At first the land below was a shadow seen through mist. As the three spaceships of Lord Clane Linn's expedition settled through the two thousand mile atmosphere, the vagueness went out of the scene. Mountains looking like maps rather than territories took form. The vast sea to the north sank beyond the far horizon of swamps and marshes, hills and forests. The reality grew wilder and wilder, but the pit was directly ahead now, an enormous black hole on a long narrow plain.
The ships settled to the ground on a green meadow half a mile from the nearest edge of the pit, which lay to the northeast. Some six hundred men and women, three hundred of them slaves, emerged from the vessels, and a vast amount of equipment was unloaded. By nightfall habitations had been erected for Clane and the three slave women who attended him, for two knights and for three temple scientists and five scholars not connected with a religious organization. In addition a corral had been built for the slaves, and the two companies of soldiers were encamped in a half circle around the main camp.
Sentries were posted, and the spaceships withdrew to a height of about five hundred feet. All night long, a score of fires, tended by trusted slaves, brightened the darkness. Dawn came uneventfully, and slowly the camp took up the activities of a new day. Clane did not remain to direct it. Immediately after breakfast, horses were saddles; and he and twenty-five men, including a dozen armed soldiers, set out for the nearby home of the gods.
They were all rank unbelievers, but they had proceeded only a few hundred yards when Clane noticed that one of the riders was as pale as lead. He reined up beside him. "Breakfast upset you?" he asked gently. "Better go back to camp and rest today."
Most of those who were destined to continue watched the lucky man trot off out of sight into the brush.
The evenness of the land began to break. Gashes opened in the earth at their feet, and ran off at a slant towards the pit, which was still not visible beyond the trees. Straight were those gashes, too straight; as if long ago irresistible objects had hurtled up out of the pit each at a different angle, each tearing the intervening earth as it darted up out of the hell below.
Clane had a theory about the pits. Atomic warfare by an immeasurably superior civilization. Atomic bombs that set up a reaction in the ground where they landed, and only gradually wore themselves out in the resisting soil, concrete and steel of vast cities. For centuries the remnants roiled and flared with deadly activity. How long? No one knew. He had an idea that if star maps of the period could be located an estimate of the time gap might be possible. The period involved must be very great, for several men that he knew had visited pits on Earth without ill effects.
The god fires were dying down. It was time for intellectually bold men to begin exploring. Those who came first would find the treasures. Most of the pits on Earth were absolutely barren affairs overgrown with weeds and brush. A few showed structures in their depths, half buried buildings, tattered walls, mysterious caverns. Into these a handful of men had ventured—and brought back odd mechanical creations, some obviously wrecks, a few that actually worked, all tantalizing in their suggestion of a science marvelous beyond anything known to the temple scholars.
It was this pit on Venus, which they were now approaching, that had always excited the imagination of the adventurers. For years visitors had crouched behind lead or concrete barriers and peered with periscopes into the fantastic depths below. The nameless city that had been there must have been built into the bowels of the earth. For the bottom was a mass of concrete embankments, honeycombed with black holes that seemed to lead down into remoter depths.
Clane's reverie died down. A soldier in front of him let out a shout, reined in his horse and pointed ahead. Clane urged his horse up to the rise on top of which the man had halted. And reined in his horse.
He was looking down a gently sloping grassy embankment. It ran along for about a hundred feet. And then there was a low concrete fence.
Beyond was the pit.
At first they were careful. They used the shelter of the fence as a barrier to any radiation that might be coming up from below. Clane was the exception. From the beginning he stood upright, and peered downward through his glasses into the vista of distance below. Slowly, the others lost their caution, and finally all except two artists were standing boldly on their feet gazing into the most famous home of the gods.
It was not a clear morning. A faint mist crawled along hiding most of the bottom of the pit. But it was possible, with the aid of glasses, to make out contours, and to see the far precipice nearly seven miles away.
About midmorning, the mists cleared noticeably, and the great sun of Venus shone down into the hole, picking out every detail not hidden by distance. The artists, who had already sketched the main outlines, settled down to work in earnest. They had been selected for their ability to draw maps, and the watchful Clane saw that they were doing a good job. His own patience, product of his isolated upbringing, was even greater than theirs. All through that day he examined the bottom of the pit with his glasses, and compared the reality with the developing drawings on the drawing boards.
By late afternoon, the job was complete. And the results satisfied every hope he had had. There were no less than three routes for getting out of the pit on foot in case of an emergency. And every tree and cave opening below was clearly marked in its relation to other trees and openings. Lines of shrubs were sketched in, and each map was drawn to scale.
That night, too, passed without incident. The following morning Clane signaled one of the spaceships to come down, and, shortly after breakfast, the two temple scientists, one knight, three artists, a dozen soldiers, a crew of fifteen and himself climbed aboard. The ship floated lightly clear of the ground. And, a few minutes later, nosed over the edge of the pit, and headed downward.
They made no attempt to land, but simply cruised around searching for radioactive areas. Round and round at a height that varied between five hundred feet and a daring two hundred feet. It was daring. The spaceship was their sole instrument for detecting the presence of atomic energy. Long ago, it had been discovered that when a spaceship passed directly above another spaceship, the one that was on top suffered a severe curtailment of its motive power. Immediately it would start to fall.
