IN CAVERNS BELOW
By STANTON A. COBLENTZ
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Wonder Stories March, April, May 1935.
It was published later using the title Hidden World.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
If we were told to list a dozen writers whom we considered great
science-fiction authors, we should certainly place the name of
Stanton A. Coblentz high up in the list.
When Coblentz writes a short story, it is excellent, but when he
composes a novel, such as the present one, you will have to go far
and wide to find a better story.
We sincerely believe that "In Caverns Below" will go down in
science-fiction history with the other novels of Stanton A.
Coblentz and will be re-read by the ever-growing multitude of
science-fiction fans during future decades.
Here we find everything that distinguishes our author's work from
all others--what more can we say?
* * * * *
It is now five years since Philip Clay and I were given up by the world
as lost, five years since we plunged into that appalling adventure
from which, even today, we have barely begun to recover. During nine
tenths of that time, we dwelt far from the sight of our fellow men in a
remote and incredible land of wizardry and terror; we made discoveries
which, we are certain, have never been surpassed since Columbus voyaged
westward to the New World; we encountered perils that we still shudder
to recall, and experienced triumphs that make us sigh regretfully in
recollection. And it is only by the rarest of good fortune that we
survive to tell the story to those who, long ago, wept at the news of
our passing.
One fact in the case, and only one, will be remembered by the public.
In the autumn of 1929, newspapers throughout the country reported that
Philip Clay and Frank Comstock, mining engineers and boon companions,
disappeared in the depths of a silver mine in Nevada. It was generally
believed that a cave-in of unexplained origin had been responsible for
their death, and that they had been crushed beyond recognition, for no
trace of their mutilated bodies was ever found. The world, with its
insatiable appetite for tragedy and horror, was naturally interested
for a time, but as the days and weeks wore by and no further news
was forthcoming, public attention was diverted to other affairs, and
Comstock and Clay were forgotten....
Yet it is I, Frank Comstock, who write these words. It is I, Frank
Comstock, who a few months ago returned as if from the grave, to
announce that Clay and I had not been killed in the mine disaster. It
is I, Frank Comstock, who have come back to record my experiences, and
to proclaim that, even in this twentieth century, there are more worlds
about us than our philosophy has ever taken into account.
Let me therefore go back over these harrowing five years and try to
report, as simply and accurately as I can, each episode in the whole
chain of extraordinary events.
It will be needless to linger over the preliminaries, to tell how Clay
and I, chums at college, had been partners since our graduation from
Western Institute of Mining twelve years before, how we had pooled
our fortunes and joined our lives and spent all of our time in mutual
experiments and enterprises in the back-regions of Montana, Idaho, and
other states of the mountain belt. Passing over all this, let me tell
how, in September, 1929, we were called to pass judgment upon the old
Carlson Flat silver mine, which an eastern syndicate was just reopening
in a particularly remote region of central Nevada. I recall how, for
two days, we trailed with our pack-team over the desert mountains,
our nostrils assaulted by the fine alkaline dust and our eyes wearied
by the never-ending gray and yellow of the sagebrush. "A God-forsaken
country!" muttered Clay, his fine blue eyes lighted with a reminiscent
gleam, as he thought of the wooded mountains of the north. "Heavens,
but I'll be thankful when we get out of here!"
Little, however, did he realize how long it would be before we would
get out!
At last, to our relief, we reached Carlson Flat--as desolate a spot as
was imaginable, at the edge of a narrow barren plateau just beneath
a projecting stony ridge that beetled a thousand feet above us.
Fortunately, the location mattered little, since we spent most of the
time underground; but we did not particularly relish our task in that
old, long-abandoned mine, whose shafts were not only unusually dank and
narrow, but exceptionally deep. For some reason that I cannot explain,
a premonition came to us both; it was as if some voice from within us
cried out, "Flee! Flee, before it is too late!" We seemed to read some
nameless menace in those dark sloping galleries, lighted only by the
fluttering illumination of our torches; and, accustomed though we were
to underground labyrinths, we somehow could not laugh away the sense of
peril that confronted us in every foot-fall and shadow.
"Guess we're growing soft-headed in our old age!" suggested Clay, with
a forced attempt at jocularity.
But I still recall how his rugged face, indistinctly visible in the
glare of the flashlight, took on a troubled expression as he uttered
these words; and I know how his unspoken fears communicated themselves
to me in a shudder of apprehension.
