Get Off My World Page 4

  “A hanging hospital,” marveled Sparky.

  “A hanging city,” corrected Paige, realizing its true size.

  They were led, with other wounded men, into one of the rocket ships. With a very slight blast of its jets, the craft smoothly slid away from the docks toward the globe-city in the giant hollow. The hanging city loomed larger and larger, through the craft’s clear bubble-top.

  “That globe is miles wide,” said Sparky, unbelievingly. “Yet you say it hangs here in mid-air without anything holding it up?”

  “At the exact center of earth, where we are,” explained Paige carefully for the bewildered little man, “the gravity pull is equal in all directions because 4000 miles of rock surrounds us at all sides. If we were to leave and climb up, in any direction, for 4000 miles, we would find the gravity pull gradually increasing until it became one-g at earth’s surface. Newton figured that all out long ago. Got it?”

  “No, but Newton’s word is good enough for me,” sighed Sparky.

  In a few minutes, the nose rockets slowed the jet-craft down and it slid neatly into a huge hatchway that was open, coming to rest at a dock platform inside. Paige and Sparky followed an attendant down a curving corridor that evidently traversed the outer layer of the giant globe-city.

  They entered a large portal. An attendant began to take down some sort of record, asking questions, when another figure strode forward.

  “Evan Paige!”

  Paige looked around into the face of Dr. Aronson, familiar yet different, from months before. The sunless environment had obviously faded his skin, beard and hair. But otherwise, the short, stocky explorer-scientist seemed in good health.

  “Dr. Aronson.” Paige wrung his hand.

  “Hi, Doc,” greeted Sparky. “Had to play several tricks to get down here, but here we are.”

  “Good to see you both,” returned the scientist eagerly. “It’s like meeting fellow Americans in some foreign port. I knew you were coming—Reena sent a message, by wire. It’s still a surprise, though. After our radio contact clipped off so suddenly, a month ago, I didn’t know what had happened. I thought perhaps the—the Martians—”

  He stopped. He had said the word queerly. He looked at Paige with a strange, half-skeptical glance, questioningly.

  Paige nodded. “It’s true,” he said quietly. “Too bitterly true.”

  “Then it wasn’t a horrible dream I’d had.” The scientist’s shoulders sagged. “I’d been hoping it was that.” Shaking his head, he turned, beckoning. “I’ll take you to your room.”

  It was down a hall, a small cubicle with two hanging hammocks. Paige looked around for a chair, finding none, then realized standing was no effort at all, in the first place.

  Paige told their story briefly, then looked quizzically at the scientist for his.

  “First of all,” Aronson began, “this floating city is more or less of a huge sanitarium. In war-time, all the Dorthian wounded are brought here, to recover more quickly, and so return to battle sooner.”

  A sanitarium at the center of the Earth. Paige thought of how skeptical, how utterly disbelieving the upper world would be, if told. He shrugged that away. Before 1492, they hadn’t even known of the other half of that upper world. It wasn’t so strange that two worlds could lie almost side by side, without mutual discovery.

  “I came down here to prove my geologic theories,” resumed the scientist. “I found the albino people. Or they found me, Reena and Tal. Neither believed I had come from an upper world, only another ‘cave’. When Tal found out I was something of an M.D., as well as explorer, he impressed me into service here. War-time measures. In spare moments I managed to repair my set and signal you. Then the news…”

  His voice was suddenly haggard. “You’re amazed at finding life and civilization below here. I’m amazed that up above, the civilization I knew is crumbling under alien attack.”

  He broke off, shaking his head with a groan.

  “But now there’s some hope.” Paige’s voice rang. “Sparky and I have already used the weapon that will defeat the Martians. You know of it.”

  Aronson brightened. “It will? Then we’ll contrive to go above and bring the plans of this weapon along.”

  “But that wouldn’t help,” Paige ground out. “Most of our factories have been destroyed. Our industry is paralyzed by the enemy’s ceaseless bombing.” He waved an arm around. “We must bring along an albino army.”

