Chapter XIX: Treachery

“Myles,” said the voice, “show no signs of surprise. It is I, Lilla, speaking to you with my mouth, so that the antennae of Yuri may not hear. Neither can I hear, myself, which makes it difficult for me to talk thus, in spite of all my secret practice. Do not back up, to try the door, for there is a man behind you in the curtains. Remain where you are. When I raise my hand, you must wheel and fire. Then turn quickly back, lest Yuri escape us.”

Cabot stood aghast. He scarce took in the purport of the words. Was that raucous sound the voice of his lovely Lilla? Better, then, she stick to antennae speech for the rest of her days!

But there could be no doubt about it, for her lips were moving with the words.

Then up shot her arm. Instantly Cabot realized what she had said. He wheeled just in time to see a Cupian separate the curtains and make a rush at him. This newcomer wore the uniform toga of the palace guards, and held in his upraised left hand a sharp stiletto. How fortunate that it had not been a revolver, for with such a weapon he could have fired at Myles from behind the curtains.

The face of the onrushing Cupian was a snarl of hatred and triumph, and full into that hideous countenance Cabot fired. The expression changed to one of surprise and thwarted rage. One frantic final effort to reach forward with the dagger, and then the enemy collapsed almost at the feet of his intended victim. Cabot wheeled again to fire at the king.

But Lilla stood alone on the platform. Yuri was no longer there. A faint swaying of the curtains behind the rostrum showed only too clearly the king’s avenue of escape. Rushing forward, Cabot flung these curtains to one side and disclosed a long, dimly lighted corridor stretching away. It was empty. Yuri had quite evidently already rounded the turn at its end. So after him dashed the earthman. But a cry from Lilla’s antennae stayed his steps.

“Don’t leave me alone!” she begged. “I am weak and tired and affrighted. Protect me!”

Once again she was merely a little girl. Her husband returned and comforted her. Then together they searched the walls of the room.

Yuri had lied. Behind the curtains were many exits, and not one was closed. But, then, Yuri might be expected to lie. What mattered it to Myles and Lilla as they clasped each other in their arms? At last they were together and free after their long separation and captivity.

As Myles held close the warm girlish form of his beloved, his tense troubles dropped from him, and a perfect peace descended upon his soul. Lilla pressed limply against him, home at last in the haven of his embrace.

Thus they replighted their love. Thus they stood in the subterranean cellars of the Kuana Palace, oblivious of time and space; Cabot, the earth man, dirty, long-haired, bearded, and disheveled; and Lilla, Princess of Poros, lovely, dainty, and immaculate. Beauty and the beast, indeed! But they adored each other, with a love unequaled on two planets.

Myles was reunited with his princess, it is true; but there should have been three of them there instead of merely two. All through the fabric of his joy ran a thread of intense grief at the absence of their little son.

“Lilla, dearest,” he started to say, “our darling baby—”

He was interrupted by the arrival of Nan-nan, the young priest, who had shed his palace guard uniform and now wore an ordinary Cupian toga.

Said Lilla, hurriedly: “Please, please don’t mention it yet!”

Myles thought he understood how she felt about it, and so desisted. Probably her grief was still too poignant to bear discussion. He little guessed that her real reason was that she did not know how much confidence to place in this newcomer.

“Lilla,” Cabot said, “this is Nan-nan, one of the priests of the Caves of Kar, who tended me during all my illness.”

The priest bowed low before her in acknowledgment of the introduction.

“You forget, dear,” Lilla declared, “that you haven’t yet told me a single thing of what has happened to you since you left Luno Castle half a year ago to fly to the Peace Day exercises, which turned out so fatally.”

“When have I had time?” Myles asked, in reply. “Let’s sit right down here and begin.”

But Nan-nan cut in with: “Pardon me for interrupting, O princess, and thou, O defender of the faith. But there is much work to be done. It is now night. There is fighting in the streets. You must consolidate the palace, Cabot, and hold it until your army from the north can reach Kuana.”

“But what of Yuri?” asked Myles. “We must run him down before he escapes us, or there will be more villainy afoot.”

Nan-nan laughed. “You yourself don’t seem to be doing very much running just this moment. But compose yourself. In spite of your many followers, who at this moment swarm every corridor of this palace, none of them dared lay hands on the person of the king. Word has just reached me that he has safely left the building, and this is why I have sought you out. Your men are now gathering in the Council Hall above.”

“Then lead to the Council Hall, Nan-nan, and I follow,” the earthman replied.

* * * * *

As the three of them entered the great Council Hall of the palace they found it filled with a jostling leaderless throng of Cupians.

