The Onslaught from Rigel

by Fletcher Pratt

  CHAPTER XIII

  The Lassan

  When the car next called for him, it took a much longer course; onesteadily downward and around a good many curves as he could judge fromthe way in which it swayed and gained and lost speed. It was fully atwenty-minute ride, and when he stepped out it was not into a room ofany kind, but in what appeared to be a tunnel cut in the living rock, atleast six feet wide and fully twice as high. The rock on all sides hadbeen beautifully smoothed by some unknown hand, except underfoot whereit had been left rough enough to give a grip to the feet.

  At his side were two of the ape-men who had been released from the carat the same time. The tunnel led them straight ahead for a distance,then dipped and turned to the right. As he rounded the corner he couldsee that it ended below and before him in some room where machinerywhirred. The ape-men went straight on, looking neither to the right northe left. As they reached the door that gave into the machine-room theyencountered another ape-man wearing the same kind of helmet with itsattached tube, as Sherman's instructor had worn. The ape-men who camewith him stopped. The helmeted one looked at them stupidly for a momentand then, as though obeying some unspoken command, took one by the armand led him across the room to the front of a machine and there thrustone of the ubiquitous helmets on his head.

  The machine, as nearly as Sherman could make out, was a duplicate ofthat on which he had injured his fingers; as the helmet was buckled onthe ape-man who stood before it he immediately began to watch theground-glass panels and put his fingers in the holes below.

  The process was repeated with the second ape-man, and then the sentinelreturned to Sherman. Taking him by the arm, the mechanical beast led himpast the row of machines (there seemed to be only four in the room) andto a door at one side, giving him a gentle push. It was the opening ofanother tunnel, down which Sherman walked for some forty or fifty yardsbefore encountering a second door and a second helmeted ape-man sentry.

  This one did exactly as the first had done. Stared at him for a moment,then took him by the arm and led him across the room to a machine, whereit left him. Sherman perceived that he was supposed to care for it, andwith a sigh, bent to his task.

  It was some moments before the rapid flashing of lights gave him arespite. Then he had an opportunity to look about him and observed that,as in the other room, there were four machines. Two of them wereuntenanted, but at the one next to his, there was someone working. Whenhe glanced again, he was sure it was a mechanized human likehimself--and a girl!

  "What is this place?" he asked, "and who are you?"

  The other gave a covert glance over his shoulder at the sentry by thedoor.

  "Sssh!" she said out of the corner of her mouth, "not so loud.... I'mMarta Lami--and I think this place is hell!"

  After a time they contrived a sort of conversation, a word at a time,with covert glances at the ape-man sentry. He looked at themsuspiciously once or twice, but as he made no attempt to interfere theygained confidence.

  "Who--is--keeping--us--here?" asked Sherman.

  "Don't--know," she replied in the same manner."Think--it's--the--elephants."

  "What elephants?" he asked a word at a time. "I haven't seen any."

  "You will. They come around and inspect what you're doing. Are you newhere?"

  "New at these machines. They had me teaching them to write English. Thisis my first day in here."

  "This is my eightieth work-period. We lost track of the days."

  "So did I. Where are we? Are there any other humans with you?"

  "One in the cage across the corridor from me. Walter Stevens the WallStreet man."

  "Have they got him on this job, too?"

  "Yes."

  Sherman could not avoid a snicker. Back in the days before the comet hehad had Stevens as a passenger once, and a more difficult customer tosatisfy, a more cocksure-of-his-own-importance man he had never seen.The thought of him burning his fingertips up in one of these machinesgave him some amusement. But his next question was practical.

  "Do you know what these machines are for?"

  "Haven't the least idea; Stevens said they were for digging something.They had the helmets on him twice."

  "What helmets?"

  "Like the dopey at the door wears. The dopeys all have to wear them."

  "Why?"

  "Haven't got any brains, I guess. I had one on once when they wereteaching me to do this. They tell you what to think."

  "What do you mean?"

  "You put the helmet on and it's like you're hypnotized. You can't thinkanything but what they want you to think."

  Sherman shuddered slightly. So that was how the mechanical ape-men werecontrolled so perfectly!

  "How did they get you?" asked the girl who had described herself asMarta Lami.

  "In an airplane. I'm an aviator. They shot me down somewhere and when Icame to, put me in one of those cages. How did you get here?"

  "The birds. I was at West Point with Stevens and that old foolVanderschoof. They started shooting at the birds and the birds justpicked us up and flew away with us."

  "Where were you after you came to? I mean after the comet."

  "New York. Century Roof. I was dancing there before."

  "You aren't Marta Lami, the dancer?"

  "Sure. Who the hell do you think?"

  * * * * *

  He turned and regarded her deliberately, careless of the arousedattention of the sentry. So this was the famous dancer who had blazedacross two continents and three divorce suits--who had been proclaimedthe most beautiful woman in the world in starring electric lights beforean applauding Broadway; for whose performances speculators held ticketsat prize-fight premiums! How little she resembled it now, a parody ofthe human form, working her fingers off as the slave of an alien andconquering race.

  She asked the next question:

  "Where have they got you?"

  "I don't know. In a cage somewhere. The only people around there arelike these mugs." He nodded toward the ape-man.

  "I wonder how long they'll keep us at this."

  "I wish I could tell you. How's chances of making a break?"

  "Rotten. There was a guy at the next machine tried it three or fourwork-periods ago. He socked the dopey at the door."

  "What happened?"

