CHAPTER XV

_Terrors of the Jungle_

Towahg had learned the names of these white-skinned ones who came down

from whatever heaven was pictured in his rudimentary mind. His

pronunciation of them was peculiar: it had not been helped any by reason

of Diane's having been his teacher. Her French accent was delightful to

hear, but not helpful to a Dark Moon ape-man who was grappling with

English.

But he knew them by name, using always the French "Monsieur," and when

Chet repeated: "Monsieur Kreiss--he go," pointing through the jungle,

and followed this with the command: "Towahg go! Me go!" the ape-man's

unlovely face drew into its hideous grin and he nodded his head

violently to show that he understood.

Chet gripped a hand each if Harkness and Diane and clung to them for a

moment. Below their knoll the white morning mist drifted eerily toward

the lake; the knoll was an island and they three the only living

creatures in a living world. It was the first division of their little

force, the first parting where any such farewell might be the last. The

silence hung heavily about them.

"Au 'voir," Diane said softly; "and take no chances. Come back here and

we'll win or lose together."

"Blue skies," was Walt Harkness' good-by in the language of the flyer;

"blue skies and happy landings!"

And Chet, before the shrouding mist swallowed him up, replied in kind.

"Lifting off!" he announced as if his ship were rising beneath him, "and

the air is cleared. I'll drop back in four days if I'm lucky."

Towahg was waiting, curled up for warmth in the hollow of a great tree's

roots. Like all the ape-men he was sullen and taciturn in the chill of

the morning. Not until the sun warmed him would he become his customary

self. But he grunted when Chet repeated his instructions, "Monsieur

Kreiss, he go! Now Towahg go too--go where Monsieur Kreiss go!" and he

led the way into the jungle where the scientist had emerged.

* * * * *

Chet followed close through wraith-like, drifting mist. They were

ascending a gentle slope; among the trees and tangled giant vines the

mist grew thin. Then they were above it, and occasional shafts of golden

light shot flatly in to mark the ascending sun.

They were climbing toward the big divide, that much Chet knew. White,

ghostly trees gave place to the darker, gloomier growth of the uplands.

Strange monstrosities, they had been to Chet when first he had seen

them, but he was accustomed to them now and passed unnoticing among

their rubbery trunks, so black and shining with morning dew.

Far above a wind moved among the pliant branches that whipped and

whirled their elastic lengths into strange, curled forms. Then the

miracle of the daily growth of leaves took place, and the rubbery limbs

were clothed in green, where golden flowers budded prodigiously before

they flashed open and filled the wet air with their fragrance.

They were following the path that Chet had traveled on his morning trips

to the divide for a view of the ship. Kreiss would have gone this way,

of course, although to Chet, there was no sign of his having passed.

Then came the divide, and still Chet followed where Towahg led sullenly

across the expanse of barren rocks. Towahg's head was sunk between his

black shoulders; his long arms hung limply; and he moved on with a

steady motion of his short, heavily muscled legs, with apparently no

thought of where he went or why.

Chet stopped for a moment's look at the distant sparkle that meant the

shining ship, which shone green as on every other day, and he wondered

as he had a score of times if it might be possible for them to make a

suit--a bag to enclose his head, or a gas-mask--anything that could be

made gas-tight: and could be supplied with air. Then he thought of the

bow that was slung on his shoulder and the stone ax at his belt. These

were their implements: these were all they had.... Suddenly he began to

walk rapidly down the slope after Towahg who was almost to the trees.

* * * * *

Again they were among the black rubbery growth. It rose from a tangle of

mammoth leafed vines and creepers that wove themselves into an

impassable wall--impassable until Towahg lifted a huge leaf here, swung

a hanging vine there, and laid open a passage through the living

labyrinth.

"How did Kreiss ever find his way?" Chet asked himself. And then he

questioned: "Did he come this way? Is Towahg on the trail?"

Again he repeated his instructions to the ape-man, and he showed his own

wonder as to which way they should go.

The sun must have done its work effectively, for now Towahg's wide grin

was in evidence. He nodded vigorously, then dropped to one knee and

motioned for Chet to see for himself, as he pointed to his proof.

Chet stared at the unbroken ground. Was a tiny leaf crushed? It might

have been, but so were a thousand others that had fallen from above. He

shook his head, and Towahg could only show his elation by hopping

ludicrously from one foot to the other in a dance of joy.

