Part 3

The spot of light grew stronger, larger, as we climbed down toward it, until finally we saw that we were nearing the shaft's bottom, at which it gleamed. A few minutes more and we had clambered down the last peg and stood at the bottom of the shaft, a dark, circular well of metal pierced in one side by a doorway through which came the dim white light. Then we were bunched together once more between our guards, and were marched through the door into a long corridor dimly lit by a few globes of lambent white light suspended from its ceiling. As we marched along this long, metal-walled corridor I wondered how far beneath the great pit's floor we were, estimating by the length of our downward climb that it must be thousands of feet, at least. Then my thoughts shifted as there came from ahead a deep humming, beating sound, and a gleam of stronger light.

Before us now lay the end of the corridor, a square of brilliant white light toward which we were marching. We reached it, were passing through it, and then we halted in our tracks in sheer, stunned astonishment. For before us there stretched a vast open space, or cavern, of gigantic dimensions, its floor and sides and ceiling of smooth black metal, brilliantly illuminated by scores of the lambent globes of light. For thousands of feet before and above us stretched the great space, and in it was a scene of clamorous activity that was stunning after the darkness and silence through which we had come.

Ranged on the mighty cavern's floor were long rows of machines the purposes of which were beyond our speculation, incredibly intricate masses of great arms and cogs and eccentric wheels all working smoothly with a steady beat-beat-beat of power, and tended by countless numbers of the formless nebula-creatures among them. Some seemed to be ventilating-machines of a sort, with great tubes leading upward through the cavern's ceiling; from others streams of white-hot metal gushed out into molds, cooling instantly into wheels and squares and bars; still others appeared to be connected with the great globes of light above; and some there were, like great domed turtles of metal, that moved here and there about the cavern's floor, reaching forth great pincer-arms to grip stacks of bars and plates and carry them from place to place.

Only a moment we stared across that scene of amazing activity before our guards were again motioning us onward, across the cavern's floor. Between the aisles of looming mechanisms we marched, whose formless attendants seemed not to heed us as we passed them. Before and around us glided the great turtle-machines with their burdens, the humming of their operation adding to the medley of sounds about us, only the shapeless nebula-creatures being completely silent. And as we marched on I saw in the great cavern's distant walls doors and corridors leading away to other vast brilliant-lit caverns that I could but vaguely glimpse, extending away in every direction, a great, half-seen vista of mighty white-lit spaces reaching away all about us, stupendous, incredible. And as we went on we saw other narrow shafts in the floor like that down which we had come, saw swarms of the nebula-creatures rising from and descending into those shafts by the pegs set in their sides, moving ceaselessly up and down from whatever other vast spaces might lie beneath us in this titanic, honeycombed world.

At last we were across the great cavern, had entered the comparative silence of another corridor, and progressed down this until our guards turned us through a doorway in its right wall. We found ourselves in a great hall, or room, smaller by far than any of the vast caverns that honeycombed this world, but unlike them quite silent, and with no humming machines or busy attendants. The great, long hall, perhaps five hundred feet in length, was quite empty except for a low dais at its farther end, toward which our guards conducted us, gliding before and behind us.

As we neared it we saw that on each side of the dais was ranged a double file of guards, each armed with the deadly weapon we had seen demonstrated, while upon the dais itself rested ten of the formless nebula-creatures. Of these ten, nine were like all of the others that we had seen, ranged in a single line across the dais. The tenth, however, who rested in a central position in front of the nine, was like the others in form or formlessness alone, being at least five times larger in size than any of the others we had seen, an enormous mass of white flesh resting there on the dais and contemplating us with his strange eye as we were marched down the hall toward him. I divined instantly, by his strange size and prominent position, that he held some place of power above the others of his race. For weird and alien as his appearance was, there yet reached out from him toward us a strong impression of some strange majesty and power embodied in this monstrous mass of flesh, some awe-inspiring dignity that was truly regal, and that transcended all differences of mind or shape.

In a moment we had been halted before the dais, and then one of our guards glided forward, the mass of flesh that was his body twisting and changing with lightning-like swiftness in the strange communication of these creatures. I had no doubt that he was explaining our capture, and when he glided back the great creature on the dais contemplated us for a time in motionless silence. Then his own body writhed suddenly in protean change, in silent speech, and instantly one of the nine creatures behind him glided from the dais and through a small door in the wall behind it, reappearing in a moment with a complicated little apparatus in his grasp.

