Vernia bent low over the wriggling fanta, meanwhile watching the king sabit from the corner of her eye. He advanced slowly, pausing now and then to indicate a woman for the pens. At length he came in front of Vernia, stopped for a moment, then started on. It was her hungry charge that proved her undoing, for in her preoccupation she held her wrist too close to the keen mandibles and received a sharp nip.
With a cry of pain she stood erect. The king sabit stopped, turned back, looked at her fixedly for a moment, then vibrated his antennae. She would be conducted to the mating pens the following evening.
Chapter 11
Grandon’s plan of escape entailed no inconsiderable degree of caution, as well as an immense amount of physical labor.
The room adjoining the dormitory in which he and his men were quartered was used for storing the driest fungi which, when mixed with the sticky milk of the green creatures, constituted the food of the slaves. These fungi were dumped in great heaps about the room without any semblance of order, and as one of the heaps effectually concealed a corner, one side of which was formed by the outer wall, it was Grandon’s purpose to dig a tunnel from this point to a spot he had marked about fifty feet from the hut, where he could emerge under a large surface root. The entrance to his tunnel would thus be hidden by the pile of fungi, while the exit might easily be covered with one of the huge leaves, a profusion of which lay everywhere about the hut.
Night after night he labored, digging with bare hands and the knife he had brought from the airship, for he had no tools of any kind. After many nights of arduous toil he had completed a slanting tunnel about eight feet deep, and was digging in a horizontal direction toward the point where he had calculated the root would be, when the floor of his burrow gave way with startling abruptness. He fell, first striking some object that gave off a metallic clang, then alighting on a hard, smooth surface with considerable force.
Dazed for a moment, Grandon lay there in pitch darkness with no inkling of what had happened. At length he arose stiffly to his feet, for he was badly bruised, though fortunately no bones were broken. He bethought himself now of the flashlight which he had kept concealed in his clothing since the day he had examined the abandoned airship.
The beating of his heart was momentarily stilled by the sight which greeted his eyes when he turned on the light; directly in front of him stood what appeared to be a huge warrior, attired in armor from head to foot. Closer scrutiny, however, revealed the fact that he faced an empty suit of armor, for a mailed gauntlet clutching a heavy axe had fallen from one of the arms. It was this which had caused the clanging sound he had heard.
The armor was skillfully wrought of a brownish metal which he at first took for bronze on account of its appearance. It was of a pattern unlike anything he had ever seen or heard of, and strikingly decorated with designs of inlaid gold set with brilliant jewels.
Sharp metal spines projected from the top and back of the grotesque headpiece, while two large green jewels sparkled just above the movable visor like the eyes of some multi-horned reptile. In the visor itself, the true eyeholes were of a hard, thick crystal, and below them were small perforations to admit air. A huge broadsword hung from one side of the belt and a short club with a heavy spiked knob dangled from the other.
On the floor before the figure lay a quantity of loose earth which had been carried with Grandon in his fall. He dashed the light upward and its rays revealed a ceiling nearly ten feet above his head, supported by timbers. He had broken through between two of the large timbers at a point where the cross- pieces were completely rotted away.
Upon examining his surroundings he found that he was in a corridor about thirty feet in width, and extending in both directions as far as he could see. A double row of hexagonal columns supported the heavy ceiling beams, and before each column stood a figure similar to the one he had examined, with the exception that every alternate figure held a long, broad-bladed spear instead of an axe in the extended right gauntlet.
The Earthman was in a quandary; he could not return via the opening through which he had fallen.
From his fellow slaves he had heard legends of an ancient race of men called Albines, who were said to have at one time been masters of the sabits. These Albines wore suits of mail which effectually protected them from the creatures, and made slaves of whole colonies by raiding them and making prisoners of the queen and king sabits, for the soldiers and workers, being ever subject to the commands of their rulers, immediately became docile when the lives of their superiors were threatened. The Albines had vanished many years before—no one knew how or why—and the sabits had thenceforth turned the tables on man by enslaving the marsh-people.
Grandon selected a suit of armor which appeared to be his size, and after a considerable struggle with the unfamiliar fastenings, succeeded in donning it. He had expected to feel stiff and awkward in his metal suit, and was therefore agreeably surprised when he found it both light and pliable; for though exceedingly hard and strong, the metal was as light as aluminum and so fashioned that the interlocking plates easily adjusted themselves to every movement of his body.
Armed with sword, axe and club, he set out to explore the subterranean passageway, walking between the two rows of pillars that were guarded by the silent sentinels of a vanished race, and flashing his light in a semicircle before him.
As he passed along, he noticed that the stone walls on both sides of him were carved at intervals with scenes arid hieroglyphics. The scenes, for the most part, represented men attired in armor such as he wore, battling with sabits. He noticed, also, that in nearly every instance, the figures were pictured as striking the sabits between the eyes with spiked clubs although a few used axes; and one was represented as severing a soldier sabit’s head from its body with a broadsword.
One scene that particularly interested him depicted a group of Albines in the act of capturing a queen sabit while their comrades fought off her guards. They were fastening huge manacles on her neck and legs while she struggled desperately.
It seemed that he had walked for more than a mile along the corridor, and passed several thousand armored figures, when he arrived at a great circular chamber that, for elegance and richness of decoration, surpassed anything he had ever seen.
From the base of the walls to the peak of the domelike ceiling, it was a mass of grotesque bas-reliefs and mural paintings in bright pigments, while gracefully sculptured statues of men and women occupied niches set at intervals of about fifteen feet all about the room. The floor was of varicolored blocks of clearest crystal, fitted together so skillfully that they presented a surface as smooth as that of a mirror, while forming beautiful tesselated patterns of exquisite design.
When he turned his light on the floor it sent forth myriad reflections that lit up the entire room. He was amazed by this phenomenon until he discovered that the base of each block had been cut and silvered so each beam of light was multiplied a thousand-fold.
In the center of the room a fountain babbled, evidently fed by an artesian well, for it could not otherwise have continued in operation for hundreds of years without attention. As he walked toward the fountain he saw a round bulk, which he had at first mistaken for a shadow, suddenly leap back and then scamper for a broad doorway at the left.
The thing had short legs armed with huge claws that rattled on the polished floor, and a barrel-shaped body covered with tiny, fishlike scales. Grandon recognized it as one of those large, burrowing rodents which the omnivorous sabits prized so highly as an article of food.
Several times he had seen them feeding on fungi and grasses in the woods, and the thought came that this creature must needs have access to the outer world to live; consequently there must undoubtedly be a means of egress nearby which he himself could use, for where so thick-bodied a rodent could go, he could easily follow.
He entered the