by Paul Ernst
CHAPTER VII
_In the Power-House_
Alone in the prison room, after Dex had been dragged away to besubjected to the Rogan inquisition, Brand gnawed at his fingers andpaced distractedly up and down the stone flooring. For a while he hadno coherent thought at all; only the realization that his turn camenext, and that the Rogans would leave no refinement of torment untriedin their effort to wring from him the secret of the atomic engine.
He went to the window, and absent-mindedly stared out. The whininghum from the great domed building off to the right, like thehigh-pitched droning of a swarm of gargantuan bees, came to his ears.He listened more intently, and leaned out of the window to look at thebuilding.
Under that dome, it came to him again, was, in all probability, themainspring of the Rogan mechanical power. If only he could get inthere and look around! He might do some important damage; he might beable to harass the enemy materially before the time came for him todie.
He leaned farther out of the window, and examined the hundred feet orso of sheer wall beneath him. He saw, scrutinizing it intently, thatthe stone blocks that composed it were not smooth cut, but rough hewn,with the marks of the cutters' chisels plainly in evidence. Also therewas a considerable ridge between each layer of blocks where theRogans' mortar had squeezed out in the process of laying the wall.
Never in sanity would a man have thought of the thing Brand consideredthen. To attempt to clamber down that blank wall, with only the slightroughness of the protruding layers of mortar to hang on to, waspalpable suicide!
* * * * *
Brand shrugged. He observed that to a man already condemned to death,the facing of probable suicide shouldn't mean much.
With scarcely an increase in the beating of his heart, he swung oneleg out over the broad sill. If he fell, he escaped an infinitelyworse death; if he didn't fall, he might somehow win his way into thatdomed building whence the hum came.
Cautiously, clutching at the rough stone with finger tips that in amoment or two became raw and bleeding masses, he began his slowdescent. As he worked his way down, he slanted to the right, towardthe near wall of the retaining yard whose end was formed by the roundstructure that was his goal.
Beneath him and to the left the broad street swarmed with figures: thetall ones of the Rogans and the shorter, sturdier ones of slaves. Anyone of those dozens of grotesque pedestrians might glance up, see him,and pick him off with the deadly tubes. Under his fingers the mortarcrumbled and left him hanging, more than once, by one hand. For fullyfive minutes his life hung by a thread apt to be severed at any time.But--he made it. Helped by the decreased gravity of the red spot, andreleased from inhibiting fear by the fact that he was already,figuratively, a dead man, he performed the incredible.
With a last slithering step downward, he landed lightly on the nearwall of the enclosure, and started along its broad top toward hisobjective.
Now he was in plain sight of any one who might be looking out thewindows of the tower building or from the dome ahead of him; but thiswas a chance he had to take, and at least he was concealed from theswarms in the street. Making no effort to hide himself by crawlingalong the top of the wall, he straightened up and began to run towardthe giant dome.
* * * * *
Hardly had he gone a dozen steps when he suddenly understood themeaning of the high-walled enclosure to his right!
Off in a far corner rose a slate colored mound that at first glance hehad taken for a great heap of inanimate dirt. The mound began to movetoward him--and metamorphosed into an animal, a thing that made Brandblink his eyes to see if he were dreaming, and then stop, appalled,to look at it.
He saw a body that dwarfed the high retaining walls to comparativeinsignificance. It had a tree-like tail that dragged behind it; and athirty-foot, serpentine neck at the end of which was a head like a sugarbarrel that split into cavernous jaws lined with backward-pointingteeth. Two eyes were set wide apart in the enormous head, eyes that weredead and cold and dull, yet glinting with senseless ferocity. It was thesort of thing one sees in delirium.
With increasing energy the creature made for him, till finally it wasapproaching his sector of the wall at a lumbering run that was rapidfor all its ungainliness.
It was apparent at a glance that the snaky neck, perched atop thelofty shoulder structure, would raise the head with its gaping jaws tohis level on the wall! Brand ran. And after him thudded the giganticlizard, its neck arching up and along the wall to reach him.
A scant five yards ahead of the snapping jaws, Brand reached his goal,the dome, and clambered over its curved, metal roof away from themonster's maw.
