by S. P. Meek
CHAPTER VII
_The Deluge_
Few of the Sons of God and none of the Nepthalim, save Damis, couldmatch the brute strength of the Viceroy. As Damis rushed, Glavoursidestepped and caught the Nepthalim's arm in a bone-crushing grasp.Damis made no effort to break the grip, but with his free hand hegripped the wrist of Glavour's crippled arm. With a quick effort hetwisted it and the Viceroy gave a shriek of pain as the newly knit bonegave way and his arm fell, dangling and useless. Damis caught his soundarm in a powerful grip and twisted slowly on his wrist. GraduallyGlavour's fingers relaxed and Damis' arm was free. His hands shot up andgripped Glavour about the throat just in time to shut off the cry forhelp which was forming on his thick lips. The two giants strove silentlyfor mastery in the struggle which meant life for the victor and deathfor the vanquished. The expression in Damis' eyes was one of confidentmastery, but the face of the Jovian showed something that was strangelyakin to fear. Even when he was whole, Glavour had found that hisstrength was no match for the power that lay in Damis' graceful limbs.With one of the Viceroy's arms useless, the issue was a foregoneconclusion.
Glavour's face gradually grew purple and his eyes started out of theirsockets. His tongue protruded horribly from his opened jaws. He grewweaker until it was only Damis' grip which kept him from falling to theground. Then Damis broke his silence and spoke slowly and distinctlyinto the dying Viceroy's ears.
* * * * *
"I was loyal to you, Glavour," he said, "despite your brutality andsensuality which sickened me, until you strove to add to your alreadycrowded seraglio the maiden whom I had chosen. As a Nepthalim, youthought I had no right which you need respect and I would tamely submitto whatever you chose to do. You forgot that in my veins run the bestblood of Earth and the proudest blood of Jupiter. Hortan was a Mildashof Jupiter, a rank to which you could never aspire. I restricted yourefforts and proved to you a thing which I long have known, that, man toman, I am your superior.
"Even then you might have won back my loyalty had I not learned how myfather and my mother came to their death. It has always been given outthat they went to Jupiter on a summons from Tubain, but I know thetruth. They died under the knife of a cowardly assassin, under yourknife, Glavour. Then it was that I swore that it would be my hand thatwould strike you down. When you raised your hand against me, you wereViceroy of the Earth and your power was secure, for the conspiracyagainst you had no hope of success. What is the situation now? You arebeleaguered in your palace, holding only the ground your few feebleweapons cover. Even this ground you hold only on the sufferance of theEarthmen. Listen to what I say, for I wish your last moments to bebitter ones. On the hill east of the city sit two weapons of a type anda power unknown to both Earth and Jupiter. They are the deadly black rayweapons of Mars. Ah, you tremble! You have good cause. One of them istrained on this palace while the other searches the heavens, ready toblast into powder the fleet of Tubain when it appears. And who, thinkyou, brought this about, Glavour? It was I, Damis, the Nepthalim, the'half-breed bastard' whom you despised. My only regret is that I cannotsend you to the twilight of the gods as you sent that otherarch-traitor, Havenner. Are your last moments pleasant, Glavour? I amincreasing the pressure slowly so that you will have time to think, tothink of the Earthmen you have given to sacrifice and torture, to thinkof your ruler, Hortan, dying under your knife, to think of the doomwhich is about to overcome your race. Think, Glavour, for your time forthought is short."
* * * * *
As he finished, Damis thrust back on the Viceroy's chin with a suddeneffort. There was a dull crack as Glavour's neck broke and Damis gentlylowered the inert bulk to the floor. He felt a touch on his arm as hestraightened up. He whirled like a cat and Lura shrank back with afrightened gesture. Damis opened his arms and in an instant theEarth-girl was folded in them.
"Is my father safe?" was her first question.
"Safer by far than we are," exclaimed Damis with a sudden pang ofanxiety. He glanced at the time-recording device on the wall.Three-quarters of an hour had passed since he had first entered theViceregal palace. If the estimates of Tubain's arrival which he hadheard were correct, the Jovian fleet should be almost most overhead."Come," he cried to Lura, "we have no time to lose if we escape beforethe palace and all in it are destroyed. Where did Havenner land hisship?"
"In the yard west of the palace," she replied.
"Pray that it is still there," said Damis. "We can reach it through thepath by which I entered this room. Come quickly."
With Lura at his heels, he passed through the rent in the tapestry andentered the secret passage through the walls. The way twisted and turnedinterminably, but finally he paused before a door. Before opening it heslid back a panel which opened a peep-hole and looked out.
"The ship is there," he whispered in a voice of relief. "There is onlyone guard over it that I can see. Why didn't I think to bring Glavour'sweapons? I'll have to try to catch him by surprise. When I open thedoor, run straight for the space ship as though you were trying toescape from me. Don't try to dodge the guard, keep right on for theship. As soon as I overpower the guard, get in the ship and hold yourhand on the starting lever. When I get on board, throw in the power at alow rate. We don't want to rise rapidly enough to get out of easycontrol. Do you understand?"
"Yes, Damis," she whispered.
* * * * *
He watched until a sudden shout drew the attention of the sentrymomentarily away from the ship he was guarding. A confused sound ofcheering came from the palace and the sentry looked toward the westernheavens. A moment of gazing and he raised his voice in a raucous shoutof joy. Instantly Damis swung open the door.
Lura sped out like a frightened deer with Damis in close pursuit. Theattention of the sentry was fixed on some distant object in the sky andhe did not see the oncoming pair until Lura was only a few yards fromhim. The sound of her footsteps attracted his attention and he glanceddown at her. An expression of surprise came over his heavy features andhe reached for a weapon. His gesture was never finished, for Damis' fistcaught him under the ear and he dropped in his tracks. Damis looked inthe direction in which the sentry had been staring and a cry broke fromhis lips.
