the torturers, who drew a white hot iron from one of the braziers and
held it a little way from Closana's face.
"One false word and that iron goes into the girl's eyes," the Lord of
Giri-Vaaka warned in a low hiss. "After that, all of you will live in
agony for weeks before we have finished. Tell him to land near the city
and bring all but a single watch-man to the east gate where they will be
well received."
"Hello Steve. This is Gerry Norton!" Gerry said. Brent's voice shook
with excitement.
"Jumping ray-blasts, chief, we all thought you were done for! Where did
you go? What happened? Where are you now?"
"I'm being well entertained in the city of Vaaka-Havson. These Scaly Men
are very pleasant and friendly when you get to know them. Cross the Giri
River by a bald hill...."
Gerry finished the directions for the coming of the _Viking_ and the
landing of its crew as ordered by Lansa. As the radio was turned off,
the Lord of the Scaly Ones stood up with his thin lipped smile.
"Good! Our plans progress. Now you three will go back to a cell. And,
since you are no longer of any value to us, you will be used when we
hunt the giant Dakta on the shore tomorrow."
* * * * *
The three prisoners were placed in the same cell, all spread-eagled
against the wall with their outstretched arms held by metal cuffs. Angus
McTavish's face was sour and glowering as he turned to Gerry.
"That was an ill thing that ye did, Gerry Norton," he growled.
"I could not see them whip her any more."
"The three of us will probably meet as bad a fate soon anyway, from what
that thin faced devil said at the end, and, meanwhile, ye've lured our
comrades to destruction."
"It couldn't be helped," Gerry said, and closed his eyes. He had taken
what was probably the longest chance of his career, and he was not in a
mood to talk about it. Particularly when every faintest syllable uttered
in one of these metal cells could be heard by the guards in the
corridor outside!
There was little rest for any of them, chained in that awkward position
and with the cell always filled with that pitiless green light. Gerry
dozed fitfully from time to time. Closana seemed to have fallen asleep,
drooping forward in her bonds with her head hanging low, but her long
hair covered her face and it was hard to tell. Angus made no attempt to
sleep at all, and for most of the intervening time he was muttering many
tongued curses into his beard.
At last they were freed from their chains. They were given water in
metal cups, and a bowl of some kind of stew to eat. For perhaps an hour
they rested and eased their stiffened muscles. Then more guards came and
bound their hands behind them and took them away.
It was again broad daylight when they were taken out into the streets of
the city, the peculiarly yellow daylight that filtered through the
cloudy canopy overhead. The three prisoners were surrounded by a heavy
guard of reptile men who marched them across the city and out through a
gate in the far wall. Here a broad plain swept down to the waters of a
saffron colored lake, a sheet of water so vast that its far shore was no
more than a dun line along the horizon. A sort of grandstand had been
erected along one side of the plain.
"I think I begin to understand the point of this little game!" McTavish
muttered, squinting as he peered ahead, "and I don't fancy the idea at
all."
"I don't get what you mean?"
McTavish snorted.
"Did ye never see a piece of cheese in a mouse-trap?"
Then Gerry himself began to understand. On a broad platform before the
grandstand stood a line of men armed with gas-guns. Some were gray
scaled officers of the fighting forces, and others were dandified Green
Men of the decadent minority that had fawned upon and mingled with their
conquerers. In the flat and marshy expanse of the plain before them
there had been driven a number of short but heavy stakes like tent pegs,
each with a metal ring set in the top. There were long rows of them.
Gray scaled guards were busy fettering prisoners to the pegs, making
them fast by tying to the metal ring the other end of the long cord with
which their hands were tied behind them. The hunters and the audience
were ready, the bait was being prepared.
Closana was a few feet away from Gerry, fastened to the next stake. She
stood erect, her shoulders drawn back by the strain of her bonds and her
long hair blowing in the wind.
"This is the end, Geree," she said, "if not today, then tomorrow or the
next day. This was the tale told in Larr of what happens to the
prisoners of the Scaly Ones, but I never believed it till now."
* * * * *
There were sixty or eighty prisoners fastened in the field to serve as
bait for the giant dakta. About half were Golden Amazons captured in
various raids. The remainder were men and women of the Green People of
Giri, prisoners condemned to death by the grim and ruthless tribunals of
the Scaly Ones. Now a dozen attendants carrying leather buckets ran up
and down the lines of the captives, splashing each victim with a dipper
full of a purple colored and very pungent oil.
