by Eando Binder
Miribel had watched which controls were used and before long the spidery arm withdrew, letting Thane free. He grabbed her hand. “Now, while they meet the mythical attack, we’ll slip away.”
They crept out of the chamber, looking both ways. But there was no need for caution. All the Vexxans were running down the corridor in frenzied haste, taking no notice of the two prisoners.
“Too risky trying to slip into one of their saucers and fly away,” Thane decided. “We’ll have to find a tunnel or cave passageway going out of this Vexxan nest that will lead us to the surface world.”
Hugging a rock wall of the giant underground city, they moved along until they came to a passageway leading out. But a Vexxan guard stood there stolidly, not in a state of panic like most of the rest. “Halt,” he growled. “You are the Vigilante prisoners. You won’t escape.”
He began drawing his tubular handgun but before he finished, Thane had leaped at him, bringing his foot up and upper-cutting the dwarf with all his power. The dwarf dropped his gun, but did not fall. Shaking his head, he leaped at Thane like a football player, grabbing him around the legs and slamming him to the rocky ground with a sickening thud.
Thane lay stunned for a moment. With a malicious grin the Vexxan prepared to leap with both feet and crush his chest. But Miribel had been staring up at a stalactite that hung above in the vaulted chamber’s roof. Suddenly it cracked and came plunging down, piercing the Vexxan in mid-leap. With an unearthly scream, he fell back dead.
“Psychokinesis,” explained the girl briefly. “Sometimes our psy-powers come in handy.”
“Handy?” panted Thane, pulling himself up from the floor. “That was downright miraculous.”
Now they were free to dash into the lead-off passageway. Glancing behind, Thane grinned as he saw hundreds of Vexxans manning big ray-cannons and awaiting the Vigilante attack that would never come.
He sobered. “How far underground are we? Five miles? Ten miles? We’ve got a tough climb ahead of us—if we don’t lose our way.”
Both premonitions came true. For an hour they followed various natural tunnels dimly lit by phosphorescent mosses. They all snaked upward at a slant with a grade of ten degrees or more.
“Worse than climbing a mountain,” panted Thane. Then, they came to a blank rock wall. “Back to the last cross corridor,” said Thane wearily. But when they retraced their steps and took the cross corridor, it soon branched out into a dozen other passageways, none of which curved upward.
“They all slant down,” gasped Miribel. “Are we lost in an endless underground maze? But I’ll try my clairvoyance…”
Her forehead showed beads of sweat as she concentrated. Finally she said in dismay, “It won’t work. Clairvoyance is tricky and undependable. Magnetic fields… radioactivity in the rocks… many things can throw it off. I’m sorry, Thane.”
“Listen,” said Thane, cocking an ear back of them. “Those sounds. The Vexxans realized it was a hoax. They’re after us.”
“Following us with an alpha brain-wave detector no doubt,” Miribel groaned. “If we don’t find a way through this labyrinth to the surface soon, they’ll catch up…”
Thane fished a packet of matches from his coat pocket and was now lighting them one by one, holding each at a different passageway. “Ah,” he said finally, as the match flame flickered and blew away from the entrance of one tunnel. “A current of air from the surface, seeping down into these caves. There’s our way to freedom. Let’s go, on the double.”
The two of them loped down that tunnel. Soon their feet met an uprise in the rocky floor. The sounds behind them grew no fainter, but neither did they get louder. “We’re keeping ahead of them,” Thane puffed. “I figure we’ve climbed several miles. The surface breeze is getting stronger. We must be near the surface.”
Then, around a turn, they stopped in frozen horror. Before them lay a chasm at least fifty feet wide, far too great for them to leap. “Blocked off,” moaned Miribel, hearing the sounds of pursuit now getting louder. “I can’t levitate us, Thane. There’s still all that interference.”
Thane swung his eyes desperately on both sides but they were smooth walls of stone with no footholds. He looked up. “Miribel,” he snapped, “give me your skirt.” The girl stared but then complied, while Thane himself took off his coat and shirt. Then, he methodically ripped the garments into ribbons. “Tie the ends together,” he ordered. “Hurry.”
