by Paul Ernst
CHAPTER V
_The Torture Chamber_
Swiftly Dex was carried down the long ramp to the ground floor, thearms of his captors gripping him with painful tightness. Heading theprocession was the immensely tall, gangling Rogan leader, clutchingGreca by the wrist and dragging her indifferently along to be hismouthpiece.
They did not stop at the street level; they continued on down anotherramp, around a bend, descending an even steeper incline toward thebowels of Jupiter. Their descent ended at last before a huge metalbarrier which, at a signal from the leader, drew smoothly up into theceiling to disclose a gigantic, red-lit chamber underlying thefoundations of the building.
In fear and awe, Dex gazed around that huge room.
It resembled in part a nightmare rearrangement of such a laboratory asmight be found on Earth; and in part a torture chamber such as themost ferocious of savages might have devised had they beenscientifically equipped to add contrivances of supercivilization tothe furthering of their primitive lust for cruelty.
There were great benches--head-high to the Earthman--to accommodatethe height of the Rogan workmen. There were numberless metalinstruments, and glass coils, and enormous retorts; and in one corneran orange colored flame burnt steadily on a naked metal plate, seemingto have no fuel or other source of being.
There was a long rack of cruelly pointed and twisted instruments.Under this was a row of long, delicate pincers, with coils on thehandles to indicate that they might be heated to fiendish precision oftemperatures. There were gleaming metal racks with calibratedslide-rods and spring dials to denote just what pull was being exertedon whatever unhappy creature might be stretched taut on them. Therewere tiny cones of metal whose warped, baked appearance testified thatthey were little portable furnaces that could be placed on any desiredportion of the anatomy, to slowly bake the selected disk of fleshbeneath them.
* * * * *
Dex shuddered; and a low moan came from Greca, whose clear blue eyeshad rested on the contents of this vast room before in her capacity ashostage and interpreter for the inhuman Rogans.
And now another sense of Dex's began to register perception on hisbrain.
A peculiar odor came to his nostrils. It was a musky, fetid odor, likethat to be smelled in an animal cage; but it was sharper, more acridthan anything he had ever smelled on Earth. It smelled--ah, he hadit!--_reptilian_. As though somewhere nearby a dozen titanic serpentswere coiled ready to spring!
Looking about, Dex saw a six-foot square door of bars in one wall ofthe laboratory--like the barred entrance to a prison cell. It was fromthe interstices of this door that the odor seemed to emanate; but hehad no chance to make sure, for now the Rogan leader approached him.
"I will first show you," he said, through his mouthpiece, Greca, "whathappens to those who oppose our orders. We have a slave who tried torun away into the surrounding jungles three suns ago...."
A man was dragged into the chamber. He was slightly taller and morestockily muscled than an Earthman might be; but otherwise, in facialconformation and general appearance, he might have come here straightfrom New York City. Dex felt a great pang of sympathy for him. He wasso plainly one of humankind, despite the fact that he had been born ona sphere four hundred million miles from Dex's.
The fellow was paralyzed with horror. His eyes, wide and glazed,darted about the torture room like those of a trapped animal. And yethe made no move to break away from the clutch of the two Rogans whoheld him. He knew he was helpless, that wild-eyed glance told Dex.Knew it so thoroughly that not even his wildest terror could inspirehim to try to make a break for freedom, or strike back at theimplacable Rogan will.
* * * * *
At a nod from the leader, the man was stripped to the waist. Here Dexstarted in amazement. The man's broad chest was seamed andcrisscrossed by literally hundreds of tiny lateral scars, some longhealed, and some fresh incisions.
He was dragged to a metal plate set upright in the wall, and securedto it by straps of metal. Evidently the miserable being knew what thisportended, for he began to scream--a monotonous, high-pitched shriekthat didn't stop till he was out of breath.
The Rogan leader stared at him icily, then depressed a small lever setin the wall beside him. The plate against which the captive was boundbegan to shine softly with a blue light. The slave twisted in hisbonds, screaming again. Rhythmic shudders jerked at his limbs. Hislips turned greenish white. The shudders grew more pronounced till itseemed as though he were afflicted with a sort of horrible St. Vitusdance. Then the tall Rogan pulled back the lever. The slave hung awayfrom his supporting shackles, limp and unconscious.
Dex moistened his lips. An electric shock? No, it was something moreterrible than that. Some other manifestation of the magnetic power theRogans had harnessed--a current, perhaps, that depolarized partly theatoms of the body structure? He could only guess. But the convulsedface of the unfortunate victim showed that the torment, whatever itwas, was devilish to the last degree!
"That will be the next to the last fate reserved for you," the Roganinformed Dex, through Greca. "Death follows soon after that--but nottoo soon for you to see and feel what waits for you behind the barreddoor!" And he nodded toward the cage-entrance affair, from which camethe musky, reptilian stench.
"Now that you have seen something of what will happen to you if yourefuse to tell us what we want to know, we shall proceed," said theleader.
* * * * *
He pointed toward one of the gargantuan work benches, and two of theRogans slid down from it a contrivance that looked familiar to Dex. Aninstant's scrutiny showed him why it was familiar: it was a partlydismantled atomic motor.
