your life by pulling up your collar,"
said Tommy. "Looks to me as if it's a case of the survival of the
fittest, said fittest being the insect, and the human race taking second
place. You know what the humans here live on, don't you?"
"No, what?"
"Shrimps as big as poodles. If you'd seen that girl and the old man
getting outside them, you'd realize that there seems to be a food
shortage in this part of the world. Say, where in thunder are we,
Jimmy?"
"Haven't you guessed yet, Travers?" asked Dodd, a spice of malice in his
voice.
"I suppose this is some sort of big hole on the site of the south pole,
with warm vapors coming up. Maybe a great fissure in the earth, or
something."
* * * * *
Jimmy Dodd's grin, seen in the half-light, was rather disconcerting.
"How far do you think we dropped just now?" Dodd asked.
"Why, I'd say several hundred yards," replied Tommy. "What's your
estimate?"
"Just about ten miles," answered Dodd.
"What? You're still crazy! Why, we slowed up!"
"Yeah," grinned Dodd, "we slowed up. We're inside the crust of the
world. That's the long and short of it. The earth we've known is just a
shell over our heads."
"Yeah? Walking head downward, are we? Then why don't we drop to the
center of the earth, you damn fool?"
"Because, my dear fellow, you can swing a pailful of water round your
head without spilling any of it. In other words, our old friend,
centrifugal force. The speed with which the earth is rotating, keeps us
on our feet, head downward. To be precise, the center of the earth's
gravity lies in the middle of the hollow sphere, of course, but the
counteraction of centrifugal force throws it outward to the middle of
the ten-mile crust. That's why we slowed down after we were half-way
through. We were moving against gravity."
"And what's up there, or down there, or whatever you call it?" asked
Tommy, pointing to what ought to have been the sky.
"Nothing. It's the center of the tennis ball, though I imagine it's
pretty near a vacuum when you get up a mile or so, owing to the speed of
the earth's rotation, which forces the heat into the shell."
"You mean to say you actually believe that stuff you've been handing
me?" asked Tommy, after a pause. "Then how did human beings get here,
and those damn beetles? And why's the grass red?"
* * * * *
"The grass is red because there's no sunlight to produce chlorophyll.
The inhabitants of the deep sea are red or black, almost invariably. In
the case of the humans, they've become bleached. My belief is that that
man and woman we saw, and those"--he pointed to the vague forms of human
beings, who moved across the grass, gathering something--"are survivors
of the primitive race that still exists as the Australians. Undoubtedly
one of the branches of the human stock originated in antarctica at a
time when it enjoyed a tropical temperature, and was the land bridge
between Australia and South America."
"And the--beetles?" asked Tommy.
"Ah, they go back to the days when nature was in a more grandiose
mood!" replied the archaeologist enthusiastically. "That's the most
wonderful discovery of the ages. The world will go crazy over them when
we bring back the first living specimens to the zoological parks of the
great cities.
"But," Dodd went on, speaking with still more enthusiasm, "of course,
this is only the beginning, Tommy. There are ten million species of
insects, according to Riley, and it is inevitable that there must be
hundreds of thousands of other survivals from the age of the great
saurians, perhaps even some of the saurians themselves. Who knows but
that we may discover the ancestor of the extinct monotremes, the
rhynchocephalia, the pterodactyls, hatch a brood of aepyornis eggs--"
"And," said Tommy tartly, "how are we going to get them back, apart from
the little problem of getting out of here ourselves?"
"Don't let's worry about that now," answered Dodd. "It will take ten
years of the hardest kind of labor even to begin a classification of the
inhabitants of this inner world. I could sit down for ever, and--"
But Jimmy Dodd rose to his feet as a pair of antenna whipped round his
neck and jerked him bodily upward.
* * * * *
One of the monster beetles was standing upright behind them, and by its
gestures it evidently meant that Dodd and Tommy were to join the crowd
of humans in the offing. As Dodd turned upon it with an indignant show
of fists, one of the antennae whipped off his fur coat and stung him
painfully with the bristle-like attachment at the end.
It was a painful moment when Dodd and Tommy realized that they were
powerless against the monstrous beetles. Tommy tried the uppercut with
which he had knocked out the deceased monster, but the quick jerks of
the present beetle's head were infinitely faster than the movements of
his fists, while the antenna had a whiplike quality about them that
speedily convinced him that discretion was the card to play.
Under the threat of the curling antenna, Tommy and Dodd moved in the
direction of the slowly circulating humans. Numerous tiny rodents, which
evidently kept the red grass short, scampered away under their feet. The
beetles made no further effort to force them on, but now they could see
that a number of the monsters were stationed at intervals around a wide
circle, keeping the humans in a single body.
"Good Lord!" ejaculated Tommy, stopping. "See what they're doing, Dodd?
They're herding us, like cowboys herd steers. Look at that!"
* * * * *
One of the herd, a male with a long beard, suddenly broke from the herd,
bawling, and flung himself upon a beetle guard. The antenna shot forth,
coiled around his neck, and hurled him a dozen feet to the ground, where
he lay stunned for a moment before arising and rejoining his companions.
"But what are they looking for?" demanded Dodd.
Tommy had not heard him. He had stopped in front of one of the luminous
trees and was plucking a fruit from it.
"Jimmy, ever see an apple before?" he asked. "If this isn't an apple,
I'll eat my head."
It certainly was an apple, and one of the largest and juiciest that
Tommy had ever tasted. It was the reddest apple he had ever seen, and
would have won the first prize at any agricultural fair.
"And look at this!" shouted Tommy, plucking an enormous luminous peach
from another tree.
They began munching slowly, then, seeing one of the beetle guards
approaching them, they moved into the midst of the crowd.
"Did you notice anything strange about those fruit trees?" inquired
Dodd, as he munched. "I'll swear they were monocotyledonous, which,
after all, is what one would expect. Still, to think that the
monocotyledons evolved the familiar drupes, or stone fruits, on a
parallel line to the dicotyledons is--amazing!"
A box on the ear like the kick of a mule's hoof jerked the last word
from his lips as he went sprawling. He got up, to see the girl standing
before him, intense disgust and anger on her face.
She snatched the fruits from the hands of the two Americans and hurled
them away. It was evident from her manner that she considered such diet
in the highest degree unclean and disgusting; also that she considered
herself charged with the duty of superintending Tommy's and Dodd's
education, but especially Dodd's.
* * * * *
Taking him by the arm, she propelled him into the midst of the groping
humans. She released him, stooped, and suddenly stood up, a shrimp about
eighteen inches long in her hand.
Towering over Dodd by six inches, she took his face in her hands and
began caressing him; then, seizing his jaws in her strong fingers, she
pried them apart, and popped the tail end of the shrimp into his mouth.
Dodd let out a yelp, and spat out the love-gift, to be rewarded with
another box on the ear by the young Amazon, while Tommy stood by,
convulsed with laughter, and yet in considerable trepidation, for fear
of being forced to share Dodd's fate.
For the girl was again holding out the tail end of the crustacean, and
Jim Dodd's jaws were slowly and reluctantly approaching it.
But suddenly there came an intervention as the strident rasping of
beetle legs was heard in the distance. Panic seized the human herd,
grovelling for shrimps in the sandy soil with its tufts of red grasses.
Milling in an uneasy mob, they cowered under the lashes of the antenna
of the beetle guards, which sacrificed their backs through their hair
garments whenever any of them tried to bolt.
Nearer and nearer came the beetles, louder and more penetrating the
shriek of their rasping legs. Now the swarm came into sight, rank after
rank of the shell-clad monsters, leaping fifteen feet at a bound with
perfect precision, until they had formed a solid phalanx all around the
humans.
* * * * *
Tommy heard sighs of despair, he heard muttering, and then he realized,
with deep thankfulness, that these human beings, degraded though they
were, had a speech of their own.
In the middle of the front line appeared a beetle a foot taller than the
rest. That it was either a king or queen was evident from the respect
paid it by the rest of the swarm. At its every movement a bodyguard of
beetles moved in unison, forming themselves in a group before it and on
either side.
There would have been something ludicrous about these movements, but for
the impression of horror that the swarm made upon Tommy and Jim Dodd.
Hitherto both had supposed that the hideous insects acted by blind
instinct, but now there could no longer be any doubt that they were
possessed of an organized intelligence.
* * * * *
The strident sounds grew louder. Already Tommy was beginning to discover
certain variations in them. It was dawning upon him that they formed a
language--and a perfectly intelligible one. For, as the note changed
about a half-semitone, two of the monsters left the side of their ruler
and reached the two men with three successive leaps.
Their movements left no doubt in either Tommy's or Dodd's mind what was
required. The two strode hastily toward the assemblage, and stopped as
the antenna of their guards came down in menacing fashion.
It was light enough for Tommy to see the face of the ruler of the
hellish swarm. And it required all his powers of will to keep from
collapsing from sheer horror at what he saw.
For, despite the close-fitting shell, the face of the beetle king was
the face of a man--a white man!
Jim Dodd's shriek rang out above the shrilling of the beetle-legs,
"Bram! It's you, it's you! My God, it's you, Bram!"
CHAPTER IV
_Bram's Story_
A sneering chuckle broke from Bram's lips. "Yes, it's me, James Dodd,"
he answered. "I'm a little surprised to see you here, Dodd, but I'm
mighty glad. Still insane upon the subject of fossil monotremes, I
suppose?"
The words came haltingly from Bram's lips, as from those of a man who
had lost the habit of easy speech. And Tommy, looking on, and trying to
keep in possession of his faculties, had already come to the conclusion
that the sounds were inaudible to the beetles. Probably their hearing
apparatus was not attuned to such slow vibrations of the human voice.
Also he had discovered that Bram was wearing the discarded shell of one
of the monsters: he had not grown the shell himself. It was fastened
about his body by a band of the hair-cloth, fastened to the two
protuberances of the elytra, or wing-cases, on either side of the dorsal
surface.
The discovery at least robbed the situation of one aspect of terror.
Bram, however he had obtained control of the swarm, was still only a
man.
"Yes, still insane," answered Dodd bitterly. "Insane enough to go on
believing that the polyprotodontia and the dasyuridae, which includes
the peramelidae, or bandicoots, and the banded ant-eaters, or
myrmecobidae, are not to be found in fossil form, for the excellent
reason that they were not represented before the Upper Cretaceous
period."
"You lie! You lie!" screamed Bram. "I have shown to all the world that
phascalotherium, amphitherium, amblotherium, spalacotherium, and many
other orders are to be found in the Upper Jurassic rocks of England,
Wyoming, and other places. You--you are the man who denied the existence
of the nototherium, of the marsupial lion, in pleistocene deposits! You
denied that the dasyuridae can be traced back beyond the pleistocene.
And you stand there and lie to me, when you are at my mercy!"
"For God's sake don't aggravate him," whispered Tommy to Dodd. "Don't
you see that he's insane? Humor him, or we'll be dead men. Think what
the world will lose, if you are never able to go back with your
specimens," he added craftily.
* * * * *
But Dodd, whose eyes were glaring, said a sublime thing: "I have given
my life to science, and I will never deny my master!"
