She may have heard him, but then her breath stopped, the light went out
of her eyes and she was gone.
Allen jumped up as Leh gripped him. Leh, with his face and figure
changed now so that Allen saw him as a handsome stripling, with
something of the look of Nereid.
"Come on," Leh gasped. "Get that helmet off, and that heavy cloak.
Hurry!"
A shot came from the catwalk, a spitting electronic stab that sent a
shower of sparks on the kiosk ceiling. From the rail Allen and Leh
dove. Then they were swimming; Leh guiding him as shots stabbed down at
them. Allen was aware that Leh was dragging him underwater through a
small subterranean passage to emerge in a watery cave. A water-cylinder
was here, a twenty foot little submarine, as one might describe it
on Earth. Two small seats were amidships in it, with its operating
mechanisms around them. A moment later, they were off.
* * * * *
It was a weird underwater journey; some two hours, Allen guessed, while
they sat in the dimness of the humming little cylindrical interior.
Through the visor pane of the turret into which their heads projected,
Allen had a dim vista of the turgid green-black depths, illumined by
the small search-ray which preceded them. The vessel was propelled by a
rocket-stream of disintegrating water as the electrolysis of backward
gas-thrust shoved them forward.
Sub-sea world of Venus. Allen saw little of it then, but still enough
to suggest its ramified weirdness. They sped out through the watery
tunnel, down the inlet at a depth of perhaps fifty feet, and then
into the open sea. Empty, black-green depths. Running at fifty feet
submersion, Allen could see beneath them the vague vista of a slimy
undulating bottom. Then it dropped away, with only occasional jagged
spires of peaks. Tumbled, submarine world. Fishes flipped away,
frightened by the light. Occasionally, there was a glimpse of monstrous
things that quivered; shapes that hung suspended, watching with
dull-green round eyes.
A submarine forest for a time was to one side, an intricate tracery of
vegetation, with air-pods holding it upright as it slowly weaved and
undulated like a thing quivering with life. A gigantic thing like a
great squid with weaving tentacles came wobbling from a forest glade.
It lunged to attack, but the little cylinder avoided it and sped past.
Leh hardly spoke. He was tense, guiding their frail craft; and tense
too with this emergency of haste to get to Peters. Leh had learned as
much or more of Tollgamo's plans than had Allen.
Then at last they were nearing their destination. Allen had learned
now that Peters and his men of science were not located in the city of
Arron. They had laboratories, workshops and arsenal on a rocky island
fortress. It was some twenty miles by water from Arron; within a mile
or so of a partly submerged section of the forest, where a village
known as the Water City was built.
Allen saw the watery foundations of the Water City as the cylinder sped
past. Then Leh was slackening, to land at a sub-sea dock beneath the
arsenal. The dock's weird dark outlines presently were beside them.
With air-renewer mechanisms like a pack on their shoulders, and a
round transparent glassite helmet, which had an elastic gasket tightly
fitting their throats, they emerged through the cylinder's little
pressure lock into the water. Heavy shoes made them able to walk, with
a pushing swaying shove.
Leh, with a metal-tipped finger, touched a tiny metal plate on Allen's
helmet. And Leh's voice, dim, muffled, sounded in Allen's ears.
"You follow me. There will be a guard where we emerge."
Allen swayed along a rocky path which was slowly ascending. The turgid,
black-green depths here were dimly lighted by a glow from some unseen
source. It was a tumbled, honeycombed submarine slope. Clumps of
vegetation stood like black thickets to the sides. Ahead, the glow
seemed brighter.
Then suddenly Leh stopped his advance; stood rigid. Within the round,
wholly transparent ball of his helmet his youthful face was tense. And
his voice murmured.
"Allen, look there!"
They had no more warning than that. From a clump of tawny submarine
vegetation nearby, two human figures suddenly emerged! Figures that
stood as though startled for a second, and then came plunging to attack!
V
Festival of Love! On the swaying little anti-gravity platform I
lay with Nereid, staring down at the strange, colorful scene that
stretched beneath us. It was at the end of our escape-flight from the
Spaceship, in time doubtless before Allen on that trip arrived in
Tollgamo's mountain city.
What Allen saw of the grim little metal and rock city of the Gorts was
in weird contrast to what I saw now of the riotous, colorful forest
and water scene where the gay festival of Love and Music was in full
progress.
There was only a brief glimpse at first, as we swooped down. We had
already passed over the main city of Arron. It lay between the open
sea and an area a mile or so inland, where there was a lagoon, little
chains of lakes, threads of tiny streams and a myriad little dots
of tropic islands. I had seen, down in the forest, lines of gay,
pastel-tinted lights to mark the city streets. Then we came to the
lagoon, where the festival was being held.
