Acolytes of Cthulhu

THE EARTH-BRAIN

BY EDMOND HAMILTON

LANDON I HAD NOT SEEN FOR TWO YEARS BEFORE THAT DAY when New York knew fear. That day is remembered yet, with its sudden and unexpected earth-tremor that shook the island shortly after noon, swaying proud towers and shaking windows to fragments and loosing a storm of panic-stricken cries that could not drown the long, grinding roll of the shifting earth beneath.

I was in the midtown section that noon, and had been struggling through the hurrying crowds when the shock and quivering of the ground turned them suddenly into a white-faced, hoarse-voiced and terror-smitten mob. For five minutes they and all New York’s millions tasted fear as the streets quivered beneath them. Then the tremor subsided and I saw Landon.

He was standing almost against me in the throng and his face was so strange that for a moment it held me without recognition. For Landon’s face was a mask of fear, not the panic that was passing from those about me but a fear beyond fear, a deep and alien dread. His dark eyes looked out of that white and twisted face as though into vistas of hell. And then I recognised him.

“Clark Landon!” I cried. “Why didn’t you let me know you were back? I didn’t even know you were in the country!”

His dark eyes surveyed me with a fixedness that chilled me. “I landed only two hours ago, Morris,” he said. “Two hours ago, and you see what has happened already.”

“What’s the matter, Landon?” I asked anxiously. “This earth-tremor hasn’t upset you? I shouldn’t think it would bother you after the polar quake you went through—I read about it at the time.”

“Yes, that polar quake,” he said softly. “You read that Travis and Skeel were killed in that but I wasn’t? I wasn’t killed, no; but I’ve been in all the quakes that have been racking earth since then, in Norway and Russia and Egypt, in Italy and England and now here in New York.”

I was amazed. “Why, one would think earthquakes are following you!” I exclaimed. “But they say all these tremors and quakes are due to the big polar cataclysm you went through—they say it touched off things in some way and so caused the quakes that have been going on all over earth ever since that one.”

“Ever since that one,” Landon repeated slowly. “Yes, they’ve been going on ever since that one.”

He was looking beyond me, lost in a strange abstraction. By then the streets about us were near normal, the city’s millions losing their brief panic and taking up again the swift routine that even a near-earthquake could not disturb for long. Hurrying passers-by were already shouldering against the two of us.

“Look here, Landon,” I said, “You don’t look half well at the moment. My rooms are only a few blocks from here—come up and sit a while and you’ll feel better.”

“I’m afraid it will take more than that to make me feel better, Morris,” he said.

Yet he came, and when we were seated at a window of my apartment with the mill-race of a cross-town street’s traffic below, he seemed to relax a little. Sitting opposite him, I strove to analyse the strange dread that still seemed holding him, but was unable to do more than to say to myself that that dread was real and that Landon had apparently changed completely.

The Clark Landon I had known had hardly known the meaning of fear, a lithe dark fellow to whom danger spelled delight. His twin and equal interests had been geology and adventure. His inherited money had enabled him to combine the two in expeditions in which he and his inseparable comrades in science and adventure, David Travis and Herbert Skeel, had investigated the world’s far corners.

Landon and Travis and Skeel had departed over two years before, on another such expedition, one intended to take them into the north polar region. Landon had announced their purpose as the investigation of certain geological oddities believed existent not far from the pole, but all knew that it was the lure of a new adventure that drew him and his companions as much as any hope of adding to geological knowledge.

The three had sailed in a special ice-breaking schooner Landon had chartered, which had taken them as far as the northern shores of Grant Land. From there Landon and Travis and Skeel had started north with two dog-sledges and two Eskimos, believing that with their equipment they could reach their objectives a few hundred miles south of the pole, and return without difficulty.

Ten days after Landon and his party started north from the ship there occurred that terrific earthquake that shook the whole polar region with unprecedented violence, and was registered by the world’s seismographs as centring not far south of the pole itself. The waiting schooner was almost destroyed, but escaped the shifting ice and continued to wait, though with scant hope, for the party.

That first awful quake was followed in the next two weeks by a succession of less violent upheavals and tremors, trending southward. Then Landon and one of the Eskimos reappeared. The latter died the next day. Landon himself was far gone but was revived and could tell those on the ship that the great quake had indeed centred where they had been and that Travis and Skeel and the other Eskimo had perished in it. He was brought back to strength during the voyage south, and after a few narrow escapes from glacial fragments the ship reached Halifax.

While Landon was at Halifax had come the sudden quake that destroyed half of the city, though he had escaped. In the succeeding two years Landon himself was forgotten, but the great polar quake he had gone through was often referred to, for earth had been torn ever since by a succession of violent quakes and upheavals. They seemed to progress from one locality to another, from Newfoundland to Norway, to Russia and Egypt and Italy and England. It was the theory of many scientists that these succeeding quakes were caused by a series of faults in earth’s structure, that had been touched off by the great polar quake Landon had gone through.

Of Landon himself, though, I had heard nothing after his leaving Halifax, and now I was amazed at his changed appearance as he sat opposite me. He must have guessed my thoughts.

“You think I’ve changed, Morris?” he asked. “Don’t deny it, man—I know that I have. I know what’s stamped on my face.”

“Travis and Skeel—” I began awkwardly.

“Travis and Skeel are dead and they’re lucky,” he said somberly. “It’s not their death that has changed me, though they were the best pals a man ever had. It’s the way they died.

“There were three of us who went up there,” he said, gazing darkly past me. “And the third still lives. I wonder for how long?”

“Landon, you’ve brooded too much,” I told him. “I can understand what an appalling experience that polar quake must have been to go through, but—”

“You can’t understand!” he lashed out. “No one can! Morris, you saw me panic-stricken a little while ago when that tremor shook the city. Did it surprise you?”

“Frankly, it did,” I said slowly. “But I can understand how that first quake would have unnerved you—and the ones you’ve chanced to be in since.”

“It wasn’t chance that I was in them,” he said astonishingly, and then leaned to clutch my arm. “Morris, can you conceive of such a thing as earthquakes following one person across the face of this earth, seeking him out no matter where he may go, riving the earth and razing cities and killing tens of thousands, to kill that one fugitive? Earthquakes that deliberately pursue one fleeing man with deadly purpose?”

