“Sonya, come here!”
She had turned. She was coming! I advanced steadily, not running,
walking swiftly, with arms outstretched, menacing the crowd with my
unknown weapon. The throng was stricken motionless with the strangeness
of my aspect. From the staircase, the girls were staring; the guards
were staring, a sea of faces, everywhere staring.
Calmly I advanced, and before me now a lane opened in the crowd. For all
my outward calmness, my heart was pounding. The pulse-motor at my wrist
was throbbing. I had not used my weapon yet. But it would be effective.
“Sonya! Come here! Hurry! Sonya!”
My words, strange of language, awed the crowd further. The men parted
before Sonya’s running figure. She came up panting, white-faced.
“Len!”
“Sonya, you are going to obey me! You understand? You . . .
everyone—obey me.”
She stared. I was speaking swiftly, grimly, imperatively. “You stay at
my side. I’ll want you to translate when I give orders. Was that siren
to announce the king’s death?”
“Yes, he . . . Leonard, what are you doing? That thing in your hand—”
I silenced her. And then, fearing perhaps that she might not follow me,
I gripped her hand, jerked her forward as I ran with rapid strides
toward the crowd of girls at the foot of the stairway.
I think that Sonya believed at that moment that I had lost my reason.
Her face stared up at me with terror in her eyes—a frightened child
beside my bulk, whom I was dragging forward so swiftly that she could
hardly keep her feet.
A few men near us shouted at me, but when I turned ferociously on them,
they ran. Someone threw a missile at me, then another—stones which they
were picking up from the flower beds. One struck my back; and one struck
Sonya.
The crowd was beginning to take courage; a wave of it surged at me.
Struggling men shoving one another, shouted menacingly at me; but the
men in the front rank, shoved forward by the press behind them, were
pushing back, away from me.
Another stone hit me. I stopped short. I did not want to use the Frazier
beam yet—time enough for that.
“Sonya, tell them to stop!” I dropped her hand, stood away from her.
“Tell them that I won’t hurt you! Tell them to stop . . . or I’ll kill
them! All of them!”
The missiles stopped at the first sound of her voice. From the stairway
top a guard was shouting up to one of the old men on the roof; at
Sonya’s voice they both were silent to listen.
I added swiftly, “Sonya, you follow me! I don’t want to drag you! Will
you come?”
“Yes. I . . . I’ll come.”
I took her at her word and ran on. I had overawed an unarmed crowd of
spectators. But the girls were still ahead of me, a thousand or more of
them, jammed near the foot of the great stairway, and a hundred or two
more upon it.
I reached the first of them, with Sonya running fleet as a faun behind
me. The girls, unarmed, scattered to give us room. We dashed through to
the foot of the stairway, began mounting it.
The girls on it made way for me. But, halfway up, I saw above me, three
girls with swords. They stood their ground, and whirled to oppose me.
Others with swords were near them and turned at me also, and above them,
I was aware that the guards were coming down from the top to attack them
from behind.
I stopped, and thrust Sonya in front of me. “You tell your girls to get
out of the way!”
She screamed it.
“Again, Sonya! Tell them to get off the stairway! Fools! Can’t they
understand I’m for them! Get them off here, I tell you! I’ll handle
those guards up there!”
It stung Sonya into action. She shouted my commands, rushed up a few
steps, waving the girls aside. Behind me, they were retreating, clearing
the stairway. Above they stood undecided, with awkwardly brandished
swords, undecided whether to oppose me or to turn to defend themselves
from the guards coming down from above.
Then one girl came, passing me hurriedly along the edge of the broad
steps, then another. Then they all came with a rush.
And presently the stairs above me were empty, up to near the top where
the guards had retreated and now stood with drawn swords gazing down at
me. Empty steps, save for a girl’s white body lying head down in a
crimson pool.
I started slowly up. “Keep behind me, Sonya—careful! You’ll be safe
enough.”
In silence I mounted toward that line of swords. The guards stood a
moment in doubt. Then from the castle roof one of the old men screamed a
command. The guards answered it. With a leap they came surging down the
top steps to rush me.
I raised the Frazier muzzle, pressed its trigger. Its pale-green beam
sprang out through the moonlight. I waved it lightly, and it spread,
painting the oncoming guards with its thin, lurid color.
The first of them fell; his sword clattered; his body came hurtling
down. I swept Sonya aside to avoid it. Another fell, but held to a step,
lying huddled. Two others sank to their hands and knees, stiffened,
awkwardly propped against the steps.
A dozen more were standing frozen of movement, with swords held stiffly
outstretched. And a few retreated woodenly to the top level where they
stood swaying drunkenly, stupidly regarding me, hypnotized by the power
of my will which the Frazier beam had intensified and thrown at them.
I snapped off the beam. Its effect, with my flashing glance to aid it,
would last five minutes or more. Hypnotized in the modern sense, very
much as the ancients claimed they could do it with the eyes alone, and
mysterious passes of the hands, these men here now, to some extent,
would do my bidding. Certainly, they were powerless to move, save as I
might direct them.
I swung on Sonya. “They’re not hurt! Not injured! Tell the crowd; tell
everyone it’s an evidence of power.”
Down in the garden the throng was pouring out the gates in a panic,
hundreds milling at the gates, trying to escape. They quieted somewhat
at the sound of Sonya’s shrill voice.
We mounted past the stricken guards. They moved slightly; they were
recovering. At the top, I stood, and with vehement thoughts commanded
them to move aside. They swayed, moved a few steps, like sleep-walkers.
“Hurry, Sonya! They’re recovering! Tell your girls to stay where they
are, down there! If they move, I’ll strike them as I struck the guards.
Tell them that!”
A lone hand! But I was winning. We came to the front of the balcony
stairway. The guards up there had vanished in fright. I mounted the
steep stairs, with Sonya close under me. Down on the terrace top, the
guards had recovered, but they were too frightened to do anything but
stare up at me.
I reached the balcony, moved to where there was no door behind me, where
I could not be attacked unawares. And I drew Sonya to the balcony rail.
Beneath us in the yellow moonlight the great throng of men, the girls,
and the vanquished guards stood silently gazing up at me.
“Now, Sonya, I’ll talk to them! Tell them I am Leonard Gray, the
Earthman. Remind them that their king is dead; their prince is captured
by a horrible unknown enemy that menaces us all! Tell your girls that
they shall have justice. Tell the men that we are going to rescue our
prince! All of us united, not fighting one another.
“Tell them they have seen a little of my power. I want to use it for
them, for you all, not against you! All of us united to rescue our
prince. And until that is done—Leonard the Earthman is their ruler!”
XII
THE PRISONER IN THE CAVE
Jim had been received by the dying king. For what seemed hours he sat
with Ren in a castle room waiting to be admitted to the royal bedside.
To Jim it was irksome. He was afraid the king would die, afraid
something would go wrong, and we would all be held as prisoners again.
But he finally saw the king. Jim took the oath of allegiance, swore he
would do what he could to rescue the prince.
They started back through the city streets. At this time I was with the
girls on the Island of the Virgins. The moon had just risen.
They were in the main lower street before our house. The moon was still
low at the horizon; its light was cut off by the houses. The street lamp
shone full on the railed flower bed, but close to the buildings, under
the pedestrian levels, the shadows were black. Jim suddenly became aware
of peering green eyes, a black shape that leaped at him. Other shapes,
with great wobbling heads.
A giant shape of human form had knocked Ren down. Another struck Jim,
bore him with its weight to the pavement. His senses faded from a blow
on the head, and blackness, smothered by clanging gongs in his ears as
he lost consciousness.
For a moment, after an interval of what length he never knew, knowledge
that he was still alive came to him. He seemed to remember that a giant
manlike shape with a bullet head had leaped upon him. It had another
head, huge, wobbling like a balloon. But the large head had fallen off
it; the large head lay on the ground, with tiny arms supporting it.
The phantasmagoria of a dream. But Jim’s head was clearing now, just a
little. Something was holding him, and he could feel movement—a
rhythmic jogging. He opened his eyes. A city street was passing. A great
hairy arm was about his middle; he was being carried by something that
walked; being held horizontal, his head, arms and legs dangling.
A giant, brown, hairy shoulder was over him; and above that, the great
bulge of a head—a smooth, dead-white inflated membrane—a head that
bounced and wobbled as the thing strode forward.
A brief consciousness, a vague, dreamlike impression, scarcely strong
enough to make a memory, and Jim’s senses again faded into a black void
of silence.