A watery failyland of gayety. The lagoon, a circular spread of water of
perhaps five miles, was rippled with a soft night-breeze. The ripples
were stained with the opalescent night-sheen from the overhead clouds,
and stained like a painter's pallette with a riot of glorious tints
from the strings of colored lights which connected the little islands.
One big island, a thousand feet in length, stood in the center. A
pavilion was on it, from which soft exotic music flooded out into the
night--music that blended on the tropic breeze with a vast murmur of
excited voices. I could guess that there might be four or five thousand
people disporting themselves here. The main island was thronged with
people moving about, or crowding toward the pavilion where with
the music there seemed dancing and perhaps some form of theatrical
entertainment.
Boats were on the thread-like little canals between the islands. A
barge crowded with young men and girls, all in gay-colored robes, was
slowly approaching from the open lagoon. Little boats, mere six foot
rafts, each held a girl and man; the man paddling, the girl fending off
flowers with which she was pelted by young men on other rafts, or on
the shore.
The laughing screams of girls floated up as they swam in the open
lagoon, their voices calling jocular defiance to the men on shore to
come out and catch them.
Nereid slid our little flying platform skilfully down. We landed on a
small level island which was connected with the big island by an arcade
bridge. No one had seemed to notice us. Boats were tied up here along
the shore. Others were arriving, disembarking the gay merrymakers. All
were in holiday attire; a variety of motley costumes, indescribable as
a fancy-dress costume ball on Earth. Some of them, men and girls, wore
cloaks and hoods, with little gaily colored masks covering their eyes.
I stood for a moment with Nereid. "You're going to find your father?" I
suggested.
"Yes. If he is here." She told me then of the Arsenal rock beyond the
Water City, where Peters and his men most of their time were working.
"He is there probably," she added. "I think he would not come here
tonight."
"Then what would we do, go to him there?"
"Yes, of course. I will see our Ruler first. Jenten-Shah--he will
be here. Over there on the big island, in the pavilion probably."
Bitterness was in her tone. Nereid was thinking of the menace of the
Gorts, with their engines of destruction. She and I did not know then,
what Allen was just about now learning--that there was an urgency of
haste since Tollgamo's attack would be made tonight. But as we threaded
our way under the gay colored lights across the arcade to the main
island, I somehow seemed to feel the undercurrent of menace here.
Occasionally we passed little figures who were evidently onlookers.
The imbecile workers, lower class who were almost in the position
of slaves. They were weird little creatures, most of them no more
than four feet tall, grey-skinned and powerfully built. We passed
one who was standing on the shore gazing at a raft where a lone girl
shrouded in blue-white filmy drapery was being pelted with flowers. The
gnome-like imbecile stood impassive, gazing with vacant face. Then he
was muttering to himself. A fragment of it reached us.
"Tollgamo is coming to help us workers. We won't have to work tomorrow.
Then we can do things like this."
I gripped Nereid. "You hear what that worker said? No work for him
tomorrow. Do you suppose--"
She tried to smile. "What an imbecile says never means much, Kent. But
I must tell father."
* * * * *
Occasionally now people were staring at us, at me. Some rushed at us,
but Nereid with an imperious gesture scattered them; and in a moment,
with their other diversions, they had forgotten us. Then we came to
where there was a pile of cloaks. Nereid gave me a dark robe and hood;
and found a long white cloak and white cowl for herself. Then from her
green undergarment she produced a little golden star, fastened it on
the breast of her cloak. Queer insignia, that star with a crescent moon
above and below it.
The white cloak and cowl to signify that she was an Untouchable.
Nereid's beautiful little face bore a faint twisted smile. "That is
what some of them call us, Kent. That is a term of derision, because
now, at a festival like this, there are things we do not like."
Love, music, laughter--all so admirable. But here in Arron, under the
leadership of the wanton Ruler, Jenten-Shah, it was becoming license.
There were some five hundred young Virgins here in Arron, who were
trying at least for moderation. And trying to help Peters prepare for
the menace of the Gorts ... Untouchables. Nereid was leader of them.
In our robes and cowls now, Nereid and I were attracting no attention
save that occasionally there was a jibe at Nereid. Laughing young men,
befuddled perhaps by some intoxicating drink with wanton girls clinging
to them, would sometimes lunge at us with mocking laughter. But we
pushed past them, shoving our way toward the big open pavilion. I could
see now the jam of people under its low spreading roof.
We were still following the shorefront. From the pavilion a bevy of
girls with flowing drapes came running and plunged into the water of
the lagoon.
I gripped Nereid's white-cloaked arm. "That big figure in red--who is
that?"
I had seen the giant figure here at an edge of the crowd, when we
crossed the arcade bridge. A man in robe and cowl of red and black.
