My glance fell on the mutilated body that lay on the second table. It was, I knew, the body of Ken Smith. He had said something about “my body over there.” The beastly men of Mars had stolen his brain and placed it in a cylinder! They had said something about him being immortal.
The crooked little men before me had assumed the stoical expression that characterized the Martian race. All of them were draped in the robes of high office. I smiled grimly and they flinched at my smile. I had thought of what a rare bag of birds I had flushed. Their lives lay in a balance, lay at the end of my two gun-finger tips and they knew it.
“Show me how this mechanism works,” I ordered the foremost one in a guarded whisper.
The priest hesitated, but I made a peremptory motion with one of the guns and he stepped quickly forward.
“One wrong move,” I warned him grimly, “and every one of you sizzle. I am here and I am leaving soon, with this cylinder. Maybe I’ll let you live, maybe I won’t.”
The expressions on their faces never changed. They had courage, you have to say that much for them.
“What do you wish to know of the machine?” asked the Martian who had stepped forward.
“I want to talk to the man in the cylinder,” I said. “I don’t want to torture him, you understand. I want to talk to him.”
The priest reached out a hand toward the machine, but I waved him back.
“No,” I said. “You tell me what to do. If you direct me falsely…”
I did not finish my threat. He beat me to it. He licked his thin lips and nodded his head.
I laid one of my guns on the table, where I could snatch it up at a second’s notice, and reached out my hand to the machine.
“You must turn that red indicator back of the green reading,” said the Martian. “Back of that the brain in the cylinder has full exercise of its faculties and experiences no ill effects. Above that mark torture begins. The machine is very simple…”
“Yes,” I said, “it must be. But I am not interested in the machine. I want to talk to my friend. Now what do I do.”
“All that is necessary is to close the switch you opened.”
My fingers closed over the switch and pushed it home. My back was to the cylinder and I could not see what transpired, but no scream came and I knew that the priest must have informed me correctly.
“You there, Ken?” I asked.
“Right here, Bob,” came the well-remembered voice.
“Listen closely, Ken,” I said. “We haven’t got much time. Something may happen any moment. Have you any suggestions for getting out of here.”
“The way out through the corridor is clear?” asked the voice of my friend.
“So far as I know. The guard is dead.”
“Then roast the priests and on your way out give me a shot. Promise, though, to finish the priests first. After what they did to me … You understand. Eye for eye. Blast their brains, rob them of this eternal life they’ve given me. And be sure I’m done before you leave.”
“No, Ken,” I said, “I’m taking you.”
“You’re crazy, Bob.”
“I may be crazy,” I retorted, half angrily, “but either both of us go out of here or neither of us go.”
“But, Bob …”
“We haven’t time to argue. You know the ropes better than I do. Any suggestions?”
“Alright, then. Shut me off. Disconnect the cylinder from the machine and stick the machine in your pocket. You will need it … or rather, I will. It is run on a connection with any electric current. Disconnect it from the temple wiring. Wipe out the priests and stick me under your arm. That’s all. If we get out, we get out. If we don’t, crack me up before you wash out.”
“That’s talking,” I cheered him. “What these animals have done to you doesn’t make any difference. We’re still pals.”
“Sure, we’re pals. Only you’ll have to do all the fighting from now on.”
My fingers were on the switch.
“Just a second, Bob. I’ve thought of something. Think you can carry two of these tanks?”
“How heavy are they?”
“I don’t know. Not so heavy, though.”
The priests were moving uneasily and I shouted a sharp command at them.
“If you can do it,” droned the voice of my friend, “run into that room just across from you. You can see the door. There’s racks of tanks in there. Brains of dead priests, you know. Take one of them. He may be a great help.”
“Okeh,” my hand started to lift the switch.
“Don’t forget the priests. Damn them, give them …”
The voice snapped short as I pulled the switch free.
A latch clicked behind me and I swung about. In the doorway which opened from the second corridor stood another priest. Amazement was written all over his features. He was opening his mouth to scream a warning when I got him.
The blast had scarcely left the muzzle of the gun, when I twisted back on my heel and not a moment too soon. All five of the priests were rushing me. The muzzle of the gun was not more than a few inches from the breast of the foremost one when I depressed the trigger. The priest was bathed for a second in a lurid blue flame that lapped over him from head to foot; for an instant he wavered in front of me, shriveled and blackened and then fell, his charred body breaking into pieces as it fell. The gun crackled and roared and I imagine that the noise could be heard even in the farthest corners of the temple. The electro-gun is not a silent weapon.
Two of the priests died only a few feet from me and the third almost touched my throat with his skinny, twisted hands before I could stick the gun into his stomach and give him everything it had. He simply evaporated in a flash of electrical energy that almost knocked me off my feet.
Staggering from the shock, I caught sight of the last of the priestly quintet rushing for the open door. My finger caught on the regulator and pushed it far over as I fired. It was unintentional, but it was lucky for me that it happened. Set at full charge, the gun hurled a living thunderbolt across the room that snuffed the fleeing priest out of existence and blasted the entire opposite wall of the room into the outer corridor. Other masonry, falling with resounding crashes, completely blocked the passage.
The room reeked with the charnel odor of burned flesh and the sickening stench of burning ozone. My ears were dulled by the thunder of the electro-gun in that vaulted room and my senses were reeling from the effects of the electrical charges set off at close quarters. With deafening crashes the masonry was still falling in the outer passage. I heard faint cries from some other quarter of the building and knew that the priests of Mars were aroused and racing toward this section of the temple.
Stumbling to the table I wrenched loose the connections from the machine and thrust it in my pocket. I lifted the cylinder and was surprised to find it so light.
Then I remembered. I was to take another cylinder. Had I the time? My friend had a good reason for wanting me to get one of the other cylinders. I was confident of being able to fight my way through.
I resolved to try it. Setting the cylinder back on the table, I ran toward the door which Ken had indicated. Halfway to it I jerked out one of the guns. There was no need of fumbling with a lock now. Every second counted. Training the gun on the lock as I ran, I pressed the trigger. The heavy charge blasted away a section of the door and, running at full tilt, I struck it, driving it open. I sprawled into a room that was so large it at first bewildered me. In huge racks that left only alleyways between them, were piled cylinder on cylinder, identically like the one in which the brain of Ken Smith reposed.