Chapter VI

Jaro hesitated undecided which way to go.

"Pull me out of here," Landovitch pleaded. "I'm stuck."

He felt around, seized the big T.I.S. agent's wrist, tugged. Landovitch came free, stood up, cracked his head against the roof with a thud.

"It's a low ceiling," said Jaro.

"This is a fine time to be telling me."

"They've got Joan," said Jaro. "Which way could they have gone?"

"Joan?" echoed Landovitch dubiously. "Oh, you mean Miss Webb, that pretty girl who was with us when the fight started in the grog shop." He paused. "Who's got her? Where are we anyway?"

"Shut up!" said Jaro impolitely. "I'm trying to orientate myself. We're in the Temple of Nemi."

Landovitch whistled softly. "The rain god."

But Jaro was paying no attention. "There must be a set of stairs at each end of this corridor," he mused. "We just came down one. That leads to the apartment where Hodes was murdered. I think it's a blind alley. But the other stair goes up to the chambers of the temple priestesses. That must be the way they've gone. Come on." He started off along the corridor.

"Hey!" Landovitch said plaintively. "Which way are you going?" He reached out, clutched Jaro's arm, hung on. "Who's got the girl?"

"Peet's men," Jaro grunted. "It must have been Peet's men who got Joan. They murdered Karfial Hodes just a few minutes ago and escaped through this corridor. We were trailing them. I don't think the Mercurians even suspect the existence of these passages." They reached the steps, ascended to the next level, hurried blindly along the corridor of the alcoves.

"But how do you figure Peet's men knew about these passages?" asked Landovitch in a puzzled voice.

"That gunman of Peet's," said Jaro. "The one who was captured along with the Red Witch. He must have discovered them. It's the only way I can figure he escaped."

Again they stumbled up a flight of steps.

"This ought to be on the same level as Nemi's apartment," volunteered Jaro. Suddenly his fingers encountered space in the right hand wall.

"What's up," said Landovitch, bumping into him.

"There's a corridor branching off here," he replied. "Which way? Which way?"

"One's as good as another," said Landovitch.

Without replying, Jaro pushed ahead along the left hand corridor. He had not gone fifty paces before he halted again, began to curse. The words flowed out, cold, furious.

The hair on the back of Landovitch's neck crawled. He'd never heard Jaro vent his anger before. "What is it now?" he asked.

"The corridor splits up into three different passages. This rotten place is a rat-run." He drew a breath. "We might as well try to find our way out and hunt up Albert Peet."

He led the way along the center corridor, fell up an unexpected flight of steps, resumed his cursing.

Landovitch wanted to laugh but decided against it. He had never known Jaro to be as wrought up over anything as he seemed to be about the girl's abduction.

Jaro scrambled to his feet, mounted the steps with Landovitch still following. The head of the stair was blocked. He fumbled a moment in the dark, found the omnipresent plug, extracted it.

The room into which he found himself looking was an ordinary Mercurian apartment of the lower strata of the city. It was untenanted, bare, dusty. He worked a moment at the panel, discovered the catch, swung it back. He and the T.I.S. agent stepped into the apartment.

"Whew!" said Landovitch. "What a relief. I was beginning to think I might rot down there." His blond hair was a mass of clotted blood and dirt. One eye was black, his clothes torn and stained.

"You look as if you'd been blown from a rocket tube," commented Jaro dryly, as he made for the street door.

"You don't look like a gay Lothario yourself," Landovitch retorted.

* * * * *

Jaro opened the door, peered out cautiously. The vaulted burrow which served as a street between the apartments was deserted. The green globes were dim. They must be on one of the lowest levels of Acecia.

"Irving," said Jaro, turning to the T.I.S. agent. "I'm going to pay Albert Peet a visit. He's going to talk whether he wants or not. I'm afraid it won't be strictly legal, and I don't want to embroil you in any difficulty. I think we'd best part."

"Never mind that," began Landovitch, then halted, seized Jaro by the shoulder. "Listen!" he commanded.

From up the street came faintly the noise of shouts and screams, then the unmistakable zizz-boom! of a rocket gun. The two men looked at each other. The silence was immediately punctured by a scattering rattle of dum-dum fire.

The firing drew closer. At the end of the street, a party of Colonial guards trotted into sight. They were dragging the rocket gun and were still in an orderly retreat.

Half way up the arched passage they made a stand. Jaro watched them set up the rocket gun. All except the gun crew faded into doorways. Jaro swung his eyes back to the head of the street. A company of Fazoqls, the killer caste of Venus, were advancing in short dashes from doorway to doorway. The rocket gun went zizz-boom! The street ahead was suddenly clear of Fazoqls except for a few sprawled figures.

"The revolution!" said Landovitch: "They've started the revolution."

* * * * *

The Venusian mercenaries had begun to snipe at the guards again with the dum-dum rifles. Several of the Earthmen slumped to the pavement. The Venusians, Jaro guessed, were crawling through the apartments, flanking the little group about the rocket gun. In a moment the Colonial guards were forced to retreat again.

Pulling their rocket gun after them, they took up a position directly in front of the apartment where Jaro and Landovitch watched, wide-eyed.

"Back! Get back!" Jaro pulled Landovitch into an adjoining chamber. A string of dum-dums exploded against the outer wall as some Fazoql raked the building with his rapid fire rifle. The door burst open. A burly Colonial guard, his gaudy uniform soiled and ragged, stumbled inside, took up a position just within the doorway.

"Hey!" said Jaro cautiously.

