MADMAN'S GAMBLE.
The upper story was dim and silent. But sounds came floating up the
central spiral. And the dragging tread of the Mercutians downstairs. I
stood at the head of the spiral. No one was on it--no one in sight. It
seemed as good a time as any.
I got down to the main floor, and unexpectedly ran into a man.
"Ah, it is you, Palisse. They are rebellious, these idiot girls. Listen
to them."
He spoke his native language. He gestured to a near-by room-arch,
"Listen, Palisse. Roc puts the new order at once into effect."
"Yes," I said. I had pushed past him. Evidently in the dimness of this
foyer he had not noticed that I was drenched with rain, nor had he seen
that I was coming from the roof-top. He went past me and disappeared.
From a near-by room came the sounds of gruff men's voices; the
terrified murmurs of girls. A low moan, then a scream.
I did not linger. From the direction of the main doorway another party
was bringing more girls. I moved away toward the incline leading
downward, and reached the underground level. There seemed no one down
here--just a dim candlestick in a bracket bowl.
I reached the inner door-slide of my apartment. It stood ajar. I
could not remember that I had left it ajar. Perhaps I had. Roc had
been keeping me a prisoner, but he had not let me know it. Instead of
scaling this inner door upon me, he had doubtless put a guard near by,
to turn me back if I tried to leave my rooms.
But the guard evidently was not here now. I hastened into my rooms. The
doorway opened directly into my bedroom. The place seemed undisturbed.
It was not so long since Toh and I had left here. My single light was
still burning. The door-slide to the lower corridor-exit was closed. I
recalled distinctly that Toh and I had closed it after us.
In the silence as I stood an instant upon entering, I could hear the
sound of the flume-water outside, vicious now, an angry torrent swollen
by the rain of the storm. I went into my workshop. My benches, shelves
of chemicals, all my familiar apparatus stood in order.
I gathered the loading chambers of the rocket-cylinder, the fuses, the
little coils of rotary magnetizers; and parchment sheets and etching
pencils with which I could write a message. I could put them all into
the cylinder's hollow interior, to keep them dry against the storm.
Lastly, I collected the few chemicals needed to complete the apparatus.
It would take me not over two or three days out there in the desert
with the girls.
I piled all the articles on my center-bench. But when I turned to the
box where I kept the cylinder itself, I found the cylinder missing!
It turned me cold. I stared into the little box, in the shadows of
the room corner. It was empty. But I had left the cylinder there. I
searched quickly.
It seemed that I heard a sound from my bedroom. I had entered with my
knife in hand. The knife now lay on the center-bench. I seized it and
rushed for the bedroom. In my frantic haste I stepped too briskly. The
lesser gravity of Mercury was not enough to hold me down, and my head
struck the eight-foot top of the connecting arch. It knocked me dizzy,
but I regained my feet, and reeled into the bedroom.
The cylinder lay on my bed. And from behind the head-curtain Roc rose
up to confront me!
* * * * *
"So you came back, Palisse. What a luck for me! I need you."
I was still dizzy from the blow on my head. I stood wavering, and saw
that he was backing away from me, saw his grinning, leering face with
the point of hair coming low on his forehead to give him a queer,
Satanic look. His pointed ears came out from the locks of his hair as
he listened.
Some one coming? I seemed to hear distant voices back in the lower
passages of the palace.
"Where have you been, Palisse? In the rain?--well, that is evident."
His voice was unduly loud--trying to attract attention to us. He was
backing behind my bed, and fumbling at his belt where I saw that he
carried a small arrow-sling.
My head cleared. If I turned to close my door he would be on me. I
said nothing. I was moving sidewise to avoid my table. And suddenly I
leaped. I caught him at the bedpost. He had not got out his weapon. He
twisted, seizing my hand that held the knife.
Together we swayed out into the room. The table went over, and my light
with it. For a moment we fought in the darkness, both silent, panting,
fighting grimly. I was far stronger than he. And there is a curious
fragile quality to the Mercutians. But his fingers clung desperately to
my hand that held the knife. And his other arm was around my neck.
We struck a chair and fell, still locked together. Suddenly he
relinquished my wrist and his groping hand on the floor found the
smashed table lamp. He flung it into my face; the hot fat burned me. My
waving knife went wild.
The voices outside seemed nearer. I regained my feet, lifting Roc up,
and with all my strength heaved his body away. It broke his hold. He
crashed against the overturned table and lay still. There was just a
little glow of light straggling in from the passageway. I could see Roc
lying there in the wreck of the smashed table.
I did not stop to investigate. The congealing fat of the lamp smeared
my burned face, and was in my eyes. I wiped it away, then caught up the
cylinder from the bed--a two-foot, cylindrical metal contrivance.
