The Fire People Part 19

We came up to them after a few hundred yards. It was the old man, and one of those whom I had first encountered. They did not wait for us to attack them, but stopped stock still, flinging their arms wide in token of surrender.

Miela came down among us, and we went back to where we had lain hidden in the palmettos. There we had left a number of short lengths of rope. While we were tying the arms of these two prisoners behind them and fettering their ankles so they could not run Anina joined us.

"Two--in water," she cried; and then added something to Miela.

"Two were in the water. Now they are in the woods, running. Anina will show you."

Miela stood guard in the boat over our first two prisoners, while Mercer and I rounded up the others. It was half an hour or more before we had them all trussed up, but none of the ten escaped. We were a long time reviving two of those we had injured, but finally we had them all lying or sitting in the boat.

Mercer's head had stopped bleeding. He washed it, and I found his injury no more than an ugly scalp wound.

"I fell and cut it on something," he explained lugubriously. "Couldn't see for the blood in my eyes. But we got 'em, didn't we?"

Under Miela's direction Mercer and I shoved the boat out into the stream.

I need not go into details regarding the propelling mechanism of this craft. Miela explained it hastily to me as we got under way. It used a form of the light-ray from a sort of strange battery. The intense heat of the ray generated a great pressure of superheated steam in a thick metal cylinder underneath the keel.

This steam escaped through a nozzle under water at the stern of the boat, and its thrust against the water propelled the boat forward. The boat was constructed to draw very little water, and when going fast its bow planed upward until only the stern of the hull touched the surface. It was steered by a rudder not much different from some of those types we are familiar with on earth. When we got out into open water I found the boat was capable of great speed. This I attributed not so much to the efficacy of its propelling force as to the lightness of the boat itself. It was built of some metal that I may perhaps compare with aluminium, only this was far stronger and lighter. The boat was, in fact, a mere sh.e.l.l, extraordinarily buoyant.

Miela sat in the stern, steering and operating the mechanism. I sat with her. Mercer was farther forward, beside Anina, talking to her earnestly.

Our prisoners lay huddled in various att.i.tudes--frightened, all of them, and obviously in no condition to give us further trouble. They were, I saw now, not ruffians by any means, but rather men of superior intelligence, selected by Tao evidently as those best fitted for spreading his propaganda among the people of the Great City.

We made slow progress down the bayou. Some of its turns were so sharp and so overhung with trees, and obstructed by fallen logs, we could hardly get through. During the latter part of the trip the bayou broadened rapidly, dividing into many channels like a delta.

We came out into the open sea finally--a broad, empty expanse, with a mirrorlike surface. The curvature of the planet was even more apparent now; it seemed almost as though the water should be sliding back downhill over the horizon.

We turned to the left as we came out of the delta, and for the first time Miela put the boat to the limit of its speed. The best comparison I can make, I think, to this rapid, noiseless, smooth progress, is that of sailing on an iceboat.

We sped along some five or ten miles, keeping close inland. I saw some of the small thatched shacks along here, though not many. For a while the sh.o.r.e remained that same palm-lined, half-inundated marshland. Then gradually it began to change, and we came upon a broad beach of white sand.

We landed here, and found the girls with the platform waiting for us.

Miela took Anina and one or two of the older girls aside, and gave them last instructions.

"What do I do--just dump them on the other sh.o.r.e?" Mercer asked me.

"That's about it. I don't know the lay of the land over there. Anina does.

You do what she tells you."

"You bet I will," he agreed enthusiastically. "Some kid--that little girl.

We get along fine. She understands everything I say to her already. I'll have her talking English like a streak by the time you see her again."

We had removed the cords from our prisoners' ankles. I motioned them to get out of the boat. We crowded Tao's men on the platform. They were surprised, and some of them alarmed, when they saw how we proposed to transport them over the water. Miela silenced their protests, and soon we had them all seated on the platform, with Mercer at the rear end facing them.

The fifty girls grasped the platform handles. Another moment and they were in the air, with Mercer waving good-by to us vigorously.

Miela and I, left alone, watched them silently as they dwindled to a speck in the haze of the sky.

We were about to start back when we saw a girl coming toward us, flying low over the water. One of those we had directed to patrol the coast, Miela said when she came closer. She saw us, and came down on the beach.

The two girls spoke together hurriedly.

"Tao's men in the Water City have caused great disturbance, Alan," Miela said to me.

"Where's the Water City?"

"Near the Great City--across the marshlands. We must get back. And when Anina and our friend Ollie have returned we must go to the Water City. It is very bad there, she said."

Our trip back to the Great City was without unusual incident. We followed the main route at the best speed we could make.

"We shall tell our king, of course, about this disturbance," said Miela.

"Perhaps he will think there is something he can do. But I fear greatly that unless he appeals directly to the people, and they are with him--"

"He's an old man," I said, "and all his councilors are old. They're not fit to rule at such a time as this. Suppose he were to die--what would happen? Who would be king then?"

"A little prince there is--a mere child. And there is our queen--a younger woman, only married to our king these few years. His first queen died."

I questioned Miela concerning her government. It was, I soon learned, an autocracy in theory. But of later years the king's advanced age, and his equally old councilors whom he refused to change, had resulted in a vacillating policy of administration, which now, I could see plainly, left the government little or no real power.

Only by constantly pandering to the wishes of the people could the king hold his throne. The supreme command was held by the king and his aged councilors. At stated intervals the more prominent men of each city met and enacted laws. The cities were each ruled by a governor in similar fashion, paying tribute to the central government somewhat after our old feudal system; but for practical purposes they acted as separate nations.

They were united merely by the bonds of their common need of defense against the Twilight People, and of intermarriage, which was frequent, since the virgins, flying about, often found mates in cities other than their own.

There were courts in each city, not much more than rude tribunals, and jails in which the offenders were held. The police I have already mentioned. They, like the king's guards, were inclined in an emergency to do, not so much what they were ordered, as what they thought the people wished.

It was all very extraordinary, but like many another makeshift government it served, after a fashion.

Hiding the boat in another bayou, we took our way home on foot. That is to say, I ran, and Miela followed me, alternately flying and walking. We made our best speed this way, and very soon were back at home in the Great City.

We crossed the garden and entered the front door, expecting to find Lua in the living room, but she was not there. The house was quiet.

"She would wait up, she told me," Miela said, and, raising her voice, called her mother's name.

There was no answer, although now I remember I thought I heard a footfall upstairs.

We went up to Lua's room hurriedly. It was empty, and our loud cries of anxiety throughout the house evoked no response. We entered our own bedroom, and before I could make a move to defend myself I was seized tightly by both elbows from behind.

At the same instant an arm hooked around my neck under my chin and jerked my head backward, and another pair of arms clutched me around the knees. I struggled vainly to free myself, shouting to Miela to run.

But there were too many holding me. A moment more and my arms were tied behind me and a rope was about my legs. I was pushed into a chair, and as I sat down I saw Miela standing quietly near by, with two Mercutians holding her by the arms and shoulders.

The man who had pushed me to the seat bent down and struck me across the cheek with the flat of his hand. His grinning, malevolent face was only a few inches from mine. I saw that it was Baar!

CHAPTER XVIII.

REVOLUTION.