All that day I had sensed a tense activity outside, and many times
there was the tramp of feet down the corridor outside our cell, as
companies of the guards came and went. As sunset came, I stood beside
the transparent wall and watched its brilliant colors fade from the sky.
Overhead, now, the aircraft of the Kanlars were flickering continuously
past, all heading toward the giant cylinder that stood at the city's
center, and when I scrambled up a little higher against the wall, to
get a glimpse of the street, I saw that that street was crowded with
masses of the armored guards and the staring-eyed slaves, all pressing
on toward the same building.
Darkness came, and the noise of activity outside died away, so that
it seemed that all the city around us was deserted, nor was there
any sound from the building above us. For all of two hours after the
darkness, we sat there, listening, waiting. Once I thought I heard a
distant ringing music, but decided that my ears had been deceived.
Then, abruptly, there was the stamp of sandals on the floor of the
corridor, and we heard the doors of the cells along it being opened.
Our own was flung wide, as we rose, and I saw that a score of the
guards waited outside, their leader ordering us to come out, which we
were glad enough to do. Once in the corridor, I found Denham and the
others of the group I had met before, shackled to each other, wrist to
wrist, in a single file. The Northman and myself were fettered to the
end of the line, and then we set out, a long file of guards on each
side of us, marching us down the corridor and outside the building.
The big street up which I had come before was utterly deserted, as we
turned into it. I looked back along its length, lit with the crimson
bulbs, a winding serpent of red light that stretched away out into
the country beyond the city, out to where our time-car lay hidden in
the hills. At the thought of it, so fierce a desire seized me to win
back to it, and my own time, that had I not been shackled I would have
made a break for freedom down the empty street. But as it was, I had
no choice, and followed the others in our fettered line down the wide
street toward the gigantic cylindrical building at its end.
That great pile seemed to loom higher and higher as we drew near it.
Brilliant, winking lights along its sides outlined it against the gloom
of night, a huge, erect cylinder of smooth stone, its flat top all of
a thousand feet in width, and nearly a half-mile above the ground.
Obscured as the immense edifice was by the darkness, yet the vague
glimpses I got of its sky-flung walls staggered me. And we were being
marched directly toward it.
A quarter-mile from the building, the flat street we followed ended,
changed to a wide, smooth ramp that led up toward the giant edifice
in a slight upward slant. We went up that ramp, the guards still on
either side, till we stood under the very shadow of the gigantic,
perpendicular walls, and now I saw that the ramp led up to and through
a wide, high-arched entrance cut in the building's side, much like the
entrance of the cylindrical building where I had been prisoned.
We passed up and through that arched entrance, and were in a long
tunnel, similarly arched, and cut through solid, seamless stone. It was
a hundred feet in length, and as we passed on down its length it came
to me that this must be the thickness of the great building's sides.
The idea was too prodigious for speculation, even, and I shook it off,
peering ahead toward the tunnel's end, where a ruddy light flooding
down from above marked that end.
A few moments, and we had reached the tunnel's mouth, and emerged from
it into the vast cylinder's interior. I swept one startled glance
around that interior, then felt myself staggering, reeling, falling.
The immensity of the place was soul-shaking, bearing down on me with a
weight that seemed physical, crushing my thoughts down into nothing but
dazed awe and terror.
I had imagined the building's interior to be divided, partitioned into
apartments, but instead, the whole interior was one titanic room,
shaped by the outside walls and roof, its sides looming up, dimly and
vaguely, into a hazy darkness that hid their upper parts from view.
Along the sides were many of the light-emitting bulbs, but these
merely burned red holes in the dimness that surrounded the building's
interior, rather than illuminated it.
Starting at the wall, and extending twenty feet out toward the center
of the room, the floor was of black stone, a flat, continuous ring
of smooth material that circled the whole room. Inside of this ring
was the real floor, a single, huge disk of burnished metal, smooth as
ice and as seamless, over nine hundred feet in diameter. And except
for ourselves, who stood on the black ring near the entrance, there
was nothing whatever on black circle or burnished floor, no people,
tables, altar, nothing but the immense expanse of smooth metal and the
comparatively thin black circle that surrounded it.
I looked up, and saw for the first time the people of the city. Cut
in the thickness of the prodigious walls of the building were broad
balconies, one above the other, ringing the building's interior as far
up as I could see in the haze that hung above, and in these balconies
were the dwellers of the city, Kanlars, guards and slaves. The lowest
balcony, which was only a few feet above the floor, jutted forth in
a smaller square gallery, a little away from where I stood, and in
this projecting square sat three of the bright-haired Kanlars, the
oldest-appearing men I had yet seen among them, two garbed in long
robes of solid crimson while the other's garment was of deepest black.
