Lords of Creation Page 17

  Here was an answer!

  A great production plant sprang full-grown into Ellory’s mind. One which hoarded metal salts, and rammed out immeasurable quantities of live steam. Harnessed, the steam would turn great dynamos, producing electricity. Metals and power! All that could come from this small crude machine that whistled and rattled in the pastoral quiet of dead New York.

  Ellory gave a shout of triumph. It was given to few men to realize they had instituted a revolutionary thing.

  “Sem Onger, this machine is going to transform your world into something beyond your dreams! It’s going to build other machines and great cities and aircraft—”

  “But before you can do all that,” said Sem Onger sagely, “you will have to make more of the glowing wax. Do you know how to make it?”

  Ellory came down to earth, nodding soberly. “Yes, but I will need radium.”

  Either that, or a cyclotron. Ellory had gone over the dead scientist’s formulae carefully. The silicon wax could be made from ordinary silicon dioxide—sand. But only through a complicated, delicate process of radium bombardment. A cyclotron, hurling out energized subatomic particles, would serve as well, but he quailed before the thought of having to build one, starting at scratch. It might take a lifetime.

  “Radium,” Ellory repeated. “Have you ever heard of radium, Sem Onger? The world had twenty five ounces altogether in my time. They must have refined more up to 3000 A.D. Where is it all now?”

  “Radium?”

  Sem Onger searched his memory.

  “Yes, I have heard of it, as a legend.”

  “Legend!” Ellory’s heart sank. No knowledge, no records of it, most likely. Had the little tubes of it, spread among hundreds of hospitals and laboratories in his time and later, simply slipped among the ruins, when civilization fell? Lost forever?

  “Wait,” muttered Sem Onger. “I have heard of its use—in Antarka.”

  “Antarka!”

  Ellory thought of their gleaning of the world’s gold and silver, booty of the ages. So too must they have gleaned radium, as much as they could find, and taken it to their land.

  This, more than anything, was true irony. Radium he needed to launch the fiftieth century into a metal-and-power age. Radium lay in Antarka. Could he somehow go there, explain the need and ask for some?

  Expect a gift from Antarka?

  He laughed harshly at the incongruous thought.

  First of all, he was a condemned man the instant he stepped into Antarka. Second, barring that, the Antarkans, far from releasing radium, would simply confiscate his radioactive process. It would save them the trouble of solving their metal-and-power problem of the future.

  Ellory weighed possibilities. Could he somehow strike a bargain, giving them the process for part of their radium?

  Too absurd, he knew, even to think about that. As well expect to rebuild his Outland empire, as hope to make such a deal.

  Could one bargain with a race whose tradition for a thousand years had been to take without question? Nor would they like the thought of the rest of Earth rising in civilization, threatening their seat of authority.

  Ellory saw the hopelessness of it. It was a vicious circle that offered no escape that he could see.

  “The possibility left,” he said aloud, “is to search in the ruins here. We might happen to locate what was once a hospital and find its radium, if the Antarkans missed it.”

  “That might take a lifetime!” Sem Onger grumbled. “And if you died before it was found, Humrelly?”

  The impact of the words stunned Ellory.

  All this lost when he died, if it were not well on its way! Not just finding radium, but applying its use. Making more of the radio-wax, extracting metals and reducing them from salts, designing steam engines, dynamos, motors, all the equipment of the twentieth-century.

  Crushing thought!

  A full lifetime of work stretched before him after the thing was once started—after the radium was found. Yet he might have to waste his lifetime searching, searching for radium that wasn’t known to be there.

  But it was known to be in Antarka, land of tyranny.

  The maddening irony of it brought a shout of helpless rage from Ellory’s lips.

  He thought he heard an answering shout from near by—a shout as emotion-filled as his.

  Chapter 26

  TO CAVERNS BELOW

  Mal Radnor around the bulk of a tumbled stone wall, shouting. By the dust over his clothes, he had just slipped from his horse after a hard gallop. He ran up, his face tense with some serious revelation.

