For four hours after sunrise Bell worked desperately. With the few and
inadequate tools in the plane he took apart the oiling system of the
motor. It was in duplicate, of course, like all modern air engines,
and there were three magnetos, and double spark plugs. Bell drained
the crankcase beneath a sun that grew more and more hot and
blistering, catching the oil in a gasoline can that he was able to
empty into the main tanks. He washed out innumerable small oil pipes
with gasoline, and flushed out the crankcase itself, and had at the
end of his working as many small scraps of metal as would half fill a
thimble. He showed then to Paula.
"And the stars in their courses fought against Sisera," he quoted
dryly. "Any one of these, caught in just the right place, would have
let us down into the jungle last night."
She smiled up at him.
"But they didn't."
"No.... God loves the Irish," said Bell. "What's that thing?"
Paula was fishing, sitting on a fallen tree in the cloud of smoke from
a smudge fire Bell had built for her. She was wearing the oily flying
suit he had found in the shed with the plane, and had torn strips from
her discarded dress to make a fishing line. The hook was made out of
the stiff wire handle of one of the extra gasoline tins. "Hook and
leader in one," Bell had observed when he made it.
* * * * *
He was pointing to a flat bodied fish with incredible jaws that lay on
the grass, emitting strange sounds even in the air. It flapped about
madly. Its jaws closed upon a stick nearly half an inch thick, and cut
it through.
"It is a _piranha_," said Paula. "The same fish that bit your hand. It
can bite through a copper wire fastened to a hook, but this hook is so
long...."
"Pleasant," said Bell. Something large and red passed before his eyes.
He struck at it instinctively.
"Don't!" said Paula sharply.
"Why?"
"It's a _maribundi_ wasp," she told him "And its sting.... Children
have died of it. A strong man will be ill for days from one single
sting."
"Still more pleasant," said Bell. "The jungle is a charming place,
isn't it?" He wiped the sweat off his face. "Any more little pets
about?"
She looked about seriously.
"There." She pointed to a sapling not far distant. "The _palo santo_
yonder has a hollow trunk, and in it there are usually ants, which are
called fire-ants. They bite horribly. It feels like a drop of molten
metal on your flesh. And it festers afterwards. And there is a fly,
the _berni_ fly, which lays its eggs in living flesh. The maggot eats
its way within. I do not know much about the jungle, but my father
has--had a _fazenda_ in Matto Grosso and I was there as a child. The
_camaradas_ told me much about the jungle, then."
Bell winced, and sat down beside her. She had Ribiera's pearl handled
automatic within easy reach. She saw him looking at it.
"I do not think there is any danger," she said with a not very
convincing smile, "but there are _cururus_--water snakes. They grow
very large."
"And I asked you to fish!" said Bell. "Stop it!"
* * * * *
She hauled the line ashore, with a flapping thing on the end of it.
Bell took the fish off and regarded her catch moodily.
"I'd been thinking," he said moodily, "that Ribiera suspects we're
dead. I'd been envisioning ourselves as marooned, yes, but relatively
safe as long as we were thought to be dead. And I'd thought that if we
lived a sort of castaway existence for a few weeks we'd be forgotten,
and would have a faint chance of getting out to civilization without
being noticed. But this...."
"I will stay," she said steadily. "I will stay anywhere or go
anywhere, with you."
Bell's hand closed on her shoulder.
"I believe it," he said heavily. "And--if you noticed--I had been
thinking of letting down the Trade. I'd been thinking of not trying to
fight The Master any longer, but only of getting you to safety. In a
sense, I was thinking of treason to my job and my government. I
suspect"--he smiled rather queerly--"I suspect we love each other
rather much, Paula. I'd never have dreamed for anyone else. Go over to
the plane and don't fish any more. I'll rustle the food for both of
us."
She stood up obediently, smiling at him.
"But kill that _piranha_ before you try to handle it," she advised
seriously.
Bell battered the savage thing until it ceased to move. He picked it
up, then, and sniffed the air. Paula had been in a cloud of acrid
smoke. She could not have detected the taint in the air he discovered.
He went curiously, saw a broken branch overhead, and then saw
something on the ground.
* * * * *
He came back to the plane presently, looking rather sick.
"Give me one of the machetes, Paula," he said quietly. "We brought
them, I think."
"What is the matter?"
He took the wide-bladed woods knife.
"A man," he said, nauseated. "He either fell or was thrown from
somewhere high above. From a plane. He was United States Secret
Service. There's a badge in his clothes. Don't come."
He went heavily over to the spot beyond the smudge fire. He worked
there for half an hour. When he came back there were earth stains on
his hands and clothing, and he carried a very small brown package in
his hand.
"He had a report ready to send off," said Bell grimly. "I read it.
It's in code, of course, but in the Trade...."
He set to work savagely on the engine, reassembling it. As he worked,
he talked in savage, jerky sentences.
"The Service man at Asuncion. One of the seven who vanished. He'd
learned more than we have. He was caught--poisoned, of course--and
pretended to surrender. Told a great deal that he shouldn't, in order
to convince The Master's deputy. The key men in nearly every republic
in South America are in The Master's power. Paraguay belongs to him,
body and soul. Bolivia is absolutely his. Every man of the official
class from the President down knows that he has two weeks or less of
sanity if The Master's deputy shuts down on him--and he knows that at
the crook of the deputy's finger he'll be assassinated before then. If
they run away, they go murder mad. If they stay, they have to obey
him. It's hellish!"
* * * * *
He stopped talking to make a fine adjustment. He went on, somberly.
"Chile's not so bad off, but the deputy has slaves nearly everywhere.
Ecuador--well, the President and half of Congress have been poisoned.
The man I found was trying to get a sample of the poison for analysis.
He'd learned it was unstable. Wouldn't keep. The Master has to send
fresh supplies constantly all over the continent. That accounts for
the deputies remaining loyal. If The Master had reason to suspect
them, he had only to stop their supply.... They couldn't stock up on
the deadly stuff for their own use. So they're as abjectly subject to
The Master as their slaves are to them. No new slaves are to be made
in Paraguay or Bolivia, except when necessary. It's believed that in
six months the other republics will have every influential man
subjected. Every army officer, every judge, every politician, every
outstanding rich man.... And then, overnight, South America will
become an empire, with that devil of a Master as its overlord."
He lifted one of the oil pumps in place and painstakingly tightened
the bolts that held it.
"Picture it," he said grimly. "Beasts as viceroys, already taking
their pleasure. Caligulas, Neros, on viceregal thrones all over the
continent.... And every man who shows promise, or shows signs of honor
or courage or decency, either killed or sent mad or...."
* * * * *
Paula was watching his face closely.
