Collected Fiction (1940-1963)

by William P. McGivern

  THE SILENCE was complete. His breathing sounded terribly loud and ragged in his ears. Behind him, faintly came the sound of shod feet moving cautiously. The hunters were closing in for the kill.

  Pop had been leaning against the wall that blocked the tunnel, and now he grabbed Brick’s arm tensely.

  “Look,” he said weakly. His voice was faint, but there was a note of excitement in it. “Here in the wall. I just found a hole.”

  Brick dropped to his knees hurriedly, his hands moving over the surface of the stone. With Pop’s hands to guide him, his fingers slipped into a narrow niche, about two inches wide and six inches long.

  With his right hand he probed into the opening. His fingers met a cold hard surface that was like steel to the touch.

  Frowning he sat back on his haunches. The niche had obviously been carved for some purpose, and its position, waist high on the wall, suggested a key hole of some sort.

  Key? His mind turned the idea over. A wild, screwy idea occurred to him, but for an instant he wavered indecisively. Then his jaw hardened.

  “Move aside, Pop,” he whispered. “I’m going to fire a slug into this slit.”

  He jerked the Luger from his belt, shoved it into the niche and pulled the trigger. In the narrow confines of the tunnel the detonation was deafening. He heard the bullet spang into the metal-like plate in the crevice.

  He heard nothing else. He listened closely but the silence was complete and final. Even the cautious advance of the Germans had stopped. It had been a crazy hunch, but he felt a curious letdown. Such as a drowning man might experience watching the last straw bob away on the waves.

  A deep rumbling came from behind them, obliterating completely the slight sounds of the Germans’ advance. It was as if the walls and ceiling had begun to vibrate crazily.

  “Brick,” Pop hissed imperatively. “Look! On the floor.”

  A thin pencil of pale light was spreading under their feet. A light that was like the illumination cast by a mellow candle. Incredulously Brick’s eyes swung to the narrow crack from which the slender finger of light was emanating.

  The heavy stone wall which had blocked the corridor was rising slowly, and from the steadily growing aperture the pale light was pouring.

  “What in the name of the forty blue blazes!” Pop muttered feebly.

  Brick rallied first.

  “Come on,” he snapped. “We’re not licked yet. If we can get out of here before the Germans spot us we’ve got a chance.”

  When the aperture was three feet high, he ducked low and crawled under the slowly rising wall. Pop scrambled after, grunting painfully. They straightened up together. And together their mouths dropped open in blank, stunned amazement.

  They stood in a small room furnished with nothing save a small couch against one wall. But it was not the room, or its pale illumination that shocked them into incredulous silence.

  It was a girl!

  A TALL slender girl dressed in a loose, white garment stood in the center of the room facing them. Her skin was as clear and as pale as fine white marble. Brilliant silver hair swept back from her high smooth brow and rippled over her head and down to her shoulders in long gleaming waves. The only color in the face was in the slight rose tint of her lips and in the dark welling pools of her eyes.

  Brick let out his breath explosively. Never in his life had he seen such weird, exotic, completely compelling beauty.

  There was a puzzled, uncertain expression on the girl’s beautifully regular features. She took a hesitant step toward them, revealing in the motion the supple feminine curves of her lithe body.

  Her startlingly dark eyes moved from one to the other, doubtfully, questioningly. Then she spoke. Her voice was low and clear and the words sounded like the gentle murmur of a quiet stream over mossy rocks.

  “What’s she sayin’?” Pop asked dazedly.

  Brick shook his head.

  “I don’t get it. Sounds something like Polynesian but that’s all I can make out.”

  Pop glanced behind him. The wall had stopped rising, revealing an opening about eight feet high and some six feet wide.

  “We can’t stop here,” he said anxiously. “Them Germans ain’t far away right now.”

  The girl looked at him as he spoke but there was no understanding in her face. Brick looked helplessly at her. In her haunting dark eyes there was an uncertainty and bewilderment that tugged at him powerfully.

