Sky Pirates of Callisto

Ulthar of Zanadar sneered.

“What large words and noble sentiments for so small a boy-cub! Well, lad, you have me dead to rights, if it does you any good to know it. I would gladly lie-cheat-connive―or betray anyone, even myself, in order to stay alive and escape from my captivity.”

“You could have forsworn your allegiance to Prince Thuton, you know,” said Tomar. “You could have put your wits and courage, your knowledge and resourcefulness to the service of Shondakor and thus have risen high in her councils. Instead, you cling to a doomed way of life. For Zanadar will fall, you know.”

Ulthar crooked an interrogative eyebrow.

“Hah! What, cub, you who prate of honor and chivalry, would urge me to betray my own people?”

“Yes, when they are wrong and we are right. For too long have the merciless Sky Pirates lived by looting and terrorizing the other civilizations of Thanator. It is no betrayal to realize an error and correct it, choosing the way of right over the way of evil and tyranny.”

Something in the boy’s clear, fearless tones, something in his steady, contemptuous eyes, something in his expression, perhaps scorn, touched Ulthar to the quick. The mockery left his features; his face went hard and ugly, his eyes cold and vicious.

“Enough fine words for now! You were right about one other thing, too. I am going to cut your throat, even as you guessed. And I think I’ll do it now, if only to stop your sermon.”

The boy regarded him unflinchingly.

“Do you mind if I take the blow standing on my feet and looking you in the face, rather than lying here like a trapped beast?” he asked contemptuously.

“Just as you like.”

The boy got up, slowly, while Ulthar backed off toward the windows, watching him carefully. Then Tomar turned to face him and Ulthar closed in with the knife.

At that precise moment three things happened almost simultaneously.

First, the deck jolted under their feet―for at that moment Lukor had fired the catapult, sending the great steel arrow crunching into the ice peak, bringing the hurtling Jalathadar to a sudden halt.

The impact staggered the Zanadarian. He was thrust off balance, and his arms went out to the nearest stanchion to steady himself, and in that involuntary gesture his fingers loosened their hold on the dagger and it went flying.

Tomar staggered and almost fell himself, but steadied himself by grabbing hold of a wall bracket.

Regaining his balance with a sulphurous curse, Ulthar snatched the boy’s rapier from his girdle and strode toward him, lamplight gleaming off the length of naked steel. Young Tomar watched the stealthy advance of the treacherous assassin. He knew he had not the slightest chance of opposing his young strength against the older man. Ulthar was taller, burlier, heavier than he―and was a master-swordsman. But the boy did not fancy the notion of standing supinely, waiting for his death blow. The blood of a thousand nobly born warrior ancestors clamored within him at that moment―bold men and gallant women who had stood and fought against overwhelming odds, rather than yield like slaves to the death blow.

So he snatched up the oil-lamp, still brightly burning in the wall bracket where Ulthar had set it, and threw it.

Startled, Ulthar raised his blade to knock the burning lamp aside. Instead, the thin glass of the lamp chimney shattered against the steel, drenching the Zanadarian from head to foot with black oil.

Burning black oil!

Within an instant, Ulthar was wrapped in flames. Uttering one great, horrible cry of surprise and rage and terror and pain, the flame-wrapped figure stumbled backward, flailing at burning body with burning hands-tripped over the window seat-hurled through the great bank of windows―and fell like a blazing meteor down to a sudden death on the frozen plains far below.

So perished Ulthar of Zanadar. With all the cruel cunning and treacherous ingenuity of which his cold, powerful intellect had been capable, he had labored mightily to destroy the Jalathadar and to frustrate it in its quest.

That he had ultimately failed was as much due to the quick thinking and steady nerves of a brave young boy as it was to the trickery of fate.

It was an hour or so later. The wind had fallen, and although the air was bitterly cold, the skies were clearing and the great, many-colored moons of Jupiter shone down on a scene of furious labor. They had seen many strange sights, those moons, in the innumerable aeons of time since their creation, but never one so bizarre as this.

Lashed securely to the utmost pinnacle of an ice mountain near the north pole of Callisto, a fantastic flying galleon hung aloft. Men wrapped in thick cloaks were cutting it free, chopping loose the great barbed arrow of steel that held it fast to the pinnacle, while other men labored mightily at repairing the damage to their vessel.