_In the Power-House_
Alone in the prison room, after Dex had been dragged away to be
subjected to the Rogan inquisition, Brand gnawed at his fingers and
paced distractedly up and down the stone flooring. For a while he had
no coherent thought at all; only the realization that his turn came
next, and that the Rogans would leave no refinement of torment untried
in their effort to wring from him the secret of the atomic engine.
He went to the window, and absent-mindedly stared out. The whining
hum from the great domed building off to the right, like the
high-pitched droning of a swarm of gargantuan bees, came to his ears.
He listened more intently, and leaned out of the window to look at the
building.
Under that dome, it came to him again, was, in all probability, the
mainspring of the Rogan mechanical power. If only he could get in
there and look around! He might do some important damage; he might be
able to harass the enemy materially before the time came for him to
die.
He leaned farther out of the window, and examined the hundred feet or
so of sheer wall beneath him. He saw, scrutinizing it intently, that
the stone blocks that composed it were not smooth cut, but rough hewn,
with the marks of the cutters' chisels plainly in evidence. Also there
was a considerable ridge between each layer of blocks where the
Rogans' mortar had squeezed out in the process of laying the wall.
Never in sanity would a man have thought of the thing Brand considered
then. To attempt to clamber down that blank wall, with only the slight
roughness of the protruding layers of mortar to hang on to, was
palpable suicide!
* * * * *
Brand shrugged. He observed that to a man already condemned to death,
the facing of probable suicide shouldn't mean much.
With scarcely an increase in the beating of his heart, he swung one
leg out over the broad sill. If he fell, he escaped an infinitely
worse death; if he didn't fall, he might somehow win his way into that
domed building whence the hum came.
Cautiously, clutching at the rough stone with finger tips that in a
moment or two became raw and bleeding masses, he began his slow
descent. As he worked his way down, he slanted to the right, toward
the near wall of the retaining yard whose end was formed by the round
structure that was his goal.
Beneath him and to the left the broad street swarmed with figures: the
tall ones of the Rogans and the shorter, sturdier ones of slaves. Any
one of those dozens of grotesque pedestrians might glance up, see him,
and pick him off with the deadly tubes. Under his fingers the mortar
crumbled and left him hanging, more than once, by one hand. For fully
five minutes his life hung by a thread apt to be severed at any time.
But--he made it. Helped by the decreased gravity of the red spot, and
released from inhibiting fear by the fact that he was already,
figuratively, a dead man, he performed the incredible.
With a last slithering step downward, he landed lightly on the near
wall of the enclosure, and started along its broad top toward his
objective.
Now he was in plain sight of any one who might be looking out the
windows of the tower building or from the dome ahead of him; but this
was a chance he had to take, and at least he was concealed from the
swarms in the street. Making no effort to hide himself by crawling
along the top of the wall, he straightened up and began to run toward
the giant dome.
* * * * *
Hardly had he gone a dozen steps when he suddenly understood the
meaning of the high-walled enclosure to his right!
Off in a far corner rose a slate colored mound that at first glance he
had taken for a great heap of inanimate dirt. The mound began to move
toward him--and metamorphosed into an animal, a thing that made Brand
blink his eyes to see if he were dreaming, and then stop, appalled,
to look at it.
He saw a body that dwarfed the high retaining walls to comparative
insignificance. It had a tree-like tail that dragged behind it; and a
thirty-foot, serpentine neck at the end of which was a head like a sugar
barrel that split into cavernous jaws lined with backward-pointing
teeth. Two eyes were set wide apart in the enormous head, eyes that were
dead and cold and dull, yet glinting with senseless ferocity. It was the
sort of thing one sees in delirium.
With increasing energy the creature made for him, till finally it was
approaching his sector of the wall at a lumbering run that was rapid
for all its ungainliness.
It was apparent at a glance that the snaky neck, perched atop the
lofty shoulder structure, would raise the head with its gaping jaws to
his level on the wall! Brand ran. And after him thudded the gigantic
lizard, its neck arching up and along the wall to reach him.
A scant five yards ahead of the snapping jaws, Brand reached his goal,
the dome, and clambered over its curved, metal roof away from the
monster's maw.