When Jim came fully to himself he was lying in a glow of yellow
moonlight. Beneath him was a smooth, curving metal surface. His head
ached horribly; a lump was upon it, and there was matted blood in his
hair.
He was sore, bruised all over, but with returning strength he realized
that he was not seriously injured.
He lay a moment, trying to remember what had happened, and the memory
came, distorted and vague. Over him spread the canopy of stars, with a
great yellow moon rising. The curving metal surface beneath him was
gently swaying. Was he on a boat? He was still no more than half
conscious. He murmured, “Ren! Ren!”
“Yes, Jim? Jim, is that you?”
Jim struggled up on one elbow. Ren was sitting hunched beside him.
Ren—alive, seemingly uninjured.
They were on a boat, lying in its bottom, a small, narrow metal boat,
six feet wide perhaps, and perhaps five or six times as long. Its
gunwale curved up two or three feet over Jim’s head. They were lying in
the narrowing of its bow.
Farther astern, in the yellow moonlight, were figures, brown, hairy
bodies—men; or were they giant gorillas? They had small bullet-like
heads, faces flat-nosed, with receding forehead and receding chin, and
two small eyes that blazed green.
Jim very slowly sank back, but in a posture where he could see the
length of the boat. The figures there were not animals; they were men of
brute force and brute intelligence. Four of them, with powerful, hairy
bodies, wide-shouldered, deep-chested, with short, thick legs and very
long arms.
They were clothed in what seemed trunks of animal skin, and a skin
fastened over the bulging chest to one shoulder. And each had a broad,
tightly drawn belt at his waist.
To Jim came the memory of his capture. It was no fantasy, his memory of
a hairy body, with a balloonlike, wobbling head. The four huge heads
were here now, in a group near the center of the boat. Each was about
four feet in diameter. A dead-white membrane, with bulging, distended
veins on a forehead, over a grotesque flat face.
Heads, belonging to these four bodies? Jim realized it was not that.
These were separate living entities, which had been riding astride the
shoulders of the four.
Intelligent, reasoning beings—it seemed monstrous to call them
men—beings which were nearly all brain, just as the others were nearly
all body, heads so distended that they sagged of their own weight.
As he regarded them, Jim became aware that to each of the great heads a
shrunken semblance of body was attached. Two tiny arms, which came out
directly from the sides of the head, and were now turned down, with
hands pressing the boat to give balance.
From the wide, convex face, beneath what might have been a bloated chin,
a shriveled body dangled: a trunk and legs some two feet long. They lay
shriveled beneath the heads. Useless appendage! But all of these
shrunken, dangling bodies were clothed with colored fabric, and upon the
breast of one was an ornate metal ornament.
Jim whispered: “Ren?”
“Yes.”
“What happened?”
“I don’t know. Something struck me. Then somebody, something was
carrying me. Men! I heard their voices. I tried to scream; a hand went
over my mouth. I knew we were captured. I thought—”
“Hush! Not so loud! They’re here . . . with us now.”
“I know. They were talking a while ago. They—hear them now, Jim?”
Low, gutteral voices sounded back there—the brute men. The brains, the
balloon heads, were talking also, low, suave voices in a foreign tongue.
“Jim! Jim, one of these men here in the boat with us—” Ren’s voice held
a quiver of fear. “He’s, Jim, I can receive thoughts now . . . like
Dolores did from a distance. It seemed, just a little while ago, that I
was getting Len’s thoughts. He was triumphant, exulting over something.
But it was gone. Then I—”
“You get the thoughts of someone here in the boat?”
“Yes. I guess so. Someone . . . the thought came to me that he called
himself Talon. I just now got it again. Talon. He’s been studying
thoughts from me. Putting them into my language. He’s doing it now. It’s
very easy for him, studying my thoughts, our words . . . my words to you
now. He can understand them.”
“Hear us now?”
“Yes. Or hear the thought of our words. We can’t escape! Can’t do
anything secretly! He’s laughing at us. He—”
Jim saw one of the heads raise itself up on its hands. Its shriveled
body hung limp, the body with the ornate cross on its breast. The arms
bent, then straightened with a snap; the head bounded a foot or two in
the air, landed again on its hands, and again leaped.
It was hitching itself the length of the boat, its shriveled body
trailing after it. One of the giant, hairy brutes of men moved aside to
let it pass.
Jim whispered, “It’s coming!”
A revulsion of horror swept him—a repugnance to have this great bloated
head come near him. He strove to master the horror. This was a man.
Strange of form, but a living, mortal being. A man—an enemy. Nothing
supernatural, not gruesome, merely strange, an enemy with whom he had to
cope.
Jim sat up abruptly. His shoulder touched Ren’s. From down the boat the
bloated head came hitchingly forward. A few feet from Jim and Ren it
stopped, rested with a slight swaying upon the tiny body hunched under
it.
Jim stared into a huge, convex face: round green eyes, holes, a circular
rim of them, for nostrils, a wide mouth, thin-lipped. The mouth seemed
almost a human feature; it was smiling. A soft, suave voice said,
“I . . . Talon.” And corrected itself, “I mean . . . I am Talon.”
It seemed to Jim in that instant that with those few spoken words the
thing itself had removed most of the horror with which its outward
aspect invested it.
A sense of relief swept over Jim. His tenseness relaxed. He said slowly:
“What do you want of us, Talon?”
“Yes . . . Talon.” His arm had a hand, with a sheaf of broad, flat
fingers. He pointed to the ornament hanging on the chest of his shrunken
body. “Talon . . . leader of my people.” He spoke haltingly, groping
with the unfamiliar words, and carefully, as though to avoid error.
“Called Talon. You . . . lie quiet and soon my words are more. I study.
Lie quiet . . . until I speak again.” He gestured. “Lie quiet, or—”
Another more vehement gesture. It embraced Jim and Ren. Jim understood
the threat. The voice repeated very calmly, “You had better lie down
. . . _now_!”
The eyes seemed leaping pools of green fire.
They sank back. With his elbows slightly raising him, Jim watched the
head of Talon hitching itself to the stern of the boat.
The moon had risen high above the horizon. From where Jim lay he could
see its yellow, horn-shaped disk. That, and a narrow segment of the
star-strewn sky, was all that showed above the gunwales of the boat. The
stars rolled with a lazy swing; the boat was throbbing, propelled
evidently, by some invisible engine, over a calm, rolling sea, and in
the silence Jim could hear the water slipping past the boat’s smooth
sides.
He wondered how far from shore they were? If he and Ren, with a leap,
could plunge overboard, a mad, fool-hardy attempt, of course, but still
he must see where they were, try and plan something.
“Ren?”
“Yes. What is it?”
“Move over a little. I’m going to get behind you and sit up, see where
we are, how far from shore.”
Jim cautiously raised his head. He half expected a command from the rear
of the boat. But none came.
They were on a broad expanse of calm water. The moon made a yellow
shimmering path into which they were heading. Jim sank back. It would
have been folly to have attempted an escape. For a long time he and Ren
lay quiet. An hour, perhaps, or more. The boat sped rapidly on.
Its invisible engine made a hiss, and a line of bubbles rose from its
sides. Jim had noticed them when he sat up; the boat seemed traveling on
a continuous, rising mass of bubbles. There was a queer acrid smell in
the air from the gas of them.
Jim learned later from Talon the details of this boat. It was built of
metal which, with its load, would barely float. Beneath its hull was a
chamber through which the water circulated. A grid of wires was there; a
current heated the wires, decomposed the water into its two component
gases, hydrogen and oxygen.
The bubbles were buoyant. The rising flow of them lifted the boat, so
that in truth it skimmed forward upon the gas bubbles beneath it. The
generation of gases was controlled, so that the boat floated high or low
at will. The engine was similar. The forcible ejection of gases from a
tube extending under water from its stern propelled it forward. The tube
was movable, like a rudder, to give direction.
An hour passed. Then the hairy brutemen who had been sitting quiet got
to their feet, fumbled at the gunwales. An oval metal cover rolled from
beneath the gunwales up like a canopy to enclose the boat overhead.
Jim had taken a last swift look outside, before the arched metal cover
rolled and closed them in. The boat was now making for a sheer wall of
cliff that lay directly ahead.
But in one place, for which they were steering, the cliff dropped sheer,
unbroken into the water. Above the cliff, behind it, a jagged mountain
range stood yellow in the moonlight, tumultuous, naked crags.
