“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m afraid I’m not going to be much of a help to you. How am I to help you? And how will you go forth?”
“You are to watch over my body when I travel upward to seek the help of those above.”
Dimly, intelligence began to come to me. “Last night,” I murmured, “out there on the plateau, I saw a white line wavering into the sky.”
Fo-Lan nodded. “That was the way,” he said, “made visible by the power of my desire. Soon I shall travel it.”
I leaned forward eagerly, wanting to ask him a score of questions. But Fo-Lan held up his hand for silence. “Have you heard nothing, Eric Marsh?” he said. “All this while it has been growing.”
The moment Fo-Lan mentioned it, I realized that I had heard
something, had been hearing it ever since we had reentered the doctor’s apartment. It was a low humming, a disturbing sound as of a chant, which seemed to well up from far below, and yet seemed equally present from all sides. And at the same time I was conscious of a distinct atmospheric change, something which Fo-Lan did not perhaps notice, since he had been here now for years. It was a growing tension, a pressing, feverish tension in the chill night air. Slowly there grew in me a feeling of great fear; the very air, I felt, was noxious with cosmic evil.
“What is it?” I murmured.
Fo-Lan did not answer. He appeared to be listening intently to the chant or humming sound mounting from below, smiling to himself. Then he looked cryptically at me and abruptly stepped to the outer wall. There he pulled hard at one of the ancient stones in the wall, and in a moment, a large section of the wall swung slowly inward, revealing a dark passage beyond, a secret way leading downward. Fo-Lan came swiftly back toward me, taking up one of the little green lamps with which I had once before come in contact, and lighting it as he spoke to me.
“I have not been idle in these past years. I fashioned that way myself, and only I know of it. Come, Eric Marsh; I will show you what no Tcho-Tcho suspects I have ever seen, what will silence all protest or disbelief in you.”
The stairs which I found myself descending in a few moments led downward along the round wall of a shaft that pierced the earth. Down, down we went, feeling the walls on both sides of us with our hands. Fo-Lan carried the lamp in one hand, and its greenish glow served as illumination for our perilous journey, for the steps were uneven and steep. As we descended, the sound from below grew noticeably louder. Now the humming sound was frequently cut into by another, the sound of many voices murmuring together in some long-forgotten language.
Then, abruptly, Fo-Lan stopped. He gave the lamp to me, and
with a brief caution to me not to speak, gave his attention to the wall before him. Raising the lamp above my head, I saw that the stone steps went no farther, that we were, in fact, within two feet of solid masonry. Suddenly Fo-Lan reached back and extinguished the light, and at the same time I was conscious of an opening in the wall before us, where Fo-Lan had moved aside an old stone. “Look down, and with care,” he whispered. Then he stepped aside, and I peered downward.
I looked into a gigantic cavern, illuminated by a huge green lamp seemingly suspended in space, and by at least a hundred smaller ones. The first thing that caught my eye was the horde of Tcho-Tcho people prostrate on the floor; it was from them that the low murmuring sound was coming. Then I saw an upright figure among them. It was that of a Tcho-Tcho man, slightly taller than the others, I thought, disfigured by a hump on his back, and incredibly old. He was stalking slowly forward, supported by a crooked black stick. Behind me, Fo-Lan, noticing the direction of my glance, murmured, “That is E-poh, leader of the Tcho-Tcho people; he is seven thousand years old!” I could not help turning in utter surprise. Fo-Lan motioned forward. “You have seen nothing. Look beyond them, beyond E-poh, in the half-darkness forward, but do not cry out.”
My gaze swept those prostrate figures, passed beyond E-poh, and began to explore the dusk beyond. I think I must have been looking for some moments at the thing that crouched there before I actually realized it; that was because the creature was so large. I hesitate to write of it, for I can blame no one for not believing me. Yet it was there. I saw it first because my gaze fixed upon the green gleaming from its eyes. Then, abruptly, I saw it entirely. I thank Providence that the light was not strong, that only its vaguest outlines were clear to me, and I regret only that my innate doubt of Fo-Lan’s strange story made the shock of this revelation accordingly sharper.
For the thing that crouched in the weird green dusk was a living mass of shuddering horror, a ghastly mountain of sensate, quivering flesh, whose tentacles, far-flung in the dim reaches of the subterranean cavern, emitted a strange humming sound, while from the depths of the creature’s body came a weird and horrific ululation. Then I fell back into Fo-Lan’s arms. My mouth opened to cry out, but I felt the doctor’s firm hand clapped across my lips, and from a great distance I seemed to hear his voice.
Fo-Lan’s story was true!
I found myself suddenly in Fo-Lan’s apartment. I know I must have climbed the long winding steps, but I do not remember climbing them, for the tumultuous thoughts that troubled me and the hideous memory of the thing I had seen served to drive from my mind all consciousness of what I was doing.
Fo-Lan came quickly away from the wall and stood before me, his face triumphant in the green lamplight. “For three years I have helped them penetrate into the earth, into the caverns below, have helped them in their evil purpose; now I shall destroy them, and my dead brother will be avenged!” He spoke with an intensity I had not imagined him capable of.
He did not wait for any comment from me. Passing beyond me, he put the lamp down on a small table near the door. Then he went into the bedroom and lit another lamp; I saw its green light on the wall as he came once more into the room where I stood.
“Mind,” said Fo-Lan as he stood before me, “is all-powerful. Mind is everything, Eric Marsh. This evening you saw things of which you hesitated to speak, even before you saw the thing in the cavern below — Lloigor. You saw leaves move on trees — and they moved by the power of evil intelligences far below them, deep in the earth — a living proof of the existence of Lloigor and Zhar.
“E-poh has a mind of great power, but the knowledge I have endows me with greater power despite his tremendous age. Long hours I have sought to penetrate cosmic space, and so powerful has my mind become that even you could see the thought-thread that wavered upward from Alaozar last night! And mind, Eric Marsh, exists independent of body.
“I will wait no longer. Tonight I will go forth, now, while the worship is in progress. And you must watch my body.”
Colossal as his plan was, I could only believe. What I had seen during the short space of my visit was unbelievable, impossible, yet was!
Fo-Lan continued. “My body will rest on the bed in the chamber beyond, but my mind will go where I wish it with a speed incomparable to anything we know. I will think myself on Rigel, and I shall be there. You must watch that none disturbs my body while I am gone. It will not be long.”
Fo-Lan drew from his voluminous robe a small pistol, which I recognized immediately as one I had been carrying in my pack. “You will kill any one who tries to enter, Eric Marsh.”
Beckoning me to follow him, Fo-Lan led the way into his chamber, and despite my feeble protest, stretched himself on the bed. Almost at once his body went rigid, and at the same moment I saw a gray outline of Fo-Lan standing before me, a smile on his thin lips, his eyes turned upward. Then he was gone, and I was alone with his body.
For over an hour I sat in Fo-Lan’s apartment, my terror mounting with each second. Only in that hour was I capable of approaching in my thoughts the cataclysmic horror which confronted the world if Fo-Lan were unsuccessful in his daring quest. Once, too, while I sat there, pattering footsteps halted beyond the outer door; then, to my unspeakable relief, passed on. Toward the end of my watch, the abrupt cessation of the chanting sounds from below, followed by the noises of movement throughout the island city, indicated that the worship was over. Then for the first time I left the chamber to take up my position at the outer door, where I stood, gun in hand, waiting for the interruptions my terrified mind told me must come.
But I never had cause to use the weapon, for suddenly I heard the sound of feet behind me. I whirled — and saw Fo-Lan! He had
