TARNISHED UTOPIA (Sci-Fi Classic). Malcolm Jameson

thousand merits to split between us for this job. She's the finest specimen I ever saw. Look! How pink and tender."

      The policeman pinched Cynthia's upper arm, and was rewarded with a prompt and resounding slap in the face. But he merely laughed and held her away from him with his long arms.

      Winchester looked on with burning eyes. There was cold murder in his heart, but without the use of his arms he could not rise. He had a glimmering now, though, of what the ruling race was like. These troopers were big men and blond, yet with the flat faces and almond eyes of Mongols. Somehow they combined the salient features of both Scandinavians and Tibetans.

      "But unbranded Nordics?" queried the man Winchester had hit. "There's a reward for them, too, isn't there?"

      Winchester noticed now that both his and Cynthia's chamois garments had been torn away, to reveal their unmarred shoulder blades.

      "Sure," said the first. "They used to turn up often in the old days, but I haven't heard of one being found in years. We're in luck."

      Other red planes commenced raining down. Soon the field was covered with them, as policeman after policeman came up to inspect the find. Apparently the original discoverers had broadcast the news. But no one molested Cynthia or Winchester further. It was evident they were awaiting the arrival of some higher-up.

      He was not long in coming. A cigar-shaped vessel with stubby wings made its appearance in the skies. It was banded like a hornet, with alternate rings of black and gold. It made a smooth landing as had the others, and in the very midst of them.

      A tall handsome man of the same Mongol-Nordic hybrid type stepped out, accompanied by another. The first was dressed elegantly in yellow silk robes ornamented with a profusion of dark jewels. The other wore yellow silk, too, but it was striped with red.

      "Prince Lohan!" shouted the senior police officer, and all fell on their faces.

      The kow-tow, evidently, was required of everyone. The exceptions in this case were Winchester, who could not, and Cynthia, who would not. She stood glaring defiantly at the prince who had come to look at her.

      "Ah," said he presently, after inspecting her as coolly as if she had been some rare and costly species of newfound animal. "Send her to the School of Arts and Graces. Have her brought before me again at the next annual Palace competition. Dispense with her examination. I would not have her marred. We will find out what we want from the man."

      His gorgeously robed companion bowed deeply.

      "As for him, take him to the nearest magistrate — that will be in New Vienna. After the quiz, carry out the usual sentence for those striking one of my officers. Take care to keep him alive, though. I am curious to know where these masterless slaves come from."

      Again the aide nodded. Then he made a suggestion on his own.

      "And the usual roundup of your Excellency's own slaves to find out who has been harboring this pair?"

      "Of course," snapped Prince Lohan.

      He strode back to his ship and disappeared within. It rose at once and was out of sight in a few seconds. The motionless police kneeling on the ground rose at a signal given by the attendant whom Lohan had left behind. Winchester noticed now that not all of them were of the Mongoloid type. Many seemed normal Westerners of his own background. Perhaps not all of them were destined to be slaves.

      The prince's adjutant hurled out orders. The police went into action. One drew a stumpy, conical instrument and leveled it at Cynthia. There was the faintest hint of a swift, rose-colored spark, and the girl wilted and fell unconscious. Two of the police picked her up and carried her to one of the ships.

      Two others lifted Winchester and flung him into a seat, where they fastened him with a strap to keep him from falling out. In another moment the entire flotilla took the air.

      CHAPTER IV

       Moonward Bound

       Table of Contents

      New Vienna was but a village. Winchester could see it plainly as the flying machine slid down from the heights. There was a cluster of a score or more small houses nestling beside the Danube, and in their midst was one large masonry building. Before it was an empty square, and behind it another on which a few of the planes were already alighting.

      Winchester's captors unloosed the paralysis that held him sufficiently for him to clamber out of the plane and walk with them from the parking lot to the front entrance of the edifice. As he rounded a corner his eye lit on the polished granite cornerstone.

      The inscription read:

      DEDICATED 3012 A.D.

      He and Cynthia had slept a thousand years! And more, for the building was anything but new.

      He was given no opportunity to speculate further as to the exact year they had awakened in. He was already up the steps and passing through the grim portals into the audience chamber of the magistrate. His examination was about to begin.

      With swift efficiency the police stripped him of his chamois garment. Then, naked as he was, they strapped him into a high-backed straight chair. One trooper plunged a needle into his arm, another fastened a small aromatic capsule to his upper lip and secured it there with a sort of glue. The Mongoloid magistrate looked on with a savage scowl.

      A surge of warmth pervaded Winchester's body. He felt a sudden inexplicable yearning to tell these people everything he knew. They had only to ask. But as if to make assurance doubly certain, another trooper stepped up and touched his neck with a slender silver instrument.

      At once the courtroom seemed to burst into a million blobs of fiery light. An unbearable agony racked Winchester's whole being. Despite his efforts to suppress it, he screamed wildly, wishing only for sudden death.

      The policeman withdrew the glittering point and the pain ceased as suddenly as it had begun. He stepped around before his prisoner and scrutinized his eyeballs. Then he turned to the magistrate.

      "Ready, Excellency. The anti-inhibition serum has taken hold, and he absorbs the sensory stimulant well. His magnification of pain is enormous, and he can stand any amount of it without fainting. Will your Excellency please to proceed?"

      "Where was your last hiding place, slave," asked the judge harshly, "and how long were you in it?"

      "A cellar under the ruins of Munich," answered Winchester in a dull monotone, "since the year Nineteen forty-one."

      "Rebellious fool and liar," snarled the judge. "How dare you address the court with such flippancy? There is no such place as Munich. It is now eighteen hundred and seventy-nine years since the birth of our glorious hero-conqueror — the Great Khan Ghengiz, our god and founder!"

      At a motion from the magistrate the policeman gestured with his silvery instrument. He touched it lightly to Winchester's left shoulder, then drew a line straight down to the wrist. The sensation was exactly that of having a red-hot knife plunged into the deltoid muscle and then drawn along the bones, splitting the arm downward. Yet the point left no mark, and the excruciating pain vanished as soon as it was withdrawn.

      Winchester tried desperately to concentrate on mental arithmetic. He remembered vaguely that Genghis Khan had flourished about the year 1200. That and eighteen hundred seventy-nine brought the total to somewhere above three thousand. It confirmed the date he had seen on the cornerstone. His sleep had been for more than a thousand years!

      But his mind could not blank out the agony of the fiendish torture now being inflicted upon him. Cold sweat stood out on his taut muscles. The magistrate kept up his merciless questioning while the trooper drew quick, searing lines across the hapless prisoner's torso. Yet, despite his anguish, which drove him to attempt any answer that might be pleasing to the judge, Winchester could only stick to his story. The truth-compelling serum was too much for him.

      "Bah!" snorted the magistrate at last. "He