The Earth-Tube (13 page)

There was no guard in sight. The Asians were apparently not expecting visitors or invasion from this source. The coming earth-car was very near the surface. To the clatter there was now added a horrible shrieking as the uprushing jets of steam behind the projectile leaked past it in the tube and began to outrun it, whistling into the air. The island trembled unpleasantly; it seemed hollow and unstable as if the whole of the land might disintegrate at any moment and plunge again beneath the heavy waves, which bit and lashed incessantly at the rocky shores.

Mingled with the rumbling could be heard vague cries and commands as hundreds of humans, slaves probably, took their places in the mechanism which received the car. In another moment the giant projectile would come burgeoning from the earth, to pour forth its load of men and munitions from the other hemisphere. Now, if ever, would King be able to slip safely and undetected inside the shield.

He advanced to the corner of the portal and looked cautiously around. Inside he saw nobody. There was a long, metallic passage, illuminated in some mysterious manner with light which seemed to come from the metal itself. There were no shadows; the entire corridor was lighted brightly and evenly. Some distance inside it was apparent that other passages branched off at right angles. There was a city of metal underneath the dome! A metal city, with metal roofs, metal walls, metal floors; everything of metal.

King slipped through the portal almost casually and moved down the corridor straight ahead. If any eyes observed him he did not know of them. The city appeared deserted, uninhabited. When he came to the first intersection, he turned into it, to the right, and there perceived that on either side of the new passageway were arched doors, each marked with small characters and firmly closed. Here were the cells, then, in, which the inhabitants of this strange city lived.

There was still no one in sight. King followed the small passage until he came, after a short distance, to another, again at right angles. Gradually some idea of the pattern of the city came to him. It was laid out like a huge wheel, with the place of the arrival of the earth-car in the center, and main avenues leading away from it on every side. The cross streets were not straight, but evenly curved, and lay upon the spokes of the patterned wheel like a series of concentric, superimposed circles. In the cross streets only were the entrances to apartments and cells; the main avenues, at least so far out, appeared bare, save for a single overhead rail, the support, evidently, for some sort of transportation system.

The ceiling in the corridors was about fifteen feet high. Above it there was probably another tier of dwellings, and above that still another, clear to the domed and solid top. At this rate the city would house thousands. millions. of persons, perhaps.

But King had little time to reflect on these things. As he darted from one passage to another, always working toward the center of the dome, keeping a sharp lookout for guards or inhabitants, he came suddenly upon twenty or thirty persons, wearing what appeared to be uniforms, hurrying through one of the main passages in the same direction he had been going. There was no place in all the bright bareness of the passages to hide, but fortunately none of the group was interested in King. He had time only to dart into one of the side passages, and crouch against the wall, when the whole group went rushing at top speed past him, and on toward the center of the city.

To his horror King saw that some of the uniformed creatures were women. Behind them, armed with long whips, came four or five large men with fierce mustaches. The entire party was running, but the large fellows could travel faster than the others, and they were continually lashing at them from behind, shouting fiercely in their own tongue. King saw a woman stumble and fall, and before she could regain her feet she had been severely knouted by four of the drivers. One of the men of the group turned back to help her to her feet, and he came in for his share of the merciless lashing also. They struck him repeatedly in the face as he stooped over to raise her up. Together, helping each other, the pair then ran rapidly to catch the others, pursued by the four drivers, who flicked them again and again as they ran.

During this performance none of the slaves cried out, not even those who were being punished. All seemed to take it as an everyday occurrence. They trotted along to their destination with unresisting resignation. But the scene left King white and trembling with anger. So that was how they handled laborers in this gleaming and beautiful city, he reflected. To be captured by the Asians then could mean but one of two things: horrible death. or slavery more horrible still.

As King turned off into another corridor, still pursuing his zigzag course, his ears were suddenly assailed by a fiendish screaming. The pavement seemed without warning to drop away beneath his feet. Clutching frantically at the air, he felt himself helpless and falling as the whole island rocked insanely.

In a moment he had regained control of himself, and realized with a start what had happened. The earth-car had at last arrived; the howling and hissing was the escape of steam; the shocks a part of the recoil of the cap and its mechanism to the weight of the car and the stress of the landing. The roaring came down the corridors like the sound of an unearthly waterfall. Little plumes and wisps of steam came floating by, tiny jets which had escaped the valves or gaskets at the landing gear.

And now he realized that in a few moments they would launch the returning car, the slaves would come back to their cells, and he would be detected surely if by that time he had not found some hiding place.

Impulsively he looked about him, and it was well that he had done so, for coming swiftly down the narrow way where he had been standing was a guard or policeman. a uniformed man of brusque and determined manner, who had seen King from behind and was coming closer to investigate. As the American turned the patrolman recognized him as an alien and shouted gruffly above the hideous roaring of the steam, which still echoed in the passages. What he shouted was unintelligible, but King could have guessed his meaning easily enough; his manner was only too plainly indicative of his intent. He flourished a large club, similar to a policeman’s nightstick, and came down through the corridor toward the young scientist as fast as he could walk.

There was only one thing to do. In the maze of passageways flight would be useless; it would be impossible for a stranger to outwit and elude any one who was familiar with them. The man was about King’s size and build. He waited until the fellow had come quite close, and then, with a full-arm swing he had often practiced with success in boxing bouts for health’s sake, he caught the Asian soundly under the chin.

The guard stared weakly at him for a moment in a surprised manner and then went down as if his neck had been broken. So completely unprepared had he been for any show of resistance that he had been taken completely off his guard. King seized his club and struck him several times more as he sought to arise.

