by Don Wilcox
On the eighteenth step he paused again, looked up at the blades, and smiled to himself. He could imagine how agitated they must be, how terribly eager, watching and waiting for him to take those last few steps. He kept his eyes on the blades and began to back down the steps.
“I’ll play their game,” he thought. “I’ll work them into a frenzy. Then what will they do with me?”
For a full hour he did play the game, and all the while he knew, from the tiny sounds, that his hidden audience was being worked into a cold sweat.
Sometimes he would climb the stairs briskly, as if fully determined to walk right in. Then he would stop abruptly, and hesitate for minutes, as if debating, finally shaking his head and descending dejectedly. Sometimes he would retreat all the way across the Arena floor. Then, as he started out, he would look back, and be tempted all over again.
He knew the king’s impatient temperament simply would not be able to endure the waiting, and he was right.
Presently the king was crossing the floor toward him.
“I couldn’t sleep, Randall.” The king was breathing hard. His fingers were twitching. “I felt that I had done you an injustice.”
“How so?”
“By refusing to let you—” the king preferred to whisper. “Why don’t you go ahead and break the law? With everyone in bed asleep, why don’t you go on in? No one will know.”
“You’re coaxing me to go in, Cousin Levaggo?”
“For your own piece of mind, yes.”
“Very well.” Again he mounted the stairs, this time to the twentieth step, and two paces beyond, so that he stood within, inches of the deadly doorway. “Why don’t you come along, Levaggo?”
“Me? Oh, no. I’ll keep watch. You go ahead.”
“I’ll keep watch,” said Randall. “You go.”
Within a few minutes, Whiteblock, who saw that the king was in danger of spoiling the whole set-up by his nervous manner, decided to come out of hiding and join the effort.
Within a few more minutes, the whole Council had appeared, quite as if by chance, to add their moral pressure to the campaign. The argument took various turns and twists, and at last Prince Randall sat down on the twentieth step and laughed.
“All right, gentlemen, I am about to enter the Red Door. You’ve tried so hard, coaxing and cajoling me in every possible way. The least I can do is reward you by walking in and looking over the documents to my heart’s content. But I am disappointed that none of you will go in with me.”
He looked at the king and Whiteblock, each standing on the nineteenth step, and at the Council, who had arranged themselves on the seventeenth and eighteenth steps.
“But before I walk in, let me tell you something about the blades in the doorway. You would say that they are motionless, wouldn’t you, Levaggo?”
“Of course they are. You can see that for yourself.”
“No, I can’t,” Randall said, and smiled with gleaming teeth. Then he grew very serious, like an earnest teacher delivering a lecture. “I would say that they are rotating at high speed. I would say that they only appear to be stationary because they are synchronized with the light. Do you Councilmen understand what that means?”
From the blank expressions it was quite apparent that the Councilmen understood absolutely nothing.
“I’ll explain,” said Randall, “for the benefit of you who appear a little more innocent than your friend Whiteblock. The image of any light is retained in your eyes for a split second. That’s the reason a light may appear to be a constant glow when actually it is a rapid series of flickers. From the stationary appearance of those steel arms, it’s plain to me that we are in the dark more than half the time. But the flashes of light are coming at us fast and regular, and they’re timed to catch the knives at the same position on each round. It’s a simple principle, Levaggo. Your chauffeur could explain it as well as I. Ask him about the workings of a stroboscope some day and he’ll tell you. Do I make myself clear?”
The king said nothing. He was as white as a chilled chicken. But some member of the Council murmured that he didn’t understand a thing.
Whiteblock was brazen. “The prince is trying to accuse us of sending him into a wheel of death. He’s mistaken, of course.”
“Then why are the rest of you afraid to walk through the door?”
“We’re not afraid,” said Whiteblock. “It’s out of respect for the law. If there was any reason to walk through—”
“I’ll make it worth your while,” said Randall. He lifted the emerald medal off the king’s chest like a magician snatching a watch out of a concealed pocket. He slid the object onto the stone floor. It scooted for about three yards and came to rest well inside the Red Door. “Why don’t you go in and pick it up?”
