very pale, butshe smiled faintly as she met Gerry's eyes. "This drain empties into theGiri river, and a few miles farther along that river forms the boundarybetween Savissa and the lands of the Scaly Ones. We have never knownthey could travel beneath the water this way."
"What will happen after they get us there?"
"Torture and death. Once any of our people are taken across into theland of Giri-Vaaka, they never return alive."
"Nice little trip we're taking, Gerry lad!" McTavish growled. "Too badyou didn't bring your cinema camera along!"
* * * * *
The submarine moved sluggishly ahead, silent except for the hum of itsmotors. As Gerry looked around he could see that it was a crudelyconstructed and makeshift craft. Even so, it was more than he would haveexpected from men of the apparent mentality of the Scaly Ones.
"This is a funny sort of submarine!" he said to Angus. The big engineer,who had twisted around to peer at the bulkhead directly behind them,growled deep in his throat.
"It's funnier than ye think, lad! Look at this!" McTavish nodded towardone of the sheets of thin steel from which the bulkhead had been built.On the edge there were stamped a few words. The letters were small, andin the dim light Gerry had to narrow his eyes for a moment before hecould read them.
U. S. Gov't Steel Works Atlanta, Ga.
"How in Heaven's name did they get that...?" Gerry's voice trailed offwithout finishing the sentence. McTavish shrugged.
"Ye don't need more than one guess. The _Stardust_ must have beenwrecked somewhere near here, and these devils took some of her parts tobuild this outlandish craft."
At last, long hours later, the submarine came to a stop. As his captorsled him up on deck, Gerry saw that the ungainly craft had grounded inthe shallows on the shore of a broad river. It was just daylight. A paleyellow light filtered down through the canopy of clouds, and a flight ofmarsh-fowl was winging by just overhead.
"Where are we?" asked Gerry.
"This is the Giri River," Closana said. "Savissa lies on the far shore.This is the land of the Scaly Ones."
Some of the reptile men hauled the submarine into a cove and began tocover it over with piles of reeds. Some twenty others formed up in acolumn with the three prisoners in the center. Then the officer incommand barked an order and they all moved out along a dirt road thatled away from the river. Olga Stark was walking beside the first rank ofscaly warriors. She had not looked at the prisoners at all.
They tramped steadily onward through the dust in silence except for thedull slap of the webbed feet of the reptile men and the jingle of theirequipment. After a while the officer in command came back to look at theprisoners. He was a grizzled veteran with shaggy ridges above his eyesand the long-healed scars of half a dozen old wounds on his scaly body.McTavish glared at him for a moment.
"Take a good look, sonny boy!" the big Scot growled. "What's yourname--if you have one?"
"I should tear out your tongue for speaking in that tone to an officerof Giri-Vaaka," the officer said. His voice had the high pitched andmetallic quality typical of his race, and he bared his pointed teeth ina not unfriendly grin, "but the torturers of the Lord Lansa will takecare of you soon enough. I am Toll, commander of a _strikka_ in theborder guards."
"Where are you taking us?"
Toll grinned wickedly.
"To the palace of Lansa, overlord of all Venus."
* * * * *
Gerry noticed that this countryside of Giri-Vaaka was very differentfrom the pleasant and cultivated fields of Savissa over which he hadpassed the day before. The roads were dirt and half over-grown. Not muchof the country was under cultivation. Strange purple bushes with thornsa foot long covered much of the land, crowding close on the patches offorest where ten-foot ferns towered high overhead. Sometimes they cameupon a grazing herd of the yard-long giant ants, who would go gallopingaway with their antennae waving in the air and their hard-shelledleg-joints clicking loudly.
Depression hung on Gerry Norton's chest like a physical weight. It wasnot alone the fact that every stride carried them deeper into a grim andhostile land--prisoners whose doom was probably already sealed--that sethim biting his lower lip till he tasted the salt blood on his tongue.Nor even the fact that Closana shared the same fate because she happenedto have been with him at the time of the raid. It was also the utterstrangeness of everything. Yesterday, in Savissa, the people and themode of life had been nearly enough to normal so that he was not deeplyconscious of the strange vegetation and the other things in which Venusdiffered from Earth and Mars.
