by Eando Binder
There was fantastic beauty in it. Light from the hidden cave mouth reflected through the gloom in stabbing beams, sparkling from a thousand crystalline facets. In the dim distance, great arched corridors spread in all directions, like the halls of a cyclopean cathedral. Strange rock formations loomed magnificently, the wildly artistic sculpturings of a wonderland of nature.
The arrows pointed on and on.
“How did Dr. Aronson know the way?” Sparky chattered.
“By his new geologic theory about the crust and all Earth,” Paige informed. “That Mammoth Cave, at some point, must connect to lower caverns.”
Abruptly a riven gash ran before them across the cave floor. An arrow at the edge pointed down. They clambered down thirty feet. A water-worn passage a hundred yards beyond led out—to where?
At one point, they had to crawl through a natural tunnel so narrow that Paige’s broad shoulders almost stuck. The passage widened and soon they stood upright, looking out upon a breathless sight.
On a lower level than Mammoth Cave, and connected to it only by that narrow passage, was a cavern yet more gigantic. Even a small lake lay gemlike in the center, glowing with phosphorescent algae. And beyond stretched corridors, twining through the rock, going on and on, and down and down.
“The beginning of the underworld,” Paige whispered. “No wonder Dr. Aronson was so excited when he reported this to us.”
Sparky grunted. “And no wonder he went nuts. Sarge, look. This is all crazy. There can’t be any people down here, no matter how far it goes. Let’s go back, Sarge, and be sensible.”
For a moment Paige hesitated. Was he being a fool? Could there be a buried race down here? Or was it all hallucination, in a man driven insane? Should he go on this wild goose chase? Or go back to duty? And death…
What choice was there? They would go on. Sparky accepted the decision with a resigned shrug.
They scrabbled down the slopes, passed the lake, and followed the arrows into the passage beyond. In the following days they hunted and shot fat cave rats, salamanders and jackdaws for food, toasting them over fires of dried moss. The signs of life increased, rather than diminished, as they went on. They were all albino forms, pigmentless, living without sun.
They plodded uncountable miles, in the underground maze, unmapped by the upper world. It became like a dream to Paige. He sensed they were going down, ever down, as much as forward. It was as if gravity lured them down into its lair, where there was a choice of grades. Phosphorescent plants and radio-active deposits in the walls lighted the way, dimly.
The upper world seemed remote. Even the terrible struggle going on up there faded from their thoughts, as though it had happened centuries ago.
“A new world,” Paige murmured more than once, his voice echoing hollowly through the caverns.
“Maybe so, Sarge,” Sparky admitted. “But we won’t find any people. I still don’t believe that.”
Temperature had risen, gradually, steadily. Now, at the end of ten days, it was abominably hot. They peeled their coats, ripped their collars open. They skirted pools of bubbling, steaming water. The soles of their boots became blackened and scorched. Waves of blistering heat radiated from the walls about them. At times they saw lava-flows, like creeping amoeba, reach up from cracks and holes.
“The heat-zone Aronson mentioned,” Paige said thoughtfully. “Watch your step. Here’s where his three men lost their lives.”
It became worse. Small rivers of lava flowed sluggishly by. Curtains of steam half blinded them. The air was furnace hot. Stumbling, sweat-soaked, throats seared dry, they were barely able to find the arrows that led on and on into the virtual inferno.
“Can’t go on,” panted Sparky, his limp foot dragging. “Sarge, we can’t go on. We’ll burn alive.”
But Paige grabbed Sparky’s arm and staggered on grimly. If Dr. Aronson had won through, so could they. Sparky cursed lividly, but said no more.
Suddenly he screamed: “Look! That lava-flow—it’s coming straight for us.”
A portion of the wall had broken open to let a flood of smoking molten rock pour out over the passage they were treading. Croaking hoarsely with fear, Sparky tried to run back. But the lava had cut off retreat.
