“So much for rule by reason and logic,” September grunted. He was breathing heavily. The run down from the monastery had finally tired even him. But now they were safe on board the Slanderscree and there weren’t enough Brothers in the world to get them off it again. The big man was staring up at the monastery buildings, faint ghosts against the black crags.
“Well, it performed well enough—within their own tight little precepts,” Ethan countered. Behind him, Ta-hoding was sending the crew aloft, yelling dire threats at imagined slackers.
The Slanderscree began to move out of the harbor. Astern, a quartet of soldiers were ungently dumping the Brothers who’d taken the raft earlier. It was more humane than similar actions that had been performed on Terra ages ago, for there was no water for the captives to drown in.
On the other hand, the ice wasn’t especially soft.
The wind blew and the Slanderscree enslaved it, cutting west, then south, to take advantage of the slightest counter-breeze. Ta-hoding didn’t miss many.
A week later they saw the first smoke. It blew steadily to the east, black and sooty and well up in the atmosphere. From there Ta-hoding was able to ignore the compass and follow the black line. They made even better time. It was another two days before they had their first glimpse of The Place-Where-The-Earth’s-Blood-Burns, and another two before the base of the giant volcano came into view.
Mottled brown and black, splashed higher up with ice and snow—fourteen kilometers of vertical hell shrouded in polar ice and rock. It was magnificent, awesome, and a little bit frightening.
“Well, no hallucinations so far,” Ethan mused.
“How,” Colette snapped back, “could you tell the difference?”
Williams voice sounded behind them. “I’d very much like to land.”
Ethan turned. Eer-Meesach was there, too. “Really, Milliken, in light of the past weeks, don’t you think …”
A huge paw came down easily on his shoulder. “We did leave without properly fixing the bowsprit, friend Ethan,” said Hunnar. “Nor did the crew receive their promised chance for a rest on shore.”
“You’re not afraid the spirits and goblins will object?”
The knight didn’t smile. He gazed over the ice at the sky-rubbing cone.
“As a cub I might have been. As a younger man I’d have been uncertain. But the wizards have explained to me what it really is, a thing neither supernatural nor inherently inimical, and I am not afraid.”
They followed the jagged shore southward, searching for a place to put in. Hundreds of meters of broken, tortured rock fell in undisciplined cataracts onto the clear ice. But nowhere did it level off.
Just as they rounded the southern tip of the island-mountain, hitting into the wind again, the plutonic crust abruptly gave way to a smooth, level stone beach. Ropy lines of pahoe-hoe marched gently into the frozen sea.
They tied up half into the wind, still protected by the sheltering bulk of the volcano. Ice-anchors were used this time, set with care and precision under Ta-hoding’s experienced watch. Once again the repair crew set about their tasks—for the last time, one hoped.
Considering what they’d gone through the past weeks, though, there were none who blamed the craftsmen for an occasional over-the-shoulder glance. You couldn’t be too sure that the ground would not still deliver up yet another fiendish surprise, hey? So the carpenters and sailweavers worked a little slower, a little more observantly.
Roiling blackness. Distant night-stars of plasmoid terror. Vast spaces unmeasureable. False concepts of life and death. The living dark came, a loathsomeness of long licorice tentacles and soul-draining fangs.
It groped for him in the emptiness, reaching, twisting. He ran faster and faster on a sea of gurgling tar, an oil-sky overhead. The ocean grabbed and tugged at him. Down he looked and saw in horror that it wasn’t a sea at all. He was running on the back of an amorphous amoeba that humped and shook and laughed.
He tried to jump, but now fat greasy pseudopods held him firm. All about the nightmare, shapes flowed up and around. In the middle of each the faces of things not human chuckled and puckered at him.
Black fronds clutched tighter, enveloping, suffocating. He tried to scream and one of the inky ropes dove down his throat, choking him. They crawled over his eyes, under his ears, into his nostrils. Cilia brushed and tickled obscenely.
He couldn’t breathe. He coughed, gagged. The thing in his throat was curling into his belly, swelling, filling him with gravid blackness.
