CHAPTER V
Flight
It was not strange that in this moment of peril, when the chips were down, Ramey Winters should be the one to seize the reins of command. He was a soldier, a trained fighting man. It was sheer instinct that spurred him into action. Once, several hours before, he had studied this room with the wondering eyes of one baffled by mystery. Now he studied it again, this time with the sharp, critical gaze of a fighter appraising a salient.
The hall in which they stood was a closed square, roughly, fifty by fifty, on the lowest level of the temple. Its walls were two feet thick, and it had no windows, but it was still precariously vulnerable because at the center of each of three walls gaped wide, arched doorways, and the fourth wall was fed by a smaller entrance.
Ramey asked swiftly, "These doorways—where do they lead?"
Syd O'Brien pointed to each in turn. "North wall—outer staircases from the moat. West wall—terrace. The south entrance is the way we came in. The little door leads to the inner court. They'll come from the west and south."
"Okay. That's where we'll concentrate our defense. Red—you and Lake and Dr. Aiken guard the west entrance. Syd and Grinnell and I will hold the south."
"How about me?" demanded Sheila Aiken angrily. "I'm as good a shot as—"
"You have the most important job of all," Ramey told her grimly. "Keeping the guns loaded for us. Put all the guns and ammunition on the table between us. Here—" With a heave he cleared the surface of a massive laboratory desk. Dr. Aiken winced as piles of carefully sorted ceramics, heaps of precious notes, spilled helter-skelter to the floor. "Sirabhar will help you. I suppose we can't count on Sheng-ti. No? Then you and Sirabhar will have to keep an eye on the north and east entrances. Not much chance of their getting in that way, but—"
Red said, "Lot of furniture in this room, Ramey. Chairs and tables and stuff. Make good barricades."
"Good idea! All right, everybody, hop to it! Time's getting short."
Time was getting short. So treacherously short, in fact, that working feverishly they had barely succeeded in setting the rude beginning of their barricades before the vulnerable doorways when the attackers hove in view. Johnny Grinnell gave the alarm.
"Here they come, Ramey! Around the edge of the terrace wall. Six ... a dozen of them. I don't see the captain, though."
"You won't," bellowed Red. "'Cause he's over here. They done what you figured, Ramey; split up. They're coming at us from both sides. Well—"
"Wait!" snapped Ramey. "Don't shoot unless they do!"
Red lowered his rifle reluctantly. "Damn if you ain't the—the pacificest guy I ever saw! Always letting the other guy get the drop on you. It gives me a pain in the—Wow! There it comes! Well, I can shoot, now!"
For his sentence had been punctuated by a simultaneous opening fire from both attack parties. His own gun barked answer. And this time, more ruthlessly, more determinedly than it had waged before the battle begun on the upper causeway continued.
There was no time for the details of that fight to register coherently upon Ramey Winters' brain. But later he found etched in his memory sharp, indelible highlights of those frenzied moments.
His own gun, spluttering and coughing against his cheek as he crouched at the edge of the doorway, firing at figures that slipped, wraithlike, through the murky corridor. The incessant, crashing echo of what seemed like a thousand guns; here in these vaulted depths sound smashed back upon itself thunderously, seemed to merge with the thickening, acrid smoke and roll about the room in reverberant waves. Red Barrett, holding his heavy rifle pistol-wise in one hamlike paw, dripping curses in a loud, prolific stream as with his free hand he tucked into place the edge of a raveling bandage. Syd O'Brien, scowling at his side, methodically pumping his shots where they would do the most good. Lake O'Brien, across the room, achieving the same result with roars of boisterous glee.
Other details. Dr. Aiken's plaintive moan rising above the crash of gunfire. "Those carvings! Those priceless carvings! Ruined!" A glimpse of Sheila Aiken, an angel yet, but an avenging angel now; face smudged and sweating, white hands flying like shuttles as she reloaded the hot, empty rifles and lined them again within reach of the fighters. The whining sing-song of Sheng-ti, stalking up and down the room, invoking something of his placid, contemplative god; whether a blessing or a curse Ramey could not tell.
Then Sheila's voice rose, shrill, alarmed. "Johnny! Ramey! At the court gate!"
Ramey spun to the small east doorway, rifle leveled. But even as his sights centered on a yellow face, Syd O'Brien's arm knocked up his gun. The bullet gouged flecks from a priceless mosaic. "Don't! It's Tomasaki! Call him, Sirabhar! Get him to help!"
Sirabhar slipped from table to doorway, called to his companion in their native tongue. An answer quavered back, highpitched with terror. Sirabhar turned.
"He say he no dare, Master sahib. He say he do not wish to fight the Little Ones. They too many and too strong."
There was anger and contempt in the loyal aide's voice. He called again to his fellow-countryman, his words a liquid blur in the tumult. An answer piped back. Sirabhar's small frame stiffened, his soft brown eyes were suddenly dark bits of flinty shale. His face contorted; he spat into the gloom and whirled to Dr. Aiken, his voice shrill, accusing.
