I COULD have been unconscious only a few minutes, for when realization returned to me, I was lying on the ground, half supported by Dr. Whitley, who was making anxious efforts to revive me. He sighed with relief when I opened my eyes, and I echoed that sigh, for it seemed that I had just awakened from a torturing nightmare.
I looked past Dr. Whitley, and all my terror rushed back on me, for over my companion’s shoulder I saw a thin, white face, glaring down on me with an unhuman stare, its dark eyes motionless and unwinking. As I rose unsteadily to my feet, one glance around me told me where I was, and a bitterness came over me that forced out even my fear, for we two were prisoners at the bottom of the crater!
Near us were standing three of the—things! I could not think of them as anything else. The shuddering loathing and horror of my first flashing glimpse of them when we were captured returned now, as I surveyed the three.
They seemed exactly similar to each other, each having the high, shadowy bat wings, wings that were dull white skin stretched on a framework of slender bones, featherless, reptilian! The body was human in shape, except for the wings, but was thin and frail looking, tapering into arms and legs that were nothing but pipe-stems, and that ended in cruel talons instead of fingers and toes. For clothing each of the three wore a simple, sleeveless tunic, or garment, of a gleaming white material, a fabric that had a strangely metallic sheen to it.
I raised my eyes to the faces of the three and a fear that was sickening filled me. For those faces, those heads, were living replicas of the statues on the island. The high, hooked noses, the thin, cruel slit of a mouth, those unearthly ears, if ears they were, all these combined in an expression that was unspeakably hideous in effect. There was intelligence in those faces, I thought, but intelligence only. No humor, nor understanding, nor pity. Nothing but cold, naked intellect.
I noted, too, that the heads of the creatures were high and domed, but entirely hairless, covered by the same dead-white skin as the bodies. Each of the things had its eyes fixed on us, and two of them held small metal cylinders which were aimed directly at us. Obviously these were weapons of some sort, though of what type I did not know. I thought for a moment of the smears of white powder on the ground in the workers’ village, and a slight chill passed over me.
I turned away from our captors and saw now that we were standing very near the great disk which we had glimpsed from above. We stood on a wide circle of metal flooring that seemed to completely surround the disk, and from that near position I could closely inspect this unearthly mechanism that was sucking down a planet.
As I had judged, it was almost a half-mile in diameter, sweeping away from where we stood in a tremendous curve, and raised probably twenty feet above the ground by an interlacing of metal pillars and girders that supported it. Because we stood so near, and beneath it, we could not see the upper surface of the disk, but I saw that it was very thin for its great surface, not being much over twelve inches in thickness. The material of it, I could not determine, but it looked very much like lead, having a dull gleam characteristic of that metal.
At the very edge of the disk, not far from where we stood, a thick metal pillar rose some fifty feet into the air, and supported on its top, like a giant bird-house, was a square metal box, ten feet in dimension each way, that towered above the surface of the disk for a distance of more than twenty-five feet. Set on the top of this box there appeared an object that was seemingly a tiny sun, a small globe which shone with a bluish, intense light, the rays of which illuminated the whole bottom of the crater, though but dimly, and enabled us to see the things I have mentioned.
There were several slots and circular openings in the side of the metalbox structure, and the light that streamed out from these was now and then obscured by some dark body inside the box moving across the openings. Set beside the giant disk, this relatively tiny structure had the appearance of a switchbox of some sort. So I thought as I watched it, and later found that my guess had been right, for it was the controlling center of the disk, and of the disk’s powers.
I could see nothing else of interest on the crater’s bottom, except for a few low buildings some distance away from us, constructed of the metal which seemed to be the one material of everything in the place. I could dimly make out the wall of the crater in the ghastly, wavering light, and I observed something which made me turn to Dr. Whitley, whom I had momentarily forgotten.
“If I weren’t afraid of those tubes, I’d make a break for it,” I told him, indicating the weapons which our captors held. “Do you see that big crack in the crater’s eastern wall? It wouldn’t be hard to climb out there, if we could get away from these things. I don’t see any more of the creatures around here, though there were plenty of them when I saw them from above.”
“Don’t try it!” he warned me. “Those tubes are surely weapons of some kind, and you would be dead before you had gone ten feet.”
“But what are they keeping us here for?” I complained. “We seem to be the only ones left in the crater.”
It was so, too, for we could see no signs of life other than our three guards on the whole floor of the pit. Where the crowds I had glimpsed, and which we had heard, had gone, I could not conceive, but finally decided that they must have entered the low buildings behind us, though these seemed absurdly small to hold a host such as I had seen.
