CHAPTER XIV

_A Bag of Green Gas_

Under a tree on the edge of the open ground a notched stick hung. Six sharply cut V's showed red through the white bark, then one that was deeper; another six and another deeper cut; more of them until the stick was full: so passed the little days.

"Some time," Herr Kreiss had promised, "I shall determine with accuracy the length of our Dark Moon days; then we will convert these crude records into Earth time. It is good that we should not lose our knowledge of the days on Earth." He made a ceremony each morning of the cutting of another notch.

Chet, too, had a bit of daily routine that was never neglected. Each sunrise found him on the high divide; each morning he watched for the glint and sparkle of sunlight as it flashed from a metal ship; and each morning the reflected light came to him tinged with green, until he knew at last that it might never be different. The poisonous fumes filled the pocket at the end of the valley where the great ship rested. She was indeed at the bottom of a sea.

Back at camp were other signs of the passing days. Around the top of the knoll a palisade had sprung up. Stakes buried in the ground, with sharpened ends pointing up and outward, were interwoven with tough vines to make a barricade that would check any direct assault. And, within the enclosure, near the little hut that had been built for Diane, were other shelters. One black night of tropic rainstorm had taught the necessity for roofs that would protect them from torrential downpours.

These did well enough for the present, these temporary shelters and defenses, and they had kept Diane and the two men working like mad when it was essential that they have something to do, something to think of, that they might not brood too long and deeply on their situation and the life of exile they were facing.

* * * * *

For Kreiss this was not necessary. In Herr Kreiss, it seemed, were the qualities of the stoic. They were exiled--that was a fact; Herr Kreiss accepted it and put it aside. For, about him, were countless things animate and inanimate of this new world, things which must be taken into his thin hands, examined, classified and catalogued in his mind.

In the rocky outcrop at the top of their knoll he had found a cave with which this rock seemed honeycombed. Here, within the shelter of the barricade, he had established what he called very seriously his "laboratory." And here he brought strange animals from the jungle--flying things that were more like bats than birds, yet colored gorgeously. Chet found him one day quietly exultant over a wrinkled piece of parchment. He was sharpening a quill into a pen, and a cup-shaped stone held some dark liquid that was evidently ink.

"So much data to record," he said. "There will be others who will follow us some day. Perhaps not during our lifetime, but they will come. These discoveries are mine; I must have the records for them.... And later I will make paper," he added as an afterthought; "there is papyrus growing in the lake."

But on the whole, Kreiss kept strictly to himself. "He's a lone wolf," Chet told the others, "and now that he is bringing in those heavy loads of metals he is more exclusive than ever: won't let me into the back end of his cave."

"Does he think we will steal his gold?" Harkness asked moodily. "What good is gold to us here?"

"He may have gold," Chet informed him, "but he has something more valuable too. I saw some chunks that glowed in the dark. Rotten with radium, he told me. But even so, he is welcome to it: we can't use it. No, I don't think he suspects us of wanting his trophies; he's merely the kind that flocks by himself. He was having a wonderful time today pounding out some of his metals with a stone hammer; I heard him at it all day. He seems to have settled down in that cave for keeps."

* * * * *

Harkness threw another stick across the fire; its warmth was unneeded, but its dancing flames were cheering.

"And that is something we must make up our minds about," he said slowly: "are we to stay here, or should we move on?"

He dropped to the ground near where Diane was sitting, and took one of her hands in his.

"Diane and I plan to 'set up housekeeping,'" he told Chet, and Chet saw him smile whimsically at the words. Housekeeping on the Dark Moon would be primitive indeed. "We are lacking in some of the customary features of a wedding; we seem to be just out of ministers or civil officials to tie the knot."

"Elect me Mayor of Dianeville," Chet suggested with a grin, "and I'll marry you--if you think those formalities are necessary here."

Diane broke in. "It's foolish of me, Chet, I know it; but don't laugh at me." He saw her lips tremble for an instant. "You see, we're so far away from--from everything, and it seems that that if Walter and I could just start our lives with a really and truly marriage--oh, I know it is foolish--"

This time Chet interrupted. "After all you have been through, and after the bravery you've shown, I think you are entitled to a little 'foolishness.' And you _shall_ be married with as good a knot as any minister could tie: you see, that is one of the advantages of being a Master Pilot. My warrant permits me to perform a marriage service in any level above the surface of the Earth. A left-over from the time when ship's captains had the same right. And although we are grounded for keeps, if we are not above the surface of the Earth right now I don't know anything about altitudes. But," he added as if it were an afterthought, "my fee, although I hate to mention it, is five dollars."

* * * * *

Harkness gravely reached into the pocket of his ragged coat and brought out a wallet. He tendered a five dollar bill to Chet. "I think you're robbing me," he complained, "but that's what happens when there is no competition. And we'll start building a house to-morrow."

"Will we?" Chet inquired. "Is this the best place? For my part I would feel safer if there were more miles between us and that pyramid. What was down in there, God knows. But there was something back of that hypnotized ape--something that knocked us for a crash landing with one look from those eyes."

The night air was warm, where he lay before their huts, but a shiver of apprehension gripped him at the thought of a mysterious Something that was beyond the power of his imagination, and that was an enemy they would never want to face. Something inhuman in its cold brutality, yet superhuman too, if this mental force were an indication. A something different from anything the people of Earth had ever known, bestial and damnable!

"I am with you on that," Harkness agreed, "but what about the ship? You have had your eye on it every day; do we want to go where we could not see it? If the gas cleared, if there was ever a season when the wind changed, think of what that would mean. Ammunition, food, supplies of all kinds, and the ship as a place of refuge, too, would be lost. No, we can't turn that over to Schwartzmann, Chet; we've got to stick around."

"I still wish we were farther away," Chet acknowledged, "but you are right, Walt; we could never be satisfied a single day if we thought the ship could be reached. Then, too, Towahg seems to think this is O. K.

"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 institution 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 wanderlust, 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 reassured 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 assured 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.