by Perry Rhodan
What he saw then was far less impersonal than the bright light and far less pleasant than the aroma of Passa perfume. He was looking at a chamber of astonishing dimensions and found himself to be located against one of the side walls but there on the floor of the chamber were at least a thousand humans who seemed to be no better off than himself. Most of them lay quietly on their backs and stared at the ceiling, which arched overhead at an average height of about 25 feet. A few of them had gotten up onto their elbows and were looking about them with a little more interest in their surroundings. And finally he saw two men nearby who were standing together by the wall and seemed to be engaged in a conversation.
Larry didn't recognize any of those who were lying on the floor or even those who had raised up onto their elbows. But it was easy to guess that they were at least a portion of the people that the Evergreens had kidnapped, including those whose punitive expedition against the Evergreens had met with such surprising defeat.
On the other hand, the two men over there by the wall were obviously none other than Ron Landry and Lofty Patterson. It was a shock to Larry when he recognized them but he got up and went over to them. Certainly it must have been another shock for them to see a man suddenly get up from all the ones who were lying there—a phenomenon in the midst of lethargy. When Ron and Lofty interrupted their conversation to stare at him he caught their sudden expression of astonishment mixed with dismay.
He could well understand their feelings. Somehow they had fallen into the hands of the Evergreens or the Springers but they had not been aware that he was also present in the chamber. They had not seen him in the midst of the numerous captives and had been hoping, no doubt, that he would be bringing them help. And now here he was beside them, also a prisoner.
"I'm sorry," was the first thing he said. "It seems that they caught me too."
Ron asked him to tell what had happened to him and listened carefully to his brief report. Then he turned to Lofty. "The same effect," he said. "He suddenly went into a rage without knowing why."
Lofty made a wry face. "You might as well know," he said to Larry, "that the two of us went out of our minds and tried to crack each other's skulls."
Ron told him in a few words how they had found the cave and what had happened after that. Larry's amazement grew when he realized the unmistakable reality of the situation: that somebody had deliberately and effectively made use of a new kind of weapon—a weapon that could cause humans to become so enraged at each other that they were overcome by a compulsion to kill and destroy. It seemed to suppress the processes of reason entirely and drive its victims to actions which would have been impossible for them to even think of under normal conditions.
Larry met Ron's gaze. "Who?" he asked calmly.
Ron had expected the question. "We don't know," he answered, but then hastily corrected himself: "Not yet! "
Larry was about to ask something but was interrupted by a commotion at the far end of the room. He recognized the figures of three Evergreens who moved toward the apathetic crowd on the floor in their inimitable loping hops. It was hard to see where they had come from since there didn't seem to be any doors in the walls. At any rate the sight of the serpent people shattered the local apathy. The Terran captives jumped up with shrieks and wails of alarm and scattered in every direction at the approach of the Evergreens. The miserable spectacle filled Larry with revulsion. He wanted to run and block the stream of fugitives and shout them down, telling them what miserable cowards they were to let a mere three Evergreens put them to flight. But he had not taken the first step before he felt a hand on his shoulder.
"Take it easy, buddy," Ron told him in an unusually calm tone of voice. "It wouldn't do any good. There may be more Evergreens lurking behind these walls than we think. And take a look at your gun belt!"
Larry grabbed for his weapon holster. What a fool he had been! Naturally they wouldn't have forgotten to take the beamer from him when they brought him here. Ron was right. They couldn't do anything against the Evergreens—at least not at the present moment.
The three hopping serpents reached the tail end of the fleeing mob while the front lines were already jamming up against the cavern wall. Larry saw each of the Evergreens pick up one man apiece. Holding them over their heads they turned around and retreated with their prisoners. Everything happened so fast that he only began to understand what was going on when the Evergreens reached the rear wall of the chamber. There where no one would have suspected a door a semi-dark opening yawned before them.
They were fetching sacrifice victims! Offerings for their bloodthirsty inhuman god!
The three captives being carried off by the Evergreens apparently knew very well what their fate was going to be because their screams were audible above the general tumult in the cavern. Larry saw them wriggling and flailing about in the talons of the snake monsters. He saw their faces turn blood red in their frantic struggle to get free and he heard the terror of death in the cry of the last one as he was carried through the dark opening and the door started to close.
• • •
After this incident there was not much left of Larry's self-possession. With his bare hands he was ready to strangle the Evergreens and whatever it was that had enticed them to commit such deeds. Lofty had become very reticent and all his cheerful crinkles had disappeared. When spoken to he made no reply.
It seemed that Ron was the only one who was still able to think rationally, to whatever extent it was necessary at the moment. He noted that the prisoners were drifting back through the cavern and distributing themselves more evenly as they flopped down again on the floor. It almost seemed as if they had forgotten the ghastly event. Relieved to find that they had not been the ones to be taken this time, they all sank back into their former state of apathy.
