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COPYRIGHT, 1930, BY A. C. McCLURG & CO. CHICAGO IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, THE BRITISH EMPIRE AND THE PAN AMERICAN UNION. Printed in the United States of America
COPYRIGHT, 1930, BY A. C. McCLURG & CO. CHICAGO IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, THE BRITISH EMPIRE AND THE PAN AMERICAN UNION. Printed in the United States of America
To Hugo Gernsback, scientist, author and publisher, whose constant efforts in behalf of scientific fiction have contributed so largely to its present popularity, this tale is gratefully dedicated....
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FOREWORD
FOREWORD
In "Tarrano the Conqueror" is presented a tale of the year 2430 A.D.—a time somewhat farther beyond our present-day era than we are beyond Columbus' discovery of America. My desire has been to create for you the impression that you have suddenly been plunged forward into that time—to give you the feeling Columbus might have had could he have read a novel of our present-day life. To this end I have conceived myself a writer of that future time, addressing his contemporary public. You are to imagi
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The New Murders
The New Murders
I was standing fairly close to the President of the Anglo-Saxon Republic when the first of the new murders was committed. The President fell almost at my feet. I was quite certain then that the Venus man at my elbow was the murderer. I don't know why, call it intuition if you will. The Venus man did not make a move; he merely stood beside me in the press of the throng, seemingly as absorbed as all of us in what the President was saying. It was late afternoon. The sun was setting behind the cliff
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Warning
Warning
It must have been nearly nine o'clock when a personal message came for me. Not through the ordinary open airways, but in the National Length, and coded. It came to my desk by official messenger, decoded, printed and sealed. Jac Hallen, Inter-Allied News . Come to me, North-east Island at once, if they can spare you. Important. Answer. Dr. Brende. Our Division Manager scanned the message curiously and told me I could go. I got off my answer. I did not dare call Dr. Brende openly, since he had use
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Spy in the House
Spy in the House
The insulated room was small, with a dome-shaped ceiling, no windows, and but one small, heavy door through which we entered, closing it carefully behind us. "At last," Dr. Brende exclaimed. "Now we can talk freely." But I was not satisfied. "That girl, Ahla—can you trust her?" They all looked at me in surprise. When one is close to danger, sometimes one recognizes it least; with Ahla in this household for over a year now, they could not imagine her an enemy. "I saw her looking up at the insulat
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To the North Pole
To the North Pole
"You stand back! You do not touch me!" The Venus girl fairly hissed the words. Her eyes were dilated; her white hair hung in a tumbling, wavy mass over her shoulders. She stood tense—a frail, girlish figure in a short, grey-cloth mantle, with long grey stockings beneath. We were startled. Georg stopped momentarily; then he jumped at her. It was a false move, for before we could reach her, with a piercing cry, she was tearing at the instruments on the table; her fingers, with burns unheeded, ripp
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Outlawed Flight
Outlawed Flight
Dr. Brende was dead. We knew it in the moment that followed our sudden assault and capture. Elza knelt there sobbing. Then she stood up, her tears checked; and on her face a look of pathetic determination to repress her grief. Now that we had yielded, the Venus men, searching us for our weapons, cast us loose. We bent over Dr. Brende, Georg and I. Dead. No power in this universe could bring him back to us. Georg pressed his lips tightly together. His face, red from the exertion of his fight, wen
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Man of Destiny
Man of Destiny
Tarrano! He rose slowly to his feet, his gaze on us for an instant, then turning to Argo. "So! You took them? Well done, Argo!" His gesture dismissed his subordinate; Argo backed from the room. From a disc, an announcer was detailing dispatches. Tarrano frowned slightly. He advanced to us as we three stood together. I had heard Elza give a low, surprised cry as we entered. She stood with a hand upon my arm. I could feel her trembling, but her face now was impassive. Georg whispered to me: "This
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Prisoners
Prisoners
From the garden where Tarrano was talking with Elza, the Mars man Wolfgar led us to the tower in which we were to be imprisoned. Quite evidently it had been placed in readiness for us. A tower of several rooms, comfortably equipped. As we crossed the lower bridge and reached the main doorway, Wolfgar unsealed a black fuse-box which stood there, and pulled the relief-switch. The current, barring passage through every door and window of the tower, was thrown off. We entered. My mind was alert. Thi
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Unknown Friend
Unknown Friend
"Sit down." Tarrano motioned us to feather hassocks and stretched himself indolently upon our pillowed divan. With an elbow and hand supporting his head he regarded us with his sombre black eyes, his face impassive, an inscrutable smile playing about his thin lips. "I wish to speak with you three. The Lady Elza——" His glance went to her briefly, then to Georg. "She has told you, perhaps, what I had to say to her?" "Yes," said Georg shortly. Elza had indeed told us. And with sinking heart I had l
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Paralyzed!
