<h2>CHAPTER V</h2>
<h2><i>The Torture Chamber</i></h2>
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<p>wiftly Dex was carried down the long ramp to the ground floor, the
arms of his captors gripping him with painful tightness. Heading the
procession was the immensely tall, gangling Rogan leader, clutching
Greca by the wrist and dragging her indifferently along to be his
mouthpiece.</p>
<p>They did not stop at the street level; they continued on down another
ramp, around a bend, descending an even steeper incline toward the
bowels of Jupiter. Their descent ended at last before a huge metal
barrier which, at a signal from the leader, drew smoothly up into the
ceiling to disclose a gigantic, red-lit chamber underlying the
foundations of the building.</p>
<p>In fear and awe, Dex gazed around that huge room.</p>
<p>It resembled in part a nightmare rearrangement of such a laboratory as
might be found on Earth; and in part a torture chamber such as the
most ferocious of savages might have devised had they been
scientifically equipped to add contrivances of supercivilization to
the furthering of their primitive lust for cruelty.</p>
<p>There were great benches—head-high to the Earthman—to accommodate
the height of the Rogan workmen. There were numberless metal
instruments, and glass coils, and enormous retorts; and in one corner
an orange colored flame burnt steadily on a naked metal plate, seeming
to have no fuel or other source of being.</p>
<p>There was a long rack of cruelly pointed and twisted instruments.
Under this was a row of long, delicate pincers, with coils on the
handles to indicate that they might be heated to fiendish precision of
temperatures. There were gleaming metal racks with calibrated
slide-rods and spring dials to denote just what pull was being exerted
on whatever unhappy creature might be stretched taut on them. There
were tiny cones of metal whose warped, baked appearance testified that
they were little portable furnaces that could be placed on any desired
portion of the anatomy, to slowly bake the selected disk of flesh
beneath them.</p>
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<p>ex shuddered; and a low moan came from Greca, whose clear blue eyes
had rested on the contents of this vast room before in her capacity as
hostage and interpreter for the inhuman Rogans.</p>
<p>And now another sense of Dex's began to register perception on his
brain.</p>
<p>A peculiar odor came to his nostrils. It was a musky, fetid odor, like
that to be smelled in an animal cage; but it was sharper, more acrid
than anything he had ever smelled on Earth. It smelled—ah, he had
it!—<i>reptilian</i>. As though somewhere nearby a dozen titanic serpents
were coiled ready to spring!</p>
<p>Looking about, Dex saw a six-foot square door of bars in one wall of
the laboratory—like the barred entrance to a prison cell. It was from
the interstices of this door that the odor seemed to emanate; but he
had no chance to make sure, for now the Rogan leader approached him.</p>
<p>"I will first show you," he said, through his mouthpiece, Greca, "what
happens to those who oppose our orders. We have a slave who tried to
run away into the surrounding jungles three suns ago...."</p>
<p>A man was dragged into the chamber. He was slightly taller and more
stockily muscled than an Earthman might be; but otherwise, in facial
conformation and general appearance, he might have come here straight
from New York City. Dex felt a great pang of sympathy for him. He was
so plainly one of humankind, despite the fact that he had been born on
a sphere four hundred million miles from Dex's.</p>
<p>The fellow was paralyzed with horror. His eyes, wide and glazed,
darted about the torture room like those of a trapped animal. And yet
he made no move to break away from the clutch of the two Rogans who
held him. He knew he was helpless, that wild-eyed glance told Dex.
Knew it so thoroughly that not even his wildest terror could inspire
him to try to make a break for freedom, or strike back at the
implacable Rogan will.</p>
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<p>t a nod from the leader, the man was stripped to the waist. Here Dex
started in amazement. The man's broad chest was seamed and
crisscrossed by literally hundreds of tiny lateral scars, some long
healed, and some fresh incisions.</p>
<p>He was dragged to a metal plate set upright in the wall, and secured
to it by straps of metal. Evidently the miserable being knew what this
portended, for he began to scream—a monotonous, high-pitched shriek
that didn't stop till he was out of breath.</p>
<p>The Rogan leader stared at him icily, then depressed a small lever set
in the wall beside him. The plate against which the captive was bound
began to shine softly with a blue light. The slave twisted in his
bonds, screaming again. Rhythmic shudders jerked at his limbs. His
lips turned greenish white. The shudders grew more pronounced till it
seemed as though he were afflicted with a sort of horrible St. Vitus
dance. Then the tall Rogan pulled back the lever. The slave hung away
from his supporting shackles, limp and unconscious.</p>
<p>Dex moistened his lips. An electric shock? No, it was something more
terrible than that. Some other manifestation of the magnetic power the
Rogans had harnessed—a current, perhaps, that depolarized partly the
atoms of the body structure? He could only guess. But the convulsed
face of the unfortunate victim showed that the torment, whatever it
was, was devilish to the last degree!</p>
<p>"That will be the next to the last fate reserved for you," the Rogan
informed Dex, through Greca. "Death follows soon after that—but not
too soon for you to see and feel what waits for you behind the barred
door!" And he nodded toward the cage-entrance affair, from which came
the musky, reptilian stench.</p>
<p>"Now that you have seen something of what will happen to you if you
refuse to tell us what we want to know, we shall proceed," said the
leader.</p>
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<p>e pointed toward one of the gargantuan work benches, and two of the
