Part 4

Olga had gone on with a faster-moving detachment, and only a dozen Scaly Ones remained with Toll to guard the three prisoners. Gerry and Closana sat side by side before the fire, their bare shoulders touching. The ruddy and flickering glow of the firelight touched Angus' giant frame a little farther around the circle, and then the scaly skins and long snouts of the reptile men watching them. Gerry clasped his arms around his knees.

"Y'know Angus, at the moment we're living as our ancestors must have lived long generations ago. No ray-tubes or dura-steel armor. No portable electro-phones. Not even a low-speed rocket car to carry us along. It must have been this way back in the days when they built that little old building that's now used for a museum in New York. The Empire State Building."

"You've got your dates mixed, laddie," McTavish yawned. "The Empire State was built in the twentieth century, and even the people of those queer old days were more advanced than most of what we've seen of life on this planet of Venus."

"I don't suppose those Ancients knew what they were missing."

"Maybe they were better off! At least they only got into trouble on their own Earth instead of wandering off to other planets like a pack of fools as we have!"

Toll and two of his men came toward them, carrying the ropes with which they had earlier been bound.

"Sorry, but I must tie you up for the night," he said. For an instant Gerry thought of making a break. If he could get away he might find some way of rescuing the others. Then he decided against it. One of the reptile men would be almost sure to bring him down with a gas-gun before he got out of the circle of firelight, in spite of the greater strength of his Earthly muscles. So he shrugged, and allowed the guards to tie him up again. For quite a while he lay awake, hoping to hear the hum of the _Viking's_ motors, but at last he fell asleep.

* * * * *

On the third day of their journey, the trail led upward, into a range of bleak and rocky hills. A few mean huts were the only signs of human habitation. Then, as they rounded a bend in the trail which at this point clung to the face of a cliff, they saw the answer to a mystery that had puzzled the civilized world for two years.

It was the wreck of the space-ship _Stardust_. She lay at the foot of a cliff across the valley, her steel and duralite hull still gleaming brightly through the thick green creepers that had grown up around it. Even from this distance Gerry could see the hopelessly crumpled rocket-tubes at the stern, and the gaping holes where plates had been ripped away to make the submarine that had brought them out of the city of Larr.

"So that was the end of the _Stardust_!" Gerry muttered. "I wonder what happened to her crew!"

"We'll probably find out soon enough!" McTavish replied grimly. "I'll bet all the gold in Savissa against an empty rocket-oil tin that we're headed for the same fate right now."

"Poor devils--I suppose the Scaly Ones did get them. I never liked Walter Lansing, as you know, but I could have wished him better luck than this!"

At last they crossed the hills and saw a broad valley before them. Dim and snow-capped mountains notched the yellow sky on the far side of the Valley. A river wound through the plain, and on the shore of the saffron waters of a mighty lake they saw the gray walls of a city. Toll, the reptilian captain, pointed across the valley.

"Yonder lies the city of Vaaka-hausen. Soon you will stand before the Lord Lansa, and then," he added with a grim and ghoulish humor, "neither I nor anybody else will be bothered with you any more."

The countryside immediately around the city of the Scaly Ones was better kept and more cultivated than what they had seen of the rest of Giri-Vaaka. There were a number of small villages. Then they passed in through the walls, gray stone ramparts that seemed to be very old and were in poor repair. The muzzles of heavy caliber gas-guns peered over the battlements here and there.

The crowds in the streets stared curiously as Toll led his prisoners toward the center of the city. Tall reptile men swaggered through the crowds with their swords slung on their hips, but the shorter Green Men were in the great majority. Most of them, men and women alike, stared at the captives without any particular sign of emotion. This gray and crowded city of Vaaka-hausen had none of the atmosphere of pleasant friendliness that Gerry had noticed in Larr. It seemed a place of fear and oppression.

