Quickly he caught up the lower knob of the ladder, set it as far out in the direction of the patch as he could reach, gathered in the other knob as it fell, and set it still farther out in the same direction. He alternated them as rapidly as he could, hoping savagely that the sun would hold out, that the patch itself was not, somehow, an illusion.
The sun had crossed the fissure and now touched the lip of the wall from which he dangled. The rock he faced, which had been yellow-red, turned gray again. But there was still light upon the other wall, and he could see well enough. He was less than a hundred feet away, and each alternation of ladder knobs brought him a yard closer.
Glimmering, the sunlight traveled up the opposite wall, and the dusk was closing in when he reached the edge of the patch. His gloved ringers closed upon the edge of a cavity set into the rock. It was smooth, The line had neither fault nor flaw. It had to be made by intelligence.
He needed sunlight no longer. The small beam of the flashlight would be enough. He swung his ladder into the inset, and when he dropped a knob he felt it clunk sharply on rock beneath. A horizontal ledge!
He descended quickly, and in a few minutes found himself standing on rock. For the first time in more than six hours he was standing on something solid. He found the inactive bulb, thrust it into rock at waist level, brought down the ladder, then adjusted the safety latch and pulled out the bulb. For the first time in more than six hours both ends of the ladder were free.
David looped the ladder around his waist and arm and looked about. The cavity in the face of the cliff was about ten feet high and six across. With his flashlight pointing the way, he walked inward and came face to face with a smooth and quite solid stone slab that barred farther progress.
It, too, was the work of intelligence. It had to be. But it remained an effective barrier to further exploration just the same.
There was a sudden pain in his ears, and he spun sharply. There could be only one explanation. Somehow the air pressure about himself was increasing.
He moved back toward the face of the cliff and was not surprised to find that the opening through which he had come was barred by rock which had not previously been there. It had slid into place without a sound.
His heart beat quickly. He was obviously in an air lock of some sort. Carefully he removed his nose-piece and sampled the new air. It felt good in his lungs, and it was warm.
He advanced to the inner slab of rock and waited confidently for it to lift up and away.
It did exactly that, but a full minute before it did so David felt his arms compressed suddenly against his body as though a steel lasso had been thrown about him and tightened. He had time for one startled cry, and then his legs pushed one against the other under similar pressure.
And so it was that when the inner door opened and the way to enter the cavern was clear before Mm, David Starr could move neither hand nor foot.
10. Birth of the Space Ranger
David waited. There was no use in speaking to empty air. Presumably the entities who had built the caverns and who could so immobilize him in so immaterial a fashion would be perfectly capable of playing all the cards.
He felt himself lift from the ground and slowly tip backward until the line of his body was parallel with the floor. He tried to crane his head upward but found it to be nearly immovable. The bonds were not so strong as those which had tightened about his limbs. It was rather like a harness of velvety rubber that gave, but only so far.
He moved inward smoothly. It was like entering warm, fragrant, breathable water. As his head left the air lock, the last portion of his body to do so, a dreamless sleep closed over him.
David Starr opened his eyes with no sensation of any passage of time but, with the sensation of life near by. Exactly what form that sensation took he could not say. He was first conscious of the heat. It was that of a hot summer day on Earth. Second, there was the dim red light that surrounded him and that scarcely sufficed for vision. By it he could barely make out the walls of a small room as he turned his head. Nowhere was there motion; nowhere life.
And yet somewhere near there must be the working of a powerful intelligence. David felt that in a way he could not explain.
Cautiously he tried to move a hand, and it lifted without hindrance. Wonderingly he sat upright and found himself on a surface that yielded and gave but whose nature he could not make out in the dimness.
The voice came suddenly. "The creature is aware of its surroundings…" The last part of the statement was a jumble of meaningless sound. David could not identify the direction from which the voice came. It was from all directions and no direction.
A second voice sounded. It was different, though the difference was a subtle one. It was gentler, smoother, more feminine, somehow. "Are you well, creature?"
David said, "I cannot see you."
The first voice (David thought of it as a man's) sounded again. "It is then as I told…" Again the jumble. "You are not equipped to see mind."
The last phrase was blurred, but to David it sounded like "see mind."
"I can see matter," he said, "but there is scarcely light to see by."
There was a silence, as though the two were conferring apart, and then there was the gentle thrusting of an object into David's hand. It was his flashlight.
"Has this," came the masculine voice, "any significance to you with regard to light?"
"Why, certainly. Don't you see?" He flashed it on and quickly splashed the light beam about himself.
The room was empty of life, and quite bare. The surface he rested upon was transparent to light and some four feet off the floor.
"It is as I said," said the feminine voice excitedly. "The creature's sight sense is activated by short-wave radiation."
"But most of the radiation of the instrument is in the infrared. It was that I judged by," protested the other. The light was brightening even as the voice sounded, turning first orange, then yellow, and finally white.
David said, "Can you cool the room too?"
"But it has been carefully adjusted to the temperature of your body."
"Nevertheless, I would have it cooler."
They were co-operative, at least. A cool wind swept over David, welcome and refreshing. He let the temperature drop to seventy before he stopped them.
David thought, "I think you are communicating directly with my mind. Presumably that is why I seem to hear you speaking International English."
The masculine voice said, "The last phrase is a jumble, but certainly we are communicating. How else would that be done?"
David nodded to himself. That accounted for the occasional noisy blur. When a proper name was used that had no accompanying picture for his own mind to interpret, it could only be received as a blur. Mental static.
The feminine voice said, "In the early history of our race there are legends that our minds were closed to one another and that we communicated by means of symbols for the eye and ear. From your question I cannot help but wonder if this is the case with your own people, creature."
David said, "That is so. How long is it since I was brought into the cavern?"
The masculine voice said, "Not quite a planetary rotation. We apologize for any inconvenience we caused you, but it was our first opportunity to study one of the new surface creatures alive. We have salvaged several before this, one only a short while ago, but none were functional, and the amount of information obtained from such is, of necessity, limited."