Terror out of the Past
By Raymond Z. Gallun
Perry Wilcox descends into the earth to solve
the secret of an incredibly ancient civilization.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Amazing Stories March 1940.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
"Rod!" Perry Wilcox shouted above the sound of bracewires singing in
the slipstream: "In the name of Mathuselah! Look! there!"
Doctor Roderick Murgatroyd's shrewd old eyes probed swiftly along
the line of Perry's pointing arm. For a moment he couldn't get it at
all--couldn't see what hundreds of airmen, flying over this place
during the past three or four decades, had missed entirely. But then,
as Perry circled the plane around in a steep bank, it came over the old
adventurer-scientist gradually.
There was a humping configuration of those hills down there--faint in
outline as an old footprint in a rainwashed garden. It couldn't have
been noticed from the ground in a million years, and even from this
altitude it was as vague in outline as the memory of a dream.
The hills below looked like a gigantic Indian Mound, a mile in extent,
and perfectly though dimly triangular. Regularly placed along its
straight sides, were humps--foggy nodules--suggesting somehow the ruins
of massive turrets, lying buried beneath layer on layer of repeated
glacial silt.
Rod Murgatroyd began to cuss, half to relieve his feelings and half as
though to drive away the possibility that he and Perry were mistaken.
"By the nine gods!" he roared back through the propstream. "It's a
fortress, Perry! You can almost see the battlements! But who in the
name of the Cyclops could have built it? And when? And what in heck are
we gonna do about it, Perry?..." Murgatroyd's voice was almost a whine
of eagerness at the end.
Perry Wilcox was grinning broadly. "Do?" he returned, knowing that
Rod had already passed the obvious answer and was planning far ahead.
"What are you asking me that for? It ain't much of a riddle, is it?" He
swung the plane into the wind, and began the glide toward Schroeder's
hayfield.
Forty-eight hours afterwards, behind a high board fence, erected for
secrecy--that is, as much secrecy as they could hope to achieve in
surroundings that knew them well--the small crew they had assembled was
busy. A heavy diesel motor pounded steadily, driving a rotary drill
that was digging deep into the side of a low knoll.
For weeks the work went on. Five separate shafts were sunk into the
ground, the first four of them reaching down to the solid stratum of
fire rock, below the lowest and oldest fossil levels. From the depths
of those first four shafts the drill brought up pieces of stone, some
of which had angular corners, like carven blocks. And there were great
lumps of rust too, that might have been reenforcing bars of steel.
Thus the mystery deepened, taking on qualities of nervous unrest and
expectancy.
And then, far down in the fifth shaft, the spinning diamond points of
the drill snarled into a new medium. An hour later, in the summer dusk,
Roderick Murgatroyd stood shifting a few ounces of muck, brought up
from the excavation, back and forth between his palms. Most of it was
grey volcanic stuff, but mingled with it were long shreds of metal,
scored out by the drillpoints. The metal was as soft and pliable as
lead, but it possessed a very considerable tensile strength. Tests
had already proved that it was lead, alloyed with certain rare-earth
elements, probably to increase its toughness, and to render it immune
to the ravages of time.
"It's true, Perry," Murgatroyd said very quietly to the younger man
beside him. "Truer than we could have quite understood before. Metal
down there shows that. A carefully prepared alloy, such as only a very
well developed metallurgical science could have produced. A layer, or a
shell. Or maybe just a block. We don't know yet.
"Yes, we're on the right trail, Perry, even if it does look like
a wild trail! Only yesterday the drill brought up fossils of an
_undisturbed_ stratum belonging to the Jurassic Period, the Age
of Reptiles many millions of years ago! That means, Perry--" and the
old Scotch-American's voice was still more vibrant and tense--"that
means that this lead alloy was made and put into place before--long
before--the time of the dinosaurs. In fact, if we are to judge from
the stratum immediately surrounding the metal, it is contemporary with
the Carboniferous Era or Coal Period. That's the point, Perry. There
weren't any men on this planet at that time. And there weren't going to
be any men for ages and ages. At least not Earth men...."
