The Earth-Tube

by Gawain Edwards

  The wonder and the simplicity of this device; the beauty and proportions of the Asian architecture and design! King was carried away by the sight as he stood at the edge of the dome-chamber and gazed about him. The floor and walls were smooth and clean as glass, and in the middle of the room, curbed about with a thick wall which rose abruptly from the floor, was the mouth of the endless wall which went down through the ancient earth to Asia. At the joining of the city floor with the earth-tube there was neither seam nor rivet. Like a hollow bolt of metal stretched the tube through the earth, holding the hemispheres in an indestructible metallic embrace, headed at either end with a metal cap and a city of folk who never saw the sun.

  There were six openings in the walls of the dome-chamber, in addition to the two car galleries. Upon these openings, which were fitted with grooved doors of metal, converged the avenues of the city. At four of the portals, one in each quadrant, were the doors to twelve avenues, three at each opening. The two other portals were opposite each other and exactly between the great doors of the car-chambers on either side. Here began the two largest avenues of the city, one running south and east to the great eye-portal where King had gained entrance, the other in an exactly opposite direction, to the causeway, and along it to the mainland.

  These were the only openings in the dome-chamber, and all could be closed against the scalding steam and the noise of the earth-car’s arrival. The avenues of the upper floors were reached, King saw, by elevators which were arranged in the walls just outside the chamber. They were automatic and worked with tremendous speed. Toward one of them Diane now was making her way, through crowds of slaves and workers who stepped aside respectfully as she approached.

  King perceived now that every one wore a uniform in this strange city. Certain of the slave drivers were dressed brightly in crimson and purple and wore long walrus mustaches which gave them an exceedingly fierce appearance. Others wore trim, pointed beards, like physicians. A few were smooth-shaven, but not many. As to the hair, it was handled in a number of different ways, according to the caste of the wearer. In most cases it was uncut and could be coiled upon the head or braided at the back or thrown loosely over the shoulders.

  But in all, the most striking thing about the appearance of the true Asians, of whom there were many despite the mixture of the races, was the peculiar vacant stare, the set features, and the open mouth. characteristics which seemed to be shared by all. In their set features there was something grotesque and horrible, like the expressionless faces of the early mechanical robots. It appeared impossible for these people to cover their teeth with their lips. As a result they wore always a kind of machinelike grin, mirthless and terrifying. Their teeth were large, square and regular; almost, though smaller in size, like those of a horse. Their eyes, if they expressed any human emotion whatever, were filled with malice. King’s flesh cringed at the touch of them. It seemed to him that pressing a button would cause those horrible eyes to light up like incandescent bulbs, the teeth to clash like shearing knives, and the legs and hands to pump up and down like pistons.

  Diane saw that he was not following her closely; that he had for the moment forgotten his character to stare at the strange things about him. Turning quickly, as if to avoid a group of workmen, she passed close by him and whispered. “Be careful; they are watching you!”

  Rapidly they went through the crowds then and entered an elevator. Not more than a dozen other persons were in it when the doors closed. The mechanism beneath the floor clicked; a light glowed, and they were shot upward almost with the speed of a bullet. King nearly betrayed himself by clutching at the wall for support. The others, used to the speed, had braced themselves. Fortunately, none of them perceived his strange actions, and he recovered his balance before his awkwardness was detected.

  He could hear the air rushing past them in the shaft as they went upward. It seemed they must have gone miles before the car began to slow down again. The light overhead grew dim and went out though the interior of the car was still brightly lighted from the glowing walls. The machine stopped, gently enough, on the laboratory floor, and the others stepped aside to let Diane and King pass.

  Down a long corridor they went, both feeling keenly the gravity of the step they were about to take. King would have liked a final conference with Diane; he had many questions to ask, but there were other persons in sight, some of them coming toward them, others loitering in the passageway. Several police were in sight, plainly recognizable by their bright uniforms and short clubs.

  King touched the automatic, where it was hidden in his clothing, and wondered if he could get at it quickly enough should need arise. Despite the growing danger, Diane went resolutely on, and King followed. Down the corridor a short distance they came to a wide door, and through it went Diane. King saw that they had entered an antechamber of curious design, with modernistic frescoes upon the walls. At a massive desk sat an attendant, who stood up when Diane entered, asking her several questions rapidly. She replied in Asian, and the attendant firmly shook his head. There was a poster of some kind upon the wall. He pointed to it and shook his head in negation a second time. Without reply, Diane turned and retraced her steps to the hall, moving angrily. King, puzzled by this turn of affairs, followed her down the corridor where, a few hundred feet beyond the laboratory door, there was a small alcove.

  “There is a new rule; they will let no more visitors in,” whispered Diane. “There is no use arguing with them. A new rule or an old one would be obeyed by that attendant if it cost him his life.”

  “Then we must take his life,” replied King. “I have a weapon that will get us past that door. “

  Diane shook her head.

  “Don’t be foolish,” she said. “We might get in, but we’d never get out again.”

  “But we must get in,” continued King. “Is there another entrance?”

  Diane thought for a few moments before she replied.

