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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Slaves of Mercury, by Nat Schachner
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Slaves of Mercury
+
+Author: Nat Schachner
+
+Release Date: September 12, 2009 [EBook #29966]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SLAVES OF MERCURY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Sankar Viswanathan, Greg Weeks, and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                         Transcriber's Note:
+
+    This etext was produced from Astounding Stories September 1932.
+    Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S.
+    copyright on this publication was renewed.
+
+
+      [Illustration: _A blinding beam sheared through Peabody's
+                      middle_.]
+
+
+
+                          Slaves of Mercury
+
+
+                        _A Complete Novelette_
+
+
+
+                           By Nat Schachner
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+_The Space Wanderer Returns_
+
+[Sidenote: Hilary returns to find alien diskoids in Earth's
+stratosphere, and out-world lords patrolling her cities.]
+
+
+Hilary Grendon piloted his battered, time-worn space flier, the
+_Vagabond_, to the smiling Earth that rose rapidly to greet it. Only
+the instinctive ease of long practise prevented a smash-up, his hands
+trembled so at the controls.
+
+Home again--the old familiar Earth! He could scarcely believe it!
+Perhaps it was only a dream, and he'd wake up among the unhuman
+glittering cylinders of Saturn, shuddering and crawling with the
+iciness of their fixed regard.
+
+Hilary's eyes blurred with unaccustomed mistiness as he drank in the
+warm sunlight, the soft green of the grass and the gracious lines of
+the slender birches as they fluttered their leaves daintily in the
+unhurrying breeze. How different it all was from the harsh red
+angularities of Mars!
+
+He was outside, breathing deeply, inhaling the perfumed air with
+delight. This was the only heaven; beyond--that far-flung immensity of
+planetary orbs--was hell! He, Hilary Grendon, the carefree, smiling
+skeptic of old, was a Fundamentalist now.
+
+How long was it since they had started out on the first flight that
+man had taken into outer space--he and those stanch comrades? Five
+years? God! Had it been so long? Yet here he was, back on Earth
+again, the kindly, blessed Earth their eyes had clung to when they
+were fighting desperately for their lives against the protoplasmic
+things that inhabited Ganymede.
+
+Hilary brushed a tear away as he thought of those brave, loyal
+friends. Dick lay as he fell on Saturn, transfixed by an icicle dart;
+Martin had been engulfed in an unholy maw on Ganymede; Dorn was a
+frozen idol to the spiral beings of Pluto; and poor Hurley, his fate
+was the worst of all: his hideously bloated body was swinging in an
+orbit around Mars, a satellite through all eternity.
+
+He, Hilary Grendon, was the sole survivor of that tremendous Odyssey!
+
+Hilary shook his head vigorously to clear away the flood of
+recollections. Enough that he had returned. Then a sudden eagerness
+surged through him, a joyous intensity of emotion. What a story he had
+to relate--how the Earth people would hang with bated breath upon his
+adventurings! And Joan--his heart gave a queer leap at the thought of
+that slender ardent wisp of a girl with her shining head and steady
+gray eyes. She had promised to wait for him, forever, if need be. She
+had said it simply, without heroics; yet Hilary knew then that she
+would keep her promise.
+
+A rush of impatience succeeded the inaction of his memories. He must
+get to New York at once. He could not wait any longer. Joan
+first--then Amos Peabody, the venerable President of the United
+States--to report his return. He smiled at the stupefaction that would
+greet him. No doubt he had long been given up for dead. The world had
+been skeptical of the space ship he had invented; had, except for a
+faithful few, mocked at his plans. Indignantly he had taken his
+calculations, his blue prints of the spheroid, along with him. If the
+flight was a success, well and good; if not, they would not be worth
+much anyway.
+
+In spite of his fever to be off, he carefully locked the controls,
+sealed the outer air-lock. Hilary Grendon was a methodical man: that
+was the reason he had survived.
+
+Then he struck across country, walking very fast. He knew where he
+was: in the wilderness of the Ramapos, some forty miles from New York.
+Sooner or later, he reasoned, he would strike one of the radiating
+conveyors that led into the metropolis, or a human being that would
+set him on the right track.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A half hour's sturdy tramping brought him out of the tangled hills
+into civilization. There was a glitter of metal and vita-crystal
+dwellings that stood four-square to the sun and the winds. A broad
+ribbon-conveyor hurled its shining length in ceaseless rush down the
+narrow valley. Human beings--normal homely Earth men with the ordinary
+number of legs and arms, with honest-to-God faces and warm living
+flesh, were seated on the conveyor-benches as they flashed by. Hilary
+could have wept with delight. It was two years since he had seen his
+own kind; two years since Hurley's tragic misstep through the breach
+in the air-lock made by a meteor as they were nearing Mars.
+
+Hilary leaped on the slow-moving ramp, skilfully worked his way across
+the graded speed belts until he was on the express conveyor that led
+straight on to New York.
+
+He sank into a cushioned seat next to an oldish man with iron-gray
+hair through which the speed of their flight whipped and pulled.
+Hilary was bursting for real human conversation again; he grinned to
+himself at the excited astonishment of this impassive stranger if he
+should announce himself. How should he do it? Should he remark
+casually without any preamble: "Pardon me for addressing you, sir, but
+I'm Hilary Grendon, you know." Just like that, and lean back for the
+inevitable gasp: "What, not _the_ Hilary Grendon!" And he would nod
+offhandedly as though he had just taken a little trip to Frisco and
+back.
+
+He stole a sidelong glance at the sternly-etched profile. The man was
+staring straight in front of him, looking neither to the left nor to
+the right. It did not seem as if he were aware of Hilary's existence.
+So with a sigh Hilary decided against that method of approach as a
+trifle too abrupt.
+
+"Nice day to-day, isn't it?" The sound of his own voice startled him.
+English was an alien language to his unaccustomed tongue after the
+hissing syllables of the Martians.
+
+With pathetic eagerness he awaited the inevitable answer to this
+commonplace introduction; that he might once more hear normal Earth
+tones in friendly converse, see the smile of greeting on a real Earth
+face.
+
+But there came no answer. The man continued staring straight ahead,
+immobile, fixed. There was no slightest turn to the etched profile. It
+was as if he had not heard.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Hilary felt a sudden surge of anger. Damn discourteous, this first
+Earthman he had met. What had happened to the old hospitality? Had it
+passed out while he was roaming the spaces? He leaned over, harsh
+words tumbling for exit, when suddenly he checked himself. There was
+something strange about that fierce blank stare. The man's face, too,
+he saw now, was lined and worn; suffering had left its multitudinous
+imprint upon an ordinarily rotund countenance.
+
+Hilary shouted suddenly: "Good morning." The man did not answer, nor
+did he stir from his unvarying pose. Deaf! The returned Earthman
+suffered swift pity. With gentle forefinger he prodded the man.
+
+The reaction was astounding. The man cowered like a pricked balloon;
+little strangling moans forced themselves out of clenched teeth. Dumb,
+too! His face jerked around to the direction of Hilary's gentle
+prodding. Merciful heavens, the man was blind also! Two vacant
+red-rimmed sockets stared pitifully at him--the eyeballs were gone,
+ripped out.
+
+But what struck Hilary particularly was the mortal terror that was
+depicted on the blind man's face. It was as though he expected some
+cruel, crippling blow to follow; as though it were the last straw on
+the back of unmentionable former agonies. Hilary shuddered. It was not
+good to witness such animal fear. A dark shadow blotted out the
+brightness of the Earth-day for him. There was something wrong here,
+something that required a good deal of explanation.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+His probing eyes went thoughtfully over the poor cowering wretch.
+Those careworn features were familiar, somehow. Where had he seen the
+man before? Suddenly he stiffened, choking an exclamation. The man was
+bound immovably to his seat. Thin metal links, almost invisible,
+encircled his feet; held the elbows taut against the fluted columns of
+the seat-back.
+
+Hilary's space-tanned features hardened; the light gray of his eyes
+darkened. All the pleasure of his homecoming vanished. The kindly
+Earth seemed suddenly grown inimical. What had happened in the five
+long years of his absence? This would have been impossible on the
+Earth he had known; a man, manifestly the victim of hideous tortures,
+bound like a wild animal to the seat of a public conveyor.
+
+He went swiftly into action. From the depths of a capacious pocket he
+fished a sheathed blade of stellite, triply keen; its razor-sharp edge
+sawed smoothly at the bonds.
+
+In his mounting anger Hilary had paid no attention to the scattering
+of people occupying the cushioned chairs of the speeding conveyor. But
+a smothered nearby gasp caused his head to jerk up. He met the
+incredulous stare of a paunchy, heavy-jowled man seated some chairs
+away. There was more than incredulity, there was furtive fear in the
+small beady eyes sunken in folds of fat.
+
+Hilary gave way to unreasoning anger.
+
+"Stop looking like a stuck pig," he called sharply. "Give me a hand
+with this poor fellow."
+
+The response was surprising. The man got up from his chair
+precipitately, stark panic written all over him. The sweat oozed from
+his shiny forehead as he backed cautiously away. He tripped over the
+edge of the seat behind, and fell. Once more he scrambled to his feet,
+and as if the fall had released his trembling muscles, he turned and
+ran, stumbling and dodging across the local conveyors, never once
+looking back.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Hilary watched his mad flight wonderingly. "Good Lord," he thought,
+"does my face frighten people so? Maybe I've turned into a Martian."
+
+He turned to appeal to the others on the conveyor, and received
+another shock. The few men within earshot were already on their feet
+and moving away from there with unostentatious celerity. Hilary
+surveyed their receding backs thoughtfully. What was there about
+himself to frighten grown men out of their wits? Or was it the poor
+tortured wretch he was trying to release who was responsible for the
+exodus?
+
+Already the express was almost clear. He saw the deserters throwing
+themselves guiltily into seats on the local belts, and then he was
+carried swiftly past. Only one man remained stubbornly in his seat,
+some fifteen rows back. He was a huge mountain of a man, a giant upon
+Earth, and there was a strangeness in his wide stare.
+
+Hilary frowned, then shook his head, and dropped down to his task
+again. The blind man moaned and jerked as he felt the bite of stellite
+upon his fetters. Hilary made soothing sounds, forgetful that he could
+not hear, and worked steadily. There was a little clinking noise and
+the links that bound the arms fell apart. He attacked the leg shackles
+next.
+
+There was a tap on Hilary's shoulder, light, electric, yet strangely
+heavy in its implications. Hilary turned his head sharply, saw the
+landscape blotted out by a huge overshadowing bulk. Five years in a
+hostile universe had made him cautious. He pivoted on his heels and
+rose in a single flowing motion, stellite blade ready for instant
+action.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+_The Strange Guard_
+
+
+There confronted him the hugest figure of a man he had ever seen.
+Hilary was not lacking in inches himself--he was well over six feet;
+but the giant staring quizzically down at him was nearer seven, with
+shoulders to match. The features of his face were gargantuan in their
+ruggedness, yet singularly open, while a pair of mild blue eyes,
+childlike in expression, looked in perpetual wonder out upon the
+world.
+
+In spite of his annoyance, Hilary instinctively liked the giant.
+
+"What do you want?" he inquired gruffly.
+
+The Colossus surveyed him with his child's eyes.
+
+"Man, you are crazy." He spoke in a deep bass rumble, without emotion
+or inflection. He was simply stating a fact.
+
+A surge of annoyance swept over the returned wanderer from the far
+spaces. This was the last straw.
+
+"I may be," he admitted coldly, "but I like my particular form of
+craziness."
+
+"You know the penalty of course for what you are doing?" the big man
+inquired unemotionally.
+
+Hilary swore deeply. "Damn the penalties, whatever you mean by that.
+Here's a man who has been tortured unmercifully--chained like a dog. I
+intend to free him."
+
+The mild blue eyes contained the hint of a gleam.
+
+"But you know the penalties," he repeated. His murmur sounded like the
+rumble of a distant earthquake.
+
+Hilary straightened sharply, poked his finger at the midriff of the
+giant.
+
+"I don't know what you are talking about," he stabbed. "What is the
+meaning of all this? Who is this unfortunate, and why did everyone
+disappear as though I had the plague when I sat next to him?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A look of bewilderment swept over the massive face, bewilderment
+tinged with a dawning suspicion of the questioner's sanity.
+
+"You mean to say you don't know?" The tone held incredulity.
+
+"I've just told you so," Hilary pointed out. He felt a growing unease.
+
+The giant eyed him closely. "Man, where on earth have you been these
+last three years?"
+
+Hilary grinned. "I haven't."
+
+"You haven't?" echoed the other. Suspicion hardened the childlike eyes
+into cold flame. The man was dangerous when aroused. He thrust his jaw
+down at Hilary. "If you are jesting with me...." He left the sentence
+unfinished, but the clenching of a huge fist left no doubt as to his
+intention.
+
+"I am not jesting," Hilary assured him grimly. "I have been away from
+the Earth for five years. I've just returned."
+
+The great hand clenched tighter. "Now I know you are crazy, or--Who
+are you?" he ended abruptly.
+
+"Hilary Grendon."
+
+"Hilary Grendon--Hilary Grendon," rumbled the other in manifest
+perplexity. It was evident the name meant nothing to him.
+
+This then was the homecoming he had dreamed of in the unfathomable
+reaches of space. Hilary thought bitterly. Five short years and he was
+already forgotten. Then the irony of it struck him, and he laughed
+aloud.
+
+"Yes," he said. "Five years ago I led the Grendon Expedition to
+explore interplanetary space in the space-ship I had invented. I've
+come back--alone."
+
+It was amazing to watch long-overlaid memories struggling up through
+the subconscious. At last the giant spoke.
+
+"Oh, yes," he said meditatively, "I seem to remember something about
+it." He surveyed Hilary with a new interest. "So you were one of those
+chaps, eh?"
+
+The explorer admitted it, humbly. Of such are the uses of fame.
+
+"Well, now," said the giant, "that might explain it. Though it sure
+beats all." And he shook his head as though he still did not
+understand.
+
+"Who is that man?" Hilary stabbed a forefinger at the blind man, who
+sat immobile as before, his worn etched face ever to the front. "It's
+monstrous. Amos Peabody shall hear of it."
+
+The Colossus looked at him mildly.
+
+"That," he said, "_is_ Amos Peabody!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Silence lay like a live thing between them. Hilary whirled in a
+kaleidoscope of emotion. Was this wasted, tortured being the portly,
+dignified President of the United States who had bade him Godspeed at
+the start of his tremendous journey five years before? His pitying
+eyes searched the lineaments of the poor wretch. There was no doubt of
+it now; it _was_ Amos Peabody.
+
+Hilary gripped his informant's arm. His voice was deadly calm. "I want
+the truth about this, and I want it fast."
+
+"The truth," echoed the big man with strange laughter; "now that is
+something--"
+
+His eyes widened over Hilary's shoulder. With a swiftness remarkable
+in one of his bulk he shook off Hilary's restraining grip, caught him
+by the shoulder and thrust him, all in one motion, into a chair
+several removed from Peabody. In a trice his huge bulk was safely
+ensconced in the adjoining one.
+
+Hilary's hand went to the butt of the automatic within his blouse. The
+giant saw the movement. He leaned forward.
+
+"Don't make a move," he warned, "the guard is coming."
+
+"What guard?"
+
+"You'll see fast enough. Appear unconcerned if you value your life.
+Don't look back."
+
+Hilary complied. His face became an expressionless mask as he lounged
+in his chair, but his thoughts seethed and boiled. What terrible
+mystery had enveloped the Earth during his absence? Why was Amos
+Peabody tortured and made into a public mockery?
+
+There was a slight whirring noise behind him. Heedful of his
+companion's admonition he relaxed in apparent unconcern, but his hand
+stole once more to the fold in his blouse. His long fingers rested
+caressingly upon the butt of his automatic. There were still three
+good Earth bullets in the chamber.
+
+The whirring ceased. There was a slight jar as of something landing
+on the speeding conveyor. Yet Hilary did not look back, though his
+grip tightened. A heavy body stumbled toward them, cursing in strange
+phrases. It passed from behind, came to a halt before the giant.
+Hilary shot a sharp glance upward from under veiled lids. An
+exclamation sprang full-throated to his lips, died unheard under a
+tremendous effort of his will.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Before them stood a being--it could not be called a man. He was no
+denizen of the Earth, that was evident, yet Hilary had visited all the
+planets outward from our own without encountering such a monster.
+
+He hulked before them like a behemoth, even dwarfing Hilary's
+companion with his enormous stature; but it was noticeable that he
+supported his weight ill, as if Earth's gravitation was too strong for
+him. Manlike he was in every essential, but the skin of his face was a
+pasty dull gray, and ridged and furrowed with warty excrescences. Two
+enormous pink eyes, unlidded, but capable of being sheathed with a
+filmy membrane, stared down at them with manifest suspicion. A gray,
+three-fingered hand held an angled tube significantly. A lens gleamed
+transparent in the sunlight from the open end.
+
+Hilary did not move under the stare, nor did his companion. The mild
+blue eyes were childlike as ever. The guard's gaze shifted from them
+to the trembling figure of Amos Peabody. He bent over him, thrust at
+him with ungentle hand. The automatic under Hilary's fingers crept
+farther out from the blouse, but a warning gesture from his companion
+stopped him.
+
+The guard amused himself with shaking the blind man; then he bent
+suddenly. He had seen the broken links. With ominous deliberation he
+turned his vast weight upon them. His baleful pink eyes fastened upon
+Hilary's companion.
+
+"You!" he growled throatily, "what do you know about this?" He spoke
+in English, but it was obviously not his native tongue.
+
+Mildly innocent was the giant's face.
+
+"I know nothing, Magnificent," he said humbly. "I am on my way to
+Great New York on my own insignificant affairs, and I bother my head
+with nothing else."
+
+"The bonds of this dog, Peabody, have been severed," the guard
+insisted, "and recently, too. Speak up, Earthman, or--you know the
+penalty."
+
+"I know the penalty," he answered respectfully, "but I have been
+seated here only five minutes, and I know nothing of this Peabody."
+
+The guard fingered his tube.
+
+"Let me see your tag," he said suddenly.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The other opened his blouse obediently and exposed a thin copper disk
+suspended on his chest. The guard tugged at it brutally to bring it
+within range of his vision. The pull jerked the giant's head forward,
+and the thin metal strand cut cruelly into the back of his neck.
+Hilary saw a flush of red sweep like a wave up to his forehead, and
+the mild blue eyes turned hard like glinting blue pebbles. But not a
+word escaped his lips.
+
+"Grim Morgan," the guard read, "A46823 Great New York. Pah, what
+barbarous names you Earthmen have." He shoved the giant back heavily
+into his seat, and turned his baleful glare upon Hilary.
+
+"You, what do you know about this?"
+
+Grim Morgan interposed hastily. "Nothing, Magnificent. He came on the
+express conveyor after I did."
+
+The guard's free hand went back. Very deliberately he struck him
+across the face with three ridged fingers. An angry welt raised.
+
+"That will teach you to keep your mouth shut when not spoken to."
+
+The big man's eyes were mild, but his hands tensed as though they were
+curled around a throat. He said nothing.
+
+The guard turned to Hilary again. "Answer me," he barked.
+
+"My friend told the truth," Grendon said simply.
+
+"Your tag?"
+
+"I have none."
+
+Suspicion flared openly in the pink eyes.
+
+"Where is it?"
+
+"I never had one."
+
+"Ah!" There was a world of meaning to the exhalation. "You know of
+course that every Earthman must be registered. The penalty for
+non-obedience is--death."
+
+The angled tube came up with the swiftness of light. Grim Morgan cried
+out sharply, lunged out of his seat. Hilary tore at his gun, knowing
+sickeningly that the draw would be slower than the action of the
+strange weapon in the guard's hand.
+
+There was a sneer on the monster as he pressed something on the tube.
+Hilary's automatic was only half out of his blouse. Grim's lunge would
+never reach in time. He was too far away.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+_The Death of Amos Peabody_
+
+
+Just how any inkling of what was happening penetrated the pain-swept
+consciousness of the blind and deaf President could never be
+determined. Possibly a thin repercussion of Grim's cry, possibly an
+intuition that comes to sense-bereft men. But he had jerked
+spasmodically erect. There was a sharp tinkling as the weakened leg
+links broke. He threw himself in a queer, awkward movement forward,
+directly in the path of the tubed weapon. A blinding beam flashed out
+of the orifice, sheared through Peabody's middle as though he were cut
+cleanly in half with a gigantic knife. He toppled in two sections to
+the floor of the conveyor--released from all humiliation, all
+suffering.
+
+At the same time two other things happened. Grim Morgan hit the guard
+like a crashing thunderbolt and Hilary's gun barked once. The monster
+tottered under the impact. A puzzled expression flitted over his
+pinkish eyes, a filmy sheath spread over them like a veil, and he fell
+heavily, a neat bullet hole square between his eyes.
+
+Hilary shoved the gun back in his blouse, and stared alternately at
+the huddled form of the grotesque being and all that remained of Amos
+Peabody. The old President had saved his life at the cost of his own.
