Sept and Ghek halted just within the room, the girl between them, and all three stood silently facing the opening in the opposite wall. On the floor beside the aperture lay a headless male body of almost heroic proportions, and on either side of this stood a heavily armed warrior, with drawn sword. For perhaps five minutes the three waited and then something appeared in the opening. It was a pair of large chelae and immediately thereafter there crawled forth a hideous kaldane of enormous proportions. He was half again as large as any that Tara of Helium had yet seen and his whole aspect infinitely more terrible. The skin of the others was a bluish gray-this one was of a little bluer tinge and the eyes were ringed with bands of white and scarlet, as was its mouth.
From each nostril a band of white and one of scarlet extended outward horizontally the width of the face.
No one spoke or moved. The creature crawled to the prostrate body and affixed itself to the neck. Then the two rose as one and approached the girl. He looked at her and then he spoke to her captor.
«You are the third foreman of the fields of Luud?» he asked.
«Yes, Luud; I am called Ghek.»
«Tell me what you know of this,» and he nodded toward Tara of Helium.
Ghek did as he was bid and then Luud addressed the girl.
«What were you doing within the borders of Bantoom?» he asked.
«I was blown hither in a great storm that injured my flier and carried me I knew not where. I came down into the valley at night for food and drink. The banths came and drove me to the safety of a tree, and then your people caught me as I was trying to leave the valley. I do not know why they took me. I was doing no harm. All I ask is that you let me go my way in peace.»
«None who enters Bantoom ever leaves,» replied Luud.
«But my people are not at war with yours. I am a princess of Helium; my great-grandfather is a jeddak; my grandfather a jed; and my father is Warlord of all Barsoom. You have no right to keep me and I demand that you liberate me at once.»
«None who enters Bantoom ever leaves,» repeated the creature without expression. «I know nothing of the lesser creatures of Barsoom, of whom you speak. There is but one high race-the race of Bantoomians. All Nature exists to serve them. You shall do your share, but not yet-you are too skinny. We shall have to put some fat upon it, Sept. I tire of rykor. Perhaps this will have a different flavor. The banths are too rank and it is seldom that any other creature enters the valley. And you, Ghek; you shall be rewarded. I shall promote you from the fields to the burrows. Hereafter you shall remain underground as every Bantoomian longs to. No more shall you be forced to endure the hated sun, or look upon the hideous sky, or the hateful growing things that defile the surface. For the present you shall look after this thing that you have brought me, seeing that it sleeps and eats-and does nothing else. You understand me, Ghek; nothing else!»
«I understand, Luud,» replied the other.
«Take it away!» commanded the creature.
Ghek turned and led Tara of Helium from the apartment. The girl was horrified by contemplation of the fate that awaited her-a fate from which it seemed, there was no escape. It was only too evident that these creatures possessed no gentle or chivalric sentiments to which she could appeal, and that she might escape from the labyrinthine mazes of their underground burrows appeared impossible.
Outside the audience chamber Sept overtook them and conversed with Ghek for a brief period, then her keeper led her through a confusing web of winding tunnels until they came to a small apartment.
«We are to remain here for a while. It may be that Luud will send for you again. If he does you will probably not be fattened-he will use you for another purpose.» It was fortunate for the girl's peace of mind that she did not realize what he meant. «Sing for me,» said Ghek, presently.
Tara of Helium did not feel at all like singing, but she sang, nevertheless, for there was always the hope that she might escape if given the opportunity and if she could win the friendship of one of the creatures, her chances would be increased proportionately. All during the ordeal, for such it was to the overwrought girl, Ghek stood with his eyes fixed upon her.
«It is wonderful,» he said, when she had finished; «but I did not tell Luud-you noticed that I did not tell Luud about it. Had he known, he would have had you sing to him and that would have resulted in your being kept with him that he might hear you sing whenever he wished; but now I can have you all the time.»
«How do you know he would like my singing?» she asked.
«He would have to,» replied Ghek. «If I like a thing he has to like it, for are we not identical-all of us?»
«The people of my race do not all like the same things,» said the girl.
«How strange!» commented Ghek. «All kaldanes like the same things and dislike the same things. If I discover something new and like it I know that all kaldanes will like it. That is how I know that Luud would like your singing. You see we are all exactly alike.»
«But you do not look like Luud,» said the girl.
«Luud is king. He is larger and more gorgeously marked; but otherwise he and I are identical, and why not? Did not Luud produce the egg from which I hatched?»
«What?» queried the girl; «I do not understand you.»
«Yes,» explained Ghek, «all of us are from Luud's eggs, just as all the swarm of Moak are from Moak's eggs.»
«Oh!» exclaimed Tara of Helium understandingly; «you mean that Luud has many wives and that you are the offspring of one of them.»
«No, not that at all,» replied Ghek. «Luud has no wife. He lays the eggs himself. You do not understand.»
Tara of Helium admitted that she did not.
«I will try to explain, then,» said Ghek, «if you will promise to sing to me later.»
«I promise,» she said.
«We are not like the rykors,» he began. «They are creatures of a low order, like yourself and the banths and such things. We have no sex-not one of us except our king, who is bi-sexual. He produces many eggs from which we, the workers and the warriors, are hatched; and one in every thousand eggs is another king egg, from which a king is hatched. Did you notice the sealed openings in the room where you saw Luud? Sealed in each of those is another king. If one of them escaped he would fall upon Luud and try to kill him and if he succeeded we should have a new king; but there would be no difference. His name would be Luud and all would go on as before, for are we not all alike? Luud has lived a long time and has produced many kings, so he lets only a few live that there may be a successor to him when he dies. The others he kills.»
«Why does he keep more than one?» queried the girl.
«Sometimes accidents occur,» replied Ghek, «and all the kings that a swarm has saved are killed. When this happens the swarm comes and obtains another king from a neighboring swarm.»
«Are all of you the children of Luud?» she asked.
«All but a few, who are from the eggs of the preceding king, as was Luud; but Luud has lived a long time and not many of the others are left.»
«You live a long time, or short?» Tara asked.
«A very long time.»
«And the rykors, too; they live a long time?»
«No; the rykors live for ten years, perhaps,» he said, «if they remain strong and useful. When they can no longer be of service to us, either through age or sickness, we leave them in the fields and the banths come at night and get them.»
«How horrible!» she exclaimed.
«Horrible?» he repeated. «I see nothing horrible about that. The rykors are but brainless flesh. They neither see, nor feel, nor hear. They can scarce move but for us. If we did not bring them food they would starve to death. They are less deserving of thought than our leather. All that they can do for themselves is to take food from a trough and put it in their mouths, but with us-look at them!» and he proudly exhibited the noble figure that he surmounted, palpitant with life and energy and feeling.