 18 Through an airplane's thick windows of shatter-proof glass, so tough and resilient that a machine-gun bullet would only make a temporary dent, the midday sun flashed brightly as the big ship rolled. Along each side of the small room, high up under the curve of the cabin roof, windows were ranged, others like them were in the floor, and above the same glass made a transparent dome from which an observer could see on all sides. Outside was the thunderous roar of ten giant motors, but inside the cabin the fire control room of a dreadnought of the air, that blast of sound became more a reverberation and a trembling than actual noise. Certainly the sound of motors and of smashing propellers as the battle plane roared up into the sky did not prevent free conversation among the three men in the room. Yet there was neither laughter nor idle talk. At a built-in desk before a battery of instruments sat Farrell, the captain of the ship. Farther aft and solidly anchored chairs Colonel Culver and Smitty were seated. Occasionally the captain spoke into a transmitter, cutting in by phone on different stations about the ship. Check up on that right wing gun, Sergeant, number two of the top wing battery. Recoil mechanism is reported stiff. Tell Chicago Lieutenant we will want one thousand gallons in the air, gas only, no oil needed. Gun room. Have the gun crews get some sleep. They'll have to stand by later on. Colonel Culver spoke musingly. Guerrilla warfare the hardest kind to meet. Smitty nodded absently. He rose and stared from one side of the windows that was just level with his eyes. He could see nothing but the broad expanse of wing, a sheet of smooth grey metal. Along its leading edge was a row of shimmering discs where great propellers whirled. From the top of the wing a two inch Richard Recoilus thrust forth its snout. It rose in air till the whole weapon was visible, then settled again and buried itself inside the wing. They were testing a gun. Smitty knew that inside the wing sections were other guns and men and smoothly running motors. The whole ship was only a giant flying wing of which their own central section was merely a thickening. He looked down through a bullseye in the floor. The city they had just left was beneath them, Washington, the nation's capital. The golden dome of the capital building was slipping swiftly astern. Only then he made a bladed reply to Culver's statement. Well, he said shortly, they'll have to meet it in their own way. We told them all we knew. And a lot of good that did, not. Five days, said Culver, it seems more like five years since the devil's first came out. Nobody knows where they will hit next. But they're working north, and there's no trouble in telling where they've been. Smitty's voice was hot in reply, hot with the intense anger of a young aggressive man when confronted by the ponderous motion of a big organization getting slowly under way. If only we'd gone down underground, he exclaimed. Carried the fight to them. They lived there. There must be a whole world underground. We could have carried in power lines, lighting the place as we went along. We could have fought them with gas. We'd have paid for it, sure, we would. But we'd have given them enough hell to think of down below, so they wouldn't rise so much of it up above. But no, we had the fight according to the textbooks. And those red devils don't fight that way. They never learned the rules. Gorilla warfare, Colonel Culver repeated. There are certain difficulties about fighting enemies you can't see. They're clever, Smitty admitted. We taught them their lesson down there in the desert. They've never been seen in the daylight since. Out at night, and with their invisible heat rays setting fire to a city a mile away, then mopping up with their green flamethrowers if anyone's left. They pick our planes out of the sky even when they're flying without lights. Darkness means nothing to them. It was murder to send troops in against them. Troops wiped out to a man. Artillery? That's no good, either, when we don't know how many of the devils there are, or where they are. There's no profit in shelling the place where the Brutes have gone back underground. Colonel Culver shot a warning glass from Smitty to the seated officer. About a hundred square miles of the finest fruit country on earth laid waste, he admitted bravely, then sought to turn Smitty from his rebellious mood. What's underground, I wonder? Must be a world of caves. Or perhaps these mole men can follow up a mere crack or a fault line and open it out with their flamethrowers to make a tunnel they can go through. The plane's captain had caught Culver's glance. Speak your peace, he said pleasantly. Don't stop on my account. There's a lot to what Mr. Smith says. But you don't know all that's going on. He had been half turned. Now he swung about in his little swivel chair whose base was riveted solidly to the floor and whose safety belt ends dangled, has he turned. My orders are to deliver you two gentlemen at San Francisco. But there's a show scheduled for tonight down south of there. Two hundred planes, big and little, scouts, cruisers, battle planes, they're going to swarm in over when the enemy makes his first crack. There's a devil of a storm in the mountains along the route we would usually take. I'm afraid I'll have to swing off south. He was grinning openly as he turned back to his desk. Colonel Culver smiled back. At a boy, he said. But Smithy's forehead was still wrinkled in scowling lines as he walked forward to an adjoining room. Underground, he was thinking, we've got to carry the fight to them, got to lick them so they'll stay licked. But Rawson, good old Dean, were too late to help him, and the lives of all the devils left in hell can't pay for that. Smithy had been dozing. The shrill whistle of a high-pitched siren brought him fully awake in an instant. Culver, too, sprang alertly to his feet. Both men knew the signal was to call to quarters. They had spread blankets on the floor of the fire control room. Culver immediately folded his into a compact bundle, and Smithy followed suit. He said, That's right, we don't want any feather beds flying around here in case of a mix-up. Even Culver's simple act of stowing the blankets back in their little compartment thrilled him with what it portended. His nerves were suddenly a quiver with anticipation. A real fight, a determined effort, no telling what these big dreadnoughts could do. Two hundred big and little Captain Ferrell had said. If they could catch the enemy out in the open, show him up in a blaze of enormous flares. Captain Ferrell was calling them. A section of the floor had been raised up mysteriously to form a platform beneath the shallow dome of the conning tower. Ferrell was there. Headphones clamped to his ears. One hand on the little switchboard at the base of the glass dome that kept him in touch with every station on the ship. Right in was the fire-control officer, similarly equipped, though his headphone was connected only with a gun-cruise. The enemies out, said Captain Ferrell, and not just where they were expected. They're raising fourteen kinds of hell. The ships have been ordered in. I'm hooked up with the radio room now. They're less than a hundred miles ahead. Of course, we won't mix in on it, but I thought it best to have my men standing by. He pressed a little lever on his switchboard and spoke into the mouth piece of his headset. Pilot room, our two passengers, Colonel Colver and Mr. Smith, are coming forward. Let them see whatever they can of the show. He gave the two a quick smile and a nod and waved them forward with binoculars in his free hand. It will be lights out after you get there. We'll be flying dark except for wing and tail lights up on top. The enemy's movements are uncertain. Perhaps he can see us anyway, but we won't advertise ourselves to him. The ship's bow was a blunt rounded nose of glass cut by cross-bars of aluminum alloy. The deeper central portion of the big flying wing was carried ten feet forward. It was but one of the many details that Smitty had looked at with interest when he had seen the ship waiting for them on the field. The pilot room was dark when they entered. Only the glow from the instrument panel showed the two men who were seated behind the wheel-controls. One of them turned and nodded at a welcome. Can't offer you gentlemen seats, he said, but if you'll stand right here behind us you can see the whole works. He did not wait for a reply, but turned back toward the black night ahead. Smitty glanced past him at the lighted instruments and found the altimeter. Twelve thousand, yes. There was nasty country hereabouts. Then he, too, stared out into the dark at the sky sprinkled with stars, at the vague blur of an unlighted world far below, and off at either side and behind them the quivering lines of cold light where the starlight was reflected dimly from the spinning propellers. Another wing-lights winked out as he watched, and he knew that from that moment on they were invisible from below, invisible to human eyes at least, that they were sweeping on through the darkness like some gargantuan night-bird, pursuing its prey. Flares ahead, sir, one of the pilots had spoken into the mouthpiece of his telephone, spoken lightly, reporting back to Captain Ferrell. The words whipped Smitty's head about, and he, too, saw on a distant horizon the beginning of a white glare. They were fighting there, two hundred planes roaring downward, one formation following another. In his mind he was seeing it so plainly. The white blaze of light dead ahead grew broader. It had not been as far distant as he had first thought, and the scene he had pictured came swiftly to reality. Their own ship was still at the twelve thousand foot level, ahead and five thousand feet below, tiny lights red and white and green. Lights whose swift motion made their hundreds seem like thousands instead, were weaving intricate patterns in the night. The flying lights of the fighting planes were on, for the plane's own protection, and, too, no further concealment was possible in the glare that shone upward from below. Settling downward were balls of blinding fire. Flares dropped by the squadron of scout planes that had torn through in advance. They lighted brilliantly a valley which, a few hours before, had been one of many, like it, square fields dark green with the foliage of fruit trees, straight lines of crossing roads, houses, and off in the distance a little city. And now the valley was an inferno of sprouting flame. The city was a vast roaring furnace, under smoke clouds of mingled blood red and black. The valley floor was a place of desolation, of drifting smoke and a flashing shellbursts as the fleet swept in above. The myriad lights of the planes had drawn into a circle, a great whirlpool of lines that revolved above a mile-wide section of that valley. Besides smithing, a wheel control was moving. He clung to the pilot's seat as their own plane banked and nose downward. And now he shouted aloud to Culver. The Mole Men, there they are, thousands of them. He was pointing between the two pilots as their own plane swept down. He could see them plainly now, clotted masses of dark figures, surging frenziedly to and fro. For an instant he saw them. Then that part of the world where they had been was a seething inferno of bursting bombs and shells. Beside him Colonel Culver spoke quietly. Caught them cold. That's handed it to them. Their