DWELLERS IN THE MIRAGE: Sci-Fi Classic. Abraham Merritt

of Ataga’hi had cured them. They came up on its shores — whole once more. Over Ataga’hi ruled the peace of God. All creatures were friends.”

      “Listen, Indian, are you trying to tell me this is your medicine lake?”

      “I didn’t say that at all. I said the name of Ataga’hi kept coming into my mind. It was a place that appeared to be a stony flat, without blade of grass, forbidding. So does this place. But under that illusion was — a lake. We saw a lake. It’s a queer coincidence, that’s all. Perhaps the stony flat of Ataga’hi was a mirage —” He hesitated: “Well, if some other things the ancestors mentioned turn up, I’ll shift sides and take your version of that Gobi affair.”

      “That lake was the mirage. I’m telling you.”

      He shook his head, stubbornly.

      “Maybe. But maybe what we see down there now is mirage, too. Maybe both are mirage. And if so, then, how deep is the real floor, and can we make our way over it?”

      He stood staring silently at the valley. He shivered, and again I was aware of the curiously intense quality of the cold. I stooped and caught hold of my pack. My hands were numb.

      “Well, whatever it is — let’s find out.”

      A quiver ran through the valley floor. Abruptly it became again the shimmering blue lake. And as abruptly turned again to nibbled rock.

      But not before I had seemed to see within that lake of illusion — if illusion it were — a gigantic shadowy shape, huge black tentacles stretching out from a vast and nebulous body . . . a body which seemed to vanish back into immeasurable distances . . . vanishing into the void . . . as the Kraken of the Gobi cavern had seemed to vanish into the void . . . into that void which was — Khalk’ru!

      We crept between, scrambled over and slid down the huge broken fragments. The further down we went, the more intense became the cold. It had a still and creeping quality that seeped into the marrow. Sometimes we dropped the packs ahead of us, sometimes dragged them after us. And ever more savagely the cold bit into our bones.

      By the frequent glimpses of the valley floor, I was more and more assured of its reality. Every mirage I had ever beheld — and in Mongolia I had seen many — had retreated, changed form, or vanished as I drew near. The valley floor did none of these things. It was true that the stones seemed to be squatter as we came closer; but I attributed that to the different angle of vision.

      We were about a hundred feet above the end of the slide when I began to be less sure. The travelling had become peculiarly difficult. The slide had narrowed. At our left the rock was clean swept, stretching down to the valley as smoothly as though it had been brushed by some titantic broom. Probably an immense fragment had broken loose at this point, shattering into the boulders that lay heaped at its termination. We veered to the right, where there was a ridge of rocks, pushed to the side by that same besom of stone. Down this ridge we picked our way.

      Because of my greater strength, I was carrying both our rifles, swung by a thong over my left shoulder. Also I was handling the heavier pack. We came upon an extremely awkward place. The stone upon which I was standing suddenly tipped beneath my weight. It threw me sideways. The pack slipped from my hands, toppled, and fell over on the smooth rock. Automatically I threw myself forward, catching at it. The thong holding the two rifles broke. They went slithering after the escaping pack.

      It was one of those combinations of circumstances that makes one believe in a God of Mischance. The thing might have happened anywhere else on our journey without any result whatever. And even at that moment I didn’t think it mattered.

      “Well,” I said, cheerfully, “that saves me carrying them. We can pick them up when we get to the bottom.”

      “That is.” said Jim, “if there is a bottom.”

      I cocked my eye down the slide. The rifles had caught up with the pack and the three were now moving fast.

      “There they stop,” I said. They were almost on the rubble at the end.

      “The hell they do,” said Jim. “There they go!”

      I rubbed my eyes, and looked and looked again. The pack and the pushing rifles should have been checked by that barrier at the slide’s end. But they had not been. They had vanished.