WHEN FREEMEN SHALL STAND

By NELSON S. BOND

Earth was conquered by Venus and her master. But
the mysterious faces of Mt. Rushmore became the gods
that gave hope and fighting courage to beaten Man!

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Fantastic Adventures November 1943.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

"That," said Stephen Duane, "is that!" He wiped his hands on an acid-stained apron, turned to his assistant. "We all set now, Chuck? Got the stuff?"

"Right here, Lootenant."

"What? What's that you called me?" Stephen Duane's voice flattened.

"I said—" Chuck began.

"I heard you. Chuck, for Pete's sake, won't you lay off that 'Lieutenant' nonsense? I've got a front handle; one you've been using for three years. What's the matter? Don't you like it any more?"

Chuck Lafferty shrugged. "Them," he said patiently, "was the good old days. But times has changed. We're in the Army now. You've got bars on your shoulders—remember?—and I'm just a sergeant. Which makes a difference."

"Nuts!" snorted Steve. "I'm still a chemist, Chuck, and you're my lab assistant. And so far as you're concerned, I'm still just plain old Steve Duane. Get it?"

"Yeah. Yeah, sure, Lootenant."

"Wha-a-at?"

"I mean, yeah, sure—er—Steve."

"That's better. Now, let's get to work on the final experiment. If this gas does what I think it will, World War II is going to end all of a sudden, and a madman named Hitler is going to be caught with his panzers down. Let's find out. Bring that flask over here while I get one of the guinea pigs from the cage. Put it on the—Wait a minute! Who left that door open?"

Chuck, gingerly lifting a small, stoppered vial from its shockproof rack, glanced over his shoulder wonderingly.

"Not me!" he denied. "I always make sure it's shut. Maybe the guard outside—?"

"Well, whoever did it," frowned Duane, "must be more careful. Our country's at war, and there's been entirely too much enemy sabotage and espionage around these parts already! You outside there! Guard!"

A khaki-clad figure appeared in the doorway, saluted smartly.

"Yes, Lieutenant?"

"Close that door, soldier, and see that it's kept—say! What is this, anyway? Why the gas-mask?"

The guard's voice was weirdly muffled by his rubbery face covering.

"Orders, sir. Trial blackout and mock gas attack in fifteen minutes, sir. All men on duty have been ordered into masks, sir."

"So?" Steve Duane stared at the guard thoughtfully. "Well, in that case, you may resume your post. But this time close the door carefully. Oh, and by the way, soldier—"

He spoke with studied casualness as the guard turned away. The other man glanced back.

"Yes, Lieutenant?"

"You might be kind enough to—Achtung!"

His voice shifted abruptly from a tone of easy camaraderie to one of sharp command. It was an old ruse—but it worked! Reflexes conditioned into the soldier's body through long years of training exercised themselves. The man's heels clicked together, his frame stiffened.

On that instant, his suspicion verified, Steve Duane hurled himself forward.

"I thought so!" he roared. "A spy at our very door, eh? Grab him, Chuck!"

But the room was wide, and the Nazi spy had realized his mistake the moment he made it. He, too, swept into swift action. A tug wrenched the .44 from his holster; impetuously he ripped the mask from his face to reveal eyes gleaming with fanatic determination. Malice thickened the heretofore well-concealed guttural accent which bespoke his ancestry.

"Stop! Another step, Leutnant, and you die! We are alone here. That has been arranged. We are not so foolishly overconfident as you stupid Americans. Ja—" He laughed—"it was I, Eric von Rath, who opened the door, the better to watch your progress, hear your braggart claims. Zu, you have a new weapon to end the war, nicht wahr? But our Fuehrer is the one who will use that weapon. Now—" He swung the ugly muzzle of his automatic to bear on Chuck Lafferty—"bring me the vial! Quickly, bitte! I have no time to waste—"

Dazed by the sudden turn of events, Chuck faltered a half step forward, stopped, turned questioning eyes to Duane. Steve nodded imperceptibly. His quick mind had appraised the gravity of the situation, found but one slim chance of coming out on top.

To take the flask from Lafferty's hand the Nazi must for a split second, at least, relax his guard. It was narrow figuring, but if in that second he could move....

"Go ahead, Chuck. Give it to him," he ordered.

"B-but—" hesitated Chuck.

"Give it to him!"

The enemy agent laughed coarsely. "Your Leutnant is no fool. A coward, yes; but, then, all Americans are cowards at heart, nein? Bring the flask here! Ach—be careful, you blundering eisel!"

The last sentence broke in a gasp from von Rath. He was not the only one to shout warning. Steve's fearful voice echoed his cry.

"Good Lord, Chuck, be careful! Don't drop that! We will all be—look out! Be care—"

The cold sweat of sudden fear broke on his forehead. Not fear of his foeman, but of what might now seize them all. Even as he shouted, the glass shattered upon the floor. From if rose a pale, chill, ominous mist. A sharp, unidentifiable odor assailed his nostrils; black vertigo staggered him. The world reeled and tumbled into wells of seething darkness; the darkness was peopled with gray, swirling phantasms; he sensed motion within and about him; a multitude of half-heard sounds rolled like surging waters past his ears. This for a fearful moment. Then:

"—ful!" he cried. "That's dangerous, Chuck—"

His hands groped forward, governed by an instinctive motion, to catch the falling flask. But, amazingly, they met and clutched nothing! More frightening still, the muscles of his well-knit, athletic body flamed with sudden agony, racked in protest as if they had been welded for months in a plaster cast.

Over straining sinews and bones that ached horribly, Lieutenant Stephen Duane had no more control than has a month old baby. With a gasp more of shock than of fear, he pitched headlong to his knees, his chest, his elbows.

