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GREAT NOVELETTE OF A MAD PLAN TO DEMAGNETIZE THE WORLD!
When Anthropologist George Kane, lost in the frozen Arctic, stumbled on that strange workroom, deep in the blue depths of a glacier, he thought he had found sanctuary. But he had discovered a mad scientist's ice-palace laboratory-and a wild scheme to plunge the world into chaos by demagnetizing the North Pole!
THE night was clear and moonless, with scintillating star clusters frosting the sombre sky as Sven Hagart stood with legs spread solidly against the wallowing roll of the trawler Annisquam harbor bound. His thick, hairy hands gripped the wheel tightly and his strong teeth were clamped on the stem of his short pipe. Behind thick-lensed spectacles his pale eyes probed the darkness. From time to time he screwed up his lips and spat through the open window of the pilot house into the phosphorescent sea.
Over the monotonous throb of the engine came the sound of the crew talking lazily as they listened to one of them playing melodious chords on a harmonica. Hagart smiled to himself, his weathered face aglow in the feeble light of the binnacle. The day's haul had been good, the crew was in fine fettle and the engine hitting well. The sea was running comparatively calm, with long ground swells. By force of habit he thrust his head through the window and glanced upwards at Polaris for checking with the compass.
Absently his eyes shuttled back to the binnacle and in the next instant his face became blank with astonishment and his pipe sagged in his lips. Sven Hagart gaped incredulously at the rocking disc of the compass and then his strong teeth were clamping on the pipe stem with such power that it snapped off. "Ar det mojligt!" he murmured. "Has the stars gone crazy or iss I asleep!"
He blinked a couple of times, then looked out again. Polaris was only half a point off the starboard bow, shining bright and clear. Again his troubled eyes sought the compass and narrowed. Quickly he becketted the wheel, removed his spectacles and polished them vigorously. Perhaps spray had warped his vision... but he sensed differently as he replaced the glasses, setting them into their customary place.
For the third time he stared at the North Star and back at the binnacle again. His face seemed to drain of all color and with a throaty exclamation of alarm and puzzlement he thrust his head through the door and yelled: "Eric! Nathan! Come quick! Something iss... I don't know what!"
INSTANTLY the harmonica silenced. There was a scramble of feet on deck. Sven stood by the binnacle, pointing an accusing finger at the compass. "It says nor'east!" he burst out. "An' the Star is just off the starboard quarter. How can we be goin' nor'east an' nor'-by-west at the same time?"
The seamen crowded about him and stared. One of them rocked the binnacle and the compass rolled lazily past the point it had been holding, farther east. Tensely they watched, expecting it to halt and swing back. But the disc continued to move steadily in a full circle!
Alarmed, the men examined it. Nothing seemed out of whack and there was no metal near to throw it off. But the disc kept on swinging aimlessly through ninety degrees of arc as if immune to the customary magnetic attraction. Sven threw up his hands helplessly. "Iss we crazy or iss it? Or iss the stars just flying around like lightning bugs?"
At exactly that moment all over the northern hemisphere, men were staring unbelievingly at compasses which refused to make sense. The captains of great liners flashed messages back and forth asking bearings, afraid to believe their time-tried indicators, and yet afraid not to, puzzled by the strange discrepancies between gyrocompasses and magnetic compasses. Astronomers found their telescopes off as much as one hundred and eighty degrees—according to stationary, exact compasses. They radioed back and forth demanding to know if the same thing were happening at other observatories.
Air-liner pilots suddenly found themselves flying two hundred miles per hour in exactly the opposite direction from what they had been pursuing five minutes before. And even as they watched, the maddening cylinders of their instruments continued to swing about, now registering east, now west, now north, even south.
For three hours the ether boiled with frantic messages from men who were lost at sea, or aimlessly cruising the skies afraid to land, from lighthouse keepers who thought their great, stone towers were twisting on sinking bases. The Naval Observatory spent a desperate hour trying to solve the riddle, and finally gave up and sat with folded hands awaiting the answer.
And after three hours the erratic needles of half the world's compasses gradually moved back and took up the positions they had held for thousands of years—due north. Once more the stars agreed with the faithful, slender needles of steel or the broad disks of mariners' compasses. Whatever it had been the crisis was over.
And in all the world there was only one man who knew what was happening, and that man was too far away to be of any help. Besides, George Kane was having troubles of his own at that moment. He stood—figuratively and literally—on the brink of death.
* * * * *
For three days after he was separated from the rest of his party on Prince of Wales of Ireland, tall, bony young Kane struggled to find them. There were six members of the expedition sent up by the Smithsonian Institute, and Kane was the youngest of them. But after endless hours of wandering about, he realized he was hopelessly lost.
