CHAPTER XIX
_The Voice of the Mountain_
In a strange new world surrounded by a group of kneeling figures ofwhom one, who called himself Gor, had spoken in Rawson's own tongue,Dean Rawson stood silent. It was all too overwhelming. He could notbring words together to formulate a reply. He only stood and staredwith wondering eyes at the exquisite beauty of the world about him, aworld flooded with a golden light, faintly tinged with green. Then helooked above him to see the source of that light and found the sun.
Not the sun that he had known, but a flaming ball nevertheless.Straight above it hung, in the center of the heavens, a gleaming diskof pale-green gold, magnificently brilliant. He saw it through lidshalf closed against its glare. Then his gaze swept back down the bluevault of the heavens, back to a world of impossible beauty.
Directly ahead was a land of desolation, radiant in its barrenness.For every rock, every foot of ground, was made of crystal. Nearbyhills were visions of loveliness where the colors of a millionrainbows quivered and flashed. Veins of metal showed the rich bluesand greens of peacock coloring. Others were scarlet, topaz, green, andall of them took the strange sunlight that flooded them and threw itback in blendings radiant and delicate.
The little hills began a short distance off, two low ranges runningdirectly away. One on either side, they made brilliant walls for theflat valley between, whose foreground was barren rock of rose andwhite. But beyond the glistening barren stretch were green fields ofluxuriant vegetation and in the distance, nestled in the green wereclustered masses that might have been a city of men. Still farther on,a single mountain peak, white beyond belief, reared its gracefulsweeping sides to a shining apex against the heavens of clear blue.
* * * * *
Slowly Rawson turned. A hundred yards away, at his left, there waswater, a sea whose smooth rollers might have been undulating liquidemeralds that broke to infinite flashing gems upon the shore. Heswung sharply to the right and found the same expanse of water,perhaps the same distance away.
Then he turned toward the shell, which had been behind him and theshaft from which it had emerged, and into which the air was drivingwith a ceaseless rushing sound. Now, looking beyond them, he found thesame ocean; he was standing on a blunt point of rock projecting intothe sea. The rest of this world was one vast expanse of water.
Suddenly Rawson knew that it was unlike any ocean of earth. Instead offinishing on a sharply-cut horizon, that sea of emerald green reachedout and still out, and _up_! It did not fall away. It curved upward,until it lost itself in the distance and merged with the blue of thesky. It was the same on all sides.
He swung slowly back to face the land that perhaps was only an island.The kneeling ones had raised their bowed heads. They were regardinghim from shining, expectant eyes. Only the girl kept her face averted.Rawson spoke to none of them; the exclamations that his amazement anddismay wrung from his lips were meant for himself.
"It's concave! It curves upward! I'm on the inside of the world! Andthat sun is the center! But what holds us here? What keeps us fromfalling?" He passed one hand heavily across his eyes. The excitementof the moment had lifted him above the weariness of muscle and mind.Now fatigue claimed him.
"Sleep," he said dully. "I've got to sleep. I've got to. I'm all in."
Gor was beside him in an instant. "Whatever you wish is yours," hepromised.
* * * * *
Rawson was to remember little of that journey toward the habitationsof this people. Gor had spoken at times along the way: "... the Landof the Central Sun.... The People of the Light, peaceful and happy inour little world...."
Rawson had roused himself to ask: "Who it at the head of it? Who isthe king, the ruler?"
And the tall man beside him had answered humbly: "Always since thebeginning one named Gor has led. My father, and those who came beforehim; now it is I. And when I have gone, my little son will take thename of Gor."
He had glanced toward the girl and his voice had dropped into thesoft, liquid syllables of their own tongue. She had smiled back atGor, though her eyes persistently refused to meet those of Rawson.
Again Gor spoke in words that Rawson could understand.
"I think at times," he said, "it is my daughter Loah, my littleLoah-San who really rules. I, knowing not who you were, did notapprove of this expedition, but Loah insisted. She had seen you,and--" A glance from the girl cut him short.
The words lingered in Rawson's mind when he awoke. The horribleexperience of the past days were no longer predominant. Even his ownworld seemed of a dim and distant past.
* * * * *
He awoke refreshed. He was in a new world and, for the moment, heasked nothing except to explore its mystery. He bathed under afountain in an adjoining room, and grinned broadly as he wrapped thefolds of the long golden loin cloth about him.
"As well be dead as out of style," he quoted. "And now to find Gor andLoah, and see what the devil all this is about--a talking mountain anda buried race that speaks first-rate American."
Gor was waiting for him in a room whose translucent walls admitted asubdued glow from outside. There was food on a table, strange fruits,and a clear scarlet liquid in a crystal glass. Rawson ate ravenously,then followed Gor.
Outside were houses, whose timbered frames of jet-black contrastedstartlingly with the quartz walls they enclosed. The street wasthronged with people who drew back to let them pass, and who droppedto their knees in humble worship. Like Gor, the men wore only the loincloth, but for this gala day, that simple apparel added a note offlashing color. The long cloths wrapped about their hips, and broughtup and about the waist where the ends hung free, were brilliant withcountless variations of crimson and blue and gold. The same rainbowhues were found in the loose folded cloths that draped themselves likeshort skirts from the women's waists. Here and there, in the sea ofwhite bodies and scintillant jeweled breast-plates, was one with anadditional flash of color, where brilliant silken scarves had beenthrown about the shoulders of the younger girls.
