Just then the cell door opened, and a shackled figure was thrust rudely
in. It was Poblath, the mango. His captor was Trisp, the bar-mango.
It was now Trisp’s turn to gloat. Said he: “Long have I served as your
assistant, O Poblath, and long have I coveted your position. Now it is
mine for the asking. I suspected you of treason when you deprived Cabot
of his antennae. I noted that you preserved his apparatus in a cupboard
in your office. But when you refused to permit the jailers to fire on
the insurgent blockade in the street below, then I knew for sure of your
treason to King Yuri. Now I go to clear the blockade. Thence to the king
to be made mango of Kuana!”
He left. From the window, the three prisoners watched the insurgents
below. In a few moments the jail opened fire on them, and they withdrew
in disorder. Once more the street was clear for the passage of alien
troops.
“But they are still cheering for King Kew,” wrote Hah.
By this time Poblath had begun to recover from the shock of his sudden
incarceration. He called to the professor, and soon the latter had
turned his back to the ex-mango and was rummaging beneath Poblath’s toga
with his shackled hands. After considerable search he found what he was
after, a small pouch containing three keys.
In a moment the prisoners were free of their handcuffs. Another moment
and the cell door swung open. The prisoners emerged and glanced
cautiously around.
The corridor outside was dark and silent. Most of the wardens were on
the roof, firing at the insurgents who had returned to the attack with
great force.
Cabot, Hah Babbuh and Poblath did not stop to release any of their
companions, but hurried to the ground floor. On the way they met but two
of the jail guards. Hah smashed in the skull of one with a handcuff; the
other had the good judgment to join the party.
It scarcely seemed a moment before the big steel doors swung open at
Poblath’s touch, to admit the besiegers. A brief exchange of greetings,
and they swarmed up the stairs to clear the roof, while Myles and his
two friends followed, to release the other prisoners.
Every prisoner, regardless of what he was in for, was given a chance at
freedom if he would join Cabot’s forces, and none refused. They were all
freed by the time the party from the roof returned with sufficient
captured arms to equip nearly all the rest. On the roof every warden lay
dead.
Then the cabinet, the generals, the leaders of the invading party,
Poblath and Cabot adjourned to Poblath’s office for a council of war. Of
course, the first thing was for Myles to get his headset again; but
alas, the cupboard lock had been wrenched from its hinges, and the
precious apparatus lay smashed to atoms on the floor.
I cannot regale you with very much of the conversation which took place
during the events which now crowded fast upon Cabot; for, from now on,
all words radiated by the antennae of the Cupians were absolutely lost
to him.
Hah Babbuh, as Chief of Staff, presided in view of the earth-man’s
disability. He opened the conference with some questions to the leader
of the insurgents, and the latter replied.
The effect was electrical! The whole assemblage rose to their feet, with
expressions of intense joy on their faces, rushed over to Cabot and
began patting him on the cheek, the Porovian equivalent of a handshake.
What could it mean?
Finally, sensing his bewilderment, Poblath seized the paper and stylus,
and wrote the startling information: “You are the father of King Kew the
Thirteenth!”
When they had all calmed down a bit, it developed that Princess Lilla
had given birth to a son at Lake Luno about an hour before the old king
had been shot. This made the baby the King of Cupia, and deprived Yuri
not only of his title to the throne, but also of his immunity for the
assassination of Kew the Twelfth.
“Would that I had not stayed your hand!” wrote Hah Babbuh.
To which message, Poblath added the philosophical comment, “He who plays
safe will often be sorry.”
Cabot was too full of surprised joy and wonder to write any reply.
Having completed the celebration, the conference settled down to
business again.
During the congratulations, the earth man had scarce had time for any
feelings except stunned stupefaction; but now, as the conference took up
its duties again, his radio-deafness gave him a chance to reflect.
“My baby! My baby boy! _Our_ little son!”
A warm thrill of pride and joy flooded through Cabot’s body. But this
was immediately followed by a heart-gripping pang of fear. Was Lilla
well? And this question was followed by another, even more terrifying.
