The Time Trap (10 page)

He gestured. The beast-men seized Mason, pulled him out into the street. He made no resistance. He had planted a seed in Greddar Klon’s mind, and now there was nothing to do but play a waiting game. He had not dared to bargain for the lives of Alasa and the others—that would have made the Master instantly suspicious.

His captors led him into another rose-marble building, and down to vaults far below. In a bare stone room he was locked. A torch set in the wall gave light, but how long it would last Mason did not know.

The shaggy, hulking forms of the beast-men lumbered out of sight. Mason was left alone, captive, his mind haunted with fears for his friends.

After a time Mason rose and examined his prison. The walls, though cracked and lichened, were sturdy enough. The barred door was of metal, and too strong to force. Nor were ceiling or floor any more promising. Mason shivered in the chill air, wishing he had something warmer than a loincloth.

But the torch gave heat as well as light, until it expired. In the darkness it was somehow harder to judge time, though Mason guessed it was nightfall when at last one of the beast-men came with food. He poked it through the bars, a mess of fruits, specked and half-rotten, which Mason found it difficult to swallow. The beast-man brought a new torch, however.

It could not have been more than half an hour later that Mason saw a glimmer of light approaching. He went to the door, peering between the bars at a stooped, withered figure approaching. He made out a shriveled, Oriental face—Li Keng!

The Chinese slowly unbarred the door. He beckoned Mason out.

“We must be silent,” he mumbled in his cracked voice. “Nirvor has returned, and has brought an evil one with her. They seek the Invincible Power, but they do not know its hiding-place. Nor do they know I hold the secret. Come!”

He shuffled along the corridor, his skinny hand gripping a torch. Mason kept pace with him.

“The others?” he asked softly. “My friends? Where are they?”

Li Keng did not hear. His wheezing voice went on, “Nirvor has brought the beast-men from the forest into Corinoor. But she shall not have the weapon. You shall take it to the Sleepers as proof of my faith.”

Mason felt a pang of pity for the old man. They turned into another underground passage, and another, a veritable labyrinth, until Mason was hopelessly lost. Once he saw a white shadow slipping away in the distance, and remembered Valesta, Nirvor’s leopard. But the beast did not reappear, if it had been Valesta.

They stopped before a metal door. Li Keng fumbled in a recess in the wall, brought out two clumsy lead-sheathed suits. “We must wear these. The radium rays—”

Mason donned the garment. It had a transparent hood which covered his head completely. The Chinese, ungainly in the armor, pushed open the door.

They stood on the brink of a cliff that sloped down into a gray fog of distance. A narrow path ran perilously slanting down, and along this Li Keng started, keeping his balance without difficulty. Mason followed, with an inward tremor as he glanced aside into the dim gulf.

For perhaps a hundred yards they skirted the cliff, and then rounded a shoulder. Mason paused, blinked blinded eyes. A flame of roaring brilliance blazed up from the gulf before him, and all through his body a curious tingling raced. The deadly radium radiations, he knew.

The path ran out on a spur of rock, narrow and dangerous, that hung over the abyss. Below it was a cauldron of fire, like the pit of a volcano. But more potent than liquid lava was the fire that burned here, having within the frightful power of radium!

A sound came from behind them. Mason turned. He cried out, his voice drowned in the roar of the inferno. Stalking along the path toward him was Valesta, the white leopard.

Behind her—Nirvor, and at her heels the black leopard, Bokya. And dozens of the beast-men, fangs gleaming redly in the flame-light, eyes glowing.

From Li Keng came a cry so piercing that Mason heard it even above the thunder of the radium pit. The Chinese flung out an arm, gesturing Nirvor back.

The priestess laughed. Her silver hair floated unbound about her shoulders, half bared by her diaphanous black robe. She took a step forward.

Li Keng turned. He raced out on the spur. On its end he went on hands and knees, and then sprang erect, gripping a metal box in his gloved hands. Before the watchers could move Li Keng, gripping the box, had leaped out into the abyss!

A shriek came from Nirvor. Mason had a glimpse of her face, twisted into a despairing Gorgon mask—and then the white leopard was upon him. He went down under the onslaught. Only the width of the path here, at the base of the spur, saved him from toppling over. As it was, he hung for a moment on the brink, the leopard’s weight bearing him down, the snarling beast-mask above his face.

Rough hands gripped him. The leopard leaped lightly away. Beast-men drew Mason back onto the ledge, lifted him to his feet. He was held motionless, facing the priestess.

