There, again, would be an oddity. Wolf-howlings would carry news even faster than messengers, if ruhks were searching for a thing over a large area.
“That’s good enough,” said Sam morosely, “but we’ve got a job ahead of us. We’ve got to get this damned doorway off the end of this pole and find out how to carry it through what’ll be the streets of New York without bringing fat women and stray cats and odd brickwork through it. Then we’ll go to the nearest precinct police-station— I’ll find it with the peephole—and rob it of tear-gas bombs and maybe some riot-guns. We’ll use this same doorway for that. And then—”
He fumbled in his pocket. He put the peephole to his eye. He saw out into the street in New York from which the three of them had come. There were many police around, now. It seemed that he could reach out and touch any one. He flinched involuntarily. But they did not see him, of course. They were hunting feverishly for the three people who had disappeared so mysteriously.
Sam regarded them wryly. Then he shrugged and put away the peephole. With Kelly, he experimented cautiously. It was simple enough, however. The disk was a doorway on one face only. Objects could enter it only from one side, on Earth, and that side was unsubstantial—like, when he thought of it, the phantom disk six inches from the disk of the crux ansata. With the other side forward they could walk through the jungle unconcernedly, even though they marched through the space occupied on Earth by solid buildings. Of course anything that ran into the reverse face of the disk, in the Other World, would emerge on Earth ...
As a matter of fact, it is rather likely that some small fauna such as flying midges and the like did suddenly find themselves in a totally strange world of streets and stone buildings. And they would never be able to adjust themselves to it at all.
The three humans headed roughly west, and presently there were some little, glittering pools of quicksilver in a precinct police station, and some tear-gas bombs were missing on Earth. Then some other glitterings, and Sam and Kelly had two riot-guns apiece, and ammunition for them. The men off duty in the squad-room would later catch the devil for letting such things be stolen under their very noses, but Sam and the other two went on. Six great, deadly beasts trotted all about them, sometimes breasting the brushwood ahead and sometimes trailing a little behind, but always coming back to sniff at the master-scent it was bred into them to adore, and to wag their huge, shaggy tails worshipfully.
Presently even Sam almost took them for granted. He began to worry. He was going to need a boat. He could steal anything he needed from Earth. In the present emergency he had no qualms. But how could he get a boat big enough for his purposes through an interdimensional doorway designed to be a trap only for men?
From time to time he looked through the peephole for guidance through the other-dimensional New York. And then, on the bank of the Hudson as it existed on Earth, he found the answer. There was a small boathouse in a most unlikely place, storing canoes for apartment-house dwellers nearby. The boathouse was locked.
It was two hours after their arrival through the doorway before they reached the Hudson, and it took an hour and a half to make a platform and fix the outboard motor to it and lash it across the two canoes. But then they pushed off. They had a catamaran with a motor driving it from between the two canoes. It was moderately seaworthy, and not even very slow. When it moved out from the shore the ruhks howled at being left behind.
Sam pulled on the cranking-cord of the motor. Rather surprisingly, it caught instantly and ran smoothly. The improvised craft swung out into the river and headed upstream. The ruhks, howling their desolation, crashed through the brushwood, following. But presently they were lost to sight.
The motor made a steady roar. Sam headed out for a longer look up and down the river, and they had not gone far when they saw the galley. It was at anchor off Manhattan Island somewhere near what would be Seventieth Street on Earth. There was no movement visible. The two cutters were tethered to its stern.
The double canoe headed on a straight course for it. The tide was at full flood and the motor roared valiantly. It made excellent speed, but as they drew near men howled defiance at them. Oar-blades waved menacingly.
“Dick ought to recognize me, anyhow,” said Nancy uneasily. “What do you suppose—”
Then Kelly stood up in the bow of the right-hand canoe. He bellowed. His voice rose above the din of shouting and the motor together. The shouting died. There were not too many men on the galley—not many more than a dozen. They stared blankly as the motor cut off and the double canoe floated up to the galley under its own momentum. Kelly matter-of-factly climbed over the side. The other two heard his voice, harsh and argumentative. They saw him strip off his coat and sweater, showing the lash-marks on his skin. But his most convincing argument was the riot-guns he handed over in the most casual way in the world.
He came back to the rail.
“The gang’s gone ashore. Some are dressed up like overseers. They took all the guns an’ spears they had. They’re hopin’ to rush the slave pen and then fight off the ruhks until they find out where a cage-trap is, an’ then they’ll try to get hold of the doorway an’ get guns through that.”
“We’ve got to go after them!” cried Nancy. “With the scent—”
“All right,” snapped Sam. “Come along if you’re coming! Any of you other men who want to come along too, do so. Make it quick!”
Kelly spoke ungently, and climbed down. Half the men on the galley followed. He snapped again, and the rest followed sheepishly.
“They got nothin’ to fight with,” he said tonelessly. “All that have are plenty anxious to come.”
