Brood Of The Dark Moon Part 11

It was a matter of a half hour later when Harkness ordered them all outside. He had accepted Kreiss as an addition to their ranks and had made himself plain to Schwartzmann.

To the scientist he said. "You remarked that no ship could hold two commanding pilots: that goes for an expedition like this, too. I am in command. If you will take orders we will be mighty glad to have you with us."

And to Schwartzmann, in a different tone: "I am sparing you and your men. I ought to shoot you down, but I won't. And I don't expect you to understand why; any decency such as that would beyond you.

"But I am letting you live. This world is big enough to hold us both, and pretty soon I will tell you what part of it you can live in. And then remember this one thing, Schwartzmann--get this straight!--you keep out of my way. I will show you a valley where you and your men can stay.

And if ever you leave that valley I will hunt you down as I would one of the beasts that you will see in this world."

Chet had to repress a little smile that was twitching at his lips; it always amused him hugely to see Harkness when roused.

"Turn us out to starve?" Schwartzmann was demanding. "You would do that?"

"There will be food there," said Harkness curtly: "suit yourself about starving. Only stay where I put you!"

Back of the others of Schwartzmann's men, the pilot, Max, was stooping.

Half-hidden he moved toward the doorway to the rear cabin and to the storage-room and gun-rooms beyond. Chet glimpsed him in his silent retreat.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you, Max," he advised quietly.

"Personally, I think you're all getting off too well; as for myself, I'm sort of itching for an excuse to let off this gun."

It was here that Harkness turned to the open port.

"Put them out!" he snapped. "You, Chet, go out first and line them up as they come--but, no, wait: there may be gas out there."

Chet was beside the port; a breath from outside came to him sweetly fragrant. A shadow was moving across the smooth lava rock. "A bird!" he thought. Then a flash of red in startling vividness swept past the open door: it was like a quick flicker of living flame. He could not see what it was, but it was alive--and this answered his question.

"Send 'em along," he said; "it seems all right now." He stepped through the opening in the heavily insulated walls.

It was early morning, yet the sun was already hot upon the smooth expanse of the lava flow. Some ancient eruption from the distant peaks that hemmed in the valley had sent out this flood of molten rock; it was hard and black now. But, to the right, where the valley went on and up, and rose gently and widened as it rose, a myriad of red flames and jets of steam told of the inner fires that still raged.

These were the fumeroles where only a month before he and Harkness and Diane had found cl.u.s.tering savages who were more apes than men; they had been roasting meat at these flames. And below, where the lava stopped, was the open glade where the little stream splashed and sparkled: in the high rock walls that hemmed the glade the caves showed black. And, beyond the open ground, was the weird forest, where tree-trunks of ghostly white were laced with a network of red veining. They grew close, those spectral columns, in a shadow-world beneath the high roof of greenery they supported.

Here was the scene of an earlier adventure. Chet was swept up in the flood of recollections born of familiar sights and scents. Herr Schwartzmann, cursing steadily in a guttural tongue, came from the ship to bring Chet's thoughts back to the more immediate problem.

There were five others who followed--the pilot and Schwartzmann's four men. There had been another, but his body lay huddled upon the bare lava. He had followed his master far--and here, for him, was the end.

Kreiss' pistol was still in his hand as he came after. Harkness and Diane were last.

Harkness pointed with his gun. "Over there!" he ordered. "Get them away from the ship, Chet. Line them up down below there; all the ape-men have cleared out since we had our last fight. Get them down by the stream.

Diane and I will bring them some supplies, and then we can send them off for good."

Chet sent Kreiss down first, where an easy slope made the descent a simple matter; it had been the bow-wave of the molten lava--here was the end of that inundation of another age--and the slope was wrinkled and creased. Schwartzmann followed; then the others. The last man was ready to descend when Diane and Walt came back.

They had packages of compressed foods. This was all right with Chet, but he raised his eyebrows inquiringly at sight of several boxes of ammunition and an extra gun. Harkness smiled good-naturedly.

"I will give them one pistol," Walt told him, "and a good supply of sh.e.l.ls. We don't need to be afraid of them with only one gun, and we can't leave the poor devils at the mercy of every wild beast."

