Part 2

They were in a rocky defile, like a little gully descending. Atwood dropped to the ground and drew up the girl beside him. More than ever now, the idea of taking her to Earth was in his mind. How could he ever have imagined leaving her here, an Earthgirl, suffering from amnesia. And he was thinking. Dr. Georg Johns, his father's friend, had left the Earth, presumably to come here.

"Listen, Ah-li," he said. "I don't want to confuse you too much. Don't think I'm crazy or anything. In this place where I just came from there used to be someone called Dr. Georg Johns. Doesn't that mean something to you? Think back."

He stared at her; and on her face, at mention of the name, there came a queer, startled puzzlement.

"Why--why--" she could only stammer. Puzzled, with some vague consciousness of memory stirring within her. And then it was gone. "Why--what is that?" she murmured. "You speak so strangely. The words I understand, but the things you say--"

"Forget it, Ah-li. I don't want to worry you. There are things you used to know, and that you'll remember sometime. They'll come back to you."

"My life in the God-Heaven?"

"Yes, sure. Call it that."

During all this time with the girl, Atwood had been conscious of that weird, gruesome undercurrent of humming which seemed a sinister background to this little world. And now, as momentarily they were silent here in the small rocky recess, abruptly he was aware that the humming had greatly intensified. Ah-li at the same instant noticed it. Terror leaped to her face as her hand gripped his arm.

"That humming--" he murmured.

"Yes. Oh, evidently this is the time for the _genes_ to come out! I thought so; that is why I was out in the tree-tops tonight--to see if any were around."

The _genes_. On Earth they might remain always as sub-microscopic spores, multiplying in human nerve and brain tissue to cause the ghastly poliomelitus. But here they were merely lurking monsters, seasonally growing into visible things of horror. Things with a voice. Countless billions of them, with their blended tiny voices faintly audible.

The rock recess here was dark. It was like a little cave, with an open, narrow front. Atwood and the girl were seated several feet back from the entrance. And now, as the tiny humming suddenly was increasing, in the grotto entrance close before them, a little spot was visible on the rocks. A spot, like a dot of saffron glow. For that stricken second numbly Atwood stared at it; an inch-long blob of glow, with a tiny solid nucleus.

Only a second or two Atwood and Ah-li sat transfixed with horror. The glow was expanding. A swift expansion--so swift that it was like a saffron balloon being blown up into size tremendous. As though hideous forces of nature, held in check, now abruptly were released. A tentacled thing, big as a football. But before Atwood and the girl could more than struggle to their feet, it was a monstrous saffron thing of horror--a round, glowing, luminous pulpy mass, big as Atwood now. Its bulk blocked the cave-entrance.

"Good God--" Atwood muttered. "We're penned in here!"

There was no chance for them to leap away. In terror Ah-li was clinging to him. The dark narrow confines of the recess were lurid now with the monster's ghastly yellow light. Its hideous voice was a humming throb. For another second it stood blocking the opening, apparently its full size now, with long tentacles weaving like tongues of yellow fire; and a ring of clustered eyes in its center, balefully glowing.

And then, with a rolling lunge, it hurled itself forward!

* * * * *

It was a blur, a chaos of utter horror to Atwood. He had no time to do more than thrust Ah-li behind him when the monster was upon him. Weird and ghastly combat. He was conscious of being engulfed by the horrible glutinous mass as the noisome saffron pulp wrapped itself around him. Wildly he fought, staggering, with kicking legs and flailing arms. The intense yellow glow, so close to his eyes now, was dazzling, blinding. Its voice was chattering, like a dynamo gone awry; a throbbing voice that mingled with the girl's cry of terror.

"Oh, do not fall. Keep standing!"

"You run--" he gasped. "Get past it and run."

He mustn't fall. That would be the end. The sticky weight of the thing pressed him. Sucking tentacles were wrapped around him. In the saffron glare he could not see if the monster still blocked the cave-opening. If only he could get it further inside, so Ah-li could slip past. Then he realized that as he fought to get loose, his flailing hands were pulling the oozy tissue apart. He ripped one of the tentacles loose. It fell like a segment of yellow flame, writhing on the ground. But there was no wound where it had been, for it seemed that the oozy flesh flowed around the break.

