_5. The Door Opens_
"Where leads the Door?" rolled the chief priest's voice.
Back up to him came the reply of hundreds of voices, muffled by thehoods but loud, echoing to the roof of the cavern in a thunderousresponse.
"_It leads outside our world!_"
The chief priest waited until the echoes died before his deep voicerolled on in the ritual.
"Who taught our forefathers to open the Door?"
Ennis, edging desperately closer and closer to the line of victims, feltthe mighty response reverberate about him.
"_They Beyond the Door taught them!_"
Now Ennis was apart from the other priests on the dais, within a fewyards of the captives, of the small figure of Ruth.
"To whom do we bring these sacrifices?"
As the high priest uttered the words, and before the booming answercame, a hand grasped Ennis and pulled him back from the line of victims.He spun round to find that it was one of the other priests who hadjerked him back.
"_We bring them to Those Beyond the Door!_"
As the colossal response thundered, the priest who had jerked Ennis backwhispered urgently to him. "You go too close to the victims, ChandraDass! Do you wish to be taken with them?"
The fellow had a tight grip on Ennis' arm. Desperate, tensed, Ennisheard the chief priest roll forth the last of the ritual.
"Shall the Door be opened that They may take the sacrifices?"
Stunning, mighty, a tremendous shout that mingled in it worshipping aweand superhuman dread, the answer crashed back.
_"Let the Door be opened!"_
The chief priest turned and his up-flung arms whirled in a signal.Ennis, tensing to spring toward Ruth, saw the two priests at the graymechanism swiftly turn the knurled black knobs. Then Ennis, like allelse in the vast cavern, was held frozen and spellbound by whatfollowed.
The spherical web of wires pulsed up madly with shining force. And up atthe center of the gleaming black oval facet on the wall, there appeareda spark of unearthly green light. It blossomed outward, expanded, anawful viridescent flower blooming quickly outward farther and farther.And as it expanded, Ennis saw that he could look _through_ that greenlight! He looked through into another universe, a universe lyinginfinitely far across alien dimensions from our own, yet one that couldbe reached through this door between dimensions. It was a greenuniverse, flooded with an awful green light that was somehow more akinto darkness than to light, a throbbing, baleful luminescence.
Ennis saw dimly through green-lit spaces a city in the near distance, anunholy city of emerald hue whose unsymmetrical, twisted towers andminarets aspired into heavens of hellish viridity. The towers of thatcity swayed to and fro and writhed in the air. And Ennis saw that hereand there in the soft green substance of that restless city were circlesof lurid light that were like yellow eyes.
In ghastly, soul-shaking apprehension of the utterly alien, Ennis knewthat the yellow circles were _eyes_--that that hell-spawned city ofanother universe was _living_--that its unfamiliar life was single yetmultiple, that its lurid eyes looked now through the Door!
Out from the insane living metropolis glided pseudopods of its greensubstance, glided toward the Door. Ennis saw that in the end of eachpseudopod was one of the lurid eyes. He saw those eyed pseudopods comequesting through the Door, onto the dais.
The yellow eyes of light seemed fixed on the row of stiff victims, andthe pseudopods glided toward them. Through the open door was beatingwave on wave of unfamiliar, tingling forces that Ennis felt even throughthe protective robe.
The hooded multitude bent in awe as the green pseudopods glided towardthe victims faster, with avid eagerness. Ennis saw them reaching for theprisoners, for Ruth, and he made a tremendous mental effort to break thespell that froze him. In that moment pistol-shots crashed across thecavern and a stream of bullets smashed the pulsing web of wires!
The Door began instantly to close. Darkness crept back around the edgesof the mighty oval. As though alarmed, the lurid-eyed pseudopods of thathell-city recoiled from the victims, back through the dwindling Door.And as the Door dwindled, the light in the cavern was failing.
"Ruth!" yelled Ennis madly, and sprang forward and grasped her, hispistol leaping into his other hand.
"Ennis--quick!" shouted Campbell's voice across the cavern.
The Door dwindled away altogether; the great oval facet was completelyblack. The light was fast dying too.
The chief priest sprang madly toward Ennis, and as he did so, the hoodedhordes of the Brotherhood recovered from their paralysis of horror andsurged madly toward the dais.
"The Door is closed! Death to the blasphemers!" cried the chief priestas he plunged forward.
"Death to the blasphemers!" shrieked the crazed horde below.
Ennis' pistol roared and the chief priest went down. The light in thecavern died completely at that moment.
In the dark a torrent of bodies catapulted against Ennis, screamingvengeance. He struck out with his pistol-barrel in the mad melee,holding Ruth's stiff form close with his other hand. He heard the otherdrugged, helpless victims crushed down and trampled under foot by thesurging horde of vengeance-mad members.
* * * * *
Clinging to the girl, Ennis fought like a madman through a darkness inwhich none could distinguish friend or foe, toward the door at the sidefrom which Campbell had fired. He smashed down the pistol-barrel on allbefore him, as hands sought to grab him in the dark. He knew sickeninglythat he was lost in the combat, with no sense of the direction of thedoor.
Then a voice roared loud across the wild din, "Ennis, this way! Thisway, Ennis!" yelled Inspector Campbell, again and again.
Ennis plunged through the whirl of unseen bodies in the direction of thedetective's shouting voice. He smashed through, half dragging and halfcarrying the girl, until Campbell's voice was close ahead in the dark.He fumbled at the rock wall, found the door opening, and then Campbell'shands grasped him to pull him inside.
Hands grabbed him from behind, striving to tear Ruth from him, to jerkhim back. Voices shrieked for help.
