The Mercurian's voice was low and intense: "Tell me, I command you. Do you understand? Command you." Suddenly he heard his voice telling the detailed description of the location of the secluded cabin. Roc would have no trouble in descending in the forest near it. Jimmy gave all the details of the cabin's interior, the location and occupants of its different rooms.
Roc laughed softly. "Thank you. I hope there will be many times when you can help me like this." Jimmy lay mentally exhausted. His senses were floating llow and it was pleasant to be at peace.
He came to himself with the realization that he was outdoors. It was still night. Snow was under his feet and a vista of open snow fields, with forest trees nearby. A thick cloth hooa protected his head; the under jacket of his flying suit was over his shoulders.
He seemed to have almost his full strength at once. He was slumped by a tree trunk which loomed beside him. A giant man clung to him by the aimhad evidently dragged him here. The man leaned down.
"You-right, now? All right?" Broken, gutteral English. A giant Mercurian. Jimmy became suddenly aware that this was a familiar locality. He saw the dim outlines of a nearby log cabin, dark in the starlight. This was our cabin, which he had left only about twelve hours before. He saw figures prowling outside it now.
Jimmy did not answer. With all his force he wrenched from his captor and tried to run. But his strength suddenly drained from him. He stumbled and fell in the snow. Aflash stung his arm and burned his sleeve; and as the giant leaped on him and pulled him erect, a portion of burned fabric fell unheeded to the now beside the stump. It was the cloth which I came upon a few moments later.
Another figure gripped Jimmy. A voice, in better English, said softly, "Do not try that." And then, "They come, DorrekRoc no need this fellow." They had brought Jimmy out to revive him in the cold air, perhaps thinking they might need him to show them further details of the cabin. They hurried him now toward the nearby forest. Jimmy saw, behind him, a following group.
He saw the silver ball resting in the shadows of the forest nearby. He was led into it, flung down on the floor of the same room where he had been before. The giant sat watchfully at his elbow.
Then there were shots outside, in the distance. A flurry of footsteps in the vehicle; excited voices. Arriving figures.
Rowena and Tama were flung down beside Jimmy. Roc's voice said: "Guard them, Dorrek... . If anyone of you causes trouble, Dorrek will kill you." The lenses of the windows and the door were slamming.
The vehicle lifted, quivered. Outside the window, the forest trees were sliding downward. Then only starlight. The ball was making upward, leaving the Earth.
"Jimmyyou I" The girls clung to Jimmy. The giant seemed to ignore their whispering. Tama had been caught by Roc while she was still asleep, but the slight noise had awakened Rowena. She had seized a long dressing gown and' gone into the living room. Roc and his men had pounced upon her.
To Rowena's easy capture Guy, Toh and I undoubtedly owed our lives. Had there been a commotion Roc would probably have killed us in our beds. But with the girls captured, he retreated at once.
"I told him where you were," Jimmy whispered. "I was druggedparalyzed1 couldn't keep from telling." Tama knew the drug. It was foolproof. She named it in her native language. Roc had thrown a cloak over her wings.
She was shivering, but presently, with the friction-heat of the rapid ascent, the room began to warm.
"We're headed for Mercury," whispered Jimmy.
The giant abruptly leaned toward Rowena, plucked at her gown.
"You-the Rowena girl?" There was light enough to see his face. A great bloated, flabby-jowled, hairless face of pallid gray skin. A wide flat nose with a bridge suggesting that it had been broken. He was grinning with a leer meant to be ingratiating.
Rowena flung off his hand. Jimmy muttered an oath, but Tama gripped him.
"Waiti He is a Cold Country native; perhaps a leader."
"Youthe Rowena girl?"
"Yes," said Rowena calmly. "That's my name."
"I like you. I, Dorrek, master of the army when we capture Light Country. Soon now. And I like you. Big woman beautiful. My woman soon" His gaze devoured Rowena's figure. Jimmy was tense, but a movement of Tama's directed his attention across the room.
Behind the squatting giant, a heavy-set gray woman was standing. Her gray wings were folded behind her. She stood against the wall; the light fell upon her wide, flabby, gray face to illumine it plainly. It was contorted now with hate. The venom of a woman's jealous hate.
And all in an instant Jimmy realized that in her hand as it came up from the folds of her drab-colored robe, i long glittering knife was clutched.
The woman moved suddenly forward, uttered a piercing hysterical scream and with waving knife blade leaped at Rowena.
IV ENDLESS VOID I SAT BESIDE Guy in one of the deck corridor chairs of the Bolton Cube. A bull's-eye window was at hand. Earthlight and starlight, and mingled moonlight fell upon usthe great firmament out there blazing with a glory wondrous, amazing. The Earth hung fairly below our window. Tremendous, reddish-yellow ball, etched with the tracery of its land and water, mottled with cloud areas, white with its polar snowcaps.
To one side hovered the gloaming, sharply black and white Moon-disk and everywhere the stars blazed like points of fire in the dead black void of space. The Sun was overhead.
From this side of the deck we could not see it.
"How far out are we?" Guy asked. I had been to the dome-peak and just-returned.
"About four hundred thousand miles."
"Has Grenfell's telescope lost sight of the silver ball?"
"Yes." We had been on the voyage some ten hours. It was now, by Earth Eastern Standard Time, which we were maintaining on the Cube, about 3 P.M. on the afternoon of March 16th.
The Mercurian vehicle had departed some four hours in advance of us and now it was beyond our sight.
"But Grenfell is sure we have been making as good speed as the ball," I added. "And he hopes to do better. We'll overhaul it in a day or two."
"If it heads directly for Mercury," said Guy. "But we're following it blind." Through the window there was no movement apparent.
"The Earth and Moon were dwindling, but very slowly. The Sun was growing larger. Our velocity was now only a million miles in about nine hours. More than a month to reach the Sun at this rate, and something like twenty-six thousand years to the nearest star! For an hour Guy and I talked that afternoon on the deck of the Bolton Cube. We would overtake the Mereurian vehicle. And then what? There was a gun mounted at a presssure port on the deck of the Cube. But with Tama, Rowena and Jimmy in the ball, we could not attack it.
On the other hand, if Roc had the necessary weapons, he was free to attack us. Guy felt, however, that Roc had no long-range weapons.
"It won't be armed," Guy insisted. "They'll have hand weaponsbut that's about all. That ball was only a tender for Croat's ship." A day passed. Anxious hours, seemingly interminable. Our almost vibrationless little square metal house seemed hanging in the void. Everything remained almost the same. The Earth was still full-round, but smaller, vidth a silvery aspect mingling now with its yellow-red sheen; the Moon, behind it, a tiny white sphere. Both were level with our side windows, with the Sun and Mercury on the other side. Grenfell kept us in this position so that his telescope might most readily seek the Mereurian vehicle in advance of us.
The Sun seemed a trifle larger now. The crescent Mercury could be seen only through the telescope. And far to one side, the blazing point of light which was Venus showed in the telescope as a glorious half-moon.