Part 3

With pounding heart, Allen stood watching the metal-clad man and woman as Tollgamo quietly confronted them. The terror leaped from their eyes to stamp their faces. And Tollgamo said quietly,

"That is bad to show fear. That forces the punishment to be worse."

At his gesture, a flick of his jeweled fingers, they bared their grey chests. Tollgamo's hands were at his ornamented belt, each of them leveling a little jeweled weapon. The weapons suddenly hissed, and from each of them a tiny violet pencilray of heat-light sprang. Allen gulped as the beams struck the chests of the two victims, and the grey flesh, turned red, then black as Tollgamo wrote a brand of punishment, an insignia of dishonor. The man stood firm, with a hand still at salute, his slit of mouth twisted as he pressed his lips together in an attempt to restrain his cry of pain.

But the woman involuntarily moaned. It was too much for Allen. He gasped,

"Stop that, you damned torturer! They're not the ones who are guilty anyway! They--"

Tollgamo had finished. He snapped off the tiny rays and slowly turned to where Allen had taken a step toward him. And the smile now was gone from his serene face.

"You are not yet trained," he said quietly. "I forgive you for that--so short a time." Another flick of his hand; and Rhool led the stumbling man and woman away.

The smell of the burning flesh drifted off; and Tollgamo, alone here now, fronted the shuddering Allen. Again he was gently smiling.

"You show weakness?" he said. "I am disappointed. So you know who released that Kent Fanning, and Peters' daughter?"

"No I don't. I'm sorry. That was just my desire to stop you doing that to that woman."

Amusement was in Tollgamo's eyes and twitching at his thin grey lips. "So? You would join me, and still try to lie to me?" His gesture dismissed it. "We will talk of that some other time." For a moment he stood pondering. "That girl--that Peters' daughter," he added. "Rhool tells me she is very beautiful. Is that so?" There seemed a twinkle in his inscrutable eyes.

"Yes," Allen agreed.

"That is interesting. I must see for myself. I think perhaps I must protect her from the things that will happen tonight."

Allen tensed inside. Did he mean that his attack upon the Arones would take place tonight?

"The woman Garga will give you supper," Tollgamo added abruptly. From a ring on his finger a silent light-signal sprang across the room and through a small arcade doorway; and at once Garga appeared there.

"Take him to my rest-room," Tollgamo said. "He is hungry. Give him food. I will send for him later."

"Yes, Master."

Then as Tollgamo moved away, lithe and silent as a great panther, with his padded soles soundless on the metal floor, he said quietly.

"Your thoughts are very transparent, Earthman. But I think you can be of use to me."

* * * * *

In the small adjoining room, Garga brought Allen food. They ate it together.

"What did he mean by things that will happen tonight?" Allen suddenly murmured.

Garga had been sitting, staring at him with her slumbrous dark gaze. "The attack," she said.

"And Peters doesn't know that?"

"No." Her hand touched him. "I am trusting you."

"Of course," Allen agreed. He recalled how Nereid's brother, Leh, as the spaceship landed, had gazed down at the inlet, across which workers were bringing things from a tunnel to the edge of the water. Leh had sucked in his breath as though with startled surprise.

"The attack," Allen murmured. "Will it be upon the city of Arron?"

"Yes--naturally. And the imbecile slaves there--they think they are going to help." Her grim grey face lighted with a smile. "That will be amusing; those imbecile workers causing bloodshed, making it so easy for us, when we get there."

"Get there--how, Garga? By air?"

Allen felt that Leh now was trying to get just such information as this; and he and Allen would escape--get to Arron and warn Peters. But evidently haste was necessary. By what Tollgamo said, he would be attacking perhaps within a few hours.

"By air?" Garga echoed. "Oh no. By water." She leaned closer to Allen. A woman warrior. But the womanhood in her now was making her bosom rise and fall with her emotion at Allen's nearness. "Under the water," she murmured. "You see how clever we are? That is the last method of attack that the Arones think we will try. There are grottos beneath the city of Arron. Grottos with the sea in them. So that we shall come up that way, appearing all over the city at once." She chuckled. "They will not know there is to be any attack at all. Just trouble with the imbeciles. And suddenly we will be there among them!"