Perry Wilcox nodded, controlling his own taut nerves. They were right
at the edge of a staggering discovery, he was sure. It might break any
minute, now, or any hour. The drill machinery still vibrated, boring
into that mass of metal deep in the ground. The pumps, sucking seepage
water out of the excavation, still throbbed. The two men's ears were
tuned to the sound of the machinery. Any shift or change in the regular
beat of the drill would have a story to tell. Thus they waited, as
night began to fall, slowly but surely.
* * * * *
They hadn't heard the soft purr of an expensive automobile on the
roadway beyond the fence, at the foot of the slope. But now the sounds
of a brief, angry argument at the gate, some hundred yards away, drew
their startled, nervous attention. With so much that was unknown and
unhintable pending, this was hardly the time to receive visitors of any
kind, certainly not hostile visitors with ideas of their own.
Uneasily, Wilcox and Murgatroyd turned to face a group of people
hurrying toward them across the intervening area of the fenced
enclosure. One was a trusted workman, left to guard the gate. But the
others--there were four men and a girl--had been able to overrule the
guard's refusal to admit them.
Of the four men, three were burly, massive specimens with the scars of
many combats marking their coarse features. The fourth was slender and
bent, maybe fifty. His head was entirely bald, his cheeks had withered
lines in them, and his squinted piggish eyes held a look of secretive,
hungry searching.
Murgatroyd and Wilcox had no trouble recognizing this uninvited guest,
who clearly was the master mind of the intruding group. All the world
knew Lyman Kerwin, whose colossal fortune had thrust dominance-seeking
tentacles into most of the key industries of America. Path of Progress,
Rod's and Perry's outfit, had tangled with him once. They'd taken
newsreel pictures of the collapse of one of the gigantic but poorly
constructed power and irrigation dams which he had built in one of
the western states. Hundreds of people had been killed, and thousands
had been rendered homeless by a disaster traceable to materials and
workmanship far less costly than specified. Only Kerwin's money,
fixing a corrupt court, had enabled him to escape the consequences of
criminal misrepresentation.
Seeing Kerwin, and the inquiring speculative glances he cast about the
enclosure, Doctor Murgatroyd's pointed red face suddenly darkened with
fury, chagrin, and something like a nameless, nervous panic.
"Thunder of Jupiter!" he whispered hoarsely. "That polecat would have
to barge in now--now, of all times! We might have known it, Perry! But
you just wait till I sail into him! The dirty--"
Perry silenced the old scientist with a poke in the ribs. "You keep
still," he ordered. "Just make believe you're bossing the drill crew."
* * * * *
The young man advanced slowly a few steps toward the intruders. He
didn't grin or scowl. He just kept his face straight, ready to meet
Kerwin in whatever manner the latter might ask for by his actions or
words. Perry did notice the girl in the party, though--briefly. She
was walking beside Kerwin. Chestnut curls peeped from beneath an odd
little hat. There was a sprinkling of freckles across her tanned,
earnest face. Perry knew her slightly. She was Lyssa Arthurs, better
known as Troubles, reporter for a paper in the neighboring town of
Brenton. Cute, plucky kid, but she seemed a little self-conscious now.
And evidently she had strange tastes in company. Perry dismissed her
presence with a curt nod that could hardly have been called a greeting.
When he spoke, Kerwin didn't allow a lot of room for doubt as to his
attitude, in spite of the veiled terms he used.
"Hello, Wilcox!" he hailed volubly in a rich voice that was in sharp
contrast with his cadaverous appearance. "I thought I'd call, since
you and the Professor are always doing such interesting things. What's
up? Boring for oil or something?"
Perry kept silent, waiting for Kerwin to talk a little more.
"You might as well answer my question, Wilcox," the financier urged.
"I'll find out anyway, you know."
"Maybe they're diggin' a road down to China, Chief," one of Kerwin's
bodyguards offered with dry and slightly sinister humor. "Or a nice,
deep hole to bury themselves in."
