Part 2

Lolan's heart thumped. His face flamed, and he tried to hide his embarrassment by springing to his feet and pacing to a window. "It's reason enough," he muttered. He swung suddenly to face them across the room. "But that isn't why I came here tonight. It's something more important than that. You've got to leave Areeba immediately!"

Atarkus' face folded into grim lines. "You mean Arzt has decreed our death?"

"That's it. You might have expected something like this for being seen with men like Ars Lugo."

Mora looked up into the officer's face. "I can't understand you, Lolan. You're supposed to be second in command of the race that oppresses us. Yet you risked death to hide that bracelet, and undoubtedly you've taken the same risk to come here."

"Don't try to understand me. Simply do as I say. Arzt has appointed me to execute you within four days. I--I can't do it, that's all. So I'm going to try to dodge the issue by letting you escape. Beyond the city there's a pursuit ship loaded with food and a pair of pistols. With that outfit you can make it to Lyna or some other settlement where you won't be known. But you've got to do it tonight!"

Atarkus snorted. "Leave our people when they need us most? Never!"

Lolan's eyes narrowed. "When they need us most," the ex-emperor had said. Why were they needed especially now--because of a coming revolution? He drove the question from his mind. "Don't quibble!" he snapped. "I can't promise you more than a few hours' leeway. You've got to leave within the hour."

"It's no use," Mora smiled wearily. "Our people look up to us for the answer to every problem that arises. What would they think of us if we ran out now?"

"What good will you be to them dead?" Lolan argued desperately. "Arzt means to have you out of the way once and for all. You're dangerous and he knows it. Get your things together and let's go!" The flush of repressed fear colored the flat angles of his jaws. His mind was a whirlpool of hope and regret--regret at losing Mora forever, though he could never own her; a deep soul-sickness at the idea of sending a force-charge into her lovely body....

But Mora was shaking her head and Atarkus had smashed his fist on the table. "Arzt can't scare us!" the aged monarch scorned. "They say we Venusians are weak, that we don't know how to fight. Some day soon the butcher will learn differently." His eyes grew softer. He laid his bony hand on Lolan's hard forearm. "I know your position, young man. You have taken a liking to us for some reason--I think I know what it is--and the thought of killing us disturbs you. Perhaps you won't have to perform that duty--"

Suspicion and wonder blended into the creases of Lolan's forehead. "Then you won't go?" he breathed.

"We can't," Mora told him. "But you have our gratitude for all you've done."

Lolan straightened. He tried to keep his voice clipped and emotionless. "You are foolish--and brave. Good night!"

When he reached the boulder-hidden rocket ship it was still safely masked in its hiding place. The fog had torn apart for a few hours, and through the ragged holes in it he could see stars blinking solemnly down at him. The young Martian's heart leaped at the thought of leaving for one of those far-off worlds; no one would miss him before morning and he could stock up on supplies and leave right away. But a leaden despondency kept that idea from gaining much headway. Gloomily he climbed into the ship.

It was when his fingers had sent the rocket car tearing up into the low clouds that Arzt's voice, just behind him, made his blood turn to water and his lips go dry.

"You're heading the right way, Sub-Commander. Over the hill to the Sulphur Holes. Tonight's warning was my last."

* * * * *

In the gleaming black disk of one of the space-ports Lolan could see Arzt's reflection, then, looming squat and dangerous three feet in back of him. He had quietly removed Lolan's pistol and held it on the back of his head.

"Planning a trip, were you?" the taunting voice went on. "I found quite a store of food here. The only trip you'll be making now is into the bottom dungeon of the Holes. By the gods, Lolan, you're a fool!"

"Am I? It might as well be now as four days from now. You know I couldn't kill them."

"I knew this: That if you couldn't, you weren't fit to be a Martian officer. Now I'll have to do the job myself. Because you're going to die tomorrow!"

Silence piled up between them. Too soon the gaping slash on the planet's surface known as the Sulphur Holes was pivoting beneath them as they circled to a landing. Here, where subterranean forces had carved a series of natural dungeons and rock-bound gases still seeped through the holes in a stifling mist, the least fortunate of Arzt's prisoners were imprisoned.

