Page:Avon Fantasy Reader 11 (1949).pdf/56

 roaring, powered by obscure energies, djinns pouring forth hour by hour and day by day instruments of warfare.

Earth was dead—a heaving ball of ooze-covered rock and water, bubbling eternally as the explosive weapons fired from the cities beneath and burst at the surface, aimed nowhere, directed by caricatures of humanity, men with but one intent and one purpose, to fight, to fight, to kill and destroy.

The fallen figure stirred again. It did not cry out, but from within the helmet came sounds of helpless sobbing. Raising itself painfully, it straightened and staggered off.

One foot up, one foot down, onward and onward. Onward into the unchanging gloom until it blindly struck another figure, prone on the ground. The other's arms were outstretched; still fingers clutched the handle of a great metal door, hinged like the top of a cistern and welded into the top of an almost buried metal cylinder some two yards across.

“Tom!” the moving figure's diaphragm burst the silence in a shriek of delight that was silenced almost immediately. Amos Bevin reached down and shook the metal-cased image of Tom Hayward. There was no response.

“Tom! You've found the exit-port! You've found it. Come on, we're home. It's the Fortress!”

Hayward was dead. The other knelt weakly and turned him over. Through the face plate he saw a picture of utter horror. The face was gone. In its place was a shapeless, frozen mass. Expressionless, a mask of utter vacuity, the eyes bulging and congested with solidified blood.

“Tom! You found the Fortress and you—found—what the others found.” A mad shriek of laughter, Bevin let the face plate drop and drew himself up. He shook a futile fist at the sky.

“You've taken him as you took the others! You devils! Who are you? What are you? Where are you? Oh, I felt you near. Tangible as steel and elusive as those damned mists. We need light to see them…”

He broke off with a shuddering gasp and dashed his arms in helpless rage against the steel door.

For a short while he stood stiffly, gazing unseeingly into the invisible distance. Then he gently disengaged Hayward's armored fingers from the steel handle of the door, turned it and sprang back as it opened with a chumming roar. He looked down at the inert form for an instant and without further ado jumped feet first into the blackness of the open well. Behind him the steel port clanged shut.

“He's waking. The stuff's good. Hadn't decayed yet, like the other. Weyman, lift him—so.”

Bevin heard the words through a lightening blackness. His ears were buzzing and his whole consciousness was nothing but a memory of that final moment on the outside when he had jumped through the exit-port and fainted while going down. Then the light shifted rapidly to the accustomed light grey of the Fortress' interior, and his eyes were open.

“Hello, Bevin.” 92