Those word, those unbelievable words, still rang in my ears, leaving me elated even in the face of the nameless death that I knew awaited me in the mysterious chamber of seven doors.
The Thorists from Kapdor who formed my escort were much intrigued by my blond hair and blue eyes, for such were unknown to any of the Venusans I had yet encountered. They questioned Vilor concerning me; but he insisted that I was a Vepajan, and as the Vepajans are the deadliest enemies of the Thorists he could not more effectually have sealed my doom even had I not been guilty of the offenses charged against me by Moosko.
"He says that he comes from another world far from Amtor; but he was captured in Vepaja in company with another Vepajan, and he was well known to Duare, the daughter of Mintep, the jong of Vepaja."
"What other world could there be but Amtor?" scoffed one of the soldiers.
"None, of course," assented another; "beyond Amtor lie only boiling rocks and fire."
The cosmic theory of the Amtorians is as wrapped in impenetrable fog as is their world by the two great cloud envelopes that surround it. From the spouting lava of their volcanoes they visualize a sea of molten rock upon which floats Amtor, a vast disk; the occasional rents in the enveloping clouds, through which they glimpse the fiery sun and feel his consuming heat assure them that all is fire above; and when these rents occur at night they believe the myriad stars to be sparks from the eternal, fiery furnace that fuses the molten sea beneath their world.
I was almost exhausted by what I had passed through since the screeching of the hurricane and the plunging of the Sofal had awakened me the preceding night. After the great wave had swept me overboard I had had a battle with the great waves that would have wholly sapped the strength of a less powerful man than I; and then, after I had reached shore, I had walked far in search of Duare and her abductors only to have my strength further sapped by a strenuous battle with the savage nobargans, the hairy beastmen, who had attacked her abductors.
And now I was about all in as, topping a rise, there burst upon my view a walled city lying close to the sea at the mouth of a little valley. I guessed that this was Kapdor, our destination; and though I knew that death awaited me there I could not but look forward to the city with anticipation, since I guessed that food and drink might also await me behind those substantial walls.
The city gate through which we entered was well guarded, suggesting that Kapdor had many enemies; and all the citizens were armed—with swords, or daggers, or pistols, the last similar to those I had first become acquainted with in the house of Duran, the father of Kamlot, in the tree-city of Kooaad, which is the capital of Mintep's island kingdom, Vepaja.
These weapons discharge the lethal r-ray, which destroys animal tissue, and are far more deadly than the .45 automatics with which we are familiar, since they discharge a continuous stream of the destructive rays as long as the mechanism which generates them is kept in action by the pressure of a finger.
There were many people on the streets of Kapdor, but they seemed dull and apathetic. Even the sight of a blond-haired, blue-eyed prisoner aroused no interest within their sodden brains. To me they appeared like beasts of burden, performing their dull tasks without the stimulus of imagination or of hope. It was these that were armed with daggers, and there was another class that I took to be the soldier class who carried swords and pistols. These seemed more alert and cheerful, for evidently they were more favored, but had no appearance of being more intelligent than the others.
The buildings for the most part were mean hovels of a single story, but there were others that were more pretentious—two– and even three-story buildings. Many were of lumber, for forests are plentiful in this portion of Amtor, though I had seen none of the enormous trees such as grow upon the island of Vepaja and which afforded me my first introduction of Venus.
There were a number of stone buildings facing the streets along which I was conducted; but they were all boxlike, unprepossessing structures with no hint of artistic or imaginative genius.
* * * * *
Presently my captors led me into an open square surrounded by larger if not more beautiful buildings than we had previously passed. Yet even here were squalor and indications of inefficiency and incompetence.
I was led into a building the entrance to which was guarded by soldiers. Vilor, Moosko, and the leader of the party that had captured me accompanied me into the interior, where, in a bare room, a large, gross– appearing man was asleep in a chair with his feet on a table that evidently served him both as desk and dining table, for its top was littered with papers and the remains of a meal.
Disturbed by our entrance, the sleeper opened his eyes and blinked dully at us for a moment.
"Greetings, Friend Sov!" exclaimed the officer who accompanied me.
"Oh, it is you, Friend Hokal?" mumbled Sov, sleepily. "And who are these others?"
"The Ongyan Moosko from Thora, Vilor, another friend, and a Vepajan prisoner I captured." At the mention of Moosko's title, Sov arose, for an ongyan is one of the oligarchy and a great man. "Greetings, Ongyan Moosko!" he cried. "So you have brought us a Vepajan? Is he a doctor, by chance?"
"I do not know and I do not care," snapped Moosko. "He is a cutthroat and a scoundrel; and, doctor or no doctor, he dies."
"But we need doctors badly," insisted Sov. "We are dying of disease and old age. If we do not have a doctor soon, we shall all be dead."
"You heard what I said, did you not, Friend Sov?" demanded Moosko testily.
"Yes, Ongyan," replied the officer, meekly; "he shall die. Shall I have him destroyed at once?"
"Friend Hokal tells me that you have a slower and pleasanter way of dispatching villains than by gun or sword. I am interested. Tell me about it."
"I referred to the room of the seven doors," explained Hokal. "You see, this man's offenses were great; he made the great ongyan a prisoner and even threatened his life."
"We have no death adequate to such a crime," cried the horrified Sov; "but the room of the seven doors, which is the best that we have to offer, shall be made ready."
"Describe it, describe it," snapped Moosko. "What is it like? What will happen to him? How will he die?"
"Let us not explain it in the presence of the prisoner," said Hokal, "if you would reap the full pleasure of the room of the seven doors."
"Yes, lock him up; lock him up!" ordered Moosko. "Put him in a cell."
Sov summoned a couple of soldiers, who conducted me to a rear room and shoved me down into a dark windowless cellar. They slammed down and locked the heavy trap door above me and left me to my gloomy thoughts.
The room of the seven doors. The title fascinated me. I wondered what awaited me there, what strange form of horrible death. Perhaps it might not be so terrible after all; perhaps they were attempting to make my end more terrible by suggestion.
So this was to be the termination of my mad attempt to reach Mars! I was to die alone in this far-flung outpost of the Thorists in the land of Noobol that was scarcely more than a name to me. And there was so much to see upon Venus, and I had seen so little.
I recalled all that Danus had told me, the things concerning Venus that had so stimulated my imagination—sketchy tales, little more than fables, of Karbol, the cold country, where roamed strange and savage beasts and even more strange and more savage men; and Trabol, the warm country, where lay the island of Vepaja toward which chance had guided the rocket in which I had journeyed from Earth. Most of all had I been interested in Strabol, the hot country, for I was positive that this corresponded with the equatorial regions of the planet and that beyond it lay a vast, unexplored region entirely unguessed of by the inhabitants of the southern hemisphere—the north temperature zone.