Chapter 3: The Coming of Greca

The numbing shock from the tubes left the Earthmen’s bodies almost paralyzed for a time; but their brains were unfogged enough for them to observe only too clearly all that went on from the point of their capture.

They were bound hand and foot. At a piping cry from the leader, several of the gangling figures picked them up in reedy arms and began to walk across the square, away from the ship. Brand noticed that his bearers’ arms trembled with his weight: and sensed the flabbiness of the substance that took the place in them of good solid muscle. Physically these things were soft and ineffectual indeed. They had only the ominous tubes with which to fight.

The eery procession, with the bound Earthmen carried in the lead, wound toward a great building fringing the square. In through the high arched entrance of this building they went, and up a sloping incline to its tower-top. Here, in a huge bare room, the two were unceremoniously dumped to the floor.

While three of the things stood guard with the mysterious tubes, another unbound them. A whole shower of high pitched, piping syllables was hurled at them, speech which sounded threatening and contemptuous but was otherwise, of course, entirely unintelligible, and then the creatures withdrew. The heavy metal door was slammed shut, and they were alone.

Brand drew a long breath, and began to feel himself all over for broken bones. He found none; he was still nerve-wracked from that last terrific shock, but otherwise whole and well.

“Are you hurt, Dex?” he asked solicitously.

“I guess not,” replied Dex, getting uncertainly to his feet. “And I’m wondering why. It seems to me the brutes were uncommonly considerate of us--and I’m betting the reason is one we won’t like!”

Brand shrugged. “I guess we’ll find out their intentions soon enough. Let’s see what our surroundings look like.”

They walked to the nearest window-aperture, and gazed out on a startling and marvelous scene.

Beneath their high tower window, extending as far as the eye could reach, lay the city, lit by the reddish glare of the peculiar metal with which its streets were paved. For the most part the metropolis consisted of perfectly square buildings pierced by many windows to indicate that each housed a large number of inmates. But here and there grotesque turrets lanced the sky, and symbolic domes arched above the surrounding flat metal roofs.

One building in particular they noticed. This was an enormous structure in the shape of a half-globe that reared its spherical height less than an eighth of a mile from the building they were in. It was situated off to their right at the foot of a vast, high-walled enclosure whose near end seemed to be formed by the right wall of their prison. They could only see it by leaning far out of the window; and it would not have come to their attention at all had they not heard it first--or, rather, heard the sound of something within it: for from it came a curious whining hum that never varied in intensity, something like the hum of a gigantic dynamo, only greater and of a more penetrating pitch.

“Sounds as though it might be some sort of central power station,” said Brand. “But what could it supply power for?”

“Give it up,” said Dex. “For their damned shock-tubes, perhaps, among other things--”

He broke off abruptly as a sound of sliding bolts came from the doorway. The two men whirled around to face the door, their fists doubling instinctively against whatever new danger might threaten them.

The door was opened and two of their ugly, towering enemies came in, their tubes held conspicuously before them. Behind came another figure; and at sight of this one, so plainly not of the race of Jupiter, the Earthmen gasped with wonder.

They saw a girl who might have come from Earth, save that she was taller than most Earth women--of a regal height that reached only an inch or two below Brand’s own six foot one. She was beautifully formed, and had wavy dark hair and clear light blue eyes. A sort of sandal covered each small bare foot; and a gauzy tunic, reaching from above the knee to the shoulder, only half shielded her lovely figure.

She was bearing a metal container in which was a mess of stuff evidently intended as food. The guards halted and stepped aside to let her pass into the room. Then they backed out, constantly keeping Dex and Brand covered with the tubes, and closed and barred the door.

The girl smiled graciously at the admiration in the eyes of both the men--a message needing no inter-planetary interpretation. She advanced, and held the metal container toward them.

“Eat,” she said softly. “It is good food, and life giving.”

For an instant Brand was dumbfounded. For here was language he could understand--which was incredible on this far-flung globe. Then he suddenly comprehended why her sentences were so intelligible.

She was versed in mental telepathy. And versed to a high degree! He’d had some experience with telepathy on Venus; but theirs was a crude thought-speech compared to the fluency possessed by the beautiful girl before him.

“Who are you?” he asked wonderingly.

“I am Greca”--it was very hard to grasp names or abstract terms--”of the fourth satellite.”

“Then you are not of these monsters of Jupiter?”

“Oh, no! I am their captive, as are all my people. We are but slaves of the tall ones.”

Brand glanced at Dex. “Here’s a chance to get some information, perhaps,” he murmured.

Dex nodded; but meanwhile the girl had caught his thought. She smiled--a tragic, wistful smile.

“I shall be happy to tell you anything in my power to tell,” she informed him. “But you must be quick. I can only remain with you a little while.”

She sat down on the floor with them--the few bench-like things obviously used by the tall creatures as chairs were too high for them--and with the informality of adversity the three captives began to talk. Swiftly Brand got a little knowledge of Greca’s position on Jupiter, and of the racial history that led up to it.

Four of the nine satellites of Jupiter were now the home of living beings. But two only, at the dawn of history as Greca knew it, had been originally inhabited. These were the fourth and the second.

On the fourth there dwelt a race, “like me,” as Greca put it--a kindly, gentle people content to live and let live.

On the second had been a race of immensely tall, but attenuated and physically feeble things with great heads and huge dull eyes and characters distinguished mainly for cold-blooded savagery.

The inhabitants of the fourth satellite had remained in ignorance of the monsters on the second till one day “many, many ages ago,” a fleet of clumsy ships appeared on the fourth satellite. From the ships had poured thousands of pipe-like creatures, armed with horrible rods of metal that killed instantly and without a sound. The things, it seemed, had crowded over the limits of their own globe, and had been forced to find more territory.