World beyond the sky, p.11
World Beyond the Sky, page 11
“Quiet!” Quintus hissed. “We are near the walls. This way.”
They were across the blackened ribbon of charred grass. The walls of the city loomed before them.
From the walls a searchlight suddenly flashed.
“Down!” Quintus shouted.
It was a command that was not needed. No sooner had the light come on than all six threw themselves face down on the ground.
The beam of light came fingering toward them. It was nothing but light, not one of the lethal projectors. But Zombar’s men were clustering around it. If the searchlight revealed anything suspicious, the projectors would be used.
Don Strong dug his face into the grass, scarcely daring to breathe. The light moved toward them. It was on them. The beam stopped.
If both the suns of Sundra Unuum had been in the sky, the illumination would not have been as bright. Had they been seen?
“Don’t move,” Quintus whispered. “There are other bodies around here. They may think we’re dead.”
The intolerably brilliant glare blazed down over them.
“I wish they would turn dot thing off, or shoot!” Stregel muttered. “Such a business on the nerves is no fun.”
“It’s not sporting to shoot us while we’re flopping on our bellies,” Rikki added. “They ought to flush us first, like quail.”
“Shut up!” Strong hissed. “You darned fools—”
Death was hovering over them, waiting to pounce. Rikki and Stregel didn’t care, outwardly. It would take something stronger than the prospect of immediate death to suppress the irrepressible Rikki.
Death passed them by. The searchlight beam lifted, went sweeping off for whatever else it might find.
It found something! A group trying to flee from the city. Death immediately got to work as the searchlight crew beamed down the victims their light had revealed.
BY THE time the shooting was over, Quintus had shoved aside a certain block of stone. One at a time, six people had dived into the narrow opening thus revealed. They came out inside a deserted room at ground level.
“Well, we’re here,” said Rikki. “Though I’d hate to make a bet that we will get out again.”
“Do you know your way around inside this place?” Don Strong asked Quintus a bit apprehensively.
“Of course.”
“What chance do we have of getting some of those hand projectors? Do you know where they’re kept?”
“They are kept under lock and key, and issued only to men whom Zombar is certain he can trust. I’ve already planned how we can get some of them, by overcoming the guards to whom they were issued.”
The scheme sounded foolhardy, but it was quite simple in operation. Posting his two lieutenants and the three Earthmen just inside a door that opened into a corridor at ground level, Quintus deliberately stepped out into the open. He was seen instantly. He dodged back inside as if he were attempting to escape.
“Get ready! Four of them are coming!”
They were brave, those guards. They were only chasing a man who was armed with nothing but a knife. They had projectors. It would be such fun to sizzle this brazen rebel as he tried to flee! Or, if he tried to hide, it would give them great satisfaction to root him out and turn on him a projector set at low intensity. He would die more slowly then.
The guards came rushing through the door, kicking it open with a clatter and a bang.
Quintus and his lieutenants had knives. They used them. Don Strong and Rikki and Stregel had fists. They used them too.
The guards had been expecting to find a single youth fleeing like a frightened rabbit. Instead they found six very angry antagonists. The fight didn’t last long. It didn’t really get started. The guards were taken completely by surprise.
“Four projectors!” Quintus exulted, wiping the blood from the blade of his knife. “The gods are good to us tonight.”
“Next,” said Rikki, hefting a projector to get its balance, “we go call on Mr. Zombar. I think I’ll get my draft-board to kill my four-F classification when we get back to New York. This fighting business is a bit of all right!”
It took them over an hour to reach their goal. They had to proceed with extreme caution. If entering the fortress city had been dangerous, being in it was triply so. Quintus led them by a circuitous route, keeping always to little-used passageways, never venturing into the open.
The city in reality was an immense hive. Now it was an alarmed hive, its frightened and enraged occupants diligently searching for intruders. Twice the little band was almost surprised by searching parties. They had to duck into unused rooms and wait there with bated breath while guards went hurrying by.
In what would have been the east on Earth, the sky was beginning to lighten. The first of Sundra Unuum’s twin suns was due, to peep over the horizon at any time now. Now and again they could hear the airship, passing outside the city. It was still being used to sow death among the luckless youths who tried to flee.
“Zombar will be in the audience chamber where you saw him,” Quintus whispered. “From there he will be organizing the defense and ordering the search. We are now approaching his audience chamber. Make no unnecessary noise.”
In single file they slipped into a narrow and apparently little-used passage. Quintus led them to a door at the far end. With infinite caution, he pushed the door open a crack and looked in.
It was Zombar’s audience chamber. He was there!
The dictator of Sundra Unuum was within their reach! The key, the nerve center of the whole hideous blotch that had spread its cancerous growth over the face of paradise, was within their power. A rush, a single massed charge, and they would have their man.
THERE were only five guards in the room. Runners were constantly arriving, but they stayed only long enough to make their reports, receive orders and dash out again. The messengers posed no problem. And the guards could be blasted down before they knew what struck them.
Zombar was pacing back and forth. A person whom Don Strong recognized as the interpreter was trotting along beside him. They were carrying on an animated conversation, interrupted only by the appearance of the runners.
