helmets stood in long rows on metal shelves and many weapons hung in
racks on the walls. The control levers of the pumps were just to the
left of the door. There were half a dozen uniformed men standing about
the room, one of them bearing the silver insignia of an officer on his
chest. When Slag had given a hasty account of the coming of Gerry and
the others, the officer nodded toward an inner door.
"Prince Sarnak has just returned. You will find him in the great hall.
Take these strangers there."
The sound of music and laughter, and the confused babel of many voices,
came to Gerry's ears as soon as the far door was opened. They entered a
vast hall. It was low ceiled, as were all the water-locked chambers of
this strange place, but it was broad and spacious. Heavy stone columns
carved like giant sea-horses supported the roof. Patterns of sea-weed
and star fish and other denizens of the deep were inter-mingled with
rearing dragons in the painted designs along the walls. The room was
filled with wide tables flanked by long benches.
The men and women who sat at the tables, or stood gossiping in noisy
groups in corners of the hall, were nearly all of the Green People of
Giri, but there were a few escaped Golden Amazons who came flocking
eagerly around Closana. In outward appearance these green skinned men
and women were similar to the folk who lived in the city overhead with
their scaly masters, but there was a subtle difference. These people had
none of the cowed and subjugated air of the citizens who lived above
ground. There was a different look in their eyes, a more confident note
in their voices, a firmer set to their shoulders. These folk had the air
of free men and warriors, not slaves.
A stocky and merry eyed man caught sight of them and came striding
across the hall. It was Sarnak, the man who had been tethered next to
them in the field of the dakta hunt.
"Welcome to the halls of Luralla!" he boomed, "we are glad to have you
come to the hidden realm of the Dragon's Teeth. _Hiziren_ and comrades,
these are the outlanders from afar who freed me this afternoon so that I
and a dozen more of our people escaped death at the hands of the Scaly
Ones!"
"Thrice hail!" roared the crowd, while a hundred blades flashed in the
golden light. Angus McTavish wrung the water out of his dripping beard.
"These look like men of spirit," he rumbled cheerfully, "I think I'm
going to enjoy myself again."
* * * * *
A little later, wearing dry clothes, the three of them sat down with
Sarnak and his officers at a table in the corner of the hall. Young
girls brought them dishes of fried sea-urchins, and broiled steaks of
the grappa fish, and other savory dishes.
"We who call ourselves the Dragon's Teeth are outlaws descended from
outlaws," Sarnak explained. "Our ancestors were men and women who never
acknowledged the rule of the Scaly Ones when they overran this once
pleasant land of Giri. I was born in this hidden place, as was my father
before me and his father before him. We live here in the water-locked
Halls of Luralla, and harass the tyrants in what ways we can, and try to
keep alive the traditions and glory of the old days when the Dragon
Kings ruled in this city and the Scaly Ones were still lurking in their
Vaaka marshes to the westward."
"Does Lansa know of this place?"
"He knows that the Dragon's Teeth exist, as all rulers of the Scaly Ones
have known it, but the location of our hiding place has never been
betrayed."
"Then," roared Angus, pounding his big fist on the table till the dishes
rattled, "why don't you revolt? I'll go with you myself to strike a blow
against those reptile skinned devils up above!"
"Count me in, too!" Gerry said quietly.
Angus' voice had boomed out through the big hall. It was answered by a
lilting shout as men sprang to their feet. Hundreds of sword blades
flashed clear of their scabbards. Only Sarnak himself remained seated,
slowly shaking his head. There was a twisted smile on his broad and
heavily lined face. His eyes held bitterness.
"It would only be pointless suicide, _hiziren_!" he said grimly. "We
number only about a thousand all together, we hunted men of the Dragon's
Teeth, against the countless thousands of Lansa's scaly hordes. It would
be different if our countrymen up above could be inspired to a mass
uprising, but the time is not yet. Too long have they lived under the
rule of the tyrants. They are cowed. They have lost their spirit, and
some of the younger ones have even become fawning satellites of the
conquerors! If there comes a day when the forces of the Scaly Ones are
engaged in some major war along the frontier, as in this suggested
assault upon the barrier forts of Savissa that Lansa is said to be
planning, then we may be able to do something. For the present we must
continue to lie hidden and bide our time."
