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Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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Astounding Science Fictiom, May 1940, with "Space Guards"
The lost story of one of science-fiction's best-
known writers—the creator of "Buck Rogers."
THERE was no doubt of it. We were lost, Linda and I, in the miasmic fog that had risen without warning over the swampy Venusian jungle. We blundered blindly against the trunks of gigantic ferns, and tangled constantly in the snarled strands of parasitic vines that spread their endless webs between them.
Our arms were weary from wielding the heavy machetes we had brought along to hack our way through them. For we were afraid that the use of our heat rays on the moisture-soaked vegetation would raise clouds of smoke and steam to betray our presence.
The fog now had become so thick that we had to hold hands to make sure we didn't lose each other. That in itself, of course, was not unpleasant. A fellow doesn't often get a chance to hold a hand like Linda's, especially when he is only a junior lieutenant in the Space Guard, and the owner of the hand outranks him as navigation officer of the ship.
Linda sighed: "I'm going to rest a bit, Bob, before we go on," and promptly sat down on a hummock of pale, yellowish moss. I plumped down beside her and found out the moss was very wet. But both of us were too tired to care. Linda just made a little face, and remarked we should have worn our porosite uniforms.
"Why go on at all?" I asked. "I'll bet we're just stumbling around in a circle, anyhow."
"Venus is a hell of a planet, isn't it?" she mused wearily. "I don't suppose a single ray of good, honest sunshine has ever penetrated that mess of clouds up there, that they call a stratosphere, since the beginning of time.
"And down here, on the surface," she continued, "not a leaf of healthy-looking green foliage to be found anywhere. Nothing but the dirty white and muddy yellow of these fern trees, and things. Ugh! They're almost fungoid! And you wouldn't think a world so much closer to the Sun than Earth is, could get so chilly, would you?"
I shrugged. "It only goes to show what a good insulation a perpetual envelope of water vapor can be."
We mused a while in silence. Not a breath of air was stirring. Not a frond of the fern trees nor a leaf of the snaky vines moved. There was only the constant drip of moisture, and the wet, white blanket of fog that had closed down upon us.
I'm no weakling myself, and Linda, though lithe and slender, has muscles like spring steel, and endurance to spare. Yet we were really weary. Hacking our way through those tough vines for five miles had been no joke. And now, it seemed, it had been in vain.
"It's hopeless to try to go any farther in this fog," she said at last. "And Heaven only knows how long it will be before it clears. Let's go hands before our faces?"
"Can we find our way back," I objected, "when we can hardly see our hands before our faces."
"I don't know, Bob. It will be slow work, I guess, but we ought to be able to feel our way back, along the path we hacked."
"Cap Scudder will be sore."
"He'll blast off, of course," Linda admitted. "But his bark is worse than his bite. He doesn't demand the impossible. And after all, we don't know whether we're even within a thousand miles of Tiger Madden's mysterious, hidden kingdom. Steve Hardie's report indicated Tiger's stronghold is rather thickly surrounded by native villages, but so far, we haven't seen the slightest sign of any inhabitants, savage or civilized. We would have seen or heard something if we'd been anywhere near them."
"All right, then," I said, standing up. "Let's see if we can grope our way back to the rocket glider."
We started off. Linda quite naturally took my hand again. As we had feared, it was slow work. The trunks of the giant ferns were some twenty feet apart, but far above their great fronds spread out until they overlapped and formed, practically, an unbroken roof of foliage under which the mosses and vines grew, the latter climbing the fern stems and draping groundward from the highest of the spreading branches like snarled, tangled nets.
Underfoot were masses of soggy, whitish moss, divided by innumerable twisting, winding little rivulets, and many wide, deep pools. We did a lot of slipping and splashing in the streams, and once Linda barely saved my life by whipping out her machete and lopping off the head of a snake thing that stabbed up at me out of one of the pools when I stepped too close to it.
Our magnetic compasses were worthless. The needles kept constantly dancing back and forth through virtually an entire quadrant. Even our little radiolets, which should have enabled us to converse with the Space Guard up to a hundred miles or more, produced nothing but buzzes and crackles, probably due to the same electronic disturbances that affected the compasses.
So, we groped our way slowly, cautiously, from one netlike barrier of vines to another, feeling our way along it until we came to the hole we had hacked in it.
"When we reach the glider we better blast straight back for the ship," Linda said. "I'm wet to the skin, and I know you must be, too. Besides, both of us could do with a shot of something to take this chill out of our bones, and some hot food."
"Fly in this fog?" I asked doubtfully.
"It probably doesn't reach any higher than the jungle roof. We'll get above it. Then we ought to be able to. see the mountain where Scudder landed the Eagle—even if the radio compass isn't working."
"And here," I said, as we climbed through another opening in the netted vines, "is the clearing where we left the glider."
Back and forth across the clearing we groped, reaching blindly ahead of us to locate our tiny craft.
But it was gone!
FOR a moment we stood there staring hopelessly at each other. We had little chance of regaining the Space Guard ship without our rocket glider. Our one slim hope was that the static would fade and enable us to communicate with it before it was too late. But the electric disturbances and the fog might continue for days, and Scudder had expected us back in a matter of hours. .
Linda began to swear, softly but fervently, and the phrases, so incongruous in her honeyed, throaty voice, seemed to carry more weight and vehemence by that very incongruity. In truth, these girls of the Space Guard were no sissies. With all his rumblings and boomings, I had never heard even Scudder do a better job than she did as we stood facing each other in that stifling Venusian mist. But I knew she was doing it to help choke back the tears and get control of her nerves in the face of the panic that threatened the pair of us.
Suddenly her eyes widened in alarm and she cut short one of her most lurid ejaculations. She leaned toward me and whispered in my ear, "Oh! Did you hear anything?" and then glanced apprehensively over her shoulder.
I shook my head "no."
Again she whispered, so softly I barely heard her, as she took my arm and led me several paces from the spot where we had been standing. Our footsteps made no noise in the spongy moss.
"For a moment I forgot, in the shock of finding our glider gone," she said, "but, Bob, it didn't vanish by itself! And whoever took it—"
"May be waiting right here, to trap us in this clearing when we return!" I finished.
I did have the feeling now that we were being watched, and by many eyes, though I couldn't understand how eyes could pierce such dense fog. Or did any of the denizens of this Venusian jungle perhaps have that power? I seemed to have a vague recollection of having heard somewhere that—"«
But I had no opportunity to pursue the thought. This time there was a noise, faint and indistinguishable, from one side of the clearing, followed quickly by another from the opposite side.
In a split second we had flopped flat on the ground, facing in opposite directions, our guns in our hands. But the attack did not come from any direction in which we had expected. It came from overhead!
With a swishing, whistling sound, a great net dropped out of the impenetrable mist above us, completely blanketing us. It must have been nearly as wide as the clearing itself.
"Our knives!" I gasped, as we whirled over where we lay, trying instinctively to lift its entangling folds. But handicapped by these and our prone positions we were Unable to whip out our machetes. Then, out of the mist, savage forms materialized as though by magic, hurling themselves upon us.
Twice we blasted with our guns, but scored no hits. Then I realized the shapes piling up upon us, and cleverly entangling us further in the meshes of the net, were human, and that they were trying to capture without harming us. The lads on top of me were gasping and groaning under the impact of my fists, elbows and knees, but were making no effort to retaliate, only to pin me down.
"Cut resistance, Bob!" Linda called to me. "They've got us, anyhow!" ,
That was an order, and of course I obeyed it, in the face of all my instinct to the contrary, forcing myself to lie still without any further struggling. Slowly they climbed off of me, which was a relief, for I think there were about eight of them. But in the process I noticed that my gun and every bit of my gear that wasn't too large, was pulled away from me through the net.
In an unfamiliar dialect of the universal Venusian language a gruff voice said: "You are good fighters, you two! But you surrender?"
Linda laughed bitterly. "What else can we do? You've got us beaten."
"Not beaten," replied the voice, with a crude note of admiration, "but overwhelmed. It took nearly a score of us to pin you down!" Then a command: "Roll back the net, and let them up! But bind their hands behind them. Tiger Madden and Valita Lenoir, the mad Earthlings, are not to be trusted. So ordered Hung-Ho-Mang!"
Linda and I exchanged glances of amazement as we got to our feet. We were barely close enough to see each other hazily through the thick mist, into which our captors busily vanished, quickly reappearing, as they completed the job of stripping us of the rest of our gear, even to our "tin hats" with their built-in radiolets, while several of their number held sharp knives to our backs, ready to thrust them home at the slightest sign of resistance.
They were big fellows for Venusians, I noticed, having several inches in stature on the average inhabitant of the cloudy planet; in fact, being almost as tall as ourselves. Obviously they were members of one of the semibarbaric races of the tropical jungle. They had the typical Venusian dead-white skin, and features that are so reminiscent of the Oriental peoples of Earth. Their only clothing was a uniform kilt of soft, pleated leather, studded with metal, and a girdle from which hung a straight, heavy-bladed knife, or short sword. In addition, they carried compact, powerful crossbows.
LINDA and I were placed side by side, for which we were thankful, since it would enable us to talk, and the middle of a long rope was passed through our belts. Half of the detail took one end of this line and vanished into the mist with it. When we felt the tug, we followed. The other half of the party brought up behind us, holding the other end of the line.
There was a break somewhere among the vines that we had not noticed when first we had landed in the clearing. Through it and others, we found ourselves hustled away at a fairly snappy pace; so fast that I suspected these jungle clansmen really could see through the fog much farther than we could.
"You noticed the names by which the head man addressed us," I said to Linda in English, as we strode along.
"Yes," she replied thoughtfully. "Our savage friends evidently are not friends of Tiger Madden and Valita Lenoir, since they think we're them."
"Maybe we can turn this situation to our advantage after all."
"Exactly what I was thinking," said Linda. "We'll play it soft for a while, and see what develops." , "What about Scudder and the Space Guard ship?" I suggested.
She shrugged. "He'll just list us as missing in action, when he doesn't hear from us in a few hours. What can we do about it? Then he'll send out other scouts to try to locate Tiger Madden's tropical empire. Maybe we'll get a break later, and a chance to contact him by radio."
"This doesn't look like it," I said gloomily.
"No, she said. Was it by accident or design that her shoulder pressed against mine for a moment as we marched along? "Right now it's just a case of the two of us, alone, against one of the most powerful, sinister and mysterious potentates on this damned waterlogged planet—win or lose—for the honor of the good old Space Guard."
The way she said "two of us, alone," made something convulsive happen under my left row of ribs. The only answer I could make was a gulped "Right!" and I couldn't tell whether her shoulder pressed against mine again accidentally or on purpose.
The ground was rising as we progressed, and soon we were out of the swamplands. The nature of the giant fern trees changed. They werent so much like ferns. The growth of rank vines thinned out and disappeared, as did the dank moss under foot. Gradually the mist thinned, and vanished. Then, even the fern type of tree vanished, to be replaced by a coniferous kind of dwarfed shrubbery, until at last we were stringing out over a plain covered with queer, long grasses, under a leaden sky. Ahead loomed a mountainous ridge, the slopes of which were patchily covered with vegetation with a distinct but anemically green tint.
At the base of the ridge, our captors led us into a ravine that wound up the course of a fair-sized stream, until, at last, after a challenge from a sentry behind a huge boulder, we passed on into a little valley, and a village of leathern tents that looked much like the tepees of the ancient American Indians.
Before the largest of the tents we were brought to a halt. Our captors lined up behind us, standing at attention. Their leader stepped forward, and stood with arms stretched wide, while a barbarically impressive figure strode out and paused, looking at Linda and me with mildly puzzled eyes.
The leader of the detail thwacked his left chest resoundingly and said: "See, O Hung! We have captured and brought to you the Earthlings, Tiger Madden and Valita Lenoir, and they are mighty fighters. It took all of us to subdue them! Have we done well?"
The hung—for, as we quickly learned this was his title and not his name—gave us a piercing glance, and actually grinned.
Still smiling, he spoke to the suddenly abashed chief of our captors: "You call them Earthlings? Yes. You are right. But they are not the Madden and the Lenoir."
"Oo-Lah!" cried the detail leader in dismay, and dropped to his knees. "They were in the swamps. We found their bird machine, like those of the Earthlings. We took it apart, and sent its parts here. Then, when they returned for it, we netted them."
"You are not to blame, Gor-Kang," replied the hung, "for you have never seen the Madden or the Lenoir. But I have. And I tell you, these are not they. Have them unbound."
Then he turned to us, still smiling, after a couple of the men had leaped to obey the command. He looked at us curiously, and then at the little heap of our weapons and gear that had been piled nearby.
"Who are you?" he asked.
Linda answered: "I am Commander Linda Darlington, astronavigator of the Earth Space Guard cruiser Eagle," she told him. "And this is Lieutenant Bob Manley of the same ship."
