The Cavern World
_By James P. Olsen_
_He aimed it, and the Thing gripping him was hurledback upon the others._]
[Sidenote: A great oil field had gone dry--and Asher, trapped farunder the earth among the revolting Petrolia, learns why.]
"Impossible! What sort of creatures would they be, that could live twomiles beneath the surface of the earth? Surely, Asher, you arejoking!"
R. Briggs Johns, mighty power back of Stan-America Oil Corporation,looked at Blaine Asher closely, expecting to see the chief geologistand scientist of the company laugh. But Blaine Asher did not laugh.Serious, his rather thin face grave as he leaned his tall, muscularbody above a torsion machine he was adjusting, there was nothing toindicate he had the faintest idea of a joke.
"Why damn it, Asher!" Johns insisted wrathfully, "you don't reallymean that. And"--he took a nervous turn around the laboratory--"ifsuch a wild thing were possible, what has that to do with our trouble?You haven't led me on to spend a million dollars drilling athirty-six-inch hole, just so you could test a fantastic theory?"
"You know better than that." Asher wiped his hands and leaned againsta table. Johns, looking into the cool gray eyes of the man before him,did know better. Blaine Asher was more than just a geologist orscientist. Well he might be termed a master geo-metallurgist. Johnsnodded, wiping beads of perspiration from his brow.
"You say impossible--and want to know how those creatures cause thisfield, the largest oil field in the world, to start going bone dryover night. All right:
"Remember how you laughed when I told you that oil would some day bemined instead of pumped or flowed from the earth? You couldn't see howone central shaft could be sunk, then tunnels run back underneath theoil strata, tapping the sand from the bottom and letting the oil rundown to be pumped out one shaft. Yet, that way, we would get _all_ theoil, instead of the possible one-eighth of the total amount as we getby present methods.
"Now, you have seen that done. And you said that was impossible."
* * * * *
"Yes," Johns objected, "but those test wells we mined were only a fewhundred feet deep. Wells in this field are eight thousand feet deep!Think of the heat, man! You can't do it. And as for people--"
"Your great field has suddenly gone dry, almost in a month's time,"Asher stopped him. "What is happening here can happen elsewhere. Only,formations in this field are more suited to there being life--orsomething--below us. Stan-America is going broke. Many others havealready gone broke. Still, that oil couldn't have gotten away.
"As for heat--yes, we know that oil is hot when it comes up from theoil sand at eight thousand feet, or from ordinary wells at three tosix thousand feet. But"--Asher lit a cigarette and inhaleddeeply--"gas coming out of the same well is _cold_! So cold it formsfrost inches thick on pipes and tanks.
"Rock pressure--the pressure of the earth--forcing up the gas, causesthat. Why couldn't that same pressure cool great caverns below thegranite cap below the oil sands? It could. For that matter, I knowthat same pressure will generate useful power. I'll show you that in aminute."
"All right!" Johns chewed his cigar almost savagely. "Say, then, thatyou can work down there, nearly two miles underground; granted that wecan tunnel from beneath the sands and pump more oil from one centralshaft than we now do from fifty wells--what has that to do with thistosh about a race of people?"
"They are not people, perhaps." Asher grinned at the "there, I'vestuck you!" look on Johns' face. "Let's say, rather, creatures. Haveyou ever met Lee Wong, the great Chinese scientist, or his Russiangeological collaborator, Krenski? No?
* * * * *
"Well, I have. I met them in Paris in 1935--five years ago. They'rebrilliant men, and they've prepared some wonderful papers. Brilliant,I said: they are also dangerous. They claim, you know, that thefossils we now drill up come from a lost race--people who went _into_the earth while man, like us, was coming up onto the earth from thewater. Some claim those fossils have been on the surface at one time,and were silted over. But eight thousand feet is a lot of silt, Johns:ever thought of that?"
"Good God!" Johns gasped hoarsely. "You almost make me believe you areright. But, supposing there is such a race of things--what will youdo?"
"This." Asher drew back a curtain that was stretched across one end ofthe laboratory. "You know I was working on a cage in which to descendinto that eight-thousand-foot well you've drilled--the well you'regoing to use to try and find why this field is suddenly gone dry. Thisit it."
Johns stared, shook his head wonderingly and stared again. Before him,ready to be transported to the well that was larger than any everdrilled before, stood what Blaine Asher called his Miner, for want ofa better name.
A thick steel tube, it was. Twelve feet long and large enough aroundthat a man might stand inside of it. The top was welded on in much themanner a top is welded on an ordinary hot-water heater, and hadconnections for hose in it. At the height of a man's eyes heavywindows were set in, and in one side was a door just large enough toadmit a man's body. This door sealed tight the minute it closed.
"It looks like--like some sort of a deep sea diving outfit," Johnssaid as he walked around the braces that held the Miner upright. "Butall those gadgets inside and on the bottom--?" He indicated thestrange instruments that could be seen when the door was opened, andthe queer glass tubes that projected from the very bottom.
* * * * *
"Pressure-power units--my own invention," Asher told him. "For tenyears I've been working on this. I knew that some day I would want toexplore the oil caverns beneath the earth, so I made ready.
"As I told you, rock pressure, or earth pressure, is a tremendousthing. It is power, so I figured how to use it. Under artificialpressure, I have tried out my Miner and its equipment.
"Those tubes sticking from the bottom contain something you arefamiliar with: non-burning and non-explosive helium gas. I havediscovered a way, by their use, to create power that will melt awayrock or iron--literally dissolve it into nothing! Not in an hour, orminutes. In seconds, Johns!
"The pressure of the earth acts as my generator. The pressure actionon the filaments of platinum, and several compositions I have no timeto explain now, causes heat. Call it friction of compressed air, ifyou wish. As neon gases carry an electric spark, so does this heliumcarry the power generated by earth pressure. The pressure below earthacts on the delicate coils and points of my generator. This bit ofpower is carried into the helium tubes, and by a system of vacuumpower, is increased millions of times. Thus, the tiny spark of a cigarlighter would electrocute a hundred men!"
"I--you mean somewhat like a violet ray is increased in the lightningtubes?" Johns strove to grasp the foundation of the thing.
"Yes, the foundation of it all--with the earth's pressure the powermotive," Asher nodded. "So, after my Miner is on the bottom of ourwell, I can burn--or dissolve--a room as large as this laboratory in afew minutes. The whole thing is no mystery after you learn it--notnearly so much as radium, or radio, was. Merely creating a spark ofelectricity and fanning it through a vacuum and a conductor of massedgases."
"But"--Johns had unconsciously dropped his voice to a whisper--"whatof these strange creatures? How would you deal with them? Damn it,Asher, I think I'm beginning to believe this nutty idea of yours. Anyman who can generate power with the pressure of air as it is packed byearth must know what he is talking about!"
"I have but one protection against anything down there that tries toharm me," Asher said simply. "That is this--see?"
* * * * *
What he held up looked like an old-fashioned six shooter. It wasfitted with a platinum-sealed box in the place where a cylinder wouldhave been. The barrel looked like some queer, blue glass.
"Do you see that test tube?" Asher pointed to a glass tube on a tablea few feet away. "Now watch."
He pressed a tiny
ratchet under his thumb. A snapping, buzzing noisefilled the laboratory. Johns gave an exclamation of wonder and awe.Quickly, the test tube started to melt into a pool of molten glass.Asher increased the pressure of his ratchet trigger. The tube wasknocked to the floor.
"Static electricity--always some form of electricity," said Ashergrinning at the astonished oil baron. "Conductor coils here," hecontinued as he tapped the sealed cylinder, "are charged much as aflash-lamp battery. The charged conductors attract the staticelectricity of the air, and, in a manner similar to the action of thepower generator, increase power. There is a slight difference: byturning quick power on my static gun, I can cause the charge to knockdown and merely electrocute, as I knocked the half-melted tube fromthe table."
"I can understand that, a little," Johns sighed profoundly. "It's thesame juice that causes a gasoline truck to catch fire if you don'thave a ground chain on it somewhere. But, just the same, I claim it'sremarkable."
"Not half as remarkable as what I expect to find two miles down when Idescend to-morrow." Asher had a dreamy look in his eyes. "I wonder:new ways to get petroleum wealth ... a strange people...."
* * * * *
"Men,"--Asher, a tight-fitting asbestos composition suit covering himfrom foot to neck, spoke tersely--"when you get me on bottom, stopevery bit of machinery, and don't dare pull up until I give thesignal. If I'm down there the entire day, all right. But"--he smiled,trying to make light of the danger--"if I don't signal withinthirty-six hours, pull up anyhow."
From the bull-wheels of the drilling rig Asher spooled out some of theair-hose cable through which air blown over ice would be pumped intothe Miner; then when the long steel cylinder was over the hole andready, he turned to the company officials and government scientistsand engineers around him in the boarded-up derrick.
"Possibly I can get a survey in an hour. Perhaps I'll have to comeback to the surface and make adjustments to my equipment. That remainsto be seen.... Now, let's get low."
He adjusted a helmet over his head. It looked much like the helmetworn by a sea diver, except that it had no connecting hose for air.The windows in the helmet, which contained pressure lights, worked onthe same principle as the disintegrating rays of the Miner. When Asherturned the ratchet that set the little pressure machine into motion, aviolet tinged green ray of great lighting power shot out andincreased, by weight of air, or atmosphere beneath the earth, thepower of one tiny spark a million times.
Without ceremony or farewell, Asher crawled inside his tube. The doorwas closed and he fastened it from inside. For a moment, wild panicassailed him. But he fought it off, becoming again less the feelinghuman and more the cold calculator of advanced science. The light fromoutside, coming in through the windows of the Miner, was shut off. Thelong steel cage clanked against the sides of the special casing in thewell, and Blaine Asher was on his trip into a lower world never beforevisited by man.
That was what Asher believed. But, had he known what waited for him,two miles into the bowels of the earth....
* * * * *
At five hundred feet, the descent stopped, giving him time to adjusthimself to the pressure change. The gas and oil had been eased out ofthe hole. That is, the casing had been run on through the producingstrata, shutting it off. Asher signaled by buzzer, and a stream of theice-washed air flowed down to him.
Three thousand feet! Six thousand feet! More than a mile down! Sweatpoured from his body in streams, and the air coming into the Minerthrough the hose did not relieve him. It was hot--almost unbearablyso. His ears were roaring. The dark of his tube was relieved as heturned on his pressure lamps. He adjusted the pressure discs over hisears by twisting a thumbscrew on his helmet, and the pounding of hisear-drums ceased.
Gasping, he watched the depth meter in front of him. It did not seemas if he was moving, but the indicator now showed more than seventhousand feet. It moved around slowly and more slowly; trembled ateight thousand--and stopped.
Like the snapping of a man's fingers, the temperature inside the Minerchanged. Asher was now fifty feet below the bottom of the oil and gassands, and if his theory about rock pressure worked.... It _was_working. Frost was forming on the inside of the Miner!
"I'm right--right--right!" Asher thought, elated, sending his buzzersignal up to those so far above. The icy air through his hose changedto air of normal temperature. He signaled for slack in the loweringcable, then prepared for the greatest test of all.
Cramped, with hardly room to move, he studied his gages. Helium tubesat the proper pressure for compressing the tiny spark of the pressuregenerator, so it would flare a million times stronger under the actionof the vacuum tubes: diamond and cut-glass tubes in the bottom of theMiner, thermoed with layers of quicksilver: everything cleared,everything ready.
* * * * *
His hand shaking, Asher pushed the tiny switch that brought hisfilament points trembling together under the atmospheric pressure sofar underground. A tiny spark danced and throbbed through the tinyglass tube before him, beginning to buzz as it started the circuit ofincreasing coils, and soon humming and vibrating as the helium andvacuum tubes swelled it to full power. Spark after spark, increasedalmost beyond imagination, followed one after another. The Minerthrobbed and shook.
White-faced, Asher touched the little lever that opened the blastingoutlets in the bottom. Almost instantly the Miner dropped a full sixinches--went on, down to a foot. Asher, pride of success choking him,pulled the lever hard over, which brought some of the tubes beneathhim spreading out, to blast away the earth on each side of him.
He signaled for more and more slack as the depth indicator showed hehad burned, or disintegrated, his way down to thirty feet beyond theoriginal bottom of the hole. He was below the bottom of the protectingwall of casing now--at the mercy of the pressure of two miles ofearth.
Slowly, setting all his bottom tubes to cutting away on all sides ofhim, he started hollowing out enough room to step out into. Hislights, when he looked through the windows, showed ghostly on earthten feet on each side of him. Ten more minutes and he had created aroom nearly twenty-five feet square--a man-made cave, two miles belowthe surface.
There was something akin to awe in the feelings of Asher when heopened the little door, crawled out and stood erect. The pressurelamps in his helmet lit up the room he had made. There were no sounds,just a vague, ringing silence.
Then so quickly that it robbed him of his senses, two things happened.A hundred yards away from the well in which he had descended, anotherwell, drilled by another oil company, was shot. Three hundred quartsof nitro-glycerine were set off in the hole.