Paralyzed!
The isolation barrage which Wolfgar had flung around us was dissolving. Someone—something—was in the room, breaking down the barrage, struggling to get at us. We stood huddled together; Elza clinging to me, Georg beside us, and Wolfgar, gripping the small cylinder which was glowing red in his hand from intense heat. Georg muttered something; the snapping sparks of the barrage blurred his words. But I heard Wolfgar say swiftly: "We're trapped! You , of all of us—you Georg Brende, must escape." Th
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Georg Escapes
Georg Escapes
I come now to recount events at which I was not present, and the details of which I did not learn until later. Fronted by Tarrano, in those few seconds of confusion, Georg made his decision to escape even at the cost of leaving Elza and me. He murmured his hurried good-bye. The moment had arrived. He could see Tarrano dimly through the sparks. He leaped backward, through that wall of electrical disturbance which surrounded us. The sparks tore at him; burned his clothing and flesh; the shock of i
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Recaptured
Recaptured
In Washington during those next few days, events of the Earth, Venus and Mars swirled and raged around Georg as though he were engulfed in the Iguazu or Niagara. Passive himself at first—a spectator merely; yet he was the keystone of the Earth Council's strength. The Brende secret was desired by the publics of all three worlds. Even greater than its real value as a medical discovery, it swayed the popular mind. Tarrano possessed the Brende secret. The only model, and Dr. Brende's notes were in h
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Tara
Tara
I must revert now to those moments in the tower room when Tarrano dissolved the isolation barrage which Wolfgar had thrown around us. Georg escaped, as I have recounted. Tarrano—there in the tower room—rendered me unconscious. I came to myself on the broad divan and found Elza bending over me. I sat up, dizzily, with the room reeling. "Jac! Jac, dear——" She made me lie back, until I could feel the blood returning to my clammy face; and the room steadied, and the clanging of the gongs in my ears
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Love—and Hate
Love—and Hate
I did not harm this Tara, though I was sorely tempted to; and after a moment we quieted her. She was crying and laughing by turns; but when we seated her on the divan she controlled herself and fell into a sullen silence. Elza, pale and frightened at her escape, faced the woman, and waved Wolfgar and me aside. Strange little Elza! Resolute, she stood there, and would brook no interference with her purpose. Wolfgar and I withdrew a pace or two and stood watching them. Tara's breast was heaving wi
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Defying Worlds
Defying Worlds
"So?" Tarrano eyed us, evidently in no hurry to speak further, seemingly amused at our confusion. Had he heard much of what the two women had said? All of it, or most of it, doubtless, with his instruments as he approached. But, even with the knowledge of Elza's vehement appraisal of him, he seemed now quite imperturbable. His gaze touched me and Wolfgar, then returned to the women. "So? It would seem, Tara, that your plan to wait upon the Lady Elza was not very successful." He dropped the irony
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Escape
Escape
That Tarrano should thus defy the Earth, when by every law of rational circumstance the move seemed to spell only his own disaster, was characteristic of the man. He stood there in the instrument room at the peak of the skeleton tower in Venia and rasped out to the Earth Council his defiance. Silence followed—silence unbroken save by the hiss and click of the instruments as the message was sent. And then Tarrano ordered thrown upon himself the lights and sending mirrors so that his own image mig
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Playground of Venus
Playground of Venus
After a trip uneventful—save that to me, taking it for the first time, it was an experience never to be forgotten in a lifetime—we landed at the Great City of Venus. We had sent no messages during the trip, and with our grey-blue color, I think we escaped telescopic and even radio observation by the Earth. Into our vessel's small instrument room, where Tarrano spent most of his time, reports of the news occasionally drifted in. But his connection—small and inadequate—was often broken. Nor did Ta
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Violet Beam of Death
Violet Beam of Death
We landed on a stage at the summit of one of the nearer hillsides. Our coming—unheralded since we had carried no sending instruments—created a furor. The workers rested to watch us as we disembarked. It was not so different a scene, here on the hill, than might have occurred on Earth. We took a moving platform, down the hill, to the water's edge. A barge was awaiting us—a broad flat vessel with gaudy trappings. A score of attendants lined its sides, each with a pole to thrust it through the shal
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Passing of a Friend
Passing of a Friend
Wolfgar was not dead; but when we picked him up it was obvious that he was dying. The violet beam vanished as his body struck it—vanished with a hiss and splutter, and a puff of sulphuric smoke that mingled with the smell of burning garments and flesh. Georg and I leaped forward. Argo was standing transfixed by surprise at what Wolfgar had done; and as the beam died, Georg was upon him. "One moment!" The quiet, commanding voice of Tarrano. He must have come quickly, when informed by the finders
