The girl turned away. "Oh, very well," she said flatly, "if you don't
want me with you."
"That's a good scout. I'll be back just as quickly as I can. And, by
the way, lock the door from the inside, and don't open it till you
hear my voice."
The girl looked at him wonderingly. "But--" she began.
"Don't ask me why. Do it." There was a curious note in Allan's voice,
one that cut off Naomi's question. The door shut, and Dane heard the
bolt shoot home.
He stood in the corridor, listening intently, his face strained. There
was no sound save that of Naomi's movements behind the locked door.
Allan turned to search for the auxiliary staircase that must be
somewhere near the bank of ascendor doors.
Silence was again around him, almost tangible in its heaviness. His
footsteps reverberated through dead halls, the echo curiously muffled
by the coating of slime that spread dankly green. Allan found the
staircase well, descended cautiously, pausing often to listen. Not
even the faint scuttering of vermin rewarded him.
* * * * *
At last, three stories down, he reached the stores level. Here, in a
great open hall, were the numerous alcoved recesses of the shops. Once
thronged, and gaudy with the varicolored goods brought by plane and
heavy-bellied rocket-freighter from both hemispheres, the vast space
was a desert of moldering dust heaps, brooding. There was a faint odor
in the stagnant air--of spices, and rustling silks, of rare perfumes,
of all the luxury of the Golden Age that Man's folly had ended.
Allan searched the long shelves feverishly, a nervous urge to complete
his task and get back to Naomi tingling in his veins. Once he stopped
suddenly, his body twisting to the stair landing. He seemed to have
heard something, an indefinable thudding, the shadow of a sound. But
it did not come again, and he dismissed it as the thumping of his own
blood in his ears, audible in that stillness.
At the end of a long aisle, neat rows of cans greeted him, the labels
rotted off, the metal rust-streaked, but apparently tight and whole.
He found a metal basket, a roll of wire, twisted a handle for the
basket and filled it, choosing the cans by their shape. He should have
liked to explore further, but the urge to return tugged at him. He
went up the stairs three at a time.
There was a dark, oblong break in the long glowing wall of the upper
corridor! The door--it was the door of the apartment where he had left
Naomi! He leaped down the hall, shouting. The portal hung open,
shattered: the rooms were stark, staring empty. Allan reeled out
again. There were the marks of footprints, of many footprints, in the
green scum of the hall floor, their own among them, that had led the
marauders straight to the girl!
Fool that he had been! He had thought she would be safer behind a
bolted door! Allan berated himself. He had thought not to worry her.
There had been only four bodies in the wreckage of the black
plane--but how had the rest gotten here so soon?
There was a humming whine from above. Dane hurtled toward the roof
stairs. He burst from the upper landing, fists clenched, face a
furious mask. A helicopter was just rising. Allan jumped for it, his
fingers caught and clung to the undercarriage. But the down-swing of
his body broke his hold, and Dane crashed to the roof.
* * * * *
He watched the plane, saw it zoom up, turn east, saw it sink and land
a half mile away, atop the building where he had found her. In the
moonlight he marked the direction of the place, its distance. Then he
was descending stairs, innumerable stairs. He could not hope to reach
it in time to save Naomi. But--his eyes grew stony--he could avenge
her.
Afterwards that nightmare journey through the murdered city was a
detailless blur to Allan. He clambered over heaped rubble, forced
himself through windrows of piled bones that crumbled to dust at his
touch. Vines, and whipping creepers of triumphant vegetation
everywhere halted him; he tore them away with bleeding hands and
stumbled on. He fell, and scrambled up again, and plodded on the
interminable path till he had reached his goal.
Here, at last, some modicum of reason penetrated into the numbed
blankness of his brain. The dark arch of the entrance-way was somehow
familiar. Still legible under the verdigris of the bronze plate on the
lintel he read, "Transportation Substation--District L2ZX." Now he
understood why he had not seen the black flier till it had leaped in
pursuit: how it was that Naomi's captors had so quickly found another
'copter. A broad well penetrated the center of this building--its
opening must be covered by the luxuriant vines so that he had not
noted it--and dropped down to the midsection that was a hangar for
local and private planes. His own little Zenith had been stored here
on occasion. There must be other helicopters there, and a stock of
fuel. A dim plan began to form at the back of his head.
