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The Immortals of Mercury By Clark Ashton Smith
The Immortals of Mercury
Clark Ashton Smith
I
Cliff Howard's first sensation, as he came back to consciousness,
was one of well-nigh insufferable heat. It seemed to beat upon
him from all sides in a furnace-like blast and to lie upon his face,
limbs and body with the heaviness of molten metal. Then, before
he had opened his eyes, he became aware of the furious light that
smote upon his lids, turning them to a flame-red curtain. His eye-
balls ached with the muffled radiation; every nerve of his being
cringed from the pouring sea of incalescence; and there was a dull
throbbing in his scalp, which might have been either headache induced by the heat, or the pain of a somewhat recent blow.
He recalled, very dimly, that there had been an expedition--
somewhere--in which he had taken part; but his efforts to remember the details were momentarily distracted by new and inexplicable sensations. He felt now that he was moving swiftly,
borne on something that pitched and bounded against a high wind
that seared his face like the breath of hell.
He opened his eyes, and was almost blinded when he found
himself staring at a whitish heaven where blown columns of
steam went by like spectral genii. Just below the rim of his vision,
there was something vast and incandescent, toward which, instinctively, he feared to turn. Suddenly he knew what it was, and began to realize his Situation. Memory came to him in a tumbling
torment of images; and with it, a growing wonder and alarm.
He recalled the ramble he had taken, alone, amid the weird
and scrubby jungles of the twilight zone of 'Mercury--that narrow
belt, warm and vaporous, lying beneath the broiling deserts on
which an enormous sun glares perpetually, and the heaped and
mountainous glaciers of the planet's nightward side.
He had not gone far from the rocket-ship----a mile at most, toward the sulphurous, fuming afterglow of the sun, now wholly
hidden by the planet's libration. Johnson, the head of that first
scientific expedition to Mercury, had warned him against these
solitary excursions; but Howard, a professional botanist, had been
eager to hasten his investigations of the unknown world, in which
they had now sojourned for a week of terrestrial time.
Contrary to expectation, they had found a low, thin, breathable atmosphere, fed by the melting of ice in the variable twilight
belt--an air that was drawn continually in high winds toward the
sun; and the wearing of special equipment was unnecessary. Howard had not anticipated any danger; for the shy, animal-like natives had shown no hostility and had fled from the earth-men
whenever approached. The other life-forms, as far as had been determined, were of low, insensitive types, often semi-vegetative,
and easily avoided when poisonous or carnivorous.
Even the huge, ugly, salamander-like reptiles who seemed to
roam at will from the twilight zone to the scalding deserts beneath an eternal day, were seemingly quite inoffensive.
Howard had been examining a queer, unfamiliar growth resembling a large truffle, which he had found in an open space,
among the pale, poddy, wind-bowed shrubs. The growth, when he
touched it, had displayed signs of sluggish animation and had
started to conceal itself, burrowing into the boggy soil. He was
prodding the thing with the sponge-light branch of a dead shrub,
and was wondering how to classify it, when, looking up, he had
found himself surrounded by the Mercutian savages. They had
stolen upon him noiselessly from the semi-fungoid thickets; but
he was not alarmed at first, thinking merely that they had begun
to overcome their shyness and show their barbaric curiosity.
They were gnarled and dwarfish creatures, who walked partially erect at most times; but ran upon all fours when frightened.
The earth-men had named them the Dlukus, because of the clucking sounds resembling this word which they often made. Their
skins were heavily scaled, like those of reptiles; and their small,
protruding eyes appeared to be covered at all times with a sort of
thin film. Anything ghastlier or more repulsive than these beings
could hardly have been found on the inner planets. But when
they closed in upon Howard, walking with a forward crouch and
clucking incessantly, he had taken their approach for a sort of
overture and had neglected to draw his tonanite pistol. He saw
that they were carrying rough pieces of some blackish mineral,
and had surmised, from the way in which their webbed hands
were held toward him, that they were bringing him a gift or peace-offering.
Their savage faces were inscrutable; and they had drawn very
close before he was disillusioned as to their intent. Then, with-
Out warning, in a cool, orderly manner, they had begun to assail
him with the fragments of mineral they carried. He had fought
them; but his resistance had been cut short by a violent blow from
behind, which had sent him reeling into oblivion.
All this he remembered clearly enough; but there must have
been an indefinite blank, following his lapse into insensibility.
What, he wondered, had happened during this interim, and where
was he going? Was he a captive among the Dlukus? The glaring
light and scorching heat could mean only one thing--that he had
been carried into the sunward lands of Mercury. That incandescent
thing toward which he dared not look was the sun itself, looming
in a vast arc above the horizon.
He tried to sit up, but succeeded merely in raising his head a
little. He saw that there were leathery thongs about his chest, arms
and legs, binding him tightly to some mobile surface that seemed
to heave and pant beneath him. Slewing his head to one side, he
found that this surface was horny, rounding and reticulated. It
was like something he had seen.
Then, with a start of horror, he recognized it. He was bound,
Mazeppa-like, to the back of one of those salamandrine monsters
to which the earth-scientists had given the name of "heat-lizards."
These creatures were large crocodiles, but possessed longer legs
than any terrestrial saurian. Their thick hides were apparently, to
an amazing extent, non-conductors of heat, and served to insulate
them against temperatures that would have parboiled any other
known form of life.
The exact range of their habitat had not yet been learned; but
they had been seen from the rocket-ship, during a brief sunward
dash, in deserts where water was perpetually at the boiling point;
where rills and rivers, flowing from the twilight zone, wasted
themselves in heavy vapors from terrible cauldrons of naked rock.
Howard's consternation, as he realized his plight and his probable fate, was mingled with a passing surprise. He felt sure that
the Dlukus had bound him to the monster's back, and wondered
that beings so low in the evolutionary scale should have been intelligent enough to know the use of thongs. Their act showed a
certain power of calculation, as well as a devilish cruelty. It was
obvious that they had abandoned him deliberately to an awful
doom.
However, he had little time for reflection. The heat-lizard, with
an indescribable darting and running motion, went swiftly onward into the dreadful hell of writhing steam and heated rock.
The great ball of insupportable whiteness seemed to rise higher
momently and to pour its beams upon Howard like the flood of
an opened furnace. The horny mail of the monster was like a hot
gridiron beneath him, scorching through his clothes; and his
wrists and neck and ankles were seared by the tough leather cords
as he struggled madly and uselessly against them.
Turning his head from side to side, he saw dimly the horned
rocks that leaned toward him from curtains of hellish mist. His
head swam deliriously, and the very blood appeared to simmer
in his veins. He lapsed at intervals into deadly faintness: a black
shroud seemed to fall upon him, but his vague senses were still
oppressed by the crushing, searing radiation. He seemed to descend into bottomless gulfs, pursued by unpitying cataracts of fire
and seas of molten heat. The darkness of his swoon was turned to
immitigable light.
At times, Howard came back to full consciousness, and was
forced to grit his teeth to avoid screaming with agony. His eyelids
seemed to scorch his eyes, as he blinked in the blinding refraction; and he saw his surroundings in broken glimpses, through
turning wheels of fire and blots of torrid color, like scenes from
a mad kaleidoscope.
The heat-lizard was following a tortuous stream that ran in
hissing rapids, among twisted crags and chasm-riven scarps. Rising in sheets and columns, the steam of the angry water was blown
at intervals toward the earth-man, scalding his bare face and hands.
The thongs cut into his flesh intolerably, when the monster leapt
across mighty fissures that had been made by the cracking of the
super-heated stone.
Howard's brain seemed to broil in his head, and his blood was
a fiery torrent in his roasted body. He fought for breath--and if thr
breath seared his lungs. The vapors eddied about him in deepening swirls, and he heard a muffled roaring whose cause he could
not determine. He became aware that the heat-lizard had paused;
and moving his head a little, saw that it was standing on the rocky
verge of a great gulf, into which the waters fell to an unknown
depth, amid curtains of steam.
His heart and his senses failed him, as he struggled like a dying man to draw breath from the suffocating air. The precipice
and the monster seemed to pitch and reel beneath him, the vapors swayed vertiginously, and he thought that he was plunging
with his weird steed into the unfathomably shrouded gulf.
Then, from the burning mist, the hooded forms of white and
shining devils appeared to rise up and seize him, as if to receive
him into their unknown hell. He saw their strange, unhuman faces;
he felt the touch of their fingers, with a queer and preternatural
coolness, on his seared flesh; and then all was darkness. . .
II
Howard awoke under circumstances that were novel and inexplicable. Instantly, with great clearness, he remembered all that
had occurred prior to his final lapse, but could find no clue to his
present situation.
He was lying on his back in a green radiance--a soft and soothing light that reminded him of the verdant green and emerald seawater of the far-off Earth. The light was all about him, it seemed
to flow beneath and above him, laying his body with cool ripples
that left a sense of supreme well-being.
He saw that he was quite naked; and he had the feeling of immense buoyancy, as if he had been rendered weightless. Wondering, he saw that his skin was entirely free of burns, and realized that he felt no pain, no ill-effects of any kind, such as would
have seemed inevitable after his dread ordeal in the Mercutian
desert.
For awhile, he did not associate the green luminosity with any
idea of limitation; for he seemed to be floating in a vast abyss.
Then, suddenly, he perceived his error. Putting out his hands, he
touched on either side the wall of a narrow vault, and saw that
its roof was only a few feet above him. The floor lay at an equal
distance beneath; and he himself, without visible support, was
reclining in mid-air. The green light, streaming mysteriously from
all the sides of the vault, had given him the illusion of unbounded
space.
Abruptly, at his feet, the end of the vault seemed to disappear
in a white glory like pure sunlight. Long, sinuous, six-fingered
hands reached out from the glory, grasped him about the ankles,
and drew him gently from the green-lit space in which he floated.
Weight seemed to return to him as his limbs and body entered
the dazzling whiteness; and a moment later, he found himself
standing erect in a large chamber, lined with some sort of pale,
shimmering metal. Beside him, a strange, unearthly being was
dosing the panel-like door through which he had been drawn
from the emerald-litten vault; and beyond this being, there were
two others of the same type, one of whom was holding Howard's
garments in his arms.
In growing astonishment, Howard gazed at these incredible entities. Each of them was about the height of a tall man, and the
physical conformation was vaguely similar to that of mankind, but
was marked by an almost god-like beauty and grace of contour,
such as could hardly have been found in the most perfect of antique marbles.
Nostrils, ears, lips, hands, and all other features and members,
were carven with well-nigh fantastic delicacy; and the skin of
these beings, none of whom wore any sore or raiment, was white
and translucent, and seemed to shine with an internal radiance.
In place of hair, the full, intellectual heads were crowned with a
mass of heavy flesh-like filaments, hued with changing iridescence,
and tossing and curling with a weird, restless life, like the serpent
locks of Medusa. The feet were like those of men, except for long,
horny spurs that protruded from the heels.
The three entities returned the earth-man's gaze with unreadable eyes, brilliant as diamonds and cold as far-off stars. Then, to
complete his amazement, the being who had just closed the door
of the vault began to address him in high, flute-sweet tones, which
baffled his ears at first, but after a little, became recognizable as
flawless English.
"We trust," said the being, "that you have recovered wholly
from your late experience. It was fortunate that we were watching
you through our televisors when you were seized by the savages
and were bound to the back of the groko--that creature known to
you as the 'heat-lizard.' These beasts are often tamed by the savages, who, being ignorant of the use of artificial heat, make a
strange use of the groko s' proclivities for ranging the terrible
sunward deserts. Captives caught from rival tribes--and sometimes even their own kin--are tied to the monsters, who carry
them through oven-like temperatures till the victims are thoroughly roasted--or, as you would say, done to a turn. Then the
grokos return to their masters--who proceed to feast on cooked
meat.
"Luckily we were able to rescue you in time; for the groko, in
its wanderings, approached one of our cavern-exits in the great
desert. Your body was covered with enormous burns when we
found you; and you would assuredly have died from the effects, if
we had not exposed you to the healing ray in the green vault.
This ray, like many others, is unknown to your scientists; and it
has, among other things, the peculiar power of nullifying gravity.
Hence your sensation of weightlessness under its influence."
"Where am I? And who are you?" cried Howard.
"You are in the interior of Mercury," said the being. "I am
Agvur, a savant, and a high noble of the ruling race of this world."
He went on in a tone of half-disdainful explanation, as if lecturing to a child: "We call ourselves the Oumnis; and we are an old
people, wise and erudite in all the secrets of nature. To protect
ourselves from the intense radiations of the sun, which of course
are more powerful on Mercury than on the further planets, we
dwell in caverns lined with a metallic substance of our own composition. This substance, even in thin sheets, excludes all the
harmful rays, some of which can pierce all other forms of matter
to any depth. When we emerge to the outer world, we wear suits
of this metal, whose name in our language is mouffa.
"Being thus insulated at all times, we are practically immortal,
as well as exempt from disease; for all death and decay, in the
course of nature, are caused by certain solar rays whose frequency
is beyond detection of your instruments. The metal does not exclude the radiations that are beneficial and necessary to life; and by
means of an apparatus similar in its principle to radio, our under-world is illumined with transmitted sunlight."
Howard began to express his thanks to Agvur. His brain was
giddy with wonder, and his thoughts whirled in a maze of astounding speculations.
Agvur, with a swift and graceful gesture, seemed to wave aside
his expression of gratitude. The being who bore Howard's garments came forward, and helped him, in a deft, valet-like fashion,
to put them on.
Howard wanted to ask a hundred questions; for the very existence of intelligent, highly evolved beings such as the Oumnis on
Mercury had been unsuspected by earth-scientists. Above all, he
was curious regarding the mastery of human language displayed
by Agvur. His question, as if divined by a sort of telepathy, was
forestalled by the Mercutian.
"We are possessed of many delicate instruments," said Agvur, "which enable us to see and hear--and even to pick up other
sense-impressions--at immense distances. We have long studied
the nearer planets, Venus, Earth and Mars, and have often amused
ourselves by listening to human conversations Our brain-development, which is vastly superior to yours, has made it a simple
matter for us to learn your speech; and of course the science, history and sociology of your world is an open book to us. We
watched the approach of your ether-ship from space; and all the
movements of your party since landing have been observed by us."
"How far am I from the rocket-ship?" asked Howard. "I trust
you can help me to get back."
"You are now a full mile beneath the surface of Mercury," said
Agvur, "and the part of the twilight zone in which your vessel
lies is about five miles away and could readily be reached by an
incline leading upward to a small exit in a natural cavern within
sight of the ship. Doubtless some of the members of your party
have seen the cavern and have assumed that it was a mere animal-den. When your vessel landed, we took care to block the exit with
a few loose boulders and fragments of detritus, easily removable.
"As to rejoining your comrades,--well, I fear that it will
scarcely be practicable. You must be our guest--perhaps indefinitely." There was a kind of brusqueness in his tone as he concluded:
"We do not want our existence known to terrestrial explorers.
