Chapter 16: Through Air and Water

It was midday when they approached the heights they had reached on their flight from Fire Valley. Off to one side must lie the arena with the pyramid within. And within the pyramid--! Chet took his thoughts quickly away from that. Or perhaps it was the shrieking chatter from ahead that gave him other things to think of.

Towahg had heard them before, but Chet had not understood his signs. And now the chorus of an approaching pack of ape-men was louder with each passing minute. That they were coming along the same trail seemed certain.

Towahg sprang into the air; his gnarled hands closed on a heavy vine: he went up this hand over hand, ready to move off to one side through the leafy roof with never a sign of his going. He waited impatiently for Chet to join him, and the pilot, regarding the incredible leap of that squat ape-man body, shook his head in despair.

“Grab a loose end,” he told Towahg. “Lower a rope--a vine. Get it down where I can reach it!” And he raved inwardly at the blank look on the savage face while he held himself in check and made signs over and over in an effort to get the idea across.

Towahg got it at last. He lowered a vine and hauled Chet up with jerks that almost tore the pilot’s hands from their hold on the rough bark. Then off to one side! And they waited in the shelter of concealing leaves while the yelling pack drew near and a hundred or more of them raced by along the trail below.

Invisible to Chet was the marked trail where Kreiss had gone, but these savage things ran at top speed and read it as they ran.

Were they puzzled by the sudden increase in markings? Did they sense that some were more recent than those they had followed? Chet could not say. But he saw the pack return, staring curiously about until they swung off and vanished through the trees toward the west. And in that direction lay the arena and the haunt of a horror unknown.

Yet Chet lowered himself to the ground with steady hands and motioned Towahg where the yelling mob had gone.

“We’ll go that way,” he said; “we’ll follow them up. And perhaps, if I can only get the idea into your thick head, we can learn what their plans are: find out if Kreiss has really thrown us in their hands--led them as straight as a pack of wolves could run to the quiet peace of Happy Valley.”

Chet might have followed them into the arena itself: he felt so keenly that he must know with certainty whether or not the pack would continue their pursuit. And why had they turned back? he asked himself. Had they returned to acquaint their horrible god and his hypnotised slaves with what they had learned?

But the trail turned off from the rocky waste where the arena lay; it took them west and south for another mile, until again to Chet’s ears came the chattering bedlam of monkey-talk that was almost human. And now they moved more cautiously from rock to tree and through the concealing shadows until they could look into a shallow valley ahead. But before Chet looked he was prepared for a surprising scene. For over and above the raucous calling of the ape-folk had come another deeper tone.

“Gott im Himmel!” the deep voice said. “One at a time, you verdammt beasts. Beat them on the head, Max; make them shut up!”

And the big bulk of Schwartzmann, when Chet first saw him, was seated on a high rock that was like a barbaric throne in a valley of green. About him the ape-men leaped and grimaced and made futile animal efforts to tell him of their discovery.

“They’ve found something, Max,” Schwartzmann said to his pilot. “Get the other two men. We’ll go with the dirty brutes. And if they’ve got wind of those others--” His remarks concluded with a sputtering of profanity whose nature was not obscured by its being given in another language. And Chet knew that the obscenities were intended for his companions and himself.

Schwartzmann’s booming voice came plainly even above the chorus of coughing growls and shriller chatter. Chet saw him showing his detonite pistol in a half-threatening motion, and the ape-men cringed away in fear.

“Not so well trained an army, Max, that I am general of, but if we find that man, Harkness, and his pilot and that traitor Kreiss, we will let these soldiers of mine tear them to little bits. Now, we go!”

Max’s call had brought the other two men of Schwartzmann’s party, and the black horde of ape-men broke into a wild run across the grass toward the place where Chet and Towahg lay. The two slipped hurriedly into the concealment of denser growth, then ran at top speed down a jungle trail that led off to one side.

They were bedded down for the night on the edge of the white forest; no persuasion of Schwartzmann’s would have driven the ape-men into the darkness of the black trees and their flashing, luminous worm-beasts. Chet and Towahg came within hearing of their encampment just at dusk, and a late-rising moon broke through the gaps in the leafy roof to make splotched islands of gold in the velvet dark where Chet and Towahg fought the jungle so they might swing around and past the camp. Occasional grunts and scufflings showed that the ape-men were restless, and the two knew that every step must be taken in silence and every obstructing leaf moved with no rasping friction on other leaves or branches. But they came again to the trail, and now they were ahead of the pack, as the first gray light of dawn was stealing through the ghostly white of the trees.

Towahg would have curled himself into a sleepy ball a score of times had Chet not driven him on, and now the pilot only allowed a few minutes for food, where ripe purple fruit hung in clusters on the end of stems that were like ropes.