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Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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Amazing Stories Quarterly, Fall 1931,
with "The Demons Of Rhadi-Mu"
Not so long ago, as we count time, a highly unusual occurrence, not generally understood by the lay mind, or perhaps difficult of conception by even highly-trained minds, would often be considered black magic. It is, therefore, not far-fetched to assume that a savage, brought to present-day civilization, should prostrate himself at the feet of the white man, who can repeat some of the achievements of the present century, and worship him as a god. Even we who are accustomed to the present-day wonders must look with awe and wonder at some of the seeming "miracles" created by man, or creations now in the making.
"ANOTHER new region never before seen by the eye of man," remarked Major Morley to his mechanic, who was putting on the finishing touches, getting the gleaming plane ready for its flight. The Major appeared a trim, athletic man in his tight-fitting leather things, who did not show his thirty-five years. Nor did he feel them. He still had the romantic outlook of the twenties.
"Yes, sir!" replied Private Heyliger, never glancing off the wrench that he held on a strut bolt.
"There must be dozens of them about the country," the Major continued. "Airplane exploration is showing them up. Remember the vast plateau in Western Colorado, and the valley in Montana, whose existence had never been suspected until we surveyed them for the Department?"
"Yes, sir!" replied Private Heyliger. "Ready in about ten minutes, now, sir!"
Major Morley walked briskly a score of paces away from the plane and back again. Hundreds of trips he had made for the U.S. Geodetic Survey, and never before had he been as excited as he was now. His heart thumped and his face felt hot and cold by turns. For, this was a moment toward which he had been looking, and for which he had been working for nearly ten years. It all raced through his mind as he paced rapidly back and forth, waiting for the mechanic to finish and the photographer to arrive. Was it Professor Geiger's theory that excited him most or the thought of Miss Lyla, the Professor's daughter? Both were sufficient causes.
Ten years ago he had been a student-roomer at the Professor's home, and had learned of the Professor's researches, and had been charmed by Lyla's flashing eyes and vivacious ways. Right along here it was, just a few hours' flight in the direction that the plane's nose was headed, that Professor Geiger claimed he had found traces of a civilization as high as that of Greece and Rome and far ahead of that of Egypt or India, and dead and gone before any of these were dreamed of certainly it was possible. There were thousands of square miles of unknown, unmapped land all along the Colorado River. The Professor had a strange theory, which he substantiated by comparing his rock inscriptions and bronze images with those from India and Ceylon and Sumatra, that this civilization here in Nevada originally came from Mu, the lost continent of the Pacific, which also produced the present Oriental civilizations. The emigrants from Mu crossed the Pacific and sailed up the Colorado River, and built cities which were populous and civilized to a high degree, twenty thousand years ago, when our Occidental ancestors were hairy cavemen fighting mastodons with stone axes.
But all of this had cost Professor Geiger his life, and that of his daughter. He had made so many trips out here to study the country and bring back specimens for his museum that he began to think lightly of the dangers. On his last trip, he had taken Miss Lyla with him, and neither one had ever been heard from again. Never a trace of him had been found, which was no surprise, for in this maze of huge canyons and plateaus, armies and cities could be hidden unsuspected.
Major Morley had sworn to devote his life to finding them, Whether it was the fabulous and romantic country of which the professor spoke, that he wanted to see for himself, or whether he hoped that there was still a chance of his seeing Miss Lyla alive, with her sparkling eyes and blue-black hair and flashing teeth, just as he had seen her helping her father in his museum, I do not know. Away back in the Professor's family there was Indian blood, and Miss Lyla's soft plump cheeks had the faintest suggestion of brown in them. But Professor Geiger was the most accomplished and cultured scholar the Major had ever seen, and Miss Lyla was following in his footsteps. And how she could sing!
Anyway, it had taken him some years to get started on the right course; to decide that airplane surveying was his only hope; to get into the Army, and then to be assigned to the Geodetic Survey, and finally to be assigned to map the Colorado River. It had taken cleverness and wire-pulling. It was a long, weary ten years upon which he looked back, and he sighed.
The mechanic stood up and saluted.
"All ready, sir! Shall I call for Sergeant Yoder."
The Major nodded, and Private Heyliger blew a whistle. In a moment the photographer appeared in a motorcycle side-car from the barracks gate. In another car was the Colonel, who shook hands with the Major and wished him success. In another moment the three were in their seats in the plane, which sailed up off the field, leaving behind the two motorcycles as little specks on the yellow sand.
It took only a few minutes to get away from the flat sand and soar up over the mountains. For a little while the wild and terrible beauty of that gigantically ragged country occupied them. Then—because modern planes cover a hundred miles in an incredibly short space of time, Sergeant Yoder got his cameras pointed and his clocks and plate magazines all set, while Major Morley, with an accurate eye on compasses and gauges, became a busy man. It takes team work to get a good aeroplane map. Private Heyliger was also busy recording observations of height, speed, and meteorological conditions.
The biggest part of a day can pass very rapidly under such conditions. Suddenly they found they had covered the allotted task, were terrifically hungry, and felt quite dull and stupid from fatigue. The gasoline gauge indicated that it was about time to turn back, when suddenly, behind a great, jagged blue ridge, they caught a flash of green. It seemed to be a bright, flat, green space on the other side of the distant mountains.
So unusual was such a sight in this region of bare, reddish rock and purple mists, that without a word, without even conscious thought, they headed the plane in that direction. Alarm over a failing gasoline supply forced them to turn back to the post, but not until they had glimpsed a great level plateau of the richest green, through which a river wound peacefully, fed by streams from the surrounding peaks. It was a brilliant sight, that bright green among the blue peaks, on top of one of which a storm raged among black clouds and streaks of thin lightning; it was a staggering thought, for who had dreamed of such a region in this wild country. "A discovery!" was the joyous thought of each of the three men.
THEY reached the post in silence; and they could hardly sleep that night. It had seemed like a glimpse into some romantic fairyland, and without a spoken word among them, the determination was mutual: the next morning by daylight the plane was ready. They pointed it straight as an arrow for the green plateau.
In a couple of hours they were over it. The glamour of yesterday's sunset was gone, and the region looked a little more prosaic; but it was still interesting. Of course, thought the trio to themselves, they had seen many places which from above looked interesting, and which on close acquaintance turned out to be nothing, from the standpoint of adventure. Only in Major Morley's head, there always dwelt the hope that here were possibilities of finding traces of Miss Lyla, or even of finding Miss Lyla herself.
The place was certainly inaccessible by ground travel.
It must have been a mile above sea-level, and precipitous cliffs surrounded it on all sides. To ground explorers, the region must have looked like a huge, unscalable mass of mountain peaks. Only from the air could they see the green, flat stretches, the winding river, the pretty lake, the dark forests.
They circled about above the fascinating land. Little things moved about here and there; animals or people, they could not tell. There were groups and patches that might have been villages. In the gloomy, towering cliffs at the north were caves, and masses that might have been buildings. Sergeant Yoder was busily clicking his camera. He must have had several hundred pictures before the Major said into his mouthpiece; "It's about time to land."
A green, level place, like a field, near the river, offered an ideal landing place for the plane. It came down low at a place where the forest came down to meet the river, and low, rolling hills stretched away beyond. The pilot flattened out a score of feet above the ground. It looked like prairie. The wheels went bumpety-bump, and they were considerably shaken up, for the ground was somewhat corrugated. But, they made a safe and successful landing.
It was a real long-grass prairie. In the distance a herd of small horses was galloping away in fright from the plane. Before them was the river, big enough to float steamboats; to their left the dark, rich forest. In all other directions the green plains stretched away to the dim blueness of the mountains.
"Now what?" asked the Sergeant.
"We don't want to get far from the plane," the Major replied, "But we can take a look at the river and at the woods. Then we can go up again and circle about at a low elevation, and look the whole place over."
The river looked deep; the water was swift and reddish.
The trees of the forest were not coniferous, as were most of the woods in this part of America. There were trees that they were sure must have been oaks and birches, and some thin-leaved ones that none of them had ever seen before.
"What in the world shall we report about this?" the Major observed. "No one will believe us."
They turned around to get back to the car [sic], and were stunned to see a mass of brown-skinned men, all naked except for bright red or blue loin-cloths, creeping on all fours and on stomachs, toward the plane, evidently in considerable fear. The three explorers started and grew rigid. There was not a weapon between them.
Such a need had never occurred to them. Involuntarily they all took a few steps toward the plane.
There came a yell behind them, and out of the woods poured another horde of brown figures. They were naked, with bright loin-cloths, and their skins were painted from faces to legs in bright and hideous designs, that made them look more terrible than ever. They carried spears, bows and arrows.
Major Morley was a scientist by nature and training. In that moment of danger, his first thought about those yelling savages charging with leveled spears down upon him was a wonder as to their ethnological classification.
"They are not exactly like Hindus, and not exactly like Hawaiians. Yet they resemble both," he said to himself.