With a screech, which, however, was evidently inaudible to the beetles,
Bram leaped at Dodd and seized him by the throat. The two men fell to
the ground, the ponderous beetle-shell completely covering them.
Underneath it they could be seen to be struggling desperately. All the
while the beetle horde remained perfectly motionless. Tommy thought
afterward that in this fact lay their brightest chances of escape, if
Bram's immediate vengeance did not fall on them.
Either because Bram was not himself a beetle, or because in some other
way the swarm instinct was not stirred, the monsters watched the
struggle with complete indifference.
At the moment, however, Tommy was only concerned with saving Dodd from
the madman. He got his foot beneath the shell, then inserted his leg;
using his whole body as a lever, he succeeded in turning Bram over on
his back.
Then, and only then, the swarm rushed in upon them. Then Tommy realized
that he had touched one of the triggers that regulated the beetle's
automatism. In another instant Bram would have been torn to pieces. The
needle-beaks were darting through the air, the hideous jaws were
snapping. Bram's yells rang through the cavern.
* * * * *
Dodging beneath the avalanche of the monsters, Tommy got Bram upon his
feet again. The beetles stopped, every movement arrested. Bram's hand
went to the pocket of his tattered coat, there came a snap, a flash.
Bram had ignited an automatic cigarette-lighter!
Instantly the monsters went scurrying away into the distance. And Tommy
had another clue. The beetles, living in the dimness of the underworld,
could not stand light or fire!
He ran to where Jimmy was lying, face upward, on the ground. His face
was badly scarred by Bram's nails, and the blood was spurting from a
long gash in his throat, made by the sharp flint that was lying beside
him.
He had some time before discarded his fur coat. Now he pulled off his
coat, and, tearing off the tail of his shirt, he made a pad and a
bandage, with which he attempted to staunch the blood and bind the
wound. It must have taken ten minutes before the failing heart force
enabled him to get the bleeding under control. Dodd had nearly bled to
death, his face was drawn and waxen, but, because the pulsation was so
feeble, the artery had ceased to spurt.
Then only did Tommy take notice of Bram. He had been squatting near, and
Tommy realized that he had unconsciously observed Bram put some sort of
pellets into his mouth. Now he realized that Bram was a drug fiend. That
was what had made him walk out of the Greystoke camp in the storm.
Bram got up and came toward them. "Is he dead?" he whispered hoarsely.
"I--I lost my temper. You two--I don't intend to kill you.
There--there's room for the three of us. I've got--plans of the utmost
importance to humanity."
"I don't think much of the way you've started to carry them out,"
answered Tommy bitterly. "No, he's not dead yet, but I wouldn't give
much for his chances, even in the best hospital. The best thing you can
do now is to go to hell, and take your beetles with you," he added.
* * * * *
Bram, without replying, raised his head and emitted from his throat the
shrillest whistle that Tommy had ever heard. The response was amazing.
Rasping out of the darkness came eight beetles in pairs. Instead of
leaping from an upright position, they trotted in the manner of horses,
on all fours, their shells, which touched at the edges, forming a solid
surface, gently rounded in the center so that a man's body could lie
there and fit snugly into the groove.
"Help me get him up," said Bram. "Trust me! I'll do my best for him. If
we leave him here they may kill and eat him. I can't trust all those
beetle guards."
Tommy hesitated a moment, then decided to follow Bram's suggestion.
Together they raised the unconscious man to the beetle-shell couch. Bram
seated himself upon the boss of one of the beetle-shells in front, and
Tommy jumped up behind.
Next moment, to his amazement, the trained steeds were flying smoothly
through the air, at a rate that could not have been less than
seventy-five to eighty miles an hour.
Tommy's shell seat was not a bed of roses, but he hardly noticed that.
He was thinking that if Dodd lived they should be able to turn the
tables.
For, unknown to Bram, he was in possession of the cigarette-lighter
which he had picked up, and which Bram, in his agitation, had
forgotten. It was full of petrol, or some other fluid of a similar
nature, which Bram must have obtained from some natural source within
the earth. And, in an emergency, Tommy knew that he had the means of
keeping the beetles at bay.
* * * * *
They had traveled for perhaps an hour when a faint light began to glow
in the distance. It grew brighter, and a roaring sound became audible. A
turn of the track that they were traversing, and the light became a
glare. A terrific sight met Tommy's eyes.
Out of the bowels of the earth--actually out of the crust beneath their
feet--there shot a pillar of roaring flame, of intense white color, and
radiating a heat that was perceptible even at a distance of several
hundred yards. The beetle steeds dropped gently to the ground; they
halted. Bram got down, grinning.
"Nicely trained horses, what?" he asked. "By the way, you have the
advantage of me in names. Who and what are you?"
Tommy told him.
"Well, Travers, it looks as if we're going to be companions for some
time to come, and I quite admit you saved my life back there. So we
don't want to start with secrets. This is a natural petrol spring, which
has probably been burning undiminished for ages. My trained beetles are
blind--you didn't happen to notice I'd cut off their antenna? But the
rest of the swarm daren't come near it. So that makes me their master.
"Pretty trick, what, Travers? I'm the Lord of the Flame down here, and
I'm using my advantage. But don't get the idea of supplanting me. There
are lots of other tricks you don't know anything about, and I'll have to
trust you better before--"
He broke off and slipped another pellet into his mouth.
"Help me get Dodd down, if this is our destination," answered Tommy.
They lifted Dodd to the ground. He was conscious now, and moaning for
water. The two men carried him into a sort of large cavern, at the
farther end of which the fire was roaring. Bram went to a spring that
trickled down one side, filled something that looked like a petrified
lily calyx, and brought it to Dodd, who drained it.
* * * * *
Tommy looked about him. He was astonished to see that the place was, in
a way, furnished. Bram had carved out a very creditable couch, and
several low chairs, evidently with a stone ax, for by the light of the
fire, which cast a fair illumination even at that distance, Tommy could
see the marks of the implement, rough and irregular, in the wood.
On the ground were thick rugs, woven of hair, and two or three more rugs
of the same material lay on the couch. It was evident that the human
herd was expected to furnish textile materials as well as meat.
"Sit down, and make yourself comfortable," said Bram, when they had
raised Dodd to the couch. "We'll have dinner, and then we'll talk. I can
give you a fine vegetarian meal. Those dirty shrimp-eating savages look
on me as a cannibal because I eat the fruits of the trees." He grinned.
"There's a bad shortage of food in Submundia, as I've named this part of
the world," he went on, "for until I came the beetles simply devoured
the humans wholesale, instead of breeding them, like I taught them. And
there's another of the hundred-and-fifty year swarms due to hatch out
soon. However, we'll talk about that later. And all those fine fruits
going to waste! Excuse me, Travers."
* * * * *
He disappeared, and returned in a minute or two with a small table,
piled high with luscious fruits unknown to Tommy, though among them were
some that looked like loaves of natural bread.
Tommy, whose appetite never failed him even in the worst circumstances,
fell to with a will. He was enjoying his meal when he happened to look
up, and saw that the penumbra at the edge of the lighted zone was dense
with beetles.
Thousands--perhaps millions, for they stretched away as far as the eye
could see, were packed together, their antenna waving in unison, their
heads, beneath the shells, directed toward the fire.
Bram saw Tommy's look of disgust, and laughed. "The fire seems to
intoxicate them, Travers," he said. "They always throng the entrance
when I'm here. It's as far as they dare go. They're quite blind in the
least light. Care to smoke? I've learned the art of making some quite
decent cigars." He produced a handful. "Oh, by the way, you didn't see
my lighter anywhere, did you?" he went on, with a pretense of
carelessness.
"No," lied Tommy. "I was surprised you--"
"Oh, there's a supply of petrol in the rocks. No matter," answered Bram
carelessly. "Your friend looks bad," he added, glancing at Dodd, who had
fallen asleep. "Travers, I'm sorry I lost my temper. The--the shock of
meeting men from the upper world, you know."
* * * * *
Dodd opened his eyes and tried to whisper. Tommy bent over him and
listened.
"He wants to know whether he can have that girl to take care of him," he
said.
"What, the one I saw you with? Why, she's a cull, Travers."
"What d'you mean?" asked Tommy.
"Why--useless, you know. There's several of them running loose, and
waiting to be rounded up. We raise two breeds, one for replenishing the
stock, and one for meat. She's just a cull, a reversion, no use for
either purpose. I'll have her brought by all means. I--I like Dodd. I
want to get him to like me," Bram went on, with a sort of penitence
that had a pathetic touch. "Our little differences--quite absurd, and I
can prove he's wrong in his ideas.
"Make yourself comfortable as long as you're here, Travers, and don't
mind me. Only, don't try to escape. The beetles will get you if you do,
and there's no way out of here--none that you'll find. And don't try to
follow me. But you're a sensible man, and we'll all get along famously,
I'm sure, as soon as Dodd recovers."
CHAPTER V
_Doomed!_
There were no means known to Tommy of reckoning time in that strange
place of twilight. His watch had been broken in the airplane fall; and
Dodd never remembered to wind his, but they estimated that about two
weeks had passed, judging from the number of times they had slept and
eaten.
In those two weeks they had gradually begun to grow accustomed to their
surroundings. Haidia, the girl, had arrived on beetle-back within an
hour after Bram's departure, apparently into a cleft of the rocks--how
he had communicated his order to the beetle steeds Tommy had no idea.
And under the girl's ministrations Dodd was making good progress toward
recovery.
That Haidia was in love with Dodd in quite a human way was evident. To
please the girl, both Dodd and Tommy had learned to eat the raw shrimps,
which, being bloodless, were really no worse than oysters, and had a
flavor half-way between shrimp and crawfish. To please the men, Haidia
tried not to shudder when she saw them devouring the breadfruit and
nectarines of which Bram always had a plentiful supply. Bram was
solicitous in his inquiries for Dodd's health.
"Jim, I've been thinking about our chances of getting away," said Tommy
one morning. "It's evident Bram's only waiting for your recovery to put
some proposition up to us. Suppose you were to feign paralysis."
"How d'you mean? What for?" demanded Dodd.
"If he thinks you're helpless, he'll be less on his guard. You haven't
walked about in his presence." That was true, for the activities of the
two had been nocturnal, when Bram had vanished. "Let him think a nerve's
been severed in your neck, or something of the sort. If it doesn't work,
you can always get better."
* * * * *
Dodd's realistic portrayal of a man with a partly paralyzed right side
brought cries of horror from Bram next morning. Solicitously he helped
Dodd back to the couch. Bram, when not under the influence of his drug,
had moments of human feeling.
"Can't you move that arm and leg at all, Dodd?" he asked. "No feeling in
them?"
"There's plenty of feeling," growled Dodd, "but they don't seem to work,
that's all."
"You'll get better," said Bram eagerly. "You must get better. I need
you, Dodd, in spite of our differences. There's work for all of us,
wonderful work. A new humanity, waiting to be born, Dodd, not of the
miserable ape race, but of--of--"
He checked himself, and a cunning look came over his face. He turned
away abruptly.