"I think," she said soberly, "that there is something worse."
Bell was silent for an instant.
"For me," he said bitterly, "it is. Before The Master dares to make
his coup public, he must be sure that there will be no foreign
interference. So, he must establish a deputy in Washington. A
relatively few chosen men, completely enslaved, could hold back our
Government from any action. Leaders in Congress, and members of the
Cabinet, working, in defense of The Master because his defeat would
mean their madness.... He would demand no treason of them at first. He
would require simply that he should not be interfered with. But his
plans include the appointment of deputies in the United States later
on. I don't think he can subdue America. I don't think so. But he
could--and I think he would--send whole cities mad. And if you think
of that...."
* * * * *
He was silent, working. A long, long time later he swung on the
propeller. The motor caught. He throttled it down and watched it
grimly. The motor warmed up to normal, and stayed there.
"It will run," he said coldly. "Those two plugs in the crankcase may
come out at any time. I've tightened them a little. They'd worked
loose from the vibration. But--well.... That Service man was heading
for Asuncion. He'd been found out. They probably shot him down in
mid-air after he'd gotten away. His plane may be crashed anywhere in
the jungle within a mile or so. And I've two bearings on the _fazenda_
where Ribiera went, now. One from Asuncion through here and one from
Rio. I want to go back there to-night and dump burning gasoline on the
buildings, to do enough damage to disorganize things a little. Then
I'm going to try to make it to a seaport. We can stow away, perhaps."
He shut off the motor.
"We'll start at dusk. There'll be lights there. This report says it's
nearly a city--of slaves. We want the darkness for our getaway."
Paula looked at the sky.
"We have three hours," she said quietly. "Let us cook and eat. You
must keep up your strength, Charles."
She said it in all seriousness, with the air of one who has entire
confidence and is merely solicitous. And Bell, who knew of at least
three excellent reasons why neither of them should survive until
dawn--Bell looked at her queerly, and then grinned, and then took her
in his arms and kissed her. She seemed to like it.
And they lunched quite happily on _piranha_ and _pacu_--which is
smaller--and drank water, and for dessert had more _piranha_.
* * * * *
The long afternoon wore away slowly. It was hot, and grew blistering.
Insects came in swarms and tormented them until Bell built a second
and larger smudge fire. But they fastened upon his flesh when he went
out of its smoke for more wood.
They talked, as well as they could for smoke, and looked at each other
as well as they could for smarting eyes. It was not at all the
conventional idea of romantic conversation, but it was probably a good
deal more honest than most, because they both knew quite well that
their chance of life was small. A plane whose motor was precariously
patched, flying over a jungle without hope of a safe landing if that
patched-up motor died, was bad enough. But with the three nearest
nations subservient to The Master, whose deputy Ribiera was, and all
those nations hunting them as soon as they were known to be yet
alive....
"Would it not be wise, Charles," asked Paula wistfully, "just for us
to try to escape, ourselves, and not try--"
"Wise, perhaps," admitted Bell, "but I've got to strike a blow while I
can." He was staring somberly at the little plane, fast upon a mud
bank, with the tall green jungle all about. "The deputies and all
their slaves have their lives hanging by a thread--the thread of a
constant supply of the antidote to the poison that's administered with
the antidote. The deputies--Ribiera, for instance--don't realize that.
Else they wouldn't dare do the things they do. But let them realize
that the thread can be broken, and what their slaves would do to them
before they all went mad.... You see? Let them learn that a blow has
been struck at the center of all the ghastly thing, and they'll be
frightened. They'll be close to mutiny through sheer panic. And there
may be slip-ups."
* * * * *
It was vague, perhaps, but it was true. The subjection of the poisoned
men and women was due not only to terror of what would happen if they
disobeyed the deputies, but to a belief that that thing would not
happen if they did obey. If Bell could do enough damage to the
_fazenda_ of The Master to shake the second belief, he would have
shaken the whole conspiracy. And a conspiracy that is not a complete
success is an utter failure.
It was close to sunset when they heard a droning noise in the
distance. Bell went swiftly to the cockpit of the plane and searched
the sky.
"Don't see it," he said grimly, "and it probably doesn't see us. We're
all right, I suppose."
But he was uneasy. The droning noise grew to a maximum and slowly died
away again. It diminished to a distant muttering.
"What say," said Bell suddenly, "we get aloft now? We'll follow that
damned thing home. It's going from Asuncion to that place we want to
find. This is on that route. Whoever's in it won't be looking behind,
and it's close to darkness."
* * * * *
Paula stood up.
"I am ready, Charles."
Bell swung out on the floats and tugged at the prop. The motor caught
and roared steadily. While it was warming up, he stripped off the rest
of his shirt and tore it into wide strips, and tied the rags in the
handles of the gasoline tins in the two cockpits.
"For our bombs," he explained, smiling faintly. "You'll want to wear
your chute pack, Paula. You know how to work it? And we'll divide the
guns and what shells we have, and stick them in the flying suit
pockets."
He made her show him a dozen times that she knew how to pull out the
ring that would cause the parachute to open. She climbed into the
front cockpit and smiled down at him. He throttled down the motor to
its lowest speed and shoved off from the mud bank. Clambering up,
while the plane moved slowly over the water under the gentle pull of
the slow-moving propeller, he bent over and kissed her.
"For luck," he said in her ear.
The next instant he settled down at the controls, glanced a last time
at the instruments, and gave the motor the gun.
* * * * *
The plane lifted soggily but steadily and swept up-stream toward the
rolling water of the _raudal_, which tumbled furiously about an
obstacle half of stones and shallows, and half of caught and rotting
tree trunks. It rose steadily until the trees dropped away on either
side and the jungle spread out on every hand. It rose to a thousand
feet and went roaring through the air to northward, while Bell
strained his eyes for the plane on ahead.
It was ten minutes or more before he sighted it, winging its way
steadily into the misty distance above the jungle. Bell settled down
to follow. The engine roared valorously. For half an hour Bell watched
it anxiously, but it remained cool and had always ample power. Paula's
head showed above the cockpit combing. Mostly she looked confidently
ahead, but once or twice she turned about to smile at him.
The sun seemed high when they rose from the water, but as it neared
the horizon its rate of descent seemed to increase. They had been in
the air for no more than three-quarters of an hour when it was twice
its own disk above the far distant hills. Almost immediately, it
seemed, it had halved that distance. And then the lower limb of the
blaring circle was sharply cut off by the hill crests and the sun sank
wearily to rest behind the edge of the world.
It seemed as if a swift chill breeze blew over the jungle, in warning
of the night. The trees became dark. A shadowy dusk filled the air
even up to where the plane flew thunderously on. And then, quite
abruptly, stars were shining and it was night.