  "They sent a machine down for him and gave him the yellow lights allover. It was fierce, you should have heard him scream."

  "How far down are we, anyway?"

  "You got me, boy friend. Sssh! Watch the dopey."

  Sherman glanced over his shoulder to see the ape-man moving aside fromthe door and bent back to his work. Evidently something important wasimminent, judging from the actions of the sentry and the energeticattention the ex-dancer was giving to her machine. He was not deceived.Down the passage came something moving; something flesh-like and smooth,of a pale, grey-blue, dead-fish color, like a dangling serpent, then around bulging head and finally the full form of an elephant!

  But such an elephant as mortal eye had never before seen. For it stoodbarely eight feet high and its legs were both longer and infinitely moreslender and graceful than the legs of any earthly elephant. The earswere smaller, not loose flaps of skin, but possessed of definite formand pressed close to the head. The skull was enormous, bulging at theforehead, and wrinkled in the middle down over the large intelligenteyes in an expression permanently cross and dissatisfied. As for thetrunk it reached nearly to the floor, longer and thinner in proportionthan the trunk of an ordinary elephant, and at its tip divided into fourfinger-like projections set around the circle of the nostril.

  Oddest of all, the elephant wore clothes! Or at least an outer garment,a kind of long cloak which appeared to be attached underneath its bodyand which covered every portion except the ankles. The feet also werecovered. A kind of hood hung back from the head on that portion of thecloak which rested on the creature's back. But what chiefly arousedSherman's sense of strangeness and loathing was that the naked s
kin,wherever exposed, was of that same poisonous, dead-fish blue.

  For a moment the thing stood in the doorway, regarding them, swingingits long trunk around restlessly, as though it could tell somethingabout them by its sense of smell. Then it advanced a step or two intothe room, and placing its trunk close to Sherman's body, began to runover it, sniffing, a few inches away. He felt that he wanted to shriek,to turn and strike the thing, or to run, but a warning glance from thedancer kept him motionless.

  Apparently satisfied with the result of its examination the elephantturned to go, stopping as it did so to unhook some projection on theape-man's helmet and apply it to its ear. After listening for a moment,it put the end of the trunk to this projection, snorted into it, andwent away with soundless steps.

  For several minutes the two worked on in silence after this. Then:

  "Well, now you seen him," said the dancer, in the same word-by-wordfashion as before. "That was our boss."

  "That--thing?" asked Sherman, incredulously.

  "I'll tell the cockeyed world. Say, those babies know more than Einsteinever heard of. Try to get fresh with one of them and see."

  "What do they do?"

  "Shoot you with one of the light-guns. They carry little ones aroundwith them. They melt you down wherever they hit you and you have to goto the operating room to have things put back and it hurts like hell."

  "Oh, I must have been there after they brought me down in my plane. Theydid something to my back."

  "Then you know, boy friend. After that they put the helmet on you andyou have to tell 'em what you're thinking about. You can beat that game,though, if you're careful. All I'd give 'em was how good a couple ofScotch highballs would taste and it made monkeys of 'em."

  It was all very strange and not a little bewildering. Intelligentelephants that controlled forces beyond the powers of men; who couldplace a helmet on your head and read your thoughts; who could repair thenew mechanized human form after it had apparently suffered irreparabledamage, and who treated men and women as lower animals. Their arrivalmust have been that of the comet.

  * * * * *

  Herbert Sherman had read deeply enough, though not widely. He rememberedsome Englishman--Colvin--Kevin--Kelvin, that was it!--who had a theorythat life had drifted to the earth from somewhere out in the void ofspace and time. Had these, too, drifted in, in the same way theancestors of man had come, to set a period to the day of man's dominanceover creation? A strange enough creation it was now, though, with itsmechanical men and its animals turned to metal statues. He wondered whatNoah would say, and giggled at the thought.

  "What's the joke, boy friend?"

  "Oh, nothing. I had an idea."

  Their plight at the hands of these master-animals was bad, but it mightbe worse. At least he had a certain amount of freedom, he was strongerthan he had ever before been in his life, and felt quite as intelligent.It would be strange if he could not accomplish something.... He fell toplanning out ways of escaping and failed to notice the pain in hisfingers in the intensity of his thoughts.

  Everything seemed to show that the operation of most of these machineswas predominantly electrical. It would be strange if the car thatcarried them to and fro was not, yes and by Jove, the helmets theape-men wore. If he could short-circuit the works, or even a part ofthem....

  Apparently his new body was a good conductor and impervious to theinjurious effects of the electric current. Short-circuit something, thatwas the idea, create a confusion--and trust to escaping in the midst ofit? Perhaps--but at all events a good deal could be learned about theseelephant-men and their methods by watching them in such an emergency.Their machinery was so efficient that a child could operate it; it wasin a pinch that their real intelligence would show.

  It struck him that it would do little good to escape unless he did learnsomething about these elephant-people, their mysterious light-guns,their vast city that they seemed to have hollowed out of the heart ofthe solid Catskill rock, their chemistry and metallurgy and methods ofattack and defense. Otherwise escape would be a jumping from thefrying-pan into the fire. There would be nothing for it but a desperate,harried existence, the existence of one of the lower animals faced bythe insupportable competition of man.

  Information! That was the first need. He must bend all his energies tothe task of obtaining it.

  "By the way, what do these eggs call themselves?" he asked.

  "Lassans," said the dancer.

  A light flickered along the corridor. The ape-man at the door cameforward, touched him on the arm and led him to the passage where hecaught the car back to his cage.