They sat there calmly, looking away across the big floor toward the
great hall's other side. This lowest gallery, and the three directly
above it, were filled with the Kanlars, while in the unnumbered
galleries above these were the armored guards and the slaves. The only
entrance to these galleries that I could see was a single narrow,
winding stairway, a spiral stairway that began on the black circle of
stone near the wall and slanted up from balcony to balcony, circling
the building's sides several times as it spiraled up, and evidently
leading up to the very roof of the place.
While I surveyed the scene, other ragged groups like our own had
entered, escorted by guards, until a considerable number of us had
been collected there near the entrance. Now one of the crimson-robed
figures who sat in the gallery that jutted out from the lowest balcony,
rose and uttered an order. My knowledge of the Kanlar language was too
rudimentary for me to understand him, but when he had finished and
resumed his seat, a delighted murmur swept over the massed crowds in
the balconies.
Before I had time to speculate, the captain of the guards who watched
us snapped out brief orders, and immediately eight of our number ran
out of the center of the metal floor, where they at once drew their
weapons and faced each other, in four individual combats.
In a few minutes, the four duels were over, but only three of the
contestants came back from the floor's center. To my surprize, then,
instead of being re-shackled to the rest of us, the three were handed
armor and weapons like that of the other guards, which they donned at
once. I began to understand now the purpose of these combats. Evidently
the bravest fighters were weeded out in preliminary duels, such as I
had taken part in, and the survivors of these first battles were then
pitted against each other, the victors being adjudged worthy to enter
the company of the guards. But where were these ragged fighters brought
from?
The combats went on, always eight men battling at once, and I saw that
our number was growing smaller very rapidly. Neither Denham nor I had
yet been called on to fight, but my heart was beating rapidly, for I
expected each time to be among the next eight. The blades clashed on,
at the floor's center, and group after group went out from us, either
to return and don the armor of the guards or to be dragged off the
floor by slaves, dead or dying. The Kanlars in the lower balconies
laughed and chatted as the ragged fighters on the floor slew each
other, the massed guards above shouted their approval at each shrewd
blow, and the fighting continued until finally but ten of our number
were left, and by a freak of chance, both Denham and I were of that ten.
The fights on the floor ended, one by one, and swiftly the guards
unshackled eight of our number and thrust them out onto the floor.
I stood appalled. For the two who were left were myself and the
Englishman!
While the swords clicked and flashed out on the floor, I stood in a
daze, dismayed at the ironical trick which fate had played me. Of
all the men in the city, I must fight the one whom alone I knew
and liked. In a space of seconds, it seemed, the four fights on the
floor had ended, and the fetters on my wrists were loosed. Together,
hesitantly, Denham and I walked out onto the floor. Shouts of applause
and encouragement came down from the balconies, for ours was the last
fight, and the spectators wanted an exciting one.
* * * * *
Standing there at the very center of the huge building, Denham and I
faced each other. Simultaneously we grasped the hilts of our rapiers,
half drew them, and then, with a common impulse, slammed the blades
back down into their sheaths. Without speaking, my companion stepped
over and flung an arm across my shoulders, then tilted up his head and
favored the spectators in the balconies with an insolent stare.
A howl of rage went up as it became evident that we would not fight
each other. A torrent of taunts and execrations poured down on us from
above, but we continued to lounge, arm in arm, as nonchalantly as
possible.
Out from the black edge of the floor rushed a half-dozen of the guards,
who seized us and hurried us off the floor, amid a storm of abuse from
above. Instead of returning with us to the entrance, the guards led us
toward the bottom of the spiraling stair and there stationed themselves
beside us.
The angry cries in the balconies silenced, now, and a strange stillness
filled the great hall. Music began, single, thrilling notes, like
dropping peals of sound. Swiftly the lights began to dim, the glowing
bulbs in the walls waning until all things in the vast room were
wrapped in shadowy dusk.
The chiming music ceased, and over all that mighty fane was absolute
silence, with no sound from Kanlars, guards or slaves. Then, in the
little projecting gallery where he sat, the black-robed oldster rose
and spoke.
His deep, heavy voice rolled out over the vast room with awesome
effect, breaking as it did the unearthly silence. He was chanting,
uttering an invocation or prayer. The words came to my ears, thick and
blurred, so that I understood few of them. But the effect was one of
utter solemnity--the darkness, the massed, silent crowds above, and
that one deep voice speaking on, rising and falling.