This was a small black box from which slender cords led to two shining little plates of metal. One of the plates he placed upon the body of the great nebula king, directly beneath the strange eye, where it seemed to adhere instantly. Then, after pausing a moment, he glided toward Jor Dahat with the other plate. The plant-man shrank back at his approach, but as the guards around us raised their weapons he subsided, allowing the creature to place the plate upon his own body beneath the head, where it also adhered. This done, the creature moved back to the little box and touched a series of switches upon it.

Instantly a slight whining sound rose from the box while a little globe on its surface flashed into blinding blue light. The great nebula ruler on the dais did not move, nor did Jor Dahat, though I saw his face grow blank, perplexed. For minutes the little mechanism hummed, and then, at a swift writhing order from the monster on the dais the thing was switched off. A moment the nebula king seemed to pause, then gave another silent order, and this time the creature at the box snapped on another series of switches, the globe upon it flashing into yellow light this time.

As it did so I saw Jor Dahat's eyes widening and starting, his whole body reacting as from an electric shock. His whole attitude, as the little apparatus hummed on, was that of one who listens to incredible things, his face a sudden mask of horror. Then suddenly he uttered a strangled cry, tore the metal plate from his body, and before any could guess his intention or prevent him had hurled himself with a mad shout straight at the nebula king!

4

The moment that followed lives in my memory as one of lightning action. The very unexpectedness of Jor Dahat's mad attack was all that saved him, for before the massed guards about us could turn their deadly weapons on the plant-man he was upon the dais and the great creature there, whirling across the platform with him in wild conflict. Instantly Sar Than and I had leaped up to his side, glimpsing in that moment a half-dozen great pseudopod arms form suddenly out of the monster with whom the plant-man battled, wrapping themselves around him with swift force. Then, before we two could reach his side, we had been gripped ourselves by the guards on either side of us.

[Illustration: "They whirled across the platform in wild conflict."]

A moment we struggled madly in the remorseless grip of those powerful arms, then desisted as we saw others of the guards grasp Jor Dahat and pull him down from the dais beside us, wrenching him loose from his hold on his opponent. Then we three faced our captors once more, panting and disheveled, while from the dais the great nebula ruler again surveyed us. I looked for instant death as a result of that wild attack upon him, but whether the creature intended to reserve his revenge for later, or whether there was in that cool and alien mind nothing so human as a desire for revenge, he did not order our deaths at that moment. His body spun again in silent speech, and as it ceased a half-dozen of the guards surrounded us and marched us back down the great hall and into the dim-lit corridor outside.

Instead of conducting us back down that corridor toward the giant cavern through which we had come, though, they led us in the opposite direction. A thousand feet or more we were marched, and then the corridor widened, while on either side of us now we made out holes in its floor, round shafts like that down which we had come from above. In the sides of these shafts, though, were no peg ladders, and we saw that the depth of each was only some twenty-five to thirty feet. While we wondered at their purpose our guards suddenly halted us before one of them, and then, taking a flexible little metal ladder from a recess in the wall, lowered it into the metal wall and motioned us to descend. Slowly we clambered down, and when the three of us had reached the well's bottom the ladder was at once drawn up. Then came the rustling sound of the guards above, gliding back down the corridor, except for a single one apparently left to guard us, who moved ceaselessly back and forth above.

Silently we gazed at each other, then about our strange prison cell. Even in the dim half-light of the corridor we could see that it was quite unescapable, its smooth perpendicular walls without projection of any kind. Even the nebula-creatures themselves, for whom these strange cells must have been designed, could not have escaped them, so there was small enough chance of our doing so. Without speaking we slumped to the floor of our well-prison, and for a time there was a dull silence there, broken only by the rustling glide of the single guard above.

At last the stillness was broken by the voice of Jor Dahat, who had been gazing moodily toward the wall. "Prisoners, here," he said slowly. "The one place of all places from which there is no escape."

I shook my head. "It seems the end," I admitted, dully. "We can't escape from this place, and if we could there's no time left to do anything, now."