He stopped to pant for breath and wipe the sweat from his streaming
face. "Thank God it didn't get me," he breathed, looking back at the
bellowing terror that had pursued him. "Wonder why it's there? It's
too ferocious to be tamed and used in any way: it must be kept as a
threat to hold the slaves in hand. It certainly looks well fed...."
He shuddered; then he began to explore the dome of the building for a
means of entrance.
* * * * *
There was no opening in the roof. A solid sheet of reddish metal, like
a titanic half-eggshell, it glittered under him in an unbroken piece.
He crept down its increasingly precipitous edge till he reached a sort
of cornice that formed a jutting circle of stone around it. There he
leaned far over and saw, about ten feet below him, a round opening
like a big port-hole. From it were streaming waves of warm, foul air,
from which he judged it to be a ventilator outlet.
He scrambled over the edge of the cornice, hung at arm's length, and
swung himself down into the opening. And there, perched high up under
the roof, he looked down at an enigmatic, eery scene.
That the structure was indeed a strange sort of power-house was
instantly made evident. But what curious, mysterious, and yet
bewilderingly simple machinery it held!
In the center was a titanic coil of reddish metal formed by a single
cable nearly a yard through. Around this, at the four corners of the
compass, were set coils that were identical in structure but a trifle
smaller. From the smaller coils to the larger streamed, unceasingly,
blue waves of light like lightning bolts.
Along a large arc of the wall was a stone slab set with an endless
array of switches and insulated control-buttons. Gauges and indicators
of all kinds, whose purpose could not even be guessed at, were lined
above and below, all throbbing rhythmically to the leap of the
electric-blue rays between the monster coils.
* * * * *
Almost under Brand's perch a great square beam of metal came through
the building wall from outside, to be split into multitudinous smaller
beams that were hooked up with the bases of the coils. Across from
him, disappearing out through the opposite wall, was an identical
beam.
"The terminals for the metal plate system that extends over the whole
red spot," murmured Brand. "This building _is_ important. But what can
I do to throw sand in the gears before I'm caught and killed...?"
He surveyed the great round room below him more thoroughly. Now he
saw, right in the center of the huge control board, a solitary lever,
that seemed a sort of parent to all the other levers and switches. It
was flanked by a perfect army of gauges and indicators; and was
covered by a glass bell which was securely bolted to the rock slab.
"That looks interesting," Brand told himself. "I'd like to see that
closer, if I can climb down from here without being observed....
Why"--he broke off--"where is everybody!"
For the first time, in the excitement and concentration of his
purpose, the emptiness of the place struck him. There was no sign of
light in the great building--no workmen or slaves anywhere. There was
just the great coils, with the streamers of blue light bridging them
and emitting the high-pitched, monotonous hum audible outside the
dome, and the complicated control board with its quivering indicator
needles and mysterious levers. That was all.
"Must be out to lunch," muttered Brand, his eyes going fascinatedly
toward that solitary, parent lever under its glass bell. "Well, it
gives me a chance to try some experiments, anyway."
* * * * *
It was about fifty feet from his perch to the floor; but a few feet to
one side was a metal beam that extended up to help support the trussed
weight of the roof. He jumped for this, and quickly slid down it.
He started on a run for the control board; but almost immediately he
stopped warily to listen: it seemed to him that he had caught,
faintly, the squeaking, high tones of Rogan conversation.
Miraculously, the sound seemed to come from a blank wall to his left.
He crept forward to investigate....
The mystery was solved before he had gone very far. There was an
opening in the wall leading off to an annex of some kind outside the
dome building. The opening was concealed by a set-back, so that at
first glance it had seemed part of the wall itself. From this opening
drifted the chatter of Rogans.
Brand stole closer, finally venturing to peer into the room beyond
from an angle where he himself could not be seen. And he found that
his whimsical reference to "lunch" had contained a ghastly element of
fact!
In that annex were several dozen of the teetering, attenuated Rogans,
and an equal number of slaves. And the relation of the slaves and the
Rogans was one that made Brand's skin crawl.
Each Rogan had stripped the tunic from the chest of his slave. Now, as
Brand watched, each drew a keen blade from his belt, and made a
shallow gash in the shrinking flesh. There were a few stifled
screams--some of the slaves were women--but for the most part the
slashing was endured in stoical silence. When red drops began to ooze
forth, the Rogans stooped and applied their horrible little mouths to
the incisions....