They all braced themselves for the impact, determined to put up the best fight they could with bare hands. The savages ran up to within a few feet, and then suddenly fell flat on the ground on their faces, prostrating themselves before the white men. Then, as though having performed a necessary duty, they leaped up, gathered about the three soldiers, and held them, by arms, legs, and clothes, wherever there was a handhold. By no gentle nor uncertain means, the savages directed their captives to march. They headed toward the forest, and bundled the white men along most roughly and unceremoniously, not hesitating to give a kick or a prod with a spear when the notion seized them, Those around the plane deserted it, and ran along with the group about the captives.
There seemed to be about fifty of the savages, and they surrounded them so effectively that there was not the least hope of a dash for liberty. They seemed to be fairly well organized, with implicit obedience to leaders, who seemed to have clear ideas; there was even a rough semblance of military formation in their progress. For what seemed an eternity to the three men from the airplane, they were shoved and hustled along at a fatiguing pace; hunger and thirst began to assail them.
The Major was puzzled at the attitude of the savages. They seemed to show the utmost respect and awe for their captives; but they seemed to be so rough by nature, so thoughtless and lacking in appreciation of someone else's point of view, that they were like the child that crushes the kitten it loves the most. Finally, the Major was ready to try and ask for rest and water, when the cavalcade came to a stream and stopped. They all sat down; the savages in a semicircle, with their captives in the focus of it.
"They look at us as though we might be gods," the Major said.
"They're certainly rough on gods," said Heyliger.
Food was passed around, some rough, hard, dark cake, and some dried meat. Both were unpleasant, and the three white men only nibbled at them a little.
Then the savages bowed in the squatting posture, and started a queer chant, doing a kow-tow every so many measures. They seemed to be singing to their white gods.
Suddenly the Major heard a sharp crack behind him, and turning quickly, beheld a strange beast swishing through the leaves. A great bulk of an animal was approaching swiftly. It charged through the leaves, directly toward him, so rapidly that he had no chance to move out of the way and was too paralyzed to cry out.
It was very much like an elephant; somewhat smaller.
The tusks were short, and bent backward instead of forward; the ears were small, and the trunk ridiculously short.
"A prehistoric elephant!" flashed through Major Morley's mind. "It belongs in a museum!"
Things happened quickly. There was an ugly snort and two more big leaps of the animal, right toward Major Morley. But at the same time there was a wild chorus of shouts and a trampling among the savages. Major Morley gave himself up for lost, and shut his eyes as the brute came for him, with trunk uplifted and tusks pointing.
HE felt himself banged into from one side and thrown several feet. His feet and ankles were seized by a dozen hands, and he was dragged along the ground. Then he lay still, and somewhere at a distance there was an awful commotion: stamping and snorting and yelling. Bruised and torn and scratched, he sat up, and found Yoder and Heyliger sitting up and staring about them with amazement, not three feet from him. Around them was a ring of ten spearmen. Thirty or forty yards away, a terrific fight was going on. A tangle of brown bodies was swaying and struggling, while above and through them showed the plunging bulk of the elephant. They looked just in time to see one struggling, kicking savage raised up in the air, a gout of blood splash from his body and spurt in all directions, with the point of a tusk showing through his back. With a vicious toss of the elephant's head, the twitching body rose high in the air, its limbs kicking and blood spattering, and fell with a thud on the ground, where after a few jerks it lay still.
Spears stabbed in and out of the mêlée. A brown savage crawled out of it on his hands and knees, dragged himself a few feet, and fell flat. But numbers and spears soon told. The movements of the bulky beast grew spasmodic and its plunges less powerful. Finally it tottered, leaned over, and fell, the natives hurriedly backing away in all directions. There was a crackle of breaking spear-shafts.
The crowd of bloody and panting savages ran toward the three explorers, shouting and jabbering in joy. They formed into regular lines and broke into a chant. Four of the number lay writhing and groaning about the scene of the fight, and two others were quite still.
"Look here!" said Heyliger. "They've put up this scrap for us. To save us from that critter."
"So it seems," said Sergeant Yoder drily, "after nearly breaking our necks on the march. I'll confess that the charm of the native's disposition is beyond me."
"We ought to look after those wounded beggars," the Major said.
They rose and started toward the wounded men. Spears were held in front of them, to block their way. Finally by signs and earnest contortions of faces, they made the savages understand that they wanted to see the wounded men. One of them had his face and neck smashed beyond recognition, and his chest was heaving deeply in his efforts to breath through blood-filled bronchi. There was no hope for him, and the Major shook his head. Before he could raise a hand to interfere, one of the natives plunged a spear through the victim's chest and finished him.
Another man had apparently had merely a solar plexus blow; he was gasping and rolling his eyes, and shortly began to vomit. He would soon be all right. Of the other two, one had a broken thigh-bone, and another a badly lacerated shoulder.
"We've got to take care of them somehow," the Major said.
"We're there!" said Heyliger, stripping off his undershirt. He tore it up into bandages, and with handkerchiefs for pads they made a fairly neat dressing for the lacerated shoulder. With the broken spear-shafts from under the elephant, from which the blood was wiped with leaves, they made splints for the thigh. The bone was apparently in fairly good position, and with six sticks and a lot of bandage, they immobilized it quite satisfactorily. The natives watched them in open-mouthed wonder, occasionally breaking out into lively jabbering. Then the Major, by gentleness and firmness—such is the force of character and leadership—succeeded in getting possession of four spears, by means of which they made litters with their shirts and blouses, stringing the sleeves on the spear shafts. Major Morley and Sergeant York lifted up the man with the fracture. Heyliger, after a lot of tugging and swearing, persuaded a native who had lost his spear and his bow, to help him carry the other man.
"Bunch o' low down skunks," Heyliger was saying. "They would 'a' just left 'em here to die."
In the meanwhile, a dozen natives had cut strips of meat off the carcass, stuck them on their spears, and were now carrying them over their shoulders, with the blood running down the shafts upon their hands. The cavalcade started off, the three white men carrying their burdens.
By the time an hour was up, the white men heartily wished that they were callous savages, rid of all the merciful impulses that prevented them from leaving the wounded men behind. Hands and shoulders ached, and lungs panted desperately for breath. The unburdened savages hurried through the woods, and prodded their prisoners with spears into equal speed; nor did any signs of fatigue arouse enough sympathy in them to elicit offers of help in carrying the litters. But, at the end of an hour, the journey was over.
THERE was a corner with high cliffs on two sides, and the huge river disappearing into a narrow cleft. A most wonderful and vast temple stood in front of them, closely against the cliff wall; in fact part of it was carved from the rock of the cliff. It had the appearance of ancient Hindu work, with perhaps less of elaborate carving, but a most beautiful and artistic massing of square stories and square towers. At the foot of it, few and scattered and vast, was the village or city of the native savages out of which ran a crowd of brown, naked bodies to greet the returning band of warriors. It consisted largely of women, children, and old men. As he drew nearer, Morley perceived that the village was composed of thousands of square clay houses, arranged in blocks and rows; and especially piled on top of each other, sometimes in stacks of four or five houses high.
"Gosh!" exclaimed Heyliger. "They live here just like they do in New York."
Shouts were exchanged between the two approaching groups. The villagers perceived the blood and wounds, and many of the women detached themselves, and ran still more swiftly, and searched intently among the warriors. One of them put her head down to that of the man the Major was helping to carry and then seized the spear shafts out of the Major's hands and insisted on helping to carry the litter. They arrived at the foot of a ladder leading up to a house raised two stories above the street; there was a bilingual argument carried on chiefly by means of hands and shrugs, and the woman yielded. She ran into the ground floor, and soon emerged, apparently with permission to house her wounded man without carrying him up the ladder.
BY that time a well-informed squad of spearmen took the three white men in charge again, as the latter were retrieving their shirts and blouses from the litters. Up the great, broad staircase that led into the huge temple, along a vast corridor as wide as a street with its ceiling hidden in gloom, past great images set at regular intervals, they were led into a vast hall, that looked like a cathedral. There was something church-like about it, with altars at one end, and earthenware lamps swinging on chains, and long-whiskered, white-robed priests solemnly busy at something. There were no seats nor benches, however, but skins were scattered about the wide expanse of floor, many of them stuffed out into cushions. The half-gloom only enhanced the beauty and grandeur of the place.
Right through the middle of the great room the party proceeded, toward the group of priests. The latter straightened out and one of them stepped out in front. The savages prostrated themselves once, and then their leader opened a harangue. He did most of the jabbering; the priest spoke only occasionally and softly, and finally ended the episode by raising and extending his arms over the group of warriors in some kind of blessing. The warriors departed solemnly, but apparently highly pleased. Major Morley and his companions were left with the priests.
The priest bowed and spoke. Major Morley bowed, but refrained from speaking.
"Good start," muttered Heyliger; "but how in heck we'll ask him our way home, I can't see."
