CHAPTER XIV.

IN THE DARK CORRIDOR.

“All ready, Arturo?”

“Yes.”

I shouted at him: “Stop that!”

He picked up one of the small metal chairs and flung it at me. I ducked. The thing was heavy, and crashed against the bed with a violent clang. I ran at him.

He whispered, “Easy, Jeff--you’re strong.” We wrestled. I flung him to the floor of the cell; the table overturned, clanging with metal against metal like a gong. We lay, listening.

“Think they’ll hear us?”

“Yes.” I had previously noticed sounds coming down the ventilator from above; occasionally the faint blended murmur of voices as though from a room overhead. “Better keep it up,” I whispered. “They may be able to see us.”

We rolled, fighting and shouting. In his zeal Arturo turned me over and was sitting on me. We presently heard the sound of our cell door opening; I twisted free, flung him away and leaped to my feet. In the doorway three gray women stood; Arturo lay writhing.

[Illustration: _The cell door opened and several Gian women stood there._]

“What--you do--what you doing?” One of the women came in. A woman tall, but shorter than Rhana. She wore a similar shield, and a cloak of brown. She was jeweled.

I was panting, but alert. The chance might come any time. This woman did not seem armed. The two in the doorway stood keenly watching me. They were all garbed the same; they seemed rather more like high-born attendants upon Rhana, than guards.

I said, “He is a fool--I don’t want to be here with him.” My gaze was contemptuous. The other two women had come into the cell. Out of the tail of my eyes I surveyed them. Seemingly unarmed. I could make a run for it. Arturo was alert. Lying groveling, but tense to spring up at my signal.

Abruptly I relaxed. Men were in the corridor outside. A group of them. I could see weapons in their dangling hands.

“Take me out of here,” I demanded. “He sickens me--he is a fool--I will kill him if I stay here.”

The woman deliberated. I fancied I saw admiration for me in her eyes. She said:

“You must not fight--bad.”

As though we were children! Arturo was up on one elbow.

“I don’t like him--I don’t like this room. Take me to another--” He gestured overhead. “Up there--this has no air down here--”

If she would do it! I added, “He can come with me--it is the air here--I won’t fight--we’re both hungry--”

The woman rasped out a sudden command. Two men came into the room. They were about the woman’s height; stocky fellows, with bullet heads of close-clipped black hair. Guards, evidently, garbed in gleaming suits of metal cloth, wearing bands about their foreheads with gleaming jewels. In their hands, and hanging against their chests were weapons; a curving, knifelike blade; small girds and projectors.

The woman spoke imperiously to them. She said to me: “We take you--”

Arturo was on his feet, his eyes searching me.

“And him?” I demanded.

“He stay here.”

Disappointment flooded Arturo; I flashed him a warning glance.

“But he is hungry,” I pleaded.

“I send food.”

One of the men pulled at me, but I pushed him off. “I want him to come with me--”

The woman leaped. Her hands went to my shoulders; her dark eyes blazed at me; unreasoning anger in them--she might have done anything--ordered me killed without stopping to think of it. “You talk much. Go!”

With a last look at Arturo, I turned and let them lead me out.

We followed the dim vaulted corridor. The women went ahead with their catlike tread. There were two men beside me; others in front and behind. We passed other vaulted doorways. A turn up a small incline; over a dark interior bridge of metal. It spanned a black void; overhead, the vaulted metal roof was within touch of my hand. Into another larger corridor; this one brighter.

I was alert trying to remember the turns--I would have to get back here some way to Arturo. Or persuade Rhana to bring him up.

* * * * *

The interior of the building seemed enormous. We turned other corners evidently into another wing; ascended another incline. It was surprisingly long and steep. I realized Arturo’s cell must be underground. We came to an upper hallway. I saw a room with barred windows that seemingly opened to the garden. There were lights out there now. We advanced through a room thronged with Gians, men and women. They made way for us; the babble of their voices hushed, and they stared at my towering figure curiously. We crossed the room. A wide door opened.

