The Red Hell of Jupiter Page 9
CHAPTER IX
_Into the Enclosure_
In the torture chamber Dex wavered slowly back to consciousness to getthe growing impression that he was being immersed in a bath of liquidfire. Burning, intolerable pain assailed him with increasing intensityas his senses clarified.
At last he groaned and opened his eyes, for the moment not knowingwhere he was nor how he had come to be there. He saw strange tortureinstruments and tall monstrosities with pumpkin-shaped headssurrounding him closely in a semicircle, and staring at him out ofgreat, dull eyes.
Remembrance came back with a rush, and he gathered his muscles tospring at the hateful figures. But he could not move. At waist andthroat, at wrists and ankles, were hoops of metal. He closed his eyesagain while the burning waves of invisible fire shot through himrecurrently from head to foot.
Dully he wondered that he was still alive. His last recollection hadbeen of the Rogan leader pointing his shock-tube full at him, hisshapeless countenance working with murderous fury. However, alive hewas; and most unenviably so!
His hands, circumscribed to a few inches of movement by the bonds onhis wrists, felt the smooth substance at his back. And with a thrillof horror he realized his position: he was crucified against the metalslab on which the slave had writhed in agony a short half hour ago.
Again he strained and tugged, vainly, to get free. Off to one side,pressed back against a huge glass experimental tank, he saw thebeautiful Greca, her eyes wide with horror; and caught her franticpleading message to her "Great White One."
* * * * *
The Rogan leader, squealing and grimacing, advanced toward the victimon the metal plate. One of the long arms went out and a sucker-diskwas pressed to Dex's cheek. Dex quivered at the loathsome contact ofthat soft and slimy substance; then set his jaws to keep from groaningas the disk was jerked away, to carry with it a fragment of skin andflesh.
Gingerly, the tall leader felt the twitching, blackened stump of hisblasted arm. Dex grinned mirthlessly at that: he'd struck one or twoblows in his own defense, anyhow!
At sight of the Earthman's grin, an expression of defiance and grimjoy that needed no interpreting to be understandable, the Rogan leaderfairly danced with rage. His long arm went out to the switch besidethe plate, and pulled it down another notch--just a little, not nearlyto the current that had torn at the slave.
At the increased torment resulting from that slight movement of theregulating lever, Dex yelled aloud in spite of all his will power. Itseemed as though his whole body were about to burst intoself-generated flame. Every cell and fiber of him seemed on the vergeof flying apart. He could feel his eyes start from his head, couldfeel every hair on his scalp stand up as though discharging electricsparks.
A minute or two of that and he would go mad! He cried out again, andtwisted helplessly in his bonds. And then the terrible torturestopped.
The Rogan had not touched the switch--yet whatever sort of current itwas that charged the plate was abruptly clicked off, as though someoneat a distance had cut a wire or thrown a master-switch.
* * * * *
Simultaneously with its ceasing, an invisible, crushing sea seemed toenvelope everything. Dex felt his body sag against his metal bonds asif it had been changed to lead.
Before him the Rogans, who had been crowding closer to watchgloatingly each grimace he made, shot doorward as though theirpipe-stem legs had been swept from under them. The leader fell on thestump of his seared arm and, a deafening squeal of rage and pain camefrom his little mouth. His tube fell from his grasp and rolled overthe floor half a dozen yards away from him.
Amazed, observing the stricken creatures only dimly through a haze ofpain, Dex saw them struggle vainly to get up again, and heard themchattering excitedly to themselves. For the moment, in the face ofthis queer phenomenon, the prisoner seemed to be forgotten. And Dexwas quick to seize the momentary advantage.
"Greca!" he called. "The tube! There--on the floor!"
The girl raised her head quickly, and followed his imploring gaze.Laboriously she started for the tube. At the same instant the Roganleader began to feel around him for his lost weapon. Not finding it,he raised his head and glanced about for it. He saw the girl makingher way toward it and, with a squeak of terror, began to crawl towardit himself.
