The Cavern of the Shining Ones Read online

the apparatus up again. This time the crystalline signalcame in with a noticeable increase in volume.

  From then on the progress of the party became a mad dash that taxed theendurance of everyone except Layroh himself. After the first hour theyentered a terrain so rugged that the cars had to be abandoned and theyfought their way forward on foot. Layroh was forced to turn theradiolike apparatus over to one of the men, while he himself carriedanother mechanism that consisted of a heavy silver cylinder with fourflexible nozzles emerging from one end.

  They held as rigidly as possible to a straight line toward thesoutheast, scrambling over whatever obstacles intervened. Their onlystops were at regular intervals when Layroh checked their course. Eachtime the crystalline signal came in with greater volume.

  Their objective appeared to be a cone-shaped peak several miles aheadthat loomed up high above the surrounding rock masses. The oddly shapedmountain was identified by one of the men who had once been a Mojavedesert rat.

  "Lodestone Peak," he announced succinctly. "Full of iron, or somethin'.A compass always goes haywire within a radius of ten miles of it."

  * * * * *

  It was early afternoon when they finally arrived at a level area at thebase of the mountain. For the last two miles Layroh had not stopped longenough to make any tests. Now he set the radiolike apparatus in placesome ten yards from the face of a sheer cliff that towered high abovethem.

  The crystalline signal came in a rippling flood. He spun the dials. Thesound ceased, and the pointing rods glowed with an aura of amber lightat their tips. Swift and startling answer came from deep within theheart of the cliff, a mighty note of sonorous beauty like the violentplucking of a string on some colossal bass viol. So powerful was thetimbre of the pulsing sound that the entire side of the mountain seemedto vibrate in harmony with it.

  Layroh snapped off the apparatus and the sound ceased. Carefullysearching until he found a certain spot on the cliff face, he steppedclose to it and unlimbered the nozzles of the silver cylinder. Fosternoted that at the place selected by Layroh there was a five-foot-widestratum of slightly lighter-colored rock extending from the sand to apoint high up on the cliff face.

  From the metal nozzles of the cylinder there spurted a broad beam ofdead black. There was a searing flash of blue-white flame as the blackbeam struck the cliff face. There followed a brief second during whichthe rock melted into nothingness in the heart of that area of blueradiance. Then the stabbing beam bored steadily on back into the clifflike the flame of a blow torch melting a way through a block of butter.

  Layroh adjusted the nozzles until the black beam was a solid shaft ofopacity seven feet in height and nearly five in width. The hole in thecliff became a tunnel from which blue radiance surged outward in ashimmering mist as the black beam steadily bit deeper into the rock.

  * * * * *

  "Follow me," Layroh ordered the men, "but do not approach too close."

  He stepped forward and entered the mouth of the tunnel. Shaken by thespectacular thing occurring before their eyes, yet, driven by curiosityas to what might lie at the end of that swift-forming tunnel, the mencame crowding obediently after him. A moment later they were within thepassage, stumbling dazedly forward through the billowing fog of bluishradiance. There was an odd, almost electric, tingle of exhilaration inthat radiant mist as it surged about their bodies.

  Fragments of almost-forgotten scientific lore flitted through Foster'sbrain as he groped for a clue to the action of the strange ray. Notquite complete disintegration of matter, but something very close toit--probably the transformation of matter into radiant energy, aningenious harnessing of the same forces that are forever at work in thecosmic crucibles of the universe's myriad suns.

  The action of the black ray was amazingly rapid. They were forced tohurry forward at a fast walk to keep their distance behind Layroh. Thevertical stratum of lighter-colored rock continued straight back intothe heart of the mountain. It apparently served as a guide. The color ofthe blue flame-mist changed perceptibly whenever Layroh allowed theblack ray to stray into the rock at either side of it.

  * * * * *

  For nearly two hundred yards they bored their way steadily into themountain, their path gradually sloping downward. The walls and floor ofthe swift-forming tunnel were as smooth and hard as though glazed with afilm of diamond.

