by Paul Ernst
CHAPTER IV
_In the Tower_
"What I can't figure out," said Dex, striding up and down the big bareroom, "is why we're needed to tell them about the atomic motor.They've got our ship, and three others besides. I should think theycould learn about the motor just by taking it apart and studying it."
Brand grinned mirthlessly, recalling the three years of intensivestudy it had taken him to learn the refinements of atomic motivepower. "If you'd ever qualified as a space navigator, Dex, you'd knowbetter. The Rogans are an advanced race; their control of polarmagnetism and the marvelously high-powered telescopes Greca mentionsprove that; but I doubt if they could ever analyze that atomic motorwith no hint as to how it works."
Silence descended on them again, in which each was lost in his ownthoughts.
How many hours had passed, the Earthmen did not know. They had spentthe time in fruitless planning to escape from their tower room and goback to the ship again. Though how they could get away in the shipwhen the Rogans seemed able to propel it where-ever they wishedagainst the utmost power of their motor, they did not attempt toconsider.
One of Jupiter's short nights had passed, however--a night weirdlymade as light as day by red glares from the plates, which seemed tostore up sunlight, among their other functions--and the tiny sun hadrisen to slant into their window at a sharp angle.
Suddenly they heard the familiar drawing of the great bolts outsidetheir door. It was opened, and a dozen or more of the Rogans came in,with Greca cowering piteously in their midst and attempting tocommunicate her distress to Brand.
* * * * *
At the head of the little band of Rogans was one the prisoners had notseen before. He was of great height, fully two feet taller than theothers; and he carried himself with an air that proclaimed hisimportance.
The tall one turned to Greca and addressed a few high-pitched, squeakywords to her. She shook her head; whereupon, at a hissed command, twoof the Rogans caught her by the wrists and dragged her forward.
"They have come to question you," Greca lamented to Brand. "And theywant to do it through me. But I will not! I will not!"
Brand smiled at her though his lips were pale.
"You are powerless to struggle," he said. "Do as they ask. You cannothelp us by refusing, and, in any case, I can promise that they won'tlearn anything from us."
The tall Rogan teetered up to the prisoners on his gangling legs, andstared icily at them. Crouched beside him, her lovely body all onemute appeal to the Earthmen to forgive her for the part she was forcedto play, was Greca.
At length the Rogan leader spoke. He addressed his sibilant words toGreca, though his stony eyes were kept intently on the Earthmen.
"He says," exclaimed Greca telepathically, "to inform you first thathe is head of all the Rogan race on this globe, and that all on thisglobe must do as he commands."
Brand nodded to show he understood the message.
"He says he is going to ask you a few questions, and that you are toanswer truthfully if you value your lives:"
"First, he wants to know what the people of your world are like. Arethey all the same as you?"
* * * * *
Dex started to reply to that; but Brand flung him a warning look."Tell him we are the least of the Earth people," he answered steadily."Tell him we are of an inferior race. Most of those on Earth aregiants five times as large as we are, and many times more powerful."
Greca relayed the message in the whistling, piping Rogan tongue. Thetall one stared, then hissed another sentence to the beautifulinterpreter.
"He wants to know," said Greca, "if there are cities on your globe aslarge and complete as this one."
"There are cities on Earth that make this look like a--a--" Brand castabout for understandable similes--"like a collection of animalburrows."
"He says to describe your planet's war weapons," was the nextinterpretation. And here Brand let himself go.
With flights of fancy he hadn't known he was capable of, he describedgreat airships, steered automatically and bristling with guns thatdischarged explosives powerful enough to kill everything within arange of a thousand miles. He told of billions of thirty-foot giantssheathed in an alloy that would make them invulnerable to any feeblerays the Rogans might have developed. He touched on the certainwholesale death that must overtake any hostile force that tried toinvade the planet.
"The Rogan shock-tubes are toys compared with the ray-weapons ofEarth," he concluded. "We have arms that can nullify the effects ofyours and kill at the same instant. We have--"
But here the Rogan leader turned impatiently away. Greca had beentranslating sentence by sentence. Now the tall one barked out a fewsyllables in a squeaky voice.
