A yard at left of us lifted a four-foot high, gently curved barricade, stretching from wall to wall--and beyond it was blackness; an utter and appalling blackness that seemed to gather itself from infinite depths.The rose-glow in which we stood was cut off by the blackness as though it had sub-stance; it shimmered out to meet it, and was checked as though by a blow; indeed, so strong was the suggestion of sinister, straining force within the rayless opacity that Ishrank back, and Marakinoff with me.Not so O'Keefe.Olaf beside him, he strode to the wall and peered over.He beck-oned us.
"Flash your pocket-light down there," be said to me, point-ing into the thick darkness below us.The little electric circle quivered down as though afraid, and came to rest upon a surface that resembled nothing so much as clear, black ice.Iran the light across--here and there.The floor of the corridor was of a substance so smooth, so polished, that no man could have walked upon it; it sloped downward at a slowly increas-ing angle.
"We'd have to have non-skid chains and brakes on our feet to tackle that," mused Larry.Abstractedly be ran his hands over the edge on which he was leaning.Suddenly they hesitated and then gripped tightly.
"That's a queer one!" he exclaimed.His right palm was resting upon a rounded protuberance, on the side of which were three small circular indentations.
"A queer one--" he repeated--and pressed his fingers upon the circles.
There was a sharp click; the slabs that had opened to let us through swung swiftly together; a curiously rapid vibra-tion thrilled through us, a wind arose and passed over our heads--a wind that grew and grew until it became a whistling shriek, then a roar and then a mighty humming, to which every atom in our bodies pulsed in rhythm painful almost to disintegration!
The rosy wall dwindled in a flash to a point of light and disappeared!
Wrapped in the clinging, impenetrable blackness we were racing, dropping, hurling at a frightful speed--where?
And ever that awful humming of the rushing wind and the lightning cleaving of the tangible dark--so, it came to me oddly, must the newly released soul race through the sheer blackness of outer space up to that Throne of Justice, where God sits high above all suns!
I felt Marakinoff creep close to me; gripped my nerve and flashed my pocket-light; saw Larry standing, peering, peer-ing ahead, and Huldricksson, one strong arm around his shoulders, bracing him.And then the speed began to slacken.
Millions of miles, it seemed, below the sound of the un-earthly hurricane I heard Larry's voice, thin and ghostlike, beneath its clamour.
"Got it!" shrilled the voice."Got it! Don't worry!"The wind died down to the roar, passed back into the whistling shriek and diminished to a steady whisper.In the comparative quiet O'Keefe's tones now came in normal volume.
"Some little shoot-the-chutes, what?" he shouted."Say--if they had this at Coney Island or the Crystal Palace! Press all the way in these holes and she goes top-high.Diminish pressure--diminish speed.The curve of this--dashboard--here sends the wind shooting up over our heads--like a windshield.What's behind you?"I flashed the light back.The mechanism on which we were ended in another wall exactly similar to that over which O'Keefe crouched.
"Well, we can't fall out, anyway," he laughed."Wish to hell I knew where the brakes were! Look out!"We dropped dizzily down an abrupt, seemingly endless slope; fell--fell as into an abyss--then shot abruptly out of the blackness into a throbbing green radiance.O'Keefe's fingers must have pressed down upon the controls, for we leaped forward almost with the speed of light.I caught a glimpse of luminous immensities on the verge of which we flew; of depths inconceivable, and flitting through the incred-ible spaces--gigantic shadows as of the wings of Israfel, which are so wide, say the Arabs, the world can cower under them like a nestling--and then--again the living blackness!
"What was that?" This from Larry, with the nearest ap-proach to awe that he had yet shown.
"Trolldom!" croaked the voice of Olaf.
"Chert!" This from Marakinoff."What a space!""Have you considered, Dr.Goodwin," be went on after a pause, "a curious thing? We know, or, at least, is it not that nine out of ten astronomers believe, that the moon was hurled out of this same region we now call the Pacific when the earth was yet like molasses; almost molten, I should say.
And is it not curious that that which comes from the Moon Chamber needs the moon-rays to bring it forth; is it not?
And is it not significant again that the stone depends upon the moon for operating? Da! And last--such a space in mother earth as we just glimpsed, how else could it have been torn but by some gigantic birth--like that of the moon? Da!
I do not put forward these as statements of fact--no! But as suggestions--"I started; there was so much that this might explain--an unknown element that responded to the moon-rays in open-ing the moon door; the blue Pool with its weird radioactivity, and the force within it that reacted to the same light stream--It was not inconceivable that a film had drawn over the world wound, a film of earth-flesh which drew itself over that colossal abyss after our planet had borne its satellite--that world womb did not close when her shining child sprang forth--it was possible; and all that we know of earth depth is four miles of her eight thousand.
What is there at the heart of earth? What of that radiant unknown element upon the moon mount Tycho? What of that element unknown to us as part of earth which is seen only in the corona of the sun at eclipse that we call coro-nium? Yet the earth is child of the sun as the moon is earth's daughter.And what of that other unknown element we find glowing green in the far-flung nebulae--green as that we had just passed through--and that we call nebulium? Yet the sun is child of the nebulae as the earth is child of the sun and the moon is child of the earth.
And what miracles are there in coronium and nebulium which, as the child of nebula and sun, we inherit? Yes--and in Tycho's enigma which came from earth heart?
We were flashing down to earth heart! And what miracles were hidden there?