Were the Princess Lilla and the baby king safe from the clutches of
Yuri?
Yuri had killed his venerable uncle. He had set a price on the head of
his own brother. He had turned his country over to the control of its
hereditary enemies. He was wading through blood to a coveted throne.
Then was there any doubt that he would murder his beautiful cousin and
her infant, if they stood in the path of his remorseless ambition?
Cabot, seizing his pad and stylus, plunged into the work of the council.
They must act, and act quickly, if they would save his loved ones.
* * * * *
It was agreed that Myles Cabot should be proclaimed regent—it ought, by
rights, to have been Lilla, but Cupia was in need of an active regent in
Kuana at that moment—and he should keep the same cabinet, making
Poblath Minister of Play to fill the place vacated by his own elevation;
that Poblath and a specially selected squad of sharpshooters were to
take the jail kerkools and try and break through, rouse the north
country, and protect Lilla and the baby; that Buh Tedn and the regent
should beat a strategic retreat to the northward with all the troops
which they could gather; and that Hah Babbuh, with a mere handful of
followers, was to hold the jail as a nucleus for the dissatisfied
element of the city, and also for the purpose of diverting Prince Yuri’s
attention from the strategic retreat.
The Mecca of all these operations was to be the town of Pronth in the
Okarze Mountains, beyond Lake Luno. There the inhabitants were known to
be of unquestioned loyalty, not only to the Kew dynasty, but also to
Myles Cabot. There a mere handful could hold the passes indefinitely
against an army, and there the air pockets would protect them to some
extent from the airplanes of the ants.
Prince Toron, as already stated, had been present at the games in the
stadium, but nothing had been seen or heard of him since the
assassination.
The first step in these maneuvers was carried out by Cabot’s detachment
sallying forth and manning the barricades in front, which had not been
cleared away by the enemy during the battle in the jail. A few shots
from the rifles of Cabot’s Cupians, and the long avenue was cleared of
ant men for its entire length. Meanwhile Poblath and his sharpshooters
packed themselves into the police kerkools in the garage of the jail,
and the gyroscopes were set running.
At a signal from Buh Tedn, the garage doors were flung open, the
barricades pulled aside and the swift and silent two-wheeled Porovian
autos charged forth. With a cheer, Cabot’s party followed them. At the
capitol, the kerkools turned sharp to the right and were soon lost to
view, nor were they in sight on the cross-street when those who were
following on foot reached the turn.
The foot troops had considerable difficulty in making the turn, for they
were subjected to a withering fire from the palace. But, by sending
snipers in advance to take cover at the corner, they were able to reduce
the enemy fire considerably, and the rest of the party crossed the spot
at the double-quick with very few casualties.
Out of range of the palace, they reformed their forces and proceeded
without event to the northern edge of the city. Here, however, they met
a formidable blockade of Formians. As there were no signs of disabled
kerkools, it was rightly assumed that Poblath had gotten through before
the erection of this barricade. But how Buh Tedn and Cabot were to get
_their_ troops through was another question.
Tedn decided to charge, in three successive waves, and accordingly
launched the first assault.
As the first assault was beaten back, the second passed it with a rush,
only to recoil in confusion before the fire of the Formians. The third
wave flatly refused to go forward. In spite of the lessons taught by the
overwhelming Cupian success in the great war of liberation, the
tradition of Formian invincibility was still deeply rooted in the
subconscious minds of most Cupians.
So they withdrew to the cover of a cross-street and held a council. As a
result, some of their best marksmen were sent into adjoining houses to
pick off whatever ant men dared show themselves above the fort.
Then Buh Tedn formed for the charge. This time the entire Cupian force
advanced together, scaled the redoubt and beat back the black defenders.
As Cabot went over the top himself, he looked down the muzzle of an
enemy rifle and discharged his own revolver in the Formian’s horrid
face. Then he knew no more.