The young anthropologist, leader of an expedition to investigate rumors of a strange race in the Arctic—rumors they had dispelled—was in the most difficult spot of his life. He had no food, no water.
DESPERATELY, he stumbled ahead. His feet were so nearly frozen that he couldn't move his toes inside the thick boots, nor could he flex his fingers. He lost all consciousness of time, and seemed to see nothing but snow. All his senses were blended into one great, empty feeling of being hopelessly lost. But the fiame of hope is unquenchable in man; it kept him struggling ahead long after his strength was really used up.
And then, after endless hours, George Kane suddenly straightened up and listened. His drawn face took on a new intensity. Frowning, he stared at the ground. There was a peculiar pounding beneath his feet. At first he thought he had strayed onto ice and that it was cracking, but soon he realized the sound was different.
It was steady, regular. It was like an engine heard at a great distance, only this was felt, instead of heard. For a long time he stood and tried to figure it out. Then he looked ahead.
Through a sudden rift in the blizzard he made out a tiny black object like a small tank. He shouted and struggled ahead. When he had reached it he stopped and went up to it. It was a sort of chimney that came out of the deep snow. The top of it was a trap door with a large handle on it whereby it could be opened, he found after scraping away the snow.
Kane was in no condition to wonder about it. He tore at the handle and found he could swing it open. He threw it back, and then stared down. It was dark inside. He dug out a match and struck it. By its light he saw an iron ladder going down the cylindrical wall. He dropped the match, and in the instant before it went out he saw that the ladder went down into dim obscurity.
Now he swung into it, clumsily because of his bulky clothing, and started down into blackness. For long minutes he continued to descend the iron rungs. After a long time he made out some sort of illumination. Looking down, he made out an opalescent glow.
Hurriedly, for all his weakness, the young scientist climbed on. So intent was he on not missing any rungs, that he was unprepared for it when abruptly his feet hit a floor. He swung around. He was in a sort of vestibule. The walls were apparently of slick ice, and the floor the same. Ten feet from him'was a doorway Cut in the thick ice. He staggered through it.
In the next moment he was standing stock-still, his eyes big with wonderment. The scene before him was like a setting from some unearthly fantasy. He stood at the entrance to a great cavern of ice. The ceiling was twenty or thirty feet above the floor, and cut like a mighty dome. Polished, slender pillars of ice climbed from floor to roof. The walls were jagged and irregular, curving from where he stood in great semicircles that met again two hundred feet from him.
The floor was of ice, too, but roughened in a serrated pattern that rendered it less slippery. There was no visible lighting equipment, but walls, floor and ceiling were luminous with a soft, blue light.
Against the ice wall at his left was a monstrous black mass of machinery that rumbled and shook the whole place. it was apparent now where the strange pounding effect had come from. The machinery was compact and powerful looking, and motionless except for a huge flywheel that spun swiftly and silently.
At the other side of the cavern a tremendous coil, like a great corkscrew, wound from beneath the floor into the ceiling. The six-feet-thick coil was of some steely-green material that defied Kane's efforts to place it.
Stunned with the magnitude of the scene, and with finding signs of a modern civilization this far north, Kane shuffled silently ahead. His weary body threatened to fail him completely as this new burden of amazement was put on it. And then, over the rumble of the machinery, a woman's cry echoed down the hall.
"Uncle! Someone's in the door!"
GEORGE KANE'S eyes rushed to the point from which the sound had come. His mouth dropped open. One more marvel had been revealed in this room of miracles—the most beautiful woman the young scientist had ever seen.
She stood only twenty feet away, with her hand against her throat in an attitude of startled surprise. She had just stepped from behind a pillar of ice which had kept her from seeing him before. Her small, shapely form was clothed in a close-fitting jacket of fine white fur and a flaring skirt of the same material, with short Eskimo boots on her small feet. Against the soft white fur her dark hair was framed in deep waves.
Her lips made a small, surprised "o" and the blue eyes were opened wide.
From a door behind the girl hurried three men. One of them was tall and broad-shouldered, with a short, clipped beard. His face was white and intense, but it was the eyes which drew Kane's gaze. They burned below his craggy black brows like chips of green fire. They were filled with hate and vengeance. Suddenly his hand slid beneath the gray smock he wore and jerked a gun free.
The shocked anthropologist was too startled to move. Through his weary body flowed a sudden flood of inertia, and of the desire to give up. Three days of fighting snow and ice and blizzard, two days without food, had not prepared him for the rapid-fire trend events were taking.