She made a quick gesture, and Mason was forced back along the path. No use to resist, he knew. It would mean destruction, and even though he killed a few of his captors, he would inevitably be thrust into the gulf. So Mason let the beast-men prod him back to the metal door, where they stripped the armor from him.

Nirvor’s face was white. “I have dared much,” she whispered. “Men do not live long above the radium pit. A little more, and I would have died … horribly!” She shuddered, ran white hands along her slender body.

The white leopard muzzled her leg, was thrust aside by the black one. The priestess said, “I thought Li Keng had the secret, and so I watched him. But he has destroyed the Invincible Power, and himself with it. He is beyond my reach. But you—you are not, Kent Mason!” A red blaze was in her jet eyes.

“We hold court tonight,” she murmured. “Your three friends will die then. And you will die with them.”

She gestured. The beast-man thrust Mason forward. Silently he let himself be taken back along the interminable corridors, back to his cell. But Nirvor did not pause there. Up and up they went, till at last they emerged in the streets of Corinoor.

“In here,” the priestess commanded.

Mason recognized the building—the same one into which Li Keng had led him earlier that day. In the moonlight its ruin was not evident; it seemed a veritable palace of enchantment, a symphony in marble.

Through the bronze gates they went, through the inner door. The huge chamber was no longer dim. It was ablaze with torches, swarming with the beastmen. At the further end was a gigantic statue of a nude female form, moon-crowned.

Nirvor made a gesture toward the image. “It is Selene,” she said. “Goddess of Corinoor—Corinoor that is soon to rise again in its former splendor!”

The priestess paused before a panel in the wall. It opened at her touch, and she pointed within.

“Go there, Kent Mason. Quickly!”

He obeyed, finding himself in a dusky, luxuriously furnished little room, ornate with tapestries and cushions. A small image of Selene stood in an alcove in the wall. The air was curiously dark, heavily scented with perfumes that rose headily to Mason’s brain. He turned.

Nirvor stood alone before the closed door. Her black eyes dwelt on him cryptically.

“I have told you you must die,” she said.

“I heard you,” Mason grunted. “So what?”

“I—I have hated you. I have reason to do so. My kingdom, my goddess, my city of Corinoor—these I worship. For them I would destroy you utterly. Yet—” The jet eyes were strange, strange! “Yet you remember something I told you long ago in Al Bekr. I am woman…”

She made a hopeless gesture. “Now my heart is sick within me. For I know you should die, I know you hate me—”

The priestess dropped to the floor, her silver hair unbound veiling her face. “
Ohé, ohé!
” she sobbed. “In all my life I have known no man like you. There were the scientists, like Li Keng—and the barbarians of Al Bekr—and Greddar Klon. And the beast-men. I am woman, Kent Mason! I long for something I have never known … and that is love.”

Mason did not reply. The honey-musk perfume was very strong. He felt oddly detached from his body, slightly drunk. He did not move when Nirvor arose and came toward him. She drew him down into the cushions.

Cool hands were against his cheeks; a flame-hot mouth avid on his own. And the strange eyes were close…

Once more Mason read a message in them—a—message of alienage! He drew back.

“You fear my eyes,” Nirvor whispered. “But you do not fear my body…”

She stood up, her gaze hidden by long lashes. She fumbled at the fastenings of her black robe, let it fall in a lacy heap about her ankles. Mason caught his breath at sight of the priestess’ voluptuous body. His throat was suddenly dry and parched.

Nirvor sank down again, her eyes closed. Her hands touched Mason’s face, guided his lips to her own.

Something clicked in Mason’s mind, like a blind springing up abruptly, letting light into a foul and darkened room. Immediately the dulling soporific spell of the perfumed incense was gone. For now Mason
knew
—

His stomach seemed to move sickeningly. He thrust the girl away. Her eyes glared into his.

Hoarsely Mason whispered, “I should have guessed the truth! What you and Li Keng and Murdach told me—”

Nirvor’s lips were a scarlet wound in the pallor of her face. She shrilled, “You dare look at me like that! You dare—!”

“No. You don’t like me to look at you now that I know. The scientists and their experiments—changing beasts into human beings—God!” Mason was shuddering as he remembered the passion the girl’s body had aroused in him. He went on softly, unsteadily, “You are the outcome of such an experiment, Nirvor! You’re not human.
You were a beast!
”

The priestess sprang up, bosom heaving, fingers clawed. “Aye! And what of that? They made me into a woman—”

Mason’s face betrayed his horror. He whispered scarcely audibly, “What were you?”

