By A. A. O. Gilmour

On that evil planet, broken men who had once trod Earth knew only two things for sure. One, they all were dying at twenty-five. Two, lovely Mona Darlanan was a dirty traitor.

[Transcriber’s Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Fall 1947. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

Rod Harrow pawed futilely at the whirling sands in the gryxon mines on Tetrarch IV. Dimly, as through a dark mist, he could see the line of bobbing lamps that etched the tunnel outlines. He raised his pick for another weary stroke, when he noticed the slave next to him. The poor devil’s face was ghastly under its close-fitting helmet. It was deeply lined, worn—and old. Rod saw his twisted grin when the man crumpled against the rocky abutment. A despairing cackle pierced his audiphones:

“I was twenty-five yesterday. I’ll be glad to die!”

Rod eased him as he slid to the tunnel floor. He watched in bitter helplessness while the stricken fingers worked their way toward glazing eyes. Dribbles of foam spattered the inside of the man’s helmet. Pity and a driving desire for vengeance struggled in Rod’s mind when the slave’s feeble shout died away. The doomed man’s feet beat a weak tattoo on the sandy floor. The beat quickened spasmodically—and stopped.

Smoke issued from the inert nostrils. It clouded the froth-filled helmet. Hazily, the dead face took on a greenish glow. It glimmered like a crucified Satan for a moment, and then fell away to dry embers.

An eerie glow flashed. Rod knew, after only a day in the mines, that the tetrarchian guards were now on their way. Black-browed and huge—with their curiously similar features—they came to drag away the corpse.

A sniveling slave on Rod’s left stopped to watch them. A guard turned and raised his weapon suggestively. The sniveler bent to his digging with renewed vigor.

When the tetrarchs had gone another slave slipped in to take the place left vacant by the dead man.

Rod winced in the act of lifting his pick. The gash he had taken in his arm before he was captured on Earth was far from healed. He saw then that the new slave was a woman. She was young and slender. Her hair was glowing gold in the dim lit tunnel. Under her broad forehead her eyes were an unfathomable grey.

“Mona Darlanan!” he breathed in wonderment.

Even in the mines—in the serfdom of Tetrarch—her beauty caught him. This was the girl who would always make him uncomfortable ... as it had back in the old days—when Earth was free. She had gone on the stage. He had buried himself in a science laboratory. They had lost touch. When the tetrarchs overran Earth he had lost all knowledge of her. Besides, he had been busy ... busy on the most important project of Earth’s Thirtieth Century A.D.

“How long have you been here?” he asked. He felt awkward. This was not the way he had pictured their meeting.

“I’ve been in the mines longer than you have.” Her face was quiet, almost submissive. “Don’t talk, or the guards will be back. Besides, I want to change places with you.”

“Why? Does it make any difference?”

“Yes.” She brushed him aside impatiently and turned to the sniveling youth at his side.

“Are you all right?” she asked anxiously.

“They almost killed me,” the whimpering slave was trembling.

“Oh, Jerry!”

“I hope we win them over.”

“I know now that’s the only way.” The girl looked about her furtively, “I’ve been talking to Latham Koler....”

Rod swung his pick with a vicious twist and unearthed a red cloud of Mercury oxide. His reaction boiled like the crimson dust as it mingled with the swirling sand in the tunnel. When he’d gotten control of himself he spoke flatly.

“A man just died here,” he said. “Don’t taint his death with a traitor’s name.”

“Latham Koler’s not a traitor!” the girl flashed. “At least he has enough influence to get some of us out of the mines.”

Rod eyed her angrily. The memory of the human torch ripped words from him.

“We’re humans! Remember? From Earth! There was a time when a human from Earth would prefer dying to licking a conqueror’s boots!”

Mona shrugged her shoulders. She swung a pick on a gryxon outcropping. “That may be,” she said briefly, “but we’re slaves now. And we die within a day or so of our twenty-fifth birthday. If Latham Koler can get Jerry out of the mines,” Mona indicated the youth by her side, “I’ll mention his name—I’ll do anything—if Jerry can be saved.”

Jerry patted her shoulder. “He’ll help us, I know,” he soothed.

Rod Harrow bent to wisp sandy ice from a blob of red oxide. He put the crimson dust into his pocket.

“You’ll be in the slave compartment tonight?” he asked.