He tried to roll, that his shoulders might break his fall, and succeeded in a measure, but concrete grated against one cheek painfully. The jolt shook him like the impact of a sledgehammer. He spat dry dust flavored with the warm, salty taste of blood and cried again:

"Chuck! Chuck, what—?"

Then the paralysis which had held him lessened; with an effort he lifted his head and stared about him, eyes stark with incomprehension.

The laboratory was gone! The bright-gleaming lights had vanished, as had the rows upon rows of glistening beakers and retorts ... the work-benches and hooded range ... the centrifuge and tubes and hissing Bunsens ... the vast intricate array of chemical paraphernalia that should be here ... all were gone!

There was only this dingy, windowless room, bare and musty, lighted by the feeble flames of candles guttering upon worn wall-sconces.

A sense of panic fear tugged at Steve Duane's heart. He cried yet again, "Chuck! Chuck Lafferty! Where are you?"

The answer came from behind him. Drowsily at first, as if the speaker were wakening to respond from the depths of drug-numbed slumber, then more coherently, the answer gaining speed like the disc of a hand-started phonograph.

"—grab it, Steve! It slipped! Look out! The gas is escap—"

Steve turned just in time to see his subordinate and lab assistant strain frozen muscles forward in futile attempt to stay the fall of a non-existent bottle. Chuck's eyes were open, but their blankness mirrored nothing. He was toppling, as grotesquely as had Duane a moment before, to the floor.

Clenching his lips against the pain that flooded him with every motion, Steve inched forward to cushion his chum's fall. Chuck's body, locked as if in rigor mortis, was a dead weight. Not only that, but—a sudden realization heightened Steve's sense of eerie—cold!

Chuck's body was cold! Not with the soft clamminess of a drugged or shellshocked invalid, but with the all-pervading iciness of carven marble!

But stiff or limber, cold or quick, Lafferty's white lips were moving. And they framed Steve's own query.

"Steve—what happened? Where are we? And what are we doing here?"

Steve said, "Flex your fingers, chum. That's right; work 'em. Yeah, I know it hurts, but it unfreezes 'em. Now, try moving those knees and elbows."

Chuck performed, obediently, the exercises Steve had found loosened his own rigid body. Soon he, too, was able to lift his head and stare about him. He turned to his superior officer, but Steve's shake of the head answered his questions before they were given voice.

"I don't know, Chuck. It's all—fantastic! What's the last thing you remember? Before you woke up, I mean."

"Woke up?" repeated Lafferty wonderingly. "I wasn't even asleep. What do you mean, woke—?"

"That," commented Steve queerly, "is what you think! You weren't asleep, eh? Well, take a look at the hunk of statuary behind you."

Chuck turned and gulped. "The—the Jerry!"

"Right! That's what you looked like, chum, a moment ago. And me, too, I suppose. But I wouldn't know about that, and I wasn't on deck to watch myself unfreeze—as he's doing right now. Catch him, Chuck!"

"The hell with him!" said Chuck. "Let him break his dirty Nazi neck!" But he obeyed. The German woke blubbering with pain and fright, howled for mercy when he discovered his hands no longer held a weapon of destruction. But no thought of vengeance motivated Steve at the moment; his sole interest was in learning what weird fate had befallen them. There was time and enough to handle their enemy as he deserved; now the problem was to find out what had happened. Therefore he gave the German the benefit of his advice, and in a short time the three erstwhile "statuettes" sat staring at each other in dim perplexity.

"This is not peace between us," he warned the German agent. "Only a truce until we find out what's happened. One false move, and—" He stopped significantly; then, to Chuck, "All right, Chuck. Your story. You were saying—?"

"I don't know," wailed Lafferty, "from nothing! All I know is that just a couple of minutes ago you ordered me to hand this lug a flask of that new anesthetic we were working on. I—I stumbled, and the flask slipped from my hands. As I fell, I tried to grab it—"

"And I yelled, 'Be careful!'"

"That's right. And then—and then all at once here I was, stiff as a board and falling flat on my puss. In this place—whatever it is! Steve—" Chuck stared at the young officer fearfully—"you don't think we—we're dead, do you? I mean, maybe the gas asphyxiated us, or something—?"

"If we are," stated Duane bluntly, "my Sunday-school teacher had the wrong steer on the afterworld. I hurt when I came to. And disembodied spirits don't have nervous systems; not that I know of. Anyhow, have you noticed your clothes?"

Chuck did, now, for the first time. He stared, then fingered wildly at the apparel in which he was clad. Perhaps unclad would be more apt. For his garments—like those worn by Steve and the spy—consisted of a metal harness about the loins, a short, metal-cloth cape suspended from the shoulders, and a pair of doeskin sandals.

He gasped, "Hell's bells, Steve! Superman duds!"

"Except," pointed out Duane, "that Superman, even in his balmiest days, never decked himself out in cloth like the stuff we have on! Don't you recognize the metal?"

Chuck squinted more closely at the material of which their garments were woven, then: "Gold!" he croaked. "Solid gold! Sweet Moses, Steve, now I know I'm off my nut! I drop a flask of gas, draw a blank—and snap out of it flopping on my pan with 18 karat panties on! What makes here? A gag?"

"It's no gag," said Steve soberly. "I don't pretend to know all the answers, Chuck, but there are several facts I can deduce from what I see in this room. The first one is—our new gas worked."

"W-worked?"

"Better," nodded Steve, "or worse than we ever dared hope. There's only one logical explanation for the situation we find ourselves in. You dropped the flask, the anesthetic knocked us out, slowing down our basal metabolism—according to my expectations—and we fell into a state of catalepsy.

