Chapter VI

Tara! Quite obviously that was the girl's name. The little Zurian men were all intoning it with awed respect, as a gesture and a low, guttural word from her made them seize us again, stand us erect in a line before her. What weird, beautiful priestess was this? By what incredible science could it be that she was fashioned like a beautiful young earthgirl?

As we were stood upon our feet, with our captors at once withdrawing to line themselves near us, I saw that at each of the several door-openings which gave access to the grotto, other Zurians were peering in at us. And guards were here--men somewhat taller, with wide, powerful shoulders and smaller heads. Each of them held a long, pointed shaft of ice in his hand for a weapon, with his motionless figure tensed and his weird eyes alert upon us. Men who could with a single thrust of their powerful leg muscles hurl themselves in a bound half across the grotto.

For that moment we four stood silent, staring at the strange, beautiful creature reclining on the dais before us. Young Alan was numbed, blankly bewildered; Carruthers, seemingly less terrified now, gazed with a grim smile playing on his thin lips; and on the handsome, rough-hewn face of the giant Duroh, the panic of terror had gone. There was a look there now of open admiration; a bold confidence, an eager, predatory look.

Weird, transfixed tableau. It only lasted a brief moment, of course, while Tara stared down at us, calmly, musingly--a gaze of quiet, confident appraisement, her soft red lips gently curving into a questing smile and her cold, pale-blue eyes roving us. And then she spoke.

Amazing thing--it struck us numb, so that we could only stand and gasp.

"You look like earthmen," she said quietly. "Which is it, your language?"

English words, quaintly intoned, but English! Her voice was soft, with a queer limpid, liquid quality to it, in amazing contrast to the guttural way she had spoken to her Zurians. And her tone, her look, her gesture to us were quietly imperious.

"English!" Duroh gasped. "What luck! So you speak our language--well, that's fine. Blast me for a sleeping tower time-keeper but you're beautiful, whoever you are. Tell us."

"I am Tara," she said. The little smile that played on her lips was amused now as her gaze roved the six-feet-four figure of Duroh.

"Tara? Tara what?" he demanded. "You're an Earthgirl of course. You must be. Then how did you get here--"

It was dawning on me now; the only combination of possible circumstances which logically it could be.

"You are the leader of your men?" Tara said quietly to Duroh.

"I--" Carruthers began. But a look from Duroh checked him--Duroh's look of bold confidence that he could handle this girl.

"Yes, I am," Duroh said. "I brought them here, on an exploring expedition from earth. We're not going to harm your little world. I killed one of your men--what in the hell did they dare set upon us for? See here now, what we want is--"

"You do talk rather too much," she interrupted. Her gaze left Duroh and fastened on Alan. "You--the young one--what is your name?"

"Alan. Alan Grant," he stammered softly.

"You have a nice voice. You look like a nice young man. And you?"

"I'm James Carruthers," Carruthers said. "If you'll let me explain--"

"And you?" she gazed at me.

"John Taine," I said.

She sat up suddenly, with her shimmering hair tumbling in a white mass over her breast. Again her calm, blue-eyed gad impersonally roved us. "The big one lies," she stated. "Which one of you is leader here?"

"Our leader is dead," I burst out. "Murdered by these two--Carruthers and Duroh."

"You're a liar!" Duroh gasped. He took a step toward me, but thought better of it as the guard made a move forward.

* * * * *

Carruthers started to speak, but Tara's calm voice silenced him. "So even in your little expedition murder had to come." She seemed saying it not to us, but to herself. "Of course, what would one expect? Who was murdered?"

Her gaze was on me, and I told her what had happened and why we were here. There was a brief pause, and again she silenced Duroh and Carruthers.

"Zogg!" she called. "Zogg--come--"

From a glittering, blue-white vaulted doorway a figure approached--a big Zurian nearly my own height. The shining, opalescent light gleamed on his white bald pate. He looked a powerful fellow. A white fur-skin draped him. In his hand was a club-like weapon, seemingly made of the heavy slate-gray rock, sleekly polished to a knife-like edge.

"Zogg, take them," she said in her calm English.

"All of them, Tara?"

"No. All but this one." Her imperious gesture went to me. "With him I will talk more."

Zogg's weird face twisted into a grin. A bluish tongue, like the tongue of an animal, licked the pallid lips of his slit of mouth. That the girl had taught him English was obvious. He had spoken to her haltingly, mouthing the words with his guttural voice.

"Not--hurt them?" he demanded.

"No," she flashed. "Never will I have that here. Well do you know it." Her cold-blue eyes glittered with her sudden angry emotion, and before it, Zogg drew away. And then she burst at him in his own language. I could guess that she was directing him what to do with the three prisoners. Duroh tried again to speak but was silenced. A dozen of the little side guards came pouncing forward.

"Easy," I warned. "Don't put up a fight, Duroh."

They were engulfed by the Zurians, shoved through the side archway, and were gone.

"Sit here by me," Tara said calmly.