  But he had no more time to worry about that. For a harsh shout rang out from the blackness of the tunnel they had left, and simultaneously the deadly rattle of machine-gun fire shattered the silence into a million stuttering pieces. Steel jacketed bullets hissed through the tunnel opening and spattered spitefully against the far wall of the room.

  The girl was almost in the direct line of fire. Pop hurled himself to the floor and scuttled crab-like to the protecting angle to the wall.

  “Get down you fool,” he shouted shrilly to Brick.

  But Brick was springing toward the girl. He knew if he didn’t get her out of the way she would be cut down like a flower before a scythe by the vicious hail of lead. Reaching her side, he saw terror in her dark eyes. But strangely, there was understanding there too, as if she realized he meant to help her.

  Her body was limp in his arms as he lifted her off her feet and sprang to the side of the room. Even in the bedlam of noise and danger he was conscious of her deep, liquid eyes on him.

  The deafeningly loud rattle of machine-gun fire continued, the bullets lacing a criss-cross pattern of perforations against the wall. Finally it stopped and a guttural voice called out:

  “Come out with your hands up please. We will give you till the count of ten. Then we will use grenades!”

  Brick felt a cold perspiration break out on his face. One grenade in a room that small would blow them all into a million pieces. He glanced at Pop. The old man was crouched in a corner, white-faced.

  Outside he could hear the slow methodical count.

  “Four—Five—six—”

  “Look!” Pop hissed suddenly. His finger was pointing excitedly at the side wall. Brick looked and saw a door, so perfectly flitted that it had been invisible, swinging open. Then, through the doorway, stepped a man.

  A small, slender, gray-haired man with a keen, alert face and very dark eyes.

  THE SILVER-HAIRED girl at Brick’s side leaped to her feet, a fervent exclamation escaping her lips. She ran to the side of the gray-haired man and embraced him. Swift, low words passed breathlessly between them.

  “Eight . . . nine . . .”

  Brick sprang to his feet. There was only one second between them and eternity. He grabbed the silver-haired girl by the arms, spun her around. For a terrible, split second she stared at him bewilderedly; but then some of his desperation must have imparted itself to her, for she turned and with one swift word to the gray-haired man led the way to the door.

  Brick leaped after her, Pop behind him. The gray headed man started to close the door.

  “Ten!”

  Brick hurled his shoulder against the door, slamming it shut. A muffled explosion sounded beyond it and he felt the door shudder under the impact. His shoulder ached at the jar, but he knew that for the time being they were safe.

  CHAPTER VI

  Leolo and Zoru

  BRICK BREATHED A SIGH of relief.

  While he realized the respite was only temporary, he had been so close to the brink of death that any delay was welcome. It would take the Germans a little time to discover that their bodies were not buried beneath the debris of the room they had just vacated.

  He turned from the door, determined not to waste a second of their precious advantage. The gray-haired man had lost his air of uncertainty, he noticed. Now he was calm, deliberate and poised; and in his dark eyes there was the unmistakable flash of authority.

  He turned, motioning to them and moved toward a door at the far end of the room. The girl followed him without hesitation.

&n
bsp; “Come on,” Brick said to Pop. “These people seem to know the score.”

  The two Americans followed their strange benefactors through several dimly lighted corridors that appeared to be hewn from the solid rock. Finally they entered a spacious hall, somewhat similar to the large room Brick had first seen in Atlantis. The walls were pure white and gleamed strangely, casting a soft illumination over the entire room.

  This room, however, was different in many ways from that Brick had seen first. This room was not bare and empty. Every corner was filled with huge machines and the walls and ceiling were covered with tubes, charts, strange indicators and graphs. In the middle of the room was a giant switchboard, covered with rheostats and pressure gauges of a design unfamiliar to him. It was obviously a laboratory, and although it was covered with a film of dust, it looked as ageless and as young as knowledge itself . . .