From what we have seen of your world, and your dealings with
the peoples of Mars and Venus, whose territories you have begun
to arrogate, we think it would be unwise to expose ourselves to
human curiosity and rapacity. We are few in number, and we prefer to remain in peace--undisturbed."
Before Howard could frame any sort of protest, there came a
singular interruption. Loud and imperious, with clarion-like notes,
a voice rang out in the empty air between Agvur and the earth-
man. Howard was ungovernably startled; and the three Mercutians
all seemed to stiffen with rapt attention. The voice went on for
nearly a minute, speaking rapidly, with accents of arrogant command. Howard could make nothing of the words, whose very
phonetic elements were strange and unfamiliar. But a chill ran
through him at something which he sensed in the formidable
voice--a something that told of relentless, implacable power.
The voice ended on a high, harsh note, and the listening Mercutians made a queer gesture with their heads and hands, as if to
indicate submission to a superior will
"Our temporal ruler and chief scientist, Ounavodo," said Agvur, "has just spoken from his hall in the lower levels. After
hours of deliberation, he has reached a decision regarding your
fate. In a sense, I regret the decision, which seems a trifle harsh
to me; but the mandates of the Shol, as we call our ancient ruler,
are to be obeyed without question. I must ask you to follow me.
and I shall explain as we go along. The order must be executed
without delay."
In perplexity not unmingled with consternation, Howard was
led by Agvur to a sort of inclined hall or tunnel, on which the
chamber opened. The tunnel was seemingly interminable, and
was lit by brilliant sourceless light--the transmitted sun-rays of
which the Mercutian had spoken. Like the chamber, it was lined
with a pale metallic substance.
An odd machine, shaped like a small open boat, and mounted
on little wheels or castors, stood before the door, on the easy monotonous grade. Agvur stationed himself in its hollow prow, motioning Howard to follow. When the other Oumnis had placed
themselves behind Howard, Agvur pulled a sort of curving lever,
and the machine began to glide rapidly, in perfect silence, down
the interminable hell.
"This tunnel," said Agvur, "runs upward to the exit near your vessel; and it leads down to the heart of our underworld realms
If the worst happens--as I fear it may--you will see only the antechambers of our labyrinth of caverns, in which we have dwelt, immune to disease and old age, for so many centuries. I am sorry; for
I had hoped to take you to my own laboratories, in the nether
levels. There you might have served me . . . in certain biologic
tests.
"Ounavodo," he went on, in calm explanatory tones, "has ordered the fusing and casting of a certain quantity of the mouffa-
alloy, to be used in the making of new garments. This alloy, invented aeons ago by our metallurgists, is a compound of no less
than six elements, and is made in two grades, one for the lining
of our caverns, and the other exclusively for raiment.
"Both, for their perfection, require a seventh ingredient--a
small admixture of living, protoplasmic matter, added to the molten metal in the furnace. Only thus--for a reason that is still mysterious to our savants--can the mouffa acquire its full power of
insulation against the deadly solar rays.
"The mouffa used in comparatively heavy sheets for cavern-
lining needs only the substance of inferior life-forms, such as the
grokos, the half-animal savages of the twilight zone, and various
creatures which we catch or breed in our underworld tunnels But
the higher grade of mouffa, employed in light, flexible sheets for
suiting, requires the protoplasm of superior life.
"Regretfully, at long intervals, we have been compelled to sacrifice one of our own scanty number in the making of new metal
to replace that which has become outworn. Whenever possible,
we select those who in some manner have offended against our
laws; but such infringements are rare, and commonly the victim
has been chosen by a sort of divination
"After studying you closely in his televisic mirror, Ounavodo
has decided that you are sufficiently high in the evolutionary scale
to provide the protoplasmic element in the next lot of mouffa. At
least, he thinks that the test is worth trying, in the interests of
science.
"However, in order that you should not feel that you are being
discriminated against or treated unjustly, you will merely take
your chance of being chosen from among many others. The method
of selection will be revealed to you in due time."
While Agvur was speaking, the vehicle had sped swiftly down
the endless incline, passing several other barge-shaped cars driven
by the white, naked Immortals, whose serpentine locks flowed behind them on the air. Occasionally there were openings in the
tunnel wall, leading no doubt to side-caverns; and after a mile or
two, they came to a triple branching, where caverns ran upward
at reverse angles from the main passage. Horrified and shaken as
he was by Agvur's disclosure, Howard took careful note of the
route they were following.
He made no reply to the Mercutian. He felt his helplessness in
the hands of an alien, extra-human race, equipped, it would seem,
with scientific knowledge and power to which humanity had not
yet attained. Thinking with desperate quickness, he decided that
it would be better to pretend resignation to the will of his captors. His hand stole instinctively to the pocket in which he had
carried the little tonanite pistol with its twelve charges of deadly
heat-producing explosive; and he was dismayed, though hardly
surprised, to find that the weapon was gone.
His movement was noted by Agvur; and a strange sardonic
smile flickered across the unhumanly intellectual face of the savant. In his desperation, Howard thought of leaping from the car;
but to do this would have meant death or serious injury at the
high speed of their descent.
He became aware that the incline had ended in a large level
cavern with numerous side-openings where multitudes of Oumnis
were passing in and out. Here they left the boat-like vehicle; and
Howard was led by Agvur through one of the side-exits, into another vast chamber, where perhaps fifty of the white people were
standing in silent, semi-circular rows.
These beings were all fronting toward the opposite wall; but
many of them turned to watch the earth-man with expressions of
unreadable curiosity or disdain, as Agvur drew him forward to
the first of the waiting ranks and motioned him to take his place
at the end
Now, for the first time, Howard saw the singular object which
the Oumnis were facing. Apparently it was some sort of rootless
plant-growth, with a swollen, yellowish bole or body like that of
barrel-cactus. From this body, tall as a man, leafless branches of
vivid arsenic green, fringed with a white hispidity, trailed in
limp, sinuous masses on the cavern-floor.
Agvur spoke in a piercing whisper: "The plant is called the
Roccalim, and we employ it to choose, from a given quota, the
person who shall be cast into the furnace of molten mouffa. You
will perceive that, including yourself, there are about fifty candidates for this honor--all of whom, for one reason or another, in
varying degrees, have incurred the displeasure of Ounavodo, our
have given rise to doubt regarding their social usefulness. One by
one, you are to walk about the Roccalim in a complete circle, approaching well within reach of the sensitive, mobile branches;
and the plant will indicate the destined victim by touching him
with the tips of these branches."
Howard felt, as Agvur spoke, the chill of a sinister menace;
but in the weirdness of the ceremony that followed, he almost
lost his apprehension of personal peril.
One by one, from the further end of the row in which he was
standing, the silent Oumnis went forward and circled the strange
plant, walking slowly within a few feet of the inert branches of
poisonous green that resembled sleepy, half-coiled serpents. The
Roccalim preserved a torpid stillness, without the least sign of
animation, as Oumni after Oumni finished his perilous circuit and
retired to the further side of the room, there to stand and watch
the perambulations of the others.
About twenty of the white Immortals had undergone this ordeal, when Howard's turn came. Resolutely, with a sense of unreality and grotesquery rather than actual danger, he stepped forward and began his circuit of the living plant. The Oumnis looked
on like alabaster Statues; and all was utterly still and silent, except for a muffled, mysterious throbbing. as of underworld machinery at a distance.
Howard moved on in an arc, watching the green branches with
a growing tenseness. He had gone half the required distance when
he felt, rather than saw, a flash of swift, intense light that appeared to stab downward from the cavern roof and strike the
lumpish yellow bole of the Roccalim. The light faded in the merest fraction of time, leaving Howard in doubt as to whether he
had really seen it.
Then, as he went on, he perceived with startled horror that the
trailing tentacular boughs had begun to twitch and quiver, and
were lifting slowly from the floor and waving toward him. On and
on they came, rising and straightening, like a mass of ropy kelp
that flows in an ocean-stream. They reached him, they slithered
with reptilian ease about his body, and touched his face with
their venomous-looking tips, clammy and inquisitive.
Howard drew back, wrenching himself away from the waving
mass, and found Agvur at his elbow. The face of the Mercutian
was touched with an unearthly gloating; and his iridescent locks
floated upward, quivering with weird restlessness, like the Roccalim branches.
At that moment, it came to Howard that his fate had been predetermined from the beginning; that the swift, evanescent flash of
light, proceeding from an unknown source, had perhaps served
in some manner to irritate the living plant and provoke the action of its tentacular limbs.
Swift anger flared in the earth-man, but he repressed it. He
must be cautious, must watch for an opportunity--even the slimmest--of escape. By giving the impression that he was resigned,
he might throw his captors off their guard.
He saw that a number of new Mercutians, equipped with long
glittering tubes like blow-pipes, had entered the cavern and were
surrounding him. The companions of his late ordeal had begun
to disperse in various directions.
"I am sorry," said Agvur, "that the choice should have fallen
upon you But your death will be swift--and the time is near at
hand. The fusing must be completed, and the metal must be
poured off and cast in thin, malleable sheets, before the next
term of darkness and slumber, which will occur in little more
than an hour. During this term--three hours out of every thirty-
six--the transmitted sunlight is excluded from all our chambers
and passages; and most of our machinery, which derives its power
from light, is rendered inactive."
III
In mingled horror and dumbfoundment, Howard was taken
through an opposite entrance of the Roccalim's cavern and along
a sort of hall which appeared to run parallel with the one in which
the incline had ended. Agvur walked at his side; and the Oumni
guards were grouped before and behind him. He surmised that
the glittering, hollow tubes they carried were weapons of some
novel type.
As they went on, the mysterious throbbing noise drew steadily
nearer Howard saw that the far end of the corridor was illumed
with a firey red light. The air was touched with queer metallic
odors; and the temperature, which had heretofore been one of unobstrusive warmth, seemed to rise slightly.
At one side, through an open door in the passage wall, as they
neared the source of the red light, Howard saw a large room
whose further end was filled with lofty banks of shining cylinder-shaped mechanisms. In front of these mechanisms, a solitary
Mercutian stood watching an immense pivot-mounted ball which
appeared to be filled nearly to the top with liquid blackness,
leaving a crescent of bright crystal. Near the ball, there was a sort
of inclined switch-board, from which arose many rods and levers,
made of some transparent material.
"The lighting-apparatus of all our caverns is controlled from
that room," said Agvur, with a sort of casual boastfulness.
"When the ball has turned entirely black, the sunlight will be
turned off for the three-hour period, which gives us all the sleep
and rest we require."
A moment more, and the party reached the end of the passage.
Howard stood blinking and breathless with wonder when he saw
the source of the dazzling red light.
He was on the threshold of a cavern so enormous that its roof
was lost in luminosity and gave the effect of a natural sky. Titanic machines of multiform types, some squat and ungainly and
others like prodigious bulbs or huge inverted funnels, crowded
the cavern-floor; and in the center, towering above the rest was a
double, terrace-like platform of sable stone, thirty feet in height,
with many pipes of dark metal that ramified from its two tiers to
the floor, like the legs of some colossal spider. From the middle
of the summit, the ruddy light arose in a great pillar. Gleaming
strangely against the fiery glow, the forms of Oumnis moved like
midges.
Just within the entrance of the Cyclopean room, there stood a
sort of rack, from which hung a dozen suits of the mouffa-metal.
Their construction was very simple, and they closed and opened
at the breast, with odd dove-tailings. The head was a loose, roomy
hood; and the metal had somehow been rendered transparent in a
crescent-like strip across the eyes.
The suits were donned by Agvur and the guards; and Howard
noticed that they were extremely light and flexible. He himself,
at the same time, was ordered to disrobe.
"The mouffa mixture, during the process of fusing, gives off
some dangerous radiations," said Agvur. "These will hardly matter in your case; and the suits of finished metal will protect my
companions and me against them, even as against the deadly solar
rays."
Howard had now removed all his clothes, which he left lying
near the rack. Still pretending his resignation, but thinking desperately all the while and observing closely the details of his situation, he was led along the crowded floor, amid the sinister
throbbing and muttering of the strange engines. Steep, winding
stairs gave access to the terraced mass of dark stone. The earth-
man saw as he went upward, that the lower tier was fitted with
broad, shallow moulds, in which doubtless the metal would run
off from the furnace to cool in sheets.
Howard felt an almost overpowering heat when he stood on
the upper platform; and the red glare blinded him. The furnace
itself, he now saw, was a circular crater, fifteen feet across, in the
black stone. It was filled nearly to the rim with the molten metal,
which eddied with a slow maelstrom-like movement, agitated by
some unknown means, and glowing unbearably. The black stone
must have been a non-conductor of heat, for it was cool beneath
Howard's bare soles.
On the broad space about the furnace, a dozen Oumnis, all
sheathed in the glittering mouffa, were standing. One of them was
turning a small, complicated-looking wheel, mounted obliquely on
a miniature pillar; and as if he were regulating the temperature
of the furnace, the metal glowed more brightly and eddied with
new swiftness in its black crater.
Apart from this wheel, and several rods that protruded from
long, notched grooves in the stone, there was no visible machinery on the platform. The stone itself was seemingly all one block,
except for a slab, ten feet long and two feet wide, which ran to
the crater's verge. Howard was directed to stand on this slab, at
the end opposite to the furnace,
"In another minute," said Agvur, "the slab will begin to move,
will tilt, and precipitate you into the molten mouffa. If you wish,
we can administer to you a powerful narcotic, so that your death
will be wholly free of fear or pain."
Overcome by an unreal horror, Howard nodded his head in
mechanical assent, snatching hopelessly at the momentary reprieve.
Perhaps . . . even yet . . . there might be a chance; though he
could have laughed at himself for the impossible notion.
Peering again toward the awful furnace, he was startled to see
an inexplicable thing. Foot by foot, from the solid stone of the
crater's further lip, there rose the figure of a Mercutian, till it
stood with haughty features, very tall and pale and wholly naked
upon the platform. Then, as Howard gasped with incrcdulous
awe, the figure seemed to step in a stately manner from the verge,
and hang suspended in air above the glowing cauldron,
"It is the Shol, Ounavodo," said Agvur in reverent tones,
"though he is now many miles away in the nether caverns, he has
projected his televisual image to attend the ceremony."
One of the Mercutian guards had come forward, bearing in his
hands a heavy, shallow bowl of some bronze-like substance, filled
with a hueless liquid. This he proffered to the earth-man.
"The narcotic acts, immediately," said Agvur, as if in reassurance.
Giving a quick, unobstrusive glance about him, Howard accepted the bowl and raised it to his lips. The narcotic was odorless as well as colorless, and had the consistency of a thick, sluggish oil.
"Be quick," admonished Agvur. "The slab responds to a timing
mechanism; and already it starts to move."
Howard saw that the slab was gliding slowly, bearing him as
on a great protruding tongue toward the furnace. It began to tilt
a little beneath his feet,
Tensing all his muscles, he leapt from the slab and hurled the
heavy bowl in the face of Agvur, who stood close by. The Mercutian staggered, and before he could regain his balance, Howard
sprang upon him, and lifting him bodily, flung him across the rising, sliding slab, which bore Agvur along in its accelerated movement. Stunned by the fall, and unable to recover himself, he rolled
from the tilting stone into the white-hot maelstrom and disappeared with a splash. The liquid seethed and eddied with a swifter
motion than before.
