Chapter V

Festival of Love! On the swaying little anti-gravity platform I lay with Nereid, staring down at the strange, colorful scene that stretched beneath us. It was at the end of our escape-flight from the Spaceship, in time doubtless before Allen on that trip arrived in Tollgamo's mountain city.

What Allen saw of the grim little metal and rock city of the Gorts was in weird contrast to what I saw now of the riotous, colorful forest and water scene where the gay festival of Love and Music was in full progress.

There was only a brief glimpse at first, as we swooped down. We had already passed over the main city of Arron. It lay between the open sea and an area a mile or so inland, where there was a lagoon, little chains of lakes, threads of tiny streams and a myriad little dots of tropic islands. I had seen, down in the forest, lines of gay, pastel-tinted lights to mark the city streets. Then we came to the lagoon, where the festival was being held.

A watery failyland of gayety. The lagoon, a circular spread of water of perhaps five miles, was rippled with a soft night-breeze. The ripples were stained with the opalescent night-sheen from the overhead clouds, and stained like a painter's pallette with a riot of glorious tints from the strings of colored lights which connected the little islands.

One big island, a thousand feet in length, stood in the center. A pavilion was on it, from which soft exotic music flooded out into the night--music that blended on the tropic breeze with a vast murmur of excited voices. I could guess that there might be four or five thousand people disporting themselves here. The main island was thronged with people moving about, or crowding toward the pavilion where with the music there seemed dancing and perhaps some form of theatrical entertainment.

Boats were on the thread-like little canals between the islands. A barge crowded with young men and girls, all in gay-colored robes, was slowly approaching from the open lagoon. Little boats, mere six foot rafts, each held a girl and man; the man paddling, the girl fending off flowers with which she was pelted by young men on other rafts, or on the shore.

The laughing screams of girls floated up as they swam in the open lagoon, their voices calling jocular defiance to the men on shore to come out and catch them.

Nereid slid our little flying platform skilfully down. We landed on a small level island which was connected with the big island by an arcade bridge. No one had seemed to notice us. Boats were tied up here along the shore. Others were arriving, disembarking the gay merrymakers. All were in holiday attire; a variety of motley costumes, indescribable as a fancy-dress costume ball on Earth. Some of them, men and girls, wore cloaks and hoods, with little gaily colored masks covering their eyes.

I stood for a moment with Nereid. "You're going to find your father?" I suggested.

"Yes. If he is here." She told me then of the Arsenal rock beyond the Water City, where Peters and his men most of their time were working. "He is there probably," she added. "I think he would not come here tonight."

"Then what would we do, go to him there?"

"Yes, of course. I will see our Ruler first. Jenten-Shah--he will be here. Over there on the big island, in the pavilion probably." Bitterness was in her tone. Nereid was thinking of the menace of the Gorts, with their engines of destruction. She and I did not know then, what Allen was just about now learning--that there was an urgency of haste since Tollgamo's attack would be made tonight. But as we threaded our way under the gay colored lights across the arcade to the main island, I somehow seemed to feel the undercurrent of menace here. Occasionally we passed little figures who were evidently onlookers. The imbecile workers, lower class who were almost in the position of slaves. They were weird little creatures, most of them no more than four feet tall, grey-skinned and powerfully built. We passed one who was standing on the shore gazing at a raft where a lone girl shrouded in blue-white filmy drapery was being pelted with flowers. The gnome-like imbecile stood impassive, gazing with vacant face. Then he was muttering to himself. A fragment of it reached us.

"Tollgamo is coming to help us workers. We won't have to work tomorrow. Then we can do things like this."

I gripped Nereid. "You hear what that worker said? No work for him tomorrow. Do you suppose--"

She tried to smile. "What an imbecile says never means much, Kent. But I must tell father."

* * * * *

Occasionally now people were staring at us, at me. Some rushed at us, but Nereid with an imperious gesture scattered them; and in a moment, with their other diversions, they had forgotten us. Then we came to where there was a pile of cloaks. Nereid gave me a dark robe and hood; and found a long white cloak and white cowl for herself. Then from her green undergarment she produced a little golden star, fastened it on the breast of her cloak. Queer insignia, that star with a crescent moon above and below it.

