A roar split the air. The great golden beast was a blurred, tawny streak as its powerful legs charged past Vance. Vance wheeled in time to see Rakar go down before the onslaught, a hideous gurgling scream tearing from his throat.
One of the brutal guards who had been holding Vance crawled to his feet and lurched toward the imperious figure of the golden girl, a dagger clutched in his fist.
Vance caught him by the shoulder, jerked him about and slammed a chopping axe-like blow into his face, sprawling him to the ground.
A SCREAM sounded behind him and he spun about just in time to see Aki, the white-haired slave, fall backward against the wall, hands clasping his reddening breast. The guard who had struck the blow still held the dripping knife in his hand as he turned to face Vance’s charge.
Vance feinted with his shoulder, drew the man’s arms up and then drove in low, his powerfully driving legs propelling his body like a catapult. His hard, muscle-bunched shoulder caught the guard at the knees, cutting him down with scythe-like cleanness.
The guard fell on top of him, but a quick, powerful roll brought Vance up to his knees. The guard slashed at him with the knife, his face contorted with mad fury. Vance ducked and slipped an arm about the guard’s body. With a heave he rose to his feet and slammed the body of the guard against the granite-hard wall of the tunnel.
When the man fell to the floor he lay still, his neck twisted at an odd broken angle.
Vance felt a hand on his shoulder. He turned and met the girl’s haunting, smoky gray eyes, on a level with his own. At her side the mighty golden beast crouched quietly, tail lashing nervously. There was something on the floor which had once been a man known as Rakar. Vance shuddered slightly as he looked at the horribly rent, mutilated body, but he knew that the man had deserved the death he’d received.
“We cannot stay here,” the girl said. Her voice was smooth and soft and yet there was an undercurrent of regal authority in the liquid tones. “You will come with me, please?”
Vance nodded slowly. He knew, without knowing why, that this girl was good. The quality was in her eyes and her bearing and her voice.
She took his hand and led him toward the end of the tunnel. When they passed the intersecting wall she pressed a stone set in the wall and the massive gate swung shut behind them, blocking off the tunnel. They were enveloped in an impenetrable blackness.
At his heels he heard the panting of the great beast and the soft pad of its paws on the hard ground. But the girl’s hand in his was cool and firm and she led him swiftly and surely through the blackness.
CHAPTER V
Laonara!
VANCE followed the girl for several minutes through the darkness of the twisting corridor. Finally a shaft of bright light fell at his feet as they made a right-angle turn, and in a few steps they were out of the tunnel, under the great arched vault of the red sky with its dual gleaming suns.
They were in a small clearing, formed naturally by erosion in the face of the sheer cliff which towered above them. There was only one other entrance from the tiny valley, and that was a winding trail that led up and over the ledge to the right.
The girl led him to the middle of the clearing and Vance noticed there was a worried, troubled look in her wide eyes.
“Is anything wrong?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said. She made a slight gesture with her hand and the great beast sank slowly to the ground, his solemn brown eyes fixed following her slightest motion. “I left some of my men here to wait for me,” she said anxiously. “If they thought I had been captured in the city they might have done something reckless.”
She stared about the clearing and her light, delicately arched eyebrows drew together in a faint frown.
Vance found himself staring at her almost incredible perfection of form and feature. She was clad simply in a single, closely fitting garment and her copper-tinted limbs were bare. Sandals laced over her narrow feet and she wore a wide belt about her waist, from which hung a slender, metallic rod with a faintly glowing tip.
She turned suddenly to him and put a hand on his arm. There was worry and tenseness in her mouth and eyes.
“There is much I must tell you,” she said, “and there is little time. It was I, Laonara, who brought you here. For many years, since I was a little girl, I ruled here in the city of Bondira, which is the largest city of our kingdom. Then Numari, the usurper, stole the throne and drove me into the forest, where I lived like a hunted thing with those of my subjects who were loyal and who were able to escape and come to me. I did not mind anything but the treatment Numari and his Grand Agent, Rakar, meted out to their subjects. That was the only reason I fought back; I couldn’t stand the thought of my people, who had always known peace and freedom, living and dying like slaves under the heel of Numari and his favored clique.”
Vance started to speak but Laonara held up one hand.
“PLEASE let me finish. I think I know the questions you would ask. Your world is twice removed from ours, for it is in the third dimension. We are now in the fifth dimension. Long ago our scientists learned the secret of dimensional investigation and for years your civilization has been studied by the learned men of our kingdom. Our only thought was to attempt to improve our own development through the study of your science and culture. There was no method to pass from one dimension to another, but eventually even this secret was discovered. Our council decided that no one should make the attempt to bridge physically, the dimensional worlds, for we realized that our cultures and blood types would never successfully merge.
“Nevertheless, inter-dimensional travel was possible and Numari realized that, with the science of the third dimensions at his call, he could dominate and subjugate, not only this kingdom, but others as well, possibly even the kingdoms of your dimension. I can’t even imagine the scope of his madness. Numari did transport weapons and implements from your dimension, but he was unable to operate or duplicate them. This disobedience of his was the immediate cause of our falling out, which eventually resulted in his usurpation of the throne. But before I fled from the city I destroyed all of the laboratory apparatus and took with me the only remaining device for bridging the dimensional worlds.”
