CHAPTER XIII - The Torture
“Haljan! Yield or
I’ll fire! Moa, give me the smaller one. This cursed––”
He had in his
hand too large a projector. Its ray would kill me. If he wanted to take me
alive, he would not fire. I chanced it.
“No!”
I tried to draw
myself beneath the window. An automatic bullet projector was on the floor where
Carter had dropped it. I pulled myself down. Miko did not fire. I reached the
revolver. The dead bodies of the captain and purser had drifted together on the
floor in the center of the room.
I hitched myself
back to the window. With upraised weapon I gazed cautiously out. Miko had
disappeared. The deck within my line of vision was empty.
But was it?
Something told me to beware. I clung to the casement, ready upon the instant to
shove myself down. There was a movement in a shadow along the deck. Then a
figure rose up.
“Don’t fire,
Haljan!”
The sharp command,
half appeal, stopped the pressure of my finger on the trigger of the automatic.
It was the tall lanky Englishman, Sir Arthur Coniston, as he called himself. So
he too was one of Miko’s band! The light through a dome-window fell full on
him.
“If you fire,
Haljan, and kill me––Miko will kill you then, surely.”
From where he had
been crouching he could not command my window. But now, upon the heels of his
placating words, he abruptly shot. The low-powered ray, had it struck, would
have felled me without killing. But it went over my head as I dropped. Its aura
made my senses reel.
Coniston shouted,
“Haljan!”
I did not answer.
I wondered if he would dare approach to see if I had been hit. A minute passed.
Then another. I thought I heard Miko’s voice on the deck outside. But it was an
aerial, microscopic whisper close beside me.
“We see you,
Haljan! You must yield!”
Their
eavesdropping vibrations, with audible projection, were upon me. I retorted
aloud.
“Come and get me!
You cannot take me alive.”
I do protest if
this action of mine in the chart-room may seem bravado. I had no wish to die.
There was within me a very healthy desire for life. But I felt, by holding out,
that some chance might come wherewith I might turn events against these
brigands. Yet reason told me it was hopeless. Our loyal members of the crew
were killed, no doubt. Captain Carter and Balch were killed. The lookouts and
Course-masters also. And Blackstone.
There remained
only Dr. Frank and Snap. Their fate I did not yet know. And there was George
Prince. He, perhaps, would help me if he could. But, at best, he was a dubious
ally.
“You are very
foolish, Haljan,” murmured the projection of Miko’s voice. And then I heard
Coniston:
“See here, why
would not a hundred pounds of gold-leaf tempt you? The code-words which were
taken from Johnson––I mean to say, why not tell us where they are?”
So that was one
of the brigands new difficulties! Snap had taken the code-word sheet, that time
we sealed the purser in the cage.
I said, “You’ll
never find them. And when a police ship sights us, what will you do then?”
The chances of a
police ship were slim indeed, but the brigands evidently did not know that. I
wondered again what had become of Snap. Was he captured––or still holding them
off?
I was watching my
windows; for at any moment, under cover of this talk, I might be assailed.
Gravity came
suddenly to the room. Miko’s voice said. “We mean well by you, Haljan. There is
your normality. Join us. We need you to chart our course.”
“And a hundred
pounds of gold-leaf,” urged Coniston. “Or more. Why, this treasure––”
I could hear an
oath from Miko. And then his ironic voice: “We will not bother you, Haljan.
There is no hurry. You will be hungry in good time. And sleepy. Then we will
come and get you. And a little acid will make you think differently about
helping us...”
His vibrations
died away. The pull of gravity in the room was normal. I was alone in the dim
silence, with the bodies of Carter and Johnson lying huddled on the grid. I
bent to examine them. Both were dead.
My isolation was
no ruse this time. The outlaws made no further attack. Half an hour passed. The
deck outside, what I could see of it, was vacant. Balch lay dead close outside
the chart-room door. The bodies of Blackstone and the Course-master had been
removed from the turret window. A forward lookout––one of Miko’s men––was on
duty in the nearby tower. Hahn was at the turret controls. The ship was under
orderly handling, heading back upon a new course. For the Earth? Or the Moon?
It did not seem so.
I found, in the
chart-room, a Benson curve-light projector which poor Captain Carter had very
nearly assembled. I worked on it, trained it through my rear window, along the
empty deck; bent it into the lounge archway. Upon my grid the image of the
lounge interior presently focused. The passengers in the lounge were huddled in
a group. Disheveled, frightened, with Moa standing watching them. Stewards were
serving them with a meal.
Upon a bench,
bodies were lying. Some were dead. I saw Rance Rankin. Others were evidently
only injured. Dr. Frank was moving among them, attending them. Venza was there,
unharmed. And I saw the gamblers, Shac and Dud, sitting white-faced, whispering
together. And Glutz’s little be-ribboned, be-curled figure on a stool.
George Prince was
there, standing against the walls shrouded in his mourning cloak, watching the
scene with alert, roving eyes. And by the opposite doorway, the huge towering
figure of Miko stood on guard. But Snap was missing.
A brief glimpse.
Miko saw my Benson-light. I could have equipped a heat-ray, and fired along the
curved Benson-light into that lounge. But Miko gave me no time.
He slid the
lounge door closed, and Moa leaped to close the one on my side. My light was
cut off; my grid showed only the blank deck and door.
Another interval.
I had made plans. Futile plans! I could get into the turret perhaps, and kill
Hahn. I had the invisible cloak which Johnson was wearing. I took it from his
body. Its mechanism could be repaired. Why, with it I could creep about the
ship, kill these brigands one by one perhaps. George Prince would be with me.
