Chapter 13

“Stand where you are!”

Tom and Major Connel stiffened and looked around, the unconscious form of Roger stretched between them on the litter. From the jungle around them, green-clad Nationalists suddenly emerged, brandishing their guns.

“Put Roger down,” muttered Connel quietly. “Don’t try anything.”

“Very well, sir,” replied Tom, and they lowered the litter to the ground gently.

“Raise your hands!” came the second command from a man who appeared directly in front of them.

Standing squarely in front of them, the little man said something in the Venusian dialect and waited, but Connel and Tom remained silent.

“I guess you don’t speak the Venusian tongue,” he sneered. “So I’ll have to use the disgusting language of Earth!” He looked down at the unconscious form of Roger. “What happened to him?”

“He was injured in a fight with a tyrannosaurus,” replied Connel. “May I remind you that you and these men are holding guns on an officer of the Solar Guard. Such a crime is punishable by two years on a prison asteroid!”

“You’ll be the one to go to prison, my stout friend!” The man laughed. “A little work in the shops will take some of that waistline off you!”

“Are you taking us prisoner?”

“What do you think?”

“I see.” Connel seemed to consider for a moment. “Who are you?” he asked.

“I am Drifi, squad officer of the jungle patrol.”

“Connel, Senior Officer, Solar Guard,” acknowledged Connel. “If we are being held prisoner, I wish to make a request.”

“Prisoners don’t make requests,” said Drifi, and then added suspiciously, “What is it?”

“See that this man”--Connel indicated Roger--”is given medical attention at once.”

Drifi eyed the major cautiously.

“I make this request as one officer to another,” said Connel. “A point of honor between opponents.”

Drifi’s eyes gleamed visibly at the word officer, and Tom almost grinned at Connel’s subtle flattery.

“You--and you,” snapped Drifi at the green-clad men around them, “see that this man is taken to the medical center immediately!” Two men jumped to pick up the litter.

“Thank you,” said Connel. “Now will you be so kind as to tell me what this is all about?”

“You’ll find out soon enough. We have a special way of treating spies.”

“Spies!” roared Connel. The officer sounded so indignant that Tom was almost fooled by his tone. “We’re hunters! One of our party is lost here in the jungle. We were searching for him when we were attacked by a tyrannosaurus. During the fight, this man was injured. We’re not spies!”

Drifi shrugged his shoulders, and barking a command to his men, turned into the jungle. Connel and Tom were forced to follow.

They were taken to the giant teakwood that Astro had seen, and Tom and Connel watched silently as the door opened, revealing the vacuum tube. The men crowded into the car and it dropped to the lower level.

Following the same twisting turns in the tunnels, Tom and Connel were brought to the armory and saw the men surrender their weapons and change their helmets and shoes. They tried desperately to get a look at the faces of the men around them while the headgear was being changed, but, as before, the men were careful to keep their faces averted.

Continuing down the tunnel, Connel tried to speak to Drifi again. “I would appreciate it greatly, sir,” he said in his most formal military manner, “if you could give me any news about the other man of our party. Have you seen him?”

Drifi did not answer. He marched stiffly ahead, not even bothering to look at Connel.

As they neared the exit, Connel drifted imperceptibly closer to Tom and whispered out of the side of his mouth, “Keep your eyes open for ships. Count as many as you can. How many are armed, their size, and so on. Look for ammunition dumps. Check radar and communications installations. Get as much information as you can, in case only one of us can escape.”

“Yes, sir,” whispered Tom. “Do you think they might have Astro?”

“It’s a good guess. We were following the tyrannosaurus’s trail when they caught us, and I’m pretty sure Astro had been doing the same thing.”

“Stop that talking!” snapped Drifi, suddenly whirling on them. “You,” he shouted at one of the guards, “get up here and keep them apart!”

A guard stepped quickly between Tom and Connel, and the conversation ended.

At the exit Connel and Tom stopped involuntarily at the sight before them. Astro had entered the canyon near twilight, but the two spacemen got a view of the Nationalists’ base under the full noon sun. Connel gasped and muttered a space oath. Tom turned halfway to his superior and was starting to speak when both were shoved rudely ahead. “Keep moving,” a guard growled.

As they walked, their eyes flicked over the canyon, alert for details. Tom counted the ships arrayed neatly on the spaceport some distance away, then counted others outside repair shops with men scurrying over them like so many ants. Near the center of the canyon the bare trunk of a giant teakwood soared skyward, a gigantic communications tower. Tom scanned the revolving antenna, and from its shape and size deduced the power and type of radar being used at the base. He admitted to himself that the Nationalists had the latest and best. Connel was busy too, noting buildings of identical design scattered around the canyon floor that were too small to be spaceship hangars or storage depots. He guessed that they were housings for vacuum-tube elevator shafts that led to underground caves.

The canyon echoed with the splutter of arc welders, the slow banging of iron workers, the cough and hissing of jet sleds, the roar of activity that meant deadly danger to the Solar Alliance. Connel noticed as he moved across the canyon floor that the workers were in good spirits. The morale of the rebels, thought the space officer, was good! Too good!

At a momentary halt in their march, when Drifi stopped to speak with a sentry, Tom and Connel found an opportunity to speak again.

“I’ve counted a dozen big converted freighters on the blast ramps, sir,” whispered Tom hurriedly. “Three more being repaired, nearly finished, and there are about fifty smaller ships, all heavily armed.”

“That checks with my count, Tom,” replied Connel hurriedly. “What do you make of the radar?”

“At least as good as we have!”

“I thought so, too! If a Solar Guard squadron tried to attack this base now, they’d be spotted and blasted out of space!”

“What about stores, sir?” asked Tom. “I didn’t see anything like a supply depot.”

Connel told him of the small buildings which he believed housed the elevator shafts to underground storerooms. “Only one thing is missing!” he concluded.

“What’s that, sir?”

“The nuclear chambers where they produce ammunition for their fleet.”

“It must be underground too, sir,” said Tom. “There isn’t a building in the canyon that’s made of concrete and steel.”

“Right. Either that, or it’s back up there in the cliffs in one of those tunnels!” The officer snorted. “By the stars, Corbett, this place is an atom bomb ready to go off in the lap of the Solar Alliance.”

“What are we going to do, sir?” asked Tom. “So far, it looks as if it’s going to be tough to get out again.”

“We’ll have to wait for a break, Tom,” sighed Connel.

“I hope they’ve taken good care of Roger,” said the cadet in a low voice. “And I hope they’ve got Astro.”