WITH Tzien Khan and his four painted torturers confronting him in his dungeon cell, Ted Dustin tried frantically to reach his pistol degravitor through the hole he had scraped in his insulating armor, but his efforts were of no avail. The hole was too small. He quickly dropped his hand to his side in order that his attempt to reach the weapon might not be detected.
Tzien Khan took a key from his belt pouch, and said:
“Bend down your head, O spawn of a maggot, that I may remove your collar. And if you have a god, pray to him, for you have but a short time to live.”
Ted bent over as directed, and as he did so he heard a tearing sound that filled his heart with hope. While Tzien Khan fumbled with his collar lock his hand stole to his right hip and confirmed his hopes. The act of stooping over had completed the work of the past few days, and his fingers closed over the butt of his degravitor.
As the collar dropped from about his neck, Tzien Khan ordered him to straighten up. He obeyed, but as he did so, whipped out his degravitor, pressed the trigger, and swung it in a narrow arc. The Khan and his four torturers were wiped out before one of them had an opportunity to use a weapon.
“Well done, Ted Dustin!” called Shen Ho from the opposite cell. “I had given you up for dead.”
With the aid of his degravitor, Ted quickly got rid of his clumsy suit of insulating armor and appeared before the astonished Shen Ho in the rich garments of black and gold he had worn in Maza’s court. Then he released his fellow prisoner by the simple expedient of flashing the degravitor rays for an instant on the collar lock.
As soon as he was freed from his metal collar, Shen Ho armed himself with the weapons of Tzien Khan, belting the richly jeweled sword and ray projector about his waist. Then he took the weapons of the others, made them into a bundle bound together with one of the belts, and strapping the head lamp of Tzien Khan to his forehead, said:
“Come, Ted Dustin. Help me release my brothers, and I will help you find, and, if the great Lord Sun wills, to slay the cruel tyrant who disgraces the great name of P’an-ku.”
“If you will help me to find and destroy the big green ray he is going to use against the earth I’ll go anywhere with you,” answered Ted.
“That I promise to do, also, or give my life in the attempt,” replied Shen Ho as they hurried along the passageway.
When they arrived in the circular room at the base of the spiral ramp, Shen Ho turned into the first passageway at his right. Other than bones and dead bodies, he found only four half dead wretches, none of whom he recognized.
Hurrying out of this passageway, he entered the next, and to his delight found Fen Ho, his youngest brother, alive and able to travel. After the young inventor of the projectiles and firing mechanism had been released and armed, the three men hurried out to the central room and back to the other passageways, one at a time, to search for Wen Ho. They found the inventor of the flying globe in the last passageway, sick, and barely able to talk. Shen Ho took a small phial of medicine from the belt pouch of Tzien Khan, a little of which he dropped on his brother’s tongue. Fen Ho, meanwhile, busied himself with cutting the collar from his brother’s neck with his green ray projector, and belting a sword and projector about his waist.
The medicine, it appeared, had marvelous stimulating qualities, for Wen Ho quickly recovered his strength, and not only was able to travel with sword and projector belted to him, but insisted on carrying one of the long spears with a buzz saw-like head, which the torturers of Tzien Khan had dropped, and which Shen Ho had brought in his bundle.
“Now,” said Shen Ho, “we must pass through the torture chambers in order to get to the upper rooms of the palace. Every man must have his weapons ready as the torturers of Tzien Khan are armed, and quick to draw.”
Ted, with a degravitor in each hand, now insisted on taking the lead as they mounted the spiral ramp. On the way up, he met a guard, whose head instantly vanished from the man’s neck before a leveled degravitor, and whose weapons were appropriated by the Ho brothers.
Shen Ho extinguished his head lamp, now no longer necessary because of the yellow rays from small globes of luminous liquid, and enjoined absolute silence. As they mounted higher, however, this precaution was made unnecessary by the agonized shrieks of the tortured victims above them.
When they reached the door of the torture chamber, Ted, with both degravitors ready for action, led a quick rush into the room. Twenty painted torturers, taken by surprise, reached for their weapons, but not one reached in time. Then Ted and Fen Ho plunged into the series of smaller chambers on the right, while Shen Ho and Wen Ho took those on the left.
