IN THE DARK CORRIDOR.
“All ready, Arturo?”
“Yes.”
I shouted at him: “Stop that!”
He picked up one of the small metal chairs and flung it at me. I
ducked. The thing was heavy, and crashed against the bed with a violent
clang. I ran at him.
He whispered, “Easy, Jeff--you’re strong.” We wrestled. I flung him
to the floor of the cell; the table overturned, clanging with metal
against metal like a gong. We lay, listening.
“Think they’ll hear us?”
“Yes.” I had previously noticed sounds coming down the ventilator from
above; occasionally the faint blended murmur of voices as though from a
room overhead. “Better keep it up,” I whispered. “They may be able to
see us.”
We rolled, fighting and shouting. In his zeal Arturo turned me over
and was sitting on me. We presently heard the sound of our cell door
opening; I twisted free, flung him away and leaped to my feet. In the
doorway three gray women stood; Arturo lay writhing.
[Illustration: _The cell door opened and several Gian women stood
there._]
“What--you do--what you doing?” One of the women came in. A woman tall,
but shorter than Rhana. She wore a similar shield, and a cloak of
brown. She was jeweled.
I was panting, but alert. The chance might come any time. This woman
did not seem armed. The two in the doorway stood keenly watching me.
They were all garbed the same; they seemed rather more like high-born
attendants upon Rhana, than guards.
I said, “He is a fool--I don’t want to be here with him.” My gaze was
contemptuous. The other two women had come into the cell. Out of the
tail of my eyes I surveyed them. Seemingly unarmed. I could make a run
for it. Arturo was alert. Lying groveling, but tense to spring up at my
signal.
Abruptly I relaxed. Men were in the corridor outside. A group of them.
I could see weapons in their dangling hands.
“Take me out of here,” I demanded. “He sickens me--he is a fool--I will
kill him if I stay here.”
The woman deliberated. I fancied I saw admiration for me in her eyes.
She said:
“You must not fight--bad.”
As though we were children! Arturo was up on one elbow.
“I don’t like him--I don’t like this room. Take me to another--” He
gestured overhead. “Up there--this has no air down here--”
If she would do it! I added, “He can come with me--it is the air
here--I won’t fight--we’re both hungry--”
The woman rasped out a sudden command. Two men came into the room.
They were about the woman’s height; stocky fellows, with bullet heads
of close-clipped black hair. Guards, evidently, garbed in gleaming
suits of metal cloth, wearing bands about their foreheads with gleaming
jewels. In their hands, and hanging against their chests were weapons;
a curving, knifelike blade; small girds and projectors.
The woman spoke imperiously to them. She said to me: “We take you--”
Arturo was on his feet, his eyes searching me.
“And him?” I demanded.
“He stay here.”
Disappointment flooded Arturo; I flashed him a warning glance.
“But he is hungry,” I pleaded.
“I send food.”
One of the men pulled at me, but I pushed him off. “I want him to come
with me--”
The woman leaped. Her hands went to my shoulders; her dark eyes blazed
at me; unreasoning anger in them--she might have done anything--ordered
me killed without stopping to think of it. “You talk much. Go!”
With a last look at Arturo, I turned and let them lead me out.
We followed the dim vaulted corridor. The women went ahead with their
catlike tread. There were two men beside me; others in front and
behind. We passed other vaulted doorways. A turn up a small incline;
over a dark interior bridge of metal. It spanned a black void;
overhead, the vaulted metal roof was within touch of my hand. Into
another larger corridor; this one brighter.
I was alert trying to remember the turns--I would have to get back here
some way to Arturo. Or persuade Rhana to bring him up.
* * * * *
The interior of the building seemed enormous. We turned other
corners evidently into another wing; ascended another incline. It
was surprisingly long and steep. I realized Arturo’s cell must be
underground. We came to an upper hallway. I saw a room with barred
windows that seemingly opened to the garden. There were lights out
there now. We advanced through a room thronged with Gians, men and
women. They made way for us; the babble of their voices hushed, and
they stared at my towering figure curiously. We crossed the room. A
wide door opened.