own plane had leveled off. With motors throttled they were drifting slowly past, only a thousand feet higher than the circling planes just off at one side. Culver's quiet tones rose to a horse shout. The ships, my God, they're falling! His wild cry ended in a gasp. Beside him smitty in breathless horror like Culver was staring at that whirlpool of tiny lights that had gone suddenly from smooth circular motion into frenzied confusion or vanished in the yellow glare of exploding gas tanks. The light of their own white flares picked them out in ghastly clarity as they fell. Straight vertical lines of yellow were burning planes. Again they made horrible zig-zag darts and flashed down in the view torn and helpless, while others, tens and scores of others with crumpled wings, joined the mad dance of death. Smitty knew that he could never tear his eyes away from the sight. Yet within him something was clamoring for his attention. They didn't do it from below. That something was shouting. Not down in that hell. There are more of them somewhere. Then somehow he forced his eyes to stare ahead and outside of that circle of fearful fascination. And he knew that for an instant he was seeing a single stab of green flame. One single light on the darkness of a little knoll that stood close beside the place of white flame and destruction. One light. And in the valley there had flashed a million brighter. It had shown but an instant. But to Smitty, watching, it was the same he had seen when their own camp was attacked. And now it was Smitty who was abruptly stone cold. One hand closed upon a pilot's shoulder with a grip of steel. His other pointed. Down there. They're hiding back of that hill, picking off our ships from the side. And then, like a guiding beacon, a point of green showed once more. The plane banked sharply, while one of the pilots spoke crisp clearly enunciated words into his phone. He listened then. Right he snapped. Power dive for bow gun firing. Level off for bombing from five hundred feet. Off into the night they were headed. Then a left bank in turn brought the place of blazing flares and falling planes swinging smoothly into view. They were flying toward it. Against a white glare in the valley of death was a hill, roundly outlined. Then the ship's nose sank heavily down. And from each broad wing, straight forward stabbing lines was the steady lightning of the record batteries in action. The pilot's room was a place of unbearable sound. The crash of gun fire it seemed must crush the glass wall like an egg shell by the sheer impact of its own thunder. In that pandemonium Smitty never knew when they flattened out. He only knew that the hill head quinkled brilliantly, and that each flashing light was an exploding shell. He knew when the hill passed beneath them. Then in the night, close beside them, just outside the pilot room glass, was a quick glow of red. The plane lurched and staggered. Smitty clung desperately to the seat ahead. The pilot was sliding madly with the wheel. The roar of bombs from a stern, where the bombers had launched their missiles at the approaching hill, was unheard. In a world suddenly gone chaotic he could hear nothing. He knew only that the valley dead ahead was whirling dizzily, that it sank suddenly from sight. They were crashing. That red glow. They had been hit. Then something hard and firm was pressing against him, pressing irresistibly. It was the last conscious impression upon Smitty's mind. End of chapter 18 Chapter 19 of 2000 miles below by Charles Willard Diffen. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. The Voice of the Mountain In a strange new world, surrounded by a group of kneeling figures, of whom one, who called himself Gore, had spoken in Rawson's own tongue, Dean Rawson stood silent. It was all too overwhelming. He could not bring words together to formulate a reply. He only stood and stared with wondering eyes at the exquisite beauty of the world about him. A world flooded with a golden light faintly tinged with green. Then he looked above him to see the source of that light, and found the sun. Not the sun that he had known, but a flaming ball nevertheless. Straight above it hung in the center of the heavens, a gleaming disc of pale green gold, magnificently brilliant. He sought through lids half closed against its glare. Then his gaze swept back down the blue vault of the heavens, back to a world of impossible beauty. Directly ahead was a land of desolation, radiant in its barrenness. For every rock, every foot of ground, was made of crystal. Nearby hills were visions of loveliness, where the colors of a million rainbows quivered and flashed. Fanes of metal showed the rich blues and greens of peacock coloring. Others were scarlet, topaz, green, and all of them took the strange sunlight that flooded them and threw it back in blendings, radiant and delicate. The little hills began a short distance off, two low ranges running directly away, one on either side. They made brilliant walls for the flat valley between, whose foreground was barren rock of rose and white. But beyond the glistening barren stretch were green fields of luxuriant vegetation, and in the distance nestled in the green were clustered masses that might have been a city of men. Still further on, a single mountain peak, white beyond belief, reared its graceful sweeping sides to a shining apex against the heavens of clear blue. Slowly Rosson turned. A hundred yards away at his left, there was water, a sea whose smooth rollers might have been undulating liquid emeralds that broke to infinite flashing gems upon the shore. He swung sharply to the right and found the same expanse of water, perhaps the same distance away. Then he turned toward the shell, which had been behind him, and the shaft from which it had emerged, and into which the air was driving with a ceaseless rushing sound. Now, looking beyond them, he found the same ocean. He was standing on a blunt point of rock projecting into the sea. The rest of this world was one vast expanse of water. Suddenly Rosson knew that it was unlike any ocean of earth. Instead of finishing on a sharply cut horizon, the sea of emerald green reached out and still out and up. It did not fall away. It curved upward until it lost itself in the distance and merged with the blue of the sky. It was the same on all sides. He swung slowly back to face the land that perhaps was only an island. The kneeling ones had raised their bowed heads. They were regarding him from shining expectant eyes. Only the girl kept her face averted. Rosson spoke to none of them. The exclamations that his amazement and dismay wrung from his lips were meant for himself. It's concave. It curves upward. I'm on the inside of the world. And that sun is the center. But what holds us here? What keeps us from falling? He passed one hand heavily across his eyes. The excitement of the moment had lifted him above the weariness of muscle and mind. Now fatigue claimed him. Sleep, he said. Dully, I've got to sleep. I've got to. I'm all in. Gore was beside him in an instant. Whatever you wish is yours, he promised. Rosson was to remember little of that journey toward the habitations of this people. Gore had spoken at times along the way, the land of the central sun, the people of the light, peaceful and happy in our little world. Rosson had roused himself to ask, who is at the head of it? Who is the king, the ruler? And the tall man beside him had answered humbly, always since the beginning one name Gore has led, my father and those who came before him. Now it is I. And when I have gone, my little son will take the name of Gore. He had glanced toward the girl and his voice had dropped into the soft liquid syllables of their own tongue. She had smiled back at Gore, though her eyes persistently refused to meet those of Rosson. Again Gore spoke in words that Rosson could understand. I think at times he said, it is my daughter, Loa, my little Loa son, who really rules. I, knowing not who you were, did not approve of this expedition. But Loa insisted. She had seen you and a glance from the girl cut him short. The words lingered in Rosson's mind when he awoke. The horrible experience of the past days were no longer predominant. Even his own world seemed of a dim and distant past. He awoke refreshed. He was in a new world, and, for the moment, he asked nothing except to explore its mystery. He bathed under a fountain in an adjoining room, and grin broadly as he wrapped the folds of the long golden loincloth about him. As well be dead as out of style, he quoted. And now to find Gore and Loa, and see what the devil all this is about. A talking mountain, and a buried race that speaks first rate American. Gore was waiting for him, in a room whose translucent walls admitted a subdued glow from outside. There was food on a table, strange fruits, and a clear scarlet liquid in a crystal glass. Rosson ate ravenously, then followed Gore. Outside were houses whose timbered frames of jet black contrasted startingly with the quartz walls they enclosed. The street was strong with people who drew back to let them pass, and who dropped to their knees in humble worship. Like Gore, the men wore only the loincloth. But for this gala day that simple apparel added a note of flashing color. The long cloths wrapped around their hips, and brought up and about the waist where the ends hung free, were brilliant with countless variations of crimson and blue and gold. The same rainbow hues were found in the loose folded cloths that draped themselves like short skirts from the women's waists. Here and there, in a sea of white bodies and sickle and jeweled breastplates, was one with an additional flash of color, where brilliant silken scarves had been thrown about the shoulders of the younger girls. From all the land, said Gore, they have come to do you honor. Hardly more than a village, this cluster of strangely beautiful shelters for the people of the light. Beyond, Rosson saw the country. Pastures were animals weird and strange were cropping the grass so vividly green. Fields of growing things, little crystal houses like fanciful, glistening toys that had miraculously grown to greater size. The dwellings were sprinkled far into the distance across the landscape. Beyond them was the base of the mountain, magnificent and glorious in its crystal purity of white, and the striations vertical and diagonal that flashed brilliantly with black jet and peacock green. Rosson knew them for mineral intrusions, and knew that the mountain was only one crystalline mass of all the quartz formation that made of the world's inner core a gigantic geode, gleaming in eternal brilliance under the glow of the central sun, and still in it all Dean Rosson had seen a lack without perfection could not be complete. Where is Loa? he asked, Gore. I thought I had hoped. Something in Gore's face told Rosson that his companion was troubled. She refused to come, he said, but the wish of one of the great ones from the land of the sun is a command. He shouted in order before Rosson could put in a protest. A man darted away. Always happy, my little Loa-san, said Gore. His eyes held a puzzled look, always until now, and now she weeps and will not say why. Come, we will walk more slowly. There were questions you wished to ask. I will answer them as we walk. Questions exclaimed Rosson a thousand of them. And now for the first time, since at the top of a barren peak in the dark of the desert night, his wild journey had begun, he