Beyond him, beyond the square mouth of the pit, yawned a dark, cavernous abysm.
Far distant in it he could glimpse rugged walls of dark rock, and part of a machine that must have been fantastically huge, faintly illuminated with a ghastly crimson light.
A curious sickness came upon Bob Star as he tried to move, as if every tissue of his body clamored for the certainty and the orientation of weight.
Yearning for something to cling to, he floundered about in the air until his foot kicked the wall.
The action had surprising results.
It sent him hurtling, head foremost, across the fifty feet to the opposite wall.
Dismayed, he flung out his arms to fend for his head.
The undue force of the gesture sent him spinning back across the pit.
Giles Habibula reached away from the circle of rods, to catch his ankle. “Better cling to this bit of rail, lad,” he advised absently. “Or you’ll be smashing out your wits, before you ever get them back. For we’re almost at the center of this fearful planet, and nearly free of gravity. One step could carry you a mile—”
“At the center of the planet?”
He shook himself dazedly.
“Tell me, Giles—”
The old man had returned to his business of twisting and sliding the scarlet rods.
“Ah, lad,” he wheezed, abstractedly, “you’ve been out for a mortal long time—the ray from that creature struck your old wound; I think it almost killed you.”
“The ship?” Bob Star asked eagerly.
“Did we take the ship?”
“Ah, so, we took the ship.”
He slid the rods in and out, listening with his ear against the case.
“Thanks to the mad courage you had put into the prisoners, lad—they overwhelmed our guards like a wild sea.
Aided, too, by the unrewarded genius of a poor old soldier in the Legion.
And by the miner, Hector Valdin; he led them on—until he died.”
The absent voice had faded, and Bob Star asked:
“If we’re at the center of the planet, how did we get here?”
“We were already in the cavernous space outside, when we took the ship,” said Giles Habibula.
“The core of the planet is a hive of the Cometeers and their cattle.”
He shuddered, but oddly his thick fingers didn’t seem to pause or tremble.
“When the ship was ours,” he went on, “Jay and the lass took command.
They disembarked us here, an hour ago.
Our comrades went on with the ship, to seek some refuge in the caverns.
Ever since, I’ve been toiling with this lock.
“It’s nothing simple!
The number of possible combinations would make your head spin, lad.
To open it by trial and error would take from now until the sun grows cold.
Ah, me! the Cometeers are clever—
“But the lass bade me open it, lad.
She says their inner stronghold is somewhere beyond, where they guard the weapon that we must take.”
Bob Star nodded—and bit his lip.
“I’m sorry, if my talk has bothered you—”
“Not so, lad,” protested the old man.
“Talk but oils the working of my precious genius.
But this lock is a fearful test for it.
Never such a riddle built into cold metal, lad.
And never was old Giles so unfit to draw out the answer.
For he’s ill, lad.
The stark hand of death is close upon him.”
But his fingers didn’t cease their labor.
Bob Star glanced at Jay Kalam and Kay Nymidee, who still were busy over the intricate thing in the red metal case.
“What’s that?‘”
“Some blessed contraption Jay tore out of the control room of the ship before we came off.
From the wonderment on his face, I doubt that he knows himself what it is.”