The Chessmen of Mars
Manator than A-Kor. It is his mother's blood that makes him so. She was
a slave girl from Gathol."
"Gathol!" exclaimed Tara of Helium. "Lies Gathol close by Manator?"
"Not close, yet still the nearest country," replied Lan-O. "About
twenty-two degrees* east, it lies."
* Approximately 814 Earth Miles.
"Gathol!" murmured Tara, "Far Gathol!"
"But you are not from Gathol," said the slave girl; "your harness is
not of Gathol."
"I am from Helium," said Tara.
"It is far from Helium to Gathol," said the slave girl, "but in our
studies we learned much of the greatness of Helium, we of Gathol, so it
seems not so far away."
"You, too, are from Gathol?" asked Tara.
"Many of us are from Gathol who are slaves in Manator," replied the
girl. "It is to Gathol, nearest country, that the Manatorians look for
slaves most often. They go in great numbers at intervals of three or
seven years and haunt the roads that lead to Gathol, and thus they
capture whole caravans leaving none to bear warning to Gathol of their
fate. Nor do any ever escape from Manator to carry word of us back to
Gahan our jed."
Tara of Helium ate slowly and in silence. The girl's words aroused
memories of the last hours she had spent in her father's palace and the
great midday function at which she had met Gahan of Gathol. Even now
she flushed as she recalled his daring words.
Upon her reveries the door opened and a burly warrior appeared in the
opening--a hulking fellow, with thick lips and an evil, leering face.
The slave girl sprang to her feet, facing him.
"What does this mean, E-Med?" she cried, "was it not the will of A-Kor
that this woman be not disturbed?"
"The will of A-Kor, indeed!" and the man sneered. "The will of A-Kor is
without power in The Towers of Jetan, or elsewhere, for A-Kor lies now
in the pits of O-Tar, and E-Med is dwar of the Towers."
Tara of Helium saw the face of the slave girl pale and the terror in
her eyes.
CHAPTER XII
GHEK PLAYS PRANKS
While Tara of Helium was being led to The Towers of Jetan, Ghek was
escorted to the pits beneath the palace where he was imprisoned in a
dimly-lighted chamber. Here he found a bench and a table standing upon
the dirt floor near the wall, and set in the wall several rings from
which depended short lengths of chain. At the base of the walls were
several holes in the dirt floor. These, alone, of the several things he
saw, interested him. Ghek sat down upon the bench and waited in
silence, listening. Presently the lights were extinguished. If Ghek
could have smiled he would have then, for Ghek could see as well in the
dark as in the light--better, perhaps. He watched the dark openings of
the holes in the floor and waited. Presently he detected a change in
the air about him--it grew heavy with a strange odor, and once again
might Ghek have smiled, could he have smiled.
Let them replace all the air in the chamber with their most deadly
fumes; it would be all the same to Ghek, the kaldane, who, having no
lungs, required no air. With the rykor it might be different. Deprived
of air it would die; but if only a sufficient amount of the gas was
introduced to stupefy an ordinary creature it would have no effect upon
the rykor, who had no objective mind to overcome. So long as the excess
of carbon dioxide in the blood was not sufficient to prevent heart
action, the rykor would suffer only a diminution of vitality; but would
still respond to the exciting agency of the kaldane's brain.
Ghek caused the rykor to assume a sitting position with its back
against the wall where it might remain without direction from his
brain. Then he released his contact with its spinal cord; but remained
in position upon its shoulders, waiting and watching, for the kaldane's
curiosity was aroused. He had not long to wait before the lights were
flashed on and one of the locked doors opened to admit a half-dozen
warriors. They approached him rapidly and worked quickly. First they
removed all his weapons and then, snapping a fetter about one of the
rykor's ankles, secured him to the end of one of the chains hanging
from the walls. Next they dragged the long table to a new position and
there bolted it to the floor so that an end, instead of the middle, was
directly before the prisoner. On the table before him they set food and
water and upon the opposite end of the table they laid the key to the
fetter. Then they unlocked and opened all the doors and departed.
* * * * *
When Turan the panthan regained consciousness it was to the realization
of a sharp pain in one of his forearms. The effects of the gas departed
as rapidly as they had overcome him so that as he opened his eyes he
was in full possession of all his faculties. The lights were on again
and in their glow there was revealed to the man the figure of a giant
Martian rat crouching upon the table and gnawing upon his arm.
Snatching his arm away he reached for his short-sword, while the rat,
growling, sought to seize his arm again. It was then that Turan
discovered that his weapons had been removed--short-sword, long-sword,
dagger, and pistol. The rat charged him then and striking the creature
away with his hand the man rose and backed off, searching for something
with which to strike a harder blow. Again the rat charged and as Turan
stepped quickly back to avoid the menacing jaws, something seemed to
jerk suddenly upon his right ankle, and as he drew his left foot back
to regain his equilibrium his heel caught upon a taut chain and he fell
heavily backward to the floor just as the rat leaped upon his breast
and sought his throat.