  Then abruptly Layroh shut the black ray projector off as the rock aheadof them ended and they broke through into another larger tunnel, dimlylighted by small globes of violet radiance set at intervals in theglassy ceiling. After thirty yards of travel along this tunnel theyfound their way barred by a massive door of copper-colored metal.

  At Layroh's imperious gesture the men halted a dozen feet back of him inthe tunnel while he brought something out of his leather belt-case.Foster was the only one of the group who was near enough to see that theobject was a small tube closely resembling a pocket flashlight.

  The only break in the surface of the great door was a six-inch disk overnear its right-hand edge. Layroh slid this disk aside. Into the openingthat was revealed he sent a series of flashes of colored light from thetube--two red, three green, and two blue. The colors were thecombination to the light-activated mechanism of the lock. At the last ofthe blue flashes there was a whirring of hidden mechanism and the portalswung slowly and ponderously open.

  * * * * *

  Layroh beckoned to the men to follow him as he strode swiftly on into avast room that was flooded with bluish light from scores of the radiantglobes. As the men passed through the door it reached the limit of itsopening swing and began automatically closing again behind them, butthey were too completely engrossed in the scene before them to noticeit.

  They were in a great cavern whose glass-smooth floor was nearly ahundred yards square, and whose ceiling was so high that it was lost inthe shadows above the maze of metal girders and cables that made awebwork some forty feet overhead. There was a feeling of almostincredible age about the place, as though it had been sealed away therein the heart of the mountain for countless centuries.

  On every hand there was evidence that the cavern and all its contentswere the products of a race of beings whose science was one that wasutterly strange to that of the modern world. At the end of the roomwhere they stood were row after row of different machines, great engineswith bodies of dull silver metal and with stiltlike legs and jointedarms that made them look like giant metal insects. Foster couldunderstand few of the details of the machines, but he felt that inefficiency and versatility they were far ahead of Earth's best modernefforts.

  Grouped together in the center of the cavern were many assemblies ofapparatus linked together by small cables that descended from maincables in the girder-crisscrossed ceiling overhead. There was a softhissing of sparks leaping between terminals and a steady glow from oddlyshaped tubes which indicated that the mechanisms were still functioningin silent and efficient performance of their unknown tasks.

  * * * * *

  The piece of apparatus nearest the door was an upright skeletonframework of slender pillars housing in their center a cluster of coilsset around a large drumlike diaphragm. Foster wondered if this were notthe signal device with which Layroh had tuned in his own portableinstrument. The principal piece of mechanism in the central space,however--a great crystal-walled case filled with an intricate array ofrods and wires--was something at whose purpose Foster could not evenguess.

  Layroh strode on past the central apparatus toward the back wall. Themen followed him. Then as they rounded the apparatus and saw for thefirst time the incredible things lining that rear wall, tier upon tier,they stopped short in utter stupefaction. Before them was Life, but Lifeso hideously and abysmally alien that their brains reeled in horror.

  Great shining slugs slumbered there by the hundreds in their boxlikecrystal cells, their gelatinous bodies glowing with pal
e andever-changing opalescence. The things were roughly pear-shaped, withthe large end upward. Deep within this globular portion glowed a largenucleus spot of red. From the tapering lower part of each slug's bodythere sprouted scores of long slender tendrils like the gelatinousfringe of a jelly-fish.

  The things measured nearly four feet in height. Each was suspendedupright in an individual glass-walled cell, its body supported by a loopof wire that dropped from larger cables running between each row ofcells. There was steady and exhaustless power of some kind coursingthrough those cables. Where they branched at the end of each cell-rowthere was a small unit of glowing tubes and silver terminals whose tipsglowed with faint auras of leaping sparks.

  * * * * *

  The slugs were dormant now but the regular changes in the opalescentsheen which coursed over their bodies like the slow breathing of asleeping animal, gave mute evidence that life was still in thosegrotesque forms, waiting only to be awakened.

  Fascinated