"That is why our muscles were stiff, our bodies cold and our joints rigid. Our minds recognized no lapse of time. That does not mean there has been none. All of our functions—breathing, digestion, elimination—have been slowed." He turned to the third member of their party. "Can you remember what happened? You were farthest from the fumes. You—Hey! What do you think you're doing? Come back here!"

Von Rath had been inching away from them stealthily. Now, well out of arm's reach, he leaped suddenly to his feet, raced toward a doorway at the far side of the chamber.

"A trick, nein? You are trying to make me reveal my Vaterland's secrets? You don't catch me in your dirty, democratic trap. I—"

His words ended with the same dramatic suddenness as his headlong flight. For as if stricken by lightning, all at once he dropped to the floor and lay still! Blood burst from his nose and mouth.

In a flash, the two Americans were at his side. Awe weighted Chuck Lafferty's words.

"Goddlemighty, what hit him? He went down just like he was pole-axed, Steve!"

But Steve, having satisfied himself that the spy was only unconscious, had already found the answer. He swept his hands before him, felt cool smoothness beneath their palms.

"Glass!" he said. "A solid wall of it! We're caged like animals under a bell!"

"What?" Lafferty, too, pawed wildly at the crystal-cool invisibility that bound them. "But air, Steve! There's air coming through somewhere—"

Duane's questing eyes had found the answer.

"Up there," he said. "See—near the ceiling? It's a wide crack in the glass. Chuck, I'm beginning to piece the puzzle together. It's mad, but it all ties in.

"That crack up there may be the thing that caused us to waken! From the appearance of this chamber, it used to be hermetically sealed! Then the dome split, air seeped in, and we wakened. But if that is true, what has seemed to us but a second's time may in reality have been weeks ... years...."

"Years!"

"Possibly," warned Steve, "longer than that! It was experimental work we were engaged in, Chuck. Methioprane was a compound about which nothing was known. Set yourself for a shock. While we slept, not only years but centuries may have passed!"

"Centuries!" echoed Lafferty bleakly. "B-but, Steve—the war? Who won? And where are we now? How—?"

Steve Duane shook his head.

"You know as much about that as I do. I'm guessing, anyway. There may be another explanation. But—" His head turned—"I think we'll know the answer in a few minutes."

"Eh? What do you mean? How?"

"Because," replied Steve tautly, "unless my ears are deceiving me, we're about to entertain guests. I heard footsteps coming down the outer corridor a moment ago, and—see? Now the door is opening!"

CHAPTER II

Priestess Beth

What manner of men Steve Duane expected to see enter the cavernous chamber, he could not have really told. Men of a future era—for by now he was firmly convinced that it was a future era in which he and his companions had roused—might differ from men of the Twentieth Century in great or in no degree. He could even conceive of looking upon members of the long-heralded race of supermen, and was fully prepared to greet such arrivals.

This presumptuous logic, based on hunch, was typical of Duane. Unorthodox, perhaps—but it was this high, swift, imaginative quality of thought which had set him apart as one of his country's ablest young chemical engineers. If hunches like these occasionally led him to error, more often they led him to success in fields where others had failed.

But this time his surmise was completely wrong. For it was no lofty-browed race of supercultured beings who stepped through the doorway. It was, instead—

"Babes!" choked Chuck Lafferty. "Holy cow—dolls!"

"Quiet!" breathed Steve swiftly. But he, too, gazed at the corps of newcomers with numb astonishment. Women they were—but what women! Steve Duane was a scientist. As such he had allotted no place in his scheme of life for the weaker sex. But he knew now, in a single blinding moment, that this was only because never before had he looked upon such a woman as she who headed this group.

From the top of her dust-golden head to the soles of her doeskin sandals she was perfection. Tawny hair, shorn to shoulder-length, cascaded down over firm neck and shoulders to frame features strong with dignity and grace. Breast-cups of filigreed gold highlighted the smooth, golden sheen of her flesh. From beneath the folds of a sarong-like loincloth her long, straight limbs carried her forward in pantherine grace.

Her manner was at once imperious and oddly humble as she led the way to the dais upon which Steve and Chuck stood. Approaching them, she intoned a curious chant in a voice warm and mellow as the dimly-heard thrum of harpstrings.

With an effort, Steve wrenched his eyes away, and in a whisper warned, "Steady, Chuck! Don't move a muscle. It's dark in this corner. Hold the pose you were frozen in before we woke. They may not notice our change of position, or him. We'll play 'possum ... try to learn something about...."

Then he stopped in obedience to his own command, and held himself rigidly motionless as the tiny band drew nearer. He saw, now, that not all of the group shared the delicacy of the dust-golden Diana who led them. Only one other—and she a maid of thirteen or fourteen—wore the kirtle and peculiar amulet which he judged to be a badge of office.

The others fell into types as sharply diverse as day and night. First, waddling meekly behind the chieftain, came a huddle of pale and flabby-fleshed matrons, grossly obese of figure, flaccid of breast, vacant of eye. These moved with a slow, tantalizing undulation of hip and thigh which disgusted rather than enticed Steve.

Encircling these, tense as fighting falcons, marched the second distinctive type. No weakling billows of fat were these, but lean, hard warriors, granite-jawed, with eyes that stared straight forward in uncompromising challenge.

These Amazons wore no gold-cloth habiliments. Their breachclouts were of coarse, sweat-stained leather, and their flat, dry, masculine breasts were stifled beneath straitlaced halters, giving freedom of movement to their sword arms.

