The Metal Monster (6 page)

The floor, unlike that of the main building, was made of the white metal that had defied shells, solid shot, oxy-acetylene flames and two of the strongest acids known to man, yet here it was, changing to a white powder beneath a woman’s tears. After each tear drop fell the sputtering soon ceased. But the white spots spread with amazing rapidity. Presently, several of them ran together, then collapsed, revealing the wild thallophytic growths of subterranean jungle about ten feet below the floor. The hole widened rapidly, the metal flaking away in white crystals. It undermined the body of Lak, and it fell into the undergrowth while Dolores and I looked on amazed.

“A way out!” I exclaimed. “Come on!”

After dropping Lak’s burning rod, I swung down on the edge of the still-widening orifice, and let go, alighting in the muck among the soft growths, with scarcely a perceptible jar.

Dolores bravely followed, and I caught her in my arms.

I stripped off the overseer’s belt, which contained his paralyzing ray cylinder and chopper. When I had it strapped around my waist, I caught up the burning rod, and we hurried away through the grotesque fungoid growths.

A few steps took us out from beneath the building, which stood on metal stilts set into the soggy soil. As we emerged under the luminous dome of this strange underground world, the light grew much stronger and the vegetation taller.

Soon we were hurrying through a forest of thick slimy trunks, some of them eight to ten feet in diameter at the base and fifty to sixty feet in height—the stems of colossal mushrooms. Often we found our way blocked by these immense fungoids which had crashed to the ground, and for the remains of which, lichens and slime moulds of many varieties contended. Giant mosses of endless shapes and hues formed most of the undergrowth, and algae dominated the thousands of stagnant pools. From time to time the immense, umbrella-shaped caps overhead opened their gills to discharge millions of spores that glittered in the queer phosphorescent light as they swirled downward to settle over the weird landscape.

The animal, as well as the vegetable kingdom, was represented in variety and profusion. The lower orders dominated in size as well as in numbers. Fat, gray slugs, three feet and more in length, fed on the juices of the various plants about us. Snails of infinite variety and immense size left their slimy trails everywhere. I recognized glass snails, amber snails, agate snails, and most striking of all, great ramshorn snails as tall as camels.

Insect monstrosities buzzed busily about, or scampered over the moss. An immense thousand-legged worm, fully twenty feet in length, startled us as it crossed our path. A huge green beetle as large as a Shetland pony charged us with its huge four-foot mandibles distended, but backed up and hastily scampered away at a touch from my searing rod. A mosquito, as large as a crane, buzzed about us for some time, until I killed it with a lucky thrust through the head.

The air was heavy with the musty odors of the fungoid growths, the sickening charnel scent of the slimy creatures that lived in their moist depths, and the reek of decaying organic matter.

Stumbling, slipping, sliding, sometimes sinking knee-deep in clinging muck or splashing through water above our waists, we pressed onward, our sole desire being to put as much distance as possible between ourselves and the slave quarters.

As we hurried along I pondered much on the miracle that had wrought our deliverance from the apartment of Lak. What could there be, I wondered, in this woman’s tears, that had destroyed a metal which had defied projectiles, explosives, heat, and powerful acids? In this solution of this mystery lay the key to the door of knowledge which, if once opened, would deliver the world from bondage.

And why, I wondered further, had this mircale not been wrought before? Surely many of the captured woman and children had dropped tears in the metal globes, on the metal vehicles in which they had been hauled, and on the tentacle-like arms of their captors. Then I recalled that the room in the globe that had brought me in, a prisoner, was of
brown
metal, as were the bodies of the vehicles in which we had been carried, and the highways over which we had traveled. The arms of the Teks, although of white metal, were of a duller cast than the globes and heads, as were the tables, globes and electrodes in the control room. The floor of the building, except in the private apartments of the overseers which jutted out over the jungle, were of stone.

But all this did not explain the enigma.

