bleak and rocky hills. A few mean huts were the only signs of human
habitation. Then, as they rounded a bend in the trail which at this
point clung to the face of a cliff, they saw the answer to a mystery
that had puzzled the civilized world for two years.
It was the wreck of the space-ship _Stardust_. She lay at the foot of a
cliff across the valley, her steel and duralite hull still gleaming
brightly through the thick green creepers that had grown up around it.
Even from this distance Gerry could see the hopelessly crumpled
rocket-tubes at the stern, and the gaping holes where plates had been
ripped away to make the submarine that had brought them out of the city
of Larr.
"So that was the end of the _Stardust_!" Gerry muttered. "I wonder what
happened to her crew!"
"We'll probably find out soon enough!" McTavish replied grimly. "I'll
bet all the gold in Savissa against an empty rocket-oil tin that we're
headed for the same fate right now."
"Poor devils--I suppose the Scaly Ones did get them. I never liked
Walter Lansing, as you know, but I could have wished him better luck
than this!"
At last they crossed the hills and saw a broad valley before them. Dim
and snow-capped mountains notched the yellow sky on the far side of the
Valley. A river wound through the plain, and on the shore of the saffron
waters of a mighty lake they saw the gray walls of a city. Toll, the
reptilian captain, pointed across the valley.
"Yonder lies the city of Vaaka-hausen. Soon you will stand before the
Lord Lansa, and then," he added with a grim and ghoulish humor, "neither
I nor anybody else will be bothered with you any more."
The countryside immediately around the city of the Scaly Ones was better
kept and more cultivated than what they had seen of the rest of
Giri-Vaaka. There were a number of small villages. Then they passed in
through the walls, gray stone ramparts that seemed to be very old and
were in poor repair. The muzzles of heavy caliber gas-guns peered over
the battlements here and there.
The crowds in the streets stared curiously as Toll led his prisoners
toward the center of the city. Tall reptile men swaggered through the
crowds with their swords slung on their hips, but the shorter Green Men
were in the great majority. Most of them, men and women alike, stared at
the captives without any particular sign of emotion. This gray and
crowded city of Vaaka-hausen had none of the atmosphere of pleasant
friendliness that Gerry had noticed in Larr. It seemed a place of fear
and oppression.
* * * * *
The palace of the ruler of the Scaly Ones was a squat gray building in
the center of the city. An arm of the river swept along beneath one
wall, with the muddy waters lapping at the aged gray stones. An iron
gate swung aside to let the newcomers into the courtyard. Men who wore
black metal breast-plates over their scales took over the prisoners from
Toll, leading them down a long flight of stairs into the dungeons
beneath the palace. They waited in a vaulted chamber where the only
light was a shaft of yellow radiance that came from a narrow slit high
up near the ceiling.
"It won't be long now!" Gerry muttered.
Then a gong sounded somewhere nearby. It was a very resonant and
deep-throated gong, and instantly the rock-walled chamber became filled
with a green light. It had no visible source, seeming to come from the
walls or from the very air itself. Again the gong rolled.
"The Lord Lansa comes!" barked the captain of the guards, "the overlord
of Venus is at hand. Down on your knees, captives and slaves."
Closana went to her knees, though otherwise holding herself proudly
erect with her hands tied behind her back. In the greenish light her
long blonde hair looked like molten gold. Angus McTavish muttered
savagely in his beard and stayed on his feet. Instantly one of the
reptile guards drew his sword and held the blade horizontally behind the
Scot's knees.
"Kneel--or I cut the tendons!" he snapped.
"Come down, you stiff-necked idiot!" Gerry growled. With a muttered oath
Angus dropped to his knees, and the guard stepped back into line.
Then the door opened, and three men came slowly into the room. Two were
gray-scaled guards who carried their gas-guns cocked and ready. The
third was a tall man in a loose green robe. His head was hooded, so that
nothing of his face could be seen at all, his hands were tucked in the
sleeves of his robe. There was something deadly and almost grotesque
about that silent figure. Gerry knew that at last he was in the presence
of Lansa, Lord of the Scaly Ones and ruler of Giri-Vaaka, self-styled
Overlord of all Venus!
* * * * *
The seconds passed in silence. The guards were frozen motionless at
attention. At last Lansa spoke, his voice coming hollowly from the
shadows of his hood.
"Take them to the cells. Their doom shall be decided when the Serpent
Gods have spoken. I have ordered it!"