“Earthquakes following a man?” I repeated. “Why, the idea’s mad! You surely don’t think because you have been by coincidence in all these quakes of the last two years—”

“I don’t think,” he said, “I know. I know that the quakes you speak of have pursued me across earth in the last two years with deadly purpose! Even today, two hours after I landed in this city, they have shown me that they are still after me!”

“Landon, you can’t believe this!” I expostulated. “Be reasonable, man—an earthquake is simply a movement of the earth’s mass. How could such movements follow you deliberately?”

“I know how,” he said, his eyes strange. “Travis and Skeel knew, too, before they died. But I know and I still live, if only for a time.

“And I am going to tell you the thing, Morris. I know before the telling that you will find it impossible to believe, just as I would have two years ago. But in your unbelief remember this—that of all things in the universe the one we men know least really of is this earth we live upon.

“It has been over two years since Travis and Skeel and I started north on that trip of ours. We left St. John’s in a sturdy Canadian schooner built for arctic work, with a Canadian crew. The ship was to take us as far as northern Grant Land, and from there we three were going to work north ourselves on the last lap. Our objective was a great ice-mountain, its rock visible through openings in its icy sides, that was supposed to exist in the polar region some three hundred miles or more this side of the pole.

“We had heard of this polar mountain from several sources. It had been a matter of minor dispute between two different aeroplane expeditions that had flown over the pole. One claimed to have sighted the big ice-clad peak and the other claimed that it didn’t exist. Travis and Skeel and I were going north to see if it did exist.

“If you know anything at all of geology you will know what such a polar mountain—a mountain in that icy desolation at the earth’s top—would mean to geologists. It would prove beyond doubt the existence of a polar continent beneath the ice and might throw a flood of light on things that have puzzled geological science. The three of us were afire to find out if such a peak did exist in the north polar region.

“The north pole, you know, like the south one, is more a region than a point. The earth is oblate, flattened at top and bottom, and that flat region around the northern pole is in fact the top or forefront of earth. In that great icy expanse the mountain was supposed to exist, and Travis and Skeel and I were bent on finding it. So we sailed north from St. John’s with our schooner loaded with equipment.

“The schooner crept northward for two months through icy channels toward the northern tip of Grant Land. Travis and Skeel and I were busy making ready our equipment. At North Devon we picked up two Eskimos who were to make the final trip with us, two sturdy fellows named Noskat and Shan. Our sledges and dogs were ready, and when the ship reached the icy coast of Grant Land we were ready to start north on the final lap as soon as the freeze came.

“It came soon, and we started. Travis and Skeel and I, and Noskat and Shan, with the two sledges and dogs, headed north over the frozen wastes. We carried felt tents, special chemical fuel of small bulk and weight, food and instruments, and an automatic apiece. Travis and Skeel and Noskat took the lead-sledge, Shan and I the other.

“For ten days we pushed north over endless ice-fields, making thirty miles a day. Ten days—three hundred miles—it doesn’t sound so much, does it? Well, it was a cross-section of icy hell. Can you imagine a world in which all has turned to glittering ice that stretches to the horizon in eye-aching whiteness? A world in which the sickly polar day never ceases to shine? A world in which the polar cold closes down upon you like a hand, gripping through your numbed flesh to your bones?

“That was the kind of world we were moving through. Ten days—and they each seemed weeks long. We would wake, would eat half-warmed food and limber our stiffened muscles, then fold the tent and harness the dogs. And then north again, north over the ice desert’s hummocks and ridges like pigmies traversing that vast white expanse. North, until on the tenth day we sighted the mountain.

“At first we could not believe our eyes. We had been pushing onward so mechanically that in the sheer struggle we had almost forgotten our mission. Then as our eyes took in that huge peak towering into the steely sky far ahead, ice-sheathed and with the dark openings in its sides, our exclamations came with a rush.

“We pushed on, little heeding difficulties then. In another day we were at the mountain’s foot, a thousand feet below the lowest of the dark openings in its icy bulk.

“We camped there that night, exultant at reaching our goal. And there trouble began. The dogs had been whining strangely as we approached the mountain, needing the lash to make them go forward at all, and our two Eskimos had been muttering to themselves. Then no sooner had we pitched camp than there came a slight earth-tremor, a shock as of earth stirring underneath that made our tent quiver and the ice-fields round it crackle.

“To us it was somewhat surprising to encounter an earth-tremor in this region, but that was all. But on Noskat and Shan, the two Eskimos, the tremor’s effects were tremendous. Their swart faces grew positively livid with fear, they jabbered in their tongue for minutes, looking fearfully up toward the mountain’s huge icy bulk, and then approached us in panic. By then the dogs had begun yelping strangely as though in terror.

“‘We cannot stay here!’ Noskat told us excitedly. ‘This is the forbidden mountain at the earth’s top—shunned by all our race! We knew not that this was your goal!’

“‘Forbidden mountain?’ repeated Travis. ‘Forbidden by whom?’

“‘Forbidden by the earth!’ was Noskat’s answer. ‘The earth is living as we are living—it cares not how men move upon its vast living body as long as they do not approach this mountain!’

“‘The earth living? What the devil is all this about?’ Travis demanded. Skeel intervened.

“‘It’s an Eskimo belief, Travis,’ he said. ‘I’ve heard of it before—they think earth is a great living thing and that we humans are mere insects or the like living on its body.’

“‘What a crazy belief!’ Travis commented. He turned back to Noskat. ‘Why does your living earth forbid anyone to come near this mountain, then?’

“‘Because this mountain holds earth’s mind—earth’s brain,’ said Noskat solemnly, Shan nodding corroboration. ‘Earth likes us not to come this near its brain, and so it has moved its great body beneath us to warn us away.’

“‘Rot!’ said Travis. ‘That tremor just now wasn’t any warning, but a slight earthquake like any other earthquake.’

“‘All earthquakes are but movements of earth’s great body,’ asserted Noskat stubbornly. ‘Earth can move its body as it wishes.’

