The door of the flier was torn open like a paper thing, and a black giant fully as huge and burly as Alkebar himself hustled the adventurers roughly out into the open.
The pock-marked face of Loo, the Martian name for their nearer moon, was in the sky, and by its light they could see hundreds of Space Men crowding about them. Plainly this Martian colony was fairly well peopled, for there were many more than the five hundred who captured them. The attitude of the onlookers was one of casual curiosity. For the moment at least they were not showing the more brutal side of their characters.
The fugitives were given but a moment to look about, while their jailer apparently carried on a silent conversation with one of his lieutenants.
They saw the sandy floor of the huge rectangular enclosure dotted with strange mounds which must have been some kind of shelter, the encircling walls crowned by square towers at regular intervals. Those walls were amber-colored in the moonlight, and cast dense shadows that shifted visibly as Loo raced in its meteoric course toward the east. Here and there before the mounds huge vague shapes squatted. At the center of the enclosure a tall spire of silvery girders rose, supporting at its summit a cone of a dull black substance. It looked like the creation of either Earthmen or Martians.
Beyond the wall the rounded summits of desert hills, over which in ages past, a restless ocean had poured and flowed, were visible. In spite of their position the two young Earthians could not help but marvel at the silent grandeur of this exotic scenery. A light though chilly desert wind blew refreshingly against their faces.
The black giant had kept a hand on each of his prisoners during his brief conference, and now, none too gently, he guided them to the entrance of one of the mound dwellings. The Space Man ushered his charges into a corridor, and then, fumbling with a curious lock he opened a heavy door and shoved them into the dim-lit room beyond. With a rattling clink the great stone panel closed behind them.
A lump of self-luminous rock set in the stone ceiling gave a faint illumination to the bare interior. There was no furniture—only the sand-covered floor and rough rocky walls. On the floor a Space Man, larger and more magnificently-muscled by far than any they had yet seen, sprawled. He was either unconscious or dead; they could not tell which. There were hideous welts and gashes and half-healed scars all over his body. The gashes were caked with a viscid purplish substance.
With the coming of the sudden Martian dawn which flashed through a narrow embrasure high in the wall, the jailer returned. His first act was to thrust the needle of what appeared to be a form of hypodermic syringe into the arm of the unconscious Space Man. Then he led his Earthian captives out into the open.
Neither Jan nor Austin were surprised when they saw the Selba squatting near the base of the spire. Several Space Men, directed by the slave Koo Faya, moved about the ship, working the fueling pump.
Walking down the gangplank which led up to the entrance of the vessel was Alkebar, and beside him, Hekalu himself. The latter sauntered leisurely toward his captives, and the Chieftain moved off toward a group of Space Men standing some distance away.