At the end of two weeks or so, an amazing thing happened. One day
Haidia, with a look of triumph in her eyes, addressed Dodd with a few
English words!
Her brain, which had probably developed certain faculties in different
proportions from those of the upper human race, had registered every
word that either of the two men had ever spoken, and remembered it. As
soon as Dodd ascertained this, he began to instruct her, and, with her
abnormal faculties of memory, it was not long before she could talk
quite intelligently. The obstacle that had stood between them was swept
away. She became one of themselves.
In the days that followed the girl told them brokenly something of the
history of her race, of the legend of the universal flood that had
driven them down into the bowels of the earth, of the centuries-long
struggle with the beetles, and of the insects' gradual conquest of
humanity, and the final reduction of the human race to a miserable,
helpless remnant.
* * * * *
Everywhere, Haidia told them, were beetle swarms, everywhere humanity
had been reduced to a few handfuls. Bram, by breeding mankind from
prolific strains, and using the new-born progeny for food, had
temporarily averted universal starvation. But a new swarm of beetles was
due to hatch out shortly, and then--
The girl, with a shudder, put her hand to her bosom, and brought out a
little bright-eyed lizard.
"The old man you saw with me, who is one of our wise elders, has told
our people that these things feed upon the beetle larvae," she said. "We
are putting them secretly into the nests. But what can a few lizards do
against millions." She looked up. "In the earth above us, the beetle
larvae extend for miles, in a solid mass," she said. "When they come out
as beetles, it will be the end of all of us."
Bram had grown less suspicious as the time passed. His sudden visits to
the cavern had ceased. Dodd and Tommy knew that he spent the nights--if
they could be termed nights--lying in a drugged slumber somewhere among
the rocks. They had asked Haidia whether there was any way of escape
into the upper world.
"There are two ways from here," answered the girl. "One is the way you
came, but it is impossible to pass the beetle guards without being torn
to pieces. The other--"
She shuddered, and for an instant drew back the film from across her
pupils, then uttered a little cry of pain at the light, dim though it
was.
"There is a bridge across that terrible monster that devours all it
touches," she said, shuddering, meaning the fire.
Suddenly Dodd had an inspiration. He still had the fur coat that he had
worn, and, reaching into a pocket he drew out a pair of snow goggles,
which he adjusted over Haidia's nose.
"Now look!" he said.
Haidia looked, blinked and, with an effort kept her eyes open. She gazed
at Dodd in amazement. Dodd laughed, and pulled her toward him. He kissed
her, and Haidia's eyes closed.
"What is this?" she murmured. "First you give me medicine that opens my
eyes, and then you give me medicine that closes them."
"That's nothing," grinned Dodd. "Wait till you understand me better."
* * * * *
Bram's eyes were preternaturally bright. It was evident that he had been
increasing his dose of late, and that he was fully under the influence
of it now.
"Well, gentlemen, the time has come for us to be frank with one
another," he said, as the three were gathered about the little table,
while Haidia crouched in a far corner of the cave. "I want you to work
for me in my plans for the regeneration of humanity. The time for which
I have long labored is almost at hand. Any day now the new swarm of
beetles may emerge from the pupal stage. But before I speak further,
come and see them, gentlemen!"
He rose, and Dodd and Tommy rose too, Tommy supporting Dodd, who let his
arm and leg trail awkwardly as he moved.
Bram led the way into the cleft among the rocks into which he had been
in the habit of passing. Beyond this opening the two men saw another
smaller cavern, with a beetle guard standing on either side, antenna
waving.
Bram shrilled a sound, and the antenna dropped. The three passed
through. Tommy saw a hair-cloth pallet set against the rocks, a table,
and a chair. Beyond was a sloping ramp of earth. Overhead was a rock
ceiling.
Bram led the way up the ramp, and the three stepped through a gap in the
rocks and found themselves on an extensive prairie. But in place of the
red grass there was a vast sea of mud.
By the light cast by the petrol fire, which roared up in the distance, a
veritable fiery fountain, the two Americans could see that the mud was
filled with huge encysted forms, grubs three or four feet long,
motionless in the soil.
* * * * *
Bram scooped up one of them and tossed it into the air. It thudded to
their feet and remained motionless.
"As far as you can see, and for miles beyond, these pupae of the beetles
lie buried in the decaying vegetation in which the eggs were hatched,"
said Bram. "Every century and a half, so far as I have been able to
judge from comparative anatomy, a fresh swarm emerges. See!"
He pointed to the pupa he had unearthed, which, as if stirred into
activity by his handling, was now beginning to move. Or, rather,
something was moving inside the cocoon.
The shell broke, and the hideous head and folded antenna of a beetle
appeared. With a convulsive writhing, the monster threw off the covering
and stepped out. It extended its wings, glistening, with moisture, from
the still soft and pliant carapace, or shell, and suddenly zoomed off
into the distance.
* * * * *
Tommy shuddered as the boom of its flight grew softer and subsided.
"Any day now the entire swarm will emerge," cried Bram. "How many
moultings they undergo before they undergo the finished state, I do not
know, but already, as you see, they are prepared for the battle of
life. They emerge ravenous. That beetle will fall upon the man-herds and
devour a full grown man, unless the guards destroy it."
He raised his arms with the gesture of an ancient prophet. "Woe to the
human race," he cried, "the wretched ape spawn that has cast out its
teachers and persecuted those who sought to raise it to higher things!"
* * * * *
Tommy knew that Bram was referring to himself. Bram turned fiercely upon
Dodd.
"When I joined the Greystoke expedition," he cried, "it was with the
express intention of refuting your miserable theories as to the fossil
monotremes. I could not sleep or eat, so deeply was I affronted by them.
For, if they were true, the dasyuridae are an innovation in the great
scheme of nature, and man, instead of being a mere afterthought, a jest
of the Creative Force, came to earth with a purpose.
"That I deny," he yelled. "Man is a joke. Nature made him when she was
tired, as the architect of a cathedral fashions a gargoyle in a sportive
moment. It is the insect, not man, who is the predestined lord of the
ages!"
And for once in his life, perhaps because at this point Tommy dug him
violently in the ribs, Dodd had the sense to remain silent. Bram led the
way swiftly back into the larger cave.
"When this swarm hatches out," he said, "I calculate that there will be
a trillion beetles seeking food. There is no food for a tithe of them
here underneath the earth. What then? Do you realize their stupendous
power, their invincibility?
"No, you don't realize it, because your minds, through long habit, are
only attuned to think in terms of man. All man's long history of
slaughter of the so-called lower creatures obsesses you, blinds your
understanding. A beetle? Something to be trodden underfoot, crushed in
sport! But I tell you, gentlemen, that nature--God, if you will--has
designed to supplant the man-ape by the beetle.
"He has resolved to throw down the wretched so-called intelligence of
your kind and mine, and supplant it by the divine instinct of the
beetle, an instinct that is infinitely superior, because it arrives at
results instantaneously. It knows where man infers. Attuned closely to
nature, it alone is able to fulfil the divine plan of Creation."
* * * * *
Bram was certainly under the influence of his drug; nevertheless, so
violent were his gestures, so inspired was his utterance, that Tommy and
Dodd listened almost in awe.
"They are invincible," Bram went on. "Their fecundity is such that when
the new swarm is hatched out their numbers alone will make them
irresistible. They do not know fear. They shrink from nothing. And they
will follow me, their leader--I, who know the means of controlling them.
How, then, can puny man hope to stand against them?
"Join me, gentlemen," Bram went on. "And beware how you decide rashly.
For this is the supreme moment, not only of your own lives, but for all
humanity and beetledom. Upon your decision hangs the future of the
world.
"For, irresistible as the beetles are, there is one thing they lack. That
is the sense of historic continuity. If they destroy man, they will know
nothing of man's achievements, poor though these are. My own work on the
fossil monotremes--"
"Which is a tissue of inaccuracies and half-baked deductions!" shouted
Dodd.
Bram started as if a whip had lashed him. "Liar!" he bawled. "Do you
think that I, who left the Greystoke expedition in a howling blizzard
because I knew that here, in the inner earth, I could refute your
miserable impostures--do you think that I am in the mood to listen to
your wretched farrago of impossibilities?"
"Listen to me," bawled Dodd, advancing with waving arms. "Once and for
all, let me tell you that your deductions are all based upon fallacious
premises. No, I will not shut up, Tom Travers! You want me to aid your
damned beetles in the destruction of humanity! I tell you that your
phascalotherium, amphitherium, and all the rest of them, including the
marsupial lion, are degenerate developments of the age following the
pleistocene. I say the whole insect world was made to fertilize the
plant world, so that it should bear fruit for human food. Man is the
summit of the scale of evolution, and I will never join in any infamous
scheme for his destruction."
Bram glared at Dodd like a madman. Three times he opened his mouth to
speak, but only inarticulate sounds came from his throat. And when at
last he did speak, he said something that neither Dodd nor Tommy had
anticipated.
"It looks as if you're not so paralysed as you made out," he sneered.
"You'll change your mind within what used to be called a day, Dodd.
You'll crawl to my feet and beg for pardon. And you'll recant your lying
theories about the fossil monotremes, or you die--the pair of you--you
die!"
CHAPTER VI
_Escape!_
"I heard what he said. You shall not die. We shall go away to your
place, where there are no beetles to eat us, even if"--Haidia
shuddered--"even if we have to cross the bridge of fire, beyond which,
they tell me, lies freedom."
High over and a little to one side of the petrol flame Dodd and Tommy
had seen the slender arch of rock leading into another cleft in the
rocks. They had investigated it several times, but always the fierce
heat had driven them back.
Both Dodd and Tommy had noticed, however, that at times the fire seemed
to shrink in volume and intensity. Observation had shown them that these
times were periodical, recurring about every twelve hours.
"I think I've got the clue, Tommy," said Dodd, as the three watched the
fiery fountain and speculated on the possibility of escape. "That flow
of petrol is controlled, like the tides on earth, by the pull of the
moon. Just now it is at its height. I've noticed that it loses pretty
nearly half its volume at its alternating phase. If I'm right, we'll
make the attempt in about twelve hours."
"Bram's given us twenty-four," said Tommy. "But how about getting Haidia
across?"
"I go where you go," said Haidia, sidling up to Dodd and looking down
upon him lovingly. "I do not afraid of the fire. If it burn me up, I go
to the good place."
"Where's that, Haidia?" asked Dodd.
"When we die, we go to a place where it is always dark and there are no
beetles, and the ground is full of shrimps. We leave our bodies behind,
like the beetles, and fly about happy for ever."
"Not a bad sort of place," said Dodd, squeezing Haidia's arm. "If you
think you're ready to try to cross the bridge, we'll start as soon as
the fire gets lower."
"I'll be on the job," answered Haidia, unconsciously reproducing a
phrase of Tommy's.
* * * * *
The girl glided away, and disappeared through the thick of the beetle
crowd clustered about the entrance to the cavern. Tommy and Dodd had
already discovered that it was through her ability to reproduce a
certain beetle sound meaning "not good to eat" that the girl could come
and go. They had once tried it on their own account, and had narrowly
escaped the lashing tentacles.