Gerry Norton was uncertain about his own course. Now that the _Viking_
and her crew had been lost, with all hope of a return to Earth cut off,
he felt hopelessly adrift. Sarnak urged his visitors to stay in Luralla.
The place was a remarkable engineering feat, completely under water and
with its air constantly re-conditioned and preserved, but Gerry felt
restless and cramped there. Though the outlaws carried on a constant
guerilla warfare with the Scaly Ones, it was all on a small scale. Gerry
felt that he would rather return to Savissa, where at least the people
were free and the Amazon warriors kept ceaseless watch on their
frontiers. Closana, of course, was very anxious to return home.
"Suits me, too," Angus rumbled, "in that country they at least show a
proper respect for a man of my attainments."
"Meaning your whiskers?" Gerry asked.
"Look out, Angus," Closana warned with a smile, idly running her slender
fingers along the keen edge of her dagger. "Some Savissan princess will
choose you for her husband as I have chosen Geree here."
"I told you we wouldn't talk about that for the present...." Gerry
began. Closana's hand moved swiftly as a striking dakta. The keen blade
bit through the cloth of Gerry's sleeve and pinned it to the table top.
"You'll never get away from me, Geree," the girl said quietly. Angus
McTavish burst out in a great roar of laughter.
"Might as well admit you're licked now, lad! These Venusian women seem
to be verra strong minded lassies!"
* * * * *
They started two days later. There was, of course, neither night nor day
in the sub-aqueous halls of Luralla but the outlaws ran their lives on a
normal schedule. Sarnak supplied Gerry and the others with rubber
uniforms and complete equipment including the thin bladed water-swords
in the long feathery scabbards.
"I will have you guided out to one of our exits that is a quarter mile
off shore from the place where the dakta hunt was held," Sarnak offered.
"I thought that water was a lake," Gerry said. Sarnak shook his head.
"No. It is an estuary, an arm of the Great Sea. The chemical tanks on
your water helmets will keep the air pure for several days travel, and
the sentries at the last outpost will give you trained saddle-dolphins
so that you will make better time toward the coastal regions of
Savissa."
Sarnak went with them to the guardroom at the edge of the water filled
passages, and personally checked over their equipment.
"These are our new type of helmet with the audiphones that let the
wearers talk to each other under water," he said, touching the tiny
microphones set into the curved glass. "Well--you had better start. May
the Dragon Gods be with you!"
They strapped on their helmets and adjusted the valves. A uniformed
guide stepped into the water-lock with them. Sarnak shook hands,
saluted, and then stepped back through the door which closed behind him.
The guide lifted his hand in a signal, and a second later a torrent of
water rushed out of the gratings to foam about their feet. They were
ready to leave Luralla!
Again they went through the maze of water-filled passages, passing
occasional sentries. After a while the character of the corridor
changed. It was wider, and was arched instead of square, and there was a
carpet of soft natural sand beneath their feet instead of a stone floor.
"We come to the last outpost of Luralla, _hiziren_!" the guide said.
They stepped out of the end of the passage and found themselves in the
open sea, many fathoms down. A broad and slightly sloping floor of
smooth sand studded with lumps of coral and clusters of sea-weed
stretched before them. Some were giant ferns stretching twelve and
fifteen feet high, others were low and sponge-like growths. A school of
tiny red fishes shot swiftly past them. Larger fish sailed majestically
by overhead. The top of the water was a gleaming golden ceiling far
above them, the greenish yellow light lessening in intensity as it came
down to the depths.
The end of the passage was surrounded by a barrier of piled coral.
Outlaw swordsmen stood on guard, also armed with a sort of compressed
air cross-bow that shot a heavy metal needle with great force. From a
corral at one side an orderly brought three saddle-dolphins.
The big fish were equipped with rubber saddles strapped around the body,
and short stirrups. They were guided by a bridle similar to that used on
Earthly horses. As Gerry swung up to the saddle his dolphin bucked once
or twice with quick flips of his tail, then steadied down as he felt the
tight pressure of his master's knees. When the other two were mounted,
the officer commanding the outpost lifted his arm in salute.
"The Dragon Gods be with you!" he said. At a distance of fifteen or
twenty feet the sound of his voice was slightly muted, but the words
were perfectly clear in the ear-pieces of Gerry's helmet. He lifted his
own rubber gloved hand to his globular helmet and returned the salute.