He stopped to pant for breath and wipe the sweat from his streamingface. "Thank God it didn't get me," he breathed, looking back at thebellowing terror that had pursued him. "Wonder why it's there? It'stoo ferocious to be tamed and used in any way: it must be kept as athreat to hold the slaves in hand. It certainly looks well fed...."
He shuddered; then he began to explore the dome of the building for ameans of entrance.
* * * * *
There was no opening in the roof. A solid sheet of reddish metal, likea titanic half-eggshell, it glittered under him in an unbroken piece.
He crept down its increasingly precipitous edge till he reached a sortof cornice that formed a jutting circle of stone around it. There heleaned far over and saw, about ten feet below him, a round openinglike a big port-hole. From it were streaming waves of warm, foul air,from which he judged it to be a ventilator outlet.
He scrambled over the edge of the cornice, hung at arm's length, andswung himself down into the opening. And there, perched high up underthe roof, he looked down at an enigmatic, eery scene.
That the structure was indeed a strange sort of power-house wasinstantly made evident. But what curious, mysterious, and yetbewilderingly simple machinery it held!
In the center was a titanic coil of reddish metal formed by a singlecable nearly a yard through. Around this, at the four corners of thecompass, were set coils that were identical in structure but a triflesmaller. From the smaller coils to the larger streamed, unceasingly,blue waves of light like lightning bolts.
Along a large arc of the wall was a stone slab set with an endlessarray of switches and insulated control-buttons. Gauges and indicatorsof all kinds, whose purpose could not even be guessed at, were linedabove and below, all throbbing rhythmically to the leap of theelectric-blue rays between the monster coils.
* * * * *
Almost under Brand's perch a great square beam of metal came throughthe building wall from outside, to be split into multitudinous smallerbeams that were hooked up with the bases of the coils. Across fromhim, disappearing out through the opposite wall, was an identicalbeam.
"The terminals for the metal plate system that extends over the wholered spot," murmured Brand. "This building _is_ important. But what canI do to throw sand in the gears before I'm caught and killed...?"
He surveyed the great round room below him more thoroughly. Now hesaw, right in the center of the huge control board, a solitary lever,that seemed a sort of parent to all the other levers and switches. Itwas flanked by a perfect army of gauges and indicators; and wascovered by a glass bell which was securely bolted to the rock slab.
"That looks interesting," Brand told himself. "I'd like to see thatcloser, if I can climb down from here without being observed....Why"--he broke off--"where is everybody!"
For the first time, in the excitement and concentration of hispurpose, the emptiness of the place struck him. There was no sign oflight in the great building--no workmen or slaves anywhere. There wasjust the great coils, with the streamers of blue light bridging themand emitting the high-pitched, monotonous hum audible outside thedome, and the complicated control board with its quivering indicatorneedles and mysterious levers. That was all.
"Must be out to lunch," muttere
d Brand, his eyes going fascinatedlytoward that solitary, parent lever under its glass bell. "Well, itgives me a chance to try some experiments, anyway."
* * * * *
It was about fifty feet from his perch to the floor; but a few feet toone side was a metal beam that extended up to help support the trussedweight of the roof. He jumped for this, and quickly slid down it.
He started on a run for the control board; but almost immediately hestopped warily to listen: it seemed to him that he had caught,faintly, the squeaking, high tones of Rogan conversation.
Miraculously, the sound seemed to come from a blank wall to his left.He crept forward to investigate....
The mystery was solved before he had gone very far. There was anopening in the wall leading off to an annex of some kind outside thedome building. The opening was concealed by a set-back, so that atfirst glance it had seemed part of the wall itself. From this openingdrifted the chatter of Rogans.
Brand stole closer, finally venturing to peer into the room beyondfrom an angle where he himself could not be seen. And he found thathis whimsical reference to "lunch" had contained a ghastly element offact!
In that annex were several dozen of the teetering, attenuated Rogans,and an equal number of slaves. And the relation of the slaves and theRogans was one that made Brand's skin crawl.
Each Rogan had stripped the tunic from the chest of his slave. Now, asBrand watched, each drew a keen blade from his belt, and made ashallow gash in the shrinking flesh. There were a few stifledscreams--some of the slaves were women--but for the most part theslashing was endured in stoical silence. When red drops began to oozeforth, the Rogans stooped and applied their horrible little mouths tothe incisions....