“‘That sounds logical enough, Travis,’ I said, grinning.

“He turned toward me. ‘Don’t encourage them, Landon,’ he said sharply. ‘We’ll have trouble enough with them as it is.’

“He swung back on Noskat and Shan. ‘That tremor was just an ordinary tremor and this stuff about a living earth is nonsense,’ he said forcibly. ‘We are going to stay here two days at least and you two are going to camp down here while we explore and examine this mountain.’

“‘But you must not try to explore the mountain!’ Noskat said excitedly. ‘You dare not approach earth’s brain! If you do—’

“‘That’s enough!’ snapped Travis. ‘You and Shan are going to wait here while we do explore the mountain, and there’ll be no more talk about it!’

“When Noskat and Shan had gone to their own tent Travis turned to us with a disgusted expression.

“‘This would be just our luck,’ he said, ‘to have those two, just as we get here, break loose with their superstitions.’

“‘I wonder if they’re only superstitions,’ said Skeel thoughtfully.

“We stared at him. ‘What the devil!’ I exclaimed. ‘Do you believe that stuff about earth being a living and intelligent being?’

“Skeel’s face was serious. ‘I’ve heard of stranger things, Landon. Why couldn’t earth be a living organism instead of just a mass of inanimate matter? It seems an inanimate mass to us, it is true, but so must a human being seem an inanimate mass to the microbes that live on and in that being. Earth might be a living organism, all the planets might be organisms, of scale and nature so different from us that we mites who swarm upon it cannot even comprehend it. And if it is living it could possess consciousness and intelligence, perhaps intelligence operating on planes and for ends entirely alien to us.’

“‘And you think, then, that, as Noskat said, earth’s brain is somewhere in this mountain?’ Travis demanded incredulously.

“Skeel smiled. ‘I don’t say that. Though as a matter of fact if earth were a living and intelligent organism it would have to have the seat of its intelligence somewhere, and as likely up here at earth’s top as anywhere.’

“‘I’ll say you’re a cuckoo geologist!’ I exclaimed. ‘You’re as bad as those two Eskimos!’

“Travis stretched. ‘Well, whether or not earth’s brain is inside that mountain, we’re going to do some climbing on it tomorrow morning.’

“‘And some climb it’s going to be,’ I told him. ‘If we can get up far enough to get a look at that uncovered rock we’ll be lucky.’

“We turned in, huddling in our furs, and though the dogs were still whining in a panicky fashion now and then, we fell almost instantly to sleep.

“We were awakened when our watches told us it was morning by a sensation of someone shaking us, and found that it was another earth-tremor that was rocking the tent, one as strong as or stronger than that of the night before. It was over almost before we were awake, the grinding crackle of ice dying away.

“We struggled rapidly into our outer clothes and heard the dogs, who had yelped with terror when the tremor began, become silent as though cowed by utter fear. The tent still quivered from the tremor’s last vibrations.

“Travis cursed. ‘Another damned tremor! This will make those two swarthy sons of perdition harder than ever to handle, if I’m right.’

“His surmise proved correct, for we had not emerged from the tent into the polar cold and glare when Noskat and Shan were upon us. They were quite evidently in an extreme state of terror.

“According to them, the tremor was another and stronger sign that the earth was uneasy at our presence near its brain, and a warning for us to turn and head southward at all possible speed before earth destroyed us. They even went so far in their panic as to say that if we did not they would start south without us with one of the sledges.

“Travis’s cold voice whipped to them through their terror. ‘You’ll stay here, all right,’ he told them. ‘You know too well what would happen to you if you showed up back down there at the ship without us.’

“‘But if you try to explore the mountain, earth’s brain will be very wroth!’ wailed Shan. ‘All earth will be wroth against you!’

“‘I’ve had enough of this crazy talk about earth and its brain,’ Travis told them impatiently. ‘You two will stay here until we come back, or you’ll go with us.’

“At that alternative both Noskat and Shan became silent out of sheer terror. I told them to see to the dogs, which were still acting strangely, and then with Travis and Skeel prepared for our climb up the icy mountain’s side.

“As we could not hope to bring back any specimens, even if we succeeded in reaching one of the openings in the mountain’s ice-sheath, we took only our ice-axes and a single rock-axe. We wore our automatics in our belts with the idea of impressing the two Eskimos if they still harboured ideas of flight, and we were roped together.

“With a final admonition and warning to Noskat and Shan from Travis, we started up the icy mountainside. A thousand feet above us was the dark circle in the ice we wanted to reach, an opening through the peak’s frozen sheath, we were sure, to its inner rock. If we could make even a cursory examination of the mountain’s rock-strata, we felt our trip would be worthwhile.

“From the first our climb was tremendously difficult. Travis led, cutting steps where needed with his ice-axe, taking advantage of ledges and cracks in the ice, moving tortuously up with Skeel and me close behind. Our heavy fur clothing was a hindrance to us in climbing, though even through it the polar cold penetrated.

“We were forced to rest every few yards, clinging against the icy slope like three strange furry animals. At such halts I looked down and for a time could see Noskat and Shan, down by the tents and sledges, watching our progress. Then an inward slant of the icy slope hid them from view for a time.

“This slant inward made climbing a little easier, and now we could plainly see the round opening in the ice above, and could make out that it opened through the ice to the dark bare rock of the mountain itself. That was a spur to our efforts and we struggled on, Travis’s axe chipping, steadily ahead of us, until at last Travis pulled himself up into the opening in the ice and then jerked us up beside him.

“We were hardly in that opening, lying panting for the moment, when there came another earth-tremor, much more violent.

“It seemed that the whole mountain and the ice-fields around it were swaying and shaking, and there came as though from far beneath a crackling roar. We lay still and in a moment it ceased.

“‘Good Lord!’ exclaimed Travis as we stood up then. ‘If that had happened a moment ago when we were climbing it would have been bad for us.’

“‘Damn these tremors anyway!’ I said, ‘If that one has succeeded in scaring off Noskat and Shan I won’t be surprised.’

“We peered down and saw them on the ice near the tents. They were on their knees, gesticulating in terror up toward us and the mountain. They made frantic motions for us to return.