Nan-nan mounted the rostrum and held up his hand. The crowd faced him and became silent.

“Patriots of Kuana,” he shouted, “I present to you your leader, Myles Cabot, the beast from Minos, protector of Cupia.”

Up shot every hand.

“Yahoo!” they radiated, in unison, the cheery Porovian greeting.

“And your rightful ruler, the Princess Lilla.”

Again the salute and the shout of greeting.

Cabot then joined the young priest upon the stage. In spite of his condition, there was a look in his cold gray eyes that inspired confidence and respect.

“Men of Cupia,” he said, “and I can call you by no more noble title—men of Cupia, to the northward lies our army of liberation, equipped with the most modern engines of destruction. We must hold this city until they arrive. And then we must keep on until the last Formian lies dead. There is no room on any one planet for two ruling races. So it must be war to the hilt, asking no quarter, giving none, until the Kew dynasty is restored to the throne, and Cupia is made permanently free. Are you with me?”

“We are,” came back the unanimous shout.

“Then every pootah hold up his hand.”

Up shot the hands of all those who had commanded the old “hundreds”, or athletic clubs, which Cabot had used as military companies, and on which he had based the organization of the first army which Cupia had ever known.

“Good!” said he. “Let the pootahs step over to me.”

They did so.

“Now let every bar-pootah hold up his hand.”

Up shot the hands of all the lieutenants.

“Let each pootah choose two bar-pootahs.”

The choices were quickly made, and thus the earthman had established the skeleton framework of an army.

“Are there any of the higher officers here?”

One colonel and several men of intermediate grade signified their persons. A colonel is one who commanded a “thousand”—that is to say, a body composed of twelve of the hundreds. I perforce use the earth word “colonel,” as the Porovian term is utterly unpronounceable. The colonel gave his name as Wotsn.

Cabot divided the non-officers by lot among the various pootahs. In a few moments the disorderly mob was organized. To Colonel Wotsn was intrusted the disposition of the troops and the posting of guards. Then Cabot, Lilla, and Nan-nan proceeded to one of the upper terraces to get a view of the city.

The night was warm, tropical, moist, and scented, as are all nights on Poros. Beneath them on every side were dotted the street lights of the great city. All was so peaceful and serene that it hardly seemed possible they could actually be at this very moment in the midst of a civil war.

Myles inhaled the fragrant hothouse air with long breaths. The princess leaned against him in perfect contentment as he quoted:

“And over all, as soft as thine own cheek,
Brooded the velvet stillness of the night.”

From time to time Cabot’s earthly ears discerned faint popping noises here and there throughout the capital. It sounded, for all the world, like the night before the Fourth of July in any American city; but Myles realized full and well that it meant that shooting was in progress between the opposing factions. These were not firecrackers—this was war!

Even so, what could they do about it just then?

So the love-starved earthman held his princess close in his arms and waited.

Finally he had an idea; so he dispatched one of the orderlies, who had followed them to the roof, to instruct the colonel to send out patrols into the streets to gather in more of their supporters. Then ensued another period of waiting, during which Myles Cabot and his princess sat side by side on the parapet of the terrace surveying the city below and saying very little. For, “Perfect communion needs no speech,” as Poblath would put it.

At last Lilla broke the silence to remark: “Now would be a very good opportunity to tell me of your adventures.”

He was glad of the chance, for by starting at the very beginning with the assassination of the old king in the stadium, he hoped to be able to lead up gradually to the sad death of little Kew. It would be well, for undoubtedly her grief would continue to fester within her heart until she had discussed it and thus given it an outlet.

So Myles recounted the inception of the revolution, and the first part of his age-long journey northward. He had just reached the point where he had abandoned his kerkool and had taken refuge in a house at the end of a blind alley, when Nan-nan interrupted to direct their attention to the northward, where waving phosphorescent streamers of light began to appear on the horizon.

“Northern lights,” thought Myles. He had never observed this phenomenon before on Poros.

“Airplanes,” the priest laconically remarked. “Your fleet is driving the enemy flyers southward toward Kuana. Those are the searchlights of the contenders.”

And he was right, for in a few paraparths the fighting was directly over the city. But what puzzled the observers on the palace top was the fact that many of the contending planes and all of the contending bees appeared to carry no searchlights. No, that wasn’t exactly correct—they carried searchlights, but these were unlit. Not an air fighter on the Cupian side was directing a single beam on the enemy; whereas each of the ant flyers carried a light on a long pole, which it could project in any direction so that the light would not reveal the true position of the craft.