"Hm-m-m," mused the hung. "The Space Guard of the Earthlings? I have heard of that. And this strange clothing, and the strange weapons? Yes, you must be right. Why were you where Gor-Kang found you?"
Linda took a chance. "Our orders are to locate Tiger Madden and Valita Lenoir," she announced . boldly, "and to arrest them in the name of the Federated Nations of Earth for high treason, mass murder and the larceny of one billion dollars' worth of deltinium from the mines of Luna, the satellite of Earth. This we have the right to do under treaty with the Venusian north and south polar hegemonies."
The hung rubbed his chin thoughtfully.
"The hegemonies have no jurisdiction here," he replied slowly, "but we of the Ho-Mang do not admit that Madden and Lenoir have either, though they claim the right to enslave us. You of the Earth Space Guard have much knowledge and skill that we of the Ho-Mang lack. You are mighty fighters, Gor-Kang says. We are mighty fighters, too, though simple folk. And we are both enemies of the Madden and the Lenoir. Could we not join forces?"
"Yes!" said Linda and I together, with considerable enthusiasm.
THE hung ordered that our weapons and equipment be returned to us. Then he shouted, in a peculiar high, quavering voice, and the inhabitants of the village began to pour out of their tents arid ringed, around us, staring at us curiously, yet with a friendly respect.
All—men, women and children—were clad alike, in the same garb that the soldiers wore; only without the metallic studding in their leathern kilts, and without weapons and equipment.
Then, having "met" us, so to speak, they dispersed, going back to activities which evidently had been interrupted by our arrival. Many were engaged in the curing of a huge luimok hide which they held over a vast smoking fire. Others were grinding gram. Some were chipping stones into convenient shape for their peculiar crossbows, while two or three, with stone hammers, laboriously were shaping bars of metal, at rude forges, into sword blades and other implements.
It was warmer and drier here in the village of the Ho-Mang. There was greater diffusion of light and heat from the leaden sky, and we began to thaw out from the chill of the ground fog of the jungle swamp which had penetrated to our very bones.
The hung invited us to a ceremonial meal to bind our alliance. He escorted us with dignity to a great stone block with a flat top, around which we sat on smaller blocks, while attendants served us on rude platters with such delicacies as great chunks of luimok meat, yaka porridge, unleavened cakes made of boo-ya grain flour, and the strange tropical fruits of Venus. Barbarian etiquette demanded that we keep absolute silence during this meal. But Linda flashed me many an eloquent glance as we sampled this and that, sometimes with the most surprising results. We had had experience with the delicate epicurian dishes of the civilized polar regions, but this tropical diet was neW to us.
The luimok meat, as might be expected, was coarse-grained, with a slight oily, reptilian flavor; not tempting, but passable when doctored up with tropical spices. Altogether, you wouldn't have called the meal an especially appetizing one, but we were hungry, and the fruit nectar, called ipsong, and served in cups hollowed out of luimok claws, was delicious.
Hardly had we finished when a sudden excitement pervaded the village, and one of the Ho-Mang scouts came leaping and plunging down the mountain slope nearest us. Staggering up to the hung, he slapped his chest in what seemed to be the tribal form of greeting or salute, and gasped out his report so breathlessly that Linda and I were unable to follow the dialect.
The chief looked grave, and turned to us. "He says that in the valley on the other side of this ridge, a vast array of clansmen is approaching, supported by a large detail of Madden's hirelings with big rocket guns, and much equipment that floated in the air, held aloft by up-falling stones and pulled along by light ropes."
"Inertron lifters!" Linda and I exclaimed in the same breath.
"Tiger Madden and Valita have done well by themselves," Linda added. "Well, what was to stop them, with the billions' worth of deltinium they stole?"
"Do they know of your village here? Are they coming to attack you?" I asked.
"It is possible," replied the hung. "But we do not know. We could not stand against them if they attack from the top of this ridge."
"Then occupy the top of the ridge yourselves," suggested Linda, "and drive your own attack down upon them!"
"That is a good thought!" he said. "After all, we are their enemies. Why should we wait to find out if they are hunting for us? A very good thought, indeed!" He brightened considerably.
But if he was slow in thought, he was not slow to action. A single barked order and two thirds of the village, including the younger women and the older boys, were congregating in rough order, detachment by detachment, in the open space around his tent, and fully armed with short swords and crossbows. And a moment later, they were scrambling up the steep slope.
The hung followed them, accompanied by Linda and myself. I loosened my rocket pistol in its holster and hitched my belt around until the machete hilt was more ready to my hand. Linda glanced at me with a little half smile of amusement.
We reached the top of the ridge before the enemy column came abreast of us. By rights they should have had flankers out, coming along the ridge, but they didn't, and I doubted if their mission really was concerned with the Ho-Mang in particular. So much the more chance of taking them by surprise.
First came a detachment of clansmen, about a hundred strong, who looked very much like the Ho-Mang, but far better armed. Rocket rifles were slung across their shoulders, and double bandoleers of ammunition. They swung along with the free, easy stride of jungle men.
Next came the mercenaries, men of smaller stature for the most part, probably outcasts and refugees from the more civilized polar regions, effortlessly towing behind them in the air, seven big rocket cannon, the weight of which had been neatly counterbalanced by the lifting power of inertron blocks. They were towing along other impediments, too, the nature of which I could not identify at the distance. Mechanical or scientific apparatus by all appearances. .
These men were completely uniformed and wore substantial armor, the weight of which they seemed to bear lightly. There probably was built into it a certain amount of inertron to counterbalance all but,a,few ounces of its weight, I imagined.
Behind them marched another detachment of clansmen, equipped like the first.
Linda and I lay flat beside the hung, raising our heads only occasionally to peer down at the enemy.
"You will watch carefully," the leader of the Ho-Mang pleaded, "and tell us our mistakes?"
We agreed to give him the benefit of our advice, but in the engagement that followed we couldn't see much to improve on in the tactics of the Ho-Mang, considering the nature of the ground and the primitiveness of their arms. Indeed, I think we learned more from them than they from us.
FROM where we lay beside the hung, Linda and I could see the Ho-Mang, spread out to either side of us, without raising our heads enough to be seen from the column marching below.
The tribesmen were hidden in little groups behind the numerous boulders and outcroppings of rock that lined the top of the ridge.
Linda nudged me. "Do you get it?" she asked.
I looked up and down the line intently. One peculiar thing I noticed, but its significance did not occur to me at the moment.
"They're well hidden behind those boulders," I replied, "all ready, I suppose, to rush down the hillside and fall upon the other crew in a surprise attack. And—"And lots of them seem to have spears now that they didn't have when they climbed up here from the village."
"Spears?" she smiled at me.
"Well, they do look a bit heavy for spears," I admitted.
"They're not spears. They're crowbars! And do you notice that it's only the girls and the young boys who are taking shelter behind the outcroppings of stratified rock? That it is the men, who are stronger, who are grouped behind the boulders, with the crowbars? And what are boulders doing up here on top of this ridge? They're all nearly round, too! It's not natural, geologically, to find them here, Bob. They've been placed here, only you don't notice them at first, in the midst of all this rocky formation!"
I got the idea then, but hardly before the Ho-Mang put it in operation.
There was no signal given that I could notice. Certainly the hung made no move, nor uttered any sound. Probably the whole thing was prearranged and rehearsed. At any rate, without warning, under the impetus of the clansmen crouching behind it, one of the huge boulders, dislodged from its place, started rolling down the steep slope, gathering speed as it went. The little group who had started it fell flat on their faces.
Below, the startled column heard, and whirled to watch it as it leaped and bounded like a living juggernaut toward their rear. The tribesmen toward whom it was headed broke their formation and scattered in panic.
Then, while all eyes were turned toward the threatened spot, several more boulders tipped forward and started crashing down the slope.
As yet, not a clansman was visible to the column below, whose officers still didn't realize they were being made the target of a desperate and clever attack. The mercenaries made no attempt to haul down their rocket guns and get them into action. Instead, still towing them in the air behind them, they attempted to swarm up the opposite slope.
"It's funny," Linda commented. "Those men evidently are seasoned soldiers. An undisguised attack by an enemy wouldn't panic them at all. They'd have had those guns unlimbered and in action in a few seconds. But there they are, utterly demoralized, fleeing madly from an avalanche of stones!"
"They're badly disorganized all right," I said. "It will take some time for them to get into action when they do realize what they're up against."
The entire column was in wild disorder now. The two and three-ton boulders, accompanied by a very storm of rocks and debris, were crashing among them with devastating effect. Scores were crushed or maimed.
By now the Ho-Mang, however, had abandoned all attempts at concealment. As fast as a group would upset the delicate balance of one great missile, they would rush openly to another, and send it hurtling down, too. All were now on their feet, those who were not assigned to duty at the stones standing calmly, grasping their weapons and waiting for the signal to charge.
"How about it, Linda?" I asked, as a couple of the big rocket guns, released from the grasp of injured or frightened mercenaries, went drifting slowly skyward like huge toy balloons. "We're good enough shots to pot a few of those fellows!" I tugged at my holster.
"No!" she said sharply, grabbing my arm. "It might, be noticed by some of them, even in this panic, and some survivor might carry the word back to Tiger Madden and Valita. They know the Ho-Mang are not equipped with rocket pistols! The hung hasn't asked us to actually take part in this fight, so we might as well keep ourselves strictly under cover! We still have our mission to accomplish, you know."
As the last of the boulders went hurtling downward the hung blew sharply on a whistle, and with a wild yell the Ho-Mang went leaping and bounding down the slope in the wake of the avalanche they had started. Shrieking their battle cry, "Ho-Mang Oo-Lah," women and boys fell upon the enemy like wild beasts, hacking, slashing and thrusting with their heavy swords.
I doubt if the tribesmen below had been aware of the charging Ho-Mang until they hit them, coming as they did, right in the wake of the showering stones and boulders, leaping through the dense clouds of dust like suddenly materialized demons. Only a scattering fire from the rocket rifles met them.
I was more than amazed at the fierceness with which the detachment of girls hurled themselves against the enemy, slashing and hacking their way through the disordered column with furious abandon.
Then the Madden forces broke. Casting away their rocket rifles, ammunition bags and anything that might impede them in their flight, the stranger tribesmen scattered and fled up the valley and along the opposite slope, hotly pursued by the Ho-Mang, while groups of the boys followed, mopping up.
No quarter was shown. Some hundred survivors, as nearly as I could estimate, made their escape simply by outrunning their pursuers. And most of these were the mercenaries who, when they saw how the fight was going, made no attempt to haul down their big guns, but simply let them drift skyward while they raced for safety.
"The Ho-Mang are mighty fighters," said the hung with simple sincerity when, obviously weak from several superficial wounds and covered with blood, he wearily reclimbed the slope to where we stood.
We agreed with him heartily. With boulders, crowbars and their heavy, short swords they had vanquished a force fifty percent stronger than themselves, armed with modern rocket rifles and huge rocket cannon. And I don't think a single crossbow bolt was fired.
"NOW," said Linda, when we were back among the campfires of the feasting Ho-Mang, "you and I better be about our business of finding out just where Tiger Madden's stronghold is, and scouting the place so Scudder can lay his plans for a raid."
"If we can manage to locate the Space Guard ship," I amended. "It's a cinch Scudder isn't going to hold it there on that plateau forever. He's probably given up hope of our return already, and gone ahead with other" plans to locate Madden and Valita."
"Let's try our radiolets again," she suggested.
The electronic disturbances, however, were still heavy, and though we signaled the ship's code for quite a while, we got no other response than loud static. If we could not hear the Eagle's powerful transmitter, it wasn't likely that it could pick up the weaker signals of our own tiny sets.
We told the hung our intentions and asked for directions, but to our disappointment, he only waved an arm vaguely eastward, and could tell us nothing about the stronghold itself. Nor had any of the Ho-Mang any further information.
All they knew, it seemed, was that about two years before—which must have been shortly after Madden and Valita had made good their escape from the Moon with the huge fortune stolen from the deltinium mines, of which Madden had been the manager—there had been rumors, passed along from one barbarian tribe to another, of the coming of an Earth man and woman who had set themselves up as supreme rulers of all Sungland. They had persuaded several tribes to accept their rule by promises of the comforts and power of civilization.
To some extent they had made good on these promises. Also, together with luxuries, machinery and scientific apparatus of every description, they had imported mercenaries recruited from the dregs of the northern and southern civilizations, including some Earth men and even Martian outcasts.
There was no telling how far they might have extended their rule by peaceful methods if they had not permitted these mercenaries to set themselves up as a sort of arrogant aristocracy. But gradually rumors of cruelty and injustice also began to circulate from tribe to tribe.
