by Don Wilcox
The engineer gave a worried look at the ship.
“Fact is we’re gonna need those ropes—and the men too. I wish they’d get back. We’ve got to build some new derricks yet today.”
“We’ll try to round them up,” said Hi Turner. “Without the ship we’re all sunk. Meanwhile, I suggest you engineers make up a list of your needs and turn it over to the captain.”
“I did,” the engineer complained.
“He told me to toss it on his desk. I might as well have buried it in the quicksand.”
Hi Turner said nothing but motioned the plane pilot and me to come on. His strong square features were full of steel, and I fancied it was the steel of anger.
As we sailed low over the swamp he kept his deep eyes on the search every minute. We circled slowly, round and round over the area where the rescue party was supposed to have gone.
To see nothing but dismal jungle was disheartening. I know that the three of us felt so sick over what had happened to our geologist that no one wanted to talk. I tried to keep my eyes on the tangled brush, but a hideous picture haunted me—the picture of a blue face rising out of the swamp, a club swishing through the air, a crushed body being dragged down beneath the slimy surface.
“What did the captain say when you told him we lost Ben Weismuller?”
“I didn’t tell him,” said Hi Turner. “I left that job to Dr. Blyman. It was Blyman’s excursion. We were only sent along to assist him. I never like to exceed my authority. It’s Blyman’s business to make his own report.”
“He didn’t do it, though,” said the pilot.
“How do you know?”
“I helped him down into the ship with his pickle jar,” said the pilot, “and he was thinking about it and nothing else. He said, ‘I got what I went after, Captain. But it seems to have shrunk since yesterday.’ And Captain Redfife stared at the green head in the jar, and nodded, and went on playing checkers. Then Doc Blyman said he’d be busy in his laboratory from now on, and after I’d helped him in with the head, he closed the door after me. So there wasn’t a word said about what happened to the geologist.”
“Did you say anything, Blonder?”
“Not a word,” I said.
“Maybe Redfife will miss him sooner or later,” said Hi Turner with bitterness and indignation.
In the minutes of cold silence that followed, I realized that Hi Turner was playing the difficult game of self-restraint. He was refraining from any criticism of Captain Redfife. In fact, he was giving the captain all the moral support he possibly could. But his allegiance was not blind, and he was on the ragged edge of exasperation.
Were there any limits to the captain’s selfishness? Was he willing to leave the whole burden of this exploration to his men? Did he realize that the expedition was going to pieces for lack of leadership?
For the present it seemed that Hi Turner had decided to stand by in silence, weighing the answers to these questions.
We spotted a flag at the farther edge of a forest-covered hill. We swooped down toward it. Soon we could discern several members of our party perched on a knoll at the edge of a wide patch of tangled deadwood.
The men were waving at us and we came down close. They pointed toward the nearby acres of fallen forest, which looked a great deal like the mangrove swamps I had once seen in America.
But on closer inspection we failed to see any lake of water underlying this tangle of dead brush. Instead, there was the deep, mysterious black of a vast emptiness. The tangle of dead-wood was a thatched ceiling over what might conceivably be a huge pit. Or perhaps a series of pits. The fact that there were a few clumps of living trees rising through the matted waste argued that there were peaks or ridges of land down among those hidden valleys.
We couldn’t land. That was impossible.
We tried the radio, but the party at the edge of the hill had brought no receiver. That reduced their communications to a lot of senseless pointings and pantomimes.
“They’ve sent part of the gang down by rope,” Hi Turner observed.
“Shall we drop ’em a note to get back to the ship?”
“I’ll parachute down,” said Hi. “It may take some persuasion to pull them away from a rescue job. Want to come along?”
Hi and I parachuted down and had the good luck to land in low trees near the party.
“Have you found your lost men?” was Hi’s battlecry.
“No.”
“No trace?”
“We thought so at first,” said La Rue. “The first two men we let down by rope shouted back that they’d found Skinny Davis’ foot tracks on a clay path.
They went on down—and four more after them. Now we don’t get an answer from anyone.”
“Come in close, men,” said Hi, “but don’t let your guard down. Blonder and I have a few things to talk over with you. First of all, we’ve some unpleasant news of our own. We’ve lost a man. Weismuller.”
Hi went on to relate how it had happened. “The blue devil came right up out of the swamp waters and dealt death instantly. We’d have had as much chance against a stroke of lightning. So you see what we’re up against. Maybe there aren’t many of the critters, but they’re deadly. Weismuller is gone.”
Then and there we stopped for a minute of reverent silence, which turned into a homely sort of service, brief and intense, without many words. It drew the group of us closer together. We had all respected the ill-fated geologist.
Right away someone asked about Captain Redfife’s reaction to this bad news and Hi Turner simply said, “I didn’t trouble to tell him.”
The silent acceptance of that answer was proof that we had ceased to expect anything from Redfife.
But Redfife must remain our captain. The rules of the competition protected him. We dared not breathe a breath of mutiny—not if there was the remotest chance that we might pull down the prize.
“It’s up to us, men,” said Hi Turner. “We’ve got to cooperate to put something across.”