* * * * *
Bell remembered, suddenly, and switched on the radio as an experiment.
The harsh, discordant dashes sounded in his ears through the roaring
of the motor. A beam of short waves was being sent out from his
destination. While he was on the direct path the monotonous signals
could be heard. When they weakened or died he would have left the way.
But they continued, discordant and harsh and monotonous, while the
last faint trace of the afterglow died away and night was complete,
and a roof of many stars glittered overhead, and the jungle lay dark
and deadly below him.
For nearly half an hour more he kept on. Twice he switched on the
instrument board light to glance at the motor temperature. The first
time it appeared a little high. The second time it was normal again.
But there was little use in watching instruments. If the motor failed
there was no landing field to make for.
A sudden faint glow sprang into being, many miles ahead. The pinkish
glare of many, many lights turned on suddenly. As the plane thundered
on the glow grew brighter. An illuminated field, for the convenience
of messengers who carried the poison for The Master to all the nations
which were to be subjected.
The glow went out as Bell was just able to distinguish long rows of
twinkling bulbs, and he saw the harsher, fiercer glow of floodlights.
He reached forward and touched Paula's shoulder. Conversation was
impossible over the motor's roar. Her hand reached up and pressed his.
Then he saw other lights. Bright lights, as from houses. Arc lights as
from storage warehouses, or something of the sort. A long, long row of
lighted windows, which might be dormitories or perhaps sheds in which
The Master's enslaved secretaries kept the record of his victims.
* * * * *
The earth flung back the roaring of the little plane's motor. Bell had
but little time to act before other planes would dart upward to seek
him out. He dived, and the wing tip landing lights went on, sending
fierce glares downward. Twin disks of light appeared upon the earth.
Sheds, houses, a long row of shacks as if for laborers. A drying
field, on which were spread out plants with their leaves turning
brown. A wall about it....
"The damned stuff," said Bell grimly.
He swept on. Jungle, only jungle. He banked steeply as lights flicked
on and off below and as--once--the wing tip lights showed men running
frantically two hundred feet below.
Then a stream of fire shot earthward, and Bell held up his hand and
arm into the blast of the slip stream. It blew out the blaze that had
licked at his flesh. He stared down. The gas can had left a trailing
stream of fluid behind it as it went spinning down to earth. All that
stream of inflammable stuff was aflame. The can itself struck earth
and seemed to explode, and the trailing mass of fire was borne onward
by the wind and lay across a row of thatch-roofed buildings. An
incredible sheet of fire spread out. The stuff in the drying yard was
burning.
Bell laughed shortly, and flung over another of his flaming bombs, and
another, and the fourth....
* * * * *
He climbed for the skies, then, as rectangles of light showed below
and planes were thrust out of their lighted hangars. Four huge
conflagrations were begun. One was close by a monster rounded tank,
and Bell watched with glistening eyes as it crept closer. Suddenly--it
seemed suddenly, but it must have been minutes later--flame rushed up
the sides of that tank, there was a sudden hollow booming, and fire
was flung broadcast in a blazing, pouring flood.
"Their fuel tank!" said Bell, his eyes gleaming in the ruddy light
from below. He shut off his landing lights and went upward, steeply.
"I've played hell with them now!"
A thousand feet up. Two thousand. Two thousand five hundred.... And
suddenly Bell felt cold all over. The instrument board! The motor was
hot. Hot! Burning!
He shut it off before it could burst into flames, but he heard the
squealing of tortured, unlubricated metal grinding to a stop. He
leveled out. It was strangely, terribly silent in the high darkness,
despite the roaring of wind about the gliding plane. The absence of
the motor roar was the thing that made it horrible.
"Paula," said Bell harshly, "one of those plugs came out, I guess. The
motor's ruined. Dead. The ship's going to crash. Ready with your
parachute?"
* * * * *
It was dark, up there, save for the glare of fires upon the under
surface of the wings. But he saw her hand, encarmined by that glare,
upon the combing of the cockpit. A moment later her face. She turned,
light-dazzled, to smile back at him.
"All right, Charles." Her voice quavered a little, but it was very
brave. "I'm ready. You're coming, too?"
"I'm coming," said Bell grimly. Below them was the city of The Master,
set blazing by their doing. If their chutes were seen descending....
And if they were not.... "Count ten," said Bell hoarsely, "and pull
out the ring. I'll be right after you."
He saw the slim little black-clad figure drop, plummetlike, and prayed
in an agony of fear. Then a sudden blooming thing hid it from sight.
Thick clouds of smoke lay over the lights and fires below.
Bell stepped over the side and went hurtling down toward the earth in
his turn.
(_To be continued_)
[Advertisement: ]
The Cavern World
_By James P. Olsen_
[Illustration: _He aimed it, and the Thing gripping him was hurled
back upon the others._]
[Sidenote: A great oil field had gone dry--and Asher, trapped far
under the earth among the revolting Petrolia, learns why.]
"Impossible! What sort of creatures would they be, that could live two
miles beneath the surface of the earth? Surely, Asher, you are
joking!"
R. Briggs Johns, mighty power back of Stan-America Oil Corporation,
looked at Blaine Asher closely, expecting to see the chief geologist
and scientist of the company laugh. But Blaine Asher did not laugh.
Serious, his rather thin face grave as he leaned his tall, muscular
body above a torsion machine he was adjusting, there was nothing to
indicate he had the faintest idea of a joke.
"Why damn it, Asher!" Johns insisted wrathfully, "you don't really
mean that. And"--he took a nervous turn around the laboratory--"if
such a wild thing were possible, what has that to do with our trouble?
You haven't led me on to spend a million dollars drilling a
thirty-six-inch hole, just so you could test a fantastic theory?"
"You know better than that." Asher wiped his hands and leaned against
a table. Johns, looking into the cool gray eyes of the man before him,
did know better. Blaine Asher was more than just a geologist or
scientist. Well he might be termed a master geo-metallurgist. Johns
nodded, wiping beads of perspiration from his brow.
"You say impossible--and want to know how those creatures cause this
field, the largest oil field in the world, to start going bone dry
over night. All right:
"Remember how you laughed when I told you that oil would some day be
mined instead of pumped or flowed from the earth? You couldn't see how
one central shaft could be sunk, then tunnels run back underneath the
oil strata, tapping the sand from the bottom and letting the oil run
down to be pumped out one shaft. Yet, that way, we would get _all_ the
oil, instead of the possible one-eighth of the total amount as we get
by present methods.
"Now, you have seen that done. And you said that was impossible."
* * * * *
"Yes," Johns objected, "but those test wells we mined were only a few
hundred feet deep. Wells in this field are eight thousand feet deep!