The catamaran’s motor sputtered. It headed for the beach. It touched, and men splashed to the shore. Nancy looked at them and shivered a little. She had seen Kelly naked save for a loin-cloth and with stripes on his flesh, but he had come as a human being when she was in terror of the ruhks—even though they fawned on her. These men, scarred and gaunt and terrible, were another matter. Kelly said briefly. “Put some scent on ‘em. Better pass out a bottle or two. When they see how it works—”
It was late afternoon, near to sunset. The extraordinarily assorted group started on through the jungle. Kelly and Sam had riot-guns and pistols. Two others had riot-guns. Then Sam brought out the rest of the arsenal he had been carrying. He saw one man caress a stubby pistol as if it were an infinitely precious thing.
They went on. Giant trees. Strange, improbable underbrush. Unfamiliar cries in the treetops. Discordant bellow-ings at unpredictable intervals in the distance.
They had gone perhaps half a mile when they heard shots ahead. Many shots. Then they began to run. The shooting rose in volume. Sam panted to a galley slave:
“How many guns did our gang have?”
“F-Fourteen,” gasped the slave. “The rest were spears.”
“Plenty more’n that up there!” said Sam. “Faster!”
They pelted toward the tumult. The sounds grew louder. They heard shrieks. There must have been fifty weapons in action up ahead.
There were. It was only logical that there should be. Because an expedition specially ordered by the master of the villa had been brought to Manhattan Island early that morning to kidnap Maltby. It had been composed exclusively of overseers and ruhks. It had captured Malt-by, but it couldn’t get back to the villa because the big galley was in revolt. So the party, in very bad temper, had taken refuge in the slave compound ahead.
Dick Blair and his party of pseudo-overseers and the slaves they would pretend they had recaptured—all of them together ran into forty armed men in the slave camp, every man armed with spear and pistol against the fourteen firearms of the attackers. And there were the ruhks.
It was sheer slaughter. It was a retreat from the beginning. It would have been a rout save that no man would turn his back while there remained a chance to kill a ruhk or an overseer with a bullet. So no armed man would run away. And no unarmed slave would actually flee while he hope
d for one of the armed men to be killed so that he would have a firearm to use.
Leaping forms in the brush alongside the trail. Snarls and rushings. Then the ruhks stopped short. They tried to fawn on Sam Todd and Nancy and on Kelly. They whimpered and groveled before the slaves who had come from the galley with these three of Earth. The slaves fired vengefully. Ruhks whimpered, and were killed. Some ran away, howling. Five milleniums of breeding to be worshippers of creatures bearing that particular scent made too strong a compulsion. They could not attack or resist a creature that more than two thousand of their generations had learned must be obeyed. Frenzied panic seized the beasts—because godlings slew them.
The tumult came nearer as the smaller party ran. A slave, staggering with two ruhks at his flanks, fell as they came upon him. Sawed-off shotguns freed him. Nancy flicked droplets of the magic odorous stuff upon him. Then he was safe. They ran on. And they came upon pandemonium.
There was shooting ahead where the pitifully few men with firearms fought in the jungle to make a retreat possible. But jungle fighting was the ruhks specialty. The spear-armed slaves had had to close up together, back to back, making a hedge of spear-points against the ruhks, who could creep close and spring almost unseen in the shadowy undergrowth. Ruhks died, to be sure, but men died too. Yet there were many more men than weapons, and no weapon went unused because its owner fell.
It was all stark confusion and lunatic noise. When the newcomers plunged toward the embattled, despairing slaves, ruhks leaped—and then groveled before them. They made yelping sounds which warned off other ruhks.
They plunged into the mass of fighting men. And those who had just come from the galley had come to believe in their immunity from the ruhks. Roaring laughter, they plunged among the animals, killing zestfully. Sam and Nancy forced their way through the close-packed crowd of slaves who waited for spears that they might fight with them. Nancy battled through them to Dick, and drenched him with the master-scent. She panted in his ear. Sam thrust ahead of him and his riot-gun crashed.
“Sprinkle that damned stuff!” he roared over his shoulder at Nancy. “Get busy!”
Kelly was already at it. Sam brought down a robed overseer, and a slave darted forward to get his weapons. A ruhk pounced from behind a tree-trunk—and then could not attack as the odor reached its nostrils. The slave squirmed over and fired upward. The beast screamed.
And then, strangely, even the slaves not yet redolent of divinity ceased to be attacked. There was the master-scent about this spot. The ruhks drew off, whimpering, and the overseers commanded them to attack, and they yelped and whined. Then Kelly ran out from the knot of slaves. Godhead was upon him. He reeked of deity to the beasts. He commanded attack upon the overseers, waving on the animals with gestures.
That did it. Where a knot of naked slaves had fought despairingly, resolved only to fight until they were killed, and where robed men had angrily but still cautiously pressed upon the rebels, now the tide turned abruptly. Nancy ran about among the slaves, incongruously slapping at them with a scent-drenched lacy handkerchief. Dick groped to understand her panted, inadequate explanation, and suddenly caught her meaning. He bellowed to his followers and led a furious charge.