For a moment, the assembled Oumnis stood like metal statues;
and the televisual image of the Shol, standing inscrutable and
watchful above the furnace, had not stirred. Leaping at the foremost guards, Howard flung them aside as they started to lift their
tubular weapons. He gained the platform's railless verge, but saw
that several Oumnis had run to intercept him before he could
reach the stairs. It was a twelve-foot drop to the second platform,
and he feared to leap with bare feet. The strange curving pipes
which ran from the upper platform to the main cavern-floor, offered his only possible means of escape.
These pipes were of darkish metal, perfectly smooth and joint-less, and were about ten inches thick. Straddling the nearest one,
where it entered the black stone just below the verge, Howard began to slide as quickly as he could toward the floor.
His captors had followed him to the platform-edge; and facing
them as he slid, the earth-man saw two of the Immortals aim their
weapons at him. From the hollow tubes, there issued glowing
balls of yellow fire which came flying toward Howard. One of
them fell short, striking the side of the great pipe, and causing it
to melt away like so much solder. He saw the dripping of the
molten metal as he ducked to avoid the second ball.
Others of the Oumnis were levelling their weapons; and a rain
of the terrible fire-globes fell about Howard as he slid along the
pipe's lower portion, where it curved sharply toward the floor.
One of the balls brushed his right arm and left an agonizing burn.
He reached the floor, and saw that a dozen Immortals were descending the platform-stairs in great bounds. The main cavern,
fortunately, was deserted. The earth-man leapt for the shelter of
a huge rhomboidal machine, and heard the hiss and drip of liquid
metal as the fire-balls struck behind him.
Threading his way among the looming mechanisms, and interposing their bulks as much as possible between himself and his
pursuers, Howard made for the entrance through which he had
been conducted to the furnace by Agvur. There were other exits
from the immense cavern; but these would have led him deeper
into the unknown labyrinth. He had no clearly formulated plan,
and his ultimate escape was more than problematical; but his instincts bade him to go on as long as he could before being recaptured.
He heard the mysterious pounding of the untended mechanisms
all about him; but there was no sound from his pursuers, who came
on in grim silence, with incredible leaps, gaining visibly upon him.
Then, startlingly, as he rounded one of the machines, he found
himself confronted by the televisual phantom of the Shol, standing in an attitude of menace, and waving him back with imperious
gestures. He felt the awful burning gaze of eyes that were hypnotic
with age-old wisdom and immemorial power; and he seemed to
hurl himself against an unseen barrier, as he sprang at the formidable image. He felt a slight electric shock that jarred his entire
body; but apparently the phantom was capable of little more than
visual manifestation. It seemed to melt away; and than it was
hovering above and a little before him, pointing out his line of
flight to the pursuing Oumnis.
Passing a huge squat cylinder, he came to the rack on which
the suits of mouffa had hung. Two of them still remained. Disregarding his own garments, which lay in a heap nearby, he
snatched one of the metal suits from its place and rolled the thin,
marvellously flexible stuff into a bundle as he continued his flight.
Perhaps, somewhere, he would have a chance to put it on; and
thus disguised, might hope to prolong his freedom--or even to
find his way from this tremendous underworld.
There was a broad open space between the rack and the cavern
exit. Howard's pursuers emerged from the medley of towering
mechanisms before he could reach the doorway, and he was forced
to dodge another fusillade of the fire-balls, which splattered in
white-hot fury all around him. Before him, the menacing phantom
of the Shol still hovered.
Now he had gained the corridor beyond the exit. He meant to
retrace the route by which he had come with Agvur, if possible.
But as he neared the door through which he had seen the watcher
of the darkening globe, and the light-controlling mechanisms, he
perceived that a number of Mercutians, armed with fire-tubes,
were coming to intercept his flight in the corridor. Doubtless they
had been summoned through some sort of telaudition by the furnace-tenders.
Looking back, he saw that his former guards were dosing upon
him. In a few moments, he would be surrounded and trapped.
With no conscious idea, other than the impulse to flee, he darted
through the open door of the cavern of light-machines.
The solitary watcher still stood beside the massive ball with
his back toward the earth-man. The crystal crescent on the dark
globe had narrowed to a thin horn, like the bow of a dying moon.
A mad, audacious inspiration came to Howard, as he recalled
what Agvur had told him about the control of the lighting-system. Quickly and silently he stole toward the watcher of the ball.
Again the vengeful image of the Shol stood before him, as if to
drive him back; and as he neared the unsuspecting watcher, it
rose in air and poised above the ball, warning the Oumni with a
loud, harsh cry. The watcher turned, snatching up a heavy metal
rod that lay on the floor, and leapt to meet Howard, raising his
weapon for a ferocious blow.
Before the rod could descend, the earth-man's fist had caught
the Mercutian full in the face, driving him back upon the slanting
dial of regulative levers beside the pivet-mounted ball. There was
a shivering crash as he fell among the curving crystalline rods;
and at the same instant, utter overwhelming darkness rushed upon
the room and blotted out the banks of gleaming mechanism, the
fallen Oumni, and the phantom of Shol.
IV
Standing uncertain and bewildered, the earth-man heard a low
moaning from the injured Mercutian, and a loud wail of consternation from the corridor without, where the two groups of his
pursurers had found themselves overtaken by darkness. The wailing ceased abruptly; and except for the moaning near at hand,
which still went on, there was absolute silence. Howard realizecd
that he no longer heard the mutter of the strange engines in the
furnace-room. Doubtless their operation had in some manner been
connected with the lighting-system, and had ceased with darknesss.
Howard still retained the suit of mouffa. Groping about, he
found the metal rod that had dropped from the hand of the
watcher. It would make a highly serviceable weapon. Grasping it
firmly, he started in what he surmised to be the direction of the
door. He went slowly and cautiously, knowing that his pursuers
would have gathered to await him, or might even be creeping toward him.
Listening intently, he heard a faint metallic rustle. Some of the
Oumnis, clothed in mouffa, were coming to seek him in the darkness. His own bare feet were soundless; and stepping to one side,
he heard the rustling pass. With redoubled caution, he stole on
toward the door, stretching one hand before him.
Suddenly his fingers touched a smooth surface, which he knew
to be the wall. He had missed the door in his groping. Listening
again, he seemed to hear a faint sound on the left, as if he were
being followed; and moving in the opposite direction, along the
wall, he encountered empty space and saw a dim glimmer of seemingly sourceless light.
His eyes were growing accustomed to the darkness, and he
made out a mass of dubious shadows against the glimmering. He
had found the door, which was lined with waiting Oumnis.
Lifting his bar, he rushed upon the shadows, striking blow
after blow, and stumbling over the bodies that fell before his onslaught. There were shrill cries about him, and he broke from
chill, mouffa-sheathed fingers that sought to clutch him in the
gloom. Then, somehow, he had broken through, and was in the
corridor.
The glimmering, he saw, came from the cavern of machines,
where the hidden furnace still burned. Into the dying glow that
lit the entrance, there came hurrying figures, each of which appeared to have an enormous Cyclopean eye of icy green. Howard
realized that more Mercutians, bearing artificial lights, were coming to join the pursuit.
Keeping close to the corridor wall, he ran as fast as he dared in
the solid blackness, toward the cavern of the Roccalim. He heard
a stealthy metallic rustling, as the foremost Oumnis followed;
and glancing back, saw them dimly outlined against the remote
glnw They came on in a cautious, lagging manner, as if they were
waiting for the new contingent with the green lights. After a littie, he saw that the two parties had united and were following him
steadily.
Fingering the wall at intervals as he ran, Howard reached the
entrance of the large chamber in whose center stood the Roccalim.
The lights were gaining upon him rapidly. Calculating in his
mind, as well as he could, the direction of the opposite doorway,
giving on the main tunnel that led to the incline, he started toward it. As he went on, he veered a little, thinking to avoid the
monstrous plant-growth. It was like plunging into a blind abyss;
and he seemed to wander for an immense distance, feeling sure
that he would reach the opposite wall at any moment.
Suddenly his feet tripped on an unknown obstruction, and he
fell at full length, landing on what seemed to be a tangle of great
hairy ropes that pricked his bare skin in a thousand places. Instantly, he knew that he had collided with the Roccalim.
The mass of python-like branches lay inert beneath him, without a quiver of animation. Doubtless, in the absense of light, the
queer, semi-animal growth was torpid.
Pulling himself from the spiny couch on which he had fallen,
Howard looked back and perceived the thronging of green lights,
cold and malignant as the eyes of boreal dragons. His pursuers
were entering the cavern, and would overtake him in a few instants.
Still clutching the mouffa garments and the metal bar, he groped
across the tangle of branches, pricking his feet painfully at every
step. Suddenly he plunged through to the floor, and found that he
was standing in an open space where the heavy arcapers, descending from the hole, had parted on either side. Crouching down, as
the lights approached him, he found a low, hollow place into
which he could crawl beneath the branches, close to the cactus-like
stem.
The creepers were thick enough to conceal him from cranial
scrutiny. Lying there, with their prickly weight upon him, he saw
through narrow rifts the passing of the green lights toward the
outer cavern. Apparently none of the Mercutians had thought of
pausing to examine the mass of Roccalim branches.
Emerging from his fantastic hiding-place, after all the Oumnis
had gone past, Howard followed them boldly. He saw the vanishing of their icy lamps as they entered the outside tunnel. Moving
again in utter darkness, he found the exit. There he recovered the
running pencils of light, cast by the hurrying lamps as their bearers went toward the incline.
Following, Howard stumbled against an unseen object, which
was either the vehicle used by Agvur, or another of the same type.
Probably, in the shutting-off of power, these vehicles were now
useless: otherwise, some of them might have been employed by
the earth-man's pursuers. Hunters and hunted were on an equal
footing; and realizing this, Howard felt for the first time an actual thrill of hope.
Going on, with the lights moving steadily before him, he started
up the interminable incline which led--perhaps--to freedom. The
tunnel was deserted, except for the hunters and their human
quarry; and it seemed as if the multitude of Oumnis seen by Howard on his arrival with Agvur had all retired with the falling of
darkness. Perhaps they had to for the usual three-hour term of
night and repose.
The light-bearers appeared to disregard all the side passages
that ran from the main tunnel. It occurred to Howard that they
were hastening toward the surface exits, with the idea of cutting
off his possible escape. Afterwards they would hunt him down at
leisure.
The incline ran straight ahead; and there was little danger of
losing sight of the lights. Howard paused an instant to slip on
the suit of mouffa, hoping that it might serve to deceive or baffle
his hunters later on. The raiment was easily donned, and fitted
him quite loosely; but the unfamiliar intricate method of fastening
eluded his untaught fingers. He could not remember quite how it
had been done; so he went on with the strange garment open at
the breast. The queer elongated heels, made to accommodate the
spurs of the Immortals, flapped behind him.
He kept as much as possible the same relative distance between
himself and the Oumnis. Glancing back, after awhile, he was horrified to see, far down, the tiny green eyes of another group of
lights following him. Evidently others had rallied to the pursuit.
It was a long, interminably tedious climb--mile after mile of
that monotonous tunnel whose gloom was relieved only by the
sinister points of green light. The Mercutians went on at a tireless pace, unhuman and implacable; and only by ceaseless exertion, half walking, half running, could the earthman maintain his
position midway between the companies of lamps.
He panted heavily, and a faintness came upon him at times, in
which the lights seemed to blur. A great weariness clogged his
limbs and his brain. How long it was since he had eaten, he could
not know. He was not aware of hunger or thirst; but he seemed
to fight an ever-growing weakness. The corridor became a black
eternity, haunted by the green eyes of cosmic demons.
Hour after hour he went on, through a cycle of sunless night
He lost the sense of time, and his movements became a sort of automation. His limbs were numb and dead, and it was only his relentless will that lived and drove him on. Almost, at times, he forgot where he was going--forget everything but the blind, primitive impulse of flight. He was a nameless thing, fleeing from anonymous terror.
At last, through the crushing numbness of his fatigue, there
dawned the realization that he was gaining a little on the group
of lights ahead. Possibly their bearers had paused in doubt or debate. Then, suddenly, he saw that the lights were spreading out,
were diverging and vanishing on either hand, till only four of
them remained.
Dimly puzzled, he went on, and came to that triple division cf
the tunnel which he remembered passing with Agvur. He saw
now that the party of Oumnis had divided into three contingents,
following all the branches. Doubtless each tunnel led to a separate
exit.
Recalling what Agvur had said, he kept to the middle passage
This, if Agvur had spoken truly, would lead to an exit in the twilight zone, not far from the rocket-ship. The other tunnels would
lead he knew not where--perhaps to the terrible deserts of heat
and the piled, chaotic glaciers of the nightward hemisphere The
one he was following, with luck, would enable him to rejoin his
comrades.
A sort of second wind came to Howard now--as if hope had
revived his swooning faculties. More clearly than before, he became conscious of the utter silence and profound mystery of this
underworld empire, of which he had seen--was to see--so little.
His hope quickened when he looked back and saw that the lights
behind him had diminished in number, as if the second party had
likewise separated to follow all three of the tunnels. It was obvious that there was no general pursuit. In all likelihood the
smashing of the transmission levers had deranged all the machineries of the Immortals, even to their system of communication.
Howard's escape, doubtless, was known only to those who had
been present or near at the time. He had brought chaos and demoralization upon this super-scientific people.
V
Mile after mile of that monotone of gloom. Then, with a start
of bewilderment, the earth-man realized that the four lights in
front had all disappeared. Looking back, he saw that the lamps
which followed him had similarly vanished. About, before and
behind there was nothing but a solid, tomb-like wall of darkness.
Howard felt a strange disconcertment, together with the leaden,
crushing return of his weariness. He went on with doubtful,
slackening steps, following the right hand wall with cautious fingers. After awhile he turned a sharp corner; but he did not recover the lost lights. There was a drafty darkness in the air, and
odor of stone and mineral, such as he had not met heretofore in
the mouffa-lined caverns. He began to wonder if he had somehow
gone astray: there might have been other branchings of the tunnel,
which he had missed in his groping. In a blind surge of alarm, he
started to run, and crashed headlong against the angular wall of
another turn in the passage.
Half-stunned, he picked himself up. He hardly knew, henceforth, whether he was maintaining the original course of his flight
or was doubling on his own steps. For aught that he could tell,
he might be lost beyond all redirection in a cross-labyrinth of
caverns. He stumbled and staggered along, colliding many times
with the tunnel-sides, which seemed to have closed in upon him
md to have grown rough with flinty projections.
The draft in his face grew stronger, with a smell of water. Presently the blindfold darkness before him melted into a chill, bluish
glimmering, which revealed the rugate walls and boulder-fanged
roof of the natural passage he was following.
