Part 31 (1/2)

Ragged and torn, his clothes were held together by bits of vine. There were longer ropes of the same material that made a sling on his shoulders when he reappeared. And, tied in the sling, were bundles; one large, one small, but sagging with weight. Both were bound tightly in wrappings of broad leaves.

”We will go now,” Herr Kreiss stated: ”there is no time to be lost.”

”Go? Go where?” Chet's question echoed his utter bewilderment.

”To the s.h.i.+p! Come, savage!”--he motioned to Towahg--”I did not do well when I made my way alone. You shall lead now.”

”He's crazy,” Chet told himself half aloud: ”his motor's shot and his controls are jammed! Oh, well; what's the difference? I might as well spend the time this way as any. I meant to go back to the old s.h.i.+p once more.”

Kreiss' arm still troubled from the wound he had got in the fight, but Chet could not induce him to share his load.

”_Es ist mein recht_,” he grumbled, and added cryptically: ”To each man this only is sure--that he must carry his own cross.” And Chet, with a shrug, let him have his way.

There was little said on the trip. Chet was as silent and uncommunicative as Kreiss when, for the last time, he paused on the divide to see the green glint from a distant s.h.i.+p, then plunged with the others into a forest as unreal as all this experience now seemed.

And at the last, when the red light of late afternoon ensanguined a wild world, they came to the smoke of Fire Valley, and a thousand fumeroles, little and big, that emitted their flame and gas. And one, at the lower end of the valley had built up a great mound of greasy mud from whose top issued hot billows of green gas. It was here that Kreiss paused and unslung his pack.

”Take this,” he told Chet; and the pilot dragged his reluctant eyes from the view of the nearby cylinder enveloped in green clouds. The scientist was handing him the larger of the two packages. It was bulky but light: Chet took it by a loop in one of the vines.

”Careful!” warned Kreiss. ”I have worked on it for a month; you see, my equipment was not so good. I thought that the time might come when it would be put to use, only first I must conquer the gas--which I now prepare to do.”

”I don't understand,” Chet protested.

”You are a Master Pilot of the World?” questioned Kreiss, and Chet nodded.

”And the control on your s.h.i.+p was a modification of the new ball-control mechanism such as is used on the latest of the high-level liners?”

Again Chet nodded.

”Then, if ever you are so fortunate, Herr Bullard, as to see once more that device on one of those s.h.i.+ps, will you examine it carefully? And, stamped on the under side, you will find--”

”The patent marking,” said Chet; then stopped short as the light of understanding blazed into his brain.

”Patented,” he reflected; ”that's what it says,” and a wondering comprehension was in his voice: ”patented by H. Kreiss, of Austria!

You--you are the inventor?”

”I did not speak with entire truth to Herr Schwartzmann,” admitted Kreiss, ”on that occasion when I told him I could not rebuild the control you had demolished. With your equipment on the s.h.i.+p I could have done a quite creditable job, but even now,”--he pointed to the leaf-wrapped bundle in Chet's hand--”with copper I have hammered from the rocks, and with silver and gold and even iron which I found occurring in a quite novel manner, I have done not so badly.”

”This is--this is--” Chet stared at the object in his hand; his tongue could not be brought to speak the words. ”But what use? How can I get in? The gas--”

”Cause and effect!” stated Herr Doktor Kreiss of the Inst.i.tute at Vienna, and once more he seemed addressing a cla.s.s and taking pleasure in his ability to dispense knowledge. ”It is the law of the universe.

”I perform an act. It is a cause--I have invoked the law. And the effects go out like circling waves in an endless ocean of time forever beyond our reach.

”But we can do other acts, produce other causes, and sometimes we can neutralize thereby the effects of the first. I do that now.” He picked up the second bundle in its wrapping of leaves; it was heavy for him to manage with his wounded arm. ”This is all that I have,” he said! ”I must place it surely.