From the nearest white plants, fog came drifting, reached out to the crystals, caressed them.
The fog closed in and was gone. Wind caught it and rent it apart in tatters. The glaring sunlight evaporated what was left.
Where the crystals had been was nothing.
“Life, Powell!” Owen said very softly. “Silicate life! And even here, Nature’s ever present check and balance system.”
The cameraman blinked. “The crystals are alive?”
“Yes. A life based on silicon, as ours is based on carbon. We can duplicate both in our Earthly laboratories. But here it is no laboratory experiment. Carbon life and silicate life are fighting for existence.”
Owen pointed to the nearest plant.
“Its roots must go very deep, for the intense sunlight would dry out all water near the surface. And the roots do go down to water. They must. For the plant emits water vapor to protect itself from the sun’s rays. The white skin reflects light, too, and that naturally helps.
“Apparently the crystals and the plants grow in entirely different environments. The former grow faster, but the plants can destroy them. Moisture is fatal to this silicate life.
“On the crest there,” Owen nodded indicatively, “there seem to be no plants. The crystals grow unchecked, reproducing, sending out their spores to drift into the valleys where the plants destroy them.
“Powell,” the scientist’s gaze locked with his companion’s, “if intelligent beings live on the surface of this world, they must be alien beyond human imagination!”
“So what?” Mike said belligerently. “We’re armed.”
Owen smiled sardonically. Without a word he pulled down a lever.
“I’ve checked the air,” he said. “It’s breathable.”
The door slid back, opening the path into the Unknown.
CHAPTER XVII
Into the Tunnel
CLAD in their lightweight armor, loaded haversacks on their backs, the two stepped out on solid ground.
Diaphragms in the transparent cowls brought to their ears a thin, distant crackling. Powell, locating it, pointed up to the ridge. Owen nodded.
“Yes. They grow rather noisily. But the plants—” He stumped to the nearest, a dwarfed figure at the foot of a stem that towered ten times his height, and thumped the bole with his fist. “It’s quite hard. Grows slowly. No leaf-surface, of course. I wonder what the principle of respiration is.”
“Don’t ask me,” Powell said, staring around under his shading hand. “We’re in a valley here. A basin. And there’s nothing but the plants and the crystals. Which way?”
“It doesn’t matter,” the other decided, shrugging. “This way, I guess.” He chose a direction at random and plodded forward.
Even through the suits the sun’s rays burned hotly. They came into the fog aura of a white plant, and immediately the uncomfortable warmth was gone. The high percentage of water vapor made the vicinity of the plant an oasis.
Keeping in the shadows of the huge growths, they approached the crest of the rise. Here the ground was unbroken, save by increasingly large clusters of the scintillant silicate life. Owen hesitated.
“I wonder if these are dangerous,” he murmured, and planted one foot hard on a mound of crystals. Coolly he waited, while Powell snatched out his heat-gun and held it ready.
The crystals were shattered under Owen’s foot. All around it they grew and budded unrestrainedly, but they did not attack the surface of the suit. Owen nodded with satisfaction.
“They need some element in the soil. Good. We’re safe enough.”
He moved on. Powell, sighing deeply, sheathed his weapon and began to film the surroundings. It was not long before they came to the top of the rise.
There the silicate, unhampered by moisture and encouraged by the direct beams of the sun, grew gigantically. The structures towered above the men like glaciers. Yet they were friable, and crumbled easily. When one tower toppled upon Powell, he yelped and tried to scramble out of the way, certain that he’d be crushed. But as the crystals hit him they degenerated into crystalline dust and drifted away on the wind.
They rounded a towering, dazzling monolith and saw before them the new world, but not much of it. Other crests lay beyond, valleys hidden by shimmering ridges, a landscape far-stretching and monotonous—with one exception.
A few miles away was a plateau, a squared-topped mountain. It was a cube so incredibly high that Powell had to bend back his neck to see the top of it. Pure white, featureless at the distance, the thing rested beyond the crests, gigantic, monstrous!
