CHAPTER XIII

Spaceflight

So came at last the dawn, and with its coming Okuno and Steve Duane set forth upon the last stage of the adventure which they shared together: the short journey to the spaceport.

It lay not far from the tower of Nedlunplaza--but a few minutes' trip in the speedy monocyclular motor the Daans used as a ground vehicle--on a promontory north and east of town which, in the day whence Stephen Duane had come, had been known as Observatory Hill.

If there was any time at which Duane had doubts as to the ultimate success of his dreams, it was at that moment when first he looked upon the Daan spaceport and the gigantic metal monster cradled thereupon.

He had overestimated the courage of his own allies in this endeavor. He knew their daring and determination; knew they could be depended upon to fight the foe so long as one drop of blood remained in their veins. But now a new doubt assailed him. Perhaps he had underestimated the enemy!

It had been easy to acknowledge the scientific skill of the Daans, looking upon their plastic bridges, their single-wheeled vehicles. Yet these were feats which humans of Duane's own era might have accomplished. But this great rocketship, a towering teardrop braced in its launching tripod, tremendous jet-tubes pointed for the thrust against the bosom of earth, prow lifted proudly toward the heavens over which it was master, was at once a staggering and a humbling sight.

For this was something men had dreamed of, worked for, planned to some day build, but had found beyond their ability. Perhaps von Rath had been right. Perhaps the Venusians _were_ a master race, rightfully Overlords of Earth. For surely....

Then he thought again of the city of Sinnaty, its squalid streets, its mud-encrusted hovels, and a repulsion shook him. No, culture was not a matter of superior science alone. Other things entered into it. A truly great race displayed sociological wisdom as well; knew that civilizations are built not only on guns and swords, rockets and machines, instruments of destruction and impregnable bastions, but on the right of every slightest soul to live cleanly, warmly, comfortably, and happily at peace with his neighbors.

The science of the Daans was great, true; but it was cold and harsh, brutal. It was science for science's sake, not science harnessed for the greater welfare of living beings. This was the Daan's false ideology. There could be no peace between Venusians and earthmen until for this credo was substituted the ancient democratic principles of liberty, equality, fraternity.

Thus Stephen Duane's thoughts as he approached the huge _Oalumuo_.

* * * * *

The spaceport was a beehive of activity. Hordes of human slaves were completing an all-night labor of loading the rocketship's cargo bins with Earth wares for the Venusian marts. Over these sweating humans, Daan guards cracked whips and snarled commands. Venusian officials scurried to and fro, concluding last minute preparations for the flight.

Okuno accompanied Steve to the automatic lift which bore passengers to an air-lock some sixty feet above the surface of the ground, there halted and touched the younger man's breast with his open palm in the Daan equivalent of a handshake.

"Now farewell, O Eternal One," he whispered quietly, "May the Holy Four guide and protect thy efforts. You know what must be done."

Steve nodded. "I know. I also know how to get in touch with you. You'll await word from me on the ultra-wave?"

"Day and night," promised Okuno. "The movement you so gloriously started will not die a-borning. I shall see that the Revelation is spread throughout the human territories, that gathering-places are fixed in a hundred strategic spots where Women and Wild Ones may pledge allegiance to the new order. I shall give them every assistance within my power, waiting and praying for your order to strike."

"Good!" said Steve. "And when and if we succeed in immobilizing the spacefleet on Daan, that word will flash to you. Now--" He changed his tone abruptly--"I hear and obey, O Master. The message shall be transmitted promptly."

For a uniformed Daan had approached them and was beckoning Steve to the lift. Okuno nodded. "Very good. Farewell, Captain Huumo. A safe and pleasant journey."

"Captain Huumo" saluted smartly, then ascended the lift to disappear into the ship.

He had thought he was the last passenger to board the _Oalumuo_, but just as he entered the air-lock there was a flurry of excitement on the field below. A cavalcade of monocycles, with sirens wailing stridently, came roaring across the drome. Bells clanged throughout the ship, and over its intercommunicating audio system rasped hasty commands.

"_Stand by for a passenger! Locks open! Stand by!_"

Space sailors scurried and grunted. There sounded the whine of the rising lift, the asthmatic wheeze of a reopening air-lock. Then the belated passenger stepped into the spaceship, and....