+Instinctively his hand went up in formal salute to the gallant old
+man.
+
+Grim Morgan shook him by the shoulder.
+
+"Man," he said quietly, "we have killed a Mercutian guard. Within the
+hour we shall be dead men too."
+
+Hilary looked up at him sharply.
+
+"A Mercutian," he echoed. "You mean--"
+
+"That for three years now the Earth has been a conquered province of
+these devils from Mercury," Grim interposed swiftly. "We have
+committed the unforgivable offense and must pay for it."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Hilary glanced swiftly around. The express conveyor was clear of
+passengers for over a hundred yards each way. All the people within
+range had cleared off when Hilary had attempted to release Peabody.
+The small figure of a man got up from his chair beyond the charmed
+circle, and was threading his way forward. The local conveyors seemed
+to be moving backward at graded speeds. Beyond was the open country,
+gradually thickening into scattered rows of crystal buildings. They
+were in the suburbs of Great New York. Within ten minutes the conveyor
+terminal would be reached.
+
+Hilary's eyes flicked speculatively to the tiny cigar-shaped boat in
+which the dead guard had flown down to them. Its smooth gray-gleaming
+surface was devoid of wings or other lifting devices. Only a
+fan-shaped fin projected from the stern like the tail of a fish. The
+cockpit, if such it could be called, was tiny, just ample enough to
+accommodate the Mercutian's girth. The sunlight dazzled back from a
+bewildering jumble of tiny lenses inset in the instrument board.
+Arranged along the hull, on either side, were larger disks of the same
+quartz-like material.
+
+"Let's get away in the flier," he said.
+
+"Can't," Grim said. "Those lenses you see on the instrument board are
+the controls. No one knows how to operate them except the Mercutians.
+Our people managed to capture a few, but couldn't do a thing with
+them."
+
+Hilary stared at the motionless flier with interest. "What are those
+round glass disks stretched along the hull in a double row?" he asked.
+"They look like burning glasses."
+
+"That's just what they are," said Grim sadly. "The top row are
+sun-lenses, that throw a terrible ray for a distance of two to three
+hundred feet. Melts everything in its path--men trees, rocks even. You
+saw one in action in the sun-tube with which poor old Peabody was cut
+in half. The lower row of lenses on the flier are search beams."
+
+"Search beams?" Hilary echoed inquiringly.
+
+"Yes. They act like X-rays, more powerful though, and with the further
+property of rendering everything they touch transparently crystal for
+depths of ten to fifteen feet. Lead is the only element they can not
+penetrate. Another secret our scientists can not fathom, so they talk
+learnedly about the stream of rays polarizing the structure of matter
+along a uniaxis."
+
+"Can't those lenses be duplicated, and turned as weapons against the
+Mercutians?"
+
+"No. They are made of a peculiar vitreous material native to Mercury."
+
+"And no one has found out the principle on which they work?"
+
+"Well, there have been theories. We haven't many scientists left, you
+know. But the most popular one is that these lenses have the power of
+concentrating the rays of the sun to an almost infinite degree, and
+then spreading them out again, each individual beam with the
+concentrated energy of the whole. Some new way of rearranging quanta
+of energy."
+
+"Hmm!" Hilary's brow was wrinkled. For a long moment he stared and
+thought.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At last he snapped back to their present situation: the dead guard at
+their feet, the dismembered body of Amos Peabody, the cowed groups of
+Earthmen on the speeding conveyors, keeping respectful distances.
+
+"We'd better start moving if we want to get away," he said.
+
+"It's no use." Grim spread his hands resignedly. "We'll have to take
+our medicine."
+
+Hilary flared angrily. "You're talking nonsense. What's to prevent us
+from hopping to another platform? There is no other Mercutian in
+sight."
+
+"No, but there were plenty of Earthmen who saw us."
+
+"They won't tell."
+
+"Oh, won't they?" Grim shook his head quietly. "You don't realize what
+has happened. Their spirit has been crushed until they are actually
+slavish in soul as well as in body. They fought bravely enough on the
+first invasion. Even after the conquest there were plenty of men
+looking for an opportunity to fight them again. Amos Peabody headed
+the revolt. It was smothered in blood, so effectually that only slaves
+are left. Peabody was left as a horrible warning. He was sent from
+city to city to be exhibited to the populace, unattended on the way,
+so confident were the Mercutians of the terror they had inspired."
+
+"So you think those Earthmen who saw us will report to their masters,"
+Hilary said slowly.
+
+Grim nodded.
+
+"I know it--they'll expect to curry favor in return."
+
+Hilary felt a web of circumstance tighten around him. His jaw
+tautened. Thank the Lord he had been away--on his own. He had not the
+soul of a slave--yet.
+
+"Won't you fight for your life?" he asked the big man curiously.
+
+A spark lit in the mild blue eyes, died down.
+
+"Yes if there were a chance," he said dully. "But there is none. The
+whole Earth is honeycombed with their guards. They have fliers, sun
+weapons, invisible search beams. We'd never elude them."
+
+Hilary snorted impatiently. "We have good Earth brains, haven't we?
+I've traveled all the outer planets and never met any intelligence
+equal to that of a man, and I won't admit for a moment that the
+Mercutians are any exceptions."
+
+A man stepped casually onto the express, took one startled look at the
+dead guard, at them, and fled precipitately back.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Another one to spread the alarm," Morgan said grimly. "There'll be a
+dozen guards dropping down on us in the next five minutes."
+
+"Let's get going then." Hilary was pulling the big man along by main
+force when he heard a movement in back of them. He stopped, whirled,
+automatic thrusting its blue nose forward.
+
+The little man who had gotten up before on the express was pushing
+rapidly toward them.
+
+"Stop." Hilary's voice was harsh with command.
+
+But the little man did not heed. He literally stumbled in his haste,
+crying: "You've killed a Mercutian."
+
+"What of it, my bantam?" Hilary inquired softly, the muzzle of his gun
+boring into a lean flat stomach. The little man was actually pressing
+against the automatic in his excitement.
+
+"What of it?" he shrilled excitedly. "God, all this time I've been
+waiting to find someone with guts enough to smash one of them. Sir,
+I'm proud to shake your hand."
+
+He reached over the wicked-looking muzzle, gripped Hilary's fist,
+still tight on the gun butt, and pumped vigorously. He dropped the
+hand, swerved on Grim.
+
+"And you too, sir." His little fingers were engulfed in a mighty paw.
+"I saw it all, I tell you," he babbled. "We've got them on the run.
+We'll sweep the filthy devils clean off the Earth. We'll annihilate
+them."
+
+"Whoa there, my little gamecock." Morgan grinned down at the excited
+little man. "One Mercutian doesn't make a Roman holiday. They're
+plenty more where he came from. You'd better clear out before they
+come, or you'll be included in the party."
+
+The little fellow--he was not much more than five feet no inches
+tall--drew himself up to his full height. "What," he ejaculated, "me
+desert my friends? Wat Tyler's never had that said of him yet. We
+stick together, to hell and back again."
+
+Hilary grinned as he slipped the weapon back into his blouse. He was
+beginning to like this little firebrand. In truth, Grim had rather
+fairly described him as a gamecock. His stature, the bristly red hair
+that flamed above a freckled face, the lightest of blue eyes that
+snapped with excitement, the peculiar strut of him.
+
+"You'll do," he said briefly.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At a safe distance a crowd was gathering, a crowd of Earthmen. Grim
+surveyed them carefully. They were milling back and forth, but no one
+dared come closer. "Slaves," he grunted, "not a spark left in them."
+His eyes swept the heavens. Two faint black specks appeared in the
+blue distance, from the direction of Great New York.
+
+"They're coming for us," he said quietly.
+
+"Let them," crowed the fiery little bantam, "we'll meet them man to
+man."
+
+He wrenched the tube from the stiffened fingers of the dead guard,
+swung it exultingly aloft.
+
+"You little fool," Hilary cried sharply, and struck it down again.
+"We're not waiting for them. That's suicide. Come. I'm afraid it's too
+late for you to turn back now. You've been seen with us."
+
+He dashed across the moving belts, Grim and Wat, a grotesquely
+assorted pair, directly behind him.
+
+Passengers, men and women both, scattered at their approach, stark,
+servile fear smothering their dulled countenances. Cries arose on all
+sides. "The Magnificents are coming."
+
+The black specks became larger, forming themselves into swift one-man
+fliers. The three men pelted across the graded conveyors as hard as
+they could run. No Earthman tried to stop them; one look at their grim
+faces would have been a most potent dissuader. And fortunately there
+were no Mercutians within hailing distance other than the rapidly
+nearing fliers.
+
+They flung themselves off the last slow-moving platform, panting.
+
+"Which way now?" Hilary asked. His quick eye raked the scene for
+possible hideouts. They were on a smoothly clipped lawn, heaving
+gently up to a pretty rambling structure, built on an antique design,
+pleasingly irregular and nestling to the ground as though it were
+indigenous to the soil. The walls were modern, though, of
+vita-crystal, which possessed the peculiar property of permitting
+_all_ of the beneficial rays of the sun to penetrate, and yet
+presented a perfectly opaque appearance to the outside world.
+
+No other hiding place was in sight. The lawn stretched smooth on all
+sides except for a scattering of trees--poor enough cover. The
+Mercutians were almost directly overhead now, preparing to swoop.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Our only chance seems to be the house," Hilary answered his own
+question quietly.
+
+Grim shook his head. "Their search beams can penetrate the
+vita-crystal walls as though they were transparent glass."
+
+Hilary's heart sank. "Can't help it," he said laconically. "Come on."
+
+The three men broke into a run. It was only a hundred yards, but the
+Mercutians were coming down fast. They had been seen. A flash as of
+molten metal gleamed overhead. A blinding ray leaped for the ground,
+struck viciously a little ahead of the running men. The velvet green
+grass crisped to ash; the soil underneath scorched.
+
+"Scatter!" Hilary shouted.
+
+Instantly the men spread out. Another blast hissed down at them, so
+close to Hilary that the heat seared his left side like a red-hot
+iron. The Mercutians were getting the range. Wat Tyler stopped short
+with a howl of defiance. He whipped the hand tube he had taken from
+the dead guard out of his blouse.
+
+"Hide it, you fool!" Hilary yelled back at him. "We don't want them to
+known we are armed."
+
+Wat obeyed reluctantly. He shook his fist high in the air, and started
+to run again. It was not an instant too soon, either. A beam slithered
+down the smoldering air, and the Earth literally boiled under its
+impact, directly on the spot where Wat had stopped to shake his fist.
+All about them the terrible rays were slashing now.
+
+But a last desperate burst of speed carried the Earthmen onto a wide
+enclosed portico, in the old manner. Hilary pounded on the
+vita-crystal door. It was tightly locked.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Step back a moment," Morgan rumbled.
+
+Hilary obeyed. The big man spat thoughtfully upon his hands, worked
+his shoulders tentatively. Then he too retreated to the outermost edge
+of the portico. Above, the crystal suddenly shattered. Sharp-edged
+fragments showered down upon them. There was little time to waste.
+
+Grim heaved forward in a slanting rush, right shoulder extended. He
+crashed into the locked door like a runaway train. There was a
+grinding noise, a smash of crystal, and his shoulder was through,
+incased in a halo of bright, sharp edges.
+
+The big man staggered back, his shoulder streaming blood from a
+hundred cuts. His face was pale and drawn.
+
+"Good fellow," Wat yelled, "even though you are an overgrown ox." He
+darted in behind the man-mountain like a twisting snake. His deft
+fingers reached in through the shattered crystal, pressed something on
+the inside. The door slid into its wall pocket with a sound of
+grinding glass.
+
+Wat burst into the opened room first, Grim right behind him. Hilary
+brought up the rear, Grim's great bulk blotting out for the moment any
+view of the interior.
+
+There was a sudden gasp--a girl's voice.
+
+"Wh--What does this mean?" She was tremulous, yet unafraid.
+
+Hilary stopped suddenly as though brought up against a solid wall. His
+heart pounded madly. That voice--but it was utterly impossible!
+
+Wat answered, gallantly. "Sorry to annoy you, miss, but they're after
+us. My partner here's wounded."
+
+"Oh, you poor man." There was quick sympathy in the clear tones. "But
+who is after you?"
+
+A splintering crash resounded outside.
+
+"The Mercutians, as you no doubt hear," the little man responded with
+faint irony.
+
+The girl gasped again. "Oh my God!"
+
+There was silence. Hilary strained his ears, yet took care to keep
+hidden behind Grim's huge frame. What would she do now? It seemed to
+him as if the whole world depended on her reply.
+
+The girl broke the silence. She had come to a swift decision.
+
+"They must not get you. Go upstairs, quietly, into the chamber on the
+left of the hall. It's my bedroom. Their search beams can not
+penetrate it; the walls are draped with lead-encrusted curtains. I'll
+stay down here and try to throw them off the trail."
+
+Hilary's heart recommenced beating. A gush of joy overwhelmed him.
+The girl had proven herself.
+
+Grim spoke, for the first time.
+
+"You know the penalty of course, for hiding us."
+
+She did not answer directly. "I can't help it. I can't surrender
+Earthmen to those beasts. Besides"--there was a catch in her
+voice--"it does not matter much since--"
+
+Hilary stepped quietly from behind Grim's overshadowing bulk.
+
+The girl's eyes went wide at the sight of him; her slender white hand
+flew to her throat. She looked as if she had seen a ghost.
+
+"You--you!" she choked. "Hilary!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She swayed and would have fallen, had Hilary not jumped to catch her.
+His heart was beating thickly with excess of emotion. Joan Robbins in
+his arms again--how he prayed for this moment in the icy reaches of
+interplanetary space. Yet what was she doing here in Bronxville? Her
+home had always been atop the windswept Robbins Building in Great New
+York.
+
+Her hand went softly over his features, as though to assure herself
+that it was really he.
+
+"Oh, my dear," she whispered brokenly. "I had almost given up all
+hope. Everyone was certain you were lost--long ago."
+
+Whirrings sounded outside.
+
+"Sorry to break up your reunion," Grim interrupted in his bass rumble,
+"but the Mercutians have landed on the lawn. They'll be in here right
+away."
+
+Joan tore herself out of Hilary's arms. Her slim straight figure
+tautened; her velvet soft eyebrows puckered over deep-lit pools.
+
+"Upstairs quickly, all of you," she cried. "I'll manage them somehow."
+
+Hilary said quietly, "I won't leave you alone with those brutes. You
+go along up, and I'll remain here." The automatic gleamed in his hand.
+
+"No, no," she panted, "you mustn't. You wouldn't have a chance. Leave
+it to me." She literally pushed them with her little hands to the
+stairway. "Go, if you love me."
+
+"The girl's right," Grim said, "there's a chance. If not," he shrugged
+his shoulders, "we can always come down again."
+
+Outside were heavy thuddings on the portico.
+
+"You in there," a heavy alien voice resounded, "open or we blast our
+way in." The door had been slid back into position.
+
+There was no room for further argument. Very reluctantly Hilary
+followed his companions up the winding stairway.
+
+At the top of the stairs an entrance slide showed darker on the left.
+Wat fumbled for a moment until he found the button. The door whirred
+open, even as they heard Joan's clear voice below: "Come in,
+Magnificents!" There was a trampling of feet.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+_The Kidnapping of Joan_
+
+
+The Earthmen moved quickly and quietly into Joan's room. Thin, crinkly
+draperies of heavy silk impregnated with lead in colloidal solution,
+covered all the walls, the door itself. But Hilary shot no more than a
+cursory glance around; he had left the slide slightly ajar; he was
+listening intently. The gun was in his hand. There were only two
+bullets in the chambers--all that were left of the thousands of rounds
+the expedition had started out with. He must not waste them.
+
+The thick rough voice of a Mercutian floated up from below.
+
+"Three Earth slaves came in here. Where did they go?"
+
+"They did," Joan admitted readily. "They frightened me out of my wits.
+I screamed and they ran through the house and out the back way."
+
+The Mercutian was suspicious.
+
+"Hmm. Funny there's no sign of a struggle here. Nothing is upset."
+
+"They ran out the back way," the girl repeated tonelessly.
+
+"We'll see; but if you are lying...." He said no more, but the pause
+was significant in its implications.
+
+"I would not lie to the Magnificents."
+
+"Not if you are wise." He seemed to be the leader. He evidently turned
+to his companion, for there issued a flood of throaty consonants to
+which the other grunted once. Then the listeners heard his heavy
+stamping as he walked through the house to the rear. A door whirred;
+he had gone out.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The remaining Mercutian said suddenly: "He won't find them."
+
+"Why not?" Joan asked, a bit tremulously.
+
+The Mercutian laughed harshly. "Because you lied. You've hid them in
+the house."
+
+Hilary heard Joan's sudden sharp intake of breath.
+
+"No, no, Magnificent," she cried.
+
+The Mercutian laughed again--a hard cruel laugh. There was no mirth in
+it.
+
+"All Earthwomen are liars. I know where you hid them. In your bed
+chamber. The trick is too old already. We may not be able to see
+through the lead curtains, but we can break down the door. I warned
+Artok not to permit the use of the lead curtains, but he has a soft
+streak. He listened to the women's pleadings for privacy. Privacy,
+pah! A cloak for conspiracies, that's all it comes to. When Gurda
+returns, we search upstairs and drag out your rats from their hole."
+
+He laughed smugly, pleased with his own cleverness.
+
+"It is not so." Strange how calm Joan sounded. "They are not in the
+house. Only my dying mother is here. She is bedded upstairs. The
+doctor ordered absolute quiet. The slightest noise would be fatal."
+
+The Mercutian sneered. "We'll take a look at that dying mother of
+yours right now."
+
+"You mustn't," the girl panted. "She will die, I tell you."
+
+"And what does it matter to me?"
+
+There was the sound of a struggle, a sharp cry, followed by a dull
+thud.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Hilary was out through the door like a flash, down the corridor to the
+head of the stairs with automatic extended. The monster Mercutian was
+coming heavily up the treads. They saw each other simultaneously.
+
+The Mercutian's pink eyes turned a vicious red; the tube dangling in
+his hand jerked sharply up. Hilary squeezed the trigger. The gun
+barked. The Mercutian spun half around with the force of the tearing
+bullet. The deadly beam from his weapon slithered over the wall,
+searing a great molten gash in the crystal. He was badly hurt, but he
+did not fall. Howling with pain and rage, he slewed himself around
+again, pointed his sun weapon unsteadily upward.
+
+Hilary let him have the other slug. The big body jerked, and fell
+backward with a crash to the bottom of the stairs, there to lie oddly
+contorted and still.
+
+There was a thundering rush from the rear of the lower floor, a
+hoarse throaty cry. Hilary tore down the steps three at a time, Grim
+and Wat slithering behind him.
+
+The other Mercutian was bending over Joan's semiconscious form,
+sweeping her into the crook of a huge arm. He shot a startled glance
+at the down-pouring Earthmen, swerved the girl around, and aimed his
+tube.
+
+Hilary pulled the trigger as he swerved. There was a sharp click, but
+no explosion. Hilary cursed and threw himself down. He had forgotten
+that there were no more bullets. The speeding flash scorched overhead.
+
+Grim and Wat crouched low. Wat's tube, the one he had wrested from the
+dead guard on the conveyor, was being slowly raised. The Mercutian saw
+it, shifted the inanimate girl in front of himself, and backed
+stealthily toward the splintered door.
+
+"Don't shoot," Hilary cried sharply. "You'll kill Joan."
+
+Wat lowered the tube disgustedly. Hilary groaned aloud. If only he had
+had one more bullet. There was enough of the gigantic body exposed to
+offer an excellent target to a steel slug without harming Joan, but
+the sun weapon sent out its beam in a flat spray.
+
+The Mercutian sensed their dilemma as they crouched on the stairs. He
+laughed unpleasantly as he backed through the doorway, Joan's limp
+body held straight in front of him.
+
+"Good-by, Earth slaves," he taunted. "I take your pretty Earth maiden
+with me. In five minutes I return, with others. You cannot escape.
+Good-by."
+
+He jumped clumsily through the door. The crouching Earthmen heard a
+click. It had closed behind him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Hilary and his companions cleared the stairs in almost a single bound.
+He had snatched the sun-tube out of Wat's hand. Through the splintered
+slide he saw the Mercutian climbing into his flier, but a great
+crystal column of the portico intervened. Nevertheless, while Wat
+fumbled for the button that released the slide, he took a chance.
+Every split second was precious now. He aimed the weapon, pressed the
+spring. A white dazzling ray darted fanwise from the orifice. It
+touched the column, fused it into molten, running glass. But the
+Mercutian was already in his seat, Joan limp beside him. He was
+fumbling at the controls.
