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Tarrano the Conqueror

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Title: Tarrano the Conqueror

Author: Ray Cummings

 
Release date: May 29, 2007 [eBook #21638]

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/21638

Credits: Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online
 Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TARRANO THE CONQUEROR ***

Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

 TARRANO

 THE CONQUEROR

 BY RAY CUMMINGS

COPYRIGHT, 1930, BY
A. C. McCLURG & CO.
CHICAGO

IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, THE BRITISH EMPIRE AND THE PAN AMERICAN
UNION.

Printed in the United States of America

To Hugo Gernsback, scientist, author and publisher, whose constant
efforts in behalf of scientific fiction have contributed so largely
to its present popularity, this tale is gratefully dedicated.

FOREWORD

_In "Tarrano the Conqueror" is presented a tale of the year 2430 A.D.--a
time somewhat farther beyond our present-day era than we are beyond
Columbus' discovery of America. My desire has been to create for you the
impression that you have suddenly been plunged forward into that
time--to give you the feeling Columbus might have had could he have read
a novel of our present-day life.

To this end I have conceived myself a writer of that future time,
addressing his contemporary public. You are to imagine yourself reading
a present day translation of my original text--a translation so free
that a thousand little colloquialisms will have crept into it that could
not possibly have their counterparts in the year 2430.

Apart from the text, you will occasionally find brief explanatory
footnotes. Conceive them as having been put there by the translator.

If you find parts of this tale unusual or bizarre, please remember that
we are living now in a comparatively ignorant day. The tale is not
intended to be fantastic or full of new and strange ideas. I have used
nothing but those developments of our present-day civilization to which
we are all looking forward as logical probabilities--woven them into a
picture of what life in America very probably will be five hundred years
from now. To that extent, the tale itself is intended to be only a love
story of adventure and romance--written, not for you, but for that
future audience._

RAY CUMMINGS.

CONTENTS

 I. The New Murders

 II. Warning

 III. Spy in the House

 IV. To the North Pole

 V. Outlawed Flight

 VI. Man of Destiny

 VII. Prisoners

 VIII. Unknown Friend

 IX. Paralyzed!

 X. Georg Escapes

 XI. Recaptured

 XII. Tara

 XIII. Love--and Hate

 XIV. Defying Worlds

 XV. Escape

 XVI. Playground of Venus

 XVII. Violet Beam of Death

 XVIII. Passing of a Friend

 XIX. Waters of Eternal Peace

 XX. Unseen Menace

 XXI. Love, Music--and a Warning

 XXII. Revolution!

 XXIII. First Retreat

 XXIV. Attack on the Palace

 XXV. Immortal Terror

 XXVI. Black Cloud of Death

 XXVII. Tarrano The Man

 XXVIII. Thing in the Forest

 XXIX. A Woman's Scream

 XXX. The Monster

 XXXI. Industriana

 XXXII. Departure

 XXXIII. First Assault

 XXXIV. Invisible Assailants

 XXXV. Attack on the Power House

 XXXVI. City of Ice Besieged

 XXXVII. Battle

TARRANO THE CONQUEROR

CHAPTER I

_The New Murders_

I was standing fairly close to the President of the Anglo-Saxon Republic
when the first of the new murders was committed. The President fell
almost at my feet. I was quite certain then that the Venus man at my
elbow was the murderer. I don't know why, call it intuition if you will.
The Venus man did not make a move; he merely stood beside me in the
press of the throng, seemingly as absorbed as all of us in what the
President was saying.

It was late afternoon. The sun was setting behind the cliffs across the
river. There were perhaps a hundred and fifty thousand people within
sight of the President, listening raptly to his words. It was at Park
Sixty, and I was standing on the Tenth Level.[1] The crowd packed all
twelve of the levels; the park was black with people. The President
stood on a balcony of the park tower. He was no more than a few hundred
feet above me, well within direct earshot. Around him on all sides were
the electric megaphones which carried his voice to all parts of the
audience. Behind me, a thousand feet overhead, the main aerials were
scattering it throughout the city, I suppose five million people were
listening to the voice of the President at that moment. He had just said
that we must remain friendly with Venus; that in our enlightened age
controversies were inevitable, but that they should be settled with
sober thought--around the council table. This talk of war was
ridiculous. He was denouncing the public news-broadcasters; moulders of
public opinion, who every day--every hour--must offer a new sensation to
their millions of subscribers.

[Footnote 1: New York City, about where Yonkers now stands.]

He had reached this point when without warning his body pitched forward.
The balcony rail caught it; and it hung there inert. The slanting rays
of the sun fell full upon the ruffled white shirt; white, but turning
pink, then red, with the crimson stain welling out from beneath.

For an instant the crowd was stunned into silence. Then a murmur arose,
and swelled into shouts of horror. A surge of people swept me forward. I
could not see clearly what was happening on the balcony. The form of the
murdered President was hanging there against the rail; a score of
government officials were rushing toward it; but the body, toppling over
the low support, came hurtling downward into the crowd, quite near me;
but I could not reach it--the throng was too dense.

The shouts everywhere were deafening. I was shoved along the Tenth Level
by the press of people coming up the stairway. Shouts, excited
questions; the wail of children almost trampled under foot; the screams
of women. And over it all, the electrically magnified voice of the
traffic director-general in the peak of the main tower roaring his
orders to the crowd.

It was a panic until the traffic-directors descended upon us. We were
pushed up on the moving sidewalks. North or south, whichever direction
came handiest, we were herded upon the sidewalks and whirled away. With
a hundred other spectators near me I was shoved to a sidewalk moving
south along the Tenth Level. It was going some four miles an hour. But
they would not let me stay there. From behind, the crowd was shoving;
and from one parallel strip of movi

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