After that there was nothing to do but wait. Three or four hours must
have passed when Bram returned from his inner cave.
"Well, Dodd, have you experienced a change of heart?" he sneered. "If
you knew what's in store for you, maybe you'd come to the conclusion
that you've been too cocksure about the monotremes. We're slaughtering
in the morning."
"That so?" asked Dodd.
"That's so," shouted Bram. "The beetles are beginning to emerge from the
pupae, and they'll need food if they're to be kept quiet. We're rounding
up about threescore of the culls--your friend Haidia will be among them.
We've got some caged ichneumon flies, pretty little things only a foot
long, which will sting them in certain nerve centers, rendering them
powerless to move. Then we shall bury them, standing up, in the
vegetable mould, for the beetles to devour alive, as soon as they come
out of the shells. You'll feel pretty, Dodd, standing there unable to
move, with the new born beetles biting chunks out of you."
* * * * *
Tommy shuddered, despite his hopes of their escaping. Bram, for a
scientist, had a grim and picturesque imagination.
"Dodd, there is no personal quarrel between us," Bram went on. Again
that note of pathetic pleading came into his voice. "Give up your mad
ideas. Admit that the banded ant-eater, at least, existed before the
pleistocene epoch, and everything can be settled. When you see what my
beetles are going to do to humanity, you'll be proud to join us. Only
make a beginning. You remember the point I made in my paper, about
spalacotherium in the Upper Jurassic rocks. It would convince anybody
but a hardened fanatic."
"I read your paper, and I saw your so-called spalacotherium,
reconstructed from what you called a jaw-bone," shouted Dodd. "That
so-called jaw-bone was a lump of chalk, made porous by water, and the
rest was in your imagination. Do your worst, Bram, I'll never crucify
truth to save my life. And I'll laugh at your spalacotherium when your
beetles are eating me."
Bram yelled and shrieked, he stamped up and down the cavern, shaking his
fists at Dodd. At last, with a final torrent of objurgation, he
disappeared.
"A pleasant customer," said Tommy. "We'll have to make that bridge, Jim,
no question about it, even if it means death in the petrol fire."
"Fire's dying down fast," answered Dodd. "Haidia ought to be here soon."
"If Bram hasn't got her."
"Bram got--that girl? If Bram harms a hair of her head I'll kill him
with worse tortures than he's ever dreamed of," answered Dodd, leaping
up, white with rage.
"You mean you--?" Tommy began.
"Love her? Yes, I love her," shouted Dodd. "She's a girl in a million.
Just the sort of helpmate I need to assist me in my work when we get
back. I tell you, Tommy, I didn't know what love meant before I saw
Haidia. I laughed at it as a romantic notion. 'Oh lyric love, half angel
and half bird!'" he quoted, beginning to stride up and down the cavern,
while Tommy watched him in amazement.
And at this moment a complete beetle entered the cave. Complete, because
it had a plastron, or breast-shell, as well as a back-shell, or
carapace.
* * * * *
A double breast-shell! A new species of beetle? An executioner beetle,
sent by Bram to summon them to the torture? Tommy shuddered, but Dodd,
lost in his love ecstasy, was ignorant of the creature's advent.
"'Oh lyric love--'" he shouted again, as he twirled on his heel, to run
smack into the monster. The crack of Dodd's head against the
beetle-shell re-echoed through the cave.
The double plastron dropped, the carapace fell down: Haidia stood
revealed. The lovers, folded in each other's arms, passed momentarily
into a trance.
It was Tommy who separated them. "We'll have to make a move," he said.
"I think the fire's as low as it ever gets. Why did you bring the
shells, Haidia?"
"To save us all from the beetles," answered the girl. "When they see us
in the shells, they will not know we are human. That is what makes it so
hard to have to be eaten by those beetles, when they are such
dumb-bells," she added, reproducing another of Tommy's words.
"Come," she continued bravely, "let us see if we can pass the fire."
* * * * *
The roaring fountain made the air a veritable inferno. Overhead the
rocks were red-hot. A cascade of sparks tumbled in a fiery shower from
the rock roof. Dodd, holding Haidia in his arms, to protect her,
staggered ahead, with Tommy in the rear. Only the beetle-shells, which
acted as non-conductors of the heat, made that fiery passage possible.
There was one moment when it seemed to Tommy as if he must let go, and
drop into that raging furnace underneath. He heard Dodd bawling hoarsely
in front of him, he nerved himself to a last effort, beating fiercely at
his blazing hair--and then the heat was past, and he had dropped
unconscious upon a bed of cool earth beside a rushing river.
He was vaguely aware of being carried in Dodd's arms, but a long time
seemed to have passed before he grew conscious again. He opened his eyes
in utter darkness. Dodd was whispering in his ear.
"Tommy, old man, how are you feeling now?" Dodd asked.
"All--right," Tommy muttered. "How's Haidia?"
"Still unconscious, poor girl. We've got to get out of here. I heard
Bram yelling in the distance. He's discovered our flight. There may be
another way out of the cave, and, if so, he'll stop at nothing to get
us. See if you can stand, but keep your head low. There's a low roof of
rock above us."
"There's water," said Tommy, listening to the roar of a torrent that
seemed to be rushing past them.
"It's a stream, and I believe these shells will float and bear our
weight. We've got to try. We've got to put everything to the touch now,
Tommy. I'm going to lay Haidia on one of the shells, poor girl, and
start her off. Then I'll follow, and you can bring up the rear."
"I'm with you," said Tommy, getting upon his feet, and uttering an
exclamation of pain as, forgetful of Dodd's injunction, he let his head
strike the rock roof overhead.
* * * * *
In the darkness he felt the outlines of his beetle-shell lying beside
the torrent. He could hear Dodd in front of him, grunting as he raised
Haidia's unconscious form in his arms and deposited her in her shell.
Tommy got his own shell into the stream, and held it there as the waters
swirled around it.
"Ready?" he heard Dodd call.
Before he could answer, there sounded from not far away, yet strangely
muffled by the rocks, Bram's bellow of fury. Bram was evidently fully
drugged and beside himself. Inarticulate threats came floating through
the rocky chamber.
"Bram seems to have lost his head temporarily," called Dodd, laughing.
"A madman, Tommy. He insists that the marsupial lion--"
"Yes, I heard you telling him about it," answered Tommy. "You handed it
to him straight. However, more about the marsupial lion later. I'm
ready."
"Then let 'er go," called Dodd, and his words were swallowed up by the
sound of the hollow shell striking against the rocky bank as he launched
his strange craft into the water.
Tommy set one foot into the hollow of his shell, and let himself go.
Instantly the shell shot forward with fearful velocity. It was all Tommy
could do to balance himself, for it seemed more unstable than a canoe.
Once or twice he thought he heard Dodd shouting ahead of him, but his
cries were drowned in the rush of the torrent.
* * * * *
Suddenly a light appeared in the distance. Tommy thought it was another
of the petroleum fountains, and his heart seemed to stand still. But
then he gave a gasp of relief. It was a cluster of luminous fungi, ten
or twelve feet tall, emitting a glow equal to that of a dozen 40-watt
electric bulbs.
By that infernal light Tommy could see that the stream curved sharply.
It was about fifty feet in width, and the low rock roof had receded to
some fifteen feet overhead. Instead of a tunnel, there was nothing on
either side of them but a vast tract of marshy ground thinly coated with
the red grass.
As Tommy looked, he saw the shell that carried the unconscious body of
Haidia strike the bank beside the phosphorescent growth. He could see
the girl lying in the hollow of the shell, as pale as death, her eyes
closed. Dodd was close behind. As the swirl of the current caught his
shell, he turned to shout a warning to Tommy.
And Tommy noticed a singular thing, of which his sense of balance had
already warned him, though he had hardly given conscious thought to the
matter. _The river was running up-hill!_
Of course it was, since the center of gravity was in the shell of the
earth, and not in the center!
But, again, the shell of the earth was under their feet!
Then Tommy hit on the solution to the problem. If the river was running
up-hill, that meant that they must be near the exterior of the earth. In
other words, they had passed the center of gravity: they must be within
a mile or so of the exit from Submundia!
* * * * *
Tommy was about to shout his discovery to Dodd when his shell grounded
beside the two others, at the base of the clump of fungi.
Huge, straight, hollow stems they were, with mushroom caps, and, like
all fungi, fly-blown, for Tommy could see worms nearly a foot in length
crawling in and out of the porous stalks. The stench from the growth was
nauseating and overpowering, utterly sickening.
"Push off and let's get out of here!" Tommy called to Dodd, who was
balancing his shell against the bank, and trying to peer into Haidia's
face.
At that moment he caught sight of something that made his blood turn
cold!
It was an insect fully fifteen feet in height, three times that of a
beetle, lurking among the fungi. He saw a hugely elongated neck, a
three-cornered head with a pair of tentacles, and two pairs of legs as
long as a giraffe's. But what gave the added touch of horror was that
the monster, balancing itself on its hind legs, had its forelegs
extended in the attitude of one holding a prayer-book!
That attitude of devotion was so terrible that Tommy uttered a wild cry
of terror. At the same time another cry broke from Dodd's lips.
"God, a praying mantis!" he shouted, struggling madly to push off his
shell and Haidia's.
The next moment, as if shot from a catapult, the hideous monster
launched itself into the air straight toward them.
(_To be concluded in the February Number._)
The Cave of Horror
_By Captain S. P. Meek_
[Illustration: "_Suddenly, for no apparent reason at all, one of the men
on guard was jerked into the air feet upwards._"]
[Sidenote: Screaming, the guardsman was jerked through the air. An
unearthly screech rang through the cavern. The unseen horror of Mammoth
Cave had struck again.]
Dr. Bird looked up impatiently as the door of his private laboratory in
the Bureau of Standards swung open, but the frown on his face changed to
a smile as he saw the form of Operative Carnes of the United States
Secret Service framed in the doorway.
"Hello, Carnes," he called cheerfully. "Take a seat and make yourself at
home for a few minutes. I'll be with you as soon as I finish getting
this weight."
Carnes sat on the edge of a bench and watched with admiration the long
nervous hands and the slim tapering fingers of the famous scientist. Dr.
Bird stood well over six feet and weighed two hundred and six pounds
stripped: his massive shoulders and heavy shock of unruly black hair
combined to give him the appearance of a prize-fighter--until one looked
at his hands. Acid stains and scars could not hide the beauty of those
mobile hands, the hands of an artist and a dreamer. An artist Dr. Bird
was, albeit his artistry expressed itself in the most delicate and
complicated experiments in the realms of pure and applied science that
the world has ever seen, rather than in the commoner forms of art.
The doctor finished his task of weighing a porcelain crucible, set it
carefully into a dessicator, and turned to his friend.
"What's on your mind, Carnes?" he asked. "You look worried. Is there
another counterfeit on the market?"
The operative shook his head.
"Have you been reading those stories that the papers have been carrying
about Mammoth Cave?" he asked.