found answers definite and precise to the puzzles he had been unable to solve. Their speech, their language. How was it they could talk with him? He fired the questions out with furious eagerness, and Gore replied. As to their speech, the Holy Mountain itself would explain. And yes, truly, this was the center of the world, or the sun above them was. The central sun did not attract, but instead repelled all matter from it, all things but one, the sun stone, of which Gore would speak later. Rosson pounced upon that and demanded corroboration. All the power of earth tends to draw every object to its center, yet we're here on an inner surface. We're walking actually head down, and our bodies, every stone, every particle of matter, ought by well-known laws to fall into that flaming center. But we don't. That proves your point, proves a counter gravitation. Then there must be a neutral zone, a place where this upward thrust is exactly equaled by gravity's downward pull. The zone of fire, said Gore, you pass through it. Did you not see? Saw it and felt it. Rosson's mind leaped immediately to the next question. And we must have come through it at surely a thousand miles an hour. What drove us? That shell must have gone in from here. I can understand it's falling one way, but not two. We should have come to rest in that very spot, and we'd have lasted about half a second if we had. Oro and Graw, said Gore. Oro, the sun stone, and Graw, the stone that loves the dark. But they are not stones, neither are they metal. We find them deep in the ground, clinging to the caves, a fine powder, both of them. Still I don't get it, said Rosson. You drive that shell in from here, and then you drive it back again. That too I will explain later. It is simple. Even the dwellers in the dark, those whom you call the Mole Men, have Oro and Graw to serve them. Gore launched into a long account of their tribal legends. Of that time in the long ago, when an angry sun god had driven his children inside the earth. Of how Gore, and the son of Gore, and his son's sons, tried always to return. Rosson was listening only subconsciously. They were circling the White Mountain, ascending at slower slope. Now he could see beyond it, as far as the land extended, and he was startled to find this distance so short. They were on an island, ten miles or so in length, and beyond it was the sea. He must ask Gore about that. It is all that is left, said Gore, when Rosson interrupted his narrative. Once the land was great and the sea small. This also in the long ago. But always it has risen. The air we breathe and the water in the sea come from the central sun. The air rushes out, as you know. The water has no place to retreat. Again he took up his tail. But Rosson's eyes were following the upward curve of that sea. They seemed to be in the bottom of a great bowl. He was trying to estimate, trying to gauge distance. And so, after many generations had lived and died, they found the pathway to the light, Gore was saying. It is our name for the shaft through which you came. This was thousands of your years ago, when he, who was then Gore, and the bravest of the tribe descended. Even then they were workers in metal, and they knew of Oro and Grah. They were our fathers, the first people of the light. Rosson had a question ready on his tongue. But Gore's words suggested another. That shaft, he said, that pathway to the light. Do you mean it extends clear up to the Mole Men's world? Why don't they come down? To them the way is lost. The pathway is closed above the zone of fire. The other Gore did that. And those who remained, the Mole Men, have forgotten. They could break their way through if they knew. They are master workers with fire. But for them the pathway ends, and below is the great heat. But we know of a way around the closed place, the hidden way to the great lake of fire. They could break their way through if they knew, repeated Rosson softly. For an instant he stood silent and unbreathing. He was remembering the ugly eyes in a priest's hideous face. The eyes were watching him as the white ones took him away. He forced his thoughts to come back to the earlier question. What, he asked, is the diameter, the distance across the inside world? How far is it from here to your son? How many miles? Miles, question Gore? We know the word, for the mountain has told us. But the length of a mile we could not know. This I can say. There were wise men in the past when our world was larger. They worked magic with little marks on paper. It is said they knew that if one came here from our son and kept on as far again through the solid rock he would reach the outside, the land of the true son from which our forefathers came. Rosson nodded his head while his eyes followed that sweeping green bowl of sea. Not far off, he said abstractedly, two thousand miles radius, and the earth itself not a solid ball, but a big globular shell, two thousand miles thick. I could rig up a level, I suppose, work out an approximation of the curvature. From the smooth winding path which they had followed there sounded behind them hurrying footsteps, and a moment later Loa stood beside him. Her eyes gave unmistakable corroboration of what Gore had said of that torrent of tears, but she looked at Dean bravely. While every show of emotion was erased from her face, you sent for me, she said. And Rosson, though now he knew he could speak to her and be understood, found himself at a loss for words. We wanted you with us, Gore and I, he began, then paused. She was so different from the girl whose smiling eyes had welcomed him. The change had come when he spoke those first words on his arrival, and now she was so coldly impersonal. I wanted to thank you, you saved my life, you were so brave. So again he hesitated. He wanted to tell her how dear, how utterly lovely she had seemed. It was nothing. It has pleased me to do it, she said quietly, then walked on ahead while the others followed. But Rosson knew that that slim body was tense with repressed emotion. He had not realized how he had looked forward to seeing again that welcoming light in her eyes. He was still puzzling over the change as they entered a natural cave in the mountain side. A winding passage showed between sheer walls of snow white, where giant crystals had parted along their plains of cleavage. Then the passage grew dark, but he could see that ahead of them it opened to form a wider space. There were lights on the walls of the room, lights like the one that Loa had carried, and on the floor were rows of tables where men were busy at work writing endlessly on long scrolls of parchment. The wise ones, Gore was saying, servants of the Holy Mountain. Yet even then men knelt at Rosson's coming has had the other more humble people. Then they returned to their tables, and in that crystal mountain was the only sound of their scratching pens in the faint sigh of a breeze that blew in through a hidden passage to furnish ventilation. Yet there were some at those tables whose pens did not move. They seemed to be waiting expectantly. One of them spoke. The time as near he said, are the servants prepared? And the waiting once answered, we are prepared. Rosson glanced sharply about. What hocus-pocus is this? He was asking himself. Still the silence persisted. He looked at the waiting men, motionless, their heads bent, their hands ready above the parchment scrolls. He saw again the white walls, the single broad band of some glittering metal that made a continuous black stripe around the walls, and ceiling and floor. What kind of ore is that? he was asking himself silently. It's metallic. It runs right through the mountain. I wonder. His idle thoughts were never finished. A ripping crashed like the crackle of lightning in the vaulted room. Then a voice, the mountain itself, was speaking, speaking in words whose familiar accent brought a sob into his throat. Station K22A said the voice of the mountain, the superpower station of the radio news service at Los Angeles, California. It's tuned in, Gast Rosson. Tuned in on the big LA station, a gigantic crystal detector, those heavy laminations of embedded metal furnished the inductance. Then his incoherent words ended, the mountain was speaking. Radio pressed dispatch. The invasion of the Mole Men has not been checked. Army Air Force fought a terrific engagement about midnight last night and met defeat. Over one hundred fighting planes were brought down in flames. Even the new battle-plane type, the latest dreadnoughts of the air, succumbed. Heavy loss of life, although civilian population of three towns had been evacuated before the Mole Men destroyed them. Gordon Smith is reported killed. Smith was associated with Dean Rosson in the Tauna Basin, where the Mole Men first appeared. With Colonel Culver of the California National Guard, Smith was returning from Washington in an army dreadnought which crashed back of the enemy lines. Rosson's tanned face had gone white. He knew the others were looking at him curiously, all but the men at the table, whose pens were flying furiously across the waiting scrolls. Before him the face of Loa suddenly wide-eyed and troubled, swam dizzily. He could scarcely see it. He was seeing other sights of another world. They're out, he half-whispered. The red devils are out. And Smitty? Smitty's gone. They had resisted the degeneration which might easily have followed the destruction of a complex civilization. Living simply and clean of mind, they had clung to the culture of the past as it was taught them by their wise ones, and now the people of the light had found the new God. Not that Dean Rosson had asked for that exalted position. On the contrary, he had tried his best to make them understand that he was only one of many millions, some better, some worse, but all of them merely humans. His speaking the language of the Holy Mountain had convinced them first, but when old Rotan, oldest and grayest of the mountain's servants, went into a trance, then Rosson could no longer escape the honors being thrust upon him. The time of deliverances at hand, old Rotan said when he awoke. His voice that so long had been cracked and feeble was suddenly strong, vibrant, with belief in the visions that had come to him. They were in the inner chamber of the White Mountain, where Dean Rosson, heart-sick, lonely and hopeless, had spent most of his time listening to the voice from the outer world. Gora was there and Loa, and the writers had left their desks to gather around old Rotan, where now the old servant of the mountain stood erect, his glistening eyes fixed unwaveringly upon Rosson. Listen, he commanded. Rotan speaks the truth. Never shall the people of the light return to the outer world. It is here we stay. For now our world which is lost shall be returned to us. His eyes, unnaturally bright, met the wandering gaze of his own people, gathered round, then came back to rest again upon Rosson. Dean, Rosson, he said. Ross, do you not see? It is our own word. Ross, the messenger. Dean, messenger of the sun. The sun god has sent him. He will set us free. He will restore our lost cities. The people of the light will spread out to fill the new land. They will multiply, and once more will be a mighty nation, living happily as of old in their own lost world. Dean, he called. Dean, messenger of the sun. He was drawn to his full frail height, his arms outstretched. But Rosson saw the old eyes close, since the first slackening of that tense body. It