as you have never even imagined — I cannot forewarn you in any respect whatever as
to what forms those forces may appear to assume. I know, however, that I shall
succumb to the first bolt of force. Therefore bind me with these chains before I open the
shield. Physically I am extremely strong, as you know, therefore be sure to put on
enough chains so that I cannot possibly break free, for if I can break away I shall
undoubtedly kill both of you.”
“How come all these things here, ready to hand?” asked vanBuskirk, as the two
Patrolmen so loaded the passive Velantian with chains, manacles, hand-cuffs, leg-irons
and straps that he could not move even his tail.
“It has been tried before, many times,” Worsel replied bleakly, `but the rescuers,
being Velantians, also succumbed to the force and took off the irons. Now I caution
you, with all the power of my mind — no matter what you see, no matter what I may
command you or beg of you, no matter how urgently you yourself may wish to do so —
DO NOT LIBERATE ME UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES unless and until things
appear exactly as they do now and that door is shut. Know fully and ponder well the fact
that if you release me while that door is open it will be because you have yielded to
Delgonian force, and that not only will all three of us die, lingeringly and horribly, but
also and worse, that our deaths will not have been of any benefit to civilization. Do you
understand? Are you ready?”
“I understand — I am ready,” thought Kinnison and vanBuskirk as one.
“Open that door.
Kinnison did so. For a few minutes nothing happened. Then three-dimensional
pictures began to form before their eyes — pictures which they knew existed only in their
own minds, yet which were composed of such solid substance that they obscured from
vision everything else in the material world. At first hazy and indistinct, the scene — for it
was in no sense now a picture — became clear and sharp. And, piling horror upon
horror, sound was added to sight. And directly before their eyes, blotting out completely
even the solid metal of the wall only a few feet distant from them, the two outlanders
saw and heard something which can be represented only vaguely by imagining Dante’s
Inferno an actuality and raised to the Nth power!
In a dull and gloomy cavern there lay, sat, and stood hordes of things. These
beings — the “nobility” of Delgon — had reptilian bodies, somewhat similar to Worsel’s,
but they had no wings and their heads were distinctly apish rather than crocodilian.
Every greedy eye in the vast throng was fixed upon an enormous screen which, like that
in a motion-picture theater, walled off one end of the stupendous cavern.
Slowly, shudderingly, Kinnison’s mind began to take in what was happening
upon that screen. And it was really happening, Kinnison was sure of that — this was not
a Picture any more than this whole scene was an illusion. It was all an actuality —
somewhere.
Upon that screen there were stretched out victims. Hundreds of these were
Velantians, more hundreds were winged Delgonians, and scores were creatures whose
like Kinnison had never seen. And all these were being tortured, tortured to death both
in fashions known to the Inquisitors of old and in ways of which even those experts had
never an inkling. Some were being twisted outrageously in three-dimensional frames.
Others were being stretched upon racks.
Many were being pulled horribly apart, chains intermittently but relentlessly
extending each helpless member. Still others were being lowered into pits of constantly
increasing temperature or were being attacked by gradually increasing concentrations
of some foully corrosive vapor which ate away their tissues, little by little. And,
apparently the piece de resistance of the hellish exhibition, one luckless Velantian, in a
spot of hard, cold light, was being pressed out flat against the screen, as an insect
might be pressed between two panes of glass. Thinner and thinner he became under
the influence of some awful, invisible force, in spite of every exertion of inhumanly
powerful muscles driving body, tail, wings, arms, legs, and head in every frantic
maneuver which grim and imminent death could call forth.
Physically nauseated, brain-sick at the atrocious visions blasting his mind and at
the screaming of the damned assailing his ears, Kinnison strove to wrench his mind
away, but was curbed savagely by Worsel.
“You must stay! You must pay attention!” commanded the Velantian. “This is the
first time any living being has seen so much — you must help me novel They have been
attacking me from the first, but, braced by the powerful negatives in your mind, I have
been able to resist and have transmitted a truthful picture so far. But they are surprised
at my resistance and are concentrating more force . . . . I am slipping fast . . . . . you
must brace my minds. And when the picture changes — as change it must, and soon –
do not believe it. Hold fast, brothers of the Lens, for your own lives and for the people of
Velantia. There is more – and worse !”
Kinnison stayed. So did vanBuskirk, fighting with all his stubborn Dutch mind.
Revolted, outraged, nauseated as they were at the sights and sounds, they stayed.
Flinching with the victims as they were fed into the hoppers of slowly turning mills,
wincing at the unbelievable acts of the boilers, the beaters, the scourgers, the flayers,
suffering themselves every possible and many apparently impossible nightmares of
slow and hideous torture — with clenched fists and locked teeth, with sweating
foreheads over white and straining faces, Kinnison and vanBuskirk stayed.
The light in the cavern now changed to a strong, greenish-yellow glare, and . in
that hard illumination it was to be seen that each dying being was surrounded by a
palely glowing aura. And now, crowning horror of that unutterably horrible orgy of
Sadism resublimed, from the eyes of each one of the monstrous audience there leaped
out visible beams of force..These beams touched the auras of the dying prisoners,
touched and clung. And as they clung, the auras shrank and disappeared.
The Overlords of Delgon were actually FEEDING upon the ebbing life-forces of
their tortured, dying victims!
CHAPTER 6
Delgonian Hypnotism
Gradually and so insidiously that the velantian’s dire warnings might as well never have
been uttered, the scene changed. Or rather, the scene itself did not change, but the
observers’ perception of it slowly underwent such a radical transformation that it was in
no sense the same scene it had been a few minutes before, and they felt almost
abjectly apologetic as they realized how unjust their previous ideas had been.
For the cavern was not a torture-chamber, as they had supposed. It was in
reality a hospital, and the beings they had thought victims of brutalities unspeakable
were in reality patients undergoing treatments and operations for various ills. In proof
whereof the patients — who should have been dead by this time were the early ideas
well founded — were now being released from the screen-like operating theater. And not
only was each one completely whole and sound in body, but he was also possessed of
a mental clarity, power, and grasp undreamed of before his hospitalization and
treatment by Delgon a super-surgeons!
Also the intruders had misunderstood completely the audience and its behavior.
They were really medical students, and the beams which had seemed to be devouring
rays were simply visibeams, by means of which each student could follow, in close-up
detail, each step of the operation in which be was most interested. The patients
themselves were living, vocal witnesses of the visitors’ mistakenness, for each, as he
made his way through the assemblage of students, was voicing his thanks for the
marvelous results of his particular treatment or operation.
Kinnison now became acutely aware that be himself was in need of immediate
surgical attention. His body, which he had always regarded so highly, he now perceived
to be sadly inefficient, his mind was in even worse shape than his physique, and both
body and mind would be improved immeasurably if he could get to the Delgonian
hospital before the, surgeons departed. In fact, he felt an almost irresistible urge to rush
away toward that hospital, instantly, without the lose of a single precious second. And,
since he had had no reason to doubt the evidence of his own senses, his conscious
mind was not aroused to active opposition. However, in his — in his subconscious, or
his essence, or whatever you choose to call that ultimate something of file that made
him a Lensman — a “dead slow bell” began to sound.
“Release me and we’ll all go, before the surgeons leave the hospital,” came an
insistent thought from Worse!. “But hurry — we haven’t much time!”