The other gripped his arm. “It’s horrible, Hackett, I know. But it isn’t instant death, and we’ve still a chance to escape. Hell, can damn frog-men keep us here? Where’s your nerve, man?”
A voice beside them made them turn in amazement. “You are men from Earth?” it asked, in queerly accented English. “From Earth?”
Astonishment held them as they saw who spoke. It was one of the green men in the room, who had settled down by their side. A tall figure with superb muscles and frank, clean countenance, his dark eyes afire with eagerness.
“English?” Norman exclaimed. “You know English—you understand me?”
The other showed his teeth in a smile. “I know, yes. I’m Sarja, and I learned to speak it from Fallas, in my city, before the Ralas caught me.”
“Fallas—” Norman repeated, puzzled; then suddenly he flamed. “By God, he means Fellows!”
“Fallas, yes,” said the other. “From the sky he fell into our city in a strange flying-boat that was smashed. He was hurt but we cared for him, and he taught me his speech, which I heard you talking now.”
“Then Fellows is in your city now?” asked Hackett eagerly. “Where is that?”
“Across this sea—back in the hills,” the other waved. “It is far from the sea but I was rash one day and came too near the water in my flying-boat. The Ralas were out raiding and they saw me, caught me, and brought me here. No escape now, until I die.”
“The Ralas—you mean these frog-men?” Norman asked.
Sarja nodded. “Of course. They are the tyrants and oppressors of this world. Our little world is but a tenth or less the size of your great Earth which it circles, but it has its lands and rivers, and this one great fresh-water sea into which the latter empty. In this sea long ago developed the Ralas, the great frog-men who acquired such intelligence and arts that they became lords of this world.
“Through the centuries, while on the land our races of green men have been struggling upward, the Ralas have oppressed them. Long ago the Ralas left all their other cities to build this one great amphibian city at the sea‘s center. Entrance to it is only by the water-tunnel from without, and being frog-people entrance thus is easy for them since they can move for many minutes under water, though they drown like any other breathing animal if kept under too long. Humans dare not try to enter it thus by the water-tunnel, since, before they could find it and make their way up through it, they would have drowned.
To the Ralas have ruled from this impregnable amphibian city. Its colossal metal dome is invulnerable to ordinary attack, and though solid and without openings it is always as light beneath the dome here as outside, since the Ralas’ scientists contrived light-condensers and conductors that catch light outside and bring it in to release inside. So when it is day outside the sunlight is as bright here, and when night comes the Earth-light shines here the same as without.
“From this city their raiding parties have gone out endlessly to swoop down on the cities of us green men. Since we learned to make flying-boats like theirs, with molecular-motors, and to make the guns like theirs that fire shells filled with annihilating force, we have resisted them stoutly but their raids have not ceased. And always they have brought their prisoners back in to this, their city.
“Tens of thousands of green men they have prisoned here like us, for the sole purpose of supplying them with blood. For the Ralas live on this blood alone, changing it chemically to fit their own bodies and then taking it into their bodies. It eliminates all necessity for food here for them. Every few days they drain blood from us, and since we are well fed and cared for to keep us good blood-producers, we will be here for a long time before we die.”
“But haven’t you made any attempt to get out of here—to escape?” Norman asked.
Sarja smiled. “Who could escape the city of the Ralas? In all recorded history it has never been done, for even if by some miracle you got a flying-boat, the opening of the water-tunnel that leads outward is guarded always.”
“Guards or no guards, we’re going to try it and not sit here to furnish blood for the Ralas,” Norman declared. “Are you willing to help, to try to get to Fellows and your city?”
The green man considered. “It is hopeless,” he said, “but as well to die beneath the force-shells of the Ralas as live out a lifetime here. Yes, I will help, though I cannot see how you expect to escape even from this room.”
“I think we can manage that,” Norman told him. “But first—not a word to these others. We can’t hope to escape with them all, and there is no knowing what one might not betray us to the frog-men.”
