VANS HOLORS was an excellent swimmer, as nearly all Martians are. His enormous lungs enabled him to remain under water for a long while, and his great muscles carried him through the water at speed. He saw that searchlights and power-boats were out after him. Let them search. They’d never catch Vans Holors, claimant to the title of wrestling champion of all Mars. They’d never have caught him in the first place if ten of those apes had not attacked him at once with their iron clubs.
It was a pity about that plucky Earthling. The tiny man was not to be seen. Not even a ripple that might have been made by his swimming figure could the Martian detect in the searchlight glare. The little man must have been struck by a deathray. He had not come up.
The idea that Earthlings might be very inferior swimmers, compared to Martians, did not occur to him.
He swam on, not in the least in a hurry. He found a large log, and swam to it with the idea of sitting astride it and paddling. Vans Holors had swum little more than five miles as yet, but he was lazy.
There were too many power-boats about for him to take the risk of showing himself. The simple-minded giant was annoyed at this.
Vans Holors wanted to sit on a log, and he couldn’t sit on that log because of a lot of pesky power-boats. He’d show them.
A power-boat was racing toward him. Vans watched from the end of the log. The searchers were not quite so keen-eyed as they had been at the beginning of their search.
Vans waited until the boat was close, then swam with his log. He pulled it right into the path of the racing boat, and dived.
Unable to stop or turn in time, the boat hit the log. Three men shot right out of the boat at the impact. The other four rolled over and over in the bottom of the boat. Vans Holors came tumbling over the stern and four blows of his fists silenced them forever.
He looked over the side. The three in the water took him for one of their own men.
“Help us aboard,” they asked.
“Do you want a tow?” he said.
“Yes.”
Vans picked up a deathray box. The ray flicked from head to head.
“Take hold of that,” he said.
“You ask for a tow,” he said, “and when I offer you one you won’t take hold of it.”
He turned to the bodies in the boat.
“Get up, you lazy devils,” he said. “Do your job. Run the boat for me.”
Naturally, there was no response.
“All right, if you won’t do as I tell you I won’t have you in my boat. You can swim home.”
Picking them up one in each hand, he threw them overboard.
For a while he toyed with the idea of going back and waging a private war on the other power-boats, but he decided that it would be a waste of time. He headed away.
Presently he came to a deserted, stony shore. He came ashore.
SUDDENLY an ape-man sprang down from a big rock and stood before him, waving an iron club threateningly.
“Hrrrumpah!” meaning, “What do you want here?” it growled.
“A fight!” said Vans Holors.
The ape swung the iron club. Vans dodged back, making him miss. The ape, puzzled, swung again. Holors dodged again.
“Tut, tut!” said Vans Holors. “Let me show you how to use that thing.”
“Grobah!” said the ape, meaning, “I never did think much of clubs, anyway.”
Dropping the club, it charged with teeth and nails.
The wrestling champion knew all there was to know about furious charges. He dropped to his haunches, seized two hairy ankles in his hands and heaved upward. With the force of its own charge and Vans’ mighty heave the ape sailed over his head to crash on the rocks beyond, unable to fight.
Holors walked over to it.
“Come on then,” he said. “You ask for a fight, and just as I get ready to start you lie down and go to sleep.”
He heard a lot of chattering voices. “A chief! A chief! A king! A killer king!”
Dozens of ape-men had been watching his fight from holes and cracks in the rocks, and they howled approval of his convincing victory.
In a moment or so he was surrounded by them, shouting, worshipping, plucking curiously at his clothing.
“A chief! A champion fighter! Be our king! Be our king! Help us to kill the humans!”
One larger than the rest shuffled forward. He had a forbidding eye, his body was marked with the scars of many old battles, and his huge club had snakes’ teeth fixed into it to give added point to its observations.
“That right?” the newcomer asked. “You a king? You a killer-fighter?”
“You said it,” returned Vans heartily. “Me number one great fighting champion chief. Me make good king, great fighting champion king.”
“Greetings!” said the newcomer, in friendly fashion. And at the same instant lashed out sideways with his club at the Martian’s head.
The treacherous suddenness of the blow would have killed almost any man, but Vans had seen the calculating look in the eyes of the other, estimating the distance, and had known what was coming. The pretended friendliness did not deceive the veteran of a hundred fights.
Vans ducked aside from the blow.
At once there began a serious fight in the ring of blue-haired, red-chested and cheeked ape-men. It was the nearchampion of all Martians against a local champion of the ape-men. The Martian had great skill and his strength was not much inferior to that of the ape, but the ape had long claws on feet and hands, and dangerous teeth. His reach, too, was very long. Standing on bent knees, his knuckles touched the ground.
Vans could not duck and grip him by the legs, or the snakes’ teeth in the club would have made holes in his back. This ape was much too experienced a fighter to make a wild rush. He was wary, and cunning. The first thing, Vans realized, was to make him drop the club. He seized the hand that held the club by the wrist. The lightning speed of the movement startled the ape-king, but he strove to regain his advantage by striking at Vans’ face with the claws of the other hand. Vans gripped that wrist also.