I was in the presence of Rhana. She sat at a table. It was littered
with flexible sheets--metal, perhaps--like paper, with strange writing
upon them. Women sat around her. Men, garbed in vivid clothes of bright
colors, were in the room, most of them standing. A man to whom Rhana
had been speaking, made an obsequious gesture and hastened from the
room. Two other men and a woman came forward to report to her.
There was an air of hurried activity. That outside room with its
waiting, excited throng; here, in this inner private apartment, Rhana
with her close subordinates, directing the departure. There were broad
windows through which I could see the lighted garden; Gians out there,
moving about with apparatus; a large aërocar was there, being loaded.
Departure for battle. I did not need to be told it was that. It was
plainly to be seen.
They stood me before Rhana. I met her gaze, with a level frown of my
own. My heart was pounding. These windows were larger, and unbarred.
The ground was no more than twenty feet below. I remembered my vaulting
over the garden palisade. I could leap from one of these windows and
not be hurt. Or, there was a staircase here in the room, leading to the
roof.
Rhana was saying: “So? You make a disturbance? How do you dare?”
“I’m hungry. I want to be fed.”
Some of these men were armed. There were too many here now. If I could
wait here until they went away.
Rhana looked at the women beside her, as though to see what they
thought of me. She was smiling with faint amusement.
“You want food--now?”
“Yes.” I added boldly: “And here. I want it here with you.”
She said something about me to the other women. They nodded, smiled and
regarded me with a new interest--as though I were a precocious child,
to be admired and tolerated.
“Here with me?”
“Yes.”
A man was near me, standing by an empty chair. I shoved him out of the
way, and sat down, as though I were a willful child. But there was
something else in the expressions of these women. I was a man; it was
to them a new masculinity, instinctively to be admired. The Gian man
shrank from my frowning aspect. Rhana said:
“So? You are very bad--but interesting. You shall be fed here, if you
do not annoy me.”
“I’ll sit over there.” Another empty chair, much nearer one of the
windows. But these women were not fools. Rhana gestured sharply. Two
armed men--they looked like beribboned popinjays in their bright gaudy
costumes--moved quickly over between me and the window.
Rhana went back to her work. I sat there perhaps an hour. Food and
drink came to me. I tasted it cautiously. But I was famished, and glad
of the strength it would give me. Strange things--but I ate and drank
with relish.
* * * * *
The activity of the room went on. I could not understand anything that
was said. The garden was active--every appearance of bustling, feverish
haste. The aëro--a gray thing a hundred feet in length--was loaded
and got away. Another, empty, came sailing down to take its place.
Gians were arriving. Men and women; and there were children. Food;
apparatus--all loaded on the arriving and departing aëros. A line of
marching gray men assembled, and were loaded on an aërocar. It left.
I saw not a single Middge. But down in the city I could hear occasional
cries. Once, a throng of Gian families--carrying children and household
goods--came up from the city escorted by soldiers. There had been a
disturbance a moment before; I imagine a mob of the Middge may have
assailed them. Rhana issued angry commands, and several messengers
dashed away.
A stream of couriers constantly arrived with what seemed reports from
distant localities. Rhana and the other women consulted over them.
The room at last began quieting. There was a lull in the garden. I
wondered if my chance had come. But I was constantly being closely
watched. There were three of these popinjays near me now. Each had a
small black weapon in his hand; they never took their eyes off me.
Rhana at last stood up. Her command cleared the room of its waiting
people. The women at the table went up the steps to the roof and
vanished. I was alone with Rhana, save for my three men guards. They
were still beside me, alert as ever.
She gestured. “Come over here--sit by me. I am tired now. It will amuse
me to talk with you.”
The guards moved over with me. I sat by her. She began questioning me
about my world. The size and the extent of the surface up there. She
said nothing of her plans--nor asked me anything personal of myself.
They seemed idle questions; generalities. I told her as well as I
could, things about our civilization. Our mode of life. Things at
random as they occurred to me. But I kept clear of anything which might
be of military value to her.
She listened with an eager, absorbed interest. Once, when I paused, she
said:
“You talk always of men. Your men must be very strange. Your friend
they call Tad, spoke of them the same--men like women--”
I laughed. “Not like women.”
“I mean, born to command. To leadership, like women.”
I said: “Ours is a man-made world. But we realize, we men are what our
mothers make us. There are things in life more important to women then
trying to run the world.”
