DARK ARMAGEDDON

VOLUME THREE OF THE DARK ARMAGEDDON TRILOGY

John Glasby

© John Glasby

John Glasby has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988 to be identified as author of this work.

Copyright © 2017 by the Estate of John Glasby

First published in 2017 by Venture Press, an imprint of Endeavour Press Ltd.

Contents

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER ONE

Below the ground floor rooms of the Miskatonic University library in Arkham, lie the vaults, which are entered through a normally locked door in the main reading room and then down a spiral flight of metal stairs. Here, on long shelves which, except for the central aisle, stretch the full width of the room, repose the accumulated knowledge of centuries dealing with the ancient myths and legends of mankind and, if certain crumbling tones are genuine, of pre-humankind. Many old and rare volumes are kept securely locked away and made available only to certain readers on application to the curator, Doctor Theodore Conlon. This precaution is applied not merely because of the rarity and extremely fragile nature of such texts, most of them written in strange hieroglyphs, but because of the possible dire consequences of reading such terrible and abhorrent books. More readily available are copies of almost every book published concerning the Cthulhu Mythos, both fiction and fact (although to the uninitiated layman much of the latter would undoubtedly be considered as fiction as well).

Much less well known is that another room lies at an even deeper level beneath the foundations, one whose existence is virtually unknown even to the university authorities as a whole although it was built, quite openly, more than forty years ago around the time of the Cold War. In all, the project took two years to complete and had been undertaken under the official guise of providing a bombproof shelter for the safe storage of priceless volumes and artefacts in the custody of the university. That had been the official story leaked to the media and, understandably, all outside interest in it waned rapidly. As further proof of the conformity of the project, large steel and lead plates were observed being taken far below ground at the time.

With the thawing of East-West relations it was announced that the ‘shelter’ had been closed, that it had been abandoned as no longer required, and any interest in it by the local population soon ceased. The reality, however, is very different. This is the headquarters of the Carter Organisation. Situated at more than four hundred feet below ground level and capable of withstanding the blast of a hydrogen bomb, it represents the highest scientific attainment of man, equipped with technology considerably in advance of any government agency. It is here that the first secrets of the Jinnee were uncovered, and aeon-old knowledge pertaining to the Old Ones and the Elder Gods is stored on highly sophisticated computer discs and is capable of retrieval within microseconds.

Of the three people who stood in front of the small door set in one wall of the university vaults on the morning of September 23, 1996, Philip Mansell had not been inside the headquarters for more than two years, having spent most of that time working with the small team headed by Professor John McKinrick in England. His two companions were Professor Susan Thaxton, head of the university biology department and Georg Kormanov.

At thirty-two, Susan Thaxton was one of the youngest full professors in the entire country and had been a member of the Organisation for close on eight years. Tall, slim and elegantly dressed with shoulder-length red hair and grey eyes, she might have been a model instead of spending her life within the cloistered environs of the university. Utterly dedicated to her chosen subject, she was also highly imaginative, prepared to accept novel ideas that her more mundane scientific colleagues would have dismissed as pure fantasy. It was this ability to acknowledge that extra-terrestrial life forms, totally different from any earthly species, could exist that had brought her to the attention of the Organisation.

Georg Kormanov had been born of peasant stock in Uzbekistan in 1928 and had spent most of his life under the old Stalinist regime. Most of the inhabitants of his tiny village in the forested region at the foot of the mountains held political views that differed radically from those of Moscow. During one of the periodical purges of the 1930s, they had been relocated in that region. While infinitely better than being transported to Siberia, life was hard, but for the most part they were left alone by the authorities.

On a number of occasions, however, dissidents from the strict regime, fleeing from the authorities, would be harboured in the village until some means could be found for moving them to safety across the mountains. Much of the success in this was due entirely to Georg for, from a very early age, he had discovered that he possessed a unique talent. He had been able to warn the villagers whenever any of the secret police or the military were approaching the village long before they arrived by simply picking up their thoughts.

In short, Georg Kormanov was a natural, and powerful, telepath.

By the time the police and soldiers arrived, the enemies of the regime were gone, taken along the narrow, winding trails through the forest. Only the local doctor, Vladimir Ivanescu, knew the full extent of Georg’s peculiar ability and had urged the boy to keep quiet about it, to tell no one, not even his parents. Ivanescu had taken Georg’s secret with him to the grave.

During the 1950s, under the more liberal form of Bolshevism, people such as Georg had been encouraged to come forward and develop their talents under strict scientific conditions. It is quite possible that he might have joined the unique ranks of ESPers, mediums and the like in the Soviet Union.

But the Organisation got to him first.

The trio had passed only a couple of students browsing among the stacks of files and books, which filled the numerous racks, and now they were out of sight of anyone. Unlocking the door, Susan said conversationally: “As I said earlier, with things now approaching a crisis, I thought it best you should both be acquainted with what we’ve got down here. At the moment, we’re only beginning our experiments, but it’s just possible we’re on the verge of a major breakthrough. I’d also be grateful if you could bring me up to date with what’s happening in England, Philip. This is the only place in the university where we can talk without any fear of being overheard.”

The room they now entered was, to all outward appearances, a cupboard, although somewhat larger than usual, with several brooms and a couple of aluminium buckets placed against one wall. A large metal filing cabinet stood just inside the door as if someone had just pushed it there to be out of the way. From these commonplace items the room would have passed close inspection and revealed nothing of its true nature.

Once they had crushed inside, she closed the door, unlocked it, then took a second key from her pocket, inserted it into the same keyhole but twisted it sharply in the opposite direction. As she did so, a small square panel on the wall slid aside, revealing two buttons, one red, the other green. She thumbed the green button and immediately, soundlessly, they were going down. Twenty seconds later the elevator stopped and Susan unlocked the door. This time the scene outside was completely different.

Long strips of fluorescent lighting threw a diffuse radiance over the huge chamber so that there were no shadows anywhere. Several white-coated technicians were busy at work, and almost all of the available space was taken up with scientific equipment. Some of it looked familiar to Mansell... the large Faraday cage, which held the captured Jinnee when he had last been there, still stood, apparently empty, in one corner. Briefly he wondered what they had done with the creature once they had got every scrap of information from it. He wasn’t sure if there was any way of destroying these fire elementals. At the time he had been certain it was impossible. But a lot could happen in two years.

Almost as if divining his thoughts, Susan said briskly: “You remember the Jinnee we took prisoner a couple of years ago?” And before Mansell could answer: “But of course you do. You and Carver Ingram were on that project together as I remember. We finally destroyed it.”

Mansell raised an interrogatory eyebrow but said nothing. Beside him, Kormanov continued to glance all around, trying to assimilate and understand everything he was seeing.

“It wasn’t easy,” Susan conceded. “After all, how do you kill a flame creature that is as much at home in a vacuum as it is in the terrestrial atmosphere?”

“Go on... tell me,” Mansell said.

“Oddly enough, it was helium. We’d figured that they need oxygen to support whatever form of combustion they have, although it obviously isn’t necessary for respiration as it is for humans since we have plenty of hard evidence that they can travel through space. We tried a nitrogen atmosphere at first, but all we got was something that looked like a demon from Hell once the nitrogen killed the flames which surrounded it.”

“It was still alive?” Kormanov asked.

“Oh, yes,” Susan replied casually. “Very much so. The electric field kept it securely confined, of course. But for a creature that’s apparently quite at ease in a vacuum, we really didn’t expect the nitrogen to have any lethal effect.”

“So what made you think of helium?” Mansell asked. Helium was one of the group of inert gases. It did not support combustion, and for a long time it had been believed that it was so inert chemically that it would not form any compounds with other chemical elements. A small number of these had, however, eventually been prepared, but only under special conditions.

“Actually, it was an accident.” Susan led the way past the Faraday cage and paused in front of a glass-topped box some six feet in length. “The effect of the nitrogen was only temporary. Once we introduced oxygen back into the atmosphere, it returned to its former state. On the second occasion we performed the experiment, however, a cylinder of helium was used by mistake. The Jinnee died almost immediately.” Motioning to the two men, she went on: “This is all that was left. I’d hoped to carry out a post-mortem on the remains, but as you can see that’s not possible.”

Stepping forward, Mansell and Kormanov peered into the box. The thing that lay at the bottom was black and twisted like charred rubber. In spite of his tight control on his emotions, Mansell felt his stomach muscles churn violently. What had been the creature's skin was shrunken into hideous folds, and it was clear that it had never possessed a bony skeleton. The arms and legs were mere strips of some leathery substance, and only the eyes, wide-open in the gruesomely shapeless skull and staring up at the two men, seemed to still hold some last vestige of life. Hell burned out of their carmine depths.

Susan was speaking again. “Don’t ask me how the helium had this effect. At the moment we’re still speculating on that. My guess is that, since it doesn’t have any need of a respiratory system, the gas is absorbed directly through the skin and somehow acted as a virulent poison. Exactly why, I can’t even guess.”

“At least we know how they can be destroyed.” Mansell stepped back from the box, fighting down the surge of nausea and revulsion. In death, these creatures were even more repulsive than in life.

“And is this what you wanted to show us?” Kormanov did not appear in the least perturbed by what he had seen. He has sensed the disgust in Mansell’s mind, but had not probed any deeper.

“No,” Susan answered quietly. “There’s something else. We have two of the others in captivity here.” Her tone became clipped and urgent as she added: “Two of the Deep Ones.”

Mansell’s first sense of surprised shock was quickly replaced by one of acceptance. After all, when viewed objectively, it would have proved easier to capture these minions of Cthulhu than a Jinnee. He followed Susan between two long benches filled with chemical apparatus towards the far corner of the laboratory where a large water-filled glass tank stood securely against the wall.

Once again Mansell experienced a tightening of his stomach muscles as he stared at the two creatures through the clear glass. In many ways they were more frightening and alien than the Jinnee. At least the latter made no pretensions of being remotely human in spite of the curiously humanoid outlines they possessed. But these monstrous creatures were nightmarish caricatures of men, standing upright on curiously distorted legs, their scaly arms pressed tightly against the front of the tank. Wide, lidless eyes peered at them with a feral hatred.

Both bore features that bordered on the batrachian with humped torsos and webbed hands and feet. Had there not been this vaguely human element, it might not have been so disturbing, watching them as they thrust futilely against the thick armoured glass in a vain attempt to smash through it and get at their captors.

“Where did you—?” Mansell began.

“Get them?” Susan turned from her study of the Deep Ones, a faint hint of a smile on her lips. “From Innsmouth, of course. Where else? As you can imagine, it wasn’t easy taking them alive. We wanted specimens of the true stock from the deeps off Devil Reef, from Y’ha-nthlei, not that debased hybrid spawn which resulted from the mating between Innsmouth folk and those creatures Obed Marsh brought back from the South Pacific over a century ago. They wouldn’t have served our purpose.”

“And you’re absolutely certain these are from Y’ha-nthlei?” Kormanov enquired. He spoke without taking his eyes off the creatures in the tank, staring intently at them as though mesmerised.

“We’re sure.” Susan gave a quick nod. “We’ve been aware for some time that the Innsmouthers have resumed their nocturnal activities at Devil Reef. Even before Cthulhu was free, those in the town who were most changed would emerge at night to swim out to that rock and meet with the others from the sea. We’ve had people keeping a close watch on their meetings for more than three years. A dangerous occupation, I’ll admit, but it was the only way we could get any accurate information. I guess you know something of it, Philip. Innsmouth isn’t the sort of place outsiders visit, hasn’t been for almost a century. But after what happened there in 1928 it was hoped that things might quieten down a little... and for a few years, it did. Then, of course, nobody guessed that all of this would happen so quickly. You’ll have heard something of what happened here only a few months ago, and no doubt you’ve seen some of the damage. The flash floods along the Miskatonic, which obliterated much of the old quarter of Arkham but seemed to leave Innsmouth unscathed. Then the Federal authorities were forced to move in. They sealed off Innsmouth completely from the outside world. Not that the folk there minded. Perhaps that’s exactly what they wanted. It meant that they could continue their nefarious activities without any interference. We guessed something of what was going on. Four of our members were sent undercover into that godforsaken town, all disguised as Innsmouthers. Three of them never came back, and I shudder to think what may have happened to them. The fourth did make it, however, and we managed to build up a fairly accurate picture of what was happening. Swarms of the Deep Ones were coming ashore. Always at night and when there was no moon. Dobrowski—our agent—saw the blue signal lights flashing from the top of the old Gilman place and from somewhere near the Marsh Refinery, and those lights were answered from Devil Reef, and that same night hordes of them swam from the reef and disappeared into the abandoned wharfs along the waterfront. He claims he spotted hundreds of them, but I think he underestimated.”

“And those two—” Mansell put in, turning the subject back to the present, “—how did you get them? Presumably the Federal authorities know nothing about them.”

Susan took up her story again. This time she deliberately turned her back on the tank as if not wanting to look at the two frog-like faces which peered impassively through the glass. “With everything that was going on, the authorities had to take some action. The people in the old quarter of Arkham are of Eastern-European stock. They’re more superstitious than most, and there could have been serious riots is something hadn’t been done. Nothing even close to the truth was ever leaked to the media. Officially, there was talk of some disease, an epidemic which was running rife through that accursed town and threatening to spread to the whole state. But we had our own sources of information, and we sent in three agents with instructions to take at least one of the Deep Ones alive.”

“Some kind of tranquilliser?” Mansell asked.

Susan nodded. “Chloral hydrate. Old-fashioned but highly effective, even against cold-blooded monsters like these.”

Mansell shifted his glance back to the tank. The Deep Ones had not changed their position. Only their wide, staring, icthyoid eyes moved slightly, following every tiny movement outside the limits of their confinement. Under that malignant scrutiny, Mansell felt acutely uncomfortable. There was nothing human in that gaze, and those scaled arms look capable of tearing a man limb from limb. “Is this all you wanted to show us, Susan?” he asked harshly. “Somehow I get the feeling there’s something else. Is it something to do with them?”

Instead of answering him, Susan turned to face Kormanov. “You know what I want, don't you?”

For a moment Kormanov looked embarrassed, then he shrugged. “I really can’t help picking up your thoughts when they’re so urgent, I’m afraid. You want me to try to get into the minds of those creatures. Not just their surface thoughts, but into the deeper levels of the subconscious.”

Susan hesitated, then gave a nod. “Can you? All of us in the Organisation have the ability to communicate with each other whenever the occasion demands. But we’ve all failed utterly where the Deep Ones are concerned. Their minds are completely closed to us.”

Kormanov rubbed his hands nervously together. He grimaced, said tautly: “If you believe it’s necessary, I can try. But their minds could be so alien that I may not be able to make any sense from anything I pick up.”

“It could also be highly dangerous,” Mansell cautioned. “We’ve no idea what mental powers these creatures might have. Even with your specialised talent, Georg, they might prove too strong... they may even be able to take you over, and if that should happen there’s no telling what damage you might cause before we could stop you.”

For once Kormanov’s normally bland expression changed. He twisted his mouth into a humourless smile. “I’ve already considered that possibility, Philip. I suggest that you should immobilise me before I make any such attempt.”

“I don’t think that should be necessary,” Susan said, forcing evenness into her tone. “After all we—”

Butting in, Mansell said: “I agree with Georg. We’re dealing with the unknown, and there’s a lot of fragile equipment here, most of it quite irreplaceable. Those horrors in that tank have only to control his mind for a fraction of a second, and there’s no telling what he might do.”

“Very well.” Susan turned and called to one of the nearby technicians and spoke briefly to him. The man left and when he returned a couple of minutes later he carried a pair of handcuffs with which he quickly shackled Georg to two metal stanchions at the end of the bench, facing the tank.

Mansell tested them, then nodded. “I guess they should hold you if anything goes wrong.” Straightening up, he added: “Now remember, Georg... at the first sign of anything you can’t handle, get out of there! You understand?”

Kormanov smiled crookedly. He glanced at Susan. “Is there anything in particular I’m looking for?”

“Get anything you can on Cthulhu. That’s the most important thing. Whether they know of His present whereabouts, I’m not sure. The last we heard from the group in England, He’s somewhere on Jupiter, fighting it out with Cthugha. Also try to discover the exact location of Y’ha-nthlei and how many of these monsters there are.”

Nodding in affirmation, Kormanov relaxed visibly, letting his arms hang slack against the steel uprights. His knees were bent slightly until it seemed that only the restraining hold of the handcuffs was keeping him upright. A few feet away, Mansell watched him closely, occasionally flashing a quick glance towards the tank. There the two Deep Ones remained immobile, webbed hands pressed flat against the thick glass. Gills along the sides of their necks opened and closed slowly.

Seconds passed and nothing seemed to change in the frozen tableau. Kormanov’s eyes were closed as he concentrated deeply. A frown furrowed his forehead, and his lips were pressed together in a thin, tight line. Then, abruptly, his eyes flew open, staring straight ahead. He seemed totally oblivious of anything around him. His bloodless lips twisted into a grimace of distaste as if he had mentally encountered something unutterably horrible.

Eyeing him intently, Mansell saw the muscles of his colleague’s upper arm bulge beneath his coat, saw his entire body stiffen. Something was happening, but Mansell wasn't sure what it was. He tried to imagine what it would be like, making contact with a completely alien mind. From what he'd read, the age-old myths concerning Y’ha-nthlei claimed that this terrible stone city under the sea, its archaic pillars and columns wreathed in weed and encrusted with the remains of countless generations of oceanic creatures, was almost as old as R’lyeh itself and, what was more to the point, the original inhabitants had never died! Even the mongrel spawn in Innsmouth, who changed over the years until they became similar to the true Deep Ones, believed they would live forever once they swam out beyond Devil Reef and went down into those lightless depths to join their remote ancestors. For a human to come into intimate mental contact with minds like those, the results could be positively devastating.

By now, Kormanov’s features were contorted into a hideous mask. His lips were pulled back into a ghastly rictus, his teeth clenched so tightly it seemed that they must surely splinter and crumble under the pressure. His breath hissed like steam from a kettle, and his chest heaved convulsively as if he was struggling for every gasp of air. The next second, his body arched and lunged forward until he was standing on tiptoe with only the steel manacles around his wrists holding him back.

Reaching out, Mansell grasped Kormanov’s shoulder, clenched his fingers until they were biting painfully into his flesh. Kormanov gave no indication he was aware of the grip. His lips moved spasmodically as if he were trying to mouth words, but no sound came from his constricted throat. Veins stood out purple across his creased forehead.

“Get out of there, Georg!” Mansell thrust his face close to Kormanov’s and yelled the order loudly in his ear.

Still no indication he was getting through to him. A string of hissing grunts emerged from the other's mouth; animal-like sounds which gradually assumed some kind of articulation. Suddenly he threw back his head, eyes bulging from their sockets, his throat muscles working horribly. In a harsh, strident voice, totally unlike his own, he yelled: “Cthulhu Iaaah! Mene, mene, Yog-Sothoth tekel, upharsin! Drognnim krevet Yog-Sothoth—”

“For God’s sake, snap out of it!” Acting instinctively, Mansell drew back his right arm and struck Kormanov across the face. The force of the blow jerked the man's head around. A thick trickle of blood oozed from the corner of his slackly-open mouth. Still he continued to mumble guttural sounds, straining forward with an almost superhuman strength, the handcuffs cutting deeply into his wrists as he fought to free himself.

At the first sign of Kormanov’s outburst, Susan had moved away. Now she returned with a hypodermic in her hand.

“Try to get his sleeve up,” she said haltingly. “We’ll have to sedate him before he harms himself.”

“No!” Mansell thrust her hand away. “We can’t do that. He’s got to fight this and come out of it himself.”

“But—”

“Don’t you see? The minute we put him under, their minds will take him over completely and we may never get him back. He knew what he might be getting into when he agreed to this experiment.”

“Isn’t there anything we can do to help him?”

Mansell knew there was only one way, but he shrank away from it. The usual procedure in an experiment such as this was to make contact with the subjects mind, to probe it for every bit of information there was, particularly that buried in their subconscious, and then withdraw. If the subject was also telepathic and liable to retaliate in a similar manner, a psychic block had to be put up against any attempt by the subject to enter one’s own mind. He himself had done this on a small number of occasions and there was no doubt that, with Kormanov’s greatly enhanced telepathic ability, it would have been comparatively easy for him under normal circumstances.

Unfortunately, the present situation was far from normal. Not only were there two minds ranged against the telepath, but both of these were inhuman. From those hideous phrases Kormanov had uttered, Mansell was convinced that he had made direct mental contact. But against this dual attack from the Deep Ones, he was unable to erect any defensive barrier. They were hammering down his defences and, unless something drastic was done, he would become little more than a walking automaton, completely dominated by these creatures.

“Is there nothing we can do?” Susan repeated her question desperately. “Nothing at all?”

“There’s only one way, but it’s extremely dangerous,” Mansell answered, trying to make his tone casual. “I have to go into Kormanov’s mind and help him to fight them off. It’s the only way.”

“Don’t be a fool, Philip. You’ve seen what’s happening to him, and his telepathic powers are much greater than yours. It would just mean we’ll lose both of you.”

“Can you think of anything else?” Mansell retorted, realising he was speaking more sharply than he intended.

“No.” Susan spoke the denial as if it left a bitter taste in the mouth. “Do we have to restrain you too?”

“I don’t think that will be necessary. I can’t get into their minds, only Kormanov’s and, believe me, at the first sign of anything trying to take me over, I’ll get the hell out.”

Standing close beside his frenzied colleague, Mansell tensed himself, then allowed his thoughts to enter Kormanov’s mind. For an instant, he recoiled in utter horror. There was something there; something black and formless and loathsome which brushed against his own mind through Kormanov’s. It was just a peripheral touch, but it was sufficient to send a shudder through him, and it was only with an effort that he steeled himself to go on.

Let go, Georg. Fight them off. Desperately, he projected his own mental command, acutely aware of that cloud of utter blackness that was trying to invade his companion's mind. You’ve done enough. Release your hold on the Deep Ones. Put up the barrier and withdraw!

He knew that Kormanov was aware of him. He could sense the fierce struggle going on inside the other's head. Then Kormanov’s thoughts got through to him, echoing faintly in his mind.

God! There’s something here, Philip. It’s monstrous, terrible! Not those things in the tank. I got all I wanted from them, but then this other thing came without warning. There’s no way to escape. It’s everywhere. It’s something old and evil.

You can fight it, Georg. Whatever it is, I’ll help you. Put up the mental shutters and block it out. You can do it!

The knowledge that it was no longer the Deep Ones they were fighting on the mental plane came as a distinct shock to Mansell. He had no idea what the nature of this extraneous force could be except that it was incredibly powerful. Even as he used his own telepathic power to aid Kormanov, a little part of his mind, curiously detached from the rest, examined the various possibilities.

The mere fact that it was inimical indicated it was something intimately connected with the Old Ones. Great Cthulhu Himself? Somehow he doubted that. By now Kormanov would have been reduced to a gibbering idiot if it had been He. Dagon perhaps, or Mother Hydra? Both of these lesser deities were clearly associated with Y’ha-nthlei and the Deep Ones and would resent any intrusion on a physical, or mental, level.

With considerable effort, he shut off the mental part of his mind and concentrated on aiding his companion. The encroaching blackness was still there, thrusting forward in an attempt to engulf Kormanov’s consciousness entirely. Mansell felt a sudden surge of anger as the foul cloud of evil tenebrosity began to flow into his own consciousness. It was a loathsome coldness, remote and incredibly old with the feel of envenomed cruelty and dispassionate menace about it, a malediction that could blast the soul.

But then, incredibly, the spark of righteous fury in his brain became a blaze and at the same time he sensed Kormanov fighting back. Slowly the clinging nebulosity retreated, albeit reluctantly, moving away as if baffled. Moments later it was gone, fading into some far distance beyond his imagining. Slowly he forced his eyes open, only just realising he had squeezed them shut so tightly that dancing retinal colours flashed in front of his vision making it difficult to discern details clearly. He was faintly aware that Susan was shouting something in his ear.

Shaking his head in an attempt to clear it, he found himself staring into her concerned face. Beside him, Kormanov sagged against the manacles, sweat pouring down his grizzled features. He was drawing long, gasping breaths into his heaving lungs.

Swallowing thickly as vomit rose into his throat, he said hoarsely: “I’m all right, Susan. Let’s see to Georg.”

“What happened?” Susan bent and unlocked the cuffs, holding Kormanov’s weight as he sagged against her. Pulling one of his arms over her shoulders, she straightened and half-carried him to a chair, lowering him into it.

“I’m not sure. Something tried to take us over, something monstrous.”

“Cthulhu?”

“Yog-Sothoth,” Kormanov mumbled the name through shaking lips as he pushed himself feebly upright in his chair. “Cthulhu is still somewhere beneath the Jovian atmosphere where Vincent Trevelyan spotted Him. Those two creatures yielded up that information readily enough. In fact, I got the impression they were anxious for us to know it. It’s funny, but it was almost as if they were cooperating.”

“Why should they do that?” Susan couldn’t conceal the puzzlement in her voice.

“I think they want us to realise that, even though Cthulhu is no longer on Earth and His attention is focused on defeating Cthugha, it’s futile for us to go on fighting. Something else is coming, something more powerful even than Cthulhu.” Taking a handkerchief from his pocket, Kormanov wiped the perspiration from his face. He looked old and haggard in the diffuse lighting.

“Yog-Sothoth.” Barely able to suppress a shudder at even the mention of the name, Mansell looked from Kormanov to Susan. “Next to Azathoth, the most powerful of the Old Ones. None of the ancient texts mention where He’s supposed to have been confined by the Elder Gods. Yet they speak of Him being the mainstay of Azathoth’s dominion. A Being who exists throughout all time and space.”

“This is even worse than I’d feared,” Susan said in a hushed whisper. “I’d simply hoped we could get some information on Cthulhu’s whereabouts. But this—”

“At least we’re forewarned,” Mansell said encouragingly. “Though whether that will help us, I don’t know. If only McKinrick and the others were here!”

“That was the other thing I wanted to discuss with you.” Though still badly shaken by recent events, Susan took a tight grip on herself. “I presume you’ve seen this newspaper report.” Taking a folded piece of paper from her pocket, she handed it to Mansell. “As you can see, it could mean the worst as far as Professor McKinrick and his team are concerned.”

Unfolding the clipping, Mansell saw that it was dated the previous month and had been taking from the Mevagissey Chronicle. It was headlined:

MYSTERIOUS FIRE DESTROYS CHARNWOOD HOUSE

Reports from Tormount reveal that the old manor house known as Charnwood House has been totally destroyed by fire. The owner of the property, Professor John McKinrick, was well known several years ago as an eminent archaeologist, but since his retirement from academic life he has lived in Tormount as a virtual recluse. It is believed that he, along with an unknown number of his colleagues, were present in the house at the time of the fire. So far, no cause for the blaze has been discovered; arson has not been ruled out. The police have revealed that, despite an intensive search of the ruins and grounds, no sign of any bodies have been uncovered.

“I take it you believe the Jinnee were responsible,” Mansell said, handing the clip to Kormanov.

“I’d say that was the obvious conclusion,” Susan agreed. “But if they found no bodies, it can only mean that somehow they all escaped. I was hoping you might be able to throw some light on this. All I know for certain is that we’ve lost all telepathic contact with them, and as far as I can determine contact was lost with every member simultaneously. I’ve got the gut feeling they’ve gone somewhere, but it’s not on Earth and I can’t think of anywhere in the solar system where it would be safe for them.”

Sinking onto a stool at a nearby bench, Mansell said brusquely: “If they’re nowhere in the solar system, how the hell do you think we can help? We know that one of them had the vrach and with that they could be anywhere in the galaxy or anywhen in the past or the future. Telepathy can’t reach them through time.”

Susan allowed her dejection to show on her face. “I suppose I was grasping at straws. I was just hoping that Georg could—”

Mansell let the feel of that suggestion sink in. Certainly he was aware of no other person in the world who possessed telepathic abilities on the same scale. But would that be enough? McKinrick and Edmund Trevelyan had both communicated telepathically from Yuggoth, a distance of billions of miles. Maybe there was no limit to the distance telepathy could reach, provided the telepath concerned had an exceptional talent.

But if those men had gone somewhere in time...

CHAPTER TWO

Five hundred and twenty light-years away, Edmund Trevelyan stood on a vast ledge of white onyx in the pale cerise light of Betelgeuse where it flooded the seemingly boundless surface of the solitary planet of this super-giant sun. In terrestrial terms, Glyu-Vho was artificial, owing nothing to any natural causes, having been created by the hands of gods to serve the purposes of gods.

Miles below the outjutting ledge, the open ground glowed a warm pink in the sunlight, carved into marvellous whorls and ridges, crests and dunes, which stretched away in all conceivable directions towards a perfectly flat horizon, flat because Glyu-Vho was a big world, at least twenty times larger than Jupiter. From his stupendous vantage point, the surface might easily have been taken for desert, or a frozen ocean of pale ruby ice. In reality, it was neither; it was a vast expanse of quartz.

In the near distance, delicately-curved arches and bridges spanned wide subterranean tunnels and connected other towers like the one in which he stood. Geometrically, the gigantic, sky-rearing superstructures were based upon a heptagonal design, as were the massive blocks of porphyry and onyx of which they were constructed. Such alien configurations produced that hazy blurring of weird angles where the blocks met and which he had seen on other occasions on Earth. Everywhere there was a constant play of prismatic colours within which it was sometimes possible to discern a hint of movement, although as yet he had never met, or ever seen, other inhabitants of this strange world.

That there had to be other creatures here apart from himself and his four companions, he did not doubt. As far as he could see from this huge external platform, the tower stretched off with very little thinning in numbers; indeed, scanning the scene intently, he decided there was no diminution at all in the number, although there appeared to be sufficient difference of detail among them to distinguish them from each other. It seemed he and his companions had arrived on Glyu-Vho at some random point that was but a minute fraction of something of incalculable size.

According to some of the most ancient texts he had read, this was reputedly the abode of the Elder Gods... and this he believed. But it seemed likely that these Beings kept strictly to Themselves, unless as some authors claimed, They still slept in Their aeon-long slumber, only vaguely conscious of what was happening within the universe They had created. There was also one other point. Unless this world had been created merely for Their own gratification and glorification, there had to be some other, and possibly more important, reason for its existence.

He vividly recalled their arrival on Glyu-Vho. Even now, it seemed like a dream. The five of them had crushed into that five-pointed star on the recessed portion of the observatory floor in Charnwood House where McKinrick had shouted out those final syllables of his chant and the vrach had abruptly brightened in the professor’s outstretched hands like a miniature nova. The next instant there had been a soundless explosion, a chaos of stars all streaming fantastically across his unbelieving vision, and then the stunning realisation that he was no longer on Earth, no longer in the solar system, but somewhere else. And though he found it difficult to accept, that ‘somewhere else’ was, indeed, the marvellous world of Glyu-Vho. The vast, curved segment of pale red, visible above the distant horizon, shining through an incredible arch of stupendous proportions, was Betelgeuse.

He recognised it was impossible to determine how long they had been here. For some inexplicable reason, their watches no longer worked and, anyway, he was trying to use terrestrial terms for the passage of time here on Glyu-Vho, which were meaningless. He had no idea how long a ‘day’ was on this world. That it did rotate on its axis was evident from the slow movement of Betelgeuse across the azure heavens and the fact that night came, filled with unimagined stars in glittering constellations, most of whose outlines were unfamiliar. Four such days and nights had passed since they had materialised in one of the huge rooms, and in that time they had spent almost the whole of their waking hours exploring this tremendous edifice of countless levels, soon discovering that it was a boundless library wherein was stored the cumulative knowledge and histories of countless worlds and civilisations. Not only the hoarded wisdom of past eras but also, from definite and frightening hints they had come across, from future ages.

Yet, incredibly, the entire place seemed empty of life. No footsteps other than their own echoed in the long stone corridors. It was a place of galactic ghosts.

There was a guide, one which was not even remotely human... a luminous sphere, some two feet in diameter, which pulsed with an ethereal light and spoke to them inside their minds. Apart from this, they had seen and heard no one.

At first, after the initial shock and wonderment of their surroundings had worn off, he had taken to keeping his eyes and ears open, expecting at any moment to enter one of the vast rooms and find some other creature there, poring over the mighty tomes, possibly on the same mission as themselves. Indeed, there had been odd moments when he had fancied he had felt some kind of presence on opening one of the doors as if something had been there only a split second earlier, leaving just the lingering echo of their presence behind. But, undoubtedly, this had been nothing more than his overactive imagination playing tricks with his senses.

With an effort, he brought his attention back to the present. The segment of Betelgeuse’s enormous disc had now grown larger as it rose slowly above the rim of the world but far below, the shadows had barely changed. In any other place, he might have found the cyclopean hugeness and gigantism of everything oppressive and vaguely, but deeply, disturbing. But here it seemed quite natural, with every detail blending so perfectly that it produced only a sense of inexplicable wonder.

A man could spend an entire lifetime, indeed a dozen lifetimes, and not see more than a tiny fraction of this world, he thought. His only previous glimpse of it had occurred during that strange vision which now seemed to belong to another lifetime when he had found himself looking down from some point in space and had heard the awesome voice of one of the Elder Gods resonating within his mind. Never had he thought to be here in the flesh.

He stepped forward a couple of paces until he was standing on the very edge of the oddly curved lip of the ledge, staring straight down from the dizzying height. Had he been on Earth, looking down from a much lesser height, it would have been impossible to stand like this, staring along the side of the sky-rearing column where it plunged sheer to the distant ground, without experiencing a toppling sense of perspective and stomach-churning vertigo which would have certainly sent him swaying off the balustrade. Yet here, he knew, if he was to take one further step, off into empty space, he would merely drift slowly down past the smooth side of the building, reaching the ground below without injury.

Similarly, inside the tower, they had come upon a wide central shaft around whose miles-high circumference were openings into other levels, and one had simply to step into it and drift downward... or upward... according to one’s unspoken mental command.

From somewhere just behind him there came a faint whisper of sound, and he knew that the gleaming sphere had materialised just within the huge vaulted opening. Turning slowly, he faced it, waiting.

“The human McKinrick would speak with you.” The flat, emotionless voice spoke softly inside his head. “It is a matter of some urgency and importance. I will take you to him.”

Although there was no need for a spoken answer, Trevelyan said automatically: “Very well. Lead the way.”

He still found it difficult to accept that voice, speaking in perfect English, emanating from a sphere of pearly light. At times he wondered whether any other races from the billions of planets scattered throughout the galaxy had ever been here. Or even if any were here right now, invisible and undetectable.

Although all of the ancient texts he had consulted since meeting with McKinrick maintained that the solar system had been the major battleground, aeons before, between the Old Ones and the Elder Gods, if the former were now plotting to destroy the entire universe so They might return to that infinitely-dimensioned region from which They had originally come, not only humankind had an interest in the forthcoming battle.

The globe preceded him across the deserted corridor that encircled the entire tower, passed through a vaulted chamber lined with immense shelves like all the others they had examined, on which reposed tomes of extraordinary size and thickness, to the central shaft. Here the sphere sank slowly out of sight and, stepping out, he moved gently down between highly polished walls of stone, dropping towards the lower levels. Innumerable openings showed on all sides before the globe’s abrupt lateral motion directed him into a long passage, which spiralled outward from the shaft. This was a region of the tower Trevelyan had not visited before and, as he travelled slowly along the corridor, a massive door came into view at the end.

On the way towards it, he noticed that the smooth walls were covered with huge carved murals, evidently representing scenes from the history of some planetary system. Trevelyan had seen others on the higher levels but those represented some alien life form, monstrous in the extreme. Some of these, however, could easily have passed for scenes from prehistoric Earth.

In front of the door, the globe hung motionless for several seconds, then vanished. There was a faint pop as air rushed in to fill the vacuum created by its departure.

The door was of some dull grey metal and was set centrally with a large symbol that Trevelyan had not seen before. As he made to lift his hand to place it over the symbol, the strange device blurred, became uncertain around the periphery, then faded and the door slid open a couple of inches. A moment later the door opened fully and McKinrick stood there. He stepped back a pace. “Come inside, Edmund. I think we may have stumbled on something important, but we need your help.”

Trevelyan glanced at him sharply as he stepped inside. Most of their time on Glyu-Vho had been spent in perusing the huge columns that lined the great stone shelves in almost every room. So far nearly every book had been inscribed in totally unknown glyphs ranging from strange dot formations, like those found on the rod from Yuggoth, to intricate curvilinear scripts.

Much of this room consisted of empty space like all the others. Like the massive shelves and books themselves, the chamber was of incredible proportions. Here and there were grotesquely-shaped pedestals and what might have passed for chairs of different shapes and sizes as if designed for a multitude of different species.

McKinrick led the way to where the Tibetan Mystic, Vansing Lai, stood beside Kitson close to one of the smaller pedestals, smaller than most of the others even though the flat top still came above the Tibetan’s chest. One of the voluminous tomes lay open on the stone impediment. Vansing Lai stepped aside, allowing Trevelyan to examine the tome. Staring down, he tried to draw the inscribed the characters into focus. What he saw stunned him.

“These look like Egyptian hieroglyphics,” he said, glancing up sharply to stare at McKinrick. “But that’s impossible.”

“Is it?” The professor leaned against the tall stone column and folded his arms across his chest. “I don’t know what the age of this place is, almost certainly billions of years. And in that time it must’ve been visited by millions of people from millions of different planets. Mathematically, I’d say the possibility of someone from Earth having come here at some time in the past is fairly high.”

“Just think of it, Edmund,” Vansing Lai butted in excitedly. “The writings of races from all across the galaxy, maybe even some of those races which inhabited earth before Man came. If only we could translate even a handful of them; think of the knowledge we could gain.”

Trevelyan shook his head numbly. He could understand the Tibetan’s ardent excitement at this find, yet it still seemed incredible that someone from Earth could actually have been in this place, over five hundred light-years from the solar system, and remained long enough to have inscribed all of this. Good Lord, he thought dazedly, it must have taken years, if not decades.

“The point is: can you make anything of it, Edmund?” McKinrick asked.

Trevelyan stood up straighter, turned the thick pages slowly. Whatever they were made of, it certainly wasn’t paper or papyrus. It seemed to be some kind of tough plastic. The hieroglyphics were very similar to those he knew well from the period of the Second Dynasty, yet he immediately noticed a certain pretension about the well-rounded flourishes which, although suggestive of the later periods of Egyptian writing, was so decadent that he felt sure the symbols were those of a pre-dynastic culture. It was this strange dichotomy that puzzled him as he studied the archaic symbols, wondering inwardly at the nature of the scribe who had penned this account and how many millennia separated this man from himself. Aware that McKinrick and the others were watching him closely, he shot the professor an inquisitive glance.

“It’s my belief that all of this—” McKinrick began, waving an arm to encompass the entire chamber, “—is nothing more than a vast storehouse continually being updated, and containing the histories of every intelligent species in the galaxy. The Elder Gods were... and still are... responsible for creating the universe and monitoring its progress, and that includes all forms of life which might periodically evolve within it. What could be more natural than that, periodically, a member of every intelligent race should be brought here to write the history of that race?”

Trevelyan forced a reluctant nod. “All right. But even accepting that, and the possibility that millennia ago, some ancient Egyptian scribe came here, what are we likely to gain from reading such an account? I suspect, from the hieroglyphics, this was written during the pre-dynastic times, possibly around four or five thousand B.C. Whatever history they had at that time would be extremely short compared with what we know now.”

“Then you consider all of this ‘short’?” Kitson jabbed a finger at the massive tome.

Trevelyan pursed his lips into a thin line. “No. What worries me is that much of this, probably as high as ninety percent of it, is pure myth and legend.”

“And that’s what interests me.” McKinrick pushed himself away from the massive pillar. “No doubt you recall the information we got from the Yuggoth Fragments. They were reputedly written by some ancient Egyptian scribe of the Second Dynasty and, on the face of it, that book seemed nothing more than myth, based upon some much earlier work which was given to the author in a dream.”

“And we can probably say the same about Al Azif,” Kitson interposed. His voice sounded suddenly eager. “Abdul Alhazred had a dream about the Old Ones. In many ways, he was probably the greatest dreamer the world has ever known. Unfortunately, he learned too much of the Old One’s secrets and he had to be stopped.”

Trevelyan uttered a patient sigh. As an archaeologist, he had always concerned himself with facts and, even after his long association with McKinrick, during which time he had come face-to-face with many things he would never previously have believed possible, it was something he found difficult to let go.

“All right. I'll do my best. However, it may not be as straightforward as you think. There was a lot in the Yuggoth Fragments which was beyond my ability to translate accurately.”

He was on the point of adding that it was possible that the man who had written the original of that horrific account more than seven millennia before and the one who had inscribed the volume in front of him, were one and the same. But, of course, as yet there was no proof of that, so he let it rest for the time being.

*

Sometime later, in another part of the gigantic tower, Vincent Trevelyan was walking a long, curving corridor some forty-five levels above that in which his four companions were examining their most recent find. By now, like the others, he had grown accustomed to this strange world and, perhaps, as he was the youngest and most adventurous of the group, he had even visited the distant surface once he had assured himself, from meticulous questioning of the guide, that it was virtually impossible to harm oneself there.

Whatever alien principle operated inside the huge central shaft, providing a movement up and down without any visible means of support, it also operated everywhere. Even if he should actually fall from one of the innumerable ledges that jutted out from the tower at every level, some invisible force would hold him up, lowering him gently to the ground.

The perusal of the apparently infinite number of volumes held in this place, he had left to the others. His own self-imposed task was to discover any trace of other living entities within the stupendous structure, or outside it. So far he had found nothing definite. Not that discovering no one else inside the tower really surprised him. Even if, as his companions believed, creatures had been transported here to inscribe their histories in these books, the chance of some creature from an extra-terrestrial planet being here at the same time as themselves was about the same as two pencil lines drawn at random, coinciding exactly along Cleopatra’s Needle!

Utter silence lay all around him, an aeon-old stillness broken only by the soft sound of his shoes on the smooth stone. In many ways the place reminded him of a tomb where the dead (for it seemed an undeniable fact that all those who had, at some past time, come to this place were now dust on a billion planets) had written their races’ epitaphs.

Certainly Glyu-Vho itself was not dead. On the first occasion when he had descended down the entire length of the shaft to ground level, and walked out into the open along an arch which was a seemingly endless tunnel, he had discovered that for himself. From the stupendously high vantage point far up the side of the tower, the ground had looked completely featureless except for the complex contours of its undulating surface. Standing on it in the warm pink sunlight he had realised just how deceiving distance could be.

There were things... plants?... growing on the surface: curious crystalline growths, some even bearing an odd resemblance to earthly ferns and flowering shrubs with slender, fragile-looking stems of transparent glass and exotic blooms which chimed faintly and melodiously in the breeze. It had not taken him long to recognise two strange facts. In spite of their brittle appearance, it was impossible to break these growths and, equally odd, no two of them were identical. Whether they actually grew by some alien botanical process, or had been deliberately fashioned, he had been unable to tell.

Over to his right he had noticed a long, domed structure, which had reminded him incongruously of the cloches his father had placed in the garden to protect small seedlings from the frost. In many ways the analogy was not fanciful, only this cloche stretched for more than twenty miles between two titan towers whose upper reaches were wreathed in pink mist. There had been movement within that feature, an intermittent flashing of blurred shadows in both directions.

Some kind of traffic highway?

It was the only thing he could think of, though it had proved impossible to make out anything clearly, for not only was the brilliant sunlight reflected from that translucent surface directly into his eyes, but the material itself seemed to distort whatever was passing within it, giving him only fleeting, tantalising glimpses.

Now, as he walked slowly along the wide, silent corridor, Vincent Trevelyan experienced something of that earlier feeling when he had first become aware of other beings on this planet, shuttling back and forth between the towers: the eerie conviction that there was someone... something... nearby.

He had already examined three rooms along the passage, all empty and as silent as the grave. It was like walking into a room which had lain tenantless for centuries, yet with the surface illusion that those massive tomes had been placed along the great stone shelves only yesterday, for there was not a single speck of dust to be seen anywhere. It gave him an eerie feeling each time he opened one of the huge doors and walked inside.

Now, as he approached the fourth door that lay at the very end of the passage, he felt a sudden increase in the tension, although he could see no reason for it. Reaching up, he placed his hand in front of the symbol embossed in the centre of the door and waited. His action should have caused the device to blur and the massive door to slide soundlessly aside.

Instead, the door remained tightly shut!

Vincent’s spine prickled. This was the first time such a thing had happened. Was there something concealed behind this particular door that the Elder Gods did not want them to see? Incongruous thoughts trickled through his mind as he stood there undecided. Every paradise held one thing that was forbidden. The fruit of the tree of knowledge in Eden; Pandora’s Box which should never be opened.

No sooner had these thoughts crossed his mind than he heard a faint sound from inside the closed room. It was scarcely audible, but in the tomb-like silence that pervaded the tower he picked it out quite clearly, though he could not identify it. The closest analogy was that muted whisper whenever the guide appeared, as if something had suddenly materialised within the room, expelling the air which had occupied that space only a split second before.

He had only sufficient time to recognise that, if this had been something sinister, it must have been on a far larger scale than the globe for him to have heard it through the massive stone door, when the symbol just above head level faded. Abruptly, he realised he had still been holding his hand in front of it. Then the door slid aside and he was able to see what lay beyond. The room was almost identical to all the others he had seen with but one exception. There were the usual pedestals and shelves around the gigantic walls, the rows of volumes, and the muted lighting which came from some concealed source near the high, vaulted ceiling.

And there was something else!

About to step over the threshold, Vincent recoiled in sudden horror at what he saw. The creature was huge, maybe twenty feet high, with folded bat-like wings and a body like that of a praying mantis. Large, multi-faceted eyes stared unblinkingly at him across a distance of perhaps thirty yards. Vincent saw with only a minimum of relief that the creature made no move in his direction; indeed, it seemed as surprised to see him as he was to see it.

Almost certainly it had just materialised within the room as he and his companions had earlier. Had it not been for his astronomical training, he might not have been able to get his emotions under tight control so quickly. As it was, he instantly accepted that this creature, hideous as it might appear to him, was simply a member of some alien species and represented no danger. Besides, the Elder Gods would never allow any follower of the Old Ones to set foot on Glyu-Vho.

Yet there still remained the problem of communication, and he could see no way around that. The creature slowly extended one of its thin, scaly forearms in his direction, and a series of unintelligible clicks emerged from the chitinous mandible. Extending both hands, Vincent walked forward, still unable to fully shake off his sense of shock. The next moment there came a muffled sound and the luminous globe appeared, floating in the air midway between the creature and himself. Pulsing weirdly, the sphere emitted a long string of shrill sounds in imitation of the creature’s speech, to which the being instantly replied.

“This is Xaa-gth.” The words formed inside Vincent’s mind. “It comes from the planet Dr’ee’vath which orbits a white dwarf sun deep within the constellation you know as Scorpius, close to the galactic core.” There was a brief pause as if the guide was searching through its memory, then: “It brings a warning that many of the suns in that region have already been destroyed by the Daemon Sultan, Azathoth. Soon its own world will be sundered and devoured by the Old One.”

“This much is already known to us,” Vincent answered promptly. “Soon, unless He can be stopped, the entire galaxy will suffer the same fate.”

As if it had not heard him, the guide continued: “Xaa-gth’s race is one of the oldest and wisest in the galaxy. One of his kind came to Glyu-Vho fifty million of your years ago to record their long history as countless others have done down the aeons. Even then they were aware of Azathoth where He lay dreaming at the centre of the galaxy; and knew of Yog-Sothoth, but only from dim rumour and legend. Being so far from the rim where your planet lies, they knew nothing of the Others.”

 “Then it’s about time they did know because—” Vincent began, then stopped as Xaa-gth uttered a further series of agitated clicks. Its curiously segmented body twisted, bent into an almost impossible position. One of its forelegs reached into what looked like a fleshy pouch in the lower part of its body, came up with something that glittered brightly in the diffuse radiance. For an instant, Vincent had the wild notion that it was a weapon of some kind and instinctively moved back. Then he saw that it was a curious multi-angled thing of some highly polished metal, which seemed to catch the light within the chamber and transmute it into flashing shards of colour. The faceted eyes fixed themselves directly on Vincent as Xaa-gth held the polyhedral object towards him.

“Xaa-gth brought this with him when he fled the wrath of Azathoth. He came to seek the aid of the Elder Gods in this struggle, not knowing there might be others who also fight against the Old Ones.”

“What is it?” Vincent asked tautly. “Some kind of weapon?”

“A weapon—no. It has many functions. If you are willing, it will allow you to communicate with each other without the need for speech. Furthermore, it can act as a... viewer... by means of which you can scan any part of the galaxy.”

Vincent’s mind was filled with a hundred questions. But at that moment, the iridescent globe dematerialised, leaving him alone with Xaa-gth. A lingering sense of awe and apprehension remained at the mere sight of the creature, but this feeling faded rapidly. After all, he thought, this was not an evil thing of its kind. Huge and insectoid it might appear, but it was the supreme intelligence of another world, possibly a scientist like himself.

Extending a four-taloned claw, Xaa-gth placed the glittering object on a stone plinth where, in spite of its oddly-angled shape, it rested securely. Now that he was standing close to it, he saw that there were small stud-like projections on most of the shining faces. Xaa-gth touched one gently with a long-nailed digit. There was a subdued click, and twin metal rods sprouted from two of the surfaces like antennae.

Taking hold of one, Xaa-gth pointed to the other indicating that he was to do likewise. Hesitantly, Vincent curled his fingers around it, feeling the metal icily-cold against his palm. Instantly there was a strange tugging inside his skull, and for a moment the unexpected shock was so great that he almost released his hold.

Then: “There is nothing to fear. I am merely probing your mind for the correct thought-patterns with which to communicate with you. Xaa-gth greets you, Vincent Trevelyan; not only myself but on behalf of all the members of my race.”

