Tarrano the Conqueror Part 6

He checked his words, and started forward. But Dr. Brende was with him, and in doubt what to do I followed with Elza.

We entered the nearest building, into a low, dim room, with doors on the sides. In the silence I seemed to hear my heart pounding my ribs. Elza's face was pale and perturbed, but she smiled very courageously at me.

"Wait!" said Georg. "You wait here."

He turned into a side door leading to another room, and in an instant was back with a face from which the color had departed.

"They're not in there," he said unsteadily. "Elza--you go outside with father.... They must be around somewhere, Jac. Come, look."

There was a rustle behind us. Arms came around me, pinning me. I heard Elza scream, saw Georg fighting two dark forms which had leaped upon him.

I was flung to the ground, but I fought--three men, it seemed to be, who were upon me. Then Georg's voice:

"Jac! Stop--they'll kill you."

I yielded suddenly, and my a.s.sailants jerked me to my feet. A group of Venus men were surrounding us. Georg, his jacket torn to ribbons, was backed up against the wall with three or four Venus men holding him.

And on the floor nearby Dr. Brende lay p.r.o.ne, with a crimson stain spreading on his white ruffled s.h.i.+rt, and Elza sobbing over him.

CHAPTER V

_Outlawed Flight_

Dr. Brende was dead. We knew it in the moment that followed our sudden a.s.sault and capture. Elza knelt there sobbing. Then she stood up, her tears checked; and on her face a look of pathetic determination to repress her grief. Now that we had yielded, the Venus men, searching us for our weapons, cast us loose. We bent over Dr. Brende, Georg and I.

Dead. No power in this universe could bring him back to us.

Georg pressed his lips tightly together. His face, red from the exertion of his fight, went pale. But he showed no other emotion. And, as he leaned toward me, he whispered:

"Got us, Jac! Say nothing. Don't put up any show of fight."

Elza now was standing against the wall, a hand before her eyes. I went to her.

"Elza, dear----"

Her hand pressed mine.

Our captors stood curiously watching us. There seemed to be at least ten of them--men as tall as myself, though not so tall as Georg. Swarthy, gray-skinned fellows--one or two of them squat, ape-like with their heavy shoulders and dangling arms. Men of the Venus Cold Country. They were talking together in their queer, soft language. One of them I took to be the leader. Argo was his name, I afterward learned. He was somewhat taller than the rest, and slim. A man perhaps thirty. Paler of skin than most of his companions--gray skin with a bronze cast. Dressed like the others in fur. But his heavy jacket was open, disclosing a ruffled white s.h.i.+rt, with a low black stock about his throat.

A s.h.i.+fty-eyed fellow, this Argo. Smooth-shaven, with a mouth slack-lipped, and small black eyes. But his features were finely chiseled; and with that bronze cast to his skin, I guessed that he was from the Venus Central State. He seemed much perturbed that Dr. Brende was dead. Occasionally he burst into English as he rebuked one of the others for the killing.

No more than a moment had pa.s.sed. Georg joined Elza and me. We stood waiting. Georg whispered: "They killed Robins and his helpers. In there----" He gestured. "I saw them lying in there. If only I had--"

Argo was standing before us. "This is a very pleasant surprise--" He spoke the careful English of the educated foreigner. His tone was ironical. "Very pleasant--"

Abruptly he turned away again. But in that instant, his eyes had roved Elza in a way that turned me cold.

They led us away, down a padded hallway into the instrument room. It was in full operation; our Inter-Allied news-tape was clicking; the low voice of the announcer droned through the silence. I started toward the tape, but Argo waved me away. He had volunteered us nothing, and again Georg advised silence.

Argo had given his orders. Through a window I saw men carrying apparatus from the house. A small metal frame of sun-mirrors, prisms and vacuum tubes. Georg whispered: "Father's model."

