The Buccaneers of Venus Collection (Three novels in one volume!) (10 page)

    "But you have been choked and beaten."

    "You do not understand. The man who made those marks is dead."

    "Then you were rescued. Tell me of it."

    "When I entered the mating pens, Oro, whom I love, met me at the gate and conducted me to the man for whom I had been destined by the king sabit. On the way I besought him to take me to an empty room and leave me there until tonight, but he said such tactics would be useless—that we would surely be found out and the sabits would put us both to death with horrible tortures.

    "When he led me into the room, a great, hairy man leaped up from the corner and seized me by the arms. I cried out and struggled to escape him. Oro had left, but he must have heard my cry, for I saw him enter the room just as the hairy giant hurled me to the floor.

    "Would that you could have seen my beloved at that moment, my Vernia! He was magnificent. With blazing eyes and set lips he grasped my assailant, held him for a moment aloft, and then threw him to the floor with such violence that I could hear the snapping of his bones. He stood glowering down at the lifeless form for a moment, then lifted me tenderly in his arms, and whispered words of comfort, cuddling me as one would a little child. Presently he set me on my feet and would have gone away, but I begged him not to leave me.

    "'Tempt me not,' he said, 'lest I further transgress the laws of our masters, the sabits. Think you that I am fashioned of stone?'

    "Then he swept me in his arms, and pressed his lips to mine, while I trembled and grew weak with the joy of that first kiss of love. And so it came about that Oro the Mighty made me his mate, and swore that I was his, and he was mine, forever and ever. Is it not wonderful?"

    "It is wonderful," said Vernia, "to have known your true love, though for only a day. But will Oro not be punished by the sabits?"

    "If he is found out. But during the night he took the body to the river and, after weighting it with stones, sank it in deep water. The natural supposition will be that the man escaped."

    Vernia and Rotha worked side by side for many days, first in the incubator room, and later tending and feeding small fantas. It was due to this change in occupation that Vernia twice avoided the inspection tours of the king sabit.

    She was feeding the sticky stuff to a voracious young fanta one day when Rotha touched her arm. "The king sabit comes. Stoop over that he may not observe you."

    Vernia bent low over the wriggling fanta, meanwhile watching the king sabit from the corner of her eye. He advanced slowly, pausing now and then to indicate a woman for the pens. At length he came in front of Vernia, stopped for a moment, then started on. It was her hungry charge that proved her undoing, for in her preoccupation she held her wrist too close to the keen mandibles and received a sharp nip.

    With a cry of pain she stood erect. The king sabit stopped, turned back, looked at her fixedly for a moment, then vibrated his antennae. She would be conducted to the mating pens the following evening.

CHAPTER XI

    GRANDON'S PLAN of escape entailed no inconsiderable degree of caution, as well as an immense amount of physical labor.

    The room adjoining the dormitory in which he and his men were quartered was used for storing the driest fungi which, when mixed with the sticky milk of the green creatures, constituted the food of the slaves. These fungi were dumped in great heaps about the room without any semblance of order, and as one of the heaps effectually concealed a corner, one side of which was formed by the outer wall, it was Grandon's purpose to dig a tunnel from this point to a spot he had marked about fifty feet from the hut, where he could emerge under a large surface root. The entrance to his tunnel would thus be hidden by the pile of fungi, while the exit might easily be covered with one of the huge leaves, a profusion of which lay everywhere about the hut.

    Night after night he labored, digging with bare hands and the knife he had brought from the airship, for he had no tools of any kind. After many nights of arduous toil he had completed a slanting tunnel about eight feet deep, and was digging in a horizontal direction toward the point where he had calculated the root would be, when the floor of his burrow gave way with startling abruptness. He fell, first striking some object that gave off a metallic clang, then alighting on a hard, smooth surface with considerable force.