After five hours of wearisome travel, we were glad to stop and sit down on the moss for a breathing spell. I took a drink of water from my flask. It was nearly half full. I shuddered at the thought of having to drink the foul, stagnant water we had encountered. Dolores also drank some water and replaced her flask in her apron pocket.

“I’m hungry,” she announced. “Do you suppose any of these plants are edible ?”

“No doubt,” I replied, “and it’s equally probable that some of them are so poisonous that a mouthful or two would prove fatal. The question is, which are poisonous and which are edible. We have no way of knowing.”

“Then what are we to do?”

“We may run across some of the varieties of slime moulds that the Snals cultivate for food,” I replied. “Their spores are good to eat. And in the palace gardens I saw some gigantic morels. I think we would be safe in using these for food if we could find any. In the outer world the morel is the one mushroom form that is never poisonous.”

“In that case,” she said, “let us look for morels.”

Rested by our brief pause, we resumed our journey. Presently the character of the vegetation changed as we came out of the marshy country to higher and drier ground. The moss was replaced by short, white snake grass. And huge, jointed reeds began to take the place of the tall mushrooms.

We had not gone far when we came to a group of large mounds uniformly about fifty feet in diameter and twenty feet high.

“I’m going up and have a look around,” said Dolores, and suited her action to her words by scampering up the side of the mound. She had not taken more than five steps when one foot broke through into a compartment underneath. She withdrew it with a scream of pain, and came running toward me, her knee bleeding. Then a white thing about eighteen inches in height, popped out after her and pursued her on six rapidly moving legs. Behind it came another and another, and I recognized them for what they were—giant termite as large as pet bulldogs and ten times as dangerous.

I ran toward her, my burning rod ready for action, but before I reached her a veritable army of the formidable creatures came rushing toward us from around both sides of the mound, their great hooked mandibles snapping menacingly.

“No use to argue with those things,” I shouted. “We wouldn’t have a Chinaman’s chance. Can you run?”

“And how!” she replied, passing me like a bullet.

I was not slow to follow, but I soon saw that we were being outstripped by the swift, six-legged creatures behind us, and that it would only be a matter of a few moments before we would be pulled down and torn to pieces.

“Climb something,” I cried. “It will be our only chance to hold them off.”

Dolores leaped for the nearest jointed stalk, and scrambled up, I at her heels, just as the foremost termites came snapping up behind us.

I thrust the point of my burning rod into the open mouth of the leader, and sent it tumbling back on those behind it. Then an astounding thing happened. There was a roar overhead as if a dozen helicopter blades had suddenly gone into action, and the stalk to which we were clinging left the ground with amazing rapidity.

I glanced upward and saw the reason. Instead of a scaly plant stalk, we were clinging to the slender, segmented body of an immense insect! And already we were so high above the ground that to let go would mean certain death!

THE huge insect to which we were clinging flew off with incredible speed. Its immense wings, which when quiescent I had taken for the spatulate leaves of a strange subterranean plant, whirred so rapidly that they were invisible. The creature itself greatly resembled a titanic dragon fly, with its massive head, great bulging eyes, and long, relatively slender body. It flew at an elevation of about a thousand feet, and watching the ground, I calculated that it was carrying us at a speed of over a hundred miles an hour.

Clinging to the rim of the huge segment with one hand, and gripping the round body with both legs, I watched the rapidly changing landscape beneath us. Presently, all signs of vegetation ceased, and we were flying over a barren, gleaming white area of dunes and hollows.

On the next segment in front, Dolores was clinging tightly with hands and arms, and I noticed that she, too, was anxiously watching the landscape below. I shouted to her, but she could not hear me because of the whirring of the huge wings. And I could not creep nearer to her without danger of losing my grip on our living aircraft and pitching to sudden death below.

So occupied was I in watching the landscape beneath that I did not notice the immense black thing, flashing downward at us from above, until it struck. Huge teeth sunk into the thorax of the giant dragon fly, just back of the head. Its wings quivered, then hung limply. It was a swift, clean kill. We were borne swiftly aloft in a steep spiral and I had an opportunity to observe the thing that was carrying us. It was an immense, black-skinned hairless bat. The body of the insect trailed almost vertically, making it much more difficult to hang on than when it had been flying horizontally. It appeared that the giant bat had not even noticed us, taking us for part of its victim’s body.