In the case of spaceships, the two ships would usually be moving along so swiftly that they would be past each other almost immediately. Quickly, then, the disabled ship would right itself and proceed on its way.
Several attempts had been made by military scientists to utilize the method to bring down enemy spaceships. The attempts, however, were strictly limited by the fact that a ship which remained five hundred feet above the source of energy endured so slight a hindrance that it didn't matter.
Nine times their ship made the telltale dip, and then, for as long as was necessary they would cruise over and over the area trying to define its limits, locating it on their maps, marking off first the danger zone, then the twilight zone and finally the safety zone. The final measure was the weakness or strength of the impulse.
The day ended, with that phase of their work still uncompleted. And it was not until noon the next day that details were finally finished. Since it was too late to make a landing, they returned to camp and spent the afternoon sleeping off their accumulated fatigue.
It was decided that the first landing would be made by one hundred men, and that they would take with them supplies for two weeks. The site of the landing was selected by Clane after consultation with the knights and the scientists. From the air it looked like a large concrete structure with roof and walls still intact, but its main feature was that it was located near one of the routes by which the people on foot could leave the pit. And it was surrounded by more than a score of cavelike openings.
His first impression was of intense silence. Then he stepped out of the ship onto the floor of the pit. And there was a kind of pleasure in listening to the scrambling sounds of the men who followed him. The morning air quickly echoed to the uproar of a hundred men breathing, walking, moving—and unloading supplies.
Less than an hour after he first set foot into the soft soil of the pit, Clane watched the spaceship lift from the ground, and climb rapidly up above five hundred feet. At that safety height it leveled off, and began its watchful cruise back and forth above the explorers.
Once again no hasty moves were made. Tents were set up and a rough defense marked off. The food was sealed off behind a pile of concrete. Shortly before noon, after an early lunch, Clane, one knight, one temple scientist and six soldiers left the encampment and walked towards the "building" which, among other things, had drawn them to the area.
Seen from this near vantage point it was not a building at all, but an upjutment of concrete and metal, a remnant of what had once been a man-made burrow into the depths of the earth, a monument to the futility of seeking safety by mechanical rather than intellectual and moral means. The sight of it depressed Clane. For a millennium it had stood here, first in a seething ocean of unsettled energy, and now amid a great silence it waited for the return of man.
He paused to examine the door, then motioned two soldiers to push at it. They were unable to budge it, and so, waving them aside, he edged gingerly past the rusted door jamb. And was inside.
He found himself in a narrow hallway, which ran along for about eight feet, and then there was another door. A closed door this time. The floor was concrete, the walls and ceiling concrete, but the door ahead was metal. Clane and the knight, a big man with black eyes, shoved it open with scarcely an effort, though it creaked rustily as they did.
They stood there, startled. The interior was not dark as they had expected, but dimly lighted. The luminous glow came from a series of small bulbs in the ceiling. The bulbs were not transparent, but coated with an opaque coppery substance. The light shone through the coating.
Nothing like it had ever been seen in Linn or elsewhere. After a blank period, Clane wondered if the lights had turned on when they opened the door. They discussed it briefly, then shut the door. Nothing happened. They opened the door again, but the lights did not even flicker.
They had obviously been burning for centuries.
With a genuine effort, he suppressed the impulse to have the treasures taken down immediately and taken to the camp. The deathly silence, the air of immense antiquity brought the sane realization that there was no necessity to act swiftly here. He was first on this scene.
Very slowly, almost reluctantly, he turned his attention from the ceiling to the room itself. A wrecked table stood in one corner. In front of it stood a chair with one leg broken and a single strand of wood where the seat had been. In the adjoining corner was a pile of rubble, including a skull and some vaguely recognizable ribs which merged into a powdery skeleton. The relict of what had once been a human being lay on top of a rather long, all-metal rod. There was nothing else in the room.
Clane strode forward, and eased the rod from under the skeleton. The movement, slight though it was, was too much for the bone structure. The skull and the ribs dissolved into powder, and a faint white mist hovered for a moment, then settled to the floor.
He stepped back gingerly, and, still holding the weapon, passed through the door, and along the narrow hallway, and so out into the open.
The outside scene was different. He had been gone from it fifteen minutes at most, but in that interval a change had taken place. The spaceship that had brought them was still cruising around overhead. But a second spaceship was in the act of settling down beside the camp.
It squashed down with a crackling of brush and an "harumph!" sound of air squeezing out from the indentation it made in the ground. The door opened, and, as Clane headed for the camp, three men emerged from it. One wore the uniform of an aid-de-camp to supreme headquarters, and it was he who handed Clane a dispatch pouch.
The pouch contained a single letter from his elder brother, Lord Jerrin, commander-in-chief of Linnan armies on Venus. In the will of the late Lord Leader, Jerrin had been designated to become coruler with Tews when he attained the age of thirty, his sphere of administration to be the planets. His powers in Linn were to be strictly secondary to those of Tews. His letter was curt:
Honorable brother:
It has come to my attention that you have arrived on Venus. I need hardly point out to you that the presence of a mutation here at this critical period of the war against the rebels is bound to have an adverse effect. I have been told that your request for this trip was personally granted by the Lord Adviser Tews. If you are not aware of the intricate motives that might inspire Tews to grant such permission, then you are not alert to the possible disasters that might befall our branch of the family. It is my wish and command that you return to Earth at once.