He went on then to outline to the other two the idea that had come to him. Both exclaimed at the simpleness of the idea, though Sarja remained somewhat doubtful. While Hackett slept, weak still from his loss of blood, Norman had the green man scratch on the metal floor as well as possible a crude map of the satellite’s surface, and found that the city, where Fellows was, seemed some hundreds of miles back from the sea.
While they talked, the sunlight, apparently sourceless, that came through the heavily barred windows of the room faded rapidly, and dusk settled over the great amphibian city beneath the giant dome, kept from total darkness by a silvery pervading light that Norman reflected must be the light from Earth’s great sphere. With the dusk’s coming the activities in the frog-city lessened greatly.
With dusk, too, frog-guards entered the room bearing long metal troughs filled with a red jellylike substance, that they placed on racks along the wall. As the guards withdrew the men in the room rushed toward the troughs, elbowing each other aside and striking each other to scoop up and eat as much of the red jelly as possible. It was for all the world like the feeding of farm-animals, and Hackett and Norman so sickened at the sight that they had no heart to try the food. Sarja, though, had no such scruples and seemed to make a hearty meal at one of the troughs.
After the meal the green men sought the bunks and soon were stretched in sonorous slumber. It was, Norman reflected, exactly the existence of domesticated animals—to eat and sleep and give food to their masters. A deeper horror of the frog-men shook him, and a deeper determination to escape them. He waited until all in the room were sleeping before beckoning to Sarja and Hackett.
“Quiet now,” he whispered to them. “If these others wake they’ll make such a clamor we won’t have a chance in the world. Ready, Sarja?”
The green man nodded. “Yes, though I still think such a thing’s impossible.”
“Probably is,” Norman admitted. “But it’s the one chance we’ve got, the immensely greater strength of our Earth-muscle that the frog-men must have forgotten when they put us in here.”
They moved silently to the room’s great barred door, outside which a frog-guard paced. They waited until he had passed the door and on down the hall, then Norman and Hackett and Sarja grasped together one of the door’s vertical bars. It was an inch and a half in thickness, of solid metal, and it seemed ridiculous that any men could bend it by the sheer strength of their muscles.
Norman, though, was relying on the fact that on the second satellite, with its far lesser gravitational influence, their Earth-muscles gave them enormous strength. He grasped the bar, Hackett and Sarja gripping it below him, and then at a whispered word they pulled with all their force. The bar resisted and again, with sweat starting on their foreheads, they pulled. It gave a little.
They shrank back from it as the guard returned, moving past. Then grasping the bar again they bent all their force once more upon it. Each effort saw it bending more, the opening in the door’s bars widening. They gave a final great wrench and the bent bar squealed a little. They shrank back, appalled, but the guard had not heard or noticed. He moved past it on his return along the hall, and no sooner was past it than Norman squeezed through the opening and leaped silently for the great frog-man’s back.
It went down with a wild flurry of waving webbed paws and croaking cries, stilled almost instantly by Norman’s te
rrific blows. There was silence then as Hackett and Sarja squeezed out after him, the momentary clamor of the battle having aroused no one.
The three leaped together toward the stairs. In two great floating leaps they were on the floor above, Hackett and Norman dragging Sarja between them. They were not seen, were sailing in giant steps up another stair, hopes rising high. The last stair—the roof-opening above; and then from beneath a great croaking cry swelled instantly into chorus of a alarmed shouts.
“They’ve found the door—the guard!” panted Hackett.
They were bursting out onto the roof. Frog-guards were on it who came in a hopping rush toward them, force-pistols raised. But a giant leap took Hackett among them, to amaze them for a moment with great flailing blows. Sarja had leaped for the nearest flying-boat resting on the roof, and was calling in a frantic voice to Norman and Hackett. Norman was turning toward Hackett, the center of a wild combat, but the latter emerged from it for a brief second to motion him frantically back.
