Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931Various
Science
Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931
Various
Science fiction -- Periodicals; Science fiction, American -- Periodicals
But there were some things the soft lips of Althora refused to say.
Again she tried vainly to raise her hands, then turned her white,
stricken face that a loved one might not see the tears that were
mingling with the blood-stains on her cheeks, nor read in her eyes the
horror they beheld.
But she found one crumb of comfort for the two doomed men.
"You will live till the sailing of the ships, Tommy," she choked, "and
then--we will go together, Tommy--you and I."
Her head was bowed and her shoulders shaking, but she raised her head
proudly erect as she was seized by a guard whose blood-red hands
forced her from the room.
And the dry, straining eyes of Lieutenant McGuire, that watched her
going, saw the passing to an unknown fate of all he held dear, and the
end of his unspoken dreams.
He scarcely felt the grip of the hands that seized him, nor knew when
he and Sykes were carried from the room where Torg, the Emperor, held
his savage court. The stone walls of the room where they were thrown
could not hold his eyes; they looked through and beyond to see only
the white and piteous face of a girl whose lips were whispering: "We
will go together, Tommy--you and I."
(_Concluded in the next issue_)
MYSTERIOUS CARLSBAD CAVERN
The largest cavern ever discovered, at Carlsbad Cavern, N. M., is soon
going to be explored.
Carlsbad Cavern is so large that that three sky-scrapers a half-mile
apart could be built in the largest of its innumerable "rooms,"
according to Mr. Nicholson, who was there once before, about a year
ago. Only 22 miles of the cavern's apparently limitless tunnels have
been explored, revealing such natural beauties that President Coolidge
established it as a national monument.
The stalagmites in the cavern tower 100 feet high. The age of the
cavern was put at 60,000,000 years by Dr. Willis T. Lee of the
National Geographic Society, after his survey three years ago.
The caverns were discovered fifteen years ago by a New Mexican cowboy
named Jim White, according to Mr. Nicholson. White was riding across a
desert waste one day when he saw what appeared to be smoke from a
volcano. After riding three hours in the direction of the smoke he
discovered that it was an enormous cloud of bats issuing from the
mouth of a gigantic cavern. He decided the cavern deserved
exploration, and a few years later he and a Mexican boy were lowered
in a barrel over the 750-foot cliff which overhangs the cavern.
The stalagmites of the cavern, according to Mr. Nicholson, are very
vibrant and resonant. One can play a "xylophone solo" on them with
practice, he said, but it is dangerous, since a certain pitch would
crack them.
The temperature of the cavern is 56 degrees Fahrenheit, never varies,
day and night, winter and summer. The air is purified every
twenty-four hours in some mysterious fashion, though there are no air
currents. This is explained by the theory that there exists a great
subterranean stream at a lower level, probably 1,200 feet down.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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