“Without a leader?” anyone might have added; but no one did.
I couldn’t help saying to myself, “Yes, put something across! We’ll risk our heads while Redfife sits and plays checkers on a sinking ship, and brags about his brunettes. And if we should come through with some prize discovery, he’ll pull down his ten dollars to our one!”
That blast of fury stayed over me like a blow-torch during the gruelling hours that followed. The more I thought of Redfife, the madder I got.
Then a new, bitter suspicion flared up in my mind.
Did Redfife give a damn how many of us got killed?
That was worth thinking about. Right away I thought of Redfife’s singular interest in Dr. Blyman. The doctor was on the trail of something. Suppose it turned out big—something of great value to humanity?
I pondered this matter.
I was still pondering when I followed Hi Turner down the ropes into blackness to pick up the trail of foottracks along a clay shelf. I was half oblivious to the steep, dark valley beneath the matted roof,
I didn’t dare talk my thoughts to Hi Turner—not yet. But what I foresaw was full of dynamite with all the fuses lit.
All I said to Hi Turner was, “How many men could ride in that space-lifeboat we carry?”
“Three or four, comfortably,” said Hi, holding a flashlight over the dark path. “Why?”
“I just wondered.”
Later I said, “Look, if we don’t find our lost men, Hi, it cuts the number of our party down almost a third.”
“I’m aware of that,” Hi replied.
I counted the possible losses over aloud. Our geologist, of course, was the only sure casualty. But if Skinny Davis and Lexington weren’t found and neither were the two who went after them, nor the four who went after them—
“Look, that’s nine out of our original thirty-one,” I said. “Look what that would do to the prize money—”
“There won’t be any prize money for this expedition,” said Hi
Turner, acting most unconcerned over the matter. “Between you and me, I’ve already shot my wad trying to keep the captain intact. As Dr. Blyman would say, he just doesn’t respond to treatment. But the Fates have made him our captain, and there’s that joker in the competition rules. All we can hope to do is get back with few casualties.”
“You’re way ahead of me.” I said.
“Nevertheless, Blonder, I concede that your mathematics are solid enough,” Hi Turner added. “When Redfife learns some men are lost, he’ll realize that his share of the possible prize money is thereby increased. If he thinks he can lop off eleven men and still win, he’ll be perfectly happy.”
“Eleven? I had counted only nine.”
Hi replied, “You left out yourself and me.”
CHAPTER VI
They Walk, They Talk
Before Hi Turner and I had started down into this region, he had sent the rest of the group back to the ship.
They had gone reluctantly. It’s never easy to give up on a search job when the lives of your companions are at stake. La Rue had clung to his story of hearing strange voices welling up out of these black chasms.
But Hi had worked his Socratic argument on the group until they had admitted that saving the ship must be the first consideration.
Moreover, it was agreed that if any of them left the ship henceforth, on impulsive excursions of their own, as Skinny and the other two men had done in their eagerness for pictures, no one would come to their rescue if they got lost.
It was a harsh rule but the group agreed to stand by it. That was good. It proved that they were welcoming Hi Turner’s unofficial leadership. What was even more important, it proved that we were all getting our second wind of courage against the dangers of this place.
“If a big blue human beast leaps out of the swamps and crushes a man and drags him under,” Hi had said emphatically, “that man is gone. No one of us dare play the fool and try to recover him. This satellite is too treacherous. We’ll be lucky if any of us gets back.”
And so the rescue party had gone back—all but the six who were supposed to be somewhere down in these chasms looking for the lost three photographers.
And now Hi and I were at it, too, but working with the utmost caution. We worked silently, keeping our ears and eyes sharp for the mysterious men with the voices. We charted the paths that ran along the narrow black ledges. Wherever our men had left shoetracks on the soft soil, we hazarded guesses on which of the three lost groups had come that way.
Our maps began to spread out from the “rope station”—our point of descent—in the form of a crescent-shaped spider web. We ran no chances of losing our original bearings, and twice before sunset we trailed back to the rope station.
Hi had sent instructions back with the main rescue party to have the pilot fly over in the plane at sunset, and again at sunrise, in case we hadn’t returned by that time. This seemed a good idea. It was a simple way for us “to inform the ship that we were still on the job and hadn’t gotten lost ourselves.
Accordingly, when the ragged blotches of purple sky began to darken above our patchwork roof, we climbed up the rope and waited.
No plane came.
We waited at the hill’s edge until the sky was almost black, but the pilot didn’t come our way.
“It’s not like him to miss an appointment,” I commented.
“No. Possibly our party didn’t get back to the ship. If they did, the pilot got our message, but something interfered with our plan.”
“The captain, for instance.”
We ate a light supper from the supplies the main party had left us.
Hi smoked his big Dutch pipe deliberately and watched the stars. I checked over the flashlights.
A voice welled up from somewhere far beneath us. It sounded a mile away, all blurred with deep-well echoes.
“Haa-aaa-wa-aaal!”
Hi gave me a curious look and went on smoking. I crawled to the edge of the pit, holding to the rope with one hand, and bent over to listen.