Precious time slid by, as the sounds of pounding feet behind them grew louder and began to reverberate through the cavern. At last Thane had a long makeshift rope. He tied a slipknot noose at one end.
Then, standing at the edge of the chasm, he cast the loop outward and upward. “That stalactite hanging there,” he informed Miribel. “It has a sort of knobby end and will hold a tightened noose… if I ever manage to snare it.”
The patched-up line missed the first time. And the second and third. Miribel turned and screeched. “The Vexxans! Turning the bend behind us. They’ll be here in a minute.”
Two more casts missed, with Thane muttering under his breath and his arms getting weary, the next throw was even worse, but incredibly, the loop did not fall but instead moved upward. Slowly and gently it settled around the stalactite and Thane yanked the noose tight.
“My psychokinesis worked that time,” Miribel said thankfully.
“Miribel, the wonder worker,” Thane said admiringly. “But this makeshift rope won’t hold us both at the same time. Hurry, you first. Swing across the chasm.”
As the girl clung to the end of the line, Thane gave her a push and after a pendulum swing, she landed neatly at the other edge. She tried swinging the rope back but it evaded Thane’s, outstretched arm.
“Tie a stone on the end,” he yelled. Glancing behind, he saw the Vexxans running up and covering the last one-hundred yards. Meanwhile, Miribel had found a stone and with that as ballast, the stiffened line swung into Thane’s eager hands.
But already one Vexxan had arrived and made a leap for him. Thane kicked out with his feet and caught the hairy gnome square in the chest, knocking him back. Then Thane swung out across the chasm, landing beside Miribel.
“Shoot them,” yelled Thyze, leader of the thwarted dwarfs. Tubular blast-guns began to bark and chipped stone off the passageway that Thane and Miribel now ran through.
“A turn ahead,” gasped Thane. “Faster, Miribel.”
Reaching the turn and rounding it, they panted in relief. They would be out of the line of fire of the blasters. Now as they went on at a jog, the character of the cave changed. Weird rock formations and deposits of varicolored stone appeared as the passageway widened considerably.
Around a turn, they were blinded by a light and heard a babble of voices. They huddled against the wall and peered out into a huge chamber where figures moved.
“More Vexxans?” Miribel groaned.
“No, cave tourists,” Thane smiled. “The caverns ahead are equipped with electric lights. Pathways and steps have been cut out of the stone. And a guide is explaining the features of this ‘underground wonderland’ to the paying customers. No Vexxan would dare show up here. We can just walk to the exit that leads to the surface.”
Miribel pulled Thane back. “Not this way,” she said hastily. “Not without a skirt. And you have no coat or shirt.”
“Um, forgot,” Thane said sheepishly. “No, we don’t want to create a sensation and get guards after us. We’ll have to hide in some nook or cranny and wait till night when the cave tours will be over.”
The Vexxans had vanished. The undressed pair crouched behind a formation of rock that hid them from those following the pathways. Clearly, amplified under the cave’s acoustical conditions, they could hear the guide: “And there, my friends, you see the Giant’s Pipe Organ… over here, the Crystalline Niagara Falls… De
vil’s Bath… Painted Stone Head… Slide to Nowhere… Rainbow Arch… Forest of Red Limestone…”
And the fifth time around, it got to be a heartily hated patter to the two hiding people. Will night never come?
“Listen!” came the guide’s voice. “Did you hear that groan? Some say there are cave spirits that haunt these caverns.”
“How do you like that,” Thane whispered disgustedly. “He used me to add to the cave wonders.”
Finally, the voices of the crowd grew fainter and died away. Electric lights went out. “At last, the place is being close down for the night,” Thane exulted, standing up and stretching his stiffened muscles. “Come on. I want out.”
With the coming of night, a pitch-blackness surrounded them. “Just hang on the guide-rope,” Thane said.
Guided by the ropes, they reached the exit, a huge cave mouth with dim starlight coming in. Gratefully, they stepped out into the fresh, clear air. “Nothing like air with neon in it,” said Thane. “Adds that extra bit of tang.”