She raised her heavy eyebrows. “You think so?”
“Yes. Things only women can do. The best of our women think so, too.”
She said decisively: “It is not so here.” It amused her. “A world run
by men! How absurd it must be!”
I could read her thoughts. She was going to war against men; she felt
it a very simple thing.
She added: “You, Geoffry Grant, do not like women born to command?”
She said it with a smile, but there was an edge under it; a tigress’s
claws lying within the soft paws.
I parried cautiously: “Did I say that? We have had women who were
queens and empresses. Women who stood alone at the head of nations.”
“So? And they ruled well?”
“Some did. Some did not.”
She purred: “You do not like commanding women--like me?” She was toying
with one of her dangling ornaments. I could have said I liked Nereid
somewhat better, but I did not. I retorted:
“I am only a man. You embarrass me.”
* * * * *
She seemed annoyed at herself. At her weakness perhaps, for asking a
man’s opinion. She said: “You are a fool. Conceited because you are big
and strong. I will show you--”
She stood up quietly. “Sit still, Geoffry Grant.” The chains on her
wrists were looped up around her arms to be out of the way. She began
unfastening them.
I think it was her intention to flog me. I had been all this time
surreptitiously watching my three guards. If I could get one of them
near me--snatch his weapon. Or by a sudden rush knock them down--
Rhana unloosed the chains. “I will show you!” Her eyes were abruptly
blazing with anger at me. A sound behind made her look around. A man
blundered into the room through the farther doorway. He had seemingly
come in not realizing where he was. A Gian from another city perhaps.
Her anger turned on him. She leaped at him. My guards rushed for me;
one stood with a weapon pressed against me. I remained docile.
The Gian man groveled as the chain struck him. She lashed; and with
his cries of pain her rage burst into a fury ungovernable. He lay
insensible and bleeding when she had finished. Other men appeared. They
carried him away. She wound the chains around her sleek gray arms; came
back to me. She was breathing hard, but the fire had gone from her
eyes. Her voice was perfectly composed.
“A stupid man, Geoffry Grant, to come in here like that. He will not do
it again.”
“No,” I murmured. “Doubtless not.”
My guards had relaxed. They were standing away, but still within
reach of me if I leaped. I was tense. Rhana sat down. She began to
talk. I scarcely heard her. I was planning how to fight my way out of
here. My thoughts ran swiftly, no more than half coherent. Down to
Arturo--fighting my way. But that was impossible. I would be caught and
killed. But the flood-gates, off there in that distant cavern, must
be closed. That was my purpose. Far above my own life, or Arturo’s. I
could get out of here perhaps, with a rush for one of those windows.
I was answering Rhana mechanically. I would have to leave Arturo, but I
could come back for him. These Gians would depart and leave him there
to die. Tad and I would come back and release him.
Thoughts are swift-flying things. They flooded me; yet it was all but a
moment. Tad. It seemed abruptly that something asked me, “_Where is
Arturo?_”
My own thought? No, it was not that. Something else--Tad, or Nereid.
I felt the presence of them both, their thoughts, something of them
here--imploring me, “_Where is Arturo?_”
I had felt like this, that night in New York. I stirred restlessly in
my chair.
“Yes,” I said to Rhana. “I think so.” What had she asked me? I could
not remember. I was recalling the route I had taken up from Arturo’s
underground cell. And something replied, soundlessly in my mind,
“_Oh, yes, I know._”
Like a thought from Tad, or Nereid. But now it was more than that.
Something of them tangibly here. Rhana felt it. She, too, moved
uneasily in her chair.
She abruptly stopped what she was saying to me. And added tensely: “You
feel it? What is it?”
* * * * *
There was almost fear in her voice--the fear of the gruesome, the
uncanny, the unknown. Her hand moved along the table edge. The
illumination of the room abruptly vanished; darkness enshrouded us.
I could see nothing. Then, just the outlines of the windows with the
lights of the garden behind them. In the silence I thought I could
hear Rhana’s breathing. I could sense her near me; and the guards.
Make a run for it now! But I could barely see in this darkness; and I
remembered that these Gians could see comfortably.
The three guards and Rhana? But there was something else here.
Something not to be seen, scarce to be felt. The presence of something.
