“My master summons you,” bellowed the colossus. “Your plight is known to him. He will help you liberally, in return for a certain assistance which you can render him. Come with me.”
“This sounds peremptory,” murmured Haines. “Shall we go? Probably it’s some charitable Aihai prince, who has gotten wind of our reduced circumstances. However, they don’t usually go out of their way to befriend terrestrials. Wonder what the game is?”
“I suggest that we follow the guide,” said Chanler, eagerly. “His proposition sounds like the first chapter of a thriller. And we’ll never know what it’s all about unless we go.”
“All right,” said Haines, to the towering giant. “Lead us to your master.” From his smattering of Martian etiquette, he knew that it was not permissible to ask questions. The identity of the person who had summoned them, and his motive, were barred from inquiry by common politeness; though the peremptory invitation itself could have been easily declined without giving offense.
With strides that were moderated to match those of the earth-men, the colossus led them away from the hero-guarded bridge and into the greenish-purple gloom that had inundated Ignar-Vath. Beyond the pavement, an alley yawned like a high-mouthed cavern between lightless mansions and warehouses whose broad balconies and jutting roofs were almost conterminous in mid-air. The alley was deserted; and the Aihai moved like an overgrown shadow through the dusk and paused shadow-like in a deep and lofty doorway. Halting at his heels, Chanler and Haines were aware of a shrill metallic stridor, made by the opening of the door, which, like all Martian doors, was drawn upward in the manner of a medieval portcullis. Their guide was silhouetted on the saffron light that poured from bosses of radio-active mineral set in the walls and roof of a circular ante-chamber. He preceded them, according to custom; and following, they saw that the room was unoccupied. The door descended behind them without apparent agency or manipulation.
To Chanler, gazing about the windowless chamber, whose inner door was also grimly shut, there came the indefinable alarm that is sometimes felt in a closed space. Under the circumstances, there seemed to be no reason to apprehend danger or treachery; but all at once, he was filled with a nervous unease and a wild longing to escape.
Haines, on his part, was wondering rather perplexedly why the inner door was closed and why the master of the house had not already appeared to receive them. Somehow, the house impressed him as being uninhabited: there was something empty and desolate in the silence that surrounded them.
The Aihai, standing in the center of the bare, unfurnished room, had faced about as if to address the earth-men. His eyes glowered inscrutably from their deep orbits; his mouth opened, showing double rows of snaggy teeth. But no sound appeared to issue from his moving lips; and the notes that he emitted must have belonged to that scale of overtones, beyond human audition, of which the Martian voice is capable. No doubt the mechanism of the door had been actuated by similar overtones; and now, as if in response, the entire floor of the chamber, wrought of dark, seamless metal, began to descend slowly, as if dropping into a great pit. Haines and Chanler, startled, saw the saffron lights receding above them. They, together with the giant, were going down into shadow and darkness, in a broad circular shaft. There was a ceaseless grating and shrieking of metal, setting their teeth on edge with its insupportable pitch.
Like a narrowing cluster of yellow stars, the lights grew dim and small above them. Still their descent continued; and they could no longer discern each other’s faces, or the face of the Aihai, in the ebon blackness through which they fell. Haines and Chanler were beset by a thousand doubts and suspicions, and they began to wonder if they had been somewhat rash in accepting the Aihai’s invitation.
“Where are you taking us?” said Haines bluntly. “Does your master live underground?”
“We go to my master,” replied the Martian with cryptic finality. “He awaits you.
The cluster of lights had become a single star, had dwindled and faded as if in the night of infinity. There was a sense of irredeemable depth, as if they had gone down to the very core of that alien world. The strangeness of their situation filled the earth-men with increasing disquiet. They had committed themselves to a clueless mystery that began to savor of menace and peril. Nothing was to be learned from their conductor. No retreat was possible—and they were both weaponless. They could not conceive the purpose of their descent, but more and more it assumed a sinister aspect.
The strident shrieking of metal slowed and sank to a sullen whine. The earth-men were dazzled by the ruddy brilliance that broke upon them through a circle of slender pillars that had replaced the walls of the shaft. An instant more, while they went down through the flooding light, and then the floor beneath them became stationary. They saw that it was now part of the floor of a great cavern lit by crimson hemispheres embedded in the roof. The cavern was circular, with passages that ramified from it in every direction, like the spokes of a wheel from the hub. Many Martians, no less gigantic than the guide, were passing swiftly to and fro, as if intent on enigmatic errands. The strange, muted clangors and thunder-like rumblings of hidden machinery throbbed in the air, vibrated in the shaken floor.
“What do you suppose we’ve gotten into?” murmured Chanler. “We must be many miles below the surface. I’ve never heard of anything like this, except in some of the old Aihai myths. This place might be Ravormos, the Martian underworld, where Vulthoom, the evil god, is supposed to lie asleep for a thousand years amid his worshippers.”
The guide had overheard him. “You have come to Ravormos,” he boomed portentously. “Vulthoom is awake, and will not sleep again for another thousand years. It is he that has summoned you; and I take you now to the chamber of audience.”
Haines and Chanler, dumbfounded beyond measure, followed the Martian from the strange elevator toward one of the ramifying passages.
“There must be some sort of foolery on foot,” muttered Haines. “I’ve heard of Vulthoom, too, but he’s a mere superstition, like Satan. The up-to-date Martians don’t believe in him nowadays; though I have heard that there is still a sort of devil-cult among the pariahs and low-castes. I’ll wager that some noble is trying to stage a revolution against the reigning emperor, Cykor, and has established his quarters underground.”
“That sounds reasonable,” Chanler agreed. “A revolutionist might call himself Vulthoom: the trick would be true to the Aihai psychology. They have a taste for high-sounding metaphors and fantastic titles.”
Both became silent, feeling a sort of awe before the vastness of the cavern-world whose litten corridors reached away on every hand. The surmises they had voiced began to appear inadequate: the improbable was verified, the fabulous had become the factual, and was engulfing them more and more. The far, mysterious clangors, it seemed, were of preternormal origin; the hurrying giants who passed athwart the chamber with unknown burdens conveyed a sense of supernatural activity and enterprise. Haines and Chanler were both tall and stalwart, but they felt themselves shrinking into mere pygmies when they saw that none of the Martians about them was less than nine or ten feet in height. Some were closer to eleven, and all were muscled in proportion. Their faces bore a look of immense, mummy-like age, incongruous with their agility and vigor. They seemed oblivious of the earth-men, their deeply shadowed eyes preoccupied with some ulterior vision.