Thus the Formians possessed a tremendous advantage. It is true that this equipment was difficult to maniulate and hard to hold focused upon the bees and the Cupian airships; yet how much better it was than no lights at all! The Cupians had lights. Why, then, did they not use them? Was it because, not being on long poles, the Cupian searchlights would serve as targets and thus aid the enemy more than they would aid their owners?

The ants outnumbered the Cupians and their bee allies. Only the ants were equipped with means to illuminate their enemy. Not being illumined themselves, they could hold their planes steady, and did not have to dodge about as did the forces of Toron. Yet, in spite of these advantages, the Cupians were steadily forcing them southward and were shooting down Formian after Formian, with scarcely any casualties of their own. How could they do it?

Cabot was thrilled, but dumfounded.

“Can you make it out?” he asked of Nan-nan.

“Yes,” the priest replied, with a smile; “it is very easy.”

“Then, for the love of the Great Builder, tell me,” the earthman exclaimed. “Don’t keep me in suspense.”

But all that Nan-nan would say was: “Wait!”

Cabot was about to remonstrate again, when he noticed a peculiar thing: the Cupian flyers seemed to be manipulating their unlit searchlights, just as though they were lighted. What was the great idea? What could it mean?

His thoughts were interrupted by something dropping with a thud on the soft silver sward beside him. He groped for it and picked it up. It was a pair of binoculars, quite evidently lost overboard from one of the battling flyers. Now Cabot and his party would be able to observe the fight from closer quarters. Courteously he offered the glasses to the princess, and she in turn to the priest; but the latter declined them with a shrug, and again that quizzical smile, which a passing gleam of light revealed for a moment. So Lilla adjusted them and peered up into the velvet sky. Then she uttered a little exclamation of surprise.

“Myles, Myles,” she cried, “our ships have at last lit their searchlights! Now, indeed, we shall win.”

“We were winning already,” he replied, likewise peering into the black abyss above. “But why do you say that our ships are using their lights? It still seems to me as though they were not.”

“Here, take the glasses and see for yourself,” said Lilla, and she handed them over, adding, as she looked into the sky with her naked eyes: “But now it seems as though the lights of our fliers have been extinguished. How strange!”

Cabot adjusted the lenses to his own vision, and sure enough all the ships on both sides, were illumined. And still the young priest continued to smile. Cabot passed the binoculars back to Lilla, and again all the Cupian searchlights became dark to him. It was most mystifying. He glanced at his companions in perplexity and suddenly saw the teeth and eyeballs of Nan-nan glow phosphorescent. Then, and not until then, did the truth dawn on Cabot.

“They are using the black light!” he gasped.

“The black light?” Lilla inquired. “What is that? How can light be black?”

“They are using the black light,” Myles continued, “just as my country, America, did to protect our convoys in the last great war on my own planet, Minos. Our warships swept the waters far and near with beams of the black light. These beams could not be seen by the German submarines, and thus did not reveal the position of our ships. When a beam played full upon a submarine, the luckless craft even then did not realize that it was observed; did not realize its fate until the high explosive projectile followed close in the wake of the light. Thus the scourge was driven from the seas, and the Germans never even suspected how it was done. I have discussed it with Toron, so this must be his idea.

“Your glowing teeth and eyes revealed the secret to me, O Nan-nan. And that reminds me of a funny story. Major Rob Wood, of the American army, the inventor of the black light, was once demonstrating it in his laboratory to Sir Oliver Lodge shortly after the close of the war. The room appeared to be in darkness, and yet in fact a powerful searchlight was throwing a beam of black light straight across the middle of the room.

“So the major gave his guest a hand mirror, and told him to walk around with it until he could see his own teeth, when he would thus know that he was in the path of the beam. But Sir Oliver skirted the laboratory in vain. His teeth never showed up white at all; for you see, he had a set of false teeth, and only _real_ teeth will glow in the black light. Major Wood and I were horribly embarrassed.”

“That is all very well,” Lilla broke in, laughing, “but if our men have the black light, and the Formians can’t see it, how can our men see it either?”

“A fair question,” her husband replied, “and the explanation is easy. These binoculars, like those used by the American navy in the World War, are equipped with a fluorescent screen, or light filter, the effect of which is to make the black light appear as though it were the ordinary white light to which our eyes are accustomed. Thus to us the light is white, whereas to our enemies it is—well, for them it does not exist at all.”

“So that is why the ant men do not dodge, not knowing that they are illumined by the Cupian searchlights, and thus they fall an easy prey to the rifles of the Cupians.”

By this time the tide of battle had swept to the southward. The party on the terrace withdrew for much needed rest and refreshment. Cabot was elated, but Nan-nan threw a wet blanket over his hopes.