“Why don’t you?” Whiteblock retorted hotly. “Maybe the king would let you have it for a souvenir.”
The king nodded. “Indeed, indeed.”
“Then it’s mine,” said Randall. He straightened, drew a deep breath, and strode straight through the doorway. He looked back at the eight gaping spectators. “So it’s mine.”
He saw that Whiteblock’s eyes were flashing fire.
“So it’s mine,” Randall repeated and he bent down slowly and picked it up.
The king blurted. “The damned thing’s not going. Whiteblock! The damned thing—”
“Shut up!” Whiteblock, still eyeing the medal greedily, sprang over the twentieth step and marched into the doorway. “I’ll take that—”
His last words. Within a yard of Randall, he was sliced away into nothingness.
Randall stood, gazing back at the open-mouthed members of the Council and the flabbergasted, dumbfounded king. Between himself and them there appeared to be absolutely nothing.
There was certainly not one shred of the late Whiteblock.
CHAPTER VI
Descent to the Laboratory
The king was confined to his bed.
The whole palace was in an uproar. The facts had leaked out through the Council. A deliberately planned murder had gone awry, it appeared, though no one dared say it.
Everyone was speculating over what would happen when the Old Lady took charge of the Randello Tenth Anniversary Memorial Service. Those few members of the court who wished to prove their loyalty to King Levaggo begged her to postpone the service until the king was ready. But others said, “Don’t wait for him. He’ll play sick all winter, just to keep from facing the facts.”
The guards visited him, from time to time; his chauffeur, a lantern-jawed, gangling, bow-legged fellow known as Muggs, paid his respects daily. The cook brought him special dishes, and tasted them in Levaggo’s presence to allay any suspicion that they might be filled with poison.
A heavy guard was kept stationed at the Red Door day and night. It was hardly necessary. No one dreamed of trying to enter after what had happened. Muggs, the chauffeur, and some of the mechanics and electricians from the power plant and the village offered to pry into the mysterious door mechanism. But the king forbade it.
So the Red Door continued to hum quietly, and its balanced seven-foot scimitars seemed to stand as motionless within the arch as ever.
But the rumor that Prince Randall had successfully defied this death trap and had walked through it unscathed was a story to spread like wildfire.
“He’s young and handsome, a dashing young soldier back from the wars,” the gossiping villagers would say, “and he’s in love with that beautiful servant girl, Sondra. She’s really some sort of entertainer, and they say she tells your fortune from your dreams!”
“Can she defy the Red Door too?” others would ask.
“They say that she wants to. She has a notion that the Old Lady will make Randall the king and Sondra the queen if she can learn to walk through death the way he does.”
“But how can she learn?”
“That’s something the Old Lady won’t tell anyone. I took a plate of cookies to her yesterday and she told me pract
ically everything. All about how grieved she was over losing Sebastian her servant. She’s just sure the Red Door got him, and she thinks the king did it. But she wouldn’t say a word about the prince and Sondra. Maybe she’ll just leave them to their own troubles.”
So the gossip went. But it sharpened on the morning that an automobile rolled out of the palace grounds before daylight. Sleepy villagers who hurried to their windows were probably too late to see it go, for it shot away at great speed as soon as it was out on the highway.
But if those vigilant villagers lingered at their windows for as much as five minutes, they were rewarded by seeing another car race off in the same direction. “The Old Lady! And she’s got a chauffeur! Who do you suppose she’s chasing so early in the morning?” Randall and Sondra did not know they were being followed. They thought they had made a clean getaway.
They wound around the mountains of Askandia until they came to a seemingly forgotten road. Soon they were driving up to the entrance of what might have been a deserted mine.
“There’s been a bit of landslide,” Randall observed, braking to a stop. “Otherwise we’d be able to drive right in. Are you good for the walk?”
