CHAPTER VIII
_The Half-Men_
"The Valley of the Fires," Harkness was to call it later, and shorten
it again to "Fire Valley." The misty smokes of a thousand fires rose
skyward from the lava beds of its upper end.
Where the lava flow had stopped and the lower valley began, came
vegetation. Sparse at first, then springing to luxuriant growth, it
contrasted strongly with the barren wall beside it and the equally
barren waste of high ground where the fires were.
Mountains hemmed it in; their distant peaks showed black, with red and
green striations of mineralized deposits. The valleys about them were
dense with foliage, a green so startling and vivid as almost to offend
the eye.
Trees were in the lower end of the valley. They were of tremendous
growth, and the dew of early morning dripped from them like rain.
Trunks smooth and ghostly white, except where the bark had split into
countless fractures and the scarlet color of the sap-wood showed
through. Outflung branches forked to drop down dangling stalks that
rooted again in the ground; these made a forest of slender white
supports for the leafy roof--a forest of spectral shapes in a
shadow-world. Only here and there were arrows of sunlight that
pierced the dense foliage above to strike through and down to the
black earth floor and the carpet of rainbow hues.
And that carpet of radiant colors was trampled into paths that wound
on to lose themselves in the half-light of that ghostly world.
* * * * *
From one of the paths came sounds of tramping feet. Cries and snarling
grunts resounded through the silence to send lizards scurrying to the
safety of the trees. Animal cries or hoarse voices of men--it would
have been difficult to tell which. And a sight of the creatures
themselves would have left an observer still in doubt.
A score of them, and they walked upright. Some bodies were naked, a
coppery-black in color; on others the skin was covered by a sparse
growth of hair. Noses that were mere nostril-slits; low foreheads,
retreating flatly to a tangle of matted hair; protruding jaws which
showed the white flash of canine teeth as the ape-like faces twisted
and the creatures tugged at ropes of vines thrown over their
shoulders.
The Neanderthal Man had not learned to use the wheel; and these
man-animals, too, used only the sheer strength of their corded muscles
as they hauled at the body of a beast.
It dragged along the path behind them, rolling at times to show the
white of its belly instead of the flexible armor-plating that
protected its back. Fresh blood flowed from a wound in the white
under-skin; this, and the dripping flints that tipped their spears,
told how death had come. One curving horn that projected from a
wrinkled snout caught at times in the undergrowth, and then the ones
who dragged it would throw themselves upon the head with snarls of
fury and twist the big horn free.
The rocky cliff was honeycombed with caves. A cry, half-human in its
tone, brought an avalanche of figures scurrying forth. Children, whose
distended abdomens told of the alternate feasting and hunger that was
theirs, were cuffed aside by women who shouted shrilly at sight of the
prize. Older men came, too, and in a screaming mob they threw
themselves upon the carcass of the beast that had been dragged into
the open.
* * * * *
Flint knives came into play, then sharpened stakes that were thrust
through the bleeding meat. Young and old seized what they could,
leaped across the little stream that trickled downward through the
valley, and raced for the nearest fires.
The fumaroles made places for roasting, and these half-men had learned
the taste of cooked meats. Their jaws were slavering as they waited.
The scents were tantalizing.
A hunter was reaching to snatch a shred of half-cooked meat when a
woman of the tribe gave a scream that was shrill with fear. She
pointed her gnarled hand upward on the face of the cliff.
An opening was there, a black cave-mouth in the black cliff. Above
their own caves, was this higher opening, yet they must have explored
it often--must have followed it as far as they dared, where it led to
the mountain's innermost depths. Yet from this familiar place there
stepped forth an apparition. Another followed, and another--three
strange creatures like none the savage eyes of this world had ever
seen.
Clothing torn to rags--faces black and smeared with blood--hands that
reached groping and trembling toward the light, until the half-blinded
eyes of one saw the trickling brook.
Then, "Water!" he croaked in a voice hardly more human than the
grunts of horror from below, and he took the hand of another to help
in the steep descent--while the tribe beneath them forgot their
anticipated feast, forgot all but their primordial fear of the
unknown, and, with startled cries, broke and ran for the safety of the
forest....