“Beware,” said Janina to the officer of the court. “Slaves may be slain for a lie!”
“Let us go,” said the gladiator, facing the door.
Then he said, “Stand straight, Gerune. Put your shoulders back. Be sensational. Remember that you are not a free woman now but a slave.”
Gerune, princess of the Drisriaks, sister of Ortog, king of the Ortungen, straightened her body and threw her shoulders back. How proudly then she stood.
“How beautiful she is!” exclaimed Janina.
“Ah,” breathed the gladiator.
Even the officer of the court was struck with awe, seeing how beautiful a woman could be.
The gladiator boldly threw open the door.
“March,” he said.
The group then exited the small room.
Janina, who was the last to leave, snapped off the light.
CHAPTER 13
“Some are still here!” said Janina, delightedly.
The officer of the court, still on her hands and knees, was on the sand, it covering her wrists, her knees, too, partly sunk in it. She could feel sand on her knees, which were sore, as were her hands. She could feel it, too, in its hundreds of tiny grains, slipped within the “same garb” where it had opened at the knees, roughened and parted by the slow procession through the corridors. Happily, elevators had been functional to this level. She could see, before her, the princess, her bared feet in the sand, it up almost to the ankles. The rope was still on her neck, and Janina held it. The princess’s rope was in the keeping of the gladiator.
Many were the ironic salutes and lustful, demeaning catcalls which had greeted the princess as she had been paraded through the corridors. She counted, the officer of the court, gathered, as a prize catch, one which would doubtless bring an excellent price in a slave market.
The officer of the court wondered if she, too, might possess such value.
To be sure, it was hard to tell, encumbered as she was with “same garb.”
“There are two left,” said Janina, peering ahead, the way illuminated by an electric torch, which implement had been numbered among the several accouterments appropriated by the gladiator.
Originally there had been several escape capsules in the hold. Several, however, had been used by passengers, and perhaps crew members, trying to escape the vessel.
These were on tracks which led to the lifts, from which, on further tracks, they could be taken to locks.
“They do not know of these, Master,” said Janina.
“I do not think so,” said the gladiator.
There was no sign, as far as they had been able to determine, that Section 19 of the hold had been entered by the barbarians. It was, at that time, among putatively less important portions of the ship, portions which might well be left for later consideration. It had not figured in the fighting.
The gladiator flashed the light of the torch about the dark hold, over the wreckage of the fallen tiers.
He flashed it, too, upward, toward the girderwork about the ceiling.
Section 19, illuminated here and there by the darting beam, seemed very different from when it had been well lit, and muchly occupied, as on the night of the entertainment.
The officer of the court found it frightening, and eerie. She wondered if they were truly alone in the place.
“Kneel them,” said the gladiator, handing the princess’s rope to Janina.
“Kneel, milady,” said Janina to the princess, who knelt in the sand.
“Kneel, slave,” said Janina to the officer of the court, “here, behind the princess, and to her left.”
The officer of the court, angrily, knelt where she had been told.
“Hands on your thighs,” said Janina to her charges. “You may keep your knees closed, milady. But you, slave, will keep yours open.”
The officer of the court was angry, but she knelt as she had been instructed. Kneeling thusly, even in the “same garb,” she could not help experiencing strange, disturbing sensations. Was it not thus that slave girls must kneel, or slave girls of a certain sort?
“It is as I feared,” said the gladiator, who was now a few feet away. “The lifts to the locks are not operational.”
It would be difficult to move the escape capsules on the tracks, not that they were large, but they were weighty, but it could be done. Two men could manage it, or one, with unusual strength.
“Oh, Master!” moaned Janina.
How then could they be brought to the level of the locks?
“The cables seem intact,” said the gladiator, with satisfaction. “There are counterweights, of course.”
The officer of the court thought she heard a small sound somewhere to her left, back, among the tiers.
Neither Janina nor the gladiator, who was concerned elsewhere, flashing the torch into the shaft, noticed it.
“I will move the capsule into the lift,” said the gladiator. “Then, perhaps, I can draw it upward.”
“It would take several men to hoist the lift, Master,” said Janina, fearfully.
But already, the iron wheels grinding on the track, the gladiator, by main strength, was moving one of the capsules into the lift.
He returned, briefly, to Janina. He handed her the fire pistol and the electric torch.
“Put them to their bellies where they are, in the sand,” said the gladiator. “If either should prove troublesome, or recalcitrant, you may burn them where they lie.”
“Yes, Master,” said Janina. Then she said to the princess, “Please assume a prone position, milady, with your legs widely spread.” The princess complied. Doubtless Janina herself had often been put, in one situation or another, in this same position. It makes it harder to rise. Then she said to the officer of the court, “To your belly, slave, and get your legs apart, as widely as you can!”
The officer of the court complied. She did not doubt but what Janina might well blast through her back, perhaps even boiling and melting the sand beneath her. The fire pistol in her grasp was not one of reduced charges, as had been those of the crew members, a safety precaution for use on the vessel. It was much more powerful, and might, if its charge was sustained, cut through metal. To be sure, it was less powerful than the Telnarian rifle which the gladiator retained.
She heard, foot by foot, the lift being raised by hand. She could scarcely believe the strength required for this. Such a man, she knew, might snap her neck with one hand. Then she thought she heard, again, a tiny sound, again back, and to her left.
It did not seem that Janina noticed this sound, if it were indeed a sound. Her interest, it seemed, was focused on the gladiator’s struggle with the weights in the lift shaft.
The gladiator then ascended the shaft by means of a ladder within it.
In a few moments he returned. “The capsule is in the lock, positioned,” he said.
“Master!” breathed Janina, delightedly.
“I have heard strangers about,” he said, “but they seem to be in another corridor.”
“What are we to do,” asked Janina, frightened.
“We must move quickly,” he said.
He took the fire pistol from Janina and replaced it in its holster.
He extinguished the torch and put it on his belt.
“Up, Gerune,” he said. As soon as she was on her feet, he scooped her up and, to her consternation, threw her lightly over his shoulder. “Come last, Janina,” he said.
“Yes, Master,” she said. Then she said to the officer of the court, “Get up, slave, follow your master.”
“I am not a slave,” said the officer of the court. “He is not my master.”
But she rose promptly to her feet.
