The weapon, or the grip of it, suggested a pistol of some kind, and I supposed that it was one of those curious firearms discharging deadly rays, that Kamlot had described to me. I was about to ask the fellow to let me see it when the officer emerged from the tower and ordered the guard to bring us in.
We were escorted into a room in which sat a scowling man with a most unprepossessing countenance. There was a sneer on his face as he appraised us, the sneer of the inferior man for his superior, that tries to hide but only reveals the inferiority complex that prompts it. I knew that I was not going to like him.
“Two more klooganfal!” he exclaimed. (A ganfal is a criminal.) “Two more of the beasts that tried to grind down the workers; but you didn’t succeed, did you? Now we are the masters. You’ll find that out even before we reach Thora. Is either of you a doctor?”
Kamlot shook his head. “Not I,” he said.
The fellow, whom I took to be the captain of the ship, eyed me closely. “You are no Vepajan,” he said. “What are you, anyway? No one ever saw a man with yellow hair and blue eyes before.”
“As far as you are concerned,” I replied, “I am a Vepajan. I have never been in any other country in Amtor.”
“What do you mean by saying as far as I am concerned?” he demanded.
“Because it doesn’t make any difference what you think about it,” I snapped. I did not like the fellow, and when I do not like people I have difficulty in hiding the fact. In this case I did not try to hide it.
He flushed and half rose from his chair. “It doesn’t, eh?” he cried.
“Sit down,” I advised him. “You’re here under orders to bring back Vepajans Nobody cares what you think about them, but you’ll get into trouble if you don’t bring them back.”
Diplomacy would have curbed my tongue, but I am not particularly diplomatic, especially when I am angry, and now I was both angry and disgusted, for there had been something in the attitude of all these people toward us that bespoke ignorant prejudice and bitterness. Furthermore, I surmised from scraps of information I had picked up from Danus, as well as from the remarks of the sailor who had announced that he would like to kill us, that I was not far wrong in my assumption that the officer I had thus addressed would be exceeding his authority if he harmed us. However, I realized that I was taking chances, and awaited with interest the effect of my words.
The fellow took them like a whipped cur and subsided after a single weakly blustering, “We’ll see about that.” He turned to a book that lay open before him. “What is your name?” he asked, nodding in Kamlot’s direction. Even his nod was obnoxious.
“Kamlot of Zar,” replied my companion.
“What is your profession?”
“Hunter and wood carver.”
“You are a Vepajan?”
“Yes.”
“From what city of Vepaja?”
“From Kooaad,” replied Kamlot. “And you?” demanded the officer, addressing me.
“I am Carson of Napier,” I replied, using the Amtorian form; “I am a Vepajan from Kooaad.”
“What is your profession?” “I am an aviator,” I replied, using the English word and English pronunciation.
“A what?” he demanded. “I never heard of such a thing.” He tried to write the word in his book and then he tried to pronounce it, but he could do neither, as the Amtorians have no equivalents for many of our vowel sounds and seem unable even to pronounce them. Had I written the word for him in Amtorian he would have pronounced it ah-vy-ah-tore, as they cannot form the long a and short o sounds, and their i is always long.
Finally, to cover his ignorance, he wrote some thing in his book, but what it was I did not know; then he looked up at me again. “Are you a doctor?”
“Yes,” I replied, and as the officer made the notation in his book, I glanced at Kamlot out of the corner of an eye and winked.
“Take them away,” the man now directed, “and be careful of this one,” he added, indicating me; “he is a doctor.”
We were taken to the main deck and led forward to the accompaniment of jeers and jibes from the sailors congregated on the deck. I saw the klangan strutting around, their tail feathers erect. When they saw us, they pointed at Kamlot, and I heard them telling some of the sailors that he was the one who had slain the basto with a single sword thrust, a feat which appeared to force their admiration, as well it might have.
We were escorted to an open hatch and ordered below into a dark, poorly ventilated hole, where we found several other prisoners. Some of them were Thorans undergoing punishment for infractions of discipline; others were Vepajan captives like ourselves, and among the latter was one who recognized Kamlot and hailed him as we descended into their midst.
“Jodades, Kamlot!” he cried, voicing the Amtorian greeting “luck-to- you.”
“Ra jodades,” replied Kamlot; “what ill fortune brings Honan here?”
“‘Ill fortune’ does not describe it,” replied Honan; “catastrophe would be a better word. The klangan were seeking women as well as men; they saw Duare” (pronounced Doo-ah’-ree) “and pursued her; as I sought to protect her they captured me.”
“Your sacrifice was not in vain,” said Kamlot; “had you died in the performance of such a duty it would not have been in vain.”
“But it was in vain; that is the catastrophe.”
“What do you mean?” demanded Kamlot.
“I mean that they got her,” replied Honan dejectedly.
“They captured Duare!” exclaimed Kamlot in tones of horror. “By the life of the jong, it cannot be.”
“I wish it were not,” said Honan.
“Where is she? on this ship?” demanded Kamlot.
“No; they took her to the other, the larger one.”