As we spiraled higher and higher, the light grew stronger above us, while the outlines of the ground below became more and more blurred and indistinct.

Up and up we went through the drifting, diaphanous mists until we were just under the luminous dome of this weird nether world, fully five miles above the ground. My eyes were dazzled by the brightness of the rugged, luminous, and probably radioactive stone that formed the vault.

The bat hovered for a moment beneath a huge jagged opening in the dome. As it did so I saw that there were a number of similar openings nearby. Then it flew upward and to one side, alighting in a self-illuminated cave about a hundred feet square.

I wondered why the monster had not devoured its victim on the wing as outer world bats habitually do, but I realized the reason when two of its offspring, which had been hanging upside down from a ledge at the back of the cave, fluttered to the floor and rushed toward the parent, screeching and flapping excitedly.

The adult bat laid the insect on the floor with us still clinging to it, then turned and dived back through the opening.

Judging by the size of the parent, the two youngsters that were rushing toward us were about a quarter grown. But this did not prevent them from being exceedingly formidable antagonists, for each stood more than ten feet in height, and was armed with long sharp teeth as well as wicked looking claws on wing joints and hind feet. Dolores and I both sprang to our feet and backed away as they pounced on the insect and began feeding voraciously, as if each feared that it would get less than the other would.

My first impulse was to look for some way of escape while the two immense youngsters were occupied with their feast. Bidding Dolores secrete herself behind one of the boulders that cluttered the floor, I made a careful search, circling behind the young bats and returning in front of them. They watched me with their black, beady eyes, but evidently did not think me quite as tempting a morsel as the insect.

Having assured myself that there was no way out of the cave except that by which we had come, I returned to the boulder with the beady eyes of the bats still following me as they finished the remains of the ill-fated dragon fly.

Our situation appeared utterly hopeless. There we were, five miles above the surface of the nether world, and we knew not how many uncounted miles below the surface of the earth, imprisoned with two hungry beasts larger and more formidable than the greatest of the outer world carnivora. Moreover, we might expect at any moment, the arrival of one or both of the parents— creatures four times as large as the ones we now faced.

There seemed little question but that the young bats would attack us, and that was quickly resolved, for as soon as they had finished their feast and licked their chops for a moment, they came hopping and flapping toward us.

With Lak’s paralyzing ray cylinder in my left hand, and his burning rod in my right, I leaped up on the boulder, behind which Dolores crouched.

As soon as they were within striking distance, both of them reached out to seize me, whereupon I held the one on my left with the paralyzing ray and lunged at the other with the burning rod. I struck for the eye, but the beast dodged and the point seared itself into the hunched shoulder, instead.

With a siren-like shriek of rage and pain the burned creature jerked back out of reach of the point, toppled on the edge of the entrance for a moment, and then fell, squawking and fluttering, down the steep shaft. As it had not learned to fly, it was undoubtedly dashed to pieces on the ground five miles below. At any rate, I did not see it again.

The other young bat, held by the powerful paralyzing ray, stood helplessly while I plunged the point of the burning rod into its heart. Then, as I withdrew the rod and shut off the ray, a shudder ran through its frame and it toppled over on its back, dead.

ALTHOUGH we had vanquished our immediate enemies, we were a long way from being out of our predicament.

Dolores came out from behind the boulder, and together we examined the fallen monster.

Presently she said:

“Tell me the truth, Wallace. Is there no way out? No hope of escape?”

“I’m afraid not,” I replied.

“Then we are to die here together. It doesn’t matter how. We’ll be slain by the mother bat when she returns, or perhaps by her mate. Even if you conquer both monsters with the weapons of Lak, we’re trapped here to die of hunger and thirst. In one case it will be a matter of a few hours, the other a few days. Am I not right?”