* * * * *
He was not quick enough. The girl, though not nearly as active underthe increased pull of gravity as a person of Earth might be, was yetmore agile than the Rogans. And she was the faster mover in thistortuous, snail-like race. While the Rogan leader was still severalfeet away, she retrieved the shock-tube.
"Kill him!" begged Dex. "And all the rest of the filthy creatures!"
With feminine horror of the thing that faced her, Greca hesitated aninstant--a hesitation almost long enough to be fatal. Then, just asthe Rogan leader was reaching savagely out for her, she leveled thetube at him and turned it to its full power.
One last thin squeal came from the Rogan's mouth, a squeal thatcracked abruptly at its height. What had been its gangling bodydrifted up in inky smoke.
"The others!" called Dex. "Quick! Before they get their weapons--"
Greca swept the death-tube in a short arc in front of her, over thebodies of the remaining Rogans, as if spraying plants with a hose. Oneafter another, toppling in swift succession like grotesque fallingdominoes, the creatures sagged to the floor and melted away. That onesmall part of Jupiter's red spot, at least, was cleared of Roganpopulation.
* * * * *
Long shudders racked Greca's body, and her lips were a bloodless linein her pallid face. But she did not go into womanly hysterics or swoonat the slaughter it had been her lot to inflict. Moving as quickly asshe could, she went to the metal slab and began, with shaking fingers,to undo the fastenings that held Dex prisoner.
"Good girl," said Dex, patting her satiny bare shoulder as he stoodfree again. "You're a sport and a gentleman. You don't understand theterms? They're Earth words, Greca, that carry the highest praise a mancan give a woman. But let's get out of here before another gang comesand takes us again. Where can we hide?"
"I don't know any hiding places," confessed Greca despairingly. "TheRogans swarm everywhere. We will be seen the moment we try to leavehere."
"Well, we'll hunt for a hole, anyway," said Dex. He essayed to walk.What with the tendency of his muscles to jerk and collapse with theaftermath of the torture he had endured, and the sudden andinexplicable increase in gravity that bore him down, he made heavygoing of it. "First we'll go up and get Brand."
"Yes, yes," said Greca, a soft glow in her clear blue eyes. "Let us goquickly."
She started toward the door, panting with the effort of moving. ButDex halted an instant, to stoop and pick up another of the tubes.
"We might as well have one of these apiece," he said. "You've provedyou have the grit to use one; and maybe the dirty rats will thinktwice about rushing us if we each have a load of death in our hands."
* * * * *
They made their way out of the torture laboratory, and up the inclineto the street level. And it was just as they reached this that theburden of gravity under which they staggered was lifted from theirshoulders as quickly as it had descended on them.
Dex raised his arms just in time to fend his body from a collisionwith the wall in front of him. "Now what!" he exclaimed.
Greca lifted her hand for silence, inclined her head, and listenedintently. As she did so, Dex heard the same noise her quick ears hadcaught an instant before his: a distant pandemonium of ringing gongsand siren shrieks, and squealing cries of a multitude of agitatedRogans.
"What the devil--" began Dex. But again Greca raised her hand tosilence him, and listened once more. As she listened, her sea-blueeyes grew wider and wider with horror. Then, frantically, she began torace down a long corridor away from the street door.
"Your friend is not there," she interrupted. She explained swiftly,distractedly: "From the shouts of the Rogans I learn that he got intothe great dome building, somehow, and then was driven into the pen ofthe...."
Dex could not get the next term she used. But her telepathic messageof the peril she mentioned formed in his mind clearly enough.
He got a flashing brain picture of a great, high-walled yard with amonster in it of the kind he had caught a close-range glimpse a shortwhile before. Also, he saw a blurred, tiny figure, running from wallto wall, that was Greca's imagining of Brand and his efforts to escapethe enormous beast.
"Good heavens!" groaned Dex. "Penned in with one of the things theyshowed me while I was stretched on the rack! Are you sure, Greca?"
She nodded, and tried to run faster. "This way," she gasped, turningdown a passage to the left that ended in a massive metal door. "Thisleads to the enclosure. Oh, if only we can be in time!"