The mental radiations were friendly and reassuring. Immediately Vincent relaxed. “I greet you, also,” he radiated back.

“From your thoughts I sense that there are others of your kind here on Glyu-Vho.”

“There are four others,” Vincent answered.

“Then I would ask that you take me to them. Time is short and there are important things you should learn from me, and I from you.”

*

Twenty minutes later, Vincent found his companions among the archives, which housed the history of Earth as written by denizens from all of the races which had so far occupied the planet.

It was McKinrick who first recovered his composure on seeing Vincent’s companion, whose huge bulk filled the doorway. “Where on earth did you—?” he began, staring wide-eyed at Xaa-gth who towered high above him.

“In one of the higher levels,” Vincent explained, aware of the stunned expressions on the others’ faces. Kitson, in particular, still looked shocked by what he saw, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down his throat. “He... or it... just materialised inside one of the rooms. Somehow I got the impression his coming had been foreseen. Our guide appeared at almost the same time to act as an interpreter.”

“So it’s possible to communicate with him?” Vansing Lai asked nervously.

“Oh, yes.” Vincent indicated the object in Xaa-gth’s outstretched claw.

“Perhaps I should inform you that the drungfth may be dispensed with now. It is no longer necessary for mental communication. When I scanned your mind, Vincent Trevelyan, I also explored your memory to interpret your language and thought-symbols. I had no wish to intrude, for that is not the way of the Vrus’ii but as I indicated earlier, time is short and we both have much to learn.”

It was clear that Xaa-gth was communicating in all of their minds simultaneously, for the professor said sharply: “Then I agree we have to pool our knowledge. We’ve been here for some considerable period and, until an hour ago, we’d learned very little we didn’t already know.”

The great mantis-like head made a curious side-to-side motion, which may have been interpreted as a nod. “Then I will tell you as much as I can. My world lies far from yours, close to the galactic core where the suns are much more closely packed than those that lie within the spiral arms. My world of Dr’ee’vath now orbits a white-dwarf sun that is nearing the end of its life. It was not always thus. There was a time, long ago, when it was a yellow sun, very much as I see your own in your minds. But then came a time when it changed. It grew larger and dimmer before it finally collapsed, throwing off its outer layers as an expanding shell of gas, leaving it as it is now, a dying star giving out little light or heat.”

“Then how did you—?” Kitson began.

“How did we survive such drastic changes?”

Vincent thought he detected a faint trace of amusement in the mental waves.

“Even before our sun became a red giant, the Vrus’ii were an old race. We knew many of the secrets of the universe. We have explored the atom. We foresaw what was to happen and made adequate preparations for it. Now, however, we are few, and in spite of our knowledge and technology, there is one enemy we cannot fight. That horror which has awakened at the hub of the galaxy, a ravening chaos bent on utter and total destruction. From what I have been able to see in your minds you also know of Him, the Destroyer of Worlds.”

“Then you have seen what, so far, we have been able only to guess,” Vincent said tautly. “From our world it is not possible to look directly to the heart of the galaxy.”

Again that odd side-to-side motion of Xaa-gth’s head. “We have seen an entire quadrant of our night sky, once covered with a host of brilliant stars, turned into an abyss of blackness... emptiness.”

There was a note of sadness in the flat, shrilling voice inside their minds. Drawing in a deep breath, Vincent asked: “How much do you know of the Old Ones?”

“We have definite knowledge only of Him who ravages at the centre of all things,” came the answer. “And there are vague rumours of one Other. He who is said to exist in all space and throughout all time. But of Him we know almost nothing.” There was a long, reflective pause before Xaa-gth continued: “Our legends concerning these deities come from a very distant time when our world was young. We have seen for ourselves that foul and evil horror that sprawls in midnight blackness, now spreading His blasphemous tentacles further and further throughout the galaxy. And there are writings which speak of a great battle long before even we came into existence, but whether these are true or nothing more than ancient superstitions, I do not know.”

“There are others,” McKinrick said grimly. “Equally powerful, equally evil. Like Azathoth, They too are now free, and Their ultimate intention is the destruction of the entire universe. We know of Them, have known for a long time, since They were imprisoned by the Elder Gods in our sector of the galaxy.”

“And that is why you are here?”

McKinrick shrugged his frail shoulders, his grizzled features impassive. “We were forced to flee to Glyu-Vho to escape the minions of Cthugha, another of the Old Ones. A fire deity. Had we remained on our planet, we would all have been destroyed.”

“This is the only known haven in the galaxy where we could be safe, for none of them dare follow us here,” Edmund Trevelyan explained. “And this is the only place where we might gain vital information we can use to defeat these Beings.”

“And it would appear we have,” McKinrick put in.

This time, it was Vincent who was surprised. “You’ve discovered something?”

There was a pause, then his uncle gave a brief nod. “At the moment it may not be anything to get excited about. It appears that this room contains the written history of every race that preceded Man on Earth. I suppose we ought to have expected something like this. Naturally, we can’t read the greater part of it although the professor reckons he might be able to translate some written in Naacal.”

“But you’ve come across something which can definitely be translated?” Vincent tried to control his natural curiosity. For the moment, Xaa-gth was temporarily forgotten.

“This.” His uncle indicated the massive tome on top of the pedestal. “It’s written in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics and from what I can make out so far, the writer was the unknown... I say unknown until now... author of that pre-dynastic book from which Khemresfu obtained the Yuggoth Fragments.”

Vincent was puzzled. “So he was brought here to write the history of his race as he knew it at the time. What can you get from that? Apart from the fact that somehow he knew about Yuggoth and those creatures that migrated to Earth before the age of the dinosaurs. What else could he have known?”

In answer, his uncle turned back two or three pages, glanced down one of them until he found the place he wanted. “Listen to this, Vincent; then tell me what you make of it.” Slowly and hesitantly, Edmund Trevelyan began to read, moving his forefinger slowly along the lines of characters. “I, Kharem-sha, write this account at the behest of the gods since I, alone of all men, have read those dread scripts of the serpent people who came after those who built their black stone city of Yrrhh and in his tower I dreamed of dark Yuggoth. Those who were not men were given strange knowledge by their god, Tsathoggua, who taught them many things of the ways of the gods. Know then that, as with men, the gods war among themselves, and in that last battle those who were defeated were thrown down from the heavens and now lie hidden in a concealed places, here and elsewhere, and there shall They remain until the magic which holds Them bound shall be undone. Yet before They were overthrown, One Who is not named stole that which can banish Them forever into nothingness, and He concealed it where not even the all-seeing eye of the Great Ones can discover it. There will it remain until the time of the Awakening.”

“You see what this means, Vincent,” McKinrick said hoarsely. “If we can believe this account, one of the Old Ones succeeded in getting His hands on something, some weapon perhaps, which can either destroy Them utterly, or at least return Them to Their own continuum.”

Vincent frowned, then nodded slowly. “I suppose that since we know that Yrrhh exists, and also Yuggoth, we have to accept the possibility that this is true. But where does it get us?” A note of caution into his voice as he went on: “Even if this book should tell us exactly where this weapon was concealed, we’ve no guarantee the Old Ones haven’t already destroyed it. And—”

“I think we can safely assume that if it was fashioned by the Elder Gods, it can’t be destroyed,” McKinrick cut in sharply. “Maybe I’m wrong, but my feeling is that if it could have been nullified, it would have been, rather than just being hidden.”

Vincent was still not entirely won over. His quick mind was already examining several other possibilities, which he thought his companions had not taken into consideration.

Vansing Lai noticed his hesitation. “Something else on your mind, Vincent?”

“Yes. We seem to have overlooked the probability that by now whoever hid it has already regained possession of it. If I knew there was something which could destroy me, that would be the first thing I would do once I had the chance.”

Before any of the others could comment, Xaa-gth’s voice resonated in their minds. “My friends, I have listened to these revelations with great interest for I now understand that this menace of which my race has become increasingly aware for long ages, is far more widespread than we ever imagined. There are, it seems, a multitude of these Beings who seek the ultimate annihilation of the universe. If such a weapon exists, our only hope of salvation lies in our finding it first.” Striding forward on four multi-jointed legs, Xaa-gth approached the plinth. A curved claw touched the mammoth tome. “This book is our only hope.” The jewelled eyes swivelled in Edmund Trevelyan’s direction. “You must read it, search through it diligently for two things. The name of the One who stole this weapon and where He concealed it. Without that knowledge, we are surely lost.”

CHAPTER THREE

Somewhere along the line, Edmund Trevelyan thought he was missing something, something important. He had been reading through the huge tome for more than three hours now, struggling to make some kind of sense of hieroglyphics, which, in many cases, were unfamiliar to him. In a way, he thought wearily, it was like a modern man trying to read Mediaeval English. His own knowledge of the writing of the Second Dynasty was pretty thorough, but he now had few doubts that this work pre-dated that by several millennia.

He was like a man working his way through a maze in complete darkness. While he had the general gist of the first section of the volume, he lacked any specific details, particularly those concerning names and places. Much of the initial account dealt with the so-called history of the serpent race, which had, according to Kharem-sha, evolved on Earth some two hundred million years ago on that part of the African continent now known as Ethiopia. Cold-blooded and utterly ruthless, they had dominated this part of the globe and by the middle of the Permian Age had extended their power across the entire continent. Here they had built their huge labyrinthine cities below ground, occasionally waging war against the scattered remnants of that dark race from Yuggoth.

At times they had come into direct contact with the spawn of Cthulhu, but here they avoided any conflict since the latter were not composed of normal matter and could not be destroyed by normal means. Furthermore, since those who followed Cthulhu were mainly ocean-dwellers, they represented little danger to the serpent race. Their god, Tsathoggua, was a late addition to their pantheon of deities: an entity said to have come from some place outside of Earth and spoken of as the Keeper of all Knowledge.

There were references to a vast stone city beside a hideous lake situated in the foothills of a high mountain range, which, from the details given, Trevelyan tentatively identified as the fabled Mountains of the Moon, now synonymous with the Ruwenzori Mountains in central Africa.

Deep within this brooding city stood the remains of the great temple which had been erected to the worship of Tsathoggua by... demons?... who were not of Earth. The serpent race believed they still lived far down in the subterranean depths into which even they dared not venture when they came upon them during their southward advance across the continent. They had, however, adopted Tsathoggua as their own deity, and it was here they had found carved figures and murals of a disquieting nature, which they nonetheless transcribed into their own language. Evidently it was these scripts which Kharem-sha claimed to have discovered and deciphered; containing secrets relating to those primal deities, the Old Ones.

Wearily Edmund leaned back in the uncomfortable stone chair, feeling the hard contours press painfully into the bottom of his spine and across his shoulders. His eyes were stinging. On the huge pages the characters blurred and jumped oddly. He needed time to think.

Where were the Elder Gods?

Surely they must be aware of his and the others’ presence on Glyu-Vho. Yet not once had They put in an appearance or made any form of communication.

Maybe what was hinted at in the old texts was true. In spite of the danger from the Old Ones, this time the Elder Gods had no intention of fighting Them. Maybe, by now, after the passage of all those aeons, the Elder Gods had grown soft, were content to remain here in deistic indolence and take no active part in deciding the fate of the universe. This new clarity of thought seemed to be leading him along paths he did not want to go. The more he considered the possibilities and ramifications of the situation, the more frightening and hopeless things seemed to get. Sitting up straight, he conjured up a mental picture of the guide. In the past he had found that this resulted in its appearance, as if he had issued a mental command to summon it. This time was no exception. There was a tiny susurration in the air and the sphere appeared directly in front of him.

It hung there, waiting.

“There are certain things I have to know,” he said harshly. “Things about the Elder Gods.”

“The Elder Gods are here, on Glyu-Vho. They are aware of your presence and why you are here, just as They are aware of all things.”

“Are They?” Edmund tried to keep the trace of sarcasm from his voice. “Then why haven’t we seen Them during the three months or so of our time that we’ve been here? Why have They not made contact with us?”

“One does not question the ways of the Elder Gods.”

“No?” Edmund could not resist a faint snort of derision.

“Each of Those whom you know as the Old Ones was given dominion over certain regions of this galaxy long before your kind, or indeed any other form of life appeared on the myriad planets which They created in the normal order of events,” continued the impersonal voice in his mind. “It was not until They sought to become all-powerful and went against the commands of the majority, seeking to return the universe to its beginning before its allotted time, that They were thrown down and imprisoned. Now the time for Their release has come as was foretold and They may resume Their sovereignty over what is rightfully Theirs.”

Edmund was stunned. “So it’s no concern of the Elder Gods that Their former prisoners are free to destroy entire worlds, entire civilisations? These creatures are evil personified. They spread death like a contagion. Azathoth destroys literary thousands of suns at the centre of the galaxy. Cthulhu and Cthugha ravage my own system of planets. And the Elder Gods will do nothing?”

“The Elder Gods will intervene only if the universe itself is in danger of being destroyed.” There was a long pause before the mental communication was resumed. “I see that you do not understand. This was all fore-ordained countless aeons ago. On every world there have been, and are, creatures who have within them the spark of the Elder Gods; just as there are those who follow the ways of Their adversaries. That is the way it was planned in the beginning. The Old Ones are not, as you seem to believe, omnipotent. The means to overcome Them, to thwart Their plans, are there for you to find and use. Whether you possess the necessary tenacity and courage to do this is in your own hands.”

*

Meanwhile: The other members of the team were gathered with Xaa-gth in a room at the opposite end of the long, winding corridor. They had left Edmund alone with the arduous task of translating the book. Xaa-gth had intimated that he had something to show them, and now they stood in a rough semi-circle on either side of the Vrus’ii as he placed the weirdly-angled polyhedron carefully on top of a low pillar, motioning them to remain slightly behind him.

“The drungfth has many more uses than enabling contact between different species,” Xaa-gth began. “In particular, as I explained earlier, it can act as a viewer which allows us to scan any region of the galaxy. With its help we discovered numerous inhabited planets within our own galactic region. We—”

“Can you use it to show us what is happening in our own solar system?” McKinrick wanted to know.

“It may take a little time. I have searched your mind, but there is only a vague estimate of where your sun lies with respect to Glyu-Vho.”

“Then do it... please.” The professor spoke with a sudden urgency.

Beside him, Vincent thought: Sol could be anywhere within a five hundred light-year radius of Betelgeuse. Even with an instrument such as this, the product of an extremely advanced technology, it was like looking for a needle in a cosmic haystack.

Xaa-gth touched two of the gleaming facets. There came a faint, whispering hum, but apart from this and the Vrus’ii’s thought echoing in their minds, everything was silent. Xaa-gth’s mental voice was very soft and the effect was eerie, like a ghost walking through their skulls. “I sense the region in which your system is situated. Watch closely and tell me if you recognise any of the star patterns you see.”

“Star patt—“ Vansing Lai began a question he couldn’t finish. His words trailed off abruptly into a stunned silence. Nothing appeared to come from the drungfth, no flickering beam of light. Yet seven or eight feet away, directly in front of them, a huge curved rectangle of utter blackness, shot through with tiny points of light, appeared in midair. It was somehow a tangible thing, like a cinema screen, or perhaps even more than that—a frozen slice of space, clear and undistorted, showing a region thickly sown with stars.

Xaa-gth touched the drungfth again with a quick movement. Very slowly the star patterns drifted across the rectangle. Stupefied, the four men watched as fresh configurations appeared at the left-hand side while others drifted away into nothingness off the opposite edge. The glittering conformations were completely unfamiliar to them all. Unable to determine from which spatial direction they were observing this scene, they strove to recognise anything that might remotely resemble the night sky from Earth.

“The drungfth is now scanning along a narrow strip of the spiral arm in which I believe your home system lies,” Xaa-gth explained. “But you must be patient and understand that the galaxy is so big that without exact galactic coordinates, this is going to take some time.”

And time is something we don't have, Vincent thought wearily. He doubted if they could ever pick out Sol using this hit-and-miss technique. He vividly recalled his own experience when he had been forced to flee that terrible planet of the black sun in the Hyades. Then it had been more luck than anything that had enabled him to pick out the right star, and on that occasion many of the constellations had appeared very similar to those he had known.

He had no idea how this device worked. The science behind it was clearly light-years ahead of his own. Perhaps, he mused, it was, like the vrach, just another toy of the Elder Gods, which had somehow fallen into the hands of the Vrus'ii.

His thoughts suddenly gelled. “Stop it there!” he yelled. He pointed. “That looks something like Aquila, and if that bright star there is Altair, that’s only sixteen light-years from the Sun.”

The image steadied as Xaa-gth did something to the object on the pillar. Vincent studied the image intently for almost two minutes until he was as certain as he ever could be. The stellar outlines were not exactly right but he knew his way around the sky as observed from Earth, and already his trained eye was picking out other similarities.

“Well?” McKinrick said sharply. “What do you reckon, Vincent? Is that Altair?”

“Let’s say I’m about ninety percent sure.” He glanced up at Xaa-gth, saw the brilliant eyes watching him closely. “Can you back off a little, bring in more of the surrounding constellations?”

“That is possible,” came the immediate reply. One insectile claw touched another facet of the drungfth. The star points receded swiftly into the distance.

A little way behind the others, Vincent took in a deep breath as he fought to steady himself. There was a momentary impression of falling backward into empty space at a terrifying velocity. Swallowing hard, he told Xaa-gth to stop. The toppling sensation faded. Forcing evenness into his tone, he said quietly: “I’m quite sure now. There’s Sagittarius, and there was no mistaking Antares off to the bottom right. That’s roughly as far from Earth as Betelgeuse. Now it’s simply a case of triangulation in three dimensions.”

In reality, it was not quite as easy as he tried to make it sound. In two dimensions, on a flat surface, the process would be simple. But where in Hell was the origin of this picture they were viewing? From the relative positions of the constellations, he knew he had to be seeing them from some standpoint very close to that of Earth. Furthermore, there was a first magnitude star visible there which did not fit into the remembered pattern. Wherever the point in space lay from which this image was being projected, he felt reasonably certain the Sun had to be situated within a few light-years of the spot. If it lay in the direction they were viewing, it should have been clearly visible as a brilliant star.

“Is it possible to swing the viewing mechanism around through a complete circle?” he asked tautly.

By way of answer, Xaa-gth fiddled again with the facets of the drungfth. Once again, the glittering images commenced their sweep across the weird screen in front of them. It was like a window looking out onto space with the stars describing bright tracks as a retinal impression on their vision.

Then—

The entire rectangle burst into white fire! A sheet of intense, glaring brilliance seared their eyes. Throwing up an arm in front of his face, Vincent gasped: “What the hell—?”

The sight was so real, so lifelike, he seemed to feel his flesh blistering, although there was no actual heat. Unwittingly, they were staring directly onto the blazing surface of a sun which could have been only half a million miles from the other ‘end’ of the viewer.

Even before he got the words out in an agonised gasp, Xaa-gth had reacted. The glare dimmed, but there still remained a vicious blue-green haze dancing in front of his eyes. Dimly he saw that McKinrick had instinctively turned his head away while the other two had their hands clasped over their eyes. Slowly the after-image faded, and Vincent was able to see clearly. In his head there were the echoes of a mental apology from Xaa-gth.

“Can that be your sun?” the Vrus’ii inquired.

Vincent stared, tried to concentrate and force himself into a state of calm after that tremendous glare when every sense told him he was standing right next to that seething, fiery surface. Now that the scene had altered (although the glaring sun still presented a sizeable disc) he was able to examine the view more deliberately and in more detail. It was soon apparent that this sun was not Sol, for it was not alone in space. There was a second brilliant companion, a somewhat smaller yellow-white disc, evidently forming a physical binary with the first. And as the prospective changed slowly, he picked out a third sun, much further away, that was far smaller and redder than the two in the foreground. In addition, he spotted two planets revolving in orbits close to the second luminary, tiny crescents just visible against the overpowering glare.

“No.” He gave an emphatic shake of his head. “But I am certain I know which stellar system this is. It has to be Alpha Centauri, just over four light-years from Earth. If you can track around in the immediate vicinity, picking out Sol shouldn’t be too difficult.”

For the first time, he began to feel more hopeful. Three minutes later, after a slow sweep of the heavens, the drungfth zoned in on a bright, yellow-white star, which stood out clearly against the background constellations. With a strange sense of nostalgia, he made out the familiar string of planets swinging around it in their endless orbits.

“There!” he muttered harshly. “That’s our planetary system.”

“Ah.” It was a faint mental sigh from Xaa-gth. “And you say that two of the Old Ones are there now, battling for supremacy in this region?”

Standing tautly erect beside Vincent, McKinrick gave a slight inclination of his head. “Our home world is the third planet from the sun. It was there the Elder Gods imprisoned Cthulhu. The Other is Cthugha who came from a small star many light-years away.”

“Then perhaps it may be possible for us to determine exactly what is happening there now. If you could tell me where you believe these Old Ones to be in the system, I will endeavour to locate Them for you.”

“But that system is more than five hundred light-years away,” Vincent protested. “Surely we’ll just be seeing things as they were half a millennium ago?”

“I see you do not understand how the drungfth operates.” There was a faint note of amusement in the mental waves that echoed in their minds. “It does not depend upon light for its function. If that were so, you would be correct. Long ago we discovered that there are other forms of radiation within the universe, particles that are not bound by the light-velocity restriction. Whether their velocity is infinite, I do not know, but I do know they can travel across the entire galaxy in virtually no time at all.”

Vincent and the professor looked at each other, then up at Xaa-gth. “Tachyons,” McKinrick said.

Xaa-gth made a short series of clicking sounds with his claws. “Then you also know of them?”

“There’s been speculation about them for some time,” Vincent replied. “Particles which have a negative rest mass and therefore only travel faster than light.” He tried to recall what he had read about them in his university days. “Several experiments have been carried out prove their existence, but as far as I’m aware none of them have been conclusive.”

“I should say, then, that what we have here is conclusive proof,” Vansing Lai put in. “But to get back to the matter at hand, we believe the Old Ones are somewhere on the small solid cores of the two largest planets, deep below their atmospheres.”

Xaa-gth now focused directly on Jupiter and Saturn, touching the drungfth deftly, keeping his huge eyes fixed on the picture that expanded in slow motion until only mighty Jupiter and ringed Saturn occupied the screen. Kitson drew in a sharp hissing breath from a few feet away. The searing bolts of incredible energy, which speared from one planet to another, were easily visible, striking deep into the turbulent atmospheres. What damage was being caused to the planets it was impossible to tell, nor was there any outward sign of the Old Ones Themselves. How long had this titanic battle been raging? For the time being, it was stalemate and likely to remain so.

Kitson muttered something inaudible under his breath. His features were twisted into a grimace. Glancing in his direction, Vincent realised that this was the first time his companion had seen this. He had known what to expect but—

His train of thought stopped right there. Something was happening. At first it was merely a sudden increase in the intensity of the green bolts which flashed like forked lightning across more than half a billion miles of interplanetary space. The red bolts became less frequent, some even missing their target altogether.

Vincent gave a small shiver. Even though he knew he was perfectly safe standing in this huge vaulted chamber on Glyu-Vho, the image he saw was so lifelike, so real, it was as if he were standing suspended in space, terrifyingly close to this awesome sight.

More and more of the ghastly bolts of energy poured down upon Saturn. They smashed through the rings, ripped them apart. A great beam of lightning struck Titan, Saturn’s largest moon, as it passed slowly across the face of the planet. A gout of glaucous fire spread rapidly across the satellite’s curved surface, enveloped it briefly in a glowing sheet of green fire that dwindled rapidly. When it faded, Titan was gone, utterly vaporised.

“Sweet Jesus, Mary and Joseph,” Kitson mumbled the words to himself as he strained forward, unable to tear his gaze from the drama which was unfolding in front of them. For now Saturn itself was beginning to change. At first it was merely a subtle alteration in outward appearance, a curious churning deep within the swirling atmosphere that began as a glowing virescent dot close to the centre of the visible disc. Within moments it commenced to spread outward like a vast ripple, ominous and deadly. Huge greenish spouts erupted in great geysers like solar prominences, spearing into space as they were torn away under the savage, unrelenting onslaught. It looked like a nova explosion in slow motion.

More and more of the outer layers heaved and boiled away in great vertiginous masses, shredding away the disintegrating planet which now took on an ugly porraceous hue as the glowing gas clouds fled into the surrounding blackness, revealing the horror which lay beneath. Clenched tightly around the small, rocky core, Cthugha clung like a fiery limpet, pulsing redly.

Mesmerised, Vincent brought all of his attention to bear upon the violence of the disrupted planet and that incandescent monstrosity which had lain at the heart of it. The glorious ring system, which had fascinated him so much since his first telescopic glimpse as a boy, was gone, completely shattered into billions of tiny shards of ice and rock. The circling moons, no longer held stable in their age-old orbits by the gravitational pull of the parent planet, wobbled in their orbits and then went spiralling off into space, pursuing erratic paths which might, eventually, carry them sunward on their final journey.

Around the tiny core which was all that now remained, Cthugha writhed and twisted under the unrelenting barrage which continued to strike at Him. The veiling, massive atmosphere that had shielded him from Cthulhu’s wrath had now completely dissipated, exposing Him to the full fury of those titanic thunderbolts, which continued to lash across space in ever-increasing numbers.

It was McKinrick’s gasp of horror which diverted Vincent’s attention from this scene towards a spot where Jupiter showed against the starry background. At first he could scarcely believe his eyes. The giant planet, its surface crossed by alternate dark and light bands with the Red Spot clearly visible, was still there, apparently untouched by Cthugha’s prolonged attack. The four Galilean moons were also visible, strung out like brilliant beads on some gigantic abacus. But these were things with which he was completely familiar. It was the other thing that prickled the hairs on his neck and sent a shudder through him.

Whatever alien and damnable laws operated within the drungfth, they showed everything with diabolical clarity. Cthulhu was there now, no longer hiding beneath the turbulent gases which gyrated around the giant planet, but hovering above it: a vast, bloated body, great writhing tentacles sprawled across the midnight blackness, a single eye glaring balefully at His enemy. A shimmering greenish luminescence surrounded the frightful outlines. It was a scene from Hell, which imprinted itself indelibly on Vincent’s numbed mind.

“What is that?” Xaa-gth’s mental exclamation vibrated in their minds.

“Cthulhu,” McKinrick said without hesitation. “It would seem that—” He broke off sharply, his gaze still fixed on the screen in front of him.

Cthulhu had suddenly exploded into action. Tentacles waving, the Old One launched Himself away from Jupiter, hurtling towards a drifting mass of planetary debris, which had earlier been Saturn. Sporadic bolts of orange-red fire clashed against Him as Cthugha pulled Himself free of the tiny rocky core of the decimated planet, but He brushed these aside contemptuously.

Holding his breath until it hurt in his chest, Vincent watched as the vast octopoid shape spread outward from the Sun. But already Cthugha had flung Himself away; a spinning, fiery shape that headed swiftly towards the rim of the solar system, temporarily beaten but not defeated.

“He’s returning to Yuggoth,” McKinrick said, forcing the words out through tightly-clenched teeth, his lips drawn back in a grim smile.

“But will not this Cthulhu pursue Him there?” Xaa-gth asked.

“Perhaps.” The professor’s tone expressed doubt. “But I suspect that Cthugha will have already set up more powerful defences around that black planet. By now, He’ll have turned it into a veritable fortress. I somehow doubt if Cthulhu will find it quite so easy to dislodge Him from there.”

“So it would seem we're faced with two possibilities,” Vansing Lai said thoughtfully. “Either Cthulhu will concentrate all His energies on expelling Cthugha from Yuggoth and thereby become undisputed master of the solar system as He was aeons ago, or He’ll be content to let Him remain there and focus His attentions on Earth.”

“Christ Almighty!” Kitson said in a small voice. “If He can do that to Saturn, what chance does Earth have?”

McKinrick shook his head. “Earth itself doesn’t pose any threat to Him. He’ll know we’re no longer there, or at least that the vrach isn’t there, which is essentially the same thing. Whatever we may think, He’s a rational, thinking creature with a ‘science’ that is light-years ahead of our own. I’d say His aim is to re-establish His rule over that region of the cosmos, not to destroy it.”

“His initial aim, perhaps,” Vincent interposed. “From what I’ve gathered, His principal aim is the ultimate collapse of the universe and His return to those infinite dimensions from which these Beings came.”

“True,” McKinrick murmured. “There’s no doubt that’s the real objective. But my feeling is that such a thing can only be done by all of Them acting in unison. Singly, I think it would be utterly beyond any of Them. And at the moment, so soon after Their release from bondage, They’re at each other’s throats. Carving up the galaxy among Themselves, if you like. They’d hardly be doing that if They didn’t have some plans for it before dispensing with it altogether.”

“So there may still be time for us to do something to stop Them?” Xaa-gth asked.

“It’s the only thing I can hope for,” McKinrick replied soberly.

*

Susan Thaxton’s office in the Organisation’s headquarters was small, cramped, cluttered with books and papers, and when the three of them moved into it, closing the door behind them, there was even less space than usual. Somehow they found room for three chairs, and when there were seated around the desk Susan said quietly: “I think we’re all agreed that McKinrick’s team, every single one of them, disappeared at exactly the same time from Charnwood House. And that as far as we can determine, none of them are present anywhere in the solar system.”

Mansell eased his long legs into a more comfortable position. “We have to face up to the possibility that they’re no longer alive, Susan. That would also account for all the facts.”

“No!” Susan’s denial was emphatic. “I refuse to believe that a man like the professor, who’s been fighting this evil longer than anyone else in the Organisation, would have been taken by surprise. No matter what happens, I’m sure he would have made plans well in advance for any emergency. He knew the ways of the Jinnee and the Deep Ones better than anyone else.”

Clearing his throat nervously, Kormanov asked: “What is the nature of this vrach you mentioned earlier? Is it some kind of weapon?”

“A weapon?” Susan shook her head. “Not in the usual sense of the term, Georg. But Philip can tell you about it. He knows more than I do.”

Mansell placed an elbow on the desk and leaned his weight on it. “Don’t ask me about the science behind the vrach. That’s way beyond anything we know, or can even guess. The general opinion is that it was made by the Elder Gods and left on Earth following the defeat of the Old Ones. Basically, it acts as a device for travelling through both space and time. McKinrick believed there’s no limit to its powers. With it, you can go to the edge of the universe, back to its formation, or forward into the future to its demise. If they used it to escape from the Jinnee, it’s theoretically possible they could be anywhere or anywhen.”

“If they're still alive and they’ve gone into time, there’s no possible way we can communicate with them,” Kormanov said. “But if they’ve gone somewhere else in the galaxy... ”

“There may be a chance?” cut in Susan. “Is that what you’re saying?”

Kormanov ignored the expression of pleading on her face. “Possibly. But I’m not offering much hope.”

“Then what are you offering, Georg?” Mansell asked sharply.

“In the past, there have been a number of occasions... not many... but some, when I picked up thoughts which were, how should I put it—alien.”

“You mean they weren’t human?” Susan asked.

Kormanov frowned and wearily rubbed a hand across his forehead. “It’s something I’ve never been able to figure out. Anyone with a talent like mine, and I suppose there are others, can pick up psychic emanations from the other side of the world, from the other side of the solar system perhaps, if there was anyone there to project them.”

“But you say these particular emanations were not human,” Mansell persisted.

Kormanov gave a tired nod. “That’s the only way I can describe them.” He held up a hand as Susan opened her mouth to speak. “I know what you’re going to say: that I may have been receiving thoughts from the Deep Ones, even the Jinnee, and they are on Earth. I can also see you’re thinking about this extra-terrestrial race, which you believe exists on some undiscovered planet on the rim of the solar system. Do you think I haven’t considered these possibilities? Naturally, I wasn’t aware these creatures even existed before I joined the Organisation. And I’ll agree their emanations will be completely non-human. But all of these will be hostile. I’d have recognised that at once.”

“And these weren’t?” Mansell eased himself upright in his chair.

“No. They were very faint, very difficult to detect, as if they came from a great distance. At first I believed I was perhaps just imagining them, that they had nothing to do with my psychic ability. And, as I said, it was only on a few occasions I was able to pick them up.”

“So where is all this leading?” Susan toyed nervously with her pen, tapping it against her teeth.

Kormanov remained silent for a full minute, staring straight ahead of him. Finally, he turned to look directly at Susan. “This may sound foolish, but the only conclusion I can reach is that somehow I’ve been tuning in on psychic radiations from some other race, on some other planet, and not one in our solar system. Look at it this way, nobody has yet come up with any scientific description of thought. Some reckon it has something to do with electrical activity in the brain, and most people believe that it stays there, that it can have no external existence. But if that’s the case, how do you explain telepathy, particularly on the scale the Organisation uses it and people like myself? I don’t care if it’s a waveform like electromagnetic radiation or something we can’t begin to imagine. But if you have a transmitter and a receiver and they both function so that something passes from one to the other over quite large distances, then that something must have some kind of external existence.”

“Go on.” Mansell was fascinated.

“Very well. It’s my belief that space is filled with these emanations, just as it is filled with radio-waves around our planet, but with one important difference. Radio-waves take a finite time for their transmission whereas this radiation is transmitted and received simultaneously. There’s no detectable delay at all.”

Mansell nodded thoughtfully. “That’s true,” he conceded. “When we were stranded near Yuggoth, we were able to communicate with Vincent Trevelyan instantaneously.”

“And, unless I’m very much mistaken, quite clearly, this suggests there’s little, if any, diminution in their intensity even over that distance.”

“Then you must try to contact Professor McKinrick, or any of the others, wherever they are,” Susan pleaded.

“I’ll try, but I’m offering no guarantees.” Kormanov hunched himself forward in his chair, tried to move his legs more comfortably in the cramped space. “But—”

The floor shuddered violently. Outside, several pieces of glass equipment flew off the benches and smashed to pieces on the floor.

“What the hell was that?” Mansell gasped, clutching at the edge of the desk.

Ten seconds later, a second shock, even more fierce than the first, shook the room. The desk slid across the floor, came up hard against the wall. With an inarticulate cry, Susan fell against Mansell. Grabbing her tightly around the waist, he hauled her to her feet. Kormanov lurched towards the door, twisted the handle, then tugged hard at it as it resisted his efforts. It suddenly came open, throwing him off balance, back into the office. Together, they staggered into the mini-section of the headquarters. More glass smashed. A long fluorescent lighting tube came away from the ceiling, hung for a moment by one end, then crashed across a bench. Against the far wall, the tank containing the captive Deep Ones swayed precariously, threatened to topple over.

“Watch that tank!” Susan yelled the words at the top of her voice, pointing urgently.

Three of the technicians, shock and surprise on their faces, ran forward, thrusting themselves against it as it tilted again. Somehow they succeeded in stabilising it.

“What is it?” Susan swallowed hard as she got the words out. “A quake?”

“It must be.” Mansell steadied himself against a metal upright. “This place is four hundred feet down. If it was anything above ground—” he was thinking of a nuclear missile, fired by someone under the mental control of Cthulhu—“the ground would have absorbed much of the shockwave. But there have been no major earthquakes in this region before.”

“Whatever it was, it was pretty big.” Susan turned her head sharply at a call from one of the men in the far corner of the room. Over the tops of the intervening benches, Mansell could see the man gesturing to them. As he followed Susan along the central aisle, he asked: “What do you have over there? Anything rhat might explain this?”

“I don’t see how,” she replied, throwing him a quick glance over her shoulder. “That equipment was installed only recently. It gives us instant access to Palomar Observatory and NASA. All done secretly, of course. Only a handful of our own men know anything about it. We even have a direct link with the Hubble telescope.”

There were two men seated at the banks of controls in the corner. Two large screens set above a bewildering array of knobs and dials faced them as they stood beside the two seated technicians. One of the screens was blank. The other linked to the Hubble telescope, showed a region of space from above the terrestrial atmosphere.

The nearer man, who had signalled to them, swivelled in his chair. “A call came through from Mel Croft at NASA half an hour ago,” he explained. “Just a routine call, or so we thought. Seems there’s been a lot of top-level activity there for the past three days. Apparently they picked up something odd near Jupiter a little while ago and have been monitoring it ever since.”

“What kind of activity?” Mansell threw Susan a quick glance as he asked the question.

“Some peculiar kind of energy flow. They don’t know what to make of it, so they’ve contacted Palomar and Mount Wilson, asked them to take a look.”

“And—?” Susan prompted.

“Nothing.” The man shrugged. “Both were able to scan the area last night, but there’s nothing they can detect optically. Then five minutes ago we got an urgent message from the Anglo-Australian Observatory.” He handed a slip of paper to Susan who scanned it briefly, then handed it wordlessly to Mansell.

There were only three words hastily scrawled on it: Saturn has vanished.

Mansell felt his scalp tingling. Strangely, he did not doubt for one minute the accuracy of what he read. Yet his mind kept fumbling for some explanation.

Kormanov peered over his shoulder, sucked in his breath with an audible hiss. “How can that be?” His tone was very quiet and subdued.

“Cthulhu, or Cthugha. Who else?” Mansell muttered bitterly. “That could explain what happened a few minutes ago. God alone knows what this will do to the stability of the solar system. One of the major planets utterly destroyed.”

“We have to verify this.” Susan straightened her back a little and she found her voice. “I suppose this comes as no surprise considering that last news we heard from McKinrick;s group. I want all the details they’ve got... and more besides!” She slammed her right fist into the palm of her left hand. “This could well be the beginning of the end! This is the time we desperately need McKinrick. And where is he? Gone off the face of the earth!”

“Then I guess it’s up to you, Georg,” said Mansell.

Kormanov rubbed a hand along his cheek. “Very well.” He looked at Susan. “Is there some place where I could be without any noise or distractions? Without having even the remotest idea where those men have gone, this is going to be extremely difficult, if not impossible.”

Susan thought for a moment, then nodded. “Come with me,” she said briskly. Once again she had got herself under tight emotional control. Glass crunched under their feet as they followed her past the long rows of benches, across a narrow metal walkway, and into a long tunnel, more dimly lit than the rest of the headquarters. The tunnel ended in a door, beyond which lay darkness. Opening the door, Susan put out a hand, flicked down a switch. Light flooded the room. It was large, obviously a conference room with a long oak table and chairs. The walls were bare and blank with no hangings or drapes. “You won’t be disturbed here,” she said, motioning Kormanov to the table. “I’ll see to that. In the meantime, I want to get as much information as I can concerning the disappearance of Saturn.”

“I’d like you to remain with me, Phillip,” Kormanov said, pulling one the chairs back from the table and lowering himself wearily into it.

“If you’re sure I won’t distract you.”

“No. Not at all.” Kormanov spoke a little too hastily, making Mansell think there was something more behind the other's desire for him to stay. His next words confirmed this. “I can’t get that... other thing... out of my mind. That black monstrosity lurking out there.”

“Yog-Sothoth?” Mansell nodded. “You’re right, of course. I understand.” The news that Saturn had unaccountably disappeared had temporarily driven the memory of that evil intrusion from his thoughts. He knew what the other had on his mind. If he was to send his psychic emanations across the void, far beyond the confines of the solar system, perhaps across a distance of hundreds, if not thousands, of light-years, probing the galaxy in every conceivable direction, searching for those five men who had so inexplicably disappeared, the chances of Kormanov encountering Yog-Sothoth were exceptionally high.

For a moment, he wondered if this was such a good idea after all.

CHAPTER FOUR

Edmund Trevelyan was seated in a vast stone room, lined with volumes embodying the age-old history from the era of that primordial amorphous race which came shortly after the founding of R’lyeh, burrowing their labyrinthine tunnels through the cooling magma of the planet crust, to very recent times. The room was empty and, switching his glance towards the huge vaulted arch, he saw that the immense disc of Betelgeuse had moved appreciably across the azure heavens indicating that he must have been asleep for quite some time.

Also, he had dreamed, which was odd because since being on Glyu-Vho he had never deemed... or, at least, he could not recall any dreams he might have had. But this one had been so vivid, so real, that every tiny detail was still fresh and clear in his mind.

He had been alone, somewhere, in utter darkness. And there had been a voice calling to him from far away. It was not a voice he recognised, but it held such a note of extreme urgency that he had strained desperately to pick out the words. The voice had called McKinrick’s name and then those of himself and the others here on Glyu-Vho. At times it had faded into absolute silence while at others it strengthened, as if whoever was trying to contact them had no idea where they were and was searching frantically for them.

There had also been something else. A nightmare, yes: he’d sensed some other presence—cold, evil and malignant, which lay between him and the caller. Whatever it was, it kept trying to invade his mind, to superimpose its will on his. But always some extraneous force prevented it.

“Professor McKinrick! Edmund Trevelyan!”

The voice came again, whispering faintly in his mind. And this time, he was wide awake! Rubbing a hand across his eyes, he tried to concentrate. “Who are you? Where are you and what do you want with me?” He spoke the words aloud, partly from habit and partly because it sharpened his thoughts.

A pause, then the mental voice came through once more, stronger than before, as if the sender had somehow fixed on him, had locked onto his mind.

“My name is Georg Kormanov, a member of the Carter Organisation. I’ve been trying to contact you for almost an hour but there’s something out there that Mansell believes is Yog-Sothoth. Where are you?”

Georg Kormanov? Edmund had never heard the name. Yet the fact that he knew Philip Mansell lent credence to his claim to be a member of the Organisation. And it was unlikely any of the enemy would warn him of Yog-Sothoth’s presence. “We are all on Glyu-Vho near Betelgeuse in Orion,” he replied.

“Thank God I’ve managed to get in touch with you. I’m at the Carter Organisation headquarters in Arkham. Things are approaching a crisis here. Yog-Sothoth is coming! And from our latest information it would seem that the planet Saturn has been destroyed. How, we don’t yet know.”

“Saturn destroyed!” Edmund gasped aloud. “But how can we help?”

“Professor Thaxton is here. It was she who asked me to try to contact you, to discover if you were all still alive after what happened at Charnwood House. She asks that one of you, at least, should return and bring the vrach. It’s the only thing which can help us now.”

The voice was fading so that it was difficult to make out the words. Whether the sender was tiring, or something else was intervening, preventing the message from getting through across all those light-years, Edmund didn’t know. At least he seemed to be getting through to Kormanov. “I’ll inform the others,” he said tautly. “If there’s any chance of getting back, one of us will.”

There was no answer. The psychic emanations had ended. Only a deep silence remained in Edmund’s mind, but it was not an empty silence as it had always been in the past whenever he had ended a mental communication with anyone in the Organisation. It was as if those words had brought something else with them, something cold and filled with implacable evil.

*

In the conference room Philip Mansell sat quite still, watching Kormanov. The other sat with his head thrust forward, his elbows on the polished table. His eyes were closed, squeezed shut so tightly he seemed to be looking at something inside his head. Occasionally his eyelids twitched, and there were deep lines of strain etched across his broad forehead. Here in this room there was absolute silence. Outside there had been plenty of noise and activity in the huge laboratory, but all of that was effectively muffled by the tunnel and the thick, steel door.

He moved his right arm slowly and glanced down at the watch strapped on his wrist. It was a little after midday and he guessed he had been sitting here for the best part of forty minutes, and still there was no sign that Kormanov had succeeded in contacting any of those five men from Charnwood House. Not that there would be any outward sign, of course. Once or twice he had tentatively tried to enter Kormanov’s mind only to find a mental barrier had been erected, and he had retreated hastily rather than run the risk of distracting his colleague.

He leaned back slowly in his chair, feeling the silence beginning to eat at his nerves. He wished he could feel as confident as Susan about those men being still alive. If they had been attacked by the Jinnee—which seemed the only logical explanation of the known facts—surely the vrach would have provided them with sufficient protection. His own fear was that something far more drastic had happened. The Organisation had suffered many casualties in its campaign against the Old Ones. Professor Eldon had been killed during that search for R’lyeh when Great Cthulhu had emerged from His accursed stone city... and there had been others whose names he had never known, and among these there had been instances where no remains had ever been found.

At the table, Kormanov suddenly stiffened. It was the first noticeable movement he had made. A shudder passed through him, and his lips moved silently. Mansell was halfway out of his chair when he forced himself to stop and relax, sinking back into it. Once more he wondered if this had been the right thing to do, particularly after that episode with the Deep Ones. If Yog-Sothoth was lurking out there, somewhere in the interstellar deeps, and coming closer, already alerted to their presence by that mental contact, there was no telling what might happen.

A low moan escaped Kormanov’s lips, and in the same instant his eyes flew open. He was staring straight ahead of him, and Mansell had the impression he was actually looking at something, something unutterably horrible.

“Are you alright, Georg?” he spoke softly but urgently.

For a few moments there was no answer. Kormanov’s face was twisted into a taut mask, lips drawn back across his teeth. The muscles in his neck bunched as if he was struggling to force words out with vocal chords which refused to function. Somehow his mind still seemed fixed on whatever was out there, but whether it was those five men or something else, Mansell had no way of telling.

“Did you manage to contact any of them, Georg?” he asked, leaning sideways in his chair.

More convulsions shook Kormanov’s slight frame. His arms went up, thrust out straight in front of him, palms pressed forward against the empty air, as if trying to fend off something invisible. Then, very faintly and hesitantly, words came: “... contacted them on Glyu-Vho. Edmund... Edmund Trevelyan... trying to come but... something else there... something black, formless... keeps changing shape... Aaaah!” The final word came out as a thin, high-pitched scream of pure terror. His head jerked, then slumped forward so hard that his forehead slammed against the top of the table with an audible thud.

Getting quickly to his feet, Mansell moved behind him, grabbed him tightly with both hands around his head, lifting it upright. Kormanov’s tongue was thrust out between his gaping teeth. Mansell could feel the violent tremors passing through the other’s body, feel him straining desperately to squirm out of the chair. Closing his eyes momentarily, Mansell tried once more to get into Kormanov’s mind in another attempt to help him, but the mental barrier was still there, even stronger than before. For some reason, he was refusing to allow him to help.

He released his hold on Kormanov’s head and stepped back. Then, slowly, the seated man turned his head to stare at him. For a moment Mansell stood absolutely still, not believing what he saw. It was Kormanov’s face—and yet it wasn’t! His skin appeared to be growing dark, as if a shadow was passing over it. His eyes blackened, became doll-like and distended until they threatened to burst from their sockets.

With a sharp, inarticulate cry, Mansell staggered back, gasping, and bumped into the wall. The hideous change continued. The dark tone of Kormanov’s flesh deepened, became inky and then jet black and still the awful metamorphosis continued. His skull elongated, swelled as if the bone had gelatinised and turned to jelly, capable of any kind of distortion. His head sagged onto his shoulders with a sickening slurp while within the sleeves of his jacket his arms lost their natural rigidity. His fingers shrivelled, his palms became pock-marked then assumed a sucker-like appearance. His legs swelled, became boneless, changing into grotesque tentacles.

By the time the final transformation was complete, it was no longer Georg Kormanov who sat there but a bloated, nightmarish horror with black eyes with bright yellow pupils and a wide gash of a mouth that exhibited twin rows of gaping shark-like teeth, their needle points glinting murderously in the subdued lighting. Purple drool leaked from its maw as it squelched and chomped, fangs ripping into its flabby, black-rippled gums.

Uttering a wild yell, Mansell flung himself at the door, grabbing and twisting the knob frenziedly, tugging at it with all of his strength. It refused to budge until he realised that, in his sheer terror, he had failed to realise it opened outward! Thrusting forward, he stumbled headlong into the tunnel while behind him the thing that had been Kormanov slid greasily off the chair and commenced to lumber after him, squeezing its obscene, growing bulk through the doorway.

Inside the laboratory, Susan glanced up sharply as Mansell burst into the room, his face ashen in the fluorescent glare of the overhead lights. Somehow, he got the words out, although they were little more than an agonised croak. “It’s Georg! Something got to him when he tried to contact McKinrick. It’s entered him! He’s changed!”

For a split second Susan stared at him as if he were insane, then made a move towards him, took only a couple of steps before she halted, frozen in an attitude of utter horror and disbelief, her eyes suddenly wide as she stared over Mansell’s shoulder at the thing that was emerging from the tunnel and moving towards the metal walkway. Somehow she caught herself before the scream could rise to her lips. Without turning she called harshly. “Somebody get a gun! In the drawer in my office. Hurry!”

For a moment, no one moved. Then one of the white-coated technicians turned and ran for the small adjoining room. Ten seconds later, he reappeared carrying the weapon. By now, the monstrous shape was halfway across the walkway. Thrusting itself forward with sliding motions of the lower tentacles and trailing a glistening mess like a slug, the grossly distended body squeezed its way nearer. The man raised the gun, his face a white mask of terror, as he aimed the automatic with shaking hands. Then he fired a deafening cacophony of sound that hammered at Mansell’s eardrums as he flung himself instinctively to one side.

A stream of heavy-calibre bullets slammed into the black bulk, ripped through the tattered shreds of clothing still clinging to it. The force of the impacts hurled the thing back and for a few moments it hung there, one tentacle wrapped around the rail. A shuddering screech came from the gaping maw and then, as everyone stared in utter disbelief, it heaved itself forward again. A crimson ichor dripped from the entry points where the slugs had stitched an irregular line across the pulsating torso but still it advanced, exuding an air of undiluted, primal evil.

This isn’t happening! The denial beat through Mansell’s mind as he struggled to think clearly and coherently. Yet some part of his mind, oddly clear in spite of the nightmare which threatened to engulf them, told him what had happened, that this was something they might have foreseen after that horrific warning glimpse they had had earlier. Yog-Sothoth, that ravening chaos which existed through all space and in every instant of time, had struck swiftly and decisively the moment He had picked up Kormanov’s psychic emanations searching for those who carried the vrach, that one weapon feared by all of the Old Ones, and He had struck viciously in His rage at the puny human who had dared to project his thoughts across the cosmos.

