Chapter XXIV: Attack on the Palace

I must take you back now to the Water Festival and the events in the Great City which followed it. Slaans in murderous frenzy were plunging through the throng of erstwhile revelers. Maida could not quell them. The revolt which she had started against Tarrano seemed now a self-created monster to destroy us all.

But there were Earth men among us. A hundred of them, no more. They had come from Washington that same day; had landed, I learned later, secretly near the Great City, sent with our Earth Council’s plans to communicate with Maida. Beneath the water, coming individually, they had entered the festival; and helping Maida’s girls (the diving girls whom I had encountered) they had made away with most of Tarrano’s guards.

In those first moments of frenzy, I got to the balcony--joined Maida and Georg. Elza was gone! My heart went cold, but in those hurried, frantic moments, grave disaster as it was, I did not dwell upon it.

“We must get away--back to the palace!” Georg exclaimed as I joined them.

The Earth men on the main floor were holding the slaans partially in check. Bodies were lying in a welter--I shall not describe it. Then abruptly, upon a table a huge slaan leaped--his garments blood-stained from his victims, a blade of dripping steel in his hands. He shouted above the tumult--words not in the universal language, but in the dialect of the slaans. His command carried throughout the building. Other slaans took it up; we could hear it echoed outside as others shouted it over the waters.

The bloodshed abruptly ceased. The slaans leaped away from the Earth men, who were glad enough to let them go--rushed for the archways of the pavilion. Outside, we could hear the water splashing. Swimmers--and boats scurrying off. Then comparative silence. The scream of a slaan woman in the grove nearby, still desiring vengeance; the groans of the dying at our feet; the hiss and splutter of weapons discarded, with circuits still connected. And over it all, the great whine of a danger whistle, which some distant official had plugged ... A lull. And around us lay strewn stark tragedy where a few moments before had been festive merry-making. A crimson scene, with the body of the Red Woman lying like a symbol in its midst...

Within an hour we were back at the palace. The whole city was seething. Boats and lights were everywhere. Control of everything seemed lost. Warning signals shrilled in crazy fashion. Public mirrors were dark, or turned to places and time wholly irrelevant.

In the palace itself we soon secured a semblance of order. Maida’s girls were here, with wet veils and long dank tresses clinging to their sleek bodies. Lips painted alluring red. But eyes which now were solemn and grim. Their demeanor alert and business-like. Unconscious of themselves they moved about the palace, executing Maida’s orders.

A dozen or so of Maida’s personal retainers were here--and most of the Earth men. Keen-eyed young men of the Washington Headquarters Staff. One of them--Tomm Aften by name, a ruddy, blue-eyed fellow--was in command. He stayed close by Georg and me.

The city was seething. But out of the chaos was coming a comparatively orderly menace. We could sense it at first; and then in a few brief minutes so swift that we had no time to prepare--the menace became obvious and was at hand.

The slaans had withdrawn from the festival for a greater, more organized effort. Their revolt against Tarrano in which Maida had joined, was bigger, more deep-rooted than a mere revolt. It was against Maida herself. Trickery of the downtrodden slaans against the ruling class. Against the old order of government. Even against the Rhaals, who in their distant city were all-powerful, but who obeyed the laws and took no part in anything.