+
+The door slid open at last. Hilary shot through like a bullet from a
+rifle. The flier had already taken off on a long slanting rise. A
+three-fingered hand waved mockingly down at him. Hilary raised his
+weapon, then lowered it with a groan. The flier was well within range
+yet, but if he aimed the terrible beam at it, there would be a crash
+of fused twisted material, and--Joan was in it. What a dilemma! If he
+didn't shoot, she would be borne away--he dared not think to what
+horrible fate.
+
+Grim's hand rested lightly on his shoulder as he watched the flier
+become a faint black speck in the direction of Great New York.
+
+"She was your sweetheart." His gruff voice was oddly gentle.
+
+Hilary brushed a weary hand over his forehead. The Earth, the universe
+itself, were suddenly dead, meaningless gobs of matter.
+
+"Yes," he said tonelessly. "Five years ago she promised to wait for my
+return. She kept her word. I found her again--only to lose her."
+
+Grim said quietly: "I too once loved a girl. I joined the last
+rebellion under Amos Peabody. The Mercutians threatened to seize the
+wives, sisters, sweethearts of the revolters if they persisted. Many
+of the men surrendered. I was one of those who refused. When the
+revolt was over, smothered in flame from their giant sun-tubes, I
+found that they had made good their threats. My girl was gone,
+vanished. Two Mercutians had taken her away. She was never found
+again."
+
+He paused in brooding silence. "They are up to their old tricks
+again." His eyes were steely blue now. Hilary pressed his hand in
+silence. They were welded together by a common loss.
+
+Wat Tyler broke in upon them. "If you fellows want to hang around
+here, I'll be on my way. That Mercutian hyena will be back here with a
+dozen others just like him in less than no time."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Hilary snapped out of his sorrow. He could not help Joan by having
+himself captured or killed, nor was it fair to Grim and Wat. They had
+placed themselves unquestioningly under his leadership. Something else
+too was growing into burning life in his mind. This was his Earth, his
+and Grim's and Wat's, and of millions of other normal human beings.
+The Mercutians were interlopers, brutal conquerors. He would devote
+his now otherwise meaningless life to driving them off the planet,
+wiping them out of the solar system. A tall order, yes, but not for
+nothing had he fought almost single-handed against those other
+monstrosities on other worlds: Martians, Ganymedans, Saturnians. The
+Mercutians were no stronger than they. Besides, there was Joan.
+
+"Men," he said crisply, once more the clear-headed commander of his
+space expedition, "I intend to fight these Mercutian invaders until
+Earth is free once more, or--I am dead. I have no illusions about the
+magnitude of the job, of its practical hopelessness. But that does not
+mean that you two have to throw away your lives also. I am a marked
+man, without any identification tag. You on the other hand, can get
+away from here, mingle indistinguishably with the hordes of people in
+Great New York. You would be safe. Our ways part here, if you desire
+it so." He added hastily, "I would be the last to blame you."
+
+Grim Morgan and Wat Tyler looked at each other, a great giant of a man
+and an undersized bantam. Yet some electric spark of sympathy seemed
+to dart between them, these so dissimilar beings.
+
+Wat elected to be the spokesman. His voice rose shrilly, as it always
+did when he was laboring under stress of excitement or emotion.
+
+"_You_ won't blame us," he almost squeaked. "Who asked you? Damn it,
+haven't we consciences of our own? Are we quitters, yellow-bellied
+Mercutians to quit a pal? Are we, Grim Morgan? Speak, you big ox."
+
+He wheeled abruptly and shook a small fist high in the air. It barely
+reached under Grim's nose. The big man looked down at the little
+gamecock unsmilingly.
+
+"No, Wat Tyler, we are not," he said gravely.
+
+Wat turned to Hilary triumphantly.
+
+"There, you see," he crowed, "we stick together. We'll lick those
+Mercutian monsters; we'll sweep them into the ocean, into space. And
+what's more, we'll rescue your girl too." He stopped to catch his
+breath. Grim was nodding slowly. He had not the little man's
+exuberance. _His_ girl could not be rescued any more, but he could
+remember.
+
+Hilary's frozen heart warmed into life again. With loyal comrades such
+as these, even the impossible might be accomplished. Very quietly,
+without heroics, the three men shook hands. Nothing more, yet they
+knew that they were bound indissolubly together, as long as there was
+a gasp of breath in any of them.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Hilary's brain functioned with racing smoothness. In minutes the
+Mercutians would be back.
+
+"We must find a secure hiding place at once," he said. "Know of any?"
+
+Grim shook his head negatively. "There is none," he spoke slowly.
+"Their search beams penetrate everything."
+
+"Except lead," Hilary interposed.
+
+"Except lead," he conceded.
+
+"Very well then. We shall have to find a place we can line with lead.
+In the meantime. I have my space flier up in the Ramapos. If it hasn't
+been discovered yet, it will be essential to our task. We'll have to
+get there quickly."
+
+"How?" Wat asked,
+
+"By the conveyors, of course."
+
+"No good," the little man declared. "Mercutian guards will be
+patrolling them. You have no identification tag. You would be caught."
+
+Hilary considered that. "Suppose you two go on along," he suggested.
+"Find it and wait for me. I'll manage somehow."
+
+"No," they answered unanimously; "we go together or not at all."
+
+Hilary did not try to argue. He would have replied himself in exactly
+the same terms. He looked longingly at the abandoned flier of the
+gray-faced Mercutian, lying cold and still within the house.
+
+"If only we could operate the ship," he said.
+
+Then, characteristically, he dismissed the vain longing and bent to
+the business in hand. "That means we'll have to make it on foot, and
+keep under cover all the way. Come on."
+
+As the three men moved rapidly over the great lawn toward the nearest
+covert, a little wood a quarter of a mile away, the horizon that was
+Great New York showed silhouetted against the westering sun numerous
+little black dots. The Mercutians were coming.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+_Outlaws of Earth_
+
+
+Three days later three footsore, weary, hungry men skulked in the edge
+of the woods near a little clearing in the Ramapos. For three days
+they had ducked and dodged and literally burrowed into the ground by
+day, traveling only at night. Above and around them the noise of
+pursuit rolled. The Mercutians were persistent.
+
+Speedy one-man fliers patrolled the airways, their search beams
+casting invisible rays in wide sweeping arcs over the uneven terrain.
+Wherever they touched, the ground sprang into vivid illumination,
+crystal clear to depths of ten to fifteen feet. Several times the
+crystal swath swept breathlessly close to the place where the
+fugitives crouched in covert. The conveyors carried back and forth
+armed companies of guards. The Mercutians were making a mighty effort
+to capture their prey.
+
+But somehow the Earthmen had won through, and eager eyes searched the
+little glade. Hilary exhaled sharply. The _Vagabond_, stanch and
+faithful companion of all his travels, rested immovably on the deep
+green grass. It had escaped the questing eyes of the Mercutians. The
+travel lanes did not touch this secluded spot.
+
+"So that's your space ship, eh?" said Grim, surveying the tarnished,
+pitted spheroid with something of awe.
+
+"Yes," said Hilary lovingly as he unlocked the outer port side. A
+hasty glance around inside showed that nothing had been touched.
+Everything was orderly, methodical, just as he had left it.
+
+Grim and Wat examined with interest the banked controls, the
+polarization apparatus that set up repulsion waves and literally
+kicked the ship out into space away from the planet against which it
+had been set.
+
+"Time enough to inspect," Hilary warned them. "Never can tell when
+those damned Mercutians may spy on us."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He set the polarization controls so that the mere pulling of a switch
+would send the flier careening off into space. He surveyed the
+apple-pie order of the interior with vast satisfaction.
+
+"Now let them come," he said, "the _Vagabond_ can show anything that
+flies a clean pair of heels. Let's eat."
+
+He dragged an aluminum box out of its locker, opened it to disclose a
+gray funguslike mass. He cut off huge slices and offered it to his
+companions.
+
+They looked at it doubtfully.
+
+"Ugh," Wat shuddered violently, "I never saw stuff like that before.
+It doesn't look good." The little man, they soon discovered, had
+violent discriminations in food.
+
+"Try it." Hilary assured him. "It's a Martian growth, and delicious.
+We had to live on the land so to speak, on our journey. Our Earth food
+gave out long before the finish."
+
+Wat looked at it with manifest distaste, but Grim was already wolfing
+his portion and making little pleased sounds. Wat bit into a portion
+gingerly, found it tasted somewhat like truffles, and soon was not far
+behind in gulping it down.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When their appetites had been appeased, Hilary called a council of
+war.
+
+"First of all," he told them, "we'll have to find a hideout. That
+presupposes two things: a place large enough to store the _Vagabond_,
+and hidden from view, either from the naked eye or their search
+beams."
+
+"That sounds like a large cavern lined with lead," said Grim.
+
+"Exactly."
+
+"And there are none such in this territory," Grim replied quietly.
+
+"I will not move too far from New York," Hilary spoke with
+determination; "there is Joan...."
+
+Grim looked blank. There was Joan, of course.
+
+Wat got up suddenly. "I know a place," he said, "within a mile of
+here, and it's not a cave. Come on; I'll show you. I was a Ranger in
+the Ramapo Game Preserve in the old days."
+
+Hilary asked no more. The polarization switch made contact, and the
+_Vagabond_ left the Earth with a swift rush. It maneuvered with the
+ease of an Earth flier. Wat directed him, scanning the rugged
+tree-clad mountains with eager eye.
+
+"There," he said finally, "set her down right there. Easy."
+
+Hilary saw no break in the uninterrupted line of the mountain, but he
+followed directions. He had come to have an abounding faith in the
+little red-haired man.
+
+The space flier eased gently down. Just as it seemed as if it would
+perforce come to rest upon serrated tree tops, a faint glimmer showed
+amid the darker green. There was an opening, just barely room for the
+_Vagabond_.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Hilary jockeyed skilfully through, kept on descending into a narrow
+cleft in the slope. The walls rose almost perpendicularly on either
+side. About fifty feet down there was a sharp turn and the gorge
+angled downward for another fifty feet. When the flier came to rest at
+the bottom, it was securely hidden in a slanting cleft, some forty
+feet wide and several hundred long. A mountain brook brawled at one
+side, assuring plentiful water. The outside world was absolutely
+invisible. Perpetual twilight reigned; only a pale dim religious light
+filtered through.
+
+"Just the thing," Wat exulted. "We'll never be found here, no matter
+how much they search, unless someone actually stumbles into the
+opening. There's almost eighty feet of solid rock above us, and their
+search beams only penetrate about ten to fifteen."
+
+"Splendid." Hilary said. "Now we've got to get to work."
+
+For two days they toiled incessantly. A rope ladder was fabricated to
+insure ease of entrance and exit without recourse to the ship. Wat, as
+the least conspicuous, was delegated to scour the countryside and
+bring in stores of provisions. The bottom of the gorge was leveled off
+with infinite labor. Rough wood shelters were erected. Spares and
+electrical equipment to replace worn parts in the _Vagabond_ were also
+purchased by Wat, in cautious small purchases. It necessitated long
+trekking through mountain trails, but there was no murmur from him.
+The search, he reported, seemed to be slackening. Only the routine
+guards whizzed by on the conveyors, and the usual Mercutian fliers
+that kept to the regular air lanes.
+
+At last even Hilary was satisfied. He was ready now for the plan that
+had been slowly forming in his mind during the days of their flight
+and of work. He was going to attempt a rescue of Joan. She had never
+left his thoughts once; he was burning with inward anxiety, though his
+face was a mask to cover his true feelings.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The last evening he sat with the others within one of the wooden
+shelters. A huge fire of fragrant pine knots blazed up a crude boulder
+chimney.
+
+"I am going out now to find Joan," he told them quietly.
+
+"When do we start?" asked Wat.
+
+"I am going alone." There was a movement of protest. He checked it at
+once. "You can understand the reasons. One man can worm his way where
+three men cannot. It isn't a question of force, of brute strength.
+Besides, if anything should go wrong, there are still the two of you
+to carry on--to be the focus of a new revolt. If all of us were
+caught, there would be no further hope for the Earth."
+
+"It's a hell of a note," Wat grumbled, unconvinced. "There's fighting
+to be done, and me cooped up here like a sick hen."
+
+"Hilary's right," Grim interposed thoughtfully. "It's a one-man job.
+We'll have our chance later." He turned on Hilary. "But if anything
+does happen to you, you understand we won't stay quietly. We'll
+come--if you are still alive. Promise you will let us know--if you
+can."
+
+"I'll promise that," Hilary agreed. "There is a way."
+
+He got up and went out of the hut. In a few minutes he was back,
+holding three small flat disks enmeshed in a spray of fine wires for
+them to see.
+
+"I've just removed the communication disks from our space suits.
+Strap them in position on your right shoulder blade, hook the
+wires--so--and you can talk to me or to each other over distances of
+one hundred miles. Underneath your clothing they cannot be seen.
+Should I require your assistance, I'll call, and further, I'll show
+you both how to run the _Vagabond_, in case...." His voice trailed.
+
+"Yes, yes, of course," Grim interposed hastily, "but you'll be here to
+run it when the time comes."
+
+"Perhaps," Hilary smiled faintly. Then he leaned forward. "I've gotten
+a pretty good idea of what's happened on Earth since I went away, but
+now I need more details. Otherwise I'll run into things that will
+surprise me, and that might not be so--pleasant."
+
+They told him, interrupting each other, arguing over details, Hilary
+interposing questions every now and then.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+About a year and a half after Hilary's departure into trackless space,
+a huge flat diskoid came hovering to the ground near Great New York.
+It carried a party of Mercutians on a friendly exploration, so they
+said, once communication could be established between Earth linguists
+and themselves. They were welcomed, made much of. They seemed friendly
+enough. At their own request they were whirled over the Earth in Earth
+planes on a tour of inspection.
+
+When they departed, with much protestation of friendship, they assured
+President Peabody they would return some day, they and others of their
+race. Just what hidden threat there was in that promise, no one on
+Earth realized. It was taken at face value.
+
+Just a year later, almost to the day, the by this time familiar
+diskoid was seen hovering once more over Great New York. The
+Mercutians were returning. The people of New York suspected nothing.
+No troops were rushed to the scene to repel invasion; no guns were
+trained on the space ship. It was just another friendly visit, and
+hurried preparations were commenced for a rousing welcome on their
+landing.
+
+What New York did not know was that simultaneously with the appearance
+of the Mercutian flier over their city, a hundred others were even
+then hovering over the strategic capitals of the world. The first
+Mercutian ambassadors had put to good advantage that hurried tour of
+inspection.
+
+No one was alarmed. Each capital city thought itself signally honored
+by the reappearance of the lone Mercutian over it. The plan was
+clever, the timing perfect.
+
+At a signal flashed through the ether, things started happening.
+
+The great diskoids, hovering high in the stratosphere, suddenly blazed
+into blinding light. To the dazzled onlookers below, a new sun seemed
+to have been born. A truncated cone of flame leaped downward. The
+diskoid was the apex, the spreading base all of Great New York. The
+sheeted brilliance enveloped the doomed city. It was a holocaust. New
+York became a roaring furnace. Stone and steel heated to
+incandescence.
+
+The affrighted people had no chance for their lives. Like moths in a
+flame they died on the streets, in the ovens of their homes, in the
+steaming rivers into which they had thrown themselves to escape the
+awful heat. There were few survivors, only those who happened to be
+inside the giant skyscrapers, protected by many thicknesses of crystal
+and steel.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As Great New York went, so went a hundred other cities. The Earth was
+caught unawares, but the governments, the people, responded nobly.
+Troops were mobilized hurriedly, preparations rushed for warfare.
+
+But the Earthmen did not have a chance. The great sinister diskoids
+moved methodically over the Earth, high in the stratosphere, where the
+futile Earth planes could not reach them, and sent the terrible blaze
+of destruction down unerringly upon armies, cities, towns.
+
+It was over soon. One after another, the Earth governments
+capitulated. America was the last--old Amos Peabody vowed he would
+rather go down to utter destruction than yield--but he was out-voted
+in Council. It was pure slaughter otherwise, without a chance to fight
+back.
+
+At once the Mercutians set up their government. The Earth was turned
+into a colony. The leader of the invaders, the son of the Mercutian
+emperor, became Viceroy, with absolute powers. Sooner or later, it was
+their intention to transport the entire Mercutian race to the Earth,
+and make it their permanent home. Mercury was not an ideal place to
+live on; in the restricted area around the poles where life was
+possible, terrific storms alternated with furnace droughts, to which
+the hottest part of the Sahara was an Arctic paradise. No wonder the
+first Mercutian expedition had broached the subject of Earth as an
+easy conquest when they returned.
+
+The Mercutians treated the Earth people as slaves. Their rule was
+brutal and arrogant in the extreme. The Earth people revolted, under
+the leadership of Amos Peabody. Weaponless, except for small hidden
+stores of rifles and revolvers--the Mercutians had cannily disarmed
+their slaves--they fought desperately with axes, knives, clubs,
+anything, against the overlords.
+
+The result could have been expected. The rebellion was smothered in
+blood and fire. The bravest of the Earthmen died in battle, or were
+executed afterwards. The slaves, the weaklings, were left. Old Amos
+Peabody was treated as Hilary had seen. He was exhibited in city after
+city as a public warning.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Hilary's blood was boiling as the terrible narration went on and on.
+But his face was calm, immovable.
+
+"How do the diskoids operate?" he asked.
+
+"Something like the sun rays on the one-man fliers," Grim told him,
+"only vastly more powerful. They are not limited in range, for one
+thing. It took only one, fifty miles up in the stratosphere, to
+destroy all New York. I saw the one that first spied on the Earth. It
+was about five hundred feet in diameter, made of the same vitreous
+material, and shaped like a huge lens. No doubt, besides being a space
+ship, it is just that. The sun's light flashes through it, is
+rearranged into terrible burning rays, and sears all in its path."
+
+"Hm'm!" Hilary meditated. "So everything the Mercutians have in the
+way of weapons and armament depends directly on the sun's rays."
+
+"Yes," Grim agreed. "After all, you must remember that with Mercury
+exposed as it is to the fierce heat of the sun, it would be only
+natural for them to develop weapons that utilized its rays."
+
+"Then the tubes and the fliers cannot operate at night?"
+
+"Yes, because then they receive the reflected waves from the diskoids
+that are stationed out in space, in eternal sunlight."
+
+Hilary considered this a moment.
+
+"Where do you think it possible Joan was taken?" he changed the
+subject abruptly.
+
+"It is hard to say," Grim answered slowly. "But your best chance would
+be with the Viceroy himself. There have been rumors--when pretty girls
+disappear."
+
+Hilary's jaw set hard.
+
+"I think I'll interview His Mercutian Magnificence," he said. "Where
+are his quarters?"
+
+"The Robbins Building."
+
+"Good Lord, that's Joan's...." So that was why Joan was up in the
+Bronxville suburb. "What happened to her father, Martin Robbins?"
+
+"Executed after the revolt," Wat interposed. "Your girl must have
+escaped, otherwise she'd have been treated then like the other girls
+whose relatives had fought."
+
+Hilary smiled unaccountably, the first smile since Joan had been
+taken. He knew the Robbins Building well; he had been a frequent
+visitor there in the old days. There were surprises in store for His
+Nibs the Mercutian....
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+_Mutterings of Revolt_
+
+
+The next morning, as dawn burst over the mountain tops, he started on
+his perilous mission. But no one who knew Hilary Grendon would have
+recognized him in the meek, shambling, slightly bent Earth slave who
+climbed the last rung of the rope ladder out of the hidden gorge.
+
+He had changed his clothes for an old, space-worn suit that one of his
+former comrades could never have any further use for. The skilful
+application of wood ash and powdered charcoal to the hollows around
+the eyes, the pits beneath the cheekbones, gave him a gaunt, careworn
+appearance, suitable to an Earthman too brow-beaten to dream of
+defying his overlords.
+
+Wat, who had artistically applied the make-up, viewed his handiwork
+with admiration. "You'll do," he grinned. "The way you look, even a
+little fellow like me would be perfectly safe in spitting upon you."
+
+Before he went, he explained the mechanism of the _Vagabond_
+thoroughly to his friends. Finally they nodded; they would know how to
+work the controls.
+
+There was the question of weapons. The captured sun-tube was out of
+the question; it could not be secreted beneath the dark-blue blouse.
+Hilary fondled his automatic wistfully.
+
+"If only I had some bullets," he sighed.
+
+"Hell, man, I know where you can get plenty," said Wat. There was a
+hidden cache, not far from where they were, stored against the day.
+There were still some brave spirits left on Earth who hoped and
+plotted. Wat had been one of them. Hilary's spirits rose immeasurably.
+With his gun loaded he could face the whole Mercutian planet.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Hilary made the return journey to Great New York in an hour. He wormed
+his way carefully to the nearest conveyor, and made his way openly to
+the express platform, secure in his disguise.
+
+There was an air of unrest, of tension in the air. The Earth
+passengers no longer sat dully, apathetically, as they were whizzed
+along. Little groups buzzed together, excited, gesticulating.
+
+Hilary unostentatiously joined one. There was a sudden silence as he
+sank quietly into his seat, glances of uneasy suspicion. But he looked
+thoroughly innocuous, and the chief whisperer felt emboldened to
+resume the thread of his interrupted discourse.