  “Evan, wait a minute,” interposed the scientist, thunderstruck. “How are you going to convince the albino people to send such an army?”

  “How can they refuse?” Paige countered. “They’re human. When they hear of part of their own blood-race being savagely annihilated by monsters from another planet, they’ll flock up there like the crusaders of the Middle Ages.”

  “Will they?” Aronson was slowly shaking his head. “I’ve been accepted as a somewhat mad creature whose poor, dazed mind can’t even remember what ‘cave’ he came from. They’ve fed me, let me live with them, treated me kindly, for that reason. You told me yourself how deaf Reena and Tal were to your story.”

  Paige hardly heard him. He burst in, nervously impatient to start the grand scheme off.

  “Where is the ruling center? Take me there. If we go directly to the authorities, we’ll get somewhere. Where is it?”

  “A cavern quite near here. The ruler of Dorthia is a sort of premier or president, called the Kal of Dorthia. He heard of me and took some slight interest in me. But Evan, I don’t know…”

  “Look,” snapped Paige, shaking the older man like a little child. “Up above maybe half the human race is wiped out, the other half doomed. This is a matter of saving the civilization we know. Get me an audience with this Kal of Dorthia one way or another.”

  Aronson jerked erect. “I’ll do it. Stay here, in the meantime. Your wounds have to heal anyway.”

  * * * *

  The Kal of Dorthia was a tall, regal albino with a mane of long, blonde hair that hung to his shoulders. Paige studied him. His face was intelligent, his eyes keen and kindly. Surely such a man must have an open mind.

  “Dr. Aronson,” nodded the Kal of Dorthia in recognition. “My aide tells me you plagued him ceaselessly for a week for an audience. What is it?”

  The scientist pointed to Paige. “This man recently came from my world. He wishes to speak with you.”

  “Two more dark-skinned men,” marveled the Kal, glancing over Paige and Sparky. “One of my scientists has just advanced the possible theory that you, Dr. Aronson, and these men too, presumably are—” he paused delicately, “—freaks caused by excess radium emanation.”

  “Freaks, nothing.” Paige stepped forward, boiling a little at the albino’s patronizing smile. “We’re from a different world entirely. It exists above and around your world. Millions of human beings like myself live there, and we have a civilization comparable to yours. Three months ago the Martians attacked, beings from another planet and from another solar system—”

  Paige went on, describing the Martian invasion briefly. Aronson helped him when he was stuck for a word in the Dorthian tongue. Paige paused, out of breath, but went right on.

  “In behalf of my world, I appeal for your help. It will not be an easy task. It will take an army of millions. But your fresh forces, powerful weapons, and impregnable base will stop the enemy. You are human. We are human. It is your duty, by race ties alone, to send your help.”

  The Kal of Dorthia had listened patiently. A smile played about his lips at times.

  “Where do these so-called monsters you describe come from?” he queried.

  “From another planet. Another world.”

  “You mean another cave?” The Kal looked genuinely puzzled. “Beyond the Fire Zone? But that is the Heavy Region, where our people d
o not go to live. It’s hardly explored.”

  Paige saw he would have to be more explicit. He did not notice the ironic look in Aronson’s eyes.

  “The Fire Zone lies just beneath Earth’s crust. Climbing up through the crust you emerge into open air. The Earth is a globe, a gigantic ball, hanging in ‘space’ in nothingness. Other worlds lie in space. Mars is such a ‘planet’. And from it, across space, have come the invaders. Surely you must understand?”

  “Gigantic globe—space—nothingness? You speak in riddles, dark man. Everyone knows that there is no nothingness, what you call ‘space’. How can the world be a globe, when there is only rock in all directions?”

  Paige groaned and tried again. He broke out in a sweat from intense effort. Vaguely he knew himself to be Galileo, trying to say Earth revolved around the sun. Or Columbus, saying the Earth was round and that half the world lay beyond the seas, against all previous belief.

