Page:Amazing Stories Volume 21 Number 06.djvu/24

24 thirty seats. We loaded up our scanty supplies; the green globes had become quite a pile and Joe Robot the second was persuaded to carry Joe the first into the car. This procedure much interested Hank, the snail centaur.

"What is the origin of your people?" I asked Hank.

"We have dwelt deep in the earth always," he began. "Our ruler, the immortal Queen Tanitia, has explained that we're a product of the laboratories of the ancient Gods, especially adapted to difficult underworld conditions, and used in pioneering new borings before they were fully equipped with apparatus adapting the deep caverns to other forms of life. Thus we had inherent abilities which enabled us to survive when most men perished, except on the surface."

"Does any of the ancient wisdom still exist?" I asked, my heart in my mouth.

"Yes," he replied, "our Queen is very old. No one knows how old. We have some of their writings which we study."

God! my mission was close to success!

"You have robots," he remarked coming back to the situation at hand. "That is good. I have heard of them." The car started slowly into the tube. The tube was smooth metal. From the car's top and bottom and sides projected wheels which were in constant pressing contact with the tube sides. The car was motor driven.

"What kind of a motor is this, anyway?" I asked Hank.

"I don't know," he confessed. "It is an antique like most things we use down here. It runs on water. Many of these ancient engines run on water. You put it in, the engine goes, the water disappears. It is all I know."

The car howled along at a tremendous speed. It swayed hardly at all for the projecting wheels held it rigidly in the center of the tube. The tube dropped steadily downward. Hours went by. Mula was far away, I sighed with relief at the thought. I found my weight had become a trifle for the sigh caused me to lift gently in the seat.

The car flashed along through a mammoth city now. It was larger and more "beautiful than any of the caverns we had yet seen. The tube in which we had descended had come out into the city cavern in a channel that ran through the city on stilts, like surface elevated trains. The top half of the car was transparent and about us lay the ancient homes of mighty immortal beings lit and tenanted; looking much as it must have when it was young. Across it hummed tiny heliplanes; along the ways, many cars like our own sped. Here and there glided or grouped the snail people, not unlovely once you were used to them. Their head crests glittered irridescently when they moved. Theirs was a gentle purposefulness as there is about a good horse in action. Among them I noticed many human forms like our own though clad in short glittering tunics and with long hair floating. They took prodigious strides when they walked, I noticed.

UR car glided to a halt before a huge doorway, flanked by snailmen at guard holding, strangely enough, modern rifles.

Hank led us up the inclined plane at a vastly more rapid glide than he had shown us near the surface. He seemed very different down here; his breath slow and even, his eyes gleaming with strength, his frill standing out sharply beautiful, veined like a big flower.

I rose several feet in the air at each step. I weighed little, had a sensation of strength I had never felt before.

We followed Hank's gliding form up the ramp, around a glistening curve of transparent walls through a hallway into a courtroom glittering with lush human life and brilliant with laughing, intelligent young faces. At a desk on a dais at one end of the place lay a woman. She rose as we entered and came swiftly toward us, her hands outstretched in greeting. My heart leaped at sight of her, not so much because of the beauty, but because of the sensation of burning thought that lay on her face.

"We know your troubles," were her words, "because they are similar to that of all surface people and because we have the same troubles everywhere we go except here. Here it is safe and we will help plan a future for you."

Hank bowed low before her.

"Queen Shola, these are the people who escaped from the great hulk Mula, and this is the man who rescued them. His name is Manville."

The Queen extended her hand to me.