She said impulsively, “No. But in the underground rooms of the castle,
the science weapons are stored. Once we get control of them—” She
checked herself, but she had told me what I wanted to know. An arsenal
under the castle! The weapons of a half-forgotten science of this
decadent race, stored there!
I shuddered at the visions which surged to my imagination. Here in the
city—a government menaced by crusading girls! This was our condition,
pitiable indeed, to oppose a savage, outside enemy!
Yet what was I to do? I pondered it until a vague possibility came to
me. It gripped me. It seemed feasible. I believed I could accomplish it.
With swiftness of action, power, dominance, I could carry it through. A
grim exaltation was upon me. A man, to play a man’s part.
We landed with a swoop upon the moonlit garden sward. The girls crowded
around us, with a fringe of curious, apathetic men behind them. Sonya
turned to speak to Alice and Dolores. Near by was a dark path between
beds of giant flowers. I slipped from the platform. With my cloak held
before my face, I avoided the girls and plunged into the shadows of the
flowered path.
The path was dark, cut off from the moonlight by a great bed of flowers
rising high above my head. A group of men came toward me; I stepped
between the flower stalks, stood enshrouded in my cloak, my figure
merging with the shadows, until the men had passed.
I caught a near glimpse of them. Young men, stalwart fellows, no doubt,
according to the standards of their race. But not one of them was taller
than my shoulder, and beside me, they were frail, delicate of build.
In a weaponless fight, I could doubtless have engaged two or three of
them, and come off the victor.
The path turned into a dim street that encircled the rear of the castle,
into the arsenal through some postern gate along here. The arsenal was
within this curving wall of stone. I passed such a gate now, a small
narrow opening, half the height of my upright body. But it was blocked
solidly with a metal door which I could see no way of opening.
I passed on, heading back through the city to the house in which we had
been held since our arrival. Behind that house, with a viaduct
connecting them, was the laboratory room in which we had arrived. Our
space-vehicle was there. I could not operate the vehicle, but it held a
weapon I wanted.
I remembered that Jim had brought it. In the excitement of our arrival,
the strangeness of everything, we had forgotten it, the Frazier beam,
brought out by an Aberdeen physicist in 1994.
I had left the castle behind me, and turned, somewhat dubiously, into
another street. I was sure if I could get to Sonya’s house, where so
recently we had been, I could retrace my way from there. I had planned
this while on the flying platform as we circled over the castle. I had
been able then to locate Sonya’s home, and to gauge the lay of the
streets in between. I turned another corner. The street was brighter.
Another corner. I saw and recognized Sonya’s house. From there, my way
was sure. Within twenty minutes after leaving the castle grounds, I was
groping in the darkness back of the house where Dr. Weatherby’s body
lay.
It was near here that the Nameless Horrors had caught Jim and Ren. But I
saw no signs of them now. The viaduct connecting the two buildings was a
dark thin line against the stars. The building I was hoping to enter was
wholly dark. A two-story structure: the viaduct extended from its upper
floor.
I prowled around. The lower window openings were all barred. The door
oval was barred. A stairway led up from the ground to the viaduct. From
the viaduct’s platform I saw a cornice, too high for a normal man to
reach. But I leaped for it, pulled myself up upon the dome-shaped roof
of a turret.
A leap from here and I was upon the main flat roof. There should be a
door under a mound cover; most of the buildings had them. I located it,
wrenched at its bar. It yielded. I went down a curving metal ladder,
into the house.
In a moment I had located the laboratory room. Our vehicle in its full
normal size lay here, dead white, an end of it tinged yellow by a shaft
of moonlight.
I stepped within it, went to Jim’s cupboard, lighting a tiny battery
light overhead. The Frazier weapon I sought was here. Its _copite_ cone,
with smooth glistening bone handle, _copite_ headband, the tiny pulse
motor, the wires; it was all complete.
A triumph swept me. I was unarmed no longer. Playing a lone hand, here
in this strange world, a man, comparatively of giant strength and
physical power. But I was more than that now. I had a mental weapon, and
the mental strength to use it.
I did not stop to adjust the apparatus. I wound it up in its wire, and
hastily retreated. I reached the street, with the weapon under my cloak.
I hurried back to the castle over the same route; I did not want to
chance losing my way.
But as I advanced, I had more than memory of the streets to guide me.
From the direction of the castle, a blur of cries was audible, a hum, a
murmur, which as I progressed resolved itself into shouts. The shouting
of a mob: heavy, angry voices of men, shrill cries of girls, a single,
long, agonized scream of a girl.
I was on a lower street that fronted the water. A side entrance to the
castle grounds was before me. Through the trees I could see the frowning
turreted walls of the castle. I stopped to adjust my weapon.
It took no more than a moment. Around my forehead, with hat discarded, I
bound the headband, a narrow strip of finely woven _copite_ wire, with
two small electrodes pressing my temples.
On the right side two finely drawn silk-insulated wires dangled from the
headband to my neck. I tucked them under my shirt, over my shoulder,
down my right arm to my wrist. A band at my wrist, to which the wires
were attached, held the tiny pulse-motor in place. My heart set it in
motion, to generate the necessary current.
The Frazier projector was a _copite_ cone, this one some ten inches
long; its shape was a cone section, one end, the muzzle, with an open
diameter of six inches, the other end, one-fifth inch, across which the
diaphragm was fitted.
The bone handle screwed into place at the diaphragm. It was hollow.
