CHAPTER VIII
_Doomed_
The sun was high when they ventured forth. Diane would have come, butthe two men would have none of it. They remembered the sight they hadseen; they knew what was left of a man's body lying on the rocks above;and they ordered the girl to stay hidden while Kreiss remained with heras a guard.
There were only the four who lay hidden in the woods; Schwartzmann andMax, with the remaining three men, were gone. Harkness' calls wereunanswered, and he ceased the halloo.
"Better keep quiet," he advised himself and the others. "We are out ofammunition, though they don't know it. And they have got away. They willkeep on going, too, and I am not any too well pleased with that. Iwanted to put Schwartzmann where I could keep an eye on him.... Oh,well, he isn't very dangerous."
But Chet Bullard made a few mental and unspoken reservations to thatremark. "That boy is always dangerous," he told himself, "and he won'tbe happy unless he is making trouble. Thank the Lord he hasn't got thatgun!"
He came out cautiously from among the trees, but the red horde was gone.The reptiles' wings had rasped and clashed furiously for a time; theyhad darted in fiery flashes before the protecting trees: and the fitfulbreeze had brought gusts of nauseous odors--until a thin haze formed inthe higher air and the red things were gone.
"There will not be any more for a while," said Harkness.
He pointed toward the fumerole they had seen from the lookout earlier inthe day: again it was emitting jets of thin, steamy vapor that did notdisappear like steam but floated up above their heads. "The gas hasdriven them off," he added.
* * * * *
The two men climbed slowly up the slope that had been the wave front ofmolten rock. Chet found his pistol by the path and picked it up.
"We'll get more ammunition up top," he told Harkness, "and we will tosssome down to Kreiss. He can have the extra gun you brought forSchwartzmann, too."
He stopped suddenly. He had reached the level top of the lava flow. Herewas where they had stood when the beasts attacked; where Harkness haddropped the boxes of ammunition and the pistol--and except for a fewscattered bodies of unbelievable reptiles and for a stain of blood wherehis own wound had bled, there was nothing to show where they had been.
"He got 'em!" Chet exclaimed. "That son-of-a-gun Schwartzmann got thegun and shells. I saw him scrambling around on the rock. I thought hewas just scared to death; but no, he wasn't too frightened to grab thegun and the ammunition while one of his own men was being killed. Andthat's not so good, either!"
A dozen paces beyond was a huddle of clothing that stirred idly in thebreeze. "The poor devil!" exclaimed Chet, and moved over beside the bodyof the man who had gone down under the red swarm's attack.
It lay face down. Chet stooped to turn the body over, though he knewthere was no hope of life. He stopped with a gasp of dismay.
Two eyes still stared in horror from a face that was colorless--adrained, ghastly white face! No tint remained to show that this ever hadbeen a living man. More dreadful than the waxen pallor of death, herewas a bleached, bloodless flesh that told of the nameless horror thathad overwhelmed this man, beaten him down and drained him of every dropof blood.
"Vampires!" Chet heard Harkness saying in a horrified whisper. "Thosebeaks that were like tubes! And they--they--" He stopped as if in fearof the words that would tell what they themselves had escaped.
Chet turned the body to its former position; that dreadful face beneatha pitiless sun was a sight no other eyes should see. "Let's go on to theship," he said. "We'll get some ammunition, go back and get Diane--"
* * * * *
He did not finish the thought. Before him he saw the lifeless bodymoving; it rolled and shuddered as if life had returned to this thingwhere no life should be. Chet raised one hand in an unconscious gestureas if to ward off some new horror that the body might disclose. It was amoment before he realized that the rock was shaking beneath his feet,that he was dizzy and that from no great distance a rumbling growl wassounding in his ears.
The moving body had shaken Chet's mental poise as had the earthquake hisphysical equilibrium. Harkness had not seen it; he was looking offacross the level plateau.
"Look!" he exclaimed; "another vent has opened! See it spout?"