Paige stood still with hammering pulses, trying to figure out an escape. The damnable vapors cut off vision. A lake of lava began crowding them toward the burning-hot walls. Wasn’t there any way out?
“We’ll die here like trapped rats,” Sparky shouted. Then he laughed wildly. “We left the Martians, for a death like this.”
Echoes of the laughter mocked them, ringing back from the cavern walls.
Suddenly, Paige lifted his bleary eyes. One sound hadn’t been an echo. It had sounded like a shout—a human shout.
He peered into the steamy gloom around them. Again the shout, and two figures racing toward them. Humanlike figures. The foremost was a female form, long ash-white hair streaming back. Her skin, too, was alabaster white, and her eyes pink. She was an albino. She was like a white spirit darting through the steam curtain.
“I’ve gone daffy, like Aronson,” moaned Sparky. “I think I’m seeing angels.”
The two figures came up. The white girl-creature grasped Paige’s arm and forced him to stumble through the blinding vapors. Her male counterpart hustled Sparky along. They could see.
Paige’s bloodshot eyes saw the sudden upwelling of hot, molten rock, sweeping toward them like a tide, threatening to cut them off. They made it to a side passage with just seconds to spare. It was like an infernally detailed nightmare.
Paige felt coolness touch his fevered brow in the new corridor. The white angel half dragged him along another hundred yards, then stopped. The white male let Sparky go, as he leaned against a wall. In dim radioactive glow, the four people looked at each other.
Sparky’s eyes were bulging. He reached out to touch his rescuer.
“He’s real,” Sparky gasped. “My Lord, Sarge, they’re real.”
“Of course,” panted Paige. “These are the albino people.”
“Then Aronson wasn’t cracked…” Sparky began.
They both stared as the albino girl spoke quickly. “Aronson,” she repeated in a lilting tone, nodding her head. “Dr. Aronson…” The rest was a flood of her own tongue.
“You know Dr. Aronson?” Paige queried. “Do you know any of our language?”
The girl seemed puzzled, her eyes on him. Suddenly she smiled, and Paige smiled back. Somehow, the ache of his muscles, the burning of his skin seemed all worthwhile to meet this marble-white girl of another world.
Sparky was shaking his arm. “Don’t you hear me? I said—oh, never mind.” He grinned suddenly. “Quite a nice number, eh? But her boy-friend’s kind of jealous.”
Paige started and looked around. The albino man was frowning. He gestured for them to move on.
The way wound erratically down. At times it was rough going. The girl helped Paige’s staggering legs, while the man helped Sparky. Sure-footed as goats, the albino-people never faltered.
A few minutes later they were standing at the lip of a cavern more gargantuan than any Paige and Sparky had yet seen. They gasped. There was a city in it.
Dwellings had been hollowed out of the rock walls, with stone steps leading to the entrances. The center space, surrounding a mirror-like lake, was a checkerboard of tilled fields bearing albino-crops, tended by albino people.
Sounds arose, the welcome noises of a busy, civilized community, sweet to their ears after the ghastly echoing silences of the cave above. The farther wall was pockmarked with tunnels, man-made passages from which came the roar of machinery.
It was a fairy-like scene, weirdly lovely in a radioactive glow shed by huge globe-lamps, again man-made, hanging in the high vaulted ceiling. Paige thrilled. Civiliz
ation after all, in this sunless world, and albino people identical to humans, except for lack of skin pigment.
“Well,” he told Sparky, “Dr. Aronson was right.”
Sparky for once had nothing to say.
They were led to one of the cliff-dwellings, overlooking the community. Utterly worn out by their ordeal through the fire-zone, they thankfully climbed into hammocks, and slept the sleep of the dead-weary.
* * * *
Paige awoke, feeling wonderfully rested. He swung his eyes to look through an open window, down at the albino people’s city.
And there were more cities. Four billion human souls, if Aronson were right, living like moles. A hustling, teeming world here within Earth’s core. As many humans living without the sun as under its rays. Suddenly the whole thing seemed fantastic, incredible.
