XIIICROWDED HOURS
“Sonya,” I exclaimed vehemently, “stay beside me! Don’t leave me!”
How I cursed my inability to speak this language during those crowded hours following the king’s death! At every turn, with every move I was handicapped, the force of my words lost since I had only a girl for mouthpiece.
Yet Sonya did well. The crowd in the garden had dispersed; Sonya had led the girls into cheering me. I had made a speech promising them justice in their cause, and sent them away, not to the Virgins’ Island, but peacefully back to the homes they had left. They were glad to go; there was no government now to force them into a distasteful marriage.
The guards had come before me, at first with an indecision, a sullenness, but the old men counsellors had swiftly abdicated.
“Tell them, Sonya, I want all their advice; whatever they think should be done, I will listen.” I strode up and down the huge audience chamber of the castle, while the old men watched me with whispered, frightened words among themselves.
There was so much to do! I had made a speech to the men in the garden before they dispersed. Our prince must be rescued. They had a man of power and action leading them now.
My words, and perhaps my aspect as I stood up there in the moonlight, aroused them to enthusiasm. They were men. Courageous. Patriotic. They had never yet had a real leader. But they had one now.
It stirred me, as I had stirred them, when I heard them cheering.
I summoned the chief of the guards before me, a slim, straight young fellow with flashing eyes. When I demanded his allegiance—he and all his fellows’—he swung on his heel to the old men who were ranged along the side of the room. They nodded timorously, and he turned back and bowed before me.
“Tell him, Sonya, that I want ten of his men always patrolling the castle grounds. And others, he can use his judgment as to numbers, patrolling the city. If there is any sign of disturbance, notify me at once. I want the people all to go to their homes and stay there.”
There was so much that I did not know! “Sonya, are there any cities beside Kalima?”
“No,” she said. “Only small villages. And there is the village on the Virgins’ Island.”
I nodded. “I want messengers sent out, to tell everyone of the change of government and a warning to beware of the Nameless Horror. It is abroad; it may appear anywhere. Have the people in the rural districts gather food and bar their homes, stay indoors. Sonya, who has been in charge of organizing the army?”
She named him, but it transpired that there had been nothing at all done, as yet, except a manufacturing of the weapons of war.
“Send him to me,” I ordered. “And the leader of the scientists—he has been in charge of the manufacturing? I want to see him also.”
Crowded hours! And I could not leave those girls on the Virgins’ Island; a few of them had remained there with the old women and children. I ordered them all brought in; ordered such of them as could to return to their former homes; the others were to be quartered in the castle.
Hours of swift, decisive commands followed. And there was no one in that busy castle, save possibly Sonya, who realized how I was groping. The government I had seized—Iwas the king now—a simple, primative organization, but to me, so ignorant of its workings, it seemed complex indeed.
But I was learning. One by one, I had the leaders of its various departments brought before me, and from each, though they did not realize it, I learned a little more.
They were all very human. None were very hostile to the virgins; many now hoped they would be given their way.
All were afraid of the Nameless Horror, but all loved their prince very dearly. It seemed that I would have no trouble with internal conditions.
Sonya soon realized it. Her voice carried a more commanding ring. Poor little Sonya! After hours of translating, issuing my commands, running my errands, she was on the verge of exhaustion. But, as in us all, the spirit of battle was upon her. An enemy was at our doors, and soon everyone realized that every command I issued was to make us stronger to resist that enemy.
It had been well over an hour after my abrupt seizure of the castle, before I even thought of Alice and Dolores. They were unharmed. Sonya had kept them away from the castle steps; for half an hour they had been in the room with me, watching and listening with wide eyes and solemn faces, a half hour before I saw them. They did not question, but ran to Sonya and me to be of such help as they could.
Once Alice insisted, “You must rest, Leonard. You can’t keep this up, you and Sonya.” I had never before seen the light of love for me in her eyes, but I saw it then!
I had sent the girls into a castle room to sleep. At last I was alone with food, and a hot stimulating drink, like coffee, before me. I was seated at a table, in the king’s huge chair.Iwas the king. Alone here in my audience room. Through the windows, the falling moon threw a yellow glow. The time of sleep was nearly over. The city was awakening; I could hear its voice awakening to the round of daily activity.
My city now! But the thought brought no exultation. This new day would be dark like the other. If the Nameless Horror were abroad in the city—Had I not better form an armed street patrol? And keep the people indoors? I needed more messengers.
The young men from the outlying districts must be ordered in to enroll with my recruiting staff. Suppose the people outside of Kalima revolted against me? Would I have to go out and overawe them with the Frazier beam?
Maxite, the scientist was coming back to talk with me presently. I thanked God that he at least had learned from Ren my language. So much to do, and I was so tired!
