  The Fires Great vortices of whirling light rolled out to either side in an endless pyrotechnical display to show the power of those flailing wings that were bearing Chet and his companion through the dark void—bearing them to some destination Chet could not envisage. His body turned in space at times, and he saw the spreading cone of luminous gas behind them like the wake of a great ship in a phosphorescent sea. The hiss and threshing of many wings came unceasingly. Once he swung close to another body clad like his own and, like him, enmeshed in a net. And he saw in the light of the luminiferous air the girl's wide, staring eyes. Then she was gone, and all about was only the whip of wings and the flashing whirls of light. He tried to form some picture of this sphere through whose center, empty but for this gas, he was being swung. That first fall had carried him down the tube of some volcanic blow-pipe; he had fallen straight for what seemed like hours. And that had been through the crust of this great, hollow globe. Then the center!—but of this he dared make no estimate; he knew only that the huge leather wings were threshing the dense air in an untiring rhythm and that he was being carried for a tremendous distance at remarkable speed. It became soothing, that rushing, swinging sweep of his body through space. There was death ahead, without doubt—but what of that? He was sleepy—sleepy—and beyond this nothing mattered. Just to sleep, to drift off in spirit into a void like this through which he was swinging.... And so traveled Chet Bullard, one time Master Pilot of Earth, through, the heart of another world—on and endlessly on, while leather-winged demons dragged him after, flying straight away from the center of the Moon toward a place and events unknown. But Chet Bullard had ceased to note the passing hours or the swirling gases that came alight at the beating of those wings; he was asleep in a stupor that was as deep as it was timeless. He opened his eyes at last; it seemed but a moment that he had slept. But now there was no rushing hiss of air, nor was he being lifted in a great net. He lay instead upon a support of some kind, and about him all was still. Not at first did he observe the exquisite carving of the yellow bed on which he lay; that came later. The fact that its massive gold and its scrollwork of inlaid platinum were worth a fortune meant nothing to him then. His eyes were held by the immensity of the great room and the intricate series of arches that made up a vaulted ceiling. It shone with a light of its own, that carved ceiling; no least lovely detail was lost. And Chet found his eyes roving from one to another of angel figures that seemed suspended in air. The white of purest alabaster was theirs; and their outstretched wings, too, were white. He realized confusedly that they were like the black demons—like them and yet entirely unlike. For, where the black-winged ones had been ugly of feature, with every mark of degeneracy, these were the ultimate of loveliness in face and form. Figures of men he saw, stalwart and strong, yet perfectly proportioned; and the others—the women and girls—were superhuman in their ethereal beauty. "Angels!" breathed Chet and turned his head slowly to see the exquisite figures that seemed hovering above the whole vast room in silent benediction. "Angels—no less! And they're carved from stone! Those black devils never did it. What does it mean? What does it mean!" And not until then did Chet realize a wonderful thing. So enthralled had he been by the wonder of this hovering angel band he had not realized that he was seeing them with no helmet glass between; he was lying disrobed on his couch of pure gold. For an instant, panic seized him. Without his helmet and the oxygen supply, he must strangle. And then he knew that he was breathing naturally in an atmosphere like that of Earth but for the strange fragrances that swept to him on the soft, warm air. He came slowly to his feet and steadied himself with one hand on the scrollwork of the bed. Then memories rushed in upon him, and he lived again the long, sickening fall through the heart of this world, the finding of the girl of mystery, hung like himself in the immensity of the inner world, their capture; and the band of black-winged ones who swung them through space in nets that drew tightly about them. The girl! Again he saw the clear look from those eyes of blue. It was she who had signaled; it was she whom he had come through vast space to rescue. And now she was lost! Chet stared slowly about him at the magnificence of the tremendous room. He saw more delicate figures done in inlay on the walls; he knew that he was in a place whose beauty and wealth should have set his nerves tingling; and all he sensed was the loneliness of this place where he was the only living occupant. He found his Earth-clothes beside the golden couch. He had put them on and was examining the suit and helmet to learn with