But here it was…
And then, Paige felt a queer satisfaction stealing through him. The Martians up above were only killing off one-half of the human race. They didn’t know either of this mysterious underworld.
In a way, it was almost a joke on those heartless monsters from another planet. Joke? It would be more than a joke, soon.
“You awake, Sarge?” came Sparky’s voice. “I’ve been lying here wondering if it’s all true.”
“It’s an amazing riddle, Sparky. Civilization below Earth’s surface. Wonder if Dr. Aronson knows all the answers? We’ll have to get to him, somehow, at the center of Earth.”
“Center of Earth,” scoffed Sparky. “I won’t believe that yet.”
“Still skeptical?” Paige laughed. He sobered. “After what we’ve seen, we can’t doubt anything. And thank Heaven for it. Don’t forget what we’re here for, Sparky—to enlist the albino people in the fight against the Martians. “They…”
He stopped, as the man and girl who had rescued them appeared, smiling a greeting.
Paige took a longer look at them. He stared at the girl till her almost colorless eyes dropped. A vivid scarlet blush touched her marble-white skin. Cosmetics were known to these people, for her eyebrows and eyelashes were tinged with black paint, and her cheeks and lips with a red tint, to relieve otherwise uniform white features. She looked very human.
Sparky was more practical. “We’re hungry,” he said. “Very, very hungry.”
The two stared in perplexity till Sparky pantomimed eating, at which the girl nodded quickly, left, and returned with steaming bowls of gruel-like food. Paige and Sparky gulped it down as fast as they could, finding it enigmatically tasty. New strength flowed through their bodies, wasted by the trek through the endless caverns and the hell-hot fire zone.
Paige gave a sigh of satisfaction and introduced themselves, wishing he could launch a flood of questions that plagued him.
“Evan Paige? Sparky Donovan?” repeated the girl, nodding, apparently with a quick ear for new words. “Names—him Tal Rithor. Me—Reena Meloth.” Her hand touched Paige’s momentarily.
Paige noticed again the quick frown in Tal Rithor’s face and grinned a little. “Don’t worry, Tal,” he said. “I’m not your rival.”
“Yet,” Sparky added under his breath. Aloud he exclaimed. “But, Sarge, she used a couple of English words. She must have learned some from Aronson.”
Paige nodded, wondering how much English they knew. “How far underground are we?” he asked.
“No understand,” returned the girl blankly, after a moment of thought.
“Where are you people from?” essayed Paige, speaking slowly and distinctly.
“No understand.”
Paige checked the turmoil of further questions on his lips. Which didn’t they understand—his words of the ideas behind them?
The girl leaned forward. “We learn your words. From Dr. Aronson.”
“Where is he?” queried Paige. “At the center of Earth?” The thought, in spite of the astounding confirmation of the subterranean world, still seemed stretching a point.
The girl shook her head without a shred of comprehension. “Him Center. Sick place. Him there.”
It might mean anything. “Can we go to him?” Paige asked patiently.
“No,” Reena Meloth emphasized the flat negative with a shake of her ash-blonde head, Tal Rithor following suit.
“Why?” demanded Paige.
The albino man spoke this time. “You fighters. You fight.”
“I don’t like his tone,” Sparky asserted in a low aside. He had always formed quick likes and dislikes. “I wouldn’t trust him.”
Paige nudged his friend quiet but didn’t like the albino man’s tone either. He took a breath. Now that he had found out they vaguely understood English, he prepared to launch into the most important part of their mission.
“Listen,” he said slowly. “We must see Dr. Aronson. We have come down from the upper world for a purpose—a grave purpose. An enemy is wiping out the human race up there. We need help. Do you understand?”
“No.” Both shook their heads in absolute lack of comprehension. Again Paige had the nagging thought that it was his meaning they failed to grasp.
Sparky was shaking his head too. “We’ll never get anywhere this way, Sarge. We’ll have to teach them our language better, or learn theirs.”
