Vans went swiftly through.
“They are not dead,” he said. “Only unconscious. Nerve-stopping deathrays at half-strength have been played on them. Just a precaution in case they tried to get fresh when the monkeys came to take them out of here. Makes things awkward, Earthling.”
“We’ll have to fight our way out alone,” Don said.
“That’s the talk,” said Vans, admiringly. “If you sat on my head and I put my hat on nobody would see you, but you’re the goods.”
Some careful work and straining helped the zekolo through the partition. Then Don, Martian and zekolo hid themselves among the unconscious figures.
The metal covers of the hold were opened. Two ape-men dropped down into the hold. The stalked eyes of a zekolo looked down, and its arms reached down for the unconscious bodies. Apparently the beast was used as a living crane. It either saw or smelled its fellow, and squawked a hoarse challenge to it to fight.
“Now or never!” Don thought. He swung his ray.
The two ape-men in the hold took the ray in the head. Their eyes closed as though they had gone to sleep, and they crumpled up. Meanwhile Vans’ ray had caught the enemy zekolo, but the creature, sensing danger with the instinctive speed of an animal, jerked backward. They heard it fall in the water.
Don sprang to the gunwale. He had a confused impression of docks with tall buildings, machinery and many Martians, ape-men and zekolos. His swinging ray knocked men over everywhere. Many fell into the water or from the tops of high buildings.
The zekolo reared itself beside him, and two of its arms lifted out Vans Holors, who was too heavy to get out by himself without a ladder.
Don looked round.
On the bridge of the submarine stood Princess Wimpolo. Beside her was a lean, sardonic Martian dressed in royal robes with insignia that none but Usulor was entitled to wear in Mars.
He might have swung his deathray and brought down this royal Martian, but Wimpolo was so close to him that his ray would probably have struck her also.
For a moment his eyes met those of the Princess in recognition. He waved a hand, shouted, “I’ll be back!” then dived into the water of the dock after Vans and the zekolo, just as a hundred deathrays stabbed out at him.
CHAPTER V
Borrimelsmeth
PRINCESS WIMPOLO, first lady in Mars, was no coward. But she had been through a horrible experience. For a gently nurtured lady to be suddenly seized in her private rooms by a pack of foul-smelling, brutal beast-men was no joke. For a time it had seemed to her that she was delivered to a fate worse than death. She fought, useless as it was, until a clout on the side of the head from an open hairy hand knocked her dizzy.
“Quiet!” growled the apes. They were able to talk in a fragmentary, indistinct fashion.
She was bundled into her own waiting sphere, and apish hands fumbled clumsily at the controls, which were very simple. The sphere raced along the one-way traffic tunnels in a dangerous fashion, ignoring signals at the forks. It seemed that the brutes did not understand the method of traffic control at all.
Wimpolo hoped for a collision, even one that would kill her and her foul captors together, but luck was with the apes. After some miles the sphere stopped, and she was hauled into the opening of a natural cave. A Martian in an unfamiliar uniform stood there, and she called to him for help.
“It’s no use struggling, Princess Wimpolo,” this Martian said. “Be sensible, and you will not be hurt.”
She understood then that human beings had sent these apes to capture her. It was another revolt against her father. She was lowered with ropes down the steep cavern, then carried through the larger cavern until they reached the city of Selketh. At Selketh she saw the looting of the city, and the driving of the people aboard the submarines. She was taken to what she saw were staterooms on board the largest of the subs. A tall, lean Martian awaited her there, smiling sardonically. He was wearing the insignia of overlord of Mars.
The lean Martian stood up.
“Power to Princess Wimpolo,” he said with stiff courtesy.
She faced him with a bitter sneer on her lips.
“Rebel dog,” she said.
He frowned.
“Not many speak to me like that and live, Princess,” he said. “I will overlook it this once, but be careful. Do you know who I am?”
“Your forged epaulets and badges would tell me that,” she said. “You are in revolt against my father, and you seem to think that you have already won.”
