CHAPTER V

Captured

The matriarch's voice dwindled into silence. For an awkward moment none spoke. Then said Jon, leader of the Wild Ones, "Great are the records of thy Clan, O Mother. Often I have pondered on these matters, nor solved them not. We have no legends like these; only one that before the Daans came to Earth, we Men were the lords of humankind."

The priestess Beth was forged of stronger stuff than Steve Duane had believed or dared hope. The knowledge thrust upon her must have come as a staggering shock, but she met it unflinching.

"But, Mother Maatha," was her only demurrer, "if the Ancient Ones and the gods were Men, then what are those which _we_ call men? And--what means this Revelation to our mode of living?"

"Our men," replied the Mother, "are the inbred males born to our breeding-mothers. They are not true Men; this is a truth known to Clan Mothers for many generations. But what could we do? How else perpetuate our Clan? It was forbidden that Women should have contact with the Wild Ones. And it is certain that these--" She stared at Jon with evident repugnance--"are not cast in the mould of the gods we worship."

Steve stepped forward, placed a hand on the shoulder of the hesitant Jon.

"Judge not a man by his garments, O Mother of Women, nor by your own high standards. Bathe this creature, cleanse the blood from his wounds, anoint him with sweet-scented oil, shave the hair from his lips and chin, and beneath his layers of grime you will find one wrought in the image of the gods.

"You have asked, priestess Beth, what the Revelation means to your mode of living? I will tell you. No more must Women war on Men, nor Men attack and seek to linber Women. A new era is proclaimed by us, the Slumberers. Henceforth must Wild Ones and Women join in common amity and purpose!"

"Join in--!"

"Even more," continued Steve boldly, "there shall no longer be castes of Women. No longer must Women be forced to adopt the professions of warrior, worker or breeder, but _each_ shall have the privilege of being wooed and won by a Man, her mate!"

A new radiance shone in the eyes of the Mother. She whispered, "Now are the prophecies fulfilled, indeed. A mate for each Woman! Now is the empty loneliness of sterile wombs banished forever--"

"But how," demanded Beth shrewdly, "is this 'wooing' done? Must we first subdue the Men, and then--?"

"Each shall choose the one she wants," Steve advised her, "then win him as she can. Thus, also, it was in the old days."

Beth looked at Jon and wrinkled her nose. She gazed through a portal of the Mother's _hoam_ and studied a spindling pet male peering inquisitively in at the meeting, and sniffed contemptuously. She frowned.

She said, "And you--O Dwain? Did _you_ not claim to be a Man?"

"That is right."

"Very well, then," said the priestess. "I will make my choice of mates now. I choose _you_!"

* * * * *

"N-now, wait a minute--" began Steve.

"Shall I come to your _hoam_ tonight?" asked the dust-gold maid with alarming ingenuousness, "Or will you attend me in mine? I do not understand these matters so well, O Dwain. But one of the breeding-mothers can teach me the Rites--"

Lafferty stole a sidelong glance at Steve's suddenly flaming cheeks, and chuckled, "Okay, buster. Let's hear you talk your way out of this one!" Steve coughed nervously and changed the subject.

"You--er--you must not be so hasty, priestess," he said. "There are other--er--more important matters. About the Daans, for instance. Though we gain unity ourselves, yet we are a conquered people. Before we can rebuild humankind's lost civilization, we must first hurl the invader from Earth. To do this, we need force.

"Jon--can you communicate with other tribes of Wild Ones? Call them hither for a general conclave?"

The bearded outlander nodded thoughtfully. "Yes. I think so. It will not be easy. Our tribes are scattered and far-flung, nor is there great unity amongst us, but--yes. It can be done. It will take many days and nights, though."

"How about you, Mother Maatha? Can you summon Women of other Clans to a grand council at Fautnox?"

"I can, O Wise One. The Mother Mairlee of Lextun is my sworn sister; we made the Pilgrimage together. The Tensee Clans owe us a debt of honor since we aided them in defending their mountain stronghold, Ashful, against an attacking horde of Wild Ones as many snows ago as I have fingers. These will surely come at my call, as will the Clina and Yana Clans, and I will bid them bring all others they can persuade. But this will take time, O Dwain. The way is long and the roads bad."

Von Rath coughed gently.

"If I might make a suggestion, _Leutnant_--?"

"Yes?"