"Now what's the game?" Gerry muttered. Angus bent his head to sniff at
the heavy liquid trickling down his hairy chest.
"It smells like a harlot's dream!" he muttered sourly, "probably
intended to make us more attractive to whatever kind of creature it is
that's coming after us!"
The attendants had hurried away with their buckets of oil, and now the
crowds in the grandstand and on the plain settled down to wait. They
were in holiday mood, laughing and talking in their shrill voices.
Then a black dot appeared high up in the sky. A murmur of anticipation
ran over the crowd. The dakta came plummeting earthward as its
super-keen senses saw and smelled the attractive bait waiting below. The
thing, as it came near, was like some figment from a nightmare. It had a
reptilian body between a twenty-foot spread of leathery wings, and a
long beak with a double row of pointed teeth. One of the things that
Gerry had seen flying over that lonely sea when he first brought the
_Viking_ down through the canopy of clouds that covered the planet of
Venus!
"So _that_ is a dakta!" Angus muttered, "bonny little creature!"
The winged lizard checked its flight momentarily some ten feet off the
ground, directly above one of the captive Amazons. Then he dove down.
The girl screamed and twisted away to the length of her tether, and the
toothed beak just missed her. The first of the hunters fired as the
dakta whirled and lashed out again, but the bullet exploded off to one
side.
Gripping the writhing Amazon with his beak and his clawed feet, the
dakta flapped his great wings and soared upward again. Two more of the
hunters fired together. One of the explosive bullets missed entirely,
the other blew one of the girl's legs to pieces but did not harm the
monster that held her.
Then Lansa tossed aside his green robe and stood up. Gerry saw that he
held a ray-tube, either one from the _Stardust_ or one of the new ones
he now claimed to be able to make in Giri-Vaaka. The tube slanted
upward. Murky light played around its muzzle. The dakta gave a shrill
and almost human scream. Then it dropped its mangled victim and fell
twitching to the ground. Its leathery skin was turned black where the
ray-blast had struck it. Along the edge of the field, the close packed
crowds broke into wild cheering and Lansa acknowledged it with a
condescending gesture of one upraised arm.
The hunt went on. Sometimes the dakta came singly, sometimes in pairs.
The hunters had the range better now, and dropped them consistently. On
several occasions the flying lizards were brought down before they had
time to seize a victim at all, but most of the time one of the prisoners
was killed or mortally wounded before the dakta was slain. A Green Man
tethered to the stake next beyond Closana had been ripped about the
throat by the raking teeth of a dakta's bill, and was breathing with a
sort of gurgling moan as he bled to death. So far, that was the nearest
that one of the flying lizards had come to Gerry or his two companions.
And then Gerry saw the thing for which he had been watching. There was a
streak of fire along the eastern horizon. The blast of speeding rocket
tubes! A cigar shaped hull of gleaming blue and silver came streaking
across the saffron sky with a trail of smoke behind it. _The Viking_ had
come!
* * * * *
A swelling uproar came from the crowds which began to mill about in
confusion. Lansa had risen to his feet and was peering upward with one
hand raised to shade his eyes. Yellow flames played about the _Viking's_
bow as the reverse rockets checked her momentum. A pair of swooping
dakta veered away from her, then dropped down toward the bait tethered
below. One of them was headed straight for Angus McTavish.
Instantly one of the forward ray-guns on the space-ship glowed into
life, and the winged lizard crumpled in mid-flight. Gerry knew then that
someone on board had been looking down through the powerful viewing
glasses, and had recognized him and Angus. He shouted hoarsely, knowing
he would not be heard but unable to keep silent.
Drums were throbbing a swift alarm, and the milling crowds were in wild
confusion. Companies of the scaly warriors were firing by volley, but
the explosive bullets only flashed harmlessly against the _Viking's_
duralite hull. Some of the heavier gas-guns set on the battlements above
hissed into life then, but even the larger caliber explosives could make
no impression on tempered duralite. With her ray-guns flashing and
ripping black swathes in the scaly ranks below, with her helicopters
spinning to take the strain as the blast of the rockets died away, the
_Viking_ settled rapidly groundward.