“So you mean to be awkward, eh?” he said. “A pity. I had planned a future for you that would not have been so very unpleasant, provided you had been reasonable and accepted the inevitable. My name is Bommelsmeth. Already I rule more of Mars than your father does. Am I not entitled to the rank of overlord, more so than he?”
“You won it by treachery and the massacre of helpless people,” she said. “You rule an empty desert.”
“WRONG, Princess, quite wrong,” he answered, smiling in sardonic triumph. “My subjects are more numerous than those of your father. For my ape-men must be counted. They are human, and very useful they are, too. Your father’s best troops are a long way from being such fanatical fighters as my apes. And they have given ample proof of their ability to travel through unexplored caverns and attack in overwhelming force at undefended spots. Why, it is really my will that decides, even in Usulor’s own country. I might have your whole country in chaos, but I have been very patient and restrained. I warn you, my patience will not last much longer. I shall demand my rights, and all who oppose me will be crushed, mercilessly.
“Have I not shown my power? Have I not plucked out of the middle of her father’s palace the best-guarded lady in Mars? My spies brought me complete plans of your secret exit long ago. In the same way I have learned all other secrets of your father’s, many of which have long been forgotten by your father and his generals themselves.”
“How could you learn of my tunnel?” she asked, unbelievingly. “All my palace servants are beyond suspicion.”
“You forgot the borers of the tunnel, the planners and designers. I have my agents in the highest, most trusted positions.” He grinned in triumph.
“All the same, King Bommelsmeth, as you call yourself, my father will break you as he broke Sommalu.”
“Oh, no! Sommalu was a hasty fool. All the same, he showed how shaky your father’s rule had become. It only needed a man with a little more intelligence than Sommalu to succeed where he so nearly succeeded. I work with science. Your father has neglected science. That is his big mistake. Nothing in life stands still, Princess. Either we go forward or we go back. Obstructions of progress must be removed. And if many have to suffer and die, and many more be partly bereft of reason, what does it matter in the end? What is a generation in the life of a race? We must have progress.”
“What you call progress,” she snapped.
For a second his eyes blazed with anger, then he controlled himself.
“Why should I lose my temper with you? You are absolutely in my power. I can break you, bend you to my will at any time I choose. Think, Princess. Where do my ape-men come from? I will tell you. They are the inhabitants of the cities I have captured.
“I have discovered the force that produces evolution. A radiation it is that irritates the cells that compose living bodies, driving them to devise ever more and more complicated chemical processes. I can reverse the development. My evolution-reversing field makes the cells that compose the bodies of men forget how to behave as the cells of men. They revert to the ways of our ancestors, countless ages ago. Skin cells forget how to produce the smooth skin of a man and remember only how to make the hairy skin of an ape. Legs become short and bowed, arms long, eyebrows huge and beetling. Brains become smaller.
“I herd my captives into camps, and round the camps I throw evolution-reversing fields. In a few days they change into hairy ape-men such as you have seen, their bodies powerful, their intelligences dim, their memor
ies of their human existence like vague, confused dreams of the distant past. They respond only to my orders and the orders of my men. At a certain stage I stop the process, and another company of most capable soldiers is ready to follow my orders.”
“You must be a fiend from hell,” she gasped.
HIS eyes glowed with a queer light. “Your skin,” he said, “is smooth and clear. Your face is beautiful, your hair a delight. I am ready to give you the highest place for a woman in Mars, by my side. But one more remark like that and that skin will soon be covered with coarse hair, that delicate face will become the face of an ape, that—”
Her shuddering gasp stopped him. He grinned.
“What must I do to escape that?” she asked.
“Under the ocean bed,” he said, “where your father would never find it though he searched for a thousand years, I have my headquarters. There I work and plan beyond all possible reach of your father’s prying television.