“No use, Norman—get away—get away!” he cried hoarsely, frenziedly.
“Hackett—for God’s sake—!” Norman half-leaped to the other, but an arm caught him, pulled him desperately onto the boat’s surface. It was Sarja, the long craft flying over the roof beneath his control.
“They come!” he panted. “Too late now—” Frog-men were pouring up onto the roof from below. Sarja sent the craft rocketing upward, as Hackett gestured them away for a last frantic time before going down beneath the frog-men’s onslaught.
The roof and the combat on it dropped back and beneath them like a stone as their craft ripped across the silvery dusk over the mighty frog-city. They were shooting toward the city’s center, toward the green pool that was the entrance to the water-tunnel, while behind and beneath an increasing clamor of alarm spread swiftly. Norman raged futilely.
“Hackett—Hackett! We can’t leave him—”
“Too late!” Sarja cried. “We cannot help him but only be captured again. We escape now and come back—come back—”
The truth of it pierced Norman’s brain even in the wild moment. Hackett had fought and held back the frog-guards only that they might escape. He shouted suddenly.
“Sarja—the water-tunnel!” A half-dozen boats with frog-guards on them were rising round it in answer to the alarm!
“The force-gun!” cried the green man. “Beside you—!”
Norman whirled, glimpsed the long tube on its swivel beside him, trained it on the boats rising ahead as they rocketed nearer. He fumbled frantically at a catch at the gun’s rear, then felt a stream of shells flicking out of it. Two of the boats ahead vanished as the shells released their annihilating force, another sagged and fell. From the remaining three invisible force-shells flicked around them, but in an instant Sarja had whirled the boat through them and down into the water-tunnel!
Norman clung desperately to his seat as the boat flashed down through the waters, and then, as Sarja sent it flying out through the great tunnel’s waters, glimpsed, close behind, the beams of the three Rala boats as they pursued them through the tunnel, overtaking them. Could the force-shells be fired under water? Norman did not know, but desperately he swung the force-gun back as they rushed through the waters, and pressed the catch. An instant later beams and boats behind them in the tunnel vanished.
His lungs were afire; it seemed that he must open them to the strangling water. The boat was ripping the waters at such tremendous speed that he felt himself being torn from his hold on it. Pain seemed poured like molten metal through his chest—he could hold out no longer; and then the boat stabbed up from the waters into clear air!
Norman panted, sobbed. Behind them rose the colossal metal dome of the frog-city, gleaming dully in the silvery light that flooded the far-stretching seas. That light poured down from a stupendous silver crescent in the night skies. Norman saw dully the dark outlines on it before he remembered. Earth! He laughed a little hysterically. Sarja was driving the flying-boat out over the sea and away from the frog-city at enormous speed. At last he glanced back. Far behind them lay the great dome and up around it gleaming lights were pouring, lights of pursuing Rala boats.
“We escape,” Sarja cried, “the city of the Ralas, from which none ever before escaped!”
Remembrance smote Norman. “Hackett! Held off those frog-men so we could get away—we’ll come back for him, by God!”
“We come back!” said Sarja. “We come back with all the green men of this world to the Ralas’ city, yes! I know what Fallas has planned.”
“Can you find your way to him—to your city?” Norman asked.
Sarja nodded, looking upward. “Before the next sun has come and gone we can reach it.”
The boat flew onward, and the great dome and the searching lights around it dropped beneath the horizon. Norman felt the warm wind drying his drenched garments as they rushed onward. Crouched on the boat he gazed up toward the silver crescent of Earth sinking toward the horizon ahead. That meant, he told himself, that the satellite turned slowly on its axis as it whirled around Earth. It came to him that its night and day periods must be highly irregular.
When the sun climbed from the waters behind them they were flying still over a boundless waste of waters, but soon they sighted on the horizon ahead the thin green line of land. Sarja slowed as they reached it, took his bearings, and sent the craft flying onward.
