Brood of the Dark Moon
"And we alone survive. Our world of Rajj is a wasteland where once we
and our fellows lived. And we have been patient, awaiting the day. The
biped beasts, as you know, have been our food; we have trained them to
be our slaves as well. By the power of our invincible minds we have sent
them out to do our bidding and bring in more of the man-herd for
slaughter when we hungered.
"And now, remember the words of Vashta, the All-Wise: 'until a new world
is ready.' O Peerless Ones, the new world waits. These ignorant, white
animals have brought the word. We had thought that Vashta meant us to
make a new world of our old world of Rajj, but what of this new world
called Earth? Perhaps that will be ours."
Chet felt the thinker break in on his own thoughts.
"One thousand years, but not to a day. Tell us, O Keeper of the Records,
when is the time?"
And another's thoughts came in answer: "Six days, Master; six days
more."
The leader's thoughts crashed in with an almost physical violence:
"On the sixth night we shall go out! In darkness we have lived; in
darkness we shall emerge. Then shall we feast in the arena of Vashta as
we did of old. We shall see this new world; we shall breed and people
the world; we shall take up our lives again.
"Let the captives live!" he commanded. "Feed them well. They shall be
the sacrifice to Vashta--all but the woman. She shall see the blood of
the others flow on the altar stone; then shall she come to me."
There was a chorus of mental protests; of counter claims. The leader
quieted them as before.
"I am Master of All," he told them. "Would you dispute with me over this
beast of the Earth--a creature of no mental growth? Absurd! But she
interests me somewhat; I will find her amusing for a time."
* * * * *
There were bearers who came crowding in; and again in groups they left.
They were on the side where Chet dared not look, but he knew each group
of blacks meant a mysterious something that was being carried carefully.
And somewhere in the confusion of black, shuffling feet the others
vanished. No sight of Walt or Diane did the slitted leather give; only a
motley crew of blacks who were left, and a wall, high-sprung to a
glittering ceiling, and flaming, cold fire that ebbed and flowed till
the room's last occupant was gone. Then the flames faded to dense
blackness where only fitful images on the retina of Chet's staring eyes
flared and waned, and ghostly voices seemed still whispering through the
clamoring silence of the room....
They were echoing within his brain and harshly at his taut nerves as he
made his slow way toward the passage through which he had come. Despite
their terror-filled urging he did not run, but took one silent, cautious
step at a time, until, after centuries of waiting, his eyes found a
square of light that was blinding; and he knew that he was stumbling
through the portal in the top of the pyramid of Vashta--Vashta the
All-Wise--unholy preceptor of an inhuman race.
CHAPTER XXII
_Sacrifice_
"Down in the pyramid! You went down there?" Herr Kreiss forgot even his
absorbing experiments to exclaim incredulously at Chet's report.
Guided by Towahg, Chet had returned to Happy Valley. There had been six
days and nights to be spent, and he felt that he should tell Kreiss what
he had learned.
"Yes," said Chet dully; "yes, I went down."
He was seated on a rock in the enclosure they had built. He raised his
deep-sunk, sleepless eyes to stare at the house where he and Walt had
worked. There Walt and Diane were to have made their home; Chet found
something infinitely pathetic now in the unfinished shelter: its very
crudities seemed to cry aloud against the blight that had fallen upon
the place.
"And what was there?" Kreiss demanded. "This hypnotic power--was it an
attribute of the ape-men themselves? That seems highly improbable. Or
was there something else--some other source of the thought waves or
radiations of mental force?"
Chet was still answering almost in monosyllables. "Something else," he
told Kreiss.
"Ah," exclaimed the scientist, "I should have liked to see them. Such
mental attainment! Such control of the great thought-force which with us
is so little developed! Mind--pure mentality--carried to that stage of
conscious development, would be worthy of our highest admiration. I
should like to meet such men."
"They're not men," said Chet; "they're--they're--"
He knew how unable he was to put into words his impression of the unseen
things, and he suddenly became voluble with hate.
"God knows what they are!" he exclaimed, "but they're not men. 'Mind',
you say; 'mentality!' Well, if those coldly devilish things are an
example of what mind can evolve into when there's no decency of soul
along with it, then I tell you hell's full of some marvelous minds!"
He sprang abruptly to his feet.
"I've got to get out of here," he said; "I can't stand it. Four more
days, and that's the end of it all. I'm going back to the ship. I saw it
from up on the divide. Still buried in gas--but I'm going back. If I
could just get in there I might do something. There's all our
supplies--our storage of detonite; I might do some good work yet!"
* * * * *
He was pacing up and down restlessly where a path had been worn on the
grassy knoll, worn by his feet and the pitiful, bruised feet he had seen
from his shelter in the pyramid; worn by Walt and Diane--his comrades!
And they were helpless; their whole hope lay in him! The thought of his
own impotence was maddening. He poured out the story of his experience
in the pyramid, as if the telling might give him relief.
Kreiss sat in silence, listening to it all. He broke in at last.
"Wait!" he ordered. "There are some questions I would have answered. You
said once that they found us--these devils that you tell of--because of
the trail that I left. That is true?"
