The greatest adventure
temperature actually forces the growth beyond all nature. In the dry,
warm pockets in the cement, sealed from light and moisture, the spores
would lie dormant indefinitely.
"Probably what we found is the mass of spores from a growth which
started from a few dusted off the bodies of the last workers. When the
vegetation had exhausted the soil and moisture in the pocket it ceased
to grow. In the warmth, I imagine, the growth was slow and natural. The
spores have retained their life all these millions of years, waiting
for a fool like me to broadcast them over the ideal medium for their
luxuriant growth and propagation. Did those dead workers foresee the
ice ages ahead? Did they seal the caves against the escape of this
fiend to its stimulating cold? I don't know. Such is my theory, and it
is my last. Which way, Anderson?"
"Head northeast. Ole, you're the strongest. Go first till you give in.
We must head off the stuff before it grows over that bay against the
rocks to the left. Then we can climb along the rocks and beat it to
the east--if we can. It is an inch higher than it was when we began
talking."
Ole made about twenty feet. Panting and sweating he stopped for breath.
He made another two feet and collapsed in the green slush.
"All right, Ole," the Captain said, taking his place. "Fall behind
while I have a go."
Anderson gave out at the third yard.
"Drake, you're next."
Drake made less than a yard. Lane followed with a yard and a half.
Edith shoved. And so it went until complete exhaustion overtook them
less than a hundred feet from their starting place. By now the green
mass grew high above their heads when they stood erect.
"I can do no more," Anderson panted. "We might as well give up."
Saying nothing they flung themselves down on the green mess they had
trampled. Presently Edith got to her feet and beckoned to Drake. He
followed her back along the green tunnel. The hair-like mass at the
farther end was already a foot high. This was a second growth springing
rankly up from the trampled slush of the first.
"I wish you to know," Edith began when they reached the end, "that I
have always loved you. We shall not get out of here. I feel no shame in
telling you."
"Why didn't you tell me before?" he said, touched to the heart. "I
never knew you cared that way for me, although I hoped that some day
you might, darling. We shall die here. Let us forget the past and not
think of the cold eternity before us. The present is enough."
And they spent their priceless moments as only lovers know how. Death
might strangle them before night, certainly before morning. These few
moments were their eternity.
Years later, it seemed to them, they heard someone ripping through the
young growth in the tunnel. It was Ole.
"The Doctor sent me to fetch some grub," he apologized guiltily.
Edith's heart gave a great leap. While there is appetite there is hope.
Her father's head had started working again.
"Come on," she said to Drake, "we shall be married after all."
They found Lane and the Captain sitting in silence. Anderson's face
was expressionless. The Doctor glanced up at Edith's happy face, and
a spasm of pain contracted his own. For he had sent Ole to fetch,
not food, but a hundred pounds of dynamite. He had hoped to end the
misery of all of them painlessly and instantaneously without Edith's
foreknowledge.
"Have you thought of a way out?" she asked hopefully.
"Yes," he said. "But seeing you I haven't the courage to take it."
She guessed.
"John and I," she said, laying her hand on Drake's arm, "will go back
again to the end of the tunnel where you can't see us. I'm not afraid."
"But I am," he said.
She stood looking down at him, all the love and affection of her past
happy life in her eyes.
"You needn't be afraid. I never was frightened of the dark."
Ole joined them, dragging his mossgrown pack. Anderson glared at him.
"Why didn't you do it back there instead of coming here to scare the
girl to death?"
"I'm not going to do it. You are. Suicide and murder are against my
religion."
"Blowing you to hell is the only good thing about this whole business.
Hand me a cap and cut off a three-inch fuse."
In spite of himself Ole began to fumble. His half-frozen fingers
refused to pick out the cap. Then searching for his knife to cut the
fuse he remembered what had become of it. He looked at Edith.
"You couldn't fetch my knife, could you?"
"No, stupid," she laughed. "How could I fly back to the tunnel?"
"Here," the Captain exclaimed, impatiently brushing him aside, "I'll do
it if you haven't brains enough to use your teeth."
Drawing out his knife he opened the blade and gave Ole a sour look.
"I've a good mind to cut your fat throat," he said. "They can't hang
me."
"Then you will go to hell for sure," Ole asserted with certain
confidence.
Working in silence Anderson methodically set about his business. Lane
still sat in the green slush, trying not to think of Edith. Presently
he rose to his feet.
"The blowholes will spout in a moment," he said. "I just felt the
suspicion of a tremor."
Involuntarily Anderson paused in his work.
"You're right. Well, we shall add to the general celebration in a
minute or two."
The violent shaking began and ended with unexpected suddenness,
throwing them down in the slush. A dull thudding in the air announced
the kindling of the flame cones.
"Gas, oil!" Lane shouted.
In his excitement he was incapable of giving coherent expression to
the association of ideas which flashed across his memory. The others
started away from him. Even Edith drew back in alarm. Although they
were about to die it seemed a terrible thing that one of their number
should go out of life mad.
