The Greatest Works of Otis Adelbert Kline - 18 Books in One Edition. Otis Adelbert Kline
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hustled me to the largest of the three airships, opened the door of the cab, and fairly hurled me onto the cushions.
“Raboth will take you to the palace,” said the commandant. “I will bolt the door and follow in a one-man craft.”
Raboth, a lean wiry youth with a thin, ragged beard, climbed in beside me and closed the door. As soon as he was seated, the ship began to rise— slowly at first, but rapidly gaining momentum until we shot upward with amazing rapidity.
My pilot, looking downward to take his bearings, drew back with a sudden intake of breath. “They have seen us! Two of their battle planes are rising to cut us off from the palace.”
Scarcely had he spoken ere a searchlight flashed on our ship. An instant later a bullet ricocheted from our deck, tearing way part of the railing as it exploded. It had been fired from a mattork.
A terrific fusillade followed as we continued our rapid ascent. Suddenly we plunged into a thick cloudbank, shielding us from the revealing glare of the enemy searchlight. Continuing upward for several minutes more we cleared this lower cloud stratum and Raboth immediately put on our forward lights. Then he turned a switch, illuminating the interior of the cab with the radiance of a tiny bulb above our heads.
My pilot leaned forward to examine a small instrument suspended on a thin wire at the front of the cab. “I fear we are lost, Highness,” he said, with a look of consternation. “One of the shells must have carried our magnet away. The compass is out of order.”
A quick examination proved his statement correct. The magnet, which is fastened to the rear deck of all Olban airships to counteract the strong magnetic pull of the motive mechanism, had been snapped off by one of the mattork bullets. Now the needle pointed to the front of our craft no matter which way we turned.
A sudden glare of light at our backs, followed by the rending impact of a mattork shell on our hull, warned us that the enemy had sighted us. This time we dived into the stratum beneath us and then with level keel, hurtled forward at a pace that held me breathless with wonder.
“How fast are we traveling, Raboth?” I asked, trying to adjust my senses to the sight of cloud masses made iridescent by our lights, and moving past the cab in swift, bewildering kaleidoscopic display.
“This ship is rated at three-quarters of a rotation,” he replied. “We are moving at top speed.”
“What do you mean by three-quarters of a rotation?”
He seemed astonished at my question. “Why, a rotation is the speed at which Zarovia rotates on her axis. We are traveling three-fourths of that speed.”
I made a rapid calculation. As the circumference of Venus is slightly less than that of Earth, and her day twenty-three hours and twenty-one minutes, Earth time, she rotates on her axis at a speed of more than a thousand miles an hour. Roughly, then, we were traveling at seven hundred and fifty miles an hour.
My companion held the ship to her course through the clouds for a considerable period, then dipped beneath them. This move almost resulted in our undoing; the second enemy craft, which had evidently been flying below us all the time, opened fire. I replied with our stern mattork—whether effectively or not, I could not tell—while Raboth again shot our craft up to the concealment afforded by the clouds. Once more we hurtled forward on a level keel.
“Our would-be assassins are certainly persistent,” I remarked casually to my companion.
“And well they may be. This is the first time their leader has been recognized. No doubt we are the only two survivors of the fight in the tower, and consequently the only ones able to expose Taliboz.”
“Who is this Taliboz?” I asked thoughtlessly.
“Is it possible that Your Highness does not remember Taliboz? He is the most powerful noble in Olba. For some time it has been hinted that he was conspiring against the throne, but there was no direct evidence. Now he must kill us all—both to do away with the heir to the throne, and to silence the witnesses of his perfidy.”
We sped along for some time in silence. I calculated that if we had traveled in a reasonably straight line we were at least a thousand miles from our starting point. At length, feeling that we must have shaken our pursuers, Raboth once more descended beneath the lower stratum, taking the precaution of switching off all lights as he did so.
He looked about carefully, saw no sign of pursuit, and made the fatal mistake of turning on the lights. Scarcely had he done this ere a missile crashed through the back of the cab and exploded with a deafening noise. It struck on Raboth’s side and killed him instantly, tearing his body to shreds.
Our lights were extinguished by the explosion, but a powerful searchlight played on us from behind and another shell carried away our stern. Then the craft lurched violently and fell, turning end-over-end while I clung desperately to my seat.
Chapter 3
As the wreck hurtled downward it gathered momentum each instant, and I expected nothing less than a terrific crash. To my surprise, however, the craft plunged nose first into water and sank rapidly. The cabin filled instantly through the great hole, torn by the mattork shell; but this same hole proved to be my salvation, for after the first cold shock of immersion was past I managed to scramble through it.
For several seconds I continued to sink in spite of my frantic efforts, due to the downward momentum of the craft I had just left. Then I stopped, and slowly began to make some progress upward, though it seemed at every stroke that my lungs must burst for want of oxygen.
After what seemed an age of lung-straining torture, my head bobbed above the surface, and I trod water while inhaling great breaths of the moist, salt air.
In the blackness of the Zarovian night, broken only at infrequent intervals by the momentary twinkle of a star or two through a rift in the ever- present cloud envelope overhead, I was unable to see in any direction. But I heard a familiar sound, far to my right—the roll of breakers on a windward shore. Toward this sound I swam slowly.
The sound grew louder as I progressed, and presently I lowered an exploring foot to find the bottom. Not reaching it, I swam onward once more. The second test proved more successful, and I stood erect, only to be knocked flat by a huge wave. I scrambled to my feet and, half wading, half swimming, at length dragged my weary body up on a sandy beach beyond reach of the breakers.
After a brief rest I arose and walked still farther inland, where I soon ran into a thick copse of bush-fern. The ground beneath the curved fronds was covered with moss, and on this I stretched, thankful for so soft a couch. In a short time, I was asleep.
I was awakened by the sound of voices quite near me. It was broad daylight and promised to be an exceptionally warm day. My silky scarlet garments had long since dried, as had my leather trappings, which bad stiffened as a result of their soaking.
I judged from the tones that two people were conversing—a man and a girl. At first I did not hear what they said as I lay there on the soft moss only half awake, looking drowsily up through the rustling, wind-shaken fern leaves. Then the man raised his voice.
“Well you know, Cousin Loralie, that your parents desire the marriage as much as mine,” he said in mincing Patoa. “Is this not enough for you? Are you so lacking in respect for the wishes of your father and mother that you would set them aside for an idle whim?”
“Not for an idle whim, Cousin Gadrimel,” replied the girl in a clear, musical voice. “I do not love you. What more need be said?”
“How do you know?” he demanded. “Yesterday we saw each other for the first time. We had but a few moments alone. I have not more than touched your hand. I could make you love me as I have…”
“As you have countless others, no doubt. Understand me, once and for all. No man can