Part 3

"A spacer it is, Jim Landor. One such as you never saw before, and it's being built under conditions such as you cannot imagine. We have to mine and fashion the metal in the few tiny furnaces we have here, and it's inconceivably slow due to the scarcity and crudeness of tools. We've been at work on this one spacer for three years.

"As for this new metal, it's to be found here in huge deposits. In some ways it's like radite, it might even _be_ radite, strangely changed through the centuries by those peculiar green radiations. Anyway, it's amazingly light and tough, almost expansive under fuel pressure and it's going to revolutionize spacer construction if we can only get any from here and make it known!"

"But how, man? How do you propose--"

"To get the spacer out of here?" Spurlin smiled confidently. "In one super blast we're going to hurl through this roof to the city above, and through _that_ cavern roof onto the surface of Mars. I'm fully convinced this metal is capable of withstanding it. We're building a double hull. And we have enough fuel hoarded here to take us clear to Earth if we wish."

Jim nodded, but he was not enthusiastic. "How long, do you think, before you finish it?"

"Perhaps only another month now! The ore's damnably hard to get out, and we can only stay up there on the surface a few hours at a time--but with the added help of you new men...."

* * * * *

"We're with you to the finish!" Conley exclaimed, and the others nodded enthusiastically. Wessel, especially, had listened with an eager intentness to Spurlin's description of the new metal. Wessel had come seeking new radite deposits, and had stumbled upon something vast beyond his fondest dreams! Even his loyalty to TRI-PLANETARY MINING was fast beginning to waver.

"What I want to know," Jim voiced the thought uppermost in his mind, "is the status of that little old Martian, Bhruulo."

Spurlin frowned. "No one seems to have found out, and most of us don't care. He's incredibly old, of course. He seems to have been here always. In some strange manner, he seems to know when men come into the Polar Cap, and he always sends that surface vehicle out for them. However, he completely ignores us here. I'm not even sure that he knows we're working on this spaceship! We try to keep out of his sight, and I've personally not seen him more than twice in the past year."

"But isn't it incredible that in three years he hasn't found out or guessed what you are doing?"

"Not so incredible. We don't know what he's doing. We leave him alone and he leaves us alone."

"But," Jim exclaimed unbelievingly, "he brought you here, and you're not even curious to know why?"

"Let me remind you that certain men have been curious--and they have disappeared. Anyway our sole purpose now is in completing the spacer for our escape."

Jim gestured disdainfully. "And you, Spurlin--you once claimed to be a scientist! You have not even the scientific mind--"

"One's mind," Spurlin interrupted softly, "somehow, does not seem to be the same after three years in this place."

"All right. But before _I_ leave here I'm going to find out what Bhruulo's purpose is! I don't like the way that old Martian grinned at me. He's got something up his sleeve, and I think you men'll find it out too late."

Spurlin smiled sadly. "All right, Jim Landor. Each man is his own boss here. At least I wish you would accompany a few of us tomorrow. We're getting more of the metal out, and trying to determine the proper spot to blast through with our spacer. You'll become more acquainted with the city and the general terrain, and maybe it'll change your mind."

"Sure, I'll go," Jim agreed. But he didn't think it would change his mind. He had wanted to find M'Tonak, here he was in M'Tonak and he was gong to solve the mystery of M'Tonak. More than that, he was going to learn once and for all what had happened to his brother.

V

The following day a dozen men ventured up into the city. Spurlin seemed disappointed as they stepped out into the street from their secret building. "Not an ideal day for it," he commented gruffly. And at Jim's querulous look, he explained, "Those emanations seem stronger today. I give us only two or three hours, at the most."

They went into the rocky terrain beyond the city, toward the near horizon where the cave roof tapered down. That was hardly a mile away. Jim found it hard to believe that over their heads was the Polar Cap, vast and desolate. Glancing up, he barely made out the dim contour of their roof; and it suddenly occurred to him to wonder what sustained it, why it didn't collapse under that tremendous pressure of rock and ice!