The tyrant of Venus gestured sharply, and the guards closed in about the
prisoners. For a fleeting instant Gerry had a glimpse of a thin green
hand, a hand where the finger was missing at the second joint. Then
Lansa went out and the door closed behind him. The deeply resonant gong
sounded again, and the pulsating green light instantly vanished so that
there was again no light except for the thin trickle of yellow radiance
that came in the single high window. The prisoners were pulled to their
feet.
There was no chance to speak to Angus or Closana again. Gerry's guards
led him down a narrow corridor, past the steel doors of cells. It was
very dim and silent. From some of the cells he heard a faint rattle of
chains, from others a low groaning. Otherwise there was no sound but
their own footfalls. At last the guards opened the door of a cell,
pushed Gerry inside, and cut the ropes that bound his arms. As they
slammed the heavy steel door behind them he heard the rasp of bolts.
Then the slapping tread of the guards' webbed feet died away and he was
left alone.
Dim as the light in the corridor had been, that in the cell was so much
less that Gerry had to wait half a minute before he could see at all.
Then he made out the outlines of a small, bare cell with a bunk made of
a light and flexible metal at one side. There was nothing else in the
place. Gerry rubbed his wrists a moment to restore circulation, then sat
down on the edge of the bunk and dropped his head in his hands.
He seemed to be about at the end of his trail. Well--that was fate. He
did not mind so much for himself and Angus. You knew you were taking
risks when you signed up for interplanetary travel in the first place!
But he was sorry that Closana had been dragged into it.
Gerry had now lost all hope of rescue by the _Viking_. He did not doubt
that her duralite hull could withstand the explosive bullets of even the
heaviest caliber gas-guns, nor that her three-inch ray-tubes could blast
a way into these underground dungeons in a few minutes. If only Steve
Brent knew where to come! That was the rub. There was now no way for
Brent to learn where the prisoners were being held, and he could not
search all the land of Giri-Vaaka.
Something small and furtive was moving about on the floor a few feet
away. Gerry scuffed his feet on the stones, and the creature scampered
quickly away. Probably a rat! It seemed that he was going to have
pleasant company during his stay in this place.
Restless and gloomy, Gerry stood up again. He started to walk up and
down the few feet that the length of his cell allowed him. Then he froze
motionless! A faint tapping was sounding from somewhere to his left.
Someone was knocking lightly on the wall of the adjoining cell. Then a
voice spoke softly in Martian.
"You there! You in the next cell! Can you hear me?"
* * * * *
Gerry knelt down on the damp floor and put his head close to the base of
the wall. Now he could hear the man more clearly, could even hear his
heavy breathing. Gerry's groping fingers found a place between two of
the stones where the mortar had been picked away to leave a small air
space.
"Yes, I hear you!" he called softly. He heard a dry chuckle.
"Good! I have been waiting a long time for them to put someone in the
next cell. Some of the stones are loose. I will come in."
There was a soft rattle of falling mortar, and a scrape of sliding
stones. Gerry saw the head and shoulders of a man thrust through the
opening, and then the man crawled laboriously into the cell.
"Who are you?" he whispered. "Your accent is not like that of the Green
Men of Giri. Wait, I have a light here."
A small flashlight clicked on. Its beam pointed up into Gerry's face.
Then the man gasped.
"Good Lord!" he whispered. "It ... it's Gerry Norton!"
Then the man swung the light so that it swung on himself. Gerry saw a
tall, gaunt man in the tattered remains of a blue and silver uniform. It
was Major Walter Lansing, once of the Interplanetary Fleet, who had
commanded the ill-fated _Stardust_ when she set out on her voyage into
space!
"Norton!" he gasped in a hoarse whisper. "Man, I never expected to see
anyone from Earth again!"
"We thought you were dead."
"I might as well be!" Lansing said grimly. "But tell me how you come to
be here."
As they squatted there in the darkened cell, Gerry whispered the story
of the _Viking's_ expedition and of his own capture. Lansing told him
how the _Stardust_ had been wrecked on the rim of the mountains when
landing, and how the Scaly Ones had captured all the crew.
"They have kept me alive because the signs pointed that way when they
cast the omens before the Serpent Gods," Lansing said, "but all the rest
of the crew were used as bait for hunting the giant Dakta. They died.
You and your companions will probably meet the same fate."
