Terror out of the Past By Raymond Z. Gallun Perry Wilcox descends into the earth to solve the secret of an incredibly ancient civilization. [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Amazing Stories March 1940. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] "Rod!" Perry Wilcox shouted above the sound of bracewires singing in the slipstream: "In the name of Mathuselah! Look! there!" Doctor Roderick Murgatroyd's shrewd old eyes probed swiftly along the line of Perry's pointing arm. For a moment he couldn't get it at all--couldn't see what hundreds of airmen, flying over this place during the past three or four decades, had missed entirely. But then, as Perry circled the plane around in a steep bank, it came over the old adventurer-scientist gradually. There was a humping configuration of those hills down there--faint in outline as an old footprint in a rainwashed garden. It couldn't have been noticed from the ground in a million years, and even from this altitude it was as vague in outline as the memory of a dream. The hills below looked like a gigantic Indian Mound, a mile in extent, and perfectly though dimly triangular. Regularly placed along its straight sides, were humps--foggy nodules--suggesting somehow the ruins of massive turrets, lying buried beneath layer on layer of repeated glacial silt. Rod Murgatroyd began to cuss, half to relieve his feelings and half as though to drive away the possibility that he and Perry were mistaken. "By the nine gods!" he roared back through the propstream. "It's a fortress, Perry! You can almost see the battlements! But who in the name of the Cyclops could have built it? And when? And what in heck are we gonna do about it, Perry?..." Murgatroyd's voice was almost a whine of eagerness at the end. Perry Wilcox was grinning broadly. "Do?" he returned, knowing that Rod had already passed the obvious answer and was planning far ahead. "What are you asking me that for? It ain't much of a riddle, is it?" He swung the plane into the wind, and began the glide toward Schroeder's hayfield. Forty-eight hours afterwards, behind a high board fence, erected for secrecy--that is, as much secrecy as they could hope to achieve in surroundings that knew them well--the small crew they had assembled was busy. A heavy diesel motor pounded steadily, driving a rotary drill that was digging deep into the side of a low knoll.