Part 16 (2/2)

He straightened up and shook himself free from the effects of the wild, barbaric scene.

”And you needn't come back,” he told Kreiss; ”you can have a look now, to-night, by moonlight. We can't go on. I think we'll be safest on that big altar rock; nothing will get near us without our knowing.”

Chet felt Diane Delacouer's hand on his arm; her other hand was gripping at Harkness. The s.h.i.+ver that pa.s.sed through her was plainly perceptible.

”I'm afraid,” she confessed in a half-whisper; ”there's something about it: I do not like it. There is evil there--danger. We should not enter.”

Walt Harkness gently patted the hand that trembled on his arm. ”I don't wonder that you are all shot to pieces,” he a.s.sured her. ”After last night, you've a right to be. But I really believe this is the safest spot we can find.”

He stepped forward beyond the great stones that were like a gateway from one wildly impossible world to another. A rock slide, it seemed, had smoothed off the great steps from where they stood, for there was a descending slope that gave easy footing. He took one step, and then another, to show the girl how foolish were her fears; then he started back. In the fading light something had flashed from the jungle they had left. Across the rocky expanse it came, to bury itself in the loose soil and rubble, not two paces in advance of the startled man. An arrow!--and it stood quivering in silent warning on the path ahead.

Chet quietly unslung his bow where he had looped it over one shoulder, but Harkness motioned him back. The pistol was in his hand, but after a moment's hesitation he returned that to his belt. His voice was low and tense.

”Listen,” he said: ”we're no match for them with our bows. They are hidden; they could pick us off as we came. And I can't waste a single detonite sh.e.l.l on them while they keep out of sight. We can't go back; we must go ahead. We will all make a break for it and run as fast as we can toward the big altar--the pyramid. From there we can stand them off for a while. And we will go now and take them by surprise.”

He seized Diane firmly by one arm and steadied her as they dashed down the slope. Chet and the professor were close behind. Each spine must have tingled in antic.i.p.ation of a shower of arrows. Chet threw one hasty look toward the rear; the air was clear; no slender shafts pursued them.

But from the cover of the jungle growth came a peculiar sound, almost like a human in distress--a call like a moaning cry.

They slackened their breath-taking pace and approached the great pyramid more slowly. As they drew near, the great steps took on their real size; each block was taller even than Chet, and he had to reach above his head to touch the edge of the stone.

They walked quickly about; found a place where the great blocks were broken down, where the slope was littered with debris from the disintegrating stone that had sifted down from above. They could climb here; it was almost like a crudely formed set of more normally sized steps. They made their way upward while Chet counted the courses of stone. Six, then eight--ten--and here Harkness called a halt.

”This--will do,” he gasped between labored breaths. ”Safe enough here.

Chet, you and Kreiss--spread out--watch from all--sides.”

The pilot was not as badly winded as Harkness who bad been helping Diane. ”Stay here,” he told Harkness; ”you too, Kreiss; make yourselves comfortable. I will go on up to the top. The moon--or the Earth, rather--will be up pretty soon; I can keep watch in all directions from up there. We've got to get some sleep; can't let whoever it is that is trailing us rob us of our rest or we'll soon be no good. I'll call you after a while.”

The great capstone projected beyond the blocks that supported it; that much had been apparent from the ground. But Chet was amazed at the size of the monolith when he stood at last on the broad step over which this capstone projected like a roof.

The shadows were deep beneath, and Chet, knowing that he could never draw himself to the top of the great slab whose under side he could barely touch, knew also that he must watch from all sides. The shadowed floor beneath the big stone made a shelter from any watchful eyes out there in the night; here would be his beat as sentry. He walked slowly to the side of the pyramid, then around toward the front.

It was the front to Chet because it faced the entrance, the rocky gateway, where they had come in. He did not expect to find that side in any way differing from the first. Each side was twenty paces in length; Chet measured them carefully, astounded still at the size of the structure.

”Carved by the winds and rains,” he said, repeating the opinion of Professor Kreiss. ”Now, I wonder.... It seems too regular, too much as if--” He paused in his thoughts as he reached the corner; waited to stare watchfully out into the night; turned the corner, and, still in shadow, moved on. ”Too much as if nature had had some help!”

His meditation ended as abruptly as did his steady pacing: he was checked in midstride, one foot outstretched, while he struggled for balance and fought to keep from taking that forward step.

In the shelter of the capstone was a darker shadow; there was a blackness there that could mean only the opening of a cave--a cavern, whose regular outlines and square-cut portal dismissed for all time the thought of a natural opening in the rock. But it was not this alone that had brought the man up short in his stealthy stride: it had jolted him as if he had walked head on into the great monolith itself. It was not this but a flat platform before the cave, a raised stone surface some two feet above the floor. And on it, pale and unreal in the first light of the rising Earth was a naked, human form--a face that grimaced with distorted features.

Chet had known the ape-men on that earlier visit: he knew that while most of them were heavily covered with hair there were some who were almost human in their hairlessness. The body before him was one of these.

It lay limply across the stone platform, the listless head hanging downward over one edge. It had high cheekbones, a retreating forehead, gla.s.sy, staring eyes, and grinning teeth that projected from between loose lips. And the evening wind stirred the black, stringy hair while it touched lightly upon the ends of a short length of vine about the ape-man's neck, where only the ends could be seen, for the rest of the pliant vine was sunk deeply into the flesh of the neck. It had been the instrument of death; the ape-man had been strangled.

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