There was no argument about that. I flung a last look around with the vague thought that I would see Jan lying here. Then I let Ama guide me. At a run, we headed back down the declivity and diagonally across the gully. A rain of arrows came down, clattering around us, but in a moment most of them were falling short.
"Which way, Ama? Where we go?"
"My people—my village—not too far."
"Which way?"
"Through this cliff. There are passages into the lower valley."
"You know the way?"
"Yes, oh yes."
A dark opening in the opposite cliff presently was before us. The Orgs were coming down the other cliff now; their bellowing voices and the whining cries of the mimes were a blended babble.
"A storm is coming," Ama said suddenly.
The distant sky over the lower end of the gully was shot now with weird lurid colors. In the heavy dark silence here around us, a sudden sharp puff of wind plucked at us, tossing Ama's long tawny hair.
"This way—" she added.
My arm went around her as another wind-blast thrust us sidewise, almost knocking her off her feet. Then clinging together, fighting our way in a rush of wind which now abruptly was a roar, we plunged into the depths of the yawning tunnel.
III
I must recount now what happened to Jan, as he told it to me when after a sequence of weird events, he and I were together again. When I left him crouching there close against the hull of the wrecked Roberts' ship, he lost sight of me almost in a moment. There was just the faint blob of me sliding into a shadow; and then the lowering ground down which I went hid me. Tensely he crouched, peering across the gully, listening to the heavy silence.
Two minutes, I had said; and then he must throw the rock. His hand fumbled around, found a sizable rock-chunk. He understood my purpose, of course—to divert our adversary across the gully at a moment when I might be close to jump him from the other direction.
Jan was excited, apprehensive, just an inexperienced boy. Was the crouching savage with the girl still there across the gully? There was no sound, no movement. Was it two minutes now?
He flung the stone at last and raised himself up a little with his gun leveled. The stone clattered off to the right. But it provoked no whizzing arrow. No sound of me, jumping upon my adversary.... Nothing.... But what was that? Jan stiffened. Distinctly he heard the sizzling puff of a flashgun shot. My gun! He knew it must be; it was to the left, out in the gully. And following it there was a low gibbering snarl. Faint in the distance, but in the heavy silence plainly audible.
I had been attacked! Jan found himself on his feet, with no thought in his mind save to dash to me.... He had taken no more than a few scrambling leaps on the rocks. He reached the brink of the descent. Far down and out in the gully it seemed that he could see the blur of something fighting.
His low incautious movement had betrayed him. From behind him there was a low whistling. A signal! An eager whining snarl instantly resounded to it. Jan had no more than time to whirl and face the sounds when a great bounding grey-green shape was on him!
Jan's shot missed it, and the next second the lunging oblong body struck him. The impact knocked him backward. His gun clattered away. Then the huge, hairless dog-like thing sprawled upon him, its slavering jaws snapping. They found his shoulder as he lunged and the fang-like teeth sank in....
A miracle that Jan could have kept his wits so that he fumbled for his knife as he fell. But suddenly he got it out, stabbed and slashed wildly with it as he rolled and twisted on the ground with the snarling creature on top of him.... And suddenly he was aware that the thing had burst into flame!
It could have been only a few seconds during which Jan fought that weird living fire. It was a wild chaos of horror.... Licking, oozing flames exuding like an aura from the sticky viscous flesh that horribly sprawled upon him. Monstrous ghastly adversary, with flesh that seemed now like burning bubbling rubber, stenching with acrid gas-fumes....
Just a few seconds, then Jan realized that somehow he had broken loose from the jaws that gripped his shoulder. He tried to scramble to his feet. The flames searing his face made him close his eyes. He was holding his breath, choking. His clothes were on fire....
Then the sprawling, lunging body knocked him down again. He was still wildly, blindly slashing with his knife. Vaguely he was aware, over the chaos of snapping snarls, that a human voice nearby with guttural shouts was urging the animal to dispatch its victim. But suddenly—as Jan's knife-blade ripped into its throat—the snarls went into a ghastly, eerie animal scream of agony—a long scream that died into a gurgle of gluey, choking blood-fluid....
Jan was aware that the creature had fallen from him with its flames dying. On the rocks he rolled away from it, with his scorched hands wildly brushing his clothes to extinguish them. Then he was on his feet, staggering, choking, coughing. But his knife, its blade dripping with an oozing flame, still wildly waved.
And then he was aware that twenty feet away, a heavy, grotesque man-like shape was standing with a club and arrow-sling. But with his flame-creature dead and the sight of the staggering, triumphant Jan waving his flaming knife-blade—the watching savage suddenly dropped his club and let out a cry of dismay and fear. And then he ran.