The priest was making gestures, with his hands toward the explorers, then toward himself, and then smiling happily, as though to indicate that they were welcome. Then he motioned for them to follow him. He led them to three comfortable little stone rooms in a row, where there were basins of water and soft linen robes, and bowls of appetizing cooked rice and meat and vegetables. Here he bowed deprecatingly and withdrew.
"Seems like we stand in good with the bosses, anyway," Heyliger remarked.
"We'll have to take it practically," the Major said. "Let's wash up and eat and make ourselves at home. Then we'll try to learn the language, and find out exactly how we stand here."
The old priest allowed them an hour, and then came back. By this time they were feeling much better, after a clean-up, a meal and a rest. This time the priest led them merely across the corridor, and they found themselves in an astonishing chamber. It was long and narrow, the length being six or seven times that of the width. One end flared out into a wider portion; the other came to a point, and at this point a huge blue-and-yellow trunk of flame hissed and roared up out of the floor, and through a hole in the ceiling. About it were scattered various utensils suggesting the founder's and the blacksmith's art. In a moment Major Morley had concluded that it was a natural-gas flame, for it looked quite typically like a lighted Bunsen burner, except that it was magnified a thousand times. Evidently the priests were making good use of its heat. There were tables along the walls of the room, upon which were scattered all manner of strange utensils, the use of which they did not at first surmise. Priests were superintending the carrying in of more tables and baskets of more utensils and various supplies, the actual labor being done by naked brown savages. It was immediately obvious that the priests were intelligent and civilized, and on a plane very much higher than that of the savages, who lived in the hut city about the foot of the huge temple. The priests were showing the tables and their contents to the travelers, speaking in soft tones.
"Their gestures and attitudes indicate that they are giving these things to us," the Major remarked, in considerable puzzlement.
"Much obliged," said Heyliger. "Could you manage, sir, to ask them to loan us a Ford?"
The Major was preoccupied with a strange thought.
"That language sounds somehow familiar to me," he mused. "It sounds as though I as least ought to know what it is. God knows I can't understand it. Devas, devas, the priest said several times. It suggests 'gods.' It can't be Latin. I could recognize that."
Then he caught sight of the hem of the priest's robe. There was an inscription there, the first word of which was a simple one of three letters, which Major Morley had often seen in Professor Geiger's museum;
three letters in Sanskrit, "P," "A," and "T," meaning "father." However, in Sanskrit, there are no circles around the letters. But the ancient inhabitants of Mu put circles around their letters to represent the sun.
"Sanskrit!" exclaimed the Major.
He caught the priest by the arm.
"Ignih?" he said breathlessly, pointing to the fire at the point of the room.
The old priest's face broke out into a joyous expression. He pointed up and down the room.
"Banah! banah! dadhami!" he said eagerly.
"Now what can that be?" the Major said to his companions. "Banah means arrow"
"Why, sure!" broke in the Sergeant. "This whole room is shaped like an arrow!"
"And dadhami means to give. They are giving it to us."
"Go on. Go on, sir, and talk to him," Heyliger urged.
"There ain't nothin' the Major can't do," he confided to the Sergeant.
"Too bad," the Major replied. "That's all the Sanskrit I know. Still, I've studied the stuff, and can learn quickly."
The old priest was also disappointed when he realized that the Major knew only a few words of his language. But learning began at once; pointing to objects and learning their names, and the Major found his memory supplying him with words here and there.
THERE began a life that lasted many weeks, learning the language, living in their three comfortable rooms, and spending days in the arrow-room. The priests treated them with the utmost respect and cordiality; and the three Americans were only too glad to admit that the priests were intelligent, civilized, cultured people. Krishti, their head or "father," became an especially intimate friend.
Their meals were brought in by white-robed priestesses, whose dark features were possessed of no inconsiderable beauty. Gradually, one tall woman considerably more beautiful than the rest, made it her especial duty to see that the Major's food was always perfect in preparation and arrangement; and while he ate she would in her melodious voice speak to him in simple sentences, very skillfully worded to give him practice in the use of the language.
They became thoroughly acquainted with the arrow-room. There were many vessels on the table of a siliceous material, probably glass; many utensils for heating, boiling, igniting, and firing materials; curious fluids in flasks and vases, and little heaps of various kinds of minerals. In fact, it was a primitive laboratory, and not so very primitive at that.
"We could do a great deal here, if we only knew how," the Major observed. "I regret immensely that I am not a laboratory man. It is evident that these people expect something of us here. They seem to take it for granted that we belong in a laboratory. What could that signify?"
"Something about Miss Lyla, no doubt," thought Heyliger, but he kept silent.
So, they kept on working at the language, and trying to learn all they could about the materials in the laboratory, and hoping for a chance to escape. One day, the tall priestess, Purtrani, told them in her liquid voice, that the tribes wanted to worship the devas in the temple.
"Sacate," she said, meaning for them to follow her. She led them into the original cathedral-like room, where hundreds of native savages were gathered; where they prostrated themselves to the white men at the altar and sang their wild chants. The priestess laid flowers around the white men's feet and burned incense before them. In the quiet monotony of the procedure, the Major got an idea.
"Look here," he said to the other two. "There's that gas flame. The air feeds into it through a round hole in the room below. We could plug that with a goatskin—stick it in below the level of the flame, and inflate it. Shut the gas off. Till the flame goes out!" He waited expectantly.
"Yeah, and then what, sir?" the other two asked.
"Then we'll have gas."
"Yes sir. Then we'll have gas?"
"There's a million bolts of silk around here, beautiful stuff. We only have to figure out a gas-tight varnish of some sort, and then, up there on the roof where the flame now comes out—"
"A balloon!" Heyliger exclaimed. "I knew it! I knew the Major would find a way of getting out of here!"
EAGERLY they set to work on the balloon plan.
It took many weeks, even to make plans and accumulate raw material. They were frequently interrupted. Now the priests would take them into the Temple library, where hundreds of thousands of book-scrolls were stored, a vast and wonderful literature it must have been, a treasure for the archaeologist. Again they visited shops where priests and priestesses were at work, at wood and metal and stone, at weaving and spinning and painting. They worked gold and copper and iron; they made wonderful things of silk. They had speaking-tubes from one room to another, and even a reaction-turbine of clay, run by steam, whose whirling moved a fan in the hands of a stone image during religious ceremonies. These people could never possibly have heard of Hero's turbine; they must have invented it for themselves.
Or, under heavy guard, Morley, Yoder, and Heyliger were conducted through the village, where thousands upon thousands of savages led their primitive, filthy lives in their piled-up stone hovels, fishing, hunting, tending sheep and cattle, primitive agriculture, and no end of fighting. On the other hand, the priests had skillfully-tended fields gardens, and orchards. Yet, the two races never mingled. They came in contact only in the cathedral chamber during religious ceremonies, or when the priests forced, by means of superstition, the natives to perform heavy labor needed in the Temple.
"Caste," the Major said, "in its rudimentary stage."
The three white men could never get past certain limits. Always when they approached certain passages, they found lowered spears in their way; and when they asked why, their questions were not even heard. So they worked at the balloon. They made a successful model, two feet in diameter, and had the satisfaction of seeing it float away to the east, where their airplane lay—somewhere. Eventually, it began to look hopeful that this great pile of varnished silk, and this square basket, would one day sail up out of the Temple and carry them in the same direction. Then, the sand flats between the Temple and the river began to fill with detachments of armed men, fiercely drilling. There was a fire in their activity that was suggestive.
"Looks like they're cookin' up of a scrap," Heyliger observed.
One day the two wounded savages whose lives the white men had saved by proper medical attention, now healed and well, came in and offered themselves and their families as slaves. The Major was about to send them kindly away, when it occurred to him that their help would speed up the making of the balloon; he put them to work, and the poor savages were utterly happy to be of service.
By this time, all three of the men were fluent in the Sanskrit tongue, even to pronounce the queer "cerebral" sounds with the under part of the tongue against the roof of the mouth, and to using the beautiful "musical" accents that characterize this language. Then one day the time suddenly arrived when they needed this fluent knowledge. There was singing from the cathedral and shouts from the village, and the roar of drums from the troops on the sand. Krishti and two of his priests came to the rooms of the white men.
"The time has come to talk to you, and to explain why we need you," the priest began. "Long ages ago this land was settled by colonists, happy people who came across the sea from the Land of the Sun, called Mu—"
"The Lost Continent of the Pacific," the Major said to the other two.
"They sailed up the big River," the Priest continued, "and built big cities here. It was a prosperous land under the rule of a beneficent king, and his learned wise men. These wise men kept constantly inventing new and more wonderful miracles; and finally they found a mineral which caused a sudden and terrible fire. It scattered their city with a great shock, and kept on burning, and has been burning ever since, for as many centuries as there are days in a year. It does not look like a fire, but anyone who ventures near becomes terribly burned, and dies. This man was so burned, because he tried to cross the Zone of Fire——"
The priests motioned to two hearers who carried in a litter containing a man, who was covered with great, open, blistered and burned areas, and was obviously in terrible agony, and immediately carried him away.