The interior of the cabin was dark, too. But it was a comforting, familiar, prosaic dark—not sticky, not malevolent, not full of nightmare shapes. Despite the cold he was sweating profusely and heaving like he’d just finished marathon.
Shaking, he reached for the lamp, then caught himself. His hand paused in mid-air, drew away slowly. No … no. It was a bad dream. Nothing more. Happens to everyone.
He put both hands on the bed, palms flat against the blankets and furs, and lay down slowly, staring at the bare outline of the ceiling. With a conscious effort he closed his eyes and breathed out, long and low. Then he hunched slowly on his side and fluffed the blanket under his head.
His last thought before falling asleep was that he hadn’t had a nightmare since childhood. He wondered about it, for a second.
Morning light bit like a mosquito. The volcano did not shine or sparkle in the false alpenglow. If anything, the black volcanic rock absorbed the light. Only at upper elevations did ice and snow work to do eye-pleasing things with the rich light.
A dark, brooding ziggurat, the mountain gave no hint of the burning core that steamed in its depths. Even the cloud-scudding black smoke was a cold coal.
There was nothing so palpable as an air of menace about the mountain, but neither was it pleasant to be near. It needed companion mountains, a sibling range around its base, before mere humans could relate to it. Alone, it was as impersonal and alien as a lost moon.
Ethan leaned on the rail and gazed at the ropy beach. He’d almost have preferred to stay on board, but there was always the thin chance that something interesting might turn up. He only stumbled once as they made their way across the ice and onto the rock. Small cause for pride.
On the frozen lava the humans had an advantage over their tran companions. The natives had to pick their way carefully on unclad feet over the nastier sections of aa and scoria.
The two wizards could have gone by themselves. However, someone had to go along to tell the two learned beings when it was time to return to the Slanderscree. Left to themselves, they would wander about the island til dark, get lost, and then there’d be a broken leg or twisted ankle and the hard work of carrying them back to the ship in the dark.
The slopes of the gigantic cone seemed to soar up and up into the opalescent blue until they merged at the artist’s vanishing point. You could tell there was a top only because of the black smoke that issued there from somewhere in the clouds.
Well, they could spend the morning picking around at the rocks in the shelter of the east slope, acquire a few specimens, and return to the ship. The rocks ought to keep Williams and Eer-Meesach occupied and out of trouble until they’d reached Arsudun.
Ethan didn’t expect any surprises—even Williams had enough sense to forgo suggesting an ascent—but he hadn’t counted on the cave.
It was well concealed by rock and low brush as he walked past the entrance. It looked no different from any other section of immolated stone. Only the early morning light shining straight into it gave any hint that it might be larger than the thousands of similar pockets which dotted the lava. He bent and peered inside.
It was large enough for a tran to walk upright in, so he called the others over.
“Fascinating,” said the schoolmaster, staring inside. Before anyone could stop him, the teacher had stepped carefully over a chunk of aa and was standing on the smooth floor of the cave.
“Get out of there, Milliken,” said September. “The whole
business could come down on you any second.”
“Pish-tosh! This is a structure built by nature, not mere man, Mr. September. Once a tube like this has been formed, it will remain so until a violent upheaval cracks the set rock. My dear Eer-Meesach, you must see this!”
“What is it?” The tran wizard had knelt slowly and was staring into the hole now.
Williams’ voice floated back from some ways in. “The walls of the tube are lined with a luminescent lichen or fungi of some sort. I can see quite clearly even though I’m well away from the entrance.” There was a pause. “It appears to extend into the mountain for some distance.”
“Then by all means,” replied Eer-Meesach, scrambling over the lip of the hole, “we must explore further.”
Hunnar looked resignedly at September. “I’d as soon wait here, Sir Skua. But those two would surely lose themselves at the first pairing of passageways.”
The big man dug into a coat pocket and pulled out one of the small compasses from the survival supplies.
“I expect you’re right,” he agreed. “Might as well go myself.”