Dr. Bird emitted a snort of disgust.
"I read the first one of them part way through on the strength of its
being an Associated Press dispatch," he replied, "but that was enough.
It didn't exactly impress me with its veracity, and, from a viewpoint of
literature, the thing was impossible. I have no time to pore over the
lucubrations of an inspired press agent."
"So you dismissed them as mere press agent work?"
"Certainly. What else could they be? Things like that don't happen
fortuitously just as the tourist season is about to open. I suppose that
those yarns will bring flocks of the curious to Kentucky though: the
public always responds well to sea serpent yarns."
"Mammoth Cave has been closed to visitors for the season," said Carnes
quietly.
"What?" cried the doctor in surprise. "Was there really something to
those wild yarns?"
* * * * *
"There was, and what is more to the point, there still is. At least
there is enough to it that I am leaving for Kentucky this evening, and I
came here for the express purpose of asking you whether you wanted to
come along. Bolton suggested that I ask you: he said that the whole
thing sounded to him like magic and that magic was more in your line
than in ours. He made out a request for your services and I have it in
my pocket now. Are you interested?"
"How does the secret service cut in on it?" asked the doctor. "It seems
to me that it is a state matter. Mammoth Cave isn't a National Park."
"Apparently you haven't followed the papers. It _was_ a state matter
until the Governor asked for federal troops. Whenever the regulars get
into trouble, the federal government is rather apt to take a hand."
"I didn't know that regulars had been sent there. Tell me about the
case."
"Will you come along?"
Dr. Bird shook his head slowly.
"I really don't see how I can spare the time, Carnes," he said. "I am in
the midst of some work of the utmost importance and it hasn't reached
the stage where I can turn it over to an assistant."
"Then I won't bother you with the details," replied Carnes as he rose.
"Sit down, confound you!" cried the doctor. "You know better than to try
to pull that on me. Tell me your case, and then I'll tell you whether
I'll go or not. I can't spare the time, but, on the other hand, if it
sounds interesting enough...."
* * * * *
Carnes laughed.
"All right, Doctor," he said, "I'll take enough time to tell you about
it even if you can't go. Do you know anything about it?"
"No. I read the first story half way through and then stopped. Start at
the beginning and tell me the whole thing."
"Have you ever been to Mammoth Cave?"
"No."
"It, or rather they, for while it is called Mammoth Cave it is really a
series of caves, are located in Edmonson County in Central Kentucky, on
a spur railroad from Glasgow Junction on the Louisville and Nashville
Railroad. They are natural limestone caverns with the customary
stalactite and stalagmite formation, but are unusually large and very
beautiful. The caves are quite extensive and they are on different
levels, so that a guide is necessary if one wants to enter them and be
at all sure of finding the way out. Visitors are taken over a regular
route and are seldom allowed to visit portions of the cave off these
routes. Large parts of the cave have never been thoroughly explored or
mapped. So much for the scene.
"About a month ago a party from Philadelphia who were motoring through
Kentucky, entered the cave with a regular guide. The party consisted of
a man and his wife and their two children, a boy of fourteen and a girl
of twelve. They went quite a distance back into the caves and then, as
the mother was feeling tired, she and her husband sat down, intending to
wait until the guide showed the children some sights which lay just
ahead and then return to them. The guide and the children never
returned."
"What happened?"
"No one knows. All that is known is the bare fact that they have not
been seen since."
"A kidnapping case?"
"Apparently not, in the light of later happenings, although that was at
first thought to be the explanation. The parents waited for some time.
The mother says that she heard faint screams in the distance some ten
minutes after the guide and the children left, but they were very far
away and she isn't sure that she heard them at all. At any rate, they
didn't impress her at the time.
* * * * *
"When half an hour had passed they began to feel anxious, and the father
took a torch and started out to hunt for them. The usual thing happened;
he got lost. When _he_ failed to return, the mother, now thoroughly
alarmed, made her way, by some uncanny sense of direction, to the
entrance and gave the alarm. In half an hour a dozen search parties were
on their way into the cave. The father was soon located, not far from
the beaten trail, but despite three days of constant search, the
children were not located. The only trace of them that was found was a
bracelet which the mother identified. It was found in the cavern some
distance from the beaten path and was broken, as though by violence.
There were no other signs of a struggle.
"When the bracelet was found, the kidnapping theory gained vogue, for
John Harrel, the missing guide, knew the cave well and natives of the
vicinity scouted the idea that he might be lost. Inspired by the large
reward offered by the father, fresh parties began to explore the unknown
portions of the cave. And then came the second tragedy. Two of the
searchers failed to return. This time there seemed to be little doubt of
violence, for screams and a pistol shot were faintly heard by other
searchers, together with a peculiar 'screaming howl,' as it was
described by those who heard it. A search was at once made toward the
spot where the bracelet had been picked up, and the gun of one of the
missing men was found within fifty yards of the spot where the bracelet
had been discovered. One cylinder of the revolver had been discharged."
"Were there any signs on the floor?"
"The searchers said that the floor appeared to be rather more moist and
slimy than usual, but that was all. They also spoke of a very faint
smell of musk, but this observation was not confirmed by others who
arrived a few moments later."
"What happened next?"
* * * * *
"The Governor was appealed to and a company of the National Guard was
sent from Louisville to Mammoth Cave. They took up camp at the mouth of
the cave and prevented everyone from entering. Soldiers armed with
service rifles penetrated the caverns, but found nothing. Visitors were
excluded, and the guardsmen established regular patrols and sentry posts
in the cave with the result that one night, when time came for a relief,
the only trace that could be found of one of the guards was his rifle.
It had not been fired. Double guards were then posted, and nothing
happened for several days--and then another sentry disappeared. His
companion came rushing out of the cave screaming. When he recovered, he
admitted that both he and the missing man had gone to sleep and that he
awoke to find his comrade gone. He called, and he says that the answer
he received was a peculiar whistling noise which raised all the hair on
the back of his neck. He flashed his electric torch all around, but
could see nothing. He swears, however, that he heard a slipping, sliding
noise approaching him, and he felt that some one was looking at him. He
stood it as long as he could and then threw down his rifle and ran for
his life."
"Had he been drinking?"
"No. It wasn't delirium either, as was shown by the fact that a patrol
found his gun where he had thrown it, but no trace of the other sentry.
After this second experience, the guardsmen weren't very eager to enter
the cave, and the Governor asked for regulars. A company of infantry was
ordered down from Fort Thomas to relieve the guardsmen, but they fared
worse than their predecessors. They lost two men the first night of
their guard. The regulars weren't caught napping, for the main guard
heard five shots fired. They rushed a patrol to the scene and found both
of the rifles which had been fired, but the men were gone.
"The officer of the day made a thorough search of the vicinity and
found, some two hundred yards from the spot where the sentries had been
posted, a crack in the wall through which the body of a man could be
forced. This bodycrack had fresh blood on each side of it. Several of
his men volunteered to enter the hole and search, but the lieutenant
would not allow it. Instead, he armed himself with a couple of
hand-grenades and an electric torch and entered himself. That was last
Tuesday, and he has not returned."
"Was there any disturbance heard from the crack?"
"None at all. A guard was posted with two machine-guns pointed at the
crack in the wall, and a guard of eight men and a sergeant stationed
there. Last night, about six o'clock, while the guard were sitting
around their guns, a faint smell of musk became evident. No one paid a
great deal of attention to it, but suddenly for no apparent reason at
all one of the men on guard was jerked into the air feet upwards. He
gave a scream of fear, and an unearthly screech answered him. The guard,
with the exception of one man, turned tail and ran. One man stuck by his
gun and poured a stream of bullets into the crack. The retreating men
could hear the rattle of the gun for a few moments and then there was a
choking scream, followed by silence. When the officer of the day got
back with a patrol, there was a heavy smell of musk in the air, and a
good deal of blood was splashed around. The machine-guns were both
there, although one of them was twisted up until it looked like it had
been through an explosion.
"The Officer commanding the company investigated the place, ordered all
men out of the cave, and communicated with the War Department. The
Secretary of War found it too tough a nut to crack and he asked for
help, so Bolton is sending me down there. Do you think, in view of this
yarn, that your experiments can wait?"
* * * * *
The creases on Dr. Bird's high forehead had grown deeper and deeper as
Carnes had told his story, but now they suddenly disappeared, and he
jumped to his feet with a boyish grin.
"How soon are we leaving?" he asked.
"In two hours, Doctor. A car is waiting for us downstairs and I have
reservations booked for both of us on the Southern to-night. I knew that
you were coming; in fact, the request for your services had been
approved before I came here to see you."
Dr. Bird rapidly divested himself of his laboratory smock and took his
coat and hat from a cupboard.
"I hope you realize, Carnsey, old dear," he said as he followed the
operative out of the building, "that I have a real fondness for your
worthless old carcass. I am leaving the results of two weeks of patient
work alone and unattended in order to keep you out of trouble, and I
know that it will be ruined when I get back. I wonder whether you are
worth it?"
"Bosh!" retorted Carnes. "I'm mighty glad to have you along, but you
needn't rub it in by pretending that it is affection for me that is
dragging you reluctantly into this mess. With an adventure like this
ahead of you, leg-irons and handcuffs wouldn't keep you away from
Mammoth Cave, whether I was going or not."
It was late afternoon before Dr. Bird and Carnes dismounted from the
special train which had carried them from Glasgow Junction to Mammoth
Cave. They introduced themselves to the major commanding the guard
battalion which had been ordered down to reinforce the single company
which had borne the first brunt of the affair, and then interviewed the
guards who had been routed by the unseen horror which was haunting the
famous cave. Nothing was learned which differed in any great degree from
the tale which Carnes had related to the doctor in Washington, except
that the officer of the day who had investigated the last attack failed
to entirely corroborate the smell of musk which had been reported by the
other observers.
"It might have been musk, but to me it smelled differently," he said.
"Were you ever near a rattlesnake den in the west?"
* * * * *
Dr. Bird nodded.
"Then you know the peculiar reptilian odor which such a place gives off.
Well, this smell was somewhat similar, although not the same by any
manner of means. It was musky all right, but it was more snake than musk
to me. I rather like musk, but this smell gave me the horrors."
"Did you hear any noises?"
"None at all. The men describe some rather peculiar noises and Sergeant
Jervis is an old file and pretty apt to get things straight, but they
may have been made by the men who were in trouble. I saw a man caught by
a boa in South America once, and the noises he made might very well have
been described in almost the same words as Jervis used."
"Thanks, Lieutenant," replied the Doctor. "I'll remember what you have
told me. Now I think that we'll go into the cave."
"My orders are to allow no one to enter, Doctor."
"I beg your pardon. Carnes, where is that letter from the Secretary of
War?"
Carnes produced the document. The lieutenant examined it and excused
himself. He returned in a few moments with the commanding officer.
"In the face of that letter, Dr. Bird," said the major, "I have no
alternative to allowing you to enter the cave, but I will warn you that
it is at your own peril. I'll give you an escort, if you wish."
"If Lieutenant Pearce will come with me as a guide, that will be all
that I need."