  “Some time ago,” she said, “I heard that there was a secret way into the laboratories from the rear, used only by the Mui Salvos and the most learned of the scientists. It was built to enable them to put into practice the secret formula for destroying undulal during hours when others would be barred from the laboratories.”

  “Can you find it? Do you know where it is?”

  “Perhaps,” returned Diane. “But I tell you, our chance of getting through safely is small, and we would be put to death without question if we were caught.”

  “Nevertheless. “

  Diane quickly put her finger to her lips, and began addressing him volubly in Asian, as if she were scolding him. King nodded and looked ashamed, for out of the corner of his eye he had seen what had alarmed her.

  Across the way, apparently attracted by the sound of their whispering, a policeman had taken up his station, and was staring at them curiously. Diane signaled King to come on and swept down the areaway toward the elevator, glancing haughtily at the patrolman as she passed. He made no sound or movement in response, but he followed her suspiciously with his eyes until the doors of the elevator had closed upon both of them.

  When they had gone he took a small transmitter from his tunic and signaled the police on the ground floor to be on watch for the chosen woman and her awkward manservant when they arrived. He had no evidence against either, he reported, but he had seen certain actions which appeared worth looking into. The police of the ground floor signaled back that the couple would be taken into custody upon their arrival and subjected to a close examination.

  III

  The Asians had a name for their metal city. It was called Tiplis, signifying western. The city at the other end of the earth-tube, which had been built upon a plan almost identical, was similarly named, being called Tanlis, which meant eastern. These gate cities were the pride of the empire, and in them, because there man could be surrounded completely by metal of his own making and served by mechanical servants which had been fashioned by his own hands and enjoy his own weather and light
and temperature and time, lived most of the great men of the empire, either in Tiplis or Tanlis, or alternating between them. The emperor, however, the great Tal Majod, lived in a metal palace of great beauty and extravagant design not far from Tanlis, on the large Asian island where once Japan had been.

  Tiplis was a labyrinth. Despite its regular geometric pattern, its even streets and straight avenues, its floors and levels, there were throughout its height and breadth strange sub-passages which penetrated levels not to be reached by ordinary means, and many of which had been built for reasons known only to the Asian engineers who had planned the city months before the foundations were laid.

  Only those men whose right and duty it was to use them knew of these hidden passageways. They were, in nearly every case, trusted members of the higher classes, generally mechanics or scientists. As the religion of the people taught them that the machine was immortal, and that undulal, once made, could never pass away, it was necessary in many cases, where alterations of undulal structures or machines were to be made, to do the work in secret. Hence the ten Mui Salvos, who had the secret of the undulal, were masters of deception and the use of roundabout passageways. It was a part of their lives to live and move unseen, to be mysterious shadows who appeared and disappeared, never to become entities in the lives of the slaves and the lesser lords of Asia.

  It was toward the entrance of one of these secret passages that King and Diane were making their way. Fortunately they had not remained in the elevator until it had reached the ground floor, where the police were waiting for them, but had brought it to a momentary stop on an intermediate floor and had let it continue on downward without them. Avoiding suspicion as far as possible, they had moved from passageway to passageway until, far out toward the city’s covering shell, they had found an area where the lights were less bright than in the other sections and where there were no persons in the streets.

  “It is a kind of storage space,” Diane whispered. “For a few minutes I believe that we can rest and hide here, while we catch our breath and decide how to proceed. I am convinced, from what I have heard, that the beginning of the passageway we are looking for is somewhere near. Presently we shall make a thorough search for it.”

  They were sheltered from direct view down the ball-like street by a series of curved niches. They drew back closely against the wall, while Diane continued to speak, in a low voice.

  “I am almost certain,” she said, “that the police are looking for us. I had a feeling when that fellow stared at us as we walked out of the upper street that he would turn in an alarm. When they find that we have stepped off somewhere between the floors, they will soon organize a searching party. Without doubt they will come upon us sooner or later if we are still in the public passages.”

  King indicated her costume.

  “Will their laws allow them to arrest you, when you are marked with this as the property of the supreme power of the nation?”

  Diane breathed deeply. “The Asians have no absurd ideas about individuality or liberty as have the Americans,” she replied. “They may seize and search any one, at any time. It is enough to suspect that a person is dangerous to the morale of the State to bring him to trial and to cause his death. You need not look for civil liberties here, and even if I were already the wife of Tal Majod; if, indeed, I were about to bear him a child, it would make no difference. No person and no condition is sacred here.

  “To understand the Asians you must understand that to them the person is nothing, the nation everything. No. my costume will not protect us if we are caught. Nothing will protect us but good luck and quickness.”

  They were silent for a moment, standing close together in the little hollowed place. King could feel that her heart was beating rapidly. His own circulation had been quickened by the imminent danger into which the necessary venture had thrust not only himself but the woman who seemed to him at that moment the loveliest being in the world.

  “Now we must try to locate the hidden passage,” she whispered. “But before we go, we had better eat. It must be hours since you have had food.”

