Chapter III: A Slave on Venus

Robert Ellsmore Grandon, ex-clubman, ex-idler, ex-social lion, was awakened from a sound sleep by a shaft of brilliant sunlight which shone through the mica-paneled window of the quarry-slaves' sleeping quarters. He blinked, turned uneasily, then sat up and stretched himself. To his surprise he felt numerous twinges of pain as he did so. His muscles appeared stiff and bruised and his back smarted and burned. He noticed that his sole articles of apparel consisted of a scarlet breech-cloth and a pair of sandals of strange design. His skin was browned, as if by constant exposure to the sun, and his hands were rough and calloused. His face was covered with a thick, black beard, and his hair was matted and unkempt.

He rose stiffly and walked to the window. The brilliance and size of the sun, visible for a moment through a rift in the clouds, astonished him. Never had he seen that orb appear so large. Then the explanation dawned on him, Venus was only three-fourths as far from the sun as was the Earth. Naturally the sun would appear larger as one approached it. Here was incontrovertible evidence that he was indeed on the planet Venus. He stared quickly about him, in eager curiosity.

Grandon had hoped for a clear view of a Zarovian landscape, but he was disappointed, for in front of his window there stretched a solid wall of black marble cliffs. The only visible vegetation consisted of a few pink toadstool-like growths which grew from niches in the rock. They were far larger than any he had ever seen, some of them being over twelve feet in height.

He turned and glanced at his roommates. Fifty men were quartered in the sleeping shed, which was built of black marble, thatched with the broad leaves of a species of tree-fern which reminded him of imaginative pictures of prehistoric swamps.

The bedding consisted of a coarse, dried moss, which made an exceptionally resilient couch, but would undoubtedly have caused considerable discomfort to one not accustomed to it, because of the scratchy stems which protruded here and there. The men, who were attired like Grandon, with the exception that their breechclouts were gray instead of scarlet, seemed to be thoroughly enjoying their morning sleep. Their skins were sunburned like his own, and marked with scars and open wounds that mutely attested the brutality of their drivers.

Grandon was startled by a hollow booming sound, and some one on the outside opened a large door at the center of the shed. Instantly every man sprang to his feet, and he saw that they were forming in single file to march through the door. He joined the procession, which was heading for a large building in the midst of a group of sheds similar to the one he had occupied, and saw that the sound emanated from a large cylinder of iron suspended from a steel beam in front of the building, and beaten by a man who wielded a large club wrapped with thongs.

Heavily armed guards stood at intervals of about fifty feet on either side of their pathway. Each guard carried a tall spear with a broad blade about four feet long, while a scarbo, a sword with a basket hilt and a blade rather like that of a scimitar, hung from the left side of the belt.

From the right depended a weapon which was utterly strange to Grandon. It was about two feet long, oblong like a carpenter's level, and apparently composed of blued steel. A rivet passed completely through it about four inches from the end, holding it firmly to the belt, although it could be tilted at any angle, and its wearer could point it in any direction by turning his body.

Grandon had yet to learn the efficiency of this terrible Zarovian weapon, the tork, which fired needlelike glass projectiles filled with a potent poison that paralyzed man and beast alike almost as soon as it penetrated, and had a range as great as the most powerful of modern rifles. These tiny bullets were propelled by a highly explosive gas ignited by an electric spark at the touch of a button.

The gas was compressed in a chamber at the rear of the tork, while the glass missiles were held in a magazine near the muzzle. After a shot was fired the weapon would automatically reload, a bullet sliding into place in front while just the right charge of gas was released in the chamber behind it. Each gun, or tork, held a thousand rounds of ammunition.

* * * * *

The slaves passed through the building where each man had his ration doled out to him: a bowl of stewed mushrooms and a steaming cup of a colorless aromatic beverage which Grandon found to be very much like a strong wine.

As he followed his companions through the building, Grandon noticed that each man stopped before a small shrine and stood for a moment with head bowed low and hand extended toward it, palm downward. When he reached the shrine, he stopped as the others had done, then gave a gasp of amazement, for there before him, illuminated by the brilliant rays of the morning sun, was a life-size painting of the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.

She wore a robe of scarlet, ornamented with gold and precious stones, and a jeweled band of platinum imprisoned a mass of golden curls which were piled on top of her head after a style different from anything he had ever seen. She was seated on a massive golden throne with cushions of scarlet, across the arms of which rested a scarbo, similar in shape to those carried by the guards, but with a hilt of gold studded with rubies.

Could this be the heartless Amazon ruler of whom Dr. Morgan had spoken? As he looked into that lovely, girlish face, Grandon did not think it possible that she could be otherwise than noble, kind and generous.

A sharp exclamation brought him to his senses none too soon, for as he turned he saw an overseer advancing with cruel whip upraised. Quickly bowing as the others had done, he ran forward to join his fellow slaves.

Once outside the building, the men seated themselves on the ground in little scattered groups, for their morning meal. Grandon joined a company of these who had occupied the same dormitory with him, and attacked his food with gusto, for he was ravenously hungry.

He could not take part in the general conversation because the language was unintelligible to him, yet the words sounded strangely familiar. A recollection of their meaning was stored in the brain cells of the body which had become his, but the true mind, or ego, which was Grandon, being the only mind which really remembers, could not interpret them because it had never heard them. He could, and later did, however, learn with great rapidity because of the subconsciously stored reflections. Meanwhile, he kept silent and listened.