The cover closed overhead. A tiny green light winked on. Within the
boat, lurid in the green glow, the four brutemen moved about with swift
activity; the soft voice of Talon was directing them; his great head was
raised on his hands as he followed their movements.
They bolted the metal over, adjusted other mechanisms which now came
into use at the stern. A lessening of the flow of gas from beneath the
hull; the water filled the chamber there. The rear power tube now
pointed downward, to dip the bow. Other tubes, one on each side below
the water line, pointed upward, with powerfully ejected streams of gas.
The bow of the boat dipped; it sank beneath the surface. Jim had no idea
then of the mechanisms, but he knew the boat was under water. One of the
great heads was busily adjusting a mechanism to purify the air they were
breathing. Another was seated at what seemed a mirror; gazing ahead
through the water, steering the boat with his fingers on a row of
buttons which governed the controls.
Another hour. Jim and Ren whispered occasionally. The boat was speeding
uninterruptedly beneath the surface. At last Jim called,
“Talon?”
“Yes. What is it?” the head of Talon answered him.
“Come here. You can talk better now, can’t you?”
Talon evidently was amused at the imperative tone. “Yes. I can talk
better now.”
He came hitching forward; his great face was broken by a grotesque grin.
“What is it?”
“Who are you?” Jim demanded. “What do you want of us? Where are you
taking us?”
Talon was willing to talk. He sat, his fingers toying with the metal
ornament, his head resting against the side of the boat for support. He
and his fellows were of a race which he called the Intellect. They came
from a distant world in the sky, a dark planet, satellite of one of the
remote suns up there.
Five thousand or more of them, adventurous Intelligences like himself,
had built a great ship and come to this foreign world. They had landed
in mountains, a wild, desolate country. Their ship had been destroyed,
irreparably broken in landing. They could not get back.
There were, he explained, in this distant world two distinct races of
beings, those like himself, for countless ages bred to develop the
intellect so that their bodies shriveled and dwindled from disuse, all
their physical powers nearly gone. And another, quite opposite race,
bred for physical strength and power, the brutemen, of slight mental
capacity but powerful of body.
He gestured. “You see four of them? They do our bidding unquestioned.
They supply the body for us; we are the mind.”
“You ride on their shoulders,” said Jim.
Talon’s eyes gleamed. “We more than ride on them.” He showed Jim where
from beneath his head a ropelike sinew depended. “This we fasten upon a
nerve-center of their backs. Their little brain is dulled, unconscious
then of existence. Our brains take command.
“The body is ours, for the time! We can feel its physical power; our
brain animates it. We are one being. One entity when that connection is
made.”
Ren spoke up softly, “Why did you go to that city where you captured us?
Those people there haven’t harmed you. But you captured their prince and
princess.”
The huge face grinned with a look of cunning. “We cannot get back to our
world. We do not like these bleak mountains, these dark caves where we
have been living. We must have a better land, and other people; we want
to establish our own race. And there is little food, here in the
mountains. We began wandering, searching. We brought this one boat with
us from our own world.” He described the workings of the boat, and went
on. “One day I came upon that man and that woman you call prince and
princess. He says he is called Altho. They escaped from me, climbed to a
cliff. But we caught them again finally.”
He paused. Then he added slowly: “The princess is dead now. I did not
want her to die . . . but the prince killed her.”
It brought a shudder to Jim. He said, cautiously, “What are you going to
do now? What do you want of us?”
“I was thinking that if you were important, like Prince Altho, to this
other world, I might offer to release all of you, not kill you, if they
would let us live among them in the city. But I have decided now not to
bother with that. I think, if you annoy us too much, we shall kill you
before we start.”
“Start where?” Ren demanded. His voice was steady.
“Start upon our attack. We brought little with us from our world, a few
devices and scientific supplies; but for all this time since we arrived
we have been manufacturing. It is difficult with so few materials at
hand. But we are nearly ready. When I return now, we will start our last
preparations.”
His voice rose to a sudden grim power, “We have prepared well for this
conquest. It is a beautiful land down there; the women, so many of them
like the princess, are very beautiful. The men, they are not like you
two—they are already afraid of us. Some have seen us wandering near the
cave entrances. They always run in terror.”
His chuckle had a horrible gloating. “They will be easy to kill. A swift
attack upon the city; we are almost ready for it now!”
The boat at last came to the surface; the cover rolled back; the stars
gleamed overhead as before, but the yellow moon had crossed the sky and
was falling to the horizon behind them. Jim saw that they had come to
the surface of a very small lake.
He could see all around its shore, a circular lake of black,
cold-looking water. It lay unrippled, smooth as polished black stone,
unbroken except as the boat’s gas bubbles rose, and by the V-shaped
waves the boat left behind it.
Around the shore was a ring of mountains. Bleak, naked cliffs of rocks
came down sheer to the water; behind them the mountains rose in tumbled,
serrated ranks, naked crags and spires, snow-capped with yellow snow
where the moonlight struck them.
Here in the remote mountain fastness, Talon had established his
stronghold. This was an isolated lake, which a subterranean boat had
been plowing.
At Jim’s elbow, Talon said, “These mountains seem to extend back
endlessly. But I have another base already established on the Warm Sea,
and from there I will make my attack. I have planned well.”
Ahead of them, in one small place the mountains were broken. A narrow
canyon-like valley was open to the water, with a fringe of black-sand
beach. Cave mouths showed along the sloping valley sides. Lights moved.
The mouths of the caves were outlined by a green-white glare from
within.
The boat landed on the black beach. Brute figures crowded around it in
the fading moonlight, sinister giant figures. Huge gruesome heads came
bouncing forward over the sand. Voices sounded. Questions. The voice of
Talon shouted commands.
Half a hundred of the brutemen lifted the boat bodily from the water,
deposited it on the beach. Jim and Ren were carried up the valley, and
into the green glow of a cave mouth. Ren seemed entranced.
Prince Altho faced Jim and Ren in the dimly lighted cave. Talon had left
them. At the cave-mouth, barely beyond sight and hearing around an angle
of its narrow entrance passage, two of the brutemen stood on guard.
Altho’s cave had been his home during most of his captivity. Jim saw it
as a small room of glittering black rock, dimly lighted with pale green
radiance from a ceiling tube from which green-glowing wires depended.
There was a bed of skins, crude stone furniture, a mere slab of rock for
a table, upon which food now lay. Draped skins walled off a corner where
the bed was placed.
Altho could not talk with Jim, but he very soon established that he was
friendly. He was a man about Jim’s height, this prince, but delicate,
almost frail of build. A handsome square-jawed face, had the delicacy of
royalty stamped upon it. A high, white forehead was topped with curly
hair like pale gold.
He smiled and shook his head at Jim’s voluble words. He shook hands with
smiling puzzlement at Jim’s insistence. He seemed to understand Ren’s
condition.
They sat, earnestly trying with gestures and words to make each other
understand. Hours passed. Altho prepared some skins for beds, and
gestured that they should sleep. Ren lay down, but Jim refused.
Another interval. A bruteman came with food. One of the heads, like
Talon, came hitching itself in, looked around, spoke to Altho, and
withdrew.
Jim ate some of the food. He had thought Ren was asleep, but when he
questioned him, Ren sat up at once.
“Jim, what are we going to do?”
Jim was wondering that himself, and wondering also what fate Talon had
in store for them. Abruptly Ren murmured,
“Awhile ago, Jim, I was sure I was getting someone’s thoughts. Not
Talon’s; he’s hiding them from me now. Someone like Len, or Dolores. Or
perhaps it was Sonya.”
Jim’s heart leaped. Something was impending! He sat between them
tensely; his hand touched Altho’s arm; his eyes flashed at Altho with
eager questioning.
Ren murmured, “I’ve got it now, Jim! It’s Sonya! She says, _I am Sonya.
We know you are with Altho. I am getting his thoughts too!_”
A silence. Altho sat cross-legged on the stone floor, as Jim and Ren
were sitting, with the stone slab of table before them; the green glow
of light nearby threw shadows behind them. Altho was sitting with closed
eyes, his hands to his temples. He looked up momentarily; his gaze
rested on Jim and Ren with a new understanding, a new friendship.
Ren murmured, “She’s telling Altho about us. She says, _Hold connection!
I’m telling him . . . he’s telling me_—”
Altho’s lips were moving with his thoughts to Sonya. The girl, over all
this distance, was translating from the universal language of thoughts
for these two strangers at Jim’s elbow.