"You're the boss," said Chet briefly; "but, for me, I'd sooner give this Schwartzmann just one bullet--right where it would do the most good.

"Let's make him work for it," he suggested, and called to the men below:

"Come back up here, Schwartzmann! A little present for you--and I'm saying you don't deserve it."

He watched the return trip as Schwartzmann dragged his heavy bulk up the slope; he was enjoying the man's explosive, panted curses. Beside him were Diane and Walt. With them, it was as it had been with him at first.

They had eyes only for the familiar ground below: the stream, the open ground, the trees....

Each of them was looking down at that lower ground.

It was Kreiss standing down there who first caught Chet's attention.

Kreiss was trying to shout. Chet saw his waving arms; he stared, puzzled, at the facial contortions--the working lips from which no sound came. He knew that something was wrong. It was a moment or two before he realized that Kreiss could not speak, that the throat, injured by the choking fumes, had failed him. Then he heard the strangled croak that Kreiss forced from his lips: "_Behind you!--look behind you!_"

Schwartzmann was scrambling to the top where they stood; every man was accounted for. What had they to fear? And suddenly it was borne in upon Chet's consciousness that he had been hearing a sound--a sound that was louder now--a rustling!--a clashing of dry, rasping things! The very air seemed to hold something ominous.

He knew this in the instant while he whirled about; while he heard the dry rustling change to a humming roar; while he saw, like a cloud of flame, a great swarm of red, flying things like the one that had flown past the port--and one, swifter than the rest, that darted from the swarm and flashed upon him.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _One, swifter than the rest, dashed upon him._]

It was red--vividly, dazzlingly red! The body of a reptile--a wild phantasm of distorted dreams--was supported by short, quivering wings.

The body was some five feet in length, and it was translucent.

A sh.e.l.l, like the dried husk of some creature long dead!--yet here was something alive, as its quick attack proved. It had a head of dry scales which ended in a projecting black-tipped beak that came like a sword, straight and true for Chet's heart. It seemed an age before he could bring his pistol up and fire.

Detonite, as everyone knows, does not explode on impact; the cap of fulminate in the end of each bullet sets it off. But even this requires some resistance--something more than a dry, red husk to check the bullet's flight. There was no explosion from the tiny sh.e.l.l that Chet's pistol fired, but the bullet did its work. The creature fell plunging to the rocky ground, and its transparent wings sent flurries of dust where they beat upon the ground. There were others that went down, for the bullet had gone on and through the great swarm.

And then they attacked.

The very fury of the a.s.sault saved the huddle of humans. So close were the red things pressed together that their vibrating wings beat and locked the swarm into a ma.s.s. They were almost above their prey. Chet knew that he was firing upward into the swarm, but the sound of his pistol was lost. The red cloud hung poised in a whirling maelstrom; and the pandemonium of clashing wings whipped down to them not only the sound of their dry sc.r.a.ping but a stench from those reptile bodies that was overpowering.

Sickly sweet, the taste of it was in Chet's mouth; the sound of the furious swarm was battering at his ears as he knew that his pistol was empty.

There were red bodies on the bare rock before him. A scaly, scabrous thing was pressing against his upflung hands that he raised above his head--a loathsome touch! A beak that was a needle-pointed tube stabbed his shoulder before he could flinch aside: the quick pain of it was piercingly sharp....

Other red horrors dropped from the main ma.s.s overhead; he saw Harkness beating at them wildly while he made a shelter of his body above the crouched figure of Diane. Two of them--two incredible, beastly, flying things! He saw them so plainly where they hovered, and Harkness striking at them with a useless, empty gun, while they waited to drive home their lance-like beaks.

The picture was so plain! His brain was a photographic plate, super-sensitized by the utter horror of the moment. While the red monster stabbed its beak into his shoulder, while he drove home one blow against its parchment body with his empty pistol, while the wild, beating wings lifted the creature again into the air--he saw it all.

Here were Diane and Harkness! Nearby Schwartzmann was on the ground! His man--the one who had not yet descended with the others--was running stumblingly forward. He was wounded, and the blood was streaming from his back. Chet saw the two monsters hovering above Harkness' head; he saw their thick-lidded eyes--and he saw those eyes as they detected an easier prey.