Dr. Whitley was absorbed in the things around him, and did not reply, so we lapsed into a silence of some minutes, leaving me to my own thoughts. And they were gloomy enough. On all Earth we two were the only ones who knew the nature of the thing that was dragging Earth toward destruction, and we were prisoners of those who were causing that destruction. I wondered if Lieutenant Rider could do anything, then dismissed the thought, for we had asked him not to leave the plane on any account, save to replenish the gasoline supply, if that was possible.
A SLIGHT twittering sound aroused me from my meditations, and I saw that for the first time in our presence our captors were conversing with each other. Their voices were very small and high, considering that the creatures were as large as myself. A language it was that they talked in, we knew that; but it was beyond our efforts to understand. To our ears it was like the chattering of birds, harsh, sometimes shrill, with now and then a low, deep note which reminded us of the chanting we had heard.
We saw, too, that another creature, similar to the three that guarded us, was clambering carefully down the great pillar beside the disk, descending it by means of projecting hooks which we had not noticed. Another of the things emerged from the bottom of the box-structure also, and followed the first one down the pillar. Both, when they reached the ground, came directly toward us and our attentive captors.
Though alike in general appearance, these two seemed different in some ways from our three guards. Their tunics, or garments, were of scarlet material, instead of white, also there was about them a subtly different manner, imperious, commanding, conscious of power.
For a moment they inspected us, then engaged in a short conversation with our guards, who evidently furnished explanations. We waited, breathless, for it was apparent that our fate hung on the commands these two might give.
Then we breathed a little easier, for the two gave a short order to our guards and started back to the disk. I noticed that they walked very poorly, with short, uncertain steps, and wondered why they did not fly directly to and from their edifice at the pillar’s top. But our guards now claimed my attention, for one of them began to walk away from us, with the same mincing steps, and the other two, pointing the cylinders at us, motioned for us to follow the first, which we did.
They led us directly to one of the buildings I had noticed, a long, low, windowless structure. I wondered if the rest of the crowd of these things were inside this building, and my interest was so aroused that I was somewhat disappointed when we entered the building’s open door, for the interior was almost bare, containing nothing except a number of studs, or switches, that were set in the surface of one of the long, low walls.
As we looked about, one of our guards walked over to that wall, and pressed one of the inset studs. Immediately there was a loud click and a circle of the wall’s surface some six feet in diameter slid to one side, revealing behind it a long, hollow cylinder of the same width, that pointed straight back into the wall. And in this cylinder there were seats, seats that reminded me of nothing so much as the queer, swinging chairs in which aviators are tested for sense of direction, chairs that swung on gimbals, as it were, capable of turning in any direction.
One of our guards now advanced and, entering the cylinder, seated himself in one of the swinging chairs, snapping into place across its front a light metal bar, so that he was strapped into the seat by it. He then turned and looked at us, and at the same time the two behind us motioned eloquently toward the cylinder.
Their meaning was plain, only too plain, so we hesitatingly entered the long tube, and installed ourselves in the middle of the cylinder, strapping ourselves into the seats as we had seen our guard do. Our two other captors followed, and I noticed that when they had installed themselves in two more of the chairs, they swung about to face us, and kept the tubes still trained on us. Certainly they were taking no chances of an escape on our part.
The creature who sat in the foremost seat reached out now to a row of small studs in the cylinder’s side, and instantly the section of wall behind us clicked back into place, leaving us in darkness. Another snap, and the cylinder suddenly tilted, so that it hung obliquely, almost in a perpendicular position, as compared to its former horizontal situation. I saw now the purpose of the free- swinging seats, for when the cylinder tilted down, the seats immediately swung up, so that our own position was unchanged, and we felt no discomfort.
The snapping of another stud, a slight jerk, and our bodies pressed against the belts of metal that held us in. The cylinder was falling! There was a humming shriek of wind outside the cylinder, and we had all the sensations of one in a falling elevator, a hundred times multiplied.
I heard Dr. Whitley’s voice close to me, above the screaming wind outside. “We are evidently in a pneumatic tube of some sort,” he shouted, “and are going at a tremendous rate, I would say.”
“But where are we going?” I yelled back to him.
“From our position I would say that we are going almost straight down,” he answered, “slanting down at a very steep angle. At a very great velocity, too.”
Straight down! Down into Earth’s fiery heart? Or was it fiery, after all? Was that the place where these things had emerged from? It could not be, it was impossible, and yet——.
But if that was their true home, why were they pulling Mars down to their own destruction? Why? Above all, what was to be our fate?
