CHAPTER XVIII.

NEREID’S STRATEGY.

Four of us now, shadowed prowlers. It had taken them only a moment to get me into the robe and adjust its connections. Strange experience! I felt the tiny vibrations of the robe; it tingled my flesh. Through the dark panes of the goggles I could barely see the outlines of the dim corridor; but in a moment they seemed clearer. Empty corridor! It was so strange to hear the voices of others beside me--and yet not see them. To stretch out my hand, yet not see my arm. To touch, in a lighted corridor, something unseen.

“Who is that?”

“It’s Tad--let go of me!”

As if in blank darkness, fumbling, he started. It was difficult for so many of us to keep together, so we went in pairs, Arturo and Nereid went ahead. Tad and I momentarily lost them. We came to the bridge and stopped.

“Where are they, Tad?”

They had agreed to wait here for us. We had passed no Gians as yet; there were none in sight here. Tad spoke softly:

“Arturo?”

Arturo’s voice answered: “Yes--here--”

Nereid lifted the robe a trifle at her neck; a vague sheen of light was here now; I saw the patch of her skin, hovering in mid-air above the bridge rail ten feet away.

We joined them. I recalled that Rhana had closed every Castle door and window. In the silence under the bridge the running water sounded. I whispered:

“Could we get down there, Tad? Get out this way?”

“No.”

Nereid’s voice: “Only the dead, killed by Rhana, have gone down there.”

We decided to try to locate an upper window that might be open. Nereid thought she could leap with safety that far; she was not sure.

We were soon among the Gians. The Castle was in a turmoil over my escape. And presently from the lower passages we heard shouts; Arturo’s escape had been discovered.

We passed through many rooms. All the windows were barred. With all our strength we could not move them.

A dozen times we were nearly discovered. The Castle was being ransacked for Arturo and me.

We were passing through a small room. A Gian man came running from behind us. We did not hear him in time, and he ran solidly into us, and fell, shouting an alarm. Tad leaped on him.

I heard the gruesome splintering crack as Tad wrenched at his neck. The cries were silenced; Tad was shuddering as he rose.

Other Gians came running, but we avoided them easily. We came to the front main doorway, but found it closed. Gian women were on both sides of it, excitedly talking through the bars.

We were trapped. There was no way out. I told them how Rhana had stood at her table, closing the windows and doors. We decided to go there.

We got into the room. A dozen women were there; Rhana sat by the table. Nereid’s voice said, at my ear:

“If we could get to the roof, Jeff, a ladder at the farther end leads to the ground.”

But how could we get to the roof? From where we crouched I could see the steps leading upward--a seven-foot flight of stairs, but there was a grating, barring the top. The stairs were empty at the moment. And the roof up there seemed empty.

* * * * *

Freedom, beyond that grating. But how get past it? Rhana sat like a cool gray statue at the table; her hand rested beside the mechanism. Occasionally she would speak to one of the women, or issue some command.

Tad’s voice came: “We’ll creep over there, get up to her, make her open it. By Tophet, I’ll make her!”

But if she did not do it at once, her cries would bring the whole Castle upon us. And even with momentary control of the mechanism, we did not know how to operate it for ourselves.

“Let’s kill her and have done with it,” Tad whispered. But that would not get us to the flood-gates.

Nereid’s voice whispered: “I have a plan. I can talk like a woman of the Gians--let me try.”

We crept across the room, up the empty staircase. At the top, near the grating, we paused. My heart was beating fast. It might work, or within an instant we might be discovered.

Tad murmured: “They’ll see us here against the stairs.”

But Nereid tried it. Her voice rang out, startlingly loud in the silence up here at the top of the stairs. She spoke in her own language, imitating the Gian accent:

“Let me in, please!”

Rhana looked up, startled. Every woman in the room was staring at us.

“Let me in, please!”

Would they see us? They might have noticed the blur of us against the stairs near the top. But they did not. They were puzzled. Rhana spoke:

“Where are you?”

“Here, on the roof. Open, please, for an instant--you will want to hear my news.”

The bars slid aside. We jammed our way out before they were fairly open. Freedom!

Rhana called, puzzled: “Come down then. Hurry!”

Some imp within Nereid must have prompted her. She called back sweetly:

“Thanks. You may close it now!”

We dashed across the empty roof, down the ladder, and safely threaded the turmoil of the garden, plunging into the dark city streets.

* * * * *

“Why, there is Entt!”