And just as surely, there grew up among the Ho-Mang and other independent clans, who at first were not entirely antagonistic to the idea of the prosperity promised, a spirit of fierce hatred for this mysterious "kingdom" or "empire," and a determination to preserve their freedom at any cost.
Finally, overtures had been made to the Hung-Ho-Mang indirectly—"he had refused them in no uncertain terms)—and the clan had begun its preparations for defense, which included the trap we had just seen them spring on their enemies.
But why had the polar hegemonies looked with such complacency on the formation of what threatened to be a powerful tropical state?
We had known the answer to that before we set out on our mission. They simply were indifferent. The tropics produced nothing they needed nor wanted. They had no trade nor communication with them. The thing wasn't taken seriously enough to be "viewed with alarm." Popular feeling was that if a couple of crazy Earthlings wanted to play king and queen to a few barbarian tribes in the beastly climate of the tropics, let them have their fun.
But neither the hung nor any of his clansmen could give us any definite information as to just how far and in precisely what direction Tiger Madden's new city lay.
In that case," I said to Linda, "maybe we're losing a good bet in not trailing after the survivors of this expedition the Ho-Mang have just licked!"
"That's right!" she exclaimed. "They'll surely streak back there. At least the mercenaries will. We'll follow them, but—"
"But what?" I cut in.
"We'll stand a lot better chance of getting away with it if we discard these brilliant Space Guard uniforms of ours. They were never designed for low visibility in tropical Venusian campaigning—except in fogs, perhaps."
"We've got nothing else to "wear," I pointed out. "We forgot to bring a trunkful of disguises."
"Well," she said doubtfully, "we might get the Ho-Mang to outfit us like themselves, only... only I'll be damned if I'm going to run around with nothing on me up here."
In the end we consulted our hosts, and found out there was another tribe several miles south who prided themselves on their addition of brief jackets to the usual jungle kilts. The women got busy at once with their thorn needles and soft pieces of luimok hide, and soon we looked like anything but two Space Guard officers.
"It won't matter if the details aren't entirely authentic," Linda remarked. "We don't dare be seen at too close range, anyhow. We could never whitewash our skin to look like Venusians. We haven't got black, slanting eyes, and my hair is yellow. But a cap will cover that."
"At a distance we won't attract undue attention," I concluded. "Let's go. Those fugitives must have covered a lot of ground by now, and well have some catching-up to do."
Outwardly we were equipped like clansmen, with broad, short swords and small but powerful crossbows. Concealed—the Ho-Mang women had provided pockets in our kilts and jackets for the purpose—we had our rocket pistols, heat-ray tubes and radiolets. The machetes we had presented to the hung, who regarded them as priceless gifts.
Over the ridge we went, and up the valley in that unhurried, swinging stride to which the Space Guard aground is trained; which looks slow, but eats up the miles tirelessly. We wasted little breath in talking.
At first, abandoned weapons and pieces of equipment made the trail easy to follow. Later, as our way rose constantly toward the highlands, these indications became more and more scarce. And to make matters worse, there was not enough vegetation to reveal the recent passage of a fleeing horde. There was, of course, no road nor visible trail. We had to guess our way by putting ourselves mentally in the position of the fugitives and picking the most likely direction.
Hotter and hotter it got, always with that dreary, sultry, leaden sky above. But we never flagged in our pace nor paused for rest, and I noted with growing admiration that Linda showed less sign of fatigue even than I. The girl was tough. Anyway you took it, however, this was better than hacking our way, foot by foot, through the tangled mass of the swampy jungle.
It was not until the leaden sky dulled slowly into night that we found the first evidence we had guessed our way correctly along the trail of our quarry. Pinpoints of light flickered up ahead of us. Camp-fires!
We kept on until we had lessened the distance somewhat, then finding a spot where a natural rock formation afforded concealment and partial protection, we settled down for the night, taking turn about at keeping watch.
IT was in the darkest period of the night, that which precedes the first leaden gray of the Venusian dawn, and Linda, curled up in a smooth hollow in the rock, was sleeping soundly when I first became aware of its approach.
I felt, rather than heard it.
I was a few steps away" from the rock, concentrating on listening, and staring uselessly into the dense blackness, when I sensed the faintest trembling in the ground. There was no sound at all, and at first I thought it must be my imagination. But gradually the tremors became more perceptible. They were regular and rhythmic, like the footsteps of some incredibly heavy giant, walking too softly to be heard, but so heavy as to set the ground trembling a bit. Every once in a while the footsteps paused, then came on again, slowly, cautiously, until finally I imagined I could actually hear them. A chill raced up and down my spine.
As quickly as I dared, in the utter darkness, I felt my way back to Linda. She was already awake, and sitting up.
"What is it?" she whispered sharply. "I could hear it through the ground. It woke me up."
"I don't know," I replied. "Listen!" The slow, rhythmic thumping came closer. She was on her feet now, standing very close to me. Instinctively we both drew our guns.
Still closer it came.
Then suddenly Linda gasped: "Look! Up there!" she said. Swaying in the blackness, some thirty feet above us, and not much farther away, two faintly phosphorescent orbs seemed to float and sway against the solid black of the night! "Eyes!" I whispered.
"A luimok!" she gasped. "Quick, Bob! Before it squashes us!"
I raised my rocket pistol, but in an instant she knocked up my arm.
"No! Not that! The explosion would give us away! The heat ray!"
Even as she spoke, she had whipped out her own tube. And the almost invisible, purplish ray stabbed through darkness to a spot several feet below the eyes. The eyes remained motionless for an instant, apparently focused right on us. A spot began to glow redly where the ray found its target. The eyes blinked rapidly and zigzagged from side,to side. A hellish blend of shriek, roar and howl shattered the night.
Suddenly the eyes whirled out of sight. The red spot vanished, and footsteps thundered away from us to be lost in the distance in an incredibly short moment.
Linda gave a great sigh, and slumped against me. I had to put my arm around her to keep her from falling to the ground.
"Thank Heaven!" she gasped, "It... it ran... instead of attacking!"
"I was afraid myself, we were done for," I admitted a bit shakily.
Ahead of us now, in the east, a dull gray light began to outline the mountain peaks faintly. And from the same direction came a distant repetition of that infernal cry, while more faintly the shouts of terrified and agonized men were borne on the still air.
"Come on!" Linda said sharply, pushing me away suddenly. "It's stumbled into one of the fugitives' camps!"
We both started to run. There was enough light now to avoid crashing into obstacles or stepping into hollows and ditches.
"Easy, Linda!" I gasped. "We can't keep up this pace. We'll be completely winded before we get there!"
At that we settled down to the regulation double-time trot that we knew we could keep up for twenty minutes to half an hour without pause.
"Funny!" I commented. "The way that beast actually took your heat ray for several seconds before it went haywire."
"I know," she replied. "It took that long for the sensory impulses to reach its tiny brain, and for the reaction to reach its muscles again. Nearly all of the animals on Venus have primitive organisms compared to those of Earth. And... and the luimok is... is something like the prehistoric... struthiomimus, I think it's called. One of the earliest of the... the dinosaurs."
"Yeah. I know what you mean. One of those things with a... a neck and a tail like a snake, and a body in between. They... they walked erect, on their hind legs, didn't they?"
"Uh-huh," Linda grunted. "Their front legs were practically arms, like those of the luimok, with... with three-fingered 'hands' like... like claws."
It was lighter still when about a quarter of a mile ahead we saw the giant form of the luimok thrashing about madly, striking great sweeping blows with his huge tail, and leaning down to claw at the ground with its short arms.
As we neared the spot, racing now as fast as our legs would carry us, I saw that it had been the bivouac of a sizable group of Madden's mercenaries, for there were several fires, or rather the remains of them, since the great beast evidently had trampled them to smoking embers. The tribesmen would have built one great fire instead of many small ones.
There were a number of crushed inanimate forms lying around, while here and there throughout the shambles was the gleam of metal armor.
The men must have been taken utterly by surprise. On its long neck, so curiously like a snake's, the animal's head was swaying and turning, restlessly but slowly, peering here and there seeking some remaining living thing on which to vent its sluggish rage. Finding none, it rose to its full height, and stared stupidly around, its huge legs stamping thunderously as it turned, and its shorter arms waving constantly with curious, hooking movements.
Then it saw us. We skidded to a halt.
For an appreciable moment it glared balefully. Then suddenly it was racing toward us at amazing speed. And again that hellish cry rent the air.
So swiftly it came that Linda and I barely had time to whip out our pistols and let fly at it. There were two blinding flashes as our explosive rockets both scored hits. In one its wicked little head vanished. With the other a gaping hole appeared in its body that you could have heaved a barrel through. We darted aside, in opposite directions, as its huge hulk came plunging on for a moment as though nothing had happened, and then crashed to the ground between us, its limbs and huge tail flailing madly.
As the beast's last convulsive struggles subsided, a little cry made us whirl about. One of the mercenaries, who had not been killed but evidently had been playing possum, arose and came toward us.
"A girl!" I gasped.
She was taller than a Venusian. Taller, in fact, than Linda. Her hair was as bright as Linda's, too, and even at that distance, the peculiar, elusive, golden tint of her skin was noticeable.
"A Martian!" Linda exclaimed.
"She doesn't look like one to be mixed up with Tiger Madden's mercenaries!"
"NOW we really are in for it," Linda murmured as the girl advanced. "We can't let her go back and report to Tiger Madden that a couple people from Earth are snooping around the countryside, disguised in Venusian clothing!"
"We might take her back and turn her over to the Ho-Mang," I suggested.
"And lose the chance of following the other fugitives?"
"Maybe we could force her to tell us—"But careful!" I whispered. "She's noticed."
The Martian girl, who had been walking toward us with the easy grace of a trained athlete, suddenly halted about fifteen feet away, and stared.
"You're not tribesmen!" she said in the Venusian tongue. She frowned. "You're not even Venusians."
"No," Linda admitted simply. I merely stood and looked. She wasn't hard to look at, either.
"Well, at any rate," she said as her eyes roved over us curiously, "I have to thank you for saving my life. There wasn't a weapon within reach, and if I had made the slightest move to get near one, that horrible beast would have trampled me or torn me to pieces in a moment. So ... so I pretended to be dead. You are from Earth, of course."
"Yes," Linda said, drawing her gun and calmly covering the other. "And you're a Martian. What have you been doing here among this riffraff? And wearing Tiger Madden's uniform? You don't look like that kind. No! Don't move! You're under arrest!"
The Martian girl tried to ignore the implication, but reddened slightly. Then she straightened up and lifted her head proudly.
"Under arrest?" she said. "By what authority do you presume to order—"
"The authority of the Earth Space Guard!" Linda snapped. "We are officers of the Space Guard. We're here to take Tiger Madden and Valita Lenoir back to Earth to stand trial. And that goes for any of his accomplices, too! No! You'll have no chance to get away and warn him!"
Curiously enough, the girl's concern dropped from her like a cloak. She smiled with relief. "Steve Hardie will laugh when he hears this one," she said.
Linda and I glanced quickly at each other.
"So you do know him," said our captive. "That proves your claim, because you couldn't if you were not officers of the Space Guard. And, as you must know also, the Martian Imperial Government is supporting your Earth council in this matter. Hence the livery I'm wearing." She made an apologetic little gesture. "I have been working with Steve Hardie under cover in Mad-Val, Madden's hidden stronghold!"
"And your name?" demanded Linda, still alert.
"Ainetsu Na Lannaigh," replied the other. "And your ship is the Eagle, isn't it? Does that mean anything to you?"
It did. Steve Hardie's reports, which Scudder had shown us, had mentioned her. And it was incredible that there could be another Martian girl in Madden's city who was so deep in the intrigue on the outlaw's side as to be impersonating her. We had to believe her.
Linda holstered her gun, and held out her hand with a smile, and I did likewise. We introduced ourselves, and Ainetsu, with a little bow, touched her fingers to her forehead in the Martian military salute.
"It was with the definite idea of contacting your ship," Ainetsu explained, "that I pulled the wires to be assigned to this expedition—to help you with whatever information I can give you about Mad-Val, its defenses, and the habits of Madden and Lenoir. Steve thought the Eagle might be found somewhere in this general locality. I was hoping to find some sign of it, and desert, before we got into action with any of these border clans. But the Ho-Mang beat the expedition to it, and took it by surprise. You saw the fight?"
"Yes," I said. "And the Ho-Mang did a neat little job of it. But I'm afraid we won't contact the ship, not for some time, at least."
"We're lost," Linda explained. "And we can't reach it with our radiolets because of this damned electronic storm. But maybe later—"
"Right now," I interjected, "our main job is to determine the location of the city and find out everything we can about it and its rulers, so that we can plan a raid with some hope of capturing them."