Think of the heat, man! You can't do it. And as for people--"
"Your great field has suddenly gone dry, almost in a month's time,"
Asher stopped him. "What is happening here can happen elsewhere. Only,
formations in this field are more suited to there being life--or
something--below us. Stan-America is going broke. Many others have
already gone broke. Still, that oil couldn't have gotten away.
"As for heat--yes, we know that oil is hot when it comes up from the
oil sand at eight thousand feet, or from ordinary wells at three to
six thousand feet. But"--Asher lit a cigarette and inhaled
deeply--"gas coming out of the same well is _cold_! So cold it forms
frost inches thick on pipes and tanks.
"Rock pressure--the pressure of the earth--forcing up the gas, causes
that. Why couldn't that same pressure cool great caverns below the
granite cap below the oil sands? It could. For that matter, I know
that same pressure will generate useful power. I'll show you that in a
minute."
"All right!" Johns chewed his cigar almost savagely. "Say, then, that
you can work down there, nearly two miles underground; granted that we
can tunnel from beneath the sands and pump more oil from one central
shaft than we now do from fifty wells--what has that to do with this
tosh about a race of people?"
"They are not people, perhaps." Asher grinned at the "there, I've
stuck you!" look on Johns' face. "Let's say, rather, creatures. Have
you ever met Lee Wong, the great Chinese scientist, or his Russian
geological collaborator, Krenski? No?
* * * * *
"Well, I have. I met them in Paris in 1935--five years ago. They're
brilliant men, and they've prepared some wonderful papers. Brilliant,
I said: they are also dangerous. They claim, you know, that the
fossils we now drill up come from a lost race--people who went _into_
the earth while man, like us, was coming up onto the earth from the
water. Some claim those fossils have been on the surface at one time,
and were silted over. But eight thousand feet is a lot of silt, Johns:
ever thought of that?"
"Good God!" Johns gasped hoarsely. "You almost make me believe you are
right. But, supposing there is such a race of things--what will you
do?"
"This." Asher drew back a curtain that was stretched across one end of
the laboratory. "You know I was working on a cage in which to descend
into that eight-thousand-foot well you've drilled--the well you're
going to use to try and find why this field is suddenly gone dry. This
it it."
Johns stared, shook his head wonderingly and stared again. Before him,
ready to be transported to the well that was larger than any ever
drilled before, stood what Blaine Asher called his Miner, for want of
a better name.
A thick steel tube, it was. Twelve feet long and large enough around
that a man might stand inside of it. The top was welded on in much the
manner a top is welded on an ordinary hot-water heater, and had
connections for hose in it. At the height of a man's eyes heavy
windows were set in, and in one side was a door just large enough to
admit a man's body. This door sealed tight the minute it closed.
"It looks like--like some sort of a deep sea diving outfit," Johns
said as he walked around the braces that held the Miner upright. "But
all those gadgets inside and on the bottom--?" He indicated the
strange instruments that could be seen when the door was opened, and
the queer glass tubes that projected from the very bottom.
* * * * *
"Pressure-power units--my own invention," Asher told him. "For ten
years I've been working on this. I knew that some day I would want to
explore the oil caverns beneath the earth, so I made ready.
"As I told you, rock pressure, or earth pressure, is a tremendous
thing. It is power, so I figured how to use it. Under artificial
pressure, I have tried out my Miner and its equipment.
"Those tubes sticking from the bottom contain something you are
familiar with: non-burning and non-explosive helium gas. I have
discovered a way, by their use, to create power that will melt away
rock or iron--literally dissolve it into nothing! Not in an hour, or
minutes. In seconds, Johns!
"The pressure of the earth acts as my generator. The pressure action
on the filaments of platinum, and several compositions I have no time
to explain now, causes heat. Call it friction of compressed air, if
you wish. As neon gases carry an electric spark, so does this helium
carry the power generated by earth pressure. The pressure below earth
acts on the delicate coils and points of my generator. This bit of
power is carried into the helium tubes, and by a system of vacuum
power, is increased millions of times. Thus, the tiny spark of a cigar
lighter would electrocute a hundred men!"
"I--you mean somewhat like a violet ray is increased in the lightning
tubes?" Johns strove to grasp the foundation of the thing.
"Yes, the foundation of it all--with the earth's pressure the power
motive," Asher nodded. "So, after my Miner is on the bottom of our
well, I can burn--or dissolve--a room as large as this laboratory in a
few minutes. The whole thing is no mystery after you learn it--not
nearly so much as radium, or radio, was. Merely creating a spark of
electricity and fanning it through a vacuum and a conductor of massed
gases."
"But"--Johns had unconsciously dropped his voice to a whisper--"what
of these strange creatures? How would you deal with them? Damn it,
Asher, I think I'm beginning to believe this nutty idea of yours. Any
man who can generate power with the pressure of air as it is packed by
earth must know what he is talking about!"
"I have but one protection against anything down there that tries to
harm me," Asher said simply. "That is this--see?"
* * * * *
What he held up looked like an old-fashioned six shooter. It was
fitted with a platinum-sealed box in the place where a cylinder would
have been. The barrel looked like some queer, blue glass.
"Do you see that test tube?" Asher pointed to a glass tube on a table
a few feet away. "Now watch."
He pressed a tiny ratchet under his thumb. A snapping, buzzing noise
filled the laboratory. Johns gave an exclamation of wonder and awe.
Quickly, the test tube started to melt into a pool of molten glass.
Asher increased the pressure of his ratchet trigger. The tube was
knocked to the floor.
"Static electricity--always some form of electricity," said Asher
grinning at the astonished oil baron. "Conductor coils here," he
continued as he tapped the sealed cylinder, "are charged much as a
flash-lamp battery. The charged conductors attract the static
electricity of the air, and, in a manner similar to the action of the
power generator, increase power. There is a slight difference: by
turning quick power on my static gun, I can cause the charge to knock
down and merely electrocute, as I knocked the half-melted tube from
the table."
"I can understand that, a little," Johns sighed profoundly. "It's the
same juice that causes a gasoline truck to catch fire if you don't
have a ground chain on it somewhere. But, just the same, I claim it's
remarkable."
"Not half as remarkable as what I expect to find two miles down when I
descend to-morrow." Asher had a dreamy look in his eyes. "I wonder:
new ways to get petroleum wealth ... a strange people...."
* * * * *
"Men,"--Asher, a tight-fitting asbestos composition suit covering him
from foot to neck, spoke tersely--"when you get me on bottom, stop
every bit of machinery, and don't dare pull up until I give the
signal. If I'm down there the entire day, all right. But"--he smiled,
trying to make light of the danger--"if I don't signal within
thirty-six hours, pull up anyhow."
