by Paul Ernst
CHAPTER VI
_The Inquisition_
Blind, animal fear caught Dex and shook him in its grip. Then ragefilled his heart, driving out the fear as a gale dissipates fog. Withpain-dimmed eyes he glared at the gangling, hateful figure that gazeddown on him with icy eyes. If he could only blast that monstrous,physically feeble but mentally ferocious thing to bits! Annihilate it!Blow it to the four corners of Jupiter! And all the other Rogans withit!
And with this thought he suddenly saw, through the red mists of rage,the shock-tube that was dangling indifferently from the Rogan leader'shand.
Instantly the red mists began to clear away. Another change took placein the tortured lieutenant's mind. The blind hot rage faded into moredeadly, cold wrath. A plan began to bud into thought. It was a futileplan, really. It could not possibly accomplish anything vital. But it_might_ give him a chance for a little revenge before his life wassnuffed out--might give him a chance to strike a blow for the deadJourneyman and the other gallant explorers who had perished here inthis chamber before him.
He closed his eyes to hide the hate and calculation in them. The tallRogan leaned lower over the rack.
"You are ready to do as I command?" he demanded.
"Yes," whispered Dex. "Yes."
In the beautiful Greca's eyes, as she translated his assent, washorror. But then, faintly, her mind caught the thought that laybeneath the Earthman's apparent surrender. She veiled her own eyeswith long lashes, lest they betray the captive's plan to the alertRogan. Her lips moved silently; perhaps she was praying to her GreatWhite One.
* * * * *
"Release him," the Rogan ordered, triumph in his bird-like, shrillvoice. The metal hoops were unfastened. Dex stretched his outragedbody, wincing with the pain of movement; then felt life and strengthreturning to him.
"Come with us to the motor," commanded the Rogan, his dull eyesglinting in anticipation of learning the coveted secret that shouldadd one more planet to the Rogan's tyranny.
Dex walked to the dismantled atomic engine with him. He walked slowly,pretending more stiffness and weakness than he really owned to. No usein letting his captors know that his resilient muscles were so quicklythrowing off the torment of the rack.
As he walked he kept his gaze covertly on that shock-tube that dangledin the leader's grasp. The rest of the guard had none; they had laidtheir weapons down on a far bench on their entrance to the chamber,depending on the one with which their leader was armed.
Eagerly the Rogans crowded around Dex and the motor that had thus farbaffled them. They bent down from their twelve-foot heights to bringtheir staring goggle-eyes closer to the lesson in atomic motive power,till Dex was in a sort of small dome of Rogans, with their long,pipe-like legs forming the wall around him, and their thin torsosinclining forward to make a curved ceiling over him.
The Rogan leader drew Greca within the circle to interpret theEarthman's explanations.
Dex moved a trifle, to bring himself nearer the tall leader. Again heglanced covertly at the shock-tube.
"The first thing to tell about our motor," said Dex, stalling fortime, "is that it utilizes the breaking up of the atom as its sourceof power."
* * * * *
He edged closer to the Rogan leader.
"You see those electrodes?" he said, pointing to two copper castingsin a chamber between the fuel tank and the small but enormouslypowerful turbine that whirled with the released atomic energy. TheRogan leader blinked assent. His small, horrible mouth was pursed withhis concentration of thought.
"The electrodes partially break down the atoms of fuel passing fromthe tank," explained Dex, desperately attempting scientificphraseology for a matter as far over his head as the remote stars. Heraised his hand a trifle, bringing it nearer the Rogan's tube....
"Is that the outlet from the tank?" inquired the Rogan, pointing withthe tube, and so raising it out of Dex's reach.
"Yes," mumbled Dex, sick with disappointment: he'd been on the pointof leaping for the weapon. He sidled close again. Greca bit her lipslest she cry out with suspense.
"The partially disintegrated atoms pass into the turbine chamber," hewent on, "and are there completely broken down by heat, which has beengenerated by the explosive energy of the atoms passing in beforethem."