"Tomasaki no good friend, Master Doctor. Him coward. Him—"
His words ended suddenly. Too suddenly. Ramey, who had turned again to the defense of his post, risked a backward glance—and was in time to see the staunch little Cambodian reel and topple forward, clutching, with fingers that seemed to spurt blood, at a gaping hole in his chest. Sheila screamed, and beside Ramey, Syd O'Brien growled a thick curse. They were the brown man's obsequies. He was dead before he hit the floor.
But there was no time to mourn him now. For Barrett, who had swung from doorway to table for a recharged weapon, roared suddenly, "The ammunition! Is that all we have left?"
The girl nodded. "That's all here. There's more in storage, but—"
Ramey, sweeping the table with a glance, saw that their supply had dwindled to a lone container of cartridges. Enough to account for every one of their attackers, yes—if every shot could be trusted to take its toll. But with six people firing steadily, indiscriminately, against a diverse attack—
"We can't defend this place any longer," he roared. "They'll take us in five minutes. Too many entrances. Doc, is there any other—?"
It was Lake who answered. "Yes! That underground chamber I found. It has only one entrance. One armed man could defend that for a week."
"But—can we get there?"
"Through the court exit."
"That's the ticket, then," shouted Ramey. "Lake, you lead the way. Then Sheila and Dr. Aiken. Somebody grab Sheng-ti and take him along. They'll murder him if we leave him behind. Ready, everybody? Go, now. Orderly. We'll all make it."
There came one contradictory voice. Out of a sudden, ominous hush that descended as briefly no rifle anywhere was barking, came the faint, dissenting voice of Johnny Grinnell.
"Not ... all of us, Winters."
Ramey, swiveling, saw with horror that the youngster was no longer on his feet. He lay asprawl on the hard stone floor behind the barricade. His rifle was still clenched in one white-knuckled hand, but his other hand gripped his belt as if to stifle a gnawing fire there. And the fingers of that hand were dark with a slowly spreading stain.
In a flash Ramey was on his knees beside the younger man. Dr. Aiken, too, and Sheila.
"Johnny, what's the matter? You're not—"
Grinnell tried to grin. An unfortunate attempt, for with the effort suddenly he coughed and the corners of his lips leaked blood. He spat and shook his head angrily.
"Lucky ... shot! But I guess ... it did ... the trick."
"You'll be okay," Ramey told him gruffly. "Barrett! Syd! Give me a hand here—"
But even as he gave the order his eyes found Dr. Aiken's, and the old man's head shook slowly from side to side. His lips formed soundless words.
"No use, Ramey."
The voice of Grinnell echoed. "It's no ... use, Ramey. I was a ... med student once." His eyes hardened to a granite doggedness. "You others ... beat it! Get out of here while ... you can!" Again a paroxysm of coughing seized him. When it ended his shirtfront was not pretty. He wiped at his lips with a grimy forearm, cried feverishly, "Get out ... damn it! Get out ... I say!"
Then a sudden thought struck him. He turned to Ramey. "No, wait! Lift me ... to the doorway there—"
Red spoke warningly from the west entrance. "They're closing in, Ramey. I think they're going to rush the joint."
Ramey bent, raised, and cradling the mortally wounded Grinnell in his arms like a gangling child, carried him to the spot he had begged to be taken. Grinnell's lips twitched in a feeble smile. "This is ... swell. Now give me a ... rifle, Winters ... and get the hell ... out of here. All of you."
Ramey looked at Aiken—the doctor nodded. One by one they abandoned their posts, slipped into the narrow corridor beyond the prostrate figure. Sheila was sobbing softly. Syd O'Brien's face was a mask of pain and rage; even Lake was grim as he stopped to wring Grinnell's hand in last farewell.
Only over Grinnell's white lips hovered the ghost of a smile. Ramey and Dr. Aiken were the last to pass him. He searched their faces with eyes already uncertain. "Don't worry about ... me ... Doc," he whispered. "Just get even." A shudder trembled through him; he drew a faltering breath. "Wish I could go with you ... though. It's ... a strange journey ... you're going on. A strange journey...."
Dr. Aiken tapped his forehead significantly. "Delirium," he whispered.
Then Red's voice boomed from the background. "Ramey! Doc! Come on! They'll be busting through in a minute."
And he was right. Already figures were closing in on the abandoned barricade. Ramey gripped the old man's arm, propelled him by sheer force down the corridor. They had covered perhaps a hundred yards when they heard the lone, explosive crack of a rifle, Johnny's rifle. Then another shot ... then a volley. Then silence....
Their way led them from wide corridors to smaller ones, then down a slow ramp to a passageway narrower still and almost completely lightless. The only illumination came through squares of stone fretwork high on the walls.
