[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
Within fifteen minutes of the start of the engagement, all that remained was the
mopping up of the surviving Morgors. We had lost ten men, all of the first ten
swordsmen having survived. As the last of the Morgors fell, one could almost
feel the deathly silence that had settled upon the audience.
The nine gathered around me. "What now?" asked Pho Lar.
"How many of you want to go back to slavery?" I asked.
"No!" shouted nine voices.
"We are the ten best swords on Eurobus," I said. "We could fight our way out of
the city. You men know the country beyond. What chance would we have to escape
capture?"
"There would be a chance," said Han Du. "Beyond the city, the jungle comes
close. If we could make that, they might never find us."
"Good!" I said, and started at a trot toward a gate at one end of the field, the
nine at my heels.
At the gateway, a handful of foolish guardsmen tried to stop us. We left them
behind us, dead. Now we heard angry shouts arising from the field we had left,
and we guessed that soon we should have hundreds of Morgors in pursuit.
"Who knows the way to the nearest gate?" I demanded.
"I do," said one of my companions. "Follow me!" and he set off at a run.
As we raced through the avenues of the drear city, the angry shouts of our
pursuers followed us; but we held our distance and at last arrived at one of the
city gates. Here again we were confronted by armed warriors who compelled us to
put up a stiff battle. The cries of the pursuing Morgors grew louder and louder.
Soon all that we had gained would be lost. This must not be! I called Pho Lar
and Han Du to my side and ordered the remaining seven to give us room, for the
gateway was too narrow for ten men to wield their blades within it
advantageously.
"This time we go through!" I shouted to my two companions as we rushed the
surviving guardsmen. And we went through. They hadn't a chance against the three
best swordsmen of three worlds.
Miraculous as it may seem, all ten of us won to freedom with nothing more than a
few superficial scratches to indicate that we had been in a fight; but the
howling Morgors were now close on our heels. If there is anything in three
worlds that I hate, it is to run from a foe; but it would have been utterly
stupid to have permitted several hundred angry Morgors to have overtaken me. I
ran.
The Morgors gave up the chase before we reached the jungle. Evidently they had
other plans for capturing us. We did not stop until we were far into the
tropical verdure of a great forest; then we paused to discuss the future and to
rest, and we needed rest.
That forest! I almost hesitate to describe it, so weird, so unearthly was it.
Almost wholly deprived of sunlight, the foliage was pale, pale with a deathlike
pallor, tinged with rose where the reflected light of the fiery volcanoes
filtered through. But this was by far its least uncanny aspect: the limbs of the
trees moved like living things. They writhed and twined myriad, snakelike
things. I had scarcely noticed them until we halted. Suddenly one dropped down
and wrapped itself about me. Smiling, I sought to disentwine it. I stopped
a
a
T
T
n
n
s
s
F
F
f
f
o
o
D
D
r
r
P
P
m
m
Y
Y
e
e
Y
Y
r
r
B
B
2
2
.
.
B
B
A
A
Click here to buy
Click here to buy
w
w
m
m
w
w
o
o
w
w
c
c
.
.
.
.
A
A
Y
Y
B
B
Y
Y
B
B
r r
smiling: I was as helpless as a babe encircled by the trunk of an elephant. The
thing started to lift me from the ground, and just then Han Du saw and leaped
forward with drawn sword. He grasped one of my legs, and at the same time sprang
upward and struck with the keen edge of his blade, severing the limb that had
seized me. We dropped to the ground together.
"What the devil!" I exclaimed. "What is it? and why did it do that?"
Han Du pointed up. I looked. Above me, at the end of a strong stem, was a huge
blossom a horrible thing! In its center was a large mouth armed with many
teeth, and above the mouth were two staring, lidless eyes.
"I had forgotten," said Han Du, "that you are not of Eurobus. Perhaps you have
no such trees as these in your world."
"We certainly have not," I assured him. "A few that eat insects, perhaps, like
Venus's-flytrap; but no maneaters."
"You must always be on your guard when in one of our forests," he warned me.
"These trees are living, carnivorous animals. They have a nervous system and a
brain, and it is generally believed that they have a language and talk with one
another."
Just then a hideous scream broke from above us. I looked up, expecting to see
some strange, Jupiterian beast above me, but there was nothing but the writhing
limbs and the staring eyes of the great blossoms of the man-trees.
Han Du laughed. "Their nervous systems are of a low order," he said, "and their
reactions correspondingly slow and sluggish. It took all this time for the pain
of my sword cut to reach the brain of the blossom to which that limb belongs."
"A man's life would never be safe for a moment in such a forest," I commented.
"One has to be constantly on guard," admitted Han Du. "If you ever have to sleep
out in the woods, build a smudge. The blossoms don't like smoke. They close up,
and then they cannot see to attack you. But be sure that you don't oversleep
your smudge."
Vegetable life on Jupiter, practically devoid of sunlight, has developed along
entirely different lines from that on earth. Nearly all of it has some animal
attributes and nearly all of it is carnivorous, the smaller plants devouring
insects, the larger, in turn, depending upon the larger animals for sustenance
on up to the maneaters such as I had encountered and those which Han Du said
caught and devoured even the hugest animals that exist upon this strange planet.
We posted a couple of guards, who also kept smudges burning; and the rest of us
lay down to sleep. One of the men had a chronometer, and this was used to inform
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]