The Earth-Tube (16 page)

At first it was extremely disconcerting to be thus the cynosure of all eyes, but gradually King began to see that it was not himself, or his movements, which were attracting attention, but rather the beauty and dignity of Diane, who strode ahead proudly, glancing neither to the right nor left. It was not usual for a chosen woman of the Tal Majod to show herself in public at this hour, King reasoned, and slaves who had never before seen her, police who despite their training undoubtedly had some human emotions, and passers-by, generally of the male sex, were all staring at her and estimating her. Perhaps, King thought, they were, if anything, jealous of him, who could with perfect right (in their eyes) be near her at all hours and tend and wait upon her as her servant.

When they had gone a little way Diane, as though weary of the admiring glances cast upon her from all sides, though secretly fearful that King’s disguise would be penetrated under this ceaseless scrutiny, paused and indicated a small spot on the wall which appeared to be a button. Approaching, King placed his finger upon it and gave a vigorous push. There was an answering signal down the passage, and presently they saw a small gray car, partly enclosed, come swinging along on the overhead rail, apparently piloted by no one, but headed toward the center of the city. When it came even with them it stopped, and a door at the side fell open. A series of steps reaching to the pavement slid down the side.

Diane entered first, gathering her robe closely around her ankles and passing up the narrow stairs with dignity and poise. Inside the car there was room for eight or ten persons, but at that hour there was little travel toward the center along the avenue, and Diane and King were alone. When they had come inside and taken their places, Diane indicated another button which King pressed. The stairs folded up quickly and collapsed into the vestibule of the car, the door closed, and they were carried with great speed toward the heart of the city.

So rapidly did they move that King was unable to see clearly how the streets lay in the inner parts. That they would soon behold the tremendous space where the earth-car was received and launched on its rhythmic journeys through the hemispheres he had no doubt. He had formed many fanciful notions of the appearance of that room. Sometimes it occurred to him that the chamber would be tall and narrow, catching the car as in a wedge and holding it there until it was unloaded. At other times he conceived of it as a flat chamber, or as a grooved and slotted aperture where the earth-cars were handled as ejected shells in an automatic rifle.

In spite of his advance imaginings, he had no preparation for the tremendous room he actually saw when the car, stopping of its own accord, paused at the end of the avenue. It was a gigantic domed chamber, nearly half a mile across. The curved walls went steeply upward toward the great hole in the top. The whole of the main chamber was therefore like the inside of a flue. On either side, wing-galleries of immense proportions, were additional spaces. One of them now was empty; in the other lay a huge slug, like a leaden bullet, nearly five hundred feet in diameter, and probably thousands of feet long. Little more than the nose of it could be seen. The main part lay lengthwise in the darkened gallery.

It rested in a sling or cradle of undulal, which carried it as if in a basket. The cradle was swung from a pivot above, situated at the point of union between the domed chamber and the gallery. When the car was ready to be launched, King saw, this basket would be set in motion on its hinge. The car would be carried out and up until it reached a vertical position over the great hole in the middle of the central chamber. There the landing gear would be released and the car dropped on its way through the earth.

The landing of the car would be a reversal of this simple process. By having the sling-cradle in place over the hole when the bullet-car arrived, the Asians would simply catch it and, the steam pressure behind having been released through valves lower down in the earth, swing it into its berth as quickly and gently as a rifle shell would be handled in a pump-gun.

The wonder and the simplicity of this device; the beauty and proportions of the Asian architecture and design! King was carried away by the sight as he stood at the edge of the dome-chamber and gazed about him. The floor and walls were smooth and clean as glass, and in the middle of the room, curbed about with a thick wall which rose abruptly from the floor, was the mouth of the endless wall which went down through the ancient earth to Asia. At the joining of the city floor with the earth-tube there was neither seam nor rivet. Like a hollow bolt of metal stretched the tube through the earth, holding the hemispheres in an indestructible metallic embrace, headed at either end with a metal cap and a city of folk who never saw the sun.

There were six openings in the walls of the dome-chamber, in addition to the two car galleries. Upon these openings, which were fitted with grooved doors of metal, converged the avenues of the city. At four of the portals, one in each quadrant, were the doors to twelve avenues, three at each opening. The two other portals were opposite each other and exactly between the great doors of the car-chambers on either side. Here began the two largest avenues of the city, one running south and east to the great eye-portal where King had gained entrance, the other in an exactly opposite direction, to the causeway, and along it to the mainland.

These were the only openings in the dome-chamber, and all could be closed against the scalding steam and the noise of the earth-car’s arrival. The avenues of the upper floors were reached, King saw, by elevators which were arranged in the walls just outside the chamber. They were automatic and worked with tremendous speed. Toward one of them Diane now was making her way, through crowds of slaves and workers who stepped aside respectfully as she approached.

King perceived now that every one wore a uniform in this strange city. Certain of the slave drivers were dressed brightly in crimson and purple and wore long walrus mustaches which gave them an exceedingly fierce appearance. Others wore trim, pointed beards, like physicians. A few were smooth-shaven, but not many. As to the hair, it was handled in a number of different ways, according to the caste of the wearer. In most cases it was uncut and could be coiled upon the head or braided at the back or thrown loosely over the shoulders.

But in all, the most striking thing about the appearance of the true Asians, of whom there were many despite the mixture of the races, was the peculiar vacant stare, the set features, and the open mouth. characteristics which seemed to be shared by all. In their set features there was something grotesque and horrible, like the expressionless faces of the early mechanical robots. It appeared impossible for these people to cover their teeth with their lips. As a result they wore always a kind of machinelike grin, mirthless and terrifying. Their teeth were large, square and regular; almost, though smaller in size, like those of a horse. Their eyes, if they expressed any human emotion whatever, were filled with malice. King’s flesh cringed at the touch of them. It seemed to him that pressing a button would cause those horrible eyes to light up like incandescent bulbs, the teeth to clash like shearing knives, and the legs and hands to pump up and down like pistons.

