CHAPTER XIV
Nalboon Unmasked
After a long, sound sleep, Seaton awoke and sprang out of bed. No soonerhad he started to shave, however, than one of the slaves touched hisarm, motioning him into a reclining chair and showing him a keen blade,long and slightly curved. Seaton lay down and the slave shaved him witha rapidity and smoothness he had never before experienced, sowonderfully sharp was the peculiar razor. After Seaton had dressed, thebarber started to shave the chief slave, without any preliminarytreatment save rubbing his face with a perfumed oil.
"Hold on a minute," interjected Seaton, who was watching the processwith interest, "here's something that helps a lot." He lathered the facewith his brush and the man looked up in surprised pleasure as his stiffbeard was swept away without a sound.
Seaton called to the others and soon the party was assembled in hisroom, all dressed very lightly, because of the unrelieved and unvaryingheat, which was constant at one hundred degrees. A gong sounded, and oneof the slaves opened the door, ushering in a party of servants bearing atable, ready set. During the meal, Seaton was greatly surprised athearing Dorothy carrying on a halting conversation, with one of thewomen standing behind her.
"I knew that you were a language shark, Dottie, with five or sixdifferent ones to your credit, but I didn't suppose you could learn totalk this stuff in one day."
"I can't," she replied, "but I've picked up a few words of it. I canunderstand very little of what they are trying to tell me."
The woman spoke rapidly to the man standing behind Seaton, and as soonas the table had been carried away, he asked permission to speak toDorothy. Fairly running across to her, he made a slight obeisance and ineager tones poured forth such a stream of language that she held up herhand to silence him.
"Go slower, please," she said, and added a couple of words in his owntongue.
There ensued a strange dialogue, with many repetitions and much use ofsigns. She turned to Seaton, with a puzzled look.
"I can't make out all he says, Dick, but he wants you to take him intoanother room of the palace here, to get back something or other thatthey took from him when they captured him. He can't go alone--I think hesays he will be killed if he goes anywhere without you. And he says thatwhen you get there, you must be sure not to let the guards come inside."
"All right, let's go!" and Seaton motioned the man to precede him. AsSeaton started for the door, Dorothy fell into step beside him.
"Better stay back, Dottie, I'll be back in a minute," he said at thedoor.
"I will not stay back. Wherever you go, I go," she replied in a voiceinaudible to the others. "I simply will not stay away from you a singleminute that I don't have to."
"All right, little girl," he replied in the same tone. "I don't want tobe away from you, either, and I don't think that we're in any dangerhere."
Preceded by the chief slave and followed by half a dozen others, theywent out into the hall. No opposition was made to their progress, but afull half-company of armed guards fell in around them as an escort,regarding Seaton with looks composed of equal parts of reverence andfear. The slave led the way rapidly to a room in a distant wing of thepalace and opened the door. As Seaton stepped in, he saw that it wasevidently an audience-chamber or court-room, and that it was nowentirely empty. As the guard approached the door, Seaton waved themback. All retreated across the hall except the officer in charge, whorefused to move. Seaton, the personification of offended dignity, firststared at the offender, who returned the stare, and stepped up to himinsolently, then pushed him back roughly, forgetting that his strength,great upon Earth, would be gigantic upon this smaller world. The officerspun across the corridor, knocking down three of his men in his flight.Picking himself up, he drew his sword and rushed, while his men fled inpanic to the extreme end of the corridor. Seaton did not wait for him,but in one bound leaped half-way across the intervening space to meethim. With the vastly superior agility of his earthly muscles he dodgedthe falling broadsword and drove his left fist full against the fellow'schin, with all the force of his mighty arm and all the momentum of hisrapidly moving body behind the blow. The crack of breaking bones wasdistinctly audible as the officer's head snapped back. The force of theblow lifted him high into the air, and after turning a completesomersault, he brought up with a crash against the opposite wall,dropping to the floor stone dead. As several of his men, braver than theothers, lifted their peculiar rifles, Seaton drew and fired in oneincredibly swift motion, the X-plosive bullet obliterating the entiregroup of men and demolishing that end of the palace.