"You see," Linda went on, "an open attack is out of the question. In the first place it actually would amount to a young war—and we're only one lone Space Guard ship—"and besides, Madden and Valita would be certain to abandon their followers if the fighting went against them, and they'd have every chance to plan an escape effectively. We've got to make a swift raid, the smaller the better, so long as we can get away with it, and just whisk them off right under the noses of their own people."
"Exactly," Ainetsu agreed. "In fact, Steve and I several times considered the idea of tackling it by ourselves. We could grab Madden and Valita, but the difficulty would be to get away with them. Madden has a few aircraft, but the" crews sleep aboard, and it would be impossible to make our getaway on foot, through the mountains and jungles, handicapped by two prisoners. The loyal clansmen would have us surrounded in no time."
"But exactly where is Mad-Val?" I asked.
"Latitude four-point-six-seven North, longitude sixty-eight-point-nine-one West," Ainetsu said. "But you could fly right over it and never spot it."
"What?" we exclaimed.
"It's an underground city, far beneath the summits of the Kang-Sih range. The entrances to the main tunnels leading to it are well camouflaged, and many miles away from the city itself."
"So that's the reason for the mystery of its location!" Linda mused.
"No wonder the few ships crossing Sungland between the north and south have never sighted it," I contributed.
"The Eagle has a full set of Venusian charts?" Ainetsu asked.
"Of course," said Linda.
"Then you can place the city very easily. About midway in the length of the range you'll find Peaks Seventeen, Twenty-three and Twenty-five. They form an irregular triangle and average about twenty-four thousand feet above sea level. The city is just twelve thousand feet below them in the solid rock. So you see, it is absolutely impregnable from air attack, even by disintegrators;"
"And how!" I admitted admiringly. "It would take the biggest dis-guns nearly a year to cut that far through rock, even if they were mounted on solid bases, and not swaying in the air."
Ainetsu went on to describe the city to us in detail. The entrances to the main tunnels, of which there were three on the east slopes of the range, and two on the west, were from twenty-five to fifty miles distant from the city They were all concealed in narrow ravines at about the three or four-thousand-foot level, and protected from sight above by overhanging rocks, foliage and cleverly designed camouflage structures.
TWO of the tunnels, one on each side of the range, were wide highways, smoothly"paved, for the movement of large bodies of troops and the transportation of bulky material. The other three were double tubes, through which high-speed trams shot back and forth.
In addition, there were a number of smaller tunnels for special purposes. The existence of several of these was a secret kept from the general population of the city, known only to Madden and Valita, and a few of their most trusted officials.
All of the main tunnels sloped downward from the city, as a drainage safety measure. For the seepage of water, Ainetsu told us, was one of the greatest problems that Madden's engineers had to cope with.
The city itself, blasted and disintegrated out of the solid rock, was a series of perfectly air-conditioned passages and chambers on two levels, in which every modern convenience had been installed, including a marvelous system of phonovision intercommunication.
There was an inner city, reserved, exclusively to the rulers and the mercenaries, who were known as the Legion, although there were not more than five hundred of them. Only by the four gates, at the four points of the compass, could it be entered from the outer city, in which the most favored of the clans which had accepted the Madden rule were quartered. There were, however, certain secret exits and tunnels from the inner city, one of which, as it turned out, was to be an especial concern in our plans.
"It's a slanting shaft," Ainetsu told us, "leading straight to the private aerie of Madden and Valita, at ,the very tip of Peak Seventeen, where they spend much of their leisure. This is reached by a single lift, and its existence is not known to more than a handful of Legion officers, and even these are not permitted to enter it."
The aerie, she said, was camouflaged on the outside to look like an upthrust of stratified rock, but actually was made of impervium painted a rocky gray. It had cleverly concealed windows of monotrans, a plastic that would transmit light inward, but not outward.
"They spend every evening there," she said, "from before dusk until well after dark. Steve and I have experimented with samples of monotrans. It can be blasted instantly with a disintegrator, or melted with a heat ray."
"Then it ought to be all very easy," Linda commented.
"No," Ainetsu said. "There are marvelous detectors, both in the aerie and on the neighboring peaks, that cover every frequency of audio, radio and electrono vibrations. The second we use a heat or a dis-ray, they'd register, and the guard would be on us. Mad-Val, I think, is the .most perfectly detector-protected stronghold in the whole Universe."
"Then that stops us completely," I commented disgustedly.
"No," Ainetsu replied. "It does intake it more difficult, but Steve and I have figured out a way. Monotrans is not so tough that it can't be sawed through by mechanical means. The five guards at the foot of the shaft are not so tough that they can't be silenced with knives or clubs, and the one thing that the outside detectors can't register is a small craft, with its power cut, gliding silently and softly to a landing beside the aerie! Of course, when it took off again—"
"We could risk that!" Linda exclaimed eagerly.
"There's one more difficulty, though," Ainetsu went on. "There are five guards at the bottom of the shaft all the time Madden and Valita are up there. Steve and I couldn't possibly handle them alone, too quickly for them to use their rocket rifles or ray tubes, both of which would register with the detectors."
"Or in other words..." I began.
"You need us inside the city with you," Linda cut in. "The four of us could silently and effectively jump five Venusians any time!"
"That is exactly the plan Steve and I have in mind," Ainetsu replied. "That means, of course, that I've got to smuggle you into the city, and also that you've got to contact your ship to arrange for the landing of a glider, and see that the timing of the whole play is accurately synchronized to the split second. Can you do it?"
"The Ho-Mang have our own glider," I said hopefully. "Of course, they took it apart, but we could assemble it again."
Linda shook her head. "No good," she said. "Maybe they have it all or maybe they haven't. Besides, it's going to need all four of us to overpower the guards at the foot of the shaft."
"Then what?" Ainetsu asked anxiously.
There seemed to be only one answer for this. Though we didn't dare use our radiolets now, we had to contact the Eagle, not only to complete our plans, but to warn Scudder of the detector system of Mad-Val. It wouldn't do at all to have the ship's rocket motors heard before we were ready to pull our coup. It would alarm our enemies and cause them to double their vigilance.
In the end, we decided that Linda and I should go back to the Ho-Mang, reassemble our glider and hunt for the Eagle, while Ainetsu returned to Mad-Val with the fugitives. Later we could meet her at a rendezvous in the mountains, closer to the city. We agreed on a time and place, and started our trek back to the valley of the Ho-Mang. Ainetsu looked after us, rather wistfully I thought, then turned and set off toward Mad-Val.
Five days later Linda and I rocketed skyward from the Eagle, which was grounded now in a ravine, high on the slope of the Kang-Sih Mountains about five hundred miles north of Mad-Val, and did not cut our blast until we reached an altitude of twenty miles. This took us a hundred miles toward our destination. But from that altitude it was easy to glide the remaining four hundred without the use of any power whatever, and at such low speed that not even a super-audio detector could pick up the slightest vibration from our wings as they slipped through the dense air.
Linda was at the controls, and as it would take us some time to reach, the spot Ainetsu had designated, I dozed off.
I was awakened by Linda's low but fervent swearing, to hear her say: "Fog below! It's rising higher and getting thicker every minute."
I glanced over the side. As far as the eye could reach in every direction, nothing could be seen but a foamy white sea of wispy vapor. Not a peak projected above it by which we could get our bearings.
"Maybe it's just a cloud layer," I suggested hopefully, "and it's clear below it."
"Not a chance, on this planet!" Linda snapped. "That mist is so thick you could almost swim in it, and you can bet it goes right down to the ground."
''Where are we now?"
"Just one mile from the rendezvous, and three above it!"
It looked bad for us. The spot Ainetsu had picked was a wooded vale, not more than a half mile or so from the entrance to one of the secret tunnels. How we were going to hit a small clearing in it, in a fog like this, without cracking up, was more than I could see.
"We've got to circle down," Linda said. "With instruments like the ones on this crate, I know I can hit within three hundred feet of it, but... but three hundred may not be enough leeway."
"And we can't glide forever, waiting for the fog to clear."
Suddenly she laughed, and there was a sparkle in her eyes. "We've got to take a chance, shipmate," she said, "and if we don't reach the ground all in one piece—well, there'll be others to carry on! Are you game?"
"Let's go!" I replied, and we nosed down into the misty oblivion.
For a moment a panicky feeling swept over me. There was no telling when we banked, or whether we actually were flying upside down, without looking at the instrument board. But Linda kept her eyes on this, holding the controls in a steady grip. Her eyes were bright, and there was a hard, daring set to her little mouth. We were spiraling down, fast.
Then it came, what we had been dreading.
There was a crashing, rending sound. The tip of our left wing became suddenly motionless. The rest of the ship swung sharply to the left, as though on a pivot, so sharply that it banged me against the side of the little cabin and slid Linda squarely into my arms. Half rising, I bent over to protect her with my body as well as I could, and held her close. There was a jarring, shuddering impact that hurled us against the instrument board. I think I saw all the constellations of the heavens in one blinding flash. Then, with one sickening, stabbing instant's sensation of falling through an eternity of white, suffocating mist, I lost consciousness.
AS I was coming to I was keenly conscious of two things: that Linda was still in my arms and that I had a splitting pain in my head. As to the former, I was afraid it wasn't true, and about the latter, I knew only too well that it was.
I tried opening my eyes, cautiously. The pain got unbearable and I had to close them before I could distinguish anything but blinding white fog. Even more cautiously I held the lissome form in my arms closer to me, with feelings far from painful. It was Linda, quite alive, as I could tell by her steady, peaceful breathing. I was content to lie that way with her head pillowed on my arm, until the pain in my head should abate. Not a sound was to be beard but the steady drip, drip of moisture from the trees.
Evidently Linda had missed the clearing, for which she hardly could be blamed. But at that, I would have wagered we hadn't missed it by much, for she hadn't exaggerated a bit when she said she could land within three hundred feet of a given spot by her instruments alone. Our ship must have barely tipped its wing against one tree, and swung sharply to crash head-on into another giant stem. Branches must have broken our fall somehow.
Again I opened my eyes. My head didn't hurt so much now. I raised myself on my elbow as gently as I could for fear of disturbing Linda. A quick glance around showed me, hazily, several sections of our wrecked craft.
So far as I could tell, Linda was unharmed, probably just knocked out as I had been by a bump on the head. Sleepily she opened her eyes and for a moment looked full into mine, then sighed and closed them.
Again she opened them, wide, and looked at me in wonder and puzzlement. Then suddenly, before I could utter a word, she had whirled out of my arms and jumped to her feet.
"Lieutenant Manley," she said severely, "I am very much surprised. Your attitude scarcely shows proper respect for your superior officer!"
"Attitude be damned!" I replied hotly, sitting there and glaring up at her in foolish indignation. "We've both been knocked unconscious, and... and I didn't know whether you had been seriously injured or not!"
"All right," she laughed. "I won't report you this time, but don't... don't—"
"Don't what?" I challenged.
"Nothing," she said, giving me a funny little look that set me wondering happily. "But remember, we still have a job on our hands. We've got to see how much of our equipment we can salvage from this wreck, and see how close we are to the clearing where Ainetsu is to meet us."
By this time the fog was clearing a bit. We found we had indeed come down at the very edge of the clearing we sought, for there was the little cairn Ainetsu had erected to mark it for us. Most of the supplies and gear—we had brought a pretty full supply this time—were undamaged. We carried it all to the other end of the clearing and cached it where it would be safe from anything but the most thorough search.
We were particularly concerned about the four little sealed chronometers we had brought along, for they were vital to the success of our plans to snatch Madden and Valita from under the noses of their guards. They were synchronized exactly with the master clock on the Eagle, and were intended for the use of Ainetsu and Steve Hardie as well as Linda and myself.
The zero hour had been agreed on to the very second. Even a few seconds' delay in the landing beside the aerie, of the rocket glider Scudder would send out, might mean death for us. It was equally vital that the detectors of Mad-Val should not spot it and give the alarm a second earlier than we could help.
But we found the tiny electrono devices purring away the seconds in exact unison.
Linda uttered a sigh of relief. "Thank Heaven," she said, "we won't have to worry about that! The whole scheme is desperate enough as it is, and nothing but the most accurate timing is going to see us through it."
"No," I agreed. "Once we start, any attempt at communication with the Eagle is obviously out of the question. There's no telling what the range of Madden's detectors is, and the only safe way to play it is to give them absolutely nothing in the way of electro or audio vibrations to detect. But when is Ainetsu due to meet us here?"
"There's nothing more definite, of course, than what she told us before," Linda replied. "This is the place and the day, but—" She shrugged.
"I wish we knew more about Mad-Val," I mused. "Then we might spend the time chewing over the details of our plans while we're waiting for—"
I was interrupted by a chorus of blood-curdling shrieks from the other side of the clearing, as no less than a dozen barbarians, wearing the scarlet kilts that were the livery of Madden's clansmen, burst into the open and came charging across at us.
Taken completely by surprise, we hesitated for a split second.