As if time had been slowed down, he saw the black-bearded man's finger tighten on the trigger of the pistol. He stood stoically awaiting the roar of the gun and the smashing impact of a bullet. But the bullet was not fired. Between them a small, white form flew. The girl screamed, "Stop! Maybe he's not—"
Kane swayed a little. He saw the hammer of the gun pull back, inexorably. Then the great cavern seemed to explode, and he was pitching down into blue depths of glacial ice. . . .
CHAPTER II
BELOW THE POLE
AFTER a long time Kane's mind seemed to climb back to the things of reality. He had no desire to open his eyes, for he was tired clear through. When finally he looked around him, he saw he had been moved. The room he was in was small, but carved from ice as the cavern had been. He got one elbow beneath him and forced himself up.
"How do you feel?" someone asked quietly. It was the soft, friendly voice of the girl.
He whirled to see her standing near the head of the cot he lay on. There was deep concern in the depths of her dark eyes.
Kane shook his head. "Weak," he muttered. "And hungry!" He said the last with such emphasis that the girl laughed.
"I was expecting that," she told him. "If you think you can get into the next room I'll fix you all the ham and eggs you can eat."
Ham and eggs! George Kane was dragging himself from the bed in a second, a steaming vision of the food before him. He strode after her into the small dining room. In a few minutes he was seated at a long table stuffing himself with the warm, vitalizing food. Ho was too starved to wonder at these delicacies as far north as this.
While he ate, the three men he had seen before—including the one who had been intent on killing him—came in and sat near him, watching wordlessly. Kane looked them over while he ate. The first man seemed to have cooled considerably. His expression was cold and hostile.
The other men consisted of a long, bony individual with a gaunt, white face, and a short, stocky man with a heavily bearded face and a completely bald head.
The scientist's eyes kept coming back to the thin, cruel face of the man who was obviously the leader. There was a familiar cast to the high cheekbones and the sunken, green eyes. And the way the dark hair was bushy at the sides and nearly fiat on top struck a responding chord in his memory.
When at last he laid down his fork and pushed back his chair, the other spoke. "Be good enough to tell us who you are," he clipped.
Kane shot him a hostile look. "I'm George Kane," he said shortly. "I got separated from my party two days ago, after an expedition to Prince of Wales Island, and I was lucky enough to stumble on this place. Now maybe you'll be good enough to tell me why I was almost greeted with a bullet?"
The other shrugged and a bleak smile touched his lips. "We have enemies," he said simply. "In the surprise of seeing you here, I mistook you for one of them. I must apologize for the rude reception you received. But that is finished." He gestured at the two men near him. "Villers and Cahill, my assistants," he introduced, without turning his head. "I am Henry Cameron. and this is my niece. Sharon."
Henry Cameron! Kane caught his breath. At last he remembered the man. Henry Cameron had received the Nobel Prize three years ago for his work in steel. He had made the first revolutionary discovery in years, the invention of a process by which steel and iron could be magnetized to a point almost unbelievable. His process had outmoded, in a few months, the great electromagnets used in steel mills for carrying great pieces of iron. A piece of his metal one-tenth the size of former magnets could do the work of an electromagnet, and obviate the necessity for expensive current. Cameron had made millions in two years.
CAMERON'S shrewd eyes caught the recognition that lighted the other's face. Quietly he said, "How soon can you leave?"
"Uncle!" Sharon Cameron broke in. How can you ask that when Mr. Kane has just recovered long enough to eat one meal?"
Cameron's eyes avoided hers. After a moment he shrugged, "Very well. I think after two days you should be sufficiently recovered to go on. The storm will be over by then. and I'll see that you have food enough to carry you to the settlement." But there was a veiled menace in his eyes that the younger man did not miss. He nodded at the girl. "I'm sure my niece will be glad to show you around."
Followed by the other two men, the tall Cahill and stocky Villers, he strode out. Sharon tried to explain. "My uncle is very—brusque to strangers," she stammered. "I'm sure you'll be welcome to stay as long as you like, after he knows you better."
Kane got up and took a deep breath. The strength seemed to come surging back into his body as the warm food brought a welcome glow to him. He stood tall and erect, a rather lanky figure. His eyes were whimsical as he said, "If he shoots at men when he's being brusque, I'd hate to get him mad! He might not miss, next time."
A smile parted the girl's rich lips. Then, turning, she said, "Perhaps you'd like to see more of this unearthly place you've stumbled into. Come along."