* * * * *
He came to in jet darkness, buried beneath an overwhelming weight, which
required long and patient effort to dislodge. Finally, however, he
struggled to the surface, and found that he had been lying in the
ant-barricade, covered by the dead bodies of his comrades-in-arms.
Cabot, himself, presented a gruesome figure. His hair was matted with
blood, but whether his own or that of some Cupian he could not tell.
Probably his own, as there was a severe wound along the ridge of his
scalp, presumably caused by a bullet from the rifle, down the muzzle of
which he had looked as he surmounted the barricade. His toga, too, was
drenched with blood. He felt weak and dizzy. Groping for support, he
looked about him.
The street was lighted but vacant. The night was warm and moist and
fragrant, as are all nights on Poros, but it afforded no balm for the
aching head of Myles Cabot.
Among the dead Cupians in the barricade were many bodies of the ant-men,
still grappling with their adversaries, even in death. Myles counted the
bodies of the Cupian slain and was reassured to find that they
represented but a mere negligible fraction of those who had stormed the
redoubt. Of course, it was just as hard on the dead to be dead,
regardless of proportions; so Cabot did not have the heart to rejoice at
the fewness of the slain. But at least it was comforting to know that a
large majority of his brave men had survived, and even more comforting
to realize that they were presumably by this time far on their way
northward toward Lake Luno, Lilla and the little king. At least Cabot
hoped so. Of course, the Cupian assault might perhaps have been
repulsed. At any rate, the victors, whoever they had been, had robbed
the dead of their arms and ammunition. Cabot’s revolver, being in his
right hand, had been overlooked, for the inhabitants of this planet are
left-handed; but his cartridge belt was gone.
Just then his thoughts were rudely interrupted by the arrival of a
Formian sentinel. Myles withdrew precipitately into a darkened doorway.
The ant man halted directly outside the hiding place, almost within
reach of Cabot’s hands. For a moment Cabot had the idea of shooting him.
Then it occurred to him that the noise of his revolver would attract
attention and bring other ant men to the scene. Then he realized that it
would not, for, of course, the inhabitants of Poros have no sense of
hearing. So he fired and rid the planet of one more member of the
dominant race. But this left him only four cartridges. He could not
replenish his supply from his victim, for the latter had been armed only
with a sword.
Stepping over the dead body, Cabot staggered down the street and soon
gained the open country. Here there were no more street lights, and
accordingly walking in the pitch darkness became very difficult. Finally
after falling off the road several times, he groped his way into the
woods and, crawling into the heart of a tartan bush, lay down to sleep.
Until reaching this haven of refuge, he had really had scarcely a moment
for consecutive thought since the fatal shot had been fired that
morning. Think of it! This morning, only six parths ago, he had been
sitting at a Peace Day celebration, as Field Marshal and Minister of
Play of a peaceful nation. Now this whole nation had been plunged into
civil war and invaded by its enemies, and he himself was a hunted
fugitive. And in the meantime what a host of events had occurred! A
beloved monarch assassinated. His traitorous murderer declared king. The
best and most loyal men of all Cupia thrust rudely into prison. Cabot
himself deprived of both speech and hearing, by the destruction of his
artificial antennae. The domination of hideous ants over Cupia, which
had taken a grueling war to destroy, now restored by a _coup d’etat_ in
an instant. Poblath overthrown as mango of Kuana.
Then the joyous news of the birth of a new king to dispute the
succession with the renegade Yuri. Fighting in the streets. The siege of
the jail. The renaissance of the Army of Liberation. The storming of the
redoubt. And finally Cabot’s own seeming death and resurrection.
He wondered for the safety of the Princess Lilla. And of his son, the
new-born king. Poor wee baby! Little would he know, as he lay kicking
and bubbling in his cradle, that he was the storm center of a whole
empire, that the fate of a whole planet was wrapped up in him.
