by Don Wilcox
“What are they yelling now?” Allison asked excitedly.
“More!” Smitt answered.
Allison gasped. “He wouldn’t dare—”
“He’d dare anything.”
June O’Neil’s left wrist was bleeding. Jo-jo-kak again did a limping grotesque dance around the fourth level. Then up the steps again. More clumsy, treacherous sword work. The girl winced.
“The damned fool!” Allison muttered loudly. “The filthy old—” Smitt clamped a hand over his mouth. “Quiet! There’s nothing you can do about it.”
“Nothing,” Allison spluttered. “Oh, if I only had a gun!”
“If any of us had a gun!” Smitt mocked bitterly under his breath. “If!” Involuntarily Allison’s hand plunged into the pocket of his slave uniform. Only useless things: scraps of gray porous rock from a torch, a pocketbook, and his handkerchief wrapped tightly around something—what was it? Oh, yes, the old bean shooter he had used to win over all the others on the boat.
Perhaps—but what was that bulge in his pocketbook? Why, it was tiny bottle of deadly poison, poison that had once effected a quick suicide. Poison—Porous stone—A bean shooter—
The girl’s bleeding left hand fell to her side. She lifted it up again. Both arms were bare now. She held them out as best she could.
Up the steps came the wrinkled old creature with his ugly crackling laugh. His yellow eyes glittered as he danced around the girl, prodding her body with the point of his sword. Avidly the other Dazzalox cried for more.
Again the sword jabbed perilously at June O’Neil’s garments. The blue ornamental band that covered the girl’s breasts severed. For a moment her side below her extended right arm was whitely naked; then a long dark line of blood appeared.
Jo-jo-kak hobbled back down to the fourth step and tossed back his ragged coppery head of hair and laughed like a demon. The crowd went wild with cheering.
Then something mysterious happened. Jo-jo-kak straightened up with a jerk. His skinny arms shot out, his gnarled fingers extended. His sword clattered down the steps and swished into the water. The breathless crowd heard the clatter and the splash.
Jo-jo-kak grabbed his mouth. A trickle of blood dripped over his lower lip. He spat and choked and with both hands fought at his mouth, all the while reeling about on the fourth step like a man who has been stabbed.
His wrinkled yellow face grew dark. His arms drooped. His eyes tightened. He fell.
He slid only a few steps, for his crusty yellow hands and feet caught him. He hung on the side of the pyramid, head and face downward, and his ragged coppery hair showered down toward the water. He was dead.
Allison and his fellow one-stripers lay about on the floor of the slave sales cavern. The men complained of the endless hours of waiting.
“Hell, if we’ve got to be slaves,” one of them grumbled, “I wish someone would buy us. I’d rather work for a Dazzalox than have to answer to that swine of a Kilhide all the time.”
“Me, too,” said another. “But who wants men slaves now? All the potentates are putting in their orders for women slaves. I hear several of the old boys have put off their death dates.”
“And some of their women are up in arms about their breaking traditions,” said a third. “But if the potentates want Earth women, they’ll get them. That’s Kilhide for you. Ain’t that so, Allison?”
Allison didn’t answer.
“He hasn’t said a word for hours,” someone grunted.
“More like weeks. Brooding about the girl, probably. It’s a good thing he got away long enough to fix up her scratches, though. Even if he did get lashed for it.”
A silence. A Dazzalox potentate came past, stopped to inquire for Kilhide, and went on. The conversation resumed.
“Funny about that thousand-year-old codger falling dead right when he did . . . But if he hadn’t, he might easily have killed the girl, the way he was going.”
“He didn’t just fall dead, however,” said another man carelessly, “according to something I heard.”
Lester Allison looked up sharply. “What did you hear?”
“I heard that he was killed somehow—by some slave—though Tyndall wouldn’t tell who it was or how he did it.”
“Tyndall?”
“He’s the one that saw it happen—at least, he claims he did.”
“Where is Tyndall?” Allison snapped savagely.