My brain, already half-stupefied by the unimaginable things I had seen, was dizzied with these questions. They swirled through my thoughts, a maelstrom of fact and fancy, as, in a metal cylinder, with three creatures like monsters from a nightmare, we flashed with awful speed down to the unknown interior of the Earth.
WE could not have been in the cylinder more than five minutes, when the humming wail of our passage dwindled and died, and the vibration ceased. How far we had gone in that short time I could not guess, but it must have been a great distance, considering our tremendous speed. And now the end of the cylinder clicked back and a flood of light entered.
But not sunlight! A soft, glowing light that was like liquid gold, holding in its lambent glow whirling little wisps of shining vapor, tiny curlings of radiant mist. While we stared, our guards stepped out of the cylinder, so we released ourselves from our chairs and followed them out.
We emerged into a long room, so very much like the one we had entered a few minutes before that in spite of the strange light I thought that the cylinder must have brought us back to our starting point. We now followed our captors out of the building, then stood rooted to the ground with sheer astonishment at the scene that lay before us.
We were standing on a high point of ground; behind us was the building we had just left, and all around us lay the inconceivably ancient city of these bat-folk, stretching away into the distance as far as eye could see, a mighty mass of roofless buildings, pierced here and there by long streets.
And every edifice was built of the same metal that had already become so familiar to us.
Pouring down on the city was a flood of golden light, filtering softly down through the clouds of shining mist that hid its source. There could be seen no sky or roof above us, nothing but those clouds of radiant mist that seemed to be thicker and thicker the farther the eye pierced them, veiling absolutely what might lie above them.
One building in the city stood out above all the others, a mighty pile that lay not a thousand feet from us, and unlike all the other structures we saw, it was roofed. Inside of its vast dome might have been placed St. Peter’s itself, without touching, so huge it was. It was immeasurably larger than any other of the city’s structures, which stretched away on all sides until hid from vision by the mists that seemed to permeate this whole place.
Flitting here and there above the buildings were a number of the batfolk, like those who guarded us, but they seemed very few in number compared to the mighty metropolis in which they dwelt. About the whole vast city hovered an air of desolation and death, a subtle suggestion of grandeur that had past.
While we were thus surveying the place, our guards stood motionless behind us, making no effort to force us to go forward, though I noticed that still they kept their deadly tubes trained upon us. I seized the chance to talk to Dr. Whitley, who was eagerly taking in the sights about us.
“Where do you think we are?” I asked him.
“Underground, without doubt,” he replied. “Where else could we be?”
“We can’t be,” I said. “Where does that light come from? And all this?” I made a sweeping gesture to the scene around us.
“As to the light” he began, then broke off speaking and stared away from me, down a street which ended directly at this point.
I looked, to see what had turned his thoughts, then I too gazed in a fixed stare of horror, for two things were coming toward us that were so utterly unlike anything we had ever seen or dreamed of or thought of, that we were almost sick with that first shock of surprise and terror.
The winged things which had captured us, God knows they were unhuman in appearance, but at least they had human faces and features, or near human. The two creatures that were running toward us, though, were so absolutely unhuman in appearance as to resemble only the unknown beasts of some far-flung star.
Their bodies were, roughly, human in shape, having two short lower limbs on which they ran, and two powerful-looking arms, or upper limbs, of extraordinary length. But directly above the shoulders, the body ceased! There was no neck, no head, no sign of features of any kind. The bodies themselves seemed of a pinkish flesh, with a slimy look to it, as though the skin had been left off.
As they ran toward us, their footless limbs padded softly on the metallic floor of the street. I noticed that they wore no more clothing than any animal, and that directly between their shoulders, where the neck should have sprung, there was an oval spot of bluish black that stood out plainly against the repellent pink color of their bodies.
The two monsters came very close, and we shrank back, then they halted and seemed to be regarding our three guards. And the three, in their turn, looked steadily at the two creatures. No sound was uttered, no word or gesture passed between them, but as though they had received a clear command, the two monsters began to conduct us down the street, one leading and the other following us, while one of our three late guards made a gesture to us that seemed to indicate that we were to follow wherever they led.
We followed them. What else could we do? I wondered, though, if it would not be possible to break away from the two, as they had neither weapons nor power of sight, that we could see. So to put this idea to the test, I wandered slightly from behind the leading creature, and made as if to turn down a different street.
For a moment the thing in front continued without me, then it stopped short, and turning, rushed toward me with appalling speed, going directly for me. I stepped aside but it swerved also, and instantly it had grasped me around the neck with one of its arms, or upper limbs, and was pulling me with tremendous force back to the proper direction.