+
+"There _are_ men left on Earth," he mouthed secretively to the little
+circle of heads. "The Mercutians went down like animals--fifteen of
+them killed, I hear. The whole company of guards retreated in a
+hurry"--he paused for greater effect, and continued slowly and
+impressively--"from--three--Earthmen."
+
+Hilary raised his head sharply. They were discussing his exploit,
+evidently. With exaggerations of course. That was inevitable.
+
+"Yes, sir," the speaker proceeded, "that shows you. These damned
+Mercutians are not invulnerable. They can be overcome, chased off the
+Earth. But we've got to be men, not slaves."
+
+High excitement shone in the surrounding faces.
+
+"But we ain't got no weapons," a small, weak-chinned man protested.
+
+The other spat carefully: "No weapons, huh? Man, I could show you--"
+
+A dark, silent man standing uninterestedly next to him jabbed him in
+the ribs. The orator gulped and stammered: "I--I mean--"
+
+"Psst," someone hissed hurriedly, "the Mercutians."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Three giant Mercutian guards, their sun-tubes at the ready, stumbled
+heavily down the aisles of the express, sagging with the pull of
+Earth's gravitation. Their gray, warted faces were black as
+thunderclouds.
+
+They stopped before the hastily scattered group.
+
+"You heard the orders," the hugest one barked: "no congregating of
+Earth slaves on the conveyors or elsewhere. Next time you disobey,
+I'll ray you. You understand?"
+
+"Yes, Magnificent," the weak-chinned man muttered hurriedly.
+
+But the little knot reformed immediately after the guards had passed
+on.
+
+"Magnificents!" The first speaker spat viciously. "I'd like to wring
+their necks."
+
+Hilary shifted unobtrusively to another excited cluster. There the
+same procedure was followed. A quiet-voiced man was talking, lauding
+the exploit of the three embattled Earthmen, skillfully and subtly
+enkindling enthusiasm, raising wholesome doubts as to the
+invulnerability of the hated Mercutians.
+
+Numerous patrols of guards stalked up and down the conveyors,
+arrogant, manifestly itching for a pretext to ray the conquered. But
+the Earthmen gave them no opportunity. The groups melted at their
+approach into meek, vacuous individuals; reformed instantly as they
+moved on. And there were no informers. The Earthmen had resumed their
+almost forgotten Earth solidarity in fronting the invaders.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Hilary watched the restless shifting groups with a glow of pride. This
+was his work, the spark he had kindled was being fanned into a steady
+blaze. These whisperers, these exhorters, who were they? Members of an
+underground organization? Possibly. Wat and Grim had both belonged to
+loose circles, vague and shifting in membership. Possibly they were
+coalescing now, joining up into a world-wide organization. He hoped
+so. It would make his task easier, it also helped restore his pride in
+being an Earthman. He had almost thought that this supine listless
+race of his was not worth rescuing.
+
+He reached the terminal in Great New York without untoward incident.
+No one challenged this meek, shabby-looking Earthman. The Mercutians
+gave him barely a glance; the Earthmen disregarded him when they
+whispered together. Hilary was content; he was not seeking undue
+notice.
+
+The terminal was the scene of unwonted activity. The conveyors were
+disgorging crowds of Earthmen, grim, determined-looking individuals.
+They scattered purposefully through the various exits of the huge
+building. Hilary noted with interest that there were no women, no
+children, on the constantly incoming expresses.
+
+The Mercutians were massing, too. The terminal was crowded with
+guards. They stalked heavily about, shouldering their Earth slaves
+rudely out of the way, sending them sprawling with sudden quick
+shoves. It would take only an untoward word, a false movement, to
+start a massacre. The Mercutians were deliberately trying to egg them
+on.
+
+But the Earthmen took the abuse, the physical violence, quietly. They
+picked themselves up, disappeared through the exits, giving way to new
+arrivals. Once Hilary caught a gleam of familiar steel in the
+unbuttoned recess of a man's blouse pocket. He smiled. There were
+untoward events impending.
+
+But first he must take care of his own private matter. Joan was a
+captive in the hands of the Mercutian Viceroy. What was his name? Wat
+had told him. That was it--Artok.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He was out in the street now, a wide vita-crystal paved thoroughfare,
+one of the many that radiated from the terminal like the spokes of a
+wheel. On either side was an upflung spray of tall receding towers,
+dazzling in the sunshine.
+
+It struck Hilary suddenly. There had been bright unclouded skies
+during the days since his arrival. Only at night had it rained, like
+clockwork: every night for fifteen minutes immediately after midnight.
+A light steady shower that ceased as suddenly as it sprang up. It was
+unusual. This was April in the Spring of 2348 and April was always a
+month of showery heavens. Had the Mercutians, accustomed to the
+blazing light of their own planet, deliberately managed some way to
+create perpetual sunshine on Earth? Very likely, considering the
+clockwork night showers, no doubt for the purpose of preventing
+droughts. There was the matter of weapons and power, too. They all
+depended on the sun.
+
+Hilary took the inside moving platform. It would take him to the
+Robbins Building. The street was black with people, surging back and
+forth, restless, ominous.
+
+Mercutians stalked purposefully along, in companies of ten. Their
+guttural voices were harsh with command. The Earthmen scattered out of
+their way. Those who were not nimble enough were knocked down,
+trampled underfoot.
+
+One Earthman, braver than the rest, or more foolish, gave vent to a
+scream of rage, when a young girl, with whom he was arm in arm, was
+wrested brutally away. His fist shot out, caught the leering guard
+flush on his chin.
+
+The Mercutian staggered, then bellowed with rage. His tube flashed
+upward. The Earthman's eyes opened wide as with wonder, then he
+collapsed, cut cleanly in half.
+
+There was a full-throated growl from the jammed thoroughfare, a sudden
+surging forward. But the guards, reinforced by others, had their tubes
+lifted, ominous, death-dealing. The crowd ebbed back hastily.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Hilary had joined the first rush. His blood pounded in his veins at
+the unprovoked brutality. For a hasty moment he visioned the
+commencement of the revolt. But as the mob retreated before the
+weapons, his brain cooled. The time was not ripe yet. It would be
+pure slaughter. Besides, there was Joan.
+
+Once more he was the meek, downtrodden slave. He got off the platform,
+shambled over to the Robbins Building, an imposing pile of
+vita-crystal. It rose high into the air, overtopping even the great
+Memorial Tower. Martin Robbins had been wealthy, very much so. He had
+been a physicist of world repute, and this building was a monument to
+his inventive genius. The top floors were devoted to marvelously
+equipped laboratories. On the roof were the living quarters--dwelling
+of many rooms surrounded by an alpine garden. All Great New York
+stretched beneath. In the distance the green waters of the Atlantic
+dazzled in the sunshine.
+
+Hilary knew the layout well. It had been his second home before.... He
+put the bitter thoughts determinedly behind him. There was work ahead.
+The stooped, hollow-cheeked creature shambled aimlessly up to the
+entrance. It was filled with Mercutian guards.
+
+He edged his way along, hoping to pass through unnoticed.
+
+"Here, you," a burly Mercutian barred his way, "get out of here before
+I ray you."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Hilary seemed to shrivel together in mortal terror. He turned to slink
+out again. The guard had him by the shoulder, was propelling him with
+ungentle paws toward the exit. Hilary let himself be shoved.
+
+A cold curt voice spoke a sharp command:
+
+"What have you there?"
+
+Where had Hilary heard that voice before?
+
+The pushing guard spun him around hastily.
+
+"He was trying to get into the building, Cor Urga," he said
+respectfully. "These damned Earth slaves are everywhere under foot.
+It's time we rayed a few to teach them a lesson."
+
+Hilary found himself gazing at the gray saturnine countenance that had
+burnt itself into his memory. Urga--the Mercutian who had kidnaped
+Joan! His muscles tensed suddenly for a quick spring, then relaxed. He
+must play the game.
+
+Urga looked him over carefully, puzzled.
+
+"Strange," he grunted, "I've seen this fellow before, but I cannot
+remember where."
+
+Hilary was taut. Would he be recognized?
+
+But the Mercutian Cor--in Earth terms, Captain of a Hundred--shook his
+head finally, and turned away. The disguise had held up.
+
+"All these Earth slaves look alike. This one is a particularly poor
+specimen. Turn him loose. If he tries to come in again, kill him.
+
+"Get," the guard growled viciously, and sent Hilary sprawling out into
+the street to the muttering accompaniment of the seething Earth
+crowds. The temper of the people was rapidly reaching the explosion
+point.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But Hilary picked himself up, meekly brushed himself off, and melted
+unostentatiously into the moving crowd. He desired no undue attention.
+
+Strangely enough, there were no Mercutians in sight. Only the surging,
+growling Earthmen. Hilary felt their mysterious disappearance to be
+ominous--as though they had been warned by some secret signal.
+Something terrible was about to happen. He must get to that certain
+passageway he knew, and quickly. If only it were not guarded.
+
+A cry went up about him, a yell of many voices.
+
+"The Mercutians are coming."
+
+Hilary whirled. Down the street, issuing from the terminal, deployed
+a full regiment of guards, bowed under the strong pull of the Earth,
+but formidable enough. Sun-tubes glinted dangerously. A stentorian
+voice reached him. "Clear the streets, you Earth dogs," it roared.
+"You're been warned enough. One minute to obey and I'll burn you all
+down."
+
+A babel of excited voices went up. The crowds farther down, near the
+advancing Mercutians, melted into a wild scramble. Men trampled each
+other underfoot in a mad attempt to reach safety before the minute's
+expiration.
+
+Where Hilary had paused, there was a milling indecisiveness. Men were
+already quietly edging their way toward adjoining buildings, into side
+thoroughfares; others were more belligerent.
+
+"Kill the bloody beasts!" a man suddenly screamed near Hilary, drawing
+a pistol from beneath his blouse. He waved it frantically in the air.
+There was an ugly surge, a low-throated growl. It needed very little
+for the mob to get out of hand and hurl itself upon the steadily
+approaching Mercutian regiment.
+
+Hilary acted swiftly. He caught the man's pistol arm, thrust it down
+sharply out of sight. A quick wrench, and the gun was in his own hand.
+The man, wild-eyed, opened his mouth to shout.
+
+"Shut up," Hilary hissed fiercely. "Are you mad? You wouldn't have a
+chance. They'd ray us all clean out of existence." He thrust the
+pistol back into the man's blouse. "Wait; our chance will come."
+
+"Oh, my God! Look!" someone screamed.
+
+A command shattered the air; the tubes of the Mercutians uplifted; a
+blinding sheet of flame blazed solidly down the street. The minute's
+grace was up.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Even at this distance, the heat scorched and seared. There were many
+unfortunates caught farther down, men who had had no chance to seek
+safety in time. They melted in the furnace blast as though they were
+bits of metal in an electric arc.
+
+"Run for your lives!" the shout went up. All thought of resistance was
+gone. It was every one for himself. The man with the gun was the first
+to run. Hilary found himself caught in the mad rush. The Mercutians
+were pounding along methodically raying in front of them.
+
+Hilary was thrust into a little eddy of men to one side. It swirled
+and shoved. The entrance of the Pullman Building loomed ahead. The
+sight of it gave Hilary new vigor. That was his destination. If only
+he could make it.
+
+He straightened out of his stoop, squared his shoulders. The next
+instant a human battering ram crashed through the twirling, yelling
+mob. Head down, right shoulder and elbow working in unison, a path
+magically opened where no path had been before. Every second was
+precious now. The heat of the tubes was engulfing him in waves,
+raising little blisters on the unprotected skin.
+
+Hilary plunged into the open entrance of the Pullman Building. It was
+packed with humanity, struggling for the lift platforms, to take them
+to the upper stories, out of reach of the awful rays. Hilary was
+thankful for that. His destination was beneath, in the sub-levels. A
+moving escalator led downward. It was deserted.
+
+A fierce, wild screaming arose outside, screams that gurgled and died
+horribly. Hilary felt sick inside. The full blast of the rays had
+reached the milling crowd. It would be a hideous and merciless
+slaughter.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Hilary's gray eyes burned, his lips set in a straight, hard line. The
+beasts would pay for this. He shot down the escalator at full speed. A
+spray of passageways met him. He did not hesitate. He chose the one
+farthest to the left and dashed along its winding length until he came
+to a dead end. The vita-crystal gleamed blankly back at him.
+
+But Hilary knew what he was doing. Long ago Martin Robbins had told
+him of the secret connection between the two adjoining buildings. A
+passageway that led between the outer and inner shells of crystal
+walls; lifts that shot smoothly to the laboratories and
+pent-apartments on the roofs of the two structures. For Simeon Pullman
+had been a close friend of Robbins; a fellow physicist, in fact. They
+interchanged theories, results of experiments, and found this swift
+connection most convenient.
+
+Both men were dead now--Pullman as the result of a premature
+explosion, and Robbins, executed by the Mercutians. But the secret
+passageway remained.
+
+Hilary pressed the secret spring he knew of. A gleaming oblong of
+crystal slid silently open. He went in without hesitation and the
+slide closed with a little whir behind him.
+
+A low tunnel confronted him, just barely high enough for him to move
+without stooping. The walls here were of burnished metal, glowing with
+impregnated cold-light. It was empty, silent. Evidently it had been
+undisturbed for years. The Mercutians had not discovered this secret
+way then.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The tunnel slanted downward for several hundred yards, then turned
+sharply upward until a vita-crystal wall barred the way. Hilary could
+hear vague sounds from the other side. He was in the Robbins
+Building. He turned to the left, where a shaft stretched upward,
+completely enclosed by crystal walls. A thin oblong edging showed the
+platform beneath. He stepped on it, hesitated for a moment. There were
+two control buttons; one that stopped the lift in the laboratory, the
+other in the sleeping room that once was Martin Robbins'.
+
+Hilary decided in favor of the penthouse; there was less chance of a
+present occupant of the room. If there was--he shrugged his shoulders
+and loosened the automatic in his blouse. He pressed the button.
+
+The platform shot smoothly upward, up, up, thrusting a thousand feet
+up. At length it came to a gliding halt. Hilary knew he was on the
+roof now, in the interior of the wall making one side of the
+sleep-apartment. The vita-crystal gleamed mockingly opaque at him. If
+only he could see through; if only he had a Mercutian search beam now.
+Was there someone in the room on the other side of the wall? He
+strained his ears to listen, but the crystal was pretty much
+sound-proof.
+
+Very quietly Hilary drew his gun, broke it, examined the chamber. The
+six bullets lay snug. He snapped it back in position, held the
+automatic butt against his side, reached over and pressed the release
+button.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The slide whirred open. Hilary waited a second, tense, ready to shoot
+at the slightest sound. His eyes bored through the oblong. Nothing was
+in sight except the luxurious furnishings he remembered so well;
+nothing stirred. But his vision was limited to that part of the room
+framed by the slide. With infinite caution he peered out, his
+searching gaze flicking swiftly, around the sleep-apartment. It was a
+man's room with built in divans, automatic sleep-spray, wall rack to
+hold illuminated book sheets, magnified so as to be read comfortably
+from a reclining position on the divan--in short, the usual ordered
+luxuries of a well-furnished sleep-room.
+
+It was empty--but the divan was touseled, certain small things
+disarranged. Someone used this room. Hilary stepped out, leaving the
+slide behind him open in case of an enforced retreat. He paused to
+think. Where could Joan be held prisoner--if, and it was a big if--she
+were really here. He ran over the possibilities.
+
+The laboratories were out of the question. The great master room then.
+No doubt Artok, the Viceroy, had installed himself there. It was
+regally magnificent. That might repay a visit. A bold scheme flashed
+across his mind. Seize Artok himself, abduct him into the secret
+passage, and compel him to disclose Joan's whereabouts, give her up.
+Hilary smiled grimly. Sheerly suicidal, yes, but he was desperate now,
+and there seemed no other way.
+
+Gun shifted back into his blouse, with his right hand thrust in, on
+the butt, he glided softly out of the chamber. No one was in sight.
+The passageway seemed oddly deserted. Possibly the staff had been
+attracted to the outer rim of the terrace by the commotion below.
+
+At the end of the passageway, facing him, was the master room. Another
+swift look about, and Hilary was moving down the long corridor, close
+to the wall, his footfalls deadened by the soft composition rug.
+
+Slowly, very slowly, he pressed the button to release the slide. It
+slid open at a barely perceptible rate. As the slender crack widened,
+Hilary, looked in, taking care to keep his body to one side.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+_In the Hands of the Mercutians_
+
+
+A Mercutian was lolling in a reclining chair, his gray, warty face
+turned half away from Hilary. He was rather undersized for a
+Mercutian, standing not more than seven feet, and his gray, unwieldy
+body was heavy and gross as though thickened with good living and
+debauch. A fleshy three-fingered hand was pounding vehemently on the
+arm of the chair. His guttural roughened voice came clearly to the
+listener. He was talking to someone unseen from the angle of the
+slowly widening slit. He was annoyed.
+
+"For the last time I give you the opportunity," the Mercutian
+howled--in English. "If you refuse I turn you over to Urga; he wants
+you."
+
+The crack in the door had widened perceptibly. Hilary's heart gave a
+tremendous leap. Disclosed to his vision was a figure standing
+opposite the Mercutian, slim, defiant, proud--Joan.
+
+What unimaginable luck! The automatic leaped like a live thing into,
+his hand. He crouched, the blood pounding in his temples, waiting for
+the slide to come completely open. He dared not reach over for the
+button control to shift the speed; the movement might be heard inside.
+
+The path was clear now. Overpower the Mercutian, escape with Joan down
+the deserted corridors back to the secret passageway, emerge below,
+return to their hideout in the Ramapos and plan for revolt. It was all
+as simple as that.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"We must have these Earth slaves," the Mercutian continued, unheeding.
+"They, must be made an example of. They are responsible for the
+unrest. They have killed Magnificents; and the Earth fools think they
+can do the same. They will find out their error soon enough. But as
+long as those three live, so long will the slaves hope, and plot."
+
+"I cannot tell you anything about them," Joan said monotonously. It
+was evident that this was not the first time she had said so.
+
+"Yes you can," the Mercutian said as softly as his gutturals would
+permit. "There is one in particular you know a great deal about. Urga
+told me. A long-lost lover, no?" His gray-ridged countenance contorted
+into a thick disgusting leer.
+
+"There it something mysterious about him. He has no identification
+tag; he releases Peabody; seems not to know the penalties. He has a
+pistol, a forbidden weapon; he dares to kill a Magnificent; he eggs on
+two others, ordinary Earth slaves to join him; he disappears out of
+sight, in spite of all search." He was shouting now, pounding the
+chair arm with complete loss of dignity. "Who is he, where does he
+come from, where did he go? Answer me?"
+
+The girl faced him boldly.
+
+"You are afraid of him, Viceroy," she challenged. "You fear his
+example. He has shown what a brave man can do; the Earth people will
+follow him. The Mercutians are not invulnerable."
+
+"Yes," the Viceroy said heavily. He was talking more to himself. Then
+he realized his mistake. "No, of course not," he growled hurriedly.
+"Enough of this. You tell me what I want to know or I call Urga in."
+
+Joan's face went white, but she faced him unflinchingly.
+
+"I do not know where he is, and if I did, I would not tell you."
+
+"Very well then." The Viceroy leaned over to the table.
+
+The slide was completely open now.
+
+"I wouldn't call anyone if I were you."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Viceroy whirled in his chair at the sound of the calm Earth voice,
+calm yet deadly in its implications. He found himself staring into the
+stubby opening of an Earth automatic, a forbidden weapon. The hand
+that held it was steady, and the gray eyes that bored into his were
+hard as pebbles.
+
+There was a smothered gasp from Joan. "Hilary."
+
+"Yes; come to take you away." He spoke swiftly. "We have no time to
+waste, Joan. Is there any binding material in the room?"
+
+"I--I believe there is. Dad always kept odds and ends in the store
+chest near the bookshelves."
+
+"Go and get it then. We'll truss up his most Mercutian
+Magnificence--No you don't," Hilary said harshly; "keep your hands in
+front of you and don't move."
+
+The Viceroy was stealthily reaching for the sun-tube dangling from his
+belt. He jerked his hand back, a cold sweat beading his forehead.
+Hilary's finger had compressed on the trigger; the slightest extra
+pressure meant flaming death.
+
+"That's better," Hilary approved.
+
+"You shall pay for this," howled the Mercutian, finding voice again.
+"You shall suffer a hundred deaths in one."
+
+"Softly," Hilary grinned. "Just a little while ago you were very
+anxious to meet me. Now that I'm here you don't seem overmuch
+pleased." Joan was rummaging frantically in the open chest.
+
+The Viceroy started, his unlidded pink eyes opened wider. But he was
+careful to keep his hands in plain view.
+
+"You are the Earth dog who killed the Magnificents."