"From all the land," said Gor, "they have come to do you honor."
* * * * *
Hardly more than a village, this cluster of strangely beautifulshelters for the People of the Light. Beyond, Rawson saw the country,pastures where animals, weird and strange, were cropping the grass sovividly green; fields of growing things; little crystal houses likefanciful, glistening toys that had miraculously grown to greater size.The dwellings were sprinkled far into the distance across thelandscape. Beyond them was the base of the mountain, magnificent andglorious in its crystal purity of white, and the striations, verticaland diagonal, that flashed brilliantly with black jet and peacockgreen.
Rawson knew them for mineral intrusions, and knew that the mountainwas only one crystalline mass of all the quartz formation that made ofthe world's inner core a gigantic geode, gleaming in eternalbrilliance under the glow of the central sun. And still, in it all,Dean Rawson had seen a lack without which perfection could not becomplete.
"Where is Loah?" he asked of Gor. "I thought--I had hoped...."
Something in Gor's face told Rawson that his companion was troubled."She refused to come," he said. "But the wish of one of the great onesfrom the Land of the Sun is a command." He shouted an order beforeRawson could put in a protest. A man darted away.
"Always happy, my little Loah-San," said Gor. His eyes held a puzzledlook. "Always until now. And now she weeps and will not say why. Come,we will walk more slowly. There were questions you wished to ask. Iwill answer them as we walk."
"Questions?" exclaimed Rawson. "A thousand of them."
* * * * *
And now for the first time since, at the top of a barren peak, in thedark of the desert night, his wild journey had begun, he foundanswers, definite and precise, to the puzzles he had been unable tosolve.
Their speech--their langu
age--how was it they could talk with him? Hefired the questions out with furious eagerness, and Gor replied.
As to their speech--the Holy Mountain itself would explain. And yes,truly, this was the center of the world, or the sun above them was.The central sun did not attract, but instead repelled all matter fromit--all things but one, the sun-stone, of which Gor would speaklater.
Rawson pounced upon that and demanded corroboration.
"All the power of earth tends to draw every object to its center, yetwe're here on an inner surface. We're walking actually head down. Andour bodies, every stone, every particle of matter, ought by well-knownlaws to fall into that flaming center. But we don't! That proves yourpoint--proves a counter gravitation. Then there must be a neutralzone. A place where this upward thrust is exactly equalled bygravity's downward pull.
"The zone of fire," said Gor. "You passed through it. Did you notsee?"
"Saw it and felt it!" Rawson's mind leaped immediately to the nextquestion.
"And we must have come through it at, surely, a thousand miles anhour. What drove us? That shell must have gone in from here. I canunderstand its falling one way, but not two. We should have come torest in that very spot--and we'd have lasted about half a second if wehad."
"Oro and Grah," said Gor. "Oro, the sun-stone, and Grah, thestone-that-loves-the-dark. But they are not stones, neither are theymetal. We find them deep in the ground, clinging to the caves. A finepowder, both of them."
"Still I don't get it," said Rawson. "You drive that shell in fromhere, and then you drive it back again."
"That, too, I will explain later. It is simple; even the Dwellers inthe Dark--those whom you call the mole-men--have Oro and Grah to servethem."
* * * * *
Gor launched into a long account of their tribal legends, of that timein the long ago when an angry sun god had driven his children insidethe earth; of how Gor, and the son of Gor, and his son's sons triedalways to return.
Rawson was listening only subconsciously. They were circling the whitemountain, ascending its lower slope. Now he could see beyond it as faras the land extended, and he was startled to find this distance soshort. They were on an island, ten miles or so in length, and beyondit was the sea; he must ask Gor about that.
"It is all that is left," said Gor, when Rawson interrupted hisnarrative. "Once the land was great and the sea small--this also inthe long ago--but always it has risen. The air we breathe and thewater in the sea come from the central sun. The air rushes out, as youknow; the water has no place to retreat."
Again he took up his tale, but Rawson's eyes were following the upwardcurve of that sea. They, seemed to be in the bottom of a great bowl;he was trying to estimate, trying to gage distance.
"... and so, after many generations had lived and died, they found thePathway to the Light," Gor was saying. "It is our name for the shaftthrough which you came. This was thousands of your years ago, when hewho was then Gor, and the bravest of the tribe, descended. Even thenthey were workers in metal and they knew of Oro and Grah. They wereour fathers, the first People of the Light."
* * * * *
Rawson had a question ready on his tongue, but Gor's words suggestedanother. "That shaft," he said, "the Pathway to the Light--do you meanit extends clear up to the mole-men's world? Why don't they comedown?"
