After Worlds Collide (When Worlds Collide 2)

She danced and delighted Seidel, who ordered her to throw off her garment and dive into the water with him.

“Why do you keep it clutched about you?” he demanded.

In a moment, she showed him; for he tried to tear off her kimono, and she let go with her hand, which had been holding, under the cloth, a knife.

She stabbed him as he reached for her. She left the dagger in him as he staggered back. He cursed her, and found his alarm signal before he pulled out the knife, threw it at her—and died.

Marian heard them at the door. For a moment she was dizzy; perhaps the klul was affecting her. She picked up the knife, with which she had killed him, and armed herself with it again. Then she remembered th

e protection he had prepared for himself against the uprising of the serfs.

She pulled the lever that sprayed all the outer rooms with the stupefying gas—the rooms filled with his friends, the most dependable and trustworthy of those who had supported him.

* * *

The signal promised by the five—if they succeeded—did not come to Hendron-Khorlu. It was longer and longer overdue.

At dawn Ransdell set out to fly toward the capital city and toward Danot beyond it; but on the way he met another plane.

A lark, it was—one of the machines of the Vanished People flown by another pilot from earth; and Ransdell, not seeking encounter, was avoiding it when he saw that the passenger—or observer—in that plane was standing, waving to him.

Ransdell swung about, and curiously, yet keeping a cautious distance, pursued the plane, which was making straight for Hendron.

It landed on the field outside the city; and Dave followed it down.

Two men stepped out; and it was evident that the passenger was watching the pilot; the passenger was armed; the pilot was not.

Ransdell and Waterman, who was with him, approached the pair; and the passenger, forgetting his watch of the pilot, hurried to them.

“You’re the Americans?” he hailed them in English; more, he spoke like an Englishman.

“Yes!” called Ransdell. “Who are you?”

“Griggsby-Cook! Once Major Griggsby-Cook, of the Royal Air Forces!”

“Where from?” challenged Ransdell wonderingly.

“Where from?” repeated the Englishman. “Out of slavery, I’d say! I came to tell you. We’ve taken over the city, since that girl of yours stabbed Seidel and gassed the rest of the ring! We’ve taken over the city!”

“Who?’ demanded Ransdell; and answered himself: “Oh, you mean the English! Then Taylor and James and Vanderbilt and the five of them got in!”

“The five?” repeated Griggsby-Cook. “It was a girl that got in! She did for Seidel in his bath—like Charlotte Corday with Marat!

“Then she gassed a lot more.… There was nothing to it when we got wind of that, and rose against them. I say, we’ve quite taken over the city! I buzzed off to tell you chaps. Didn’t take time to learn the trick of this plane myself; so I pistoled one of their pilots into taking me. But he’s good now, isn’t he?”

Ransdell nodded; for the pilot was meekly waiting.

“Oh, they’ll all be good!” said Griggsby-Cook confidently. “They’ll have to be.”

“But the five—the five men that went from here?” Ransdell persisted.

“Know nothing of them!” said the Englishman. “Sorry.”

Then no one spoke; but the four of them stared, as in the dim gray dawn, the great dome of Khorlu began glowing, and illumination showed in the streets too.

“The lights are coming on!” Ransdell exclaimed incredulously.

“Yes,” said the Englishman. “We were working at that; they hoped to get the power to you before I got here!”