Creatures of Vibration
Page 4
chest.
"Father--they killed him," Ora sighed almost inaudibly. "Have youforgotten? We saw the dart strike him and I--I saw it sticking from hischest. Oh, Carr!" A dry sob caught in her throat.
"Yes--yes. Lord!" Carr groaned, sick at heart with the suddenrecollection and full of compassion for the stricken girl.
He patted her hand with clumsy tenderness as she turned her head andgazed out through the cave mouth in silence that was fraught withintense pain. She would take it like that: with little to say but withmuch inward suffering.
And then he noticed a fourth occupant of the cavern, a young lad ofTitan. Like one of the savages in his small stature and in the largesize of his head, he was much lighter in color and his body was encasedin a snug one-piece garment of shimmering material of silky texture. Andthere was a different light in his eyes, the light of intelligence andculture.
"Who is that?" Carr whispered.
Ora stared when she saw that the stranger was on his feet. "Oh," sheexclaimed, "I'm glad he has recovered. He's one of the civilized ones;they captured him with his ovoid when the second pteranodon went outafter them."
* * * * *
Mado was standing now, endeavoring to communicate with the lad by meansof signs and the drawing of crude pictures in the red sand of the cavernfloor. The graceful little fellow watched him with understanding andwith a smile of amused tolerance. Then he halted the big Martian with animperious motion, addressing him in velvety voice.
"Nazu," he said simply, placing a forefinger on his breast and bowingbefore the astonished Mado.
"Imps of the canals!" the Martian exclaimed, grinning delightedly as hecast a swift look at Carr and Ora. "He's telling me his name." "Mine'sMado," he said, turning his eyes to the keen gray ones that smiled up athim. "Mado," he repeated, placing a huge fist against his own chest andbending his body in awkward imitation of the lad's courtly gesture.
They made no attempt to converse in tongues that would convey nomeaning, but there was no mistaking the quick friendship that sprang upbetween the incongruous pair. Mado was the boy's slave from that moment,and Nazu looked up to the Martian with all of youth's admiration for hisvast bulk and rippling muscles.
Suddenly they were without light and Carr saw that a curtain of wovenrushes had been dropped over the mouth of the cave. There were softpadding footsteps on every side and he drew back against the rock wallwith Ora clasped in his arms. A sinewy hand grasped his wrist andtwisted his right arm free. He lashed out in the darkness and wasrewarded by a grunt of pain as his fist contacted with an unseen face.Nazu's voice rose in anguish, and Mado's wrathful bellow was followed bya frightful commotion as he tore into his assailants.
They were everywhere in the blackness, these slippery little savages ofTitan, their half naked bodies crowding him and stifling him with theirsweaty nearness. Again and again Carr struck out, but it was likefighting a horde of squirming and clawing feline creatures that swarmedover him and bore him down by sheer weight of numbers. They dragged Orafrom his arms and quickly overpowered him. Thongs of rawhide twisteddeeply into the flesh of his wrists and he was hauled forth into thedaylight.
* * * * *
Securely tied, hand and foot, Carr was propped sitting with his back toa huge boulder. He saw they had been carried to the place they hadviewed in the disk of the rulden. A dozen paces away, Ora and Mado satsimilarly bound. The Martian had been gagged as well and Carr was forcedto smile despite the seriousness of the situation. His mad bellowingsmust have proved as painful to the ears of the red dwarfs as had hisfists to their bodies.
Nazu, unbound and walking proudly erect, was being marched to the edgeof a smoking fissure by two of the savages. No others of the red menwere in sight.
Carr shuddered. It was the place of sacrifice they had seen in therulden, and the natives were in hiding as before. Nazu would be first togo; then Ora, most likely. He strained desperately at his bonds when herealized the awful significance of their position. It was incrediblethat Ora was here and in the hands of these unspeakable monsters. Why,she'd be thrown into the incandescent folds of the flappingfire-god, along with the rest of them! He groaned in an agony ofself-recrimination; he should not have allowed her to come on this madvoyage.