"Radium burns!" pronounced the Major, in amazement. "Poor chap!"
"This burning spot," continued the priest, "which shines at night, is on the spot where the city of Ra-Mu stood, and divides our land into two almost equal areas. The people are mostly savage, except for the priests of this Temple, called Sirdah-Mu, and the one at the North, called Rhadi-Mu. The savages of the two halves of the land are bitter enemies, and fight constantly. They have nothing to live for but to fight each other, and we cannot prevent them; we would prefer not to fight, but we cannot change the instincts of the savage multitudes; and we need their labor and their support in our work and our worship.
"The constant fighting of the two tribes has kept their numbers weakened down, and through long ages, they were fairly well matched. In late years, our tribe, the Sirdah-Mu has been getting the worst of things. That is all because about ten years ago a white divine man from far lands came to the tribe of the Rhadi-Mu and lent them much powerful magic with which to kill our people. His magic has enabled them to weaken our tribe, and we are afraid they may destroy us altogether. That is why we are so happy to find three white gods who will give us magic against that of our enemies. We have given you a labor-room with all the utensils and substances to work with to produce magic. We want you to make us some miracles, as does the white god of Rhadi-Mu.
"Today we have word that an army of warriors from Rhadi-Mu is marching on us. We implore you to get your magic ready to help us, or they will destroy us all."
"WHAT'S it all about?" said Heyliger.
"I would guess that some white man lives with the priests of the other race, and that he must have devised some scientific weapons for them," the Major explained. "I shouldn't wonder if it were Professor Geiger. This stuff all corresponds to his reports from his previous trips."
"And," added Sergeant Yoder, "they expect us to make some rifles and artillery in the next day or two."
"Don't you treat it as a joke, either," the Major said. "We've got to get in and help somehow, or we'll get a spear through our ribs, if not from one side, then from the other."
"But what can we do? This bird says the other army is on the way." Sergeant Yoder snorted in contempt at savage ways.
"I'd like to walk out of this, just like I do out of a picture-show that I don't like, but it don't work, does it?"
"When does this Army git here?" Heyliger's mouth twisted in grim humor.
"The priest said that the scouts reported that they were crossing the Zone of Fire through the Valley of Mirrors, the only way across. That would bring them here by noon, if they hurry. And, according to reports, they outnumber our boys sufficiently to wipe us up."
Sergeant Yoder jumped up. He was a photographer, and knew the most about practical chemistry in the group.
"There is sulphur and nitre in that laboratory. Charcoal we can get fairly quickly. We can easily make up a bunch of gunpowder."
"And then——" Heyliger gazed in quizzical expectation.
"We haven't time," said the Major, "to make even the simplest weapon. But we can set a mine."
The priest was happy to see them set to work with real enthusiasm. They found plenty of charcoal ready. It took a short time to grind the ingredients, wet, and keep on grinding, so as to mix them intimately; with plenty of native labor to help. Then the wet mixture was laid out to dry in a warm, breezy place. It was next pulverized and in a few hours they had a dozen big vases full of gunpowder.
In the meanwhile, a narrow area between river and forest was selected, where the enemy troops must pass, and plans were laid to bait them with a small force, blow them up, and then to fall on whatever men remained with the available troops. The Major counted chiefly on the fact that the explosion would demoralize the ignorant savages. They dug their pit, laid their mine, covered the powder with rocks and earth, and laid a train for a fuse.
Then they waited. Scouts kept coming in and reporting that the enemy was approaching slowly. Then that the enemy had stopped. Again that the enemy was coming, but slowly. The Army grew impatient, and the little group of warriors that served as a decoy to the mine was nervous and scared. The Major persuaded the leaders to drill the men. After a while that failed, And the priests had a sacred image dragged out, an ugly god in a pointed hat. Three fires were built around it, and the companies took turns prostrating themselves about it and chanting. Then came the turn of the white men to serve as gods and be prostrated to and sung to.
"White lord, save us from the demons of our enemies," stuck in Major Morley's mind, in spite of the distraction of the beautiful priestess Purtrani kneeling in front of him, with his hand on her neck.
The priestess flung a handful of something into the fire, and a dense cloud of smoke rolled up about her and the Major, concealing them from the others as though they had been a hundred miles away. The priestess Purtrani sprang to her feet, seized the Major's hand and drew him after her. Not knowing just what he was doing, he followed, through smoke, in which dim, vague forms of men showed. In a few minutes, the smoke was gone, and they were alone in one of the square, stone houses of the village. The Major could not deny that the woman was beautiful, and that the light that shone in her eyes as she rolled impassioned torrents of Sanskirt at him was thrilling. In fact, for a moment it was alarming. Again she was dragging him by the hand to an inner door.
"But, but—" stammered Major Morley, with Lyla in his mind, "the troops are waiting; there is going to he a battle."
"Who knows who returns from battle and who does not?" the priestess breathed, and he could feel the beat of her breath on his neck.
"But—my companions—" the Major protested again, very much embarrassed, not knowing what to do.
The priestess' face suddenly grew harsh.
"Ah! I know!" she snarled. "You love Sabah, the priestess of the fire. Urrgh! Faugh!" and she launched off into a torrent of Sanskrit that the Major could not follow. She stood erect and rigid and clenched her hands and raised them above her head. He slipped slowly out of the door. At first she did not notice him, and then seeing him in retreat, she flung curses after him, that sounded incongruous from her beautiful lips, He saw no more of her that day.
Late in the afternoon, the savages lost patience, and the column began to pull out to meet the enemy. The Major swore and protested that it was suicide, but the native leaders disregarded the white god's advice. They wanted divine action, not divine advice. The scouts said that the enemy was ten miles away.
A long column travels slowly. Darkness caught them rapidly, and camp was made by twilight with fires twinkling here and there.
"Good thing night caught us," the Major said. "We can move the mine, and set it between us and the enemy."
They ate, rested a little, and prepared to get to work.
Suddenly, frightened scouts, gray in their pallor, came panting in that the enemy were attacking. At the same time, a most unearthly noise began. It rose in a terrific shriek, died low, and swelled again in a wail, ululated up and down to a crescendo and sank down sickeningly to a moan; over and over it repeated these variations, but never twice the same. The warriors trembled in every limb; even the intelligent, fairly well civilized priests looked pale and hesitated,
THERE was shouting ahead; commanders were attempting to form their men for combat; and from the distance came the beat of running feet in the intervals of that horrid wailing. Then, in a burst of brilliance, a huge dragon appeared ahead, with points of green scintillating in a million places all over him. He disappeared suddenly again in a blaze of yellow and a terrific hollow roar, that reverberated and bellowed, and seemed to shake the ground. The warriors dropped with their faces to the ground and trembled.
Then in the distance the Major could see a long row of bursts and jets of flame; a fence, a stockade of blazing flame, advancing slowly upon them, coming slowly, relentlessly toward them. Terror spread through the camp, and the warriors were helpless and useless with panic.
Heyliger laughed long and heartily.
"Is your mind affected, too?" the Major demanded sharply.
"Damned simple," Heyliger roared. "Can't you see it? I've made stuff like that myself. That roar is nothing but a powerful amplifier with the tubes oscillating at low frequency."
The Major nodded. It was plain now that he knew what it was; he could recognize the timbre and the oscillations of the tubes.
"And a few common fireworks," continued Heyliger. "And a fire-siren. Old stuff. No greasy savages nor no goat-whiskered priests ever got that stuff up. There must be white men, Americans there. Some hope— what?"
The Major did not voice his thoughts, but Lyla was their center, and Professor Geiger their background.
Suddenly, shooting began. The shots were distinct cracks, not exactly like a rifle; certainly not pistols. Instinctively the three Army men fell flat on their faces. There was no use in getting shot at random, with no objective in view.
"This bunch of savages is licked now," the Major said.
Indeed, all around there was yelling and trampling of feet; and bright lights flared and waned. Right beside them sounded a terrific bang! They all jumped, and the mechanic sat up, holding a red, stumpy, charred object
"Ha! ha!" he laughed again. "Fire crackers!"
So they ventured to look about them again, trying to make some sense out of the confusion of running and struggling forms. A white figure advanced toward them, and behind it, a circle of flames closed around them. It was a woman with long, flowing hair, a priestess.
"There they are," said a familiar voice, "the three white magicians, who with their magic would destroy your warriors."
She stood there, pointing a rigid hand at the Major and his companions, and she laughed a shrill laugh of triumph.
"As the demons of Rhadi-Mu are eating you alive," she hissed at the Major, "think of Purtrani whom you scorned." The translation of her Sanskrit words sounds tame and circumlocutory; the way she said it was indescribably hateful and vicious.
A circle of spearmen closed about the three men, and the priestess moved off and vanished. The men raised their spears and reached out to seize their captives. Heyliger swung back and hit one of the savages on the point of the chin with his fist, toppling the man over backwards. For a moment, the prostrate man's companions regarded him in amazement; then they raised their spears clubwise. The Major felt a crack on the back of his head and everything went blank.