At her heels, George Kane stalked out through a short hall into the immense cavern. "Tell me one thing," he said earnestly. as he caught up with her. "Just what and why is all this? Who built it, or carved it, and what does it do?"
"To begin at the first question," Sharon smiled, "the caverns were cut out by a tribe of Eskimos my uncle brought here to do the work. I never saw them, because I've only been here a month myself. Uncle sent for me just after it was finished. As to why this is—it's some big oil scheme he has on. It seems he discovered an immense pocket of oil up here, and he's built his own plant right over it. That's the pump over there," she went on, indicating the bulky mass of machinery. "It's—I don't know how powerful, but it draws up oil from about eight miles down."
"Eight miles!" Kane gasped.
"Yes. The pump is especially built to do the work."
"What's the—coil, or whatever it is?" Kane asked. "Some sort of still?"
Sharon smiled and walked over to the Gargantuan coil of greenish steel or whatever metal it was. It looked like some monstrous enclosed circular staircase that wound down into the bowels of the earth. "That's the one thing I can't quite understand," she told him. "My uncle says it has something to do with distilling the oil."
"It doesn't look like any—"
At that moment a step sounded behind them. Villers stood close to Kane, a crafty smile on his fleshy lips. His squat, ugly body was relaxed in easy self-confidence. "Miss Cameron is right," he said, "it is a special process of Mr. Cameron's for refining the crude petroleum."
A SUDDEN impulse came to the other man to call him a liar. Obviously there was something hidden here Cameron didn't want discussed. He stifled the desire, and asked. "When did Cameron become interested in oil? I thought he was a steel man?"
"Did you?" Villers said, and left it there. "I was afraid Miss Cameron might forget to tell you one thing, so I'll let you know myself. You are at liberty to go anywhere you like in the upper part of the structure, but Mr. Cameron prefers that you don't go any farther past the coil. The machinery in the interior is rather complicated. You might hurt something—or get hurt yourself." With that he strode off.
Kane watched him go, frowning, and then turned to the girl. "If you don't mind," he said quickly, "I think I'll shave and clean up."
Sharon said quickly, "Forgive me for not asking you. The room you're to use is the one we brought you to after this morning. You'll find everything you need there." With unconscious nervousness, she brushed hastily at a curl that strayed over her smooth forehead.
Kane mumbled, "Thanks," and left her. Back in his room he took a long time shaving, heating the water in a little alcohol stove. His mind puzzled over the strange world into which he had dropped. He was sure Cameron was no more interested in oil than he was, and yet there was little doubt that the machinery in the ice hall was to pump something from the ground. The thought came to him that for a man who had made the remarkable discovery that he had in steel, he forgot it in a hurry.
A glimmer of suspicion came to him that this might revolve about the rumors he had heard not long ago that the new metal was not working out so well. After a year of use, the metal seemed to lose its remarkable magnetic power and require further processing by Henry Cameron's laboratories—at Cameron's own expense. But—they were only rumors. They might be completely unfounded.
At last, shrugging, he decided his imagination was carrying him away. Cameron's explanations were probably true: He was here to drill oil, and naturally jealous enough of his discovery to be quick to challenge any stranger who entered the caverns.
Putting away his shaving things, Kane prepared to explore the place further. Perhaps a look around would justify him in thinking definitely one way or the other. He found that the back door of his room opened on a hall he had not yet been in.
Aimlessly, he wandered down it, until he wasn't quite sure where he was. Seeing a door ajar, he shoved it open and walked in. His mind was so taken up with the mysteries around him that he almost stumbled over Sharon without seeing her. She was huddled in a chair, her arm flung over the back of it and her face pressed into the hollow of her elbow. Her slim shoulders shook with sobs. A soft sound of crying. of miserable, heart-wrung crying, came to Kane.
He strode forward impulsively. He was touched strangely by the girl's grief, more so than he would have imagined a girl's crying could affect him after so short an acquaintance.
"Here, here!" he said warmly. "It can't be that bad!"
Sharon started and jerked around in the chair. Her face was white and tear-stained, her lower lip quivering. "Oh!" she gasped, in a muffled little voice. "I—I—"
Kane went closer to her. His face looked young and rugged, and yet very kindly, but there was a depth of feeling in his expression that was not all pity.
"If it's none of my business," he told her, "just say so, but—if I can help, I wish you'd let me."
SHARON CAMERON looked away and stood up. She went over to where a small packing bag lay open. For a long time she stared down at it, and then suddenly she turned and burst out helplessly, "I don't know what's the matter. If I did, perhaps I could do something about it. But—" she shrugged despairingly, "I do know my uncle isn't here to drill for oil It's something a lot bigger than that."
