Chapter 4: Before the Council

Pegrani lost no time in reporting the incident to the Zara. The Earth men were hustled to the throne room of the palace where the leopard woman sat in conference with her advisers. An ominous silence greeted their entrance. Ugly faces leered at them from the long table.

“What is it, Pegrani?” The Zara’s chalky face went whiter still.

“The Rulans, Your Majesty. They have endeavored to communicate with the prisoners.”

“Did they succeed?” Clyone’s voice was terrible in its fury.

“They did not. I destroyed the messenger, and the message itself was lost in the jungle where Carson flung it.”

The Zara shot a fleeting glance in Blaine’s direction and permitted herself the ghost of a smile. “It is well,” she breathed. “But it must not happen again. Have Tiedor brought to me.”

Pegrani hurried off to do her bidding and Blaine turned uncertainly to follow.

“You will remain, Carson--you and Farley.” The incisive voice of the leopard woman halted him in his tracks.

Tiedor was chief of the Rulans, it developed. There was but a handful of them in the realm and they were the last survivors of the civilization of Europa; descendants of those original brave souls who had settled on Io as a last resort in the effort to perpetuate their kind.

He was a magnificent creature, this Tiedor, tall and straight in his muscular leanness and with wide-set gray eyes in the face of a Greek god. Olive-skinned like the messenger, he was, and with the high forehead of an intellectual. He swept the assemblage with a haughty gaze when he faced the Zara.

“Tiedor,” she snarled, “it has come to my ears that a Rulan lad carried a message to one of my guests from Earth. What means this?”

“I know nothing about it, Your Majesty.” Tiedor gazed into the wicked eyes, unafraid.

“You lie! There is some treasonable scheme in which you had hoped to enlist their help. You will tell me the entire story, here before the council.”

“There is nothing to tell.”

“You will confess or I shall destroy every Rulan in the Tritu Nogaru.” The Zara’s words were clipped short with deadly emphasis.

Tiedor paled and his lips tightened in a grim line, but he stood his ground. “I have nothing to confess,” he said.

With a whistling indrawn breath, the leopard woman threw back her head and motioned to one of the green-bronze giants who guarded the entrance. There was a nervous stir around the council table.

At her command the guard drew back a heavy drape that hid an embrasure in the far wall. There, on a stubby pedestal, was revealed a gleaming sphere of crystal, a huge polished ball that shimmered a ghastly green against a background of jet.

Slowly in its depths a milky cloud took shape, swirling and pulsating like a living thing. Then it flashed into dazzling brilliance and the globe cleared to startling transparency. It was as if it did not exist. Rather they looked through an opening in the cosmos that carried their gaze to another and distant point. It was a large open space that was revealed to their eyes; a sort of public square where many of the olive-skinned Rulans were coming and going to and from the entrances of the circular tank-like structures that surrounded the area. They were greeting one another in solemn fashion as they passed and watching furtively the green-bronze guards who were everywhere. The sound of their low voiced conversations came clear and distinct from the depths of the crystal sphere.

“Your choice, Tiedor,” the Zara hissed.

“There is nothing--nothing, I tell you!” The Rulan chief’s voice was panicky now.

Clyone’s snarling command was carried to those guards out there in the Tritu Nogaru by some magic of the crystal sphere. As one man they snapped to attention. With deadly accuracy they released the energy of their ray pistols. It was a shambles, that square of the Tritu Nogaru; a slaughter house. Agonized screams of the doomed Rulans rent the air of the council chamber. They organized hastily and rushed again and again into the crackling blue flame of the disintegrating blasts of the guards’ fire. It was hopeless: unarmed and unprotected, they were at the mercy of Clyone’s minions.

[Illustration: Sick and trembling, Blaine cried out against the massacre.]

Sick and trembling, Blaine cried out against the massacre. He was seized instantly by two of the green-bronze guards who had been watching his every move. Tommy, too, was in their clutches once more, fighting valiantly but without avail. The sphere went blank and silent, and the drape was returned to its place. Still muttering disapproval, the members of the council gazed at their queen in alarm. There was no telling what this vile creature might do.

“The slaughter continues. Tiedor,” she gloated. “Soon your handful of followers will be no more. And good riddance.”

Swaying drunkenly, eyes glazed with the horror of the thing. Tiedor went raving mad. In one wild leap he was upon her, his fingers sinking into the white flesh of her throat. Woman or no woman, he’d have her life.

But it was not to be. A quick move of jeweled fingers was followed by a crashing report. Tiedor staggered and drew back, spinning on his heel to face them all with distended, pain-crazed eyes. Astonishment was there, and horror, but the fire of undying courage remained. His olive skin turned suddenly purple, then black from the poisoned dart that had exploded in his entrails. He collapsed in a still heap at the feet of the Zara.

She stood there a moment in the awful silence, caressing her bruised throat with fluttering fingers. She had faced death for one horrid instant and was obviously shaken.

Then she recovered and flew into a rage. “Out of my sight, all of you!” she screamed. “Out, I say! The Earth men are to be freed and Pegrani will conduct them to their quarters. Go now!”

The councillors made haste to comply, jostling one another in their anxiety to jam through the doorway. Blaine found himself released. He took one step toward Clyone, murderous hatred in his heart. But he recoiled from the expression in those red-flecked eyes; they softened instantly and looked into his very soul, saw through and beyond him into some far place where relief and happiness might be attained. And then, suddenly, they were swimming in tears. The Zara dropped into a seat and buried her sleek coiffured head in outstretched arms, her shoulders shaking with sobs.

An incomprehensible anomaly, this queen of the Llotta; a strange mixture of cruelty and tenderness, of cold hatred and the longing for love. A dual personality hers, susceptible to the deepest emotion or to utter lack of feeling as the mood might dictate.

Blaine tiptoed softly from the room.

They were in the corridor now, and Tommy was blowing off at a great rate. Even Pegrani was stunned and shaken. But Tommy raved.