Chapter I: Front Matter

PRINCESS OF CHAOS

By BRYCE WALTON

The howling, slavering mob in the blood-spattered arena
hated the half-breed Moljar--prayed gibberingly for his
death. But Moljar looked coldly up at the Princess and
licked dry lips. He would not die--while she lived!

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Spring 1947.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

Moljar planted his columnar legs wide apart beside the dying saurian and blinked blood and sweat from his eyes. Only slightly strained after three hours of the Red Moon Games, his seven foot height of Terran-Martian muscles gleamed damply in the blazing arc lights of the Colosseum. His lungs sucked hungrily at the dense Venusian air as he waited for whatever would next be sent against him, the champion of them all.

Through sweat-blurred vision he watched the climbing tiers of eager spectators, a high curvature outlined against the crimson mist. Red Moon Games! Bi-monthly slaughter, ordered by the Princess Alhone when the unnatural filtering of the reflected sun's rays spread a carmine glow through the fog.

The grey sands of the arena were daubed with sprawled forms of monsters and men alike. Out of the shambles, Moljar's black barbarian eyes shone as they swung up to fix on the Princess Alhone where she sat with a retinue in her private observation box. Her grey-furred, semi-human body glimmered softly beneath the blue-glowing effulgence that always bathed her in its royal cold light.

Her heavily jeweled paw raised, dropped. The signal.

A roar of sadistic anticipation swelled, echoing from the misty range of hills, beyond Venus Port, out across the Sea of Mort that washed its marble walls.

Moljar shifted toward the gates. His hands flexed about the alloy bar. At Princess Alhone's gesture, the gates across the arena lifted. The monstrous beast, somewhat resembling a Mesozoic saber-tooth tiger of Terra, charged out straight for Moljar in a blinding burst of speed and power.

The half-breed swung the pitiful weapon which had jokingly been granted him, a five-foot length of compressed alloy. It cracked against the giant cat's skull. Moljar leaped aside as the beast plunked on its face, rolled in a flurry of sand and blood. Tendrils of gore oozed from its shattered skull as it lumbered erect and charged again, erratically now, circling and leaping down toward the arena's far end, blinded and roaring in pain.

* * * * *

A sigh of ecstasy rose up in a long drone from the spectators--a polyglot of Solarians who had paid eighty credits for this night of vicarious blood-lust. Wealthy interplanetary aristocrats and cartel magnates, Mercurian and Martian speculators, Terran monopolists, adventurers and adventuresses from many worlds, muckers from the asteroid mines. All imagining themselves to be Moljar tonight. All hating him because he was a half-breed.

Of the half-thousand prisoners who had been marched into the amphitheatre--a few Terran mutants, many half-breeds, and space pirates who couldn't pay enough hush-hush credits--only three remained standing. The Terran girl mutant, Mahra, who had helped him slay the saurian and who had rare courage. Himself. And Gasdon, the Martian pirate, who, barehanded, was still battling the giant squid in the arena's synthetic quagmire. His yellow body was a panting, straining bulk beyond the tendrils of sulphur dioxide that bubbled up through the bog.

Moljar felt the Terran girl's hot breath on his neck as he waited for the pain-maddened cat to scent him down. His glittering eyes turned and met hers. Her silver mutant's hair glowed beneath the merciless glare of the flood lights. Her full, yet agile body wriggled in its brief trappings in nervous preparation for the cat's rapid return from the end of the arena. But when she spoke to Moljar her lips curled with obvious distaste.

"You fight well, for a half-breed," she said.

His teeth shone white in what might have been either a laugh or a snarl. "Go to your Martian outlaw. Gasdon's pure of blood. If he'll have you--mutant!"

She laughed sharply like shimmering glass. "I'm Mahra. I stand alone."

"You'll die alone," said Moljar, "if you stand by me."

She tossed her head. The cat was bearing down, shrieking in blind hate. "You think you've won, barbarian. Wait 'til the _kristons_ are turned loose on us."