The lieutenant paled slightly, but threw back his shoulders.
"Do you wish to start at once, sir?" he asked.
"In a few moments. What is the floor of the cave like where we are
going?"
"Quite wet and slimy, sir."
"Very slippery?"
"Yes, sir."
"In that case before we go in we want to put on baseball shoes with
cleats on them, so that we can run if we have to. Can you get us
anything like that?"
"In a few moments, sir."
"Good! As soon as we can get them we'll start. In the meantime, may I
look at that gun that was found?"
* * * * *
The Browning machine-gun was laid before the doctor. He looked it over
critically and sniffed delicately at it. He took from his pocket a phial
of liquid, moistened a portion of the water-jacket of the weapon, and
then rubbed the moistened part briskly with his hand. He sniffed again.
He looked disappointed, and again examined the gun closely.
"Carnes," he said at length, "do you see anything on this gun that looks
like tooth marks?"
"Nothing, Doctor."
"Neither do I. There are some marks here which might quite conceivably
be finger-prints of a forty-foot giant, and those two parallel grooves
look like the result of severe squeezing, but there are no tooth marks.
Strange. There is no persistent odor on the gun, which is also strange.
Well, there's no use in theorizing: we are confronted by a condition and
not a theory, as someone once said. Let's put on those baseball shoes
and see what we can find out."
Dr. Bird led the way into the cave, Carnes and the lieutenant following
closely with electric torches. In each hand Dr. Bird carried a
phosphorus hand-grenade. No other weapons were visible, although the
doctor knew that Carnes carried a caliber .45 automatic pistol strapped
under his left armpit. As they passed into the cave the lieutenant
stepped forward to lead the way.
"I'm going first," said the doctor. "Follow me and indicate the turns by
pressure on my shoulder. Don't speak after we have started, and be ready
for instant flight. Let's go."
Forward into the interior of the cave they made their way. The iron
cleats of the baseball shoes rang on the floor and the noise echoed back
and forth between the walls, dying out in little eerie whispers of sound
that made Carnes' hair rise. Ever forward they pressed, the lieutenant
guiding the doctor by silent pressure on his shoulder and Carnes
following closely. For half a mile they went on until a restrainable
pressure brought the doctor to a halt. The lieutenant pointed silently
toward a crack in the wall before them. Carnes started forward to
examine it, but a warning gesture from the doctor stopped him.
* * * * *
Slowly, an inch at a time, the doctor crept forward, hand-grenades in
readiness. Presently he reached the crack and, shifting one of the
grenades into his pocket, he drew forth an electric torch and sent a
beam of light through the crack into the dark interior of the earth.
For a moment he stood thus, and then suddenly snapped off his torch and
straightened up in an attitude of listening. The straining ears of
Carnes and Lieutenant Pearce could hear a faint slithering noise coming
toward them, not from the direction of the crack, but from the interior
of the cave. Simultaneously a faint, musky, reptilian odor became
apparent.
"Run!" shouted the doctor. "Run like hell! It's loose in the cave!"
The lieutenant turned and fled at top speed toward the distant entrance
to the cave, Carnes at his heels. Dr. Bird paused for an instant,
straining his ears, and then threw a grenade. A blinding flash came from
the point where the missile struck and a white cloud rose in the air.
The doctor turned and fled after his companions. Not for nothing had Dr.
Bird been an athlete of note in his college days. Despite the best
efforts of his companions, who were literally running for their lives,
he soon caught up with them. As he did so a weird, blood-curdling
screech rose from the darkness behind them. Higher and higher in pitch
the note rose until it ended suddenly in a gurgling grunt, as though the
breath which uttered it had been suddenly cut off. The slithering,
rustling noise became louder on their trail.
"Faster!" gasped the doctor, as he put his hand on Carnes' shoulder and
pushed him forward.
* * * * *
The noise of pursuit gained slightly on them, and a sound as of intense
breathing became audible. Dr. Bird paused and turned and faced the
oncoming horror. His electric torch revealed nothing, but he listened
for a moment, and then threw his second grenade. Keenly he watched its
flight. It flew through the air for thirty yards and then struck an
invisible obstruction and bounded toward the ground. Before it struck
the downward motion ceased, and it rose in the air. As it rose it burst
with a sharp report, and a wild scream of pain filled the cavern with a
deafening roar. The doctor fled again after his companions.
By the time he overtook them the entrance of the cave loomed before
them. With sobs of relief they burst out into the open. The guards
sprang forward with raised rifles, but Dr. Bird waved them back.
"There's nothing after us, men," he panted. "We got chased a little way,
but I tossed our pursuer a handful of phosphorus and it must have burned
his fingers a little, judging from the racket he made. At any rate, it
stopped the pursuit."
The major hurried up.
"Did you see it, Doctor?" he asked.
"No, I didn't. No one has ever seen it or anything like it. I heard it
and, from its voice, I think it has a bad cold. At least, it sounded
hoarse, so I gave it a little white phosphorus to make a poultice for
its throat, but I didn't get a glimpse of it."
"For God's sake, Doctor, what is it?"
"I can't tell you yet, Major. So far I can tell, it is something new to
science and I am not sure just what it looks like. However, I hope to be
able to show it to you shortly. Is there a telegraph office here?"
"No, but we have a Signal Corps detachment with us, and they have a
portable radio set which will put us in touch with the army net."
"Good! Can you place a tent at my disposal?"
"Certainly, Doctor."
"All right, I'll go there, and I would appreciate it if you would send
the radio operator to me. I want to send a message to the Bureau of
Standards to forward me some apparatus which I need."
"I'll attend to it, Doctor. Have you any special advice to give me about
the guarding?"
"Yes. Have you, or can you get, any live stock?"
"Live stock?"
"Yes. Cattle preferred, although hogs or sheep will do at a pinch. Sheep
will do quite well."
"I'll see what I can do, Doctor."
"Get them by all means, if it is possible to do so. Don't worry about
paying for them: secret service funds are not subject to the same audit
that army funds get. If you can locate them, drive a couple of cattle or
half a dozen sheep well into the cave and tether them there. If you
don't get them, have your sentries posted well away from the cave mouth,
and if any disturbance occurs during the night, tell them to break and
run. I hope it won't come out, but I can't tell."
* * * * *
A herd of cattle was soon located and two of the beasts driven into the
cave. Two hours later a series of horrible screams and bellowings were
heard in the cave. Following their orders the sentries abandoned their
posts and scattered, but the noise came no nearer the mouth, and in a
few minutes silence again reigned.
"I hope that will be all that will be needed for a couple of days," said
the doctor to the commanding officer, "but you had better have a couple
more cattle driven in in the morning. We want to keep the brute well
fed. Is there a tank stationed at Fort Thomas?"
"No, there isn't."
"Then radio Washington that I want the fastest three-man tank that the
army has sent here at once. Don't bother with military channels, radio
direct to the Adjutant General, quoting the Secretary of the Treasury as
authority. Tell him that it's a rush matter, and sign the message 'Bird'
if you are afraid of getting your tail twisted."
Twice more before the apparatus which the doctor had ordered from
Washington arrived cattle were driven into the depths of the cave, and
twice were the screams and bellowings from the cave repeated. Each time
searching parties found the cattle gone in the morning. A week after the
doctor's arrival, a special train came up, carrying four mechanics from
the Bureau of Standards, together with a dozen huge packing cases. Under
the direction of the doctor the cases were unpacked and the apparatus
put together. Before the assembly had been completed the tank which had
been requested arrived from Camp Meade, and the Bureau mechanics began
to install some of the assembled units in it.
The first apparatus which was installed in the tank consisted of an
electric generator of peculiar design which was geared to the tank
motor. The electromotive force thus generated was led across a spark gap
with points of a metallic substance. The light produced was concentrated
by a series of parabolic reflectors, directed against a large quartz
prism, and thence through a lens which was designed to throw a slightly
divergent beam.
"This apparatus," Dr. Bird explained to the Signal Corps officer, who
was an interested observer, "is one which was designed at the Bureau for
the large scale production of ultra-violet light. There is nothing
special about the generator except that it is highly efficient and gives
an almost constant electromotive force. The current thus produced is
led across these points, which are composed of magnalloy, a development
of the Bureau. We found on investigation that a spark gave out a light
which was peculiarly rich in ultra-violet rays when it was passed
between magnesium points. However, such points could not be used for the
handling of a steady current because of lack of durability and ease of
fusion, so a mixture of graphite, alundum and metallic magnesium was
pressed together with a binder which will stand the heat. Thus we get
the triple advantages of ultra-violet light production, durability, and
high resistance.
* * * * *
"The system of reflectors catches all of the light thus produced except
the relatively small portion which goes initially in the right
direction, and directs it on this quartz prism where, due to the
refractive powers of the prism, the light is broken up into its
component parts. The infra-red rays and that portion of the spectrum
which lies in the visible range, that is, from red to violet inclusive,
are absorbed by a black body, leaving only the ultra-violet portion free
to send a beam through this quartz lens."
"I thought that a lens would absorb ultra-violet light," objected the
signal officer.
"A lens made of glass will, but this lens is made of rock crystal, which
is readily permeable to ultra-violet. The net result of this apparatus
is that we can direct before us as we move in the tank a beam of light
which is composed solely of the ultra-violet portion of the spectrum."
"In other words, an invisible light?"
"Yes. That is, invisible to the human eye. The effect of this beam of
ultra-violet light in the form of severe sunburn would be readily
apparent if you exposed your skin to it for any length of time, and the
effects on your eyesight of continued gazing would be apt to be
disastrous. It would produce a severe opthalmia and temporary
impairment of the vision, somewhat the same symptoms as are observed in
snow blindness."
"I see. May I ask what is the object of the whole thing?"
"Surely. Before we can successfully combat this peculiar visitant from
another world, it is necessary that we gain some idea of the size and
appearance of it. Nothing of the sort has before made its appearance, so
far as the annals of science go, and so I am forced to make some rather
wild guesses at the nature of the animal. You are probably aware of the
fact that the property of penetration possessed by all waves is a
function of their frequency, or, perhaps I should say, of their
wave-length?"
* * * * *
"Certainly."
"The longer rays of visible light will not penetrate as deeply into a
given substance as the shorter ultra-violet rays. This visitor is
evidently from some unexplored and, indeed, unknown cavern in the depths
of the earth where visible light has never penetrated. Apparently in
this cavern the color of the inhabitants is ultra-violet, and hence
invisible to us."
"You are beyond my depth, Doctor."
"Pardon me. You understand, of course, what color is? When sunlight,
which is a mixture of all colors from infra-red to ultra-violet
inclusive, falls on an object, certain rays are reflected and certain
others are absorbed. If the red rays are reflected and all others
absorbed, the object appears red to our eyes. If all the rays are
reflected, the object appears white, and if all are absorbed, it appears
black."
"I understand that."
"The human eye cannot detect ultra-violet. Suppose then, that we have an
object, either animate or inanimate, the surface of which reflects only
ultra-violet light, what will be the result? The object will be
invisible."
"I should think it would be black if all the rays except the
ultra-violet were absorbed."