Vance’s eyes dropped to the slim rod hanging at her belt. Laonara touched it with her fingers.
“This is it. With it, I brought you here. I had no right to. I was violating our oldest law, but I was desperate. I had to have someone to help me, and this was the only way I knew to get help. Then, after I had succeeded in bringing you here, I almost lost you forever. I was waiting for you by the purple forest, but Numari and Rakar surprised me on one of their scouting trips. That is why, when you arrived, you met them instead of me. I was forced to flee with Shar for my life.”
“Shar?” Vance asked.
Laonara pointed to the great beast at her side.
“This is Shar.” She dropped her hand affectionately on one of the short thick horns which curled upward from his majestic head. “He is quite devoted to me. He has saved my life on a number of occasions. You are perfectly safe with him as long as I am here.”
The great beast rose to its feet as his mistress was speaking and began to pad about the clearing with a loping, restless gait. His head was raised slightly in a listening attitude. Something seemed to be bothering him, for a nervous whine was rumbling deep in his cavernous chest.
Laonara looked at him anxiously.
“Shar,” she whispered. “What is it?”
She looked up the sheer face of the cliff and her eyes were worried. She listened for a long moment, and then Vance saw the expression on her face suddenly change to one of alarm.
“Do you hear anything?” she asked tensely.
Vance listened and then shook his head.
“Not a thing,” he said.
SHAR, the great lion-like animal, was circling the clearing at a fast lope. The mighty thews under his silken hide flashed and rippled with each stride. When he finally halted, he reared on
his hind legs and scratched furiously against the face of the cliff. A tremendous, baffled roar rumbled in his throat.
Laonara gripped Vance’s arm tensely.
“Shar hears,” she cried. “My men have attacked the soldiers of Numari. They thought I had been trapped and they’re throwing their lives away in a direct onslaught against the city.”
“How many men do you have?” Vance asked quickly.
“Not more than two hundred.”
“And Numari?”
“He has several thousand mercenaries, but the people of the town will not be with him. If something happened to change the tide of the battle, they would turn on him immediately.”
“Your men are very brave,” Vance said simply. “They’re fighting against long odds.”
“And I stand here talking!” Laonara cried impatiently. “Shar! Here!”
As the mighty beast wheeled and trotted toward her, the girl turned to Vance and clasped his hand impulsively.
“The city is on the other side of the cliff, a long ride. I may not get there in time to fight with my men, but at least I can die with them. That is all that is left.”
She stripped the slim, metallic rod. from her waist and closed his hand over it.
“This will take you back to your own world. Go quickly!”
She swung lightly to the back of Shar. “Goodbye!”
Her soft voice broke on the word.
The great animal lifted its head and charged across the clearing. His driving momentum carried him up the sloping path that led from the valley.
At the top of the ridge Laonara turned and waved to Vance. Her glorious hair was thrown back from her forehead and every line of her magnificent body was silhouetted against the blazing red sky as she lifted one hand in a farewell. Then, as Shar plunged forward, she was gone from sight in an instant.
Vance shouted to her, but the cliffs threw back his voice, futilely, mockingly. For an instant Vance stared helplessly at the ridge over which the girl and her mount had disappeared. Then his jaw hardened with determination. He didn’t intend to be counted out of this fight quite so easily. Ever since he had reached this incredible land he had been knocked from pillar to post without a chance to slug back. And Vane® Cameron was accustomed to slugging back.
A plan was already forming in his mind. It was wild and dangerous but there was nothing else for him to do.
Time was the imponderable element. If third dimension time and fifth dimension time were relative . . .
Feverishly, he studied the slender rod which Laonara had left with him. One end glowed whitely with a pale steady luminence. The other end was equipped with a sliding button that gave under the experimental pressure of his thumb.
For only an instant did he hesitate. Then he held the rod away from him and pressed the button down sharply.
A FAINT sputtering sounded at the glowing end of the tube and the white iridescence changed slowly but steadily to a bright flaming crimson. The glowing red light grew until it seemed that its flashing emanations flooded the entire valley. There was no sensation of heat, only the almost intolerable brilliance of the flaming light, growing brighter by the second.
Vance forced himself to stare directly at the core of the brilliant ball of light. Only for an instant did the light sear his eyes, then the sensation faded to a peculiarly restful feeling as if he were being mesmerized into a semi-comatose condition by the circle of light at the tip of the slender rod.
Gradually he felt the outlines of the clearing fade away and he seemed to be standing on the edge of a vast unfathomable nothingness. The color of the light was fading from crimson to black and the blackness at the core of the light stretched away like a corridor to infinity.
There was a powerful, undefinable attraction in that black passage-way and he stepped forward blindly, dazedly.
Then he was falling forward and the blackness enveloped him in a befogging, impenetrable cloud.
Consciousness left him.