Hunnar hopped down into the tunnel, followed closely by Budjir and Suaxus. September went next, turned and looked back at Ethan.
“Coming, young feller-me-lad?”
He hesitated. The tunnel did not look especially inviting. But they could be watching from the ship. Colette had already confessed a fear of the dark; it was the only thing that seemed to faze her. Naturally he had to go in.
It was a good thing he had no time to work on the logic of his thinking or he wouldn’t have been terribly happy with the resultant picture.
They walked at a leisurely pace, moving deeper and deeper into the mountain. The walls, ceiling, and floor had been scoured almost slippery smooth. There were places where the ceiling rose to two and three times the height of a tran. And here and there there were vents of green clay. Green clay in volcanic vents. Now, where had he seen that before? He puzzled over it.
The glowing plant life grew no more luxuriantly as they moved down the tunnel, but it didn’t grow dimmer, either. And it supplied enough light to show occasional boulders and rocks that had fallen from the roof (green clay in volcanic vents?). The number was small, Ethan noted gratefully. He moved ahead to listen to the schoolmaster.
“Lava has gone through this passage fairly recently,” Williams explained, “which accounts for the smooth sides.”
“Now that’s a comforting thought,” grinned Ethan. He thought of the millions of tons of hot magma beneath their feet, whose outlet had once been the tube in which they now trod.
After an hour’s hike Hunnar finally declared a halt. The wizards gave no sign of tiring and the tunnel no signs of ending.
“Scientific exploration is all very well and good,” the knight said, crouching against the cold gray wall, “but we’ve brought no provisions with us. I do not believe further exploration of this hole, which could run clear through the mountain, is worth missing the midday meal.”
This opinion was seconded immediately by September, Ethan, and both squires. Outvoted, the two scholars capitulated gracefully.
“I, too, confess to being somewhat wearied and hungered,” admitted Eer-Meesach. “And we seem to have learned all that we might. Yet it would be interesting to know if this tube opens near the central vent itself.”
“I’m cold,” September quipped, “but not that cold.” He sat down across from Hunnar and began flipping pebbles against the far wall.
Ethan took a few steps forward and prepared to rest also. He squinted hard down the tunnel.
“Hey … it does seem to get a little brighter ahead.”
“Your eyes are tired from straining in this light, lad.” The big man glanced down the tunnel without getting up. “Looks the same to me.”
“No, really, it does,” Ethan continued. He took another couple of steps forward. “It does.” He started to walk down the tunnel.
“Don’t go too far,” September warned him. “Don’t go out of voice range. I don’t want you making a wrong turn into some endless maze. If you do, I’m not coming after you, what?”
“Don’t worry, Skua. I’m not going to go far.” The tunnel made a sharp turn to the right, just ahead. That would be far enough.
He turned and stepped into the chamber.
It was larger than the tunnel, perhaps three or four times as wide as the passageway and equally as high. There were no more phosphorescent plants here than behind him, but the light was blinding. Blinding, dazzling, overpowering—and green.
Now he remembered where he’d read of green clay in volcanic vents.
Ozmidine was mined in only two places in the known universe. One was on a tiny island in the middle of a lake on the thranx world of Drax IV. Drax IV was a hell world, a steaming, sweltering moldy ball of corruption that would drive a man insane if the Po’pione or Turabisi Delphius didn’t get him first. The thranx could survive the heat and humidity, but the local flora and fauna made no species distinctions when it came to dinner.
But there was ozmidine there, so they stayed.
The other lode had been found on Mantis, one of the first worlds settled by humanity after the discovery of the KK-drive. It had been discovered, not by lonely prospector, nor by mining combine, nor by official survey. A driller pushing a new subway tunnel through the heart of downtown Locust had come on the first deposits. Now there was an ugly, dark, smoky hole in the middle of the planet’s capital city. But the inhabitants didn’t mind. It made them rich.
