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  THE HIDDEN WORLD

  By

  STANTON A. COBLENTZ

  A Spellcaster E Books publication

  ISBN 1-58873-826-4

  All rights reserved

  Copyright 1935, 1950, 1957, Stanton A. Coblentz

  2006 Spellcaster E Books

  Reprinted permission the Ackerman Agency

  This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part without written permission.

  For information contact

  [email protected]

  Spellcaster E Books/A Starship Edition

  INTRODUCTION

  Stanton A. Coblentz (1896-1982) was science fiction's premier satirist, and one of its premier world-builders, for the field's first magazine, the late, lamented Amazing Stories, during its earliest years in the late 1920s-1930s. In many ways, he was better known outside the field as a literary critic and poet. Founder of the fabled poetry magazine, Wings, he was the author of more than a dozen books of poetry and criticism. Born in San Francisco, he received a Master's Degree in English literature from Berkeley, and then relocated to New York where he eked out a living writing book reviews for the major daily newspapers. Deeply influenced by H. G. Wells, he had written two satirical novels, emulation of the master even before the advent of Amazing Stories, but put them aside as there appeared to be no market until he discovered Hugo Gernsback's pioneering publication at a newsstand. His first published work of science fiction was “The Sunken World,” a satire about Atlantis, published in Amazing Stories Quarterly in July, 1928. Amazing lauded Coblentz for his satire “a la Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels and trenchant ... criticism [of] the nature of mankind” and termed his work, “Impressive!” Paul diFilippo in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction calls him one of “sf's premier satirists.” But Coblentz also earned a reputation as one of sf's premier world builders, with no less a critic than Damon Knight praising him for his weird world building and “fertile imagination for alien environments and a vivid presentation.” The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction also cites Coblentz’ “strong gift for descriptions of ingeniously conceived alien environments, so that he was often regarded as one of the writers best capable of conveying the sense of wonder so rightly valued by the readers of U.S. pulp magazine sf...” The Hidden World has long been regarded as one of Coblentz’ best novels, and in a Garage Sale Gold Review, Edward Janusz cites the book for its “unexpected moments of snarky humor ... enjoyable wordplay ... satire of militarism [which] give it a different tone from many stories of the time,” and notes that “it holds up well.” The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction calls The Hidden World “a satire set in an underground venue with fascinating descriptions of a strange civilization.” In The Hidden World, two geologists fall through a mine tunnel into a world turned upside-down. There the pair discover the chalk-faces, who consider Caucasians “colored” and who breed their children to die in war, whose women are counted more beautiful for each wrinkle they have on their faces, where takers of official oaths literally eat their words, where a man wearing anything but skirts is considered scandalous, where those opposed to warfare are considered unenlightened savages, and the ruler is an overbearing gasbag called His Abysmal Excellency, Thuno Flatum. To survive and return to the surface world, the explorers will have to take over the civilization of the chalk-faces and, starting at the bottom of the society, work their way up to the most powerful office in the land, deposing his His Abysmal Excellency, Thuno Flatum, and assuming the title of Abysmal Excellency himself! It's a challenge filled with dangers and potential missteps in this weirdly inverted society. But, you can't keep two clean-cut, all-American 1930s heroes down, not even when they are down under themselves, prisoners in the hidden world! It is hoped that Stanton A. Coblentz “snarkey humor” and over-the-top satire will find a new audience with this series of ebook reprints of the best of his dyspeptic, but ever-so-funny works.

  The Editors

  PAGEBREAKCHAPTER 1

  CAVE-IN

  It is now six years since Clay and I were given up by the world as lost. One fact in the case, and one only, may be remembered by the public. In the autumn of 1951, newspapers throughout the country reported that Philip Clay and Frank Comstock, mining engineers, had disappeared in the depths of a silver mine in Nevada.

  I shall not linger over the preliminaries, except to state that Philip Clay and I had been partners ever since our graduation from Western Institute of Mining in 1939. We had spent all our time in experiments and enterprises in the back regions of Montana, Idaho, and other states of the mountain belt. In September, 1951, we were called to pass judgment on the old Carlson Flat Silver Mine, which an Eastern syndicate was just reopening. The mine was located in a particularly inaccessible section of central Nevada, Carlson Flat—as desolate a spot as you could imagine. We were at the edge of a narrow barren plateau, just beneath a stony ridge that beetled a thousand feet above. No matter; we spent most of the time in that long-abandoned mine, whose shafts were not only unusually dank and narrow, but exceptionally deep.

  It was on the third day that we decided to inspect the farthest and deepest section of the diggings. Accompanied by two or three workmen, and an official of the company, we made our way tortuously through galleries that seemed miles long, and accomplished the dim descent hundreds of feet beneath the desert floor. Every now and then, as we groped and fumbled silently downward, I seemed to feel a sudden faint trembling of the earth.

  "Feel that?” I demanded of Clay, after one tremor.

  But he merely snapped, “Feel what?"

  "Seemed like an earthquake to me!” I muttered.

  "Earthquake? How the devil could it be? We're out of the earthquake belt, aren't we?"

