The Conquest of the Moon Pool/Chapter 4
CHAPTER IV
THE MOON POOL
"LARRY!" I cried, turning to O'Keefe, "the stone has shut! We're caught!"
O'Keefe took a brisk step toward the barrier behind us. There was no mark of juncture with the shining walls; the slab fitted into the sides as closely as a mosaic.
"It's shut all right," said Larry. "But if there's a way in, there's a way out. Anyway, Doc, we're right in the pew we've been heading for, so why worry?" He grinned at me cheerfully, and although I could not accept his light-hearted view of situation, I felt a twinge of shame for my momentary panic. The man on the floor groaned, and O'Keefe dropped switfly to his knees beside him.
"Von Hetzdorp!" he said.
At my exclamation he moved aside, turning the face so I could see it. It was clearly German, and just as clearly its possessor was a man of considerable force and intellectuality.
The strong, massive brow with orbital ridge unusually developed, the dominant high-bridged nose, the straight lips with their more than suggestion of latent cruelty, and the strong lines of the jaw beneath a black, pointed beard all gave evidence that here was a personality beyond the ordinary. The hair was closely cropped on the square head, and the short, stocky body with its deep chest and abnormal length of torso as compared to the legs, indicated extraordinary vitality.
Unscrupulous, I thought, looking down upon him, remorseless, crafty, and with a brain as unmoral as is science itself.
"Got another one of those condensers the Heinie here broke?" Larry asked me suddenly. "And do you suppose Olaf will know enough to use it?"
And then it dawned upon me that O'Keefe could not have heard, as I had, the Norseman race into the moon door's passage before the door had closed! I arose swiftly.
"Larry," I answered, "Olaf's not outside! He's in here somewhere!"
His jaw dropped.
"Didn't you hear him shriek when the stone opened?" I asked.
"I heard him yell, yes," he said. "But I didn't know what was the matter. And then this wildcat jumped me—" He paused and his eyes widened. "Which way did he go?" he asked swiftly. I pointed down the faintly glowing passage.
"There's only one way," I said.
"Watch that bird close," hissed O'Keefe, pointing to Von Hetzdorp—and pistol in hand stretched his long legs and raced away. I looked down at the German. His eyes were open and he reached out a hand to me. I lifted him to his feet.
"I have heard," he said. "We follow quick. If you will take my arm, please, I am shaken yet, yes—" I gripped his shoulder without a word, and the two of us set off down the corridor after Larry. Von Hetzdorp was gasping, and his weight pressed upon me heavily, but he moved with all the will and strength that was in him.
As we ran I took hasty note of the tunnel. I saw that its sides were smooth and polished, and that the light seemed to come not from their surfaces, but from far within them—giving to the walls an illusive aspect of distance and depth; rendering them spacious in a peculiarly weird way. The passage turned, twisted, ran down, turned again. It came to me that the light that illumined the tunnel was given out by tiny points deep within the stone, sprang from the points ripplingly and spread upon their polished faces. Involuntarily I stopped to look more closely.
"Hurry," gasped Von Hetzdorp. "Explain that later—etheric vibration—set up in that composition—stones really etheric lights—stupendous! Hurry!"
Through his panting speech broke a cry from far ahead. It was Larry's voice.
"Olaf!"
I gripped Von Hetzdorp's arm closer and we sped on. Now we were coming fast to the end of the passage. Before us was a high arch, and through it I glimpsed a dim, shifting luminosity as of mist filled with rainbows. We reached the portal and I drew myself up short, almost tripping the German. For what I was looking into was a chamber that might have been transported from that enchanted palace of the Jinn King that rises beyond the magic mountains of Kaf.
It was filled with a shimmering, prismatic lambency that thickened in the distances to impenetrable veils of fairy opalescence. It was a shrine of sorcery!
Before me stood O'Keefe, and a dozen feet in front of him, Huldricksson, with something clasped tightly in his arms. The Norseman's feet were at the verge of a shining, silvery lip of stone within whose, oval lay a blue pool. And down upon this pool staring upward like a gigantic eye, fell seven pillars of fantom light—one of them amethyst, one of rose, another of white, a fourth of blue, and three of emerald, of silver and of amber. They fell each upon the azure surface, and I knew that these were the seven streams of radiance, within which the Dweller took shape—now but pale ghosts of their brilliancy when the full energy of the moon stream raced through them.