Ren added, “Altho says to us in his thoughts, Talon had promised not to
kill him; Talon now thinks he will be useful after our city of Kalima is
conquered. But one of Talon’s men—that head who was in here a while
ago—he said they had decided we all three were to die. I’m asking Altho
what he thinks we can do to escape.”
Altho raised his head at the question; his eyes searched Ren’s face. His
lips moved.
“Jim! Jim, she says, _We are coming to try and rescue you! If you or
Altho can direct us . . . we’re coming . . . in the air now._”
Altho was on his feet. He seemed to be warning Sonya back.
“No!” cried Ren. “Altho says no, they must not come! But they’re coming!
Sonya and . . . she doesn’t say who’s coming.”
“What’s that?”
Altho and Jim stiffened. From the entrance passage a figure had emerged,
a giant, hairy bruteman. He stood with swaying, dangling arms, green
eyes blazing in the pale green cave light; a leer on his small flat
face, a black tongue like an animal’s, licking his black lips with
murderous anticipation!
XIII
CROWDED HOURS
“Sonya,” I exclaimed vehemently, “stay beside me! Don’t leave me!”
How I cursed my inability to speak this language during those crowded
hours following the king’s death! At every turn, with every move I was
handicapped, the force of my words lost since I had only a girl for
mouthpiece.
Yet Sonya did well. The crowd in the garden had dispersed; Sonya had led
the girls into cheering me. I had made a speech promising them justice
in their cause, and sent them away, not to the Virgins’ Island, but
peacefully back to the homes they had left. They were glad to go; there
was no government now to force them into a distasteful marriage.
The guards had come before me, at first with an indecision, a
sullenness, but the old men counsellors had swiftly abdicated.
“Tell them, Sonya, I want all their advice; whatever they think should
be done, I will listen.” I strode up and down the huge audience chamber
of the castle, while the old men watched me with whispered, frightened
words among themselves.
There was so much to do! I had made a speech to the men in the garden
before they dispersed. Our prince must be rescued. They had a man of
power and action leading them now.
My words, and perhaps my aspect as I stood up there in the moonlight,
aroused them to enthusiasm. They were men. Courageous. Patriotic. They
had never yet had a real leader. But they had one now.
It stirred me, as I had stirred them, when I heard them cheering.
I summoned the chief of the guards before me, a slim, straight young
fellow with flashing eyes. When I demanded his allegiance—he and all
his fellows’—he swung on his heel to the old men who were ranged along
the side of the room. They nodded timorously, and he turned back and
bowed before me.
“Tell him, Sonya, that I want ten of his men always patrolling the
castle grounds. And others, he can use his judgment as to numbers,
patrolling the city. If there is any sign of disturbance, notify me at
once. I want the people all to go to their homes and stay there.”
There was so much that I did not know! “Sonya, are there any cities
beside Kalima?”
“No,” she said. “Only small villages. And there is the village on the
Virgins’ Island.”
I nodded. “I want messengers sent out, to tell everyone of the change of
government and a warning to beware of the Nameless Horror. It is abroad;
it may appear anywhere. Have the people in the rural districts gather
food and bar their homes, stay indoors. Sonya, who has been in charge of
organizing the army?”
She named him, but it transpired that there had been nothing at all
done, as yet, except a manufacturing of the weapons of war.
“Send him to me,” I ordered. “And the leader of the scientists—he has
been in charge of the manufacturing? I want to see him also.”
Crowded hours! And I could not leave those girls on the Virgins’ Island;
a few of them had remained there with the old women and children. I
ordered them all brought in; ordered such of them as could to return to
their former homes; the others were to be quartered in the castle.
Hours of swift, decisive commands followed. And there was no one in that
busy castle, save possibly Sonya, who realized how I was groping. The
government I had seized—_I_ was the king now—a simple, primative
organization, but to me, so ignorant of its workings, it seemed complex
indeed.
But I was learning. One by one, I had the leaders of its various
departments brought before me, and from each, though they did not
realize it, I learned a little more.
They were all very human. None were very hostile to the virgins; many
now hoped they would be given their way.
All were afraid of the Nameless Horror, but all loved their prince very
dearly. It seemed that I would have no trouble with internal conditions.
Sonya soon realized it. Her voice carried a more commanding ring. Poor
little Sonya! After hours of translating, issuing my commands, running
my errands, she was on the verge of exhaustion. But, as in us all, the
spirit of battle was upon her. An enemy was at our doors, and soon
everyone realized that every command I issued was to make us stronger to
resist that enemy.
It had been well over an hour after my abrupt seizure of the castle,
before I even thought of Alice and Dolores. They were unharmed. Sonya
had kept them away from the castle steps; for half an hour they had been
in the room with me, watching and listening with wide eyes and solemn
faces, a half hour before I saw them. They did not question, but ran to
Sonya and me to be of such help as they could.
Once Alice insisted, “You must rest, Leonard. You can’t keep this up,
you and Sonya.” I had never before seen the light of love for me in her
eyes, but I saw it then!
I had sent the girls into a castle room to sleep. At last I was alone
with food, and a hot stimulating drink, like coffee, before me. I was
seated at a table, in the king’s huge chair. _I_ was the king. Alone
here in my audience room. Through the windows, the falling moon threw a
yellow glow. The time of sleep was nearly over. The city was awakening;
I could hear its voice awakening to the round of daily activity.
My city now! But the thought brought no exultation. This new day would
be dark like the other. If the Nameless Horror were abroad in the
city—Had I not better form an armed street patrol? And keep the people
indoors? I needed more messengers.
The young men from the outlying districts must be ordered in to enroll
with my recruiting staff. Suppose the people outside of Kalima revolted
against me? Would I have to go out and overawe them with the Frazier
beam?
Maxite, the scientist was coming back to talk with me presently. I
thanked God that he at least had learned from Ren my language. So much
to do, and I was so tired!
My head fell to my hands on the table. Alone there at last in the great,
silent room, I fell asleep.
* * * * *
“Why—”
“You’ve been asleep, highness. I did not want to awaken you.”
Maxite sat across the table from me. I aroused myself, rubbing my eyes,
embarrassed at my undignified position. Maxite had evidently been
sitting there a long time, waiting for me to have my sleep out. The
moonlight was gone. The windows were black rectangles, the stars hidden
by dark-gray cloud masses. But the city was awake, its new day now fully
advanced.
Maxite smiled. He was a small, gray-haired man of middle age,
black-robed, with gray ruching at his throat and wrists, and with a
yellow ball ornament dangling from a chain at his neck. He said,
“Others, too, are waiting to have your orders, highness. But we knew you
needed rest.”
At the farther door of the large apartment a group of men and a few
girls were standing. One by one, I saw them. My chief of the guards
reported that the city seemed normal; the Nameless Horror had not
appeared. A messenger from the rural districts along the Warm Sea said
the people were frightened.
They were obeying my orders to stay indoors; but the young men were
demanding that I let them come at once to Kalima, to get from me weapons
with which to defend their families.
Three girls presented themselves, with a petition that the girls be
allowed to join my army. Five hundred names were on it. A fat,
affluent-looking individual, a wealthy land owner he told me, came to
present his claim to immediate marriage to a girl who was now returned
from the Virgins’ Island. I sent him brusquely away.
There was some confusion over the return of the refugees from the
island. Some of the infants could not be returned to their homes; the
mothers were afraid to have them. Some of the virgins lived in the rural
sections; they wanted their parents brought into the city for greater
safety. And some of the old women had not been welcomed home, and had
been brought to the castle.
I did my best to straighten it out. Enlistment in my army had already
begun. I interviewed three trainers of the military animals, for use on
land, in the water, and in the air. The animals were ready. The
mechanical equipment was very nearly complete.
I sent word to the rural districts for all young men to come in and
present themselves to my recruiting officers. And any family that
wished, could come also. I issued a proclamation to the city, that all
homes be prepared here in Kalima to care for at least one family of
refugees, at government expense if necessary.
Expense! My national treasurer was already in despair. I knew almost
nothing of my nation’s finances, but I did not admit it. I would learn,
devise some methods of raising money. Already a dozen ways were
springing to my mind. That fat, middle-aged landowner, for instance, he
and others like him would not be so rich when I got my government
properly operating.
Maxite and I were alone again. “Come,” I said. “I’m ready.”
We had planned that he would show me through the arsenal. I wanted first
to see the small hand weapons. Maxite had told me that we had a room
with a thousand or more electronic needle pipes, a simple hand device
which generations ago had been used for hunting birds.
