Brood of the Dark Moon
gave Chet to understand that Kreiss had slept some distance beyond: they
would try to reach the same place. But the quick-falling dusk caught
them while yet among the black rubbery trees. And the dark showed Chet
why their branches might not be inviting as a sleeping place.
By ones and twos they came at first, occasional lines of light that
flowed swiftly and vanished through the black tangle of limbs. Chet
could hardly believe them real; they appeared and were lost from sight
as if they had melted.
But more came, and it seemed at last as if the roof above were alive
with light. The moving, luminous things glowed in hues that were never
still: were pure gold, were green, then red, melting and changing
through all the colors of the spectrum.
Living fireworks that were a blaze of gorgeous beauty! They wove an
ever-moving canopy of softest lights that raced dazzlingly to and fro,
that crossed and intertwined; that were dazing to his eyes while they
held his senses enthralled by their color and sheer loveliness ... until
one light detached itself and fell toward him where he stood spellbound
beside a giant fern.
It struck softly behind him, and its crimson glory flashed yellow as it
struck, then went black and in the dim light, on a great leathery leaf
with a spread of ten feet, Chet saw an enormous worm, whose head was a
thing of writhing antennae, whose eyes were pure deadliness, and whose
round corrugated body drew up the hanging part that the leaf could not
hold. It hunched itself into a huge inverted U and, before Chet could
recover from his horrified surprise, was poised to spring.
* * * * *
It was Towahg's strength, not his own, that threw him bodily down the
path. It was Towahg who poured a volley of grunted words and shrieks
into his ear, while he dragged him back. Chet saw the vicious head flash
to loveliest gold while it shot forward to the body's full twelve feet
of length--twelve feet of pulsing lavender and rose and flashing crimson
that was more horrible by reason of its beauty.
Chet stumbled to his feet and raced after Towahg. The ape-man moved in
swift silence, Chet close at his back. And other luminous horrors
dropped on ropes of translucent silver behind them, until the ghostly
white of friendly trees became visible, and they stood at last,
breathless and shaken, as far as Chet was concerned, in the familiar
jungle of the lower valleys.
And Towahg, to whom poison vines and writhing, horrible worms of death
that had failed to make him their prey were things of a forgotten past,
curled up in the shelter of an outflung snarl of great roots, grunted
once, and went calmly to sleep.
But Chet Bullard, accustomed only to man-made dangers that would have
held Towahg petrified with fear, lay long, staring into the dark.
CHAPTER XVI
_Through Air and Water_
It was midday when they approached the heights they had reached on their
flight from Fire Valley. Off to one side must lie the arena with the
pyramid within. And within the pyramid--! Chet took his thoughts quickly
away from that. Or perhaps it was the shrieking chatter from ahead that
gave him other things to think of.
Towahg had heard them before, but Chet had not understood his signs. And
now the chorus of an approaching pack of ape-men was louder with each
passing minute. That they were coming along the same trail seemed
certain.
Towahg sprang into the air; his gnarled hands closed on a heavy vine: he
went up this hand over hand, ready to move off to one side through the
leafy roof with never a sign of his going. He waited impatiently for
Chet to join him, and the pilot, regarding the incredible leap of that
squat ape-man body, shook his head in despair.
"Grab a loose end," he told Towahg. "Lower a rope--a vine. Get it down
where I can reach it!" And he raved inwardly at the blank look on the
savage face while he held himself in check and made signs over and over
in an effort to get the idea across.
Towahg got it at last. He lowered a vine and hauled Chet up with jerks
that almost tore the pilot's hands from their hold on the rough bark.
Then off to one side! And they waited in the shelter of concealing
leaves while the yelling pack drew near and a hundred or more of them
raced by along the trail below.
Invisible to Chet was the marked trail where Kreiss had gone, but these
savage things ran at top speed and read it as they ran.
Were they puzzled by the sudden increase in markings? Did they sense
that some were more recent than those they had followed? Chet could not
say. But he saw the pack return, staring curiously about until they
swung off and vanished through the trees toward the west. And in that
direction lay the arena and the haunt of a horror unknown.
Yet Chet lowered himself to the ground with steady hands and motioned
Towahg where the yelling mob had gone.
"We'll go that way," he said; "we'll follow them up. And perhaps, if I
can only get the idea into your thick head, we can learn what their
plans are: find out if Kreiss has really thrown us in their hands--led
them as straight as a pack of wolves could run to the quiet peace of
Happy Valley."
* * * * *
Chet might have followed them into the arena itself: he felt so keenly
that he must know with certainty whether or not the pack would continue
their pursuit. And why had they turned back? he asked himself. Had they
returned to acquaint their horrible god and his hypnotised slaves with
what they had learned?
But the trail turned off from the rocky waste where the arena lay; it
took them west and south for another mile, until again to Chet's ears
came the chattering bedlam of monkey-talk that was almost human. And now
they moved more cautiously from rock to tree and through the concealing
shadows until they could look into a shallow valley ahead. But before
Chet looked he was prepared for a surprising scene. For over and above
the raucous calling of the ape-folk had come another deeper tone.