Ron knew the cause of this apathy. He knew what he would find if he were to go along the walls and search for an exit: nothing. The same thing that the others must have discovered already, whether searching singly or in groups. There was no way out. At least none that could be opened from the inside. And even if they could open such a door, undoubtedly there were enough Evergreens on the other side to thwart any such attempt at an outbreak. There was still another reason for their discouragement. This cavern lay somewhere in the middle of the glass forest wilderness. The western rim of the forest—in itself 500 km removed from the nearest city—was all of 1,000 km away. And who would venture to attempt such a trek?
When Ron set out nevertheless to examine the walls he did it first of all because he preferred to trust his own eyes particularly since they were more especially trained than the others—and in the second place he was convinced that it was better to do something practically senseless rather than just sit there inactively and drown in the general bog of apathy.
The chamber was about 100 meters long and half as wide. All in all his tour of inspection would have to cover 300 meters—300 meters of grey, jagged rock that he would have to look at inch by inch. It was no small task. He left Lofty and Larry behind him because they seemed to have no inclination to join him.
After moving along only a few steps he suddenly realized why this solo trip would be useful. He would be able to think without being distracted by Larry's sullen grumbling and Lofty's withdrawn and melancholy disposition. There were still several items which definitely needed some special cogitation.
• • •
For instance there was the matter of the illumination here in the cavern. A row of fluorescent-type lighting tubes had been clamped to the ceiling in a very hurried and jury-rigged fashion. Some of them were loose and banging crooked. Wires led across the unfinished rock into a few outlet holes. But however hastily the lighting units may have been installed the fact remained that the Evergreens knew nothing about electrical lighting. So these lamps were the first concrete evidence that the Springers really had their fingers in what was happening on Passa. Another proof was the exit door he had seen, which silently opened and closed
without anyone having to turn a knob. That too, must have been installed by the Springers. It was they who had set up this entire subterranean prisoner camp.
Why? Why should they care where the Evergreens kept their captives? Why had they taken such pains to create an escape-proof prison area when all that they were supposedly after was the commercial profits that Passa would bring them? No answer to that one, Ron decided. He still knew too little about it.
And another thing: Lofty Patterson had been able to read from the Evergreens' drum talk that they were trying to appease their god or idol because they didn't have any more sacrifices for it. Here there must be altogether a thousand people and everybody in the chamber knew that the few victims that were taken out at half-hour intervals would quickly die on the altar of this insatiable deity. Weren't a thousand offerings like this enough for it? What kind of monster was it?
No answer for this one, either.
There was a third question which Ron had thought about already and found no answer for: how had the Evergreens discovered his small expedition so quickly? The soundless attack on Larry and especially the weird fight he himself had gotten into with Lofty, all of them waking up here in this giant cavern—it all pointed to the fact that somebody had been waiting for them and that they had merely bided their time for the most favorable moment in which to take them.
How could the Evergreens have managed this? And even if they weren't directly behind it, how had the Springers been able to contact them in this mountain fastness in the depths of the forest?
In the course of his inspection tour there was something else that Ron was forced to consider: the Springers must know that Terra would not stand still for this senseless murder of the settlers. Terra's consideration of the sensitivities of the natives had certain limitations and this murderous spell the Springers had woven around the god of the Evergreens was more than enough to exceed that limit. The Springers knew that sooner or later they'd be mixing it with the Terran Fleet and that their commercial war could turn into a shooting war. In which case the valuable world of Passa would be lost to them.
So how could they get involved in a thing like this? Why didn't they simply try one of their usual unscrupulous schemes, which for the most part would be far less bloody, and that way maybe channel off a portion of the Passa profits with much less risk?
Ron thought he might have the answer to this question. It was conspicuous enough to fill him with a new dread. The Springers had staged this whole affair with the intention of drawing Terra into a limited type of warfare. And if that was so it meant that they held some sort of trump card in their hands which led them to believe that they would win this conflict. What kind of a trump it might be was something Ron couldn't figure out.
But he realized that the situation was far more serious than he had believed it to be a few hours ago.
7/ THE CHAMBER OF DEATH
We prepare a mighty feast for thee, O thou Incomparable One! Three princes of darkness shall we sacrifice to thee and we shall have thee with us always. Recognizing the faithfulness of thy children, thou wilt shield them from all danger, Ayaa-Oooy...!
• • •
For two long days they had tried to appeal to their fellow captives in an attempt to reawaken their spirit of self-preservation but the few who showed any kind of reaction at all merely asked to be left alone. They didn't want to be bothered. Ron's tour of inspection had yielded nothing. He had found the place where the Evergreens had disappeared with their victims but he hadn't tried to open the door. He knew it would be to no purpose.
Their life in the cavern was anything but diversified. About every hour and a half the Evergreens would come in to take three more men. Twice in a period of 20 hours a larger contingent of serpent monsters appeared to bring in a few tons of so-called food and water. The prisoners had lost their appetites and this kind of food was anything but tasty so they didn't touch much of it.
