The Onslaught from Rigel/Chapter XIV

Chapter XIV: In the Passages
The first thing to be done, Sherman decided, was to short-circuit the mind-reading helmet of the guard at the door, if it were possible. He was not certain that the thing was electrical, and ignorant of how the current was conveyed if it were. He realized that he was dealing with the products of an utterly alien form of mentality, one that might not produce its results in the same way as an earth-man would at all. But something had to be dared, and this seemed to offer the best opportunity.

If the thing were electrical, the current must come through the tube to the top of the head. On his second work-period he observed this tube with care. It ran through an aperture in the stone roof and was apparently provided with some spring device, for a considerable length of it reeled out when the ape-man wished to walk across the room, and was absorbed as he returned.

The tube seemed to be made of the rubber-like material that composed the floor of his cage. The simplest plan, of course, would be to bring his chopping-knife with him and when the ape-man paused before the wall, swing it up in a sweep, severing the tube. But this, he felt, was not to be recommended. It would not necessarily short-circuit the current and the damage would be too readily laid at his door. The desideratum was some damage that apparently accidental, would yet produce a good deal of uproar.

He talked it over with Marta Lami.

“I think you're bugs,” she said frankly, “but anything for excitement. What do you want me to do about it?”

“Well, here's what I figured out,” Sherman explained. “We both arrive about the same time. I'll bring my knife. When we come in you hang back a bit, and while you're doing it, I'll take a poke at that cable with the knife, not enough to cut it, but enough to damage it. Then about half-way through the work period, I'll turn around and say something to you. If I do it quick enough, I think the monk will start for me, and if the cable doesn't go then, I'll miss my guess.”

The next period proved unsuitable; the dancer's car arrived considerably before Sherman's and the plan was dropped for the time, but on the following occasion, as Sherman came down the passage, he noticed Marta Lami just ahead of him. He hurried to catch up and she evidently understood, for she avoided the guard's outstretched hand and hung back a minute against the wall as Sherman came up behind. He made one quick motion; the cable sheared half-way through exposing two wires of bright metal.

As luck would have it, it proved unnecessary to put the second part of the plan into operation. For just as Sherman was nerving himself to swing round and attract the ape-man's attention, he heard the soft pad-pad of one of the approaching Lassans. The ape-man stepped back to clear the entrance as he had before, and as he did so, there was a trickle of sparks, a blinding flash, and the cable short-circuited.

The result was totally unexpected. From the great machine before Sherman there came an answering flash; the ground glass split across with a bang, there was a hissing sound and something blew up with a roar that rocked the underground chambers…

Sherman came to himself flat on his back and with pieces of rock and the debris of the machine lying across his legs. He looked around; Marta Lami lay some little distance across the room, half covered with fallen rock, one arm flung across her eyes as though to protect them. Above, the solid granite looked as though a blasting charge had been fired in its midst. Sherman pulled himself to a sitting posture, and finding nothing damaged, stood upright. The machine, badly shattered, lay in fragments of bent rods, broken pulleys and wrecked cylinders all about him. In the place where it had stood was a long narrow opening, down at the end of which something irregular shut off a bright point of light. A blast of heat exuded from the place and a steady, deep-voiced roaring was audible. The ape-man guard was nowhere to be seen.

He bent to pick up the unconscious girl, wondering how one revived a mechanical woman, especially without water, but she solved the problem for him by opening her eyes and asking:

“Who touched off the pineapple, boy friend?”

“I did. Come out of it and tell me what we do next. Anything busted?”

“Only my head.” She patted the mass of stiff wire. “Boy, am I glad I wore my hair long before they made a robot of me!” And with an effort she stood up, looked down the pit where the machine had been and said, “Say, let's get out of here. That don't look so good.”

“All right,” said Sherman, “which way? Wait till I get my knife.”

“No, leave it,” she said. “Those babies are nobody's saps. If they find it on you they'll know you shot the well. Come on, I think that thing is going to pop again.”