On the scale of comparative hardness for minerals, diamond is the hardest at 10. Or rather, it was until ozmidine was found to have a hardness rating of about 14. And the crystals of the raw mineral were of a deep green shading to violet that made the finest emeralds look like soapstone.
Ozmidine was only found in igneous rocks, in vents of greenish clay.
Ethan stumbled forward, his eyes adjusting to the light thrown back at him from an endless hall of green hexagonal crystal. Ozmidine hung from the ceiling like stalactites. It grew outward from the walls like decorative swords, filled the floor with spikes and crushed crystals from the ceiling.
He’d once seen a picture of the Green Nova. The Green Nova was a piece of pure ozmidine from the Drax IV mine. It was as big as a man’s fist and had taken thirteen months to cut and facet by the finest stonecutter on Terra, using laser and ozmidine cutting tools. It had no price.
He stumbled, wincing at the pain in his toe. He’d tripped over a chunk of clear ozmidine the size of a basketball.
This wasn’t wealth—there was no way, no means of comparing this to normal human pursuits. The ownership of whole worlds lay in this tunnel. Power to alter the structure of governments, even enough to shake the Church itself.
“Hey, young fella! …” came September’s voice. “It’s time to … “
Dimly, Ethan recognized the voice of September and the others behind him. But he didn’t turn. He knew what they looked like.
Something shook underfoot. He felt it, ignored it.
“My dear Eer-Meesach, this is wonderful!” Williams whispered. “Such symmetry of form, such amazing variety …” He frowned. “Was that a tremor?”
“EEYAHOO!” bellowed September. He grabbed Ethan and danced in a circle while Ethan hung on for dear life, his feet centimeters off the floor. “Gods and Devils and broken hearts, and broken names, and all the lost promises down the trail of time!” He stopped, let Ethan down. Ethan felt himself to make sure no bones were broken.
He grinned up at the other. “My sentiments exactly.”
September bent to pick up a flawless piece of crystal as big as his thumb. He landed on his rump.
The earth shook.
Shards of priceless gemstone, any one worth a king’s life, pelted Ethan’s unprotected face. When the shaking stopped, he felt himself gingerly. He’d received some very expensive scratches.
Below, a steady rumbling had begun. There were demons afoot in the
mountain.
Williams was backing toward the tunnel proper, a little of his scientific detachment gone. He watched the walls warily.
“I … I do believe it would be best if we returned to the ship. I think something may happen.”
His words penetrated the green haze surrounding Ethan. He was dimly aware that September was shaking him.
“Better do what he says, young feller. We can come back tomorrow … maybe. Time to leave.”
“Leave …?” Ethan stuttered. “Return …?” He looked up at the big man, blinked. “Leave this … no, absolutely no!”
“Now young feller …” began September.
“No, I won’t … I found it, dammit … I’m staying … you go!”
September chuckled. “All right, lad, have it your way.” He turned and walked past Ethan … and clipped him neatly on the jaw as he passed. He knelt, scooped up the slumping body, and threw it over his shoulder.
“Let’s go.” He took a last glance over his shoulder, muttered so low no one could hear him, “Shana … forgive me,” and started out of the tunnel.
The run back to the raft turned into a nightmare, with groanings and heavings and cyclopean creakings alternating with distant detonations. One was powerful enough to throw them off their feet. It bloodied September’s nose. He uttered a few choice curses, hefted Ethan higher on his shoulder, and continued forward at a jog.
If anything, their emergence from the cavern into clean daylight inspired them to move faster. They were met at the shoreline by Balavere and a party from the ship.
“All be thanked!” said the old General, clasping Hunnar by the shoulders. “We thought the mountain had got you.” Then he noticed the scrapes and bruises and Ethan’s unmoving form. “What did happen in there?”
“I shall tell you later, honored General,” replied Hunnar, “if I still believe in it myself, then.”
There was an awesome roar behind them and they were nearly thrown again.
“But if that interesting talk is to take place, we must depart this accursed island now. Quickly!”
They hurried to the ice. Two of the soldiers carried Ethan between them. They moved much faster on the ice than September could have.