was he who sprang and caught the sagging figure in his arms, then lowered the lifeless body to the floor of crystal white. Even happiness can kill. A feeble heart can cease to beat under the stress of emotions, too beautiful to be born. And Rotan, wisest of the wise, had passed on to serve his sun god in another world. And thereafter Rosson, Dean, Rosson, was undeniably a god. But he wondered, even then, while the others dropped to their knees in humble worship, why Loa, her eyes brimming over with tears, had broken suddenly into uncontrollable sobs, and had rushed blindly, swiftly, from the room. To Rosson the unwavering, simple faith of the white ones was only an added misery. Rotan's vision was accepted by them unquestioningly. Their adoring eyes followed Rosson wherever he went, while the children carpeted his path to the holy mountain with golden flowers. And there Rosson would sit, cursing silently his own helplessness, while the voice of the mountain told a further devastation up above. His plans for leading a force against them all men were abandoned. On this island all that was left of this inner world were only two thousand persons, men, women and children, and the children were few. The population had been rigorously kept down. Their present number was all that the island would support, though every possible foot of ground was tilled. Only a handful of them Rosson admitted despondently, and not a weapon of any sort. They've kept by themselves. Only Loa and a few of the others had enough curiosity and nerve to scout around where the Mole Men live. She even understands their talk. Lord, what I'd give for a thousand like her. A thousand men with her nerve. Then with weapons and means of transportation? But a daddy stopped, aware, of the futility of all such thoughts. He tried to talk to Gore, tried to tell him of his own limitations, and Gore had only smiled pleasantly and repeated, Rotan has spoken, it will come to pass. Ceaselessly his thoughts revolved about the hopelessness of his situation. He was alone. Whatever was to be done he must do single-handed, and there was nothing he could do. But he would not admit to himself that the aching loneliness came to a focus in the memory of a girl's smiling eyes, the touch of her soft hand. They're fighting up there, he argued, fighting for their lives, and I can't help. What right have I to think of Loa or myself? In spite of which he sprang abruptly to his feet, left the mountain and the voice of the mountain behind him, and went in search of the girl. I've got to make her understand, he exclaimed. I've got to have someone to talk to. But I can't make her out. She's so confoundedly respectful, axe as if I were a little tin god. And yet she wasn't always that way. At the home of Gore he found Loa slim and beautiful as always. She had just come from the bath. The creamy texture of her skin had flushed to rosiness in the cold fountain. Her jeweled breast plates sparkled. A cloth shone like silk enwrapped her hips in soft folds of pale rose, and hung in an absurd little skirt. She might have been the spirit of youth itself, a vision of loveliness. Yet Rawson felt an almost uncontrollable desire to take her in his two hands and shake her when she bowed humbly and created his request as if it were a royal command. To walk with Dean Rawson? But certainly, if that is his wish. In silence they left the village and walked toward the island's end, where Rawson had emerged from the underworld. The island was not large. On either side were low hills, mere knolls, of white crystal, where in every hollow men and women were harvesting strange grain. Between the two ranges of hills were flat fields of green, reaching out toward the point some three miles distant. Rawson made no attempt to talk as he led Loa along the roadway that cleft the green expanse in half. Other workers were there, and Dean acknowledged their smiling, worshipful salutations. He did not want to talk now. He wanted to find some place where he and Loa could be by themselves. There was so much he must tell her. He must try to make her understand. And after that, perhaps, with her help, he could find some way to be evade to his own beleaguered people. Mean he could do, even single-handed. Where the fields ended, and from there on toward the point, had been an expanse of glistening white. Rawson remembered it plainly. So now, when he found that a place of flaming crimson, he stared in amazement. Across the full width of the valley a brilliant carpet had spread itself, a covering of flowers. A blossoming vine had sprung up in the few days since his arrival, and had woven a thick mat of vegetation. He wanted to go out to the extreme end of the point. There they would be alone. But Loa objected when he started to enter the red expanse. No, she said in quick alarm. We must not cross. It is the place of death. We will go around it following the hills. We crossed it the other day when it was a plain of white salt, argued Rawson. But now the flowers have come. Even now it might be safe. But when they die, then nothing can cross here and live. Loa could not give the reason. Dean gathered from what she could tell that a gas of some sort was formed, perhaps by the decomposing vegetation. Perhaps it combined with a sparkling white shale. But all this was of no consequence compared with his own problems. He did not argue the matter, but followed where Loa led. Where is the shell he asked when they stood at last near the open mouth of the great shaft into which the air was rushing? Where is the machine that we came here in? I want to see it. Thought perhaps I could use it later on. The Janna, the shell as you call it, is safely locked in a great room of Gora's house. Not all understand its use. It must be kept away from careless hands. Then Rawson put that thought aside. He took Loa's hand and let her some distance away toward the shore. Beyond a rocky, crystalline mass, where fragments had been heaped, the sound of the rushing air was lost. Only the flashing emerald waves whispered softly on the shore beyond. And there, in that quiet place, under the brilliance of the central sun, Rawson told her of himself and of the great outer world. He told her of his work, of everything that had happened, of how he was only one of many millions of men and women like, and yet unlike, the people of the light. And at last he knew that she understood. He had spoken softly, though he knew there were no other listening ears. Loa had been seated before him on one of the white blocks. She rose to her feet. Her eyes were troubled. Vaguely he sensed behind them a conflict of emotions. I must think, she said, I must walk by myself for a time. Then I will return. Rawson reached for her hand. You're a good sport, he said huskily. Then he felt the trembling of that hand in his, and, as if it had been an electric current, his own body responded. Shaken in every nerve, his poise deserted him. He could not think clearly. He only knew that that horrible loneliness was somehow gone. By force of will alone he kept his arms from reaching out toward that radiant figure. Instead he raised her hand toward his lips. She withdrew it sharply. No, she said. Our wise ones were mistaken. For years they have listened to the mountain. They have written down its words. Slowly they have learned their meaning. A kiss, they said, was a symbol of love in your world. They were mistaken, as was I. Now I will walk alone for a time. Shaken let her go. She seemed hardly looking where she went. Her eyes were downcast. She moved slowly around the sheltering rock and on toward the level ground and the rushing winds of the shaft. His own thoughts were in a whirl, too confused with emotion for clear thinking. A symbol of love. And back there in that cave world she had pressed her lips to his hand. Then they had come here and he had been transformed to a god, a being who could never have more than an impersonal affection for one as humble as she. The rising flood of happiness within him was abruptly frozen, changed to something which filled his veins with ice. For, from beyond the crystal barrier that hid Loa from his view, her voice had come in in one single cry of terror, then deigned she called Dinsan. But by then Rosson was throwing himself madly around the barricade of rocks. Like a sensitized plate when the camera's shutter is opened a nearest fraction of a second Rosson's brain took the imprint of every detail that was there. The black mouth of the shaft and on the rock beside it something metallic, brilliantly gleaming, a flamethrower. Beyond the pit was Loa, half crouching her slim body tense as if checked in mid-flight. She had been running toward him, coming to warn him. And between her and the shaft his back turned squarely toward Rosson, was the hideous figure of a mole-man, one of the reds. His grotesque point at head was bent forward toward the girl. His arms were reaching the long fingers like talons. Rosson did not know when he called the girl's name, but he knew the instant that he had done it and he knew it was a mistake. He should have crept quietly, seized the weapon, and now his feet tore madly on the white rock floor as he raced toward the shining implement of death. From beyond the red figure whirling at his call leaped wildly for the same prize. The taloned hands were on the flamethrower first. Rosson saw the red body straighten, saw the weapon swing, glistening in air, swinging over and down. From its tip green fire made a straight line of light. He leaped in under the descending flame, felt the nozzle of the projector as it crashed upon his right shoulder, and the green fire spat harmlessly beyond his back. The last spring had thrown him bodily against the red monster. They were both knocked off balance for a moment. Then Rosson caught himself and swung with his left. He set himself in that fraction of a second, felt the first movement of that shining crook-necked tube that meant the green flame was being drawn back where it could reach him, and then his fists crashed into a yielding jaw. Not five feet from the brink of that nearly bottomless shaft he stood wavering in the rush of air. He knew that the ugly red figure had toppled sideways, that the weapon had fallen with him, the blast swinging up in a vertical hissing arc. Then man and weapon had dropped silently into the pit. He was alone, save for the girl, who, her eyes wide with horror, threw herself upon him and clung trembling, while she murmured incomprehensible endearments in her own tongue wherein his own name was mingled. DEAN, DEAR, MY OWN DEAN SON. But the Mole-men. Dean Rosson's mind was aghast with the horror of it. The Mole-men had now found the way. CHAPTER XXI of two thousand miles below by Charles Willard Diffen. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. SUICIDE Captain Smith, sometimes known as Smitty, was to remember little of the happenings that followed the crash of the big army dreadnought. It was Colonel Culver who dragged him from the pilot-room wreckage, Colonel Culver and one of the pilots whom he had restored to consciousness. They lowered Smitty carefully to the ground, then explored the rest of the ship. Their hands were red when they returned, and empty. Captain Ferrell and the rest of the crew had ceased to be units of the United States Army Air Force. Henceforth they would only be names on a casualty list grown ominously long. Stood plumb on her tail, said the pilot, staring at the wreck. They hit us just once, and the left wing crumpled like cardboard. Last I remember was pulling her up off the trees. He stared at the mass of twisted metal in the center section where the wing had torn loose. It stood upright, almost vertical, resting on the crushed tail. Funny said the pilot in the same flat-level tone. That seemed the only voice he had since that last pull on a whipping wheel. Damn funny. Mostly we get it first up there. Come here, snapped Colonel Culver. Lend a hand here with Smith. We've got to carry him, and don't talk so loud. Those red devils will be out here any minute. He was taken a more active interest in his surroundings when he sat a week later in the governor's office. There's a detachment moving in there from the south, said the governor. We're going to follow your advice, to some extent at least. We're sending troops to Tauna Basin. If the top of that dead crater is closed they will blast it open. Then a scouting party's going down. Call it a reconnaissance. Call it suicide. One name's just as good as the other. Colonel Culver here is going. But you know the lay of the land there. You could be of great help. How about it? Are you asking me, Smithy inquired? He stood up, flexed his arms while he grinned at Colonel Culver. Hinge is all greased and working. As a flyer, Colonel, you're a darn good first-aid man. I'll say that. When do we start? Which explains why, Smithy, some time later, hidden under the grotesque disguise of a gas mask, was one of fifty similarly attired, who stood waiting about the black open maw in the great cylinder-floored crater of one of the peaks that surrounded Tauna Basin. Night. And the big stars that hang so low in the black desert sky should have been brilliant. They were lost now in the white glare that streamed upward. The crater was a fortress. Around the circle of the entire rim, on the inner side of the rough crags, men of the forty-ninth field artillery stood by their guns. Lookouts trailed their telephone wire to the higher peaks, where they perched as shapeless as huddled owls. And, like owls, their eyes swept the mountain slopes and the desert at its base, where the searchlight crews played long fingers of light incessantly, and where nothing moved. But the empty silence of the desert was misleading, as the men in the crater knew. They had begun arriving with the earliest light of morning. Smithy had come in with the first lot. And when the first big auto gyro transport had settled and risen again from the crater, another had taken its place, and another, and many others after that. The first crew had been a machine-gun battalion, and Smithy had smiled with grim satisfaction at the unhurried way in which their young captain had snapped them into position without loss of a second, and their guns, Smithy noticed, were trained inward upon the crater itself. Inside that protecting circle, the other transports landed one by one. Men, mobile artillery, ammunition cases, big searchlights, and a dozen engine generator outfits. The last transports brought in strange cargo, short sections of aluminum struts with bolts and splice plates to join them together. Blocks and tackle and sheaves, then spools of steel alloy cable, at least ten miles in length. From the last ship they took a hoisting engine and an assortment of aluminum plates and bars, which were bolted together by weighting mechanics, and which grew magically to a crude but exceedingly substantial elevator on which fifty men, by considerable crowding, could stand. Only a floor of bolted plates, with corner posts, and diagonal bracing and a single guard rail running around the four sides, but for the first time Smithy began to feel that he was actually going down, that this was not all make-believe or a futile gesture. He would stand on that platform, he would go down where Dean had gone, and then, but what would come after, he knew he could never imagine. A little crane swung the first metal work into position, above the shaft. One end of the assembled framework of aluminum alloy dragged loosely on the ground. The other end swung out and projected above the shaft, swayed for an instant, and then came the first direct knowledge of the enemy's presence. The end of a metal strut, though nothing visible was touching it, grew suddenly white-hot, sagged, then broke into a shower of molten, dazzling drops that rained down into the pit. Good said Colonel Culver, who was standing beside Smithy. Now we know they are there, but it means we will have to go down there with our gas masks on. To Smithy it was not immediately apparent how gas masks were to protect them from the deadly invisible ray. He got the connection of thoughts when a bomb was slid over the edge. The dull thud of the explosion quickly came back to them. They popped that one off in the air, hit it with their heat ray, said a cheerful voice beside them. But the phosphine will keep going down. Give them another. The interval this time was longer. Now, for a dirty crack, said the cheerful voice, time this one. A youngster nearby snapped a stopwatch as the bomb was released. He held some printed tables in his hand. Odd receivers, from which no wire led, were clamped over his ears. This time, the dull thud was long and coming. It was hardly perceptible when the young man with the stopwatch announced, Fifty thousand feet, sir. Give them another. Time it again. A second high explosive bomb was released. Fifty thousand feet, sir. Good. That measures it. And those last bombs have knocked the devil out of whatever machinery they've got down there. Now we'll give them a real taste of gas. Two of the green ones there, men. Put ten miles of cable on the drums. Get that hoisting frame into place. But night had come. Those searchlights outside the crater and floodlights within had robbed the night of its terror. When Smitty, with Culver beside him, climbed over the guard rail of the lift that hung waiting just over the pit. A gas mask covered his entire face. Through its round eye-plates he looked at the others who crowded about him. Grotesque, almost ludicrous, twenty men armed with clumsy submachine guns. The others would follow later. A searchlight was on a tripod at the center, and a spool of electrical cable. The light sizzled into life and swung slowly about. Then the platform jarred, and the spool of cable began slowly to unwind. Beside him, Colonel Culver was returning the salute of an officer outside on the ashy ground. Smitty raised his hand, but the brink of that pit had moved swiftly up. There was nothing before him but a glassy wall. Reconnaissance? Suicide? One word was as good as another. But he was going down. Down where Dean Rossin had gone. Down where there was a debt to be paid. CHAPTER XXII The red flowering vine. Rotan, said Gore, slowly, sadly, was wrong. His vision was not the truth. The red ones have come, and now we die. Want to fight? Rossin demanded incredulously. We are not fighting people. We have no weapons. We can only die. Rossin turned to Loa. They were inside the mountain, and the servants of the mountain, with terror and dismay written plainly on their faces, were gathered about. At the lake of fire, said Rossin, when you saved me, there was an explosion in clouds of white fumes. What was it? It was like water, Loa said. We found it deep inside the earth, in a place where it is very cold. When warmed, it turns to white clouds. We threw a flask of it on the hot rocks, hoping to reach you while they could not see. She paused and shook her head slowly. But we can get no more. The pathway of light is close to us, now that the red ones are there. Liquified gas of some sort, said Rossin briefly, caught an enormous rock pressure. But that's out. Now what about this place of death? There's an idea there. The white ones weren't numbed with fear. But Loa and Gore accompanied him when Rossin returned to the red field. The flowers were still in bloom. They waved gently in the breeze that blew always from the mountain across the fields and out towards the point. Where even now, dark figures could be seen near the mouth of the shaft. It will be many of your days, said Loa, before the flowers die. If you thought to trap the red ones in the place of death, there will not be time. But Rossin had left them. He had advanced into the scarlet field and dropped to his knees. He was crushing the vines in his hand, grinding them into the white, salty earth underneath. Then he passed his hand guardedly before his face, as if to detect an odor. Loa and Gore saw him shake his head slowly while he spoke a loud words they could not understand. Cyanide, Dean Rossin was saying. It's a cyanide of some sort. Releases hydrocyanic acid gas. I could have rigged a generator, though. I have forgotten all about my chemistry. And now there isn't time. Off in the distance the dark figure still moved near the end of the point. He made no effort to conceal his dejection as he returned. The edge of the place of death made a winding line across the scant half mile of valley where the green fields ended abruptly. Dean stepped high over the stone troth a half a mile long that marked the dividing line. There was water in it. It was part of their irrigation system. A little beyond, in the midst of the green, stood a tiny flat-topped knoll on which he knew was a pool that supplied the crude system. Beyond it, Loa and Gore were waiting. Gore read the look on Rossin's face. It is useless, Gore said. And now I have decided. The people of the light must die, but not in the fires of the reds. With my people I shall walk into the sea. And Rossin could not protest. He could only follow as Gore turned back toward the village and the mountain beyond. From a spur on the mountain side Rossin could see the full length of the island. One way lay the village, beyond it the green fields, then the wide scarlet band of the place of death, and beyond that the little crystal hills and the valley between that led out to the point. It was now dark with masked clusters of bodies, red even at that distance. He could even see the glint of metal from time to time. And behind the mountain were the people of light, where Gore was only waiting for the attack to lead them out to the island's farther end, and then onto a kindlier death in the emerald sea. Only Loa was with Dean, although there were others of the white ones not far away watching, ready to warn Gore when the attack began. Not an hour before Rossin had stood in the inner chamber and had listened to the mountain as it repeated the words of a far distant man. Attack of the mole men growing increasingly ferocious. Heat ray projectors, almost invincible. Our forces have entered the tauna basin. They are descending into the crater. But whether warfare can be carried on advantageously underground is problematical. Rossin unconsciously gritted his teeth behind his set lips as he watched the reds. He knew why they had been so slow in attacking. They must have a carrier of some sort, a shell like that of Loa's, and they were bringing their fighters one shell load at a time. When the entire force was ready they would attack. And Rossin was convinced that this force would be limited in number. They'll have plenty to keep them busy up there, he argued. If only we could wipe out this one lot we could prepare to defend ourselves. And now, standing on the side of the mountain, he startled Loa with the fury of his sudden ejaculation. Fool, quitter, waiting here for them to come and get you. There's one chance in a