“You came near here of your own accord, through the opening you made in our roof. Evidently the outer surface of our buried sphere and city has pushed its way very close to your soil surface. However, that is beside the point. Nothing has lived here for tens of thousands of years. It has all been preserved. Your coming released hidden switches, started things moving again…”
The thing paused for a moment, then the words from its open mouth orifice resumed.
“You stunned yourself when you fell from the steps. In fact you cut your head rather severely. An operation soon restored you to normalcy.”
Rod gaped in amazement. He could not find the words to express the questions teeming through his brain. All he could do was stand and listen as the robot went on.
“Only as time passes will you begin to appreciate the truth about this underworld—the reason why I speak to you in your own language, why I am a mere machine. The forces motivating my words cannot, as yet, be understood by you. You will only grasp that when you behold those who sleep in another part of this city. I am their spokesman. Time revealed to us, Rodney Marlow, that you would be the savior of your people—that is, the savior of those people who deserve to be saved…”
“How long have I been here? What place is this?” Rod demanded.
“You have been here some three hours. This place is the last habitation of former man—a civilization which existed before yours. We retired here before the threat of a vast cosmic disturbance, a disturbance which is about to be repeated. The last men and women of this race still live, but sleep. In due time, Rodney Marlow, you will revive them—but first you have the more urgent task of saving those of your own humanity who deserve to be saved. Certain things must be revealed to you…Come!”
Rod obeyed the command dutifully, following the robot from the amazingly efficient surgery into an adjoining building. Its size was enormous; the machines it housed positively breath-taking in their implication. In startled wonderment he gazed around him.
“Be seated, and watch!” the creature commanded, motioning to a stool.
Again Rod obeyed without question, and curious instruments were attached to his head and body. The hidden lights in the great place expired and his gaze transferred itself to a whitely glowing screen. In bewilderment he stared at the vision of a great city, perfect architecture, reproduced in flawless color. He heard its sounds, smelled its smells, seemed actually present. Tall, slender spires reached to a sky that was curious muddy yellow. Suddenly a large ship—was it a spaceship?—crashed headlong into a giant building, crumbling it in ruin to the ground below, with a terrific roar of destruction. Then the view slowly lowered to a well-planned street, and there Rod received another shock.
Instead of the activity of busy human beings such as he had expected, he saw instead sub-human looking creatures moving to and fro, the tattered rags of clothing clinging around them. Some of them turned on each other even as he watched, fighting with demoniacal fury. All around on the ground lay dead and decomposing bodies, litter and un-cleaned filth.
Again the view changed, swept over seas that contained rotting, drifting ships, over cities that were naught but crumbling skeletons of their original selves. Everywhere, whatever view was shown, revealed destruction and decay of an advanced order.
Then the lights came up again and the screen blanked. The hidden projector ceased its soft whirring. The sounds died out.
“You have seen a movie film of an age long past,” the robot explained. “There are of course many other records, but the one you have seen embraces the main facts. The last civilization reached the very peak of magnificence, then save for the few who managed to escape into this artificial underworld, progress ended.
“The earth during its spatial journey ran into the midst of a cloud of meteoric dust, so enormous in extent ten years elapsed before it was traversed. Though it was not dense enough to entirely block solar radiation, it was dense enough to be collected by and dispersed through earth’s atmosphere, stopping a great deal of heat from reaching the surface and also preventing the flow of several other vital radiations.
“Pre-eminent among the sun’s radiations is the one producing mitogenesis. Mitogenesis is absorbed and given forth by the cells of all living things, but it is so obscure that no instrument can detect it. The radiation goes through quartz, but not through glass, proving it is basically a chemical effect, and chemical fermentation is of course the basis of all life. This solar radiation is responsible for evolution.
“When the cloud came, the radiation was cut off and evolution stopped. In fact it did more than that; mankind atavized, slid backward down the ladder he had so laboriously climbed. If that seems a strange thing to your mind, remember that a dead body does not just stay dead—it starts to decompose, back into the very elements from which it was born.
“So it was, in a different sense, with human beings. They began to atavize. There were wars, crime, man fought against man. Cities crumbled. Everything in the world save this refuge made by the intellectuals, was wiped out. Man went back to the caveman of the Glacial Age, which in itself was produced by the solar heat blockage. Then the warmth and radiation re-turned. Man started to ascend once more, right up to his present status—which is still far below the peak we attained.
“And now that same cloud threatens again: only a matter of days separates it from humanity. It will be your task to save as many of your people as you can.”
Rod said nothing. Actually he was wondering how the metal walls of this buried city, which had survived geological changes for such a vast span of time, had succumbed to the attack of an ordinary electric welder. Somehow, it didn’t make sense.
“Why didn’t you escape into space?” he asked at length. “You understood space travel?”
“Certainly, but there was not a world we could go to. None of the planets in the system can safely support life, and the chance of finding a world in the outer deeps was too grave a risk. So we preferred to come below and insulate this one spot of Earth against all chances of atavism. Scientifically we duplicated the missing solar wavelength for our own use, but of course it could only be done on a small scale.”