  Another piddling border war, thought Ellory half in disgust. They’d ask him now to defeat the enemy, as he had once before. Now, at this moment, when his whole being strained to forge ahead to a much greater goal.

  But Ellory was wrong.

  “Humrelly—escape!” gasped Mal Radnor, coming close. “They’re after you—kill you!”

  Ellory’s breath caught. “The Antarkans!” he groaned.

  Somehow, then, ErMalne’s cover-up had failed. The Outland Council, knowing him to be alive in the Outland, had come after him, to end the reign once and for all of the man from the past who was their sworn enemy. A still more terrible thought came to him—had ErMalne, swinging all the way back, betrayed him?

  “No, no!”

  Mal Radnor was half screaming, breaking into Ellory’s thoughts. “Not the Antarkans. The Quoise and Jendra and others of the neighboring tribes. News of your return must have leaked to their ears. A great mob of them swarmed past our capital, demanding your head!”

  Ellory stood stunned.

  Mal Radnor went on. “They call you a false prophet. They blame you for starting the revolt, bringing down the heavy hand of Antarka. They lay at your feet all their recent suffering and loss of homes and loved ones. It’s rabble, a blood-thirsty mob, more dangerous than an army. We are trying to hold them off. They are approaching the ruins now.”

  Mal Radnor’s eyes became pained. “Even, Humrelly, even some of our people have joined the mob!”

  Ellory’s mind swam. The very people he had tried to save from an age-long serfdom now demanding his life.

  “You must be saved, Humrelly!” Old Sem Onger’s voice quavered. “He must, Mal Radnor! If he dies, a whole new world dies with him. The woods—across the river. We’ll hide there—”

  “No!” Mal Radnor shook his head hopelessly. “They would beat the woods for days, drive us out like wild beasts. A sailing ship? No, the Quoise have ships as fast—”

  Ellory took command of himself. “The ruins are as good as anything to hide in. If we can find an underground passage—” He was already thinking of a former subway tunnel that might lead to a forgotten corner.

  The three men stiffened.

  Over the still air from the north came a low clamor that rose in volume. A cloud of dust swirled at the horizon, marking the path of the vengeful mob.

  “Hurry!” panted Mal Radnor. “If they once sight us—”

  They ran deeper into the bones of dead New York. Everywhere their eyes darted, seeking a safe hiding place. Ellory knew it could not be an ordinary one, for the great mob would scatter and search, for days, if necessary. He knew the unrelenting mood of a mob on a witch-hunt, from past history.

  A subway tunnel, half caved in! He leaped for it. They scrambled down a fill-in of loose gravel. Thirty feet beyond, the darksome cavern ended against solid debris from floor to roof.

  “Out! No good.”

  Ellory led the way back to light. They had lost precious minutes. A glance to the north showed a body of tiny figures, like black ants, swarming toward them. Their blood-curdling yells might have been those of merciless Apaches on the warpath, three thousand years ago.

  Again and again
they came down to shadowy caverns, holes in the ground, dark spaces beneath crumbled walls, but none offered real hiding against thousands of pairs of eyes through long hours. Ellory felt the chill of approaching doom. He found himself praying to the soul of dead New York, city that once had harbored him and his race—praying for one last service from it.

  They fled perhaps a mile to the south, losing precious moments each time they examined some likely concealment. The mob, spread in a long line that left no loophole open, gained slowly, peering into every crevice. Ellory shuddered as their full-throated cries resounded behind them.

  He lost hope. He estimated they were within a couple of miles of the narrowing end of Manhattan Island. On both sides, rivers. Ahead, the wide Atlantic. Back of them—death.

  Sem Onger stumbled finally, falling back, clutching at his chest. His old heart could not stand the frantic pace much longer. Ellory went back, supporting him.

