He heard voices calling. Several Martian girls were looking out of a window across the street and were calling to him for help.
In a few seconds the zekolo was down from the roof and across the street. Elongating two of its arms, it reached up to the window, gripped the sill with its pincers, then rapidly hauled up itself and Don.
Don found himself looking into a room where were many Martians of both sexes and all ages. All had their wrists chained together.
“What happened?” Don asked, as he and the zekolo came through the window.
“It was the big submarine,” a Martian told him. “It bobbed up in the harbor, and from it came a new sort of ray, a threadlike burning ray that instantly destroyed all the defenses and important points of the city. Then came the rush of the ape-men out of all the unexplored caverns round us. When we tried to use our deathrays every one of them had mysteriously gone out of action. We were helpless.
“The apes carried deathrays with which they killed our snakes and zekolos. Everybody who tried to resist was killed. Those of us who gave in were chained and locked up, as we are. We have seen many batches like ourselves being marched away, and we are waiting for our turn.”
“Oh, where are they taking us?” a Martian girl asked.
“There are batches of people being marched aboard the submarine,” Don said.
“Submarine?” the big Martian repeated. “That might be taking us anywhere in Mars. But why do they use submarines? It must be some very secret place that we are going to, perhaps to somewhere that cannot be reached by any other means.”
“Have you seen anything of Princess Wimpolo?” Don asked.
They looked blank, but one girl remembered seeing a girl wearing royal insignia being marched through the street by a group of apes who were making a lot of noise as though very pleased with themselves. The Martian girl had not thought it possible at the time that it could really be the Princess.
“Then I am on the right trail. Is there any way that I can get to this submarine and stow away on board?”
The Martians looked at one another.
“You haven’t a chance, Earthling. All ways to the docks and the docks themselves will be swarming with ape-men. Best not to throw your life away trying it. There is no possibility of getting near that submarine, unless you swim.”
“That’s an idea,” Don said. “And, say, I have a plan to help you to escape, if you like to try it.”
“I’ll try anything,” the big Martian said. “What’s your idea?”
“My zekolo will take each of you in turn and lift you onto the roof. This block is huge. You can hide yourselves anywhere in it. The apes will be too busy getting away before King Usulor’s army gets here to have much time to hunt for you.”
The Martian looked out of the window.
“We should be seen getting out,” he said.
Many batches of ape-men were coming down the street. A squad of them turned into the house where Don watched.
“They’ve come for us,” the Martian said.
THE steps of the ape-men could be heard padding through the house, grunts, half-animal cries and primitive speech.
“All stand well away from the door,” Don directed. “Zeko! Climb!”
The zekolo knew what was wanted. It elongated two of its arms like long stilts and stood over the doorway, one arm on each side. Don sat on its back, over the door.
They had not long to wait. Soon the door was unlocked. Ten ape-men with metal clubs in their hands lurched in on short, bowed legs.
Don dropped to the floor behind them, sword in hand. To his amazement the zekolo gripped his belt in one of its pincers and placed him behind it, out of the way. The zekolo was going into action, and it had ten enemies to fight at once. It had many arms and pincers, but only one pair of eyes. It could not watch what all of its arms were doing. For some minutes it would be dangerous to be anywhere within range of those pincers.
Don had seen the zekolo fight several times before, but never in such a confined space against so many opponents at once. It simply lay on the floor and shot out all its. arms at once, pincers clashing.
The three ape-men in the lead it seized by the neck and simply pinched off their heads as scissors might cut off the heads of men of paper. The rest of the pincers clashed more or less at random, pinching at anything in the way, arms, legs, bodies, the wall, the door, furniture.
Metal clubs crashed on tough shell and rubbery arms, apparently doing no damage. The zekolo’s eyes turned. The blue-haired arms of the ape-men tried to cover their throats, and were promptly cut off. A swinging club might knock out of the way the first reaching pincer, but not the second and third.
In less than a minute the fight was over. Two ape-men tried to run away.
They swung their clubs at Don, who stood in their path, but he jumped higher than their heads, his sword stabbing out at their throats.
“Onto the roof,” Don said, “before more of these things come.”
He went to the window, but the zekolo knew a better way. Reaching up, it knocked a hole in the ceiling. Soon it had lifted all the prisoners onto the roof.
“We should be able to escape now,” the big Martian said. “If only our bracelets were off we would be quite happy.”
“I am afraid I can’t manage that,” Don said.
“But your zekolo can.”
And Don discovered, to his surprise, that the tough pincers of the zekolo could even cut through the metal chains, with some effort. Soon the prisoners had their arms free.
The party went down into another house in the same block, and, watching their chance, slipped across the street into a house opposite. The city was nearly empty of ape-men by now, and those left were hurrying from house to house, setting them on fire.
“I must be off to find the Princess,” Don said. “I have lost too much time.” In a moment he returned.
“I forgot to ask you. Can zekolos swim?”
“Like fish,” he was told.
“And what is the word of command to tell a zekolo to take to the water?”
“Hoddors.”