In spite of the ordeal that faced him, Dex felt a thrill of elationas he looked at the motor. In its scattered state, it told a mutestory: a story of long and intensive study by the Rogans, which hadyielded them no results! Only too obviously, the intricate secret ofatomic power had not let itself be solved.
On the heels of the elation that filled his heart, came a sickeningrealization of his dilemma. He could not have told the Rogans whatthey wanted to know even if he had wished to! He himself didn't knowthe principles of the atomic engine. As Brand had remarked, he was nospace navigator; he was simply a prosaic lieutenant, competent only atfighting, not at all versed in science.
He knew, though, that it would do no good to assert his ignorance tothe Rogans. They simply wouldn't believe him.
"You will rebuild this engine for us," ordered the tall leader,"showing us the purpose of each part, and how the power is extractedfrom the fuel. After that you will set it running for us, and instructus in its control."
Dex braced himself. His final moment had come.
By way of indicating his refusal he looked away from the dismantledmotor and said nothing. The Rogan repeated his command. Dex made nomove. Then the leader acted.
He said something to the Rogan guards who had been standing by allthis while, alert against an outbreak from their prisoner. Dex wascaught up, carried to one of the metal racks, and thrown down on itscalibrated bed. Loops of metal, like handcuffs, were snapped aroundhis wrists and ankles; and a metal hoop was clamped over his throat,pinning him to the torture rack. Resistance would have been useless,and Dex submitted quietly.
* * * * *
The contrivance, with him on it, was wheeled toward the barred door.It was halted at a spot marked on the floor, about thirty feet fromthe bars. The Rogan leader stepped alongside the rack, with Grecatrembling beside him.
Dex closed his eyes for a moment, grimly marshaling strength of willto go through the trial that was just beginning.
The Rogan leader depressed another lever in the rock wall. The barreddoor slid slowly up, to reveal the receding darknesses of some greatcave, or room, that adjoined the laboratory. Dex rolled his eyes sothat he could watch the doorway; and, in a cold perspiration, waitedfor whatever mi
ght appear.
It was not long in coming!
The reptilian smell suddenly grew stronger. There was a booming hiss,a savage bellowing. A clattering of vast scales rattled out as somebody weighing many tons was dragged over rock flooring. Then, beforeDex's staring eyes appeared a huge, wedge-shaped head, at sight ofwhich he bit his lips to keep from crying aloud.
Often enough he had seen one of those terrific heads looming in thefog of the northern hemisphere of Jupiter. He did not know the genusof the vast monster that bore it, but he did know it for the fiercestof the lizard giants that roamed the Jovian jungles. A creature largerthan a terrestrial whale, with great long neck and heavy long taildragging yards behind it, it would find the puny bulk of a man nothingbut a morsel in its jaws!
Again the gigantic thing hissed and bellowed. And then its huge headcame through the six-foot door and its neck uncoiled to send thegaping jaws within a foot of Dex. There it struggled to reach him,prevented by the small doorway that restrained the bulk of itsenormous body, its head only inches away from the cleverly measuredspot to which the metal rack had been wheeled.
* * * * *
Dex stared, hypnotized, into the dull, stony eyes of the beast,gasping for breath in the stench of its exhalations. The jaws snappedshut, fanning his cheek. He fought for self-control. Steady! Steady!The slimy Rogans had no intention of feeding him to the thing yet. Nottill they had made more determined efforts to wring from him thesecret of the motor. They were just prefacing actual physical torturewith hellish mental torture, that was all.
That he was right in his guess was proved in a few moments. He heard alouder hiss from the great lizard so near him. Opening his eyes, hesaw the Rogan leader in the process of forcing the serpentine neck towithdraw foot by foot back into the doorway, using his shock-tube as asort of distant prod.
The monster swayed its ugly flat head back and forth, hissingdeafeningly at the sting of the tube, now and again lunging with itsvast unseen body at the too narrow entrance that kept it from enteringthe laboratory. Dex could hear the foundation walls of the buildingcreak at the onslaught of that tremendous weight.
If it would only break through! he thought savagely. But it wasn'tgoing to. In a short while it was cowed by the deadly tube, andwithdrew its head awkwardly from the chamber. The barred door sliddown into place: and the Rogan leader once more turned his attentionto his prisoner.
"You will be wheeled within reach of the creature as the last step ofyour fate," Dex was informed. "Meanwhile, we shall start withsomething less deadly...."
A cogged wheel beside him was turning a notch. Dex felt the slidingbed of the rack crawl slightly under him. Intolerable tension wassuddenly placed on his arms and legs. The leader stared at a springdial; and moved the wheel another notch. The rack expanded again,stretching Dex's body till his joints cracked.
"You will tell us what we want to know," said the Rogan, glaringcoldly down at him.
Dex compressed his lips stubbornly. He couldn't tell them if he wantedto, and, by God, he wouldn't if he could.
Another notch, the wheel was turned; and in spite of himself a groanescaped Dex's lips. One more notch, while the metal slide-rods beneathhim lengthened a fraction of an inch....