* * * * *
Asher screamed and clamped his ear discs down tight. It seemed thevery gods of thunder were shrieking and raging in his head; everynerve and fiber in his body throbbed and tingled with the hellishvibration.
On his knees, where the shock had thrown him, in darkness beyonddescription, Asher realized the lights from the Miner no longer shoneout. Frantically, he adjusted the small lights in his helmet and gotthem to sending off their rays again. Then, an icy hand seemed tosqueeze his heart, turning his blood to ice-water in his veins. Hecursed himself for not foreseeing that some company might shoot a wellclose by, while he was underground.
He turned. The Miner was all right, but Blaine Asher was trapped! Forthe walls of the hole below the bottom of the casing had caved. Thirtyfeet of rock, sand and conglomerate matter were between him and thebottom of the pipe.
He was trapped--two miles below the earth. There was no hope ofrescue, the hope that miners feel in deep shafts. There could be norescue for Asher. No one could get to him. He cried out his horror,fighting to keep from swooning.
The helmet hampered him. He turned on a small pressure lamp attachedto the belt at his waist, and chanced taking the helmet off. Dank andnauseous was the air that he breathed, since it no longer came throughthe fi
lters in his helmet. But it was air that would serve,nevertheless.
A crackling, rumbling sound caused him to turn quickly. Eyes wide, hestared at the long crack that was opening before him.
Asher was between two layers of granite--one layer under him, andanother above him, just below the oil sands. Now, as the crack betweenthese two layers widened, he could see it slope downward until itended in a great cavern that stretched endlessly away beyond the beamsof his light.
* * * * *
It wasn't this crack that caused Blaine Asher, an iron-hearted man ofscience, to choke and sag down to a sitting position, his kneesrefusing to support him. No--it was the terrible, Godless,unbelievable _Things_ that scurried around in the smooth rock hallthat stretched away into the cavern.
Frozen with soul-chilling fear, Asher stared with eyes that bulged.What were they? Spawned neither of God nor Satan--what could they be?Black-skinned--or was it skin?--like rubber, with round bodies, likeblack basket balls inflated to triple size; bodies that seemed toripple, distort, swell and contract with life within life.
Short, foot-long stems that must have been legs, ending in round ballsthat served as feet, no doubt. Tentacles, Asher would have calledthem, six feet in length, thick as mighty cables and dotted withsuckers like the tentacles of an octopus. And heads--Asher gagged andvomited!
Not heads. Just masses of the black body substance as large as the twofists of a man. In each head was a crooked black gash for a mouth.There were no eyes that Asher could see. Yet, these Things seemed tosee one another, and emitted strange, chill, squeaking sounds!
As Asher watched, the Things sensed his presence. A half hundred ofthem rose and started toward him. They did not walk, nor did theycrawl. Undulating, contorting strangely, they came on with incrediblespeed, long tentacles waving before them; slithering on the rockyfloor of the cavern; making those odd squeaking noises.
As they neared him, Asher sprang to his feet, backing up against thepile of cavings beside the Miner. A long tentacle whipped out andwrapped around his leg. A short, snout-tentacle quivered toward hisface. There was strength beyond imagining in the grip on him.
* * * * *
With an almost animal snarl the man from the earth's surface moved toprotect himself from these creatures, surely of the lowest livingorder. He grabbed into the pocket of his loose asbestos compositionsuit, and his fingers closed comfortingly around the static gun.
He aimed it, and the Thing gripping him was hurled back upon theothers. Crackling, snapping viciously, the charges of electricity thatwere drawn from the very earth increased in the gun and spumed outlike lightning bolts. The Things squeaked excitedly and surgedforward. Asher's finger pulled the ratchet trigger full force, andlike dew before a strong shaft of sunlight, the gruesome Things wereknocked away.
Hating the sight, Asher changed the charge of his gun, cutting thesize of the path the volts covered, thereby increasing the potency ofthe discharge. The piled bodies sizzled, and to Asher's nose came asulphurous smell. Then, there was nothing at all....
Sick, he put the gun back into the deep pocket and leaned on the wall.He turned around again to the pile of cavings that barred his way fromthe surface, and dug like a madman with his bare hands. The Miner wasweighed down, and he could not use it anyhow. The blasting tubes wereon the bottom, and could not be shifted to the top.
