Айзек Азимов - Before The Golden Age

Darkness came on rapidly, but I held my course by compass and in less than an hour the lights of Kaulani loomed before us. With all my lights blazing I headed boldly for the power house and landed on the roof. A detachment of the guard came to meet us and we opened the door and emerged. Ten of my men had donned the useless fighting suits of the dead Kauans and they led the way with me in their midst and the rest of the Ulmites trooped along after as though they were prisoners.

“What means this, Homena?” demanded the officer who had approached us.

These were the last words he spoke, for Moka had him by the throat before he could utter another. Before the menace of the lifted arms of the fighting suits, the unarmed Kauan guards surrendered and were taken into the flyer and bound and gagged. The ten men equipped with fighting suits, with me again an apparent prisoner in their midst, trooped down the stairs to the laboratory. We paused outside and I heard the buzz of a wireless transmitter. Waimua was apparently at work.

I motioned my men aside and softly opened the door. Waimua was alone in the laboratory and he looked up with a smile when I entered.

“Ah, Courtney,” he said, “you are just in time. I have been hearing some signals on my receiver—”

He broke off as I covered him with my pistol.

“I want to save your life, Waimua,” I said, “for you were kind to me, but to do so you must surrender to me. I am in control of the power house and my men are outside. If you make a sound, I will kill you where you stand.”

“What do you mean?” he asked in amazement.

“Exactly what I say. We have returned from the Kau mountains to rescue our Sibimi and we will brook no interference. Raise your hands in token of surrender or I’ll shoot.”

Slowly he raised his hands as I had ordered. I turned to call my men, and he sprang. Not at me, but toward a button which was on his laboratory table. I liked Waimua, but it was his life or mine and with mine, Awlo’s. My pistol spat out a message of death and the luckless scientist fell in a heap. At the sound of my weapon, my men burst in. We barred the door and waited breathlessly. Not a sound came from outside. Apparently the Kauans were enough accustomed to strange sounds from the laboratory to remain unalarmed at my shot.

Satisfied that we would not be interrupted, I took an ordinary six-armed fighting suit from the wall and donned it. I measured a distance of fourteen inches from the top of the huge testing screen, which covered one entire end of the laboratory and eleven inches from the left edge. I marked the place and stepped back. I pointed my red ray at the intersection of the two fines I had drawn and left it on full force for eight seconds. I shut it off and supplied the orange ray for twelve seconds. As I shut the orange ray off, a section of the screen opened slowly forward and there, in a recess cut behind the screen, lay the fighting suit of which Olua had told me. I drew it out and examined it.

The suit weighed less than twenty pounds, despite its thirty arms. I took off the six-armed suit which I was wearing and donned the new garment. It fit me like a glove and was not much more uncomfortable than an ordinary suit of clothes.

Olua had explained the suit to me and I found detailed instructions with it. I stepped back and spent several minutes in practising the use of the various controls against the protective screen. I did not have time to try all of them and no time to learn which control actuated which weapons, but I did locate the master control, which threw on all of the protective rays at once. Satisfied that I had learned enough, I led the way out of the laboratory.

For some unknown reason, we passed through the building and into the grounds without a challenge, although the sight of a detachment of eleven men in fighting suits in the Sibama’s palace ground was enough to attract attention. We stole quietly toward the royal palace until we were under the south wing, where we knew Awlo to be confined. Moka pointed out her window to me and I gave my rifle to him and grasped a creeper which clothed the wall. It was a hard climb and I was tempted several times to return to the ground and take off the cumbersome fighting suit which I wore, but better judgment prevailed and I struggled on. At last I climbed to a point where I could look into her room. It was apparently empty and I inserted the point of my dagger and pried the window open and stepped into the room.

I found myself in a luxuriously furnished apartment, but a hasty search through the rooms proved them to be as empty as the grave. My heart fell, for I feared that Awlo had already been dragged to Kapioma’s chambers. I tried the doors leading from the rooms and one of them opened at my touch. I found myself in a deserted corridor and I stole softly along it. 1 had almost reached an intersecting way when a slight noise behind me made me swing around. A hidden panel in the wall I had just passed was slowly opening and I stepped beside it. A Kauan Alii made his appearance and turned toward me. As he saw me, he opened his mouth to shout, but my green ray blazed forth for an instant and he stopped petrified. He had done me no harm and with my orange ray I removed the paralysis from his brain. His tongue I left helpless and before I left him I treated both his legs with a dose from my paralyzing ray. I left him helpless and went on.

I found myself in a secret passage, dimly lighted, and I stole along it for a few yards and found it ended in a stairway. I debated for a moment as to what course to pursue and then stole back to the panel. It was closed and I could not find the spring or lever which operated it. It would have been an easy matter to have burnt my way through with my heat ray, but I did not care to start a possible fire in the palace. I thought of restoring to speech the Alii who lay helpless before me, but knowing the Kauans as I did, I felt certain that his first action would be to give the alarm. Despite their cruelty and treachery, they were intensely loyal to their Sibama.

There was only one alternative. With a prayer in my heart, I returned to the stairway and proceeded down it. I went down a long flight and paused on a landing place where I could hear a murmur of voices. I touched the wall before me and found that it was no wall but a hanging. Cautiously I cut a slit with my dagger and peered through.

I was looking into the throne room from a point behind and slightly to one side of the two central thrones. The room was empty save for a small group which stood before the throne. I didn’t stop to count them, for my eyes were focused on one of them and my heart gave a bound which threatened to burst my ribs. The central figure was my adored princess, Awlo of Ulm. I could hear a voice speaking from the throne which was concealed from my gaze and I recognized it as Kapioma’s.

“The Sibimi’s throne of Kau is empty,” he said in a voice which sounded as though he were repeating an argument for the hundredth time, “and I offer you the honor of filling it. I could take you without this formality, but such is not my wish. Your blood is royal and your children would be worthy of the throne of Kau, which they would occupy some day. Will you bid me lay aside the panoply of war and don the robes of peace that I may wed you honorably?”

Awlo threw back her proud head.

“Never!” she cried. “My lord, Courtney Sibama, lives and will rescue me. I could not be your Sibimi if I wished and would not if I could.”

“I tell you that Courtney is dead,” protested Kapioma.

“Not until I see his corpse will I believe that and when I do, my life will end as well,” she said haughtily. “Beware what you do, Kapioma Sibama, the arm of my lord is long and he knows how to avenge any indignity to which I am subjected.”