The Time Trap (6 page)

“Alasa!” he called again.

The girl did not heed. Her body glistening with perspiration, she flung herself on Mason, fingers clawing, teeth seeking his throat. He tried to roll over, but could not.

A sharp pain lanced through his neck. He felt the warm stickiness of blood trickling across his skin.

Agonizingly the girl’s teeth drove deeper…

Dimly, through a red haze, Mason realized that the girl’s weight no longer bore him down. Two plant-men held her writhing body in their tentacles, dragging her toward the door. A trickle of blood wormed from her lips. In silence she struggled, striving to break free.

The Gorichen pulled her outside. As Mason watched he saw her body suddenly sag limply in unconsciousness. A pang darted through him. Was Alasa—dead?

The same idea had come to the plant-men. Tentacles were waved excitedly. They lowered the girl to the floor, examining her carefully. A movement of Alasa’s arm reassured Mason; the girl tried feebly to get to her feet.

The Gorichen dragged her back to Mason’s prison. They thrust her within it. Again the door was shut.

Alasa ran to the man.

“Kent! What happened?”

“You—” Mason hesitated. In the girl’s eyes he read the knowledge that she remembered nothing of her nightmare attack on him. The madness of the plant-men had passed from her brain. “Nothing much,” he finished. “Can you untie me, Alasa?”

She bent forward, fumbled at the metal ropes. Would the Gorichen permit her to free the man?

At last the task was finished. Mason got to his feet, rubbing his legs to restore circulation. He went quickly to the door, kicked it tentatively.

The plant-men outside seemed to watch undisturbed.

Again Mason kicked the glass, but it did not shatter. He crashed his shoulder against it, but only bruised his arm. The cell was empty, and there was nothing he could use as a weapon.

A cry from Alasa made him turn. She was pointing to a corner of the cell, where walls joined ceiling. Greenish-white, a plume of vapor was entering the prison, coiling ominously in the still air.

Fear gripped Mason. He sprang forward, tried to reach the valve. If he could manage to stuff it closed—but it was too high. Baffled, he retreated to the door and renewed his onslaught on it.

But the substance, tougher than steel, would not yield. Mason paused only when he could scarcely see the door through a thickening cloud of greenish mist. Alasa touched his arm.

“Kent? What is happening?”

“I don’t know,” he said slowly. “They’re experimenting on us. What they expect—well, I just don’t know. Maybe it’ll kill us. If it does, I hope it’s a quick death.”

With a soft little cry Alasa moved close to Mason, and he put protecting arms about her. She buried her face on his shoulder, and for a while they stood there, while the green mists thickened—

There came a time when Mason was completely blinded. Oddly he had no trouble with his breathing. There was a slight exhilaration, due, he thought, to oxygen in the strange gas, but he was not discommoded. Perhaps the vapor—admittedly experimental—would have no effect on human beings.

He dropped to the floor, cradling the girl in his arms. In that blind emerald emptiness they waited, and Mason soothed and calmed Alasa as best he could. In spite of himself his pulses mounted at the nearness of the girl’s warm, satiny body. The weird gas, he knew, was exciting him; yet the madness grew on him. And Alasa, too, felt the intoxicating effect. Her hands crept up, touched Mason’s hair. She drew down his head, guiding his lips in the green blindness till they touched her own. Flame of dark passion blazed up within Mason…

Desperately he fought it down. The girl’s breathing mingled with his own, hoarse and uneven. His fingers touched the silken smoothness of rounded flesh, and the touch was like fire. Suddenly his muscles were weak as water.

“Alasa!” he whispered. “
Alasa!
”

In a surge of newfound strength he pressed the girl’s form against him, sought her lips. Fantastic visions flashed through his mind. Weird madness of the plant-men’s poisoned gas…

Alasa seemed to slide away, to vanish in a green-lit abyss. She was gone. Mason was alone. The clouds whirled about him, and very faintly he heard a distant throbbing, steadily growing louder. With the portion of his brain that remained sane he knew that this was unreal, a drug-born hallucination, as the deep pounding roared louder in his ears and dark shadows moved slowly down the emerald distances. Clearer the shadows grew, and clearer … Bat-winged horrors that mocked and tittered obscene laughter as they raced down on him … and ever the drumming roar grew deeper, louder, crashing like the tocsin of a demon in his ears…

Faster the green mists swirled. They were a whirlwind of chaotic, blinding brilliance. The devils danced a grotesque saraband, screaming a mocking chant.

