by Eando Binder
Table of Contents
Copyright Information
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Copyright Information
Copyright © 1971 by Otto O. Binder.
All rights reserved.
Cover art © Nicholas B / Fotolia.
Chapter 1
Sergeant Evan Paige’s gray, brooding eyes stared reflectively at the paper in his hand, dated three days before, June 7, 1975. Under the official seal of Washington it read:
“EMERGENCY DRAFT. All men able to bear arms, ages 14 to 55, in defense of Earth against the invaders from Mars. Your country and your world need you. REPORT AT THE NEAREST RECRUITING OFFICE IMMEDIATELY.”
“We’d better go, Sarge,” said “Sparky” Donovan, small, wiry, his voice tense. “Before a draft commission comes for us. We never sidestepped a fight yet.”
He walked to the window with a limp, and looked out into the night, shuddering. “Lord! Martians taking over Earth!”
“Incidentally, they’re not really Martians,” said Paige. “Scientists are sure Mars never had higher forms of life. They’re aliens from some other star, using Mars as their base in the solar system. The most convenient base from which to attack Earth.”
“Well, they’re still Martians to me,” growled Sparky. Evan Paige now tossed the draft paper on his workbench and ran his strong hands through uncombed hair in nervous indecision. Paige, a six-footer, had a craggy face that looked as if it had been hewn from stone. He spoke in a rapid-fire manner and his voice was deep. His body was muscled but he moved with well-balanced poise. One thing everybody soon noticed about him—he had the tenacity of a bulldog, once his mind was made up.
“We can’t go now, Sparky,” he rasped. “We can’t let Dr. Aronson down.”
Sparky tossed his hands in the air eloquently. Sparky Donovan had the quick movements of a monkey despite his game leg from a war wound. He had an impish face that could change expression a dozen times in a minute. Small though he was he was packed with steel-spring muscles. A red thatch of unruly hair half hung over his sparkling blue eyes that always darted about keenly, never missing a thing.
Paige turned back to his radio. Its banks of low-frequency oscillators and its special aerial outside were designed to send a beam underground. An electrical engineer, Paige had developed the set himself, with Sparky Donovan’s help, to keep in touch with Aronson’s exploring party. It had gone in a different direction from any other exploring party—down.
“No return signal from him for three months,” Sparky said gloomily. “What do you expect? Somewhere under Earth’s crust, his number rang up.”
“But we’re not sure,” Paige said. His voice became musing. “Sparky, this is about the strangest situation facing us ever imagined. For the first time in history, an unsuspected underworld is being discovered. And for the first time in history, invasion has come from space. Two of the most astounding events in human chronicles happening at the same time! It’s fantastic—as only truth can be. If we leave the radio now, we might be cutting off Aronson’s last chance to tell the world…”
“Tell what world?” shrugged Sparky. “The Martians?”
“We’ll try once more…”
Hopelessly, Paige sent his beam down, down. The last contact with Aronson had broken off at sixty miles below Earth’s surface—abruptly. A cry of alarm, clipped off in the middle. Had Aronson and his three men met death, in that unknown depth? Still, perhaps only their portable radio-set had been damaged. On that slim hope, Paige had kept a hopeless vigil, hunched over the radio at all hours, signaling below.
Three months of nerve-wracking suspense. And in the meantime, the pseudo-Martians had thundered down on Earth, like a bolt out of the blue…
Paige stiffened, as a faint voice trickled from his speaker, behind a barrage of crackling static. He twisted his power dial to the upper limit.
“—ling Evan Paige. Aronson calling Evan Paige. Aronson calling—”
“It’s him!” Sparky yelled wildly.
Paige barked into the microphone. “Paige answering. Good Lord, Dr. Aronson, it’s about time. What happened? Where are you?”
“At the center of Earth,” the scientist’s voice came back almost casually.
“What?” snapped Paige. “You’re joking!”
Sparky had started, and then made a sad gesture with his finger tapping his forehead.
“Not at all.” The scientist’s voice, with a weird howl in it from underground interference, went on eagerly. “You remember that we found the linked caverns, at the back of Mammoth Cave. We followed them down, for ten days, as you know from our previous radio contact. At sixty miles down, we came to the heat-zone, where our troubles started. Molten lava flows there, in the caverns. The worst happened. Peters, Henderson and Bode slipped and fell while we ran. All three died…”
Paige and Sparky looked at each other, shocked. Aronson’s voice went on tersely, as if he had steeled himself against useless emotion. “I grabbed up the portable radio and kept running. Escaped the lava. But the set was damaged. I couldn’t contact you. The rest is unbelievable.”
“The rest,” Sparky muttered ironically.
Aronson resumed in a lower tone.
“I’ll give it to you straight from the shoulder, Evan. There’s a vast world down here. And people. Human beings, but total albinos. They’ve never seen the sun. Don’t know our upper world exists, as we didn’t know theirs did.”
“Completely daffy,” breathed Sparky. “Poor guy.”