"The slimy devils!" Brand whispered hoarsely, at sight of that
dreadful feeding. "The inhuman, monstrous vermin!"
But now one or two of the Rogans had begun to utter squeaks of
satiation; and Brand hastened away from there and toward the control
board again. He hadn't an idea of what he might accomplish when he
reached it; he didn't know but that a touch of the significant looking
parent-lever might blast him to bits; but he did know that he was
going to raise absolute hell with something, somewhere, if he possibly
could.
* * * * *
Swiftly he approached the great master-lever, protected by its bell of
glass. (At least it looked like glass, for it was crystal clear and
reflected gleamingly the blue light from the nearby coils). He tapped
it experimentally with his knuckles....
At once pandemonium reigned in the great vaulted building. There was a
siren-like screaming from a device he noticed for the first time
attached under the domed roof. A clanging alarm split the air from
half a dozen gongs set around the upper walls.
Squealing shouts sounded behind Brand. He whirled, and saw the Rogans,
interrupted in their terrible meal, pouring in from the annex and
racing toward him. Rage and fear distorted their hideous faces as they
pointed first to the big lever and then at the escaped Earthman. They
redoubled their efforts to get at him, their long unsteady legs
covering the distance in great bounds.
Brand swore. Was he to be caught again before he had accomplished a
certain thing? When he had already managed to win clear to his
objective?
He hammered at the glass bell with his fists, but realized with the
first blow that he was only wasting time trying to crack it
bare-handed. He glanced quickly about and saw a metal bar propped up
against the control board near him.
* * * * *
He sprang for it, grasped it as a club, and returned to the glass
bell. Raising his arms high, he brought the thick metal bar down on
the glass with all his strength.
With a force that almost wrenched his arms from their sockets, the bar
rebounded from the glass bell, leaving it uncracked.
"Unbreakable!" groaned Brand.
Desperately he tried again, whirling the bar high over his head and
bringing it smashing down. The result was the same as before as far as
breaking the bell was concerned. But--a little trickle of crushed rock
came from around the bolts in the slab to which the bell was fastened.
A third time be brought the bar down. The glass bell sagged a bit sway
from the slab....
He had no chance for more assaults on it. The nearest Rogans had
leaped for him. Slimy arms were coiling around him, while the
loathsome sucker-disks tore at his unprotected face and throat.
Savagely Brand lashed out with the bar. It caved in a pair of the
long, skinny legs, bringing a bloated round head down within reach. He
smashed it with the bar, exulting grimly as the blow crumpled bone and
flesh almost down to the little mouth which was yet carmine from its
recent feeding.
The process seemed a sound one to Brand, unable as he was to reach the
Rogans' heads that towered six feet above his own. Methodically,
swinging the bar with the weight of his body behind it, he repeated
the example. First a crash of the bar against a pair of legs, then the
crushing in of the Rogan's head when he toppled with agonized squeals
to the floor.
Again and again he crushed the life out of a Rogan with his one-two
swing of the deadly bar. They were thinning down, now. They were
wavering in their charges against the comparatively insignificant
being from another planet who was defending himself so fiercely.
* * * * *
Finally one of their number turned and ran toward an exit, waving his
four arms and adding his high-pitched alarms to the incessant ringing
of the gongs and shrieks of the warning siren up under the roof. The
rest rushed the Earthman in a body.
Steadily, almost joyfully, Brand fought on. He had expected to be
annihilated by one of the Rogan shock-tubes long before now; but as
yet there was no sign of any. Either these Rogan workmen were not
privileged to carry the terrible things, or they were too occupied to
think of going and getting them; anyhow, Brand was left free to wield
his bar and continue crushing out the lives of the two-legged vermin
that attacked him.
With almost a shock of surprise, he saw finally that he had battered
their number down to three. At that he took the offensive himself. He
rammed the bluntly pointed end of the bar almost through one writhing
torso, broke the back of a second with a whistling blow, and tripped
and exterminated the third almost in as many seconds. The creatures,
without their death-tubes, were as helpless as crippled rats!
Panting, he turned again toward the loosened glass bell, and battered
at it with the precious bar. Gradually the bolts that held it to the
stone slab were wrenched out, till only one supported it. But at this
point, from half a dozen set-back doorways, streams of infuriated
Rogans began pouring into the building and toward him.
The one that had fled had come back with help.