He landed then. The substance beneath his feet was soft, spongy. It
broke his fall. Around him was a momentary red glow, as of the sun
shining through a filter that blocked out all waves above the red band.
He passed through slimy pools within the huge mass, and momentary
revulsion gripped him. Then he emerged out into brief daylight, riding
a huge disc to the brown, heaving sea.
He hit with a splash. Fathoms deep to him, he went directly to the
bottom, as if he were composed of a substance many times heavier than
lead. And he remained on the bottom. Not even his instinctive attempt
to swim upward could lift him to the surface.
The ironic thought hit him then, as death stared at him with grinning
face. The huge mass through which he had plunged must have been
the body of one of the bluefish they had caught. Evidently, though
incredibly reduced in size, his weight in relation to the earth's pull,
was still one hundred and eighty pounds. And the brown, heaving sea at
the bottom of which he now rested, was merely the bilge water of the
_Crawfish_. And in the next minute or two he, Frank Hammond, was going
to drown in it!
He turned, instinctively, and ran for the boat side. Again he felt the
boat tip to his unbalancing weight. Overhead the bilge water rushed to
lap high against his side.
There was danger that his weight would so tip the skiff that it would
ship water from the Sound. But he had to chance it, or drown where he
stood.
His lungs were nearly bursting when he came upon the dark, gigantic
loom of the boat side. And strangely, at this moment, the steep slant
of the floor began to level--the bilge water washed back from the side.
The thought came to Hammond, then, that Peter Storm must be running
for the opposite side of the boat, instinctively realizing the need of
keeping this strange world on an even keel.
Lungs bursting, Hammond started the climb up the dark wall. Like some
tiny mite, almost invisible to the naked eye, Hammond finally emerged
from the bilge water. Aching lungs drew in great draughts of clean air.
Spent, still somewhat dazed by the incredible truth, he did not notice
the eight-legged colossus that came down along the cliff toward him.
Not until it loomed over him, and a giant claw reached down for him,
did he become aware of it. And then it was too late.
He gasped, tried to dodge.
A giant forcep grasped him about the middle, and with a quick, deft
motion another claw-like appendage clipped a small, parachute-like
metal harness over his shoulders. Then the first forcep lifted him,
easily, and drew him up to the metal monster where a round port dilated
open and he was thrust inside.
* * * * *
The huge claw withdrew, and the port closed. Hammond blinked his eyes.
He was in a big room, the ceiling of which was transparent, letting in
a subdued light. Ringing him, in a circle two deep, were warriors of
an ancient era. Amazons, complete to breast plates and oval shields,
cinctures and sandals. Lithe, beautiful, yet erect and disciplined,
they watched him as a trainer watches a jungle cat on its first day in
the arena.
Hammond waited. The thought came to him, now, that these were very
modern Amazons. For beside the shield they carried a weapon that
closely resembled a modern rifle. And on their shoulders each carried
an identical parachute-like contrivance similar to the one fastened on
Hammond.
The young chemist took a deep breath. He said: "What's the idea, girls?
This some kind of a new game?"
The sound of his voice seemed to startle them. A golden haired warrior,
perhaps a minor officer, for she wore a green armlet, made a short,
quick gesture.
The ringing warriors closed in on Hammond. Instinct moved the young
chemist's arms--the instinct to fight, to win free of this strange
experience he could not understand. But crippling that instinct were
the habits of civilization.
He couldn't bring himself to hit these girls, warriors or no.
Yet he tried to win free. He pushed the first two off their feet,
whirled, and bucked the rest of the line with his shoulders. They
parted under his assault. But with disciplined movement the others
closed in and fairly smothered him under them.
He felt metal clasped about his arms and legs, and suddenly he was
unable to struggle, to heave free of that pinning mass. Panting, his
face grim, he subsided.
* * * * *
The Amazons reformed ranks. He was left with arms and legs chained in a
manner that allowed him, when on his feet, to take short steps forward.
The officer with the green armband gestured again, and gave with it
a verbal order. Her voice was musical, in a tongue entirely alien to
Hammond.
Two warriors marched forward, bent, helped Hammond to his feet. The
officer took hold of the free length of blue chain, and started to walk
Hammond toward the far end of the big room.