My head fell to my hands on the table. Alone there at last in the great, silent room, I fell asleep.
“Why—”
“You’ve been asleep, highness. I did not want to awaken you.”
Maxite sat across the table from me. I aroused myself, rubbing my eyes, embarrassed at my undignified position. Maxite had evidently been sitting there a long time, waiting for me to have my sleep out. The moonlight was gone. The windows were black rectangles, the stars hidden by dark-gray cloud masses. But the city was awake, its new day now fully advanced.
Maxite smiled. He was a small, gray-haired man of middle age, black-robed, with gray ruching at his throat and wrists, and with a yellow ball ornament dangling from a chain at his neck. He said,
“Others, too, are waiting to have your orders, highness. But we knew you needed rest.”
At the farther door of the large apartment a group of men and a few girls were standing. One by one, I saw them. My chief of the guards reported that the city seemed normal; the Nameless Horror had not appeared. A messenger from the rural districts along the Warm Sea said the people were frightened.
They were obeying my orders to stay indoors; but the young men were demanding that I let them come at once to Kalima, to get from me weapons with which to defend their families.
Three girls presented themselves, with a petition that the girls be allowed to join my army. Five hundred names were on it. A fat, affluent-looking individual, a wealthy land owner he told me, came to present his claim to immediate marriage to a girl who was now returned from the Virgins’ Island. I sent him brusquely away.
There was some confusion over the return of the refugees from the island. Some of the infants could not be returned to their homes; the mothers were afraid to have them. Some of the virgins lived in the rural sections; they wanted their parents brought into the city for greater safety. And some of the old women had not been welcomed home, and had been brought to the castle.
I did my best to straighten it out. Enlistment in my army had already begun. I interviewed three trainers of the military animals, for use on land, in the water, and in the air. The animals were ready. The mechanical equipment was very nearly complete.
I sent word to the rural districts for all young men to come in and present themselves to my recruiting officers. And any family that wished, could come also. I issued a proclamation to the city, that all homes be prepared here in Kalima to care for at least one family of refugees, at government expense if necessary.
Expense! My national treasurer was already in despair. I knew almost nothing of my nation’s finances, but I did not admit it. I would learn, devise some methods of raising money. Already a dozen ways were springing to my mind. That fat, middle-aged landowner, for instance, he and others like him would not be so rich when I got my government properly operating.
Maxite and I were alone again. “Come,” I said. “I’m ready.”
We had planned that he would show me through the arsenal. I wanted first to see the small hand weapons. Maxite had told me that we had a room with a thousand or more electronic needle pipes, a simple hand device which generations ago had been used for hunting birds.
The army would be equipped with it, Maxite planned. I thought, too, if it were sufficiently simple, I would send it into the rural districts, so that each home might be armed for defense.
“I want also,” said Maxite, “to show you our aerial image-finders.”
These, which he had already described, I needed at once. Our enemy—I still could only call it the Nameless Horror—probably had a base near Kalima. Prince Altho perhaps was in captivity there; Jim and Ren, if they were alive, might be there also. This aerial device might enable me to locate the enemy base.
Maxite and I were descending into the lower floors of the castle. We passed rooms where the refugees were huddled. Girls had been organized to care for them. On another, still lower floor, I saw my guard pacing back and forth through dim stone corridors. We were now below the terrace level, but higher than the level of the back street.
We descended other floors, came to a narrow dark corridor. This, Maxite told me, was at the street level of the back castle wall. I remembered walking along that curving street, at the base of the wall, remembered a small door there.
“It’s here,” said Maxite.
We stood in a dim blue radiance at the intersection of two corridors. Ahead lay a floor-opening, where down a flight of curving stone steps was the entrance to the first of the subterranean arsenal rooms. To the right, a branching passageway led to the small street gateway.
“A guard is there,” said Maxite, “armed with a fire-flash for close-range work. He could kill anyone who came near him. Oh Grett!”
He called the guard but there was no answer. His soft voice echoed between the narrow passage walls. We hastened to the gate door. The guard was not there! But in the darkness we heard a sound. Maxite’s hand-wire in its blue tube flung a faint beam around us. On the stone flagging a figure lay twisting. We had heard the scrape of its movement. It was the guard, lying there bound and gagged!
XIVFUGITIVES IN THE STARLIGHT
I had sent Alice, Sonya and Dolores into one of the castle bedrooms. They were all tired and overwrought with the excitement through which they had passed. A dream awakened Sonya, after how long an interval she did not know—several hours undoubtedly. She dreamed she had been talking with Prince Altho: he was in a cave; Jim and Ren were with him.
For a long time Sonya lay pondering. Then she awakened the other two girls.
“Listen, I want to go and try and rescue Altho.”
