Part 2 (2/2)

”Only he is immortal,” Naila said, awed. ”For look! Mary is already gone. Hail immortal....”

It was the acknowledgement of his supremacy.

He took advantage of it on the instant. ”Good. I can use you all. We must first rid ourselves of these men, my enemies. Come, call the others of your tribe and I will lead you to them.”

He knew without being told that there were many more of these women. For surely not so few would have come, armed as they were, into a strange land. At his words, several of them sped around a headland which hid the cove beyond. Naila took his arm and led him forward. His eyes widened when he saw the four sailing s.h.i.+ps in the large bay beyond the headland.

There were five hundred women all armed and all ready and willing, when they heard the situation, to do his bidding. Nor did he take long to give his commands.

Daylight was breaking when they came to the tunnel which was the headquarters for the tribe from which Bly Stanton had come. He deployed his forces with the greatest of care, making sure the surprise would be complete when he came out. Then he entered. He knew at this hour that his men would be asleep. He was right. There were two hundred of the women with him, and these he placed all along the tunnel length, telling them to hide in the recesses along the walls.

His voice awakened his men. They crowded round him when he clambered over the barricade, and at the sight of the sword in the place where he usually carried it smiles broke on their lips.

”Bly! We have you with us again,” Mark exclaimed.

”But of course,” Bly said. ”It must have been the knock on the head I got in the fight with the Himlos. But now it's clear. And I have news for you. We can get rid of our enemies in one fell swoop. They are as foolish as we. They too sleep in the daytime. Does that mean anything to you?”

”Are you sure?” Mark asked.

”Certain. I have seen them.”

”Then let us wait no longer. By the time they come to their senses, it will be too late.”

And it was. Only not as Mark had thought. For the immortal Stanton had become battle-crazed, and whether loyal comrade or enemy, he knew only to kill violently. It was Stanton himself who delivered the death blow to his good friend. The rest of his group fell easy prey to the women, who were even more savage than Stanton. It wasn't until it was all over that Bly noticed what his women companions had done. Each and every one of them carried a trophy hung in her belt, a horrible thing which leaked blood. They had cut the heads from those they killed.

All that day and the next and until the last of the Mongoloids had been eliminated, they hunted. They were no longer five hundred women when they were finished. But there were no more men, either. Each of the women carried a single head on her belt when they went back to the s.h.i.+ps which had brought them. And Bly, also, carried one.

Bly Stanton was no longer the same man as the one whom they had discovered. The blood bath he had been in had done something to him. His nose had become pinched, and his whole face had changed, so that his eyes were narrowed now and his forehead, for some reason, lower. He no longer walked erect, but stooped and shambled oddly as he moved. His jaw jutted forward, and his teeth showed because of it. Little by little, he had found it more comfortable to be without clothes, until by the time they returned to the s.h.i.+ps, the only article of clothing he wore was the belt on which hung his sword and knife.

Naila had taken Mary's place in the scheme of things. Still, she found she had to call Bly her superior. During the long days of slaughter, there had been little need of talk. Muttered directions had done for them.

But as they stood at the edge of the gangplank leading aboard, she said: ”Come immortal! There is nothing left for you here.”

”Nothing?” he asked, somewhat blankly. ”Nothing...?”

”Of course not,” she said. ”In all of this world not another like you is left alive.”

Through the brain of Bly Stanton shot a thought that was like an arrow--he, alone, of all the males in the world. What sort of world could it be? What was he to do in this world where there was nothing but woman, and man had no place? He peered at these women and saw them for what they were--beasts, cruel and vicious, shaped as humans. There was no compromising with nature. If one did not serve the purpose for which one was intended, then one served another purpose. He looked at these women who were the rulers of this planet and knew they had an empty rule, and a losing fight. For immortality, in the sense in which he had achieved it, was lost to them.

He shook his head from side to side, and slowly turning, started off without a word of farewell.

But Naila was not as Mary. There was a cunning in her which the other had never possessed. Before Stanton had taken more than ten steps, she was at his side. Her sword flashed in a blinding arc as it sped toward the man. There was a sickening sound as the steel met the flesh of the throat. And a b.l.o.o.d.y geyser bloomed where the head had been. A vicious grin leaped to her lips as she stooped and lifted the head.

But the grin changed to a howl of fear as the eyes suddenly opened and the lips parted and words came from them: ”You forgot, Naila. Death comes not to me. Remember?”

She dropped the head and sped for the s.h.i.+p. The others, witness to what happened, followed as quickly as possible. What they did not see, of course, was that the eyes and lips had closed forever on the instant of their departure.

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