The plant-man nodded, glancing at the time-dial on his wrist. "But twelve hours more," he said, "before the end--before the break-up of the nebula, the cosmic cataclysm that will wreck our universe. And these things who are our captors, these shapeless nebula-creatures, responsible for that break-up, that cataclysm----"

We stared at him in amazement, and he was silent for a moment, then speaking slowly on. "I know," he said darkly. "There in the hall of the nebula king I learned--what we came to learn. You saw them put those plates upon him and me, saw that apparatus? Well, it is in reality a thought-transmission apparatus, one which can transfer those vibrations of the brain which we call thought, those mind-pictures, from one mind to another. When it was first turned on I felt my senses leaving me, my brain a blank. I stood there, my knowledge, my memories, my ideas, being pumped out of me like water from a well, into the brain of that monstrous ruler there. He must have learned, in those few moments, all of my own knowledge of the universe outside the nebula, all of our own plans in coming to this place. And then, at his order, the machine was reversed, and thoughts, pictures, flowed through it from his brain to mine.

"It must have been from a sheer desire to overawe and terrify me that the creature sent his thoughts into my brain. I know that the moment it was turned on I became conscious of ideas, thoughts, pictures, rushing into my mind, of new knowledge springing whole into my brain. Much there was that was blank and dark, ideas, no doubt, for which my own intelligence had no equivalent; but enough came to me so that I realized at last who and what these creatures were, and what their part was in whirling the nebula on to its break-up, and our doom.

"I knew, with never a doubt, that this great open space at the nebula's heart had been formed because the denser portions of its interior had contracted faster than the outer portions. As you know, all nebulæ contract with the passage of time, their fiery gases condensing to form great blazing stars, the eon-old cycle of stellar evolution, from fiery nebula to flaming sun. In this cycle this great nebula followed, but because of its vast size the inner, denser portions had contracted with much greater speed than the outer parts, forming a great solid world, in time, while the outer parts were still but fiery gas. This solid world spun at the center of the great space formerly occupied by the gases that had contracted to form it, and it was warmed and lit eternally by the encircling fires of the nebula all around it, and shut off from the outside universe by those fires.

"Light and warmth had this world in plenty, therefore, and with time life had risen on it, crude forms asecnding through the channels of evolutionary change into a myriad different species, of which one species, the nebula-creatures we have seen, was the most intelligent. In time they ruled this strange world, wiping out all other species, and climbed to greater and greater science and power with the passage of time, their existence never suspected by any in the universe outside. Back and forth through the Galaxy went the great star-cruisers of the federated suns, but none ever dreamed of the strange race that had grown to power on this world at the fiery nebula's heart.

"But slowly, inexorably, destruction began to creep upon that race. As I have said, all nebulæ contract always, and this one was still doing so, still growing smaller and smaller, its encircling fires closing steadily in upon the spinning world at their heart. Hotter and hotter it became on that world until life was hardly possible on it for the nebula-creatures, accustomed as they were to a milder temperature. They must escape that heat or perish, and since they could not escape to outer space through the prisoning fires around them they did the last thing available, hollowed out vast caverns in the interior of their world and descended into those caverns to live. The whole surface of their world they sheathed with smooth, heat-reflecting metal, and then descended in all their hordes into the countless mighty caverns that honeycombed all their great world, taking up their life again in those cool depths, safe from the nebula's heat.

"Ages passed over them while they lived thus in their world's depths, but still the nebula contracted, closed in upon them, in that vast, remorseless cycle that is nature's law throughout the universe. Closer and closer crept its fires toward the metal-sheathed world of the nebula people, until at last they saw that soon those fires would envelop their world and annihilate it, unless they were turned back in some way. So for a time they bent all their energies toward the problem of turning back the nebula's contracting fires, and at last found a way to do so, one which would take all their strength and science to carry out.

"In the surface of their metal-covered world they sank a vast, metal-walled pit, and in that pit set massed machines capable of generating an atomic ray of terrific power. From each of the generating-machines led a connection carrying the power produced by it, all these connections combining into the thick cable we saw which leads into the great cylinder-apparatus, generating inside it the mighty ray that stabs up toward the nebula, and into which we crashed. Now the great world here at the nebula's heart is already spinning, revolving, and the purpose of the nebula people was to use the great ray as a connection between their spinning world and the encircling nebula, to set the nebula to spinning also by this means, the ray being equal to a solid connection between the two. And their plan proved a sound one, for after the great ray had been put into operation the vast encircling nebula began to move slowly, to revolve, faster and faster as its turning accelerated under the constant impetus of the great ray.

