Part 2

The two figures were struggling. There was the sound of the girl's low cry, and a grunt from the man.... My low admonition stopped Jan from firing and in another second the shapes across the gully had vanished.

"That girl," I murmured. "She tried to keep him from killing us. Seemed that way, don't you think?"

"Well--"

* * * * *

We waited. From across the gully there was no sound. I could see now that there was a little ridge in the broken, littered gully floor, behind which the two figures had vanished. A lateral depression was there, with the ragged, broken cliff-wall some ten feet behind it.

"Do you suppose there's only one of them?" Jan whispered. "One man--and that girl--"

"And that--that Thing in flames--"

There was no sign of the animal-like creature. For another moment we crouched tense, peering, listening. A loose stone the size of my fist was here beside us. I picked it up. It was weirdly heavy for its size. Then I flung it out into the gully to the right of us. It fell with a clatter.

Our enemy was there all right. An arrow whizzed in the darkness and struck near where the stone had fallen.

Jan laughed with contempt. "Dumb enough--that fellow. Bob, listen, we've got flash-guns. That fellow with no brains--and just with arrows--"

True enough. "You stay here," I whispered.

"What's the idea?"

"You wait a couple of minutes. Then throw another stone off to the right--about the same place. Understand?"

"No, I don't."

"Well, you do it, anyhow."

There seemed a line of shadow to the left of us, a shadow which extended well out into the gully. The ground dropped down in that area--a slope strewn with crags, broken with little crevices. Crouching low, I crept to the bow of the ship, to the left away from Jan; sank down, waited. There was no sound; evidently I had not been seen. I started again, picking my way down the slope.

A minute. I was well out into the gully now, ten feet or so down, so that I could not see the wrecked ship where Jan was crouching. From here the opposite cliff-wall showed dark and ragged. Occasionally it yawned with openings, like little cave-mouths. The place where the figures had been crouching should be visible from here. The broken, lower side of the little ridge behind which they had dropped was in view to me now. It was dark with shadow, but there seemed nothing there.

Slowly, cautiously, I crossed the gully. Two minutes since I had left Jan? I melted down beside a rock, almost at the edge of the cliff-wall. And then, out in the gully, far to the right, I heard the stone clatter as Jan threw it.

There was no answering arrow-shot this time.... One can be very incautious, usually at just the wrong moment. I recall that I stood up to see better, though I flattened myself against a boulder. And suddenly, close behind me, I was aware of a padding, thudding rhythmic sound on the rocks. I whirled. I had only a second's vision of a dark bounding animal shape coming at me. My sizzling little flash went under it as it rose in one of its bounding leaps.

I had no time to fire another shot. Frantically I pulled the trigger-lever, but the gun's voltage had not yet rebuilt to firing pressure. Futilely I flung the gun into the creature's face as it bore down upon me.

The impact of the dark oblong body knocked me backward so that I fell with it sprawling, snarling upon me. In the chaos of my mind there was only the dim realization of a heavy body as big as my own; spindly legs, like the legs of a huge dog. There seemed six or eight legs, scrambling on me.

Wildly I fought to heave it off. There was a face--a ring of glaring green eyes; fang-like jaws of a long pointed snout which opened, snarling with a gibbering, gruesome cry. I shoved my left forearm into the jaws as they came at my face. They closed upon my arm, ripping, tearing.

* * * * *

But somehow I was aware that I had lunged to my feet. And the Thing reared up with me. It was a Thing almost as heavy as myself. My left arm had come loose from its jaws and as its scrambling weight pressed me I went down again. A Thing of rubber? It seemed boneless, the shape of it bending as I seized it. A gruesomely yielding body. My flailing blows bounded back from it. Then I knew that I was gripping it by the head, twisting it. The snarling, snapping jaws suddenly opened wide with a scream--a scream that faded into a mouthing gibber, and in my grip the Thing went limp. I cast it away and it sank to the rocks, quivering.