The guard swung around, his finger on the button of the Dixon Ray Rifle. Jaro noticed that sweat had traced paths down his grimy face. His hat was gone. Slowly his features relaxed as he recognized the two men as Terrestrials.

"What's coming off?" Jaro asked.

The guard grunted, glanced out the door. "The Mercurians have risen." Up the street a Fazoql moved in a doorway. A yellow ray leaped from the bell-shaped mouth of the guard's rifle, bathed the doorway in a saffron glare. The Fazoql tumbled into the street.

"They've hired the Venusian mercenaries," the guard continued. "We're outnumbered ten to one."

"Who's leading the revolution?" asked Jaro.

"Karfial Hodes, the patriot," replied the guard. He flung the words over his shoulder, keeping his eyes up the vaulted passage.

"But Hodes is dead!" expostulated Jaro.

"Not so you could notice it," grunted the guard. Outside the rocket gun went zizz-boom! "How do you explain this?" He took a scrap of paper from his tunic, tossed it to Jaro.

"What is it?" Landovitch said.

The paper, Jaro saw, was a declaration. It read:

"_To the Mercurian People_:

"_The time has come to cast off the yoke of Earth. All loyal
Mercurians are called upon to purge our ranks of the greedy
Terrestrial parasites who have been exploiting our resources. Arise
and take back that which is rightfully yours._"

It was printed in both Mercurian and English and signed: "_Karfial Hodes, Imperator_."

"Those have been stuck up all over the city," the guard informed them. "They've stormed the Spaceography Station and sent an ultimatum to the Earth Congress."

Landovitch whistled. "But it's race suicide," he said, aghast. Both he and Jaro were thinking of what must be transpiring back on Earth at this minute.

File upon file of huge battle spacers would be floating free from their sheds. Slim cigar-shaped corvettes, tenders, all the countless craft that comprised Earth's fleet, the mightiest fleet in the Universe, would be jockeying into position for their dash across space. Even now Earth's Sun Patrol must be hurtling upon the city of Acecia. The little uprising would be quelled almost before it got under way, martial law declared, the revolutionists hunted out, destroyed ruthlessly. Earth had experienced four such uprisings in different parts of its far-flung empire within the past decade and she would not be inclined to be lenient.

"They haven't got the chance of a snowball in hell!" Jaro said bitterly.

The rocket gun exploded: zizz-boom! Again the guard sprayed a doorway with the yellow ray, cursed. Three distorted figures huddled about the carriage of the rocket gun, but it was still being served.

"They gutted the palace of the Governor," said the guard, "and hung the Governor from his own doorway. They've wrecked the offices of the Latonka Trust too."

"What about the Terrestrials?" asked Jaro.

"Most of them got away in the spacers before they captured the port." The guard spat, wiped the sweat off his forehead with his sleeve. "The Mercurians aren't fighting. It's mostly Venusian mercenaries and a few renegade whites."

* * * * *

Something exploded in the guard's chest. He fell half in, half out of the doorway. Outside the gun captain blew a whistle. The pitiful remainder of the Colonial guards struck their rocket gun, retreated down the passage at a trot, drawing it after them.

"What does it mean?" Landovitch asked in bewilderment. "They couldn't have formed an alliance with Venus."

"Hardly," replied Jaro. "They would have had to sign agreements with about seven hundred and fifty different states, principalities and democracies." He yanked the T.I.S. agent back into the chamber again. "Don't let those birds lay an eye on you," he cautioned.

The Fazoqls had begun to stream past outside. They were lean, bearded men, for the most part armed with rapid fire dum-dum rifles. They all had the blue star of the Venusian caste of killers tattooed on their foreheads. The noise of fighting waned, died down the vaulted passage.

"I can't believe it." Landovitch shook his head. "The Mercurians are throwing away any chance for freedom. The Earth Congress will never grant them their independence now."

"I don't believe it," said Jaro grimly. "In fact, I don't put any credence in it at all."

The T.I.S. agent looked at him, perplexed. "But...." he began.

"Come on," Jaro interrupted savagely. "The answer to any number of things lies at the office of the Latonka Trust, if I'm not mistaken." He stooped over the dead Colonial guard, relieved him of his Dixon Ray Rifle, stepped over him into the street. Shaking his head bull-like, Landovitch followed. He obviously wanted to ask questions, but the set, grim expression on Jaro's face forbade it.

As they approached the Terrestrial quarter, the signs of bitter street fighting grew more apparent. They passed a barricaded corner where a pile of dead Colonial guards attested to the stubbornness of their defense. The street beyond was littered with the bodies of Fazoqls and an occasional renegade Earthman. There were no signs of Mercurians anywhere. Jaro imagined that they had retreated deep into hidden burrows and rooms until the fighting was over.

Two Earthmen came out of an apartment just ahead, dragging a pretty Mercurian between them. They spotted Jaro and Landovitch, halted, their hands creeping upward towards shoulder holsters.

"Who are you?" one asked, and his voice was death itself.

"Have you seen the Red Witch?" said Jaro, on a wild gamble. "We've got news for her. It's important."

"Naw," growled one of the renegades suspiciously. He turned to his companion, said: "Let's get going." Between them, the gunmen hustled the frightened girl off a bisecting alley.

Landovitch was frowning. "This is a wild goose chase," he said. "The Mercurians have wrecked the Latonka Trust building. Albert Peet was probably one of the first men to escape from Mercury when the revolution broke."

"I'm gambling," replied Jaro, "that he's got a hideout in the building some place. I think he's waiting for everything to blow over." He set off down the corridor at an easy lope. With a shrug, Landovitch panted after him.