But Jaro was paying no attention. "There must be a set of stairs at
each end of this corridor," he mused. "We just came down one. That
leads to the apartment where Hodes was murdered. I think it's a blind
alley. But the other stair goes up to the chambers of the temple
priestesses. That must be the way they've gone. Come on." He started
off along the corridor.
"Hey!" Landovitch said plaintively. "Which way are you going?" He
reached out, clutched Jaro's arm, hung on. "Who's got the girl?"
"Peet's men," Jaro grunted. "It must have been Peet's men who got Joan.
They murdered Karfial Hodes just a few minutes ago and escaped through
this corridor. We were trailing them. I don't think the Mercurians
even suspect the existence of these passages." They reached the steps,
ascended to the next level, hurried blindly along the corridor of the
alcoves.
"But how do you figure Peet's men knew about these passages?" asked
Landovitch in a puzzled voice.
"That gunman of Peet's," said Jaro. "The one who was captured along
with the Red Witch. He must have discovered them. It's the only way I
can figure he escaped."
Again they stumbled up a flight of steps.
"This ought to be on the same level as Nemi's apartment," volunteered
Jaro. Suddenly his fingers encountered space in the right hand wall.
"What's up," said Landovitch, bumping into him.
"There's a corridor branching off here," he replied. "Which way? Which
way?"
"One's as good as another," said Landovitch.
Without replying, Jaro pushed ahead along the left hand corridor. He
had not gone fifty paces before he halted again, began to curse. The
words flowed out, cold, furious.
The hair on the back of Landovitch's neck crawled. He'd never heard
Jaro vent his anger before. "What is it now?" he asked.
"The corridor splits up into three different passages. This rotten
place is a rat-run." He drew a breath. "We might as well try to find
our way out and hunt up Albert Peet."
He led the way along the center corridor, fell up an unexpected flight
of steps, resumed his cursing.
Landovitch wanted to laugh but decided against it. He had never known
Jaro to be as wrought up over anything as he seemed to be about the
girl's abduction.
Jaro scrambled to his feet, mounted the steps with Landovitch still
following. The head of the stair was blocked. He fumbled a moment in
the dark, found the omnipresent plug, extracted it.
The room into which he found himself looking was an ordinary Mercurian
apartment of the lower strata of the city. It was untenanted, bare,
dusty. He worked a moment at the panel, discovered the catch, swung it
back. He and the T.I.S. agent stepped into the apartment.
"Whew!" said Landovitch. "What a relief. I was beginning to think I
might rot down there." His blond hair was a mass of clotted blood and
dirt. One eye was black, his clothes torn and stained.
"You look as if you'd been blown from a rocket tube," commented Jaro
dryly, as he made for the street door.
"You don't look like a gay Lothario yourself," Landovitch retorted.
* * * * *
Jaro opened the door, peered out cautiously. The vaulted burrow which
served as a street between the apartments was deserted. The green
globes were dim. They must be on one of the lowest levels of Acecia.
"Irving," said Jaro, turning to the T.I.S. agent. "I'm going to pay
Albert Peet a visit. He's going to talk whether he wants or not. I'm
afraid it won't be strictly legal, and I don't want to embroil you in
any difficulty. I think we'd best part."
"Never mind that," began Landovitch, then halted, seized Jaro by the
shoulder. "Listen!" he commanded.
From up the street came faintly the noise of shouts and screams, then
the unmistakable zizz-boom! of a rocket gun. The two men looked at each
other. The silence was immediately punctured by a scattering rattle of
dum-dum fire.
The firing drew closer. At the end of the street, a party of Colonial
guards trotted into sight. They were dragging the rocket gun and were
still in an orderly retreat.
Half way up the arched passage they made a stand. Jaro watched them
set up the rocket gun. All except the gun crew faded into doorways.
Jaro swung his eyes back to the head of the street. A company of
Fazoqls, the killer caste of Venus, were advancing in short dashes from
doorway to doorway. The rocket gun went zizz-boom! The street ahead was
suddenly clear of Fazoqls except for a few sprawled figures.
"The revolution!" said Landovitch: "They've started the revolution."
* * * * *
The Venusian mercenaries had begun to snipe at the guards again with
the dum-dum rifles. Several of the Earthmen slumped to the pavement.
The Venusians, Jaro guessed, were crawling through the apartments,
flanking the little group about the rocket gun. In a moment the
Colonial guards were forced to retreat again.
Pulling their rocket gun after them, they took up a position directly
in front of the apartment where Jaro and Landovitch watched, wide-eyed.
"Back! Get back!" Jaro pulled Landovitch into an adjoining chamber. A
string of dum-dums exploded against the outer wall as some Fazoql raked
the building with his rapid fire rifle. The door burst open. A burly
Colonial guard, his gaudy uniform soiled and ragged, stumbled inside,
took up a position just within the doorway.
"Hey!" said Jaro cautiously.
The guard swung around, his finger on the button of the Dixon Ray
Rifle. Jaro noticed that sweat had traced paths down his grimy face.
His hat was gone. Slowly his features relaxed as he recognized the two
men as Terrestrials.
"What's coming off?" Jaro asked.
The guard grunted, glanced out the door. "The Mercurians have risen."
Up the street a Fazoql moved in a doorway. A yellow ray leaped from the
bell-shaped mouth of the guard's rifle, bathed the doorway in a saffron
glare. The Fazoql tumbled into the street.