The white cloak and cowl to signify that she was an Untouchable. Nereid's beautiful little face bore a faint twisted smile. "That is what some of them call us, Kent. That is a term of derision, because now, at a festival like this, there are things we do not like."

Love, music, laughter--all so admirable. But here in Arron, under the leadership of the wanton Ruler, Jenten-Shah, it was becoming license. There were some five hundred young Virgins here in Arron, who were trying at least for moderation. And trying to help Peters prepare for the menace of the Gorts ... Untouchables. Nereid was leader of them.

In our robes and cowls now, Nereid and I were attracting no attention save that occasionally there was a jibe at Nereid. Laughing young men, befuddled perhaps by some intoxicating drink with wanton girls clinging to them, would sometimes lunge at us with mocking laughter. But we pushed past them, shoving our way toward the big open pavilion. I could see now the jam of people under its low spreading roof.

We were still following the shorefront. From the pavilion a bevy of girls with flowing drapes came running and plunged into the water of the lagoon.

I gripped Nereid's white-cloaked arm. "That big figure in red--who is that?"

I had seen the giant figure here at an edge of the crowd, when we crossed the arcade bridge. A man in robe and cowl of red and black. Then he had vanished. He was visible again now, a huge fellow, six and a half feet, at least. He was standing a hundred feet or so ahead of us, on the pink-white coral sand of the shore. And then abruptly he moved away and was gone again.

Nereid stared, and then shook her head. "I do not know. I--" She checked herself; her face had a queer startled look.

"What--" I demanded. But we were in the pavilion now, with the jam of watching people pressing us.

"You will wait here, Kent?" Nereid murmured. "I will ask Jenten-Shah of my father."

I drew back behind a palm on which great orchid-like flowers were growing. I could see the dais where the gay fatuous ruler was seated with food and drink before him, with his young women favorites around him as they watched the platform where a barbarically voluptuous woman in flame-colored drapes was dancing with colored light-beams upon her.

I had a glimpse of Nereid importuning Jenten-Shah. It was brief; and then Nereid came back to me.

"Father is not here, Kent. He told the King not to hold this festival tonight."

"Did you mention that imbecile worker?"

She nodded. Her face was grim, frightened now. "He said, if any imbecile causes trouble there will be a hundred imbeciles killed as punishment. He is drunk with _marite_. He laughed at the idea that Tollgamo would dare attack."

Merrymaking on the brink of disaster and death.

* * * * *

As though both Nereid and I were fascinated now, for a time we stood in the pavilion corner, watching the colorful scene. Half the people here were robed and masked, waiting a later time when a bell would give the signal for the unmasking. I saw several of the white-robed girls--the Untouchables. Then one of them, with a golden star on her breast, like Nereid's but without the crescent moons, came and joined us. Nereid had met her a while ago near the Ruler's dais. Her name was Venta. Under Nereid, she was commanding the little group of protesting Virgins.

She was very like Nereid, save that beneath her white cowl I could see that her hair was dark. She stared at me. "So? The Earthman?" She shook my hand with a quaint awkwardness. "You look in the same fashion as her father, the Meester Peters," she commented.

Then suddenly all three of us were stricken tense. There was a commotion across the crowded pavilion, where a scantily clothed young girl was struggling, terrified, in the grip of a thick-set, crooked little imbecile man. He was forcing his caresses on her and the girl was screaming.

The music suddenly ceased. In the hushed, stricken silence, the imbecile's crazy childish laughter mingled with the girl's screams. Then there was a rush as a group of young men nearby plucked the girl away, knocked the gnome-like worker down, beating him, slamming him until he lay inert.

It was like a spark in gunpowder. People were shouting. Somebody found another imbecile and attacked him. A wave of shouting spread beyond the pavilion. But it lasted only a moment. The music started up again. The dancing continued.

Nereid gripped me. "Out in the workers' village they will hear of that. And what they might try to do--"

Her words evoked a grim picture of powerful little men, with minds like children suddenly enraged to frenzy; and the half-drunken youths at the festival, ready enough to kill any worker, with the Ruler encouraging them.

And this was what Tollgamo wanted, of course; confusion here to make his attack easier.