“We shook our heads and Travis gestured sharply to them, ordering them to remain where they were. Their terror subsided a little, and he turned to us.

‘“They’ll stay there, I think—they’re more afraid to go back to the ship without us than to stay. But we’d best not stay up here too long ourselves.’

“Skeel had turned and was staring into the opening in the mountain’s side, at whose edge we stood. ‘Lord, look at this!’ he exclaimed.

“We looked and were petrified with astonishment. The opening in which we stood was the mouth of a round tunnel that slanted straight back and downward into the mountain’s mighty mass.

“This tunnel was thirty feet in diameter and ran inward toward the mountain’s centre in a slight downward grade, as straight as though it had been gouged by a huge punch.

“There was no ice in the tunnel, though a steady current of air rushed down it. We examined the black rock of its walls quickly, then again with mounting excitement. It was a geologist’s nightmare. This mountain’s rock was stratumless, a smooth black rock that might have come from earth’s innermost mass!

“‘I’ll say we’ve found something here!’ cried Travis excitedly. ‘Why, this rock is pre-igneous even—it’s a kind of rock geology’s not even heard of!’

“‘But this opening, this tunnel leading down into the mountain?’ I asked. ‘What could have formed it?’

“‘God knows, Landon. But the other openings we saw in the mountain’s ice-sides must be the mouths of similar tunnels! And they must lead down to some central opening or space, for there are air-currents in this one!’

“Travis unhooked from his belt his flat metal electric torch and sent its ray down the dark tunnel’s length. The quivering little beam wavered down through the next few hundred feet of the tunnel but showed only the same smooth, black rock sides.

“‘The only way we’ll find out what this tunnel leads to down there is to follow it and see,’ said Travis. ‘Come on, you two.’

“We started down the tunnel. Its grade was not steep enough to make it perilous, though its floor, like its sides, was so smooth as to make footing difficult. We had a hard time to keep our footing when, a moment or so later, there came another tremor that swayed the mountain so that the tunnel’s floor seemed to pitch beneath us.

“By then we were too excited over the geological strangeness of the tunnel and the black rock and the whole mountain to mind the tremor. We pressed on, Travis’s quivering beam preceding us, with the circle of white light that was the tunnel’s mouth dwindling and disappearing behind and above us. We paid no more attention to another tremor that shook us a few moments later, or to still another that followed that one closely.

“Within a quarter of an hour we had followed the tunnel downward for a half-mile and had found that it curved slightly now instead of running straight as heretofore, but led still in a general direction down toward the mountain’s centre. By then, too, the tremors and quakings of the mountain and earth around it had become practically continuous.

“The tunnel’s walls were swaying unceasingly around us, not violently but noticeably, and the sound of these continued earth-movements was now a tremendous monotone of rumblings and mutterings from far beneath. The strangeness of these continued tremors penetrated through even our excitement and we stopped in the tunnel’s curve we were passing through, Travis flashing his beam ahead and behind.

“‘Damn queer, all these tremors at once!’ he exclaimed. ‘They seem to be getting worse, too.’

“‘I’m beginning to think this whole mountain is queer,’ Skeel said. ‘Tell me, have you two felt anything?’

“We stared at him. We had experienced with increasing strength a sensation so strange that neither Travis nor I had mentioned it. It was a sense of a tangible and powerful force that flooded out over and through us from ahead, a tingling force that had a strange effect upon my will.

“I cannot describe that effect better than by saying that the farther down into the tunnel we went, the more did my own will and personality seem shared or usurped by some will or force utterly alien and different. In other words, that as I went on I was not only Clark Landon but something or a part of something vast and strange, whose will partly replaced Clark Landon’s will in me.

“‘I’ve felt it, yes,’ I told Skeel. ‘But I didn’t know you had. You too, Travis?’

“Travis nodded puzzledly. ‘I’ve felt it also. There must be some centre of radioactive or electrical force down in this mountain and the closer we get to it the more it affects us.’

“‘But what about the tremors?’ Skeel asked. ‘Can we go on in the face of them and this other thing?’

“‘The devil with the tremors,’ said Travis impatiently. ‘There’s something tremendous down inside this mountain and I say we go on, tremors or no tremors.’

“‘What do you think, Landon?’ Skeel asked me. I looked doubtfully from him to Travis.

“‘After all, we’ve been in worse tremors than these,’ I said, ‘and I think Travis is right when he says there must be something tremendous down in this mountain.’

“‘I think there is, myself,’ said Skeel, ‘and I think that with these tremors it’s warning us back!’

“‘Oh, rot!’ said Travis. ‘Are you going to start that silly notion of Noskat’s about earth’s brain being down here?’

“‘No, I’m with you two if you want to go on,’ Skeel said.

“‘Then on it is!’ I said. ‘We can’t go a great deal farther, anyway, for we can’t spend too long a time down here.’

“We resumed our interrupted progress. The tunnel curved on downward, toward the mountain’s heart. The currents of air still rushed down it unceasingly, making me wonder, as we went on, whether what thing of force was down here somehow drew or attracted those air-currents, through this and the other tunnels leading up to the mountain’s sides.

“The tremors were somewhat more violent and it was evident that the whole mountain must be shaking. We moved on without commenting on them, though. It was hard work to keep our footing on the smooth, swaying floor of the tunnel and we were thrown continually against its sides, sometimes with force. But we held to our downward progress, drawn by the mystery we were now sure this mountain held.

“For the strange force that beat upon us from ahead with increasing strength as we went on could only be mysterious and unheard of to our science, so strange it seemed. The sensation as of the impact of a colossal will was stronger and stronger. Can you imagine a will so mighty that mere nearness to it makes one feel its power as tangible force? That is what this alien force inside the mountain felt like to us.

“Skeel’s face was becoming grave and even Travis seemed troubled as we went doubtfully on. The tremors by then had become really terrible, great roarings and shakings that swayed the tunnel’s walls about us. But now so strange was everything, so dazing that vast, enigmatic force that beat stronger upon us from ahead, that we paid small attention.