For it was no mountain, Powell knew. It was the laboratory of the Colossi!
DESPITE the shadows in the sky above New York, despite the telescopic pictures, until now Powell had not fully realized the stupendous hugeness of the giants. This vast structure lifting, silently menacing, against the pallid blue sky, brought home, as nothing else could, the almost inconceivable size of the beings that menaced New York.
Inconceivable? Only to one who had never looked through a microscope, to one who had never seen an ant. As a human would seem to an ant, so the Colossi would seem to a man.
Even on Earth there was a limited, though vast, variation in size.
But in the face of this silent, cosmic-size fortress, logic and sanity failed.
An overwhelming sense of insignificance and weakness struck through Powell. He growled inarticulately, swung up his camera, and began to film the structure. It was his only defense against superiority. Without realizing it, he had classified the white fortress, despite its overpowering size, as a “take.” And “takes,” you see, were nothing new to Mike Powell, Summit’s ace cameraman.
“If we had binoculars,” Owen said, “we could see the window by which we emerged. Is it worth going back to the ship for them?”
Powell unearthed a telescopic lens.
“Use this,” he suggested.
“Good! Yes . . . We can find our way back. But right now—”
“What?”
Owen’s face, in its transparent covering, was shining with perspiration. He licked his lips and sighed.
“I was not meant for forced marches. But come. That’s our destination.”
They started down into the valley. It was identical with the one they had left. Fog plants and crystals alone were there. The next valley was the same. One after another merged into a hazy memory. Often the men paused to drink.
Wearily the two went on. Hope waned. Had Eberle been mistaken in declaring that a race of telepaths dwelt on this world? If so, Powell decided, they were invisible.
The thought made him pause. He remembered some of the thought-messages from outside the huge laboratory. Visions of digging in tunnels, Mrs. Cardotti had mumbled.
Of course the aliens were invisible. They were underground!
He communicated the idea to Owen, who nodded eagerly.
“Yes, that checks. The rays of this sun would probably be dangerous to intelligent beings. But solid earth can stop even cosmic rays. Under the surface, that’s where we must look.”
“How?” Powell’s voice was heavy with irony.
“Oh, use your eyes. There must be outlets for ventilation, if the creatures have respiratory systems. Disguised outlets, perhaps, if they are at war with the giants. The crystals are too impermanent. But the white plants—”
IT was a long time before they found what they were searching for. The absence of a fog veil around one of the plants was betraying. The branches were perforated with innumerable holes. The plant was merely a hollow shell, sucking in air audibly.
“Listen,” Owen said. “Hear that?”
Mike pressed his ear close to the plant. Through the diaphragm he heard a faint, muffled pounding.
“Pumps?”
“Perhaps. But how can we enter?”
Owen stared around vaguely. He grunted defeatedly and took a swig of the diminishing water supply. Powell emulated him.
“Footprints?” the
cameraman suggested, wiping his mouth and hastily donning his hood.
“On this baked ground? Hardly.” Owen wore a baffled look. “We’ll just have to search.”
The great sun had covered a perceptible arc of the pallid sky before the entrance was discovered. Peering down through a crystalline growth, Powell had noticed an irregular blob of darkness that did not seem to be merely rock. He kicked the silicate to pieces and found a lever of metal protruding from a slot in the baked ground.
Hastily he called Owen. The scientist came lumbering forward.
“Found something?”
“Shall I pull it?” Powell asked.
“Well, you can’t eat it. Naturally!”
The cameraman tugged the lever forward. The ground suddenly burst open at his feet in a ten foot gap, and out of the opening squirmed a thing that resembled a torpedo crossed with an octopus. Its body was like an elongated barrel, pointed at both ends, and all around it grew thick palps, elastic and covered with suckerlike mouths.