Her slim fingers tore at a massive bolt that secured the door. "Here,"said Dex, wrenching it open for her. And they stepped out into thinsunlight, onto a hard surface of reddish ground that was crisscrossedwith innumerable rounded furrows like the tracks old-fashioned,fifty-passenger airplane wheels used to make on soft landing fields.
* * * * *
Greca shrieked, and pointed to the far end of the enclosure. Downthere, flattened against the wall of the dome building, was Brand. Andwaddling toward him with a tread that caused the ground to quiver, wasa mate to the hideous creature the Rogans had used to terrify Dex inthe torture chamber.
Dex leveled the tube he was carrying, swore, hit it frenziedly againsthis hand. "How do you work this damned thing, Greca--Oh! Like that!There--see if _that_ puts a sting in your hide!"
The distant monster stopped its advance toward Brand. A raw white spotas big as a dinner plate leaped into being on one of its enormous hindlegs. It whirled with an ear-splitting hiss, to see what thing wascausing such pain in its rear. The frightful head whipped back at theend of the long neck, to nuzzle at the seared spot. Then the giantlizard turned toward Brand again.
A second time Dex pressed the central coil that formed the handle ofthe tube, as Greca had showed him how to do. A second time the rayshot down the field to flick a chunk of flesh weighing many poundsfrom the monster's flank. And this time it definitely abandoned thequarry behind it. With a scream like the keening of a dozen steamwhistles, it charged back over its tracks toward the distant pigmiesthat were inflicting such exasperating punishment on it.
Dex swept the tube before him in a short half-circle. A smoking gashappeared suddenly in the vast fore-quarters of the monster. Itstopped abruptly, its clawed feet plowing along the ground with theforce of its momentum. An instant it stood there. Then, with its headswinging from side to side and lowered so that its looped neck draggedon the reddish, dusty ground, it began to back away from the source ofits hurt, bellowing and hissing its rage and bewilderment.
"Brand!" shouted Dex. "This end! Run, while I hold the thing off!"
Brand began to race down the long enclosure, ten feet to a leap. Thegreat lizard darted after him, like a cat after an escaping mouse; buta flick of the tube sent it bellowing and screaming back to itscorner.
"Dex!" gasped Brand. "Thank God!"
For a moment he leaned, white and shaken, against the wall. Then Grecacaught his hand in both of hers, and Dex put his arm supportinglyaround his shoulder. They retreated back through the doorway behindthem, and slid the bolt across the metal door.
CHAPTER X
_The "Tank Scheme"_
"Thank God you came when you did," repeated Brand. Then, with a momentin which, figuratively, to get his feet back on earth, the wonder ofDex's appearance struck him.
"How did you manage to get away?" he asked. "I was sure--Ithought--when they dragged you out of the tower room I wouldn't seeyou again--"
Rapidly Dex gave an account of his ordeal in the torture chamber,telling Brand in a few words how he had attempted to win free of theRogans, how he had almost succeeded, only to be caught again andclamped to the death-plate on the wall.
"But just as the big fellow was about to cook me for good and all," heconcluded, "something happened to the current, and to the gravity atthe same time--"
"That was when I pulled the lever in the dome building!" exclaimedBrand.
He told of what had befallen him in the Rogan power-house. "Thatlever, Dex!" he said swiftly. "It's the keynote of the whole business.It absolutely controls the pull of gravity, and Lord knows what elsebesides. If we could only get at it again! Perhaps we could not onlyshut it off so that Jupiter's pull would function again, but alsoreverse the process so its gravity would be _increased_! Think whatthat would mean! Every Rogan in the red empire stretched out andimmovable, possibly crushed in by his own weight!"
"It's a wonderful thought," sighed Dex; while Greca's eyes glowed witha sudden hope for her enslaved race, "but I don't see how we couldever--"
He stopped; and glanced in alarm down the passage behind them. Grecaand Brand, hearing the same soft noise, whirled to look, too.
* * * * *
Far down the passage, just sneaking around the bend, was a group ofRogan guards, each armed with a death-tube.
