Spaceflight
So came at last the dawn, and with its coming Okuno and Steve Duane set
forth upon the last stage of the adventure which they shared together:
the short journey to the spaceport.
It lay not far from the tower of Nedlunplaza--but a few minutes' trip
in the speedy monocyclular motor the Daans used as a ground vehicle--on
a promontory north and east of town which, in the day whence Stephen
Duane had come, had been known as Observatory Hill.
If there was any time at which Duane had doubts as to the ultimate
success of his dreams, it was at that moment when first he looked upon
the Daan spaceport and the gigantic metal monster cradled thereupon.
He had overestimated the courage of his own allies in this endeavor. He
knew their daring and determination; knew they could be depended upon
to fight the foe so long as one drop of blood remained in their veins.
But now a new doubt assailed him. Perhaps he had underestimated the
enemy!
It had been easy to acknowledge the scientific skill of the Daans,
looking upon their plastic bridges, their single-wheeled vehicles.
Yet these were feats which humans of Duane's own era might have
accomplished. But this great rocketship, a towering teardrop braced
in its launching tripod, tremendous jet-tubes pointed for the thrust
against the bosom of earth, prow lifted proudly toward the heavens over
which it was master, was at once a staggering and a humbling sight.
For this was something men had dreamed of, worked for, planned to some
day build, but had found beyond their ability. Perhaps von Rath had
been right. Perhaps the Venusians _were_ a master race, rightfully
Overlords of Earth. For surely....
Then he thought again of the city of Sinnaty, its squalid streets,
its mud-encrusted hovels, and a repulsion shook him. No, culture was
not a matter of superior science alone. Other things entered into it.
A truly great race displayed sociological wisdom as well; knew that
civilizations are built not only on guns and swords, rockets and
machines, instruments of destruction and impregnable bastions, but on
the right of every slightest soul to live cleanly, warmly, comfortably,
and happily at peace with his neighbors.
The science of the Daans was great, true; but it was cold and harsh,
brutal. It was science for science's sake, not science harnessed
for the greater welfare of living beings. This was the Daan's false
ideology. There could be no peace between Venusians and earthmen until
for this credo was substituted the ancient democratic principles of
liberty, equality, fraternity.
Thus Stephen Duane's thoughts as he approached the huge _Oalumuo_.
* * * * *
The spaceport was a beehive of activity. Hordes of human slaves were
completing an all-night labor of loading the rocketship's cargo bins
with Earth wares for the Venusian marts. Over these sweating humans,
Daan guards cracked whips and snarled commands. Venusian officials
scurried to and fro, concluding last minute preparations for the flight.
Okuno accompanied Steve to the automatic lift which bore passengers
to an air-lock some sixty feet above the surface of the ground, there
halted and touched the younger man's breast with his open palm in the
Daan equivalent of a handshake.
"Now farewell, O Eternal One," he whispered quietly, "May the Holy Four
guide and protect thy efforts. You know what must be done."
Steve nodded. "I know. I also know how to get in touch with you. You'll
await word from me on the ultra-wave?"
"Day and night," promised Okuno. "The movement you so gloriously
started will not die a-borning. I shall see that the Revelation is
spread throughout the human territories, that gathering-places are
fixed in a hundred strategic spots where Women and Wild Ones may pledge
allegiance to the new order. I shall give them every assistance within
my power, waiting and praying for your order to strike."
"Good!" said Steve. "And when and if we succeed in immobilizing the
spacefleet on Daan, that word will flash to you. Now--" He changed
his tone abruptly--"I hear and obey, O Master. The message shall be
transmitted promptly."
For a uniformed Daan had approached them and was beckoning Steve to the
lift. Okuno nodded. "Very good. Farewell, Captain Huumo. A safe and
pleasant journey."
"Captain Huumo" saluted smartly, then ascended the lift to disappear
into the ship.
He had thought he was the last passenger to board the _Oalumuo_, but
just as he entered the air-lock there was a flurry of excitement on the
field below. A cavalcade of monocycles, with sirens wailing stridently,
came roaring across the drome. Bells clanged throughout the ship, and
over its intercommunicating audio system rasped hasty commands.
"_Stand by for a passenger! Locks open! Stand by!_"
Space sailors scurried and grunted. There sounded the whine of the
rising lift, the asthmatic wheeze of a reopening air-lock. Then the
belated passenger stepped into the spaceship, and....