Paige grunted. “We’ll learn theirs. I hate to take the time, with Earth being blasted day by day, but we’ll have to.” He turned to the girl. “Will you teach us your language?”
She nodded brightly. This she seemed to understand. “Start now,” she said. She spoke to Tal Rithor rapidly in their flowing speech. He nodded, rather reluctantly, shot a glance at Paige, and left.
“I still don’t like him,” Sparky murmured.
“Forget it,” Paige snapped. “It’s trivial. We’re here to learn the language first, contact Aronson and get help for Earth.”
In his mind, he pictured what was happening up in the world they had left. New York, London, Paris, Berlin—falling before giant forces spawned in Martian minds. Humanity facing extinction.
The girl began pointing to objects, giving their names in her strange tongue.
Chapter 3
In a week, they knew more than a smattering of the albino people’s speech. With a flair for language Paige had learned fast. He was amazed himself, but realized that a demon drove him, sharpened his mind.
Reena spent all waking hours with them. She told them much of the strange new world they had dropped into, as they learned words. Dorthia it was called by the inhabitants. Underworld, Paige and Sparky called it between themselves. Millions of human beings lived down here, as easily as up above.
Paige and Sparky had been given new clothing to replace their tattered, fire-scorched military uniforms. The new garments were a sort of tunic, knee-length trousers, and thick-soled boots. All were of a varied pattern of color interwoven into the cloth.
Reena and other women wore a flowing robe down to the ankles, also of piebald colors that contrasted vividly with their alabaster white skins.
Reena conducted them through the cavern-city. Industry was well developed. The albino people had metal alloys, and inexhaustible supplies of ore all about them. They had electricity, fast transportation, and were superb structural engineers. They had, apparently through a long history, hollowed out many artificial caverns, and so extended their range of living.
Later, watching a new tunnel being extended, Paige became thoughtful. A giant machine on rollers, with a spout something like a cannon, slowly edged forward, guided by workmen. An invisible force shot from it peeling the wall down steadily, converting rock into compressed heavy matter that was carted away. It was something Earth science knew nothing of.
“Reena,” Paige asked, using the new-found language haltingly, “what force does that machine use?”
“It is atom-breaking,” she
responded. “Energy springs forth when atoms are broken down.”
“Atomic-energy. Or at least a form of it,” Paige gasped eagerly. “Sparky, do you know what it means?”
“A weapon for our forces, against the Martians?” Sparky guessed quickly.
Paige whirled on Reena, his eyes blazing.
“Reena,” he said in her tongue, “I think I can explain now, in your words. We’re from the upper world. It is being destroyed. Martians, beings from another planet, have attacked…”
He stopped, at her utterly blank stare. “Upper world?” she repeated. “There is no upper world.”
Paige and Sparky looked at each other. “But there is,” Paige returned patiently. “You saw us come down from what you people call the Fire Zone. Dr. Aronson, too.”
She frowned thoughtfully. “Yes. And you are strangely dark-skinned. Dr. Aronson stumbled through the Fire Zone which is strange. Tal and I were there, by chance, as we liked to look upon the fires. When you came through, we were there because Tal almost believed there might be a world above the terrible Fire Zone.”
“Almost,” reiterated Paige. “You don’t believe…”
“We believe,” said the girl, “that you come from an unexplored cave-city beyond the Fire Zone.”
“Not cave-city.” Paige wondered how to express himself, still unhandy with their language. “My world is beyond the caves. It is open, wide, free. It is under the ‘sky’ ”—he was forced to use the English word and an all-embracing gesture—“and there are ‘stars’ and the ‘moon’ and ‘winds’ and ‘rain’ and ‘sunshine’.”
He stopped, caught by a sudden sigh.
“You’re homesick, Sarge,” Sparky said bluntly. There was also a longing look in his eye.
Reena looked still more perplexed. “I do not understand,” she murmured. Then she laughed roguishly. “Whatever strange cave you came from, your people are gifted with much imagination.”
