Part 25 (2/2)

Greg nodded gravely. ”There's just one thing to be thankful for,” he declared. ”He probably isn't any nearer our energy than he was before.

But now we can't watch him. And that field of his shows that he has tremendous power of some sort.”

”We can't watch him, but we can follow him,” corrected Russ. ”He can't shake us. None of them can. The mechanical shadow will take care of that. I have one for Craven with a bit of 'bait' off his spectacles and he'll keep those spectacles, never fear. He's blind as a bat without them. And we can track Chambers with his ring.”

”That's right,” agreed Greg, ”but we've got to speed up. Craven is getting under way now. If he does this, he can do something else.

Something that will really hurt us. The man's clever ... too d.a.m.n clever.”

_CHAPTER SIXTEEN_

A miracle came to pa.s.s in Ranthoor when a man for whom all hope had been abandoned suddenly appeared within the city's streets. But he appeared to be something not quite earthly, for he did not have the solidity of a man. He was pale, like a wraith from out of s.p.a.ce, and one could see straight through him, yet he still had all the old mannerisms and tricks.

In frightened, awe-stricken whispers the word was spread ... the spirit of John Moore Mallory had come back to the city once again. He bulked four times the height of a normal man and there was that singular ghostliness about him. From where he had come, or how, or why, no one seemed to know.

But when he reached the steps of the federation's administration building and walked straight through a line of troopers that suddenly ma.s.sed to bar his way, and when he turned on those steps and spoke to the people who had gathered, there was none to doubt that at last a sign had come. The sign that now, if ever, was the time to avenge the purge.

Now the time to take vengeance for the blood that flowed in gutters, for the throaty chortling of the flame guns that had snuffed out lives against a broad steel wall.

Standing on the steps, shadowy but plainly visible, John Moore Mallory talked to the people in the square below, and his voice was the voice they remembered. They saw him toss his black mane of hair, they saw his clenched fist raised in terrible anger, they heard the boom of the words he spoke.

Like a shrilling alarm the words spread through the city, reverberating from the dome, seeking out those who were in hiding. From every corner of the city, from its deepest cellars and its darkest alleys, poured out a ma.s.s of humanity that surrounded the capitol and blackened the square and the converging streets with a mob that shrieked its hatred, bellowed its anger.

”Power!” thundered the mighty shadow on the steps. ”Power to burn! Power to give away. Power to heat the dome, to work your mines, to drive your s.p.a.ces.h.i.+ps!”

”Power!” answered the voice of the crowd. ”Power!” It sounded like a battle cry.

”No more acc.u.mulators,” roared the towering image. ”Never again need you rely on Spencer Chambers for your power. Callisto is yours. Ranthoor is yours.”

The black crowd surged forward, reached the steps and started to climb, wild cheers in their throat, the madness of victory in their eyes. Up the steps came men with nothing but bare hands, screaming women, jeering children.

Officers snapped orders at the troops that lined the steps, but the troopers, staring into the awful, raging maw of that oncoming crowd, dropped their guns and fled, back into the capitol building, with the mob behind them, shrilling blood l.u.s.t and long-awaited vengeance.

Out of the red and yellow wilderness of the deserts, a man came to Sandebar on Mars. He had long been thought dead. The minions of the government had announced that he was dead. But he had been in hiding for six years.

His beard was long and gray, his eyes were curtained by hards.h.i.+p, his white hair hung about his shoulders and he was clothed in the tattered leather trappings of the s.p.a.ceways.

But men remembered him.

Tom Brown had lead the last revolt against the Martian government, an ill-starred revolt that ended almost before it started when the troopers turned loose the heavy heaters and swept the streets with was.h.i.+ng waves of flame.

When he climbed to the base of a statue in Techor Park to address the crowd that gathered, the police shouted for him to come down and he disregarded them. They climbed the statue to reach him and their hands went through him.

Tom Brown stood before the people, in plain view, and spoke, but he wasn't there!

Other things happened in Sandebar that day. A voice spoke out of thin air, a voice that told the people the reign of Interplanetary was over.

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