and how that migration took place are data lost in the mists of time. However it may have happened, the fact remains that these people were human. As someone observed in one of the reports written up by one of the officers: “They could pass for Indians, except their skins are of a decidedly redder hue.”
* * * *
The race of the Great Nobles held their conquered subjects in check by the exercise of two powerful forces: religion and physical power of arms. Like the feudal organizations of Medieval Europe, the Nobles had the power of life and death over their subjects, and to a much greater extent than the European nobles had. Each family lived on an allotted parcel of land and did a given job. Travel was restricted to a radius of a few miles. There was no money; there was no necessity for it, since the government of the Great Nobles took all produce and portioned it out again according to need. It was communism on a vast and—incomprehensible as it may seem to the modern mind—workable scale. Their minds were as different from ours as their bodies were similar; the concept “freedom” would have been totally incomprehensible to them.
They were sun-worshipers, and the Greatest Noble was the Child of the Sun, a godling subordinate only to the Sun Himself. Directly under him were the lesser Great Nobles, also Children of the Sun, but to a lesser extent. They exercised absolute power over the conquered peoples, but even they had no concept of freedom, since they were as tied to the people as the people were tied to them. It was a benevolent dictatorship of a kind never seen before or since.
At the periphery of the Empire of the Sun-Child lived still unconquered savage tribes, which the Imperial forces were in the process of slowly taking over. During the centuries, tribe after tribe had fallen before the brilliant leadership of the Great Nobles and the territory of the Empire had slowly expanded until, at the time the invading Earthmen came, it covered almost as much territory as had the Roman Empire at its peak.
The Imperial Army, consisting of upwards of fifty thousand troops, was extremely mobile in spite of the handicap of having no form of transportation except their own legs. They had no cavalry; the only beast of burden known to them—the flame-beasts—were too small to carry more than a hundred pounds, in spite of their endurance. But the wide, smooth roads that ran the length and breadth of the Empire enabled a marching army to make good time, and messages carried by runners in relays could traverse the Empire in a matter of days, not weeks.
And into this tight-knit, well-organized, powerful barbaric world marched Commander Frank with less than two hundred men and thirty carriers.
VI
It didn’t take long for the men to begin to chafe under the constant strain of moving through treacherous and unfamiliar territory. And the first signs of chafing made themselves apparent beneath their armor.
Even the best designed armor cannot be built to be worn for an unlimited length of time, and, at first, the men could see no reason for the order. They soon found out.
One evening, after camp had been made, one young officer decided that he had spent his last night sleeping in full armor. It was bad enough to have to march in it, but sleeping in it was too much. He took it off and stretched, enjoying the freedom from the heavy steel. His tent was a long way from the center of camp, where a small fire flickered, and the soft light from the planet’s single moon filtered only dimly through the jungle foliage overhead. He didn’t think anyone would see him from the commander’s tent.
The commander’s orders had been direct and to the point: “You will wear your armor at all times; you will march in it, you will eat in it, you will sleep in it. During such times as it is necessary to remove a part of it, the man doing so will make sure that he is surrounded by at least two of his companions in full armor. There will be no exceptions to this rule!”
The lieutenant had decided to make himself an exception.
He turned to step into his tent when a voice came out of the nearby darkness.
“Hadn’t you better get your steel plates back on before the commander sees you?”
The young officer turned quickly to see who had spoken. It was another of the junior officers.
“Mind your own business,” snapped the lieutenant.
The other grinned sardonically. “And if I don’t?”
There had been bad blood between these two for a long time; it was an enmity that went back to a time even before the expedition had begun. The two men stood there for a long moment, the light from the distant fire flickering uncertainly against their bodies.
The young officer who had removed his armor had not been foolish enough to remove his weapons too; no sane man did that in hostile territory. His hand went to the haft of the blade at his side.
“If you say a single word—”
Instinctively, the other dropped his hand to his own sword.
“Stop! Both of you!”
And stop they did; no one could mistake the crackling authority in that voice. The commander, unseen in the moving, dim light, had been circling the periphery of the camp, to make sure that all was well. He strode toward the two younger men, who stood silently, shocked into immobility. The commander’s sword was already in his hand.
“I’ll spit the first man that draws a blade,” he snapped.
His keen eyes took in the situation at a glance.
“Lieutenant, what are you doing out of armor?”
“It was hot, sir, and I—”
“Shut up!” The commander’s eyes were dangerous. “An asinine statement like that isn’t even worth listening to! Get that armor back on! Move!”
He was standing approximately between the two men, who had been four or five yards apart. When the cowed young officer took a step or two back toward his tent, the commander turned toward the other officer. “And as for you, if—”
He was cut off by the yell of the unarmored man, followed by the sound of his blade singing from its sheath.
The commander leaped backwards and spun, his own sword at the ready, his body settling into a swordsman’s crouch.
But the young officer was not drawing against his superior. He was hacking at something ropy and writhing that squirmed on the ground as the lieutenant’s blade bit into it. Within seconds, the serpentine thing gave a convulsive shudder and died.
The lieutenant stepped back clumsily, his eyes glazing in the flickering light. “Dropped from th’ tree,” he said thickly. “Bit me.”
His hand moved to a dark spot on his chest, but it never reached its goal. The lieutenant collapsed, crumpling to the ground.
The commander walked over, slammed the heel of his heavy boot hard down on the head of the snaky thing, crushing it. Then he returned his blade to its sheath, knelt down by the young man, and turned him over on his face.
The commander’s own face was grim.
By this time, some of the nearby men, attracted by the yell, had come running. They came to a stop as they saw the tableau before them.
The commander, kneeling beside the corpse, looked up at them. With one hand, he gestured at the body. “Let this be a lesson to all of you,” he said in a tight voice. “This man died because he took off his armor. That”—he pointed at the butchered reptile—“thing is full of as deadly a poison as you’ll ever see, and it can move like lightning. But it can’t bite through steel!
“Look well at this man and tell the others what you saw. I don’t want to lose another man in this idiotic fashion.”
He stood up and gestured.
“Bury him.”
VII
They found, as they penetrated deeper into the savage-infested hinterlands of the Empire of the Great Nobles, that the armor fended off more than just snakes. Hardly a day passed but one or more of the