Kane grinned, "I'm glad there's somebody else who thinks there's something rotten in Franklin's territory. I thought maybe it was nerves on my part." Then, more seriously, he asked, "Tell me—just what do you know about your uncle's affair here? Do you have any actual reason to fear him, or merely intuitions?"
Sharon glanced at the bag she had been packing. "I've got enough intuitions, at least, to be ready to risk my life getting away," she said decidedly. "I've stood all of this 'unofficial captive' business I can. Just outside the tunnel, in the snow, I've got enough concentrated food tablets I stole from the supply to last a month."
Kane nodded slowly, "If I may use such language of your kinfolk, I think Henry Cameron is trying to pull the well-known wool over our eyes."
"You certainly may," Sharon came back. "I never could understand his wanting me to come here anyway. Lately I've decided why he did it. He probably decided he'd told me too much about his affairs here, and wanted to keep me from telling any more by staying down in civilization. He told me before that he was going to Victoria Island, and now he keeps testing me to find out if I told anyone else. Unfortunately, I didn't."
For a minute Kane looked thoughtfully at her. "Just where are we, anyway?" he wanted to know at last. "Don't you know?" the girl asked in surprise. "We're on—or under—Boothia Peninsula."
"Boothia Peninsula!" gasped the scientist. "But that means—we're under the magnetic North Pole!"
CHAPTER III
ONE HUNDRED DEAD MEN
"I KNOW," Sharon shrugged. "But I'm sure I don't know what it all means. The whole thing's a mystery to me."
Kane was silent. After a while he said, "I'm thinking the only place we can find the answer is in the part of the cavern we're not supposed to go into. Which adds up to one thing—I'm going in there right now and have a look for myself!"
"Oh, you mustn't!" the girl cried, laying her hand on his arm. Her azure eyes earnestly probed the depths of his. "If he caught you there, he might kill you. There's something—something he's guarding with his life in there."
"Just the same," Kane said finally. "I'm convinced that it's no less dangerous to wait here than it would be to go into the forbidden rooms. But I want your promise that you won't try to escape before I get back. Then, if I find Cameron is as crazy as I think he is, we'll go together."
With the girl's promise still in his ears, he threaded his way to the other section of the cavern in the glacial ice. He chose the narrowest and least used halls to go by, anxious to avoid Cameron or his assistants. Everywhere the light seemed even and soft, leading Kane to suspect some sort of phosphorescent material fused into the ice.
Suddenly, he rounded a narrow turn and came into a hall about half as large as the first. The rounding ice walls gleamed coldly about him. In the spacious room there was a battery of shining instrument panels down one wall, another wall lined with faintly humming machinery, and a series of doorways on the other two walls.
Kane shot a look about to make sure he was alone, then slid into the room. Swiftly he went to the instruments. He found after a quick look that most of them were unfamiliar to him, consisting of pressure gauges and tachometers.
Then, down the wall, he discovered a frosted glass panel like a scanning screen, set flush with the ice wall. At the lower corner of it was a small red button. Kane hesitated, and then his curiosity got the better of him. His finger went out and pressed against the button.
Instantly the board lighted up. Kane recognized it as a detailed geologists map. There were various colored strata of ice, earth, oil, and other formations. He bent closer. his lips tight against his teeth as he studied it. He caught a breath.
The labels were frequent—and in the brief words the young scientist read something that made his heart hammer and his pulses throb in his ears. The diagram was accurately scaled, so that he could read it easily. About seven miles down there was a thick layer labelled, "Magnetic Iron Deposit!" Kane's eyes flashed on down to the oil strata. He found that the level of oil in it was indicated by a movable black line, and that certain marks denoted the level on other days. By them, he read that in the last six months the oil had been reduced from a depth of one mile to about a hundred feet!
His mind raced. He saw how thin the layers were between oil and magnetic iron deposits, and between oil and the space below it—which seemed to be merely a bottomless chasm! All at once Kane stepped back and gasped, "Magnetic—why didn't I guess it!"
FOR the whole story was right there on the scanning screen. If all of the oil were drained from below the deposit of iron, the slightest jar would send the two-mile thick layer crashing down far into the bowels of the earth, to come to rest perhaps twenty-five miles below the surface. And unless he was very much wrong, it was that layer of magnetized iron that solved the age-old riddle of why compasses point north! The great body of iron would exert a tremendous attraction as far south as the equator, where some similar deposit must cause the Southern Magnetic Pole attraction.
Abruptly, George Kane whirled from the glowing screen and started across the floor. There was no time to lose. He must now find Cameron and the others and stop them somehow, before their disastrous plan could take effect.