"By Lord, Steve came a-fightin'!" McTavish roared.
"Of course, you old goat!" Gerry shouted back, "did you really think I'd
call the ship into a trap? You're as bad as that maniac who calls
himself Lansa. I knew that if I spoke _too_ strongly of what nice
fellows these scaly devils are, Steve would have the sense to know that
I was under pressure and in a trap."
And then came swift disaster! Over the edge of the nearest black and
battlemented wall of Lansa's palace thrust the muzzle of a large caliber
ray-gun. Steve Brent saw it, too, and tried to lift the nose of his ship
to bring his own guns to bear on this new menace, but he was too late.
The muzzle of the ray-gun on the battlements glowed dully, the blast of
the supode-rays struck the row of spinning helicopters on top of the
_Viking's_ hull. The blades of the big propellors went spinning into
space, their shafts bent and crumpled like straws in a gale. Robbed of
their support, essential when lacking rocket power of at least 300 miles
per hour, the space-ship plunged downward like a falling star. She
struck the waters of the lake with a mighty splash. Spray dashed as high
as the walls of Lansa's castle, and when it was gone the space-ship had
vanished.
* * * * *
Gerry Norton stood motionless. He was staring at the muddy and foam
flecked waters of the lake, and at the spreading ripples that still beat
on the shore as the effect of that mighty splash subsided. At the moment
he felt old and tired and defeated, his brain numbed. The _Viking_ was
gone! Freckled Steve Brent, and the cheerful Portok, and all the rest of
them were gone. Buried deep in the muddy bottom of a Venusian lake.
The second expedition from Earth to this cloud-veiled and ill-fated
planet had also ended in disaster. In the future the _Viking_ would be
classed with the _Stardust_--simply another luckless space-ship that
sailed away into the void and vanished. The men of her crew and what
they tried to accomplish would be forgotten, their names would only
remain on some yellowing record buried in the maze of government files.
So deep was Gerry Norton's bitter brooding that he scarcely heard the
words Angus McTavish was shouting in his ear.
"Come on, Gerry lad! Let's get away while there's all this confusion."
* * * * *
Ever since they had been brought to this field beside the lake, Angus
had been working at his bonds. He was a very strong man anyway, and the
swell of his earthly muscles was far greater than the strength of any of
the races that the Scaly Ones were accustomed to making prisoners. While
the attention of all the guards was absorbed in the appearance and
subsequent wreck of the _Viking_, Angus had managed to snap his own
bonds and was now unhurriedly freeing Gerry's wrists.
Gerry ran to Closana and untied her hands, while Angus freed the nearest
other prisoner who was a stocky and broad shouldered Green Man with a
heavily lined face. As soon as his hands were free, the latter wheeled
to face them.
"My thanks, _hiziren_!" he panted, "now go while you can. You are more
easily spotted in a crowd than I. Hurry! I will free as many of these
others as possible. Get into the city, and try to reach the place men
call 'The Square of the Dragon.' Say that Sarnak sent you. Hurry!"
Even though he was carrying Closana in his arms, Gerry's Earthly muscles
allowed him to run in mighty six-foot bounds. Angus went leaping along
before him. So great was the confusion that they were half way across
the plain to the city before anyone noticed them at all. Then a shouting
officer of the Scaly Ones threw himself in front of them with his drawn
sword in his hand.
The big engineer roared like an angry bull, and leaped clean over the
man. Before the scaly warrior could turn the Scot had him from behind.
An instant later Angus had the sword and was racing ahead, while the
Venusian lay sprawled in the mud with his neck broken and his long head
twisted grotesquely awry.
The half dozen guards posted in the arch of the gate stared indecisively
at the white skinned trio racing toward them. Angus had a sword in each
hand by this time, and he leaped at the guards with a shout. The
fugitive broke through the line of swordsmen by sheer momentum and
dashed into the city. There was no pursuit. The first of the panic
stricken throng rushing back for the shelter of the city reached the
gate a moment later, and the guards were swamped by a jostling mob of
mingled Scaly Ones and Green Men.
