Steve called down and tossed over the knotted line. Viejo was soon with them. He studied Mueller for a moment, turned to Steve, who showed him the dead wasp. “A shame, to lose a man like that . . .”
“What the hell do you mean?”
“That thing”—Viejo pointed to the wasp—“nobody can survive an attack by a swarm of those. I see on his face and neck where they struck. The poison stops the heart, freezes the lungs and muscles.”
“I don’t think so this time,” Rudy said. “He’s going to make it.”
Viejo looked from Wells to Mueller. “It has never happened before. I am very sorry . . .”
“Well, look again.”
Viejo couldn’t believe it—Mueller stirred. Steve helped him to a sitting position. Mueller blinked his eyes, trying to focus. Viejo hurried to him, staring intently. “Impossible . . . but I see him alive!” Then, to Rudy Wells: “How?”
Rudy pointed to the kit. “Something new,” he said quietly. “We developed it as an antidote to nerve gas, includes atropine. We never tried it on a human before, but it’s worked on test animals.” He glanced at Mueller, who was fully alert now, listening. “I only brought it along because of certain eels you have in your rivers that paralyze with their sting or bite. This medicine is the only known antidote for that eel . . . damned lucky for our friend here that it works against wasp stings, too.”
Viejo had turned back to Mueller, who was climbing to his feet, hardly able to believe his own recovery. Viejo extended his hand to clasp Mueller’s. “Tell me,” Viejo said, “how it feels to come back from the dead.”
The rest of the ascent was slow, grueling, bone-wearying. As they climbed higher along the western escarpment, the broad base of which led finally to the suddenly rising flanks of the monolith shape of Temple Mountain, they kept moving into constantly thinning air. They expected this, of course, but their weariness came close to bringing them down. Coordination was faulty in pulled and stinging muscles. The lack of enough oxygen did more than exhaust them, it interfered with normal clear thinking. At times one or more would stop, head spinning, spots before eyes. They were dangerously close to breaking down. Little argument, though, about continuing. Who could argue it now, with their goal so visible, looming into the sky? For that matter, they lacked the strength for a real argument of any kind.
On a high ledge, with comfortable grass and moss about them, huge boulders providing excellent windbreaks, Rudy Wells called a halt for the day. The others needed no prompting to slide gratefully to the ground. With rest and Rudy’s massive vitamin doses they could at least partially recharge themselves.
Rudy went to Steve. “We’ve got to make a camp of this place,” he told him. “These people must pull themselves together. All of them. Viejo’s adapted to the altitude but he’s strangely withdrawn and—”
“What Viejo needs,” Steve interrupted, “is responsibility. He isn’t in charge of this group, Rudy. He can’t function with a loose crowd like this. He knows they need him but he’s afraid to overstep his bounds. I suppose I could do it, but Viejo should be the one.”
Rudy glanced at the Peruvian officer, sitting alone on a rock ledge, staring into the distance. “What do I do?” Rudy asked Steve.
“Go to him and ask for help. Put him in charge. Even you, doc. Take his orders.”
“And you?”
“Never mind, just try it.”
Wells turned and walked slowly to Viejo. Steve saw them talking. Viejo shrugged, and it was clear even from a distance that Rudy was losing his temper. Viejo got to his feet and came face to face with the American. More argument, and then Viejo turned aside—not away from the doctor, but to stare at the jungle floor far below them. He talked again with Rudy, pointing. Moments later he had his binoculars to his eyes and was scanning an area in the distance. He lowered the glasses slowly, handed them to Wells. As the doctor sought what Viejo had seen, the latter turned from him and went to the other members of the expedition sprawled listlessly among their packs.
Steve was pleased. Viejo was like a man with new life, showing the authority the others needed. There were curses from Phil Wayne. Weary to the bone, short-tempered, he was spoiling for any kind of fight. Steve got to his feet, his pack over one shoulder, and walked slowly in front of Wayne and Viejo. On the lee side of a high boulder, Steve began to set up a small tent. Viejo had watched every move, and the Peruvian was sharp enough to know the American was setting himself up as an example. If Steve Austin could take orders from Colonel Viejo—although only Austin and Viejo knew no words had passed between them—there could hardly be argument from anyone else.