A third type brought up the rear. Neither masculine nor cloyingly feminine were these. They might have been dull husks of neuter gender for all the physical emotion the sight of their thick, peasant bodies aroused. Their flesh was dark with long exposure to burning sun and driving sleet, they had gnarled, calloused fingers and strong, broad wrists.

They were heavy of jowl and brow, their stringy hair was crudely hacked to the neck-line, then caught in a clubbed knot. Aprons of shoddy felt were their only garments. Their legs bulged, sturdy and asensual as limestone pediments, from beneath these grimy skirts.

This much Steve Duane saw with growing wonder. Then the band drew still nearer, and the chant of the golden Diana became audible.

At first the words meant nothing. They were part of an intoned, indistinguishable blur, signifying nothing. Then suddenly—as if one strophe of a sacred ritual had ended and another begun—the chant slowed. Halting words emerged from the meaningless drone—and it was no longer meaningless. As one mesmerized, Steve hearkened incredulously to the chant of the dust-gold maiden.

"Osé, can you see by the Daans' surly light—"

The American national anthem! Steve's eyes narrowed in dazed bewilderment. Francis Scott Key's immortal words—immortal indeed!—but phrased all wrong, curiously accented, broken in the wrong places! Behind him, Chuck emitted a tiny gasp, but it went unnoticed as the voice of the cantor lifted sonorously.

"—the rockets' red glare-bombs bursting in air—"

There it was again! The right words, or right syllables, but improperly cadenced so that the whole true meaning of the song was distorted! Holding his peace was the hardest task Steve Duane had ever undertaken. Every fretful instinct urged him to interrupt this grotesquely mangled hymn.

But it was wiser, reason warned him, to just listen. Listen and learn more. The girl had lifted her head now, and was looking directly at him. A mist of reflected candlelight enmeshed her hair with a halo of golden glory. And there was radiance in her eyes, too; a bright, high burning, with which was somehow strangely mingled desperation and—hope! Liquid fire flamed in her throbbing voice.

"Osé, does that star-spangled banner yet wave

O'er the land, O, Thou Free? Or

Thy hoam, O, Thou Brave?"

The last note of the chant dwindled into silence. A strange, strained, watchful hush settled over the little band of women as if they were waiting for—for what? Steve Duane did not know. A manifestation of some sort? Quite possibly. It was perfectly obvious by now that to these women, for some obscure reason, he and his companions were objects of worship. The glass-encased dais upon which they stood was an altar—a shrine!

But—Lord! If this were so, for how many countless decades or centuries had they been immured here? What mighty evolutionary or sociological force had wrought these physical changes upon one-time fair and lovely womankind? And—where were the men of this day?

As if in answer to his unvoiced query, was presented the next act of this weird tableau. The circle of obese matrons parted, disgorging from their midst one whom, in the wan light, Steve had not noticed before. A tiny, withered parody of a man with painted lips and cheeks, kohl-blackened lashes, elaborately ringletted hair tumbling shoulder-deep to a white samite frock.

As this futile creature was loosed, terror glittered in his beady eyes; he emitted a small, high-pitched bleat and strove to break from his guards. But the warrior women, grim and adamant as stone, formed a phalanx about him, a barricade of hard flesh which stood unyielding before the panic thrusts of his soft, white fists.

Then it was the dust-gold maiden turned to the young neophyte, accepted from her an object which gleamed evilly in the sallow light; then it was the voices of the loose-fleshed matrons rose in mournful keening; then it was that two of the apron-girt women stepped forward to seize the struggling male in oaken grip, tearing the samite frock from his body, baring his soft, hairless chest to the knife.

And then it was that Steve Duane horribly understood the meaning of this ritual. Chuck Lafferty got it, too. His voice exploded in Steve's ear.

"Hell's flaming fire, Steve, they're sacrificing the little guy—to us!"

But Duane had already recognized the finale to which the drama was moving, and was already in motion. He raced to the transparent barrier.

"Stop!" he cried. "Stop—!"

There was no way of knowing whether or not his words were audible to those outside. True, the glass dome of their prison was cracked, but even so the curved surface might mute all sounds. But communication is not a matter of sound-waves alone; action has a tongue. Steve lifted his arm—as he had seen the golden priestess raise hers a moment before—in the universal symbol for cessation.

His gesture saved the doomed man's life. The raised blade stayed ... then clattered to the floor from the dust-gold maiden's nerveless fingers. Heads turned, and faces hard and soft adopted one expression of awed terror. Voices rose in a bedlam of confusion; then, as one, the women tumbled to their knees!

Cringing, they cowered there prostrate. But one had the courage to raise her eyes again: the leader. On her brow was a furrow of perplexity as if she were trying to recollect some once-heard, half-forgotten instruction. Then her visage lighted; her voice lifted in clarion call.

"Jain! The Slumberers have awakened—at last! The Day of Freedom dawns! To the Sacred Wheel, swiftly!"

A flame of joy burst in the eyes of one of the grim-faced warrior women; her lean flanks tensed as, leaping to her feet, she hurried across the chamber to a huge, metal wheel on the farther wall. Sweat sprang from her forehead, her sinews knotted in cords as she tugged at this device. It held fast. Again she wrenched its spokes, white lines of strain upon her jaw. This time red flakes of rust showered to the floor, the wheel groaned protest at being thus rudely roused from an age of disuse—and slowly turned!

As it did so, Steve was conscious of a draft of cool air about his ankles, his knees, his thighs. Looking sharply he saw that the nether rim of the glass prison was separating from the edge of the dais; the whole structure hoisted upward like the gigantic bell it was.

Slowly as it had started, the movement stopped. And Steve and Chuck—along with the wide-eyed von Rath, whom the fresh air had revived, and who had now lurched to his feet—stood face to face with their worshippers!