Alternate waves of heat and cold swept over Stephen Duane. For he was staring squarely into the eyes of the Lady Loala--and in her answering gaze was startled recognition!

* * * * *

It was fortunate for Stephen Duane that the take-off of the transport had been delayed, for Loala made no effort to repress her exclamation of astonishment.

"Steve of Emmeity!" she gasped. "What are _you_--?"

But her question was drowned in the sudden clamor of signals, a metallic voice calling over the audio system, "_All hands to posts! Prepare to lift gravs! Clear ship for lift!_"

And an officer came bustling to the duo.

"Pardon, my Lady. Pardon, my Lord. If you will come this way, please--"

And as he swept the pair before him to the hydraulic hammocks wherein passengers must recline during the initial shock of acceleration, Steve seized the opportunity to whisper to the Lady Loala, "Silence, O Mistress of Delight, I beseech thee. I am on a dangerous mission. My true identity must not be revealed."

And though the silver-haired daughter of Venus frowned, her eyes fraught with question, she said nothing more. So the two took the hammocks assigned them, strapped themselves securely therein, and a few minutes later, with an ear-splitting roar and a rushing violence which for an instant seemed to halt the very pounding of blood in their veins, the mighty jet-tubes of the _Oalumuo_ exploded, catapulting their vessel outward from Earth into space.

But not for long could the curiosity of the Overlord be denied. Later, released from their hammocks, with the vessel hurtling the dark vaults of the void at a speed increasing toward the acceleration of 200,000 m.p.h. Duane later learned to be the craft's maximum velocity, the voluptuous Lady Loala turned to Steve imperiously.

* * * * *

"Come, Captain Huumo," she said, addressing him by the title a space sailor had used when releasing him from his hammock. "Follow me to my quarters. I would learn more of this 'mission' which carries you to Daan."

And when they had reached the suite of rooms reserved for her use, and had closed the doors behind them: "Well?" she demanded. "What means this, Steve of Emmeity? A secret mission? And on whose behalf, pray? Was it not _I_ who but recently assigned you to a mission of utmost importance?"

"It was, O my Lady," acknowledged Steve. "But that errand has already been concluded; this new duty springs from its accomplishment. On it I am sent by your companion in Council, the Overlord Okuno."

"The Chief Executioner? But why should he--Aaah!" Loala's gray-green eyes widened slightly. "Then it was you whose information warned us of the rebel uprising at Loovil, and enabled our forces to quell it? Well done, brave Steve of Emmeity! But still I do not understand. Why did you not report this directly to _me_?"

"Because," explained Steve, "upon my return to Sinnaty I was seized by guards and taken before the Chief Executioner. When I told Okuno of the dreadful secret I had learned at Loovil, he commissioned me to proceed immediately to Daan, that I might point out amongst the group recently exiled--"

"The Slumberers!" Excitement brightened Loala's eyes. "Now I understand! Then what we heard rumored was true? The Slumberers _were_ amongst those captured at Loovil, and exiled to Daan? And you, O Steve, you can identify them?"

"I can," declared Steve boldly. Then, in a softer voice, "I can and will, O loveliest daughter of Daan."

And again, as before, Loala proved herself mistress of all things save her own truly feminine emotions. At the tone of his voice, her features softened. Her eyes met his approvingly, and she whispered, "You have done well, Steve of Emmeity. I think the time is not far off when you shall have won that which you claim to desire. Do you--" There was a calculated allure in her sidelong glance--"Do you still find the prize worth striving for?"

"More so than ever, O Mistress of every delight," avowed Steve ardently ... and moved a step nearer her. "Must I continue to prove myself? Surely by now I have earned--"

It was a bold gambit he offered, one which might have boomeranged against his plans. But he was gambling on the inherent coquetry of the woman Loala. His psychology was good, for, as he had expected, she withdrew before him, and her lips lifted in a smile of light amusement.

"Not so quickly, O most presuming human," she laughed archly. "There is still your important mission to be accomplished. After that, well--then perhaps we shall see...."

