Chapter II

I think I did not quite lose consciousness. I was aware that I had fallen to the earthy ground, with Shorty and Vivian bending over me. My head was roaring; I was bathed in cold sweat. Then I began to feel better, trying to sit up, with Shorty's arm holding me.

"You're all right now, Bob? Can't you speak?"

"Yes. I--guess so."

Whatever had happened which had brought me here when an instant ago, it seemed, I was walking alone by the park, none of us could imagine. The identical experience had happened to Shorty, to Vivian La Marr; and to Peter Mack, and J. Walter Blaine.

"But--where are we?" I demanded, when in another moment I was strong enough to struggle upright in the crimson glowing darkness.

"Damned if we know," Shorty said. It seemed a sort of underground grotto. I could begin to make out its rocky walls and ceiling now, with that glow like a crimson phosphorescence streaming from them. One by one my companions had found themselves here. Blaine was the first. Then at intervals it seemed as though the wall across the grotto had opened and Shorty, Vivian and Mack came stumbling in, standing an instant, dazed, and then falling, as I had fallen, almost in a normal faint.

"No way of getting out of this damned place," Shorty was saying. "The rock-wall over there moves like a door, but we haven't been able to open it."

How much time had passed since we were stricken with this weird thing, none of us could guess. Suddenly I was startled. My clothes were too big for me. My body felt thin; I had lost twenty or thirty pounds. And in the dim crimson glow now I could see Mack, Vivian and Blaine fairly well. All of them thinner than I remembered them, with faces drawn and haggard and big glowing smouldering eyes. And we men had a growth of beard.

Weeks could have passed! Vivian laughed lugubriously as she met my startled stare. "De-glamorized," she said. "I feel like a lost alley cat." She was clad in a thin, summer street dress. Her lush lissome curves were gone so that it hung drably on her. The vivid artificial blonde hair was darkish at the roots; it fell in a tangled mass to her shoulders. Her makeup was gone; her lips pallid. "We're all about starved to death, if you ask me," she added.

"He brought us food a while ago," Blaine put in.

"Try to eat it," Mack said. "There's some of it over by the wall. If that's what we've been living on, no wonder we're starved."

"He? Food?" I stammered.

Since Blaine had found himself here, what seemed like perhaps twelve hours had passed. Our captor had come twice. They had only seen him dimly.

"But he's human--semi-human, anyway," Shorty said. "And he seems to talk English a little."

"Look!" Vivian suddenly murmured. "Here he comes again."

The red glow across the cave for an instant brightened. It seemed as though a rock had slid aside and closed again. A dim upright shape moved toward us; stopped and stood regarding us with eyes that gleamed green, smouldering in the dimness.

"The Great Mind--ready--see you soon," the figure's weird, guttural voice said.

I moved forward, unsteadily on my feet. "I want to talk to you," I said. I could see him now, quite plainly. A man? I suppose you could call him that. He was about five feet tall, squat and square, with high square shoulders, a rectangular torso and two legs which seemed encased in a flexible metal grey fabric. His head was round, set upon a triangular neck with its apex under his chin--a bullet head, hairless, with a weird, box-like face, square-chinned and broad square nose. His two arms, long and powerful-looking, dangled at his sides.

* * * * *

This, we were soon to learn, was a Radak. I recall my first clear impression that there was about him a queer sense of power. And something else, mysterious, yet even more apparent. An automaton-like quality. It was as though here were an individual who was only acting his role as a tiny part of some great, organized thing. A cog in a machine. The German Nazis of my father's boyhood, must have been like that. And here with these Radaks of the Crimson Comet it seemed intensified to be almost gruesome. You could not tell why, but you could sense it. Human individuals who lived only to do what they were told. A great mental force dominating them from birth to death, so that they thought what they were told to think; only did what they were told to do.

This Radak answered our questions now; he seemed willing enough to talk, though in many ways his knowledge of our language, newly absorbed by his weird brain, was inadequate. I think it best to summarize briefly here, the total of what we learned and saw of the strange little world and its people. In actuality we were destined to see very little. Doomed little world! And since its death now, as you all know, most of its secrets will forever remain a mystery.

It was some five hundred Earth-miles in diameter, doubtless of immense density because we were not aware of much change of gravitational force. Of its past history, no one knows much. Somewhere out in Interplanetary Space it must once have had a normal orbit. I shall explain more of that later.

