Page:Amazing Stories Volume 21 Number 06.djvu/117

117 was equipped with a mass of enigmatic apparatus. What it was all for, in truth, it is probable that even Eemeeshee did not know. But he certainly knew how to use most of it to advantage.

S THEIR maps told them they were nearing ray field range, Eemeeshee shot forth a great grey beam of power far ahead of the advancing columns of war mech, and the results were startling. Lane speculated, as he watched the effects, just what the power-beam might be. He figured that the ray in some way altered the inner polarity of the basic building blocks of matter—the electronic polarity—so that it was no longer transparent to the penetray beams.

For, far ahead of their advance, the vision beams of penetrative ray had carefully revolved over the whole arc ahead, seeking for any sign of opposition. Now, as Eemeeshee played his ultra powerful beam of grey light ahead through the rock, the rock turned slowly grey and opaque to their vision beams, and they were advancing, instead of through apparent glass, through natural looking grey rock tunnels.

His purpose, evidently, was to keep the opposition's penetrative rays from finding their position. That it also obscured their own means of sight troubled Lane. But the purpose of the ancient being in the great crystal complexity floating weirdly in their midst became clearer as Eemeeshee shut off the grey beam. Now, as they neared the farther edge of the cloudlike greyness he had created within the rock, their own penetray beams became able to peer out ahead—while themselves were invisible within the opacity of the rock. Lane halted his floating car just within this area of opacity, and waited, searching far ahead with his vision beam, watching his screen with great care for the slightest sign of enemy preparation.

For what seemed forty miles ahead the ways led, parallel, empty of life—the alien splendor of the construction glistening here and there where walls and vertical construction had kept the usual blanket of time's dust from forming. Even through that pall of eons of slow precipitation of dust the lovely forms of the machine art of the ancients showed, row on row, arrangement on arrangement, chamber after chamber, tier on tier of vast, waiting perfection—waiting always for the feet of those immortal Elder masters who would never return to this death-laden planet.

Of the modern interlopers within these sacred halls, there was no sign. No breath of a ray trail, no slightest bristling ionizing of the dust layer betrayed with its stirring a watch ray. Not even a footprint upon that dust, not one tread of the magnetic anti-grav beams upon the dust-layer left its tell-tale path before them. Apparently no life had touched these endless tunnels and God-built chambers since they were abandoned so long ago. Yet their maps told them that hereabout were the forces who had taken over the caverns under Montana. That hereabout must lie swift and terrible destruction for them if unwary.

Slowly they crept forward, their watch rays sweeping, sweeping, and Eemeeshee's mysterious beam changing the polarity of the rock ahead of them so that themselves remained invisible to any penetray beam from the distance. Lane realized that this opacity yielded to their own beams because close to the source such a beam is vastly more powerful than at its tenuous further end. He appreciated Eemeeshee's abilities, for this hiding of themselves within a field of opacity in the rock was in truth clever.

"I hope Eemeeshee has a few more tricks up his sleeve against these European ray. God knows what they may use against us," Lane murmured to Saba. She smiled reassuringly.

"The old one is really enjoying himself for the first time in my life time. I would not believe he could change so. You have done him much good; I would pit his ancient heritage of wisdom from the strange people who fathered him against any bunch of modern murderers. These who set upon your Red Legion and drove them out; we know more about them than you think. They have killed and tormented the 'creeps'; some of the spider men had fled westward to tell me of them. Also the nomads have told me of them. We know what they are, and we know how they fight. But behind them may be some old behemoth from the past who may not be such easy prey. Eemeeshee is not the only old one in the caves."

Cautiously the long columns of floating cars crept ahead with the care of troops penetrating a mine field. When death comes from ray, it comes lancing swiftly out of unseeable distance, and the swiftest only is life left. To the first who sighted