"Yes. There is no time for further explanation now, though. You must
get into hiding immediately. For tonight begins the vengeance we have
so long waited. Until happier days, then, my friends--"
The voice dimmed with the final words. An electric tenseness left the
air, and somehow the assembled listeners knew their visitor had gone.
Neil Hardesty shook himself.
"Goodbye, Dirk, and ... good luck!"
Then, to his companions, "Well ... that's all. Now we know what to
expect. Come on ... let's get going! There's a lot of work ahead of us,
as well as Morris."
* * * * *
Already back on the fair soil of Nadron, Dirk Morris had retraced his
wanderings to the home of the Ptan Slador. He approached its "doorway,"
marveling again--as he had when first the Ptan revealed the entrance to
his domicile--at the ease with which the portal merged itself into the
surrounding landscape.
Homes on Nadron, Dirk had learned, were _underground_! That was why
the eye beheld nothing but the beauties of nature when the horizon
was scanned. The functions of living were carried on in cleverly
constructed subterranean dwelling-places, leaving the entire surface of
the planet a playground for the pastoral race.
The Ptan was awaiting his return, eager curiosity in his eyes. He
looked up as Morris entered.
"Well, my friend?" he asked.
Dirk smiled grimly.
"Very!" he replied. "It has been a day Graed Garroway will long
remember ... if I give him a chance to do so."
"Your plans were successful?"
"Perfectly. I assisted one of my erstwhile comrades in the destruction
of a vital munitions storehouse, robbed a tax collector of his monies
and the Emperor's own daughter of her jewels, and distributed these
where they were needed most ... amongst the poverty-ridden families
of the capital." Morris chuckled. "There will be more surprised faces
tomorrow when those poor devils wake to find themselves richer by a
king's ransom than when they sought their pallets."
"Still," said Slador thoughtfully, "you have really accomplished
little. It would take a thousand men as many years to redistribute the
tribute Garroway's army has exacted from the people of your homeland--"
"That is true. But this is only a beginning; a few, minor incidents
created to strike fear and awe into Garroway's hirelings. Later, I
will strike at more vital spots. And as for men ... there will be not
thousands, but millions, to rally when Garroway's force begins to
weaken."
Slador nodded.
"Yes, that I believe. It is the history of mankind. Ever there have
been millions to arise when oppression grows unbearable."
A remembered question stirred in Dirk's mind; something which had
vaguely puzzled him in his previous conversations with the Nadronian.
He asked, "How is it, Ptan Slador, you know so much about the history
of Earthmen? And how, even more strangely, does it come about that you
of Nadron and we of Earth are identical in physical structure? Man's
space-vessels have flamed to the farthermost planets of our sun, but
nowhere else was ever found a life-form similar to that on our own
Earth.
"The Venusians resemble us, but are taller by many feet, heavier,
slower of wit. The Plutonians again look like us ... save for the fact
that their skins are green. Yet you, not only removed from our Solar
Galaxy, but from our very ken of knowledge, might be a brother of my
own."
The Ptan smiled slowly.
"And so, in fact, I am, Dirk Morris."
"What?"
"A brother many times and many centuries removed. Tell me ... have you
never heard of the land of Aztlan?"
"Azt--?" Dirk pondered, shook his head. "No. I'm afraid I have not,
Slador. Where was it ... or is it?"
"It was," answered the older man, "an island in the ocean you Earthmen
now call the 'Atlantic' The very ocean takes its name from our
once-great nation--"
"Aztlan!" ejaculated Morris. "Atlantis! Of course! Now I remember. It
is a myth ... a fable ... of an island which sank beneath the waves
countless centuries ago! But surely, sir, you don't mean--?"
* * * * *
"I mean," Slador assured him gravely, "that legend is no fable, but
veritable truth. Yes, my son, there _was_ such an island ... and we of
Nadron were once the rulers of that island, and of your world.
"Its ancientness is not measured in centuries, but in millennia.
How long we descendants of the Atlanteans have lived on Nadron, our
archives do not tell. Those who fled hither from the holocaust that
deluged our former home could not bring with them the impedimenta
of a cultured civilization. We had to fight our way upward from
semi-barbarism to our present state of living ... and even yet we have
not regained all the lost lore of Aztlan."
Dirk said humbly, "Great must have been the wisdom of your forebears to
be able to transfer themselves from a sinking island to this place. I
understand, now, your interest in Earth. It is more than just sympathy
for us ... it is a natural love for a land which once was yours."
"Yes," said the Ptan. "A land which once we ruled, and now have lost
forever. But enough of this, my son. You were telling me of your
adventures--?"