As Clane looked up from the letter, he saw that the commander of the spaceship which had brought the messenger, was silently signaling to him. He walked over and drew the captain aside.
"I didn't want to worry you," the man said, "but perhaps I had better inform you that this morning, shortly after your expedition entered the pit, we saw a very large body of men riding along several miles to the northeast of the pit. They have shown no inclination to move in this direction, but they scattered when we swooped over them, which means that they are Venusian rebels."
Clane stood frowning for a moment, then nodded his acceptance of the information. He turned away, into his spacious tent, to write an answer to his brother that would hold off the crisis between them until the greater crisis that had brought him to Venus shattered Jerrin's disapproval of his presence.
That crisis was due to break over Jerrin's still unsuspecting head in just about one week.
In high government and military circles in Linn and on Venus, the succession of battles with the Venusian tribesmen of the three central islands were called by their proper name: war! For propaganda purposes, the word, rebellion, was paraded at every opportunity. It was a necessary illusion. The enemy fought with the ferocity of a people who had tasted slavery. To rouse the soldiery to an equal pitch of anger and hatred there was nothing that quite matched the term, rebel.
Men who had faced hideous dangers in the swamps and marshes could scarcely restrain themselves at the thought that traitors to the empire were causing all the trouble. Lord Jerrin, an eminently fair man, who admired a bold and resourceful opponent, for once made no attempt to discourage the false impression. He recognized that the Linnans were the oppressors, and at times it made him physically ill that so many men must die to enforce a continued subjection. But he recognized, too, that there was no alternative.
The Venusians were the second most dangerous race in the solar system, second only to the Linnans. The two peoples had fought each other for three hundred and fifty years, and it was not until the armies of Raheinl had landed on Uxta, the main island of Venus some sixty years before that a victory of any proportions was scored. The young military genius was only eighteen at the time of the battle of the Casuna marsh. Swift conquest of two other islands followed, but then his dazzled followers in Linn provoked the civil war that finally ended after nearly eight years in the execution of Raheinl by the Lord Leader. The latter proceeded with a cold ferocity to capture four more island strongholds of the Venusians. In each one he set up a separate government, revived old languages, suppressed the common language—and so strove to make the islanders think of themselves as separate peoples.
For years they seemed to—and then, abruptly, in one organized uprising they seized the main cities of the five main islands. And discovered that the Lord Leader had been more astute than they imagined.
The military strongholds were not in the cities, as they had assumed, and as their spies had reported. The centers of Linnan power were located in an immense series of small forts located in the marshes. These forts had always seemed weak outposts, designed to discourage raiders rather than rebellions. And no Venusian had ever bothered to count the number of them. The showy city forts, which were elaborately attacked turned out to be virtual hollow shells. By the time the Venusians rallied to attack the forts in the marshes it was too late for the surprise to be effective. Reinforcements were on the way from Earth. What had been planned as an all-conquering coup became a drawn-out war. And long ago, the awful empty feeling had come to the Venusians that they couldn't win. Month after month the vise of steel weapons, backed by fleets of spaceships and smaller craft tightened noticeably around the ever narrowing areas which they controlled. Food was becoming more scarce, and a poor crop year was in prospect. The men were grim and tense, the women cried a great deal and made much of their children, who had caught the emotional overtones of the atmosphere of fear.
Terror bred cruelty. Captive Linnans were hanged from posts, their feet dangling only a few inches from the ground. The distorted dead faces of the victims glared at the distorted hate-filled faces of their murderers.
The living knew that each account would be paid in rape and death. They were exacting their own payments in advance.
The situation was actually much more involved than it appeared. Some six months before, the prospect of an imminent triumph for Jerrin had penetrated to the Lord Adviser Tews. He pondered the situation with a painful understanding of how the emotions of the crowd might be seduced by so momentous a victory. After considerable thought he resurrected a request Jerrin had made more than a year before for reinforcements. At the time Tews had considered it expedient to hasten the Venusian war to a quick end, but second thought brought an idea. With a pomp of public concern for Jerrin he presented the request to the patronate and added his urgent recommendations that at least three legions be assembled to assist "our hardpressed forces against a skillful and cunning enemy."
He could have added, but didn't, that he intended to deliver the reinforcements and so participate in the victory. The patronate would not dare to refuse to vote him a triumph co-equal with that already being planned for Jerrin. He discussed his projected trip with his mother, the Lady Lydia, and, in accordance with her political agreement with Clane, she duly passed the information on to the mutation.
Lydia had no sense of betraying her son. She had no such intention. But she knew that the fact that Tews was going to Venus would soon be common knowledge, and so, sardonically, she reported to Clane less than two weeks before Tews was due to leave.
His reaction startled her. The very next day he requested an audience with Tews. And the latter, who had adopted an affable manner with the late Lord Leader's grandchildren, did not think of refusing Clane's request for permission to organize an expedition for Venus.
He was surprised when the expedition departed within one week of the request, but he thought that over too, and found it good.
The presence of Clane on Venus would embarrass Jerrin. The birth of a mutation twenty-five years before into the ruling family of Linn had caused a sensation. His existence had dimmed the superstitions about such semihumans, but the fears of the ignorant were merely confused. Under the proper circumstances people would still stone them—and soldiers would become panicky at the thought of the bad luck that struck an army, the rank and file of which saw a mutation just before a battle.