He knew why, only a minute later. There came a sudden, smooth hum in his ears. The very air around them seemed surcharged with energy, or rather all energy seemed to be rushing _away_ from them!

"This way!" Spurlin exclaimed, making a hasty detour from the spot. Barely a hundred yards away Jim could discern a vague swirling mistiness, in the form of a huge column that reached up to touch the roof. Suddenly, he knew what it was, knew also that it would be death for any man who ventured too close.

"Ionization zone." Spurlin voiced Jim's own thoughts as they hurried in the detour. "An electronic tower of strength! There are usually six of them in a straight line across this cave, but once in a while new ones spring up out of nowhere. I think Bhruulo controls them."

Jim nodded uncomfortably, and tried not to think what would happen if all those electronic zones failed, with millions of tons of ice above them.

They reached their objective at last. Tunnels were in evidence where the men had been taking out the ore. They resumed work at once, but it was slow and heart-breaking. Their tools were crude, and the ore was the most difficult Jim had ever handled.

Wessel worked harder than any of them, his eyes agleam with a new excitement. "Look at that stuff," he said once to Conley. "Over fifty per cent pure content, most of it!"

It was perhaps an hour later when Spurlin called a halt. "Enough for today. We'll try again tomorrow."

Jim didn't need to ask why they must stop. Already he felt that strange tingling in every fiber of his being, which increased as the minutes passed, and he knew that here was a dangerous thing.

"We have so little time in which to work up here," Spurlin said as they hurried back. "Do you see now, Jim Landor, why it's taken us close to three years?"

Jim saw, indeed. Within him there surged a vast admiration for these men who had persevered in the face of almost insurmountable difficulties, to build their spaceship from the barest resources around them.

Yet close upon this there leaped to Jim's mind another thought, unannounced and without reason. It was simply a feeling that there was something _vastly, terribly wrong with what these men were doing_! It was more than a feeling, it was a certainty! It didn't make sense--that they shouldn't escape from M'Tonak--but now Jim knew it!

Before he could think long upon it, however, they had come in sight of their building and Jim saw a familiar figure emerge. It was Kaarji, but there seemed something vaguely wrong with him. He looked in their direction but seemed not to see them at all, as he turned and walked away with a long, purposeful stride.

Something struck another ominous note in Jim's brain. The men reached their building and entered it, but he did not stop. He hurried after Kaarji.

"Landor! You damn fool, come back here!" Spurlin cried after him.

But Jim waved a hand, not looking back. He hurried after the Martian. Those emanations were almost unbearable now, but he didn't seem to mind. There was something ominous about them, but something else as well that he could not resist.

He had miscalculated Kaarji's distance, however, because somewhere in the maze of streets he lost him. But he knew where the Martian was going--where they were both going. Hours later it seemed, but could only have been minutes, when he came in sight of the imposing edifice where he had last seen Bhruulo disappear.

* * * * *

Now he hesitated. His mind was crystal clear, clearer than he had ever known it before. But somehow it did not seem to be his own. He struggled a little, but the result was inevitable, he seemed to know it. He gave up almost voluntarily. He continued toward the building and entered its portals that were open wide and waiting.

He faced a long, greenish-gloomy corridor of marble. With hardly a pause he continued along it. Tall imposing doors, tightly closed, were on either side of him, but he gave little heed to them. The corridor turned sharply once, and then again, and then it seemed to lead a little downward. Jim could not be sure. He only knew that he was being led _somewhere_, that he was to face something. A cold fear caught his brain, but he could only go on.

Now the corridor walls seemed to waver, seemed to swim beneath a sort of radiance. But it was a glaucous radiance, ineffably green as the light beneath the waters of a shallow sea. It increased in intensity, however, as he went on. It became almost tangible, it beat against him, it seemed to pluck with evil intentness at the fibers of his mind. Jim laughed once, laughed wildly, but did not pause in his stride.

The corridor made one more turn and then he was walking into a light so blinding that it staggered him momentarily. It flared up once in a great greenish effulgence, then died down into a steady pulsation. Now, Jim knew, he must be approaching the very source of that all-pervading light which had so puzzled him since his arrival at M'Tonak.