It began to take shape. Windbreak shelters and tents. Carla helping her father and Dr. Jennings, and then retiring to her own small tent. Razors were broken out, even if it meant shaving with water that boiled so swiftly in the thin air it was almost tepid. Their small group came alive under the constant verbal sawing from Viejo.
“Steve?” Wells came into the tent, sat on the ground with his legs crossed beneath him. He gestured to take in the others. “Good idea. It’s working.”
Steve nodded. “Trick is to keep it going.”
“That won’t be any problem.”
“Oh?”
“Did you see Viejo looking over the valley with his binoculars? He found what he was looking for.”
Steve’s hands became motionless inside his pack. He waited.
“Company,” the doctor said.
Steve eased himself to the ground. “Sooner than I thought. How far away?”
“The colonel says at their present rate, one to two days. If they really press, maybe eighteen hours.”
“They can’t get here before dawn tomorrow and they won’t show in daylight. It’s tomorrow night at the earliest. That at least gives us a little time to arrange a reception committee.”
The word had now reached them all about the sighting of the group no more than a day’s steady travel away. It had to be Fossengen and his men. Viejo cursed softly. “If only I could have reached Ayabaca by radio,” he said, “then our men would be trailing Mr. Fossengen.”
They began preparations for their reception committee. They were agreed it would be a mistake to give in to the temptation to engage in a showdown struggle with the group now closing in on them. They had no idea of the numbers involved, although Viejo was convinced it would be an eflicient party. “Mercenaries,” he said. “Fossengen has Julio Ruperez with him. That’s how he controls the natives they brought here from the north. They are frightened of Ruperez. We have been waiting a long time to attend to that one. He has a hold on them. Their families. They are kept in a small village and guarded well. If a man deserts Ruperez, he knows his family will be butchered.”
“And he gets away with it?”
“As in your country, one must have proof before . . . Still, if we prepare our reception with special taste, we may eliminate the problem of Julio Ruperez. Think of all the money we will save if there is no need for a trial.”
Steve stood up and pointed back along the trail they had made on the way to their present location. He gathered his pack and told Phil Wayne to pick up his gear and come with them. He turned to Mueller. “There’s a chance they’ve got a scout or two ahead of them,” Steve told him. “You’d better stay sharp. From now on keep a shell in the chamber all the time. Everybody.”
Mueller nodded. “Anything else?”
“Take a good, careful look all around you. Put everything in relationship to everything else. Make a sketch of it. We might need it in the dark. If we know the layout well enough we’re one up on them. In case.”
CHAPTER 16
They started with first light the next morning. Viejo had them awake and packing their gear in the dark, and when the still invisible sun began to cast a gray glow over their height, they were ready to finish their tasks. Refreshed, filled with a new sense of purpose, experienced at careful breathing in the thin air, they moved upward along the gently sloping surface. It was
the sort of splendid morning that seemed to dismiss the threat of the group trailing them. They were under way less than an hour when the morning brightened swiftly. Heading east, they walked directly into a spectacular sunrise. Breaks in the clouds filled with golden and pink light as the sun slashed its way through. And directly before them, rearing impossibly high, was Temple Mountain, its flank washed in dazzling early morning light.
For a moment they stopped, bringing binoculars to play on the massive south wall. The low angle of morning light could bring out features that might otherwise escape them. Along the steep slope, which they estimated at sixty to seventy degrees, they saw vines and creepers that had had thousands of years to work their way along the monolithic peak. And they saw something else.
“There’s no mistake,” Dr. Jennings said. “See the south edge? That’s a sharp break. It’s an edge, and it runs true for the whole height of . . .” He had started to say “mountain,” but changed his mind and called it “. . . structure.” Indeed it did seem artificial. A natural fault with so long an unbroken line? Impossible. Impossible? Looking through binoculars at a low sun angle is hardly scientific proof. They’d have to wait to be absolutely certain. It wouldn’t be long.
