them across the city and out through agate in the far wall. Here a broad plain swept down to the waters of asaffron colored lake, a sheet of water so vast that its far shore was nomore than a dun line along the horizon. A sort of grandstand had beenerected along one side of the plain.
"I think I begin to understand the point of this little game!" McTavishmuttered, squinting as he peered ahead, "and I don't fancy the idea atall."
"I don't get what you mean?"
McTavish snorted.
"Did ye never see a piece of cheese in a mouse-trap?"
Then Gerry himself began to understand. On a broad platform before thegrandstand stood a line of men armed with gas-guns. Some were grayscaled officers of the fighting forces, and others were dandified GreenMen of the decadent minority that had fawned upon and mingled with theirconquerers. In the flat and marshy expanse of the plain before themthere had been driven a number of short but heavy stakes like tent pegs,each with a metal ring set in the top. There were long rows of them.Gray scaled guards were busy fettering prisoners to the pegs, makingthem fast by tying to the metal ring the other end of the long cord withwhich their hands were tied behind them. The hunters and the audiencewere ready, the bait was being prepared.
Closana was a few feet away from Gerry, fastened to the next stake. Shestood erect, her shoulders drawn back by the strain of her bonds and herlong hair blowing in the wind.
"This is the end, Geree," she said, "if not today, then tomorrow or thenext day. This was the tale told in Larr of what happens to theprisoners of the Scaly Ones, but I never believed it till now."
* * * * *
There were sixty or eighty prisoners fastened in the field to serve asbait for the giant dakta. About half were Golden Amazons captured invarious raids. The remainder were men and women of the Green People ofGiri, prisoners condemned to death by the grim and ruthless tribunals ofthe Scaly Ones. Now a dozen attendants carrying leather buckets ran upand down the lines of the captives, splashing each victim with a dipperfull of a purple colored and very pungent oil.
"Now what's the game?" Gerry muttered. Angus bent his head to sniff atthe heavy liquid trickling down his hairy chest.
"It smells like a harlot's dream!" he muttered sourly, "probablyintended to make us more attractive to whatever kind of creature it isthat's coming after us!"
The attendants had hurried away with their buckets of oil, and now thecrowds in the grandstand and on the plain settled down to wait. Theywere in holiday mood, laughing and talking in their shrill voices.
Then a black dot appeared high up in the sky. A murmur of anticipationran over the crowd. The dakta came plummeting earthward as itssuper-keen senses saw and smelled the attractive bait waiting below. Thething, as it came near, was like some figment from a nightmare. It had areptilian body between a twenty-foot spread of leathery wings, and along beak with a double row of pointed teeth. One of the things thatGerry had seen flying over that lonely sea when he first brought the_Viking_ down through the canopy of clouds that covered the planet ofVenus!
"So _that_ is a dakta!" Angus muttered, "bonny little creature!"
The winged lizard checked its flight momentarily some ten feet off theground, directly above one of the captive Amazons. Then he dove down.The girl screamed and twisted away to the length of her tether, and thetoothed beak just missed her. The first of the hunters fired as thedakta whirled and lashed out again, but the bullet exploded off to oneside.
Gripping the writhing Amazon with his beak and his clawed feet, thedakta flapped his great wings and soared upward again. Two more of thehunters fired together. One of the explosive bullets missed entirely,the other blew one of the girl's legs to pieces but did not harm themonster that held her.
Then Lansa tossed aside his green robe and stood up. Gerry saw that heheld a ray-tube, either one from the _Stardust_ or one of the new oneshe now claimed to be able to make in Giri-Vaaka. The tube slantedupward. Murky light played around its muzzle. The dakta gave a shrilland almost human scream. Then it dropped its mangled victim and felltwitching to the ground. Its leathery skin was turned black where theray-blast had struck it. Along the edge of the field, the close packedcrowds broke into wild cheering and Lansa acknowledged it with acondescending gesture of one upraised arm.