Then came that roaring column of flame from out the crater, and theweird fluttering thing whose intense heat radiated across theintervening space like the breath of a blast furnace. The rumble ofdrums commenced, and thousands of the red men dashed over the rocky areato worship at the shrine of their pitiless god.
As their monotonous chant rose high, Nazu was rushed to the edge of thepit. The ghastly, shimmering heat-ghost drifted hungrily to await theflinging of the slight form into its consuming embrace. Carr was glad tosee that Ora had turned her head.
* * * * *
And then there came a sucking noise from the depths of the crater, andthe pillar of blue flame vanished abruptly, the incandescent ghost-shapeflapping disconsolately in its wake. The chant of the savages trailedoff into a chorus of disgruntled murmurings and the booming of the drumsdied down in disappointment. The worshippers had been cheated of theirsadistic pleasure. There was something wrong with the timing of therite; their mysterious fire-god had granted the captives a reprieve.
But the prisoners were not deceived by the solicitous treatment accordedthem by their captors when they were returned to the cave and theirbonds were severed. For well they knew that at the next appearance ofthe phenomenon of the pit they would be dragged off to the sacrifice.Sooner or later all of them were to meet the fate of those given intothe embrace of the heat-demon.
A guard of fifty or more of the savages, armed with blow-guns and stonehatchets, paraded continuously before the mouth of the cave as one oftheir number returned with a huge woven container of fruits and nuts ofstrange form and color. This was set before them and the bearerwithdrew.
"Humph!" Mado grunted. "Seems like they want to fatten us up for thisheated sheet of theirs. Like hogs fattened for the market."
But he reached for the striped yellow melon atop the heap, and, at abright nod of approval from Nazu, bit into its smooth skin.
Carr's stomach rebelled when he looked at the food. He could not bearthe sight of the stuff, sitting there in the damp cavern with Ora's blueeyes regarding him in the dim light. Those wide eyes held a gleam ofhope and trust that would not be discouraged.
* * * * *
He gazed out through the cave mouth and calculated their chances. Therewere none. Not against that horde of barbarians; there were too many ofthe devils to fight with their bare hands. If only they had their raypistols, or a torpedo projector. At least they could sell their livesdearly. His eyes narrowed speculatively when they came to rest on apeculiar egg-shaped object that stood out there in the open. It wasNazu's ovoid. Here was an idea!
But he saw that its entrance door was open and that the space inside wastoo small for any of them excepting one of the small stature of theTitanese. It was crammed with machinery. Nazu was the only one of theirnumber who could squeeze into the thing; in fact he alone knew how tooperate the queer flying machine. There must be others of his kind,plenty of them; another country, or a city full of them at least.Perhaps he might obtain aid if only he could be made to understand, andif they could get him out there safely somehow.
"Mado," he called, pointing, "do you suppose we could dope out a way ofgetting Nazu aboard his sky vehicle to go for help?"
The Martian stared, his mouth stuffed with food and his jaws in fullaction. He strained suddenly to swallow the huge mouthful so he couldmake reply.
"Not a chance," he grunted. "Why, there's a million of them out there.You won't catch them napping."
But he turned his attention from the basket of fruit and made adesperate effort to convey the idea to Nazu, whose bright eyes took inhis every significant motion and whose sensitive fingers traced imagesin the sand that conveyed
his own thoughts to the mind of the Martian inrapid succession.
"He's got it!" Mado gloated. "The game little cuss would go in a minuteif we could get him to the ovoid. He's got a picture of a big islandhere, so help me! An island covered with circular dwellings, made ofmetal like the ovoids, he indicates. Look here."
* * * * *
Carr and Ora moved over to watch the swift sketching of the Titaneselad. By means of pantomime and his carefully drawn pictures, he toldthem of his people, making it clear that they were forced to live ininsulated dwellings and travel only in the ovoids, which likewise wereinsulated against the devastating vibrations that emanated from Saturn'srings. He sketched those rings, illustrating the vibrations and tappinghis own forehead in explanation of the effect on the brain; pointing tothe savages to indicate the