She told them her plan. They could take a small flying platform, with a few birds. Once away from the city, the distraction of the thought-waves of all its people, she would be able to communicate with Altho or with Ren. Communicate with them, find them—rescue them!
A mad, impossible adventure, perhaps, but to the girls it looked feasible.
“Oh, Alice, oh, Dolores, shall we try it? Leonard will be many days getting his army together. That is too dangerous, to wait so long.”
Dolores turned to her with shining, tearful eyes. “If I could only get to Jim, help him to safety.”
Sonya had other plans. She could get weapons, a small weapon, the electronic needle pipe. She knew where they were kept, and how to use them.
“I heard Ren discussing it one day with Maxite the scientist. And there are image-finders stored in the same room. I think I know how to use them.”
The girls decided to try it. They slipped unobserved from the room. Sonya found them long, hooded black cloaks. In the darkness, mingled with the confusion of arriving refugees, they got out of the castle without being recognized.
“Where are we going?” Dolores whispered. They were all three tense with excitement. Sonya had turned toward the rear of the castle, into the dimly lighted street along the base of the wall.
“A gate-door here,” she whispered. “It is guarded by Grett. Quiet! Stand close beside me, but do not speak. But be ready to do what I say. Soon we will have the weapons.”
In the castle bedroom, before leaving, Sonya had tom a garment into long, narrow strips, a staunch, tough fabric. She handed the strips now to Alice. At the small door in the wall, they paused.
“Keep behind me,” Sonya whispered. “Over there in the shadow. But be ready.”
The street along here was dark; it was a street little used and at the moment it was empty. Sonya knocked boldly on the door.
“Grett! Oh, Grett!”
In her own language from within came the muffled question, “Who is there?”
“It’s Sonya.”
“Yes?”
“Open the door.”
“No. I must not.”
“It’s only Sonya. Don’t you know my voice?”
“Yes. What do you want?”
“I’ve news from Ren. He is . . . oh Grett, you must let me show you.”
There was the sound of dropping metal bars. The doors opened cautiously a trifle.
Sonya put her hand casually on the door. “It’s only Sonya, Grett. See here what I have.”
She tugged at the door. The guard was revealed, standing with the leveled metal pipe in his hand. Sonya touched the weapon. “Turn that away, Grett. It . . . frightens me!”
There was a low cry, a scuffle. Sonya had snatched the pipe. She leaped backward, swung it level.
“Don’t move, Grett! Don’t make a sound! If you do I . . . I’ll kill you!”
“Sonya!”
“I’m desperate! Can’t you see it? Get back in there!” She called softly, “Alice! Dolores! Here! Come inside, quickly.”
She had backed the frightened, surprised young man into the corridor, with leveled weapon and crisp menacing words. In the glow of the passageway’s single light, she held the weapon while Alice and Dolores bound the man’s legs and arms with the strips of fabric. Sonya gagged him, and they rolled him along the floor to the wall and left him.
Alice was grim and pale, frightened at what they had done. Dolores was trembling. “We haven’t hurt him, have we?”
Sonya bent down, loosened the gag a trifle. “No, he’s all right. Lie quiet, Grett. And when they find you, tell them you’re not to blame. Sonya tricked you. We may be back by then, anyway, and I’ll take the blame.”
The girls hurried down the corridor, down the stone steps into the arsenal room. Sonya had been here once before with her uncle. The place was dark, but Sonya found a hand-wire and Alice carried it above her head. Its light glowed dimly blue, in a big room of fearsome shadows. Overhead they could hear the faint tramp of a guard. Every moment they expected to be discovered.
Sonya seized one of the electronic needle pipes, and the range apparatus with which to operate it. And a large metal cylinder in which was packed a group of image finders and their aerial controls. With their loot under their cloaks, the girls hastily retreated. At the gate-door they switched off the corridor light. Sonya murmured, “Good-bye, Grett!”
They closed the gate-door after them. From the outside it appeared barred. With the cloaks shrouding them they hurried to Sonya’s home.
In a moment they had six birds harnessed to a small platform, and were in the air.
Within the cave, Altho, Jim and Ren faced the giant murderous intruder. The bruteman stood licking his lips, an imbecile leer on his face.
There was a brief silence.
Altho spoke soft, soothing words to the hairy giant, and then ripped out a sharp command. It went unheeded. The bruteman’s dangling hand came up to his belt. But never reached it.
Jim screamed an exclamation to Ren, and leaped. His body struck the bruteman full, a solid impact which would have flung Jim back, but the giant’s huge arm went around him, lifted him like a child. As he went up, he flung his arms around the thick, hairy neck and clung.
His feet were high in the air as the bruteman straightened with a savage, surprised cry. He tried to shake Jim off, but Jim clung with one arm, with the other hand he gouged at the giant’s face.
