by Hal K. Wells
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The Cavern of the Shining Ones
By Hal K. Wells
Layroh's hiring of husky down-and-outers for his expedition is part of a plan made ages past.
It was shortly after midnight when a persistent nightmare aroused DonFoster from sleep. For a moment he lay drowsily in his blankets there onthe sand, with memory of the nightmare still vivid.
It had been a monstrous flying thing like a giant blue-bottle fly thathe had been battling in his sleep. Memory of the thing's high-pitched,droning buzz still rang in his ears. Then abruptly he realized that thepeculiar buzzing was no mere echo of a nightmare. It was an actualsound that still vibrated from somewhere within the camp.
_... Yet that thread held._]
Startled into full awakening, Foster propped himself up on one elbow.The sound was penetrating, but not particularly loud. He was apparentlythe only one whom it had awakened. In the gray gloom of the desertstarlight he saw the blanket-shrouded figures of the rest of the menstill deep in slumber.
He realized the source of the sound now. It came from inside the blackwalls of Layroh's tent, pitched there in its usual isolation on a slightrise fifty yards from the sleeping group. Foster grunted disgustedly tohimself. More of Layroh's scientific hocus-pocus! The man seemed to goout of his way to add new phases of mystery to this crazy expedition ofhis through the barren wastelands of the Mojave.
For a solid week now they had been working their way back and forth overa thirty-mile stretch of desert, while Layroh labored with his intricateinstruments searching for something known only to himself. Whateverreason Layroh had for recruiting a party of fifteen to accompany him wasstill a mystery. So far the men had done practically nothing excepttrail along after Layroh while he worked with his apparatus.
It was a state of affairs that caused the men little worry. As long asthey had enough to eat they were quite content. They weredown-and-outers, all of them, human derelicts recruited from the parkbenches and cheap flop houses of Los Angeles. They had only one thing incommon: all of them were large and powerful men.
Don Foster was the youngest of the fifteen, and the only college man inthe group. A succession of bad breaks had finally landed him broke andhungry on a park bench, where Layroh found him. Layroh's offer of tendollars a day and all expenses had seemed a godsend. Foster had promptlyjumped at the offer. Layroh's peculiar conditions and rules had seemedtrivial details at the time.
* * * * *
Foster scowled as he lit a cigarette and stared through the gloom at theviolet-lighted tent from which the disturbing sound still came. Sevendays of experience with Layroh's peculiarities had begun to make them alittle irritating. His sternly enforced code of rules was simple enough.Never approach Layroh unless called. Never touch Layroh's instruments.Never approach Layroh's tent. Never ask questions.
Layroh neither ate with the men nor mingled with them in any way thatcould possibly be avoided. As soon as they made camp each night he setup his small black tent and remained inside it until camp was broken thenext morning. No one knew whether the man ever slept. All night long theviolet light glowed inside the black tent. The men had wondered aboutthe unusual color of that light, then had finally decided it wasprobably something required by the same eye weakness that made Layrohwear heavily smoked goggles, both day and night.
Strange sounds in the night as Layroh worked with his apparatus in theblack tent were nothing unusual, but to-night was the first time thatFoster had ever heard this peculiar whining buzz. As he listened it rosein a sudden thin crescendo that rippled along his spine like a filerasping over naked nerve-ends. For one shuddering second there seemed tobe an intangible _living_ quality in that metallic drone, as though somenameless creature sang in horrible exultance. Then abruptly the soundceased.
* * * * *
Foster drew a deep breath of relief and ground his cigarette into thesand beside him. Better try to get to sleep again before Layroh startedsome new disturbance with his infernal apparatus.
He was just settling down into his blankets when a movement in the tentdrew his attention back to it. Layroh was apparently changing theposition of the violet light, for his tall figure was suddenlysilhouetted against the tent wall in sharp relief.
Foster started in surprise as another figure loomed darkly beside thatof Layroh. For a moment he thought that the unprecedented had happenedand some member of the expedition was inside those jealously guardedtent walls with Layroh. Then he saw that the figure must be a mere trickof the shadows cast by the moving light upon some piece of luggage. Itlooked like the torso of a man, but the head was a shapeless blob andthe arms were nothing more than boneless dangling flaps. A moment laterthe light moved on and both shadows vanished.
Foster grinned sheepishly over the momentary start the distorted shadowhad given him, and determinedly rolled himself in his blankets to sleep.It was after sunrise when he awoke. The rest of the camp was already up,but there was one member of the party missing.
Jeff Peters' empty blankets were still spread there on the sand, but noone had seen the big Negro since the camp turned in the night before.The expedition's daily travels under the blazing sun of the Mojave neverhad appealed particularly to Jeff, and he had apparently at last madegood his repeated threats to desert.
* * * * *
The men were just getting up from breakfast when Layroh finished packinghis tent and apparatus in his sedan, and started down toward the camp.As usual, he halted some five yards away from them, standing there for amoment in stony silence.
Physically, the man was a giant, towering well over six feet in height.On several occasions when the expedition's cars had stalled in deep sandhe had strikingly demonstrated the colossal strength in his tall body.
His aquiline features, his red-bronze complexion, and his long blackhair, were all suggestive of Incan or Mayan ancestry. No one had everseen any trace of feeling or emotion upon his impassive features. Fosterwould have given a good deal for just one glimpse of the eyes hiddenbehind the dark-colored goggles. In their depths he might be able tofind some reason for the tingling surge of nameless dread that Layroh'sclose approach always inspired.
Layroh noted Jeff Peters' absence at once. "We seem to have our firstdeserter," he commented evenly. His voice was as richly resonant as thetone of some fine old violin. He hesitated almost imperceptibly betweenwords, like one to whom English was not a native tongue.
"It does not matter," he continued indifferently. "We can spare one maneasily enough. To-day we shall continue toward the east. Pack the truckat once. We are ready to start."
Without waiting for an answer, he turned and strode back to the sedan. Acurious thought struck Foster as he stared after Layroh's retreatingfigure. What if the oddly distorted shadow he had seen against the tentwall last night had really been that of a man--had been that of JeffPeters?
* * * * *
For only a moment did Foster mull over the idea. Then he promptlydismissed it as being absurd. He could imagine no possible reason forJeff Peters being in Layroh's tent in the middle of the night. Theshadow had been only remotely like that of a man, anyway. There had beenneither head nor arms to the figure, only shapeless masses totallyunlike anything human.
They finished packing the breakfast stuff in the supply truck, and theparty started out along the trail with Layroh's sedan leading the way.For nearly two hours they followed their usual routine, working steadilyeastward and stopping at regular intervals while Layroh made hismethodica
l tests with his instruments.
Then near the end of the second hour something happened that abruptlysent a thrill of excitement through the entire expedition. Layroh hadjust set his apparatus up on a small sand dune beside the trail. Themechanism looked somewhat like a portable radio, with two slenderparallel rods on top and a number of dials on the main panel.
Layroh swung the rods slowly around the horizon while he carefully tunedthe various dials. It was when the rods pointed toward the southeastthat there suddenly came the first response he had ever received. Fromsomewhere within the mechanism there came a faint staccato ripple ofclear beauty like countless tiny hammers beating upon a crystal gong.
* * * * *
The sound galvanized Layroh into the nearest approach to emotion anyonehad ever seen him display. The giant moved with the furious speed of amadman as he returned the apparatus to the sedan and swung the car outacross the sand toward the southeast. After a mile he stopped andhurriedly set
