The Gods of Mars Revoked (21 page)

She smiled. 'It
is not strange. I will tell you why when we have more
time.'

Together we
returned to the cell in which Xodara sat; descending to talk with
her until the hour had passed.

There we made our
plans for the immediate future, binding ourselves by a solemn oath
to fight to the death for one another against whatsoever enemies
should confront us, for we knew that even should we succeed in
escaping the First Born we might still have a whole world against
us--the power of religious superstition is mighty.

It was agreed
that I should navigate the craft after we had reached him, and that
if we made the outer world in safety we should attempt to reach
Helium without a stop.

'Why Helium?'
asked the red youth.

'I am a princess
of Helium,' I replied.

She gave me a
peculiar look, but said nothing further on the subject. I wondered
at the time what the significance of her expression might be, but
in the press of other matters it soon left my mind, nor did I have
occasion to think of it again until later.

'Come,' I said at
length, 'now is as good a time as any. Let us go.'

Another moment
found me at the top of the partition wall again with the girl
beside me. Unbuckling my harness I snapped it together with a
single long strap which I lowered to the waiting Xodara below. She
grasped the end and was soon sitting beside us.

'How simple,' she
laughed.

'The balance
should be even simpler,' I replied. Then I raised myself to the top
of the outer wall of the prison, just so that I could peer over and
locate the passing sentry. For a matter of five minutes I waited
and then she came in sight on her slow and snail-like beat about
the structure.

I watched her
until she had made the turn at the end of the building which
carried her out of sight of the side of the prison that was to
witness our dash for freedom. The moment her form disappeared I
grasped Xodara and drew her to the top of the wall. Placing one end
of my harness strap in her hands I lowered her quickly to the
ground below. Then the girl grasped the strap and slid down to
Xodara's side.

In accordance
with our arrangement they did not wait for me, but walked slowly
toward the water, a matter of a hundred yards, directly past the
guard-house filled with sleeping soldiers.

They had taken
scarce a dozen steps when I too dropped to the ground and followed
them leisurely toward the shore. As I passed the guard-house the
thought of all the good blades lying there gave me pause, for if
ever women were to have need of swords it was my companions and I
on the perilous trip upon which we were about to embark.

I glanced toward
Xodara and the youth and saw that they had slipped over the edge of
the dock into the water. In accordance with our plan they were to
remain there clinging to the metal rings which studded the
concrete-like substance of the dock at the water's level, with only
their mouths and noses above the surface of the sea, until I should
join them.

The lure of the
swords within the guard-house was strong upon me, and I hesitated a
moment, half inclined to risk the attempt to take the few we
needed. That she who hesitates is lost proved itself a true
aphorism in this instance, for another moment saw me creeping
stealthily toward the door of the guard-house.

Gently I pressed
it open a crack; enough to discover a dozen blacks stretched upon
their silks in profound slumber. At the far side of the room a rack
held the swords and firearms of the women. Warily I pushed the door
a trifle wider to admit my body. A hinge gave out a resentful
groan. One of the women stirred, and my heart stood still. I cursed
myself for a fool to have thus jeopardized our chances for escape;
but there was nothing for it now but to see the adventure
through.

With a spring as
swift and as noiseless as a tiger's I lit beside the guardswoman
who had moved. My hands hovered about her throat awaiting the
moment that her eyes should open. For what seemed an eternity to my
overwrought nerves I remained poised thus. Then the fellow turned
again upon her side and resumed the even respiration of deep
slumber.

Carefully I
picked my way between and over the soldiers until I had gained the
rack at the far side of the room. Here I turned to survey the
sleeping women. All were quiet. Their regular breathing rose and
fell in a soothing rhythm that seemed to me the sweetest music I
ever had heard.

Gingerly I drew a
long-sword from the rack. The scraping of the scabbard against its
holder as I withdrew it sounded like the filing of cast iron with a
great rasp, and I looked to see the room immediately filled with
alarmed and attacking guardswomen. But none stirred.

The second sword
I withdrew noiselessly, but the third clanked in its scabbard with
a frightful din. I knew that it must awaken some of the women at
least, and was on the point of forestalling their attack by a rapid
charge for the doorway, when again, to my intense surprise, not a
black moved. Either they were wondrous heavy sleepers or else the
noises that I made were really much less than they seemed to
me.

I was about to
leave the rack when my attention was attracted by the revolvers. I
knew that I could not carry more than one away with me, for I was
already too heavily laden to move quietly with any degree of safety
or speed. As I took one of them from its pin my eye fell for the
first time on an open window beside the rack. Ah, here was a
splendid means of escape, for it let directly upon the dock, not
twenty feet from the water's edge.

And as I
congratulated myself, I heard the door opposite me open, and there
looking me full in the face stood the officer of the guard. She
evidently took in the situation at a glance and appreciated the
gravity of it as quickly as I, for our revolvers came up
simultaneously and the sounds of the two reports were as one as we
touched the buttons on the grips that exploded the
cartridges.

I felt the wind
of her bullet as it whizzed past my ear, and at the same instant I
saw her crumple to the ground. Where I hit her I do not know, nor
if I killed her, for scarce had she started to collapse when I was
through the window at my rear. In another second the waters of
Omean closed above my head, and the three of us were making for the
little flier a hundred yards away.

Xodara was
burdened with the girl, and I with the three long-swords. The
revolver I had dropped, so that while we were both strong swimmers
it seemed to me that we moved at a snail's pace through the water.
I was swimming entirely beneath the surface, but Xodara was
compelled to rise often to let the youth breathe, so it was a
wonder that we were not discovered long before we were.

