Collected Short Fiction, page 397
The weight of silence was appalling after those months of the great wheel’s drumming. It seemed to press upon him, as he stumbled up the slope. It was smothering, like the stillness of the tomb.
For the flickering finger of light found no open passage, nor any gray gleam of durite. He saw only the tumbled incline of dark shattered stone, the vitreous glint of far-looming barriers. Shocking, incredible realization pressed upon him.
He was buried alive!
THE chance of rescue was small, he knew.
The desperate survivors of mankind had little time or power to spare. And his own situation, after all, was not much different from that faced by the entire race.
Lingering death, in underground darkness. . . .
The very silence was a torturing oppression. Jeremy wanted to scream. Even the hollowest echo would bring an instant of life to this black vault.
But what was that? A strange sighing! Trembling, Jeremy turned. He glimpsed a sudden flare of green. It vanished, and the whisper receded. But a tiny blue glow remained.
What could it have been?
Jeremy was shaken with incredulous, desperate hope.
He stumbled back down the slope of smashed igneous rock. That feeble lingering glow vanished as he passed the wrecked mole. But it was no illusion. It reappeared when he climbed over the last barrier of rubble. Light gleamed unmistakably through a low arched opening.
Cautiously he peered through the passage—
He gaped into a blue-walled tunnel!
The amazing tube was larger than those that men had made. Twenty feet wide, the blue, porcelainlike lining was something that seemed as hard as durite. The soft illumination came from a bare, dim-glowing wire strung along the arched roof.
He stared at the floor. It was cut by two wide, shallow grooves. They were polished, as if from friction. That queer sigh and the flash of green, Jeremy thought, must have marked the passing of some vehicle.
But what manner of vehicle? Questions clamored in him. Where the builders of this passage men—or perhaps some race of monstrous troglodytes that had never seen the lost Sun? Might the strange science witnessed here aid struggling mankind? Or did it threaten only a more certain doom?
A cold, instinctive dread held Jeremy back. He tried to thrust it down into sub-consciousness. His rationalization was that he could not endanger mankind because the quake had buried his own tunnel. These unknown beings would never find the human refuges without his aid.
As for himself, he was already buried, anyhow, so he resolved to go ahead.
IN one direction the tube ran straight, until it dwindled to a point of blue. In the other, it curved out of sight.
Jeremy stepped breathlessly out into it, and started walking toward the curve.
At close intervals, he passed little niches like the one through which he had entered, except that none of those he peered into communicated with any space beyond. He counted all those he passed.
He had been walking half an hour when a deep hooting echoed down the passage. Trembling, wet with the sudden perspiration of ungovernable apprehension, Jeremy stumbled into one of the niches.
He dropped flat, watching anxiously. A blazing eye of purple-red swung around the curve behind him. A sighing roar bore down at him, and then the vehicle swept past.
Built of some dull-colored metal, the machine was larger than the Silver Mole. It had no wheels. Instead, it seemed to glide in one of the polished grooves. Intense flashes of green splintered from beneath it. Jeremy had an astonished impression that it floated on a film of green fire.
In an instant—before he could try to glimpse its passengers—it was gone. An orange light dwindled, vanished.
Here was an amazing science, perfectly adapted to life underground. Jeremy began to build rosy dreams of acquiring unguessed secrets that would enable men to survive forever in the refuges. He might obtain some wonderful new power plant for the mole, and dig his way back with the good news. Yet, he cautioned himself, there might be unknown danger.
He crept out of the niche. Following the strange vehicle, he walked swiftly and uneasily. Suddenly he discovered that in his excitement he had unconsciously slipped off the oxygen mask. He was breathing good air, air that carried a singular, penetrating, musky odor.
He became conscious of a throbbing hum, almost like the vast muffled traffic of the most crowded levels of New Chicago. And at last he saw that he was emerging from the tube. He paused in the arched entrance.