And then, right in the middle of the floor, he jerked to a sudden stop. He stared down at the ice floor with an expression of utter horror on his drawn features.
In the ice beneath he could see the bodies of scores of men! Their features were plain in the light suffusing them. Pain, desperation were frozen into their countenances. Staring eyes struck up at him in a way that froze him with horror, and wide open mouths seemed about to shriek for help. There were at least a hundred men in the ice most of them clutching pickaxes or other tools. All of them were Eskimos.
Before Kane could recover from the shock, a footstep grated in back of him. Someone said icily, "You find the bodies interesting, Mr. Kane?"
The anthropologist whirled. "Cameron!" he jerked. And then, in a flood of anger, "So this is why you wanted no one in here! You wanted nobody to see what became of the poor victims whom you hired to build your ice palace—and then buried in the ice by flooding the chasm they were digging in!"
Cameron's face was a stolid mask. The green eyes blazed under his shaggy brows. the only touch of emotion in his countenance. "You are very discerning," he breathed.
"Yes—discerning enough to know the insane scheme yon are trying to work here!" Kane scourged. "You're planning to cause the great magnetic iron deposit that you've discovered to drop so deeply that it will be ineffectual. But why in God's name do you want to do it, Cameron? Why should you want to throw the compasses of the world off, to ruin the most valuable means that man has of guiding him in difficult places?"
"Because," the steel man grated, "I intend to recoup my losses of the last year and sustain an income no one can ever take from me. It has cost me a fortune to recharge the metal I sold. But since then I have found why it failed. Now I'm going to be paid back. I'll be paid back for all eternity. Because while I am alive the world will have to pay me to sustain a magnetic pole, and after I am gone—the world will have to learn to go by the stars once more!
"Their gyro compasses are useless in most cases. So they will be completely helpless without me. And all because they don't realize a small amount of heat will sustain the metal for years. A thousand degrees would charge it permanently. But they won't know that—because you'll never live to tell it!"
As the full import of the other's words struck him. George Kane sprang forward and crashed against him. Both men were carried onto the hard ice floor. Kane's fists clubbed into the others face as he sought to overpower him. He felt hard blows rock his head with dizzying pain.
IN the next moment something hard shoved into the back of his neck. Villers snarled. "One more trick and I'll fire!"
The scientist relaxed and turned his head, to see the stocky assistant's glowering face close to his. He got up slowly.
Cameron got to his feet and faced him angrily. "That will earn you a more horrible end than I had planned," he gritted. "For the present you can reflect on a slow death in a block of ice-with only a small hose leading to your mouth to sustain life—until the ice crushes you. Within a few hours, you will have the doubtful pleasure of experiencing it. But not before you see something you can carry to your death with you." He gestured to Villers. "Take him to the room."
Without a chance to raise a hand in his own behalf, he was prodded out of the room by his guard and led away. "The room" proved to be a small cubical space in the floor with a huge chunk of ice for a door to it. Kane was rudely shoved into it, and the door slid back into place. He saw at a glance that there would be no escaping this dungeon. The walls were too slick for him to ascend to the opening. In despair, he watched, through thick ice, the vague form of his jailer moving away.
CHAPTER IV
WHEN THE ICE CRACKED
FOR two hours he was kept there, while he tortured himself with worries and fears. Bitterly he regretted his foolhardy attempt to disarm Cameron, for it had changed his position from that of a tolerated fool to a condemned enemy. The game had been even more dangerous than he thought; one error had resulted in his being thrown here in this freezing-cold cubicle to await death.
And while he shivered here in the semi-gloom, Cameron and his aides were preparing virtually to enslave a world. Whatever his plan was, Kane knew it was almost at the culmination point. The other's statement that he would not die, until he had seen something he could remember as he died, proved that.
And yet, with a whole world about to be plunged into slavery to Henry Cameron, the young scientist found himself worrying far more about Sharon than he was about the world's millions! He conjured up her face and her trim little fur-clad figure before him, and then anxious fears would change the smiling face to one of terror. What did Cameron have in store for her? He was too suspicious a man to risk letting her tell all she knew about his work. Some stray bit of knowledge she had picked up might give away his secret, might free men from the necessity of his presence in order to process the coil.
Kane's mind rebelled at thinking of what might happen to her. He was far more worried about the girl than he was about himself; he found, during those anxious hours in the dungeon, that she had come to mean a very great deal to him.
