Brood Of The Dark Moon Part 21

"As near as I can learn from his sign language and a dozen words, this is about as good a spot as we can find. He says the ape-men never cross the big divide; something spooky about it I judged. However, we must remember this: the fact that Towahg came across shows that the rest of them would if they found it could be done."

"That was why he led us so far while we waded up that stream," offered Diane. "Trailing Towahg would be like trying to follow the wake of an airship."

"And I asked him about the red vampires that jumped us down by the ship," Chet continued. "He gave me the clear sign on that, too."

Diane was not anxious for more wanderings, as Chet could see. "There is game here," she suggested, "and the edge of the jungle is simply an orchard of fruit, as you know. And having a lake to bathe in is important--oh, I must not try to influence you. We must do what is best."

"No," said Chet, "our own wishes don't count; the ship's the deciding factor. You had better build your house here, Walt. Happy Valley will be headquarters for the expedition; we've got a whale of a lot of country to explore. And, of course, we will slip back and check up on Schwartzmann; find out where he went to--"

"Count me out;" Harkness interrupted; "count me out. You go and hunt trouble if you want to; Diane and I will have our hands full right here.

Great heavens, man! We've got to learn to make clothes; and, by the way, that uniform you're wearing is no credit to your tailor. If we are to call this home, we must do better than the savages. I intend to find some bamboo, split it, make some troughs, and bring water down here from the spring. I've got to learn where Kreiss is getting his metal and find some soft enough to hammer into dishes. We can't call the department store by radiophone, you know, and have them shoot a bunch of stuff out by pneumatic tube."

"That's all right," Chet mocked; "by the time you have built a house with only a stone ax in your tool kit, you'll think the rest of it is simple."

The barricade, or _chevaux de frise_ as Chet insisted upon calling it, to show his deep study of the wars of earlier days, was built in the form of a U. The knoll itself sloped on one side directly to the water's edge: they had left that side open and carried their line of sharp stakes down to the water, that in the event of a siege they would not be conquered by thirst.

On the highest point of the knoll, some few weeks later, a house was being built--a more pretentious structure, this, than the other little huts. The aerial roots that the white trees dropped from their high-flung branches were not impossible to cut with their crude 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 inst.i.tution 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 wanderl.u.s.t, 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 rea.s.sured 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 a.s.sured 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 p.r.o.nunciation 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.