The army would be equipped with it, Maxite planned. I thought, too, if
it were sufficiently simple, I would send it into the rural districts,
so that each home might be armed for defense.
“I want also,” said Maxite, “to show you our aerial image-finders.”
These, which he had already described, I needed at once. Our enemy—I
still could only call it the Nameless Horror—probably had a base near
Kalima. Prince Altho perhaps was in captivity there; Jim and Ren, if
they were alive, might be there also. This aerial device might enable me
to locate the enemy base.
Maxite and I were descending into the lower floors of the castle. We
passed rooms where the refugees were huddled. Girls had been organized
to care for them. On another, still lower floor, I saw my guard pacing
back and forth through dim stone corridors. We were now below the
terrace level, but higher than the level of the back street.
We descended other floors, came to a narrow dark corridor. This, Maxite
told me, was at the street level of the back castle wall. I remembered
walking along that curving street, at the base of the wall, remembered a
small door there.
“It’s here,” said Maxite.
We stood in a dim blue radiance at the intersection of two corridors.
Ahead lay a floor-opening, where down a flight of curving stone steps
was the entrance to the first of the subterranean arsenal rooms. To the
right, a branching passageway led to the small street gateway.
“A guard is there,” said Maxite, “armed with a fire-flash for
close-range work. He could kill anyone who came near him. Oh Grett!”
He called the guard but there was no answer. His soft voice echoed
between the narrow passage walls. We hastened to the gate door. The
guard was not there! But in the darkness we heard a sound. Maxite’s
hand-wire in its blue tube flung a faint beam around us. On the stone
flagging a figure lay twisting. We had heard the scrape of its movement.
It was the guard, lying there bound and gagged!
XIV
FUGITIVES IN THE STARLIGHT
I had sent Alice, Sonya and Dolores into one of the castle bedrooms.
They were all tired and overwrought with the excitement through which
they had passed. A dream awakened Sonya, after how long an interval she
did not know—several hours undoubtedly. She dreamed she had been
talking with Prince Altho: he was in a cave; Jim and Ren were with him.
For a long time Sonya lay pondering. Then she awakened the other two
girls.
“Listen, I want to go and try and rescue Altho.”
She told them her plan. They could take a small flying platform, with a
few birds. Once away from the city, the distraction of the thought-waves
of all its people, she would be able to communicate with Altho or with
Ren. Communicate with them, find them—rescue them!
A mad, impossible adventure, perhaps, but to the girls it looked
feasible.
“Oh, Alice, oh, Dolores, shall we try it? Leonard will be many days
getting his army together. That is too dangerous, to wait so long.”
Dolores turned to her with shining, tearful eyes. “If I could only get
to Jim, help him to safety.”
Sonya had other plans. She could get weapons, a small weapon, the
electronic needle pipe. She knew where they were kept, and how to use
them.
“I heard Ren discussing it one day with Maxite the scientist. And there
are image-finders stored in the same room. I think I know how to use
them.”
The girls decided to try it. They slipped unobserved from the room.
Sonya found them long, hooded black cloaks. In the darkness, mingled
with the confusion of arriving refugees, they got out of the castle
without being recognized.
“Where are we going?” Dolores whispered. They were all three tense with
excitement. Sonya had turned toward the rear of the castle, into the
dimly lighted street along the base of the wall.
“A gate-door here,” she whispered. “It is guarded by Grett. Quiet! Stand
close beside me, but do not speak. But be ready to do what I say. Soon
we will have the weapons.”
In the castle bedroom, before leaving, Sonya had tom a garment into
long, narrow strips, a staunch, tough fabric. She handed the strips now
to Alice. At the small door in the wall, they paused.
“Keep behind me,” Sonya whispered. “Over there in the shadow. But be
ready.”
The street along here was dark; it was a street little used and at the
moment it was empty. Sonya knocked boldly on the door.
“Grett! Oh, Grett!”
In her own language from within came the muffled question, “Who is
there?”
“It’s Sonya.”
“Yes?”
“Open the door.”
“No. I must not.”
“It’s only Sonya. Don’t you know my voice?”
“Yes. What do you want?”
“I’ve news from Ren. He is . . . oh Grett, you must let me show you.”
There was the sound of dropping metal bars. The doors opened cautiously
a trifle.
Sonya put her hand casually on the door. “It’s only Sonya, Grett. See
here what I have.”
She tugged at the door. The guard was revealed, standing with the
leveled metal pipe in his hand. Sonya touched the weapon. “Turn that
away, Grett. It . . . frightens me!”
There was a low cry, a scuffle. Sonya had snatched the pipe. She leaped
backward, swung it level.
“Don’t move, Grett! Don’t make a sound! If you do I . . . I’ll kill
you!”
“Sonya!”
“I’m desperate! Can’t you see it? Get back in there!” She called softly,
“Alice! Dolores! Here! Come inside, quickly.”
She had backed the frightened, surprised young man into the corridor,
with leveled weapon and crisp menacing words. In the glow of the
passageway’s single light, she held the weapon while Alice and Dolores
bound the man’s legs and arms with the strips of fabric. Sonya gagged
him, and they rolled him along the floor to the wall and left him.
Alice was grim and pale, frightened at what they had done. Dolores was
trembling. “We haven’t hurt him, have we?”
Sonya bent down, loosened the gag a trifle. “No, he’s all right. Lie
quiet, Grett. And when they find you, tell them you’re not to blame.
Sonya tricked you. We may be back by then, anyway, and I’ll take the
blame.”
The girls hurried down the corridor, down the stone steps into the
arsenal room. Sonya had been here once before with her uncle. The place
was dark, but Sonya found a hand-wire and Alice carried it above her
head. Its light glowed dimly blue, in a big room of fearsome shadows.
Overhead they could hear the faint tramp of a guard. Every moment they
expected to be discovered.
Sonya seized one of the electronic needle pipes, and the range apparatus
with which to operate it. And a large metal cylinder in which was packed
a group of image finders and their aerial controls. With their loot
under their cloaks, the girls hastily retreated. At the gate-door they
switched off the corridor light. Sonya murmured, “Good-bye, Grett!”
They closed the gate-door after them. From the outside it appeared
barred. With the cloaks shrouding them they hurried to Sonya’s home.
In a moment they had six birds harnessed to a small platform, and were
in the air.
* * * * *
Within the cave, Altho, Jim and Ren faced the giant murderous intruder.
The bruteman stood licking his lips, an imbecile leer on his face.
There was a brief silence.
Altho spoke soft, soothing words to the hairy giant, and then ripped out
a sharp command. It went unheeded. The bruteman’s dangling hand came up
to his belt. But never reached it.
Jim screamed an exclamation to Ren, and leaped. His body struck the
bruteman full, a solid impact which would have flung Jim back, but the
giant’s huge arm went around him, lifted him like a child. As he went
up, he flung his arms around the thick, hairy neck and clung.
His feet were high in the air as the bruteman straightened with a
savage, surprised cry. He tried to shake Jim off, but Jim clung with one
arm, with the other hand he gouged at the giant’s face.
Altho had leaped. The giant kept his feet, swaying, kicking; he stopped,
and with an upflung arm, dashed Jim’s body away. But Jim was back at him
again, he and Altho, now, clinging, kicking, gouging.
And then Ren. The harrassed giant, fighting with scarce the intelligence
of a man, staggered across the cave with Altho and Jim clawing at him.
Their bodies struck Ren, and scrambling in the dark, he caught a great
hairy leg and wound himself around it.
In the pale-green glow of the cave, the giant bruteman surged about. He
tripped, went down, with the three men pounding on top of him.
Jim shouted, “We’ve got him!”
But the giant was up, shaking them off, first one, then another, tearing
them loose, flinging them back. But always they returned to claw at him.
They fought silently, grimly, but the giant roared.
Harrassed, frightened, Altho had torn his belt away and flung it aside.
The giant stood panting, looking around to see where it had gone. Altho
was gripping his thick middle firmly with both hands; Ren was wound
about his legs.
Jim had been flung away again. He was picking himself up, but he
stopped. He had seen a jagged, metallic projection of the cave-wall. It
seemed loose. Jim tugged at it. The swaying bodies surged past him. He
tugged, worked it loose. It came free; in his hand he held a heavy,
jagged chunk of black metal.
“Ren! Work him over this way! Over here . . . here!”
Jim leaped to the slab of table for greater height. The giant’s back was
to it. Jim could not talk to Altho, and Altho could not see him. But he
could hear Jim’s reiterated call.