Diane saw that he was not following her closely; that he had for the moment forgotten his character to stare at the strange things about him. Turning quickly, as if to avoid a group of workmen, she passed close by him and whispered. “Be careful; they are watching you!”

Rapidly they went through the crowds then and entered an elevator. Not more than a dozen other persons were in it when the doors closed. The mechanism beneath the floor clicked; a light glowed, and they were shot upward almost with the speed of a bullet. King nearly betrayed himself by clutching at the wall for support. The others, used to the speed, had braced themselves. Fortunately, none of them perceived his strange actions, and he recovered his balance before his awkwardness was detected.

He could hear the air rushing past them in the shaft as they went upward. It seemed they must have gone miles before the car began to slow down again. The light overhead grew dim and went out though the interior of the car was still brightly lighted from the glowing walls. The machine stopped, gently enough, on the laboratory floor, and the others stepped aside to let Diane and King pass.

Down a long corridor they went, both feeling keenly the gravity of the step they were about to take. King would have liked a final conference with Diane; he had many questions to ask, but there were other persons in sight, some of them coming toward them, others loitering in the passageway. Several police were in sight, plainly recognizable by their bright uniforms and short clubs.

King touched the automatic, where it was hidden in his clothing, and wondered if he could get at it quickly enough should need arise. Despite the growing danger, Diane went resolutely on, and King followed. Down the corridor a short distance they came to a wide door, and through it went Diane. King saw that they had entered an antechamber of curious design, with modernistic frescoes upon the walls. At a massive desk sat an attendant, who stood up when Diane entered, asking her several questions rapidly. She replied in Asian, and the attendant firmly shook his head. There was a poster of some kind upon the wall. He pointed to it and shook his head in negation a second time. Without reply, Diane turned and retraced her steps to the hall, moving angrily. King, puzzled by this turn of affairs, followed her down the corridor where, a few hundred feet beyond the laboratory door, there was a small alcove.

“There is a new rule; they will let no more visitors in,” whispered Diane. “There is no use arguing with them. A new rule or an old one would be obeyed by that attendant if it cost him his life.”

“Then we must take his life,” replied King. “I have a weapon that will get us past that door. “

Diane shook her head.

“Don’t be foolish,” she said. “We might get in, but we’d never get out again.”

“But we must get in,” continued King. “Is there another entrance?”

Diane thought for a few moments before she replied.

“Some time ago,” she said, “I heard that there was a secret way into the laboratories from the rear, used only by the Mui Salvos and the most learned of the scientists. It was built to enable them to put into practice the secret formula for destroying undulal during hours when others would be barred from the laboratories.”

“Can you find it? Do you know where it is?”

“Perhaps,” returned Diane. “But I tell you, our chance of getting through safely is small, and we would be put to death without question if we were caught.”

“Nevertheless. “

Diane quickly put her finger to her lips, and began addressing him volubly in Asian, as if she were scolding him. King nodded and looked ashamed, for out of the corner of his eye he had seen what had alarmed her.

Across the way, apparently attracted by the sound of their whispering, a policeman had taken up his station, and was staring at them curiously. Diane signaled King to come on and swept down the areaway toward the elevator, glancing haughtily at the patrolman as she passed. He made no sound or movement in response, but he followed her suspiciously with his eyes until the doors of the elevator had closed upon both of them.

When they had gone he took a small transmitter from his tunic and signaled the police on the ground floor to be on watch for the chosen woman and her awkward manservant when they arrived. He had no evidence against either, he reported, but he had seen certain actions which appeared worth looking into. The police of the ground floor signaled back that the couple would be taken into custody upon their arrival and subjected to a close examination.

III

The Asians had a name for their metal city. It was called Tiplis, signifying western. The city at the other end of the earth-tube, which had been built upon a plan almost identical, was similarly named, being called Tanlis, which meant eastern. These gate cities were the pride of the empire, and in them, because there man could be surrounded completely by metal of his own making and served by mechanical servants which had been fashioned by his own hands and enjoy his own weather and light and temperature and time, lived most of the great men of the empire, either in Tiplis or Tanlis, or alternating between them. The emperor, however, the great Tal Majod, lived in a metal palace of great beauty and extravagant design not far from Tanlis, on the large Asian island where once Japan had been.

Tiplis was a labyrinth. Despite its regular geometric pattern, its even streets and straight avenues, its floors and levels, there were throughout its height and breadth strange sub-passages which penetrated levels not to be reached by ordinary means, and many of which had been built for reasons known only to the Asian engineers who had planned the city months before the foundations were laid.

Only those men whose right and duty it was to use them knew of these hidden passageways. They were, in nearly every case, trusted members of the higher classes, generally mechanics or scientists. As the religion of the people taught them that the machine was immortal, and that undulal, once made, could never pass away, it was necessary in many cases, where alterations of undulal structures or machines were to be made, to do the work in secret. Hence the ten Mui Salvos, who had the secret of the undulal, were masters of deception and the use of roundabout passageways. It was a part of their lives to live and move unseen, to be mysterious shadows who appeared and disappeared, never to become entities in the lives of the slaves and the lesser lords of Asia.

It was toward the entrance of one of these secret passages that King and Diane were making their way. Fortunately they had not remained in the elevator until it had reached the ground floor, where the police were waiting for them, but had brought it to a momentary stop on an intermediate floor and had let it continue on downward without them. Avoiding suspicion as far as possible, they had moved from passageway to passageway until, far out toward the city’s covering shell, they had found an area where the lights were less bright than in the other sections and where there were no persons in the streets.