* * * * *
They rode off at an easy pace, the dolphins rising above the tops of the
tallest vegetation. Gerry found that it was easy to sit the saddle as
long as he bent a little forward to overcome the resistance of the water
against his chest. They were about thirty or forty feet down. On Earth
such a depth would have been uncomfortable, but the lighter gravity of
Venus made it easily bearable.
Gerry glanced back. Closana was riding a few feet behind him, slender
and erect, controlling her restless dolphin as easily as though she had
been accustomed to such steeds all her life. Angus was grinning broadly
through his globular glass helmet as he sat astride a particularly big
dolphin and swung his light bladed water-sword from side to side.
"If any of our friends back on Earth could see us now in some sort of an
astral spectroscope," the big Scot cried, "they'd think themselves
crazy. Maybe this is only a nightmare at that! Do you think we'll wake
up soon and find ourselves safe back on board the _Viking_?"
"I'm afraid not," Gerry answered. He wondered in what part of this vast
sea the twisted hulk of the _Viking_ was now lying.
All day they rode, roughly following the shoreline to the northward.
Whenever it got so deep that nothing was visible below but a vast green
shadow Gerry headed inland until the tops of the sea gardens again came
into view. Sarnak had told them that by the middle of the next day it
should be safe for them to come above water and check their maps and put
fresh chemical cartridges in the cylinders of their helmets. The Scaly
Ones patrolled their coast line in shallow open boats, but they did not
go beyond their own borders.
Once Gerry checked his dolphin and then headed downward as he caught
sight of something big and dark lying on the sand. The others followed
him. It was the broken and rusting hulk of a space-ship, a vessel of a
strange type with a name in an unknown tongue still visible on the
shattered stern. The wreck must have been there for a very long time,
for the sand was heaped high about it and sea-weeds grew up through the
open hatches.
"Leaping ray-blasts!" McTavish said softly. "Yon craft never came from
either Earth or Mars."
"Probably from some far distant planet in outer space that we've never
heard of," Gerry said. "Some adventurous wanderer of the interstellar
regions who came to grief in this lonely spot."
* * * * *
It was desolate and forlorn, the sight of that wrecked vessel from so
long ago. It made Gerry think of his own lost command. There were clean
picked white bones of strange shape lying about on the sand. Gerry
saluted, a tribute to those strange and forgotten wanderers of space,
and then urged his dolphin to a higher level again.
When the dimming light showed that it was dusk above the water they rode
in to the four-fathom shallows and halted in a smooth patch of yellow
sand. Gerry unsaddled the dolphins and tethered them to lumps of coral
where they browsed contentedly on the short vegetation. Then the three
exiles sat down in a circle on the sand. McTavish stretched his long
legs, bouncing a few feet off the ground as he did so and then floating
slowly down again.
"I'll never forget this journey if I live to be older than the whole
Solar System itself!" he said. "Also--I'm hungry."
"There's nothing we can do about that until noon tomorrow," Gerry
grunted. "Maybe the fasting will make you lose some of that surplus bulk
of yours. But I'll admit I could do with some of that special coffee
Portok used to brew in the ward room on the _Viking_ in the evenings."
"I'd give a lot for a drink of plain water," Closana said wistfully.
"Acres of water around us and nothing to drink!"
When the last of the light was gone they lit a small lamp that Sarnak
had given them. It illumined a circle some twenty feet across, a little
patch of light in the midst of the utter blackness of the depths of the
sea. They sat there talking for a while, then Gerry stretched out on the
sand with one arm hooked around a lump of coral to hold himself in
place. He was thankful that the waters of Venus were always warm. It
would scarcely have been possible to sleep at the bottom of one of
Earth's oceans in this manner, even with the equipment with which Sarnak
had supplied them.
For a while Gerry drowsed. The audiphones of his helmet picked up all
the faint sounds of this watery world. A muffled splash as Angus
McTavish stirred restlessly ... the steady movement as their drowsing
but apparently sleepless dolphins fed on the fields of sea-weed ... an
occasional steady churning as some larger denizen of the deep swam past
above them. Then he slept.
* * * * *
It was well past midnight by the illuminated dial of the waterproof
chronometer that Sarnak had given Gerry when he awoke. Angus was shaking
his shoulder. The light had been put out hours before, and there was no
illumination at all except for an occasional flash of green
phosphoresence where some fish sped by.