The girls now were swiftly talking in their own language. We had shoved our way out of the pavilion, were standing near the shorefront; and the girls had drawn a little apart from me. I could see Venta nodding as Nereid gave her instructions. Then Nereid came to me.

"She will get our Virgins, Kent. She has ten other girls who will help her collect them all."

The Virgins--five hundred of them if Venta could locate them all--would come in surface boats, past the Water City to the Arsenal. Nereid and I would precede them, starting now. All to offer ourselves to Peters and his fighting men if Tollgamo should strike tonight. But how would he strike? That we did not know.

"And in the Water City," Nereid was hastily telling me, "many of the people living there have come here to the festival tonight. But some of our girls live there." Again her lips twisted with that wry little smile. "They will be there now. Some have brothers and fathers who work with my father in the Science Arsenal. But some do not, and I will send them here. If there is trouble with the imbeciles, they will help quell it."

Venta, ready to start on her mission, called goodbye. Then for just a moment Nereid ran after her to add something. Two other girls in the white Untouchable robes joined them, and stood talking about fifty feet away from where I waited. The shore there had risen to a little grassy bluff about twenty feet above the glittering, light-bathed lagoon.

And suddenly I gasped. From a clump of vivid blue and orange palms which grew thickly beside the four girls, a figure suddenly emerged. A giant man-shape, in red and black robe. Then his robe and cowl dropped from him, revealing a towering powerful giant with dark close-clipped hair, dressed in a grey garment of woven metal with jeweled weapons at his broad belt. And in that second of my numbed gaze, I was aware that he had scattered the girls and had seized Nereid, holding her slim form against his huge bulk.

And one of the other girls screamed: "Tollgamo!"

* * * * *

Tollgamo! My first sight of him. And like Allen, for just a second I stood numbed, awed by the power, the dominance that radiated from him. He was quietly smiling. His hand went up to wave the girls away.

"Tollgamo! Tollgamo!" The name went like a wave, back from the shore, so that the merrymakers gasped, stood stricken. For that second it was a tableau, with only the smiling Tollgamo in movement. Slowly he was backing, drawing the fighting, struggling Nereid with him. Backing toward the thick clump of palms.

Then I was aware that I was dashing forward, shouting. It was only fifty feet. From one of Tollgamo's hands, a spit of tiny blue light hissed at me. Missed. Then Venta and two of the other girls had cast off their white robes. Slim little creatures, like Nereid, greenly clad. Soon Tollgamo was struggling with all four of them. He flung them off, still trying to hold Nereid.

It was only a second or two as I plunged at them. Then in a group they went over the little promontory and hit the water with a splash. Almost simultaneously I dove. The green opalescent water closed over me. Somewhere near at hand I could see the blurr of the struggling figures. But I could not reach them. With all my strength I swam, but then I had to come up for air. I dove again. Accursedly helpless. Then on another try I met a girl coming up, then another and another--all four of them bobbing to the surface with me. All panting; unhurt, but angry that they had not captured Tollgamo!

Then Venta and the other two girls swam away on their errand. Nereid drew me forward as we swam, to avoid the commotion of gathered people on the bank. Tollgamo was gone. His plan had been, quite evidently, to dive into the water with Nereid here. Some twenty feet down, as the girls attacked him, he had tried to shove Nereid through a rock-rift, which obviously opened again to some cave where air was trapped.

"I got away from him," Nereid was saying. "A man, even Tollgamo, is so clumsy in the water, so quick to smother. I could have followed him but he blocked the little passage with a rock."

"And maybe he's trapped down there?"

She shook her head. "There are so many passages, and all lead out to the sea. Of course he had a cylinder-boat under there."

Together we swam out into the open lagoon, diagonally across it to where, beyond the lights of the festival, Nereid had a little surface boat in which we could get now to the Water City.

"My boat is about a mile from here. Can you swim so far?"

"Yes. I guess so." I had always counted myself a strong swimmer; a mile was not too much for me. But I was like a puffing tugboat now, laboriously splashing along. Nereid was laughing at my efforts; trying to tow me; then giving it up, swimming around me, under me.

Occasionally, while we were still in the light-glare, other girls came dashing up, with questions of Tollgamo; and of me. Once a group of them dashed at me, with shouts of laughter trying to seize me, but Nereid drove them off. Then we were swimming alone in the luminous opalescent night; and at last we reached the little boat. Nereid was already in it; waiting impatiently to haul me aboard as I came panting.