“The big shot and some potentates took him over for a conference. It won’t take them long to find out what he knows.”
The group waited for Allison to say something more, but he didn’t. His manner was puzzling.
Someone finally asked, “Whatever happened to that rebellion you started when you first got here, Allison? Thought you were going to get us a ride back to the earth.”
“Come close and listen to me,” Allison said coldly. Then his voice lowered to a whispered undertone. “The robot ship will soon take off. I’ve found out when it goes and who goes with it. A few trusted slaves. They’re being sent to America to gather up a load—all girls. When they take off, Kilhide will be at his lab, working the automatic controls.”
One of the men asked, “But how will these slaves get people to come aboard? After all, the people on Earth—particularly in our country—will be mobilized, wary of the return of this kidnaping space ship, and when it does reappear—well—”
Allison’s face twisted. “Kilhide has an answer for that, too. No matter how many trips this damned shuttling space vessel makes, it’ll be landed each time at night, disguised, camouflaged, on the outskirts of a town or the edge of a woods. I don’t even want to think about how Kilhide’s slaves will kidnap folks.” There was a swelling chorus of angry mutters.
“Can’t we get to Kilhide?” one of the group bit out through clenched teeth.
“Not a chance,” said Allison. “He’s got more protection than a dictator. But—by careful timing, there might be a chance for one or two—possibly three—of us to slip aboard—during the crucial five or ten seconds just before the take-off.”
“Let the girl go, for one,” said the sideshow barker.
The other men voiced their agreement. She should have first chance.
“I suggest we draw straws for second, third and fourth chances,” said Allison, “and we’ll follow through as long as our luck lasts.”
The straws were prepared. But just as the draw was to begin, the sound of footsteps outside made Allison hold up a warning hand.
“Psst!” he whispered. “Make out we’re playing a game.”
A moment later Ted Tyndall walked in, and behind him came three Dazzalox carrying ornamented battle axes, followed by Kilhide. It was Kilhide who spoke.
“Allison, the Dazzalox want you for the murder of Jo-jo-kak.”
Allison’s eyes met Kilhide’s and read the evil delight that lurked there in the handsome scientist’s saturnine, gloating face. Kilhide, however, could not meet the other’s accusing stare. His own eyes lowered, came to rest on the straws the slave men held in their hands.
“What is going on here?” Kilhide demanded, all suspicion. “Not drawing lots for some little trick, are you?”
“You don’t think,” Allison fairly purred, “that any of us are that clever—do you, Kilhide? If you have made us slaves, at least you cannot deny us the right to play an occasional game.” Kilhide flushed darkly, made as if to say something, and then retired from the room in momentary confusion, gesturing to the three Dazzalox to take Allison along. Allison rose leisurely, glanced back at the men who had been about to draw straws, and surveyed Ted Tyndall with amused, contemptuous eyes. Tyndall’s face turned away.
“Let my good friend Tyndall have my straw,” Allison said as he left in the center of the three Dazzalox. “Perhaps—perhaps he likes to play games, too. Perhaps there will even come a time when he will be ‘it’ !”
At snail pace the robot ship moved along the cavern runway, its gleaming black metal nose pointed toward the unlighted tunnel that would let
it escape, somewhere miles beyond these buried chasms, into the void. The rocket motors thundered.
Several men in slave uniforms waited, concealed in a deep shadowy crevice. The drawing of straws had gone through according to Allison’s original plan. Ted Tyndall, in fact, had taken Allison’s place with an almost sweating eagerness.
Silently the men counted off the seconds. Another one-striper came running to them a moment later from the other end of the crevice and whispered his news breathlessly.
“Allison couldn’t get her to come!” he gasped. “She’s determined to stay.”
“Hell!” the carnival barker muttered. “We should have guessed that she wouldn’t go unless Allison did. Wish to God I’d given Allison my chance. If there was only time—”
“Not a chance,” said the news bearer. “They’ve just convicted him of murder. He’s sunk.”