He explained his thoughts to Lydia, adding, "It will give me a chance to discover whether Jerrin was implicated in any way in the three plots against me that I have put down in the past year. And if he was, I can make use of the presence of Clane."
Lydia said nothing, but the falseness of the logic disturbed her. She, too, had once planned against Clane. For months now, she had questioned the blind impulse of mother love that had made her slave and conspire to bring Tews to power. Under Tews, the government creaked along indecisively while he writhed and twisted in a curious and ungraceful parody of modest pretense at establishing a more liberal government. His plans of transition were too vague. An old tactician herself, it seemed to her that she could recognize a developing hypocrite when she saw one.
"He's beginning to savor the sweetness of power," she thought, "and he realizes he's talked too much."
The possibilities made her uneasy. It was natural for a politician to fool others, but there was something ugly and dangerous about a politician who fooled himself. Fortunately, little that was dangerous could happen on Venus. Her own investigations had convinced her that the conspiracies against Tews had involved no important families, and besides Jerrin was not a man who would force political issues. He would be irritated by the arrival of Tews. He would see exactly what Tews wanted, but he would do nothing about it.
After the departure of Tews and his three legions, she settled herself to the routine tasks of governing for him. She had a number of ideas for re-establishing firmer control over the patronate, and there were about a hundred people whom she had wanted to kill for quite a long while.
During the entire period of the crisis on Venus, life in Linn went on with absolute normalcy.
Tews took up his quarters in the palace of the long-dead Venusian emperor, Heerkel, across town from the military headquarters of Jerrin. It was an error of the kind that startles and starts history. The endless parade of generals and other officers that streamed in and out of Mered passed him by. A few astute individuals made a point of taking the long journey across the city, but even some of those were in obvious haste, and could scarcely tolerate the slow ceremoniousness of an interview with their ruler.
A great war was being fought. Officers in from the front lines took it for granted that their attitude would be understood. They felt remote from the peaceful pomp of Linn itself. Only the men who had occasion to make trips to Earth comprehended the vast indifference of the populations to the war on Venus. To the people at home it was a far-away frontier affair. Such engagements had been fought continuously from the time of their childhood, only every once in a while the scene changed.
His virtual isolation sharpened the suspicions with which Tews had landed. And frightened him. He hadn't realized how widespread was the disaffection. The plot must be well advanced, so advanced that thousands of officers knew about it, and were taking no chances on being caught with the man who, they must have decided, would be the loser. They probably looked around them at the enormous armies under the command of Jerrin. And knew that no one could defeat the man who had achieved the loyalty of so many legions of superb soldiers.
Swift, decisive action, it seemed to Tews, was essential. When Jerrin paid him a formal visit a week after his arrival, he was startled at the cold way in which Tews rejected his request that the reinforcements be sent to the front for a final smashing drive against the marsh-bound armies of the Venusians.
"And what," said Tews, noting with satisfaction the other's disconcertment, "would you do should you gain the victory which you anticipate?"
The subject of the question, rather than the tone, encouraged the startled Jerrin. He had had many thoughts about the shape of the coming victory, and after a moment he decided that that was actually why Tews had come to Venus, to discuss the political aspects of conquest. The other man's manner he decided to attribute to Tews' assumption of power. This was the new leader's way of reacting to his high position.
Briefly, Jerrin outlined his ideas. Execution of certain leaders directly responsible for the policy of murdering prisoners, enslavement only of those men who had participated intimately in the carrying out of the executions. But all the rest to be allowed to live without molestation, and in fact to return to their homes in a normal fashion. At first each island would be administered as a separate colony, but even during the first phase the common language would be restored and free trade permitted among the islands. The second phase, to begin in about five years, and widely publicized in advance, should be the establishment of responsible government on the separate islands, but those governments would be part of the empire, and would support the occupation troops. The third phase should start ten years after that, and would include the organization of one central all-Venusian administration for the islands, with a federal system of government. And this system, too, would have no troops of its own, and would be organized entirely within the framework of the empire.
Five years later, the fourth and final phase could begin. All families with a twenty year record of achievement and loyalty could apply for Linnan-Venusian citizenship, with all the privileges and opportunities for self-advancement that went with it.
"It is sometimes forgotten," said Jerrin, "that Linn began as a city state, which conquered neighboring cities, and held its power in them by a gradual extension of citizenship. There is no reason why this system should not be extended to the planets with equal success."
He finished, "All around us is proof that the system of absolute subjection employed during the past fifty years has been a complete failure. The time has come for new and more progressive statesmanship."
Tews almost stood up in his agitation, as he listened to the scheme. He could see the whole picture now. The late Lord Leader had in effect willed the planets to Jerrin; and this was Jerrin's plan for welding his inheritance into a powerful military stronghold, capable, if necessary, of conquering Linn itself.
Tews smiled a cold smile. Not yet, Jerrin, he thought. I'm still absolute ruler, and for three years yet what I say is what will happen. Besides, your plan might interfere with my determination to re-establish the republic at an opportune moment. I'm pretty sure that you, with all your liberalistic talk, have no intention of restoring constitutional government. It is that ideal which must be maintained at all costs.
Aloud, he said, "I will take your recommendations under advisement. But now, it is my wish that in future all promotions be channeled through me. Any commands that you issue to commanding officers in the field are to be sent here for my perusal, and I will send them on."
