by Earl
But it was unhurt! Any Earth beast, even the mightiest dinosaur, would have been mortally wounded. This Mercurian monster had lost only a few scales. We all realised for the first time how really impregnable it was. In a sense it was minerral life. Beside it, organic life was soft jelly, and their weapons and forces little puffs of nothingness. It had spawned and lived where furnace heat and volcanic forces reigned.
One bomb was left. If that failed, all eight men would be marooned. Some could get away by separating, but only at the loss of cither lives.
Back in the ship, Karsen and I could hear the beast’s roar through the helmet radio system. It sounded like the deep-throated blast of an ocean liner’s steam whistle. And then we heard a new sound—dull, heavy thumps that rattled the radio speaker!
CAPTAIN ATWELL reported that these were caused by the beast. Now utterly berserk, it threw its titanic body against the pyramid, trying to batter it down. And it might. None of us was skeptical of that. Swinerton’s voice breathed in awe: “Being literally an animate steam engine, it probably develops a thousand-horse-power!”
Robertson made an additional comment.
“The Martian inscriptions at the base include this beast, represented with mathematical symbols and an outline of its dragon shape. They show it being destroyed, by blasting its head away completely. The ancient Martians must have set up big guns to do it.”
There was a sharp exclamation suddenly, from Captain Atwell.
“Swinerton!” he called. “You fool—”
“Let go!” Swinerton yelled., “Only hope; The rest of you can escape. I caused all this.”
But several of the others grabbed Swinerton and held him back. Sacrificing a life would be done only as a last resort.
Karsen and I held our breaths. We heard Ling’s voice murmur softly.
“Blowing its head away—”
Ling was already scrambling down the pyramid steps, while the rest were still struggling with the almost insane Swinerton. Ling carried the last bomb! Captain Atwell shouted, but there was no answer from Ling. It was too late to catch him.
Captain Atwell described Ling calmly descending toward the beast. It had launched its tremendous bulk again at the structure, shaking its foundations. Then it spied the tiny mite and stretched its serpentine neck toward him.
Ling faced the dragon, a lone man against a mighty beast. What kind of courage that took, we can’t guess. The dragon had been his childhood terror.
Von Zell’s choked voice came from his helmet radio.
“And I called him a coward!”
Ling’s idea was sublimely simple. He waited till the ferocious saw-edged jaws lunged for him. The dragon’s live-steam breath snorted out at him. He threw the bomb straight between those gaping jaws. The first touch of hot steam within would set off the sensitive fulminate. The dragon’s head would be blown apart—and Ling with it. . . .
Karsen and I heard the muffled explosion in our radio. It was followed by a curious sound, almost like the breaking of dishes. It was the creature’s hard, silicic tissue flying to shreds. Then there was silence.
“Well,” came Captain, Atwell’s low voice, “that did the dragon in, all right.”
“Ling, too,” murmured von Zell. “Brave Ling.”
And all of us, at that moment, knew we had done the quiet, soft-voiced Chinese a deep injustice. He had conquered more than the beast. He had conquered fear. Captain Atwell spoke again, in bitter self-reproach.
“A life lost, after all—” But he was interrupted.
“Ling!” It was a startled exclamation from all of them. Ling’s voice came, panting from the climb.
“Well, let’s get back to the ship. Confucius has said: ‘He who leaps fast, lives to leap again’.”
Ling had had about three second to scuttle away along the pyramid ledge, before the explosion. Crouching against the stone, he had been untouched, except for a pelting of silicic chips. The men hadn’t seen him crouching out of sight.
We’re all overjoyed that he escaped, Captain Atwell particularly.
“Well, men,” he said, with more feeling than his voice betrayed. “We haven’t lost a life yet on Mercury. And we’re not going to, as long as we watch out for the unexpected.”
SIXTY-FOURTH Day (noon).
The unexpected came!
The ment went a mile from the pyramid, toward the ship, and then suddenly ran back. Captain Atwell told us why. A pouring flood of what seemed to be molten metal thundered down from the side. Barely reaching the pyramid in time, they once more scrambled up and watched. All the regions around them was filling like a lake.