Miribel chuckled, feeling as giddy and light-hearted as Thane at having escaped from the Vexxan horror chamber underground. “But just where are we? In what part of America, or the world?”
“Not far from home,” Thane said, pointing at a huge sign saying MAMMOTH CAVE. “This cave is in Kentucky. As for getting home, how about some of your deluxe levitation?”
Miribel complied, concentrating her psychic powers to waft them both over the countryside. They traveled all night, avoiding highways and towns. “We don’t want to stir up any headlines,” Miribel said, “of strange creatures floating through the air like witches without broomsticks.”
The night was chill. “I w-wish I had at least a shirt,” Thane chattered. “Slow down a little so we don’t create such a wind.”
Instead, Miribel speeded up. “That’s what you get,” she said maliciously, “for holding out on me and not telling me where you hid the missing Seed. I can work up to a hundred miles an hour. Want to try?”
But then she relented and took them down to a field where a scarecrow stood upright on a pole. “Borrow its coat,” she said.
After putting on the well-worn coat with patches and holes, Thane bowed to the denuded scarecrow. “My deepest gratitude, friend.”
“The coat looked better on the scarecrow,” Miribel put in teasingly, as they resumed their levitating trip. At dawn, they strode thankfully into their cottage.
After a good meal, when they had settled down in their robes, Miribel looked up expectantly. “All right, Thane. Where in this room did you hide the Seed?”
“But I didn’t hide it in this room, my dear.”
Miribel stared. “But you had the leaden box in your hand, with the Seed inside, when the Vexxans barged in. You didn’t move at all into another room, or go outside. It must be in this room.”
“No,” Thane denied. “Actually, the Seed is miles away from here.”
“Miles away?” Miribel choked. “Oh, Thane, you’re driving me crazy. And you still won’t tell me where?” Thane shook his head. “It’s still safer to keep the secret in one mind, rather than two.”
Miribel reached for a piece of paper on an end table. “There’s a note here. Why, it’s from Daryl Seatonburry. He must have left it here before he left, after we were kidnapped.”
She squinted under a lamp. “It says: ‘If you escape those nasty hirsute creatures, whoever or whatever they are, please come and visit me. I still want that remarkable glowing gem for my collection, and will try to wear down your resistance against selling it.’ Well, he certainly is persistent.”
“Yes, and I think his persistence should be rewarded,” said Thane with mock loftiness of tone. “We’ll visit dear old Daryl tomorrow.
“Thane, I don’t understand…” Miribel cut herself off and rose wearily. “I won’t attempt to fathom your reasons. I’m tired and I’m going to bed. Goodnight, Madman Smith.”
Chapter 11
“Why, I’m delighted you accepted my invitation,” said Daryl Seatonburry mincingly. He was sitting near his huge diamond-shaped swimming pool. “You must stay for the evening. I’m having a masquerade party. Don’t worry, I’ll furnish you both costumes. What say?”
“We’re too busy…” Miribel tried to say, but she was interrupted by Thane, who made a courtly half-bow and said, “Splendid, Daryl. We’ll join your party.”
Miribel glared venomously at her husband. As Daryl turned away to talk to other guests at the pool, she whispered in his ear. “Instead of retrieving the Seed and delivering it to Thalkon, you’re wasting a whole day and evening with this blue-blood folderol. Thane, how could you?”
“Try these martinis, my dear,” returned Thane suavely. “Delicious… delectable… delightful.”
Then he sobered. “Listen, my unthinking wife. The moment I have the Seed in my hands again, a dozen Vexxan craft with Vibroscopes will pounce down on me. See?” He pointed upward.
Squinting into the bright blue sky, Miribel made out a tiny white dot, a mile high, hovering directly over Seatonburry’s mansion.
“Oh, I see,” she said contritely. “I’m sorry, Thane. I wasn’t thinking it through.”
“Well, while we’re here, let’s have a swim. Daryl has spare suits for us, I’m sure.”