Afterwards he was conscious of much nauseating movement, and an ache in his head. Gradually, it seemed, he drifted back to consciousness. The mechanic and the photographer lay beside him; the latter moved and groaned. It was dark and flares were going. There were running feet and vague, confused noises. He dozed and wakened and dozed again. Finally, bright sunlight on his face awakened him. He felt fine. The other two were stretching their limbs beside him, looking the same.
Evidently they were far from the place where they had been last night. Now, a dense forest was about them, and little spears of bright sunlight came down from above. The natives all around them looked exactly the same as the natives they had been used to during the past weeks, the same weapons, the same loincloths; even the priests looked the same, though there was no one whom they recognized personally. Their jabbering was in Sanskrit, but sounded just a little different; it must have been a slightly different dialect.
"Where are we? How'd we get here?" Heyliger asked.
"I guess it makes little difference where," the Major said "But there are the crude stretchers that have made my bones ache."
The savages, perceiving that they were conscious, descended upon them, and after mauling them about most roughly, tied their hands and feet. They placed before them a coarse gruel, which the white men were compelled to eat with their hands tied, under the gloatingly complacent regard of the savages. There were other captives, all warriors and no priests—tied, subdued, scared, speechless, and looking as though they had given up all hope.
"The general appearances are," Heyliger remarked, "that there is something hot in store for us."
"You're too damned cheerful for me," the photographer replied.
Each of the prisoners was tied by a braided leather rope to a burly savage from the other army and were started on the march with prods of spears. The wood was alive with warriors, who all suddenly begun to press hurriedly in the same direction. A number of them in the distance were seen riding on the queer, prehistoric elephants. In an hour they had emerged on the long-grass prairie, and the march became more rapid Still, a sort of trot. Many of the savages carried queer burdens—boxes, cases, cylinders, things with a civilized appearance about them.
It was a long day. Fatigue, hunger, thirst, seemed to arouse no consideration in their captors. Lagging ones received prods with spears. It was in the middle of the afternoon that they perceived ahead of them a sort of shimmering in the air, such as is seen over a heated surface. As they neared it, the Major perceived that it was a bleak, desolate area of bare, reddish soil and jagged rocks, without the least vestige of vegetable life. He could hear whispers of "Fire Zone" among the captured natives, though he saw no fire. It was merely a bare, raw stretch, reaching to the horizon. The Major remembered the burned flesh and red wounds of the man who had tried to cross this radioactive desert. How would they cross now?
A long, thin column wound gingerly toward it, and suddenly disappeared. The Major perceived that they had arrived among a pile of rocks with a dull, gray gleam, and gone in among them. When he reached it, he noted it as a sort of half-tunnel, partly open to the sky. The floor and walls, and whatever there was of ceiling, were formed of huge rhomboidal crystals of a dull gray, with here and there a flat, shining surface. He could sec how the natives might have called this the "Passage of Mirrors" or whatever it was, though they did not look like mirrors to him.
"Won't we get burned?" he asked one of the natives.
The warrior was frightened, but assured him that they would not.
The Major scratched one of the huge prismatic crystals with a sharp rock, eyed suspiciously by the savages. It was soft, and his scratch left a shining mark.
"It's galena," he explained to his companions. "Lead sulphide. If the old priest's story is true, I should presume that this is the remains of some protective chamber, made of the lead mineral, in which the ancient scientists did their work with the radio-active stuff."
In three hours they were through the tunnel, a good deal of delay being due to the passage of so large a body of men through a narrow space. Numerous drums began to throb, and answering throbs came from the distance. Again, the white men were conscious of gloating looks of anticipation as the natives looked at them. One of them noticed Heyliger's blank look as the result of these gloating glances; and he laughed the mirthless laugh of a savage, made some grimaces toward the white men, and shook himself down in a heap on the ground and laughed again. His companions joined his hideous, terrifying laughter.
"Br-r-r-r!" said Heyliger. "Cheer up! They can hardly wait."
Toward evening they arrived almost at the foot of the northern mountains, and saw before them the towers and spires of a group of huge temples, and at their foot again the weltering mass of native huts. The temples looked even more beautiful than the one they had left. Gibbering crowds ran out of the city to meet the returning warriors. The latter displayed their captives proudly, and the people hopped up and down in glee.
They marched right through the city of squalid huts, which, like those of Sirdah-Mu, were built in the form of cubes and rectangles, and piled up three and four high, the upper ones reached by shaky ladders. Their way led to the temples, whose beauty the Major was compelled to comment upon again and again. They were similar to those seen in Java or Siam; and there was a great group of them around a central open space, like a court. This court was occupied by three huge images, not of Buddha, but not unlike him either, squatting, placid. One of them had its mouth open, a huge, gaping hole, six feet in diameter.
The prisoners were bundled roughly across the court and marched up the broad stairs of one of the temples The three white men were shoved into a small room, and the stone door swung to upon them. There was one window, two feet square, which looked out upon the courtyard of the Idols. This court was now densely packed with yelling savages; drums were pounding hollowly, and cymbals were clanging. Wild chants arose from time to time, in the intervals of which there were discorded shouts. Now and then, in a lull of these noises, they could detect a steady, hissing roar, as they watched intently out of the window.
As the darkness increased, they perceived that one of the huge images, the one with the open mouth, seemed to glow, with a vibrant radiation in the gathering darkness. Suddenly the crowd was hushed, and then broke out in a loud, savage cheer, An altar was rising slowly out of the ground in front of this idol. On the top of this altar was a man bound to a post, and to our horror we found that it was one of our servants, whose wounds we had attended after the fight with the elephant. The poor fellow, named Jishma, writhed and struggled. The altar stopped rising when the man was on a level with the idol's mouth, and three or four feet distant from it.
There was a grating clang; a lid slid aside, and the mouth of the image became suddenly a glowing circle, a fiery opening, out of which shot a stream of intensely white flame, enveloping the poor Jishma instantly. He gave one shriek, cut off in the middle, before he became a smoking, sizzling, shriveled, charred cinder. The crowd hopped up and down and yelled. The lid closed again, the mouth of the idol was dark, and the altar sank.
The white men watched, paralyzed. Again the altar rose, with another victim bound on it. At the last moment they turned their eyes away, just in time to see them leading another captive below their window. He had been the leader of one of the companies, and was a stately man. He fought with them like a wildcat, but they overcame and bound him.
Footsteps sounded outside their door.
"We're next!" said the inevitable Heyliger.
SUDDENLY all three of them were petrified into rigidity. Their attention was distracted from the tragedy outside. From somewhere had come a queer little feminine shriek. It was soft, and muffled and distant, and yet it seemed to be right in the room with them, unmixed with the external noises. They searched the room rapidly. There was no place from which it might have come. Then came words, masculine words, in the same muffled, distant way.
"Dear, dear," it sounded like some dear old petulant grandfather. "Those children are up to their mischievous pranks again."
Then followed the murmur of a feminine voice, in which words were not distinguishable. Again, a deep sigh from the man.
The three men looked closely about the room. It was of stone, with bare walls, and two solid stone benches. There were various odd openings in the rock, any of which may have conducted sound through a speaking-tunnel from a long distance. The walls were solid, and the voices of the prisoners in the next room came in through the window around the outside, but not through the stone wall. The mysterious voices were now silent.
Suddenly a terrific bellow resounded outdoors.
"Re-wow! R-a-ow-ow!" It seemed to say at first. Then came "Kessa! Kessa!" in terribly stern, loud tones, that shook the very walls of the stone buildings. The words meant "stop!" in the mongrel Sanskrit used by these people. The crowd went suddenly paralyzed, and silent as shadows.
"The God Yishni commands you to stop at once!" the voice bellowed. "Yishni has told you three times before that these sacrifices were displeasing to him. One more sign to show you that the God Yishni is in earnest!"
There was a thud, and a burst of flame came from a temple across the court. The head of the sacrificial idol burst into a brighter glow, and then melted, with spurting sparks and a spattering of molten metal. It slumped into a shapeless mass half way below the shoulders, with flames shooting out from the fire within its hollow interior. The multitude slunk away in silence. The bellowing went on:
"The next time the God Yishni has to speak to disobedient followers, he will do worse things. Dratted little nuisances!" The latter part came in a lower tone, sotto voce, and in English, not in Sanskrit. The three men gripped each other.
"Dandy power amplifier!" the mechanic chuckled. "There's a good mechanic here somewhere. But how'd he melt old Bozo's head?"
"It must, it must be Professor Geiger—" the Major mused.
The voice outdoors continued to blare in awful tones: "Take the prisoners and put them to labor in the new chamber of magic in Yishni's temple!"
That was all. A silence followed that was like a blanket.