Myles thrilled at the thought that he was a father. Yet he shuddered at
the realization of what lay before his loved one. And thus musing, he
fell into a fitful sleep, from which he awakened in the morning with no
clear understanding as to how much of his recollections of the day
before had been reality and how much a dream. In fact, it was not until
many sangths later, when he had an opportunity to compare notes with
several others of the chief actors of this eventful drama, that he was
able to reconstruct the actual happenings of Peace Day in the year
three-fifty-ten. And even now, the entire day stands forth in his memory
as one long, terrible, continuous nightmare.
But, from the morning of his awakening in the tartan bush, his
recollections, although terrible, are clear.
His first thoughts on arousing himself were: “Lilla! And my baby!”
So, pushing the protecting leaves to one side, he set out to the
northward. A thousand stads away lay Lake Luno and the royal family.
Four days’ travel by kerkool. Fifty days’ travel on foot under favorable
circumstances! And here he was essaying it, battered and wounded,
without antennae, without food, without an umbrella to shield him if the
scorching sun should burst through the protecting clouds; in fact, with
nothing but an army revolver, four cartridges, and an unconquerable
will.
Myles Cabot recited to himself:
“If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you,
Except the Will that says to them: ‘Hold on’!”
He could and he would! And so he set out on that thousand-mile journey.
His plan was to reach the nearby suburb of Lai, where he had many
friends. Surely one of these would lend him fresh raiment and a kerkool
in which to overtake the army of Buh Tedn.
At the first brook to which he came, he shed his toga and washed from it
as much of the blood and grime as possible. Also he bathed his face and
head. The cool water stilled the ache of his wound, and refreshed him
greatly. His appearance now was thoroughly presentable, but the
destruction of his antennae by Trisp in the jail prevented him from
looking like a real Cupian any longer. At most he looked like a deformed
person, a deaf-mute. Still, his friends would not mind this, if he could
but reach them.
He breakfasted off of milk which he drew from a herd of aphids, those
green cows kept by both races of intelligent beings on Poros. And then
he felt nearly his old self again, and pressed on with more vigor.
* * * * *
Around midday, 600 o’clock, he reached the outskirts of the town of Lai.
One of the first houses was the villa of a very intimate friend of his
and Lilla’s. There it stood, set in a clearing, surrounded by thick
woods, a little way to the right of the road, at the end of a
flower-flanked path. The architecture was typically Cupian, white stucco
with steep red-tilted roof, ornamented with turrets, towers and
minarets.
Just as Cabot was about to turn in at the gate, a Formian appeared at
the door. This was unexpected. His friend had never before been known to
entertain ant men. Ant men were the last creatures on the planet whom
Myles desired to see at that moment, so he hastily passed by.
At last he topped a rise, from which he could see the whole of Lai
stretched beneath him. And what a sight met his eyes. Not a Cupian
stirring in the usually bustling little village, but instead all the
streets patrolled by ant men.
There would be no haven here. So Myles sadly circled the town, rejoined
the road at the other side, and resumed his journey northward.
Day after day he trudged on, avoiding the towns, which he rightly
assumed were policed by ant men as Lai had been, and hiding whenever a
kerkool approached or an airplane motor sounded in the sky. True, the
kerkool might bear friends, but he was taking no chances.
His sustenance was root-crops stolen from the fields, edible twig-knobs
plucked in the woods, green milk drawn from the grazing aphids, and even
lobsterlike parasites plucked from the sides of these creatures. Once he
was about to extract a bullet from one of his cartridges and discharge
the blank into a pile of dried leaves to start a fire and roast some of
these parasites; but, realizing that his ammunition was now limited to
four rounds, he decided to forego the experiment.
His hair and beard grew long and unkempt, so that now there was no
possible hope of escaping unrecognized, if ever he should be seen. For
in the whole history of the planet Poros, there had never been but one
person with long hair and beard, and that one person was Myles Cabot,
the earthman. Cupians cannot grow beards, and the hair on their heads
remains a fixed length, never requiring cutting.
As he plodded along, day after day, he did a great deal of thinking.