The bruteman tried to turn toward the insistent voice, but Altho now
understood and distracted his attention. And Ren at his legs, was
pushing him backward. A step; then another.
They came within reach of the table. Jim leaped into the air. He struck
the giant’s back; his hand went up, and the heavy chunk of metal caught
the bruteman full on the back of the skull.
He toppled, fell, writhing, jerking a moment, then lay still.
They disentangled themselves from him, and stood up. They were all three
bruised and winded. There was a jagged cut on Jim’s forehead; he dashed
the blood from his eyes.
“Let’s get out of here! Now’s the time! Now, or never!”
Altho’s pale face smiled at him questioningly.
Jim gestured. “Out . . . get out of here!” He added, “The belt. What’d
you do with the belt?”
The giant’s weapons. Altho could not understand the words, but Jim saw
the belt. He leaped over the huge, motionless body. Outside the cave an
uproar sounded.
Altho called a warning; he was gesturing vehemently at Jim to come. Jim
seized a small metal object at random from the giant’s belt, an
egg-shaped thing of white metal: a muzzle-projection, a handle and a
trigger.
Lights were moving nearby in the darkness with a confusion of voices.
The second of the giant guards at Altho’s cave had run away in fear. He
was shouting, gathering other guards around him. The huge heads were
bouncing forward over the rocks; calling commands. The brute-bodies were
running to them, each to his master. The heads were mounting.
Jim turned to the right, up the valley. They were momentarily in
darkness, open metallic ground up a rocky slope, stars overhead, lights
and confusion behind them.
They ran. Jim had handed the giant’s weapon to Altho, thinking he would
know better how to use it. They ran swiftly. A tiny light to one side
picked them out, then it vanished. Jim pulled them sidewise to change
their course. Ren stumbled over the rocks as they ran, but they kept him
on his feet.
Jim panted, “A cliff . . . over there! We can climb it . . . or hide.”
Altho glanced back. The lights were rushing on up the valley. The
fugitives were running between jagged, tumbled boulders; Jim thought
they had eluded the pursuit. But suddenly ahead of them, a head rose on
its hands from behind a crag.
Jim jumped for it. He struck it. His fist struck the great face between
its green blazing eyes. The face smashed, cracked like the shell of an
egg. Noisome! His fist sank into a soft pulpy mass. He jerked it free.
The head rolled backward, the arms waving.
“Come on,” Jim shouted. He wiped his fist and arm on his jacket:
noisome, horrible!
“We’re on the ledge, Ren . . . can’t climb out of the valley. It’s too
steep.”
“Are they following us?”
“No. I can see lights going up the valley. Altho seems to want to lie
here, not try to climb higher. If only I could talk to him.”
“I’m trying to get Sonya’s thoughts, Jim.”
They lay on a dark ledge; a fifty foot drop was before them, a sheer
perpendicular wall. They had climbed beside it, where the ground was
broken. Over the ledge, some ten feet above it, was another broader
space with what seemed a cave-mouth behind it. The crags were dim in the
starlight; black gulleys, ravines were everywhere. Below them spread the
valley floor. Lights which marked the pursuit had gone past.
For a time the three fugitives lay quiet. Jim’s mind went back to the
cave from which they had escaped. Two of the brutemen had been on guard.
These brutemen were hardly more than animals, like tigers with a lust
for human blood. One had murderously entered the cave; the other,
listening, had become frightened and decamped, giving the alarm.
Jim whispered impatiently, “Ren, can’t you get any thoughts from Sonya?”
“No. I’m trying. I feel . . . I feel that Altho is getting them.”
It seemed so. Altho was lying with his head down on his hands. Once he
uttered a suppressed exclamation, and then he was murmuring as though to
himself.
“You’re right. He’s getting them,” Jim muttered. “Try again, Ren!”
Abruptly Ren exclaimed, “They’re coming! Sonya, with Dolores and Alice.”
“Do they know where we are?”
“They’re trying to find us. Sonya says they haven’t seen any lights yet
to mark our valley. Altho has been trying to direct them.”
“Well, for a while we’re safe here. They—”
Jim never finished. From down the valley, by the cave-lights of Talon’s
encampment, a ball of fire mounted slowly upward, a tiny, blazing white
ball. It rose in a slow arc, and suddenly burst with a blinding white
glare.
The valley, the crags, the ledge upon which the fugitives lay were all
momentarily brilliantly illumined. Jim saw that beneath them in the
valley a hundred of the mounted heads were gazing upward. And he knew
too, that they had been seen upon the ledge.
A shout arose; a rush of the figures to climb. But a voice, Talon’s
voice, seemed commanding them to stop. Farther down the valley, brutemen
were dragging forward a heavy piece of apparatus, a huge gun-muzzle on
wheels, the muzzle pointed vertically upward.
Jim leaped to his feet. “We’ve got to get higher! Try to get to that
cave overhead.”
But Altho pulled him back. Altho still held the weapon Jim had taken
from the giant. He gestured with it. Jim sank back.
There was something going on down there in the valley. Jim wondered if
the weapon Altho had was of any use at this distance. Altho seemed
absorbed in thought communication. Suddenly from over the cliff-tops
across the valley, a small pink ball of light came sailing, floating out
over the valley in a huge segment of circle, a thousand feet in the air.
A glowing pink ball; a concentrated radiance seeming to whirl upon its
axis, with tiny crescent streamers of light as it whirled. It sailed in
a curve above the valley, growing dimmer, as though burning itself out,
until in a moment it vanished.
Jim stared. But Altho knew what it was. He leaped to his feet.
XV
THE RESCUE
The small flying platform, with the girls prone upon its fur covering,
sailed up from Sonya’s home and over the city. The stars were obscured
by gathering black clouds, a threatening storm, but it did not break.
Sonya headed the birds for the Virgins’ Island.
They passed a thousand feet above it where a barge drawn by swimming sea
animals below was bringing the women and children back to Kalima. Sonya
had only the general direction of where she wanted to go, the length of
the Warm Sea toward the distant mountains and caves. The Nameless Horror
had been seen always in that direction.
The girls lay silent. Sonya was in constant, though sometimes vague
communication with Altho. She knew the captives were in a cave; then she
got the thoughts clearer, and got Ren’s thoughts also. But suddenly all
the thoughts were broken.
The threatening storm passed. The moon was below the horizon. But the
stars came out clear and bright. The girls were calmer now, grim with
purpose. Sonya began connecting their scientific apparatus, explaining
it as well as she could.
The electronic needle pipe was a foot-long metallic pipe with a diameter
the size of a small human finger. It had a large, round-metallic base,
to be operated by two hands.
It projected a very small stream of electrons, which carried with them a
tiny, sharp-pointed fragment of metal, like a needle. The needle flew
with nearly the speed of light, expanding. But when it struck it
solidified.
There was a range finder for aiming, and a device for curving the
electronic stream, so that the beam could be sent to almost any degree
of curvature. In her heart, though she did not confess it even to
herself, Sonya was dubious of her ability to use the weapon.
She knew she could not aim it with any degree of skill. And she did not
know its range. This needle pipe was a very small size projector, with a
range, she thought, effective only a few hundred feet.
The girls were now beyond the Warm Sea, flying over a broken,
mountainous country, black and desolate looking in the starlight.
Altho’s thoughts were with Sonya again. They had never been as clear as
this before. A fight, an escape, a dark ledge with a valley below it.
There were lights in the valley.
But where, in all this dark, mountainous waste, was that valley? Sonya
believed she was flying toward it. She had several times in the last
hour altered the direction of the flight. Altho’s thoughts, a dim
feeling of his approaching nearness, seemed to guide her.
It was very vague, an intuition more than a thought. Altho himself did
not know where he was, but the bond of love between these two was very
strong. Each could feel the other’s approaching presence. He had tried
to warn her away, but when she persisted, he did his best to guide her.
Sonya murmured, “Now he says, _Lights in the valley—you will see the
lights._”
But every desolate valley sweeping beneath them was pale and wan in the
starlight. Then Sonya prepared an image-finder. She connected the
batteries, the projector, and the grid of glowing wires.
Alice and Dolores held the grid between them. Sonya fired the small
projectile. It sailed off, a whirling pink ball. It was in reality a
small, flat disk with a lenslike eye and a whirling, pink, glowing
armature on top.
Over a radius of several miles Sonya’s _raytron_ apparatus could direct
its flight, and back over the invisible connecting ray came an image of
all that the lens eye saw.
