Two Thousand Miles Below Part 16

They were a thousand feet up and close when Smithy saw the first car vanish in flame. Others followed swiftly. Men were falling. A dozen of them had made up the sheriff's posse, and now, like the cars, they, too, burst into flame and either vanished utterly or, like living torches, were cast down upon the sand.

Still no sign of the enemy, more than the ripping stab of green fire from a sand dune at one side. They were over and past before Smithy, looking back, saw the red ones leap out into view.

Culver must have seen them in the same instant. He throttled down to a safe banking speed. Opened full, the DeGrosse would have whipped them around in a turn that would have meant instant death. From five miles distant they shot in on a long slant. Smithy's hands were off the stick. It was Culver's s.h.i.+p now.

He saw the man peering through his sights, then the roar of the motor held other, sharper sounds. Thin flames were stabbing through the propeller disk, and he knew that the bow guns were sending messengers on ahead where red figures waited on the sand.

Their trajectory flattened. Culver half rolled the s.h.i.+p as they sped overhead. "He wants a look at them," Smithy was thinking. Then a blast of heat struck him full in the face.

It was Smithy's hand on the stick that righted the s.h.i.+p; only the instant response of the big DeGrosse motor tore them up and away from the sands that were reaching for those wings.

His face was seared, but the pain of it was forgotten in the knowledge that their drunken, twisting flight had whipped out the fire licking back from the forward c.o.c.kpit. He saw Culver's head, fallen awkwardly to one side. The helmet in one part was charred to a crisp.

He leveled off. He was thinking: "Another man gone! Can't I ever fight back? If I only had a gun!" Then he knew he was looking at the pistol grip, where Colonel Culver's brown hand had brought an awkward weapon to life. His lips twisted to a whimsical smile, though his eyes still held the same cold fury, as he whispered: "And I don't even know that the d.a.m.n thing's loaded--but I'm going to find out!"

They were cl.u.s.tered on the sands below him as he roared overhead. He was flying at two thousand, the throttle open full. Beside the s.h.i.+p a gun swung its long barrel downward. It sputtered almost soundlessly--but where it pa.s.sed, the sand rose up in spouting fountains.

But his wild speed made the gunfire almost useless. The sh.e.l.l-bursts were s.p.a.ced too far apart; they straddled the blot of figures.

He came back at five thousand feet, slowly--until the s.h.i.+p lurched, and he saw the right wing tip vanish in a shower of molten metal. He threw the s.h.i.+p over and away from the invisible beam; the plane writhed and twisted across the last half mile of sky. He was over them when he pulled into a tight spiral, then he swung the pistol grip that controlled the gun until the dot in the crystal was merged with the target of cl.u.s.tering red forms. The gun sputtered.

Below the plane, the quiet desert heaved its smooth surface convulsively into the air. Even above the roar of the motor Smithy heard the terrific thunder of that one long explosion.

Above the rim of the forward c.o.c.kpit Culver's head rolled uneasily; his voice, thick and uncertain, came back through the phone; and later--only a matter of minutes later, though fifty miles away--Smithy set the plane down on a level expanse of sand and tore frantically at his belt. Colonel Culver was weakly raising his head.

"What hit us?" he demanded when Smithy got to him. "Did I crash?" He looked about him with dazed eyes from which he never would have seen again, but for the protection of his goggles.

"Fire," said Smithy tersely. "They did it, the devils, and it wasn't a flame-thrower, either. There wasn't a flash of their cursed green light. It just flicked us for a second. You got the worst of it. Your half roll saved us. That thing, whatever it was, would have ripped our left wing off in a second."

He was looking at the forward c.o.c.kpit where the metal fuselage was melted. The leather cus.h.i.+oning around the edge was black and charred.

Culver's helmet had protected him, but half of his face was seared as if it had been struck by a white flame.

"But we got some of them: they know we can hit back...." Smithy began, but knew he was speaking to deaf ears. Again his pa.s.senger had lapsed into unconsciousness.

Quickly he disconnected their own radio receiver and threw on the emergency radio siren. Ahead of them for a hundred miles an invisible beam was carrying the discordant blast. Then, with throttle open full, regardless of levels and of air traffic that tore frenziedly from his path, he drove straight for the home field.

In the office of the Governor, the radio newscaster was announcing last-minute items of interest. The Governor switched off the instrument as Smithy entered, supporting the tall figure of Colonel Culver, whose face and head were swathed in bandages. Culver had insisted upon accompanying him for the rendering of their report, though Smithy had to do the talking for both of them.