"I warn you to speak true," said the leader, suddenly removing hisgaze from the specimen motor and staring icily down at Dex. Dex's handdropped abruptly from its place near the tube. Again his fingers hadcome within a foot of it.
* * * * *
"We will get ahead faster," piped the Rogan, an edge of suspicionsounding in his shrill voice, "if I conduct the explanation. I willask questions for you to answer. What is the fuel used?"
"Powdered zinc," Dex answered promptly. No harm in admitting that. TheRogans must already know it; zinc was common to Jupiter, as Earthspectroscopes had showed long since; and they had no doubt analyzed itby now. The chances were that the leader was merely testing him, tosee if he were sincere in his ostensible surrender.
That his guess was right, he read in the fishy, dull eyes. The Roganleader nodded at his answer, and some of the lurking suspicion in hisgaze died down.
"How is it prepared?"
Now this marked the beginning of the end, Dex knew. The preparation ofthe powdered metal was half the secret of atomic power--and Dex hadn'tthe faintest idea what it was! This questions-and-answers affair wasgoing to pin him down in short order!
"How is it prepared?" repeated the Rogan leader inexorably. "Tell us,or--"
But at that instant Dex attained his objective.
Once more his hand had crawled slowly toward the tube--till, oncemore, it was within reach. Then, more bold as his position grew moredesperate, he straightened up--and, with a lightning move, hadwrenched it from the sucker-disk that held it!
He shouted his triumph. He had it! _Now_ let the devils put him backon the torture bed if they could! _Now_ let them try to make himbetray his planet!
* * * * *
There was an alarmed squeak from the Rogan leader, and in an instantthe huge laboratory was in an uproar. The Rogan guards whipped theirhose-like arms toward the Earthman. Dex, with a sweep of his hands,knocked the pipe-stem legs of two of the guards from under them,leaped over their bodies, and stood at bay in a corner--guarding thebench on which the guards had laid their tubes when they filed intothe laboratory.
The air resounded with the shrill calls of the excited Rogans. Thenthey began to close in on him, all the while eyeing the tube in hishand with terror written large on their hideous faces.
Dex's eyes blazed with the light of vengeful exultation. For the deathof Journeyman and the rest, for the coming inevitable death of himselfand Brand, he was going to pay--at least in part--with the capturedtube of death in his hand! It was a lovely thought, and for a fewseconds he delayed acting in order to savor it.
Then, with a smile of pure happiness, he leveled the tube at thenearest Rogan in order to shrivel him to nothingness as he had seenthe slave shrivelled in the street.
The Rogan did not fall! Full in the face of the death tube he teeteredforward, his arms reaching savagely toward the Earthman.
Dex stared incredulously. Cold fear crept into his heart. He pointedthe tube more accurately, and squeezed harder on the coil handle.Still nothing happened. The Rogans warily drew closer.
* * * * *
Perspiration began to trickle down Dex's cheeks. In God's name, whydidn't the tube work? He had thought all he had to do was point it andsqueeze down on the handle. But evidently there was more to the trickthan that!
He groaned. He had staged all this elaborate play for a weapon asuseless to his untrained mind as one of Earth's explosive guns, withthe safety-lock clamped on, would have been to an abysmal Venusiansavage!
By now the nearest Rogan was within reaching distance of him. One
ofits two pairs of slimy arms uncoiled toward him. The other pairstrained to reach around him and get to the weapons on the bench byhis side.
With a cry, Dex dashed the useless shock-tube down on the reachingarms. As long as he didn't know how to work it anyway, he might aswell use it as a club.
The Rogan squeaked with pain; the arms recoiled. Dex jerked the tubeback over his shoulder for another blow....
There was a shriek from the doomed wretch fastened to the metal plate.The slave that had been tortured before Dex's eyes as an objectlesson! He had been returned to consciousness a short time since, andhad been writhing and shuddering against the plate.
Dex flashed a glance at him over his shoulder, as he shrieked, andcried aloud himself at what he saw.