The pink ball of light sailed ahead and soon was lost to view. The grid
of wires which Alice and Dolores held glowed pink; then suddenly glared
white. A glare of white showed ahead in the sky. It was the light flare
Talon had sent up to locate the fugitives.
The flare went dark. The grid was pink again. Upon it, etched in black,
was a moving scene: mountains, crags, valleys, moving in slow panorama,
valleys all pale and empty in the starlight. Then one showed dim, moving
lights!
Alice cried, “Sonya . . . lights! We see them now!”
Sonya’s apparatus marked the position of the pink ball. She turned the
birds slightly, to fly after it.
The platform was almost over the valley. Sonya sent out another pink
disk. The girls bent over the grid, staring at the tiny movement image;
a dim, starlit valley. At the bottom of it, a group of busy figures and
a giant projector muzzle pointing vertically upward.
The girls watched the grid breathlessly. Its image, moving with
constantly changing viewpoint, was clearly etched, but dim and very
small: a cliff ledge with three figures upon it. From the ledge suddenly
a small red ring of fire leaped out. It sped downward, struck a rock,
and vanished with a puff.
It was Altho firing the weapon Jim had taken from the giant; in a moment
the still distant girls heard a report, like a tiny clap of thunder, the
sound of the red ring striking the rock. Down in the valley the giant
muzzle of the vertical projector began issuing a stream of green light.
It mounted a hundred feet, sprayed out like a fountain column of water.
From the ground, huge black figures tossed a balloon head into the
column of light. The head rose, surged upward, until at the top it hung
in the light spray, balancing itself like a ball held at the top of a
jet of water.
It was all very swift, a moment or two while the girls stared at the
glowing grid. The head was nearly level with the ledge. In the green
light Altho’s figure showed plainly; he was standing at the ledge,
firing his red rings of flame.
But they were futile now. They floated slowly, and from below, some
hidden marksman was catching each of them with an upflung pencil point
of black light, a narrow beam, so dead black that it showed clearly in
the night. It caught the red fire rings; its rays exploded them
harmlessly in the air.
The grid went dark; the second lens disk had burned out. But the
platform itself now swept over the valley. The reality of the image
scene was spread beneath the girls. Sonya saw the ledge was large enough
to land upon; she guided the birds toward it.
She raised the electronic needle projector, fired it with a futile aim
and then cast it away. There was no time for her to attempt to use it
further. Her birds were swooping for the ledge, and they needed her
guidance. A moment, and they would be there.
But too late! The head in the fountain of green light held something in
his hands. A hum rose over the valley. Altho, standing on the ledge,
suddenly flung up his arms. His weapon fell from him. He toppled, seemed
trying to draw himself backward. But could not.
And then, forward from the ledge his struggling figure floated into the
air. On the ledge, Ren and Jim were frantically clinging to avoid being
drawn after him. The hum rose to a shrill whine.
In what seemed a whirlpool of air, or the levitation of an invisible
magnetic stream, Altho was drawn to the head on the supporting green
light beam. The green light slowly diminished.
The head, with arms holding Altho’s unconscious body, was lowered to the
ground. A voice down there shouted hurried commands. The lights all went
out sharply. In the starlight, Altho’s body was surrounded by dark
surging figures, and dragged away.
The platform swooped to the ledge, landed with a thump.
“Jim! Jim! Are you all right?” It was Dolores’s anxious voice. But Sonya
was cold, shuddering. All her hopes were vanished. She knew that they
could not go down into the dark valley, with all those armed figures
entrenched in the caves. Altho was lost to her.
Jim and Ren rushed to the platform. There was a moment of confused
greeting. Jim never knew how it quite happened, but from the other
ledge, ten feet above them, a head like Talon suddenly leaped down. It
flashed to Jim that the head must all this time have been laboriously
climbing in the darkness. Or perhaps had followed some underground
passage to the cave up there.
Dolores was standing slightly apart from the others. The head seized
her. On the upper ledge a giant bruteman was leaning down; the head
tried to lift Dolores to where the dangling arms of the bruteman could
reach her, arms which would have pulled her and the head both up to the
upper ledge.
It happened so quickly, it was so utterly unexpected, that Jim and the
other two girls were for an instant stricken with surprise. Dolores
screamed. It was the first that they knew of her peril. She called,
“Jim! Jim!”
But Ren was closer. He leaped before Jim, leaped in the dark for the
girl’s terrified voice. He struck the head with his shoulder. His
groping arms tore Dolores away.
There was a spurt of flame from some weapon the head was carrying. It
caught Ren in the chest, drilled him. He fell backward, lay motionless.
But he had saved Dolores from her captor. Jim and Alice had reached her.
The bruteman leaned swiftly down. The head held up one of its small
arms. The bruteman drew his master to the upper ledge, with a jerk as
though he were raising a large, light ball. In the valley they were
trying to raise another beam of the green light.
Jim was carrying Dolores; he threw her to the platform and dragged Ren’s
inert body aboard, with Alice grimly helping him. Sonya screamed at the
birds.
From above, the head was sending down tiny spurts of flame. They struck
the fur coverings with the acrid smell of burning hair. Jim flung the
girls behind him; every moment he expected that the flame jets would
strike him.
It was only an instant, then the platform lifted, sailed away. The ledge
dropped beneath it. The dark, seemingly deserted valley dropped and
merged into the tumbled mountain waste.
The platform struggled on, sailing low. It was the Virgins’ Island now.
The moon was rising again with its flood of yellow radiance. Ahead,
toward Kalima, they saw a blob in the sky.
It was the large flying platform I had hastily equipped and armed,
coming out over the city to seek them.
But Ren was dead.
XVI
DEPARTURE FOR BATTLE
We were ready at last for our attack upon Talon’s forces. The night had
passed, and another long day, and night had come again. Jim’s return,
with what he had to tell us about Talon, was of immeasurable help to me.
I knew now what I was facing.
It was tremendously helpful also in arousing public enthusiasm for the
war. The Nameless Horror was nameless no longer. The people recognized
that a savage enemy was at their threshold, men who would have to be
fought and conquered.
I did not want a large fighting force, but I wanted it well armed and
trained, armed for defense also against what I could guess Talon’s
weapons might be. Jim had seen something of them.
I sent out scouting platforms with the aerial image finders. But they
brought me little information, for presently Talon realized what the
pink balls of radiance in the sky meant. He began destroying them with
his black flash beam.
This was to be a war of weapons, rather than fighting men. With Maxite,
I labored to prepare a defense against Talon’s black flash, and the fire
rings which Altho had used. Evidently Talon was armed chiefly with
weapons of electronic basis. I hoped so, for we could insulate against
them fairly efficiently.
The day had just turned to night when news came that Talon’s forces had
left the mountains and now were encamped at the end of the Warm Sea. It
was what I had hoped he would do. I had no intention of allowing him to
attack Kalima, but I did not want to go up into the mountains after him.
He was evidently ready now, but so was I.
It was a busy time, those last hours. Kalima was jammed with refugees.
All along the shores of the Warm Sea the rural districts were deserted.
I mobilized my men and girls on the castle grounds, and on the estuary
there. The girls had had their way; they were an important unit of my
forces. I could not refuse them, for they speedily demonstrated that in
the air they were far superior to the men.
With Sonya and Maxite, I stood on the Castle terrace watching the last
details of our departure. The night was clear, save for a low bank of
clouds hanging over the sea, with the horn-shaped yellow moon rising
above it.
The castle grounds were crowded with my eight hundred fighting men, two
hundred girls, the land animals, birds and platforms. On the water were
the boats, with sea animals to draw them. I had some four hundred men in
this division—a total force of about fourteen hundred.
A busy scene of moving lights, voices, commands, the fluttering of the
excited birds; behind us, on every housetop, in every window and point
of vantage in the city, a throng of spectators watched.
The last preparations held a myriad details.
“Maxite,” I said, “the platform with the Frazier beam—have them hold it
until last. Then I’ll come down.”
Maxite’s orders went out over the aerial he carried on his shoulder. I
could hear the echo of his voice down there in the garden. I swung the
grid on my chest to catch the rays from an image-finder erected on the
waterfront. Alice and Dolores were down there. I had not wanted them in
this fighting, but they insisted, and I had put them in the division of
boats.
“All ready, Alice?”
She glanced up at the image finder; it stood on a post at the shore
front. On my grid was the image of her figure standing there, with her
insulated suit like a black cone around her, and her helmet in her hand.