For minutes the voice rumbled on, then abruptly ceased. There was
another full minute of the strange silence, and a tremendous ringing
note sounded. Even after it had died, the echoes of it beat in my
ears like ghostly carillons of tiny, elfin chimes. And as it died
away, there was a heavy, grating sound and the whole vast metal floor
abruptly sank down some six feet into what appeared to be a gigantic
smooth-walled shaft, then slid sidewise with another grating jar,
vanishing into some aperture prepared for it. And where the floor had
been was now a tremendous circular abyss, a straight-sided pit of such
titanic depth that, looking down into it, I fell weakly to my knees and
was seized with sudden nausea.
I stood on the very edge of the abyss, on the ring of black flooring
that was its rim. And down from that rim, the stone sides of the great
shaft fell smoothly to an unguessed depth. Far, far below, I seemed to
see glimmering lights that winked faintly. And I saw, too, that the
spiral staircase which circled the great room's interior from floor to
roof continued on down beneath the floor and circled around and around
this circular chasm in the same way, winding down into the unguessed
depths below.
I felt Denham pulling me back from the edge of the shaft, beside
which I lay. Dimly I realized that all in the great building were now
chanting, rolling forth the same invocation as the black-robed leader.
Far above, now, at the very ceiling or roof of the cylinder, a light
burgeoned out, a burning purple beam that clove its light down through
the dim haze and shadows around it. A moment it hung there, then there
was a faint sigh of wind, a puff of icy air, and down, straight down
from the vast hall's roof, there raced like a misty plummet--the Raider!
It flashed down until it hung on a level with myself, in midair,
poised at the very center of the circular abyss and floating there
effortlessly. It hung there, its gray mass changing, fluxing,
interlacing, while at its center hung the three little orbs of purple
light, steady and unwinking. From all the massed thousands on the
balconies a sigh of worship went up.
The chant rolled out, louder, fiercer, and through it sounded another
single ringing note. There was another whistle of wind, and the three
purple orbs of the Raider flashed to green, while the solid but fluxing
mass of it changed to a spinning cloud of gray vapor, that swirled
rapidly around the central lights. Another fierce gust of wind smote
me, and abruptly the Raider had vanished.
Up in the balconies the chant went on, repeated again and again. I saw
a sea of white faces above, all turned down toward the spot where the
Raider had disappeared. Minutes passed. The chanting went on, low, vast
and deep-toned.
Came another buffeting breeze, a tempest of shrill wind-sounds, and
with startling suddenness the Raider reappeared, flashing back into
being at the same spot where it had vanished, above the center of the
abyss. Again the green orbs changed to purple, and its cloudy mass
contracted to the shifting but solid form it had occupied before. But
now, held in its shapeless self, were men, who hung helpless in its
grasp. It drifted over to the marble edge of the abyss, and loosed the
men it held, then moved back to the pit's center.
The chanting swelled out, exultant, and I saw the men thus loosed
struggle to their feet and look around with utter awe and terror. They
were five in number, three in short white tunics who looked like men of
ancient Greece, the other two wizened little figures with dark skin and
long, wispy mustaches, either Huns or Tartars.
Again a ringing note cut through the chanting, and as if in obedience
the Raider rose, floated up toward the vast hall's roof, whence it had
come. It disappeared there, the purple light burned for a moment and
vanished, and the chanting finally ceased.
The bulbs glowed out, at once, and light filled the place. The crowds
in the balconies began to leave, streaming down the narrow staircase
toward the floor. Before they reached it, however, guards had reached
and fettered the five men the Raider had left on the pit's edge, and
they now brought them over and shackled them also to Denham and me.
Our little group stood now on the very edge of the abysmal shaft. Some
twenty feet below us there was a little landing, from which the stair
started, spiraling down and around the shaft, into the darkness below.
I wondered momentarily how the landing was reached, but my wonder
ceased as a guard touched a lever in the wall, causing a little metal
stair to unfold swiftly from the side of the shaft itself, a light
little series of steps that connected the black marble ring of flooring
with the landing below.
At an order from the guards we stepped onto it, down it to the landing
and on down the spiral stair, which was cut in the solid rock of the
great shaft's sides. Looking back, I saw the steps down which we had
come fold back into the wall, and a moment later the light from above
was shut out as the great metal floor of the temple swung back into
position above us with a grating clash.
Our only light now was from bulbs set in the smooth wall along the
down-winding stair, and these gave hardly enough light to show us
the next steps. A low wall about a yard in height, pierced with an
ornamental design of openings, was our only protection from the abyss
on our left. Yet the guards still marched us on, around and around the
great shaft, in a tremendous, falling spiral, down, down....
_CHAPTER 11_