Allen had it now! All the information needed. More than ever now he wanted to connect with Leh, and escape out of here.

"Garga, listen," he murmured, "were you ordered to stay here with me, until Tollgamo sends for me?"

"Yes," she agreed. Her gaze clung to his. "That will not be--too hard for you?"

"No--no, of course not, Garga, but listen--" Abruptly Allen tensed. In a dark doorway nearby, beyond which Allen knew Tollgamo's guards were stationed, a dim blob of figure had appeared. Garga's back was to the door; she did not see the lurking shape. It was a hunched, misshapen silhouette. Leh, in his masquerade as jester, standing there listening.

"Listen," Allen quickly resumed. "There's no reason why you should not show me around a bit, is there? On that cliff quite near here there's a little kiosk that looks over the inlet. You and I--alone there, Garga?"

His hand touched her square, metal-clad shoulder; and at once her hand went up, gripping his. "Perhaps."

"I would like to have you show me what's going on," he urged. "And to sit there with you, just for a little time."

Leh heard it. His hunched figure in the doorway moved and his head nodded assent; and then he drew back, was gone.

"I will get you a cloak," Garga murmured abruptly.

She came with the cloak in a moment; a long, dark-grey garment of flexible metal. With this on, and with the helmet which Rhool had given him, Allen could pass for a Gort. Garga was eager, trembling, as she took him through a small side doorway. The nearby glowing city street bustled with activity. Garga and Allen were not challenged as they skirted the edge of the metal street; and presently came to a dark and narrow little bridge, a fifty foot catwalk-span over a chasm to the promontory head where the lookout kiosk stood dark and silent above the lagoon.

A new idea had come to Allen. As together they crossed the catwalk he murmured to Garga:

"The Master spoke of the Peters girl, and asked me if she is beautiful."

Garga smiled. "So? The Master is ironical always. He plays with you."

"Meaning what?"

"He has seen that girl many times. Ten years ago, when there was no threat of Tollgamo, he was in Arron. She was just a child then. He played with her. And he has loved her ever since."

They came to the kiosk, entered its dark interior. It was merely a roof over a circular metal bench, with a waist high railing. Thirty feet down, the sea inlet was a black ribbon of water. The yellow tunnel at the bottom of the opposite cliff was dark now, but further up the inlet there were lights and activity.

Allen sat with a hand gripping Garga's mailed arm. Across the background of his mind he was trying to plan ... he could seize this amourous woman's weapons. But then what? Would Leh be able to come here now? Leh, who had mentioned diving from here, with a way of escape from the inlet.

"Tollgamo loves Peters' daughter?" Allen was murmuring.

"Yes. It is sure, although he would not have it known. And he is planning tonight, before we attack Arron, to--"

A dark figure near them suddenly materialized. For a second Allen thought that it was Leh. But it was Rhool! Rhool who doubtless had seen Garga coming here, and followed her.

In that tense second Allen was aware that Rhool was drawing a weapon. And Allen leaped, catapulted with lowered head. He caught Rhool in the stomach, knocked him backward. But the Gort's weapon had stabbed, a hiss of violet light. It missed Allen; struck Garga. She went down.

On the metal floor of the kiosk, Allen rolled with the giant Rhool. The Gort had no chance to use his weapon again. Allen in a second or two was on top of him, pounding his head against the metal floor. It cracked, and his big body quivered and lay limp.

Allen jumped up. He was aware of a commotion on the catwalk bridge. A running figure. And men back in the glare at the end of the street; men shouting, and then running forward. The figure on the catwalk was Leh. He came plunging into the kiosk. Allen was bending over the fallen Garga. She was dying, with bloody foam gushing at her mouth. But she was trying to smile, her eyes staring at Allen. Contrition swept him. This Amazonian woman-warrior.... Trained to be a cruel machine. But she had remained only a woman; and she was dying now; just a woman staring with her last wistful gaze at the Earthman she loved so that she might take the image of him with her into the Great Beyond.

Allen murmured: "Oh, Garga, I'm sorry."