"Yes," said Dirk, remembering. "There was one thing happened which I do
not understand. In the boudoir of the Princess Lenore, Ptan Slador, I
was _visible_ for a few seconds! Why was that?"
Slador stared at him in astonishment.
"Visible! Impossible!"
"That's what I thought. But it is true, sir. I saw my own image in the
Princess' mirror--"
"Mirror! Ah!" exclaimed the Ptan. "Now I begin to understand. This
mirror ... it was not plain, silvered glass? It was, perhaps, quartz?"
"Possibly," admitted Dirk. "I would not know about such things, sir."
"Undoubtedly," mused his advisor, "it _must_ have been a rock-quartz
mirror. That is the only Earthly substance of dual isotopic form. Its
converse refractions hold and trap not only the normal vibrations of
your system, but harmonic vibrations as well. Surely your scientists
know this. Many hundreds of years ago, I know they experimented with
the use of quartz substances in both light and sound transmission.
"But we are not so interested now in causes as in results. Do you think
the Princess saw you in this mirror?"
"I ... I am afraid so," confessed Dirk. "It was her astonishment that
attracted my gaze to the glass. Of course, I shattered the mirror
instantly. But too late to keep her from seeing--"
"If, of course," interrupted a cool voice, "she was not as bemused as
yourself."
"Eh?" Dirk spun, flushing in swift embarrassment as his eyes met those
of Slador's daughter. Rima's lips were lifted in a light smile which,
oddly, was not altogether of amusement. "Oh, you mean ... then, you ...
you saw?"
"You do let business interfere with pleasure, do you, Dirk Morris?"
laughed the girl. "Yes, I am sorry, but I must confess to having
been an innocent witness to your ... momentary digression. It was
inexcusable of me, I know, but I was so interested in your endeavors
that I turned on the visor to follow your adventures, and--"
"Rima," blurted Dirk, "you must believe me ... it was nothing. I mean,
the Princess means nothing to me. I--"
He stopped, his embarrassment heightening with his color as he realized
how any attempt at explanation merely made an already awkward situation
worse. It suddenly mattered to him terribly that Rima should have
watched that impulsive episode between himself and the Emperor's
daughter. He had no right, he knew, to think of Rima as other than
a girl who had befriended him on an alien world ... but somehow he
already did. At first sight of her, a new meaning had entered into his
life.
It did not soothe him that Rima turned away his explanation with a
laughing shrug.
"Oh, but do not misunderstand me, Dirk Morris. It does not concern _me_
in the least how you amuse yourself in your lighter moments. And your
other exploits were, I must acknowledge, thrilling to watch ... in a
somewhat different way."
Dirk said miserably, "Please! It was an impulse ... one I regretted
immediately. The Princess Lenore means nothing to me ... nothing. I
shall never lay eyes on her again in my life...."
V
In that one statement, Morris was mistaken. He made it in all good
faith, but its truth was a matter over which he was not to have full
control.
Two weeks passed. Two weeks filled with excitement and adventure. Two
weeks during which Dirk Morris made good his pledge to the assembled
brothers of the Group, now safely in hiding.
During that fortnight the Galactic Ghost ... as soon he became known
to the whispering citizenry of Earth ... struck again, again, and yet
again at the wide-flung forces of Black Garroway. Some of these blows
were of a minor nature: the theft of hoarded gold, and the subsequent
reappearance, as if by magic, of that gold where starving folk could
lay eager hands on it; the mysterious disappearance of the Emperor's
armored unicar scant moments before Garroway was to make an impressive
"personal appearance" before the populace of the capital city; the
inexplicable vanishment of a secret formula wherewith the Overlord's
military experts hoped to subdue the gallant little guerrilla army
which still held a salient against Garroway's might on the planetoid
Iris.
Other occurrences were more violent ... the kind that not even a
ruthlessly controlled press can keep from public knowledge. The
shocking demolition of the Overlord's strongest Asiatic fortress at
Chuen-tzwan, keypoint from which his troops dominated all of what had
once been Southern China. At six-fifteen in an evening, according
to testimony given by the commanding officer at the subsequent
investigation, from out of nowhere had appeared a placard, advising the
entire garrison to withdraw immediately from the fortress, advising its
component members, moreover, to rebel against Garroway. This ultimatum
had teeth in it. Midnight was set as the deadline for obedience.
When at midnight the garrison was still abristle with an aroused and
suspicious force of armed men, from a dozen key points had broken out
instantaneous fires. "Only a member of the Imperial High Command,"
testified the wretched officer, "could have known where to set those
fires. Each was at a vitally strategic place: near a munitions bin, a
water supply depot, or a warehouse of inflammables. We were helpless.