“Ready?” Quintus called softly.
His two lieutenants answered in fierce whispers. Strong saw Rikki glance at him.
“Luck,” said Rikki. “This is it.”
“Yah!” Stregel spoke firmly. “Luck!”
The scientist had refused to accept one of the projectors. Instead he had found a heavy club, exactly suited to his bull-like strength.
The lips of Quintus formed the command “Charge!” It was a command that was never spoken.
A scurry of running feet sounded in the passageway behind them. A disheveled, battered figure came running toward them. Quintus, whirling, brought up his projector.
“Don’t go in there!” a voice cried at them, in English. “It’s a trap!”
Strong barely had time to knock the projector aside. The figure came toward them. He saw who it was.
“Jean!” he gasped.
Curses rumbled in Rikki’s throat.
“I thought I’d never find you!” the girl gasped. Her clothes were torn and there was an angry bruise on her cheek. “Trait—Trait slugged me! He decided his best chance—was to throw in with Zombar. He tried to get me to go with him—and when I wouldn’t—he hit me.
“The last I saw of him—he was surrendering to a group of guards. He meant to make them take him—straight to Zombar—so he could get on the good side of the dictator—by betraying you—”
For an awful moment, there was silence. Then Rikki cursed again. Don Strong swiftly translated what the girl had said. Quintus’ bronzed face whitened.
“Maybe Trait hasn’t had time to get to Zombar yet,” he said.
“The devil he hasn’t!” Strong gasped. “Look!”
Perhaps the slightly opened door had betrayed to the watchers within that the moment for which they were waiting had arrived. The audience chamber was suddenly swarming with guards. They were coming from everywhere. Two doors to the room had suddenly been flung open. Armed men were dashing in. Guards were springing up behind screens.
Zombar had left off his pacing to stare from frightened eyes at the slightly opened door. For the first time the would-be attackers saw his full face.
He wasn’t Zombar! He was someone dressed in the dictator’s clothes!
Quintus slammed the door.
“Run!” he shouted.
CHAPTER XVII
The Shadows
DON STRONG and Rikki and Stregel had more than played tag with death since the mad moment when they had entered the world of Sundra Unuum. Now they must play it again. Rather, they must continue the same grim game.
It was not a game that could long continue. All the chips were down, the blue chips, the red chips, the white ones, and the last card was coming from the hands of the dealer.
The passage that led to Zombar’s audience chamber was short. They were through a door and out of it before the guards could get through from the audience chamber.
Alarm bells were ringing over the whole city. Their brazen clamor penetrated here. Whistles were shrilling. If the whole hive had been alert before, it was doubly alert now. Zombar, with the information the treacherous Trait had given him, had improvised an almost perfect trap.
“We’ll have to hide!” Quintus said, panting.
His face showed that he was without hope. Perhaps they could hide—for a few minutes. Maybe they could hide for an hour. But in a place that swarmed with enemies, they would eventually be rooted out.
At a dead run, the bronzed youth led them through the intricate maze that was the city. And then, racing through one final door, they were out in the open.
Don Strong’s first thought, with a gasp of relief, was that they were outside the city. Then he saw they were still within the grim walls. They were in a small open space, with a ruined building in the center. Trees and shrubbery gave it the appearance of a small park.
“I didn’t mean to bring us here,” Quintus whispered, looking around. “I—I lost my way.” His gaze fastened on the ruined building in the center of the open area. “We’ll hide in the old temple. Maybe they won’t think to look for us there.”
“I’ll give you three to one they will think of it,” said Rikki. “They like to play dirty.”
The sky was bright with dawn as the little band slipped furtively through the shrubbery and into the old building. It was a huge place. Vast columns, pitted and worn, supported the roof. The interior was dark.
“We will have at least a chance to defend ourselves here,” said Quintus, shrugging even as he spoke.
Four projectors against the thousands that Zombar could bring to bear on them!
“What is this place?” Strong asked.
“In the old days, it was a temple of the Roumi,” the youth replied. “It has not been used for a long time—perhaps centuries.”
“What do we do?” Rikki wanted to know. “Hole up here and if we’re not discovered, make a sneak for the outside tomorrow night?”
“That’s the general idea,” Strong answered.
He knew it wasn’t a good idea, because the temple was one single vast room, with no place to hide, the columns supporting the roof offering the only place for concealment.
The designers had not intended to build a place of refuge for hard-pressed fugitives. There was no altar, nor furnishings of any kind. But it was the only choice they had. Death was searching relentlessly for them in the surrounding city.
They heard the search going on. The first sun of Sundra Unuum came up over the horizon. The pearls of the dawn sky gave way to the brighter lights of day, illumining the city. A burst of shouts came through the dawn air.
“They’re prying the lid off hades, looking for us,” Rikki said, nodding toward the buildings surrounding them.
Rikki was lying sprawled on the marble floor. He was behind a column, as were all the rest.
“Yah.” Stregel nodded his agreement. “Too bad it is that we have to fight, to kill each other. In this world are many things to be learned.” The scientist sounded sad. .