She may have heard him, but then her breath stopped, the light went out of her eyes and she was gone.

Allen jumped up as Leh gripped him. Leh, with his face and figure changed now so that Allen saw him as a handsome stripling, with something of the look of Nereid.

"Come on," Leh gasped. "Get that helmet off, and that heavy cloak. Hurry!"

A shot came from the catwalk, a spitting electronic stab that sent a shower of sparks on the kiosk ceiling. From the rail Allen and Leh dove. Then they were swimming; Leh guiding him as shots stabbed down at them. Allen was aware that Leh was dragging him underwater through a small subterranean passage to emerge in a watery cave. A water-cylinder was here, a twenty foot little submarine, as one might describe it on Earth. Two small seats were amidships in it, with its operating mechanisms around them. A moment later, they were off.

* * * * *

It was a weird underwater journey; some two hours, Allen guessed, while they sat in the dimness of the humming little cylindrical interior. Through the visor pane of the turret into which their heads projected, Allen had a dim vista of the turgid green-black depths, illumined by the small search-ray which preceded them. The vessel was propelled by a rocket-stream of disintegrating water as the electrolysis of backward gas-thrust shoved them forward.

Sub-sea world of Venus. Allen saw little of it then, but still enough to suggest its ramified weirdness. They sped out through the watery tunnel, down the inlet at a depth of perhaps fifty feet, and then into the open sea. Empty, black-green depths. Running at fifty feet submersion, Allen could see beneath them the vague vista of a slimy undulating bottom. Then it dropped away, with only occasional jagged spires of peaks. Tumbled, submarine world. Fishes flipped away, frightened by the light. Occasionally, there was a glimpse of monstrous things that quivered; shapes that hung suspended, watching with dull-green round eyes.

A submarine forest for a time was to one side, an intricate tracery of vegetation, with air-pods holding it upright as it slowly weaved and undulated like a thing quivering with life. A gigantic thing like a great squid with weaving tentacles came wobbling from a forest glade. It lunged to attack, but the little cylinder avoided it and sped past.

Leh hardly spoke. He was tense, guiding their frail craft; and tense too with this emergency of haste to get to Peters. Leh had learned as much or more of Tollgamo's plans than had Allen.

Then at last they were nearing their destination. Allen had learned now that Peters and his men of science were not located in the city of Arron. They had laboratories, workshops and arsenal on a rocky island fortress. It was some twenty miles by water from Arron; within a mile or so of a partly submerged section of the forest, where a village known as the Water City was built.

Allen saw the watery foundations of the Water City as the cylinder sped past. Then Leh was slackening, to land at a sub-sea dock beneath the arsenal. The dock's weird dark outlines presently were beside them. With air-renewer mechanisms like a pack on their shoulders, and a round transparent glassite helmet, which had an elastic gasket tightly fitting their throats, they emerged through the cylinder's little pressure lock into the water. Heavy shoes made them able to walk, with a pushing swaying shove.

Leh, with a metal-tipped finger, touched a tiny metal plate on Allen's helmet. And Leh's voice, dim, muffled, sounded in Allen's ears.

"You follow me. There will be a guard where we emerge."

Allen swayed along a rocky path which was slowly ascending. The turgid, black-green depths here were dimly lighted by a glow from some unseen source. It was a tumbled, honeycombed submarine slope. Clumps of vegetation stood like black thickets to the sides. Ahead, the glow seemed brighter.

Then suddenly Leh stopped his advance; stood rigid. Within the round, wholly transparent ball of his helmet his youthful face was tense. And his voice murmured.

"Allen, look there!"

They had no more warning than that. From a clump of tawny submarine vegetation nearby, two human figures suddenly emerged! Figures that stood as though startled for a second, and then came plunging to attack!

V

Festival of Love! On the swaying little anti-gravity platform I lay with Nereid, staring down at the strange, colorful scene that stretched beneath us. It was at the end of our escape-flight from the Spaceship, in time doubtless before Allen on that trip arrived in Tollgamo's mountain city.

What Allen saw of the grim little metal and rock city of the Gorts was in weird contrast to what I saw now of the riotous, colorful forest and water scene where the gay festival of Love and Music was in full progress.