“All ready, Leonard.” Her smile was grim, excited, tense, but I could
see no fear in it.
“Be careful, Alice. Keep Dolores with you . . . and obey orders.”
“Yes.” She turned away.
Sonya, standing beside me, laid her hand on my arm. “We’re going to win,
Leonard. And Altho—” She gestured. “I seem always to be getting his
thoughts, Leonard. Again . . . just now.”
We knew that Altho was still alive, that Talon was going to keep Altho
with him. Sonya very often had fragmentary communication. She had seemed
to be getting it a few hours ago, and now, suddenly, we realized what
evidently Altho had been trying to tell her. A messenger rushed up. He
had come from one of our scout platforms.
Talon’s forces had started for Kalima. The brutemen with the heads
mounted upon them were dragging heavy apparatus along the shore road.
And there were rafts on the sea drawn by swimming brutemen. The rafts
were already half way to the Virgins’ Island!
There was no time to be lost. Maxite’s aerial sent his voice to the
seventy men and twenty girls who were equipped to receive it. Each of
them urged his squad to greater haste.
The individual girl flyers rose first. One by one, each mounted upon a
giant bird, they rose from the castle grounds, and began circling in the
air. These girls were not protected against Talon’s electric rays.
It was my plan to keep them very high in the air, beyond what we
estimated was the effective range of Talon’s black flash. They were
armed only with small explosive bombs, but were expert at dropping them
upon a mark.
A hundred and fifty of these mounted girls gathered now in a hovering
group, then in wedge-shape, flew in a wide, slow circle. The birds were
well-trained, capable of flying swiftly to great heights. And the most
agile of the young girls; Sonya had selected them carefully.
This unit was the swiftest, most mobile of my forces. Sonya was to lead
it. She was presently ready, bringing up her great gray bird, with its
rug saddle upon which she would recline on its back between its great
spreading wings.
She was dressed, as were all the girls in the air squadron, in a single
dark flowing garment from shoulder to knee, with her hair bound tightly
in braids around her head. The small metallic bombs were in a belt at
her waist, bombs fitted with a chemical most explosive.
She offered her hand in my own fashion.
“Good-bye,” I said. “And remember, Sonya, keep well up, and listen to my
signals. Do not attack until I order it.”
She leaped upon her mount. It rose over me with dangling legs; the rush
of air from its wings was on my face. In a moment I saw her up there,
taking her place just below the girl at the point of the wedge.
From the garden, the first of the flying platforms rose. There were
three of this size, each with twenty men and some ten girls. Forty birds
were harnessed to each platform: birds in tandem along each side, and
two long strings in front. Four girls were to drive them; the other
girls had bombs, and the men had the smaller range electronic
needle-pipes.
These platforms were fairly swift. They were insulated underneath, with
the shaggy black fabric of woven wire through which the insulating
current circulated. And they had side shields which could be raised; and
dangling, insulating curtains beneath some of the birds.
I stood watching the three platforms as they rose majestically, joined
the mounted girls, and circled with them over the city.
The land forces were starting. Jim was leading this division: eight
hundred men, most of them mounted individually upon the giant _lops_—a
four-footed animal, more like a giant cat than anything I can name;
handsome beasts, larger than an earth-horse, with great claws, a mass of
shaggy red hair, and a tail like a plume of fur.
Each with a rider, they padded through the village streets. Some were
harnessed to our larger projectors, and our wind device, which I planned
to have Jim establish down the shore opposite the Virgins’ Island. With
it, Jim could lash the narrow channel waters to a fury.
The small land force passed into the city and vanished. From the distant
housetops I could see the waving crowd to mark its progress. I turned
away. The boats on the river had started, a fleet of ten long, narrow,
metallic boats, with insulated sides and shields, boats drawn by
sea-like mammals, agile, swift, and intelligent.
There were some forty men and a few girls on each of the boats. A large
long-range needle projector was mounted in the bow, behind the black
screen.
It could throw an electrified, imponderable blade of metal over a curved
path, with almost the speed of light for an effective distance of over a
mile. And these boats had light-flares, wind projectors, and horizontal
bomb projectors.
They sped down the estuary, with the mammals leaping like dolphins in
the water ahead of them; then they stopped, circled, came back, and
waited in a line in midstream. From the city a great shout of enthusiasm
went up at sight of them. On one of them were Alice and Dolores.
Our three other flying platforms were long strings of birds, our
longest-range rising, heavier, smaller platforms, each with weapons—a
giant projector on each of them, with a few men to handle it.
Maxite said, “We’re ready for you, Leonard.” He had dropped, for the
first time, my royal title. We stood, two friends, parting with a
handclasp. His face was very solemn. I think he, too, was thinking of
the homecoming. “I’ll follow you with the finders, Leonard. Keep voice
connection if you can. Perhaps . . . I will see what you might overlook,
and I can advise you.”
I nodded. A simple handclasp. He turned away, to watch our fate from his
room beneath the castle.
My platform with the giant Frazier thought-beam we had constructed, was
ready. I was to operate it alone. I had learned to fly its six birds. I
clasped my black, cone-shaped robe about me. My black helmet dangled
like a hood behind my shoulders.
I ran down the castle stairway. From the city a roar of enthusiasm went
up. I turned and waved a hand.
Departure for battle! The people expected a martial gesture, and I gave
it to them. But within me was a shudder.
I leaped on the black platform. It was no more than six feet wide and
twice as long, crowded with the projector, the batteries and
intensifiers, and much other scientific apparatus.
I gripped the reins, shouted to the six birds whom I had trained to know
my voice and respond to my commands.
My platform rose over the castle grounds. Around me, the girls and the
other platforms circled. Down in the estuary the ten black boats were
starting in a double line. Out beyond the city, on the road toward the
sea, a thin black line showed in the yellow moon glow—Jim’s land
division. The city beneath me was a frantic, waving mass of humanity.
I shouted through my aerial. The girls and the platforms broke their
circle and started forward. With my platform leading them, we swept in a
great arc over the city, and away into the moonlit sky.
XVII
THE BATTLE
The Warm Sea was a body of water some one hundred miles long by ten
miles wide at most places. It lay in a bowl-like depression of rolling
country. Bays and caves indented its shores in some places; in others
cliffs came sheer to the water.
Kalima lay at what I might term its southern end. The sea broadened here
into a sheet of water nearly twenty miles wide, which I had learned to
call Kalima Bay. To the north it narrowed. The Virgins’ Island divided
it, with a narrow channel on each side, beyond which it opened again.
To the left along the west side of the sea, the road from Kalima wound
northward. The west channel of the Virgins’ Island was very narrow—two
thousand feet at the utmost—but it was deep, with a sandy strip of
beach on the mainland, a bluff of fifty feet, with the road on top. It
was along the west side that Talon’s land forces were coming. And on the
same road from Kalima Jim’s force was marching to oppose them.
Our water division of ten boats headed into the center of Kalima Bay,
and there I halted them. They lay drawn in a black ring on the placid
water. To one side of me, the squadron of girls flew now in a circle at
about the threshold foot level. The platforms hovered near them.
Along the shore I could see the slow-moving line of Jim’s army, crawling
like a black snake over the winding, moonlit road. I had hoped that the
head of it would be approaching the bluff near the west channel of the
Virgins’ Island. But it was not that far as yet.
I spoke into my aerial. “Make it faster, Jim!” The image of him showed
his smiling face. Good old Jim, always smiling. “Right,” he said.
From this height there was no sign of Talon. Behind me, from Kalima,
Maxite had sent out an aerial image-finder. Its pink whirling ball came
sailing past me overhead.
I sat enshrouded in my black insulated suit. I switched the current into
it; I could hear the current hum; smell its faint acrid odor. The
apparatus of the Frazier projector was already assembled. The
pulse-motor was on my wrist; the head-band I now adjusted on my
forehead. I made all the connections, but I did not turn on the current.
Before me were my smaller instruments. A bank of image-grids was lashed
here; voice receivers were at my ears, my speaker aerial was on my
shoulder. I caught the rays from the image lens mounted in Maxite’s
castle room. I tuned into it, saw his pale, intent face, heard his grave
voice.
“No sign of Talon, Leonard?”
“No. I’m holding the girls and the boats ready. I’ll go higher
myself—your lens just passed me.”
“Yes. But it shows nothing yet.”
“I’ll send one beyond it.”
“Good luck, Leonard.”