It drove from my mind all thought of escape. I sat stiff, straining my
vision in the darkness.
Something here, moving soundlessly. Something touched me! Brushed me
gently. I shrank; my chair slid on the metallic floor with a grind. One
of my guards, even now alert, moved over and held me firmly. Rhana’s
voice said softly:
“Did you see anything? Something is here. No, it is gone.”
She illumined the room. It was so soft a light it did not bother my
eyes, even after the blank darkness. But I realized that for a moment
now it might dazzle the sensitive eyes of Rhana and these three men.
Her hand was shading her face. The man holding me had an arm against
his eyes. My chance had come. I stood up suddenly; knocked his weapon
from his hand, and my other fist caught him in the face. He fell
without a cry at my feet.
Rhana shouted. I whirled away from her; launched myself at the other
two men who stood blinking in confusion. My body struck them full.
Under my weight they went down. One of their weapons was discharged--a
soundless stab of radiance. It missed me.
In my rush I stumbled over one of the falling men. I went down with
him. He was far smaller, lighter than I, and his body seemed queerly,
unnaturally fragile. My fist cracked against his shoulder; broke it.
I caught his wrist. Gruesomely it snapped with my twist. I held his
weapon when I rose, a small, heavy thing of metal. But I did not know
how to fire it. I thrust it under the shirt of my suit.
Rhana stood by the table; she made no move. The third man whom I had
flung down was up on one elbow. I saw his leveled weapon and leaped
aside. He was evidently hurt. He twisted around, but before he could
aim again, I seized a heavy metal chair and hurled it. He lay still,
with the chair partly on him.
The way was open. I ran for the nearest window. A black metal grating
slid up in it; barring it. I turned away; ran for another. I was
confused now. Like an animal, caged, rushing one way and another and
finding always bars. The uproar was bringing people to the room. Men
and women were running in.
I dashed at another window. But the bars came up before I got there.
And another. Two men and a woman were in my way. I scattered them. Some
one fired at me. I felt the tingle of the flash, but it missed.
From the table Rhana was working a mechanism controlling the bars. The
windows were all closed now; a grating closed the roof doorway at the
head of the stairs. People were up there vainly trying to get in.
* * * * *
The place was in confusion. Shouts everywhere. They had spread to the
garden; a gathering throng out there.
It was all a confusion of impressions to me. I made a dash at Rhana;
decided against it; turned and ran the other way. There seemed perhaps
twenty people in the room. Every instant I expected to be hit by that
stabbing flash. The main doorway was still open, and men were coming
in. I rushed at them and they scattered. There was another flash, which
stung my shoulder. A woman was leaping at me, swishing a chain; the
shot caught her and she went down. There was no more firing after that.
In the doorway I was engulfed by half a dozen men who rushed me
at Rhana’s vehement command. I went through them; waded, kicking,
twisting, heaving them off, flinging them bodily away.
I found myself in the entry room. The people in it scattered before me.
There were several flashes, but I was untouched. I went through the
room with a rush to find myself in a dark corridor. There was pursuit
behind me; I could hear the shouts. I ducked into a long, empty, dim
room, and went down its length at a full run. All its windows were
barred. One of the gratings slid up as I got there.
Rhana was back at her table, I knew, barring every exit of the castle.
I ran on, through doorways, always dark corridors--an endless maze. I
was wholly lost. Occasionally I encountered a Gian, but none could stop
me.
I found myself going down an incline; over a bridge up near a vaulted
ceiling. It was familiar. I stopped; panting for breath I stood in the
blackness clinging to the rail. An abyss was below me. I had shaken
off my followers. I was alone here. In the silence I heard what seemed
murmuring water far under me.
Familiar. I had crossed this interior bridge, or one very like it, on
the way up from Arturo’s cell. I thought I could find my way back there
now.
With recovered breath I started. Cautiously--now that I had escaped
pursuit, I wanted to avoid any one again finding me. Get down to
Arturo; if I could open his door from the corridor side, together we
would find some way out of this place.
I moved along. Over the bridge. It was darker here now than when I had
been brought up. I felt my way along the stone passage.
I rounded a corner. There was a small dim light. The passage was empty;
but I ran squarely into something solid--something invisible. It
gripped me.