Then he felt Ah-li tugging at him as again he staggered, almost went down. She was tugging, trying to pull him loose. And the monster now, with chattering, enraged voice rising in pitch, was trying to draw him inward. A slap of the horrible stuff struck his face; choking him. He wiped it off; tore loose a great segment of the body and cast it away.

"Now--you--get free--we can run--" The girl's panting voice came to him out of the chaos. Behind him she was pulling at his shoulders, adding her slight strength and weight to his.

And suddenly he found himself loose, staggering backward. The monster, gathered itself, with its glowing fragments on the rocks around it, rolled itself a few feet away. Atwood found that he was in the mouth of the cave. Ah-li shoved him, and he was outside.

"You jump--now!"

The huge, screaming, saffron ball lunged for them. With his hand gripping hers, they jumped, sailed together in a flat arc over the monster and landed fifty feet behind it. Atwood, who had fallen, picked himself up. At the mouth of the cave the huge round ball, with new tentacles growing upon it, stood seemingly confused by the escape of its prey. Then, growling with a low sullen murmur, suddenly it rolled itself back into the darkness of the recess. Lurking, with only the reflected light of it at the opening to show that it was there.

Panting, still with horror making him shudder, Atwood followed the girl. They skirted an edge of waving forest growth, descending a rocky declivity. Open rocky space was to the left of them now, with a little line of hillocks. Ahead, at a lower level, the glow of the purple _Xarite_-radiance was a big patch in the darkness. And now in the patch, Atwood could see what seemed a weird little human settlement. Clusters of low, mound-shaped dwellings of rocks and mud and grass. The semblance of crooked little streets. The purple glow bathed it--a half mile, irregular patch. And beyond it and to the sides, there was only blank darkness.

"That is Marla," Ah-li was saying. "We shall have to put the light-force up now for the season of the growing of _genes_. The time has come."

With his questions, she tried to make it clear. The radiance off there which enveloped the little settlement was inherent to the ground itself. Most of the Marlans of this little world lived here. And those others who were nearby, now at the season of the growing of the _genes_, would come flocking into the glow. A few days, a week or two; and then the _genes_ would die away until the next cycle of their growth. But even this natural glow was not sufficient to hold them off, so that the Marlans set up around their settlement what Ah-li called a light-fence. A sort of barrage; a few hundred little braziers of _Xarite_, set at intervals on the ground, their spreading glow mingling one with the other, encircling the village. A barrage which no _gene_ would dare pass.

"I see," Atwood murmured. "But Ah-li, where do you get that _Xarite_? Near here?"

"Oh, yes." She gestured toward the dark little line of hills off to the left. "It is there. Most of it, in grottos underground. You see, it is not far."

"And what's it like? Loose in the caves?"

He held his breath for her answer. "Yes," she said. "The _Drall-stone_. It lies loose in the caves."

Triumph swept him. He could get his insulated cylinder packed with _Xarite_, and then get back to his Spaceship and away. And take Ah-li with him.

"Listen," he began, "show me the way to one of those caves. I want to see--"

"Here is water, for us to swim," she interrupted. "The flesh of the _genes_ is still on us."

Heaven knew he had been conscious of it. A little stream of purplish phosphorescent water, impregnated no doubt with the _Xarite_, came babbling down the slope here from the distant hills. He and Ah-li plunged in; came out, with the purple phosphorescence of the water dripping from them.

Atwood breathed with relief. "That's certainly better." Now, if he could get her to lead him to the _Xarite_ caves.

"Ah-lee. Ah-lee." It was the sound of a guttural voice calling from the dimness of the rocks near at hand. The startled Atwood turned to see a group of small stocky figures approaching.

* * * * *

The Marlans. With Ah-li gripping him he stood as the figures came forward and ranged themselves in a jabbering group around him and the girl. They were about five feet tall. Cast somewhat in Earth-human mould, with crooked heavy legs, and swart, putty-colored skin. The body was wide-shouldered, thick-chested. The round, hairless head was set low in a depression of the shoulders. The face was rough-hewn of feature, with up-turned snout-like nose, and small, watery reddish eyes.