In an hour the entire fortress was doomed. I was lucky to save a tenth
of my men."
He was not so fortunate in facing Garroway's wrath. The ex-commanding
officer was put to death, along with every other ranking officer of the
destroyed battalion.
This summary execution seemed bootless, though, when a day or so later
a similar flame destroyed the spaceport wherein was cradled one quarter
of the Emperor's fleet. It was revealed by those who escaped this
debacle that it had been impossible to salvage a single one of the
spacecraft. "They were not merely attacked with fire from without," one
official avowed. "Each vessel was found to have been tampered with by
someone of the crew. The hypos were smashed as if with sledges, vital
running parts were broken or stolen. We were helpless!"
Helpless ... helpless ... helpless! There were excuses Garroway heard
often, far too often, during the next weeks. It was a word he learned
to hate fiercely, because it was so true. In quick succession he saw
fall his outpost in Lower Africa, the well-fortified city of Buenos
Aires, the central armaments depot on Lake Huron. And each time the
apologies were the same. "We saw no one ... heard no one ... until it
was too late."
* * * * *
Meanwhile, trouble had reared its head challengingly in the capital
city itself. Here, as elsewhere, a frightened populace began by asking,
"Why?" and rapidly changed its query to the more daring, "Why not?"
Rumor, despite Garroway's every attempt to still it, ran like
quicksilver through the city. If the press was silent on a new
disaster, a common man or woman walking the streets might hear at
his elbow a mysterious Voice asking, "_Did you know that last night
the fortress at Toulon fell? The city is freed of the Emperor's
rule; already the people have declared their independence, set up a
provisional government. You can do the same. The hour is near!_"
Or a child, playing with his little companions on the streets, would
suddenly stop and look about him strangely, listen as to an unseen
speaker ... then run home to his parents with the inexplicable words of
a Voice: "_Yesterday the Territory of Mexico threw off the Overlord's
bonds. In a short while you may do the same. Prepare!_"
Or an unwimpled nun, praying in the sanctuary of a forbidden
cloister--Black Garroway had long since outlawed the Church--might hear
the vengeful, whispered tones of an unecclesiastic visitant: "_On Timor
the Cross is worshipped openly since the Overlord's force has been
broken. Here it will soon be the same. Spread the word!_"
Thus the message was passed from person to person, and through a
citizenry for decades apathetic to its own plight a new sense of hope
and courage pulsed. Garroway's warriors sought in vain the refuge of
the Group, upon the heads of whose members the Emperor had long since
placed a tremendous price. But any common man who felt the urge to add
his contribution to the rising tide of revolt could find that refuge
with ease ... for at his work, or by his side, or in the heart of a
crowd would be a Voice to tell him its location.
So grew revolt like a tropic vine, reaching out new tentacles with
every rising dawn, developing new strength with every failure of
Garroway's heretofore supposedly invulnerable war machine, gathering
new converts with every fresh disaster. And the mute whisperings of
fearful people began to thrum with a new and heady tone ... the spirit
of daring, the renascense of the flame of liberty. The voice of the
people ... which is the will of God.
Graed Garroway heard the bruitings of this voice, and was afraid.
* * * * *
Graed Garroway, whose boast had ever been he feared no man, heard the
slow, insistent voice of revolt closing in about him ... and was afraid.
For the first time in his brutal career he had met an enemy he could
not crush with ruthless blows, destroy by force, obliterate with a
flick of the hand. His armies had fallen twice ... thrice ... a dozen
times before a phantom, a will-o'-the-wisp that struck and fled,
leaving terror, awe, and desolation in its wake.
He was baffled and confused, was Black Garroway. A terror was upon him
that he could neither escape nor admit, for his confession of this fear
to his commanders might be the last thing needed to send them, too,
fleeing from his banner.
There was but one living soul to whom he dared admit this fear. That
was his own flesh and blood, the Princess Lenore. Yet even to her
he would not make an open avowal. His admission came in the form of
blustering attack.
"Cowards!" he stormed, pacing the floor of his daughter's boudoir.
"Snivelling cowards ... the lot of them! All this nonsense about a
Voice ... a ghost that destroys strong forts ... a phantom that passes
unscathed through flame ... _pah!_ It's lies, lies ... nothing but
lies!"
Princess Lenore studied her father lazily. She was not of the type
easily stirred to fear. Under other circumstances, born the daughter
of a lesser man than Black Garroway, Lenore Garroway might have
made a name for herself in the world. As an adventuress ... a
fighting-woman ... a daring woman.