Tarantass

“ At the next station we stopped for dinner; while we were eating our meal the dampened articles were somewhat improved by being placed in front of the kitchen fire.
"Once while descending a hill at full speed a wheel of the tarantasse came off, but no damage was done beyond bringing us to a very sudden stop. The two axles of the vehicle were about twelve feet apart, and connected by a pair of stout poles which had a great deal of 'spring' in them. Properly made, a tarantasse is by no means an uncomfortable vehicle to ride in, provided, of course, you are travelling over good roads." ”

“ The two tarantulas, after tearing each other's fur and legs off, were locked in the death embrace, leaping and rolling.
"Get on your horse at once," said Magdaléna, sternly. "You are a cruel boy."
"But that is very interesting," said Trennahan; "I never saw it before."
"They are always doing it here. They pour water—" She turned to the boy, who was mounted, and close behind them, now that they were likely to come within the range of the old don's vision at any moment. "Dick," she said sternly, "how did you get those tarantulas up? Have you a whiskey flask about you?" ”

“ An Earth man of my own race! What did it mean?
I was perturbed—frightened. But I did not demur when Tarrano led us to his flower-bedecked barge. Of what use?
We were paired. Georg with Maida; Elza with Tarrano. And I? Tarrano told me curtly—and with a smile of ironic amusement—that when we reached the festival so handsome a man as I would have no trouble engaging the attention of some Venus maiden.
On cushions in the barge we reclined while our slaans poled us along the streets. Tarrano was feeding sweets to Elza as though they were gay young lovers. Poor little Elza! She was frightened. ”

“ Tarrano drew Elza with him. Tara led the way. Through glowing white hallways, an arcade; down steps and an incline—to burst at last through a tunnel-like passage into a room.
"So? What is this, Cretar?"
A room littered with apparatus. A dozen men were about. Men scantily dressed in this interior heat. Short, squat men of the Cold Country; flat-nosed, heavy faces; hair long to the base of the neck. In a corner stood the Brende instrument, fully erected. A light from it seemed penetrating the bared chest of a man who was at that moment standing in its curative rays. ”

“ Otherwise, I would hate to take the chance of having this gadget seen in the daylight."
"All right, so we're out in the desert," said Taranto. "How does this ship you arranged for pick us up? We'll still be out for the count."
"I plan to tell them where to touch down. I can talk louder by radio, you know, than I can to you now. They will grab your 'bodies' and scramble for space. Against the sunset, they may not even be seen from the city. If they are, I never heard of them."
"Who are they?" asked Taranto.
"Some bunch hired for the job by the D.I.R.'s Department 99. ”

“ At last Tarrano signified that we must go. It was upon me then to make an effort to draw back, to keep Elza and Maida at the palace with Georg and me. My heart was heavy with foreboding. Amid all this laughter and music—pleasure of the senses reigning supreme here in the Great City tonight—I could not miss a sense of impending evil. The slaans propelling the boats were stolid and grim. Not for them, this dalliance. Not for their women, this music and laughter, these daring costumes to display their beauty. The slaan women, drab with work, were slinking about unnoticed. ”

“ The breeze grew—a breeze blowing directly over the forest to where in the distance the lights of the Great City showed plainly. Tarrano added:
"I had thought to create the wind." He tapped his belt. "Create the wind to carry our onslaught. But you see, it is unnecessary. Nature is kind, and far more efficacious than our man-made devices."
"Jac! Danger!" She stood there in the breeze, watching Tarrano—his purpose as yet no more than guessed—praying that I might receive her warning.
Tarrano selected his spot—a tiny little cone of rock no bigger than his thumb. He beckoned Elza. ”

“ Quick as a flash Tharon Last lifted the rifle that lay ready on her pommel and sent a shot whining toward him.
“Just to show we mean business,” she muttered to herself.
The cowboy caught the warning and drew his running horse up to slide ten feet on its haunches.
He had meant to warn his boss, but a chance was one thing, certainty another.
“Dixon––Dement,” called Tharon rising in her stirrups, “when we get to work you pick out as near as you can, cattle that look like yours, an’ th’ same amount––not a head more.” ”

