Forgotten Fiction

by Lloyd Eshbach

  A great helicopter, a large quadriplane of most peculiar design, had appeared on the white surface. Carcante explained it before I had time for more than a fleeting thought, beginning then to intersperse explanatory remarks between items of interest.

  “This is my plane, the machine I use in entering and leaving the valley. Like all my mechanisms it derives its power from atomic energy. It played a mighty important part in my experiments on evolution.”

  The plane was gone then; but it left a horrible suspicion in my mind. A machine answering to the description of this one had caused the disappearances of the aviators and their machines. This plane—Carcante—the unknown, hidden valley—they dovetailed into each other perfectly. Yet not in my wildest flight of fancy did I suspect the complete truth. But I hadn’t long to wait ere I knew all the fiendish facts, in their hideous, heartless brutality.

  THE screen was now occupied by a picture of what was evidently the lower floor of the sphere. In the center of the chamber, before a strange mechanism of wires and cones, discs and tubes, stood Carcante.

  The latter’s voice came to me faintly out of the semidarkness. “These pictures were taken automatically to serve as a permanent record of my experiments. The room is my laboratory.”

  Carcante’s image walked out of the camera range; but returned in a moment, bearing in his arms a curious burden. Long and narrow, it was, wrapped completely in white doth. As the scientist removed this covering, I gasped in horror. His burden was a human being, a man I recognized as the first aviator who had disappeared. There was no time for the full significance of this to penetrate my consciousness, for Carcante’s image was in motion.

  Carrying the man across the room to what appeared to be a large, wooden cross, he tied him fast to the cruciform object, arms widespread, head fastened back, and body sagging. Then returning to the machine, he manipulated the apparatus for a moment, and stepped back.

  A stream of light leaped from the heart of the device and bathed the aviator with an alien glow. Abruptly he stiffened while an expression of unutterable pain and torment overspread his face. In a moment this was gone, replaced by a look of mingled horror and dazed wonder. Then suddenly there was a strange blurring of his features—his body grew squat, broadening perceptibly—hair sprang from his flesh with a speed that could be seen—he turned to a beast before my eyes! The awfulness of what I had beheld numbed my faculties, yet I heard all that Carcante said with complete clarity.

  “That was my first attempt to accelerate evolution. As you saw, it was unsuccessful. Indeed, instead of speeding up the process, it cast the subject back along the path of evolution. The speed of the subject’s retrogression, by the way, was far less rapid than the film indicated. The camera is responsible for the greater speed.

  “The result of this, my first attempt, was duplicated in every way in each case, even though each subject was treated in a slightly different manner.

  “The ray that you saw is composed of the collected and magnified emanations of a certain radioactive element that I’ve discovered. These emanations act on the glands of the body, breaking down the mineral matter in them, and forming other elements. The structure of the tissues undergoes a metamorphosis, and the cells are reorganized and changed. The excretions of the glands are replaced by entirely different compounds. So potent is the action of the ray that the entire body is transformed—but. the change is directly opposite to that which I desire! Of all the subjects on which I’ve experimented, a total of ninety-one men and women, not one advanced; all degenerated.

  “But I think I’ve discovered a method of reversing the action of the ray. I intend starting a new series of experiments very shortly—and that’s where I need you. I f you will do so, you may aid me in this attempt to lift humanity high above its low plane, to a position of undreamed of culture and knowledge. There is a remote possibility that my new process will fail, and that the subjects will be cast further back, but we needn’t feel any greater concern about that.

  “What do you say?”

  What would I say? For a moment I could say nothing; the chill hand of horror had made me speechless. This man must be insane! But finally, when I regained control of my tongue, all the horror, revulsion and disgust within me sought outlet.

