THE ELEVATOR stopped at the floor of the top segment, and we mounted thence to the roof by a spiral stairway. Two guards armed with torks, scarbos and broad-bladed spears, saluted when we appeared. The roof was made of the same material as the walls, and the slabs of black marble were fitted together so cunningly that the joints were all but concealed. It was circled by a four foot wall perforated on the floor level at intervals to carry off the heavy Zarovian rains.
There were four Olban airships on the roof. I examined the nearest one with interest. It was shaped like a small metal duck-boat about ten feet in length and three in the beam. The cockpit was covered with a glass dome in the back of which was a small door. Within this dome I could see an assortment of levers, buttons and knobs, and the cushioned seat for the driver. The thing that amazed me the most was the fact that it was not equipped with planes, rudder or propeller.
Vangal turned to me. “You seem astonished at our airships.”
“They certainly do not resemble any aircraft I have previously seen.”
“We have no need of planes, propellers or rudders for this type of flyer,” he went on. “As I told you, it is raised, lowered, turned, or moved in any desired direction by amplified mindpower. The amplifying mechanism is under the round bump on the forward deck. The small lids that you see fore and aft conceal safety parachutes. That rectangular protuberance from the front of the cab is a mattork, a weapon operated on the same principle as a tork, but with a greater range and firing much heavier projectiles.”
“You told me that the Olban government alone possessed the secret for manufacturing these flying mechanisms,” I said. “Suppose one should be forced to land in hostile territory. The craft would then, in all probability, fall into the hands of your enemies, and they could thus easily take the mechanism apart and duplicate it.”
“That danger has been foreseen. A vial of powerful acid has been placed in the mechanism of each Olban craft in such a way that it will be immediately broken if tampered with. The acid thus released in the secret mechanism will instantly destroy it.”
“Certainly a far-sighted provision,” I remarked.
“It has kept us at peace with our neighbors for many centuries,” replied Vangal. “I dislike leaving you thus precipitately, but the time has come for departure.”
So saying, he opened the door in the back of the cab and entered. After a hurried examination of the control levers and the cannon-like mattork, he said: “Farewell. Study diligently, practice assiduously, and be ever on your guard against assassins.”
“If I catch any prowling about I’ll practice on them instead of the target. Farewell, and a safe and pleasant journey to you.”
The little craft rose slowly at first, then, gradually gathering momentum, it shot to a height of a half mile or more, sped away with amazing rapidity, and was soon lost to view.
I walked to the edge of the wall and looked over. The roof was at least six hundred feet from the ground, though the drop from battlement to battlement was only about sixty feet. Far to the northward I descried a city of circular buildings, in the center of which towered an immense red structure similar in design to the one on which I stood, but at least twice as tall.
This must be the Red Tower of which Vorn Vangal had spoken—the Imperial Palace of Olba. The city walls formed a circle, broken at each point of the compass by a tower which evidently covered a gate.
The countryside, as far as I could see, was divided into well-kept farms on each of which was a round building, probably the home of the owner. People were working in the fields, and here and there I saw men driving huge, grotesque beasts hitched to plows or cultivators.
The animals, which I afterward learned were called thirpeds, were great hairless pachyderms; they stood about eight feet at the shoulder, and weighed four to five tons apiece when full grown. They had huge heads and mouths, sharp-pointed long ears, and relatively thin necks almost half as long as their bodies. They moved with a lumbering gait that reminded me of elephants.
The plants under cultivation were fungi of various kinds, and several varieties of bush-ferns.
A smoothly paved road, straight as an arrow, led from the south gate of Olba past the tower on which I stood, and thence to the great, crescent-shaped Olban harbor of Tureno. This was the marine gateway of the capital, whence Emperor Hadjez sent his mighty fleet of trading vessels out over the rolling, steel-blue waters of the mighty Ropok Ocean.
Along this straight, smooth road rumbled great, one-wheeled carts drawn by thirpeds. The body of a Zarovian cart is inside the huge single wheel that carries it, being suspended on an inner idling wheel that keeps it from turning when the outer wheel revolves. There were also one-wheeled motor-driven vehicles that moved over the road with great speed. I saw some with wheels more than twenty feet in diameter, making all of a hundred Earth miles an hour.
One of the guards accompanied me down the telekinetic elevator, which I had not learned to operate, conducted me to the suite Vangal had prepared for me, and bowing low, with right hand extended palm downward, left me alone. I could hear him pacing back and forth in the hall while I studied the patoa scrolls.
As I pored over the translations and pronunciations with keen interest, it seemed to me that I was reading something I had known well, but had forgotten. I tested myself on this and found, to my surprise, that having once read and pronounced a patoan word, I had learned it.
When I told Vorn Vangal about it afterward, he explained that this was because the brain of Zinlo, which had become mine, knew all of these things already. The subjective mind, having once received an impression, records it forever. Thus, having only to tap my subjective mind, I learned instantly. It amazed and overjoyed me.