"Since we plot to overthrow _ein herrenvolk_, would it not be well to learn more about those whom we plan to attack? These Daans are a mystery to us--"

"Absolutely right!" agreed Steve. "And that's how I had planned to spend the weeks that must intervene before our forces can be drawn together. Mother, where lies the nearest Daan encampment?"

"To the north of Fautnox," said the Mother promptly, "two days walking. In a city of the Ancients called Sinnaty, where once dwelt a mighty Clan known as the Reds."

"_Reds!_" exclaimed von Rath. "You hear, Duane? Then our _Fuehrer_ was right in warning the world against the menace of Bolshevik Russia! Small wonder man's civilization toppled, if even your nation succumbed to--"

Chuck Lafferty made a rude noise with his lips.

"Guess again, 'kraut," he chuckled. "These Reds was different. They did their scrapping with bats and baseballs, and their boss was a 'Dictator' named McKechnie. Cincinnati, eh? Boy, many's the time I've parked my tootsies in a bed in the Netherland Plaza.[4] Steve, remember the night we--"

[Footnote 4: Netherland Plaza: One of Cincinnati's finest hotels. It boasts the Queen City's tallest "sky-scraper", a structure known as the "Carew Tower".--Ed.]

But his words had struck a responsive chord. A gasp escaped the Mother Maatha.

"Nedlunplaza! Yes, that is it! That is the name of the Daans' fortress in Sinnaty!"

Steve Duane grunted satisfaction.

"In that case," he said, "call the room-clerk and make reservations. We're on our way to Cincy!"

* * * * *

Two days later, they were not merely on their way to the one-time Queen City of the Ohio but almost there.

There were eight in their party. Duane and Lafferty and von Rath--whom, despite their pledge of mutual aid, Steve preferred to keep under surveillance--headed the group. The warrior captain, Jain, commanded a trio of fighting-women who had been assigned to guide and guard them on their adventure. Eighth member of the expedition was the priestess Beth. Over Steve's protest she had insisted on coming.

"It is my right," she declared, "as a priestess. If I go not, the journey is without favor in the sight of Jarg."

"But--" argued Steve.

"Moreover," insisted the girl, "one must go to serve as interpreter and counsel. You Slumberers know not the ways of those through whose territory you must pass."

"Just the same--" fumed Steve.

"Furthermore," concluded Beth firmly, "I have chosen you as my mate. And it is written that a Woman must stand by her Man at all times, nor desert him in hour of peril."

There was no answer to that. So, completely floored and none too gracefully, Steve surrendered.

But however little he may have desired her presence, now that she was here, Steve Duane was forced to concede that her aid had proven invaluable. It was she who, by reading of the stars, had reoriented them after an evening of blundering aimlessly through a trackless forest. It was she who stalled the attack of a small band of Rovers, addressing the ruler of these unattached Women in their own slurred dialect and bidding her take her followers to the Mother at Fautnox. It was she, also, who snared wild hares in seines of hair and cotton, dug scrawny _taters_ from furrowless fields, and prepared meals for them all. For these, she explained, were the rightful duties of a priestess.

Only in one respect did her company prove more of an embarrassment than a pleasure: the persistence with which she attached herself to him. This was not so bad in the daytime. As a matter of fact, it was good to tramp through leafy dells with the keen, live scent of summer vibrant in your nostrils, watching the sudden scamperings of curious chipmunks startled by your passage, and the arrow-flight of swift-flushing birds; hearing the muted murmur of river waters rushing pell-mell to a distant sea as it had in countless ages past and would for endless aeons; feeling the soft warmth of a shoulder firm against your own in carefree comradeship. But it was--well, awkward to say the least, thought Steve, to seek your blanket at night and find it already occupied by one who looked up at you with drowsy expectancy, and damned uncomfortable to spend the night huddled by the glowing embers of a campfire.

* * * * *

Chuck heard Steve's grumbling with a stare of blank astonishment.

"Well, cripes!" he exploded. "_You_ ain't got nothing to squawk about! You said yourself we was stuck here in this new world forever, didn't you? Well, then--?"

"That's not the point," wrangled Steve. "If we want to change an entire culture and substitute a brand new design for living, we must set the example ourselves in our behavior towards these women. We can't confuse liberty with license."

"You mean," said Chuck, "everything's got to be done fair and square, eh? Marriage, and all that stuff?"

"That's the idea."

"Well, then--" Lafferty stroked his jaw--"why not that? I got eyes in my head. You like the kid, don't you?"