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Waters of Eternal Peace
Waters of Eternal Peace
Little Wolfgar was gone. It seemed at first very strange, unreal. It lay a shadow of grief upon our spirits, for many hours a deeper shadow than all those grave events impending upon which hung the fate of three worlds. Tarrano ordered for Wolfgar a public burial of ceremony and honor in the waters of eternal peace—ordered it for that same evening. Once again Tarrano demonstrated the strangeness of his nature. His arrival to take possession of Venus had been made the occasion of a great festival
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Unseen Menace
Unseen Menace
That day following the burial of Wolfgar, there was nothing of importance occurred. No news from the Earth could get in. I felt that the Earth might be planning an attack. Probably was, since war had been declared. Yet that of course was months away. Tarrano apparently was engaged in the pleasurable triumph of the coming Water Festival. All day he seemed engaged in planning it. But I knew that he was engaged secretly with far sterner things concerning the Cold Country, which lay a day's journey
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Love, Music—and a Warning
Love, Music—and a Warning
The Water Festival! As our barge rounded a bend in the canal, under the archways of dangling colored lights, the festival spread before us. Involuntarily I stood up to gaze. The canal opened into an artificial lake—a broad circular sheet of water some 800 helans [17] in diameter. Sloping hillsides enclosed the lake—hillsides which I saw were terraced with huge banks of seats in tiers one above the other. The seats were crowded with people. White ribbons of roads gave access from the neighboring
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Revolution!
Revolution!
I realize that I am, by nature, not overly observant; and in those moments, when I stood out there beside the pool, I think I came most forcibly to appreciate how little I habitually observe that which is not readily apparent. An incident now occurred to bring it home to me; and, quite suddenly, a score of things which I had seen during the past two hours at the festival were made plain. Music, feasting, merry-making, love! In the midst of it all, an undercurrent of events was flowing. Unseen ev
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First Retreat
First Retreat
I must recount now what Elza later told me, going back to those moments when Elza sat upon the balcony watching Tarrano and the Red Woman. The significance of what had been transpiring at the Water Festival was not clear to Elza; she did not know what was impending, but as she sat there with Tarrano beside her, a sense of danger oppressed her. Danger which lay like a weight upon her heart. Yet several times she found herself laughing—hilarious; and from Maida's warning glance, and the steadying
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Attack on the Palace
Attack on the Palace
I must take you back now to the Water Festival and the events in the Great City which followed it. Slaans in murderous frenzy were plunging through the throng of erstwhile revelers. Maida could not quell them. The revolt which she had started against Tarrano seemed now a self-created monster to destroy us all. But there were Earth men among us. A hundred of them, no more. They had come from Washington that same day; had landed, I learned later, secretly near the Great City, sent with our Earth C
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Immortal Terror
Immortal Terror
To Elza, approaching with Tarrano on the tiny flying platform the City of Ice, the place seemed truly like a child's dream of Fairyland. The rude snow huts of the Arctic of our Earth were all that she had ever conceived could be built of frozen water. Here, in the outskirts of the city, she saw indeed, quite similar huts. But further in—ornate buildings several stories high. She caught a vague glimpse of them only, as the platform flew above them and descended in the center of the city. They had
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Black Cloud of Death
Black Cloud of Death
I must revert now to that time in the gardens of Maida's palace at the Great City when we stood upon its roof-top, threatened below by that mob of slaans . Georg stood with the cylinder in his hand, waving it. The palm foliage was freezing. Down through the swirling snow fell the frozen bodies of the slaans who had climbed into the gigantic palm fronds. The thuds as the bodies struck the ground sounded horribly plain in the stillness. Georg was still waving his cylinder. Snow and ice were gather
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Tarrano the Man
Tarrano the Man
"Wake up, Lady Elza." A silence. His hand touched her white shoulder. "Wake up, Lady Elza. It is I—Tarrano." Elza opened her eyes, struggling to confused wakefulness. The white walls of her sleeping room in Tarrano's palace of the City of Ice were stained with the dim red radiance of her night light. She opened her eyes to meet Tarrano's inscrutable face as he bent over her couch; became conscious of his low, insistent, "Wake up, Lady Elza;" and his fingers half caressing the filmy scarf that co
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Thing in the Forest
Thing in the Forest