None the less, being reasonable beings, we would not let our misgivings
deter us from investigating the mine. Would that we had taken warning
from our own sense of danger! For, on the third day, we were hurled
into catastrophe.
It was then that we had decided to inspect the furthest and deepest
section of the diggings. Accompanied by two or three workmen and an
official of the company, we made our way tortuously through galleries
that seemed miles long, and penetrated the dim, dank descent hundreds
of feet beneath the desert floor. As we groped and fumbled silently
downward, I was in far from a cheerful mood, for that weird, mysterious
feeling of peril was still with me, the feeling of walking into a trap!
Besides, as if to lend a basis of reason to my forebodings, what was
that sudden faint trembling of the earth that I seemed to feel every
now and then, that occasional rude jarring of the gallery floor, as
if from the concussion of a distant explosion?--or was it only my
imagination?
"Did you feel that?" I demanded of Clay, upon being shaken by the
severest of the tremors. But he merely snapped, "Feel what?" and the
pale light of the torches did not reveal the workings of his features.
"Seemed like an earthquake to me!" I muttered, as the ground beneath my
feet once more gave a slight, almost imperceptible fluttering.
"Earthquake? Nonsense!" flung back Clay. "How could it be? We're way
out of the earthquake belt, aren't we?"
I mumbled in the affirmative, but was not reassured.
Nevertheless, we said no more about the matter, and a few minutes
later we had reached the lower limits of the mine. Forgetting my
fears, I had pushed on with Clay ahead of our companions and was just
turning my flashlight on an ore-producing ledge at the bottom of the
gallery ... when suddenly there occurred that event which only too
completely justified my alarm.
Like many of life's crises, it was all over in a minute. Yet it seemed
infinitely prolonged, seemed packed with the experience of hours, of
days, almost of years. I can still relive the dagger-shaft of terror
that shot through me when the earth, without warning, gave a quick
convulsive lurch, like the deck of a vessel in a storm at sea; I can
still hear the sharp frightened exclamation from the throat of Clay and
the startled shouts of our companions from down the tunnel. Once more
I listen to the crunching, grinding, and groaning of the earth and the
low rumbling from far subterranean depths; I am again pitched headlong
to the floor as the ground beneath us heaves and threshes; I catch the
panic-gleam in the eyes of my companion as he tries vainly to clutch
a projecting spike of rock; then for an instant, as the commotion
momentarily subsides, I almost succeed in regaining my feet, only to be
hurled down again with a fury that leaves me bruised and bleeding.
As I strive for the second time to pick myself up, my ears ring with
a tumult as of an avalanche. With terrorizing force, the crash and
thunder of falling rock breaks upon my stunned senses; the roof of the
gallery has collapsed, and Clay and I are cut-off from our companions
in a chamber only a few yards across, at the extreme end of the tunnel!
Prisoners, both of us! By the wavering rays of a flashlight, we see
ourselves entombed in a stone-walled cell deep underground! But even
as this realization sweeps across our minds, still greater dread
overwhelms us. Our world again sways like a drunken sailor, there is a
fresh roaring in our ears, a huge rock is dislodged and crashes down
from the roof with a howl of demoniac menace, and then, at our very
feet, the tortured earth groans and opens, and a huge black fissure
spreads out beneath us!
Desperately, like mountain climbers on a crumbling precipice, we strive
to maintain our balance on the narrow floor of our prison. But we are
as helpless as babes. We see the fissure widening, spreading out like
the pitchy jaws of doom; we know that, in an instant, we will no longer
have a foothold; then, at the moment of supreme horror, the light in
Clay's flashlight flickers and goes out, and we are plunged into utter
darkness....
At the same time, clutching instinctively at the overhanging rocks,
which delay, but cannot halt our flight, we feel ourselves slipping.
I hear once again Clay's cry of consternation; I hear the uproar of
sliding earth and rock; I feel my arms and shoulders bruised and
mangled; I have a sense of suffocation, a sense of being buried beneath
tons of dead matter; then, all at once, a veil of quietness, of
vacancy, of oblivion blots out my consciousness.
CHAPTER II
A Mysterious Light
I have always marvelled that Clay and I lived through the cataclysm.
But probably we owe our survival to the fact that the fissure, far
from being perpendicular, sloped at an angle of only thirty or forty
degrees, so that, while rolling over and over in our descent, we were
at least spared a direct drop.