He came out in a huge, chamber-like cave of some marble-pallid
stone with twisted columnar forms. The glimmering, he saw, was
a kind of phosphorescence emitted by certain vegetable growths,
probably of a thallophytic nature, which rose in thick clusters from
the floor, attaining the height of a tall man. They were flabby and
fulsome-looking, with abortive branches, and pendulous fruit-
shaped nodes of etiolated purple along their puffy, whitish-blue
stems. The phosphorescence, which issued equally from all portions oft hese plants, served to light the gloom for some distance
around, and brought out dimly the columnated character of the
cavern's further walls.
Howard saw, as he passed among them, that the plants were
rootless. It seemed that they would topple at a touch; but happening to stumble against one of the clumps, he found that they supported his weight with resilient solidity. No doubt they were attached firmly by some sort of suction to the smooth stone.
In the middle of the cave, behind a lofty fringing of these luminous fungi, he discovered a pool of water, fed by a thin trickle
that descended through the gloom from a high vault that the phosphorescence could not illumine. Impelled by sudden, furious
thirst, he slid back the mouffa-hood and drank recklessly, though
the fluid was sharp and bitter with strange minerals. Then, with
the ravening hunger of one who has not eaten for days, he began to
eye the pear-shaped nodes of the tall thallophytes. He broke one
of them from its parent stem, tore off the glimmering rind, and
found that it was filled with a mealy pulp. A savorous, peppery odor
tempted him to taste the pulp. It was not unpleasant, and forgetting
all caution (possibly he had become a little mad from his extra-
human ordeals) he devoured the stuff in hasty mouthfuls.
The node must have contained a narcotic principle; for almost
immediately he was overpowered by an insuperable drowsiness.
He fell back and lay where he had fallen, in a deep sodden sopor
without dreams, for a length of time which, as far as he could
know, might have been the interim of death between two lives. He
awoke with violent nausea, a racking headache, and a feeling of
hopeless, irredeemable confusion.
He drank again from the bitter pool, and then began to hunt
with cloudy senses and feeble, uncertain steps for another exit
than the tunnel by which he had entered. His mind was dull and
heavily drugged, as if from the lingering of the unknown narcotic,
and he could formulate no conscious plan of action but was led
only by an animal-like impulse of flight.
He discovered a second opening, low, and fanged with broken-off pillar formations, in the opposite wall of the cavern. It was
filed with Stygian darkness; and before entering it, he tore a
lumpy branch from one of the phosphorescent fungi, to serve him
in lieu of other light.
His subsequent wanderings were nightmarish and interminable. He seemed to have gotten into some tremendous maze of natural caverns, varying greatly in size, and intersecting each other
in a bewildering honeycomb fashion: an underworld that lay beyond the metal-insulated realm of the Oumnis.
There were long, tediously winding tunnels that went down
into Cimmerian depth, or climbed at acolivitous angles. There
were strait cubby-holes, dripping with unknown liquid ores,
through which he crawled like a lizard on his belly; and Dantean
gulfs that he skirted on slippery, perilous, broken ledges, hearing far below him the sullen sigh or the weirdly booming roar of
sub Mcrcutian waters.
For awhile, his way led mainly downward, as if he were plunging to the bowels of the planet. The air became warmer and more
humid. He came at last to the sheer brink of an incommensurable abyss, where noctilucent fungi, vaster than any he had yet
seen, grew tall as giant trees along the precipice that he followed
for miles. They were like fantastic monolithic tapers; but their
luminosity failed to reveal the giddy depth above and beneath.
He met none of the Oumnis in this inexhaustible world of night
and silence. But after he had rounded the great gulf, and had
started to re-ascend in smaller caverns, he began to encounter, at
intervals, certain blind, white, repulsive creatures the size of an
overgrown rat, but without even the rudiments of tail or legs. In
his demoralized condition of mind and body, he felt a primitive
fear of these things, rather than the mere repugnance which their
aspect would normally have aroused. However, they were non-aggressive and shrank sluggishly away from him. Once, he trod
inadvertently on one of the creatures and leapt away, howling
with fright, when it squirmed nauseously beneath his heel. Finding he had crushed its head, he took courage and began to belabor the flopping abnormality with the metal rod which he still
carried. He mashed it into an oozy pulp--a pulp that still quivered with life; and then, overcome by bestial, atavistic hunger,
and forgetting all the painfully acquired prejudices of civilized
man, he knelt down and devoured the pulp with shamcless greed.
Afterwards, replete, he stretched himself out and slept for many
hours.
VI
He awoke with renewed physical strength, but with nerves and
mind that were still partially shattered by his experiences. Like a
savage who awakens in some primordial cave, he felt the irrational terror of darkness and mystery. His memories were dazed
and broken, and he could recall the Oumnis only as a vague an
almost supernatural source of fear, from which he had fled.
The fungus-bough, which had served him in lieu of a torch or
lantern, was lying beside him in the darkness. With the bough in
one hand and the metal rod in the other, he resumed his wanderings. He met more of the white, legless creatures; but he had conquered his fear of them- now, and looked upon them only as a
possible source of food. He proceeded to kill and eat one of them
anon, relishing the worm-soft flesh as an aborigine would have
relished a meal of grubs or white ants.
He had lost all notion of the passing of time or its measurement. lie was a thing that clambered endlessly on Tartarean cavern-slopes or along the brink of lightless rivers and pools and
chasms, killing when he was hungry, sleeping when his weariness
became too urgent. Perhaps he went on for days; perhaps for many
weeks, in a blind, instinctive search for light and outer air.
The flora and fauna of the caverns changed. He dragged himself through passages that were wholly lined with bristling, glowing thallophytes, some of which were tough and sharp as if fibred
with iron. He came to tepid lakes whose waters were infested by
long, agile, hydra-bodied creatures, divided into tapeworm segments, that rose to dispute his way but were powerless to harm his
mouffa-covered limbs with their toothless, pulpy mouths.
For awhile, he seemed to be passing through a zone of unnatural warmth, due, no doubt, to the presence of hidden volcanic
activity. There were hot geysers, and gulfs from which sultry vapors rose, filling the air with queer, metallic-smelling gases that
seemed to burn corrosively in his nostrils and lungs. Some remnant of his former scientific knowledge caused him to recoil from
such neighborhoods and retrace his footsteps into caverns free of
these gases.
Fleeing from one of the mephitic-laden caves, he found himself
in a mile-wide chamber, lined with fungi of uncommon exuberance,
amid whose luminiferous growths he met with one of his most
terrible adventures. A vast and semi-ophidian monster, white as
the other life-forms lie had met, and equally legless but owning
a single, Cyclopean, phosphoric eye, leapt upon him from the unearthly vegetation and hurled him to the ground with the ram-like impact of its blunt, shapeless head. He lay half-stunned, while
the monster began to ingest him in its enormous maw, starting
with his feet. Seemingly the metal which he wore was no barrier
to it~ appetite. The creature had swallowed him nearly to the hips,
when he recovered his senses and realized his frightful predicament.
Smitten with hideous terror, howling and gibbering like a caveman, he lifted the metal rod, which his clutching fingers had
somehow retained, and struck frantically at the awful head into
whose mouth he was being drawn by inches. The blows made
little or no impression on the great rubbery mass; and soon he
was waist-deep in the monstrous maw. In his dire need, a trace of
reasoning-power returned to him; and using the rod like a rapier
he thrust it into the immense, glaring eye, burying it to his hand,
and probably penetrating whatever rudimentary semblance of
brain the animal possessed. A pale and egg-like fluid oozed from
the broken eye, and the slobbering lips tightened intolerably upon
Howard, almost crushing him in what proved to he the death-spasm. The white, swollen barrel-thick body tossed for many minutes; and during its convulsions, Howard was knocked insensible.
When he came to again, the creature was lying comparatively
still; and the sack-like mouth had begun to relax, so that he was
able to extricate himself from the dreadful gorge.
The shock of this experience completed his mental demoralization and drove him even further into primitive brutehood. At
times, his brain was almost a blank; and he knew nothing, remembered nothing but the blind horror of those infra-planetary caverns and the dumb instinct that still impelled him to seek escape.
Several times, as he continued his way through the thickets of
fungi, he was forced to flee or hide from other monsters of the
same type as the one that had so nearly ingested him. Then he entered a region of steep acclivities that took him ever upward. The
air became chill and the caverns were seemingly void of vegetable
or animal life. He wondered dully as to the reason of the growing
cold; hut his broken mind could suggest no explanation.
Before entering this realm, he had supplied himself with another fragment of luminiferous fungus to light his way. He was
groping through a mountain-like wilderness of chasms and riven
scarps and dolomites, when, at some distance above, he saw with
inexpressible fright a glimmering as of two cold green eyes that
moved among the crags. He had virtually forgotten the Oumnis
and their lamps; but something--half intuition, half memory--
warned him of direr peril than any he had hitherto met in the
darkness.
He dropped his luminous torch and concealed himself behind
one of the dolomitic formations. From his hiding-place, he saw
the passing of two of the Immortals, clad in silvery mouffa, who
descended the scarp and vanished in the craggy gulfs below
Whether or not they were hunting for him, he could not know;
but when they had gone from sight, he resumed his climb, hurrying at breakneck speed and feeling that he must get as far away
as possible from the bearers of those icy green lights.
The dolomites dwindled in size, and the steep chamber narrowed like the neck of a bottle and closed in upon him presently
from all sides, till it was only a narrow, winding passage. The
floor of the passage became fairly level. Anon, as he followed it,
he was startled and blinded by a glare of light directly ahead--a
light that was brilliant as pure sunshine. He cowered and stepped
back, shielding his eyes with his hands till they became somewhat
tempered to the glare. Then, stealthily, with a mingling of confused fears and dim, unworded hopes, he crept toward the light
and came out in an endless metal hall, apparently deserted but
filled as far as eye could see with the sourceless brilliance.
The mouth of the rough natural passage from which he had
emerged was fitted with a sort of valve, which had been left open,
doubtless by the Immortals he had seen among the nether crags.
The boat-shaped vehicle they had used was standing in the hall.
This vehicle, and the hall itself, were familiar to him, and he began to recollect, in a partial way, the ordeals he had undergone
among the Oumnis before his flight into outer darkness.
The hall was slightly inclined; and he seemed to remember that
the upward grade would presumably lead to a lost world of freedom. Apprehensively and furtively, he began to follow it, loping
like an animal.
After he had gone for perhaps a mile, the floor became perfectly level, but the hall itself started to turn in a sort of arc. He
was unable to see very far ahead. Then, so abruptly that he could
not check his headlong flight, he came in view of three Oumnis,
clothed in metal, who were all standing with their backs to him.
A boat--vehicle was near at hand. One of the Immortals was tugging at a huge, capstan-like bar that protruded from the wall of
the passage; and as if in response to the bar, a sort of gleaming
metal valve was descending slowly from the roof. Inch by inch,
it came down like a mighty curtain; and soon it would close the
entire passage and render impossible the earth-man's egress.
Somehow, it did not occur to Howard that the tunnel beyond
the valve might lead to other realms than the outer air for which
he longed so desperately. As if by a miracle, something of his
former courage and resourcefulness had returned to him; and he
did not turn and flee incontinently at sight of the Immortals as
he would have done a short time before. He felt that now or
never was his opportunity to escape from the sub-Mercutian levels.
Leaping forward on the unsuspecting Oumnis, all of whom
were intent on the closing of the valve, he struck at the foremost
with his metal bar. The Mercutian toppled and went down with a
clattering of mouffa on the floor. The one who was operating the
lever continued his task, and Howard had no time to strike him
down, for the remaining Immortal, with tigerish agility, had
sprung back and was levelling the deadly fire-tube which he carried.
Howard saw that the great valve was still descending--was
barely two feet above the cavern floor. He made a flying dive for
the opening, sprawling on all fours and then crawling prone on
his stomach beneath the terrible curtain of metal.
Struggling to rise, he found himself impeded and held back
He was in utter darkness now; but getting to his knees and groping about, he determined the cause of his retardation. The fallen
valve had caught the loose elongated heel of the mouffa on his
right foot. He had all the sensations of a trapped animal as he
sought to wrench himself free. The tough mouffa held, weighed
down by the enormous valve; and it seemed that there was no
escape.
Then, amid his desperation, he somehow remembered that the
mouffa-armor was open at the breast. Awkwardly and painfully,
he managed to crawl forth from it, leaving it there like a discarded
lizard-skin.
Getting to his feet, he raced on in the darkness. He was without light, for he had dropped the phosphorescent bough in his
dive under the closing valve. The cavern was rough and flinty to
his naked feet; and he felt an icy wind, bleak as the breath of
glaciers, that blew upon him as he went. The floor sloped upward,
and in places it was broken into stair-like formations against
which he stumbled and fell, bruising himself severely. Then he
cut his head cruelly on a sharp stone that projected from the low
roof. The wet, warm blood flowed down across his brow and into
his eyes.
The passage steepened and the air took on a terrible frigidity.
There was no sign of pursuit from the Oumnis; but fearing they
would raise the valve and follow him, the earth-man hastened on.
He was puzzled by the growing Arctic cold, but the suppositional
reason seemed to elude him. His naked limbs and torso were
studded with goose-flesh; and he began to shiver with violent
ague, in spite of the high speed at which he ran and climbed.
Now the cavern-stairs were more regular and defined. They
seemed to mount forever in the darkness; and growing accustomed
to them he was able to grope his way from step to step with no
more than an occasional fall or stumble. His feet were cut and
bleeding; but the cold had begun to numb them and he felt little
pain.
He saw a dim, circular patch of light far above him, and gasping with the icy air, which appeared to grow thinner and more
irrespirable, he rushed toward it. Hundreds, thousands of those
black, glaciated steps he seemed to climb before he neared the
light. He came out beneath a sable heaven crowded with chill,
pulseless, glaring stars, in a sort of valley-bottom among drear
unending scarps and pinnacles, still and silent as a frozen dream
of death. They gleamed in the starlight with reflections of myriad-angled ice; and the valley-bottom itself was lit by patches of a
leprons whiteness One of these patches fringed the mouth of the
incline on whose topmost step the earth-man was standing.
He fought agonizingly for breath in the tenuous infra-zero air
and his body stiffened momently with a permeating rigor as he
stood and peered in numb bewilderment at the icy, mountainous
chaos of the landscape in which he had emerged. It was like a
dead crater in a world of unspeakable and perpetual desolation,
where life could never have been.
The flowing blood had congealed upon his brow and cheeks.
With glazing eyes, he saw, in a nearby cliff, the continuation of
the cavern-steps. Hewn for some unimaginable purpose by the Immortals, they ran upward in the ice toward the higher summits.
It was not the familiar twilight zone of Mercury in which he
bad come forth--it was the bleak, nightward side, eternally averted
from the sun, and blasted with the frightful cold of cosmic space.
He felt the pinnacles and chasms close him in, relentless and
rigid, like some hyperborean hell. Then the realization of his
plight became something very remote and recessive, a dim thought
that floated above his ebbing consciousness. He fell forward on
the snow with limbs already stiff and unbending; and the mercy
of the final numbness grew complete.