  It occurred to King that this was true. In his supplies, most of which he had left in Diane’s apartment, there were emergency rations, but he had not found time to touch them. Now he had nothing with him.

  “But what will we eat?” he asked. “What do the Asians eat and where? I have not seen a meal since I’ve been here.”

  She laughed lightly, forgetting the danger in her amusement.

  “Nor are you likely to,” she said. “The business of eating, except in the royal court and at state functions of various kinds, is no longer a ceremony here. The Asians have long ago worked out concentrated foods, as you might expect, and refueling the body is as perfunctory and mechanical a business as refueling a motor; and sometimes,” she added with a smile, “almost as distasteful.”

  As she spoke she felt inside a small pouch which King had noticed depending from her girdle and took out several brownish, flat tablets. “You will need about two,” she remarked, placing them in his hand. “Don’t expect too much in the way of flavor.”

  King put one of the tablets on his tongue. There was a faint chocolaty taste, accompanied by a tingling sensation. The tablet melted away slowly. Gradually the tingling extended to his flesh; every nerve seemed to catch it up and carry it along, producing the most delightful sense of vitality and energy. In some manner the pangs of hunger, which had been noticeable when his attention had been called to them, had disappeared, and his stomach seemed satisfied, though nothing whatever had entered it. Quickly he took the second tablet. It produced no additional effect and seemed to melt more slowly upon his tongue.

  “If you swallow it,” Diane said, watching with amusement, “it will continue to supply you with energy as long as it lasts. In that manner you could take several of these tablets as you might load the magazine of a rifle. They will give off their energy to you only as it is needed. They are really remarkable substances, as producers of strength. but as foods; well. “ She made a grimace. “You can see for yourself that sooner or later, energy or no energy, a big dinner with plenty of meat and potatoes and vegetables and salad would taste pretty good.”

  In another moment her mind had returned to the serious business at hand. She was correct about the activities of the police. Already they had sent out searching squads, and the various levels had been checked to see if the suspected couple had passed that way. Now more than a hundred police, working in small parties through the various streets, were converging upon the spot where King and Diane were hiding, making their way slowly, carefully, observing and examining every nook where the fugitives might be hiding.

  Their suspicions were by this time fully aroused. It was not like an innocent woman of the Tal Majod and her equally innocent servant to enter an elevator ostensibly bound for one floor, and to get off secretly at another. That was in itself sufficient evidence to convict in this most suspicious of cities, where, in addition to the strictness accompanying the policing of any civilization in time of war, a continual surveillance had been found necessary to counteract the plots of the enslaved foreigners.

  Diane had sensed, even before the search had reached the level upon which they were hiding, that the police had found the right trail and that their time would be brief.

  “We must find the secret passage quickly,” she whispered. “It begins somewhere in this section. Press especially upon any discolored spots you may see in the smooth wall, about the height of a man’s head, or upon any little knobs or imperfections. My only knowledge of this passage was gained,” she explained, “when I was still a slave, working in the gangs which daily clean and patrol the public ways. I learned of it from a fellow slave who had accidentally stumbled upon it, but who had been prevented from exploring by the guards.

  “He told me that the passage apparently led to the laboratory floor, and that he thought he had seen a Mui Salvo, whom he recognized by the flowing black costume, come out of
it. He concluded that it was one of the secret passages frequently used by these men and closely guarded by them. Later in the day, his work permitting him to go near the spot, my friend passed his hand along the wall and quite by accident came upon the hidden spring or button which opened the door.

  “In a moment the guards were upon him, and though he protested that he had only leaned against the wall without knowing what would ensue, they beat him so unmercifully that he was disabled for several days. It was weeks afterward that he mentioned it to me, cautioning me never to tell where I had gotten the information and never to make use of it except in the greatest need. A few days later he died, I believe from his injuries and the continued brutal treatment he received at the hands of the slave drivers, who would not let up on him.

  “After his death they cast his body where they throw all such refuse here. down the earth-tube. It was, of course, consumed by the unmeasurable internal heat of the earth, and the ashes were blown out again by the winds which rush before and after the car as it passes through.”

  As she made this recital, Diane was already exploring the glassy wall with her hands. King followed her example, his fingers trembling with the series of curious emotions and impulses which were sweeping through him. The food tablets had quite revived his energies; he felt refreshed even though for nearly thirty hours he had taken no sleep. The tingling sensation, which was somewhat akin to slight intoxication induced by wine, exhilarated him, made him somewhat oblivious to the dangers of their position, yet drew his senses to a keenness which was a new and wonderful experience.

  They went down the passage a great way, one on each side, moving their hands along the wall, exploring with eager fingers. But nothing happened. With emotions almost amounting to panic Diane turned into a cross passage and began to work in the same manner along the wall there, with King on the other side, his hands also moving eagerly upon the metallic surface. The walls in that section were not lighted brightly; it was not easy to see what they were doing. The expanses of metal on either side seemed endlessly glassy and smooth, with no panels or other decorative features which might have hidden a secret spring or given concealment to the edges of an opening. It seemed like hopeless work, and after ten or fifteen minutes of it Diane called a halt to take counsel.