Then he went on at a pace Chet found difficulty in following, until they

came to a place where Towahg tore a vine aside to show easier going, but

climbed instead over a fallen tree, grown thickly with vines, and here

even Chet could see that other feet had tripped and stumbled. The Master

Pilot glanced at the triple star still pinned to his blouse; he thought

of the study and training that had preceded the conferring of that

rating, the charting of the stars, navigational problems in a

three-dimensional sea. And he smiled at his failure to read this trail

that to Towahg was entirely plain.

* * * * *

"Every man to his job," he told the black, and patted him on the

shoulder, "and you know yours, Towahg, you're good! Now, where do we

sleep?"

He ventured to suggest a bed of leaves that had gathered amongst a maze

of great rocks, but Towahg registered violent disapproval. He pointed to

a pendant vine; his hands that were clumsy at so many things gave an

unmistakable imitation of a bud that developed on that vine and opened.

Then Towahg sniffed once at that imaginary flower, and his body went

suddenly limp and apparently lifeless as it fell to the ground.

"You're right, old top!" Chet assured him, as Towahg came again to his

feet. "This is no place to take a nap." A crashing of some enormous body

that tore the tough jungle in its rush came from beyond the rocks.

"And there are other reasons," he added as he followed Towahg's example

and leaped for a hanging tangle of laced vines. Here was a ladder ready

to take them to the high roof above, but they did not need it; the

crashing died away in the distance.

It was Chet's first intimation that this section of the Dark Moon held

beasts more huge than the "Moon-pigs" he had killed: it was a disturbing

bit of knowledge. He caught Towahg's cautious, wary eyes and motioned

toward the branches high overhead.

"How about hanging ourselves up there for the night?" he asked, and the

gestures, though not the words, were plain, as the ape-man's quick

dissent made clear.

* * * * *

He motioned Chet to follow. Down they plunged, and always down. Towahg

gave Chet to understand that Kreiss had slept some distance beyond: they

would try to reach the same place. But the quick-falling dusk caught

them while yet among the black rubbery trees. And the dark showed Chet

why their branches might not be inviting as a sleeping place.

By ones and twos they came at first, occasional lines of light that

flowed swiftly and vanished through the black tangle of limbs. Chet

could hardly believe them real; they appeared and were lost from sight

as if they had melted.

But more came, and it seemed at last as if the roof above were alive

with light. The moving, luminous things glowed in hues that were never

still: were pure gold, were green, then red, melting and changing

through all the colors of the spectrum.

Living fireworks that were a blaze of gorgeous beauty! They wove an

ever-moving canopy of softest lights that raced dazzlingly to and fro,

that crossed and intertwined; that were dazing to his eyes while they

held his senses enthralled by their color and sheer loveliness ... until

one light detached itself and fell toward him where he stood spellbound

beside a giant fern.

It struck softly behind him, and its crimson glory flashed yellow as it

struck, then went black and in the dim light, on a great leathery leaf

with a spread of ten feet, Chet saw an enormous worm, whose head was a

thing of writhing antennae, whose eyes were pure deadliness, and whose

round corrugated body drew up the hanging part that the leaf could not

hold. It hunched itself into a huge inverted U and, before Chet could

recover from his horrified surprise, was poised to spring.

* * * * *

It was Towahg's strength, not his own, that threw him bodily down the

path. It was Towahg who poured a volley of grunted words and shrieks

into his ear, while he dragged him back. Chet saw the vicious head flash

to loveliest gold while it shot forward to the body's full twelve feet

of length--twelve feet of pulsing lavender and rose and flashing crimson

that was more horrible by reason of its beauty.

Chet stumbled to his feet and raced after Towahg. The ape-man moved in

swift silence, Chet close at his back. And other luminous horrors

dropped on ropes of translucent silver behind them, until the ghostly

white of friendly trees became visible, and they stood at last,

breathless and shaken, as far as Chet was concerned, in the familiar

jungle of the lower valleys.

And Towahg, to whom poison vines and writhing, horrible worms of death

that had failed to make him their prey were things of a forgotten past,

curled up in the shelter of an outflung snarl of great roots, grunted

once, and went calmly to sleep.

But Chet Bullard, accustomed only to man-made dangers that would have

held Towahg petrified with fear, lay long, staring into the dark.