THE next day they were put to work, shoveling some sort of rock, in well-made iron scoops. Other prisoners were breaking and crushing the rock and wheeling it away in workmanlike, wheel-barrows. But nowhere a white man. They had a tyrannical foreman who would not let them talk, and lashed at them with a thong if they tried to ask questions. Dumbly, they bent their backs to work, and tried to think. How to get word to this white man who was behind these supernatural manifestations. They lived in the same square stone room, on repulsive food, among countless vermin, and with no relief from the ubiquitous dirt. The only people they came in contact with were filthy, ignorant savages, who worked when they were forced to, and fought whenever they got a chance. Only one or two glimpses, at a great distance, did they get of clean, white-robed, intelligent priests.
All their efforts to get word to the priests were in vain. Their overseer laughed coarsely.
"If you have magic, use it to get to the priests," he said, and laughed till he doubled up over the joke. "If your magic isn't strong enough, stay here and work."
They spent night after night in gloomy dejection, trying to think of some plan to get in communication.
"It must he Professor Geiger," the Major kept repeating. "Who else could it be?"
"I would swear to his voice," he said again. "And—to her voice!"
"Dirty heathen!" said Heyliger, apropos of his own particular thoughts, "I knocked one down yesterday, neater'n a whistle, and he took it as a compliment. Oh, damn! What'd we ever start over here for?"
That midnight the Major leaped out of his sleep with a shout.
"Yell!" he cried. "Shout! We heard them. Why couldn't they hear us?" Then he sank down, with his head in his hands and groaned;
"The human mind is indeed a rudimentary institution! To think that it took us all of this time to think of such a simple thing."
Heyliger was already making a hullabaloo.
"Help!" he yelled. "Professor Geiger! White People! Get us out of here!"
But all the reply they get was the mutterings and imprecations of the prisoners in the other rooms. They finally desisted from fatigue.
In the morning things looked clearer.
"Of course," said the Major, "the communication to this place must come from some one certain room. They are not in that room all the time. We'll have to keep up some shouting in English as much of the time as we can. Sooner or later we'll catch them at home. Tonight we'll start taking turns; one will shout, and the others will get what sleep they can."
Heyliger's turn came first; by lot, that evening, and immediately a happy inspiration possessed him. He started in at once with the rollicking tune of I've Been Working on the Railroad, and carried it through his entire repertoire of popular and classical (?) music before his turn was out
The plan looked reasonable, but its carrying out was discouraging and fatiguing. It could not be kept up consistently; it was not humanly possible. They missed many hours; but they kept up singing and oratory and recitations as much of the time as they could. They spent many more days in the dirty stone room and at hard labor shoveling rock. But, one evening there was some sort of ceremony out of doors in the court; there were priests in rich gowns, and crowds of people; and wreaths of flowers and baskets of fruit and vegetables were put about the feet of the idol with the melted head. Heyliger was mechanically doing his best with "A Life on the Ocean Wave!" in his penetrating voice.
There came the same little soft, feminine shriek. It seemed to come from nowhere.
"It's English!" said the voice.
There came some indistinguishable growling in a man's voice. It sounded ghostly. The man's voice seemed to come nearer, and demanded:
"Who are you?"
"Three U.S. Army explorers," the Major answered. "Are you Professor Geiger?"
"Good Heavens!" exclaimed the mysterious voice. "Lyla, somebody knows me. Where are you?" said the voice in a louder tone.
"In the temple south of the court."
"There are a thousand rooms in that temple. How can we find you?"
"Don't you know where your voice carried to?" the Major asked.
"Bless me, no," protested the gentle voice. "These temples and the ground under them are honeycombed with speaking tunnels. But I am across the court from you, in the largest temple. Have you any matches or can you make a light?"
"No. Could you see a white shirt if we waved it?"
"Good! I know how to find you now. Can you be patient? These savages are hard to handle. It will take time to get you out. In the meantime, cheer up and prepare for a welcome."
They had to work all the next day as usual. But that night, the bellowing voice said, reverberating through the empty court:
"Yishni wants three new priests, Yishni is displeased because his warriors have concealed priests among the prisoners at labor. Beware of Yishni. The light will find the priests."
The few people in the court stopped in their tracks, as a bright disk of light danced up and down the face of the temple, and finally stopped on the window of the stone room and stood motionless. Several savage spearmen came in and prostrated themselves before the three miserable white men, and then led them out and across the court.
UP the stairs of the huge temple they were led, past rigid guards with spears. Within they found beauty and luxury; skins on the floor, brilliantly colored tapestries on the wall. Through long corridors and past a maze of rooms they went, into an inner room, where they found a gray-bearded man in a silk robe, seated at a desk covered with papers. Beside him stood, a beautiful woman in her early thirties.
"Professor—"
"Major Morley—"
There was joyous wringing of hands.
And Lyla held out her hand, speechless, with emotions that could not even show through the expression in her face. Major Morley went up to her. Neither could he say a word. He gripped her hand. She bent her head over it, and then turned away and brushed her eyes. The Major cleared his throat.
"Sergeant Yoder and Private Heyliger, Professor Geiger," he said.
"Come," said the Professor; "I've got a big dinner waiting."
During the meal, the Professor talked. The Major and Lyla were silent.
"We've been here ten years," the Professor explained. "We've had a pretty good time, and it's been interesting. Off and on we've thought of getting away, but its difficult. Not impossible; we could outwit these simple children; but there's been things to do, and we hadn't got around to it. Only my conscience has bothered me because Lyla ought to have some of her own kind of young people to be with. If it wasn't for that, I might stay here forever. Well," here he sighed deeply, "your coming in going to be a stimulus to help us break loose. Also, you'll he able to help me make some sort of a flying apparatus to get away from here with; there's no other way."
"We've got a good plane here with us."
"We'll have to slip away from these poor folks secretly. They want us. They simply live on the miracles that I perform for them. I keep them terrified all the time, but they like it. Too bad, to leave the poor children."
After dinner the Professor took his guests over the place. He had a huge temple all to himself. The living rooms for himself and Lyla were provided with running water, hot and cold; baths, and lavatories; there was heating and refrigeration and electric light; there was radio reception, but he had not as yet been able to make a broadcasting apparatus. They lived there as comfortably as they could in any modern hotel—and yet, there out of the window, the priests were raising water out of a well by means of a treadmill operated by a naked savage; and a thousand sweating laborers were pushing stone blocks into place by muscular force; women were charring and blackening meat over an open fire.
"You've been here ten years," the Major said. "You're such a missionary, I'm surprised that you haven't got all these people taking baths and using forks, and at least washing their faces. Why keep all these modern conveniences for yourself alone?"
"Yes, that was my dream too, at first. Wonderful opportunity; plenty of labor; certainly enough to be done. I was going to civilize these people, and bring them all the blessings and conveniences of the modern mechanical life. Especially, as one of the first things that happened was that I stumbled upon vast sources of power. Radium is plentiful, easy to separate, and I found an activator, a simple hydrocarbon, which, when mixed with radium, causes a tremendous expansion, probably due to a lot of atomic disintegration; from it can be developed heat, explosion, traction, rotation, anything.
"I could see myself doing away with labor and drudgery for those people, doing all of their work by machinery, giving them leisure for culture, filling their land with railways and factories——
"My dreams didn't last long. The people don't want power. They aren't interested in the saving of labor nor in the work of machines. I tried plows and pumps and electric lights on them. They considered them as objects of worship and were afraid to use them. My playthings were miracles for them; and miracles can't be used in daily work. They prefer to be dirty, to do nothing except what the moment demands, and to fight. The only thing I can do for them with science is to perform miracles. They need me so badly for miracles, that they'd never let me go voluntarily.
"So I've put my efforts to study and experimentation, used science for my own benefit, and for appeasing their superstition. You've seen some of my stunts. I'll show you more later."
He showed them laboratories in which there were real glass, and chemical balances, dynamos, and electron-tubes.
"How in the world did you make all of this?" Major Morley exclaimed.
"Ten years is a long time and I have lots of skilled help."
Everywhere in the vast laboratory rooms were priests at work. A score of tasks were going on in foundries, machine-shops, electrical shops, and laboratories. At one of the windows stood the mortar that had fired the bomb of radium and activator which had melted the statue's head. They also saw the microphones and power amplifiers that had produced the voices.
"There are a few people out there now; we can give them a little magic," the Professor said.
He took a phonograph disk—it was just a little crude, and they could see that its manufacture had not been quite as skilled as what they were used to at home—and put it in a phonograph, turning it toward the microphone. It produced a soft variety of music of an orchestra of clay wind instruments that had no little charm and emotional appeal. Out through the window they could see the people approaching the idols in awe and prostrating themselves on the ground in front of them.
"There's a power speaker in the middle idol," the Professor said. "Watch."
He moved some switches, and the eyes of the idol glowed green, and then changed to red. A soft glow covered the whole of the squatting figure, and then dissolved into red, yellow, and green. As the Professor moved a number of switches carefully, one arm of the idol rose level as if in blessing; and the Professor hastened to say their "Bhayatana Veda," blessing into the microphone.
"The poor folk just live on this stuff," the Professor said. "I can't make them pump enough water to wash their faces, but this is heaven for them."