“Thanks.”
He went away again.
CHAPTER IV
Stowaways
HE would have to get wet. The deathray would get a soaking, too.
The metal cover of the box looked watertight, and he decided to take it with him, useless though it was at the moment.
The sea was as smooth as a mirror. He found a motorboat tied at a deserted quay, and the silent atomic engine carried him swiftly out into the darkness of the deep water.
Some of the ships in the docks were moving, gliding out to sea. He wondered if Wimpolo was on board any of them. There was no way of knowing. Most of the civilians from the city who lived had been taken aboard the submarines; that much was certain. He could only take a chance that Wimpolo was on the biggest of them.
Don was no sailor. A great liner surged past, a long way off, and the wake, which he had not thought about, swamped his boat. He found himself swimming.
“Hoddors,” he said, needlessly, for the zekolo had to swim or drown.
As the Martians had said, the creature was quite at home in the water. It swam with graceful, undulating motions of its many arms. The water was warm. Don was lifted out of the water by one of the zekolo’s arms and placed on its back.
They began a dangerous swim among the shipping. Cranes and trucks were busy loading the ships. Loot from the city, he supposed. Many boats were sinking at their moorings, and he realized that little of any value and hardly anybody alive would be left by the time the ape-men and their mysterious masters had left the city.
Brute beasts were in possession here, and the uniformed men in charge seemed unable to do much to restrain them, even if they had wished to.
The submarine was of enormous size. It had a superstructure that carried the curious mechanism of the weapons. The marching in of prisoners had stopped, but metal cases and machinery were still being
slung into a hold in the after end of the vessel.
It would not be easy to get on board unseen. Blocks of metal lifted the cases, apparently by magnetic attraction, and lowered them into the hold. He judged that the best chance to make his attempt would be just as the crane swung back for the next load.
The zekolo and he scrambled out of the water, looked down into the sub’s interior. Captive dock hands and ape-men were wheeling metal boxes away to stow them. A man in uniform was directing them. All had their backs to Don.
Don whispered, and jumped. He landed on the floor, and was soon hidden among the cases. The zekolo flowed after him and, difficult as it seemed at first, managed also to secrete itself among the boxes. Because he was so small to them, Don could slip about amongst the Martians without being seen, and they took little notice of zekolos. The sharp ears of the ape-men had heard Don’s light figure land in the hold, and one of them turned with a growl. At once a tiny thread of red fire shot from an instrument in the hands of the man in uniform. It touched the ape’s side. With a howl the creature turned back to its work.
“Hurry! Hurry!” grated the man in uniform. “Must I scorch all the flesh off your bones before you will hasten yourselves? Usulor’s air fleet is coming, with massed deathrays, power beams and fighting flies. Our blanketing ray is effective against deathrays only up to five miles, and Usulor’s planes can strike from a lot further off than that. Hurry!”
SOON Don and the zekolo were hidden among the cases as the piles grew and grew. For all their haste, the apes and their human helpers seemed to take hours to load the sub. It became darker and darker as the hold filled up, and the voices of men and apes further and further away. Presently he heard the clanging of doors and hatchways, and the screwing home of bolts. A little later he felt the throb of mighty engines. The sub was under way. Presently he felt the up and down motion of waves, and then he felt the sub submerging under him.
He put on the headlight that was attached to his head. The hold he was in was vast, but of course too full of cases to be comfortable. It was possible to wriggle among them, but the huge shell of the zekolo made it difficult for the creature to get about much.
From the cases he saw that the city had been thoroughly stripped of everything of value. There were works of art, Martian jewelry, expensive machinery, arms, expensive clothing, rare chemicals. There were even cases full of the extremely highly prized fruits that the Martians still, with enormous difficulty, cultivate in deep valleys on the surface of Mars, in the light of the sun that so few of their race ever see.
He was glad of the fruits. When the zekolo had broken open the cases they made food and drink for both of them. Fruit to a value corresponding to many thousands of dollars they ate for one meal, but after three days on this expensive but monotonous diet Don would have traded a million dollars worth of the fruits for a loaf of bread, a pound of cheese and a pint of beer.
He could hear voices in other parts of the ship. Some were the grunts and inarticulate words of the ape-men and the orders barked at them by the Martians in charge of them. From one direction came sobs, groans and remarks that told that some of the people from the sacked city of Selketh were imprisoned in there.
Only a metal partition separated him from them. He managed to get to the partition and tapped on it, but they took no notice. He called, but got no answer. He was afraid to shout too loudly, lest the voice of an Earthling, which is a shrill, piping sound to a deep-voiced Martian, attract the attention of the men in charge of the sub.
The partition was of plates held together with rivets. He succeeded in getting the zekolo to understand that he wanted the rivet-heads cut off. The creature found it easier to pull the rivets out altogether. After a long struggle Don succeeded in clearing away the packing-cases from near the partly freed metal plate and in wedging it partly open. He wriggled through.
He was among a mixed crowd of gigantic Martians who gaped at him in amazement.
“How did you get here, little Earthling?”