"Either I'm an over-grown sponge," the big engineer muttered, "or
there's a light shining through the water off to the west."
Gerry yawned and sat up, instinctively starting to rub his eyes before
his hands bumped against the hard glass surface of his curving helmet.
Some of the bits of coral around them glowed with an eerie green
radiance, and a tall frond of sea-weed had tiny specks of light on the
tips of its constantly waving leaves. Then, far off to the left, Gerry
caught a faint glow.
It was hard to tell what kind of a light it was, so great was the
refraction of the water, but there was something there. It was little
more than a lessening of the deep gloom that otherwise surrounded them
on all sides. Gerry got to his feet and picked up his rubber saddle
which he had been using as a pillow under his helmet.
"We'd better investigate," he said. "Wake Closana."
They saddled their dolphins and rode out at an easy pace, holding the
big fish down with a tight rein. As they rode the glow ahead of them
became more definite. It seemed to come from a long row of twenty or
more lights. Then they were near enough to see each other in the
reflected glow.
"It's some kind of a ship," Gerry said. "Those lights are her port
holes!"
"It's more than that!" snapped Angus. "It's the _Viking_! I know the
lines of her stern anywhere, even in this sunken and God forsaken spot!"
The space-ship lay quietly in the soft mud of this part of the ocean
bottom. All her port holes of transparent duralite were glowing with the
reflected light from inside. The twisted wrecks of her helicopters were
still visible on top of the hull, but otherwise she did not appear to be
damaged.
Gerry was in the middle as the three of them rode their dolphins up
close to one of the big windows of the control room. The ship had
evidently survived the fall into the water, for they could see dim
figures moving about inside.
"I told you that duralite hull could stand a little thing like a fall
into the ocean!" McTavish exulted.
As they crowded their finny steeds close to the glass of the control
room window, Portok the Martian came to peer out. His red-skinned face
went pale as he saw them, and even through the ship's hull their
audiphones picked up his agonized cry.
"Steve! Tanda! I just saw the ghosts of Norton and McTavish looking in
the window!"
Steve Brent came into the control room. He looked haggard and unshaven,
and he was stained with oily grease.
"What are you raving about, Portok?" he snapped.
"It's no raving, Steve!" the little Martian chattered, "I tell you I saw
the three of them. The Chief, and Angus, and the Amazon girl--all riding
on some kind of big fish and peering in that window!"
"You're going crazy!" Steve Brent snapped, but he walked to the window.
His own eyes widened as he saw the strangely clad trio sitting their
mounts outside. Gerry waved violently to him.
"Let us in, you idiot!" he shouted, forgetting that the _Viking_ did not
carry any audiphones that could pick up his words. He heard Steve's
unsteady voice.
"Maybe we're both crazy, Portok, but I think they're really out there.
Open the outer door to the starboard space-lock."
* * * * *
A small door swung open on the starboard side of the _Viking's_ blue and
silver hull. That small compartment had really been designed for
dropping objects into the void of outer space, or for testing the
quality of the atmosphere on any stray planetoids the _Viking_ might
have visited on her journey across the vastness of interplanetary space,
but it would do for a water-lock in this instance.
Gerry and the others dismounted from their dolphins and let the reins
hang. Angus gave his mount a slap on the flank. With a flip of its tail
the big fish wheeled and swam off, and after a second the others
followed it. Gerry led the way into the space-lock and closed the door
behind him. It only took a few seconds for the blast of the _Viking's_
powerful compressed air tanks to blow out the water. Then, as Gerry
unstrapped his helmet and lifted the big glass globe off his head, Steve
Brent opened the inner door and stepped into the space-lock.
"I don't know if I'm crazy or dreaming or what, Chief," he said, "but
I'm damn glad to see you back."
"You're sane enough," Gerry snapped, "it's a long story, so skip it for
the moment. I thought _you_ were done for!"
"Not the _Viking_!" Larry affectionately slapped the laminated duralite
shell of the space-ship. "She can stand more than being dropped in the
drink from a few hundred feet up. Our problem is how to get going again.
We've been able to crawl along the bottom by using minimum power of one
rocket tube and scaring hell out of all the fish, but that's the best
we've been able to do. Now that Angus is back he can take over. What do
you think about the helicopters?"