Long before the afternoon had waned, I had mastered the entire group of lessons which Vorn Vangal had prepared for me. I was eagerly reading a Zarovian book on natural history, when the advent of sudden darkness, so common in tropical and semi-tropical Venus, interrupted my studies. A rap sounded at the door.
“Enter,” I said in patoa, eager to try my newly mastered language.
The door slid open, framing the figure of my guard in silhouette against the lighted hall. He entered and pressed a button, flooding the room with soft light. I could not see the points from which the radiance emanated, so cleverly were the fixtures concealed.
“Your Highness’s dinner,” announced the guard.
Two slaves entered, bearing a huge double-decked tray laden with at least fifty different dishes. A third followed with a small table, and a fourth with gold service and scarlet napery.
Fish, flesh, and fowl were set before me, as well as numerous dishes concocted from mushrooms and other fungi, and countless others whose origin I could not fathom. There was also a colorless, pleasant-tasting beverage which I afterward learned was called “kova,” served hot in small bowls. I found it fully as stimulating as strong wine, though with a slightly different effect.
Having dined as became a prince of Olba, I turned once more to my studies.
Late in the evening a second knock sounded at my door, and a new guard admitted a man who was evidently my valet. He busied himself in the adjoining room for a few minutes, then entered and, bowing before me, announced that my bedchamber was ready.
I entered, to behold a sleeping shelf that curved out from the wall like the nest of a cave-swallow. A scarlet canopy fringed with gold projected above it, and the downy, silken coverlets—scarlet lined with golden yellow—had been turned back invitingly.
My valet brought my scarlet sleeping garments, and I wondered at the preponderance of this color; later, I learned that throughout Zarovia scarlet is the exclusive color of royalty.
Though I had grown drowsy over my studies, the novelty of my situation kept me awake. After several hours, I managed to drift off, only to be awakened by a sharp, metallic clang.
The sound seemed to come from the direction of the battlement outside my window, and I listened breathlessly for a repetition. As it was not repeated, I decided that it could have no alarming significance, and was once more composing myself for slumber when I heard a slight rustle as of silken garments only a few feet distant from my head.
Without moving, I opened my eyes and endeavored to penetrate the pitch darkness that enveloped me. Venus has no moon, and in consequence it was fully as dark outside as anywhere in the room; I could not see the window, nor could I have seen any one entering it.
It was plainly evident that there was someone in the room. I thought of Vorn Vangal’s warning, and a cold sweat broke out on my forehead. My weapons lay on a low table only a few feet from me, yet I could not move to reach them without making sufficient noise to apprise my stealthy visitor of my whereabouts.
Another rustle, quite near me this time, was followed by the glow of a flashlight which swept the room, rested for a moment on my recumbent form, and then winked out. I sat up suddenly, at the sound of a scarbo drawn stealthily from its sheath not two feet from me.
No sooner had I sat up in bed than there was a whistling sound, followed by a thud, as the keen blade of a scarbo buried itself in the pillow where my head had lain a moment before.
I leaped from the sleeping shelf and fumbled for the light switch while my assailant, with a muttered exclamation of surprise and anger, flashed his torch on the coverlets. Then he whirled it around the room just as I found the switch and turned it.
Both of us were blinded for an instant by the glare of the light. I reached the table and secured my scarbo just in time to ward off his furious attack.
Back and forth we fought across the smooth floor, overturning furniture and tripping on rugs, while the apartment echoed and re-echoed with the clamor of our rapidly moving blades.
I found my assailant a dangerous antagonist; as a swordsman, Vorn Vangal was but a child compared with him. He was dressed in purple raiment trimmed with silver, and wore a heavy black beard.
At first his demeanor was one of sneering disdain; but when he found me able not only to parry his lightning cuts and thrusts, but to return them, measure for measure, a look of wonderment came to his hawk-like features. “Body of Thorth, stripling!” he exclaimed. “You have been practicing with the scarbo since I last saw you.”
“I am but practicing now,” I replied tauntingly, speaking slowly so that I might not mispronounce the words which came to me so readily.
His face reddened at this, and he redoubled his efforts, his keen blade flashing in shimmering arcs, alike bewildering and deadly. But his anger gave me the opportunity I sought. Whirling his blade on mine, as I had whirled that of Vangal some time before, I wrenched it from his hand and sent it clattering to the floor.
With a startled look he leaped back just in time to avoid a lunge that would have ended our conflict. As he sprang he shouted lustily, “Vinzeth! Maribo! Attend me!”
Two burly ruffians responded to his call, leaping through the window. They were armed with huge, broad-bladed spears and would probably have made quick work of me had not my own retainers burst through the door at my back, having heard the noise of our conflict.
For the moment the tide of battle turned in our favor. Then fresh re-enforcements poured in from outside. The leader had recovered his scarbo, and now they cut my men down until but a handful remained. Though our attackers were not without casualties, we were outnumbered from the start.
