by John Norman
There was no sign, as far as they had been able to determine, that Section 19 of the hold had been entered by the barbarians. It was, at that time, among putatively less important portions of the ship, portions which might well be left for later consideration. It had not figured in the fighting.
The gladiator flashed the light of the torch about the dark hold, over the wreckage of the fallen tiers.
He flashed it, too, upward, toward the girderwork about the ceiling.
Section 19, illuminated here and there by the darting beam, seemed very different from when it had been well lit, and muchly occupied, as on the night of the entertainment.
The officer of the court found it frightening, and eerie. She wondered if they were truly alone in the place.
“Kneel them,” said the gladiator, handing the princess’s rope to Janina.
“Kneel, milady,” said Janina to the princess, who knelt in the sand.
“Kneel, slave,” said Janina to the officer of the court, “here, behind the princess, and to her left.”
The officer of the court, angrily, knelt where she had been told.
“Hands on your thighs,” said Janina to her charges. “You may keep your knees closed, milady. But you, slave, will keep yours open.”
The officer of the court was angry, but she knelt as she had been instructed. Kneeling thusly, even in the “same garb,” she could not help experiencing strange, disturbing sensations. Was it not thus that slave girls must kneel, or slave girls of a certain sort?
“It is as I feared,” said the gladiator, who was now a few feet away. “The lifts to the locks are not operational.”
It would be difficult to move the escape capsules on the tracks, not that they were large, but they were weighty, but it could be done. Two men could manage it, or one, with unusual strength.
“Oh, Master!” moaned Janina.
How then could they be brought to the level of the locks?
“The cables seem intact,” said the gladiator, with satisfaction. “There are counterweights, of course.”
The officer of the court thought she heard a small sound somewhere to her left, back, among the tiers.
Neither Janina nor the gladiator, who was concerned elsewhere, flashing the torch into the shaft, noticed it.
“I will move the capsule into the lift,” said the gladiator. “Then, perhaps, I can draw it upward.”
“It would take several men to hoist the lift, Master,” said Janina, fearfully.
But already, the iron wheels grinding on the track, the gladiator, by main strength, was moving one of the capsules into the lift.
He returned, briefly, to Janina. He handed her the fire pistol and the electric torch.
“Put them to their bellies where they are, in the sand,” said the gladiator. “If either should prove troublesome, or recalcitrant, you may burn them where they lie.”
“Yes, Master,” said Janina. Then she said to the princess, “Please assume a prone position, milady, with your legs widely spread.” The princess complied. Doubtless Janina herself had often been put, in one situation or another, in this same position. It makes it harder to rise. Then she said to the officer of the court, “To your belly, slave, and get your legs apart, as widely as you can!”
The officer of the court complied. She did not doubt but what Janina might well blast through her back, perhaps even boiling and melting the sand beneath her. The fire pistol in her grasp was not one of reduced charges, as had been those of the crew members, a safety precaution for use on the vessel. It was much more powerful, and might, if its charge was sustained, cut through metal. To be sure, it was less powerful than the Telnarian rifle which the gladiator retained.
She heard, foot by foot, the lift being raised by hand. She could scarcely believe the strength required for this. Such a man, she knew, might snap her neck with one hand. Then she thought she heard, again, a tiny sound, again back, and to her left.
It did not seem that Janina noticed this sound, if it were indeed a sound. Her interest, it seemed, was focused on the gladiator’s struggle with the weights in the lift shaft.
The gladiator then ascended the shaft by means of a ladder within it.
In a few moments he returned. “The capsule is in the lock, positioned,” he said.
“Master!” breathed Janina, delightedly.
“I have heard strangers about,” he said, “but they seem to be in another corridor.”
“What are we to do,” asked Janina, frightened.
“We must move quickly,” he said.
He took the fire pistol from Janina and replaced it in its holster.
He extinguished the torch and put it on his belt.
“Up, Gerune,” he said. As soon as she was on her feet, he scooped her up and, to her consternation, threw her lightly over his shoulder. “Come last, Janina,” he said.
“Yes, Master,” she said. Then she said to the officer of the court, “Get up, slave, follow your master.”
“I am not a slave,” said the officer of the court. “He is not my master.”
But she rose promptly to her feet.
The gladiator had already begun to ascend the ladder, Gerune on his shoulder.
“Climb the ladder, slave,” said Janina, “up, behind your master.”
The officer of the court did not bother responding to Janina. Let her think that she was a slave, and that the great lout was her master. What difference did it make? It wasn’t true, was it? She ascended the ladder.
The rope, held by Janina, was still on her neck.
In a moment she and Janina had reached the level of an outer corridor. The door to the lock, a few feet to the right of the elevator, as one would emerge from it, was open.
The gladiator, in his armor, was in the hallway, just outside the port, setting the timer.
Gerune was at his feet, kneeling. The rope was still about her neck, but now its free end had been looped about her ankles, which had been crossed, and tied there, rendering her bound, hand and foot.
“Kneel,” said Janina, looking about nervously.