But there was no time to think about that now. Somehow this creature, who was no longer his colleague, had to be destroyed. From what they had seen, bullets had little effect on it. How much of Kormanov’s body still existed within that protoplasmic mass, he did not know. But whatever force had taken control of it, had changed it into what it was now, still had the power to motivate it, direct it in an orgy of destruction.

“For Christ’s sake, get away from it!” He choked the warning out. Even before he had finished, Susan with running back along the aisle between the rows of benches. All around, the technicians were rushing in a wild race for the only exit. Panic was spreading like wildfire, and he knew that within seconds they would have a complete catastrophe on their hands.

He retreated slowly, still facing the octopoid monstrosity, now so huge that the bulbous head almost touched the high ceiling. The flailing tentacles lashed out at the man still holding the empty gun, caught him around the waist and lifted him high into the air where he screamed once before he was smashed down onto a bench, his spine breaking like a rotten twig with a sickening snap. Another unfortunate was grabbed; two rapacious tentacles twisting and rending him apart—his upper body flung into the distended maw and greedily gobbled, his legs tossed indifferently aside.

Susan’s voice raised above the general pandemonium. She was shouting shrilly, but for several seconds her words fail to register on his numbed mind.

“Over here, Philip. Help me.”

Swinging round, he expected the worst, to see her on the floor, trampled under the feet of the fleeing technicians. Then, in spite of the perspiration dripping into his eyes, he saw she was still on her feet, pointing. Sucking in a deep breath that burned his throat, he ran towards her, ignoring for the moment the horror that raged at his back, flailing tentacles hurling bottles and equipment in all directions. Gasping harshly, he came up to where she was standing.

A large carboy stood on the floor between two benches. He had time to notice the black skull and crossbones printed on the label before she said hoarsely: “Concentrated nitric acid. Help me with it. It’s too heavy for me to lift alone.”

“Do you think that will—?”

“Can you think of anything else?” she demanded, bending and hooking her arms around the thick glass container. “We can’t allow that thing to get out of here. If it should somehow escape—” She deliberately left the remainder unsaid.

Grabbing the container, they lifted it from the straw packing. It was half-full. Mansell could hear its contents sloshing around as they held it between them.

“Be careful, Philip. This stuff is highly corrosive.”

Fifteen feet away, looming hideously over the long wooden benches, the nightmare horror had paused. Horrible eyes, now as large as saucers, glared at them with an evil malevolence, which made Mansell shiver. Nothing can stop that, he thought wildly. High-calibre bullets fired at almost point-blank range had scarcely inconvenienced it.

“Now!” Susan hissed the word in a gasping exhalation.

Mansell forced his arms to move, bracing himself against the weight as he swung the carboy back. His arms and shoulder muscles cracking painfully, he swung the container forward and up with all his strength. Acid splashed onto the back of his hand, burning and stinging, but he scarcely noticed it. Arcing through the air, the carboy struck the thing’s lower body where the two larger tentacles joined the bloated torso. Dark yellow liquid spilled down the creatures front and side. Sizzling, it ate deeply into the protoplasmic flesh, raising huge bubbling blisters and acrid brown fumes. A bellow of rage and agony boomed through the room as more acid poured down the bulging body.

Red ichor dripped and plopped from gaping sores, which spread and coalesced into steaming wounds. The agony drove the thing that had been Kormanov beyond blind destructiveness into insane frenzy. Tentacles whipped and lashed viciously in all directions, wreaking havoc with the equipment. Still it advanced, but suddenly its movements grew slow and erratic. The upper part of the octopoid body was still relatively unharmed, eyes wide and glaring down at them.

Dear Lord, can nothing stop it? The thought hammered through Mansell’s brain as he backed away, pulling Susan with him. At the rear of the laboratory, several people were being crushed as by sheer weight of numbers as they tried to pile into the elevator which was already so full that it was impossible to close the door to get it moving to the upper floor.

Then, without warning, one of the rubbery tentacles with which the monstrosity had been thrusting itself along, shrivelled. With a shuddering howl, the thing fell sideways, thrown off balance, crashing across a bench that instantly splintered beneath the ponderous bulk. Bottles of chemical reagents shattered against the tough hide, baptising the grotesque head. Incredibly, the creature somehow hauled itself upright once more, its grossly misshapen mass oozing over half the laboratory. The night-black head, now crowned with a multitude of waving feelers that had sprouted from it, touched the ceiling, dislodging one of the fluorescent tubes.

Sparks sputtered redly from the electrical fitting, and the next second the flammable solvents ignited. Rivulets of orange-edged flame ran down the pulsing, heaving body; ran together, wreathing it completely in a sheet of fire. Mansell could only lean against the nearby bench and stare at the nightmare scene as the flames lapped up around that hideous shape. Where the concentrated acid had not done its work, the chemical fire accomplished it. Deep within the curtain of flame, the frightful form continued to burn, imploding into a black jelly-like mass that bubbled and frothed and ran in nigrescent streams down the sides of benches and across the charred floor in a river of putrid foulness.

Shuddering, Susan turned away, covering her face with her hands. But Mansell continued to watch until the acid and the flames were done. Coughing as the acrid nitrous fumes caught at the back of his throat, he edged forward a little. For an instant, while the flames had licked around the amorphous shape, he’d had the odd impression that he had seen something that looked like Georg Kormanov, or at least, something that possessed a semi-human outline, slumped on the floor. But he couldn’t be sure, and it was not something he wanted to think about. One thing he was certain: that evil entity which had somehow entered his colleague’s mind and body had gone, had retreated into whatever alien dimension it inhabited, before that final dissolution had come.

A faint whirring cut through the stillness, and Mansell guessed that someone had had the presence of mind to switch on the extraction fans. Already the brown fumes and acrid stench were beginning to clear. Someone at the rear of the laboratory with an equal amount of self-control was bringing some semblance of order and calmness to the milling crowd near the elevator. Two men with fire extinguishers were hosing down the smoking remains, while a couple of others began clearing away the debris of shattered glass and splintered fragments of wood.

“What in God’s name was it?” Susan whispered the words in hushed tones, as she fumbled with a first-aid kit, trying to treat her colleague’s acid burn. Her face looked ghastly in the light.

“It was what we’ve feared for some time.” Mansell tried to speak quietly and evenly, but in spite of his tight control his voice quavered a little. “We knew that Yog-Sothoth was somewhere out there from what happened with the Deep Ones. When Kormanov tried to contact those others, He was waiting.”

“Then if it was Him, how—?”

“How was it possible for fire and acid to destroy that thing? That’s easily explained. He had to work through a human being. Whatever He changed Kormanov into, it had to be flesh and blood, even if in the end it was alien flesh and blood.” Wiping the perspiration from his forehead, Mansell continued: “Now let’s try to get this mess cleared up and see to any of the injured.”

Susan shivered, trying not to look at the mess on the floor where lumps of burned protoplasm still twitched and jerked as if they continued to house some of that alien life-force. “I shudder to think what might have happened if that... thing... had somehow got out of here. God, it was still growing when the flames hit it.”

Nodding, Mansell shook himself, tried to shake off the mood of horror. Even now it was impossible to believe that only a little while before Georg Kormanov had been alive, sitting there at that table in the conference room, striving to send his thoughts out across light-years of the void to seek out their colleagues. In a way, they all had to accept their guilt, their part in his hideous death. And—

Now it came home to him how close they had been to total disaster. Luck had been on their sides this time. But it had been a close thing. If Yog-Sothoth could strike so quickly and easily as that, anyone of them could be next. He realised that Susan was speaking again.

“Do you know if Georg succeed in getting in touch with McKinrick and the others?”

“What—? Oh, yes! Just before that change started, he managed to speak. It wasn’t much, and it was hard to make out what he was trying to say. But he did contact Edmund Trevelyan. I’m sure of that. They’re all alive and on Glyu-Vho, the only place in the galaxy where they could be perfectly safe from the Old Ones.”

“What amazes me is that Georg's talent enabled him to reach that far. Unfortunately, it was this that led to his undoing and to what we just saw. I’m afraid we’ve lost someone very special to the Organisation.”

Mansell sensed the bitterness deep inside her, knew how she was feeling. However, looked at objectively, what was one life against the tremendous cosmic threat that faced them all? But it was not going to be easy to reconcile Kormanov’s death with what had happened.

CHAPTER FIVE

Edmund found the others half an hour later and told them of the message he had received from Georg Kormanov, only to find they were already aware of it. Not that McKinrick had picked it up, or any of the three men with him. But Xaa-gth, whose mental abilities far surpassed theirs, had caught those faint thoughts easily, had immediately guessed they originated from the home world of his companions, since they mentioned the destruction of that ringed planet which they had witnessed for themselves.

“So one of us will have to go back,” the professor said. He smiled mirthlessly. “The question is who... and when.”

“I’ll go,” Vansing Lai said without hesitation.

“No.” McKinrick shook his head. “It will have to be someone who’s used the vrach before and knows what it’s capable of. And also someone versed in the ancient lore.”

Edmund looked at him sharply, and there was concern written all over his face. “Are you putting yourself forward, John?”

“You think I might be getting too old for the job?” There was no malice in the professor’s voice. “No, I wasn’t thinking of myself.” He looked straight at Vincent. “I’d like you to go. I’d have preferred your uncle, but it’s imperative he should remain here to complete the translation of that volume.”

After a little while Vincent said: “When do you want me to go?”

“Now,” McKinrick said decisively. He took the vrach from his pocket, held it out in the light.

At the sight of it, Xaa-gth clicked his claws excitedly, then: “That must be the thing of the Elder Gods. The Vrus’ii have heard of it from dim legend, but never had I thought to be privileged to see it. In our legends, even the Old Ones fear it.”

“Fear it... aye.” McKinrick nodded. “But it hasn’t the power to destroy Them. That’s why it’s so important we follow up the lead we’ve found. If that weapon really exists, we’ve got to get our hands on it first.” He handed the vrach to Vincent. “There’s no point in going back to Charnwood House, although that’s possibly the last place any of the enemy would look for you. Arkham is where you must go. Contact Philip Mansell or Susan Thaxton. And be careful. Watch out for Cthulhu every second. Either He’s returned to Earth or He’s planning some further attack on Yuggoth.”

“And once I get there?”

“The plan’s simple enough. Use the vrach to destroy as many of Their minions as you can. Unfortunately, I’ve no idea what conditions are like there.”

“And how will I keep in contact with you?”

“Have no fear of that.” Xaa-gth’s voice resonated within Vincent’s mind, strong and powerful. “I can reach you even across all that distance.”

“And if things should get too hot, get back here at once. We can’t afford to lose you... or the vrach,” McKinrick cautioned soberly. “Now you know the formulae. I’ve implanted them in your mind.”

Holding the vrach tightly in both hands, Vincent murmured the guttural syllables of the incantation. The vast room, his companions, all faded swiftly and vanished. Once again there was that strange sensation of being a mote whirling within the immense fabric of the cosmos, of being hurried along through utter blackness shot through now and then with glowing colours belonging to no earthly spectrum. Vast columns sped by, were replaced by shimmering walls of wavering hues. Stars fled past like comets on streaming tails of fire.

Then, without warning, everything jarred to a sudden stop. Had he been physically moving at that incredible velocity (certainly far in excess of light-speed) he would have been totally annihilated. As it was, his psyche suffered a tremendous jolt, one from which he fought desperately to recover. Some tiny spark of reason told him that, not only had something entirely unforeseen happened, but that he was in imminent danger. He could not believe that the vrach had malfunctioned... and the fleeting notion that he had, somehow, uttered the wrong chant, was instantly dismissed.

This was something else!

Pure instinct told him what it was; that he had encountered something like this before. During that incursion into those alien dimensions that lay between the various alternate planes of existence, he had sensed this presence.

Yog-Sothoth!

In the urgency of the moment before leaving Glyu-Vho, he had temporarily forgotten the Old One. Now he saw Him. Far off, there was a blackness, a dense nigrification, which expanded swiftly, rushing in upon him as Yog-Sothoth came sweeping along the starwinds. The Old One’s outlines were indistinct; they shimmered and changed as if Vincent were seeing this nightmarish entity through a desert heat-haze. But this was no mirage; this was the real thing! With a terror of unaccustomed panic, Vincent meshed his mind more strongly with the vrach, struggled to orientate himself. Whatever force had seized hold of him, it was powerful enough to keep him immobile, suspended in this weird region, which, while not space and time as known to earthly scientists, was still the domain of the Old One.

He knew that Yog-Sothoth lay between him and his destination. He could proceed no further in that direction even if he were able to move. Then, as if the Old One were supremely confident He had His prey completely at His mercy, the constraining grip relaxed. Instantly Vincent flashed off at a tangent to his original course, only to realise that the Old One did likewise, now looming so close that Vincent could feel the aura of utter evil that emanated like a noxious cloud from the shapeless, polymorphic form. Beginning to panic, he tried to escape in time, moving into the future. But the Old One was there also. No escape in that direction either! Yog-Sothoth was the All-in-One and the One-in-All. Space and time were His domain, and He was capable of existing simultaneously throughout the whole of the four-dimensional continuum.

Yet even enmeshed in the horror that stampeded through his mind, Vincent strove to recall what he had learned of this particular Being. There had to be a weakness somewhere, he told himself, something he could use against Yog-Sothoth. Someone, sometime, he recalled, had told him that the Old Ones were not invulnerable, however awesome Their powers were in comparison to those of mankind.

Whether it was some added factor given him by the vrach he did not know, but now his brain seemed to be working more rapidly and clearly than ever before. Yog-Sothoth was all dimensional; hence there could be no escape from Him in either space or time now that He was free of the bondage imposed on Him by the Elder Gods.

Vincent’s mind seized on that like a drowning man clutching at a raft. But there had been a time, not so long before, when He had been chained just like all of the other Old Ones with the possible exception of Nyarlathotep. Swiftly, almost before he was aware of it, he imposed his mental command on the vrach, flashed back in time. As if Yog-Sothoth had sensed what he meant to do, Vincent felt once more that shuddering force striving to hold him there, unmoving. The looming horror surged closer, and deep within it he glimpsed flashes of blue-violet lightning surrounding a pulsing mass of transient viscidity enveloped by writhing appendages and a multitude of massive, bulging crimson eyes.

He knew that, in spite of his best efforts, his motion back through time was slowing as Yog-Sothoth fought to prevent him from escaping by the only route open to him. Slowly, very slowly, he was succeeding, using all of the power of the vrach. How far back in time he went, it was impossible for him to tell, for in this weird dimension there was nothing with which he could make any comparison. Only Yog-Sothoth Himself, for now the great, pulsing cloud of ebon darkness seemed to be retreating, withdrawing into the far distance, like a film being run backward... which, indeed, was exactly what was happening.

The last thing Vincent saw before the Old One vanished completely from view was a brilliant pencil-beam of the purest white light, which speared across his sight, striking arrow-straight towards the spot where Yog-Sothoth was a dwindling dot at the limit of his vision.

There was no sense in moving forward in time right now; that would only take him back to where—when—Yog-Sothoth would be waiting. His only hope now was to complete his journey to Earth, seek where... or rather when... he ended up and go on from there. Once again he spoke those weird syllables in his mind and he meshed with the vrach, and for what seemed only seconds he was moving swiftly through the palpable void before emerging into the normal universe with the Sun shining brilliantly against the black mass of Earth lying below him with the moon showing as a yellow-white shard where it was just coming into view from behind the blue and white disc.

A little while later, after descending slowly through the atmosphere, he was standing on a deserted embankment where a single track of rusted rails ran between stretches of desolate marshland. He had chosen his arrival place carefully, not wishing to be seen by anyone. This, he knew, was the railway that ran between Arkham and Innsmouth and, thrusting the vrach out of sight in his jacket pocket, he straightened up and took stock of his surroundings. His first task, he decided, was to determine how far back into the past he had travelled during that encounter with Yog-Sothoth and then slip forward to the present.

Once he had ascertained his compass directions, he was able to determine in which direction Arkham lay. From the position of the sun he judged it to be early morning, sometime in the middle of winter, for there was a bitter chill in the air and the ground underfoot crackled with frost. Around him, the straggly vegetation was almost bare of foliage, and many of the oddly deformed and stunted trees were rimed with white. There was the smell of the sea in his nostrils and, as he clambered over the rusted rails and made his way over spongy sedgegrass, he made out, far to his right, the dizzy heights of the cliffs where they culminated in Kingsport Head and now, for the first time, he realised just how close he was to that accursed town of Innsmouth.

In the surprisingly clear wintry air, he was able to see the town spread out across the valley with a trio of tall steeples showing blackly against the seaward horizon. He felt a shudder at the sight of those crumbling buildings and the deserted waterfront and even a chilling tremor as he spotted, about a mile and a half offshore, the dark line of rock which was Devil Reef, knowing that just beyond it, where the rocky underwater shelf dropped steeply into the ocean, there lay aeon-old Y’ha-nthlei.

For all its size, he noticed there seemed to be a strange dearth of any kind of life about the place. He could see little sign of any human activity going on and, from the numerous chimney pots sat on the sagging gambrel roofs, hardly any smoke issued. There were several boats tied up at the wharves, and from what he could see these appeared to be a fairly modern design. His first thought had been that he may have travelled back to the time when the sailing ships of the Marshes, Gilmans and Waites voyaged to the islands of the South Pacific, bringing back with them those ocean-spawned creatures which mated with the town’s inhabitants, producing later generations of monstrous hybrids who, if the old tales were true, were kept out of sight in the tightly-shuttered rooms until the time came for them to swim out beyond Devil Reef and go down into those benighted depths offshore.

Instinctively, he began to pick his way across tufts of the course grass, his shoes splashing in pools of stagnant water, until he reached the road. Whatever the year was, it was some time before the railroad to Innsmouth had shut down for, from what he had learned, most of the rails had been torn up shortly thereafter. Although this was a region he had never visited, knowing of it only what he had learned from Mansell and Ingram, several things seemed oddly familiar, almost as if he had lived here for most of his life. The road, where it led away from Innsmouth, would take him close to Rowley and from there to Arkham, several miles away. Feeling the icy chill penetrating his thin clothing, he commenced walking towards Rowley, not expecting to meet any travellers heading towards Innsmouth.

Rowley, when he reached it half an hour later, proved to be a small place, little more than a village which, in spite of its proximity to Innsmouth, seemed to have acquired none of the spectral characteristics of the latter. There was a small bus depot by the side of the road, and he decided that this was probably the best place to make some enquiries. The agent, seated behind a low desk, was a stout, florid-faced man who eyed him with an expression of shrewd surprise. Vincent tried to sound casual as he asked how far it was to Arkham.

“Arkham? You thinkin’ of walkin’ there, mister? It’s quite a ways from here. Better takin’ the bus or the train.” The agent threw a quizzical glance at Vincent’s attire. “Where are you from, mister?” he went on. “I seen you comin’ from the Innsmouth side, but you ain’t one o’ them. And that’s a mighty queer place for strangers to visit.”

Vincent nodded, said quickly: “I'm English as you’ve probably already guessed, from one of the universities over there. I’m here studying the old folklore of this region and, from what I’d heard of Innsmouth, it seemed a good place to have a look around.”

The man shook his head dubiously. “Evidently you don’t know much o’ that place,” he said conversationally now that he had determined Vincent’s identity. “Most folks hereabouts shun it like the plague... and with good reason. Had a fella come through here a few months ago, July, I think. He seemed in quite a state, I can tell you. Said he wanted to make some report to the Federal authorities about certain goings-on there. Reckon he must’ve because we’ve had truckloads of men heading out there, mostly through the night, investigatin’ things, and there’s been a whole heap of talk o’ a lot o' them old buildings there being burned and dynamited. Funny thing is... they’ve taken a load o’ prisoners away, but there’ve been no reports of any charges being made, and as to what’s happened to those they’ve taken away, nobody knows. Everythin’s been kept secret for some reason. Sounds like a big government cover-up, if you ask me.” He got up from his chair, stepped forward and leaned his elbows on the desk, bending forward, conspiratorially, evidently relishing the opportunity of passing on the local gossip to anyone willing to listen. “And there’s another rum thing, mister. Livin’ so close to that place, we get to hear things that folk in Boston and Arkham know little about.”

“What sort of things?” Vincent asked. He raised an enquiring eyebrow.

“What kinda creatures can live down in the deeps o’ yonder reef? Why do they come ashore in their hundreds on nights when there is no moon? And—” here he paused as if for dramatic effect, lowering his voice slightly, “—what’s the truth behind the rumour that the Navy sent a submarine there a week past? One that went far down and fired several high-explosive torpedoes into the ocean bottom. We both heard and felt those explosions out here, so there has to be some truth to it.”

Vincent tried hard to suppress his surprise. This was something he knew about, something that enabled him to pinpoint his whereabouts in time without the need to ask any awkward questions. He was recalling the talks he had had with McKinrick concerning the more recent history of Innsmouth, and that particular incident, just mentioned by the bus agent, jarred his memory. It had occurred in February, 1928. He now knew how far he was in the past. Thanking the agent for his help and information, Vincent stepped outside. He stood for a moment before walking into the middle of the village street where he took the vrach from his pocket, held it tightly, and united his mind with that strange, alien intelligence within the crystal.

Behind him, standing in the doorway of the depot, the agent suddenly oblivious of the icy wind that swept through the opening, watched open-mouthed, just in time to see his visitor vanish abruptly. A handful of winter-dried leaves, swept up into the vacuum created by his unbelievable departure, swirled briefly for a moment in agitated motion, then settled back onto the hard earth.

*

Having gone over much of the writing in the massive volume, Edmund Trevelyan began to go through it again. It was a tedious process and one that he considered superfluous. He felt reasonably certain that the two things he was searching for had either been deliberately omitted by the author for fear of the dire consequences which might occur if they should ever become known, or were concealed in hieroglyphics which he had never come across before and which were therefore incapable of translation.

Already, following his first perusal, he had experienced a positive shock of horror and loathing at what was written there. These were dark, forbidden secrets that were not for mankind to know; banned, esoteric and shocking revelations from a dim, hideous past, which had seeped down through the ages from a fabulous time long before man had existed. The conviction that whoever this unknown scribe was, he had had access to arcane knowledge unknown to the rest of mankind, had grown steadily with his reading and there was no doubt that, with the single exception of Kitson, his companions firmly believed it too.

Sighing audibly, he leaned back, rubbed his left elbow absently where it had been leaning heavily on the stone arm of the chair. He was beginning to feel frustrated and a little angry. He could understand the urgent need to discover the location of this weapon of the Elder Gods, but even if they should succeed would it be of any use to Them? Surely if it could banish these Beings back to Their original plane, it followed it could be turned against the Elder Gods for, from everything he knew, They were all of the same kindred. Whoever had stolen it all those aeons ago would surely have made possession of it a prime priority once the restraining sigils had been broken. Furthermore, if it had been concealed in someplace hidden from even the Elder Gods, that meant—

His thoughts broke off at that point. He had been staring absently at the open page in front of him, his gaze wandering aimlessly over the large, inscribed glyphs. Quite suddenly he realised he was staring at a name he had not come across before... or at least, could not recall having done so. Abruptly alert, he examined the text more closely feeling a strange, rising excitement.

Among Those who rebelled against the Wisdom of the Great Ancient beings was Axaroth, the... Deceiver... He Who wove His web of Illusion before the eyes of the Great Ones so that They saw nothing of His deeds. That which is the Destroyer-of-All was taken from its secret place and since He lacked the knowledge of its use, He hid it away against the time when All should be free and that which the Dark Ones yearned after should be brought to fulfilment. In the Book of K’yog it is stated that it is to be found at Neverness beneath the Sign of Koth. Yet none knows where Neverness lies, although in the ancient lore of the serpent men it is said that while it is in this world and not in another known only to the Gods, it exists only for that instant of no-time. Furthermore, there be guardians Who watch; They Who never sleep.

Edmund puzzled over this passage for several minutes. The wording seemed ambiguous, full of possibilities, from which several probabilities could be drawn, none of which satisfied him. Nowhere, as far as he could recall, had he found any previous mention of Axaroth, nor had he ever heard the professor intimate any knowledge of this Old One. As far as Neverness, that made no sense at all. And how could something possibly exist for an instant of no-time? To his way of thinking, such a statement was an absurdity, without meaning. Yet the passage clearly related to what they were seeking. Exhaling slowly, he decided that perhaps the others might have some ideas. Mentally he contacted McKinrick, informed him briefly of what he had discovered.

Ten minutes later, they were all gathered in the room, going over what Edmund had written. McKinrick finally straightened up, came around the chair and began pacing the floor. At last he stood still and said: “How sure can you be that what you’ve written there is an accurate translation, Edmund?”

Edmund shrugged slightly. “It’s as near as I can make it, taking into account the differences between this writing and that of the Second Dynasty. As I said before, my guess is that this was written several centuries before even the First Dynasty and the unification of Egypt. I’ve no way of telling how things changed in that time.”

“All right.” The professor held up a placating hand and nodded. “Then for the moment we’ll accept this as accurate. Anyone have any ideas of a possible explanation?”

After a short silence, Vansing Lai cleared his throat hesitantly. He said quietly: “As I see it, ‘Neverness’ merely suggests the absence of time, and I’d say that’s confirmed by that later statement that this ‘weapon’, if you want to call it that, exists only for an instant of no-time. There’s only one place I can think of where no-time exists. Within one of the ultimate continua.”

McKinrick pondered that suggestion for a moment, then shook his head. “If that were so, it wouldn’t state that it exists in this world, namely on Earth. It has to mean something else, although for the life of me, I can’t—“

“Perhaps there is one other possibility you seem to have overlooked,” Xaa-gth radiated. “One which would fit the facts as they have been stated here.”

McKinrick stared hard at him, his eyes aglow. “Go on,” he prompted.

“From your memory patterns I have discovered that your ideas on the universe and how it evolves coincide almost exactly with those reached a long time ago by the Vrus’ii scientists. From its beginning it began to expand, and at the present time this expansion still continues. At some time, however, this will stop, when the force of expansion is exactly equalled by that of gravity. At that point, it will become highly unstable and will commence to contract. Is that not so?”

The professor gave a nod of agreement. “Vincent would no doubt have confirmed that if he were here.”

“But that doesn’t help,” Vansing Lai butted in. "Time still goes on whether the universe is expanding or contracting.”

“Ah, I see you have failed to grasp the point I’m trying to make. You are thinking only of space as expanding and contracting. But there is far more to it than that. Not only space, but time, is behaving in exactly the same way, since time cannot be divorced from space. If the Vrus’ii theory, and possibly your own, is correct; once that critical instant in the evolution of the universe is reached, everything is reversed. Because the universe is now expanding, the arrow of time points from the past to the future. Once the universe begins to contract, it points in the opposite direction, from the future into the past.”

McKinrick said excitedly: “Now I see what you mean, and I'm sure you're right. Just at that moment... if ‘moment’ is the right term... time is going in neither direction. It simply doesn’t exist.”

Xaa-gth gave a mental nod of approval. “Somehow... do not ask me how, for like you I know little of the ways of the gods... Axaroth concealed it on your planet so that it exists only at that particular instant. That would explain why it has not been discovered by the Elder Gods..” Here there was a long mental pause before he went on: “It also means that it can only be retrieved at the junction between the expansion and contraction of the universe.”

As the full implication of his words sank in, they left a chilling silence in the room.

*

Vincent Trevelyan materialised inside the Carter Organisation headquarters to find the place a shambles. Acrid brown fumes hung in the air but already the extractors were removing the mephitic gases, sucking them up toward the gratings in the ceiling. He had re-entered the normal space continuum less than a minute after the thing that had been Georg Kormanov had been destroyed. Indeed, the final dissolution was still taking place.

Directly in front of him, Susan Thaxton had her hand up to her mouth. Very faintly, he heard her whisper: “What in God’s name was it?”

For that moment on, events there (and all over the universe although, of course, he was not aware of this) took a subtly different course.

Out of the corner of his eye he noticed a couple of technicians, one holding a fire extinguisher, who had witnessed his abrupt materialisation. Both men gave a violent start, their eyes wide. The man with the extinguisher dropped it in his stunned surprise.

Sensing something out of the ordinary, Susan spun round, her mouth dropping open. For a moment she found herself unable to speak. With an effort, she made herself relax as Mansell said: “Vincent! Thank God you made it! We weren’t really sure that Georg succeeded in getting through.” To Susan he said: “This is Vincent Trevelyan. He was with McKinrick at Charnwood House.” He glanced down, saw the vrach which Vincent still held in both hands. “And you’ve brought the vrach with you... of course you did, you needed it to get here.”

Still confused by Kormanov’s hideous transformation and this stranger’s unexpected appearance, Susan said hesitantly: “Welcome to our headquarters, Vincent.” She held out her hand, shook his warmly. “Things aren't normally quite as dramatic around here but, as you can see, we’ve had some trouble.”

Vincent stared at the charred remains on the floor and the damage nearby. “What happened? One of Cthulhu’s minions?” He couldn’t see how any of these creatures had managed to breach the defences which he knew must protect this place, but as Susan launched into a brief explanation, his face grew grimmer. He felt the horror and fear in his mind begin to bite deeper.

When Susan had finished, he gave a taut nod. “So that was it. Evidently, the Old Ones have recognised that the Organisation is a force to be reckoned with.” He drew in a deep breath. “Now we’re going to carry the fight to Them.”

Tight-lipped, eyes narrowed, Mansell said: “How? Even the vrach will not destroy Them.”

While they had been speaking Susan had led the way to her office. Now, inside, she closed the door quietly, motioned them to chairs.

“Do you have a plan?” Mansell lit a cigarette, blew a cloud of smoke towards the ceiling. Outside, the process of cleaning up was now in progress after the initial shock and panic had died down.

“We’ve learned a lot since we have been on Glyu-Vho,” Vincent explained, choosing his words with care. “And we have another ally there.”

“One of the Elder Gods?” Susan asked breathlessly.

“No. For the time being at least, They seem unwilling to take any part in this struggle. It’s almost as if They’re determined to leave it up to us to sort out. We’re fairly sure we know what’s going on as far as the Old Ones are concerned. Now They’re free, They intend to claim what was Theirs aeons ago when each dominated Their own sectors of the galaxy. That’s why Cthulhu is determined to drive Cthugha clear out of the solar system, back to that region around Fomalhaut where He rightly belongs. This part of the cosmos belongs to Cthulhu.”

“So you’re saying... ” Susan began.

“Our guess is that once They’ve taken over what was Theirs in the beginning, then the real battle begins. They’ll unite as They did once before to bring the entire universe to a premature end so that They can return to where ever it was They came from when the Big Bang occurred and all of this was created.”

For a moment, it seemed that Susan understood, but then she said shakily: “If that’s what They want... if that’s what They tried to do all that time ago, why not do it now?”

Quietly, Vincent replied: “There’s something you have to understand, Susan. Even though they have an implacable hatred of the Elder Gods for what was done to Them after they were defeated, most of the Old Ones are mortal... or immortal... enemies. Each of Them would knife the Other in the back as quickly as look at Them. This obsession about regaining Their rightful place in the galaxy has to be settled first. I don’t profess to be able to get into Their minds, or even fully understand Their motives, but I'm quite sure that, rightly or wrong, They believe that while They’ve grown stronger during the ages since They were incarcerated, the Elder Gods are now weaker than before, and this time the Old Ones are supremely confident of final victory once They unite.”

“So... what’s our next step?” Mansell asked, stubbing out his cigarette.

“Well, there’s one other thing I haven’t mentioned so far because I didn’t want to raise your hopes too high. My uncle has come across a volume in that vast library on Glyu-Vho which was written in something similar to Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics but almost certainly long before three thousand B.C. There’s a vague reference to some weapon which was stolen by one of the Old Ones and concealed somewhere. If... and I say, if... he can find that information and it’s possible for us to get our hands on it first, there may be no need for the Elder Gods to intervene at all.”

“Perhaps that’s been the plan of the Elder Gods all along,” Mansell cut in. “But you haven’t answered my question. What are we going to do in the meantime? First Cthulhu and Cthugha... and now Yog-Sothoth is headed this way.”

“At the moment there’s only one thing we... or rather I... can do but I’ll need your help.”

“You can count on that,” Susan said at once. “Whatever facilities you need, you’ll get.”

“Thanks. My aim is to destroy as many of the Old Ones’ minions as I can using this.” Vincent took the vrach from his pocket and laid it carefully on the table. To Mansell he said: “You’re aware of certain properties of this crystal, Phillip. But there are others we’ve learned since. First I intend to destroy Y’ha-nthlei and put an end to that accursed place once and for all. And if I have to wipe out Innsmouth in the process, then so be it.” He allowed the threat to hang there.

“Can you do that?” Susan wanted to know. The expression on her face implied that, after seeing what had happened to Georg Kormanov, she wasn’t sure they could do anything.

“I can do it,” Vincent answered, hoping he sounded a little more confident than he felt. The encounter with Yog-Sothoth had shaken him, just as that unexpected transformation of Kormanov had shaken the people here. “I’ll need some kind of transport to get me to Innsmouth and someone who knows that town well to accompany me.”

“I’ll go with you,” Susan said, getting to her feet.

“You’re sure you can find your way around Innsmouth?” Vincent asked. He would have preferred Mansell to accompany him, knowing the possible dangers they were likely to face, but one look at Susan’s face decided him against declining her offer. He could, of course, have transported himself instantly to Y’ha-nthlei, but he wanted to obtain some idea of the countryside around that legend-haunted town before rushing blindly in.

“I think I can say I know my way around there as well as anyone here,” she replied firmly. “Before all this started I visited Innsmouth on several occasions with a couple of marine biologists from the university. I’ve even been out to Devil Reef to study those carvings on the rocks there. But that’s not an experience I’d like to repeat unless it’s absolutely necessary.”

“All right. Then let’s go.” Vincent stood up, opened the door to allow her to proceed him. Now that the immediate danger was passed, things in the big laboratory were rapidly getting back to normal. Leaving Mansell in charge, Susan led the way to the elevator, through the almost deserted library vaults and then out into the street. Here, for the first time, they saw the damage that had been wrought by the two major earth movements. Several of the university buildings had all but collapsed and the street itself was virtually blocked by debris and fallen masonry.

A trio of ambulances were speeding away, sirens wailing, as they came out of the gates onto the wide sidewalk. Casualties had obviously been high. A number of fires were burning furiously due to several gas mains having been ruptured, throwing clouds of sparks and black smoke high into the air.

“My car is a couple of blocks away,” Susan said, raising her voice to make herself heard above the din. “If it hasn’t been buried under the rubble.”

Following her, clambering over heaps of bricks and concrete, Vincent tried to make out details through the dust haze that still clung around the building. Here and there great cracks had been opened in the streets, zigzagging in all directions. In one of them the rear bumpers of two cars were just visible where they had plunged in. Distant rumbles told of buildings still collapsing.

Fortunately, the narrow side street into which Susan turned a few minutes later did not appear to have suffered as much as the main highway. Both sidewalks were blocked, and one car was blazing at the far end of the street. As they approached the red Buick parked at the curb, a police officer came running over.

“Is this your car, Miss?” he asked as Susan took out her keys.

“Yes.” She nodded.

“Then I’d get it away from here as quickly as you can. That building is going to come down at any minute.”

Vincent glanced up. Great cracks, widening perceptibly, zigzagged up the front of the store. Already the building was bulging precariously. Slipping in beside Susan, he slammed the door shut as she switched on the ignition, put the Buick into gear, and moved out into the street. Scarcely had they moved away than there was an ominous rumble and the entire front of the building came down in a shower of concrete and dust, covering the whole width of the street behind them.

Very soon, in spite of the numerous diversions they were forced to take where entire streets had been closed, particularly in the old quarter of Arkham, they reached the outskirts of the town and were driving into the wild, desolate moorland towards Rowley. Much of what he saw through the dust-smeared windscreen looked exactly as it had been more than sixty years earlier when Vincent had last seen it. The afternoon was warm and sunny, yet in spite of the pleasant autumn weather, Vincent felt a deep mood of depression settle over him as he viewed the bare desolate landscape: stunted bushes, interspersed with stretches of bare sand and sedge grass which edged down in the direction of the ocean.

Before reaching Rowley Susan swung the car off the main highway which went on to Ipswich and took a narrow, more rutted track. Sitting in silence as Susan concentrated on her driving, Vincent recalled more of what he had read concerning this desolate region. The long sandy region offshore which he could just discern, he guessed was Plum Island but this was soon lost to view and now, on the left, there were only the white breakers of the Atlantic extending to the far, misty horizon.

Rounding a sharply-angled bend, the track now commenced a steep upgrade after crossing a couple of grotesque wooden bridges where narrower tributaries of the ocean meandered inland before losing themselves in the marshes. Putting her car into second gear, Susan pressed her foot harder on the accelerator, leaning forward a little to scan the track for frequent potholes and deep ruts. Evidently, Vincent mused, this road was seldom used now... and possibly with good reason. Here and there, poking out of ridges of windblown sand, were crumbling vestiges of ancient buildings, which had clearly been abandoned more than a century before and left to rot.

“Once we get to the top you’ll be able to see Innsmouth,” Susan said, speaking for the first time since they had set out. “Then we’ll have to be alert for trouble. Our latest reports from this place suggest that it's been almost completely taken over by those creatures from off Devil Reef.”

Vincent gave a grim smile. “We have one thing in our favour,” he said harshly. “Whatever devastation we have to bring about to put an end to this town... and Y’ha-nthlei... it won’t bring any undue attention to the Organisation. The authorities will accept that it has the same cause as all that damage we saw in Arkham.”

“You’re really sure that crystal can do all that?” Susan sounded dubious. “I’m not doubting it can take you anywhere through space and time, although even that is hard to accept. But—”

“Against these creatures it can do all of that,” Vincent assured her. “Against the Old Ones Themselves, I’m not sure. Our biggest danger is from Cthulhu Himself. If He realises that the vrach is back on Earth, there’s no telling what might happen.”

Nodding, Susan fell silent, and half a minute later they crested the steep incline, and for the second time Vincent saw the wide expanse of the valley spread out below them with the sunlight gleaming wanly on the broad Manuxet where it flowed into the ocean and just beyond it, a long line of rugged cliffs. Far-off, he glimpsed Kingsport Head, the highest point of the cliffs, and on its crest a vague shape which for some odd reason stirred strange fancies in his mind.

Vincent surveyed the distant town, letting his glance take in everything. When he had seen it before, as it had been over six decades in the past, he had been at ground level and much of the detail had been invisible. Now he could clearly make out the narrow, cobbled streets, huddled houses with their sagging roofs, over-topped by the three gaunt steeples. Two of these, he noticed, seemed to be in a state of complete disrepair as if no longer in use. The third, however, bore a fresh coat of paint and this, he guessed, was the church used by the Esoteric Order of Dagon founded more than a century before by Obed Marsh and the other wealthy Innsmouth families.

The large Marsh Refinery was also visible standing on the banks of the Manuxet adjacent to a waterfall. The only signs of activity he could see were in the vicinity of the waterfront, although here the general air of decay and neglect was most evident. Several small boats were tied up at the wharves and along a small breakwater which thrust a stone tongue out into the sea. It was as he directed his attention towards the ocean, however, that the first real thrill of horror swept through him. The tide was out and there, rising abruptly from the sea, stood Devil Reef with its overtones of latent, ancient evil.

Even from that distance it was just possible to make out tiny, dark shapes that bobbed in the water between the reef and the rotting wharves. Susan had spotted them, too, for she said throatily “Deep Ones! Do you see them?”

“I see them,” he answered her grimly. “And now it’s up to me to put an end to them and their accursed underwater city, once and for all.”

CHAPTER SIX

Innsmouth seemed completely deserted as they walked along Federal Street and into the centre of the town where, Susan informed him, several narrow, refuse-filled alleys radiated eastward towards the waterfront. The cupola-crowned Gilman House was easily picked out on one side of the large square, the creaking wooden sign swinging listlessly in the breeze which blew off the sea. Here the sound of the river and the falls close to where the refinery building stood was loud in their ears. From what they had seen thus far there existed no sign of recent damage as had occurred in nearby Arkham. Most of the buildings to the south were in a sorry state of decay, but this had been a slow and gradual process that had gone on for decades.

Fighting down the growing tension, Vincent fingered the vrach in his pocket, ready to use it at a moment's notice if any attempt to stop them materialised without warning.

As they paused at the edge of the square, Susan said in a low whisper: “What’s your first move, Vincent?!

Vincent frowned, then made up his mind. “Y’ha-nthlei. That godforsaken place has to be destroyed—and before here anyone guesses my intentions; otherwise they may try to call on Cthulhu.”

If his companion felt any fear, she showed little of it. Turning on her heel, she led him across the square towards one of the narrow side streets, thrown into deep shadow by the decrepit buildings on the sunward side. A much-decayed sign proclaimed this to be Water Street. On the other side stood a row of hovels, seemingly empty of any occupants, with splintered doorways gaping like black mouths and small windows, many tightly shuttered with wooden boards. He guessed that very little, if any, daylight ever penetrated this warren and for a moment wondered if there was any truth in what he had heard: that deep beneath these rotten dwellings there existed a veritable fecundity of teaming burrows which had housed monstrous hybrids in the days following Obed Marsh.

Then, as he glanced into one of the dark, irregular openings, something moved within that recess. That it was a living object... the first they had seen since entering the town... he did not doubt. He had a vision of a hideous visage that had nothing human about it. Goggly eyes glared redly, and it seemed to move with repulsive hopping motions. Instinctively he withdrew the vrach as he saw more shapes behind it. With a touch of bizarre horror, he held the crystal in front of him, felt the sudden surge of energy against his palm and fingers as a thin beam of pure white light speared into the dimness. The creature uttered a single mewling croak as it shrivelled. The humped body seemed to fold upon itself into a nauseous greenish lump.

Instantly the darkness far back within the hovel was full of indistinct shapes that squealed horribly, and Vincent had a shocking impression of a flopping horde that descended into unseen, deeper levels far below the shanty. The sound faded swiftly but not before a jarring ululation echoed from some unknown depths of stygian blackness.

“God!” Vincent muttered hoarsely. “This entire region must be overrun with these creatures.”

“You’re not going in after them!” Susan protested. She shivered and hugged her elbows. “There could be hundreds of them down there and—“

“No. That can be done later. First, I’m taking care of their breeding place—Y’ha-nthlei. Once that’s done, there will be time enough to clean up Innsmouth.”

“And how do you intend to reach Y’ha-nthlei?” Until now, Susan had not given much thought to this. “If the myths are correct, it’s right down there on the ocean bed, hundreds of fathoms deep.”

V Vincent could understand her natural puzzlement. He had earlier noticed that she wore one of the Akkadian crystals around her neck, but quite possibly, he reflected, she had merely done this as a protection against the minions of the Old Ones. The likelihood was that she knew nothing of those special chants which would have enabled her to move through space and time as his uncle had when he had accompanied the professor to that uncharted island in the South Atlantic.

“With this I can go anywhere. I’ve used it to enter planes of existence you couldn’t possibly conceive. But first we’ll go to Devil Reef. Whether that evil-haunted rock will have to be destroyed also depends on what I find there.”

“Won’t it be dangerous taking a boat out there?” Susan was remembering those bobbing shapes they had seen earlier in the sea.

“I’ll take you there right now,” he replied. "I've seen enough of this place for the moment. Just take my hand and keep a tight hold on it.”

For a moment she stared at him, not understanding. Then he took her hand in a firm grip, holding the vrach in the other. “Close your eyes,” he said firmly. “Don’t be afraid of what happens.” Tightening his grip, he meshed with the vrach, mentally brought up a picture of that grim black rock standing out on the seaward horizon. Beside him, Susan uttered a faint gasp.

The first inkling she had that something inexplicable had occurred was her sense of smell. The faint fishy odour that had been in her nostrils outside the decaying hovel was abruptly much more pronounced, and there was the unmistakable crash of breakers in her ears.

“You can open your eyes now,” Vincent told her.

Very slowly, she opened them. They grew wider as she stared around her.

They were standing on bare black rock with grotesquely-shaped boulders all around them and white foam spuming over steep ledges below them. Salt spray stung her eyes and cheeks. A pair of crudely-sculpted columns were set in the rock face, and these bore such an appearance of artificiality that she could not believe they had ever been formed by natural means.

“Relax,” Vincent said. “We’re here.”

“Oh, my God,” she whispered, awestruck. “I never imagined that crystal had such powers.” For the first time she half-believed that he could do everything he claimed.

“I’m going to have to leave you here for a little while,” he told her soberly. Although he could have taken her with him, down into those awesome depths, he doubted if her mind was ready for such an experience. “I see you have one of the Akkadian crystals. If there should be any danger, that will protect you. Don’t worry about me.”

Swallowing hard, she nodded slowly. “I’ll be all right.” She tried to force casualness into her tone, but her voice quavered a little as she added: “Don’t worry about me.”

“Fine.” Vincent formed another mental picture in his mind and vanished, leaving Susan staring through the space where he had been standing. He’d had no accurate picture of Y’ha-nthlei in his mind, merely an imagery based upon what he’d seen in the South Pacific when R’lyeh had risen from the ocean.

But that proved to be enough.

Within nanoseconds he was down on the ocean floor staring at the mountainous stone blocks and monoliths, gaping orifices and repulsive carvings that adorned those titan columns. Great tangles of noxious weed mercifully hid much of the vast structure from view, yet even though it had lain there in the abyssal darkness for millennia beyond human comprehension, the great stone city was not dead. Y’ha-nthlei teemed with loathsome life, clearly visible in the bilious green phosphorescence which glimmered around those incredibly ancient stones.

Twisting, flowing in monstrous shoals, he saw the inhabitants of that star-spawned city, that hideous twin to horrific R’lyeh... and he knew, instinctively, that they were aware of him!

Hordes of them swarmed up from concealed depths within the city until the ocean above those colossal ramparts was black with their numbers. And there were other things he made out: great shapes of midnight blackness that uncoiled their amplitudinous shapes from around time-shattered pillars and up from the primal ooze. Vincent recognised them instantly.

Shoggoths!

He might have known that some of these awesome denizens of the ocean gulfs would be present, guarding Y’ha-nthlei. He remembered glimpsing them before, from the ship taking him towards R’lyeh. He remembered, too, the terror that had seized him when one had reared high above the vessel. This time, however, he was ready for them.

Raising the vrach, he issued an unspoken command, saw the crystal brighten between his fingers. His mental image of the whirling triple helix embedded within the vrach was instantly transformed into its material counterpart as a great fan-shaped beam of crimson radiance, shot through with tiny incandescent pinpoints of pure white light, whirling in a gigantic spiral, lanced out to envelop the oncoming horde.

The light ate into them like acid, burning through scaly flesh, reducing them to mere flotsam that drifted down to settle on the ocean floor. It was as if a beam of concentrated sunlight suddenly shot on that evil-haunted city where no sunlight had reached for countless aeons. Writhing in mortal agony, the shoggoths struggled to escape, to lose themselves in the elemental darkness within the massive stone walls. But even here, there was no escape. Wherever the beam struck the rearing titan walls the stone and melted, flowed, dripped hissing into ruin.

A gigantic tower collapsed with a rumble that was distinctly audible to Vincent where he stood like a vengeful destroyer, directing the beam from the vrach in every direction. Mountainous debris rained into the ooze. The repulsive seaweed which had draped Y’ha-nthlei from time immemorial withered, flared briefly, then fell away in tangles of black shreds. The beam played across stony balconies and into dark interiors through the gaping orifices in an uncontrollable chain reaction of unstoppable carnage. More and more towers teetered and fell, toppling downward in crumbled heaps of rubble.

By now, virtually all of the creatures that had been in Y’ha-nthlei were finished, utterly wiped out. The churning, ooze-laden water was free of them. Still Vincent swept the glowing radiance over the shattered remains, erasing everything until not one stone was left standing. Yet, even then, he sensed that his task was not finished. Some strange instinct warned him that there was something else here in the ruins of Y’ha-nthlei. Those Deep Ones and shoggoths had been merely secondary inhabitants. The primary source of all the evil in this place dwelt far deeper, below the seabed, just as Cthulhu had lived within R’lyeh. Even now it was aware of him, had been aware for some time. Now the ocean floor shuddered, and heaved. Where the ruins of Y’ha-nthlei lay, the nauseous green radiance increased in brightness. Withdrawing a little way, Vincent watched and waited tensely as the toppled columns and shattered buildings lifted. An enormous head rose from the rubble, a monstrous head surrounded by flailing tentacles that whipped aside the massive blocks in a savage fury.

He felt a shudder of horror and loathing go through him. For an instant he was back on that ship, his mind filled with soul-searing terror as he watched Great Cthulhu emerging from that night-black cavern which had led down into the evil, diabolic heart of R’lyeh. In that split second, with a vast upheaval of the ocean floor, Dagon... for if the old myths were true he knew it could be no other... came fully into view. Parts of the mighty stone foundations of Y’ha-nthlei, which had remained comparatively untouched, were riven and torn as the gelatinous bulk squeezed upward, gigantic tentacles reaching out towards Vincent.

The awful squid head soared high above the demolished city; a single eye glared redly through the water. There was a horrible plasticity about the creature that spoke of alien matter and extraneous spheres, and for a moment Vincent fought desperately against the terror that threatened to freeze his mind. Then, just in time, he caught himself, forced his mind to clear. A writhing tentacle, covered with massive suckers, lunged for him, stirring up the water so that he could scarcely see.

The next second, the eye-searing radiance from the vrach lashed out once more, struck Dagon squarely in the chest, hurling Him back, toppling across the sundered masonry. The cacophonous mental scream of agony hammered at Vincent’s ears so that he involuntary cringed away, shuddering. The vrach had undoubtedly inflicted pain, but Dagon wasn’t finished yet. Hell glared down at Vincent from the towering visage as the crimson eye opened and glared a feral hatred at its tormentor. Somehow the titanic mass lumbered upright, tentacles clutching at broken columns and towers.