million. Then he was rushing full speed along the roadway that circled the mountain toward gore and the terrified throng. The waiting savages must have laughed if indeed laughter was possible for such a race at the sight of the white ones creeping timidly down. Off a mile and more they could see them harvesting their strange crop. Harvesting? Storing up supplies of food, no doubt, when the molemen with their flamethrowers would reap the harvest so soon. But in a crimson field, Dean and Gore and Loa led the others where they swarmed across the place of death, gathering huge armfuls of the red flowering vine, carrying them to the village and returning for more. Where they trod, it was as if peach pits were crushed beneath their feet. And there was a curious fragrance which Rosson told them not to breathe, but to keep their faces always into the wind. Their hands and bodies were sore and burned by the strong juice of the vines. They stopped often to cast apprehensive glances at the distant group of red figures, and always Rosson drove them in a frenzy of haste. At last he made them move the long troth of stone beyond the edge of the green field and over into the place of death. Rosson kept no track of the time. The voice of the mountain was his only measure of hours in a world of perpetual day. But more hours another day perhaps had passed when the red force at last began to move. They did not spread out wide across the valley, but formed a straggling line that was denser toward the center. They could not know what opposition they would meet. For the present they would stay together. Above them, as they came, were twinkling lights of pale green fire. The radio had spoken of heat rays. Rosson wondered if that meant some newer and more horrible instrument. But he saw nothing but the flamethrowers in the armament of this force. He was waiting by the irrigation pool, hidden for the moment behind the little knoll. Loa was with him. He had tried in vain to induce her to stay with Gore and the others who were waiting beyond the mountain. There were watchers, some of them within hearing, whose voices relayed the news of the enemy's advance. Then they ran, panic was upon them. Ture, Ghana, they cried. New, Ture, Ghana. We die, quickly we die. Rosson heard the shout carried on toward the hidden throng. Cautiously he peered from the little knoll. They were coming. Already they were trampling the remaining red blooms on the farther edge of the field. But he waited till they were halfway across before he leaped to the top of the knoll, grasped the pole he had placed there in readiness, and rammed it down through the pool, turbid yellow with a juice from the vines, and broke open the outlet he had plugged in the base. One green light slashed above his head. One flicked at the knoll near his feet, where green growing things burst into flame. Then he threw himself backwards down the short rocky slope, while the stone's tore at his nearly nude body. He sprang to his feet and held Loa close. On either side of the knoll was a holocaust of flames where green lights played. He waited breathlessly. The fires brought in a little back draft of air. The scent of peach pits was strong, and then the green lights ceased. The unripe grain of the fields smoldered slowly. Then Rosson stepped from his hiding and stared out at the place of death. Nearby was a huddle of bodies, on either side, in long, staggering lines, they lay now on the ground. A windrow where death had reaped. The flames of their weapons still in action were all that moved. The white earth turned molten wherever those flames struck. Farther off there were red things that were running. The yellow liquid from the pool charged with the acid of the vines had been slow in flowing out through that long troth. The savages could only see that their fellows had fallen. Some mystery, something invisible and beyond their comprehension, had struck them. They ran toward the center at first, then turned and fled. And by then the soft air blowing gently about them had brought that strange fragrance of death. Then they, too, lay still. From the distance came a faintly booming chant, two thousand voices raised in unison. Tour Ghana, new tour Ghana, the last of a once mighty people were marching to their death. Rosson and Loha turned with one accord. Victory was theirs, but there was no time to taste the fruits of victory. They ran with straining muscles and gasping breath toward the distant mountain and the marching host beyond. My plans are made, Rosson spoke quietly. I must go. I shall take the shell, the Janna, and go back to the Mole-Men's world. I shall go alone, and I shall die. But what of that? His eyes lit up for a moment. I'll try to find Fe all first. If I can get him before they get me, that will help. They were standing on the mountain's lower slope. Gore and Loha, and the servants of the mountain gathered near. Below the white ones were massed in worshipping silence. Had not Dean Rosson saved them? And now what else would come the pass? The same question had been asked by the wise ones, and now Rosson turned and spoke to them. Rotan was right, he told them. His vision was true. There's work I must do here before I go. Your lands, or some of them at least, will be restored, and you will be safe forever from what we have seen today. Gore will lead you wisely, and Loha. His voice faltered. He had kept his eyes resolutely away from the slim figure of the girl, who had been wordless, scarcely breathing. Now she stepped swiftly before him. You must go, Dean Rosson, she said gently. He knew it was a time of endearment. You must go, if you say you must. But you do not go alone, nor die alone. Long ago the voice of the mountain spoke beautiful words. I know now it was one of your priests telling of a woman of your own race, always I have remembered. Wheresoever thou goest, I shall go. Thy people. But Dean Rosson had gathered the slender figure, starry eyed and sobbing, into his arms. End of CHAPTER XXII CHAPTER XXIII of two thousand miles below by Charles Willard Diffen. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Oro and Grah. The place of death, said Dean Rosson. Whoever named it had the right idea. He looked out across the wide stretch of ground, with its covering of white salt almost entirely stripped of the carpet of vines. The bodies of the Molemen lay where they had fallen. Their flamethrowers still tore futilely at the earth, or stabbed upward in vain, thrusting toward the green, gold sun that shone piteously down. Still I do not understand, said Gore. My people pressed the strong burning water from the vines, and poured it into the pool as you directed. But the red ones did not touch it. How could it burn them? I'll say it was strong, said Rosson. He looked at his hands red and burned, where the liquid had touched. And it got stronger by standing. It was an acid. And when it touched the white earth a gas was formed. Hydrocyanic acid gas. And that's nothing to fool with. He walked cautiously out where the liquid had been poured on the white ground. No odor remained. The air was clean. Then he picked up one of the flamethrowers and experimented with it until he found the sliding sleeve that shut off the blast. All right, he called to Gore. Bring your men. We've got to clean up this place and get rid of the bodies before the sun gets in its work. They're the ones that will go into the ocean instead of you. He moved carefully along the straggling line of bodies, salvaging the weapons, and turning off their fearful blasts. They worked and slept and worked again before their gruesome task was done, and Rosson was ready to begin the other work that he had in mind. Beside the mouth of the great shaft resting on the rocks was a cylinder almost exactly a counterpart of the one Loa had used. But this was larger. Fully fifty of the red savages could have crowded inside. It is the only one they had, said Loa. I have seen and I know. But they can make more, Gore argued. This one and the one we have, he told Rosson, were made thousands of years ago. There were masters of metal work among them, and they had learned to use oro and gra. Even then the people were divided. He who was then Gore and his followers fought with the others. But he left them one Janna. This very one here. Then Gore followed the pathway to the light, though he sealed it as you know. But they will build others. Sooner or later they will come. I think not, said Rosson. Now, what about this oro and gra material? What was it you called them? The sunstone and the stone that loves the bark? I must know how they work. But Loa was reluctant to experiment with the Janna of the Reds. So she had her own shell brought instead. And Rosson learned the secret of what seemed its miraculous flight. A cylindrical metal bubble, just buoyant enough to lift itself above the ground. Gore and some of the others brought it from the village. Gore brought to a little box which he carried with great difficulty. It is gra, he said, when he showed Rosson a little scattering of black dust within the box. Always it tries to fall back under the ground. Both oro and gra grow deep down near the zone of fires. We find them in the caves. Oro on one side and gra on the other. Oro is as heavy in its upward falling as gra is in its downward. Then he pointed to the central vertical tube in the shell. We put both of them in here. Bringing it a few grains at a time. One falls to one end and the other to the other. And then, with these simple valves, we let out a little of whichever we wish. Release it a grain at a time, if that is best. We let out a few grains of gra and oro. Being stronger draws us upward. Or if we let a little bit of oro escape, we fall downward swiftly. You see, it is simple, as I said. Rosson's reply was not an answer to Gore so much as it was an argument with himself. Heavy, he said, specific gravity beyond anything we've ever known. Osmium, the heaviest substance we have, would be light as a feather compared to this. But wait. The gra, as you call it, falls downward. But that means it falls toward the outside of the earth. With us it would be light. Light. And the oro would be heavy. New substance, new matter. One feels only the attraction of our normal gravitation. The other doesn't react to that at all, but is driven outward with tremendous force by counter gravitation. The repulsion of this central sun. You've used it cleverly, but we'd have done more with it up on top. He was lost in thought for some minutes, muttering figures and calculations half-allowed. One miles from the central sun to us. Two thousand more through the solid earth. And if that repelling force follows Newtonian laws, it will decrease as the square. But coming down from up on top, normal gravity would decrease directly as the distance. He made scratches with one small stone upon a larger one in lieu of paper and pencil. But to his listeners, his muttered words could have meant nothing. Around six-seventy, six-hundred-and-seventy miles to the neutral zone, the zone of fire, and a column of water, it would carry on by, plug the shaft, check the back pressure, and then, for the first time, since that night when the mole-men had poured out into the crater, his eyes were light with hope, though his face seemed tense and grim. Then the lines about his lips relaxed. He smiled at Loa. "'I would like to investigate this underworld,' he said. "'Not very far down. Will you take me?' The girl's adventurous spirit had led her on