Then he had vanished. He was visible again now, a huge fellow, six and
a half feet, at least. He was standing a hundred feet or so ahead of
us, on the pink-white coral sand of the shore. And then abruptly he
moved away and was gone again.
Nereid stared, and then shook her head. "I do not know. I--" She
checked herself; her face had a queer startled look.
"What--" I demanded. But we were in the pavilion now, with the jam of
watching people pressing us.
"You will wait here, Kent?" Nereid murmured. "I will ask Jenten-Shah of
my father."
I drew back behind a palm on which great orchid-like flowers were
growing. I could see the dais where the gay fatuous ruler was seated
with food and drink before him, with his young women favorites around
him as they watched the platform where a barbarically voluptuous woman
in flame-colored drapes was dancing with colored light-beams upon her.
I had a glimpse of Nereid importuning Jenten-Shah. It was brief; and
then Nereid came back to me.
"Father is not here, Kent. He told the King not to hold this festival
tonight."
"Did you mention that imbecile worker?"
She nodded. Her face was grim, frightened now. "He said, if any
imbecile causes trouble there will be a hundred imbeciles killed as
punishment. He is drunk with _marite_. He laughed at the idea that
Tollgamo would dare attack."
Merrymaking on the brink of disaster and death.
* * * * *
As though both Nereid and I were fascinated now, for a time we stood in
the pavilion corner, watching the colorful scene. Half the people here
were robed and masked, waiting a later time when a bell would give the
signal for the unmasking. I saw several of the white-robed girls--the
Untouchables. Then one of them, with a golden star on her breast, like
Nereid's but without the crescent moons, came and joined us. Nereid had
met her a while ago near the Ruler's dais. Her name was Venta. Under
Nereid, she was commanding the little group of protesting Virgins.
She was very like Nereid, save that beneath her white cowl I could see
that her hair was dark. She stared at me. "So? The Earthman?" She shook
my hand with a quaint awkwardness. "You look in the same fashion as her
father, the Meester Peters," she commented.
Then suddenly all three of us were stricken tense. There was a
commotion across the crowded pavilion, where a scantily clothed young
girl was struggling, terrified, in the grip of a thick-set, crooked
little imbecile man. He was forcing his caresses on her and the girl
was screaming.
The music suddenly ceased. In the hushed, stricken silence, the
imbecile's crazy childish laughter mingled with the girl's screams.
Then there was a rush as a group of young men nearby plucked the girl
away, knocked the gnome-like worker down, beating him, slamming him
until he lay inert.
It was like a spark in gunpowder. People were shouting. Somebody found
another imbecile and attacked him. A wave of shouting spread beyond the
pavilion. But it lasted only a moment. The music started up again. The
dancing continued.
Nereid gripped me. "Out in the workers' village they will hear of that.
And what they might try to do--"
Her words evoked a grim picture of powerful little men, with minds like
children suddenly enraged to frenzy; and the half-drunken youths at the
festival, ready enough to kill any worker, with the Ruler encouraging
them.
And this was what Tollgamo wanted, of course; confusion here to make
his attack easier.
The girls now were swiftly talking in their own language. We had shoved
our way out of the pavilion, were standing near the shorefront; and the
girls had drawn a little apart from me. I could see Venta nodding as
Nereid gave her instructions. Then Nereid came to me.
"She will get our Virgins, Kent. She has ten other girls who will help
her collect them all."
The Virgins--five hundred of them if Venta could locate them all--would
come in surface boats, past the Water City to the Arsenal. Nereid and I
would precede them, starting now. All to offer ourselves to Peters and
his fighting men if Tollgamo should strike tonight. But how would he
strike? That we did not know.
"And in the Water City," Nereid was hastily telling me, "many of the
people living there have come here to the festival tonight. But some
of our girls live there." Again her lips twisted with that wry little
smile. "They will be there now. Some have brothers and fathers who work
with my father in the Science Arsenal. But some do not, and I will send
them here. If there is trouble with the imbeciles, they will help quell
it."
Venta, ready to start on her mission, called goodbye. Then for just a
moment Nereid ran after her to add something. Two other girls in the
white Untouchable robes joined them, and stood talking about fifty feet
away from where I waited. The shore there had risen to a little grassy
bluff about twenty feet above the glittering, light-bathed lagoon.
And suddenly I gasped. From a clump of vivid blue and orange palms
which grew thickly beside the four girls, a figure suddenly emerged. A
giant man-shape, in red and black robe. Then his robe and cowl dropped
from him, revealing a towering powerful giant with dark close-clipped
hair, dressed in a grey garment of woven metal with jeweled weapons at
his broad belt. And in that second of my numbed gaze, I was aware that
he had scattered the girls and had seized Nereid, holding her slim form
against his huge bulk.