The ape tried to strike at Vans with the nails on its feet, but luckily its legs were much too short. Vans concentrated on making the ape drop the club. Abandoning the club, the ape made a violent effort to break loose. Vans’ grip was broken. The club fell.
The two antagonists circled each other, warily.
CHAPTER VII
Battle Fury
THE ape-king had discovered from the strength of Vans’ grip that the Martian was a match for him. Mostly, he regarded men with contempt. So soft were their bodies, and so easily were they killed provided one could catch them without deathrays, that killing them gave little pleasure. It was too easy. But this man was different. He was hard to kill. A man worth taking some trouble over.
And Vans had, for his part, realized that fighting this ape-man was a job to be taken seriously. At long range the ape’s claws were a nuisance. They could rip and tear. They prevented Vans from getting anywhere near the ape’s body. And if Vans dodged those talons and rushed in to grip the other round the body in his usual way, then the claws on those short legs would come into very effective play. In fact, those claws were a nuisance, whatever way one looked at it.
Vans could not even try a ju-jitsu hold, supposing he got a chance to use one. The ape’s bones, being of different shapes from those of men, would probably make any hold he tried ineffective. And that would give those claws a chance to rip at him.
None of Vans’ usual tactics were any use here. He had to invent a new way of fighting. So far he had done nothing but retreat and dodge the quick slashes of the claws. The other apes were growing restless. This was slow fighting. There was a danger that they might attack him in the rear while his attention was occupied in front.
The bow legs and long arms of the other were an advantage, too. The ape could pick up large stones and hurl them without giving the least warning. Stones came flying from other angles too. Spectators were choosing this method of expressi
ng their impatience. They wanted action, not dodging.
The ape-king was growing contemptuous. He was slashing more furiously, annoyed with his repeated misses.
Vans tried the dangerous ruse of pretending to slip. The claws slashed furiously, in a swing, trying to take advantage while Vans was off his balance. That was what Vans wanted. He knocked that arm sideways with all his strength, partly turning the ape’s body round. At the same moment he ran, and seized the ape in the only way he could, by leaping on his back.
Apes roared and drummed their deep chests with delight. They did not care who won, so long as they had some sport. And this was entertaining. This was a novel way of fighting. This was a new trick to memorize for future use.
Vans’ scissors grip round the ape’s abdomen would have caused an average man of Mars to burst with a loud pop. The ape’s stomach, liver and kidneys were much inconvenienced. The ape had that feeling of fullness that comes after a too-hearty meal. Vans’ thumbs were trying to reduce that fullness by preventing air from entering the ape-king’s lungs, but, instead of appreciating this kind of attention, the ape-king clawed feebly at the strangling hands.
The two fell, Vans taking the combined weight. But his grip did not relax, neither on abdomen nor on throat. His muscles stood out with a mighty effort. The slightest slackening of the strain now, and those claws would tear the flesh from the bones of his arms and legs.
The ape-king relaxed. Instantly Vans snatched up the dropped club, and made deadly use of the snakes’ teeth embedded in it. The ape-king lay still.
VANS never knew whether he had killed the other or not. As soon as he got up the other three of the apes snatched him up, carried him shoulder-high, and all the rest of them began a sort of war-dance in honor of their new king. They roared their war-cry, “Death to all Humans!”
He learned that these were ape-men who had escaped from Bommelsmeth’s rule and were living wildly. They lived mainly by stealing food in raids. Many were lost in these raids, but fresh desertions kept the numbers of the tribe about level.
“Me great king,” boasted Vans. “Me number one great fighting champion king. Follow me. I show you how to fight. I make you win. I show you how to kill many humans.”
And because his way of thinking was, after all, not so very different from theirs, he actually succeeded in getting them to understand a plan of campaign.
They were to creep into the town, not in a pack but singly. When one of them met one of Bommelsmeth’s soldiers the ape was to bow humbly and raise his hand in the usual salute. (There were murmurs of disagreement at this.) At close range there was to be a swift attack. The idea was to capture deathray boxes. The boxes already in the boat Vans had captured would do to begin with.
The apes began to lope toward the town. One old ape saw a guard who was alone. The ape went up, bowed and saluted. The soldier gave a contemptuous kick. In an instant he was a dead soldier, and another raybox had been captured.
The other apes, watching from behind rocks, noted carefully how it had been done. They practiced the humble approach, the bow, the servile salute, and the sudden, swift tearing out of the victim’s throat. These tactics were tried out several times on the way to the town. Watching apes roared with laughter.
The ape-men had tasted blood.
DON HARGREAVES and Princess Wimpolo had landed about half a mile beyond the city. The city was a blaze of light. It ended in a high stone wall on the top of which were set what Don judged to be ray generators of various sorts, as well as searchlights that restlessly roved over the country beyond the town. Uniformed soldiers patrolled the top of the wall.
Outside the wall, scattered about, were miserable huts where ape-men lived.
Don wondered why Bommelsmeth had taken such care to guard his city. What could he be afraid of here in his own secret lair, so far beyond the reach of his enemies? But Don saw enough to tell him that Bommelsmeth’s own ape-men were the danger. A harsh discipline kept them down, as well as the fact that Bommelsmeth’s men controlled the food supply.
