Page:Amazing Stories Volume 15 Number 10.djvu/63

Rh rel-chested ape-men with bodies covered with blue hair, apart from red patches on cheeks and chest, roamed the neglected fields and streets. Their toes and fingers had claws and were webbed like the toes of ducks. Most of them wore odd articles of clothing, a belt, a conical helmet or a pair of shoes. And nearly all carried in one hand an iron club and in the other that most deadly of all weapons, a black box producing the nerve-stopping deathray of Mars.

Don wondered why the view was so dim. Slowly it faded until the sphere was completely dark.

"You see, Don," explained Wimpolo, "those beasts know enough to put the television out of action. They can use nearly all the things they find in the cities they destroy, and they leave nobody alive in them when they go. They are horribly cunning. When my father's army, with its warplanes and battlespheres, gets to that city, all those ape-creatures will have vanished back into the caves, leaving a sacked and empty city. Bodies only will be found, bodies of old people and children. For the young adults, men and women, will have vanished. Do not ask me what has happened to them. It is one of those things one does not like to talk about."

"What is the name of that city?"

"It is Selketh, forty of your miles from here."

Don caught his breath. For forty miles in Mars is as ten on Earth.

"Then you are not safe even here? You should go to somewhere safe."

"Nowhere is safe," said she, sadly. "We thought that Selketh was as safe as any city in Mars. And I don't like running away. Besides, I have my way of escape, if it should be necessary. Have I ever shown you my secret room?"

"No."

"Then come. But remember to say nothing to anybody about it."

She took him through another room to where a cunningly hidden door proved to be a way into yet another room. A transparent sphere rested here, eighteen feet tall, with a square compartment inside. In front of the sphere gaped a round hole.

"One sign of danger," she explained, "and I could be racing through the tunnels to anywhere in Mars in a few seconds. My father, the king, arranged all this long ago so that whatever happened while he was away, earthquake, fire, war, revolution, the royal family would be safe."

"I'd like to talk this over with Professor Winterton," Don said.

"I'll call him."

HE sent for the Professor, using the automatic television system of the palace. The white-haired Professor