CHAPTER XX

_On to the Pyramid_

It was like Walt Harkness to rush impetuously after where Diane was being drawn away; but who, under the same circumstances, would have done otherwise? Yet it was like Chet, too, to keep a sane and level head, to check the first wild impulse to dash to their rescue, to realize that he would be throwing himself away by doing it and helping them not at all. It was like Chet to stop and think when thinking was desperately needed, though what it would lead to he could not have told. There were many factors that entered into his calculations.

Half-consciously he had walked to the barricade that he might stare into the blackness beyond. The worst of the storm had passed, and the strong Earth-light forced its way through the thinning clouds in a cold, gray glow. It served to show the great gateway to the jungle, empty and black, until Chet saw more of the man-beasts he had called messengers.

A file of them, stolid, woodenly walking--he could not fail to know them from the ape-men of the tribe. And they moved through the darkness toward the sounds of shouts and laughter.

Chet saw them when they returned; following them were three others. Schwartzmann was not one of them; but the pilot, Max, Chet could distinguish plainly; the other two, he was sure, were the men of Schwartzmann's crew.

And, for each of them, all laughter and shouted jests had escaped. They moved like wooden toys half-come to life. And they, too, vanished where Walt and Diane had gone through the high arch of the jungle's open door.

Chet knew Kreiss was beside him; at a short distance, Towahg, staring above the palisade, buried his unkempt, hairy head in the shelter of his arms. All of Towahg's savage bravery had oozed away at direct sight of the pyramid men; Chet, even through his heavy-hearted dismay, was aware of the courage that must have carried this primitive man to their rescue on that other black night when the pyramid had been about to swallow, them up.

* * * * *

To the pyramid all Chet's thoughts had been tending. There Diane and Harkness were bound; there he, too, must go, though the thought of driving himself into that black maw, through the overpowering stench and down to the pit where some horror of mystery lay waiting, was almost more than his conscious mind could accept. But, with the sight of Towahg and the abject fear that had overwhelmed him, Chet found his own mind calmly determined, though through that cool self-detachment came savage spoken words.

"If poor Towahg could go near that damned place," he reasoned, "am I going to be stopped by anything between heaven and hell?"

And his mind was suddenly at ease with the certainty of the next step he must take. He turned to speak to Kreiss, but paused instead to stare into the dark where shadows that were not the ghosts of clouds were moving. Then his whispered orders came sharply to the scientist and to Towahg.

"Come!" he commanded. "Come quickly; follow me!"

The two were behind him as he found the narrow opening in the barrier's farther side, passed through, and crouched low in the darkness as he ran toward the lake where the shallow water of the shore took no mark of their hurrying feet.

* * * * *

At the end of the lake he stopped. Beside him, Kreiss, weakened by his wound, was panting and gasping; Towahg, moving like a dark shadow, was close behind.

"I saw them," said Kreiss, when he had breath enough for speech, "--more beasts from the pyramid. They were coming for us! But we can go back there after a day or so."

"You can," Chet told him; "Towahg and I are going on."

"Where?" Kreiss demanded.

"To the pyramid."

Chet's reply was brief, and Kreiss' response was equally so. "You're a fool," he said.

"Sure," Chet told him: "I know there's nothing I can do to help them. But I'm going. All I ask is to get one crack at whatever it is that is down in that beastly pit and if I can't do that maybe I can still save Diane and Walt from tortures you and I can't imagine." He touched his pistol suggestively.

"Still I say you are a fool," Kreiss insisted. "They are gone--captured; they will die. That is regrettable, but it is done. Now, besides Herr Schwartzmann who escaped, only we two remain; the savage, he does not count. We two!--and a new world!--and science! Science that remains after these two are gone--after you and I are gone! It is greater than us all.

"But I, staying, shall contribute to the knowledge of men; I shall make discoveries that will bear my name always. This world is my laboratory; I have found deposits such as none has ever seen on Earth.

"Be reasonable, Herr Bullard. The enemy has tracked us down by his superior cleverness. We will go far away now where he never shall find us, you and I. Do not be a fool; do not throw your life away."

* * * * *

Chet Bullard, a figure of helpless, hopeless despair, stood unspeaking while he stared into the black depths of the jungle, and the night wind whipped his tattered clothing about him.

"A fool!" he said at last, and his voice was dull and heavy. "I guess you're right--"

Herr Kreiss interrupted: "Of course I am right--right and reasonable and logical!"

Chet went on as if the other had not spoken:

"If I hadn't been a fool I would have found some way to prevent it; I would have killed that ape-thing when first I saw it; I would have got them free."

He turned slowly to face his companion in the darkness.