"Pleasant prospect!" Gerry said grimly. Lansing gripped his arm.
"There's a chance, Norton! Listen! I've been able to get these scaly
devils to bring me a good many things from the wreck. I couldn't get a
ray-tube, they were too wise for that, but I did get a portable radio by
telling them it was my tribal god. I have it in my cell. We'll go over
and you can phone your ship to come after us." He eyed Gerry eagerly.
"Let's go!"
They both crawled through the gap in the wall. It was like Gerry's own,
but it was piled with an assortment of junk from the wrecked space-ship.
In one corner stood a compact two-way radio telephone set with its tubes
still intact.
"Think you can tell them how to come?" Lansing whispered.
"I'm not sure. They marched us along the roads, and the route was
winding, and...."
"I'll draw you a map!" Lansing interrupted. "You hold the light."
While Gerry held the flash, the other man spread out a piece of crumpled
paper on the floor and began to draw on it with the stub of a graphite
stylus. He talked as he wrote, in a shrilly, excited whisper. Gerry had
never liked the man in the old days, considering him excitable and
undependable, and it was evident that the long captivity had not
improved Walter Lansing's self-control. That did not matter. The main
thing was to get out of this place. And then Gerry saw something that
stiffened every muscle and made the short hair prickle all down the back
of his neck. The ring finger of Lansing's left hand was missing at the
second joint!
* * * * *
The suspicion that had come to Gerry Norton seemed impossible. Walter
Lansing ... the Lord Lansa. It couldn't be. And yet--he was sure he had
seen that same mutilated hand thrust out from the sleeve of a green robe
an hour before! Lansing was still talking as he bent over the improvised
map.
"Here's the line of the Giri River. Tell them to cross by the bald gray
hill, then bear west-six-north, using Venusian magnetic bearings. After
that...."
He suddenly stopped and looked up, catching Gerry's grim glance fixed on
his left hand. Hastily he jerked it aside into the shadows. He must have
read in Gerry's eyes that his move had been too late, for his own gaunt
face hardened.
"_You rat!_" Gerry hissed between his teeth. His right hand shot out,
clutching for the other man's throat, but Lansing twisted aside and
jerked a dark object from his pocket. An instant later a stinging cloud
of the paralysis gas took Gerry in the face, and he fell limply to the
floor.
Lansing straightened up and tossed aside the flask that had held the
gas. There was a savage gleam in his narrow eyes.
"All right, Norton," he said, "we'll do it the other way. Ho--guards!"
A gong sounded in the corridor, the pulsating green light immediately
flooded the cell. Scaly-skinned guards swarmed in and saluted. Lansing
ripped off the torn uniform, revealing a tight-fitting green garment
beneath it, and one of the guards helped him on with the cowled robe he
had worn before. He glanced down at Gerry for a moment.
"Bring him and the others up to me when he recovers the use of his
muscles," he said.
* * * * *
By the time Gerry Norton recovered from the effects of the gas he had
been securely bound again. Two guards led him to the end of a corridor
and up a flight of stairs to the level above. This was also part of the
prison zone of the castle, but built in an entirely different manner.
Walls and floor were of a polished green metal. Super-charged electronic
locks fastened each door, holding death for anyone who attempted to
tamper with them. Metal globes gave a steady light. Mirrors above each
cell door gave the guards who lounged in the corridors a complete view
of the inside of every cell.
This, Gerry realized, was actually the prison used by the lords of
Giri-Vaaka. He had been placed in the old and abandoned dungeons beneath
as part of the scheme to lure him into calling the _Viking_ to her doom.
Glancing in the door-mirrors of the cells as he went by, Gerry saw that
most of the occupants were men and women of the Green Race of Giri, with
a fair number of Golden Amazons and a few reptile men who had been
guilty of some crime or infraction of discipline.
Then he saw Closana! The girl was tightly spread-eagled against one of
the polished metal walls of her cell, her outstretched wrists and ankles
held by steel cuffs. Gerry's jaw jutted stubbornly forward, and for a
moment he twisted helplessly against the cords that held his arms behind
him.
The guards halted before a door deep in the interior of the palace,
where a pair of scaly warriors stood on guard with gas-guns cocked and
ready. The opening itself was not closed by any door, but by what looked
like a tightly stretched curtain of some transparent green material. On
closer inspection he saw that it glowed with a steady pulsation, while
occasional specks of green fire ran through it. When one of the guards
moved incautiously back so that the tip of his scabbard touched the
green glow filling the door, there was a crackling hiss. The tip of the
scabbard simply vanished. It was as though it had been cleanly cut off
by a very sharp knife.
