CHAPTER XXII
_Sacrifice_
"Down in the pyramid! You went down there?" Herr Kreiss forgot even hisabsorbing experiments to exclaim incredulously at Chet's report.
Guided by Towahg, Chet had returned to Happy Valley. There had been sixdays and nights to be spent, and he felt that he should tell Kreiss whathe had learned.
"Yes," said Chet dully; "yes, I went down."
He was seated on a rock in the enclosure they had built. He raised hisdeep-sunk, sleepless eyes to stare at the house where he and Walt hadworked. There Walt and Diane were to have made their home; Chet foundsomething infinitely pathetic now in the unfinished shelter: its verycrudities seemed to cry aloud against the blight that had fallen uponthe place.
"And what was there?" Kreiss demanded. "This hypnotic power--was it anattribute of the ape-men themselves? That seems highly improbable. Orwas there something else--some other source of the thought waves orradiations of mental force?"
Chet was still answering almost in monosyllables. "Something else," hetold Kreiss.
"Ah," exclaimed the scientist, "I should have liked to see them. Suchmental attainment! Such control of the great thought-force which with usis so little developed! Mind--pure mentality--carried to that stage ofconscious development, would be worthy of our highest admiration. Ishould like to meet such men."
"They're not men," said Chet; "they're--they're--"
He knew how unable he was to put into words his impression of the unseenthings, and he suddenly became voluble with hate.
"God knows what they are!" he exclaimed, "but they're not men. 'Mind',you say; 'mentality!' Well, if those coldly devilish things are anexample of what mind can evolve into when there's no decency of soulalong with it, then I tell you hell's full of some marvelous minds!"
He sprang abruptly to his feet.
"I've got to get out of here," he said; "I can't stand it. Four moredays, and that's the end of it all. I'm going back to the ship. I saw itfrom up on the divide. Still buried in gas--but I'm going back. If Icould just get in there I might do something. There's all oursupplies--our storage of detonite; I might do some good work yet!"
* * * * *
He was pacing up and down restlessly where a path had been worn on thegrassy knoll, worn by his feet and the pitiful, bruised feet he had seenfrom his shelter in the pyramid; worn by Walt and Diane--his comrades!And they were helpless; their whole hope lay in him! The thought of hisown impotence was maddening. He poured out the story of his experiencein the pyramid, as if the telling might give him relief.
Kreiss sat in silence, listening to it all. He broke in at last.
"Wait!" he ordered. "There are some questions I would have answered. Yousaid once that they found us--these devils that you tell of--because ofthe trail that I left. That is true?"
"Yes," Chet agreed irritably, "but what of it? It's all over now."
"Possibly not," Herr Kreiss demurred; "quite possibly not. The fault, itappears, was mine. Who shall say where the results of that fault shalllead?
"And you say that these thinking creatures are devils, and that theyplan to sacrifice your good friends to strange gods; and still the faultleads on." Herr Kreiss, to whom cause and effect were sure guides,seemed meditating upon the strange workings of immutable laws.
"And you say that if you could reach the interior of your ship you mightperhaps be of help. Yes, it is so! And the ship is engulfed in a fluidsea, but the sea is of gas. Now in that I am not to blame, andyet--and--yet--they all tie in together at the last; yes!"
"What are you talking about?" demanded Chet Bullard harshly. "It's nouse to moralize on who is to blame. If you know anything to do, speakup; if not--"
Herr Kreiss raised his spare frame erect. "I shall do better than that,"he stated; "I shall act." And Chet stared curiously after, as the thinfigure clambered up on the rocks and vanished into the cave.
* * * * *
He forgot him then and turned to stare moodily across the enclosure thathad been the scene of their battle. Kreiss had done good work there; hehad scared the savages into a panic fear. Chet was seeing again thescenes of that night when a faint explosion came from the rocks at hisside. He looked up to see Herr Kreiss stagger from the cave.
Eyebrows and lashes were gone; his hair was tinged short; but his thickglasses had protected his eyes. He breathed deeply of the outside air ashe regarded the remnant of a bladder that once had held a sample ofgreen gas. Then, without a word of explanation, he turned again into thecave where a thin trickle of smoke was issuing.
Ragged and torn, his clothes were held together by bits of vine. Therewere longer ropes of the same material that made a sling on hisshoulders when he reappeared. And, tied in the sling, were bundles; onelarge, one small, but sagging with weight. Both were bound tightly inwrappings 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 ship! Come, savage!"--he motioned to Towahg--"I did not do wellwhen I made my way alone. You shall lead now."
"He's crazy," Chet told himself half aloud: "his motor's shot and hiscontrols are jammed! Oh, well; what's the difference? I might as wellspend the time this way as any. I meant to go back to the old ship oncemore."
Kreiss' arm still troubled from the wound he had got in the fight, butChet could not induce him to share his load.
"_Es ist mein recht_," he grumbled, and added cryptically: "To each manthis only is sure--that he must carry his own cross." And Chet, with ashrug, let him have his way.
* * * * *
There was little said on the trip. Chet was as silent anduncommunicative as Kreiss when, for the last time, he paused on thedivide to see the green glint from a distant ship, then plunged with theothers into a forest as unreal as all this experience now seemed.
And at the last, when the red light of late afternoon ensanguined a wildworld, 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 lowerend of the valley had built up a great mound of greasy mud from whosetop issued hot billows of green gas. It was here that Kreiss paused andunslung his pack.
"Take this," he told Chet; and the pilot dragged his reluctant eyes fromthe view of the nearby cylinder enveloped in green clouds. The scientistwas 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, myequipment was not so good. I thought that the time might come when itwould be put to use, only first I must conquer the gas--which I nowprepare to do."
