The Cavern of the Shining Pool E-Book

Arthur Leo Zagat

• Herausgeber: Al-Mashreq eBookstore
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 36

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

The Cavern of the Shining Pool by Arthur Leo Zagat is a mesmerizing journey into a hidden world beneath the earth, where danger and wonder coexist. When a group of explorers stumbles upon a secret cavern glowing with an otherworldly light, they find themselves drawn into a fantastical adventure. But this underground paradise holds dark secrets—mysterious forces and ancient guardians that protect the shimmering pool at its heart. As the explorers delve deeper, they must confront their deepest fears and the possibility that some treasures are better left undiscovered. Will they escape the cavern's mystical grip, or be lost forever in its depths? Dive into a story that will captivate your imagination and challenge your sense of reality.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

The Cavern of the Shining Pool

I. — THE ETHER EDDY

II. — INTO A NEW UNIVERSE

III. — THE TURTLE MEN

IV. — RELATIVITY REVERSED

Landmarks

Table of Contents

Cover

The Cavern of the Shining Pool

Thrilling Wonder Stories

By: Arthur Leo Zagat

Edited by: Rafat Allam

Copyright © 2024 by Al-Mashreq Bookstore

First published in Thrilling Wonder Stories, October 1937

No part of this publication may be reproduced whole or in part in any form without the prior written permission of the author

I. — THE ETHER EDDY

I JERKED down the result-lever of my Merton Calculator, and the rattle of its gears was loud in the deserted reaches of Flight Control Headquarters. The flight-graph imprinted itself on the space-chart, the thin red line that would guide the newly launched Phobos on her maiden voyage to Venus. I glanced through the transparent quartz wall at her tremendous bulk, vague on the vast tarmac of New York's Spaceship Terminus in the brooding dark of 3 a.m. The graph line I had just traced jogged erratically, a million and a half miles out, detouring the Phobos' course a hundred thousand miles. That hump was why I was here, alone in the crystal hive. At midnight the message had pulsed in on the infra-red ray from the domed air-cell on the Moon where gaunt men ceaselessly scan the skies that Trade may ply unhampered between Earth and her sister planets.

In their electelscopes a far-flung shimmer had appeared across the blackness of space and they had leaped to send warning of the one unconquered menace that harried the spaceways. An ether eddy!

Sometimes I thought the old memories drowned, the thirty-year lingering agony ended, that had wiped out for me forever the thrill of space flight, the transcendant joy of leaping from this wrinkled ball of ours and hurtling, godlike, among the stars. Then that word, that damned word that had stripped the winged rocket from my tunic and made of me a half alive juggler of charts and figures, would strike my ears. The years would fade and I would be in hell again.

As now. I saw Jay again, my brother, too poignantly real across the span of three decades. I saw the wide-shouldered, thick-legged bulk of him, a strand of yellow hair straggling over his brow, his broad-planed face flushed with the excitement of his first command. I felt my hand crushed in his own as I wished him the immemorial "Happy landing."

The Luna's hatch shut him from my sight. The great craft blasted-off from Earth. Tile scene shifted. In tortured imagining I bent over an electelscope view field, pride pulsing in my veins as I watched the long, clean arc of his flight. He had learned my teaching well, the bantling. He would, push me hard for my laurels as ace of Earth's space fleet.

Then there was that black shimmer across the firmament's spangled black. The Luna plunged straight into it—and vanished!

There—where a moment ago she had been, even in her tininess, majestic as a symbol of man's conquest of unimaginable distances, unrealizable cold—there the inscrutable panoply of the stars stared horror at me and only a faint trail of rocket gas, glowing and fading in the vacancy, showed that the Luna had ever been.

In the madness that took me, I ripped the insignia of my craft from my blouse and swore that never again should I leave Earth's atmosphere. I kept that oath, but my great need drew me back to this place where the space ships, in ever increasing numbers, leaped for the stars.

Here, while I moldered in the dull routine of my clerk's job, I could watch the swaggering youngsters who wore the winged rocket and pretend to myself that perhaps the next craft to land would bring Jay back to me. Here I had grown old...

The little hairs prickled on the nape of my neck. The silence about me was eerie, the shadows played tricks on my overwrought nerves. Somehow I felt that I was not alone. And I was afraid.

A furtive sound whispered behind me. My eyes flicked the desk for a weapon, found none. I forced my swivel chair around, every nerve protesting.