From the bull-wheels of the drilling rig Asher spooled out some of the
air-hose cable through which air blown over ice would be pumped into
the Miner; then when the long steel cylinder was over the hole and
ready, he turned to the company officials and government scientists
and engineers around him in the boarded-up derrick.
"Possibly I can get a survey in an hour. Perhaps I'll have to come
back to the surface and make adjustments to my equipment. That remains
to be seen.... Now, let's get low."
He adjusted a helmet over his head. It looked much like the helmet
worn by a sea diver, except that it had no connecting hose for air.
The windows in the helmet, which contained pressure lights, worked on
the same principle as the disintegrating rays of the Miner. When Asher
turned the ratchet that set the little pressure machine into motion, a
violet tinged green ray of great lighting power shot out and
increased, by weight of air, or atmosphere beneath the earth, the
power of one tiny spark a million times.
Without ceremony or farewell, Asher crawled inside his tube. The door
was closed and he fastened it from inside. For a moment, wild panic
assailed him. But he fought it off, becoming again less the feeling
human and more the cold calculator of advanced science. The light from
outside, coming in through the windows of the Miner, was shut off. The
long steel cage clanked against the sides of the special casing in the
well, and Blaine Asher was on his trip into a lower world never before
visited by man.
That was what Asher believed. But, had he known what waited for him,
two miles into the bowels of the earth....
* * * * *
At five hundred feet, the descent stopped, giving him time to adjust
himself to the pressure change. The gas and oil had been eased out of
the hole. That is, the casing had been run on through the producing
strata, shutting it off. Asher signaled by buzzer, and a stream of the
ice-washed air flowed down to him.
Three thousand feet! Six thousand feet! More than a mile down! Sweat
poured from his body in streams, and the air coming into the Miner
through the hose did not relieve him. It was hot--almost unbearably
so. His ears were roaring. The dark of his tube was relieved as he
turned on his pressure lamps. He adjusted the pressure discs over his
ears by twisting a thumbscrew on his helmet, and the pounding of his
ear-drums ceased.
Gasping, he watched the depth meter in front of him. It did not seem
as if he was moving, but the indicator now showed more than seven
thousand feet. It moved around slowly and more slowly; trembled at
eight thousand--and stopped.
Like the snapping of a man's fingers, the temperature inside the Miner
changed. Asher was now fifty feet below the bottom of the oil and gas
sands, and if his theory about rock pressure worked.... It _was_
working. Frost was forming on the inside of the Miner!
"I'm right--right--right!" Asher thought, elated, sending his buzzer
signal up to those so far above. The icy air through his hose changed
to air of normal temperature. He signaled for slack in the lowering
cable, then prepared for the greatest test of all.
Cramped, with hardly room to move, he studied his gages. Helium tubes
at the proper pressure for compressing the tiny spark of the pressure
generator, so it would flare a million times stronger under the action
of the vacuum tubes: diamond and cut-glass tubes in the bottom of the
Miner, thermoed with layers of quicksilver: everything cleared,
everything ready.
* * * * *
His hand shaking, Asher pushed the tiny switch that brought his
filament points trembling together under the atmospheric pressure so
far underground. A tiny spark danced and throbbed through the tiny
glass tube before him, beginning to buzz as it started the circuit of
increasing coils, and soon humming and vibrating as the helium and
vacuum tubes swelled it to full power. Spark after spark, increased
almost beyond imagination, followed one after another. The Miner
throbbed and shook.
White-faced, Asher touched the little lever that opened the blasting
outlets in the bottom. Almost instantly the Miner dropped a full six
inches--went on, down to a foot. Asher, pride of success choking him,
pulled the lever hard over, which brought some of the tubes beneath
him spreading out, to blast away the earth on each side of him.
He signaled for more and more slack as the depth indicator showed he
had burned, or disintegrated, his way down to thirty feet beyond the
original bottom of the hole. He was below the bottom of the protecting
wall of casing now--at the mercy of the pressure of two miles of
earth.
Slowly, setting all his bottom tubes to cutting away on all sides of
him, he started hollowing out enough room to step out into. His
lights, when he looked through the windows, showed ghostly on earth
ten feet on each side of him. Ten more minutes and he had created a
room nearly twenty-five feet square--a man-made cave, two miles below
the surface.
There was something akin to awe in the feelings of Asher when he
opened the little door, crawled out and stood erect. The pressure
lamps in his helmet lit up the room he had made. There were no sounds,
just a vague, ringing silence.
Then so quickly that it robbed him of his senses, two things happened.
A hundred yards away from the well in which he had descended, another
well, drilled by another oil company, was shot. Three hundred quarts
of nitro-glycerine were set off in the hole.
* * * * *
Asher screamed and clamped his ear discs down tight. It seemed the
very gods of thunder were shrieking and raging in his head; every
nerve and fiber in his body throbbed and tingled with the hellish
vibration.
On his knees, where the shock had thrown him, in darkness beyond
description, Asher realized the lights from the Miner no longer shone
out. Frantically, he adjusted the small lights in his helmet and got
them to sending off their rays again. Then, an icy hand seemed to
squeeze his heart, turning his blood to ice-water in his veins. He
cursed himself for not foreseeing that some company might shoot a well
close by, while he was underground.
He turned. The Miner was all right, but Blaine Asher was trapped! For
the walls of the hole below the bottom of the casing had caved. Thirty
feet of rock, sand and conglomerate matter were between him and the
bottom of the pipe.
He was trapped--two miles below the earth. There was no hope of
rescue, the hope that miners feel in deep shafts. There could be no
rescue for Asher. No one could get to him. He cried out his horror,
fighting to keep from swooning.
The helmet hampered him. He turned on a small pressure lamp attached
to the belt at his waist, and chanced taking the helmet off. Dank and
nauseous was the air that he breathed, since it no longer came through
the filters in his helmet. But it was air that would serve,
nevertheless.
A crackling, rumbling sound caused him to turn quickly. Eyes wide, he
stared at the long crack that was opening before him.
Asher was between two layers of granite--one layer under him, and
another above him, just below the oil sands. Now, as the crack between
these two layers widened, he could see it slope downward until it
ended in a great cavern that stretched endlessly away beyond the beams
of his light.
* * * * *
It wasn't this crack that caused Blaine Asher, an iron-hearted man of
science, to choke and sag down to a sitting position, his knees
refusing to support him. No--it was the terrible, Godless,
unbelievable _Things_ that scurried around in the smooth rock hall
that stretched away into the cavern.
Frozen with soul-chilling fear, Asher stared with eyes that bulged.
What were they? Spawned neither of God nor Satan--what could they be?