* * * * *
In the meantime the slave had taken several pieces of apparatus from acabinet in the room and had placed them in his belt. Stopping only toobserve for a few moments a small instrument which he clamped upon thehead of the dead man, he rapidly led the way back to the room they hadleft and set to work upon the instrument he had constructed while theothers had been asleep. He connected it, in an intricate system ofwiring, with the pieces of apparatus he had just recovered.
"That's a complex job of wiring," said DuQuesne admiringly. "I've seenseveral intricate pieces of apparatus myself, but he has so manycircuits there that I'm lost. It would take an hour to figure out thelines and connections alone."
Straightening abruptly, the slave clamped several electrodes upon histemples and motioned to Seaton and the others, speaking to Dorothy as hedid so.
"He wants us to let him put those things on our heads," she translated."Shall we let him, Dick?"
"Yes," he replied without hesitation. "I've got a real hunch that he'sour friend, and I'm not sure of Nalboon. He doesn't act right."
"I think so, too," agreed the girl, and Crane added:
"I can't say that I relish the idea, but since I know that you are agood poker player, Dick, I am willing to follow your hunch. How aboutyou, DuQuesne?"
"Not I," declared that worthy, emphatically. "Nobody wires me up toanything I can't understand, and that machine is too deep for me."
Margaret elected to follow Crane's example, and, impressed by the needfor haste evident in the slave's bearing, the four walked up to themachine without further talk. The electrodes were clamped into placequickly and the slave pressed a lever. Instantly the four visitors feltthat they had a complete understanding of the languages and customs ofboth Mardonale, the nation in which they now were, and of Kondal, towhich nation the slaves belonged, the only two civilized nations uponOsnome. While the look of amazement at this method of receivinginstruction was still upon their faces, the slave--or rather, as theynow knew him, Dunark, the Kofedix or Crown Prince of the great nation ofKondal--began to disconnect the wires. He cut out the wires leading tothe two girls and to Crane, and was reaching for Seaton's, when therewas a blinding flash, a crackling sound, the heavy smoke of burningmetal and insulation, and both Dunark and Seaton fell to the floor.
Before Crane could reach them, however, they were upon their feet andthe stranger said in his own tongue, now understood by every one butDuQuesne:
"This machine is a mechanical educator, a thing entirely new, in ourworld at least. Although I have been working on it for a long time, itis still in a very crude form. I did not like to use it in its presentstate of development, but it was necessary in order to warn you of whatNalboon is going to do to you, and to convince you that the best way ofsaving your lives would save our lives as well. The machine workedperfectly until something, I don't know what, went wrong. Instead ofstopping, as it should have done, at teaching your party to speak ourlanguages, it short-circuited us two completely, so that everyconvolution in each of our brains has been imprinted upon the brain ofthe other. It was the sudden formation of all the new convolutions thatrendered us unconscious. I can only apologize for the break-down, andassure you that my intentions were of the best."
"You needn't apologize," returned Seaton. "That was a wonderfulperformance, and we're both gainers, anyway, aren't we? It has taken usall our lives to learn what li
ttle we know, and now we each have thebenefit of two lifetimes, spent upon different worlds! I must admit,though, that I have a whole lot of knowledge that I don't know how touse."