They passed over a green coastal plain and then over low hills joined in long chains and mantled by dense and mighty jungles, towering green growths of unfamiliar appearance to Norman. He thought he glimpsed, more than once, huge beastlike forms moving in them. He did see twice in the jungles great clearings where were fair-sized cities of bright-green buildings, a metal tower rising from each. But when he pointed to them Sarja shook his head.
At last, as they passed over another range of hills and came into sight of a third green city with its looming tower, the other pointed, his face alight.
“My city,” he said. “Fallas there.”
Fellows! Norman’s heart beat faster.
They shot closer and lower and he saw that the buildings were obviously green to lend them a certain protective coloration similar to that of the green jungles around them. The tower with its surmounting cage puzzled him though, but before he could ask Sarja concerning it his answer came in a different way. A long metal tube poked slowly out of the cage on the tower’s top and sent a hail of force-shells flicking around them.
“They’re firing on us!” Norman cried. “This can’t be your city!”
“They see our black boat!” Sarja exclaimed. “They think we’re Rala raiders and unless we let them know they’ll shoot us out of the air! Stand up—wave to them—!”
Both Norman and Sarja sprang to their feet and waved wildly to those in the tower-cage, their flying-boat drifting slowly forward. Instantly the force-shells ceased to hail toward them, and as they moved nearer a sirenlike signal broke from the cage. At once scores of flying-boats like their own, but glittering metal instead of black, shot up from the city where they had lain until now, and surrounded them.
As Sarja called in his own tongue to them the green men on the surrounding boats broke into resounding cries. They shot down toward the city, Norman gazing tensely. Great crowds of green men in their dark tunics had swarmed out into its streets with the passing of the alarm, and their craft and the others came to rest in an open square that was the juncture of several streets.
The green men that crowded excitedly about Norman and Sarja gave way to a half-dozen hurrying into the square from the greatest of the buildings facing on it. All but one were green men like the others. But that one—the laughing-eyed tanned face—the worn brown clothing, the curious huge steps with which he came—Norman’s heart leapt.
“Fellows!”
“Great God—Norman!” The other’s face was thunderstruck. “Norman—how by all that’s holy did you get here?”
Norman, mind and body strained to the bre
aking point, was incoherent. “We guessed how you’d gone—the second satellite, Fellows—Hackett and I came after you—taken to that frog-city—”
As Norman choked the tale, Fellows’ face was a study. And when it was finished he swallowed, and gripped Norman’s hand viselike.
“And you and Hackett figured it out and came after me—took that risk? Crazy, both of you. Crazy—”
“Fellows, Hackett’s still there, if he’s alive! In the Rala city!”
Fellows’ voice was grim, quick. “We’ll have him out. Norman, if he still lives. And living or dead, the Ralas will pay soon for this and for all they’ve done upon this world in ages. Their time nears—yes.”
He led Norman, excited throngs of the green men about them, into the great building from which he had emerged. There were big rooms inside, workshops and laboratories that Norman but vaguely glimpsed in passing. The room to which the other led him was one with a long metal couch. Norman stretched protestingly upon it at the other’s bidding, drifted off almost at once into sleep.
He woke to find the sunlight that had filled the room gone and replaced by the silvery Earth-light. From the window he saw that the silver-lit city outside now held tremendous activity, immense hordes of green men surging through it with masses of weapons and equipment, flying-boats pouring down out of the night from all directions. He turned as the door of the room clicked open behind him. It was his old friend Fellows.
“I thought you’d be awake by now, Norman. Feeling fit?”
“As though I’d slept a week,” Norman said, and the other laughed his old care-free laugh.
“You almost have, at that. Two days and nights you’ve slept, but it all adds up to hardly more than a dozen hours.”
“This world!” Norman’s voice held all his incredulity. “To think that we should be on it—a second satellite of Earth’s—it seems almost beyond belief.”
The Edmond Hamilton Megapack: 16 Classic Science Fiction Tales Page 54