Gerry and his two companions darted into the nearest of the many narrow
alleys that twisted about this part of the city. They dodged from one
dingy thoroughfare to the next. When they met a woman of the Green
People, Gerry unceremoniously tore off her robe and shielding veil and
flung them to Closana to hide her own tawny skin and golden hair. Later,
when he and Angus had also disguised themselves in the rough garments
worn by the poorer folk of this city of Vaaka-hausen, they were able to
walk quietly down the streets without fear of detection unless they met
a patrol at close range.
At last they came to a dingy plaza that was surrounded by ramshackle
buildings of great age. It had probably once been a prosperous and
fashionable part of the city, centuries ago, before the Scaly Ones
overran the land of Giri. Now grass grew up between the paving stones,
and the roofs of the dingy buildings sagged close to the breaking point,
and piles of festering rubbish lay along the gutters. The place was a
slum of the sort that had not existed on the more enlightened planets of
Earth and Mars for many generations. A canal flowed along one side of
the square, and in the center of the plaza stood the eroded and ancient
black marble statue of a rearing dragon.
"This must be the place!" Angus muttered from the shadows of the hood
that he had drawn up over his head.
* * * * *
As they hesitated, a few people peered furtively out at them from the
broken windows and sagging doors of the houses around the square. Then a
man came toward them. He was bent and crippled, a beggar wearing filthy
rags. His matted hair hung down over his eyes, and his whole body seemed
covered with the caked filth of one who had never thought of washing. As
the man came forward with a sort of limping shuffle, Gerry instinctively
laid his hand on the hilt of the sword he carried concealed under his
cloak, while Closana drew the concealing veil more closely over her
face.
"Alms, _hiziren_! A little charity of your generosity!" the beggar
whined as he came closer.
"What place is this?" Gerry asked, trying to give his voice the soft
tone and lisping accent characteristic of the Green Men.
The beggar limped a little closer and peered up into the shadows of
Gerry's hood. What he saw seemed to satisfy him.
"Take your hand from your sword hilt, friend!" he said in a low voice
quite unlike his previous whine, "what place do you seek?"
"The Place of the Dragon."
"This is it. Who sent you?"
"Sarnak sent us."
"It is good." The beggar pointed down a flight of worn stone steps that
led to the canal whose surface was some eight or ten feet below the
level of the plaza. "Go down there, below the bridge, and tap on the
stone that bears a rusted iron ring. You will find friends. Go quickly,
while there are no strangers to observe you."
"Do you trust that man?" Angus whispered in English as they turned away.
Gerry shrugged.
"We've got to. It's our only chance, We're too easy to recognize, in
spite of these clothes, to stay free in this city for long."
The black waters of the canal flowed sluggishly along between slimy
stone walls. Refuse drifted on the surface. The water itself had a foul
and penetrating odor. Gerry walked down the steps, and then along the
walk that stretched beside the water at one edge of the canal until he
was under an arch that served as a bridge to support the street above.
The arch was wide enough so that they were now completely hidden from
the view of anyone in the plaza above.
On one of the stones of the arch, at about the height of his shoulder,
Gerry saw a rusted iron ring. He tapped on that stone with the hilt of
his sword. He heard a faint click, and though there was no visible
change in the surface of the pitted stone wall before him he heard a
whispered question:
"_Who knocks?_"
"Friends," Gerry replied.
"Who sent you?"
"Sarnak sent us."
There was a low, metallic jingle. A section of the wall about the height
of a man and some three feet wide swung quietly inward. As soon as the
three of them had stepped through the opening into a small room that was
built in the interior of the arch, the door swung shut behind them.
* * * * *
There were half a dozen men in this low roofed and stone walled chamber.
All were of the Green People, dressed as ragged beggars but with the
bearing and appearance of warriors. Drawn steel gleamed in their hands.
Their faces were heavy with suspicion. One of the men had gone to stand
with his back against the closed door behind them.
"Who are you, that come using the name of Sarnak?" snapped the leader.
Suspicion became blended with puzzled surprise as Gerry and Angus threw
back their hoods and the outlaws saw their white skins. Hastily Gerry
told the tale of the dakta hunt and of their subsequent escape.
"So Sarnak got away!" the leader of the Green Men exulted. "Ho! That is
the best news that we of the Dragon's Teeth have heard in many weeks!
All right, Slag, take these strangers through to the inner places."
One of the Green Men beckoned to Gerry to follow him down a narrow
flight of steps at the back of the room. It ended in a circular pool of
water like a large well, the steps going on down below the surface.
