CHAPTER IV

"Co-operate--and Live!"

"Earth-Men, we are not impatient! We know your minds work like rusty hinges--but what else can be expected of the minor planets? So take a little time. Consult with one another. We will allow you half an hour. Then we will be back, and learn if you prefer to co-operate--or to die a thousand deaths!"

With an agile looping movement, Red-Hood started down one of the cable ladders, followed by all his retinue.

"One thing more!" he warned, noting how longingly Gates was staring into the abyss. "Take care not to fall off the platform! In that case, strong arms will be waiting to catch you--and your punishment will be heavy in proportion to the crime!"

"How heavy will that be?" defied Gates, wondering what they could do to him worse than they had already threatened.

Scarlet flashes shot from the monster's eyes. "One hundred of your kind," he snorted, "will be picked up from the streets of your cities, and crushed to death as hostages! Such is the vengeance of Saturn!"

As the creature left, with a low hissing as of escaping steam, Gates felt as never before that he was in contact with a force having nothing in common with humanity.

Silence ruled for a moment, while the three prisoners sat facing one another on their high swinging perch. But their horror-filled eyes were eloquent.

"God in heaven! I don't suppose there's much for us to decide!" mumbled Gates, grimly, while he stared as in a nightmare at the looping, crisscrossing intricacy of cables overhead.

"No, I'm sure not!" sighed Eleanor.

"Any idiot could see that!" Dunbar muttered. "Don't know what we need this half hour to think about!"

Another gloomy silence ensued.

"Well, at least I'm glad we're agreed," declared Gates, who, to tell the truth, was a little surprised at Dunbar's sudden manifestation of decent feeling.

"Wouldn't we be imbeciles not to be," Dunbar drawled, running a lean, long-fingered hand reflectively across his jutting chin. "All comes down, I guess, to a question of saving our own hides. As for me--I never did exactly hanker to shine as a martyr."

"Martyr?" echoed Gates. And all at once he knew the full enormity of Dunbar's treason--yes, knew beyond all need for further questioning!

At the same time, he noticed Eleanor's nauseated look.

"Goddamn it, Ronny, mean to say I got you wrong? So you folks are not with me after all?" demanded Dunbar, incredulously. "Deuce take you! I never thought you were that crazy!"

"If you call it crazy not to betray your whole race--"

"I'd like to know what in hell my whole race has ever done for me!" retorted Dunbar. "Lot it'll help them if I let myself be ground to bits by those snaky dragons! No, sirree, you can play the saint if you want to--but I'll think you're both hell-blasted fools. As for me--I'll co-operate--and live!"

"I'd rather be a hell-blasted fool than live with the world's blood on my hands. Wouldn't you, Eleanor?"

"A thousand times over!" attested the girl. And in her animated eyes, as she nodded assent, there was a warmth Gates hadn't observed in them before.

"You're letting your feelings rule you, Ronny, not your mind!" swore Dunbar. "That's the trouble with you--too infernal much of a dreamer! Can't face reality! Why, haven't I seen it in you all along? You haven't got the guts of a jellyfish! That's why I've despised you!"

* * * * *

There it was out in the open again, their antagonism flaring white-hot. Somehow it seemed strange, ludicrous that the three of them should be perched here, on the rim of eternity as it were, and be doing nothing better than air their personal enmities. Yet, after all, did Gates not know that Dunbar had always loathed him?

It was Eleanor's voice that broke the brief, bristling silence. Struggling to gain control of herself, she cast a defiant glance at Dunbar. "You are badly mistaken, Philip!" she defended, crisply, "if you think Ronald hasn't got, as you say, the guts of a jellyfish. I guess it doesn't take so much guts to be a traitor, the way you're planning, Mr. Dunbar! And let us both die while you go pleasantly along your way!"

Tears were in the girl's eyes; she had to avert her face violently to prevent a telltale overflow.

Dunbar's answer was a low, gruff laugh.

"Good Lord! What makes you think I'm willing to let you both die? Ronny can do what he damn well wants to--guess the world will outlive his loss. But you, my girl--do you think I'll let you be massacred just because most of our good-for-nothing species is due to be wiped out? Believe me, if there's going to be one man survive the slaughter, there'll be one woman too--just to start the new world right! Do you get me?"

As he crept nearer to her along the web, his little black eyes widened in a leer.

A quarter of an hour later, the full implications of his words became clear. Red-Hood and the other Saturnians had returned; and, ringing their captives about in a glittering circle, had demanded their decision. And Eleanor and Gates had defied them with a resolute "No!", regardless of the thunderous rumblings and the spouts of smoke that came from their masters' lips.

But Dunbar took another track.

"Worthy visitors from Saturn," he said, with mincing gestures, "I am glad to co-operate with you. But, in return, I ask one small boon."

"What boon?"

"If I help you, O noble ones, I must do so without restraint. But this cannot be unless you grant me the favor I ask. You see, O Lords, we earth-men are so made that we cannot do our best work without a woman at our side. So I crave of you--spare the life of this female here; release her, so that she may labor with me!"

A snort from Red-Hood drowned out Eleanor's shocked protests.

"But this woman, O earthling, has refused to co-operate. She deserves the fate worse than death, which we have in store for her."

"Women, O Lords, are ever fickle and changeable of mind. If you will but spare her, I will see that she will co-operate."

The Saturnians held a brief conference among themselves, in tones like rapid gurglings. Then Red-Hood turned back toward Dunbar. "It is so, O Nignig! On our planet, too, the female of the species is fickle, and changes her mind like the lightning." And then, pointing scornfully at Gates, "Do you also ask us to spare your other companion?"

"Not so, O Lords! I ask the woman only!"

* * * * *

Eleanor's despairing cry was muffled amid the bellowing of the Saturnians, as they once more conferred, punctuating their debate with flashes of their many-colored armor, and with innumerable puffs of smoke ... in a discussion that lasted for many minutes.

Finally, discharging sulphur fumes from little orifices at the ends of his long twining fingers, Red-Hood turned back to his Quisling.

"Let it be so!" he rattled out. "On one condition, we will release the woman. She will serve as a pledge for the faithful performance of your promise. If you fail us, by even the minutest fraction of a fraction of a degree, be sure she will not escape, but will perish along with you on the Barbs of Slow Agony!"

Eleanor gasped; and peering up into the relentless red eyes of her captors, knew that all protest would be futile.

"Zoltevi! Zoltevi! Quimboson!" she heard Red-Hood rasping, as one of his long tentacled arms motioned to two retainers. And after a brief interchange in their native tongue, the pair stepped forth, and she felt the octopus arms of one of the giants winding about her, while Dunbar was snatched up in the claws of the second.

"My followers will give you your instructions!" Red-Hood growled at his new servant; while Eleanor, with swimming head, felt herself being borne down the great swaying web.

"Have faith! Have faith! We will win out yet!" she thought she heard a familiar voice calling after her. Or was it that, in her bewilderment, she had only imagined? For her last glimpse at Gates showed him standing erect and defiant enough, but so feeble-looking, of such midget size beside the many-armed, tailed monsters that towered above him to the height of the great dinosaurs of vanished ages!