Lolan, the Martian Sub-Commander, had no
choice. He sorrowed for Princess Mora's beaten,
X-ray starved subjects. But when the desperate
Venusians raised their empty fists, duty
commanded him to cut loose his force-bolts.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Spring 1940.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Lolan's pen made the only sound in the stuffy barracks room. The words
took shape reluctantly beneath the official army letterhead, even as
his mind had fought against framing them. He sat alone at his desk, the
open window behind him crowding in the dank heat of a Venusian summer
night. The collar of his ornate, iridite-crusted uniform was open, but
a dark ring of perspiration stained its top.
Lolan laid the pen down and looked at what he had written. His
violet-gray eyes became stony. This letter might mean demotion to the
ranks, or even court-martial, but the things in him had festered there
too long.
"Herewith I tender my resignation as Sub-Commander of the Martian Army
of Occupation on the planet Venus," he read. "If it is the wish of the
Council-Royal, I desire immediate transfer to some post on Mars. I can
no longer blind my conscience to the brutal treatment Venusians are
receiving at the hands of us, their conquerors.
"When I accepted this post two years ago, I understood that, under
Commander Arzt, I would be endeavoring to control a savage, half-wild
people scarcely more intelligent than beasts. I found them gentle,
intelligent, cheerful, demanding only the treatment we accord our
slaves at home. But do they receive it? No! We dole them food not fit
for swine. We work them fifteen hours a day in their own iridite
mines, in the sulphur holes, at whatever other work is beneath a
Martian soldier. Their population has been reduced twenty percent
during the twenty years since Mars conquered them. Disease is
prevalent in their poorer quarters--little better than the 'improved'
sections--to such an extent that few officers ever venture into these
pestilential streets except to put down an occasional uprising.
"Because I feel that to continue in this post would demean--"
Lolan scowled at the unfinished sentence. He went to the window and
stood staring out, his eyes not seeing the low clouds brushing the
barracks roofs, nor the jagged tracery of lights a half-mile below,
where Areeba sprawled in miserable squalor over the foothills. Before
him was the vision of a girl's sober face--the face of a Venusian,
high-caste woman. Princess Mora ... princess only in name, but beloved
of her people--and of Lolan.
But for her, that letter would have been written and handed in a year
ago. But somehow the young Martian could not leave Venus while she and
her father, old ex-Emperor Atarkus, were still here and under continual
threat of death. There could never be any more intimate relation
between them than that of master and slave--yet Lolan kept a forlorn
flame of hope guttering in his heart.
There were two good reasons why he was a fool to let Mora be a factor
in his staying on Venus. In the first place, inter-marriage was
strictly forbidden by Arzt, high commander of the army. Second--and
more important to Lolan--biology entered in. Years ago, a few Martian
soldiers had taken native wives, with tragic results. Although the two
races were almost alike in appearance, except for the deeper coloring
of the invaders, the children resulting from such unions were ugly,
half-witted little monsters. Fortunately, none of them lived for more
than a few years.
Lolan's lean young features hardened. Why fight it any longer? He
couldn't have Mora, couldn't help her people without being a traitor to
his own race. With an oath he pivoted from the window.
It was then that he saw the indicator on his tele-screen flashing
angrily. Quick strides carried him there, a flip of the thumb made the
silver screen a window to the outside world. The brutal face of Irak,
Captain of the Secret Service, took shape.
"--repeating:" came the tail end of his announcement. "Two minutes ago
the house in which Ars Lugo is hiding was entered by two persons. I am
in an upstairs room across the street. I could not be sure of their
identity, but I believe we are on the verge of breaking the secret of
the recent revolution rumors. Haste is imperative if we are to trap
them together...."
Excitement tingled through Lolan. Ars Lugo, a condemned revolutionary
lately escaped from the Sulphur Holes, had contacted friends. Arzt had
been right in deliberately letting him escape and tracking him to a
hideout. "Rotten meat draws flies quickly," was his way of putting it.
Now the flies had been drawn. But an unknown terror kept Lolan from
even guessing at their identities--swiftly he hurried from the room as
somewhere the officers' alarm began chiming.
A small, silent gravity-repulsion ship set eight men in the uniform of
high Martian officers down a few blocks from the slum in which Captain
Irak was tensely waiting for them. Lolan emerged with set face. Around
him on the flat roof of the building where they had landed were grouped
the others.
The voice of Arzt came harshly through the quiet. He was a short,
immensely powerful man, with reddish features stamped with the cast of
brutality. There was a slovenliness to him, a brutal arrogance that was
betrayed by every ugly twist of his mouth as he spoke.
"Lolan, you'll give the order," he snapped. "These filthy
revolutionists won't be looking for trouble if you handle it right.
We'll have them before they know what's happened. I told you Ars Lugo
would get in touch with his cronies as soon as he thought he wasn't
being watched. Come on!"
They left the ship on the roof and groped down an outside stairway
to the narrow street. A light fog hung yellowish in the streets. For
a moment after their feet touched the slimy cobblestones, the eight
Martians huddled together by a single impulse--revulsion at the
sordidness of the lower-class quarter.