The girl turned to her work. “There’s no place else except the sleeping cubicles. I suppose I’ll be there. When will you be twenty-five?” she asked abruptly.

“One month from today.”

“I don’t see why ...” Mona’s voice died away as the guards worked their way down the tunnel. They were herding the humans back to the slave compartment for the night.

Rod Harrow entered the compartment for the first time. He was one of the last on Earth to be captured and sent on the slave ship to Tetrarch IV. His eyes were narrow, waiting for the first sign of inevitable recognition.

He had divested himself of his tight, transparent space suit. Heated space suits were necessary on Tetrarch IV, except in the compartments assigned to human slaves. In them there was air and heat. The planet itself was bitterly cold. Its only atmosphere was inert Krypton which the tetrarchians breathe. Through this dead gas activated sand coursed in eternal swirls.

Slaves were pouring through the door in droves. There were no oldsters in this crowd. None over twenty-five. Earth’s two hundred year life span had been considerably reduced.

A hard-thewed, ice-eyed youngster recognized him first. Steel fingers closed on Rod’s wrist.

“Rod Harrow!” he whispered. “I’m Don Rickter. I thought you were holding out on Earth.”

Rod kept his eyes on a card game that had started. “I left our hideaway in the Rockies when I found out how I could help up here. There was no way of getting here except by the slave route.” He paused thoughtfully. “We haven’t been idle on Earth—the few of us that are left.”

“But, man!” Rickter was dubious. “We’re trapped here. Right now those devils are watching us. We can’t even talk, but that they know about it. Sometimes even before we say anything. I swear they can read our thoughts.”

“It’s not quite as bad as that. How about getting some of our old gang together for a game of cards?”

“Just as you say, Rod. But it won’t do any good to talk business.”

Rod grinned. “Remember the game we all played when we were kids?” He emphasized his remark with a quick gesture.

Rickter’s answering grin was sufficient response. “I remember,” he said.

“There’s a grey-eyed girl around here. Name’s Mona.”

“Oh, Mona Darlanan. She’s hipped on getting that adopted brother of hers out of the mines. The Lord knows why! He’s a cowardly little wretch.”

“Better keep her from kibitzing if you can. She might have played the same game ... and I don’t think she can be trusted.”

The first hand had hardly been dealt when Rod threw his cards down and called for a new deck. He emphasized his dissatisfaction by shaking his hand with index finger outstretched, middle finger and thumb conjoined. Then he clenched his fist and shook it at the intent players first with the thumb down and then with the thumb up. His fingers stretched heaven-ward, except for the index finger when he swore the deck they were using was too dirty.

Don Rickter looked up in mock disgust. The icy glint in his eyes deepened. Rod centered his displeasure on him. After a slight pause, Rickter argued back. His own gestures were just as aggressive. Soon all of them joined in. The chatter continued, hand after hand, but the real discussion remained in the deaf and dumb sign language—the game all of them had played on Earth before Earth succumbed to the tetrarchs.

“I let myself get caught,” Rod commenced, “because of a note smuggled through to me on a tetrarchian space ship.”

“Sounds like a trap.” Rickter was succinct. “We couldn’t get a message out from here.”

“I don’t think it came from here.” Rod was equally terse. “I think it came from the survivors of the Hunt.”

“What!” Rickter almost forgot to use his hands. “There can’t be any survivors.”

“But there are,” Rod insisted. “They’ve learned how to live on Tetrarch IV even when the oxygen in their space suits is exhausted.”

At this point a rustling was heard among the gathering kibitzers. The crowd was drawing back in sullen anger while a tall, black-robed, cadaverous personage forced his way through.

“I’m Latham Koler,” he announced, “I understand Rod Harrow is here.”

Rod pushed his chair back. Silence settled over the crowd. It was broken suddenly by a scuffle in the far corner of the compartment. A golden-haired girl struggled in the arms of a slave who tried vainly to clamp his hand over her mouth.

“He’s here all right.” Mona Darlanan’s disheveled hair fell over her shoulders. She pushed the slave from her and struck him sharply. Her clear voice shattered the quiet.

“He’s here. And he’s plotting rebellion. I just realized they’ve been talking to each other in sign language!”

The walls of the slave compartment seemed to glow with thousands of almost microscopic specks of violet light. A scant moment later the door to the compartment burst open and the guards entered. They marched with beautiful precision, calmly, impassively.