At all events, we finally did come to a stop without receiving any
fatal hurt. It may have been minutes, or it may have been hours, before
I recovered consciousness; but when at length I came to myself, it was
with a dull aching in the head, and with a sensation of soreness in
every limb and muscle.
"Where am I?" I gasped, still but hazily aware of what had happened,
and with the sickly, absurd feeling that perhaps I had died and was
reawakening in the Afterlife. And it was only the sound of another
human voice that brought me once more to my senses.
"Where are you? Would to God I knew!--down in hell, I guess!" came in
mumbled accents from an unseen figure.
"Much hurt, Phil?" I jerked out, striving vainly to locate my friend
amid the impenetrable blackness. And, as I spoke, I moved to a sitting
position and made my first effort to extricate myself from the rocks
and dust that buried me almost waist-deep.
"No, not hurt much!" came Clay's drawled reply. "A few little cuts and
bruises, more or less, and one black eye. But what does that amount
to? Couldn't use the eye down here, anyway!"
And then, after a moment of silence, he asked, "How about you, Frank?
Hope you're not banged up too much."
"No, I'm all right," I protested, as stanchly as I could, considering
that I felt as if I had been run through a threshing-machine.
"We'll sure be able to collect big damages!" proceeded Clay, as
optimistically as though we had already made our escape. "But say, old
pal, you certainly were right about the earthquake! That one was a
whopper! I didn't know they had them around this part of the country!"
"Neither did I!" I declared. And, even as I spoke, a violent shudder
once more went through me. The earth was again trembling!
"Guess the climate here isn't any too healthy!" decided my friend,
while from somewhere amid the darkness, I heard him shaking off the
débris and struggling to his feet. "Don't know where we are, Frank, but
I wouldn't mind being anywhere else! Come! Where are you, old fellow?"
As we had lost the flashlights in our fall, it took us several anxious
minutes to locate one another amid that tar-like blackness. Several
times we stumbled over unseen obstacles, and more than once we followed
a false lead; but at length, guided by the sound of each other's
voices, we brushed shoulders in the darkness. And thenceforth, like
lost children, we held hands lest we lose track of each other.
Where had we fallen?--to what hidden cavern deep in the earth's maw?
This was the question we asked ourselves many times, as we groped
our way down the sloping floor, we could not guess whither. Yet each
moment we were making discoveries. After a few minutes, as we shuffled
cautiously forward, we had passed the débris-littered area and found a
smooth stone floor slanting beneath our feet. And we discovered that, a
yard or two to each side of us, was a polished stone wall!
"Holy Jerusalem!" whistled my companion. "Who'd have thought the mine
reached down this far?"
"Mine?" I returned, derisively. "Your misfortunes must have gone to
your head, Phil! When did you ever see a mine with polished walls?"
"Well, what is it if not a mine?" he flung back in gruff challenge.
"What is it? Just tell me that!"
Not being able to answer, I remained silent. But a strange suspicion,
which had been forming in my mind, was gradually deepening; and
involuntarily I shuddered once more and pressed closer to my
friend--nor was I reassured by the renewed trembling of the earth which
from time to time interrupted our ruminations.
I am afraid that grim conjectures came into the mind of Clay also,
for he remained tense and silent for many minutes as we continued to
fumble, like blind men, down those uncanny subterranean corridors.
"The devil take us both!" he at last muttered, with an attempted levity
that did not serve to conceal his alarm. "You'd think we were going
straight down to Dante's Inferno! Why, I can almost feel the little
imps dancing in the darkness all about us!"
"The imps be damned!" I snapped in unseemly irritation.
"Most likely, that's what _we'll_ be," he returned, wryly. And then, in
soberer tones, he spoke again.
"But seriously, old man, where do you suppose we are?--in the pit of
some extinct volcano?"
"Possibly--but that doesn't explain why the walls are so smooth and
even."
"No, it doesn't. However, mightn't it be the channel of a dried-up
subterranean river? In the course of ages, the water might have washed
the walls smooth."
"It might have," I conceded, briefly. Yet deep within me, there was
the feeling, the persistent feeling, that it was not water that had
hollowed out the passageway.
For ten or fifteen minutes we plodded on without a word, moving at
a snail's pace in our anxiety, and not aware of any change in our
environment. The walls were still as polished and regular as ever;
the blackness was as absolute and as unbroken; the occasional jarring
of the earth continued at uneven intervals, growing a little more
pronounced than before, but disturbing us less, since we were now
becoming used to it.
