The Mole Pirate

VIII

Through the windows of the Mole the outside world could be seen. One glance, and Jack knew. A strange, harsh, reddish light outlined tall and unsubstantial columns reaching up to a roof of shadows. The columns rose from a cloudy, soft-seeming vapour underfoot. Over all and through all the reddish light showed.

The Mole swam on, and the columns swept slowly past, immobile despite their near transparency. There was no sound from without. The thudding rumble of the gasoline engine; the whine of the dynamo and the separate driving motors -that was all. There was not even a noise as of a water wash against the hull of the earth-ship. It swam on through an eerie, a phantom world - and it was almost impossible to believe.

Shadows even passed through the interior, through all its moving parts, through the human beings within it. They paid no heed. Those shadows were tree trunks, impalpable to the dematerialized state of the Mole as it was impalpable to the normal world.

Durran grinned and said: 'You're a very lucky young man.'

Jack opened his lips and closed them.

*I said,' repeated Durran amusedly, 'you're a very lucky young man. You're alive.'

'I hardly imagine,' returned Jack evenly, 'that I'll be alive very long.'

'It wasn't my intention to allow it,' conceded Durran. A mocking light danced in his eyes. 'Miss Kennedy persuaded me otherwise. You are very fortunate to have so charming a girl so - shall I say, loyal to you?' He chuckled.

Jack was working on his bonds. Hopeless! They had been tied by someone who knew how.

'You want to know,' he said slowly, 'where the other earth-ships are being built to destroy you. That's why you brought me in the Mole instead of simply shooting me.'

'You guess,' said Durran, 'with remarkable accuracy.'

'Set her free,' said Jack grimly, 'and I'll tell you where they are. Otherwise you can go to hell! There's no power on earth that could make me tell while she's a prisoner.'

'I disagree,' said Durran. Again his eyes mocked. 'I think we could make you tell us anything. There are - er - methods. But I shan't try. I promised Miss Kennedy.'

Jack's eyes turned to (Jail. She stood up and came over to him, bracing herself against the swaying movements of the Mole. She was silent for a moment. Then:

'1 told him, Jack,' she said quietly. 'I - I wasn't blinded by the gas. You told me to run, but I - I waited to be sure you were safe. You - didn't come outside. I didn't see you, anyway. So I started to go back to find you. And the Mole swam out and materialized on the lawn. I hid. Then I saw two men get out and pick you up. I recognized you. And I ran -'

'She tried to fight us,' put in Durran blandly. 'And I recognized her, in turn. I had her showed inside the Mole, and of course we brought you in. We were very busy just about then, because there were police running to shoot at us. You were unconscious. I dematerialized the Mole and started to navigate away. And Miss Kennedy had picked up a hand grenade and swore she'd pull the pin and blow the lot of us to smithereens unless we released you at once.'

Again Jack's eyes turned upon Grail. 'Good girl!' he said grimly. 'I'm almost sorry that you didn't go through with it.'

'It was a stalemate,' said Durran as blandly as before. 'Because, as I pointed out, she'd do you no good by blowing us all up. Finally we compromised. I promised to release you, unharmed, but not her, if she'd put down the grenade, and if she told me where the other earth-ships are being built.'

'Jack, I - I had to! Don't you see? He promised to - only hold me for ransom.'

Durran nodded. 'That's all,' he said comfortably. 'You, Hill, will be allowed to leave the ship in ten minutes more. In fact, I'll insist on it.'

Jack searched his face. The mockery, the unholy amusement in his eyes, denied the promise of safety. There was no doubting that.

'Do you mean,' he asked harshly, 'you're going to re-materialize the ship and put me out on solid ground, or do you mean you're going to toss me out of the door into that?'

He nodded to the vapourous, unreal cloudiness which was the earth to those within the Mole.

'No!' said Gail quickly. 'He was laughing when he promised to let you out. I made him swear he didn't mean to put you out of the ship so you'd - drop down to the centre of the earth. He said you'd stay on top, all right.'

Durran laughed again.

'Well?' snapped Jack. 'What's the catch? And I tell you, Durran, no ransom you can get for her is as big as the one I can give you, of information you need! You turn her loose instead of me-'

'I'll let you decide,' said Durran blandly. 'You see, Hill, you gave advice on how to keep me from looting bank vaults by putting bars of iron about so I couldn't materialize any part of the Mole in a vault without including a bar and so blowing up the ship. The fools haven't taken your advice, but I thought they would.

'So I prepared for it.'

'How?'