Cliff Howard's first sensation, as he came back to consciousness,
was one of well-nigh insufferable heat. It seemed to beat upon
him from all sides in a furnace-like blast and to lie upon his face,
limbs and body with the heaviness of molten metal. Then, before
he had opened his eyes, he became aware of the furious light that
smote upon his lids, turning them to a flame-red curtain. His eye-
balls ached with the muffled radiation; every nerve of his being
cringed from the pouring sea of incalescence; and there was a dull
throbbing in his scalp, which might have been either headache induced by the heat, or the pain of a somewhat recent blow.
He recalled, very dimly, that there had been an expedition--
somewhere--in which he had taken part; but his efforts to remember the details were momentarily distracted by new and inexplicable sensations. He felt now that he was moving swiftly,
borne on something that pitched and bounded against a high wind
that seared his face like the breath of hell.
He opened his eyes, and was almost blinded when he found
himself staring at a whitish heaven where blown columns of
steam went by like spectral genii. Just below the rim of his vision,
there was something vast and incandescent, toward which, instinctively, he feared to turn. Suddenly he knew what it was, and began to realize his Situation. Memory came to him in a tumbling
torment of images; and with it, a growing wonder and alarm.
He recalled the ramble he had taken, alone, amid the weird
and scrubby jungles of the twilight zone of 'Mercury--that narrow
belt, warm and vaporous, lying beneath the broiling deserts on
which an enormous sun glares perpetually, and the heaped and
mountainous glaciers of the planet's nightward side.
He had not gone far from the rocket-ship----a mile at most, toward the sulphurous, fuming afterglow of the sun, now wholly
hidden by the planet's libration. Johnson, the head of that first
scientific expedition to Mercury, had warned him against these
solitary excursions; but Howard, a professional botanist, had been
eager to hasten his investigations of the unknown world, in which
they had now sojourned for a week of terrestrial time.
Contrary to expectation, they had found a low, thin, breathable atmosphere, fed by the melting of ice in the variable twilight
belt--an air that was drawn continually in high winds toward the
sun; and the wearing of special equipment was unnecessary. Howard had not anticipated any danger; for the shy, animal-like natives had shown no hostility and had fled from the earth-men
whenever approached. The other life-forms, as far as had been determined, were of low, insensitive types, often semi-vegetative,
and easily avoided when poisonous or carnivorous.
Even the huge, ugly, salamander-like reptiles who seemed to
roam at will from the twilight zone to the scalding deserts beneath an eternal day, were seemingly quite inoffensive.
Howard had been examining a queer, unfamiliar growth resembling a large truffle, which he had found in an open space,
among the pale, poddy, wind-bowed shrubs. The growth, when he
touched it, had displayed signs of sluggish animation and had
started to conceal itself, burrowing into the boggy soil. He was
prodding the thing with the sponge-light branch of a dead shrub,
and was wondering how to classify it, when, looking up, he had
found himself surrounded by the Mercutian savages. They had
stolen upon him noiselessly from the semi-fungoid thickets; but
he was not alarmed at first, thinking merely that they had begun
to overcome their shyness and show their barbaric curiosity.
They were gnarled and dwarfish creatures, who walked partially erect at most times; but ran upon all fours when frightened.
The earth-men had named them the Dlukus, because of the clucking sounds resembling this word which they often made. Their
skins were heavily scaled, like those of reptiles; and their small,
protruding eyes appeared to be covered at all times with a sort of
thin film. Anything ghastlier or more repulsive than these beings
could hardly have been found on the inner planets. But when
they closed in upon Howard, walking with a forward crouch and
clucking incessantly, he had taken their approach for a sort of
overture and had neglected to draw his tonanite pistol. He saw
that they were carrying rough pieces of some blackish mineral,
and had surmised, from the way in which their webbed hands
were held toward him, that they were bringing him a gift or peace-offering.
Their savage faces were inscrutable; and they had drawn very
close before he was disillusioned as to their intent. Then, with-
Out warning, in a cool, orderly manner, they had begun to assail
him with the fragments of mineral they carried. He had fought
them; but his resistance had been cut short by a violent blow from
behind, which had sent him reeling into oblivion.
All this he remembered clearly enough; but there must have
been an indefinite blank, following his lapse into insensibility.
What, he wondered, had happened during this interim, and where
was he going? Was he a captive among the Dlukus? The glaring
light and scorching heat could mean only one thing--that he had
been carried into the sunward lands of Mercury. That incandescent
thing toward which he dared not look was the sun itself, looming
in a vast arc above the horizon.
He tried to sit up, but succeeded merely in raising his head a
little. He saw that there were leathery thongs about his chest, arms
and legs, binding him tightly to some mobile surface that seemed
to heave and pant beneath him. Slewing his head to one side, he
found that this surface was horny, rounding and reticulated. It
was like something he had seen.
Then, with a start of horror, he recognized it. He was bound,
Mazeppa-like, to the back of one of those salamandrine monsters
to which the earth-scientists had given the name of "heat-lizards."
These creatures were large crocodiles, but possessed longer legs
than any terrestrial saurian. Their thick hides were apparently, to
an amazing extent, non-conductors of heat, and served to insulate
them against temperatures that would have parboiled any other
known form of life.
The exact range of their habitat had not yet been learned; but
they had been seen from the rocket-ship, during a brief sunward
dash, in deserts where water was perpetually at the boiling point;
where rills and rivers, flowing from the twilight zone, wasted
themselves in heavy vapors from terrible cauldrons of naked rock.
Howard's consternation, as he realized his plight and his probable fate, was mingled with a passing surprise. He felt sure that
the Dlukus had bound him to the monster's back, and wondered
that beings so low in the evolutionary scale should have been intelligent enough to know the use of thongs. Their act showed a
certain power of calculation, as well as a devilish cruelty. It was
obvious that they had abandoned him deliberately to an awful
doom.
However, he had little time for reflection. The heat-lizard, with
an indescribable darting and running motion, went swiftly onward into the dreadful hell of writhing steam and heated rock.
The great ball of insupportable whiteness seemed to rise higher
momently and to pour its beams upon Howard like the flood of
an opened furnace. The horny mail of the monster was like a hot
gridiron beneath him, scorching through his clothes; and his
wrists and neck and ankles were seared by the tough leather cords
as he struggled madly and uselessly against them.
Turning his head from side to side, he saw dimly the horned
rocks that leaned toward him from curtains of hellish mist. His
head swam deliriously, and the very blood appeared to simmer
in his veins. He lapsed at intervals into deadly faintness: a black
shroud seemed to fall upon him, but his vague senses were still
oppressed by the crushing, searing radiation. He seemed to descend into bottomless gulfs, pursued by unpitying cataracts of fire
and seas of molten heat. The darkness of his swoon was turned to
immitigable light.
At times, Howard came back to full consciousness, and was
forced to grit his teeth to avoid screaming with agony. His eyelids
seemed to scorch his eyes, as he blinked in the blinding refraction; and he saw his surroundings in broken glimpses, through
turning wheels of fire and blots of torrid color, like scenes from
a mad kaleidoscope.
The heat-lizard was following a tortuous stream that ran in
hissing rapids, among twisted crags and chasm-riven scarps. Rising in sheets and columns, the steam of the angry water was blown
at intervals toward the earth-man, scalding his bare face and hands.
The thongs cut into his flesh intolerably, when the monster leapt
across mighty fissures that had been made by the cracking of the
super-heated stone.
Howard's brain seemed to broil in his head, and his blood was
a fiery torrent in his roasted body. He fought for breath--and if thr
breath seared his lungs. The vapors eddied about him in deepening swirls, and he heard a muffled roaring whose cause he could
not determine. He became aware that the heat-lizard had paused;
and moving his head a little, saw that it was standing on the rocky
verge of a great gulf, into which the waters fell to an unknown
depth, amid curtains of steam.
His heart and his senses failed him, as he struggled like a dying man to draw breath from the suffocating air. The precipice
and the monster seemed to pitch and reel beneath him, the vapors swayed vertiginously, and he thought that he was plunging
with his weird steed into the unfathomably shrouded gulf.
Then, from the burning mist, the hooded forms of white and
shining devils appeared to rise up and seize him, as if to receive
him into their unknown hell. He saw their strange, unhuman faces;
he felt the touch of their fingers, with a queer and preternatural
coolness, on his seared flesh; and then all was darkness. . .
II
Howard awoke under circumstances that were novel and inexplicable. Instantly, with great clearness, he remembered all that
had occurred prior to his final lapse, but could find no clue to his
present situation.
He was lying on his back in a green radiance--a soft and soothing light that reminded him of the verdant green and emerald seawater of the far-off Earth. The light was all about him, it seemed
to flow beneath and above him, laying his body with cool ripples
that left a sense of supreme well-being.
He saw that he was quite naked; and he had the feeling of immense buoyancy, as if he had been rendered weightless. Wondering, he saw that his skin was entirely free of burns, and realized that he felt no pain, no ill-effects of any kind, such as would
have seemed inevitable after his dread ordeal in the Mercutian
desert.
For awhile, he did not associate the green luminosity with any
idea of limitation; for he seemed to be floating in a vast abyss.
Then, suddenly, he perceived his error. Putting out his hands, he
touched on either side the wall of a narrow vault, and saw that
its roof was only a few feet above him. The floor lay at an equal
distance beneath; and he himself, without visible support, was
reclining in mid-air. The green light, streaming mysteriously from
all the sides of the vault, had given him the illusion of unbounded
space.
Abruptly, at his feet, the end of the vault seemed to disappear
in a white glory like pure sunlight. Long, sinuous, six-fingered
hands reached out from the glory, grasped him about the ankles,
and drew him gently from the green-lit space in which he floated.
Weight seemed to return to him as his limbs and body entered
the dazzling whiteness; and a moment later, he found himself
standing erect in a large chamber, lined with some sort of pale,
shimmering metal. Beside him, a strange, unearthly being was
dosing the panel-like door through which he had been drawn
from the emerald-litten vault; and beyond this being, there were
two others of the same type, one of whom was holding Howard's
garments in his arms.
In growing astonishment, Howard gazed at these incredible entities. Each of them was about the height of a tall man, and the
physical conformation was vaguely similar to that of mankind, but
was marked by an almost god-like beauty and grace of contour,
such as could hardly have been found in the most perfect of antique marbles.
Nostrils, ears, lips, hands, and all other features and members,
were carven with well-nigh fantastic delicacy; and the skin of
these beings, none of whom wore any sore or raiment, was white
and translucent, and seemed to shine with an internal radiance.
In place of hair, the full, intellectual heads were crowned with a
mass of heavy flesh-like filaments, hued with changing iridescence,
and tossing and curling with a weird, restless life, like the serpent
locks of Medusa. The feet were like those of men, except for long,
horny spurs that protruded from the heels.
The three entities returned the earth-man's gaze with unreadable eyes, brilliant as diamonds and cold as far-off stars. Then, to
complete his amazement, the being who had just closed the door
of the vault began to address him in high, flute-sweet tones, which
baffled his ears at first, but after a little, became recognizable as
flawless English.
"We trust," said the being, "that you have recovered wholly
from your late experience. It was fortunate that we were watching
you through our televisors when you were seized by the savages
and were bound to the back of the groko--that creature known to
you as the 'heat-lizard.' These beasts are often tamed by the savages, who, being ignorant of the use of artificial heat, make a
strange use of the groko s' proclivities for ranging the terrible
sunward deserts. Captives caught from rival tribes--and sometimes even their own kin--are tied to the monsters, who carry
them through oven-like temperatures till the victims are thoroughly roasted--or, as you would say, done to a turn. Then the
grokos return to their masters--who proceed to feast on cooked
meat.
"Luckily we were able to rescue you in time; for the groko, in
its wanderings, approached one of our cavern-exits in the great
desert. Your body was covered with enormous burns when we
found you; and you would assuredly have died from the effects, if
we had not exposed you to the healing ray in the green vault.
This ray, like many others, is unknown to your scientists; and it
has, among other things, the peculiar power of nullifying gravity.
Hence your sensation of weightlessness under its influence."
"Where am I? And who are you?" cried Howard.
"You are in the interior of Mercury," said the being. "I am
Agvur, a savant, and a high noble of the ruling race of this world."
He went on in a tone of half-disdainful explanation, as if lecturing to a child: "We call ourselves the Oumnis; and we are an old
people, wise and erudite in all the secrets of nature. To protect
ourselves from the intense radiations of the sun, which of course
are more powerful on Mercury than on the further planets, we
dwell in caverns lined with a metallic substance of our own composition. This substance, even in thin sheets, excludes all the
harmful rays, some of which can pierce all other forms of matter
to any depth. When we emerge to the outer world, we wear suits
of this metal, whose name in our language is mouffa.
"Being thus insulated at all times, we are practically immortal,
as well as exempt from disease; for all death and decay, in the
course of nature, are caused by certain solar rays whose frequency
is beyond detection of your instruments. The metal does not exclude the radiations that are beneficial and necessary to life; and by
means of an apparatus similar in its principle to radio, our under-world is illumined with transmitted sunlight."
Howard began to express his thanks to Agvur. His brain was
giddy with wonder, and his thoughts whirled in a maze of astounding speculations.
Agvur, with a swift and graceful gesture, seemed to wave aside
his expression of gratitude. The being who bore Howard's garments came forward, and helped him, in a deft, valet-like fashion,
to put them on.
Howard wanted to ask a hundred questions; for the very existence of intelligent, highly evolved beings such as the Oumnis on
Mercury had been unsuspected by earth-scientists. Above all, he
was curious regarding the mastery of human language displayed
by Agvur. His question, as if divined by a sort of telepathy, was
forestalled by the Mercutian.
"We are possessed of many delicate instruments," said Agvur, "which enable us to see and hear--and even to pick up other
sense-impressions--at immense distances. We have long studied
the nearer planets, Venus, Earth and Mars, and have often amused
ourselves by listening to human conversations Our brain-development, which is vastly superior to yours, has made it a simple
matter for us to learn your speech; and of course the science, history and sociology of your world is an open book to us. We
watched the approach of your ether-ship from space; and all the
movements of your party since landing have been observed by us."
"How far am I from the rocket-ship?" asked Howard. "I trust
you can help me to get back."
"You are now a full mile beneath the surface of Mercury," said
Agvur, "and the part of the twilight zone in which your vessel
lies is about five miles away and could readily be reached by an
incline leading upward to a small exit in a natural cavern within
sight of the ship. Doubtless some of the members of your party
have seen the cavern and have assumed that it was a mere animal-den. When your vessel landed, we took care to block the exit with
a few loose boulders and fragments of detritus, easily removable.
"As to rejoining your comrades,--well, I fear that it will
scarcely be practicable. You must be our guest--perhaps indefinitely." There was a kind of brusqueness in his tone as he concluded:
"We do not want our existence known to terrestrial explorers.