Suddenly he stopped his crazed work, raised his head and listened. "MyGod!" he gasped hoarsely, "am I stark mad?" He thought he must be, forthe voice of a human being came to his ears.
"You will be pleased, Blaine Asher, to turn around! And do not makeany foolish moves, I warn you."
"Lee Wong! Krenski!" Asher turned, face to face with thesuper-scientists of whom he had spoken to R. Briggs Johns the daybefore. Asher shook his head. More of the terrible dream, this meetingtwo humans down in the earth's core.
* * * * *
"Most right, honorable Asher." Lee Wong bowed mockingly. He andKrenski were garbed in loose-fitting garments of much the same styleas Asher. In their hands, they carried static guns. Not the small gun,such as Asher had concealed in his pocket. More like heavy air drills,they were.
Asher frowned at the lamps they carried. He knew by the dazzlingaction of the rays that they were pressure lamps. But they gave offmuch better light than those of his own invention. They had gone himone better there.
"Did--did you see them?" Asher gulped. "And how--how did you get downhere? Tell me!" He took a step toward Lee Wong, intending to lay hishand on the Chinaman, to make sure he was live flesh and blood, andnot a figment of his disordered brain.
"Stand where you are!" Lee Wong snapped. He held the heavy static gunup and Asher felt a light charge tingle his body. "Those Things ofwhich you speak--I assume you mean the Petrolia. Ah, yes, we see them.Every day, we see them. For us they work. They work, my dear BlaineAsher, tapping upward into the oil sands; sands that are burial placesof countless millions of generations of Petrolia; of lost races thatonce ruled supreme over these underground worlds.
"How simple, to take the oil from below--the oil you want so muchabove. Someone must do the work. I and Krenski found the Petroliaready and willing. Being creatures of feeling, with little sense, wewere able to bend their dying wills to do our work. You see, we madethem feel we would save them, a dying race, from extinction! They doour bidding."
Asher was bewildered by the enormity of the thing. "You mean theseThings you have called Petrolia actually work for you? And that yousaved them from becoming extinct?"
* * * * *
"Exactly," Lee Wong nodded, seeming to be enjoying himself. "Likehumans of the surface, Petrolia live on the dead. I mean, wherever weget our living food from the earth, we plant our dead back in thatearth. Petrolia are spawned in beds of petroleum. Just as eels seekdeep water to lay their eggs, so do Petrolia go to the oil strata tospawn future tribes.
"When we pump out the oil, they have no--shall we say"hatching?"--beds. But now, by tapping and bringing down the oil, wehave assured them more spawning pits. They will increase, and we havemade them sense it. For that matter, the very oil they breed in, givesthem sustenance. That is why they are black fleshed and blooded, andhave suckers instead of mouths, as a black man is black through agesbeneath hot suns.
"It's easy for us, who are wiser than other men, to figure whatoilfield might contain such people. We have a rapid elevatorconnecting us to the surface. And--"
"Then," Asher almost shouted, "I'm not trapped!"
"No?" Lee Wong wrinkled his forehead quizzically. "You should realizethat we cannot allow you to go back to the surface--alive, or anyother way. We intend to increase the Petrolia, spreading them to otherunderground, yet uninhabited worlds. You would spoil that.
"No, you will never return to the surface. They cannot haul your tubeto the top, so they will think you perished in it. And"--Lee Wongshrugged--"it might have been better if you had, Mr.--"
"_I wouldn't!_" the yellow man snarled. He rolled the ratchet of hisstatic gun and Asher was hurled to the floor by the heavy shock.Wisely, he stood up, keeping his hands well away from the pocket inwhich his own gun rested. He doubted whether his little static guncould compete with the guns of the others, but it was something. Theyhad not thought to search him--perhaps they might not. It was his onlyhope.
* * * * *
Lee Wong bowed low again, motioning Asher to go ahead. "Now you shallsee what we have done. We are proud, and we know you can appreciateour workings. You will be glad to learn why we do as we are doing; youwill be intrigued as a fellow scientist. Then, so sad to say, you mustperish for having gained that very knowledge."
Asher shrugged, and through half-closed lids he eyed Lee Wong and therather small, slender Krenski, of the high brow and large head. Thenhe walked ahead of them. Head up, shoulders back, he walked carelesslydown the wide hall--a hall that led into the
main cavern of thatunderground empire.