But it wasn’t molten metal—just mercury. A whole glacier of it had been frozen solid five miles away, touching the frigid Night Side. As the slow libration exposed it to the warmer rays of the Sun, it assumed the liquid form.
Picture it as we see it. Cubic miles of silvery metal are flooding all the region around us—almost an ocean of it. Atwell and his seven men are once again trapped on the pyramid, watching the level slowly rise.
Of all things unexpected, it is ironic that the namesake metal of Mercury should threaten us!
It’s a real threat. The flowing mercury surrounded our ship. All ordinary metals float on Mercury, with its high density. Thus our ship was picked up like a cork and whirled off. Karsen and I felt as though we were on the stormiest sea ever known.
The mercury flood carried us out toward the Day Side, miles and miles. It has just beached us, high and dry, on a metal hillside. We have the refrigeration unit going full blast. We’re a hundred miles apart. Atwell and the others are on the pyramid, Karsen and I on the blazing Day Side. Our problem is to get together.
The engine was damaged by the violent knocking around. Karsen is looking it over frantically. I have a broken arm. As soon as possible, we’ll make repairs and fly the ship to the pyramid, so we can at least be together.
There is one disturbing thought. Our buried fuel reserves are under that lake of mercury! How will we ever get it out, for our return trip to Earth?
THIS will be our final contact. Your last signal came through so faintly, I doubt whether this is reaching you. We will send the usual high-powered click signal twice a day, noon and midnight, Greenwich Earth time.
We will resume contact in three months, if all is well. If we have somehow rescued our. cached fuel, we’ll make the return at that conjunction. Our only consolation is that we haven’t lost a life—yet.
Good luck, Mars Expedition Two! Hope you haven’t had any trouble. Au revoir, Earth!
Mercury Expedition Number One signing off.
ONE THOUSAND MILES BELOW
Humanity was doomed. Hoar by hoar the Martian horror was blasting Mankind from the earth. Then up from the depths came a strange, pale army, marching to battle the sky-born Ray Armada.
SERGEANT EVAN PAIGE’S gray, brooding eyes stared reflectively at the paper in his hand, dated three days before, June 7, 1941. Under the official seal of Washington it read:
“EMERGENCY DRAFT. All men able to bear arms, ages 14 to 55, in defense of Earth against the invaders from Mars. Your country and your world need you. REPORT AT THE NEAREST RECRUITING OFFICE IMMEDIATELY.”
“We’d better go, Sarge,” said “Sparky” Donovan, small, wiry, his voice tense. “Before a draft commission comes for us. We never sidestepped a fight yet.”
He walked to the window with a limp, and looked out into the night, shuddering. “Lord! Martians taking over Earth!” Evan Paige tossed the well-thumbed paper on his workbench, and ran his strong hands through uncombed hair in nervous indecision.
“We should go. Yet what about Dr. Aronson?”
Sparky tossed his hands in the air eloquently.
Paige turned back to his radio. Its banks of power-tubes and its special airial outside were designed to send a beam underground. An electrical engineer, Paige had developed the set himself, with Sparky Donovan’s help, to keep in touch with Aronson’s exploring party. It had
gone in a different direction from any other exploring party—down.
“No return signal from him for three months,” Sparky said gloomily. “What do you expect? Somewhere under Earth’s crust, his number rang up.”
“But we’re not sure,” Paige said. His voice became musing. “Sparky, this is about the strangest situation facing us ever imagined. For the first time in history, an unsuspected underworld is being discovered. And for the first time in history, invasion has come from space. Two of the most astounding events in human chronicles happening at the same time! It’s fantastic—as only truth can be. If we leave the radio now, we might be cutting off Aronson’s last chance to tell the world—”
“Tell what world?” shrugged Sparky. “The Martians?”
“We’ll try once more—”
Hopelessly, Paige sent his beam down, down. The last contact with Aronson had broken off at sixty miles below Earth’s surface—abruptly. A cry of alarm, clipped off in the middle. Had Aronson and his three men met death, in that unknown depth? Still, perhaps only their portable radio-set had been damaged. On that slim hope, Paige had kept a hopeless vigil, hunched over the radio at all hours, signaling below.
Three months of nerve-wracking suspense. And in the meantime, the Martians had thundered down on Earth, like a bolt out of the blue. . . .
PAIGE stiffened, as a faint voice trickled from his speaker, behind a barrage of crackling static. He twisted his power dial to the upper limit.
“—ling Evan Paige! Aronson calling Evan Paige! Aronson calling—”
“It’s him!” Sparky yelled wildly.
Paige barked into the microphone. “Paige answering! Good Lord, Dr. Aronson, it’s about time! What happened? Where are you?”
“At the center of Earth!” The scientist’s voice came back almost casually.
“What?” snapped Paige. “You’re joking!”
Sparky had started, and then made a sad gesture with his finger tapping his forehead.
“Not at all.” The scientist’s voice, with a weird howl in it from underground interference, went on eagerly. “You remember that we found the linked caverns, at the back of Mammoth Cave. We followed them down, for ten days, as you know from our previous contact. At sixty miles down, we tame to the heat-zone, where our troubles started. Molten lava flows there, in the caverns. The worst happened. Peters, Henderson and Bode slipped and fell while we ran. All three died!”
Paige and Sparky looked at each other, shocked.
Aronson’s voice went on tersely, as if he had steeled himself against useless emotion. “I grabbed up the portable radio and kept running. Escaped the lava. But the set was damaged. I couldn’t contact you. The rest is unbelievable.”
“The rest!” Sparky muttered ironically.
Aronson resumed in a lower tone.
“I’ll give it to you straight from the shoulder, Evan. There’s a vast world down here. And people! Human beings, but total albinos. They’ve never seen the sun. Don’t know our upper world exists, as we didn’t know theirs did!”
“Completely daffy!” breathed Sparky. “Poor guy.”
“People; human beings!” Paige recovered quickly. So many incredible things were happening, one more didn’t matter. He grinned a little. “Even you didn’t suspect that, Dr. Aronson.”
“No. And they’ve kept me busy. I didn’t have a chance to repair my set and contact you, Evan, till now. You see, there’s a war down here, just like above. Earth is a honeycomb of natural caverns, as I theorized originally. The albino people inhabit them and the total population is as much as on Earth’s surface. They have separate nations, and they are warring, with scientific weapons, just like in Europe when I left the surface.”
Paige was about to break in, to destroy that illusion, but the scientist went on rapidly. His voice was eager, with the eagerness of his calling.
“But all that to the side, think what this means! A whole new underground world discovered! I’m going to try to escape and return to the surface. All my theories about a non-molten, honeycombed Earth are proven true. When I get above I’ll wave the proof in front of certain learned colleagues who sneered at me—”
Paige did break in now, with a harsh, mirthless laugh. He spoke slowly, bitterly.
“The upper world isn’t what you knew, Dr. Aronson. There isn’t a European war any more. Two months ago the unbelievable happened. Beings from another world—from Mars—attacked Earth! They are utterly savage, ruthless, bent on wiping out humanity!”
How fantastic it sounded, in Paige’s own ears!
“Now you’re joking!” gasped Aronson.
“No joke,” Paige returned grimly. “They’re a scientific—superscientific race. They’re blasting down cities steadily. In the first few weeks, their swift rocket (ships blew most of our aircraft out of the sky. Even the great German fleet only lasted a month. After that, in Europe, it settled down to ground warfare. We put army after army against them. Soldiers lately bitter enemies fought side by side. The pride of French, Italian, Russian, German troops marched into their long-range kill-beams. They have ray-weapons. Our cannon can’t even reach halfway to their projectors. Standing armies no longer exist. Now everyone marches to battle, even women. But it’s hopeless. I think half of humanity in Europe, where the Martians first landed, is gone already. The end may be near for the human race. I can’t begin to describe the stark horror of it!