Kamlot appeared crushed, and I could only attribute his dejection to the hopelessness of a lover who has irretrievably lost his beloved. Our association had not been either sufficiently close nor long to promote confidences, and so I was not surprised that I had never heard him mention the girl, Duare, and, naturally, under the circumstances, I could not question him concerning her. I therefore respected his grief and his silence, and left him to his own sad thoughts.
Shortly after dawn the following morning the ship got under way. I wished that I might have been on deck to view the fascinating sights of this strange world, and my precarious situation as a prisoner of the hated Thorists engendered less regret than the fact that I, the first earth man to sail the seas of Venus, was doomed to be cooped up in a stuffy hole below deck where I could see nothing. But if I had feared being kept below for the duration of the voyage, I was soon disillusioned, for shortly after the ship got under way we were all ordered on deck and set to scrubbing and polishing.
As we came up from below, the ship was just passing between the two headlands that formed the entrance to the harbor, in the wake of the larger vessel; and I obtained an excellent view of the adjacent land, the shore that we were leaving, and the wide expanse of ocean stretching away to the horizon.
The headlands were rocky promontories clothed with verdure of delicate hues and supporting comparatively few trees, which were of a smaller variety than the giants upon the mainland. These latter presented a truly awe inspiring spectacle from the open sea to the eyes of an earth man, their mighty boles rearing their weirdly colored foliage straight up for five thousand feet, where they were lost to view among the clouds. But I was not permitted to gaze for long upon the wonders of the scene. I had not been ordered above for the purpose of satisfying the esthetic longings of my soul.
Kamlot and I were set to cleaning and polishing guns. There were a number of these on either side of the deck, one at the stern, and two on the tower deck. I was surprised when I saw them, for there had been no sign of armament when I came on board the preceding day; but I was not long in discovering the explanation — the guns were mounted on disappearing carriages, and when lowered, a sliding hatch, flush with the deck, concealed them.
>
The barrels of these pieces were about eight inches in diameter, while the bore was scarcely larger than my little finger; the sights were ingenious and complicated, but there was no breech block in evidence nor any opening into a breech, unless there was one hidden beneath a hoop that encircled the breech, to which it was heavily bolted. The only thing that I could discover that might have been a firing device projected from the rear of the breech and resembled the rotating crank that is used to revolve the breech block in some types of earthly guns.
The barrels of the guns were about fifteen feet long and of the same diameter from breech to muzzle. When in action they can be extended beyond the rail of the ship about two thirds of their length, thus affording a wider horizontal range and more deck room, which would be of value on a ship such as that on which I was a captive, which was of narrow beam.
“What do these guns fire?” I asked Kamlot, who was working at my side.
“T-rays,” he replied.
“Do those differ materially from the R-rays you described when you were telling me about the small arms used by the Thorans?”
“The R-ray destroys only animal tissue,” he replied, “while there is nothing that the T-ray may not dissipate. It is a most dangerous ray to work with because even the material of the gun barrel itself is not wholly impervious to it, and the only reason that it can be used at all is that its greatest force is expended along the line of least resistance, which in this case naturally is the bore of the gun. But eventually it destroys the gun itself.”
“How is it fired?” I asked.
He touched the crank at the end of the breech. “By turning this, a shutter is raised that permits radiations from element 93 to impinge on the charge, which consists of element 97, thus releasing the deadly T-ray.”
“Why couldn’t we turn this gun about and rake the ship above deck,” I suggested, “thus wiping out the Thorans and giving us our freedom?”
He pointed to a small, irregular hole in the end of the crank shaft. “Because we haven’t the key that fits this,” he replied.
“Who has the key?”
“The officers have keys to the guns they command,” he replied. “In the captain’s cabin are keys to all the guns, and he carries a master key that will unlock any of them. At least that was the system in the ancient Vepajan navy, and it is doubtless the same today in the Thoran navy.”
“I wish we could get hold of the master key,” I said.
“So do I,” he agreed, “but that is impossible.”
“Nothing is impossible,” I retorted.
He made no answer, and I did not pursue the subject, but I certainly gave it a lot of thought.
As I worked, I noted the easy, noiseless propulsion of the ship and asked Kamlot what drove it. His explanation was long and rather technical; suffice it to say that the very useful element 93 (vik-ro) is here again employed upon a substance called lor, which contains a considerable proportion of the element yor-san (105). The action of vik-ro upon yor-san results in absolute annihilation of the lor, releasing all its energy. When you consider that there is eighteen thousand million times as much energy liberated by the annihilation of a ton of coal than by its combustion you will appreciate the inherent possibilities of this marvellous Venusian scientific discovery. Fuel for the life of the ship could be carried in a pint jar.
I noticed as the day progressed that we cruised parallel to a coast line, after crossing one stretch of ocean where no land was in sight, and thereafter for several days I noted the same fact — land was almost always in sight. This suggested that the land area of Venus might be much greater in proportion to its seas; but I had no opportunity to satisfy my curiosity on that point, and of course I took no stock in the maps that Danus had shown me, since the Amtorians’ conception of the shape of their world precluded the existence of any dependable maps.