"Back! Into the woods!" Linda snapped, and we leaped for cover, tugging at our guns. But we couldn't make it. Whirling about, we let them have it.
Seven of them went down in that brief charge. Then it was hand to hand—our guns and knuckle-knives against their short, slashing, thrusting swords. And they were still yelling like demons.
Two of them came at me together. I blew the belly out of one at short range, and ducking the sword-swing of the other, drove my bladed fist into the side of his neck as he whirled under the momentum of his swing.
"Two down!" my brain clicked subconsciously, and hearing the roar of a rocket bullet from Linda's gun. "Three!"
Two more were coming at me now, close. And I knew that left her facing one. There was no time for even a flickering glance in her direction. The pair were closing in on me from both sides.
I flipped up the muzzle of my pistol blindly and blasted off the leg of the one to my right, even as I saw the other drive his point straight for my middle. Instinctively I flung myself backward, but my heel caught on a root projecting from the mossy ground, and I went down. His sword grazed my scalp and buried itself in the ground as he plunged over me and sprawled headlong.
Rolling over to spring to my feet, I saw the down-flashing sword of Linda's adversary strike the pistol from her numbed grasp. Instantly, before he could recover his balance, she hurled herself upon him and, whimpering in blind rage, drove her keen-bladed little left fist deep into his side.
Glancing back at my own opponent, I saw that he was still prone, stunned. And I whirled around to have Linda, her arm bathed in gore, stagger limply and fall into my arms, still whimpering hysterically.
"Huh-huh-hell!" she sobbed. "Th-those beasts can't fight! They leave themselves w-wide open when they swing!"
I WAS still trying to comfort Linda, though I wasn't at all sure exactly what it was she wanted to be comforted about, when we heard a slight noise, and turned to see a tall, slender figure in the uniform of a captain of Madden's mercenaries. It was Ainetsu. She trailed behind her, on a light line, a bundle lightened by a small lifter, like a toy balloon.
She was staring about her incredulously, counting the twelve prone figures.
"Who's responsible for this shambles?" she asked us with a puzzled stare.
"We are," said Linda simply, pushing me away. "They attacked us—"took us by surprise—so what could we do?"
The Martian girl's eyes opened wider. "Good Heaven!" she exclaimed. Then, as Linda turned all the way to face her: "Your arm! Are you—"
"It's not her own blood," I explained, "but that of that animal there."
Ainetsu turned to stare unbelievingly at the ghastly hole in the side of Linda's last adversary. "But what did you do it with?"
"My knuckle-knife, of course," Linda said testily, holding her arm away from her side with an expression of disgust.
I showed Ainetsu my own knife, which wasn't quite so gory, and she marveled at its peculiar construction, with its razor-sharp blade of impervium running across the width of the fist. I told her it was standard equipment with the Earth Space Guard for in-fighting.
"What a viciously effective weapon!" she exclaimed. "And clever! Whoever thought it up? Martian recorded history goes back about twenty-five thousand of your years, but I never heard of a weapon like this."
"Well," I replied, "the basic idea is an old one on Earth. The ancient Romans used something like it they called a cestus, with spikes instead of a knife edge. And thugs of the nineteenth century often carried brass knuckles, simply to knock people out with. But the impervium blade is a modern improvement."
"Oh, cut the lecture, Bob," said Linda. "How am I going to get rid of this swine's blood?"
"There's a stream over there a little way," Ainetsu suggested. "I just crossed it on the way here."
So the two girls left me to my own devices, which I must admit for the moment consisted entirely of wondering at Linda and her scrapping ability no less than Ainetsu had. Too late, I remembered my own last opponent, who had been only stunned.
He had come to, retrieved his sword, and cautiously climbing to his feet, hurled himself fiercely upon me just as I turned in sudden anxiety toward the spot where he had lain. By an instinctive twist I avoided his slash, but went down like a ninepin under his rush, and in a second he was. poised to give me the death stroke.
At this instant a familiar cry rang across the glade: "Ho-Mang Oo-Lah!" A crossbow twanged, and a heavy iron bolt smashed through his head. He fell like a log.
And, somewhat shaken, I got to my feet to greet our old friends, the Hung-Ho-Mang and Gor-Kang, who had headed the party that had captured us in the jungle swamp.
"You are a mighty fighter, Bob Manley," said the hung gravely, "but—" He shrugged.
"Even a mighty fighter is handicapped when his enemy leaps on him from behind," finished Gor-Kang.
At this juncture the two girls returned. Linda had washed away the evidences of battle, and seemed more her normal self.
"So you have come," Ainetsu addressed the pair. "It is good! How many warriors have you brought with you?"
"Seventy men and forty girls," the hung said. "All ready to die if they may help in overthrowing the false king and queen!"
We looked questioningly at Ainetsu.
"A little addition of Steve Hardie's to our plan," she explained, and then to the hung, "I hope it will not be necessary for any of you to die. I shall lead you to a spot close to one of the tunnel mouths, where you may lie concealed. I have set a bomb on the mountainside, to be fired by a time fuse on the appointed day. When you hear it, fall suddenly upon the guards. Make as much noise and do as much damage as you can, but by no means try to penetrate deeply into the tunnel, for all the tunnels are mined. Your raid should create some confusion inside the city, and help to divert attention from what we will be trying to do. Do you understand?"
"Understood!" replied the hung and Gor-Kang.
"And where are your warriors?"
"Two langs behind. We thought it best not to approach the meeting place in large numbers."
"That was wise. Return now to them, and bring them here."
The two chieftains slapped their chests resoundingly in the clansmen's salute, and vanished into the woods.
"Now," Ainetsu said, undoing the lifter-lightened bundle, which she had tied to a tree, "here are uniforms for you, those of privates in Madden's mercenary legion. There is no use trying to disguise you as clansmen. It would take only a glance at close quarters to know you are not even Venusians. Besides, you wouldn't be admitted to the inner, city and, of course, it's vital that you must be. Put them on, and we'll be on our way as soon as the hung and his warriors return."
We approached the tunnel entrance from the mountain slope above. It was thickly wooded, affording good cover, and . here Ainetsu posted the Ho-Mang, who quickly and skillfully effaced themselves even from our sight.
Then Ainetsu, Linda and I, making a wide circle, approached the station from down the ravine by the regular road, which was concealed from above by overhanging rocks and cleverly constructed camouflages.
It was a nervous moment when we were challenged by the Venusian guards, whose leader appeared somewhat more alert and intelligent than the average tribesman.
"I am Captain Holman, of K Company," Ainetsu said haughtily. For this, as she had explained to us, was the name by which she was known in the Legion.
"And these other two, captain?" the officer made bold to ask, though hesitantly. "According to the register they were not with you when you were passed out, and—"
"Silence, fool!" the Martian girl scowled. "They are two of my own company, or would they be with me?" Her hand crept toward her gun threateningly. "Get out of our way before I blast you down!"
Linda and I tried to act like wooden-faced privates.
Sullenly the guard stood aside and saluted. With our chins high, we marched past them into the tunnel, tingling with the feeling that we were followed by hateful and suspicious stares.
"You have to treat them like that," Ainetsu murmured as we got beyond earshot, "or they'll be even more suspicious that you're not what you seem to be. All of the mercenaries are overbearing and arrogant."
Farther on a number of tube cars were parked in sidings hewn out of the solid rock. They floated free in the air, held there by the action of the four automatic repulsion rails which ran into the tunnel, at the sides as well as top and bottom.
"Get in," said Ainetsu. "Take the back seat, and be as stiffly impassive as possible. You're supposed to be, at attention constantly in the presence of an officer." She, herself, got in the front, and snapped a switch.
Slowly, soundlessly, and without the slightest jar, the car swung into the main repulsion field, gathering speed until the wind shrieked in our ears as it flashed up the slanting tunnel, toward the mysterious city in the core of the mountain range—"and the most dangerous part of our mission.
WE found Mad-Val a truly remarkable little city, even in these days of superscience and interplanetary travel.
The streets, of course, were merely corridors disintegrated out of the volcanic rock of the mountain core, with floors and walls smoothly polished. Most of them were only ten or twelve feet wide. Many had moving sidewalks that slid along in absolute silence, without the slightest jar or vibration.
Only a few of the streets were wide enough to accommodate crowds of any size. This, Ainetsu told us, was because there were so many of them, and since those of the two levels were arranged at an angle of forty-five degrees to each other, it was possible to travel in a direct line from almost any part of the city to another. Moreover, there was no necessity for the congregation of crowds or large bodies of troops, since the elaborate intercommunication system permitted the leaders to talk to their followers either individually or en masse, in their own quarters.
"Here are my rooms," she said at last, stepping off the continuous sliding platform. We followed. She paused before a metal door in which there was a little depression which was the only break in its smooth surface.
"This thing's rather clever, I think. Did you ever know that everybody has a distinct physical oscillatory rate?" she said. "No two persons have the same rate, any more than they have the same fingerprints.
"When the lock is 'set' for you, all you have to do is insert your finger in this hole, and it opens at your touch—but to no one else's." She suited the action to the word. The door swung open and we stepped in.
"There's no denying the skill of Madden's engineers and architects," Ainetsu said as she snapped a switch. The room was lighted with a rosy glow that seemed to come from nowhere, but actually emanated from the ceiling and floor as well as the walls. "It can be changed to any tint or intensity desired," she informed us.
Most of the furniture was of the built-in type, of utilitarian yet artistic design. She snapped another switch. Instantly the wall opposite us became a mountain scene. She swung a little dial a couple of notches. The mountain scene faded out, and we were looking at a bleak Venusian shore line and seascape. The giant fern trees swayed in the wind, and unending lines of breakers came rushing toward us, while from somewhere came the muted sound of the surf.
"It's marvelous," said Linda. "I'd swear I was looking at the real thing through a great plastic window."
Ainetsu went to another wall, into which was set what appeared to be a full-length mirror. But it wasn't. It was a phonovision viewplate. She dialed a number. The picture of another apartment appeared. Then a tall figure stepped into view. He was a long, lean lad, with a square jaw and piercing blue eyes, which began to twinkle as he saw her. He also was clad in the scarlet uniform of a Legion officer. His voice seemed to come from the viewplate itself.
"Hello, Netsy," he said, looking at us curiously. "Shall I come over?"
"Yes," the Martian girl said. "That's why I called you," and snapped off the connection.
"That's Steve Hardie. He'll be here in a few minutes, and we can go over our plans."
While we waited she showed us some of the other marvels, of the luxurious apartments Madden and Valita had provided for their chosen followers. Purchases could be made from the central stores by phono-vision. They were delivered through a panel by an automatic carrier system. Food was prepared in central kitchens, and slid quietly into the room on automatic tables through another wall panel. There was almost instantaneous humidity and temperature control, and even pleasant breezes from any direction could be obtained through concealed vents.
"And," said Ainetsu, "even the refreshments are 'on the house,' as you say on Earth. What will you have?"
We both elected ipsong. Ainetsu pressed a couple of ornamental buttons beside a small panel, and in short order it snapped open to reveal a tray with three goblets.
While we were sipping this slightly fermented and wholly delicious nectar, the like of which is not to be found on Earth or any other planet, there was a slight buzzing sound from the door, and a little light shone over it.
Ainetsu pursed her lips and whistled. To our astonishment, the door began to swing open.
"It's automatic," she explained. "Any whistling sound opens it. The only objection is that you can't whistle in your bath. That can be very embarrassing." Then to the tall figure who stepped into the room: "Hello, Steve!"
"Any difficulty getting into the city?" Hardie asked, after introductions.
"No. At least, I wouldn't call it any difficulty," Ainetsu replied. "But I didn't like the looks of the barbarian in charge at the Wang-Ming tunnel. Evidently a new man with exaggerated ideas of his own importance. He tried to make something of the fact that I went out alone, and came back with two troopers." She indicated us with a nod.
"He backed down quickly enough, though, when you told him off," Linda remarked.
"But I don't think he was satisfied," I said. "Would there be any danger of his reporting the matter?"
"There's always a chance that he might," said Hardie. "The main thing would be exactly .to whom he reported it. Who's officer of the day, Ainetsu?"
The Martian girl thought for a moment, and her eyes widened a bit in alarm. "Vega Natsara!" she exclaimed. "And he hates me!"
"Hm-m-m. Not so good," Hardie mused. "He'd make trouble for you—and me too—if he possibly could. Let's hope our barbarian friend has decided to drop the matter. After all, tribesmen who antagonize legionnaires are not popular in Mad-Val."
"But you said he was a new man, Ainetsu," Linda put in.
"It's chiefly in that fact that the danger lies," Hardie explained. "A veteran in the city's service would know better."
"Well," Ainetsu shrugged, "there's nothing we can do about it but hope for the best. I can see now, I would have been wiser to leave the city by another gate than that by which I meant to bring you in. But nothing can be done about that, either. So let's go ahead and get our plans set."