From what we have seen of your world, and your dealings with
the peoples of Mars and Venus, whose territories you have begun
to arrogate, we think it would be unwise to expose ourselves to
human curiosity and rapacity. We are few in number, and we prefer to remain in peace--undisturbed."
Before Howard could frame any sort of protest, there came a
singular interruption. Loud and imperious, with clarion-like notes,
a voice rang out in the empty air between Agvur and the earth-
man. Howard was ungovernably startled; and the three Mercutians
all seemed to stiffen with rapt attention. The voice went on for
nearly a minute, speaking rapidly, with accents of arrogant command. Howard could make nothing of the words, whose very
phonetic elements were strange and unfamiliar. But a chill ran
through him at something which he sensed in the formidable
voice--a something that told of relentless, implacable power.
The voice ended on a high, harsh note, and the listening Mercutians made a queer gesture with their heads and hands, as if to
indicate submission to a superior will
"Our temporal ruler and chief scientist, Ounavodo," said Agvur, "has just spoken from his hall in the lower levels. After
hours of deliberation, he has reached a decision regarding your
fate. In a sense, I regret the decision, which seems a trifle harsh
to me; but the mandates of the Shol, as we call our ancient ruler,
are to be obeyed without question. I must ask you to follow me.
and I shall explain as we go along. The order must be executed
without delay."
In perplexity not unmingled with consternation, Howard was
led by Agvur to a sort of inclined hall or tunnel, on which the
chamber opened. The tunnel was seemingly interminable, and
was lit by brilliant sourceless light--the transmitted sun-rays of
which the Mercutian had spoken. Like the chamber, it was lined
with a pale metallic substance.
An odd machine, shaped like a small open boat, and mounted
on little wheels or castors, stood before the door, on the easy monotonous grade. Agvur stationed himself in its hollow prow, motioning Howard to follow. When the other Oumnis had placed
themselves behind Howard, Agvur pulled a sort of curving lever,
and the machine began to glide rapidly, in perfect silence, down
the interminable hell.
"This tunnel," said Agvur, "runs upward to the exit near your vessel; and it leads down to the heart of our underworld realms
If the worst happens--as I fear it may--you will see only the antechambers of our labyrinth of caverns, in which we have dwelt, immune to disease and old age, for so many centuries. I am sorry; for
I had hoped to take you to my own laboratories, in the nether
levels. There you might have served me . . . in certain biologic
tests.
"Ounavodo," he went on, in calm explanatory tones, "has ordered the fusing and casting of a certain quantity of the mouffa-
alloy, to be used in the making of new garments. This alloy, invented aeons ago by our metallurgists, is a compound of no less
than six elements, and is made in two grades, one for the lining
of our caverns, and the other exclusively for raiment.
"Both, for their perfection, require a seventh ingredient--a
small admixture of living, protoplasmic matter, added to the molten metal in the furnace. Only thus--for a reason that is still mysterious to our savants--can the mouffa acquire its full power of
insulation against the deadly solar rays.
"The mouffa used in comparatively heavy sheets for cavern-
lining needs only the substance of inferior life-forms, such as the
grokos, the half-animal savages of the twilight zone, and various
creatures which we catch or breed in our underworld tunnels But
the higher grade of mouffa, employed in light, flexible sheets for
suiting, requires the protoplasm of superior life.
"Regretfully, at long intervals, we have been compelled to sacrifice one of our own scanty number in the making of new metal
to replace that which has become outworn. Whenever possible,
we select those who in some manner have offended against our
laws; but such infringements are rare, and commonly the victim
has been chosen by a sort of divination
"After studying you closely in his televisic mirror, Ounavodo
has decided that you are sufficiently high in the evolutionary scale
to provide the protoplasmic element in the next lot of mouffa. At
least, he thinks that the test is worth trying, in the interests of
science.
"However, in order that you should not feel that you are being
discriminated against or treated unjustly, you will merely take
your chance of being chosen from among many others. The method
of selection will be revealed to you in due time."
While Agvur was speaking, the vehicle had sped swiftly down
the endless incline, passing several other barge-shaped cars driven
by the white, naked Immortals, whose serpentine locks flowed behind them on the air. Occasionally there were openings in the
tunnel wall, leading no doubt to side-caverns; and after a mile or
two, they came to a triple branching, where caverns ran upward
at reverse angles from the main passage. Horrified and shaken as
he was by Agvur's disclosure, Howard took careful note of the
route they were following.
He made no reply to the Mercutian. He felt his helplessness in
the hands of an alien, extra-human race, equipped, it would seem,
with scientific knowledge and power to which humanity had not
yet attained. Thinking with desperate quickness, he decided that
it would be better to pretend resignation to the will of his captors. His hand stole instinctively to the pocket in which he had
carried the little tonanite pistol with its twelve charges of deadly
heat-producing explosive; and he was dismayed, though hardly
surprised, to find that the weapon was gone.
His movement was noted by Agvur; and a strange sardonic
smile flickered across the unhumanly intellectual face of the savant. In his desperation, Howard thought of leaping from the car;
but to do this would have meant death or serious injury at the
high speed of their descent.
He became aware that the incline had ended in a large level
cavern with numerous side-openings where multitudes of Oumnis
were passing in and out. Here they left the boat-like vehicle; and
Howard was led by Agvur through one of the side-exits, into another vast chamber, where perhaps fifty of the white people were
standing in silent, semi-circular rows.
These beings were all fronting toward the opposite wall; but
many of them turned to watch the earth-man with expressions of
unreadable curiosity or disdain, as Agvur drew him forward to
the first of the waiting ranks and motioned him to take his place
at the end
Now, for the first time, Howard saw the singular object which
the Oumnis were facing. Apparently it was some sort of rootless
plant-growth, with a swollen, yellowish bole or body like that of
barrel-cactus. From this body, tall as a man, leafless branches of
vivid arsenic green, fringed with a white hispidity, trailed in
limp, sinuous masses on the cavern-floor.
Agvur spoke in a piercing whisper: "The plant is called the
Roccalim, and we employ it to choose, from a given quota, the
person who shall be cast into the furnace of molten mouffa. You
will perceive that, including yourself, there are about fifty candidates for this honor--all of whom, for one reason or another, in
varying degrees, have incurred the displeasure of Ounavodo, our
have given rise to doubt regarding their social usefulness. One by
one, you are to walk about the Roccalim in a complete circle, approaching well within reach of the sensitive, mobile branches;
and the plant will indicate the destined victim by touching him
with the tips of these branches."
Howard felt, as Agvur spoke, the chill of a sinister menace;
but in the weirdness of the ceremony that followed, he almost
lost his apprehension of personal peril.
One by one, from the further end of the row in which he was
standing, the silent Oumnis went forward and circled the strange
plant, walking slowly within a few feet of the inert branches of
poisonous green that resembled sleepy, half-coiled serpents. The
Roccalim preserved a torpid stillness, without the least sign of
animation, as Oumni after Oumni finished his perilous circuit and
retired to the further side of the room, there to stand and watch
the perambulations of the others.
About twenty of the white Immortals had undergone this ordeal, when Howard's turn came. Resolutely, with a sense of unreality and grotesquery rather than actual danger, he stepped forward and began his circuit of the living plant. The Oumnis looked
on like alabaster Statues; and all was utterly still and silent, except for a muffled, mysterious throbbing. as of underworld machinery at a distance.
Howard moved on in an arc, watching the green branches with
a growing tenseness. He had gone half the required distance when
he felt, rather than saw, a flash of swift, intense light that appeared to stab downward from the cavern roof and strike the
lumpish yellow bole of the Roccalim. The light faded in the merest fraction of time, leaving Howard in doubt as to whether he
had really seen it.
Then, as he went on, he perceived with startled horror that the
trailing tentacular boughs had begun to twitch and quiver, and
were lifting slowly from the floor and waving toward him. On and
on they came, rising and straightening, like a mass of ropy kelp
that flows in an ocean-stream. They reached him, they slithered
with reptilian ease about his body, and touched his face with
their venomous-looking tips, clammy and inquisitive.
Howard drew back, wrenching himself away from the waving
mass, and found Agvur at his elbow. The face of the Mercutian
was touched with an unearthly gloating; and his iridescent locks
floated upward, quivering with weird restlessness, like the Roccalim branches.
At that moment, it came to Howard that his fate had been predetermined from the beginning; that the swift, evanescent flash of
light, proceeding from an unknown source, had perhaps served
in some manner to irritate the living plant and provoke the action of its tentacular limbs.
Swift anger flared in the earth-man, but he repressed it. He
must be cautious, must watch for an opportunity--even the slimmest--of escape. By giving the impression that he was resigned,
he might throw his captors off their guard.
He saw that a number of new Mercutians, equipped with long
glittering tubes like blow-pipes, had entered the cavern and were
surrounding him. The companions of his late ordeal had begun
to disperse in various directions.
"I am sorry," said Agvur, "that the choice should have fallen
upon you But your death will be swift--and the time is near at
hand. The fusing must be completed, and the metal must be
poured off and cast in thin, malleable sheets, before the next
term of darkness and slumber, which will occur in little more
than an hour. During this term--three hours out of every thirty-
six--the transmitted sunlight is excluded from all our chambers
and passages; and most of our machinery, which derives its power
from light, is rendered inactive."
III
In mingled horror and dumbfoundment, Howard was taken
through an opposite entrance of the Roccalim's cavern and along
a sort of hall which appeared to run parallel with the one in which
the incline had ended. Agvur walked at his side; and the Oumni
guards were grouped before and behind him. He surmised that
the glittering, hollow tubes they carried were weapons of some
novel type.
As they went on, the mysterious throbbing noise drew steadily
nearer Howard saw that the far end of the corridor was illumed
with a firey red light. The air was touched with queer metallic
odors; and the temperature, which had heretofore been one of unobstrusive warmth, seemed to rise slightly.
At one side, through an open door in the passage wall, as they
neared the source of the red light, Howard saw a large room
whose further end was filled with lofty banks of shining cylinder-shaped mechanisms. In front of these mechanisms, a solitary
Mercutian stood watching an immense pivot-mounted ball which
appeared to be filled nearly to the top with liquid blackness,
leaving a crescent of bright crystal. Near the ball, there was a sort
of inclined switch-board, from which arose many rods and levers,
made of some transparent material.
"The lighting-apparatus of all our caverns is controlled from
that room," said Agvur, with a sort of casual boastfulness.
"When the ball has turned entirely black, the sunlight will be
turned off for the three-hour period, which gives us all the sleep
and rest we require."
A moment more, and the party reached the end of the passage.
Howard stood blinking and breathless with wonder when he saw
the source of the dazzling red light.
He was on the threshold of a cavern so enormous that its roof
was lost in luminosity and gave the effect of a natural sky. Titanic machines of multiform types, some squat and ungainly and
others like prodigious bulbs or huge inverted funnels, crowded
the cavern-floor; and in the center, towering above the rest was a
double, terrace-like platform of sable stone, thirty feet in height,
with many pipes of dark metal that ramified from its two tiers to
the floor, like the legs of some colossal spider. From the middle
of the summit, the ruddy light arose in a great pillar. Gleaming
strangely against the fiery glow, the forms of Oumnis moved like
midges.
Just within the entrance of the Cyclopean room, there stood a
sort of rack, from which hung a dozen suits of the mouffa-metal.
Their construction was very simple, and they closed and opened
at the breast, with odd dove-tailings. The head was a loose, roomy
hood; and the metal had somehow been rendered transparent in a
crescent-like strip across the eyes.
The suits were donned by Agvur and the guards; and Howard
noticed that they were extremely light and flexible. He himself,
at the same time, was ordered to disrobe.
"The mouffa mixture, during the process of fusing, gives off
some dangerous radiations," said Agvur. "These will hardly matter in your case; and the suits of finished metal will protect my
companions and me against them, even as against the deadly solar
rays."
Howard had now removed all his clothes, which he left lying
near the rack. Still pretending his resignation, but thinking desperately all the while and observing closely the details of his situation, he was led along the crowded floor, amid the sinister
throbbing and muttering of the strange engines. Steep, winding
stairs gave access to the terraced mass of dark stone. The earth-
man saw as he went upward, that the lower tier was fitted with
broad, shallow moulds, in which doubtless the metal would run
off from the furnace to cool in sheets.
Howard felt an almost overpowering heat when he stood on
the upper platform; and the red glare blinded him. The furnace
itself, he now saw, was a circular crater, fifteen feet across, in the
black stone. It was filled nearly to the rim with the molten metal,
which eddied with a slow maelstrom-like movement, agitated by
some unknown means, and glowing unbearably. The black stone
must have been a non-conductor of heat, for it was cool beneath
Howard's bare soles.
On the broad space about the furnace, a dozen Oumnis, all
sheathed in the glittering mouffa, were standing. One of them was
turning a small, complicated-looking wheel, mounted obliquely on
a miniature pillar; and as if he were regulating the temperature
of the furnace, the metal glowed more brightly and eddied with
new swiftness in its black crater.
Apart from this wheel, and several rods that protruded from
long, notched grooves in the stone, there was no visible machinery on the platform. The stone itself was seemingly all one block,
except for a slab, ten feet long and two feet wide, which ran to
the crater's verge. Howard was directed to stand on this slab, at
the end opposite to the furnace,
"In another minute," said Agvur, "the slab will begin to move,
will tilt, and precipitate you into the molten mouffa. If you wish,
we can administer to you a powerful narcotic, so that your death
will be wholly free of fear or pain."
Overcome by an unreal horror, Howard nodded his head in
mechanical assent, snatching hopelessly at the momentary reprieve.
Perhaps . . . even yet . . . there might be a chance; though he
could have laughed at himself for the impossible notion.
Peering again toward the awful furnace, he was startled to see
an inexplicable thing. Foot by foot, from the solid stone of the
crater's further lip, there rose the figure of a Mercutian, till it
stood with haughty features, very tall and pale and wholly naked
upon the platform. Then, as Howard gasped with incrcdulous
awe, the figure seemed to step in a stately manner from the verge,
and hang suspended in air above the glowing cauldron,
"It is the Shol, Ounavodo," said Agvur in reverent tones,
"though he is now many miles away in the nether caverns, he has
projected his televisual image to attend the ceremony."
One of the Mercutian guards had come forward, bearing in his
hands a heavy, shallow bowl of some bronze-like substance, filled
with a hueless liquid. This he proffered to the earth-man.
"The narcotic acts, immediately," said Agvur, as if in reassurance.
Giving a quick, unobstrusive glance about him, Howard accepted the bowl and raised it to his lips. The narcotic was odorless as well as colorless, and had the consistency of a thick, sluggish oil.
"Be quick," admonished Agvur. "The slab responds to a timing
mechanism; and already it starts to move."
Howard saw that the slab was gliding slowly, bearing him as
on a great protruding tongue toward the furnace. It began to tilt
a little beneath his feet,
Tensing all his muscles, he leapt from the slab and hurled the
heavy bowl in the face of Agvur, who stood close by. The Mercutian staggered, and before he could regain his balance, Howard
sprang upon him, and lifting him bodily, flung him across the rising, sliding slab, which bore Agvur along in its accelerated movement. Stunned by the fall, and unable to recover himself, he rolled
from the tilting stone into the white-hot maelstrom and disappeared with a splash. The liquid seethed and eddied with a swifter
motion than before.
