CHAPTER IV

Sub-Sahara

Jacklyn said, “Fifty years nearly I’ve been here. It never changes. First time I’ve ever seen the Copts get out of hand. Sure, they’d try to get out once in a while to butcher the Bedouins, but they never had anything against us. Funny.”

The group was marching swiftly through a dim tunnel, Captain Brady in the lead, the others trailing. They had been moving for an hour, in a labyrinth of passages through which the captain unerringly found his way. Now he looked back and remarked:

“That’s right. I know this maze pretty well, but Jacklyn knows it blindfolded. He’s practically a Copt himself. Hasn’t been above ground for fifty years.”

“You must like it here,” Jimmy remarked.

Jacklyn said, very softly, “It’s hell. You been in New York lately? Yeah? How does the old burg look now?”

“It’s changed in fifty years,” Phil said. “But you know that already.”

“Times Square, though—that’s there, eh? I remember I used to feel empty whenever I got out of the old town. God, I’d like to see it again—but not on a televisor. In fact,” he went on slowly, “I’d like to smell fresh air again. Not this artificial ventilation. See starlight and green growing things.”

“And the Sun,” Jimmy nodded understandingly. He glanced at Jacklyn—and then caught his breath at sight of the expression on the legionnaire’s pallid face. Horror—and hate!

It was gone immediately. Jacklyn ignored the remark. He said, “I was one of the first spacemen. There’ve been plenty of improvements since my time, what with liquid fuels instead of powder, and those new magnetic induced-gravity screens they’re working on. But it’s like shipping, I guess—steam or sail, it’ll never really change. There’ll be the sea under you, or space around you. We—”

“_Sh-h!_” Brady held up a warning finger. “Hold it!”

They paused, but no sound came. The captain relaxed.

“Thought I heard an explosion. Guess not. Well—by the way, are you sure you know how to use the carbon-pistols?”

“It’s not hard,” Tony said. He took out his weapon, resembling an oversized revolver with a cup-shaped hollow where the hammer should have been. From his pocket he withdrew a bit of coal, slipped it into the cup, where prongs held it firmly in place, and hefted the gun. “Not so easy to sight as a Colt, but the force-charge scatters, doesn’t it?”

Jacklyn said, “Right. Watch the recoil, though. Ease the trigger-button down. And don’t run out of coal.”

“Funny,” Tony remarked. “Coal doesn’t seem much good in a pistol.”

Captain Brady laughed a little. “The thing’s based on atomic force—liberation of quanta, though I don’t understand the scientific principles of it myself. Works only on carbon. Coal’s carbon—and cheap. So, if the Copts get out of hand, we fight ’em with the coal they dig for us. Rather unfair, but it’s all in the Legion’s work.”

“Practically everything is,” Tony said dryly. “How much farther, captain?”

“We’ve been going down steadily—wait! Here’s someone. Don’t touch your guns unless I give the word.”

Tony stared ahead. For a second he saw nothing; then abruptly the tunnel was filled with a dozen bizarre figures. Clad in skin-fitting garments of unfamiliar texture, white-skinned, with blue veins showing plainly through the flesh, the men’s faces were aquiline and strong, with beaked noses and abnormally large eyes, in which the pupils nearly eclipsed the irises. The Copts’ hair—they had none on their faces—was like bleached straw, tightly curled. They seemed unarmed, yet Brady’s whole body subtly tensed as he stood waiting.

The foremost of the Copts, taller than the rest, and wearing a tapering headdress, came forward, hand lifted. He spoke in English.

“Captain Brady, why are you here?”

Brady said, “If any harm comes to a legionnaire, it will not be well with the Copts, priest.”

* * * * *

The man nodded. “I understand. That was a mistake. Some of our younger men—they have already been suitably punished for meddling in affairs beyond them. Your legionnaire is back in the fort, Captain Brady. You will find him there if you return.”

Tony detected a half-veiled glance the priest sent at his fellows. Brady saw it also, and tugged at his moustache.

“You are speaking true words?”

“I speak true words.”

“Suppose we do not believe. Suppose we—go on.”

A stir shook the Copts; they looked at one another askance. The priest said, “The Moon passages begin not far from here. Those you may not enter.”

Brady seemed undecided. “We shall go back. But if our man is not safely in the fort—”

The priest’s smile was apparently guileless. “He will be there.”

“All right. About face! _Allons!_”

Tony turned with the others. But before a foot was lifted there came an interruption. The priest’s voice was raised in an urgent command in an unfamiliar tongue. He, with the others, had seen the bloodstained, tattered, huge figure that sprang out from concealment behind a rock.

“Kill those men!” a bull voice shouted. “Blast ’em down!”

“Commander Desquer!” Brady clipped—and then—

“Out guns!”

For from the ranks of the Copts a pale ray had lanced, striking full upon Desquer’s bison chest, bared by a tattered tunic. Another ray touched Tony; he felt a wave of intolerable heat as he snatched out the carbon-gun at his belt.

_Cr-rack!_ Brady’s weapon snarled viciously, and the heat-ray left Tony. He slipped a coal-cartridge into the cup and triggered almost without aiming. The deadly little guns worked havoc. But there were almost a dozen Copts, and for a few moments the tunnel was a chaotic Maelstrom of battle, dominated by Desquer’s deep voice roaring commands.

“Get them! All of them! Aim at their bellies!”