“ Always Tarrano was with us. We sat upon the palace balcony, we men smoking our arrant-cylinders. Tarrano talked and joked like a care-free youth. He was very courteous to Elza, with a holiday spirit upon him. But his eyes never relaxed; and often I could see him measuring her.
The aural lights mounted the sky. The holiday spirit which was on Tarrano was spreading everywhere throughout the city. Boats gayly bedecked—in such contrast to the funeral cortege of poor Wolfgar just the night before—began passing the palace on their way to the festival waters. Men and laughing girls thronged them. ”

“ A tarand is an animal as big as a bullock, having a head like a stag, or a little bigger, two stately horns with large branches, cloven feet, hair long like that of a furred Muscovite, I mean a bear, and a skin almost as hard as steel armour. The Scythian said that there are but few tarands to be found in Scythia, because it varieth its colour according to the diversity of the places where it grazes and abides, and represents the colour of the grass, plants, trees, shrubs, flowers, meadows, rocks, and generally of all things near which it comes. ”

“ Tarrano called impatiently: "Closer, Rax!"
The image dissolved, blurred; turned red, violet, then white. We seemed now upon a height close above the city. It was seething with confusion. Fighting going on in the streets. Animals and men, fighting; a crowd of the Little People thronging a public square, with beasts of war charging them.
The Hairless Men; I had heard of them, with their animals trained to fight, while they—the humans—lurked behind. A mysterious, almost grewsome race, to us who live on Earth—these hairless dwellers of the underground Mars. Dead-white of skin; sleek and hairless ”

“ Tarrano the weakling!" He leaped from the couch and began pacing the room. "Tarrano the weakling! To what depths has Tarrano fallen!"
He stopped before her. "I ask your pardon, Lady Elza. This has been madness. Forget my words—all madness."
His tone was crisp. "Human weakness to which I did not realize I was so prone made me talk like a fool. Desire you above the conquest of the universe? Absurd! Lies that men whisper into women's ears! All lies!" ”

“ Nature has given everything in plenty to the country of Tarentum. Probably the sea is nowhere in Europe so rich in shell and other fish, as in the bay of Tarentum: the poor Tarentine in his idleness is indeed as happy as a prince; he lives only on bread, salt, and olives, which he can always easily procure. Tarentum had no large tracts of land belonging to it, in which there was room for tillage. ”

“ The Syssokan swiveled their narrow, pointed skulls about at each other.
"I'm in the last minutes," said Taranto sadly.
"What lasst minutess?" asked the officer.
"It's the way Terrans pass on," asserted the spacer. "Didn't you ever see a Terran die?"
The officer silently avoided admitting so much, running a hand reflectively over his thick waist, but his hesitation provided an opening.
"That's the way it goes," said Taranto. "First a blackout ... we sleep, that is. Then the last minutes, the sweat of death, and ... blooey!" ”

“ Looking upward, Elza caught a gleam of green eyes overhead. A triangle of three baleful spots of phosphorescent green. Her murmur of fright caused Tarrano to glance upward. His lavender, beam, grown suddenly larger, swung there with a hiss. Falling from above came a pink body. A bloated body, square, with squat, twisted legs; a thing larger than a man. A grotesque naked monstrosity almost in human form. A travesty—gruesome mockery of mankind. A face, three-eyed...
The thing lay writhing in the underbrush, mouthing, mumbling and then screaming—the shrill scream of death agony. ”

“ Like a smothered fire smouldering, lacking only a breath of vital gas to explode it into flame, the sentiment for Tarrano spread about the Earth.
Public opinion is fickle. It sways instinctively—not always, but often—to the winning side. Here in Venus we knew we must defeat Tarrano. ”

“ You are playing to win him! What girl would refuse? You say yourself he is the greatest man of the ages. You lie when you tell me you do not want him!"
Elza had taken the woman by the shoulders. "Tara, listen—you must listen! Are you mated with Tarrano?"
"No! But years ago he promised me. I took his name then, as we do in the Cold Country. They still call me Tara! Years I have waited, true to my promise—with even my name of maidenhood relinquished. His name—Tara! And now he tosses me aside—because you, only an Earth woman, have bewitched him." ”