“We rounded another long curve in the downward-slanting tunnel and saw ghostly, glowing light ahead in it, heard a soft roar of steady sound over the grinding crash of shifting rock. Like puppets drawn by forces outside us, we pressed onward toward the light. As we neared it the impact of strange forces from ahead was almost stunning. There came a great last tremor that almost flung us from our feet. But even Skeel did not mind it, since in the moment it came we had reached the glowing light, had emerged suddenly from the dark tunnel into a great, glowing-lit space.

“We halted in it, stupefied. The tremors stopped altogether at that same moment, but only our subconscious minds registered the fact. We three were gazing across the great cavernous space into which the tunnel opened.

“It seemed in that first stunned glance that this strange cavern must occupy most of the interior of the mountain, so huge was it. It must have been a half-mile in diameter, and was like the interior of a hollow cone.

“The mountain’s dozen tunnels all opened down into it. It was lit by a quivering, glowing light which came from what was beyond doubt the most awesome and stupefying thing that ever man dared to look upon. I cannot, even now, describe to you with one-tenth of its real terrible splendour, the thing that poised at the centre of this cone-like cavern over the rock floor, the thing at which Travis and Skeel and I gazed.

“Can you imagine a great ovoid of pure light, like a huge egg in shape and a hundred feet high, poised upon its smaller end? That was what we three looked upon, a giant ovoid of light or force that towered there at the cone-cavern’s centre, emitting the light that illuminated it and also the enigmatic force that had beat upon us and the soft roar of sound we had heard.

“This ovoid was of all colours, it seemed. Its colours changed with incalculable swiftness like those of a racing cinema film. And those racing tints seemed to reproduce all the colours of the earth.

“The ovoid would flame for an instant with a red like that of devouring volcanic fires, of flowing flame. Then the red would be gone and instead would be a thread of blue, serene as the blue of mountain lakes. The blue would pass into brown like the warm brown of fresh-turned soil, and that in turn into green like that of ocean’s depths or yellow of earth’s fantastic rocks.

“These colours changed and spun and swam in the great ovoid of light constantly, unceasingly. And just as in them seemed represented every natural colour of earth, so in the soft roar of sound that came from the ovoid, there seemed merged and mingled all the natural sounds of earth.

“The crash of avalanches and thunder of slow-moving glaciers were in that roar, and the splitting of tortured rocks. One heard the howl of winds and the caressing whisper of soft breezes, the gurgling of small brooks and the hiss of rain and the smash of hurricanes and tidal waves. That roar of merged sound seemed issuing from a whispering gallery open to all the sounds of earth.

“From the lower end of this huge poised ovoid of light branched scores of great tentacles of light, glowing arms that ran down into the rock floor of the cavern. They did not run into openings in that rock but into the rock itself, interpenetrating it as light interpenetrates glass. Somehow it seemed to me even in that first stunned moment that those light-tentacles branching down from the ovoid were of inconceivable length, that from where it poised here at the frozen top of the earth those arms of force or light penetrated down through all earth’s mighty mass!

“As Travis and Skeel and I gazed now at the mighty ovoid, there shot suddenly from its lower end a new light-tentacle, as though forming suddenly. It darted across the cavern and encircled us three. Its grip was like that of solid steel rather than of glowing light, and with us in its grasp it darted back toward the great ovoid.

“We were held by this tentacle a score of feet from the ovoid. The scene was incredibly weird—the mighty cavern, the huge ovoid of light with its kaleidoscopic colours and roar of merged sounds and downward-branching tentacles, the arm of light that held Travis and Skeel and me in remorseless grip!

“It held us beneath the ovoid as though that immense thing of light from which it branched was contemplating us. And somehow in my mind then I knew without shadow of doubt that the ovoid was contemplating us, was examining and inspecting us by means of strange senses somewhere inside its glowing mass of light, senses having nothing to do with any senses we knew but operating on planes entirely different. Its vast will, mind, beat out on us tangibly.

“Skeel’s cry came thinly to my ears over the soft roar of the towering ovoid. ‘The brain of the earth! The Eskimos were right—it’s the brain of the earth!’

“‘The brain of the earth! The Earth-Brain!’ Travis and I mouthed the cry in stupefaction.

“For somehow we knew, knew absolutely, that it was the brain of the living earth that towered here and that held us, this awful ovoid of light poised in its mountain-chamber at the top of earth. This stupendous intelligence which saw and heard and somehow represented all the colours and sounds existing in its body, the earth! And whose light-tentacles ran down like animating sinews through its great earth-body!

“The Eskimos had been right. Their legends had told truth when they said that this mountain at the frozen top of earth held the brain of earth, and that it cared not how men moved upon its mighty earth-body so long as they approached not that body’s brain, its self!

“For earth was but body to this great brain! And just as microbes move upon a human body without even knowing that it is a living thing and not a great inanimate mass they exist on, so had men moved and lived upon its body, the earth, without ever dreaming that the huge body was animated by a vast kind of life so different from their own that they had deemed it lifeless!

“Men had moved and lived so upon the living earth for ages, generation after generation of tiny parasites upon it, but now three of those parasites in the person of ourselves had had the audacity to approach the earth’s brain, here at earth’s top; had disregarded the Earth-Brain’s warning tremors of uneasiness at our approach and had penetrated despite them to its inmost chamber, here to the Earth-Brain itself that now had seized us and was examining us!

“‘Those tentacles of light!’ Travis was yelling thinly in my ear. ‘They must run down from this Earth-Brain like muscles through all earth!’

“‘Yes—we know now what caused those tremors, what causes earthquakes!’ I cried.

“The light-tentacles drew us closer to the Earth-Brain! Can you picture that scene? The great ovoid of light holding us with one of its tentacles, inspecting us? Yes, the Earth-Brain was examining us as a man might take and examine three tiny parasites or insects whom he had not noticed upon his body until they became too bold!

“And still upon us, through us, beat the Earth-Brain’s will! The impact of that will was tangible, overwhelming. It seemed partly to replace, to usurp, my own will and mind. It seemed that I was not only Clark Landon, but also part of the Earth-Brain that held me. By the strange, unhuman expressions of Travis and Skeel I knew they experienced the same thing.