He finished with finality, "The reason for this is that I wish to familiarize myself with the present positions of all units and with the names of the men in charge of them. That is all. It has been a privilege to have had this conversation with you. Good day, sir."
Move number one was as drastic as that.
It was only the beginning. As the orders and documents began to arrive, Tews studied them with the assiduity of a clerk. His mind reveled in paper work, and the excitement of his purpose made every detail important and interesting.
He knew this Venusian war. For two years he had sat in a palace some hundred miles farther back, and acted the role of commander-in-chief, now filled by Jerrin. His problem, therefore, did not include the necessity of learning the situation from the beginning. He had merely to familiarize himself with the developments during the past year and a half. And, while numerous, they were not insurmountable.
From the first day, he was able to accomplish his primary purpose: replacement of doubtful officers with one after another of the horde of sycophants he had brought with him from Linn. Tews felt an occasional twinge of shame at the device, but he justified it on the grounds of necessity. A man contending with conspiring generals must take recourse to devious means. The important thing was to make sure that the army was not used against himself, the Lord Adviser, the lawful heir of Linn, the only man whose ultimate purposes were not autocratic and selfish.
As a secondary precaution, he altered several of Jerrin's troop dispositions. These had to do with legions that Jerrin had brought with him from Mars, and which presumably might be especially loyal to him personally. It would be just as well if he didn't know their exact location during the next few critical weeks.
On the twelfth day he received from a spy the information he had been waiting. Jerrin, who had gone to the front on an inspection tour two days before was returning to Mered. Tews actually had only a hour's warning. He was still setting the stage for the anticipated interview when Jerrin was announced. Tews smiled at the assembled courtiers. He spoke in a loud voice:
"Inform his excellency that I am engaged at the moment but that if he will wait a little I shall be happy to receive him."
The remark, together with the knowing smile that went with it, started a flutter of sensation through the room. It was unfortunate that Jerrin had failed to wait for his message to be delivered, but was already halfway across the room. He did not pause until he was standing in front of Tews. The latter regarded him with an indolent insolence.
"Well, what is it?"
Jerrin said quietly, "It is my unpleasant duty, my Lord Adviser, to inform you that it will be necessary to evacuate all civilians from Mered without delay. As a result of rank carelessness on the part of certain front-line officers, the Venusians have achieved a breakthrough north of the city. There will be fighting in Mered before morning."
Some of the ladies, and not a few of the gentlemen who were present uttered alarmed noises, and there was a general movement toward exits. A bellow from Tews stopped the disgraceful stampede. He settled heavily back in his chair. He smiled a twisted smile.
"I hope," he said, "that the negligent officers have been properly punished."
"Thirty-seven of them," said Jerrin, "have been executed. Here is a list of their names, which you might examine at your leisure."
Tews sat up. "Executed!" He had a sudden awful suspicion that Jerrin would not lightly have executed men who had long been under his command. With a jerk he tore the seal from the document and raced his gaze down the column. Every name on it was that of one of his satellite-replacements of the past twelve days.
Very slowly, he raised his eyes, and stared at the younger man. Their gazes met and held. The flinty blue eyes of Tews glared with an awful rage. The steel gray eyes of Jerrin were remorseless with contempt and disgust.
"Your most gracious excellency," he said in a soft voice, "one of my Martian legions has been cut to pieces. The carefully built-up strategy and envelopment of the past year is wiped out. It is my opinion that the men responsible for that had better get off of Venus, and back to their pleasures in Linn—or what they have feared so foolishly will really transpire."
He realized immediately it was a wild statement. His words stiffened Tews. For a moment the big man's heavy face was a mask of tensed anger, then with a terrible effort he suppressed his fury. He straightened:
"In view of the seriousness of the situation," he said, "I will remain in Mered and take charge of the forces on this front until further notice. You will surrender your headquarters to my officers tomorrow morning."
"If your officers," said Jerrin, "come to my headquarters, they will be whipped into the streets. And that applies to anyone from this section of the city."
He turned and walked out of the room. He had not a clear idea in his head as to what he was going to do about the fantastic crisis that had arisen.
Clane spent those three weeks, when the Venusian front was collapsing, exploring a myriad of holes in the pit. And, although the threat from the wandering parties of Venusians did not materialize, he moved his entire party into the pit for safety's sake. Guards were posted at the three main routes leading down into the abyss, and two spaceships maintained a continuous vigil over the countryside around the pit, and over the pit itself.
None of the precautions was an absolute guarantee of safety, but they added up fairly well. Any attempt of a large body of troops to come down and attack the camp would be so involved an affair that there would be plenty of time to embark everyone in spaceships, and depart.
It was not the only thing in their favor. After sixty years under Linnan rule, and although they themselves worshiped a sea god called Submerne, the Venusians respected the Linnan atom gods. It was doubtful if they would risk divine displeasure by penetrating into one of the pit homes of the gods.
And so the six hundred people in the pit were cut off from the universe by barriers of the mind as well as by the sheer inaccessibility of the pit. Yet they were not isolated. Daily one of the spaceships made the trip to Mered, and when it floated back into the depths of the pit Clane would go aboard and knock on door after door inside. Each time he would be cautiously admitted by a man or woman, and the two would hold a private conference. His spies never saw each other. They were always returned to Mered at dusk, and landed one by one in various parts of the city.