I was in the presence of Rhana. She sat at a table. It was littered with flexible sheets--metal, perhaps--like paper, with strange writing upon them. Women sat around her. Men, garbed in vivid clothes of bright colors, were in the room, most of them standing. A man to whom Rhana had been speaking, made an obsequious gesture and hastened from the room. Two other men and a woman came forward to report to her.

There was an air of hurried activity. That outside room with its waiting, excited throng; here, in this inner private apartment, Rhana with her close subordinates, directing the departure. There were broad windows through which I could see the lighted garden; Gians out there, moving about with apparatus; a large aërocar was there, being loaded. Departure for battle. I did not need to be told it was that. It was plainly to be seen.

They stood me before Rhana. I met her gaze, with a level frown of my own. My heart was pounding. These windows were larger, and unbarred. The ground was no more than twenty feet below. I remembered my vaulting over the garden palisade. I could leap from one of these windows and not be hurt. Or, there was a staircase here in the room, leading to the roof.

Rhana was saying: “So? You make a disturbance? How do you dare?”

“I’m hungry. I want to be fed.”

Some of these men were armed. There were too many here now. If I could wait here until they went away.

Rhana looked at the women beside her, as though to see what they thought of me. She was smiling with faint amusement.

“You want food--now?”

“Yes.” I added boldly: “And here. I want it here with you.”

She said something about me to the other women. They nodded, smiled and regarded me with a new interest--as though I were a precocious child, to be admired and tolerated.

“Here with me?”

“Yes.”

A man was near me, standing by an empty chair. I shoved him out of the way, and sat down, as though I were a willful child. But there was something else in the expressions of these women. I was a man; it was to them a new masculinity, instinctively to be admired. The Gian man shrank from my frowning aspect. Rhana said:

“So? You are very bad--but interesting. You shall be fed here, if you do not annoy me.”

“I’ll sit over there.” Another empty chair, much nearer one of the windows. But these women were not fools. Rhana gestured sharply. Two armed men--they looked like beribboned popinjays in their bright gaudy costumes--moved quickly over between me and the window.

Rhana went back to her work. I sat there perhaps an hour. Food and drink came to me. I tasted it cautiously. But I was famished, and glad of the strength it would give me. Strange things--but I ate and drank with relish.

* * * * *

The activity of the room went on. I could not understand anything that was said. The garden was active--every appearance of bustling, feverish haste. The aëro--a gray thing a hundred feet in length--was loaded and got away. Another, empty, came sailing down to take its place. Gians were arriving. Men and women; and there were children. Food; apparatus--all loaded on the arriving and departing aëros. A line of marching gray men assembled, and were loaded on an aërocar. It left.

I saw not a single Middge. But down in the city I could hear occasional cries. Once, a throng of Gian families--carrying children and household goods--came up from the city escorted by soldiers. There had been a disturbance a moment before; I imagine a mob of the Middge may have assailed them. Rhana issued angry commands, and several messengers dashed away.

A stream of couriers constantly arrived with what seemed reports from distant localities. Rhana and the other women consulted over them.

The room at last began quieting. There was a lull in the garden. I wondered if my chance had come. But I was constantly being closely watched. There were three of these popinjays near me now. Each had a small black weapon in his hand; they never took their eyes off me.

Rhana at last stood up. Her command cleared the room of its waiting people. The women at the table went up the steps to the roof and vanished. I was alone with Rhana, save for my three men guards. They were still beside me, alert as ever.

She gestured. “Come over here--sit by me. I am tired now. It will amuse me to talk with you.”

The guards moved over with me. I sat by her. She began questioning me about my world. The size and the extent of the surface up there. She said nothing of her plans--nor asked me anything personal of myself. They seemed idle questions; generalities. I told her as well as I could, things about our civilization. Our mode of life. Things at random as they occurred to me. But I kept clear of anything which might be of military value to her.

She listened with an eager, absorbed interest. Once, when I paused, she said:

“You talk always of men. Your men must be very strange. Your friend they call Tad, spoke of them the same--men like women--”

I laughed. “Not like women.”

“I mean, born to command. To leadership, like women.”

I said: “Ours is a man-made world. But we realize, we men are what our mothers make us. There are things in life more important to women then trying to run the world.”