And the arm with which it grasped me was boneless, for it curled around my neck twice, like a boa-constrictor, and with all of that reptile’s crushing power. I shrank frantically from the slimy, cold contact of that faceless monstrosity; and after that I made no more tests, but carefully followed the thing before me.
AS WE were conducted across the city, through its long, angled streets, we said nothing to each other, absorbed each in the things that led us, and the scene around us. And we saw that the city was truly a dead city, for in its streets was no throng, no pushing crowd, and the buildings that lined these streets were empty and deserted. A few of the bat-folk flapped by overhead, and one or two who caught sight of us being led along spiraled down and circled above us, inspecting us, but all flew away after a minute, nor did our monstrous guards notice them at all, so far as we saw.
Here and there in the streets we saw other creatures like those who were conducting us, and I noticed that all of these seemed quite busy, running to and fro with great speed, some carrying packages of indeterminate contents, others with what looked like strange tools. It was clear enough that they were slaves, or servants, of the winged bat-things.
Our guards came now to a small building, which was roofed, in contrast with those around it, and we entered this and proceeded with them down a corridor to a door, fastened on the outside by a metal bar that rested across it, in hooks set in the wall. The creature in front of us removed this bar and opened the door, standing beside it, and—I almost said gazing at us, so evident it was that his attention was focused on us.
His meaning was plain enough, so we reluctantly passed through the door into a small cell, and the door clanged shut behind us. The bar outside fell into place and we heard the soft pattering of our guards’ limbs, as they went back down the corridor.
A slight rustling sound turned our attention quickly to the interior of the cell itself, and by the light from a small window set high up in the wall, we saw a shapeless bundle that lay in one comer of the room, covered by a piece of white cloth. We shrank back. With what new terror had we been imprisoned?
The bundle moved again, and we watched, fascinated. Then the cloth covering was suddenly thrown aside and the thing sat up and faced us. It was a human being like ourselves! It was a man!
AS I GAZED, astounded, there was a sudden movement on the part of my companion, and then he had thrown himself on the floor beside the man there and was crying to him, “Holland! You here? It is I, Whitley!” And now Dr. Whitley looked up to me, and his voice was passionate with anger.
“What have they done to him?” he cried. “Look here!” And he pointed to the man’s body.
I knelt down to see, then sickened with pain at the sight, for both of the man’s legs were gone at the knee, replaced by shapeless stumps, and the left arm was also missing at the shoulder, a white pad of flesh marking its former juncture.
The man opened his eyes, now, and looked at us with an expression of fear on his face, a cowering back, that was pitiful to see. He had been a fine physical figure once, a six- footer with a viking’s strength and appearance, and strong, bearded face, but it was terrible to see the wreck he had become.
His eyes wandered over our faces, then his stare fixed itself on my companion’s features, and he grasped Whitley by the shoulder with his one hand. Then, “Oh, God!” he said, hoarsely, and again, “My God!”
“You know me, Holland?” asked Dr. Whitley. “You remember me, don’t you? And Berkeley, and the university?”
“Berkeley,” repeated the man on the floor, pondering. “Yes. And you, Whitley, you here! How in God’s name did you get here?”
In as few words as possible, Dr. Whitley explained the way in which we had been brought there, speaking of the falling of Mars which had been the cause of our journey to the island. I looked for some surprise on Holland’s part at this news, but he seemed to take no interest in it. And his next words showed us that he already knew that much.
“Yes, as to Mars, I know about that,” he told us. “For years and years, it seems, I’ve been here, and I’ve learned some things. Years and years!” And as he repeated the words, he seemed to be musing over them.
“Then you have been here ever since the first time of your disappearance?” asked Whitley.
“My disappearance?” he questioned. “Yes, I suppose that was a mystery to you outside. It was simple enough. I had gone out that night to nose around the ruins that are found here and there in the island’s interior. One moment I was examining a pile of crumbling blocks, the next moment something grabbed me from behind and I was carried through the air down to Rano Kao’s crater. They whizzed me down that big mail-tube of theirs to this private hell. I suppose you came down the same way?” And as we nodded, he continued, “Well, it was the same then, but they had it masked, of course, at the spot where it emerged on the crater’s bottom. And ail that clutter of apparatus on the crater’s floor was not there then, of course. But do you know yet where you are? What in your idea, Whitley?”
Dr. Whitley considered for a moment, then spoke thoughtfully. “I take it that we are in some immense cavern under the Pacific. We practically know that the moon was thrown out of what is now the Pacific when Earth was still molten, and I would say that this is one of the caverns that might have been formed by that cataclysm. Is that correct?” And he looked toward Holland.