    Dazed for a moment, Grandon lay there in pitch darkness with no inkling of what had happened. At length he arose stiffly to his feet, for he was badly bruised, though fortunately no bones were broken. He bethought himself now of the flashlight which he had kept concealed in his clothing since the day he had examined the abandoned airship.

    The beating of his heart was momentarily stilled by the sight which greeted his eyes when he turned on the light; directly in front of him stood what appeared to be a huge warrior, attired in armor from head to foot. Closer scrutiny, however, revealed the fact that he faced an empty suit of armor, for a mailed gauntlet clutching a heavy axe had fallen from one of the arms. It was this which had caused the clanging sound he had heard.

    The armor was skillfully wrought of a brownish metal which he at first took for bronze on account of its appearance. It was of a pattern unlike anything he had ever seen or heard of, and strikingly decorated with designs of inlaid gold set with brilliant jewels.

    Sharp metal spines projected from the top and back of the grotesque headpiece, while two large green jewels sparkled just above the movable visor like the eyes of some multi-horned reptile. In the visor itself, the true eyeholes were of a hard, thick crystal, and below them were small perforations to admit air. A huge broadsword hung from one side of the belt and a short club with a heavy spiked knob dangled from the other.

    On the floor before the figure lay a quantity of loose earth which had been carried with Grandon in his fall. He dashed the light upward and its rays revealed a ceiling nearly ten feet above his head, supported by timbers. He had broken through between two of the large timbers at a point where the cross-pieces were completely rotted away.

    Upon examining his surroundings he found that he was in a corridor about thirty feet in width, and extending in both directions as far as he could see. A double row of hexagonal columns supported the heavy ceiling beams, and before each column stood a figure similar to the one he had examined, with the exception that every alternate figure held a long, broad-bladed spear instead of an axe in the extended right gauntlet.

    The Earthman was in a quandary; he could not return via the opening through which he had fallen.

    From his fellow slaves he had heard legends of an ancient race of men called Albines, who were said to have at one time been masters of the sabits. These Albines wore suits of mail which effectually protected them from the creatures, and made slaves of whole colonies by raiding them and making prisoners of the queen and king sabits, for the soldiers and workers, being ever subject to the commands of their rulers, immediately became docile when the lives of their superiors were threatened. The Albines had vanished many years before—no one knew how or why—and the sabits had thenceforth turned the tables on man by enslaving the marsh-people.

    Grandon selected a suit of armor which appeared to be his size, and after a considerable struggle with the unfamiliar fastenings, succeeded in donning it. He had expected to feel stiff and awkward in his metal suit, and was therefore agreeably surprised when he found it both light and pliable; for though exceedingly hard and strong, the metal was as light as aluminium and so fashioned that the interlocking plates easily adjusted themselves to every movement of his body.

    Armed with sword, axe and club, he set out to explore the subterranean passageway, walking between the two rows of pillars that were guarded by the silent sentinels of a vanished race, and flashing his light in a semicircle before him.

    As he passed along, he noticed that the stone walls on both sides of him were carved at intervals with scenes and hieroglyphics. The scenes, for the most part, represented men attired in armor such as he wore, battling with sabits. He noticed, also, that in nearly every instance, the figures were pictured as striking the sabits between the eyes with spiked clubs although a few used axes; and one was represented as severing a soldier sabit's head from its body with a broadsword.

    One scene that particularly interested him depicted a group of Albines in the act of capturing a queen sabit while their comrades fought off her guards. They were fastening huge manacles on her neck and legs while she struggled desperately.

    It seemed that he had walked for more than a mile along the corridor, and passed several thousand armored figures, when he arrived at a great circular chamber that, for elegance and richness of decoration, surpassed anything he had ever seen.

    From the base of the walls to the peak of the domelike ceiling, it was a mass of grotesque bas-reliefs and mural paintings in bright pigments, while gracefully sculptured statues of men and women occupied niches set at intervals of about fifteen feet all about the room. The floor was of varicolored blocks of clearest crystal, fitted together so skillfully that they presented a surface as smooth as that of a mirror, while forming beautiful tesselated patterns of exquisite design.