From the deep distance it came again.
“Saa-aah-tah-waaah!”
It’s strange how anything so far away and harmless-sounding can shoot chills through you. I was as tense as a cat ready to spring. And just then from right behind me came a tap-tap-tap. It was Hi Turner tapping his pipe, but I almost jumped off the cliff.
“Good for an all night search, Blonder?” he asked.
So we climbed down the rope with a fresh supply of flashlights. With no appointments until dawn we were free to follow several of our paths beyond the points where the footprints ran out.
But right away two very mysterious new facts burst in upon our methodical plans.
First, we discovered that the bottomless blackness of these chasms was not as black at night. There was light in them. Not bright light; nothing sharp, like the light of a torch or a candle. But rather a steamy, intangible glow.
It was more like a promise of light than light itself: the sort of thing you feel on a foggy night when you’re driving through pitch-blackness but somehow you know there must be a city just beyond that hill.
Looking down into these chasms, I got the feeling that they were much deeper and more immense than I had previously guessed. For the first time we could sense the fact that our shelf-paths were high up on the walls that curved away from us to those pinkish misty depths.
Before we were over the first gasp of excitement over this discovery, the second thing came along. And I mean came along.
It was a shadow.
Luckily, we hadn’t turned on our flashlights during the past few minutes. And you can be sure we didn’t turn them on now.
That shadow was a man, fully as big and tall as the big yellowish-green man that Hi had dispatched not so many hours ago. Maybe larger. We couldn’t tell much about him, for he was simply a dark object against the uncertain light.
He was moving along on a level a few feet below us—walking without benefit of any light other than the glow from far below. The shadows sharpened as he came closer, and I saw that he was feeling his way along in the darkness by brushing his right hand along the edge of the shelf that formed our path.
“Back,” Hi whispered. We flattened ourselves against the limestone wall.
The big shadow came on with a slow, lazy stride, and the footfalls were almost silent, in spite of the creature’s great bulk.
Our ledge was five or six feet wide, as I had remembered it from the last blaze of the flashlight. Now it seemed nonexistent, lost in the formless void that framed this shadowy figure directly in front of us. My hand gripped the flashlight. I kept thinking, what if I should snap the light on against my will?
For all I could tell, Hi had vanished completely in the blackness, and I had melted away, too, all except for my thumping heart and my hand that gripped the flashlight.
From somewhere deep down among the walls a shrill female voice came singing up to us.
“Gree-e-e-ekellll!”
“Well?”
It was a masculine roar from this big shadow beside us. It made my ears ring.
On top of the echoes of his roar he slapped his hand down on the ledge, and the resounding clack was apparently a powerful expression of annoyance. Could his single utterance of “Well?” mean what it meant in our language?
There was a moment’s silence, except for his somewhat agitated pounding of fists on the upper ledge where we stood. Presently his great hand came to rest on the toe of my shoe.
I didn’t move.
Again the shrill female voice rang up to us.
“Gree-e-e-ekellll!”
The big dark figure gave a guttural snort, cupped his hands to his mouth, and yelled.
“I TOLD YOU THREE TIMES I’M GOING FOR A WALK. BY MYSELF. NOW, STOP YOUR SHOUTING.”
Then he snorted angrily to himself, “There!” and stepped off in the darkness.
CHAPTER VII
Maybe the Landlord?
Hi Turner had to
shake me out of my paralysis before I could move from the spot. If he was scared he didn’t show it.
“We’re in luck, Blonder! Tremendous luck! He talks our language. I’d have flashed a light on but I didn’t want to scare him. Maybe I can call him.”
“Don’t,” I whispered. “Let him have his walk.”
“You’re right, Blonder. He’s in no mood to meet people.”
“Neither am I,” I said. “Not if he’s the same breed that came up out of the swamp.”
“I wonder what color this one was. Where do you suppose he got our language? It’s unquestionably his native tongue. And maybe the woman’s—though I couldn’t be sure. All she said was Greekel. But she said it without our accent, I think. How do you say Greekel, Blonder?”
“I never say Greekel.”
“When he comes back he’ll be in a better mood. Do you suppose he’s an offshoot of the lost Antlock expedition? It was composed of several families, you know.”
“Giants?”
“Of course not. Normal people like ourselves. How tall was this man? About twelve feet? Did you ever hear anything like his voice? Fine quality. Not a voice to be irritated over trifles. It didn’t fit. I don’t understand this business, Blonder. Either there’s a new strain of the human race down here, or else a lot of freaks. I wonder how soon he’ll come back this way.”
“Let’s find another path,” I suggested. “I don’t feel a bit sociable.”
“I’m guessing we’ll find Skinny Davis and all the rest of our lost sheep sitting around one of the council fires in these bottomless pits,” said Hi. “I hope they’ve broken the ice gently. A lot will depend on whether they’ve made a good first impression.”
“I hope they aren’t being boiled in a pot.”
The rest of the night was a game of hide and seek, with us doing both. If our seeking didn’t come to much it was because we mixed courage with caution and stayed hidden.
