Tyros tried to draw his sword as he saw me coming nearer, but Duare’s body interfered. At last he let it slip to the floor; and, still screaming, he came toward me. It was then that a door flew open and a dozen warriors burst into the room.
I let Tyros the Bloody have it first. He collapsed in a heap; then I turned the weapon upon the advancing warriors. They nearly got me as a veritable shower of tridents drove through the air at my almost naked body. It was the very number of them that saved me. They struck one another and their aim was diverted—just enough to permit me to dodge and elude them. After that it was simple. The warriors with their swords were no match for me. I mowed down ten of them before the remaining two turned and fled.
At last I was alone with the body of my mate. I turned toward it. Duare was sitting up, looking at me wonderingly.
“How did you do it, Carson?” she demanded. “However in the world did you do it?”
“I could do much more than this for you,” I said, as I took her in my arms.
“What now?” asked Duare presently. “We are trapped. But at least we shall die together.”
“We are not dead yet,” I said. “Come with me!”
I led the way to the pool from which we had just emerged. Through the one small window I could see the great lake scarcely a hundred yards away. I was certain that a corridor led from this pool to the lake. “Can you swim another hundred yards under water?” I asked her.
“I can try,” she said.
“Wait until I make sure that there is a corridor leading to the lake;” then I dove into the pool. I found an opening near the bottom of the end of the pool nearest the lake; so I was reasonably certain that it led into a corridor that would take us out of the city of Mypos. The only drawback to the plan was that we should be swimming in the lake right off the quays of Mypos in broad daylight. It didn’t seem possible that we could escape detection.
As I broke the surface of the pool after locating the corridor, Duare whispered to me that she heard someone approaching. I listened. Yes, I could hear them plainly—the sound of sandalled feet and the rattling of accouterments; then we heard men shouting, and the sounds were very near.
“Come, Duare!” I called and she dove in.
I led her to the mouth of the tunnel and followed her in. I must have been wrong in my estimate of the distance to the lake. It was far more than a hundred yards. I marvelled at Duare’s endurance, for I was almost all in and virtually at my last gasp, had I dared to gasp, when I saw light shining from above. As one, we shot up to the surface; and as our heads broke it, almost simultaneously, Duare flashed me a reassuring smile. Ah, what a girl! In two worlds; yes, even in all the Universe I doubt that there is like her.
We found ourselves in a small, circular pool in the bottom of a roofless, windowless tower. A ledge, a few feet wide, encircled the pool. We dragged ourselves on to it to rest and plan. We decided to remain where we were until after dark; then try to reach the lake. If we were followed into this pool, I could account for our pursuers as fast as they stuck their heads above the surface. How I thanked Heaven for that pistol!
Well after dark we swam through the remainder of the passageway to the lake; and followed the shore line to a point beyond the city. What hideous terrors of the deep we were fortunate enough to escape, I can only guess; but we came through all right. More by intuition than anything else, I made our way back to the point at which we had left the anotar. Our hearts were in our mouths as we searched for it. The night was dark. Even the strange Venusian luminance seemed lesser than usual. At last we gave up, disheartened, and lay down on the soft grass to rest.
We both must have fallen asleep almost instantly, for the next I remember it was daylight. I sat up and looked around. Duare lay asleep beside me; and a hundred yards away, just inside the forest, was the anotar!
I shall never forget with what a sense of gratitude to God and with what relief we felt the ship rise above the menaces of this inhospitable land.
The only blemish on our happiness was that Kandar and Artol were still prisoners in Mypos.
XVII
There are, fortunately, recorded indelibly upon our minds moments of great happiness that we have enjoyed. Standing out among mine, I am sure, will be the moment that the anotar rose from the ground that day and I realized that Duare and I were reunited and that she was safe.
Safe! That word has its nuances. Safety is relative. In relation to her immediate past, Duare was quite safe; but we were still thousands of miles from Korva, with only a very hazy idea of the direction of our goal.
We had enough concentrated fuel to fly the ship for, probably, some fifty years; but we would have to make occasional landings for food and water, and it seemed as though every time we landed something terrible happened to us. But that is Venus. If you had a forced landing in Kansas or Maine or Oregon, the only thing you’d have to worry about would be the landing; but when you set a ship down in Venus, you never know what you’re going to run up against. It might be kloonobargan, the hairy, man-eating savages; or a tharban, that most frightful of lion-like carnivores; or a basto, a huge, omnivorous beast that bears some slight resemblance to the American bison; or, perhaps worst of all, ordinary human beings like yourself, but with a low evaluation of life—that is, your life.
But I was not so much troubled by consideration of these possibilities as I was of the fate of Kandar and Artol. They were splendid fellows, and I hated to think of their having to remain slaves in Mypos.
Duare had evidently been watching my face, for she said, “What is troubling you, Carson? You look worried.”
“I was thinking of Kandar and Artol,” I replied. “We had hoped to escape together.”
“Who is Artol?” she asked. “I do not recall a slave by that name.”
“I met him after I was taken to Yron’s palace,” I explained. “He was a warrior in the bodyguard of Jantor, jong of Japal—Kandar’s father, you know.”
“We should help them to escape, if we can,” said Duare.
“I can’t risk your safety again,” I said.
“They are our friends,” she said. “We cannot abandon them without making an effort to save them.” That was like Duare.
“Well,” I said, “we might fly over the city and see what can be done about it. I have a plan. Perhaps it will work, and perhaps it won’t. That will depend more upon Kandar and Artol than on us. Take the controls a minute.”
As she flew the ship, circling back toward Mypos, I found writing materials in one of the storage compartments; and wrote a note to Kandar. I showed it to Duare, and after she had read it, she nodded her approval.
“We can do our part easily enough,” she said; “I hope they can do theirs.”
I tied the note to a spare bolt, and took the controls. We were now about a thousand feet above Mypos, and I started a wide spiral down toward the city, aiming at Tyros’ palace.
As we got closer, I could see people staring up at us from the streets and from the palace grounds; and I could see others scurrying for safety. Of course none of them had ever seen an aeroplane before, for our anotar is the only one in Venus—as far as I know; at least none of them had seen one except the Mypos warriors who had captured us. Of course they had told everyone about it, but nobody believed them.
I headed for the slave compound in the palace grounds, flying very low and looking for Kandar or Artol. At last I recognized them both; they were standing together, looking up at us. Although I had told Kandar all about the anotar, he looked now as though he couldn’t even believe his eyes.
As I circled again, some of Tyros’ warriors ran into the compound and commenced to hurl spears at us—the three-pronged tridents with which they are armed. As far as we were concerned they were quite harmless; but they fell back among themselves; and after one impaled a warrior, they desisted.