They walked with a sluggishness of heavy, solid tread. Quite evidently their bodies were a wholly different density from that of Earthmen. Atwood guessed that here they weighed what might be called three hundred pounds; compared to which his own weight was ten or fifteen, and that of Ah-li not more than five or eight. Beside them, with their swinging, ponderous movements, Atwood suddenly felt spindly and birdlike. How obvious now, that these primitive people would have accepted the beautiful little Earthgirl as a Goddess! Her coming from the sky in a thing which struck the ground and burst into flame. Her seeming miraculous ability to leap into the air. Her size, and yet her lightness. Her ability to swim; to leap into the vine-tops and run upon their frail swaying surface.

Certainly these Marlans would sink like stones in this light water; they could leap no more than a heavy man could leap on Earth. Their weight chained them to the ground.

"Ah-lee...." One of them, slightly taller, less ponderous than the others, came forward, with a flood of words to the girl.

She answered him in weird, guttural, unintelligible words, with gestures toward Atwood at whom now they were all staring in awe. And then abruptly she added, in English:

"A Man-God has come to us, Bohr."

"That fellow understands English?" Atwood put in.

"Yes. A little. I have taught him, since this time when I was born from the sky."

"The language of the Gods." Bohr said heavily. "It, I understand. I am like a God too--"

Whatever plans Atwood vaguely had made, were swept away now. There seemed not so much awe of him upon these jabbering, crowding Marlans as curiosity. They were plucking at him now, with heavy, taloned hands feeling his arms, prodding at his ribs. And abruptly he realized the tremendous strength of these creatures. A ponderous power of muscles; a different quality of strength from that of any Earthman.

The realization sent a thrill of fear through Atwood; mentally he cursed himself that he had not seized Ah-li, rushed her to one of those caves for the _Xarite_, and gotten away from this accursed place. But there was nothing he could do about it now. Bohr and one of the others gripped him, leading him along, with Ah-li excitedly beside them, and the crowd of jabbering Marlans engulfing them.

The crowd augmented as they progressed down the slope. It was fifty, then a hundred. And now he saw women. They were garbed much the same as the men--shorter, more flabby-looking bodies with wispy hair on their heads. Their shrill voices mingled with the deeper tones of the men, as they pressed forward, some of them carrying children, all of them trying to get a glimpse of Atwood.

"You are to see our Ruler, the great Selah," Ah-li said, as she walked beside him, clinging to him. "Tonight, I am sure, you will be proclaimed a God." Her young voice quivered. "Our Man-God."

"All right, but look here--" Atwood muttered. "You better get us out of this now. This crowd is getting pretty heavy."

They were among the little mound-shaped houses. The narrow crooked streets were jammed with pressing people.

"Yes," Ah-li agreed. "To my home first. And then the Selah will send for you."

In the Marlan language she gave her commands to Bohr. He seemed to assent. But in the light-radiance here which suffused the turmoil of the weird little village, Atwood had a better look at the leader of these Marlans. Bohr was close beside him; and on the Marlan's grotesque, ugly face, Atwood saw an expression very strange. A sort of sidelong leer at Atwood; and a look at Ah-li that made Atwood's heart pound. It was as though this Bohr were sullenly resentful. As though something which he might have been planning was going wrong. And abruptly, as though with a premonition of menace, Atwood recalled the only words of English which Bohr had spoken: The language of the Gods, he had said. "It, I understand. I am like a God too."

Ahead of them a larger dwelling loomed in the radiant glow. "My home," Ah-li said. "We will go there, and wait."

* * * * *

Ah-li's dwelling was a house seemingly of three mounds interlocked. A glow of dim purple radiance showed through its small window-openings. And there were upright ovals for doors. The milling crowd stood watching as they entered. There seemed three small rooms inside.

Amazement swept Atwood. There was crude furniture here, woven of plaited vines--a table; chairs. A low little couch with dried leaves upon it. Furniture almost in Earth-style.

"Where did you get that?" Atwood murmured as he surveyed it.

"That? Why, I made it. I do not know why, but that seemed the right thing to do."

