Part 28 (1/2)

At the end of the lake he stopped. Beside him, Kreiss, weakened by his wound, was panting and gasping; Towahg, moving like a dark shadow, was close behind.

”I saw them,” said Kreiss, when he had breath enough for speech, ”--more beasts from the pyramid. They were coming for us! But we can go back there after a day or so.”

”You can,” Chet told him; ”Towahg and I are going on.”

”Where?” Kreiss demanded.

”To the pyramid.”

Chet's reply was brief, and Kreiss' response was equally so. ”You're a fool,” he said.

”Sure,” Chet told him: ”I know there's nothing I can do to help them.

But I'm going. All I ask is to get one crack at whatever it is that is down in that beastly pit and if I can't do that maybe I can still save Diane and Walt from tortures you and I can't imagine.” He touched his pistol suggestively.

”Still I say you are a fool,” Kreiss insisted. ”They are gone--captured; they will die. That is regrettable, but it is done. Now, besides Herr Schwartzmann who escaped, only we two remain; the savage, he does not count. We two!--and a new world!--and science! Science that remains after these two are gone--after you and I are gone! It is greater than us all.

”But I, staying, shall contribute to the knowledge of men; I shall make discoveries that will bear my name always. This world is my laboratory; I have found deposits such as none has ever seen on Earth.

”Be reasonable, Herr Bullard. The enemy has tracked us down by his superior cleverness. We will go far away now where he never shall find us, you and I. Do not be a fool; do not throw your life away.”

Chet Bullard, a figure of helpless, hopeless despair, stood unspeaking while he stared into the black depths of the jungle, and the night wind whipped his tattered clothing about him.

”A fool!” he said at last, and his voice was dull and heavy. ”I guess you're right--”

Herr Kreiss interrupted: ”Of course I am right--right and reasonable and logical!”

Chet went on as if the other had not spoken:

”If I hadn't been a fool I would have found some way to prevent it; I would have killed that ape-thing when first I saw it; I would have got them free.”

He turned slowly to face his companion in the darkness.

”But you were wrong, Kreiss; you forgot a couple of things. You said they found us by their superior cleverness. That's wrong. They found us because you left a trail they could follow. We threw them off once, Towahg and I, but the messenger wouldn't be fooled. Then Schwartzmann and his pack followed the messenger in.

”And you say it is logical that I should quit here, leave Diane and Walt to take whatever is coming; you say I'm a fool to stay with them till the end.

”Well,”--he was speaking very quietly, very simply--”if you are right I'm rather glad that I'm a fool. For you see, Kreiss, they're my friends, and between friends logic gets knocked all to h.e.l.l.

”Come on, Towahg!” he called. ”Let's see if we can travel this jungle in the night!” He set off toward the fringe of great trees, then let Towahg go ahead to find a trail.

Travel at night through the tangle of creepers was not humanly possible.

Even Towahg, after an hour's work, grunted his disgust and curled himself up for the night. And Chet, though he found his mind filled with vain imaginings, was so drained by the day's demands on his nervous energy that he slept through to the rising of the sun.

Then they circled wide of the trail they had taken before; no risk would Chet take of a chance meeting with one of the pyramid apes. And he plagued his brain with vain questions of what he should do when he reached the arena and the pyramid and the unknown something that waited within, until he told himself in desperation: ”You're going down, you're going into that d.a.m.ned place; that's all you know for sure.”