It swelled to a frightful crescendo of sound and motion that rocked Mason’s giddy senses. He felt blackness creeping up and overwhelming him.

And it was with gratitude that he sank down into deepest unconsciousness!

Slowly Mason awoke, with a blinding headache and an acrid, unpleasant taste in his mouth. He opened his eyes, stared up at the transparent roof of his prison. He was still imprisoned in the crystal cage, but the green gas had been pumped out. Alasa’s still body lay beside him. Head swimming, Mason tried to revive her. He stripped off his cloak, wrapped it about the girl.

A grating overhead made him look up. The roof of the cage was sliding aside, leaving a gap four feet wide, running the length of the prison. Plant-men were busy with a kind of crane, swinging its burden, an enigmatic metal block, into place so that it could be dropped into the two human’s prison. There came an interruption.

The Gorichen sprang into frenzied activity. Mason could not interpret their thoughts, but he sensed sudden, deadly danger. Frantically the plant-men went racing toward the corridor that led into the upper world. A stray thought-fragment flashed into Mason’s mind.

“The Deathless Ones! They have broken the gateway—”

In five minutes the cavern was deserted. Now, if ever, was a chance to escape. Mason looked up once more. The smooth sides of the cell were unscalable. But above, the gap in the roof hung the metallic block from the crane’s arm, too high to be reached—unless—

A rope? Mason wore only the loincloth Erech had given him in Al Bekr, and neither that nor the cloak would support his weight. His glance fell on the metal ropes that had bound him, now discarded in a mound on the floor, and Mason knew he had solved the problem. If only they were long enough!

Picking them up, he paused to examine Alasa. Already assured of her safety, it was with relief that he saw the girl’s lashes flutter, and her golden eyes open. She saw Mason.

“Oh, Kent! Help me up!” She clutched his arm, got unsteadily to her feet. “We’re not dead, it seems. I thought we were both slain and in the Pit of Abaddon—”

“Maybe you’re right about the last,” Mason said grimly. He told her what had happened. “If I can loop the rope over that metal block, we can climb out, I think.”

“Can you do it?”

He shook his head doubtfully. “I can try…”

But only after repeated attempts did Mason manage to loop the doubled end of the metal cord over the suspended block. Then a careless move undid his work, and for another ten minutes he tried, a fury of apprehension mounting within him, till at last the anxious work was done. The two ends of the rope hung down within the cell. Mason knotted them together.

“I’ll go first. Then I’ll pull you up—”

The metal cord was slippery, scoring Mason’s skin. He twisted his legs about it, fought his way up, while Alasa held the rope steady from below. And at last he reached the roof of the cell, swung on to it, sweating with exertion.

“Hurry!” he told the girl. Distant sounds of conflict made him fear that the cavern would not be isolated for long.

His muscles, weary with exertion and lack of food, cracked and strained as he hauled Alasa painfully to his side. But it was easier thereafter. They slid down to the floor of the cavern, and swiftly made for the passage that led to freedom.

“It’s the only way out, apparently,” Mason said, glancing around. “Hold on! There’s something I want.”

He retrieved a bar of silvery metal, longer than his arm, that would make a formidable bludgeon. He tested it with a vicious swing that smashed the cryptic gears of a machine.

“Good! It isn’t soft or brittle. This’ll help, Alasa!”

The girl responded by picking up a smaller bar for herself. Battle-light glowed in her golden eyes. She hurried at Mason’s side, the cloak occasionally flaring to reveal the pale flesh of her thighs.

But before they reached the passage-mouth a battling horde spewed from it, struggling in insane conflict. Swiftly Mason caught the girl, drew her down out of sight. Crouching, they watched.

The Gorichen were fighting for their lives. And their enemies were—

The Deathless Ones! Icy cold crawled down Mason’s back as he saw the invaders, creatures that were unmistakably human beings, yet more alien to him than the grotesque plant-men. For the Gorichen were normal products of evolution, and the Deathless Ones, Mason sensed, were not.

They were the living dead. In their bodies dwelt life undying, forms that had once been tall and stalwart and godlike in their beauty. Even now some remnant of past splendor lingered, made dreadful by the foul corruption that had overtaken the Deathless Ones.

The name itself explained much. They were men who had conquered death—but not disease! Not—corruption!