many exploring trips in that subterranean world. She laughed happily when Rossum told her what he wanted. But yes, she said, "'Of course I know such a place. And from some two or three miles below, after anchoring the jaunas securely, she led him through a winding tunnel, where he knew he was steadily climbing. It was a wide corridor that they followed, where the walls came together high above their heads. He could hardly see where they met by the light of Loa's torch. Now and then there were lateral passages, but they were narrow, hardly more than cracks, and Rossum, looking into them, not at his head with satisfaction. Occasionally his footsteps rang hollowly on the stone, and he knew that the floor was thin between this and other caverns below. "'What an old honeycomb it is,' he exclaimed. And we had it all figured has been solid. The weight is all here, of course, but it's concentrated in that red stuff down near the neutral zone. But anyway, Loa has shown me just what I wanted.' He had gathered a handful of little fragments and, keeping count of his steps, he shifted a bit of rock to his left hand for every hundred paces. By this he knew they must have gone five or six miles when he reached the tunnel's high point. Many times it had widened. Here, too, was a cave more than a hundred feet across. From the farther side the tunnel continued, pitching sharply downward, but Rossum did not explore farther. I concealed that off with a flamethrower, he said. I've seen how they used him. Then he took Loa's light and looked with every evidence of approval at the rocky walls and the roof that seemed heavy with dew. He had wondered about the air, but he found that it seeped through from the central shaft, although Loa told him that in some deeper passages the air was bad. Here, although it was moving gently, it seemed wet as if charged with moisture. Rossum, staring upward, felt a drop strike him in the face, dripping from the rocks above. It's a gamble, he said, just a gamble, but the stakes are worthwhile. And now, Loa saw, we will return. He made crude work with the flamethrowers at first, but finally he got the knack and the mouth of the tunnel beyond the big room was sealed. Then, with the help of Loa and some few others, he brought in more and more of the weapons of the Reds. He was curious as to their construction, but his curiosity had to go unsatisfied. They were only cylinders, so far as he could see, cylinders a foot long and six inches through, of some metal with the dull luster of aluminum. But they were sealed, and he dared not cut one open with another flamethrower for fear of what might come forth. On the top of each cylinder a tube was connected that ended in a lava tip, but at the base of the tube where it joined the cylinder was a sliding sleeve that checked the flame to nothing when it was moved, or opened it to the full blast. He had a hundred of them in the room when at last he was through, one hundred fearful instruments of destruction, and still he told no one of his plans. He only told Gore what he wanted done later on. It may not work, he had to admit to himself, I'm just guessing at the thickness of the rock and the power of these machines. It's a gamble, nothing but a gamble. He arranged the flamethrowers in a circle along the outer wall. The tops of the cylinders were curved, the bottoms were flat, and they set solidly on the rock. But he tipped them backwards and braced them firmly with fragments of stone until every crooked neck tube was pointing upward and toward the center. Finally he was done. It was only a matter of a few hours later when Rosson stood on the island's end by the mouth of the shaft. In his ears was the ceaseless rush of the air as it entered the pit. It was the only sound in a silent world, and for the first time there came overwhelmingly upon him a realization of what this moment meant. The time had come, Loa was beside him, her lovely eyes unnaturally bright in her face, from which all blood seemed to have flowed. He felt the slight trembling of her body as she pressed against him. He knew she was struggling to keep back the tears. Then Rosson half turned with one final entreaty that she'd let him go alone. But he left the words unsaid. He had argued it several times before. Before them stood Gore, then the wise ones, the servants of the mountain, deserting their post for the first time since the mountain had been given a voice. Beyond them all the people of this little world were gathered. It had seemed only a fanciful dream, this thought of going. In fact he had been too busy to press with his own preparations to give it thought. Now he was learning to his own surprise how closely he had identified himself with this world and his people. It had given him Loa. It had been a haven, a sanctuary. He let his eyes slowly take in the full splendor of that emerald sea, the shining land under a green gold sun, the mountain in white, crystal purity against a green blue sky. And he was leaving it, he and Loa. They were going to death. You will remember, he said to Gore, his voice sounded dull and heavy. It hardly seemed himself who was speaking. You know the day and the hour. This is the nineteenth. It is now noon, twelve o'clock in my world. When the voice of the mountain says that noon again has come, you will do as I said. The mountain speaks without ceasing now, said Gore, telling always of what the Red Ones do. We will count the hours as they pass. In twenty-four of those hours Gore will descend in the Johnna of the Reds to do as Dean Rosson has commanded. Rosson held out his hand. He was suddenly wordless. Then Loa threw herself in the Gore's arms in one last passionate embrace. But it was she who entered the Johnna first. Come, she said to Dean, oh, come quickly, Dean Son. Then he too stepped inside and made the heavy door fast. One of the white ones had been holding the big cylinder down. But Rosson, staring through the window, saw that it was Gore's own hands that swung them out at last above the pit. Their craft hung quivering for an instant in the rushing air. Then Loa moved one of the levers a trifle, and the blackness took them, and only the little bullseye in the metal ceiling showed the fading glow of the inner world, the home of the glow of the light, which their eyes never again would see. CHAPTER XXIV Rosson had taken one flamethrower with him. He tied it securely inside the shell, so it could not shift with a changing gravity, or be accidentally turned on. Again he clung to the curved bar against the wall. Loa stood at the center directing the craft. Once again he floated in air, then found himself standing on what had been the ceiling of the room. The girl had released a considerable quantity of the lifting element in the Johnna's end, and now the black powder in the other end of the central tube was dragging them at terrific speed as it rushed away from the earth's center. Over six hundred miles Rosson had figured from that inner surface to the neutral zone, where the red substance of the earth that was neither rock nor metal under terrific pressure glowed with fervent heat or formed pools like the lake of fire. Perhaps a hundred miles thick that zone of incessant energy and their little craft tore through it at tremendous speed. Even so he was gasping for breath in the heated room when the glow faded and again he swung over and down upon the floor as Loa checked the speed of the flying projectile and the little ship crept slowly up into the room where first he had seen it. The first that he noticed was the absence of the roar. The Java drifted slowly to one side and Loa let it come to rest upon the floor. Staring from the open door Rosson saw the familiar red walls and floor and the black opening of the shaft from which they had come. But the reverberating roar of the great organ pipe was gone. He knew that the air for the greater part was driving on past through the upper shaft that was now open. The way was clear for them to ascend. He turned to the girl. If my figures are right it's some thirteen hundred miles from here on. How did you get up there before? Loa pointed to the passage where the Janna on the other excursion had been hidden. We went through there she said, taking the Janna with us. We went up many miles through a great crack but it was not straight. We had to go carefully to another passage opened through to the shaft far above where it was sealed. And the Mole men never found it? Oh yes said Loa. They must have known of the crack but they did not know where it led. Its air was bad. A gas that choked. One could not breathe it and live. But in our little Janna we were safe. They could not use theirs it was too large. Besides only the priest came down. They had their lake of fire where they did horrible things. They did not know that the shaft began again below. Okay said Rosson and closed the door. But I wish to get out, Loa protested, to gather more of the Oro. We may need more should we return. We will never need it Rosson spoke softly. From the time we left Gore we had just twenty-four hours to live. We must go on and go fast. They had no way of measuring time and Rosson could only guess at the hours that passed while their little ship tore swiftly upward through the dark. He wondered if the occasional shrill shriek that followed the touching of their metal guides on the glassy walls could be heard up above. Then at last Loa was driving the Janna slowly while she held her light so that it would shine through a window. Rosson had to restrain himself to keep from pacing the little room like a caged animal while the precious minutes slipped by. Now that the enemy was near he wanted nothing but to drive up to the end of the shaft, come out into that world wherever the shaft ended, and try to fight his way through to the Great Hall, where he hoped to find Fee-E-All, and his haste made him overestimate the passing time. Their journey had been swifter than he knew. I may have passed it, Loa was saying doubtfully. I may have come too far. Then she interrupted herself and sprang to the controls. They drifted slowly back. It is different now, Loa said. The air rises more swiftly than before. She stared from the window while she drove the Janna slowly up and down, trying to bring it to equilibrium in the strong updraft. The air entered the shell through a little opening with the same pungent tang Rosson had noticed before. He had wondered about the air. Down near the neutral zone it was dense, yet he had not minded the pressure too greatly, and that had been puzzling. Rock pressure and air pressure he had reasoned. They are two different things. If the rock flowed any air that it trapped would be squeezed to a liquid, but it doesn't flow. The red stuff is solid, so the air pressure is only the weight of the air column itself. But even that should be enormous. He could only conclude that the lessened pressure came from that strange counter gravitation, that repelling force from the center of the earth. Perhaps it tended to dissipate the molecules, held them farther apart, prevented their squeezing in together and battering with a thousand little impacts on a point where one had hit before. Their Janna swayed gently as if the smooth air occurrence were disturbed and were drifting them sideways, and then at last Loa, peering from a window, sprang back and moved the lever. Beneath them was the softly cushioned thud of the shell seating itself on firm rock. They were in another of the interminable caves