  I mumbled in the affirmative, but was not reassured.

  A few minutes later, we had reached the mine's lowest limits. I pushed on with Clay, ahead of our companions, and was just turning my flashlight on an ore-producing ledge at the bottom of the gallery when ... it happened.

  Like many of life's crises, it was all over in a minute. The earth gave a convulsive lurch, like a ship's deck during a storm at sea. I heard Clay's sharp exclamation, and the startled shout of our companions, down the tunnel. I heard the crunching, grinding, and groaning of the earth, and a low rumbling from far subterranean depths, then I was pitched headlong to the floor as the ground heaved beneath us. I could see a gleam of panic in Clay's eyes as he tried to clutch a projecting spike of rock; then, as the commotion momentarily subsided, I almost regained my feet—only to be hurled down again.

  As I tried to get up, my ears rang with the thunder of falling rock. The roof of the gallery had collapsed; by the wavering rays of a flashlight, we saw ourselves entombed. But even as this realization swept across our minds, there was a fresh roaring in our ears. A huge rock crashed down from the roof, and then, at our feet, the earth groaned and opened, and a broad black fissure spread out beneath us.

  Desperately, like mountain climbers on a crumbling precipice, we tried to hold our balance on the narrow floor of our prison. We could see the fissure widening, spreading
out; then the light in Clay's flashlight flickered and died...

  In the darkness, clutching instinctively at the overhanging rocks, we felt ourselves slipping. I heard Clay's cry; I heard the uproar of sliding earth and rock; I felt my arms and shoulders bruised. There was a sense of suffocation, of being buried beneath tons of dead matter; then ... quietness.

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  I have always marveled that Clay and I lived through the cataclysm. Probably we owe our survival to the fact that the fissure, far from being perpendicular, sloped at an angle of thirty or forty degrees, so that, while rolling over and over in our descent, we were spared a direct drop.

  It may have been minutes, or it may have been hours later; but when I came to myself, it was with a dull aching in the head, and a sensation of soreness in every limb and muscle.

  "Where are we?” I gasped.

  "Where are we? I wish I knew,” came in mumbled accents from an unseen figure.

  "Much hurt, Phil?” I jerked out, striving to locate Clay amid the blackness as I started to extricate myself from the stones and dust.

  "No, not hurt much!” came Clay's drawled reply. “A few little cuts and bruises, more or less, and one black eye. But I couldn't use the eye down here, anyway! How about you, Frank?"

  "I'm all right,” I said, as cheerfully as I could, considering that I felt as if I had been through a threshing machine.

  "We'll sure be able to collect big damages! Don't know where we are, Frank, but I wouldn't mind being anywhere else. Where are you?"

  It took us several minutes to find each other.

  At length, guided by the sound of our voices, we brushed shoulders in the darkness. Thereafter, we clasped hands to keep together.

  After a few minutes, we passed the debris-littered area, and found a smooth stone floor slanting beneath our feet. And, a yard or two to each side of us, our groping fingers discovered a polished stone wall.

  Clay whistled. “Who'd have thought the mine reached this far down?"

  "Mine?” I returned derisively. “When did you ever see a mine with polished walls?"

  "Well, what is it if not a mine? Just tell me that!"

  Not being able to answer, I remained silent, as we continued on down those uncanny corridors.

  For another ten or fifteen minutes we plodded on without a word. The walls were still as polished and regular as ever, the blackness as absolute and unbroken; now we felt an occasional jarring of the earth at uneven intervals. It grew a little more pronounced, but was less disturbing as we became used to it.

  Then, unexpectedly, the gallery curved, turning almost at right angles. And as we felt our way around the bend, the tunnel curved again even more sharply, then curved once more. While, adding to our bewilderment, we discovered several side-galleries branching off in various directions.

  At the same time, the thuddings of the earth grew more pronounced, accompanied by rumblings and reverberations of terrifying force and insistency. Crash after crash burst upon us, as if from some remote storm center.

  What could it be? Some volcanic disturbance in the depths of the earth? So we were inclined to believe as, sweating with fear, we halted for a consultation. In another moment, might we not feel the reek of sulphur in our nostrils?

  Groping around another turn in the gallery, we were startled to see an indistinct patch of light far ahead. Vaguely rectangular in shape, and of an unearthly greenish hue, it wavered and flickered strangely, at times almost disappearing, at times flaring to a hectic, momentary brilliance, shot through with flashes of red, orange, and violet. Simultaneously, the far-off thunders grew more deep-throated.

  "Lord,” muttered Clay, “you could almost believe the old yarns about Old Nick and his court of devils!"

  "Court of devils?” I tossed back. “The only devils are in your imagination, Phil! It's clear enough what's wrong. The earth is going through a little fit of indigestion. Most likely it'll clear up any moment."

  These words were barely out of my mouth when the earth gave a lurch that knocked us both off our feet. And for an instant the light from down the gallery became a sun-like glare, by which I caught a glimpse of Clay's harried face, one eye half closed and a long gash across his forehead.

  Probably I did not present a more inviting sight, for, as we both picked ourselves up, he exclaimed, “Say, old fellow, I ought to have your picture now!"

