CHAPTER III

Legion of the Lost

“So,” said the fat little man with the shaved head, “so you want to join the Legion. Eh?”

Tony looked him over. The dingy office in the outskirts of the North African city was unimpressive. But, somehow, the little man was not. He wore dirty white tropical linens, his face glistened with sweat, but to the three brothers he represented fate. On his decision their destiny would depend.

“Yeah,” Tony said. “We want to join. Well?”

The little man smiled, tapping pudgy fingers on the crowded desk. “Well. Let’s see. You passed the physical examination. Your names are—Anthony. Phillips. Jameson.” The pale blue eyes sparkled maliciously. “Better remember ’em. Sometimes it’s hard at first, but you’ll get used to them. I’m sure I don’t know why everyone who enters the Legion changes his name. There’s no extradition. However ... You are joining for a term of five years. If you wish to leave before then, you can buy your freedom if you have the money. If you have not, you must serve your term.

“You may try to escape. You may succeed. You may fail, and in that case will be assigned to the guards in the uranium pits of Mars. No one has ever escaped from there. It is not advisable—” The blue eyes were hard as steel now. “It is scarcely wise to attempt escape. Aside from all else, when you leave us, you are no longer under the Company’s protection.”

He passed a plump hand over his shining head. “Anything more?”

Tony glanced at his brothers and shook his head. “Not a thing. What happens next?”

“The Sub-Sahara post needs men. It’s an easy job for recruits, keeping the Copts in check and seeing they don’t go outside raiding. Here!” A buzzer rang, and soon a man entered, clad in the dull gray uniform of the Legion. He saluted casually.

“Sir.”

“Captain Brady,” said the fat little man, “these three are assigned to Sub-Sahara. Rookies. Anthony, Phillips, Jameson. Break ’em in.” He immediately became engrossed in the papers piled high on his desk.

Tony looked at the officer with interest. He saw a spare figure, and a worn, tired face, deeply lined, with sunken eyes and a clipped moustache. An adventurer gone to seed, he thought—grown tired.

Brady said, “Come along,” and led the way out of the room. They emerged in blazing white sunlight. A helicopter stood a few rods away, and the captain gestured toward it.

“_’ntre._ We’ll fly, and talk as we go. Discipline needn’t begin till we reach Sub-Sahara, so if you’ve any questions—I’m at your service.”

He pointed toward the plane, and followed the brothers into it. With quick, familiar motions he lifted the craft into the air and sent it winging southward.

“I’ll stop at Azouad. That’s an oasis on the way. You can get smokes and equipment there—personal stuff you may want. That is—if you have any money.”

Tony’s eyes narrowed, but he merely said, “We’ve a little.” He shifted on the worn leather seat, glancing aside at Captain Brady. The man’s haggard face was immobile, the eyes mere slits as he squinted into the flaming sunlight.

From the rear of the plane came Jimmy’s voice. “Just what is Sub-Sahara?”

* * * * *

Brady’s voice went dull with routine. “Well—twenty years or more ago a labyrinth of caverns was discovered under the Sahara. It was inhabited by survivors of prehistoric Egyptians—Copts. They were trapped underground in some ancient catastrophe, and got along there, gradually growing accustomed to their environment. Matter of fact—there was a sort of colony in the old pre-dynastic days down there. The Copts worked mines, and there was a—well, a city of miners under the Sahara. When the entrance was blocked, the miners couldn’t get out—so they stayed there.”

“What about food?” Jimmy asked. “And oxygen?”

“There’s a lot about that Copt tribe we don’t know. Food—well, fish and mushrooms are staples. The Midnight Sea lies under the Sahara. Ages ago the water in it made the desert itself a sea, but it drained underground at last. As for oxygen, there must have been outlets before we blasted some, though they’ve never been discovered. Possibly through river caves that drain into the sea.”

Captain Brady rubbed his eyes with the back of one mahogany hand. “A lot we don’t know about the Copts. Savage, ferocious—but marvelous miners. The Legion’s posted there to keep order. Prevent raids on the surface tribes. The Copts worship Isis, or the Moon—I dunno which. Probably they’re the same. Keep clear of them unless you’re armed; don’t monkey with their religion; and don’t enter any passages engraved with the emblems of the Moon and the sistrum.”

“Why not?”