I hastened into my workshop, stuffing the apparatus from the
center-bench into the cylinder and closing it. In a moment I was out
through the lower corridor doorway.
I went up the ascending passage almost at a run, the cylinder under one
arm, and my knife in the other hand. There would be pursuit, I knew. I
could already hear the voices back in my bedroom. Doubtless I had not
killed Roc; perhaps he was only shamming as he fell.
The outer gate was ajar. I went through it, into the open air. The
storm was raging as before. The red torrent of rain coming down; the
trees here bending their porous branches like reeds in a wind.
I had hoped to be able to make off into the city without raising a cry
after me. But the alarm was already given. A puff of lightning showed
me my surroundings clearly: the garden wall curving behind me; the
stretch of lake wall with the waves dashing over it; and the other
side of the triangle, hemmed in by the metal flume. Its ten-foot depth
was depressed into the ground, its sides rising only a foot or two. It
passed quite near me. I caught a glimpse of its turgid whirling current.
* * * * *
An arrow sang past me as for an instant I stood undecided. At the gate
out of which I had come, men appeared. They stood shouting. I could see
that the way along the lake was blocked by other men, who had heard the
shouts, and now came running at me.
I was suddenly aware of a sound close behind me, a queer sloshing.
I turned. A _brue_ was slithering forward through the water and mud
of the path. In the lurid half-light its eyes gleamed balefully. A
gruesome thing, ten feet long. Its upraised head as it advanced was
nearly the height of my own; its feelers, muscular arms the length of
my body, with the strength to crush me, waved over its head.
The watchful insect was partly between me and the flume. There was an
instant when I was confused. A _brue_ could leap suddenly, swift as a
coiled snake. I turned the other way, back toward the wall. Arrows came
at me, but a gust caught them and flung them away. The men by the wall
scattered as they thought I was about to rush them.
The turmoil was rising around me. Shouts from everywhere. Figures were
approaching, it seemed, from every direction. I was caught, hemmed in.
I saw a bowlder lying under a tree, and seized it, raising it aloft--a
tremendous chunk, but it was light to my strength here on this little
world. I had shoved my knife back in my belt, but it was awkward to
have to cling to the cylinder.
The _brue_ did not leap, but with lowered head came slithering toward
me. I heaved the rock with one hand. It caught the giant insect full
in its gruesome, pseudo-human face, mashing it. The thing let out a
shrill, horrible scream and lay quivering.
The men behind me seized this opportunity to advance. A thrown knife
winged past my shoulder, tearing my shirt. I went with a twenty-foot
leap over the writhing, crushed insect, and reached the flume. Clinging
to the cylinder, I plunged into the boiling, tumbling current and was
swept away.
* * * * *
The water was hot, with a heavy mist of vapor rising from it. I sank,
with my plunge, but desperately held to the cylinder. In a moment I
came up like a cork. But for all my buoyancy, it was difficult to keep
my head above the surface. A chaos of spray and boiling, lashing water
swept viciously down the incline of the flume. I could see dimly the
smooth metallic sides rushing past me. Red puffs in the sky overhead
illumined the sweep of passing tree branches.
I tried to swim, but could not. Momentarily I was under the surface;
then up again, tumbling end over end, rolling--beaten against the
rushing side of the flume when it turned a curve. The hermetically
sealed cylinder, with the air inside it, floated high. It jerked and
pulled to escape from me. Once it got away; but I lunged and caught it
again.
It was two miles across the city to where the flume plunged into
the cliff tunnel. It seemed unending, yet I must have made it with
racing-flyer speed. Houses went by--dim shapes with lights in them,
racing backward, momentarily visible over the flume edge. There was a
great sweeping curve where the swollen torrent surged and slopped over
the edge and I was very nearly flung over.
But presently I was able to keep my body from turning and to swim a
little. Then I tried holding the cylinder before me like a buoy and
kicking it forward. I got along better after that. The relief was
short. The widening mouth of the tunnel entrance yawned out of the
darkness ahead and swallowed me.
In the solid blackness I lost all track of direction. I could not see
the sides of the flume. There was nothing but the inky chaos of sounds.
A roaring reverberation now. The beat of the waves against me. The
thuds as I struck the flume-side and was hurled back into the center of
the current.
A racing, tumbling black chaos. Then abruptly I saw the red lightning
in the sky again. The cliff-wall opening swept backward. I was through
the tunnel. In the open stormy night, outside the city valley. Naked
rock spires were passing--
The flume abruptly ended. I was spilled out in a great cascade of
water. The cylinder was torn from me. Rocks struck me. I felt myself
rolling, tumbling on a rocky surface.