“Lead on,” said Sondra.
They climbed over the heap of fallen stones that had threatened to block the doorway, and soon found themselves within a zigzagging tunnel.
The turns were sharp, sharper than right angles, with the switchback effect of mountain roads, all enclosed within walls of rock. Deeper and deeper. The irony blueness of the rocky surfaces added to the feeling of depth. A touch of a switch had turned on a circuit of electric lights, one dim bulb at each turn. Much too dim, Sondra thought. Like something out of her half forgotten dreams. She felt that there were observers lurking around those dark corners. She clung to Randall’s hand.
The smells of deeper air. The warmth of the earth’s subterranean chambers. Then, to Sondra’s relief, signs of civilization. Here was an American army jeep parked in the very center of the passage. They walked around it and hurried on. There were drums of fuel.
“If it’s much farther, we might drive,” she suggested.
“We’re almost there, Sondra. Are you sure you want to go through with this?”
“I’m sure, Randall. Even if I didn’t trust my own dreams, even if I didn’t trust the Old Lady—and I do, very much—I will still trust you above all people.”
He must have liked her answer. His head was high with pride, his eyes were on fire with purpose. He was strong and brave, as a prince should be. But he also had that rare quality that women admire so much in men—a full understanding and appreciation of the strength and courage she brought to him.
“What tremendous instruments!” she gasped. As they rounded the corner into a great laboratory chamber, the brighter lights that shone in long parallel bars from the walls revealed a more complicated sight than she could begin to begin to understand.
A few things were familiar—certain instruments of warfare. Fuel barrels. A truck. In a distant corner, a small airplane.
But the great machine in the center of the room, more intricate than her most fanciful dream, was a mystery that she had no words to describe. Around it were immense tubes, like the bodies of dirigibles set up on end, all shining with glossy purple metal, seemingly alive under bars of violet light.
There was not a soul here; and yet Sondra felt as if she were in the presence of a thousand master minds, all of whom had fixed themselves into something timeless, through these great monsters of power. Now that Randall had snapped a master switch, instrument boards had lighted along the platforms halfway up the side of the central machine. Generators hummed softly, gadgets came to life with pinpoints of light, immense governors began to spin. Huge glass spheres glowed with colored light, revealing smaller spheres within, and still tinier globes in the center. A flare of sparks played back and forth through their surfaces.
“Are you frightened, Sondra?”
“Do I look frightened?”
“You look fascinated.”
“That’s it. Not frightened. Not with you.”
“Here we are, at the end of the room.”
The long subterranean chamber tapered beyond the vast machine, but the end was quite rounded out, with a hollowed-out effect. It was streaked with weird shadows from the fall of rocks that had been shattered and pulverized, as if from some terrific explosion.
High overhead, Sondra observed, the hollowed-out effect was still more pronounced. The rock seemed to have been eaten away for many yards up into the mountain overhead, so that a black emptiness hung over them.
“It’s like a stage,” Sondra said. “Somewhere up there the curtains are ready to descend.”
“Do you feel that the curtain is about to descend, dear?” He seemed troubled over her comparison. What did he mean? Did he think she was speaking of impending death?
“I didn’t mean—I was just comparing it to the first big auditorium I played in back in India,” she said. “It was vast, like this, and I didn’t know what was going to happen. I mean, there was a big audience out in front, and my father knew I was scared.”
“I’m your only audience this time.” said Randall. Then looking around apprehensively, he added, “At least, I hope so.”
They both stood breathless for a moment, listening. The rustle of sound from the distant tunnel was perhaps nothing more ominous than a tiny landslide of loosened stones.
“I am wishing you luck, Sondra,” the prince said. He held her tight for a long moment and kissed her: At last he led her to the wall. “Stand here. Don’t move. Just stand.”
He walked away from her determinedly. He glanced at his watch. His nerves quickened.
Some fifty yards from where she stood, there hung a cable with a hook. There were four or five small buckets of stones lined along the wall. He climbed up on a bit of ledge and hung one of the weighted buckets on the hook.