"Back to the pen!" cried Brand.
He slid the bolt, and jerked the door open. They rushed into thewalled enclosure again, the slamming of the door behind them cuttingoff the enraged squeals of the Rogans.
"This isn't going to mean anything but a short delay, I'm afraid,"said Brand, clenching his fists in an agony of futility. "They'll bein here in a minute, and get us like trapped rats."
"Not before we get a lot of them," said Dex grimly.
"But that isn't enough, man! We don't want to die, no matter howdecently we do it. We've won free, and stayed free this long; now,somehow, we've got to reach our ship and get back to Earth to warnthem of the danger that hides here for our planet!"
He strode tensely up and down, smacking his fist into his palm. "Thelever!" he exclaimed. "That lever! It's our only answer! If we couldget to it.... But how can we? We couldn't break into the dome, now theRogans are on the watch for us, with anything less than a charge ofexplosives. Or a tank. God, how I'd like to have an old-fashioned,fifty-ton army tank here now!"
Greca exclaimed aloud as Brand's fleeting mental picture of one ofEarth's unwieldy, long-discarded war tanks registered on her brain.
"There is the great beast there," she said hesitantly, pointing a slimforefinger at the huge lizard that had backed into a far corner andwas regarding them out of dull, savage eyes. Then she shook her head."But that is impossible. Impossible!"
* * * * *
The men stared at her, with dawning realization in their minds. Thenthey gazed at each other.
"Of course," said Brand. "Of course! Greca, you're marvelous! Wish wehad a tank? Why, we've got one! A four-legged mountain of meat thatought to be able to plow through the side of that dome like abattering ram through cardboard!"
"But it's not possible," replied Greca, her head dropping dejectedly."My people, as driven slaves, till the fields with great animals thatwere trapped in the surrounding jungles. They harness other greatanimals to haul burdens. But none of the beasts are like _this_ one.This kind cannot be tamed or harnessed. It is too ferocious. It isused only as a scourge of fear, to crush us into complete submission."
"Can't be tamed?" Brand said. "We'll see about that! Come on, Dex."
"Just a minute," said Dex. He flattened against the wall, motioningthem to do the same. Then he leveled his tube at the door.
Slowly, cautiously, the door began to swing back; and the Rogan thatDex had heard fumbling with the bolt stuck his huge head out to locatethe escaped prisoners.
Dex pressed
the release coil of his tube. Without a sound, the Roganslumped to the ground, a smoking cavity in its shoulders at the spotwhere its head had been set. In an instant the body, too, disappeared;an upward coiling wisp of black smoke marking its vanishing.
Another Rogan, tiptoeing out, met the same fate; and another. And thenthe door was banged shut again, and the bolt ground into place on theinside.
"That'll teach 'em to be careful how they try to rush us from _that_door," said Dex, through set teeth. "Now let's see if that tank schemeof ours can be worked."
* * * * *
He picked up a tube dropped by one of the Rogans, and handed it toBrand; showing him which coil to press to get full force, as Greca hadin turn informed him.
"Down the field," commanded Brand. "We'll go about thirty yards apart,and try to herd this brute back through the walls of the domebuilding. Once it's inside, we'll try to rush to the lever before theRogans can down us, and jam the thing past its terminal peg and intoreverse action. I don't know that there _is_ a reverse to it--but wecan try.
"Greca dear,"--the girl started at the warmth of his thought, and afaint pink rose to her pale cheeks--"you'd better stay by my side.Your place as hostage-priestess of your people wouldn't save you ifthose devils catch you now. Besides, you can keep your tube leveled atthe doorway as we go, and discourage any Rogans who might pluck upcourage to try coming out again."
They started down the field toward the nightmare thing that snarledand hissed in its corner. On one side of the big enclosure walkedBrand, with Greca close beside him, glancing continuously over hershoulder at the rear door, and holding her tube in readiness to checkany charge the Rogans might attempt to make from the tower building.On the other side, keeping an equal pace, advanced Dex.