Black-skinned--or was it skin?--like rubber, with round bodies, like
black basket balls inflated to triple size; bodies that seemed to
ripple, distort, swell and contract with life within life.
Short, foot-long stems that must have been legs, ending in round balls
that served as feet, no doubt. Tentacles, Asher would have called
them, six feet in length, thick as mighty cables and dotted with
suckers like the tentacles of an octopus. And heads--Asher gagged and
vomited!
Not heads. Just masses of the black body substance as large as the two
fists of a man. In each head was a crooked black gash for a mouth.
There were no eyes that Asher could see. Yet, these Things seemed to
see one another, and emitted strange, chill, squeaking sounds!
As Asher watched, the Things sensed his presence. A half hundred of
them rose and started toward him. They did not walk, nor did they
crawl. Undulating, contorting strangely, they came on with incredible
speed, long tentacles waving before them; slithering on the rocky
floor of the cavern; making those odd squeaking noises.
As they neared him, Asher sprang to his feet, backing up against the
pile of cavings beside the Miner. A long tentacle whipped out and
wrapped around his leg. A short, snout-tentacle quivered toward his
face. There was strength beyond imagining in the grip on him.
* * * * *
With an almost animal snarl the man from the earth's surface moved to
protect himself from these creatures, surely of the lowest living
order. He grabbed into the pocket of his loose asbestos composition
suit, and his fingers closed comfortingly around the static gun.
He aimed it, and the Thing gripping him was hurled back upon the
others. Crackling, snapping viciously, the charges of electricity that
were drawn from the very earth increased in the gun and spumed out
like lightning bolts. The Things squeaked excitedly and surged
forward. Asher's finger pulled the ratchet trigger full force, and
like dew before a strong shaft of sunlight, the gruesome Things were
knocked away.
Hating the sight, Asher changed the charge of his gun, cutting the
size of the path the volts covered, thereby increasing the potency of
the discharge. The piled bodies sizzled, and to Asher's nose came a
sulphurous smell. Then, there was nothing at all....
Sick, he put the gun back into the deep pocket and leaned on the wall.
He turned around again to the pile of cavings that barred his way from
the surface, and dug like a madman with his bare hands. The Miner was
weighed down, and he could not use it anyhow. The blasting tubes were
on the bottom, and could not be shifted to the top.
Suddenly he stopped his crazed work, raised his head and listened. "My
God!" he gasped hoarsely, "am I stark mad?" He thought he must be, for
the voice of a human being came to his ears.
"You will be pleased, Blaine Asher, to turn around! And do not make
any foolish moves, I warn you."
"Lee Wong! Krenski!" Asher turned, face to face with the
super-scientists of whom he had spoken to R. Briggs Johns the day
before. Asher shook his head. More of the terrible dream, this meeting
two humans down in the earth's core.
* * * * *
"Most right, honorable Asher." Lee Wong bowed mockingly. He and
Krenski were garbed in loose-fitting garments of much the same style
as Asher. In their hands, they carried static guns. Not the small gun,
such as Asher had concealed in his pocket. More like heavy air drills,
they were.
Asher frowned at the lamps they carried. He knew by the dazzling
action of the rays that they were pressure lamps. But they gave off
much better light than those of his own invention. They had gone him
one better there.
"Did--did you see them?" Asher gulped. "And how--how did you get down
here? Tell me!" He took a step toward Lee Wong, intending to lay his
hand on the Chinaman, to make sure he was live flesh and blood, and
not a figment of his disordered brain.
"Stand where you are!" Lee Wong snapped. He held the heavy static gun
up and Asher felt a light charge tingle his body. "Those Things of
which you speak--I assume you mean the Petrolia. Ah, yes, we see them.
Every day, we see them. For us they work. They work, my dear Blaine
Asher, tapping upward into the oil sands; sands that are burial places
of countless millions of generations of Petrolia; of lost races that
once ruled supreme over these underground worlds.
"How simple, to take the oil from below--the oil you want so much
above. Someone must do the work. I and Krenski found the Petrolia
ready and willing. Being creatures of feeling, with little sense, we
were able to bend their dying wills to do our work. You see, we made
them feel we would save them, a dying race, from extinction! They do
our bidding."
Asher was bewildered by the enormity of the thing. "You mean these
Things you have called Petrolia actually work for you? And that you
saved them from becoming extinct?"
* * * * *
"Exactly," Lee Wong nodded, seeming to be enjoying himself. "Like
humans of the surface, Petrolia live on the dead. I mean, wherever we
get our living food from the earth, we plant our dead back in that
earth. Petrolia are spawned in beds of petroleum. Just as eels seek
deep water to lay their eggs, so do Petrolia go to the oil strata to
spawn future tribes.
"When we pump out the oil, they have no--shall we say
"hatching?"--beds. But now, by tapping and bringing down the oil, we
have assured them more spawning pits. They will increase, and we have
made them sense it. For that matter, the very oil they breed in, gives
them sustenance. That is why they are black fleshed and blooded, and
have suckers instead of mouths, as a black man is black through ages
beneath hot suns.
"It's easy for us, who are wiser than other men, to figure what
oilfield might contain such people. We have a rapid elevator
connecting us to the surface. And--"
"Then," Asher almost shouted, "I'm not trapped!"
"No?" Lee Wong wrinkled his forehead quizzically. "You should realize
that we cannot allow you to go back to the surface--alive, or any
other way. We intend to increase the Petrolia, spreading them to other
underground, yet uninhabited worlds. You would spoil that.
"No, you will never return to the surface. They cannot haul your tube
to the top, so they will think you perished in it. And"--Lee Wong
shrugged--"it might have been better if you had, Mr.--"
"_I wouldn't!_" the yellow man snarled. He rolled the ratchet of his
static gun and Asher was hurled to the floor by the heavy shock.
Wisely, he stood up, keeping his hands well away from the pocket in
which his own gun rested. He doubted whether his little static gun
could compete with the guns of the others, but it was something. They
had not thought to search him--perhaps they might not. It was his only
hope.
* * * * *
Lee Wong bowed low again, motioning Asher to go ahead. "Now you shall
see what we have done. We are proud, and we know you can appreciate
our workings. You will be glad to learn why we do as we are doing; you
will be intrigued as a fellow scientist. Then, so sad to say, you must
perish for having gained that very knowledge."
Asher shrugged, and through half-closed lids he eyed Lee Wong and the
rather small, slender Krenski, of the high brow and large head. Then
he walked ahead of them. Head up, shoulders back, he walked carelessly
down the wide hall--a hall that led into the main cavern of that
underground empire.
It was large--fully a hundred feet in a rough square. Not fifteen feet
from floor to ceiling at any point, it followed the course of the two
layers of granite between which it was sandwiched. Other long halls,
or crevices, ran in every direction out of this main cavern. In the
walls, in niches and cracks, the superior pressure lamps had been
placed, throwing a bright, eery light over it all.