"It would, but mark, I did not say the others were absorbed. Are you
familiar with fluorescein?"
"No."
"I think you are. It is the dye used in making changeable silk. If we
fill a glass container with a fluorescein solution and look at it by
reflected light it appears green. If we look at it by transmitted light,
that is, light which has traversed the solution, it appears red. In
other words, this is a substance which reflects green light, allows a
free passage to red light, and absorbs all other light. This creature we
are after, if my theory is correct, is composed of a substance which
allows free passage to all of the visible light rays and at the same
time reflects ultra-violet light. Do I make this clear?"
* * * * *
"Perfectly."
"Very well, then. My apparatus will project forward a beam of
ultra-violet light which will be in much greater concentration than
exists in an incandescent electric light. It is my hope that this light
will be reflected by the body of the creature to a sufficient to allow
me to make a photograph of it."
"But won't your lens prevent the ultra-violet light from reaching your
plate?"
"An ordinary lens made of optical glass would do so, but I have a camera
here equipped with a rock crystal lens, which will allow ultra-violet
light to pass through it practically unhindered, and with very slight
distortion. When I add that I will have my camera charged with X-ray
film, a film which is peculiarly sensitive to the shorter wave-lengths,
you will see that I will have a fair chance of success."
"It sounds logical. Would you allow me to accompany you when you make
your attempt?"
"I will be glad of your company, if you can drive a tank. I want to take
Carnes with me, and the tank will only hold two besides the driver."
"I can drive a tractor."
"In that case you should master the tricks of tank driving in short
order. Get familiar with it and we'll appoint you as driver. We'll be
ready to go in to-night, but I am going to wait a day. Our friend was
fed last night, and there is less chance he'll be about."
* * * * *
The early part of the next evening was marked by howls and screams
coming from the mouth of the cave. As the night wore on the noises were
quite evidently coming nearer and the sentries watched the cave mouth
nervously, ready to bolt and scatter according to their orders at the
first alarm. About two A. M. the doctor and Carnes climbed into the tank
beside Lieutenant Leffingwell, and the machine moved slowly into the
cave. A search-light on the front of the tank lighted the way for them
and, attached to a frame which held it some distance ahead of them, was
a luckless sheep.
"Keep your eye on the mutton, Carnes," cautioned the doctor. "As soon as
anything happens to it, shut off the search-light and let me try to get
a picture. As soon as I have made my exposures I'll tell you, and you
can snap it on again. Lieutenant, when the picture is made, turn your
tank and make for the entrance to the cave. If we are lucky, we'll get
out."
Forward the tank crawled, the sheep bleating and trying to break loose
from the bonds which held it. It was impossible to hear much over the
roar of the motor, but presently Dr. Bird leaned forward, his eyes
shining.
"I smell musk," he announced. "Get ready for action."
Even as he spoke the sheep was suddenly lifted into the air. It gave a
final bleat of terror, and then its head was torn from its body.
"Quick, Carnes!" shouted the doctor.
The search-light went out, and Carnes and the lieutenant could hear the
slide of the ultra-violet light which Dr. Bird was manipulating open.
For two or three minutes the doctor worked with his apparatus.
"All right!" he cried suddenly. "Lights on and get out of here!"
Carnes snapped on the search-light and Lieutenant Leffingwell swung the
tank around and headed for the cave mouth. For a few feet their progress
was unhindered and then the tank ceased its forward motion, although the
motor still roared and the track slid on the cave floor. Carnes watched
with horror as one side of the tank bent slowly in toward him. There was
a rending sound, and a portion of the heavy steel fabric was torn away.
Dr. Bird bent over something on the floor of the tank. Presently he
straightened up and threw a small object into the darkness. There was a
flash of light, and bits of flaming phosphorus flew in every direction.
The anchor which held the tank was suddenly loosed and the machine
crawled forward at full speed, while a roar as of escaping air mingled
with a bellowing shriek burdened the smoke-laden air.
"Faster!" cried the doctor, as he threw another grenade.
* * * * *
Lieutenant Leffingwell got the last bit of speed possible out of the
tank and they reached the cave mouth without further molestation.
"I had an idea that our friend wouldn't care to pass through a
phosphorus screen," said Dr. Bird with a chuckle as he climbed out of
the tank. "He must have been rather severely burned the other day, and
once burned is usually twice shy. Where is Major Brown?"
The commanding officer stepped forward.
"Drive a couple of cattle into the cave, Major," directed Dr. Bird. "I
want to fill that brute up and keep him quiet for a while. I'm going to
develop my films."
Lieutenant Leffingwell and Carnes peered over the doctor's shoulders as
he manipulated his films in a developing bath. Gradually vague lines and
blotches made their appearance on one of the films, but the form was
indistinct. Dr. Bird dropped the films in a fixing tank and straightened
up.
"We have something, gentlemen," he announced, "but I can't tell yet how
clear it is. It will take those films fifteen minutes to fix, and then
we'll know."
In a quarter of an hour he lifted the first film from the tank and held
it to the light. The film showed a blank. With an exclamation of
disappointment he lifted a second and third film from the tank, with the
same result He raised the fourth one.
"Good Lord!" gasped Carnes.
* * * * *
In the plate could be plainly seen the hind quarters of the sheep held
in the grasp of such a monster as even the drug-laden brain of an opium
smoker never pictured. Judging from the sheep, the monster stood about
twenty feet tall, and its frame was surmounted by a head resembling an
overgrown frog. Enormous jaws were opened to seize the sheep but, to the
amazement of the three observers, the jaws were entirely toothless.
Where teeth were to be expected, long parallel ridges of what looked
like bare bone, appeared, without even a rudimentary segregation into
teeth. The body of the monster was long and snakelike, and was borne on
long, heavy legs ending in feet with three long toes, armed with vicious
claws. The crowning horror of the creature was its forelegs. There were
of enormous length, thin and attenuated looking, and ended in huge
misshapen hands, knobby and blotched, which grasped the sheep in the
same manner as human hands. The eyes were as large as dinner plates, and
they were glaring at the camera with an expression of fiendish
malevolence which made Carnes shudder.
"How does that huge thing ever get through that crack we examined?"
demanded the lieutenant.
Dr. Bird rubbed his head thoughtfully.
"It's not an amphibian," he muttered, "as is plainly shown by the shape
of the limbs and the lack of a tail, and yet it appears to have scales
of the true fish type. It corresponds to no recovered fossil, and I am
inclined to believe it is unique. The nervous organisation must be very
low, judging from the lack of forehead and the general conformation. It
has enormous strength, and yet the arms look feeble."
"It can't get through that crack," insisted the lieutenant.
"Apparently not," replied the doctor. "Wait a moment, though. Look at
this!"
He pointed to the great disproportion between the length and diameter of
the forelegs, and then to the hind legs.
"Either this is grave distortion or there is something mighty queer
about that conformation. No animal could be constructed like that."
* * * * *
He turned the film so that an oblique light fell on it. As he did so he
gave a cry of astonishment.
"Look here!" he said sharply. "It does get through that crack! Look at
those arms and hands! There is the answer. This creature is tall and
broad, but from front to rear it can measure only a few inches. The same
must be true of the froglike head. That animal has been developed to
live and move in a low roofed cavern, and to pass through openings only
a few inches wide. Its bulk is all in two dimensions!"
"I believe you're right," said Carnes as he studied the film.
"There is no doubt of it," answered the doctor. "Look at those paws,
too, Carnes. That substance isn't bone, it's gum. The thing is so young
and helpless that it hasn't cut its teeth yet. It must be a baby, and
that is the reason why it made its way into the cave when no other of
its kind ever has."
"How large are full grown ones if this is a baby?" asked the
lieutenant.
"The Lord alone knows," replied Dr. Bird. "I hope that I never have to
face one and find out. Well, now that we know what we are fighting, we
ought to be able to settle its hash."
"High explosive?" suggested the lieutenant.
"I don't think so. With such a low nervous organization, we would have
to tear it practically to pieces to kill it, and I am anxious to keep it
from mutilation for scientific study. I have an idea, but I'll have to
study a while before I am sure of the details. Send me the radio
operator."
The next day the Bureau mechanics began to dismount the apparatus from
the tank and to assemble another elaborate contrivance. Before they had
made an end of the work additional equipment arrived from Washington,
which was incorporated in the new set-up. At length Dr. Bird pronounced
himself ready for the attempt.
* * * * *
Under his direction, three cattle were driven into the cave and there
tethered. They were there the next morning unharmed, but the second
night the now familiar bellowing and howling came from the depths of the
cave and in the morning two of the cattle were gone.
"That will keep him quiet for a day or two," said the doctor, "and now
to work!"
The tank made its way into the cave, dragging after it two huge cables
which led to an engine-driven generator outside the cave. These cables
were attached to the terminals of a large motor which was set up in the
cave near the place where the cattle were customarily tethered. This
motor was the actuating force which turned two generators, one large and
one small. The smaller one was mounted on a platform on wheels, which
also contained the spark gaps, the reflectors and other apparatus which
produced the beam of ultra-violet light which had been used to
photograph the monster.
From the larger generator led two copper bars. One of these was
connected to a huge copper plate which was laid flat on the floor of the
cave. The other led to a platform which was erected on huge porcelain
insulators some fifteen feet above the floor. Huge condensers were set
up on this platform, and Dr. Bird announced himself in readiness.
A steer was dragged into the cave and up a temporary runway which led to
the platform containing the condensers, and there tied with the copper
bus bar from the larger generator fastened to three flexible copper
straps which led around the animal's body. When this had been completed,
everyone except the doctor, Carnes, and Lieutenant Leffingwell left the
cave. These three crouched behind the search-light which sent a mild
beam of ultra-violet onto the platform where the steer was held. The
engine outside the cave was started, and the three men waited with tense
nerves.
For several hours nothing happened. The steer tried from time to time to
move and, finding it impossible, set up plaintive bellows for liberty.
"I wish something would happen," muttered the lieutenant. "This is
getting on my nerves.
"Something is about to happen," replied Dr. Bird grimly. "Listen to that
steer."
* * * * *
The bellowing of the steer had suddenly increased in volume and, added
to the note of discontent, was a note of fright which had previously
been absent. Dr. Bird bent over his ultra-violet search-light and made
some adjustments. He handed a helmetlike arrangement to each of his
companions and slipped one on over his head.
"I can't see a thing, Doctor," said Carnes in a muffled voice.
"The objects at which you are looking absorb rather than reflect
ultra-violet light," said the doctor. "This is a sort of a fluoroscope
arrangement, and it isn't perfect at all. However, when the monster
comes along, I am pretty sure that you will be able to see it. You may
see a little more as your eyes get accustomed to it."
"I can see very dimly," announced the lieutenant in a moment.
Dimly the walls of the cave and the platform before them began to take
vague shape. The three stared intently down the beam of ultra-violet
light which the doctor directed down the passageway leading deeper into
the cave.
"Good Lord!" ejaculated Carnes suddenly.