"I am glad you take it that way," returned the other warmly, "for I aminfinitely the better off for the exchange. The knowledge I imparted wasnothing, compared to that which I received. But time presses--I musttell you our situation. I am, as you now know, the Kofedix of Kondal.The other thirteen are fedo and fediro, or, as you would say, princesand princesses of the same nation. We were captured by one of Nalboon'sraiding parties while upon a hunting trip, being overcome by some new,stupefying gas, so that we could not kill ourselves. As you know, Kondaland Mardonale have been at war for over ten thousand karkamo--somethingmore than six thousand years of your time. The war between us is one ofutter extermination. Captives are never exchanged and only once duringan ordinary lifetime does one ever escape. Our attendants were killedimmediately. We were being taken to furnish sport for Nalboon's party bybeing fed to one of his captive kolono--animals something like yourearthly devilfish--when the escort of battleships was overcome by thosefour karlono, the animals you saw, and one of them seized Nalboon'splane, in which we were prisoners. You killed the karlon, saving ourlives as well as those of Nalboon and his party.
* * * * *
"Having saved his life, you and your party should be honored guests ofthe most honored kind, and I venture to say that you would be soregarded in any other nation of the universe. But Nalboon, the Domak--atitle equivalent to your word 'Emperor' and our word 'Karfedix'--ofMardonale, is utterly without either honor or conscience, as are allMardonalians. At first he was afraid of you, as were we all. We thoughtyou visitors from a planet of our fifteenth sun, which is now at itsnearest possible approach to us. After your display of superhuman powerand ability, we expected instant annihilation. However, after seeing theSkylark as a machine, discovering that you are short of power, andfinding that you are gentle instead of bloodthirsty by nature, Nalboonlost his fear of you and resolved to rob you of your vessel, with itswonderful secrets of power. Though we are so ignorant of chemistry thatI cannot understand the thousandth part of what I just learned from you,we are a race of mechanics and have developed machines of many kinds toa high state of efficiency, including electrical machines of all kinds.In fact, electricity, generated by our great waterfalls, is our onlypower. No scientist upon Osnome has ever had an inkling thatintra-atomic energy exists. Nalboon cannot understand the power, but hesolved the means of liberating it at a glance--and that glance sealedyour death-warrants. With the Skylark, he could conquer Kondal, and toassure the downfall of my nation he would do anything.
"Also, he or any other Osnomian scientist would go to any lengthswhatever--would challenge the great First Cause itself--to secure evenone of those little bottles of the chemical you call 'salt.' It is farand away the scarcest and most precious substance in the world. It is sorare that those bottles you produced at the table held more than thetotal amount previously known to exist upon Osnome. We have greatabundance of all the heavy metals, but the lighter metals are rare.Sodium and chlorin are the rarest of all known elements. Its immensevalue is due, not to its rarity, but to the fact that it is anindispensable component of the controlling instruments of our wirelesspower stations and that it is used as a catalyst in the manufacture ofour hardest metals.
"For these reasons, you understand why Nalboon does not intend to letyou escape and why he intends that this kokam (our equivalent of a day)shall be your last. About the second or third kam (hour) of the sleepingperiod he intends to break into the Skylark, learn its control, andsecure the salt you undoubtedly have in the vessel. Then my party andmyself will be thrown to the kolon. You and your party will be killedand your bodies smelted to recover the salt that is in them. This is thewarning I had to give you. Its urgency explains the use of my untriedmechanical educator; the hope that my party could escape with yours, inyour vessel, explains why you saw me, the Kofedix of Kondal, prostratemyself before that arch-fiend Nalboon."
"How do you, a captive prince of another nation, know these things?"asked Crane, doubtfully.
"I read Nalboon's ideas from the brain of that officer whom the KarfedixSeaton killed. He was a ladex of the guards--an officer of about thesame rank as one of your colonels. He was high in Nalboon's favor, andhe was to have been in charge of the work of breaking into the Skylarkand killing us all. Let me caution you now; do not let any Mardonaliantouch our hands with a wire, for if you do, your thoughts will berecorded and the secrets of the Skylark and your many other mysteriousthings, such as smoking, matches, and magic feats, will be secrets nolonger."
"Thanks for the information," responded Seaton, "but I want to correctyour title for me. I'm no Karfedix--merely a plain citizen."