But first he must find where they were, and what had happened to
Naomi.
Allan removed his sandals, and began the endless climb. He made no
sound on the steps, cushioned as they were with mold, but at each
landing he paused for a moment, listening. The cold fire that burned
within him left no room for fatigue, for pain.
A murmuring, then a laugh, cut through the deathlike stillness. Allan
was nearly to the top. Down the corridor into which he crept,
snakelike on his belly, red light flickered from an open door.
* * * * *
Dane moved soundlessly to that door, and, lying flat, pushed his head
slowly past the sash till he could see within. By the light of a fire
that danced in the center of the unburnable mallite floor, its
illumination half revealing their sodden, brutish faces, he saw an
unspeakably strange group. A scene from out of the dawn of history it
was, the haunch-squatted circle, their yellow skins and black
glistening in the crimson, shifting glow. He recognized the giant
Negro, Ra-Jamba, his head bound with a rag, and Jung Sin. There were
five others clustered about those two, and a third, a skew-eyed
Oriental, intent on some game they were playing with little sticks
that passed from hand to hand.
Before each of the players there was a little pile of fish bones,
black with much handling. The Negro's pile, and that of Jung Sin, were
about equal, but there were only two or three in front of the third
player. And just as Allan caught sight of them, the sticks clicked,
and a shrill objurgation burst from that third as the last of his
markers were raked in by Jung Sin's taloned hand. The circle hunched
closer, there was a ribald, taunting laugh from Ra-Jamba and Jung Sin
glanced over his shoulder into a shadowed corner.
"Have patience, my lotus flower," he purred. "Only one is left. Soon
the goddess of fortune and love will clear him from my path. By the
nine-headed Dragon, I have never seen a game of Li-Fan last so long.
But it draws to an end. Then we shall have our joy together, you and
I."
In that instant the fire flared. Allan saw an open window in the
background, and beneath it a slim white form lying, bound and
helpless. Fierce joy leaped in him, and fiercer hate, Naomi was as yet
untouched, the game was being played for her as stake. He had come in
time to save her!
But how? There were eight of the Easterners in the room. He had his
ray-gun, and might cow them with it and free the girl. But as soon as
he had gotten her out of the room, they would surge out after the
whites. He could fight for a while, but the end was inevitable. And
even if by some miracle he and Naomi escaped, they would be tracked to
Sugar Loaf.
The sticks were clicking in a continuous rattle as the final bout of
the game waxed fast and furious. And as fast and furious was the whirl
of Allan's thoughts. He strove to remember the layout of this
building. The helicopter hangar was next above this level. Outside the
windows of this floor a narrow ledge ran. The nebulous scheme that had
entered his dazed brain as he read the bronze plate below took clearer
form, shaped itself to meet this new need.
* * * * *
Allan crept away to safe distance, leaped to his feet and flitted
upward. He was in the empty, echoing space of the hangar level. The
fuel tanks bulged huge in the dimness. Here were reels of the feed
hose he needed--flexible metal that had withstood the years; here a
faucet nozzle, and a long coil of fine wire. Haste driving him, he
made the connections. Then he was descending again, dragging behind
him a long black snake of hose whose other end was clamped to a vat of
oxygen impregnated gasoline.
The rustle of the hose along the hall floor was muffled by the greasy
slime. Dane got the nozzle to just outside the door of the room where
Naomi lay captive. The rattle of the playing sticks still continued.
Jung Sin's voice sounded, in a language that Allan did not understand.
But there was no mistaking the triumphant note in the silky, jeering
tones. The yellow man was winning, and winning fast.
Dane twisted one end of the wire around the faucet handle. Then he was
unwinding the coil as he tried the door of the chamber next to the one
where the fire burned, found it open, darted across the room and
softly raised the sash. The sill here, like the one beneath which
Naomi lay, was a bare two feet above the ground.