Utter nightmare was written in that hellish outline. The gaping maw widened in a bestial grimace, revealing row upon row of serrated teeth. Again the spearing beam struck. Dagon struggled to fight back, to reach the puny human who defied Him with this weapon of the Elder Gods, but already pieces of protoplasmic flesh were shedding away from the corpulent, hideous body. For long seconds Vincent continued to send the beam stabbing into the mountain-high bulk which loomed like a portent of doom over shattered Y’ha-nthlei. Then, wild with rage and frustration, the lashing tentacles thrashed downward. Vincent had a momentary glimpse of the dark shape that surged upward in desperate retreat, leaving behind only a rapidly dispersing trail of evil green luminosity.

For a little while Vincent remained where he was, surveying the remains of Y’ha-nthlei until he was fully satisfied that every living creature that had once inhabited it was dead, finished. The curse, which had lain there since the dim aeons of time before Man's coming, was ended. But now he had started this, he meant to finish it. There was still Innsmouth to take care of. He willed himself back to Devil Reef where he found Susan standing where he had left her. There was no sign of any Deep Ones, either on the reef or in the water between it and the distant waterfront of the town. But he could tell from Susan’s ashen face and the look of horror in her eyes that she had witnessed the flight of Dagon.

“You saw it?” he asked, taking her arm and holding her steady as she leaned against him.

“I saw something.” Some of the terror in her eyes was fading now that he had returned. “It came out of the sea like a meteor, shot up into the sky. What in God’s name was it, Vincent?”

“I’ve no doubt it was Dagon. One of the lesser deities in the pantheon of the Old Ones. Some reckon He was the ancient fish-god mentioned in the Bible as worshipped by the Philistines. Though His origins go back much further than that. But right now there’s one last job to finish. Y’ha-nthlei is no more, and all of the Deep Ones and shoggoths down there have been exterminated. It just remains to finish them all off in Innsmouth.”

Gripping her hand, he meshed with the vrach, taking them to an abandoned building near the waterfront. With Y’ha-nthlei utterly destroyed, Vincent felt imbued with a relentless purpose. Whatever evil had come here with Obed Marsh, it still festered in a multitude of hidden and secret places and he felt no sense of guilt as he used the crystal to bring down the ancient stone buildings and set fire to the flimsy wooden shanties which stretched in stinking rows towards the town centre. Susan sensed the cold hatred that blazed deep within him but said nothing as she walked with him along the squalid alleys.

Behind them they left crumbling ruins and a conflagration that was beginning to sweep in a relentless orange tide inland, fed by the fetid wind from the ocean. Once he was sure that the fire had taken a firm hold, Vincent moved more quickly, sometimes dragging Susan bodily with him, feeling the growing heat on his back.

Occasionally they heard faint, guttural cries from below the stricken buildings, but even here the flames licked downward, driven along subterranean tunnels that had existed for centuries, ever since the town was built. For those trapped below there was no way out. Once or twice a grotesque shape would emerge from the blazing ruins, a scorched and blackened figure, oddly humped, that hopped or slithered for a few yards before collapsing into a smouldering heap.

By the time they reached the central square where the old Gilman House stood, even Vincent was feeling nauseated both by what he had seen and by the fetid stench that swept around them amid the acrid smoke. Now more and more distorted figures appeared. Some attempted to rush at the two but were cut down by the lancing radiance from the vrach, which shrivelled them within seconds. A wake of smouldering corpses filled the streets, adding to the stench.

Like an avenging angel, Vincent turned his attention to the northern sector of Innsmouth. Here there had once been stately Georgian mansions where the wealthy sea merchants had lived before Obed Marsh had begun his evil, devil-spawned trade with the distant islands of the South Pacific. These once-sumptuous buildings were mere shadows of their former grandeur and, more ominously, their topmost windows were enclosed by thick wooden shutters, tightly-fitting casements whose use had been not so much to conceal certain things from sight, as to protect the occupants from the clean, normal light of day.

Susan, gasping and almost fainting from her exertions, somehow managed to remain on her feet as Vincent set about completing his self-imposed task. Half an hour later, she was forced to cling tightly to him as he led her away from the doomed town, back up the hill to where they had left the car. Below them, it was almost impossible to see anything of Innsmouth. Smoke hung like an oily black shroud over it. The fire had done its work well.

Standing beside the Buick, Vincent saw a great gout of red-tongued flame suddenly erupt high into the sky, followed a few seconds later by the sound of an explosion. From its position, he knew that it had been the Marsh Refinery building that had gone up with such a violent detonation. He guessed that large amounts of solvent had been stored there, and once the flames had reached them.

He let his breath go in a long, audible exhalation, realised he had been holding it for a long time. He shuddered as he opened the car door. Even from that distance he imagined he could still hear the hoarse, croaking screams of the Deep Ones and their hybrid spawn as the cleansing fire completed its work of destruction.

The last thing he heard before he got into the car beside Susan and she switched on the engine was a distinctly normal sound compared with those others he had heard in the town, yet it sent an icy tingle brushing up and down his spine. It was a single doleful clang like a church clock striking the hour, and he knew that it had been the bell in that squat-towered church housing the Esoteric Order of Dagon, falling from the Belfry.

Innsmouth was no more...

*

For almost as long as he could remember, John McKinrick had had one strangely disturbing and recurring dream. It could not be rightly classed as a nightmare, although there were certain qualities about its later parts which were frightening in the extreme. Where the central theme had originated, he couldn't say. Had it all begun later in life, he might have been able to ascribe it to the books, both fiction and fact, he had read. Or even the curious influence exerted by Charnwood House. But he could still recall it from his teens, and he did not doubt that his interest in the Old Ones, culled from those ancient and little known texts, had all stemmed from this dream.

It was impressive, but with one odd characteristic. At first, it had been little more than a brief glimpse, repeated each time it came, but then it unfolded a little more like an ongoing saga which was leading him toward some unknown and unguessable goal, some mind-numbing climax which had not yet been reached. Now, shortly after the onset of another night that was long by ordinary terrestrial standards, it assailed his sleeping mind once more, repeating itself up to a certain point. Each individual scene was very graphic with not a single detail changed, except for the ending, over the years.

He was standing somewhere in the open with not a single light showing anywhere and the sky a midnight black above him. The stars stood out brilliantly in the clear, frosty air. Across the wide heavens he saw the changing positions of the stars—not the normal east to west movement of the constellations but the stars themselves, shifting and forming new constellations, stretching and contracting the old, familiar ones into new, alien shapes, the process speeding up until it was impossible for him to follow it and then slowing again until, once more, the star configurations were the same as those he had always known.

Then came the change, the terror which crept insidiously into his dream, adding the nightmarish element; the stars going out one by one, some vanishing in an instant as if swallowed up by the surrounding blackness, others flaring up brilliantly as eye-searing supernovae before fading into oblivion. The darkness took on form... or rather a number of individual forms... things which could scarcely be described, for there were no words to give a proper description of such infernal contradictions of everything he held natural.

From the very beginning he had felt that these recurring visions held some profound and terrible meaning for him, but that some malign and powerful external influence kept him from grasping the significance and meaning behind it all. Then he had come across a number of old and curious books during his university days in Edinburgh, and here he had found hints which, although vague and evasive, gave him an idea of the true meaning of what he was being shown in these dreams.

Until about three years before, this was where his dreams always ended with him jolting awake, his body drenched in perspiration and an icy chill on his limbs. Recently, there had been glimpses of being in a vast vaulted room whose delineations were similar to those within this huge tower but on a far larger and grander scale. Gargantuan stone pillars bearing curious carvings supported the dimly visible ceiling, and again the massive stone blocks were fitted together in such crazy angles that he knew he had to be somewhere close to the Elder Gods. At the far end of the chamber, so remote that it was barely visible, he beheld an enormous dais, but what lay behind it was hidden by a shimmering curtain of liquid fire that looked both ominous and deadly.

It was at this point that he woke... or thought he woke! For he was not lying on the low couch with the others in the room at the end of one of the long radiating corridors. He was standing upright in that vast chamber which had formed the latter part of his dream, his eyes were wide open, a faint, pleasant warmth bathing his body. As he struggled to understand just what was happening, an awesome voice resonated inside his bemused mind:

“You are not dreaming and there is no need for fear. There was a time when you spoke with one of my Brothers, He of the Great Abyss, to ask His aid. Now I have brought you here for you are the one who has known of Us the longest and has accepted Our existence. You have successfully fulfilled part of your quest and discovered the whereabouts of that which was stolen and hidden long ago where even We could not see it.”

“The weapon stolen by Axaroth!” McKinrick spoke softly, his voice hushed, yet it seemed to vibrate into every corner of the immense chamber.

“Yes, for such it is. The Deceiver used His powers well to beguile Us, and it is fortunate that He lacked the knowledge to use it for His own mischief, for such is the power of the phthath that it could destroy the entire universe and banish both Ourselves and Those whom you call the Old Ones to those infinitely Higher Spheres from which We came. It is not right that Our plan should be thus thwarted. Our fear is that Axaroth will seek to retrieve it and that, during those long aeons of His incarceration, He has learned too much. It may be that in His dreaming he has learned its secrets and He will use it to wipe out everything that has been created within this continuum, for Their ultimate aim is to return all to primal chaos, to replace the order which We imposed upon your universe.”

“Then why do you not seek it out, now that you know where it lies?” McKinrick asked. “Surely it would be safe in Your hands?”

“If only it were as simple as that.” There came a mental sigh. “But that cannot be done. The Deceiver was more devious in His ways than We knew. He obtained knowledge which even We did not know existed; knowledge from a time before time. A dark, arcane wisdom with which he conjured a spell just as potent as those We used to contain Our enemies. That is what protects the phthath; that, and certain guardians about which we know little.”

“Yet I somehow sense that you are asking us to seek this... phthath... and maybe even use it against the Old Ones,” McKinrick retorted harshly. “But if You cannot do it, what chance is there for us?”

“Like the spells which held the Old Ones in check throughout the ages, that which Axaroth placed upon the phthath is effective only against Us. You, and all the other races within your galaxy, are unaffected by it. Yet We are not unaware of the dangers associated with its retrieval, nor that Axaroth will do everything within His power to gain it for Himself. Time is short, and there is much you need to know and certain preparations to be made.”

“You seem certain that we’ll agree to do this,” McKinrick said, inwardly surprised at his audacity. He felt suddenly uneasy, wondering what was coming next. Something like a faint chuckle of amusement sounded in his mind. The shimmering curtain in front of the dais suddenly dimmed, sank out of sight, revealing what lay at the back of it. For an instant he was blinded by the awesome brilliance which came pouring out, lighting everything within the vast room. If the fiery curtain had been bright, this was a thousand times more eye-searing; a chiaroscuro of scintillant motion in which it was virtually impossible to make out any details. Only gradually did his eyes become sufficiently accustomed to the radiant transplendency to detect the rising and falling convolutions within the pure white shaft of light. He pulled in a deep breath, forced himself to remain upright, his eyes narrowed to mere slits.

The prodigious voice came again, echoing across the plains of his brain.

“You have seen for yourself how We created the galaxies and formed them into stars and planets following the creation of this universe. In thus doing, We created you and all other creatures. In you there is a part of Ourselves, that spark of eternal wisdom and belief which will enable you to overcome this evil and chaos which is now threatening your worlds. You have been given free will, the ability to distinguish between that which you call good from that which is evil, even though We Ourselves are above all good and evil. You, and those with you, have followed Our ways from the beginning, just as there are those who have followed the ways of chaos. There is, however, one among you who has a greater power than any others, as was told you by Nodens. He it is who must undertake this quest.”

“Then if you have all knowledge, you must know whether or not he will succeed.”

“Again you look upon Us as All-Powerful. That is not so. There are many futures and even if We were to see all of them, it is not possible to predict which will come to pass. Omnipotent as We may appear, in this continuum, as in many others, there is a force even greater than We, one which rules even Us. Your race calls it Fate and it is that which ultimately decides that which is to happen, no matter how hard We attempt to influence things. Edmund Trevelyan will be given all the knowledge and means We have to aid him in his search. The vrach is no longer here; that We know. But no matter, there are others and he will not go forth in his search alone. Now return. Your own work here is not yet finished. There still remains much for you to do.”

Before McKinrick could reply, before he could ask any more of his unanswered questions, the sparkling curtain of fire obliterated the figure of the Elder God, and an instant later, without any conscious awareness of the transition, he found himself lying on the low couch, eyes staring uncomprehendingly at the ceiling, almost believing that what had happened had been nothing more than a continuation of his dream... except that there were bright after-images of that stupendous radiance still dancing in front of his vision.

CHAPTER SEVEN

With Y’ha-nthlei destroyed, Dagon driven into the interplanetary deeps, and Innsmouth raised to the ground in a holocaust of fire, Vincent Trevelyan expected the Old Ones to strike back in fury. Certainly they would never allow this act to go unavenged. Yet for two days following Vincent and Susan's return to the university there were few indications of the expected Rage. Further earth tremors were reported, and a secret communication received at the Carter Organisation’s headquarters warned of planetary debris heading towards Earth from the destruction of Saturn and its system of moons. Nothing of the latter was made public.

On the second day, however, word was received from two widely-separated sources, detailing two different events, both of which were important to the Organisation. Observers at the Parkes Observatory in New South Wales, using their sixty-four metre radio-telescope, had picked up surges of extremely powerful radio emissions from a source very close to the galactic centre. Initial reaction among the radio-astronomers was one of high excitement with suggestions of a quasar at the heart of the galaxy. Certainly the intense radio emission from this object was on a par with that of known quasars, although quite how this tremendous powerhouse of energy had suddenly erupted within the galaxy they could not explain.

To those at the Organisation’s headquarters the answer was obvious. Deep within the galactic core Azathoth was now devouring suns at an even more alarming rate. Where the closely-packed stars had once clustered, so densely packed that scarcely a light-year separated them, these were now gone, annihilated, their atoms disrupted, their fiery furnaces extinguished.

The second piece of information came from a small archaeological expedition digging at a site in Eastern Ethiopia. But whereas the first report had received worldwide publication, the second was broadcast telepathically by an Organisation member, Angus Hannah, who had, at the Organisation's instigation, joined the expedition as an observer. The Organisation’s interest came from a paper in an obscure journal, written by the team’s leader, Doctor Peter Durbridge, a little over a year before. In it he quoted several passages from a source, immediately identified by the Organisation as the Pnakotic Manuscripts, which related to ‘The hidden door which stands at the end of the infinite path for Him Who Knows No Bounds’. From other references taken from the same tone, Durbridge believed that this specific statement referred to some incredibly ancient site of a lost civilisation, which possibly existed long before those of Sumer and Ancient Egypt.

From their own researches, the Organisation had long been aware that the Pnakotic Manuscripts, along with many similar monstrous books, hidden down the ages and consulted only by small groups of mystics since the beginning of recorded history, not only had a reliable basis in fact but gave descriptions and locations which were, if one could translate them properly, highly accurate.

Now it seemed Durbridge and his small team had discovered something in the remote region, something so significant that they wished to keep it secret from the outside world. Whether they knew what they had found, Vincent wasn’t sure. He himself had a growing certainty, and it was this that made him nervous. He had read much of the Pnakotic Manuscripts in McKinrick’s library, had shuddered at the monstrous hints and suggestions which were contained within that dreadful pre-human text. He Who Knows No Bounds could only be Yog-Sothoth, and somehow Durbridge and his team had located that gateway by which Yog-Sothoth could enter this four-dimensional world.

“If that’s what they’ve discovered, it has to be sealed before they have a chance of opening it,” he told Susan. “At the moment, Yog-Sothoth is in that extraneous continuum where I encountered Him. He needs a gateway to break through, and this could be it. Does anyone know anything about this Doctor Durbridge?”

“Actually we know quite a lot about him.” Susan went over to a small metal filing cabinet in one corner of her office, pulled open a drawer, and withdrew a slim file which she brought across to her desk, pulling the desktop lamp a little closer as she sat down. Opening the file, she riffled through the pages. “Born in Bristol in 1929. Both parents killed during the war; he was brought up by an aunt. She died when he was twenty-three, leaving him very well provided for and this, together with what he inherited from his parents, gave him ample means to indulge himself. Apparently he spent much of his time abroad in many different places, all well off the beaten track. A high-ranking Freemason, he seems to have an exceptional interest in the occult, collecting rare books from a number of sources as well as consulting those in the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris, the British Museum, the Widener Library in Harvard and the Boston Library in Copley Square. Whatever he found among those delvings clearly prompted him to fund his expeditions. Those we know of include one deep into the Amazonian rainforest, one to some region of Somalia, and now this one in Ethiopia.”

“From what you’re saying, he seems to have developed an intense interest in the Old Ones, and I’d say this latest expedition bears that out. It’s a wonder he wasn’t recruited for the Organisation.”

“Don’t think we didn’t consider it. Unfortunately, it appears that his interest in the Old Ones is a little different from ours.”

“In what way?” Vincent asked.

Susan smiled grimly. “It would seem that, like ourselves, Durbridge believes in the existence of the Old Ones, but he’s a pronounced egoist, a power-seeker, and our belief is that he's searching for evidence of the Old Ones in order to gain that power.”

Vincent cocked his head to one side. “You’re telling me that his aim is to call up the Old Ones in the hope that he’ll be able to control Them and get what he wants?”

“It’s been tried before over the ages,” Susan replied. “That’s our feeling, and over the past few years we’ve been keeping him under observation. What we know at the moment hasn’t changed our opinion.”

“Damn! That’s all we need.”

Susan closed the file. “Can you stop him?”

“I’ve got to.” Vincent's mind was already hard at work, probing the options open to him. It required a certain knowledge to open one of these infernal gateways to those outer realms and call forth Those who waited on the other side, ravening for entry into this normal space-time continuum. Such knowledge was not easy to acquire. Nevertheless, he had to go on the assumption that Durbridge did possess that dread wisdom and, in his supreme folly, believed that he could extort from Yog-Sothoth everything he desired in return for bringing the Old One through the gate.

“Can you get there with that... crystal?” Susan had seen with her own eyes what had happened in Innsmouth, but it was still hard to believe.

“I can. But I need some means of pinpointing my objective.” Vincent also felt he had to talk with the Organisation's agent in the expedition and get some idea of what exactly was happening, preferably without Durbridge even suspecting his presence. Abruptly he realised that Angus Hannah would provide him with the means of accomplishing both of his objectives, just so long as Hannah possessed the telepathic abilities which had been conferred on most members of the Organisation. But, of course, he did. That was how the Organisation had just learned of what had happened in Ethiopia. “I think I know how I can do it,” he said. “All I need is an accurate location to fix on, and Hannah can provide that if I can contact him.” He forced himself to concentrate, thought the name: Angus Hannah. Angus Hannah.

Almost immediately the reply came back: Yes? Who is this?

Are you still with Doctor Durbridge’s expedition?

Yes. But who are you?

Vincent Trevelyan. I’m at the Carter Organisation’s headquarters in Arkham. It’s vitally important I should reach you at once. Can you get away from the others, particularly Doctor Durbridge?

Vincent Trevelyan? A long pause, then Hannah’s mental vibrations continued: Weren’t you part of Professor McKinrick’s team in England?

That’s right.

But we understood you were killed. How—?

There’s no time to go into that now. I assure you I’m very much alive. Now It’s imperative you do exactly as I say. I’ll explain everything when I get there, but at the moment it’s important that no one else knows about this. I want you to go somewhere out of sight of the others and then form a clear mental image of your surroundings so that I can get an accurate fix on you. Do you understand?

I understand but— There was a detectable note of consternation in Hannah’s thoughts.

Don’t ask questions. Just do it.

Very well. The others, including Doctor Durbridge, are down in the tunnel at the moment. Just give me five minutes.

Sighing, Vincent waited, aware that Susan was watching him narrowly. She may have picked up a little of the mental conversation, although he knew she would not deliberately intrude on it.

Then: I’m out of sight of the camp, Vincent.

Good. Now turn slowly full circle and take in everything you can see; form as powerful and accurate a mental picture as you can, and I’ll home in on it.

Vincent took the vrach from his pocket, held it firmly in both hands and concentrated even harder. Gradually the picture formed in his mind. There was a range of tall mountains far off on a sun-drenched horizon and, closer at hand, a rocky trail that led down the side of a steep slope. The image moved slowly across his mental awareness, and he knew that Hannah was turning on his heel to take note of the entire panoramic view around him.

Once he had the complete picture firmly imprinted in his mind, Vincent meshed his psyche with that of the vrach, glimpsed for an instant the rapidly twirling triple helix and willed himself to where Angus Hanna was standing on a rocky hillside in Ethiopia.

*

Vincent stood quite still. Hot sunlight poured onto his shoulder and struck the top of his head as if he had thrust it straight into a furnace. The man standing three feet away on a rocky outcrop uttered a short gasp of surprise at his sudden materialisation, backed a couple of paces before pulling himself tautly together.

“How the hell—?” Hannah began harshly.

Vincent grinned. “From what I’ve been told, you’re a member of the Organisation. You must know we have certain artefacts of the Elder Gods. This is one of them.” He indicated the glittering carmine crystal, saw Hannah’s eyes widen.

“I know of these.” Hannah indicated the Akkadian crystal he wore about his neck. “But only as a form of protection against the minions of the Old Ones. But that—that must be really something if it can transport you all the way from Arkham in no time at all.”

“Believe me, it has other powers. Some of which I may have to use here if this place is what I suspect. Now I want you to fill me in as briefly as possible about what you’ve found here.” While he had been speaking Vincent had been taking a close look around him. It was a desolate region with only the one track as far as he could see, and from where they stood it was impossible to guess where it led, for it twisted sharply out of sight some fifty feet below. A foot from where they stood a long stony shelf hid them from the view of anyone in the direction of where the camp lay.

Motioning him to follow, Hannah walked cautiously along the base of the ledge until they reached the end. “The camp is on the plateau just on the other side,” he cautioned. “There are only a couple of porters there. The other three are down the tunnel like I said.”

An inch at a time, Vincent moved his head to one side to risk a glance around the lip of the ledge. A little less than a hundred yards away, four tents stood bathed in the strong sunlight. Two natives squatted on the rock, their backs to him. There was no sign of anyone else.

Beyond the tents a smooth rock-face loomed for perhaps three hundred feet towards a roughly serrated crest that ran away into the distance until it fell sharply away into a wide fold in the ground. Several stunted bushes grew along the base of the wall, and he could see where a number of these had been burned, revealing a dark, roughly semi-circular opening.

Withdrawing his head, he asked: “Do you have any idea how Durbridge knew of this site? After all, it must be miles from civilisation, and somehow I get the feeling it wasn’t a hit-and-miss affair.”

“He doesn’t talk much about that, but you’re right. From the beginning, when he was first planning this expedition, he seemed to know exactly where to come. He’s talked about some old books he’s read, and I’m sure that’s where he got his information.”

“I don’t doubt it. If what we know of him is true, he’s been searching for this place for a long time.”

“But why? That’s something he won’t discuss with the rest of us. From what I’ve seen down there, this is no ordinary archaeological site. There’s something down there; something I don’t understand, although I get the impression that he knows what it is.”

Vincent took another look at the distant opening, speculating on how far that tunnel penetrated below the rock. The entrance had been entirely hidden by the bushes. Doubtless, he mused, burning them would have been quicker and easier than trying to uproot them from the hard ground, or cut them down. Somehow Durbridge had known this exact spot in all these thousands of square miles of desolation, had come directly to it. This thought worried Vincent more than he cared to admit. Even if Durbridge had managed to consult the Pnakotic Manuscripts and translate that pre-human language, the information there would not have given the location so accurately that he could come directly here, to this exact spot. There must have been some other source of information, and Vincent felt a sudden rush of horror as he reached the only possible conclusion.

That information must have come directly from Yog-Sothoth! The Old One had, by some means, led Durbridge directly here. And this, in turn, meant that he was being used and controlled by the Old One. If the situation had not been so fraught with danger, it would have been ironic. Durbridge clearly believed that once he had brought Yog-Sothoth through the gate, the Old One would grant all of his desires, rather like the genie in the bottle. It would never have occurred to him that he was being used, just like all the other minions and worshippers of the Old Ones down the ages who had discovered, to their cost, that the only things which the Old Ones granted were eternal torture and damnation.

“Do you know what it is we’ve found down there?” Hannah spoke in a low, urgent whisper.

Vincent gave a terse nod. “I'm pretty sure it’s one of those damnable gateways into the Outer regions. There was one in Scotland, which my uncle discovered and succeeded in closing. He managed to banish Nyarlathotep, but I suspect that may have been only a temporary success.”

“And you reckon that’s why Durbridge is here... to close this gateway?”

Vincent shook his head grimly. “The message I get from what’s happening here is that he’s hoping to open it.”

“What! Surely he wouldn’t be so bloody stupid as to try that!”

“I’m afraid he would. And if he’s read the whole of the Pnakotic Manuscripts, then you can be damned sure he knows the correct words for doing it.”

“Then we have to stop him.” Hannah was still trying to absorb all of this new information. “I never guessed he had that in mind when I joined this expedition.”

“It is indeed fortunate for us that you did join him. Otherwise we would never have known of this danger.” Vincent crouched down at the base of the ledge, squatting in its shadow. The glare of the afternoon sun beat oppressively on his head and neck. It wouldn’t do to risk sunstroke. Pulling Hannah down beside him, he said urgently: “Tell me what’s down there, in that tunnel. How far down does it go?”

Hannah hesitated, then sank down beside him. “It goes down a long way, through the rock. A mile, maybe, possibly further. There are carvings on the walls, hideous images of things that aren’t even remotely human. At the bottom, the shaft widens considerably into a kind of cavern with huge pillars and more figures, and at the back of the cave, something I can’t describe. It’s as if there’s a peculiar optical effect there which blurs everything. You try to look at it, but when you look away and back again, it’s something different.”

Vincent nodded in understanding. “It’s a gateway, all right. That’s the way I’d describe one.” He sucked in a deep breath. “I have to get down there and without being seen. That means I’ll have to stay out of sight until it’s dark.” He looked around him, searching for a suitable spot. It was unlikely any of the team would stray far from the camp, but he didn’t want to take any unnecessary chances.

Vincent could have gone to the gateway direct, he realised that, but he wanted to take a good look at those carvings which Hannah insisted were present on the tunnel walls, and he didn’t want to emerge inside the gateway itself. Also, and more importantly, he wanted to keep an eye on Durbridge. If the man was a fanatic (as he suspected), then he would do everything in his power to prevent that gateway being permanently closed. Furthermore, for all His power, Yog-Sothoth could not pass through it unless the proper invocations were made, and almost certainly, Durbridge was aware of this; the chances were that he knew those incantations.

“If there’s anything I can do to help,” Hannah began.

“There is. I’m going to find myself a place out of this dammed sun and wait there until nightfall. I want you to go back now before you’re missed. Do you think you can get your hands on a torch? Bring it to me after dark.”

“All right. That’s no problem. But be careful. For some reason Durbridge has been on edge the past couple of days and, although he’ll never suspect anyone else is in the vicinity, he sometimes stays awake all night, prowling around the camp. A couple of nights ago he went down into the tunnel shortly after midnight.”

“Thanks for the information. I appreciate it,” Vincent told him. He threw a quick glance into the craggy jumble of rocks to the right, and pointed. “I’ll be up there.”

Ten minutes later, he was crouched in a low hollow, out of the sun’s direct rays, his back against the hot rock. Through a narrow crack between two large boulders he was able to keep an eye on the camp below him without any risk of being spotted. The place was silent, although occasionally brief snatches of conversation drifted up to him when Hannah was speaking to the two natives. A little over half an hour later there was further activity. He caught sight of movement within the tunnel mouth, and three men came out. The oldest man with grey hair and a lined face, he guessed to be Durbridge. All three, he noticed, carried guns in holsters strapped around their waists. One of them called to Hannah, spoke briefly, and then all four of them went into the largest tent.

Vincent settled down to wait. The air was suffocatingly hot, and he was perspiring freely. Slowly the shadow of the rock at his back travelled across the hard, stony ground. Once the sun set he knew there would be very little twilight and the temperature would commence to fall quickly. The harsh sun-glare, reflected from the rocks, hurt his eyes and he closed them against it, leaning his head back. He must have unknowingly fallen asleep, for when he opened his eyes again it was dark and a bitter icy chill had soaked into his body, numbing his limbs. He stretched out his legs to ease them, wincing a little as the returning circulation brought sharp stabs of agony.

Then, as he redirected all of his attention to his surroundings, he heard the faint sound of a dislodged stone clattering down the slope, gathering others as it descended. Tensing himself, he forced his chilled muscles into motion, eased himself back against the rockface, going down into a half-crouch. A dark shape moved into sight around a boulder. A hissed whisper reached him, allowing him to relax as he recognised Hannah’s voice.

“It’s only me.”

He sank back, and a moment later Hannah crouched beside him, thrusting something hard and metallic into his hands.

“I’ve brought you a torch, Vincent. Wexford and Thornley have turned in for the night, but Durbridge is still up. He’s in his tent at the moment, but like I said earlier he might decide to go back into the tunnel, so watch your step.”

“Thanks.” Vincent took the torch, thrust into his pocket. “You’re sure they don’t suspect anything?”

“Not a thing,” Hannah told him. “But I’ve got a feeling something is about to happen—and soon. I overheard Durbridge talking to Wexford an hour ago, and I’m sure the name Yog-Sothoth was mentioned.”

“Then that clinches it. The sooner I seal that dammed gate, the better.” Vincent forced himself to his feet. The chill was still deep in his limbs, but at least they responded.

“Would you like me to come with you?” Hannah asked. “I know the way and—“”

Vicent cut him off with a shake of his head. “Don’t think I wouldn’t appreciate your company. This is something I have to do alone. Besides, Durbridge may notice you’re gone.”

“Very well. But take care.”

“I will,” Vincent promised. “Now get back to your tent and leave this to me.” He waited until Hannah had slipped away into the darkness, then began a cautious descent, worming his way along the broad ledge into he came in full view of the campsite. A couple of lights were burning in one of the tents, and he made out a dark, indistinct shadow thrown onto the canvas. That would be Durbridge, he thought. Hannah had already reached the camp, and he now saw him duck beneath the flap of a darkened tent and disappear.

Keeping one wary eye on the illuminated tent, Vincent moved carefully around the perimeter of the plateau, watching where he put his feet, making no sound. There was a sudden movement at the camp where a fire had been lit, voices speaking in low tones. He tensed, stood stock still, then relaxed slightly. It was only the two natives, crouched near the flames. He felt sure they would keep as far away as possible from this tunnel. Ancient myths and legends tended to cluster around these places, stories from an old time that were never quite forgotten.

Wincing as thorny branches clawed at his hands, he worked his way forward until the dark yawning mouth of the opening showed clearly in the faint starlight. There was no moon visible, a fact for which he was grateful.

Five minutes later he was inside the tunnel, feeling his way forward for fifty yards before he dared switch on the torch. For a little way, just inside the entrance, the tunnel floor had been level, but now it declined somewhat and, curiously, the air coming up from the stygian depths seemed warmer than that outside. It carried with it an odd, acrid odour that bit at the back of his throat, making him want to cough.

In the torchlight, the carvings on the rough walls were clearly visible, and as Hannah had told him they were not pleasant to look at. There was nothing to even suggest any human connection. In the main, these petroglyphs depicted hideous saurian creatures representing some race unknown to the mass of mankind. He saw other creatures of an even more repellent nature whose outlines were inconceivably alien. Something clicked in Vincent’s mind as he edged downward. That great volume in the library on Glyu-Vho, at least ten thousand years old, which his uncle had succeeded in translating. It had mentioned the serpent race, which had preceded mankind on Earth. And it spoke of the monstrous creatures, even older, which the serpent men had encountered in Africa during their forays across the continent, those worshippers of amorphous Tsathoggua.

Thus he hoped that this gateway was not one to that polymorphous Old One brought to Earth from the stars millions of years before. Certainly the ancient texts all claimed that Tsathoggua had been worshipped in some great subterranean temple in Africa, but this was supposed to be somewhere near the Ruwenzori Mountains and not as far north as this.

Ahead of him the tunnel progressed deeper into the earth, and the further he went, the warmer it became; a dry, throat-biting wind moaned and murmured through clefts in the rocky walls. Once he came across a side-passage on his left but this was suggestively low, as if designed for creatures that slithered on their bellies rather than walked upright like men.

The tunnel went on for another half mile, then turned right, then became a stairway, but even here the steps had not been shaped for human feet. They were long and narrow, sloping downward rather than horizontal. His progress slowed as he struggled to keep his balance, at times clutching at the rough wall to stop himself from toppling forward. He checked his watch, holding the torch close to the circular face; almost forty minutes had passed since he had entered the tunnel. Hannah has said that it stretched for possibly a mile, and he had not underestimated it. What alien hands had chiselled this monstrous shaft deep into the hard rock? For it was plain to see, from the deep gouges on either side and along the roof, that it had been dug and was not a natural formation.

A few minutes more and then the tunnel widened abruptly. Now there was light of a kind; a diffuse greenish glow which came from somewhere still far below him. After he had descended a little further, it became strong enough for him to switch off the torch and return it to his pocket. Now he was able to use both hands to steady himself against the rock walls. He had come out onto a broad ledge. Some fifty feet below him a huge cavern lay spread out. Ahead and below he saw the source of the light. Twin monoliths stood like grim sentinels, fantastically carven, near the further wall, and between them was a shimmering net of luminosity that sent a pattern of grotesque shadows across the cavern floor.

Vincent immediately saw that Hannah had not been mistaken when he had said something made it impossible to discern things clearly in that particular direction. There was a curious blurring effect, which made Vincent’s eyes twist horribly so that he quickly averted his gaze. There were other pillars supporting the vaulted ceiling, but they stood closer at hand and their outlines were relatively sharp, so much so that even from where he stood, he could make out the hideous ideoglyphs that adorned their smooth sides. A large carved altar stood between and just in front of the massive columns and he imagined that its upper surface looked oddly discoloured where the shimmering radiance fell on it.

Here the hot wind was stronger, blowing from some deeper levels, stinging his eyes and face. It was as he considered the possible location of this upsurge in current that he heard something. It was only a faint sound, but down there it echoed loudly. It came from behind him, the sound of a stealthy footstep!

Swiftly he flung himself to one side, out of sight. He could think of only one person likely to be coming down that long tunnel at this time of night—Durbridge!

Two minutes later the shadowy figure emerged from the tunnel mouth where it widened into the cavern. In the pale light Vincent recognised the tall, grey-haired man he had seen earlier. Durbridge held a torch in one hand and what looked like a small urn in the other. Without even glancing in the direction where Vincent lay, pressing himself hard against the rock, Durbridge continued downward until he was standing immediately in front of the altar, flanked by the two guardian monoliths. His face looked ghastly in the green light, his eyes gleaming fiercely with a form of almost reverential madness.

Holding his breath, Vincent eased himself onto his knees and peered down through a narrow cleft in the rocks. What the hell did the man intend doing? The answer came to him a couple of minutes later when Durbridge moved to one side and, bending, began sprinkling something from the urn onto the floor, moving slowly until the powder had formed a wide semi-circle in front of the altar. Vincent tensed, fumbling in his pocket for the vrach. The damned fool was going to perform the Rite of Opening now!

Down below, Durbridge stepped back, placed the urn carefully on the cavern floor, then set the powder alight. It burned with bright green flames, giving off clouds of oleaginous smoke, which, for a few moments, hid everything as it curled upward around the monoliths, driven towards the distant ceiling by the sweeping updraft of hot air that now increased in savage force until it became a howling gale. Yet although Vincent could feel it tearing at him, threatening to hurl him back against the rough rock face, it appeared to have no effect on the man standing before the altar.

Durbridge had drawn himself tautly erect, his arms were raised as he made a series of cabalistic motions with his hands. Desperately Vincent fought against the wind, struggled to remain upright as the demonic blast pushed savagely at him. Clawing for support at an upthrusting tongue of rock, he stepped forward. Down below, Durbridge had caught the faint sound, for he suddenly whirled, dropped his arms, reached for something at his waist. When his hand came up, it was holding a gun.

He must have thought he had been followed by one of his own team, for he held his fire, opened his lips to shout. Then he saw Vincent and his eyes widened. “Who the hell—?" Stunned surprise flashed across his lined features, but he recovered himself in an instant. The next second he squeezed the trigger. Vincent heard the bullet strike the rock within inches of his head. There was a shrill, angry whine as it ricocheted into the distance. Durbridge fired a second time but Vincent had already dived for cover, his shoulder and ribs striking a protrusion of rock with brutal force.

A searing stab of agony flared along his arm, numbing the muscles, and the vrach flew from his nerveless fingers. A third shot went wild over his prone body as he forced air into his bruised chest. Frantically he looked for the vrach, searching desperately with scrabbling fingers among the dark shadows.

Then he saw it, a couple of yards away, wedged in a triangular crack. Down below, probably believing that one of his shots had found its mark and that this mysterious intruder was either dead or wounded, Durbridge thrust the weapon back into its holster and commenced the ritual, calling the words in a sonorous, hoarse voice that echoed eerily throughout the entire chamber. The booming syllables hammered at Vincent’s ears as he fought to free the crystal, tugging at it in desperation. By the time it came free and he had pushed himself upright, Durbridge had almost finished.

His face glowed hellishly in the glaucous radiance, his eyes bulging from their sockets as he faced the altar. Between the mighty, obscenely-inscribed stone blocks, the glittering web of light was pulsing horribly. Shapes and shadows formed across its surface as it brightened. The misting coalesced into something resembling solidity, then faded, came back again as something struggled to break through. Durbridge had almost completed his demonic adjuration. There was no time to be lost. Vincent knew the man still had the gun, that there were still bullets in it, and he would not hesitate to shoot him. Durbridge was too far gone in his insane obsession to obtain a supernatural power from Yog-Sothoth.

Gripping the vrach tightly, Vincent ran towards the curiously delineated steps and raced down them, holding the crystal in front of him. Durbridge was standing with his back to him like a man in a trance, arms upraised. If he was aware of Vincent’s presence, that he was still alive, still a threat to him, he gave no outward sign, certain in the knowledge that within seconds a gate would be open and that whatever came through would be more than sufficient to take care of any intruder.

Swiftly Vincent meshed his mind with the vrach, conjured up the rapidly spinning helix in his consciousness, focused on it, mentally intoning the terrible formula for sealing these abhorrent gateways. Durbridge uttered a final shriek, arms outstretched, fingers pointing straight at the glimmering tracery of light. The gateway was opening!

Something dark as night took shape, moving slowly forward as if approaching from some vast distance. A nigrescent, formless mass thrust out of the scintillant curtain, parted it, seemed to grow blindly for a moment. Then it sensed Durbridge, heaved at his body, fastening on it. For a second Vincent had the impression it actually penetrated the man’s body. Durbridge’s head snapped back. His mouth was wide open, but no sound came out. His neck muscles were corded and his spine seemed to arch in an impossible position.

The next instant the vrach in Vincent’s fingers came alive. Carmine fire lashed from it, struck the evilly glowing refulgence between the monoliths. Crimson flared wherever the beam fastened onto the virescent glow, spread like wildfire. Where it touched the horrible columns, the crimson ran down them in streams of liquid fire. Like magma, it bubbled and hissed.

Suddenly the cavern was filled with a roar of savage frustration. It was a sound such as Vincent had never heard before and certainly wished never to hear again. It came from nowhere within the chamber but from unfathomed abysses outside of normal space and time. The writhing, twisting appendage, which still clutched Durbridge in its grasp was utterly withdrawn into the fading curtain of light. Seconds later the glow snapped out of existence. There were only the altar and the grey stone menhirs, all now utterly lifeless. Durbridge was gone, and all that remained was a fading echo of that terrible cry.

*

There was no need for Vincent to walk all the way back up through the tunnel. Using the vrach, he simply conjured up an image in his mind of the campsite as he had last seen it and teleported himself to the spot just outside of the tents. He found all of the expedition members clustered in a small group near the fire. One of them had evidently thrown more wood onto it, for it was beginning to blaze furiously, throwing a shower of red sparks high into the cold, still air. His sudden materialisation brought the two natives to their feet. For a couple of seconds they stared at him then, uttering wild shrieks, they turned and fled down the rough hillside, their robes fluttering about them like wings.

Two men, evidently Thornley and Wexford, had been talking animatedly just as Vincent appeared. Now they stared at him, open-mouthed. Then the taller of the two found his voice with an obvious effort. “Who—? How in hell—?”

“Who I am is immaterial,” Vincent said harshly. “Angus here knows, and no doubt he’ll fill you in when I’ve gone. Now, which of you is Wexford?”

“I am.” Wexford answered.

“Were you anything to do with that sound we heard a little while ago?” Hannah interrupted. “It definitely came from somewhere in the tunnel.”

“Doctor Durbridge must have gone into the tunnel,” Thornley said hoarsely. “He’s not in his tent and—”

“Doctor Durbridge is no longer... ” Vincent was going to say ‘alive’ but changed his mind, “... on this Earth. He meddled in things he knew little about, things best left alone. Whether or not you’re aware of it, that blasphemous thing down there was a gateway leading to horrors you can’t imagine, not even in your wildest nightmares. He knew the formula for opening it, and maybe he hoped he could control what he was trying to bring through. I had to stop him.”

“You’ve killed him?” Thornley took a step forward. He still seemed in shock at seeing Vincent there, and his hand went towards the gun he had strapped around his waist.

Vincent shook his head. “I didn’t kill him, although he tried to kill me. Something was trying to come through; almost certainly it would have if I hadn’t prevented it. And believe me, if it had emerged fully into this world, there’d have been more horror and destruction then you’ve ever dreamed of. Durbridge failed in his attempt, and the price of that failure was his own life.” He paused, then went on solemnly: “At least, I hope for his sake that he is dead.”

“You’re insane!” Wexford snapped. “I don’t know who you are, or how you got here, but that cavern down there is the first real evidence we have that there was a civilised race on this planet before mankind. It’s clearly nothing less than a pre-human temple. As Doctor Durbridge’s assistant I’ve been with him, planning this expedition for almost five years. He’s discussed everything with me.”

“Not everything,”" Vincent said firmly. “You see, I know he's mentioned the name Yog-Sothoth to you.”

“So what?” Wexford gave a shrug of his shoulders. “One of the supposed gods of this primal race. Nothing more. A myth. Are you suggesting that Durbridge was trying to conjure Him up out of thin air?”

Vincent ignored the marked note of derision in Wexford’s tone. “I'm not suggesting anything. I’m telling you. Yog-Sothoth exists, and anyone foolish enough to try to call Him up will go the same way as your leader. There’s no point in going down there to look for him. You’ll never find him. I’ve sealed that gateway, and hopefully that’s the end of it... here, anyway.”

“You’re talking in riddles!” Thornley snapped. “Either you’ve killed Durbridge to get all of the glory for yourself, or you’re a madman.” His right hand began to move closer to the holster.

Almost effortlessly Vincent joined his mind with that of the vrach and pictured Susan Thaxton’s office in the Carter Organisation’s headquarters.

Thornley, pulling the gun from its holster, his finger tight on the trigger, uttered a gasp of utter disbelief as he stared at the distant cliff face through the spot where Vincent had been standing. He was totally unaware that the gun had dropped with a clatter onto the ground at his feet.

CHAPTER EIGHT

The next time the summons came from the Elder Gods, all five were transported into that vast chamber. One second they were in the room with the lines of volumes raged around the walls, and the next they were standing before the great dais, barely aware of the translocation. Even though he had been here before, McKinrick staggered, sucked in a gasp of air to steady himself. For the others it was a shocking experience from which they took a little time to adjust and recover their poise. Even if they had known it was coming, it would have taken them a while to cope with the change and what they saw.

“Where is this place?” Vansing Lai asked in hushed tones.

“The chamber of one of the Elder Gods,” McKinrick answered. “This is where I was told that you, Edmund, have been singled out to search for the phthath. And it may be that—” He broke off sharply as that awesome voice spoke within their minds:

“I have brought you here, all of you, so that you may be told what each of you must do if Those who rebelled against Us long aeons are to be finally vanquished. Know you that while there are many futures, some of which even We cannot see clearly, ever since you first set out on this quest, each of you has been guided by Us. This We have done in order that the particular future We have ordained for the universe might come to pass. It is not chance, nor coincidence, which has resulted in the five of you being present here at this time, while one of you is back on your own world destroying the followers of Those who oppose Us.” The pause that followed left an ominous silence within the chamber, a stillness so absolute that it held a terrifying quality. Then the thoughts came again: “Each of you has a task to fulfil. Edmund Trevelyan, upon you falls the most difficult and dangerous mission, to obtain the phthath from where it was concealed by the Deceiver. Should you fail, all will fail. You have discovered where it lies from that which was written long ago by that ancient scribe whom We called here as others of your race may be called in ages yet to come. You have little time in which to fulfil your task, for even now Axaroth stirs from His spell-induced slumber.”

“Then He is not free like the Others?” Edmund asked.

“Because of His treachery, We saw to it that He will be the last to lose His shackles. But those sigils and words of power that bind Him will soon be broken. He is the Unknown One among all of the Old Ones. None have followed or worshipped Him since time began. Only when He hears Shub-Niggurath howl in the eternal darkness will He be freed from His bondage.”

“And what of the rest of us?” McKinrick asked. “What must we do?”

“Your individual tasks will also be fraught with danger,” came the reply. “All of the Old Ones are aware of Their danger should the phthath fall into hands other than Axaroth’s. They have made Their own preparations. Rather than risk banishment from this universe, or even perhaps Their total dissolution, They will attempt to flee to Their own places where They were once incarcerated, for there They have woven Their own magic during the long ages They were imprisoned. Cthulhu back to R’lyeh, Cthugha to that red star near the one you call Fomalhaut, Hastur to the Lake of Hali, Shub-Niggurath to that unknown world which has been visited by only one human in its history, for which act of folly he paid the ultimate price. It will be your tasks to destroy each of these places of refuge before They can return.”

That was asking a lot, McKinrick thought. And with the vrach gone, they were virtually weaponless.

His thoughts had been picked up. “The means for completing these tasks will be made available to you. As for Xaa-gth, he shall accompany Edmund Trevelyan. It may be that his talents will be needed on that awesome journey.”

The air in front of the five companions shivered and an instant later, glowing eerily in the milky white effulgence that illuminated the chamber, a shape solidified in front of each member. The gleaming radiance played almost sentiently over the vrachs, five in all.

“Take these and use them as you have that which was left on Earth,” intoned the voice. “Now you must go. Your stay on Glyu-Vho is ended. You have found that which you sought. Your search now lies elsewhere within the universe, and it is to strange places and even stranger times that you must go if you are to oppose the Old Ones.”

In the far distance, the sparkling curtain of fire which hid the Elder God moved slightly as if whatever had been there a moment earlier, had departed.

Edmund forced himself to relax. He had known that the Elder Gods had singled him out to search for this weapon, which had been stolen from Them long before mankind had appeared on Earth. McKinrick had told him of it the previous day. But he had not expected to have to set out so soon. Deep inside, he was worried, afraid of what lay ahead of him. That journey to the beginning of the planet, to the birth of the solar system, had been bad enough. But this—

Even the knowledge that Xaa-gth was to accompany him brought little comfort. There were too many imponderables, too many seeming impossibilities, too many things that could go wrong. To him, it seemed a certainty that this quest was doomed from the start. He thought of all those billions of years stretching away into the future, to a time when the universe had run itself down in one direction and, for the briefest of instants, teetered on the brink of instability before time began winding itself up in the opposite direction and all those outward-flying galaxies began moving together again. How could anyone hope to find something which existed only in an ‘instant’ of ‘no-time’? His mind reeled as he struggled to consider things which were virtually beyond human understanding, impossibilities piled on improbabilities.

But what other choice had they? If they, and not the Elder Gods, were guardians of the universe, they had no other alternative but to obey. Beside him McKinrick took a step forward, reached out, and grasped the glowing vrach which hovered before him, the one which he had been allocated. One by one, the others did likewise.

Just before they were whisked away to the room in the distant tower, there came a faint mental voice echoing in their minds: “There is one among you whose body is crippled, although his will and determination are as great as the rest. It is Our will that he, too, should play his full part in the task which is imposed upon you…”

Once again the air shimmered as it had when the crystals had appeared, but this time, the aura settled around Kitson where he sat in his wheelchair beside Vansing-Lai. The glow bathed his entire body like a weird halo. His legs suddenly straightened, and by the time the glow faded he was standing on his feet, a look of utter stupefaction on his broad features. Swaying a little, he clutched at Vansing Lai for support.

The next instant, they were back within the room with the pink light of Betelgeuse reflecting from the smooth stone wall, highlighting the shelves and volumes of ancient lore.

There was food and drink waiting for them and, as they ate, they discussed what each of them had to do, knowing that this would probably be the last time they should be together... like this, until all of this was finished, one way or another. It was a sombre and subdued gathering.

Chewing absently on his food, Edmund reflected: We’re being used as pawns in some ultra-dimensional game of chess. And there’s nothing we can do about it. Was it truly just a contest between white and black, good and evil, order and chaos. Or was it something else entirely?

Across the large stone table, McKinrick was engrossed in his own thoughts. He had absorbed far more of this ancient lore than any of the others here, with the possible exception of Xaa-gth, although from what he had learnt from the Vrus’ii, he reckoned that the myths and legends concerning the Old Ones which had come into existence on his planet roughly paralleled their own.

As the leader of this small team (for even Xaa-gth seemed to defer to him in most things) he knew it was up to him to ensure that each member knew exactly what was expected of him, was fully aware of the attendant dangers, and was given an idea of their chances of success. In fact, it was the latter which bothered him the most. In spite of the sense of assurance they had all experienced when in the presence of that Being behind the curtain, in the cold light of reason he had to admit that the odds were stacked heavily against them.