"I wait," said Moljar simply. "I've waited a long time, and I can wait forever. And someday I'll kill her. Alhone's pelt I'll have and give to my people to whom I pledged it."

His blood-spattered arm swept aside as the giant cat ploughed past in its sightless, pounding charge. He swung his bar again. It crunched through tissue and bone and brain, and the cat dropped suddenly like a stone. Its sleek gold and black body shivered and twitched as it died.

He planted a sandaled foot on the carcass and raised his face toward the Princess Alhone's royal booth. Reluctantly, a smattering of applause rose. Princess Alhone's silkily furred body was standing now. Motionless.

Moljar's voice rang out clear through the mist. "Moljar waits for worthy opposition. He is bored."

"Dirty half-breed dog!" howled a voice. Thousands joined in a thunder of obscene and filthy epithets.

Moljar laughed loudly. He saw Alhone's slim alien form tense as the saber tooth's had before a charge. And he began walking toward her across the blood-stained sands.

He paused as she raised a jeweled paw again. Moljar's eyes narrowed as the almost invisible vibrational force-wall rose up before the spectators and the rim of the vast arena.

"_Kristons!_" screamed Mahra behind him. "The wall protects the audience."

He heard the high whirring whine of the huge tri-winged, armor-plated insects as they were released into the arena. They dove and circled, maddened by the miasmic death vapor overhanging the stadium.

Like a trapped beast, the half-breed turned this way and that. Beads of sweat stood out on his heaving chest. He wiped his sweat-slippery hands on his leather tunic, then dried them in the sand, before he gripped his alloy bludgeon again. Then with the long eerie cry of the wild desert tribes he sprang into the air to meet the hurtling drive of the _kriston_ that had singled him out.

The blinding speed of its wings distorted his perspective. The alloy bar, caught in their blurring motion, spun from his stunned hands. He cursed as he fell beneath its flight.

Dimly, he heard the joyous roaring of the throngs who watched him fall. As he rolled aside he heard Mahra's frightened scream. He felt the spearing slash of the _kriston's_ poisonous barbed fang. His arms whipped out, hands closed on the horned tip. He was on his feet heaving outward. He felt tendons rip and a sudden freedom as the tongue tore from the _kriston's_ throat. Its death cry sounded like escaping steam.

He was running toward the outcast Terran girl who was dodging the worrying darting movements of another _kriston_. He swung the grotesque whip-like tongue of the one he had slain as he ran.

He stopped. The creature attacking Mahra suddenly became a lifeless charred hulk. The other _kristons_ were plunging into the sand, smoking, burning. His eyes swung up. The force-wall was gone. The heat ray on the roof landing above the catacombs had destroyed the _kristons_ before their work was done. The heat ray was only used for emergencies. What had moved the Anghorians to save them?

Miraculously, the three still lived. Moljar, Mahra, and the Martian outlaw Gasdon who had blinded the squid by punching out its eyes. Having no scent faculties it was flapping tentacles helplessly in its phosphorescent bog.

* * * * *

An aimless hum of fear and hysteria exploded outward from the throng. They were fleeing from the stands, trampling, yelling frantically, some burning their way through the choked exits of the Colosseum. They were jammed in its elevators, blocking its corridors and archways.

Gasdon came running toward Moljar and the girl. His towering body, dripping mucous from the squid battle, was as large as Moljar's, but lacked its agility and integration of movement. His ugly face was twisted in fanatical purpose.

"Now we fight!" he shouted, "for her! I've wanted to meet Moljar, the half-breed freak, before witnesses who will testify to your defeat."

Mahra laughed. "Morons. I'll choose my own lover. And I certainly can't imagine him being either of you!"

"What witnesses will see you, Gasdon?" asked Moljar. "They run for their lives. Their pure hearts pump thin water."

A loud speaker blared:

THE MISTMEN! VENUS PORT IS UNDER ATTACK. TAKE TO THE JUNGLES. MISTMEN HAVE DESTROYED VENUS PORT COMMUNICATIONS. THEY ARE SACKING, PLUNDERING, KILLING. FLEE FOR YOUR LIVES! THE MISTMEN! VENUS PORT HAS BEEN ATTACKED AND....