Alternate waves of heat and cold swept over Stephen Duane. For he was
staring squarely into the eyes of the Lady Loala--and in her answering
gaze was startled recognition!
* * * * *
It was fortunate for Stephen Duane that the take-off of the transport
had been delayed, for Loala made no effort to repress her exclamation
of astonishment.
"Steve of Emmeity!" she gasped. "What are _you_--?"
But her question was drowned in the sudden clamor of signals, a
metallic voice calling over the audio system, "_All hands to posts!
Prepare to lift gravs! Clear ship for lift!_"
And an officer came bustling to the duo.
"Pardon, my Lady. Pardon, my Lord. If you will come this way, please--"
And as he swept the pair before him to the hydraulic hammocks wherein
passengers must recline during the initial shock of acceleration,
Steve seized the opportunity to whisper to the Lady Loala, "Silence, O
Mistress of Delight, I beseech thee. I am on a dangerous mission. My
true identity must not be revealed."
And though the silver-haired daughter of Venus frowned, her eyes
fraught with question, she said nothing more. So the two took the
hammocks assigned them, strapped themselves securely therein, and a
few minutes later, with an ear-splitting roar and a rushing violence
which for an instant seemed to halt the very pounding of blood in their
veins, the mighty jet-tubes of the _Oalumuo_ exploded, catapulting
their vessel outward from Earth into space.
But not for long could the curiosity of the Overlord be denied. Later,
released from their hammocks, with the vessel hurtling the dark vaults
of the void at a speed increasing toward the acceleration of 200,000
m.p.h. Duane later learned to be the craft's maximum velocity, the
voluptuous Lady Loala turned to Steve imperiously.
* * * * *
"Come, Captain Huumo," she said, addressing him by the title a space
sailor had used when releasing him from his hammock. "Follow me to my
quarters. I would learn more of this 'mission' which carries you to
Daan."
And when they had reached the suite of rooms reserved for her use, and
had closed the doors behind them: "Well?" she demanded. "What means
this, Steve of Emmeity? A secret mission? And on whose behalf, pray?
Was it not _I_ who but recently assigned you to a mission of utmost
importance?"
"It was, O my Lady," acknowledged Steve. "But that errand has already
been concluded; this new duty springs from its accomplishment. On it I
am sent by your companion in Council, the Overlord Okuno."
"The Chief Executioner? But why should he--Aaah!" Loala's gray-green
eyes widened slightly. "Then it was you whose information warned us of
the rebel uprising at Loovil, and enabled our forces to quell it? Well
done, brave Steve of Emmeity! But still I do not understand. Why did
you not report this directly to _me_?"
"Because," explained Steve, "upon my return to Sinnaty I was seized by
guards and taken before the Chief Executioner. When I told Okuno of the
dreadful secret I had learned at Loovil, he commissioned me to proceed
immediately to Daan, that I might point out amongst the group recently
exiled--"
"The Slumberers!" Excitement brightened Loala's eyes. "Now I
understand! Then what we heard rumored was true? The Slumberers _were_
amongst those captured at Loovil, and exiled to Daan? And you, O Steve,
you can identify them?"
"I can," declared Steve boldly. Then, in a softer voice, "I can and
will, O loveliest daughter of Daan."
And again, as before, Loala proved herself mistress of all things
save her own truly feminine emotions. At the tone of his voice, her
features softened. Her eyes met his approvingly, and she whispered,
"You have done well, Steve of Emmeity. I think the time is not far off
when you shall have won that which you claim to desire. Do you--" There
was a calculated allure in her sidelong glance--"Do you still find the
prize worth striving for?"
"More so than ever, O Mistress of every delight," avowed Steve
ardently ... and moved a step nearer her. "Must I continue to prove
myself? Surely by now I have earned--"
It was a bold gambit he offered, one which might have boomeranged
against his plans. But he was gambling on the inherent coquetry of the
woman Loala. His psychology was good, for, as he had expected, she
withdrew before him, and her lips lifted in a smile of light amusement.
"Not so quickly, O most presuming human," she laughed archly. "There is
still your important mission to be accomplished. After that, well--then
perhaps we shall see...."
* * * * *
To say that the following ten days, during which the spacecruiser
_Oalumuo_ blazed its way across thirty-odd million miles of trackless
ether, were uneventful would be but to demonstrate the relativity of
all things.