The spies were not all mercenaries. There were men in the highest walks of the empire who regarded the Linn mutation as the logical heir of the late Lord Leader. To them Tews was merely a stopgap who could be put out of the way at the proper time. Again and again such individuals, who belonged to other groups, had secretly turncoated after meeting Clane, and become valuable sources of information for him.
Clane knew his situation better than his well-wishers. However much he might impress intelligent people the fact was that a mutation could not become ruler of the empire. Long ago, accordingly, he had abandoned some early ambitions in that direction, retaining only two main political purposes:
He was alive and in a position of advantage because his family was one of the power groups in Linn. Though he had no friends among his own kin, he was tolerated by them because of the blood relationship. It was to his interest that they remained in high position. In crises he must do everything possible to help them.
That was purpose number one. Purpose number two was to participate in some way in all the major political moves made in the Linnan empire, and it was rooted in an ambition that he could never hope to realize. He wanted to be a general. War in its practical aspects, as he had observed it from afar, seemed to him crude and unintelligent. From early childhood he had studied battle strategy and tactics with the intention of reducing the confusion to a point where battles could be won by little more than irresistible maneuver.
It was a pleasure to combine purposes number one and two.
He arrived in Mered on the day following the clash between Tews and Jerrin, and took up residence in a house which he had long ago thoughtfully reserved for himself and his retinue. He made the move as unobtrusively as possible, but he did not delude himself that his coming would be unremarked.
Other men, too, were diabolically clever. Other men maintained armies of spies, as he did. All plans that depended upon secrecy possessed the fatal flaw of fragility. And the fact that they sometimes succeeded merely proved that a given victim was not himself an able man. It was one of the pleasures of life to be able to make all the preparations necessary to an enterprise within the sight and hearing of one's opponent.
Without haste he set about making them.
When Tews was first informed of Clane's arrival in Mered, about an hour after the event, his interest was dim. More important—or so they seemed—reports were arriving steadily from other sources about the troop dispositions Jerrin was making for the defense of the city. What puzzled Tews was that some of the information came from Jerrin in the form of copies of the orders he was sending out.
Was the man trying to re-establish relations by ignoring the fact that a break had taken place? It was an unexpected maneuver, and it could only mean that the crisis had come before Jerrin was ready. Tews smiled coldly as he arrived at that conclusion. His prompt action had thrown the opposition into confusion. It should not be difficult to seize Jerrin's headquarters the following morning with his three legions, and so end the mutiny.
By three o'clock Tews had sent out the necessary orders. At four, a very special spy of his, the impoverished son of a knight, reported that Clane had sent a messenger to Jerrin, requesting an interview that evening. Almost simultaneously other spies reported on the activity that was taking place at Clane's residence. Among other things several small round objects wrapped in canvas were brought from the spaceship into the house. More than a ton of finely ground copper dust was carried in sacks into a cement outhouse. And finally a cube of material of the type used to build temples was carefully lowered to the ground. It must have been hot as well as heavy, because the slaves who took it into the house used slings and lead-lined asbestos gloves.
Tews pondered the facts, and the very meaninglessness of them alarmed him. He suddenly remembered vague stories he had heard about the mutation, stories to which he had hitherto paid no attention.
It was not a moment to take chances.
Ordering a guard of fifty men to attend him, he set out for Clane's Mered home.
His first sight of the place startled Tews. The spaceship which, according to his reports, had flown away, was back. Suspended from a thick cable attached to its lower beam was a large gondola of the type slung under spaceships when additional soldiers were to be transported swiftly. They were used in space to carry freight only.
Now, it lay on the ground, and slaves swarmed over it. Not until he was on the estate itself did Tews see what they were doing. Each man had a canvas bag of copper dust suspended around his neck, and some kind of liquid chemical was being used to work the copper dust into the semitransparent hull of the carrier.
Tews climbed out of his chair, a big, plump man with piercing blue eyes. He walked slowly around the gondola, and the longer he looked the more senseless was the proceeding.
And, oddly, nobody paid the slightest attention to him. There were guards around, but they seemed to have received no instructions about spectators. They lounged in various positions, smoking, exchanging coarse jests, and otherwise quite unaware that the Lord Adviser of Linn was in their midst.
Tews did not enlighten them. He was puzzled and undecided, as he walked slowly towards the house. Again, no effort was made to interfere with his passage. In the large inner hallway, several temple scientists were talking and laughing. They glanced at him curiously, but it did not seem to occur to them that he did not belong.
Tews said softly, "Is Lord Clane inside?"
One of the scientists half turned, then nodded over his shoulder, casually. "You'll find him in the den working on the benediction."
There were more scientists in the living room. Tews frowned inwardly as he saw them. He had come prepared for drastic action, if necessary. But it would be indiscreet to arrest Clane with so many temple scientists as witnesses. Besides, there were too many guards.
Not that he could imagine any reason for an arrest. This looked like a religious ceremony, being readied here.
He found Clane in the den, a medium sized room leading onto a patio. Clane's back was to him, and he was bending intently over a cube of temple building material. Tews recognized it from the description his spies had given him as the "hot," heavy object that the sweating slaves had handled so carefully in transporting it from the spaceship.
On the table near the "cube" were six half balls of coppery substance.
Tews had not time to look at them closely, for Clane turned to see who had come in. He straightened with a smile.