“I may be needing clothing like that,” the American thought to himself. The man was lying quite still at last, completely knocked out. Quickly King stripped off the colored coat and trousers. Taking the coat and hat and shoes and billy also, he rolled them into a compact bundle and hurried out of the passageway into another across the nearest main corridor. As he did so he caught a fleeting glimpse of many persons pouring into the main passage and coming toward him. He must find a place to hide at all costs. His safety was a matter of minutes, perhaps seconds.

He had, he calculated, penetrated the city perhaps three quarters of a mile, though he was surely much farther than that from the gate at which he had entered. He had run a great distance. His breath was becoming short; his legs were weary and aching. Gradually he noticed that he had somehow entered a corridor which was different from the others. a difference which lay in innumerable small details, but most strikingly in the quality of the light which suffused it. The illumination was not the glaring yellowish-white of other sections of the city; it was very pleasing and soft, instead, and of a creamy rose color. It was apparent that he was in a portion of the city which had been unaccountably marked apart from the rest; perhaps a select colony, a place for the homes of the rulers.

He had little time to wonder about it. The sound of escaping steam was nearly gone. It had been replaced by the peculiar high-pitched whine which signified that the returning car had been launched on its eight-thousand-mile journey through the earth. In the distance, and in corridors not so far away, he could hear as well the shouts and laughter and the voices of many persons. The citizens of the metal city were returning to their homes.

Impulsively he tried to open the doors which fronted him along the passageway, but found them securely fastened. It was not until he had reached nearly the end of the row that one finally gave beneath his hand. He pushed it open, holding his automatic ready. He would make himself master of the cell, he resolved, and hide there until a plan came to his mind for further investigation in the city.

The door opened with a clicking noise, and a small hallway was disclosed beyond. No one was in sight. King let the door fall closed behind him of its own accord and glanced quickly around. There was another door at the end of the hall. Hastily adjusting his load so that he might use both his hands, he continued his investigation, opening the door with his left band, and gripping the pistol with the right.

III

Walls of shining metal, varied here and there with opalescence and color. Furniture of metal, floors and ceilings of metal!

When King pushed open the second door he found himself in a large room, apparently the living room or reception hall of the apartment. He gazed with surprise and delight at the beauty of the place, at the cunning and artistry of its furnishings, and the curious, all-pervading air of modernity and expressionism. It was as if artists here had carried to the farthest degree of perfection the movements in architecture and decoration which had been only moderately developed in certain of the largest cities of the Western Hemisphere. Everywhere was the suggestion, cunningly wrought, of the mechanical age; the cylinders, planes, cones and cubes of symmetrical geometry; yet so completely worked into a unified whole that the effect was neither harsh nor cold, but strangely exalting, like the roar and ordered tumult of giant machinery.

What a conception, this tremendous city of metal, under a gleaming and protecting dome, at the head of the greatest and fastest transportation system in the world! At first King had expected to feel shut in because of the absence of windows. Curiously enough, there was no such sensation. The soft light, which came apparently from the ceiling and walls, was sufficient to give the impression of space and freedom and air. Here and there, as if from a hidden window, high up, there poured a flood of light like yellow sunshine. King moved eagerly about the walls, seeking the source of this mysterious illumination, but he was unable to find the origin of it.

Heat and ventilation were also supplied, it was evident, by some hidden and unusual means. Every detail of the apartment bespoke artistry and mechanical cunning. The tapestries and fabrics, with which it was richly hung, were of materials which the American had never seen before. Some were silky and strong; others duplicated familiar weaves and patterns, yet with a certain fineness which lifted them magically to the plane of luxury. Unmistakably the best products of the Asian factories and laboratories had gone into the furnishings of those rooms; synthetic or natural, there was no duplicating of the materials anywhere else in the Western World.

The very air of the place breathed of plenty and comfort. But through the material completeness of the appointments there moved the shadowy figure of a lovely but tragic personality. The feeling was elusive, but persistent. King fell to wondering, as soon as he had entered the room, for whom this splendor and luxury had been fashioned; what might be the nature of the occupant of such a palatial suite.

He had not long to wonder. His musings were suddenly cut short by a startling sound. Some one. the occupant of the apartment probably, was coming in. He heard voices, the clinking of the outer door as it opened, the shuffle of feet on the uncarpeted floor of the hallway.

He was on the far side of the salon near a door and connecting passageway which led farther back into the apartment. With an impulsive movement he opened the door and passed through it into the room beyond. He paused in amazement at what he beheld there.

Unknowing, he had pushed into a boudoir of such tremendous size and beauty that he momentarily forgot his danger to look at it. Enclosed, artificially lighted, it nevertheless was like a fairy garden. as broad and bright, as redolent of the perfume of living, growing flowers, as airy as any garden ever planted out of doors. Tall plants and garden statuary, beneath a high blue dome, half hid a warm and tinted bathing pool which shimmered softly in the changing light. A tinkling water fountain made pleasant music with the echoes from the walls.

Beyond all this an intimate nook winged off, half-concealed by hangings from the jutting walls. There stood a bed upon a dais, overhung with gossamer draperies of many shades. A royal princess might be imprisoned here! None certainly of baser flesh could sleep in peace in such a bed or bathe in such a pool or lie upon the silken, luxurious cushions of many colors which strewed the polished floor!

King heard the soft tones of a woman in the salon, the whisper of feet passing over the deep-piled rugs beyond the door. He had time only to slip behind a. tall cabinet near the bed before a small girl slave, in uniform, opened the door through which he had just come and stood aside to let her mistress pass. The girl stopped beside the door, but the woman approached the bed directly and wearily lay down upon it.

She was a lovely figure there, clad in an enveloping robe of shimmering white, caught at the middle with a scarlet girdle of tasseled cord. From where he crouched King could see her lying upon the bed. One arm was outflung; the hand was white and very fine, the fingers long and pale. The other hand lay beneath her breast.