Part 12 (2/2)

A dozen paces beyond was a huddle of clothing that stirred idly in the breeze. ”The poor devil!” exclaimed Chet, and moved over beside the body of 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 knew there was no hope of life. He stopped with a gasp of dismay.

Two eyes still stared in horror from a face that was colorless--a drained, ghastly white face! No tint remained to show that this ever had been a living man. More dreadful than the waxen pallor of death, here was a bleached, bloodless flesh that told of the nameless horror that had overwhelmed this man, beaten him down and drained him of every drop of blood.

”Vampires!” Chet heard Harkness saying in a horrified whisper. ”Those beaks that were like tubes! And they--they--” He stopped as if in fear of the words that would tell what they themselves had escaped.

Chet turned the body to its former position; that dreadful face beneath a pitiless sun was a sight no other eyes should see. ”Let's go on to the s.h.i.+p,” he said. ”We'll get some ammunition, go back and get Diane--”

He did not finish the thought. Before him he saw the lifeless body moving; it rolled and shuddered as if life had returned to this thing where no life should be. Chet raised one hand in an unconscious gesture as if to ward off some new horror that the body might disclose. It was a moment before he realized that the rock was shaking beneath his feet, that he was dizzy and that from no great distance a rumbling growl was sounding in his ears.

The moving body had shaken Chet's mental poise as had the earthquake his physical equilibrium. Harkness had not seen it; he was looking off across the level plateau.

”Look!” he exclaimed; ”another vent has opened! See it spout?”

Some hundred yards distant were clouds of green vapor that rolled into the air. At their base a fountain of mud sputtered and spouted and fell back to build up a cone. The green cloud whirled sluggishly, then was caught by the breeze and began its slow, rolling progress across the flat rock. It was coming their way, rolling down toward the s.h.i.+p, and Chet gripped suddenly at his companion's arm.

”Come on!” he said! ”I'm going away from here, and I'm going now. We'll get Diane and Kreiss: remember what a whiff of gas did to him this morning.”

He was drawing Harkness toward the face of the rock; he wondered at his slowness. 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 bow of their s.h.i.+p; it flowed slowly, sluggishly, along the sides, and then swept up and over the top. The lookouts of the control room were obscured, 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 and Diane, they stood on high ground to look down on the s.h.i.+p.

The sparkling sheen of the metal cylinder had changed from silver to pale green. The cloud that enveloped it was not heavy, but it was always the same. Yet still Chet insisted: ”It may not last.”

”Sorry to disappoint you,” replied Kreiss, ”but there is little ground for such a belief.” Again he was the professor instructing a cla.s.s.

”These fumeroles, in my opinion, are venting a region far below the surface. It is possible that further seismic disturbances may alter conditions; a rearrangement of the lower rock strata may close existing crevices and open others like this you have seen; but, barring that, I see no reason for thinking that this emission of what appears to be chlorine with other gases may not continue indefinitely.”

Chet looked at Diane. Was it a twinkle that appeared and vanished in her eyes as Herr Professor Kreiss concluded his remarks. She would laugh in the very face of death, Chet realized, but her tone was entirely serious as she offered another suggestion.

”If this wind should change,” she said, ”and if it blew the gas in another direction, the s.h.i.+p could be cleared. One of us could go in long enough to switch on the air generators full.”

But now it was Chet who shook his head in a negative. ”Remember,” he told her, ”when we were here before? All of the time while Walt was gone for the s.h.i.+p--how did the wind blow then?”

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