  I didn't bother to reply, but started away again along the gallery, whose walls were now and then dimly visible by the flickering light ahead. To our astonishment, we saw that the ceiling formed a perfect triangle, an inverted V like the roof of a house. Here was the handiwork of man—yet what man before us had penetrated these labyrinths?

  But it was useless to speculate. We had to go toward and find out. As we approached the light, we were relieved to find that the earth trembled less violently and less often, and that the illumination down the passageway grew more steady and distinct.

  "See, Phil, I told you the earthquakes would be over soon!” I told my companion. But Clay didn't reply; he merely quickened his footsteps.

  At last we were drawing near the mysterious light. It had now ceased to flicker, and shone with a steady greenish-yellow glare, so bright as to fill the gallery with a weird radiance, wherein we could clearly distinguish each other's features. The source of the light, however, remained an enigma.

  In a few minutes we had reached the corridor's end, and, turning sharply, found ourselves in a wider passageway penetrated by scores of cross-galleries and terminating, about a hundred yards beyond, in a perfect blaze of greenish light.

  "Lord in heaven!” exclaimed Clay, as we reached the new thoroughfare. “Are we dreaming? Or am I simply crazy?"

  "Guess we're both crazy!” I muttered. “Come on, let's find out what's what!"

  "Might as well die exploring!” he conceded.

  I now noticed for the first time that Clay was walking with a slight limp; I also noticed that his rude mining garb was not only soiled with streaks and blotches of black, but was ripped and torn in a hundred places. But my own clothes were in an equally sorry condition.

  As we slowly covered the hundred yards to the end of the second gallery, I could see the bleak furrows on Clay's long, lean, battered face. He stroked his disheveled red hair. “Say, Frank, if anything happens to me, see that my mother gets my watch as a remembrance. Tell her I was thinking of her at the last—"

  "Tell her yourself!” I interrupted. “Haven't you as good a chance as I of getting out of this infernal mess?"

  "Suppose I have, at that! Guess it's both of us, or neither!

  Our conversation was interrupted by our arrival at the end of the second gallery. Clay, preceding me by half a dozen feet, stopped short and gasped. I heard his swift exclamation, and gained his side; then I, too, seemed to have lost my tongue.

  How can I describe the scene which had suddenly unfolded before us? Surely, the discoverer of a new planet could not have had a deeper sense of awe! For here was, literally, a new world. The gallery had ended as if on the brink of a precipice; we were staring down, through yellowish-green abysses, into a chasm as wide and deep as the Grand Canyon of Arizona. As wide and deep, but by no means as irregular, by no means as narrow at the bottom. Unlike the great gorge of the Colorado, this showed no unevenness of structure; sheer stone walls, straight and precipitous as the walls of a room, shot down beneath us a mile deep. Sheer stone walls, equally precipitous and straight, rose opposite us at a distance of more than a mile, and between them spread the bare, level floor of the cavern, which reached to our right and left to an incalculable remoteness.

  There was such an atmosphere of unreality about it all that only by degrees could I absorb the details. There was the gentle curve of the ceiling, which, arching but a few hundred feet above us, revealed fantastic figures, vaguely man-shaped, standing out sharply in cameo. There was a multitude of greenish-yellow bulbs which, square or rounded or elongated into rods and spirals, studded the walls by the tho
usand and hung in long strings from above. Small round openings, like the portholes of a ship, dotted the opposite side of the cavern, countless scores of horizontal lines; and little door-like apertures opened at regular intervals all along the cavern floor.

  Many minutes must have passed while we stood there spellbound...

  My companion was standing bemused, near the brink, and I pulled him back. “Better watch out, Phil, or I won't have even your watch to bring to your mother!"

  Still like a man in a daze, he wiped a grimy hand over his carrot-colored hair. “Good thing she can't see me now!"

  Before I had time to reply, the earth wavered violently once more; distant thunders and detonations burst out with renewed fury. At the same time, a shaft of violet light shot across the cavern with lightning swiftness. Then, in the barest fraction of a second, waves of orange light and of vermilion followed; and while Clay and I stared at each other, the greenish-yellow luminaries all flickered and seemed about to be extinguished. Simultaneously, our ears were struck by a distant blast of sound, a little like the notes of a bugle; and the next instant, as the greenish-yellow lights regained their former brilliance, a scene of startling activity became visible on the cavern floor.

  Had we obeyed our hammering hearts, we should have turned and fled; but we did not wish to seem cowards in each other's eyes. We flung ourselves upon the gallery floor, crept to the edge of the abyss, and gazed across, like small boys clandestinely watching a ball game.

  CHAPTER II

  THE BATTLE

  From our vantage point near the cavern roof we could not follow all that was happening a mile beneath us; however, we did observe more than a little. In the beginning, we were astonished to see the doors at the base of the excavation all thrown open, to admit a multitude of antlike black mites—all of them so minute, in view of their distance, that they might have been insects. To learn the details of their appearance or costume was out of the question. They drew themselves up into precise rectangular formations, each divided into scores of long, mathematically even columns.