"In one way I see that that is true," replied the Kofedix with a puzzledlook. "I cannot understand your government at all--but the inventor ofthe Skylark must certainly rank as a Karfedix."
As he spoke, a smile of understanding passed over his face and hecontinued:
"I see. Your title is Doctor of Philosophy, which must mean that you arethe Karfedix of Knowledge of the Earth."
"No, no. You're way off. I'm...."
"Certainly Seaton is the Karfedix of Knowledge," broke in DuQuesne. "Letit go at that, anyway, whatever it means. The thing to do now is tofigure a way out of this."
"You chirped it then, Blackie. Dunark, you know this country better thanwe do; what do you suggest?"
"I suggest that you take my party into the Skylark and escape fromMardonale as soon as possible. I can pilot you to Kondalek, the capitalcity of our nation. There, I can assure you, you will be welcomed as youdeserve. My father, the Karfedix, will treat you as a Karfedix should betreated. As far as I am concerned, nothing I can ever do will lightenthe burden of my indebtedness to you, but I promise you all the copperyou want, and anything else you may desire that is within the power ofman to give you."
* * * * *
Seaton thought deeply a moment, then shook Dunark's hand vigorously.
"That suits me, Kofedix," he said warmly. "I thought from the first thatyou were our friend. Shall we make for the Skylark right now, or wait awhile?"
"We had better wait until after the second meal," the prince replied."We have no armor, and no way of making any. We would be helplessagainst the bullets of any except a group small enough so that you couldkill them all before they could fire. The kam after the second meal isdevoted to strolling about the grounds, so that our visiting the Skylarkwould look perfectly natural. As the guard is very lax at that time, itis the best time for the attempt."
"But how about my killing his company of guards and blowing up one wingof his palace? Won't he have something to say about that?"
"I don't know," replied the Kofedix doubtfully. "It depends upon whetherhis fear of you or his anger is the greater. He should pay his call ofstate here in your apartment in a short time, as it is the inviolablerule of Osnome, that any visitor shall receive a call of state from oneof his own rank before leaving his apartment for the first time. Hisactions may give you some idea as to his feelings, though he is anaccomplished diplomat and may conceal his real feelings entirely. Butlet me caution you not to be modest or soft-spoken. He will mistakesoftness for fear."
"All right," grinned Seaton. "In that case I won't wait to try to findout what he thinks. If he shows any signs of hostility at all, I'll openup on him."
"Well," remarked Crane, calmly, "if we have some time to spare, we mayas well wait comfortably instead of standing in the middle of the room.I, for one, have a lot of questions to ask about this new world."
Acting upon this suggestion, the party seated themselves uponcomfortable divans, and Dunark rapidly dismantled the machine he hadconstructed. The captives remained standing, always behind the visitorsuntil Seaton remonstrated.
"Please sit down, everybody. There's no need of keeping up this farce ofyour
being slaves as long as we're alone, is there, Dunark?"
"No, but at the first sound of the gong announcing a visitor we must bein our places. Now that we are all comfortable and waiting, I willintroduce my party to yours.
"Fellow Kondalians, greet the Karfedo Seaton and Crane," he began, histongue fumbling over the strange names, "of a distant world, the Earth,and the two noble ladies, Miss Vaneman and Miss Spencer, soon to betheir Karfediro.
"Guests from Earth, allow me to present to you the Kofedir Sitar, theonly one of my wives who accompanied me upon our ill-fated huntingexpedition."
Then, still ignoring DuQuesne as a captive, he introduced the otherKondolians in turn as his brothers, sisters, cousins, nieces, andnephews--all members of the great ruling house of Kondal.
"Now," he concluded, "after I have a word with you in private, DoctorSeaton, I will be glad to give the others all the information in mypower."
He led Seaton out of earshot of the others and said in a low voice:
"It is no part of Nalboon's plan to kill the two women. They are sobeautiful, so different from our Osnomian women, that he intends to keepthem--alive. Understand?"