Now the leader dropped to one knee; in a voice which even determination could not steady quavered:

"Hail, O Slumberers! Aie, look with mercy upon us, Thy children, for lo! we have tarried and kept the faith, even as was ordained!"

Chuck stared at the speaker.

"Hey, what makes here? A revival meeting? How come this 'faith and ordained' chatter?"

The German was equally taken aback. So much so that for the moment he quite forgot the neo-paganistic pretensions of his creed, and relapsed into the speech-habits of one-time Christian Germany.

"Gott im Himmel!" he exclaimed. "Vas—?"

Only Steve Duane had the acuteness to comprehend the lofty place to which he and his companions had been elevated, and the quickness of mind to take advantage of it. Aside, he whispered hurriedly, "Don't you get it? We are their gods—or the symbols of their gods! Quiet, now!" And to the girl, in a gravely commanding voice:

"Rise, O Priestess!" he said. "The Slumberers hear, and are merciful. Is there one in command here?"

The priestess rose with slowly returning assurance.

"Not here, O Wise One; but elsewhere in Fautnox sits the Mother in everlasting wisdom."

The Mother, thought Steve swiftly. Then his surmise as to the sociological organization of this race had not been wrong. It was a matriarchy, divided into groups of warriors, workers, and—what else could the flabby-fleshed ones be but breeders? That accounted for the sole male being a pampered, bedizened pet.

But—"Fautnox"? Doubt clouded his eyes; he bit his lip. Then his trusted ally, hunch, came to his rescue. Why, of course! A concrete, subterranean chamber of massive size. A wild wealth of gold used lavishly, almost negligently, by a civilization obviously semi-barbaric. A language which owned English as its parent, but was changed by untold ages of misuse and elision. Fautnox was—Fort Knox, Kentucky![1]

The next words of the priestess brought verification of his guess. Humbly she said, yet proudly, too:

"Come, O Slumberers! Let Thy handmaiden, Beth, lead Thee to the Mother of the Tucki Clan."

She made a sign of obeisance, whirled, issued orders to those who followed her. Instantly the kneeling ones rose. The warriors formed an avenue before the dais; metal clanged! on metal as a score of bright blades whipped from scabbards.

Chuck Lafferty started. "Now, wait a minute, Steve! I don't like them swords, nohow! You sure this Mardi Gras is on the level?"

"Positive!" asserted Duane. "Keep your tongue still and follow me. The Marines have landed, and the situation is well in hand. You, von Rath—come along! And don't forget, I don't need much of an excuse to slug you. So watch out!"

Thus marched the trio of "Slumberers," surrounded by a triumphant band, upward from the cavern through the strong, bastioned corridors of a citadel which had once served as the repository for a mighty nation's riches, to meet the Mother.

In one expectation, Steve Duane was disappointed.

He considered it a foregone conclusion their journey would take them to the surface, into sunshine or moonlight as the case might be. But though they rose several levels, they never left the subterranean depths. News of their awakening, spreading swiftly and mysteriously as only tidings of evil or great joy can spread, had somehow gone before them; clansfolk poured from everywhere to crowd the passageways through which they traveled.

In vain were drawn the warriors' swords, futile were the commands of the soldier-captain, Jain. The crowd pressed forward, screaming wild paeans of joy, to look upon, to touch the garments of their demigods. Had there been a rigid caste system in this community, it was forgotten now. Laborers and breeders stood shoulder to shoulder, weeping openly with joy. Here a towering warrior lifted a spindling male that he might see, above the heads of the throng, the Deliverers. There an awed worker stood with gaping mouth in the midst of a bevy of shrill-piping breeders, a dirty blot against their immaculate whiteness.

It was with relief, and barely with whole skins, that the small procession wound its way finally through a guarded door into the sanctuary of the Mother's hoam.

There was nothing pretentious about the chamber. It was just another room, barren as any they had passed through, simply furnished with the scant necessities of life. But two things served to differentiate it from other dwelling-places: the tremendous heap of parchment rolls overflowing from loose racks in one corner—and the woman who rose to greet them as they entered.

For her, Steve Duane could conceive no other feeling than one of instant affection. A ruler she was, a tyrant she might be, but there was goodness, honor and truth in the gaze she bent upon them, gentleness in her voice as she spoke.

"Then it is true!" she breathed. "You have wakened, and after all these long and weary years, I have lived to see the ancient prophecies fulfilled. Now am I, Mother Maatha of the Tucki Clan, content to die. For at last you have come to free us, as was promised—"

Her white head bent, her soft eyes filled with tears of happiness, and she stretched forth a lean, tremulous hand. Steve moved forward, took it between his own.

"Yes, Mother," he said gently, "we have come. But I do not understand. You speak of freedom as if it were a lost thing. Who holds you captive? Not—" A sudden fear struck him—"not the Nazis?"

The old woman shook her head.

"The word you use is strange to me, O Wise One. But surely, you, who are All-Wise and Eternal, know that all Earth lies crushed beneath the heel of the vandals from Daan?"

CHAPTER III

Attack

"Daan?" repeated Steve wonderingly. "Daan, Mother?"

"Yes, O Everlasting. Daan, the shining star of morn and eventide. Surely you know how, many snows ago, before my mother's mother's mother learned the Rites, the invaders from Daan swooped down upon Earth in their rockets, destroying all who stood before them? How they seized Earth's mighty cities and vanquished equally both the Women and the Wild Ones?"

