Chapter XIV: Fugitives in the Starlight

I had sent Alice, Sonya and Dolores into one of the castle bedrooms. They were all tired and overwrought with the excitement through which they had passed. A dream awakened Sonya, after how long an interval she did not know—several hours undoubtedly. She dreamed she had been talking with Prince Altho: he was in a cave; Jim and Ren were with him.

For a long time Sonya lay pondering. Then she awakened the other two girls.

“Listen, I want to go and try and rescue Altho.”

She told them her plan. They could take a small flying platform, with a few birds. Once away from the city, the distraction of the thought-waves of all its people, she would be able to communicate with Altho or with Ren. Communicate with them, find them—rescue them!

A mad, impossible adventure, perhaps, but to the girls it looked feasible.

“Oh, Alice, oh, Dolores, shall we try it? Leonard will be many days getting his army together. That is too dangerous, to wait so long.”

Dolores turned to her with shining, tearful eyes. “If I could only get to Jim, help him to safety.”

Sonya had other plans. She could get weapons, a small weapon, the electronic needle pipe. She knew where they were kept, and how to use them.

“I heard Ren discussing it one day with Maxite the scientist. And there are image-finders stored in the same room. I think I know how to use them.”

The girls decided to try it. They slipped unobserved from the room. Sonya found them long, hooded black cloaks. In the darkness, mingled with the confusion of arriving refugees, they got out of the castle without being recognized.

“Where are we going?” Dolores whispered. They were all three tense with excitement. Sonya had turned toward the rear of the castle, into the dimly lighted street along the base of the wall.

“A gate-door here,” she whispered. “It is guarded by Grett. Quiet! Stand close beside me, but do not speak. But be ready to do what I say. Soon we will have the weapons.”

In the castle bedroom, before leaving, Sonya had tom a garment into long, narrow strips, a staunch, tough fabric. She handed the strips now to Alice. At the small door in the wall, they paused.

“Keep behind me,” Sonya whispered. “Over there in the shadow. But be ready.”

The street along here was dark; it was a street little used and at the moment it was empty. Sonya knocked boldly on the door.

“Grett! Oh, Grett!”

In her own language from within came the muffled question, “Who is there?”

“It’s Sonya.”

“Yes?”

“Open the door.”

“No. I must not.”

“It’s only Sonya. Don’t you know my voice?”

“Yes. What do you want?”

“I’ve news from Ren. He is . . . oh Grett, you must let me show you.”

There was the sound of dropping metal bars. The doors opened cautiously a trifle.

Sonya put her hand casually on the door. “It’s only Sonya, Grett. See here what I have.”

She tugged at the door. The guard was revealed, standing with the leveled metal pipe in his hand. Sonya touched the weapon. “Turn that away, Grett. It . . . frightens me!”

There was a low cry, a scuffle. Sonya had snatched the pipe. She leaped backward, swung it level.

“Don’t move, Grett! Don’t make a sound! If you do I . . . I’ll kill you!”

“Sonya!”

“I’m desperate! Can’t you see it? Get back in there!” She called softly, “Alice! Dolores! Here! Come inside, quickly.”

She had backed the frightened, surprised young man into the corridor, with leveled weapon and crisp menacing words. In the glow of the passageway’s single light, she held the weapon while Alice and Dolores bound the man’s legs and arms with the strips of fabric. Sonya gagged him, and they rolled him along the floor to the wall and left him.

Alice was grim and pale, frightened at what they had done. Dolores was trembling. “We haven’t hurt him, have we?”

Sonya bent down, loosened the gag a trifle. “No, he’s all right. Lie quiet, Grett. And when they find you, tell them you’re not to blame. Sonya tricked you. We may be back by then, anyway, and I’ll take the blame.”

The girls hurried down the corridor, down the stone steps into the arsenal room. Sonya had been here once before with her uncle. The place was dark, but Sonya found a hand-wire and Alice carried it above her head. Its light glowed dimly blue, in a big room of fearsome shadows. Overhead they could hear the faint tramp of a guard. Every moment they expected to be discovered.