Rod watched them as he rose from his chair. He took quick note of the masks they wore to protect themselves from the air and then he launched himself head first.

His skull landed with a satisfying plunk in the middle of the first guard’s stomach. His reaching arms clasped the tetrarchian’s legs just below the knees and the tetrarchian landed on the floor—hard. He slipped the guard’s blaster from its holster on the way down, knocked the tetrarchian mask loose and rolled to meet the next attacker. His turn was just in time to miss a pair of boots—lead-heeled—that were jamming down on his head. As he twisted, Rod saw another boot. It was coming toward him in the full arc of a fast kick. Rod caught it and twisted. He was slightly surprised when the ankle turned a full three hundred and sixty degrees. The guard fell heavily.

He’d gotten to his feet, blaster in hand, when they rushed him. With a savage grin, Rod let go. It was good to put electronic slugs in the advancing guards. A small return payment for the slave who had glowed to his death! Rod wasn’t sure but what his eyes were playing him tricks. He swore the guard was still coming at him. The one with the hole in him! Only the unmasked tetrarch was inert on the floor.

He aimed carefully and let go again. The guard was still coming. The lights went out entirely. Rod blasted four times in quick succession, then jumped and twisted sidewise to the floor. As a feint it did him little good. The guards were up, on him—including the one with five holes in his carcass. Rod was held in a vise-like grip while they kicked the blaster out of his hand and zipped a space suit over his frame.

As he was hustled out of the compartment he heard Rickter’s voice. “I’m sorry, Rod. But I guess it’s useless—and I couldn’t have helped you. I’ll be twenty-five next month!”

“I’ll be twenty-five myself,” Rod yelled back. “We’ll have a swell birthday party.”

The last sound he heard was Mona’s hysterical laughter.

The heavy door closed softly and Rod found himself in the stinging sand of outside Tetrarch. But only for a moment. The guards took off their masks with obvious relief and guided him to a small building some fifty yards from the slave compartment.

He was thrust through a circular aperture and turned to see himself viewed by an elderly tetrarch. It spoke with the peculiar sibilance with which the tetrarchians handled human speech.

“You are a rassh yonge manss, Ross Harros. Howefser, there iss ssomething I musst ssay to you. With no one elsse of my rasce pressent.”

A door back of the tetrarch opened silently. Latham Koler slid noiselessly through the opening. Rod scowled into the quisling’s peering owl-eyes. It was an effort to resist the impulse to cover both of them with a left jab before crossing his right on the bony chin.

“I’m sorry our helmets keep me from spitting in your face,” he remarked.

The tetrarch motioned Koler forward.

“You are not as mature as I expected.” Koler’s voice rustled like his dark garments, “And your wits need more exercise. You’d be quarry for the Hunt at this moment, if I hadn’t interceded on your behalf.”

“Quarry?” Rod’s eyebrows raised.

“Yes. Every so often one of the hot-heads decides to escape. The tetrarchs love it. Sometimes, they deliberately give them the chance.”

He pointed to the oxygen cannisters attached to the back of Rod’s space suit. “The cylinders in our human space suits supply enough air to last for eight hours. When the air is exhausted it seems to be a natural reaction to rip the suit open.

“Imagine breathing this stuff!” Koler grasped a handful of the sand swirling about them. “That’s the climax of the Hunt. We—uh—they allow about an hour’s head start and then stalk the quarry. The idea is to catch him just as he rips his suit. And to get him to the operating chamber just before he dies.

“The tetrarchs are brilliant technicians, even if they are weak on theory. So I’ve helped them. We are anxious to find out why humans exposed to gryxon die on their twenty-fifth birthday. They think research on still-living humans will give them the answer.”

The tetrarch waved an arm. “He is a good sscientisst,” he commented.

Koler’s rustling voice paused while the owl-eyes continued to peer. “But that’s of minor interest. I’ve persuaded them to save you.”

“Why?”

“You have influence.” Latham Koler’s voice rustled while the tetrarch nodded approvingly. “We are well aware you were President of the Terran Science Association. And that you served in the terran army with distinction in the fruitless fight against the tetrarchs. And we know that you have thousands of devoted followers.”

Koler paused. He peered with bloodshot eyes to see if his remarks were taking effect. “The tetrarchs are anxious to expand their conquests. They need those that are spending their time guarding the humans now. If you will throw in with us—the rest will follow....”

