Brood of the Dark Moon
implements; they made good building material for a house whose framework
must be tied together with vines and tough roots. This would be the home
of Harkness and Diane.
The two had been insistent that this structure would be incomplete
without a room for Chet, but the pilot only laughed at that suggestion.
"It's an old saying," he told them, "that one house isn't big enough for
two families. I think the remark is as old as the institution of
marriage, just about. And it's as true on the Dark Moon as it is on
Earth. And, besides, I intend to build some bachelor apartments that
will make this place of yours look pretty cheap, that is, if I ever find
time. I am going to be pretty busy just roaming around this little world
seeing what I can see. Even Herr Kreiss has got the wanderlust, you will
notice."
"He has been gone four days," said Diane. Her tone was frankly worried.
Chet finished tying a sapling to a row of uprights and slid to the
ground.
* * * * *
"Don't be alarmed about Kreiss," he reassured her. "He has been
all-fired mysterious for the past several weeks. He's been working on
something in that cave of his, and visitors have not been admitted. When
he left he told me he would be gone for some time, and he looked at me
like an owl when he said it: his mysterious secret was making his eyes
pop out. He has a surprise up his sleeve."
"Wedding present for Diane," Harkness suggested.
"Well, he showed me some darn nice sapphires," Chet agreed. "Probably
found some way to cut them and he's setting them in a bracelet of soft
gold: that's my guess."
"I wish he were here," Diane insisted.
And Chet nodded across the clearing as he said fervently: "I wish I
could get all my wishes as quickly as that. There he comes now with his
bow in one hand and a bag of something in the other."
The tall figure moved wearily across the open ground, but straightened
and came briskly toward them as he drew near. He seemed more gaunt than
usual, as if he had finished a long journey and had slept but little.
But his eyes behind their heavy spectacles were big with pride.
"You have--what do you Americans say?--'poked fun' at my helplessness in
the forest," he told Chet. "And now see. Alone and without help I have
made a great journey, a most important journey." He held up a bladder,
translucent, filled with something palely green.
"The gas!" he said proudly.
"Why, Herr Kreiss," Diane exclaimed, amazed, "you can't mean that you've
been to Fire Valley; that that is the gas from about the ship!... And
why did you want it? What earthly use...."
* * * * *
She had looked from the proud face of the scientist to that of Harkness;
then turned toward Chet. Her voice died away, her question unfinished,
at sight of the expression in those other eyes.
"From--the ship? You mean that you've been there--Fire Valley? That
you've come back here?" Chet was asking on behalf of Harkness as well:
his companion added nothing to the words of the pilot--words spoken in a
curiously quiet, strained tone.
"But yes!" Herr Kreiss assured him. His gaze was still proudly fixed
upon the bladder of green gas. "I needed some for an experiment--a most
important experiment." And not till then did he glance up and let his
thin face wrinkle in amazed wonder at the look on the pilot's face.
Chet had raised one end of another stick as Kreiss approached. He had
intended to place it against the frame they were building: it fell
heavily to the ground instead. He regarded Harkness with eyes that were
somber with hopeless despair, yet that somehow crinkled with a whimsical
smile.
"Well, I said he had a surprise up his sleeve," he reminded them. "It is
nearly night; I can't do anything now. I'll go to-morrow; take Towahg. I
don't know that there's anything we can do, but we'll try.
"You will stay here with Diane," he told Harkness. And Harkness accepted
the order as he would from one who was in command.
"It's up to you now," he told Chet. "I'll stay here and hold the fort.
You're running the job from now on."
But the pilot only nodded. Herr Kreiss was sputtering a barrage of how's
and why's; he demanded to know why his success in so hazardous a trip
should have this result.
But Chet Bullard did not answer. He walked slowly away, his eyes on the
ground, as one who is trying to plan; driving his thoughts in an effort
to find some escape from a danger that seemed to hover threateningly.
CHAPTER XV
_Terrors of the Jungle_
Towahg had learned the names of these white-skinned ones who came down
from whatever heaven was pictured in his rudimentary mind. His
pronunciation of them was peculiar: it had not been helped any by reason
of Diane's having been his teacher. Her French accent was delightful to
hear, but not helpful to a Dark Moon ape-man who was grappling with
English.
But he knew them by name, using always the French "Monsieur," and when
Chet repeated: "Monsieur Kreiss--he go," pointing through the jungle,
and followed this with the command: "Towahg go! Me go!" the ape-man's
unlovely face drew into its hideous grin and he nodded his head
violently to show that he understood.
Chet gripped a hand each if Harkness and Diane and clung to them for a
moment. Below their knoll the white morning mist drifted eerily toward
the lake; the knoll was an island and they three the only living
creatures in a living world. It was the first division of their little
force, the first parting where any such farewell might be the last. The
silence hung heavily about them.
"Au 'voir," Diane said softly; "and take no chances. Come back here and
we'll win or lose together."
"Blue skies," was Walt Harkness' good-by in the language of the flyer;
"blue skies and happy landings!"
And Chet, before the shrouding mist swallowed him up, replied in kind.
