The Fire People, Ray Cummings [best thriller books to read .txt] 📗

were doing at the time; later I found out Anina was devoting it to learning English.

During the evening meal we planned it all. Tao's men were living in a house near the edge of the city—the house Tao had occupied before he was banished to the Twilight Country. It had no other occupants at this time.

We had learned where they kept their boats in one of the bayous near by, and in it we intended to take them to the sea, where we would meet the girls, who would then fly with them to the Twilight Country. But we could not figure out how to capture them without alarming the city. We were sure they were unarmed; they had been carefully searched by the authorities when they entered the country. But they were ten to our two.

[Pg 106]

Mercer voiced the problem most emphatically.

"Ten men in a house," he declared. "Maybe we can catch them all asleep. But even if they are, how are we going to get them out? There'd be a row, and we don't want any noise. Besides, there's always this confounded daylight here. If we tied them up somebody might see us when we got outside. How do we get them out of that house without any rumpus, and down to that boat? That's what I don't see."

"I—do—that," said Anina suddenly.

She had spoken in English, and we looked at her in amazement. She lisped the words in her soft, sweet voice, haltingly, like a little child. Then she turned to Miela and poured out a torrent of her native language. Mercer stared at her in undisguised admiration.

As Miela explained it, Anina proposed that she go into Tao's house alone, and decoy his men down to the boat where we could capture them.

"But how will she get them there?" I exclaimed. "What will she tell them?"

"She says she can make them think she is one of those few of our women who sympathize with their cause," Miela explained. "And she will say that the earth‑man who escaped from them she has seen lurking about their boat; perhaps he plans to steal it. She will go there with them, and they can recapture him."

"They might not all go," said Mercer. "We want to get them all."

"It is Anina's thought that they will all go, for they fear this earth‑man much—and all would go to make sure of him."

I could not feel it was right for us to let Anina do so daring a thing, and Mercer agreed with me heartily. But Anina insisted, with a fire in her eyes and flushed cheeks that contrasted strangely with her usually gentle demeanor.

In the end Mercer and I gave in, for we could think of no better plan, and Miela was confident Anina would not be harmed.

It was about what would correspond with ten o'clock in the evening on earth when the girls began to arrive. We waited until all fifty of them had come in. Miela named a place on the shore of the sea known to them all. They were to take the platform—starting in about two hours, when the city would be quiet—and there they would wait for us to join them in the boat.

[Pg 107]

We four started out together, but soon Anina left us to make her way to Tao's house alone. Mercer, Miela and I then hurried as fast as we could through the city down to the marshlands, and to the secluded spot on the bayou's bank where the boat was lying.

The bayou here was about a hundred feet wide, a winding, brackish stream, lined on both sides with trees whose roots were in the water and whose branches at times nearly met overhead. Its banks were a tangled mass of tree roots, huge ferns, palmettos and some tall upstanding kind of water grass. Half submerged logs jutted out into the sluggish current, making it in places seem almost impassable.

A narrow metal boat—a very long and very narrow motor boat with a thatched shelter like a small cabin over part of its length—lay fastened to a tree near at hand. I noticed at once some mechanism over its stern.

We had come up quietly to make sure no one was about. Now we hid ourselves close to the boat and waited with apprehension in our hearts for the arrival of Anina with Tao's men.

Half an hour, perhaps, went by. The silence in this secluded spot hung heavy about us. A fish broke the glassy surface of the water; a lizard scurried along the ground; a bird flitted past. Then, setting our hearts pounding, came the soft snapping of underbrush that we knew was the cautious tread of some one approaching. I was half reclining under a fallen tree, with a clump of palmettos about me. I parted their fronds carefully before my face. A few yards away a man was standing motionless, staring past me and apparently listening intently.

He moved forward after a moment. I feared he was coming almost upon us, but he turned aside, bending low down as he crept slowly forward. Sounds in the underbrush reached me now from other directions, and I knew that the men had spread apart and were stalking the boat, expecting Mercer to be in or near it.

[Pg 108]

Had they all come down here? I wondered. And where was Anina? I looked down at Miela warningly as I felt her move slightly.

"We'll wait till they're all near the boat," I whispered to Mercer.

I saw Anina a moment later soaring over the bayou just above the tree‑tops. I sighed with relief, for it was a signal to us that everything was all right. We continued to wait until the men had all come into view. They went at the boat with a sudden rush. Several of them climbed into it, With shouts to the others.