"The fleet of Tubain!" he cried.
A thousand yards in the air and a scant five miles to the west was aclump of half a dozen Jovian space flyers. Massed behind them were ahundred more. They were approaching with tremendous velocity.
Damis gave a mighty bound and leaped through the airlock of the ship.Hardly had he cleared the door than Lura pulled down the starting lever.The ship flew up from the ground. Hardly had it left its ways than amomentary flash came from the hill east of the palace. The air grewblack around them and a cold as of interstellar space penetrated theirvery bones. In an instant the ship had flashed up into the sun above thezone of influence of the Martian weapon. The shouting from the palacewas suddenly stilled. Damis looked down, but nothing could be seen savea pall of intense blackness over the ground where the building stood.
"The port motor, Lura!" cried Damis. The Jovian fleet was approaching sorapidly that a collision with the nearest flyer seemed inevitable. Therewas a roar from the air as Lura threw in the port blast with its maximumpower. Damis was hurled against the side of the ship.
* * * * *
From the hill where the Martian weapons had been placed came a secondflash of light and a beam of jetty blackness shot through the air. Anedge of it brushed the ship for an instant and Lura stiffened. Aterrible cold bit through the flyer and the side where the Martian rayhad touched crumpled into powder. The ship sped on, and the friction ofthe air and the bright rays of the sun dissipated the extreme cold.Through the terrific storm which was raging, the black ray stabbed againand again. Back and forth it played and ship after ship of the Jovianswas momentarily caught in the beam. When the beam passed on th
ere wasnothing left of the ship save a cloud of dust which the terrific winddissipated in all directions.
Damis glanced at the Earth below him. It seemed to be flying past theship at a velocity which he could hardly comprehend. He made his wayagainst the pressure of the movement to the control levers and strove tocheck the speed. As the Earth ceased to revolve beneath them, the windrose to a terrible force.
"What has happened, Damis?" shrieked Lura in his ear.
"I don't know," he shouted in reply. "I am trying to keep away from theneighborhood of the palace for a while until the Jovian fleet isdestroyed. Toness and your father might not be able to tell us from oneof Tubain's ships and they might turn the ray on us."
* * * * *
He bent over the control levers of the ship, but they refused to obeyhis touch. The stern motor still roared with enough force to keep themthree thousand feet above the ground, but none of the side motorsresponded to the controls. The ship was helpless and was tossed about, aplaything of the terrific wind which howled through the heavens. Damiswatched the ground below them.
"Look, Lura!" he cried.
They swept over the site of the palace. The black ray was no longerplaying on it, but the whole palace glistened like crystal.
"What is it?" she asked.
"Frost!" he shouted. "The Martian weapon did its work well. Everythingin that palace is frozen. In the name of Tubain!"
The Jovian ejaculation had burst from his lips, unbidden, at the sightwhich met his gaze. Racing over the land was a solid wall of water,hundreds of feet high and moving with enormous speed. On toward thepalace it swept. Below they could see the Earthmen on the hill strivingto fly, but there was no place of safety. The oncoming wall of water washigher by a hundred feet than the top of the hill and it was the highestbit of land for many miles.
Nearer and nearer came the water until with a roar and a crash whichthey could plainly hear in the crippled space ship, it swept over thehill and the palace, burying them under a hundred feet of brine.
"Father!" cried Lura in anguish.
Damis made his way across the ship and folded her in his arms.
"He was chosen as one of the lives needed to buy the freedom of theEarth," he murmured to her. "It is hard, for I loved him as a father;but it was the end which he would have chosen. He died at the head ofhis followers battling for freedom."
* * * * *
"What happened, Damis?" asked Lura an hour later as she looked down onthe seething tumult of water under them.
"As nearly as I can figure out, the Jovian fleet approached the palacefrom the west at a low elevation. In order to destroy them, we could notuse the Martian weapon normal to the Earth's surface as they commandedus, but were forced to use it tangentially. The enormous counterreaction to the stream of force of almost incredible intensity which wasshot at Tubain's flyers, had to be absorbed in some way. The weaponcould not take it up as it was anchored to the center of gravity of theearth. As a result, the force was translated into one of increasedrotation. The Earth must be spinning on its axis at fully twice itsformer rate. Both the air and the water had too much inertia to followthe accelerated motion of the land, so the wind blew a gale and theoceans left their beds and swept over the land. Everything must havebeen swept to destruction before this flood."
"And all our labor and sacrifice has been useless," cried Lura. "Wehave freed a world at the cost of the lives of its inhabitants."
"The world is not lost, sweetheart," he cried as he clasped her to him."The floods will not have overwhelmed the mountains and some men andanimals will have escaped. The waters will subside in a few weeks asthey take up the new rotation of the Earth. By His will, we are sparedfor the labor of building a new world. As soon as the land again appearsabove the waters, we will land and assemble those who have been spared.The fleet of Jupiter has been destroyed and we need fear no fresh attackfor ages, perhaps never. Unhampered, we will build a new world and tryto avoid the mistakes of the old one.
"Look, Damis!" exclaimed Lura in a hushed tone.
From the spray and mist below them leaped a living bridge of coloredlight. Above the sun it arced its way into the heavens in the directionin which they knew Mars lay.
"It is His promise," whispered Damis reverently, "that henceforth theplanets will live in peace and amity and that nevermore will the Joviansbe allowed to invade us."
(The End.)
Transcriber's Note:
This e-text was produced from Astounding Stories December 1931 andJanuary 1932 issues. Extensive research did not uncover any evidencethat the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.