Terror out of the past

They hadn't heard the soft purr of an expensive automobile on the roadway beyond the fence, at the foot of the slope. But now the sounds of a brief, angry argument at the gate, some hundred yards away, drew their startled, nervous attention. With so much that was unknown and unhintable pending, this was hardly the time to receive visitors of any kind, certainly not hostile visitors with ideas of their own.

Uneasily, Wilcox and Murgatroyd turned to face a group of people hurrying toward them across the intervening area of the fenced enclosure. One was a trusted workman, left to guard the gate. But the others--there were four men and a girl--had been able to overrule the guard's refusal to admit them.

Of the four men, three were burly, massive specimens with the scars of many combats marking their coarse features. The fourth was slender and bent, maybe fifty. His head was entirely bald, his cheeks had withered lines in them, and his squinted piggish eyes held a look of secretive, hungry searching.

Murgatroyd and Wilcox had no trouble recognizing this uninvited guest, who clearly was the master mind of the intruding group. All the world knew Lyman Kerwin, whose colossal fortune had thrust dominance-seeking tentacles into most of the key industries of America. Path of Progress, Rod's and Perry's outfit, had tangled with him once. They'd taken newsreel pictures of the collapse of one of the gigantic but poorly constructed power and irrigation dams which he had built in one of the western states. Hundreds of people had been killed, and thousands had been rendered homeless by a disaster traceable to materials and workmanship far less costly than specified. Only Kerwin's money, fixing a corrupt court, had enabled him to escape the consequences of criminal misrepresentation.

Seeing Kerwin, and the inquiring speculative glances he cast about the enclosure, Doctor Murgatroyd's pointed red face suddenly darkened with fury, chagrin, and something like a nameless, nervous panic.

"Thunder of Jupiter!" he whispered hoarsely. "That polecat would have to barge in now--now, of all times! We might have known it, Perry! But you just wait till I sail into him! The dirty--"

Perry silenced the old scientist with a poke in the ribs. "You keep still," he ordered. "Just make believe you're bossing the drill crew."

The young man advanced slowly a few steps toward the intruders. He didn't grin or scowl. He just kept his face straight, ready to meet Kerwin in whatever manner the latter might ask for by his actions or words. Perry did notice the girl in the party, though--briefly. She was walking beside Kerwin. Chestnut curls peeped from beneath an odd little hat. There was a sprinkling of freckles across her tanned, earnest face. Perry knew her slightly. She was Lyssa Arthurs, better known as Troubles, reporter for a paper in the neighboring town of Brenton. Cute, plucky kid, but she seemed a little self-conscious now. And evidently she had strange tastes in company. Perry dismissed her presence with a curt nod that could hardly have been called a greeting.

When he spoke, Kerwin didn't allow a lot of room for doubt as to his attitude, in spite of the veiled terms he used.

"Hello, Wilcox!" he hailed volubly in a rich voice that was in sharp contrast with his cadaverous appearance. "I thought I'd call, since you and the Professor are always doing such interesting things. What's up? Boring for oil or something?"

Perry kept silent, waiting for Kerwin to talk a little more.

"You might as well answer my question, Wilcox," the financier urged. "I'll find out anyway, you know."

"Maybe they're diggin' a road down to China, Chief," one of Kerwin's bodyguards offered with dry and slightly sinister humor. "Or a nice, deep hole to bury themselves in."

Before Perry could speak there was an interruption. The sound of the drill nearby, busy in the dusk, changed abruptly. There was a grating, hollow noise from far underground. Then the whine of machinery racing without resistance. Out of the pipe which ejected the muck and chipped stone and metal shreds brought up from the drilling, there came a gurgling puff, as of air trapped in a subterranean cavern, and under slightly higher pressure than that of the surface, being suddenly released from confinement.

Workmen leaped to throw out the clutch of the big diesel. Old Rod Murgatroyd began to swear excitedly, for it was clear what had happened. The drill had broken through the metal at last. It had reached a hollow space down there. A room, a chamber, perhaps, which the shell of lead alloy was meant to protect.

Perry Wilcox felt his pulses racing wildly. The presence of Kerwin could not spoil his sense of victory. In the evening air around him there was suddenly a faint, musty odor, like that of an old cellar, but with a distinctive quality all its own.

Perry saw the workmen step back from the machinery, as if they didn't know quite what to do or say. And he could tell, too, that the sudden cessation of movement, and that noisome smell, indescribably suggestive of a time that was dead for incredible eons, had had its effect on Lyman Kerwin. Kerwin's lips dangled loosely, and his eyes had lost a lot of their squint. His face was sweaty, and paler than usual.

"You asked what was up, Kerwin," Perry growled at last. "Well, so far we've tried to keep our work here dark so we could get the first investigations completed without interference. But I guess there's no use to stall. You said you'd find out anyway, and you're right--whatever good that'll do you. I think everybody'll get the story in a few days, or even hours. I suppose somebody tipped you off about what we were doing--somebody who lives around here." Perry grinned crookedly at the girl, Lyssa Arthurs, as he made this half accusation.

"But it doesn't matter," he went on. "You saw what just happened, Kerwin. We've evidently reached something with the drill. I don't know what--yet. But it's terribly old, Kerwin. And get this--there's metal down there--a perfectly balanced alloy as old as the Carboniferous fossils! Yes, it's pretty big, Kerwin! And liable to be--dangerous! Why, hell, even that cellar stench that came up from down there might actually be poisonous! It might contain microscopic spores that, in contact with human lungs, could grow and kill. Spores from the past, Kerwin. Sealed up and kept alive through the ages. Of course it's a thin possibility, but who can say? Do you still want to hang around, Kerwin?"