The brigands who had been posing as the stewards and crew-members were unable
to navigate; they would obey my orders. There were only Miko, Coniston and Hahn
to kill.
Futile plans!
From my window I could gaze up to the helio-room. And now abruptly I heard
Snap’s voice:
“No! I tell
you––no!”
And Miko: “Very
well. We will try this.”
So Snap was
captured, but not killed. Relief swept me. He was in the helio-room, and Miko
was with him. But my relief was short-lived.
After a brief
interval there came a moan from Snap. It floated down from the silence
overhead. It made me shudder.
My Benson-beam
shot into the helio window. It showed me Snap lying there on the floor. He was
bound with wire. His torso had been stripped. His livid face was ghastly plain
in my light.
Miko was bending
over him. Miko with a heat-cylinder no longer than a finger. Its needle-beam
played upon Snap’s naked chest. I could see the gruesome little trail of smoke
rising; and as Snap twisted and jerked, there on his flesh was the red and
blistered trail of the violet-hot ray.
“Now will you
tell?”
“No!”
Miko laughed.
“No? Then I shall write my name a little deeper...”
A black scar
now––a trail etched in the quivering flesh.
“Oh!––” Snap’s
face went white as chalk as he pressed his lips together.
“Or a little
acid? This fire-writing does not really hurt? Tell me what you did with those
code-words!”
“No!”
In his absorption
Miko did not notice my light. Nor did I have the wit to try and fire along it.
I was trembling. Snap under torture!
As the beam went
deeper, Snap suddenly screamed. But he ended, “No! I will send––no message for
you––”
It had been only
a moment. In the chart-room window beside me again a figure appeared! No image.
A solid, living person, undisguised by any cloak of invisibility. George Prince
had chanced my fire and had crept up upon me.
“Haljan! Don’t
attack me.”
I dropped my
light connections. As impulsively I stood up, I saw through the window the
figure of Coniston on the deck watching the result of Prince’s venture.
“Haljan––yield.”
Prince no more
than whispered it. He stood outside on the deck; the low window casement
touched his waist. He leaned over it.
“He’s torturing
Snap! Call out that you will yield.”
The thought had
already been in my mind. Another scream from Snap chilled me with horror. I
shouted,
“Miko! Stop!”
I rushed to the
window and Prince gripped me.
“Louder!”
I called louder.
“Miko! Stop!” My upflung voice mingled with Snap’s agony of protest. Then Miko
heard me. His head and shoulders showed up there at the helio-room oval.
“You, Haljan?”
Prince shouted,
“I have made him yield. He will obey you if you stop that torture.”
I think that poor
Snap must have fainted. He was silent. I called, “Stop! I will do what you
command.”
Miko jeered,
“That is good. A bargain, if you and Dean obey me. Disarm him, Prince, and
bring him out.”
Miko moved back
into the helio-room. On the deck Coniston was advancing, but cautiously,
mistrustful of me.
“Gregg.”
George Prince
flung a leg over the casement and leaped lightly into the dim chart-room. His
small slender figure stood beside me, clung to me.
“Gregg.”
A moment, while
we stood there together. No ray was upon us. Coniston could not see us, nor
could he hear our whispers.
“Gregg.”
A different
voice; its throaty, husky quality gone. A soft pleading. “Gregg––
“Gregg, don’t you
know me? Gregg, dear...”
Why, what was
this? Not George Prince? A masquerader, yet so like George Prince.
“Gregg, don’t you
know me?”
Clinging to me. A
soft touch upon my arm. Fingers, clinging. A surge of warm, tingling current
was flowing between us.
My sweep of
instant thoughts. A speck of human Earth-dust, falling free. That was George
Prince, who had been killed. George Prince’s body, disguised by the scheming
Carter and Dr. Frank, buried in the guise of his sister. And this black-robed
figure who was trying to help us––
“Anita! Dear God!
Anita, darling! Anita!”
“Gregg, dear
one!”
“Anita! Dear
God!”
My arms went
around her, my lips pressed hers, and felt her tremulous, eager answer.
“Gregg, dear.”
“Anita, you!”
The form of
Coniston showed at our window. She cast me off. She said, with her throaty
swagger of assumed masculinity:
“I have him, Sir
Arthur. He will obey us.”
I sensed her
warning glance. She shoved me toward the window. She said ironically, “Have no
fear, Haljan. You will not be tortured, you and Dean, if you obey our
commands.”
Coniston gripped
me. “You fool! You caused us a lot of trouble, didn’t you? Move along there!”
He jerked me
roughly through the window. Marched me the length of the deck. Out to the
stern-space; opened the door of my cubby; flung me in and sealed the door upon
me.
“Miko will come
presently.”
I stood in the
darkness of my tiny room, listening to his retreating footsteps. But my mind
was not on him...
All the Universe
in that instant had changed for me. Anita was alive!
FOOTNOTES:
[1] As early as 1910 it was discovered that an object magnetized under
certain conditions was subject to a loss of weight, its gravity partially
nullified. The Martel discovery undoubtedly followed that method.
[2] “United States of the World,” which came into being in 2057 upon
the centenary of the Yellow War.
[3] Trinight Hour, i.e., 3 A. M.
[4] Pressure sickness. Caused by the difficulty of maintaining a
constantly normal air pressure within the vessel owing to the sudden, extreme
changes from heat to cold.
[5] “Set and Setta,” the Martian equivalent of Mr. and Miss.
[6] A Venus form of jocular, intimate greeting.