“As slaves! With time hanging a glowing torch over our heads! Try another tack, Koler.”

The bitter anguish in Rod’s voice tightened the skin on the traitor’s cadaverous skull. Unconsciously, he stepped back before Rod’s overwhelming fury.

“Some day we’ll rid ourselves of the tetrarchs. The time will come when Earth again will be free. When it comes, Koler, kill yourself. At least you’ll have your choice of the various kinds of death.”

Koler peered doubtfully at the tetrarch who nodded and walked to the aperture. A guard stood at attention.

“Bring the sslave, Mona Darlanan,” the tetrarch commanded.

“Bring the slave, Mona Darlanan!”

When she entered Rod faced her impassively. “You’ve turned traitor too, I see.”

The girl faced him. She looked remote and submissive, but somehow untouched. Her hand sought unconsciously to brush back the heavy golden hair under the confines of her helmet.

“I have a brother,” she said simply, “the baby of our family. We’re all that’s left. My parents adopted him to look after him. I’ve taken over.”

“Sslave Darlanan,” the tetrarch interrupted, “we wissh you to convinsce Ross Harros of the sstupidity of further resisstansce.”

“If you do,” Koler’s voice rustled, “perhaps Jerry—your brother—can be put to work in the compartment instead of the mines.”

Mona turned her breath-taking beauty on Rod. Her eyes glowed with passionate conviction. “Don’t you see,” she said softly, “we only make things worse by resisting? The tetrarchs want more slaves. Let them get them—from other planets—other galaxies. If we help them perhaps they will send us back to Earth. You’ve got to understand.”

Before her his reason was powerless. Unconsciously, his arms encircled her waist. He couldn’t bring himself to fight her.

She dropped her head on his chest. Then she raised her eyes, “You will help—with you and Latham Koler in the confidence of the tetrarchs....”

The spell was destroyed. Rod stiffened. “Not Koler!” He grasped her by the wrists and thrust her away. “Koler!” His voice deepened in contempt.

“We knew him on Earth before these slave-makers lulled us into a false sense of security with their friendship and their gadgets. Koler never amounted to anything then. He was always on the fringe of things. Here, he’s venting his spite on the few of us that are left—and he’s gotten that opportunity by toadying to these lousy, so-called powers.”

“No sso fasst,” the tetrarch put out a restraining arm. “We are simply following the desstiny by ensslaving you. Our rasce iss to be the overlords of all the galassies. You can have a sshare if you wissh.”

“I can see your point though,” Rod ignored the tetrarch to face Mona, “but don’t you see there are some things more important than your brother—that in spite of him—you can’t turn traitor?

“Do you remember, Mona, how the tetrarchs first came to Earth—how friendly they were and how they loaded us with those amazing labor-eliminating gadgets? Press a button and everything was done—power for our gyros, heat for our buildings, force for our machines—anything and everything. With all our work eliminated we lost our watchfulness. They never let us know what powered the gadgets—we never knew about gryxon power until the tetrarchs took over.

“We found out about gryxon then—in the mines. Once it’s sheathed by radium and the radium sheathed with lead—it’s harmless. But—when human life is used to handle the raw ore—!”

The vibrant timbre of Rod’s voice seemed to die away to death’s whisper, “Well, we all expect to die when we’re twenty-five ... and time’s passing. Try weighing what you might loosely call the human race against one brother!

“And as for you—” Rod stepped forward quickly and slammed his fist against the air tank attached to Koler’s space suit. He wrenched it loose and threw it away. Not waiting to see the result, he stepped out of the aperture and gave the guard the same treatment.

He raced through the city, wondering why he was not pursued. Then it came to him. There would be a Hunt.

As he ran across rocky ground he wondered how Koler was taking to a silica diet.

His course was hazily sketched in his mind. The smuggled note that had started him from Earth had not been too specific. It couldn’t have been. There was too much chance of its being intercepted. But he had a good working knowledge of Tetrarch’s surface. The problem was to get to the Survivors—those who had somehow escaped the gryxon mines and escaped the hunting tetrarchians—and in getting to them he had to throw his pursuers off the trail. There was a test in this, he was sure. He thought he had certain clues to that.

Why, for instance, did a tetrarch with a slug in him keep on fighting? Why did the unearthly glow precede the coming of the guards? He felt he ought to be glad about that eerie flash. It was a warning—something like a rattlesnake’s.