Breaking the taut, uncomfortable silence, McKinrick said quietly: “Well, we’ve all been told of what’s expected of us. Now we must plan our campaign. Edmund, you know what you have to do, and you're taking Xaa-gth with you. As for the rest of us, we must now decide our specific targets and how we’re going to set about destroying them.”

“As I see it,” Kitson broke in, “our primary targets are R’lyeh, the Lake of Hali and that red star near Fomalhaut.”

McKinrick nodded. “That takes care of three of the Old Ones. But if Xaa-gth can contact Vincent, I think we may be able to leave R’lyeh to him. After all, he’s already on Earth. I suggest that Vansing-Lai concentrates on the Lake of Hali and you, Ewart, with Cthugha’s former prison near Fomalhaut.”

“And you, John?” Edmund asked. “What do you have in mind?”

“Shub-Niggurath,” the professor told him.

“Do we know where She was imprisoned?” Vansing Lai sounded doubtful. “In all the texts I’ve read, there’s no mention of that.”

“You won’t find any,” McKinrick declared emphatically.

“Then how—?” Edmund began.

In answer, McKinrick took something from his pocket and laid it on the table in front of him. It was a ring, fashioned of some strange metal none of them recognised. The stone in the centre was of so deep a red it seemed black and, although virtually opaque, there were eerie inner fires that wove an eye-twisting tracery of flickering light. Around the crystal tiny, cryptic sigils were engraved on seven claws that held the stone in place.

“What is it?” Kitson queried.

“The Ring of the Hyades,” McKinrick declared solemnly. “Very few people have ever seen it, and fewer still are aware that it still exists on Earth. For countless centuries it lay concealed in a hidden cavern in the mountains near a place called Clayville in America. Somehow it fell into the hands of a man named Kirby who apparently obtained it with the aid of an old recluse with whom I once corresponded... Joseph Quinlan. Apparently Kirby used it only once when it transported him to that world where Shub-Niggurath brooded and stalked while imprisoned. It seems that Kirby was convinced this ring could protect him against the minions of Hastur whom he feared were out to destroy him. Instead, when he used it to save himself from them by uttering the words engraved around this stone, it took him to where Shub-Niggurath lay in wait. Kirby mysteriously vanished one night many years ago and from the testimony of two eyewitnesses who spoke to me but told the authorities nothing, because they knew they’d never be believed, it was Hastur who took him. How it came into my possession is immaterial. But I intend to use it to destroy Shub-Niggurath’s place of exile.”

Across the table, Kitson looked doubtful. Placing his knife and fork carefully beside his plate, he sat back in his chair, a frown on his face. “There are one or two points we seem to have overlooked. I’m not certain about our friend here,” he inclined his head towards Vansing Lai, “but I know very little about the workings of the vrach. I’ve seen it used, but I have no idea how to use it myself.”

“Then I’ll show you before we leave,” McKinrick promised. He let his glance stray towards the Tibetan. “That applies to both of you. It will seem a little strange at first, but once you know how to blend your mind and will with the vrach’s, you’ll soon get the hang of it. It’ll soon come as second nature.” He paused, then continued: “Was there anything more on your mind, Ewart?”

“I hope you’re right about us controlling that thing,” Kitson replied. He was still struggling inwardly to come to terms with the fact that, somehow, by some miracle, he could now stand and walk as well as any man. “But as for the rest, even if we succeed, we have only gone part of the way. There’s still Azathoth, Yog-Sothoth and Nyarlathotep... and that’s the Old Ones that we’re aware of.”

McKinrick forced a faint smile. “I know. I haven’t forgotten Them, Ewart. But I think you’ll agree that those three main Old Ones are a little different from the Others. Nyarlathotep was never imprisoned by the Elder Gods. Why, I don’t know. Azathoth was bound at the centre of the galaxy but now, that region is no more. We can’t destroy nothing. And Yog-Sothoth was incarcerated within an alien dimension. All we can do is concentrate on those regions we can attack.”

*

Vincent Trevelyan stood just inside the door of Susan Thaxton’s office and struggled to control his emotions, a blend of apprehension, fear and excitement. Ten minutes earlier several vicious earth tremors had struck the region, causing extensive damage in the laboratory. In spite of all their efforts, the tank containing the two captive Deep Ones had pulled itself from the wall, smashing into a hail of flying glass splinters. Three technicians had died horribly as the Deep Ones ran amok before Mansell, the first to recover from the shock, had emptied Susan’s pistol into their scaly hides.

What destruction had been wrought above ground in Arkham itself and in the neighbouring towns, they could only speculate upon. Judging from the violence they had experienced, four hundred feet down, it must have been extensive and devastating.

It had been in the middle of all this that Xaa-gth’s voice had spoken inside Vincent’s mind. Clearly, concisely and unemotionally, the Vrus’ii had passed on McKinrick’s message. Xaa-gth had finished with: “You understand what it is we have to accomplish? These places where the Old Ones were held in bondage have to be totally destroyed. Your task is to obliterate R’lyeh. We will take care of the others.”

“And my uncle?” Vincent had asked. “What chance of success does he have?”

“That is in the hands of what you call Fate. I am going with him on this journey. I will do all in my power to help him.”

Now Vincent passed on the message to Susan and Mansell. The latter chewed his lip when Vincent finished. “Y’ha-nthlei was one thing, Vincent. But R’lyeh, that’s something else,” he said.

“From what we know, that damned city surfaces and descends into the ocean without warning.” Susan got up from her desk, spread her hands in a gesture of indecision. “The ocean there is far deeper than that off Innsmouth. Even with the vrach—”

“I know.” Vincent shrugged. He also knew that compared with R’lyeh, Y’ha-nthlei had been a mere dot. Cthulhu’s alien, massive stone city extended over a vast area of the Pacific ocean floor, perhaps far more than a hundred square miles of horror-blighted buildings. That part which he had seen in company with Professor Eldon had been but the merest tip of the cosmic iceberg. Furthermore, there would be not only Cthulhu’s minions guarding that place but, if like the Elder Gods, Cthulhu also knew of the existence of the phthath, He might have taken the logical precautions and protected R’lyeh from just such destruction as was now planned for it.

“And you’re still going to attempt it?” Mansell asked in astonishment.

“I’m certainly going to try.” Vincent forced conviction into his voice. “Don’t worry. I know the danger. But the others from Glyu-Vho are about to attempt the same. At least, I’ll be on Earth. They’ll be on alien planets.”

“Then you’ll need help,” Mansell said firmly. “First you have to locate R’lyeh as precisely as possible. Oh, I know you’ve seen it, but the Pacific Ocean is a big place and, although I know very little about the crystal you carry, my guess is that you have to have an accurate fix on your location if you’re going to use it to get there.”

That was perfectly true, Vincent mused. With Y’ha-nthlei, the old stories had placed it almost exactly in the spot where he’d found it. All he could recall from that trip to R’lyeh were vague directions. He needed more to go on if he wasn’t to waste precious time searching a vast area of water.

Already a plan was forming in his mind. It would mean retracing the route he had taken on that ill-fated voyage, but most of the way could be undertaken in no time at all. Briefly he told his companions what he intended to do.

“Now let’s get this straight, Vincent,” said Susan, after he had finished his account. “You’re going to use vrach to get you to Ponape and then to that island from which those natives fled. Then what?”

“Then I have to find more conventional means of getting to the exact spot where R’lyeh lies.”

“Meaning a boat of some kind?”

“A boat, yes. That’s going to be the difficult part. I’m damned sure none of the natives will take me to where I want to go. Does the Organisation have anyone in that area who might help?”

“It’s possible. I’ll get that information for you,” Susan replied briskly. “We usually have some of our people stationed where we expect the most trouble, and that region has naturally attracted our attention for some time. This will take just a few minutes.”

Vincent waited, feeling his impatience growing by the minute. Waiting for things beyond his control always had this effect on him. However, the required information was not long in coming. The Organisation had two operatives in that area and one of them, Julius Minter, was at that moment on Ponape where he was posing as a trader, while keeping a close watch on any possible resurgence of the Deep Ones in that area.

“Then he’s the man I want.” Vincent made a mental note of the name. “Get word to him that I’m coming. Ask him to meet me on the waterfront.”

A pause, then Susan said: “It’s done. He knows. I’ve also given him your description.”

“Good. Then I’ll be on my way.” Vincent closed his fingers around the vrach in his pocket, visualised Ponape as he had last seen it.

The next instant he was standing in the moist tropical darkness of the South Pacific island, in a narrow, stinking alley which bordered the waterfront. The place looked exactly the same as he remembered it with the fishy smell of the ocean in his nostrils and the decaying shanties on every side. Most of the buildings seemed on the point of imminent collapse but again, as in Innsmouth, this was the normal decay of long centuries of neglect. There was no sign of any destruction here as had been wrought in Arkham. Evidently Great Cthulhu took good care of His own, and this breeding ground of the Deep Ones had escaped His anger. The Rage had not come here.

Vincent had been standing there for only a couple of minutes when the silence was broken by a faint shuffling noise to his right. Swiftly he crouched down and pressed himself back into a narrow recess between two of the dilapidated buildings. A group of shambling shapes moved across the waterfront end of the alley. Dimly, he picked out the guttural croaking of voices and felt a shiver passed through him. Now that Cthulhu was free, His minions would be out in the open and in much larger numbers than before. Just as long as Minter hadn’t already fallen foul of them, otherwise he would have to revise his plans drastically.

He waited tensely until the last of the slithering bunch had disappeared, then padded to the alley’s end. He could have destroyed those creatures quite easily with the vrach, but right now he didn’t want to make himself conspicuous in any way. He suspected that the Deep Ones from R’lyeh still had some form of telepathic communion with Cthulhu, and he did not want his presence here to be known to the Old One before he reached R’lyeh. His attack on that abhorred city had to be totally unexpected if he was to succeed.

At the end of the alley, he pressed himself tightly against the wall and looked cautiously in both directions. The moon, which had been hidden behind a bar of black cloud, suddenly sailed free, flooding the area brilliantly, picking out the smallest details. There were a number of small fishing boats drawn up on the beach, but all appeared deserted. A larger vessel was moored further away in the deeper water, and he was able to make out a light on board. Ponape was no longer a healthy place to visit, he mused, certainly not for foreigners. The native population had long been in league with those devils from the ocean deeps, most of them having alien, tainted blood in their own veins from previous matings. But any outsider would now be considered an enemy of Cthulhu and would inexplicably vanish.

In the moonlight, he could make out no movement apart from the boats where they bobbed up and down on the tide, which slapped incessantly against the stone jetty. Yet he sensed there was something out there, watching his every move intently from the shadows. Still concealed, he glanced back along the alley. It wound crookedly into the darkness towards the middle of the town but, as far as he could discern, there was nothing there. He felt certain that group of shuffling creatures he had seen earlier had not suspected his presence.

Then he heard it distinctly... the sound of stealthy footsteps, and not that far away either. Far too close for comfort. Whirling, he stared back into the black, moon-thrown shadows. One of them close beside the ramshackle building on his left suddenly moved! Then a voice... a human voice... reached him out of the dimness.

“Vincent Trevelyan?” It was little more than a faint whisper.

“Yes,” Vincent answered back. “Are you Julius Minter?”

The dark shape detached itself from the shadows for an instant, then moved quietly into the alley mouth. The man was short, his body beginning to run to fat, and he wore a dirty white Panama, loose baggy trousers and a jacket that had seen better days. He had a large hooked nose and bright eyes that stared out from beneath bushy brows. There was a smell coming from him of stale body odour and sweat.

“I knew it had to be you,” Minter said, keeping his voice low, his eyes darting in all directions. “When you’ve been around places like this for as long as I have, you get a feel for things. I came up this alley not more than five minutes ago, and it was empty. When I noticed you appear like that I figured you were the man I'd arranged to meet, though how the hell you got here is beyond me. I thought I knew most of the weapons the Organisation has to fight these creatures, things like this... ” He unbuttoned his shirt and exposed the Akkadian crystal on a slender chain, more perhaps to convince Vincent of his identity than anything else, “... but obviously there are a lot of things I know nothing about.” Before Vincent could make any reply Minter continued: "Now just tell me how I can help. I should warn you that Ponape is crawling with those frogs-things out of the sea. They’ve been coming ashore in droves over the past couple of weeks. A lot of the true natives have fled into the jungle.”

“I expected that,” Vincent whispered back. “My mission here is to destroy R’lyeh, and to do that—”

“Destroy R’lyeh! Good God, man, that’s impossible! Even if you know where it is, it’s thousands of fathoms down on the ocean floor.”

“I’m aware of that. But just as I got halfway across the world in no time at all, I can do it.”

Minter looked at him as if he were insane, then collected himself and shrugged. “All right. If you say so. What’s your plan? Dynamite... or do you have the launch codes for a nuclear strike?”

Vincent grinned. “Explosives won’t be necessary. And all I need you to do is provide me with the means of getting there.”

“You need a ship?” Minter pointed along the waterfront. “That’s my ship over there.” He indicated the larger vessel with the light still burning.

Vincent had already guessed that this was the ship belonging to Minter. “Can you sail her without a crew?”

Minter rubbed his chin. His fingers made a faint scratching sound on his untidy, sleazy-looking stubble. “It could be done, I suppose. Just so long as we don’t run into any real bad weather. But what do I tell them?”

Vincent shrugged. “Just tell them you’re taking her out for a sail around the island. I’m sure you can think of something. Are you sure that ship’s seaworthy?”

Minter looked hurt. “I’ve been sailing her for more than four years now. Trading around the islands. You can rely on her to get you to where you want to go.”

Vincent gave a nod. “At least you needn’t worry about the first leg of the trip. We’re heading for an island only a short distance away. From there, we’ll sail almost due south.” He guessed that Minter knew the islands in this region of the South Pacific like the back of his hand, would also know that particular island and that, due south of it, there was no other land until one reached the Antarctic shelf.

But Minter made no comment, merely looked all around to ensure there was nothing in sight, then took Vincent’s arm in a firm grip. “Let’s go, then,” he said softly.

Keeping alert for any sign of the Deep Ones, Vincent followed his companion along the dingy waterfront, keeping to the shadows as far as possible, then along the wide stone jetty to its seaward end. A flight of slippery stone steps lead down towards the sea where a small boat was tied up. Once he was in it, Minter cast off and pushed the boat away from the jetty. The oars made scarcely a splash as he rowed towards the larger vessel.

In the moonlight, Ponape seemed completely deserted. But Vincent knew that this was an illusion. He had the feel of eyes watching them, but, even though the Deep Ones could follow them in the water if they tried to sail from Ponape, he doubted if these creatures would be able to trail them by the route he intended to take.

Once on board the vessel, Minter ordered the two crewmen to take the small boat back to Ponape, waiting by the rail until this was done. They watched the men scramble onto the jetty, and a few moments later they had disappeared into the maze of narrow streets and alleys. Not until they were gone did Vincent take the vrach from his pocket. What he meant to do was something he had never tried before, was not even certain it would work.

Minter threw a curious glance at the crystal, which was flashing redly in the moonlight. “Is that the—?” he began, then lifted his head sharply, looked over Vincent’s shoulder, and uttered a harsh exclamation.

Turning swiftly, Vincent followed the direction of Minter’s glance and saw that the entire seaward side of Ponape was no longer empty. Whether they had been kept under covert observation all the time, or bringing the vrach out into the open had somehow alerted their enemies, he did not know. Streaming out of the winding alleys came the ghastly horde of hopping, slithering shapes, their bodies glistening faintly as they spilled onto the jetty. Some wore garments that made their misshapen forms infinitely more horrible; croaking monsters that walked upright on two legs, travesties of all that was human.

“They’ve seen us,” Minter gasped hoarsely. “There’s no way we can get away from Ponape now. Even if we manage to put to sea those devils can follow us for miles, and once they get on board—”

“They won’t follow us the way I’m going,” Vincent said calmly.

“You’re not making sense!” Panic edged Minter’s voice as he stared at the oncoming horde. By now several of the creatures had reached the jetty. While some flopped along it with hideous hopping motions, others dived into the water. Only vaguely was he aware that the man beside him was holding the glowing crystal out in front of him, murmuring strange phrases in a low undertone. Most of Minter’s attention was focused on the Deep Ones, several now within fifty yards of the vessel. He knew there was no chance of starting the engines, no chance of moving an inch, before those monsters were clambering up the sides in ever increasing numbers and—

There was an instant of darkness, a flicker of such absolute blackness and utter emptiness that Minter’s mind all but failed to recognise it. Even if he had noticed it fully, consciously, he would never have been able to understand it, or describe it.

It was as if he had blinked involuntarily and then opened his eyes again, but now the scene around him was entirely different. For one moment, as he staggered, clutching at the metal rail for physical and mental support, he thought he was dreaming. Ponape was gone. Those croaking creatures had vanished. An island lay perhaps three hundred yards away with curving arms of land enclosing a small lagoon. He could see trees swaying in the wind, long spatulate leaves waving restlessly in the moonlight.

“What—?” His voice was a throaty exhalation. He turned a white face towards his companion.

“We’re here,” Vincent said quietly. “Don’t ask how. It would take too long to explain, and there are a lot of things I don’t understand about it.”

“Where is this?” For a moment Minter seemed to have trouble speaking, in putting his whirling thoughts into words. Just below them large ripples spread outward where the water, abruptly displaced by the sudden arrival of the ship, moved towards the shoreline.

“This is the island I was telling you about,” Vincent explained. “I’ve used this crystal on several occasions to transport myself was space. I can also move through time with it. But I wasn’t sure I could move an object the size of this ship.”

Minter let his breath go in a loud hiss through his teeth; he was shivering. Then his momentary panic began to subside a little. He did not believe this was possible, it went against everything sane, yet he could not disbelieve the evidence of his own eyes. This place was real!

Vincent said incisively: “We haven’t any time to lose, Julius. How long before we can get under way?”

“What? Oh, give me twenty minutes. Then it’s due south from here, you say?”

“Due south,” Vincent repeated. “The last time it took us over two days, and I’m hoping I remember enough to follow the same course.”

Minter eyed him speculatively for a moment. “Why not use that crystal of yours? Wouldn’t you get there in no time at all?”

Vincent shook his head, stood back from the rail. “It doesn’t work like that, I’m afraid. I have to have a definite spot to fix on in my mind. And there are no locations like that in the middle of the ocean. Nothing but water for miles. I’ve been to Ponape, and this island, before. It was relatively simple to visualise them mentally.”

Minter turned and threw an apprehensive glance at the moonlit expanse of ocean at his back. He was worried again. They had thrown off that pursuit from Ponape, had literally vanished into thin air. But out there, and drawing ever closer to that blasphemous city of elder legend, they were more than likely to encounter more of the Deep Ones and perhaps things that were even worse. The thought did nothing to lift his spirits as he went below to start the engines.

*

For Edmund Trevelyan and Xaa-gth it was first stop Earth: a swift transition through the space continuum where multi-coloured suns flashed by on long trails of fire until it ended amid the fire-blackened shell of Charnwood House. It was dark but a pale red flush along the eastern horizon told Edmund it would soon be dawn. The raging inferno had done its work well, but there was also evidence of some human agency having been busy after the fire had died down. Large sections of the walls had been smashed in and torn down, furniture had been broken, cupboards ransacked. Clearly, whoever had been there following the blaze had been searching for something.

“This is the dwelling from which you escaped to Glyu-Vho?” Xaa-gth asked.

“This is it,” Edmund acknowledged. “We had something which both Cthulhu and Cthugha wanted desperately.”

“A weapon?”

“No, not a weapon. Cthugha has an army of creatures on Yuggoth. That’s a planet on the very rim of our solar system. Originally they came from a world that revolves around that sun in which He was in prison. That was millions of years ago.”

“Then why did He not bring them here?” There was a note of puzzlement in Xaa-gth’s mental intonations.

“Some of them did come here, long before my race evolved. But then the composition of the atmosphere changed drastically, and those who were here died out. Apparently they could no longer breed under those conditions. But in order to cross interplanetary space they needed a certain artefact, a graven rod made of some substance unknown to us.”

“And that is what you had?” Xaa-gth’s impassive, insectile had turned slowly to survey the scene of devastation. “Where is this rod now?”

“Thankfully, it’s on Glyu-Vho where they can’t get their hands on it.” Stepping over the piles of debris, Vincent crossed to the shattered wall. In the pre-dawn darkness, it was just possible to make out the far gates where they had been smashed to the ground and, beyond them, the village. It looked quiet with no lights showing, but he remembered those yelling, shrieking villagers who had accompanied the Deep Ones in their attack upon the house before the Jinnee had appeared. The illusion of a peaceful, tranquil village had been shattered.

“We must go,” Xaa-gth broke in on his thoughts. “I sense there is something evil here. Not in these ruins but close by.”

“Those people in the village,” Vincent said, walking back. “They are followers of Cthulhu.”

“No. This evil is not associated with humans such as yourself, but with others. I am picking up their thoughts, burning whispers in my mind as if—”

“Jinnee! McKinrick always maintained they knew whenever the vrach materialises in this world. They must have picked up its signal the instant we arrived.”

“Then let us begin our real journey,” Xaa-gth murmured. “I would think it is unlikely any of the Old Ones’ minions can follow us through time.”

I wouldn’t be too sure of that, Edmund thought. Stepping up close to the Vrus’ii, he placed his hand on Xaa-gth’s scaly arm. Before he meshed his mind with that of the crystal, a completely frivolous thought flashed into his mind: If anyone had told me I would one day be standing beside a seventeen-foot high insect, travelling billions of years into the future, I’d have said they were insane!

Once more, as on those two previous occasions, Edmund felt himself swept into the featureless greyness of the time continuum: a mote hurtling along the temporal winds that howled from that far-distant beginning with the Big Bang towards an unguessable time. Xaa-gth was an ethereal presence which could be sensed but not seen or... even though he had not loosed his grip on that squamous arm... felt.

Before leaving Glyu-Vho, they had decided upon a plan of action based upon all of the facts Edmund had been able to glean from that ancient tome. Regarding the exact location of the phthath, these were pitifully few. Even as an amateur astronomer, McKinrick could provide them with no remotely accurate figure for this instant of instability in the evolution of the universe; indeed, there were other theories that did not admit of such an event. Edmund had found it difficult to follow much of what the professor had told him, although he had the impression that Xaa-gth understood a lot more. Basically, McKinrick had said, it all depended upon one simple fact. How much matter was contained in the universe. Not just the stars and planets, comets and meteorites, but the invisible matter, which at present could not be accurately detected and determined by available instruments. Below a certain critical figure, the force of the expansion would always exceed that of gravity, and the universe would go on expanding indefinitely with the galaxies running further and further apart. Only if the total matter in the universe exceeded this critical amount would there be an eventual halt to the expansion.

Or, it could be argued that since the written myths and the Elder Gods both agreed that Axaroth had, countless ages before, carried out this deed, then the expansion of the universe had come to a halt. Furthermore, it might be contended that, if they did manage to travel several billion years into the future to find the universe still in existence, this would constitute absolute proof that they would succeed in their task and that the Old Ones had failed in Their second rebellion against the aspirations of the Elder Gods. After all, it stood to reason that if there was an extant universe in the remote future it implied that it had not been destroyed in the near future.

Or would it? Time and again, Edmund had read... had even heard from the Elder Gods Themselves... that there were many futures. Time was not a rigid, inflexible, immutable thing. It could be changed; indeed it was changed.

But as far as they were concerned, it would be a case of progressing into the future by leaps and bounds, even though each leap would initially be measured in billions of years. Once they neared their objective these intervals would naturally become shorter.

Emerging from the time continuum, their point of egress synchronised by the vrachs, they found themselves standing on a low, dusty elevation. In terms of what he was familiar with, it could not even be called a hill, merely a long lump on the ground. Edmund looked all about him at this Earth of eight billion years in the future, turning slowly in a full circle. It was the same in every direction he looked: flat, empty desolation as far as the eye could see. A thin wind ruffled a greyish dust, but he guessed that the atmosphere was now far thinner than that of his own time.

There was no sign of the Sun. The sky was absolutely dark and the sparse, sprawling constellations were completely alien. It was possible they had emerged on the night side of the planet; that the Moon had, long ages before, broken the invisible shackles of gravity and gone wandering off through the solar system. It was equally likely there was no true daytime now that the Sun had long since passed through its red giant phase and become a tiny white dwarf star after throwing off its outer gaseous layers as a planetary nebula.

There can be no life here now, Edmund thought morbidly. Earth is finally dead, nothing more than a lifeless globe spinning down towards its inevitable extinction.

“Did you expect to find any?”

Edmund glanced up sharply as Xaa-gth’s voice interrupted upon his dismal thoughts.

“Forgive me. I did not intend to intrude upon your thoughts, Edmund. But they were so strong, and in all this silence—”

“That’s all right,” Edmund sighed. “It’s just that all of this—” He swept an arm to encompass the lifeless surroundings, “—is so difficult to take in, to accept. God knows how long ago it was when my race died out, or even how it happened.” The fact that he was now the sole human being on Earth was profound, shocking and very humbling. Had he expected to see futuristic cities indicative of the continuation of a thriving human species? He was not sure.

“Sometimes it is better not to know. Perhaps they fled this world when your sun changed and were replaced by some other race more adapted to a changed environment. Believe me, it has happened all over the galaxy.”

Edmund thought of all those books he had read in McKinrick’s library. Now all that seemed a lifetime ago and certainly, in real-time, as long ago as twice the age of the Earth when he had known it then... and what of all those minions of the Old Ones? Were there still remnants of them here, still clinging to life in dark, concealed places? That seemed unlikely and yet that tome on Glyu-Vho has stated that the phthath could be found beneath the Sign of Koth. The logical conclusion to draw from that statement was that there had to be some form of life existing at Earth’s end, for it had also mentioned the guardians, Those Who Never Sleep.

“Do we search for the sign of Koth?” Xaa-gth asked mentally.

Edmund surveyed the barren landscape and wondered if the entire planetary surface was like this. Once three quarters of the globe had been covered with water. The sea had been less than a mile from Charnwood House in those days, but there was no sign of it now. He hadn’t really expected to see it, of course. In eight billion years, new continents and mountain ranges would have been uplifted and then, with the long passage of time, these would have weathered and crumbled into the dust which he saw at his feet. It was almost certain that, when the Sun had swollen into its red giant phase, the oceans had boiled off into space, globally evaporated and now lost forever.

Nodding wearily, he meshed with the crystal and soon he was rising high above the dusty surface into the translucent air. As the Earth receded below him, more and more of it came into view, and all of it was the same dismal emptiness. There were none of the familiar things: trees, grass, rivers or oceans—no sign at all that this planet had once been inhabited or indeed had ever been habitable. Just a single sterile waste that exuded an aura of age and emptiness. While oddly fascinating and not unexpected, it was also strange and shocking. The dust of a million unknown epochs covered everything like an empty room that had not been inhabited for years. There were no contrasts, nothing to mar the eternal stillness. Then, slowly, the Sun emerged from behind the horizon. At first he took it for an exceptionally bright star, for he could see no perceptible disk. With Xaa-gth hanging beside him, they watched intently as the planet turned slowly beneath them, searching with the enhanced vision that the vrachs provided for any sign of something to break the absolute monotony of that dead surface.

And then, edging around the curved rim...

Xaa-gth’s mental exclamation echoed in Edmund’s mind in the same instant that the Vrus’ii pointed a curved claw. Together they dropped lower. With no moisture in the thin atmosphere, there were no clouds, no hazing of detail. The great rift ran almost arrow-straight for hundreds of miles across the surface from north to south. Around it were the faint outlines of massive craters, testifying to some intense meteoritic bombardment in the distant past. Seconds later, they were hovering directly above the monstrous ravine. Its depth was problematical, but it was certainly far deeper than they could probe with their intensified vision. From where they hung suspended in space, miles above it, it looked as if some gigantic cleaver had been used in an attempt to slice the planet in half, inflicting a terrible wound.

Edmund shook his head in puzzlement. Along the edges of this immense rent there were large, roughly curved indentations as if something had taken bites out of the rock. If they had been caused by large meteorites striking this awesome chasm along the lip (and this seemed the only plausible explanation), then this feature had clearly been in existence for countless millions of years; it would have taken that awesome span of time for the nearby craters to have become silted up with fine dust until they were barely visible.

As they drifted slowly northward something else—something totally unexpected—came into view at the northernmost end. At first Edmund could not believe what he saw. For if he had felt a rush of awesome wonder at the magnitude of the occurrence which had wrought this incredible gash in the Earth’s surface, what was he to make of the object which stood out of the plain where this split began? Fantastically carven, soaring more than two miles above the ground, a stupendous arch lifted from the plane amid a multiplicity of large boulders, which, even at that distance, looked curiously unnatural.

Possibly the arch had been sculpted from the rock by some natural means long before, for Edmund could conceive of no creatures which might have carved it, nor any purpose it was likely to serve. Yet its very position hinted that something more than the vicissitudes of nature had brought it into being.

Xaa-gth had noticed it too. “There, Edmund. You see it?”

“I see it. But I’m dammed if I know what it is.” Combining his will with that of the vrach, Edmund drifted lower until he was hovering beside that stupendous arch, still the best part of a mile above ground level. Xaa-gth did likewise, his multi-faceted eyes following the massive contours of the huge curved structure.

There was now no doubt at all in either of their minds. They were so close to it that it had taken on an entirely different aspect. Huge and terrible were the great carved glyphs and figures now clearly visible on the... stone?... or was it some dull grey metal? Edmund couldn’t be sure which it was, although the latter seemed the more likely for, incredibly, there was no sign of any erosion or weathering such as he would have expected considering the millions of years which must have passed since it had been erected. Everything about this two-mile-high structure spoke to him of a race not of men but of gods.

“Can you make anything of these carvings?” Xaa-gth asked after a long pause.

“Nothing, I’m afraid. They don’t resemble anything I’ve ever seen before.” For the first time the full implications of that tremendous gulf of time that separated him from his own age really penetrated. So much could have happened during that enormous duration that his mind refused to take it all in. Countless civilisations, and possibly not all of them indigenous to Earth, could have risen and fallen, flourished and died... and perhaps the last of them had left this stark enigma like an eternal question mark spearing towards the heavens.

Craning his neck, he took in the full awesome height, then willed himself a little further from the structure, staring up to where the apex of the arch loomed against the star-flecked heavens. Utterly soulless and ominous, a vast symbol stood out, one which, unlike the rest of the etchings, was familiar to him. The sign of Koth, that awful sigil which some of the ancient authors, mystics, and dreamers maintained stood above a black, forbidden gateway into the Ultimate Abyss which yawned beyond all sane and normal knowledge.

“This is it. This is the place. That incredibly ancient text on Glyu-Vho which came down from the age of the serpent race hasn’t lied.”

“Then that is the Sign the book spoke of?”

“That’s it. The Sign of Koth.” Edmund threw a glance down to where the ground beneath the arch lay littered with those curiously-shaped boulders they had first noticed. “And it will be down there that we’ll find the phthath.”

“True. But not now. It will only be there in that brief ‘no-time’ when time reverses, between the universe expanding one second and contracting the next. I fear we may still have a long way to go through time, and the closer we get to that instant, the more careful we will have to be.” Xaa-gth paused, then his mental vibrations went on: “There are many things about this situation I find difficult to understand, and the more I ponder it, the more complex it becomes.”

Edmund was aware of the large bulbous eyes watching him closely. “Go on.”

“When McKinrick explained the many properties of the vrach to me, I understood that it has the ability to transport the bearer through both space and time, and that I believe for it has already been demonstrated to me. Yet there is one thing that is of grave concern to me, one that McKinrick was unable to answer. Logic tells me that in that instant of ‘no-time’, the vrachs will no longer function in that way. There will be no time, no space, through which we could travel. Furthermore, if we should break through that point and into that time-reversed phase of the universe, what then? Will they still function? Is there some kind of temporal polarity in their mechanism?”

For all of his familiarity with the vrach, Edmund realised this was something he had not considered. But Xaa-gth had a point, a perfectly valid one. So long as they approached the end of the expanding phase from this side, they were all right. As far as the evolution of the universe was concerned, they would be approaching a singularity and, like a vacuum, nature abhorred singularities—which was why the laws of physics and relativity did not apply within black holes or at the very instant of the Big Bang.

He could now appreciate some of the complexities that were puzzling his companion. There would, he mused, also be an inevitable slowing down of the expansion of space-time the closer they got to that unique point and, where they were concerned, this would result in a slowing down of time. Right now he wished he had talked more with his nephew on Glyu-Vho before Vincent had left. He shrugged mentally. One would require the mind and intellect of an Elder God to unravel such complexities.

Nevertheless, these thoughts were still in his mind as they slipped once more into the grey quasi-existence of the time continuum.

CHAPTER NINE

On Glyu-Vho, Ewart Kitson hesitated with the vrach held tightly in both hands. In the pinkish light of Betelgeuse, where it flooded through the open archway in the titan wall, the crystal glowed with a roseate flush all its own. He could make out the twisting spirals of the triple helix where they wound in and out in ceaseless motion, drawing his gaze towards it, mesmerising him, the tiny configuration swelling before his gaze until it seemed to fill his entire view.

Edmund and Xaa-gth had already gone, back to Earth, to undertake that incredible journey into the far future. Only McKinrick and Vansing Lai remained, and soon they too would leave to pursue their individual tasks. It was now his turn to leave for that dying red star which lay close to brilliant Fomalhaut, and not for the first time he felt utterly inadequate for this role. He knew how the vrach operated, and knew that he had but to blend his mind and will with the gleaming crystal, merge totally with the alien intellect until both of them were a single entity. The others had done it, and McKinrick had assured him that there was no reason he should not be able to do the same. After all, the professor had pointed out, the Elder God had restored his crippled body so that he might play his full part in this battle with the Old Ones.

McKinrick saw his hesitation and came over. “Are you ready, Ewart?”

With an effort, Kitson tore his gaze from the crystal and nodded. “As ready as I’ll ever be, I suppose.”

“You’ll do just fine. Trust the vrach, that’s all there is to it. You should have nothing to fear from Cthugha. We’ve double checked and He’s still holed up on Yuggoth.”

When the position was put like that, there seemed little point in arguing. Kitson could only nod his head. “Are you sure, John, that this crystal can destroy a sun? I mean—”

“It can do that. Trust me, Ewart. And above all, trust yourself. When it comes to the time I’ve no doubt that you’ll know what to do.”

They had gone over it a sufficient number of times for it to have become engraved on Kitson’s memory. In the clear night sky of Glyu-Vho, it had been comparatively easy to pick out Fomalhaut, even though many of the constellations were distorted and looked very different from those seen from Earth. Kitson had seen the brilliant star on a number of occasions, had the location clear in his mind. That was to be his first objective, using the vrach, his celestial beacon. There was, of course, more uncertainty about the insignificant red sun in whose fiery interior Cthugha had been incarcerated. Following its supernova-like flare-up, when the Old One had broken free, it had faded rapidly and probably returned to something like its former state.

McKinrick, however, felt sure that once Kitson arrived in the vicinity of Fomalhaut, he would have little difficulty in locating Cthugha’s star. Once that was done, his task was to use the tremendous potential energy contained within the vrach to obliterate this sun and, if it had not been destroyed during the supernova outburst, that attendant planet which had been the original home of those creatures on the new Yuggoth.

Kitson turned all of this over in his mind, aware that the professor was watching him closely, possibly assessing him; maybe, Kitson thought, the professor was doubting the wisdom of sending him on this mission. He sucked in a deep, gasping breath, flexed the newly-mended muscles of his legs. It still felt strange to be standing upright like this.

“Good luck, Ewart,” McKinrick said, and Kitson knew there was no longer any more hesitation, that he was going, whether he was ready for it or not. For a second, he closed his eyes, mentally visualising that spinning, whirling triple helix as the professor had taught him. At once he experienced that extraneous tugging at his mind, a pulling... and then total absorption. In his mind he envisaged that part of the heavens that McKinrick had pointed out to him—not a large part, merely the star pattern around Fomalhaut.

Vertigo seized him; blackness surrounded him on all sides. He had experienced this inexpressible sensation once before during that weird teleportation from Charnwood House to Glyu-Vho. But then there had been others with him, presences which, although he could neither see nor feel them, had been oddly comforting. This time, he was utterly alone and, he was forced to admit to himself, scared.

Beginning to panic, he flinched as flaming stars sped past him and then twin walls, light-years across, of eye-searing brilliance. Had the abyss been completely vacant it might not have been so bad, but these bizarre geometric patterns that loomed out of a far distance, seemed to accelerate as they neared him, and then careered into the remoteness at his back, threatened to overwhelm his sanity. Then impenetrable blackness did close in around him, a dense nigrification that contained nothing. There still remained the sense of rushing headlong toward some invisible goal, but with nothing visible he found it impossible to gauge his velocity, or even if he was absolutely motionless and everything else was rushing past him.

Then, far-off and directly ahead, an expanding sphere of light appeared. Swiftly it moved towards him, and at the same time he had the impression that his headlong plunge was slowing. Suddenly stars glittered in all directions, on every side, above and below. For an insane moment he was completely disorientated. With an effort he closed his eyes and forced himself into a state of calmness, a mental condition in which he realised that he was not falling endlessly into that void of darkness, which lay directly beneath his feet.

He opened his eyes slowly. The blazing disc of a nearby sun dazzled him. Was that Fomalhaut? Narrowing his eyes against the glare, he scanned the blackness, making out the tiny gleaming crescents which he took to be planets. Ignoring these, he searched for his objective. According to McKinrick that red star in which Cthugha had been imprisoned lay very close to Fomalhaut—but where?

Stars glittered in all directions, and none of them showed any appreciable disc. The one he was looking for could be any of them. How could he—?

His thoughts stopped at that moment, for there was something different about one of them. He hadn’t noticed it on his first sweep of the surrounding heavens because it was so faint, but now he concentrated all of his attention on the red star over to his left. He hadn't been mistaken! There were strands of tenuous nebulosity around it, wispy streamers of glowing gas, which had evidently been thrown out into space quite recently.

Fixing his whole attention on it, he willed himself towards it, watched it grow larger until it showed a widening disc mottled with ugly dark spots. Strangely, since using the vrach, his sight appeared to have improved considerably. He could easily discern the expanding filaments of gas rushing away from the star, propelled outward by the tremendous explosion that had accompanied the release of Cthugha from His bondage.

There was also a planet visible off to one side, a solitary companion, which had somehow survived that massive, sun-shattering blast. He recalled what he had been told about this world, how millions of years before, it had been the home of those creatures on Yuggoth. From his vantage point he eyed it apprehensively as it swung in an erratic orbit about its parent sun. He edged towards it. It was a dead world, of course, he told himself. Even if there had been any scattered remnants of that hideous race left when the main bulk had fled towards the solar system all those ages ago, they must surely have been annihilated when Cthugha had burst free and that sun had exploded.

Almost before he was aware of it he was drifting down towards the lifeless surface of ancient, original Yuggoth. His job was to destroy that sun out there, but he reckoned he might feel better if he had some kind of solid ground beneath his feet. He did not feel right, did not feel safe, suspended there with nothing but an empty abyss under him, a gulf that went on forever.

There was no hazing of an atmosphere around this world. If it had not vanished ages before, it would certainly have dissipated into space when the sun had detonated. A little while later he was standing on a wide stretch of glass-smooth rock, a frozen magma of petrified earth. Around him lay an unbelievable spectacle, one impossible to take in all at once. He saw huge ramparts of black stone, incredibly-shaped towers and stone masses which reared their titan bulks high above a limitless plain.

Stark and forbidding, they lay spread out in all directions clear to the distant horizon, and the odd asymmetry of the grotesque stone structures was ample testimony to their alien origin. Nearer at hand were smaller features, monstrously weathered, which projected from the vitrified rock. These he examined closely. It was evident they were many millions of years old, but in addition to the normal denudation there was also evidence of some vast force which had fused the individual blocks together into conglomerate masses.

In places he noticed circular tunnel mouths some four feet in diameter, which bored straight down into the rock, but their purpose eluded him. Had the inhabitants of this world bored these holes deep beneath the foundations of the crazily-angled edifices in an attempt to escape some catastrophe which had struck this world in past ages? Were there still any of those creatures here, living in these terrible wormholes, which, for all he knew, might lead all the way to the core of this dreadful, silent planet?

He had not seen those teeming hordes on new Yuggoth, circling the Sun out beyond the orbit of Pluto as had the other members of the team. He could not conceive what they looked like, but his imagination was beginning to run riot, filling his mind with all sorts of nightmarish creatures. It was only with a supreme effort that he forced his thoughts back to the task at hand. The dim red sun was just lifting above the jagged black horizon, throwing long futuristic shadows across the endless plain.

Holding the vrach tightly in his hand, Kitson found himself for a moment calculating how long it would be before the sun lifted clear of the horizon. McKinrick had told him that the incredible energy contained in this innocuous-looking crystal was more than sufficient to destroy that sun. He himself found that hard to believe but, of course, his experience with these things was far less than that of the others. Very slowly the red segment enlarged. Here and there, around the visible disc, long angry streamers of flame leapt into space.

He narrowed his eyes in an attempt to bring that solar activity into sharp focus. Even though it was a dwarf sun, smaller than the one he knew, how could—?

Now what the hell was... that?

Something moved perhaps a quarter of a mile from where he stood. Kitson felt his spine prickle, and the small hairs on the back of his neck lifted. He drew breath in a startled gasp, straining his eyes to make out what it was that swayed oddly from side to side like a black pendulum. Kitson stood, paralysed with dread, but only for a few heart-thumping seconds. This was not the time to panic. It dawned on him just what this thing might be: whatever it was that had drilled those gaping holes through the solid rock. Not the original inhabitants of this world, for they had long since departed... but some race that had come after them. How long after, he didn’t know, couldn’t even begin to guess. But they were here... and there was no doubt they were aware of him.

*

McKinrick stood on a fantastically carved terrace and stared down at the ground that lay at a dizzying depth below him. For a second a sickening sense of vertigo threatened to overwhelm him, to take control of his senses and send him reeling helplessly forward. In front of him was a grotesquely-fashioned balustrade about chest high which curved sharply out of sight on both sides and followed the narrow ledge around the outer circumference of the tower. From its alignment and the fact that, once he had recovered himself by leaning forward a little, he could see its continuation below him, spiralling down until it was no longer visible, he knew that it wound all the way down in a vertiginous helix.

Only a little while earlier he had placed the enigmatic Ring of the Hyades on the middle finger of his left hand and uttered the uncouth syllables graven around the erubescent stone in the centre. The effect had been instantaneous. Yet it had not been unfamiliar. There had been a headlong plunge down yawning abysses between gleaming vortices and insanely-angled facets of colour which had belonged to no earthly spectrum. Then a blinding flash of violet light, and when he could see again he was standing, swaying precariously, on this ledge, on that unknown world which he knew had once been the prison of The Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young, Shub-Niggurath.

Now he fought to steady himself and take stock of his surroundings. There were other structures below him, but none rising to the prodigious height of the one on which he found himself. By working his way slowly and cautiously around the outer side of the lofty pinnacle, he was able to determine that these lower structures were arranged in a definite geometrical pattern, but it was immediately obvious that it was not one which could be described by Euclidean mathematics. There was that now familiar outlandishness associated with the Old Ones; mind-boggling angles which were neither acute nor obtuse which met in some confusing manner that defied all the laws of perspective. Yet, superimposed upon this weird heterogeneity, the overall layout of the scene was in the form of a vast five-pointed star.

Suppressing a shudder, McKinrick commenced to progress downward, for there was clearly no point in attempting to ascend and, as far as he could see, there was no means of entry into the tower, merely this seemingly endless external ledge. So far as he was aware, only one human being had ever visited this world and returned... and he had been almost immediately snatched by Hastur for his audacity and presumption in challenging the might of the Old Ones. What little McKinrick knew of this man, Edmund Kirby, he had gained from his correspondence with Joseph Quinlan, an aged recluse, who had vanished under mysterious circumstances shortly after he had taken Kirby to that concealed portal high in the mountain range above Clayville.

Where in the galaxy this planet was situated was something McKinrick did not know and as for the sun around which it revolved... if, indeed, there was such a sun... no known text had given it the smallest mention. As he continued the arduous descent, occasionally pausing to get his breath back and ease the unaccustomed ache in his legs, he tried to recall everything he had ever read pertaining to Shub-Niggurath for, unlike the other Old Ones, this particular deity never featured in the general texts, being known only in certain incantations and rituals.

When examined objectively, his knowledge was extremely meagre. There were some who claimed that, when summoned by means of the correct chants and sacrifices, Shub-Niggurath had proved beneficent to the dwellers of Mu, that ancient civilisation which had existed long before those of Sumer and Ancient Egypt.

It was impossible to estimate how long the descent took him. He had to make more frequent halts before he eventually reached the bottom. Overhead, the sky was a featureless slate-grey, a diseased, leprous hue that never changed. If it was cloud cover, he thought it should at least have exhibited some gradations of tone and intensity. But there was nothing.

From his original vantage point his view had been much better. Now, at the bottom, the awesomeness of the erections lay in the sheer dimensions and as his gaze travelled around the tremendous, sky-rearing structures, he noticed the openings in their bases. Jagged caverns of blackness gaped open in a menacing and sinister fashion. Everywhere he saw evidence of the peculiar five-pointed layout and, although the buildings were far smaller than that central tower, their hugeness suggested that the builders had been monstrous exaggerations of nature. He was glad of the utter silence, desertion, and general appearance of great age: all indications that, whatever this race of builders had been, they must have long since died out, leaving only this great megalopolis behind as a grotesque testimony to their passing.

There was nothing here to suggest any present link with Shub-Niggurath, and he would have to search further afield. If only Kirby had left behind some record of what he had found, it would have made things much easier. There were no orderly streets, and he chose a broad swathe that appeared to lead in the general direction of a thinning of the buildings as he had seen this place from near the pinnacle of that tower.

Turning his back on the sky-soaring tower, he headed for the outskirts of the dead city. On every side he saw great irregular forms, endless varieties of utter alien exoticism: truncated cones and bulbous protuberances, which were meshed together in some insane fashion. The sky maintained its unchanging grey uniformity that made it impossible for him to gauge the passage of time. For several seconds after he had found himself on that narrow balcony overlooking the city, the hands of his watch had spun erratically around the dial and then stopped. Now it was useless.

All around him the tomb-like silence of the city pressed on his nerves, and this sense of oppression increased as he finally reached the edge of the vast conurbation. Beyond lay emptiness, an endless plain, unmarked by any visible feature. Was this what Kirby had found? And if so, how had he encountered Shub-Niggurath? In spite of all he had seen, McKinrick felt certain that this world was not dead. Perhaps the race that had built that titanic city had become extinct ages before, but he sensed there were other creatures here, perhaps Shub-Niggurath Herself, although he doubted that.

He had progressed perhaps a mile from the city when something on the skyline, something that had been hidden by the ruins, caught his attention. Was that a mound he could see off in the distance? If so, it was the only object visible in these desolate badlands beyond the city. Somewhere on this world, he was sure, was something that was intimately connected with Shub-Niggurath, and he had already dismissed that sprawling megalopolis which now lay, dominating the grotesque horizon, behind him. That place contained none of the hideous carvings he had associated with the dwellings of the Old Ones. Plain and unadorned by such outlandish markings it had clearly been constructed by beings who had known little, if anything, of Shub-Niggurath.

No, the site he was looking for was elsewhere and it was up to him to find it. Just as Cthulhu had R’lyeh; Hastur, the Lake of Hali; Cthugha that ravening solar furnace near Fomalhaut; Azathoth, those crowded suns of the galactic core and Yog-Sothoth, that alien dimension beyond time and space, so The Black Goat had some place, some object, intimately linked with Her and Her worship.

With these thoughts in his mind, McKinrick fixed his scrutiny on the oddly-humped landmark in the far distance and commenced to head across the plain towards it. With no change in the cinereous heavens and nothing else visible except at his back where the spectrally glowering towers of that dead city receded slowly into the distance, he had no means of determining how far away that curious hummock was, nor how much time was passing. Yet he soon became aware of one curious fact. Time and distance seemed to possess oddly different characteristics on this world for there was no indication that he was getting any nearer to the mound. It still seemed to be as far away as when he had set out, although he had been walking for what seemed hours.

Gradually, however, it drew closer, and now he was able to discern its overall delineations as a large stone slab, laid horizontally in the sand. A monolith, which had, over long ages, fallen onto its side, possibly due to subsidence of the soft ground. This was the first thought which came into his head but as he approached, he saw that not only had he been mistaken in this surmise but that the capricious aberrations of the normal laws of optics and perspective had deluded him again.

The stone block towered above him, it sides pitted and carved with deep indentations that spoke shudderingly of eldritch times and even more fearsome rituals—for it was clear to McKinrick that it was an ancient altar. Clearly visible, though not easy to take in owing to their prodigious size, these glyphs were of the most loathsome kind. Interspersed with them were sculpted figures depicting such hideous exaggerations of natural principles that even he, who had seen and read of such things, felt a rush of coldness.

That the Ring of the Hyades had brought him to the right place was now confirmed, for among the arcane markings etched into the ancient stone were several symbols which he recognised as pertaining to Shub-Niggurath. He let his pent up breath go in a long exhalation. This was his objective, the link with the Old One that had existed for more ages than mere men could conceive. All he had to do now was destroy it.

*

It was now the second day since leaving the island, and so far Vincent Trevelyan had seen no sign of the Deep Ones or shoggoths, although he felt reasonably certain they were out there somewhere, watching them. There was a hard knot of apprehension in the pit of his stomach, a tightening of muscles that refused to go away. Indeed it had been growing stronger ever since the previous day. The thought of that great, sprawling city hidden by thousands of fathoms of water was not a comforting one. What if Cthulhu had placed His own spells on His underwater fortress? Would the vrach prove sufficiently powerful to counter them?

