Philip Farmer - The Green Odyssey

«You talk too much,» broke in Aga harshly. «Let's get on into the cave.»

Green could appreciate what Aga's comment meant. Miran had lost face because he'd allowed his vessel to be wrecked and his Clansmen murdered en masse. To Aga and the other women he was no longer Captain Miran, the rich patriarch. He was Miran, the shipwrecked sailor. A fat old sailor. Just that. Nothing more.

He could have redeemed himself if he had committed suicide. But his eagerness to live had resulted in his placing himself on an even lower level in their estimation.

Miran must have realized this, for he did not reply. Instead he stood to one side.

Green walked thirty paces into the cave, then looked back over his shoulder. The entrance was still visible, an arch outlined in the bright moonshine.

Someone coughed. Green was about to caution them to keep quiet, when he felt his nostrils tickling and had to fight to down a loud sneeze himself.

«Dust.»

«Good,» said Green. «Maybe they never come down here.»

Suddenly the tunnel turned at right angles, to the left. The little light that penetrated from the entrance disappeared in total blackness, The party halted.

«What if there are traps set for intruders?» wailed Inzax.

«That's a chance we'll have to take,» Green growled. «We'll go in the dark until we come to another turn. Then we'll light up a torch or two. The natives won't be able to see the glow.»

He walked ahead feeling the wall with his left hand. Suddenly he stopped. Amra humped into him.

«What is it?» she asked anxiously.

«The rock wall has now become metal. Feel here.»

He guided her hand.

«You're right,» she whispered. «There's a definite seam, and I can tell the difference between the two!»

«The floor's metal, too,» added Soon. «My feet are bare, and I can feel it. What's more, the dust is all gone.»

Green went ahead, and after thirty more paces he came to another ninety-degree turn, to the right, The walls and floor were composed of the smooth, cool metal. After making sure that the entire party was around the corner, he told a woman carrying some torches taken from a long house to light one. Its bright flare showed the group staring round-eyed at the large chamber in which they stood.

Everywhere were bare gray metal walls and floors. No furniture of any kind.

Nor a speck of dust.

«There's a doorway to another room,» he said. «We might as well go on in.»

He took the torch from the woman and, holding a cutlass in the other, he led the way. Once across the threshold he halted.

This room was even larger than the other. But it had furnishings of a sort. And its further wall was not metal but earth.

At the same time the room began to brighten with light coming from an invisible source.

Soon screamed and threw herself against her mother, clinging desperately to her waist. The babies began howling, and the other adults acted in the various ways that panic affected them.

Green alone remained unmoved. He knew what was happening, but he couldn't blame the rest for their behavior. They had never heard of an electronic eye, so they couldn't be expected to maintain coolness.

The only thing that Green feared at that moment was that the outcries would be heard by the savages outside the cave. So he hastened to assure the women that this phenomenon was nothing to be frightened about. It was common in his home country. A mere matter of white magic that anyone could practice.

They quieted down but were still uneasy. Wide-eyed, they bunched up about him.

«The natives themselves aren't scared of this,» he said. «They must come here at times. See? There's an altar built against that dirt wall. And from the bones piled beneath it I'd say that sacrifices were held here.»

He looked for another door. There seemed to be none. He found it hard to believe that there couldn't be. Somehow he'd had the feeling that great things lay ahead of him. These rooms, and this lighting, were evidences of an earlier civilization that quite possibly had been on a level with his own. He'd known that the island itself must be powered with an automatically working anti-gravity plant, fueled either atomically or from the planet's magneto-gravitic field. Why the whole unit should be covered with rocks and soil and trees he didn't know. But he had been sure that somewhere in the bowels of this mass of land was just such a place as this. And more. Where was the power plant? Was it sealed up so that no one could get to it? Or, as was likely, was there a door to the plant which could not be opened unless one had a key of some sort?

First he had to find the door.

He examined the altar, which was made of iron. It was a platform about three feet high and ten feet square. Upon it stood a chair, fashioned from pieces of iron. From its back rose a steel rod about half an inch in diameter and ten feet long, its lower end held secure between two uprights by a thick iron fork. Once the fork was withdrawn, the rod would obviously fall over against the earth wall behind it, though the lower end would still remain on the uprights and would, in fact, stick against whoever was sitting in the chair at the moment.

«Odd,» said Green. «If it weren't for those catheaded idols on the ends of the platform, and the bones at its foot, I'd not know this was an altar. Bones! They're black, burned black.»

He looked again at the rod. «Now,» he said, half to him.-self, «if I were to withdraw the fork, and the rod fell, it would strike the wall. That is evident. But what is it all about?»

Amra brought him some long pieces of rope.

«These were stacked against the wall,» she said.

«Yes? Ah! Now, if I were to tie one end of this rope about the apex of that rod, and someone else were to stand upon the altar and take out the fork, then I could control which direction the rod would fall by pulling it toward me. Or allowing it to go away from me. And the person who had taken the fork out would then have plenty of time to get down from the altar and back to the region of safety, where the rope-wielder and his friends would be stationed. Alas, the poor fellow sitting in the chairs. Yes, I see it all now.»

He looked up from the rope he held in his hand. «Aga!» he said sharply. «Get away from that wall!»

The tall, lean woman was walking past the altar, holding her bare cutlass in her hand. When she heard Green she paused in her stride, gave him an astonished look, then continued.

«You don't understand,» she called back over her shoulder. «This wall isn't solid earth. It's fluffy, like a young chick's feathers. It's dust, dust. I think we can knock it down, cut our way through. There must be something on the other side….»

«Aga!» he yelled. «Don't! Stop where you are!»

But she had lifted her blade and brought it down in a hard stroke that was to show him how easy the stuff would be to slash away.

Green grabbed Amra and Paxi and dived to the floor, pulling them with him.

Thunder roared and lightning filled the room, dazzling and deafening him! Even in its midst he could see the dark figure of Aga, transfixed, crucified in white fire.

THEN AGA WAS blotted out by the dense cloud of dust that billowed out over her and filled the whole room. With it came an intense heat. Green opened his mouth to cry out to Amra and Paxi to cover their faces and especially their noses. Before he could do so his own open mouth was packed with dust and his nostrils were full. He began sneezing and coughing explosively, while his eyes ran tears in their efforts to wash out the dirt that caked and burned them. Clods of dirt struck him, hurled by the blast. They didn't hurt because they were so small and so fluffy. But they fell so swiftly and in such numbers that he was half-buried under them. Even in the midst of his shock he couldn't help being thankful that he'd been breathing out when the heat struck him. Otherwise he'd have sucked in air that would have seared his lungs, and he'd have dropped dead. As it was, wherever his skin had not been covered by cloth he felt as if he were suffering a bad case of sunburn.