"Yes," returned Seaton grimly, his eyes turning hard, "I get you allright--but what he'll do and what he thinks he'll do are two entirelydifferent breeds of cats."
Returning to the others, they found Dorothy and Sitar deep inconversation.
"So a man has half a dozen or so wives?" Dorothy was asking in surprise."How do you get along together? I'd fight like a wildcat if my husbandtried to have other wives!"
"We get along splendidly, of course," returned the Osnomian princess inequal surprise. "I would not think of being a man's only wife. Iwouldn't consider marrying a man who could win only one wife--think whata disgrace it would be! And think how lonely one would be while herhusband is away at war--we would go insane if we did not have thecompany of the other wives. There are six of us, and we could not getalong at all without each other."
"I've got a compliment for you and Peggy, Dottie," said Seaton. "Dunarkhere thinks that you two girls look good enough to eat--or words to thateffect." Both girls flushed slightly, the purplish-black color suffusingtheir faces. They glanced at each other and Dorothy voiced the thoughtof both as she said:
"How can you, Kofedix Dunark? In this horrible light we both lookperfectly dreadful. These other girls would be beautiful, if we wereused to the colors, but we two look simply hideous."
"Oh, no," interrupted Sitar. "You have a wonderfully rich coloring. Itis a shame to hide so much of yourselves with robes."
"Their eyes interpret colors differently than ours do," explainedSeaton. "What to us are harsh and discordant colors are light andpleasing to their eyes. What looks like a kind of sloppy greenish blackto us may--in fact, does--look a pale pink to them."
"Are Kondal and Mardonale the only two nations upon Osnome?" askedCrane.
"The only civilized nations, yes. Osnome is divided into two great andalmost equal continents, separated by a wide ocean which encircles theglobe. One is Kondal, the other Mardonale. Each nation has severalnations or tribes of savages, which inhabit various waste places."
* * * * *
"You are the light race, Mardonale the dark," continued Crane. "What arethe servants, who seem half-way between?"
"They are slaves...."
"Captured savages?" interrupted Dorothy.
"No. They are a separate race. They are a race so low in intelligencethat they cannot exist except as slaves, but they can be trained tounderstand language and to do certain kinds of work. They are harmlessand mild, making excellent servants, otherwise they would have perishedages ago. All menial work and most of the manual labor is done by theslave race. Formerly criminals were sterilized and reduced to unwillingslavery, but there have been no unwilling slaves in Kondal for hundredsof karkamo."
"Why? Are there no criminals any more?"
"No. With the invention of the thought recorder an absolutely fair trialwas assured and the guilty were all convicted. They could not reproducethemselves, and as a natural result crime died out."
"That is," he added hastily, "what we regard as crime. Duelling, forinstance, is a crime upon Earth; here it is a regular custom. In Kondalduels are rather rare and are held only when honor is involved, but herein Mardonale they are an every-day affair, as you saw when you landed."
"What makes the difference?" asked Dorothy curiously.
"As you know, with us every man is a soldier. In Kondal we train ouryouth in courage, valor, and high honor--in Mardonale they train them insavage blood-thirstiness alone. Each nation fixed its policy in bygoneages to produce the type of soldier it thought most efficient."
"I notice that everyone here wears those heavy collars," said Margaret."What are they for?"
"They are identification marks. When a child is nearly grown, a collarbearing his name and the device of his house is cast about his neck.This collar is made of 'arenak,' a synthetic metal which, once formed,cannot be altered by any usual means. It cannot be scratched, cut, bent,broken, or worked in any way except at such a high temperature thatdeath would result, if such heat were applied to the collar. Once thearenak collar is cast about a person's neck he is identified for life,and any adult Osnomian not wearing a collar is put to death."
"That must be an interesting metal," remarked Crane. "Is your belt asimilar mark?"
