He drew a deep, silent breath of triumphant joy. Pausing there on the hp of the opening, he once nfere put two and two together.
This entrance hole to the fortress had not been closed against the inhospitable heat of a tropic night. Therefore, the ship down yonder on the translucent floor would shortly take to the air again. And still fastened to the ship was his dugout canoe. It was going along on the voyage. Where?
The answer to that was evident. The boat would be flown to some greater and more central community of the Cold People, for exhibition to creatures in high authority—perhaps as evidence that human beings still dared to spy upon their terrible vanquishers. If Darragh was to save his belongings, he must move prompdy.
He examined the walls of the orifice. They were sloping, and no more than twenty feet in height. He saw, too, that they were scored all the way around with the ladder slits. Quickly he flung his feet over the edge, groped with his toes for purchase, and began to climb down.
Quickly he reached the lighted level bottom, and stood still there for a moment. His bare feet felt an icy chill at their soles, apparendy filtered from the frozen interior of the dome shelter. Then he moved noiselessly across to the boat where it lay in its netting beside the aircraft.
He studied the criss-cross of lines. They were tough and pliable, and of a rubbery texture to his exploring fingers. He could not guess the substance, but when he drew his knife and tried one of the lines he found that it could be cut. He paused again, to take council with himself.
Suppose he cut the various binding ropes almost through. Then, when the aircraft rose again, it would carry the dugout only a little distance before the nearly severed strands parted and dropped their burden. Falling, the dugout might with luck strike into the jungle, be cushioned by the twigs and branches of the trees, and so slide through unharmed, to the ground beneath. It was possible that such a falling of the boat might occur in the night without the knowledge of the Cold Creatures piloting the craft. He, Darragh, would be lurking in the jungle to run and reclaim his little vessel, drag it somehow to the water, get in, raise his sail and voyage away from Haiti with the knowledge his spying had gathered. All these things would need luck to achieve; but luck had been with Darragh from the very beginning of his expedition. And, despite a most practical and logical pattern of mind, Darragh could never persuade himself to stop believing in luck.
He took another strand of the rope in his hand and set the edge of the knife to it, but paused again. He could see that the dugout had been emptied of all his stores. Even the mast had been stripped of the palm-fiber sails, the slate hearth had been pried from its fastenings and taken away. He needed those things, wherever they had been carried.
He glanced here and there. After a moment, he studied the aircraft of the Cold People as it lay next to the boat. It was a metal cigar in which a hatchway gaped. He rose from beside the dugout, tiptoed gingerly to the aircraft and stared in through the open hatch.
He saw something bundled inside, in a dim reddish light like the light from an ember of his charcoal cooking-fire. Darragh thought he recognized the string-woven fruit bag in which he carried guavas and plums harvested on various islands of the Caribbean. He moved boldly through the hatch into that murkily lighted interior and began to fumble for his belongings.
With his hand on the fruit bag, he suddenly snapped erect. Outside the craft had sounded a sliding rasp of metal. Somewhere a panel was opening.
Listening with a sudden throb of his heart, Darragh heard movement, a creaky flow of movement like the dragging of something heavy and wet.
Cold People were coming out of their shelter into the open port-chamber. They were coming to the ship.
He felt panic, and in the same moment he felt inspiration. He must hide, at once. Frantically he glanced around. In a comer he saw the palm-fiber sails, loosely bundled together. He dived for them and then into them, like a rabbit into its burrow. He wriggled deep among the folds, turned around, and cautiously lifted a corner of the fabric so that he could peer out.
As he did so, a shiny-swaddled shape, indistinct in the dim red glow, came in through the hatchway. It went humping across the floor, and as it cleared the way another followed it in. This second one put out a tentacle, sleeved and gloved, to slide the hatch shut. The first went forward in the ship and touched some instruments that gave a faint vibrant clatter. The red light grew brighter and paler. Then the floor beneath Darragh vibrated. It shifted. The ship was taking off.
