Part 20 (1/2)

By night there were unmistakable signs that the hand of man had been at work. A band of savages would have accepted the place as they found it; for them the shelter of a rock would have sufficed. They would have pa.s.sed on to other hunting grounds and only a handful of ashes and a broken branch, perhaps, would have marked where they had been. But your civilized man is never satisfied.

Along the mile of sh.o.r.e was open ground. Here the trees approached the water: again their solid rampart of ghostly trunks was held back some hundreds of yards. And the open ground was vividly green where the soft gra.s.s waved; and it was matted, too, with crimson and gold of countless flowers. A beautiful carpet, flung down by the edge of a crystal lake, and the flowered covering swept up and over the one high knoll that touched the sh.o.r.e.... And on the knoll, near an outcrop of limestone rocks, was a house.

”Not exactly pretentious,” Chet had admitted, ”but we'll do better later on.”

”It will keep Diane under cover,” argued Harkness; ”these leaves are like leather.”

He helped Diane put another strip of leaf in place on the roof; a twist of green vine tied around the stem held it loosely.

The leaves were huge, as much as ten feet in diameter: great circles of leathery green that they cut with a pocket knife and ”tailored” as Diane called it to fit the rough framework of the hut. Towahg had found them and had given them a name that they did not trouble to learn. ”Towahg's grunts sound so much alike,” Diane complained smilingly. ”He seems to know his natural history, but he is difficult to understand.”

But Towahg proved a valuable man. He cracked two round stones together, and cleaved off one to a rounded edge. He bound this with withes to a short stick and in a few minutes had a serviceable stone ax that bit into slender saplings that were needed for a framework.

Chet nodded his head to call Kreiss' attention to that. ”Herr Doktor,”

he said, ”it isn't every scientist who has the chance to see a close-up of the stone age.”

But Herr Kreiss, as Chet told Harkness later, did not seem to ”snuggle up nice and friendly” to the grinning savage. ”He is armed better than we,” Kreiss complained. ”I do not trust him. It is an impossible situation, this, that civilized men should be dependent upon one so savage. For what is our _kultur_, our great advancement in all lines of mental endeavor, if at the last, when tested by nature, we must rely upon such a.s.sistance?”

Chet saw Herr Doktor Kreiss draw himself aloof with meticulous care as Towahg dashed by, and it occurred to him that perhaps it was as well for Kreiss that the black one knew so little of what was said.

But aloud he merely said: ”You'll have lots of chances to use that mental endeavor stuff later on, Doctor. But right now what we need to know is how to get by without any of your laboratories, without text books or tools, with just our bare hands and with brains that are geared up to the civilization you mention and don't do us a whole lot of good here. Better let Towahg show us what he knows.”

But Herr Kreiss only shrugged his thin shoulders and wandered off through this research-man's paradise, where every flower and insect and stone were calling to him. Chet envied the equanimity with which the man had accepted his lot, had come to this place and was prepared to spend his remaining years collecting scientific data that were to him all-important.

Again the sun sank swiftly. But this time, Chet stretched himself luxuriously upon the matted gra.s.s and turned to stare at the little fire that burned before the entrance of Diane's shelter. His pocket fireflash had kindled some dry sticks that burned without smoke.

”We will be a little careful about smoke,” Harkness had warned them all.

”No use of broadcasting the news of our being here. We have come a long way and I think there is small chance of Schwartzmann's party or the savages finding us in this spot.”

Beyond the fire, Harkness raised himself now to sit erect and glance about the circle of fire-lit faces. ”There's plenty of planning to be done,” he said. ”There is the matter of defense; we must build a barricade of some sort. As for shelter, we must remember that we will be here a long time and that we might as well face it. We will need to build some serviceable shelters. Then, what about clothes? These we are wearing are none the better for the trip through the jungle: they won't last forever. We've got to learn--Lord! we've got to learn so many things!”

And the first of many councils was begun.

CHAPTER XIV

_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 pa.s.sed 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 s.h.i.+p; 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 s.h.i.+p rested. She was indeed at the bottom of a sea.