The retreat that had been almost a rout became an attack again. This time the ruhks were with the slaves. They flung themselves upon the robed men—all the robed men not infallibly declared by ruhk nostrils to be divine. The overseers knew terror and horror akin to madness. They broke and ran, and those whom the slaves did not overtake the ruhks did. With each dead overseer there was another slave armed with spear or pistol or both, and the flight of the overseers ended before the swiftest of them could reach the slave pen again.
There were more overseers there, but not many, and there were robed men among those who approached. The disguise of the slaves had seemed vain, before, but it was not vain now. Approaching, with ruhks fawning upon them, they entered the barred gate. They left the ruhks outside. They killed the overseers who had remained at the slave camp. The ruhk guards inside the pen groveled before them. They killed those, too. And they let in other humans who went about among the stupefied slaves, sprinkling them with sweet-smelling stuff until every slave reeked of the odor which to ruhks was sanctity.
Then they let in the ruhks—and killed them. For five thousand years the ruhks had been the victims of a discovery made when magicians first moved between worlds. The scent had ensured their absolute loyalty to a race which ruled over ruhks and overseers and human slaves alike. And now they could not believe that men with the smell of the gods upon them could destroy them. Some whimpered as the slaves stabbed and shot. A few fought half-heartedly, almost paralyzed by the instinct five thousand years had made immutable. Some seemed to go insane at the impossibility they saw and smelled, their own massacre by men who smelled like those they must worship. But they died. All of them.
~ * ~
Night had fallen, now, and great fires blazed in the slave pen. In their crimson light, hordes of more than half-naked men and women howled and leaped and gloried in the havoc that had been wrought. Some of them prowled among the dead bodies of the ruhks, clubbing and stabbing the dead things when they could persuade themselves that a spark of life remained in a furry carcass.
But Dick rounded up the men who on the galley had seemed instinctively leaders. There was a man with a scarred face, and a short and brawny man, and one who had been a professor of physics.
Dick found Maltby and freed him and Nancy doused him with scent. They found the spidery device that no slave should ever see—and Sam knew something of it. So Dick told his followers what he wanted to do next, and they scattered and rounded up suitable men from the rejoicing mob. It was a still-shouting gang which went back through the jungle toward their ship. They carried torches, and they pushed and pulled and wrestled through the jungle the device by which anything at all that was desired by the masters of this world could be brought here from Earth. Sam Todd had even found on a dead overseer a curious pair of goggles which he recognized.
He marched through the jungle with those goggles in place over his eyes, and he was able to see at the same time the flame-lit trunks of mighty trees as bare-bodied men swaggered through the jungle, and the electric-lit streets and motor traffic of crosstown streets in that Manhattan Island which was on Earth.
The triumphant men reached the river, and torches flared upon its flood. They got the cutters ashore, made a platform of oars between them, wrestled the spidery device upon it, and the double canoe towed it out to the galley. By main strength they loaded it on the galley, and then it was up anchor and down the long, moonlit jungle shore of Manhattan Island. Sam Todd returned the alloy peephole to Dick. With the goggles from a dead overseer which looked more efficiently between two worlds, he conned the galley through the night, guided by the lights on Earth.
The galley beached alongside a barren rock at midnight, and men sweated and strained to get the spidery thing ashore on what should have been Governor’s Island. Sam led men off into the darkness, again guided by lights on another planet which happened to be the twin of this. Because, of course, Governor’s Island on Earth is an army post and an air field, and in these days it is kept equipped for any emergency. There would be guns and ammunition and hand grenades and other things more precious than fine gold to the men of the galley and cutters. The Army lost valuable equipment that night, before Sam Todd came back and gleeful men made trip after trip to load their booty on the galley and in the smaller craft.
Dick did not share in that. He had to talk to Nancy, to suggest anxiously that, as soon as the loading of the galley was finished, she let him put her back on Earth down by the Battery, which was just across the stream from here. Of course the place that should have been the Battery on the Other World was dark forest from which eerie cries and a curious semblance of the sound of bells came faintly. But she resolutely refused to go back to Earth. When he told her why neither he nor any other man from the galley would
go back to Earth to stay, just yet, she shuddered and seized upon the explanation as an additional reason why she should remain.
They were a little awkward with each other because Dick had merely resolved that nobody else could possibly be allowed to marry Nancy, and had not explained the matter to her. But suddenly he said anxiously, “Of course we’ll have to slip back long enough to get married—”
And then that was all right too.
~ * ~
When the galley’s oars spread out and she and the cutters went on through the dark once more, Dick had things to do. He called each cutter’s crew alongside and gave specific instructions. Then the expedition really began.
The moon sank low, though the waters were still streaked with flashes of its light. All three craft hugged the Manhattan shore, at first. When the dim lights of the villa first became visible, though, one of the cutters turned and streaked straight across to the Brooklyn shore. Lest any ruhks sight them and give the alarm, men landed and marched along the shore so that ruhks would sight them and creep up to spring—and remain to grovel and to die.
The galley made fast at the wharf on the Manhattan shore where Dick had killed his first overseer and taken the first cutter. A scented, murderous band of armed men marched along the trail to the slave pen inland from it. Nancy, for once, willingly stayed behind. She talked to Maltby, bringing him up to date on her adventures.
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