At her gesture I sat on the side of the dais, with her calm gaze upon me as she questioned me. How shall I describe my first strange talk with Tara? Under her questions I described frankly our expedition, who we were, what we had come for, and what had happened. And then suddenly I began questioning her. I had thought that her beautiful cold-blue eyes would flash with the little lightnings as they had at Zogg. But instead she said quietly,

"I shall tell you about myself, because there is no reason why I should not."

I had guessed what at least the main circumstances of her history must be.... The Blake expedition, which had left earth some sixteen years ago and never returned, had landed here on Zura, when the little asteroid previously had come into our Solar System. Landed here, with its space-ship smashed in the landing.

"George Simpson was my father," Tara was saying. "Everyone is dead now, of that little group, except me."

* * * * *

I was myself only some four years old when the Blake expedition disappeared. But I had heard of George Simpson. A fanatic. An altruist. That was the best, undoubtedly, that you could call him. A crusader for ideals, he had thought that he could remodel the world, remake God's erring creatures so that hate and fear and jealousy and violence would be gone. And among nations--peace, amity--never a hint of war or aggression.

Nice ideals. Simpson undoubtedly was a genius. A remarkable orator; a fellow of indefatigable energy; a personality forceful, winning. For years, with fanatic fervor, he devoted his life to converting others to his own ideals. It was ironic, but inevitable, that he himself was always a storm-center. Pathetically sincere, frequently he became a lawbreaker; was in prison and out again. Until at last he was the frenzied hater of humanity--an outcast. And with a wild burst of condemnation for earth and everything on it, he had joined Blake's expedition, vowing he would never return.

"And you were on that expedition too?" I said. "And your mother--I understood Blake took only a few men."

"He would not take my mother," Tara said. "So she hid herself on board. I was born here--a few months after they landed."

The rest of the story was simple enough.

Her mother had died about a year after Tara was born. Her father had brought her up, here on little Zura; had educated her. For fourteen years, until his death a year or so ago, she had been his constant companion. George Simpson was an educated man, a scholar. He had left earth, determined never to return, so that he had taken many books with him, with which Tara had been taught. And he had found here a strange, primitive little people. There were, I believe, since it is understood now that the Zurians were a dying race, no more than a few thousands, living here in these interlacing honeycombed grottos. The forceful Simpson, when he had learned their language, had come to rule them. His intelligence, much greater than their own, and his own ideas which seemed here, at least, possible of attainment, had enabled him to make himself the Zurian ruler.

I must state now that it is far from my purpose--even if space permitted, which it does not--to sketch the life-history of the tragic little Zurian people. I am no ethnologist. Nor can I detail the effect George Simpson had upon them--the practical working of his ideal economic system. Books have been written on it in the last half century, based on what Tara was able to tell the learned men who questioned her. And as I indicated in my preface, much nonsense has been written. I think that my own experience, with Tara there in Zura, will demonstrate fully what I mean.

"And so now," I said, "since your father's death, you are ruler here?"

"Yes, of course. I followed my father's ideals."

"And there is no crime here? Nobody does anything wrong? They obey you?"

"I make them obey me," she said; and again her eyes flashed with the little lightnings. "So I understand you came here to get what it is you call Xalite?" she added suddenly.

"Yes."

"Something that belongs to us--to me--not to you."

* * * * *

I withheld my smile. She was amazingly beautiful, reclining there so close to me. Her bosom, the contour of it faintly apparent beneath the white furry garment, rose and fell with her emotion. Her long snow-white hair glistened with a silvery sheen in the opalescent light.

"You're very beautiful, Tara," I said abruptly. "Your strange white hair--"

"My mother was like that. So you are a thief? My father would have expected it of any man of earth."

I had touched her hand, where it rested on the fur rug beside me. "You were taught to hate all earth-people, weren't you, Tara?"

"I hate thievery, and murder." Her beautiful moist red lips curved with her scorn. "Five of you--just five to represent earth's millions--and you are thieves and murderers. Everywhere on earth it is the same. Oh, I _know_--my father, he told me. Oh, he tried so hard for what is right--"

"I know he did, Tara. But he was doomed to fail."

"And your nations, too--thieves, murderers, just like you individuals." She suddenly seemed to realize that my hand was on hers. As though a viper had stung her she snatched her hand away. "You--Earthman! You would dare to touch me! Thief! Murderer--like all your miserable kind!"

She was abruptly sitting erect, quivering with her anger as she spat the words at me. I had drawn back. I was aware that from a nearby door-oval one of the little white Zurian guards was coming forward, but Tara imperiously waved him away. Her small white hand had gone to her furry garment, came back, clutching a small knife of polished stone. Little frozen volcano. But the tempestuous fires within her were seething now. For that breathless instant I thought that she was about to spring upon me with the knife.

"Tara--" I murmured.

Amazing little creature. Was it that subconsciously she realized the irony of her violence, and was ashamed that I should see it? Her hand opened and the knife fell to the rug at her side. Her flashing, steel-blue gaze like a little sliding sword clashed with mine. Then she called out an imperious command in the Zurian tongue. From the shadows of the door-oval three guards came leaping at me.

"Tara--wait! Listen--"

Her furious commands drowned my protests. She was lying back, panting, staring after me as the guards roughly dragged me away.