Maddened with the lust of battle, I was cutting my way through the spearmen in my endeavor to reach their leader when my tower guards made a sudden charge in response to a sharp order from their commander. At the same instant he plucked at my sleeve.
“The tower is lost, highness,” he cried. “The traitors are too many for us. You must flee.”
“Never! Let me at these assassins!”
I succeeded in breaking from his grasp, but he seized my arm once more, calling one of the guards to assist him. “Do not compel me to use force, Highness,” he pleaded. “I must get you hence at once. To do otherwise would be treason to Your Imperial Sire.”
The two of them dragged me through the doorway which they bolted. A moment later we entered the elevator and shot to the top floor, whence we climbed the spiral stairway to the roof. Far below us I heard the door crash inward—proof that the last guardsman had fallen.
They hustled me to the largest of the three airships, opened the door of the cab, and fairly hurled me onto the cushions.
“Raboth will take you to the palace,” said the commandant. “I will bolt the door and follow in a one-man craft.”
Raboth, a lean wiry youth with a thin, ragged beard, climbed in beside me and closed the door. As soon as he was seated, the ship began to rise—slowly at first, but rapidly gaining momentum until we shot upward with amazing rapidity.
My pilot, looking downward to take his bearings, drew back with a sudden intake of breath. “They have seen us! Two of their battle planes are rising to cut us off from the palace.”
Scarcely had he spoken ere a searchlight flashed on our ship. An instant later a bullet ricocheted from our deck, tearing way part of the railing as it exploded. It had been fired from a mattork.
A terrific fusillade followed as we continued our rapid ascent. Suddenly we plunged into a thick cloudbank, shielding us from the revealing glare of the enemy searchlight. Continuing upward for several minutes more we cleared this lower cloud stratum and Raboth immediately put on our forward lights. Then he turned a switch, illuminating the interior of the cab with the radiance of a tiny bulb above our heads.
My pilot leaned forward to examine a small instrument suspended on a thin wire at the front of the cab. “I fear we are lost, Highness,” he said, with a look of consternation. “One of the shells must have carried our magnet away. The compass is out of order.”
A quick examination proved his statement correct. The magnet, which is fastened to the rear deck of all Olban airships to counteract the strong magnetic pull of the motive mechanism, had been snapped off by one of the mattork bullets. Now the needle pointed to the front of our craft no matter which way we turned.
A sudden glare of light at our backs, followed by the rending impact of a mattork shell on our hull, warned us that the enemy had sighted us. This time we dived into the stratum beneath us and then with level keel, hurtled forward at a pace that held me breathless with wonder.
“How fast are we traveling, Raboth?” I asked, trying to adjust my senses to the sight of cloud masses made iridescent by our lights, and moving past the cab in swift, bewildering kaleidoscopic display.
“This ship is rated at three-quarters of a rotation,” he replied. “We are moving at top speed.”
“What do you mean by three-quarters of a rotation?”
He seemed astonished at my question. “Why, a rotation is the speed at which Zarovia rotates on her axis. We are traveling three-fourths of that speed.”
I made a rapid calculation. As the circumference of Venus is slightly less than that of Earth, and her day twenty-three hours and twenty-one minutes, Earth time, she rotates on her axis at a speed of more than a thousand miles an hour. Roughly, then, we were traveling at seven hundred and fifty miles an hour.
My companion held the ship to her course through the clouds for a considerable period, then dipped beneath them. This move almost resulted in our undoing; the second enemy craft, which had evidently been flying below us all the time, opened fire. I replied with our stern mattork—whether effectively or not, I could not tell—while Raboth again shot our craft up to the concealment afforded by the clouds. Once more we hurtled forward on a level keel.
“Our would-be assassins are certainly persistent,” I remarked casually to my companion.
“And well they may be. This is the first time their leader has been recognized. No doubt we are the only two survivors of the fight in the tower, and consequently the only ones able to expose Taliboz.”
“Who is this Taliboz?” I asked thoughtlessly.
“Is it possible that Your Highness does not remember Taliboz? He is the most powerful noble in Olba. For some time it has been hinted that he was conspiring against the throne, but there was no direct evidence. Now he must kill us all—both to do away with the heir to the throne, and to silence the witnesses of his perfidy.”
We sped along for some time in silence. I calculated that if we had traveled in a reasonably straight line we were at least a thousand miles from our starting point. At length, feeling that we must have shaken our pursuers, Raboth once more descended beneath the lower stratum, taking the precaution of switching off all lights as he did so.
He looked about carefully, saw no sign of pursuit, and made the fatal mistake of turning on the lights. Scarcely had he done this ere a missile crashed through the back of the cab and exploded with a deafening noise. It struck on Raboth’s side and killed him instantly, tearing his body to shreds.
Our lights were extinguished by the explosion, but a powerful searchlight played on us from behind and another shell carried away our stern. Then the craft lurched violently and fell, turning end-over-end while I clung desperately to my seat.