With tubes of death as whips, and with death for themselves set as thestake for which they gambled, they went about their attempt to drivethe brainless monster before them through the solid wall of the domebuilding. And there followed what was probably the strangest animalact the universe has ever witnessed.
* * * * *
The first thing to do was to rout the enormous lizard out of thecorner where sullen fear had sent it squatting. Dex contrived to dothat by standing next to the wall at its side, and sending a searingray that just touched the scaly, tremendously thick hide. The monsterbellowed deafeningly, and, with a spot smoking on its flank, waddledsideways to the center of the field. Its head and swaying long neckfaced the Earthmen and its back was against the wall of the domebuilding. To that extent, at least, they had the creature placed; butthey soon found that the struggle had only just begun.
Brand got far enough around to focus his tube on the tip of the hugetail, in an effort to swing the gigantic thing about. There was anunearthly shriek from the colossal beast, and a foot and a half of itstail disappeared.
"Careful," called Dex, his jaw set and grim as the monster lashed outin its wrath. "If you bore in too long with that tube there'll benothing left of our tank but a cloud of smoke."
Brand nodded, wordlessly, walking on the balls of his feet like aboxer, holding himself ready to swerve the thing should it chargethem. Which--next instant--it did!
With a whistling bellow it gathered its tons of weight and thunderedwith incredible quickness at the gnats that were stinging its flanksand tail.
Desperately Brand played the tube across the vast chest, scoring asmouldering gash in the scale-covered flesh just above the gash Dexhad seared a few moments before.
"Sorry, old fellow," Brand muttered to the screaming beast. "We hateto bait you like this, but it has to be done. Come on, now, throughthat wall behind you, and give us a chance at the lever."
* * * * *
But through the wall behind it the vast creature, not unnaturally,refused to go! It darted from side to side. Backward and forward. Upto the wall, only to back bewilderedly away from it. And constantlythe tubes flicked their blistering, maddening rays along its monstroussides and tail, as the Earthmen tried to guide it into the wall.
"Hope there's enough left of it to do the trick," said Brand,white-lipped. The monster was smoking in a dozen spots now, andseveral of the hump-like scales on its back had been burned away tillthe vast spine looked like a giant saw that was missing a third of itsteeth. "God, I'm thinking we'll kill it before we can drive it throughthat wall!"
Greca nodded soberly, keeping her eyes on the distant door to theirrear. Twice that door had been opened, and twice she had directed thedeath rays into its opening to mow down the gangling figures behindit. But she had said nothing of this to her man. He was busy enoughwith his own task!
"The door to the dome--" Dex shouted suddenly.
But Brand merely nodded, even as a discharge from his tube annihilatedthe Rogan that had appeared in the doorway before them. He had seenthat door stealthily opening even before Dex had.
"It had better be soon, Dex!" he called. "Rogans in front ofus--Rogans behind us--and--look out! On your side of the fence,there!"
Dex whirled in time to pick off a grotesque, pipe-like figure that hadsuddenly appeared on the broad wall of the enclosure. Then he turnedto the frenzied problem of driving the monster through the buildingwall.
"The thing's going mad, Brand!" he cried, his voice high-pitched andbrittle. "Watch out!"
* * * * *
It was only too evident that his statement was true. The baitedmonster, harried blindly this way and that, hounded against the blankwall behind it by something that bit chunks of living flesh out of itslegs and sides, was losing whatever instinctive mental balance it hadever had. Its dimly functioning brain, probably no larger than awalnut in that gigantic skull, ceased more and more to guide it.
With a rasping scream that set the Earthmen's teeth on edge, itcharged for the wall on Dex's side. Dex just managed to swerve it witha blast from the tube so prolonged that half its great lower jaw fellaway.
At this the titanic thing went wholly, colossally mad! It whirledtoward Brand, jerking around again as a searing on that side jarredits dull sensory nerves, then headed at last straight toward the stonewall of the dome building.
With the rays from both tubes flicking it like monstrous spurs, itcharged insanely toward the bulge of the circular wall. With all itstons and tons of weight it crashed against the stonework. There was athunderous crackling noise, and the wall sagged in perceptibly, whilethe metal roof bent to accommodate the new curvature of its supportingbeams.