She raised her heavy eyebrows. “You think so?”

“Yes. Things only women can do. The best of our women think so, too.”

She said decisively: “It is not so here.” It amused her. “A world run by men! How absurd it must be!”

I could read her thoughts. She was going to war against men; she felt it a very simple thing.

She added: “You, Geoffry Grant, do not like women born to command?”

She said it with a smile, but there was an edge under it; a tigress’s claws lying within the soft paws.

I parried cautiously: “Did I say that? We have had women who were queens and empresses. Women who stood alone at the head of nations.”

“So? And they ruled well?”

“Some did. Some did not.”

She purred: “You do not like commanding women--like me?” She was toying with one of her dangling ornaments. I could have said I liked Nereid somewhat better, but I did not. I retorted:

“I am only a man. You embarrass me.”

* * * * *

She seemed annoyed at herself. At her weakness perhaps, for asking a man’s opinion. She said: “You are a fool. Conceited because you are big and strong. I will show you--”

She stood up quietly. “Sit still, Geoffry Grant.” The chains on her wrists were looped up around her arms to be out of the way. She began unfastening them.

I think it was her intention to flog me. I had been all this time surreptitiously watching my three guards. If I could get one of them near me--snatch his weapon. Or by a sudden rush knock them down--

Rhana unloosed the chains. “I will show you!” Her eyes were abruptly blazing with anger at me. A sound behind made her look around. A man blundered into the room through the farther doorway. He had seemingly come in not realizing where he was. A Gian from another city perhaps. Her anger turned on him. She leaped at him. My guards rushed for me; one stood with a weapon pressed against me. I remained docile.

The Gian man groveled as the chain struck him. She lashed; and with his cries of pain her rage burst into a fury ungovernable. He lay insensible and bleeding when she had finished. Other men appeared. They carried him away. She wound the chains around her sleek gray arms; came back to me. She was breathing hard, but the fire had gone from her eyes. Her voice was perfectly composed.

“A stupid man, Geoffry Grant, to come in here like that. He will not do it again.”

“No,” I murmured. “Doubtless not.”

My guards had relaxed. They were standing away, but still within reach of me if I leaped. I was tense. Rhana sat down. She began to talk. I scarcely heard her. I was planning how to fight my way out of here. My thoughts ran swiftly, no more than half coherent. Down to Arturo--fighting my way. But that was impossible. I would be caught and killed. But the flood-gates, off there in that distant cavern, must be closed. That was my purpose. Far above my own life, or Arturo’s. I could get out of here perhaps, with a rush for one of those windows.

I was answering Rhana mechanically. I would have to leave Arturo, but I could come back for him. These Gians would depart and leave him there to die. Tad and I would come back and release him.

Thoughts are swift-flying things. They flooded me; yet it was all but a moment. Tad. It seemed abruptly that something asked me, “_Where is Arturo?_”

My own thought? No, it was not that. Something else--Tad, or Nereid. I felt the presence of them both, their thoughts, something of them here--imploring me, “_Where is Arturo?_”

I had felt like this, that night in New York. I stirred restlessly in my chair.

“Yes,” I said to Rhana. “I think so.” What had she asked me? I could not remember. I was recalling the route I had taken up from Arturo’s underground cell. And something replied, soundlessly in my mind, “_Oh, yes, I know._”

Like a thought from Tad, or Nereid. But now it was more than that. Something of them tangibly here. Rhana felt it. She, too, moved uneasily in her chair.

She abruptly stopped what she was saying to me. And added tensely: “You feel it? What is it?”

* * * * *

There was almost fear in her voice--the fear of the gruesome, the uncanny, the unknown. Her hand moved along the table edge. The illumination of the room abruptly vanished; darkness enshrouded us. I could see nothing. Then, just the outlines of the windows with the lights of the garden behind them. In the silence I thought I could hear Rhana’s breathing. I could sense her near me; and the guards. Make a run for it now! But I could barely see in this darkness; and I remembered that these Gians could see comfortably.

