and then down, clattering to the bottom of the shaft.
“Bring gas,” said a voice from above.
“We are lost, Master,” said Janina. “There is no escape!”
The gladiator stood unsteadily, parts of his armor dangling, and drew a bead with the pistol on the door, across the way, that giving the main entry to Section 19. He fired once into the side of the door, sealing it to the steel portal.
Running feet could now be heard again, above, more men approaching.
There was blood running down the side of the gladiator’s leg, on the plating, from beneath the armoring of his torso.
He slipped down on one knee.
“She lied,” he said.
Across the way he could see, through the observation panel, the faces of men. He heard the door being tried.
“Get in the escape capsule,” said the gladiator, from one knee, to Janina.
But she fled to him. She put her arms about him. “Master is mad!” she wept. “He is mad with confusion and pain!”
He struggled to raise his head.
“There is no lock here, Master!” she said.
“Go,” he said.
“Let Janina rather die in his arms!”
Then his head was raised, and he looked upon the slave, and his visage was fierce and terrible.
“Janina hastens to obey!” cried the girl with fear and she fled to the inactivated capsule, the second of the two which had been in the hold.
She struggled only for a moment with the hatch, as it had been opened before, by the fugitives. They had been sustaining themselves on the supplies in the capsules.
Across the way the butt of fire pistols smote at the wire-reinforced glass, and then the muzzle of a pistol, poking through the wire, bits of glass, clinging to it, intruded into the hold. It fired over the escape capsule, rippling the wall of the hold.
“Masks!” called a man, from above.
The gladiator fired a shot toward the observation panel and glass and wire spattered backwards, into the corridor outside.
Gas began to hiss downward into the hold, through the lift shaft.
It could be seen now, like fog, creeping from the shaft.
Across the way the door was being struck with charges like hammers. The door began to glow.
The gladiator rose unsteadily to his feet.
The door now seemed lost in a blaze of sparks and charges.
The gladiator staggered toward the escape capsule.
He climbed the two iron steps, leading to the hatch of the capsule, and then leaned against the capsule, weakly, over it.
“She lied!” he cried, suddenly, and wept, and struck down on the capsule with an armored fist. “She lied!” he cried.
“Master!” cried Janina, from within the capsule. “Master!”
Gas was now billowing from the lift shaft into the hold.
The gladiator unslung the Telnarian rifle from his back.
Across the way the door suddenly burst loose from the steel portal.
He slipped into the opened hatch, but stood in it, his body half out of the capsule.
Janina, within, crouched on the steel plating.
Men, masked, weapons raised, emerged through the portal across the way.
The gladiator heard two men leaping to the floor of the lift shaft.
He aimed the Telnarian rifle at the side of the hold.
He pulled the trigger four times, placing four charges in the form of a square.
Some of the gas began to move suddenly, hissing, toward the wall. The gladiator laid the rifle on the surface of the capsule before him, and then, with the pistol, with its last charges, each set on the narrow sustaining beam, linked the four points of impact of the rifle.
The gas was now whipping toward the wall. The atmosphere in the hold was rushing past him, tearing at his hair.
“No!” cried someone behind him.
Then men were fleeing.
The gladiator lifted, once more, the Telnarian rifle. He fired the last charge in the rifle at the center of the pattern. Suddenly the side of the hull seemed to leap away from him and, the capsule tumbling on its side toward the hole, he slid within it, turned the wheel, and secured the hatch.
In a moment the capsule was tumbling through space, leaving the Alaria, and the Ortung fleet behind, like specks in the night.
CHAPTER 15
“What are those sounds?” asked Janina, frightened.
“They are horns, hunting horns,” said the gladiator.
“This world, then, is not uninhabited,” said Janina.
“It would seem not,” said the gladiator.
He kicked dirt over the small fire they had built on the bank.
“My clothes are not yet dry!” protested Janina.
“Put them on wet, or carry them,” said the gladiator.
“I am exhausted,” she said. “We almost died. I cannot move.”
She looked up at him, pathetically. She knelt on leaves. Her hair had been loosened, that it might be dried near the fire.
“Then I shall rope you to a tree and leave you behind,” he said.
She rose to her feet and hastily began to gather her clothes from the cord stretched between two trees.
“Forgive your slave,” she said.
The gladiator stood very still, listening.
“What world is this?” she asked, rolling the garments of Princess Gerune into a small bundle.
“I do not know,” he said, softly.
“Forgive me, Master,” she said, realizing she might have disturbed him.
The gladiator looked up at the sky. The descent of the capsule, last night, might have been visible, particularly in the upper atmosphere. It might have been mistaken for a meteor at first, a falling star, perhaps even later, when the fearful rush in the atmosphere, like a hurricane over the trees, was audible. But, too, there may have been a visual contact, when the descent slowed and the capsule began to skim the trees, the sensors searching for level surfaces, where the adjusting thrusters would be activated for a landing. But then, too, perhaps not. How could one know?
Again the horns sounded.
The gladiator threw the last bits of the armor into the river. These, with certain other supplies, he had salvaged from the capsule.
“Master, I cannot swim!” had cried Janina, last night, first waist deep in the current, trying to help bring the capsule to the shore, then her footing lost, falling, her hands slipping from the wet metallic surface, being swept downstream.