The Major and his two companions spent a few delicious days in resting, doing nothing, recuperating from their strenuous experiences. For the Major, the days were especially delicious in the company of Lyla. He was compelled to dress as a priest in order to appear among the people, and in her role of priestess, she led him about and showed him many wonders in ths depths of the temples.
Then they began to discuss plans for reaching the airplane. It was not an easy task; for the radioactive area would have to be crossed. The "Passage of Mirrors" was guarded by the warriors of the two tribes on its opposite ends. The Professor was a powerful man among the savages, but taboos and customs are more powerful than men, and he could not do as he pleased. Almost every step of his was determined by some custom, rite, or ritual, except in the privacy of his guarded rooms. An incident of a few days after their arrival showed just what one individual was able to do.
Toward noon a troop of warriors on elephants arrived in front of the door, assuming rigid formation with great pomp and ceremony. A huge, ugly, gorgeously decorated savage, wearing a crown and scepter and a perfect arsenal of primitive weapons, came into the Professor's reception chamber. His heralds announced him as the bravest, most powerful, most victorious, most terrible King. He stood in the Professor's seated presence, and bowed and knelt to the Professor, and talked long and circumlocutoryly about everything and nothing. After thirty minutes of talking, it came out that he wanted to marry Lyla, the Professor's daughter.
The Major stiffened and was about to rise and say something, but Lyla caught his arm. The Professor took it all calmly and gravely, and appeared to consider it favorably. He said that he was much complimented; but that for a short time at least, he would need the white priestess, his daughter, for some special magic that the god Yishni had asked of him. In a few days he would send word to the King. He moved over to a high-frequency apparatus, took up a bronze ball on a glass handle and touched the king's scepter several times. At each touch there was a long, blue, crackling spark. He then nodded to Lyla, who held a piece of paper in one of the sparks until it caught fire; this he held toward the chief. The savages were very much awed and backed out.
"That decides it," the Professor said. "We're leaving. That man means trouble. He doesn't believe me any more than I do myself."
"He looked scared enough."
"He may be scared, but he'll cause trouble anyway. This is his third time here; he can't get it out of his mind. We can't put him off much longer. Fortunately, I've got stuff nearly ready for our hop."
He took them to see the car on which he had been working. It had wheels six feet in diameter, without rubber tires, for rubber was scarce, and was needed in electrical work. Ths radium-expansion motor was as big as a suitcase, and developed a good hundred horsepower; and the Professor protested that his machine was most crude and inefficient. The motive power was applied by means of a big propeller in the front.
"Why did you do it that way?" Heyliger asked.
"Because a differential and transmission are hard things to make. A propeller is simple and easy."
The Professor started the motor; its hum rose to a shriek, and the car lurched, though it was held by brakes.
"It needs just a little more work before it will go," the Professor said.
It was irksome to stay in the temple, with no occupation. Heyliger occupied himself with kidding one of the irritable priests, and the Major was watching Lyla in the laboratory.
"I have been thinking of you, looking for you for ten years," he said. "I expected to find traces of your death somewhere. Can yon imagine what it means to find you alive and beautiful——"
"But I am old now. When you knew me, I was young and pretty," she said.
"You are changed. But you are more wonderful than ever."
By way of reply she showed him the changes of color in a beaker, and promised to take a walk in the fresh air with him toward evening.
Things seemed wonderful indeed on that walk, the red sunset splashing on the square tops of the reddish huts. Life now held an inspiration for the Major that he had never known before. He took Lyla's arm, and got a little shy squeeze in return. They walked about the almost deserted court.
As they passed a narrow alley between two temples, there was a rush of bare feet, and Lyla gave a shriek, smothered in the middle. The Major hit out savagely, as several of the naked warriors closed about him. Three times his fist found a crunching mark on faces, before a dizzy blow got him in the head. He just managed to see them carrying Lyla away before everything went black.
WHEN he came to, he lay at the top of the temple steps, alone. His head ached sickeningly with every movement. He got up and groaned and staggered in. The old chief-priest Bhaga met him and helped him stand up.
"To the Master, quick!" Morley said.
"They took her," he said to the Professor, as the room reeled about his head. "Lyla. Kidnaped."
The old man clutched his chair for a moment his face set, and he trembled. Then he relaxed.
"How are you?" he asked
"Never mind me. Get Lyla."
"There is nothing active we can do at present. We can't do anything among these millions of rat-holes. Come."
They went into the laboratory, and started an instrument in front of the microphone. A most horrible clanging started out in the court and was kept up for twenty minutes. As the crowd of bewildered natives assembled, the Professor talked into the microphone, and the bellowing roar spoke to the natives:
"The Priestess Lyla, daughter of the Master, has been kidnaped by ruffians. Listen to the solemn words of the God Yishni. Anyone who brings her back, if a slave, gets his freedom, if a citizen, gets wives, cattle, and slaves, as he wishes. If she is not brought back by tomorrow noon, the whole land will suffer. Every man, woman, and child will suffer!"
Again the silence shut down upon the hushed crowd.
"You got to bluff 'em," said Sergeant Yoder, who appeared on the scene.
"That is no bluff," the Professor said through white lips. "I've got enough radium and activator to blow up this whole city and all these temples, and fuse them into a bowl of lava."
The Major spent a bad night. His two companions sat up with him and talked to him until they fell asleep. Finally, toward morning, the Major himself fell into a troubled sleep. He awakened suddenly, to find it daylight, and with a feeling that someone was standing by him. Looking around, he saw Bhaga leading a ragged, dirty creature, which fawned and prostrated itself before the Major.
"Why Rhadi, old fellow, I'm glad to see you," the Major exclaimed. It was one of the captives from Sirdah-Mu, dusted all over with stone-powder from his labors; it was also the man whose thigh-bones had been fractured, and whom the Major had carried on a litter. The man bowed his forehead to the ground.
"I can show you the priestess," he said.
"If you do, we'll make a powerful man of you," the Major said. He hastened to wake Yoder and Heyliger.
"Sergeant Yoder, come with me. Private Heyliger, report to the Professor, and ask him to have the car ready to move instantly when we get back."
The Major followed the ragged Rhadi out of the door, In turn followed by Yoder. They went down a long passage, where Yoder darted into one of the laboratories for a moment and came out again. By devious passages, which the Major kept track of carefully in his mind, they came to a corner of the temple. Then they descended stairs, into a damp, dark passage, which, the Major surmised, led under the ground, to another temple. Then they went up crude stairs again; up many more stairs than they had descended, and again through several passages. In front of them was a series of embrasures in stone, with the light coming up between them. They found themselves looking down into a room furnished with barbarous luxury and occupied by a number of women, among whom was Lyla, silent and despondent.
"Some rope," the Major whispered, wishing that he had thought of it before.
"I knew we should need rope, white lord," Rhadi said humbly, and began to unwind yard after yard of it from his waist He reached into a hiding-place and brought out three wooden clubs. The Major leaned through one of the stone openings.
"Lyla!" he whispered.
He had to repeat it a dozen times before he attracted her attention. Then she looked about her in puzzled alarm.
"Don't let on," he whispered, when he was sure she heard him. "Listen. Look up. There is a rope coming down."
She got the idea immediately, and became listless and drooping again. She sauntered idly toward the rope, and reclining on a skin on the floor made the rope fast under her arms. At her signal the Major and the Sergeant hauled rapidly on the rope. The other women saw her ascend, and fell on their faces shrieking.
Men ran into the room with spears. They arrived just in time to see Lyla pass through one of the stone openings of the ceiling, and raised a hoarse shouting. The Major pulled her through, cut the rope, and they all ran. Suddenly they found their way barred by a tall guard with a spear.
The brave-hearted Rhadi attacked him with his poor little club. He got run through with the spear and collapsed with a grunt. But before the guard could pull his spear loose, the Sergeant had landed him one on the skull with his club and dropped him on top of Rhadi. He added another crack to make sure that pursuit would not follow, and they ran on into the tunnel. Footsteps pattered on behind them.
The footsteps gained rapidly, and soon they could hear the savages grunting and the rattling of spears.
"Run!" yelled the Sergeant. He waited behind, shelling out some big thing that fitted tight in his pocket. The others ran desperately. There was a loud boom and a rush of air that knocked them all flat on their faces; and for a few moments a thudding and crashing and rumbling kept up. The Major picked himself up and ran back, calling the Sergeant.
"O.K." grunted the Sergeant's voice, and the Sergeant's figure came crawling up. He was a terrifying sight, blackened, blistered, his clothes in tatters.
"What in thunder—" the Major demanded,
"I thought I'd pick up one of the Professor's radium bombs as we went by," the Sergeant said, "Useful, wasn't it?"
"Well, it nearly cooked you," the Major said with a break in his voice. "Be careful. But it corked up the passage. We're safe."
They found their way back into the temple, where they found high excitement with everyone running to the balconies. The court was full of people, all looking up into the sky. It is inevitable; when you see someone looking up, you look up, too. In spite of their haste and excitement, the three fugitives looked up. Far away to the sky, toward the south, was a myriad of little floating bodies; little round, dark balls in the air. The Major ran for his glasses.