We gave Ainetsu and Hardie two of the four electronic chronometers we had brought. All four were still precisely synchronized.
"A rocket glider will land beside the aerie for us and our prisoners at exactly six forty p. m. tomorrow evening," Linda informed them. "You'll have to work out the rest of the timing from that."
"Not hard," Hardie remarked, and proceeded to outline the details of the schedule he had worked out.
OUR difficulties included not only the overcoming of the guard at the foot of the elevator shaft running up to the aerie, and forcing an entrance to the latter and subduing Madden and Valita, but we first had to get inside their luxurious section of the inner city, for it was from there that the shaft ascended to their quarters on the mountain-top.
"There's only one entrance," Ainetsu said, "and the guard there is too strong for the four of us to attack alone. Besides, the second we did attack them the alarm would be given, and we wouldn't have a chance to reach the foot of the shaft."
"We've got to find a pretext, Netsy," said Hardie. "Since we're only company commanders, and not members of the Council, it's going to be hard to find an excuse."
"Oh, we'll bluff our way through somehow," Ainetsu said confidently.
"Let's figure that out later. But first, how does your schedule run? You said the rocket glider would land beside the aerie at exactly six forty, didn't you, Linda?"
Hardie figured thoughtfully for a few minutes. "It takes exactly three minutes to ascend the shaft," he explained, "and the same length of time to bring the car down, for, of course, Madden and Valita will have it at the top with them. That makes a total of six minutes. We dare not allow ourselves more than two minutes to dispose of the shaft guards, for then the alarm is likely to be given."
"In short," I put in. "We go to work on the guards at the bottom of the shaft at exactly six thirty-two, and hope to Heaven the top of Peak Seventeen won't be swarming with guards and covered by guns at six forty—eight minutes later?"
"Eight minutes is a long time," murmured Linda, "for well-trained troops to get into action."
Ainetsu said: "We're relying on the Ho-Mang to cause some confusion first. They'll go into action seven minutes earlier—at six twenty-five. Their time-bomb signal is already set on the mountainside above the mouth of the Wang-Ming tunnel. It's a big one, and in itself it ought to cause a lot of commotion."
"The chances are ten to one that it will attract so much attention that our attack cm the guards will be unnoticed," Hardie added.
But Linda raised another point. "How about Madden and Valita?" she asked. "They'll surely get the alarm, too, when the Ho-Mang attack, won't they? Do you expect them to loll around up in their aerie and pay no attention to it?"
Steve Hardie grinned. "If they don't, so much the better for us. It will give us that much more time.
Well be there, at the foot of the shaft, and if the indicator shows the descent of their elevator, well simply dispose of the guard a few minutes in advance of schedule and rush the lugs the second their lift door opens!"
"Always provided," I commented wryly, "a couple of dozen legionnaires don't happen to be around to jump us."
"That's a risk we've got to take, anyhow," said Ainetsu, "whether at exactly six thirty-two or several minutes earlier. But in any event, it will be only after the Ho-Mang have started their diversion."
"Well, .1 guess it would be too much to expect, to arrange it without any risk at all," Linda admitted. "So, O. K. on that!"
It was Linda who suggested a pretext to get by the guard at the gate of the royal quarters. Prior to the Ho-Mang demonstration. we would let Hardie and Ainetsu drag us to the gate with the claim that they had found a couple of spies in their companies whom Madden would want to question in person.
"Good!" declared Hardie. "That will get us by! And once past the gate guard, you can drop the prisoner pose."
But meanwhile, there was a twenty-four-hour period' to be passed in which Linda and I had to lie in concealment, and there was always the danger that the suspicious chief at the mouth of the Wang-Ming tunnel might report Ainetsu's return to the city with two unexplained companions.
If that happened, Steve and Ainetsu explained to us, there would be sure to be an inquiry, possibly a general search of the city—the corridors and all public rooms by the corridor police, and all private rooms by Phonovision Central.
"Your best bet is to separate," Ainetsu said, "because if there is a search, they'll be looking for two people, not one. Steve, you take Bob, and hide him somewhere in your quarters. I'll fix Linda up."
I objected strenuously to this when I learned that most of the following day Hardie and Ainetsu would have to be on duty. If Linda and I had to remain alone during this period, I felt it would be safer for us to be "alone together." I pointed out that one of us might be discovered without the other knowing anything of it, and our whole plan thereby wrecked.
But the consensus of opinion was against me, and as finally Linda put it somewhat testily in the form of an order, I shut up. But I had forebodings.
Alone with Hardie in his quarters, which were not. far from Ainetsu's but on the level below, I spoke to him about the vast fortune in deltinium Madden and Valita had stolen.
"While our mission is primarily to arrest the pair and take them back to Earth to stand trial," I explained to him, "Captain Scudder is also very anxious to recover the deltinium if he can."
"He thinks that in the confusion following their capture, the Eagle might make a successful raid, in force, on the leaderless city. Where is the deltinium stored?"
"It's not in the city at all," Hardie said, "but cached somewhere in the mountains to the south of here. I'm pretty sure there isn't even a tunnel connecting the place with the city. I've noticed that in every case when they've been in need of large funds, Madden and Valita have made a quiet trip somewhere, by air, and without any attendants. These trips have always been southward."
. "Then no one but those two thieves knows where it's hidden?" I asked.
Steve shook his head. "Not a chance," he answered.
"All right," I decided. "We'll have to find a way to make them talk."
He grinned. "I might be able to suggest certain ways. I've seen something of the things they've done in the way of refined torture to the natives around here."
Time in Mad-Val was not figured by days and nights, but simply by watches, as on shipboard, so presently Hardie and I ate, and after a couple of hours of comfortable conversation, he pressed a couple of buttons in the far wall from the phonovision mirror. Panels slid silently back from recesses inclosing built-in beds.
I slept well for hours. Just how many, I didn't know, for I had neglected to look at my chronometer on retiring. But when I awoke I noticed it was midnight.
But as I rolled over to compose myself again the room was suddenly filled with a fiendish, moaning sound.
With the instant alertness of old campaigners suddenly aroused at night, Hardie and I were both on our feet, grabbing for our guns. Steve let out a heartfelt oath.
"The alarm!" he gasped. "That means your entrance into the city was reported! Every room and corridor will be searched."
"SO what do we do?" I demanded, expecting to see the light flash up in the phonovision mirror any second.
He said quickly: "There's just one place in this room that that thing can't see, though most of these dumb clucks.don't realize it. That's the wall it's set in, alongside or underneath it!"
I didn't need a second hint. I plunged for the floor directly underneath the viewplate and rolled over to lie tightly against the wall.
"Good lad!" Steve said, as he quickly slid the panel across in front of my bed. "But don't breathe hard. You're pretty close to the thing, and the mike in it is sensitive as the devil! And—"
I never got the rest of what he was going to say, for at that instant glaring light from the mirror flooded the room, and he choked off his words, suddenly stretching and yawning like a man having trouble in waking from a sound sleep.
"Captain Rockoff!" said a coldly official and slightly metallic voice. Rockoff was the name by which Hardie was known in Mad-Val.
"Yeah?" said Steve. "What's the matter?"
The voice told him a search was being made and asked him if he knew anything about two spies.
"Huh?" exclaimed Hardie in simulated astonishment as he sauntered closer to the mirror-like viewplate. "Of course not! Or wouldn't I have reported—"
"Very well, captain," the voice cut in coldly. "Kindly keep to your quarters until further notice. The police are 'sweeping' the corridors." There was a click, and the phonovision light faded.
I started to get up, but Hardie stopped me. "Stay where you are, Manley!" he warned. "They might snap on again any second. They're a suspicious crew at Phonovision Central. We might even have the police stopping in here to make a personal inspection."
I stayed where I was, but did some mighty quick and intensive worrying. If it was the tribal chieftain at the Wang-Ming gate who had turned us in—and it couldn't have been anyone else—Ainetsu must be very definitely under suspicion! And Linda was there with her in her rooms! If any particular suspicion attached to Hardie, it was only because "Captain Rockoff" was known as a friend of "Captain Holman."
Whispering something of all this to Hardie, I was startled at the sudden anguish in his face, and knew it was not for Linda alone.
"I realize," he breathed, "that they must have crashed in on them by now. But we can't help them any by being caught ourselves. We simply can't afford to have you caught here—and you'd be caught even quicker if you went out into the corridors."
"So that leaves what?" I asked.
"We've got to find some way of concealing you, right in here."
"How? I couldn't even try to hide under any of the furniture. Everything's solid to the floor."
I don't think he even heard me. He was so busy thinking. Then his face lightened. He went over quickly and inspected a grating set pretty high in the wall.
"Ventilator!" he muttered. "The flue runs straight back, horizontally, from the grating. You could squeeze yourself in there if—"
"If we could get the grating off," I cut in. "But we can't unscrew it. It's set solidly into the wall, isn't it?"
"Yes," he admitted. "But just the same, I think we can get it off!" He was moving swiftly now. From a wall-closet shelf he took a little instrument, about the size of a pencil, which, indeed, it looked like.
"A disintegrator," he explained softly. "It's got a beam as thin as a razor edge. I'll just slice the bars of the grating and lift it out!"
He went to work with it at once.
The tiny blue-green ray was so thin that it showed hardly the faintest glow, and the hissing noise of atomic destruction was practically inaudible.
It took some fancy wriggling to get up and into the vent feet first, but with Steve's help, I managed it.
Then he replaced the grating, using soap to rejoin the bars, and smearing the soap over with dust to conceal its whiteness. So I lay in the vent, pretty much squeezed, but invisible from the room.
Hardie swiftly eliminated every trace of occupancy other than his own. And none too soon.
For hardly had he finished and thrown himself back lazily in an easy-chair, when the little light flashed over the door, and a faint buzz sounded. Hardie whistled and the door opened.
A squad of corridor police bounded into the room, to skid sharply to a halt, looking around in amazement. Their officer seemed the most amazed of all. He was an ebony-hued Mercurian of magnificent proportions.
"Whuh-whuh-why!" he gasped, "there's no one here but yourself!"
Hardie had jumped to his feet, facing him indignantly.
"Yes?" he said bitingly. "And whom did you expect to see here? The two spies Central was talking about a few minutes ago?"
The Mercurian was flustered. He stammered a bewildered apology. "I'm sure you understand, captain. I ... I was only obeying orders. But there really are two spies loose in the city and—"
"And you thought sure they were in here? Is that it?"
"No, no! Of course not, captain, but... er... that is... of course, we have to search all quarters." He looked uncomfortable.
"I see," Hardie said dryly. "Just a matter of form, I gather. So you had to come leaping in here like a bunch of wild wadikoos? All right, lieutenant. You must do your duty, naturally. So go ahead. And I'll ask you to be very thorough about it."
Despite their embarrassment, the officer and his men did make their search a thorough one, departing finally with many courteous apologies, in the course of which Steve winked slyly in the direction of my grating.
After they had gone, he frowned and shook his head negatively at me. So I stayed where I was. But when fifteen minutes had passed with nothing happening, I came out.
Hardie paced the room restlessly. "I can't stand it any longer," he said. "I've got to find out if anything has happened to them."
"By phonovision?" I suggested.
He shook his head. "Too dangerous. Central will be listening in—maybe looking in, too—on all calls. There's less risk in just going up to Ainetsu's, now that the police have swept the corridors past this point. Come on!"
It didn't take us long. Ainetsu's quarters were on the level above, only a short distance away. Hardie buzzed at the door. Nothing happened.
"I don't like it," he muttered. "They ought to be in here, unless... unless they've been arrested."
"In which case, our plans will all flop," I said.
He glared at me. "Plans?" he said indignantly. Then, more quietly: "Yes. Of course. I... I was thinking of something else."
"Isn't there any way we can get in?" I asked.
"Yes," he said. "The door is set for me as well as herself. Get your gun ready." He drew his own, and pressed his finger into the depression of the vibro lock. Slowly the door swung open.
We leaped into the room. It was empty. The door closed behind us.
Hardie looked dazed. The place was in perfect order, almost as though it had been unoccupied. Evidently, there had been no struggle.
"Strange!" he muttered. "Ainetsu would certainly have put up some kind of a battle, under the circumstances."
"Do you suppose they could have gotten out before the police came?" I asked.
"It could be," he said thoughtfully. "But I can't imagine where they could have gone. And she wouldn't have dared leave a note for me—for the police to pick up."
And now I became definitely aware of certain sounds without, which I had been uneasily sensing for a moment or two; muffled footsteps, voices, vague activity. Hardie got it at the same moment, and looked at me with widening eyes.
"They did get out before the police arrived," he whispered. "These are the police now!"
"And here we are—trapped!" I gasped.
"WE'RE trapped, all right!" Hardie whispered. "Nothing to do now but fight it out—if we can! Back! Into the bath!"
