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TARRANO
THE CONQUEROR
BY RAY CUMMINGS
COPYRIGHT, 1930, BYA. C. McCLURG & CO.CHICAGO
IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, THE BRITISH EMPIRE AND THE PAN AMERICANUNION.
Printed in the United States of America
To Hugo Gernsback, scientist, author and publisher, whose constantefforts in behalf of scientific fiction have contributed so largelyto its present popularity, this tale is gratefully dedicated.
FOREWORD
_In "Tarrano the Conqueror" is presented a tale of the year 2430 A.D.--atime somewhat farther beyond our present-day era than we are beyondColumbus' discovery of America. My desire has been to create for you theimpression that you have suddenly been plunged forward into thattime--to give you the feeling Columbus might have had could he have reada novel of our present-day life.
To this end I have conceived myself a writer of that future time,addressing his contemporary public. You are to imagine yourself readinga present day translation of my original text--a translation so freethat a thousand little colloquialisms will have crept into it that couldnot possibly have their counterparts in the year 2430.
Apart from the text, you will occasionally find brief explanatoryfootnotes. Conceive them as having been put there by the translator.
If you find parts of this tale unusual or bizarre, please remember thatwe are living now in a comparatively ignorant day. The tale is notintended to be fantastic or full of new and strange ideas. I have usednothing but those developments of our present-day civilization to whichwe are all looking forward as logical probabilities--woven them into apicture of what life in America very probably will be five hundred yearsfrom now. To that extent, the tale itself is intended to be only a lovestory of adventure and romance--written, not for you, but for thatfuture audience._
RAY CUMMINGS.
CONTENTS
I. The New Murders
II. Warning
III. Spy in the House
IV. To the North Pole
V. Outlawed Flight
VI. Man of Destiny
VII. Prisoners
VIII. Unknown Friend
IX. Paralyzed!
X. Georg Escapes
XI. Recaptured
XII. Tara
XIII. Love--and Hate
XIV. Defying Worlds
XV. Escape
XVI. Playground of Venus
XVII. Violet Beam of Death
XVIII. Passing of a Friend
XIX. Waters of Eternal Peace
XX. Unseen Menace
XXI. Love, Music--and a Warning
XXII. Revolution!
XXIII. First Retreat
XXIV. Attack on the Palace
XXV. Immortal Terror
XXVI. Black Cloud of Death
XXVII. Tarrano The Man
XXVIII. Thing in the Forest
XXIX. A Woman's Scream
XXX. The Monster
XXXI. Industriana
XXXII. Departure
XXXIII. First Assault
XXXIV. Invisible Assailants
XXXV. Attack on the Power House
XXXVI. City of Ice Besieged
XXXVII. Battle
TARRANO THE CONQUEROR
CHAPTER I
_The New Murders_
I was standing fairly close to the President of the Anglo-Saxon Republicwhen the first of the new murders was committed. The President fellalmost at my feet. I was quite certain then that the Venus man at myelbow was the murderer. I don't know why, call it intuition if you will.The Venus man did not make a move; he merely stood beside me in thepress of the throng, seemingly as absorbed as all of us in what thePresident was saying.
It was late afternoon. The sun was setting behind the cliffs across theriver. There were perhaps a hundred and fifty thousand people withinsight of the President, listening raptly to his words. It was at ParkSixty, and I was standing on the Tenth Level.[1] The crowd packed alltwelve of the levels; the park was black with people. The Presidentstood on a balcony of the park tower. He was no more than a few hundredfeet above me, well within direct earshot. Around him on all sides werethe electric megaphones which carried his voice to all parts of theaudience. Behind me, a thousand feet overhead, the main aerials werescattering it throughout the city, I suppose five million people werelistening to the voice of the President at that moment. He had just saidthat we must remain friendly with Venus; that in our enlightened agecontroversies were inevitable, but that they should be settled withsober thought--around the council table. This talk of war wasridiculous. He was denouncing the public news-broadcasters; moulders ofpublic opinion, who every day--every hour--must offer a new sensation totheir millions of subscribers.
[Footnote 1: New York City, about where Yonkers now stands.]
He had reached this point when without warning his body pitched forward.The balcony rail caught it; and it hung there inert. The slanting raysof the sun fell full upon the ruffled white shirt; white, but turningpink, then red, with the crimson stain welling out from beneath.
For an instant the crowd was stunned into silence. Then a murmur arose,and swelled into shouts of horror. A surge of people swept me forward. Icould not see clearly what was happening on the balcony. The form of themurdered President was hanging there against the rail; a score ofgovernment officials were rushing toward it; but the body, toppling overthe low support, came hurtling downward into the crowd, quite near me;but I could not reach it--the throng was too dense.
The shouts everywhere were deafening. I was shoved along the Tenth Levelby the press of people coming up the stairway. Shouts, excitedquestions; the wail of children almost trampled under foot; the screamsof women. And over it all, the electrically magnified voice of thetraffic director-general in the peak of the main tower roaring hisorders to the crowd.
It was a panic until the traffic-directors descended upon us. We werepushed up on the moving sidewalks. North or south, whichever directioncame handiest, we were herded upon the sidewalks and whirled away. Witha hundred other spectators near me I was shoved to a sidewalk movingsouth along the Tenth Level. It was going some four miles an hour. Butthey would not let me stay there. From behind, the crowd was shoving;and from one parallel strip of moving pavement to the other I was pushedalong--until at last I reached the seats of the forty mile an hourinside section.