“Are you a prisoner, too?”
“I am looking for Princess Wimpolo. Have any of you seen her?” he asked.
Life came back into the blank faces of the dejected prisoners.
“Has the Princess been captured too?”
“How terrible!”
“Serves her right!”
Many were the opinions expressed about the news, but nobody had seen Wimpolo. Most of them said that she had been in her own palace when their city was captured, and that it was impossible for her to get into such trouble. She was too well guarded.
“Royalty takes care of their own. no matter what happens to people like us,” the prisoners said.
“Nevertheless, this catastrophe has struck rich as well as poor, and even the highest in all Mars,” Don said. “Princess Wimpolo is a prisoner like you in the hands of the ape-men, or of the people, whoever they are, who are in charge of them.”
But Wimpolo certainly was not here. Don did not know whether he was relieved that she was not in this hell-hole where so many were confined in a small space, or disappointed at his lack of success in tracing her, up to the present.
“WHERE are we going?”
That was the question that all the prisoners asked him, but Don could give no answer. They seemed to think that he had been all over the sub, and knew all the plans of its masters. He had difficulty in explaining to them that he knew no more than they did. Most of the Martians thought the sub had gone very deep, some said over a mile. They pointed to the high air-pressure as proof of this. Of course, pressures in Mars are much less than those on Earth.
He asked them if they had found out anything.
“Such as what?” they asked.
“Haven’t you heard the ape-men talking? Or the uniformed men in charge of them? Haven’t you any idea of where they come from?”
“It’s another lesser king in revolt against Usulor,” they said. “Like Sommalu. The apes do his fighting for him.”
“A plague on all kings, I say,” said another.
Don felt he was not getting anywhere. These people were not likely to help him in any desperate break for freedom. They were spiritless.
“Are you all cowards?” he asked. “Will nobody—”
One of the giant Martians clapped a hand over his mouth. On the other side of the partition the zekolo stirred uneasily, thinking that he was being attacked. One of its pincers slid through the hole in the partition, ready to help him.
Another Martian wrote on a piece of paper:
“Be careful. Any word spoken in here is liable to be overheard. At least a hundred of us are with you, ready to light to the last drop of our blood. Only show us the way.”
Don wrote in answer: “Then one of you come forward, out of range of the listener.”
A giant of giants came forward, an immense Martian who stood nearly a head taller than the others and whose enormous chest and massive bowed legs spoke of tremendous strength.
“I am your man,” he wrote, forming the Martian words so clumsily that Don had difficulty in reading them. “Me, Vans Holors. I live by fighting. I’m wrestling champion of my country, rightful champion of all Mars.”
Don looked at him. Van Holors did not look exceptionally intelligent, but he appeared to be good-natured enough. His strength was obviously terrific, and Don felt certain that his courage equalled his strength.
“Vans is your man,” others were writing. “Trust Vans.”
The zekolo pulled out more rivets. Presently it was possible for the Martian wrestler to push his great bulk through into the storage hold. Making a way through the tightly packed cargo was more difficult, but zekolo and Martian, working together, accomplished this also.
“What have you got to fight with?” Vans asked. “A little sword, a raybox and a zekolo. Not much between a hundred men. Is your nerve-stopping ray any good?”
He took the box from Don and fiddled with it.
“You’ve got it wet,” he observed. “Power
supply exhausted too. Same as ours went in Selketh when the monkey-men came.”
“They’ve got a blanketing ray,” Don said. “I heard them speak of it. It short-circuits every nerve-stopping deathray within miles.”
“Um,” said Vans. “Then the monkey-men get busy with those iron clubs of theirs. If I could recharge your box it would be all right. Wonder what’s in all these cases? Some of them hold recharging apparatus, I’ll bet. Zeko! Break! Open!”
The creature looked at Don, wondering if it was all right to obey the orders of the stranger.
“Break! Open!” Don repeated.
THE throbbing of the engines of the sub died down as the Martian and the zekolo opened cases. The submarine was gliding into some port. Hurriedly they worked. Many cases they opened before they found what they wanted.
One case contained dozens of ray boxes, but to their great disappointment they were not charged. At last they found charging apparatus, nearly run down. Van was working now with sweat on his brow and a gleam of triumph in his eye.
“A few more hours to get all these boxes charged, and then when the monkeys and the men in charge of them come to take us, what a shock they’ll get!”
From the noises outside it seemed that the sub had stopped, and that the hold was being opened. Time was short. There were hootings and whistles and the clanging of metal. Light from outside shone down between the cases.
Van growled and put out the light he had been working by. They must not be seen too soon. Only a dozen or so of the deathray boxes had been charged. Don and Vans made their way carefully back to the partition that separated them from the prisoners of Selketh.
Had the prisoners already been taken out? Don wondered. For some time there had not been a sound from beyond the partition. One glance through the partition showed the reason. The prisoners all lay in crumpled heaps on the floor.
“The fiends have killed them all,” Don muttered.
The Complete Saga of Don Hargreaves Page 10