"I don't understand," Chet protested.
"You are a Master Pilot of the World?" questioned Kreiss, and Chetnodded.
"And the control on your ship was a modification of the new ball-controlmechanism 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 morethat device on one of those ships, 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 ofunderstanding blazed into his brain.
"Patented," he reflected; "that's what it says," and a wonderingcomprehension 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," admittedKreiss, "on that occasion when I told him I could not rebuild thecontrol you had demolished. With your equipment on the ship I could havedone a quite creditable job, but even now,"--he pointed to theleaf-wrapped bundle in Chet's hand--"with copper I have hammered fromthe rocks, and with silver and gold and even iron which I foundoccurring in a quite novel manner, I have done not
so badly."
"This is--this is--" Chet stared at the object in his hand; his tonguecould not be brought to speak the words. "But what use? How can I getin? The gas--"
"Cause and effect!" stated Herr Doktor Kreiss of the Institute atVienna, and once more he seemed addressing a class and taking pleasurein 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 theeffects go out like circling waves in an endless ocean of time foreverbeyond our reach.
"But we can do other acts, produce other causes, and sometimes we canneutralize thereby the effects of the first. I do that now." He pickedup the second bundle in its wrapping of leaves; it was heavy for him tomanage with his wounded arm. "This is all that I have," he said! "I mustplace it surely.
"Go down toward the ship," he ordered. "Wait where it is safe. Thenwhen the gas ceases you will have but three minutes. Threeminutes!--remember! Lose no time at the port!"
He had reached the base of the hill of mud. He was on the windward side;above him the fumerole was grunting and roaring. And, to Chet, the thinfigure, gaunt and ungainly and absurd in its wrappings of dilapidatedgarments, became somehow tremendous, vaguely symbolic. He could not getit clearly, but there was something there of the cool, reasoningsureness of science itself--an indomitable pressing on toward whatevergoal the law might lead one to; but Kreiss was human as well. He stoppedonce and looked about him.
"A laboratory--this world!" he exclaimed. "Virgin! Untouched!... So muchto be learned; so much to be done! And mine would have been the gloryand fame of it!"
He turned hesitantly, almost apologetically, toward Chet standingmotionless and unspeaking with the wonder of this turn of events.
"Should you be so fortunate as to survive," began Kreiss, "perhaps youwould be so kind--my name--I would not want it lost." He straightenedabruptly.
"Go!" he ordered. "Get as near as you can!" His feet were climbingsteadily up the slippery ascent.
* * * * *
The faintest breath of the gas warned Chet back. Almost infinitelydiluted, it still set him choking while the tears streamed down hisface. But he worked his way as near the ship as he dared, and he sawthrough the tears that still blinded his stinging eyes the tall figureof Kreiss as he reached the top.
A table of steaming mud was there, and Kreiss was sinking into it as hestruggled forward. At the center was a hot throat where fumes like abreath from hell roared and choked with the strangling of its own gas.The figure writhed as a whirl of green enveloped it, threw itselfforward. From one outstretched hand an object fell toward the throat;its leafy wrapping was whipped sharply for an instant by the coughingbreath....
And then, where the hot blast had been, and the forming clouds and theerupting mud, was a pillar of fire--a white flame that thundered intothe sky.
Straight and clean, like the sword of some guardian angel, it stooderect--a line of dazzling light in a darkening sky. And the fumes ofgreen had vanished at its touch.
But Kreiss! Chet found himself running toward the fumerole. He must savehim, drag him back. Then he knew with a certainty that admitted of noquestion that for Kreiss there was no help: that for this man of sciencethe laws of cause and effect were no longer operative on the plane ofEarth. The heat would have killed him, but the enveloping gas must havereached him first. And he had sacrificed himself for what?--that he,Chet, might reach the ship!... Before Chet's eyes was a silvery cylinderwhose closed port was plainly marked.
* * * * *
No gas now! No glint of green! The way was clear, and the slim figure ofChet Bullard was checked in its rush toward a mound of mud and the bodyof a man that lay next to a blasting column of flame; he turned insteadto throw himself through the clean air toward the ship that was free ofgas.
"Three minutes!" This was what Kreiss had said; this was the allottedtime. In three minutes he must reach the ship, force open the longunused port, get inside--!
At one side, across the level lava rock he saw Towahg. The savage wasrunning at top speed. He had thrown away his bow, dropping it lest itimpede his flight from this terrifying witchcraft he had seen. There hadbeen a witch-doctor in Towahg's tribe; the savage knew sorcery when hesaw it. But never had his witch-doctor changed green gas to a column offire; and this white sorcerer, Kreiss, powerful as he was, had beenstruck down by the fire-god before Towahg's eyes. Towahg ran as if theroaring finger of flame might reach after him at any instant.
Chet saw this in a glance--knew the reason for the black's desertion:then lost all thought of him and of Kreiss and even of the waiting ship.For, in the same glance, he saw, springing from behind a lava block, theheavy figure of a man.
Black as any ape, hairy of face, roaring strange oaths, the man threwhimself upon Chet! It was Schwartzmann; and, mingled with profaneexclamations, were the words: "the ship--und I take it for mineself!"And his heavy body hurled itself down upon the lighter man in theinstant that Chet drew his pistol.
But, tearing through Chet's mind, was no rage against this man as anenemy in himself; he thought only of Kreiss' words; "Three minutes! Loseno time at the port!" And now the brave sacrifice! It would be in vain.He twisted himself about, so that his shoulder might receive the humanprojectile that was crashing upon him.