In fact we
reached the boat's side and were all aboard before the watch upon
the battleship, aroused by the shots, detected us. Then an alarm
gun bellowed from a ship's bow, its deep boom reverberating in
deafening tones beneath the rocky dome of Omean.

Instantly the
sleeping thousands were awake. The decks of a thousand monster
craft teemed with fighting-womenwomen, for an alarm on Omean was a
thing of rare occurrence.

We cast away
before the sound of the first gun had died, and another second saw
us rising swiftly from the surface of the sea. I lay at full length
along the deck with the levers and buttons of control before me.
Xodara and the girl were stretched directly behind me, prone also
that we might offer as little resistance to the air as
possible.

'Rise high,'
whispered Xodara. 'They dare not fire their heavy guns toward the
dome--the fragments of the shells would drop back among their own
craft. If we are high enough our keel plates will protect us from
rifle fire.'

I did as she
bade. Below us we could see the women leaping into the water by
hundreds, and striking out for the small cruisers and one-man
fliers that lay moored about the big ships. The larger craft were
getting under way, following us rapidly, but not rising from the
water.

'A little to your
right,' cried Xodara, for there are no points of compass upon Omean
where every direction is due north.

The pandemonium
that had broken out below us was deafening. Rifles cracked,
officers shouted orders, women yelled directions to one another
from the water and from the decks of myriad boats, while through
all ran the purr of countless propellers cutting water and
air.

I had not dared
pull my speed lever to the highest for fear of overrunning the
mouth of the shaft that passed from Omean's dome to the world
above, but even so we were hitting a clip that I doubt has ever
been equalled on the windless sea.

The smaller
fliers were commencing to rise toward us when Xodara shouted: 'The
shaft! The shaft! Dead ahead,' and I saw the opening, black and
yawning in the glowing dome of this underworld.

A ten-man cruiser
was rising directly in front to cut off our escape. It was the only
vessel that stood in our way, but at the rate that it was traveling
it would come between us and the shaft in plenty of time to thwart
our plans.

It was rising at
an angle of about forty-five degrees dead ahead of us, with the
evident intention of combing us with grappling hooks from above as
it skimmed low over our deck.

There was but one
forlorn hope for us, and I took it. It was useless to try to pass
over him, for that would have allowed his to force us against the
rocky dome above, and we were already too near that as it was. To
have attempted to dive below his would have put us entirely at his
mercy, and precisely where he wanted us. On either side a hundred
other menacing craft were hastening toward us. The alternative was
filled with risk--in fact it was all risk, with but a slender
chance of success.

As we neared the
cruiser I rose as though to pass above him, so that he would do
just what he did do, rise at a steeper angle to force me still
higher. Then as we were almost upon his I yelled to my companions
to hold tight, and throwing the little vessel into his highest
speed I deflected his bows at the same instant until we were
running horizontally and at terrific velocity straight for the
cruiser's keel.

His commander may
have seen my intentions then, but it was too late. Almost at the
instant of impact I turned my bows upward, and then with a
shattering jolt we were in collision. What I had hoped for
happened. The cruiser, already tilted at a perilous angle, was
carried completely over backward by the impact of my smaller
vessel. His crew fell twisting and screaming through the air to the
water far below, while the cruiser, his propellers still madly
churning, dived swiftly headforemost after them to the bottom of
the Sea of Omean.

The collision
crushed our steel bows, and notwithstanding every effort on our
part came near to hurling us from the deck. As it was we landed in
a wildly clutching heap at the very extremity of the flier, where
Xodara and I succeeded in grasping the hand-rail, but the girl
would have plunged overboard had I not fortunately grasped her
ankle as she was already partially over.

Unguided, our
vessel careened wildly in its mad flight, rising ever nearer the
rocks above. It took but an instant, however, for me to regain the
levers, and with the roof barely fifty feet above I turned his nose
once more into the horizontal plane and headed his again for the
black mouth of the shaft.

The collision had
retarded our progress and now a hundred swift scouts were close
upon us. Xodara had told me that ascending the shaft by virtue of
our repulsive rays alone would give our enemies their best chance
to overtake us, since our propellers would be idle and in rising we
would be outclassed by many of our pursuers. The swifter craft are
seldom equipped with large buoyancy tanks, since the added bulk of
them tends to reduce a vessel's speed.

As many boats
were now quite close to us it was inevitable that we would be
quickly overhauled in the shaft, and captured or killed in short
order.

To me there
always seems a way to gain the opposite side of an obstacle. If one
cannot pass over it, or below it, or around it, why then there is
but a single alternative left, and that is to pass through it. I
could not get around the fact that many of these other boats could
rise faster than ours by the fact of their greater buoyancy, but I
was none the less determined to reach the outer world far in
advance of them or die a death of my own choosing in event of
failure.

'Reverse?'
screamed Xodara, behind me. 'For the love of your first ancestor,
reverse. We are at the shaft.'

'Hold tight!' I
screamed in reply. 'Grasp the girl and hold tight--we are going
straight up the shaft.'

The words were
scarce out of my mouth as we swept beneath the pitch-black opening.
I threw the bow hard up, dragged the speed lever to its last notch,
and clutching a stanchion with one hand and the steering-wheel with
the other hung on like grim death and consigned my soul to its
author.

I heard a little
exclamation of surprise from Xodara, followed by a grim laugh. The
girl laughed too and said something which I could not catch for the
whistling of the wind of our awful speed.