Within the Nebula

III

My only memory now of that mad plunge downward is of the pilot room spinning about me, and of the whistling roar of winds outside caused by the speed of our fall. The shock of our collision had apparently silenced our generators, and it was moments before I could struggle up to the controls and make an effort to start them. I jerked open the switches and there came a hum of power from beneath; but the next moment with a jarring, grinding shock our cruiser had met the great pit's floor, flinging us once more to the floor.

For a moment we lay motionless there, and in that moment I became aware of sounds outside, soft rustling sounds that were hardly audible, as of soft-footed creatures moving about. The second shock had again silenced the vibration-mechanism, which I had started the moment before our crash, but I had no doubt that it was only that last-minute action on my part that had slowed our fall enough to save our ship and ourselves from annihilation. Now, staggering to my feet, I reached for the switch of the pilot room's little emergency door, sending it sliding back, admitting a rush of warm, fresh air, and then with my two companions behind me stared dazedly forth.

Our battered cruiser was resting now on the great pit's floor, a vast circular plain of smooth metal five miles in diameter, enclosed on all sides by vertical cliffs of gleaming metal that loomed for miles above us. A dusky twilight reigned here at the great shaft's bottom, but we saw now that that bottom was covered with countless great machines, enigmatic, shining mechanisms that covered the pit's floor completely except for a round clearing at its center, at the edge of which our cruiser rested. From each of the massed machines around us ran a slender tube-connection, and all of these tubes, thousands in number, combined to form a thick black metal cable which led into a huge object at the clearing's center. This was a giant squat cylinder of metal, its height no more than fifty feet but its diameter a full thousand, into the side of which the thick black cable led and whose upper surface shone with a vast brilliant white light that half dispelled the shadows here at the vast pit's bottom. It was from this brilliant upper surface of the cylinder that there sprang upward the great livid ray, a flickering beam of pale light that stabbed straight up toward the glowing fires of the nebula far above.

It was not on the great cylinder or on the massed machines around us, though, that our eyes first rested, but on the shapes, the creatures, who had gathered about our cruiser and stood before us. They were creatures of surpassing strangeness and horror, even to ourselves, unlike in form as we were. Each of them was simply a shapeless mass of plastic white flesh, several feet in thickness, a formless thing of pale flesh without limbs or features of any kind, the only distinguishing mark being a round black spot on the body or mass of each. A dozen or more of them had gathered before us, a dozen shapeless masses of flesh resting on the smooth metal floor there, each with the black spot on his body turned up toward us like some strange eye, which, we knew instinctively, it in reality was.

As we watched them in horror, we saw one of them suddenly move toward us across the smooth metal. A limbless mass of flesh, he glided across the level floor as a snake might glide, the flesh of him flexing and twisting to bear him smoothly forward. Just beneath us he stopped, and there was a moment of tense silence while the whole scene impressed itself indelibly on my brain-the vast, metal-walled pit, the great ghostly ray that clove up through its shadowy dusk toward the nebula far above, the weird white masses of flesh before us. Then up from the creature below us there shot a long, slender arm, an arm that formed itself out of the flesh of his-body-like the pseudopod of a jellyfish, reaching swiftly upward toward us.

That sight was enough to break the spell of horror that had held us, and with a strangled cry I fell back from the door, reached toward the controls to send our ship slanting up out of this place of horror. But as I did so there came a shout from my two companions, and I whirled around to see a half-dozen pseudopod arms reach in through the open door, and then by that grip six or more of the weird creatures had drawn themselves up into the pilot room, and were upon us.

I felt cold, boneless arms twine swiftly around my neck and body, struck out in blind rage against the twisting masses of flesh that held me, and then felt my arms gripped also, felt myself being carried toward the door. The next moment I had been swung smoothly down to the metal floor below and released there, standing panting with my two companions while our strange captors surveyed us. Several of them held in pseudopod arms little square boxes of metal which they held toward us, and one of them, as if for an object lesson, turned his toward a little pile of metal bars not far away, and touched a switch in its handle. Instantly a narrow little jet of what resembled thick blue smoke sprang out of the thing toward the pile of bars, and as it touched them I saw them instantly crumbling and disintegrating like sugar in water, disappearing entirely in a moment. The meaning of the action was plain enough, and with a half-dozen of the deadly things trained full upon us we gave up all thoughts of a dash back to the cruiser.