“Religion, youngster. No white man has ever seen the Ka’aba—the Black Stone—at Mecca. It’s sacred to the Moslem, just as the Alu—the group of deepest caverns—are sacred to the Copts. They say Amon-Ra is down there.”

Jimmy’s eyebrows lifted. “Amon-Ra? The ancient Egyptian god?”

“Right. ‘The Hidden Light.’ We have a sort of armed truce with the Copts, provided we don’t interfere too much. When they get out of line, we whip them back. Figuratively, of course.” Brady’s hand touched the buttoned holster at his thigh.

“What did you say the sacred caves were called?” Phil asked suddenly.

“Alu.”

“What does it mean?”

“The Land of Light.” Brady looked around. His face was alight with interest. “Have you studied Egyptology?”

“No—afraid not.”

The captain’s eyes lost their glow. “Um. Bit of a hobby of mine. Land of Light—Hidden Light—Isis, the Moon goddess—I’ve always wondered what exists in Alu. Never found out. Never expect to. But I shouldn’t be surprised if there’s the wreckage of a civilization down there.”

He chuckled. “Not that the commander agrees with me—Commander Desquer, you’ll be under him. But he can’t tell me how the Pyramids were built, or the explanation of so many mysteries of Egypt. In my opinion, space travel was understood ages before Europeans achieved it. Yes ...” He nodded thoughtfully. “A puzzle. A nomadic civilization on the Nile, and then, without warning, a civilization full-blown and decadent. Where did it come from? It was decadent when it reached Egypt. I wonder ...”

He turned to the controls. “Here’s Azouad. Half an hour. You’ll find plenty of shops. Don’t buy any wines—they won’t keep in Sub-Sahara. Brandy’s good. And pipes wear better than cigarettes in the Legion.”

Below the gyro was a patch of gray on the brownish, rolling Sahara plain. Small dots of faded green were visible, trees struggling desperately for moisture and life. In a clearing Captain Brady set down the ship.

“All out,” he grunted. “_Parte!_ Half an hour, remember.”

* * * * *

The brothers watched the lean figure move briskly across the sun-baked square, to disappear into the depths of a cantina. Then they looked at one another.

“Well!” Jimmy murmured. “So we’re in the Legion!”

“Sub-Sahara. Um. Come on; we’ve only half an hour. Let’s look over Azouad.” Tony hesitated, gripped Phil’s arm, and glanced up. “That a plane?”

“Yeah.” Phil squinted aloft. “Wait ... not a government plane. Private. Anyway, so what? There’s no extradition.”

“I know,” Tony said softly. “But the Earth Star’s plenty valuable. Somebody might have ... ideas.”

“Maybe I’d better mail it back home,” Jimmy grinned.

Three glances crossed. And, curiously, at that moment a shadow drifted across the brothers—the shadow of a plane, chilling them momentarily after the blast of the African sun. It was like an omen.

Phil said, “I wonder which of us really has it?”

“I have,” Tony remarked. “Come along. I want a drink.”

He led the way, shouldering through a crowd of assorted riff-raff, the usual scum of a bordertown. Odors of sesame, oils, and less familiar stenches were sickeningly strong. Dozens of mongrels roved hungrily about; the flies were countless.

They bought smokes and entered a cantina, dark and muggy. A fat native served them squareface gin, waddling toward the dim corner where they sat. Behind them, Tony noticed, was a door, half opened less to permit fresh air to enter than to allow foul to emerge. He pushed it shut with a casual foot.

The gin wasn’t good, but it was strong. Also, it was inordinately expensive. Jimmy made a wry face.

“Hell of a lot of good money will do us now. We’ve ten minutes. Think we’ll like Sub-Sahara?”

“It sounds—interesting,” Phil said slowly. “Captain Brady’s certainly hipped on his Land of Light. I wonder what sort the Copts are?”

“Tough hombres,” Tony grunted. There was a brief silence. The waiter appeared, refilled glasses, and departed. Then—

“_Merlin!_” a soft voice whispered.

Tony’s fingers tightened around his glass. Phil sat perfectly motionless. Jimmy’s head jerked slightly; then he was immobile.

Tony looked around, and the others followed his lead.

Standing beside them was a small, round-faced man, his beady dark eyes glinting beneath a sun-helmet, his tropical whites looking freshly laundered. His gaze swiveled sharply from one to another of the trio. A shadow of disappointment flickered over his features and was gone.

Tony said, “Who the devil are you?”