Smoke drifted away. The Copts lay in helpless huddles amid red stains. Tony lowered his gun and stared around anxiously. Jimmy was painfully rubbing his arm where a heat-ray had cindered the cloth. Phil was apparently untouched, and so was Jacklyn, but Captain Brady was rubbing his thigh and cursing quietly. As for Commander Desquer, it was impossible to judge whether he had been injured in the conflict. He was already wounded in a dozen places.

Tony’s fascinated gaze clung to the man. The mighty body was thewed like an auroch-bull, the matted, deep chest heaving convulsively with exhaustion. The commander’s head was shaved, but nevertheless there was something leonine about his face. Shaggy, tufted eyebrows overhung glittering small eyes, and thick, sensual lips were pressed tightly together. Desquer reminded Tony, somehow, of a Nero or a Caligula—a degenerate Roman despot.

Now Desquer flung back his huge head in an arrogant gesture. “Jacklyn! See if the priest’s got a healing-ray. We need it.” As the legionnaire hurried forward the commander turned his eyes to the others. Tony felt a curious shiver ripple down his spine as the cold gaze touched him. Desquer looked long and intently at Tony, and not until he had stared equally long at Phil and Jimmy did he turn his attention to Brady.

“The fort’s gone,” he said. “The Copts smashed it and massacred every man. They blew up the shaft to the surface just after I reached Sub-Sahara. I just managed to get away ... the cavern’s overrun with ’em.”

Jacklyn came back with a small flat box, in which a lens was set. He touched a button and turned the lens to focus upon Brady’s thigh.

“Thanks ... up a bit ... You know they kidnapped Ruggiero?”

* * * * *

Desquer nodded “Yes. I found a Copt alone and induced him to give me a little information.” He glanced at his hands, took out a small knife, and began to clean his nails. “What this means I don’t know. A _jehad_—a holy war, possibly. Though it’s without precedent.”

The captain lifted his hand. “Enough, Jacklyn. Tend to the commander.”

But Desquer shook his head impatiently. “No time.” He drew Brady aside, as Jacklyn turned to the others. The two officers withdrew a few steps and lowered their voices.

Tony stared at the lensed box as Jacklyn used it on Jimmy’s arm. “What the devil’s that?”

“A gadget the Copts have. Nobody knows how it works. They don’t themselves. It was handed down ... it’s a ray that increases cell activity. Builds up cell tissue. Prevents infection ... how’s that?”

“Swell,” said Jimmy, touching his arm. “It still hurts a bit, though.”

“It won’t for long—”

Desquer said, “You three recruits—listen to me. We’re going down. Into Alu. Jacklyn, you’ll go for help.”

The skull-faced legionnaire’s body jerked convulsively. He stared at the commander.

“For—help?”

Desquer nodded. “Right. You know these caves. There are other openings to the surface. Get help. We’ll hide out and wait for you. The Copts won’t expect us to go right to their headquarters, so that’s just what we’ll do.”

“But—” Jacklyn moistened dry lips. “I’ll have to go to the surface?” There was a curious note of horror in his voice.

“Don’t argue. Move! You’ll have a better chance alone than with companions, so—_allez!_”

Jacklyn moved a pace away, stopped, and turned back. He said woodenly, “I can’t go to the surface, Commander.”

Desquer said very softly, “Why not?”

“Sunlight will kill me.”

There was a little silence.

“Why?”

“I was space-burned. That’s why I joined the Legion. It’s a kind of allergy, you know—I was so badly burned in space by direct solar rays that even filtered sunlight will kill me now in a few hours.”

Tony felt his stomach move sickeningly. So that was why Jacklyn had remained in Sub-Sahara for fifty years. A prison with its mockery of freedom—

“Let one of the others go, sir!”

“I’ll go,” Jimmy offered—but Desquer snarled at him.

“Silence! You know these caves, Jacklyn—”

“The captain knows them!”

“He’s badly burned. That heat-ray touched the bone. He couldn’t stand a long trek. Here!” Desquer bent over the dead Copts and rapidly began to strip them of their garments. “If sunlight will kill you, stay out of it.”

“In the desert?”

“Bandages, you fool—bandages! Wrap yourself up in these. Travel by night if you have to, after you reach the surface.”

Silently Jacklyn began to don the garments. He said without expression, “It will kill me.”

Desquer threw him an armful of clothes and grinned. “You’ll live long enough to get help. If the Copts break out of Sub-Sahara, it’ll be like rounding up a thousand fleas. Besides, I don’t know what’s back of this—but it’s nothing small, I can promise you. If—”

He leaped like a panther. His shod foot came down with a sickening crunch on flesh and bone. Tony, startled by the sudden movement, saw that Desquer had sprung upon the Coptic priest, from whose hand a ray-projector had dropped. The priest’s blood-smeared face, twisted in agony, lifted toward the ceiling as he cried out.

“Not dead, eh?” Desquer whispered, his voice taut with savage fury. “Well—you soon will be.”

He drew back his foot. But the priest’s lifted arm somehow halted him. The Copt dragged himself half erect. His thin voice shrilled, “Go down to Alu, fools! But you will be too late. Isis has risen—and with her the gods who dwell in Alu. Before the opening to the outer world can be cleared again, we shall have triumphed—and the Earth will tremble before the power of the Ancients! Aye—the Ancients who ruled over the Four Rivers before their sons fled to Egypt!

“Go down to Alu, fools! _You shall find death!_”

The priest fell back—and died.