Altho had leaped. The giant kept his feet, swaying, kicking; he stopped, and with an upflung arm, dashed Jim’s body away. But Jim was back at him again, he and Altho, now, clinging, kicking, gouging.
And then Ren. The harrassed giant, fighting with scarce the intelligence of a man, staggered across the cave with Altho and Jim clawing at him. Their bodies struck Ren, and scrambling in the dark, he caught a great hairy leg and wound himself around it.
In the pale-green glow of the cave, the giant bruteman surged about. He tripped, went down, with the three men pounding on top of him.
Jim shouted, “We’ve got him!”
But the giant was up, shaking them off, first one, then another, tearing them loose, flinging them back. But always they returned to claw at him. They fought silently, grimly, but the giant roared.
Harrassed, frightened, Altho had torn his belt away and flung it aside. The giant stood panting, looking around to see where it had gone. Altho was gripping his thick middle firmly with both hands; Ren was wound about his legs.
Jim had been flung away again. He was picking himself up, but he stopped. He had seen a jagged, metallic projection of the cave-wall. It seemed loose. Jim tugged at it. The swaying bodies surged past him. He tugged, worked it loose. It came free; in his hand he held a heavy, jagged chunk of black metal.
“Ren! Work him over this way! Over here . . . here!”
Jim leaped to the slab of table for greater height. The giant’s back was to it. Jim could not talk to Altho, and Altho could not see him. But he could hear Jim’s reiterated call.
The bruteman tried to turn toward the insistent voice, but Altho now understood and distracted his attention. And Ren at his legs, was pushing him backward. A step; then another.
They came within reach of the table. Jim leaped into the air. He struck the giant’s back; his hand went up, and the heavy chunk of metal caught the bruteman full on the back of the skull.
He toppled, fell, writhing, jerking a moment, then lay still.
They disentangled themselves from him, and stood up. They were all three bruised and winded. There was a jagged cut on Jim’s forehead; he dashed the blood from his eyes.
“Let’s get out of here! Now’s the time! Now, or never!”
Altho’s pale face smiled at him questioningly.
Jim gestured. “Out . . . get out of here!” He added, “The belt. What’d you do with the belt?”
The giant’s weapons. Altho could not understand the words, but Jim saw the belt. He leaped over the huge, motionless body. Outside the cave an uproar sounded.
Altho called a warning; he was gesturing vehemently at Jim to come. Jim seized a small metal object at random from the giant’s belt, an egg-shaped thing of white metal: a muzzle-projection, a handle and a trigger.
Lights were moving nearby in the darkness with a confusion of voices. The second of the giant guards at Altho’s cave had run away in fear. He was shouting, gathering other guards around him. The huge heads were bouncing forward over the rocks; calling commands. The brute-bodies were running to them, each to his master. The heads were mounting.
Jim turned to the right, up the valley. They were momentarily in darkness, open metallic ground up a rocky slope, stars overhead, lights and confusion behind them.
They ran. Jim had handed the giant’s weapon to Altho, thinking he would know better how to use it. They ran swiftly. A tiny light to one side picked them out, then it vanished. Jim pulled them sidewise to change their course. Ren stumbled over the rocks as they ran, but they kept him on his feet.
Jim panted, “A cliff . . . over there! We can climb it . . . or hide.”
Altho glanced back. The lights were rushing on up the valley. The fugitives were running between jagged, tumbled boulders; Jim thought they had eluded the pursuit. But suddenly ahead of them, a head rose on its hands from behind a crag.
Jim jumped for it. He struck it. His fist struck the great face between its green blazing eyes. The face smashed, cracked like the shell of an egg. Noisome! His fist sank into a soft pulpy mass. He jerked it free. The head rolled backward, the arms waving.
“Come on,” Jim shouted. He wiped his fist and arm on his jacket: noisome, horrible!
“We’re on the ledge, Ren . . . can’t climb out of the valley. It’s too steep.”
“Are they following us?”
“No. I can see lights going up the valley. Altho seems to want to lie here, not try to climb higher. If only I could talk to him.”
“I’m trying to get Sonya’s thoughts, Jim.”
They lay on a dark ledge; a fifty foot drop was before them, a sheer perpendicular wall. They had climbed beside it, where the ground was broken. Over the ledge, some ten feet above it, was another broader space with what seemed a cave-mouth behind it. The crags were dim in the starlight; black gulleys, ravines were everywhere. Below them spread the valley floor. Lights which marked the pursuit had gone past.
For a time the three fugitives lay quiet. Jim’s mind went back to the cave from which they had escaped. Two of the brutemen had been on guard.
These brutemen were hardly more than animals, like tigers with a lust for human blood. One had murderously entered the cave; the other, listening, had become frightened and decamped, giving the alarm.
Jim whispered impatiently, “Ren, can’t you get any thoughts from Sonya?”