The strengthening of the light gave Darragh his first clear view of the compartment. It was no more than half the length of the vessel in extent, a curve-walled chamber like the inside of an egg, some ten feet long. The rest of the craft's interior must be occupied by the engines. Silent engines they were— Darragh did not hear even the faintest purring of machinery in motion. There was no furniture for the Cold People, who were not built to sit or to he, even when in that motionless condition which for them must approximate sleep. Here and there the bulkheads were pierced with glassed-in ports, and between these were studded with strange instruments that might be gauges or chronometers, and were furnished in several places with hatchlike panels that might be the doors to cupboards.
The gear that operated the craft was strange but, after Darragh had gazed at it for moments, understandable.
Upon a litde round pedestal of shimmery metal there lay, or was fastened, a horizontal cross made of two wirelike rods, with the arms about a foot long. From the intersection of the rods rose a third slender length, like the gnomon of a sundial, but perpendicular. Each of the four arms of the cross, as well as the upright fifth arm, was furnished with a beadlike object, more than an inch in diameter and dead black in color. The position of these beads determined the direction and speed of the craft.
Just now, as Darragh judged, they were rising upward. The Cold creature at the controls had its tentacle to the bead on the upright arm and held it nearly at the top of the rod. And likewise they were going straight ahead; another tentacle had advanced the bead on the forward arm of the cross, while those on the other three arms remained at the intersection of the rods. Already they must be soaring high above Haiti and the tropic heat, for upon Darragh's naked body began to rise protesting areas of gooseflesh. He tried not to shiver or to breathe heavily.
He tried, also, not to curse himself for getting into the ship so confidently. Cursing one's self was a waste of time, when one needed badly to find a way out of mortal danger.
CHAPTER IV
Mark Darragh was young, tough and healthy, but he was tropic-born and tropic-bred. Cold temperatures he had never been made to endure, and here in this high-mounting aircraft it was growing colder by the second. He groped frantically in his mind for some way of escape, and yet another inspiration came to his mental hand.
He had most sagely prepared a warm dress, an armor of his own against just such shuddering chill. He himself had fashioned it of those two thicknesses of fine deerskin, with a comforting layer of cotton down quilted between them. And he had stowed it, as he well remembered, under the foredeck of his dugout when he made ready to sail down the Orinoco.
But it had been gone from the dugout when he had scrambled down into the open lock. It must be here in this cabin, with his other gear. It must be. He widened the crack of his vision between the folds of the woven sail.
There was the bundle, sure enough—a great lumpy package of leather folded and bound with strips of rawhide. In its center were the good moccasins, the gauntiets, the goggles and the scarf. But it lay a sickeningly long four feet out of his reach as he huddled there.
He clamped his strong teeth together lest they chatter, and considered hunching the sail a bit closer. But surely that would be noticed by one of the Cold Creatures hunched so close to him, perhaps by both. While he wondered what to do, it grew colder, degree by degree. The temperature, if he were able to read whatever the Cold Creatures employed as a thermometer, must already be close to freezing.
; Well, he had to get the garments, that was certain. He had to reach them, drag them unobserved into his hiding, and there pull them over his suffering nakedness. A shiver threatened to convulse his body, to make it thrash like a jumping-jack. Desperately he fought it down. He wrapped both arms around himself in a half-instinctive gesture to shut out the cold, and his left hand touched the hilt of his saber, still slung over his shoulder.
That suddenly gave him new hope. He dragged the weapon around to his front, and began to draw the weapon, an inch at a time, down there under the sail. When at last it was free of the scabbard, he pushed the fold of fabric a little wider. His breath made a steamy cloud in the red-lighted air of the cabin.
Neither of the Cold Creatures seemed to notice. One was paying close attention to the controls; the other lounged lumpily at a port as though observing the night outside. Darragh extended his arm into the open, and touched the bundle of deerskin clothing with the point of his saber.