Burly guards came running up to take charge of Lolan. Arzt stood back with fists on hips. "Take him to the bottom level," his guttural command came. "Watch him closely. The devil's been conspiring with Venusians for a revolution!"

He watched coldly while they jostled his former chief officer into the little rock house that housed the elevator. He stood there stolidly until a deep-pitched sigh emanated from the structure, denoting that one more soul had been carried down ... to hell. A fierce grin twisted his lax features. He was so engrossed in his own thoughts that he did not hear the closing of the storage-hatch on the pursuit ship they had come in, nor did he see the spidery form that slid from it to the shelter of some rocks. Deeply and sadistically satisfied, Commander Arzt turned and departed.

For the first ten minutes after his captors had left him, Lolan sat on the edge of a hard, filthy cot with his head buried in his hands. The cell was low-ceilinged, with eroded sandstone walls studded with sharp metal crystals. Through the barred door drifted stringy tendrils of gas--sulphur smoke, belching up from the planet's bowels. From nearby cells came horrible moans, a ragged scream, the rattling of a door as some hapless prisoner shook it and shouted for food. The soft plod-plod of someone pacing the floor like a caged beast reached the Martian's ears.

Lolan's lungs seemed filled with acid. He coughed until tears streamed from his eyes. Finally he fell back in despair on the cot. But even in his desperate physical pain he was far more conscious of acute despair over the failure of his plans to save Mora and Atarkus. He felt that no torture could be worse than imagining what devilish end Arzt would find for them.

The grating of a key in the lock brought Lolan to a sitting posture. Then he had sprung to the door as Captain Irak, spindly, grinning little imp that he was, flung the door open and dodged in.

"Irak--what the devil are you doing here?" Lolan coughed.

The other pressed something hard and cold into his hand--a gun. "No questions now!" he rapped. "Follow me and use this if you need it--which you will!"

"But the keys--how did you get them?"

Irak closed one shoe-button eye in a sly wink, and gestured with his gun. "Come on!" he jerked his head. Roughly he shoved the younger man into the tunnel.

Not understanding what it all meant, Lolan fled through the corridors beside him. Hope was kindling like a fire in his breast. Once the captain paused before a cell and through the bars tossed the bunch of keys. "Use them yourself and pass them on!" he laughed at the astonished prisoner.

Up ahead the elevator loomed out of the wisps of gas. Irak plunged into it and Lolan followed. There was silence until they had almost reached the top.

"Be on your guard," Irak snapped. "I killed the turnkey to get the keys. If they've found his body--" The automatic door flew open, light from the guard-house flooded their figures and they stiffened. The shouting of angry men reached their ears from outside.

Irak looked at him in somber decision. "We'll try a run for it out the back. There's a rocket car in the field. It's our one chance."

Lolan grinned boyishly, ready for anything. "Lead the way!" he offered. "I'm with you!"

* * * * *

But they had not gone forty feet when a harsh shout arrested them. "There they go--_get them_!" Five men sprang up from where they had knelt about the body of a dead Martian.

Captain Irak stuck a skinny leg between Lolan's running feet and sent him sprawling in the dirt. Lolan was puzzled, until he felt the searing impact of force bolts inches over his head. The movement had saved his life. Instantly he had twisted about to sight down the chrome-steel shaft of his pistol. It roared, jarred heavily against his hand. And one of the men staggered back with his head and shoulders half torn off.

Irak chuckled fiendishly. His own gun blasted twice, destroying a man at each shot. The remaining pair spread out and came at a low run for them, with guns crackling blue lightning over the terrain. Lolan's eyes were hard and narrow, his jaw was firm. The impact of deadly charges exploded all around him, making his ears ring with the terrific concussion. He cuffed at his coat-sleeve as blobs of molten earth splattered on it. Some of the fiery stuff bit through to his skin.

The Martian's hate-twisted countenances were plain now, thirty feet away. With a simultaneous impulse they flung themselves prone and leveled their guns. Lolan squeezed the trigger of his weapon. He kept it pulled back until the gun grew hot and smoking and the last bolt had been launched. Irak had done the same.