"They've hired the Venusian mercenaries," the guard continued. "We're
outnumbered ten to one."
"Who's leading the revolution?" asked Jaro.
"Karfial Hodes, the patriot," replied the guard. He flung the words
over his shoulder, keeping his eyes up the vaulted passage.
"But Hodes is dead!" expostulated Jaro.
"Not so you could notice it," grunted the guard. Outside the rocket gun
went zizz-boom! "How do you explain this?" He took a scrap of paper
from his tunic, tossed it to Jaro.
"What is it?" Landovitch said.
The paper, Jaro saw, was a declaration. It read:
"_To the Mercurian People_:
"_The time has come to cast off the yoke of Earth. All loyal
Mercurians are called upon to purge our ranks of the greedy
Terrestrial parasites who have been exploiting our resources. Arise
and take back that which is rightfully yours._"
It was printed in both Mercurian and English and signed: "_Karfial
Hodes, Imperator_."
"Those have been stuck up all over the city," the guard informed them.
"They've stormed the Spaceography Station and sent an ultimatum to the
Earth Congress."
Landovitch whistled. "But it's race suicide," he said, aghast. Both he
and Jaro were thinking of what must be transpiring back on Earth at
this minute.
File upon file of huge battle spacers would be floating free from their
sheds. Slim cigar-shaped corvettes, tenders, all the countless craft
that comprised Earth's fleet, the mightiest fleet in the Universe,
would be jockeying into position for their dash across space. Even
now Earth's Sun Patrol must be hurtling upon the city of Acecia.
The little uprising would be quelled almost before it got under
way, martial law declared, the revolutionists hunted out, destroyed
ruthlessly. Earth had experienced four such uprisings in different
parts of its far-flung empire within the past decade and she would not
be inclined to be lenient.
"They haven't got the chance of a snowball in hell!" Jaro said bitterly.
The rocket gun exploded: zizz-boom! Again the guard sprayed a doorway
with the yellow ray, cursed. Three distorted figures huddled about the
carriage of the rocket gun, but it was still being served.
"They gutted the palace of the Governor," said the guard, "and hung
the Governor from his own doorway. They've wrecked the offices of the
Latonka Trust too."
"What about the Terrestrials?" asked Jaro.
"Most of them got away in the spacers before they captured the port."
The guard spat, wiped the sweat off his forehead with his sleeve. "The
Mercurians aren't fighting. It's mostly Venusian mercenaries and a few
renegade whites."
* * * * *
Something exploded in the guard's chest. He fell half in, half out
of the doorway. Outside the gun captain blew a whistle. The pitiful
remainder of the Colonial guards struck their rocket gun, retreated
down the passage at a trot, drawing it after them.
"What does it mean?" Landovitch asked in bewilderment. "They couldn't
have formed an alliance with Venus."
"Hardly," replied Jaro. "They would have had to sign agreements with
about seven hundred and fifty different states, principalities and
democracies." He yanked the T.I.S. agent back into the chamber again.
"Don't let those birds lay an eye on you," he cautioned.
The Fazoqls had begun to stream past outside. They were lean, bearded
men, for the most part armed with rapid fire dum-dum rifles. They all
had the blue star of the Venusian caste of killers tattooed on their
foreheads. The noise of fighting waned, died down the vaulted passage.
"I can't believe it." Landovitch shook his head. "The Mercurians are
throwing away any chance for freedom. The Earth Congress will never
grant them their independence now."
"I don't believe it," said Jaro grimly. "In fact, I don't put any
credence in it at all."
The T.I.S. agent looked at him, perplexed. "But...." he began.
"Come on," Jaro interrupted savagely. "The answer to any number of
things lies at the office of the Latonka Trust, if I'm not mistaken."
He stooped over the dead Colonial guard, relieved him of his Dixon Ray
Rifle, stepped over him into the street. Shaking his head bull-like,
Landovitch followed. He obviously wanted to ask questions, but the set,
grim expression on Jaro's face forbade it.
As they approached the Terrestrial quarter, the signs of bitter street
fighting grew more apparent. They passed a barricaded corner where a
pile of dead Colonial guards attested to the stubbornness of their
defense. The street beyond was littered with the bodies of Fazoqls and
an occasional renegade Earthman. There were no signs of Mercurians
anywhere. Jaro imagined that they had retreated deep into hidden
burrows and rooms until the fighting was over.
Two Earthmen came out of an apartment just ahead, dragging a pretty
Mercurian between them. They spotted Jaro and Landovitch, halted, their
hands creeping upward towards shoulder holsters.
"Who are you?" one asked, and his voice was death itself.
"Have you seen the Red Witch?" said Jaro, on a wild gamble. "We've got
news for her. It's important."
"Naw," growled one of the renegades suspiciously. He turned to his
companion, said: "Let's get going." Between them, the gunmen hustled
the frightened girl off a bisecting alley.
Landovitch was frowning. "This is a wild goose chase," he said. "The
Mercurians have wrecked the Latonka Trust building. Albert Peet
was probably one of the first men to escape from Mercury when the
revolution broke."
"I'm gambling," replied Jaro, "that he's got a hideout in the building
some place. I think he's waiting for everything to blow over." He set
off down the corridor at an easy lope. With a shrug, Landovitch panted
after him.