Two Thousand Miles Below by Charles Willard Diffin

Author:Charles Willard Diffin [Diffin, Charles Willard]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Science fiction
Published: 2009-09-11T16:00:00+00:00

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CHAPTER XVI

The Metal Shell

She was motioning for him to follow.

ean Rawson had passed through a nerve-racking experience. It was not a question of courage—Rawson had plenty of that—but there are times when a man's nervous system is shocked almost to insensibility by sheer horror. Not at once did he realize what was happening.

The Voice of the Mountain heralds Rawson's Messianic coming to the White Ones in their hour of need.

Perhaps it was the sound of pursuit that jarred him out of the fog clouding all his thoughts and perceptions. It was like the sound of fighting animals—cat-beasts—whose snarls had risen to screaming, squalling shrieks of rage. It was sheer beastliness, the din that echoed through that narrow passage.

Ahead of him the girl was running. She held a light in her hand. Soft wrappings of cloth hung loosely from her waist; like her golden hair, it was flung backward in the strong draft of air against which they were struggling. She was outlined clearly before the red, rock-like masses where her light was falling; she was running swiftly, gracefully, like a wild, woodland nymph.

Two men, their milk-white bodies naked but for the thick folds of their loin cloths, were beside Rawson, helping him along. Two others followed. And, by their haste and their odd whispered words of alarm, he knew that pursuit had not been expected; they must have thought to get away unobserved.

Rawson felt his strength returning. He shook himself free from those who tried to aid him. He was amazed at how easily he ran: his weight was a mere nothing; his efforts were expended in driving his body against the blast of wind. The air seemed dense, thick; he had almost the feeling of forcing himself through water.

Ahead of him the girl darted abruptly through a narrow crack in the wall. Rawson followed—and then began a wild race through a network of connecting passages, a vast labyrinth of caves, more like fractures in this strange red substance which Rawson could think of only as rock, for lack of a more accurate name, until at last there was no sound except that of their own hurrying feet.

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