Then Huldricksson bent and placed on the shining silver lip of the Pool that which he held, and I saw that it was the body of a child! He set it there so gently, bent over the side and thrust a hand down into the water. And as he did so he stiffened strangely, moaned and lurched against the little body that lay before him. Instantly the form moved, and slipped over the verge into the blue. Rigid with horror, I watched Huldricksson recover himself and throw his body over the stone, hands clutching, arms thrust deep down. And then I heard from his lips a long-drawn, heart-shriveling cry of pain and of anguish that held in it nothing human!
Close on its wake came a cry from Von Hetzdorp.
"Gott!" shrieked the German. "Drag him back! Quick!"
He leaped forward, but before he could half clear the distance, O'Keefe had leaped, too, had caught the Norseman by the shoulders and toppled him backward, where he lay whimpering and sobbing. And as I rushed behind the German I saw Larry lean over the lip of the Pool and cover his eyes with a shaking hand; saw Von Hetzdorp peer down into it with real pity in his cold eyes; heard him murmur, "Das armes Kind! Ach! das armes Kleine Madchen!"
THEN I stared down, myself, into the Moon Pool, and there, sinking, sinking, was a little maid whose dead face and fixed, terror-filled eyes looked straight into mine; and ever sinking slowly, slowly—vanished! And I knew that this was Olaf's Freda, his beloved "yndling" whose mother had snatched her up from the Brunhilda's deck when the Dweller had wrapped its awesome, coruscating folds about her, and had drawn her, the child still in her arms, along the moonbeam path to where we stood.
But where was the mother, and where had Olaf found his babe?
Simultaneously, it seemed, we straightened ourselves, the three of us, and looked into each other's faces; each of us, yes, even Von Hetzdorp, shaken to the heart. The German was first to speak.
"You have nitroglycerin there, yes?" he asked, pointing toward my medical kit that I had gripped unconsciously and carried with me during the mad rush down the passage. I nodded and drew it out.
"Hypodermic," he ordered next, curtly, took the syringe, filled it accurately with its one one-hundredth of a grain dosage, and leaned over Huldricksson, who, with arms held out rigidly, was fighting for breath as though a great weight lay on his chest. He rolled up the sailor's sleeves halfway to the shoulder. The arms were white with that same strange semitranslucence that I had seen on Throckmartin's breast where a tendril of the Dweller had touched him. His hands were of the same whiteness—like a baroque pearl. Above the line of white, standing out like marble on the bronzed arms, Von Hetzdorp thrust the needle.
"He will need all his heart can do," he said to me.
Then he reached down into a belt about his waist and drew from it a small, flat flask of what seemed to be lead. He opened it and let a few drops of its contents fall on each arm of the Norwegian. The liquid sparkled and instantly began to spread over the skin much as oil or gasoline dropped on water does, only far more rapidly. And as it spread it seemed to draw a sparkling film over the tainted flesh and little wisps of vapor rose from it.
The Norseman's mighty chest heaved with agony, and I could see the over-stimulated heart beating in a great pulse in his throat. He strove to rise to his feet, but his weakness was too great. His hands clenched. The German gave a grunt of satisfaction at this, dropped a little more of the liquid, and then, watching closely, grunted again and leaned back. Huldricksson's labored breathing ceased, his head dropped upon Larry's knee, and from his arms and hands the whiteness swiftly withdrew.
Von Hetzdorp arose and contemplated us, almost benevolently.
"He will all right be in five minutes," he said. "I know. I do it to pay for that shot of mine, and also because we will need him. Yes." He turned to Larry. "You have a poonch like a mule kick, my young friend," he said. "Some time you pay me for that shot, eh?" He smiled; and the quality of the grimace was not exactly reassuring. Larry looked him over quizzically.
"You're Von Hetzdorp, of course," he said. The German nodded, betraying no surprise at the recognition,
"And you?" he asked.
"Lieutenant O'Keefe of the Royal Flying Corps," replied Larry, saluting. "And this gentleman is Dr. Walter T. Goodwin."
Von Hetzdorp's face brightened.
"The American botanist?" he queried. I nodded.
"Ach!" cried Von Hetzdorp eagerly; "but this is fortunate. Long I have desired to meet you. Your work, for an American, is most excellent; surprising—"
Huldricksson interrupted him. The big seaman had risen stiffly to his feet and stood with Larry's arm supporting him. He stretched out his hands to me.
"I saw her," he whispered. "I saw mine Freda when the stone swung. She lay there, just at my feet. I picked her up and I saw that mine Freda was dead. But I hoped—and I thought maybe mine Helma was somewhere here, too. So I ran with mine yndling, here—" His voice broke.
"I thought maybe she was not dead," he went on. "And I saw that." He pointed to the Moon Pool. "And I thought I would bathe her face and she might live again. And when I dipped my hands within, the life left them, and cold, deadly cold, ran up through them into my heart. And mine Freda she fell." He covered his eyes, and dropping his head on O'Keefe's shoulder, stood, racked by sobs that seemed to tear at his very soul.