Kamlot and I had been separated, he having been detailed to duty in the ship’s galley, which was located in the forward part of the main deck house aft. I struck up a friendship with Honan; but we did not work together, and at night we were usually so tired that we conversed but little before falling asleep on the hard floor of our prison. One night, however, the sorrow of Kamlot having been brought to my mind by my own regretful recollections of the nameless girl of the garden, I asked Honan who Duare was.
“She is the hope of Vepaja,” he replied, “perhaps the hope of a world.”
9. SOLDIERS OF LIBERTY
Constant association breeds a certain camaraderie even between enemies. As the days passed, the hatred and contempt which the common sailors appeared to have harbored for us when we first came aboard the ship were replaced by an almost friendly familiarity, as though they had discovered that we were not half bad fellows after all; and, for my part, I found much to like in these simple though ignorant men. That they were the dupes of unscrupulous leaders is about the worst that may be said of them. Most of them were kindly and generous; but their ignorance made them gullible, and their emotions were easily aroused by specious arguments that would have made no impression upon intelligent minds.
Naturally, I became better acquainted with my fellow prisoners than with my guards, and our relations were soon established upon a friendly basis. They were greatly impressed by my blond hair and blue eyes which elicited inquiries as to my genesis. As I answered their questions truthfully, they became deeply interested in my story, and every evening after the day’s work was completed I was besieged for tales of the mysterious, far distant world from which I came. Unlike the highly intelligent Vepajans, they believed all that I told them, with the result that I was soon a hero in their eyes; I should have been a god had they had any conception of deities of any description.
In turn, I questioned them; and discovered, with no surprise, that they were not at all contented with their lots. The former free men among them had long since come to the realization that they had exchanged this freedom, and their status of wage earners, for slavery to the state, that could no longer be hidden by a nominal equality.
Among the prisoners were three to whom I was particularly attracted by certain individual characteristics in each. There was Gamfor, for instance, a huge, hulking fellow who had been a farmer in the old days under the jongs. He was unusually intelligent, and although he had taken part in the revolution, he was now bitter in his denunciation of the Thorists, though this he was careful to whisper to me in secrecy.
Another was Kiron, the soldier, a clean-limbed, handsome, athletic fellow who had served in the army of the jong, but mutinied with the others at the time of the revolution. He was being disciplined now for insubordination to an officer who had been a petty government clerk before his promotion.
The third had been a slave. His name was Zog. What he lacked in intelligence he made up in strength and good nature. He had killed an officer who had struck him and was being taken back to Thora for trial and execution. Zog was proud of the fact that he was a free man, though he admitted that the edge was taken off his enthusiasm by the fact that every one else was free and the realization that he had enjoyed more freedom as a slave than he did now as a freeman.
“Then,” he explained, “I had one master; now I have as many masters as there are government officials, spies, and soldiers, none of whom cares anything about me, while my old master was kind to me and looked after my welfare.”
“Would you like to be really free?” I asked him, for a plan had been slowly forming in my mind.
But to my surprise he said, “No, I should rather be a slave.”
“But you’d like to choose your own master, wouldn’t you?” I demanded.
“Certainly,” he replied, “if I could find some one who would be kind to me and protect me from the Thorists.”
“And if you could escape from them now, you would like to do so?”
“Of course! But what do you mean? I cannot escape from them.”
“Not without help,” I agreed, “but if others would join you, would you m
ake the attempt?”
“Why not? They are taking me back to Thora to kill me. I could be no worse off, no matter what I did. But why do you ask all these questions?”
“If we could get enough to join us, there is no reason why we should not be free,” I told him. “When you are free, you may remain free or choose a master to your liking.” I watched closely for his reaction.
“You mean another revolution?” he asked. “It would fail. Others have tried, but they have always failed.”
“Not a revolution,” I assured him, “just a break for liberty.”
“But how could we do it?”
“It would not be difficult for a few men to take this ship,” I suggested. “The discipline is poor, the night watches consist of too few men; they are so sure of themselves that they would be taken completely by surprise.”
Zog’s eyes lighted. “If we were successful, many of the crew would join us,” he said. “Few of them are happy; nearly all of them hate their officers. I think the prisoners would join us almost to a man, but you must be careful of spies — they are everywhere. That is the greatest danger you would have to face. There can be no doubt but there is at least one spy among us prisoners.”
“How about Gamfor,” I asked; “is he all right?”
“You can depend upon Gamfor,” Zog assured me. “He does not say much, but in his eyes I can read his hatred of them.”
“And Kiron?”
“Just the man!” exclaimed Zog. “He despises them, and he does not care who knows it; that is the reason he is a prisoner. This is not his first offense, and it is rumored that he will be executed for high treason.”
“But I thought that he only talked back to an officer and refused to obey him,” I said.
“That is high treason — if they wish to get rid of a man,” explained Zog. “You can depend on Kiron. Do you wish me to speak to him about the matter?”
“No,” I told him. “I will speak to him and to Gamfor; then if anything goes wrong before we are ready to strike, if a spy gets wind of our plot, you will not be implicated.”
Delphi Collected Works of Edgar Rice Burroughs (Illustrated) (Series Four Book 26) Page 625