Sickly gleams kindled on their uniforms where stray beams from dingy
windows found them. The stench of rotting offal insulted their
nostrils, mingled with the musty, revolting odors peculiar to the south
side of Areeba, principal city of Venus. A place of drunken, tottering
buildings and vice and sickness that festered like a raw sore, the
south side was the abode of the diseased, the degenerate, the lawless.
With a muttered curse, Lolan swung down the street. It didn't have to
be like this. It was commanders like Arzt who let the Venusians suffer
for their own enrichment. Inwardly, a resolution was taking possession
of the young officer that this was his last duty on Venus. Tomorrow ...
his letter of resignation would be handed in.
* * * * *
In a dark alley across the street from a crumbling, one-story hovel, he
slipped into the shadows. His eyes were riveted to the yellow cracks of
light opposite him, where bolted shutters guarded some furtive scene
within that house. Then he was moving swiftly backwards as two forms
reeled from the fog. His eyes narrowed to careful slits that raked the
pair.
They had not seen him, nor, apparently, the other hidden Martians they
had just passed. Their bellies were so full of cheap Martian _gyla_
that all they could see was the heaving stones under their feet.
Lolan's slim, dark fingers fell from the _sadon_ pistol at his side.
The fog swallowed the derelicts.
Ragged nerves leaping, Lolan strode across the street, knocked softly
at the door. Frightened gasps found their way through the portal.
Someone gruffed:
"Who is it? What do you want?"
Lolan pressed his lips against a crack in the door. "Lugo--you've got
to get out! They know you're here! I heard two of them talking. Let me
in, will you! I can't stand here shouting."
A bolt scraped in its bed and the door inched back the width of a man's
black eye. From both sides of Lolan, burly, powerful shapes lunged at
the door. The man behind it cried out a single shrill warning as he was
hurled to the floor.
Six Martian officers clanked inside. Arzt loomed up with Captain Irak,
gripped Lolan's arm. "Good work!" he grunted. "Now we'll have these
dirty Venusian rebels where we want them, eh?"
Hard-jawed, Lolan made no answer but strode in. One glimpse of the
room's interior sent shock through his vitals like a sword. A single,
whispered word parted his bloodless lips: "Mora!"
The girl across the room glanced at him in hurt surprise. Quickly
she looked away. She stood erect and pale under the soldiers' eager
glances. She was tall, for a Venusian, with slim, strong limbs and
golden hair lying soft about her shoulders. Her garments were of the
roughest cloth, but dignity and courage were in the flash of her eyes
and the spots of color in her cheeks.
During those first moments Lolan was conscious only of a growing ache
in his throat. He wanted to ask Mora and her father, standing there
beside her, why they had come here, since they knew it meant death to
consort with revolutionists. But he sensed that their kind of courage
would laugh at the question. In Lolan's breast, a cold, dead thing had
taken the place of his heart.
The ex-emperor stood fierce and tall, a shaggy-headed man of
sixty-five. He was a living skeleton dressed in hanging garments. Most
of the life in him seemed to be concentrated in his blazing eyes. There
was force in his countenance, but his voice came in the cracked accents
of an old man.
"What's the meaning of this? Can't a man and his daughter call on their
friends without being watched like criminals?"
Arzt swaggered close, his stubby legs moving stiffly. "Not when they'd
like to see a revolution as much as you two!" he taunted. "You admit
conspiracy with this rebel?"
Ars Lugo stood between two hulking officers, scowling at the Commander.
"Conspiracy!" he spat. "Don't hang that crime on them. I was out of
food and money and knew they could help me a little. I sent for them."
Arzt smashed a thick palm across the man's face. Contempt twisted his
ill-formed features. He jerked a thumb at the well-like hole, guarded
by a low rim, in a far corner, where refuse was thrown in such cheap
hovels as this. "Another of your filthy lies and you'll go down the
sewer. In the underground rivers you'll have plenty of time to think up
better ones. Now, you two--" He grinned wickedly at Mora and Atarkus.
"There's a little matter of a map I've heard rumors of. Who's got
it--one of you, or Lugo?"
"You talk like a fool!" raged Atarkus. "We've got no map, you vile
butcher."
Arzt's struggle for self-control was evident in the working of his jaw
muscles. Presently he relaxed. He drew on his feeble powers of sarcasm.
"The matter has been brought to my attention," he purred gutturally,
"that one of your esteemed countrymen, a garbage-boy in the barracks,
has been making a map of the buildings. I had the extremely painful
duty--painful to him--of cutting his body here and there and pouring in
burning sulphur; but the lad would not talk. But since he carried no
papers, I judge he passed them on earlier. Now, you bag of bones--" he
roared suddenly, "where is that map?"
"You are screaming into the wrong hole to get an echo," Mora replied
coldly. "We know nothing."
"Nothing, eh?" A small knife flashed into Arzt's fingers. He caught
Atarkus in a vicious hug and placed the blade just under his ear. "Then
remember it, before your father strangles on his own blood!"
Lolan stiffened, his hand dropping to the _sadon_ pistol. The weapon
was halfway out of its holster when a new voice intruded obsequiously.
"Commander--I wouldn't do that!"