relief that they were intact when the first sound came to him. From an arched entrance across the room were coming shuffling figures whose black wings were wrapped about their chalk-white bodies. Only their pallid faces showed, ghastly and inhuman, as the eyes glowed redly from their deep black sockets. Chet still held the suit in his hands as the black-winged ones came toward him across the floor, and he carried it with him as he moved unresistingly where they led him with the pull of their claw-like hands upon his arms. "No gun!" he told himself hopelessly. "Not a chance if I put up a fight! They've got me and got me right. Now what I need to do is to be good—lay low—find out something about all this, and find her!" He could not name the girl whose eyes were haunting him in their appealing loveliness; he could think of her only as the mystery girl, and he accepted without surprise or denial the fact that the finding of her outweighed all else that this new world might hold for him. As the shuffling figures closed about him and led him away he found relief in the thought of his ship, of Spud's safety, and of his return to the world that they both knew as home. "Never again for me!" said Chet softly beneath his breath. "But Spud will get there. Perhaps he is there now—no telling how long I have slept!" He saw it all so plainly: saw the Irish pilot bringing the ship to rest at the great Hoover Terminal. And he saw, too, a relief expedition that would be organized by Harkness and that must arrive too late. To suppose that any help might reach him here inside this wild world was too much; Chet looked with judicially appraising eyes at the things about him and could not allow himself to be deceived. There was no hope; but he made one resolve and made it grimly in words that never reached his lips. "Give me half a chance at them, Walt," he promised, "and if ever you do get inside here, you'll know where I've been. I'll find the girl first—I must do that—then I'll give these devils something to remember me by before they put us away for good!" And now the face of the pilot was almost happy as he stared at the snarling, twisted features of those that led him unresistingly through a series of stone rooms that seemed without beginning or end. He even disregarded the spiked tails that whipped at him with heavy blows to hurry him along. "If I had a gun," he told them inaudibly, "I'd take you on right now. But you got that, or I lost it in the scuffle, so I'll just twist your scrawny necks in my bare hands when the time comes. And it's coming, you ugly devils! It's coming!" Their claws pulled roughly at him to hurry him into another room. And where before he could see nothing of a beautiful room because of the absence of a pair of smiling eyes, he now saw nothing else for their presence. For, across the great hall, whose walls and ceilings glowed softly with yellow light, his eyes swept unerringly to a slim figure in a pilot's suit—to an oval face and blue eyes and red lips that could still curve into a trembling smile of welcome as he drew near. Forgotten was the grip of sharp-spiked, clawing hands; even the anticipated sweets of revenge were lost from Chet's mind. He knew only that he had found her—the mystery girl—and that the blue eyes were locked with his in an intimacy that set something deep within him into a turmoil of emotion. And instead of the countless questions he had expected to launch upon her when again they met, he found his lips trembling and wordless—until they uttered one hoarse ejaculation of: "Thank God!" But the girl seemed to understand, for she reached one slender hand to touch him lightly upon the arm where these gripping claws had been. "Yes," she whispered; "I was afraid, too—afraid for you!" More whispered words, but they were lost to Chet in the babel of sound that engulfed them. Those who had brought him had moved silently, and the throng of some hundred or more that waited beside the girl had been mute. But now they burst into a chorus of shrill cries whose keenness stabbed at Chet's ears. A pandemonium of the same high-pitched squeals, he had beard before—this was all that he could distinguish at first. Then the shrill sounds broke into words and unintelligible phrases, and he knew they were talking among themselves. They quieted at a sound from the girl. She had turned to face them, and she forced her own soft voice into a shrill pitch as she spoke to them. Their clamor broke out once more as she ceased, but it was more subdued. Chet could hear her as she turned toward him. "They think you are Frithjof," she explained. "You talked with them?" asked Chet incredulously. "But certainly; have I not been here for five years? They have their language—but enough of that now. They are angry. They sent Frithjof away; they tell me now that he escaped; they think you are he—that you have changed your appearance with magic—that the ship they saw was summoned by your magic. They say they