His mind, now more active than before, seemed to be leading him in frightening new paths, and the more he travelled these mental routes the scarier things got. The refusal of the Elder Gods to intervene directly in this battle, the sheer impossibility of what his uncle and Xaa-gth had set out to do, the powers which the Old Ones had built up during the long grey ages of Their incarceration... all of these facts were beginning to fall into place, and he didn't like the picture which was emerging.

Already, in spite of everything he could do, all that the Organisation could achieve, the minions of Cthulhu were wreaking havoc around the world. He spent several hours during the night listening to the radio in the small cabin while Minter had been busy on deck keeping watch and maintaining their southward course. Death had come to several small, isolated villages along the foothills of the Himalayas; a nightmarish, sudden death that had struck without warning leaving hundreds dead and only a handful of terrified survivors whose stories of red-eyed monsters from the remote mountain slopes had been disbelieved by the Nepalese authorities – until a small detachment of troops had been sent there to check out what lay behind these wild and incoherent accounts. The truth was exactly as the survivors had said. At least six hundred people had been slaughtered and in such a manner that even the hardened soldiers had been sickened by what they had discovered.

He had tried to pick up a radio station along the eastern seaboard of the United States, hoping to learn something of what was happening around Arkham and Boston. But the interference had been too great. He had heard brief snatches of a news bulletin which he had guessed was American, and what little he had heard had not been good: entire towns inundated by floods, fires raging out of control in others, vague reports of strange creatures spotted in large numbers in thickly wooded areas and the bayou regions, inmates in mental institutions up and down the control becoming uncontrollable, escaping and running amok.

Minter appeared, mopping his brow with a large red handkerchief. He was sweating profusely. He threw a quick glance at the sky before speaking. “The weather report just came through,” he said. “It’s not good. There’s a storm brewing to the south-east, and it seems to be heading this way.”

“Damn.” While he was wondering how well the ship would survive a typhoon, part of Vincent’s mind was considering the possibility that this was no ordinary tropical storm, that it was no coincidence it was moving in their direction at this particular time. Was Cthulhu somehow aware of what his intentions were? “When is it expected to hit this region?”

“Six, maybe seven, hours.” Minter chewed his bottom lip. “If we alter course now, turn north, we might just hit the edge of it, possibly miss it altogether.”

Vincent shook his head. “No. We have to maintain our present course.”

“Bloody Hell, man! You don’t know these storms. I do! I’ve seen them, been through a couple, and on much larger vessels than this.” Minter stepped forward, gripped the rail tightly in both hands, his sweaty features twisted into a frown.

“You don’t reckon this ship can weather such a storm?”

“Hell, I know it can’t,” Minter declared vehemently. “Good God, you’ve only got to look at her to realise that! It’s one thing plying for trade among the islands but another thing entirely to run foul of a typhoon in the middle of the Pacific Ocean miles from anywhere.”

“I can understand your concern,” Vincent said quietly. “But I doubt if changing our course would make the slightest bit of difference. That storm will still hit us no matter which way we go.”

Minter stared at him as if he was insane. “What are you talking about? I know these waters.”

“But how much do you know about the Old Ones?”

“What—?” The trader fell silent for a moment, obviously wondering what Vincent was getting at. “You think this is no ordinary storm that’s brewing up?”

“I’m sure of it.” Vincent knew his companion was going to find it difficult to accept what he was going to say. “We’re too far from any land to make a safe harbour. It seems to be more than mere coincidence that just now, when we’re less than a day from where R’lyeh lies, this has to happen. Have you been listening to those radio reports? This is occurring all over the world. It’s now a global phenomenon. And Cthulhu and His minions are behind it all.”

“Isn’t that stretching things a bit too far?” Minter protested. “These tempests aren’t uncommon in this part of the world, you know.”

Vincent remained silent. Minter was clearly on the point of pushing his argument further, then abruptly changed his mind. He seemed resigned. “All right, we continue due south. My work for the Organisation comes first, and I’ve been told to help you all I can. But I still think it’s sheer suicide, what you’re doing.” After another quick, apprehensive glance at the cloudless sky Minter went below, muttering to himself. It was clear he was unhappy.

The storm hit that night, less than an hour after dark. At first it was just a perceptible increase in the wind which had earlier shifted from north all the way round to the south-east. Just before darkness closed in Vincent had noticed the black bank of angry-looking cloud on the flat horizon and had urged Minter to get all possible speed from the engines. The sea had been relatively calm all day, but now the first of the white crests showed, and the ship began to yaw ominously as Minter tried to turn into the teeth of the approaching gale.

Within minutes of the torrential rain beginning, they were both soaked to the skin. The low growling of thunder and vivid lightning flashes that had first appeared on the horizon drew rapidly closer. At times, peering through the teeming rain, Vincent had the impression that several of the blue lightning bolts were actually striking upward from the sea, and as the storm boiled and raged about the ship he became more convinced of this; certain now that this was no natural meteorological phenomenon.

Conversation was now all but impossible above the crashing of the swell against the hull and the continuous crack of lightning and roar of thunder. Huge waves swept over the boat, but somehow the vessel remained afloat on an even keel.

Vincent clung desperately to the rail on the small bridge thinking to himself that they were not going to make it, that he had been a fool even to try. He struggled to see through the lashing rain that streamed down the outside of the glass. Now and then, in the brilliant flashes of lightning, he could just pick out the mountainous waves with white spume flying from their crests, and he imagined other things besides: great black sinuous things, like large sentient oil slicks, that showed intermittently above the water, keeping pace with the vessel.

Minter suddenly caught his arm, pointed urgently. He was indicating the compass, and in the dim light from the overhead bulb Vincent saw that the needle was spinning crazily.

“I’ve never seen anything like that before!” Minter yelled. “The thing’s gone crazy. There must be some powerful kind of magnetic disturbance nearby.”

“I told you this was no ordinary storm!” Vincent shouted back. “Something is trying to prevent us from reaching R’lyeh.”

“Well, they’re making a damned good job of it.” Water streamed into Minter’s eyes but he ignored it, making no attempt to wipe it away. “Without the compass we’ve no way of telling our bearing. We’ll just have to pray for a miracle, that we can ride out the storm. If the sky clears I may be able to get a fix on the stars, but we could be miles off course by then.”

It was three hours before the storm abated, moving away to the north-west. Behind it the rain eased off, then stopped altogether. The wind dropped considerably and the sky cleared. There was still a heavy swell, and the deck pitched dangerously as Vincent left the comparative shelter of the bridge and walked towards the bow. He hooked his finger securely around the steel rail, leaned over the side, and stared down into the heaving water. Was it his imagination, or was there a strange greenish phosphorescence there, streaming in long ribbons around the hull? After a few moments as his eyes became accustomed to the darkness, he knew he was not mistaken.

Lifting his head with a painful wrenching of neck muscles, he peered into the night.

Nothing.

No sign of those grotesque shapes he had thought he had seen earlier, during the storm. Overhead the stars were beginning to show brightly as the trailing edge of the thunderclouds drifted swiftly away. With his trained eye, he picked out the various constellations already visible, checked the positions of the luminous hands on his watch. They were still heading almost due south and, unless Minter had altered course drastically during the past three hours, he reckoned that they had not been driven too far off their original course after all. Bringing his glance back to sea level, he noticed that the luminescence in the water was now more pronounced, more extensive.

Vincent’s spine tingled for he had seen this phenomenon before, knew what it meant. Either the boat had travelled with more speed than the much larger vessel on which he and Eldon had journeyed this route before, or his recollection of that ill-fated voyage was seriously amiss. He had not expected to reach the location of R’lyeh for another twelve, possibly twenty-four, hours. Now, however, he cast about him in the starlit darkness, searching for that other unmistakable sign of the proximity of that accursed city. Less than twenty minutes later he glimpsed the faint hazing on the southern horizon, knew it to be that wall of greenish fog that marked that blasphemous spot.

Calling Minter from the bridge, he pointed it out. “There! Do you see it?”

Without replying, Minter lifted the powerful binoculars and began a slow sweep of the area. A moment later Vincent heard his sharp intake of breath. “What in God’s name is it? I’ve never seen anything like that before. A fog bank?”

“You could call it that, I suppose,” Vincent told him absently.

“But that’s impossible. I’ve never known fog banks to form except somewhere close to land. And there's nothing out there for hundreds of miles.” Minter lowered the binoculars slowly, then let them fall with an audible thud against his chest. “You were expecting something like this, weren’t you?”

“I wasn’t sure.” Vincent’s voice was quite neutral. “In fact, I was certain that R’lyeh had sunk back onto the ocean floor after Cthulhu left, that it would remain there. But that tells me something different.”

Minter fingered the binoculars helplessly, totally at a loss to understand. Finally he said throatily: “Just what does it mean? I’ve got a feeling it’s something I’m not going to like.”

“It means that R’lyeh has risen again. If it has, it makes things a little easier. I can—”

“Makes things easier!” Minter forced the individual words out like bullets. “Good Lord, I would have thought it would be infinitely better if it had gone to the bottom and stayed there forever. If Cthulhu’s no longer there, what harm can it do thousands of fathoms down?”

“I’m afraid you don’t understand all that’s happening. There’s only one way we can rid the universe of the Old Ones, and that’s to banish Them back to where They originally came from at the moment of the Big Bang. There’s apparently a weapon that can do just that, and right now my uncle and someone... something... else have gone to find it.”

Minter didn’t ask who... or what... the ‘something’ was. Instead, he asked: “So what has all of this got to do with R’lyeh?”

“Just this. We’ve good reason to believe that the Old Ones are well aware of this danger to Themselves, particularly since this weapon was stolen from the Elder Gods by one of Them, Axaroth.”

“And—?”

“And during those billions of years They were imprisoned, They made preparations in the event that it might be used against Them. They’ve turned each of Their former prisons into strongholds, suitably screened by powerful spells which may even be potent enough to withstand this weapon. If we should get it, and use it against Them, instead of banishing Them back to Their own plane, They’ll simply flee to Their one-time prisons where we can’t get at Them.”

“Meaning everything will be back to what it was before?” Minter said ominously.

Vincent shook his head. “No, not as it was before. This time, They’ll not be bound by the sigils of the Elder Gods. It will be worse than before, a million times worse! Imagine if you will that the Old Ones are like vampires. What we’re attempting to do is destroy Their coffins so that they have nowhere left to retreat.”

“So that’s why you have to destroy R’lyeh?” Minter spoke as if the words left a sour taste in his mouth. He lifted the binoculars again and studied the distant bank of mist, which had now drifted closer, spreading further along the horizon.

 An occasional heavy wave hammered against the hull, but now, with the last remnants of the storm having retreated to the north-west, the sea was abnormally calm. There was not the slightest breath of wind. Nothing disturbed the clinging tomb-like silence except for the steady beat of the engines like a heart thumping inside the ship.

“Do we head straight for that fog?” Minter’s voice was uncertain.

“Straight for it,” Vincent replied emphatically. “And keep your eyes open. There are still... other things... in that godforsaken city even though Cthulhu has left.”

“Deep Ones, you mean?” Minter had encountered these creatures before and their hybrid spawn on Ponape and had discovered for himself that the Akkadian crystal was a sufficient protection against them. These were the least of his worries at the moment.

“Them,” Vincent affirmed. “And probably shoggoths.”

Minter had turned to make his way back to the bridge. He halted at Vincent’s words. His face was a pale white blur in the faint light.

Vincent twisted his lips in a grim smile at the other’s expression. “You’ll find references to them in plenty of old sailors’ yarns over the centuries. Then they invariably described them as sea serpents. Nowadays we tend to dismiss them as fanciful myths and legends. Unfortunately, like all such tales, they have a firm basis in truth.”

Minter was silent for several seconds, then: “And the Akkadian crystals, will they—?”

“I’ve no doubt they’ll protect us even against the shoggoths. What I’m afraid for is the ship. They could smash this into matchwood. Some of those things are fifty, sixty feet in length.”

“Jesus!” Minter muttered as he turned away. “What have I let myself in for? I’m not cut out for this.” He disappeared inside, leaving Vincent standing at the rail, watching the curling strands of the green fog, which were already reaching out for them.

Within minutes the nauseous fog was all around them, reducing visibility almost to nil. The mist possessed a curiously malign quality, an evil coldness that penetrated Vincent’s heavy clothing, numbing his limbs. It was a great tidal wave of semi-visible force that held an indescribable stench of age and corruption. Where it clung to the superstructure of the vessel it glowed eerily like Saint Elmo’s Fire. It whirled itself into fantastic shapes, and now the steady beat of the engines, although oddly muffled and curiously transmuted around the vessel, seemed to produce frightening antiphonal echoes as if thrown back by something solid which lay concealed beneath the impenetrable haze.

Peering into it, Vincent wished they had a powerful searchlight on the ship, not that it would have penetrated far into this dense murk. He knew there was little chance of seeing anything definite, which was why he concentrated most of his effort into listening. Even above the muffled beat of the engines he reckoned he would be able to pick out the sound of surf breaking over rocks in time to stop the boat. The last thing he wanted was for the ship to run aground.

Minter had reduced their speed until now they were progressing very slowly, merely edging forward with scarcely a ripple at the bow. Instinctively Vincent swung round, straining his vision, but he could see nothing... or was there the vaguest shadow that appeared for a tantalising instant and then vanished? He couldn’t be sure. But the rising tension in his mind warned him they were now very close to the source of this hellish mist.

Then, faintly at first, but growing louder with every passing second, another sound emerged; the unmistakable slosh of water on rock. With a harsh, urgent yell Vincent ordered Minter to stop the vessel. Moments later, the throb of the engines died away and a deep, unearthly silence closed in around the ship. He was aware that Minter was peering out at him through the glass of the bridge, his silhouette highlighted by the faint glow of the light. Then the silhouette moved and Minter came slowly towards him.

“What is it? Can you see something?”

“No.” Vincent gave a shake of his head. “But I can hear something. We must be very close now, and I’d say there’s no doubt about it—that damned island has risen again, and it’s directly ahead.”

Beside him, Minter grasped the rail and leaned as far over as he dared. After a moment he muttered tautly: “I can hear it, too. Not far away. But in this dammed fog I can’t see a thing. What do we do, wait for daylight? It should be dawn in less than a couple of hours.”

“That won’t help much, I’m afraid. I’ve encountered this fog before. Help me lower the small boat.”

Minter stared at him as if he had gone out of his mind. “You’re going out there in the dark?”

“Can you think of anything else? R’lyeh is out there, less than a quarter of a mile away, I’d say. We can’t take this ship any closer, or we run the risk of going aground. It might be better if you were to remain here.”

Shivering a little, Minter considered which might be the better of the two alternatives, the lesser of two evils. The virescent fog was beginning to eat at his nerves, and God alone knew what horrors it contained, what might come surging up from those ghastly phosphorescent depths. Yet what greater horrors might lie in wait in that accursed city of lost aeons? He made up his mind quickly as Vincent moved away from the rail. “If it’s all the same to you, I’ll tag along.”

It proved relatively easy to lower the small boat over the side in the complete calm. Once they had settled it, Vincent took the oars. As they moved away from the vessel, watching it vanish swiftly as the fog closed in around them, he had the ludicrous thought that they were leaving behind the only sane, solid thing in the world. The slick, oily swell moved around them, pushing onward, and all the while the slosh of water against the unyielding rock grew louder in their ears, although at times there was a disturbing ambiguity as to which direction it came from. The fog seemed to have the quality of distorting sound, and there were weird echoes that welled up now and again from within the mist.

Then Minter uttered a low, warning sound deep in his throat and pointed.

Resetting the oars, Vincent turned to look behind him. Here the enshrouding viridity thinned; vague details emerging from the spectral green background. The water stopped at the edge of a great sloping mud bank on which the small boat grounded scant moments later with an obscene sucking sound. Although the sky was dark, it was still possible to see, for everything emitted the same hideous green glow as the fog, only more strongly. Curiously-angled stones jutted from the ooze. Some stood upright, but the majority were canted at weird, unearthly angles. Even the shadows cast from the light of a moon seemingly fearful to look down on this dread city were strange, sentient, as though possessed of their own malevolence.

Making certain the boat was wedged fast, Vincent clambered out with Minter following. Their feet sank deeply into the primal slime, came free only with an effort. Progress up the slippery slope was slow, each step threatening to drag them down so that it was difficult to walk upright. In places, the rotting carcasses of indescribably grotesque marine creatures lay festering. Huge monoliths covered with great strands of weed loomed before them and here and there it was possible to discern impious images and glyphs all chiselled on an abnormally large scale.

Panting with the exertion, Vincent drove himself on. Up the slope, perhaps three hundred yards away, there were more of the huge stones. But these were arranged in a far more orderly manner, if such a term could be applied to a structure that was alien in every angle and delineation. Each stone face was suggestive of unnatural dimensions beyond those known by normal men. There was a distorted menace in every line of that titan building and, in spite of his tight-fisted hold on the vrach and his earlier experience at Y’ha-nthlei, Vincent could not suppress a shudder at the sight of that looming citadel of elder aeons.

Beside him Minter was staring at it, his eyes wide and terror-stricken, his features made even more ghastly in the eldritch luminosity. He opened his mouth to say something, but for several seconds no sound came out. Then he grunted hoarsely: “I’m not sure we should go any further. Let’s get out of here, back to the ship! If this island should sink again, we’ll both go down with it.”

“No, damnit!” Vincent grasped him tightly by the arm, thrust his face close to Minter’s. “Pull yourself together, man. There’s nothing here. Cthulhu’s not here. This place is empty, deserted.” Inwardly he wasn’t so sure. But whatever happened, now that Minter was here, he had to keep him under rigid control. Quickly, without giving him time to think, he hauled Minter up the treacherous slope, half-dragging him through the clinging mud until they reached the top with the vast walls towering above them; walls which stretched seemingly interminably in both directions. In places the ooze came up flush against the stone, but in the main it stopped several yards away, and they were able to move comparatively easily along the base of the citadel, finally coming upon the immense graven portal, above which leered a grotesque carving which was instantly familiar to Vincent.

It was the embodiment of Great Cthulhu Himself: the squid-like head on the dragon body with leathery wings outspread, an image so lifelike, that it seemed on the point of launching itself at the two interlopers. It was just in front of this hideous image that they came upon the three large stone slabs, each split into several pieces as if smashed by some gigantic hammer. On each of them it was just possible to make out a central motif in the form of a five-pointed star around which were graven potent symbols Vincent recognised instantly from certain drawings he had seen in the dreaded Necronomicon.

“If we needed any further evidence that Cthulhu is free, this is it,” he told Minter, pointing. “These are the three Kh’yrog Tablets which were placed by the Elder Gods at the portal which guarded each of the Old Ones’ prisons. So long as they remained intact and left in situ, none of the Old Ones could pass these portals.”

“Then what could have smashed them like that?” Minter asked in a hushed voice, shaking a little and staring wildly around him as curious whispering echoes were thrown back by the looming walls.

“Once the stars were right those sigils lost their power,” Vincent replied. “As you can see, the door is open.”

In front of them and a little to one side of the massive statue, the vast door with its fantastic mouldings had been swung aside, revealing the gigantic opening which, by contrast with the weirdly-shining exterior, seemed filled with a midnight blackness, obscuring such portions of the interior as should have been visible from where they stood.

Without any further word Vincent drew the vrach from his pocket, gripping it tightly in his fingers. It glowed a brilliant carmine as he held it out in front of him. Was it his imagination or did the sickly, ghastly green radiance appear to dim wherever the spreading red glow touched it? Taking a step forward, he stared into the opening, aware of the intolerable odour that rose from those awesome, stygian depths.

Then, with a brief gesture to his companion, Vincent Trevelyan walked forward into the aeon-old corpse-city of R’lyeh.

CHAPTER TEN

Vansing Lai stood on the surface of the night-black world and tried to make sense of what he saw. Certainly the sky over his head was black but it was far from empty. A multitude of glorious stars in every possible hue crowded every corner of it, right down to the jagged horizons in all directions. Their light, far more brilliant than any starlight on Earth, threw fantastic shadows across the ground, highlighting the rearing rocks and a high mountain range that formed the opposite end of the seemingly unending plane in front of him.

His was, in some ways, the most dangerous mission of all. No one had any real idea where Hastur might be, unlike the known whereabouts of Cthulhu and Cthugha. Vansing Lai suspected He might still be here, biding His time, and if that were so his own position was, to say the least, precarious. He glanced down at the vrach in his hands. It was glowing softly. It had brought him here to this world of the black sun in the Hyades; now it was his task to locate the Lake of Hali and destroy Hastur’s hiding place.

From where he stood, he could see only a bare plain littered with massive boulders, hemmed in on one side by the mountain peaks which looked gaunt and forbidding, and on the others by great gaping rifts which showed merely as long, irregular shadows slicing deep into the ground. He realised he could be anywhere on this unknown world about which he knew next to nothing. He hadn't the faintest inkling of its size, topography, hidden dangers—which he guessed were many, or possible inhabitants. Hastur had His minions, as had most of the Old Ones, and some of them could be here.

But Vansing Lai did possess one definite advantage, which had led to his recruitment into the Organisation twelve years earlier. During the many years he had spent in a monastery on the Himalayan slopes, he had been taught much of the ancient lore. His mind had developed a peculiar receptivity, and it was this metaphysical skill that enabled him to mesh first with the Akkadian crystal and now with the vrach on a far deeper and more intimate level than any other member of the team. Even in the short time since McKinrick had taught him how to use the crystal, his control of it was phenomenal. Almost without conscious effort, he now willed himself to the topmost peak of the massive mountain range on the far side of the valley. The teleportation was instantaneous. Now he was able to get a good look at this hellish world. That plain he had just left went on and on in both directions, pitted and scarred by immense rifts. But on the other side of the range...

Perched as he was at such a dizzy height, the scene below was monstrous and unbelievable. Vansing Lai had read much in the Necronomicon and other ancient tomes of the hideous Plateau of Leng and, although he had no idea where this shunned and haunted place might lie, this was what he imagined it might look like. Huge broken columns stood in twin lines, and far off they opened out onto a vast semi-circle where they stood like grim guardians around the shores of a great lake whose oily surface reflected odd prismatic beams into the heavens. Blackness and shadow lay between this double row of pillars, and there was something else standing at the end of the colonnade furthest from the lake. Twin winged creatures of stone that reared their grotesque figures a full four hundred feet from the floor of the plateau.

Vansing Lai knew full well what he was looking upon: the age-old ruins of primordial Xalcovar, which bordered the Lake of Hali. His cognizance of this blasphemous place came from a single source. While the Lake of Hali was mentioned in the Necronomicon and in certain pre-human texts, Xalcovar was described only in the Book of K’yog, the only known copy of which was kept in that terrible monastery in the Himalayas.

Many years before, Vansing Lai had stumbled upon this incredibly ancient tome, which contained glyphs and drawings of the starkest terror out of unknown gulfs of time. Unable to read the language which had been forgotten millennia before the forebears of mankind began to clamber down from the trees to walk upright, he had sought the aid of an aged monk whose life had been spent laboriously deciphering such weird hieroglyphs. Now he recalled how, night after night, they had poured over this terrible volume, struggling to equate the crudely-drawn symbols with others in the numerous volumes in the monastery library, finally deciphering parts of the text, in particular that relating to Hastur and the black stone city of Xalcovar.

Xalcovar had existed even before Hastur had been imprisoned on this terrible world, but no record remained of the builders. Now Vansing Lai stared down at the hideous reality behind those aeons-old myths, at the duo of fantastically-carved enormous statues which flanked that cyclopean avenue that stretched for miles in the flashing chromatic colours reflected from the lake. Menace brooded in every line of those chiselled bas-reliefs which whispered of eldritch secrets from so distant a time that it was impossible to conceive it fully. For a moment he pondered on his wisest course of action.

Instinctively he had the feeling that the city was not as utterly deserted as it appeared. There was nothing he could see to substantiate that impression. This was a feeling, which he knew it would not be wise to ignore. But now that he had located his objective, he would gain nothing by remaining where he was.

Effortlessly he transported himself down onto the enormous thoroughfare with its massive stone slabs, all cracked and weathered by long ages. Lofty almost beyond belief, the black stone pillars rose on either side. Here and there time had taken its inevitable toll and they lay on their sides, splintered into huge fragments, leaving only the eroded pedestals on which they had once stood. Those still standing bore repellent images, which, even though he had known vaguely what to expect, nevertheless sent a shudder of disgust through him.

For a moment he wondered how that terrible Book of K’yog had ever reached Earth. Without doubt, that which he had encountered in the monastery had been a copy of an even more ancient tome now long extinct. Yet the fact that he was here, the reality, so closely resembled the description given therein could only mean that at some time, long aeons before, someone... or something... from this world had come to Earth and written of this place.

He had commenced walking in the direction of the lake. He judged it was still the best part of a couple of miles away and, although he could have teleported himself there within a second, now he preferred to walk, to try to determine the source of the danger he felt still existed here. He dealt first with those things he could see. The mountains were so far distant that if any danger approached from that direction he would be aware of it in sufficient time to take action. As for the massive ruins, which brooded around him, they seemed empty and deserted enough, and everything spoke of this place having been long abandoned.

Yet there still persisted that uncomfortable itch between his shoulder blades that refused to go away. Something was watching him, had been aware of his presence ever since the vrach had brought him here. A chill wind had got up, blowing from the distant peaks, stirring the jet-black dust and whirling it into tiny spinning columns, ebon wraiths which gyrated and danced as if trying to keep pace with him.

Not until he reached the point where the columns of stone widened into that vast semi-circle around the shore of the lake, did he recognise his danger. It did not come from the oily waters of the lake where they lapped against that monstrous shore, nor even from the gliding eddies of black dust that continued to cavort in their mesmeric dance on all sides.

It came from the most unexpected, most improbable source—from directly behind him!

Those two gargantuan statues which had marked the end of the miles-long way between the ruins of ancient Xalcovar no longer remained where they had rested for countless ages beyond all human reckoning. Wings outspread, they now glided towards him!

For a second Vansing Lai froze, but only for a second. In a smooth fluid motion he held up the vrach, going down into a crouch. When they were still some four hundred yards from him, their great wings began to beat slowly, lifting the monstrous gargoyle-like creatures high into the air. In Vansing Lai's hands the vrach glowed it briefly. For an instant he waited for the crimson radiance to strike out at the oncoming horrors. But nothing happened!

Too late Vansing Lai realised the truth. These massive stone guardians of ancient Xalcovar had been here even before Hastur had come. The magical spells that gave them this hideous life were not those of the Old ones, but of the long-vanished architects and builders of this terrible city. Against them, the vrach was useless! Lurching upright, he backed off, threw a quick glance behind him. There was nowhere he could hide, no refuge in sight. He knew it would be foolish even to attempt to run.

The stone eyes sculpted in those fiendish heads were fixed on him as they swooped down. The first flying creature fell swiftly towards him. One massive clawed hand caught him around the waist, and then he felt himself lifted high into the darkness, all of the air in his lungs expelled from his lips as the monster gripped him even tighter. As the mighty pillars fell away beneath him, the vrach slipped away from his nerveless fingers, turning over and over until it struck the ground some fifty feet below.

Desperately he sucked breath into his tortured chest. He did not lose consciousness, was fully aware of all that was happening. Down below, growing smaller with every passing second, the Lake of Hali receded with the long avenue of pillars stretching away to one side. Beyond the lake, on the opposite extremity, he glimpsed more ruins, dimly visible in the brilliant starlight. Then they, too, dwindled as the creature bore him still further aloft into the upper atmosphere, and now he saw they were heading for the gaunt, towering mountain range on whose highest peak he had stood only a little while before.

Here, amid the needle-shaped spires of black rock, he was finally deposited, dully aware of the pain in his chest and a chill coldness. A moment later he dimly saw the twin shapes gliding smoothly down the precipitous side of the crest and he knew that the creatures were returning to those massive pedestals on which they had stood for countless ages. The guardians of a aeon-old Xalcovar had had a duty to perform, and this they had done.

*

With only the pale carmine glow of the vrach to provide any welcome contrast to the all-pervading greenish phosphorescence, Vincent worked his way slowly down the treacherous incline which yawned indefinitely off into a precipitous, descending slope, leaving the grotesquely-chiselled opening behind. From below a current of damp, fetid air with a suspicion of swirling vapours ascended, bathing the two men with clammy fingers of ice. As he progressed he wondered what entities other than Deep Ones and shoggoths the limitless vacuity below might hold. Of the minions of Cthulhu he had little to fear, but where the spells of the Old Ones were concerned, it was possible that not even the vrach might provide them with much protection.

Of these doubts he said nothing to Minter. The man was positively shaking with terror, and with good reason. Even knowing that Cthulhu no longer inhabited this terrible stone city, this monstrous survival from a fearful antiquity had worked on his imagination, peopling it with nightmarish denizens and relics from a forbidden past. Everywhere, they saw devilish violations of nightmarish symmetry, but most of all it was the hugeness of the features which was the most disturbing aspect. The warped, distorted angles, lines and curves which opened out in front of them when they finally reached the bottom of that stupendous shaft, spread outward in a never-ending labyrinth of slime-coated pillars, columns, ramparts and gaping tunnel mouths that leered malevolently at them from every direction.

“Oh, my God!” Minter stared wide-eyed around the vast cavern. “Are you sure you know what you’re doing here?”

“Just keep your head and, whatever you see or hear, don’t panic.” Vincent could see that his companion was close to hysteria. “We’re going to get out of here, but you must do exactly as I say and stick close to me.”

“And if this godforsaken place should sink... what then?”

Suddenly the floor of the cavern shuddered and heaved beneath their feet. Staggering, Minter uttered an audible gasp and jumped back a couple of paces. In the sickly green radiance his features looked positively ghastly.

Vincent had been taken by surprise too, but only for a moment. Now he said sharply: “Just stick with me. I have to find the heart of this place and that must be on a deeper level than this.”

“You’re going further down? But you must have felt that shock. This whole island is unstable, probably volcanic. It could go to the bottom any minute.”

“Then we’ll have to hurry, won’t we?” Vincent grabbed Minter’s arm and propelled him forward, across the uneven floor to where a tunnel mouth, larger than the others, loomed in the near wall. For an instant Minter tried to resist, now totally unnerved. Then, as if suddenly resigned to his fate, he fell in beside Vincent.

A second tremor hit when they were still only halfway to the tunnel entrance. From somewhere in the distance came the unmistakable sound of large stone blocks falling onto the cavern floor. Vincent ignored it but his own thoughts were the same as his companion’s. R’lyeh had risen and sunk on several occasions and each time without warning. He had no idea how much time was left, and there was a further strange fact which disturbed him. So far, they had seen no sign of the Deep Ones. As far as he was aware, the shoggoths lived only in water but those other alien creatures were as much at home on dry land as in the sea.

The downward slant and comparative regularity of the passage they entered made him certain he had chosen the right one amid the plethora of tunnels leading off from the upper cavern. Here, however, the garish glow which had marked the upper levels of R’lyeh was far less apparent, soon fading almost completely until they were moving in near total darkness, feeling the way forward, hands trailing along the ooze-coated walls with the sickening stench increasing in their nostrils. In places, the tunnel narrowed to the point where they were forced to shuffle along in single file, sliding their feet over the rough floor, alert for obstacles. They struggled to remain upright, for now the declivity was such that at times it bordered almost on the vertical.

Aeons seemed to pass during that nightmare descent, but it could only have been about twenty minutes when a faint glow appeared far below them, one that grew steadily brighter as they approached. When they finally emerged from the tunnel, the scene in front of them was one that could only be described in terms of sheer fantasy. But this was no fantasy from a child’s fairy-tale. This was undiluted horror.

Minter’s senses almost gave out as his wild-eyed stare took in the scene. Vincent knew there were no words, no language, capable of describing such infernal discongruities of all natural order and cosmic sanity. Dear God! What insane mind had conceived such illusory angles and distorted menace as exuded from every corner, where instinct indicated convexity and sight showed depression? And as for the frescoes, designs, and general architecture of the buildings, all held such an air of wrongness that the mind refused to accept it.

That nauseous green glow was once again present, and here it waxed and waned in a truly horrible manner, at times actually seeming to burst forth from the rock as a cloud of glaucous miasma.

Convergent lines appeared to spread apart, while those that were apparently divergent seemed to meet at some point in an infinite distance. Repulsively-graven columns which rose vertically from the floor seemed to tilt in a lunatic fashion until it was impossible to determine if the ground on which they stood was level or slanted first in one direction and then another. The awful squid-head motif was everywhere, but nowhere so prominent as above a gigantic door between two graven pillars of stupendous contours. Here the carvings were monstrous in the extreme. Minter would have turned and fled in that horrific instant had not Vincent forced him to hold his ground. This was not the time for panic. After all, what was there to fear? Great Cthulhu was no longer present, and they had seen nothing of the shoggoths or the Deep Ones. Yet in spite of what commonsense told them, Vincent had the disturbing impression they had walked blindly into a trap, that there was something here which, although not as potent as the Old One Himself, was nevertheless something to be feared.

Approaching the door, which towered a good forty feet above his head, he looked in vain for some means to open it. Something more than instinct or intuition told him that what he sought lay beyond this mighty portal. Standing in front of it, he made a motion with his left hand. “Somehow we have to open this door,” he told Minter.

The other swallowed several times, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down in his throat. It was some time before he could speak. “Why, for God’s sake? Do you know what's on the other side?”

“No, it’s only a hunch. But I’m certain that this is the place, this is the heart of R’lyeh.” While he had been speaking, Vincent had been taking in the weird glyphs emblazoned around the massive door jambs, searching for something... anything... which might indicate how it could be opened. His first glance had been cursory; now he looked more diligently. This time he saw it. It was an insignificant detail, one that might easily have been missed, but on one side of the great posts, perhaps ten feet above the floor, an additional glyph had been inserted into the design, which, apart from this, was wholly symmetrical. “Come over here,” he ordered sharply as Minter backed away in horror, uncertainty written all over his awed face.

For a moment Minter hesitated, then walked slowly forward until he was standing at the spot Vincent indicated. “What are you going to do?” he asked tremulously.

“I’m going to open this door,” Vincent replied. “Now brace yourself against it while I get on your shoulders.”

“What—?”

“Don’t argue; just do it!”

Stepping forward, Minter placed both hands against the towering pillar, bent his knees a little. With an effort, Vincent climbed up onto the man's shoulders, felt him give a little under his weight. Then, gasping with the exertion, Minter somehow straightened. Vincent had already fixed his mind on the position and delineations of the glyph. Now his face was almost level with it. Gritting his teeth, he thrust at it with both hands. For several seconds nothing happened. Had he been mistaken? Was the concealed opening even more cleverly hidden? He pushed harder, feeling his arm muscles crack with the strain.

The greenly-glowing stone was icily cold against his palms, and he could feel that skin-numbing chill searing into his flesh. Then abruptly a heptagonal section of the pillar moved in some alien manner. Noiselessly, pivoting in some curious way, the great portal began to swing inward. Taken by surprise, Minter stumbled forward, arms sliding helplessly down the stone pillar, throwing Vincent to the ground. Somehow he landed on his feet and bent to help his companion up.

In front of them, swinging slowly and soundlessly around an invisible pivot, the massive door opened, and a blinding light flooded out, cutting a brilliant swathe across the vast cavern. Sound hammered at their ears. Enormous lightning bolts lanced and forked ceaselessly within the writhing cocoon of brilliance.

For a split second, as that monstrous portal opened still wider, Vincent had the terrible feeling they would be burned alive, their flesh crisped to black tatters, their bones incinerated into powder. But it was not heat that poured out of that gaping orifice... but cold!

A chill like that of interstellar space engulfed them.

*

Another two billion years into the future, Edmund and Xaa-gth emerged from the time continuum once again. Very little seemed to have changed. Overhead far fewer stars were now visible, and the majority of these were dim and red, shining only feebly in the eternal night. Almost all of those Edmund had known were gone now, had reached the end of their age-long lifespans and were now nothing more than dead, burnt-out cinders, their nuclear fuels exhausted. In the amazing clarity of the thin atmosphere, he looked in vain for the Milky Way. It, too, was gone, although here and there he glimpsed faint nebulous twists that might once have formed a part of it.

But closer at hand, the tremendous arch, towering high above the flat landscape, was still there. Even throughout that awful gulf of time since they had last seen it, it did not appear to have changed but still stood guard over that frightening rift which ran clear to the horizon and beyond. High in the deep indigo heavens, the Sun was visible as a deep red globe. Its surface marred by ugly blemishes. Curiously, it seemed larger than he remembered it from two billion years ago whereas, by rights, it should have been smaller. Edmund puzzled over that for a few minutes. Either something was wrong with the theory of stellar evolution as it was known in his time or—

Or the Earth’s orbit was slowly decaying and the planet was moving closer to the Sun!

“There is something here, Edmund.” Xaa-gth’s mental voice penetrated his thoughts.

“Something alive? But that—“ Edmund was going to say ‘impossible’ then rejected the word, remembering that they had been warned about a guardian of the phthath. He himself never saw, heard, nor sensed anything. The whole planet seemed dead, a lifeless, crater-marked bulk of matter drifting towards its inevitable end.

“We Vrus’ii have the ability to perceive the presence of life, any form of life. There are mental images being produced nearby. They were faint at first, but now they are growing stronger.”

Turning his head in every direction, Edmund scanned the endless terrain below. From such an altitude it should have been possible to pick out any sign of movement for several miles. But there was nothing. “Then if it’s coming closer, we should be able to see it.” He looked again, then shook his head. “I see nothing.”

Xaa-gth made a series of sharp clicks with his pincer-like claws. Then his voice came again in Edmund’s mind. “No, you misunderstand me. Whatever it is, this thing... this creature... is stationary. It’s as if it has just woken up. At first the mental pictures in my mind were all confused. Now it is fully awake; it knows what it has to do. Protect the arch and await the coming of the phthath.”

“It’s just woken up?” Edmund repeated him. “Then there’s only one place where—”

“Down there,” Xaa-gth interrupted urgently. His ten-foot-long arm pointed directly at the great rift.

Within that gigantic chasm the darkness was absolute. But the ragged edges where giant meteorites had chewed great chunks from the rocks were clearly visible and now, with a faint shudder, he saw that more massive pieces were breaking away, cascading into those unfathomable depths. But these were not being dislodged by any fall of meteorites; these were being shaken loose by something deep below, something that was now emerging from those lightless chasms!

Minutes later they had their first glimpse of it... or part of it... for the thing was monstrous. Even in his worst nightmares, Edmund had never conceived of anything like this chthonic evil. Leprous-white, it filled the entire fissure as far as the eye could see. The wickedly-glistening snake-like body humped and heaved as a vast ripple ran along its miles-long, segmented length.

“Evil. Those thoughts... so like those of the Old Ones Themselves,” Xaa-gth seemed to be thinking to himself as his multi-faceted eyes took in the horrific scene below.

“Is it possible—?” Edmund muttered hoarsely, struggling to put his own thoughts into words. “Can that be Axaroth?”

“Not the Old One.” The mental radiations were confident. “But something created by Him, no doubt. And it knows of our presence.”

Thrusting upward, a gigantic head weaved in their direction, writhing and twisting from side to side. Below it more boulders fell into the gap as the massive body pushed the walls of the great crevice aside. Gaping jaws yawned open like a pit. A long, glistening, forked tongue flickered between rows of jagged teeth. The head drew back on the long neck as the creature prepared to strike.

In the split second before his mind made the instinctive slip back into the time continuum Edmund glimpsed that awesome head spear through the place where Xaa-gth had been but an instant before, knew that his companion had reacted just in time.

*

At the Organisation’s headquarters information continued to pour in from sources all around the world, some even from beyond the world as optical and radio-telescopes fed more data into NASA. Some of this was released to the media where it was sensationalised and distorted in the process. Various scientific explanations continued to be offered to account for the highly abnormal storms and freak weather conditions. Theories ranged from cyclical variations in the Sun’s radiation to the, as yet, inexplicable disappearance of the planet Saturn.

It proved much more difficult to explain the increasingly frequent outbreaks of mania which were occasionally reported in spite of the attempts of the authorities to hush them up. Mass suicides and aberrant mental behaviour were occurring on an unprecedented scale and even more baffling were frequent instances where patients pronounced incurably insane had suddenly become lucid overnight.

There was the inevitable resurgence of religious fervour. So-called prophets proclaimed the end of the world was nigh, forecasting the imminent destruction of the Earth by fire, exhorting their followers to forsake everything in the hope of being among those chosen for salvation. Reading through a batch of the latter reports, Susan Thaxton thought how ironic it was that, while these religious fanatics were so close to the truth, if they were given the real cause of the terrible effects, they would immediately denounce it as the work of the Devil.

From the central aisle of the laboratory Mansell watched through the glass window of her office as she sat at her desk, poring over the reports. The last three days had not been easy for any of them, shut away in this laboratory deep below ground. There had been more tremors, which had been felt, even at that depth below ground. God alone knew what conditions were like outside... but this was something he intended to discover for himself.

When Susan came out a few minutes later she saw Mansell waiting for her. “Well,” she said, coming around the end of the bench, “what do you think of the latest news? I presume you’ve read these reports.”

“I’ve read them,” Mansell affirmed. “They’re all bad and steadily getting worse.”

Susan eyed him closely, her gaze inscrutable. “I get the impression you’ve got something on your mind, Philip.”

“Yes. I think it’s about time I went out to see things for myself. We’ve all been down here for several days now. Pretty soon we’re going to run out of food and I think it’s time we saw at first-hand what’s happening on the surface.”

“Do you think that would be wise?” Susan’s response was immediate. “We don’t know what things are like in Arkham. For all we know there could be nothing left standing. At least we’re safe here.”

“For the time being, perhaps. But for how long? And we have to know where Cthulhu is and what He’s doing. So far, we don’t have that information.”

“You’re determined to go?”

Mansell nodded. Somehow he managed to keep his face impassive.

“All right. I can’t stop you.” Susan turned quickly on her heel, went back into her office and returned with something in her hand. “But you’d better take this, you may need it.” She thrust the gun out towards him. There were two clips of ammunition in her other hand.

Mansell hesitated, then took the weapon, checked that it was loaded and the safety catch was on before he put it into his pocket. The two clips he put into the other.

“Would you like anyone to go with you? I could spare one of the technicians.”

“No.” Mansell shook his head. “There’s no sense in anyone else risking their lives. Don’t worry. If I run into anything I can’t handle, I’ll get back.”

Five minutes later, he stepped out of the elevator in the library vaults. Here several of the long metal racks had collapsed, and priceless volumes lay in scattered heaps on the floor. There was no one in sight as he made his way up into the main library where he found the damage even more extensive. Most of the large windows were smashed, and his shoes crunched loudly on shards of glass as he made his way to the door. It was light outside, and in the dimness he saw that the double doors had been wrenched off the hinges and now gaped wide open. Taking care where he placed his feet, he stepped outside into the chill night air.

The large quadrangle was empty. Around it, the once splendid buildings were mostly in ruins. Not a single light showed, nor did he hear any sound. Indeed, the entire town seemed silent and deserted. It was not until he had passed through the twisted wreckage of the ornate gates and entered the street, that he saw for the first time the full extent of the devastation that had struck Arkham.

The absence of anyone else on the streets bothered him. Certainly it was night-time, and a glance at his watch told him it was almost one-fifteen. Down there in the headquarters' building there was no day or night, and he had lost all track of time. Indeed he had even experienced a brief sense of surprise at discovering it was night.

Here and there at irregular intervals a tall building was still standing, relatively undamaged, while on either side lay only huge heaps of rubble. But even here there was no sign of life. Arkham was a dead city—a veritable necropolis. It was as if the entire population had fled in terror at the catastrophe that had struck so suddenly and unexpectedly. None of the street lights were working, and only the pale, haunting moonlight picked out any details.

After a time he found himself approaching the old quarter of the town, a warren of narrow alleys and gambrel-roofed buildings which sprawled between the wealthier business area and the Miskatonic. From there it lead down towards the salt marshes, and the narrow road went on towards Rowley and whatever remained of Innsmouth. Surprisingly, the havoc was less severe. The ancient hovels here had been standing since before Georgian times, giving shelter to the poorer population from the earliest period of Arkham’s history and later providing dubious refuge to the Eastern European immigrants who had come into the town more than a century before. Now for the first time he saw intermittent signs of life among the squalid houses; chinks of flickering yellow light which showed through cracks in the wooden shutters across the small windows.

Possibly, he thought, these people had nowhere to go after the disaster had struck and no means of leaving Arkham. Now they remained, huddling together behind tightly locked doors and screened windows, muttering their ancient prayers and incantations as a cryptic ward against evil. Once in a while he noticed the palely-gleaming façade of a church set back from the narrow road, but these were not only all empty, they did not appear to have been used for a long time. Yet in spite of the utter absence of any living thing on these streets, he could not shake off the feeling of being watched from the shadows by hidden, furtive eyes.

A glance at his watch told him he had spent more than an hour wandering through the empty streets. Commonsense suggested that every part of the town would be similar to that he had already seen, that there was no point in going any further, that it was time to turn and go back, when he heard a noise. He halted suddenly, just at the mouth of a dark alley that angled away to his right. Dropping his hand to his pocket, he brought out the gun, cocked it, and looked warily about. He could see nothing, no one. But he’d heard something. He edged cautiously forward a couple of paces and peered along the alley.

Something flickered in the distance at the far end. He caught only a fragmentary glimpse of it, but what little he'd seen made him shiver. That wavering incandescence was all too familiar. A Jinnee! There was something else. Scarcely daring to breathe, he listened hard and yet again he heard the sound that had alerted him to this possible danger. A distant babble of voices coming from the same direction! Human voices! Yet these were not, as he had expected, cries for help to escape from that monstrous fiery shape he had just seen.

The cries came closer, and there were others, which seemed to emanate from the opposite direction, but he couldn’t tell whether these were real, or simply echoes. There was something about those sounds that increased the tension building up inside him. Shrill screeches and high-pitched laughter, in which he could make out no articulate words. Mansell knew he had about ten seconds in which to make up his mind. Either to investigate, knowing that the Akkadian crystal would afford him ample protection against the Jinnee, or to turn and slip back the way he had come. He’d made up his mind to investigate, when the scrape of a shoe on the rough cobbles sounded just behind him. He swung around swiftly, blinking his eyes against the glare of the moonlight, and a dark shape launched itself at him, arms thrust forward, fingers reaching for his throat.

He glimpsed a woman’s face twisted with insane fury, utter madness glaring out of her eyes. The next instant, he had been slammed against the wall and was fighting for his life. He felt one hand grip his neck, felt the chain of the Akkadian crystal grinding deeply into his flesh. Her other hand caught at his right wrist where he held a gun. The woman’s strength was superhuman as she tried to choke him, her steely fingers squeezing inexorably around his windpipe, cutting off the air to his gasping lungs.

For a moment he blacked out. Then instinctive reflex action took over. Without thinking, he bunched his left fist and struck her savagely on the side of the face. Her head snapped back, and the grip on his wrist relaxed sufficiently for Mansell to break completely free of her hold. The next second he swung the gun in a vicious arc, hitting her hard on the temple. Uttering a wild, choking cry, she fell back and slumped at his feet. Whether she was dead or merely unconscious, Mansell didn’t wait to find out. Gasping air into his bruised throat, he staggered away from the alley. Already there came a cachinnating chorus of shrieking yells and bestial laughter from that direction and the clatter of feet on cobbles.

He knew the Akkadian crystal would be of little protection against these people. Although it was a near certainty they had been afflicted by the same madness that had struck so many now that Cthulhu was free, they were human and not true minions of the Old Ones. Without further hesitation he turned and ran, keeping into the shadows and making as little noise as possible. At the far end of the narrow street he risked a glance over his shoulder. For a few moments the street at his back remained empty. Then a horde of yelling and barking humanity, some armed with knives, broken bottles and baseball bats, erupted from the alley: wild, dishevelled travesties of human beings that shrieked insanely as they stumbled over the inert body of the woman he had hit. Then one of them, a string-vested lunatic with a blood-spattered wood axe, uttered a high shriek and pointed in his direction.

It was now abundantly clear to Mansell that the Cthulhu-induced madness had spread like a contagion among the degenerate inhabitants of this quarter of Arkham and that his position was precarious in the extreme. With every breath burning agonisingly in his chest, he continued to run. To his horror, he could see corpses hanging from the lampposts of the street he had entered. Three intersections later he was approaching the business district, forcing aching muscles to the limits of effort. Behind him the shrieking, baying mob of homicidal psychopaths continued to follow, and he knew that if there were more of them in the dark streets which flanked the one along which he was fleeing, they could get ahead of him, take him from all sides—whereupon they would no doubt butcher him and possibly eat him. Now, too, there was the added danger of more debris, great heaps of fallen masonry blocking the streets.

Twenty yards further on, the road was completely obstructed where two tall buildings had collapsed into a mass of shapeless rubble. The husks of burnt-out cars lay nearby. Great concrete blocks as high as himself lay crushed together into a virtually solid mass. Swaying, Mansell turned. The nearest of those bedlamites was now less than a hundred yards away. Gasping with the effort, perspiration running into his eyes, Mansell reached up with one hand, hooked his fingers around the upper edge of one the blocks and pulled himself up with an agonising wrench of shoulder muscles. Gritting his teeth, he swung himself sideways, succeeded in getting one leg across the top of the block. Then he was up, his knees scraped and bleeding where the sharp edge had torn a gaping hole in his trousers.

Lying flat on his stomach, he pointed the gun directly at the onrushing horde. Through the throbbing ache in his temples, he thought: This is no time for asking or giving any quarter. If those crazies get their hands on me, I'm finished.