It was large--fully a hundred feet in a rough square. Not fifteen feetfrom floor to ceiling at any point, it followed the course of the twolayers of granite between which it was sandwiched. Other long halls,or crevices, ran in every direction out of this main cavern. In thewalls, in niches and cracks, the superior pressure lamps had beenplaced, throwing a bright, eery light over it all.
Asher recoiled suddenly at the sight of hundreds of Petrolia thatswarmed the hallways, and they seemed to sense another presence besidethat of Lee Wong or Krenski. A choked, gurgling sound came from theChinaman, and they disappeared down the halls, squeaking angrily asthey went.
"Our control room," explained Lee Wong waving his hand about him. Hepointed to a dozen twenty-four inch pipe-lines that ran along the lowceiling, coming from as many different halls into the room, but allgoing out the same large hall, larger than the rest. "There are thearteries of our system. There is the oil that is so--shall we saystrangely?--missing in your wells." He smiled, a taunting, mockinglight in his eyes.
"You well understand how we do it. Above us, just below the oilstrata, is a steel, trough-shaped roof. The oil, tapped from below,drains into these, and then into these pipe-lines. If we were workingfrom above, now, we would run it to a central shaft, and pump it out.We do not want it on the surface, however."
* * * * *
"Then why in the name of hell do you want it?" Asher barked, a tensenote of anger in his voice. "And what do you do with it?" These twowere humans. At least, they were in man-form, if not in feeling. Andthe Petrolia could be handled. Asher was getting mad, and his fearebbed.
"Come." Lee Wong led the way under the pipe-lines, down the largehall. Krenski, his heavy static gun ready, walked at Asher's back.They came out into another cavern that stretched beyond the powerfullights. The sound of their voices echoed like thunder of the drums ofThor, and Asher realized this cavern might stretch away in Stygianblackness for hundreds of miles.
Asher marveled, for the floor of this cavern dropped at least fivefeet below the level of the control room or incoming hallways, forminga natural reservoir. A reservoir for the big streams of oil that werepouring into it from the pipe-lines.
The rumble of the oil as it came in and splashed out in a never-endingstream, and the rumble of the oil streams above them as the preciousfluid flowed down into the plated drain roof, sounded like the trampof the weary feet of the damned, as it echoed back and forth acrossthe mighty cavern.
"Our storage." Lee Wong stood at the edge and explained. "Also, as youmay see, a concentration incubator, or spawning bed and food storagefor our Petrolia."
Blaine Asher looked again at the rippling oil at his feet. He chokedbrokenly and stepped back a pace. For the oil near the bank was alive!It rippled and splashed, teeming with life. By the strange alchemy ofbreeding in oil and living on oil as man lives on bread, that lake ofoil was a mass of growing Petrolia. Millions--yes, countlessbillions--of them! Hideous, foul Things that would be turned loosewith the rest in that nightmare world--that would be taken to otherburied worlds to start new races.
* * * * *
"But why--why?" Asher almost screamed the words at Lee Wong.
"Petrolia will be our armies, protecting our underground wealth," LeeWong answered him. "They will be our faithful workers, under nocommand but mine. For, even Krenski has not mastered the over-controlit takes to handle them!
"Gradually, as happened to the field we are now under, all oil fieldswill go dry. We will be getting the oil from below, and putting it instorage in mother earth. Think, Blaine Asher, what it will mean!"There was a fanatical light in Lee Wong's beady eyes.
"A world without petroleum is a world without power. No oil for fuel;no gasoline, lubricants or by-products of any sort. No airplanes couldfly; tanks, tractors, oil-burning trains and ships; mechanicalappliances--nothing could run. We now take the oil from America.Later, when our Petrolia have increased and we have devised means ofmoving them, we will go to all oil-producing countries.
"We will secrete the oil and paralyze the world. Now, in Russia andChina and India, our societies are organizing and growing. They willhandle the weakened, powerless nations, and I shall be ruler of theuniverse, surface and beneath, with Krenski to aid me, you see. It itwonderful, is it not? And, knowing what you do, having seen what youhave, could you call it impossible?"
Blaine Asher groaned. It was not impossible, he knew. Unreal;monstrous--but never impossible. A region of hideous Petrolia; a worldstripped of automotive and mechanical power, its fuel held in thehands of a few, far underground--it was terrible to think of.
And Asher the only one who knew. The only one who could avert such athing. The fate of an entire world was in his hands. And he would soondie.
Die? No! Blaine Asher swore silently to himself that no power inexistence should keep him from destroying these two fiends. It had tobe done!
He dared not fail.