Most of it was useless recrimination: “Why wasn’t I a bit quicker on the
draw, that fatal morning in the stadium? Why did I ever leave Lilla
alone at Lake Luno, even at the behest of her father, the king? Was I
not influenced by my conceited desire to pose as a popular hero on the
anniversary of the beginning of my great victory over Formia, and by my
wish to star as a pistol shot, rather than by deference to the king?”
And so on. And so on.
Then, too, he worried a great deal about the safety of Lilla, and their
little son. And about the progress of the civil war. Not daring to
approach any towns, he was completely cut off from all knowledge of
current events. The only clues he had were the fact that he met no
Cupians stirring abroad, that the roads were constantly patrolled by
ants in kerkools, and that airplanes scoured the sky.
This might mean any one of several things. For instance, it might mean
that the insurrection had crumbled, and that the last survivors were
being run down. Or perhaps the ant men were trying to prevent
reenforcements from joining an already augmented Cupian army in the
Okarze Mountains. Or perhaps it might even be that they were scouting
against an impending advance of overwhelming forces from the Cupian
strongholds. But whatever it meant, Cabot was resolved to reach Lake
Luno, and find out what had happened to Lilla, and little Kew.
Finally, one day, he espied through the woods the tower of one of the
radio relay-stations which formed a part of the network of wireless
communication which he had installed throughout the kingdom.
As Minister of Play in the cabinet of King Kew XII, Myles had introduced
radio broadcasting, and thus had given to the Cupians the benefit of
music, which heretofore their lack of ears had denied them, but which he
had been able to translate into their antenna-sense.
One of the stations of his broadcasting system now loomed before him.
There was more than an even chance that it was an automatic station, and
that the attendant would be absent. Although a trip to this tower would
take Cabot a bit out of his way, yet it might enable him to listen in on
the news of the day, and thus find out how his loved ones fared, and how
the revolution was progressing. So thither he turned his weary steps.
The aerial loomed above the tree-tops about a stad away to the right of
the road. Thick woods intervened. The trees were mostly of that typical
Porovian variety which resembles a greatly enlarged form of that
red-knobbed many-branched gray lichen which is so commonly found growing
on rocks and tree-stumps on the earth. There was a heavy underbrush of
ferns and small conifera. Gayly colored plants, of the sort which grace
the fields and gardens of Poros, were conspicuously absent; but there
was no lack of tropical vines and gray moss. Here and there flitted
four-winged snakes, but in numbers merely sufficient to be a nuisance,
not a menace.
Through all this tangle, Myles Cabot had to plow his way for at least
one whole stad, in order to reach the relay-station. And to add to his
discomfiture, the sky began to darken. This portended one of those
torrential Porovian thunderstorms, the like of which is never
experienced on earth.
Well, there was one thing to be thankful for: the relay-station would
furnish a shelter from the storm, if he could but reach it in time.
He did. The storm had not yet broken when he entered the little clearing
where the station stood. A brief reconnaissance convinced him that the
shack was vacant. Its door was standing open. So he cautiously made his
way inside.
But, even as he entered, he realized how foolish he had been, for of
course the set would be without earphones, as the inhabitants of Poros
have no sense of hearing; and Cabot’s own earphones lay smashed on the
floor of the office of the mango of Kuana.
All was not lost however. He could still use the set for the purpose of
sending in dots and dashes a cryptic message, which Poblath alone would
understand. Such as “When will we four play ming-dah again?” for
Poblath, and his wife Bthuh had been the most frequent opponents for
Myles and Lilla in that four-handed Porovian checker-game. Or, for
Toron’s antennae alone, “The black light still shines,” for to no one
except Toron had Cabot disclosed that masterpiece of optical science
which had safeguarded the American troopships in the war against
Germany. So with renewed courage, he continued to enter. But, alas, the
entire installation lay wrecked by some vandal hand.
Cabot surveyed the disorder sadly for a long time. Then he turned to the
door to resume his journey north—
And looked into the muzzle of a rifle held by an ant man in the doorway.
Up went Cabot’s hands. The other advanced to shackle him.