The stranger flashed white teeth. “The private secretary of a certain Rajah. One of you has seen me before. I do not know which one. However—”

“He’s crazy,” Phil grunted. “Batty as a bedbug. Drink up, boys.”

“My name is Zadah,” the man went on without heeding the interruption. “I know that one of you is the Merlin and has the Earth Star. I want it.”

Tony looked at the man. “Do you think anybody’d who’d stolen a jewel would be fool enough to keep it on him?”

“The Merlin would. Because he’d want to make certain that a certain—deal—wouldn’t ever be completed. An imitation of the stone was made, so perfect that the deception can be discovered only by comparison with the original. Someone might try to sell the imitation as the original jewel—and the Merlin could block such a transaction only by producing the real Earth Star. He won’t get rid of it. Not unless—he’s forced to.”

Tony drank gin reflectively. “There’s an offensive odor in this place,” he remarked. “Notice it, anybody?”

Zadah said, “I do not want the police to find you or the Earth Star. If I recover it myself, the Rajah will pay me any price to have the jewel—and the original owners can prove nothing. My private operatives have traced you this far. Now—” He took out a small gun. “You will stand up and walk one by one through the door behind you. Stay in single file. My plane is just near by. We will fly to my country, and there—” Again the teeth flashed. “There I think it will not be too hard to learn which of you is the Merlin.”

Tony hesitated, remembering the plane he had seen in the sky. Zadah held the gun almost hidden under his coat, but of its deadliness there could be no doubt. The brothers exchanged glances.

“Stand up!” Zadah whispered.

Tony obeyed. He turned toward the door, opened it, and stepped out into sunlight. The others followed. Zadah said, “To the left.”

They moved slowly through an alley, littered with refuse and foul with odors. Not a soul was visible—only a stray cur that ran past, tail between its legs.

“Across the square. The gun is in my pocket, but I have my finger on the trigger. Make no suspicious move.”

Tony’s lips were white. He guessed well enough what would happen once he and his brothers were captives aboard the plane. Zadah would not stop at torture to achieve his ends. If only—

But there was no sign of help. Across the square they went, toward a small gyro in its center. Loungers in the shadows of the low buildings eyed the group incuriously as they passed. They walked on, toward a cantina, past its door—

* * * * *

Captain Brady came out. He hesitated, his sunken eyes intent on the spectacle. Then he moved like an uncoiled spring.

Zadah sensed danger. He started to whirl, dragging his gun from his pocket. But Brady’s hand chopped down viciously, the edge of the palm smashing against the secretary’s spine, at the nape of the neck.

A little grunt came from Zadah. He went down like a wet sack of flour. Casually Brady bent, picked up the gun, and pocketed it. His humorless eyes were without any hint of emotion.

“Time to go,” he said. “Come along.”

Silently the brothers followed Brady to the latter’s plane. Without a word they took off, speeding south until the desert-stain of Azouad was lost beneath the horizon.

And not once, during the journey, did Captain Brady refer to the affair in which he had played Saviour. Tony, grinning to himself, remarked in an undertone, “There’s no extradition from the Legion.”

“Yeah,” Phil nodded. “The devil protects his own.”

Jimmy said nothing. He was too busy peering out at the rolling dunes and endless plains of the Sahara.

Sub-Sahara! Underground labyrinth—an oasis under a burning, lifeless expanse of wilderness! To the three Martells it was, at first, a relief, after the flaming heat of the desert. Though even in the beginning there was a feeling of oppression as the metal car sank down into its shaft and the weight of earth overhead was felt almost tangibly.

It seemed hours later when the car stopped and a panel in its bare side slid open. Pale radiance flickered in through the gap, lighting the men’s faces eerily. The glow seemed to come from the walls itself.

“Phosphorescent paint,” Brady said, nodding. “Saves trouble. We spray the walls and ceiling once a year, and it’s bright enough for our needs. Come along.”

The four stepped out into a passageway. It wasn’t long. It ended before a metallic door; Brady took a rod from his pocket and held it briefly pointed at the lock. The panel opened.

Beyond the threshold lay a cavern.

Huge and dim and alien as a distant world it seemed, a gigantic hollow hemisphere in the solid Earth. It was, as far as Tony could judge, about two miles in diameter, with a jagged floor that had been cleared in a few spots. The dim light filtered down from the ceiling, as sunlight through heavy cloud. When Brady spoke, his voice was incongruous in this place of silvery soft grayness.