* * * * *
"Wonderful, stupendous thing," he forced himself to smile. "I'd liketo grasp the hand of the genius who devised and carried out such awonderful thing."
He took a step toward Lee Wong, right hand extended, his left slippingtoward the pocket where his own static gun rested.
Lee Wong extended his own right band. Something in the chill, flintlook of Asher's eyes must have warned him. Even as Asher's fingersclosed around his hand, he tried to jerk back.
"Destroy him!" he cried out to Krenski.
Asher dropped to one knee, letting his static gun remain in hispocket. His left hand closed around Lee Wong's wrist as the Orientaltried to pull away. Krenski was bringing the heavy, cylinderlike gunup and aiming it at Asher.
Asher twisted on one knee, his teeth gritted, braced to receive theshock from the gun. He jerked Lee Wong's arm down, heaved and came tohis feet. Crying out, arms and legs flailing, the Chinaman catapultedtoward Krenski--and just at the instant Krenski fired!
The sickening smell of cindered flesh was in Asher's nostrils as heturned and ran back up the main hallway. He glanced back over hisshoulder as he ran, and shuddered at the black mass lying at Krenski'sfeet. Lee Wong was no more. Wide-eyed, the Russian stared at the thingat his feet. Then, with a fiendish shriek, turned and brought the guninto line on the fleeing Asher.
A crackling charge of electricity singed the back of Asher's head ashe dove head first around the corner of the hall into the controlcavern. He reasoned that Krenski had sent a full charge after him, andhope kindled higher in his breast. For Asher believed his smallerstatic weapon was as strong as that of the other. At that, it would bea test, and Asher dared not take chances.
* * * * *
He crouched in the door of another hallway, waiting. Cursing, Krenskidashed into the control cavern. Asher brought his gun up and fired.But even as he pulled the trigger, a long tentacle reached from thedark crevice behind him and jerked his arm. His charge snapped by theRussian, warning the other that Asher, too, was dealing with powerfulelectric rays that meant death should they touch.
Asher yielded to the tug of the slimy, sulphur-smelling tentacle,letting it pull him into the crevice, the charges of Krenski's weaponcrackling by him, leaving his skin dry, and a powdery sensation in hismouth.
In the shelter of the crevice, Asher turned his gun upon the Petroliathat gripped him. The tentacles fell away, fading to nothingnessbefore the charges that showed quivery blue in the dark. Likecatacombs, one crevice opened into another. Asher darted into the nextcrevice and edged cautiously toward the control cavern.
The angry buzzing and snapping of Krenski's weapon caused him to duckinstinctively, although no deadly charges came his way.
"Oh, God!" he heard the Russian's high-pitched voice, agonized,wailing, "they're coming in--they're coming in!"
A squeaking and slithering, now greater than ever, rose above allother sounds. And Asher re
alized what Krenski meant. Lee Wong had saidthat only he could control the Petrolia. They were swarming into thecontrol room now. That was what Krenski was shooting at.
The squeaking sounds came up the crevice in which Asher was and acold, clammy sweat broke out all over him. He could blast a thousandof them into nothing. But by sheer force, more body than his lightstatic gun could down, they would overwhelm him.
His mind raced swiftly. He remembered the location, out in the controlroom, of the cage elevator that ran to the surface. It had not beenhurt by the glycerine blast that had trapped Asher. The elevator shaftfrom the control room was cased clear into the cavern floor, and theblast had not jarred this far.
* * * * *
He wheeled and sent another charge of static electricity into thecrevice back of him, then lunged out into the control room. It wouldbe his own weapon against Krenski's, and a chance to gain the bottomof the shaft.
Krenski--piled, charred heaps of the Petrolia around him, which hadmomentarily cleared the attack--was running across the control room.Like a seething wave, the foul Petrolia undulated from every creviceand hallway, coming in to fresh attack. The Russian, terror lendinghim speed, raced for the cage at the foot of the shaft that led to thesurface. At the same time Asher ran out.
Nearly a hundred feet apart, on opposite sides of the cavern, theystopped. Krenski turned his heavy weapon toward Asher at the same timeAsher sent his own gun crackling and snapping out blue, fiery flame.
Side-stepping, now crouching, now dodging to this side and that, theyfought their strange duel. Asher's right arm was burned, his hairsinged from his head, and his body jarred again and again as Krenskitouched him. Krenski, groaning through gritted teeth, suffered burnsall over his chest and left leg.