  The Kal of Dorthia suddenly waved an imperious arm, interrupting.

  “It is a mad conception. Dr. Aronson told me the same thing. I convinced him such thoughts are wholly wrong.”

  “But at least you can send an expedition with us beyond the Fire Zone, to disprove our claims,” Paige said desperately.

  “Not at present,” the Kal retorted. “King Luth of Uldorn is again waging war on us. All our activities must go into protection of our cave system.”

  “But Good Lord,” exploded Paige. “Don’t you realize that over your head your own blood-people are being exterminated, massacred?”

  “Enough,” snapped the ruler of Dorthia. “I deal with realities, not the figments of a madman’s brain. Go!”

  Baffled rage shook Paige. He took a step forward, fists clenched, but Aronson pulled him back.

  “Don’t be a fool,” he hissed.

  “No use, Sarge,” Sparky sighed. “Like with Tal and Reena.”

  Paige turned helplessly, to leave the chamber.

  The Kal of Dorthia’s voice floated to them, at the door. “You will be allowed to live with us and be treated well, dark man. I did not mean to be unkind to you.”

  “Treated well, like lunatics they pity,” Sparky muttered.

  Paige ground his teeth out in the hall. “How could the man refuse? How could he be so obtuse, ignorant, heartless?”

  “No, Evan,” cut in the scientist wearily. “You can’t blame him. Think once, suppose it were the other way around. Suppose two albino men had stumbled up into our world, made their way to Washington, and demanded that the United States send a vast army down to defeat monsters, who were wiping out the buried albino race. A race we never heard of, never even dreamed was under our feet. And monsters we couldn’t believe in, because we had never seen them before. Picture that, and then try to picture 225,000,000 practical, hard-headed Americans taking up the crusade.”

  “Yeah, especially past that Fire Zone,” agreed Sparky.

  “Okay, I get it,” muttered Paige. “When you look at it that way, there is some excuse for them. But at least our people would send an expedition to investigate.”

  “Would they? If powerful, blood-thirsty overseas armies were invading the coasts at that particular time? Here’s how the situation is: For the past three years, there has been growing friction between the Dorthians and Uldornians. They are the two great ‘powers’ down here. There are separate governments and cultures, just like above. King or Dictator Luth of Uldorn rules over a vast chain of caverns lying roughly under the Pacific Ocean and Asia. He has built up a powerful aggressive army and has been absorbing smaller, independent cave-states. He is now creeping at the ‘borders’ of Dorthia, ready to smash at it with all his power. The Kal of Dorthia is concerned with that, not a hypothetical new world that needs help.”

  “And remember the recruiting officer up above?” put in Sparky. “He didn’t believe about the underworld for a minute. How can we blame these people? We had to desert the Earth forces even to get down here.”

  Paige suddenly felt as though a crushing weight had descended on him. Two worlds, neither of which believed in the other. One world, too panic-stricken with doom to investigate possible rescue. The other, preoccupied with a civil war, unaware that monsters were killing off half their blood-race.

  The gods must be laughing at the cosmic irony of it.

  What could be done? What possible way was there to break this nightmarish deadlock? Paige didn’t know. He just didn’t know any more.

  Chapter 5

  “Now what do we do, Sarge?” growled Sparky, as they left with an air of gloom around them.

  “Trapped,” hissed Paige, in suppressed rage. “Trapped underground and taken for kooks who believe in a mythical outer world. Trapped…trapped.”

  “It seems so,” sighed Dr. Aronson. “You may as well accept it, as I was forced to do. Learn to live down here. You may be down here the rest of your life.”

  Paige stopped in shock, rebelling as that thought filtered into his mind for the first time. “Live a lifetime down here? Not me. I’m going to escape from this madhouse and return to our own world as soon as possible.”

