Chapter XVII: Violet Beam of Death

We landed on a stage at the summit of one of the nearer hillsides. Our coming--unheralded since we had carried no sending instruments--created a furor. The workers rested to watch us as we disembarked. It was not so different a scene, here on the hill, than might have occurred on Earth. We took a moving platform, down the hill, to the water’s edge. A barge was awaiting us--a broad flat vessel with gaudy trappings. A score of attendants lined its sides, each with a pole to thrust it through the shallow water. And on its high-raised stern, beneath a canopy was a couch upon which Tarrano reclined, with us of his party at his feet.

A royal barge, queerly ancient, barbaric--reminding me of the flat, motionless pictures of Earth’s early history. Yet it was a symbol here on Venus, not of barbarism, but of decadence.

We started off. I may have given a false idea of the size of the Great City. Its lake, indeed, was fully fifteen miles or more in diameter. Half a million people lived on or close around that placid stretch of water.

The news of Tarrano’s arrival had instantly spread. Graceful boats, all propelled by hand, thronged our course. From them, and from every house-window, balcony and roof-top, a waving multitude cheered the coming of the Master. The new Master, to whom so recently they had given their allegiance--the Master who in return was to endow them with life everlasting.

It was a gay, holiday throng--cheering us, tossing flower-petals down upon us as we passed majestically beneath the bridges. Yet among these gaudily dressed women and men with the luster of wealth and ease upon them, others mingled. Others of a lower class, poorly dressed, with the badge of servitude upon them, enthralled in a social peonage which I did not yet understand.

“Slaans,” Wolfgar called them. A term half of derision, half contempt. And Wolfgar pointed one out to me. A huge grey, surly-looking fellow passing in a one-man shell or boat of tree-fibre. He gazed up at us as he went by--a furtive glance of cold, sullen fury. Unmistakable. And I saw it again on others of his kind--men, women, even children who gazed at us with big, round eyes. A dumb, sullen resentment, with a smouldering fury beneath it.

During the trip, which may have taken an hour, I remarked something also, which did not at the time seem significant but very soon I was to recall it and understand its import. Argo, of course, was still with us. As we embarked upon the barge, a man evidently an official of the Great City had paid his humble respects to Tarrano and then withdrawn to a further part of the vessel, drawing Argo with him. I saw the two in close conversation. The official evidently was telling Argo something of importance. I could see Argo growing indignant and then his eyes gleaming, a leer upon his cruel lips.

During the trip Tarrano sat calm, half reclining on his couch--sat watching with his keen expressionless eyes the applause of the multitude. It was, I think, and I believe he felt it also, the height of his career up to that time--this triumphant entry into the greatest city of Venus. He did not speak, just sat watching and listening, with a half smile of triumph pulling at his mouth. Yet I know too, that those keen eyes of his did not miss the sullen glances of the slaans.

The weather, as always in the Venus Central State, was warm--a luxurious tropic warmth. And now I felt--as I had seen from above--the languorous, sensuous quality of it all. Music, mingled with the ripple of girlish laughter and cheers, came from the houses as we passed. Soft, fragrant flower-petals deluged us. The very air was laden heavy with exotic perfumes from the flowers which were everywhere.

We arrived at last at what appeared to be a palace--a broad, low building of polished stone, on an island of its own. It was the building I had noticed when first we saw the Great City from above. Gardens were about the building, and on its roof. Flowers lined its many balconies.