“People. Human beings.” Paige recovered quickly. So many incredible things were happening, one more didn’t matter. He grinned a little. “Even you didn’t suspect that, Dr. Aronson.”
“No. And they’ve kept me busy. I didn’t have a chance to repair my set and contact you, Evan, till now. You see, there’s a war down here, just like above. Earth is a honeycomb of natural caverns, as I theorized originally. The albino people inhabit them and the total population is as much as on Earth’s surface. They have separate nations, and they are warring, with scientific weapons.”
The scientist went on rapidly. His voice was eager, with the eagerness of his calling.
“But all that to the side, think what this means. A whole new underground world discovered. I’m going to try to escape and return to the surface. All my theories about a non-molten, honeycombed Earth are proven true. When I get above I’ll wave the proof in front of certain learned colleagues who sneered at me…”
Paige did break in now, with a harsh, mirthless laugh. He spoke slowly, bitterly.
“The upper world isn’t what you know, Dr. Aronson. Two months ago the unbelievable happened. Beings from another world—from a base on Mars—attacked Earth. They are utterly savage, ruthless, bent on wiping out humanity.”
How fantastic it sounded, in Paige’s own ears.
“Now you’re joking,” gasped Aronson.
“No joke,” Paige returned grimly. “They’re a scientific—superscientific race. They’re blasting down cities steadily. In the first few weeks, their swift rocketships blew most of our aircraft out of the sky. After that, in Europe, it settled down to ground warfare. W
e put army after army against them. The pride of French, Italian, Russian, German troops marched into their long-range kill-beams. They have ray-weapons. Our cannon can’t even reach halfway to their projectors. Standing armies no longer exist. Now everyone marches to battle, even women. But it’s hopeless. I think half of humanity in Europe, where the Martians—to call them that—first landed, is gone already. The end may be near for the human race. I can’t begin to describe the stark horror of it. But, Dr. Aronson…”
A blazing thought had struck Paige. He went on hoarsely:
“Can we recruit those albino-people to help us? They’re scientific, and know fighting. Will they help us? They must. They’re human, you say…”
Paige stopped, a little dazed by the stupendous revelation of underground civilization, wondering if it could be true.
Aronson, in turn, still seemed stunned by the other stupendous revelation of Martian invasion. He spoke finally, in a choking whisper.
“Possibly, Evan. But I wonder. You see, they don’t believe in the existence of an upper world. And…”
Without warning, the radio suddenly went dead. But not at Aronson’s end. Paige’s set had blinked out and with it all the electric lights. They heard dull thuds, from the center of town. Sparky was already limping to the window, and flung it wide. Aronson’s laboratory-home was on the outskirts of town.
They saw, in the heart of the city, the sinister iridescent beams that stabbed down from swift rocket ships.
“A bombing raid by the Martians,” Sparky growled. “They’re starting in on America like Europe. Blasting cities, railroads, power-houses. Then the final cleanup on the battlefield…”
Cold rage iced through Evan Paige’s veins. He felt his way back to the work-bench in the dark and picked up the draftpaper.
“Yeah, that’s it, Sarge,” snarled Sparky. “We’ll join up now and fight those Martian snakes. I want to get in my lick at them.”
Paige crumpled the paper in his hand suddenly. “Wait. What about those albino-people? A mysterious scientific race under earth. If we could get their help…”
“Sarge, for Lord’s sake,” exploded Sparky. “You don’t believe that story? The old guy went crazy, somewhere down there. Why, it’s like a fairy tale.”
Paige gripped the little man’s arm and squeezed. “Sparky, I wouldn’t have believed about the Martians either, except that it happened.”
“But, Sarge…”
A banging at the door interrupted them. Sparky groped his way down the hall to the front door, Paige following. Three men in uniform stood in the doorway and played flashlight beams over them.
“Drafting commission,” announced the head officer. “We’re looking for slackers.” After a significant pause, he said harshly, “Come along, you two.”
Sparky looked at Paige, shrugged and made a step forward.
“Wait.” Paige suddenly made up his mind. “We didn’t report for duty because…” He gave the details briefly. “So you see, we’ve got to get power somehow and re-contact Dr. Aronson. It’s important, more important than going into the front line.”
The officer glanced at his men cynically. “First time I heard that excuse. Even at a time like this, cowards lie for their skins. Afraid to fight, eh? Come along, slackers.”
“Afraid to fight?” Sparky’s voice was an angry shriek. Paige pulled him back as he made for the man with balled fists. Sparky growled. “We fought in Korea. I got my limp in Vietnam. And you think we’re afraid to fight?”
Paige had a scar on his shoulder from Vietnam too. They had come back, with their wounds. While convalescing with Dr. Henry Aronson, his dead father’s old friend, he and Sparky had become interested in and part of the underground project.
“All right, then come along,” said the recruiting officer. “You’re experienced soldiers.”
Paige flung off the man’s hand. “Don’t you understand? What good are we, as two more soldiers? We’ve got to stay here and re-contact the underworld, I tell you.”