Naturally the cavern did not have any sanitation facilities so it wasn't too long before the air was so foul that even the sweet aroma of the Evergreens had no effect on it when they came in. Ron feared that the unsanitary enclosure would become a hotbed for infectious diseases and he tried to discuss the problem with some of the other prisoners but to them it was a matter of indifference whether they died on the altar of the monster god or succumbed to typhus.
Such was the situation when Ron perceived by his watch that by now almost 50 hours had passed since he had recovered consciousness here in the cavern. He was beginning to sense that the spell of apathy was also starting to take hold of him. Nor did he fail to notice that Larry and Lofty were falling into a similar mood. They hardly spoke to each other anymore. And why should they? There was no reason for it. And their faces reflected as much.
Ron finally realized that something had to happen if the monotony and hopelessness of their plight were not to drain them of their last spark of energy. And at last he reached the conclusion that it was better to attempt something that might be completely mad instead of lying around here staring at the ceiling and hypnotizing themselves into a state of mindless idiocy.
He developed a plan. In a word, it was deadly. But it was enough of a plan to convince Lofty and Larry to go along with it. There was an alternative to its purely suicidal aspects. At least it offered a choice: "Either us... or the Springers!"
• • •
Ron checked his watch.
The Evergreens were not always punctual. Sometimes the one and a half-hour period was cut a few minutes early and sometimes it was a few minutes late. This time it seemed that their captors would be late but for those who waited it was agonizing in any case.
Ron tried to think of what else to say but nothing new came to his mind. He had already preached the usual precautions several times: keep your eyes open and don't let any opportunity escape you. That was it. He didn't have any more advice than that. He told himself that they would make it, forcing himself to shake off his morbid thoughts.
A slight vibration in the ground made him look up.
He looked directly at the wide, dimly lit opening in the cave wall as the three Evergreens came into the chamber with their arms outstretched. The lower pair of arms was for balance as they hopped along and the upper pair was for grasping their victims.
A cry went up in the cavern. Men jumped up and began to run. Ron also got to his feet and from the corner of his eye he could see that Larry and Lofty were also getting up. They all turned and also started to run.
Ron suddenly realized how difficult it was to only pretend to be fleeing. At first he found himself running for all he was worth but this meant that he'd soon overtake the rear line of the other fugitives and that wasn't a part of the plan. He forced himself to shorten his stride and go a bit slower while he looked around toward the Evergreens. They had not increased their pace appreciably. They hopped along with their tails in the same rhythmic movement as usual. They knew that they'd get what they wanted without having to hurry.
Ron couldn't help hating them at the moment.
But he changed his course a bit to his right when he saw that no Evergreen was directly behind him. He took a second to look around for his two companions but all he could see was Larry. The latter was running directly ahead of an Evergreen with not more than a 15-foot lead. Ron saw him stumble and fall to the ground. In the next instant the serpent creature grabbed him and lifted him into the air.
But this was the whole idea. It was a simple ruse that would not arouse suspicion. Now Ron also forced himself to take a fall and he pretended to roll to one side as if to escape the serpent talons. It was actually a relief to him, however, when he saw the green-skinned arms reach down to him and he felt himself caught in their powerful grip. He started to yell and shout, also according to plan. And Larry promptly joined him. They strained their lungs and shouted even above the tumultuous clamor that filled the chamber. They flailed and struggled about just as they had seen the other victims do.
When Ron l
ooked around for the third Evergreen he saw that he had loped along closer to the tail end of the fleeing crowd but that he had just now snatched up his prey. When the creature turned about to follow his companions, Ron saw that Lofty had also managed to get himself caught. The old-timer also set up a wild caterwauling to show he hadn't willingly joined this legion of the damned.
The Evergreens carried their human offerings out of the larger cavern. The howling of their captives had a different sound here in this dimly lit and narrower but loftier passage. The sound of their shouting was also somewhat broken up or absorbed by the bodies of the serpent throng that was stationed here to stand guard. Ron estimated their number to be about 200 at least. It was exactly what he had suspected. Lying in ambush here at the exit door they would have been able to thwart any attempt at an outbreak.
The Evergreens hopped along the corridor with their prey until they entered another chamber. While still shouting and struggling, Ron was able to observe the source of the dim illumination. There were smoking torches stuck in the walls. The Springers hadn't taken the trouble to equip this particular room with electric lights. The Evergreens had lighted the place by use of their ancient method, employing burning young branches of the glass trees. The chamber was circular and Ron noted that there were two dark exits at the other side of it.
It was at this moment that his captor bent down and set him on the ground. Ron reacted swiftly. He could well imagine what the other prisoners must have done when they were released here. He turned and attempted to run away. This time he sprinted with all his might and almost reached the high-ceilinged corridor before he was caught again, lifted into the air and re-deposited in the same place as before.