He outlined their experience in brief sentences. "And now," he was saying grimly, "you can go as far as you please, Governor. You've got a man's sized fight on your hands. We don't know how many there are of them. We don't know how fast they'll spread out, but--"

A shrill wail interrupted him. From the newscasting instrument came a flash of red that filled the room. The crystal, the emergency call, installed on all radios within the past year and never yet used, was clamoring for the country's attention.

Governor Drake sprang to switch it on, and tried to explain to Smithy as he did so. "It's out of my hands now," he said. "Was.h.i.+ngton has--"

Then the radio came on with a voice which shouted:

"Emergency order. All aircraft take notice. Mole-men"--Smithy started at the sound of the word; it was the name he had given them himself--"Mole-men are invading Western states. A new race. They have come from within the earth. In Arizona, three s.h.i.+ps of the Transcontinental Day Line, Southern Division, have been destroyed with the loss of all pa.s.sengers and crew. Shattered in air.

"It is war, war with an unknown race. Goldfield, Nevada, is in ruins.

Heavy loss of life. Federal Government taking control. Air-Control Board orders traffic to avoid following areas...."

There followed a list of locations, while still the red crystal blazed its warning across the land and to all aircraft in the skies. Southern California, Arizona, Nevada--Southern Transcontinental Routes closed; all except military aircraft grounded in restricted areas.

Smithy's excitement had left him. In his mind he was looking far off, deep under the surface of the world. "They've been there," he said quietly, "thousands of years. A new race--and they've just now learned of this other world outside. Three s.h.i.+ps downed! They picked them off in the air just as they tried to do with us. I knew we had a fight on our hands."

His voice died to silence in the room where now the new announcer was giving a list of the dead--a room where men were speechless before an emergency no man could have foreseen. But Smithy's eyes, gazing far off, saw nothing of that room. Again he was seated on an outthrust point of rock, Dean Rawson beside him, and from the black depths beneath a man's voice was rising clearly, mockingly it seemed, in song:

"You're pokin' through the crust of h.e.l.l And braggin' too d.a.m.n loud of it, For, when you get to h.e.l.l, you'll find The devil there to pay!"

"The devil is there to pay," Smithy repeated softly. He leaned across and placed one hand on Colonel Culver's knee. "With your a.s.sistance, Colonel, I'd like to go down there and find him. You and I, we know the way--we'll organize an expedition. Maybe we can settle that debt."

CHAPTER XV

_The Lake of Fire_

Before a barrier of gold, waist-high, Dean Rawson stood tense and rigid. Behind him the great cave-room swarmed with warriors, leaders, doubtless, of the unholy hordes. But beyond the barrier were the real leaders of the Mole-men tribes--Phee-e-al, ruler in chief, and his cl.u.s.tering guard of high priests. In the flooding light from the wall, their eyes were circles of dead-white skin. A black speck glinted wickedly in the center of each.

Phee-e-al was speaking. His artificially whitened face grimaced hideously; the shrill whistling voice made no comprehensible sound.

But in some manner Rawson gathered a dim realization of what his gestures meant.

Phee-e-al pointed at the captive; and one lean hand, with talons more suggestive of a bird of prey than of a human hand, pointed downward.

"Gevarro," he said. The word was repeated many times in the course of his whistling talk.

"Gevarro"--what did it mean? Then Rawson remembered. It was the word he had heard in his dreams, the name of the lake of fire.

The voices of the priests rose in a shrill chorus of protests, and even Phee-e-al stood silent. They crowded about their ruler, and Rawson knew they were demanding him for themselves. Then the one who still held a human body in his arms sprang forward and his long talons worked unspeakable mutilation upon the body and face.

Rawson averted his eyes from the ghastly spectacle. For, swiftly, he was seeing something more horrifying than this desecration of a dead body; he was seeing himself, still living, tortured and torn by those same beastly hands. The dead face of Sheriff Downer was staring at him from red, eyeless sockets as with one leap Rawson threw himself over the golden wall. Ten leaping strides away was his gun. In that instant of realization, he knew why his life had been spared.

In the room of fire he had destroyed their priest. They had saved him for further torture.

To get his hands on the gun, to die fighting--the thought was an unspoken prayer in his mind. Behind him the room echoed with demoniac shrieks. Before him was the metal stand. His outstretched hands fell just short of the blue .45 as he crashed to the floor. The copper ones were upon him.

Half stunned by the fall, he hardly knew when they dragged him to his feet. He was facing the golden figure of Phee-e-al, but now the ruler's indecision had vanished. He was exercising his full authority and even Rawson's throbbing brain comprehended the doom that was being p.r.o.nounced.