“I could explain it, after a fashion, but I doubt very much if even you, Dunark, with your heredity, could understand it. Sometime, when we have a few hours to spare, I will try to, if you like. But in the meantime, what are those collars and what do they mean?”
“Identifications. When a child is nearly grown, it is cast about his neck. It bears his name, national number, and the device of his house. Being made of arenak, it cannot be altered without killing the person. Any Osnomian not wearing a collar is unthinkable; but if it should ever happen he would be killed.”
“Is that belt something similar? No, it . . .”
“No. Merely a pouch. But even Nalboon thought it was opaque arenak, so didn’t try to open it.”
“Is that transparent armor made of the same thing?”
“Yes, except that nothing is added to the matrix to make it colored or opaque. It is in the preparation of this metal that salt is indispensable. It acts only as a catalyst, being recovered afterward, but neither nation has ever had enough salt to make all the armor they want.”
“Aren’t those monsters—karlono, I think you called them covered with the same thing? And what are they, anyway?” Dorothy asked.
“Yes. It is thought that the beasts grow it, just as fishes grow scales. But no one knows how they do it—or even how they can possibly do it. Very little is known about them, however, except that they are the worst scourge of Osnome. Various scientists have described the karlon as a bird, a beast, a fish, and a vegetable; sexual, asexual, and hermaphroditic. Its habitat is—”
The gong sounded and the Kondalians leaped to their positions. The kofedix went to the door. Nalboon brushed him aside and entered, escorted by a squad of heavily-armed, full armored soldiers. A scowl of anger was on his face; he was plainly in an ugly mood.
“Stop, Nalboon of Mardonale!” Seaton thundered, in the Mardonalian tongue and at the top of his powerful voice. “Dare you invade privacy without invitation?”
The escort shrank back, but the emperor stood his ground, although he was plainly taken by surprise. With a heroic effort he smoothed his face into lines of cordiality.
“May I inquire why my guards are slain and my palace destroyed by my honored guest?”
“You may. I permit it, to point out your errors. Your guards, at your order, no doubt, sought to invade my privacy. Being forbearing, I warned them once, but one of them was foolhardy enough to challenge me, and was of course destroyed. Then the others attempted to raise their childish weapons against me, and I of course destroyed them. The wall merely chanced to be inside the field of action of the force I chanced to be employing at the time.
“An honored guest? Bah l Know, Nalboon, that when you seek to treat as captive a visiting domak of my race, you lose not only your own life, but the lives of all your nation as well. Do you perceive your errors?”
Anger and fear fought for supremacy on Nalboon’s face; but a third emotion, wonder, won. He, Nalboon, was armed: he had with him a score of armed and armored men. This stranger had nothing; the slaves were less than nothing. Yet he stood there, arrogantly confident, master of the planet, the solar system, and the universe, by his bearing . . . and how . . . how had he completely obliterated fifty armed and armored men and a thousand tons of stone and ultra-hard metal? Nalboon temporized.
“May I ask how you, so recently ignorant, know our language?”
“You may not. You may go.”
Chapter 18
“THAT WAS a beautiful bluff, Dick!” Dunark exclaimed, as the door closed behind Nalboon and his guards. “Exactly the right tone—you’ve got him guessing plenty.”
“It got him, all right—for the moment—but I’m wondering how long it will hold him. He’s a big time operator, and smart. The smart thing for us to do, I think, would be to take off for the Skylark right now, before he can get organized. What do you think, Mart?”
“I think so. We’re altogether too vulnerable here.”
The Earth-people quickly secured the few personal things they had brought with them. Seaton stepped out into the hall, waved the guards away, and motioned Dunark to lead the way. The other Kondalians fell in behind, as usual, and the group walked boldly toward the exit nearest the landing dock. The guards offered no opposition, but stood at attention and saluted as they passed. The officer lifted his microphone, however, and Seaton knew that Nalboon was being kept informed of every development.
Outside the palace, Dunark turned his head.
“Run!” he snapped. All did so. “If they get a flyer into the air before we reach the dock it’ll be just too bad. There’ll be no pursuit from the palace—it isn’t expendable—but the dock will be tough.”
Rounding a metal statue some fifty feet from the base of the towering dock they saw that the door of one of the elevators was open and that two guards stood just inside it. At sight of the party the guards raised their guns; but, fast as they were, Seaton was faster. At first sight of the open door he had taken two quick steps and hurled himself across the intervening forty feet in a football plunge. Before the two soldiers could bring their guns to bear he crashed into them, hurling them across the cage and crushing them against its metal wall.
“Good work,” Dunark said. He stripped the unconscious guards of their weapons and, after asking Seaton’s permission, distributed them among the men of his party. “Now, perhaps, we can surprise whoever is on the roof. That was why you didn’t shoot?”
“No,” Seaton grunted. “We need this elevator. It wouldn’t be much good after taking even a Mark One load.” He threw the two Mardonalians out of the elevator and closed the door.
Dunark took the controls. The elevator shot upward, stopping at a level well below the top. He took a tubular device from his belt and fitted it over the muzzle of the Mardonalian pistol.
“We get out here,” Dunark said, “and go up the rest of the way by side stairs that aren’t used much. We’ll meet a few guards, probably, but I can take care of them. Stay behind me, please, everybody.”
Seaton promptly objected and Dunark went on, “No, Dick, stay back. You know as much about this as I do, I know, but you can’t get at the knowledge as fast. I’ll let you take over when we reach the top.”
Dunark took the lead, his pistol resting lightly against his hip. At the first turn of the corridor they came upon four guards. The pistol did not leave Dunark’s hip, but were four subdued clicks, in faster succession than a man could count, and four men dropped.
“What a silencer!” DuQuesne whispered to Seaton. “I didn’t suppose a silencer could work that fast”
“They don’t use powder,” Seaton replied absently, all his faculties pinned to the next corner. “Force-field projection.”
Dunark disposed of several more groups of guards before the head of the last stairway was reached. He stopped there.
“Now, Dick, you take over. I’m speaking English so I won’t have to order each of my men individually—command them, literally—not to take my place at your side. We’ll need all the speed and all the fire-power you have. There are hundreds of men on the roof outside, with rapid-fire cannon throwing a thousand shells a minute. If Crane will give me his pistols you can kick that door open as soon as you’re ready”
“I’ve got a lot better idea than that,” DuQuesne said. “I’m as fast as you are, Seaton, and like you, I can use both hands. Give me the guns and well have ’em cleaned out before the door gets fully open.”
“That’s a thought, brother—that’s really a thought, Seaton said. “Hand ’em over, Mart. Ready, Blackie? On your mark get set—go!”
He kicked the door open and there was a stuttering crash as the four weapons burst into almost continuous flame—a crash obliterated by an overwhelming concatenation of sound as the X-plosive bullets, sweeping the roof with a rapidly-opening fan of death, struck their marks and exploded.
It was well that the two men in the doorway were past masters in the art of handling their weapons—and that they had in their bullets the force of giant shells! For rank upon rank of soldiery were massed there; engines of destruction covered elevators, doorways, and approaches.
So fast and fierce was the attack that trained gunners had no time to press their switches. The battle lasted approximately one second. It was over while shattered remnants of the guns and fragments of the metal and stone of the dock were still falling, through a fine mist of what had once been men.