Amazing Stories, Vol. 2, No. 2 — page 60: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

164 luminous by reflection against the daylight with- out, was watching me out of the obscurity! “The old instinctive dread of wild animals came upon me. I clenched my hands and steadfastly looked into the glaring eyeballs. I feared to turn. Then the thought of the absolute security in which humanity appeared to be living came to my mind. Then I remembered that strange dread of the dark. “Overcoming my fear to some extent, I advanced a step, and spoke. I will admit that my voice was hoarse and ill controlled. I put out my hand, and touched something soft. “At once the eyes darted sideways, and something white ran past me. I turned, with my heart in my mouth, and saw a queer little ape-like figure, with the head held down in a peculiar manner, running across the sunlit space behind me. It blundered against a block of granite, staggered aside, and in a moment was hidden in a black shadow beneath another pile of ruined masonry. “My impression of it was of course very imper- fect. It was of a dull white color, and had strange, large, grayish-red eyes. There was some flaxen hair on its head and down its back. But, as I say, it went too fast for me to see distinctly. I cannot even say whether it ran on all fours, or only with its fore arms held very low. “After a momentary hesitation I followed the creature into the second heap of ruins. I could not find it there at first, but after a time, in the pro- found obscurity I came upon one of those round, well-like openings, of which I have told you, half closed by a fallen pillar. A sudden thought came to me. Could the thing have vanished down the shaft? I lit a match, and, looking down, saw a small white moving figure, with large bright eyes, that regarded me steadfastly as it retreated. “The thing made me shudder. It was like a human spider. It was clambering down the wall of the shaft, and now I noticed for the first time a “number of metal projections for foot and hand, forming a kind of ladder down. “Suddenly the light burned my fingers and fell out of my hand, going out as it dropped: and when I had lit another, the little monster had disappeared. “I do not know how long I sat peering down the portentous well. Very slowly could I persuade my- self that the thing I had seen wasa man. But grad- ually the real truth dawned upon me; that man had not remained one species, but had differentiated into two distinct animals; that my graceful children of the upperworld were not the only descendants of the men of my generation, but that this bleached, nocturnal thing that had flashed before me, was also heir to our age. “I thought of the flickering pillars, and of my theory of an underground ventilation. I began to suspect their true import. “But what was this creature doing in my scheme of a perfectly balanced organization? How was it related to the indolent serenity of the beautiful overworld people? And what was hidden down ' below there? I sat upon the edge of the well, tell- ing myself I had nothing to fear in descending, and that there I must go for the solution of my difficulties, and withal I was absolutely afraid to go down. AMAZING STORIES “As I hesitated, two of the beautiful upperworld people came running in their amorous sport, across the. daylight into the shadow. One pursued the other, flinging flowers at her as he ran. - They seemed disappointed when they found me with my arm against the overturned pillar, peering down the well. to notice these apertures, for when I pointed to it, and tried to frame a question about it in their tongue, they seemed distressed, and turned away. They were, however, interested by my matches, and I struck several to amuse them. “However, all my attempts to woo them toward the subject I wanted failed: and presently I left them. I resolved to go back to Weena, and see what I could get from her. “But my mind was already in revolution, my guesses and impressions slipping and sliding to a new adjustment. I had now the clew to these wells, to the ventilating towers, to the problem of the ghosts, and a hint, indeed, of the meaning of the bronze gates and the fate of the Time Machine. Vaguely indeed, there came a suggestion toward the economic problem that had puzzled me. Py ERE was the new view: Evidently this sec- ond species of man was subterranean. There were three circumstances in particular that made me think its rare emergence upon the surface was the outcome of long subterraneous habit. In the first place, the bleached appearance, common in most animals that live largely in the dark—the white fish of the Kentucky caves, for instance. Then the large eyes and their capacity for reflecting the light —a common feature of nocturnal eyes, witness the owl and the cat. And finally the evident confusion in the sunlight, the hasty flight toward dark sha- dow, and the carriage of the head while in the light, re-enforced the idea of an extremely sensi- tive retina. “Beneath my feet, then, the earth must be tun- neled out to an enormous extent, and in these cav- erns the new race lived. The presence of ventilat- ing shafts and wells all along the hill slopes— everywhere, in fact, except along the river valley— showed how universally the ramification of the un- derworld extended. “And it was natural to assume that it was in the underworld that the necessary work of the over- world was performed. This was so plausible that I accepted it unhesitatingly. From that I went on to assume how the splitting of the human species came about. shape my theory took, though I soon felt it was still short of the truth of the case. “But at first, starting from the problems of our own age, it seemed as clear as daylight to me that the gradual widening of the present merely tem- porary and social difference of the capitalist from the laborer was the key to the explanation. doubt it will seem grotesque enough to you and wildly incredible, and yet even now there are cir- cumstances that point in the way things have gone. There is a tendency plainly enough to utilize under- ground space for the less ornamental purposes of civilization; there is the Metropolitan Railway in London, for instance, -COMICDOOKSCCOM Apparently, it was considered bad form No. I dare say you will anticipate what