The monstrous lizard, jerked off its huge legs by the impact,staggered up and retreated toward the two men. But again the maddeningpain in its hindquarters sent it careening toward the building wall.This time it raised high up on its hind legs in a blind effort toclimb over it. "God, it must be five stories tall!" ejaculated Brand.Thunderingly its forelegs came down on the edge of the roof.
* * * * *
There was another deafening crash of stone and shrieking of tornmetal. Just under the cornice, the wall sagged away from the roof andthe top rows of heavy stone blocks slithered inward.
"Again!" shouted Brand.
His tube was pointing almost continuously now at the metal doorleading from the dome building. The Rogans inside, at the shocks thatwere battering down a section of their great building, were all tryingto get out to the yard at once. In a stream they rushed for thedoorway. And in loathsome heaps they fell at the impact of the rayand shriveled to nothingness on the bombarded threshold.
"Once more--" Brand repeated, his voice hoarse and tense.
And as though the monster heard and understood, it rushed again withall its vast weight and force against the wall in a mad effort toescape the things that were blasting the living flesh from itscolossal framework.
This charge was the last. With a roaring crash a section of thebuilding thirty yards across went back and down, leaving the massiveroof to sag threateningly on its battered truss-wor
k.
* * * * *
It was as though the side of an ant-heap had been ripped away. Insidethe domed building hundreds of Rogans ran this way and that on theirelongated legs, squealing in their staccato, high-pitched tongue.
With blind fury the mad monster charged in through the gaping hole ithad battered for itself. In all directions the Rogans scattered. Thenan authoritative tall figure with a tube in each of its foursucker-disks, whipped out a command and pointed to the great coilswhich lay immediately in the berserk monster's path.
The command restored some sort of order. Losing their fear of thebeast in their greater fear of the damage it might do, the Rogansmassed to stop it before it could demolish the Rogan heart of power.
At this point Brand saw an opening of the kind he had been prayingfor. The Rogans had retreated before the terrific charge of themonster in such a way that the space between its vast bulk and thecontrol board was clear.
"After me!" he shouted to Dex. "One of us has got to reach that leverwhile the creature's still there to shield us!"
The two Earthmen dashed through the jagged hole in the wall and racedto the control board just as the huge lizard, a smoking mass, sank tothe floor. Brand gazed almost fearfully at the lever-slot.
Was there a reverse to the gravity-control action? There was room inthe slot for the lever to be pulled down below the neutral point, ifthat meant anything....
* * * * *
Behind them the great bulk of the dead lizard was disappearing withincredible quickness under the rays of the tubes directed on it. Nowthe pumpkin-shaped heads on the opposite side were visible through afleeting glimpse of a skeleton that was like the framework of askyscraper. And now the colossal bones themselves were melting, whileover everything hung a pall of greasy black smoke.
"Hurry, for God's sake!" gasped Dex.
Brand threw down the lever till it stuck. At once that invisible oceanpoured crushingly over them, throwing them to their knees and sweepingthe Rogans flat on their hideous faces just as half a hundred tubeswere flashing down to point at the Earthmen.
"More--if you can!" grated Dex, whirling this way and that andspraying the massed Rogans with his death-dealing tube. Dozens went upin smoke under that discharge; but other dozens remained to raisethemselves laboriously and slowly level their suddenly ponderousweapons at the Earthmen.
Brand set his jaw and threw all his weight on the lever. It bent alittle, caught at the neutral point--and then jammed down anappreciable distance beyond it.
* * * * *
Instantly the blue streamers, that had stopped their humming progressfrom coil to coil with the movement of the switch to neutral, startedagain in reversed direction. And instantly the invisible ocean presseddown with appalling, devastating force.
Greca and Brand and Dex were flattened to the floor as if by blanketsof lead. And the scattered Rogans about them ceased all movementwhatever.
"Oh," sobbed Greca, fighting for breath. "Oh!"