The hunt went on. Sometimes the dakta came singly, sometimes in pairs.The hunters had the range better now, and dropped them consistently. Onseveral occasions the flying lizards were brought down before they hadtime to seize a victim at all, but most of the time one of the prisonerswas killed or mortally wounded before the dakta was slain. A Green Mantethered to the stake next beyond Closana had been ripped about thethroat by the raking teeth of a dakta's bill, and was breathing with asort of gurgling moan as he bled to death. So far, that was the nearestthat one of the flying lizards had come to Gerry or his two companions.
And then Gerry saw the thing for which he had been watching. There was astreak of fire along the eastern horizon. The blast of speeding rockettubes! A cigar shaped hull of gleaming blue and silver came streakingacross the saffron sky with a trail of smoke behind it. _The Viking_ hadcome!
* * * * *
A swelling uproar came from the crowds which began to mill about inconfusion. Lansa had risen to his feet and was peering upward with onehand raised to shade his eyes. Yellow flames played about the _Viking's_bow as the reverse rockets checked her momentum. A pair of swoopingdakta veered away from her, then dropped down toward the bait tetheredbelow. One of them was headed straight for Angus McTavish.
Instantly one of the forward ray-guns on the space-ship glowed intolife, and the winged lizard crumpled in mid-flight. Gerry knew then thatsomeone on board had been looking down through the powerful viewingglasses, and had recognized him and Angus. He shouted hoarsely, knowinghe would not be heard but unable to keep silent.
Drums were throbbing a swift alarm, and the milling crowds were in wildconfusion. Companies of the scaly warriors were firing by volley, butthe explosive bullets only flashed harmlessly against the _Viking's_duralite hull. Some of the heavier gas-guns set on the battlements abovehissed into life then, but even the larger caliber explosives could makeno impression on tempered duralite. With her ray-guns flashing andripping black swathes in the scaly ranks below, with her helicoptersspinning to take the strain as the blast of the rockets died away, the_Viking_ settled rapidly groundward.
"By Lord, Steve came a-fightin'!" McTavish roared.
"Of course, you old goat!" Gerry shouted back, "did you really think I'dcall the ship into a trap? You're as bad as that maniac who callshimself Lansa. I knew that if I spoke _too_ strongly of what nicefellows these scaly devils are, Steve would have the sense to know thatI was under pressure and in a trap."
And then came swift disaster! Over the edge of the nearest black andbattlemented wall of Lansa's palace thrust the muzzle of a large caliberray-gun. Steve Brent saw it, too, and tried to lift the nose of his shipto bring his own guns to bear on this new menace, but he was too late.The muzzle of the ray-gun on the battlements glowed dully, the blast ofthe supode-rays struck the row of spinning helicopters on top of the_Viking's_ hull. The blades of the big propellors went spinning intospace, their shafts bent and crumpled like straws in a gale. Robbed oftheir support, essential when lacking rocket power of at least 300 milesper hour, the space-ship plunged downward like a falling star. Shestruck the waters of the lake with a mighty splash. Spray dashed as highas the walls of Lansa's castle, and when it was gone the space-ship hadvanished.
* * * * *
Gerry Norton stood motionless. He was staring at the muddy and foamflecked waters of the lake, and at the spreading ripples that still beaton the shore as the effect of that mighty splash subsided. At the momenthe felt old and tired and defeated, his brain numbed. The _Viking_ wasgone! Freckled Steve Brent, and the cheerful Portok, and all the rest ofthem were gone. Buried deep in the muddy bottom of a Venusian lake.
&nb
sp; The second expedition from Earth to this cloud-veiled and ill-fatedplanet had also ended in disaster. In the future the _Viking_ would beclassed with the _Stardust_--simply another luckless space-ship thatsailed away into the void and vanished. The men of her crew and whatthey tried to accomplish would be forgotten, their names would onlyremain on some yellowing record buried in the maze of government files.So deep was Gerry Norton's bitter brooding that he scarcely heard thewords Angus McTavish was shouting in his ear.
"Come on, Gerry lad! Let's get away while there's all this confusion."
* * * * *
Ever since they had been brought to this field beside the lake, Angushad been working at his bonds. He was a very strong man anyway, and theswell of his earthly muscles was far greater than the strength of any ofthe races that the Scaly Ones were