Before Perry could speak there was an interruption. The sound of the
drill nearby, busy in the dusk, changed abruptly. There was a grating,
hollow noise from far underground. Then the whine of machinery racing
without resistance. Out of the pipe which ejected the muck and chipped
stone and metal shreds brought up from the drilling, there came a
gurgling puff, as of air trapped in a subterranean cavern, and under
slightly higher pressure than that of the surface, being suddenly
released from confinement.
Workmen leaped to throw out the clutch of the big diesel. Old Rod
Murgatroyd began to swear excitedly, for it was clear what had
happened. The drill had broken through the metal at last. It had
reached a hollow space down there. A room, a chamber, perhaps, which
the shell of lead alloy was meant to protect.
Perry Wilcox felt his pulses racing wildly. The presence of Kerwin
could not spoil his sense of victory. In the evening air around him
there was suddenly a faint, musty odor, like that of an old cellar, but
with a distinctive quality all its own.
Perry saw the workmen step back from the machinery, as if they didn't
know quite what to do or say. And he could tell, too, that the
sudden cessation of movement, and that noisome smell, indescribably
suggestive of a time that was dead for incredible eons, had had its
effect on Lyman Kerwin. Kerwin's lips dangled loosely, and his eyes had
lost a lot of their squint. His face was sweaty, and paler than usual.
"You asked what was up, Kerwin," Perry growled at last. "Well, so
far we've tried to keep our work here dark so we could get the
first investigations completed without interference. But I guess
there's no use to stall. You said you'd find out anyway, and you're
right--whatever good that'll do you. I think everybody'll get the story
in a few days, or even hours. I suppose somebody tipped you off about
what we were doing--somebody who lives around here." Perry grinned
crookedly at the girl, Lyssa Arthurs, as he made this half accusation.
"But it doesn't matter," he went on. "You saw what just happened,
Kerwin. We've evidently reached something with the drill. I don't know
what--yet. But it's terribly old, Kerwin. And get this--there's metal
down there--a perfectly balanced alloy as old as the Carboniferous
fossils! Yes, it's pretty big, Kerwin! And liable to be--dangerous!
Why, hell, even that cellar stench that came up from down there might
actually be poisonous! It might contain microscopic spores that, in
contact with human lungs, could grow and kill. Spores from the past,
Kerwin. Sealed up and kept alive through the ages. Of course it's a
thin possibility, but who can say? Do you still want to hang around,
Kerwin?"
The latter's retreat was just a trifle too quick for good poise, and
the sudden fury of his expression wasn't good form either.
"Rot, Wilcox!" he half stammered and half roared as he backed away.
"You're talking rot!"
Perry could almost feel sorry for him at that moment. Full of
hypochondriac fear, inspired by nothing but the slenderest of chances,
Kerwin was trying to mask his cowardice by a show of scorn.
But Perry could feel sorrier for Lyssa Arthurs. Troubles, she was
called. And she looked regular, all right.... But why was she hanging
around with Kerwin?
Now Kerwin made a nervous, jerking sign to his henchmen.
"Come on, boys," he said. "We might as well leave these fools to their
silly grubbing."
Even the three pug-uglies looked a bit sheepish at the hasty departure
their boss led them into.
* * * * *
Workmen were grinning and chuckling as Perry turned about, and old Rod
Murgatroyd's red face was alight with amusement and satisfaction.
"You sure told that ninny where to dump himself, pal," he complimented,
his blue eyes seeming to twinkle even in the dusk.
Perry's answering smile was brief. He glanced toward the fence, from
beyond which came the sounds of Kerwin's car speeding away along the
concrete road.
"Only," Murgatroyd added, sobering, "I don't think we're through with
our playmate yet, Perry. You've got him doubly sore at us now, for
making him ridiculous. And he's not so scared that he won't do his
damnedest to get even--if nothing else. And--glory but it would be
tough to have him mixing in with something really colossal, wouldn't
it? What we've got here could be good for all humanity--it could be
neutral, or it could be bad. We don't know. But good or bad, depend on
Kerwin to make it the latter, if he gets the chance!"
