Edgar Burroughs - Lost on Venus

“Come!” I whispered, and with the girls behind me I stepped out into the street and turned to the left. “If we meet any one,” I cautioned, “remember to walk like the dead, shuffle along as you will see me do. Keep your eyes on the ground; it is our eyes that will most surely betray us.”

“Where are we going?” asked Duare in a whisper.

“I am going to try to find the house through which I came into the city,” I replied; “but I don’t know that I can do so.”

“And if you can’t?”

“Then we shall have to make an attempt to scale the city wall; but we shall find a way, Duare.”

“What difference will it make?” she murmured, half to herself. “If we escape from here there will only be something else. I think I would rather be dead than go on any more.”

The note of hopelessness in her voice was so unlike Duare that it shocked me. “You mustn’t feel like that, Duare,” I expostulated. “If we can get back to Havatoo you will be safe and happy, and I have a surprise there for you that will give you new hope.” I was thinking of the plane in which we might hope to find Vepaja, the country that I could see she had about despaired of ever seeing again.

She shook her head. “There is no hope, no hope of happiness, ever, for Duare.”

Some figures approaching us along the dusty street put an end to our conversation. With lowered eyes and shuffling feet we neared them.

They passed, and I breathed again in relief.

It would be useless to recount our futile search for the house I could not find. All the remainder of the night we searched, and with the coming of dawn I realized that we must find a place to hide until night came again.

I saw a house with a broken door, no unusual sight in dismal Kormor; and investigation indicated that it was tenantless. We entered and ascended to the second floor. Here, in a back room, we prepared to await the ending of the long day that lay ahead of us.

We were all tired, almost exhausted; and so we lay down on the rough planks and sought to sleep. We did not talk; each seemed occupied with his own dismal thoughts. Presently, from their regular breathing, I realized that the girls were both asleep; and very shortly thereafter I must have fallen asleep myself.

How long I slept I do not know. I was awakened by footsteps in an adjoining room. Some one was moving about, and I heard mutterings as of a person talking to himself.

Slowly I rose to my feet, holding Skor’s sword in readiness. Its uselessness against the dead did not occur to me, yet had it, I still would have felt safer with the sword in my hand.

The footsteps approached the door to the room in which we had sought sanctuary, and a moment later an old woman stopped upon the threshold and looked at me in astonishment.

“What are you doing here?” she demanded. If she was surprised, no less was I; for old age was something I had never before seen in Amtor. Her voice awakened the girls, and I heard them rising to their feet behind me.

“What are you doing here?” repeated the old woman querulously. “Get out of my house, accursed corpses! I’ll have none of the spawn of Skor’s evil brain in my house!”

I looked at her in astonishment. “Aren’t you dead?” I demanded.

“Of course I’m not dead!” she snapped.

“Neither are we,” I told her.

“Eh? Not dead?” She came closer. “Let me see your eyes. No, they do not look like dead eyes; but they say that Skor has found some foul way in which to put a false light of life into dead eyes.”

“We are not dead,” I insisted.

“Then what are you doing in Kormor? I thought that I knew all of the living men and women here, and I do not know you. Are the women alive too?”

“Yes, we are all alive.” I thought quickly. I wondered if I might trust her with our secret and seek her aid. She evidently hated Skor, and we were already in her power if she wished to denounce us. I felt that we could not be much worse off in any event. “We were prisoners of Skor. We escaped. We want to get out of the city. We are at your mercy. Will you help us?—or will you turn us over to Skor?”

“I won’t turn you over to Skor,” she snapped. “I wouldn’t turn a dead mistal over to that fiend; but I don’t know how I can help you. You can’t get out of Kormor. The dead sentries along the wall never sleep.”

“I got into Kormor without being seen by a sentry,” I said. “If I could only find the house I could get out again.”

“What house?” she demanded.

“The house at the end of the tunnel that runs under Gerlat kum Rov to Havatoo.”

“A tunnel to Havatoo! I never heard of such a thing. Are you sure?”

“I came through it last night.”

She shook her head. “None of us ever heard of it—and if we who live here cannot find it, how could you, a stranger, hope to? But I’ll help as much as I can. At least I can hide you and give you food. We always help one another here in Kormor, we who are alive.”

“How many of you are there?” I asked.

“A few,” she replied. “Skor has not succeeded in hunting us all down yet. We live a mean life, always hiding; but it is life. If he found us he would make us like those others.”

The old woman came closer. “I cannot believe that you are alive,” she said. “Perhaps you are tricking me.” She touched my face, and then ran her palms over the upper part of my body. “You are warm,” she said, and then she felt my pulse. “Yes, you are alive.”

Similarly she examined Duare and Nalte, and at last she was convinced that we had told her the truth. “Come,” she said, “I will take you to a better place than this. You will be more comfortable. I do not use this house very often.”

She led us down stairs and out into a yard at the rear of which stood another house. It was a mean house, poorly furnished. She took us into a back room and told us to remain there.

“I suppose you want food,” she said.

“And water,” added Nalte. “I have had none since yesterday evening.”

“You poor thing,” said the old woman. “I’ll get it for you. How young and pretty you are. Once I was young and pretty too.”

“Why have you aged?” I asked. “I thought that all the people of Amtor held the secret of longevity.”

“Aye, but how may one obtain the serum in Kormor? We had it once, before Skor came; but he took it away from us. He said that he would create a new race that would not require it, for they would never grow old. The effects of my last inoculation have worn off, and now I am growing old and shall die. It is not so bad to die—if Skor does not find one’s corpse. We of the living here bury our dead in secret beneath the floors of our houses. My mate and our two children lie beneath this floor. But I must go and fetch food and water for you. I shall not be gone long.” And with that, she left us.

“Poor old creature,” said Nalte. “She has nothing to look forward to except the grave, with the chance that Skor may rob her of even that poor future.”

“How strange she looked!” There was a shocked expression in Duare’s eyes as she spoke. “So that is old age! I never saw it before. That is the way I should look some day, were it not for the serum! How ghastly! Oh, I should rather die than be like that. Old age! Oh, how terrible!”

Here was a unique experience. I was witnessing the reactions of a nineteen-year-old girl who had never before seen the ravages of old age, and I could not but wonder if the subconscious effect of old age on youth accustomed to seeing it was not similar. But these meditations were interrupted by the return of the old woman, and I caught a new insight into the character of Duare.

As the old woman entered the room, her arms laden, Duare ran forward and took the things from her. “You should have let me come with you and help you,” she said. “I am younger and stronger.”