"_Gott im Himmel!_" the deep voice said. "One at a time, you _verdammt_
beasts. Beat them on the head, Max; make them shut up!"
And the big bulk of Schwartzmann, when Chet first saw him, was seated on
a high rock that was like a barbaric throne in a valley of green. About
him the ape-men leaped and grimaced and made futile animal efforts to
tell him of their discovery.
"They've found something, Max," Schwartzmann said to his pilot. "Get the
other two men. We'll go with the dirty brutes. And if they've got wind
of those others--" His remarks concluded with a sputtering of profanity
whose nature was not obscured by its being given in another language.
And Chet knew that the obscenities were intended for his companions and
himself.
Schwartzmann's booming voice came plainly even above the chorus of
coughing growls and shriller chatter. Chet saw him showing his detonite
pistol in a half-threatening motion, and the ape-men cringed away in
fear.
"Not so well trained an army, Max, that I am general of, but if we find
that man, Harkness, and his pilot and that traitor Kreiss, we will let
these soldiers of mine tear them to little bits. Now, we go!"
Max's call had brought the other two men of Schwartzmann's party, and
the black horde of ape-men broke into a wild run across the grass toward
the place where Chet and Towahg lay. The two slipped hurriedly into the
concealment of denser growth, then ran at top speed down a jungle trail
that led off to one side.
* * * * *
They were bedded down for the night on the edge of the white forest; no
persuasion of Schwartzmann's would have driven the ape-men into the
darkness of the black trees and their flashing, luminous worm-beasts.
Chet and Towahg came within hearing of their encampment just at dusk,
and a late-rising moon broke through the gaps in the leafy roof to make
splotched islands of gold in the velvet dark where Chet and Towahg
fought the jungle so they might swing around and past the camp.
Occasional grunts and scufflings showed that the ape-men were restless,
and the two knew that every step must be taken in silence and every
obstructing leaf moved with no rasping friction on other leaves or
branches. But they came again to the trail, and now they were ahead of
the pack, as the first gray light of dawn was stealing through the
ghostly white of the trees.
Towahg would have curled himself into a sleepy ball a score of times had
Chet not driven him on, and now the pilot only allowed a few minutes for
food, where ripe purple fruit hung in clusters on the end of stems that
were like ropes.
No use to explain to Towahg. Perhaps the ape-man thought they were
hurrying to get through the black forest; he might even have thought the
matter through to see the necessity for reaching their own valley and
warning the others. Certainly he had no idea of any plans other than
these, and he must have been puzzled some several hours later when Chet
halted where the trail had crossed a barren expanse of rock.
Towahg had stopped there on the way down. Then he had sniffed the air,
dropped his head low and circled about, motioning Chet to follow, from
across the clearing where he had picked up the trail. Chet knew the
ape-men would do the same unless they were diverted, and he had a plan.
To communicate it to his assistant was his greatest problem.
* * * * *
He stopped at the clearing, while Towahg urged him on across the smooth
rock. Chet shook his head and pointed away from the direction of the big
divide, and at last he made him understand. Then Towahg did what Chet
never could have done.
He followed their former trail across the stone, his head close to the
ground. Now he picked a bruised leaf: again he replaced a turned stone
whose markings showed it had been displaced, and he came back over an
area that even an ape-man would not follow as being a place where men
had gone.
From where they emerged he turned as Chet had pointed, crossed the
clearing as clumsily as the German scientist might have done, scuffed
his bare feet in a pocket of gravel, and pointed to soft earth where
Chet might walk and leave a mark of shoes. Chet grinned happily while
Towahg did his grotesque dance that indicated satisfaction, though from
afar the first cries of the pack rang in the air.
They could never have outdistanced the apes alone, Chet knew that. But
he also knew that Schwartzmann and the others would slow them up, and he
counted on the pack staying together on the trail as they traversed this
new country. He entered the jungle with Towahg where their new trail
led, and drove his tired muscles to greater speed while Towahg, always
in the lead, motioned him on.
There were stops for food at times until another night came, and Chet
threw himself down on a mat of grass and fell instantly asleep. If there
was danger abroad he neither knew nor cared. He knew only that every
muscle of his body was aching from the forced march, and that Towahg's
twitching ears were on guard.
The following day they went more slowly, stopping at times to wait for
the sounds of pursuit. They were leading the pack on a long journey;
Chet wanted to be sure they were following and had not turned back. He
left a plain mark of his boot from time to time, and knew that this mark
would be shown to Schwartzmann. With that to lead him there would be no
stopping the man: he would drive his army of blacks despite their
superstitious fears.
The short days and nights formed an endless succession to Chet. Only
once did he see a familiar place, as they passed a valley and he saw
where their ship had rested on that earlier voyage.
"This is far enough," he told Towahg, and made himself plain with signs.