“No. I’m trying. I feel . . . I feel that Altho is getting them.”
It seemed so. Altho was lying with his head down on his hands. Once he uttered a suppressed exclamation, and then he was murmuring as though to himself.
“You’re right. He’s getting them,” Jim muttered. “Try again, Ren!”
Abruptly Ren exclaimed, “They’re coming! Sonya, with Dolores and Alice.”
“Do they know where we are?”
“They’re trying to find us. Sonya says they haven’t seen any lights yet to mark our valley. Altho has been trying to direct them.”
“Well, for a while we’re safe here. They—”
Jim never finished. From down the valley, by the cave-lights of Talon’s encampment, a ball of fire mounted slowly upward, a tiny, blazing white ball. It rose in a slow arc, and suddenly burst with a blinding white glare.
The valley, the crags, the ledge upon which the fugitives lay were all momentarily brilliantly illumined. Jim saw that beneath them in the valley a hundred of the mounted heads were gazing upward. And he knew too, that they had been seen upon the ledge.
A shout arose; a rush of the figures to climb. But a voice, Talon’s voice, seemed commanding them to stop. Farther down the valley, brutemen were dragging forward a heavy piece of apparatus, a huge gun-muzzle on wheels, the muzzle pointed vertically upward.
Jim leaped to his feet. “We’ve got to get higher! Try to get to that cave overhead.”
But Altho pulled him back. Altho still held the weapon Jim had taken from the giant. He gestured with it. Jim sank back.
There was something going on down there in the valley. Jim wondered if the weapon Altho had was of any use at this distance. Altho seemed absorbed in thought communication. Suddenly from over the cliff-tops across the valley, a small pink ball of light came sailing, floating out over the valley in a huge segment of circle, a thousand feet in the air.
A glowing pink ball; a concentrated radiance seeming to whirl upon its axis, with tiny crescent streamers of light as it whirled. It sailed in a curve above the valley, growing dimmer, as though burning itself out, until in a moment it vanished.
Jim stared. But Altho knew what it was. He leaped to his feet.
XVTHE RESCUE
The small flying platform, with the girls prone upon its fur covering, sailed up from Sonya’s home and over the city. The stars were obscured by gathering black clouds, a threatening storm, but it did not break. Sonya headed the birds for the Virgins’ Island.
They passed a thousand feet above it where a barge drawn by swimming sea animals below was bringing the women and children back to Kalima. Sonya had only the general direction of where she wanted to go, the length of the Warm Sea toward the distant mountains and caves. The Nameless Horror had been seen always in that direction.
The girls lay silent. Sonya was in constant, though sometimes vague communication with Altho. She knew the captives were in a cave; then she got the thoughts clearer, and got Ren’s thoughts also. But suddenly all the thoughts were broken.
The threatening storm passed. The moon was below the horizon. But the stars came out clear and bright. The girls were calmer now, grim with purpose. Sonya began connecting their scientific apparatus, explaining it as well as she could.
The electronic needle pipe was a foot-long metallic pipe with a diameter the size of a small human finger. It had a large, round-metallic base, to be operated by two hands.
It projected a very small stream of electrons, which carried with them a tiny, sharp-pointed fragment of metal, like a needle. The needle flew with nearly the speed of light, expanding. But when it struck it solidified.
There was a range finder for aiming, and a device for curving the electronic stream, so that the beam could be sent to almost any degree of curvature. In her heart, though she did not confess it even to herself, Sonya was dubious of her ability to use the weapon.
She knew she could not aim it with any degree of skill. And she did not know its range. This needle pipe was a very small size projector, with a range, she thought, effective only a few hundred feet.
The girls were now beyond the Warm Sea, flying over a broken, mountainous country, black and desolate looking in the starlight. Altho’s thoughts were with Sonya again. They had never been as clear as this before. A fight, an escape, a dark ledge with a valley below it. There were lights in the valley.
But where, in all this dark, mountainous waste, was that valley? Sonya believed she was flying toward it. She had several times in the last hour altered the direction of the flight. Altho’s thoughts, a dim feeling of his approaching nearness, seemed to guide her.
It was very vague, an intuition more than a thought. Altho himself did not know where he was, but the bond of love between these two was very strong. Each could feel the other’s approaching presence. He had tried to warn her away, but when she persisted, he did his best to guide her.
Sonya murmured, “Now he says,Lights in the valley—you will see the lights.”
But every desolate valley sweeping beneath them was pale and wan in the starlight. Then Sonya prepared an image-finder. She connected the batteries, the projector, and the grid of glowing wires.
Alice and Dolores held the grid between them. Sonya fired the small projectile. It sailed off, a whirling pink ball. It was in reality a small, flat disk with a lenslike eye and a whirling, pink, glowing armature on top.