“I felt a withdrawal of interest from Clark Landon’s petty affairs and viewpoints. My mind seemed to leap beyond his little concerns to infinitely vaster things. And yet I knew somewhere in my consciousness that it was not my own mind that leapt thus, but the mere reflection or echo in my mind of the Earth-Brain holding me.

“How can I tell what I seemed to feel? It was as though for the time I was part of that great Earth-Brain, was thinking as it thought and seeing things as it saw them. It was as though, like it, my mind was cased not in any tiny body of colloids and bones and blood-compounds, but in a vast body endowed with a totally different sort of life. As though my great body was a planet, its stupendous frame of stone and its circulating life-fluid the cataracts of flowing fire in its interior! As though all the multitudes of land and water forms of life that swarmed upon my vast body were as unnoticeable and unimportant to me, intent on my own vast affairs, as microbes to the human upon whose body they live.

“It seemed that I, the Earth-Brain now and not Clark Landon, sat here in this brain-chamber at the top of my earth-body. Poised here, I was as aware of all my great body as a man is of his arms and legs. For down into my earth-body ran the tentacles of light that extended to the uttermost parts of earth, the muscular system by which I moved my earth-body at will.

“I moved one of those mighty muscles of light and the answering movement of my earth-body was a great quake on the other side of earth! Another of my muscles twitched and an avalanche crashed somewhere else on earth! I paid no attention whatever to the verminous tiny things dwelling upon my body, often annihilated in hordes by my earth-body movements.

“And I, the Earth-Brain, and my great earth-body, were not stationary but moving! My great body was racing at awful speed through vast leagues of infinite space! Far off across those immensities of space I was aware of other living earths, other planets, some larger and some smaller than I, but each living in the same vast way as I lived, each with its own great Brain!

“Yes, and from those other living earths there came to me across the void messages, communication. I, Clark Landon, could not even dimly comprehend the nature of that communication which I, the Earth-Brain, carried on. But it was constant and unbroken, a strange speaking of living earth to earth across the void, an exchange of thoughts, of purpose—

“For purpose there was in the way in which I and those other mighty Brains moved our planet-bodies through space. It was not by mere blind chance, haphazardly, that we moved, but consciously, deliberately, carrying out together some vast purposeful design. Circling and moving with superhuman exactness, a colossal, geometrical march of vast living earth-things through space!

“And even as I, Clark Landon, thus seemed to share the superhuman viewpoints and purposes of the Earth-Brain that held us, so did I share dimly its attitude toward ourselves. In one part of my intelligence I was still Clark Landon, held with Travis and Skeel helpless by a thing of mystery and terror. But in another part of my mind I was the Earth-Brain, inspecting these three tiny parasites who had dared penetrate my brain-chamber.

“For I, the Earth-Brain, had never bothered in one way or another with the numberless verminous parasites that dwelt on my earth-body, except that when any had dared approach the mountain at my body’s top that held encased myself, I had warned and driven them back by movements and tremors of my body.

“But these three had not been driven back but had come on with insane temerity until they had penetrated this dwelling-chamber of mine where none of their kind ever had penetrated before. And I, the Earth-Brain, had found their audacity so unprecedented and unexpected that I had grasped these three insect-things, was examining them!

“In so much did I, Clark Landon, share somehow the Earth-Brain’s thoughts as those thoughts beat like tangible force through us. And I was aware, even as Travis and Skeel and I struggled vainly against the light-tentacle’s grip, of the Earth-Brain’s desire to inspect one of us more closely. I was not surprised when another light-tentacle whipped out from its base and grasped Skeel, raised him high in the air close beside the Earth-Brain, Travis and I still held by the first tentacle on the floor.

“Travis and I ceased our struggles, watched in a sort of paralysis of terror as Skeel was raised high beside the Earth-Brain. The glowing light of the great ovoid seemed to beat out through him as the tentacle turned him this way and that like a helpless puppet.

“The Earth-Brain was examining him, I knew, for there still held me that curious duality of mind in which I was at the same time Clark Landon and the Earth-Brain. Even as I, Landon, watched from below my comrade Skeel, I, the Earth-Brain, was inspecting curiously this tiny thing I held and concerning which I was casually interested.

“It was I, the Earth-Brain, who shot forth from myself another light-tentacle to grasp this tiny living thing. And then suddenly with a red crash of horror I was no longer the Earth-Brain at all but was Clark Landon, screaming wildly with Travis and shaking impotent little hands up at the Earth-Brain. For with those two tentacles it had casually torn Skeel’s living body into halves!

“The tentacles held the two torn red things of broken flesh and bone that a moment before had been Herbert Skeel closer to the Earth-Brain’s towering ovoid. The Earth-Brain was inspecting them, as calmly and dispassionately as a man might tear apart an insect and examine its interior structure.

“‘Skeel!’ Travis was screaming raggedly over the unceasing soft roar. ‘The thing’s killed Skeel!’

“‘It’s vivisected him!’ I cried. ‘I’ll kill the damned thing—I’ll kill it!’

“I was struggling insanely to reach the automatic in my belt, but held in the light-tentacle’s grasp with Travis, I could not move my arms an inch.

“The Earth-Brain still was examining the broken body of Skeel. The great ovoid’s changing colours still raced and swam, its roar of merged sounds unceasing and its mighty will still flooding tangibly through us and giving us that queer sense of identity with the Earth-Brain. But that sense was overwhelmed in me now by my wild fury at seeing Skeel, the comrade of Travis and myself for so long, slain so terribly before our eyes.

“Travis and I were mouthing wild threats at the towering ovoid. The Earth-Brain paid no more attention to us than might a man to the waving antennae of ants beneath his feet. It broke the halves of Skeel’s body into smaller pieces. After a moment’s inspection it dropped these red fragments, and the two tentacles that had held them shot down towards Travis and me!

“They grasped Travis and swung him up toward the Earth-Brain’s side as Skeel had been swung, to vivisect him as Skeel had been vivisected. The other tentacle of light still held me on the floor. But in the moment Travis had been taken by the two, the grip of it upon me had perforce for an instant loosened, and in that instant I had ripped my pistol from my belt. Now as Travis was raised toward the Earth-Brain I aimed in a flash and fired a stream of steel-jacketed bullets up into the Earth-Brain’s mighty ovoid of light.