Now everything seemed different, and alien. The lowering yellow skies ofVenus were ominous. The hot winds brought strange smells and seemed tocarry a hint of doom. The one thought that gave him any real hope wasthe fact that Portok the Martian had not been captured with the rest ofthem. He must have missed them soon after the abduction. There might bea chance that he and Steve Brent would bring the _Viking_ to look forthem.
* * * * *
They had begun to pass occasional small farms. These were scanty fieldscarved out of the creeping masses of purple thorns, usually with aroughly thatched hut in the center. On one such occasion the farmer andhis family stood apathetically at the roadside to watch the patrol ofReptile Men go by.
"But they're not scaly!" Gerry exclaimed. Closana shook her head.
"No. They are of the Green Men of Giri. Once they held this land whilethe Scaly Ones dwelt in the marshes of Vaaka farther west, but the ScalyOnes have now been masters of this place for many generations."
The Green Men, Gerry noticed, looked like ordinary Earthlings except fora slight greenish cast to their skin. Probably, like the Golden Amazons,they were also descended from the Old Ones who had come from Mars solong ago. The ragged and mud-stained farmer gave Toll a perfunctorysalute, and then leaned on his hoe to watch the column pass by.
The warriors of Toll swaggered along the road with the insolentassurance of men who know themselves masters of all around them. Thefarmer's green face was carefully expressionless, but there was a gleamin his eyes that spoke of no great liking for his scaly masters. Whenhis glance lingered on Gerry's for an instant, the Earth-man read adefinite sympathy in it.
They camped that night in a clearing beside a small stream. One of theguards shot a giant ant with his gas-gun, then cracked open the hornyshell with his sword. They cut long strips of the meat and roasted itover a fire. Though the taste was peculiar the stuff was edible, andthe three prisoners managed to swallow it.
"The condemned man ate a hearty meal!" Angus McTavish said with grimhumor, wiping his fingers on the coarse yellow grass beside him.
Olga had gone on with a faster-moving detachment, and only a dozen ScalyOnes remained with Toll to guard the three prisoners. Gerry and Closanasat side by side before the fire, their bare shoulders touching. Theruddy and flickering glow of the firelight touched Angus' giant frame alittle farther around the circle, and then the scaly skins and longsnouts of the reptile men watching them. Gerry clasped his arms aroundhis knees.
"Y'know Angus, at the moment we're living as our ancestors must havelived long generations ago. No ray-tubes or dura-steel armor. Noportable electro-phones. Not even a low-speed rocket car to carry usalong. It must have been this way back in the days when they built thatlittle old building that's now used for a museum in New York. The EmpireState Building."
"You've got your dates mixed, laddie," McTavish yawned. "The EmpireState was built in the twentieth century, and even the people of thosequeer old days were more advanced than most of what we've seen of lifeon this planet of Venus."
"I don't suppose those Ancients knew what they were missing."
"Maybe they were better off! At least they only got into trouble ontheir own Earth instead of wandering off to other planets like a pack offools as we have!"
Toll and two of his men came toward them, carrying the ropes with whichthey had earlier b
een bound.
"Sorry, but I must tie you up for the night," he said. For an instantGerry thought of making a break. If he could get away he might find someway of rescuing the others. Then he decided against it. One of thereptile men would be almost sure to bring him down with a gas-gun beforehe got out of the circle of firelight, in spite of the greater strengthof his Earthly muscles. So he shrugged, and allowed the guards to tiehim up again. For quite a while he lay awake, hoping to hear the hum ofthe _Viking's_ motors, but at last he fell asleep.
* * * * *
On the third day of their journey, the trail led upward, into a range ofbleak and rocky hills. A few mean huts were the only signs of humanhabitation. Then, as they rounded a bend in the trail which at thispoint clung to