Before him rose fantastic buildings. Blue towers and golden domes made a dreamlike city. Above them a vast dome lifted, blue as the old sky that Jeremy knew only from pictures and words. And in that sky, above the fairylike cavern city, stood—
A Sun!
FOR a long time, crouching in the diffused shadow of that lofty arch, Jeremy stood motionless. He had an odd, numbing sense of disbelief. A Sun, pouring down its hot invigorating rays upon a cave-world! That couldn’t be true.
But he knew it was true!
The amazing orb hung a full mile above, he estimated, for the Silver Mole had been boring at twelve thousand feet. The shining globe appeared to be many yards in diameter. It looked exactly like his conception of the old Sun that Earth had lost.
A hooted warning rang hollowly down the passage behind him. Another strange vehicle was swiftly approaching. Jeremy’s first problem was to get out of sight.
Uneasily Jeremy slipped forward. By the side of the broad blue track, as it curved into the amazing city, lay what looked like a park. The ground was covered with a crimson mossy growth. Instead of trees, there were tall, fernlike things, whose feathery leaves were vividly yellow.
Beyond the park towered tall, odd-shaped buildings of the blue porcelainlike material. He shuddered with the cold dread of hostile eyes that might be watching from the narrow, slitlike windows. Swiftly he ran crouching into the park, dived heedlessly into a thick clump of the yellow ferns.
Caution tempered the elation of his discovery. Whatever unguessed science had created this astounding Sun might easily save mankind from extinction. But more likely, Jeremy could not help thinking, it would move with the same uncanny efficiency to squash an alien intruder who might become a menace.
Suppose that some fantastic creature—say, an intelligent octopus—had come to New Chicago to get the secret of the ME-converter. One frightened citizen, one excited policeman—Jeremy crouched lower, shuddering at his picture of the outcome.
The vehicle that had hooted came sliding furiously out of the tunnel. Shooting off bright green flashes from the grooved track, it quickly glided by within a dozen yards of him. It had slowed to enter the city, and now he first glimpsed the cavern-folk.
CHAPTER VII
Tower of Gold
SOMEHOW they looked queerly like men—and somehow queerly different.
They were bipeds, and they clung to straps fastened to the top of the vehicle, swaying exactly like strap-hangers in the noisy tube-trains of New Chicago. Some of them were seated, and these stared out of the broad windows. They had the familiar bored look of tired travelers everywhere. Their heads and their features were almost human, but not quite.
Their hairless bodies were naked, except for a sort of light harness to which odd little implements and pouches were clipped. Their smooth skins had a polished luster, as if they were covered with invisibly fine scales, Jeremy thought. They were mottled with bright hues of red, green and Orange splashed haphazardly all over them.
But there was something else, something that made Jeremy shudder.
A stronger odor reached him, forced up his nostrils by the wind rushing around the vehicle. It was the same mustiness he had distastefully noticed before. For some reason, it sent an eerie prickling along his spine. It made him stare, shuddering, at the slow, gliding grace of one purple-and-green creature moving through the car.
These things were snaky—reptilian!
For hours, scarcely aware of the passing of time, Jeremy crouched in the yellow ferns. He studied the beings that rode the other vehicles which slowed for the curve. He watched two paler-hued midgets, amazing, tiny copies of the full-grown creatures, that came to play with a ball in the park. They came alarmingly near discovering him.
But it was the suspended Sun that fascinated him.
The city’s tallest building stood directly beneath the strangely hanging orb. A massive, eight-sided tower, cast off a dull rich gleam, as if built of great blocks of unpolished gold. Crowning it was a dome of shimmering transparency.
Within that crystalline dome, incredibly high above the blue-and-gilded towers, cupolas and twisted minarets of the city, Jeremy thought he could detect something like a shining needle. It pointed straight at the hanging Sun.
Was it a control?
Jeremy’s first wild elation returned. Once he had dreamed that he made a Sun. The dream had seemed the sheerest madness, yet here was proof that other beings had done what to him had been only wishful thinking. These unhuman creatures could build a Sun within Earth. Why couldn’t men set another, huger Sun in the sky?