Two human races were here now. The Radaks--there were perhaps something like a thousand or two of them--were the rulers. The others were the Lei--a primitive, gentle people, no more than slaves to the dominating Radaks. Nature always had been cruel, uncompromising, here on Zelos. (Which was the word their native language seemed to call their world.) Both Radaks and Lei lived always in great underground caverns with which this section of the surface was honeycombed. Above them, on the outer surface, weird storms and erratic extremes of heat and cold were prevalent. And out there strange monsters roamed--the Deathless Things, as they were called, since it was impossible to kill them. Creatures of indescribable horrible quality who seemed unwilling to come into the confines of the underground corridors and grottos, so that all the humans were of necessity driven here, eking out a drab and grim existence.

How the strange science of the Radaks developed will forever remain a mystery. Perhaps it was brought here from some other planet. Despite the science, life here was primitive--a struggle for the bare necessities. Queerly enough, the Radak science seemed not concerned with better living. They had a few small space-fliers--the secret of interplanetary travel was known to them. Perhaps only recently--that seems rather certain. Beyond that, there was nothing save the weird, mysterious mechanisms by which at last they had been able to control the space-movements of their tiny world. It was all here, in what they called the "Great Cavern of Machines." Shorty and I were there for a brief time--an unforgettable time of horror.

"The Great Mind will see us soon?" I was saying now to this Radak who stood stiff and stolid beside me. "Who--what is that?"

We were soon to see. Another Radak appeared, motioning us imperiously to follow him. Neither of these fellows seemed to have any weapons on them, though of course there was no way of telling. Shorty nudged me, muttering something about starting a fight.

"You're crazy," I whispered. "We'd be killed."

"The Great Mind--want see you now," one of the Radaks said. He led us, and we followed him, with the other Radak behind us, out into a dim rock-corridor gleaming with that same crimson phosphorescence.

The banker, Blaine, pushed past me. "I'll attend to this," he said. "This Ruler, whoever he is, he can be bought. I'll get him to take us back to Earth--promise him riches--"

The ragged, cadaverous Mack gave Blaine a glance of contempt. "I guess it's strange to you, not being able to buy everything with your money, isn't it?" he commented.

A distant murmur of voices sounded ahead of us now, and we could see where the light-glow widened as the corridor emerged into another grotto. More Radaks were around us now, herding us with their stiff, jerky movements, jabbering with their strange guttural voices. The murmur ahead of us grew louder; then we emerged from the tunnel.

* * * * *

It was at first almost like being above ground--a huge grotto with red-glowing ceiling high up, dim in the crimson haze. To the sides the precipitous rock-walls widened rapidly out. Ahead of us, down a ragged, undulating slope, there was only a red haze of distance. There seemed to be distant fields, with things growing in them. There was a spindly blue and red stalk-like vegetation growing like trees perhaps to a height of a hundred feet. And off to the left, under the trees, there were mound-shaped little buildings.

We were on a broad level space at the top of the slope. A hundred or more Radaks were here, some crowding at us, but most standing stiff, gazing at us with gleaming, animal-like eyes. And now I saw Radak women and children among them--the women broader-hipped, narrower shouldered. But they were all cast in the same mold--even the children stood at attention, like rows of little statues waiting for something to move them, with only their eyes in motion.

Most of the murmuring voices were further down the slope. A crowd of figures milled about, down there, trying to see us better. A thousand perhaps. The Lei, the slaves of this little world. Certainly they seemed far more human than the Radaks--slim and slight, and some of them as tall as Shorty. They were dressed in simple flowing fabric garments. A bronzed-skinned people, the women with long-flowing hair.

"You come--this way," the Radak said. "Now--you stand still--the Great Mind speak to you."

Ruler of the Crimson Comet. He sat on a sort of stone throne with a leafy canopy over him. Our captors shoved us forward until we stood in a wavering line, all of us staring blankly at this Being whose mentality encompassed and dominated every living human on his tiny world. He looked as though once he had had the aspect of a Radak. But that perhaps was a hundred or two hundred Earth-years ago. He sat now with his shriveled, wrinkled grey body small as a child, encased in a single garment of woven fabric. His round head, devoid of hair, wobbled on a spindly neck. Skin like shriveled grey parchment covered his shrunken bony face giving him a mummy-like appearance of immense age. His shiny, smooth-grey skull seemed bloated by the pulsating brain-tissue within it. It bulged in places, with worm-like knots under the scalp, dilating, quivering, as his huge green-glowing eyes regarded us.

