A SLAVE ON VENUS.
Robert Ellsmore Grandon, ex-clubman, ex-idler, ex-social lion, was
awakened from a sound sleep by a shaft of brilliant sunlight which
shone through the mica-paneled window of the quarry-slaves' sleeping
quarters. He blinked, turned uneasily, then sat up and stretched
himself. To his surprise he felt numerous twinges of pain as he did
so. His muscles appeared stiff and bruised and his back smarted and
burned. He noticed that his sole articles of apparel consisted of a
scarlet breech-cloth and a pair of sandals of strange design. His skin
was browned, as if by constant exposure to the sun, and his hands were
rough and calloused. His face was covered with a thick, black beard,
and his hair was matted and unkempt.
He rose stiffly and walked to the window. The brilliance and size of
the sun, visible for a moment through a rift in the clouds, astonished
him. Never had he seen that orb appear so large. Then the explanation
dawned on him, Venus was only three-fourths as far from the sun as was
the Earth. Naturally the sun would appear larger as one approached it.
Here was incontrovertible evidence that he was indeed on the planet
Venus. He stared quickly about him, in eager curiosity.
Grandon had hoped for a clear view of a Zarovian landscape, but he was
disappointed, for in front of his window there stretched a solid wall
of black marble cliffs. The only visible vegetation consisted of a few
pink toadstool-like growths which grew from niches in the rock. They
were far larger than any he had ever seen, some of them being over
twelve feet in height.
He turned and glanced at his roommates. Fifty men were quartered in the
sleeping shed, which was built of black marble, thatched with the broad
leaves of a species of tree-fern which reminded him of imaginative
pictures of prehistoric swamps.
The bedding consisted of a coarse, dried moss, which made an
exceptionally resilient couch, but would undoubtedly have caused
considerable discomfort to one not accustomed to it, because of the
scratchy stems which protruded here and there. The men, who were
attired like Grandon, with the exception that their breechclouts were
gray instead of scarlet, seemed to be thoroughly enjoying their morning
sleep. Their skins were sunburned like his own, and marked with scars
and open wounds that mutely attested the brutality of their drivers.
Grandon was startled by a hollow booming sound, and some one on the
outside opened a large door at the center of the shed. Instantly every
man sprang to his feet, and he saw that they were forming in single
file to march through the door. He joined the procession, which was
heading for a large building in the midst of a group of sheds similar
to the one he had occupied, and saw that the sound emanated from a
large cylinder of iron suspended from a steel beam in front of the
building, and beaten by a man who wielded a large club wrapped with
thongs.
Heavily armed guards stood at intervals of about fifty feet on either
side of their pathway. Each guard carried a tall spear with a broad
blade about four feet long, while a scarbo, a sword with a basket hilt
and a blade rather like that of a scimitar, hung from the left side of
the belt.
From the right depended a weapon which was utterly strange to Grandon.
It was about two feet long, oblong like a carpenter's level, and
apparently composed of blued steel. A rivet passed completely through
it about four inches from the end, holding it firmly to the belt,
although it could be tilted at any angle, and its wearer could point it
in any direction by turning his body.
Grandon had yet to learn the efficiency of this terrible Zarovian
weapon, the tork, which fired needlelike glass projectiles filled with
a potent poison that paralyzed man and beast alike almost as soon as
it penetrated, and had a range as great as the most powerful of modern
rifles. These tiny bullets were propelled by a highly explosive gas
ignited by an electric spark at the touch of a button.
The gas was compressed in a chamber at the rear of the tork, while
the glass missiles were held in a magazine near the muzzle. After a
shot was fired the weapon would automatically reload, a bullet sliding
into place in front while just the right charge of gas was released in
the chamber behind it. Each gun, or tork, held a thousand rounds of
ammunition.
* * * * *
The slaves passed through the building where each man had his ration
doled out to him: a bowl of stewed mushrooms and a steaming cup of a
colorless aromatic beverage which Grandon found to be very much like a
strong wine.
As he followed his companions through the building, Grandon noticed
that each man stopped before a small shrine and stood for a moment
with head bowed low and hand extended toward it, palm downward. When
he reached the shrine, he stopped as the others had done, then gave a
gasp of amazement, for there before him, illuminated by the brilliant
rays of the morning sun, was a life-size painting of the most beautiful
woman he had ever seen.
She wore a robe of scarlet, ornamented with gold and precious stones,
and a jeweled band of platinum imprisoned a mass of golden curls which
were piled on top of her head after a style different from anything he
had ever seen. She was seated on a massive golden throne with cushions
of scarlet, across the arms of which rested a scarbo, similar in shape
to those carried by the guards, but with a hilt of gold studded with
rubies.
Could this be the heartless Amazon ruler of whom Dr. Morgan had spoken?
As he looked into that lovely, girlish face, Grandon did not think it
possible that she could be otherwise than noble, kind and generous.
A sharp exclamation brought him to his senses none too soon, for as he
turned he saw an overseer advancing with cruel whip upraised. Quickly
bowing as the others had done, he ran forward to join his fellow slaves.
Once outside the building, the men seated themselves on the ground
in little scattered groups, for their morning meal. Grandon joined a
company of these who had occupied the same dormitory with him, and
attacked his food with gusto, for he was ravenously hungry.
He could not take part in the general conversation because the language
was unintelligible to him, yet the words sounded strangely familiar. A
recollection of their meaning was stored in the brain cells of the body
which had become his, but the true mind, or ego, which was Grandon,
being the only mind which really remembers, could not interpret them
because it had never heard them. He could, and later did, however,
learn with great rapidity because of the subconsciously stored
reflections. Meanwhile, he kept silent and listened.
