by Earl
IN a week, they knew more than a smattering of the albino people’s speech. With a flair for language Paige had learned fast. He was amazed himself, but realized that a demon drove him, sharpened his mind.
Reena spent all waking hours with them. She told them much of the strange new world they had dropped into, as they learned words. Dorthia it was called by the inhabitants. Underworld, Paige and Sparky called it between themselves. Millions of human beings lived down here, as easily as up above.
Reena conducted them through the cavern-city. Industry was well developed. The albino people had metal alloys, and inexhaustible supplies of ore all about them. They had electricity, fast transportation, and were superb structural engineers. They had, apparently through a long history, hollowed out many artificial caverns, and so extended their range of living.
Later, watching a new tunnel being extended, Paige became thoughtful. A giant machine on rollers, with a spout something like a cannon, slowly edged forward, guided by workmen. An invisible force shot from it peeling the wall down steadily, converting rock into compressed heavy matter that was carted away. It was something Earth science knew nothing of.
“Reena,” Paige asked, using the newfound language haltingly, “what force does that machine use?”
“It is atom-breaking,” she responded. “Energy springs forth when atoms are broken down.”
“Atomic-energy! Or at least a form of it!” Paige gasped eagerly. “Sparky, do you know what it means?”
“A weapon for our forces, against the Martians?” Sparky guessed quickly.
Paige whirled on Rena, his eyes blazing. “Reena,” he said in her tongue, “I think I can explain now, in your words. We’re from the upper world. It is being destroyed. Martians, beings from another planet, have attacked—”
He stopped, at her utterly blank stare. “Upper world?” she repeated. “There is no upper world.”
Paige and Sparky looked at each other. “But there is,” Paige returned patiently. “You saw us come down from what you people call the Fire Zone. Dr. Aronson, too.”
SHE frowned thoughtfully. “Yes. And you are strangely dark-skinned. Dr. Aronson stumbled through the Fire Zone, which is strange. Tal and I were there, by chance, as we liked to look upon the fires. When you came through, we were there because Tal almost believed there might be a world above the terrible Fire Zone.”
“Almost!” reiterated Paige. “You don’t believe—”
“We believe,” said the girl, “that you come from an unexplored cave-city beyond the Fire Zone.”
“Not cave-city.” Paige wondered how to express himself, still unhandy with their language. “My world is beyond the caves. It is open, wide, free. It is under the ‘sky’ ”—he was forced to use the English word and an all-embracing gesture—“and there are ‘stars’ and the ‘moon’ and ‘winds’ and ‘rain’ and ‘sunshine.’ ”
He stopped, caught by a sudden sigh. “You’re homesick, Sarge,” Sparky said bluntly. There was also a longing look in his eye.
Reena looked still more perplexed. “I do not understand,” she murmured. Then she laughed rouguishly. “Whatever strange cave you came from, your people are gifted with much imagination!”
“Imagination, she calls it!” Sparky snorted.
Paige fumed at the girl’s hard-headed attitude, like an ant denying the existence of anything beyond his ant-heap.
Reena had become grave suddenly. “Perhaps you and your friend had better return to your cave-city beyond the Fire Zone,” she said with averted eyes. “We are at war here. You will be conscripted. Tal is commander of this city’s military force. He is rather hard at times. He needs every man.”
“War!” Paige was reminded again of the holocaust above ground. How could he forget it, even for an instant? “Reena, there is war in my world. We need help—”
“We do not go to your cave asking for help,” she returned, sharply.
“But this is different. Monsters from another world are attacking Earth—”
Again her uncomprehending stare of puzzled disbelief.
“No use, Sarge,” muttered Sparky in English. “Can’t you see it’s like talking Greek?”
Paige grasped the girl’s arm. “Dr. Aronson—where is he?”
“He is down in the Center. Tal sent him there, to help care for the wounded.”
“Can he come to us?”
“No.”
“Then we’ll go to him. Tell us how.” The ash-blonde head shook a negative. “You cannot go. Tal will keep you here, to fight—unless you return to your cave.”
