Astounding Stories, July, 1931 Part 6

He was speaking ancient Egyptian!

That proved it. These three, who but half an hour before were dead and entombed in the ice, _were_ Egyptians. Trying to cope with his returning bewilderment, Craig racked his brains for remnants of the difficult language. And finally said laboriously:

"Who--who art thou?"

A torrent of words broke from the warrior. Only a few were understandable.

"Shabako--Pharaoh Shabako!" And he repeated Craig's question: "Who art thou?"

The girl was sitting up now, and peering at the American. Her eyes were still tear-filled, for the dead body of the young man was at her side. She cried out a warning, and Craig caught most of it.

"Be careful, Stranger! He will slay thee as he slew Inaros!"

"Answer me! Who art thou?" repeated the warrior angrily. His patience was short; he played with the hilt of his sword.

"I come," said Wesley Craig slowly, groping for words, "from a far country. I found the three of you in this ice--dead. I brought thee back to life."

There was an astounded silence. Then the man who called himself Shabako deliberately cuffed his prisoner on the cheek. "Blasphemer!"

he roared. "To claim the powers of the G.o.ds! Thou shall die for that!

Yea, the ice entrapped me when I was about to slay the guilty Inaros--but our mighty G.o.d Aten restored me to life! Enough! The priests shall deal with thee!"

He jerked the trembling girl to Craig's side, and with a p.r.i.c.k of his sword in their backs made them go forward. The American was too bewildered to think evenly. Why, the G.o.d Aten was the Sun G.o.d!--the divinity Egypt worshipped in five hundred B.C.? How had these warm-blooded people come to the far north? Where did they live? And what fate lay in store for him?

He felt none too optimistic about his position. He knew that it would be two weeks before Somers, at the main base, would become alarmed at his absence. Unless, of course, the mechanic at the sub-base tried to beat his way back on foot, which was only barely possible.... Then he discovered that his automatic was still in its holster; it was slapping against his thighs; and he felt more hopeful.

The girl trudged tiredly at his side. Shabako was a few feet behind, grumbling and urging his captives along.

"Where does he drive us?" Craig asked softly. "What is thy name--and why did he slay thy companion?"

Her frightened eyes slanted towards his face. "To the Temple of the Sun G.o.d, Stranger," she whispered. "And there--" She broke off, to get control of the emotion she was feeling.

"There--what?"

"The G.o.d's awful hands!... Taia is my name. I do not know how I am once again alive, when a short while ago I was dead--but it matters not. I am a priestess of Aten, a virgin of the Temple. Inaros, he--he who lies behind--dared to love me. But a few hours gone he committed sacrilege, hiding in the Temple, so he could watch me. Pharaoh Shabako chanced on him, threatened death to us and pursued us out here. And then of a sudden, when Shabako was hurling his spear, we were entrapped ... and died...."

It was a strange story of forbidden love, one that might have been enacted in age-old times beneath the shadows of the pyramids. Craig began, "How did--" but a harsh voice cut his question short.

"Silence, infidel! Stir thy feet! This ice cools my blood!"

The American's plane, hidden from view behind the hillock, was left farther and farther in the rear, and Wes was surprised to find that he was being driven up the very slopes of the ice-covered hill he had come to investigate.

At the top, he saw that the hill was a volcano, as he had guessed.

There, in the center, was a wide gaping hole from which, in past ages, fiery streams of lava and ashes had belched forth. He was amazed to see that rude steps had been hacked in one side of the great cleft, and that they led sharply downwards. A faint warmth reached him, and he observed that there was but little ice in the crater cup, and none on the rocky walls where the hewn steps led down. It was here that these warm-blooded people lived!

As soon as Taia reached the steps she began to descend them, but Craig wasn't so docile. He told himself that this was his last chance; once below, surrounded by numbers, there might be no opportunity to strike for freedom. His eyes narrowed as he groped for a plan. If he could b.u.t.t his brawny captor, strike him fairly in the solar plexus, and, while he lay helpless, cut his bonds with the sword....

He whirled around. Reverting to football tactics, he tensed his lean, hard body and plunged squarely at Shabako.

The Pharaoh was taken completely by surprise, and went sprawling; but the sword did not pitch from his hand. He had received a stiff, shrewd blow, but only a glancing one, for he had twisted his body at the last second. Now, sputtering with wrath, he scrambled to his feet and whipped back his blade for a killing slice at the American.