"To them the way is lost; the Pathway is closed above the zone offire. That other Gor did that. And those who remained--themole-men--have forgotten. They could break their way through if theyknew--they are master-workers with fire--but for them the Pathwayends, and below is the great heat. But we know of a way around theclosed place, the hidden way to the great Lake of Fire."
"They could break their way through if they knew!" repeated Rawsonsoftly. For an instant he stood silent and unbreathing; he wasremembering the ugly eyes in a priest's hideous face. The eyes werewatching him as the White Ones took him away.
He forced his thoughts to come back to the earlier question. "What,"he asked, "is the diameter, the distance across the inside world? Howfar is it from here to your sun? How many miles?"
"Miles?" questioned Gor. "We know the word, for the Mountain has toldus, but the length of a mile we could not know. This I can say: therewere wise men in the past when our own world was larger. They workedmagic with little marks on paper. It is said that they knew that ifone came here from our sun and kept on as far again through the solidrock, he would reach the outside--the land, of the true sun, fromwhich our forefathers came."
Rawson nodded his head, while his eyes followed that sweeping greenbowl of the sea. "Not far off," he said abstractedly. "Two thousandmiles radius--and the earth itself not a solid ball, but a bigglobular shell two thousand miles thick. I could rig up a level, Isuppose; work out an approximation of the curvature."
From the smooth winding path which they had followed there soundedbehind them hurrying footsteps; a moment later Loah stood beside him.
* * * * *
Her eyes gave unmistakable corroboration of what Gor had said of thattorrent of tears, but she looked at Dean bravely, while every show ofemotion was erased from her face. "You sent for me," she said.
And Rawson, though now he knew he could speak to her and beunderstood, found himself at a loss for words.
"We wanted you with us, Gor and I," he began, then paused. She was sodifferent from the girl whose smiling eyes had welcomed him. Thechange had come when he spoke those first words on his arrival, andnow she was so coldly impersonal.
"I wanted to thank you. You saved my life; you were so brave, so...."Again he hesitated; he wanted to tell her how dear, how utterlylovely, she had seemed.
"It was nothing; it has pleased me to do it," she said quietly, thenwalked on ahead while the others followed. But Rawson knew that thatslim body was tense with repressed emotion. He had not realized how hehad looked forward to seeing again that welcoming light in her eyes.He was still puzzling over the change as they entered a natural cavein the mountainside.
A winding passage showed between sheer walls of snow white, wheregiant crystals had parted along their planes of cleavage. Then thepassage grew dark, but he could see that ahead of them it opened toform a wider space. There were lights on the walls of the room, lightslike the one that Loah had carried. And on the floor were rows oftables where men were busy at work, writing endlessly on long scrollsof parchment.
* * * * *
"The Wise Ones," Gor was saying. "Servants of the Holy Mountain." Yeteven then men knelt at Rawson's coming as had the other more humblepeople. They then returned to their tables, and in that crystalmountain was only the sound of their scratching pens and the faintsigh of a breeze that blew in through a hidden passage to furnishventilation.
Yet there were some at those tables whose pens did not move; theyseemed to be waiting expectantly. One of them spoke. "The time isnear," he said. "Are the Servants prepared?"
And the waiting ones answered: "We are prepared."
Rawson glanced sharply about. "What hocus-pocus is this?" he wasasking himself. Still the silence persisted. He looked at the waitingmen, motionless, their heads bent, their hands ready above theparchment scrolls. He saw again the white walls, the single broad bandof some glittering metal that made a continuous black stripe aroundwalls and ceiling and floor.
"What kind of ore is that?" he was asking himself silently. "It'smetallic; it runs right through the mountain. I wonder--"
His idle thoughts were never finished. A ripping crash like thecrackle of lightning in the vaulted room! Then a voice--the mountainitself was speaking--speaking in words whose familiar accent brought asob into his throat.
"Station K-twenty-two-A," said the voice of the mountain, "thesuper-power station of the Radio-news Service at Los Angeles,California."
* * * * *
"It's tuned in!" gasped Rawson. "Tuned in on the big L. A. stat
ion! Agigantic crystal detector! Those heavy laminations of imbedded metalfurnish the inductance." Then his incoherent words ended--the mountainwas speaking.
"Radiopress dispatch: The invasion of the mole-men has not beenchecked. Army Air Force fought a terrific engagement about midnight,last night, and met defeat. Over one hundred fighting planes werebrought down in flames. Even the new battle-plane type, the latestdreadnoughts of the air, succumbed.
"Heavy loss of life, although civilian population of three towns hadbeen evacuated before the mole-men destroyed them. Gordon Smith isreported killed. Smith was associated with Dean Rawson in the TonahBasin where the mole-men first appeared. With Colonel Culver of theCalifornia National Guard, Smith was returning from Washington in anArmy dreadnought which crashed back of the enemy's lines."
Rawson's tanned face had gone white; he knew the others were lookingat him curiously, all but the men at the tables whose pens were flyingfuriously across the waiting scrolls. Before him the face of Loah,suddenly wide-eyed and troubled, swam dizzily. He could scarcely seeit--he was seeing other sights of another world.
"They're out," he half whispered. "The red devils are out--andSmithy--Smithy's gone!"