“They’ve pried your lid off!” Strong exclaimed suddenly to Rikki.
A SINGLE fierce shout had sounded from a building near them. Looking up, they saw a watcher on the roof. The watcher was pointing toward the temple.
Simultaneously the air throbbed as the beam from a projector came searing down. It flashed against a column, puffed into blinding light, went out. The watcher on the roof yelled again, then stopped yelling and screamed.
Abruptly the scream went into silence. Something streaked downward against the face of the building, thudded against the ground.
“That’s one good German,” said Rikki calmly.
He had rested his projector against the column, fired one single throbbing beam of burning light.
“Good shot!” Don Strong shouted at him. “I’m afraid it came too late, though. Listen!”
Another chorus of shouting had burst from the building on which the watcher had been standing. Faces popped up in front of the windows, hands pointed excitedly toward the temple.
“Yep,” said Rikki. “They’ve found us. Well, it will be a merry fight—while it lasts. And if I may paraphrase the words of a better man than I am, I suggest we withhold our fire until we see the tips of their pointed ears.”
The time was not long in coming. Apparently most of the guards had misunderstood the death of the rooftop watcher, or had not seen it. Thinking their quarry was armed only with knives and clubs, they came rushing from the building.
Summoned by the whistles of their leaders, they popped up from everywhere. They were the hounds, bugling in for the kill, now that the hare had been run to earth. Across the open space, straight toward the temple, a group of at least fifty came at a headlong run.
Zombar had offered tremendous rewards for the death of the rebels who had attacked him. Each of his men was eager to earn his share.
They didn’t fire their projectors as they charged. They were a hundred feet away—fifty—twenty-five. Shouting like demons, they came on.
Out from the temple sprang four beams of throbbing radiance. Four gigantic fists smashing into the massed attackers would not have had a more devastating effect. The beams screamed across the short distance, struck the oncoming guards, blasted holes in their loose ranks, tore among them.
From the physical standpoint the effect was terrific. From a morale standpoint the effect was more than that. It was terrifying. The guards had anticipated no resistance. Instead they found they had run headlong into a barrage of biting death beams. The hare had teeth, the hare could bite! The shock of that discovery struck terror among the attackers.
For an instant the charge held. Its own momentum carried it forward a few faltering steps. Then—it broke! Screaming as the throbbing beams tore among them, the guards stopped running toward the temple. Their sole interest lay in getting away from this horrible place, as fast as they could.
Like thieves pursued by avenging demons, they turned and ran, those who could run, to vanish into the nearest building.
Shocked silence hung over the city.
“We stopped that one!” Rikki shouted. “Hey! What the devil—Get back here, you crazy female!”
A figure had dashed from the temple. It was Jean Sharp. She was running straight toward the buildings where the guards had gone.
“Have you gone crazy?” Don Strong shouted. He and Rikki leaped to their feet, started after her.
HAD the girl lost her senses? Death was waiting out there. Within the space of seconds, beams would be pouring from every window of the surrounding buildings.
Before Strong and Rikki could reach her, she had stopped and began snatching at the ground. Bodies were strewn on the turf all around her. The charge of Zombar’s guards had been halted at the spot where she now stood.
Then she came running back toward the temple.
“Nobody would give me a gun!” she shouted at Don Strong and Rikki. “So I had to get one for myself.”
Her arms were full of projectors. She had rushed forth and snatched the projectors that the guards had thrown away when their charge had been broken. As nimble as a deer, Jean slipped behind a protecting column, slid a projector toward Stregel, another toward the lieutenant who was without a weapon.
Don and Strong and Rikki leaped back behind a column. “Hm-m,” said Rikki thoughtfully, his face getting red. “I guess I kind of underestimated that girl.”
“I guess we did,” Don Strong agreed, his own face even redder.
Havoc broke loose now from the surrounding buildings. Strong glanced across at Jean. The girl was lying behind a column, calmly firing around it. She looked up, caught his eye on her and scowled.
“Man!” she declared vehemently. “It takes a woman to get things done.”
“Oh, yeah?” Strong snapped, blushing anew at the implication.
“Shut up, you two,” Rikki interrupted. “The devil’s broken out of the paddock.”
Chaos was really loose. The charge of the guards had failed. Now the guards knew that their quarry was armed. There would be no more charges. Instead there would be a closing ring of relentless fire pouring from every window, from every rooftop.
The fire began to come. The first sun of Sundra Unuum was above the buildings now, pouring down its full brilliance over the city, clearly revealing the scene. The temple was no longer a place of darkness. It was a place of light. Some of the light came from the sun. Most of it came from the throbbing beams that were frothing down into it.
Quintus got up, slipped across the room, took up a position behind one of the columns there. The temple was built in a circle, the columns forming the outer perimeter. The defenders arranged themselves so that they could cover all approaches.
Beams dug into the columns in blazes of light, showering droplets of red-hot stone. Beams fingered between the columns, gouging into the floor.
Don Strong tried to make himself as small as possible, to keep the thick bulk of the columns between him and the death that was raging so close. This is the end, he told himself. Now is the time come. A gurgling scream sounded somewhere near. He looked around.