Painstakingly he worked the blade under a strand of the rawhide that bound the package. As he had done when leaving the dugout to explore on the shore of Haiti, Darragh repeated a prayer to himself, but this time it was a prayer of deep and devout thanks. Gendy he began to twitch the prize near to him.
At that very instant, the Cold Creature at the port turned itself around with ponderous smoothness, facing in his direction.
It was impossible that the thing could not perceive. Darragh did not move, his hand with the saber and his arm from the elbow downward in the open. Perceiving, the creature did not quite understand. Mildly mystified, it began to hunch its bulk closer.
Darragh lay huddled as though the chill of the air had indeed frozen him stiff. He dared not unclasp his stiffened fingers from the saber hilt or turn betrayingly under the palm fiber cloth; the least motion would have given him away entirely. The monster inched toward him until it towered above the wadded sail and the bundle of leather and the saber. Its strange sensory powers, whatever they were, plainly were concentrated upon this curiosity. Darragh, crouching where he was—like a mouse under a napkin—could see through its transparent armoring drapery the glow and pulsation of its central organ.
Now it was observing that naked hand that emerged from the sail's depths. No doubt but that it was aware what sort of creature owned such an extremity. A tentacle reached down to twitch away the concealing sail; another fell down toward a pouch that hung to the armor fabric, a pouch that held some sort of weapon.
A ray-thrower, perhaps.
Darragh told himself not to die quiedy. His lips dragged themselves from his clenched teeth as he quickly rose to his knees and made a slashing cut with his saber.
The thing divined the move and tried to sidle backward, but not in time. The point of Darragh's saber snagged the protecting cloak and sliced a great smooth rent in it. And that was all the saber needed to do.
Staring, Darragh saw the creature's tentacles relax, quiver and sag, saw a slumping of the great gross pyramidal shape of gelatinous tissue that was the body. The afr that to Darragh seemed torturingly cold was rushing through that slit he had made in the armor, like a blast of murderous heat. Already the monster was helpless, unconscious. Darragh, still upon his knees, the fighting grin stamped upon his desperate brown face, watched while the inner organ grew dimmer, feebler of pulse, and dark and motionless.
The Cold Creature was dead. He knew that, and he knew why.
From what little he had heard from men who had assembled knowledge about the invaders, the Cold Creatures must have come from a planet not only bitterly cold, but of an unchanging temperature. Like snakes and snails, the Cold Creatures took their temperature from their surroundings, and did not have within themselves any heat-regulating mechanism. But they were highly organized mentalities. A very few degrees of heat beyond their margin of endurance meant unconsciousness. If it continued, that unendurable degree of heat, it meant death.
Darragh's discoverer had died, within less than a minute— the first of the Cold Creatures to die of a human hand since those pitifully unequal pitched battles of half a century ago.
No motion or menace from the operator a few feet away at the controls of the ship. The drama of menace and sudden counter-attack and death behind it had gone all unnoticed. Darragh felt a sudden surging flush of fierce, triumphant exultation. Then he dragged the clothes to him and, crouching to hide behind the silent bulk of the Cold Creature he had slain, drew his knife and cut away the lashings. In trembling silence he drew on the wide breeches, tied the belt-cord, and then lowered the quilted jacket down over his head. He dragged the moccasins upon his numb bare feet, gratefully slid his hands into the gauntiets, and pulled the hood over his ears and face. He drew a steamy breath of comparative relief, and dared to peer cautiously around the shielding bulk of his conquered enemy.
Still the ship was mounting upward, its floor gendy tilted beneath him as he crouched, and the temperature was dropping steadily. By now, as Darragh judged, it was truly below the freezing mark. He had not won his swift victory and secured his garments any whit too soon. But the quilted swaddling of leather was sufficient. He strapped the goggles over his eyes, and wound his nose and mouth in the grateful warmth of the woollen scarf. Then, very gingerly, he wriggled back under the sail and propped up its edge so that he could look out past the dead mass of his victim toward the other creature at the controls.