Rogans slid down from it a contrivance that looked familiar to Dex. An
instant's scrutiny showed him why it was familiar: it was a partly
dismantled atomic motor.</p>
<p>In spite of the ordeal that faced him, Dex felt a thrill of elation
as he looked at the motor. In its scattered state, it told a mute
story: a story of long and intensive study by the Rogans, which had
yielded them no results! Only too obviously, the intricate secret of
atomic power had not let itself be solved.</p>
<p>On the heels of the elation that filled his heart, came a sickening
realization of his dilemma. He could not have told the Rogans what
they wanted to know even if he had wished to! He himself didn't know
the principles of the atomic engine. As Brand had remarked, he was no
space navigator; he was simply a prosaic lieutenant, competent only at
fighting, not at all versed in science.</p>
<p>He knew, though, that it would do no good to assert his ignorance to
the Rogans. They simply wouldn't believe him.</p>
<p>"You will rebuild this engine for us," ordered the tall leader,
"showing us the purpose of each part, and how the power is extracted
from the fuel. After that you will set it running for us, and instruct
us in its control."</p>
<p>Dex braced himself. His final moment had come.</p>
<p>By way of indicating his refusal he looked away from the dismantled
motor and said nothing. The Rogan repeated his command. Dex made no
move. Then the leader acted.</p>
<p>He said something to the Rogan guards who had been standing by all
this while, alert against an outbreak from their prisoner. Dex was
caught up, carried to one of the metal racks, and thrown down on its
calibrated bed. Loops of metal, like handcuffs, were snapped around
his wrists and ankles; and a metal hoop was clamped over his throat,
pinning him to the torture rack. Resistance would have been useless,
and Dex submitted quietly.</p>
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<p>he contrivance, with him on it, was wheeled toward the barred door.
It was halted at a spot marked on the floor, about thirty feet from
the bars. The Rogan leader stepped alongside the rack, with Greca
trembling beside him.</p>
<p>Dex closed his eyes for a moment, grimly marshaling strength of will
to go through the trial that was just beginning.</p>
<p>The Rogan leader depressed another lever in the rock wall. The barred
door slid slowly up, to reveal the receding darknesses of some great
cave, or room, that adjoined the laboratory. Dex rolled his eyes so
that he could watch the doorway; and, in a cold perspiration, waited
for whatever might appear.</p>
<p>It was not long in coming!</p>
<p>The reptilian smell suddenly grew stronger. There was a booming hiss,
a savage bellowing. A clattering of vast scales rattled out as some
body weighing many tons was dragged over rock flooring. Then, before
Dex's staring eyes appeared a huge, wedge-shaped head, at sight of
which he bit his lips to keep from crying aloud.</p>
<p>Often enough he had seen one of those terrific heads looming in the
fog of the northern hemisphere of Jupiter. He did not know the genus
of the vast monster that bore it, but he did know it for the fiercest
of the lizard giants that roamed the Jovian jungles. A creature larger
than a terrestrial whale, with great long neck and heavy long tail
dragging yards behind it, it would find the puny bulk of a man nothing
but a morsel in its jaws!</p>
<p>Again the gigantic thing hissed and bellowed. And then its huge head
came through the six-foot door and its neck uncoiled to send the
gaping jaws within a foot of Dex. There it struggled to reach him,
prevented by the small doorway that restrained the bulk of its
enormous body, its head only inches away from the cleverly measured
spot to which the metal rack had been wheeled.</p>
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<p>ex stared, hypnotized, into the dull, stony eyes of the beast,
gasping for breath in the stench of its exhalations. The jaws snapped
shut, fanning his cheek. He fought for self-control. Steady! Steady!
The slimy Rogans had no intention of feeding him to the thing yet. Not
till they had made more determined efforts to wring from him the
secret of the motor. They were just prefacing actual physical torture
with hellish mental torture, that was all.</p>
<p>That he was right in his guess was proved in a few moments. He heard a
louder hiss from the great lizard so near him. Opening his eyes, he
saw the Rogan leader in the process of forcing the serpentine neck to
withdraw foot by foot back into the doorway, using his shock-tube as a
sort of distant prod.</p>
<p>The monster swayed its ugly flat head back and forth, hissing
deafeningly at the sting of the tube, now and again lunging with its
vast unseen body at the too narrow entrance that kept it from entering
the laboratory. Dex could hear the foundation walls of the building
creak at the onslaught of that tremendous weight.</p>
<p>If it would only break through! he thought savagely. But it wasn't
going to. In a short while it was cowed by the deadly tube, and
withdrew its head awkwardly from the chamber. The barred door slid
down into place: and the Rogan leader once more turned his attention
to his prisoner.</p>
<p>"You will be wheeled within reach of the creature as the last step of
your fate," Dex was informed. "Meanwhile, we shall start with
something less deadly...."</p>
<p>A cogged wheel beside him was turning a notch. Dex felt the sliding
bed of the rack crawl slightly under him. Intolerable tension was
suddenly placed on his arms and legs. The leader stared at a spring
dial; and moved the wheel another notch. The rack expanded again,
stretching Dex's body till his joints cracked.</p>
<p>"You will tell us what we want to know," said the Rogan, glaring
coldly down at him.</p>
<p>Dex compressed his lips stubbornly. He couldn't tell them if he wanted
to, and, by God, he wouldn't if he could.</p>
<p>Another notch, the wheel was turned; and in spite of himself a groan
escaped Dex's lips. One more notch, while the metal slide-rods beneath
him lengthened a fraction of an inch....</p>
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