Page:Amazing Stories Volume 07 Number 08.djvu/78

Rh fighting desperately to escape from the grasp of whatever it was that was holding him down.

Then the mercy of complete senselessness fell upon him like a shroud of death. Two animated skeletons, lorded over by a grotesque flier, carried him off the floor of the abyss and into a long corridor that ran diagonally underground from it

HEN Bob Allen regained his senses he found himself lying on a hard, but comfortably warm floor in a dimly-lighted underground room that was without ventilation. He awoke with a fit of coughing, to discover that his vision had been restored. For a long time he lay flat on his back staring at the eerie, blue-glowing roof above him, wondering if he was dreaming that he had been blind. He rubbed his eyes hard and blinked to make sure he was awake. There was no mistake. He was wide awake now and could see perfectly. The indescribable pain had left him and while he was not aware of it, his eyes were swollen to almost twice their normal size. They appeared ready to pop out of their sockets. The lids were inflamed to a cherry red. But the pain had left them.

The blue glow of his surroundings told him plainly that he was anything but dreaming. He had been totally blind, he recalled. But, he asked himself silently, why had the Subterranean fliers taken the trouble to restore his sight? He wondered if the odorous liquid they had forced into his eyes out in the crater had reacted against the effects of the blinding ray. But why had they returned his vision to him after he had deliberately attempted to kill the flier who had blinded him? Did the Subterraneans know no vengeance? Or had they merely restored his sight for reasons that would serve their own purposes?

A slight movement beside him attracted his attention. He stiffened and glanced furtively aside. What he saw there caused him to leap almost out of his skin. With a gasp of surprise and horror he recoiled, eyes wide. While he had lain staring at the roof, an animated human skeleton had been sitting calmly beside him, its awesome presence unknown to him. The shock and horror of seeing this ghostly and revolting thing made his blood run cold. He leaped up and crouched.

"Don't get excited, buddy!" the jaws of the skeleton moved as it spoke in a calm, almost amused tone. Bob was stricken dumb for a moment. He stared at the ghostly thing before him in awe and horror. The skeleton's jaws moved again. The thing's voice was brittle and rasping. "I've been put here to watch you, skipper," the fleshless jaws put forth. "Don't try anything and you'll live for the present."

"Who—who are you?” Bob gasped, overwhelmed. "A ghost, or what?"

The skeleton laughed outright. It was a hard, bitter laugh, with a ferocious note in it that made Bob wince. The grisly jaws closed suddenly with a vicious snap.

"I'm not a ghost, skipper," the skeleton said bitterly, "but many's the time I've wished that I was! It's been hell here these fourteen years since the Cyclops took a dive into a cascade and stranded us in this dirty, rotten hole!"

"You're from the Cyclops?" Bob gasped incredulously.

"Chief Engineer of the Cyclops, skipper!" the skeltonskeleton [sic] said. "The name's Scoops Larkin! What's yours?"

The skeltonskeleton [sic] of Scoops Larkin stood up and extended a horrible, grisly hand in a gesture of friendship. Bob hesitated in taking it, but finally extended his own hand. He watched it, as he would a snake, and saw his hand grip the bones. But instead of feeling bones, he felt warm, friendly flesh! He looked into the eyeless sockets with a shudder.

"I know how you feel, shipmate," said Larkin quietly. "It's hell to shake the paw of a skeleton, isn't it?" [sic]

Bob nodded in awe.

"Your hand feels like any other," he said shyly. "But good Lord, I thought for a minute I was going to get a handful of bones!"

"You just can't see the flesh, that's all," said Larkin, eying his hands bitterly. "All we ever see of each other here are bones, bones, bones; God, it's terrible! It's a world of the living dead, skipper, so far as we humans are concerned!"

"I don't look like a walking skeleton, do I?" Bob grimaced.

"Not yet, buddy," replied Larkin with a snap of his jaws. "But you will before very long!"

"Why?" asked Bob, feeling Larkin's arm curiously. His fingers touched perspiring flesh. But he saw only the man's arm bones. There was a gap between the bones and his hand.

It made him shudder.

"When they put you to work in the radium mines," said Larkin, “you’ll become a walking skeltonskeleton [sic] like the rest of us!"

"Radium?" Bob asked dumbly.

"Aye!" Larkin grunted. "The place is full of it. It runs in veins, like gold, through the big hole. This place, the walls, the ground, everywhere, is salted with it. It lights everything with a blue glow! In the lingo of the Subterraneans, radium is known as taas. After human flesh is exposed to it for any length of time, it causes the flesh to become even more transparent than glass, leaving only the bones visible. You and your outfit'll be compelled to work with us in the radium mines. After a couple of weeks, you'll look no different from me, or the others!"

"Radium kills human beings, who are exposed to it, in time, doesn't it?" Bob gave him a weird look.

"It does, skipper!" growled Larkin. "It's the deadliest thing in the world. But every so often we are put through a normalizer that overcomes the effect of the taas on our system. But it doesn't react to the transparency to my knowledge. It might. Anyhow, the Subterraneans say it doesn't."

"So you're mining radium here, eh?" Bob ruminated.

"Aye!" replied Larkin. "And you'll be surprised when I tell you why!"

"Why?" Bob watched the engineer's grisly face expectantly.

"The taas is being mined for use against our people on the surface!" Larkin snarled ferociously. "With it the Subterraneans intend to wipe out humanity and take over the surface for their own use. Why, skipper, there's enough radium already stored away in their arsenals and laboratories to split this old world forty ways from Saturday night!"

Bob whistled in astonishment.

"What the devil do they want to wipe us out for?" he asked. "Aren't they satisfied with what they have here?"