Nereid saw him. We were almost to Fen’s home. The street chanced to be deserted. Entt rounded a corner, riding his _arras_. We were visible now; there seemed no Gians in this part of the city; we had cut the current from our robes and thrown back the hoods for greater comfort.

“Oh, Entt!”

He pulled up and we crowded around him explaining what had happened. He was pleased; he smiled as he shook my hand. But he was very solemn.

Arturo and I were told by Tad where Entt had been. Arturo said:

“Are the people getting away safely?”

He nodded. The first of them were past the tunnel-entrance; many were well on their way. But a million people could not be started on a march like that at once. It would take several days before they were all away. Much confusion had been reported. From the opposite surface across the abyss the Middge were being brought in aëros. But there was a shortage of cars. Many families were starting to march around, following the surface curve. It would take them too long; when cars were available, these Middge would have to be rounded up and brought across.

Entt was increasingly solemn. Nereid demanded: “What is it? Something is wrong?”

The Middge attack upon the gate-house had been defeated! The expedition had got close up to the gates. The place seemed abandoned by the Gians. And then an armed aëro had arrived from the City of the Mound. The Middge were caught by surprise by the counterattack. An utter rout; there were no more than twenty of the Middge band alive to struggle back to the tunnel, and the Gians remained in possession of the gates.

“Disaster,” said Entt. “There is nothing for any of us but to escape.”

“But there is!” I exclaimed. I outlined my plan. With these invisible suits two or three of us could get into the gate-house, even though it was held by the Gians. A desperate venture--suicide possibly. But if, before they found and killed us, we could get the huge gates closed and demolish the mechanism, it would be worth it.

Entt’s eyes flashed. “I think I understand that mechanism. I will go with you.”

I still held the small weapon I had seized from my Gian guard in Rhana’s Castle room. It had been of no use to us in the Castle, since none of us knew how to fire it. The weapons of the Gians in this realm had been very closely held. Nereid had never even had such a weapon in her hand before. But Entt knew how to use it. He would show me. At the gate-house it would be of service.

We started again for Fen’s home, walking, with Entt on the _arras_ beside us. My plan was to leave Nereid with her father. They would get together what belongings they wanted and start for the tunnel and wait there at the entrance for the success or failure of our venture. If we were still alive, we would join them there.

We were three minutes, no more, reaching the house. My mind roved what lay ahead: The horrors here in this dark abyss, unseen by our great world spreading above. These escaping Gians--forty or fifty thousand of them, with all their equipment of war, passing upward through the locks into our falling ocean. This harried Middge people, unarmed, in panic, a million of them fleeing their doomed realm, marching desperately into a tunnel that might lead them to safety.

That titanic surge of water, off there in the neighboring abyss of the monsters--coming down to mingle with the slumbering fires of the earth. Vast horrors impended for our upper world.

But the human mind individualizes. I chiefly felt, and considered, the personal danger to this little band of friends with whom my interest lay. And as we approached the silent doorway of Fen’s home, the sense of impending tragedy--crowning horror--was strong upon me.

We entered. Nereid called: “Father--my father--we have come.”

I heard Tad mutter: “I hope he’s kept that fellow Bhool locked up.”

We passed the silent rooms. “Father--father!”

A fear was creeping into Nereid’s voice. We hastened, bursting into the main apartment.

Crowning horror!

The closet into which Bhool had been thrust and locked, stood open. There was food upon the table in the room. On the floor in a huddled heap lay old Fen. Gruesome, a red stain against his neck, a small, spreading pool of crimson on the floor; a broad knife-blade, bathed in crimson, lying here discarded by the murderer.

We stood stricken, staring, gasping. And then little Nereid flung herself down.

* * * * *

He lived to open his eyes and see us. He seemed to recognize us. Arturo knelt with Nereid.

“Oh, Fen, what did you do? Where is Bhool? Did you let him out?”

Fen’s words were faint. “Yes--he--was hungry--and then--he killed me.”

A kindly act at the last, and the reward was death! Life can be so tragic, so cruel!

Fen lay very still, with eyes closed. But in a moment he opened them. He tried to focus them on Arturo. “You--will guard--my little daughter--”

He drew Nereid’s head down to him. He seemed to sigh; and then he lay unbreathing. There was no sound but Nereid’s sobbing.

Arturo stood before me. “I want to go with you, Jeff. You know that!”

“Yes. I know it.” I smiled into his earnest, sorrowful eyes. “But three of us will be enough, Arturo. And Nereid needs you.”