  “I am a drag to you!” gasped the old seer. “I am old, useless. Leave me here. They won’t harm me. Your young legs will gain on them—”

  Silently, Mal Radnor and Ellory took Sem Onger by either arm and half pulled him along. That mob would tear him apart, for it was well known to them that Sem Onger had supplied Ellory’s conquering army with the invincible metal weapons. And Mal Radnor, co-leader, was no less marked for death.

  They stumbled on, with Sem Onger’s old legs buckling under him. Ellory weighed considerations. Soon they would be sighted, by some pair of searching eyes. Once that happened the end was within minutes.

  Desperately, he turned for the next pile of masonry, into a lower space that might once have been part of a department store bargain basement. They scrambled down, darting to the deepest shadows a few dozen feet beyond, before the space ended.

  “Don’t make a sound when they come. Don’t breathe!” warned Ellory. “This is our last chance.”

  “And a poor one!” whispered Mal Radnor hopelessly.

  Ellory pondered a moment, then took out the lead-foil wrappings that held the formulae of the radio-wax. He had stuffed these in his pocket, before the chase. He shoved them into Sem Onger’s hand.

  “You keep them, Sem Onger,” he whispered. “Guard them. Hand them down to other generations, as you would a priceless heritage. Maybe sometime in the future, they will fulfill themselves. This is all that matters, not our lives!”

  He stood up. “Come, Mal Radnor. We’ll lead them a merry chase away from here!”

  Mal Radnor sprang up, but the old seer clutched Ellory’s coat, holding him back. “Humrelly, listen to me!” His voice had become eager. “A vision has come to me. I see you and Mal Radnor descending into a tunnel that connects with lower ones. Down and down they go, to perfect safety from our pursuers. I see it plainly—”

  There was a strange, glassy stare in the old man’s eyes. Ellory looked at Mal Radnor, startled. Was Sem Onger close to death, babbling in half-delirium?

  The old seer glanced at them.

  “I’m not befogged!” he cried half angrily. “The vision is one of memory, not hallucination. I saw it a moment ago, before we descended here. That other tunnel is a thousand feet beyond. I remember this section of the ruins clearly now. When I was young, I stumbled on the tunnel, explored, found the lower caverns. Strange things lay there. I came back eagerly the next day, but could not find the place again. Only now have I found it, after all these years!”

  His bony hand squeezed Ellory’s arm. “You must believe me! I swear it is escape!”

  He did a strange thing—stooped and rubbed dirt in his silvery hair till it was dark. Then, thrusting the foil-wrappings in Ellory’s hands, he leaped away before the younger men knew what he was about. They sprang after him, but a new strength seemed to have flowed into the old, shaky limbs.

  Sem Onger scrambled up the slope, out into the open sunlight, screeching at the top of his lungs. He looked back once, pointing beyond, to the tunnel he had told about. Then he raced on, fleetly as a youth.

  The van of the searching, yelling mob spied his flying figure. With a whoop of triumph they gave chase. They would not find out till they came close that he was not Humrelly, though his dirt-darkened hair and incredible bounding run gave that illusion.

  For a moment then, Ellory stood motionless.

  But only for a moment. Now was the time to reach hiding, during the precious seconds Sem Onger was giving his life for. Crouching low, the two men scurried across the open space to the tunnel Sem Onger had told them about. Would it lead them to secure hiding? Or had the old seer’s mind and memory played him tricks?

  It was a subway cave-in. Dark, it seemed to stretch interminably. Hope rose in Ellory. They stumbled over rotted ties and crumbled masonry.

  A darker passage loomed at the side, and it slanted down.

  A hundred yards beyond, and perhaps two hundred feet down from the ground level, the narrow passage opened into a large corridor. It was pitch dark, cold and dank, and their breathing magnified hollowly, as if the corridor pierced underground endlessly.