* * * * *
The tortured slave was rapidly disappearing! Another shriek left hislips, to be broken off halfway. In an instant nothing was left of thestruggling body but a wisp of greasy black smoke!
Dex stared stupidly at the tube in his hand. Then, as a squeak ofagony sounded from a Rogan in front of him, his mind grasped what hadhappened. Somehow its mechanism had been jarred into functioning whenhe dashed it against the groping arm. In some way its death dealingpower had been unleashed. With a cry of exultation, Dex began to useit!
The Rogan in front of him, squealing, collapsed on the floor,dwindling swiftly into nothingness. Dex turned the mysterious deathagainst another teetering creature. It too went up in oleaginoussmoke.
The Rogan leader came next. Dex whirled the tube in his direction, andsaw him go down. Then he sprang to annihilate still another grotesquemonster who had almost reached the bench on which were the othertubes. He shouted and raved as this fourth Rogan crumbled. Torturehim, would they! Plan to capture Earth, would they! He'd kill off thewhole damned population with this tube!
The Rogan survivors, squeaking in panic, gave over their attempts toretrieve the tubes. They dove for various hiding places--underbenches, behind retorts, anywhere to get away from the terror runningamuck in their midst. And after them sprang Dex, mad with his suddenmiraculous success, to ferret them out one by one and blow them intohell with their own horrible death-engine.
* * * * *
In his ecstasy of rage, Dex overlooked the Rogan leader. He had seenthat attenuated monstrosity go down, and had assumed he was dead. Butsuch was not the case. In the corner Dex had vacated when he sprangafter the fleeing guard, the tall leader twisted feebly and sat up.
One of his four arms was missing, a smoking stump showing where theannihilating ray from the tube had blasted it off at the shoulder. Buthe was far from being dead. With cold purpose in his great staringeyes, he moved snakily toward the bench Dex had now left unguarded.
The Earthman got another Rogan; whirled to track down still another.Promptly the leader sank motionless to the floor. The Rogan leadercontinued his crawling. He reached the bench, fumbled up and along itssurface for the nearest tube.
Dex, unconscious of the sure fate gathering behind him to strike himdown, dashed past a great glass tank behind which Greca was huddlingin mortal fear, and charged down on two more of the squeaking guards.
Then, suddenly, some sixth sense warned him that something was wrong.He whirled toward the corner he had left.
The Rogan leader, two of his surviving arms propping feebly againstthe bench, was pointing a shock-tube squarely at him!
* * * * *
Dex fell to the floor to escape the first discharge of the tube, andleveled his own. He felt the thing grow hot in his hand, saw ablinding blue-white fire leap into being in the space between them asthe rays from the two tubes met and absorbed each other. He shifted,to get out of the line and blast the creature he had too hastilyreckoned as dead. But he was not quick enough. A fraction before him,the Rogan leader shifted.
Dex felt a terrible burning sensation all over his body, as the rayfrom his tube met the conflicting ray less squarely, and allowed alittle of it to reach him. He shrieked as the slave had shrieked whenhe felt the annihilating current from the plate sweeping through hisbody.
A black fog seemed to close in around the Earthman's senses. Hecrashed to the floor, with a glimpse of the leering triumph on theRogan's face as the last picture to stamp itself in his failingconsciousness.
The tall Rogan, obviously in great agony from his blasted arm,squeaked a faint command. The four guards who were left issuedfearfully from their hiding places and came to him.
He pointed his tube at Dex Harlow, lying unconscious on the floor.There he hesitated an instant, his soft little mouth slobbering in hisrage and pain. Then he let the tube sink slowly off its line.
He gave another command. The four guards picked the Earthman up andcarried him to the metal torture-plate on which the slave had met hisdeath. The tall leader's eyes gleamed with vicious hatred as the limpbody was fastened to the metal.
Mouthing and squealing with the pain of his seared arm-stump, hewobbled toward the lever, a mere turn of which would readily convertthe plate into a bed of agony.