An ape-man approaching one of Bommelsmeth’s soldiers had to bow and salute. If he did not a deathray struck him down instantly. And the hand producers of the thread-rays that looked, and felt, like threads of red fire, were freely and painfully employed to liven up ape-men who were slow in carrying out orders.
Don tried to bring down one of the soldiers on the distant wall with a deathray. The man was not hurt, but a searchlight turned at once in Don’s direction.
So Bommelsmeth’s sentries were shielded against deathrays. There must be a wall of special impervious glass protecting them. And automatic direction-finders located the source of deathrays that attacked the shield. Don was glad that he had turned his deathray off promptly.
Through the darkness a host of stealthy figures was creeping, widely scattered and carefully avoiding the flashing searchlights. He discovered them suddenly, with a shock. Quite close to him an ape-man bowed in servile manner to one of Bommelsmeth’s soldiers. Suddenly, the ape’s long arms shot out. Taken completely unawares, the soldier was killed instantly. The ape-man went on with the strap of the soldier’s deathray over its shoulder.
Other soldiers fell. Shaggy figures drifted into the city, one by one, through the gates. Sentries on the wall, smitten mysteriously, stiffened abruptly and fell.
Suddenly, it was open war. Rays flashed. Men and apes died soundlessly. The main body of the ape-men surged forward towards the gates their comrades had captured. Deathrays from uncaptured parts of the wall played havoc with their packed masses.
In the general darkness, relieved only by a few roving searchlights, it was impossible to form any estimate as to how many got through and how many were killed. The impatience of the ape-men, causing them to attack too soon, cost them many hundreds of lives. But a large number got through.
“Come!” said Don to Wimpolo. “Let us join in the attack.”
“Where you lead I follow,” she said. “Death before capture.”
DON’S nerves were quivering with excitement, but she was as calm as ice. Her courage was amazing to Don. He wondered how many high-born ladies of Earth would have behaved as well as she was doing if they had suddenly been plunged into such terrible experiences as the gigantic Martian Princess had been. With long ages of peace and advanced civilization the emotion of anger had almost died out among the highest races of Mars, and with it had gone fear, which is always the power behind anger.
Don expected trouble at the gate, but he, Wimpolo and the zekola went openly and unchallenged into Bommelsmeth’s city. Wimpolo was in the uniform of a soldier of Bommelsmeth, and Don had also adopted a badge or two. In the confusion there was a good chance of their being able to get about unnoticed.
Inside the city was a wild confusion.
The deaths of so many of the ape-men made no difference to the spirits of the rest. They scattered in all directions, their deathrays now flickering everywhere. Every ape-man seemed to have a deathray now. Those who had not soon picked one up from a soldier slain by one of the others, or from a dead comrade.
Several times Don saw an ape-man fingering one of the little pistols that produced the red threadray that, with its effect of intense fire, had so often scorched and tortured them in the past. But the ape-men could not understand the working of these weapons. Bommelsmeth had taken great care that these pistols should be too complicated to be understood by ape brains and too delicate to be operated by ape fingers. The fire that was not fire was not for ape-men to use.
In any case, in confused street fighting, where there were no fortifications and no armor to be attacked, deathrays were, a much more suitable weapon than the threadrays.
Throughout a wide section of the city sounded a curious sound. It was the ape-men drumming on their chests. At the same time they were roaring their deep-throated war cry, “Death to all humans!”
The ape-men in the city, submissively carrying out their tasks, heard the blood-curdling war-cry. It stirred t
heir blood with dim ancestral memories of forest, of battle, of blood. It set their huge adrenal glands pouring the hormones of battle fury into their bloodstreams. A red haze of rage floated before their eyes. They turned on their task-masters. They leaped blindly at the nearest of Bommelsmeth’s men.
Most of them died, but many survived. For apes outnumbered men here many times to one. And one man cannot defend himself against the sudden, unexpected attack of a dozen at once. Many a soldier struck down two apes before him, but fell to a third behind. Many a soldier failed to hear feet softly padding behind him, or fell to a hurled brick or iron club.
In open spaces, standing shoulder to shoulder, men might still be masters, but in narrow streets the apes, with their quicker eyes and much sharper ears, were soon in control.
Don and the Princess made for the docks, Don ahead. Being small, he saw ape-men before they saw him, and shot them down before they could attack Wimpolo. For the apes had entirely forgotten their human king, Vans Holors, now, and had only one idea, to kill human beings, Vans as well if they could.
A SQUAD of soldiers, marching shoulder to shoulder, came suddenly upon Don and Wimpolo. The soldiers stared at Wimpolo, seeing something strange in her figure. They wondered, too, what the tiny Earthling was doing with her.
“I bear an urgent message,” Wimpolo cried. “I must not be stopped. Every moment is precious.”
The soldiers began to march past, but an officer confronted her.
“Who is your message for?”
“General Soloroff,” answered Wimpolo, relating a name she had heard.
“General Soloroff is in the upper world, leading an expedition,” snapped the officer.
“I mean General Bissalak.”
The Complete Saga of Don Hargreaves Page 12