“There’s the fort. Over there—” He pointed. “That’s the entrance to the Coptic tunnels. We guard the entrance to the surface. Though the Copts haven’t tried to make any surface raids for a long time.” He swung out along a rough path, the others following. “They hate the Bedouins, just as the ancient Egyptians did. They don’t especially dislike us, unless we get in their way. If the mineral deposits the Copts work weren’t valuable, though, they’d be left to themselves. But the Legion’s paid to make sure the mines are kept active.”

Tony didn’t answer. His eyes were slowly accustoming themselves to this strange light. He glanced up at a ceiling that was both visible and invisible. No details could be seen. A veil of shining cloud seemed to obscure the rock far above. The vault of a world, Tony thought. A world created here, perhaps, when the Sahara was a sea instead of a desert. What had Brady said a while ago? Something about a prehistoric, mighty civilization in ante-dynastic Egypt ... and, far and far below, the Copts still worshiped Isis, in the hidden caverns of Alu where no white man had ever penetrated. “The wreckage of a civilization down there,” Brady had said.

In this eery cavern-world it was easy to believe in almost anything. A scrap of half-forgotten verse drifted through Tony’s mind:

“_But you have seen the hieroglyphs on the great sandstone obelisks,_ _And you have talked with Basilisks, and you have walked with hippogriffs_ ...”

They were at the fort. Nothing could be seen beyond a palisade of strong, dully-gleaming metal. But a bell rang sharply; a gate opened, and a man in legionnaire uniform appeared.

Even in the odd light his face seemed strangely pallid—drained of all color, like bleached papyrus. He was gaunt and fleshless almost to the point of emaciation, so that his eyes and mouth were black hollows. It seemed as though a skull wore the rakish Legion cap atop its dome.

He saluted, and Brady responded.

“Hello, Jacklyn. Tell Commander Desquer I’m here.”

* * * * *

Jacklyn stood aside to let the others enter. Tony discovered that within the palisade were a dozen metal shacks, prefabricated, and without sign of life. So this would be their home from now on!

Brady said, “Well? Didn’t you—”

Jacklyn’s voice was strained. “Glad you’re back, sir. The commander left for the surface an hour ago. He got a message.... There’s trouble, sir. The Copts—they’ve kidnapped Ruggiero.”

Captain Brady looked at his fingernails. “It’s full moon, isn’t it?”

“Yes, sir.”

“All right. I need four men. Completely armed. We’ll leave as soon as they’re ready.”

Jacklyn hurried away. Tony asked, “Is this—the usual thing, down here?”

Brady shook his head. “No. At full moon the Copts choose a victim to represent Osiris. The Husband of Isis. Usually it’s all done quietly, and the sacrifice is a Copt, of course.”

Jimmy inquired rather weakly, “What sort of sacrifice is it?”

“Degenerate form of Egyptian religion. According to legend, Seth, the evil god, was jealous of Osiris. He put him to death, tearing his body into fourteen pieces. The Copts are ... literal-minded.”

Brady sucked in his breath. “I wish I knew more of their mythos. The ceremony glorifies Isis of the Moon. A Copt has always served before. But now ...” He pulled at the clipped gray moustache. “Ruggiero has been taken to Alu to be sacrificed. This means trouble—plenty of it.” But there was no fear in the sunken eyes; only excited anticipation. “Alu! The Land of Light!”

And suddenly Tony understood. For years Brady had wondered about the half-mythical cavern world below, a place forbidden to him by rigid rules. Now, in the absence of the commander, it was Brady’s duty to rescue the kidnapped legionnaire. His duty—and his chance.

Tony said, “Let us go with you, captain. Eh?”

Jimmy and Phil exchanged surprised glances. Then Phil nodded. “Yeah! How about it?”

Brady hesitated. “You’re untrained. You don’t know the ropes—”

“We know how to handle guns.”

“Carbon-pistols?”

“We can learn easily enough.”

“Yes ... they’re simple. But—all right,” the captain said with sudden decision. “You’re new, and that means you’re not scared stiff of Alu. The three of you and Jacklyn. Right!”

He bawled for the skull-faced man. “Jacklyn! Get equipment! I’m taking these three recruits. _Allons!_”

Tony grinned at his brothers. Their introduction to the Legion was to be exciting, after all—if not fatal!