Steve answered, "That's the hell of it; I do! If we had met in a different age, under other circumstances--"

"No dice, pal! If you like her, why don't you set a real honest-to-John example by marrying her? Show the Women that the new system _will_ pan out."

"Because," explained Steve bitterly, "it wouldn't be fair to Beth. I'd be getting her under false pretenses. You see, she _still_ thinks I'm a god. She's doing this purely and simply because she considers it her duty. Beth's not in love with me. She doesn't even know what love _is_!"

Lafferty shrugged and turned away.

"Well, okay," he said. "It's your worry. All I got to say is: Some guys want _everything_!"

And so, as the third twilight of their march neared, they approached the stronghold of the Daans. The wild trails gave way to highways of cracked "creet" through which hopeful spires of grass had broken in patches ... the highway bore them to a deserted village Beth called "Covton", which once, Steve knew, had been the populous city of Covington, Kentucky ... and they stood, at last, on the southern bank of the rolling Ohio looking into the enemy-held fortress of Sinnaty.

In the happier day, not one but a half dozen spans had bridged this river. They were gone now; their rust-encrusted skeletons still thrust redly from the water like the bones of drowned monsters. But where Twentieth Century man had thrown his cantilevers, where a later, barbaric era had allowed them to decay and fall, now stood a gleaming anomaly which brought a gasp to Steve Duane's lips.

"Sweet snakes!" he exclaimed. "Am I nuts, or do you see what I see? A glass bridge!"

"The answer," said Chuck, awed, "is yes. To both."

But the German, von Rath, was staring at the edifice narrowly. Now he said, "A bridge, true. But glass, _nein_!"

"What? But it's transparent!"

"Exactly! _Too_ transparent--do you see what I mean? There is no diffraction whatsoever in that structure."

"But--but if it ain't glass--" stammered Chuck.

"Then it must be," recognized Duane, "plastic! Like the _lutice_ of our day, but of an infinitely superior quality. Right, von Rath? But--but if they can create such things as this, we have been underestimating them. What sort of beings _are_ these Daans--"

"Magnificent!" The German's eyes were gleaming with admiration. "What _kultur_, what refinement! Truly, they must be a great people who built this structure--"

And:

"Don't look now," interrupted Chuck somewhat acidly, "but if you'd peek more and peep less you can get a gander at the bozos you're yapping about. 'Cause, unless I'm completely cockeyed, there's a bunch of 'em coming toward us right now!"

All followed the direction of his gaze. He had made no mistake. A band of men, previously concealed by a bulwark of the bridge, was now approaching them. Or--were they men? They were manlike in general build and structure, being neither shorter nor taller than Duane, apparently weighing about the same, but--there were differences.

* * * * *

Evolution on Venus must have somewhere diverged from the path taken by Earth's anthropological mankind, and chosen a pathway derivative from amphibious or piscatorial forebears. For the Daans were dead-white of complexion, their hair was a bleached thatch of silver, their eyes so lowly pigmented that there was no sharp distinction between eyeball and iris. The forward jut of their jaws gave them a truculent, almost carp-like look, and between their fingers--now hovering above the hilts of curiously-wrought weapons tucked in their girdles--stretched translucent films of flesh, a faint, vestigial webbing inherited from aqueous ancestors.

Beth shrank as she looked upon the newcomers, and an exclamation, less of fear than of awed hatred, broke from her lips.

"O Dwain! Now you have seen them, let us flee--"

"Steady!" said Steve soothingly. "Hold tight. It's all right, my priestess."

Chuck said, "Whaddya mean, hold tight, Steve? Do we just stand here and let them fish-on-legs catch us? Looks to me like it would be smarter to take it on the lam."

"We wait!" ordered Steve succinctly. "Our desire is to get into their fortress, isn't it? I know no better way." He took a step forward, raised an arm in greeting. "Peace, O Daans!" he said. "We are eight wayfarers seeking lodging for the night. Yonder city looks inviting. Can we--?"

He at the head of the armed band grated his men to a halt, stared at the earthlings suspiciously. Then:

"Whence come you?" he demanded.

"From Loovil," equivocated Steve. "We come from the territory of Tucki--"

"So?" rasped the Daan captain. And he crisped swift commands to his followers in the Earth tongue. "We have been fortunate to find those we sought so soon. Seize them! Bind them well that we may take them to the Overlords!"