For a moment, the assembled Oumnis stood like metal statues;
and the televisual image of the Shol, standing inscrutable and
watchful above the furnace, had not stirred. Leaping at the foremost guards, Howard flung them aside as they started to lift their
tubular weapons. He gained the platform's railless verge, but saw
that several Oumnis had run to intercept him before he could
reach the stairs. It was a twelve-foot drop to the second platform,
and he feared to leap with bare feet. The strange curving pipes
which ran from the upper platform to the main cavern-floor, offered his only possible means of escape.
These pipes were of darkish metal, perfectly smooth and joint-less, and were about ten inches thick. Straddling the nearest one,
where it entered the black stone just below the verge, Howard began to slide as quickly as he could toward the floor.
His captors had followed him to the platform-edge; and facing
them as he slid, the earth-man saw two of the Immortals aim their
weapons at him. From the hollow tubes, there issued glowing
balls of yellow fire which came flying toward Howard. One of
them fell short, striking the side of the great pipe, and causing it
to melt away like so much solder. He saw the dripping of the
molten metal as he ducked to avoid the second ball.
Others of the Oumnis were levelling their weapons; and a rain
of the terrible fire-globes fell about Howard as he slid along the
pipe's lower portion, where it curved sharply toward the floor.
One of the balls brushed his right arm and left an agonizing burn.
He reached the floor, and saw that a dozen Immortals were descending the platform-stairs in great bounds. The main cavern,
fortunately, was deserted. The earth-man leapt for the shelter of
a huge rhomboidal machine, and heard the hiss and drip of liquid
metal as the fire-balls struck behind him.
Threading his way among the looming mechanisms, and interposing their bulks as much as possible between himself and his
pursuers, Howard made for the entrance through which he had
been conducted to the furnace by Agvur. There were other exits
from the immense cavern; but these would have led him deeper
into the unknown labyrinth. He had no clearly formulated plan,
and his ultimate escape was more than problematical; but his instincts bade him to go on as long as he could before being recaptured.
He heard the mysterious pounding of the untended mechanisms
all about him; but there was no sound from his pursuers, who came
on in grim silence, with incredible leaps, gaining visibly upon him.
Then, startlingly, as he rounded one of the machines, he found
himself confronted by the televisual phantom of the Shol, standing in an attitude of menace, and waving him back with imperious
gestures. He felt the awful burning gaze of eyes that were hypnotic
with age-old wisdom and immemorial power; and he seemed to
hurl himself against an unseen barrier, as he sprang at the formidable image. He felt a slight electric shock that jarred his entire
body; but apparently the phantom was capable of little more than
visual manifestation. It seemed to melt away; and than it was
hovering above and a little before him, pointing out his line of
flight to the pursuing Oumnis.
Passing a huge squat cylinder, he came to the rack on which
the suits of mouffa had hung. Two of them still remained. Disregarding his own garments, which lay in a heap nearby, he
snatched one of the metal suits from its place and rolled the thin,
marvellously flexible stuff into a bundle as he continued his flight.
Perhaps, somewhere, he would have a chance to put it on; and
thus disguised, might hope to prolong his freedom--or even to
find his way from this tremendous underworld.
There was a broad open space between the rack and the cavern
exit. Howard's pursuers emerged from the medley of towering
mechanisms before he could reach the doorway, and he was forced
to dodge another fusillade of the fire-balls, which splattered in
white-hot fury all around him. Before him, the menacing phantom
of the Shol still hovered.
Now he had gained the corridor beyond the exit. He meant to
retrace the route by which he had come with Agvur, if possible.
But as he neared the door through which he had seen the watcher
of the darkening globe, and the light-controlling mechanisms, he
perceived that a number of Mercutians, armed with fire-tubes,
were coming to intercept his flight in the corridor. Doubtless they
had been summoned through some sort of telaudition by the furnace-tenders.
Looking back, he saw that his former guards were dosing upon
him. In a few moments, he would be surrounded and trapped.
With no conscious idea, other than the impulse to flee, he darted
through the open door of the cavern of light-machines.
The solitary watcher still stood beside the massive ball with
his back toward the earth-man. The crystal crescent on the dark
globe had narrowed to a thin horn, like the bow of a dying moon.
A mad, audacious inspiration came to Howard, as he recalled
what Agvur had told him about the control of the lighting-system. Quickly and silently he stole toward the watcher of the ball.
Again the vengeful image of the Shol stood before him, as if to
drive him back; and as he neared the unsuspecting watcher, it
rose in air and poised above the ball, warning the Oumni with a
loud, harsh cry. The watcher turned, snatching up a heavy metal
rod that lay on the floor, and leapt to meet Howard, raising his
weapon for a ferocious blow.
Before the rod could descend, the earth-man's fist had caught
the Mercutian full in the face, driving him back upon the slanting
dial of regulative levers beside the pivet-mounted ball. There was
a shivering crash as he fell among the curving crystalline rods;
and at the same instant, utter overwhelming darkness rushed upon
the room and blotted out the banks of gleaming mechanism, the
fallen Oumni, and the phantom of Shol.
IV
Standing uncertain and bewildered, the earth-man heard a low
moaning from the injured Mercutian, and a loud wail of consternation from the corridor without, where the two groups of his
pursurers had found themselves overtaken by darkness. The wailing ceased abruptly; and except for the moaning near at hand,
which still went on, there was absolute silence. Howard realizecd
that he no longer heard the mutter of the strange engines in the
furnace-room. Doubtless their operation had in some manner been
connected with the lighting-system, and had ceased with darknesss.
Howard still retained the suit of mouffa. Groping about, he
found the metal rod that had dropped from the hand of the
watcher. It would make a highly serviceable weapon. Grasping it
firmly, he started in what he surmised to be the direction of the
door. He went slowly and cautiously, knowing that his pursuers
would have gathered to await him, or might even be creeping toward him.
Listening intently, he heard a faint metallic rustle. Some of the
Oumnis, clothed in mouffa, were coming to seek him in the darkness. His own bare feet were soundless; and stepping to one side,
he heard the rustling pass. With redoubled caution, he stole on
toward the door, stretching one hand before him.
Suddenly his fingers touched a smooth surface, which he knew
to be the wall. He had missed the door in his groping. Listening
again, he seemed to hear a faint sound on the left, as if he were
being followed; and moving in the opposite direction, along the
wall, he encountered empty space and saw a dim glimmer of seemingly sourceless light.
His eyes were growing accustomed to the darkness, and he
made out a mass of dubious shadows against the glimmering. He
had found the door, which was lined with waiting Oumnis.
Lifting his bar, he rushed upon the shadows, striking blow
after blow, and stumbling over the bodies that fell before his onslaught. There were shrill cries about him, and he broke from
chill, mouffa-sheathed fingers that sought to clutch him in the
gloom. Then, somehow, he had broken through, and was in the
corridor.
The glimmering, he saw, came from the cavern of machines,
where the hidden furnace still burned. Into the dying glow that
lit the entrance, there came hurrying figures, each of which appeared to have an enormous Cyclopean eye of icy green. Howard
realized that more Mercutians, bearing artificial lights, were coming to join the pursuit.
Keeping close to the corridor wall, he ran as fast as he dared in
the solid blackness, toward the cavern of the Roccalim. He heard
a stealthy metallic rustling, as the foremost Oumnis followed;
and glancing back, saw them dimly outlined against the remote
glnw They came on in a cautious, lagging manner, as if they were
waiting for the new contingent with the green lights. After a littie, he saw that the two parties had united and were following him
steadily.
Fingering the wall at intervals as he ran, Howard reached the
entrance of the large chamber in whose center stood the Roccalim.
The lights were gaining upon him rapidly. Calculating in his
mind, as well as he could, the direction of the opposite doorway,
giving on the main tunnel that led to the incline, he started toward it. As he went on, he veered a little, thinking to avoid the
monstrous plant-growth. It was like plunging into a blind abyss;
and he seemed to wander for an immense distance, feeling sure
that he would reach the opposite wall at any moment.
Suddenly his feet tripped on an unknown obstruction, and he
fell at full length, landing on what seemed to be a tangle of great
hairy ropes that pricked his bare skin in a thousand places. Instantly, he knew that he had collided with the Roccalim.
The mass of python-like branches lay inert beneath him, without a quiver of animation. Doubtless, in the absense of light, the
queer, semi-animal growth was torpid.
Pulling himself from the spiny couch on which he had fallen,
Howard looked back and perceived the thronging of green lights,
cold and malignant as the eyes of boreal dragons. His pursuers
were entering the cavern, and would overtake him in a few instants.
Still clutching the mouffa garments and the metal bar, he groped
across the tangle of branches, pricking his feet painfully at every
step. Suddenly he plunged through to the floor, and found that he
was standing in an open space where the heavy arcapers, descending from the hole, had parted on either side. Crouching down, as
the lights approached him, he found a low, hollow place into
which he could crawl beneath the branches, close to the cactus-like
stem.
The creepers were thick enough to conceal him from cranial
scrutiny. Lying there, with their prickly weight upon him, he saw
through narrow rifts the passing of the green lights toward the
outer cavern. Apparently none of the Mercutians had thought of
pausing to examine the mass of Roccalim branches.
Emerging from his fantastic hiding-place, after all the Oumnis
had gone past, Howard followed them boldly. He saw the vanishing of their icy lamps as they entered the outside tunnel. Moving
again in utter darkness, he found the exit. There he recovered the
running pencils of light, cast by the hurrying lamps as their bearers went toward the incline.
Following, Howard stumbled against an unseen object, which
was either the vehicle used by Agvur, or another of the same type.
Probably, in the shutting-off of power, these vehicles were now
useless: otherwise, some of them might have been employed by
the earth-man's pursuers. Hunters and hunted were on an equal
footing; and realizing this, Howard felt for the first time an actual thrill of hope.
Going on, with the lights moving steadily before him, he started
up the interminable incline which led--perhaps--to freedom. The
tunnel was deserted, except for the hunters and their human
quarry; and it seemed as if the multitude of Oumnis seen by Howard on his arrival with Agvur had all retired with the falling of
darkness. Perhaps they had to for the usual three-hour term of
night and repose.
The light-bearers appeared to disregard all the side passages
that ran from the main tunnel. It occurred to Howard that they
were hastening toward the surface exits, with the idea of cutting
off his possible escape. Afterwards they would hunt him down at
leisure.
The incline ran straight ahead; and there was little danger of
losing sight of the lights. Howard paused an instant to slip on
the suit of mouffa, hoping that it might serve to deceive or baffle
his hunters later on. The raiment was easily donned, and fitted
him quite loosely; but the unfamiliar intricate method of fastening
eluded his untaught fingers. He could not remember quite how it
had been done; so he went on with the strange garment open at
the breast. The queer elongated heels, made to accommodate the
spurs of the Immortals, flapped behind him.
He kept as much as possible the same relative distance between
himself and the Oumnis. Glancing back, after awhile, he was horrified to see, far down, the tiny green eyes of another group of
lights following him. Evidently others had rallied to the pursuit.
It was a long, interminably tedious climb--mile after mile of
that monotonous tunnel whose gloom was relieved only by the
sinister points of green light. The Mercutians went on at a tireless pace, unhuman and implacable; and only by ceaseless exertion, half walking, half running, could the earthman maintain his
position midway between the companies of lamps.
He panted heavily, and a faintness came upon him at times, in
which the lights seemed to blur. A great weariness clogged his
limbs and his brain. How long it was since he had eaten, he could
not know. He was not aware of hunger or thirst; but he seemed
to fight an ever-growing weakness. The corridor became a black
eternity, haunted by the green eyes of cosmic demons.
Hour after hour he went on, through a cycle of sunless night
He lost the sense of time, and his movements became a sort of automation. His limbs were numb and dead, and it was only his relentless will that lived and drove him on. Almost, at times, he forgot where he was going--forget everything but the blind, primitive impulse of flight. He was a nameless thing, fleeing from anonymous terror.
At last, through the crushing numbness of his fatigue, there
dawned the realization that he was gaining a little on the group
of lights ahead. Possibly their bearers had paused in doubt or debate. Then, suddenly, he saw that the lights were spreading out,
were diverging and vanishing on either hand, till only four of
them remained.
Dimly puzzled, he went on, and came to that triple division cf
the tunnel which he remembered passing with Agvur. He saw
now that the party of Oumnis had divided into three contingents,
following all the branches. Doubtless each tunnel led to a separate
exit.
Recalling what Agvur had said, he kept to the middle passage
This, if Agvur had spoken truly, would lead to an exit in the twilight zone, not far from the rocket-ship. The other tunnels would
lead he knew not where--perhaps to the terrible deserts of heat
and the piled, chaotic glaciers of the nightward hemisphere The
one he was following, with luck, would enable him to rejoin his
comrades.
A sort of second wind came to Howard now--as if hope had
revived his swooning faculties. More clearly than before, he became conscious of the utter silence and profound mystery of this
underworld empire, of which he had seen--was to see--so little.
His hope quickened when he looked back and saw that the lights
behind him had diminished in number, as if the second party had
likewise separated to follow all three of the tunnels. It was obvious that there was no general pursuit. In all likelihood the
smashing of the transmission levers had deranged all the machineries of the Immortals, even to their system of communication.
Howard's escape, doubtless, was known only to those who had
been present or near at the time. He had brought chaos and demoralization upon this super-scientific people.
V
Mile after mile of that monotone of gloom. Then, with a start
of bewilderment, the earth-man realized that the four lights in
front had all disappeared. Looking back, he saw that the lamps
which followed him had similarly vanished. About, before and
behind there was nothing but a solid, tomb-like wall of darkness.
Howard felt a strange disconcertment, together with the leaden,
crushing return of his weariness. He went on with doubtful,
slackening steps, following the right hand wall with cautious fingers. After awhile he turned a sharp corner; but he did not recover the lost lights. There was a drafty darkness in the air, and
odor of stone and mineral, such as he had not met heretofore in
the mouffa-lined caverns. He began to wonder if he had somehow
gone astray: there might have been other branchings of the tunnel,
which he had missed in his groping. In a blind surge of alarm, he
started to run, and crashed headlong against the angular wall of
another turn in the passage.
Half-stunned, he picked himself up. He hardly knew, henceforth, whether he was maintaining the original course of his flight
or was doubling on his own steps. For aught that he could tell,
he might be lost beyond all redirection in a cross-labyrinth of
caverns. He stumbled and staggered along, colliding many times
with the tunnel-sides, which seemed to have closed in upon him
md to have grown rough with flinty projections.
The draft in his face grew stronger, with a smell of water. Presently the blindfold darkness before him melted into a chill, bluish
glimmering, which revealed the rugate walls and boulder-fanged
roof of the natural passage he was following.
