The roaring in my ears came first as my consciousness struggled back.
My fumbling fingers felt my throat. The band was gone; the skin was
swollen there. Then I knew that I was bathed in the cold sweat of
weakness and was lying on the metal grid of a floor. The murmur of
voices sounded around me; and I opened my eyes to find myself in a
dimly starlit, circular turret room. The control room of a spaceship.
It hummed with a throbbing rhythm of its current. But save for that it
was queerly still, vibrationless.
We were in space. Through the round, transparent turret walls I could
see the blazing stars in a black firmament to one side. The other
was shrouded with metal blinds, through the chinks of which dazzling
sunlight was showing, so that I knew we had already left the giant
cone of the Earth's shadow. Heading partly toward the Sun. Heading for
Venus? It seemed so.
Men were here around me. Huge, burly, strangely garbed men--one at the
controls, where banks of levers and dials with quivering indicators
were ranged in rows with a line of little fluorescent globes diagonally
across them. Two other men sat softly talking together; guttural,
unintelligible words. Weird figures indeed. At first glance they could
have been towering robots; wide, square shoulders, rectangular bodies,
round tubular, jointed legs. The starlight glinted on their burnished,
grey-white metal casements. Then as they moved, I saw that their
garments were of flexible woven metal.
The one at the controls was bareheaded, a round bullet head of
close-cropped black hair. His face was heavy; skin queerly grey-white.
Weird features, with a protruding chin and long hawk nose so that the
mouth was a greylipped slit, depressed between the projections of his
nose and lower jaw. And he had deep-set, round dark eyes under shaven
black brows.
Men of science. Humans whose life was of such efficient, mechanical
rigidity that they themselves had the aspect of machines. Worshipers of
precision; of mechanization. The aura of it was on them.
I saw that one of them was sitting impassive, stiffly erect in
his metal garments with his gaze roving me like a guard. Strange,
jewel-like little weapons were at his waist and in pouches of his metal
jacket. On his head was a metal, peaked helmet--its peak fashioned in
the form of a hawk-like bird, poised for screaming flight. Across the
starlit circular room, another of the men was sitting, gazing out at
the firmament. A man? I stared with a new amazement. The same square,
jointed metal garments. But the hips were wider, the shoulders more
narrow. A woman, of this mechanized race of Gorts. Her breast swelled
beneath her mailed tunic. Her hair was black, long to the base of her
neck, covering her ears. A shining black metal band was around her
forehead, holding the hair from her eyes.
Strange, powerful Amazon. She was a good six feet tall; her face was
hawk-nosed like the men, but with lips that were fuller, of a reddish
tinge. Then as I stared, the man at the controls called to her:
"Garga--"
She rose; moved to him. Her dangling weapons, and a huge metal ornament
on her bosom, clanked as she walked. At the control table the leader
gave her orders; guttural crisp words unintelligible to me. She
nodded; went to a small table across the room, where with charts and
computations she seemed figuring the course of our flight.
Garga, woman of the Gorts. Mechanized womanhood, with all that
womanhood stands for in my own world submerged within her so that
she was a mere female machine. And suddenly my mind, still dazed now
in these first moments of my returning consciousness, swept back to
Nereid. Strange world, this Venus, to hold two such contrasting types
of female! What a gulf between them!
Where was Nereid now? Had she been killed in that attack upon us?
Anxiety swept me. I had struggled up on one elbow. The watching Gort
saw me; he muttered an exclamation and the man at the controls came
clanking to his feet. A giant fellow, well over six feet. His slit of
mouth widened with a grin like a gash between his nose and chin as he
bent down over me.
"You--still alive?" he greeted. "What your name?"
I sat up, still rubbing my bruised throat. "Kent Fanning," I said. "So
you talk English? There was a girl with me, back there on that island.
Where is she?"
He gestured blandly. "She safe. Daughter of Peters. Tollgamo wants her
not injured. He will like you too, I think perhaps. You have scientific
skill of Earth science?"
I would be kept alive for the knowledge I might have. "Well, maybe,"
I said. "Where is Peters' daughter? I want to see her. Where are you
taking us? To Venus?"
"You ask too much quick questions," he retorted. His grey knuckles
rapped his mailed chest. "I am Rhool, second to Tollgamo. I talk with
you some else time. Maybe you teach me more the English? Eh?"
"Where is Peters' daughter?" I insisted. I was on my feet, still dizzy;
and as I staggered a little, I clutched Rhool's metal clothed arm. It
angered, or perhaps startled him. With a sweeping gesture, incredibly
powerful, his arm flung me aside. His guttural barking command brought
the woman Garga with a pounce.
I have not mentioned that I am a bit under six feet in height; slim
and dark. Not very powerful; but I have, my friends tell me, a temper
somewhat flaring so that in a rough and tumble fight I usually can take
care of myself. But the glare in Rhool's eyes warned me that this was a
time when discretion certainly was better than valor. The woman Garga
towered an inch or so over me; her fingers gripped my shoulders.
"So?" she muttered. "You think to cause trouble?"
I summoned a grim smile. "I do not. I want to be taken to Peters'
daughter. Where is she?"
Rhool, back at his instrument table now, barked a command; and the
metal-clad Gort woman shoved me. "You come with me. I take you."
To Nereid? I hoped so. Docilely I preceded Garga along a glowing
humming little metal corridor of the spaceship. She said nothing more,
but flung open a small metal door after unbarring its fastenings,
shoved me in and banged it upon me.
I found myself in a small metal sleeping apartment. Brilliant starlight
filtered in through its single bullseye pane. A figure was in the
corner on a fabric couch.
"You Kent? Good Lord."
* * * * *
It was Jack Allen. They had pounced on him, back there on Palmetto Key.
I sat with him now, telling him of the weird things which had happened
to me; telling him of Nereid.