"Don't you remember, Ole?" he continued, barely able to utter the words
for emotion. "The oil from the shale on the beach oozed down into the
hole where that green stuff lay. That plant was the same as this. What
destroyed it? Oil! The whole mass was dissolved, a mess of brown
sludge when we saw it next. Oil is its natural enemy! Those gas flames
made me think of oil. Thank God for memory!"
They still thought him demented.
"Nitric acid might as well be its natural enemy," Drake remarked, "for
all the good it will do us. Where are we to get oil?"
Drake had not yet learned that genius is the gift for making the most
of circumstances.
"Where?" the Doctor shouted. "From the tank of the airplane of course.
Edith, can you spare two hundred gallons and still have enough petrol
to take us to the south shore of the oil lake?"
"Yes. It is less than a ten-minute fly. I can spare three hundred
gallons if you need that much and have plenty to fly to the cache by
the ship."
But Lane had not yet thought that far. Neither his own possible escape
from death nor that of the party had yet come above his horizon. He was
planning a greater deliverance.
"Break through to the plane, Ole," he ordered, "while I get the can."
The twelve feet to the oil tank took only half an hour. Hope had
trebled their strength. The first petrol drawn was used to soak the
spores in the can. These were then thrown away in the tunnel and the
can washed clean.
"Strip that green devil off the plane somehow, the rest of you," Lane
directed, "while I spread the petrol in the tunnel."
They went at the job like tigers.
"Look," Lane cried from the tunnel. "See what the soaked spores did."
Hurrying back they found him standing in a pool of brown muck. Like a
field of dry flax before a fire the eight-foot wall of green hair was
dissolving round the edges of the pool. The almost instantaneous decay
ate like a flame into the impenetrable thicket.
Lane carefully spread his can of oil against the matted roots along the
left side of the tunnel. When he returned with the second can a band of
brown slush two feet broad marked the destruction wrought by the first.
Four hours later they had cleared the plane and opened up a straight
alleyway through the matted tangle sufficiently broad and long enough
for the plane to run along and take the air.
"Hang on all your dynamite," Lane ordered. "I'll bring the can. Leave
everything else."
Ole and Edith climbed into their places, Drake sat on the back of the
seat clutching Ole round the neck, while Lane and the Captain disposing
themselves on either side of Drake clung to him and to one another.
The load, although considerable, was far below the plane's lifting
capacity. Edith ran it down the long alleyway and lifted from the brown
sludge with thirty feet to spare.
Their last look at the blowholes showed the green mounds all about them
lit up by the cheery fires.
Rising to the thousand foot level they saw beneath them a vivid green
band twelve miles broad winding like a river due north toward the oil
lake.
"That's what the wind did with the spores we lost last night. The stuff
multiplies on itself like compound interest at ten thousand per cent.
Unless we stop its growth now this whole continent will be matted thick
in a month."
"And then it will blow across the ocean to South America."
"Not if I can help it. We don't know yet whether it can multiply like
this in a warmer climate. Freezing temperature seems to act on it like
a violent stimulant. For all we know it might be controllable at ten
degrees and perish at fifty. But I'm not going to find out. This plague
will never get farther than that lake. Land near the cache, Edith. We
shall need all the dynamite we have."
Anderson guessing the Doctor's purpose made no remonstrance. The oil
had risen high in the lake during the night. Six inches more and it
would begin spilling over the south barrier of the lake. But they could
not wait for nature. The green plague river was broadening before their
eyes. In half a day it would have streamed up the intervening three
miles to the oil lake, surrounded it, and swept onto the desolate plain
beyond in its ever swifter rush to the ocean.
Ole unearthed the pick and began digging furiously into the ice under
the narrowest point of the barrier.
"How long will it take to fly across the lake, Edith?" Lane asked.
"Twenty minutes at the most."
"Then give your shots a twenty-minute fuse," Lane directed. "We shan't
stay to see the show. The oil may catch when the dynamite explodes.
All hands soak themselves in crude oil. We can't risk starting those
infernal spores in a new place."
Setting the example Lane baled up several canfulls of the black oil and
drenched himself from head to feet. Then he soused the plane. Having
finished he passed the can to Drake and stood watching Anderson at his
work. The Captain was saying nothing in the presence of his tragedy.
"Look here, Captain," Lane said, "all this is due to my stupidity
alone. I have lost your oil for you. In slight return I shall make you
a present of the finest thousand-acre orange grove in California."
The proud temptation to refuse gave way to the memory of twenty years
of cold and stink.
"I accept the sunshine and orange blossoms with all my thanks," the
Captain replied.
"And while you are about that job," Lane continued, "put this in with
the dynamite too." He handed the Captain his tobacco box containing the
parasites which he had scraped from the monster's tail. "I shall not
take another chance with any of the infernal diseases of the archaean
age," he said.
Having planted the last charge Anderson soaked his clothing in oil
before lighting all four fuses. He then clambered up on the plane with
the others. They were off as fast as they could fly.
Twenty minutes passed, twenty-five, and they were well beyond the
north shore of the lake speeding toward the ship.
"Are you sure those fuses were dry?" Lane shouted above the roar of the
propeller.