The Golden Amazons of Venus Part 3

A few minutes later they saw a glint of armor through the trees, and then the half dozen members of the exploring party emerged into the clearing. Their eyes were wide with surprise as they saw Closana standing beside Gerry.

"Who's your yellow-haired friend, Chief?" Portok asked with a broad grin. He had spoken in Martian, the two tongues being practically interchangeable with the men of the Interplanetary Fleet. Closana's eyes flashed fire.

"Speak of me with more respect, little Red-face!" she snapped. Portok's jaw sagged open, but before he could say anything further the underbrush on the far side of the clearing suddenly vomited a yelling horde of the Scaly Ones.

They came in close-packed ma.s.ses, yelping shrilly. Their scaly skins and the blades of their swords gleamed in the subdued yellow light.

Evidently bent on capture of the small group of strangers, they were not using their gas-guns.

"Keep together! Fall back toward the s.h.i.+p!" Gerry roared, drawing the sword he had captured earlier in the day.

There was a sharp crackle of ray-blasts as the Earth-men fell back before the charging horde of the Scaly Ones. The short hand-tubes were soon exhausted, but the heavy ray-guns carried by two of the men fired steadily. Murky light continually played about their stubby muzzles.

Dozens of the Scaly Ones dropped, twitching, in the tall gra.s.s before the deadly blast of the rays, but the shouting hordes came on unchecked.

And then a bugle sounded somewhere off on the flank!

"Now, you scaly devils!" Closana screamed, facing about and waving the sword high above her head, "The frontier guards have arrived!"

Long lines of warriors charged out through the bushes to take the reptile men on the flank. The front line of skirmishers carried heavy bows and had quivers of arrows slung on their backs, the ranks behind were armed with s.h.i.+elds and spears. Rank by rank and company by company they came, nearly a thousand strong, the ringing clamor of brazen trumpets urging them onward. Gerry Norton stared at them blankly, scarcely able to believe what he saw. All the warriors were women!

They were tall and clean-limbed, with long golden hair that streamed behind them as they ran. Like Closana, they wore bright-colored loin cloths and had round gold plates fastened across their b.r.e.a.s.t.s. The might of the Golden Amazons of Venus swept forward like a giant wave, with a spray of tossing spear points above it. Then the trumpets sounded again, and the arrow storm began.

The front ranks loosed their long shafts swiftly, and the air became full of the tw.a.n.g of bow-strings and hiss of speeding arrows. A shouting officer of the Scaly Ones went down with a pair of shafts feathered in his chest. His men were dropping all about him as the gold-tipped arrows struck home.

The reptile men were using their gas-guns now. The sharp hiss of the discharges rose above the tw.a.n.g of the bow-strings, the snap of the exploding bullets was like a crackle of old-fas.h.i.+oned musketry. The projectiles ripped holes in the front ranks of the Amazons, but they still came bounding forward. Then the sharp reports of the exploding bullets died away, for the gas-guns were c.u.mbersome things to re-charge and there was no time. The two lines met with a clash of steel.

Gerry Norton had thrown his armoured Earth-men and Martians as a guard around Closana when she ran toward the center of the Amazon line. On two occasions small parties of the Scaly Ones cut their way through the guarding spears to reach them, and each time the blast of the heavy ray-guns mowed them down. The clatter of meeting blades was like the noise of a thousand smithies, the shrill yelping of the reptile men was drowned out by the triumphant blast of the Amazon trumpets. The Scaly Ones were giving back all along the line, under pressure of superior numbers and the greater agility of the lithe Amazons.

Gerry fought with the long, blue-bladed sword in his hand and the s.h.i.+eld of a fallen Amazon on his left arm. With the greater strength of his earthly muscles, he raged through the fighting while his heavy blade wrought deadly execution. And then it was over! The Scaly Ones broke up into scores of fleeing groups and fresh companies of Amazons bounded in pursuit with their long bows tw.a.n.ging. Closana leaned on her dripping blade and held out her hand.

"It was a good fight, Geree. I think I will take you for my husband."

"I think," Gerry said, "We'll just leave that idea for discussion some other time."

The fleeing survivors of the Scaly Ones had gone, with companies of light armed Amazons in hot pursuit. The others were tending the wounded and gathering up the dead, picking up fallen weapons, doing all the routine tasks that are the aftermath of battle. Closana was now surrounded by a body-guard of tall, blonde Amazons whose loin-cloths bore the same design of a golden arrow-head as her own.

"I think," she said to Gerry, "that you should come to see my father Rupin-Sang, who is ruler of this land."

Quite a thinker, decided Gerry.

"We can take you there in the s.h.i.+p if you show us the way," he said shortly.