Then he spoke, slowly with a measured, sonorous voice of weird sepulchral tone. And what he said--it was as though here we faced a mental power too great to resist; as though there could be no question but that his thoughts must be our thoughts. I felt it with a sudden strange shudder--a radiance of thought from him, beating down, destroying whatever was within me of independent individualism. And the realization swept me; if I yielded to this radiance--these thought-waves, whatever they might be, then all that was Robert Rance would be gone. I would be nothing but an automaton.

He was saying, "You will listen. There are things I shall explain to you Earthmen. I have sent to Earth and brought you here--because each of you has a knowledge of many things on Earth that I wish to know."

* * * * *

I listened, numbed, somewhat perhaps as though hypnotized. In this Radak ruler's judgment, Blaine the banker, Mack the derelict, Shorty, myself and Vivian--the sum total of the myriad things that were stacked in our brains--were what now must go into his. Certainly a varied, representative strata of Earth-knowledge.

"You want to learn everything we know?" Blaine suddenly said. "How can you do that? Suppose we don't want to teach you? And why do you want to learn it? What are your plans? What I want to know is--do you realize who and what I am, on Earth?"

Of us all, undoubtedly the dominating nature of J. Walter Blaine made him best able to resist that weird mental force that was engulfing us. Yet his manner, his querulous, arrogant questions under these strange, unearthly conditions here on the Crimson Comet certainly were fatuous, childish. Mack gave a short, disagreeable laugh.

"On Earth, okay," Mack muttered. "But you don't amount to much here."

"Money of course, won't mean anything to you," Blaine was saying. "But I have other things on Earth--things you would want. Look here, if you'll send all these people away, I'll have a talk with you. I'll--"

He got no further. It seemed that a look of wonderment was upon the shriveled, ancient grey face. The eyes were darting little green fires. The measured voice said, "I shall attend to you later--" And then droned into the Radak tongue. Four of the squat little men marched upon Blaine, seizing him.

"What in the devil--stop that!" Blaine remonstrated. There was a scuffle beginning. I recall that I shouted,

"Blaine! Take it easy! You'll be killed!"

Amazing power of these squat little men! A claw-like hand was clapped over Blaine's mouth; his flailing arms and kicking legs were pinned by the Radak's clutches; and then they picked him up and carted him away.

"I shall begin with you, Peter Mack," the Radak ruler said quietly. "Come forward, bend before me."

For a second Mack hesitated, flinging Shorty and me a questioning glance. But we had nothing to offer. Then the shabby, lanky figure of the bearded Mack shambled forward, guided by two Radaks until he was standing with head bent before the Ruler. Down the slope the murmurs of the crowd of Lei rose into a babble. The milling throng of slave-people a hundred yards or so from us crowded curiously forward to see Mack better. There was a sudden, low-voiced command from the Radak Ruler. A dozen or more of the squat, grey Radaks ran at the Lei, cuffing them, knocking them back ... I saw a young Lei girl, slim, with flowing white and tawny hair framing her face. The little automaton Radak ran at her, struck her in the mouth so that the blood spurted out.

And through it all, near me a row of Radak children stood stiffly at attention, motionless, with only their round green eyes turning sidewise to watch the scene.

Then the ancient Radak Ruler's smouldering gaze was upon Mack's head. An awed silence fell over the scene as Mack stood motionless. Who shall say by what weird and gruesome process Mack was now being sapped! No one on Earth knows what a thought is. No one can say what is within our brain cells to constitute knowledge. But something is there, something in our conscious and subconscious minds upon which our memory can draw. And we do know that thought is a wave of vibration--an infinitely tiny, infinitely rapid vibration. A thing that at least has a tangible entity. And this Radak's mind now was drawing, sapping from Mack.

A minute. Five minutes. In the tense silence, I felt Shorty clutch at me, heard him mutter: "God, it's weird!"

Mack now was drooping. A mental agony, rasping his nerves now, drawing vitality from him so that he drooped, swayed, and suddenly let out a groan. Mental anguish, with screaming nerves translating it into physical pain.

"It's torture!" Vivian murmured. "Look at him--stop it! Stop it!"

Mack had fallen to the ground, writhing now, mumbling with futile hands clawing at his face and head as though to pluck away that damnable, torturing gaze. But still, calmly, inexorably the green-eyed, monstrous little Radak held him--this shriveled Radak Ruler, avidly, greedily drawing in the knowledge of Mack's past life--those myriad little things of Earth-life stored within Mack's brain. Surely it must have been a torture most horrible.