Sonya seized one of the electronic needle pipes, and the range apparatus with which to operate it. And a large metal cylinder in which was packed a group of image finders and their aerial controls. With their loot under their cloaks, the girls hastily retreated. At the gate-door they switched off the corridor light. Sonya murmured, “Good-bye, Grett!”

They closed the gate-door after them. From the outside it appeared barred. With the cloaks shrouding them they hurried to Sonya’s home.

In a moment they had six birds harnessed to a small platform, and were in the air.

* * * * *

Within the cave, Altho, Jim and Ren faced the giant murderous intruder. The bruteman stood licking his lips, an imbecile leer on his face.

There was a brief silence.

Altho spoke soft, soothing words to the hairy giant, and then ripped out a sharp command. It went unheeded. The bruteman’s dangling hand came up to his belt. But never reached it.

Jim screamed an exclamation to Ren, and leaped. His body struck the bruteman full, a solid impact which would have flung Jim back, but the giant’s huge arm went around him, lifted him like a child. As he went up, he flung his arms around the thick, hairy neck and clung.

His feet were high in the air as the bruteman straightened with a savage, surprised cry. He tried to shake Jim off, but Jim clung with one arm, with the other hand he gouged at the giant’s face.

Altho had leaped. The giant kept his feet, swaying, kicking; he stopped, and with an upflung arm, dashed Jim’s body away. But Jim was back at him again, he and Altho, now, clinging, kicking, gouging.

And then Ren. The harrassed giant, fighting with scarce the intelligence of a man, staggered across the cave with Altho and Jim clawing at him. Their bodies struck Ren, and scrambling in the dark, he caught a great hairy leg and wound himself around it.

In the pale-green glow of the cave, the giant bruteman surged about. He tripped, went down, with the three men pounding on top of him.

Jim shouted, “We’ve got him!”

But the giant was up, shaking them off, first one, then another, tearing them loose, flinging them back. But always they returned to claw at him. They fought silently, grimly, but the giant roared.

Harrassed, frightened, Altho had torn his belt away and flung it aside. The giant stood panting, looking around to see where it had gone. Altho was gripping his thick middle firmly with both hands; Ren was wound about his legs.

Jim had been flung away again. He was picking himself up, but he stopped. He had seen a jagged, metallic projection of the cave-wall. It seemed loose. Jim tugged at it. The swaying bodies surged past him. He tugged, worked it loose. It came free; in his hand he held a heavy, jagged chunk of black metal.

“Ren! Work him over this way! Over here . . . here!”

Jim leaped to the slab of table for greater height. The giant’s back was to it. Jim could not talk to Altho, and Altho could not see him. But he could hear Jim’s reiterated call.

The bruteman tried to turn toward the insistent voice, but Altho now understood and distracted his attention. And Ren at his legs, was pushing him backward. A step; then another.

They came within reach of the table. Jim leaped into the air. He struck the giant’s back; his hand went up, and the heavy chunk of metal caught the bruteman full on the back of the skull.

He toppled, fell, writhing, jerking a moment, then lay still.

They disentangled themselves from him, and stood up. They were all three bruised and winded. There was a jagged cut on Jim’s forehead; he dashed the blood from his eyes.

“Let’s get out of here! Now’s the time! Now, or never!”

Altho’s pale face smiled at him questioningly.

Jim gestured. “Out . . . get out of here!” He added, “The belt. What’d you do with the belt?”

The giant’s weapons. Altho could not understand the words, but Jim saw the belt. He leaped over the huge, motionless body. Outside the cave an uproar sounded.

Altho called a warning; he was gesturing vehemently at Jim to come. Jim seized a small metal object at random from the giant’s belt, an egg-shaped thing of white metal: a muzzle-projection, a handle and a trigger.

Lights were moving nearby in the darkness with a confusion of voices. The second of the giant guards at Altho’s cave had run away in fear. He was shouting, gathering other guards around him. The huge heads were bouncing forward over the rocks; calling commands. The brute-bodies were running to them, each to his master. The heads were mounting.