"Your excellency," he said. He bowed. He came forward. "This is a pleasure."
Tews was disappointed. He had heard that the mutation could be surprised into a condition of extreme nervousness, as the result of his affliction. There was no nervousness. It was obvious that this pale, intense, fragile looking young man had overcome his childish weakness. Or else he was calm with the calmness of a clear conscience. Tews began to feel better. Whatever the explanation there seemed nothing dangerous here.
"I was passing by," he said, "and, having been informed of your presence in Mered, decided to, uh, drop in." He waved a hand. "What is all this? This gondola and such."
Clane bowed again, but his expression was grave when he straightened, his eyes sorrowful.
"As your excellency is aware," he said, "some ten thousand officers and men of the fourth Martian legion were captured by the Venusians. This morning the Venusians were observed to be erecting thousands of posts on which they intend to hang these brave, unfortunate men, without"—he suddenly sounded indignant— "without so much as a religious ceremony."
He went on quietly, "The gondola will be towed over to the scene of the hanging, and a benediction will be spoken over it from the spaceship at the moment that the men are dying." He sighed heavily. "It is unfortunately all that we can do."
He finished: "I am going tonight to ask my brother, Jerrin, for permission to perform this merciful act since I am informed that nothing else can be."
All the vague fears that had troubled the Lord Adviser were gone as if they had never existed. He nodded sanctimoniously. "I am sure," he said, "that the noble Jerrin will grant your worthy request."
He hesitated, anxious now to leave; and yet— He looked around, conscious that he should take nothing for granted. He walked over to the table and stared frowningly down at the hollow half balls that lay there. They were very possibly the round objects that had been brought in from the spaceship wrapped in canvas. And now they had been cut in half, or opened. The balls were not completely empty. Each one contained a fragile appearing internal structure, which seemed to come to a focus in the center. But whatever had been supported by the spidery web of transparent stuff was not now visible.
Tews did not look very hard. These were details for temple scientists.
Once more he turned away—and saw a metallic rod standing against the near wall. He walked over and picked it up. Its lightness startled him. It was, he estimated, about four feet long, and the thin end was startlingly bright, a jewel rather than a metallic brightness.
Tews turned to look questioningly at Clane. The young man came over.
"We are all hoping," he said, "that this rod, which we found in the pit of the gods, is the legendary rod of fire. According to the legend, a basic requirement was that the wielder be pure in heart, and that, if he was, the gods would at their own discretion, but under certain circumstances, activate the rod."
Tews nodded soberly, and put the thing back where he had found it.
"It is with pleasure," he said, "that I find you taking these interests in religious matters. I think it important that a member of our illustrious family should attain high rank in the temples, and I wish to make clear that no matter what happens"—he paused significantly—"no matter what happens, you may count me as your protector and friend."
He returned to Heerkel's palace, but, being a careful, thoughtful man, who knew all too well that other people were not always as pure in heart as they pretended, he left his spies to watch out for possible subversive activity.
He learned in due course that Clane had been invited for dinner by Jerrin, but had been received with that cold formality which had long distinguished the relationship between the two brothers. One of the slave waiters, bribed by a spy, reported that once, during the meal, Clane urged that a hundred spaceships be withdrawn from patrols and assigned to some task which was not clear to the slave.
There was something else about opening up the battle lines to the northeast, but this was so vague that the Lord Adviser did not think of it again until, shortly after midnight, he was roused from sleep by the desperate cries of men, and the clash of metal outside his bedroom.
Before he could more than sit up, the door burst open, and swarms of Venusian soldiers poured inside.
The battle lines to the northeast had been opened up.
It was the third night of his captivity, the hanging night. Tews quivered as the guards came for him about an hour after dusk, and led him out into the fire-lit darkness. He was to be first. As his body swung aloft, twenty thousand Venusians would tug on the ropes around the necks of ten thousand Linnan soldiers. The writhings and twistings that would follow were expected to last ten or more minutes.
The night upon which Tews gazed with glazed eyes was like nothing he had ever seen. Uncountably numerous fires burned on a vast plain. In the near distance he could see the great post upon which he was to be executed. The other posts began just beyond it. There were rows of them, and they had been set up less than five feet apart, with the rows ten feet from each other, to make room for camp fires that lighted the scene.
The doomed men were already at their posts, tied hand and foot, the ropes around their necks. Tews could only see the first row with any clearness. They were all officers, that first line of victims; and they stood at ease almost to a man. Some were chatting with those near them, as Tews was led up, but the conversation stopped as they saw him.
Never in his life had Tews seen such consternation flare into so many faces at once. There were cries of horror, groans of incredulous despair.
Tews did not expect to be recognized, but it was possible the men had been taunted with his identity. Their eyes were curious, but his three-day beard and the night with its flickering fire shadows gave them little opportunity to be sure.
No one said anything as he mounted the scaffold. Tews himself stood stiff and pale as the rope was fitted around his neck. He had ordered many a man to be hanged in his time. It was a different and thrilling sensation to be the victim not the judge.
The passion of anger that came was rooted in a comprehension that had been gathering in his brain for three days: the comprehension that he wouldn't be where he was if he had actually believed that a resurrection [insurrection?] was in progress. Instead, he had counted on Jerrin maintaining his forces against the enemy, while his three legions seized control from Jerrin.
Deep down inside, he had believed in Jerrin's honesty.