+
+"I wouldn't call names," Hilary advised. "It might be unhealthy. But I
+am that very individual. And I trust"--he bowed mockingly-"to have
+more notches on my gun before I am through."
+
+"You--you--shall be taken to Mercury. My father has special places for
+such as you." Joan was coming now swiftly with lengths of wire, soft
+thick material for swathing.
+
+"Get me there first," Hilary said indifferently. "Gag him, Joan, so he
+can't open his ugly mouth any more. Then tie him up, well."
+
+Joan thrust the gag into the thick gash of a mouth, choking off a
+torrent of imprecations in the guttural Mercutian tongue. Then she
+proceeded to truss him, expertly, efficiently.
+
+"Good job," Hilary approved. "Now with your kind permission, Most
+Viceregal Magnificence, we shall go." He bowed mockingly. "Come,
+Joan."
+
+"Not so fast, Earth slave." A cold saturnine voice resounded like the
+clang of doom behind him. He whirled, shifting his gun swiftly for a
+quick shot.
+
+A little gush of heat caught his trigger hand as the index finger
+contracted desperately. The smarting pain tore the pistol out of his
+hand. It dropped to the floor, unheeded. Hilary found himself staring
+into the gross unpleasant face of Urga, a sun-tube trained directly at
+his midriff.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"The Earth slave who tried to slink into the building," Urga said,
+surprised. "How did he get up here?"
+
+"I don't know," the Viceroy said shortly, working the gag out of his
+mouth. "Don't stand there like a fool. Untie me." Gratitude was not
+among the Viceroy's virtues.
+
+Urga's face mottled as he hastened to obey. When Artok stood finally
+released, he glared heavily at Hilary and Joan. Then slowly a smile
+broke over his warty features, a smile that boded unutterable things.
+Hilary waited quietly, ready to seize the slightest opening; Joan
+pressed wide-eyed against his shoulder.
+
+"Know this Earth dog?" the Viceroy jerked at Hilary.
+
+Urga's glance was puzzled. "I told you I threw him out of the
+entrance, but even then I felt I had seen him before."
+
+"You have, Cor Urga," the ruler laughed shortly. "This is the one who
+is responsible for the mutterings of the slaves. He slew your comrade,
+Gornu."
+
+The captain started, peered into his captive's unflinching
+countenance.
+
+"He's disguised!" he cried. "Let me kill him, Magnificent." He
+fingered his sun-tube significantly.
+
+The Viceroy was in high good humor now.
+
+"Not so fast. You would let him off too easy. I have a better scheme.
+We shall show the mutinous dogs how we treat those who revolt against
+our will."
+
+A cruel smile broke over Urga.
+
+"I understand, Magnificent. Make a public warning of him like that
+fool Peabody. Rip out his tongue and his eyes, smash his eardrums, and
+ride him from city to city, in chains."
+
+"Exactly."
+
+Joan shuddered, convulsively. "No, no," she cried aloud in her terror,
+"don't do that. I'll tell you everything; I'll do--"
+
+"Joan," Hilary interrupted sharply, "not another word." His arm went
+around her.
+
+She collapsed against his shoulder, sobbing.
+
+"It is too late for bargains now," the Viceroy shrugged indifferently.
+"We have the man we wanted. As for the other two, you will tell us
+where they are hiding anyway."
+
+Urga turned to him expectantly.
+
+"Your Magnificence," he urged respectfully, "you promised me the girl,
+if--"
+
+"Yes, take her." The Viceroy waved a weary hand. "I don't want her; I
+have too many as it is."
+
+The captain's face lit up with an unhealthy glow. He approached
+eagerly to seize his prize. Joan gave a little cry of dismay, and
+shrank closer to her lover.
+
+Hilary tensed in every muscle. Though it meant instant death, he would
+not permit that towering brute to lay his clumsy paw on Joan.
+
+Urga reached out to clasp the frightened girl. Hilary seemed to
+uncoil. His fist shot straight up with all the power of his body
+behind it. It crashed into the jutting jaw of the Mercutian like a
+charge of high explosive dynol. For all his height and massive
+strength, the giant toppled over, thudding heavily against the floor.
+
+For the moment Hilary saw freedom ahead. The sun-tube had fallen from
+the nerveless fingers. He darted for it with the speed of a striking
+snake. Even as his fingers curled around the handle, there came a roar
+from the Viceroy.
+
+"Drop it, or I'll cut you in two."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Hilary knew when he was beaten. Slowly, reluctantly, his fingers
+uncurled. He arose, to meet the gleaming opening of the Viceroy's
+weapon, and the surprised stare in back of it.
+
+Urga got up groggily, feeling gingerly the tender point of his jaw.
+There was unfathomable hatred in his lidless eyes.
+
+The Viceroy chuckled throatily.
+
+"I never thought, Cor Urga, to have seen a puny Earthman, a mere
+midget, overcome a Mercutian. Especially you, a winner of the prize
+of strength three times running in the arenas."
+
+Urga flushed darkly.
+
+"It was an unexpected blow; it caught me unawares," he said heatedly.
+"I'll break the slave in two."
+
+"Try it--without your sun-tube," said Hilary laconically.
+
+The captain made a movement toward him.
+
+"Leave him alone," Artok cried sharply. He seemed to enjoy his
+Captain's discomfiture. "I have other plans for him. Now go. Take the
+girl with you. I'll watch this presumptuous Earthling."
+
+Urga advanced with an evil grin. Hilary thrust Joan suddenly behind
+him; crouching like a cat. He would go down fighting. For all his
+bulk, the Viceroy wheeled on his flank, raised his weapon.
+
+"One false move, and you are dead carrion," he said coldly. His weapon
+was raised. Hilary was caught between two fires, exposed to the
+searing blasts that would issue at the slightest pressure.
+
+Nevertheless he intended to strike. A sudden swerving jump, and he
+might throttle one before he would be blasted into nothingness. It
+would be Urga, he decided grimly. He tensed for the final desperate,
+suicidal spring. The two Mercutians were watching him like unsheathed
+hawks.
+
+"Good-by, Joan," he whispered, and his muscles went taut.
+
+Urga paused, his weapon came up sharply. One little pressure, and--
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There was a commotion in the outer hall, the sound of padding feet.
+The four in the master room froze into immobility. Two Mercutian
+guards stumbled panting into the room. They came to a jerking halt,
+threw themselves prone upon the floor, arms outstretched in
+obeisance.
+
+"May we speak, oh Magnificent?" they asked humbly.
+
+"Say your say," the Viceroy said crossly.
+
+They rose to their feet heavily, and one of them spoke.
+
+"The Earth dogs are revolting. The Cors of the outlying districts
+report that the slaves are massing and are marching on Great New York.
+They are armed with Earth weapons. The Cor of the Third District
+reports two men responsible--one is a giant among them, almost as tall
+as our own kind; and the other a puny red-haired firebrand. The Cor
+has tried to capture them, but they are elusive. Even the search beams
+cannot disclose their hiding place."
+
+Hilary's heart gave a great bound. Grim and Wat had not waited then.
+
+The Viceroy's face darkened with anger.
+
+"The filthy scum," he growled; "this morning's lesson was not enough.
+This time I'll slay, burn, smash until there isn't a single rebel
+left. I'll fertilize their damned Earth with their own black blood.
+You, Cor Urga," he snapped, "transmit my orders to the Cors of the
+Hundreds. They are to mobilize their men at once, and proceed in
+accordance with instructions known to them as General Order One. All
+conveyors to be stopped except for troop movements. Every slave found
+with weapons, or acting suspiciously, to be slain on the spot. Flying
+patrols to scatter in pairs, observe for concentrations of slaves. Ray
+any gathering without warning. Inform Cor Algor of the _Tora_ (this
+was the great armed diskoid of the Mercutians that had previously
+reduced Great New York, Hilary found out afterwards) to resume his
+station over the city, ready to act when I give the signal."
+
+Even in the conflict of emotions, Hilary marveled at the
+unhesitating, snapped flow of orders. The Viceroy, in spite of his
+seeming gross lethargy, was a soldier, and an efficient one to boot.
+
+"Yes, Magnificent." Urga bowed low, and departed, thrusting a
+malignant glance at Hilary.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Viceroy thrust off from him his bright yellow robes, wriggled his
+vast bulk swiftly into a close-fitting dull-gray tunic. To his belt he
+fastened little round knobs; the sun-tube dangled swankily at one
+side. He was accoutered for battle.
+
+He seemed to have forgotten the existence of the Earthlings.
+
+"You," he snapped to one of the waiting guards, "go to the laboratory
+at once; convey my strict orders to Cor Eela that the weather machine
+must function perfectly. There must be no slip-up--his life will
+answer for it."
+
+"Yes, oh Magnificence." The guard prostrated himself once more, then
+departed hastily.
+
+Vast echoes resounded in Hilary's mind. "Weather machine--weather
+machine," he puzzled, holding Joan the tighter. There was more to this
+than met the eye. He must think.
+
+The Viceroy turned suddenly, stared at them, fingering his tube.
+
+"I could of course have you killed at once," he thought aloud, "and
+have no further trouble; but then Urga would be angry." His lidless
+eyes rested fleetingly on Joan. "And I would lose my public warning to
+the few Earth dogs who will survive. If it weren't that I needed them
+to till the fields, and work the machines, I would not leave a single
+one alive."
+
+He seemed to come to a decision. "You'll wait my return." He spoke
+sharply to the guard. "Bind them up well. Thrust gags into their
+mouths." He grimaced. "I can taste mine yet. And remember, if they
+escape, just turn that sun-tube of yours on yourself. It will be
+pleasanter for you. Understand?"
+
+"Yes, Magnificent."
+
+The obsequious guard caught hold of Hilary, under the watchful tube of
+Artok, and proceeded with clumsy weighted fingers to tie him up.
+Hilary did not resist. An idea was slowly forming in his mind. Joan's
+turn came next.
+
+When they were trussed so tightly that neither could move, the Viceroy
+smiled mockingly. "We shall meet again, Earth dogs," he said, and was
+gone.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+_Rescued_
+
+
+The guard looked at his captives sourly, kicked viciously at Hilary to
+relieve his feelings. There was fighting to be had outside; Earth
+slaves to be tortured and slain, and he was out of it--wet nurse to a
+couple of prisoners.
+
+He growled disconsolately. Through an open slide window giving out on
+the terrace, a confused roaring, a babel of sounds came filtering
+through. There was trouble below--fighting already, very likely. The
+Mercutian glanced back at his bound and gagged prisoners. They were
+immobile, helpless. He looked guiltily about. The great room was bare,
+silent. With almost furtive movements he opened the door leading to
+the terrace, stumbled out, and was leaning over the parapet, absorbed
+in the spectacle of Great New York below.
+
+Instantly, Hilary lifted his head, exerting to the utmost his muscles.
+He could just see the guard's back, strained over the side. Hilary
+relaxed rolled painfully over to Joan. She stared at him wide-eyed.
+
+If only he could make her understand. He must get the gag out of his
+mouth. Every moment was precious; the guard might return momentarily.
+He screwed his face into tremendous contortions, wiggled his feet as
+much as he could, worked his jaws, trying desperately to convey his
+meaning.
+
+Joan watched him puzzled; trying to follow those strange contortions.
+Beads of perspiration started on his brow as her face registered blank
+incomprehension. Just as he was giving up in despair, she grasped the
+idea. Her face brightened, and her shapely head nodded stiffly.
+
+The trussed-up pair started at once to pivot around on the floor.
+Fortunately the composition was polished, affording little friction.
+With infinite pains the maneuver was completed. They lay side by side
+now. Joan's trim feet close to Hilary's head.
+
+Writhing and contorting, she worked the sharp heel of her foot against
+the thick wad of the gag in Hilary's mouth, and pushed. It was solidly
+tied, but it gave a little. Encouraged, she redoubled her efforts,
+pushing with all the limited force of her bound limbs.
+
+The yielding gag cut cruelly, the sharp heel scraped and gouged into
+Hilary's cheeks, but he did not mind. He was in a fever of
+apprehension. If only the guard's interest were held by the events
+below until he had accomplished what he intended!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At last his mouth was free. The gag had been pushed over his nose.
+Joan rolled away. She had accomplished the task Hilary had set her,
+but she was still puzzled. What earthly good would it do him to talk?
+
+She found out almost immediately. He was twisting his head, burrowing
+with his nose against the blouse over his right shoulder. The open
+tunic give a bit, and he burrowed painfully, Joan watching with
+growing fascination, until one of the binding wires stopped further
+progress. But it seemed far enough, judging from the satisfied
+illumination in Hilary's eyes.
+
+He spoke, his mouth pressed close against the shoulder blade, his
+tones queerly muffled, thick.
+
+"Grim Morgan, Wat Tyler, Grim Morgan, Wat Tyler," he whispered over
+and over again. He could not hear if there was any response; his ears
+were muffled now by the spread gag. He could not help that.
+
+"Grim Morgan, Wat Tyler," he muttered monotonously, "Hilary Grendon
+calling. Held prisoner with Joan, top of Robbins Building. Guarded.
+Urgent you free us. Artok has sent out general death orders. I have
+plan to stop him. Come, quickly."
+
+Over and over he murmured the message, hoping desperately they would
+hear him in the communication disks strapped to their shoulders.
+
+"Come quickly," he repeated; and then the guard, tiring of the view
+below, or the streets having been cleared of rebels, came softly into
+the room. Hilary's head jerked quickly back, the shoulder of his tunic
+falling back into position.
+
+"Here, what's this?" the guard growled suspiciously, catching sight of
+the displaced gag. "How on Mercury did you do that?"
+
+He knelt swiftly, thrust the gag back into position with ungentle paw,
+kicked the unresisting form in the side to show his displeasure, and
+rose. Hilary's heart pounded; the guard had not seen the inconspicuous
+disk under the tunic. He was in an agony of expectation. Had his
+comrades caught his message? Could they rescue him even if they had?
+Questions that only time could answer.
+
+The guard was alert now; he did not like that queer removal of the
+gag. There would be no further chance to unbind themselves. What
+seemed hours passed as they lay cramped, immobile.
+
+The air grew thick and warm, or was it only his imagination? No, for
+the guard felt it, too. Then something buzzed, intermittently. One
+long, two short. It seemed to emanate from a round black button on the
+sleeve of his gray tunic. A signal!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The guard exclaimed something in guttural Mercutian, rose hastily, and
+closed the open door and window. He pressed another button, and
+sheeted lead curtains rolled swiftly over the vita-crystal roof,
+darkening the room, cutting off the rays of diffused sunlight. Then he
+seated himself not far from the captives, facing them, grinning
+savagely. Hilary wondered why.
+
+Again what seemed hours passed. Behind the lead curtain, the room had
+become definitely, uncomfortably warm. The Earthlings perspired; the
+atmosphere was literally steaming; and in their cramped limbs, the
+torture was fast becoming unbearable. Only the Mercutian guard did not
+seem to mind. He was accustomed to far higher temperatures on the arid
+planet that was his home.
+
+Just as the prisoners were gasping almost their last gasp, the heat
+seemed to recede, swiftly. At once the guard rolled back the leaden
+shade opened the door and window again. His grin was broadly
+triumphant. Something clutched at Hilary's heart; he understood now.
+The beastly invaders! He struggled furiously at his bonds, but they
+did not give. He ceased his efforts, panting.
+
+The moments passed. Hilary was giving up whatever slender hopes he had
+had. Wat and Grim had not heard, or if they did, they could do
+nothing. A slow, sullen despair enveloped him.
+
+He was watching the guard. That gray-faced giant turned his head
+suddenly, jumped up as fast as his lumbering alien weight could move,
+snatched at his sun-tube.
+
+"Don't move an inch, if you want to live," a deep, slow voice vibrated
+through the room. A well-remembered voice. Hilary would have laughed
+aloud his relief, but he was gagged. His comrades had not failed them.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The guard dropped his half-raised weapon sullenly, staring at the
+intruders in dazed incomprehension. Hilary jerked his head around.
+Framed in the doorway was Grim--good old Grim--a long-barreled dynol
+pistol steady in his hand. From behind him there darted a little
+figure, red-haired, freckled, shrill with delight. An old-fashioned
+submachine gun, abstracted from some museum, weighed heavily under his
+arm.
+
+It clattered unheeded to the floor as the bantam dived for Hilary and
+Joan.
+
+"We came as fast as we could when we got your message," he crowed.
+"Dropped everything." His nimble fingers were making havoc of the
+knotted bonds, while his nimbler tongue wagged on. "Boy, we have them
+on the run. We'll sweep them out into space by the time we're
+through."
+
+Hilary and Joan were free now. Very painfully they rose to their feet,
+stamping and pounding their arms to make the sluggish blood circulate
+again. Wat hopped about in his excitement.
+
+"Here, you little runt," Grim's voice boomed at him, "stop jumping
+around, and tie up this Mercutian. We have no time to waste."
+
+Wat groaned comically. "See how that big ox orders me around," he
+proclaimed, but he picked up the wire and in a trice had the guard
+helpless and glaring.
+
+Hilary had recovered his speech.
+
+"Thanks, boys," he told them simply. "I knew you'd come if it was
+humanly possible. But how did you manage to get through the
+Mercutians? The building is honeycombed with them."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Morgan grinned. "We came in the _Vagabond_," he said.
+
+"What," almost yelled Hilary, "you mean--"
+
+"That your ship is resting comfortably outside on the terrace. When
+little Wat here caught your message in the communication disk, we were
+busy organizing companies of Earthmen in the hills back of Suffern. As
+recruits poured in, we'd tell them off in hundreds, appoint officers,
+see that they had arms, or gave them directions where to find the old
+caches, and hustled them off. Had to shift our quarters continually,
+because Mercutian fliers would pick us up with their search-beams, and
+start raying. Had some close shaves. But when we heard you were
+caught, we turned over the command to the nearest new officer, hurried
+to the gorge, and here we are. The _Vagabond_ handled beautifully."
+
+"I could take her myself to the Moon," Wat boasted.
+
+"Hadn't we better be going?" Joan asked anxiously.
+
+"There is work first to be done," Hilary, answered grimly. "There's a
+certain weather machine in the laboratory I want to take a look at."
+
+"Weather machine?" Grim echoed, puzzled.
+
+"Yes. The Viceroy let something slip about it. For some reason it's
+very important to them that it continues to function. I'm curious."
+
+A gasp from Joan. Surprised, the men turned to her.
+
+"Of course," she said breathlessly. "Father had been working on it for
+the longest time. It was a machine to control weather. Something to
+do with broadcasting tremendously high voltages, ionizing the air and
+causing rain clouds to form or reversing the process and scattering
+clouds back into thin air. This was the Master Machine. All over the
+Earth, at spaced distances, were smaller replicas, substations,
+controlled from this one. He had great hopes of furnishing equable
+weather to all the Earth. It was just completed, when...." She trailed
+off.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Grim frowned. "Very interesting, but what is so terribly important
+about it now?"
+
+"You fool," Hilary exploded, "it's as important as hell. Don't you
+see? What are the Mercutians' weapons? Sun-tubes, sun-rays from their
+fliers, tremendous burning disks that are their space-ships.
+Sun--sun--everything they have depends upon the sun. Take away the
+sun, and what have they? Nothing but their hideous giant bodies--they
+are weaponless. Now do you see?" He fairly shouted at him.
+
+Grim's face lit up heavily; Wat was dancing insanely.
+
+"Get hold of the machine, reverse the process. Make it form clouds,
+great big woolly ones. Start a rain that'll make the Deluge look sick;
+forty days--a year--and we'll drown them all," Wat cried.
+
+"Exactly," Hilary nodded. "Joan darling, you and Wat get into the
+_Vagabond_, and wait for us. Grim and I will take care of the
+laboratory."
+
+"What?" Tyler ejaculated. "Leave me cooped up when there's a fight on.
+I'm coming."
+
+"So am I," Joan was pale but determined.
+
+"Oh, Lord," Hilary groaned. "Listen to me, please," he said patiently.
+"Time is precious, and I can't argue. Joan, you would only be a
+hindrance. I for one would be thinking more of protecting you than
+fighting. As for you, Wat," he turned to the furious bantam, "I'm
+sorry, but you'll have to take orders. The _Vagabond_ must be guarded.
+If we're cut off, we're through. And there's Joan."
+
+"Well. If you want to put it that way," Wat grumbled.
+
+"I knew you'd be sensible," Hilary said hurriedly, not giving them a
+chance to change their minds. "At the slightest alarm, take off. Don't
+try to rescue us if we don't return. The Earth cause is more important
+than any individual. If you get caught, too, the revolt will be
+leaderless; at an end."
+
+The men shook hands gravely. Joan, white-faced, kissed Hilary
+passionately. "Be careful, my dear."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Then the two men were gone, moving cautiously down the corridor with
+deadened footfalls. Hilary had retrieved his automatic; Grim had his
+more modern dynol pistol. The guard had been thrust into a corner,
+bound, unnoticed.
+
+The laboratory was on the floor below. They trod carefully down the
+inclined ramp connecting all the floors. The corridors, the ramp, were
+deserted.
