stone was pushed aside they noticed that the daylight did not come through the breach as it ought. They had heard my cries, and as the gas came down on them, the doctor had slammed the front port-hole, which was never wide open, and had thus saved himself. Hotep was safely shut into the other compartment with the fire-arms and ammunition.
The doctor now came down to the rear port-hole to speak to me.
“My plan is to escape now to the Gnomons, where we will leave Hotep in possession with most of our fire- arms. You can give him some instructions how to use them, so that he may defend himself. There we can finish our stores of air and food.” To this I assented, and said to Hotep,—
“The Gnomons I give to thee, and all the land round about them, as a reward for thy most valuable assistance. Also I put into thy charge all my stores of wheat, to be distributed among the needy. Thou must husband them to last yet four years more, and for thine own thou mayest keep one measure in twenty. Take thou also a sword, a rifle, a revolver, and a belt of cartridges. Mayhap, to thy right to rule they may add the power to be a Pharaoh!”
I was interrupted by a noise below, as of some one opening the door of the secret chamber. All the deadly gas lurked in that room now, and it was certain death to whoever opened and entered! Yet if an alarm had been raised it was there they would immediately go for the fire-arms. I listened and heard faintly a voice of command, like that of Zaphnath, saying, “Haste, get me the thunderers!” Then, as the door below creaked open, I heard it louder: “The thunderers!” Next I heard many men in violent fits of coughing; I heard some groan and fall; but who or how many died by the purplish poison intended for me, I never knew.
It was but a moment later that hurried footsteps in the banquet-hall were heard approaching the veiled doorway. I took the revolver from Hotep, and motioned him inside the projectile. How cautiously they opened the door I could not see, for it was behind the great curtain. Presently, however, the captain who had bound me and bade me wait, drew aside the curtain, and the Pharaoh stood in the door, and behind him were a crowd of soldiers armed with cross-bows. In all the number I did not see the face of Zaphnath. They beheld me alone, and had no reason to suspect the presence of the others inside the projectile.
“Guard both the doors!” the captain commanded, and a detachment of soldiers barred the other door, as if thus to prevent me from escaping with the projectile; for of course they had not seen it rise through the floor.
“Seize and bind yon traitor!” cried the Pharaoh; “and he who hesitates shall be flayed!”
“And he who attempts it, shall die ere his first step be taken!” I replied, levelling the revolver. The captain started for me and I shot him down.
“If a man of you moves till I have entered this thing, I will kill the Pharaoh, as I have killed this dog! Ye serve him best who stand still as ye are!” So saying, I covered the trembling monarch with the revolver, and with my other hand I opened the rear port-hole; then stooping, I sprang inside with a quick motion. When the Pharaoh had recovered from his fright, I heard him cry out,—
“Cast that black thing, and the traitor inside it, into yon poisonous hole again!”
The soldiers did not fear to act this time, and the whole company seized the projectile and carried it toward the breach in the floor. As they lifted it on end to thrust into the hole, I called out to the doctor, who turned in two batteries, and gently we lifted out of their dumb hands and rose steadily till we touched the roof. There the vaulted stonework stopped us, and an exultant shout went up from below. Suddenly a score of arrows twanged against my window, but the doctor turned in two more batteries and then gradually we lifted the key of the great stone arch, broke through the roof, and the whole universe was an open sea before us!
Crouching by me at the port-hole, Hotep watched the roof collapse and tumble in. “For thy sake,” I said to him, “I hope a falling stone may have crushed him!”
Thus ended our other-world life. In a time of activity it would never have occurred to me to write down these events. It was to relieve the uneventful quiet of our trip back to Earth that I undertook to set down all our Martian experiences in their proper order. No doubt it was the changeless monotony of that return journey which made the record appear to me novel, unusual, and at times exciting. But now, six little months again on Earth have made the more than three Martian years (equalling six years of Earth) seem slow, tame, and profitless. If they were pregnant with adventure, they lacked the real experiences of life which have been crowded into the half-year since our return.
The very day I reached my old home I found another wheat corner more wide-spread, if less complete and impregnable, and I set to work to break it down. Thus the maelstrom of modern commercial life dragged me into its dizzy whirl before I slept the first night on Earth, and I am already surfeited with it. I seem to take the Earthly life in too large and rapid doses. Into the half-year she has put a flattering success and a dismaying failure. She has given me a month of her sweetest experiences and another of her bitterest disappointments. As if she knew I would not remain long at her feast, she has served to me in quick succession a measure of renown, a taste of fortune, the rapture of wooing, the bliss of marriage, and the rare delight of loving a soul created to love me. Then one little drop from the cup of Death embittered the whole feast and turned me against it all.
In the rush and turmoil of it all I should never have thought of my crudely written narrative again had not my cousin Ruth, who never tired of the story, fished it out and sent it to a literary friend in Boston. It was probably the instant success in the scientific world of Dr. Anderwelt’s scholarly books on Mars and His Life, and the new direction given to modern thought by his Theory of Parallel Planetary Life, which led my literary sponsor to think the world would be interested in a plain, unscientific narrative of our trip Marsward and our doings there. In agreeing to look it over and cause it to be a “good delivery” in the literary world, he exacted a promise from me to make my recent Earthly experiences and our adventures on Venus join in producing another story. For before the eyes of the first reader have reached these words, Dr. Anderwelt and I will have departed sunwards, on the visit to our brilliant sister planet, where, according to his theory, life will have run through some 31,000 years more than Earth toward the perfect existence. By the first return of the projectile I have promised to send back a thorough account of the evolution of life and the advancement of civilization on Venus, so far as Earthly eyes and wits can see and know it.
THE MAN WHO STAKED THE STARS
by Charles Dye
Bryce Carter could afford a smug smile. For hadn’t he risen gloriously from Thieves Row to director of famed U.T.? Was not Earth, Moon, and all the Belt, at this very moment awaiting his command for the grand coup? And wasn’t his cousin-from-Montehedo a star-sent help?
I
“What do I do for a living?” repeated the slim dark-skinned young man in the next seat of the Earth-Moon liner. “I’m a witch doctor,” he answered with complete sincerity.
“What do you do? I mean, what do they hire you for?” asked Donahue with understandable confusion and a touch of nervousness.
“I’m registered as a psychotherapist,” said the dark-skinned young man. He looked too young to be practicing a profession, barely nineteen, but that could be merely a sign of talent, Donahue reflected. The new teaching and testing methods graduated them young.