The meal finished, the slaves were herded to the quarries by their drivers. Each driver, who had charge of ten slaves, wore both tork and scarbo in his belt and carried a whip, the five lashes of which were woven from some coarse fiber and interwoven with short pieces of a brittle, nettlelike moss, which broke off in the skin of the victim, inflicting a pain like that of a thousand bee stings. A man struck with one of these whips not only felt the momentary blow, but suffered excruciating agony for hours afterward.

For the first time in his hitherto petted and pampered existence, Grandon learned what it was to labor. Sweating, toiling, straining every weary muscle, he managed to keep pace with his fellow slaves. The intense heat of the sun would have made labor in the open impossible, had it not been almost constantly tempered by the floating clouds of vapor which are ever present in the dense, moist Zarovian atmosphere. Such a thing as a clear sky is almost unknown on any Zarovian landscape, and it is, indeed, this very fact which enables man to exist on this planet with any degree of comfort in other than the polar regions. At those rare intervals when the disk of the sun is fully revealed, the heat is almost unbearable.

The marble was being removed from the hillside in large rectangular blocks, by thousands of slaves working on a series of terraces, each of which was the height of one of the blocks. The crews were so distributed that the terraced hillside constantly retained the same general contour, for while the bottom terrace was being removed, the next one above it was also cut away in the same proportion, and so on to the very top.

* * * * *

Grandon's crew worked on the bottom terrace all morning, but were ordered to the top in the afternoon to reënforce the laborers in that section who, for some reason, had not kept up with their quota. He and a fellow slave were removing one of the heavy blocks by means of levers when his end slipped and fell on another block, breaking off a large fragment. The quick-tempered driver, who was standing behind Grandon when the accident happened, raised his whip and struck him a stinging blow across the shoulders.

The result was almost as much of a surprise to Grandon as it was to the driver, for quickly wheeling, Grandon landed a tremendous right hook on the point of the man's jaw. It was a clean knock-out. Another driver, seeing his fellow go down, came running with whip upraised, but Grandon bowled him over with a marble fragment and ran through the group of startled slaves toward the brow of the hill. Some one raised the alarm and a half dozen torks were immediately pointed toward the fugitive. Several slaves fell, struck by the missiles intended for him, and a hail of projectiles battered the rocks around him as he disappeared over the hilltop.

Before him stretched a dense, waving forest of tree-ferns into which he plunged without slackening his speed, for his pursuers were close behind him. As he dodged in and out among the tree-trunks he could hear their halloos growing fainter and fainter, and finally no sound was audible except the rustling of the countless, wind-shaken fern leaves.

Wearied by his exertions, he slackened his pace and, after proceeding about a mile farther, stopped and looked about him. The fern forest was, to the Earth-man, a most strange and impressive sight.

Huge tree-ferns with rough trunks and foliage growing out of the tops like that of palm trees, some of them ever seventy feet in height, towered above the shorter, more bushy varieties which were themselves giants compared to the largest ferns of earthly jungles. Then there were climbing ferns hanging in tangled masses, creeping ferns, and dwarf, low-growing kinds, barely raising their fronds above the thick carpet of moss which everywhere covered the forest floor.

Grandon was puzzled where to go or what to do. Behind him were the cruel slave drivers who would probably inflict horrible tortures and even death itself if they could get their hands on him. Ahead was---he knew not what.

Would the direction he had taken carry him to safety, or into still greater dangers? He was weary, hungry, and thirsty, and had no idea which way to go for water or food. As for marking his course by the sun, this was impossible, first because he knew nothing whatever of the geography of Zarovia, and second because he did not even know whether he was in the northern or southern hemisphere.

He noticed that the ground slanted slightly toward his right, and intuition told him that this might lead to a valley and water. He changed his course accordingly. He hoped also to find some fruits, berries or nuts with which to satisfy his hunger, but he hoped in vain, for there is no such thing in all the forests of Zarovia.

* * * * *

As he trudged wearily forward, sunset was succeeded by twilight, and before he realized it, the black, moonless Zarovian night had spread its impenetrable mantle about him.

Suddenly, from out the darkness behind him, came a peal of horrible, demoniac laughter.

As he wheeled, Grandon unconsciously emitted a peculiar sound, half roar, half growl, and every hair on his body bristled. For the moment he had reverted to the primitive. Reason was unseated and instinct held sway.

Two glowing phosphorescent orbs were slowly advancing as if something were creeping or slinking toward him. Then, without warning, the hideous noise was repeated at his left.

He turned to face another pair of menacing eyes, then leaped for the trunk of the nearest tree-fern and climbed it as rapidly as if he had been used to that sort of thing all his life. As it was, he was barely in time to escape the snapping jaws that yawned beneath him.

Not until he had reached the leaf-crown, fifty feet above the ground, did he pause or look downward. Then he saw, not two, but a dozen pairs of eyes glancing toward him, while peal after peal of the nerve-racking laughter smote his ears.

Time dragged along. What manner of things were these that sought his life, he wondered? Evidently they were unable to climb, or they would have followed him ere this. The fact that they did not leave, even after several more hours had elapsed, made it evident that they expected to get him.

He had been hearing a peculiar crunching sound some time before he located it and guessed the terrible truth.

They were gnawing through the base of the tree-trunk!