Asher recoiled suddenly at the sight of hundreds of Petrolia that
swarmed the hallways, and they seemed to sense another presence beside
that of Lee Wong or Krenski. A choked, gurgling sound came from the
Chinaman, and they disappeared down the halls, squeaking angrily as
they went.
"Our control room," explained Lee Wong waving his hand about him. He
pointed to a dozen twenty-four inch pipe-lines that ran along the low
ceiling, coming from as many different halls into the room, but all
going out the same large hall, larger than the rest. "There are the
arteries of our system. There is the oil that is so--shall we say
strangely?--missing in your wells." He smiled, a taunting, mocking
light in his eyes.
"You well understand how we do it. Above us, just below the oil
strata, is a steel, trough-shaped roof. The oil, tapped from below,
drains into these, and then into these pipe-lines. If we were working
from above, now, we would run it to a central shaft, and pump it out.
We do not want it on the surface, however."
* * * * *
"Then why in the name of hell do you want it?" Asher barked, a tense
note of anger in his voice. "And what do you do with it?" These two
were humans. At least, they were in man-form, if not in feeling. And
the Petrolia could be handled. Asher was getting mad, and his fear
ebbed.
"Come." Lee Wong led the way under the pipe-lines, down the large
hall. Krenski, his heavy static gun ready, walked at Asher's back.
They came out into another cavern that stretched beyond the powerful
lights. The sound of their voices echoed like thunder of the drums of
Thor, and Asher realized this cavern might stretch away in Stygian
blackness for hundreds of miles.
Asher marveled, for the floor of this cavern dropped at least five
feet below the level of the control room or incoming hallways, forming
a natural reservoir. A reservoir for the big streams of oil that were
pouring into it from the pipe-lines.
The rumble of the oil as it came in and splashed out in a never-ending
stream, and the rumble of the oil streams above them as the precious
fluid flowed down into the plated drain roof, sounded like the tramp
of the weary feet of the damned, as it echoed back and forth across
the mighty cavern.
"Our storage." Lee Wong stood at the edge and explained. "Also, as you
may see, a concentration incubator, or spawning bed and food storage
for our Petrolia."
Blaine Asher looked again at the rippling oil at his feet. He choked
brokenly and stepped back a pace. For the oil near the bank was alive!
It rippled and splashed, teeming with life. By the strange alchemy of
breeding in oil and living on oil as man lives on bread, that lake of
oil was a mass of growing Petrolia. Millions--yes, countless
billions--of them! Hideous, foul Things that would be turned loose
with the rest in that nightmare world--that would be taken to other
buried worlds to start new races.
* * * * *
"But why--why?" Asher almost screamed the words at Lee Wong.
"Petrolia will be our armies, protecting our underground wealth," Lee
Wong answered him. "They will be our faithful workers, under no
command but mine. For, even Krenski has not mastered the over-control
it takes to handle them!
"Gradually, as happened to the field we are now under, all oil fields
will go dry. We will be getting the oil from below, and putting it in
storage in mother earth. Think, Blaine Asher, what it will mean!"
There was a fanatical light in Lee Wong's beady eyes.
"A world without petroleum is a world without power. No oil for fuel;
no gasoline, lubricants or by-products of any sort. No airplanes could
fly; tanks, tractors, oil-burning trains and ships; mechanical
appliances--nothing could run. We now take the oil from America.
Later, when our Petrolia have increased and we have devised means of
moving them, we will go to all oil-producing countries.
"We will secrete the oil and paralyze the world. Now, in Russia and
China and India, our societies are organizing and growing. They will
handle the weakened, powerless nations, and I shall be ruler of the
universe, surface and beneath, with Krenski to aid me, you see. It it
wonderful, is it not? And, knowing what you do, having seen what you
have, could you call it impossible?"
Blaine Asher groaned. It was not impossible, he knew. Unreal;
monstrous--but never impossible. A region of hideous Petrolia; a world
stripped of automotive and mechanical power, its fuel held in the
hands of a few, far underground--it was terrible to think of.
And Asher the only one who knew. The only one who could avert such a
thing. The fate of an entire world was in his hands. And he would soon
die.
Die? No! Blaine Asher swore silently to himself that no power in
existence should keep him from destroying these two fiends. It had to
be done!
He dared not fail.
* * * * *
"Wonderful, stupendous thing," he forced himself to smile. "I'd like
to grasp the hand of the genius who devised and carried out such a
wonderful thing."
He took a step toward Lee Wong, right hand extended, his left slipping
toward the pocket where his own static gun rested.
Lee Wong extended his own right band. Something in the chill, flint
look of Asher's eyes must have warned him. Even as Asher's fingers
closed around his hand, he tried to jerk back.
"Destroy him!" he cried out to Krenski.
Asher dropped to one knee, letting his static gun remain in his
pocket. His left hand closed around Lee Wong's wrist as the Oriental
tried to pull away. Krenski was bringing the heavy, cylinderlike gun
up and aiming it at Asher.
Asher twisted on one knee, his teeth gritted, braced to receive the
shock from the gun. He jerked Lee Wong's arm down, heaved and came to
his feet. Crying out, arms and legs flailing, the Chinaman catapulted
toward Krenski--and just at the instant Krenski fired!
The sickening smell of cindered flesh was in Asher's nostrils as he
turned and ran back up the main hallway. He glanced back over his
shoulder as he ran, and shuddered at the black mass lying at Krenski's
feet. Lee Wong was no more. Wide-eyed, the Russian stared at the thing
at his feet. Then, with a fiendish shriek, turned and brought the gun
into line on the fleeing Asher.
A crackling charge of electricity singed the back of Asher's head as
he dove head first around the corner of the hall into the control
cavern. He reasoned that Krenski had sent a full charge after him, and
hope kindled higher in his breast. For Asher believed his smaller
static weapon was as strong as that of the other. At that, it would be
a test, and Asher dared not take chances.
* * * * *
He crouched in the door of another hallway, waiting. Cursing, Krenski
dashed into the control cavern. Asher brought his gun up and fired.
But even as he pulled the trigger, a long tentacle reached from the
dark crevice behind him and jerked his arm. His charge snapped by the
Russian, warning the other that Asher, too, was dealing with powerful
electric rays that meant death should they touch.
Asher yielded to the tug of the slimy, sulphur-smelling tentacle,
letting it pull him into the crevice, the charges of Krenski's weapon
crackling by him, leaving his skin dry, and a powdery sensation in his
mouth.