Hammond followed. Behind him the two warriors kept pace, rifle-like
weapons held ready.
A door dilated open in the wall, and Hammond found himself in a long,
softly lighted runway. He was marched along this to another door, and
motioned within.
The door closed behind him.
It was a small room, bare and blank on three sides save for a number of
iron handgrips on the walls. The fourth wall was transparent. Hammond
shuffled to it. At the same moment the floor under him pitched and
rolled, and the clank of machinery rumbled through the iron monster.
He grasped the nearest handgrip, and clung. Looking out through the
transparent wall, he could see that the monster tank (for now he
guessed the eight-legged antlike thing to be) was climbing up the boat
side to the seat.
The tank leveled off. Above him towered the outlines of the "big one."
Scores of the monster tanks were climbing back up the parent side, to
disappear in as many openings.
The tank which held Hammond moved steadily, nosed into its compartment.
The door closed after them. The tank rumbled on across a large, dimly
lighted room, more like some enormous storage garage, for Hammond could
glimpse the bulks of dozens of the huge tanks along the far walls, and
in one corner he saw several of what resembled fast, ultra streamlined,
all metal planes.
The tank came to a halt. The door of Hammond's cell opened, and the
officer with the two guards came in. Hammond was motioned to follow her
out.
He was led out of the tank which was immediately maneuvered to its
niche among the vague bulks along the wall. A door dilated open at the
officer's approach, and they passed through it into another long, green
lighted runway. They went along this for some distance, then turned
into another room, as huge as the colossal garage into which the tank
had entered.
Thousands of the wiry Amazons were swarming in through a hundred
doorways to this room. Evidently they were members of the expedition
which had been sent to locate and capture him, and which must have
consisted of nearly a hundred of the strange, ambulatory war tanks.
The Amazon officer led him across this huge room which reminded Hammond
of a railway or bus terminal, and into another corridor. It was then
that the hugeness of the "big one" became evident to Hammond.
They marched through a number of huge rooms, climbed three spiral
ramps, and popped into a half dozen tranverse corridors. And only on
these upper levels, in rooms that held banks of whirring machinery, did
Hammond see the males.
They carried no weapons. They all wore white, collarless crew neck
garments that resembled smocks which came down to their knees. They
sported bearded chins and jowls, but smooth shaven upper lips. The
beards were all trimmed to sharp points, and they looked alike as
stenciled copies.
But here and there among them were some with remarkable physical
characteristics. Each of these occasional individuals had a
tremendously large left arm, fully as big as one of his legs. It was
carried crooked at the elbow, with the forearm held horizontally
in front of him. The right arm, on the contrary, was spindly and
underdeveloped. These males had thin, scraggy beards, and strange dull
eyes that followed Hammond as he was marched past.
If the other males noticed him they gave no sign. They seemed
completely subordinated in this huge craft.
The spiral ramps kept leading upward. Finally they reached a corridor
with a transparent ceiling, and Hammond realized that he was now at the
top of the strange craft. A moment later he was led before a door at
either side of which stood a stiff Amazon guard.
The guards saluted the officer by raising the right hand to the heart.
Then they stepped aside. The officer stared at the closed door. Her
forehead furrowed slightly. Then she nodded. Turning, she removed the
shackles from Hammond, stepped back.
The door dilated open. The officer made a sharp, unmistakable gesture
with her right hand, and the armed guard took a stolid step forward.
Hammond shrugged. Ducking a little to clear the top of the doorway, he
stepped inside.
* * * * *
Across the well lighted room, close to the transparent prow of the
ship, was a huge, metal desk. Papers and small charts lay scattered
upon it. But Hammond's eyes scarcely noticed.
He stopped, just within the room, the door closing silently behind
him. Then he took a deep breath, and grinned: "Now I know I must be
dreaming!"
The girl behind the desk did not smile. She looked at him, solemnly,
then a strange, quick fire leaped across her startlingly beautiful
face. She lowered her gaze abruptly, and her hands stiffened on the
desk. She rose, and when she looked again at Hammond there was a
hardness, a piercing penetration to her sea-green eyes that seemed to
probe like a surgeon's scalpel into Hammond's very brain. A fire seemed
to spread, quickly, through his mind, as though long dormant cells
were stirring, growing to awareness.