Swiftly and silently we leaped for this temporary concealment, and stood there, ready, with our guns in our hands, scarcely breathing.
But the corridor door did not open at once. Faintly we heard the sound of voices and shuffling feet. Then these faded out. Some miracle must have happened, I thought, to divert search from Ainetsu's rooms. But a moment later, I knew I was wrong. We heard the corridor door open, softly. Steve gave me a startled, wondering glance.
There was someone in the room all right, but apparently only one!
Someone who was moving quietly about, as though searching for something. Hardie held up a warning hand to me and then, after a moment, peered cautiously around the edge of the doorway. He jerked his head back again as though he had been stung. Frowning, he leaned toward me and breathed in my ear: "It's Vega Natsara, himself! Officer of the day!"
"What do we do?" I mouthed soundlessly at him.
"Take him!" he whispered. "I'll step out into the room. When I've drawn his attention away from this door, you come out and cover him!" I nodded. Hardie stepped out. I heard Natsara's surprised gasp and Hardie speaking.
"Well, Natsara," he said. "What are you doing here?"
"S-s-so, Rockoff!" the other hissed, with a peculiar and not unfamiliar intonation. "So it's you! I might have known as much. No! Keep your distance, or I'll blast you! When you go out of here it will be as a prisoner, bound for the execution chamber!"
Hardie laughed easily. "On what charge, Natsara? Have you gone crazy? And how are you going to explain your presence here, in Captain Holman's room?"
"Treason is the charge!" said the other in his peculiar, hissing voice. "And no explanations from me will be needed. Holman brought two spies into the city with her. She was caught red-handed, by the tunnel guard, who reported immediately. I've been wondering how to tie you into it. I've suspected for a long time that you two have been together in some undercover game. But now you've saved me the trouble of proving the connection. The mere fact that I've found you here, in her quarters, is enough."
"So you've arrested Holman, too?" Hardie said in pretended surprise.
"No. But she's proved her guilt, by skipping out after the general order from Central to stay in quarters. She can't escape from the city, and she can't hide in it for very long. I've got you both, Rockoff! Stop edging toward that door!"
If Hardie were doing that, I knew Natsara must be' facing away from me somewhat. I stepped into the room and covered him.
"Drop that gun," I snapped, "and reach for the ceiling!"
The fellow did neither, but whirled toward me with a gurgle of surprise, and I just had time to note that he, too, was an Earth man, a Japanese—which explained the odd hiss in his speech—and that he was whipping up his own gun to shoot it out with, me, when Steve Hardie's fist caught him flush on the side of the head. He literally bounced off that fist and thudded full length to the floor.
"Nice work, Manley," said Hardie, bending over him quickly, and then straightening up with a look of satisfaction while he rubbed his knuckles. "He's out like a light! Nice judgment on your part to wait until he spilled the dope about Ainetsu."
"We better tie him up, and gag him before he comes to," I suggested. "He looks like a particularly nasty customer."
"A whiff of anaesthetic will do him more good," Hardie said thoughtfully. "I wonder if Ainetsu hasn't got some around here. I know she has a gas pistol." He searched among the panel closets and finally found a small can of superchlor. Spilling a few drops on a handkerchief, he held it over the unconscious man's nose and mouth for a moment, and said: "There! No need even to bind him now. That will hold him completely paralyzed, mind and body, for from eighteen to twenty-four hours."
"And by that time," I put in, "we ought to be far away from Mad-Val with our two 'royal' prisoners."
"Right," Hardie agreed, "and that gives me another idea. I'll just stick this superchlor in my pocket. It may save us a good bit of trouble handling that pair of lugs!"
Suddenly a pang of fear shot through me again. What of Linda, and Ainetsu? Assuming that they actually hadn't been picked up by the Corridor Police, how were we going to contact them?
"I don't know," Hardie admitted despondently. "That's a poser. I can't imagine where they could have found any safe concealment in this underground warren. And every thug in the mercenary corps will be on the lookout for Ainetsu by now—and for me, too, in all probability, because I don't imagine our sleeping friend here neglected to send out the pick-up order, even before he ran into us."
"Can't you think of any place where the girls could have hidden?" I persisted.
He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "Hm-m-m. In one of the storerooms, perhaps, if they were able to put the guard away without raising an alarm. Or possibly in the quarters of someone they knew to be on duty. But there they'd be in constant danger of being spotted by a second phonovision search."
"And how long do we have to wait for zero hour, now?" I asked.
"Eh?" he said in sudden surprise. "I'd almost forgotten. Ainetsu and I are both supposed to be on duty this afternoon." He looked at his chronometer and made a mental calculation. "We've got about nine hours to wait," he said.
"You better not try to bluff out a whole watch on duty," I advised. "Certainly not if you think a pick-up order on you has been sent out."
He sat down and put his head between his hands. "What a jam we're in!" Hardie groaned. "How are we ever going to get away with it?"
"There's always a way out," I said grimly. "If we can only find it. But... but I can't see it now, either! You and Ainetsu, don't either of you dare show your faces in the corridors. You're both officers, and therefore too well known. Linda and I might, though. There's no description of the two spies out, and we're uniformed only as privates. We wouldn't be likely to attract attention. Only—"
Hardie laughed harshly. "Only you wouldn't know how to find your way around, or what to do! And even if you did, how would we—"Ainetsu and myself—be able to pass the guards into the royal section?" He groaned again. "You and Darlington couldn't handle the whole job alone. Besides, we don't know where, or how, to contact those gals!"
The situation looked pretty hopeless, and the pair of us gloomed over it for an hour or more. At last I had a thought.
"Listen!" I said. "Why can't we just reverse the trick by which we were going to get by the guard? You were going to take me through by the scruff of the neck, saying you had captured one of the spies. Why can't I, in the guise of a loyal private, march you in, with your hands tied and at the point of a gun?"
Hardie jumped to his feet. "Great!" he enthused. "We can work it, but—"
"But what?" I said.
"You're forgetting about the gals." He flopped back in his seat.
"Maybe they'll figure out the same thing, and show up at the bottom of the aerie shaft at zero hour." I'll confess I wasn't very hopeful about it. But still—"
Hardie gave me a scornful glance. "Maybe? Yes, maybe! But if they don't?"
"Well," I said gloomily, "in that case there's nothing for us to do but carry on, by ourselves."
"And leave them to their fate?"
I shrugged, and winced. "This is war, Hardie," I reminded him. "You can't give up the battle for a couple of casualties. At least, we of the Space Guard, can't. I'm sure Commander Darlington would order us to go ahead."
Hardie was staring at the corridor door. "I guess you're right," he was saying as it started to swing open. He sprang up to leap for it, but started back as a slender figure sauntered in.
"Right as rain!" said Linda, and smiled at us as she backed up against the door to close it.
I WAS overjoyed to see Linda safe and sound, and I started toward her, my arms half raised. But she checked me with a glance.
"You're quite right, Lieutenant Manley," she said coolly. "Emotion has no place in the life of a Space Guarder, where duty is concerned. I was very glad to hear you were ready to go ahead without me, in case I didn't show up."
Hardie had quite a spell of coughing at this point. "Then you heard what we said?" he asked gravely, when he got under control.
"Naturally," she said, "I had to listen. I wasn't going to barge in without knowing who was in here."
"And Ainetsu?" he asked. "She's safe? She wasn't arrested? Where is she? How did you avoid the police? What—"
"Cease firing!" Linda laughed, throwing herself wearily on a couch. "One question at a time, please. Yes, Ainetsu is quite safe. At least, as safe as she could be in a deal like this. Neither of us was arrested. She's in the royal section. And we didn't avoid the police. We just gassed 'em!"
My jaw must have dropped in sheer astonishment. I know Hardie's did, and he was spluttering in surprise.
"Perhaps I better tell you just what happened?" she smiled.
"Please do," Hardie said weakly.
After we left them it seems the girls had sat and talked for a long time. And when they finally retired, Ainetsu spread an air-foam mattress for Linda on the far side of her couch from the phonovision viewplate, which foresight they were to feel thankful for.
They were awakened, as we had been, by the midnight broadcast alarm and search. But Linda had remained quietly, on her mattress, and so had not been seen nor heard.
Afterward they speedily straightened the room, and slipped into the corridor. Ainetsu knew several rooms nearby that were vacant at the time, their occupants being on duty. They were fortunate in finding the door to one of these unlocked, and went in.
They heard a small searching party come down the corridor, stopping in apartment after apartment.
But apparently the search was more or less perfunctory in all but that of Ainetsu. They had stayed in there a long time.
At length the master lock of the door behind which they were hidden clicked, and two guardsmen came into the room.
The rest was easy. Taken completely by surprise, they had slumped to the floor as the gas from Ainetsu's pistol hissed in their faces, and Linda softly closed the door behind them.
For an uneasy quarter of an hour the girls waited, alert and on edge, expecting any moment the pair would be missed and that their companions would be back hunting for them. But nothing happened.
In the end, they slipped back into Ainetsu's quarters again, where the Martian girl made a very effective transformation. A hair dye, which she had been keeping for a long time in case of emergency, turned her golden hair black. Likewise, she had stained her skin, changing its natural golden glow to a slightly swarthy tone. The blueness of her eyes was not so noticeable after this.
Then, Linda told us, she had changed the collar insignia of her uniform to the rank of major in a different unit.
On the theory that the last place a fugitive would hide would be in the royal quarters themselves, in the heart of the city, the pair had walked boldly to the gate. There they found some little excitement and confusion, with many officers passing in and out. Ainetsu took leave of Linda and, with a perfect air of self-assurance, had walked in past the guard without even being challenged.
Who's your intoxicated friend?" She nodded toward the unconscious form of Natsara, who was breathing stertorously in the bunk where we had laid him.
"The officer of the day," Hardie grinned. "But in addition, he's the dirtiest scoundrel, and the most dangerous one, with the exception of Madden, himself, in all Mad-Val. He's the head of Madden's spy system."
"But he's not plastered," I put in. "He came snooping in, so Steve socked him. He's gassed. He won't wake up until hours after we've gone—or caught."
Linda sauntered over and stood looking down at him for a moment. She turned away with a little grimace of disgust.
She was about to speak, but checked herself, staring at us with widening eyes, listening.
Silently she jabbed a finger a couple of times toward the wall opposite the corridor door, apparently a solid wall with no panel closets.
Then we heard a faint, muffled sound that her sharp ears had caught before we did, the sound of metal clinking against stone or composition.
And before any of us could move, a concealed panel slid back, revealing a recess from which steps ascended, and a startled figure in a scarlet uniform appeared.
In a flash the fellow's gun was in his hand. But in that same instant, a slender figure dived headlong for his knees, and he went down with a grunt and a crash. Steve and I both flung ourselves at him. I wrested his pistol from his hand while Steve gave him a blast of superchlor.
"What's that closet, with the stairs going up?"
"I'm beginning to understand," Hardie said thoughtfully. "This bird is evidently one of Natsara's stooges, who came hunting for him. The steps and closet are news to me. however.
"But now that I come to think of it, a number of suspected officers have vanished mysteriously of late, and... and it wasn't so long ago that Ainetsu's quarters were changed."
"You mean there's some sort of a secret passage from which all the rooms on this corridor can be entered?" Linda asked.
"Must be," Hardie answered.
"Come on, then!" she suggested brightly, heading for the closet. "We'll explore it and see where it goes!"
ABOVE we found a narrow passage that stretched away into the distance, dimly lighted by a ceiling glow. It was high enough above the regular corridors to pass over the intersecting ones, and was paved with some kind of plastic material that effectively deadened the sound of footsteps. At each apartment there were stairs going down into a closet with a panel door like that into Ainetsu's that could not be operated from the apartment side, and which presumably was unknown to the occupant.
With drawn weapons we hastened swiftly and noiselessly along. A full quarter of a mile farther on it came to an end at another door, which was open.
We approached this with the utmost caution, though not a sound could be heard in the chamber beyond. The room proved to be unoccupied. Its walls were covered with maps, evidently of the city corridors and apartments, in some of which little lamps glowed, with what significance we could not tell. There were also a couple of desks equipped with viewplates, switchboards and microphonic devices.
"Natsara's lair, by all that's holy," Hardie breathed.
"His stooge must have been worried when he didn't return from Ainetsu's apartment, and he came to see what had happened, to him," I ventured.
"Is this any closer to that elevator shaft, do you suppose?" Linda asked.
"It must be right inside the royal section, and very close to it," replied Hardie. "Natsara must have close access to Madden."
To check on this I volunteered to slip out in the main corridor and do a little quiet scouting. "They may know there are spies in the city, but they have no description of us," I argued, "while you're well known, Steve. And besides, as an officer, you'd attract more attention than I would in this uniform."