Mahra trembled with uncontrollable fears. Her mutant's mind clouded over with the significance of the descending terror. Gasdon, his egomaniacal feud with Moljar forgotten for the moment, shivered, and his green eyes probed the thick cloud blanket.

Moljar's intuitive senses stirred darkly. Mistmen. Scourge of Venus, super-scientific pirates, they appeared mysteriously out of the fogs to loot and kill. Protected by force shields of thick grey, impenetrable mists, they appeared in sudden ruthless violence, sacked, slew, and vanished into the unknown land that spawned them.

Now, they were actually attacking Venus Port!

The stands were empty, except for the dead and dying who had been trampled or burned by the stampeding crowds. They and the Princess Alhone, amid her personal bodyguard. She was standing now, her slender, evil grace swaying in the ever-present blue glow.

She motioned to Moljar. He trembled. "This is the time," he said very low in his throat like a growling dog. "I have waited long."

He strode across the reddened sands towards her. Her yellow cat-eyes veiled her study of his approach. Her feral body leaned tautly as it waited. The half-breed looked up. She was only fifteen feet above him; he could leap the distance.

Her high mewing voice said, "They have dared attack Venus Port! If they continue, they will soon be undisputed rulers of my planet. Soon, with such boldness, the Mistmen might even rule the System. Moljar, would you like freedom?"

He shrugged. "Can a half-breed ever be free?"

"On Venus, I have but to speak to make any being free."

"Try telling the Mistmen that," said Moljar boldly. "They'll soon be here."

"I've never, in all the places I have been, seen quite such a magnificent fool as you, Moljar. Anyway, our communications are cut off. If a man could get through to Anghore, bring back a force ... my scientists in Anghore have been perfecting a new vibro-generator as a weapon. Perhaps it is completed now. The Mistmen have never been attacked. They surprise, throw up detectors and shut off communications, and disappear before any reinforcements can arrive."

Moljar's fingers quivered for her slim throat. But his voice seemed calm. "Could one get through their detectors to Anghore?"

"You perhaps could. If you can, Moljar, I'll make you a Guard of Anghore."

Stolid as was the half-breed's neural circuit, the sudden statement momentarily shocked him. It was rumored that Alhone chose certain fighters to go to Anghore. But that he, a contemptible half-breed should be promised a position as Alhone's personal guard....

"Why me?" he was saying.

"In these games I have seen the best fighters of three worlds. But I have never seen anyone fight as you fought tonight."

A series of thunderous explosions rocked the stadium. A brilliant pyrotechnic display glittered fantastically through the thick cloud layers above Venus Port. The Mistmen were storming the city with customary thorough and savage efficiency. The crying of a helpless city in pain rose and fell in an aimless pattern of terror.

* * * * *

Moljar noted the energy guns held in the hands of the Anghorians surrounding their Princess. This was not the time. One aggressive move from him, and he would be annihilated on the spot. If he accepted her proposition, got through to Anghore and was rewarded as she promised, then he would surely eventually be placed in a fool-proof position to kill her. Time meant nothing. He had worked and waited many years. Many more would not matter--if they led to the fulfilment of his pledge. Only her death mattered. Revenge. Her pelt, well cured and soft, presented to his tribesmen.

The Mistmen were sweeping toward the Colosseum. The roar of their advance increased rapidly. He must decide.

Anghore. Over this outlaw world of blood-lust and savagery, ruled Alhone. Thousands of his kind who had migrated here had been slain under her sanction. But who, or what, was Alhone? What and where was Anghore? Out of the numerous strange and unexplored lands of Venus she might have come. No one knew. There was only a name. Anghore. Anghore that lay somewhere across the Sea of Mort.

A few claimed to have seen Anghore--from a distance. A jumble of towers spearing into the mist higher than the mountain peaks. Only Princess Alhone and her ferocious minions knew of it. And no one talked with them.

