Winchester nodded with a gleam in his eyes.
"The Mongoloid absorbed the philosophies of those men. He declared himself to be the direct descendant of the original Great Khan, and began to spread his doctrines. His own kind accepted them eagerly, and I am ashamed to say, so did many of our own race. It was easy after that for them to seize the supreme power."
He stopped talking and stared out the port.
"There is no hope," mumbled the old man brokenly.
"There is always hope!" said Winchester fiercely. His eyes lit up with the fire of resolution.
He felt a gnarled hand seize him, and was surprised at the warmth and vigor of its grip.
"Ah," said the old man. "If I were only young again!"
"Be young in spirit, then," Winchester challenged. "We shall have work to do!"
He thought of Cynthia then — Cynthia, a slave girl. The blood rushed angrily to his face, and he had to clench his fists to keep them quiet.
CHAPTER V
Break for Liberty
The area below was vast, and at first sight featureless. It was one of the tracts of the Moon known in the old days as "seas." But as the spaceship prison van approached nearer, Allan Winchester saw that the plain was pimpled over with small hemispherical mounds. Each was ringed with a faint aura of greenish light and connected with neighboring mounds by other slender beams of the same pale rays.
For awhile the ship approached no closer, but spiraled about the Moon as she lost velocity. The convex line of the horizon rolled slowly toward them, as if the Moon was a gigantic ball turning ponderously over. A string of immense craters came into view, and their slopes were studded with hundreds of minor ones.
Winchester saw that many were domed. He understood then why it was that when he had first seen them from the mouth of his cave in Munich, the satellite had appeared set with sparkling jewels. For the domes were of all shapes and colors, some spherical, some ellipsoidal and others polyhedral, showing many glistening facets.
"That is Tycho," pointed the old man to one larger than the rest, crested with a translucent dome that shimmered like polished mother-of-pearl. "In it is the great city of Cosmopolis, the largest in the System. There are the dormitories of the industrial slaves, the textile mills and many machine shops.
"The variegated colors show where the foreign quarters are, where the Martians and the Venusians live, and so on, each under his own planetary conditions. Beyond it, on that pinnacle, is the Great Observatory, one of the five located on the Moon."
"How do you know these things?" queried Winchester.
"I served here for thirty years," sighed the patriarch. "When my strength and skill failed, they reduced me to a domestic slave and sent me back to Earth to be headman of Prince Lohan's cattle herd."
The ship headed down into a vast, undomed crater. There were many spaceships of various size squatting here and there on its bottom. Ungainly, high-wheeled vehicles were to be seen crawling to and from them. What appeared to be row upon row of iridescent soap bubbles, clinging to the base of the ten-thousand-foot cliffs that ringed the landing field, proved on closer approach as many small domes.
"Grand Central Station," explained the aged headman. "The huge interplanetary liners take off and arrive here — the gravity is so much less than on Earth. Passengers from Earth come over on small ferries like this one. Freighters have a port of their own, near the mining and smelter craters, and the Space Fleet uses the Military Base in Proclus, where the Academy and the Grand Arsenal are."
His words were cut short as they were hurled against the glassine visiport by the sudden increment of deceleration. For a moment Winchester was too dazed to see anything clearly. When he looked again, the prison van was gliding to a smooth stop not far from a grim, gray dome. At once, one of the awkward, high-wheeled buggies slid out of a portal in the dome's side and rolled toward them.
"A ground tender," grunted the old man. "Saves putting everybody in space-suits. There's no air out there."
In a moment two guards came in, ray-guns drawn and in hand.
"Fall in, slaves," one cried. "About face! March."
In double rank the condemned slaves shambled ahead into a corridor, turned a corner and went through the ship's lateral spacelock. Coupled to it was a bridge leading to the wheeled tenders. Winchester and the aged patriarch brought up the rear, doors clanged behind them. The tender lurched and rumbled off, its wheels bumping grittily over the irregular crater bottom.
Winchester cast a look about the chamber he was now in. It was cubical, all steel. There was no opening whatever, except the now closed outer door by which they had come in, though there were small lenses set in the plating of the polished wall opposite. These were probably peepholes through which the prisoners could be watched or counted. There could be no escape.
The van jolted on, then stopped jerkily. The clang of interlocking metal broke the silence. Then the door slid back again, revealing a short, arched corridor, lined with guards.
"Single file, swine," bawled the nearest trooper. "When you come to the sacred mark in the pavement kneel and show your marks."
The leading peasant shuffled forward, his shoulders stooped and his dull gaze fixed on the pavement a yard ahead of him, as was required of slaves. The rest of the poor wrecks followed. As they reached the place where a golden sunburst was embedded in the concrete floor, each paused and made a kow-tow, while a policeman noted the symbols on his back and checked them against his list.
"Hey!" yelled the recorder, on examining the third one. "Whoever put this guy's marks on did a sloppy job. Touch 'em up — make the figures more distinct."
The entire line was halted while the wretch was dragged out and strapped, moaning, to a crosslike structure of steel in a niche. He faced the wall while the guards brought up a machine mounted on a rolling tripod. The policeman consulted the record, set certain knobs, and focused. He tripped a switch and lavender fire flashed out of the brander, retracing the faded distinguishing numerals.
The man screamed once, then dangled helplessly in his bonds. Winchester saw and sickened. He had no brand as yet. If he was to escape, it was now or never.
He waited until it came his turn to kneel and bump his face to the sunburst set in the floor. Until that instant he had imitated the slovenly, hopeless shamble of the beaten slaves ahead of him. But out of the corner of his eye he had stolen glimpses of the guards about him. They were lolling contemptuously against the wall, serene in the belief that these trapped creatures were so spineless that they could be trusted to follow the routine like blind sheep.
Allan Winchester went into action like a springing leopard. He jerked up his head, saw at one swift glance that he was on the threshold of a vast circular open space on the order of an ancient coliseum. Groups of gray-clad slaves huddled in spots on the sands of its floor. Many doors led off it, and only a few were visibly guarded.
Winchester sprang sideward, snatching the weapon from the surprised hand of the guard that stood nearest to him. With a bound he leaped past and into the arena, then turned sharply and ran along one of its curving walls.
Shouts rose behind him, as the startled guards comprehended that a slave had been so audacious as to break out of line, snatch a gun and run away. Winchester heard the faint spatting of deadly rays. Violet streaks of light hurtled past him and ricocheted from the stones ahead, leaving mushy-looking incandescent spots wherever they hit.
He ducked low and dodged into the first door he came to. An astonished guard, who had been sitting on a stool just inside the arch, half rose, only to be butted sprawling as Winchester,