The Venus Trilogy - Complete Sci-Fi Series: The Planet of Peril, The Prince of Peril & The Port of Peril. Otis Adelbert Kline
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I also got a very full picture of your character and personality— no intimate details, but sufficient to assure me that you were the sort of man I wanted. And that you were very likely to go along with me if the way could be cleared for you…But suppose you tell me of any inhibiting factors; I think they can be cleared up.”
Robert Ellsmore Grandon recounted his personal situation briefly, and Morgan nodded. “Yes,” he said. “This checks with the information I’ve gathered on Mr. Arthur Grandon since you arrived here. He’s sincerely devoted to you, you know. I don’t believe he’ll stand in the way if he knows you want to go on some caper of your own and by your own choice. Suppose you phone him long distance now. Here’s what I suggest you tell him…”
“You were right, Doctor,” Grandon said after bidding his uncle farewell. “Uncle Arthur agrees that Vincent is better suited to handle the firm than I. He just wanted me to try for awhile and see—says he half expected something like this when I disappeared and was concerned lest I forget to let him know.”
“Then we need waste no more time, Mr. Grandon.”
“But—my body will remain here while my personality goes to Venus. What happens to it?”
“You need have no fear about that. The man who comes to inhabit it —forgotten about him, haven’t you?—will naturally be careful of it; for if he loses it there will be no return for him, either to this world or his own.”
“What do we have to do in order to exchange bodies? And how will you keep in touch with me?”
“I will, at regular intervals, establish telepathic rapport with you and Thorne while you are asleep. You will know nothing of these telepathic communications—which will be as detailed as those you read last night —unless I see fit to convey a message to you which will probably come in the form of a dream, so vivid that you will remember every detail. If you wish to communicate with me for any reason whatever, I will learn of it when I establish rapport with you.”
Grandon sighed. “I’m ready. Want me to lie down and look into a mirror the way Harry Thorne did when you sent him to Mars?”
“Right. And the present Harry Thorne will follow you in a few hours —you may meet on Venus, though it isn’t too likely.” He set up the mirror, painted with alternate circles of red and black, as Grandon reposed on the sofa. “Now think of Venus, far off in time and space—millions of miles, millions of years away…”
Chapter 3
Robert Ellsmore Grandon, was awakened from a sound sleep by a shaft of brilliant sunlight which shone through the mica-paneled window of the quarry- slaves’ sleeping quarters. He blinked, turned uneasily, then sat up. His muscles appeared stiff and bruised and his back smarted and burned. He noticed that his sole articles of apparel consisted of a scarlet breech-cloth and a pair of sandals of strange design. His skin was browned; his hands were rough and callused. His face was covered with a thick, black beard, and his hair was matted and unkempt.
He rose stiffly and walked to the window, hoping for a clear view of a Zarovian landscape, but he was disappointed, for in front of his window there stretched a solid wall of black marble cliffs. The only visible vegetation consisted of a few pink toadstool-like growths which grew from niches in the rock, some over twelve feet in height.
He turned and glanced at his room-mates. Fifty men were quartered in the sleeping shed. The bedding consisted of a coarse, dried moss, which made an exceptionally resilient couch. The men were attired like Grandon, except that their breech-clouts were gray instead of scarlet. Their skins were sun-burned like his own, and marked with scars and open wounds.
Grandon was startled by a hollow booming sound, and someone on the outside opened a large door at the center of the shed. Instantly every man sprang to his feet, and he saw that they were forming in single file to march through the door. He joined the procession, which was heading for a large building in the midst of a group of sheds similar to the one he had occupied, and saw that the sound emanated from a large cylinder of iron suspended from a steel beam in front of the building, and beaten by a man who wielded a large club wrapped with thongs.
Heavily-armed guards stood at intervals of about fifty feet on either side of their pathway. Each guard carried a tall spear with a broad blade about four feet long; a sword with a basket hilt, its blade rather like that of a scimitar, hung from the left side of the belt.
From the right depended a weapon which was utterly strange to Grandon. It was about two feet long, oblong like a carpenter’s level, and apparently composed of blued steel. A rivet passed completely through it about four inches from the end, holding it firmly to the belt, although it could be tilted at any angle, and its wearer could point it in any direction by turning his body.
Grandon had yet to learn the efficiency of this weapon, the tork, which fired needlelike glass projectiles filled with a potent poison that paralyzed man and beast alike almost as soon as it penetrated, and had a range as great as the most powerful of rifles. These tiny bullets were propelled by a highly explosive gas, ignited by an electric spark at the touch of a button.
The gas was compressed in a chamber at the rear of the tork, while the glass missiles were held in a magazine near the muzzle. After a shot was fired, the weapon would automatically reload, a bullet sliding into place in front while just the right charge of gas was released in the chamber behind it. Each tork, held a thousand rounds of ammunition.
The slaves passed through the building where each man had his ration doled out to him: a bowl of stewed mushrooms and a steaming cup of a beverage which Grandon found to be very much like a strong wine.
As he followed his companions, Grandon noticed that each man stopped before a small shrine and stood for a moment with head bowed low and hand extended toward it, palm downward. When he reached the shrine, he stopped as the others had done, then gave a gasp of amazement at a life-size painting of the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.
She wore a robe of scarlet, ornamented with gold and precious stones, and a jeweled band of platinum imprisoned a mass of golden curls which were piled on top of her head after a style different from anything he had ever seen. She was seated on a massive golden throne with cushions of scarlet, across the arms of which rested a scarbo—a sword like those carried by the guards, but with a hilt of gold studded with rubies.
Could this be the Amazon ruler of whom Dr. Morgan had spoken?
A sharp exclamation brought him to his senses; he turned and saw an overseer advancing with whip upraised. Quickly bowing as the others had done, he ran forward to join his fellow slaves.
Once outside the building, the men seated themselves on the ground in little scattered groups for their morning meal. Grandon joined a company of those who had occupied the same dormitory with him.
He could not take part in the general conversation because the language was unintelligible to him—yet the words sounded strangely familiar. A recollection of their meaning was stored in the brain cells of the body which had become his, but the ego, which was Grandon could not interpret them. He kept silent and listened.
The meal finished, the slaves were herded to the quarries by their drivers. Each driver, who had charge of ten slaves, wore both tork and scarbo in his belt and carried a whip, the five lashes of which were woven from some coarse fiber and interwoven with short pieces of a brittle, nettle-like moss, which broke off in the skin of the victim, inflicting pain like that of a thousand bee stings.
Grandon managed to keep pace with his fellow slaves. The intense heat of the sun would have made labor in the open impossible, had it not been constantly tempered by the floating clouds of vapor, ever present in the dense, moist Zarovian atmosphere.
The marble was being removed from the hillside in large rectangular blocks, by thousands of slaves working on a series of terraces, each of which was the height of one of the blocks. The crews were so distributed that the terraced