+
+"All out fighting," Hilary whispered. "The revolt must be spreading."
+
+Grim swore. "The idiots. I told them not to start anything until I
+returned. They'll be wiped out--they weren't ready."
+
+Hilary nodded slowly. He thought of the strange heat while he had been
+captive. There would be very few Earthmen left alive in Great New York
+now.
+
+They were at the foot of the ramp now. Just ahead gleamed an open
+slide. A pale-blue light streamed out at them; in the oblong of the
+interior they could see moving shapes, weirdly cut off, crossing their
+field of vision; bright gleaming machines, segments of tremendous
+tubes flooded with the pale-blue light. And over all was a constant
+hum, a crackling, a whining of spinning parts. The laboratory!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+_The Weather Machine_
+
+
+The two men flattened themselves against the wall so that they could
+not be seen by a casual glance from the Mercutians inside the
+laboratory.
+
+"There are a lot of them," Grim whispered.
+
+"Can't help it," Hilary answered grimly. "Have to take our chances."
+
+"Of course," Grim said simply. There was no backing out.
+
+Silently, with catlike tread, they inched their way forward flat
+against the wall, keeping out of the blue flood of illumination. The
+shapes, or rather segments of shapes within, moved about, engrossed in
+the business at hand, unaware of the creeping death.
+
+The Earthmen had reached their stations unobserved, one on either side
+of the open slide. Very carefully Hilary protruded his head around the
+vita-crystal, and ducked back almost instantly. But his quick eye had
+taken in all the essential details in that momentary vision.
+
+There were about a dozen Mercutians in the long laboratory, and each
+had a sun-tube dangling from his belt, ready at hand. The laboratory
+was crowded with apparatus, but what had drawn Hilary's attention was
+a gigantic gleaming metallic sphere set up prominently in the center
+of the room. Protruding from it at all angles were great quartz tubes,
+through which a blue light pulsed and flamed. It was connected by huge
+cables to a spark-bathed dynamo. Other cables writhed through the
+translucent ceiling. The weather machine!
+
+Hilary took a firmer grip on his automatic, nodded once to Grim. The
+two Earthmen stepped simultaneously through the open door.
+
+"Raise your paws high and keep them up." Hilary's voice cracked like a
+whip through the busy confusion of the laboratory. The Mercutians,
+scattered as they were, whirled around from their tasks to face two
+deadly weapons held by two determined-looking men.
+
+There was a chorus of strange guttural oaths, but every hand moved
+skyward, reluctantly.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Hilary picked out the most blasphemous sounding of the cursers,
+rightly deeming him the Cor in charge.
+
+"You," he said, "what switches regulate the weather machine?"
+
+The Mercutian Cor was a particularly ugly specimen. The gray warts
+were gigantic, hiding whatever semblance of manlike features there
+might have been beneath.
+
+"I'll see you dogs burned to a cinder in the sun first," he growled.
+
+"Keep them covered, Grim," Hilary said sharply. "I'll take care of
+this fellow personally."
+
+He walked straight across the room for the Cor, eyes blazing, index
+finger on trigger. The Cor, fear staring out of his lidless eyes,
+backed slowly away from the approaching death. There was a hushed
+silence.
+
+"I'll tell, I'll tell!" the Cor screamed, as the relentless weapon
+almost touched his paunchy stomach.
+
+"I thought you would," Hilary said grimly, not for an instant relaxing
+the pressure against the trigger. "If you value your worthless hide,
+you'd better talk, and talk fast. What switch reverses the machine, to
+bring on rain? If you are wise, you won't try to fool me."
+
+The wretch almost stumbled in his eagerness. "By the gray soil of
+Mercury I'll tell you the truth." His arm flung up, pointing. "That
+knob over there controls the--"
+
+Hilary never heard the rest. There was a crash at the other end of the
+laboratory. One of the Mercutians, tired of keeping his arms high
+extended, had attempted to rest his huge bulk against a laboratory
+table. It went over with a splintering crash of glassware.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Hilary whirled around to face the noise. As he did so, the Cor seized
+his opportunity. His right arm dropped to his side, jerked up his
+sun-tube. Hilary heard Grim's warning cry, tried to pivot back again.
+But Grim beat him to it. The dynol pistol exploded sharply; the
+flaming pellet caught the Cor square in his side. There was a dull
+explosion and the Cor was torn violently into bits. He dropped, a mass
+of shapeless blobs.
+
+But now hell had broken loose. The Mercutians were not cowards. At the
+moment of the diversion, every one of them had gone for his sun-tube.
+A flame streaked close to Hilary's head, shivered the opposite wall
+into molten fragments. He ducked behind a table and fired. A Mercutian
+threw up his hands, staggered and pitched forward heavily. Grim's
+dynol bullets whined in their passage, spattered the laboratory with
+flying blobs of flesh. They did terrible execution. Hilary's automatic
+spat its leaden hail.
+
+But the Mercutians were entrenched now behind tables, machinery,
+whatever cover they could find. The beams from half a dozen sun-tubes
+slithered across the room, burning flaming paths through the
+overheated air, bringing the very walls down about them. It could not
+last long. Already Hilary had a nasty burn across one shoulder; there
+was a streak of red across Grim's forehead as he hid behind the panel
+of the entrance, whipping his pistol around to fire, and ducking back
+again. There were too many of the enemy, and overwhelming
+reinforcements could be expected any moment. The Earthmen's position
+was desperate.
+
+Through it all the great weather machine hummed and crackled; the
+tubes were sheets of surging flame. Hilary cursed softly. If only the
+Cor had completed his sentence before he died. Hilary would have
+chanced a sudden rush forward to reverse it, to bring on a deluge of
+rain and clouds, even though it meant certain death. The machine
+seemed to gleam at him mockingly; the hum continued with tantalizing
+smoothness.
+
+"Look out," Grim's voice came to him sharply. He jerked his head back,
+just in time. A ray streaked past his ear like a thunderbolt. The heat
+from it scorched his face.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Mercutians were stealthily crawling nearer, pushing heavy, tables
+in front of them as shields. He was almost outflanked now. In another
+minute he would be exposed.
+
+Hilary thought rapidly. His position was untenable. He would have to
+run for it. A sudden dash to the door might possibly win through. But
+the machine! He set his teeth hard. If he could not change the
+weather, at least he could destroy the infernal thing, stop its
+grinding out perfect sunshine for the Mercutians.
+
+He lifted his weapon. Off to one side a Mercutian arm advanced
+cautiously, bringing up a sun-tube. He swung on it and fired. The
+sun-tube clattered to the floor and the arm jerked back, accompanied
+by a howl of anguish. Hilary smiled grimly, took careful aim at the
+metal sphere of the machine. The bullet leaped true for its mark. A
+little round hole showed--but nothing happened. The infernal machine
+hummed softly as ever.
+
+He cursed, fired again. Another round hole, and that was all. With
+increasing viciousness he turned his aim on the quartz tubes, pierced
+them through and through. Before his very eyes, the quartz seemed to
+run and melt around the holes, to seal them tight as if he had never
+shot. The blue flames leaped and surged mockingly. The Mercutians were
+jeering now; raucous calls went up.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Hilary felt a sinking despair. He had failed; would have to run for it
+now. Small chance to make it, too. Then he heard Grim's deep bass.
+"Hold it a moment," he said as if he had read his thoughts.
+
+Fascinated, Hilary saw the giant's pistol slowly thrust its long
+barrel around the edge of the crystal slide. A half dozen rays leaped
+viciously, for it. But a flaming pellet streaked out of its orifice
+before it was jerked back.
+
+Hilary could see its red path as it struck the sphere of the machine.
+The next instant there was a dull explosion and the whole machine
+disintegrated into a smother of flying fragments. The expanding dynol
+had done the trick where lead had failed. There would be no more
+weather control.
+
+But Hilary did not pause to see the finish. Even as the machine burst,
+he was running across the room, bending low. Fragments whizzed by him
+at a fearful clip; rays crisscrossed all about him.
+
+But somehow he was through. Grim's finger was on the slide button. It
+closed with a snap behind him, cutting off the pursuing howls of rage.
+
+Silently the two men darted up the ramp to the pent-apartment, dashed
+into the master bedroom. The Mercutian guard whom they had left
+securely bound, was gone. The Earthmen looked at each other, a great
+fear in their eyes. In one bound Hilary was at the door slide,
+thrusting it open. He tore out upon the open terrace, Grim right
+behind him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They looked wildly about. The terrace was empty. There was no sign of
+the _Vagabond_, or of Joan and Wat. High overhead hovered a great
+burnished diskoid. Long streamlined Mercutian fliers darted through
+the air, but nowhere was there a sign of the familiar sphere.
+
+Hilary gripped his companion's arm. "They've been captured, Grim," he
+choked.
+
+"Nonsense," the giant said gruffly, to hide his own misgivings. "They
+just took alarm at something and winged off."
+
+"But where is the guard then?"
+
+Grim shook his head. He could not answer that. Despair overwhelmed
+Hilary. After all he had gone through, to have Joan snatched away from
+him at the moment of success. It was terrible. Wat too, that
+freckled-faced bantam.
+
+"I should never have left them alone," he accused himself
+remorsefully.
+
+"Here," said Grim sharply, "none of that. You did exactly the proper
+thing. We'll find them yet."
+
+It was a confidence that he did not feel. There was the noise of
+padding feet up the ramp. The Mercutians were coming, in force.
+
+Grim gripped Hilary by the shoulder, shook him vigorously. "They're
+coming. We're trapped."
+
+Grendon snapped out of the lethargy into which he had sunk, face drawn
+and gray.
+
+"No. There is a way. Follow me."
+
+The first of the Mercutians pounded heavily into the room when Hilary
+had thrust Grim into the secret lift. He whirled and fired. The
+Mercutian coughed and fell forward. Other gray warty faces, furious,
+thrust from behind their dying comrade. But Hilary was in the lift,
+pressing the button for full speed down. A darting ray showered them
+with rounded smoking bits of vita-crystal, but they were dropping
+headlong through the building.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Ten minutes later they emerged cautiously from the entrance to the
+Pullman Building. It was deserted, deathly still. The two Earthmen
+stopped short, horror-struck at what they saw.
+
+The streets were shambles. Hundreds of bodies lay sprawled in tumbling
+twisted heaps. Earthmen all, with here and there the grotesque huge
+bulk of a Mercutian who had failed to hear the warning signal. The
+bodies were scorched, blackened. Raw agony appeared on contorted
+desperate faces. It was not good to look upon.
+
+"Wh--what has happened?" Grim gasped, his breath coming heavily.
+
+"Just a little pleasantry of the Mercutians," Hilary said bitterly. He
+looked upward. High overhead hovered a gigantic shape, motionless.
+
+Its great disk, burnished and dazzling in the cloudless sky, seemed to
+cast a sinister shadow over the city it had destroyed a second time.
+
+"There's the toy that did it," said Hilary. "I felt the heat while I
+was a captive up in the Robbins Building. You must have flown over
+after, and missed it."
+
+Grim shook a great brawny fist aloft. His deceptively mild eyes were
+hard flames now. His face was set in great strong ridges. Hilary had
+never seen him this way before.
+
+"I'll rip every Mercutian to pieces with my bare hands--shred him into
+little bits." He meant it too. Hilary shuddered.
+
+Far off down the wide thoroughfare came the glint of weapons, the
+sight of massed ranks. A Mercutian patrol was shambling along,
+heavy-gaited.
+
+"Come on, Grim, let's get out of here," said Hilary.
+
+They flattened like shadows against the wall, slunk stealthily through
+radiating streets. As much as possible they kept their eyes away from
+the sickening sights, the poor burned bodies of their fellow men.
+Steadily they headed for the branch local conveyors as being less
+likely to be under surveillance.
+
+The Ramapos was their destination. Hilary went dully, listlessly. Joan
+was gone again; this time he could not possibly know where. Every step
+he took though, seemed to lead him farther away from her. His glazed
+eye searched the shining skies as he stumbled along. Not a sign
+anywhere of the _Vagabond_. Only the hateful swift-moving Mercutian
+fliers.
+
+It was only Grim's insistence that kept him going. The secret gorge
+was the headquarters of the revolt, he argued. If the fools he had
+left in charge hadn't thrown their men recklessly on New York against
+his instructions to join that last foolhardy heroic attack, there was
+still a chance of salvaging the revolution.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+_Back to the Ramapos_
+
+
+It was dark when they reached the first swellings of the Ramapo Range.
+It was dangerous to try and make their way through tangled brush and
+mountain trails. All night they camped on the bare ground, sleeping
+fitfully, cramped cold, shivering. They dared not light a fire; it
+would draw instant unwelcome attention.
+
+When dawn came, they were on the move, glad to stretch their sodden
+limbs. Unerringly Grim homed for the invisible cleft. Nothing stirred
+in the forests, even the birds seemed gone. The fog had lifted, the
+sun blazed forth in unclouded majesty. The damp on them dried quickly.
+
+But Grim shook his fist at the unwitting orb.
+
+"Damn that weather machine," he growled. "Breaking it seems to have
+made matters worse. Even the regular midnight shower has stopped. I'd
+give ten years of my life for the sight of a cloud."
+
+"It will never rain again," Hilary said wearily. "It has forgotten
+how."
+
+The bright sunny sky seemed a brazen hell to the footsore Earthmen. It
+mocked and jeered at them with sparkling waves of warmth.
+
+Before them was an unbroken mass of underbrush. The next instant they
+were on the brink of the chasm.
+
+"They haven't found us yet," said Morgan, surveying the looped end of
+the rope ladder. They climbed swiftly down the swaying rungs. The rock
+slanted with them, turned sharply and fell sheer. Below there was a
+confused murmur, the sound of movement.
+
+A voice came floating up to them, sharp, commanding.
+
+"Stop where you are, you two. You're covered."
+
+"It's Morgan," Grim bellowed, not pausing an instant in his descent.
+
+The next instant he dropped lightly to the floor of the gorge. A
+moment later Hilary stepped beside him.
+
+Men were crowding about Grim, clean-cut, determined-looking Earthmen.
+Nothing like the men he had encountered on his first trip on the
+express conveyor. The bottom of the gorge had all the appearance of a
+wartime camp.
+
+There were at least a hundred men encamped in the narrow cleft,
+crowded and crowding. A tall man thrust himself forward, spare,
+angular.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Welcome, Captain Morgan," he cried. "We had given up all hopes of
+seeing you again."
+
+"Hello, Waters," said Grim. "Where's Lieutenant Pemberton?"
+
+The other looked shamefaced.
+
+"He's, gone," he muttered. "Took two hundred men with him."
+
+Morgan's face was awful. "Disobeyed orders, did he? Where did he go?"
+
+"To join in the attack on Great New York. Reports came in that the
+countryside was up in arms, moving to attack the Mercutians. I
+couldn't hold him. Said you were crazy, never coming back. He went,
+and two hundred of the boys went with him."
+
+Grim said: "Know what happened?"
+
+Waters shook his head. "Our radio communication went dead yesterday
+afternoon."
+
+"He's dead," said Grim softly. "The others too."
+
+A groan went up as he described swiftly the holocaust of the day
+before. "That was why I warned you all to wait. We can't fight them
+yet. But I'm forgetting...." He turned to Hilary, who had remained
+quietly aside. "This is Hilary Grendon, your Chief. He's the man who
+is responsible for the revolt. I told you about him. We all take
+orders from him hereafter. If anyone can beat the Mercutians, here's
+your man."
+
+A babel of sound burst about him like a bomb. Men patted him on the
+back, shook his hand, crowded him until he was almost smothered. It
+was a rousing reception. The kind Hilary had dreamed of on his return
+from his tremendous flight through space--and had not received.
+
+For his act of revolt, unwitting as it was, had fired the imaginations
+of the Earth people, who in their degradation and despair had come to
+believe the Mercutian overlords invulnerable. It had been the little
+spark that touched off a far-reaching train of events. In the few days
+that had elapsed Hilary had become a legendary figure.
+
+The sparkle came back to his eyes, his brain cleared of the fog of
+hopelessness as he took command. Joan was lost--yes--but there was the
+Earth to be saved.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+His orders crackled. The little gorge became a hive of activity. With
+Grim and Waters as efficient assistants he soon whipped the tiny
+company into ordered discipline. Absurdly few to fight the Mercutians,
+but Hilary counseled patience. They were a nucleus merely, he told
+them. When the time arrived to fight in the open, the peoples of the
+Earth would swell their ranks.
+
+To provide against the day, he sent scouts out to filter through the
+surrounding villages and towns; unarmed, to all seeming meekest of the
+Earthlings. They stirred the embers of revolt with muted whisperings;
+they found trustworthy leaders in each community to organize secretly
+all able-bodied men; they returned with tidings of the outside world,
+with food and other necessities.
+
+Sometimes they did not return. Then others went out to take their
+places. It was the fortune of war. Day and night a sentinel was posted
+in a dugout directly under the overhanging lip of the gorge. It was
+his duty to warn of impending attack; above all, to rake the sky
+ceaselessly with a crudely-contrived periscope for signs of gathering
+clouds, be they no bigger than a handsbreadth.
+
+But the heavens were a brass blaze by day and a glittering mask of
+stars by night. Weather machine or none, in truth it seemed that it
+had forgotten to rain.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Hilary was hard put to it to restrain the impatience of his men.
+Reports drifted in from the scouts. The premature revolt had been
+crushed in blood and agony. New York was deserted except for the
+Mercutians. The country round had been ruthlessly rayed; not only had
+the armed bands of Earthmen been ferreted out and destroyed, but
+peaceful communities had been wantonly burned into the ground.
+
+Strong reinforcements had been rushed to the Great New York territory
+from more peaceful sectors of the world. There were three of the
+terrible diskoids hovering within a radius of one hundred miles, ready
+to loose their hideous destruction at the slightest sign of
+disaffection.
+
+But this time the spirit of the Earthmen was not broken. Their gait
+was springier, their glance more forthright than heretofore. For every
+one knew that Hilary Grendon, the prime mover, the defier of the
+Mercutians, had escaped. The invaders sought him ceaselessly, offering
+huge rewards for knowledge of his whereabouts. But there were no
+traitors. Even these few who knew would suffer unimaginable tortures
+rather than reveal him to the enemy.
+
+"Patience," Hilary counseled his little band. "I know it is hard; I
+have my own scores to even. But we could only bring disaster upon
+ourselves and the cause of Earth's freedom by premature action. What
+have we? A handful of men, poorly armed. A few pistols; only, three of
+which can use the dynol pellets; a little ammunition. The rest of you
+have knives, axes, pitchforks. Poor enough weapons against the
+terrible rays of the Mercutians. We must wait."
+
+Someone grumbled. "For what? Until the Mercutians finally trace our
+hideout and ray us out of existence?"
+
+"We must take that chance," Hilary told him quietly. "Let it but rain,
+and we move at once."
+
+"It never will," someone averred with profound conviction.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It began to seem so as the days passed, and the sun blazed pitilessly
+as ever. The brief night showers had ceased completely. That seemed
+the only effect of the weather machine's destruction. Some of the
+weaker spirits among the men were for disbanding. They were afraid of
+eventual discovery; anxious about their families, left to the tender
+mercies of the outlanders. Hilary argued, dissuaded, but to no effect.
+They were determined to go. If by the end of the week there was no
+action, they said, they would leave. It was Wednesday then.
+
+Thursday and Friday passed. No change. On Saturday a scout brought
+breathless tidings. One of the great diskoids had crashed to the
+ground from its station fifty miles up in a smother of flame and
+flying fragments. No one knew what had happened; the Mercutians of
+course threw a strict censorship about the affair.
+
+But rumors flew on winged whisperings. Some war vessel from space had
+attacked the Mercutian, brought it down. More diskoids were rushed to
+New York; there were five now menacing the territory.
+
+Grim looked steadily at Hilary when the news was brought to them. A
+momentary wild hope flared in his friend's eye that died out quickly.
+
+"I know what you're going to say," said Hilary. "You think it is Wat
+Tyler and Joan, somehow escaped in the _Vagabond_."
+
+The giant nodded slowly. "Why not?" he challenged.
+
+"It's impossible," muttered the other. "Where could they have been all
+this time? Surely they would have returned to this place. And you
+forget that Mercutian guard who was freed. No, my friend, they have
+been killed, the _Vagabond_ seized, and that was the end to that."
+
+Morgan shook his head skeptically.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Saturday was cloudless. Sunday morning the malcontents were to leave,
+to dribble back quietly to their homes. They were sullen, defiant in
+the face of the openly expressed scorn of the loyal men, but
+determined.
+
+"No use getting ourselves killed for nothing," they muttered.
+
+Double sentries were posted that night. A gloom hung over the camp.
+Hilary went to sleep heavy-hearted. This seemed the end of all his
+visions. Joan dead, Wat too; no hope of freeing the Earth from its
+slavery. If only he had the _Vagabond_, he'd take off again for the
+uncharted reaches of spaces, find some little habitable asteroid, live
+out the rest of his meaningless life there. With these gloomy thoughts
+he fell at last into fitful slumber.