  “What do I say? Just this: you’re mad! But sane or insane, you’re a foul, inhuman brute! Help you? The only way I’ll help you is to see that you get the punishment you deserve. You——”

  Carcante snapped on the light—and fell back, aghast. Never had I seen a face given over so completely to evil. His deep-set eyes were narrowed to slits from which flashes of anger seemed to dart, and his thin lips were drawn back in a hideous snarl. And then the madman leaped upon me!

  I am not very tall, but since boyhood I’ve been noted for my abnormal strength. I needed all of it to withstand Carcante—all of it and more! His was the strength of two men. In a moment his hands fastened themselves about my neck in a viselike grip and cut off my breath. I felt my struggles growing weaker—a flare of multicolored, bright lights—a wave of blackness—and my senses left me.

  With returning consciousness I became aware of a sharp, cutting pain at each of my wrists. For a moment I could not comprehend where I was, then abruptly I realized. I was bound to the arms of the wooden cross in Carcante’s laboratory!

  The mad scientist was busily working with his dials and controls. Finally he secured to have them arranged to his complete satisfaction; then he turned toward me with a cruel, gloating expression in his pin-point eyes. He opened his lips to speak—but closed them without uttering a sound.

  A confused bedlam of guttural voices had broken the comparative silence; a revolver shot rang out on the air! The sound seemed to come from a point a short distance away from the sphere.

  Carcante gazed at me for a moment, then turned, dashed across the room, and disappeared up the shaft.

  I was left alone, bound to a cross, awaiting the application of a ray that would transform me to a creature little better than a beast.

  CHAPTER III

  The Subterranean Tubes

  IMMEDIATELY after Carcante left the room I began to struggle with the bonds that held my wrists. The cords were thick and strong, and I felt before I tried that they were beyond my power to break; but I could not remain there motionless, docilely awaiting my captor’s return. As I had thought, my efforts were in vain; the cords held.

  From without came the babble of gutteral voices, mounting higher and higher, and growing stronger and stronger with the passing moments. Then gradually they faded, as though their owners were moving slowly from the vicinity. A heavy silence that was somehow disquieting fell upon the room.

  Minutes passed by—and I became aware of a vague suggestion of sound close at hand. It seemed to be a faint grating rasp of one hard surface upon another, heard for a moment, then gone, only to be repeated a few seconds later. Sharply I stared around, searching.

  In a few moments my quest was rewarded. A short distance away, a few feet from the shaft that led to the upper floor, a circular section of the curving floor, about twelve feet wide, began to move. As I watched, it slid aside into some hidden compartment, revealing the dark mouth of a shaft.

  Impatiently I watched the opening while my heart beat more rapidly. What new menace was this, come to threaten me? Not for long was I left in doubt.

  The figure of a woman arose above the surface. Anxiously she peered around, then climbed quickly into the room. Stepping lightly, she crossed to my side.

  So rapid were her movements, and so unexpected her presence, that I gained only an indistinct impression of her appearance. A lovely, oval face; deep, starry brown eyes; beautiful red lips, now tense with excitement; a mass of tumbled chestnut hair brushing red cheeks; and a lithe form clad in a dress that was soiled and torn—that was what my swift glance revealed.

  I cleared my throat to speak; she laid a silencing finger across her lips, and doubled her efforts to release my fettered wrists. Fi
nally she succeeded, and I staggered away from the wooden cross, and the diabolic machine that made men into beasts.

  Quickly we moved over to the opening in the floor—and there the girl hesitated.

  “I’ll return in a moment,” she whispered. “Wait!” And in a trice she had crossed the room and had vanished in the circular shaft.

  Impatiently I waited, my mind filled with conjectures—and with anxiety for the stranger. In a moment she returned with a canteen of water, and a knapsack filled with food.

  “They belong to the mad scientist,” she smiled, “but we need them more than he.”

  A moment later, with the girl in the lead, we entered the mouth of the shaft and started down another, now familiar spiral ledge. The door slid automatically back into place when the girl applied pressure in a round indentation in the wall. We were completely surrounded by abysmal darkness, in some subterranean passageway beneath Carcante’s home.