Hardie gave me a description of. the layout of the royal section, especially the part surrounding the shaft to the aerie, so I was sure I'd be able to locate it, even though we didn't know the exact location of the room we were in.
All this time Linda was looking at me peculiarly. "I'm coming with you," she said as I started for the door, and gave her gun belt a little hitch.
This resulted in an argument, which I finally won by pointing out that if I were captured, there would still be two of them, with the strong hope of Ainetsu's assistance, whereas, if Linda came with me, and we were both captured, there would be small hope of successfully carrying out our plan.
There was a viewplate, we found, that allowed inspection of the corridor, and, choosing a time when there was no one in sight, I quietly stepped forth, and strode off with a businesslike but unhurried air.
It didn't take me long to locate the elevator, with its highly decorated, solid metal door, and handful of alert guards. It was but a hundred yards or so from the room where I had left Hardie and Linda, around a corner where the cross-corridor widened out to spacious proportions. There were several scarlet-clad figures passing by, all apparently bent on their own affairs, and my appearance seemed to attract no particular attention. But there was no sign of Ainetsu anywhere. Like Hardie, I wondered where she could have hidden.
I walked on past, looking the ground over without seeming to do so, and some distance beyond, in another corridor that for the moment was deserted, I turned and retraced my steps to Natsara's headquarters.
Linda looked relieved, but she was markedly stoical about it.
Nothing had happened to disturb them in my absence, nor, of course, had Natsara or his underling returned from Ainetsu's room, where they would lie for hours yet under the influence of the superchlor.
It was close to our zero hour now, and we went over our plans once more, in even greater detail, then sallied forth to put our luck and courage to the test.
As Linda and I sauntered past the elevator shaft at some distance, we noted there were fewer officers and men about.
"This is the meal hour, Steve told me," she said. "But I don't see Ainetsu yet—anywhere, do you?"
The Martian girl was nowhere in evidence.
At a pace and distance carefully calculated to bring him in front of the elevator door at the moment when Linda and I, having passed on, would return, we passed the shaft. We were waiting for the sound of the time-bomb Ainetsu had planted on the mountainside above the Wang-Ming tunnel as a signal for the Ho-Mang to start their diversion.
It came, like a dull thud, through the miles of tunnel and rock, and surprisingly loud, at that. .
We ran, back toward the elevator shaft. Alarm sirens shrieked throughout the city. Others were running, too, in apparent confusion, but each toward his appointed post, we knew.
The guards at the shaft door looked startled and a bit confused.
Distant shouting and unidentifiable clamor reached our ears.
Then we hit them. Linda and I from one side, and Steve Hardie from the other.
Completely taken by surprise, two of the guards went down under our first rush. Hardie promptly gassed them and turned to meet two more who were closing in on him.
A few mercenaries running through the square noticed the fracas and gave us bewildered stares, but so strong was their habit of discipline that they kept on running for their own appointed posts.
With our knuckle knives, which we had unobtrusively fitted to our fists, Linda and I took care of the two fellows who charged at us, and turned to Hardie's aid. But it was unnecessary. He had accounted for them already with his gas pistol, and was backing away, choking, from the little cloud of fumes that was settling over their prone forms.
Then he threw the lever that would bring down the elevator.
The moments that followed were our greatest danger. It would take the car three minutes to descend. Meanwhile, there we had to wait for it, surrounded by the crumpled forms of the guards.
But Hardie had an inspiration. While Linda and I assumed the positions of guards before the door, Steve shouted mightily and waved all newcomers on by pointing to the prone figures, and also in the direction from which the clamor was coming.
Exactly what meanings the different ones took from this we never knew, of course, but with startled glances at him they all ran on, for officers' orders were not to be flouted in Madden's Legion.
It was not until the door opened and we leaped into the car that it occurred to any of the running crowd to question the situation. Then there was a shout, and some score of them swung about in their stride to charge straight at us.
We clanged the door in their faces. The lift shot upward. For the moment we were safe. But there would be no return by that route.
'Above were our quarry, Madden and Valita. How much idea would they have of what was going on by the time we reached their aerie? Would our rocket glider land in time—without being too quickly spotted in its descent? Would we be able to get away with our prisoners without being blasted to atoms? All these things hung in the balance.
Hardie groaned.
Linda and I swung sharply toward him. He was resting his forearm against the side of the car, leaning upon it as though for support. And on his face was a look of agonized pain.
"Ainetsu!" he moaned. "What will happen to her? What has happened to her?"
ACCELERATING better than a mile a minute for part of the upward trip, the lift gradually lost speed and finally came, to a silent stop at the tip of Peak Seventeen, twelve thousand feet above the city.
The door slid open softly, and across a foyer sumptuously furnished and lighted by its own glowing walls we saw a curtained door.
Half stunned, I ducked as the pencil beam of a disintegrator flashed from the curtains, splitting the air past my ear like a thunderclap. An answering ray of Hardie's gun melted the curtains, but revealed only the circular expanse of the aerie itself, just beyond.
Hardie kept playing his beam continuously through the door. Madden and Valita had jerked back out of sight. The three of us hurled ourselves into the foyer, separating as we did so.
I bore to the left. Linda slipped nimbly to the right. Hardie planted himself squarely before the door, covering the opening with a steady hand.
"We've got you, Madden!" Linda called. "Will you two throw down your weapons and surrender? Or would you rather shoot it out and take what's coming to you, right now?"
A growling, bitter curse was the only answer from the room beyond.
"All right, then! He's asking for it!" said Linda, and motioned to me as she crept along the wall toward the edge of the door. I did likewise on the other side. Slowly, cautiously, Hardie stepped straight forward.
I thought Linda's idea was for the three of us to dive into the room at the same time, in different directions.
But suddenly she transferred her gun to her left hand, and thrusting it around the door frame, blazed into the room, sweeping her ray across it at a slightly downward angle.
An answering flash blasted the gun from her hand; and vanished instantly to a howl of pain as my own weapon squirted its destroying beam into the room at a sharp angle. I had caught sight of Madden's foot.
The foot simply ceased to exist, as the ray hit it and dug a hole in the floor beyond. Madden's unconscious form thudded down in full sight. From somewhere in the room came Valita's shrill scream.
Steve and I, closely followed by Linda, dashed through the door, to bring up short in amazement.
A frightened girl, her face contorted in animal-like fury, stood trembling, with her arms raised high, and looking rather foolish in her regal robes. Behind her, smilingly holding the muzzle of a gun to her spine, was Ainetsu!
A pane had been cut out of one of the broad monotrans windows.
Steve's eyes spoke volumes as he stared at Ainetsu for a moment. But what he said was: "Hello, Netsy!"
And I don't think her eyes were quite dry as she replied: "You better look after Madden, you three. You want him alive, don't you? He'll bleed to death in another couple of minutes. I'll take care of this she-snake."
We improvised a tourniquet for Madden's leg, although he had lost so much blood already that it was a question in my mind whether even a transfusion would save him now. And all the while Valita was pouring forth a stream of shrill, blasphemous invective, writhing madly in Ainetsu's grasp, hysterically ignoring her captors' ability to blast her out of existence by the pressure of a finger on a trigger.
Yet so great was Hardie's confidence in the Martian girl, that he never so much as paused for a glance over his shoulder as we worked on Madden's leg.
"Now," said Hardie with a sigh, as we straightened up. "Let's get this thing straightened out."
Valita, bound and gagged very effectively, was twisting and gurgling on the floor where Ainetsu had unceremoniously dumped her.
"You certainly saved the situation up here, Ainetsu," Steve went on. "How did it all happen? We " thought, when you didn't show up at the door to the shaft that—"
"That I had been caught? I almost was."
Ainetsu adjusted her uniform, which had gotten pulled somewhat awry in her struggle with Valita. "It was a sudden impulse that made me leave Linda and wander into the royal section when 1 saw how easy it would be. Afterward I didn't find it so easy to find any place to hide. I wandered around the corridors until I sensed I was .attracting attention by reappearing in the same places so often.
"Then I got a real break. I just happened to near the shaft as the guard was being changed. For a moment there were ten or twelve of them clustered near the door, you see. There was some kind of a heated discussion going on among them, over the gandik fight tomorrow night. They paid no attention as I sauntered right up behind them. So I took a desperate chance.
"The indicator showed the car was down. So, as quickly and silently as I could, I slid the door open enough to slip inside, and closed it quietly after me. I know it sounds unbelievable. But nobody noticed. So up I came!"
"But," Linda marveled, "how about Madden and Valita? You couldn't have entered the aerie without their seeing you!"
"That was before they came up," Ainetsu explained. "Then I partially cut through the pane of that window with my knife, enough to bend it a bit and squeeze out. When I shoved it back into place, the curtains inside concealed nearly all of the cuts. And I simply waited outside. This window, you see, is on the far side from the look-outs on the neighboring peaks. Then when I heard the rumpus inside, I cut out the whole section as quickly as I could. And... and there you are!"
"Nice work," Linda congratulated.
But at this instant Steve gasped, and pointed.
"The elevator!" he exclaimed. "It's coming up! They're after us from below! What a dumbbell I am! I should have jammed it!"
"No way of stopping it?" Linda snapped.
"None!"
"Then outside with our prisoners, as quick as we can!" She dashed to the window. There was a faint hissing and bumping outside. "The rocket glider!" she called out. "Just in time!" and turned back to us.
Steve was already halfway across the floor, carrying Madden's unconscious form. Ainetsu was having difficulty in lifting Valita, who writhed and struggled desperately.
"Help her!" Linda commanded, running over to where I had planted myself before the elevator door, gun in hand.
"Like hell!" I snapped back at her. "You do it! I'm staying here to hold these devils back!"
Linda's eyes blazed, and she drew herself up angrily. "It's an order! Who's in command here?"
"I am, right now!" I roared. To her amazement, I whirled her about and gave her a violent shove toward where Ainetsu was struggling with Valita. And turned to face the shaft. The indicator showed the door was about to open.
Then it did open, and—
NEARLY a score of Legionnaires poured out and hurled themselves at me.
Massed as they were, four or five of them plunged on their faces, horribly mutilated travesties of men, as the ray of my gun sliced right through the center of the bunch.
For an instant they recoiled, then throwing themselves sidewise and opening up, they dived at me again. I leaped backward and let go with my gun again. This time there were answering blazes, and the foyer seemed nothing but blistering light and deafening noise.
I couldn't think, but acted solely by instinct. Why I was not hit, I don't know.
Then something crunched under my foot. I think a disintegrator beam had crumbled the flooring from under it. And I went down. They hurled themselves at me again.
Then there was a fresh outbreak of stabbing, blinding beams, this time from behind me, and two slender legs bestrode me as I lay there. Linda had come back for me.
Momentarily the Legionnaires seemed dazed and befuddled, not an uncommon reaction, even among the best-trained soldiers, in the midst of a disintegrator fight at close quarters. No less dazed myself, I was instinctively crawling free and rising to my feet. It was hearing Linda's voice, I think, between the deafening detonations that kept me going.
"Quick... for the ship... prisoners... no time... chance... peak guns—"
In an instant we were racing, stumbling, back across the aerie, and literally diving out the window, into ready hands that literally hurled us aboard the rocket glider.
With an upward jerk, the little ship was off.
Weak, gasping for breath, I pulled myself up and stared over the side. The two observatory peaks were suddenly ablaze with searchlights concentrated on the aerie, now dropping swiftly from under us, and madly sweeping the night.
Several times they caught us in their blinding glare. But our gliders was ducking, twisting, whirling in the maddest air dance I had ever experienced. Miraculously, the dis-beams did not hit us.
Our own two guns were blazing all this time, and the peak batteries themselves were but the vortexes of blazing hells. It was pretty difficult shooting for them.
After we were well aloft,beyond effective range of the guns, I began to get my bearings. The rocket-glider's crew was composed of Pete Gorgas and Bull Dunstan, with two of the Eagle's best engineers.
"We ain't the best glider pilots on the old space tub," Pete explained apologetically, "but the skipper says we're the shootin'est. So he sent us to pick you up."
"You sure covered yourselves with glory the way you smothered those peak guns," I admitted. "How are the prisoners?"
"Well, Madden, I guess he'll, live. If he's lasted this long, he'll pull through with a bit of medical attention. The gal's still tryin' to chew her way loose. But she ain't gettin' nowhere."
"Scudder will make them talk, when we get them aboard the Eagle," I mused. "Then we'll lift their cache of deltinium—and then—"
Then Linda was standing before me, her fists on her hips. She glared and said: "Well?"
"I'm... I'm sorry," I stammered, "that I had to sling you out of the way, back there in the aerie, but—"
If looks could have killed, I would have expired right there.
"Why!" she said, softly but with venomous intensity, "you insubordinate space louse! I ought to have you broken for that! Only—"
Without any warning, she slumped into the seat close beside me and put her head on my shoulder.
"Only I love you too much," she whispered.
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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