"This belt is an idea of my own," and Dunark smiled broadly. "It lookslike opaque arenak, but isn't. It is merely a pouch in which I carryanything I am particularly interested in. Even Nalboon thought it wasarenak, so he didn't trouble to try to open it. If he had opened it andtaken my tools and instruments, I couldn't have built the educator."
"Is that transparent armor arenak?"
"Yes, the only difference being that nothing is added to the matrix tocolor or make opaque the finished metal. It is in the preparation ofthis metal that salt is indispensable. It acts only as a catalyst, beingrecovered afterward, but neither nation has ever had enough salt to makeall the armor they want."
"Aren't those monsters--karlono, I think you called them--covered by thesame thing? And what are those animals, anyway?" Dorothy asked.
"Yes, they are armored with arenak, and it is thought that the beastsgrow it, the same as fishes grow scales. The karlono are the mostfrightful scourge of Osnome. Very little is known of them, though everyscientist has theorized upon them since time immemorial. It is veryseldom that one is ever killed, as they easily outfly our swiftestbattleships, and only fight when they can be victorious. To kill onerequires a succession of the heaviest high-explosive shells in the samespot, a joint in the armor; and after the armor is once penetrated, theanimal is blown into such small fragments that reconstruction isimpossible. From such remains it has been variously described as a bird,a beast, a fish, and a vegetable; sexual, asexual, and hermaphroditic.Its habitat is unknown, it being variously supposed to live high in theair, deep in the ocean, and buried in the swamps. Another theory is thatthey live upon one of our satellites, which encounters our belt ofatmosphere every karkam. Nothing is certainly known about the monstersexcept their terrible destructiveness and their insatiable appetites.One of them will devour five or six airships at one time, absorbing thecrews and devouring the cargo and all of the vessels except the veryhardest of the metal parts."
"Do they usually go in groups?" asked Crane. "If they do, I should thinkthat a fleet of warships would be necessary for every party."
"No, they are almost always found alone. Only very rarely are two foundtogether. This is the first time in history that more than two have everbeen seen together. Two battleships can always defeat one karlon, sothey are never attacked. With four battleships Nalboon considered hisexpedition perfectly safe, especially as they are now rare. The navieshunted down and killed what was supposed to be the last one upon Osnomemore than a karkam ago, and none have been seen since, until we wereattacked...."
* * *
* *
The gong over the door sounded and the Kondalians leaped to theirpositions back of the Earthly visitors. The Kofedix went to the door.Nalboon brushed him aside and entered, escorted by a full company ofheavily-armed soldiery. A scowl of anger was upon his face and he wasplainly in an ugly mood.
"Stop, Nalboon of Mardonale!" thundered Seaton in the Mardonalian tongueand with the full power of his mighty voice. "Dare you invade my privacyunannounced and without invitation?"
The escort shrank back, but the Domak stood his ground, although he wasplainly taken aback. With an apparent effort he smoothed his face intolines of cordiality.
"I merely came to inquire why my guards are slain and my palacedestroyed by my honored guest?"
"As for slaying your guards, they sought to invade my privacy. I warnedthem away, but one of them was foolish enough to try to kill me. Thenthe others attempted to raise their childish rifles against me, and Iwas obliged to destroy them. As for the wall, it happened to be in theway of the thought-waves I hurled against your guards--consequently itwas demolished. An honored guest! Bah! Are honored guests put to theindignity of being touched by the filthy hands of a mere ladex?"
"You do not object to the touch of slaves!" with a wave of his handtoward the Kondalians.
"That is what slaves are for," coldly. "Is a Domak to wait upon himselfin the court of Mardonale? But to return to the issue. Were I an honoredguest this would never have happened. Know, Nalboon, that when youattempt to treat a visiting Domak of MY race as a low-born captive, youmust be prepared to suffer the consequences of your rashness!"
"May I ask how you, so recently ignorant, know our language?"
"You question me? That is bold! Know that I, the Boss of the Road, showignorance or knowledge, when and where I please. You may go."