To the Venusian space-navigators the trip was, perhaps, one of little
moment. It passed smoothly, serenely, and without untoward incident.
To the passengers who spent their waking hours dining and gaming, the
trip may have been unexciting. To the workmen who performed mysterious
functions deep within the bowels of the ship the trip may have seemed
but hours of drudgery. But to Stephen Duane the trip was ten days of
nerve-tingling adventure. Excitement stirring every sense, emotion and
brain-fibre.
First, there was that never-to-be-forgotten moment when, led to the
Observatory Deck by a junior officer eager to win a good place in the
graces of the mock Daan "nobleman," Steve looked out upon that which
every imaginative human has dreamed of some day beholding: the starry
firmament of space as viewed from the void itself.
Stephen Duane was stricken speechless by the majesty of this sight.
Here was no scattered handful of stars sprinkling the black emptiness
like a sparse shaking of mica upon velvet. Here was a glorious backdrop
of color, radiant, pulsating, gleaming with hues which shamed the
efforts of the most daring rainbow. Clear of the encumbrance of Earth's
blanketing atmosphere, the stars became tremendous globes burning
hotly, fiercely, in the celestial vault. Flanking them on every
side, forming a webwork so closely woven as to stagger the mind with
its intricateness, were millions ... billions ... of myriad flaming
companions.
Behind the _Oalumuo_ lay the blue-green orb of Earth, studded with the
whirling coronet of its tiny lunar companion. Before, looming larger
with each passing hour of flight, was the gleaming-white birthplace
of the races of Daans. Elsewhere circling the solar giant which
dominated the segment of space could be seen, methodically plodding
their ordained courses, the other planets of Sol's family. Red Mars and
mighty Jupiter ... ringed Saturn and far, frozen Uranus.
* * * * *
It was a sight to humble the proudest human. Seeing it, tiring never
of its ever-changing splendor, Steve Duane renewed to himself his vow
that he would do everything within his power to reclaim for an enslaved
humanity the right to share in the glories of this celestial empire.
But he saw not only beauty on the trip. He studied other things
more practical, as well. Under the guidance of young Thaamo, his
space-mariner friend, he spent long days in traversing the _Oalumuo_
from stem to stern, from control-room to jet-chambers.
Much of what he saw upon these visits he did not completely understand.
That was only natural. Not in a day nor a decade had the Daans solved
the secret of space-travel. It lay within the power of no single brain
to instantaneously comprehend mechanisms which had taken a hundred
brains to invent, a thousand hands to build.
But Stephen Duane was, or had been, a scientist--and a brilliant one.
He had that type of mind which, though it necessarily ignored details
at the moment unsolveable, grasped prime essentials swiftly and surely.
On the more important points Steve centered his attention. He learned
that the motors propelling the ship were atomic motors, and by deft
questioning learned how that long-sought power had been harnessed
by the Venusians. He studied the controls so carefully that in an
emergency he might have taken his seat at the pilot's studs ...
mentally blueprinted the general layout of the craft so that in days to
come he might know in rude outline the sort of ship earthmen must build
were they to go space-vagabonding.
[Illustration: Steve studied the controls carefully.]
He learned where the fuel was stored, and where were kept food
and water supplies. He was shown--and memorized--the location of
the air-conditioning system through whose viaducts re-freshened,
re-oxygenated atmosphere was pumped to each nook and cranny of the
ship. And though the armaments of the vessel were a military secret
that might not be entrusted to even a traveling dignitary, he learned
the locations of the principle ray-guns, and knew the points on a
Venusian man-o'-war over which one must achieve mastery in order to
seize that vessel.
Thus, though others may have been bored by the trip, to Steve Duane the
ten days whisked by like dry leaves fleeing before an autumn gale. And
finally the journey came to an end.
On the morning of the eleventh day, when he awakened to peer through
his porthole, he discovered the now-familiar spangled firmament was
blotted out by a mist of writhing gray. Fog banks, impenetrably thick,
engulfed the craft like a veil. The clear, sharp brilliance of open
ether was left behind, and the _Oalumuo_ was settling through miles of
turgid white to its destination.
And when the gray evaporated, Steve looked down upon the landscape of
Earth's humid, solar sister ... the planet Daan.