+
+He was awakened, hours later by a sudden uproar. The camp was in
+confusion. Sleepy voices tossed back and forth in inextricable babble.
+Hilary was on his feet in an instant, instinctively slipping his
+automatic into his blouse. Grim looked huge at his side, unperturbed.
+
+"What's happened?" Hilary shouted to make himself heard.
+
+"Don't know," grunted the other, "but we'll soon find out."
+
+He pushed massively through the milling crowd of sleep-frightened men
+like a ship shouldering the waves, Hilary in his wake. One of the
+sentinels appeared suddenly before them.
+
+"You," spat Hilary, "why aren't you at your post?"
+
+The man saluted automatically and gasped.
+
+"The Mercutians have come."
+
+"What do you mean?" Hilary demanded, as a groan went up.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"One of the weak-kneed men, sir," the sentry ejaculated, "wouldn't
+wait until morning to make his get-away. We found him climbing out.
+Said it would be dangerous in broad daylight. He was in a terrible
+funk. We had no orders to stop anyone who wanted to leave, so we just
+jeered him, and let him go. My comrade leaned out to watch.
+
+"As he hit the ground, he was bathed suddenly in light. The next
+instant the blackness of the night was split by a sizzling flame. It
+crisped the poor fellow to a cinder, and sheared the head of my
+comrade clean off. I caught the body, pulled it back into the dugout,
+but it was too late.
+
+"I knew what had happened, sir. Some damned Mercutian flying patrol
+had spotted us with their search beam. I didn't wait for more, but
+scrambled out of the dugout as fast as I could. Up above I saw a
+one-man flier slanting down for me. It was a-sparkle, ready for
+another ray. I came down the ladder in a hurry, I tell you."
+
+The man was panting, white-faced. Someone cried: "It's all over;
+they'll smother us in now."
+
+Hilary swung around. It would take very little to start a panic.
+
+"Stop that," he said sharply. "Now is no time to play the coward." He
+turned again to the sentinel.
+
+"A one-man flier, you said?" he reflected aloud.
+
+"Yes, sir," the other answered, "and I'll bet he's calling for help
+right now."
+
+"That's just what I intend putting a stop to," said Hilary grimly. He
+shifted his gun to an easier drawing position, swung himself aloft on
+the ladder. "Take over, Grim, until I come back," he shouted down.
+"If I don't, send others up to get that Mercutian."
+
+"Come down," Grim yelled after him, alarmed. "I'll go up; you're the
+leader here."
+
+"That's why it's my job. So long."
+
+The men stared up after the tiny ascending figure, lumps in their
+throats. They would die gladly for Hilary Grendon now; he was proving
+himself. Grim fumed and waited. Hilary had disappeared above the
+angled bend.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+_Driven from Cover_
+
+
+Far overhead, Hilary climbed swiftly. He realised the seriousness of
+their situation. Let that Mercutian flash his message to Headquarters
+and there would be a swarm of fliers upon them within an hour's time.
+They would be caught like rats in a trap, without a chance for their
+lives.
+
+He gritted his teeth and swung himself up the faster. He turned the
+bend. There was the dark sky above, faintly spangled with stars. The
+flier was not in sight. Hilary stifled an imprecation. If he had taken
+off, they were doomed.
+
+He moved more cautiously now, stepping gingerly from rung to rung up
+the swaying ladder. The cleft widened; he was near the top. He paused.
+There was not the slightest sound. But Hilary was taking no chances.
+
+With infinite slowness he raised his head over the matted underbrush
+that masked the entrance. For the moment he could see nothing in the
+pitchy blackness. Then a dim shape loomed to one side. From within it
+there came a tiny hum, intermittent, almost inaudible.
+
+Hilary knew what that was: a transmitter. Even then the fatal message
+was winging through the ether. He did not hesitate. He lofted to the
+ground with one quick heave, steadied on his swaying feet as the
+automatic flashed into his hand.
+
+"Throw up your hands, Mercutian," he shouted at the dimly-perceived
+bulk. "I have you covered." He tensed, straining his ears for any
+movement that might locate the hidden foe.
+
+The tiny humming ceased abruptly. There was painful silence.
+
+"Don't try--" Hilary commenced. He stopped, swerved his body suddenly
+to one side. A red glow had warned him. The hurtling ray scorched past
+him with a crackling blaze. Hilary was off balance, teetered, and went
+down with a crash into the thorny underbrush, his automatic exploding
+into sharp flame.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A hoarse guttural laugh came from the flier. "Got you that time, Earth
+dog," the invisible Mercutian taunted. There was silence. Another belt
+crashed from the ship, heaved the ground under its impact. Another and
+another. Still no break in the silence, no cry.
+
+The Mercutian muttered to himself: "The dog is dead, all right." He
+peered out cautiously. The underbrush was black, sullenly quiet. Great
+swaths showed where the rays had swept the Earth. With a hoarse
+chuckle the grotesque giant climbed over the side of his ship. A
+search beam swung in his hand. He was in deep shadow. He swung the
+beam in a short arc. There was nothing, only matted vegetation. There
+was one thick thorny bush he noted, however, extending its bulk behind
+the bow of the ship. He stepped out a bit, away from the flier's
+shadow, and swung his beam directly at it. The invisible ray pierced
+through the interlacing twigs with ease. It picked out a prone figure,
+lying with arm extended.
+
+The Mercutian chuckled again, but the chuckle changed almost
+immediately to a throaty cry of alarm. With a swiftness that went
+incongruously with his awkward bulk, his free arm dropped for his hand
+ray. There was a sharp burst of flame, a staccato bark. The Mercutian
+staggered, swayed with sullen pain-widened eyes, and pitched headlong
+forward.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The prone figure in the bush leaped up, ran for him. The Mercutian was
+dead, drilled through the heart. Hilary sheathed his weapon grimly.
+His task was done. One thing, though. How much of the message had been
+transmitted? He must know. He vaulted over the side of the flier,
+fumbled around until he found the receiving apparatus. Then he waited,
+dreading to hear the silence broken. A minute passed, two minutes, and
+Hilary breathed a sigh of relief. The message had not gotten through.
+
+Then it came--a tiny sparking, an intermittent hum. Hilary's heart
+sank with hammering blows. He tried to read the signals, but they were
+in code, or in the Mercutian tongue, which was just as bad. It was not
+necessary, though. Headquarters _had_ heard; they _knew_.
+
+Hilary did not waste an instant in vain regrets. Within an hour the
+gorge would be a vicious trap; he must get his men out at once. What
+then he did not know, nor bother. There was the more immediate
+problem.
+
+He went down the swinging ladder hand over hand, not pausing for the
+rungs. Every instant was precious now. His hands scorched, but he did
+not feel the pain.
+
+His flying body collided thudding with a heavy bulk beneath. There was
+a grunt, the rope jerked from his hands, and two bodies fell cursing,
+entangled, to the ground. Luckily it was not far distant. He sprang
+to his feet, found Grim heaving his bulk up more slowly.
+
+"I was coming up after you," the giant growled. "You were gone too
+long. That's the thanks I get."
+
+Hilary had no time for idle talk.
+
+"Attention, men," he snapped. "We leave at once. You have five minutes
+to get your arms, ammunition clips and rations, light marching order."
+
+Without a word they scattered alertly to their tasks. It was the
+discipline of veterans.
+
+"You didn't get the Mercutian?" Grim was troubled.
+
+"I got him all right," answered his leader laconically, "but too late.
+His message had gone through."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Five minutes later to the dot, the camp was lined up, accoutered
+complete. They were silent, tense, but smartly erect. Hilary's flash
+glowed over them in the dark. Then he nodded approvingly.
+
+"Fine work, men. Up that ladder, one at a time," he said. "Each man
+counts twenty slowly, one--two--three before he follows. Keep your
+distance, and move fast."
+
+The first man sprang to the ladder, went up swiftly. Twenty seconds
+later, the next man's foot was on the bottom rung. Up and up they
+went, one after the other, each man counting off and climbing. Hilary
+watched them anxiously.
+
+"Hope we make it," he muttered to Grim. "It'll take all of forty
+minutes to evacuate, and the Mercutians may be on us by then."
+
+It was almost forty minutes to the dot when Hilary's head emerged from
+the cleft. He was the last man out. The men were lined up on a level
+bit, nervous, apprehensive. In spite of the discipline, heads
+automatically jerked upward, raked the sky for sign of the enemy.
+
+Where to now?--thought Hilary. There were no more hiding places as
+perfect as the one they had just left. They were forced into the open,
+easy prey for the first lynx-eyed Mercutian. Sooner or later, they
+would be discovered, and then.... A last hopeless glance at the
+mocking stars. Never had man yearned more for rain, oceans and oceans
+of it.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Hilary roused himself. Whatever of despair he felt did not appear in
+his staccato orders.
+
+"We march at once, men," he said. "Scatter formation, five paces
+between. At the signal, take nearest cover, and prepare for action.
+Forward--"
+
+"Too late." Grim's voice was flat, controlled.
+
+Hilary looked around sharply. "What do you mean?"
+
+"Look." Morgan's hand swept aloft. Through the darkling night, faintly
+visible in the feeble starlight--there was no moon--were driving
+shapes, a full score of them converging upon the little band.
+
+One look was sufficient. Mercutian fliers hurrying in response to
+their fellow's signal. There was no time, no chance to escape.
+
+"Very well, men." Hilary commanded, coldly calm. "Take cover. Do not
+fire until I give the order."
+
+There was instant scattering. The men dived for whatever poor bit of
+protection they could find: jutting rocks, tree trunks, thin thorny
+bushes even.
+
+Grim and Hilary crouched together behind a great boulder.
+
+"How many pistols are there in the crowd?" Hilary asked quietly.
+
+"Not many. Outside of your automatic and my dynol pistol, there are
+two other dynols and not more than a dozen automatics. If only we had
+the submachine gun with us, but Wat took it along, and he's gone."
+
+"Not much chance, I'm afraid," said Hilary; "but we'll fight it out.
+Here they come."
+
+The two men crouched lower. All about them was silence; not even a
+leaf stirred in the heavy breathlessness.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The driving fliers were easily visible now. Ominous hurtling
+projectiles, coming to crush out the last vestige of revolt on the
+conquered planet. On they came, purposefully, directly, knowing their
+way; a full score, converging in a scream of wind against their bows
+as they dropped straight for the hidden gorge.
+
+It seemed to the hidden watchers as though they would crash to Earth
+with the speed of their swoop. But at one hundred feet aloft the
+fliers braked their headlong flight, hovered motionlessly in echelon
+formation.
+
+A moment's breathless pause--to the hiding men it seemed eternity--and
+all the uneven terrain, rocks, trees, bushes, the soil itself, burst
+into glowing white crystal clearness. The Mercutians had turned on
+their search beams.
+
+Hilary gazed clear through the rock behind which he crouched as though
+it were a transparency. All around him he saw the prone bodies of his
+men, naked to the view of all and sundry.
+
+A hoarse derisive chuckle rasped from above. Hilary sprang to his
+feet; further attempt at concealment was useless. As he did so, the
+air seemed to split in two, there was a blinding rending crash. Not
+ten feet from where he stood, the ground tossed in torture. A man
+screamed--terribly. The first blow had been struck.
+
+Hilary burned with a cold consuming anger. "Up, men, and fire. Aim
+forward about three feet back of the prow." That was where the pilot
+would be.
+
+A scattered burst of cheers answered him. On all sides, like crystal
+ghosts, the Earthmen rose to their feet. They were fighting men.
+
+Hilary took careful aim at a flier almost directly overhead and fired.
+He could have sworn he hit it, but nothing happened. Grim's dynol
+pistol flamed redly nearby. The tracer pellet scorched upward,
+impacted, against the hull of a flier. There was a faint detonation,
+and the next instant the air was full of flying fragments.
+
+"Got that one," he said softly.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Hilary was conscious of a faint envy. His automatic seemed like a
+harmless popgun against that deadly weapon. But he drew another bead
+and fired again. With bated breath he awaited the result. Nothing.
+Hilary groaned, made as if to throw the useless gun away, when the
+flier he had aimed at wabbled, tried to right itself, and crashed in a
+swift erratic loop.
+
+By now the pitifully few weapons of the Earthmen were popping. Two
+more of the enemy fliers hurtled to destruction. But as at a given
+signal, the air above them seemed suddenly to flame destruction. With
+the noise of a thousand thunderbolts the massed rays struck.
+
+The groaning Earth tossed and heaved in billowing waves to escape its
+torture. The trees were blazing pyres. It seemed impossible for
+anything that lives within that area to escape instant destruction.
+
+Hilary felt a wave of blinding heat envelop him, and he was thrown
+flat to the quaking ground. Frightful cries, screams of agony, came to
+his dulled ears as from a great distance. He heaved himself up
+wearily, scorched, smoldering, but otherwise unhurt.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Grim," he whispered through thick cracked lips. "Grim, where are
+you?"
+
+"Here." Strange how tranquil he sounded. A scarecrow of a figure arose
+almost at his right from a smoldering bush, a giant clothed in smoking
+rags. In the strange illumination of the search beams he seemed the
+wraith of a scarecrow.
+
+"Thank God you're alive," Hilary croaked. "The others...?"
+
+Figures were staggering up from the holocaust about them.
+
+Grim's practised eyes counted. "About fifty left," he said, "just one
+half."
+
+Hilary's voice rose suddenly, strongly. "Keep on firing, men." Once
+again his pistol barked defiance.
+
+A faint, ragged cheer answered him. A few guns flamed; there were only
+a handful left.
+
+"God!" someone cried.
+
+The massed ships above were gleaming faintly. Little shimmering
+sparkles ran over the hulls. They were going to ray again. Hilary went
+berserk, screamed strange oaths, fired again and again. Grim fired,
+more slowly. Two of the enemy ships left the formation, plunged
+headlong. But the shimmering grew brighter. In seconds the terrible
+bolts would be loosed. It was the end. The Earthmen knew it. They
+could not survive a second raying.
+
+Grim shouted. Never before had Hilary heard him raise his voice to
+that pitch. His great arm was upflung. "Look!" he screamed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+_The Vagabond_
+
+
+High up, a dark blob against the feeble starlight, something was
+dropping; dropping with the speed of a plummet, straight for the
+massed Mercutian fliers. From outer space it seemed to come, a
+plunging ripping meteor.
+
+A search beam must have swung hurriedly aloft, for it flamed into
+startling being; a spheroid, compact, purposeful, dropping with
+breathtaking velocity.
+
+Something seemed to explode in Hilary's brain. A great cry wrenched
+out of his torn throat.
+
+"The _Vagabond_."
+
+Unbelievable, impossible. Yet he could not be mistaken. The _Vagabond_
+was coming home again!
+
+By this time the Mercutians had seen it too. It meant suicide, that
+rushing projectile from outer space, but it would take along with it
+in the crash of its flight a goodly number of the Mercutian fliers.
+The Mercutians were no cowards, but death stared them openly in the
+face.
+
+Instantly, all was in confusion. Forgotten the rebellious Earthmen
+below, forgotten everything but escape from the down-rushing
+thunderbolt.
+
+Hilary, staring upward, could visualize the fliers working desperately
+at their controls. The clustered ships vibrated like a school of
+frightened fish poised for instant flight. Then they were in motion;
+scattering, wabbling in the terror of their retreat.
+
+The _Vagabond_ hurtled down among them like a hawk among pigeons. Its
+surface glowed with the speed of its flight. To Hilary's fascinated
+gaze it seemed as if there would be a terrific smash. But the
+_Vagabond_ came to a screaming, braking halt directly in the center of
+the milling, scattering Mercutians.
+
+Almost simultaneously the air resounded with staccato bursts.
+_Ratatat-tat-a-tat._
+
+"Good little Wat," Grim danced insanely. "He's cutting loose the
+submachine gun."
+
+Hilary woke from his amazement with a start.
+
+"Shoot, and shoot to kill," he shouted above the turmoil. "Don't let a
+single one get away."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Automatics spat their leaden hail, dynol pellets flamed redly, and
+over all resounded the rapid drum fire of the machine gun, pouring
+steel-jacketed death into the confused ranks of the Mercutians.
+
+The monster invaders had lost their heads. Even then, they could have
+destroyed the Earthmen with their deadly spreading rays. But the
+strange apparition from above had demoralized them. No one thought of
+fighting: flight, safety, were the only thoughts in their minds.
+
+Flier after flier went tailspinning to horrible death while his
+comrades fled in all directions.
+
+It was soon over. The greater number of the Mercutians were twisted
+smoldering wrecks. The few who escaped were rapidly diminishing dots
+in the cold starlight.
+
+Its work finished, the rescuing space flier settled softly to the
+ground, in the midst of the embattled cheering Earthmen, temporarily
+gone insane.
+
+The air-lock port yawned, and a slim figure darted out, straight into
+Hilary's outstretched arms.
+
+"Joan!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Behind her danced a small red-haired individual, his homely features
+grinning with delight. Under his arm swung heavily a submachine gun.
+He disappeared almost immediately into the vast bearlike grip of his
+gigantic friend. His shrill voice went on unceasingly, but strangely
+muffled, as Grim hugged him. Finally he extricated himself, ruffled,
+breathless, but still talking.
+
+"What did I tell you, you big ox?" he shrilled. "We'll chase them off
+the Earth, sweep 'em out into space."
+
+"Why, you little gamecock," the giant observed affectionately, "I'm
+beginning to believe you can do it."
+
+"We thought you had gone for good," said Hilary, holding Joan tightly
+to him as if he feared to lose her again. "What happened to you on the
+Robbins Building?"
+
+"Can't get rid of us that easily, can he, Joan?" The little man
+smirked knowingly at the girl. "It was all very simple," he went on.
+"No sooner had you two left us than we heard the thud of a flier
+landing on the other end of the roof. The pilot looked out at us
+startled. We recognized each other simultaneously. It was our old
+friend--Urga."
+
+Hilary clenched his fist. He had a good many scores to settle with the
+Cor.
+
+Wat saw his action. "I did my best," he stated apologetically. "I ran
+for the machine gun. But by that time Urga had shot aloft again.
+Didn't seem as though he wanted to wait. I heard his whistle shrilling
+in the air. Fliers came thick as flies."
+
+He spread his hands in a quaint gesture. "What could I do, Hilary?"
+his voice was appealing. "Any minute I expected to have a ray on us. I
+couldn't wait for you two, the _Vagabond_ would have been a little
+pile of ashes. Besides, there was Joan. She kicked and struggled: she
+wanted to stay for you, but I shoved her in the ship, locked the port,
+and went scooting up like a rocket. You should have seen the
+Mercutians scatter."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+For the first time in his life words seemed to fail him.
+"You--are--not--angry?" he fumbled, looking for all the world like a
+bedraggled dog who knows he has been in mischief.
+
+"Angry?" Hilary fairly whooped. "What for? For saving the ship, Joan,
+all of us? Why, you little bit of pure gameness, you did the only
+sensible thing."
+
+Wat grinned from ear to ear.
+
+"But why," Grim interrupted, "didn't you have sense enough to come
+back here, instead of scaring everybody to death?"
+
+Wat turned on him indignantly. "Sure," he squeaked, "and bring all the
+Mercutians along with me? No sir, I shot straight up into the
+stratosphere, and headed for the Canadian woods. Felt we'd be safe
+there."
+
+Hilary looked at him. "I've heard," he said overcasually, "that an
+accident happened to one of the Mercutian diskoids. Know anything
+about it?"
+
+The redhead grinned. "I was the accident. I wasn't staying cooped up
+in the wilderness. Joan and I decided we'd do some scouting before we
+came back; see what was happening over the rest of the world. We were
+returning from one of those little expeditions, cruising about fifty
+miles up, when we almost bumped into the diskoid. We saw them first;
+we had just come out of the shadow of the Earth; they were in the sun.
+I let them have it before they had a chance to turn on their rays. The
+bullets punctured them clean; must have let out their air. I didn't
+wait to see; ducked back into the shadow again."
+
+"How did you get here in the nick of time?" asked Hilary suddenly. "A
+few minutes later and there would have been no rescue."
+
+Wat looked, at him in some surprise.
+
+"Why, we got your signal, of course."
+
+"Signal?" Hilary echoed. "I never--" Then he paused. Morgan was
+grinning sheepishly, "Here, what do you know about this?" he queried
+sharply.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The giant's grin widened. "Just a little," he admitted. "I'd been
+playing around with my transmitter. Used some of the spare equipment
+we had cached for the _Vagabond_, and stepped up the sending radius to
+a thousand miles or so."
+
+"We received your call in the woods north of Lake Ontario," Joan
+interrupted.
+
+Grim nodded, gratified. "I thought it might work," he rumbled. "You
+see," he explained to Hilary, "ever since I heard about that diskoid,
+I _knew_ that the _Vagabond_ was responsible. But you refused to
+believe it. So I worked in secret, rigging up the apparatus. Didn't
+want to stir up false hopes. I finished it yesterday. When we were
+discovered, I started sending."