  Mal Radnor fumbled in his coat pockets and withdrew a candle, an item the fiftieth-century people always carried. The scrape of his flint against the wall rumbled loudly. In flickering candle glow, they moved on slowly.

  Ellory stared about.

  Concrete lined, the fifteen-foot arched passage seemed as solidly constructed as his crypt had been. Along the central floor ran a narrow-gauge railroad track, the metal rotted to red oxide. Every fifty feet the smooth wall was broken by an exit. These led to what had once been staircases winding upward. Little reMalned of them save skeleton frames of stubborn steel.

  Ellory, almost forgetting the mob above ground, found himself trying to piece together a puzzle. What was this subterranean system part of?

  Further along, at regular intervals, there were niches in the wall. Behind what had been metal shields, now heaps of rust, lay more heaps of metal-rot—and in one, bones. A hundred feet beyond they stepped through a jagged metal plate so thick that Time had eaten through only in places. It had once blocked the passage off.

  Overhead, at intervals, were ceiling pockets that might have originally held huge fans to circulate air. This had been a gigantic underground community at one time.

  Chapter 27

  ANCIENT THUNDER

  “Mal Radnor!” Ellory’s voice was tense with wonder. “Do you know any history? Of New York City particularly? Any of the latest wars before its downfall?”

  Mal Radnor shrugged.

  “Only that before the Dark Time, there was fevered activity all over earth to build underground shelters. There came an attack here, from across the ocean. The enemy took over much southern territory. This city stood them off, it is said, for many months. Then it fell, finally.”

  Invasion of North America, from Europe! Ellory filled in the details himself. The southern states occupied. Armies marching north, vanguarded by fleets of bombers with the dread atom bomb. A deadlock at New York, for months. And that explained why several nuclear wars, from World War in on, had not wiped out mankind immediately. The whole world had burrowed into the bowels of earth for protection against the atomic hell that raged above.

  This underground beehive, then, had been a bombproof shelter, built by America as a last stand. It ran, perhaps, from New York City through New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Probably by 3000 A.D., with temperature rising, the bulk of what had been American population had migrated into the northern states and all through Canada.

  That could be the only explanation for this stupendous underground network, with a train system, kitchens, ventilation, machine-gun niches, and staircases and elevators leading to surface turrets. From here, the besieged army had directed rocket powered atom bombs against the advancing horde. Troops had concentrated here, scurried out in desperate counterattack, while New York itself, at t
he surface, was reduced to atomic rubble. At last, cut off without supplies, the lines had fallen.

  Such, perhaps, had been the grim story.

  But the enemy, whoever it was, had had short triumph, for soon after had come complete collapse of that age. Dr. Unknown, who had discovered the glowing-wax, had watched the last of mankind’s precious power supplies dwindle, including the uranium with which atom bombs were made.

  He had withheld his secret wisely, for Mars alone would have benefited in that mad time.

  “What is this place?” Mal Radnor shivered. “Did people once live here?”

  “Lived and died here,” responded Ellory, “without knowing why!”

  That, he reflected, was a fitting epitaph for his age that had gone mad with war fever.

  “There is no pursuit by the mob,” Mal Radnor continued, eagerly. “We can stay down here days if need be, till they go.”

  Ellory nodded and strode on, curious to see more of the giant network. Obviously, atomic warfare had driven fighting forces underground. Europe too must have such a labyrinth. Despite early predictions, when the atom bomb was first developed in the 20th Century, such a thing as the “Twenty-Four Hour War” had not come to pass. Atom bombs might level cities and manmade things on the face of earth. But armies deep underground, spitting back, had to be routed by the same old tedious methods.

  The air felt dryer gradually. Ellory surmised they were going away from the river edge, into the solid rock of central Manhattan. The metal track in the Maln gallery showed a better state of preservation. Metal staircases were less oxidized. Elevator shafts were almost intact, cages jammed. The armored shields in the niches stood upright. Behind them, machine guns were recognizable, part of the precautions against invasion.