But now he had a vaguely uncomfortable feeling. It was as though a million eyes were watching him, observing every move. It was as though a million tiny fingers were tearing away the shreds of his mind with secret, silent amusement. Jim did not look about him as he walked on, for he knew no one was there. It had something to do with this light, that much he knew.

Now he could see the end of the corridor through the pulsing greenish haze. Something seemed to be there, something towering and opalescent--and waiting.

He came very near before he saw what it was, a huge circular glass-enclosed well that towered up to the ceiling fifty feet above. It was from this well that the light came. Jim could see the gentle pulsing of it, with streamers of a darker color flashing through it vertically.

Those millions of eyes now were very near. Those millions of fingers probed into his brain unbearably. Jim pressed his hands to his throbbing temples, but the pain continued to expand within his skull. He could not turn and flee, for something held him there. He tried to cry out against it, but his throat seemed to contract and no sound would emerge.

He had no knowledge whether it was minutes or hours that he stood there; but when at last he felt his legs giving way beneath him, and glimpsed the blur of the floor rushing up, it was with a profound sense of gratitude for the oblivion that would be his.

* * * * *

But this was not to be. No sooner did he feel the floor beneath him, than the force which had beaten him down partially withdrew. Jim staggered to his feet, weak and a little dazed. Now something else was happening behind that glassite-encased well. The green pillar of light was lowering, coalescing upon itself with a slowly swirling motion.

And then, as the tower of light lessened, Jim saw what rode atop it. He saw a shape, huge, iridescent and apparently weightless. It seemed at first simply a larger area of greenish light, but for a single second he glimpsed more. He saw the massive core of it. He felt his stomach turning over in a prodigious yawn, and his brain churned in chaotic horror.

The thing he saw was a roughly globular, quasi-amorphous shape that was in a state of constant fluxion. It was partly tentacular, it writhed and pulsed, it seemed to project itself at will. Darkish tendrils came uncurling from it as if it were reaching for something not quite attainable. Simultaneously it spun slowly atop its pillar of light which seemed also a part of itself, somehow. _It was alive, a thinking, intelligent entity._ That much Jim knew. It would even have been an entity of beauty, with its whirling greenish effulgence, were it not for one thing.

_It was evil._ Terribly, undeniably so. Jim could feel the impact of it almost physically. Almost he felt that here was the essence of all the evil of another universe, compressed into that one horribly writhing mass that was now trying to expend itself but could not. And he had the feeling that although it could be moved to terrible, devastating anger, it was now for some reason gleeful.

It came riding down, light as a feather atop its light, until it hovered just a few feet above Jim's head. Jim knew that he was being examined microscopically, perhaps even fourth-dimensionally. He shivered a little. He tried to take a step back but could not. There came a sudden chuckling within his own brain, and then mentally he heard the entity speak.

"Yes, Earthman, you were right in your estimate of me. I am 'evil' to such as you. At least that is what Bhruulo tells me, and I have come to believe Bhruulo."

Jim crouched before the thing, staring up at it. He still felt its probing mental fingers in his mind, and the fingers were ... _unclean_. He spoke aloud at last, in a voice he hardly recognized as his own.

"What--_what in heaven's name are you_?"

* * * * *

There came that chuckling note again, as the thing spoke.

"Whatever I am, Earthman, it is not in heaven's name. I do not exactly know myself what I am. I personally have no conception or remembrance of how I came here. I only know what Bhruulo has told me. It pleases me to tell you."

The mental voice ceased abruptly. Then sudden, vivid pictures flashed stereoptically across Jim's brain and were as quickly gone. He saw a city he recognized as M'Tonak, and the city was teeming with people. Jim knew that must have been many, many years ago.

The scene changed. As through another's eyes, he caught a blurry vision of this evil entity flashing from out of the sky to land near the city. He felt some of the consternation and then horror as the populace died by the score in the streets. There was no apparent reason except the presence of the alien thing. Just to look at the blinding brilliance of it was to die. Jim caught confused pictures of all available weapons being rushed to the scene to do battle with the thing, but to no avail; as the M'Tonakians died, the entity grew tremendous in proportions and in power.