“Can I send a message to Dr. Aronson?” Paige asked desperately.
“Tal will not allow it.”
Sparky growled: “What is this Tal, a dictator?”
They had returned to their cliff-dwelling. Tal was waiting for them, glancing from the girl to Paige scowlingly. Paige ignored that and repeated his request to see Dr. Aronson.
“No,” Tal Rithor said flatly. “Only the wounded go to the Center. This is wartime. You are able-bodied men. I need you in defense of the city.”
Paige ground his teeth. Their story disbelieved. No spark of concern, or even comprehension, for the tale they brought. Impressed into military service! Paige decided on a show-down. The pistol that he still had leaped into his hand from its holster.
But Tal had been on guard. A hand-weapon of his own came out just as swiftly. The eyes of the two men locked. Reena fell back with a gasp. Sparky poised on the balls of his feet, ready for anything.
“Don’t shoot, or I will,” Tal barked. “If you kill me, my men will get you. You can’t escape!”
Paige relaxed and holstered his gun. It had been a mad thing to do, antagonizing Tal still more.
“But, Tal,” he pleaded, “if you’ll only listen carefully to my story—”
“This is war,” the albino man returned coldly. “We cannot help in your war, while we have our own. You are free to go back to your own cave. If you stay, you fight with us.”
“Crazy world,” Sparky grunted. “Or is it? Before the Martians came, up above, the nations of Europe—”
A noise interrupted a—brazen clang that reverberated through the city-cavern deafeningly. Tal and Reena stood for a moment frozenly. Then the albino man darted away with a startled shout.
“Attack!” breathed Reena. “By our enemies. King Luth of Uldorn and his people are trying to gain control of this section of caverns!”
IV
PAIGE watched. It seemed to be a skirmish, rather than battle. From the remotest corridors pressed the attackers, a few thousand albino men, firing long rifle-like weapons. The city’s defense force retaliated from concealed ledges. Paige wondered what their weapons did. His answer came abruptly.
There was a queer crunching sound, as though millions of crystals were being squeezed together, and then a six-inch portion of the stone window frame chipped away, next to his elbow. But the piece that dropped was only one inch in size!
“Stand back!” warned Reena. “Another stray shot might hit you. If you do not know our weapons, they fire a bolt that causes atoms to collapse together, like the tunnel-digging machines.”
“Atomic-power weapons!” Paige said excitedly.
“If we had them up above, we’d lick the Martians!” cried Sparky.
“We’ve got to get out of Tal’s hands,” Paige groaned. “Find Aronson and figure out how to bring help to the surface.” Reena’s hand was on his arm, her lovely pale eyes on his. “It is important for you to see your Dr. Aronson?”
Paige grasped her shoulders. “Reena, if I could only tell you how important!” She looked at him for another moment, then spoke tensely.
“This is just a skirmish. I think the Uldorn forces only want to find out gun emplacements. They are planning for a bigger attack, in the future. Go down among our forces and fight!”
Paige was confused. Was she using an age-old appeal simply to force him to help her side? “But that’s just what I don’t
want to do!” he exploded. “I can’t fight in your crazy war while up above—”
His voice ground to a stop. Did she think him a coward?
She was looking at him strangely. “The wounded go to the Center,” she said quietly.
“I get it!” yelled Sparky. “It’s our one way to get to Aronson. Sarge, she’s telling us how.”
Paige was already running for the door. He glanced back at her, but she had averted her eyes.
On the cavern-city’s floor level, the two men came up behind the Dorthian lines. Tal Rithor, directing operations, turned in surprise.
“We will fight,” Paige said shortly.
“Good. Our weapons are easy to operate.”
“What’s wrong with this?” Paige pulled his pistol from its holster again.
Tal glanced at it and laughed. “Bullets? We stopped using such guns a hundred years ago. Here,” he snapped an order and an aide brought two of their rifles. “Use these. Get up in the front line and pick off as many of the enemy as you can. This is little more than a skirmish. The experience will be good for you. There will be heavier attacks in the future.”