And with it, impacting strangely on his ears, the girl spoke, her
voice low and musical. "Earthman, your thoughts are unpleasant to me.
I, Gena, commander of the spacecraft, _Vandar III_, with a million
warriors at my disposal, am not for you."
Hammond's grin changed to a startled gape. Confusion moiled in his
brain. How had she known what he was thinking? And where had she
learned English! She spoke it like an American.
The girl smiled, as if hearing his confusion. She was a tall, lissome
girl; a corn-yellow blond of remarkable beauty. But there was an
imperiousness in her manner, a quiet dignity to her regard, a grace to
her movements that set her above the Amazons that had captured Hammond.
That she was a warrior also, albeit, the commanding officer of this
strange craft, was evinced by her attire which was the same as that of
the other female fighters. On a small table to her left was a shield,
differing from the plain blue of the others by the single, glowing
white star in its center. With it reposed one of the rifle-like weapons.
On her left arm she wore a metal band, like that of the minor officer
that had escorted Hammond here. But this band was of gold, and it held
the same symbol of high status, the single white star of glowing stone
that writhed with a strange white fire.
Hammond took control of his confused thoughts. He said: "I'm sorry if
I've offended you, Gena. But I can't control my thoughts, and they were
sincere." His handsome face lighted with his quick, infectious grin.
"You are very beautiful, and very desirable."
The quick fire leaped across the girl's face again, and in Hammond's
mind there suddenly beat a tumultuous surge of emotions other than his
own. Then the girl's face went sombre, and the strange surge in Hammond
abruptly ceased. "You are a very impetuous young barbarian," she said,
coldly. "But perhaps your uncouthness can be excused. You will indeed
prove an interesting specimen to present to Aleea, the Queen Mother."
Hammond frowned. He had almost forgotten the utter strangeness of the
entire experience, but it came back to him now, and with it the clamor
for explanation.
The girl read his thoughts. "I, Gena, am not of Earth. Nor did I,
before you entered this room, know your language, or know that your
people call this planet Earth and the planet from which I come Mars.
All this, and as much of Earth and your civilization as you know I have
probed from your mind while you stood there."
She came around the desk, smiling now. "Your thoughts are confused.
You do not readily believe. Mars--impossible! No ship has yet been
constructed that can negotiate the airless void of space--no _Earthian_
craft!" she emphasized. "But we of Mars have."
Hammond looked about him, out through the transparent hull wall to the
far low maroon cliffs that he knew were the boat sides. He shrugged.
Fantastic or no, this was the reality, and with a true scientist's
adaptable mind he accepted it.
"How is it then," he questioned calmly, "that the warriors that
captured me did not learn my language, nor read my thoughts?"
Gena's imperial features held dignity. "I am a commander," she
answered. "Which means that I am a thorough master of that which
your scientists call ESP--extra-sensory perception--as well as its
opposite, which they have not yet recognized, but which they might
call EST--extra-sensory transmission. It takes a certain type of
personality, even on Mars, and years of training to attain to the power
to perceive what is in other minds, plus the power to transmit to them,
selectively, and at will, that which I wish them to know, understand,
or obey."
Hammond relaxed, his keen mind enjoying itself. "Then you are not
speaking to me in American? Yet to me it seems you are talking my
language."
Gena's eyes quickened. "Precisely. I am speaking the language of
the mind. Your mind reinterprets what I say in the phonetic symbols
you call American, due to speech habits, just as it interprets such
phonetic symbols as thoughts and ideas. If you spoke another language
the written symbols and sounds conjured up by your mind would be
different, but the thoughts and ideas conveyed would be the same."
Hammond frowned. "Then, if you and your people use only the language of
the mind, how does it happen that I heard spoken words which I did not
understand?"
"I did not say we use _only_ the language of the mind. We have our own
phonetic symbols; in fact, I am talking audibly to you now. When you
first entered I probed your mind, and put you _en rapport_ as you might
call it, not only with our mind language, but with our thought symbols,
so you now reinterpret both as your own language."