The scene at Park Sixty was far out of direct sight and hearing. Thepark there had already been cleared of spectators, I knew; and they weredoubtless bearing the President's body away.
"Murdered!" said a man beside me. "Murdered! Look there!"
We were across the river, into Manhattan. The Tenth Level here runsabout four hundred feet above the ground-street of the city. The manbeside me was pointing to a steel tower we were passing. It was severalhundreds yards away; on its side abreast of us was a forty-foot squarenews-mirror, brightly illumined. On all the stairways and balconies herea local crowd had gathered, watching the mirror. It was reporting thepresent scene at Park Sixty. As we sped past the tower I could see inthe silver surface of the mirror the image of the now empty park fromwhich we had been so summarily ejected. They were carrying off thePresident's body; a little group of officials bearing it away; red,broken, gruesome, with the dying rays of the sun still upon it. Carryingit slowly along to where an aero-car was waiting on the side landingstage.
We were past the mirror in a moment.
"Murdered," the man next to me repeated. "The President murdered."
He seemed stunned, as indeed everyone was. Then he eyed me--my cap,which had on it the insignia of my calling.
"You are one of them," he said bitterly. "The last word he said--thelurid news-gatherers."
But I shook my head. "We are necessary. It was unfortunate that heshould have said that."
I had no opportunity to talk further. The man moved away toward the footof a landing stage near us. A south-bound flyer had overtaken us and waslanding. I boarded it also, and ten minutes later was in my office inSouth-Manhattan.
I was at this time employed by one of the most enterprisingnews-organizations in Greater New York. There was pandemonium in therethat evening. My supper came up in the pneumatic tube from the publiccookery nearby, but I had hardly time to taste it.
This, the evening of May 12, 2430, was for me--and for all theEarth--the most stirring evening of history. Events of inter-planetaryimportance tumbled over each other as they came to us through the airfrom the Official Information Stations. And we--myself and a thousandlike me in our office--retold them for our twenty million subscribersthroughout the Anglo-Saxon Nation.
The President of the Anglo-Saxon Republic was murdered at 5:10. It wasthe first of the new murders. I say new murders, for not in two hundredyears had the life of so high an official been wilfully taken. But itwas only the first. At 6:15 word came from Tokyohama,[2] that the rulerof Allied Mongolia was dead--murdered under similar circumstances. Andten minutes later from Mombozo, Africa, the blacks reported their leaderkilled while asleep in his official residence.
[Footnote 2: Tokyo-Yokohama, Japan.]
The Earth momentarily was without leadership!
I was struggling to get accounts of these successive disasters out overour audiophones. Above my desk, in a duplicating mirror fromHeadquarters, I could see that at the palace of Mombozo a throng ofterrified blacks were gathered. It was night there--a blurred scene offlashing lights and frightened, milling people.
Greys--next to me--had a mirror tuned to Tokyohama. The sun there wasshining upon almost a similar scene of panic. Black and yellow men--onopposite sides of the Earth. And between them our white races inturmoil. Outside my own window I could hear the shouts of the crowd thatjammed the Twentieth Level.
Greys leaned toward me. "Seven o'clock, Jac. You've got the arrival ofthe Venus mail. Don't overlook it ... By the code, man, your hands areshaking! You're white as a ghost!"
The Venus mail; I had forgotten it completely.
"Greys, I wonder if it'll get in."
He stared at me strangely. "You're thinking that, too. I told theBritish National Announcer it was a Venus plot. He laughed at me. ThoseGreat Londoners can't see their fingers before them. He said, 'That'syour lurid sense of newscasting.'"
Venus plot! I remembered my impressions of the Venus man who was besideme when our President fell.
Greys was back at his work. I swept the south shore of Eastern Island[3]with my finder, and picked up the image of the inter-planetary landingstage, at which the Venus mail was due to arrive. I could see the blazeof lights plainly; and with another, closer focus I caught the hugelanding platform itself. It was empty.
[Footnote 3: Now Long Island.]
The station-master there answered my call. He had no word of the mail.
"Try the lookout at Table Mountain," he advised me. "They may be comingdown that way.... Sure I'll let you know.... What a night! They say thatin Mediterrania--"
But I cut off; it was no time to chat with him. Table Mountain,Capetown, had no word of the mail. Then I caught the Yukon Station. Themail flyer had come down on the North Polar side--was already crossingHudson Bay.
At 8:26 it landed on Eastern Island. A deluge of Venus despatchesoverwhelmed me. But the mail news, before I could even begin to handlemy section of it, was far overshadowed. Venus, now at 8:44 was callingus by helio. The message came in the inter-planetary code, was decodedat National Headquarters, and from there flashed to us.
The ruler of the Venus Central State was murdered! An almost incoherentmessage. The murder of the ruler, at a time co-incident with 6:30 inGreater New York. Then the words:
_"City being attacked ... Tarrano, beware Tarrano ... You are in dangerof ..."_
In danger of what? The message broke off. The observers, behind theirhuge telescopes at the Potomac Headquarters, saw the helio-lights of theVenus Central State go dark suddenly. Our own station flashed its call,but there was no answer. Venus--evening star on that date--was sinkingto the horizon. But our Observatory in Texas could see the planetclearly; and gave the same report.
Communication was broken. The authorities of the Venus CentralState--friendly to us in spite of the recent immigrationcontroversy--had tried to warn us.
Of what?