Part 9

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.