Two hours later Randall stood stiffly at attention in his somewhat
oversized steward's uniform while eleven passengers filed into the
Diamvator, chattering in excitement over their coming adventure.
Randall wondered with a wry smile what their reactions would be if they
knew what had happened to the Diamvator's passengers on three preceding
trips. The secret agent had not been entirely in agreement with his
Chief's orders that the mysteries be suppressed and that passengers
still be accepted. But he saw the logic of keeping the trap baited. And
Randall realized, with a warm feeling inside, that his Chief depended
upon him to protect the eleven lives which were the bait in a trap
which he hoped fervently would not close upon those who set it!
Slowly the chattering passengers took their places in the comfortable
chairs. After the yard-thick door had swung ponderously shut, and the
outside bar had been thrust home, Randall cautioned the passengers to
keep their seats, then found his own place.
There came a sudden breathless drop as the upper lock opened, and
the steel arms released the Vator upon the cushioning column of air
above the next lower lock. A sibilant hiss sounded through the room as
twelve people fought for breath when the Vator floor tried to drop from
beneath them.
Two women screamed in high thin voices that tore at the agent's ears.
The fat traveling salesman from New Orleans clapped his plump hands to
his throat, and his eyes looked like pale blue marbles. The bronzed big
game hunter looked as if he were face to face with a lion crouched for
attack. The white-haired professional gentleman colored as if he had
swallowed a chameleon.
Slowly the falling sensation faded, and a vast sigh of relief sounded
through the room. Then a second chorus of gasps arose from eleven
throats. The young engineer on his way to the uranium mines in Borneo
rasped out in a choked voice: "Just--passing through the lower
lock--into--near vacuum!"
Randall nodded with effort and waited breathlessly until finally the
Vator had attained an almost constant acceleration.
When the eleven passengers had lost a little of their pallor, and a few
had even begun to laugh and talk among themselves, Randall arose and
strolled around the room.
He quietly examined the massive door which could be opened only from
the outside. Then he turned and strolled about the room, carefully but
covertly scrutinizing every person aboard.
There were four middle-aged school teachers who were trying to recover
the vicarious thrills of vanished youth.
A young couple with the obvious devotion of honeymooners occupied the
lounge across the room.
A reserved old gentleman with a mane of white hair and a professional
mien sat in the big Morris chair to the right of the newlyweds. Randall
immediately catalogued him as a doctor, or perhaps a scientist of some
sort.
On the other side of the four school ma'ms was a chap Randall couldn't
quite analyze. He was tall and spare and lithe, with the bronze of the
sun in his cheeks, and a thousand tiny wrinkles like ripples surrounded
the deep blue of his eyes.
Randall instinctively liked the chap. He looked wholesome and
true-blue. He looked like a man who'd seen a lot of the world and liked
most of it.
The young engineer, the lion hunter, and the fat traveling salesman
completed the list of passengers.
The trouble was, Randall concluded, there wasn't a person in the Vator
who looked as if he could be guilty of any real crime, much less the
wholesale kidnappings, which had evidently taken place.
But if the enigma of the Earth Tube were not instigated by some one in
the Vator, how in the name of a thousand mysteries could it happen at
all?
Randall shrugged. It looked as if a philosophical approach was worse
than hopeless.
He'd have to map out a plan of direct action. A plan that would tell
him more of the true characters of his eleven companions.
He looked at the clock on the mantel. It's dial showed a little after
4:00 P.M., so according to the schedule, the Vator should be rapidly
nearing the center of the Earth.
Randall started toward the professional gentleman in the big chair. He
had completed four steps when sudden catastrophe blasted all plans from
his mind.
* * * * *
The women didn't scream this time. It all happened too quickly. There
wasn't even time for Randall to complete the step he had started.
Thunder with a thousand toneless voices echoed through his mind.
Lightning with the hues of alien spectra shot blindingly into his eyes.
He felt as though he had suddenly grasped the two poles of an electric
circuit. His muscles contracted spasmodically and numbness clutched
with deadly anesthesia at his groping mind.
When the stupor finally began to retreat from Randall's bewildered
consciousness, the first sounds he identified were the delayed screams
of the four school ma'ms and the bride.
He cautiously opened his smarting eyes and looked around. What he saw
was far from reassuring, for it was vividly apparent that they were no
longer in the Diamvator. In fact, there was no sign whatever to be seen
of the Tube Car!
Randall blinked, looked again. He and his eleven companions were
suspended like fallen acrobats in a huge net constructed of
closely-woven metallic strands.
A dozen feet above his head was a coruscating sheet of stratified
radiance that arched across like a miniature sky, forming a
hemispherical dome of light over the great net.
