The Skylark of Space by E. E. Smith (books like beach read .TXT) 📕

“but I’ve picked up a few words of it. I can understand very little of what they are trying to tell me.”

The woman spoke rapidly to the man standing behind Seaton, and as soon as the table had been carried away, he asked permission to speak to Dorothy. Fairly running across to her, he made a slight obeisance and in eager tones poured forth such a stream of language that she held up her hand to silence him.

“Go slower, please,” she said, and added a couple of words in his own tongue.

There ensued a strange dialogue, with many repetitions and much use of signs. She turned to Seaton, with a puzzled look.

“I can’t make out all he says, Dick, but he wants you to take him into another room of the palace here, to get back something or other that they took from him when they captured him. He can’t go alone⁠—I think he says he will be killed if he goes anywhere without you. And he says that when you get there, you must be sure not to let the guards come inside.”

“All right, let’s go!” and Seaton motioned the man to precede him. As Seaton started for the door, Dorothy fell into step beside him.

“Better stay back, Dottie, I’ll be back in a minute,” he said at the door.

“I will not stay back. Wherever you go, I go,” she replied in a voice inaudible to the others. “I simply will not stay away from you a single minute that I don’t have to.”

“All right, little girl,” he replied in the same tone. “I don’t want to be away from you, either, and I don’t think that we’re in any danger here.”

Preceded by the chief slave and followed by half a dozen others, they went out into the hall. No opposition was made to their progress, but a full half-company of armed guards fell in around them as an escort, regarding Seaton with looks composed of equal parts of reverence and fear. The slave led the way rapidly to a room in a distant wing of the palace and opened the door. As Seaton stepped in, he saw that it was evidently an audience-chamber or courtroom, and that it was now entirely empty. As the guard approached the door, Seaton waved them back. All retreated across the hall except the officer in charge, who refused to move. Seaton, the personification of offended dignity, first stared at the offender, who returned the stare, and stepped up to him insolently, then pushed him back roughly, forgetting that his strength, great upon Earth, would be gigantic upon this smaller world. The officer spun across the corridor, knocking down three of his men in his flight. Picking himself up, he drew his sword and rushed, while his men fled in panic to the extreme end of the corridor. Seaton did not wait for him, but in one bound leaped halfway across the intervening space to meet him. With the vastly superior agility of his earthly muscles he dodged the falling broadsword and drove his left fist full against the fellow’s chin, with all the force of his mighty arm and all the momentum of his rapidly moving body behind the blow. The crack of breaking bones was distinctly audible as the officer’s head snapped back. The force of the blow lifted him high into the air, and after turning a complete somersault, he brought up with a crash against the opposite wall, dropping to the floor stone dead. As several of his men, braver than the others, lifted their peculiar rifles, Seaton drew and fired in one incredibly swift motion, the X-plosive bullet obliterating the entire group of men and demolishing that end of the palace.

In the meantime the slave had taken several pieces of apparatus from a cabinet in the room and had placed them in his belt. Stopping only to observe for a few moments a small instrument which he clamped upon the head of the dead man, he rapidly led the way back to the room they had left and set to work upon the instrument he had constructed while the others had been asleep. He connected it, in an intricate system of wiring, with the pieces of apparatus he had just recovered.

“That’s a complex job of wiring,” said DuQuesne admiringly. “I’ve seen several intricate pieces of apparatus myself, but he has so many circuits there that I’m lost. It would take an hour to figure out the lines and connections alone.”

Straightening abruptly, the slave clamped several electrodes upon his temples and motioned to Seaton and the others, speaking to Dorothy as he did so.

“He wants us to let him put those things on our heads,” she translated. “Shall we let him, Dick?”

“Yes,” he replied without hesitation. “I’ve got a real hunch that he’s our friend, and I’m not sure of Nalboon. He doesn’t act right.”

“I think so, too,” agreed the girl, and Crane added:

“I can’t say that I relish the idea, but since I know that you are a good poker player, Dick, I am willing to follow your hunch. How about you, DuQuesne?”

“Not I,” declared that worthy, emphatically. “Nobody wires me up to anything I can’t understand, and that machine is too deep for me.”

Margaret elected to follow Crane’s example, and, impressed by the need for haste evident in the slave’s bearing, the four walked up to the machine without further talk. The electrodes were clamped into place quickly and the slave pressed a lever. Instantly the four visitors felt that they had a complete understanding of the languages and customs of both Mardonale, the nation in which they now were, and of Kondal, to which nation the slaves belonged, the only two civilized nations upon Osnome. While the look of amazement at this method of receiving instruction was still upon their faces, the slave⁠—or rather, as they now knew him, Dunark, the Kofedix or Crown Prince of the great nation of Kondal⁠—began to disconnect the wires. He