"Balloons!" he cried, as he focused on them. "Their cars are crowded with warriors. There must be thousands of men!"
"Now what's happening?" Yoder gasped.
"They are crude-looking things. Undoubtedly they come from Sirdah-Mu. The priests saw us making our balloon and took the hint. The material was all there for hundreds of big balloons."
"They're not so dumb!" exclaimed the Sergeant in admiration. "I suppose they're keen to clean up on this place."
The hundreds of little spheres became larger as they sailed directly overhead; and the crowded people in the court whined with fear and fell flat on their faces. The Major hastened with Lyla to her father. The Professor said not a word. He patted Lyla's shoulder and shook the Major's hand. Then he went to the microphone.
"This is Yishni's punishment to his people because their king abducted the daughter of the priest," bellowed the idol.
The riot started, Ths people began looking and shouting for the king. There was a raid on the temple where he made his palace, and the Major feared that the king did not last long in the melee that could be seen through the temple doors.
But again their attention was occupied by the balloons above. The sky was full of them directly overhead now. As they sailed over the city, a shower of arrows came down, wreaking deadly havoc among the crowd. On the far side of the temples, the balloons slowly descended.
"There's going to be a flight," the Major remarked. "If we're starting back to Fort Carson, now's the time."
They all hastened to the car and clambered in. There was plenty of room for all of them, in addition to a number of large bundles which already lay in the car. Poor old Bhaga, the priest, refused to get in, though he knew that he would be killed.
"I know some of the Master's magic," the old priest said, shaking his head; "perhaps the gods will give me an opportunity to turn it against our enemies."
The Professor started the motor, and the sound of the propeller rose to a shriek. The car rolled ahead, with the Professor at the steering-wheel. Down between two temples he guided it, and to the left, away from the court, toward the edge of the city of huts. For some minutes they were not seen by the crowd and met no one. Then suddenly there was a shout of "Priests!" and drums began to rumble. The machine was still moving fairly slowly, and had not yet gathered much momentum. Three savages with spears stood in front of the car, trying to block its way. It was moving along so lightly and slowly that their threatening bulks alarmed the passengers.
However, the Professor shouted a warning to them. In reply, they brandished their spears. Then it happened in a moment. Ths propeller struck one of the spears, and drew the man toward itself. He seemed to melt into the blur of its whirling, and one by one his companions did the same. There was a high-pitched rattle, and small pieces of things shot out tangentially from the propeller. A red mist sprinkled back into the car and made the fingers and faces of the passengers sticky. Lyla shuddered, and Heyliger grinned.
Other warriors running up, seeing what happened to the first three, backed away. They hurled a few spears, but did so half-heartedly. Soon the car was out of the city and headed across the prairie.
"Now we're safe!" exclaimed the Major.
"Guess again," said ths Professor. "Look behind you."
A troop of elephants ridden by armed men was careening after them at a good speed.
"You see," the Professor said, "The nature of the savage is a queer thing. They hate on badly enough to kill us; but they need our magic against their enemies; they want to save us so that we can save them."
The car was making fair progress over ths corrugated ground covered with long grass, but the elephants, covered with gesticulating men, kept at a good distance behind. An hour of pursuit elapsed, without much change in the relative positions of the pursued and pursuers. Evidently the elephants were able to make about as much speed as the car. The savages seemed to be quite enraged and waved their spears madly.
On ahead was the bare, bleak zone of radioactive earth, death to anyone who tried to cross it.
"THEY think they've got us," chuckled the Professor. "Well, I've figured on this very thing. The radioactivity will not affect our machinery, and I'll take care of our bodies. Open the bundles."
There were six heavy bales. Each contained a set of overalls, gloves, helmet, and slippers, all tremendously thick and heavy.
"They are all lead lined," the Professor explained. "Put them on quickly and leave no crevices for the radiation to get through. Hurry, because we're not stopping. Major, take my place at the wheel as soon as you get yours on."
The elephants were reining in, as they neared the edge of the bare ground. They had expected the fugitives to stop and were rather astonished; the burning death was more to be feared than battle or torture. But the car plunged on, and in a few minutes its occupants were transformed to clumsy, grotesque figures. The suits weighed fifty or sixty pounds apiece and made their wearers look hideous. The machine leaped on over the thinning grass, and into the bare, bleak region. Through their goggles, the fugitives could see the bare, bleak soil, without the least living thing on it
After a pause, and much movement and gesticulation on the part of the warriors, the elephants came on, in pursuit, right over the radioactive earth.
"Fools!" muttered the Professor.
"Do they know what this will do to them?" asked the Major, putting his helmet close to the Professor's.
"They know. But they are fanatics. Or brave men. Suit yourself."
"Or, probably this will be no worse than what will happen to them if they come back without us."
"You see, they would have plenty of time to catch us and deliver us before they died of radium burns."
They had gained a good deal on the elephants, and the professor suddenly stopped the propeller and put on the brakes. The others looked at him in amazement as he got out of the car, and scooped up several lead boxes full of rocks from the ground. He put them carefully into the car and started again. The savages were shouting at the gain they had made.
"These little rocks will make us all rich when we get home," the Professor said, "There is more radium in these boxes than the whole civilized world possesses."
It seemed only a few minutes before they reached the further edge of the radioactive zone. This side was rough going, because the rocks were larger; and the elephants gained on them. No immediate effect from the radium was apparent on either men or animals. The riders brandished their spears and yelled. Major Morley, the Sergeant, and Heyliger were busy comparing notes, trying to decide which way to go to find their plane, when suddenly they caught a gleam of the sun on its metal fuselage, a mile or so away. They headed toward it, and reaching smooth ground soon drew away from the elephants. Now they were planning on how to dispose of five people in a plane meant for three.
There came a groan from the Major, who was watching the plane intently with glasses. A group of brown savages emerged from the woods, saw ths plane, and ran toward It. They gathered about it and approached it hesitatingly. New ones kept coming out of the woods, till they numbered nearly a hundred.
"Hell!" said the Major softly.
"They seem to be our old friends of Sirdah-Mu. Think we can handle them?" asked the Sergeant.
"We've got to," exclaimed Heyliger. "I won't be stuck here another year or two. I got just enough of this country."
They continued to drive the car toward the plane. One savage, as they watched, stuck his spear through a wing. The Professor stepped on his accelerator, and the shriek of the propeller made the savage drop his spear.
"We've handled them before," the Major said. "Got to bluff it out somehow. These fellows behind us won't give us a lot of time, either."
As the car drove up, the natives shrank buck. The white men climbed out, hampered by their lead-lined garments, the Major assisting Lyla, and started in determination toward the plane. The savages looked, gave one shriek, and turned in precipitate flight into the woods. The white people were quite as much surprised as were the natives, until they recollected the grotesque appearance of the lead-lined suits, and especially of the goggles.
They all piled into the plane, and turned over the motor. To their great joy, it responded perfectly. The Major did not wait for it to warm up, but let the car glide on over the grass. As they looked back they saw the elephant riders pursuing the naked spearmen into the wood, as though they had forgotten about the white gods. But, their own death, some weeks later, would be worse.
For a mile they rolled along the ground on the wheels of the plane. Then the Major tried to turn it upwards. It bumped and bumped, rose a little, and bumped again.
"No use," the Major said. "She wasn't made to carry this load. Throw the lead suits overboard."
One by one the suits thudded out on the ground. The plane did a little better, but was still unable to rise higher than a few feet, nor to remain up more than a few seconds.
"Everything out that we can spare!" ordered the Major.
Many instruments were thrown out. The cameras and plates, amounting to two hundred pounds went over, with many a groan from Yoder. He leaned over and watched them crash to the ground. Water and food supplies want out. They permitted the Professor to hug his lead boxes, providing it were possible to rise. He had thrown out his shoes and coat, when the plane finally soared up gracefully.
"We'll go up high enough to get a last look at the temples," the Major said to the Professor. "You are no more curious than I am as to what is happening there. It will take just a moment or two."
Soon they could see the temples and the patch of red huts. When they came near enough, they could see through their glasses that fighting was still going on, and fires rose here and there.
Suddenly one of the great temples seemed to rise bodily into the air. A blue flame appeared beneath it, and as the temple dissolved in it the others rose up after it.
Everything, temples, hut-city, and fighters, all dissolved into a blue, vaporous mist.
"Too bad!" exclaimed the Professor. "It was old Bhaga's work. He knew about my stores of radium and activator. Now that place will be another radioactive zone." He drew a sigh, "Well, it can't be helped. We'll go home and work out some of these problems that occurred to we here."
The nose of the plane was turned toward Fort Carson. The Major was holding Lyla's hand, regardless of the presence of the others. The propeller made too much noise for talk, except through the phones, but Major Morley was thinking:
"I thought I was old enough not to be so silly. But, you see, it took me ten years to find her!"
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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