After what seemed an eternity, Cahill and Villers returned and swung the block of ice from the trapdoor. They lowered a rope to him and permitted him to clamber out. Cahill stuck his evil, bony face close to his and rasped, "We've got a special treat for you Kane. Cameron decided it would be cruel to make you die alone. He's going to let the girl go with you!"
Kane's heart swam in shock and hatred. He clenched his fists and bit out savagely, "If ever a cowardly, murderous pack of rats lived—"
Villers' fat paw slapped across his mouth, cutting off the angry flood of words. "Save your energy to fight the ice block when it begins to crush you."
Together they hauled him along. Swiftly he was carried back to the great hall in which the pump and coil were stationed. Suddenly Kane realized that the pump was no longer throbbing. He guessed the reason—that the huge oil pocket was empty at last, leaving space for the mass of iron to tumble into the bowels of the earth. Cameron was standing near the coil, by a black box fixed in the wall. Sharon stood near him. a small, frightened figure.
Kane was shoved to her side. Impulsively he reached out and grasped her hand. Her answering squeeze warmed his heart, and gave him the courage to smile. His eyes promised her hope that his lips could never have uttered, for there was only despair in his heart.
Now Cameron strode before them, his face triumphant and cruel. "One small thing remains to be done," he smiled. "And when I press that switch it will be finished. A charge of dynamite now rests far down in our oil line. When I send it off, the iron will drop—forever."
Kane watched his white face, studying the green eyes that burned coldly. "I'm warning you," he began, "that if you go on—"
"Condemned men are in no position to give warnings," Cameron snapped. "In your position, one usually pleads. But you two will not even have the satisfaction of doing that. For I am going to finish my work before your very eyes, and then—then you will go to join those Eskimos you were admiring."
Sharon's eyes flashed to his. "What— what does he mean?" she asked.
GEORGE KANE guessed that she had not been told what was in store for them. He said: "Nothing that will concern us. Not if he goes on with his plans, at least. Cameron, if you weren't half crazy with ego, you'd realize what you're doing."
"I realize fully," the other chilled. "I haven't spent a year laboring in this hole without knowing what I was about." He broke off and strode to the black box on the wall just beyond the huge green coil. He raised his hand to it. He flashed a bleak smile at the two men who stood at either side of the captives, their guns trained on them. Slowly his fingers commenced pressing the switch in.
Kane lurched forward with a warning crowding his lips, to be brought up by his two guards. "You fool!" he shouted. "You'll bring this whole place crashing down if you go on. You'll kill yourself as well as the rest of us!"
But Henry Cameron's hand continued steadily to close the circuit that would set off the charge of dynamite miles below them. His lips parted briefly to counter, "Your ravings are useless, Kane. I know enough of geology to be sure that the ice layer is far too thick to crack."
The hissing breathing of Cahill was sibilant in young Kane's ears as the bony aide hunched forward. His chalky white face was ghastly in its drawn intensity, making his eyes appear like hollow sockets. At his other side Villers strained ahead, his fleshy lips pursed. And then Cameron's body stiffened as he drove the knife switch home.
In the great cavern of ice not a sound was heard. There was a faint crackling as the current was closed, and then the hall became as soundless as a catacomb. For seconds, the five who waited hung motionless. Abruptly, through the solid floor of ice, a faint tremor was felt. The gigantic coil quivered a little, like a chiming spring that has been struck. Then a low rumble seemed to sound from walls and ceiling, and the floor quivered slightly.
Over Cameron's face, pale now, came a frown of puzzlement. His hand came slowly away from the switch box. His eyes sought those of the others, but his tight lips uttered no sound.
And then a wave of violent jerking passed through the ice cavern. From the ceiling came a fine mist of ice chips. Long lines of cleavage shot, zigzagging, through the floor under their feet as the miles-deep ice cracked. Shrill raspings filled the hall as age-old ice was ripped apart.
The cavern in the ice was crashing into ruins!
The tension broke. Cameron shouted something and darted to the coil, braced his body against it as though to stop its mad quivering. Cahill and Villers ran to his side. The three of them, like children who seek to hold back a breaking dam, threw their weight against the tons of green steel that shook and jerked.
Kane turned to the girl, who was frozen with fear. "We've got to get out of here!" he shouted, over the thunder of sliding ice. But within him he held no hope that they would ever climb from the crushing death that was closing in on them.
ACROSS the cavern's floor a white line shot, tracing a path between the man and girl and the three who fought the coil. Down its length a great chasm opened up, ten feet wide. Kane was left on the very edge of it, staring like a sleepwalker into the blue depths that yawned before him. His face blanched as he gaped at the bottomless wedge that slid down through miles of ice. Then he whirled and grasped the girl's hand. "Come on!" he cried. "We've got to make the tunnel before we're cut off!"