The three guards and Rhana? But there was something else here. Something not to be seen, scarce to be felt. The presence of something. It drove from my mind all thought of escape. I sat stiff, straining my vision in the darkness.

Something here, moving soundlessly. Something touched me! Brushed me gently. I shrank; my chair slid on the metallic floor with a grind. One of my guards, even now alert, moved over and held me firmly. Rhana’s voice said softly:

“Did you see anything? Something is here. No, it is gone.”

She illumined the room. It was so soft a light it did not bother my eyes, even after the blank darkness. But I realized that for a moment now it might dazzle the sensitive eyes of Rhana and these three men. Her hand was shading her face. The man holding me had an arm against his eyes. My chance had come. I stood up suddenly; knocked his weapon from his hand, and my other fist caught him in the face. He fell without a cry at my feet.

Rhana shouted. I whirled away from her; launched myself at the other two men who stood blinking in confusion. My body struck them full. Under my weight they went down. One of their weapons was discharged--a soundless stab of radiance. It missed me.

In my rush I stumbled over one of the falling men. I went down with him. He was far smaller, lighter than I, and his body seemed queerly, unnaturally fragile. My fist cracked against his shoulder; broke it. I caught his wrist. Gruesomely it snapped with my twist. I held his weapon when I rose, a small, heavy thing of metal. But I did not know how to fire it. I thrust it under the shirt of my suit.

Rhana stood by the table; she made no move. The third man whom I had flung down was up on one elbow. I saw his leveled weapon and leaped aside. He was evidently hurt. He twisted around, but before he could aim again, I seized a heavy metal chair and hurled it. He lay still, with the chair partly on him.

The way was open. I ran for the nearest window. A black metal grating slid up in it; barring it. I turned away; ran for another. I was confused now. Like an animal, caged, rushing one way and another and finding always bars. The uproar was bringing people to the room. Men and women were running in.

I dashed at another window. But the bars came up before I got there. And another. Two men and a woman were in my way. I scattered them. Some one fired at me. I felt the tingle of the flash, but it missed.

From the table Rhana was working a mechanism controlling the bars. The windows were all closed now; a grating closed the roof doorway at the head of the stairs. People were up there vainly trying to get in.

* * * * *

The place was in confusion. Shouts everywhere. They had spread to the garden; a gathering throng out there.

It was all a confusion of impressions to me. I made a dash at Rhana; decided against it; turned and ran the other way. There seemed perhaps twenty people in the room. Every instant I expected to be hit by that stabbing flash. The main doorway was still open, and men were coming in. I rushed at them and they scattered. There was another flash, which stung my shoulder. A woman was leaping at me, swishing a chain; the shot caught her and she went down. There was no more firing after that.

In the doorway I was engulfed by half a dozen men who rushed me at Rhana’s vehement command. I went through them; waded, kicking, twisting, heaving them off, flinging them bodily away.

I found myself in the entry room. The people in it scattered before me. There were several flashes, but I was untouched. I went through the room with a rush to find myself in a dark corridor. There was pursuit behind me; I could hear the shouts. I ducked into a long, empty, dim room, and went down its length at a full run. All its windows were barred. One of the gratings slid up as I got there.

Rhana was back at her table, I knew, barring every exit of the castle. I ran on, through doorways, always dark corridors--an endless maze. I was wholly lost. Occasionally I encountered a Gian, but none could stop me.

I found myself going down an incline; over a bridge up near a vaulted ceiling. It was familiar. I stopped; panting for breath I stood in the blackness clinging to the rail. An abyss was below me. I had shaken off my followers. I was alone here. In the silence I heard what seemed murmuring water far under me.

Familiar. I had crossed this interior bridge, or one very like it, on the way up from Arturo’s cell. I thought I could find my way back there now.

With recovered breath I started. Cautiously--now that I had escaped pursuit, I wanted to avoid any one again finding me. Get down to Arturo; if I could open his door from the corridor side, together we would find some way out of this place.

I moved along. Over the bridge. It was darker here now than when I had been brought up. I felt my way along the stone passage.

I rounded a corner. There was a small dim light. The passage was empty; but I ran squarely into something solid--something invisible. It gripped me.