“But, Dr. Aronson—”
A blazing thought had struck Paige. He went on hoarsely:
“Can we recruit those albino-people to help us? They’re scientific, and know fighting. Will they help us? They must! They’re human, you say—”
Paige stopped, a little dazed by the stupendous revelation of underground civilization, wondering if it could be true.
Aronson, in turn, still seemed stunned by the stupendous revelation of Martian invasion. He spoke finally, in a choking whisper.
“Possibly, Evan. But I wonder. You see, they don’t believe in the existence of an upper world. And—”
Without warning, the radio suddenly went dead. But not at Aronson’s end. Paige’s set had blinked out, and with it all the electric lights. They heard dull thuds, from the center of town. Sparky was already limping to the window, and flung it wide. Aronson’s laboratory-home was on the outskirts of Cincinnati.
They saw, in the heart of the city, the sinister iridescent beams that stabbed down from swift rocket ships.
“A bombing raid by the Martians!” Sparky growled. “They’re starting in on America like Europe. Blasting cities railroads power-houses. Then the final cleanup on the battlefield—”
Cold rage iced through Evan Paige’s veins. He felt his way back to the workbench in the dark and picked up the draft-paper.
“Yeah, that’s it, Sarge!” snarled Sparky. “We’ll join up now and fight those Martian snakes. I want to get in my lick at them.”
Paige crumpled the paper in his hand suddenly. “Wait! What about those albino-people? A mysterious scientific race under Earth! If we could get their help—”
“Sarge, for Lord’s sake!” exploded Sparky. “You don’t believe that story? The old guy went crazy, somewhere down there. Why, it’s like a fairy tale.”
Paige gripped the little man’s arm and squeezed. “Sparky, I wouldn’t have believed about the Martians either, except that it happened.”
“But, Sarge—”
A banging at the door interrupted them. Sparky groped his way down the hall to the front door, Paige following. Three men in uniform stood in the doorway; and played flashlight beams over them.
“Drafting commission,” announced the head officer. “We’re looking for slackers.” After a significant pause, he said harshly, “Come along, you two.”
Sparky looked at Paige, shrugged and made a step forward.
“Wait!” Paige suddenly made up his mind. “We didn’t report for duty because—” He gave the details briefly. “So you see, we’ve got to get power somehow and re-cont
act Dr. Aronson. It’s important, more important than going into the front line.”
The officer glanced at his men cynically. “First time I heard that excuse! Even at a time like this, cowards lie for their skins. Afraid to fight, eh? Come along, slackers!”
“Afraid to fight!” Sparky’s voice was an angry shriek. Paige pulled him back, as he made for the man with balled fists. Sparky growled. “We fought in Spain, and Finland. I got my limp in Rumania. And you think we’re afraid to fight!”
Paige had a scar on his shoulder from Rumania, too. They had come back, with their wounds. While convalescing with Dr. Henry Aronson, his dead father’s old friend, he and Sparky had become interested in and part of the “underground project.
“All right, then come along,” said the recruiting officer. “You’re experienced soldiers.”
Paige flung off the man’s hand. “Don’t you understand? What good are we, as two more soldiers? We’ve got to stay here and re-contact the underworld, I tell you!”
“Underworld!” snorted the officer, in utter disbelief. “The Martians have Europe licked. They set up a base in Georgia a week ago. Now they’re raiding American cities. Don’t you realize you’ve got to fight?”
His voice was suddenly dogged, harried. “Earth has to fight to the last man!”
“That’s just it,” Paige shot back. “There’s no hope. But if we get help from the und—”
“Take your choice!” rasped the officer, whipping out a pistol. “My orders are to shoot any slackers who resist!”
Paige and Sparky went. Paige couldn’t blame the officer for not believing the story. Even Sparky didn’t. And Paige himself wondered. Maybe there wasn’t any underground world. Maybe Aronson was crazy mad, trapped in some corner of the strange subterranean world.
II
A WEEK later, Paige’s regiment took the full brunt of a Martian attack, somewhere in South Carolina. It was all a hellish confusion.