But he did not allow his excitement to overcome his caution. The odds against him, the difficulties ahead were too clearly manifest.
IT was almost certain that these beings would destroy, or at least imprison him at sight. And it would serve nothing to gain the secret unless he could also solve the difficult problem of providing a new power unit for the mole.
He resolved to learn as much as possible about the amazing Sun, and the fantastic world it illuminated, without taking any avoidable risk of betraying his presence.
Presently he had discovered that the long, sliding vehicles arrived and departed with clocklike regularity. He slipped out of the strange park and went back the way he had come.
He counted the niches again. After concealing himself in one of them to let another vehicle pass, he came again to the cavern through which he had entered. The disabled mole had not been molested. He climbed back into it.
Working swiftly, he dismounted the little automatic spectrograph from beside the atomic furnace. It had been intended to analyze rock specimens, but it could reveal the secrets of the strange Sun’s radiations just as well.
With the heavy little instrument slung to his shoulders, and his pockets stuffed with the synthetic pemmican called crow meat, he started back. Briefly he wished that he had some weapon. But it was secrecy upon which he must rely, not force.
The tube was dark when he came back to it. The dim light had died from the wire overhead. Not daring to use the flashlight, he stumbled through darkness back toward the strange city, guiding himself by touching the tunnel’s wall.
He listened apprehensively for the vehicles, knowing that it would be difficult to hide himself in time, if one came. But traffic had ceased. At last, weary and nervous, he came back to the enormous cavern.
The hanging Sun had changed, its golden radiance faded until now it was a dim blue orb, no brighter than the old Moon must have been. Silence lay beneath its cold pale light. The fantastic city slept.
Jeremy guessed that at some time in the far-distant past, these reptilian creatures must have lived on Earth’s crust. For here was evidence of a memory of night, and the ancient habit of sleep. It was the greatest single help he could have asked to accomplish his purpose.
HE slipped back into the park, set up the spectrograph on the blue chinalike wall of a quiet little pool. Then he ran a hundred feet of film to record the blue orb’s spectrum. When the little instrument was packed again, his eyes lifted wistfully to the golden tower.
Its dull, massive column lifted majestically above the sleeping city. The lofty crystal dome shimmered. It beckoned to him with a mad hope. Still, Jeremy thought, he could see that far shining finger pointing at the luminary. He fought against the insane urge to know the secret of it.
The park was very still. The dim blue light gave the yellow ferns a curiously hideous shade of green. The red mossy stuff looked black, though thousands of tiny blue flowers opened out upon it. Bright as flakes of frost, they filled the air with a strong pinelike odor that refreshingly blanketed the almost sickening musky odor of the city.
Starting to slip forward, Jeremy abruptly froze.
He wasn’t alone in the park!
Into the little mossy glade before him came a female of the cavern-folk. She moved silently, with a slow ophidian grace. Under her revealing harness, she was tall and slender. In a disquieting way—for a reason he could not discover, Jeremy compared her with the coral snake in New Chicago’s tiny zoo—she was beautiful.
Her skin was a shimmering, pearly white, spotted with red. Her face was white. On her forehead glowed a little red heart. A spot of crimson, on the side of her delicate, hairless head, gave the curious effect of a jaunty little hat.
She stopped beyond the ferns. For an instant he was afraid she had discovered him. But her big purple eyes looked up at the orb above the golden tower. Strumming on a queer little three-stringed instrument, she began to sing in a weird, lisping voice.
Jeremy dropped deeper into the ferns, staring breathlessly. She was the first adult that he had seen near at hand. Scientifically, he was very much interested. But he also felt himself perilously stirred by her eerie beauty.
Her tunes sounded curiously unmusical to Jeremy’s ear. They were as disturbing as her musky body-scent and the slow ophidian grace of her moving hands. Their weird harmonies set all his body to prickling with a chill, instinctive apprehension.
STILL he thought that she was beautiful.