"But you were wrong, Kreiss; you forgot a couple of things. You said they found us by their superior cleverness. That's wrong. They found us because you left a trail they could follow. We threw them off once, Towahg and I, but the messenger wouldn't be fooled. Then Schwartzmann and his pack followed the messenger in.

"And you say it is logical that I should quit here, leave Diane and Walt to take whatever is coming; you say I'm a fool to stay with them till the end.

"Well,"--he was speaking very quietly, very simply--"if you are right I'm rather glad that I'm a fool. For you see, Kreiss, they're my friends, and between friends logic gets knocked all to hell.

"Come on, Towahg!" he called. "Let's see if we can travel this jungle in the night!" He set off toward the fringe of great trees, then let Towahg go ahead to find a trail.

* * * * *

Travel at night through the tangle of creepers was not humanly possible. Even Towahg, after an hour's work, grunted his disgust and curled himself up for the night. And Chet, though he found his mind filled with vain imaginings, was so drained by the day's demands on his nervous energy that he slept through to the rising of the sun.

Then they circled wide of the trail they had taken before; no risk would Chet take of a chance meeting with one of the pyramid apes. And he plagued his brain with vain questions of what he should do when he reached the arena and the pyramid and the unknown something that waited within, until he told himself in desperation: "You're going down, you're going into that damned place; that's all you know for sure."

Whereupon his questioning ceased, and his mind was clear enough to think of giant creepers that barred his way, of streams to be crossed, and to wonder, at the last, when the valley of the pyramid was in sight and whether the others had reached there before him.

Another day's sun was beating straight down into the arena when again it opened before Chet's eyes. And the bleak horror of this place of black and white that had seemed so incredibly unreal under Earth-lit skies was doubly so in the glare of noon.

They entered through the jagged crack that had been their means of escape. An earthquake, one time, had split the stone, and Chet was more than satisfied to avoid the broad entrance where the rocks made a gateway and where hostile eyes might be watching.

* * * * *

He stood for long minutes in the cleft in the rocks where the hard earth of the arena made a floor before him, where the huge steps of ribboned white and black swung out on either hand, and where, directly ahead, in the same hard, contrasting strata, a pyramid lifted itself to finish in a projecting capstone. And now that he faced it he found himself curiously cool.

He motioned Towahg to his side, and the black came cowering and trembling. He had tried before to ask Towahg about the mystery of the pyramid, but Towahg had never understood, or, as Chet believed, he had pretended not to understand. But now he could no longer feign ignorance of Chet's queries.

Chet pointed to the pyramid with a commanding hand. "What is there?" he demanded. "Towahg afraid! What is Towahg afraid of? Ape-men go in there--Gr-r-ranga-men; who sends for them?"

And Towahg, who must know the sense of the questions, even though some words were strange, could not answer. He dropped to his knees there in the narrow, ragged chasm in the rock and clutched at Chet's legs with his two hands while he buried his shaggy head in his arms. Then--

"Krargh!" he wailed; "Krargh there! Krargh send--Gr-r-ranga go. Gr-r-ranga no come back!"

It was perhaps the longest speech Towahg had ever made, and Chet nodded his understanding. "Yes," he agreed; "that's right. I imagine. When Krargh sends for you, you never come back."

But more eloquent than the ape-man's halting words was the trembling of his muscle-knotted shoulders in a fear that struck him limp at Chet's feet. And the pilot realized that the fear was inspired in part by the thought in the savage mind that his master might ask him to go closer to the place of dread. He had followed them once and had struck down a messenger, but this was when he was avid with curiosity and half-worshipful of the white men as gods. Now, to go that dreadful way in full daylight!--it was more than Towahg could face.

* * * * *

Chet patted the cringing shoulder with a kindly hand. "Get up, Towahg," he ordered and pointed back toward the jungle. "Towahg wait outside; wait today and to-night!" He gave the ape-man's sign of the open and closed hand to signify one day and one night, and Towahg's grunt was half in relief and half in understanding as he slipped back into hiding where the jungle pressed close.

Chet turned again to the pyramid. "They're down there," he told himself, "facing God knows what. And now it's sink or swim, and I'm almighty afraid I know which it's to be. But we'll take it together: 'When Krargh sends for you, you never come back.'"

No jungle sounds were here in this silent arena, no flashing of leather-winged birds nor scuttling of little, odd creatures of the ground. It was as if some terror had spread its dark wings above the place, a terror unseen of men. But the little, wild things of earth and air had seen, and they had fled long since from a place unclean and unfit for life.

Chet felt the silence pressing heavily upon him as he took his hand from the rock at his side and stepped out into the arena. And the vast amphitheater seemed peopled with phantom shapes that sat in serried rows and watched him with dead and terrible eyes, while he went the long way to the pyramid's base, and his feet found the rough stone ascent....