Page:Amazing Stories Volume 15 Number 10.djvu/72

72 weapons. The marching in of prisoners had stopped, but metal cases and machinery were still being slung into a hold in the after end of the vessel.

It would not be easy to get on board unseen. Blocks of metal lifted the cases, apparently by magnetic attraction, and lowered them into the hold. He judged that the best chance to make his attempt would be just as the crane swung back for the next load.

The zekolo and he scrambled out of the water, looked down into the sub's interior. Captive dock hands and ape-men were wheeling metal boxes away to stow them. A man in uniform was directing them. All had their backs to Don.

Don whispered, and jumped. He landed on the floor, and was soon hid- den among the cases. The zekolo flowed after him and, difficult as it seemed at first, managed also to secrete itself among the boxes. Because he was so small to them, Don could slip about amongst the Martians without being seen, and they took little notice of zekolos. The sharp ears of the ape-men had heard Don's light figure land in the hold, and one of them turned with a growl. At once a tiny thread of red fire shot from an instrument in the hands of the man in uniform. It touched the ape's side. With a howl the creature turned back to its work.

"Hurry! Hurry!" grated the man in uniform. "Must I scorch all the flesh off your bones before you will hasten yourselves? Usulor's air fleet is coming, with massed deathrays, power beams and fighting flies. Our blanketing ray is effective against deathdays only up to five miles, and Usulor's planes can strike from a lot further off than that. Hurry!"

OON Don and the zekolo were hidden among the cases as the piles grew and grew. For all their haste, the apes and their human helpers seemed to take hours to load the sub. It became darker and darker as the hold filled up, and the voices of men and apes further and further away. Presently he heard the clanging of doors and hatchways, and the screwing home of bolts. A little later he felt the throb of mighty engines. The sub was under way. Presently he felt the up and down motion of waves, and then he felt the sub submerging under him.

He put on the headlight that was attached to his head. The hold he was in was vast, but of course too full of cases to be comfortable. It was possible to wriggle among them, but the huge shell of the zekolo made it difficult for the creature to get about much.

From the cases he saw that the city had been thoroughly stripped of everything of value. There were works of art, Martian jewelry, expensive machinery, arms, expensive clothing, rare chemicals. There were even cases full of the extremely highly prized fruits that the Martians still, with enormous difficulty, cultivate in deep valleys on the surface of Mars, in the light of the sun that so few of their race ever see.

He was glad of the fruits. When the zekolo had broken open the cases they made food and drink for both of them. Fruit to a value corresponding to many thousands of dollars they ate for one meal, but after three days on this expensive but monotonous diet Don would have traded a million dollars worth of the fruits for a loaf of bread, a pound of cheese and a pint of beer.

He could hear voices in other parts of the ship. Some were the grunts and inarticulate words of the ape-men and the orders barked at them by the Martians in charge of them. From one direction came sobs, groans and