CHAPTER VII

_Prisoners_

From the garden where Tarrano was talking with Elza, the Mars man

Wolfgar led us to the tower in which we were to be imprisoned. Quite

evidently it had been placed in readiness for us. A tower of several

rooms, comfortably equipped. As we crossed the lower bridge and reached

the main doorway, Wolfgar unsealed a black fuse-box which stood there,

and pulled the relief-switch. The current, barring passage through every

door and window of the tower, was thrown off. We entered. My mind was

alert. This man of the Little People could not again turn on that

current without going outside. Once it was on, like an invisible wall it

would prevent our escape. But now--could not Georg and I with our

superior strength overpower this smaller man?

I caught Georg's glance as our captor led us into the lower room--an

apartment cut into the half-segment of a circle. Georg, at my elbow,

whispered: "No use! Where could we go? Could not get out of the

city----"

The hearing of the Little People is sharp. Wolfgar turned his head and

smiled. "You will be quite secure here--do not think of escape." His

bronzed fingers toyed with a cone at his belt. "Do not think of it."

Soon he left us, with the parting words: "You may use the upper circle

of balcony. The current rises only from its rail." He smiled and left

us. A pleasant smile; I felt myself liking this jailer of ours.

We took a turn of the tower. There were three bedrooms; a cookery, with

food and equipment wherein evidently it was intended that Elza could

prepare our meals; and two bath-apartments, one of them fairly

luxurious, with a pool almost large enough for a little swimming; tubes

of scent for the water and the usual temperature rods.

"Well," I remarked. "Obviously we are to be comfortable." I was trying

to be cheerful, but my heart was heavy with foreboding nevertheless.

"How long do you suppose they'll keep us here, Georg? And what----"

His impatient gesture stopped me. His mind was on Elza--alone down there

in the garden with Tarrano--as was mine, though I had not wanted to

speak of her.

There was an instrument room, up the circular incline in the peak of the

tower! We heard the hum of it; and when we went up there, the first

thing we saw was a mirror tuned in readiness for us to view the garden

we had just left. This strange Tarrano, giving Georg the visible proof

that he would keep his word and not harm Elza. We could see in this

mirror the image of the scene down there--Elza and Tarrano talking. But

could not hear the words--those were denied us. We saw the culprit

brought in; the punishment with the white-hot wire-lash, and a few

moments later Elza was with us.

During the hours which followed, we made no attempt to escape. Such an

effort would have been absurd. The current controls were outside, beyond

our reach. Visibly, we were free, with open, unbarred arches and

casements. But to pass through one of them, the barring current struck

you like a wall, with darting sparks when it was touched. As Wolfgar had

said, we had access to the upper balcony; the waist-high rail there,

with its needle-points of electrodes, sent up a visible stream of the

Nth Electrons--a dull glow by daylight; at night a riot of colors and

snapping sparks.

Through this barrage an inner vista of the city was visible; towers,

arcades, landing-stages and spider bridges a hundred feet or so above

us; the lower levels beneath, and through a canyon of walls we could

just make out a corner of the ground-plaza, with its trees and beds of

flowers.

A queerly flat little city--tropical with banana trees and vivid foliage

in every corner plot of the viaducts. At night it was beautiful with its

romantic spreading lights of soft rose and violet tubes, and there was a

fair patch of open sky above us--a deep purple at night, star-strewn.

Under other circumstances our imprisonment would not have been irksome.

But these hours, most critical of any in the history of the nations of

Earth, Venus and Mars, unfolded their momentous events while we were

forced there to helpless idleness. All sending apparatus of our

instrument room was permanently disconnected. But the news came in to us

from a hundred sources--rolled out for us in the announcer's droning

words; printed for permanent record upon the tapes and visible images of

it all constantly were flashing upon the mirrors.

We spent hours in that instrument room--one or the other of us was

almost always there. Save that we were ourselves isolated from

communication, we were in touch with everything. A whim of this Tarrano;

perhaps a strain of vanity that Elza should see and hear of these

events.

So much had occurred already during those hours of our trip over the

Polar ocean and back that we scarce could fathom it. But gradually we

pieced it together. Underlying it all, Tarrano's dream of universal

conquest was plain. In the Venus Cold Country he had started his

wide-flung plans. Years of planning, with plans maturing slowly,

secretly, and bursting now like a spreading ray-bomb upon the three

worlds at once.

In Venus, the Cold Country had conquered its governing Central State.

Tarrano's army there was in full control. The helio station in the Great

City was now reinstated. The Tarrano officials had already set up their

new government. With notification to the Earth and Mars that they

demanded recognition, they were sending the usual routine helio

dispatches and reports, quite as though nothing had occurred. The mails

would proceed as before, they announced; the one due to leave this

afternoon for the Earth was off on time.

It was all very clever propaganda for our Earth public consumption.

Tarrano--who was visiting our Earth at present, they said--had been

chosen Master of Venus. His government desired Earth's official

recognition, and asked for our proclamation of friendliness in answer to

their own. The present Ambassadors of the Venus Central State to the

Earth--there were three of them, one each in Great London, Tokyohama and

Mombozo--this new government requested that we send them back to the

Great City as prisoners of the Tarrano forces. Other Ambassadors,

representing the new government, would be sent to the Earth.