"The slimy devils!" Brand whispered hoarsely, at sight of thatdreadful feeding. "The inhuman, monstrous vermin!"
But now one or two of the Rogans had begun to utter squeaks ofsatiation; and Brand hastened away from there and toward the controlboard again. He hadn't an idea of what he might accomplish when hereached it; he didn't know but that a touch of the significant lookingparent-lever might blast him to bits; but he did know that he wasgoing to raise absolute hell with something, somewhere, if he possiblycould.
* * * * *
Swiftly he approached the great master-lever, protected by its bell ofglass. (At least it looked like glass, for it was crystal clear andreflected gleamingly the blue light from the nearby coils). He tappedit experimentally with his knuckles....
At once pandemonium reigned in the great vaulted building. There was asiren-like screaming from a device he noticed for the first timeattached under the domed roof. A clanging alarm split the air fromhalf a dozen gongs set around the upper walls.
Squealing shouts sounded behind Brand. He whirled, and saw the Rogans,interrupted in their terrible meal, pouring in from the annex andracing toward him. Rage and fear distorted their hideous faces as theypointed first to the big lever and then at the escaped Earthman. Theyredoubled their efforts to get at him, their long unsteady legscovering the distance in great bounds.
Brand swore. Was he to be caught again before he had accomplished acertain thing? When he had already managed to win clear to hisobjective?
He hammered at the glass bell with his fists, but realized with thefirst blow that he was only wasting time trying to crack itbare-handed. He glanced quickly about and saw a metal bar propped upagainst the control board near him.
* * * * *
He sprang for it, grasped it as a club, and returned to the glassbell. Raising his arms high, he brought the thick metal bar down onthe glass with all his strength.
With a force that almost wrenched his arms from their sockets, the barrebounded from the glass bell, leaving it uncracked.
"Unbreakable!" groaned Brand.
Desperately he tried again, whirling the bar high over his head andbringing it smashing down. The result was the same as before as far asbreaking the bell was concerned. But--a little trickle of crushed rockcame from around the bolts in the slab to which the bell was fastened.
A third time be brought the bar down. The glass bell sagged a bit swayfrom the slab....
He had no chance for more assaults on it. The nearest Rogans hadleaped for him. Slimy arms were coiling around him, while theloathsome sucker-disks tore at his unprotected face and throat.
Savagely Brand lashed out with the bar. It caved in a pair of thelong, skinny legs, bringing a bloated round head down within reach. Hesmashed it with the bar, exulting grimly as the blow crumpled bone andflesh almost down to the little mouth which was yet carmine from itsrecent feeding.
The process seemed a sound one to Brand, unable as he was to reach theRogans' heads that towered six feet above his own. Methodically,swinging the bar with the weight of his body behind it, he repeatedthe example. First a crash of the bar against a pair of legs, then thecrushing in of the Rogan's head when he toppled with agonized squealsto the floor.
Again and again he crushed the life out of a Rogan with his one-twoswing of the deadly bar. They were thinning down, now. They werewavering in their charges against the comparatively insignificantbeing from another planet who was defending himself so fiercely.
* * * * *
Finally one of their number turned and ran toward an exit, waving hisfour arms and adding his high-pitched alarms to the incessant ringingof the gongs and shrieks of the warning siren up under the roof. Therest rushed the Earthman in a body.
Steadily, almost joyfully, Brand fought on. He had expected to beannihilated by one of the Rogan shock-tubes long before now; but asyet there was no sign of any. Either these Rogan workmen were notprivileged to carry the terrible things, or they were too occupied tothink of going and getting them; anyhow, Brand was left free to wieldhis bar and continue crushing out the lives of the two-legged verminthat attacked him.
With almost a shock of surprise, he saw finally that he had batteredtheir number down to three. At that he took the offensive himself. Herammed the bluntly pointed end of the bar almost through one writhingtorso, broke the back of a second with a whistling blow, and trippedand exterminated the third almost in as many seconds. The creatures,without their death-tubes, were as helpless as crippled rats!
Panting, he turned again toward the loosened glass bell, and batteredat it with the precious bar. Gradually the bolts that held it to thestone slab were wrenched out, till only one supported it. But at thispoint, from half a dozen set-back doorways, streams of infuriatedRogans began pouring into the building and toward him.
The one that had fled had come back with help.