“And you say I am to herd my own people down here?”
“Those who are intelligent, who form the nucleus of your world’s science and progress—yes.”
“Even assuming I can manage it,” Rod said slowly, “how shall I know how to carry on when I take over down here? All this is so much mystery to me. I’m not a scientist; my knowledge is by no means great. You spoke of some sleepers; what possible chance have I of understanding their motives and aims? How to revive them?”
“That will be revealed to you.” The robot turned aside with another command. “Follow me!”
Rod walked pensively between the grouped machines, halted presently before a device which looked horribly suggestive of an electric chair. Rather doubtfully he obeyed the order to sit within it. Fear gripped him as the lights went out again, save for the dull glow of six red bulbs on a switchboard to the left of him. He heard the soft whir of machinery, then a click—Something moved gently out of the dark and stopped before him, came to life as a glowing rectangle filled with vague, phantasmal shapes.
They represented nothing understandable, but as he watched them, with an hypnotic fixity which he could not by any effort break down, he could feel his mind, his grip on things tangible, beginning to slip. He lost contact with his surroundings; the whole world was a darkness filled with crawling, incredible shapes that, somehow, did something to his mind.
Tremendous ideas began to drift into his brain. He saw hitherto unknown explanations for electricity, gravitation, and other riddles of physics. Engineering and mathematics; those too he fully grasped in their real significance. It was as though knowledge was being poured into him, and strangely enough he retained it all.
When at last he became aware of his surroundings once more his brain was burning with conceptions.
“You believe now that you wil
l understand when the time comes?” the robot asked slowly.
“Everything,” Rod muttered. “Granting, that is, that I can get people to believe me.”
“That is your task, and you will accomplish it.”
“Yeah…That’s right.” Rod stood in deep thought for a moment, then he looked up quickly. “Well, I’ve got to be moving,” he said. “I left a young lady up on the surface. She’ll be thinking I’m dead, or something. How do I reach the shaft I came down?”
The robot motioned to the open doorway. “When you go through that exit turn left and keep going until you come to steps. Go up them. Your shaft is almost immediately above their summit. You had the misfortune to slip as you landed…”
Rod turned, cast one look back at the robot as it stood motionless against the wall of the vast laboratory, then he walked out into the soft glowing light of the city. Quietly he walked up the wide street, gazed around on the squat but solidly made dwellings. He came at last to the steps—dozens of them, reaching upward to a remote square star which he knew was the hole he had burned.
Thoughtfully he began to ascend, the city dropping lower and lower behind him. The glow illumined his path. His mind was still in a turmoil. Ideas were falling over themselves—
At a sudden sound he looked up sharply. A long way above him on the steps was Phyllis Bradman herself, coming swiftly down toward him.
“Mr. Marlow! Rod!” she gasped thankfully, and her voice echoed in the great emptiness. “Oh, thank goodness…”
Rod hurried to meet her. Breathless, she finally joined him, nearly fell into his arms.
“You’re alive!” she cried, her eyes searching his face. “When I heard no sounds or anything from you I slid down the rope myself to see what had happened. I found these steps, guessed that you had fallen over the flat summit at their apex. I—I think they’re intended as a sort of observational pyramid of steps, or something, and the hole you made happened to come right over them. I saw that city, all aglow, then—Well, I got scared. I didn’t dare to call anybody here, and I didn’t dare to visit the city either, so I just waited. It—it seemed hours.”
Her rush and tumble of words stopped abruptly. Her eager eyes still studied him.
“What happened?” she demanded quickly. “Is it a real city?”
“Kind of—a refuge from the long dead past,” Rod answered quietly. “Thanks a lot for coming down after me; I really appreciate it.”
“Can I go down there?” she insisted.
“Wouldn’t do any good if you did; I can tell you everything. Besides, there isn’t time. I’ve got a lot to do.”
“You mean bring scientists and other people?”
“Among other things, yes. You can see the place then.”
He took her arm decisively and they returned slowly up the monstrous flight. Certainly the steps looked as though they were intended as a lookout post over the city. Far away in the distance another pyramid reared in similar fashion.
“You’re different, somehow,” the girl said suddenly.
“Am I?” Rod smiled faintly. “I guess some of the things I saw down there were enough to make any guy feel different…”
They fell silent again, presently gained the still dangling rope. Up above the pale evening sky was visible in the rectangular hole. Rod stepped forward, and at the same instant the glow from the city expired; the darkness of the tomb descended.
“Must be some kind of automatic switch in this platform which stops and starts things,” he commented. “Last time I started the city going; this time I’ve closed it down. I half wonder if I’m not dreaming the whole darned thing…”
Seizing the rope he began to ease himself up it.
“I’ll go first,” he said briefly. “When I call fasten it round your waist and I’ll haul you up.”
“All right—but hurry up! It frightens me down here in the dark.”
Rod went up steadily, hand over hand, at last reached the surface. In a few minutes he had the girl beside him again. They stood looking at each other in the approaching sunset.
“Queer, isn’t it, the things we’ve done since morning?” Phyllis said at last, smiling.