Over a radius of several miles Sonya’sraytronapparatus could direct its flight, and back over the invisible connecting ray came an image of all that the lens eye saw.
The pink ball of light sailed ahead and soon was lost to view. The grid of wires which Alice and Dolores held glowed pink; then suddenly glared white. A glare of white showed ahead in the sky. It was the light flare Talon had sent up to locate the fugitives.
The flare went dark. The grid was pink again. Upon it, etched in black, was a moving scene: mountains, crags, valleys, moving in slow panorama, valleys all pale and empty in the starlight. Then one showed dim, moving lights!
Alice cried, “Sonya . . . lights! We see them now!”
Sonya’s apparatus marked the position of the pink ball. She turned the birds slightly, to fly after it.
The platform was almost over the valley. Sonya sent out another pink disk. The girls bent over the grid, staring at the tiny movement image; a dim, starlit valley. At the bottom of it, a group of busy figures and a giant projector muzzle pointing vertically upward.
The girls watched the grid breathlessly. Its image, moving with constantly changing viewpoint, was clearly etched, but dim and very small: a cliff ledge with three figures upon it. From the ledge suddenly a small red ring of fire leaped out. It sped downward, struck a rock, and vanished with a puff.
It was Altho firing the weapon Jim had taken from the giant; in a moment the still distant girls heard a report, like a tiny clap of thunder, the sound of the red ring striking the rock. Down in the valley the giant muzzle of the vertical projector began issuing a stream of green light.
It mounted a hundred feet, sprayed out like a fountain column of water. From the ground, huge black figures tossed a balloon head into the column of light. The head rose, surged upward, until at the top it hung in the light spray, balancing itself like a ball held at the top of a jet of water.
It was all very swift, a moment or two while the girls stared at the glowing grid. The head was nearly level with the ledge. In the green light Altho’s figure showed plainly; he was standing at the ledge, firing his red rings of flame.
But they were futile now. They floated slowly, and from below, some hidden marksman was catching each of them with an upflung pencil point of black light, a narrow beam, so dead black that it showed clearly in the night. It caught the red fire rings; its rays exploded them harmlessly in the air.
The grid went dark; the second lens disk had burned out. But the platform itself now swept over the valley. The reality of the image scene was spread beneath the girls. Sonya saw the ledge was large enough to land upon; she guided the birds toward it.
She raised the electronic needle projector, fired it with a futile aim and then cast it away. There was no time for her to attempt to use it further. Her birds were swooping for the ledge, and they needed her guidance. A moment, and they would be there.
But too late! The head in the fountain of green light held something in his hands. A hum rose over the valley. Altho, standing on the ledge, suddenly flung up his arms. His weapon fell from him. He toppled, seemed trying to draw himself backward. But could not.
And then, forward from the ledge his struggling figure floated into the air. On the ledge, Ren and Jim were frantically clinging to avoid being drawn after him. The hum rose to a shrill whine.
In what seemed a whirlpool of air, or the levitation of an invisible magnetic stream, Altho was drawn to the head on the supporting green light beam. The green light slowly diminished.
The head, with arms holding Altho’s unconscious body, was lowered to the ground. A voice down there shouted hurried commands. The lights all went out sharply. In the starlight, Altho’s body was surrounded by dark surging figures, and dragged away.
The platform swooped to the ledge, landed with a thump.
“Jim! Jim! Are you all right?” It was Dolores’s anxious voice. But Sonya was cold, shuddering. All her hopes were vanished. She knew that they could not go down into the dark valley, with all those armed figures entrenched in the caves. Altho was lost to her.
Jim and Ren rushed to the platform. There was a moment of confused greeting. Jim never knew how it quite happened, but from the other ledge, ten feet above them, a head like Talon suddenly leaped down. It flashed to Jim that the head must all this time have been laboriously climbing in the darkness. Or perhaps had followed some underground passage to the cave up there.
Dolores was standing slightly apart from the others. The head seized her. On the upper ledge a giant bruteman was leaning down; the head tried to lift Dolores to where the dangling arms of the bruteman could reach her, arms which would have pulled her and the head both up to the upper ledge.
It happened so quickly, it was so utterly unexpected, that Jim and the other two girls were for an instant stricken with surprise. Dolores screamed. It was the first that they knew of her peril. She called, “Jim! Jim!”
But Ren was closer. He leaped before Jim, leaped in the dark for the girl’s terrified voice. He struck the head with his shoulder. His groping arms tore Dolores away.
There was a spurt of flame from some weapon the head was carrying. It caught Ren in the chest, drilled him. He fell backward, lay motionless. But he had saved Dolores from her captor. Jim and Alice had reached her.