* * * * *

The palace of the ruler of the Scaly Ones was a squat gray building in the center of the city. An arm of the river swept along beneath one wall, with the muddy waters lapping at the aged gray stones. An iron gate swung aside to let the newcomers into the courtyard. Men who wore black metal breast-plates over their scales took over the prisoners from Toll, leading them down a long flight of stairs into the dungeons beneath the palace. They waited in a vaulted chamber where the only light was a shaft of yellow radiance that came from a narrow slit high up near the ceiling.

"It won't be long now!" Gerry muttered.

Then a gong sounded somewhere nearby. It was a very resonant and deep-throated gong, and instantly the rock-walled chamber became filled with a green light. It had no visible source, seeming to come from the walls or from the very air itself. Again the gong rolled.

"The Lord Lansa comes!" barked the captain of the guards, "the overlord of Venus is at hand. Down on your knees, captives and slaves."

Closana went to her knees, though otherwise holding herself proudly erect with her hands tied behind her back. In the greenish light her long blonde hair looked like molten gold. Angus McTavish muttered savagely in his beard and stayed on his feet. Instantly one of the reptile guards drew his sword and held the blade horizontally behind the Scot's knees.

"Kneel--or I cut the tendons!" he snapped.

"Come down, you stiff-necked idiot!" Gerry growled. With a muttered oath Angus dropped to his knees, and the guard stepped back into line.

Then the door opened, and three men came slowly into the room. Two were gray-scaled guards who carried their gas-guns cocked and ready. The third was a tall man in a loose green robe. His head was hooded, so that nothing of his face could be seen at all, his hands were tucked in the sleeves of his robe. There was something deadly and almost grotesque about that silent figure. Gerry knew that at last he was in the presence of Lansa, Lord of the Scaly Ones and ruler of Giri-Vaaka, self-styled Overlord of all Venus!

* * * * *

The seconds passed in silence. The guards were frozen motionless at attention. At last Lansa spoke, his voice coming hollowly from the shadows of his hood.

"Take them to the cells. Their doom shall be decided when the Serpent Gods have spoken. I have ordered it!"

The tyrant of Venus gestured sharply, and the guards closed in about the prisoners. For a fleeting instant Gerry had a glimpse of a thin green hand, a hand where the finger was missing at the second joint. Then Lansa went out and the door closed behind him. The deeply resonant gong sounded again, and the pulsating green light instantly vanished so that there was again no light except for the thin trickle of yellow radiance that came in the single high window. The prisoners were pulled to their feet.

There was no chance to speak to Angus or Closana again. Gerry's guards led him down a narrow corridor, past the steel doors of cells. It was very dim and silent. From some of the cells he heard a faint rattle of chains, from others a low groaning. Otherwise there was no sound but their own footfalls. At last the guards opened the door of a cell, pushed Gerry inside, and cut the ropes that bound his arms. As they slammed the heavy steel door behind them he heard the rasp of bolts. Then the slapping tread of the guards' webbed feet died away and he was left alone.

Dim as the light in the corridor had been, that in the cell was so much less that Gerry had to wait half a minute before he could see at all. Then he made out the outlines of a small, bare cell with a bunk made of a light and flexible metal at one side. There was nothing else in the place. Gerry rubbed his wrists a moment to restore circulation, then sat down on the edge of the bunk and dropped his head in his hands.

He seemed to be about at the end of his trail. Well--that was fate. He did not mind so much for himself and Angus. You knew you were taking risks when you signed up for interplanetary travel in the first place! But he was sorry that Closana had been dragged into it.

Gerry had now lost all hope of rescue by the _Viking_. He did not doubt that her duralite hull could withstand the explosive bullets of even the heaviest caliber gas-guns, nor that her three-inch ray-tubes could blast a way into these underground dungeons in a few minutes. If only Steve Brent knew where to come! That was the rub. There was now no way for Brent to learn where the prisoners were being held, and he could not search all the land of Giri-Vaaka.

Something small and furtive was moving about on the floor a few feet away. Gerry scuffed his feet on the stones, and the creature scampered quickly away. Probably a rat! It seemed that he was going to have pleasant company during his stay in this place.