He squeezed the trigger, felt the recoil hammer against his wrist. Four more shots followed in quick succession, each finding their target. Five of the running, gesticulating figures staggered, then dropped. The rest halted momentarily, their crazed minds slowly taking in what was happening. Scrabbling back desperately, Mansell reached the far side of the pile, dropped to the ground behind the granite-and-concrete barrier. Pain jarred redly along his legs as he hit the road, throwing him off balance. Then, as more wild, animal-like yells pierced the silence he let his pent-up breath go in a long exhalation. He knew he could not hope to out run the rest of that mob, knew they would come after him in spite of the deaths of five of their kind. His only chance now was to find some place of concealment amid the ruins and trust to luck they did not find him.

Then, as he peered about him for somewhere to hide, the moonlight faded, leaving only darkness. Even though commonsense told him that it was only a dark cloud passing across the moon, he glanced up involuntarily and froze in his tracks as a paralysing wave of terror passed through him. There were no clouds visible near the moon. The sky there was perfectly clear. What had eclipsed the brightly-shining yellow disc was a terribly familiar, tentacled shape of utter blackness.

Cthulhu had returned!

CHAPTER ELEVEN

By now the massive stone altar had risen up to a towering fifty feet above the sandy plain and, as McKinrick worked his way around it he noticed it bore certain marks other than the monstrous ideoglyphs. These were all near the top: rusty-brown streaks staining the uneven, carved exterior. Glancing up, he mentally formed an image of the top of the great slab, activated the vrach, and the next instant he was standing on its great rectangular summit.

Now he checked the surface again, saw with no great sense of surprise that he had not been mistaken. The horrific blemishes extended over much of the altar. What ghastly rituals had been performed here in times gone by, and by whom, he could scarcely imagine but—

Two things occurred almost simultaneously, freezing him into immobility. The first was a faint rippling of movement on the ground all around the altar, a series of spreading waves like a sudden shower of heavy rain falling into an enormous puddle, and second... second there came a dissonant chanting, a reverberating, undulating howl echoing and re-echoing up and down a saw-edged scale. There are certain sounds peculiar to men, others associated with beasts, and it was awful to listen to the latter yet forming an articulate speech. It was even more terrible to recognise many of those words:

“Iaaah! Iaaah! Yaglufth ngmadh Shub-Niggurath kremn gorath!”

There could be no mistaking that terrible invocation, and a moment later McKinrick saw the source. All around him as far as the eye could see the sand had erupted into a veritable sea of swaying shapes that kept in time to that hideous ululation. There were things which were something like gigantic worms... or, perhaps, snakes... yet, although their heads were tapered in a reptilian manner with a flat skull and eyes that glowed redly and unblinkingly in the grey light, their mouths were gaping holes surrounded by waving cilia, opening and closing like the petals of some repulsive carnivorous flower.

McKinrick couldn’t tell their size for he guessed that much of their scaled bodies lay hidden beneath the sand. For the present it seemed that here, on top of this cyclopean block, they were unable to reach him. Dear Lord! Could these hideous creatures be the fabled Thousand Young of Shub-Niggurath?

He had little time to consider this question. That demonic chant reached an ear-splitting crescendo, then fell silent. Down below the mesmeric swaying ceased, but the ensuing silence and stillness were incomparably more ominous than what had gone on before. It was several seconds before McKinrick lifted his gaze from that silent multitude to stare up into the heavens. There the overall leprous grey had changed. Now there was a dense blackness hovering almost directly above him, a swirling mass shot through with ominous blue flashes. For a second vague recollections of Shub-Niggurath went through McKinrick's mind; then there came a single lightning stroke, so vast that it was more like a shaft of eye-searing brilliance. A single, thudding heartbeat later McKinrick fell to his knees as the great mass of carved stone shuddered with a violent convulsion and then, without warning, fell away beneath him.

The impression was that of an elevator going down out of control, falling into a bottomless shaft. Dizzily the endless descent continued with only blackness on all sides. Above him he could just make out the gaping rectangle of open sky. But this had dwindled so swiftly that within moments it had vanished entirely. All he could do was remain on his hands and knees as he was borne down into the bowels of this unknown planet. Then abruptly his downward motion slowed. Around him the stone walls widened, and there was light of a kind, an obnoxious blue radiance which lit a vast grotto, in the midst of which the altar came to rest. Grotesque stalactites and stalagmites clashed like a row of teeth from some half-buried antediluvian monster.

McKinrick had a good idea where he was, for he had read much concerning the vaults of blue-lit N’Kai. The age-old texts spoke of this blasphemous subterranean world, but they gave only vague, elusive hints as to its location and indeed many of these hints were contradictory, and he could not recall any which provided a connection between N’Kai and Shub-Niggurath.

Feeling these dim memories tugging at his mind, he transported himself onto the rough floor, his eyes now growing accustomed to the dim light. Could this be the place where Shub-Niggurath had been imprisoned by the Elder Gods? That this gargantuan cavern was not as nature had first formed it was soon confirmed by a brief examination of the near wall. There were traces of carvings, which he could just discern, but their exact nature was beyond the limit of his perception where they stretched away above his head.

Standing there beside the mighty stone slab, he felt once more that lure which earlier had prompted him to leave that deserted city of elder secrets and venture forth into the seemingly empty wastes around it. Having automatically begun to move ahead, now determined to discover if this had indeed been the abode of the Old One, that to which She would attempt to return if Edmund and Xaa-gth were successful in their quest through time, he guided himself past the giant stalagmites.

At the far end of the grotto he came across a wide archway, which, although small by comparison with the cavern itself, was nevertheless more than fifty feet high at its apex and approximately seventy feet across. Not until he had come within twenty or thirty feet of it, however, did he notice a certain peculiar aspect of the dust and sand which covered the floor. This did not look quite as it should after countless ages of desertion, and when he stepped a little to one side so that the strange radiance fell somewhat obliquely upon it, he immediately saw where a wide swathe had been brushed through it as if some incredibly large, flattish thing had either entered or left some secondary cave on the other side.

The smoothness of the trail precluded definite markings of any kind, although here and there were suggestions of large, roughly circular indentations. It was evident, too, that this disturbance of the aeon-old dust was of comparatively recent occurrence. Furthermore, there was an odour that clearly emanated from within the second cavern, a stench that was subtly and unmistakably similar to what he had encountered before, one that he had always associated with the presence of the Old Ones. As he stood hesitant in front of that vast archway McKinrick recalled a particular passage he had read in the Necronomicon.

When the rites have been called and howled through the years, They walk unseen by men. The forests know Them, as do the oceans and the ice-deserts of the poles. Yet these places show no sign of Their passing. But by Their smell can men sometimes know of the Their passing upon the Earth.

Certain now that Shub-Niggurath had been here, McKinrick cast all hesitation aside and, taking out the vrach, held it firmly in both hands as he advanced through the titanic archway. He had no idea what he expected to see. As it turned out, his first glance proved something of an anticlimax. In essence the cavern beyond was almost a replica of that in which he had first found himself, although appreciably smaller. Yet there were subtle differences. The walls were utterly devoid of any carvings, and the floor and ceiling were perfectly smooth. No speleological formations were present, but in the centre of the floor was a raised portion in the form of a heptagon. As McKinrick approached this he felt a sudden electric tension in the air, as if something had suddenly sensed his presence and was preparing to—

Something prompted him to turn sharply, just in time to witness the bizarre metamorphosis: a swirling of colours, which had no counterpart in a normal terrestrial spectrum. There was a flowing transmutation in the air, and the great arch disappeared. There was only a wall of solid rock extending from the floor to the high, vaulted ceiling!

*

Wrenching himself to his feet, Vansing Lai scanned the increasing constriction of the precipitate walls of black rock that fell away below him, then looked beyond them to where, made small by sheer distance, the gigantic avenue of pillars stretched towards the Lake of Hali. Without the vrach he had no option but to make his way down unaided, always keeping a watchful eye on those great stone guardians. Perhaps they had discovered his presence by something that passed for sight, or by some other sorcerous things about which he knew nothing. But in any case he must find that precious crystal of the Elder Gods and destroy this dwelling place of Hastur before they became aware of him again.

The light of the multi-coloured stars threw confusing shadows and patterns across every gully, crevice, and needling spire as he began his laborious descent. Here his long sojourn in the Himalayas stood him in good stead, for all around him lay strewn boulders and sharply-knuckled slopes, together with sheer walls that offered few hand- or foot-holds. After a while he came upon a broad ledge, which wound down the sheer face of the mountain, but even here he was forced to concentrate to avoid the treachery of its black surface. Sections of the ledge seemed so tenuously held in place that at times he felt them shift terrifyingly under his weight. Soon the summit he had left loomed high against the alien sky.

The ledge continued, and Vansing Lai began to hope that it went all the way to the edge of the distant valley, still thousands of feet below him. Then, as he eased his way past an outjutting shoulder of rock, he saw that it ended directly ahead in a mass of detritus where, long ages before, part of the mountain had collapsed, sweeping in an avalanche down the side, tearing that ledge away. Much of the slope there was cracked and torn up by time, and it took all of his skill and courage to work his way slowly through a maze of upjutting spikes of night-black stone.

Here, on either side, more forbidding peaks, dark and sinister, thrust their black masses up towards the star-flecked heavens, and he noticed certain curiously regular formations, which clung precariously to their palely-gleaming slopes. Whether these grotesque forms were natural or of some artificial origin, he found it difficult to decide. Everything about this strange and otherworldly region indicated that, apart from the occasional gales which seethed around the upper mountain reaches and rockslides such as that which had evidently destroyed the ledge, the atmospheric conditions were not favourable to change, even over the course of millions of years; yet this uniform symmetry seemed uncanny, giving the impression of having been deliberately carved long ages before. Vansing Lai had seen for himself how glaciers could polish rock surfaces, giving them strange irregularities, yet so far he had seen no evidence of any ice or snow on this forbidding range. Something other than natural causes had shaped those monstrous blocks giving them the appearance they now had and laid them out in gigantic formations which stretched away to the very limit of his vision. But there was no time to ponder upon who or what had sculpted them in this alien fashion. He had only one thing on his mind now, to reach the bottom of this nightmare descent and strike out across the great valley where he might, with luck, recover the vrach and accomplish his task.

Hours passed with little change in the perilous descent and, as far as he could determine, no change at all in the heavens. Either this planet did not rotate at all in its endless orbit about that black sun, or if it did, its rotation was so slow as to be imperceptible. Several times he almost lost his grip as his numbed fingers slipped on the smooth rocks, threatening to pitch him into the yawning abyss below, yet finally, after what seemed ages of working his way between jagged-edged boulders and around the massive overhangs, he reached more level ground and was able to make more rapid progress.

Behind him the cliff face rose towards the stars, its side sculpted into those tantalising and terrifying shapes. Ahead lay a wide stretch of open ground that he knew he must cross before he reached that double role of pillars. Off to one side reposed the stone guardians of Xalcovar and, keeping a watchful eye on them, alert for the first sign of any movement, he commenced to walk towards the spot where he figured the vrach had fallen, his tension mounting with every step he took.

Then, bent almost double, it took him the best part of two hours to cross the final stretch of open ground before he was edging slowly towards the great central area which bordered the pale waters of the lake. Finally he crouched in the multiplicity of shadows cast by the starlight, scarcely daring to breathe, knowing that those grim, monstrously-winged creatures moved in utter silence.

Now he began a silent crawl along the edge of the time-eroded pavings, searching desperately for the crystal. Much of the ground was littered with fragments that had fallen from the monoliths, and he knew the vrach could be anywhere. Faint, sourceless sounds reached him and made his flesh quiver. They seemed to come from the direction of the lake, but he couldn’t be sure. Once more, as he scrambled among the debris, he had the feeling of eyes watching him, and this time it was stronger than before, more intent, more malevolent.

Desperately he probed the shadows where the clashing of colours made his eyes ache. Nothing. Had he mistaken the pillar that he believed marked the spot he had seen the vrach fall? He threw a swift glance behind him to where the gigantic stone creatures squatted upon the massive pedestals, half-expecting to see them rise and moved towards him. But they had not moved.

Slowly, still on his hands and knees, he edged away from the enormous column towards the next. The polychromatic starlight glistened off something that was not a rock fragment. He wormed his way towards it, reached out and grasped the vrach, clasping it tightly in his hand. A backward glance told him that those two twin statues still reposed on their pedestals, that for the time being they had not sensed him. Now he crawled his way across the uneven ground towards a great amphitheatre, which bordered the lake at the end of the avenue, pausing only when he encountered huge tumbled blocks, around which he eased himself carefully and silently.

In less than twenty minutes he had reached the more open area where it sloped down to the oleaginous waters. Here he found two smaller menhirs set some ten feet apart which stood at the very edge of the lake where the oily liquid lapped incessantly against the stony shore. The carvings on these, he noticed, were of a more decadent nature than those on the pillars flanking the avenue, and in that bright starlight he came across images that depicted the denizens of this planet. For the first time he encountered pictures of the two races which had lived here long ages before: one curiously reptilian which had occupied the land masses and the other a hideously-shaped hybrid having outlines suggestive of both octopoid and batrachian descent. He shuddered to see reptiles that walked upright on their hind legs raising and carving the great stone blocks with which they had built this incredibly ancient city on both sides of the lake.

For a moment he felt an impulse to flee this ruinous place of horror with its silent sentinels who still kept their eternal vigil and might even now be growing aware of his return. Then he remembered the task which had been placed upon him by the Elder Gods and, knowing that he had to act quickly, he pushed himself rigidly to his feet, stepped between the monoliths, and raised the vrach high above his head, meshing his mind instinctively with the crystal.

As the brilliant ray of pure carmine light speared out from between his hands, it struck the surface of the lake, piercing the murky depths. Where it hit, the surface frothed and boiled, and fierce red flarings shot back and forth. Hissing and steaming, the lapping waves receded, drawing away from the spot where Vansing Lai stood, his arms trembling with the strain. He watched as the black fluid in the lake began to go down. It was as if the beam had burnt a great hole through the bed of the lake, and all of the liquid was draining away into some vast subterranean cavern. Faster and faster the liquid level fell, revealing the rough, pitted walls of the great basin, and now he noticed other motions within the swiftly-falling lake: thrashing, churning movements as of huge half-seen bodies lunging and twisting within the depths, throwing great splashes high into the air.

Held upright and active only by the fierce pressure of his will, Vansing Lai continued to hold the vrach high over his head, directing that beam of pure, all-consuming energy down into the deepening chasm at his feet. Finally it was done, and it was not until then that the real horror was revealed. He had thought the lake to be bottomless. Now he saw that, although the bottom lay almost at the limit of his vision, there was something there that he had not expected. Glowing greenly in the blackness where the brilliant starshine could not possibly hope to penetrate, were the ruinous walls of a sprawling city, and the hideously-angled architecture told him that it was one which could only belong to the Old Ones. Only They built such blasphemous edifices where the angles blurred into a mind-twisting infinity.

And that was not all...

Clustered in frightful masses around those spires, turrets and massive columns were those denizens of this place whose age-old images were depicted on the twin menhirs flanking the erstwhile lake, clinging like huge limpets to the stone walls. Vansing Lai felt his stomach muscles contract painfully at the mere sight of them. If they had been indigenous to this planet before Hastur had come, they had been so depraved and degenerate that they had worshipped the Old Ones during His imprisonment. Now Hastur was gone but they remained.

Tightening his grip on his fading will, Vansing Lai played the incarnadine radiance over the entire region, watched as the monstrous inhabitants of the lake shrivelled, their grotesque outer shells and exoskeletons disintegrating, revealing their repulsive, slimy, mussel-like interiors which melted into dripping masses of ooze and fell away, while beneath them the ancient stones cracked asunder, mighty blocks falling one atop the other. The beam of light pierced pseudo-flesh and stone like a cleansing fire, swept every shadow away, pulverised the soaring pinnacles. Those pillars and ruins he had seen from the air when that creature had lifted him away, had been merely the outward, visible sign of primal Xalcovar. There, deep within that chasm, was the real city, and now, like Sodom and Gomorrah, it lay totally destroyed.

When he finally lowered the vrach, reeling with dizziness, nothing was left standing on the floor of the lake. Everything was gone.. But the danger was not yet past. Alerted by some instinct hidden deep within himself, Vansing Lai spun away from that great shaft of midnight blackness to face the miles-long avenue again, and saw what he feared. Already those two great stone monstrosities were in the air, once more aware of him, out-spread wings beating silently. He had only seconds in which to act if he wanted to get away from this terrible place now that his task was finished. The two colossal creatures suddenly veered towards him, great talons outstretched in his direction, and he thought he glimpsed an alien intelligence, a consciousness awful and malignant, on their stone features. Swiftly, reflexively, he turned his temporarily lapsed concentration to the palely-glowing crystal, saw that blazing triple helix shining within.

The brilliant suns that crowded the heavens became elongated streaks of multi-hued flame, blurred into rushing walls of unearthly colour. Amid the crumbling pillars of primeval Xalcovar, the questing talons closed on empty air.

*

Utter cold radiated from beyond the great portal like a silent scream. Instantly paralysis locked itself like an iron bar around the two men. Vincent saw what was happening; every tiny detail registered itself on him. But he was mentally and physically helpless, caught in that feral chill. No matter how hard he tried, he could not reach out and touch the vrach with his mind.

Through the blaze of light, he glimpsed something moving deep within the all-pervading radiance. Wraith-like and insubstantial, it shifted tantalisingly, refusing to come into focus in order for him to give it shape. There was a coiling, and for an instant he thought it might be the image of the helix within the vrach, somehow transferred to the heart of that argent glare. Then something reached up towards him. It was as if a tiny portion of that blazing nebulosity touched his head. It felt like an impalpable nail being driven deep into the side of his skull, impaling his brain albeit painlessly.

Into his mind there flashed cloudy images: pictures of multitudinous worlds of wonder beneath fantastic constellations; majestic towers of jade and glittering crystal which rose from lush, fertile plains; marvellous cities beneath the sea all encrusted with shells and coral; remote spaces where the convoluted coils of dark nebulae coalesced into flaring suns; and still more ultramontane regions where nothing existed but faint stirrings which spoke of hidden latent energies and the uttermost secrets of the universe.

There followed a sudden change, a shifting of mental perspective. He saw the vast shining wheel of the galaxy blazing across an ocean of utter blackness, and now there was a presence inside him. It was alien and evil—yet he found it strangely compelling. He struggled instinctively as it entered his mind, yet the numbing chill made his strivings pointless. And the intrusion formed words inside his head.

Vincent Trevelyan, said the voice, you have come here to destroy the ancient city of R’lyeh, and that I cannot allow. Great Cthulhu is no longer here to protect that which is His. You have annihilated Y’ha-nthlei, which was the home of our Brother Dagon. Even for that you yourself should be destroyed, for you have dared to set yourself up against the gods. To follow that path is folly and leads only to your own eternal damnation. The Elder Gods cannot protect you, and that bauble which you hold in your hands has no power here. It cannot touch that which the true Old Ones created more years ago than your human mind can conceive. Cthulhu would destroy you utterly were He here, but I can spare you and your companion. Release your hold on the crystal, hurl it into the light like the abomination it truly is and all that I have shown you can be yours together with eternal life.

Before he realised it Vincent’s hand was moving of its own volition, his fingers loosening their grip on the vrach. Beside him Minter stood motionless, a figure seemingly carved from stone, eyes staring from their sockets at the horrific scene. Then all at once the arcane spell was broken by a surge of indeterminate panic, fear... and recognition. Vincent knew what it was, what he was entangled with, what was determined to break his hold on the crystal.

Nyarlathotep! The Crawling Chaos! The Messenger of the Old Ones! With Cthulhu no longer present, He had come to make fantastic promises with His honeyed words. And with this realisation Vincent recognised something else. The Crawling Chaos had no power over the vrach, otherwise He would have taken it in an instant. Nyarlathotep was afraid!

Terrible as the nightmare was that clutched and hampered his senses, Vincent could fight it. He could defy the Old One.

A few heartbeats later, gritting his teeth until the muscles of his jaw ached with the tension, he felt a tiny spark of warmth deep within his mind, a spark that grew rapidly into a raging white blaze. He sensed the icy chill retreating, experienced another presence in his mind, felt the blood returning to his numbed limbs. His fingers clenched into a tight fist around the crystal. From deep inside the writhing, twisting maelstrom of light there came a howl of frustrated anger, a hideous shriek which rose to a crescendo and then faded as if what had uttered it had withdrawn swiftly away into an unseen distance.

Beside him Minter had sagged to his knees, his hands covering his face. He was shaking uncontrollably, muttering incoherent phrases behind his clenched fingers. Deep within the doorway the eye-searing glow was fading swiftly, and the cold was fleeing. In the centre of the floor rose a curiously-angled pedestal some ten feet in height, covered on each side with deeply-incised and wholly unrecognisable symbols. On this column rested something syncretic: an interweaving of oddly curved faces and planes, peculiarly asymmetrical. The glow that had surrounded it earlier was now merely a ghostly flickering spark that went out even as he watched.

It was then that a further gigantic convulsion shook R’lyeh. A crack appeared in the wall, spread rapidly across the uneven floor, widening as it came. A second zigzagged almost at right angles to the first. With a wild shriek Minter clutched desperately at Vincent as the floor heaved and tilted. An elusive touch of defoedation arose from somewhere close by, followed by a booming reverberation from far below them. For a second Minter teetered on the edge of a widening gap, a gaping angle which seemed to form from nothing, would have fallen horizontally into it had Vincent not caught him by the arm and hauled him away.

Perspiration beaded the man’s face, and there was an expression of utter terror in his eyes as he croaked: “Jesus! This whole island is sinking! We have to get out of here!” His head turned wildly in all directions, seeking a way out.

Drawing in a deep breath Vincent said sharply: “First I have to destroyed the heart of R’lyeh. Then we’ll leave.”

“But there’s no time!” Minter’s lips were working horribly as he fought to get the words out. Vincent knew that at any second his nerve would break and he would try to make a run for the tunnel where he would be swallowed by those alien angles. He tightened his grip, thrust the vrach forward in his free hand, concentrating hard. All around them, the cavern started to reel, and he knew it was neither his imagination nor an illusion: R’lyeh was sinking, down to the bed of the Pacific Ocean unknown fathoms below. He had to work quickly. While he had the vrach, he could exist under water, but now he had Minter to consider.

With an effort he closed off his thoughts to everything that was happening around him, focusing only on the crystal, sending a beam of carmine light directly at the thing on the pedestal. The incarnadine glow enveloped it completely, spun around it in crazy whorls, dancing and sparkling in flashing shards of colour. For an instant the alien magic within the object resisted fiercely. It took on a colour that matched the nauseous green of R’lyeh. Then with a soundless implosion it vanished, followed by a vast rumbling concussion that echoed along the tunnel. There was a violent shaking which had nothing to do with the earlier convulsions. R’lyeh was disintegrating around them as the elder magic which had held these stones together for measureless ages beyond history dissipated.

A pallid fog of dust and pulverised stone emerged from the distant tunnel mouth and rolled into the cavern. Far above their heads there was an ominous creaking and, glancing up, Vincent saw the massive door, now wrenched free of its hinges, toppling towards them. Almost without thinking, he dragged Minter towards him, meshed with the vrach, and uttered the archaic guttural syllables he had used on previous occasions, fixing in his mind the great stone room on Glyu-Vho with its massive shelves. The ponderous mass of the titan door fell upon the space where they had been standing a split second before.

*

The things that emerged from the black-shadowed shafts were manlike in stature but as atramentous as the heavens overhead. Crouched in the inky shadow of a gaunt tower, Kitson felt a wave of nameless fright sweep over him, for there came a flash of memory as to where he had seen those triangular faces and satanic red eyes before. The last time he had seen them had been in Charnwood House only minutes before he and the others had gathered inside that great five-pointed star and McKinrick had used the vrach to transport them to Glyu-Vho.

Jinnee!

Then these creatures had been flame-shrouded entities bent on destruction. Now it had been the absence of those tongues of licking flame that had thrown him mentally off balance. He should have realised what manner of beings might be here on this horrendous planet which revolved around Cthugha’s former prison within that red star. He had failed wholly to recall that, unlike those denizens of the new Yuggoth, these creatures possessed the ability to move through interstellar space just as easily as Cthugha Himself. If there were to be any guardians of the small region of the cosmos, it had to be the Jinnee.

More of them were now emerging, ascending the smooth walls of those tremendously deep shafts by unknown means. In utter silence they formed a menacing ring around him, although so far none made any move in his direction. Then, as if at an invisible signal, flames erupted from their coal-black bodies, and the ring of darkness became a ring of fire. Kitson forced himself to stand his ground. He had met these creatures before, new their limitations. Mere minions of Cthugha, they were powerless against the vrach.

But they were not powerless to spread their fire. Around him the Jinnee suddenly squatted against the rock. Arms like black, scorched sticks beat against the ground. Slowly the fire which enveloped them ran down their arms, dripped like liquid magma from their wrists and fingers, puddling into a wide circle which then began to creep inward in streams of blazing lava—and he was in the middle!

The fire was moving slowly, but Kitson knew that within minutes it would engulf him. He couldn’t wait here for the sun to rise fully above the horizon. Fighting the terror in his mind, he struggled to mesh with the vrach but his control of the crystal was nothing like that of his companions. Time and again he thought he had the spinning helix imprinted on his mind, and each time it faded—and all the while the liquid fire was creeping closer, the circle of flame closing.

Then without warning a wave of incandescence reared up, coiled like a snake, and hurled itself towards him. With a wild cry, he staggered back, realising too late what the Jinnee had planned. His abrupt lurch backward took him to the lip of one of the great shafts. The next moment he was shooting dizzily downward in utter blackness, still gripping the crystal but in his breathless fall utterly unable to focus upon it. He seemed to be hurtling down to the ultimate pits of this nightmare world, and he knew that if he hit the bottom it would be end of him.

Fighting vertigo, he risked a quick look downward, stared into absolute darkness, straining his vision until dancing flecks of light flickered across his stultified sight. Then he noticed that one of the points of light did not move like the others and, in addition, it seemed to swell slowly, expanding into an angry red glow. It was then, in one instant of blinding clarity, that Kitson knew the meaning behind these multitudinous shafts which honeycombed this entire planet, knew where they led... down to the raging hellfires which burned at its core—and that it was this region which was the spawning ground of the Jinnee. Here, after that original race had fled across the void to the solar system, Cthugha had bred these monstrosities.

And now he was plunging headlong into that hellish region, unable to halt his fall unless he could calm his riotous thoughts and regain control of the vrach. Desperately he tried to expel all thought of what lay gaping beneath him, drawing ever closer. Ignoring the rush of wind which carried a fetid stink from the pit, thrusting into the background of his consciousness the image of the raging hellfires which would devour him instantly, he attempted to conjure up an image of the whirling, spinning helix emblazoned in carmine which was his only salvation.

Maddeningly, it refused to come. The tableau of that nameless doom which awaited him at the bottom of the shaft drilled his mind with a roaring torrent of flame. The rush of the noxious updraught tore his breath from his lips. The blackness of the pit seemed to take on a tangible form, wrapping itself around him in an enclosing cocoon, seeking to dull his mind to anything but the fiery realm far below where the Jinnee dwelt.

There was a growing numbness in his limbs, extending along his right arm and into his clenched fingers where they curled around the vrach. He could feel the crystal slipping from his grasp, knew that once he lost it he was indeed doomed. Somehow, dredging into reserves of strength he did not know he possessed, he forced his arms to move, to bring the vrach up in front of his eyes, pressing it tightly against his forehead. The numbness diminished; the raging hellfires that danced and leapt in his mind dimmed. His downward plunge, however, continued and, although he now steadfastly refused to look down, he knew those infernal regions at the planet’s core were approaching fast.

With a supreme effort he forced that knowledge from his brain, opened his eyes wide, visualising the carmine crystal pressed against his temple. Gradually the shrieking chaos in his mind receded; the lurid glow developed a pale colour.

Something was there; something which was striving to break through. For several seconds the image wavered, then grew stronger, taking on a definite shape and substantiality. Like a drowning man he clung to it, let everything else slip away. A second later the symbiosis was complete.

He visualised the planet as he had first seen it from space, before he had descended to that Jinnee-ridden surface. The transition was virtually instantaneous. Scarcely able to comprehend it, he was hanging in space, looking down upon those time-shattered ruins which threw their grotesque, crooked shadows across the rocks, now teeming with shapes of lambent flame. Very soon those Jinnee down there, spilling like a torrent across the rocks, would realise what had happened, that he had somehow escaped from their trap, and that they would launch themselves upward to seek him out. They had a duty to perform, to guard this planet and its sun while Cthugha was absent and this they would do. Even though the vrach might destroy them, if they came in sufficient numbers he might not be able to kill them all.

From where he was, high above the planetary surface, the red sun, surrounded by hideous streamers of flame, was clearly visible. Like some vast, tentacled monster it hung in the void, its disc horribly defaced by gigantic black blotches. What had happened when Cthugha, freed from the bondage imposed by the Elder Gods, had burst forth from that incandescent interior? Certainly the entire fabric of that star must have been torn asunder and, from what he could recall of the professor’s observations at that time, its brightness had increased more than ten thousand-fold. Now, in spite of the great prominences that writhed around its surface, it seemed to have settled into a fairly stable condition. But it remained a menace so long as it existed as a haven for the Old One, should Edmund and Xaa-gth succeed in their mission.

Taking the vrach firmly in both hands, he held it out in front of him. Clenching his teeth, he turned the crystal towards the sun, blended his own will with that of the vrach, felt his mind clench around the helix. The beam of carmine luminosity that speared across the void was a blinding, sparkling coruscation, which leapt directly to the heart of the sun. It contemptuously brushed aside the groping fingers of spiralling flame that sought to entangle themselves with it, pierced deep into the interior where, for a moment, it seemed to lose itself without producing any visible effect. Then, slowly at first, the writhing tendrils of the prominences curved more steeply inward as if some hidden force was acting upon them, tugging them towards the centre of the star.

It began to shrink perceptibly, collapsing in upon itself, its colour changing from red to indigo and then violet. Soon it had diminished to less than half of its original diameter, and still it contracted. Now there were no longer any prominences, as all of the material of which it was composed was drawn irresistibly towards the invisible centre where the beam from the vrach had penetrated. Awe-struck, Kitson saw the incredible transformation, and several seconds fled before he became aware of another curious phenomenon.

He was moving towards that contracting sun and with an ever-increasing velocity!

Not only himself, but that terrible black planet, infested by Jinnee, was also being drawn towards the dwindling disc, now so small and black as to be virtually invisible against the starry firmament. Kitson knew very little of black holes, only that they were supposedly formed from stars of large mass which collapsed into point sources where the gravitational pull was so enormous that not even light could escape from them. Yet surely this star could not possibly have possessed sufficient mass to evolve into a black hole? Perhaps the mysterious vrach, which obviously obeyed laws of physics unknown to earthly science, was responsible for the transformation.

By now, the tremendous pull was so strong he seemed to be plunging headlong towards that invisible point which was drawing everything in its vicinity into oblivion. At some time, the lancing carmine beam had snapped off, so he knew his task he was finished. Now he had to get out of this of region space before he too, was drawn into that point source. Below him he glimpsed the original Yuggoth, torn from its stable orbit, speeding uncontrollably towards the black hole, its velocity increasing rapidly, taking with it those hellish creatures that had guarded it.

His mind still enmeshed with that of the vrach, Kitson formed a picture in his consciousness of that great stone room on Glyu-Vho. In the instant before the transition, he glimpsed aeon-old Yuggoth poised against its doom, now seemingly motionless as time became distorted by its unbelievable velocity.

CHAPTER TWELVE

The same instant that awful transubstantiation occurred, wiping out the vast archway, the blue radiance was also extinguished and McKinrick found himself in a darkness as deep as the pit. But it lasted for less than half a minute. With a swift movement he thrust the vrach out in front of him, and within the space of a single heartbeat it sent a peal of vivid incarnadine light ringing across the cavern. There was danger here, he could sense it in every fibre of his body, yet he could not distinguish the source. Then his vision cleared in time to see that something hovered just above the raised dais thirty yards away: a black, roiling cloud like a thunderhead with vague glimmerings of light within it.

Warily, he approached and it was as he did so that he noticed the cavern was no longer empty. Around him were tall, robed and hooded figures whose outlines were not even remotely human, and more seemed to be emerging from the solid rock. Dim and wraith-like, they clustered around the thing on the dais, exuding a curious influence on McKinrick’s mind. A faint, omnipresent impression of sound began to rise and fall in cadences that seemed to follow some rhythm, but not one of the Earth. He picked out an elusive suggestion of chanting, and the scintillant colours within the black cloud now conformed to the unearthly rhythm of the chant.

Transfixed to the spot, McKinrick could only stand and stare as the subtle mesmerism of the sound entered his brain and took a firm hold on him in spite of everything he could do to fight it. The towering mass of blackness seemed to reach to the distant ceiling and his eyes were irresistibly drawn towards the centre. Then abruptly all sound ceased, and the silence which ensued was like a portent of doom.

How long that awful silence lasted, McKinrick couldn’t tell, caught as he was in the hypnotic spell of that ancient chant which was old when Shub-Niggurath and the Others were young and the universe had not yet been born.

But end it did, and a voice flowed through McKinrick’s bemused mind. There was both horror and malignity in the mental radiations, which McKinrick somehow interpreted into words:

“I am an extension of My true form which, as you have already guessed, is now elsewhere seeking vengeance upon Those who imprisoned Us long ages ago. Did you, in your supreme folly, believe I would leave My place unattended so that any rash mortal, believing he carried the means of My destruction, might enter unopposed? Fool! You have taken it upon yourself to stand against the Old Ones who are now all-powerful. Your ignorance and presumption have led to your undoing. While it is true that the bauble you hold in your hand can hurt Us and is beyond Our control, the same is not true of your mind.”

Something like a finger of ice touched McKinrick’s mind. Within the writhing black cloud the sparkling flashes gathered themselves. For a moment they hung in the centre, a ball of blazing blue fire. Then they blasted outward and, in spite of the alien hold on his will, McKinrick winced, confident that the bolt of fire had been aimed at him. Instead it struck the wall on the far side of the dais, and the savage concussion left him almost bereft of consciousness.

The impact did no visible damage. It was nothing on the physical level, but rather a sorcerous force. Spreading outward, the glimmering lines extended like etchwork across the rock—blended, multiplied and joined to take shape within the rock. Huge and monstrous, it was a figure of Shub-Niggurath in Her true form. That it was simply an avatar of the Old One, McKinrick knew; nonetheless, the sight of it brought a rising note of terror. Above the dais the boiling nigrification was diminishing in volume as its substance was transferred to the brilliantly glowing core and thence to the sheer rockface.

All the while, the subtle but powerful hold on his mind remained, so that he was unable to tear his gaze from the glowing figure that loomed over the entire cavern, above the swaying ghostly shapes that cavorted wildly in an insane circle. He tried to look away from the shape in an effort to break this hypnotic grip on his consciousness but it drew his eyes back until the outline of that horrific, horned figure was imprinted indelibly upon his brain.

Could this be Shub-Niggurath Herself? Had She somehow come back to prevent him from completing his act of destruction? He knew that if that gigantic shape should step out of the rock and take on solidity, it would indeed be the Old One, and he struggled desperately to break free of the damnable spell. More and more details emerged, etched into the rock, as the blackness subsumed itself into fire. Finally the darkness was all gone. Only the evilly-glowing figure of Shub-Niggurath remained graven in the wall from which writhing tentacles which ended at terrible, puckered mouths weaved and slavered.

Ghostly voices murmured, mournfully and incantatory, in the air, and a potent nimbus, glowing bluely but far brighter than the radiance which had earlier lit N’Kai, blazed frozenly over the horned head embedded within the stone. By degrees and mistily, it became apparent that the figure was holding something—some dimly seen object clutched in hideously-shaped hands. It was an elusive glowing thing, and McKinrick saw that it had a shape like the vrach he held, but it’s radiance was blue, and that which crawled and coiled within its depths was serpent-like.

Even as he grew aware of this, he realised that the crystal in his own hands had started to glow as if in response to the growing brightness of the object outlined in the wall. As the vrach gleamed up into a pulsing roseate brilliance, a bolt of cold cyanic blue light flashed towards McKinrick, sizzling through the air with sufficient power to blast rock and flesh into nothingness. The blast scoured across the cavern, would have obliterated McKinrick had it reached him. He knew he had no control over the vrach, that his mind was still held in thrall by the weird influence, which still dominated him. Now, however, the vrach appeared to be acting of its own volition as if it recognised an enemy and, in acting to protect itself, it protected him also.

Erubescent light speared out of it, met the arctic blue just above the dais in a clash of absolute violence. All around the great chamber the rock howled, drowning out the undulant chanting of the spectres, thundering in McKinrick’s ears, shuddering in great waves through his rigid body as he strove to maintain upright under the tremendous assault.

Gradually, he found the alien grip on his mind easing, saw through tear-blurred eyes that the cerulean light was retreating slowly, being beaten back by the savage radiance from the vrach. Here, he realised, that in some small way the ancient battle between the Elder Gods and the Old Ones was being re-enacted. As Shub-Niggurath’s power faded he felt his mind clear, knew that he could now regain the symbiosis with the vrach, but he forbore to do so. There was no need at that moment. Whether the vrach always functioned when confronted by evil or whether there was an extension of one of the Elder Gods here manipulating it, McKinrick could not tell. But the blue light was slowly being driven back into the rock.

“No!” the avatar howled. “No! I know not how you have thrown off the mental shackles of My power. The power here in N’Kai is Mine; and Mine alone. Nothing can withstand it.”

Blast after blast erupted from the rock, but the carmine light absorbed it, thrust it back into the cavern wall, and at the same time the image of the Old One dimmed, faded as each blow diminished the pseudo-substance of the avatar. The lines that etched the outline of the gigantic figure frayed, grew faint with each succeeding second, until finally it went out altogether.

Silence, deep and absolute, settled within the cavern like a cloud of pulverised rock. The wraiths were also gone, back into the walls, driven away by the defeat of Shub-Niggurath's power. Faint rumbles sounded within the rock, but they too were fading swiftly. Swaying, McKinrick gasped air into his lungs, felt it raw at the back of his throat. The immediate danger was passed, but he still had a task to perform.

He let his glance fall to the crystal in his hands. It still glowed faintly, and an instant later he meshed with it, forcing himself to concentrate. More light blazed into existence as he turned slowly, focusing the radiance first upon the dais, watching as it crumbled to dust, then upon the walls around him, criss-crossing them with the laser-like beams of the vrach, cutting and slicing through their smoothness until he felt the fabric which held them together begin to give. A few seconds more and then he uttered the necessary incantation under his breath. Stars fled, ran into streaks of colour, which grew and swelled into vast, rearing walls of an inconceivable hue.

*

Mansell’s frantic running ceased before he had covered a single block, for to both his left and right he discerned the hue and cry of organised pursuit. The sight of that bloated shape outlined against the moon had driven him almost to the point of gibbering madness. Somehow he had forced himself into motion, had known that he had to reach the headquarters and warn them of this danger. He knew he could not be more than four or five blocks from the university grounds but now, with this fresh sound, his plans had been utterly changed. If the thoroughfare ahead of him was blocked by more of these awful, maniacal creatures there was no way he could make it, and with more of them at his back it was only a matter of minutes before they cornered him. He now knew too much and, insane as his pursuers might be, their madness was derived from Cthulhu, and Philip Mansell had to be eliminated.

His only hope lay in concealing himself among the ruins, praying that the mob might pass by to join up with their fellows further on, and then backtracking a little way to cut along one of the intersections. It would mean a circuitous and longer route, but it seemed the only option. Clinging closely to the great mounds of rubble lining the left-hand side of the street, he ran on for a further thirty yards and then, hearing a sudden increase in the high-pitched screams of those creatures at his back, he darted through a narrow crack where a massive girder had fallen slantwise across the sidewalk, ducking his head and squirming into the tumbled blocks of masonry which lay beyond.

Scarcely daring to breathe, he thrust himself as far as possible into the gap, pressing his back against a rough concrete block. The sound of pursuit grew louder now: bestial shrieks and grunts, which were hideous in the extreme and could scarcely have arisen from human throats. Shivering uncontrollably, Mansell tried to put out of his mind that vast, tentacled blight from the beginning of the cosmos. At the moment he had to concentrate solely on his own survival.

Through a narrow crack between the girder and a couple of stone slabs he glimpsed three loping figures that raced swiftly passed his hiding place. The moon had come out once more, and by its pallid light he saw their faces twisted into masks of frenzied determination. Two stopped almost directly in front of his hiding place, and he could distinctly hear muttering guttural voices conversing in some unknown tongue. From the other noises which had now risen to a veritable bedlam of sound, and coming seemingly from every direction, it seemed that the ancient quarter of Arkham must have hidden a huge congregation of these nameless creatures, now driven into a fury by the mental waves emitted by Cthulhu.

Dear God! Had this evil cosmic contagion spread throughout every town and city in the country... or worse still, throughout the entire world? The capacity of the Old Ones for maintaining contact with Their debased minions while still in Their aeon-long captivity was well known. What alien and impious dreams was Cthulhu sending now that He was free?

Shouts echoed from further along the street and, after a momentary pause, the two shapes moved on, out of sight. Cautiously, Mansell shifted himself slightly into a more comfortable position as the sounds gradually diminished and the screaming horde moved further away.

There might be stragglers coming up behind, but that was a risk he would have to accept. Very soon that band which had passed him would meet up with the others working their way along the adjacent streets and would then discover their error. Taking care not to make any more sound than necessary, he edged back towards the street, ducking beneath the angled beam. Slowly, an inch at a time, he leaned forward until he could throw a glance along the street in both directions. The sickly yellow moonlight delineated the whole length of the thoroughfare, back to the barrier he had scaled in one direction and to the next intersection in the other.

Two dim shapes were visible more than a hundred yards away, and as he watched they scrambled out of sight, not once looking behind them. Swiftly he darted towards a vacant lot opposite him, threw himself down among the tall clumps of coarse grass, working his way across it until he came up against the façade of a gaunt church which had somehow survived much of the destruction. High iron railings enclosed it, and the large gate was securely padlocked forcing him to work his way around it, along a narrow alley where the side of the church abutted on the passage.

Just before entering the alley he glanced behind him but saw no sign of any pursuers. There was still a confused shouting and shrieking in the near distance, but it did not seem to be coming any closer and he guessed that for the moment he had thrown them off the scent. But there was still some distance to cover before he reached the university grounds and the comparative safety of the Organisation headquarters. The passage opened out onto a narrow street, and this was almost completely choked with rubble. A line of burnt-out vehicles stood on one side, some crushed out of all recognition by the masonry which had fallen onto them. Pools of stagnant water shone in the wan moonlight and for a moment, eyeing the mounds of debris, he doubted if he could make his way through. But if he ventured towards the other street paralleling this one, it would take him even further from his destination, and there was no guarantee they were not in an even worse condition than this.

Pausing to get his breath back, he threw a swift, apprehensive glance at the sky. There was no sign of that monstrous shape he had earlier seen silhouetted against the moon, but that fact brought him little comfort. Cthulhu was indeed returning to Earth, and whether that meant Cthugha had been forced to flee the solar system, or Cthulhu no longer considered Him a threat, it boded ill for mankind.

Nothing was stirring in that dead street, but he had only progressed a few yards when he became aware of the marked fishy odour, which the freshening breeze brought from some region ahead of him. The meaning of this was immediately clear, stopping him in his tracks.

Deep Ones!

In the turmoil of all that had happened he had completely forgotten them. The Jinnee he had spotted earlier seemed to have made no attempt to follow him, but with Cthulhu now so close any of His minions still around would now be more inclined to show themselves, even after the destruction of Y’ha-nthlei. With that ancient stone city now totally obliterated, there could now be no return there for them. All sorts of unpleasant conjecture crossed his mind as he stood undecided, scanning the deep moon-thrown shadows ahead of him. Then as his gaze circled the area around him he caught the faint movement almost directly ahead. It was some distance away, and the gaunt ruins on either side threw the spot into deep shadow, but what he saw he did not like. He had already seen the shapes of those inhabitants of the native quarter and how far they had sunk beneath the level of normal humankind, but this cluster of vague shapes was something different.

Their gait was a peculiar hopping motion, and their limbs flopped awkwardly and horribly as if unused to walking upright. Moreover, whenever they crossed a narrow strip of moonlight that pallid glow glistened too whitely off their hideously-contoured bodies.

For an instant, he debated whether to try to contact Susan telepathically, then held back. It was possible these creatures also possessed that ability, and they would instantly divine his presence. The stench grew stronger until it was almost overpowering, and for a second he thought he had been detected and they were closing in on him. But the high mountains of debris had concealed him from them. Bending low, he skirted the burnt-out shell of a car, then worked his way slowly across the narrow street to the far side where he was out of the moonlight. Now, peering through gaps in the tumbled blocks of stone and cement, he was able to see them clearly, perhaps two hundred yards away. There seemed to be a limitless number of them streaming around the corner, shambling in a milling mass of abnormality.

He knew that if they decided to move along the street in his direction there was no way he could reach the university. It still lay four blocks ahead, and very soon those other creatures from the poorer quarter of Arkham would be massing for an extended search. Then, moving in a loose bunch, they hopped, slithered and crawled along the road to the left of the intersection, finally disappearing from sight. Still keeping in the shadows, Mansell moved along the street as quickly as he could, clawing his way over sharp-edged irregular blocks, knowing that very soon every route to the university grounds would be cut off.

Reaching the intersection he scanned the streets that led off to the left and right, breathed a sigh of relief as he saw they were deserted. Sounds still reached him, however, a cacophonous chorus of baying, yelping shrieks, which told him that the pursuit still continued. Ten yards beyond the intersection he spotted an automobile parked against the sidewalk. Unlike all the others he had seen this one appeared to be undamaged and, pausing to glance through the driver's window, he noticed that the key was still in the ignition. Evidently at some time in the past few days its owner had abandoned it when the tremors had started and the buildings came crashing down in ruin.

Swiftly he slid into the seat and turned the key, praying there was still gasoline in the tank. The engine coughed twice, then caught with a loud roar. Switching on the headlights, he pressed hard on the accelerator and pulled away into the middle of the road, swerving violently around heaps of contorted rubble. The tyres screeched thinly as he shot across the next intersection, the car lurching precariously as it threatened to go into a skid. With an effort he managed to correct it, but then twenty yards away a crowd of Deep Ones suddenly rushed into the middle of the road. The sight of those monstrous creatures and oddly slumped outlines, clearly visible in the powerful headlights, almost unseated Mansell’s reason. Dear Lord! Was it possible that this planet could have spawned such outrageous abominations?

His hands shook on the wheel, and for a second his foot moved automatically to the brake. Then, gritting his teeth, he pressed harder on the accelerator, ignoring the obstacles in his path, driving straight for the sickening, slavering horde. Horrifying thuds hammered at his ears as the car smashed into the middle of them. Some flew high into the air, turned over once, and landed on the hood. Lidless eyes stared horribly at him through the glass. Sickening green ichor splashed across the windscreen. The car bounced as one of them fell beneath the rear wheels. Through the mirror he noticed that several lay on the road and the remainder had scattered. But already those still alive were following. Desperation seized him as he struggled to concentrate on avoiding the rubble. He noticed other dark shapes on either side emerging from the ruins, keeping pace with him. It was only a matter of time before they made a second attempt to stop him, and this time he might not be so fortunate.

He also knew he had to keep an eye open for the intersection which would lead him back to his destination; that if he missed it there might be no way of retracing his route. Pursued by those nameless, shapeless entities and flanked by others whose outlines he could not see clearly, Mansell drove recklessly along the debris-choked street searching frantically for the turn-off. Across one street he sent the car into a wide swerve and felt the front wheels hit the littered sidewalk with an impact that almost threw him out of the seat, his chest slamming painfully into the wheel. Then less than thirty yards away where the spectral moonlight glimmered on the shapeless ruins, he spotted the junction. For a wild instant, hurtling towards it, the car sliding greasily on the surface, he had the impression the entrance was completely blocked.

Pulling hard on the wheel, he swung into the street, narrowly missing a wrecked truck that stood at a crazy angle across the road. He heard the scrape of metal against the side of the automobile. An outjutting piece of twisted steel crashed against the windscreen, shattering it into a hundred pieces. Something sliced across his cheek as the blast of cold night air swirled around his head, and there was blood trickling down the side of his face. Then he was past, and what he could make out of the remaining stretch of road seemed comparatively free of rubble.

He saw the broken gates of the university on his left in the rising and falling beam of the headlights, pushed his foot down and drove through. Skidding to a halt, he switched off the lights and engine, climbed out, not bothering to close the door behind him, and made his way through the ruins, down the elevator, and into the laboratory where the lights still burned brightly.

*

More millions of years into the future than he could count, Edmund Trevelyan sped along the temporal winds which blow from the universe's creation to its ultimate demise. For what seemed ages, but had no measurable duration in this strange perpetuity, he and Xaa-gth had gradually slowed their tremendous acceleration as they approached the final stage in the expansion of the universe. In some unimaginable way their minds had become attuned to the vibrations seething within the time continuum, forces which strove to prevent this transgression of all the normal laws.

Using some weird extramundane sense imparted by the vrachs they were able to view the universe as it evolved and observed this phase of its existence draw to its inevitable close. Not that there was much to see. Most of the stars were gone, their fires extinguished, the nuclear reactions that had fuelled their existence for countless millions of years now ended. Faint wisps of galaxies that had been visible before had now receded to such remote distances that, even had they retained their former splendour, their light could no longer reach the two observers.

Earth still remained; a dead world below them, much closer to the dark orb which had once been the Sun. That former luminary gave out no light or heat, and the only influence it still exerted upon the Earth and those other planets still orbiting it was that of gravity. The universe had been born in a blaze of radiation, and for long aeons the force of that titanic explosion had hurled the planets, suns and galaxies outward. Very soon, however, this hitherto dominant explosive force would be exceeded by that of gravity; the universe would expand so far and no further, and after that instant of 'no-time' contraction would begin, and the long aeons of reversion to that far-distant beginning would commence.

