Astounding Stories, July, 1931 by Various (ebook reader library TXT) 📖

tudying their bonds, they discovered that they were of rawhide of some sort, obviously from the hides of animals these strange people caught on the lower slopes somewhere. But though they strained and twisted, they could not stretch them, the leather evidently having been cured to a marvelous toughness in these high altitudes.

Precious minutes ticked by as they struggled there, but they were unable to extricate themselves.

But before the end of a half-hour, Stoddard managed to free one arm, and reaching into his jacket he drew forth a small, compact metal object—his cigarette lighter.

Twirling the wheel, while Professor Prescott held his breath, he succeeded in kindling a flame on its tiny wick.

If only he could reach the thongs with it! If only he could burn them through and free himself and the professor before any of the pigmies re-entered that lethal chamber!

Wrenching around now, he applied the flame to his left wrist, which was still bound. As the living fire touched his flesh, he winced with pain, but almost anything was better than the grisly fate that threatened.

Slowly, a little at a time, he endured the torture, straining at each application to see if the thongs would yield.

"Here, let me try it once!" called out Professor Prescott, as he cried aloud with the agony of the ordeal.

"No. I'll get it!" Stoddard gritted his teeth, continued. "There! I think my hand is free!" He struggled. "Yes. Now wait!"

Replacing his cigarette lighter in his pocket, he drew his blistered wrist from its smouldering bonds and struggled feverishly now to undo the lashes about his feet.

Five minutes of that and suddenly he flung them off and stood up.

"Now! Now then, Professor. I'll have you loose in a jiffy!"

Bending over his fettered companion, he worked with frantic haste to untie the rawhide bonds.

Another five minutes and they were both free.

rofessor Prescott stood up and stretched.

"Thank God for small favors!" he exclaimed. "But you, Jack? You must be burned cruelly.

"Forget it!" Stoddard was already wrapping a handkerchief around his wrist. "Now let's see about getting out of here. These little rats all seem to be asleep, and Lord knows where that maniac Krassnov is. Perhaps we can make it. At any rate, we'll give them a run for their money!"

As he spoke, he drew his automatic.

Silently, stealthily, they left that glittering chamber and proceeded down the cavern toward what seemed to be the entrance, guided by their remembrance of the way they had come.

A hundred yards or more they made, seeing no sign of their captors, when suddenly a musical gong rang out.

"We've stepped on one of Krassnov's infernal signals!" cried Stoddard, above the din. "Now there'll be hell to pay!"

And "hell to pay" there was, almost instantly—for before they had taken ten more steps, the cavern ahead was full of small, ghostly figures, jabbering in their shrill voices.

Indifferent now of what he did, their lives at stake, Stoddard blazed away with his automatic, sweeping it from side to side of the stony walls as he fired.[57]

As the shots crashed out, the jabbers turned to shrieks of terror. Several of the pigmies fell. The rest broke their ranks and shrank into the shadows.

"Run!" yelled Stoddard, slipping a new clip into his pistol.

The professor needed no invitation. Gathering his long legs he sped after the younger man, and together they burst from the mouth of the cavern.

utside, in the dazzle of moonlight, they paused for an instant.

"This way!" called Stoddard, racing toward that splintered arena.

They gained it and lunged across it to the shelving slope that reached upward to the narrow, perilous ridge whence they had come.

As they proceeded, the pigmy horde following with incredible swiftness, Stoddard wheeled and fired time and again—and now his shots were answered by the reports of rifles.

"Krassnov and his Cossacks!" he muttered. "Well, we'll give them our heels, unless they hit us."

"And Russians are notoriously bad shots, I understand," panted the professor.

At any rate, they reached the slope and struggled upward toward the ridge, putting themselves presently out of range behind the jagged rocks that loomed on every side.

But just as they were congratulating themselves on their escape, came a dull, reverberating explosion—and as they clung to their insecure footholds, a volcano of snow and ice rose ahead. Thousands of tons of debris avalanched into the chasm below.

tunned, deafened, they looked around.

Down in that pocket where the Thunderbolt had so recently gleamed was one vast chaos, and above, where that razor-back ridge had led across the intervening chasms to safety, was a dazzling void.

To both came the same thought, but Stoddard expressed it first.

"Krassnov—he's dynamited the ridge!" he gasped.

"Then we—we'll never get back now!" echoed Professor Prescott.

"No, but they'll never get us here!"

"Scant comfort, though, when we're pinioned here like a couple of birds with their wings clipped."

"Right; but let's see. Let's figure. We're better off than we were. And what was it Napoleon once said: 'When you can't retreat, advance.' So suppose we—"

"But listen!"

toddard heard. It was the sound of rifle shots. And looking down, he saw a feverish activity surrounding the rocket. Myriads of the pigmies were swarming upon it, while a handful of Cossacks were holding them off.

"Something doing down there, all right!" he muttered. "Looks to me like—why, sure I've got it! That madman has overshot himself, for once! He's buried their precious meteor, in blowing up our ridge, and they've turned on him!"

"I think you're right," agreed Professor Prescott. "Suppose we advance as you say. It looks like a chance."

"Right," said Stoddard.

Slowly, cautiously, they returned down the slope.

When within a hundred yards, they knew they had sized up the situation correctly. With frantic speed, Krassnov was supervising the shoveling out of his rocket from amid the debris; was directing its loading, while the free members of his crew held off the enraged natives who were obstructing them.

Descending even more cautiously now, they neared the scene of activity.

"My plan is this—to get aboard[58] and find out where they're going!" said Stoddard, through shut teeth. "What do you say?"

"Lead on!" said the professor.

So they continued down, neared the resting-place of that strange craft, and, under shelter of the moonlight shadows, stole through the confused ranks surrounding it and crept aboard.

towing themselves into the first likely niche that offered—a narrow cubicle behind a flight of metal stairs—they waited, scarcely daring to breathe for fear of being discovered.

Fifteen minutes passed, a half-hour, when suddenly sounded a rasping of doors that told them the rocket was being sealed.

Then came a roar, as of some mighty blast beating down upon the frozen earth, followed by a lifting, rushing sensation—and they were flung violently to the flooring.

The pressure ceased in a moment, however, to be supplanted by a buoyant, exhilarating sense of flight. It increased, and they judged they must be traveling at great speed.

Glancing at the luminous dial of