For a moment Jan, wildly, hysterically laughing, went in pursuit. But in the rocky darkness the fleeing savage already had vanished....
Then reaction set in upon Jan. His burned face and hands stung as though still fire was upon him. He was still gasping, choking from the fumes of his smoldering clothes. His eyes, with lashes singed, smarted, watering so that all the vague night-scene was a swaying blur.... He found himself sitting down on the rocks....
And then suddenly he remembered me. Where had I gone? What had happened?...
Vaguely Jan recalled that I had left him and gone across the gully.... Where was I now?... Then he seemed dimly to recall that he had heard my shot....
In the dimness suddenly it seemed to Jan that he saw me, far up the gully to the right, up on the cliff-top. For just a moment he was sure that it was the shape of me, silhouetted against the sky.... The sight gave him strength. Still staggering, he ran wildly forward.... A quarter of a mile; certainly it seemed that far. He had crossed the gully by now. The figure up above had vanished.... Queer. What was I doing up there? Chasing the savage?...
Jan climbed the little cliff, which was ragged, and lower here than elsewhere. It led him to the undulating, upper plateau, crag-strewn, dim under a leaden sky. But there was enough light so that he could see the distant figure. It was only two or three hundred yards away, plodding on, apparently not looking back....
Jan ran after it. And then he was calling:
"Bob! You Bob—"
The figure turned. Started suddenly back, and called:
"Is that you? Jan?"
It was Torrence! He came back at a lumbering run now—Torrence, bare-headed, gun in hand. But he obviously hadn't had any encounter. His jacket was buttoned across his shirt; he looked just as he had when Jan had last seen him, out there at the bow of the wrecked spaceship when Jan had gone inside to join me.
Torrence stared at the burned Jan. "Why—good Heavens," he gasped. "You—I saw that thing killing you. I was up here—I started down, but too late—"
"Where's Bob?"
"Bob? Why—he was killed. Burned—like you. I tried to help him—too late—the damned things—"
The lameness of it was lost on the still-dazed Jan at that moment. I had been killed! It struck him with a shock. And as he stood wavering, trembling, Torrence drew him to a rock.
"Too bad," Torrence murmured sympathetically.
"Where—where were you?" Jan said at last. "We came out of the ship—couldn't find you."
"I was attacked by one of those cursed Things. Like the one that nearly got you—like the one that killed Bob. I chased it; shot at it when I got up here. But I shouldn't have come up—then I saw you and Bob—too late to get back to you. So I was starting for our ship. It's off this way, not so very far."
For a little time Jan sat there numbed, and Torrence sat sympathetically, silently beside him.
"When we get back," Torrence murmured at last, "you can put in your report with mine. We did our best—but there isn't any use now, us tackling this thing."
Jan must have been wholly silent, thinking of me, dead, burned, back there in the darkness of the gully.
"You all right now, lad?"
"Yes," Jan said. "Yes—I'm all right."
"When we get back, we ought to get a bonus," Torrence said. "Don't worry, Jan—I'll see you get plenty. Your report and mine—to tell them the hazards of this trip—"
"We should go back?" Jan said.
"Yes, certainly we should. Get back to Earth as fast as we can. No chance of doing anything else—"
Torrence gazed apprehensively around them in the darkness. That much at least—the reality of his apprehension as they sat there on the open plateau—that was authentic enough. And Jan also felt that at any moment one of the flaming creatures might attack them.
"You strong enough to start now?"
"Yes, sure I am," Jan agreed.
They started, picking their way along. Jan tried to remember how far we three had come from our own ship until we had discovered the Roberts' vessel.... For ten or fifteen minutes now he and Torrence clambered over the rocks.
"You think you know the way?" Jan asked at last.
"Yes—or I thought I did." Torrence's tone was apprehensively dubious. And that, too must have been authentic. Certainly it would be a desperate plight to be lost here on Vulcan. "It was Bob who was sure he knew the way back—"
"I think we are all right," Jan agreed. "That big rock-spire off there—I remember it."
As they progressed, Jan was aware now that the sky behind them was brightening. They turned and stared at it.
"Weird—" Torrence muttered.
"Yes—some sort of storm. If it's bad—you suppose we ought to take shelter? It's pretty open up here."
The sky was certainly weird enough—a swirl of leaden clouds back there, shot now with lurid green and crimson. And suddenly there came a puff of wind. Then another. Stronger, it whined between the nearby naked crags. In a little nearby ravine it caught an area of loose metallic stones, whirled them before it with a tinkling clatter.
"We came through that ravine, coming out this way," Jan said suddenly. "I'm sure of it."