A grisly silence came down over the field. Horror gripped Lolan as the smoke drifted away and showed two shapeless masses of burning flesh on the ground before them. Doggedly he turned away, getting to his feet.

From nearby came the clamor of hurrying guards. "Quick!" Irak's voice crackled. "Into the ship."

They made it none too soon. Force charges were exploding under their soaring ship like blue balloons that swelled to magnificent proportions and then exploded. Not until they had gained thirty thousand feet altitude did Lolan relax from the controls.

His face was sweaty and grinning. "Am I crazy or are you, Irak? I thought you were Captain of the Secret Service, sworn to track down rebels like me--not help them escape!"

Irak was lighting a Martian cigarette. He paused with the lighter held to the cylinder's tip. "Quite true," he smiled. "That is my job. But when the rebel is a fellow-Venusian, I am tempted to reverse the usual order of things!"

IV

Lolan's mouth hung open. Had he heard aright? "You said--a fellow _Venusian_? Didn't you mean...."

"I mean Venusian. And by the way--congratulations on your escape, _Prince Lolan_!"

Somewhere in him a pulse began throbbing, as Lolan fumbled to put the controls on automatic. Then he twisted about on the seat and gripped his knees with his hands. "Let's get this straight," he suggested impatiently. "I'm Sub-Commander Lolan--ex-Sub-Commander, I should say. You're Captain Irak--also 'ex', I'm afraid. We're both Martians and neither of us has so much as a drop of royal blood of any race coloring his veins. Starting from that basis, would you mind explaining your remarks?"

Irak leaned back in his chair. "Not at all. You are Prince Lolan, of the House of Sarn. Twenty years ago, when you were two years old, all of your people were killed in the Martian invasion. Among fifty other Venusian children, you were taken back to Mars. The war chiefs wanted to experiment, to find out what difference the Martian atmosphere had on the development of a child of Venus. All of those other children were killed due to lack of care on the return voyage. You alone lived ... to become a high-ranking Martian officer!"

The blood had drained from Lolan's face, leaving it a sickly color. His hands shook a little. It was too much to grasp at once. "Irak, you're telling the truth?" he gasped. "But you can't be. Look at me: I'm dark, like a Martian ... so are you, as far as that goes. And why would they let me hold such a responsible position?"

"Of course you're dark!" Irak laughed. "Who wouldn't be, after eighteen years of blistering Martian suns? As far as their letting you gain position is concerned, they had two reasons for doing it. In the first place, they found that you were developing into a brilliant, scholarly youth who could go far if allowed to. You had something no other Venusian before you had: initiative and the ability to fight like a bulldog on any problem you attempted. Perhaps the ultraviolet rays so strong on Mars and so feeble here have something to do with that. At any rate, you are strong and determined where the rest of our race is vacillating, good-natured, and pliable. Their other reason for letting you fight your way to the top in their own army was that, to their cruel minds, it seemed a good joke to let a Venusian have partial charge of his own down-trodden people. But the joke may backlash...."

"And you?" Lolan murmured. "Where do you come in?"

"I went back on the same ship that took you, but as a stowaway. I hid in the upper part of the ship where the constant, harsh light of the sun soon blackened my fair skin as dark as theirs. I killed a soldier one night and took his uniform. It wasn't hard to take his place. They were a motley crew from all over Mars, a sort of foreign legion, and few knew each other. By the time we reached Mars I was able to mingle safely with the men. And as years went on I completed my Martian education, vied with others for honors. I gained those honors for one purpose--to fight again in a Venusian army, to wipe the scourge from the face of our planet. Now we are ready!"

Lolan sank back. He felt like a man who has had too strong a dose of some powerful drug. "Now I can explain a lot of things," he murmured. "I've had the feeling so many times that I've been a certain place before, yet I never understood why." He got up, began pacing the tiny cabin with restless tread. When he spoke again, at last, he seemed to be talking to himself. "Then it must be true. I'm not one of Arzt's bloodthirsty race, I'm a Venusian--one of Mora's race!" Abruptly, he whirled on the little intelligence officer. "Well, what now? Where are we going?"