He turned away.
PAIGE and Sparky found themselves behind a stone bulwark, a moment later, with grooves in which to rest the rifles. With a swift glance over the weapon, Paige found the trigger-lever at the side that would release blasts of atomcompressing force. He sighted along the barrel at a dim figure in the enemy uniform of blue, creeping forward in the corridor from which the attackers had come.
The weapon had no kick. There was just a faint hum as he pulled the trigger. But in the “V” of the sights, three hundred yards away, the blue-clad Uldornian threw up his hands and toppled backward.
Paige closed his eyes for a moment, shuddering. The man’s head had completely vanished, reduced instantaneously to crushed matter.
This was a wonderful—or frightful—weapon! Even the Martians, with their rustling kill-beams of neutrons, had no such power of death in so small a weapon.
Paige shuddered, too, because he had killed a man against whom he had no slightest enmity or cause. Yet it had been necessary, to find out the true potentiality of the underworld weapon.
“What a gun!” Sparky was crowing beside him, bending to his sights for the second time.
Paige pulled him away. “No more, Sparky. Now we know this is the weapon we need for upper Earth. No sense killing albino men.”
“But, Sarge!” Sparky was puzzled. “They’ll notice we’re faking. And we have to get wounded—or killed!” He twisted his lips in a wry grimace. “On second thought, this is kind of wacky—shopping for a wound. A crazy suggestion by a woman, and we go prancing off—”
“She was a step ahead of you,” Paige cut him off. “Sparky, we’ve got to get to that Center, where Aronson is. There’s only one way, with a wound. Even if we—” He paused.
“—have to do it ourselves!” gasped Sparky, in dawning comprehension. “But, Sarge, that’s worse than our deserting was.”
He stopped at the grim, implacable look in Paige’s eye. Events seemed to force them to do these incredible things, to fulfil their strange mission.
A moment later it was done, as they crouched low behind the stone parapet. The other albino soldiers were too busy to look. Paige winced as Sparky carefully sent a bullet through the fleshy part of his left shoulder. Then Page calmly aimed his pistol for a shot through Spark’s right shoulder. They did not trust using the unfamiliar blast-rifles. Wounds were alike.
They crawled back from the firing line, holding their wounds as though two shots from the enemy had grazed their shoulders.
“Shooting ourselves!” Spark mumbled, outraged. “What in the name of Lucifer will we try next?”
“Anything!” Paige shot back. “Anything at all to bring help to upper Earth.”
First-aid women, in the safety zone, quickly ripped their shoulders free and dabbed on some antiseptic, and then taped the wounds. Tal suddenly appeared.
“Wounded already?” he grinned. “You will go to the Center immediately, for recuperation.”
“Figure out why he wanted you fighting right away,” whispered Sparky. “He’s glad you’re going away from Reena!”
Paige was also glad, for a different reason. To the Center meant finding Aronson, and getting somewhere in his baffling quest.
“You were a little careless,” Tal went on. “It’s a good lesson. When you come back, recovered, you’ll be good fighters. I’ll need you.” He turned away on his heel.
The skirmish was over abruptly. The attackers left as suddenly as they had come leaving a hundred dead. The hissing of weapons died away.
Paige and Sparky found themselves bundled, along with other wounded, before a structure that vaguely resembled a subway kiosk. Reena was there, along with other albino women who had come to see the wounded off.
She extended her hand, relief in her face. “I was afraid I might have sent you to—worse. Now you will find your Dr. Aronson. Perhaps we will meet again.”
She said it as if they were strange beings who might at any moment vanish as suddenly as they had appeared in the albino world.
Paige stared. He was struck again by her snow-white beauty, under the radium-glow lamps. How would she look in the bright sunshine of Earth? Probably, he thought, like a rare white orchid rescued from gloomy jungle.
Paige was queerly disturbed. Was she human, with her exotic whiteness? At times this seemed like a dream, humans sixty miles below the foundations of Earth cities. And the albino people looked so cold, statuesque, unreal. Impulsively, he bent to kiss her. Other soldiers were kissing women farewell. His doubts dispelled. Her lips were warm, her body supple. This was a girl as human as any above.
