Page:Amazing Stories Volume 15 Number 10.djvu/132

132 ing for the author of the voice. But he could see no one.

"There's a way, Cliff," came a muted voice, seemingly from far away. "There's a waaayyy."

Cliff was on his feet, trembling.

"Townshend!" he exclaimed. "Oh my God, I'm going mad!"

His own voice echoed back to him from the distant reaches of the cavern.

"Townshend—going mad Townshend  mad  going  oh my God "

Cliff forgot his injured ankle and began to run, then cried out sharply as it gave beneath him, and he tumbled to the floor once more.

He sat up with an effort, and groaned.

All about him he seemed to hear whisperings, and he trembled violently. He got out his flash, and lit it, sending its bright beam casting about the cavern into every cranny of it, searching for the author of the voices that tortured him.

''Tick-tock. Tick-tock. Tick-tock.''

For a time, in his growing madness, Cliff had become aware of the ticking of the pendulum, but now it beat back upon his consciousness like the blows of a giant hammer.

He screamed.

"I've got to stop it!" he shouted.

And the echoes shouted back,

"Stop it!—Stop it!—STOP IT!"

They become a thundering clamor of many voices, then died away.

Sobered by the tumult, Cliff became quiet, and his eyes cleared. Deliberately he swung the light about the cave.

"Yes," he muttered to himself. "You're right "

The beam from the flash caught a ball of anilum high overhead.

"Maybe that was the one that killed Richardson," said Cliff. A look of rage passed over his face. He sent the beam questing on. Down the walls of the cave, to the floor, littered with debris. Then on to the giant ball, and beside it to—

The magnetizers!

HEN slowly an idea began to form in Cliff's tortured mind. His idle torch beam was focused quite unintentionally upon the massive bulk of the three magnetizers that had fallen from above in the explosion that had left him the sole survivor.

"X-rays passed through that ball " he muttered. "Other radiations passed through because Townshend measured them on instruments. In that case, suppose I—?"

He jumped to his feet and raced over to the nearest magnetizer. Putting his shoulder against it he shoved and heaved with all his power. It stirred a little, finally righted itself. He stood back, panting, thanking Providence for the lesser attraction that had made his Herculean feat possible.

Without pause, perspiration streaming down his face and limbs, he shoved and heaved and levered the second machine into position, and then did the same with the third.

He was working to the last possible throw of the dice. If other radiations could pass through the globe from inside to outside, then the process could be reversed. Magnetism streaming from the giant horseshoes of the machines, trained on the pendulum inside the ball, should stop its swinging!

If that could be done the machine would be powerless. True, something might happen to the potential energy that would be released, but at least it wouldn't hit the Earth.

Cliff slammed home the generating switches on the first machine and listened intently. Over the drone of the dynamo the pendulum made a noticeable waver. It was obviously disturbed.