: The Drone A Play in Three Acts by Mayne Rutherford - Ireland Drama; Ulster (Northern Ireland and Ireland) Drama

@FreeBooksTue 06 Jun, 2023

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IN CAVERNS BELOW

If we were told to list a dozen writers whom we considered great science-fiction authors, we should certainly place the name of Stanton A. Coblentz high up in the list.

When Coblentz writes a short story, it is excellent, but when he composes a novel, such as the present one, you will have to go far and wide to find a better story.

We sincerely believe that "In Caverns Below" will go down in science-fiction history with the other novels of Stanton A. Coblentz and will be re-read by the ever-growing multitude of science-fiction fans during future decades.

Here we find everything that distinguishes our author's work from all others--what more can we say?

It is now five years since Philip Clay and I were given up by the world as lost, five years since we plunged into that appalling adventure from which, even today, we have barely begun to recover. During nine tenths of that time, we dwelt far from the sight of our fellow men in a remote and incredible land of wizardry and terror; we made discoveries which, we are certain, have never been surpassed since Columbus voyaged westward to the New World; we encountered perils that we still shudder to recall, and experienced triumphs that make us sigh regretfully in recollection. And it is only by the rarest of good fortune that we survive to tell the story to those who, long ago, wept at the news of our passing.

One fact in the case, and only one, will be remembered by the public. In the autumn of 1929, newspapers throughout the country reported that Philip Clay and Frank Comstock, mining engineers and boon companions, disappeared in the depths of a silver mine in Nevada. It was generally believed that a cave-in of unexplained origin had been responsible for their death, and that they had been crushed beyond recognition, for no trace of their mutilated bodies was ever found. The world, with its insatiable appetite for tragedy and horror, was naturally interested for a time, but as the days and weeks wore by and no further news was forthcoming, public attention was diverted to other affairs, and Comstock and Clay were forgotten....

Yet it is I, Frank Comstock, who write these words. It is I, Frank Comstock, who a few months ago returned as if from the grave, to announce that Clay and I had not been killed in the mine disaster. It is I, Frank Comstock, who have come back to record my experiences, and to proclaim that, even in this twentieth century, there are more worlds about us than our philosophy has ever taken into account.

Let me therefore go back over these harrowing five years and try to report, as simply and accurately as I can, each episode in the whole chain of extraordinary events.

It will be needless to linger over the preliminaries, to tell how Clay and I, chums at college, had been partners since our graduation from Western Institute of Mining twelve years before, how we had pooled our fortunes and joined our lives and spent all of our time in mutual experiments and enterprises in the back-regions of Montana, Idaho, and other states of the mountain belt. Passing over all this, let me tell how, in September, 1929, we were called to pass judgment upon the old Carlson Flat silver mine, which an eastern syndicate was just reopening in a particularly remote region of central Nevada. I recall how, for two days, we trailed with our pack-team over the desert mountains, our nostrils assaulted by the fine alkaline dust and our eyes wearied by the never-ending gray and yellow of the sagebrush. "A God-forsaken country!" muttered Clay, his fine blue eyes lighted with a reminiscent gleam, as he thought of the wooded mountains of the north. "Heavens, but I'll be thankful when we get out of here!"

Little, however, did he realize how long it would be before we would get out!

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