For an instant I stood panting, trembling with nausea sickening me. On my hands the flesh of the weird antagonist was sticking like viscous, gluey rubber. Hot and clinging. Hot? I stared at my hands in the dimness. For a second I thought it was phosphorescence. Then yellow-green wisps of flame were rising from my hands. Frantically I plunged them into my jacket pockets. The tiny flames were extinguished. I stripped off my jacket, flung it away and it lay with a little smoke rising from it where the weird stuff was trying again to burst into flame.

The skin of my hands was seared, but the contact with the flames had been only momentary and the burns were not severe. It had all happened in a minute or two. I recall that I was standing trembling, staring at the yawning mouth of a cave entrance which was nearby in the cliff-face. A movement in there? A moving blob? Then I was aware that there was a light behind me. Off across the gully there was a blob of light-fire. A red-green blob, swirling, scrambling. And the sound of a distant, gibbering snarl....

The singing whizz of an arrow past my head made me turn again. My human adversary! I saw him now. He was coming at a run from the mouth of the cave--a wide-shouldered, grotesquely-shaped man with a brown hairy garment draped upon him. He swayed like a gorilla on thick bent legs. In one hand he held what seemed an arrow-sling. In the other he carried a long narrow segment of rock, swinging it like a club. He was no more than ten feet from me. In the dimness I could see his huge round head with tangled, matted blank hair. As I whirled to meet him, his voice was a bellow of guttural roar, like an animal bellowing to intimidate its enemy.

I turned, jumped sidewise. And abruptly from a rock-shadow another shape rose up! Slim, small white body, brown-draped with long, gleaming tawny hair. The girl! Her voice gasped,

"You run! He kill you! In here--this way--"

The bellowing savage had turned heavily in his rush and was charging us. In her terror and confusion the girl gripped me, shoving me toward the cave. As we ran I flung an arm around her, lifting her up. She weighed hardly more than a child. Then we were in the blackness of a tunnel-passage. I set her down.

"Lie down. Be quiet," I whispered vehemently. She understood me; she crouched back against the side wall. There seemed a little light here, a glow which I realized was inherent to the rocks, like a vague, faint phosphorescence. But it was brighter outside. The charging savage had evidently paused at the entrance. As I stared now, his bulky figure loomed there, grotesque silhouette. Then doubtless he saw me. With another bellow he came charging in.

I stood waiting, like a Toreador, in front of a heavily charging bull. It was something like that, for as he rushed me, swinging his club and plunging with lowered head of matted hair, nimbly I jumped aside. I had seized a rock half as big as my head. He had no time to turn and poise himself as I jumped on him, crashing the rock at the side of his broad ugly face as he straightened and swung around.

Ghastly blow. His face smashed in as the rock seemed to go into it. For a second his hulking body stood balanced upon the crooked legs and broad flat bare feet. Gruesome dead thing with the face and top of the head gone, it balanced on legs suddenly turned rigid. Then it toppled forward and thudded against the passage wall, sliding sidewise to the ground where it lay motionless.

* * * * *

In the phosphorescent dimness, I dropped beside the girl. She was panting with terror, shuddering, with her hands before her face.

"It's all right," I murmured. "Or at least, maybe it isn't all right with you, but he's dead, anyway."

Utterly incongruous, the delicately formed bronze-white girl--and that hulking, grotesque, clumsy savage.

"Oh--yes," she murmured. "Dear--yes--"

"You speak English--strange, here on Vulcan--"

"But from your Captain Roberts--he was the fren' of mine--of all the Senzas--"

"He's dead. An arrow in him--lying over there by his wrecked ship--the rest of them, dead inside--"

"Yes. I know it. That was these Orgs. I was caught--just the last time of sleep. Tahg--surely it seems it must be Tahg who sent this Org to take me from my father's home--"

A captive! And she had fought with her savage captor to stop him from sending an arrow into me. Then, in his absorption as he tried to stalk me, she had broken loose from him.

"Just this one Org?" I murmured. "Is he the only one around here? He and that--animal-thing which I killed?"