Powell’s heart seemed to lift him with it four feet back. His hand came up with the gun. Owen, too, was shaken.
“Wait!” he called sharply. “Don’t shoot it yet!”
Powell’s finger was already on the trigger. He hesitated.
The creature rolled aside. It was eight feet thick and three times as long. Its tentacles propelled it to one side, where it lay without motion.
“Is this what we’re looking for?” Powel asked, nauseated.
Owen peered into the depths of the hole.
“This is a tunnel,” he said. “See?” Stretching down into the earth at a steep slant was a passage, cut out of solid rock, illuminated by glowing filaments on the floor.
“You thinking of going down there?” Powell inquired, his eyes on the monster.
“It’s what we were looking for, isn’t it?”
Owen stepped forward calmly and began to descend. Powell followed because there was nothing else to do.
THIRTY feet along the tunnel they paused as a thumping came from behind them. “Look,” Powell said. “We’re locked in.”
The torpedo-monster had rolled back and crawled inside the tunnel, blocking it with its bulk. The tentacles moved swiftly. Moisture extruded from the suckers. Unhurriedly, mechanically, the creature began to close the entrance to the passage, its secretions moistening the walls so that the tentacles could scrape off gluey-looking mud, which it plastered along the sides of the tunnel mouth.
“That,” said Owen, “is the doorkeeper. I have a hunch we can get out whenever we want. If not—well, we’re armed. Anyway, our road leads forward just now.”
Powell examined the thin threads that lay along the ground. They extended down the tunnel and stretched out of sight. Smaller than twine, they gave out a pale, white light that was of about the strength of a 30 watt electric bulb. Gingerly, Powell stirred one with his toe.
The filament writhed aside. When Powell drew back, the glowing thread swung back in place.
“It’s alive,” Owen said. “Come along.”
They went warily on. The corridor ran straight ahead at the same pitch, and for two hundred yards there was no change. Then a gust of wind stirred Powell’s cheek.
He strained his eyes. Some distance ahead a gross bulk lay against the wall. As the two approached, it became distinct, a fat, bulging object that nearly filled the tunnel, and which expanded and contracted rhythmically. It was a spheroid, pallid and colorless, with a skin of tough, tensile muscle. The wind became a series of swirling gusts.
“Look at that,” Owen said thoughtfully. “It’s an air-pump, and it’s alive. See? Its body blocks a ventilator shaft, perhaps the very one we found. See those valves on its body? It sucks in air from the outside and releases it in this tunnel.”
“Alive!”
“Like the doorkeeper. Do you understand the significance of this, Powell? A race without machines—a race that has adapted itself incredibly! Lord knows what we may discover. We are on the outskirts of the unknown, the mere fringes. When we penetrate further in . . .”
The muffled throbbing of the living pump beat all around them, rhythmic, strange, and somehow ominous.
CHAPTER XVIII
The Recessive
ON the two men went, finding nothing but more of the pump-creatures set at irregular intervals in side passages. The air was quite breathable. Before long, Powell took off his protective suit. Owen followed his companion’s example. Cooled and relieved, they continued their journey.
It was, perhaps, an hour later when the corridor opened into a larger one at right angles to the first. The illuminating tendrils lay along its floor. It was vacant, but, as the two men hesitated warily, they heard a padding of footsteps coming from the right, down the slope.
The sounds grew louder. Powell drew Owen back into the passage mouth. Into sight came two of the strangest creatures human eyes had ever seen.
They were quadrupeds, their white, pulpy backs some five feet above the ground, and they progressed swiftly and mechanically on thin, triple-jointed legs. Aside from these similarities, the creatures were utterly different.
The foremost had a round, globular body that looked like a toadstool. Tiny eyes, protected by transparent membrane, stared straight ahead. The face of the thing was all muzzle. It seemed as though someone had clapped a funnel on the beast’s face. Under the proboscis was a tiny mouth. The ears were pointed and set far back. There was no tail.