He came out in a huge, chamber-like cave of some marble-pallid
stone with twisted columnar forms. The glimmering, he saw, was
a kind of phosphorescence emitted by certain vegetable growths,
probably of a thallophytic nature, which rose in thick clusters from
the floor, attaining the height of a tall man. They were flabby and
fulsome-looking, with abortive branches, and pendulous fruit-
shaped nodes of etiolated purple along their puffy, whitish-blue
stems. The phosphorescence, which issued equally from all portions oft hese plants, served to light the gloom for some distance
around, and brought out dimly the columnated character of the
cavern's further walls.
Howard saw, as he passed among them, that the plants were
rootless. It seemed that they would topple at a touch; but happening to stumble against one of the clumps, he found that they supported his weight with resilient solidity. No doubt they were attached firmly by some sort of suction to the smooth stone.
In the middle of the cave, behind a lofty fringing of these luminous fungi, he discovered a pool of water, fed by a thin trickle
that descended through the gloom from a high vault that the phosphorescence could not illumine. Impelled by sudden, furious
thirst, he slid back the mouffa-hood and drank recklessly, though
the fluid was sharp and bitter with strange minerals. Then, with
the ravening hunger of one who has not eaten for days, he began to
eye the pear-shaped nodes of the tall thallophytes. He broke one
of them from its parent stem, tore off the glimmering rind, and
found that it was filled with a mealy pulp. A savorous, peppery odor
tempted him to taste the pulp. It was not unpleasant, and forgetting
all caution (possibly he had become a little mad from his extra-
human ordeals) he devoured the stuff in hasty mouthfuls.
The node must have contained a narcotic principle; for almost
immediately he was overpowered by an insuperable drowsiness.
He fell back and lay where he had fallen, in a deep sodden sopor
without dreams, for a length of time which, as far as he could
know, might have been the interim of death between two lives. He
awoke with violent nausea, a racking headache, and a feeling of
hopeless, irredeemable confusion.
He drank again from the bitter pool, and then began to hunt
with cloudy senses and feeble, uncertain steps for another exit
than the tunnel by which he had entered. His mind was dull and
heavily drugged, as if from the lingering of the unknown narcotic,
and he could formulate no conscious plan of action but was led
only by an animal-like impulse of flight.
He discovered a second opening, low, and fanged with broken-off pillar formations, in the opposite wall of the cavern. It was
filed with Stygian darkness; and before entering it, he tore a
lumpy branch from one of the phosphorescent fungi, to serve him
in lieu of other light.
His subsequent wanderings were nightmarish and interminable. He seemed to have gotten into some tremendous maze of natural caverns, varying greatly in size, and intersecting each other
in a bewildering honeycomb fashion: an underworld that lay beyond the metal-insulated realm of the Oumnis.
There were long, tediously winding tunnels that went down
into Cimmerian depth, or climbed at acolivitous angles. There
were strait cubby-holes, dripping with unknown liquid ores,
through which he crawled like a lizard on his belly; and Dantean
gulfs that he skirted on slippery, perilous, broken ledges, hearing far below him the sullen sigh or the weirdly booming roar of
sub Mcrcutian waters.
For awhile, his way led mainly downward, as if he were plunging to the bowels of the planet. The air became warmer and more
humid. He came at last to the sheer brink of an incommensurable abyss, where noctilucent fungi, vaster than any he had yet
seen, grew tall as giant trees along the precipice that he followed
for miles. They were like fantastic monolithic tapers; but their
luminosity failed to reveal the giddy depth above and beneath.
He met none of the Oumnis in this inexhaustible world of night
and silence. But after he had rounded the great gulf, and had
started to re-ascend in smaller caverns, he began to encounter, at
intervals, certain blind, white, repulsive creatures the size of an
overgrown rat, but without even the rudiments of tail or legs. In
his demoralized condition of mind and body, he felt a primitive
fear of these things, rather than the mere repugnance which their
aspect would normally have aroused. However, they were non-aggressive and shrank sluggishly away from him. Once, he trod
inadvertently on one of the creatures and leapt away, howling
with fright, when it squirmed nauseously beneath his heel. Finding he had crushed its head, he took courage and began to belabor the flopping abnormality with the metal rod which he still
carried. He mashed it into an oozy pulp--a pulp that still quivered with life; and then, overcome by bestial, atavistic hunger,
and forgetting all the painfully acquired prejudices of civilized
man, he knelt down and devoured the pulp with shamcless greed.
Afterwards, replete, he stretched himself out and slept for many
hours.
VI
He awoke with renewed physical strength, but with nerves and
mind that were still partially shattered by his experiences. Like a
savage who awakens in some primordial cave, he felt the irrational terror of darkness and mystery. His memories were dazed
and broken, and he could recall the Oumnis only as a vague an
almost supernatural source of fear, from which he had fled.
The fungus-bough, which had served him in lieu of a torch or
lantern, was lying beside him in the darkness. With the bough in
one hand and the metal rod in the other, he resumed his wanderings. He met more of the white, legless creatures; but he had conquered his fear of them- now, and looked upon them only as a
possible source of food. He proceeded to kill and eat one of them
anon, relishing the worm-soft flesh as an aborigine would have
relished a meal of grubs or white ants.
He had lost all notion of the passing of time or its measurement. lie was a thing that clambered endlessly on Tartarean cavern-slopes or along the brink of lightless rivers and pools and
chasms, killing when he was hungry, sleeping when his weariness
became too urgent. Perhaps he went on for days; perhaps for many
weeks, in a blind, instinctive search for light and outer air.
The flora and fauna of the caverns changed. He dragged himself through passages that were wholly lined with bristling, glowing thallophytes, some of which were tough and sharp as if fibred
with iron. He came to tepid lakes whose waters were infested by
long, agile, hydra-bodied creatures, divided into tapeworm segments, that rose to dispute his way but were powerless to harm his
mouffa-covered limbs with their toothless, pulpy mouths.
For awhile, he seemed to be passing through a zone of unnatural warmth, due, no doubt, to the presence of hidden volcanic
activity. There were hot geysers, and gulfs from which sultry vapors rose, filling the air with queer, metallic-smelling gases that
seemed to burn corrosively in his nostrils and lungs. Some remnant of his former scientific knowledge caused him to recoil from
such neighborhoods and retrace his footsteps into caverns free of
these gases.
Fleeing from one of the mephitic-laden caves, he found himself
in a mile-wide chamber, lined with fungi of uncommon exuberance,
amid whose luminiferous growths he met with one of his most
terrible adventures. A vast and semi-ophidian monster, white as
the other life-forms lie had met, and equally legless but owning
a single, Cyclopean, phosphoric eye, leapt upon him from the unearthly vegetation and hurled him to the ground with the ram-like impact of its blunt, shapeless head. He lay half-stunned, while
the monster began to ingest him in its enormous maw, starting
with his feet. Seemingly the metal which he wore was no barrier
to it~ appetite. The creature had swallowed him nearly to the hips,
when he recovered his senses and realized his frightful predicament.
Smitten with hideous terror, howling and gibbering like a caveman, he lifted the metal rod, which his clutching fingers had
somehow retained, and struck frantically at the awful head into
whose mouth he was being drawn by inches. The blows made
little or no impression on the great rubbery mass; and soon he
was waist-deep in the monstrous maw. In his dire need, a trace of
reasoning-power returned to him; and using the rod like a rapier
he thrust it into the immense, glaring eye, burying it to his hand,
and probably penetrating whatever rudimentary semblance of
brain the animal possessed. A pale and egg-like fluid oozed from
the broken eye, and the slobbering lips tightened intolerably upon
Howard, almost crushing him in what proved to he the death-spasm. The white, swollen barrel-thick body tossed for many minutes; and during its convulsions, Howard was knocked insensible.
When he came to again, the creature was lying comparatively
still; and the sack-like mouth had begun to relax, so that he was
able to extricate himself from the dreadful gorge.
The shock of this experience completed his mental demoralization and drove him even further into primitive brutehood. At
times, his brain was almost a blank; and he knew nothing, remembered nothing but the blind horror of those infra-planetary caverns and the dumb instinct that still impelled him to seek escape.
Several times, as he continued his way through the thickets of
fungi, he was forced to flee or hide from other monsters of the
same type as the one that had so nearly ingested him. Then he entered a region of steep acclivities that took him ever upward. The
air became chill and the caverns were seemingly void of vegetable
or animal life. He wondered dully as to the reason of the growing
cold; hut his broken mind could suggest no explanation.
Before entering this realm, he had supplied himself with another fragment of luminiferous fungus to light his way. He was
groping through a mountain-like wilderness of chasms and riven
scarps and dolomites, when, at some distance above, he saw with
inexpressible fright a glimmering as of two cold green eyes that
moved among the crags. He had virtually forgotten the Oumnis
and their lamps; but something--half intuition, half memory--
warned him of direr peril than any he had hitherto met in the
darkness.
He dropped his luminous torch and concealed himself behind
one of the dolomitic formations. From his hiding-place, he saw
the passing of two of the Immortals, clad in silvery mouffa, who
descended the scarp and vanished in the craggy gulfs below
Whether or not they were hunting for him, he could not know;
but when they had gone from sight, he resumed his climb, hurrying at breakneck speed and feeling that he must get as far away
as possible from the bearers of those icy green lights.
The dolomites dwindled in size, and the steep chamber narrowed like the neck of a bottle and closed in upon him presently
from all sides, till it was only a narrow, winding passage. The
floor of the passage became fairly level. Anon, as he followed it,
he was startled and blinded by a glare of light directly ahead--a
light that was brilliant as pure sunshine. He cowered and stepped
back, shielding his eyes with his hands till they became somewhat
tempered to the glare. Then, stealthily, with a mingling of confused fears and dim, unworded hopes, he crept toward the light
and came out in an endless metal hall, apparently deserted but
filled as far as eye could see with the sourceless brilliance.
The mouth of the rough natural passage from which he had
emerged was fitted with a sort of valve, which had been left open,
doubtless by the Immortals he had seen among the nether crags.
The boat-shaped vehicle they had used was standing in the hall.
This vehicle, and the hall itself, were familiar to him, and he began to recollect, in a partial way, the ordeals he had undergone
among the Oumnis before his flight into outer darkness.
The hall was slightly inclined; and he seemed to remember that
the upward grade would presumably lead to a lost world of freedom. Apprehensively and furtively, he began to follow it, loping
like an animal.
After he had gone for perhaps a mile, the floor became perfectly level, but the hall itself started to turn in a sort of arc. He
was unable to see very far ahead. Then, so abruptly that he could
not check his headlong flight, he came in view of three Oumnis,
clothed in metal, who were all standing with their backs to him.
A boat--vehicle was near at hand. One of the Immortals was tugging at a huge, capstan-like bar that protruded from the wall of
the passage; and as if in response to the bar, a sort of gleaming
metal valve was descending slowly from the roof. Inch by inch,
it came down like a mighty curtain; and soon it would close the
entire passage and render impossible the earth-man's egress.
Somehow, it did not occur to Howard that the tunnel beyond
the valve might lead to other realms than the outer air for which
he longed so desperately. As if by a miracle, something of his
former courage and resourcefulness had returned to him; and he
did not turn and flee incontinently at sight of the Immortals as
he would have done a short time before. He felt that now or
never was his opportunity to escape from the sub-Mercutian levels.
Leaping forward on the unsuspecting Oumnis, all of whom
were intent on the closing of the valve, he struck at the foremost
with his metal bar. The Mercutian toppled and went down with a
clattering of mouffa on the floor. The one who was operating the
lever continued his task, and Howard had no time to strike him
down, for the remaining Immortal, with tigerish agility, had
sprung back and was levelling the deadly fire-tube which he carried.
Howard saw that the great valve was still descending--was
barely two feet above the cavern floor. He made a flying dive for
the opening, sprawling on all fours and then crawling prone on
his stomach beneath the terrible curtain of metal.
Struggling to rise, he found himself impeded and held back
He was in utter darkness now; but getting to his knees and groping about, he determined the cause of his retardation. The fallen
valve had caught the loose elongated heel of the mouffa on his
right foot. He had all the sensations of a trapped animal as he
sought to wrench himself free. The tough mouffa held, weighed
down by the enormous valve; and it seemed that there was no
escape.
Then, amid his desperation, he somehow remembered that the
mouffa-armor was open at the breast. Awkwardly and painfully,
he managed to crawl forth from it, leaving it there like a discarded
lizard-skin.
Getting to his feet, he raced on in the darkness. He was without light, for he had dropped the phosphorescent bough in his
dive under the closing valve. The cavern was rough and flinty to
his naked feet; and he felt an icy wind, bleak as the breath of
glaciers, that blew upon him as he went. The floor sloped upward,
and in places it was broken into stair-like formations against
which he stumbled and fell, bruising himself severely. Then he
cut his head cruelly on a sharp stone that projected from the low
roof. The wet, warm blood flowed down across his brow and into
his eyes.
The passage steepened and the air took on a terrible frigidity.
There was no sign of pursuit from the Oumnis; but fearing they
would raise the valve and follow him, the earth-man hastened on.
He was puzzled by the growing Arctic cold, but the suppositional
reason seemed to elude him. His naked limbs and torso were
studded with goose-flesh; and he began to shiver with violent
ague, in spite of the high speed at which he ran and climbed.
Now the cavern-stairs were more regular and defined. They
seemed to mount forever in the darkness; and growing accustomed
to them he was able to grope his way from step to step with no
more than an occasional fall or stumble. His feet were cut and
bleeding; but the cold had begun to numb them and he felt little
pain.
He saw a dim, circular patch of light far above him, and gasping with the icy air, which appeared to grow thinner and more
irrespirable, he rushed toward it. Hundreds, thousands of those
black, glaciated steps he seemed to climb before he neared the
light. He came out beneath a sable heaven crowded with chill,
pulseless, glaring stars, in a sort of valley-bottom among drear
unending scarps and pinnacles, still and silent as a frozen dream
of death. They gleamed in the starlight with reflections of myriad-angled ice; and the valley-bottom itself was lit by patches of a
leprons whiteness One of these patches fringed the mouth of the
incline on whose topmost step the earth-man was standing.
He fought agonizingly for breath in the tenuous infra-zero air
and his body stiffened momently with a permeating rigor as he
stood and peered in numb bewilderment at the icy, mountainous
chaos of the landscape in which he had emerged. It was like a
dead crater in a world of unspeakable and perpetual desolation,
where life could never have been.
The flowing blood had congealed upon his brow and cheeks.
With glazing eyes, he saw, in a nearby cliff, the continuation of
the cavern-steps. Hewn for some unimaginable purpose by the Immortals, they ran upward in the ice toward the higher summits.
It was not the familiar twilight zone of Mercury in which he
bad come forth--it was the bleak, nightward side, eternally averted
from the sun, and blasted with the frightful cold of cosmic space.
He felt the pinnacles and chasms close him in, relentless and
rigid, like some hyperborean hell. Then the realization of his
plight became something very remote and recessive, a dim thought
that floated above his ebbing consciousness. He fell forward on
the snow with limbs already stiff and unbending; and the mercy
of the final numbness grew complete.