Perry shrugged ruefully. "Yeah," he said. "That means we've got to
work quick, Rod. One of us has got to go down there into the bore on
a cable--find out just what we're up against in that quarter. Then
there'll still be time to see if we can get digging options on the
surrounding country--if it turns out to be advisable. Kerwin can't very
well beat us to that, anyway. Now who'll it be that goes down there
first?"
Perry Wilcox drew a nickel from his pocket. He flipped it dexterously
into the air, caught it and slapped it onto the back of his other hand.
"Buffalo!" old Rod called.
Perry raised his palm to reveal a shiny Indian head. "I win," he
remarked, grinning.
CHAPTER II
Mystery Below Ground
Lights were snapped on in the gathering darkness. Long lengths of
drill-shaft were pulled out of the boring, whose dark maw hid the
unknown.
Perry put on a coverall garment of rubberized silk. Over his face he
fitted an oxygen mask, and to his shoulders he attached several oxygen
bottles. The air blow, after so many countless ages of stagnation,
would probably be unbreathable. And though Perry had meant merely to
unnerve Kerwin when he had mentioned the possibility of some kind of
contamination, one could not quite be sure. It was best to have one's
body encased in a sealed garment.
When he had completed his preparations, there was even a small toolkit
at his hip. Attached to an elbow there was a powerful electric lamp,
fitted with a long cord by means of which it could draw power from the
generator here on the surface. And there was a small phone incorporated
into his headgear. With the phone, like a subsea diver, he could
maintain communication with Rod and the rest of the crew here above
ground. And of course he had his motion picture camera--strapped across
his chest.
With a stout steel cable fastened under his armpits, Perry clambered
over the edge of the boring, and was lowered below. The trip
down--nearly three hundred feet--was uneventful. The stillness in the
narrow shaft, scarcely wider than his shoulders, deepened with the
depth of his descent. There was only the scraping of his kit against
the rough walls, and the sleepy trickle of seepage water.
He reached the punctured metal barrier at last, and passed through it.
Two feet thick, the shell was. A moment later his feet touched a solid
floor, wet with the water that had dribbled down through the opening.
"I'm here, Rod," Perry called into the phone. "At the bottom."
It was a moment before the older man answered, and in this interval
Perry heard disquieting sounds from the phones over his ears--sounds
from the surface, which seemed so infinitely far away to him now.
Automobile motors racing. Voices in much larger numbers than those of
the small drill crew. And to Perry Wilcox came a conviction of pending
trouble.
Then Murgatroyd spoke: "We've got company up here, Perry," he said, a
note of anxiety in his tone. "A lot of curious people from Brenton.
Sight-seers rushing to a fire, so to speak. Kerwin couldn't think of
anything dirtier to do to gum up the works for us, so he spread the
news around that something was up out here. Naturally I've got a whole
crowd on my hands. We're trying to keep 'em outside the fence. Of
course they ought to be harmless enough, really; but damn it, I wish
they'd go someplace else! What do you see down there?"
Perry had his electric lamp blazing at full now. On his chest, his
camera, driven by a little spring motor, was turning. And he was
staring about him intently, to grasp the character of his surroundings.
He began to talk--to describe what he saw and felt.
* * * * *
"I'm in a passage, Rod," he said. "It slants down. Its alloy walls
are all bent and crumpled. It must have been the movement of the
ground through the ages that did that. Gosh, Rod, but you can feel the
length of eternity here! It's written in these tunnel walls, Rod. The
way they're bent and rebent. I can understand now why they were made
of something tough and pliable, like this lead alloy. It's twisted
everywhere, but unbroken. They--whoever built this place--must have
known pretty well what they were doing--whatever their purpose was...."
Perry advanced slowly down the slope of the tunnel, cautiously drawing
his descent cable and his telephone and electric cords after him.
He reached a room of heroic dimensions, walled with the same grey alloy
as the tunnel. The Stygian gloom that obscured it parted before the
intense white path of his lamp.