These pictures flashed away and Jim saw others; the last few scientists of M'Tonak, in a barricaded place where they worked frantically on a weapon with which to battle the alien thing. They completed the weapon but they could not destroy the entity. After a terrific struggle they subdued it temporarily by means of certain rays and beams. In this manner they at last brought it into captivity within the glassite well.

"Bhruulo says all this happened hundreds of years ago," the voice came again within Jim's brain. "He is the last of that final group of scientists who subdued me. _I_ have only a vague remembrance--"

"Bhruulo says!" Jim gasped, struggling with the significance of the idea.

He looked up and saw the spherish, effulgent thing spinning with silent amusement. "Is Bhruulo's longevity, then, such an unusual thing? I do not know. Your time-scheme means little to me. Perhaps Bhruulo's great age is due to his perpetual proximity to me, I only know that, unlike other Martians and Earthmen, he is immune to my strongest powers now."

Jim sensed a certain bitterness in that mental voice, almost a hatred for Bhruulo. Looking up at the greenish, brooding globe, Jim ventured a daring question.

"Don't you sometimes long to be--free again?"

He felt the tendril-fingers grasp his mind again with a fierce tenacity. He cried out against the physical pain of it, but even through the pain he heard the throbbing answer.

"Free! Yes, Earthman! Bhruulo glories that he has me trapped here. Often I remember those olden days when I almost conquered the city of M'Tonak and the planet Mars! Bhruulo has promised me those days again, and much more. He says he is preparing for it, but I do not know what he means. I only know that I tire of waiting!"

There were more mental words, but Jim only heard them through a mist about his brain. He knew that here, at last, he had solved the mystery of M'Tonak! This evil entity from out of another universe or another dimension was the "emeralds" of M'Tonak which had lured men up here in ages past for its own, or Bhruulo's, devilish purpose. But what was that purpose? Something vastly imminent, Jim knew! Perhaps it was something the entity even now was trying to tell him in its strangely confidential mood.

* * * * *

"That is enough. You have said enough! I have warned you about this!"

That was not the thing's mental voice! Jim knew it, even as he whirled to face Bhruulo who had come from nowhere to stand behind him. Bhruulo was furious. His grayish, lined face was a mask of hate--but not for Jim. He hurried forward like a scuttling crab, supporting himself on his cane with both hands. He approached the glassite barrier, and began to manipulate tiny wheels there which Jim had not noticed before. A network of wiring led down to several complicated box-like affairs set in the floor.

Then a very curious thing happened. If a writhing, pulsing, spinning globe of evil can cower, that is what the entity did! No sooner had Bhruulo's hands touched the wheels, than the entity sank down to the floor, then darted frightenedly up again, to cringe against the furthermost confines of its prison. It poised there, hesitant, as if watching Bhruulo. It ventured out from the wall and then back again. It hardly pulsed at all now, as if holding its breath in fear.

A tiny hum came from the machinery Bhruulo was manipulating. It rose to a shrill whine and then passed beyond the audible. A sudden criss-cross of pencil-thin beams leaped about the confines of the well. They were pale, scarcely visible, but Jim sensed the power of them. He heard a mental shriek of agony from the spinning globe, then it was tumbling up the sides of the well, out of range. It vanished fifty feet overhead, in a haze of greenish light.

Using his cane as a pivot, Bhruulo pirouetted slowly to face Jim.

"Now," he said, "we can talk to each other without interruption from that thing. Too bad that it hates me and I hate it. For we need each other.

"I do not know," Bhruulo continued, "how much the Dim-Ing told you of itself or of me and my plans. It does not particularly matter, now."

"Dim-Ing?" Jim repeated querulously, trying to focus his mind again.