  Around and around we went, down, down, until we paused on a level surface at the base of the shaft. And there we stood for a moment, the silence broken only by our breathing.

  “The bottom of the pit,” the girl explained through the darkness. “So far as I know, we can go no farther. I’ve never been able to learn whether or not there’s a way out; but I’ve never had a light.”

  Her mention of light reminded me of the cigarette lighter that I habitually carried. Fortunately, the beastmen had not taken this; although this was the only thing they had missed while searching me. Drawing the lighter from my pocket, I pressed the button that simultaneously released the lid and ignited the wick. A faint flickering glow replaced the absolute darkness.

  Searching the walls with the aid of the pygmy flame, the girl suddenly exclaimed, “Here it is—the mechanism that controls the opening and closing of the bottom of this shaft!” And she pointed to a depression in the wall similar to the one above.

  It was the work of a moment to step back on the ledge and press on the control. Slowly, ponderously, creaking in protest, the base of the shaft slid back into the wall.

  We peered down. About twelve feet below us lay a smooth, level floor; it was vague, indistinct, and barely discernible in the rays of the lighter. Only for a moment did we gaze down; then there was a sharp report, a sudden lurch of the ledge on which we stood; and we were dropping through the air.

  In the shock of my landing the lighter was extinguished; but miraculously I retained my hold upon it. In a second the flickering flame again illuminated our surroundings.

  Hastily I glanced around. High above us was the shaft, a jagged edge showing where a portion of the ledge had broken away. It was so high above that it was completely beyond our reach.

  To right and left stretched a long tunnel, about twelve feet high. That is, it gave the impression of great length in spite of the fact that our meagre light penetrated only a short distance into the gloom. It seemed to be a great pipe with smooth, shining sides.

  A sound behind me recalled my companion to my mind. Turning, I saw her struggling to her feet. “Are you hurt?” I exclaimed.

  “I seem to have wrenched my ankle,” she replied. “But I don’t think it’s anything serious.”

  At my suggestion that we bathe her ankle with water from the canteen, she laughed. “It’s nothing,” she said.

  “And what will we do now?” she asked, changing the subject.

  I hesitated. “That’s hard to say. I believe I could lift you up so that you could grasp the ledge and draw yourself up; but I don’t think we want to do that. What we want to do is to find some way out of this tunnel, other than through Carcante’s laboratory. And I don’t believe that will be difficult as it seems at first thought.” I recounted Carcante’s statement concerning the countless pits, similar to the one in which he lived, that covered the entire valley; told, too, of my belief that the tunnel into which we had fallen acted as a connecting link between the pits.

  “If we can find a place where one of these shafts leads into the tunnel,” I concluded, “we’ll manage to open the door, and get you on the ledge. With that accomplished, I feel certain that some way will present itself to enable me to join you.

  “At any rate, it seems to be the only feasible plan.” After a moment’s discussion, we started through the great tube, slowly, carefully, eyes watching for the unexpected. The girl’s arm rested upon my shoulder; her injured ankle handicapped her walking considerably.

  Somehow the pressure of her arm had a queer effect upon me. It was strangely pleasant. I had never had any great interest in the female of the species; but there was something so very appealing about this woman that I was involuntarily drawn to her.

  AS we made our way along the great tube, I became aware of things that I hadn’t noticed before. The walls seemed to be formed of the same, glass-like substance that made up the floor of the ledge in Carcante’s pit, and the sphere. More highly polished, though, this seemed to be, casting back the rays of the feeble light I was carrying. I noticed, too, that the floor of the tube was thickly coated with dust. Powder-fine, inches thick, it lay, the dust of ages, a sign of immemorial antiquity. Not on the floor, alone, was dust; the walls, when I touched them inquisitively, I found were covered with the same age-old film. Where my fingers removed the dust, the interior of the tube shone more brightly than ever; it was far more highly polished than I had imagined. Strange, this tube was, and ancient as the Himalayan hills.

