Dick went quietly ashore. He made certain of his two tear-gas bombs and swung the sawed-off shotgun around and threw off the safety-catch. He had fired three shots from an automatic pistol and had been lucky. But one does not want to depend on luck when it is dark and animals may be charging. A sawed-off shotgun is better.
He went as silently as possible along the beach. But he touched a brushwood branch, and one of the ruhks turned its head. Dick was still. Presently the ruhk yawned and looked away. Dick went on. He did not really hope to reach the wharf undiscovered, of course—
He did not. A ruhk stared in his direction and stood up quickly while he was better than two hundred yards away. Dick broke into a run toward the wharf. Fortunately, the beach here was all of ten feet wide.
He was in full stride when both ruhks were up and staring keenly at him from their positions on the stem of the wharf. They could not see him quite clearly because of the background of brush behind him. One of them yelped questioningly. Since he was not another ruhk he should have been—to the creatures of this world—a fugitive. That he ran toward them instead of away was unsettling. He covered nearly fifty yards before the ruhk yelped again. Seventy-five before it snarled. A hundred before both animals trotted ashore to intercept him. And the ruhks were slave guards. They felt contempt for men. They stood poised and waiting while he plunged on still nearer. It was not possible for them to be afraid of him. It was unlikely that they would even feel the need for caution.
They stood on the wharf-stem, snarling in indecision. Dick was actually within seventy yards before the first of them emitted a high howl and plunged at Dick.
He pulled the trigger of the sawed-off shotgun when it was twenty yards away, and practically tore it apart. The other leaped crazily aside into the brush. Dick ran on, leaping over the dying creature, and whirled as the second ruhk leaped from behind. The riot-gun crashed again. At such short range, the heavy pellets hit in a compact mass of destruction and then caromed outward from each other with all the effect of an explosion.
Dick reached the planks of the wharf as a beastly howl came from the trail which led to this landing-place. He saw four-footed figures rushing toward him, and tossed a tear-gas bomb, and ran out to the end of the wharf as the bomb created a cloud of mist around the shore end.
Human figures cringed, below him in the boat. He saw dull, animal eyes and matted shocks of hair and naked bodies on which the moonlight shone. This was a galley. At one time it had been an oared cutter of a United States warship, and doubtless its disappearance from its proper place on Earth had caused some concern. Now a dozen chained men slumped over their oars upon its thwarts. They looked up at Dick, and cringed. He heard scrabblings on the wharf-planking, and fired furiously. A beast screamed. There were splashes. Dick fired again. Ruhks, plunging toward him, had run into the nearly stationary wall of tear-gas, and were blinded. Some went overboard. A man in a white, knee-length robe came stumbling out of the tear-gas cloud. He carried a spear and there was a pistol slung about his waist, but he wiped streaming eyes and tried to see—if only so he could run away.
Dick moved savagely toward the tear-gas and shot the gun’s magazine empty. He came back carrying the spear and the overseer’s pistol. With the sharp blade of the spear he sawed at the ropes which held the boat to the wharf. It floated free and he jumped down into its stern. None of the dozen chained men stirred. They simply looked at him in numb terror.
“Row, damn you!” raged Dick. “Get away from here!”
There was a splashing nearby. A blindly swimming ruhk snarled in the water. Dick killed it in cold ferocity. He turned back to the rowers. He opened his mouth to threaten them again. But suddenly the oars were beginning to dip, and suddenly they fell into cadence, and suddenly the boat swept away from the wharf and began to move out into the river. And Dick felt a dozen pairs of eyes staring at him incredulously.
“Look!” he snapped. “Somebody back on the real Earth has found a way to come through to this world, and how to get back. I came through to find a girl who’s been kidnapped as I suppose you were! Play along with me and you’ll get back too!”
There was silence. The rowers pulled automatically. They were living automatons. On the shore near the wharf there was a snarling, yelping tumult. Ruhks created a monstrous din. Then one of them seemed to silence the others and emitted high, keening cries which would carry a vast distance over the water on a night as still as this.
Then one of the rowers said dully:
“Telling ‘em. They’ll give us to the ruhks, now!”
A man near the bow cursed. The rowing kept on. Then another man said, marveling:
“He killed a ruhk!”
Dick said sharply:
“I’ll kill some more!” He held up the overseer’s pistol. “I’ve got an extra pistol. Who wants it?”
More silence. Then a voice said in a whisper:
“Could kill ruhks with that.”
“Or overseers,” said another in a hushed tone.
“Could kill anybody,” said yet another, as if dazed. “With a pistol, a fella could kill ‘em ...”
Babbling. Sudden, lustful babblings. The oars stroked irregularly, Dick barked at them as the babblings rose to uproar.
“Silence there!” Instant stillness. These men were cowed to where they were hardly men. The rowing took up its regular cadence once more. “There was a girl vanished from New York three days ago,” said Dick harshly. “She wasn’t taken to the slave pen back yonder. Where was she taken?”
A long pause, and then a voice said fumblingly:
“We didn’t take her across the river. We ain’t taken nobody across but ruhks an’ overseers.”
“Then she’s still on Manhattan Island,” rasped Dick. “How many other slave pens there?”
Another voice, heavily:
“One up by the hothouses. That’s upriver. Across from Blackwell’s Island—or what looks like Blackwell’s.”
The use of the name, alone, was an indication of the length of time the man who used it had been a slave here on the twin of Earth. Blackwell’s became Welfare Island many years ago.
“We’ll head for there, then,” said Dick grimly.
The rowing went on. It was spiritless and dazed. Dick found a tiller and swung the boat about. A man said humbly:
“Give me that extra pistol, fella? There’s a overseer I got to kill. He gave my girl to the ruhks. Lend it to me?”
“I’m getting some more,” said Dick. “First—”
A man near the bow whimpered.
“ ‘Nother boat ... It’s got ruhks in it ...”
Dick strained his eyes. He saw the boat, upstream, coming down, heading out on the wide, moonlit river. It came as if headed for the villa on the other shore, down where the Navy Yard should have been. It was impossible to see the size of the boat, but it could only have come from somewhere on Manhattan Island opposite Welfare. It could have come from that other slave pen. It could be carrying Nancy to the villa now. At least, its crew might know what had happened to her.
He swung the tiller over.
“Pull hard,” he directed.
The two boats neared each other steadily. The other did not change its course. Its rowers—doubtless chained like these—rowed in the steady apathy Dick’s own crew had shown. But now, slowly, a trace of spirit was coming to his crew. Presently a voice whispered: