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ape-men and their guide had come. The passage no longer rose with the same
steepness and as the ascent grew more gentle the tunnel widened, with frequent
side-passages to the right and branches leading down to the track at the left.
Finally after a sharp turn it opened out into a big room, untenanted like all
they had seen so far, filled
with a complex maze of machinery, but machinery of a different character from
that they had labored at.
At the farther end of the room a door stood open. They dashed across it,
plunged through and found
themselves in one of the enormous blue-domed halls, whose ceiling seemed to
stretch miles above them.
IT MUST have been all of three hundred feet across, and there was no visible
support for the ceiling.
All about the place stood various objects and pieces of machinery and figures
moved dimly among the titanic apparatus at the far end. But what most
attracted their attention was the huge object that stood right before them.
It looked like a metal fish on an enormous scale. Fully fifty feet long and
twenty feet high its immense proportions dwarfed everything about it. Its
sides, of brilliantly polished metal, shone like a mirror. The tail came to a
stubby point, from which projected a circle of four tubes.
Down the side was a rib which ended in a similar tube about halfway and at the
nose-end of the mechanical fish was a ten-foot snout, not unlike an elephant's
trunk in shape and apparently made of the same rubbery material which held the
cables of the helmets.
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Marta pulled Sherman down behind the thing and they peered around the edge,
seeking a means of egress from the room. The nearest was twenty or thirty feet
away. Watching their opportunity they chose a moment when they seemed least
likely to attract attention and made a dive for it.
They found themselves in another passage, terminating in two doors.
"Which?" asked Sherman.
"Eeny-meeny" said Marta "this one," and, stepping boldly to the right hand
door, pushed it open.
For a moment they could only gaze. The room they had entered was another and
smaller blue-domed hall. Around its sides was a row of curious twisted benches
of green material, each of which was now occupied by one of the Lassans, hood
thrown back from head, elephant-trunk thrust into a large pool of some viscous
green stuff with bright yellow flecks in it in the center of the circle. Half
a dozen helmeted ape-men stood behind the benches of their masters, apparently
serving them at this singular meal.
As the two humans entered there was one of those silences which are pregnant
with events. Then, "Good evening, folks. How's things?" said Marta and
curtsied gracefully.
The sound of her words seethed to release the spell. With a bellow of rage the
nearest Lassan leaped from his bench, fumbling at one of the pouches in his
cloak.
The light-gun!
thought Sherman and braced himself to spring, but another of the masters
extended his trunk and detained the first. There was a momentary babble of
rumbling conversation, then one of the
Lassans reached behind him, picked up a helmet and placed it on his head and,
attaching a tube to one of the ape-men, rose.
The ape-man moved toward Marta and Sherman like a being in a dream. They
turned to run but the
Lassan produced a light-gun with such evident intention of using it at the
first motion that they paused.
"Looks like we're in for it," said the dancer. "Oh, well, lead on Napoleon.
What do we care for expenses?"
Under the direction of the Lassan the ape-man took them each by an arm and led
them back through the hall of the metal fish, down among the machines, where
two or three others stared at them curiously or lifted inquisitive trunks in
their direction.
Then into another passage which had been one of the inevitable cart racks.
Their Lassan conductor reached around the corner into the passage, applied his
trunk briefly to something and a moment later one of the cars slid silently
into position. The door opened.
"So long, old pal," said Marta Lami. "Even if I never see you again we had a
great time together."
"So long," replied Sherman, taking his place in the car. He felt a distinct
pang at leaving this dancer
 vulgar and flippant but gay and debonair and the best of companions.
The car did not take them far. It discharged Sherman in a little passage
before a narrow door, which opened automatically to admit him to a small
blue-domed room containing nothing but a seat, one of the
benches on which he had seen the Lassans reclining and a mass of wires and
tubes.
There seemed nothing in particular to do. He was at liberty save that the door
closed firmly behind him, cutting off escape. Seeing that he was left alone he
seated himself and began to examine the machinery, most of which was attached
to his chair.
CHAPTER XV
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THE LASSAN EXPLAINS
BEFORE he had time to riddle out any of its secrets the door opened again and
one of the Lassans came in a distinctly different type from any he had
hitherto seen. This one was smaller than most. His skin, where exposed, was
covered by a tracery of fine wrinkles and his coloring was whiter than the
rest.
Little crowsfeet stood around the corners of his eyes, giving him an
expression that was singularly
humorous. He approached Sherman on noiseless feet, moved his trunk up and down
as though examining him. Then, producing from a pocket in his cloak one of the
thought-helmets, he set it on Sherman's head,
tightened a connection or two with his trunk and, placing a like device on
his own head, settled himself on the twisted bench.
The ordeal of the helmet! "They make you think whatever they want you to it's
like being hypnotized," Marta Lami had said. He braced himself resolutely.
This alien intelligence should not plumb his thoughts without a struggle.
To his surprise there seemed no attempt to force his mind. The thought leaped
up, unbidden, Why, this this Lassen is friendly!
No definite image or plan or connection of ideas formed itself in his brain.
He merely felt enormously soothed and strengthened. After all, he found
himself arguing, nobody desired to hurt him merely to discover what curious
process of thought had led him to act as he had.
"You are too intelligent, too high a type to have been put to work at the
machines," came the unspoken thought of the Lassan. "We might better have put
you at the controls of one of the fighting machines." This thought caused a
mental image of the giant silver fish he had seen in the hall of the dome to
rise in his mind. He pictured himself as seated amid a mass of levers before a
panel set with complex
gauges.
"It was a mistake," the thought he was receiving went on, "that you were sent [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]