There was only a brief glimpse at first, as we swooped down. We had already passed over the main city of Arron. It lay between the open sea and an area a mile or so inland, where there was a lagoon, little chains of lakes, threads of tiny streams and a myriad little dots of tropic islands. I had seen, down in the forest, lines of gay, pastel-tinted lights to mark the city streets. Then we came to the lagoon, where the festival was being held.

A watery failyland of gayety. The lagoon, a circular spread of water of perhaps five miles, was rippled with a soft night-breeze. The ripples were stained with the opalescent night-sheen from the overhead clouds, and stained like a painter's pallette with a riot of glorious tints from the strings of colored lights which connected the little islands.

One big island, a thousand feet in length, stood in the center. A pavilion was on it, from which soft exotic music flooded out into the night--music that blended on the tropic breeze with a vast murmur of excited voices. I could guess that there might be four or five thousand people disporting themselves here. The main island was thronged with people moving about, or crowding toward the pavilion where with the music there seemed dancing and perhaps some form of theatrical entertainment.

Boats were on the thread-like little canals between the islands. A barge crowded with young men and girls, all in gay-colored robes, was slowly approaching from the open lagoon. Little boats, mere six foot rafts, each held a girl and man; the man paddling, the girl fending off flowers with which she was pelted by young men on other rafts, or on the shore.

The laughing screams of girls floated up as they swam in the open lagoon, their voices calling jocular defiance to the men on shore to come out and catch them.

Nereid slid our little flying platform skilfully down. We landed on a small level island which was connected with the big island by an arcade bridge. No one had seemed to notice us. Boats were tied up here along the shore. Others were arriving, disembarking the gay merrymakers. All were in holiday attire; a variety of motley costumes, indescribable as a fancy-dress costume ball on Earth. Some of them, men and girls, wore cloaks and hoods, with little gaily colored masks covering their eyes.

I stood for a moment with Nereid. "You're going to find your father?" I suggested.

"Yes. If he is here." She told me then of the Arsenal rock beyond the Water City, where Peters and his men most of their time were working. "He is there probably," she added. "I think he would not come here tonight."

"Then what would we do, go to him there?"

"Yes, of course. I will see our Ruler first. Jenten-Shah--he will be here. Over there on the big island, in the pavilion probably." Bitterness was in her tone. Nereid was thinking of the menace of the Gorts, with their engines of destruction. She and I did not know then, what Allen was just about now learning--that there was an urgency of haste since Tollgamo's attack would be made tonight. But as we threaded our way under the gay colored lights across the arcade to the main island, I somehow seemed to feel the undercurrent of menace here. Occasionally we passed little figures who were evidently onlookers. The imbecile workers, lower class who were almost in the position of slaves. They were weird little creatures, most of them no more than four feet tall, grey-skinned and powerfully built. We passed one who was standing on the shore gazing at a raft where a lone girl shrouded in blue-white filmy drapery was being pelted with flowers. The gnome-like imbecile stood impassive, gazing with vacant face. Then he was muttering to himself. A fragment of it reached us.

"Tollgamo is coming to help us workers. We won't have to work tomorrow. Then we can do things like this."

I gripped Nereid. "You hear what that worker said? No work for him tomorrow. Do you suppose--"

She tried to smile. "What an imbecile says never means much, Kent. But I must tell father."

* * * * *

Occasionally now people were staring at us, at me. Some rushed at us, but Nereid with an imperious gesture scattered them; and in a moment, with their other diversions, they had forgotten us. Then we came to where there was a pile of cloaks. Nereid gave me a dark robe and hood; and found a long white cloak and white cowl for herself. Then from her green undergarment she produced a little golden star, fastened it on the breast of her cloak. Queer insignia, that star with a crescent moon above and below it.

The white cloak and cowl to signify that she was an Untouchable. Nereid's beautiful little face bore a faint twisted smile. "That is what some of them call us, Kent. That is a term of derision, because now, at a festival like this, there are things we do not like."