Memories of her Earth-life which were stirring in her, so vague that she did not recognize them.

"You go now, Bohr," Ah-li added.

Atwood swung to find the Marlan behind him. "Yes," Bohr said, "I will tell to the Great-Selah that the Man-God has come." Bohr's wide heavy jaws were chewing; and as he stood eyeing Atwood, he swayed on his feet.

"You chew the intoxicating weed?" Ah-li said reproachfully. "That is not good, Bohr. You want to be God-like--you should not do that."

"I know it," he said. His gaze fell before hers. And then as he turned to leave the room, again his strange flashing look swept Atwood, and there was hatred and menace in it.

"We will eat now," Ah-li said. "I have food here."

It was a strange meal. The food was peculiar though palatable. But Atwood hardly was aware of the food as he ate it. At the windows here he could see that Marlans were watching them. Others undoubtedly were watching the doors. There would be no chance, certainly not now, for him to get out, even though, once outside and free, he knew that no Marlan possibly could catch him. Nor had he the least chance of getting Ah-li out. Especially since she would probably be unwilling.

"You have told them of the _genes_?" he heard himself saying.

Her voice sounded worried.

"Yes. They are putting the barrage up now."

On impulse Atwood went to one of the windows. The Marlans there drew back, but stood at a little distance, staring at him. Behind them, the weird, glowing little village was in a turmoil with the excitement of the coming of a Man-God, and the news of the _genes_, the dread season of monsters again at hand. Doubtless the word had spread. From the nearby smaller settlements, the people were hurrying here. The streets seemed more jammed than ever now; and out beyond the edge of the village, radiant beams of the purple light were standing up at intervals into the sky; spreading beams, intermingling to form the barrage curtain.

Atwood came back from the window. It faced the main village street. Atwood was wondering if the other side might not face some space darker, more empty. That would be this adjoining room.

"When do you think Selah will send for us?" he demanded.

"Perhaps soon. Perhaps later tonight."

He gestured toward the room's inner doorway. "And that room there, that is for me, the Man-God?"

"Yes," she agreed.

"Then I shall go there now. You call me if the Selah wants us."

Triumph swept him as he reached the dim other room. He had lost his flash-gun in the tree-tops when he was chasing the girl. But he still had his other equipment. He discarded it all now save the little insulated cylinder slung over his shoulder, the cylinder in which he would store the precious _Xarite_. The window-ovals here were dark. Cautiously he went to one of them. There was a sort of garden outside, with beds great blossoms topping spindly stalks. A little forest of them, high as a man's head. To the left, a section of the village was visible; crowded with milling excited Marlans. But to the right, beyond the garden there was dimness. The barrage at the outskirts of the village there, had not yet gone up. It should be possible to get out through this window; make a run through the shrouding flowers of the garden.

Atwood watched his chance. Then, like a shadow, he was out of the window, sliding into the tall flower-clusters. Every instant he feared that there would be an alarm; but there was not. Then he was through the garden, skirting a dark edge of the town. The barrage was going up to the left of him, but its light did not reach him, and in a moment he was in the open country, with great sailing leaps bounding toward the hills and the caves of the _Xarite_.

* * * * *

The little cave was a weird, intense glare of violet light. Atwood had had no difficulty finding it; the glare streamed like an aura from its entrance, out into the night. The _Xarite_, almost in a pure state, lay in great powdery heaps. Atwood's hands were trembling as he scooped it up, filling his insulated cylinder, clamping down its lid. More than ever, a desperate haste was upon him now. So many things might be transpiring back in the village. And he realized too that his spaceship might be discovered.

Within a minute or two he was into the cave and out again, with his precious little cylinder slung on his back. He was more skillful at leaping now. Ahead the circular barrage was complete now, a vertical violet curtain of light enclosing the village. It made the darkness out here on the rocks seem more intense by contrast.

The dim landscape swayed weirdly with his flat sailing leaps. And suddenly, off to one side, he was aware that round blobs of yellow glow were appearing. The monster _genes_. With the season of their growth upon them, they were struggling up out of their microscopic invisible world.

