by Don Wilcox
The squad of Disps broke into a run. Elsa was forced to keep pace. A dizziness came over her. She stumbled. The Disps jerked at her arms. She came up. She breathed the perfumed handkerchief and tried to keep her head up.
The murderous chant had begun. Dissipated faces leered. It was not often that a beautiful young girl was led to the feeder.
From far below the congregation of Higher-ups came the usual wailing protests, the usual riotous sounds of the hopeless, ineffectual mob. The chanting Higher-ups could not let their unholy pleasures be disturbed. The ceremony proceeded.
The long gleaming feeder swung down to the squad of Disps. Elsa was lifted into it. She gasped at her handkerchief as a suffocating man chokes for air.
The tube rose. The chanting stopped. The girl began to slide.
CHAPTER VI
Escape!
Ten days before, they had fed Wayne Champlin to the Purple Fury.
When Champlin shot down through the circle of flames, he underwent all the sensations of entering death—except death itself!
For a long second after that burning plunge—for it was like cutting across the path of a gigantic blow torch—he could not realize that he was not dying. He was not caught in the altar, he was not being cremated by a gas blaze, much less was he being gobbled up by a monster. But he was falling!
Did the Shrine rest over a bottomless pit? Down, down he plummeted!
He fell past some lights—something that was like a room. Then—kr-r-r-rippp! He was caught by a deep net.
The net couched his fall, sinking as if suspended by rubber ropes.
In the flash of that fall Champlin’s burning wonderment took a hundred impossible twists and turns and ended in a huge question mark. What the devil—
The net began to lift. One glance up the black shaft through which he had fallen told him volumes. It was not a straight shaft like a well. It was a pit that bellied out like a bell; indeed, the very cone-shaped hill on which the Shrine sat must be nothing more than a hollow shell of limestone.
Now, looking up into the point of this hollow hilltop, Wayne Champlin could see the altar of the Shrine—from underneath. The purple fires reflected down like a dim sun pouring through the vaulted dome of a great building from a hole at the top.
But the sight that shook Champlin from these sudden bewildering discoveries was the spacious, lighted shelf built near the top of this colossal limestone dome. Brilliantly lighted, the shelf circled the interior like an overhanging balcony. Standing on that structure were men—Summiteers—some of whom Champlin recognized.
There was no time to look at the shining, formidable instruments and the high-powered machines they were tending, for on the instant Champlin saw that his trail led into the very jaws of death.
He saw one of his fellow Grubbers, a wounded woman, being carted along the shelf’s edge on a rolling bed. She was naked and bleeding. She was struggling, moaning with pain—until she rolled under the flaring light. Then her struggles ceased and her moaning died away. She was wheeled out of sight.
What sort of death mill was this, anyhow? Obviously it was the ultimate fate for every victim of the Purple Fury.
Champlin’s net was elevating rapidly. Three Summiteers waited to take him—not with their bare hands, but with a huge power-driven cage.
The cage swung out, opening into two steel jaws. It stopped directly above the rising net. Champlin saw that it was a matter of seconds until that cage would close over him, net and all.
In his hand was the corn knife that Shorty Joe had thrown him. He stabbed at the cords of the net like a thrashing machine. He swung himself out through the gash, still clinging perilously with one hand.
He glanced down. How far might it be through that impenetrable dark?
He released his knife. As it fell he counted.
A moment of waiting—then, sploosh! Deep water! He let go the net; the closing cage scraped his arms as he fell.
From his count, Wayne Champlin had estimated the drop to be at least a hundred feet. He had once done an eighty-foot dive, and he remembered it vividly.
He turned slowly through the blackness—blackness—blackness! It was maddening.
Sploosh!
The unseen surface flew up at him like a floor. He pierced it as squarely as a plummeting bomb. At the risk of breaking his back, he cut his swift course upward; and luckily so, for he scraped rocks that projected from the bottom.