VON HETZDORP nodded his head solemnly as Olaf finished.
"Ja!" he said. "That which comes from here took them both—the woman and the child. Ja! They came clasped within it and the stone shut upon them. But why it left the child behind I do not understand."
Larry was watching him, in his eyes incredulous indignation and amazement.
"You, too, try to tell me that something carried a woman and a child from a ship hundreds of miles away, through the air over the seas to here?" he cried, an edge of contempt in his voice. "Something that Dr. Goodwin has said is made of—moonshine—carried a strong woman and a child. How do you know?"
"Because I saw it," answered Von Hetzdorp simply. "Not only did I see it, but hardly had I time to make escape through the entrance before it passed whirling and murmuring and its bell sounds all joyous. Ja! It was what you call the squeak close, that."
"Wait a moment," I said, stilling Larry with a gesture. "Do I understand you to say that you were within this place?"
Von Hetzdorp actually beamed upon me.
"Ja, Dr. Goodwin," he said, "I went in when that which comes from it went out!
"Now," he said, "to prove my good faith I will tell you what I know. Something I knew of what was occurring here before I was sent"—he corrected himself hurriedly—"before I came. I found the secret of the door mechanism even as you did, Dr. Goodwin. But by carelessness, my condensers were broken. I was forced to wait while I sent for others, and the waiting might be for months. I took certain precautions, and on the first night of this full moon I hid myself within the vault of Chau-ta-leur. There is"—he hesitated—"there is a something there also which I do not quite understand that—protects. But I did not know this when I first hid myself, nein! All I thought was that I could see from there and perhaps come through." An involuntary thrill of respect for the man went through me at the manifest heroism of this leap of his in the dark. I could see it reflected in Larry's face.
"I hid in the vault," continued Von Hetzdorp, "and I saw that which comes from here come out. I waited long hours. At last, when the moon was low, I saw it return—ecstatically— with a man, a native, in embrace enfolded. It passed through the door, and soon then the moon became low and the door closed. I had found it difficult, and had it not been for whatever it is of protection there in the vault—" He hesitated again, perplexedly.
"The next night," he went on, "more confidence was mine, yes. And after that which comes had gone, I looked through its open door. I said, 'It will not return for three hours. While it is away, why shall I not into its home go through the door it has left open?' So I went—even to here. I looked at the pillars of light and I tested the liquid of the Pool on which they fell, and what I found led me to believe the shape of light emerged from there."
I started. Evidently then, he did not know just how the Dweller materialized from the Pool. He saw my movement and interpreted it correctly.
"You know how it comes?" he asked eagerly.
"Yes," I answered. "Later, I will tell you."
"I analyzed that liquid," he went on, "and then I knew I had been right in one phase at least of my theory. That liquid, Dr. Goodwin, is not water, and it is not any fluid known on earth." He handed me a small vial, its neck held in a long thong, "Take this," he said, "and see."
Wonderingly, I took the bottle, dipped it down into the Pool. The liquid was extraordinarily light; seemed, in fact, to give the vial buoyancy. I held it to the light. It was striated, streaked, as though little living, pulsing veins ran through.it. And its blueness even in the vial, held an intensity of luminousness.
"Radioactive," said Von Hetzdorp. "Some liquid that is intensely radioactive; but what it is I know not at all. Upon the living skin it acts like radium raised to the nth power and with an element most mysterious added. The solution with which I treated him," he pointed to Huldricksson, "I had prepared before I came here, from information I had of what I might find. It is largely salts of radium, and its base is Loeb's formula for the neutralization of radium and X-ray burns. Taking this man at once, before the degeneration had become really active, I could negative it. But after two hours I could have done nothing." He paused a moment.
"Next I studied the nature of these luminous walls. I concluded that whoever had made them, knew the secret of the Almighty's manufacture of light from the ether itself. Colossal! Ja! But the substance of these blocks confines an atomic—how would you say?—atomic manipulation, a conscious arrangement of electrons, light-emitting, and perhaps indefinitely so. These blocks are lamps in which oil and wick are—electrons drawing light waves from ether itself! A Prometheus, indeed, this discoverer! Hein! Hardly had I concluded these investigations before my watch warned me to go. I went. That which comes forth returned, this time empty-handed.
"And the next night I did the same thing. Engrossed in research, I let the moments go by to the danger point, and scarcely was I replaced within the vault when the shining thing raced over the walls, and in its grip the woman and child. Then you came, and that is all. And now, what is it you know?"