While his mind was meshed with that of the vrach, a small part, separated from the rest, wrestled with questions and doubts. How would they know when they had reached this point of ‘no-time’? They knew where the phthath would appear, where Axaroth had concealed it. But unless the Elder Gods knew something they didn’t, he couldn’t visualise how they could possibly get their hands on it and return to use it against the Old Ones in literally no time at all. That just didn’t make sense.

And if they miscalculated and passed beyond that instant of ‘no-time’, would the vrachs continue to function normally in that second phase of the universe's evolution when time might be reversed? He tried to unravel the logic of these persistent questions, finding no comfort in the thought that, where the Elder Gods and the Old Ones were concerned, logic and common sense counted for nothing.

Xaa-gth’s mental voice reached out to him from the void. “Edmund! I sense something... something evil!”

“That thing we saw the last time guarding the arch?” he radiated back.

“No, this is nothing down there on your world. This follows others through the time continuum, something from the far past.”

Edmund’s immediate reaction was one of alarm. He had felt nothing. Now he strained to pick up what his companion had noticed. At first there was nothing out of the ordinary. Then faintly he caught an evanescent touch of virulent malevolence. Whatever the source, it was approaching swiftly, not through space but, as Xaa-gth had guessed, through time.

“Axaroth!”

“It can be no other,” Xaa-gth intoned cerebrally. “We should have anticipated this. We must be very close to our goal. Whether the Old One knows of our presence and intention or is merely coming to retrieve that which He concealed here long ages ago I cannot tell.”

Edmund felt a shiver of panic. So much was at stake here, the ultimate fate of the universe, and the odds seemed to be so highly stacked against them. Earlier they had seen no sign of the monstrous snake-like guardian that had lurked within that prodigious crack in the earth. Yet if it had been placed there by Axaroth, it had not yet completed its hideous work... and now the Old One Himself was speeding through time, and Edmund felt certain that not even the power of the vrach could stop Him.

 “We must be ready, Edmund. Already I feel space, and time, slowing. The expansion of the universe is nearing its end. Once it appears you must seize the phthath and I will attempt to hold off Axaroth and the guardian.”

Edmund could feel it, too. Not with any normal sense, for there was nothing to see, hear, or feel that was different. It was something detected by the vrach; it flowed through the crystal's alien intelligence and then into his own brain. This particular cycle of the cosmos was floundering to its completion. He could not conceive of what would happen next. Would time go backwards so that everything that had appeared repeated itself exactly but in reverse? Would dead suns and galaxies rise like the legendary phoenix from their celestial graves, live anew from the ashes of their former lives, back to that first Beginning? Or would it be a completely new cycle with nothing left to survive from that which was growing rapidly to its close?

“Now!” The mental command rang in his mind, obliterating all other thoughts and considerations.

Together they emerged from the time continuum, hung in the air close to that vast arch at the end of time. The Earth was dead... the Sun was dead, a black cinder, invisible to normal human eyes against the utter darkness, yet detectable to the two observers. A few stars were visible, late-comers on the cosmic scene, born out of the last gas-and-dust clouds scattered throughout the galaxy.

They were nearing the end of everything; the final emptiness, weird and terrible.

As they drifted slowly to the ground between the spans of the huge arch, everything seemed to be sputtering to a halt. Far above their heads the gigantic Sign of Koth began to glow. In that almost absolute blackness, it stood out stern and awesome and, as if it were a signal, they felt the tremors beneath their feet, surging convulsions that ran through the rock and stirred the dust of ages. The Watcher was awakening, answering the call. It had a duty to perform, an obligation to carry out which had been placed upon it by Axaroth. Rumblings echoed and re-echoed within the abyss.

The titanic arch loomed high into the heavens. It should have been invisible in the overall blackness without sunlight, moonlight or starlight. But it was not. Edmund saw it all quite clearly, every single horrific line of it... the only thing on Earth left standing. The mystical sign brightened, became a blazing beacon of intolerable light. It shone down upon that gaping gash which stretched to the distant horizon beyond, and somehow it lit all of it, pierced the depths with its malefic radiance... and alerted the guardian.

“The moment is very close.” Xaa-gth uttered the mental warming. He made a series of clicking sounds with his claws, pointed abruptly towards the horizon. “There! Something comes!”

Against the blackness swarmed a chiaroscuro of blue-violet gleamings like a dense cluster of giant fireflies above a swamp... and silhouetted against this a dark figure showed. At first it was little more than a slice of shadow, but it expanded swiftly into something whose outlines were so blurred that they transcended discernment. But it radiated pure force like a mental scream through the empty dark.

“Axaroth!” Edmund shouted the name. He was still staring, unable to take his gaze off the sky-looming monstrosity as the Old One emerged from the time continuum and came lumbering towards them, straddling the vast chasm which gaped at His feet. Lightning glowed frighteningly in a crackling nimbus around the grotesque head. Whether there were any features on that face which stared down from its prodigious height, Edmund was unable to tell, for its constantly blurring aspect made it impossible to discern details.

Then all thought of that ghastly shape, all awareness of the gelatinous immensity that came arising from that bottomless pit in answer to the summons from the Sign of Koth, fled his mind. Something flickered into existence nearby. Small and insignificant in size, only its intense brilliance gave it prominence.

“The phthath!” Edmund forced the words out in a sudden exhalation, leaping forward in the same instant. Even as he sprang towards it, he knew it would be impossible to reach it in time. Now that the instant of 'no-time' had arrived, it would as quickly be gone, and he and Xaa-gth must now surely have passed into that contracting phase of the universe.

Yet incredibly it was still there!

There was no time to question why it hadn’t vanished in that same instant it had appeared, scarcely any time in which to recognise that the Earth was shuddering violently as that creature from the pit uncoiled its miles-long length, a gaping circular maw swooping out of the blackness in his direction, rows of teeth gleaming in the spectral blue light from the Sign of Koth. Only dimly was he aware that the Vrus’ii had turned to face the striding form of the Old One, had sent a beam of the purist carmine lancing up into the black, empty heavens, striking Axaroth in the centre of where the face should be.

Red fire splashed across the gigantic head, and their ears rang with the concussive roar of rage and pain as Axaroth halted momentarily in His tracks. It was only momentary respite, but that moment was long enough. Dropping to his knees, Edmund got the fingers of his free hand around the flaring cylinder of pure radiance. He expected it to burn like fire, to blister his flesh and roast it off his bones... but there was no heat. He judged it to be little more than six inches long and a quarter of that in width and, although there was the feel of something solid in his hand, he could see nothing due to the intolerable glare.

Staggering upright, he held it high over his head, not knowing what effect that might have, but obeying an odd compulsion. The light from the phthath shone clearly through flesh and bone, making his hand completely transparent. Ten yards above him the snaking, questing head of the monstrous guardian drew back. The massive coils withered and shrivelled, contorting and flowing like molten plastic. Swiftly he spun to face Axaroth, only to see the gigantic shape melt from view as the Old One vanished.

Half-blinded by the unendurable luminescence, he groped through dizziness to remain on his feet, almost bereft of vision, yet still he retained his tight-fisted grip on the phthath.

“Quickly, my friend.” Somehow, Xaa-gth’s mental command penetrated the temporary chaos that clouded his mind. “We must return to Glyu-Vho and our own time.”

Edmund’s mind spun. Surely they must have passed through the unstable phase, and by now the universe was beginning its formidable contraction back to the Big Bang. How could they—?

He felt the Vrus’ii’s claw fasten on his right arm, and his companion's touch somehow cleared his head a little. Xaa-gth’s voice continued to ring inside his aching skull. “I have no knowledge of what has happened... or why. But somehow, at some time in the past, time must have got out of phase with space. Because of this, while space has stopped expanding, time is still continuing, but for how long I cannot tell. You must blend your mind with the vrach before it’s too late.”

With a savage mental wrench Edmund did so, felt Xaa-gth’s grip tighten momentarily. Then they were in the time continuum, miraculously speeding back through the ages until—

Without warning everything stopped!

All motion ceased.

Then, almost in the same second as Xaa-gth emitted his cry of recognition and anguish, he knew what had happened. Axaroth had not fled when He had lost control of the phthath. He had simply entered the time continuum and had set up this barrier. Even if they should, by using their combined psychic powers, break through... He would be waiting on the other side, within time, where the vrachs would be impotent against Him.

The Old One had laid this trap for them, and like blind, stupid fools they had fallen into it!

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Momentarily stunned by the psychic impact of the barrier, Edmund groped about him mentally, testing the strength of this obstruction. There was nothing that could be seen or felt, yet it was as impenetrable as a steel wall. He forced himself to think clearly. This was not the first time this has happened to him. Cthulhu had placed a similar barrier across time when he had travelled back to the birth of the solar system. Then he had succeeded in breaching it, had witnessed the fall of the Old One and those words engraved upon the primal seal of the Elder Gods, which had been set above R’lyeh.

He did not doubt that, with Xaa-gth’s aid, they could break through this invisible temporal wall that Axaroth had erected, but that would almost be suicidal with the Old One undoubtedly waiting on the other side.

“It would appear we have but one choice.”

For a moment Edmund struggled to grasp his companion’s meaning, before realisation dawned. There were other dimensions, an infinity of them, lying outside this plane of existence. But such routes were very dangerous, not only because of the entities that existed there, but because there was a multitude of gateways beyond such dimensions, and chartless infinity beckoned. But as Xaa-gth has said, they had no other choice.

He did not allow himself to hesitate. With a swift mental warming to the Vrus’ii to maintain contact with him, he penetrated deeper into the carmine depths of the vrach, sought out the multiplicity of gates that opened onto the Outer Spheres. Choosing one at random, he plunged through it, taking Xaa-gth with him. Suddenly an arrhythmic roaring sounded in his ears, and all around him lay an alien amorphousness through which sinuous anamorphic shapes moved sluggishly. Ugly, bloated, jellyfish-like terrors congregated around them. Whether these were the nameless larvae of the Old Ones mentioned in so many horrific texts, or some other form of pseudo-life, he did not know but he knew it was highly dangerous to remain in this hostile dimension. After only a single horrified glimpse, he melted frantically into another, equally bizarre. Here on all sides was a blackness as deep as that of intergalactic space filled with a multitude of blue-violet lines which stretched away into an infinite distance, converging upon a single red star which hung like a drop of frozen blood in the firmament. He experienced the sensation of motion, sensed that he was somehow enmeshed within these brightly glowing threads and speeding with an unbelievable velocity towards that grim orb which stood out clearly on the rim of the infinity. An endless chain of damned spectres of countless species trailed off and faded into nothingness and... Uhu’giaggoth. The Devourer of Life. Something black and repellent, a conglomerate, festering mass of all that had died bubbled from the Great Beyond.

As if from a far distance Xaa-gth’s voice sounded urgently in his mind.

“Not that way, Edmund! That way leads only to oblivion. You must break free! This is another trap of the Old Ones! I fear Their followers are now gathered in all of the Outer Spheres, awaiting their chance to break through into our universe.”

The alien rhythm hammered in Edmund’s ears, first like thunder and then softly like a soporific trance. His limbs seem to be entangled within the blue-violet lines, and it was as if some of these were being exuded from his own incorporeal body. Dimly he sensed Xaa-gth’s presence but now the Vrus’ii seemed light-years away and growing more distant all the time. The coruscating lines drew close as if to trap him, to bind him irrevocably.

Then, somehow, even as he felt his mental grasp on the vrach slackening, he got a grip on himself. He had not come all this way, seen and endured all those horrors, just to sink into scarlet oblivion. Just before he broke free of the insidious hold, he thought he caught a fading echo in his mind. Then it was gone, and he knew that somehow he had lost all contact with his companion.

But there was no time to worry about that now. He searched desperately for some avenue of escape, found a gate and passed through it. He knew he was in danger of becoming hopelessly lost in this infinity of dimensions that existed outside his own time and space. Entering them had been a necessity and a last resort. But he had been forced to take the risk. Now he felt like an atom in the midst of infinity. There were no signposts, no directions in this plethora of continua to guide him back to normal space-time. Through one nightmarish, surreal dimension after another, he plunged endlessly on, pausing only to briefly examine the alien continua in which he found himself, searching for signs of familiar constellations that might guide him home.

In one, he stood amid a desert wilderness of green sand with mountains standing stark and foreboding against the entire horizon: an alien world with no visible mark of life and yet with the unmistakable feel of presences nearby. A huge blue-green sun threw long, irregular shadows across the dunes, touched the mountain peaks with verdant fire. Stern and terrible in the glaring sunlight were those lofty crags which reached from unknown depths to unguessable heights, and in their sheer faces were numerous cavern mouths and curious crevasses and...

... something emerged from those deeply-shadowed caves, and vague impressions of terror crawled along Edmund’s spine. That which oozed into view was something he could not describe; neither solid nor liquid, it had a shocking kind of plasticity, and strange ripples pulsed along it as it continued to issue from the dark interior. He fled before its full shape could come into view.

Then he entered a dimension that was horrifyingly familiar, yet for a while he failed to recognise it, for everything was reversed. Gaunt grey ruins cast white shadows across the sombre ashen ground, and the sky above his head was a dazzling white with black stars hanging against the niveous background. With a shudder he picked out the unmistakable shape of Orion, yet there was something wrong. Not only was this universe the negative of his own, but he was seeing everything as its mirror-image! Once his mind had accepted this, he recognised the wreck nearby as the ruins of Charnwood House, and low on the horizon was a thin ebon crescent, which he recognised as the Moon.

Everything he saw reminded him poignantly of the world he had known and yet, like a reversed photographic negative, it was the antithesis of all that was sane and normal; so close to the universe for which he was searching, yet so far away. He felt torn between a desire to examine this strange universe more closely, believing that it might lie close to his own. He closed his eyes until the retinal image of a more sane universe formed, then opened them again as a rush of icy coldness passed over him. There was something that moved on the rim of this negative Earth, the only moving thing he had seen, and in its contrariety it took the space of several thudding heartbeats for him to recognise it.

It was the same shape he had seen earlier, striding across the riven surface of the Earth in its ultimate moments, straddling that vast chasm.

Axaroth!

No chance now, he though, to remain and explore this weird dimension. Whether it was pure chance or design, which had enabled the Old One to follow him, he didn’t know. But with the light of the phthath in full view, as black of midnight in this odd negativity, Axaroth would have no difficulty in tracing him. Even if he knew how to use the phthath, he doubted if it possessed any efficacy in this continuum.

Barely in time, he shifted into another continuum and then another, taut with the knowledge that now Axaroth knew where he was and would follow him endlessly until he was hopelessly lost within the infinity of the Outer Spheres.

*

Xaa-gth materialised inside the great stone chamber to find the others already there. All but Edmund. It was then that the Vrus’ii new with a sick certainty that his companion was still lost among the myriad dimensions lying beyond the universe.

McKinrick spoke first, his voice hoarse. “Did you succeed? And if so, where are Edmund and the phthath?”

“We found the weapon of the Elder Gods where the book said it was concealed,” Xaa-gth radiated to them all.

“Then where is it?” Vincent demanded. “And what of my uncle?”

“Your uncle snatched the phthath just before Axaroth and the guardian could gain possession of it. What happened at that moment is something I do not understand unless it was the work of the Elder Gods. That instant of ‘no-time’ should have been exactly that... no time at al—yet the phthath continued to exist, and I can only conclude that, somewhere, somehow, time got out of phase with space for a finite period.”

The mental outpouring stopped as the professor interrupted sharply: “We now know what happened. When Vincent returned to Earth to destroy Y’ha-nthlei and R’lyeh he was attacked by Yog-Sothoth and arrived on Earth several decades in the past.”

“So it was that which—?”

“No. That factor was insufficient to upset time. It was what happened later when he went forward to the present at the Organisation's headquarters in Arkham. Because of some unsuspected malfunction in the vrach due to that encounter with the Old One, he arrived seven minutes out of phase in the past. That discontinuity in space-time continued right up until the last moment. It was clearly that which enabled Edmund to get the phthath. But what happened then? Why didn’t you return with it?”

“I fear your companion is lost. He is out there, among the dimensions. Axaroth trapped us in time when we tried to return, placing a barrier across the time continuum.”

“You could have broken through,” Vansing Lai interposed. “Surely you knew such barriers could be breached?” His eyes studied the Vrus’ii as if he were obsessed with thoughts of impending disaster. “Without the phthath, we’re completely helpless. It’s the only thing which might destroy the Old Ones.”

“That may have been possible.” Xaa-gth seemed immune to the Tibetan’s outburst. “But that would have left us open to an attack from Him. As you well know, the vrachs are powerless within the time continuum. We would have been completely at His mercy and if He had succeeded in gaining possession of the phthath, all would have been lost. That was a risk we could not take. We had to take the only course open to us.”

McKinrick’s narrow shoulders sagged perceptibly. “Then we can only hope he succeeds in finding his way back and that he’s not being pursued by Axaroth for we can be certain that once the Old One discovers you’ve escaped Him, He will not rest until He has the phthath.”

After several minutes of silent indecision it was Vansing Lai who broke the uncomfortable silence. “It’s clear we can do nothing to aid Edmund, wherever he is. But I believe we should determine what the Old Ones are doing if only to discover how much time we have left. We’ve destroyed most of Their havens, so They cannot return to them. And we have to go on the assumption They know the phthath has been taken.”

Xaa-gth hesitated, then moved towards a high stone plinth, taking the drungfth from some concealed fold of his garments. He placed the curious polyhedron on the stone, waited for them to move behind him. “I know where your home world lies. We will search there first.” A claw touched one of the glistening facets, and the large rectangle of blackness sprang into being in the air a few feet away. It was a view of space more than five hundred light-years away. To the left, well off centre, the Sun blazed brilliantly. Deftly, the Vrus’ii manipulated the drungfth, touching first one shining face and then another in a seemingly random fashion. The image shifted, picked out tiny Mercury with its heavily-cratered surface and then Venus with its cloud-shrouded atmosphere, filled with lightning and sulphuric acid rain.

The professor held his breath as Earth swam into focus, expecting to see that gigantic tentacled shape hovering near the planet... but there was nothing. Tensely he watched as the remaining planets moved slowly across the rectangle: Mars, Jupiter, the awesome gap where Saturn had once existed, Uranus and Neptune, Pluto and Charon like a double moon on the rim... and then out to dark Yuggoth. This world showed only feebly in the engulfing blackness, and McKinrick felt the rising tension in the chamber as its image swelled swiftly in response to Xaa-gth’s touch, until it almost filled the entire view. Previous memories came vividly into his consciousness with every detail fresh and familiar. As they were laid bare by the advanced science of the drungfth, he saw those teeming denizens of that midnight world, that eye-twisting ziggurat which rose from the northern pole and clawed its frightful way into the void.

Everything was as he remembered it... with one exception. Where was that monstrous shape which had crossed the gulf from Fomalhaut? In the whole of the solar system they had seen no sign of either Cthulhu or Cthugha. The absence of the two Old Ones puzzled him and for some reason brought a rising sense of alarm. The others had noticed this too.

“Where can They have gone?” asked Vincent.

McKinrick did not reply. Instead he swung to face Xaa-gth. “Your telepathic abilities are far in excess of ours. I want you to try to reach Earth, to contact either Susan Thaxton or Philip Mansell. There’s something wrong here, dreadfully wrong, and the sooner we know what it is, the better.”

“What is it you wish to know?”

“If they know where Cthulhu is, if He’s anywhere on Earth, they’ll know. If not... then I only hope to God I’m wrong, but I fear the fate of the universe is about to be decided very soon.”

Xaa-gth released his touch on the drungfth. His rugose head lifted, and his faceted eyes stared straight ahead of him as he concentrated, sending his thoughts across the void. For several minutes he remained thus: then he turned his head slowly, looking down at his companions. His thoughts reached them clearly: “I have contacted the human you call Philip Mansell. He tells me that Cthulhu was there, between your planet and its moon, two of your nights ago. Since that time there has been no sighting of the Old One. Furthermore, much of the insanity that had struck the inhabitants of the Earth has inexplicably subsided as have the violent Earth tremors and atmospheric disturbances. It is something for which he has no explanation.”

After a moment’s silence Vansing Lai said harshly: “But you do have an explanation, don’t you, professor?”

“It is what I feared.” McKinrick's voice was little more than a dry whisper which seemed to stick in his throat. “Yog-Sothoth, the One-in-All and the All-in-One, has evidently discovered that the phthath was not retrieved by Axaroth, that one of us has it. My guess is that all of the Old Ones are now aware of this, and They know Their danger if it should return to this universe and this time. Their places of refuge have been destroyed, and that avenue of escape is no longer open to Them.”

“But how does that explain Cthulhu’s absence from the solar system, and Cthugha’s?” Kitson asked. Perplexity furrowed his broad features.

“Don’t you see?” McKinrick realised he was speaking more sharply than he had intended. With an effort, he softened his tone. “They’re faced with a dilemma. Had Axaroth regained possession of the phthath, everything would have gone Their way. They could have defeated the Elder Gods with comparative ease using that weapon, brought the universe to an end and returned to whatever infinite plane They originally came from. That’s been Their aim all along. But so long as Edmund has the phthath, They can be defeated for a second time. I’d hoped we could have found Cthulhu and Cthugha still fighting it out in the solar system, still battling for supremacy there. Now I fear They’ve adopted the only other course open to Them. They’re banding together as They did before, putting all of Their previous differences aside, prepared to strike against the Elder Gods and, make no mistake about it, They’ve grown far stronger during Their aeon-long imprisonment. This time it’s possible They;ll win.”

Kitson started to expostulate; Xaa-gth stopped him with a firm gesture.

“What McKinrick says may be true,” he intoned carefully. “And if it is so, we shall find ourselves in the middle of it, here on Glyu-Vho. We must try to determine where the Old Ones are.”

“Is that possible?” Vincent asked. He still had his gaze fixed on the weird black rectangle, which hung impossibly in the air.

“Perhaps.” The Vrus’ii touched other faces of the gleaming polyhedron. The Sun and its attendant worlds vanished as if wiped out by an unseen hand. Stars blazed in glittering trails across the screen. There was a sense of reeling, of vertigo, of hurtling backward in space with the stars and constellations zooming away in every direction. They all experienced it; once it stopped, each one slumped forward in a sudden reflex action from holding themselves so tautly rigid against that sensation of endless falling.

On the screen the image steadied. Now they saw the vast shining spiral of the galaxy. No one spoke. Viewing it intently, Vincent allowed his glance to drift from one end of the magnificent spectacle to the other. A prescient nausea suddenly gripped him as he took note of the dense blackness at the core. It was not so much this particular fact that alarmed him to such a degree; what was more frightening was a narrow swathe which emanated from the galactic centre and was moving out towards the arms of the galaxy, to one arm in particular which he reasoned was that in which the Sun and most of the stars visible from Earth were situated.

Beside him McKinrick’s sudden gasp echoed throughout the vast chamber as he noticed it too. It might have passed for a narrow lane of dust situated in the galactic plane but for the obvious fact that it was definitely lengthening even as they watched.

“Vincent!” the professor said sharply..

Vincent did not look at him. He did not look at any of his companions. He scarcely heard himself speak as he said tautly: “Do you realise what that is?”

“Azathoth.” McKinrick’s voice was so low it was barely audible. “He’s left the core, and right now He’s heading out to the rim, to our region of space, devouring all of the suns in His path.”

“But why?” Xaa-gth’s question echoed in their minds.

“It’s just as I said. They’re returning to this corner of the cosmos, as They did aeons ago, preparing to renew Their war against the Elder Gods. And this time, without the phthath to protect us, I fear They may be victorious.”

“But surely the Elder Gods won't simply stand by and see Themselves defeated?” Kitson began.

“So far we've seen no sign that They intend to get Themselves involved in this cosmic battle.” Bitterness edged the professor’s tone. “It has always appeared that the task of defeating the Old Ones has fallen upon us.”

“With what?” Vansing Lai’s voice was steady, but it held a suggestion of rising panic. “We already know that the vrachs cannot seriously harm the Old Ones. And where do we stand and fight—here, or on Earth?”

“Here.” Xaa-gth’s voice sounded defiantly in their minds. “There are legends among the Vrus’ii which speak of the second Armageddon as it is known in your tongue. They say it will be fought near the place the Elder Gods chose for Themselves after They created this galaxy.”

“And the outcome of this battle? What do your myths say of that?” Kitson asked.

“Nothing.”

On the large screen the thin thread of nothingness was now lengthening, spiralling through the less dense regions of the outer environs of the galaxy, and to the watchers it seemed its rate of progress was accelerating rapidly.

Snapping out of the morbid lethargy that had momentarily seized him, McKinrick said: “Focus on the region around Betelgeuse, Xaa-gth. Let’s see what we’re up against.”

Briefly the Vrus’ii operated the drungfth. Beside the professor, Vincent caught hold of the stone plinth as a fresh wave of nausea and dizziness swept over him. The scene expanded swiftly, sliding from right to left as the focus changed dramatically. He seemed to be whirling precipitously into a maelstrom of scintillating star points, caught in an endless plunge into the galaxy. One of the great spiral arms whirled up to meet them, and then the sense of falling slowed. A giant red sun loomed large on the screen... Betelgeuse.

But now the space nearby was no longer empty!

Shapes moved where before there had been empty space. Vincent felt his eyes twist momentarily in his head as if they refused to accept what they saw outlined against the background stars. How many there were, he could not tell with any accuracy, for they were in continuous motion. He recognised Cthulhu, a vast tentacled shape sprawled across space; fiery Cthugha, bigger than a sun and just as bright. Another amorphous blight that might have been Cthulhu’s twin—Hastur from near that baleful red star which shone in the eye of Taurus. And emerging from the Outer Voids he saw the terrible outlines of that monstrous shape which had attempted to prevent his return to Earth... Yog-Sothoth, come to join His Brothers in the last titanic contest against the Elder Gods.

There were others, too, such a frightening multitude of them that Vincent felt utter despair. Were the Elder Gods aware of Their presence and intent? Would They really be content to remain in Their onyx towers and wait for inevitable doom to befall Them? And where was his uncle? The only one who could possibly save them and the universe from total extinction? Lost in that infinity of alternate dimensions which existed beyond the rim of this space-time continuum, possibly fleeing endlessly from one plane of existence to another, irrevocably lost, pursued by Axaroth until the Old One caught up with him.

“What are They waiting for?” Kitson muttered, his eyes wide as he stared awestruck at the scene.

“Can’t you guess?” With an effort McKinrick wrenched his gaze from the screen. “You’ve seen Him coming. The greatest of Them all... The Daemon Sultan, Azathoth.”

“And once He—” Xaa-gth’s mental waves broke off abruptly. The rectangular screen dimmed, then snapped out of existence. On the plinth the drungfth suddenly shattered into a cloud of flying fragments. Xaa-gth reeled back as though physically struck. The Vrus’ii straightened with an obvious effort. It was impossible for them to tell anything from the insectile features which loomed over them. His mental vibrations were weak at first, but gradually increased in strength. “Have no fear for me, my friends. It would seem that one of the Old Ones has detected us spying upon Them and taken action.”

McKinrick made to say something further, but at that moment there came a soft susurration in the air, and a few yards away the gleaming orb of the guide materialised out of nothingness. It hung there for several seconds as if surveying them; then its alien voice sounded inside their heads:

“The ancient enemies of the Elder Gods are gathering around Betelgeuse. The time for the final reckoning has come, and you must all be prepared. My Masters bid you to leave this place and descend into the open.”

McKinrick wearily drew himself up to his full height and faced the guide. He seemed old and frail, but his voice was steady as he asked: “And what part have we to play in this battle?”

“That you will discover when the moment comes,” was the enigmatic reply. The sphere drifted towards the archway in the far wall where the huge door opened soundlessly of its own accord.

Swiftly McKinrick walked through the wide arch, along the corridor, stepping into the central shaft. Beside him the others followed with Xaa-gth bringing up the rear. The slow descent seemed endless, but at last it was over and they walked through the long tunnel out into the open.

It was night. Betelgeuse had set some time earlier, but there still remained a faint pink flush in that direction. Overhead, the stars were brilliant, and all around them the great sky-rearing towers, which rose from the onyx plain glittered with thousands of lights. Here there was no outward sign of the cosmic evil, which they had earlier seen with the aid of the drungfth. But then, just visible above the flat horizon, they witnessed the coming of Azathoth. At first it was nothing more than a tiny circle of utter blackness, so atramentous that it stood out even against the overall darkness of the night sky. It expanded swiftly. Three bright stars vanished, were stuffed out like candle flames in a gale. More were extinguished in rapid succession until the atrocious disfigurement covered almost a quarter of the heavens.

“Oh my God!” Kitson muttered the words over and over again. “Oh my God!” His eyes were full of fear and loathing.

Other shapes of dense blackness stalked the heavens over Glyu-Vho, like nigrescent meteors among those stars that were still visible. The watchers were half-numbed with awe and fright, and for an instant, as if paralysed, no one moved or spoke. The things they could not see clearly were more frightening than those they had glimpsed through the drungfth.

Then the heavens flared and crackled as vivid lightning bolts, emanating from far out in space, lanced towards Glyu-Vho and hidden Betelgeuse. Confident that all of the Elder Gods, with the possible exception of Nodens, were trapped on the solitary world, the Old Ones hurled Their thunder bolts of energy against this home world and its parent sun. It was power beyond belief, sufficient to rend entire suns and galaxies.

Both McKinrick and Vincent had witnessed that earlier battle among the stars in the vivid dreams in Charnwood House. But this was no dream, no nightmare; this was reality as the Old Ones flung Their unutterable force against Their ancient enemies. Blast after blast rained down from space, but somewhere in the midnight blackness that surrounded this system Their relentless bombardment struck an invisible barrier. In the empty blackness sundered fragments of blue fire parted and blazed meteoric trails across the heavens.

“Evidently the Elder Gods still possess some power of Their own,” Vincent murmured. “But how long can it hold out?”

McKinrick stared into the night sky. His eyes narrowed against the intense glare of the fury that was being hurled at Glyu-Vho. He had heard Vincent's urgent question, but it was one he couldn’t answer. The fact that there appeared to be no answering bolts of energy from the Elder Gods made him think that They had invested all of Their power into this protective shield, leaving nothing to attack the Old Ones.

More and more fulgent lightning flashed across the void under the combined assault. The amorphous tenebrosity that was Azathoth had now spread so that it covered the entire heavens, occulting the light of the distant stars, although the fading pink glow of Betelgeuse continued to show lowdown on the horizon. Behind the rising towers there was a sudden brightening in the sky, a fiery reddish gleam like sunrise. It blazed up swiftly, climbing up from behind the rim of the planet. It might have been a new sun except for the flickering appendages of flame that surrounded it.

Huge and incandescent, Cthugha hurled Himself towards Glyu-Vho, seeking to pierce the shield and reduce the entire planet to flaming ruin. But He struck nothing but the shield. Ravening in fury, He struck again and again until McKinrick feared that not even the power of the Elder Gods could resist the savage energy that hammered down against the barrier.

And although it was not initially discernible, the attack was having an effect. As the ferocious lightning bolts continued to assail Glyu-Vho, McKinrick noticed that in places they were getting through, weakened certainly, but still penetrating the defences. He experienced a sickening lurch of fear as he realised that the power of the Elder Gods was failing under this formidable siege. How long it could hold out against the berserk onslaught, he couldn’t tell. But once the barrier disintegrated Glyu-Vho was finished and with it, the universe. The Old Ones would triumph, and doom would come to all life.

Now, remembering Vincent’s question, he pointed to the sky. “There’s your answer! Some of those bolts are getting through. That shield won’t last for long.” Even as he uttered the words a vivid flash of electric blue speared across the darkness. It struck the ground some distance away, and they felt the concussion through the soles of their feet. Around them the lights which had shown in the multitudinous towers dimmed, and with a sudden sense of shock they noticed that the vrachs which each of them still held were also losing their glow.

“It’s useless!” Kitson gasped. “We were fools to believe that anything can stop the Old Ones. They’ve become far too strong during Their captivity.”

Another vicious glare lit the flat horizon, shaking the ground. Soon the invisible barrier would fall, and there was undoubtedly sufficient power being loosed against this world to shatter it to atoms.

Fury and frustration raced through him as McKinrick thought: Where are the Elder Gods? Why have They not sallied forth from Glyu-Vho to meet Their ancient enemies? Were They relying upon him and his companions to defeat Them? That was impossible. They had done all that had been asked of them, risked everything, thwarted and fought these cosmic horrors by every means possible. But mere mortals could not hope to destroy gods.

One of the nearby towers suddenly exploded and collapsed in fragments as a savage thunderbolt sliced the air into screaming echoes and struck the topmost ramparts. The concussive detonation hurled him backwards, and only Vansing Lai, standing directly at his back, prevented him from falling. From somewhere in the far distance he thought he heard a shrilling of mad triumphant laughter, a rising cachinnation of unholy exultation.

Then—

A star suddenly blazed out against the blackness in the heavens. Its brilliance seemed to tear the darkness asunder, its pure argent light gleaming where before there had been nothing but the chaotically-ravening tenebrosity of Azathoth outspread like a blanket of evil against the firmament.

Awe-struck, McKinrick stared at it and thought foolishly: A supernova? Has one of the neighbouring stars exploded due to its proximity to all this cosmic power?

A similar thought had occurred to Vincent. But a moment later he saw that the argent glow was approaching swiftly and, although it was undoubtedly a point source, it moved across the sky in a manner that was totally inexplicable. But if not a star, what was it?

Swiftly the coruscation expanded, became a vast cone of luminiferous whiteness that shredded the black monstrosities thronging around Betelgeuse and Glyu-Vho. Their substance stretched and frayed, becoming more and more evanescent. With the appearance of this strange phenomenon, a deep silence had fallen over everything. The lancing bolts had ceased and, to those watching on the ground, it was as if the universe had come to an abrupt halt, that time stood still, and the only visible change was that being wrought in the substance of the Old Ones as they faded out of existence.

Only then, when the heavens had resumed their former aspect, did the watchers on Glyu-Vho grasp what had happened. The all-pervading glow that had destroyed the Old Ones drew back into itself until it was merely a tiny source of brilliance, and they saw the figure of a man holding the phthath in one outstretched hand. In his human way Edmund Trevelyan held as much power as the Elder Gods. As he drifted slowly down to stand beside the others he knew absolutely, by some strange inner sense, that somewhere in those dark dimensions beyond this universe Axaroth, too had been destroyed.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The disputatious Trevelyan manuscript, found in the newly-opened Miskatonic University library on the afternoon of May 14, 1996, has now been made available for publication although, it must be said, with some reservations on the part of the library staff. The mystery surrounding this manuscript is still unsolved. All of the staff are adamant that the document was not there at 1:50 PM but had appeared on the librarian’s desk at 2:15 PM. The handwriting has been definitely established as that of Edmund Trevelyan, a British archaeologist.

The text is given here in full since certain investigators concerned with the recent devastating events all around the globe, have drawn various conclusions which differ greatly from those reached by the majority of scientists. In particular, Doctor Susan Thaxton, a highly respected member of the university staff has, on a number of occasions, intimated that some terrible cosmic evil has been narrowly averted by the actions of a small group of men of whom Doctor Trevelyan was one.

*

It is singularly fortunate that so few people are aware of the true cause of all that has happened during the past few years, that with few exceptions Earth’s population knows nothing of the dark horrors which, after vigintillions of years of incarceration, emerged from the black and hidden corners of the galaxy and threatened its utter extinction.

Following on the defeat of the Old Ones near the star we call Betelgeuse, with our task seemingly completed and the threat to the universe over, our return to Earth was not long delayed. Xaa-gth returned to his own planet, although whether it was still in existence, lying as it did so close to the galactic centre, no one knew. As for the rest of us, unable to return to Charnwood House, we instead arrived at Ewart Kitson’s house on the outskirts of Cambridge, timing our arrival for the early hours of the morning in order not to be seen by prying eyes.

After a brief meal prepared from tinned food, we retired for the rest of the night. From what little we could see of the surrounding countryside, everything appeared to have returned to a semblance of normality. It was possible to make out the large areas of burnt vegetation in the faint moonlight, but a more complete investigation would have to wait for morning.

During the following three days we made several excursions into Cambridge to obtain provisions and bring ourselves up-to-date with news from all over the world. What we heard and read was reassuring. No further catastrophic occurrences had been reported. Since Kitson’s house was in such an isolated spot, and his reclusive nature had been well known to his neighbours, his absence had apparently gone unnoticed.

Telepathic communication with other members of the Organisation soon confirmed that, as far as could be determined, the Rage had ceased. Fresh storms continued to be reported from various countries, but these all formed part of the normal weather cycle and could certainly not be correlated with what had happened earlier. Similarly the widespread outbreaks of insanity, which had threatened to engulf large factions of Earth’s population no longer occurred, and the majority of those who had been afflicted had apparently fully recovered.

Yet despite this overwhelming body of data McKinrick seemed oddly troubled. On the fifth morning after our return, as we were sitting alone in Kitson’s parlour, I asked him outright if anything was worrying him. He then countered with a strange question of his own: Could we be absolutely certain that all of the Old Ones had been either banished or destroyed?

I told him that, from far out in space at the point where I had miraculously emerged from a hideous continuum to find myself staring straight at the ruddy disc of Betelgeuse, I had seen all of those cosmic monstrosities disintegrated in the light of the phthath and that I had no doubt whatever that Axaroth had also been destroyed where He had attempted to pursue me through the dimensions. I had seen that great cloud of noxious blackness which was Axaroth waver and fade like smoke; Cthulhu, Hastur and the Others disappear, mewling horribly in Their agony... and Cthugha grow dim and eventually gutter out.

“Then why am I so sure there is still something monstrously evil out there? Something left which is seeking vengeance?”

“Are you sure it isn’t simply your imagination?” I asked. “God knows we’ve been through a lot since that day many years ago when you arrived on my doorstep in London and offered me the post of your assistant.”

“That’s true, Edmund,” he replied. “And you will admit that, of all our team, I’ve been in contact with this evil the longest. Long ago I developed a strange sense about these creatures: I could feel Their presence, even all those years when They were imprisoned by the Elder Gods. Now I—”

 “And you still have that impression now?” I interrupted. I knew better than to ignore or doubt his perceptions where the Old Ones were concerned.

Nodding, he continued: “Believe me, I’ve no doubt that Cthulhu and those Others have gone. Yet there’s something which isn’t right.” He stared straight at me as he spoke. “I don’t want you to mention this to the others. This is just between the two of us. You understand?”

“Of course. If that’s what you wish. But if you’re right, it means this battle isn’t yet over.”

“I’m afraid it does. Whatever this evil is, we have to find it, root it out, and destroy it. Are you prepared to help me in this?”

“Naturally,” I answered immediately. “What do you want me to do?”

“We must return to Charnwood House and—”

“Charnwood House! But there’s nothing left there apart from—” I began when he stopped me with a sudden, sharp gesture.

“Those villagers and the Jinnee may have destroyed the shell, but there are certain things about that house of which they know nothing. With luck, it’s possible we may determine whether I’m right in my supposition or not. We’ll leave this afternoon.”

“Just the two of us?”

McKinrick nodded again. “There’s no point in involving anyone else in this at the moment. If any of them ask, we’re just going to see if any of my possessions still remain.”

*

Later that afternoon, driving a rented car, we left Cambridge and headed across country towards Cornwall. The weather was dull and overcast, giving the countryside a sombre aspect. In spite of the fact that fresh growth was appearing in these scorched areas, hinting at a return to normality, my sense of foreboding and constraint increased during the journey, and McKinrick’s odd silence as he sat beside me added further to this vague sense of apprehension. Our excuse for undertaking this trip on the spur of the moment had been accepted by our companions without question, and I had the feeling they were all now anxious to return to their former lives and forget what we had been through. If such a thing was possible.

By the time we came within sight of Tormount it was growing dark and, although we had brought a supply of food with us, I wondered where we were going to sleep that night. Despite the fact that Cthulhu and Cthugha were now gone, I still had a deep-seated distrust of the villagers. My feelings of nervousness had risen to a peak again now that I was back in this ancient place, and this was not diminished even when I noticed that there were lights now visible in the windows and wisps of grey smoke curled upward from the chimneys. Perhaps it was something of the professor's own fear, communicating itself to me, which gave me the feeling that this outward appearance of conformity was nothing more than a surface illusion which hid some deep-brooding evil.

Entering the wide gravel drive through the gap where the iron gates lay torn from their hinges, I parked the car in front of the fire-blackened shell of the old house. Even in the dimness it was evident that the flames had done their work well. Yet curiously, possibly because of its more recent construction, the tower of the observatory did not appear to be as badly damaged as the rest of the building. Alighting from the car I followed McKinrick into the deeply-shadowed interior, taking care where I placed my feet for there were several planks missing from the porch steps. Even after all this time, the stench of smoke still clung about the place, stinging the back of my throat. Grey ash lay everywhere and we were forced to pick our way cautiously around fallen charred timbers and rubble, using only the torch which McKinrick had brought from the car. Shards of glass from the shattered windows winked at us like thousands of evil eyes.

The professor immediately made his way to the door leading up to the observatory. It was splintered and badly scorched but mainly intact, although it took all of our combined strength to thrust it open owing to the debris piled against it on the other side. More rubble lay on the stone steps, but in the wavering torchlight it was comparatively easy to make it to the top and into the observatory proper. Here there was no sign of fire, and the destruction had been wrought by human hands, almost certainly the villagers who had stormed the house that night. The telescope was smashed beyond repair, McKinrick’s heavy oaken desk was ripped to pieces, and his papers lay scattered all over the floor.

“It could have been worse, I suppose,” he said laconically after a brief, cursory examination. His words echoed eerily in the confined space. “But at least the roof appears to be intact.”

I knew he was thinking of the dark storm clouds we has seen during the latter part of our journey, building up in thunder-heads along the north-eastern horizon. Knowing the violence of the storms which frequently hit this region of the coast, and sensing that we were to spend the night in the observatory, I was not surprised when he indicated a large cupboard against one wall and said: “You’ll find some blankets in there, Edmund. I kept them here for warmth while observing on the winter nights.”

After a much-needed meal, for we had not eaten since leaving Cambridge, McKinrick and I cleared a section of the floor of debris and, using the ample supply of blankets, settled down for the night. Very soon my companion fell asleep but the distant rumble of thunder, together with the strangeness of my surroundings, kept me awake. A host of fantastic conjectures and unanswered questions rioted through my mind. My initial equanimity on returning to Earth from Glyu-Vho, believing that the evil threat that had engulfed the galaxy had been totally removed, has now been replaced by a chaos of doubt and fearfulness. I knew McKinrick too well to believe that he was simply exaggerating events or merely following a hunch without foundation or proof.

And what did he expect to uncover here among these ruins? I could think of no reason for returning to this place, yet he had been so adamant that we come. Furthermore, I wondered whether it was safe for us to fall asleep here. The villagers would certainly be aware of our arrival, and if any of them were still under the influence of either the Deep Ones or the Jinnee there were now no locked doors or seal-protected windows to prevent their entry. Yet McKinrick had fallen asleep almost at once as if he were absolutely certain there was no danger from any external source.

Outside the thunder did not appear to be coming any closer although it continued to rumble over the hills, and there was the unmistakable sound of rain drumming on the curved dome.

After a while, however, in spite of my uneasiness I fell into a troubled doze. I had a dream, which, at first, was filled with disconnected pieces of nightmare that revealed jumbled incidents, which had occurred over a number of years. Hideous glimpses of ancient R’lyeh as it had been when first built during Earth’s far-distant youth and that monstrous arch erected towards the close of this planet’s first phase of existence with that terrible, glowing Sign of Koth emblazoned upon its surface. There were glimpses, too, of the Old Ones, but these were only fragmentary, fleeting reminders of what we had encountered in our battle against Them.

But then there came a transition when I seemed to fall into a far deeper slumber, and this was something that, while similar in aspect, was far different in its content. I seemed to be looking down from an immense height upon a shadowy scene of endless sand dunes and low hills with a crude pyramidal structure of huge stone blocks in the foreground. The entire panorama was lit only by the pale moonlight, which gave the whole view a hideously leprous sheen. Whatever this monument was, I knew it to be no normal resting place of some ancient pharaoh, but a shrine dedicated to something far more sinister and forbidding.

Towards this cyclopean vista of carven stone, moving sinuously across the sand, there came a procession of strangely hooded figures, bearing in their midst three struggling bodies. Halting before the pillared entrance, one of the figures raised an arm, and from some indeterminate place deep within the temple there came a sound which could not be described as a voice... certainly not a human voice... which formed inarticulate noises from which I could distinguish only something which sounded like: Va’drish jaghthul Khem ai’glth’uu magnn.

This verbal dissonance was clearly the key to the opening of the temple, for almost immediately a great door swung open and the straggling horde progressed inside, but not before I noticed one oddly disturbing fact. Whereas the pale moonlight threw dark irregular shadows across the dunes, these shambling figures cast none!

As the last inhuman shape passed inside there came an abrupt transition. No longer was I poised somewhere above the stretch of desert but inside the ancient edifice watching the scene of absolute horror which unfolded before my entranced vision. Whatever god was worshipped within this unholy fane, it was certainly not one of the normal gods or goddesses of Ancient Egypt. The grotesque statue that loomed above the stone altars depicted an unspeakable nightmare compared to which the animal-headed deities were sane and wholesome.

The echoing tumult of noise rose to a booming crescendo as the three sacrificial victims were borne to the altars and stretched out upon the blood-stained stone. I struggled frantically to jolt myself out of this nightmarish vision, not wishing to witness that final abomination as three robed and cowled figures approached the altars, but whatever weird hold this dream had on me, it refused to release its grip, and I could not turn away as the plunging knife thrusts tore the living hearts out of the victims.

Yet even this was not the ultimate horror, was not the thing that brought me shriekingly awake, throwing off the two blankets which covered me where I lay on the cold floor of the observatory. That crowning madness was reserved for the insanely-carved idol at the rear of the temple. At the instant of the triple sacrifice that monstrous figure, which totally eclipsed for sheer horror all of the Old Ones I had seen, stepped out of the rock and lumbered shockingly towards the diabolical congregation, mutating through a rapid succession of forms until finally the figure of a man, dressed regally like some youthful pharaoh, stood before the multitude.

Beside me, a few feet away, McKinrick was also wide-awake, and as he switched on the torch I saw there were tiny beads of perspiration on his face. He was shivering violently from something more than the chill of the night air.

“I would guess that you’ve just had exactly the same dream as myself,” he said hoarsely. He made me recount my nightmare, pressing me to include every little detail I could recall, nodding finally when I had finished and saying: “This was what I was hoping for, Edmund. That’s the reason I asked you to accompany me here, to corroborate anything which might happen.”

“Then you expected something like this?” I asked, surprised.

“Let’s just say this was the only way I could think of to prove or disprove my hunch. Remember when you first came here, that first night. You had that dream, or perhaps a better term would be vision, of that battle between the Elder Gods and the Old Ones, and I told you then that it was no coincidence, that it had something to do with the intersection of the old ley lines which are far more ancient than Christianity or even the Roman and Celtic religions. Indeed it is quite possible these lines of invisible force were formed at the same moment as the Earth came into existence.”

I could still not see what this horrific nightmare had to do with his feeling that something—some relic of the Old Ones—still lingered on after Their defeat. “You’re inferring that this dream affords a kind of proof that some evil still exists?” I enquired, getting to my feet and stretching my cramped limbs.

Drawing up his knees, McKinrick clasped his arms around them, staring up at me in the torchlight. His tone was deadly serious as he answered: “You realise where that temple was? You heard it in the dream.”

After a moment’s reflection, I replied. “Of course, Khem.”

“Exactly. And if you recall what Alhazred wrote in the Necronomicon, it was in ancient and shadowy Khem that Nyarlathotep first manifested Himself in human form. The Dark Pharaoh.”

The full implications of this revelation struck me. That foul sacrificial rite, which had been held in that remote village in the Scottish islands. Was it possible? Nyarlathotep, The Crawling Chaos, unique among the Old Ones in that He, alone, had remained unshackled by the Elder Gods, a Being capable of assuming a thousand different shapes and guises. Was this what my companion suspected? One glance at his shadowed features confirmed my thoughts. Nyarlathotep had not been banished or destroyed along with the Others of His kind. Somewhere within the universe this Old One remained free to wreak His vengeance upon mankind and all the other races on a myriad worlds.

*

This morning we drove into Mevagissey, and in the newspaper we came across a small item of news tucked away at the bottom of the pages. Quite simply, it stated that astronomers in Australia had discovered a brilliant supernova in the constellation of Centaurus, so close to Alpha Centauri that its light totally overwhelms that of this first magnitude star. The possibility that Proxima Centauri, the nearest of all stars to our own Sun, had exploded in this spectacular manner is considered highly unlikely since its mass is far too small for it to become a supernova. Yet what the astronomers believe from their theories and calculations can be wrong. There are other forces within the universe and about which they suspect little and know nothing, forces which can destroy entire suns.

The news sent McKinrick into a virtual paroxysm of alarm and trepidation, for what has occurred on our cosmic doorstep may easily happen here unless we find some means to prevent it, to seek out Nyarlathotep and destroy Him like the Others.

I have hastily written this account, not that it will be believed by the great majority of scientists, only by those few, like us, who have seen for themselves what monstrous entities exist just beyond the rim of human knowledge and perception. The phthath, of course, was returned into the custody of the Elder Gods, but we still have the vrachs and Akkadian crystals. I intend to use one or other of these devices to deposit this manuscript in the library of Miskatonic University where I trust it will fall into the right hands.

By the time it is discovered and read, McKinrick and I will be gone...

HERE ENDS

THE FINAL VOLUME OF THE DARK ARMAGEDDON TRILOGY.

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