+
+"It took us just ten minutes over the hour to get here from a standing
+start," Wat boasted. "We almost burned up the old machine smashing
+through the air, didn't we Joan?"
+
+She nodded happily from her cozy position in the crook of Hilary's
+arm.
+
+Hilary looked long and steadily at his friends.
+
+"Well--" he finally began, when someone cried out sharply.
+
+A dark shape shot over the rim of the mountainside, swooped down at
+them in one fierce lunge. Involuntarily the Earthmen threw themselves
+flat on the ground to avoid the tremendous rush of its flight. At one
+hundred feet it banked sharply, a circle of light gleamed, and a long
+blazing streamer thrust its relentless finger at the prostrate figures
+of the Earthmen.
+
+There was a blinding flash, a roar. Hilary was on his feet, bullets
+spitting rapidly. But already the lone Mercutian flier had completed
+his bank, and was zooming out of range. Hilary watched the flier grow
+fainter and fainter in the starlit distance. Almost he could hear the
+far-off hoarse chuckle of its pilot.
+
+Then he turned to survey the damage. The Earthmen were up, growling
+low heartfelt curses. That one blast had been catastrophic.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There on the ground lay the smoking ruins of the _Vagabond_, beloved
+companion of his space wanderings. For a moment Hilary gave way to a
+deep-seated despair. This was the end of all his plannings. He had
+built high hopes on the _Vagabond_ in his carefully laid schemes for
+overcoming the Mercutians. He stood as one stunned.
+
+Someone cried: "A curse is upon us; let us scatter before it is too
+late!"
+
+It acted on Hilary like a cold shower, that cry of despair.
+
+"No," his voice resounded strong and vibrant. "We did not need the
+_Vagabond_. It never was part of my plans." A lie, of course, but most
+necessary. "That Mercutian saved me the trouble of finding a hiding
+place for it. Come, let us march. At dawn it rains, I _know_ it will."
+
+"You've said that every day since the weather machine was smashed," a
+voice cried out from the rear.
+
+Hilary paused, thrown off his balance momentarily. Yet a second's
+hesitation would be fatal. It was Joan who answered for him. She
+sprang forward, lithe and exalted, her dark eyes flashing even in the
+dark.
+
+"I'll tell you how he knows. I myself had almost forgotten. Tomorrow
+is exactly two weeks since the weather machine was destroyed. My
+father, Martin Robbins, built it. He told me then that its effects
+were so powerful that they lasted for two weeks, even with the machine
+turned off. Only positive action could bring an immediate reversal, of
+weather conditions. _That's_ how he knows."
+
+Joan had turned the tide. The waverers turned as one man to Hilary.
+"Lead on! We follow!"
+
+"Very well," he stated quietly. "We can't remain here. The Mercutians
+will be back soon in overwhelming force, burning for revenge. We
+march."
+
+To Joan, in barely audible tones: "Is that true, what you said?"
+
+"I--I think so. I remember Dad mentioned a time limit. I think it was
+two weeks."
+
+"If it isn't, we're facing a damned unpleasant prospect to-morrow," he
+said grimly.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+_The Last Battle_
+
+
+Dawn found the little band still struggling over the thick-forested
+mountains in a desperate attempt to avoid detection. They were
+footsore, weary, their clothes shredded by innumerable sharp thorns,
+their eyes bloodshot from lack of sleep. Overhead, the paling sky was
+already dotted with the fliers of the Mercutians; faint sounds came to
+them of the clumsy thrashing of enemy patrols as they beat the woods
+for the fugitives. The Mercutians were putting forth all their
+resources to seek out and destroy these irritant foci of revolt.
+
+At length Hilary called a halt. They were in a little valley, not far
+from Bear Mountain. It offered some protection from the searchers. The
+enclosing hills would mask them, from all but search beams directly
+overhead.
+
+"It is no use going any farther," he said wearily. "We all need sleep
+and rest. Sooner or later they'll find us, no matter where we go, and
+then--" He shrugged his shoulders.
+
+The weary, panting men threw themselves down upon the ground, too
+tired even to eat. Immediately they were in a drugged sleep. Joan was
+sleeping too, her face pale drawn, but like a little child's in her
+slumber. Hilary watched her with a sharp pang in his heart. What would
+the next few hours bring to her, to all of them?
+
+Nor did Grim and Wat sleep either. The three of them squatted on their
+heels, silent, as the cold dawn wind swept with a great sigh through
+the valley.
+
+The stars were paling now, the purple sky was enswathing itself in
+pearly grays. Something glowed pinkly overhead; and was extinguished
+almost immediately by the prevailing gray.
+
+Hilary started violently. "Did you see that?"
+
+"See what?" Grim was drunk for lack of sleep.
+
+Hilary was on his feet, peering upward. "I thought I saw--there, there
+it is again."
+
+The other two were on their feet also, weariness forgotten, heads
+thrown back.
+
+High overhead, in the overturned cup of the sky, an irregular pink
+wisp formed before their wondering eyes, and vanished again. But more
+slowly, than the first time.
+
+"Well?" asked Wat, puzzled.
+
+"A cloud." Hilary's voice was a prayer.
+
+"Hell," said Wat disgustedly. "If that's a cloud I'm a Mercutian.
+There wouldn't be enough water there to moisten a canary seed."
+
+"And even if there were it wouldn't matter now," said Grim calmly.
+"We're discovered."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A long slim flier shot athwart the brightening sky, paused suddenly in
+flight as though jerked by an invisible string. The next instant the
+valley was illumined by a transparent glow. It enveloped the Earthmen,
+made crystal figurines of the most solid among them. They seemed like
+wraiths through which, as in a glass, more could be seen beyond. The
+solid ground, the rocks, were transparencies floating in an ocean of
+airy nothingness. A search beam!
+
+The flier hung steady, high overhead, holding them in the dissolving
+area of his beam. Too high to ray them but also too high for their
+futile bullets. The Mercutians no longer underrated the fighting
+abilities of their erstwhile slaves.
+
+"He's sending out messages for help," observed Hilary.
+
+"Let's take it on the run," Wat suggested.
+
+"No good. Where could we run to that his beam couldn't follow?"
+
+"Well, we can only die once," Wat observed cheerfully.
+
+"And take as many Mercutians with us as we can," Grim amended. "That's
+one lucky thing. Their rays have no greater range than our bullets."
+
+"Except the diskoids," said Hilary. "Here's your chance, Wat, to play
+with your rattle."
+
+The red head, who had lugged the heavy machine gun all the way with
+him, patted its snout affectionately. "It plays the devil's tattoo,"
+he said.
+
+More fliers materialized in the by now brighter blue of early morning.
+The sun was just peeping over the serrated tops of the mountains. But
+still they did not attack.
+
+"Afraid of us," Wat chuckled. "Bet they'll send to Mercury for the
+whole damn army before they come for us."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The first shock was over. With the inevitable staring them in the
+face, the men had achieved something of a gay recklessness. Hilary
+found some natural recessions under overhanging masses of rocks that
+would afford protection from the searing power of the rays. To be
+effective, the fliers would have to land in the valley or fly low,
+thus exposing themselves to the raking fire of the Earthmen's weapons.
+Hilary posted his little band skilfully underneath these natural
+shelters in such a way that they would be able to command the bit of
+sky from every angle.
+
+The men jerked and fidgeted. The heavens darkened with massed fliers,
+and still they came. The Mercutians were taking no chances.
+
+"Plenty of guests at our funeral," Wat chuckled, sighting along the
+barrel of his gun.
+
+Hilary left the jesting to the others. He was watching the skies
+intently.
+
+Joan slipped her arm through his. "You see something that we don't.
+What is it?"
+
+He nodded with an intent frown. "There are clouds forming up there.
+The first I've seen since I came back to this planet. Rain clouds,
+too, if I know anything about it. Look."
+
+Joan tilted her head backward. Thin scuds of vapor darted across the
+sky, driven by the morning breeze; dissolved and reformed a little
+farther on. Tenuous wisps, evanescent, wraithlike. The sun shone
+steadily, unobscured.
+
+"Those little things," said Joan unbelievingly. "Why, if that's all
+you're depending on, we're finished."
+
+"Nevertheless they are rain clouds. But _when_ the rain will come is
+another matter. Very likely too late."
+
+Grim came hurriedly over from his post near the entrance to the little
+valley. His face was placid as ever, but his eyes were worried.
+
+"We are being surrounded," he stated calmly.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Hilary sprang to his feet. "What do you mean?"
+
+"Listen. Do you hear it?"
+
+Far down the overgrown trail they had followed into the valley came
+the noise of heavy stumbling feet, innumerable feet.
+
+"They are taking no chances," said Grim, his countenance unchanged.
+
+Hilary looked swiftly around. The valley was a cul-de-sac, surrounded
+on three sides of its narrow oblong by precipitous hills. From the
+fourth side, the Mercutians were coming--an army, from the sound of
+them. Overhead were a hundred fliers, and more coming. The trap was
+sprung!
+
+Hilary's voice rang out. "All men without guns down the valley to
+repel invaders. Those with guns remain at your positions; watch the
+fliers. Wat Tyler in command."
+
+With a joyous cry the Earthmen started for the narrow mouth of the
+valley, all without guns. Gone was the helpless feeling of before; now
+they could fight too. Axes, spades, pitchforks, sticks and stones
+even, were their weapons.
+
+Hilary thrust his automatic into Joan's hand. "You use it, dear. I
+won't need it. Come on, Grim."
+
+Morgan smiled slowly, handed over his dynol pistol without a word to a
+weaponless man and stalked after his leader. His great hand clutched
+and unclutched unconsciously. This was what he wanted, hand-to-hand
+fighting.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+By the time they reached the foot of the valley, the noise of the
+oncoming Mercutians sounded like the rumbling of thunder. Secure in
+their numbers there was no thought of concealment.
+
+The Earthmen were pitifully few, only thirty of them, and wretchedly
+armed. Hilary disposed of them up the slope of the hill on either
+side, set them to loosening jutting boulders. He was in command on one
+slope. Grim on the other.
+
+In a minute the Mercutians would be upon them. A simultaneous attack,
+no doubt; the fliers dropping low to loose their deadly rays from
+above as the land force attacked with their hardly less deadly hand
+rays.
+
+Hilary shot a last hasty glance aloft. His heart gave a great bound.
+The thin insubstantial vapors of a little before had solidified, taken
+on a grosser leaden hue. The sky was a sullen gray, shot through
+intermittently with the broad flares of a sun valiantly struggling to
+reassert its long undisputed sway. Little flickers of lightning played
+around the ragged edges of the clouds.
+
+To the most unobservant it was evident now that a storm was in the
+making. But might it not be too late? The sun still shone, and as long
+as its light pierced through, the weapons of the Mercutians held all
+their deadly potency.
+
+The alien invaders sensed the urgent necessity for quick action, for
+the fliers were dropping now, hundreds of them, to within range.
+Hilary heard the shouted orders of the Mercutians Cors, the crashing
+forward of a mighty host, and then the front of the attack burst out
+of the trees in an engulfing flood of gigantic unwieldy bodies and
+gray warty faces.
+
+A quick view of the stout ungainly Viceroy, Artok, another of the
+coldly saturnine visage of Urga in the front rank, and with a roar of
+gutturals, the attack was on.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Down from above came a myriad blinding flashes, turning the inclosed
+valley into an inferno of heat and rocking, boiling, shattered ground.
+Up the valley shot the massed hand rays of the hundreds as they swept
+along in close-packed trot.
+
+It seemed as if nothing could exist in that blazing, screaming hell.
+Hilary, stunned, shaken, scorched, felt as if he were the only one
+alive. Yet as the front of the attack washed up before him, he did not
+hesitate. He sprang to his feet, swung the nicely hefted long-handled
+ax he had picked up, uttered a war whoop that went back to remote
+ancestors, and flung himself headlong into the boiling mass of
+Mercutians.
+
+As he did so, he caught a fleeting, comforting glimpse of Grim rising
+to his full height on the other slope, huge hands raised, and crashing
+down barehanded, silent, into the ranks of the enemy. A cheer went up,
+a faint ragged cheer, and other figures popped up out of nowhere and
+dropped feet first into the fray.
+
+Hilary found himself engulfed in a welter of figures that towered
+heads above him. His ax swung up and down, bit into something soft and
+yielding. The Mercutian screamed horribly; blood spouted from his
+wide-split shoulder. He fell stumbling to his knees, and Hilary
+stepped into the little open space. That gave him more elbow room. A
+furious towering monster swung his tube around in the press. Hilary
+ducked as the sizzling ray sped over his head. There were howls of
+pain as the spreading beam cut a burning swath through the packed
+Mercutians.
+
+Thereafter no more tubes were raised. The quarters were too close. It
+was to be hand-to-hand fighting; thousands of giant Mercutians against
+a handful of puny Earthmen.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Hilary swung his red-dripping ax in ever-widening circles. At every
+swing a Mercutian tumbled. A little space opened around him, literally
+hewn out of living flesh. But with strange fierce cries he threw
+himself again and again into the wall of bodies. There and there only
+was salvation possible where the sun-tubes could not be used.
+
+Far over to one side he caught glimpses of bodies in violent
+upheavings, bodies that thrust explosively to either side as from the
+sharp prow of an invisible ship. Then a great figure heaved staggering
+into view, bloody, gashed, great arms encircling Mercutian heads,
+smashing them together like eggshells, flinging them apart, seizing
+others. Grim Morgan, berserk with bare hands.
+
+Here and there in his own travail Hilary sighted little foci of
+struggle, Earthmen with ax and pitchfork and spade battling valiantly
+in a sea of Mercutians. A swirl, an eddy, and all too often a sudden
+surge and flowing of gray warty faces, and smooth rippleless heads
+where an Earthman had gone down, trampled into pulp.
+
+Hilary's first rush with swinging flashing ax had caught the
+Mercutians unawares. They had relied upon their sun-tubes, and in the
+mêlée succeeded only in inflicting frightful havoc on their own kind.
+Now, however, they came for Hilary in a solid mass, huge
+three-fingered hands flailing, seeking to thrust him down by sheer
+weight of numbers. He swung and swung again, the ax bit deep, but
+still they came. His arm grew weary from so much slaughter, it rose
+more and more slowly, and then it rose no more. The bloody ax was
+wrenched from his nerveless fingers, and he was down, smothered by
+innumerable trampling bodies. Over him the tide swirled smooth. Heavy
+feet kicked and battered at his body, hands reached down to pluck and
+rip at him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Feebly he tried to fend them off, but the shodden hoofs smashed him
+down again, gouged at his unprotected face. He struggled, but soon he
+would not struggle any more.
+
+From afar came to his dimming ears below, a huge shout that shook the
+ground. Feet pounded him down into semi-unconsciousness; there was a
+mighty shuffling to and fro over him, and then the feet were gone. A
+huge well-remembered hand, caught him, heaved him upright. It was
+Grim. His face was a wreck, battered out of all semblance, but those
+blue mild eyes were flaming with an unholy light.
+
+Hilary tottered, and the giant shook him.
+
+"Wake up," he bawled; "they're coming again."
+
+With a great effort Hilary cleared his numbed brain, saw the
+resurgence of the temporarily beaten herd. His fists clenched
+automatically.
+
+"Good boy," Grim whooped. "Let's get them."
+
+Then they were engulfed, fighting back to back. Hilary seemed to be
+fighting in a dream. He never had a clear conception of what happened.
+Faces thrust themselves into his own, furious, contorted; his fist
+went out mechanically, thudded against something soft, and the face
+disappeared. Hands reached plucking for him; he thrust them off, and
+swung left and right again.
+
+Once he looked dully upward. The sky was gray slate now, festooned
+with bellying black. No sign of the sun; not the least ray could
+pierce. The fliers hung aimless overhead, no sparkle to their hulls.
+The valley was dark too; the terrible rays had ceased raking it with
+an inferno of heat.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Just before he lowered his upflung face to smash his fist into another
+face, something wet blobbed on his forehead. A raindrop? Perhaps, but
+he was too far gone to care now. Life was an endless series of howling
+Mercutians to thrust fists into.
+
+A cheer rose high, punctured by quick sharp explosions of sound. Guns.
+Those few remaining of the fighting Earthmen farther up the valley, no
+longer menaced by the futile fliers, had come down to help their
+weaponless brethren. Wat's voice was shrill in the land, yelling,
+exhorting, screaming. A familiar _rat-a-tat-a-tat_ came down the
+wind. The submachine gun was spitting steel-jacketed death. Where was
+Joan? Hilary wondered wearily.
+
+A face towered over him, a face he knew. Urga. The Mercutian was no
+longer impassive; his gray countenance was distorted with hideous
+hate. "I'll break you in two," he mouthed, and lunged for Hilary.
+
+The Earthman came out of his daze at the sight of the other. Strength
+seemed to flow back into his weary body. His fist came up, clean with
+all the power that was left in him. It went home with a
+soul-satisfying crunch. Urga's gray gash of a mouth seemed to smear
+slowly over the rest of his face. A wild animal scream burst from him
+as he sagged. Then a swirl of other Mercutians anxious to get at the
+Earthman eddied him out of view.
+
+Hilary felt better. Now he could die content. Even with their guns,
+what could a handful of Earthmen do against the resistless,
+ever-coming tide of Mercutians, thousands of them?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was raining now, slowly at first, large scattered drops, then
+heavier and heavier, until the fogged air was a driving sheet of
+water.
+
+What of it?--thought Hilary bitterly as he fought and slipped and
+stumbled in the slimy, bloody muck that was now the ground. The
+Mercutians' weapons were useless, but they did not need them any more.
+Sheer numbers would overwhelm the Earthmen.
+
+Then to his amazement something happened. The heavens, long outraged
+by the artificial repression of the weather machine, kicked over all
+traces and opened their sluices in earnest. The sky was one vast
+waterfall. The elements roared and rocked; the valley was knee deep
+already in a spate of waters.
+
+Hilary splashed and waded after his enemies. But they were going. They
+staggered and trembled in every shaking limb, heedless now of the
+Earthmen. They slipped and fell into the flood, and stayed there,
+motionless under the waters. Like Pharaoh's army they were being
+drowned before the amazed Earthmen's very eyes.
+
+On their own planet it never rained; there was no water except for
+carefully hoarded underground lakes. This first taste of real Earth
+weather was too much for them. They could not withstand the driving
+rain, the water swirling round their knees. All the strength went out
+of their shaggy frames, their knees buckled and down they went,
+helpless, destroyed by a natural phenomenon to which they were
+unaccustomed. They had actually been smothered by the humidity!
+
+Hilary's voice was strong again. With great shouts, he rallied his
+men. A pitiful handful; only fifteen of the fifty that had entered the
+valley. But Joan was alive, her face black with burned skin, otherwise
+unhurt. Wat's grin rose superior to a mask of raw flesh, and Grim,
+bleeding from a hundred wounds, was still a tower of strength.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was a strange sight as they stood almost waist deep in the flood,
+the storm beating down upon them, hundreds and hundreds of bodies
+floating, bumping against them.
+
+"We must clinch our victory, men," Hilary shouted above the roar of
+the elements. "We must go to arouse the Earth, sweep the Mercutians
+into the oceans while the storm lasts, or all our work will go for
+naught."
+
+A great cheer went up from the little band, and without resting,
+without food or sleep, they waded their way out of the valley, into
+civilization once more, carrying their message, arousing the peoples,
+gathering to themselves like a tiny snowball rolling down a
+mountainside, a huge swelling army of jubilant Earthmen, Earthwomen,
+too, moving in resistless flood down upon New York.
+
+The rest is history. Like a torrent they swept down upon the cowed,
+weakened Mercutians. Those that did not escape in the great diskoids
+back to their own torrid, waterless planet were searched out, torn to
+pieces by the infuriated Earth peoples.
+
+For five days and five nights the storm raged, all over the world. The
+floodgates were opened; outraged nature was taking her revenge. For
+five days and five nights the sun was hidden behind bucketing gray
+skies. And for five days and five nights, Americans, English, Chinese,
+Zulus, Australians, Russians, Bushmen, Argentinians, animated by a
+common purpose, rose gleefully and smote the invaders. When the sun
+finally peeped once more from behind the thick blanket of clouds, not
+a Mercutian remained. Few had escaped; the rest would never see
+Mercury again.
+
+"We've won," Joan sighed happily, after it was all over, and was able
+to nestle once more comfortably in Hilary's arms. "Thanks to you."
+
+"You forget Grim Morgan and Wat Tyler, dear."
+
+"Ye-es, they helped, too," she admitted grudgingly; "but without you,
+what could they have done?"
+
+Hilary started to protest, but over her crown of shining hair, he saw
+Grim and Wat watching him, grinning like two monkeys. Wat's thumb was
+raised to his nose in an immemorial gesture.
+
+"You're right," said Hilary defiantly. "What could they have done?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Slaves of Mercury, by Nat Schachner
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