He was carrying a tool that looked much like a common garden-hoe, and walked toward me with that stiff, rigid movement that marked the white-robed slaves. He came closer, I glanced at his face, then reeled back against the side of the cell. For it was Talerri!
It was the Italian I had killed eight days before, garbed as a slave and walking with the same inhuman, puppetlike motion that all these strange servants used. He came closer toward me, so that I could see his staring eyes, then, with an angular movement, he turned aside and passed from view along the building's side.
For hours I puzzled over it, rejecting with a certain panic fear the one explanation that came to mind. I knew that I had killed the Italian that night, for my sword had pierced clean through his heart. Yet here he was, working as a slave for the Kanlars. And what of the other slaves, then, these rigid, staring-eyed figures? Were they too—?
For hours I speculated on the thing, but could find no rational explanation for it, nor would the Norseman enlighten me. Finally I gave it up as a mystery beyond me, and strove to banish it from my mind.
Two more days dragged out, days that were like weeks to me. I felt that I must soon go mad, if I were longer imprisoned. And then, sharply ending the monotony of dreary hours, there came a summons, a summons that in the end proved to be a call to an adventure utterly undreamed of by Lantin or myself.
CHAPTER 10
THE TEMPLE OF THE RAIDER
All that day I had sensed a tense activity outside, and many times there was the tramp of feet down the corridor outside our cell, as companies of the guards came and went. As sunset came, I stood beside the transparent wall and watched its brilliant colors fade from the sky.
Overhead, now, the aircraft of the Kanlars were flickering continuously past, all heading toward the giant cylinder that stood at the city's center, and when I scrambled up a little higher against the wall, to get a glimpse of the street, I saw that that street was crowded with masses of the armored guards and the staring-eyed slaves, all pressing on toward the same building.