The ship was about to stop to take on Kilhide’s trusted slave. It was time to act. Since the girl hadn’t come, the barker’s turn was automatically raised to first. Ted Tyndall’s chance moved up from fifth to fourth.
“Why can’t I have her place?” Tyndall begged. “After all—”
“You’re fourth!” the barker snapped. “Heads up—All ready? Remember what Allison said. We jump out of here at our own risk. Either we make it or we don’t. Ready, number two?” Number two stood directly behind the barker, number three next, Ted Tyndall and the rest followed in line.
The ship eased to a stop. On the opposite side of it Kilhide’s minion would enter. There was a click; the airlocks on this side automatically pushed open. The carnival barker dashed out. Number two failed to get started, for Ted Tyndall gave him a violent push and crowded out ahead of him.
Then above the sound of the idling rocket motors an automatic gun rattled. The barker and Ted Tyndall fell. The other men fled back through the crevice as hard as they could go. The robot ship roared away exactly on schedule.
CHAPTER VII
War of the Sexes
Lester Allison lay on his stomach a fortnight later, his chin resting in his hands, his eyes watching the Dazzalox traffic come and go.
The heavy metal bars of his prison door afforded a comprehensive view of Dazzalox life, and in the many hours he had been here—an estimated twenty-five days, Earth time—he had gained much insight on the rising conflicts within this subterranean race.
A sharp, bitter conflict between the sexes!
At first, when he had been hailed into the absurd courts of native justice, he had been mildly surprised at the pronounced difference of opinion between the males and the females regarding his degree of guilt. To his astonishment, even old Jo-jo-kak’s widow had made a stout appeal in his behalf.
“This slave not kill,” the unbereaved spouse had declared in her prided English words. “Jo-jo-kak, his time to die. He try to escape death. He die.”
The other women had carried their superstitions even farther. It was the official duty of the Dazzalox women to uphold and defend the great traditions. When they discovered that their males were yielding to a strange urge to break traditions, they were sure that Jo-jo-kak’s death should be interpreted as a warning. Nothing less.
To Allison’s grim amusement, many of the old men had cancelled their death dates, as if life had suddenly taken on a new interest; and this, the women complained, was upsetting to their careful plans for the distribution of food and properties. But back of it all, Allison knew, was a deep-rooted female distrust of the ill-suppressed desires of their males for “girl”!
If this Allison slave be guilty of a murder, the women whispered among themselves, then he should still be dealt with leniently; for he had put a timely end to the most undignified and ungracious exhibition of any Challenge Parade in their memory.
But although the Dazzalox women considered that the murder had been well timed, if murder it was, the male Dazzalox were exceedingly angered that the act had occurred just when it did.
They had been crying “More!” to old Jo-jo-kak, and he had been complying.
Indeed, the Challenge Parade had been on the point of making memorable history when Jo-jo-kak’s death brought the excitement to an end. The murderer deserved death. No, he deserved the worst kind of death!
Between Ted Tyndall’s eyewitness account and the telltale bottle of poison which Allison had dropped and broken in his haste, there had been no difficulty proving guilt. The only question which Kilhide had left open to the potentates was: what was the most appropriate sentence?
Allison closed his eyes as these thoughts flooded through his mind for the thousandth time. The perspiration trickled over his half-naked body. He knew that before the manner of his death had been decided upon, other things had happened to make his case a spectacular issue.
The most important thing was that the robot ship had returned on schedule seven days ago after its week’s trip to Earth to dump twenty-five nice-looking girls—stolen from a factory in eastern United States—into Kilhide’s lap.
“There are now over a hundred male slaves; there are twenty-six female slaves in our society,” Naf, Smitt’s owner, had reminded his fellow potentates, speaking in their native tongue during the last session of Allison’s hearings.
“Unless we deal firmly with the murderer of Jo-jo-kak, we may expect more trouble from the male slaves.”
The potentates had applauded vigorously.