Now the foremost of the creatures seemed to undergo a series of swift changes in shape, his plastic body twisting and changing from one strange form to another with inconceivable rapidity. After a moment of this protean changing his body settled back into its former shapeless mass, but as it did so three of the creatures behind him came forward toward us, as though in answer to a silent command. I was later to learn what I half guessed at the moment, that it was by these swift changes in bodily shape that the creatures communicated with each other, each such change, however slight, carrying to them as much meaning as a change of accent in spoken speech does to us.

The three that had come forward each held in a pseudopod arm one of the deadly box-weapons, and now they placed themselves around us, one in front and the other two behind us. Then they motioned eloquently toward the left, and after a moment's hesitation we set off in that direction, around the clearing's edge. Past the looming machines we went, my own eyes intent on the huge cylinder in the clearing beside us, from which arose the great ray of impenetrable force into which our ship had crashed. Through the twilight that reigned about us I saw that only a handful of these nebula-creatures were to be seen on all the pit's floor, and wondered momentarily at the smallness of their numbers. Then my speculations were driven from my mind as our guards suddenly halted us, several hundred feet around the clearing's edge from our cruiser.

Before us there yawned a round, dark opening in the smooth floor, a small, shaft-like pit some ten feet in diameter, its sides disappearing down into a dense darkness. As we stared, the guard before us glided to the shaft's edge and suddenly swung himself over that edge, disappearing from view. And as we stepped closer we saw that he was lowering himself down the shaft's smooth metal wall by means of metal pegs inset every few feet in that wall, dropping from peg to peg in smooth, effortless descent. Now our two remaining guards raised their weapons significantly, motioning toward the shaft. Choice of action there was none, so after a moment's involuntary hesitation I stepped to the edge and grasped the highest peg, swinging myself over the edge and down until I had found a foot-hold on a lower peg, then shifting my grasp to swing down again in the same manner. After me came Jor Dahat, and after him the plant-man Sar Than, who swung easily down by grasping the pegs with all of his four limbs. Then the two guards were swinging down after him, and we were dropping steadily down the line of pegs into the rayless darkness.

I think now that of all the journeys in the universe that journey of ours down the shaft was the strangest. Plant-man and human and Arcturian, three different beings from three far-distant stars, we swung down that dizzy ladder into the dark depths of this strange world at the fiery nebula's heart, guarded above and below by formless beings of weirdness unutterable. Down we clambered, feeling blindly in the darkness for our hand and foot-holds, down until at last, far below, there appeared a faint little spot of white light in the darkness.

The spot of light grew stronger, larger, as we climbed down toward it, until finally we saw that we were nearing the shaft's bottom, at which it gleamed. A few minutes more and we had clambered down the last peg and stood at the bottom of the shaft, a dark, circular well of metal pierced in one side by a doorway through which came the dim white light. Then we were bunched together once more between our guards, and were marched through the door into a long corridor dimly lit by a few globes of lambent white light suspended from its ceiling. As we marched along this long, metal-walled corridor I wondered how far beneath the great pit's floor we were, estimating by the length of our downward climb that it must be thousands of feet at least. Then my thoughts shifted as there came from ahead a deep humming, beating sound, and a gleam of stronger light.

Before us now lay the end of the corridor, a square of brilliant white light toward which we were marching. We reached it, were passing through it, and then we halted in our tracks in sheer, stunned astonishment. For below us there stretched a vast open space, or cavern, of gigantic dimensions, its floor and sides and ceiling of smooth black metal, brilliantly illuminated by scores of the lambent globes of light. For thousands of feet before and above us stretched the great space, and in it was a scene of clamorous activity that was stunning after the darkness and silence through which we had come.

Ranged on the mighty cavern's floor were long rows of machines the purposes of which were beyond our speculation, incredibly intricate masses of great arms and cogs and eccentric wheels all working smoothly with a steady beat-beat-beat of power, and tended by countless numbers of the formless nebula-creatures among them. Some seemed to be ventilating-machines of a sort, with great tubes leading upward through the cavern's ceiling; from others streams of white-hot metal gushed out into molds, cooling instantly into wheels and squares and bars; still others appeared to be connected with the great globes of light above; and some there were, like great domed turtles of metal, that moved here and there about the cavern's floor, reaching forth great pincer-arms to grip stacks of bars and plates and carry them from place to place.