Very briefly I went over my story. His eyes gleamed now and then, but he did not interrupt me.
"A great secret! A colossal secret!" he said at last. "We cannot leave it hidden."
"The first thing to do is to try the door," said Larry, matter of fact.
"There is no use, my young friend," said Von Hetzdorp mildly.
"Nevertheless we'll try," said Larry.
We retraced our way through the winding tunnel to the end, but soon even O'Keefe saw that any idea of moving the slab from within was hopeless. We returned to the Chamber of the Pool. The pillars of light were fainter, and we knew that the moon was sinking. On the world outside before long dawn would be breaking. I began to feel thirst, and the blue semblance of water within the silvery room seemed to glint mockingly as my eyes rested on it.
"Ja!" said Von Hetzdorp, reading my thoughts uncannily. "Ja! We will be thirsty. And it will be very bad for him of us who loses control and drinks of that, my friend!"
Larry threw back his shoulders as though shaking a burden from them.
"We're four able-bodied men up against a bunch of moonshine and a lot of dead ones. Buck up, for Heaven's sake!"
"Do you suggest that we poonch our way out?" asked Von Hetzdorp mildly.
"Forget that, professor," answered Larry almost testily. "I suggest that we look around this place and find something that will take us somewhere. You can bet the people that built it had more ways of getting in than that once-a-month family entrance. Doc, you and Olaf explore the left wall; the professor and I will take the right."
THE chamber widened out from the portal in what seemed to be the arc of an immense circle. The shining walls held a perceptible curve, and from this curvature I estimated that the roof was fully three hundred feet above us. It occurred to me that perhaps the Chamber of the Pool was shaped like half a hollow sphere, an inverted bowl. As we silently passed on, I was confirmed in this belief, for clearly we were circling. If I were right, the circumference of the place, reckoning the radius at three hundred feet, must be one thousand eight hundred feet, or a little less than a third of a mile.
The floor was of smooth, mosaic-fitted blocks of a faintly yellow tinge. They were not light-emitting like the blocks that formed the walls. The radiance from these latter, I noted, had the peculiar quality of thickening a few yards from its source, and it was this that produced the effect of misty, veiled distances. As we walked, the seven columns of rays streaming down from the crystalline globes high above us waned steadily; the glow within the chamber lost its prismatic shimmer and became an even gray tone somewhat like moonlight in a thin cloud.
Now before us, out from the wall, jutted a low terrace. It was all of a pearly rose-colored stone, and above it, like a balustrade, marched a row of slender, graceful pillars of the same hue. The face of the terrace was about ten feet high, and all over it ran a bas-relief of what looked like short trailing vines, surmounted by five stalks, on the tip of each of which was a flower. Behind the vines ran a design of semiglobes from which branched delicate tendrils. I did not recognize the carved flowers; they were, I thought, some symbolization in which the true form of the original had been lost.
How then could I have known the incredible thing which these stones pictured!
We passed along the terrace. It turned in an abrupt curve. I heard a hail, and there, fifty feet away, at the curving end of a wall identical with that where we stood, were Larry and Von Hetzdorp. Obviously the left side of the chamber was a duplicate of that we had explored. We joined. In front of us the columned barriers ran back a hundred feet, forming an alcove. The end of this alcove was another wall of the same rose stone, but upon it the design was much heavier.
We took a step forward, and then stopped, every muscle rigid. There was a gasp of terrified awe from the Norsemen, a guttural exclamation from Von Hetzdorp. For on, or rather within, the wall before us, a great oval began to glow, waxed almost to a flame, and then shone steadily out as though from behind it a light was streaming through the stone itself!
Within the roseate oval two flame-tipped shadows appeared, stood for a moment, and then seemed to float out upon it surface. The shadows wavered; the tips of flame that nimbused them with flickering points of violet and vermilion pulsed outward, drew back, darted forth again, and once more withdrew themselves. And as they did so the shadows thickened, and suddenly there before us stood two figures!
One was a girl—a girl whose great eyes were golden as the fabled lilies of Kwan-Yung that were born of the kiss of the sun upon the amber goddess the demons of Lao-tse carved for him; whose softly curved lips were red as the royal coral, and whose golden-brown hair reached to her knees.
The second was a gigantic frog—a woman frog, head helmeted with carapace of shell around which a fillet of brilliant yellow jewels shone; enormous round eyes of blue circled with a broad iris of green; monstrous body of banded orange and white girdled with strand upon strand of the flashing yellow gems; six feet high if an inch, and with one webbed paw of its short, powerfully muscled forelegs resting upon the white shoulder of the golden-eyed girl.