Randall cleared his throat noisily. He had stalked desperate criminals
into their hiding places.
He had daringly matched cunning with determined dope rings. He had
stood face-to-face with armed murderers, but never as now had he felt
so completely at a loss. Never had he been so neatly and easily trapped.
But what was behind it all? And how had it been done? What earthly--or
other--agency could contrive to tear twelve people from the interior of
a locked metal car traveling in excess of two thousand miles an hour?
Randall shrugged and turned to examine his eleven charges.
The newlyweds, Charles and Evelyn McMahon, were clutching each other
frantically as if their very salvation lay in their proximity.
Blake Garnet, the lion hunter, had cautiously gained his feet and was
edging gingerly across the net toward Randall.
The four school ma'ms were trying frantically to sit up, clutching each
other as if separation spelled death.
Randall remembered their names because they were so thoroughly, almost
ludicrously American. Retta Shields, Laura Hanks and Sarah Nelson were
the three thin ones, and Mamie Wilson was the plump, good-natured one.
Paul Gerard, the white-haired professional gentleman, was interestedly
gazing up at the coruscating hemisphere of radiance.
Angus McClellan, the lean whimsical chap whom Randall hadn't been able
to catalogue, was talking in low tones with Gordon Malherne, the young
engineer.
Randall started forward to meet Blake Garnet, when suddenly the net
began to sink beneath his feet.
Down and down it sank, until Randall felt a firm foundation under his
feet. Then the edges of the net were pulled up and over until the
twelve humans were rolled pell-mell together in the bottom of a huge
woven bag. A huge eye peered in at the twelve startled humans. An eye
that glinted light from a thousand separate facets.
Randall heard his own gasp amid the bedlam of mingled screams and
shouts from the passengers. Then a huge clawed arm reached down through
the opening at the top of the net bag. Reached straight for the huddled
humans.
Randall felt the chitinous limb slide past his body, then a frenzied
scream dinned in his ears.
The kicking thrashing body of Evelyn McMahon was lifted high in the air
to disappear through the opening above.
Her husband had clutched her until she was torn from his grasp, and
now, with a low cry of anguish he started climbing frantically up the
strands of the net.
He had clambered half the distance when the chitin-covered limb
appeared again, and Charles McMahon went to join his bride.
Randall was heartsick. He could do nothing, absolutely nothing, and he
knew it was only a matter of seconds until that huge claw would return
for another struggling, screaming human.
He hoped frantically that he would escape the horrible suspense; that
he himself would be the next victim. However, he wasn't. He had to
wait until two of the school teachers and the young engineer were gone
before the opposing claws closed around him.
He waited for the crushing violence of those great talons, but instead,
there was only a gentle pressure as he felt himself lifted smoothly and
easily from the net.
In another moment he was set free in a small open field covered with a
thick carpet of grass. A tall stockade constructed of foot-thick wooden
piling, sharpened at the upper ends, enclosed fifteen or twenty acres
of field.
* * * * *
He looked around and saw Charles McMahon trying to calm his sobbing
bride, and Gordon Malherne, the engineer, chafing the hands of the two
school teachers who had preceded him.
Randall started toward the group, when a shadow passed over him, and
Doctor Gerard was released from the great claw almost beside him. The
white-haired scientist scrambled to his feet and turned toward Randall
with a grimace.
"Nice business," he said. "I used to consider Entomology a respectable
profession, and I fancied myself quite capable in my line. But from the
looks of our captor, I guess my job has grown too big for me!"
Randall tried to smile at the other's joke, but his grin wasn't very
successful. "Let's see what we can do for the women folk," he suggested.
Their work was immediately complicated by the arrival of the other two
teachers in quick succession. They were finally beginning to have a
little success in quieting the trembling women, when the claw again
appeared, depositing Jerome Jackson beside them.
The fat little salesman scrambled to his feet with a squall of fear.
His cheeks quivered like twin puddings, and his eyes seemed almost to
be growing on stalks.
"Wha--what was it?" he quavered.
Randall almost smiled. "Doctor Gerard seems to think it's somewhat
buggy," he replied. "You can draw your own conclusions."
Jackson was about to reply when the claw again descended, and Blake
Garnet was released.
His black eyes were inky pools of consternation, and his healthy bronze
had faded a dozen shades. He recovered his composure quickly when he
saw his companions, and a thin smile fought through.
"Looks like a one-bug plague to me," he remarked. "--Whoops, here comes
our cowpuncher!"
Angus McClellan still had his one-sided grin as he shook his long lanky
body and looked quizzically at the disheveled group of humans.
"Never had anything like that around Sidney," he said. "Chamber of
Commerce wouldn't allow it. What's the next installment anyway of the
'Clue of the Chitin Claw'?"