Surprisingly, it was von Rath who spoke. To Steve's astonishment, the German seemed to have forgotten, faced with this new problem, their own ideological differences. He said incredulously, "Leutnant, the star of morgen und abend! That is—"

"I know," said Steve. "The planet Venus! They call it 'Daan'; why, I do not know. Perhaps from our word 'dawn.' But I'm beginning to understand their distortion of America's national anthem. I wondered why she chanted of the '—Daan's surly light—' and the '—rockets' red glare-bombs—.'

"But—" And he turned to the Mother querulously—"how can we help you? We are but three, and you are many."

"It is written," said the Mother Maatha confidently, "that one day the Slumberers shall waken, and that with their wakening the one known as Dwain shall reveal the Great Secret which he alone knows. It is also written that this knowledge will forevermore bring peace to Earth. You, O Slumberer, are Dwain?"

"I am Duane. But I know of no secret—"

"Wait a minute, Steve!" That was Lafferty. "You're forgetting something, ain't you? You do know a secret!"

"What?"

"Methioprane! Don't you get it? We went beddy-bye, Lord knows how long ago. Nobody else knew nothing about that gas we was working on. All they knew was that when they come in and found the three of us laid out colder than herring, we had evidently sniffed it. The medicos examined us, and found out we was still alive, only in a state of coma, or suspended animalation, or whatever you call it. So—"

"You're right, Chuck! You must be right! They must have moved us here to Fort Knox, left a message to succeeding generations that our glass tomb was to be kept inviolate till one day we should waken. But—how long? Mother, surely you must know? How long have we slept?"

The Mother nodded sagely.

"Yes, O Dwain, I know. When they advised me of your wakening, I performed the magic of Numbers. Your sleep began in the year One-Nine-and-Four-Two. It is now the year Three-Four-and-Eight-Eight—"

"The Thirty-Fifth Century!" cried Steve. "Chuck, we have slept for more than fifteen hundred years!"

But if he had expected Chuck Lafferty to be dismayed by this revelation, he had another thing coming.

Chuck just grunted. "That," he said, "ain't hard to believe. I been wondering why I'm so confounded hungry. Now I know. It's been a helluva long time since breakfast, pal!"

The Mother, Maatha, stirred anxiously at his words.

"But I neglect my duty!" she exclaimed. "Beth, send for food. The gods are an-hungered."

"As you say, O Mother." The priestess slipped away. Soon she re-appeared, followed by workers bearing golden trays laden with food and drink. These they placed before the trio without lifting their eyes, then backed from the room. Steve looked after them curiously.

"But, Mother Maatha, you must tell your clansfolk we are not gods. We are but men—"

"Men!" The Priestess Beth almost dropped the golden ewer from which she was pouring water. "Men!"

The Mother said hastily—too hastily, thought Steve Duane—and in a tone of admonition, "Be not so swift of ear, child, when is spoken that of which you know naught. The god but jests, nor is it ours to comment on his words.

"O, Wise One—" She changed the subject quickly—"is it not true, then, that you do bear us the knowledge of a Great Secret? A new weapon with which we may wreak vengeance on our enemies?"

Steve answered slowly, "It is true, O Mother, that I hold such a secret. But—" He was thinking of the chemical problem involved in the preparation of his invention, the anesthetic methioprane. Not only did the preparatory process for its sublimation require intricate equipment unknown to this crude culture; it also demanded an ingredient which even in Steve's day had been so frightfully rare that it had taken ten months to segregate the flaskfull used in his experiments.

The basic ingredient of methioprane was the seed-pod of the swamp-musk, a tank-epiphyte so delicate, so sensitive, that even in Steve's day—fifteen hundred years ago—it had been virtually extinct. Only the painstaking plant husbandry of a hundred patriotic botanists had enabled Steve to continue his work. It had been hoped that once his research was done, and crowned with success, the end-product of his labors might be analyzed, and its formula synthesized from ingredients less rare.

And in a day which had known nylon, alnico, plastics; had made felt hats of cows' milk, automobile bodies of rolled oats, and women's hose of water, coal and air, this might have been possible. But now—

"Tell me first, O Mother," said Steve, "something of these Daan invaders. It is needful to know their nature if I am to prepare a weapon against them. When came their rockets to Earth? How strong is their rulership over our world? And was it they who destroyed all the males and left the women to fend for themselves?"

"But, Wise One!" exclaimed the priestess Beth, "None ever caused the Women to 'fend for themselves!' We Women are the rulers of humankind, and ever have been. Surely you know that—or do you jest again?"

And once more the Mother interrupted hurriedly, with an all-too-obvious desire to change the subject.

"A hundred seasons have come and gone, O Dwain," she said, "since first the Daan fleet landed on this planet. But we shall talk of this in more detail later. There is a query I would put to you."

"It is told in the records of the Ancient Ones that of the Slumberers two were good and one was evil. It is told that when the Slumberers waken, the evil one must die. Which is he who must face judgment?"

"Well!" said Chuck Lafferty. "Now we're starting to get somewhere! Them records is okay, huh, Steve? All right, von Rat—here it comes! Fifteen hundred years late, but you know the old saying."

The German's face was a white mask of fear. Well it might be, for at the Mother's query, the ranks of the warrior women had snapped together; now they were standing with drawn swords ready for any command. At that moment, a nod of Steve Duane's head, a word from his lips, would have cost the enemy agent his life.

But no such word was forthcoming. Instead, his brow drawn thoughtfully, Steve turned and spoke to the Nazi in his native tongue.

"You hear that, von Rath? You understand?"

"Ja, mein Leutnant! But—but you must not let them do this thing! It is barbarous ... uncivilized...."