“If the females are to be our slaves, we must have complete freedom in our management of them.” Naf’s words had led to enthusiastic cheering. A severe execution seemed in order.
Another potentate had hit upon another need for such an execution, saying, in effect,
“If these female slaves are treated to the bravest and most daring of our Dazzalox performances, in which we put to shame the poor fighting skills of their males, they will be convinced that male slaves are insignificant compared to us. The most daring and spectacular way for us to execute this murderer is by the Ancient Rite of the Floating Chop.”
So, in spite of demands for leniency from the female upholders of tradition, Allison had been condemned to die by the Floating Chop.
And what had happened to the anger of the women aroused by these masculine strategies? At this very moment Allison could look out into the streets and see groups of female Dazzalox talking in ominously low tones. The conflict was gathering fury. It had been gathering all the past weeks. There were subtle signs here and there that the lid would soon blow off.
Allison felt a poignant wish that he could live to see what form the conflict would take, and whether the women would dare do violence. But he doubted whether he would live to find out; for he was to die by the Floating Chop.
When? he wondered.
Perhaps not until this orgy of buying and selling the new females had subsided. Not until the arrogant old potentates had had their turns at staging ostentatious Challenge Parades to impress these lovely females slaves with their grandeur and power. Not until the speculation on the slave market had passed its first frenzied wave.
Perhaps not until the boiling seas had swept periodically through these streets and river beds, to wash away the filth and grime and half a Mercury year’s accumulation of bodies from the death tunnels. The blue dust from the stone streets was constantly in the air, so thick and fast came the traffic of hard, crusty yellow feet, and so long had it been since the sea had swept through. “How’s the boy, Les?”
Lester Allison looked up into the grinning face of Smitt. A Sicker of disappointment came into his own visage. “You couldn’t get her?”
“Not yet, Romeo. But I’ll try again soon. It’s devilishly risky, you know. As long as she’s with Jo-jo-kak’s wife, she’s safe. But with these potentates practically fighting over girl slaves—”
“I know,” Allison grunted. “I see plenty of it from this angle, with the slave mart right across the street from me. Those poor girls are scared to death. They fell into a pretty mess of hell when they came here. Did June send any message?
”
“Her love, and this.” Smitt passed a package of food through the bars. Allison took the package with eager begrimed fingers. Smitt grinned broadly and knowingly.
He mumbled, “I’ve begun to figure out your side of things finally. That is—” He shuffled his feet like a bashful boy with something embarrassing that had to be said.
“What are you driving at?”
“Well, at first I thought you were a fool to try to fight Kilhide’s racket. It was too much like batting your brains against a stone wall. But since that load of females arrived, I’ve sort of picked up the feeling that life is worth fighting for.”
“You mean—”
“Her name’s Mary,” said Smitt, as if that explained everything. He added, chuckling, “I know of three other fellows who have got it as bad as I have. They’ve been plumb dead to themselves for years down here, but the minute some girls came along and began to look at them as heroes, darned if the fellows aren’t pawing the earth for a chance to put the hammerlock on Kilhide and take a shot for the void!
“If you were just on the other side of these bars, Les, that rebellion you’ve been propagating—Listen! What’s that?”
“Another load of girls,” Allison muttered. “Two trips in two weeks!”
The subterranean canyon filled with the percussion of the robot ship. Before the sounds stopped and the echoes died, hundreds of Dazzalox bounded down their steps and through the streets toward the Red Suburb.
Soon another twenty-five attractive working girls were lined up in the slave market across the dusty plaza from Allison’s prison, and at once the bewildered creatures were surrounded by a chaos of buying and selling and trading—a chaos of shrill birdlike voices screaming and quarreling in an inhuman tongue. Potentates hurried to the market with many of the first crop of girls—and with groups of two-stripers to make exchanges.
Smitt was still sitting outside Allison’s bars when Kilhide breezed past, then turned back to say,
“I’m looking for June O’Neil. Have you seen her?”