    When he turned his light on the floor it sent forth myriad reflections that lit up the entire room. He was amazed by this phenomenon until he discovered that the base of each block had been cut and silvered so each beam of light was multiplied a thousand-fold.

    In the center of the room a fountain babbled, evidently fed by an artesian well, for it could not otherwise have continued in operation for hundreds of years without attention. As he walked toward the fountain he saw a round bulk, which he had at first mistaken for a shadow, suddenly leap back and then scamper for a broad doorway at the left.

    The thing had short legs armed with huge claws that rattled on the polished floor, and a barrel-shaped body covered with tiny, fishlike scales. Grandon recognized it as one of those large, burrowing rodents which the omnivorous sabits prized so highly as an article of food.

    Several times he had seen them feeding on fungi and grasses in the woods, and the thought came that this creature must needs have access to the outer world to live; consequently there must undoubtedly be a means of egress nearby which he himself could use, for where so thick-bodied a rodent could go, he could easily follow.

    He entered the doorway in quick pursuit and found himself in a passageway similar to the one he had just vacated. The circular chamber was evidently a sort of hub from which these passageways radiated as spokes in all directions.

    The rodent had disappeared, but its trail was not hard to follow, for it had left thousands of muddy footprints during its many excursions to the fountain. The trail terminated at a gaping black hole in the wall where a portion of the sculptured stone had broken away. Drawing his sword and pointing the light before him, he entered the dark, winding burrow, crawling on knees and elbows. It led upward in a slanting, irregular spiral which he thought would never come to an end.

    At length the welcome scent of fresh air came to his nostrils and he emerged from the burrow at the base of a huge tree. He shut off his light. As he paused there in the darkness, Grandon fancied he heard the distant murmur of human voices. He listened intently for a moment, then clambered up on a large surface root. Several hundred yards distant he saw two torches flickering before the gateway of a circular wall about ten feet high which surrounded a tall, conical structure.

    Leaping down from the root he approached the place cautiously. As he drew nearer the sounds grew more plain, and he could distinguish the voices of men raised in altercation. He also heard the sound of blows, and thought he detected the faint cry of a woman.

    The torch-lit gateway was guarded by two powerful soldier sabits with brown forceps, so he circled, keeping well out of sight, and brought up at the base of the wall at a point that was not visible from the gate. He leaped, hooked his fingers over the edge of the wall, and drew himself up on its broad top. Then flattening his body on its surface, he peered cautiously within.

    The space inside the wall was illuminated by four torches, the sharpened butts of which had been driven in the ground. Some twenty-odd slaves, all big strapping fellows, were ranged in an irregular circle about two of their comrades who were engaged in primitive combat.

    Beneath one of the torches lay two other hairy men, stone dead—one with his throat torn out and the other with his head twisted and bent back in such a fashion as to indicate a broken neck.

    Suddenly the taller of the two combatants leaped forward and locked his arms about the head of the other, bearing him to the ground just as they struck the earth he whirled, twisting the tightly gripped head—there was a sickening snap, and the duel was ended.

    The big fellow arose, panting heavily from his exertions, and faced the others. "You have seen the fate of those three fools," he growled. "Are there any others, who would match their strength with Tholto for this slave woman?"

    There was no response. Evidently his comrades were convinced of Tholto's prowess.

    "Bring me the woman, Oro," continued the victor. "Many precious moments have I wasted in silencing these braggarts."

    A great, hairy man, larger even than Tholto and superbly muscled, went into a low door at his back, and emerged a moment later dragging Vernia by the wrist. He pushed her toward Tholto, who seized her roughly and drew her to his side.

    The slaves were startled by a clanking noise behind them, and upon looking around beheld a man clad from head to foot in brown armor on which many jewels glistened, his terrifying appearance enhanced by a spine-crested helmet in which two emerald eyes sparkled, and by the businesslike weapons that dangled from his belt.