Lights were on him as he bobbed up. He caught half a breath, went down, sped far to one side. Three thuds like plunging bullets pounded against his ears.
Cautiously he came up behind a protecting barrier. The lights that swept back and forth couldn’t catch him here. For the moment he was safe.
He breathed hard. For the first time, he was aware of the painful burning over the skin of his legs. He hadn’t been suspended under the altar blazes to emerge unscathed.
The slick moist ceiling of this gigantic cavern now became dimly visible, the lights reflecting along its bumpy water-eaten surfaces. Wayne Champlin had the feeling of being imprisoned within the shell of a starfish of mountainous proportions. Numerous caverns branched off from the colossal bellshaped room. The low roar he heard was more than the echo of purple fire above. It was thousands of little waves resounding through thousands of caves—a bit of the ocean imprisoned.
A dark object was lowered down from aloft. Champlin’s breathing spell was over. The object was an inflated rubber boat occupied by two Summiteers. In a moment they were on the surface, unhitching.
Champlin waited to see which direction they would take. One of them worked the flashlight, and held a gun ready—one of Champlin’s new pistols. The other paddled. They came toward him.
He slipped under silently. He could not be seen swimming under these black waters. But he was still more at sea than ever as to their motives. Murder, certainly. Sadistic, cruel, heartless murder had been back of all their ritualistic fol-de-rol. But what of all those gleaming machines that lined that balcony? His burning curiosity, together with his need for a fresh breath, brought Champlin to the surface.
It was a mistake. From across the water the flashlight swept over him. A shot thundered through the caverns. A bullet ripped into the ceiling somewhere beyond him, and a row of little stalactites splashed into the water.
Champlin swam for dear life. He swam deep—but not toward one of the protecting rocks as his pursuers suspected; nor yet for one of the endless branch caverns. There was another little matter on his mind that must be cared for before he struck out; for any branch cavern he chose might turn out to be a dead-end.
He swam squarely for the center of the big chamber, and when he was directly beneath the Shrine he fought for depth.
He crawled down through the wilderness of slimy ragged rocks. His lungs were almost bursting, but he kept groping, he held on; and at the last possible moment of his endurance, luck was with him. He found the knife he had purposely dropped to test the depth.
Up to the surface like a cork, he caught his breath, bobbed under and was away before the spotlight and bullets bore down upon his wake.
He jammed the knife through his belt. For the next ten minutes he sped deep into one of the branch caverns. Each time he came up for air, he saw that the surface of the water and the ceiling were drawing closer together. He was evidently headed for a dead-end; but that did not worry him now, for he had at last shaken his pursuers.
Strange, Wayne Champlin thought, as he dragged himself up on a shelf above the water’s surface, into those deceptive formations nature will mold its stalactites and stalagmites. Dim though the light was, gleaming along the slick ceilings from distant points, he could see a stalagmite a few feet in front of him whose size and shape was that of a man—a bushy-bearded man.
Perhaps it was too thin for a perfect resemblance; its bones were too prominent. It was more like a skeleton, except for its eyes; which, for all the darkness, struck Champlin’s imagination as being a perfect representati
on of lusterless human orbs.
The eyes winked, the skeleton breathed, it spoke.
“You beat them out of your hide too!”
The voice was weak and cracked like the crowing of a sick rooster. The skeleton came closer.
CHAPTER VII
Douzel’s Last Stand
“Jake Douzel!” Champlin exclaimed. “What are you doing here?”
“Watching you put it over those nasty devils,” the skeleton replied. Then with a crackle of surprise, “How’d you know who I am?”
“I saw you the morning you killed the two Disps. A fine job, Douzel.”
“You think I’m a ghost, don’t you? Of course you do! Everybody does. I can’t come near anyone. They run from me.”
“You’re not a ghost,” said Champlin. “Far from it.”
“I don’t know whether I am or not. I don’t know anything any more. I’d forgot my name till you called it just now. I’m all knocked to hell. But I beat them out of my hide!”