All this occurred during the first few hours of our imprisonment in the

tower. And during the day previous, at 7 P.M. this night--70° West

Meridian Time--the governments of our Earth met in Triple Conference in

Great London. Three rulers pro tem--White, Yellow and Black--to replace

the three who had been assassinated. The responsibility for the

assassinations was placed by the Council upon Tarrano. But this--from

his headquarters here in Venia--he blandly refused to accept, denying

all knowledge of the murders. Venia was the principal Venus immigrant

colony of Earth's Western Hemisphere. It had already been closed by our

Earth Council; its inhabitants interned as possible alien enemies,

pending diplomatic developments. This was the meaning of that line of

official vessels lying there to the north on guard. No one could leave

Venia, and for a day Venus refugees had been ordered into it from

everywhere.

At 8:40 this evening came from Great London our ultimatum to Tarrano. A

duplicate of it went to the Great City of Venus via the Hawaiian

Station. The Earth would not recognize the Tarrano government of Venus.

We would hold to our treaty of friendship with the Central State. We

would remain neutral for a time. But Tarrano himself we declared an

outlaw. His presence was required in Washington to stand trial for the

assassinations, and the delivery in Washington of Dr. Brende's notes and

model was demanded.

The ultimatum carried a day of grace; the alternate was a declaration of

war by the Earth, and our immediate attack upon Venia. It was the same

proposition which our War Director had previously made unofficially to

Tarrano while he was there in the garden with Elza and which Tarrano so

summarily had rejected.

The ultimatum came to us in the tower as we sat listening to the

announcer's measured tones. Elza exclaimed:

"But why do they wait? Father's model must be here. Tarrano, the leader

of all this--is here. Within the hour those vessels of war could sweep

in here--capture Tarrano--recover father's model----"

Georg interrupted quietly: "No one knows if the model is here. That

other car from the laboratory--we don't know where it went. The

plundered laboratory has been found, of course. No station up there is

near enough to have eavesdropped upon our capture, but the whole thing

must have come out by now. But that aero with the model may have met an

inter-planetary vessel--the model may be on the way to Venus by now."

"Georg," I exclaimed, "do _you_ know the workings of that model? Could

you build another without the notes?"

He nodded solemnly. "Yes. And they know that, in Washington. I could

build another. But they know by now, that I, too, am in Tarrano's

hands----"

"And he will kill you, of course, to destroy that knowledge and keep the

secret for himself----" I did not say it aloud, for Elza's sake; but I

thought it, and I realized that Georg was thinking it also.

Dr. Brende's secret of longevity was the crux of all this turmoil--the

lever by which Tarrano was raising himself. Scores of facts amid the

tumultuous news of these hours showed us that. For months, throughout

Venus, Tarrano had spread the insidious propaganda that he alone had the

secret of immortality--that when he was made ruler, he would use it for

the benefit of his followers.

Converts to Tarrano's cause were everywhere. In the Central State many

welcomed the coming of his army. And now from the Great City his

propaganda was being sent to the Earth. Murmurs from our own Earth

public were beginning to be heard. The ignorant lower classes seemed

ready to swallow anything. A new beneficent ruler who guaranteed

everlasting life! Throughout the ages people have flocked to that same

standard!

In Mars, much the same was transpiring. At almost her closest point to

the Earth these days, Red Mars sent us constant helios from the midnight

sky. The Little People had appointed a new ruler to take the place of

him who had been assassinated. The Council there put the assassination

to unknown causes. Tarrano was held blameless. The Little People

declared themselves neutral. But they gave prompt official recognition

to the Tarrano government of Venus. And everywhere throughout Mars the

public was stirred by the thought of everlasting life.

"Fools!" muttered Georg. "That Little People government--they'll have a

revolution of their own to fight at this rate. Can't you see what

Tarrano is doing? Working everywhere with propaganda--working on the

public--the gullible public ready always to swallow anything----"

On Earth, lay the crisis. Our own governments only had taken a firm

stand. What could Tarrano do with this ultimatum? Either he must yield

himself and the Brende secret, or a war in which he would be immediately

overwhelmed here in Venia would follow.

It was nearly ten o'clock that first night. Elza had gone to the

balcony. We heard her call us softly, but with obvious tenseness. Out

there we found her pointing excitedly. A few hundred feet away and

somewhat below us was a tower similar to our own. In one of its oblong

casements a glow of rose-light showed. And within the glow was the

full-length figure of a girl. We could see her plainly, though a small

image at that distance with the naked eye, and our personal vision

instruments had been taken from us. A slender, imperial figure--a young

girl seemingly about Elza's age. Dressed in a shimmering blue kirtle,

short after the Venus fashion, with long grey stockings beneath. A girl

with flowing waves of pure white hair to her waist--a girl of the Venus

Central State. She seemed, like ourselves, a prisoner. An aura or

barrage was around her tower. She stood there, back in the tower room,

full in the rose-light as though surreptitiously trying to attract our

attention.

As we gathered on our balcony, behind the glow of our own barrage, she

gestured to us vehemently. And then, with one white arm, she began to

semaphore. One arm, and then with both. Georg and I recognized it--the

Secondary Code of the Anglo-Saxon Army. We murmured the letters aloud as

she gave them:

"_I am----_" Abruptly she stopped. A violent gesture, and she

disappeared; her rose-glow went out; her tower casement was dark. On a

lower spider bridge Tarrano had appeared. He was crossing it on foot

toward our tower, his small erect form advancing hastelessly, with the

figure of Argo behind him.

He reached our lower entrance, cut off the barrage there, and entered.

Argo replaced the barrage, lingered an instant, gazing upward at us with

his habitual leer. Then he retraced his steps across the bridge and

disappeared.

A moment more, and in our lounging apartment Tarrano faced us.