Holland nodded his head. “Partly so. I’ll tell you what I know of the whole thing, though. I’ve learned a good deal down here. I know their language, and damned hard it was to learn, for a human throat can make only about half of the sounds they use to converse with. I can understand what they say, though, and so I’ve picked up information here and there. I talked, too, with the Science Council, three times.” His face darkened at some bitter memory of his own.
“But why were you captured and kept here at all?” I interjected. “And why do you suppose they got us too, instead of killing us as they did the others on the island?”
He considered me grimly, then pointed to his maimed body, legless and distorted. “That’s why I was captured,” he said. Then, seeing that we did not understand, he went on. “Just how much do you know about these things, anyway?”
“Very little,” Whitley put in. “We didn’t even suspect their existence until they seized us from behind.”
“Well, I can give you some light on them,” said Holland. “First, though, where do you think they came from, anyway?”
I answered quickly. “Why, they must have always lived down here,” I told him. “Maybe, though, they came up here from even greater depths in the Earth.”
He smiled slightly. “Yet if they always lived here, who carved those statues on the island above, exact copies of these things?” I was reduced to silence by this question, and he turned to Whitley, saying, “And you, Whitley?”
Again Dr. Whitley considered before replying. “I think it very probable that they came originally from the Earth above,” he said. “We know that there was once a continent in the Pacific, which sank beneath the ocean centuries ago, and the highest peaks of which are now the islands of that ocean. I would say that these things are children of the upper Earth, even as we are, but developments of some different chain of evolution. We know that at one spot there is a great forking in the long road of evolution, that from slime to fish to reptile it is roughly single, then turns to two different paths, one the path of mammals, from which we have come, and the other the path of birds, from which these things have risen. I take it that this development occurred centuries ago and that these things reached a high state of civilization on the lost continent in the Pacific, and were forced down to these caverns when the land sank beneath them. Yet two things I can not understand: the reason why they should pull Mars down to their destruction, and the cause of existence of those monsters who serve them. Those latter are creatures completely removed from any thinkable evolutionary process.”
Holland nodded approvingly as Dr. Whitley finished. “Near, very near,” he said. “Yet still you are far from the basic truth. Well, this much I can tell you. These things, these bat-people, never originated on our Earth at all, or inside it.” He looked at our faces, eloquent of our amazement, then said quietly, “They came here from Mars!”
FROM MARS! So there was a connection, after all, with the falling of that planet! The swift questions gathered on our lips, but he silenced us with a gesture and went on, staring darkly at the wall while he unfolded a cosmic chronicle.
“Some things I have learned from one, some from another, that enable me to piece together their past. And it is much like this:
“Ages ago, eons ago, when most of Earth was steaming jungle, there was a great civilization on the older world of Mars. But it was a waning civilization, for the races on Mars, all of whom are like these bat-folk, were crowded together intolerably, and conditions were very hard. The planet was no longer adequate for their support, in spite of their great science and knowledge.
“And since the government of the planet was intensely autocratic, a few, a very few, continued to live in comfort and luxury, while life became harder and harder for the masses they ruled. So it was that from time to time there were sporadic rebellions and outbreaks against the rulers, yet did the reigning oligarchy always put down such revolts, for they controlled all of the weapons on the planet, and virtually all of the scientists were of their number. And so the ages passed, and it seemed that the great masses of Martians must endure their wretched lot of slavery forever, a lot that was growing harder and harder to bear.
“But at the hour when their plight seemed worst, a spark of hope flared out for them, for one of their number who was a dabbler in science and was one of the bitterest rebels, discovered a way to screen gravity, to cut off its effect entirely on any object thus screened. Such a discovery made it possible to navigate the space between the worlds; so, constructing a work-shop in the icy, deserted north of the planet, the little council of rebellious Martians worked to build a vehicle that would be able to venture out into space. And when they tested the space-ship they had built, they found that it was a complete success.
“So the council of the rebels adopted a daring plan. Since it was evident, they said, that there was no hope of a successful revolt against their rulers, their only chance of a better lot was to migrate to another planet, a warmer, richer planet, where life would be easier. The Mayflower drama enacted on a cosmic scale.
“And for the planet to come to, they picked Earth, as being most fitted for them to dwell in. So they built vast numbers of the space-ships in secret, and on a given night left Mars by the thousands, flocking sunward to the Earth, and leaving no trace or plan behind them of the space-ships, so that they could not be pursued and attacked later.