It was Taia who saved him, then. In a flash she threw herself against the sword arm and deflected the sweep.

"Wait, O Pharaoh!" she cried breathlessly. "The priests will claim this stranger; 'tis they who must decide his fate! Do not kill him here!"

Shabako's face was livid with wrath; rage choked him; but he paused.

The girl's aptly timed words had told. He was obviously not decided as to what to do. There was a pause, while the sword pointed straight at Craig's chest; then, grumbling, the Egyptian let down his weapon.

"But try no more of thy tricks, dog!" he said harshly. "Else thy death come before its time!"

Taia glanced appealingly at Wes. Her eyes were half-frightened. Craig smiled wryly. "Lead on!" he said.

Years of time fell away with each of their descending steps. Egypt stirred under the dust of the centuries; Egypt lived again, though in a sad mockery of her former glory. It was like a descent into a new world, yet a world that was, at the same time, as old as man's civilization....

Fifty or more steps they trudged down, then came suddenly to two dark corridors, both of which slanted steeply into the bowels of the earth.

The one they took was mystic with deep shadows thrown by flaring oil lamps, cunningly imbedded in the walls of rock; and immediately into Wes's mind came the memory of a corridor he had once walked through in old Egypt, a corridor that pierced to the heart of a pyramid and the somber vault of a mummy who had once been revered as the Pharaoh Aknahton. In his nostrils now there seemed to be that same, musty, age-old smell; the same hushed gloom was about him; his eyes saw dimly on the walls the same rows of hieroglyphs telling of long-past deeds of warriors and priests.

But there the similarity ended. In Egypt it had been a dead Pharaoh; here, though even yet he could hardly believe it, a living one--living by grace of modern science--walked warily behind him, and a living virgin of the temple at his side. The sword of the Pharaoh was p.r.i.c.king his back.

The pa.s.sageway they trudged down became one of many. Others angled from it frequently, all dark, all hushed, all seemingly devoid of people. The volcano--extinct, almost surely, for the warmth was only that of the earth--was honey-combed with corridors. The marvelous ingenuity of the Egyptian race had come into play in fashioning this warm home in the barren arctic wastes. But Craig's ever-alert eyes warned him of what was to come. The characters, the hieroglyphs, the rude forms of Egyptian G.o.ds on the jagged walls were of degenerate character--and always, when degeneration sets in, the cruellest form of worship has been chosen. The worship of Aten, the Sun G.o.d, Wes recalled, was one that demanded human sacrifice....

Still they went down. Savage crevices, split in the days when the volcano roared with fire and gushing lava, were skirted; crude, ladders reached down ever-recurring pits, beneath which there was always another corridor, and always leading down. Craig could not reckon the depth they must be at; he knew that the heat was growing, though, and that his skin was wet with perspiration beneath his furs.

He started to ask Taia the question that ceaselessly tormented him--how her race had come to the arctic; but a p.r.i.c.k from Shabako's sword silenced him.

Then the pa.s.sageway they were in widened. There was a bend just ahead.

Through the gloom came the sonorous chant of many voices.

"The Temple!" whispered Taia.

They turned the bend, and saw, ahead, lit by a thick cl.u.s.ter of oil lamps which threw a broad swathe of yellowish light, two tall columns of corrupt Egyptian design. They framed the entrance to the Sun G.o.d's Temple. The full volume of a chant of worship from inside poured through them.

Shabako's sword brooked no pause. He drove his prisoners straight through.

A host of impressions thronged Wes's bewildered eyes: a huge, misty-dark room, columns lining it--the vague form of a great idol squatting at the far end, ma.s.sed people bowed before it--a weird chant rising into murmuring echoes along the high, dim ceiling. There were priests standing rigidly in front of the idol, their hands stretched high; and every eye was upon them. None saw the three in the doorway until a roar split the drone of worship.

"Way! Way for thy Pharaoh, Shabako the Fourth!"

Shabako had stepped for the moment in front of his prisoners. His sword blade was waved aloft; his bawl rudely interrupted the ceremony.

The chant stopped, and silence fell as the priests whirled around. The worshippers, too, turned and stared at the man who had broken the service with his imperious command.