“But I can relay television back, if I choose. From there you will televise your father. Tell him that you are my prisoner, and that he must submit to me. All his armies must deposit their battlespheres, warplanes and all other arms in a spot I shall name, and you will be queen of all Mars. Otherwise, I fear that your body will lose its delicate shape, your skin its texture.
“And I will build huge evolution-reversing force machines in the roofs of caverns over your cities, where they will be unseen, so that the people of your father’s cities will turn into apes even as they walk about.”
A cold chill settled on her heart.
“Can you reverse the process? Can you change your apes back into men?”
“Unfortunately, no. Evolution is like a tree with many branches. The human race is like a collection of caterpillars on one of the leaves of the tree. I drive some of those caterpillars back toward the trunk. If I set them climbing again very few of them will get back to the same leaf. I tried it, several times, but I got only a lot of queer freaks, very few of them capable of life.
“But do not let my apes worry you. I cannot make them into men again, but I can get rid of them. Once I am master of Mars I shall evacuate all of my men and everything of value from my cavern under the sea. My apes will be left there. My submarine will be the last to go out, and then my dissolving ray will cut away the rocks until the sea rushes in, and the apes trouble me no more.”
They stared into each other’s eyes, he grinning, she horror-struck.
At last he rose.
“I have given you much to think about. Now I will leave you to think it over. The journey to my sub-oceanic headquarters will occupy several days, and the negotiating of the huge locks requires care. You will have several days uninterrupted privacy in which to ponder on what I have put before you.
“In the next cabin you will see twelve cages and aquaria. Each of them holds what was once a man. They are former soldiers of mine who have annoyed me. Into the roof of the cabin is built a small evolution-reversing field machine. Some of them have been there longer than others, and you can trace twelve stages in the long journey from human form back to the primeval slime. Even in the little while that we shall be on our journey you will be able to see a change in each of them. You should find it most interesting and instructive.”
He saluted.
“Power to Princess Wimpolo,” he said, sneeringly, and went out.
THE cages were as he had said. An anthropoid ape glared at her from the first, growling and shaking the cage in its efforts to get out. In the next cage was a more primitive ape-man, squatting sullenly on its haunches and looking terrified. In the next a smaller monkey with a long tail climbed on branches. Then came monkeys of more and more primitive form, then creatures that were half rodents, half reptiles, then scaly swimming creatures in square glass vessels, progressively smaller and smaller until there were nothing but worms burrowing in mud. In the last bowl there was nothing to be seen at all.
Wimpolo stared at these horrors through a thick glass door. She could see that it was glass of a type that was opaque to rays of most sorts. Each day a man entered the room of the cages to feed the animals, first switching off the ray. He grinned at her, and wanted to tell her the crimes for which the men had been punished. Most of them had made offensive remarks about Bommelsmeth in private conversation and been denounced by spies.
“It’s a lie!” growled the most recent and human of the victims. “I didn’t say it. I didn’t! I didn’t!”
Each day his voice was less human, less easy to understand. And each day a slight change was noticeable in each of the other victims as they slid back along the long road to life’s beginnings.
As Bommelsmeth had said, Wimpolo had plenty of time for undisturbed reflection. Except to bring her food none came near her.
At last she felt the sub stop. Bommelsmeth came in.
“Welcome to my undersea domain. Am I to take it that we are now friends?”
She glared.
“Come up on deck,” he said. “I will give you one last chance before you go into one of those cages.”
She came up on deck and saw the vast cavern, the machines, the zekolos and ape-men unloading this and other subs and taking out unconscious prisoners.
“You see,” Bommelsmeth said, “how vast is my cavern. Most of it was carved out by my own dissolving thread-ray. Above our heads is a thick layer of rocks, and above that nearly a mile of salt water. I have metallic ores here, and vast factories. I am invincible. Your father and his armies can never trace you here. None of your friends can ever find you here.”
His booming, boasting voice was interrupted by a commotion below her. A death-ray seemed to be sweeping round the docks, knocking men and apes over. She looked down.