Only a moment we stared across that scene of amazing activity before our guards were again motioning us onward, across the cavern's floor. Between the aisles of looming mechanisms we marched, whose formless attendants seemed not to heed us as we passed them. Before and around us glided the great turtle-machines with their burdens, the humming of their operation adding to the medley of sounds about us, only the shapeless nebula-creatures being completely silent. And as we marched on I saw in the great cavern's distant walls doors and corridors leading away to other vast brilliant-lit caverns that I could but vaguely glimpse, extending away in every direction a great, half seen vista of mighty white-lit spaces reaching away all about us, stupendous; incredible. And as we went on we saw other narrow shafts in the floor like that down which we had come, saw swarms of the nebula-creatures rising from and descending into those shafts by the pegs set in their sides, moving ceaselessly up and down from whatever other vast spaces might lie beneath us in this titanic, honeycombed world.

At last we were across the great cavern, had entered the comparative silence of another corridor, and progressed down this until our guards turned us through a doorway in its right wall. We found ourselves in a great hall, or room, smaller by far than any of the vast caverns that honeycombed this world, but unlike them quite silent, and with no humming machines or busy attendants. The great, long hall, perhaps five hundred feet in length, was quite empty except for a low dais at its farther end, toward which our guards conducted us, gliding before and behind us.

As we neared it we saw that on each side of the dais was ranged a double file of guards, each armed with the deadly weapon we had seen demonstrated, while upon the dais itself rested ten of the formless nebula-creatures. Of these ten, nine were like all of the others that we had seen, ranged in a single line across the dais. The tenth, however, who rested in a central position in front of the nine, was like the others in form or formlessness alone, being at least five times larger in size than any of the others we had seen, an enormous mass of white flesh resting there on the dais and contemplating us with his strange eye as we were marched down the hall toward him. I divined instantly, by his strange size and prominent position, that he held some place of power above the others of his race. For weird and alien as his appearance was, there yet reached out from him toward us a strong impression of some strange majesty and power embodied in this monstrous mass of flesh, some awe-inspiring dignity that was truly regal, and that transcended all differences of mind or shape.

In a moment we had been halted before the dais, and then one of our guards glided forward, the mass of flesh that was his body twisting and changing with lightning-like swiftness in the strange communication of these creatures. I had no doubt that he was explaining our capture, and when he glided back the great creature on the dais contemplated us for a time in motionless silence. Then his own body writhed suddenly in protean change, in silent speech, and instantly one of the nine creatures behind him glided from the dais and through a small door in the wall behind it, reappearing in a moment with a complicated little apparatus in his grasp.

This was a small black box from which slender cords led to two shining little plates of metal. One of the plates he placed upon the body of the great nebula king, directly beneath the strange eyes, where it seemed to adhere instantly. Then, after pausing a moment, he glided toward Jor Dahat with the other plate. The plant-man shrank back at his approach, but as the guards around us raised their weapons he subsided, allowing the creature to place the plate upon his own body beneath the head, where it also adhered. This done, the creature moved back to the little box and touched a series of switches upon it.

Instantly a slight whining sound rose from the box while a little globe on its surface flashed into blinding blue light. The great nebula ruler on the dais did not move, nor did Jor Dahat, though I saw his face grow blank, perplexed. For minutes the little mechanism hummed, and then, at a swift writhing order from the monster on the dais the thing was switched off. A moment the nebula king seemed to pause, then gave another silent order, and this time the creatures at the box snapped on another series of switches, the globe upon it flashing into yellow light this time.

As it did so I saw Jor Dahat's eyes widening and starting, his whole body reacting as from an electric shock. His whole attitude, as the little apparatus hummed on, was that of one who listens to incredible things, his face a sudden mask of horror. Then suddenly he uttered a strangled cry, tore the metal plate from his body, and before any could guess his intention or prevent him had hurled himself with a mad shout straight at the nebula king!