The meal finished, the slaves were herded to the quarries by their
drivers. Each driver, who had charge of ten slaves, wore both tork and
scarbo in his belt and carried a whip, the five lashes of which were
woven from some coarse fiber and interwoven with short pieces of a
brittle, nettlelike moss, which broke off in the skin of the victim,
inflicting a pain like that of a thousand bee stings. A man struck
with one of these whips not only felt the momentary blow, but suffered
excruciating agony for hours afterward.
For the first time in his hitherto petted and pampered existence,
Grandon learned what it was to labor. Sweating, toiling, straining
every weary muscle, he managed to keep pace with his fellow slaves. The
intense heat of the sun would have made labor in the open impossible,
had it not been almost constantly tempered by the floating clouds of
vapor which are ever present in the dense, moist Zarovian atmosphere.
Such a thing as a clear sky is almost unknown on any Zarovian
landscape, and it is, indeed, this very fact which enables man to exist
on this planet with any degree of comfort in other than the polar
regions. At those rare intervals when the disk of the sun is fully
revealed, the heat is almost unbearable.
The marble was being removed from the hillside in large rectangular
blocks, by thousands of slaves working on a series of terraces, each
of which was the height of one of the blocks. The crews were so
distributed that the terraced hillside constantly retained the same
general contour, for while the bottom terrace was being removed, the
next one above it was also cut away in the same proportion, and so on
to the very top.
* * * * *
Grandon's crew worked on the bottom terrace all morning, but were
ordered to the top in the afternoon to reënforce the laborers in that
section who, for some reason, had not kept up with their quota. He and
a fellow slave were removing one of the heavy blocks by means of levers
when his end slipped and fell on another block, breaking off a large
fragment. The quick-tempered driver, who was standing behind Grandon
when the accident happened, raised his whip and struck him a stinging
blow across the shoulders.
The result was almost as much of a surprise to Grandon as it was to the
driver, for quickly wheeling, Grandon landed a tremendous right hook on
the point of the man's jaw. It was a clean knock-out. Another driver,
seeing his fellow go down, came running with whip upraised, but Grandon
bowled him over with a marble fragment and ran through the group of
startled slaves toward the brow of the hill. Some one raised the alarm
and a half dozen torks were immediately pointed toward the fugitive.
Several slaves fell, struck by the missiles intended for him, and a
hail of projectiles battered the rocks around him as he disappeared
over the hilltop.
Before him stretched a dense, waving forest of tree-ferns into which
he plunged without slackening his speed, for his pursuers were close
behind him. As he dodged in and out among the tree-trunks he could hear
their halloos growing fainter and fainter, and finally no sound was
audible except the rustling of the countless, wind-shaken fern leaves.
Wearied by his exertions, he slackened his pace and, after proceeding
about a mile farther, stopped and looked about him. The fern forest
was, to the Earth-man, a most strange and impressive sight.
Huge tree-ferns with rough trunks and foliage growing out of the tops
like that of palm trees, some of them ever seventy feet in height,
towered above the shorter, more bushy varieties which were themselves
giants compared to the largest ferns of earthly jungles. Then there
were climbing ferns hanging in tangled masses, creeping ferns, and
dwarf, low-growing kinds, barely raising their fronds above the thick
carpet of moss which everywhere covered the forest floor.
Grandon was puzzled where to go or what to do. Behind him were the
cruel slave drivers who would probably inflict horrible tortures and
even death itself if they could get their hands on him. Ahead was---he
knew not what.
Would the direction he had taken carry him to safety, or into still
greater dangers? He was weary, hungry, and thirsty, and had no idea
which way to go for water or food. As for marking his course by the
sun, this was impossible, first because he knew nothing whatever of the
geography of Zarovia, and second because he did not even know whether
he was in the northern or southern hemisphere.
He noticed that the ground slanted slightly toward his right, and
intuition told him that this might lead to a valley and water. He
changed his course accordingly. He hoped also to find some fruits,
berries or nuts with which to satisfy his hunger, but he hoped in vain,
for there is no such thing in all the forests of Zarovia.
* * * * *
As he trudged wearily forward, sunset was succeeded by twilight, and
before he realized it, the black, moonless Zarovian night had spread
its impenetrable mantle about him.
Suddenly, from out the darkness behind him, came a peal of horrible,
demoniac laughter.
As he wheeled, Grandon unconsciously emitted a peculiar sound, half
roar, half growl, and every hair on his body bristled. For the moment
he had reverted to the primitive. Reason was unseated and instinct held
sway.
Two glowing phosphorescent orbs were slowly advancing as if something
were creeping or slinking toward him. Then, without warning, the
hideous noise was repeated at his left.
He turned to face another pair of menacing eyes, then leaped for the
trunk of the nearest tree-fern and climbed it as rapidly as if he had
been used to that sort of thing all his life. As it was, he was barely
in time to escape the snapping jaws that yawned beneath him.
Not until he had reached the leaf-crown, fifty feet above the ground,
did he pause or look downward. Then he saw, not two, but a dozen pairs
of eyes glancing toward him, while peal after peal of the nerve-racking
laughter smote his ears.
Time dragged along. What manner of things were these that sought
his life, he wondered? Evidently they were unable to climb, or they
would have followed him ere this. The fact that they did not leave,
even after several more hours had elapsed, made it evident that they
expected to get him.
He had been hearing a peculiar crunching sound some time before he
located it and guessed the terrible truth.
They were gnawing through the base of the tree-trunk!