* * * * *

“Do not forget,” the young priest reminded him, “that with daylight the Formians will return in full force. What will your black light then avail you?”

They separated for the night, Cabot pondering deeply on the parting words of the priest.

* * * * *

Lilla and Myles made their way to her old quarters, where he had courted her in the days when he had been a mere barsarkar, newly arrived in Kuana, after his escape from the Formians. Here, too, they had lived as guests of King Kew, her father, after their marriage; except of course, during such time as they had spent at their own country residence on the beautiful little island in the midst of Lake Luno. The fatal Lake Luno!

In Lilla’s recent captivity under Yuri, she had been permitted to occupy these same quarters. And Bthuh, her best friend, and wife of Poblath, had accompanied her as lady in waiting, and had taken charge as of old.

Yuri, still hoping to win the princess, had not violated the sanctuary of those rooms.

Lilla and Myles entered the quarters together.

“Lie down for a minute on this couch,” she said, “while I find your things.”

He obeyed. In a moment she was back, but the weary earthman was sound asleep where he had dropped. Tenderly she kissed the unshaven face; then spread a blanket over him and left him there in the outer room, while she retired to her chamber for the night.

The next thing he knew some one was shaking his shoulder. He awoke with a start.

Bthuh, the wife of Poblath, lady in waiting to the princess, was standing over him with an electric candle in her hand.

“Myles, Myles,” she cried, “I am glad to see you again, but make haste, arise. An orderly is at the door with a message.”

Cabot jumped to his feet and went to the door. The Cupian soldier standing there informed him that Colonel Wotsn desired his presence as soon as convenient. Then the man withdrew, and Cabot returned to the room. The three dials of the clock on the wall showed that the time was two hundred and sixty o’clock, not quite daybreak.

“Is Lilla up?” he asked.

“No,” Bthuh replied. “She still sleeps.”

“Then do not disturb her,” he said. “She needs the rest.”

So, dismissing Bthuh, he shaved, bathed, and donned a fresh toga. Then, as the princess had not yet appeared, he penciled a hasty note for her, and went to have breakfast with the Colonel. Nan-nan, the priest, was also there.

Wotsn announced that during the night the city had fallen completely into their hands, and that the loyal army from the north was about to enter it at daybreak, but that the Formian air fleet was already on its way northward from Wautoosa to give battle.

He wished Cabot to be on hand to see these developments.

As the first pink light from the invisible sun diffused through the silver clouds of the eastern sky, these three and their attendants charged up on the highest terrace of the palace. There was the hum of many motors in the air. The early morning light disclosed to the southward the long serried ranks of the imperial air navy of the ant empire, while from the north came the whistling bees and their Cupian allies. It was a truly impressive sight.

The two forces would meet for battle squarely over the city. The outcome was in the hands of the gods.

And then Cabot saw what filled his heart with intense joy and security. Several kerkools, manned by Cupian soldiers, drove in from the north and halted beside the palace. And each kerkool bore the familiar electrical machinery designed by Cabot and Prince Toron, the machinery which propagated that peculiar ray which was capable of silencing the ignition of any airplane motor—except, of course, the trophil engines with which the Cupian planes were equipped.

“Let them come!” Cabot exulted. “For, look, there is the means to bring every black flyer to the dust.”

But Nan-nan, the priest, shook his head sadly.

“That device has passed its usefulness,” he declared, “for every Formian plane now has a trophil engine the same as ours. If your fleet relies on any assistance from these machines they are lost.”

“How do you know this?” Cabot asked him.

To which the priest replied, as was his wont: “The holy father knows everything.”

“Then we are indeed lost,” added Lilla, who had just joined them, “for look—the force from the south outnumbers that from the north, and the Formians are the more experienced flyers, as we well know.”

“How does it happen,” Myles asked, “that the ant men do outnumber us? When I was captured, _we_ were rapidly gaining the ascendancy.”

“That is true,” Nan-nan replied, “but your troops, in their rocky fastnesses, did not possess the facilities for the construction and repair of airships which Prince Yuri had at Wautoosa and at Mooni and at Kuana.

“So that, in spite of the greater fatalities among his forces, his fleet steadily grew until it outnumbered yours. And when he learned the secret of the ray, his ascendancy became complete. Even before your capture he had complete control of the sky, if he but chose to exercise it. Last night’s air battle, which your fleet won by the aid of the black light, was the first to its credit in two sangths. And I am afraid that this morning the tables will be turned.”

“Only a miracle can save us!” Lilla exclaimed.

“True, too true! But there will be no miracle,” Nan-nan asserted positively.

And Cabot added: “We must trust to the brains and patriotism of Cupia, and to them alone.”