* * * * *

Shorty and I were starting to leap forward in protest. But Vivian was ahead of us, raging, rushing heedlessly at the old Radak. She almost reached him. She was screaming, "You--you rotten damn Thing--you--"

Her hand went up to strike him. It was all a sudden chaos, just a few seconds. Radaks caught Shorty and me; with almost machine-like strength their arms pinned us. I think I yelled at Shorty not to struggle. In that same second, I saw Vivian's arm with clenched fist trying to hit the Radak Ruler, but a little squat grey figure standing guard there, jumped and seized her. It was an amazing tableau. At the threatened blow, the Ruler shrank back. His whole little body quivered, pulsated; and on the weird, almost unhuman face, there was a look, not of fear, but of strange revulsion--as though the threat of that physical blow were something too horrible to contemplate.

"Vivian! Vivian--you--they'll kill you! Run--Vivian, run--"

Mack was staggering to his feet, stumbling, half falling. But he reached Vivian, clutched her. Both of them were confused, dazed so that all they could do was stand there, holding onto each other. I saw Mack gazing defiantly at the oncoming Radaks--Mack who on Earth probably wouldn't have lifted a hand to help anyone, ready now to fight to protect this girl.

"You will all--stand--away from them." It was the Ruler's quiet, measured voice. And abruptly I saw that his shriveled hand had gone to his belt. A weapon was hanging there--a little pot-bellied black cylinder. His fingers shifted it, seemed aiming it at Vivian and Mack. Shorty and I were struggling, but the Radaks held us. And we were both shouting. Then there was a soundless, almost invisible flash, just a vague spitting glow of light from the little cylinder. It leaped and for a second clung upon Mack and the girl. They seemed to stiffen. Just that; nothing else. Still clutching each other they stood transfixed, and on their faces there was a blankness, a strange emptiness.

"You will walk together, hand in hand," the Ruler's soft voice was droning. "One of my Radaks will lead you to the upper exit. And then you will walk together alone--out into the Realm of the Deathless Things."

He added something in his own language. A little Radak moved in front of Mack and Vivian now. Hand in hand they were standing docile, and then they were following the Radak--following him with slow measured steps, their faces blank, their eyes staring straight ahead of them. Like somnambulists, walking in their sleep.

"Good Lord," Shorty murmured. "That could be the way we were abducted on Earth! Do you suppose--"

* * * * *

His words were cut off. The Ruler had given another command. The Radaks gripping us were pulling us away--shoving us back into the dim crimson tunnel from which they had brought us. I turned to look behind me. The stiff figures of Mack and Vivian still were visible, walking in a trance, following the square, box-like little Radak who marched silently ahead of them. For a moment they wound along the edge of the slope; then the crimson murk of radiance enveloped them and they were gone.

Roughly Shorty and I were shoved along the tunnel by our captors. Then a rock panel slid aside. We were shoved in, and the panel slid closed.

"Well," Shorty murmured. "That's that. We're in a jam, Bob--a damn weird jam."

It was soundless in here, and darker than out in the main open grotto. But still there was that dim crimson glow. We were in a small cave-cell now. The air was hot, fetid, earthy. Presently we could see a little better. There was nothing but black, spongy ground, glowing red rock walls and a rock ceiling close over us. In the dimness I fumbled, feeling the wall, trying to find the crevice of the sliding door panel; but could not.

Time passed. Shorty and I both realized now that we were weak and faint from hunger--not altogether the hunger from missing a meal or so, but the depletion of long under-nourishment. Together we lay down on the fibrous ground. I think at that moment I was more despairing than ever before in my life. I seemed unable to cope with even the thought of what we might possibly plan. I closed my eyes. I seemed just to want to drift into the blessed relief of sleep.

"This is one jam we might not get out of, Bob," Shorty murmured presently.

"Yes, looks so."

Then suddenly both of us were galvanized into alertness. The door-panel was sliding open with a little rasp and an influx of brighter red glow. Outside in the corridor we saw a group of Radaks on guard. But none of them came in. They moved aside and a figure came past them--a Lei girl. Her slim body was draped in a bluish garment of thatch. Her long tawny hair flowed down over her shoulders. She was carrying a slab on which there was food and drink for us.

Then she set the slab on the ground near us. She was between us and the door, almost a silhouette but I could see that her hand was at her lips and her glowing eyes seemed warning us to be silent.

For an instant she leaned close toward me. "I am Tahn--the wife of Taro, the Lei." Her voice barely whispered it. "You say nothing. I come again--with Taro's plan to help you! We would save you and your Earth--if we can!"

Silent, Shorty and I just stared. Then she had turned and was gone. The rock panel slid closed upon us.