In the dim light Champlin could see the gleam of fiery pride in the sallow face. But for that gleam, this grotesque figure might have been a dead, dehydrated human, echoing the cackling voice of a machine.
“I beat them out of my hide, same as you did.” Eagerly Jake Douzel told his story. When he fell, something had gone wrong with the net, and he had spilled over the side for a long drop.
“I didn’t get away with no handsome dive, like you did, Champ. Had a high tide with me too, but all the same I crushed my leg to pieces.”
“Lucky to get off with that.”
“Hell, yes. There ain’t been another to cheat them till you done it.”
“Do you live in here somewhere?” Champlin asked, as the crippled skeleton led the way along the dark rocky path.
“Back and forth,” said Douzel.
His talk became incoherent. He talked of his private fire, that the Summiteers never saw. He mentioned stealing food at night from the vulcatcher caches. He talked of starving, of eating fish and eels, of getting lost in the endless caves, of never being able to remember the way out.
“Then there is a way to swim out of here?” Champlin asked eagerly.
“Sometimes there is and sometimes there ain’t. It depends. If I’m trying to find a way out, there ain’t.”
“But that time you happened out on the surface to kill those two Disps—”
“That’s the only time I ever found it when I wanted it,” Douzel muttered. On that occasion he had heard the Summiteers talk over their plans, and he knew that Disps were being sent down to get Perribone for vulcatching.
Champlin was on fire with interest now.
“Then you can get close enough to yonder balcony to hear them talking? You know what all those machines are about? You’re onto their game?”
“Don’t know nothing,” Douzel cracked. “Don’t remember nothing I used to know. But you can get close, all right. Close enough for them to spit in your eye.”
He paused to gaze at Champlin’s corn knife.
“I wish to God we could get clean to them. We’d cut them in strips.”
Deep within a tunnel above the water level they came upon a tiny purple fire, Douzel’s underground refuge. The fire had been burning ever since he had first lighted it; for upon discovering this hideaway he had smelled the strange odor of escaping gas,[1] and had had the good sense to make use of its illumination.
Innumerable skeletons of fish were heaped in a corner. Fish were the principal diet in this hermit camp, though there were also small supplies of grain and moldly bread.
The thought of food was an inspiration to Champlin. A few minutes of hand fishing among the crags yielded results. With a hearty meal of fresh fried fish, the two refugees felt more like men, less like ghosts.
Among Douzel’s supplies was some grease, which Champlin applied as salve to his burns and spear wounds. Then he slept for hours on end.
Two lines of action were prodding at Wayne Champlin’s mind as he awakened. First he must find the way to swim out of here. Secondly, he must get a line on what this ritual-encrusted death mill was all about.
Jake Douzel led the way. Dragging his crippled leg with remarkable energy, he bounded along a tortuous dark ascent. Champlin felt like a blind man feeling his way through a lost world. The centuries of waves and mists and oozing moisture had eaten away countless nooks and alcoves in the limestone, and here and there were stalactites for hand holds.
“Here,” the crippled ghost whispered tensely. “This is the top.”
The nook was a scanty fifty feet from the balcony at the top. Champlin could see that the trail ended here. Further ascent toward the Summiteers’ stronghold would be as impossible as climbing the inside of a cathedral dome whose walls were greased. But at any rate, the show could be seen from here; and even the acoustics were passable, so long as the caverns were not roaring too loudly with waves.
The voice of one of the Summiteers carried down to them with startling clarity.
“Malcinder!” the Summiteer called.
“He’ll be here at once,” another Summiteer answered. “Are the new Disps ready? Bring them in.”
A string of seven or eight spruced-up young Disps filed into the balcony. The artificial lights shone through their silk purple and gold shirts. In a moment Clay Malcinder strode around from the other side, faced them sternly.