Slowly into the field of vision came the hideous figure they had seen on
the film. As it moved forward a rustling, slithering sound could be
heard, even over the bellowing of the steer and the hum of the
apparatus. The odor of musk became evident.
Along the floor toward them the thing slid. Presently it reared up on
its hind legs and its enormous bulk became evident. It turned somewhat
sideways and the correctness of Dr. Bird's hypothesis as to its peculiar
shape was proved. All of the bulk of the creature was in two dimensions.
Forward it moved, and the horrible human hands stretched forward, while
the mouth split in a wide, toothless grin. Nearer the doomed steer the
creature approached, and then the reaching hands closed on the animal.
There was a blinding flash, and the monster was hurled backward as
though struck by a thunderbolt, while a horrible smell of musk and
burned flesh filled the air.
"After it! Quick!" cried the doctor as he sprang forward.
* * * * *
Before he could reach the prostrate creature it moved and then, slowly
at first, but with rapidly gaining speed, it slithered over the floor in
retreat. Dr. Bird's hand swung through an arc, and there was a deafening
crash as a hand-grenade exploded on the back of the fleeing monster.
An unearthly scream came from the creature, and its motion changed from
a steady forward glide to a series of convulsive jerks. Leffingwell and
Carnes threw grenades, but they went wide of their mark, and the monster
began to again increase its speed. Another volley of grenades was thrown
and one hit scored, which slowed the monster somewhat but did not arrest
the steady forward movement.
"Any more bombs?" demanded the doctor.
"Damn!" he cried as he received negative answers. "The current wasn't
strong enough. It's going to get away."
Carnes jerked his automatic from under his armpit and poured a stream of
bullets into the fleeing monster. Slower and slower the motion of the
creature became, and its movements again became jerky and convulsive.
"Keep it in sight!" cried the doctor. "We may get it yet!"
Cautiously the three men followed the retreating horror, Leffingwell
pushing before him the platform holding the ultra-violet ray apparatus.
The chase led them over familiar ground.
"There is the crack!" cried the lieutenant.
"Too late!" replied the doctor.
He rushed forward and seized the lower limb of the monster and tried
with all his strength to arrest its flight, but despite all that he
could do it slid sideways through the crack in the wall and disappeared.
A final backward kick of its leg threw the doctor twenty feet against
the far wall of the cave.
"Are you hurt, Doctor?" cried Carnes.
"No, I'm all right. Put on your masks and start the gas! Quick! That may
stop it before it gets in far!"
* * * * *
The three adjusted gas masks and thrust the mouths of two gas cylinders
which were on the light truck into the crack, and opened the valves. The
hissing of the gas was accompanied by a thrashing, writhing sound from
the bowels of the earth for a few minutes, but the sound retreated and
finally died away into an utter silence.
"And that's that!" cried the doctor half an hour later as they took off
their gas masks outside the cave. "It got away from us. Carnes, how soon
can we get a train back to Washington?"
"What kind of a report are you going to make to the Bureau, Doctor?"
asked Carnes as they sat in the smoker of a southern train, headed for
the capital.
"I'm not going to put in any report, Carnes," replied the doctor. "I
haven't got the creature or any part of it to show, and no one would
believe me. I am going to maintain a discreet silence about the whole
matter."
"But you have your photograph to show, Doctor, and you have my evidence
and Lieutenant Leffingwell's."
"The photograph might have been faked and I might have doped both of
you. In any case, your words are no better than mine. No, indeed,
Carnes, when I failed to make the current strong enough to kill it
outright I made the first of the moves which bind me to silence,
although I thought that two hundred thousand volts would be enough.
"The second failure I made was when I missed him with my second grenade,
although I doubt if all six would have stopped him. My third failure was
when we failed to get a sufficient concentration of cyanide gas into
that hole in a hurry. The thing is so badly crippled that it will die,
but it may take hours, or even days, for it to do so. It has already
made its way so far into the earth that we couldn't reach it by blasting
without danger of bringing the whole place down on our heads. Even if we
could blast our way into the place it came from I wouldn't dare open a
path which would allow Lord only knows what terrible monsters to invade
the earth. When the soldiers have finished stopping that crack with ten
feet of solid masonry, I think the barrier will hold, even against that
critter's papa and mamma and all its relatives. Then Mammoth Cave will
be safe for visitors again. That latter fact is the only report which I
will make."
"It is a dandy story to go to waste," said Carnes soberly.
"Tell it then, if you wish, and get laughed at for your pains. No,
Carnes, you must learn one thing. A man like Bolton, for instance, will
implicitly believe that a four leaf clover in his watch-charm will bring
him good luck, and that carrying a buckeye keeps rheumatism away from
him; but tell him a bit of sober fact like this, attested by three
reliable witnesses and a good photograph, and you'll just get laughed at
for your pains. I'm going to keep my mouth shut."
"So be it, then!" replied Carnes with a sigh.
Phantoms of Reality
A COMPLETE NOVEL
_By Ray Cummings_
[Illustration: _The office room faded.... I was lying on another
floor.... New walls sprang around me._]
[Sidenote: Red Sensua's knife came up dripping--and the two adventurers
knew that chaos and bloody revolution had been unleashed in that shadowy
kingdom of the fourth dimension.]
CHAPTER I
_Wall Street--or the Open Road?_
When I was some fifteen years old, I once made the remark, "Why, that's
impossible."
The man to whom I spoke was a scientist. He replied gently, "My boy,
when you are grown older and wiser you will realize that nothing is
impossible."
Somehow, that statement stayed with me. In our swift-moving wonderful
world I have seen it proven many times. They once thought it impossible
to tell what lay across the broad, unknown Atlantic Ocean. They thought
the vault of the heavens revolved around the earth. It was impossible
for it to do anything else, because they could see it revolve. It was
impossible, too, for anything to be alive and yet be so small that one
might not see it. But the microscope proved the contrary. Or again, to
talk beyond the normal range of the human voice was impossible, until
the telephone came to show how simply and easily it might be done.
I never forgot that physician's remark. And it was repeated to me some
ten years later by my friend, Captain Derek Mason, on that memorable
June night of 1929.
My name is Charles Wilson. I was twenty-five that June of 1929. Although
I had lived all of my adult life in New York City, I had no relatives
there and few friends.
* * * * *
I had known Captain Mason for several years. Like myself, he seemed one
who walked alone in life. He was an English gentleman, perhaps thirty
years old. He had been stationed in the Bermudas, I understood, though
he seldom spoke of it.
I always felt that I had never seen so attractive a figure of a man as
this Derek Mason. An English aristocrat, he was, straight and tall and
dark, and rather rakish, with a military swagger. He affected a small,
black mustache. A handsome, debonair fellow, with an easy grace of
manner: a modern d'Artagnan. In an earlier, less civilized age, he would
have been expert with sword and stick, I could not doubt. A man who
could capture the hearts of women with a look. He had always been to me
a romantic figure, and a mystery that seemed to shroud him made him no
less so.
A friendship had sprung up between Derek Mason and me, perhaps because
we were such opposite types! I am an American, of medium height, and
medium build. Ruddy, with sandy hair. Derek Mason was as meticulous of
his clothes, his swagger uniforms, as the most perfect Beau Brummel. Not
so myself. I am careless of dress and speech.
I had not seen Derek Mason for at least a month when, one June
afternoon, a note came from him. I went to his apartment at eight
o'clock the same evening. Even about his home there seemed a mystery. He
lived alone with one man servant. He had taken quarters in a high-class
bachelor apartment building near lower Fifth Avenue, at the edge of
Greenwich Village.
All of which no doubt was rational enough, but in this building he had
chosen the lower apartment at the ground-floor level. It adjoined the
cellar. It was built for the janitor, but Derek had taken it and fixed
it up in luxurious fashion. Near it, in a corner of the cellar, he had
boarded off a square space into a room. I understood vaguely that it was
a chemical laboratory. He had never discussed it, nor had I ever been
shown inside it. Unusual, mysterious enough, and that a captain of the
British military should be an experimental scientist was even more
unusual. Yet I had always believed that for a year or two Derek had been
engaged in some sort of chemical or physical experiment. With all his
military swagger he had the precise, careful mode of thought
characteristic of the man of scientific mind.
* * * * *
I recall that when I got his note with its few sentences bidding me come
to see him, I had a premonition that it marked the beginning of
something strange. As though the portals of a mystery were opening to
me!
Nothing is impossible! Nevertheless I record these events into which I
was plunged that June evening with a very natural reluctance. I expect
no credibility. If this were the year 2000, my narrative doubtless would
be tame enough. Yet in 1929 it can only be called a fantasy. Let it go
at that. The fantasy of to-day is the sober truth of to-morrow. And by
the day after, it is a mere platitude. Our world moves swiftly.
Derek received me in his living-room. He admitted me himself. He told me
that his man servant was out. It was a small room, with leather-covered
easy chairs, rugs on its hardwood floor, and sober brown portieres at
its door and windows. A brown parchment shade shrouded the electrolier
on the table. It was the only light in the room. It cast its mellow
sheen upon Derek's lean graceful figure as he flung himself down and
produced cigarettes.
He said, "Charlie, I want a little talk with you. I've something to tell
you--something to offer you."
He held his lighter out to me, with its tiny blue alcohol flame under my
cigarette. And I saw that his hand was trembling.
* * * * *
"But I don't understand what you mean," I protested.
He retorted, "I'm suggesting that you might be tired of being a clerk in
a brokerage office. Tired of this humdrum world that we call
civilization. Tired of Wall Street."
"I am, Derek. Heavens, that's true enough."
His eyes held me. He was smiling half whimsically: his voice was only
half serious. Yet I could see, in the smoldering depths of those
luminous dark eyes, a deadly seriousness that belied his smiling lips
and his gay tone.
He interrupted me with, "And I offer you a chance for deeds of high
adventuring. The romance of danger, of pitting your wits against
villainy to make right triumph over wrong, and to win for yourself power
and riches--and perhaps a fair lady...."
"Derek, you talk like a swashbuckler of the middle ages."
I thought he would grin, but he turned suddenly solemn.
"I'm offering to make you henchman to a king, Charlie."
"King of what? Where?"
He spread his lean brown hands with a gesture. He shrugged. "What
matter? If you seek adventure, you can find it--somewhere. If you feel
the lure of romance--it will come to you."
I said, "Henchman to a king?"
But still he would not smile. "Yes. If I were king. I'm serious.
Absolutely. In all this world there is no one who cares a damn about me.
Not in this world, but...."
He checked himself. He went on, "You are the same. You have no
relatives?"
"No. None that ever think of me."
"Nor a sweetheart. Or have you?"
"No," I smiled. "Not yet. Maybe never."
"But you are too interested in Wall Street to leave it for the open
road?" He was sarcastic now. "Or do you fear deeds of daring? Do you
want to right a great wrong? Rescue an oppressed people, overturn the
tyranny of an evil monarch, and put your friend and the girl he loves
upon the throne? Or do you want to go down to work as usual in the
subway to-morrow morning? Are you afraid that in this process of
becoming henchman to a king you may perchance get killed?"
I matched his caustic tone. "Let's hear it, Derek."