'I made a field-of-force generator a man could carry into a vault, dodging those bars. He could dematerialize anything I wanted and bring it back without materializing the Mole inside at all and even without the Mole's entering it. It's a good trick. I can take things out of a drawer or the smallest safe, now. A neat answer to your suggestion. My men can walk about and pick up anything they want.'

Again Jack nodded grimly at the cloudlike earth. 'No man can walk about on that.'

'Oh, yes, a man can! You'll see! The same trick as the sustaining screws that hold this ship up, a thin coating of thorium. I made snowshoes, my dear fellow, on the same principle. Frames covered with cloth, which is painted with radioactive paint. We are going to get a pair of those snow-shoes for you. Earth-shoes would be a better name. With them upon your feet you can walk wherever you like. You can assuredly stay on top of the ground, even in your present state of dematerialization. Take my word for it - you can!'

Jack's eyes burned.

Gail stared, and then cried desperately: 'But - but you're cheating! He'd starve! And - and only as long as he kept moving. You're cheating! You'd be killing him as surely and - more horribly than if you just flung him out to drop.'

'But,' said Durran, and chuckled, 'I am holding to the strict letter of my bargain. I confess it seems to me an excellent joke. You have five minutes more, Hill, before you begin your interesting walk, unless you wish Miss Kennedy to have that freedom instead. How about it?'

Jack said grimly: 'Supposing you observe the proprieties and let a condemned man have a little indulgence. I want to talk to Gail. Clear out!'

Again Durran chuckled. 'And I'll do even that, instead of spending my time making just complaints about the manner in which you constructed the ship for me. My dear Hill, do you know that is is necessary to run the sustaining screws ten revolutions a minute faster than at the beginning? Why is that?'

'Repeated dematerializations,' snapped Jack. 'Clear out!'

He waited, his jaw set. Durran moved away, amused. It could not matter what Jack and Gail might say to each other. In five minutes more, Jack would be more utterly alone and more irrevocably doomed than any other man since time began. And Gail would remain in the Mole.

The cloudy shapes in the harsh red light without came to an end. The shadow of a house appeared, and beyond it a low and level mist more tenuous than that of earth. It would be the water of a lake.

The Mole swam smoothly up to the house. Then it seemed to glow in every particle with a strange white light, which gradually diminished and died. And as it diminished, the world without became more solid. When it ended, the shadow house became a bungalow. The cloudy earth was covered with green grass. The light was vastly brighter. And this normal, natural world looked infinitely desirable.

The rat-faced man got out of the ship and went casually into the house. Squeals of delight came out. Women appeared, five of them. And they were pretty women, in their fashion. But Jack looked from them to Gail and ground his teeth. The sight was too bitter.

The rat-faced man came back, carrying two cloth-covered frames which were nothing more or less than snowshoes of entirely familiar pattern, with painted canvas stoutly sewed to the rawhide webbing. He had told the women something. They laughed shrilly. He came into the Mole again. Again the flash of eerie, whitish light. The Mole swam on smoothly.

And then Durran threw a switch and reversed the tail screw. The moving procession of shadows in a world of harsh red light slowed down and stopped.

Durran opened the door of the Mole. 'And now I keep my promise,' he said blandly. 'You are free to go. In fact, if you don't go you'll be thrown out.'

Two men kept guns trained upon Jack as a third cut loose his hands. He put on the strange devices for walking in a world which was all vapour, all shadows, without substance or reality. To fight was not only hopeless, it would please Durran. And Jack had no hope, but he would not admit it. He pretended a confidence he did not feel, simply to make things easier for Gail.

'I'll see you later, Durran,' he said without intonation. 'I'm inclined to think you won't harm Gail, because I know what ransom you'll want. But I'll see you later!'

He stepped grimly out of the door. The stuff underfoot was soft and yielding and springy, but it seemed to give slowly from his weight. Actually, that was the thinly coated cloth sinking through the substance of the ground. If Jack stood still, he knew, he would sink down and down as into a quicksand. The earth was semisolid only to the devices upon his feet. To his body it was thin as air. If he stumbled, he would hang head down, swinging, and ultimately he would sink.

And then -

But he stood, balancing himself in a world all harsh red light and unreal shadows, with his weight resting upon the appearance of vapour. In all this universe only the Mole seemed real, because only the Mole was unreal where this world was actual.

Durran stood at a window and laughed at him. The door closed. The Mole swam away. Presently it was lost to sight amid the shadows of innumerable phantom trees. Jack was alone as no man had ever been alone before. He walked upon vapour, and about him were only ghosts.