"Lifting off!" he announced as if his ship were rising beneath him, "and
the air is cleared. I'll drop back in four days if I'm lucky."
Towahg was waiting, curled up for warmth in the hollow of a great tree's
roots. Like all the ape-men he was sullen and taciturn in the chill of
the morning. Not until the sun warmed him would he become his customary
self. But he grunted when Chet repeated his instructions, "Monsieur
Kreiss, he go! Now Towahg go too--go where Monsieur Kreiss go!" and he
led the way into the jungle where the scientist had emerged.
* * * * *
Chet followed close through wraith-like, drifting mist. They were
ascending a gentle slope; among the trees and tangled giant vines the
mist grew thin. Then they were above it, and occasional shafts of golden
light shot flatly in to mark the ascending sun.
They were climbing toward the big divide, that much Chet knew. White,
ghostly trees gave place to the darker, gloomier growth of the uplands.
Strange monstrosities, they had been to Chet when first he had seen
them, but he was accustomed to them now and passed unnoticing among
their rubbery trunks, so black and shining with morning dew.
Far above a wind moved among the pliant branches that whipped and
whirled their elastic lengths into strange, curled forms. Then the
miracle of the daily growth of leaves took place, and the rubbery limbs
were clothed in green, where golden flowers budded prodigiously before
they flashed open and filled the wet air with their fragrance.
They were following the path that Chet had traveled on his morning trips
to the divide for a view of the ship. Kreiss would have gone this way,
of course, although to Chet, there was no sign of his having passed.
Then came the divide, and still Chet followed where Towahg led sullenly
across the expanse of barren rocks. Towahg's head was sunk between his
black shoulders; his long arms hung limply; and he moved on with a
steady motion of his short, heavily muscled legs, with apparently no
thought of where he went or why.
Chet stopped for a moment's look at the distant sparkle that meant the
shining ship, which shone green as on every other day, and he wondered
as he had a score of times if it might be possible for them to make a
suit--a bag to enclose his head, or a gas-mask--anything that could be
made gas-tight: and could be supplied with air. Then he thought of the
bow that was slung on his shoulder and the stone ax at his belt. These
were their implements: these were all they had.... Suddenly he began to
walk rapidly down the slope after Towahg who was almost to the trees.
* * * * *
Again they were among the black rubbery growth. It rose from a tangle of
mammoth leafed vines and creepers that wove themselves into an
impassable wall--impassable until Towahg lifted a huge leaf here, swung
a hanging vine there, and laid open a passage through the living
labyrinth.
"How did Kreiss ever find his way?" Chet asked himself. And then he
questioned: "Did he come this way? Is Towahg on the trail?"
Again he repeated his instructions to the ape-man, and he showed his own
wonder as to which way they should go.
The sun must have done its work effectively, for now Towahg's wide grin
was in evidence. He nodded vigorously, then dropped to one knee and
motioned for Chet to see for himself, as he pointed to his proof.
Chet stared at the unbroken ground. Was a tiny leaf crushed? It might
have been, but so were a thousand others that had fallen from above. He
shook his head, and Towahg could only show his elation by hopping
ludicrously from one foot to the other in a dance of joy.
Then he went on at a pace Chet found difficulty in following, until they
came to a place where Towahg tore a vine aside to show easier going, but
climbed instead over a fallen tree, grown thickly with vines, and here
even Chet could see that other feet had tripped and stumbled. The Master
Pilot glanced at the triple star still pinned to his blouse; he thought
of the study and training that had preceded the conferring of that
rating, the charting of the stars, navigational problems in a
three-dimensional sea. And he smiled at his failure to read this trail
that to Towahg was entirely plain.
* * * * *
"Every man to his job," he told the black, and patted him on the
shoulder, "and you know yours, Towahg, you're good! Now, where do we
sleep?"
He ventured to suggest a bed of leaves that had gathered amongst a maze
of great rocks, but Towahg registered violent disapproval. He pointed to
a pendant vine; his hands that were clumsy at so many things gave an
unmistakable imitation of a bud that developed on that vine and opened.
Then Towahg sniffed once at that imaginary flower, and his body went
suddenly limp and apparently lifeless as it fell to the ground.
"You're right, old top!" Chet assured him, as Towahg came again to his
feet. "This is no place to take a nap." A crashing of some enormous body
that tore the tough jungle in its rush came from beyond the rocks.
"And there are other reasons," he added as he followed Towahg's example
and leaped for a hanging tangle of laced vines. Here was a ladder ready
to take them to the high roof above, but they did not need it; the
crashing died away in the distance.
It was Chet's first intimation that this section of the Dark Moon held
beasts more huge than the "Moon-pigs" he had killed: it was a disturbing
bit of knowledge. He caught Towahg's cautious, wary eyes and motioned
toward the branches high overhead.
"How about hanging ourselves up there for the night?" he asked, and the
gestures, though not the words, were plain, as the ape-man's quick
dissent made clear.
* * * * *
He motioned Chet to follow. Down they plunged, and always down. Towahg