"Yes," Chet agreed irritably, "but what of it? It's all over now."
"Possibly not," Herr Kreiss demurred; "quite possibly not. The fault, it
appears, was mine. Who shall say where the results of that fault shall
lead?
"And you say that these thinking creatures are devils, and that they
plan to sacrifice your good friends to strange gods; and still the fault
leads on." Herr Kreiss, to whom cause and effect were sure guides,
seemed meditating upon the strange workings of immutable laws.
"And you say that if you could reach the interior of your ship you might
perhaps be of help. Yes, it is so! And the ship is engulfed in a fluid
sea, but the sea is of gas. Now in that I am not to blame, and
yet--and--yet--they all tie in together at the last; yes!"
"What are you talking about?" demanded Chet Bullard harshly. "It's no
use to moralize on who is to blame. If you know anything to do, speak
up; if not--"
Herr Kreiss raised his spare frame erect. "I shall do better than that,"
he stated; "I shall act." And Chet stared curiously after, as the thin
figure clambered up on the rocks and vanished into the cave.
* * * * *
He forgot him then and turned to stare moodily across the enclosure that
had been the scene of their battle. Kreiss had done good work there; he
had scared the savages into a panic fear. Chet was seeing again the
scenes of that night when a faint explosion came from the rocks at his
side. He looked up to see Herr Kreiss stagger from the cave.
Eyebrows and lashes were gone; his hair was tinged short; but his thick
glasses had protected his eyes. He breathed deeply of the outside air as
he regarded the remnant of a bladder that once had held a sample of
green gas. Then, without a word of explanation, he turned again into the
cave where a thin trickle of smoke was issuing.
Ragged and torn, his clothes were held together by bits of vine. There
were longer ropes of the same material that made a sling on his
shoulders when he reappeared. And, tied in the sling, were bundles; one
large, one small, but sagging with weight. Both were bound tightly in
wrappings of broad leaves.
"We will go now," Herr Kreiss stated: "there is no time to be lost."
"Go? Go where?" Chet's question echoed his utter bewilderment.
"To the ship! Come, savage!"--he motioned to Towahg--"I did not do well
when I made my way alone. You shall lead now."
"He's crazy," Chet told himself half aloud: "his motor's shot and his
controls are jammed! Oh, well; what's the difference? I might as well
spend the time this way as any. I meant to go back to the old ship once
more."
Kreiss' arm still troubled from the wound he had got in the fight, but
Chet could not induce him to share his load.
"_Es ist mein recht_," he grumbled, and added cryptically: "To each man
this only is sure--that he must carry his own cross." And Chet, with a
shrug, let him have his way.
* * * * *
There was little said on the trip. Chet was as silent and
uncommunicative as Kreiss when, for the last time, he paused on the
divide to see the green glint from a distant ship, then plunged with the
others into a forest as unreal as all this experience now seemed.
And at the last, when the red light of late afternoon ensanguined a wild
world, they came to the smoke of Fire Valley, and a thousand fumeroles,
little and big, that emitted their flame and gas. And one, at the lower
end of the valley had built up a great mound of greasy mud from whose
top issued hot billows of green gas. It was here that Kreiss paused and
unslung his pack.
"Take this," he told Chet; and the pilot dragged his reluctant eyes from
the view of the nearby cylinder enveloped in green clouds. The scientist
was handing him the larger of the two packages. It was bulky but light:
Chet took it by a loop in one of the vines.
"Careful!" warned Kreiss. "I have worked on it for a month; you see, my
equipment was not so good. I thought that the time might come when it
would be put to use, only first I must conquer the gas--which I now
prepare to do."
"I don't understand," Chet protested.
"You are a Master Pilot of the World?" questioned Kreiss, and Chet
nodded.
"And the control on your ship was a modification of the new ball-control
mechanism such as is used on the latest of the high-level liners?"
Again Chet nodded.
"Then, if ever you are so fortunate, Herr Bullard, as to see once more
that device on one of those ships, will you examine it carefully? And,
stamped on the under side, you will find--"
"The patent marking," said Chet; then stopped short as the light of
understanding blazed into his brain.
"Patented," he reflected; "that's what it says," and a wondering
comprehension was in his voice: "patented by H. Kreiss, of Austria!
You--you are the inventor?"
* * * * *
"I did not speak with entire truth to Herr Schwartzmann," admitted
Kreiss, "on that occasion when I told him I could not rebuild the
control you had demolished. With your equipment on the ship I could have
done a quite creditable job, but even now,"--he pointed to the
leaf-wrapped bundle in Chet's hand--"with copper I have hammered from
the rocks, and with silver and gold and even iron which I found
occurring in a quite novel manner, I have done not so badly."
"This is--this is--" Chet stared at the object in his hand; his tongue
could not be brought to speak the words. "But what use? How can I get
in? The gas--"
"Cause and effect!" stated Herr Doktor Kreiss of the Institute at
Vienna, and once more he seemed addressing a class and taking pleasure
in his ability to dispense knowledge. "It is the law of the universe.
"I perform an act. It is a cause--I have invoked the law. And the