The man with it pa.s.sed beyond my sight. Others came along, carrying the cylinders of books--Dr. Brende's notes--and a variety of other paraphernalia. Carrying it back from the sh.o.r.e toward the headlands of the Cape, where I realized now they had an aero secreted.

Argo was at a mirror; he had a head-piece on; he was talking into a disc--talking in a private code. I could see the surface of the small mirror. A room, with windows. Through one of the windows, by daylight, palms and huge banana leaves were visible. A room seemingly in the tropics of our own hemisphere.

Argo was triumphant--explaining, doubtless, that he had captured us.

Mingled with his voice, the Inter-Allied announcer was saying:

_"Greater-New York 10.32 Martian Helio, via Tokyohama: Little People Proclamation----"_

A man standing near the tape switched off the droning voice. At the receiving table, every few seconds came the buzz of the laboratory's call. Wrangel Island again calling Robins; but no one paid any heed.

Argo finished at the mirror. He glanced over the tape, smiling sardonically. Then, methodically, deliberately, he swept the instruments to the floor, jerked out the connections, turned out the current--wrecked it all with a few strokes. A moment later we were taken away.

Outside, from back by the low reaches of the Cape, we saw an aero rising. They had loaded it with Dr. Brende's effects, and in it half of the men were departing. It rose vertically until we could see it only as a speck in the blue of the morning sky--a speck vanis.h.i.+ng to the north over the Pole.

With four or five of the men--all those remaining--Argo took us three to the Brende car. We did not pa.s.s Dr. Brende's body, lying there in the outer room. Elza and Georg gazed that way involuntarily; but they said nothing. The greatest grief is that which is hidden, and never once afterward did either of them show it by more than an affectionate word for that father whom they had loved so dearly.

Soon we were back in the Brende car in which we had landed no more than an hour before. It was a standard Byctin model--evidently Argo and his men knew how to operate it perfectly. We were herded into the pit, and in a moment more were in the air.

Argo seemed now rather anxious to make friends with us. He was in a high good humor. His eyes flashed at me sharply when I questioned him once or twice; but he offered us no indignities. To Elza he spoke commandingly, but with that deference to which every woman of birth and breeding is ent.i.tled from a man.

We rose straight up and, at 18,000 feet, headed northward by a point or two west. We would pa.s.s the Pole on our right--too far to sight it with the naked eye, I realized; but I knew, too, that the Director there would see the distant image of us on his finder, even though we refused connection should he call us. And we had no right to be up here in the 18,000-foot lane. They'd order us down--shut off our power, if necessary.

We could not escape observation on this daylight flight. Heading this way, it would take us past the Pole and on southward, down the Western Hemisphere over the Americas. We could not refuse connection for long.

We would be challenged, then brought down. Or, if Argo answered a call, some Director would examine our pit with his finder--would see Elza, Georg and me as prisoners. We could gesture surrept.i.tiously to him....

My thoughts ran on. Argo's soft, ironic voice brought me out of them.

"We will answer the first call that comes," he said smilingly. "You understand? We are the Inter-Allied News on Official Dispatch." He was addressing me, his glance going to the insignia on my cap. "_You_ are of the Inter-Allied?"

"Yes," I said.

"What's your name?"

I did not like his tone. "None of your--"

"Quiet, Jac," Georg warned.

"Jac Hallen," I amended.

"Yes. Division 8, Manhattan," he read from my cap. "Well, when the first Director calls--from the Pole perhaps--you will tell him we are Inter-Allied Officials. He will see us here--I do not believe, the way we are sitting, that he will think anything is wrong. He will see us of Venus. There are Venus men employed by the Inter-Allied. Is it not so?"

I had to admit that it was. He nodded. "You will fool the Directors, Jac Hallen. You understand? You will get the reports on weather today down the 67th Meridian West. And ask if we can have power to the Equator and below." His eyes flashed. "And if you attempt any trickery--you will die. You understand?"

I did, indeed. And I knew that his plans were well laid--that I would be helpless to give us over without paying for it with my life--with the lives of Elza and Georg as well.