Restless and gloomy, Gerry stood up again. He started to walk up and down the few feet that the length of his cell allowed him. Then he froze motionless! A faint tapping was sounding from somewhere to his left. Someone was knocking lightly on the wall of the adjoining cell. Then a voice spoke softly in Martian.

"You there! You in the next cell! Can you hear me?"

* * * * *

Gerry knelt down on the damp floor and put his head close to the base of the wall. Now he could hear the man more clearly, could even hear his heavy breathing. Gerry's groping fingers found a place between two of the stones where the mortar had been picked away to leave a small air space.

"Yes, I hear you!" he called softly. He heard a dry chuckle.

"Good! I have been waiting a long time for them to put someone in the next cell. Some of the stones are loose. I will come in."

There was a soft rattle of falling mortar, and a scrape of sliding stones. Gerry saw the head and shoulders of a man thrust through the opening, and then the man crawled laboriously into the cell.

"Who are you?" he whispered. "Your accent is not like that of the Green Men of Giri. Wait, I have a light here."

A small flashlight clicked on. Its beam pointed up into Gerry's face. Then the man gasped.

"Good Lord!" he whispered. "It ... it's Gerry Norton!"

Then the man swung the light so that it swung on himself. Gerry saw a tall, gaunt man in the tattered remains of a blue and silver uniform. It was Major Walter Lansing, once of the Interplanetary Fleet, who had commanded the ill-fated _Stardust_ when she set out on her voyage into space!

"Norton!" he gasped in a hoarse whisper. "Man, I never expected to see anyone from Earth again!"

"We thought you were dead."

"I might as well be!" Lansing said grimly. "But tell me how you come to be here."

As they squatted there in the darkened cell, Gerry whispered the story of the _Viking's_ expedition and of his own capture. Lansing told him how the _Stardust_ had been wrecked on the rim of the mountains when landing, and how the Scaly Ones had captured all the crew.

"They have kept me alive because the signs pointed that way when they cast the omens before the Serpent Gods," Lansing said, "but all the rest of the crew were used as bait for hunting the giant Dakta. They died. You and your companions will probably meet the same fate."

"Pleasant prospect!" Gerry said grimly. Lansing gripped his arm.

"There's a chance, Norton! Listen! I've been able to get these scaly devils to bring me a good many things from the wreck. I couldn't get a ray-tube, they were too wise for that, but I did get a portable radio by telling them it was my tribal god. I have it in my cell. We'll go over and you can phone your ship to come after us." He eyed Gerry eagerly.

"Let's go!"

They both crawled through the gap in the wall. It was like Gerry's own, but it was piled with an assortment of junk from the wrecked space-ship. In one corner stood a compact two-way radio telephone set with its tubes still intact.

"Think you can tell them how to come?" Lansing whispered.

"I'm not sure. They marched us along the roads, and the route was winding, and...."

"I'll draw you a map!" Lansing interrupted. "You hold the light."

While Gerry held the flash, the other man spread out a piece of crumpled paper on the floor and began to draw on it with the stub of a graphite stylus. He talked as he wrote, in a shrilly, excited whisper. Gerry had never liked the man in the old days, considering him excitable and undependable, and it was evident that the long captivity had not improved Walter Lansing's self-control. That did not matter. The main thing was to get out of this place. And then Gerry saw something that stiffened every muscle and made the short hair prickle all down the back of his neck. The ring finger of Lansing's left hand was missing at the second joint!

* * * * *

The suspicion that had come to Gerry Norton seemed impossible. Walter Lansing ... the Lord Lansa. It couldn't be. And yet--he was sure he had seen that same mutilated hand thrust out from the sleeve of a green robe an hour before! Lansing was still talking as he bent over the improvised map.

"Here's the line of the Giri River. Tell them to cross by the bald gray hill, then bear west-six-north, using Venusian magnetic bearings. After that...."