One after another, painted torturers went down before the degravitors of Ted or the green ray projectors of Fen Ho. Presently they reached the last chamber of the series and found no torturer present. It was occupied by but one victim, and Ted cried out in surprise as he recognized him.
“Professor Ederson!” he exclaimed, “and I thought you safe in Chicago!”
A flash of his degravitor cut the heavy cable which held the cylinder of water that was straining the professor’s neck cords, and it crashed to the floor. Then, while Fen Ho swiftly released the savant’s hands and feet, Ted removed the helmet and chin clamp.
The professor attempted to speak, but his voice failed him, and he suddenly fainted, toppling into the arms of his young friend.
“I’ll carry him to the main torture chamber,” said Ted. “You find Shen Ho and get that little bottle of medicine that revived Wen Ho. It may work on my friend.”
“It will,” replied Fen Ho, speeding away.
When Ted reached the central chamber with the slight form of the professor drooping in his arms, he found the three Ho brothers awaiting him.
“Every torturer has been slain,” said Shen Ho as he dropped some medicine on the tongue of the professor, “and no alarm has been given as yet, but we must work swiftly.”
The professor regained consciousness and the power of speech with remarkable speed, while Fen Ho and Wen Ho busied themselves with releasing such torture victims as were not yet mortally injured and mercifully dispatching the others. These men were armed with the weapons of the torturers and instructed to hold the chambers against all comers.
“Thank you, Ted,” said the professor, “and these friends of yours for saving my life. I had reached the end of my rope both literally and figuratively. A few more drops of water in that cylinder would have snapped my cervical vertebrae.”
Ted introduced the three brothers to his old friend, and in a few moments the professor declared himself able not only to walk unaided, but to bear weapons. He declined one of the pistol degravitors when it was proffered him, but took a green ray projector, sword, and buzz-saw spear.
“Now for that big projector of P’an-ku’s,” said Ted.
“It will be in the second peak,” answered Shen Ho. “Follow me, and I’ll get you there in the shortest possible time.”
He led them along a narrow, winding passageway in which two palace attendants were met and summarily dispatched, to the base of a cylindrical shaft in which there was a diamond-shaped door. Shen Ho pulled once, then twice, then once again, on a tasseled cord that hung down from the center door, and the clang of a gong within answered each pull. Then there was a humming sound from behind the door, and it slid upward, revealing the interior of a large, bullet-shaped car with a lone operator who was attired in armor of brown metal and wore a sword and ray projector in his belt.
No sooner did he see the five men in the passageway, than he reached for the control lever with one hand and his ray projector with the other. He had no chance to use either, however, for Wen Ho, anticipating this, swiftly thrust with his buzz-saw spear for the neck of the operator. As he thrust, he pressed a button in the side of the shaft which started the blade whirling and Ted, for the first time, saw the terrible efficiency of this weapon, the teeth of which cut through the armor plate as if it had been cheese, instantly shearing the head of the guard from his body.
Then body and head were tossed from the car, and the five men, with Shen Ho at the controls, shot upward.
Through the small diamond-shaped windows of the car, Ted saw that they presently shot above the roof of the palace, swiftly climbing a slender cable which extended up into the stalactite covered vault above. Just beyond the distant city walls, in every direction, he could see the flashing of green and red rays which told him that Maza was attacking the city, though he did not suspect that she had been taken prisoner.
The car continued to travel upward on the slender cable until it entered an enormous, cone-shaped shaft more than a mile in diameter at the base, and slanting upward toward a glassed in opening at the top which was about five hundred feet across, and admitted a considerable amount of light to which there was a queer, greenish cast.
Shen Ho, also looking upward, said:
“See, Ted Dustin. Already they are using the great ray against your world.”
“I hope and pray that we will be able to prevent them from using it much longer,” replied Ted.
“Amen,” said the professor fervently.
Although the car was traveling upward in the shaft, which was plainly a volcanic crater, at a terrific rate of speed, Ted chafed impatiently until Shen Ho moved the control lever, gradually bringing it to a stop. He moved another lever and the diamond-shaped door slid upward, revealing a railed landing platform fastened to the side of the crater.