A challenge came from within, and one of Gerry's guards shouted a reply.
The green glow suddenly vanished from the doorway. Whatever elemental
force it was that blocked the passage had been withdrawn, and they
walked freely in through the opening.
* * * * *
The wide room before them was walled with slabs of polished black
marble. The figures of writhing snakes and rearing reptiles were inlaid
into the black walls with some iridescent green stone. Their eyes were
inlaid jewels. Thin trails of pungent smoke drifted upward from their
nostrils. A low and throbbing music, full of the thunder of muted drums,
came from unseen source. At regular intervals around the walls stood
tall golden standards with glowing globes atop them.
This was the throne room of Lansa, Lord of Giri-Vaaka, who had once been
an officer in the flying forces of Earth. The man himself sat on a black
marble throne with a dozen of the higher officers of his scaly warriors
grouped around him. These Inner Guards wore breast-plates and helmets of
a bright green metal, and their pointed ears protruded upward through
twin openings in the sides of the helmets.
Lansa's swarthy face was gloatingly triumphant. It had always been Gerry
Norton's private opinion that Walter Lansing was slightly mad. Brilliant
in many ways, but definitely unstable. At last he appeared to have
slipped over that shadowy border that divides the rational from the
insane.
"It is unfortunate that my little scheme to have you summon your
space-ship here did not work," Lansa said in English. "But we will find
some other way of persuading you to do it."
"You think you're quite the little tin god, don't you?" Gerry sneered.
"I _am_ a god--to these people," Lansa replied quietly. "Though the
_Stardust_ was damaged too badly to return to earth, little of her
equipment was harmed except for the rocket tubes themselves. Within six
months after landing I had made myself master of these primitive but
obedient people. The submarine that brought you from the city of Larr
shows what can be done with them. In the meantime I had communicated
with friends on Earth by means of a secret radio frequency, and waited
for the sending of the next space-ship...."
He broke off as a door behind the throne opened and a woman came into
the room. It was Olga Stark, now wearing a long gown of shimmering
green. Metal strands of the same color were braided into her dark hair,
which was crowned by a circlet bearing the design of a rearing serpent.
All the officers and courtiers lifted their arms in salute. The woman
walked over and stood beside Lansa's throne, looking down at Gerry with
a cold and impersonal scorn. It had not taken Olga Stark very long to
fit herself into the role of the queen of Giri-Vaaka!
* * * * *
A number of things were clear to Gerry Norton now! It had been Olga
Stark with whom Lansing had secretly communicated after he made himself
master of the Scaly Ones, and that explained her insistent requests to
join the expedition. Again, it had been Olga who had been
surreptitiously using the radio to talk to Lansing that day when Gerry
had stepped into the radio room on hearing the hum of the generator.
They had been arranging the details of his abduction. Only--who was
Olga's confederate who had knocked him over the head when he had walked
in on them that time? There was still some traitor on board the
_Viking_.
"I have now developed the resources of this country to the point where
the final campaign is ready," Lansa boasted, "all these reptile men
needed was a man of sufficient brains and initiative to lead them. We
are making ray-tubes, modeled on those aboard the _Stardust_, and will
soon be able to blast down the guardian forts of Savissa and to conquer
those few other portions of this planet that still stand against me.
Then I will return to the Earth in your _Viking_, taking with me enough
gold to buy a vast fleet of ships. There is more gold available here on
Venus than all your banks on Earth have ever imagined! I could make
myself ruler of Earth with all that gold, but I will choose another
method. I will bring back the space-ships, and load them up with my
scaly warriors--and then sail to conquer the Outer Planets and whatever
else may lie beyond the Solar System!"
Gerry Norton stared at Lansa in a grim silence. The man was undoubtedly
mad. Stark, raving mad! No one but a maniac would cherish such a wild
dream of Universal conquest. He had that dangerous combination of
natural cleverness and distorted values that has often distinguished
leaders who have taken nations into the shadowy valleys of ruin. For a
moment Lansa hesitated, his narrow eyes blazing and one arm flung up in
a dramatic gesture. Then some of the fire went out of him, and he
returned to more prosaic and immediate things.