“ On the flesh of all the men—save the one who had been checked in the act of using the instrument—a bright orange mottling was apparent. Cretar exclaimed:
"The immunity to all diseases, master. It is itself a disease—harmless—and it combats every other." He laughed a little wildly. "We cannot get sick now. We cannot die—we are immortal. Come, Master—let us make you so!"
Tarrano whispered: "You see, Lady Elza? The orange spots! These men of medicine here have used the Brende secret to its full. Immune from disease!" ”

“ A face, an expression in the smouldering eyes, the full lips half parted—a face and an expression that seemed the very incarnation of all that is sensuous in humans. The Red Woman! The living symbol of all that lay beneath this festive merry-making.
The Red Woman! For a moment she hovered there before us. A shaft of red light now came down from above. It caught her, bathed her in its lurid glow. On her face came a look of triumph, and a leer almost insolent, as slowly she began fluttering through the air toward Tarrano. He rose to meet her. Whispered something aside to Elza. ”

“ On the right loomed up confusedly the heavy mass of a mountain—perhaps the Atlas range. On the heart-hand, the invisible sea hollowly rolling. The very spot to attract wild beasts.
With one gun laid before him and the other in his grasp, Tartarin of Tarascon went down on one knee and waited an hour, ay, a good couple, and nothing turned up. Then he bethought him how, in his books, the great lion-slayers never went out hunting without having a lamb or a kid along with them, which they tied up a space before them, and set bleating or baa-ing by jerking its foot with a string. ”

“ A quivering beam of yellow light; then Elza saw that upon occasion, as Tarrano's finger slid a lever, the beam narrowed, intensified to a bright lavender. And now where it struck, the vegetation withered. Blackened, sometimes burst into tiny flame, and parted thus before them as they advanced.
The jungle was silent; yet, as Elza listened, beneath the crackle of the burning twigs she could hear the tiny myriad voices of insect life. Startled voices as the heat of Tarrano's beam struck them. Rustling leaves; breaking twigs; things scurrying and sliding away, unseen in the darkness. ”

“ But Tarrano seemed proof against the rays. I could see he was unharmed; and as he stood there, no doubt using a curved, duplicating beam, the like of which I have seen used in warfare, the image of him seemed to shift. Then it doubled—two images, one here, one further down the balcony. Then still others—appearing and disappearing, always in different places, until no one could have said where the man himself really was. A dozen Tarranos, each enveloped in hostile sparks, each with his face grinning at us in mockery.
Abruptly, I heard Georg's voice shout above the din: "Elza! Elza is gone!" ”

“ I did not say it aloud, for Elza's sake; but I thought it, and I realized that Georg was thinking it also.
Dr. Brende's secret of longevity was the crux of all this turmoil—the lever by which Tarrano was raising himself. Scores of facts amid the tumultuous news of these hours showed us that. For months, throughout Venus, Tarrano had spread the insidious propaganda that he alone had the secret of immortality—that when he was made ruler, he would use it for the benefit of his followers.
Converts to Tarrano's cause were everywhere. In the Central State many welcomed the coming of his army. ”

“ Taranto, unopposed, hit him alongside the head with a light right, then whipped the left hook in again as the arms began to lift. The Syssokan went out like a light.
"Come on!" Taranto shouted at Meyers when he saw that the other had not moved. "Two of us could do it. Those heads are too little to hold a brain. Kick 'em, if you can't do anything else!"
"Are you crazy?" retorted Meyers, his voice hoarse as much with fear as with thirst. "They'll kill us! Give up, and they'll only take us back!" ”

“ Elza was still clinging to me in fright. I shook her off. Wolfgar flung his smoking, useless cylinder to the floor. The blackness at once sprang into light; the sparks died. Tarrano was standing in the room, quietly, before us. Standing with a grim, cynical smile, regarding us.
But only for an instant did he stand quiet. Across the room, creeping for the balcony doorway, I was aware of the figure of Georg. Tarrano saw him also; and with a swift gesture snapped back to his belt the interference cylinder with which he had uncovered us ”