Page:Weird Tales Volume 30 Number 02 (1937-08).djvu/73

ism. You will not be allowed to operate it—we will do that under your direction, the first time."

Hours had passed. It should be midday on the surface of Krann, a quarter-mile above. The great square mechanism was completed, finished in incredibly short time by these super-scientific beings. The force-producing units had been set at the points I specified.

Now, my heart beating wildly, I said, "There is one connection yet to be made—a wire between those two points."

A connection made between those two points would be equivalent to closing the switch of the mechanism. And it had been so set at my direction that the terrific radiant force from it would thrust upward and would hurl the whole roof of the cavern out of ordinary space!

A Dweller approached and began to fasten the wire as I directed. But the Dweller leader, whose huge eyes had been carefully inspecting the mechanism, suddenly hissed, "It is a trick! Do not——"

Before he could finish, the connection was made. And instantly, as the soundless, awful forces from that mechanism thrust upward, the whole rock roof of the cavern vanished, whiffed instantly outside the continuum of ordinary space! The cavern, its roof gone, was open to the sky. And up there blazed the crimson sun, pouring a sudden blinding flood of light and heat down into these dim spaces that never before had known light.

The Dwellers in Darkness cried out wildly in hissing terror as the dazzling sunlight struck them. They tried to writhe out of it, to gain the shelter of darkness, but could not. For almost instantly their white worm-bodies were turning black. They were dying, slain by the sunlight that was fatal to their dark race.

Yes, the mad chance on which I had gambled had succeeded and all the race of the Dwellers, gathered here for their human victims, was dead now and would never again shadow this world with dread.

Gor Om and his two guards and Lura too, stood there benumbed with stupefaction in the flood of crimson sunlight. I snatched a sword from the nearest of the two men. Before I could use it, he and the other guard fled shrieking with terror away through the looming mechanisms and litter of dead black worm-bodies.

But Gor Om, even now, had the courage to draw his sword. Blade clashed on blade while Lura watched, stunned. Weak as I was, hardly able to stand, I yet pressed the obese one back and back, until a last fierce lunge sent my blade through his gross throat.

Then Lura ran to me, sobbing, "Khal Erik—look!"

She pointed up. Men mounted on rhors were winging fearfully, cautiously, down from the sunlight into the vast, newly unroofed cavern.

Their winged reptilian steeds alighted near us, and one man ran to us, shouting. It was big Herk Ell.

He cried, "Khal Erik—you're still alive! We thought you gone for ever; then a few minutes ago we saw this vast space suddenly open not far from Zinziba, and came to investigate. Gor Om——"

"Gor Om is dead," I said weakly, "and so too are the Dwellers in Darkness, dead and gone for ever."

They brought me one of the rhors and I mounted it, holding Lura tightly in front of me. With flapping of wings, we rose on our steeds up out of that place