  The girl closed and bolted the heavy door through which they had entered the vast laboratory, and the strange, gray-haired man moved swiftly to a large cabinet against the wall and began removing various trays of equipment and odd-looking devices.

  “What’s up now?” Pop asked.

  Brick shrugged helplessly.

  “You’ve got me.”

  He watched intently as the gray-haired man carried the equipment he had selected from the cabinet to the huge, intricate switchboard in the middle of the hall. He watched him make adjustments and changes on several of the dials that pitted the surface of the board, and then his eyes widened slightly as he straightened up and beckoned to him and Pop.

  The gray-haired man had four small flat boxes in his arms, and from each of these trailed a single wire about a foot long. At the end of the wire was attached a perforated disc with a tiny knob oddly set in the center.

  Brick approached curiously, Pop trailing a few cautious feet behind him. The gray-haired man extended one of the boxes to Brick and one to the silver-haired girl who was standing to his left.

  The girl took the box immediately. Brick hesitated an instant and then accepted the strange contraption gingerly. With very obvious misgivings Pop did likewise.

  THE BOX was about eight inches long, four inches wide and not more than an inch thick. It was made of some black, grainless material that was as hard as steel to the touch. It had a long slender clamp on one side of it, and the perforated disc also was fitted with a clamp similar to the kind used on radio headphones.

  The gray-haired man clamped the disc to his ear so that the tiny knob pressed against his eardrum and then he clamped the slim black box to his shoulder. The foot of wire between the disc and the box was sufficient to allow him to move his head in all directions.

  With gestures, he indicated that Brick and Pop were to do the same.

  Brick complied with his unspoken request in silence, but Pop grumbled.

  “Dang it all, what for?” he snapped. “How do we know what he’s up to? These things may blow up after we get ’em on.”

  “He has them on too,” Brick pointed out. “So has the girl. It isn’t likely he’ll blow them both up with us.”

  Muttering wrathfully, Pop clamped the apparatus awkwardly on his head and slung the box over his shoulder.

  Nothing happened for a while. The tiny knob in Brick’s ear was cold and hard, but it was not particularly uncomfortable. He waited patiently for some explanation of the mysterious apparatus and its use.

  The gray-haired man was speaking to them now. But still in the musical, unintelligible tones. Brick tried desperately to gain some meaning from the man’s words, but the effort must have shown in his face and eyes, for at a soft word from the girl, the gray-haired man stopped talking and turned impatiently to the switchboard.

  There he made another series of adjustments and changes on several of the dial-like devices before turning back to Brick.

  His dark intelligent eyes were almost imploring, as he opened his mouth and said, “Can’t you understand me? I am Zoru of Atlantis!”

  Brick jerked to attention, every muscle tense. He stared at the gray-haired man incredulously, too dazed to speak.

  For the words had been spoken in perfect English!

  He could feel Pop’s fingers digging into his arm, and he heard the old man’s frantic voice in his ears.

  “Brick!” Pop gasped. “I’m goin’ crazy. I’m hearin’ things.”

  “Please do not be alarmed,” the gray-haired man’s smooth voice flowed on in cultured English. “The devices you are wearing are merely translating my speech into thought impulses which are delivered directly to your brains. I am not speaking your language but you can understand me. These instruments operate on a principle with which I gather you are unfamiliar. That is not important, however. The fact that they permit us to communicate is all that counts.”

  He turned to the girl standing next to him and smiled.

  “This is my daughter, Leolo. She was saved by you, she has told me.

  That is why I brought you here to safety.”

  “Can you understand me?” Brick asked.

  The man who called himself Zoru nodded.

  “Perfectly,” he said.

  Brick looked from him to the girl, Leolo in perplexity. The girl was smiling slightly, displaying even, white teeth that gleamed like pearls against the faint rosiness of her lips.

  HE HAD never in his life seen such people as these. There was a nobility and dignity about them that flashed from their clear, intelligent eyes and stood forth in their carriage and bearing.

  Instinctively he knew them to be good. It was difficult to conceive of them being anything else.