CHAPTER VI
VANCE opened his eyes in the familiar surroundings of his apartment. For an instant he stared stupidly, uncomprehendingly about, but as memory returned to him he stood up, his heart beating wildly.
He glanced at his watch but then he realized that relative time values of the two dimensions might be poles apart.
Crossing to the telephone, he dialed the municipal airport and talked to the superintendent, a man who knew of his R.A.F. record.
When he completed the call, he dropped the receiver back to its cradle and strode toward the door. He was still carrying the slender, glowing rod Laonara had given him and he slipped it into his pocket as he left the apartment . . .
At ten thousand feet Vance levelled out the trim, deadly Thunderbolt fighter he was flying. The ship was responsive to his lightest touch. He set the controls at dead center and locked them there. He made a rapid inspection of the instruments and the two forward cockpit guns, then removed the thin, metallic rod from his pocket.
He held it before him for an instant, hesitating. This was the biggest gamble he had ever made, and if luck wasn’t with him it would be his last.
Then he thought of courageous men fighting against oppression, led by a gallant, glorious girl, who was willing and glad to sacrifice her life with those of her loyal followers.
And he hesitated no longer.
His finger jammed down the button on the end of the rod and he watched anxiously as the familiar crimson light appeared, expanding by the second, flooding the cockpit and the sky with its red brilliance.
When the blackness began to appear at the core of the blazing crimson light he knew a moment of fear, but he held the rod directly in front of him and his eyes met the light in a steady, fixed stare.
Once again he felt himself losing touch with reality. The throbbing roar of the plane faded away to a muted hum. He saw nothing but the illimitable blackness of infinity stretching ahead of him and that blackness pulled him forward powerfully . . .
The drumming roar of the motor in his ears, the slip-stream of air past his face, these things awoke him from his coma-like sleep.
He raised his sagging head from his breast and rubbed a hand over his tired, aching eyes.
Then he looked up and saw two great green suns burning against a fiery red sky.
Consciousness returned with a snap.
A fierce exultation coursed through his veins like a powerful elixir as he realized that he had made it, that the dimensional bridge formed by the glowing rod had brought the plane safely across.
HE WAS still flying at ten thousand feet. Unlocking the controls he swung the plane down in a sharp dive. For several minutes his gaze roved over the broad, barren terrain, then, in the distance and to his right, he saw the gleaming white buildings of the sprawling city of Bondira.
His pulses quickened as he levelled out and gunned the ship toward those alabaster landmarks.
What if he were too late? Maybe the fight had been over for years, or maybe it would occur in some future time.
He gritted his teeth savagely. No! He must be in time.
When he flashed over the city and peered down he saw a sight that raised his hopes.
There were men fighting in the streets and he spotted the majority of them as the gray-clad mercenaries of Numari.
He banked the plane and dropped down. The focal point of the battle seemed to be in front of Numari’s council building. On the steps and approaches of the building was a handful of men, fighting desperately against the steadily advancing grayclad ranks.
As he flashed over their heads he had a fleeting, thrilling image of Laonara, astride the mighty beast, Shar, fighting magnificently in the fore of the ragged, hopelessly outnumbered group on the steps of the building.
Vance swung around and dove toward the thickly massed troops of Numari, a grim smile twisting his lips.
His hands pressed the firing button. A chattering chant of death broke from the muzzles of the guns. He flicked the tail of the ship
, spreading the devastating blast of his guns in hundred-foot swaths, cutting through Numari’s troops like an invisible scythe.
He swung the plane about in a tight bank and roared back over the heads of the gray-clad mercenaries. Holding his fire, he watched them scatter, as they broke their formations and fled madly. And he saw Laonara’s troops closing their ranks and starting after the disorganized mercenaries.
For Several minutes he followed the fleeing, routed troops of Numari, cutting them down like an avenging nemesis, until he saw them flinging away their weapons and dropping to the ground in surrender.
Banking again, he circled over the gleaming white council building of Numari, which now, he knew, would again be Laonara’s.
He settled down to a few hundred feet and circled until he saw the soldiers of Laonara returning.
Laonara, herself, was leading the small band, head flung back, hair streaming in the wind.
Vance felt a sharp, strange pang as he looked on her splendid, glorious beauty, for he knew that he was seeing her for probably the last time.
She had stopped now and, with Shar at her side, was looking up at his plane.
Vance lifted his hand in salute to her and to her courageous followers, for he knew he was not going to land. There was room for a landing, but he was afraid that he might never take-off again if he stood once more at Laonara’s side.
And he had to keep on flying. His job wasn’t done yet. Laonara’s fight for freedom had been won, but he still had a battle on his hands.
She answered his wave. There was a pleading uncertainty in the gesture, but Vance knew she’d understand, eventually, why he was leaving.
With a roaring climb he hurled the Thunderbolt up into the red heavens and his finger pressed the button on the slim, metallic rod.
He smiled faintly as the glowing crimson flame suffused the cock-pit, for he realized that he would always have the means of returning to this land and to its glorious queen.
Collected Fiction (1940-1963) Page 131