Nirvor was silent for a moment. Then she said, “Bokya and Valesta—”

“The leopards?”

“They are my sisters!”

Her face contorted, Nirvor sprang to the door. She flung it open. From the great chamber beyond welled a deep-throated roar.

She cried a command. Beast-men poured into the room, seized Mason. Too sick with repugnance to speak, he fought desperately until weight of numbers bore him down, the foul odor of the beast-men strong in his nostrils.

Nirvor stood above him, a statue of living evil. Then she said, “You are proud of your humanity, Kent Mason? You may have cause to regret it. For now you come to the Court of the Beasts!”

The huge chamber was filled with surging multitudes of the beast-men. On a low dais before the statue of Selene, Mason saw, were three bound figures. Alasa, Murdach, and Erech. Mason was dragged to the dais, flung down upon it. Two beast-men held him motionless.

Nirvor stood beside him, a slim hand lifted. She cried something in the gutteral language of the monsters. They roared a response.

“The verdict is death,” the priestess said mockingly to Mason. “First—the girl. Prepare her, my people!”

She nodded, and a beast-man lifted the slim figure of Alasa, carried her into the midst of the horde. Shaggy, bestial figures closed around her. A scream broke from the girl.

Mason had a glimpse of rough hands loosening the cords, ripping the cloak roughly from Alasa. The girl was thrust upright, stood for a second staring wildly around, her bronze hair falling about her white shoulders. She cried out, held out imploring hands toward Mason. She took a few steps toward him—

The pack closed in, brutal hands mauling the girl’s body. Cursing, Mason struggled with his captors. They held him motionless; their binding arms tightened, shutting off his breath. Gasping and sweating, Mason forced himself to relax.

Nirvor screamed a command. The beast-men drew back slowly. One of them threw Alasa’s body over his shoulder and loped toward the dais. The priestess pointed up.

A pulley hung from the roof, thongs dangling from it. The beast-man, in obedience to Nirvor’s words, bound Alasa’s wrists tightly to the hanging ropes and then turned to a windlass near by. He turned it. Slowly Alasa was lifted till she swung by her hands, her hair falling like a veil over her face and breasts. Up and up, till her feet no longer touched the floor…

At last Nirvor nodded. The beast-man drew back. Alasa hung perhaps ten feet above their heads, a vision of tortured loveliness.

The priestess snarled at Mason, “She is human. But soon it will be difficult to be sure of that!”

Nirvor touched a lever. A grinding of machinery came from above. Staring up, Mason saw an arm of the image of Selene swing slowly down. God! Was Alasa to be crushed to death between the metal hands of the idol?

No, that could not be it, or both arms would be moving. The left arm of Selene halted about three feet from Alasa’s dangling form. From the hand billowed a jet of white cloud—and the girl screamed in utter agony!

Steam! Live, boiling steam, hot enough to sear flesh from bone! Again Mason fought with his captors—and again they subdued him.

The hissing from above stopped. The steam had been on for only moments, but already Alasa’s white body was flushed to a deep pink.

The image’s arm swung back, lifted. The other arm descended slowly, with a ponderous creaking of gears. No steam issued from the metal palm, but Alasa’s form writhed in pain, while a blast of chill air blew over Mason.

The torture of boiling steam, alternated with currents of icy, frigid air! This would be no quick death for Alasa, but a lingering hell of torment unendurable. She was sobbing softly, low moans of pain that made Mason feel sick and giddy.

“Nirvor!” he said urgently. “For God’s sake, stop it! I’ll do anything—”

“You are too late,” the priestess whispered. In her jet eyes was torture-lust; on her face was stamped the cruelty of the beast. Her heritage, the leopard stigmata, was ruling now.

“Too late, Kent Mason! She shall die, and the others—but more quickly than you. Not for many moons shall you perish, and before you do you shall know the deepest pits of pain…”

Erech snarled a lurid oath. “Ma-zhon! Cannot you get free? These cursed ropes are too strong for me!”

Murdach’s thin face was a pale, grimy mask of hopelessness. “They’ve destroyed the time-ship,” he called. “Greddar Klon wrecked it.”

Nirvor touched the lever again; once more the arm of the goddess began its slow descent. But before the live steam could jet forth there came an interruption. Into the chamber, through the open bronze doors, drifted a shimmering, transparent ovoid.

The time-ship of the Master! And within it—Greddar Klon!