Then, unexpectedly, the gallery curved, turning almost at right angles;
and, as we felt our way around the bend, it curved again at an even
sharper angle; then it curved once more, while, as if to add to our
bewilderment, we discovered several side-galleries branching off in
various directions.
At the same time, the thuddings of the earth grew more severe than ever
and they were accompanied by rumblings, roars, and reverberations of
terrifying force and insistency. Crash after crash burst upon our ears
as if from some remote storm-center--crash after crash that echoed and
re-echoed eerily in that narrow corridor, until our ear-drums ached
from the strain and our agitated hearts pumped with a thumping rapidity.
What could it be?--some volcanic disturbance in the heart of the earth?
So we were inclined to believe as, sweating with fear, we halted for a
consultation. In another moment, might we not feel the reek of sulphur
in our nostrils and gasp our last beneath the suffocating fumes?
For several minutes we conferred, but could reach no conclusion.
Standing there against the invisible cavern wall, with the earth almost
constantly quivering and with low, gruff, distant detonations dinning
upon our ears, we found it difficult, almost impossible to exchange
ideas. That terror which is close to madness was upon us both; and
since the most difficult thing to do was to do nothing at all, it was
not long before we were on our way again.
A moment later we were to receive a sharp surprise. Groping around
another bend in the gallery, we were startled to see, far ahead of
us, an indistinct patch of light. Vaguely rectangular in shape, and
of an unearthly greenish hue, it wavered and flickered strangely, at
times almost disappearing, at times flaring to a hectic, momentary
brilliance, shot through with flashes of red, orange, and violet. And,
simultaneously, the far-off thunders grew more deep-throated, with
occasional snarls and reports as of siege-artillery.
"Sacred Catfish!" muttered Clay in awe-stricken tones. "You could
almost believe the old yarns about Satan and his court of devils!"
I must confess that, hard-headed man of science though I pride myself
on being, a wave of superstitions fright went through me at these
words; some old ancestral terror had gripped me until my legs shook and
all but sank beneath me. Nevertheless, I strove desperately to rally
what remained of my strength.
"Court of devils?" I tossed back, mockingly. "The only devils are in
your imagination, Phil! It's clear enough what's wrong; the earth is
suffering from a little fit of indigestion, something out of gear down
here in her volcanic entrails. Most likely it'll clear up any moment."
Hardly were these words out of my mouth when the earth gave a lurch so
violent that we were both knocked off our feet. And for one instant,
the light from down the gallery became a sun-like illumination, by
whose glare I caught a glimpse of Clay's harried face, scarred and red
with newly clotted blood, with one eye half closed, and with a long
gash across the great dome of his forehead.
Probably I did not present a more inviting sight, for, as we both
picked ourselves up from the cavern floor, he exclaimed, "Say, old
fellow, I ought to have your picture now! The way you're looking, you'd
scare off a brigade of fighting Hottentots!"
Not thanking him for this compliment, I started away again along the
gallery, whose walls were now and then dimly visible by the flickering
light from ahead. All lingering idea that it was the channel of a
subterranean river was now dissipated! To our astonishment, we saw
that the ceiling formed a perfect triangle, an inverted V like the
roof of a house! Here was the handiwork of man--or else we were both
dreaming! But what man before us had penetrated to these abysmal
labyrinths?
But it was useless to speculate. Let us go forward and find out! It
is difficult for me today to say how Clay and I, fear-stricken and
wounded, found courage to press on through that hideous, down-sloping
cavern, where at any moment we might expect annihilation. Perhaps it
was that we realized the impossibility of retracing our footsteps
through the darkness; perhaps it was that the light ahead, mysterious
and frightening as it was, seemed less to be dreaded than the gloom
behind; perhaps it was that curiosity, which so often is the father of
recklessness, led us on moth-like toward the seduction of the far-off
radiance.
In any case, we did continue to move forward, though very slowly and
cautiously; and as by degrees we approached the light, we were relieved
to find that the earth trembled less violently and less often, and that
the illumination down the passageway grew more steady and distinct.
"See, Phil, I told you the earthquakes would be over soon!" I reassured
my companion; and he, not venturing a reply, merely quickened his
footsteps, as if in tacit agreement.
Little did either of us foresee how much more violent, how much more
amazing, how much more terrifying our adventures would be after we had
gained the longed-for haven of the light.