Alhone ruled slave followers with weapons of basic energies as strange in origin as Alhone herself. Followers who, in return for their unquestioning, dogged devotion, held positions of great personal power. In their rich trappings, they ruled over private little spheres of influence, answering only to Alhone.

Who was Alhone?--Where was Anghore?--What would he become should he accept this offer? None of these things mattered. Sometime, somewhere, he would have the opportunity to strip that soft furred hide from her quivering body--and no personal price he might pay would be too dear.

"Well, Moljar," she was saying. "Doesn't my offer interest you?"

He controlled himself well as he nodded. "I'll go to Anghore, wherever it is."

Her round pink face crinkled. "You are so certain, barbarian. Few have crossed the Sea of Mort. It is well-named."

"I will go to Anghore," he repeated.

"Then you should hurry. The Mistmen are outside the stadium now, and I'm sure they would like to find us here. At the other end of the stadium, above the catacombs, is the gyro-scout. For emergencies in the games," she laughed. "It has seldom been used. Take it. Its directional beam is already set for Anghore. It will take you directly there. If you have the key."

Moljar flexed his shoulders. His eyes were narrow, suspicious. No one ordinarily could break through the Mistmen's detector bands. Then how could _he_? He shrugged. At least he would be free for a while.

Alhone removed the gleaming yellow stone from one of her semi-webbed fingers. She dropped it to him. "This will open the gyro to you. It will function only under this stone's influence. It will also, if you reach my castle, open the gates into Anghore. You shall be rewarded, Moljar--bountifully."

His eyes fastened on her throat. "Yes," he said. "I depend on it." He slipped the vibrant, throbbing yellow stone on his smallest finger. He stepped back and then a tremendous blast of energy surged against him. The blue field which enveloped the Anghorians was beginning to fade. A stabbing pain lanced up his spine, up into his brain, to explode there in a flash of wrenching agony. He stumbled, went down.

The blue field blurred, swirled, deepened in color. It became a vortex of violently churning silver shot with fire. A nauseous weakness spread through him. The Anghorians, the stadium, the whirling blue fires, all faded.

* * * * *

He opened his eyes slowly. It was raining. A few fat warm drops were spattering down, then a curtain of water spilled from the stadium wall. Shamefully he climbed to his feet, shook his head, looked about warily for Mistmen.

If he had blanked out it had only been for a few seconds. The blue field was gone. And with it, Alhone and her sycophants. Instinctively, he jerked his hand up. The yellow ring-key was gone. He bellowed bitterly. And a laugh answered. Gasdon!

He turned. The Martian outlaw had one arm around the struggling Terran girl. She was biting and striking and cursing, but with no effect. She writhed helplessly under his arm. There was a yellow flash on the outlaw's other hand as it raised, clutching an alloy bar. Gasdon had taken the key!

The half-breed swept a defense bar from a gladiator's stiff dead hand. Gasdon laughed fearless scorn, threw the girl from him, and met Moljar's rush with his own bar upraised. They crashed together with a dull clang, parted, struck again. They circled warily, feinting, parrying, thrusting....

Mahra's scream rang out. "The Mistmen! Coming into the arena!"

Moljar's eyes darted toward her. Beyond, far across the sands, were a number of grey vaporous spheres. Within their depths, dim shapes, indistinct, blurred, moved in a steady ferocious intent toward the three.

"Fight!" yelled Gasdon. He charged toward Moljar again. His face was twisted insanely. "We're doomed anyway. Defend yourself!" His broad yellow face glowed with obsession as he sprang. His alloy bar whirled in a singing arc, which was unwise. Moljar dropped beneath the level of the bar, punched savagely with the end of his own. Gasdon screamed hoarsely as the blunt end sank into his solar plexus. He staggered back, trying to lift the bar. Moljar swung downward, sank his bar halfway through the Martian outlaw's heavy skull.

Quickly Moljar retracted the yellow ring. He yelled at the girl. Then they were running together across the death-littered amphitheatre. Rays of force might have burned them down easily, but for some reason not then known to Moljar, the Mistmen did not fire.