With a significant glance to Mercer I leaped suddenly to my feet. I was perhaps twenty feet from the boat, and the space between us was fairly clear. A single bound landed me beside it, almost among four of the men who were standing there in a group. Before they had time to face me I was upon them.

I scattered them like nine‑pins, and two of them went down under my blows. The other two flung themselves upon me. I stumbled over some inequality of the ground, and we all three fell prone. This was the first time I had come actually to hand grips with any of the Mercutians.

I felt now not only their lack of strength, but a curious frailness about their bodies—a seeming absence of solidity that their stocky appearance belied. These two men were like half‑grown boys in my hands. I was back on my feet in a moment, leaving one of them lying motionless. The other rose to his knees, his face white with pain and terror.

I left him there and looked about me. Miela was fluttering around near by, as I had instructed her—just off the ground and with the whole scene under her eyes. It was she on whom I depended for warning should any of the quarry attempt to escape us.

At the edge of the water another man was lying, whom I assumed Mercer had felled. There was a great commotion from the boat. I ran toward it. A man was standing beside it—an old man with snow‑white hair. He stood still, seeming confused and in doubt what to do. As I neared him he turned clumsily to avoid me. I passed him by and bounded over the boat's gunwale, landing in its bottom. The first thing I saw was Mercer struggling to his feet with four of the Mercutians hanging on him. One had a grip on his throat from behind; another clutched him about the knees.

[Pg 109]

The two others let go of him when they heard me land in the boat. One had evidently had enough, for he dived overboard. The other waited warily for my onslaught. As I got within reach I hit at his face, but my blow went wild. He hit me full in the chest, but it was the blow of a child.

At that instant I heard Mercer give a choking cry, and out of the corner of my eye saw him go down again. I could waste no more time upon this single antagonist. The man had his hands at my throat now. I seized him about the waist and carried him to the gunwale. He clung to me as a rat might cling to a terrier, but I shook him off and dumped him in the water.

I turned to Mercer just as he was struggling to his feet again, and in a moment more between us we had felled his two assailants. Mercer's face was very white, and I saw blood streaming from a wound on his head; but he grinned as he faced me.

"Have we—got 'em—all?" he gasped. He dashed the blood away from his eyes with the flat of his hand. "I fell—damn it—right at the start, and hit my head. Where are they all? Have we got 'em?"

Miela alighted in the boat beside us.

"Two are running," she said. "They are together. Hasten."

We jumped out of the boat. Miela flew up, and we followed her guidance through the dense woods. We could make much better speed, I knew, than the Mercutians. "We'll get them all, Ollie," I shouted at Mercer. "They're not far ahead. See up there—Miela's evidently over them now."

We came up to them after a few hundred yards. It was the old man, and one of those whom I had first encountered. They did not wait for us to attack them, but stopped stock still, flinging their arms wide in token of surrender.

[Pg 110]

Miela came down among us, and we went back to where we had lain hidden in the palmettos. There we had left a number of short lengths of rope. While we were tying the arms of these two prisoners behind them and fettering their ankles so they could not run Anina joined us.

"Two—in water," she cried; and then added something to Miela.

"Two were in the water. Now they are in the woods, running. Anina will show you."

Miela stood guard in the boat over our first two prisoners, while Mercer and I rounded up the others. It was half an hour or more before we had them all trussed up, but none of the ten escaped. We were a long time reviving two of those we had injured, but finally we had them all lying or sitting in the boat.

Mercer's head had stopped bleeding. He washed it, and I found his injury no more than an ugly scalp wound.

"I fell and cut it on something," he explained lugubriously. "Couldn't see for the blood in my eyes. But we got 'em, didn't we?"

Under Miela's direction Mercer and I shoved the boat out into the stream. I need not go into details regarding the propelling mechanism of this craft. Miela explained it hastily to me as we got under way. It used a form of the light‑ray from a sort of strange battery. The intense heat of the ray generated a great pressure of superheated steam in a thick metal cylinder underneath the keel.

This steam escaped through a nozzle under water at the stern of the boat, and its thrust against the water propelled the boat forward. The boat was constructed to draw very little water, and when going fast its bow planed upward until only the stern of the hull touched the surface. It was steered by a rudder not much different from some of those types we are familiar with on earth. When we got out into open water I found the boat was capable of great speed. This I attributed not so much to the efficacy of its propelling force as to the lightness of the boat itself. It was built of some metal that I may perhaps