The other creature resembled, somewhat, a sloth. Its forelegs were tremendously developed, ending in great clawed scoops on which it rolled forward unsteadily. It seemed to be blind, but followed its companion without hesitation. The face of this one was practically non-existent, just a button of a nose and a round hole of a mouth.
They plodded forward without noticing the onlookers. As they vanished, Powell drew a deep breath and stared at Owen.
“Well?” he inquired. “What are they?”
The scientist shook his head. “I don’t know. Mammals, of course, and highly specialized ones. The one with the clawed feet was built for digging. The other? I don’t know, I’m sure.”
“Do we follow them? They looked dangerous to me.”
But this problem was solved immediately. From the direction in which the strange beasts had gone came a hurried padding of footsteps. Again the men drew back.
A balloon on stilts ran along the passage and stopped in front of the side corridor. It was deathly white, with a globular body three feet or 60 in diameter. It had the legs of a stork, clawed and scaled. It was featureless and headless, save for a tiny orifice on one curve of the sphere.
It stood motionless. Out of its top popped an eye, lifting as though on a periscope. It surveyed the two men.
Powell groped for his gun.
“What now?” he muttered wildly. “It can’t be intelligent!”
“Wait,” Owen said, and stepped forward, one hand raised, palm forward. “We are friends,” the scientist began.
The eye retreated. Out of the sphincter a puff of blue vapor raced. It dissipated and mingled with the air immediately. Powell, gripping his gun, was conscious of an eerie sense of timelessness. His fingers strove to tighten on the cold butt, but moved slowly, slowly.
He saw the figure of Owen, before him, crumple to the ground.
Then Powell, too, lost consciousness completely.
SLOWLY, painfully, the cameraman awoke. His brain felt foggy. Memory eluded him for a time, and then came drifting back in vague wisps. There was a remembrance of being carried along tunnels, the sound of a man screaming, and the flashing and glowing of rainbow fountains of light . . .
Powell opened his eyes. Forty feet above him he saw a ceiling of rock, illuminated by the omnipresent luminous tendrils. He was lying flat on his back, unbound and distressingly chilly. His cramped muscles ached.
He sat up. Agony raced through constricted veins. The cavern swam into view. It was huge, larger than the Metropolitan, and quite empty, save for
a fountain of light that shot up apparently from the bare ground some distance away.
The light was no ray. It poured up like water, shifting, cascading, changing, in sky-purple, pearl-white, sun-yellow, gray soft as smoky twilights. And as it whirled up, it whispered.
Almost beyond the threshold of hearing the low whisper came. Ever changing, pulsating, in a curious threnody of monotones, the sound rustled out, rising and falling, rising again.
Louder it grew, and louder. It was a roaring cataract more furious than Niagara, deafening, yet strangely musical and soothing. The light changed. It swirled into patterns.
Fantastic patterns of color, three-dimensional and alien. Cubes and polyhedrons and cones danced before Powell’s eyes.
The light faded; the sound died. The rainbow fountain dipped and sank and was gone.
Where it had been was a small transparent hemisphere set in the floor.
From where he crouched, Powell could not see what lay beneath it. Painfully he rose and stumbled forward, till he stood above the pane.
It was of glass, or some allied substance. Beneath it was a core of light. A spheroid of soft brilliance, white and intense, glowed there, revolving slowly, no larger than Powell’s head, oddly beautiful—and alive.
The sheer magnetism of the thing thrust out like a spear. Involuntarily, Powell moved back a step, apprehensive and uncertain.
In his mind, a soundless voice took form.
“Are you an intelligent being, like the other?”
TELEPATHY, that was obvious enough. Eberle had said telepaths existed on this outside world. Yet, faced with the actual phenomenon, Powell felt at a loss. He tried to frame words in his mind.
“Speak aloud,” the voice said. “It is too confused if you do not.”
“Where’s my companion, the man who came with me?” Mike asked.
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