Love, music, laughter--all so admirable. But here in Arron, under the leadership of the wanton Ruler, Jenten-Shah, it was becoming license. There were some five hundred young Virgins here in Arron, who were trying at least for moderation. And trying to help Peters prepare for the menace of the Gorts ... Untouchables. Nereid was leader of them.

In our robes and cowls now, Nereid and I were attracting no attention save that occasionally there was a jibe at Nereid. Laughing young men, befuddled perhaps by some intoxicating drink with wanton girls clinging to them, would sometimes lunge at us with mocking laughter. But we pushed past them, shoving our way toward the big open pavilion. I could see now the jam of people under its low spreading roof.

We were still following the shorefront. From the pavilion a bevy of girls with flowing drapes came running and plunged into the water of the lagoon.

I gripped Nereid's white-cloaked arm. "That big figure in red--who is that?"

I had seen the giant figure here at an edge of the crowd, when we crossed the arcade bridge. A man in robe and cowl of red and black. Then he had vanished. He was visible again now, a huge fellow, six and a half feet, at least. He was standing a hundred feet or so ahead of us, on the pink-white coral sand of the shore. And then abruptly he moved away and was gone again.

Nereid stared, and then shook her head. "I do not know. I--" She checked herself; her face had a queer startled look.

"What--" I demanded. But we were in the pavilion now, with the jam of watching people pressing us.

"You will wait here, Kent?" Nereid murmured. "I will ask Jenten-Shah of my father."

I drew back behind a palm on which great orchid-like flowers were growing. I could see the dais where the gay fatuous ruler was seated with food and drink before him, with his young women favorites around him as they watched the platform where a barbarically voluptuous woman in flame-colored drapes was dancing with colored light-beams upon her.

I had a glimpse of Nereid importuning Jenten-Shah. It was brief; and then Nereid came back to me.

"Father is not here, Kent. He told the King not to hold this festival tonight."

"Did you mention that imbecile worker?"

She nodded. Her face was grim, frightened now. "He said, if any imbecile causes trouble there will be a hundred imbeciles killed as punishment. He is drunk with _marite_. He laughed at the idea that Tollgamo would dare attack."

Merrymaking on the brink of disaster and death.

* * * * *

As though both Nereid and I were fascinated now, for a time we stood in the pavilion corner, watching the colorful scene. Half the people here were robed and masked, waiting a later time when a bell would give the signal for the unmasking. I saw several of the white-robed girls--the Untouchables. Then one of them, with a golden star on her breast, like Nereid's but without the crescent moons, came and joined us. Nereid had met her a while ago near the Ruler's dais. Her name was Venta. Under Nereid, she was commanding the little group of protesting Virgins.

She was very like Nereid, save that beneath her white cowl I could see that her hair was dark. She stared at me. "So? The Earthman?" She shook my hand with a quaint awkwardness. "You look in the same fashion as her father, the Meester Peters," she commented.

Then suddenly all three of us were stricken tense. There was a commotion across the crowded pavilion, where a scantily clothed young girl was struggling, terrified, in the grip of a thick-set, crooked little imbecile man. He was forcing his caresses on her and the girl was screaming.

The music suddenly ceased. In the hushed, stricken silence, the imbecile's crazy childish laughter mingled with the girl's screams. Then there was a rush as a group of young men nearby plucked the girl away, knocked the gnome-like worker down, beating him, slamming him until he lay inert.

It was like a spark in gunpowder. People were shouting. Somebody found another imbecile and attacked him. A wave of shouting spread beyond the pavilion. But it lasted only a moment. The music started up again. The dancing continued.

Nereid gripped me. "Out in the workers' village they will hear of that. And what they might try to do--"

Her words evoked a grim picture of powerful little men, with minds like children suddenly enraged to frenzy; and the half-drunken youths at the festival, ready enough to kill any worker, with the Ruler encouraging them.

And this was what Tollgamo wanted, of course; confusion here to make his attack easier.

The girls now were swiftly talking in their own language. We had shoved our way out of the pavilion, were standing near the shorefront; and the girls had drawn a little apart from me. I could see Venta nodding as Nereid gave her instructions. Then Nereid came to me.

"She will get our Virgins, Kent. She has ten other girls who will help her collect them all."