"When the nebula should reach a certain speed of whirl, the nebula-creatures knew, when it should reach the critical point of its spin, it would be whirling so fast that it would not longer be able to hold its mighty mass together, and it would break up, disintegrate, its fiery mass flying off through the Galaxy in all directions. This would remove all danger from the nebula people, who could then live on without fear in their cavern-honeycombed world, using artificial light and heat. They knew, however, that once started the whirling of the nebula must be kept up until it had reached its critical point and had broken up, since if the whirling were slackened before then, the great ray turned off, the vast, ponderously turning nebula would collapse with the removal of the ray, its collapsing fires annihilating the nebula world inside it. For this reason the great machines in the pit that generated the power for the ray were made completely automatic and certain in operation, needing only a handful of the nebula-creatures to attend them.

"It was that handful that captured us when we came, our ship falling down to the great pit's floor after crashing into the terrific ray. And after we had been brought down here, after I had learned thus what terrible plan of these creatures it was that was bringing doom to our own universe, I lost my senses, sprang at the nebula king, unconscious of all but what I had just learned. And now you know what it was I learned, what we came here to learn. But we have learned too late, now, for in less than twenty hours the nebula's whirling will have reached its critical point, will have sent its vast flaming mass hurtling out across our universe, our Galaxy, in all directions, to carry destruction and death to all the peoples of our suns and worlds!"

* * * * *

The silence of our shaft-cell was suddenly heavy and brooding as the voice of Jor Dahat ceased. From above came the soft rustling of the guard there, gliding back and forth along the dim corridor, and faintly to our ears from the distant vast caverns came the clash and hum of the great machines there, with all their clamor of activity. At last, as though from a distance, I heard my own voice break the silence.

"Twelve hours," I said slowly. "Twelve hours--before the end." Then I, too, fell silent, and silently, hopelessly, we stared into each other's eyes.

Through the hours that followed, the same deathly silence hung over us, a silence intensified by the thing in all our thoughts, a silence deafening as the rumble of doom. Always now that scene comes back to me in memory as a strange, dim-lit picture--the dusky little well at the bottom of which we crouched, hardly able to make out each others' faces, the ceaseless humming activity from the great caverns beyond, the measured glide of our guard above. Hour passed into hour and we moved not, changed not, sitting on in dull, despairing silence. At last, weary as I was, I drifted off into restless sleep, tortured by vague dreams of the horrors through which we had come.

When I opened my eyes again it was to find Jor Dahat gently shaking me, crouched there beside me. As he saw me wake he bent his head to my ear. "Sar Than has a plan," he whispered to me. "We've hardly more than an hour left but he thinks that we have a chance that way to get out--a million to one chance. If we could----"

But by that time I was crawling over to the Arcturian's side, and eagerly we listened while in whispers he outlined his project for escaping from our pit-cell. Small enough chance there seemed that we could carry it out, and even were we to escape from our well-prison there seemed nothing but death awaiting us farther on, but we were of one mind that it would be better to meet our end thus than wait in the shaft tamely for death. Therefore, crouching against the wall, we waited tensely for the guard above to pass our shaft.

Pass he did, in a moment more, his monstrous shapeless body gliding to the shaft's edge and peering down there at us in passing, as usual. Then he was gone, gliding on down the corridor, and instantly we sprang to our feet. At once Jor Dahat stepped over to the wall, standing with his back against it and his feet braced widely on the floor. Then Sar Than climbed nimbly up over the plant-man's body until two of his four limbs rested on the shoulders of Jor Dahat, who now grasped those two limbs in his own hands and raised them as high as he could reach, holding the Arcturian above him by the sheer force of his powerful muscles.

With his other two limbs Sar Than also was reaching upward and now I clambered up in turn, over the plant-man and the Arcturian, until the latter, grasping my own feet, had raised me in turn as high as he could reach. Thus upheld I was just able to reach the shaft's rim above with my upstretched hands, and there, in that precarious position, we awaited the return of the guard.

It could hardly have been more than a minute, at most, that we waited, but to ourselves, balancing there with muscles strained to the utmost, it seemed an eternity. I heard the rustling glide of the guard's approach, now, but at the same time felt the Arcturian's hold giving, beneath me, heard the great muscles of the plant-man cracking beneath the weight of both of us. I knew that my two companions could hold out for but a moment longer, and then, just as the Arcturian's grip on my feet began to slip, the returning guard had reached the pit's edge, pausing there, directly above me, to peer down as usual. The next moment I had reached up with a last effort and had gripped him, and then we four were tumbling down into the well, pulling the guard down with us.