All the hideous plagues of mankind had burst into foul ripening on the bodies of the Deathless Ones. None was whole. Loathsome gaping wounds and sores showed the flesh and bone beneath. Tatters of granulated flesh hung in ribbons from some. There were unspeakable skull-faces glaring blindly, and there were mutilations from which Mason turned away, sickened.

Man had conquered death—and, too late, had discovered his error.

The Deathless Ones seemingly could not be injured. Scores of the Gorichen would leap upon an enemy, bearing him down by their weight. And presently the pile of struggling figures would fall away, and show that at the bottom the Deathless One had been busy—feeding.

But they found the ship at last, almost by chance. Its silvery surface glowed like a flame in the gray, dull plain. It seemed hours before they reached it.

And it was empty. Murdach and Erech had vanished. There were signs of struggle, and a pool of dried blood on the floor. In the mud outside a confused track led toward the east. Frowning, Mason swung shut the door and turned to the controls.

“I can move the ship, Alasa. Maybe we can find Erech and Murdach. That spoor’s pretty clear.”

The girl wrapped her cloak more closely about her slender body. “Do so, Kent.” She found a flask of water and offered it to Mason before she drank.

Slowly the craft rose, drifted on above the waste, following the track. On the horizon a spire rose, growing taller as they advanced. It was a cyclopean crag—not the work of nature. It was too regular, Mason realized, a great cylindrical shaft that thrust itself from the gray empty plain into the gray sky, flat-topped, desolate and colossal.

“They may be in that,” Mason suggested. “See if you can find some weapons, Alasa.”

Presently the girl gave him Murdach’s egg-shaped projector. “It worked on the metal men,” she told him. “Whether it will succeed in killing living beings I do not know.”

“Well, it’s better than nothing. I still have my club.” Mason glanced down at the metal bar.

The surface of the tower was, perhaps, two miles across, and quite flat. There was an odd flickering in the air above it, and once or twice Mason caught a fugitive glimpse of bright color that flashed out from the gray desolation of the tower and was gone. In the exact center was a round, black opening, and toward this Mason lowered the ship slowly.

He landed on the rim—almost losing control of the craft in his surprise. For directly beneath him, springing out of empty nothingness, loomed a great granite boulder! It was twenty feet high, and he was slanting toward it, paralyzed with astonishment and horror. With a grating crash the ship landed.

The shock almost threw him from his feet. The boulder—was gone! He followed the direction of Alasa’s astonished gaze, turned, and saw the boulder behind the ship. Apparently they had passed through it as though it were a phantom.

Nor was this all. All around, where he had seen nothing but a flat, metallic surface from the air, was a wilderness of tumbled, riven rock. To all sides towered the great boulders, and overhead a blazing
white
sun glared down.

“Good lord!” Mason gasped. “We haven’t moved in time! What’s happened?”

“Magic,” Alasa said, solving the problem to her own satisfaction. “Do you think Erech and Murdach are here?”

“If they are, they flew in.” As Mason spoke he realized his guess was not too far-fetched. He had seen creatures flying in the air—perhaps the very beings that had captured the vanished pair.

“I hope Erech is not dead,” the girl murmured. “Shall we search, Kent?”

Nodding, Mason opened the port, stepped out, followed by the girl. He approached the great rock and tried to touch it. His hand passed through the brown, rugose surface as though it did not exist.

“It’s a mirage,” Mason said suddenly, with conviction. “An unbelievably perfect one! Three-dimensional! Artificially created, I’m sure. Look at your feet, Alasa.”

The girl’s slim ankles were hidden, seemingly, in gray, slate-like rock. But she stepped forward without hindrance. Mason moved to her side, felt the smooth surface of the flat tower top beneath him. He got down and felt the cold metal with his hands. Then, smiling a little, he plunged first his hand and then his head into one of the great phantom boulders, and found himself instantly in profound darkness. He heard Alasa cry out.

He moved back, and there was the white sun pouring down its non-existent, heatless rays, and all around was the tumbled wilderness of jagged rock.

“Your head,” the girl said shakily. “It—vanished!”

Mason remembered he had seen no plant or animal life on the surface of the planet. Possibly the Gorichen were the only food of the Deathless Ones…

The struggle swept away from the tunnel-mouth. With a whispered command Mason gripped Alasa’s arm, sprang out from concealment. They heard a dreadful skirling cry go up, heard feet thudding in pursuit. A hand closed on Mason’s arm; he whirled; struck out blindly with his weapon, felt unclean flesh pulp under the blow. The grip fell away and was gone.