Their guide opened a cupboard built into the wall and took out four
glass helmets. The helmets were attached to leather pads that fitted
tightly about the shoulders and chest, with straps to hold them in
place. A cylindrical metal tank was attached to the back of each helmet,
with a tube that led to a valve at the side. The guide also took out
some heavily leaded sandals.
"Put on these helmets and then open the valves," he explained, "then
follow me down the steps. Be careful not to fall in the darkness. After
we get around the first bend in the corridor below there will be light."
Gerry put the globular glass helmet over his head, opening the valve as
soon as he had adjusted the straps. The air in the helmet immediately
took on a faintly chemical odor, but it was pleasant and in no way
oppressive. As soon as all of them were ready, the man called Slag
beckoned and then started down the steps.
Warm black water rose to Gerry's knees, then to his waist. As it came up
to his shoulders he saw the top of Slag's helmet disappear below the
surface ahead of him. For a moment the smooth surface of the water was
level with Gerry's eyes as it rose around his own helmet. Then he
stepped down into a darkness as black and impenetrable as though he were
immersed in ink.
Gerry guided himself with his left hand on the slime covered stones of
the wall beside him. He reached back with his other hand to steady
Closana who was just behind. All together he counted thirty steps,
feeling carefully with his feet each time, before the floor leveled off.
The wall curved around to the right. Gerry followed it, rounded a bend,
and was no longer in darkness.
They stood in a straight passage that was lined with blocks of polished
stone. Metal plates, set in the ceiling at regular intervals, glowed
with a greenish-yellow light that was nearly as bright as the cloudy
Venusian daylight. The place was completely filled with water.
It was an eerie sensation! Slag was standing a few feet ahead, grinning
at them through the glass of his helmet, but now he turned and walked
slowly down the corridor. Gerry followed him, bent well forward as he
walked, forcing himself ahead against the resistance of the water. All
their movements were sluggish and slow, but the heavily leaded sandals
held them down and gave their feet purchase.
* * * * *
Small fishes swam past them along the passage, their round eyes peering
in through the helmet glasses as they passed. Clumps of colored sea-weed
grew out from the walls and ceiling, their long streamers waving gently
in the slow currents set up by the passage of the men. In spite of the
brightness of the light from the ceiling plates, the effect of the water
made it difficult to see far down the passage ahead. The outlines of
Slag were clear enough as he plodded along directly ahead of Gerry, but
everything beyond him was a little blurred and uncertain. It was like
living in a mirage.
At last they came to a point where the passage branched. Here they
passed a sentry who wore a glass helmet and a tight fitting green rubber
uniform. On his chest was the insignia of a rampant black dragon. He was
armed with a very thin, almost needle-like sword whose point was razor
keen. Gerry realized the reason for that peculiarly designed weapon when
the sentry swung his sword upward to salute their guide. The blade was
so thin that it offered little resistance to the water, and its power of
being quickly wielded made it a far more effective weapon under water
than a heavier sword would have been.
They passed more branching passages, and more rubber-clad sentries who
stared at them curiously as they went by. There was a whole network of
corridors in this underwater world! At last Slag opened a metal door at
the end of the particular passage he had followed, and they all crowded
into a small room. Slag closed the door and dogged it, then tapped on a
glass panel across the room.
A silvery flood of air bubbles came pouring out the end of a pipe that
protruded through the wall. At the same time Gerry heard the thud of
heavy pumps starting to suck water through gratings at the base of the
wall. The water level dropped rapidly. When it was down to their waists,
Slag took off his helmet and slipped the leaded sandals from his feet.
He motioned to the others to do the same.
"We are about to enter the hidden realm of Luralla, the home of the
Dragon's Teeth!" he said. "If you can prove your right to be here you
will be welcome. Otherwise you will go back into one of these
waterlocks--without any helmets on."
He grinned cheerfully.
* * * * *
The water dropped below the level of the door sills. The pumps sucked
noisily on the last few foaming inches for a moment, and then they
ceased. The inner door was opened by a sentry whose tight fitting green
uniform with its black dragon was made of dry cloth instead of dripping
rubber. He wore a plumed metal helmet, and carried a heavy sword instead
of one of the thin water blades.
"Come in, Slag," he said, "who are these strangers?"