"No more so," pointed out Duane grimly, "than taking young women and girls from their homes and sending them to the front for the amusement of fighting troops, or shooting fifty hostages for every one of your own soldiers slain. But that's neither here nor there. The point is, we used to be enemies, but that period of mankind's history is dead and gone, buried beneath fifteen centuries of dust.

"We are now three exiles of Time, the only remaining representatives of a civilization now vanished. We can never return to our own warring world. The very differences which made us foes have been obliterated by the ages and, from what the Mother says, I suspect by an even greater peril to humankind.

"Now, what do you say? Will you join us? Lay aside the old enmity and hatred? Or—shall I tell which Slumberer was the 'evil one?'"

Von Rath said, "There is but one possible answer, mein Kamerad. You are right: it is futile to continue our ancient warfare in this strange new world. I am your ally."

The women were listening, wide-eyed, to this "speech of the gods." Chuck Lafferty, who knew no more of the German tongue than they, was also listening suspiciously. He glared discontent as his superior offered von Rath his hand, growled as the erstwhile Nazi met it hesitantly.

"Hey, what's the big idea, Steve? You turning Fifth Columnist on me? Turn that heel over to the dames!"

"No, Chuck. Whatever his faults, despite our former differences, von Rath is an intelligent man. We must respect him as such, and accept his help in solving our new problems. Therefore—" He turned to the Mother—"There has been some mistake, O Mother. The records are wrong. There was no evil one amongst the Slumberers. We are three brothers pledged as one to aid you."

The Mother said humbly, "So be it, O Dwain. Shall I then dismiss the warriors?"

"Do so."

The Mother motioned to Beth. The priestess murmured a command to the warrior chieftain, Jain, and reluctantly but obediently the strait-harnessed ones wheeled and marched from the room. The Mother turned again to Steve.

"And now, O Wise One—?"

"First," suggested Steve, "let us learn those things which have happened since we slept. In the year out of which we came a great war was raging. The forces of peace defended themselves against hordes of international anarchy. What was the result? How ended this conflict, and did men—?"

"Forgive me, O Dwain!" Again, at the sound of that tabu word, the Mother interrupted hastily, casting a worried, sidelong glance at the priestess Beth. "Perhaps it were best we should discuss these holy matters privately. Such secrets are not fit for maiden ears. The priestess is unenlightened; she has not yet embarked upon the sacred Pilgrimage."

"Pilgrimage?" repeated Steve wonderingly.

"Yes, O Everlasting. She has not yet visited 'Kota, the Place of the Gods. She does not know—"

"But, Mother!" pleaded the dust-gold maiden, "Soon I shall go, and will then be initiate to these mysteries. May I not stay now and garner wisdom from the lips of the Ancient Ones? By Taamuz and Ibrim I swear—yea, even by far-seeing Tedhi—no word I hear shall escape my lips!"

The Mother shook her head, her lips pressed together firmly.

"It is forbidden, my daughter. Only after you have seen with your own eyes the Place of the Gods and learned its dread secret can you join this consultation. Such knowledge, coming suddenly, might destroy your very sanity. Go, now, to your hoam and recite thrice the magic of fives—"

Steve, wisely, held his counsel, nor tried to interfere in matters of ritual which he did not understand. Chuck Lafferty was less inhibited. He said:

"Hell's imps, let the kid stick around if she wants! We'll keep it clean. What's this all about, anyway? I don't get it. Where's this 'Place of the Gods,' and who are Taamuz and Teddy and—?"

"Teddy!" The name leaped from Steve Duane's tongue. He, too, had been vainly trying to decipher the girl's words. Lafferty's altered pronunciation gave him the clue he needed. "Teddy ... Thomas ... Abraham! Mother—this 'Place of the Gods' of which you speak! Is it in Dakota? South Dakota?"

The Mother Maatha answered perplexedly, "Verily, the Place of the Gods is in 'Kota, O Eternal One. But it lies to the north of here, not south. Across the plains of Zurri and 'Braska territories, beyond the Big Water—"

"I thought so!" shouted Steve. "I knew I was right! Chuck, this is terrific! You wouldn't believe—"

"Believe what?" demanded Lafferty. "Thunderation, I don't even understand! Give out! What's it all about?"

"Why, don't you see? The 'gods' these women worship are—"

But not at that moment was Chuck to be let in on his discovery. For there came another interruption, this time in the shape of a warrior messenger.

"They come, O Mother! They come again!"

Alarm dawned swiftly in the old woman's eyes. In an instant she was on her feet.

"Who comes, my daughter? Not the—the Daans?"

"Nay, Mother, none so dangerous as they, thank Jarg! But a foe dangerous enough. It is the animals of the forests who storm our citadel with wicked force and fury. The filthy male creatures of the outland, O Mother. The Wild Ones!"

CHAPTER IV

Revelation

Chuck Lafferty yelped, "Oh, boy! Fun!" and started from the room. Steve halted him with a word.

"Chuck! Where do you think you're going?"

"Why—why, I dunno. Topside, I suppose. There's a scrap going on somewhere around here, ain't they?"

"A fight," said Steve. "But not our fight. I don't exactly understand—" To the Mother he said—"Just who are these 'Wild Ones,' O Mother? Fierce beasts?"

"Beasts, yes, O Dwain," replied the matriarch. "But of the two-legged variety. They are the foul males who some say are a brutish branch of our own human race—though it is hard to credit that theory. Matted, hairy creatures dwelling in the junglelands of Tizathy. They have no females of their own, as we have drone-men to impregnate our breeding-mothers, so when need and nature tightens their loins, they make raids upon our encampments to capture Women, that they may replenish their race."

The priestess Beth was standing before Steve, eagerness brightening the steel-blue of her eyes.