Irak let a thin smile curve his lips. "To the old palace. There we'll meet Mora and Atarkus and many others. You will see things you haven't dreamed existed on this planet. Areeba is ready to strike for freedom!"

Lolan's eyes sparkled. But it was not entirely the revolution he was thinking of. "They knew about me?" he jerked.

Irak nodded, made an adjustment in the flight. "But none of us ever dared tell you of our plans until we knew exactly how you stood. If you had become a true Martian, we wanted you always to remain ignorant."

Silence came into the rocket ship. They were soaring along above a thick blanket of yellowish clouds. Irak's hand sent them plummeting down into the clear air beneath. Directly below them a cluster of crumbling buildings topped a hill in the north section of the city. Ruin had laid its bony hand over all, tumbling towers and cornices back into the dust from which they had sprung. Squarely in the midst of it the ship settled to a landing. Memory troubled Lolan at sight of the old palace.

Irak sprang out. "Follow me!" he shot at Lolan. They hurried into a roofless room of magnificent size, passing through it into a small room still partially covered. The captain found a ring in the floor, beneath a litter of rubbish. It yielded to insistent tugging, to reveal a flight of stairs sliding away into dim obscurity. Irak flashed a light into the depths and descended. Wondering strangely, Lolan followed.

A half hour passed, while steps blended into winding corridors and corridors changed back into stairs. Lolan's head was spinning by the time they reached a heavy bronze door. Irak flashed a smile. "Now--watch!" he breathed. His thumb flattened on a button.

Seconds dragged out. Nothing happened. But ... was the door moving? A crack of light split down the middle of the portal. It widened, and suddenly the two parts drew wide and light and sound flooded through them. Lolan started. Dumbly he moved ahead. What he saw made his legs wobbly with astonishment.

* * * * *

Below them, in a spacious, high-vaulted hall, thousands of men were at work with various machines. At one end of the room a continual stream of Venusians filed through one door, past a long table where workers were doling out some kind of apparatus, and back through another door. The clank of stamp machines, the scream of drill-presses, the whine of lathes, blended into a confused wail. And over all was the roar of the underground river, that flowed between black banks squarely through the middle of the cavern.

Questions sprang to Lolan's lips, but Irak stifled them. "Come along," he ordered. "Others can explain better than I."

A winding path led down the wall of the place. At the bottom they turned left and found their way to where a large crowd of men were in noisy conference with two persons in their midst. Irak raised his voice in a triumphant shout. Instantly the babble broke. Irak bowed low as Atarkus emerged from the crowd.

"It is done, Emperor! I bring you--Prince Lolan!"

Unnameable feelings swept over Lolan as a great cry went up. Before he could move, he was surrounded by a laughing, shouting crowd that grew steadily larger. Their words were only a confused sound in his ears, but he knew what they meant: That he was whole-heartedly welcomed back into the race from which he had been stolen so long ago!

Mora came to his side, then, flushed and happy. "We sent for you," she said, "as soon as we learned you had been imprisoned. We have wanted so long to tell you of our plans. We--we need you."

"But we were afraid," Atarkus frowned. "It is with joy that we receive you, Prince, but ... sadness has awaited your coming."

The exuberance that had buoyed Lolan up fled from beneath him and left him on the rock-bottom of unpleasant reality. "For what part I've had in your misery, I humbly beg forgiveness," he apologized. "But--this cavern ... the machines: what do they mean?"

Atarkus' thin form drew up stiffly. His eyes swept the length of the vast room. "They mean the revolution is here! Tomorrow--at high noon!"

Through the crowd ran a tremor of excitement. Faces that wore graven looks of hopelessness flamed eagerly. Tired eyes sparkled.

"Revolution!" Lolan's word was a harsh, incredulous gasp. "But you have no weapons! No--no chance, against Arzt's legions of trained murderers!"

"We have weapons," Atarkus grunted. "But I wanted more time. Now, word has come that since your escape that butcher is running wild. Men and women are being shot down in their homes while soldiers search for you. The slightest word of reproach is sufficient to condemn a man to the Holes, or to instant death. We can wait no longer. In a few days my people will be so cowed even I cannot lead them to the battle."

"But your weapons?" Lolan inquired eagerly.