The night out here now was hideous with the throbbing, humming voices of the monsters. Atwood's heart went cold. How would he get the girl out of this damnable place? He could think only that in some way he must quickly persuade her. Together, running, leaping like this--or like birds following the flimsy forest-top which the _genes_ could not reach--he would be able to get her to the spaceship.

With the purple barrage curtain close before him, Atwood slowed up. Then he came within the direct light-radiance; crawling almost flat to pass between two of the braziers. The glare blinded him. Then he was through, rising to his feet.

"So? Here is the God--our Man-God who was gone?" It was Bohr's ironic, guttural voice. Atwood had no chance to jump away. Bohr, with a ponderous pounce, gripped him with the power of a machine. Bohr and a dozen of his roistering men were here.

"Our Man-God is late for the ceremony," Bohr was leering. They were shoving Atwood forward, along a village street crowded with jabbering Marlans, across an edge of the village toward an open space, like a public square. The mound-dwellings bounded it on one side, and the barrage was on the other. The square was thronged with Marlans, standing in jabbering groups, gazing toward the center where three platforms were erected. Two were side by side, and one faced them. The two were empty. On the other a single Marlan sat in a great cradle. The Ruler-Selah. His ponderous fat body was round with flesh. In the cradle he squatted like a huge toad.

Bohr's grip never for an instant had relaxed on Atwood. "I am to be made a God now?" Atwood murmured.

"Yes. The Selah has decided." Surely that was leering irony in Bohr's heavy voice. Where was Ah-li? Then, as Atwood's captors shoved him toward the larger and higher of the two empty platforms, Atwood saw the girl. Slowly she was crossing the square. Ah-li, robed now in a long flowing, bluish grass garment with a garland of flowers around her head. The Goddess Ah-li. The Marlans, awed, bowed before her as she advanced, mounted the smaller platform and stood with her arms outstretched. The reflected glow of the barrage painted her face. Apprehension was there. And then she saw Atwood. Relief swept her; and then an exaltation. The recognition of a Man-God, with her to guide these people.

Then Atwood, tense and alert, stood on the other platform, facing the ruler. He was some twenty feet from the girl, and five feet or so above her.

"The Man-God is here," Bohr proclaimed in English. And then he seemed to be repeating it in the Marlan language.

The crowd was bowing now with foreheads to the ground. The Selah spoke in a piping, cracked voice; and with a gesture ordered Bohr from the platform.

* * * * *

Alone, Atwood faced the Ruler and the prostrate throng. Out of the corner of his eyes he could see Ah-li standing stiffly erect, with arms outstretched as though in benediction. And as the Selah now was intoning some ritual, Atwood drew himself up and lifted his arms.

But tensely, alertly he was watching. Where was Bohr? The big Marlan seemed to have vanished. A dozen of Bohr's men were in a little drunken group, their boistering voices suppressed now as they stood at the edge of the platform behind the Selah's cradle. The barrage was close behind them. And as Atwood's apprehensive gaze stared at the purple radiance, dimly behind it he could see that the _genes_ were crowding. Attracted by the scent of the human crowd here, they had gathered outside the barrage. Thousands of them--ghastly, tumbling, tentacled balls of saffron, milling one upon the other as they pressed forward. Thousands? There could have been millions; a saffron sea of them out there.

"The Man-God will speak to us now." It was Ah-li's voice, prompting him.

Atwood gathered his wits. He began to talk. What matter the words. He hardly knew what he was saying, for abruptly behind the Ruler-Selah, Bohr had appeared. Bohr with a knife in his hand. And in that same instant, with a ponderous leap he plunged the knife into the Selah's bloated back!

There was a second of ghastly startled silence. Then chaos. The prostrate Marlans gasped; then leaped to their feet, shouting, milling with terror and confusion. Bohr's men from behind the platform leaped upon it. All of them with knives, plunging the blades into the Ruler's puffed, toadlike body; and then standing, shouting at the crowd.

It was a startled instant while Atwood stood numbed. Bohr again had vanished; and then suddenly he appeared on the platform with Ah-li and was standing beside her, with his heavy arm around her as she sagged against him in terror. He, too, was shouting at the crowd now; and then he shouted in English:

"I am the Man-God! Your Man-God and the new Ruler."