It was exactly two hours and twenty minutes later. Their speculation proved conservative.
They stood at the base of what had been misnamed a mountain, for mountains are not made of massive blocks of stone fitted so perfectly they seem to have been welded together, the separation of one huge stone from another only a thin seam-line. It towered above them, a wide-based obelisk, a monolith, a man-made mountain of formed and fitted stone. Magnificent. Old beyond their calculation. Impossible? True.
They looked at one another in a daze. Tears were in Carla’s eyes as she held her father’s hand. Dr. Yavari leaned back, shaking his head in wonder. Steve looked at Colonel Viejo, saw the pride in his eyes, nodded to him. No question any longer. Here was the sign of an ancient civilization that superseded, that towered over, all they had ever discovered of the Inca or the Maya or the Aztec or any people, the sign of a people who had built in this high jungle land a monument that dwarfed the pyramids standing above the Egyptian desert.
Steve turned to Phil Wayne, his cameras already clicking, Rudy Wells helping. Steve caught Mueller’s eye, and the latter nodded. He took his rifle and binoculars and worked his way back along the trail, selecting a high hummock for a vantage point to study the land behind them.
Steve sensed how they felt. All of them, but especially the Peruvians. This was uniquely their moment, a sweep backward in time for so many thousands of years. He had felt something of the same thing himself when he first stepped out on the moon’s dusty surface. He had stood in lifeless dust and looked back across a quarter-million miles of vacuum to see the home world of man, than stunning blue-white marble against velvety black.
Now these people were seeing a view of comparable sweep. Theirs was a view through time that stretched incomparably farther than anything of earth he had seen from the moon.
“I have seen this before,” Dr. Yavari guided his fingertips across the face of the stone, the answering pressures telling him as much as might be learned by a blind man. “All my life I have looked for such things . . . stones . . . doorways . . . secret ways to enter.” He glanced at the others, winced a moment as a flash from Wayne’s camera caught him in the eyes. “It is a matter of knowing, the touch, where to place it. Then, as these people intended . . .” He stared at one huge face of stone, motioned to Jennings and to his daughter. Moments later, using his cap, Jennings was scrubbing furiously at the stone. Dust and leaves flew in all directions. Wherever he scrubbed, a bas-relief appeared.
They stared at symbols, drawings, figures. Yavari motioned for a floodlight to gain starker relief. He was lost to them as he leaned closer, peering intently. He spoke with little conscious awareness of his words, but Carla was by his side, writing furiously to get down what he said. Suddenly she turned to Steve and the others. “It is a strange form of language, to be sure, but still it is not completely unknown.” She gestured to where her father was standing, studying, brushing his fingers against the wall carvings. “There is a commonality to almost all the ancient languages,” she went on. “Before, when we came across tribes that were unknown, it did not take long to interpret their messages. The general similarities are really a challenge of logic more than of translation.”
“There don’t seem to be any openings along this whole flank,” Steve said. He turned. “Phil, get whatever you can on film, and be ready to pick up your gear to get inside when and if Dr. Yavari finds his opening.” He turned again. “Rudy, you stay with them. Keep a shotgun eye on things.” He pointed at Viejo. “Let’s go.”
“But—” Carla looked bewildered.
“It’s Mueller,” Steve said. “He’s got company in sight.” He tapped the small transceiver radio clipped to his shirt. “He’s calling us.” Without another word he took off at a dead run, Viejo following close behind. Carla stared after him, then turned back to her father.
Steve and Viejo crouched as they ran, staying as much as possible within the cover of boulders and brush. They came up to Mueller, who also had managed some concealment. He pointed down the path.
“At least ten,” he said. “They’re loaded. Pros, by the looks of it. They’ve got a point man out on each side, while the others are coming up slower behind them.”
“How far from the camp?”
Mueller glanced at Viejo. “Another hundred yards, maybe less.”