Ramey judged they were below ground level now. Sheila Aiken, behind whom he stumbled, verified his guess.
"We're beneath the main altar room. Ventilation ducts at bases of statues there. That's how Lake discovered this place."
Then abruptly they turned a corner and the subterranean chamber lay before them. It, unlike any of the other chambers Ramey had seen at Angkor Vat, was doored with a great barrier of bronze. They tumbled into the room, Syd O'Brien and Tomasaki, Red Barrett and the still bleating bonze, Sheng-ti, Lake and Sheila, Ramey and Dr. Aiken bringing up the rear. Ramey shut the huge door after them, clanged into place a ponderous lock-bar, and with a sigh of relief, turned to view his new surroundings.
This was a small room, barely more than twenty feet on a side and of equal height. A pallid light filtered down from a grilled mosaic at roof level. Lake O'Brien augmented this illumination by igniting a flambeau ensconced on the wall. The torch crackled and flamed high, casting a fitful, tawny gleam over carven walls, and—something else. The object Dr. Aiken had mentioned. The inexplicable cube of wrought metal standing in the middle of the room.
Ramey stared at the thing incredulously.
"Why, that—that thing's modern!"
Dr. Aiken nodded somberly. "By all laws of reason and logic," he assented, "it should be. But its location and the inscriptions argue differently, Winters."
Ramey tapped the thing with his pistol. It echoed metallically, hollowly. "But the ancients didn't know how to work with metals like this. This isn't silver or brass or even iron. It's—it's steel!"
"Guess again," grunted Syd. "It's not even steel. We haven't been able to figure what it is. Some unknown alloy."
He was, Ramey thought suddenly, getting almost as bad as Dr. Aiken. Fretting over archeological problems at a time like this. He abandoned the question for the time being.
"Well, no time to worry about it now. We've given the Japs the skip for the time being, but we're still not out of the woods. Now that we're down here, what do we do next?"
Lake grinned at him. "We sit," he said, "tight. And wait for them to get tired looking for us. We hightailed it down here so fast, Ramey, you probably didn't notice the passageway we came through was a veritable labyrinth. It took me months to locate this place, and then I only stumbled across it by accident. The Japs are nervous, impatient little devils. They'll never find us here. In a few hours, a day at the most, they'll decide we must have somehow escaped from the temple grounds, beat it back to ask their base commandant what they should do next. When we're sure they're gone, we'll lam out of here."
"Sounds good. Meanwhile, what do we do about food and drinking water?"
"We do without, I guess," admitted Lake.
For the first time since their flight from the room above, the little native spoke up.
"Excuse, please, Master sahib, sir. I will go topside. Bring back food and water."
Ramey stared at him in astonishment. A little while ago Tomasaki had been limp with terror. Now he was offering to take a foolhardy risk on their behalf. It didn't make sense. The little man had undergone a complete change of heart or—
Suddenly Ramey thought he understood. For his keen gaze detected jittering nerves in the native's hopeful offer. The rising intonation of Sheng-ti supplied the missing clue.
"Aiee! Doom!" the shaven bonze was crying. "Woe to all men when the chamber of change be violated; when the gods of the past shall walk!"
Lake, too, understood, and stopped the little man as he edged toward the doorway. "No, come back here, Tomasaki! It's too risky. They might see you." He grinned at his friends. "I don't know how the rest of you feel, but me, I'd rather have an empty belly than a full carcass."
Red Barrett had been staring in awed wonderment at the mysterious metal cube ever since Ramey had tapped it. Red was a great guy, but he was not the world's fastest thinker. Now comprehension seemed to dawn on him with an almost audible sound of gears meshing. He said to Ramey, "Hey, Ramey! That thing's hollow!"
Dr. Aiken said, "Yes, Barrett, we know that. But so far we have been unable to find any way to open it."
Red started to scratch his brick pate automatically, winced as his hand touched bandages. "You know what? I bet I know what that thing is. I seen a picture once, back in the States. Bela Lugosi in The Wife of the Werewolf. He was one of them whacky scientists—'scuse me, Doc—and he had a cabinet something like this. Only it really wasn't no cabinet at all. It was a secret entrance to an underground tunnel.
"I betcha that's what this is, too. A passageway which goes down under the moat, maybe, and out beyond the temple. Them old priests used to be keen on things like that. Course they didn't mess around with keys or nothing. They had trick doors you had to work out on like an osteopath. Like you'd punch on this little knob here, and maybe wriggle this hunk of carving—Holy cow! Lookit, Ramey!"
He leaped back, startled. Nor was he the only one whose jaw dropped in sudden wonder. Call it coincidence, call it Fate, call it an incredible permutation of chance—but while explaining, Red's fingers had fumbled upon the combination required to unlock the gate of this ancient mystery. With a groan of protest, one outer face of the strange cube was swinging open!