Don Hargreaves stood on the deck of the sub, death-ray box in hand. Beside him was a strange Martian and a zekolo that she recognized as her own.
“I’ll be back!” Don shouted, waving an arm. Then he, Martian and zekolo dived into the water.
“Kill them!” Bommelsmeth shouted.
Taking advantage of his distracted attention, Princess Wimpolo dived also, deep into the warm, queer-tasting water of this inner sea of Mars.
CHAPTER VI
Undersea Land
DON HARGREAVES swam as far as he could under water before he came up. Large submarines were all round him. A large searchlight blazed out, looking for him. He went under again, and swam to get the nearest hull between him and the light. He could see nothing of Vans Holors. It seemed to him that the Martian must have been struck by one of the deathrays as he dived. That was one of the advantages of being small: one made a smaller target, and stood a better chance of living through a fusillade of bullets, deathrays or anything else.
Many lights were now searching the waters. Don reached a small quay supported by metal pillars, and hid beneath it.
The zekolo, which, he knew, could hold its breath for remarkably long periods, swam with only the tips of its stalked eyes above the water. It plucked at him as he sat on the tracery of girders, trying to tell him something. At last it went away.
Soon it was back again, swimming among the girders under the quay. Upon its back sat Princess Wimpolo, wet but unharmed.
“My little Earthling,” she said. “Your coming saved me from a terrible fate. If ever we get away from here we’ll be married at once. I promise you that,” And she outlined what Bommelsmeth had told her.
“The fiend,” Don muttered. “We’ll get away from here all right. Once the commotion dies down well steal a boat and put out to sea.”
“There is no getting out of here that way,” Wimpolo answered. “This place is one enormous trap. It is a great natural cavern under the ocean, and the only way of getting in or out is by submarine through the locks.”
“Hell,” said Don. “That’s awkward.”
“I’d sooner die than be a slave of Bommelsmeth,” said Wimpolo.
Many small power-boats, searchlights at their helms, were methodically searching the w
aters. One nosed its way under the quay.
Don aimed his raybox.
“Leave them to the zekolo,” Wimpolo whispered. “Your raybox is wet. It will make smoke and noise.”
She whispered the word of command to the zekolo. The creature made its way through the girders, and as the boat passed underneath it dropped neatly into the middle of it.
The men in the boat had no time to cry out, so swiftly did the pincers and the strangling tentacles do their work.
There were deathray boxes and a stock of food on board.
“Now, quickly,” Don said. “Put on the clothes of one of these fellows. Disguise yourself as a soldier of Bommelsmeth.”
She changed her wet clothes, and he examined her by the light of the searchlight.
“You’ll pass, in a bad light,” he said.
THEY prepared the dead men with ropes so that they appeared to be looking out across the water. Don’s idea was to join in the search for themselves.
Another boat came nosing under the quay.
“Why are you so long under here?” shouted the officer at the helm. “Gone to sleep?”
“We caught a glimpse of the fugitives,” Wimpolo called back, in as masculine a voice as she could manage. “We are hunting for them.”
“Address me in the proper manner,” bellowed the officer, furiously. “And don’t edge away from me. Come alongside. Show me where you saw them. And what’s wrong with that man in your stem?”
The head of the man in the stern was attached to his body only by string, and it was at a curious angle.
Don judged that it was time to fight. A deathray shot out, played right and left. The officer and his crew fell across their gunwales, struck down before they knew they were attacked.
“We’d better be moving,” Don said. They went out from under the quay. The man in the stern nodded approvingly. In the open they put on speed. The man in the stern nodded vigorously. They swerved sharply. The head of the man in the stern fell off altogether.
Fortunately, none of the searchlights seemed to take much interest in them. Don nosed his way past and through the submarines. Most of the searchlights and the boats were searching the water out to the open sea. Therefore Don headed along the shore. They found a barren, rocky cove away from the town. Here they came ashore, tying the boat to a rock and sinking the bodies in deep water.
The Complete Saga of Don Hargreaves Page 11