“It was in the sheer madness of insane fury that I shot thus into the Earth-Brain, for I had no conscious hope of hurting in the least that terrific thing of tangible light and force in which its intelligence was embodied. But certain it is that even unconsciously I had no expectation of the cataclysmic reactions that took place the instant after my bullets tore into the Earth-Brain’s ovoid of light.

“The Earth-Brain flamed pure crimson instantly, the crimson of leaping hell-fires and raging holocausts, the red of a superhuman, stupendous wrath. Colossal anger emanated from it at the same moment like a wave of destroying force, and as that cosmic wrath swept through me I knew that I had committed blackest sin against the universe in daring to attack the brain of the living earth-body upon which dwelt I and all my tiny race!

“And as the Earth-Brain blazed blinding crimson in rage, all its great tentacles or light-muscles whipped and twisted in a wild convulsion of insensate wrath! Travis was flung against the cavern’s wall and smashed into red pulp by the impact; I was hurled as wildly and struck not the cavern wall but the mouth of the tunnel down which we had come, and all earth seemed shaking with a tremendous grinding roar of shifting rock as the tentacles running down from the Earth-Brain into it convulsed.

“The Earth-Brain had for the moment gone mad with sheer rage and its earth-body was shaking and quaking in that mad spasm. I staggered to my feet. The mountain, the great cavern and the tunnel in whose mouth I was standing, were rocking about me like a leaf in the wind. The Earth-Brain, in its mad excess of rage at having been attacked, had for the moment even forgotten me, who had dared make that attack, and was reacting in an insensate convulsion of fury that was shaking the whole upper part of its earth-body, the whole polar region!

“I stumbled away from that awful spectacle of the Earth-Brain’s crimson-flaming ovoid of light, up into the tunnel. It was mindless terror that made me struggle up the tunnel whose terrific shakings flung me this way and that. I knew that in a moment when the Earth-Brain’s first wild rage subsided it would remember me and its vengeance would crash upon me.

“I cannot tell now for how many minutes I fought my way up that tunnel, thrown from my feet each time I staggered erect by the wild pitchings of the mountain around me; crawling crazily upward on hands and knees with the terrific grinding of rock-masses beneath and around me like the last roar of doom in my ears. I saw ahead the white circle of light that was the tunnel’s opening just as the first awful quakes began to subside, as the Earth-Brain’s first convulsive rage began to calm.

“I knew the Earth-Brain would now remember me and I flung myself forward, out of the dark tunnel into the daylight on the mountain’s side. Below and far away stretched the glittering ice-fields but now they were heaved and rumpled like waves of a mighty sea, piling here and there in mountainous ridges and attesting the violence of the great quake that had just shaken them.

“Down the mountain’s icy side I started by the path Travis and Skeel and I had cut in ascending. There came a roar from above and an avalanche of ice and rock poured down on me from the mountain’s upper side. I flattened myself beneath the angle of the slant in the side and it roared over and past me. The Earth-Brain had indeed remembered, knew where I was upon its body and was seeking to slay me!

“Thrice it tried to destroy me as I struggled down the mountain’s side. Twice other avalanches were shaken loose upon me, each almost annihilating me, and once the whole mountain shook violently as though to dislodge me and send me tumbling to death. God, what a weird progress was that of mine down the mountain, with the Earth-Brain, with earth itself, trying to destroy me!

“I do not know yet by what chance I evaded those tremendous attacks and got to the ice-field at the mountain’s bottom, bruised and terror-dazed. I looked to where our camp had been and there was but Noskat and one sledge and three dogs. Shan and the other sledge and dogs had been caught and annihilated by the shifting ice. Noskat ran toward me.

“He was babbling madly of the vengeance of the Earth-Brain, of the mighty quake that had killed Shan and the dogs and shaken terribly the earth itself. I cut him short, and we fled southward from the mountain over the ice-fields. Before we had travelled two hours a strong quake shook violently the ice over which we were travelling. A crevice opened suddenly ahead of us that we almost fell into.

“Noskat cried to me that we might as well die, that we had offended the Earth-Brain and that wherever we went upon its body, the earth, it would know and would try to kill us. But I pressed on, motivated only by the insane desire to put more and more distance between myself and that towering ice-mountain in whose heart the Earth-Brain poised.

“The next week was like one in a strange inferno, an icy hell of cold in which we pushed south with the Earth-Brain’s vengeance ever following closely. Nine times during that week we were menaced by violent quakes that shook the ice over which we travelled. How we escaped those suddenly opening crevices and marching ice-ridges and terrific shocks, I cannot now dream. Terror, a terror not of the quakes but of the Earth-Brain causing them, drove us on.

“It came to me during that week of hell that Travis and Skeel had been luckier in being slain outright by the Earth-Brain than had I, with this remorseless vengeance of that mighty ovoid of light and intelligence pursuing me. Yet with that mad persistence that still actuated me, I pushed on. Toward the week’s end Noskat’s strength failed. With him in the sledge, dying and babbling of the Earth-Brain, I struggled south and at last reached the ship.

“To the ship’s officers, who talked excitedly of the great cataclysm that had almost destroyed the vessel and that had seemed to centre where Travis and Skeel and I had been, I lied. I said that there had been a terrific quake and that Travis and Skeel and Shan had been killed in it. Noskat died without regaining consciousness and there was none to contradict me. The ship started south.

“I prayed as we sailed southward that the Earth-Brain would pursue me no farther, but I feared—I feared. My fear was justified, for as the ship passed close to the shore of Grinnell Land, a projecting glacier broke and hurled out a huge mass of ice that barely missed the ship. Two days later an undersea disturbance almost swamped us. The ship’s crew talked of unsettled conditions, of earth-faults caused by the great polar quake; but I knew the truth, knew that my prayer was not answered and that still the Earth-Brain’s vengeance followed me.

