VII
I was not killed, as momentarily I had feared, but was flung into a cell. You might call it that—a small cave-like recess off one of the smaller corridors. It seemed a level below the apartment in which Tara had been. My captors flung me into it, shoved a heavy stone into the door-slit, barred the stone with a metal fastening and withdrew.
More than ever now, the light inherent to the metallic rock-masses of subterranean Zura was apparent—a soft luminous glow. Left alone, I looked around me. It was somewhat warmer in here. The air was fresh enough. I saw that it was seeping in through many little rifts, an inch or two in width—tiny fissures in the honeycombed walls. There was a couch here, of white skins. I threw myself on it with the sudden realization that I was exhausted, and hungry and thirsty. The latter two needs I could not supply—but presently I had drifted into sleep.
I was awakened by the realization that the door-slab was being drawn aside. It was Zogg, Tara's guard who had taken Alan and the others away. He came in with food and water—food that was a fatty, uncooked animal flesh. I drank the water greedily—water different in taste from anything I had had on earth, but it was palatable. The blubbery animal-flesh at first was nauseous, but my hunger made me manage it. I was stiff with chill, but the food warmed me.
"Thanks," I said.
Zogg had been standing by the door, watching me impassively. I added: "Those friends of mine—what did you do with them? Kill them?"
"Near here. No hurt them," he said. Was that irony on his weird, grimacing face? A string of little ornaments hung on his chest now, dangling from his spindly neck. He gestured to them proudly. He was a dignitary here—one of Tara's leaders, I surmised. Afterward I learned that for years, in fact, he had been Simpson's lieutenant—forcing Simpson's commands upon the primitive little people, with what autocratic violence I could only guess. A belt of sinew was around his waist, with crude weapons dangling from it.
His grimace widened. He swept me with a sidelong glance and again I had the feeling that this Zurian was far more intelligent than his weird, to me fantastic, aspect would suggest. His little slit eyes stared at me with a queer sort of cunning, and his grimacing mouth more than ever seemed ironical. It sent a vague shudder through me so that involuntarily I tensed as he came suddenly toward me.
"Tara send me for you," he said. "She wants see you now."