Page:Amazing Stories Volume 21 Number 06.djvu/56

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E STRODE out the door, Nydia fluttering at his heels and guiding herself by the sound of his feet—the purposeful, grim sound of rage ringing in every footstep. The old man walked to the wall near where Chlio still stood in her mindless, waiting trance and as he saw her condition, fresh fire blazed in his eyes, for he loved Chlio above all other people. She and Hugo, now dead, were the only two people who had proved faithful to him always.

The old man pressed upon the wall, and a panel opened in the apparently solid stone. Within was a cylinder of metal, with a control box at the side of the cylinder. He stepped within, and Nydia followed after. He pressed the control box lever, and the panel swung shut—the cylinder dropped swiftly downward. Nydia caught her breath, but was not really surprised. She had long ago learned to expect anything in these ageless warrens of wonder.

After long moments the dropping cylinder stopped, and now Nydia's ears that must serve her when she had no telaug instrument as eyes as well as ears were filled with that eerie roaring that above had sounded like lost souls fleeing forever from some dreadful wrath, but now sounded like many chained, titanic beasts all roaring in frustrated rage—but was, she knew, water rushing down through some ancient metal turbine inlets; down and down to those seas of endless extent that do lie within the heart of earth, where rock itself from the dreadful pressure precipitates out as the pressure forces the particles of dissolved matter to flocculate.

Here was some long gone scientist's workshop, concealed from prying eyes and rays by its great depth, and by an impervious metal sheathing which excluded those penetrative rays so generally used by the Elder race.

This was the birthplace of "magic"; and mysterious and awful the place was, in truth. All along one vast wall were tier on tier of retorts, twisted tubings, great vitra-glass containers, full of curious colored chemicals and tall, oddly shaped dynamos with the old metal cables still connected to the equipment. On several long tables an array of mysterious tools lay just as they had been abandoned so long ago, and over the whole vast gloomy room the hush of age—an age of terrific work—lay like a blanket. Through that hush vibrates the howling water outside the thick walls, and through that hush the blind Nydia trailed the purposeful steps of the fearful old man, who had proved, strangely, a friend in need.

Toward the opposite wall his steps led to where a monstrous enigma of metal loomed, with all its mysterious bowels laid open by that forgotten workman of the vast science of the past. He looked at the machine for a moment, then hooked up one of the cables where it lay half out of the opening in the machine. For a few moments he worked. Nydia listening with her ears that served her nearly as well as eyes, could not understand what the clever old hands were doing, but when he pulled a switch in the wall and the six foot tubes of the machine lit up, and power sang a terrible song of vast strength within the machine, a glimmer of the monster of strength that lay here under Eg Notha came to her. Then upon a screen at the side came a picture of the surface miles above, a tree and a horse standing under it in the noon day sun.

YDIA could see this screen quite as well as if she had eyes, for the rays which activated its screen penetrated the skull, and acted directly upon the inner eyes of the mind, so that even the blind may see with the ancient rays. Many of the antique instruments are so built. For a moment old Mephisto tinkered with the dials of the mechanism, centering the horse upon the cross wires of the screen. Then pulled a great lever at the side of the screen. The horse abruptly turned into a mass of queer looking gray jelly upon the grass.

Mephisto looked at Nydia and laughed shortly.

"Ha, wonder what that is supposed to be. I always wondered just what this thing was, and intended to find out—now I still don't know."

"Try another control, perhaps it is one of those multi-purpose ray-mech they sometimes built. Turn the dial to a new marking, and the whole purpose of the machine becomes another thing. Do you want to kill your son, or do you just want to put him back in his coop till he comes of age and saner viewpoint?"