The officer of the court knelt.
Her own heart was beating rapidly, seeming to pound madly within her.
She heard voices, those of barbarians, from a nearby corridor.
“The timer is set,” said the gladiator.
The officer of the court saw the hatch on the escape capsule opened.
She knew that she and Janina were then to hurry to the hatch and climb through, it doubtless then to be closed behind them by the gladiator, he the last to enter.
The officer of the court was terrified.
She realized she had knelt before this man in the darkness and proclaimed herself slave. She knew herself then, almost giddy with fear, to be subject to claimancy. Indeed, Janina seemed to think that she was already claimed, and thus, having been subject to claimancy, was now owned, indeed, that she was the gladiator’s slave!
But see the princess!
The princess was looking wildly up at the gladiator. Tears ran from her eyes, down her cheeks, against the gag. Then, to the amazement of the officer of the court, the princess put her head down to the boots of the gladiator.
She heard the sounds of voices coming nearer.
She cast a glance at exquisite Janina, now muchly bedecked in the barbaric robes of the princess.
Janina was a slave, not she!
Too, she saw the princess, her beauty brazenly bared, as it had been decided by the will of the gladiator, her head to his boots.
She felt a rush of anguish, and rage, and jealousy!
How could she compete with two such women?
“I am not a slave!” she suddenly cried, aloud. And she sprang to her feet. “Help! Help!” she cried.
The gladiator looked up, startled. His astonishment was evident.
“Help!” she screamed. “Help!”
But then the gladiator, looking past her, lifted his hands, suddenly.
The officer of the
court looked back and saw, just emerged from the shaft of the lift, having climbed the ladder, the young naval officer, he of the purple cords, of the blood, whom she had not seen since the evening of the entertainment. He held a fire pistol leveled at the gladiator.
Behind the young naval officer, emerging now from the shaft of the lift, completing the ascent of the ladder, one by one, were other figures.
She was not sure how many there were.
She realized then that these must have been hiding in the hold, in Section 19.
At this moment, apparently rushing to investigate the cries of the officer of the court, several barbarian warriors, helmeted, armored, appeared in the corridor.
“Hold your fire!” cried one of them. “The princess!”
They mistook Janina in her regal garb for Gerune.
“Surrender!” cried one of the barbarians to the young naval officer.
“Be careful,” cried one of the barbarians to his fellows. “A commander, too, is in the line of fire!”
They took no thought for the real princess, who, naked, bound hand and foot, and gagged, they took naturally for a prisoner or slave.
The naval officer snapped off a charge and one of the barbarians spun about, the armor on his chest blackened.
Janina screamed.
The officer of the court, too, cried out in misery. Clearly the shot must have passed her.
“What shall we do, Commander?” called one of the men down the hall.
“Hold your fire,” said the gladiator.
Gerune, in her bonds, shrank down, small, in misery. She had been seen naked, at the feet of a man. What would be the consequences of that, when her identity might be established? Too, she had been paraded as a slave girl through the corridors, an object of lust and ridicule to hundreds of men.
“Move aside!” said the naval officer.
The gladiator stepped to the side, keeping his hands raised.
“The timer has been activated!” said the young officer. Then he cried to those with him, “Into the capsule!”
“Alert the gunners,” said a man down the hall.
One of their number lifted a communication device and began to speak rapidly into it.
The young naval officer then, carefully, fired four shots down the hall. Three of these shots struck targets. One fellow staggered back, his armor blackened and scarred; another lost part of his armor, it blasted away from him; he scrambled away; a third shot struck the helmet of a man at the side, half tearing his head from his body. The other shot, the barbarians having broken for cover, passed harmlessly down the corridor, until it subsided, and left a line of fire on the carpeting more than a hundred yards away.
“It seems we owe our lives to your presence, Princess,” said the young naval officer. Janina began to tremble.
The young naval officer then, his suspicions aroused, jerked away her hood. “You are not a princess,” he said. “I know you! You are a slave!”
He then looked down at Gerune. “Your hair,” he said, “shows you to be barbarian, and you are not ankleted, or braceleted, or collared, no mark of bondage is upon you, not even, it seems, a brand, so you must be free. Perhaps it is you who are the princess! Well, it does not matter. Many women, once barbarian princesses, are now slave girls in the empire. It is where such as you belong, at the feet of gentlemen.”
“My thanks to you, whoever you may be,” said the young naval officer to the gladiator. “We were not capable of bringing the escape capsule to the lock, the lift being inoperative. You have been of great help.”
He glanced at the timer.
“We must be leaving now,” he said.
Then he looked at the officer of the court, who was backed against the corridor wall, near the lock, on its left, as one would enter it.
He regarded her with contempt.
“I am a citizen,” she said. “I am of the blood!”
“You are a stupid, loud-mouthed bitch,” he said. “Your cries could have gotten us all killed. And why did you cry out? Are you so eager to be killed, or cast into the chains of a slave?”
“Sir!” she protested.