It took her a moment to be sure.
Yes, the weight was descending slowly drawing the cable down. Out across the line of crisscrossed cables toward the big machine, she saw three huge rollers, like the cylinders of a printing press, beginning to turn. One very slowly, the second somewhat more rapidly. The third was not only rotating but was riding away from the other two, across the top of the machine. The, intricate actions of other parts of the mechanism were partially revealed by the reflected glow of several dull yellow lights along the machine’s vast shoulders.
Now all the lights were brightening, and the whole cavern became a place of such intense brilliance that Sondra was nearly forced to close her eyes. Those broken edges of natural rock might have been studded with diamonds.
But the most noticeable and by far the most ominous of all the effects that hanging the weight on the cable had apparently started was the movement of the massive black gun which projected from the very center of the machine.
It was a blunt-nosed cannon. Not more than thirty feet in length, it was so wide of diameter that it might have belched forth a small piano or a jeep.
It had been pointed upward, into the overhead cavern. Now it was slowly descending, black, glistening, frightening, and at last it was pointing directly at Sondra. There it stopped.
There was a moment of breathless silence. The easy whirr of well oiled machines ceased. There was a smell of heat in the air, like train brakes. No movement. No sound.
Sondra looked to Randall. Was this it? Was it happening—whatever it was that must happen? At a distance of several yards he was sitting crouched against the wall, his shoulders drawn tight with tension, his elbows hard against his sides. He nodded to her grimly, as if to say, “Stay right where you are. Don’t move. Just wait.”
Then suddenly he put his fingers to his ears.
A glow of green sparks rattled over the heaps of machinery. Everything was alive with the crackle of sparks.
Then for one blinding instant the light struck—a flash of fire that was like the end of the universe. That was al
l. All consciousness ended for Sondra.
CHAPTER VII
The Old Lady Gets an Eyeful
The Old Lady had followed, all the way to the tunnel entrance, in the company of Muggs, the king’s gangling, lantern-jawed chauffeur.
The Old Lady didn’t like Muggs. She never had. He was one person she never understood. Partly because he talked with an accent. Too much of the Arabian in his speech. She wouldn’t have minded that if he had ever had anything to say. He was too dumb for any use. He wouldn’t even argue with her.
“Don’t pretend you like these rocky roads,” she had grumbled along the way, after he had been driving for miles without saying a word. “You know you don’t like them.”
“Yes, ma’am,” said Muggs. No spirit whatever.
“As a driver, you’re about as safe as a monkey,” she said.
He gave a nod, as if fully contented to accept her verdict.
“What are you, an idiot?” she growled. “Don’t you ever get mad?” He shrugged and concentrated upon the hairpin curve as if doubting that he would make it. She wondered. Maybe it took all his feeble concentration to control the car. Well, anyway she was glad she hadn’t driven herself. Her physician was right, driving was much too strenuous for one of her age, especially in these mountains.
They parked when the half-blocked tunnel entrance stopped them. There was the car they had followed. Its two passengers had evidently wasted no time following the tunnel to whatever destination it might lead to.
“Wait for me right here, Muggs.”
“How long?”
“However long it is, you wait,” the Old Lady snapped.
“I’ll get hungry after awhile.”
“Don’t tell me!”
Well, maybe the fellow did have some spunk after all.
During the next half hour, as she followed down the long zigzag trail, she grew increasingly uneasy about him. Maybe he would wait, maybe he wouldn’t. She had taken the car key, but as a chauffeur he undoubtedly carried an extra.
Her worries were cut short when she came in view of the world of underground machinery. The mystery of this place started a chain of wild fancies in her mind. What were these great mechanisms intended to accomplish? She recalled the pictures she had seen of atom bomb factories in America. She knew, as everyone knew, of the limitless destruction that this awful source of power could achieve. She had read, too, that the usefulness of its mysteries had only begun to be explored.