He was out on the ledge, sliding along it toward the fire-reddened
oblong five feet away. He crammed his body close against the wall,
kept his eyes away from the unfenced edge of that eighteen-inch shelf.
Beyond, an abyss waited, twelve thousand feet of nothingness down
which a single misstep, an instant's vertigo, would send him hurtling.
Suddenly the rattle of sticks stopped, and he heard the black's long
howl of disappointed rage. The game was over!
Allan reached the window, glimpsed a leering semicircle of animal
faces, saw Jung Sin coming toward him. Then he had swung in.
"Back, Jung Sin! Back!" Allan was straddled over Naomi's form, the
ray-gun thrust out before his tense threat, his face livid, his eyes
blazing. "Get back, or I ray you!"
* * * * *
Consternation, awe, flashed into the brutal faces of the Easterners.
Jung Sin reeled back, his saffron hands rising. Allan's weapon swept
slowly along the line of staring men. "If one of you moves I flash."
He bent to the girl, keeping his eyes on the Easterners, and his
weapon steady. He had hung the wire coil over his shoulder, leaving
his left hand free to fumble for and untie the cords around Naomi's
wrists. He got them loose.
"Can you get your feet free, Naomi?"
"Yes, I can manage it." Her voice was steady, but there was a great
thankfulness vibrant in it.
"Then do it and get out on the ledge. Quick." He straightened, and the
blaze of his eyes held the yellow men, and the black, motionless.
Naomi, at the window behind him, gasped. "I know it looks tough," he
encouraged her, "but you can make it. Don't look down. Go to the left.
_And keep clear of that wire._"
"I'm all right, Allan. But you--"
"Never mind about me. Go ahead."
Jung Sin jerked forward, driven by the madness that twisted his face
into gargoyle hideousness. But Allan's ray-gun stabbed at him, and he
halted.
"I'm out, Allan."
Dane's foot felt back of him for the sill, found it. He lifted, facing
his enemies inexorably, caught the lintel with his left hand, and was
crouching outside. A sidewise flick of his eyes showed Naomi just
reaching the other window.
He pulled at the wire till it was gently taut. A moment's compunction
rose in him at what he was about to do. Then the black roll of the
Easterners' crimes rushed into his mind. Naomi's safety, his own, and
that of the little colony that had endured so much to preserve
humanity, cried out for their extinction. Allan jerked the metal
thread, and the faucet nozzle in the corridor opened.
A black stream gushed forward, reached the fire, and the room was a
roaring furnace. Allan saw the forms of his enemies silhouetted
against the blaze for a fleeting instant, then they were flaming
statues. One only, Jung Sin, nearer than the rest, leaped for the
window and escaped the first gush of flame. Allan pressed the trigger
of his ray-gun. But no blue flash answered that pressure. The weapon's
charge had leaked out, was gone!
* * * * *
Allan tore himself loose from yellow hands that clutched at him, his
fist crashed into Jung Sin's fear twisted visage, and the crazed
Oriental fell back into the roaring blaze.
But Allan himself was thrust backward by that blow, was swaying on the
very edge of the chasm. His hand went out for a saving hold on the
window sash; flame licked at it. He was toppling, against the strain
of his body muscles to resist the inevitable fall, and death reached
up from depths for him. Then an arm was around him, was drawing him
back to life. Naomi had darted back, defying the terror of that
height, the surge of heat. She had reached him just in time--a
split-second later and his weight would have been too much for her
puny strength. But in this instant, the merest touch was enough to
save him. They crept along the ledge and climbed wearily in.
There was another plane in the hangar, and presently Allan had it
rising through the well into clean, free air. He turned to the girl in
the seat beside him and pointed at the scene they were leaving.
"Look," he said.
The city was in darkness beneath them, save for the one staring
rectangle that marked a pyre. But dawn shimmered opalescent in the
east.
A soft white hand crept into Allan's. There was a long moment of
silence. Then Allan said, softly: "A new day, and a new world for
their children."