"He says he knows you are lying," sighed Greca. "For if you on Earthhave tubes more effective than theirs why weren't you equipped withthem on your expedition here to the red kingdom?"
Brand bit his lips. "Check," he muttered. "The brute has a brain inthat ugly head."
* * * * *
The Rogan leader spoke for a long time then; and at each singsongword, Greca quivered as though lashed by a whip. At length she turnedto Brand.
"He has been telling what his hordes can do, answering your boastswith boasts of his own. His words are awful! I won't tell you all hesaid. I will only say that he is convinced his shock-tubes aresuperior to any Earth arms, and that he states he will now illustratetheir power to you to quell your insolence. I don't know what he meansby that...."
But she and the Earthmen were soon to find out.
The Rogan leader stepped to the window and arrogantly beckoned Brandand Dex to join him there. They did; and the leader gazed out and downas though searching for something.
He pointed. The two Earthmen followed his leveled arm with their eyesand saw, a hundred yards or so away, a bent and dreary figure trudgingdown the metal paving of the street. It was a figure like those to beseen on Earth, which placed it as belonging to Greca's race.
The tall leader drew forth one of the shock-tubes. Seen near at hand,it was observed to be bafflingly simple in appearance. It seemeddevoid of all mechanism--simply a tube of reddish metal with a sort ofhandle formed of a coil of heavy wire.
The Rogan pointed the tube at the distant figure.
Greca screamed, and screamed again. Coincident with her cry, as thoughthe sound of it had felled him, the distant slave dropped to thepavement.
* * * * *
That was all. The tube had merely been pointed: as far as Brand couldsee, the Rogan's "hand" had not moved on the barrel of the tube, noreven constricted about the coil of wire that formed its handle. Yetthat distant figure had dropped. Furthermore, fumes of greasy blacksmoke now began to arise from the huddled body; and in less thanthirty seconds there was left no trace of it on the gleaming metalpavement.
"So that's what those things are like at full power!" breathed Dex."My God!"
The Rogan leader spoke a few words. Greca, huddled despairingly on thefloor, crushed by this brutal annihilation of one of her country-menbefore her very eyes, did not translate. But translation wasunnecessary. The Rogan's icy, triumphant eyes, the very posture ofhis grotesque body, spoke for him.
"That," he was certainly saying, "is what will happen to any on yourhelpless planet who dare oppose the Rogan will!"
He whipped out a command to the terror-stricken girl. She rose fromher crouching position on the floor; and at length formulated theRogan's last order:
"You will explain the working of the engine that drove your space shiphere."
Dex laughed. It was a short bark of sound, totally devoid of humor,but very full of defiance. Brand thrust his hands into the pockets ofhis tunic, spread his legs apart, and began to whistle.
* * * * *
A quiver that might have been of anger touched the Rogan leader'srepulsive little mouth. He
glared balefully at the uncowed Earthmenand spoke again, evidently repeating his command. The two turned theirbacks to him to indicate their refusal to obey.
At that, the tall leader pointed to Dex. In an instant three of theguards had wound their double pairs of arms around his strugglingbody. Brand sprang to help him, but a touch of the mysteriousdischarge from the leader's tube sent him writhing to the floor.
"It's no use, Brand," said Dex steadily. He too had stoppedstruggling, and now stood quietly in the slimy coils of his captors'arms. "I might as well go along with them and get it over with. Iprobably won't see you again. Good luck!"
He was borne out of the room. The Rogan leader turned to Brand andspoke.
"He says that if your comrade does not tell him what he wants to know,your turn will come next," sobbed Greca. "Oh! Why does not The GreatWhite One strike these monsters to the dust!"
She ran to Brand and pressed her satiny cheek to his. Then she wasdragged roughly away.
The great door clanged shut. The heavy outer fastenings clicked intoplace. Dex had gone to experience whatever it was that Journeyman andthe rest had experienced in this red hell. And Brand was left behindto reflect on what dread torments this might comprise; and to praydesperately that no matter what might be done to his shrinking body hewould be strong enough to refuse to betray his planet.