A Brand New World by Ray Cummings

In the confusion I found myself pushed a considerable distance, separated from all our party. I could not see any of them; with the scrambling throng, the changing scene I could not at first determine where we had been sitting. Then I saw the place; it was empty. I strove to get there, fighting my way. The amphitheater was fast emptying. The official voice was still bellowing. Guards were leaping away, perhaps rushing to the grotto. In the distance across the city a siren was sounding -- a long electrical scream.

I thought, over near the gate through which a press of people were surging, that I saw father. I forced my way in that direction; went through the gate. They ought to be waiting for me here. But they were not.

A cross-street ran down at an angle here into the forest vegetation -- a narrow, shaky-looking causeway of fiber. It was unlighted, dark with straggling moonlight -- a purple, ghostly-looking street. It seemed at the moment empty of people -- the throng surged past it, keeping to the upper level.

From behind me as I stood there a dark-cloaked figure darted past me and plunged down it. Dan! It was as tall as he; seemed moving with our earthly heavy tread. I started down after it; I would have shouted, but the words choked me. It was not Dan -- not anyone of earth, for all its solid gait! It passed through a shaft of moonlight; from the cloak, I saw a white arm hanging. Waving.

This was a man, carrying some one; I caught a glimpse of the bulk of the other body he was holding in his arms, under his cloak. He disappeared down into the purple darkness. Memory of the little tug I had felt in my fingers as Zetta's hair was withdrawn sprang to me now. Was that Zetta under that cloak? Her arm I had seen waving from beneath it?

With the Essen automatic in my hand, I found myself plunging, half falling, down the flimsy street. Beneath the strain of my incautious descent, it bent and crackled. Houses like nests were set here in the dark, pod-laden foliage. They sagged with me as I passed. A woman came to the window of one of them and shouted.

I reached the ground. A vaulted, tunnel-like street was cut through the jungle. Ahead of me, a hundred yards or so, the moonlight showed clear where the jungle ended and the open country began. I thought I saw the hooded figure hurrying out there. I ran -- I wondered if I would get a chance to shoot. If that were Zetta he was carrying I would not dare.

I think now I have never been, before or since, so incautious. I came with a rush out of the dark depths of the forest, into an open moonlit area. A red glow hovered like a circular curtain near at hand. Within a dozen steps of me, a small railed platform lay upon the ground. Men were on it. Brauns! A black-hooded figure was standing holding Zetta! Zetta, with fear sweeping her face as she saw me appear.

I must have stood for an instant in confusion. I remember casting off the impediment of my cloak. A dozen men came leaping at me. I fired the Essen, but hit no one. It was knocked from my hand as one of the leaping bodies struck me.

They closed in on me. I turned and swung at them. Flimsy things! My dirk tore into the shoulder of one. He went down with a scream. The dirk had buried, hilt and all; I let it go. I wrenched an arm loose from around my neck; hit another man full in the face. Two others I knocked aside with a sweep of my arm. Another leaped astride my back, but I heaved him off as though he were a child clinging there. They must have been without weapons. They clung, bit and tore at me -- a ring of them struggling to hold me.

I burst through them; but, like birds, they were at me again. One I lifted bodily and hurled a dozen feet. Another I caught by his legs, whirling him, a thirty-pound bludgeon to knock the others away. I had almost reached Zetta. I shouted to her -- I do not know what. She answered; but it was a scream of warning. I turned too late. Some one from behind crashed a block of metal stone on my head. I went down into soundless, empty darkness.

When I recovered consciousness I was lying on the platform. It was in mid-air; I could feel it sway, feel the rush of the wind past me on that thirty-foot square, railed platform. Some fifteen men crowded near its center, where in a small pit, its anti-gravity, lifting mechanism was installed. It was this pit -- a white glow there -- which first I saw when I opened my eyes. The glow shone upward upon the faces and figures of the seated men. Brauns. I sat up unsteadily. One of my captors was beside me. He murmured an unintelligible command; but when he saw I only intended to sit up, he relaxed.

The platform was sailing through the purple moonlight. I was too far from the rail to see over it to the ground, but in the distance I could make out a line of the metal mountains -- naked crags glistening under the stars.

From behind a platform a yellow fire streamed out, like a vessel's wake; we were being propelled forward by the impulse of its thrust against the air. Vertical and horizontal rudders were back there. In front also, and to the sides, were small lateral wing-rudders.

A gentle hand touched my shoulder. Zetta was seated beside me. Unharmed, her face lighting with relief that I, too, seemed uninjured. My head was roaring from the blow; blood, now drying, matted my hair. But it seemed only a scalp wound.

The man guarding us called to his fellows; two of them came and looked me over, and then went back. The guard moved to seat himself between us and the rail. Zetta and I were left free to talk. She had been seated beside me in the Stadium; when the panic began she had turned to see our two insect guards vanishing under a tiny red beam.