It hit them about eleven o’clock and there was no sleeping after that. It was the heaviest wind Brent had ever experienced in the Northwest. It made mountains on the ocean so that they could hear the pound of the surf like a constant roaring in their ears. It bent the great fir trees like a child’s bow. The tent held, thanks to the extra precautions of the Indians. But the flapping would have ruined slumber even if the noisy majesty of the storm had not.
Along about midnight there was a sound that overtopped all the rest. And was different from all the rest. There was a gigantic boom, as if a hundred sixteen-inch guns had been fired in exact unison. Then there was a bellow like that of a million bulls. And finally a mighty spouting sound, as if about a square mile of ocean floor had risen from the bottom, looked around and sunk in a welter of tidal waves again. Brent looked toward Lini. He couldn’t see her, couldn’t see his hand before his face. “Earthquake?” he shouted above the wind.
“I don’t think so, or we’d have felt it,” she shouted back. “Landslide?”
“Maybe. Or maybe the glacier.”
In the morning, tired but otherwise unharmed, they looked on a wind-scoured world. Many of the trees were down. Scarred logs were washed a hundred feet above normal water level on the shore. They went to the glacier as soon as they’d eaten. It was a pretty impressive sight — a river of broken glass penned between two high hill ranges and opening onto the ocean. The two saw a field of great ice lumps over the ocean’s surface for what seemed miles. And across the foot of the glacier, there was a sharp cliff, as if someone had sliced the ice river off about four hundred yards from shore with a great knife.
“That was it,” nodded Brent. “A chunk of ice bigger than an ocean liner — bigger than fifty ocean liners — broke off in the gate— Hey! That’s funny.” Lini followed the direction of his gaze, her own brown eyes looking puzzled.
The height of the wall of ice at the foot of the glacier was a good twenty stories. Under it, as if it had been squeezed flat during countless centuries by the great weight, was a low cliff of black rock. “I’ll bet it’s the first time that rock has seen the light of day for a good many thousands of years,” Lini said. “The ice would normally come far over it. How square that one center part is, Brent.”
Brent Waller nodded. It was that squareness which had attracted his eyes too. Part of the low cliff was as smooth and flat as if hewed that way by human hands. They went to it. As they approached the low cliff, they instinctively cowered and looked up at the ice wall. The glacier’s foot seemed actually to lean over them a little, so sheer was the solid ice mass. It looked as if it would fall on them if they breathed hard! But the thing in the center of the flat section of the rock took their minds off the ice. “Looks like a door,” said Brent.
“It is a door!” gasped Lini. “Who would cut a door in there — in a place no man could get to for hundreds and hundreds of years?”
“Maybe the cliff hasn’t been buried as long as we thought,” said Brent. But both of them knew otherwise. They were sure that this cliff had not been exposed to daylight since long before the most ancient memory of tribal man. Yet what they were looking at was undeniably a door!
The cliff was perhaps twenty feet high, stretching from one of the glacier-confining hills to the other. And in the center, where the face of the cliff had been cut so that it was as smooth as a brick wall, was the eight-by-five slab, obviously separate from the surrounding rock.
A door — but with no convenient doorknob on it. “How would it open?” mused Lini.
“Woman’s curiosity,” said Brent, jeeringly, yet with an undertone of uneasiness. “Who would want to open it? What could it open on?”
“That’s what I’d like to find out,” said Lini. She bent close to the slab, set flush with the smooth black cliff. With sharp, young eyes she went over it. “Here’s a spot that’s smoothed inward, as if a lot of fingers had rubbed at it,” she announced. She pressed hard. Nothing happened.
“Silly,” said Brent. “Expecting some kind of secret spring when this door couldn’t have been built by any but ancient Indians without even Stone-Age knowledge—” He stopped. The door was swinging on a central pivot. Lini screamed. She had pressed at that smoothed spot with her right hand, and then her foot had slipped so that her left hand thrust, for support, against a section of the slab in about the same location on the left side. “Brent!” She was falling inward through the opening. Her left hand clutched at the edge of the door, slipped from it.
“Brent!” She banged her head. And it was lights out!
CHAPTER II
River of Ice
Lini Waller recovered quickly. She had only fallen on level rock floor, and her right arm had partly broken the fall. There was an egg on her forehead, but that was all. She sat up, rubbing the bump, and looked into her brother’s frightened eyes. “I’m all right,” she said. “Where are we? This looks strange. Oh, we’re behind the door!”
“Behind the door,” nodded Brent. “And all there seem to be in here are a lot of other doors. I can’t figure it out.”
Rubbing her head, Lini looked around. They were in a cave about forty feet across, and quite low. Set at widely spaced intervals around the cave were doors just like the outer one through which she had fallen: heavy rock slabs set flush with the rock around them. And that was all. The cave was empty.
A very peculiar thing suddenly struck Lini’s consciousness. “Why, Brent!” she gasped. “It ought to be dark in here! And it’s not. There’s just the one opening made by that door swung open on a center pin. We shouldn’t be able to see ten feet away. Yet we can see this whole big place as if it were clear daylight all the way back!”
“By heavens, we can!” said Brent. “We can. That is funny, Lini.” They began looking for the source of the light. It simply couldn’t be daylight coming in from the comparatively small door. And they noticed at regular intervals around the walls that the light was a little brighter. Brent went to the nearest bright spot. Up above his head there was a rock shelf. Light streamed up and out from this. He reached high, and felt. The ledge was hollowed out into a deep niche and the source of the light was down in that. “For the love of Pete!” said Brent excitedly. “If this isn’t indirect lighting, I’ll eat the glacier over our heads!”
“You mean electric lights?” said Lini, incredulously.
“No, certainly not. How could there be electric lights in a place like— Here, give me a knee. I’ll hang onto the rock ledge so you won’t have my whole weight.” Lini knelt on one shapely knee, with the other leg out. Brent stood on it, holding most of his weight with his hands hooked over the ledge. He could see into the niche now. He continued to look as puzzled as before. “There’s something here like a glass rod,” he said. “It’s fiery white, gives off a sort of fluorescent glow. No, it’s not glass; it looks like fused quartz.”
“Any wires or anything like that to it?” asked Lini.
“Not a thing. There’s just the rod.” Brent touched it with a fast stab of his finger, then laid his whole hand on it. “There’s no heat in it. I never saw anything like it in my life.”
Lini was losing interest in the flaming white rod. “Come down, Brent. I want to look behind these other doors.”
“Think that’s wise?” said Brent, stepping down.