  The voice of the girl broke in upon my musings. “We’ve been thrown together under peculiar circumstances,” she said, “and the fate of each of us seems closely linked with that of the other. I think our association will be less strained if we become acquainted. I know that I’m curious about how you came into the mad scientist’s grip, who you are, and all the rest; and I suppose you’re wondering the same thing about me.” Now that she mentioned it, I was curious; our being together had seemed so natural that it hadn’t occurred to me before.

  “Of course!” I exclaimed. “I’ve been wondering who you are, and how you come to be here.” As we moved through the tube, then, I identified myself, and related briefly the events leading up to my meeting with the girl.

  She in turn told her story, a narrative not very surprising in the light of what I already knew, but that was nevertheless far from commonplace.

  Claire Maynard was her name; she, too, was an American. A week before she had been on board the transoceanic passenger plane, Teutonia, en route from New York to Liverpool. Midway between the continents, a panic had seized the passengers at the strange behavior of the plane. The pilots seemed to have lost control of the craft. Then the truth became known. A mighty monster of a machine, strangely wrought, had seized the Teutonia with great hooks that dangled from the former’s under side, and had borne her from her course. It was Carcante, in his plane, seeking new subjects for his experiments.

  The Teutonia had been carried south, landing finally in the hidden valley. There, the mad scientist, aided by about a dozen beastmen, had herded the terrified passengers and crew into his laboratory. A number of the men—there were more women than men—had offered resistance, but their efforts were in vain. They had been shot down in cold blood. Then, while the beastmen stood guard, Carcante had begun his experiments.

  Claire, by some chance, had been farther back than the rest. While watching the horrible spectacle before her, one of her heels had sunk into a depression in the floor. To her amazement, a great door drew aside in the floor behind her. With the sounds of her movements concealed by the cruel voice of Carcante speaking to his captives, she had retreated into the shaft, and had pressed on the indentation in the wall similar to the one above. Darkness had closed about her.

  There followed five seemingly endless days of waiting in the darkness, five nights of nerve-wracking foraging through the sphere for much-needed food and water. Twice she had been dose to detection, but both times had escaped.

  And then on the sixth day I had come. Through the door she had heard the wild mutt
erings of Carcante as he prepared his apparatus; had heard the sounds of violence among the beastmen, and Carcante’s departure from the room; and had decided to take a chance and rescue me, with the hope that, together, we might escape.

  With her narrative concluded, Claire became silent. And T too was silent, busy with my thoughts. A remarkable woman was this who had rescued me from Carcante—how remarkable, I had not realized. The weaker sex! Not much weakness could be found in this girl! More than ever I felt myself drawn toward her, felt the full force of her attractive personality.

  During the recital of each of us, we had continued on through the great tube; but not a sign of a shaft leading to the world above had come to our eyes. I began to feel disheartened. Perhaps my theory was wrong, and there were no other shafts; or, which was more probable, perhaps we had been passing doorways so cleverly concealed that they had escaped our notice.

  After I told Claire my thought, we kept our eyes trained upon the top of the tube with far greater care than we had exercised before.

  And then we came to a point where the tube divided—or rather where a number of tunnels met. After some debate we decided upon one of these, and continued on our way.

  We had gone some distance, when, without a warning sputter, the flame of the lighter died! With a dread suspicion in my mind, I tried to ignite it again—but to no avail. It was empty! We were lost in a maze of subterranean tunnels—lost in darkness, without means of making light!

  “Miss Maynard,” I said to the girl, striving to keep my voice steady, “I’m afraid the lighter is useless. It was the height of folly for me not to realize that the fuel could not last forever. We’ve been wandering farther and farther from the shaft that led us into this tunnel; and I—I don’t believe we could possibly find it again. I frankly admit that things look mighty hopeless; but anything is better than the fate Carcante had in store for us.”