The roaring had increased in both volume and intensity, and the machine-room had become unbearably hot. They turned toward the door, but just at the entrance into the passage a pile of debris had descended, making egress impossible. Behind them the roaring increased still more. “Come on, boy friend,” called the dancer, tearing at the rocks. “Get these out of the road unless you want to be stewed in your own juice.”

Together they toiled over the blocks of granite, hurling them backward toward the wreck of the machine. One minute, two, three—the roaring behind them grew and spread, the heat became terrific.

“Ah!” cried Marta Lami at last. A tiny opening at the top of the heap was before them. Sherman tugged at a rock—one more, and they would be through. But it was too big, would not budge.

“No, this one,” shouted his companion and together they dragged at it. It gave—a cascade of smaller stones rolled down the heap to the floor. “You first,” said Sherman and stood aside.

The dancer wriggled through and reached back a hand to pull him after. He dived, grunted, pushed—made it. As they turned to slide down the other side of the heap, he looked back. A little rivulet of something white, hot and liquid was creeping through the ruins of the machine and into the room.

Up the passage, strewn with wreckage, but with no more blockades, into the upper machine room. The machines here also were deserted and from one of them issued a minor variation on the roaring sound they had heard in their own room. The guard was not on duty. They turned, sped up the next passage to the place where the cars ordinarily met them. The car-track was dark; by the illumination from the passage they could see the rail on which it ran, a foot or two down from the level of the passage, and about a foot broad—a single shining ribbon of metal. Sherman looked in one direction, then the other. Nothing. The roaring behind them continued.

“Drive on, kid,” said Marta Lami. “The boojums are going to get us if we wait.”

“Stop, look, listen, watch out for the cars,” he quoted as they leaped down and both laughed.

The roadbed was as smooth as glass, the rail set flush with it. Judging that the best route was the one taking them upward Sherman turned to the right and they began climbing, hand in metal hand.

The track was on a curve as well as an ascent. After a few steps they were in complete darkness and could only feel their way along, running into the wall every few minutes. They climbed for what seemed hours. The tunnel continued dark, without branches, simply winding on and on. Finally, so quickly that Sherman missed his step, they reached a level place, rounded one more curve, and saw ahead of them a band of light across the track from some side-tunnel.

“Shall we try it?” he asked as they reached the opening.

“Might be another machine room,” she said, “but let's go. This track is terrible. If I wasn't made of iron I'd have bruises all over.”

He vaulted over the sill, reached down and hauled her after him. From behind them came the roar, sunk to a vague purring by the distance. They were in another granite-lined passage; one that went straight ahead for a few yards, then branched sharply. The right hand fork seemed to lead downward; automatically they took the other turn. A diffused radiance from somewhere high in the walls, as though the granite had been rendered transparent here and there, filled the whole place with shadowless light. For a time the passage ran level, then it climbed again, with another fork to the right, which dipped away from their level and which they again avoided. Of any other living being there was thus far no sign.

The passage began climbing again, in a tight spiral, this time.

“Good thing we're in training,” remarked Marta Lami. “This is worse than the stairs in the Statue of Liberty.”

“Oh, did you fall for climbing that, too?” asked Sherman.

“Sure. Publicity stunt about a year ago. Dumb bunny of a publicity man. Photographed on the old lady's spikes. Never will again.”

The spiral ended, a side passage branched off. The dancer stopped.

“Sh,” she said, “someone's coming. Duck in here.” She seized Sherman's hand and led him into the side passage, down which they ran for a few feet, then paused to look back. Down the passage they had just vacated came a group of the ape-men, four or five of them, each carrying on his left arm a long, cylindrical shield like those one sees in pictures of Roman soldiers, and in his right hand some instrument that looked like a fire extinguisher with a long, flexible nozzle.

Each of the group wore one of the helmets and behind them, wearing a similar headgear to which all the tubes were connected from the ape-men's helmets came one of the Lassans. The group hurried past without a sideward glance, the metal feet of the ape-men ringing oddly loud on the granite of the echoing passage. After a minute Sherman and the dancer crept cautiously forward; the procession had gone straight on down. Very likely a wrecking crew.