He half dragged Sharon with him as he crossed towards the entrance. But even as they started ahead, a deafening roar sounded close behind them. Kane spun about to see what new peril threatened them. His eyes widened as he watched the scene across the chasm.
The coil had torn loose from its base two miles below, and with ominous acceleration it was sinking down. The ice screamed as it ripped through. Cameron and the others reeled back from the jagged hole that had been torn by the coil. Cracks shot through the ice all about them. As one man they turned and ran back towards the others.
Too late they saw the chasm between them and the hope of safety. But there was no other way out for them now. Already the ceiling was raining large chunks of ice down on them. and in a few seconds the whole place would be filled with jagged blocks of crushing ice. With a desperate leap Henry Cameron launched himself over the gaping canyon. As one man, the others flung themselves at the opposite side.
Kane's stomach felt cold and sick as he saw them hurtle over the pit. Cameron's shoulders were hunched, his arms bent, hands clawing, as he stared down at the death miles below. Suddenly his feet struck the other side, barely touching the edge. He tried to take a step, twisted, bent backwards as the slick ice failed to give him footing. His hands clawed madly at the air as his long body teetered back. And then, in a moment, he was gone.
From the cold depths a chilling scream ricocheted up at them, filling the cavern with mad echoes. Before the sounds died, Cahill and Villers crashed to their deaths behind him. Both men were too frozen with fear to utter a sound. Not a whisper came from the dark void after the echoes of Cameron's shriek faded away.
With a violent jerk George Kane shook off the cold fingers of horror that clutched him. He whirled and swept up the girl in his arms and dashed for the tunnel, just as a thousand-pound block of glacial ice crashed to the floor on the spot where they had stood.
Like a drunken man he stumbled and reeled. The floor heaved beneath him, threatening to throw him down. The slender pillars snapped like icicles. A rumbling sound gave evidence that the oil machinery had dropped through the floor. Kane's whole body was a tight mass of bunched nerves. He fought the terror that would slow his legs down and doom them to a horrible death.
The exit loomed up before him, then he sprung through and was dashing for the iron ladder. The walls were frosty with spiderweb lines that betrayed their crumbling. It seemed minutes that he struggled towards the black hole that would mean salvation, though it was only seconds. His ears rang with the rumbling thunder all about.
All at once the ladder was before him. He set the girl down and somehow got her started up it. Swiftly he followed. The ladder seemed a thing alive beneath his hands and feet. Lurchings and shakings threatened to dislodge both of them. But fear gave strength to their muscles and carried them on.
AFTER an eternity of climbing, the trapdoor loomed before them and Sharon's hands thrust it upward. The harsh Arctic light streamed in on them. George Kane followed her out into the snow. Absently he noted the little pile of provisions the girl had brought out early that day.
The rumbling had almost stopped now. Only faint undulations of the ground evidenced the hell that had taken place below. Kane's legs were weak as he turned to the girl. She was crying softly with relief.
Somehow the young scientist's arms stole about her shoulders and drew her near him. "It's all right now," he murmured. "The cave-in won't come any farther. It was just the ice that was affected. With the food you brought out this morning, we can get away from this place and reach Spence Bay in two days."
After a moment the girl's voice, muffled because her face was buried in the hollow of his shoulder and neck, said: "But what happened? I thought he said the ice couldn't slip?"
"It wouldn't have," Kane said, "except that he forgot something—the friction that would be produced by all that slipping iron. The friction created tremendous heat and melted the lower ice. That brought the whole place down. And when that happened—Henry Cameron's plans were spoiled. He failed in what he was attempting."
"You mean—" Sharon's face tipped up to his querulously. "You mean the pole hasn't been destroyed?"
"The original one was, all right. It's about twenty-five miles down, now, and useless. But Cameron told me something before he imprisoned me. He told me he'd discovered that all the metal needs, in order to have the magnetism fixed, is to be heated up to about a thousand degrees. Right now that huge coil of his is slipping down and heating itself far above that! In other words, only a few hours will elapse before the magnetic North Pole is restored for good."
Sharon was silent. After a moment Kane said, with the first smile that had touched his face for hours. "Personally, I wouldn't mind standing like this for the rest of my life, hut I'm afraid we'd freeze. We'd better start for the settlement. We've a long walk ahead of us."
The girl's blue eyes smiled up at him, with no trace of the horror that had drenched them a short time ago. "At least," she said softly, "it will give us plenty of time to get acquainted!"
Answers to Questions on Page 79