  “Who are you?” he asked, directing his question to them both.

  Zoru answered:

  “It might be hard for you to believe, but my daughter and myself are Atlanteans. We are the last survivors of a race that perished twelve thousand years ago.”[6]

  Brick stared from Zoru to his startlingly beautiful daughter bewilderedly. Atlanteans! It was incredible! Impossible!

  “You do not believe us,” Leolo said quietly. “I can see the doubt in your eyes.”

  “Good Lord,” Brick cried, “I want to believe you, but how can I? Atlantis has been under millions of tons of water for thousands of years. To believe that you—”

  Zoru raised a slim hand to Brick’s outburst.

  “Please,” he said. “Listen to me. Possibly I can explain the things that trouble you and raise doubts in your mind.”

  Brick found himself curiously calmed by the almost pleading sincerity in the voice of Zoru.

  “Go ahead,” he said. “I’m afraid I’ve been rude.”

  Zoru was silent for an instant, and Brick noticed that his dark eyes were strangely glazed, as if they were seeing, not the scene before him but instead were beholding a scene that existed only in time and memory.

  “As a scientist of Atlantis,” Zoru began, “I knew that one day the continent would sink. A volcanic pressure was building steadily beneath the the continent and it would only be a matter of time until it would get beyond our control. I tried to make the ruling groups understand the immediacy of the danger, but they were too occupied with their savage wars of conquest to heed my pleas. It was Atlantis’ misfortune, at that time, to be in the power of a despotic tyrant whose only concern was the extension of his power and armies into every corner of our world.”

  Zoru paused and his mouth straightened into a bitter line.

  “When I realized that nothing I could say or do would prevail against his madness, I decided to save my daughter and myself, if possible, from the holocaust I knew was imminent.

  “Accordingly I perfected an opiate and administered it to us a few days before the time, as determined by my calculations, when the volcanic pressure would erupt. We retired to separate sealed chambers, stocked with quantities of condensed food in tablet form, and when my predictions were proven accurate several days later, we embarked on a voyage of dreamless sleep that lasted until a few months ago.”

  “WHAT A
WAKENED you?” Brick asked.

  “Air,” Zoru replied. “Our chambers were practically perfect vacuums when we constructed them, but time had created fissures and cracks through which air seeped. Our first conclusion was that the continent had risen from the floor of the ocean. My instruments soon convinced me that the position of Atlantis had not changed in the years we had been slumbering. The air, we soon discovered, came from the huge chambers and halls of the city which had been pumped free of mud and water.

  “At first we decided to make ourselves known to the strange visitors who had inhabited our former city, but in the end we made up our minds to remain in the comparative safety of these sealed chambers until we knew more of them.

  “Then, somehow, you must have shattered the lock that controls the entrance to our hidden chamber.”

  Brick explained how that had been accomplished. He also explained from whom they had been fleeing and why. When he finished Leolo’s dark eyes were flashing indignantly. Zoru shook his noble head gravely.

  “When I awoke and realized that these mighty halls and chambers had been pumped dry and hermetically sealed to keep out the ocean, I was certain that an intelligent race of people had sprung into being in the years my daughter and I had been slumbering. People who could accomplish such a feat of hydraulics and engineering would be like unto gods, I thought. It saddens me terribly to think that such genius is being perverted and prostituted to cause misery instead of peace and happiness in the world.”

  “They ain’t goin’ to get away with it,” Pop broke in explosively. “No sir!”

  Leolo, the silver-haired girl, shook her head sadly.

  “It is always the same,” she said softly. “A group of ruthless men seize control of armies and use them to enslave their fellow man. Because those that are decent and kind do not wish war and bloodshed, they suffer the tyrants to gain great power before they attempt to stop them. Then it’s too late. I presume it is that way now. You have permitted this beast to gain supremacy over you and—”

  “No we haven’t,” Brick said grimly. “I think the people of the world have awakened in time, for once.”