Viejo looked at Steve. “We wait?”
Steve nodded. “The scouts should miss the wire. That means the main body will be right behind them. When the explosives go, we aim for the scouts. Aaron, you work on the man on the right with me. Colonel?”
Viejo patted the rifle stock. “The left one is mine.”
They settled themselves in and waited. Steve put the binoculars to his face and looked back toward the base of the great temple. Dr. Yavari had left the inscriptions on the stones and was sliding his hands over a smooth-faced rock.
Steve turned back. Through binoculars they watched their trackers working their way cautiously along the trail. Steve was sure he could now recognize Fossengen—the big man had stopped and was studying the area where they had camped. One of the scouts rose from a cluster of boulders and waved an all-clear signal.
“Keep coming,” Mueller said, low to himself.
Fossengen obviously was an old hand. He sent two men ahead of his main group. The two scouts watched from their positions ahead of and to the sides of the main body.
The lead man of the two approaching the camp hit the trip wire concealed within the brush. Instantly a half-dozen explosive charges buried just beneath the ground in loose rocks detonated. A bright orange flash erupted with a booming roar and both men were hurled crazily through the air. At almost the same instant Viejo’s rifle sounded as he fired a short burst. A third man tumbled to the ground. Steve and Mueller fired together at the point man on the right. They weren’t sure if they hit him, and there wasn’t time to find out. The three of them turned and ran back toward the temple.
Only Rudy Wells was in sight, crouched by a high opening in the otherwise unbroken face of the temple wall. No need to ask. Yavari knew what he was doing. He’d found the place to apply pressure, and the great rock had moved. How many centuries had it stood in place here? And who were these people who had built so that not even this enormous span of time—that began before the western world saw its first agricultural settlements—would not destroy or at least make their handiwork useless? . . . They came to the opening. Steve pushed them through, followed the last man in. Phil Wayne had already turned on mercury-cell lamps. He played a bright light on the doorway, and Carla moved forward, her hand on an inscription carved in a rock, waiting.
“Close it,” Steve urged. She pressed her fingers firmly against the inscription. A massive stone, taller than a man and nearly four feet wide, rumbled
heavily as it swung on a pivot and sealed the entrance-way. The stone boomed into place with a dull echo. They stood quietly, listening to the sound drift along unknown passageways and chambers before it came back to them, rippling in hoarse whispers. Dust drifted across the lights, a dust of untold centuries.
Yavari looked around him, his eyes showing the awe he felt. Steve and Viejo looked at one another. Viejo nodded and Steve took a deep breath. “I know it’s an intrusion,” he said slowly, “but you must listen to me.” He related what had happened, explaining the blast they had heard, the cracking sounds of the rifles. He also saw that the words had really failed to reach Dr. Yavari, and that Dr. Jennings was not far removed from the state of the Peruvian scientist. He looked sharply at Carla, saw the understanding in her eyes. What her father did not hear she would hear for him.
“Those people out there won’t hold back anymore,” Steve warned. “Mueller saw at least ten. We know we took care of three, but there could have been several more who stayed out of our sight. We’re committed now. We had the lead, and they’ll move slowly where we camped. But that’s about all the slowing down we could manage. It’s too bad we couldn’t rig another welcome for them outside these walls, but there wasn’t time.”
“Steve, I don’t think they can get in here,” Phil Wayne said, speaking for the benefit of all of them. “I mean, unless Dr. Yavari had found that pressure release . . .” He shook his head. “We’d still be out there.”
Steve stopped him. “It sounds good, Phil, but don’t sell them short. There may be more than one way in here. We don’t know. We didn’t have time to look. And if Dr. Yavari could figure the way in through this stone—” He cut off his words and nodded to Viejo. The colonel motioned to Mueller, and both men went back to the stone that had moved to permit their entrance. There were loose blocks of stone lying about on the floor beneath them. They immediately started piling the blocks against the vertical stone to wedge it in place.
Cyborg 03 - High Crystal Page 13