"But all that lies in the future. At the moment I must ask you to
radio-phone the _Viking_ to come to this city and land in the plain just
below the walls."
"I'll see you in hell first!" Gerry snapped. Lansa shrugged.
"I expected you to indulge in some such heroics! Your type always does.
I have not forgotten your attacks on my reputation back on Earth some
years ago, Norton, nor your charges that I was unfit to command the
_Stardust_. It will give me considerable pleasure to watch what is about
to happen to you. Ho--guards! Bring him down to the torture chamber."
* * * * *
The place of torture was a circular and low vaulted chamber. Gerry was
led across to one of the walls, and his bound hands fastened behind him
to a metal ring. The place was lit by a dim green light that had no
visible source, though in one spot there was a ruddy glow where irons
were heating in a brazier of burning charcoal. A bench was placed for
Lansa and Olga to sit on, and four of their guards stood beside them.
The torturers themselves had been selected from among the Green Men of
Giri, instead of the scaly skinned warrior race of Vaaka. They were
squat and heavy men, those torturers, evidently of the most brutal and
debased type that Lansa had been able to find. One in particular, whose
wide green face was made hideous by an old scar that had put out one of
his eyes, licked his thick lips in ghoulish anticipation as his fingers
prodded the flesh about Gerry's ribs and felt the Earth-man's muscles.
"Bring in the other two," Lansa commanded.
All about the room were the tools of the torturer's art. Some were
familiar things that have been used since men first began to mistreat
his fellow creatures--leaded whips and stretching-racks and cradles
lined with pointed spikes. Others were strange looking and probably even
more horrible mechanisms of coils and wires and electrodes. Gerry licked
his lips. The place had the hushed stillness of a chamber that has been
thoroughly sound-proofed. Probably no screams of agonized victims ever
penetrated beyond those smooth walls of polished green metal.
They brought Angus McTavish in first. He looked like some shaggy red
giant, wearing only a loin-cloth with his hair and beard all awry. Then
came Closana. Her crossed wrists were tied together before her by a cord
that was held by one of the guards, and she was very pale.
Lansa nodded quickly.
"Let them begin," said Lansa tonelessly.
"A suggestion, sir!" Olga leaned forward on the bench. The glance of her
brooding eyes was fixed on the young Amazon princess. "Let them work on
the girl first. It will probably succeed more quickly. I think the man
Norton has fallen in love with that empty headed young savage, and you
know how men are."
"You are right. Let it be done that way."
Closana was spread-eagled in mid-air, her upstretched arms fastened to
ropes that led to the ceiling and her ankles lashed to metal rings in
the floor below. She could move nothing but her head as Olga Stark
walked up to stand before her.
"This will repay for the condescension with which I was treated in
Savissa!" the Earth-woman said venomously. Closana looked at her in
silence for a moment, and then suddenly spat squarely in the other
woman's face.
"_Atta girl!_" roared Angus with all the power of his big lungs. Olga
struck the helpless girl twice in the mouth with her clenched fist, then
returned to her seat.
"Begin!" she commanded.
One of the torturers tossed Closana's long hair forward on either side
of her neck, to leave her back entirely bare for the lash. The girl's
eyes were closed again, and there was a thin trickle of blood at one
corner of her mouth. The torturer shook out the lash, whirled it once
through the air and then brought it smashing across the middle of
Closana's back.
* * * * *
The girl's whole body writhed convulsively for a moment. There was an
instant red welt where the whip had struck. A low moan escaped between
her clenched teeth. Then Gerry Norton leaned forward where he stood
bound against the wall.
"You win, Lansing!" he said hoarsely, "stop it! Make them leave her
alone and I'll do as you say."
"I thought you would," the renegade officer said softly. There seemed to
be a definite disappointment in his cruel eyes. "I will have the radio
set brought here and you can call the ship right now."
"Have them lower the girl down."
"She stays where she is until you have finished."
The portable radio-phone from the wrecked _Stardust_ was brought in and
set up on a stand immediately in front of Gerry. Olga set up the sigmoid
antenna on its duralite frame, and twisted the dials to the space-ship's
wave length. Then she took the transmitter.
"Calling Steve Brent on the _Viking_! Calling Steve Brent on the
_Viking_! Please come in!" she repeated over and over.
At last the answering signal lit up, and Steve's familiar voice came
from the receiver.
"This is Steve Brent. Who is calling?"