He suddenly stopped and looked up, catching Gerry's grim glance fixed on his left hand. Hastily he jerked it aside into the shadows. He must have read in Gerry's eyes that his move had been too late, for his own gaunt face hardened.

"_You rat!_" Gerry hissed between his teeth. His right hand shot out, clutching for the other man's throat, but Lansing twisted aside and jerked a dark object from his pocket. An instant later a stinging cloud of the paralysis gas took Gerry in the face, and he fell limply to the floor.

Lansing straightened up and tossed aside the flask that had held the gas. There was a savage gleam in his narrow eyes.

"All right, Norton," he said, "we'll do it the other way. Ho--guards!"

A gong sounded in the corridor, the pulsating green light immediately flooded the cell. Scaly-skinned guards swarmed in and saluted. Lansing ripped off the torn uniform, revealing a tight-fitting green garment beneath it, and one of the guards helped him on with the cowled robe he had worn before. He glanced down at Gerry for a moment.

"Bring him and the others up to me when he recovers the use of his muscles," he said.

* * * * *

By the time Gerry Norton recovered from the effects of the gas he had been securely bound again. Two guards led him to the end of a corridor and up a flight of stairs to the level above. This was also part of the prison zone of the castle, but built in an entirely different manner. Walls and floor were of a polished green metal. Super-charged electronic locks fastened each door, holding death for anyone who attempted to tamper with them. Metal globes gave a steady light. Mirrors above each cell door gave the guards who lounged in the corridors a complete view of the inside of every cell.

This, Gerry realized, was actually the prison used by the lords of Giri-Vaaka. He had been placed in the old and abandoned dungeons beneath as part of the scheme to lure him into calling the _Viking_ to her doom. Glancing in the door-mirrors of the cells as he went by, Gerry saw that most of the occupants were men and women of the Green Race of Giri, with a fair number of Golden Amazons and a few reptile men who had been guilty of some crime or infraction of discipline.

Then he saw Closana! The girl was tightly spread-eagled against one of the polished metal walls of her cell, her outstretched wrists and ankles held by steel cuffs. Gerry's jaw jutted stubbornly forward, and for a moment he twisted helplessly against the cords that held his arms behind him.

The guards halted before a door deep in the interior of the palace, where a pair of scaly warriors stood on guard with gas-guns cocked and ready. The opening itself was not closed by any door, but by what looked like a tightly stretched curtain of some transparent green material. On closer inspection he saw that it glowed with a steady pulsation, while occasional specks of green fire ran through it. When one of the guards moved incautiously back so that the tip of his scabbard touched the green glow filling the door, there was a crackling hiss. The tip of the scabbard simply vanished. It was as though it had been cleanly cut off by a very sharp knife.

A challenge came from within, and one of Gerry's guards shouted a reply. The green glow suddenly vanished from the doorway. Whatever elemental force it was that blocked the passage had been withdrawn, and they walked freely in through the opening.

* * * * *

The wide room before them was walled with slabs of polished black marble. The figures of writhing snakes and rearing reptiles were inlaid into the black walls with some iridescent green stone. Their eyes were inlaid jewels. Thin trails of pungent smoke drifted upward from their nostrils. A low and throbbing music, full of the thunder of muted drums, came from unseen source. At regular intervals around the walls stood tall golden standards with glowing globes atop them.

This was the throne room of Lansa, Lord of Giri-Vaaka, who had once been an officer in the flying forces of Earth. The man himself sat on a black marble throne with a dozen of the higher officers of his scaly warriors grouped around him. These Inner Guards wore breast-plates and helmets of a bright green metal, and their pointed ears protruded upward through twin openings in the sides of the helmets.

Lansa's swarthy face was gloatingly triumphant. It had always been Gerry Norton's private opinion that Walter Lansing was slightly mad. Brilliant in many ways, but definitely unstable. At last he appeared to have slipped over that shadowy border that divides the rational from the insane.

"It is unfortunate that my little scheme to have you summon your space-ship here did not work," Lansa said in English. "But we will find some other way of persuading you to do it."