"I could forge new ones in a week out of that blue metal they have in
Giri-Vaaka," McTavish muttered. "But God knows how we'll ever get hold
of a supply. Anyway, I think I can reverse enough of the gravity plates
to give this craft reserve buoyancy so she'll navigate on the surface
instead of hugging the bottom."
"I never thought of that!" Steve said admiringly. Angus grunted, and
began to strip off his green rubber uniform.
"It takes a Scotsman to show the rest of the Universe how to get out of
a tough spot!"
* * * * *
It was afternoon on the following day when the _Viking's_ long hull
finally broke the surface. She lay in the water like a half submerged
cigar, the yellowish ripples lapping on the curved blue duralite of her
super-structure. The twisted remains of the shattered helicopters were
ugly stumps along the space-ship's sleek back. A single rocket tube
flamed and smoked astern, its blast driving the vessel through the water
at a good pace while her wake smoked and bubbled.
Gerry Norton opened the duralite dome of the upper control room and
stepped out on the wet deck with a few of the others. They were well out
on the great sea, with the green hills of the Giri-Savissa border a low
smear along the horizon to starboard. This was the same lonely sea they
had seen when they first dropped down through the clouds to Venus.
The vast and greenish-yellow waters were broken by scattered islands,
bare bits of rock that were dotted with blue moss. Sea birds swooped
about them. Lofty mountains on a distant shore were capped with snow. In
one or two places a narrow shaft of sunlight struck down through a brief
gap in the canopy of eternal clouds, but otherwise there was only that
subdued and peculiarly golden light in which there moved only a few
oddly shaped birds.
So much had happened since they first saw that lonely sea! It seemed
as though much more than a week had elapsed. Savissa and its Golden
Amazons ... the arrow tipped tower of Rupin-Sang ... the Scaly hordes
of Vaaka and the dread palace of the insane Lansa who had once been an
Earthly officer ... the secret and water-locked halls of Luralla where
The outlaws of Giri dwelt--many scenes went through Gerry Norton's mind.
He seemed to have aged ten years since the day he brought the _Viking_
down through the cloud screen. Well--the immediate problem was to get
some suitable metal to repair the smashed helicopters. The _Viking_
might possibly get up into the air with the power of her rockets alone
if they beached her on a sloping shore with her nose upward, but she
could never come down safely without helicopters.
"I'll hold her on this course a while," Gerry said. "In the morning we
can strike over and try to pick up the frontiers of Savissa."
It was just at dusk that they saw white towers against the sky. They
rose out of the sea as Gerry turned the _Viking's_ blunt nose toward
them--the mighty battlements of a vast city. Closana, who was standing
on deck beside him at the time, rested her hands on the rail and stared
in utter amazement.
"But it isn't possible, Geree!" she gasped, "there isn't any
civilization out there on the islands of the Great Sea!"
"Could it be a mirage?" he suggested. "A reflection of some Savissan
city on the mainland?"
"No." The girl shook her head. "There are no cities of that sort in any
of these lands. Geree--there is something strange here. I do not like
it. There _cannot_ be any city ahead of us there!"
"But there it is!" Gerry said grimly. "We can't all be seeing things.
We'll go closer and get a better look."
It was sunset, the unspectacular Venusian sunset which was simply a
swift lessening of the golden glow from the cloud veiled sky above.
Lights were gleaming from most of the tall buildings of the towering
city as the _Viking_ drove toward it through a quiet sea. Sea birds
swooped low about the ship's wake. The watchers on deck could see the
low shore line of the island on which the city was built. Then they
heard distant bells, pleasant bells that seemed to be chiming a farewell
to the day and a welcome to the night. And then a red light flashed on
top of the tallest building and in an instant the entire city vanished.
* * * * *
One minute the strange city had been clearly visible before them, its
graceful towers agleam with lights as they notched the sky. The next
instant the whole place was gone. There was nothing in sight at all but
a low shoreline. It was as though a thick veil of concealing mist had
been suddenly drawn across between the ship and the city. Only--the air
was clear and without a trace of mist. Gerry walked across to the open
dome of the upper control room.
"Cut rockets!" he snapped. "Get some kind of an anchor overboard. We'll
just stay right here off shore until morning. There's something queer
going on."