Later, staring in astonishment at his wife’s figure cleaving the water like a shark and leaving a wake, Thane bent toward her and said huskily, “Hey. Tone down your speed, Miribel. People are staring. If they guess you’re not an Earthgirl…”
“Ooops. I forgot and used a bit of psy-power to propel myself too fast.”
“So that’s the secret.” Thane mused. “I’ll never be afraid of drowning with you around. But let’s have some sunshine now and work on a tan.”
Lying in the sun, Miribel suddenly sat up. “That’s odd. Though Daryl wears a bathing suit, I’ve never once seen him go in the water. Isn’t that peculiar?”
“Why?” shrugged Thane. “Plenty of bathing beauties loathe swimming and just like to parade around on the beach. Why shouldn’t Daryl be entitled to be a hydrophobe?
“I guess you’re right. It’s not peculiar.” her tone became musing. “Wonder what kind of masquerade costumes he’s going to dig up for us tonight?”
* * * *
“Oh Great Pharaoh, tell me how you built the pyramids?”
The tall regal figure with a spade beard and golden robes answered solemnly. “Simple. We dug a deep pit and built the pyramid down there. It was easy to lift the big stone blocks down and put them in place. Then, we just hoisted the whole thing above ground.”
“Ingenious,” said the girl dressed in the cave-girl outfit, with the tiger-skin barely covering the places it was supposed to cover. Her gold-red hair was caught up in a barrette composed of two small bones.
“And how many sabre-tooths have you slain lately, my dear?” queried the Pharaoh.
“I don’t slay them. I tame them.” Then she leaned close to the Pharaoh. “I’d like to see the faces of the Vexxans if they barged in, Thane. They’d never find us in these costumes.”
“Right, Miribel… er… Oog, the Cave Girl.”
Daryl bustled over, a swashbuckling cavalier of the romantic period in France. “Are you two enjoying yourselves? Let loose. Have a ball. Then, later, you’ll be in good humor and sell me that great glowing gem.”
He moved away to mingle with his many guests, all in colorful costumes.
Miribel was frowning.
“What now?” asked Thane.
“Daryl again,” Miribel said puzzled. “I’ve seen him taking a dozen drinks, even mixing martinis and champagne. And yet he walks as steady as a rock and talks without the slightest drunken slur. He’s pouring down enough to put three judges under the table yet he’s sober.”
�
��Haven’t you heard?” admonished Thane. “Some people can hold their drinks, others can’t. Want me to explain all about glandular functions and their interactions between the liver, pancreas, and kidneys which can result in widely different states of inebriation and…”
“Thanks,” Miribel said dryly. “Some other time. Come on, let’s dance.”
The hired orchestra was playing an old-time waltz. Surprisingly, to Thane, Miribel instantly fell into the cadence without hesitation.
“Did you just pick up the waltz like that?”
“Heavens, no, Thane. But you see, we danced it on our world Zyl 500,000 years ago.”
Thane winced as he always did when anything reminded him of the great gulf between Earthian and Zylian civilization, one a bushel of millenniums behind the other. But he shrugged off his involuntary inferiority feelings to glance over the crowd and measure what stage the party had reached. Most of the guests were in high spirits, due to bottled spirits. Daryl was gathered with a group of hobbyists, each extolling his particular bent: postage stamps, coins, chinaware, fine arts, rare books, gloves of all centuries, sleighs, locomotives, ancient chariots, almost anything. Daryl was exuberantly dominating the conversation with his collection of gems, “those exquisite crystalline beauties of nature.”
Thane grasped Miribel’s arm. “Time to do our thing.”
“What thing?”
“Finding the Seed.”
Miribel gasped. “Here?”
Without answering, Thane led her into the foyer as if they were going to visit the bathroom. But instead, when no one was looking, he tripped up the stairs, the girl following with a baffled air.
On the second floor, Thane unhesitatingly turned one way to a carved door, which he opened. It was unlocked.
“Daryl’s bedroom,” he said tersely.
It was sumptuous with a four-poster bed, antique furniture, and a balcony. But Thane went immediately to the west wall which was entirely taken up with the sliding doors of a lengthy closet. He pulled open the first sliding partition, revealing part of Daryl’s wardrobe.