"We can't stand this," panted Dex. "We've fixed the Rogans, all right.But we've fixed ourselves, too! That lever has to go up a bit."
Brand nodded, finding his head almost too heavy for his neck to move.Sweat beaded his forehead--sweat that trickled heavily off his facelike drops of liquid metal.
With a tremendous struggle he got to his knees beneath themaster-switch. There he found it impossible to raise his arms; but,leaning back against the control board and so getting a littlesupport, he contrived to lift his body up enough to touch thedown-slanting lever with his head and move it back along its slot afraction of an inch. The giant coils hummed a note lower; and some ofthe smashing weight was relieved.
"That does it, I think," Brand panted, his voice husky with exhaustionand triumph.
He began to crawl laboriously toward the nearest street exit. "On ourway!" he said vibrantly. "To the space ship! We leave for Earth atonce!"
* * * * *
Slowly, fighting the sagging weight of their bodies, the two Earthmeninched their way to the street, helping Greca as they went. Among thesprawled forms of the Rogans they crept, with great dull eyes rollinghelplessly to observe their progress, and with feeble squeals of rageand fear and malediction following their slow path.
On the street a strange and terrible sight met their eyes.
Strewn over the metal paving like wheat stalks crushed flat by ahurricane, were thousands of Rogans. Not a muscle of their pipe-likearms or legs could they move. But the gravity that crushed themrigidly to the ground did not quite hold motionless the shorter andmore sturdily built slaves.
Among the thousands of squealing, panting Rogans that lay as thoughparalyzed on the metal paving, crawled equal thousands of Greca'senslaved people. Their eyes flamed with fanatic hate. Andmethodically--not knowing what had caused their loathed masters to bestricken helpless, and not caring as long as they _were_ helpless--theslaves were seeking out the shock-tubes that here and there had fallenfrom the clutch of Rogan guards. Already many had found them; andeverywhere gangling, slimy bodies were melting in oily black smokethat almost instantly vanished in thin air.
As it was in these streets and in the great square in the center ofwhich rested the Earthmen's ship, just so, they knew, was it beingrepeated all over the red empire. Slowly crawling, fiercely exultingslaves were exterminating the tyrannous things that had held them solong in dreadful bondage! Before the sun should set on anotherflashing Jovian day there would be no Rogan left in the red spot.
* * * * *
"And so it ends," said Brand with a great sigh. He moved over besideGreca, and touched her lovely bare shoulders. They were shakingconvulsively, those shoulders; and she had buried her face in herhands to keep from gazing at the ghastly carnage.
Brand pressed her to him. "It's terrible--yes. But think what itmeans! The knell of all the Rogans been sounded to-day. As soon asthe secret of these death-tubes has been analyzed by our science andprovided against, my friend and I will return from Earth with a forcethat shall clear the universe of the slimy devils. Meanwhile, yourpeople are safe here; with the gravity what it is, no Rogan attackinghordes can land."
They crawled tortuously over the square to the space ship. Brandturned again to Greca; and now in his eyes was a look that needed nolanguage of mind or tongue for its complete expression.
"Will you come to Earth with me, Greca, and stay by my side till wereturn to set your people in power again?"
Greca shook her head, slowly, reluctantly. "My people need leadersnow. I must stay and help direct them in their new freedom. Butyou--you'll come back with the others from Earth?"
"Try and stop him!" grinned Dex. "And try and stop me, too! From whatI know now of the way they grow 'em on your satellite"--his eyesrested on Greca's beauty with an admiration that turned her to rosyconfusion--"I'd say I'd found the ideal spot to settle down in!"
Brand laughed. "He's answered for me too. And now, a salute that isused on Earth to express a promise...." He kissed her--to her utterastonishment and perplexity, but to her dawning pleasure. "Good-by fora little while."
The two Earthmen hoisted themselves heavily over the sill of thecontrol room of their ship, and crawled inside.
They secured the trap-door, and turned on the air-rectifiers. Brandmoved to the controls, waved to Greca, who was smiling at him throughthe glass panel, and pointed the ship on its triumphant, four hundredmillion mile journey home.
* * * * *