“I just wanted you to know I ought to go with you.”

He turned away. We three were ready. Entt was equipped with his black robe. I carried my weapon. He had shown me how to advance the charge from its storage battery to the firing chamber; and how to fire it. An oblong thing of black metal the size of my hand, it discharged a stab of radiance with an effective range of perhaps a hundred feet. Or at fifty, with an altered form of its vibration, the radiance, like an electro-magnet, would seize an object, grip it, hold it.

“Is our _arras_ ready, Entt?”

“Yes.”

We had one giant _arras_ which could carry all three of us. There was a small aërocar available at the tunnel-mouth--the tunnel into which the Middge people were retreating. Entt had left the aëro there.

Tad demanded: “You’re sure it will be there?”

“Yes. It is hidden as I told you.”

I stood again with Arturo. “You take Nereid and three _arras_, Arturo.”

“Yes, Jeff.” He was docile now. No more forcing of his own ideas. “We’ll load one with our things, lead one, and ride the third.”

“Exactly. And wait at the tunnel-entrance. You’ll find our _arras_ there, where the aëro is now. Wait there, Arturo--we’ll join you if we can. But not too long. Understand? If you know that the gates have broken and we have failed, ride on. Will you?”

He nodded. His eyes were full. “I may not see you again, Jeff. Good-by.”

I clapped his shoulder. “Good-by, Arturo. Good-by, Nereid.”

We left them standing together gazing after us.

* * * * *

To any one who cared to look, our giant _arras_ was loping through the gloom unmounted. We clung to its long saddle, Entt in front, guiding it. We went in great bounding leaps, over the river-bridge, with the hot wind rushing past us. Tad’s solid body before me was a vague black blur, and I could not see Entt at all. We took the road Tad had already traversed toward the fire caldron, but we soon swung aside.

We came at last to the tunnel-entrance. Activity here. Twin light-beacons mounted on the rocks marked it for the arriving Middge people. They were coming in groups; a throng of them surged in confusion at the broad entrance, passing the guards, starting on their long upward march.

We avoided attracting attention. No one heeded our wandering, seemingly unmounted _arras_. We found, beside one of the rocky walls of the entrance, the small cavelike recess where Entt had left his aërocar, and here we chained the _arras_.

In my heart was a prayer that within a few hours we would be safely back, with the flood-gates closed, and find Arturo and Nereid here waiting for us.

Tad was hopeful of it. “Those Gians won’t stay in the gate-house. Why would they? The Middge attacked--they couldn’t figure it would be anything but a last attempt, and they’ve defeated it. To stay there, with the gates likely to break any moment, that would be crazy!”

“The Gians are nearly all departed now,” Entt agreed. “Our watchers say the last of them from this surface and the other are started for the locks.”

“And if,” Tad added, “Rhana did leave a few to guard the gates, they’d desert--wouldn’t wait there for the flood to kill them. They’re all cowards anyhow, unless they’ve got weapons and you haven’t. Don’t worry, we’ll find the whole place deserted. It’s exactly the time to strike at it now, at the last minute!”

It seemed logical reasoning. I could only hope it might prove true.

We climbed to the aërocar, where it rested on a rock ledge. It was no more than ten feet long--a narrow strip of gleaming metal. With the currents out of our robes, and hoods flung back, we lay upon the car. Entt was at the controls.

The car slowly lifted. We slid silently from the recess. The arriving Middge stared up at us. A guard up on the beacon platform challenged us. Entt called a signal, and he relaxed.

We rose and sped forward, gathering speed as we rushed into the darkness. Underneath I could see a long line of the arriving Middge families; but we soon were past them.

Flying low. Presently there were no houses, no signs of human life. A rocky, barren surface; sometimes a black area of squat forest trees; to the right I made out the outlines of a rocky wall which we were following. Then we turned toward it, into a mile-wide passage. We seemed nearly always ascending; but of that I could not be sure.

The glaring white beacons along here, placed to blind and turn back the monsters, had been extinguished and broken by the Gians. It was a dark, sinister passage, turning, rising, dipping; narrowing almost to a small tunnel; or again opening into a great rocky amphitheater, with an extent I could not estimate.

Half an hour’s flight. Tad and I saw almost nothing; but to Entt the way was clear.

I became aware that the air had changed. A fetid quality had come to it. The passage ceiling had lifted. We were beyond the confines of the connecting passage. The abyss of the monsters lay before us!