* * * * *

To say that the following ten days, during which the spacecruiser _Oalumuo_ blazed its way across thirty-odd million miles of trackless ether, were uneventful would be but to demonstrate the relativity of all things.

To the Venusian space-navigators the trip was, perhaps, one of little moment. It passed smoothly, serenely, and without untoward incident. To the passengers who spent their waking hours dining and gaming, the trip may have been unexciting. To the workmen who performed mysterious functions deep within the bowels of the ship the trip may have seemed but hours of drudgery. But to Stephen Duane the trip was ten days of nerve-tingling adventure. Excitement stirring every sense, emotion and brain-fibre.

First, there was that never-to-be-forgotten moment when, led to the Observatory Deck by a junior officer eager to win a good place in the graces of the mock Daan "nobleman," Steve looked out upon that which every imaginative human has dreamed of some day beholding: the starry firmament of space as viewed from the void itself.

Stephen Duane was stricken speechless by the majesty of this sight. Here was no scattered handful of stars sprinkling the black emptiness like a sparse shaking of mica upon velvet. Here was a glorious backdrop of color, radiant, pulsating, gleaming with hues which shamed the efforts of the most daring rainbow. Clear of the encumbrance of Earth's blanketing atmosphere, the stars became tremendous globes burning hotly, fiercely, in the celestial vault. Flanking them on every side, forming a webwork so closely woven as to stagger the mind with its intricateness, were millions ... billions ... of myriad flaming companions.

Behind the _Oalumuo_ lay the blue-green orb of Earth, studded with the whirling coronet of its tiny lunar companion. Before, looming larger with each passing hour of flight, was the gleaming-white birthplace of the races of Daans. Elsewhere circling the solar giant which dominated the segment of space could be seen, methodically plodding their ordained courses, the other planets of Sol's family. Red Mars and mighty Jupiter ... ringed Saturn and far, frozen Uranus.

* * * * *

It was a sight to humble the proudest human. Seeing it, tiring never of its ever-changing splendor, Steve Duane renewed to himself his vow that he would do everything within his power to reclaim for an enslaved humanity the right to share in the glories of this celestial empire.

But he saw not only beauty on the trip. He studied other things more practical, as well. Under the guidance of young Thaamo, his space-mariner friend, he spent long days in traversing the _Oalumuo_ from stem to stern, from control-room to jet-chambers.

Much of what he saw upon these visits he did not completely understand. That was only natural. Not in a day nor a decade had the Daans solved the secret of space-travel. It lay within the power of no single brain to instantaneously comprehend mechanisms which had taken a hundred brains to invent, a thousand hands to build.

But Stephen Duane was, or had been, a scientist--and a brilliant one. He had that type of mind which, though it necessarily ignored details at the moment unsolveable, grasped prime essentials swiftly and surely.

On the more important points Steve centered his attention. He learned that the motors propelling the ship were atomic motors, and by deft questioning learned how that long-sought power had been harnessed by the Venusians. He studied the controls so carefully that in an emergency he might have taken his seat at the pilot's studs ... mentally blueprinted the general layout of the craft so that in days to come he might know in rude outline the sort of ship earthmen must build were they to go space-vagabonding.

[Illustration: Steve studied the controls carefully.]

He learned where the fuel was stored, and where were kept food and water supplies. He was shown--and memorized--the location of the air-conditioning system through whose viaducts re-freshened, re-oxygenated atmosphere was pumped to each nook and cranny of the ship. And though the armaments of the vessel were a military secret that might not be entrusted to even a traveling dignitary, he learned the locations of the principle ray-guns, and knew the points on a Venusian man-o'-war over which one must achieve mastery in order to seize that vessel.

Thus, though others may have been bored by the trip, to Steve Duane the ten days whisked by like dry leaves fleeing before an autumn gale. And finally the journey came to an end.

On the morning of the eleventh day, when he awakened to peer through his porthole, he discovered the now-familiar spangled firmament was blotted out by a mist of writhing gray. Fog banks, impenetrably thick, engulfed the craft like a veil. The clear, sharp brilliance of open ether was left behind, and the _Oalumuo_ was settling through miles of turgid white to its destination.

And when the gray evaporated, Steve looked down upon the landscape of Earth's humid, solar sister ... the planet Daan.