will kill us both; throw us to the fires!" "Wait!" almost shouted Chet to make himself heard above the din of shrieking voices. "I've got to know! Who are you? Who is Frithjof? How did you get here? Where are you from? Tell me quickly! It may give me something to go on; it may mean a chance for delay." And if Chet had not been out of breath from the shouted questions, he would surely have been left breathless by their amazing answer. "I thought you knew," said the girl as the din of shrillness subsided. There seemed to Chet a note of hurt in her voice. "I thought you knew, that you had come here knowing. I am Anita, and Frithjof is my brother—Frithjof Haldgren! I stowed away on his ship; he did not know. I was only thirteen then.... And now, is Frithjof forgotten back in that world that we left?" Again that note of disappointment; the pilot sensed it even through the tenseness of the moment when both Earth-folk knew that death stood close at their side. He answered quickly: "I came for your brother. I saw your signals. I came to find Haldgren and to save him. And I have failed. But if death, as you say, is all we can expect, let me say this: 'I have failed, but I have found you; and whatever comes I am content.'" The blue eyes were wide; they were looking at him with a searching glance that changed to a childish candor while a flush stole over the pale face. She reached out one hand toward his. "We could have been happy," she said simply; "and now—now we must face the fires—together." "I don't know just what you mean by that," spoke Chet softly, "but, whatever it is, there is a little matter of a fight first." He released her hand and moved swiftly between her and the nearer of the throng; and his blood pulsed strongly through him as he faced a battery of hostile red eyes and knew that he was preparing for his last fight. A hand clutched at his arm. "Not now!" begged Anita Haldgren's voice. "Wait! They will not all come. I too, can fight; but we cannot face so many!" The rat-tails of the nearest beasts were whipping to and fro; the eyes in the chalky faces were like living coals where the ashes have been freshly blown. Chet stepped back beside the girl, and he made no protest as the black claws seized him and the sharp talons dug into his flesh. But he whispered to the one who was hurried along beside him: "You are right; I'll be good as long as we stay together. But if not—if we're separated—if they take you away—" And the girl nodded quick agreement with his unspoken words. Chet set his teeth together to make more bearable the pain of those gripping claws; but the hurt was easier to bear when he saw that the girl was more carefully treated. She was close ahead as his captors hustled him from this room into others and yet others, all carved from the solid rock. What a people this must be who could do such work as this! Again the sense of amazement struck through to Chet despite the pain—amazement and a feeling of an inexplicable incongruity when he saw the leather-winged creatures that had him in their grip. And again there were figures high overhead—white, floating figures on pinions of pure white; their faces, kindly and serene, looked down upon the motley throng. "Look above you!" gasped Chet. "Anita! What are they? Not like these devils!" And the girl ahead half-turned her head to answer: "Ancestors! A thousand generations back! They have come down to this state now—degenerated." Chet saw one of the beasts who held her jerk her sharply about, and he knew that his remaining questions must wait—wait forever, perhaps, and remain unsaid. They came at last to a place where Chet found the answer to one question he had not dared ask; a place where gaping chasms in the floor glowed red with the wrath of unquenched fires. And the girl, Anita, when they had been placed by themselves against a glowing, lighted wall of rock, stared steadily at those pits and the sulphurous fumes that vomited out at times; then turned and spoke to the pilot in a voice steady and sure. "It will be over quickly," she assured him. "Frithjof said that the heat, like the warmth of this whole inner world, comes from the contraction of the rocks in the cold of night. There is great pressure developed ... but he never learned the source of the light in the walls." Talking to still the beating of a heart pulsing with dread, perhaps! Chet had no mind for explanations. Before him were a score of yawning clefts in a rocky floor; one was larger than the rest; there were figures whose white bodies glowed red in its reflected light as they floated on black wings high above; the light of those hidden fires blazed and died intermittently. There death was waiting, while these demons—these degenerate half-men, living products of a dying race—whipped the air in a frenzy of expectation as they darted above those chasms that were like rifts in the rock roof of hell. Chet did not answer the statements of the girl. Instead he turned and gathered