Sherman and Marta sprinted up the passage in the direction from which the ape-men and their guide had come. The passage no longer rose with the same steepness, and as the ascent grew more gentle, the tunnel widened, with frequent side-passages to the right and branches leading down to the track at the left. Finally, after a sharp turn, it opened out into a big room, untenanted like all they had seen so far, filled with a complex maze of machinery, but machinery of a different character from that they had labored at. At the farther end of the room a door stood open. They dashed across it, plunged through—and found themselves in one of the enormous blue-domed halls, whose ceiling seemed to stretch miles above them.

It must have been all of three hundred feet across, and there was no visible support for the ceiling. All about the place stood various objects and pieces of machinery, and figures moved dimly among the titanic apparatus at the far end. But what most attracted their attention was the huge object that stood right before them.

It looked like a metal fish on an enormous scale. Fully fifty feet long and twenty feet high, its immense proportions dwarfed everything about it, and its sides, of brilliantly polished metal, shone like a mirror. The tail came to a stubby point, from which projected a circle of four tubes; down the side was a rib which ended in a similar tube about half way, and at the nose-end of the mechanical fish was a ten-foot snout, not unlike an elephant's trunk in shape and apparently made of the same rubbery material which held the cables of the helmets.

Marta pulled Sherman down behind the thing, and they peered around the edge seeking for a means of egress from the room. The nearest was twenty or thirty feet away. Watching their opportunity, they chose a moment when they seemed least likely to attract attention and made a dive for it.

They found themselves in another passage, terminating in two doors.

“Which?” asked Sherman.

“Eeny-meeny,” said Marta—“this one,” and stepping boldly to the right hand door, pushed it open…

For a moment they could only gaze. The room they had entered was another and smaller blue-domed hall. Around its sides was a row of curious twisted benches of green material, each of which was now occupied by one of the Lassans, hood thrown back from head, and elephant-trunk thrust into a large pool of some viscous, green stuff with bright yellow flecks in it, in the center of the circle. Half a dozen helmeted ape-men stood behind the benches of their masters, apparently serving them at this singular meal.



As the two humans entered there was one of those silences which are pregnant with events. Then:

“Good evening, folks. How's the boy?” said Marta, and curtsied gracefully.

The sound of her words seemed to release the spell. With a bellow of rage the nearest Lassan leaped from his bench, fumbling at one of the pouches in his cloak. “The light-gun!” thought Sherman and braced himself to spring, but another of the masters extended his trunk and detained the first one. There was a momentary babble of rumbling conversation, then one of the Lassans reached behind him, picked up a helmet and placed it on his head, and attaching a tube to one of the ape-men, rose.

The ape-man moved toward Marta and Sherman like a being in a dream. They turned to run, but the Lassan produced a light-gun with such evident intention of using it at the first motion that they paused.

“Looks like we're in for it,” said the dancer. “Oh, well, lead on Napoleon. What do we care for expenses?”

Under the direction of the Lassan the ape-man took them each by an arm and led them back through the hall of the metal fish, down among the machines, where two or three others stared at them curiously or lifted inquisitive trunks in their direction. Then into another passage which had one of the inevitable car-tracks. Their Lassan conductor reached around the corner into the passage, applied his trunk briefly to something and a moment later one of the cars slid silently into position. The door opened.

“So long, old scout,” said Marta Lami. “Even if I never see you again, we had a great time together.”

“So long,” replied Sherman, taking his place in the car. He felt a distinct pang at leaving this dancer—vulgar, no doubt, and flippant, but gay and debonair, and the best of companions.

The car did not take them far. It discharged Sherman in a little passage before a narrow door, which opened automatically to admit him to a small blue-domed room containing nothing but a seat, one of the benches on which he had seen the Lassans reclining and a mass of wires and tubes. There seemed nothing in particular to do. He was at liberty, save that the door closed firmly behind him, cutting off escape, and seeing that he was left alone, he seated himself and began to examine the machinery, most of which was attached to his chair.