“It was a daring plan and it was crowned with success. After a survey of the Earth’s surface, they settled down in a vast, rich land, a continent that stood where is now the South Pacific. And they grew great there, their empire waxed mighty, and while the forerunners of men were hairy half-apes, chasing small game across the plains of Asia, they were building temples and palaces and vast cities.
“Their science grew too, and in time they penetrated into a vast cavern far beneath them, formed by the throwing off of the molten moon, as you have suggested. This subterranean world was eternally glowing with a soft light, a light that had its source in the hidden roof of the cavern, in a certain radio-active element that abounded there, twin to the radio-active element that causes Mount Tycho to blaze out so brilliantly on the moon.
“This cavern was a pleasant place, and in time they built a city there, and lived there during the rainy season. So each year when the torrential rains commenced on the world above, they retired to their warm, dry world beneath and spent the time pleasantly enough there.
“So the centuries wheeled away, and for every king they had, they carved a statue of him and placed it on a high peak of their land, a peak that is now Easter Island. As the ages fled by, hundreds of such statues dotted the peak.
“And their science made triumph after triumph. For long they had desired slaves to serve them, but the humans they captured for this purpose could not be used. Their fierce, savage natures could not be tamed, and they died soon, proving entirely useless as slaves.
“So their scientists took counsel, and produced at last the creatures that are now their slaves, two of which brought you here. The Martian scientists had gone far within the secrets of life and death, so far that they were now able to reproduce the processes of life itself, and make out of inorganic elements the things you have seen.
“It may sound mad to you but it is the literal truth. I have seen the things being made myself, and a ghastly sight it is. They do not eat, they do not sleep, they are literally living machines, needing only a certain stimulant from time to time, which is injected into them just as you oil a machine. And they are perfect servants, for they have only one sense beside touch, a sense of telepathy, by means of which they can perceive all that we can with our five. Their extremely limited brains receive the commands of their Martian masters in thought waves and automatically translate those commands into action. I have thought, sometimes—but I will speak of that later.
“So the Martians flourished on Earth, and it seemed that they could never be menaced by any power, yet a power finally came that threatened their destruction. The continent on which was their empire began slowly to sink into the ocean, and their outlying towns were engulfed, one after another. They took counsel among themselves, and decided it was imperative that they go elsewhere, but where?
“Back to Mars they could not go, nor to another planet, for with all their advance in science, they had lost the secret of the space-ships, the gravity screen. Ages ago it had been forgotten, deliberately forgotten, in fact, for they had had no further need of the space-ships and they feared lest some traitor might return to Mars in one of them and, disclosing their existence on the Earth, bring down on them an avalanche of destruction and revenge from their former rulers.
“So to another planet they could not go. And the rest of the Earth was unattractive to them, after their own warm, rich country, being either bleak plain, dense jungle, or glacier- covered realms of ice.
“The course they took might have been foreseen. Gathering together all their wealth and slaves, they descended into their cavern home far below Earth’s surface, and took up their existence there, secure from danger. The continent they had left sank and sank, until only a few of its highest peaks remained above the ocean’s surface, but they cared little for that, secure in their empire beneath.
“So the ages wheeled still farther away, and above them man began his reign, vaulting up to a civilization and power of his own, yet far, far below, the Martians continued in their city, unknown by those above, and caring nothing for the hordes of men who never suspected their presence. And still the years fled by.
“BUT in the underworld their numbers did not grow. It is true that they lived for great periods of time, but fewer and fewer became their young, and they dwindled, dwindled. Pursuing their own pleasure, they neglected this fact until they finally woke to realization that only a few thousands were left of their once mighty empire. Nothing that is born to live in the open air can flourish beneath the ground, and this they now realized.
“So, piercing a way up to the upper Earth from their cavern home, they rose for the first time in ages to the world above. Their path had its opening above on that same peak where they had placed the statues of their kings, a peak that was an island now, inhabited by a handful of men. Secretly, and by night, they sent out their spies from the island, winging their way over the Earth, surveying its condition. They saw that much of it was now fit to dwell in, but they saw also that it was covered by the countless masses of men that held it, and they knew that with all their science, the few thousands of them left could never wrest the Earth from the races of men, unaided.
“But go up they must, or pass into extinction. So for the first time in ages, their thoughts turned back to Mars, their mother planet. Long ago their original resentment at their former rulers had faded, since for generations that had been only a tradition. So when the council met, they decided to communicate with Mars, if possible, and ascertain conditions there, with the hope of procuring there the aid they needed to conquer the Earth.