Within it were amplifying tubes and a transformer, miracles of
smallness. The whole projector weighed some twenty Troy ounces. I
plugged the two connecting wires from my wristband to its butt, gripped
the handle with my index finger along its side, resting on the trigger
button.
I was ready! My heart was racing. The tiny motor at my wrist was racing.
I could feel the hum of the current, the prickling of it under the
forehead band, its tiny stabbing throb at the electrodes pressing my
temples. There was power within me.
I had flung off my cloak. I stood in the white silk shirt, dark, short,
tight trousers, and high, heavy black stockings of my earth costume,
stood with outflung arms for an instant and exulted in the wave of
triumph which swept me. Against the people the power of my weapon would
be invincible.
Furtive no longer, I advanced with bold, open strides to the gate of the
castle grounds. A few men were there, evidently about to enter. They
stared at me. Before the strangeness of my aspect, the boldness of my
flashing glance, they quailed, cried with fear and scattered before me.
I did not heed them. Beyond the gate, back from the water there was a
rise of ground. I mounted it, and from the thicket of flowers that
ornamented its top, gazed out at the moonlit scene.
Between the mound on which I stood, and the foot of the broad staircase
leading up the broad terrace to the castle entrance, a throng of men
were standing.
Spectators, standing idle. Occasionally a group of them would surge
forward in one direction or the other, milling about some individual who
seemed abruptly determined upon a course of action. A mob without a
leader. Excited, aimless, striving for points of vantage to see what was
taking place in front.
The girls were massed at the foot of the castle steps. Evidently, just
before I arrived, the girls had tried to mount them. The guards were
gathered in a group on top. Half way down, a girl’s body was lying. It
writhed, rolled down the steps. From the crowd of men a murmur rose.
The scene was clear in the yellow moon-glow. The throng of girls at the
staircase bottom, were gathering their leaders, preparing again to
mount. The tense guards on top seemed confused, not knowing how to deal
with this unarmed attack.
On the castle balcony, at the head of the steep metal stairway, a few
other guards were standing. And on the rooftop, I could make out the
doddering figures of old men, gazing down in confused terror.
There was, momentarily, a pause over the scene: a silence, expectant.
But abruptly the hush was broken by a shrill, electrical whine. It rose
in pitch to a scream, a siren from the castle battlements. It screamed
for a moment, then abruptly was stilled.
I wondered what it meant. The crowd was stricken breathless. But for an
instant only. Then it broke into a roar of shouting.
The king had died!
I did not know it at the time, but I suspected it. On the rooftop, the
old men were waving their arms; one of them seemed trying to talk to the
throng. But his voice was lost in the din.
As though the siren had been a signal, the girls began swarming up the
staircase, unarmed girls—unarmed save for the shining armor of their
virginity and the desperation of their purpose. I stood watching; it was
necessary for me to know with what arms the guards were equipped.
Some fifty young men, they stood in a group at the head of the
staircase. The girls came up in a throng. I saw then that each of the
guards seemed armed only with a long, curved knife, like a scimitar,
incased in a black metal sheath.
Some drew these knives, waved the naked blades. But the girls were
beyond intimidation. They came surging—a hundred of them in the first
rank, with other hundreds pressing from below. The guards met them
halfway down, a confusion of white figures with the black forms of the
guards struggling in their midst.
A man with twenty girls around him. He did not want to use his naked
sword. It was torn from him, the girls tearing at him savagely. He went
down; the white forms swept over him. A girl who had secured his sword
waved it with shrill cries.
Another guard, more desperate, was using his sheathed weapon as a club.
He had cleared a space around him. A girl leaped; the club struck her
head. She fell limp. But he too, was soon overwhelmed.
The girls presently were near the staircase top; the guards remaining
there were standing now, all with naked swords. I could not doubt but
that they would be driven to use them. The girls momentarily had paused,
a dozen steps below them.
Many now were armed with swords they had taken. The blades were waving.
A score of girls with the swords, pushed their way to the upper rank,
gathered for concerted, frenzied action. Then, with a rush, started up
the empty intervening steps.
I had been standing on that hillock, enshrouded by the flowers. I had
wanted to be sure beyond a doubt, how the guards were armed, and had
hoped vainly that I might locate Sonya. And a fear had struck me for
Alice and Dolores. Where were they in all this turmoil?
I thought I saw Sonya now, her white-limbed figure, with the dark,
high-necked smock. She was creeping alone up the steep bank of the
terrace beside the staircase, trying, no doubt, to attain the top
unnoticed, and thus to surprise the guards from behind.
My time had come. I stepped from the shadows of the flowers into a broad
patch of moonlight. From the hillock here, I knew my figure would be
visible from all parts of the scene. I stood, drawn to full height, with
arms outstretched. And called with all my voice,
“Sonya! Sonya!”
The fighting did not stop, but the nearer men of the crowd turned and
saw me. A murmur went up.
“Sonya! Sonya! Sonya!”
I kept repeating it. The murmur spread; rose to a shouting, shouts of
wonderment, awe, and then fear. I strove to hold my voice to dominate
the noise.
“Sonya! Sonya! Sonya!”
The faces were turning my way. The shouting near me died into a
frightened silence. The men were milling about, with a surge away from
me. Over on the stairs I saw that the girls had paused in their attack.
“Sonya! Sonya! Sonya!”
She had turned, was staring at me. I waved my arms.
“Sonya! I am Leonard; come here!”