Some hundred yards distant were clouds of green vapor that rolled intothe air. At their base a fountain of mud sputtered and spouted and fellback to build up a cone. The green cloud whirled sluggishly, then wascaught by the breeze and began its slow, rolling progress across theflat rock. It was coming their way, rolling down toward the ship, andChet gripped suddenly at his companion's arm.
"Come on!" he said! "I'm going away from here, and I'm going now. We'llget Diane and Kreiss: remember what a whiff of gas did to him thismorning."
He was drawing Harkness toward the face of the rock; he wondered at hisslowness. Walt seemed fascinated by the oncoming cloud.
"Wait!" Harkness paused at the top of the descending slope. Chet turned,to look where Harkness was watching.
The green cloud moved slowly. As he turned to stare it touched the bowof their ship; it flowed slowly, sluggishly, along the sides, and thenswept up and over the top. The lookouts of the control room wereobscured, and the port from which they had come!
"Cut off!" breathed Harkness, his voice heavy with hopeless conviction."We can't get back! And now we're on our own past any doubt!"
* * * * *
"It may not last," Chet was urging an hour later, when, with Kreiss andDiane, they stood on high ground to look down on the ship.
The sparkling sheen of the metal cylinder had changed from silver topale green. The cloud that enveloped it was not heavy, but it was alwaysthe same. Yet still Chet insisted: "It may not last."
"Sorry to disappoint you," replied Kreiss, "but there is little groundfor such a belief." Again he was the professor instructing a class."These fumeroles, in my opinion, are venting a region far below thesurface. It is possible that further seismic disturbances may alterconditions; a rearrangement of the lower rock strata may close existingcrevices and open others like this you have seen; but, barring that, Isee no reason for thinking that this emission of what appears to bechlorine with other gases may not continue indefinitely."
Chet looked at Diane. Was it a twinkle that appeared and vanished in hereyes as Herr Professor Kreiss concluded his remarks. She would laugh inthe very face of death, Chet realized, but her tone was entirely seriousas she offered another suggestion.
"If this wind should change," she said, "and if it blew the gas inanother direction, the ship could be cleared. One of us could go in longenough to switch on the air generators full."
But now it was Chet who shook his head in a negative. "Remember," hetold her, "when we were here before? All of the time while Walt was gonefor the ship--how did the wind blow then?"
"The same as now," she admitted.
"And it never changed."
"No,"--slowly--"it never changed."
* * * * *
Chet turned to Walt and Kreiss. "That's that," he said shortly. "Anyother good ideas in the crowd? Can anyone go through that gas and get tothe ship? I'll make a try."
"Suicide!" was Kreiss' verdict, and Harkness confirmed his words.
"I saw things that moved up in the trees," he said. "Lord knows whatthey were; Birds--beasts of some sort! But they were alive till the gastouched them. I saw it drift among the trees when we left, and thosethings up there came plopping down like ripe apples."
Diane Delacouer looked up at Harkness with wide, serious eyes. "Then,"she shrugged, "we are really--"
"Castaways," Harkness told her. "We're on our own--off on a desertisland--shipwrecked--all that sort of thing! And you might as well knowthe worst of it; you, too, Kreiss.
"Our good friend, Schwartzmann, is at large, and he has the pistol andammunition we brought out from the ship. He i
s armed, and we are not; hehas food, and we have none. And I'll have to admit that I didn't haveany breakfast and could use a little right now."
"There are seven shells left in my pistol," said Diane. She held theweapon out to Harkness; he took it carefully.
"Seven," he said; "it is all we have. We must kill some animals forfood, my dear, but not with these; we must save these for bigger game."
"But we cannot!" expostulated Kreiss. "To kill game with our barehands--impossible! We are doomed!"
And now Chet caught Diane's glance brimming with mirth that wasundisguised. Truly, Diane Delacouer would have her laugh in the face ofdeath.
"Doomed?" she exclaimed. "Not while Chet and I know how to make bows andarrows!... Do you suppose we can find any of their old spears, Chet?They made gorgeous bows, you remember."
And Chet bowed low in an exaggeration of admiration that was notentirely assumed. "Lead on!" he said. "You are in command. The army isready to follow."