her once into his arms, while his lips met hers to find a ready response. Her face, so calm and pale, was turned upward to his. And his own voice trembled at first; then was steady and firm. "I love you. I've come a long way to tell you, and I didn't know why I came. And now it is too late." "Anita Haldgren," he said, and let his voice linger as he repeated the name, "Anita Haldgren—a beautiful name—a beautiful soul! And now—" He released her quickly and swung to meet a rush of beastly things that half-ran, half-flew across the great room. Outstretched arms of white that ended in black claws! Snarling, grinning teeth in faces of dead-white flesh! Barbed tails that hissed through the air as they swung down upon him! And Chet Bullard, his blond hair shining like the gold that was inlaid and encrusted upon the walls of the room—Chet Bullard, Master Pilot, once, of a distant Earth—did not wait for the assault to reach him, but sprang in upon the beastly things with swinging fists that came up from beneath to crash into grinning faces; to smash dully into white, scabrous flesh; or catch beneath the angle of out-thrust jaws jolt the ghastly faces into awkward angles. They went down before him at first. Then the long rat-tails came whipping over, the demon-heads, ripping down with slashing blows on the pilot's head and shoulders. Off at one side, a dozen paces away, a slender figure tore loose from gripping claws. Chet saw it; he freed himself for an instant to leap to her side. She was tugging at a bar of gold, a scepter in the hands of a sculptured figure in the wall. It would have been a serviceable weapon, but it bent slowly. Another of the beasts was upon her as Chet sprang. This one went down beneath the chopping right that Chet shot to a lean, white jaw; then a barbed tail caught him a blow that laid his shoulder open. Another descended—and another. The pilot sank to the floor. Anita was beside him, shielding him with her own body from the rain of blows. Then they were buried beneath a great weight of odorous bodies—till Chet, after a time, felt himself dragged to his feet. His head, was ringing with the shrieks of the shrill-voiced mob. He was still struggling, still fighting blindly, as the clamor ceased. Then he stood erect and motionless as he heard the voice of Anita Haldgren. "It's Frithjof!" she cried. "Oh, my dear—my dear! It's Frithjof! I heard him!" But he can't reach us—he can't help us! I will try to reason with these beasts—bargain with them—make them afraid! I will tell them it is magic." And, as her voice, high-pitched in the language of this race, rose in protest against them, Chet heard what the girl had detected first: a sharp, metallic rapping within the wall, a rapping that was dulled by distance but whose separate blows were distinct; and he knew, with a knowledge that came from somewhere else than his bewildered brain, that the raps were forming dots and dashes. They were talking Morse! The girl's frenzied appeal ended in a din of shrieks; a horde of man-beasts swept into the air and launched themselves in a solid mass upon the two. Chet saw Anita for one instant as he felt himself lifted in air. About him was a pandemonium of flailing wings; ahead and below was the red of hidden fires. They were being lifted out and over the pits. One instant only, while tortured eyes smiled bravely into his; then a great pit-mouth that gaped a horrible welcome up ahead. So plainly Chet saw it! He could not tear his eyes away. He saw the red, smoking breath of it; he saw a rocky lip that shone like one great ruby. It was impossible! Even the blast of air that tore at him meant nothing at first! But it was happening! Before his eyes it was happening! Chet watched dumbly, uncomprehendingly, as that great overhanging rock tore itself into fragments that rose screamingly into the air or fell to the depths beneath. Another section of solid floor erupted a hundred feet across the room! The destruction was being kept away, Chet knew. And then, while a roar like all the thunders of Earth reverberated deafeningly through the rock room, the claws that gripped him relaxed their hold. He fell, nor felt the impact of his fall. He came to his feet, ran stumblingly to the edge of the nearest pit where he threw his arms about the body of a girl and dragged her to safety. And while he did it he was babbling in broken sentences: "It's detonite! Your brother!... Where did he get it?... Detonite!... Oh, my dear—my dear!" And his arms were tight about her while he held his body between her and the explosions that tore at the floor in an inferno of crashing explosions out beyond—until three of the demon-beasts, red with the reflected fires of that subterranean hell, flew down like black-winged bats bent on vengeance. And Chet, laughing at their numbers, sprang out with hard fists swinging in well-directed blows, and welcomed them as only an Earth-man could. |
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