As the Petrolia came on, and the lightning play of deadly electriccharges continued, Asher made a discovery. He noticed that the rays,or charges, of the two guns, when they met in mid-air, caused blueflame, and that the charge went no farther.
It did it again. The two charges met, crackled to explosion in theair. Krenski, too, noticed it, and he also noticed that the Petroliawere almost upon them again. Coming on in a wave that could not behurled back.
* * * * *
He looked at Asher, and met the dare in Asher's eyes. Straight at eachother, neither moving, they shot their static charges. Neither wouldmove: it was a challenge from Asher that Krenski had to meet. One ofthem would have to die before the other would be able to gain the cagein the shaft. There could be no compromise, and only one man at a timecould go surfaceward. If they continued to dodge and fight, thePetrolia would overwhelm them.
Power against power, they fought it out.
Asher's finger tightened on his trigger release until it seemed theskin would split; then he caused his hand to tremble just enough tomake his electric charges cover the space in which Krenski's chargestraveled. Hissing, spitting, flashing explosions, giving off soundsand light like big explosions of flash powder, the charges met.
Asher tingled from head to foot, and thrilled to the very marvel ofthe thing. Two deadly beams of electricity, holding each other off!
In one long, continuous flash, the contact point of the charges beganto shift. Closer and closer, as the force of superior charges cleavedthrough the other, the contact points neared Krenski. He saw deathupon him, for in another instant, Asher's charges would hurl his ownbolts back upon him. The smaller weapon of Blaine Asher, attractingmore static electric currents by reason of having a small attractingbattery inside, where the larger gun of the other depended uponmagnets for attraction, was triumphing.
Krenski's mustache and light beard singed and curled. He cried out,stepped back, throwing up his arms as death flashed through his body.
* * * * *
His gun playing about him, Asher raced toward the big valves and gatesthat shut off the drain of the pipe-lines. Burning, reeking of sulphurand burned leather, the Petrolia vanished before him. But, as heturned, the drainage system that was robbing the field shut off. Theyhad blocked his way again!
Too many to blast away altogether, they pressed in. Asher leapedforward, feet kicking, left fist smashing out, static gun crackling asif to tell him that nothing could stop them. Tentacles gripped at him,the foul, stinking smell gagged him. But the squeaks of the Petroliamaddened him.
"Squeak, damn you!" Asher shouted wildly, kicking, shooting andhitting, gaining toward the shaft. "Squeak--for all the damned Thingsthat ever bred below the earth cannot stop one surface man!"
He burned and fought his way through and jumped into the cage as hisgun electrocuted two of the Petrolia that tried to weave in after him.As he slammed the door, Asher was conscious that something washappening. He hesitated, just long enough to see the cavern startbuckling and caving. The pressure of the oil, now shut off, wasfilling back toward the surface, creating a mighty pressure downward.The surface wells would produce man's power-fuel once more.
Asher slammed the door, turned on the power, and the cage shot upward.
A half hour later, those waiting on the floor of the derrick above thehole in which Asher had gone down, started. Asher, burned, wounded,blood streaming from his battered body, staggered in and collapsed attheir feet.
* * * * *
"I can't believe it! Insane! Impossible! Yet, every well in this fieldhas started producing again! And when we went to that old, abandonedwildcat well, we found the shaft opening! I had it covered up, as youordered."
R. Briggs Johns paced up and down the laboratory floor, talking toAsher, who had just arisen from his bed, two weeks after he hadcollapsed at their feet in the derrick. Still bandaged, he was adifferent Blaine Asher. His face was lined, and the hair next to hisscalp nearly snow white.
"I'll be able to do some walking around outside in a few days," Asherdeclared as he cleaned a test tube and placed it in a rack. "I canlocate several wells over that underground storage cavern, and you canrecover that oil. But you can't mine this field.
"Twenty years, perhaps, and you can. But it will take that long forthose Petrolia to die out. We've got to get the oil out from below toa point where they can no longer spawn. We will apply mining in otherfields--but not here!"
"Not here," Johns repeated, shuddering.
"It's up to you to see no one else tries it." Asher lit a cigaretteand nodded at Johns. "Get control of the field--anything. Tell the oilmen something. But don't tell then the truth. They wouldn't believeyou. They would call you raving mad.
"The world does not know. It would not believe. Can we do other thanremain silent?"
R. Briggs Johns, sick of thinking of the cavern world and horriblethings below them, knew they could not.