Page:Amazing Stories Volume 21 Number 06.djvu/15

 against, for men are too foolish—the wild devil-things of the caverns too wily and well equipped.

"Then, too, there are very definite tales that have come upon them. These are served by the better of the smaller beings of the caverns and sometimes men from the surface too. But men are supposed not to live down there long except they are lucky and very strong. The conditions are too different.

ERTAIN it is that many men secretly believe this is the real cause of all man's troubles and wars. That these beings from the darkness come up still, flying great globes of metal in which is machinery that controls men's minds and actions so that it is but as playing marbles or chess for them to choose sides; and each side backing armies of the surface people play with them as the little Dutchmen of Rip van Winkle played at nine-pins: play with armies of nations at a game they call Bickro—in their tongue—meaning bickering robots. That what is to us a war is to them but a game.

"All this and much else of a still wilder kind is whispered of and believed by many men just as magic and witches were whispered of and believed in Medieval times, though not aloud, for men would then and now tap their heads and scoff did anyone say aught of the truth of the underworld."

We talked of many things which I cannot mention, but one thing I learned well and that was where to look for the secret of immortal life. For I had entered and explored a bit of those endless caverns that honeycomb the depths of earth, but I had not realized that in the records of those people who built them lay the formulæ and processes which had made them immortal. I knew that much writing still lined the walls of those tremendously antique dwellings. I knew that sealed-in portions containing libraries of books whose pages were of indestructible metal still lay untouched, but that anyone had ever translated any of the language or thought of doing so had never entered my head. And to tell anyone of the existence of actual working machines and written books built in a time so antique it is forgotten was, I knew, impossible.

But Brandoch Daha knew, had even obtained from a miner one volume of the metal books and had worked out a key which opened that mighty thought to the man who dared to enter the caverns. But he was too old; and, too, he knew of the dread and incomprehensible creatures who dwell in those caves. His word pictures of these beings had not made the project revolving in mind any more inviting. But try it I would, I knew that, for I knew myself. No one felt and answered the lure of magic more readily than myself and those books were the source from which came the 'Magic Books' which in all legends and tales of the past are the strength and wisdom of the sorcerers.

"Now that I knew the origin of these ancient tomes from which rose the mightiest power spoken of in all the past of man, now that I knew it was true wisdom in those books and that they could be gotten at if one were hardy and intrepid enough, the Devil himself—and well it might be one as great lying in wait in the darkness of those endless giants' warrens—could not keep me from trying to get them.

"So it was that my long trek started."

OWERED down the shaft of the Bottomless Pit, a good mile of cable unreeling above me, I searched the walls eagerly for an opening. At last it came, one of those perfectly round, apparently metal lined holes which are the only entrance into the caves that were homes of the Gods. What they were originally intended for I don't know. Perhaps all that is left of a breather pipe to the surface and the pipe, of less durable materials, disappeared to leave an opening in the inaccessible caves of the past. Inaccessable because the walls were made so hard no metal will cut them.

A few sways of my body and my cable became a pendulum to place me on a shelf a few feet from that opening. Now, again, I must enter the dwelling place of Evil, the home of Dread; the beautiful structures, once the homes of God-like beings, now the dens of incomprehensible, often giant things whose endless struggles for existence made these caves a Hell. This search must not fail, nothing must stop me, for now that I had the key to their language—any bit of their immense lore of science which I might bring back could and most probably would