“So many things,” he murmured, then as briefly as possible he told her all that had happened to him in the underworld. She listened in wondering silence.
“But—but why should you be chosen of all the people in the world?” she asked finally. “How did they know you’d arrive?”
“That I don’t know; had something to do with time. Anyhow, I’ve things to do, and I start in tomorrow.”
“Would you mind very much if I helped you?”
“Nothing I’d like better.”
Their eyes met steadily, then with mute accord they moved to the girl’s car.
“I shall hardly sleep tonight for thinking about all this,” she said, slipping into the driving seat. “I’ve got something to live for at last; something interesting.”
“But for you it would never have started anyway,” Rod smiled. “You got the right hunch all right. Well, see you in the morning?”
“Early,” she promised, then switched on the engine and engaged the first gear. Rod stood watching in silence as the car moved away through the haze of dust.
A sense of perplexity transiently settled on him. Queer how easily she seemed to fit into the whole picture.
He had never known a girl with so much interest in science. Or was it more than science? She had needed plenty of nerve to follow him down into that hole.
He turned back toward the hole, gathered some boarding from the outhouse and roughly covered it up. Then he went inside the farmhouse and scraped together a solitary meal. He slept badly that night.
CHAPTER III
Dr. Ashley Gore
Rod had hardly finished his breakfast the following morning before Phyllis arrived, pushing the door gently open and standing silhouetted attractively against the sunshine. “Can I come in?”
“Right in!” Rod rose to welcome her, pulled up a chair and poured out an extra cup of coffee.
“Just what,” she asked slowly, “do you intend to do? You say that humanity is threatened with atavism. Suppose nobody believes you?”
Rod’s jaw set doggedly. “They’ll have to believe me! Scientists aren’t fools. I’ll show them this underground place—that ought to convince them, surely. Then I’ll outline the plan of escape. Matter of fact I’m planning to head for New York this morning. You’d better come with me as a very material witness.”
“I’ll do more than that; I’ll take you in the car. But say, have you decided yet on whom you ought to contact?”
“Matter of fact, no.” Rod frowned. “I figured on doing that when I arrived in the city. I’m not well up on big scientists. I was going to look through ‘Who’s Who’.”
“There’s no need for that. The man you want is Doctor Ashley Gore. He’s President of the Scientific Association, and as such is in a position to contact all the big scientists you’re likely to need.”
* * * *
It was late afternoon by the time they reached New York—nor did they find it easy to gain admission to the President of the Scientific Association. However, after considerable cajoling and stressing of urgency on Rod’s part, they managed it, were shown into the great man’s luxurious office.
Dr. Ashley Gore looked up from his desk with some impatience; it was close on time for him to leave. In appearance he was massive shouldered, faultlessly dressed, with the face of a prize bulldog and a startling bald head. Rather perfunctorily he waved to chairs.
“I sincerely hope you have something of real importance to discuss, Mr.—er—Marlow,” he said briefly, glancing at Rod’s card. “I’m a very busy man, you know.”
“So am I,” Rod answered tartly. “I thought you might be interested to learn that humanity is facing destruction, and that I have the means to save it.”
“Another inventor, eh?” Gore smiled acidly.
“I’m not an inventor
. I’m merely offering succor to those people in the world who are considered essential to progress. That’s all. Disaster definitely threatens every living being any day.”
“Indeed!” Gore lay back in his chair, eyes half closed.
“All you have to do is to see the place wherein you can be saved; I will direct all other operations.”
“You will direct!” Gore echoed in amazement, sitting upright. “Your modesty astounds me, sir! What exact position do you hold, may I ask?”
Rod gestured irritably. “Does it matter? Actually, I’m a farmer, but—”
“A farmer!” Gore shot to his feet with a purpling face. “A farmer! And you have the temerity to come here and talk of matters scientific? Of death for the human race? Do you realize—”
“I realize that if you’ll instruct astronomers to examine space they’ll find an approaching cosmic cloud!” Rod broke in hotly. “It will be here any day. The earth may take ten years or so to go through it, and at the end of that time, whatever is left of humanity without protection, will have gone back to the caveman stage. Human beings will be atavized, fighting each other in the ruins of a one-time civilization—probably in the midst of a second Glacial Epoch by the cutting off of solar warmth…”
Gore’s expression changed a little. He glanced at the girl, then back to Rod.
“I by no means believe your full story, young man,” he said slowly, “but it does so happen that one thing is in your favor. Recent reports from astronomers, which of course pass through me, have revealed a strange haze in space blurring some of the stars. In fact several plates have been made and studied, but no man as yet has arrived at the real truth.”
Rod shrugged. “Well, there you are. I’ve given you the truth. All I need is your further cooperation. Out at Middleton, one of the newer Middle West towns, is a buried city, right under my own farm. Down there are all the necessities for protecting chosen people from approaching disaster.”
“That is correct, Doctor,” put in Phyllis quietly. “I’ve seen it myself.”
“The least you can do is see for yourself before you start to condemn,” Rod commented.
John Russell Fearn Omnibus Page 69