“How they communicated with those on Mars, I do not know, but doubtless it was with some form of radio. At any rate, they discovered that their mother planet was in terrible straits, crowded with those of their own race, starving on a dying, cooling planet. So it was but natural that those on Mars, after their first astonishment, should eagerly agree to help them grasp the Earth for themselves, wiping out the races of men who occupied it.
“And now they encountered their great problem. How were they to bring the hordes of Martians from Mars to Earth? Once here they could easily conquer Earth with their superior science and weapons, yet how to bring them here seemed an insoluble problem. The secret of the space-ships was lost, and even had they had it, it would have taken untold years to build enough of the space-ships with which to, bring the necessary number of Martians to the Earth.
“This was the problem that the council faced, and for years they worked on it, in collaboration with those on Mars. And finally they perfected a stupendous plan, which was nothing less than to bring the planet Mars itself across space to the Earth. It would be brought near enough to the Earth so that the atmospheres of the two planets would just touch, and then the Martian hordes could fly directly from their own planet to Earth, in an extremely short time. And Mars was to be made to circle the Earth, like another moon.
“For power to do this thing, to reach out and pull a world toward the Earth, the council relied on a fact that is known to every schoolboy on Earth. It was stunning in its very simplicity.
“As is well known, the Earth, like every other planet, is a vast magnet, with a north magnetic pole, and a south magnetic pole, even as every planet has a north and south magnetic pole. Now the north pole of any magnet will repel the north pole of another magnet, but will attract the south pole of another magnet. It is the simplest rule in physics, the basic law of magnetism, that like poles repel and unlike poles attract.
“The vast magnetism of the Earth is inconceivable in its power, but it is radiated into space at its poles without affecting its position. And the plan of the council was this, that they focus, concentrate, the magnetic power of Earth’s northern pole and hurl it out into space in a concentrated ray, aiming it so that it would exactly strike the south magnetic pole of Mars. You see the plan? An enormous attraction would be the result, enough to pull the smaller planet of Mars out of its orbit and start it falling toward the Earth. To guard against the Earth’s also being jerked from its orbit, and being pulled out to meet Mars, they planned to send out the attractive ray only at a time when the position of the other planets would be such as to hold Earth in its proper course by their gravitational power.
“But it was not enough to have the attractive ray. They must have a repellent ray also, so that they could halt Mars when it neared the Earth, and prevent a collision that would mean destruction. And for a repellent ray they planned to concentrate in a like manner the magnetism of Earth’s southern pole, which, directed against Mars’ southern pole, would repel the red planet, in accordance with the law of magnetism.
“So they began work, and in ten years their great task was finished. Their underground connections stretched from the north and south magnetic poles of the Earth to their masked, secret laboratory in the crater of Rano Kao. Of their apparatus at the two poles I know no more than you, but its function was to gather together and focus the magnetism of each of Earth’s poles, and, when the proper connection was made, to transmit it to their apparatus inside Rano Kao.
“All was ready, yet before emerging onto the upper Earth, they desired to have a sure, deadly weapon against the races of man, who might molest them in their work. So they perfected a deadly ray, a ray that crumbles a human body into a puff of white powder instantly. They needed only a human being on whom to test it, and I was destined to be that, for it was for that purpose they caught me.
“They experimented on me as on a guinea pig, turning different rays on arms and legs to observe their action. They would not kill me outright for I was too valuable a specimen. And God, how I prayed for death!
“The ray was a success, so at a chosen time fifty of them armed themselves with it and emerged onto the island, wiping out every living thing on the island with it. Then came the others from beneath, setting into place the great disk that aims the ray, and placing beside it the switch-box that controls its action. A great bell was brought up, too, and placed beside the disk.
“And on the first night, only a few days ago, they met in the great temple down here and conducted a ceremony of some kind, going through their rites for an hour before they ascended to the disk. They have been doing that ever since, too, and every one of them must take part in their ceremonies at the temple, before rising to the crater, every one, that is, except the two who guard the switch-box of the disk, above. I never saw what they did in the temple, but I could hear them chanting, chanting.
“And so, perhaps twenty minutes after midnight, they streamed up to the crater through the tubes, and ranged themselves around the disk. I was taken up also, by two of the slave-creatures, just why I do not know. Was it some queer sense of triumph on their part? Were they simply wishing to show me the power that was theirs? They went through another ceremony up there, chanting another weird hymn, which I could not understand, since it seemed to be in a very ancient, twisted version of their own language. And when the bell sounded for the third time, the ray was snapped on, for the third bell-note sounds always when Mars is passing across the path in which the ray is aimed, and thus they knew the exact moment to stab out the ray, hurling the concentrated magnetism of Earth’s north magnetic pole out across space to the south magnetic pole of Mars.