The bruteman leaned swiftly down. The head held up one of its small arms. The bruteman drew his master to the upper ledge, with a jerk as though he were raising a large, light ball. In the valley they were trying to raise another beam of the green light.
Jim was carrying Dolores; he threw her to the platform and dragged Ren’s inert body aboard, with Alice grimly helping him. Sonya screamed at the birds.
From above, the head was sending down tiny spurts of flame. They struck the fur coverings with the acrid smell of burning hair. Jim flung the girls behind him; every moment he expected that the flame jets would strike him.
It was only an instant, then the platform lifted, sailed away. The ledge dropped beneath it. The dark, seemingly deserted valley dropped and merged into the tumbled mountain waste.
The platform struggled on, sailing low. It was the Virgins’ Island now. The moon was rising again with its flood of yellow radiance. Ahead, toward Kalima, they saw a blob in the sky.
It was the large flying platform I had hastily equipped and armed, coming out over the city to seek them.
But Ren was dead.
XVIDEPARTURE FOR BATTLE
We were ready at last for our attack upon Talon’s forces. The night had passed, and another long day, and night had come again. Jim’s return, with what he had to tell us about Talon, was of immeasurable help to me. I knew now what I was facing.
It was tremendously helpful also in arousing public enthusiasm for the war. The Nameless Horror was nameless no longer. The people recognized that a savage enemy was at their threshold, men who would have to be fought and conquered.
I did not want a large fighting force, but I wanted it well armed and trained, armed for defense also against what I could guess Talon’s weapons might be. Jim had seen something of them.
I sent out scouting platforms with the aerial image finders. But they brought me little information, for presently Talon realized what the pink balls of radiance in the sky meant. He began destroying them with his black flash beam.
This was to be a war of weapons, rather than fighting men. With Maxite, I labored to prepare a defense against Talon’s black flash, and the fire rings which Altho had used. Evidently Talon was armed chiefly with weapons of electronic basis. I hoped so, for we could insulate against them fairly efficiently.
The day had just turned to night when news came that Talon’s forces had left the mountains and now were encamped at the end of the Warm Sea. It was what I had hoped he would do. I had no intention of allowing him to attack Kalima, but I did not want to go up into the mountains after him. He was evidently ready now, but so was I.
It was a busy time, those last hours. Kalima was jammed with refugees. All along the shores of the Warm Sea the rural districts were deserted. I mobilized my men and girls on the castle grounds, and on the estuary there. The girls had had their way; they were an important unit of my forces. I could not refuse them, for they speedily demonstrated that in the air they were far superior to the men.
With Sonya and Maxite, I stood on the Castle terrace watching the last details of our departure. The night was clear, save for a low bank of clouds hanging over the sea, with the horn-shaped yellow moon rising above it.
The castle grounds were crowded with my eight hundred fighting men, two hundred girls, the land animals, birds and platforms. On the water were the boats, with sea animals to draw them. I had some four hundred men in this division—a total force of about fourteen hundred.
A busy scene of moving lights, voices, commands, the fluttering of the excited birds; behind us, on every housetop, in every window and point of vantage in the city, a throng of spectators watched.
The last preparations held a myriad details.
“Maxite,” I said, “the platform with the Frazier beam—have them hold it until last. Then I’ll come down.”
Maxite’s orders went out over the aerial he carried on his shoulder. I could hear the echo of his voice down there in the garden. I swung the grid on my chest to catch the rays from an image-finder erected on the waterfront. Alice and Dolores were down there. I had not wanted them in this fighting, but they insisted, and I had put them in the division of boats.
“All ready, Alice?”
She glanced up at the image finder; it stood on a post at the shore front. On my grid was the image of her figure standing there, with her insulated suit like a black cone around her, and her helmet in her hand.
“All ready, Leonard.” Her smile was grim, excited, tense, but I could see no fear in it.
“Be careful, Alice. Keep Dolores with you . . . and obey orders.”
“Yes.” She turned away.
Sonya, standing beside me, laid her hand on my arm. “We’re going to win, Leonard. And Altho—” She gestured. “I seem always to be getting his thoughts, Leonard. Again . . . just now.”
We knew that Altho was still alive, that Talon was going to keep Altho with him. Sonya very often had fragmentary communication. She had seemed to be getting it a few hours ago, and now, suddenly, we realized what evidently Altho had been trying to tell her. A messenger rushed up. He had come from one of our scout platforms.
Talon’s forces had started for Kalima. The brutemen with the heads mounted upon them were dragging heavy apparatus along the shore road. And there were rafts on the sea drawn by swimming brutemen. The rafts were already half way to the Virgins’ Island!
There was no time to be lost. Maxite’s aerial sent his voice to the seventy men and twenty girls who were equipped to receive it. Each of them urged his squad to greater haste.