Campbell's pistol blazed in the dark and the hands released their grip.Ennis stumbled with the girl through the door into a dark tunnel. Heheard Campbell slam a door shut, and heard a bar fall with a clang.
"Quick, for God's sake!" panted Campbell in the dark. "They'll followus--we've got to get up through the tunnels to the water-cavern!"
They raced along the pitch-dark tunnel, Campbell now carrying the girl,Ennis reeling drunkenly along.
They heard a mounting roar behind them, and as they burst into the maintunnel, no longer lighted but dark like the others, they looked back andsaw a flickering of light coming up the passage.
"They're after us and they've got lights!" Campbell cried. "Hurry!"
It was nightmare, this mad flight on stumbling feet up through the darktunnels where they could hear the sea booming close overhead, and couldhear the wild pursuit behind.
Their feet slipped on the damp floor and they crashed into the walls ofthe tunnel at the turns. The pursuit was closer behind--as they startedclimbing the last passages to the water-cavern, the torchlight behindshowed them to their pursuers and wild yells came to their ears.
They had before them only the last ascent to the water-cavern when Ennisstumbled and went down. He swayed up a little, yelled to Campbell. "Goon--get Ruth out! I'll try to hold them back a moment!"
"No!" rasped Campbell. "There's another way--one that may mean the endfor us too, but our only chance!"
The inspector thrust his hand into his pocket, snatched out his big,old-fashioned gold watch.
He tore it from its chain, turned the stem of it twice around. Then hehurled it back down the tunnel with all his force.
"Quick--out of the tunnels now or we'll die right here!" he yelled.
They lunged forward, Campbell dragging both the girl and the exhaustedEnnis, and emerged a moment later into the great water-
cavern. It wasnow lit only by the searchlight of their waiting cutter.
As they emerged into the cavern, they were thrown flat on the rock ledgeby a violent movement of it under them. An awful detonation andthunderous crashing of falling rock smote their ears.
Following that first tremendous crash, giant rumbling of collapsing rockshook the water-cavern.
"To the cutter!" Campbell cried. "That watch of mine was filled with themost concentrated high-explosive known, and it's blown up the tunnels.Now it's touched off more collapses and all these caverns and passageswill fall in on us at any moment!"
The awful rumbling and crashing of collapsing rock masses was deafeningin their ears as they lurched toward the cutter. Great chunks of rockwere falling from the cavern roof into the water.
* * * * *
Sturt, white-faced but asking no questions, had the motor of the cutterrunning, and helped them pull the unconscious girl aboard.
"Out of the tunnel at once!" Campbell ordered. "Full speed!"
They roared down the water-tunnel at crazy velocity, the searchlightbeam stabbing ahead. The tide had reached flood and turned, increasingthe speed with which they dashed through the tunnel.
Masses of rock fell with loud splashes behind them, and all around themwas still the ominous grinding of mighty weights of rock. The walls ofthe tunnel quivered repeatedly.
Sturt suddenly reversed the propellers, but in spite of his action thecutter smashed a moment later into a solid rock wall. It was a mass ofrock forming an unbroken barrier across the water-tunnel, extendingbeneath the surface of the water.
"We're trapped!" cried Sturt. "A mass of the rock has settled here andblocked the tunnel."
"It can't be completely blocked!" Campbell exclaimed. "See, the tidestill runs out beneath it. Our one chance is to swim out under theblocking mass of rock, before the whole cliff gives way!"
"But there's no telling how far the block may extend----" Sturt cried.
Then as Campbell and Ennis stripped off their coats and shoes, hefollowed their example. The rumble of grinding rock around them was nowcontinuous and nerve-shattering.
Campbell helped Ennis lower Ruth's unconscious form into the water.
"Keep your hand over her nose and mouth!" cried the inspector. "Come on,now!"
Sturt went first, his face pale in the searchlight beam as he divedunder the rock mass. The tidal current carried him out of sight in amoment.
Then, holding the girl between them, and with Ennis' hand covering hermouth and nostrils, the other two dived. Down through the cold watersthey shot, and then the swift current was carrying them forward like amill-race, their bodies bumping and scraping against the rock massoverhead.
Ennis' lungs began to burn, his brain to reel, as they rushed on in thewaters, still holding the girl tightly. They struck solid rock, a wallacross their way. The current sucked them downward, to a small openingat the bottom. They wedged in it, struggled fiercely, then tore throughit. They rose on the other side of it into pure air. They were in thedarkness, floating in the tunnel beyond the block, the current carryingthem swiftly onward.
The walls were shaking and roaring frightfully about them as they wereborne round the turns of the tunnel. Then they saw ahead of them acircle of dim light, pricked with white stars.
The current bore them out into that starlight, into the open sea. Beforethem in the water floated Sturt, and they swam with him out from theshaking, grinding cliffs.
The girl stirred a little in Ennis' grasp, and he saw in the starlightthat her face was no longer dazed.
"Paul----" she muttered, clinging close to Ennis in the water.
"She's coming back to consciousness--the water must have revived herfrom that drug!" he cried.
But he was cut short by Campbell's cry. "Look! Look!" cried theinspector, pointing back at the black cliffs.
In the starlight the whole cliff was collapsing, with a prolonged,terrible roar as of grinding planets, its face breaking and buckling.The waters around them boiled furiously, whirling them this way andthat.
Then the waters quieted. They found they had been flung near a sandyspit beyond the shattered cliffs, and they swam toward it.
"The whole underground honeycomb of caverns and tunnels gave way and thesea poured in!" Campbell cried. "The Door, and the Brotherhood of theDoor, are ended for ever!"
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