Jim turned to the right, up the valley. They were momentarily in darkness, open metallic ground up a rocky slope, stars overhead, lights and confusion behind them.

They ran. Jim had handed the giant’s weapon to Altho, thinking he would know better how to use it. They ran swiftly. A tiny light to one side picked them out, then it vanished. Jim pulled them sidewise to change their course. Ren stumbled over the rocks as they ran, but they kept him on his feet.

Jim panted, “A cliff . . . over there! We can climb it . . . or hide.”

Altho glanced back. The lights were rushing on up the valley. The fugitives were running between jagged, tumbled boulders; Jim thought they had eluded the pursuit. But suddenly ahead of them, a head rose on its hands from behind a crag.

Jim jumped for it. He struck it. His fist struck the great face between its green blazing eyes. The face smashed, cracked like the shell of an egg. Noisome! His fist sank into a soft pulpy mass. He jerked it free. The head rolled backward, the arms waving.

“Come on,” Jim shouted. He wiped his fist and arm on his jacket: noisome, horrible!

“We’re on the ledge, Ren . . . can’t climb out of the valley. It’s too steep.”

“Are they following us?”

“No. I can see lights going up the valley. Altho seems to want to lie here, not try to climb higher. If only I could talk to him.”

“I’m trying to get Sonya’s thoughts, Jim.”

They lay on a dark ledge; a fifty foot drop was before them, a sheer perpendicular wall. They had climbed beside it, where the ground was broken. Over the ledge, some ten feet above it, was another broader space with what seemed a cave-mouth behind it. The crags were dim in the starlight; black gulleys, ravines were everywhere. Below them spread the valley floor. Lights which marked the pursuit had gone past.

For a time the three fugitives lay quiet. Jim’s mind went back to the cave from which they had escaped. Two of the brutemen had been on guard.

These brutemen were hardly more than animals, like tigers with a lust for human blood. One had murderously entered the cave; the other, listening, had become frightened and decamped, giving the alarm.

Jim whispered impatiently, “Ren, can’t you get any thoughts from Sonya?”

“No. I’m trying. I feel . . . I feel that Altho is getting them.”

It seemed so. Altho was lying with his head down on his hands. Once he uttered a suppressed exclamation, and then he was murmuring as though to himself.

“You’re right. He’s getting them,” Jim muttered. “Try again, Ren!”

Abruptly Ren exclaimed, “They’re coming! Sonya, with Dolores and Alice.”

“Do they know where we are?”

“They’re trying to find us. Sonya says they haven’t seen any lights yet to mark our valley. Altho has been trying to direct them.”

“Well, for a while we’re safe here. They—”

Jim never finished. From down the valley, by the cave-lights of Talon’s encampment, a ball of fire mounted slowly upward, a tiny, blazing white ball. It rose in a slow arc, and suddenly burst with a blinding white glare.

The valley, the crags, the ledge upon which the fugitives lay were all momentarily brilliantly illumined. Jim saw that beneath them in the valley a hundred of the mounted heads were gazing upward. And he knew too, that they had been seen upon the ledge.

A shout arose; a rush of the figures to climb. But a voice, Talon’s voice, seemed commanding them to stop. Farther down the valley, brutemen were dragging forward a heavy piece of apparatus, a huge gun-muzzle on wheels, the muzzle pointed vertically upward.

Jim leaped to his feet. “We’ve got to get higher! Try to get to that cave overhead.”

But Altho pulled him back. Altho still held the weapon Jim had taken from the giant. He gestured with it. Jim sank back.

There was something going on down there in the valley. Jim wondered if the weapon Altho had was of any use at this distance. Altho seemed absorbed in thought communication. Suddenly from over the cliff-tops across the valley, a small pink ball of light came sailing, floating out over the valley in a huge segment of circle, a thousand feet in the air.

A glowing pink ball; a concentrated radiance seeming to whirl upon its axis, with tiny crescent streamers of light as it whirled. It sailed in a curve above the valley, growing dimmer, as though burning itself out, until in a moment it vanished.

Jim stared. But Altho knew what it was. He leaped to his feet.