It was a narrow, canoe-like surface craft; some twenty feet long, of dull white metal. Its hooded mechanisms were in bow and stern--water electrolysis. Soon we had attained a considerable speed, silent, vibrationless. And then we were on the open sea, with the lights of Arron fading behind us.

* * * * *

Venus night at sea. It was weirdly beautiful. The low-hanging curtain of heavy clouds was luminous with pale blue and silver sheen. The water, silver-rippled by a gentle night-breeze, was opalescent as our little craft hurled up a bow wave, with a gleaming phosphorescent wake behind us. Off to the right, for a time, the faint blurred outlines of metal mountains were visible on a promontory near the land of the Gorts. Then we passed it; and the forest to the left had faded away to be just a blur.

Beside me, Nereid sat grim and silent, staring ahead as she steered our boat. The breeze tossed her tawny tresses against me. My mind went back to that other night, back on Earth when she had sat in my little fishing boat, with its outboard motor puttering. How long ago that seemed. And like that other night, my hand went now to a lock of her hair, beside us on the seat.

"Nereid, when this is over, this war--"

Her face turned toward me. She was faintly, whimsically smiling.

"I think my father will like you," she murmured.

"And you, Nereid?"

There was no impishness, this time. Her gaze met mine, shyly, and she nodded.

But a moment later we were again both thinking of Tollgamo. And we were wondering about Allen, and Nereid's brother, Leh. Had Tollgamo put them to death, in vengeance for our escape from Rhool's spaceship?

Then at last, to our left, the outlines of the lush forest shore were close at hand.

"The Water City," Nereid murmured.

It was built in what seemed a partly submerged area of the jungle. Tangled tree-tops projecting from the water, with little houses of thatch and wood built like birds' nests between them. Or queer little dwellings of woven blue rush, built on platforms that floated on the water and were lashed between the protecting tree-trunks. Narrow arcade bridges connected the houses; and the little balcony platforms where boats were moored.

There were a few dots of lights. Then we passed the first group of houses. Very queer. Nereid stared at me. Queer indeed. It was far into the time of sleep, but still there should have been someone attracted to the house doorways as we passed.

We had slackened now, with the houses, most of them dark, clustering all about us.

"There is Venta's home," Nereid murmured. "Her father and brother will be there."

We drifted under an arching bridge. The figure of a man was lying on it. Asleep? Nereid called softly to him, but he did not move. Then I was aware of a queer, acrid smell here. Choking smell. Nereid coughed suddenly.

The boat landed at a low platform dock of Venta's home. We jumped to the platform. Two men were here. Venta's father and brother. They lay in a heap, one half upon the other. Dead! The opalescent sheen of the glorious night was ghastly on their dead faces; mouths goggling with blackened, protruding tongue; eyes staring with the agony and death.

And from here we could see other house balconies. Inert forms on them. All dead.

In that stricken second, as we stood shuddering on the little platform with the sea lapping under it, a new horror suddenly assailed us. There was a tangle of vegetation here, tree branches overhead; air-vines with redolent flowers and pods on them, dangled, swaying in the breeze. And abruptly I realized that the dangling, rope-like vines were visibly growing! At an edge of the platform one of them was slithering like a serpent!

And Nereid gasped: "That smell! The gas of nitro-carbon in some terrible concentration!"

I stood numbed. Nitrogenous gas-fumes, sprayed here on the night-breeze by what deadly means I could not guess, had asphixiated the people of the little Water City. Most of them asleep, they were quickly overcome by the insidious fumes. An intensification of the gas which was normally used by the Arones to stimulate vegetation growth, as we on Earth use fertilizer. Nitro-carbon--deadly to humans; stimulating to plant-life!

And the air-vines here were growing with a deadly acceleration!

In that same second, as we stood momentarily confused, one of the dangling, swaying vines, grown monstrous now to be as thick as my arm, struck against Nereid. Sentient vegetation! With the contact, the damnable dangling vine suddenly wrapped itself around her, its powerful sinuous blue feelers gripping her slender white throat, strangling her! And in the night-silence an imbecile was gibbering, with triumphant, maniacal laughter!