In the shelter of the crevice, Asher turned his gun upon the Petrolia
that gripped him. The tentacles fell away, fading to nothingness
before the charges that showed quivery blue in the dark. Like
catacombs, one crevice opened into another. Asher darted into the next
crevice and edged cautiously toward the control cavern.
The angry buzzing and snapping of Krenski's weapon caused him to duck
instinctively, although no deadly charges came his way.
"Oh, God!" he heard the Russian's high-pitched voice, agonized,
wailing, "they're coming in--they're coming in!"
A squeaking and slithering, now greater than ever, rose above all
other sounds. And Asher realized what Krenski meant. Lee Wong had said
that only he could control the Petrolia. They were swarming into the
control room now. That was what Krenski was shooting at.
The squeaking sounds came up the crevice in which Asher was and a
cold, clammy sweat broke out all over him. He could blast a thousand
of them into nothing. But by sheer force, more body than his light
static gun could down, they would overwhelm him.
His mind raced swiftly. He remembered the location, out in the control
room, of the cage elevator that ran to the surface. It had not been
hurt by the glycerine blast that had trapped Asher. The elevator shaft
from the control room was cased clear into the cavern floor, and the
blast had not jarred this far.
* * * * *
He wheeled and sent another charge of static electricity into the
crevice back of him, then lunged out into the control room. It would
be his own weapon against Krenski's, and a chance to gain the bottom
of the shaft.
Krenski--piled, charred heaps of the Petrolia around him, which had
momentarily cleared the attack--was running across the control room.
Like a seething wave, the foul Petrolia undulated from every crevice
and hallway, coming in to fresh attack. The Russian, terror lending
him speed, raced for the cage at the foot of the shaft that led to the
surface. At the same time Asher ran out.
Nearly a hundred feet apart, on opposite sides of the cavern, they
stopped. Krenski turned his heavy weapon toward Asher at the same time
Asher sent his own gun crackling and snapping out blue, fiery flame.
Side-stepping, now crouching, now dodging to this side and that, they
fought their strange duel. Asher's right arm was burned, his hair
singed from his head, and his body jarred again and again as Krenski
touched him. Krenski, groaning through gritted teeth, suffered burns
all over his chest and left leg.
As the Petrolia came on, and the lightning play of deadly electric
charges continued, Asher made a discovery. He noticed that the rays,
or charges, of the two guns, when they met in mid-air, caused blue
flame, and that the charge went no farther.
It did it again. The two charges met, crackled to explosion in the
air. Krenski, too, noticed it, and he also noticed that the Petrolia
were almost upon them again. Coming on in a wave that could not be
hurled back.
* * * * *
He looked at Asher, and met the dare in Asher's eyes. Straight at each
other, neither moving, they shot their static charges. Neither would
move: it was a challenge from Asher that Krenski had to meet. One of
them would have to die before the other would be able to gain the cage
in the shaft. There could be no compromise, and only one man at a time
could go surfaceward. If they continued to dodge and fight, the
Petrolia would overwhelm them.
Power against power, they fought it out.
Asher's finger tightened on his trigger release until it seemed the
skin would split; then he caused his hand to tremble just enough to
make his electric charges cover the space in which Krenski's charges
traveled. Hissing, spitting, flashing explosions, giving off sounds
and light like big explosions of flash powder, the charges met.
Asher tingled from head to foot, and thrilled to the very marvel of
the thing. Two deadly beams of electricity, holding each other off!
In one long, continuous flash, the contact point of the charges began
to shift. Closer and closer, as the force of superior charges cleaved
through the other, the contact points neared Krenski. He saw death
upon him, for in another instant, Asher's charges would hurl his own
bolts back upon him. The smaller weapon of Blaine Asher, attracting
more static electric currents by reason of having a small attracting
battery inside, where the larger gun of the other depended upon
magnets for attraction, was triumphing.
Krenski's mustache and light beard singed and curled. He cried out,
stepped back, throwing up his arms as death flashed through his body.
* * * * *
His gun playing about him, Asher raced toward the big valves and gates
that shut off the drain of the pipe-lines. Burning, reeking of sulphur
and burned leather, the Petrolia vanished before him. But, as he
turned, the drainage system that was robbing the field shut off. They
had blocked his way again!
Too many to blast away altogether, they pressed in. Asher leaped
forward, feet kicking, left fist smashing out, static gun crackling as
if to tell him that nothing could stop them. Tentacles gripped at him,
the foul, stinking smell gagged him. But the squeaks of the Petrolia
maddened him.
"Squeak, damn you!" Asher shouted wildly, kicking, shooting and
hitting, gaining toward the shaft. "Squeak--for all the damned Things
that ever bred below the earth cannot stop one surface man!"
He burned and fought his way through and jumped into the cage as his
gun electrocuted two of the Petrolia that tried to weave in after him.
As he slammed the door, Asher was conscious that something was
happening. He hesitated, just long enough to see the cavern start
buckling and caving. The pressure of the oil, now shut off, was
filling back toward the surface, creating a mighty pressure downward.
The surface wells would produce man's power-fuel once more.
Asher slammed the door, turned on the power, and the cage shot upward.
A half hour later, those waiting on the floor of the derrick above the
hole in which Asher had gone down, started. Asher, burned, wounded,
blood streaming from his battered body, staggered in and collapsed at
their feet.
* * * * *
"I can't believe it! Insane! Impossible! Yet, every well in this field
has started producing again! And when we went to that old, abandoned
wildcat well, we found the shaft opening! I had it covered up, as you
ordered."
R. Briggs Johns paced up and down the laboratory floor, talking to
Asher, who had just arisen from his bed, two weeks after he had
collapsed at their feet in the derrick. Still bandaged, he was a
different Blaine Asher. His face was lined, and the hair next to his
scalp nearly snow white.
"I'll be able to do some walking around outside in a few days," Asher
declared as he cleaned a test tube and placed it in a rack. "I can
locate several wells over that underground storage cavern, and you can
recover that oil. But you can't mine this field.
"Twenty years, perhaps, and you can. But it will take that long for
those Petrolia to die out. We've got to get the oil out from below to
a point where they can no longer spawn. We will apply mining in other
fields--but not here!"
"Not here," Johns repeated, shuddering.
"It's up to you to see no one else tries it." Asher lit a cigarette
and nodded at Johns. "Get control of the field--anything. Tell the oil
men something. But don't tell then the truth. They wouldn't believe
you. They would call you raving mad.
"The world does not know. It would not believe. Can we do other than
remain silent?"
R. Briggs Johns, sick of thinking of the cavern world and horrible
things below them, knew they could not.
Brigands of the Moon
(The Book of Gregg Haljan)
CONCLUSION OF A FOUR PART NOVEL.
_By Ray Cummings_