And the wail of uncanny minors made him feel that the burden of her songs was a dreadful sorrow.
The voice in which she sang was far different from anything human. Its range extended far higher than that of the most ear-splitting soprano. There were little clicks and trills and whistles. It was hopeless, Jeremy told himself, to think that he could master such speech.
Then he almost cried out with astonishment.
For she had begun to sing Kipling’s Mandalay!
Jeremy knew the song. Often in childhood he had heard his father sing it. The familiar syllables came from this being’s crimson lips in a curious, high-pitched, lisping way. But they were unmistakable.
Jeremy’s heart began pounding hard. He could scarcely breathe, and that cold prickling numbed his body. This was incredible! How could these cavern-dwellers have learned an English song?
Once he rose up amid the ferns, catching his breath to call out. But caution drew him back. One song was no guarantee of friendly understanding. It would be wiser, for the time at least, to remain undetected.
He waited, silently. The singer finished Mandalay. She had started another song, in her own alien tongue, when a string broke on her instrument. With a regretful glance at the high narrow windows behind her, she left the park.
A deeper silence settled over the city.
Jeremy waited for another hour, debating what to do. The spectrograph films, alone, might yield valuable data. But he wanted to know the secret of that golden tower.
The familiar song had made him feel that discovery might not be completely disastrous. At last, tempted by utter quiet that had fallen, he set out for the tower.
He followed the curving blue track. It was bordered with a narrow parkway, whose yellow ferns might serve to hide him. Once he lay flat in them while a black-mottled troglodyte, carrying an ominous looking cylinder, crossed the track ahead of him.
Eventually, though, it was necessary for him to leave the parkway. He had to do down a street queerly like the shopping district on New Chicago’s most prosperous level. The only exception was that most of the articles displayed in the dimly blue-lit windows were wholly unfamiliar to him.
He heard the warning click and scrape of another pair of splayed, horny bare feet upon the hard blue pavement. He crouched in a dark entrance while the patrolman went by. At last he came into the park that surrounded the golden tower.
EMPTY benches made it seem comfortingly like the tiny Plaza on the Regents’ level in New Chicago. Thick clumps of ferns promised cover, so Jeremy hurried forward more confidently, keeping upon the silent carpet of fragrant moss.
Near at hand, the base of the tower more than ever resembled time-dulled gold. But Jeremy gave its substance no second thought. More precious than a tower of diamonds was the secret that he hoped to find in the crowning dome.
Twenty yards from the arched entrance, he silently dropped flat again. A gigantic green-and-yellow troglodyte was standing guard before him. Its massive, mottled arms cradled another alarming looking cylinder.
Jeremy lay breathless, trying to think of some ruse that would draw the sentry out of his way. With his small knowledge of this alien world, however, it was difficult to think of anything that was not too likely to rouse suspicion.
He had decided to take the risks of setting a fire in the moss, when the problem was solved for him. A soft trilling call came from another clump of ferns, opposite. Jeremy glimpsed the serpentine grace of a pink-and-gold female. The guard clicked a cautious reply. His immense purple eyes peered warily about. Satisfied, the mottled giant stalked into the ferns.
Jeremy darted silently into the tower.
The building was even more massive than it had appeared from a distance. The huge, tarnished yellow blocks were hard as durite. If they were really gold, they had been hardened by some process unknown to men. The architecture was extremely simple. Everything about the tower gave an almost appalling impression of unthinkable antiquity.
A spiral stair ran upward, about an open shaft. Dim blue light fell through narrow window slits. No other being was in view. Eagerly, Jeremy began climbing. A dull, thrumming sound, slow and heavy, came down to meet him from above.
WORN hollow by ages of use, despite their adamantine hardness, the steps were a little too tall for him. They were also too tall, he thought, for the most of the beings he had seen. Once he paused to examine a bit of time-faded mosaic above a landing. He saw that the creatures depicted upon it were oddly different from those he had encountered. They appeared larger, more rugged. Visibly scaled, they bore curious hoodlike crests.