“Get in the capsule, bitch,” he said. She cast one wild glance at the gladiator and then, hurriedly, entered the capsule.
The timing needle was now close to the point at which the automatic launching sequence would be activated.
“How are we to escape?” asked the gladiator.
“Who are you?” asked the officer.
“He who defeated Ortog in the contest,” said the gladiator.
“The Otung?” said the officer.
“I know not the meaning of that word,” said the gladiator.
“You are the one Pulendius calls ‘Dog’?”
“Yes,” said the gladiator.
“You may be an Otung,” said the officer. “Surely you are not of the empire.”
“I have brought the capsule to the lock,” said the gladiator.
“My thanks,” said the officer.
“How are we to escape?”
The officer threw a quick glance at the needle.
“I have no time to trust you, or disarm you,” he said. He then, twice, pulled the trigger on the fire pistol, and the gladiator staggered backwards, the armor black with heat. He then, spinning about, fell to the side of the shaft, near the ladder. Another shot blasted him back into the open area of the shaft, by the ladder.
Janina screamed.
“I am sorry,” said the officer.
He regarded both the distraught Janina and the princess, who had scrambled back as she could, bound, and was now to the left of the lift entrance, as one might enter it from the corridor. She jerked madly at the bonds, but, of course, was held, perfectly.
“You will remain here, slaves,” said the officer to Janina and the princess.
Then he hastily leaped through the lock port a moment before it shut. He slid through the hatch on the capsule and secured it. A moment later the outer portal opened, and, an instant after that, the capsule burst free of the Alaria.
…CHAPTER 14…
The gladiator lay at the bottom of the lift shaft.
Janina fled to the ladder and climbed down, to crouch beside him.
He half sat up, then fell to the side.
“Master! Master!” she wept.
There was the sound of racing feet, approaching. The gladiator crawled from the bottom of the shaft, across the tracks on which the escape capsule had been moved, to the flooring of the hold.
Faces appeared at the opening to the lift shaft, above.
“Princess!” called a man. “Are you all right? Commander! Answer me!”
The gladiator sat up, awkwardly. The chest plate of the armor had taken three charges, two at almost point-blank range. It was loose on the left, half-unhinged. The gladiator tried to rise, but fell back.
“She lied,” he said. “She gave her word. But she lied.”
“Master!” whispered Janina, frenziedly.
“Princess? Commander?” called the voice again.
“She lied,” said the gladiator.
The gladiator slipped loose the fire pistol from its holster.
“We are lost!” wept Janina.
“Courage, Princess!” called the voice. “We are coming down immediately!”
“Stay where you are!” screamed Janina.
“That is not the voice of the princess!” said a man, from somewhere above.
“Commander! Commander!” called another voice.
“My helmet, remove my helmet,” said the gladiator, weakly.
Janina struggled to lift the helmet, and then put it to the side.
Within the collar of the armor, where it had been pressed back, under the helmet, there was blood.
The blaze of electric torches, from above, darted about the shaft.
The gladiator lifted the fire pistol weakly.
Then he put it down, beside him.
“She lied,” he said.
“O
h, Master, Master,” moaned Janina.
“Who are you, woman?” called a voice from above.
“Commander!” called a man, from above.
“It may not be a commander,” said another.
“Who is the captain of the Gelstane? ” called down a man.
“Who is the subcaptain of the Borsa? ” called another.
“Can you speak, Commander?” asked a man.
“Answer our questions, female,” demanded a voice.
“Here,” said another, “ungag this slave and beat her. She will speak!”
“Hurry!” said a voice, with authority.
The men drew away from the opening above.
“She is a beauty,” said a man.
“A not unattractive slut,” said another.
“I saw her earlier, in the corridors,” said another.
“I, too!” said another.
“She walked well on her leash,” said another.
“That she did!” laughed a man.
“Kneel her here, before me. Strike her,” said a voice.
There was in a moment the sound of a blow and a soft cry of muffled pain.
“Do you wish to be struck again, slut?” asked a man.
There was a muffled whimper of protest, of denial.
“When you are ungagged,” said a man, “you will speak instantly, clearly and truthfully.”
“Get the gag out of her mouth,” said the authoritative voice.
“Master, what are we to do?” whispered Janina.
The gloved hand of the gladiator reached out, groping, for the fire pistol, and then he had it, again, in his hand.
“I am Gerune, princess of the Drisriaks, sister of Ortog!” cried the princess above, in misery, and pain.
“Hear the slave!” laughed a man.
“The commander of the Gelstane is Surogastes, the subcaptain of the Borsa is Tethgutha, the commander of the Vorgaard is Bradow, son of Astarax! Bring me clothing, now!”
“Bring sheets,” said a man.
“Cover her,” said another voice, startled.
“Hurry the princess away,” said a man, frightened.
“Fools, fools, fools!” wept the princess.
“Sever her bonds! Carry her from this place!” said the authoritative voice.
The gladiator had now crawled to the foot of the shaft, and lifted the fire pistol. With one bolt he melted the ladder from the top of the shaft.