"You think you're quite the little tin god, don't you?" Gerry sneered.

"I _am_ a god--to these people," Lansa replied quietly. "Though the _Stardust_ was damaged too badly to return to earth, little of her equipment was harmed except for the rocket tubes themselves. Within six months after landing I had made myself master of these primitive but obedient people. The submarine that brought you from the city of Larr shows what can be done with them. In the meantime I had communicated with friends on Earth by means of a secret radio frequency, and waited for the sending of the next space-ship...."

He broke off as a door behind the throne opened and a woman came into the room. It was Olga Stark, now wearing a long gown of shimmering green. Metal strands of the same color were braided into her dark hair, which was crowned by a circlet bearing the design of a rearing serpent. All the officers and courtiers lifted their arms in salute. The woman walked over and stood beside Lansa's throne, looking down at Gerry with a cold and impersonal scorn. It had not taken Olga Stark very long to fit herself into the role of the queen of Giri-Vaaka!

* * * * *

A number of things were clear to Gerry Norton now! It had been Olga Stark with whom Lansing had secretly communicated after he made himself master of the Scaly Ones, and that explained her insistent requests to join the expedition. Again, it had been Olga who had been surreptitiously using the radio to talk to Lansing that day when Gerry had stepped into the radio room on hearing the hum of the generator. They had been arranging the details of his abduction. Only--who was Olga's confederate who had knocked him over the head when he had walked in on them that time? There was still some traitor on board the _Viking_.

"I have now developed the resources of this country to the point where the final campaign is ready," Lansa boasted, "all these reptile men needed was a man of sufficient brains and initiative to lead them. We are making ray-tubes, modeled on those aboard the _Stardust_, and will soon be able to blast down the guardian forts of Savissa and to conquer those few other portions of this planet that still stand against me. Then I will return to the Earth in your _Viking_, taking with me enough gold to buy a vast fleet of ships. There is more gold available here on Venus than all your banks on Earth have ever imagined! I could make myself ruler of Earth with all that gold, but I will choose another method. I will bring back the space-ships, and load them up with my scaly warriors--and then sail to conquer the Outer Planets and whatever else may lie beyond the Solar System!"

Gerry Norton stared at Lansa in a grim silence. The man was undoubtedly mad. Stark, raving mad! No one but a maniac would cherish such a wild dream of Universal conquest. He had that dangerous combination of natural cleverness and distorted values that has often distinguished leaders who have taken nations into the shadowy valleys of ruin. For a moment Lansa hesitated, his narrow eyes blazing and one arm flung up in a dramatic gesture. Then some of the fire went out of him, and he returned to more prosaic and immediate things.

"But all that lies in the future. At the moment I must ask you to radio-phone the _Viking_ to come to this city and land in the plain just below the walls."

"I'll see you in hell first!" Gerry snapped. Lansa shrugged.

"I expected you to indulge in some such heroics! Your type always does. I have not forgotten your attacks on my reputation back on Earth some years ago, Norton, nor your charges that I was unfit to command the _Stardust_. It will give me considerable pleasure to watch what is about to happen to you. Ho--guards! Bring him down to the torture chamber."

* * * * *

The place of torture was a circular and low vaulted chamber. Gerry was led across to one of the walls, and his bound hands fastened behind him to a metal ring. The place was lit by a dim green light that had no visible source, though in one spot there was a ruddy glow where irons were heating in a brazier of burning charcoal. A bench was placed for Lansa and Olga to sit on, and four of their guards stood beside them.

The torturers themselves had been selected from among the Green Men of Giri, instead of the scaly skinned warrior race of Vaaka. They were squat and heavy men, those torturers, evidently of the most brutal and debased type that Lansa had been able to find. One in particular, whose wide green face was made hideous by an old scar that had put out one of his eyes, licked his thick lips in ghoulish anticipation as his fingers prodded the flesh about Gerry's ribs and felt the Earth-man's muscles.

"Bring in the other two," Lansa commanded.