He had sought to humiliate Jerrin, so that he could nullify the rightful honors of a young man with whom he did not wish to share the power of the state.
His desperate fury grew out of the consciousness—too late—that Jerrin had in reality been plotting against him.
That chaos of thought would have raged on but for one thing: At that moment he happened to glance down, and there, below the platform, with a group of Venusian leaders, stood Clane.
The shock was too great to take all in one mental jump. Tews glared down at the slim young man, and the picture was absolutely clear now. There had been a treasonable deal between Jerrin and the Venusians.
He saw that the mutation was in his temple scientist fatigue gown, and that he carried the four foot metal "rod of fire." That brought a memory. He had forgotten all about the benediction in the sky. He looked up, but the blackness was unrelieved. If the ship and the gondola were up there they were part of the night, invisible and unattainable.
His feverish gaze flashed down again at the mutation. He braced himself, but before he could speak, Clane said:
"Your excellency, let us waste no time with recriminations. Your death would renew the civil war in Linn. That is the last thing we desire, as we shall prove tonight, beyond all your suspicions."
Tews had hold of himself suddenly. With a flare of logic, he examined the chances of a rescue. There was none. If spaceships should try to land troops, the Venusians need merely pull on their ropes, and hang the bound men—and then turn their vast, assembled army to hold off the scattered attacks launched from scores of spaceships. That was one maneuver they had undoubtedly prepared against; and since it was the only possible hope, and it couldn't take place, then Clane's words were a meaningless fraud.
He forgot that, for the Venusian emperor, a grim-faced man of fifty or so was climbing the platform steps. He stood there for minutes while silence gradually fell on the enormous crowds. Then he stepped to the front group of megaphones and spoke in the common language of Venus:
"Fellow Venusians, on this night of our vengeance for all the crimes that have been committed against us by the empire of Linn, we have with us an agent of the commanding general of our vile enemy. He has come to us with an offer, and I want him to come up here and tell it to you, so that you can laugh in his face as I did."
There was a mass shriek from the darkness: "Hang him! Hang him, too!"
Tews was chilled by that fierce cry, but he was forced to admire the cunning of the Venusian leader. Here was a man whose followers must many times have doubted his wisdom in fighting the war to a finish. His face, even in those shadows, showed the savage lines of obstinacy, of a badly worried general, who knew what criticism could be. What an opportunity this was for gaining public support.
Clane was climbing the steps. He waited until silence once more was restored, and then said in a surprisingly strong voice:
"The atom gods of Linn, whose agent I am, are weary of this war. I call upon them to end it NOW!"
The Venusian emperor started towards him. "That isn't what you were going to say," he cried. "You—"
He stopped. Because the sun came out.
The sun came out. Several hours had passed, since it had sunk behind the flaming horizon of the northern sea. Now, in one leap it had jumped to the sky directly overhead.
The scene of so many imminent deaths stood out as in the brightness of noon. All the posts with their victims still standing beneath them, the hundreds of thousands of Venusian spectators, the great plain with the now visible coastal city in the distance—were brilliantly lighted.
The shadows began on the other side of the plain. The city could only be seen by vague light reflections. The sea beyond to the north and the mountains to the south were as deep as ever in blackness.
Seeing that darkness, Tews realized that it was not the sun at all above, but an incredible ball of fire, a source of light that, in this cubic mile of space equaled the sun in magnitude of light.
The gods of Linn had answered the call made to them.
His realization ended. There was a cry from scores of thousands of throats, a cry stranger and more horrible than any sound that Tews had ever heard. There was fear in it, and despair, and an awful reverence. Men and women alike started to sink to their knees.
At that moment the extent of the defeat that was here penetrated to the Venusian leader. He let out a terrible cry of his own—and leaped towards the catch that would release the trapdoor on which Tews stood. From the corner of one eye, Tews saw Clane bring up the rod of fire.
There was no fire, but the emperor dissolved. Tews could never afterwards decide what actually happened, yet he had a persistent memory of a human being literally turning into liquid stuff. Liquid that collapsed onto the platform, and burned a hole through the wood. The picture was so impossible that he closed his eyes, and never again quite admitted the reality to himself.
When he opened his eyes again, spaceships were coming down from the sky. To the now prostrate Venusians, the sudden appearance of fifty thousand Linnan soldiers among them must have seemed like a miracle as great as the two they had already witnessed.
An entire reserve army was captured that night, and, though the war on other islands dragged on and on, the great island of Uxta was completely captured within a few weeks.
Clane's words had been proved beyond all suspicions.
On a cloudy afternoon a week later, Clane was among the distinguished Linnans who attended the departure of the flotilla of ships, which was to accompany the Lord Adviser Tews back to Earth.
Tews and his retinue arrived, and as he came up to the platform, a group of temple Initiates burst into a paroxysm of singing. The Lord Adviser stopped, and stood for a minute, a faint smile on his face, listening.
The return to Earth, quietly suggested by Clane, suited him completely. He would take with him the first tidings of the Venusian victory. He would have time to scotch any rumors that the Lord Adviser himself had been humiliatingly captured. And, above all, he would be the one who would insist upon full triumph honors for Jerrin.
He was amazed that he had temporarily forgotten his old cunnings about things like that. As he climbed aboard the flagship, the Initiates broke into a new spasm of sound.
It was clear that the atom gods, too, were satisfied.