"All in good time, Lady Elza, you will know where we are." Alone, unnoticed, they had departed from the City of Ice on a small flying platform similar to the one they had used before. The night had passed; day, with a new warmth to the sun, came again. Flying low, with Tarrano in a grim, moody silence, and Elza staring downward. The aural lights were overhead when at the last Tarrano brought the platform to rest. A thick, luxuriant forest. Huge trees with rope-like roots and heavy vines. Others
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A Woman's Scream
A Woman's Scream
"The black Cloud of Death!" We stood there at the casement of the palace, gazing with a growing terror at the visible evidence of the tragedy which threatened. A black cloud off there in the distance, spreading out, rolling inexorably toward us. And then came the wind, and with it a breath of the black monster—a choking, horrible suggestion of the death rolling already over the city. We must have been fascinated at the casement for some considerable time. Elza's thought messages had ceased. Abru
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The Monster
The Monster
I stood frozen with horror; but as my brain cleared—awake at last to full rationality and consciousness—beneath the horror came a surging joy of the knowledge that at last Elza was near me. The scream was repeated; inactive no longer, I dashed the thicket branches apart with my arms and plunged forward through the darkness. Ahead of me the thickets opened into a sort of clearing. I saw the sky, the stars—paling stars with the first flush of dawn overpowering them. I stood at the edge of an open
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Industriana
Industriana
It must have been two days later when at last we were rescued by the Rhaal patrol and taken to Industriana. Back there in the forest I had suddenly remembered that the mate to the thing I had killed would doubtless be lurking in the vicinity. We fled. Subsisting on what food of the wilds we could find, at last we were picked up and taken to the City of Work. The Great City had been destroyed. Wanton capital of the Central State, we learned now that it lay dead. To outward aspect, unharmed. Fair,
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Departure
Departure
Georg and Maida were very busy in Industriana; and now Elza and I were admitted to their activities—Elza and I, with our new-found love and happiness neglected for the greater thing, the welfare of the nation upon which hinged the very safety of Venus itself; and Mars; and our own fair Earth. Industriana, greatest commercial and manufacturing center of Venus, had been given over momentarily to the preparations for war. The Rhaals had at last turned from industry to the conquest of Tarrano. Prepa
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First Assault
First Assault
Our spies had informed us that of recent weeks there had arisen about the City of Ice a huge wall behind which Tarrano would make his stand. It was our plan to approach within range of this and establish our power plant as a base from which to direct our offensive. The trip from the Great City was not long. After a few helans our girls ceased flying individually and boarded their appointed vehicles. In a long single line, armament platforms, the towers, our instrument room, with the power plant
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Invisible Assailants
Invisible Assailants
We did not locate the source of the bomb, and no others rose to assail us. The mountain defiles, so far as our lights could illuminate them, seemed deserted. We passed over the Divide, and on the plateau beyond, we landed. A region of rolling country beneath its snow and ice. The mountains came down sharply to the inner plain—a crescent of mountain range stretching off into the dimness of distance, half encircling this white plateau in the center of which stood the City of Ice. We could just see
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Attack on the Power House
Attack on the Power House
Stricken with surprise and awe, Elza and I sat there motionless. Our encampment was in a turmoil of confusion—chaos, out of which very soon order came. The skeleton figures in the air—I saw now that there were nearer two hundred than one hundred—were perhaps two thousand feet away, and at an altitude of about the cliff-ledge where Elza and I were sitting. They swept forward, bathed in the Zed-ray with all our other search-beams darkened to give it full sway. Momentarily I saw them clearer; metal
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City of Ice Besieged
City of Ice Besieged
We were not greatly harmed by this surprise attack; the power house was superficially damaged, but soon repaired. That night—I call it that though the constant weak daylight made the term incongruous—activity showed in the City of Ice. It came with a vertical spray of light rising from the ice wall which encircled the city. Spreading light beams rising from points a hundred feet apart along the wall. The beams spread fan-shape, so that within fifty feet above their source they met and merged int
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Battle
Battle
I found myself in the air; with my men around me we hovered. Then Georg's command from the instrument room sounded in my ears. I gave the signal; and flying wedge-shaped, we hurled ourselves forward. It was like lying on the air, diving head foremost. The rush of wind sang past me; the ground, a hundred feet below, was a white surface flowing backward. We were heading for the base of one of Tarrano's barrage projectors. It was mounted within the wall; but the wall itself was protected merely by
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