"That--a female _mime_--you--you--"

She was huddling beside me, clinging to me, still shuddering. "Two Orgs there were," she whispered. "And another mime--a fire-male--"

The flame-creature! Queerly, it was not until that instant that I thought of Jan. Out there across the gully, that swirling swaying blob of light-fire! Those snarling sounds! Jan had been attacked by another of the savages, and by the weird flaming creature! The mime fire-male, as the girl called it.

I jumped to my feet. "What--what you do?" she demanded.

"You stay here. What's your name?"

"Ama. Daughter of Rohm, the Senza. He my father. He very good fren' of the Captain Roberts--good fren' of all the Earthmen. Like you? You are Earthman?"

"Yes. Now Ama, listen--I came here with another Earthman--with two others, in fact. One of them is over there by the Roberts' ship.... You wait here--"

"No!" she gasped. I had dashed toward the tunnel entrance, but I found her with me. "No--no, I stay with you."

From the entrance the gully showed dim and silent. Over the little rise of ground, just the top of the Roberts' spaceship was visible.

Ama clung to me. "I stay with you," she insisted.

Cautiously we picked our way across the gully, up the small ascending slope. No sound; nothing moving. But now there was a pungent, acrid chemical smell hanging here in the windless air.

"The fire-mime!" Ama whispered. "You smell the fire? Then he was angry, ready to fight--"

"He fought," I retorted grimly. "I saw it--"

"Look! Look there--"

* * * * *

Her slim arm as she gestured tinkled with metal baubles hanging on it.... I saw, up the slope, the blob of something lying on the rocks. Jan! My heart pounded. But it wasn't Jan. The body of one of the weird oblong animals was lying there. Lying on its side, with its six legs stiffly outstretched. Ugly hairless thing, like a giant dog which had been skinned. I could see now that the grey-green flesh had a greasy, pulpy look. What strange organic material was this? Certainly nothing like it existed on Earth. Impervious to heat, as the human stomach tissue is impervious to the action of its own digestive juices. Evidence of the thing's flaming oxidation was here. Wisps of smoke were rising from the ground about the slack body.

Had Jan killed it? The ring of eyes above the long muzzle snout bulged with a glassy, goggling dead stare. The jaws were open, with a thick, forked black tongue protruding, and green, sticky-looking froth still oozing out. The teeth were long and sharp, fangs like polished black ivory protruding from the jaw. The cause of its death was obvious. A knife-slash had ripped, almost severed its throat in a hideous wound where green-black viscous ooze was still slowly dripping, with smoky vapor rising from it.

For a moment, with little Ama clinging to me, I must have stood appalled at the weird sight of the dead fire-mime. If Jan had fought and killed it--then where was he now? And where was that other Org, companion of the clumsy savage I had killed when it had tried to attack me?

And where was Torrence?

"Your fren'--he did this?" Ama was murmuring.

"Yes, I guess so." I raised my voice cautiously. "Jan--Oh, Jan, where are you?"

The dark shadowed rocks mocked me with their muffled, blurred echo of my call. There seemed nothing here alive, save Ama and me. The wrecked spaceship lay broken and silent on the rocks, with the gruesome, strewn bodies of the Earthmen in it. And the body of Roberts still lay here outside, near the bow.

"Jan--Jan--"

Then Ama abruptly gasped, "The Orgs! See them--up there!"

The cliff which was the gully wall, at this point was some fifty feet high. I stared up to a patch of yellow light which had appeared there in the darkness. A band of the murderous Orgs! Carrying flaming torches, a dozen or more of the gargoyle savages stood above us on the cliff-brink. One stood in advance of them, pointing down at us. He was the other one, doubtless, who had originally been down here with Ama. Around them, half a dozen of the huge greenish mimes bounded, whining with gibbering cries of eagerness.

And in that instant, an arrow came down. I saw one of the savages sling it from a flexible, whip-like contrivance. The whizzing metal shaft sang past our heads and clattered on the rocks.

Ama was clutching me. "You come! Oh hurry--they kill us both."

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."