He found himself ready to accept his own congratulations at killing one enemy; but, since he had done so, he must kill the other if it did not kill him first. He could see the transparent pouch on the armor at its side, and in the pouch the pistol-formed apparatus for throwing rays. So far luck had been richly on the side of Mark Darragh, and he felt it would carry him further. But he would launch the attack at the next clash, before this second enemy could muster its devices against him.
Attack he would, but not now, not until he had learned something more about how to operate the ship. If he managed to kill the second creature, he must manage to keep the speeding vessel from crashing with him. He glued his goggle-covered eyes to the controls on which confidently skillful tentacle-tips slid beads backward and forward to adjust speed and direction. Higher the craft was mounting, and higher, toward the upper reaches of Earth's atmosphere. Darragh felt the chill of the altitude, even through his thick garments of quilted leather; his breath made frost in the woolen fabric he had stretched across his mouth and nose, so that it was like a rigid mask of ice-cold tin.
At last the creature at the controls began to pluck at its armor with free tentacles, unfastening studs and clamps and dragging the fabric away. Its own range of temperature-comfort was being reached up in these heights, judged Darragh, something well below zero. With three tentacles the thing deftiy folded the discarded armor into a compact parcel, and with it the pouch with the weapon. Now; Darragh told himself, the time had come for striking.
He took his saber tightiy in his gloved right hand, rose cautiously upon his moccasined feet behind the protecting carcass of the dead Cold Creature, then sprang around it and at the other.
The thing was aware of him as he came out into the open. It had been fumbling at the catch of a cupboard panel, as though to stow its folded armor away. But now it slid clear of its controls and hurriedly strove to push a tentacle into the pouch for its weapon. But Darragh got there first. A savage downward slash of his saber struck the folded bundle of fabric and knocked it to the floor. He kicked it away and out of reach.
Tentacles shot out at him, seizing and grappling him with anaconda strength. At the same time the floor tilted sickeningly, as though the ship was sliding out of the horizontal.
But Darragh struck again with his saber, and the blow went home. The whetted edge pierced the massive translucent body as a knife pierces cheese. He shortened the blade and stabbed, full into the glowing, throbbing central organ. As the point pierced that vital spot, Darragh twisted the weapon and drew with it. Deep within the sofdy tough substance of that squat, unlovely body, his
edge sliced the organ in two. The grip of tentacles fell away from him, and he sprang clear.
Darragh was master of the ship.
CHAPTER V
The luck in which Mark Darragh chose to believe was, it must be admitted, necessary to allow the slaying of the first Cold Creature. Double luck had favored Darragh in his victory over the second. But undoubtedly the high point of his phenomenal good fortune was attained when the aircraft in which he thus fought and triumphed did not crash at once to earth.
For one thing, the Cold Creature which he had so expertly sabered at the controls had flown its craft miles high, in fact had risen nearly to the stratosphere. When the pilodess vessel began to slip away sideways out of its course, throwing the two ungainly carcasses against the port bulkhead, and almost toppling Darragh from his moccasined feet, it had a long way to go before crashing disaster could arrive. In the moments that followed, Darragh himself became a successful operator of a Cold People's airship.
He dropped his saber and clutched the pedestal of the control mechanism to steady himself. A frantic shake of his right hand threw off the muffling gauntlet and he began to manipulate the beads upon the five metal arms.
The principle of the mechanism he had already grasped as he watched, and his first act was to draw all the beads close together at the juncture of the five arms. At once the ship righted itself, but continued to descend swifdy. Darragh then drew the bead upward on the perpendicular arm, and after a trembling halt in dark space, the thing began to rise. A slight lowering of the bead slackened the pace of ascent. Then Parragh gingerly adjusted the forward bead. At last he managed to get the captured craft on an even keel, moving forward. He blew on his cold-nipped fingers, retrieved his glove and thrust his hand back into its warm shelter. Then he stood up and studied other items.
Manly Wade Wellman - Novel 1959 Page 4