  Sparky spoke with a look of horror. “Our world, Sarge? But it won’t be our world. It’ll be the Martians’ world.” Paige jerked as if shot. Yes, had he forgotten? The Martian fleets and marching armies. By the time he and Sparky worked their way out of the inner world, the outer world would be denuded of humans. Only their corpses would lie around. It was planeticide where an entire world’s population had been wiped out.

  The shuddery picture made Paige groan aloud. “Marooned,” he whispered, shaken. “That’s what we are—marooned down here. We’re exiles, castaways, but worse off than Robinson Crusoe. He at least had the hope of returning to his home-world. We have no home-world waiting for us.”

  All three of them felt the weight of those shattering words. Certainly their fate was unique in all history—maddeningly unique.

  “Well,” shrugged Sparky, finally. “Like the Doc said, we might as well get used to living down here.” He stared at some albino people going past, as they stared in return. “Trouble is, I feel like a freak down here with my ‘dark’ skin.”

  “Our thoughts are getting too gloomy,” said Aronson with an effort, shaking his own shoulders as if throwing off a burden. “Come, let me show you around Centropolis. That’s the name of the city at the center of earth.”

  Paige and Sparky followed listlessly. It would help pass the time until they could think more of their future life.

  From the cavern where the Kal of Dorthia had his sumptuous quarters, Aronson led the way to the jet-craft docks. They had permits to ride to the globe-city and soon stepped out in Centropolis. Like before, they were given magnetic shoes.

  “Without them,” said Aronson, “we would simply float in zero-g in which this entire global-city rests.”

  “How big is it?” Sparky asked, just to keep the conversation going.

  “Ten miles in diameter.” Aronson smiled at their gasps. “It has to be huge. It houses not only the patients and wounded soldiers but all the doctors, nurses and personnel that go with a giant sanitarium, plus all the necessary medical equipment. But a large portion of it, more than half, is just a city. A place for Dorthians to live, those who work at various installations and stations that are distributed along the inner surface of the earth-center hollow.”

  It was a rather confusing picture to Paige and Sparky. A tiny world on its own, with people working at places scattered over the curving surface of a hollow inside earth, and living in a zero-g suspended global city.

  Aronson was waving. “Centropolis itself is divided up into concentric layers, from the outer shell inwards. In each circling layer are corridors or ‘streets’ lined with buildings and homes. It’s much like a surface city rolled up into a ball.”

  “But
why is it so light here, like daylight?” Sparky asked in curiosity.

  The scientist stepped toward a broad window. “We’re in the outer shell of the city and can look outward. See?” Sparky looked, astonished. “Why, there’s a sun there!” Confined in quarters deeper within the globe-city before, he and Paige had had no glimpses outside.

  It was a blazing orb, quite like a miniature sun only pure white instead of yellowish.

  “An artificial sun,” nodded Aronson. “Up in the caverns, people can live by the radioactive and phosphorescent glows from rocks and mosses, their eyes adjusted for dimness. But inside this globe city there would be no natural glows. So a nuclear mass was created to shed light and a certain amount of mild heat, down on the city.”

  “What about the layers under this outer shell?”

  “There is an ingenious system of shafts and mirrors that penetrate within the city to its very core. Those shafts distribute the sunlight to every street so that nobody is deprived of sunshine. Every 12 hours, the sun is shut off—it’s controlled by an automatic device within—to stimulate night-time.”

  The scientist’s face became puzzled. “For some strange reason, the undergrounders have always kept an exact 24-hour day split into daylight and night-time. As if it’s an ancient instinct from the time they lived above…”

  “Say,” exclaimed Sparky. “Maybe if we explain that to the people, they’ll realize their ancestors once lived on earth’s surface, proving our story.”

  Aronson shook his head wearily. “Don’t you think I tried that? They can’t understand the earth’s rotation that creates day and night above. Look, notice how our shadows change as that artificial sun slowly swings around the city?”

  “I get it,” grunted Sparky, his voice sagging. “Here, the sun revolves around the globe-city, which stands still and doesn’t rotate. Shades of Galileo!”