Ted was the first to step out, and as he did so, he saw a party of people not more than fifty feet away on the same platform. Instantly he recognized the slender figure of Maza, still in her shining armor, being dragged along between two burly warriors while P’an-ku walked ahead. They had just stepped out of a car similar to the one in which he and his companions had come up, and P’an-ku, one foot on a winding stairway which led up into the rock, was saying:
“So now, little white Princess, I will show you the conquest of a world, after which you will perhaps not think so ill of me as a prospective husband. At the head of these stairs is my—”
He did not finish the sentence, for Ted, at this instant, blasted the heads from both the warriors who held Maza, with his degravitors, and the sound of their armored bodies clattering to the floor interrupted him.
He whirled, whipping out a green ray projector, but before he could level it, Ted had destroyed it with a flash from one of his degravitors. He could as easily have destroyed his arch enemy then and there, but preferred to take him prisoner.
“Halt!” he commanded, “or—”
The sentence remained unfinished, for P’an-ku, with an alacrity which was astounding for one of his weight and years, had suddenly turned and darted up the winding stairway, disappearing beyond a curve in the wall.
In the meantime, the professor and the three Ho brothers had stepped out on the platform and were gazing at Ted, the Princess, and the two fallen warriors in an effort to understand just what had taken place.
“Guard the Princess,” Ted called to them. “I’m going after P’an-ku.”
With one terrific leap he landed at the foot of the stairway, then bounded up taking ten steps at a time with ease, momentarily expecting to overtake the yellow monarch around each curve. But P’an-ku had had a good start, and evidently was climbing with a speed far greater than that of which he appeared capable.
At length Ted sighted him, climbing a metal ladder which led upward from a platform at the head of the stairway to a room above which was filled with an intricate array of machinery worked by more than a score of armed men and guarded by an equal number. Just above it the giant green ray flashed out horizontally.
This time it was no part of Ted’s intention to waste words on P’an-ku. Deliberately he raised a degravitor and sighted for the bullet head of the monarch.
But before he could press the trigger there was a blinding flash of light, and the monarch, ladder, men, machinery and projector—all disappeared from view as completely as if they had never existed. Then there hove into view the prow of a flying vessel on which was inscribed the word “Luna,” and Ted shouted for joy, waving frantically at two figures in the control cabin whom he recognized as Roger and Bevans.
The air where he stood was being rapidly vitiated by its sudden contact with the tenuous atmosphere of the outer surface, but Ted stayed long enough to gesture toward the glazed top of the shaft, patted his degravitor, and then pointed one finger downward. Roger nodded as if he understood, and the Luna started for the glazed opening. Then the young scientist, gasping for breath, plunged down the stairway to the platform where Maza, the professor, and the Ho brothers awaited him.
The Luna had already cut through the glazed top when he arrived, and was descending toward the little group on the platform. She drew alongside, opened a door and admitted them before there was any notable change in the quality of the air.
In the happy reunion that followed, Ted, with his arm around his radiant little Princess, presented each of his friends in turn. Then he said:
“We still have work to do. The army of the Princess is storming the city and, I’m afraid, fighting a losing battle against the globes of P’an-ku.”
“We can settle those globes in short order,” replied Roger. “After ’em, Bevans! You should have seen what we did to the fleet sent against Ultu.”
“What did you do to them?”
“Cleaned ’em out to the last globe,” replied Roger.
“Then you saved my city!” exclaimed Maza. “How can I thank you?”
“Don’t thank me,” replied Roger, “thank Ted. Besides, he’s in a better position to collect a reward than I am. Excuse me, please, while I direct the degravitor fire.”
Protected by her degravitor barrage, the Luna first descended to a position just above the great docks of P’an-ku, where she made short work of the reserve fleet. Then she rose and circled the city, safe from the menace of either red or green rays, leveling the walls with her keel degravitors while the gunners in the turrets picked off the globes.
Quickly recognizing a friend in the strange and seemingly indestructible craft, the hosts of Ultu cheered, and went into the battle with redoubled vigor. In less than twenty minutes after the Luna had come on the scene, the last globe was destroyed and the city was in the hands of Maza’s army.
The Luna stopped in the palace courtyard for several hours, during which time Maza proclaimed Shen Ho Viceroy of Peilong—then proceeded to Ultu, where Ted and his Princess were married in regal magnificence, according to the ancient rites and customs of Maza’s people.
THE END