A horde of Amazons thronged around the big blue-and-silver hull of the _Viking_ where she lay in the knee-high gra.s.s. As the members of the landing party filed on board and turned their ray-tubes in to the Ordnance Officer to be recharged, the other members of the crew came out to stare at the visitors. Angus McTavish stood on the steps of the ladder with his big fists on his hips.

"Will ye look at all the bonny la.s.sies!" he said, "This may not be such a bad planet after all."

The feminine warriors of Venus saw McTavish then, and a sudden murmur swept over the throng. An instant later a hundred blades flashed in the air in salute, and then all the Amazons dropped down on one knee.

"Now what the devil...?" muttered Steve Brent who had come out of the s.h.i.+p just behind McTavish.

"Just a proper tribute to my outstanding personality, lad!" the big Scot muttered aside. Closana read the surprise in Gerry Norton's eyes.

"There are few men in this land of Savissa," she explained, "And the wearing of a beard is the sign of a n.o.ble of the highest rank."

"Wonder how long it will take me to grow a good crop of whiskers!" Steve said.

Closana and a dozen of her body-guard came aboard, looking curiously about them. As the Venusian princess walked into the control room she came face to face with Olga Stark. For a long moment the two women stood looking at each other, their clas.h.i.+ng glances hard and intent. The golden Venusian and the dark haired Earthling. Then Closana shrugged and turned away.

"I do not like her," she said calmly. A slow flush spread over Olga Stark's face, and her eyes smoldered, but she did not answer.

With helicopters spinning, the _Viking_ rose a thousand feet in the air.

Then she moved ahead at minimum cruising speed. Closana stood at one of the control room windows to point the way.

It was a strange land that they saw moving past below them, though a pleasant one. There were rolling uplands, and patches of forest, and occasional villages surrounded by broad tilled fields. Except for the yellowish tinge to the vegetation, and the odd shapes of the trees, it might have been an Earthly countryside. Then Gerry noticed another thing! Though it was broad daylight, as bright as it could become on this planet, there were no shadows at all. The diffusing effect of the eternal cloud barrier kept the light equal on all sides.

"The Land of No Shadow!" he said aloud. For the first time in this busy day he thought of the fact that they were forty million miles from home.

If anything happened to the _Viking_, they would spend the rest of their lives here.

They pa.s.sed some of the barrier forts, square and stone walled buildings reminiscent of medieval castles on Earth. In the misty hills beyond, Closana told Gerry, lay the country of the Scaly Ones.

"What is it like?" he asked. She shrugged, but her eyes were shadowed.

"All I know about it is legend, the sort of tales that old women tell in the evenings. Many of our people have been taken there as prisoners in raids, but none has ever returned alive."

Leaving Steve Brent in command in the control room for the moment, Gerry went aft to his quarters where he had a compact Tri-dimensional-cinema outfit. He was pa.s.sing along one of the corridors on B-deck when he abruptly halted. A faint humming was coming from behind the closed door of the radio room!

The _Viking's_ sending outfit was not strong enough to bridge the vastness of interplanetary s.p.a.ce. Such outfits existed, of course, but only a small set had been installed on the s.p.a.ce-s.h.i.+p because of the extra weight involved. The radio room had been closed and locked weeks ago. No one was supposed to have access to it except Steve Brent and Gerry himself. And yet--the unmistakable hum of a generator was coming from behind the closed door!

Gerry cautiously tested the k.n.o.b of the door. It gave under his hand. As he opened the portal a crack, he clearly heard the sharp murmur of the sending apparatus. Then he swung the door wide on its noiseless and well oiled hinges. A dim light gleamed across the room! A dark figure was crouched tensely over the table that held the sending set. At the moment Gerry could not see who it was.

Two steps Gerry took into the room. Three steps. The rubberoid soles of his shoes made no sound. Then a crus.h.i.+ng weight descended on top of his head! In the half second before he lost consciousness, he realized that there had been a second interloper in the radio room. Someone who had been crouching against the wall by the door, and who had slugged him as he pa.s.sed.

When consciousness returned to Gerry Norton, he was lying alone on the floor of the darkened radio room. He sat up, and rubbed his aching head, and swore softly. There was no sign of the interlopers, nor any clue to their ident.i.ty.

The whole incident puzzled him. His a.s.sailants must have been from among the _Viking's_ crew. That was surprising enough in itself, but there was also the problem of motive. Why would anybody be sending a secret message when there was no receiving set within millions of miles? The thing just didn't make sense.

Closing the radio room behind him Gerry went back to the control-room and drew Steve Brent aside.

"Look here, Steve! I just found someone sending a secret message out over the radio, and got knocked on the head before I could see who it was."

"You must have been reading some of those funny old Twentieth Century gangster yarns of evil deeds!" Steve grinned.

"I'm serious. That really happened." Gerry snapped. The grin faded from Brent's freckled face.