The individual girl flyers rose first. One by one, each mounted upon a giant bird, they rose from the castle grounds, and began circling in the air. These girls were not protected against Talon’s electric rays.
It was my plan to keep them very high in the air, beyond what we estimated was the effective range of Talon’s black flash. They were armed only with small explosive bombs, but were expert at dropping them upon a mark.
A hundred and fifty of these mounted girls gathered now in a hovering group, then in wedge-shape, flew in a wide, slow circle. The birds were well-trained, capable of flying swiftly to great heights. And the most agile of the young girls; Sonya had selected them carefully.
This unit was the swiftest, most mobile of my forces. Sonya was to lead it. She was presently ready, bringing up her great gray bird, with its rug saddle upon which she would recline on its back between its great spreading wings.
She was dressed, as were all the girls in the air squadron, in a single dark flowing garment from shoulder to knee, with her hair bound tightly in braids around her head. The small metallic bombs were in a belt at her waist, bombs fitted with a chemical most explosive.
She offered her hand in my own fashion.
“Good-bye,” I said. “And remember, Sonya, keep well up, and listen to my signals. Do not attack until I order it.”
She leaped upon her mount. It rose over me with dangling legs; the rush of air from its wings was on my face. In a moment I saw her up there, taking her place just below the girl at the point of the wedge.
From the garden, the first of the flying platforms rose. There were three of this size, each with twenty men and some ten girls. Forty birds were harnessed to each platform: birds in tandem along each side, and two long strings in front. Four girls were to drive them; the other girls had bombs, and the men had the smaller range electronic needle-pipes.
These platforms were fairly swift. They were insulated underneath, with the shaggy black fabric of woven wire through which the insulating current circulated. And they had side shields which could be raised; and dangling, insulating curtains beneath some of the birds.
I stood watching the three platforms as they rose majestically, joined the mounted girls, and circled with them over the city.
The land forces were starting. Jim was leading this division: eight hundred men, most of them mounted individually upon the giantlops—a four-footed animal, more like a giant cat than anything I can name; handsome beasts, larger than an earth-horse, with great claws, a mass of shaggy red hair, and a tail like a plume of fur.
Each with a rider, they padded through the village streets. Some were harnessed to our larger projectors, and our wind device, which I planned to have Jim establish down the shore opposite the Virgins’ Island. With it, Jim could lash the narrow channel waters to a fury.
The small land force passed into the city and vanished. From the distant housetops I could see the waving crowd to mark its progress. I turned away. The boats on the river had started, a fleet of ten long, narrow, metallic boats, with insulated sides and shields, boats drawn by sea-like mammals, agile, swift, and intelligent.
There were some forty men and a few girls on each of the boats. A large long-range needle projector was mounted in the bow, behind the black screen.
It could throw an electrified, imponderable blade of metal over a curved path, with almost the speed of light for an effective distance of over a mile. And these boats had light-flares, wind projectors, and horizontal bomb projectors.
They sped down the estuary, with the mammals leaping like dolphins in the water ahead of them; then they stopped, circled, came back, and waited in a line in midstream. From the city a great shout of enthusiasm went up at sight of them. On one of them were Alice and Dolores.
Our three other flying platforms were long strings of birds, our longest-range rising, heavier, smaller platforms, each with weapons—a giant projector on each of them, with a few men to handle it.
Maxite said, “We’re ready for you, Leonard.” He had dropped, for the first time, my royal title. We stood, two friends, parting with a handclasp. His face was very solemn. I think he, too, was thinking of the homecoming. “I’ll follow you with the finders, Leonard. Keep voice connection if you can. Perhaps . . . I will see what you might overlook, and I can advise you.”
I nodded. A simple handclasp. He turned away, to watch our fate from his room beneath the castle.
My platform with the giant Frazier thought-beam we had constructed, was ready. I was to operate it alone. I had learned to fly its six birds. I clasped my black, cone-shaped robe about me. My black helmet dangled like a hood behind my shoulders.
I ran down the castle stairway. From the city a roar of enthusiasm went up. I turned and waved a hand.
Departure for battle! The people expected a martial gesture, and I gave it to them. But within me was a shudder.
I leaped on the black platform. It was no more than six feet wide and twice as long, crowded with the projector, the batteries and intensifiers, and much other scientific apparatus.
I gripped the reins, shouted to the six birds whom I had trained to know my voice and respond to my commands.
My platform rose over the castle grounds. Around me, the girls and the other platforms circled. Down in the estuary the ten black boats were starting in a double line. Out beyond the city, on the road toward the sea, a thin black line showed in the yellow moon glow—Jim’s land division. The city beneath me was a frantic, waving mass of humanity.
I shouted through my aerial. The girls and the platforms broke their circle and started forward. With my platform leading them, we swept in a great arc over the city, and away into the moonlit sky.