“Underworld,” snorted the officer, in utter disbelief. “The Martians have Europe licked. They set up a base in Georgia a week ago. Now they’re raiding American cities. Don’t you realize you’ve got to fight?”
His voice was suddenly dogged, harried. “Earth has to fight to the last man.”
“That’s just it,” Paige shot back. “There’s no hope. But if we get help from the und…”
“Take your choice,” rasped the officer, whipping out a pistol. “My orders are to shoot any slackers who resist.” Paige and Sparky went. Paige couldn’t blame the officer for not believing the story. Even Sparky didn’t. And Paige himself wondered. Maybe there wasn’t any underground world. Maybe Aronson was crazy mad, trapped in some corner of the strange subterranean world.
* * * *
A week later, Paige’s regiment took the full brunt of a Martian attack, somewhere in South Carolina. It was all a hellish confusion.
Overhead, swift Martian rocket craft outmaneuvered American pursuit ships and shot them down steadily.
Earth artillery pounded briefly, and then the guns exploded as creeping neutron-rays touched off shells prematurely.
Finally, across no-man’s-land came a wave of Martians, with long-range kill-beams. On all sides of Paige and Sparky soldiers threw up their hands with choked cries and fell as corpses, as neutron-beams drilled a one-inch hole through lungs and spine.
The regiment stood its ground, under orders. Men fought grimly, with a doomed look in their eyes. And so it had gone for two months, with the Earth forces steadily being decimated. The Martians—everybody called them that—were maddeningly scientific, equipped with super-weapons and super-ships. Earth’s defenses were toy-like in comparison. Complete extermination of the human race seemed the enemy’s aim, so that they might take over the new world for their own.
At first, it had seemed incongruous for the super-scientific invaders to fight an “old-fashioned” ground war. Why not just send their hovering spacecraft over the world and wipe out all cities and towns and farms? That would defeat mankind but not wipe them out.
It was sort of subtle psychology for the Martians to send land armies and foot soldiers into the fray. They knew that this would inspire the earthmen to keep sending armies at them, thus assuring the slaughter of all men and most women, eventually. The children, the old and infirm, the leftovers, would then simply starve.
The final result—a barren world, barren of humanity.
“It’s no use, Sparky,” groaned Paige, resting his automatic gun for a moment on the knoll behind which they crouched. His voice was filled with the hollow bitterness that he and all humans felt. “Earth is licked. Extinction faces humanity. There isn’t a chance in the world of winning out against the Martians. It’s just a matter of months…”
“We’re not licked till the last man goes,” Sparky retorted grimly.
Paige looked around. In back of the thin line of doomed fighters the way was clear. Paige suddenly clutched the little man’s arm.
“Come on, Sparky,” His voice was dry, defeated. “We’re deserting.”
“Deserting!” Sparky repeated the word with a good soldier’s utter loathing. “To save our skins? Sarge—not you—”
“Not to save our skins,” Paige said savagely. “To take the one chance left to save Earth.”
“You mean that funny-sounding underworld business? Sarge, now you’re cracked, too.”
But Paige was already crawling back, away from the line of fighters. Sparky looked up in the war-torn sky as though for guidance, then followed.
“Sarge, I’ll stick with you. That makes me a deserter, a skunk and a maniac. Funny, what a man will do at times.” They crept back, through bushes and grass, deserting the regiment that was being cut down to the last man. They hid in a woods t
ill night, and then sneaked through the secondary line hastily digging into trenches. In back of its constantly melting front line, the Earth forces were setting up further lines. A hopeless, bitter fight to try and stem the invincible invaders.
They were shot at several times by sentries, but escaped.
“Shot at by our own people,” Sparky sobbed brokenly. “We’ll die yet, with bullets in our backs. They’ll kick our bodies and spit at them.”
Paige winced, but led the way adamantly. To die without honor was horrible. But to die without hope was worse.
The desertion was easier than they might have thought. The country was disorganized, under the encroaching menace. They stole from farmers’ vegetable patches for food, avoiding cities. They slept in the day, among trees, and moved at night. In a week they had trudged through Tennessee up into Kentucky.
“Sarge.” Sparky stopped stock still suddenly. “We’re really fools. What can we do when we get back to the lab? There’s no electrical power for our radio.”
“We’re not going there,” Paige returned quietly. “We’re going to Mammoth Cave. We’re going down in the underworld ourselves.”
Chapter 2
They entered the yawning portals of mighty Mammoth Cave.
Tour parties had long been suspended, with the coming of the Martians. It was deserted. A forest of stalagmites loomed in the dimness ahead.
“People have gone in here and never come out,” shivered Sparky. “They went in circles. How do we find the way?”
“Aronson’s markings,” reminded Paige, pointing to a stalagmite on which had plainly been scratched an arrow with a large “A” beneath it.
They followed the arrows. The cave mouth receded, became lost. Utter tomb-like silence surrounded them. Their footfalls sounded like the tread of mammoths. At times they were startled by bats skittering through the air. High overhead, from the vaulted ceiling of rock, hung gigantic stalactites that seemed poised for an instant drop.