Atarkus led the way to where the line of hurrying Venusians were being given small, copper-colored articles like tiny drum-majors' batons. He picked one up and handed it to Lolan. "Try it!" he offered.

The prince regarded it curiously. He found a small trigger on one side. Training it on the wall twenty feet away, he fired. After a moment a round spot of phosphorescence appeared, that gradually turned red, then crumbled away. Slowly he handed the gun back to Atarkus.

"Well?" the Emperor inquired eagerly. "Do you think we're unarmed now, with four out of five Venusians owning one of these?"

Lolan drew his own weapon and directed it on the wall. He fired, the charge instantly crashing against the wall and tearing a ragged hole in it. He was white-lipped when he turned back. "There is your answer. Against these--these toys of yours, the Martian guns will be like long-range cannons. No, my friends. If this is the best you have to offer, the revolution is doomed before it starts!"

V

The shocked hush seemed to reach to all parts of the room. Lolan's thoughts were bitter ones. They concerned the thing that had cursed his people for centuries. Their childish inability to think a problem through, their pathetic attempts to fight back against their aggressors. Now those qualities had doomed them again to misery.

Atarkus was muttering to himself. "We--we thought they would work if we could get within ten or fifteen feet of them."

"But how are you going to approach that close when _their_ guns are effective at two hundred feet?" Lolan countered. Idly he glanced at the piles and piles of ray pistols still being doled out. "How do they operate? Draw on the Martian power station, I suppose?"

Mora pointed at a massive apparatus at the upper end of the hall. "Electronic power," she told him. "We generate our own power. As long as the turbines are running, the guns will operate."

Lolan's eyes went a little wide at that. He scratched his head, scowled, then walked off a little. He whirled about and came back to them. "That gives me a clue! The Martian guns also draw from a central station. Only it's a radioactive type of power. Underneath the barracks there's a huge mass of _radite_. If that stuff were carried off, they'd have guns no more effective than water pistols!"

Irak snorted. "Who's going to carry it off? It weighs tons. I've seen it. It's like a great lump of radium. If you get too close, even, you'll be poisoned."

"We couldn't carry it off--in its present form! But there is a large, unused sewer hole in a room near it. If we could break it up, using workmen's lead suits, it might be possible to drop it into the underground river. Contact with the water would result in an explosion that would destroy its radioactivity."

Atarkus licked his lips. "Would this be possible? Could anyone get that close to it without being caught?"

"We could try!" Lolan gave back. "If the plan succeeded--well, we number twenty thousand in Areeba to the Martians' two. Once their weapons were destroyed, the city would be ours!"

"Then it must be attempted!" Atarkus raised his fist high. "Irak--call the leaders. We must lay our plans tonight, for the struggle tomorrow!"

They met in a little alcove off the main room, ten men whose grim countenances stamped them as men ready to die for the cause. Lolan sensed immediately, as they took places around a long table, that he was being looked to as their leader. And old Atarkus willingly fell away to make room for younger, more dynamic blood.

When all were quiet, Prince Lolan stood up. It came to him strongly, the feeling that everything, the fate of every soul on Venus, hinged on what happened in this little room tonight. His voice came gravely, freighted with importance.

"I won't try to deceive you for one instant that our battle is going to be easy," he told them sternly. "It isn't. The odds are a hundred to one against us. But I will tell you this: The game is worth it! If we win Areeba, all Venus is ours. With improved weapons, the Martians' own, we'll be able to descend on the smaller settlements and conquer them before they know what has happened here. Then there will be the task of building up a space fleet. We can do it. If Mars sends a new army out to re-capture us, they'll find us ready, trained in their own modes of warfare and as brutal as they themselves. I have a theory that once we have won our independence, progress on Venus will be different. My experience has proved that all the Venusian lacks for a complete, balanced fighting personality is an abundance of ultraviolet light. We can provide that artificially, in street-lights, in the nursery, everywhere. It will be the beginning of the greater Venus. Yes, the game is worth the risk. We have all to win ... nothing to lose!"

Vesh-Tu, a squat, hairy little man, leaned forward. "But how are we to do it, Prince? The _radite_ is guarded, is it not?"