Chapter 14: 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.