Rosson found when he opened the door. The Janna was resting a few feet from the edge of the shaft. Cautiously they got out, but even without their weight it had a slight negative buoyancy. Oro is pulling more strongly than Graw, Dean said, and smiled. Already the names seemed familiar to him. The two lifted the Janna and carried it back some twenty feet more before Rosson realized how unnecessary this was. We'll never be using it again, he said. If I have guessed right, it will stay here as long as the rocks, if not. But we'll never know the difference anyway. He took the flamethrower from the car in sudden haste. Quick, dear, he told Loa, God knows when the end will come. Quick, show me the way. Loa knew every step of the route that took them on and upward through a maze of twisting passages, and Rosson marveled at her sense of direction. She flashed her light at times, the little bar of metal that had in one hollow end a substance which absorbed the light energy of the central sun. Rosson knew how it worked. Even the lights in the mountain room were taken out from time to time and exposed to the sunlight that brought them back into glowing life. He had seen similar phenomena on earth. But for the most part, Loa kept the little metal cap in place on the end of her torch, and they moved cautiously through the dark. Sounds of the red ones came to them at times, and once they hit in a narrow branching cleft that came abruptly to a dead end while a force of red warriors marched hurriedly through the passage they had just left. Back in their hiding place, Rosson stood tense and ready with his weapon till the last of the enemy was gone. Always he was frantic at the thought of the time that was slipping past. Until it last, the narrow passage that they followed cut transversely through another large runway from some distant light. With that first gleam of light there came over Dean Rosson an odd change. Something within him had been cold with fear. Fear of the flying minutes. Fear that Loa might have lost her way in this tangled labyrinth of winding ways. And now suddenly he was carefree, filled with an absurd joy. Nothing mattered. They were to die. But what of that? He would see that when it came to her it would be quickly and without pain. Asked for himself if before he died he could remove this ruler of an enemy race. So when Loa leaned close and whispered the light it shined from the council room of Fee-E-All. Dean replied almost gaily I've got to hand it to you. You sure do know all the back alleys. Then he stuck his head consciously out into the dimly lighted corridor. It was broad. He saw where their own little passageway went on from the opposite side. But the light, the light at his left not a hundred steps away was a room brilliantly lighted. And across it, in gleaming splendor stretched a low wall a barrier of gold. It was the council room where once before he had faced Fee-E-All in all that savage's hideous splendor. He listened. All was silent. Then Loa whispered. Fee-E-All comes this way when he goes to the council room. But when he comes or how often I do not know. Dean pressed her back into the narrow way with his hands. Wait here, he said, and gave her the flamethrower. I have an idea. He stepped softly into the broad passage and on naked, noiseless feet moved swiftly toward the lighted room. It was empty. Beyond the barrier were no red figures, nor were there whistling voices to echo as he had heard them before. Here was the throne where Fee-E-All had sat. Here the priests had stood. There, along the wall, were the chests. Fully twenty of them, each eight feet long, they stood ranged along the three walls of that part of the room protected by the barrier. No two of them alike. All of them were oddly carved and studded with jewels. The chest were ranged in a straight row, a foot or more out from the wall. He crossed to them swiftly. About here was where the priests must have gone. He raised one of the heavy lids till the light struck within. Bones, only fragments of a skeleton blackened by age, a necklace of teeth from some animal's jaw, took his trifles for the mummary of the priests. Then, beneath them, he saw two great fangs a foot in length. They were curved, sharply pointed and yellow as old ivory. What was it Gore had said of legends that told of ancestors coming from the outer world? Rosson knew that he was looking at priceless relics of the tribe at the tusks of man's long, extinct enemy, the great saber-toothed tiger. But he had neither time nor thoughts to spare for the marbles newer old. He must find his gun. Yet, even then, he wondered what undreamed of treasures the other chests might hold. What jewels, what paraphernalia of ancient kings. He must be silent. Perhaps the next great glittering container might hold the blue gleam of his gun. Obviously against the rock wall Dean could not repress the audible gas that came to his lips. His own pistol. He had expected to find one weapon, but instead the chest was filled with all that would hold of rifles and side-arms and cartridge belts all mingled in one indiscriminate heap. They were twisted some of them and bent, discolored, too, evidently by flames. On some the stocks had been burned off. Rosson's hands were suddenly trembling. There was one rifle that seemed unharmed. He brought it out and hardly heard the little clatter that it made among the other weapons. An ammunition belt. He slipped out a clip of cartridges, made sure they fitted this gun and threw one up into the firing chamber. He was fumbling for more of the clips when there pierced through his tumultuous thoughts the realization that he was hearing something that was not made by his own suddenly clumsy hands. Marching feet, whistling voices, they came from beyond the room's farther end, beyond the entrance through which he had once been brought a captive. He took one step back towards the broad tunnel, then knew there were others coming there. There was no possible avenue of escape. He threw himself in one wild dive into the narrow space between the chests and the wall and pulled himself forward under the shelter of the one back-turned lid. The rifle was still gripped in his hands. By the sounds that came to him he knew that the outer room had filled with red warriors and that another smaller group had come scuffing from the passage where he had just entered. And by the equine cry of shrill voices that shouted, Fee-ee-all, Fee-ee-all he knew that the ruler was near. There were footsteps approaching the chest. A priest, no doubt. Shrill whistling, told of his anger. The concealing cover was jerked outward and down, and Rawson, staring above him, saw not the coppery face that he had expected, but the hideous white visage of Fee-ee-all himself. For an instant the ruler of the Mole-men stood half-stooped in petrified astonishment, and in that moment Rawson dragged himself to his feet. No chance to use the gun. The other was upon him, his gripping talons tearing Rawson's bare flesh. In one flashing thought, Dean cursed himself for the uselessness of his weapons. He should have taken a pistol and automatic. Then, body to body with a savage, he was dragged out over the chest. He had been holding the rifle above him, as he struggled from his cramped quarters. The savage had grabbed him and they held the gun on high, and in the second, when he found his feet under him, as Fee-ee-all dragged him clear of the chest, Rawson brought the breach of the gun crashing down upon the pointed skull. He felt the talons release their hold. The priests were rushing upon him. Fee-ee-all, too, had been only momentarily stunned. He was springing. Then, Rawson whipped the rifle down in line, and the clamoring room with tumult were drowned under another roar. He saw Fee-ee-all fall. Even then, through all the pandemonium within his own mind, he thrilled with satisfaction at sight of a little dot and a spreading stain above Fee-ee-all's heart, where only bare skin had been before. The next shot took the foremost of the priests. The others paused, hesitant for a moment, ranged out in an inner line. Past them beyond the golden barrier, Rawson caught a confused glimpse of a sea of red faces. Green flames were stabbing upward from their ready weapons. The priests were between him and them, and there came the Rawson in that instant through all the chaos of fighting and half-formed plans the knowledge that these priests were a living barrier that held off the flames. He hanged for the wide entrance of the tunnel. He fired again back of him, shooting wildly as he ran. Then saw Loha as she came from her hiding place with a flamethrower ready in her hand. Quick he gasped, get back. Then with her he was running stumbling through the dark. There could be no escape, even while they fled he knew it, and yet they almost made it, though the end when it quickly had foreseen. They were following a wide passage, one of the countless thoroughfares of the Reds. It was deserted. Loha flashed her light freely. Ahead of them the passage turned. Just short of that bend was a rift in the rocks. There, Loha gasped, turned there. It will take us back to the Jannah. But the words were followed by a flash of green from dead warriors were before them, the light of their weapons slanting just above Rawson's head. His rifle was half raised. They would at least fight to the last, then he realized that the green death was not swinging downward. From behind them, in the corridor through which they had raced, came a chorus of whistling shouts. Rawson whirled to find more of the Red fighters, and again, they did not descend. The priest, copper-colored, shining resplendently in the weird glow, detached himself from the group and stepped forward under the protection of their weapons. Loha's hand was depressing the muzzle of Rawson's rifle. Wait, she said. He wishes to speak. The priest stopped and addressed them. Loha answered, and to Rawson it seemed horrible that her lips slain words. Then she turned toward him. He says they will not harm you now if you surrender. Later, when they select a new ruler, he may order you set free. Rawson was doing some quick thinking. The priest was lying clumsily, childishly, but it might be he could bargain with them. Tell them this, he ordered Loha. There to let you go free, let you go right now. If they do that priest will die before they get me. I don't think you can make it, he added, but go back to the Janna. Don't stop for anything. Drive it as fast as you can. You may still get there before Gore does his stuff. And take the flamethrower in case you were followed. He stopped. Loha was laughing. Did you really think Dean Son that I would desert you? Again she laughed to death. A laugh that was half a sob that caught suddenly in her throat as she stared at Dean. He could not read the look in her eyes as her expression changed. Yes, she said slowly, yes you are right. If I say we both die quickly. Again her voice made whistling sounds. The priest replied. Then Loha threw her arms around Dean and kissed him. He was gripping his rifle. Before she was gone she walked swiftly the flamethrower in her hand toward the dark clef in the rocks through which she disappeared. And Dean though she had done what he really wished, felt that all of his life and strength had gone with him with that fleeing figure. He placed his rifle on the floor and straightening held out his empty hands. The priest's talons were upon Dean all anyhow. He was thanking Dali. End of chapter 24