The Martian rat is a fierce and unlovely thing. It is many-legged and
hairless, its hide resembling that of a newborn mouse in repulsiveness.
In size and weight it is comparable to a large Airedale terrier. Its
eyes are small and close-set, and almost hidden in deep, fleshy
apertures. But its most ferocious and repulsive feature is its jaws,
the entire bony structure of which protrudes several inches beyond the
flesh, revealing five sharp, spadelike teeth in the upper jaw and the
same number of similar teeth in the lower, the whole suggesting the
appearance of a rotting face from which much of the flesh has sloughed
away.
It was such a thing that leaped upon the breast of the panthan to tear
at his jugular. Twice Turan struck it away as he sought to regain his
feet, but both times it returned with increased ferocity to renew the
attack. Its only weapons are its jaws since its broad, splay feet are
armed with blunt talons. With its protruding jaws it excavates its
winding burrows and with its broad feet it pushes the dirt behind it.
To keep the jaws from his flesh then was Turan's only concern and this
he succeeded in doing until chance gave him a hold upon the creature's
throat. After that the end was but a matter of moments. Rising at last
he flung the lifeless thing from him with a shudder of disgust.
Now he turned his attention to a hurried inventory of the new
conditions which surrounded him since the moment of his incarceration.
He realized vaguely what had happened. He had been anaesthetized and
stripped of his weapons, and as he rose to his feet he saw that one
ankle was fettered to a chain in the wall. He looked about the room.
All the doors swung wide open! His captors would render his
imprisonment the more cruel by leaving ever before him tempting
glimpses of open aisles to the freedom he could not attain. Upon the
end of the table and within easy reach was food and drink. This at
least was attainable and at sight of it his starved stomach seemed
almost to cry aloud for sustenance. It was with difficulty that he ate
and drank in moderation.
As he devoured the food his eyes wandered about the confines of his
prison until suddenly they seized upon a thing that lay on the table at
the end farthest from him. It was a key. He raised his fettered ankle
and examined the lock. There could be no doubt of it! The key that lay
there on the table before him was the key to that very lock. A careless
warrior had laid it there and departed, forgetting.
Hope surged high in the breast of Gahan of Gathol, of Turan the
panthan. Furtively his eyes sought the open doorways. There was no one
in sight. Ah, if he could but gain his freedom! He would find some way
from this odious city back to her side and never again would he leave
her until he had won safety for her or death for himself.
He rose and moved cautiously toward the opposite end of the table where
lay the coveted key. The fettered ankle halted his first step, but he
stretched at full length along the table, extending eager fingers
toward the prize. They almost laid hold upon it--a little more and they
would touch it. He strained and stretched, but still the thing lay just
beyond his reach. He hurled himself forward until the iron fetter bit
deep into his flesh, but all futilely. He sat back upon the bench then
and glared at the open doors and the key, realizing now that they were
part of a well-laid scheme of refined torture, none the less
demoralizing because it inflicted no physical suffering.
For just a moment the man gave way to useless regret and foreboding,
then he gathered himself together, his brows cleared, and he returned
to his unfinished meal. At least they should not have the satisfaction
of knowing how sorely they had hit him. As he ate it occurred to him
that by dragging the table along the floor he could bring the key
within his reach, but when he essayed to do so, he found that the table
had been securely bolted to the floor during the period of his
unconsciousness. Again Gahan smiled and shrugged and resumed his eating.
* * * * *
When the warriors had departed from the prison in which Ghek was
confined, the kaldane crawled from the shoulders of the rykor to the
table. Here he drank a little water and then directed the hands of the
rykor to the balance of it and to the food, upon which the brainless
thing fell with avidity. While it was thus engaged Ghek took his
spider-like way along the table to the opposite end where lay the key
to the fetter. Seizing it in a chela he leaped to the floor and
scurried rapidly toward the mouth of one of the burrows against the
wall, into which he disappeared. For long had the brain been
contemplating these burrow entrances. They appealed to his kaldanean
tastes, and further, they pointed a hiding place for the key and a lair
for the only kind of food that the kaldane relished--flesh and blood.
Ghek had never seen an ulsio, since these great Martian rats had long
ago disappeared from Bantoom, their flesh and blood having been greatly
relished by the kaldanes; but Ghek had inherited, almost unimpaired,
every memory of every ancestor, and so he knew that ulsio inhabited
these lairs and that ulsio was good to eat, and he knew what ulsio
looked like and what his habits were, though he had never seen him nor
any picture of him. As we breed animals for the transmission of
physical attributes, so the Kaldanes breed themselves for the
transmission of attributes of the mind, including memory and the power
of recollection, and thus have they raised what we term instinct, above
the level of the threshold of the objective mind where it may be
commanded and utilized by recollection. Doubtless in our own subjective
minds lie many of the impressions and experiences of our forebears.
These may impinge upon our consciousness in dreams only, or in vague,
haunting suggestions that we have before experienced some transient
phase of our present existence. Ah, if we had but the power to recall
them! Before us would unfold the forgotten story of the lost eons that
have preceded us. We might even walk with God in the garden of His