"Yes. 'Dimensional-Thing.' Facetious? I have my moments of humor. _It_ has only a dim remembrance of its past before it came to Mars; but through certain conversation with it I have come to the conclusion that it somehow had birth in another dimension impinging delicately upon ours. How or why it was flung across to us we shall never know. But it is nearly finished on Mars."

Something caught at Jim's brain. He started a little.

Bhruulo laughed shrilly.

* * * * *

"Yes. Had you not guessed before? The Dim-Ing feeds upon the minds of men. Oh, very subtly, of course. But for the presence of such sustenance on Mars it would have died long, long ago. At first the accumulative mental sustenance of Mars was more than sufficient. I was careful to keep the Dim-Ing under my control, even as now. But as the years passed--more years than you think, Earthman--I saw what was happening. _We were hastening the eventual decease of the Martian race!_ The Dim-Ing absorbed, at first, all _evil_ from the total Martian mind. And then--even more.

"No doubt, Earthman, you have read something of Martian history. You will remember that several centuries ago a frightful war raged across three major continents of Mars. Almost abruptly, that is to say within the space of a few years, it ceased mutually and without apparent reason! It was the Dim-Ing and I who indirectly caused that. Then, you will remember, there came an almost Utopian state for something like a few score of years. It quickly passed as the Dim-Ing sent out its subtle radiations almost desperately, across the surface of Mars. The Martians became the inactive, indolent, dying race you see now. In the last few scores of years, sustenance for the Dim-Ing has been meager indeed."

Jim only stared at this Martian who according to the entity was hundreds of years old. A horror crept into Jim's brain, and a subtle warning. Here, he knew, was the one to be guarded against. Here in this bent little Martian was the ultimate evil. His was the controlling hand.

* * * * *

Jim had been listening in a slowly dawning horror. Now he found his voice at last, as he took a single tense step toward Bhruulo.

"And you--you tell me this! This thing that has been happening to the Martian race! You, yourself a Martian--"

Bhruulo did not move and the expression on his face did not change.

"It is not what I am, or once was, that matters. It is what I _shall_ be. With the tool that I have now, immortality lies within my grasp. That, and eternal power. I shall continue.

"Within the last fifty years, you Earthmen came. I need not say that you were a Godsend. The Dim-Ing was at a very low ebb indeed.

"Even at the height of their scientific accomplishments the Martians never quite achieved space travel. By what miracle you Earthmen achieved it shall always remain a mystery to me. But I thank you. You came when I needed you most.

"I discovered that your Earthian minds are stubborn, very stubborn indeed. The Dim-Ing likes that. It can subsist much longer on an Earthian mind than on a Martian. Furthermore, I learned that the Earthian mind is curious--one of the inherent qualities of your race. Therefore, I embellished somewhat the existing legend of M'Tonak. And you all came searching greedily; if not in droves, at least, in sufficient numbers.

"And now you are building a spaceship for me. I have known it all along! I have brought you here for that purpose! I know it is very near completion, this spaceship which shall carry, not Earthmen back to Earth, but the Dim-Ing and myself."

"But it shall not!" Jim had let Bhruulo talk on, knowing what was coming. In his mind now was no room for horror; his mind was quickly alert and his hand was even quicker, as it flashed to the electro-pistol in his belt.

But Bhruulo made a motion too, so fast that, paradoxically, there was a certain casualness about it. He still smiled. He raised his cane on which he had been leaning with both hands. From a lens-covered bore in the end of it came a thick whitish light, touching Jim's hand and holding it motionless. It expanded, enveloped all of his body so that he could not move.

It surged a little upward, full into his face.

Jim Landor crumpled noiselessly and lay still.

VI

His mind came surging slowly back up from the dark depths of nightmare. His head ached unbearably. He had thought an insistent, warning voice was crying out at him. He opened his eyes. This was no nightmare, for memory came back in a rushing flood, and he still heard the voice, low and warning and very close to his ear.

"Do not move, Jim Landor. Do not say anything, just listen. This is Kaarji, I am here close by you."

Kaarji! Jim had almost forgotten about Kaarji. Then he took the warning and tried not even to think, he just listened, in a detached manner.