Part 2 (1/2)
Sullenly the two men obeyed his order.
”Good,” commended Layroh. ”In the pits where you are going you will have little use for pistols. When I again take you from those pits you will quickly learn why I brought you with me. _Yaharigans_, I have called you, and _yaharigans_ you shall be--Earthly counterparts of those miserable beasts of Rikor who have for ages been bred only for the one purpose of supplying food for the s.h.i.+ning Ones. I knew that when I found the cavern the process of awakening the s.h.i.+ning Ones would require that they be carefully fed with the calcium and lime from the bones of living _yaharigans_, the normal food of all Rikorians.
”The few _yaharigans_ I had brought from Rikor were consumed on my long trip to Earth. So I had to recruit a party of human beings to go with me and serve as the necessary food for the s.h.i.+ning Ones. My search for the cavern took longer than I had expected for I knew only its approximate location. My own body at last had to have sustenance. Last night the Negro, Jeff Peters, provided that sustenance.
”I shall feed those of you who remain to the first group of s.h.i.+ning Ones to be awakened. After that we shall be strong enough in numbers to sally forth and capture ample food for awakening the rest of our comrades.
Then in our full strength we shall emerge and again become masters of a planet upon which your crude race shall exist only as _yaharigan_ herds for our sustenance.”
Layroh's resonant voice ceased. Keeping the black ray projector alertly covering the men, he strode over to a closed metal door in the wall just beyond them. He took a small tube from a rack beside it and opened the door by sending a flash of yellow light into the mechanism of its lock.
”Into the pits until I am ready for you,” he commanded curtly. ”They were first constructed for keeping our own _yaharigans_ while we were working in the cavern, and they should serve just as well for you.”
With the memory of Olsen's tragic fate still fresh in their minds, the men obediently filed into the next room, with Layroh bringing up the rear. The room was little more than a single large cell carved from the living rock, and lighted by a single radium bulb in the ceiling.
Its smooth gla.s.slike floor was broken at intervals of ten feet by circular pits fifteen feet deep. At Layroh's order the men entered the floor-pits, one man to each pit. As Foster lowered himself into one of them he saw how grimly efficient a trap the pit was.
An unusually tall and active man might be able to jump high enough to touch the edge, but the effort would be useless. Those gla.s.s-smooth edges were so cunningly rounded that they offered no possible purchase for clutching fingers. The diameter of the pit, ten feet, was too great to permit any effort at climbing by wedging one's body between two opposing walls.
Layroh sent every man into the pits but one.
”You will return to the cavern with me, Carter,” he ordered. ”I have need for you at once.”
They heard the door clang shut as Layroh and Carter left the pit room.
Chaos reigned as the men flung their bodies against the pit walls in efforts to escape. There was the click of metal as several of them tried with pocket knives to chip finger-holes in the walls, but the gla.s.sy surfaces were of diamond hardness.
Foster's brain was numb with despair as he began to realize the true meaning of those sleeping things out in the cavern. Death in some unknown and horrible form was imminent for himself and his companions, he knew, but his thoughts were going far beyond that, to the time when the s.h.i.+ning Ones would emerge in all their resistless power to ravage and conquer a helpless world.
There could be little doubt as to the futility of Earth's best efforts against the advanced science of these invaders from far-off Rikor.
Encased in their colossal machine-bodies of glittering metal, and armed with such terrible weapons as the black ray projector, the s.h.i.+ning Ones would be as invulnerable as men trampling an anthill underfoot.
The future status of mankind upon the Earth would be that of vast herds of human _yaharigans_, probably bred for ever greater bone content as men breed cattle for superior food values. The picture aroused Foster to a fury of cold desperation. If they could only escape from the pits there might be a chance to trap Layroh and slay him before he brought those hordes of opalescent slugs to life. Then escape from the cavern itself would be an easy matter. Even if the outer door had been locked since they pa.s.sed through it Layroh had the light-key and Foster remembered the combination.
Half a dozen wild schemes flitted through Foster's brain, only to be discarded as futile. Then suddenly he thought of something that had every chance of success if only they were given time enough. Layroh in his arrogance had forgotten that his prisoners were not naked brutes of Rikor. In the very clothing the men wore was the means of escape from the pits.
Foster's voice cut through the babel in the room until he gained everyone's attention.
”Our only chance for escape is to get a rope between two pits,” he said curtly. ”Then one man can climb out while the other holds the rope.
We'll have to make that rope from our clothing. No one man can get a strip strong enough, so we'll have to work the strips to a central man who can braid them into a single heavy rope. I'm near the center. Get the strips to me. Tear your clothing into ribbons, and knot them together. Use your knives, watches, anything to weight one end of the strip. Then cast until you get contact with the pit next to you. That way all the strips can be worked to me.”
A period of feverish activity followed while the men went to work.
Layroh also was busy. Through several narrow ventilating slits high in the cavern wall they heard the hum of machinery.
The first of the men finished knotting their ropes together. With weighted ends m.u.f.fled to deaden their fall upon the rock floor, they began casting to get contact with their neighbors.