There were tall metal boxes, like packing cases for heavy machinery,
arranged in rows on the buckled and humped pavement of the
chamber--metal boxes, each with a closed and perhaps hermetically
sealed door. And near the farther wall was a machine--an engine or
something--that displayed a gigantic, dusty fly-wheel. The walls,
at a head-high level, were covered with something crystalline, like
glass; though where it had bent it had bent like metal--not shattering
as a brittle substance would have done. Behind those crystal panes
were compartments, housing queer, complicated devices. They looked
a little like astronomical or surveying instruments, Perry thought.
Were they perhaps instruments for the navigation of interplanetary or
interstellar space?
Seeing charts traced on the walls above the compartments that protected
this array of apparatus--charts dotted with winking, diamond-bright
bits of glass, which must represent scattered suns of the void--he
was half sure that his guess was right. The charts were marked with
countless interlocking lines and circles, which might be the geometric
equivalent of latitude and longitude, applied not to the navigation
of the ocean, but to the limitless, three-dimensional reaches of the
cosmos.
This much Perry Wilcox was able to note, before his eager inspection
was interrupted. In the heavy stillness there was a rustling whisper,
which penetrated easily the thin, rubberized fabric of his hoodlike
mask. The sound swiftly built itself up into a regular, soft rhythm.
Perry spoke a few warning words about this development into his phone,
and described briefly the room he was in. Meanwhile he stared ahead,
ready in every taut nerve and muscle to leap out of danger, yet eager
to see what it was that caused the disturbance.
His lamp beam focused on the engine near the opposite wall. Its
fly-wheel was turning, maybe after half a billion years of motionless
waiting in this sealed vault. But why? How?
Perry bounced back a step, icy fingers of dread tickling his flesh. "On
your marks up there, Rod," he said tensely into his phone. "I can't
tell what kind of a show it is I've started; but you may have to yank
me up in a hurry!"
* * * * *
The engine was whizzing now, ancient dust spraying from its fly-wheel.
For a few seconds there were no more developments, except that Perry
noticed the decorative frieze around the high, shadowy ceiling.
Human faces carved in the metal. They smiled down on the young man
mysteriously.
Then there was a soft clank in the far distance, muffled apparently
by the turn of many passages, and echoed back and forth by crumpled,
vaulted ceilings and walls. The sound might have been that of a door
opening, or the rattling of chains. Perry was beginning to feel very
much like beating a hasty retreat; but he waited a trifle longer.
There came, then, a ponderous, soft thudding, growing nearer. It wasn't
till the impression of the sound clicked into a groove in his mind,
establishing itself as identical with the regular thud-thud of great,
running, elastic-shod feet, entirely inhuman in their note, that he
concluded that discretion was the better part of valor.
He had farther to return than he realized. And his electric and
telephone cords, his hoist cable, hampered him.
"Draw in the slack of my rig," he shouted into his phone. "And for
Pete's sake, if you love me, set the hoist winch going when I tell you!"
He got beneath the bore that penetrated the tunnel roof okay. But the
thudding was catching up on him fast. "Up!" he yelled. "Quick!"
It seemed a century before he felt the reassuring tug of the cable
under his arms. He had a chance to look back once into the Stygian
darkness that concealed a reawakening and incredible ancientness. There
a little red light wavered and hurtled nearer.
Perry's feet left the metal pavement. He heard a hiss, like escaping
steam, just as he was drawn up into the narrow bore. Something clanked
and scraped beneath him, like claws raking at his retreat. And the
hissing continued.
He thought he could relax then, a little. But as he was pulled farther
up the bore he felt heat burning through his rubberized silk coverall.
It was just a harmless warmth at first, but it increased to a burning
sensation about his legs. It made him dizzy and sick, and clouded his
brain.
He heard Rod Murgatroyd yelling at him through the phone: "What's the
matter, Perry? What's up?" And behind the voice of his friend there
was the murmur of many other voices. The sightseers from Brenton. They
didn't have any business being there; but if anything happened--if they
got hurt--it was his and Rod's fault. Even though Kerwin, or someone
under Kerwin's orders, had tipped them off for mere malice.
"Back!" Perry yelled. "Order everybody back! When you pull me up, Rod,
don't touch me without gloves! And breathe cautiously. Gas, I think.
Some kind of corrosive gas...."