“We finally reached Halifax, and there I saw that the Earth-Brain would not reck of killing all my race if it could slay me, who had dared attack it. For, two days after we reached Halifax, came a terrible quake that destroyed half the city and killed thousands of its people. I escaped again, by the mere chance of being in an open park when the quake began.

“The newspapers quoted the scientists as saying, like the ship’s men, that the great polar quake I had gone through had somehow caused faults in earths’s interior structure which had resulted in this quake. I knew how far they were from the truth, knew the Earth-Brain had moved its vast earth-body and caused that quake solely to kill me.

“I fled from Halifax, whose dead seemed to point accusingly at me who had brought the Earth-Brain’s death upon them. I took a boat to Norway and the day I arrived there came a quake that did great damage. By then I knew enough to stay out of buildings that might crash upon me, even sleeping in the open air. I went on from Norway to Russia.

“Russia had a series of three devastating quakes, the third one of which almost got me despite my precautions. When I fled on to Egypt it was worse, for my presence in Alexandria brought a quake and tidal wave that killed more innocent thousands. When I headed north again to Italy, the peninsula was racked by unprecedented quakes and landslides during my stay. And when I went on to England the quakes followed me.

“I knew that sooner or later, despite my carefulness to stay out of buildings and away from mountains and hills that might loose avalanches on me, one of these quakes would get me, the Earth-Brain’s vengeance would find me. But I fled on, took a boat home. I arrived in New York today, and you, Morris, saw what happened.

“You saw that when I had not been in New York more than a few hours there came an earth-tremor. To the people here it seemed only a tremor. But to me it was warning and knowledge, knowledge that the Earth-Brain knew of my presence here, that it was still seeking to slay me with the movements of its great earth-body.

“Yes, following me still with deadly purpose! And that is why I dare not stay here in New York, Morris. If I did stay, sooner or later the Earth-Brain would again attempt to kill me with an earthquake or tidal wave that might kill more innocent thousands or tens of thousands here. I have the blood of enough people now on my head without wanting more killed on my account. So I must go on, must leave here now before I bring doom on New York from the Earth-Brain’s endeavours to take my life.”

That was the story Clark Landon told me in my New York apartment the morning of the tremor. He left the city despite all I could say, a few hours afterward. I parted from him at the station where he took a train to New Orleans. I never saw Landon again but I followed his movements from that time until the end, and will summarise them briefly here.

The train Landon took to New Orleans was derailed by a sudden earth-tremor when a few hundred miles from its destination. Landon escaped, according to the newspaper casualty lists, though a score of people were killed and more injured. There were several earth-shocks of varying violence while Landon was in New Orleans, but they ceased after he took a banana boat to Mexico.

Ten days later I read of a violent quake that had destroyed the town of Tegulcipan, in northern Mexico, and the neighbouring villages of Causo and Santlione. The newspaper dispatches estimated the dead at fifty and mentioned the escape of an American staying in Tegulcipan, Clark Landon.

Landon went southward and a more or less continuous series of earthquakes followed him. At Progreso, in Yucatan, a double quake laid practically every structure in ruins and slew three-fourths of the population. Again I saw Clark Landon mentioned as one who had escaped, and it was said he had started for Guatemala.

At Guatemala came the end. The day after Landon arrived came the first terrifying rumblings of an earthquake of tremendous violence. The radio and cable stories told of the unexpected suddenness with which the earth heaved violently and with which vast crevices began opening in it. They told also of the curious suicide of an American named Clark Landon, which took place as the quake started.

According to these dispatches, Landon, when the quake started, had rushed into the street along which crevices were opening and had shouted madly as though adjuring someone or something to stop the quake. The shocks becoming each moment more violent, Landon had shouted something about surrendering himself and stopping these quakes devastating earth, and had rushed to the nearest crevice and thrown himself into it. According to those who saw, the crevice closed instantly upon him.

With Landon’s death the quake stopped almost at once, the tremors subsiding. Though a few of Guatemala’s buildings were shaken down and much glass shattered, there was no other damage and so Guatemala had cause for rejoicing. It was only after the first sensational stories of the quake and its sudden stop had filled the papers that they carried the minor detail of Landon’s strange suicide.

The quake at Guatemala was the last of the series of earthquakes that for almost two years had wrought destruction over earth’s surface. There have been minor tremors and movements since, of course, but no such succession of cataclysms as that which began with the great polar quake and moved here and there over earth until it ended at Guatemala.

That is all of the story, and I, Morris, intend to attach to it no explanation or attempt at explanation. It must end not with explanations but with questions, questions that may have their answer in known natural causes or that can be answered, perhaps, only by the incredible tale Clark Landon told me that morning.

Was the tale the literal truth? Did Landon and Travis and Skeel actually penetrate that icy mountain at earth’s top to find there the Earth-Brain, the vast mind that has this earth for body? Was it because Landon attacked that Earth-Brain that for two years earth was racked by quakes?

Certain it is that that terrible series of quakes did follow Landon over earth’s surface. Whether that was by coincidence only, or whether those quakes were the deliberate movements of its huge earth-body by which the Earth-Brain was striving to kill Landon, as he believed, there will be different minds.

And what of that last quake at Guatemala, where Landon flung himself into the crevice after madly adjuring the Earth-Brain to stop its destruction? There can be no doubt that Landon saw himself as bringing endless death and destruction on innocent cities and peoples by his mere continued living, and that he felt at last that only by sacrificing himself would the Earth-Brain’s vengeance be satisfied, and the quakes cease.

Here again it is certain that no sooner had Landon flung himself into that crevice in the Guatemala street than the quake there stopped, the whole series of quakes stopped. Was that, too, by chance only? Or was it that Landon’s sacrifice was not in vain, that with his death the Earth-Brain’s revenge was accomplished?

It is with such questions and not with explanations, as I said, that the story must end. We cannot say whether up in its mountain-chamber at earth’s top sits that mighty ovoid of sentient light that Landon called the Earth-Brain, whether we who consider ourselves masters of all are not but a race of microscopic parasites dwelling upon the vast and strangely living body of that Earth-Brain. It may be that we shall never be able to say, and I think that that is best. I think it is infinitely best that we, who know so much so certainly, do not know this thing.