At the sight of Malcinder, Champlin’s fists tightened. Well remembered was the glee with which Clay Malcinder had witnessed the sacrifice of his parents. Many were the insults that Wayne Champlin had endured as a boy from this arrogant, cruel Summiteer. But never had Champlin’s fists had a chance at that proud face, for Summiteer children were always too well protected. They were never to be caught out in the open.
“What’s happening here?” Champlin whispered to the bushy-bearded skeleton beside him. “Initiation?”
“If you figure it out, tell me,” Douzel returned. “They don’t talk sense up there.”
Champlin watched breathlessly.
These young Disps were to be treated to the innermost secrets of the Summiteers.
“Your good work against the rebellious Grubbers,” Malcinder spoke crisply, and there was no mockery in his voice now, “proves that you have a healthy taste for blood. You have earned the right to be introduced into the mysteries that underlie this Shrine.
“Many of the Higher-ups—even some of the Summiteers themselves,” Malcinder continued, “don’t have the stomach for these facts I’m going to tell you. My own parents, I’m ashamed to say, have closed their eyes to the whole business. They prefer simply to believe in the monster god of their childhood. But there is more. It has taken more than a smoky monster to make this island one of the world’s most dependable human body marts.”
He paused, searched the faces of each of the Disps. Their eager appetites for the bloody business initiated by their superiors reassured him.
“Some lily-livers would consider this enterprise cold-blooded; but I don’t see any weak sisters among you. The selling of human bodies is simply a business, and no Summiteer or Disp mixes sentiment with his business. After all, there’s nothing sentimental about the body of a Grubber.
The Disps laughed lightly, and their response pleased Clay Malcinder. He explained then that this selling of human bodies had been the business of the Summiteers for generations. The wealth they and the Disps rolled in came not from the Grubbers’ toil but from the Grubbers’ corpses.
“Our chief market is AHDA—the Asiatic Human Dissection Association. AHDA can order bodies of any age or sex. We can supply them within days.
“You are already familiar with the method by which these bodies are secured: the sacred—ahem!—ritual of sacrifice. But as to the means of preparing our products for shipment—let us demonstrate.”
One of the assisting Summiteers drew back a curtain to reveal a number of naked forms lying on a bench—the harvest from the recent Grubber encounter.
The shipping port, M
alcinder revealed, was on the mainland some five miles distant. Quick transportation to that point was afforded by a natural water-filled tunnel which had been equipped with power-drawn cables.
“Here is the car,” said one of the Summiteers, indicating a long watertight, coffin-shaped box that clung to the cable. He opened it. It was large enough for two or three bodies. It could be opened, moreover, from the inside. Thus it was usable by the Summiteers for their own transportation to the mainland station. Apparently they did not mind riding as passengers in a compartment which corpses would occupy on the next trip.
“I’ll go over now,” said the Summiteer, crawling into the car. “Send the bodies after me. I’ll unload them and box them up for shipment.” The Summiteer closed himself in. In the days to come, Wayne Champlin was to see this process frequently repeated by Summiteers who chanced to have duties on the mainland.
Malcinder touched a silvery lever, the car accelerated down the inclined cable track. It melted off into the blackness and splashed into the water level like a torpedo. Automatically it gained speed. In three minutes it was across.
The Disps stayed to see the empty car return. They were told to load it with bodies. It was then that one of the Disps, who had been engrossed in the array of scientific paraphernalia, asked the vital question.
“Are these bodies dead?”
As he blurted the words a body slipped from his arms; something in the touch had amazed him.
Clay Malcinder answered.
“We’ve learned many things about preserving bodies for dissection here in this laboratory—having had an abundance of ‘raw material’,” he said.
He glanced at the row of vari-colored glowing lamps, the shelves of serums, the urns of powders, the operating tables. It was here, obviously, that the bodies were prepared for preservation.
“Our most important discovery is that AHDA pays us splendidly if the bodies are still alive—or, I might say, nearly so.”