“So far they have used only a tenth of the attractive power at their command, for they feared to jerk Mars out of its orbit too swiftly, lest the other planets be sucked out of their own positions, and the universe be wrecked. Yet that tenth was enough to stop the planet in its course and pull it toward Earth. The two moons of Mars had already been shaken off by those on Mars, using the same plan, for they were afraid that when Mars arrived and began to circle Earth, the two little moons would crash either into Earth or into our own moon, and cause disaster.
“Of the rest, you know as much as I. The planet is falling toward us with immense speed, a speed that is growing greater each night they use the attractive ray. A few days now, and it will be here, and then I seem to see the skies darkened by the Martian hordes pouring down on the Earth. And they have that crumbling ray.
“On all Earth we three alone realize the true nature of the awful peril that confronts our world. And here we lie, tightly locked into a metal cell, miles underground, and guarded by soulless, mindless monsters!”
WE STARED at each other in dumb terror. For we knew now the peril that confronted our Earth, a peril beside which the collision we had feared would be a mercifully quick death. And I had a vision in my mind of what might be, of what would be, when the planet hurtling toward us would fill the sky, and its numberless hordes of winged inhabitants would be swooping down on Earth in a great cloud of death and destruction.
I had a vision of that ray flashing out and reducing great crowds to drifting white dust, of those brainless brutes that were servants to the Martians running wild through a fear- stricken world, slaying, slaying at the command of their masters. And I
shuddered at the pictures that rose in my mind.
The voice of Dr. Whitley broke into my thoughts. “If it were possible to get inside that switch-box, one could turn on the repellent ray, then?” he asked Holland.
“Possible,” Holland assented, “but impossible to get into the place. It is guarded at all times by two of the Science Council, and they have that crumbling ray also, as a protection. Yet it is the only chance of saving our Earth! If we could send out the green ray, even now it would push Mars back into space, farther back than its original orbit, I think, for as I said, both attractive and repellent rays are extremely powerful, so powerful that they have used only a small part of the red ray’s possible power.”
“You speak of the red and green ray,” Whitley observed; “I take it that the repellent ray is green, then?”
“Yes, that is so,” Holland said. “Why, I don’t know, but it is a fact that the ray that is the concentrated magnetism of Earth’s northern pole is red, and the southern pole’s ray is green. Perhaps they caused this themselves, to differentiate between the two. There is so much I don’t know about it all!
“I have a plan,” he went on, “by means of which you two may be able to escape and get to the tube entrance. If you do, you can get up to the crater without much trouble, for I will try to explain to you how the mechanism of the tube is operated. And once in the crater, there is a million to one chance that you may be able to get into the switch-box, in spite of the two who guard it, and send out the green ray. Perhaps you might not be able to operate it, though. And God help you if you turned on both rays at once! Imagine the whole magnetic power of the Earth released in a crater like that!
But we will see, we will see——”
He relapsed into a brooding silence.
“Why did they bring us down here, though?” I asked. “I can’t understand that, when they killed all the others on the island.”
“Who can say what their intentions are?” he countered. “I suppose, though, that you are destined for more experiments,” and he pointed to his own maimed body. “You will be taken to the next meeting of the Science Council, and then, God help you!”
I was struck with his repetition of the name, and asked, “The Science Council? Just what is it, anyway?”
The expression on his face at my question seemed to indicate that he was remembering all the things he had suffered. “It is the ruling body of the Martians, composed of the greatest scientists of their race. They long ago discarded the idea of a king or other single head of government, and are ruled entirely by their wisest members. And surely they must have tremendous knowledge, to evolve a scheme like this bringing of Mars to the Earth. And, too, they are devils. I know that.”
After that a silence fell upon us, nor were there any sounds from outside. Now and then we heard a pattering outside, as one of the servant creatures went by, but that was all. The whole city was dead, I thought, its once teeming throngs had gone down to a darker darkness in which there was no light, and silence ruled almost undisputed in this subterranean Babylon.
So thinking, I gradually drifted off to sleep, for there was nothing else to do, and I was very tired. I had unconsciously been waiting for night to come, forgetful that there was no time here, where it was always daylight and always noon, with no moon or stars or tide to measure the hours, nothing but the softly glowing light that never shaded into dusk or sprang out in flaming dawn.
Across the little room I saw Whitley and Holland earnestly conversing, but in the lassitude that gripped me, I did not even desire to know the subject of their conversation. Death was coming, I thought, and that was my last conscious idea before dropping off into a dreamless sleep that was surely death’s brother.