Torrence remembered it also. Another blast of wind came; and with it blowing them, they scurried into the ravine. The lurid storm-sky painted it with a crimson and green glare, so that the narrow cut in the rocky plateau was eerie. To Jan it seemed suddenly infernal. He clutched at the larger, far more bulky Torrence as they hurried along with the wind blasting them.
Loose metallic stones were blowing around them now with a clatter. Then suddenly the sky seemed riven by a darting, jagged red shaft of lightning. And then red rain was pelting them.
"Got to find some place," Torrence panted. He had to shout it above the roar as the wind tore at his words and hurled them away.
"Over there?" Jan gestured. "Looks like a cave."
The sides of the ravine were rifted in many places with vertical crevices. They headed toward a wider slit of opening which seemed to lead well back underground. A place of shelter until this storm passed....
To Jan, what happened then was weirdly terrifying. He suddenly realized that as they approached the opening, they were being pulled at it. Into it! A suction, as though somewhere down underground this storm had created a partial vacuum—a far lesser pressure so that the air of the little ravine was rushing into it!
Terrified, both of them now were fighting to keep away. But it was no use. Like wind-blown puffs of cotton they were sucked into the yawning opening. A sudden chaos of roaring horror. Jan felt that he was still clutching at Torrence. Then both of them fell, sliding, sucked forward as a plunger cylinder is sucked through a pneumatic tube. The ground here in the passage felt smooth as polished marble.
For how long they plunged forward Jan had no conception. Roaring, sucking darkness. Then it seemed that there was a little light. An effulgence; a pallid, eerie glow, like phosphorescence streaming from the rocks. The narrow passage was steadily widening; and then abruptly they were blown out into emptiness.
It was a vast grotto, with smooth metallic floor almost level. The effulgence here was brighter, so that an undulating, vaulted ceiling glistened far overhead. For a moment the nearer wall was visible, smooth, burnished metal rock. Eroded by the winds of centuries, all the rock here was burnished until it shone mirror-like.
The huge pallid interior roared and echoed with the tumbling wind-torrents seething in it. A lashing cauldron jumbled with eddying blasts. Jan and Torrence tried to get to their feet. They could see now that they were far out from the wall—sliding, buffeted, desperately clinging together, hurled one way and then another. Bruised from head to foot, panting, gasping in the swiftly changing pressures, Jan felt his senses leaving him. A numbed vagueness was on him, so that there was only the suck and roar of the winds and the feel of Torrence to whom he was clinging. They were lying prone now—
"Easing up a little—" He heard Torrence's voice as though from far away. And then he came to his senses to find that he and Torrence had hit against a wall of the grotto and were clinging to a projection of rock.
Easing up a little.... The storm outside lessening.... Jan must have drifted off again; and after another interval he was conscious that there was only a tossing, crazy breeze in here. It whined and moaned, echoing from one wall to another so that the pallid, silvery half-light seemed filled with a myriad gibbering little voices.
And Jan could see now that he and Torrence had been blown into a recess of the grotto—a smaller cave. The rock formation here was as though this were the heart of a monstrous crystal—vertical facets of strata that glistened pallidly.
"We'll have to try and cross back," Torrence said, and in the confined space his words weirdly echoed, split and duplicated so that there seemed many little whispering replicas of his words. "Find that passage where we came in—"
They were on their feet now—suddenly to Jan there was around them a vast vista of pallid dimness. A glowing, limitless abyss stretching off into shadowy nothingness, everywhere he looked.
"Why—why," he murmured, "this place—so large—"
Torrence still had his flash cylinder. He fumbled in his jacket pocket, brought it out. Amazing thing! As he snapped it on, its tiny white beam showed mirrored in a hundred places of the paneled, crystalline walls! The blurred image of Torrence and Jan standing holding each other with their light-shaft before them, duplicated so that there were a hundred of them everywhere they looked! And countless other hundreds smaller and smaller in the myriad backgrounds!
With a startled curse Torrence took a few steps into what seemed pallid emptiness, and then suddenly his image was coming at him! Lost! To Jan came the rush of horror that they might, wander in here, balked at every turn....
Another startled cry from Torrence stuck away Jan's thoughts. Neither he nor Torrence had time to make a move. There was suddenly everywhere the duplicated image of a thick, swaying, gargoyle savage, standing like a gorilla on thick bent legs, with one crooked arm holding a flaming torch over his head. A myriad replicas of him everywhere! Was he close to them, or far away? And in which direction?
In that stricken second the questions stabbed into Jan's tumultuous mind. Then he was aware of something whirling in the air over his head—something crashing on his skull so that all the world seemed to go up into a splitting, blinding roar of light. He felt his legs buckling under him. There was only Torrence's fighting outcry and the sound of a guttural echoing voice as Jan fell and his senses slid off into a blank and black, empty silence....
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