* * * * *
The rest, for a while, was like a bad dream to Wilcox. He became aware
of stars overhead, and of wind. He was up in the open air once more.
Nearby, Herkett, one of the drill crew, was swearing at the inquisitive
onlookers, trying to send them on their way. Some were retreating.
Others, held by a kind of fascination, still crowded forward against
the fence, and met Herkett's blasphemous pleas with boos, or ignored
them with a kind of self-conscious indifference.
Perry was sick with that intense, burning pain in his right leg.
To keep his senses was a struggle. He heard noises from within the
Earth--like ragged drumbeats that made the ground shake. Something
unknown, crescendoing on to a preplanned purpose. Hands touched
him--Rod's hands, covered with thick gloves. Car headlights flared all
around in the night, mingling confusingly with the chaos of voices.
Perry's rubber-silk outer garment was crumbling away from him like
rotten rags. It had been eaten by a virulently active gaseous chemical,
all right. Like combustion, the activity had evolved heat. He was still
alive only because he was wearing an oxygen mask.
He tried to stand, clinging to Rod's shoulders; but the burnt leg,
which might still put him in danger of death by an unknown chemical
poison, would not bear his weight. He sank down to one knee while Rod
tore the remnants of rotted rubber and cloth from his leg, and smeared
an unguent on the ragged, blistered injury.
"I'll get him to a doctor," someone was saying from very close by. "You
can't tell. That's apt to be very dangerous. A physician will know
better what to do."
It wasn't till then that Perry saw who it was that was holding the
first aid kit. Lyssa Arthurs, the girl who had been with Kerwin and
his boys. But she'd come back, somehow. Looking up into the confusing
medley of light and shadow, Perry saw her curly chestnut hair blowing
in the wind. She looked a little bedraggled, and her lips were pursed
very tight.
"Okay!" old Rod snapped, for this moment might involve the question
of life and death for his friend, and there was no time to question
the connections of this girl, who had been helpful. "Come on, you!" he
added, grasping Perry's arm. "You're out of action for a while!"
Perry Wilcox was too dazed to think of all the reasons why he didn't
want to be taken away from the scene of action now, and why he
didn't want to go with anyone associated with Lyman Kerwin. So his
stubborn protests were mostly those of a hard man of action, clinging
obstinately to the habit of wanting to be where things were happening.
"Can't leave, Rod!" he grumbled like a great obstinate, drunken child.
"Everybody's in danger of--God knows what. Gotta stay with you,
Rod...." His words were muffled by his mask.
A moment Murgatroyd hesitated, then his balled fist shot out and caught
Perry on the chin with stunning force.
What he'd seen of Troubles Arthurs in the last few seconds made the
old scientist like her a lot. But since she was tied up with Kerwin
someway, he couldn't trust her entirely with the custody of his pal. So
he said:
"Thanks, kid. Otto, here, will go along to help."
Almost as an afterthought, Rod unsnapped the motion picture camera from
Perry's chest. Its record of a mystery would be safer in his keeping.
* * * * *
Otto, one of the drill crew, a great, blond bear of a man, picked Perry
up and followed the girl through the throng to her car. In a moment it
was speeding away toward Brenton.
But it hadn't gone far before the sounds of a fresh disturbance issued
from the enclosure it had recently quitted. To the thudding from
beneath the Earth, was added a droning note, faint but infinitely
far-reaching. It was like the drone of a solitary electric generator
in a deserted powerhouse at night. And there was a puffing noise from
the direction of the enclosure. Voices waxed to screams. First of plain
terror; then some of them changed to yelps of agony.
The reviving Perry half rose in the back seat of the speeding car. Then
Otto, with all the good intentions in the world followed Murgatroyd's
original example, hit Perry on the chin, and told the frightened girl
up ahead to drive faster.
Meanwhile, safe in a hotel room in Brenton, a man sat at a writing
table and waited. Lyman Kerwin had just received a phone call. One
couldn't tell, yet, what was happening. But Kerwin's mind was quick
and cold and ruthless. And somewhere in all this he saw a lot to his
advantage--if he played his cards right.