Sparky turned away, with a soft whistle.
She yielded only for a moment, then broke away. A spark of fury flashed from her rose-irised eyes. “How dare you?” she said coldly. “Tal Rithor is my future husband.”
“Sorry,” mumbled Paige, cursing himself for a fool.
The girl, still furious, whirled away and vanished in the crowd.
“You know, Sarge,” Sparky said softly, “when they get angry like that, it means something!”
Paige straightened. “Never mind about that. The important thing is meeting Aronson.”
INSIDE the kiosk, they were hustled into one of a long train of little cars, resting on a smooth runway that further on dipped down into rock-bound tunnel. They lay flat in the car, wade for that position. An attendant slid tight a cover and they were sealed in.
“I feel nervous,” vouched Sparky. “Like my first subway ride as a kid. Wonder where this hospital Center is?”
“At the center of Earth, four thousand miles down.”
“Naw,” snorted Sparky. “It’s somewhere near. Why would they send wounded men four thousand miles? Its name happens to the the Center, where Doc Aronson is. He was just fooled into thinking it meant Center of Earth.” Outside, partly muffled, they heard a warning signal. Then motion. As if brakes had been released, the train rattled forward on the runway, smoothly gathering speed.
Paige felt the gradual dip downward, into the tunnel. When he felt pressure on his feet, he knew they were vertical. He was in reality standing up now—not lying down—in a car that dropped straight down! Yet the pressure on his feet was light. Was the car simply a free-falling body, being yanked down by force of gravity?
A low whine sounded from outside and within minutes the train rumbled along with the sound of a streamlined express roaring at top speed.
Paige felt pressure against his eardrums that made him swallow. Counting mentally, he timed the period of acceleration, till the sensation of drop became uniform. Paige grunted as though his breath had been knocked out, when he figured it out.
“Wonder how fast we’re going?” yelled Sparky above the whine.
“About a thousand miles an hour!” Paige yelled back.
Paige wanted to think over the amazing adventure he h
ad dropped into, from the upper world. But now lassitude stole over him. He felt light-headed. In his weakened condition, from loss of blood, his mind whirled into blankness. Sparky was quiet beside him.
PAIGE awoke with a start. An attendant was shaking his good shoulder, urging him up. Their car was open, and the train had come to a stop.
“Are you all right?”
Paige nodded dazedly, feeling queer, and started to rise on his elbows. The attendant’s hand restrained him for a moment.
“Don’t make any sudden moves,” he warned. “Use your arms to get out.” It was routine instruction, given passengers in peace-time, no doubt, as well as when a train-load of wounded came.
Paige lifted himself over the edge of the car with his arm muscles—an impossible acrobatic feat! That is, impossible against gravity. He further astonished himself by remaining suspended in the air, his body horizontal, once he was out. He stayed that way, feeling paralyzed, helpless, out of his element.
With no amusement, the attendant reached up and pulled him down. “Keep your hands on the guide-rail!”
Sparky bounced out like a rubber ball, and had to be pulled down, too, floundering and kicking his legs in the air. When he had his hands safely on the guide-rail, he was panting.
“I feel like a fish out of water,” he growled. “What’s wrong, Sarge? I feel like a feather!”
“There’s no gravity here,” Paige returned. “There’s only one spot on or in Earth that would have no force of gravity, because of equal pull in all directions.” He looked at Sparky half maliciously. “The center of Earth.”
Sparky gasped. “You mean we’re really there? Four thousand miles down!” Paige sympathized with the little man’s utter dumbfoundment. Fantastic, every hit of this.
They followed a stream of wounded men from the train. Those with serious wounds, unable to move by themselves, were towed through the air like balloons. Paige found walking like the strut of a drum-major, lowering each foot firmly to press forward. He slid one hand along the guide-rail, thankful for its assistance. The path they followed was a metal ramp that seemed to slant upward. And yet, was it upward? Paige didn’t know.