They darted through an unguarded archway, up through level after level. They were still running easily when they reached the roof landing above the catacombs where the monsters of the games were kept. The long low hangar's panel slid open when the ring was applied to its invisible photo-electronic reaction mechanism. The gyro-scout's panel and instruments also were activated by the ring of Alhone.

Moljar hesitated, grinned at the girl. Her silver hair shone like dewed metal. "You are following me? A half-breed? A slave?"

"I'm not following anyone, not in the sense you mean. I'm with you, that's all. I'd have to fight alone, otherwise. That would hardly be intelligent of me, would it?"

"Hardly," he said. "Come on." The gyro-scout lifted automatically, straight up through increasingly thick cloud-layers, until it shot suddenly forward, straight like a bullet across Venus Port and above the Sea of Mort.

A radabeam and an automatic pilot was in complete control. Moljar turned to the Terran mutant. Her taut face was trying to pierce the dense sheath of cloud.

"This is a strange dream, Mahra."

"Dream?" She turned her weird eyes on him briefly.

"What else? A half-breed, child of a Terran woman and a Martian outlaw, travels across the Sea of Death with an outcast mutant." He shook his head. "And for Alhone we fly. For Alhone, the she-monster whom no one knows, to Anghore where no one has ever been and returned."

"Is it far across this death trap?"

"I've heard that in miles it is only perhaps a hundred. But in perils--"

The girl said abruptly, angrily, "For Alhone! You're crazy! If we can take control from the automatic pilot, we could--"

"We can not do that," said Moljar. "We would only crash down there. It's bad ... down there."

She fell silent. The atomic motor whirred almost silently, driving them toward Anghore.

"There is great mystery here," said Moljar. "We seem guided by forces beyond our control. Some powerful, invisible wind."

* * * * *

Curious, nervous, Mahra's rummaging uncovered weapons beneath the gyro's seats. Two electro-blasters and a duelling dagger. They each took a pistol, and she gave the half-breed the long slim knife. Then, when she sat down, her bare shoulder rubbed slightly against him. And remained there.

His flesh tingled. His hand gripped the electro-gun tighter in his hand. "Why do the Terrans hate you mutants so much?" he asked. "Are the rumors about you mutant's deadly powers true?"

She sighed. "Perhaps some of them are true. Anyway the Normals are very scared of us. That's why they isolate and scourge us. We can rule them when we decide we want to."

"Will you want to?"

"Perhaps, someday. When the time is right."

"I am neither ruled, nor do I wish to rule," said Moljar.

"You half-breeds are a strange tribe. Too bad you must all be such barbarians, such savages."

He smiled grimly. "We are what we were made. Somehow, the offspring of a Martian-Terran union results in much larger, much longer-living stock. We were envied. Much as you mutants are on Terra, blessed with double-life compared to Normals. We were driven into the deserts, reviled, imprisoned, beaten. There aren't many of us left. Of those thousands who sought to migrate here and find freedom, Alhone's games wiped out all but a few hundred."

Her voice sharpened. "You found her attractive! You know you did! You swore to avenge your people and bring her pelt back to Mars. Instead, you run errands for her!"

His shaggy black head turned. His eyes blazed with hate into hers. "That alien slut! It was a way out of Venus Port. It will lead me to her again. I could do nothing there."

She sulked. He sensed the slight trembling of her arm against his, and smiled. "My vows cannot change. Someday her pelt will hang in Ankhar's trophy cave."

She screamed. Her lips quivered as she raised a hand over her face. "Will you?" Her voice shrilled. "A _gruoon_!"

Moljar's stomach knotted. He had not even time to fire. The giant flying croc was plunging straight into them. There was a tearing impact. The gyro wobbled. Then the controls went dead. The little ship buckled, vibrated as though the winged crocodile was trying to devour it, rend it with its claws. Then the crushed blades released their hold, and the gyro spun down in a fluttering spiral.

Moljar had time to jam his electro-gun and a small magnetic compass into a bag of water-proof plastic and belt it to his waist before they crashed violently into the Sea of Death.