"It was for this, O Dwain," she cried, "you wakened! To rid us once and evermore of these who prey upon us. Come! Come with me and see how brave Women vanquish their foes!"

Steve glanced at von Rath. The German nodded.

"It were well to learn what sort of enemies we shall meet in this time, Leutnant Duane."

"Right!" agreed Steve. "Very well, priestess. Lead the way."

The way carried them again upward from the bowels of Fautnox, debouching at last into a walled enclosure which, at some dim period of the past, may have been a courtyard. Ages had taken their toll, however, of the once-sturdy barricades. Their firmness had been breached in a dozen spots; gray piles of stone and detritus were strewn beneath wide openings which a barbarian clan with no knowledge of cement had found no way of mending.

It was before these entrances the battle raged most fiercely. Within the court, no breeders or pet males were to be seen; apparently they had all been removed to safer spots. The workers and the warriors defended the citadel. Of these, the warriors did the actual fighting; the workers acted as an auxiliary corps, bearing fresh supplies of lances, arrows and bows to the fighting-women when their stores were depleted or broken, rallying the Amazons to weakened salients when danger loomed, dragging the wounded from the field of conflict.

This much saw Duane at a glance. Then his eye swung to the attackers, and his body stiffened.

In some respects, Beth had told the truth. The Wild Ones were dirty, hairy, unkempt. Their garments and weapons were crude as compared with the golden equipage of the Women. But there ended their brutishness, their loutishness. Though they fought savagely, it was clear to the most un-military eye that their main effort was not toward wholesale slaughter and destruction—but to capture!

When a Wild One fell, perhaps suffering from only a minor wound, all feminine adversaries within sword-thrust were upon him in an instant, his body was literally hacked to bits before it was abandoned. But when a Woman fell—then it was a different story! Attackers surged forward en masse, with a sort of savage desperation, recklessly braving death in order to take, unharmed, their prisoner!

And incredible as it might seem—those who bore the captured warriors clawing and screaming from the fray, did so with an almost hallowed tenderness!

But this was the tide of battle only as seen through unprejudiced eyes. At Steve's shoulder, the priestess Beth's golden body was tense with rage and hatred, her hands gripped his arm hotly.

"You see, O Dwain? Behold how the vandals lay waste the flower of our womanhood; Vengeance, Eternal One! Cast a spell upon them; yea, call down the fury of the Ancients upon those who would despoil our—"

Steve turned to Chuck.

"Well, chum? You still itching to get in the war?"

Lafferty's eyes were mirrors of surprise.

"Who—me?" he gasped. "Hell's imps, no! Why, them guys ain't wild animals at all. They're not matinee idols, I grant you, but they're no worse than—well, than a couple of hundred pro wrestlers from our own time. Steve, they're men! Like—"

Steve said, "What do you say, von Rath?"

"I am confused," admitted the German, "but I believe your friend is right. These are barbarians, but nevertheless true members of the genus Homo sapiens. This battle is stark madness! Gross Gott! Women against men—"

The priestess had drawn away, was staring at them as one aghast.

"In the Name of Jarg," she whispered awfully, "what blasphemy is this? Men! You compare these hideous creatures with our sacred charges? Am I mad?"

"Not mad, honey," grinned Steve suddenly, "just sort of befuddled. You and the rest of your gang. And it's about time you snapped out of it. I think I can turn the trick. I don't think those 'Wild Ones' ever got around to studying the Greek wars, so it ought to work.

"Can you issue commands to your warriors? I thought so. All right, then. Tell the fighting-women to withdraw to the protection of the walls, out of sight, and the workers to retreat toward this building."

"What! You bid me—Here!" The priestess Beth drew from her girdle a long, slim, golden knife, handed it to him. With a sob she clenched her fists upon her cupped breasts.

Steve stared at her in astonishment.

"What the—?"

"Strike!" she begged from between white lips. "Strike hard and true, O Slumberer. For I must defy even you, a god. What you bid me do is treason, and rather death than I should betray my Clan!"

Von Rath's eyes were admiring. He said raptly, "But what eine fraulein!" Duane was less impressed with her histronics. He said, "Oh, nuts!" and tossed the dagger back to her. "Look, sister," he said wearily, "skip the mellerdrama. You want to win this fracas, don't you?"

"But—but, yes, O Wise One—"

"Okay, then. Do what I say. This isn't 'a sell-out; it's what we gods call the 'Trojan horse' trick. Magic, see? The good old ousemay-aptray."

The priestess seized on the one word she understood. "Magic! Aie, Thy forgiveness, O Eternal One. I leap to obey Thy commands."

"Well, get going—" commented Steve gloomily—"before there aren't any Wild Ones left to capture. Well?"

Chuck scratched his head as the priestess ran to the warrior captain, Jain, and transmitted Steve's orders.

"I don't get it," he complained. "I don't get it at all. Whose side are you playing on, anyway?"

"I'm tired explaining," said Steve. "Wait and see!"

He hadn't long to wait. The scheme of wily Odysseus worked as well in the Thirty-fifth Century as in pre-historic Troy.[2] Better, perhaps. The Trojans had their Cassandra; the Wild Ones had no soothsayer to warn them against a ruse. Men who had never won a battle against their better-armed adversaries leaped eagerly through the breeches abandoned by the retreating women.

In a solid swarm they flooded half-way across the open courtyard, leaving flanks and rear exposed. And then:

"Warriors!" cried Steve. "Close the openings behind them! Your foes are trapped!"

And it was so! The Wild Ones were caught in a vise; their thin ranks were hopelessly sandwiched between divisions of warriors and workers. The very portals they had fought so hard to win were now closed avenues to freedom.