Astounding Stories, May, 1931 Part 10

Did a rock move? he wondered. Was the splotch of color--that mottling of crimson and copper and gray--a part of the metallic ma.s.s? He rubbed his smarting eyes--and when he looked again the color was gone. But he had a conviction that eyes, sinister and deadly, had been staring into his, that a living ma.s.s had withdrawn softly into a shadowed cave, and that the menace that had threatened the ape-men was directed now toward them.

Was this the reason for the silence? Was this valley, so peaceful in its sunlit stillness, a place of death, from which all living things kept clear? Had the ape-men been drawn there through curiosity at seeing their s.h.i.+p float down?

And the quiet beauty of the valley--it might be as horrible a mockery as the blazing splendor of those things ahead--those beautiful and horrible eaters of fles.h.!.+ His voice was unsteady as he turned toward the others.

"Let's call this off," he said: "there is something up there. We'll go back to the s.h.i.+p and get up in the air again. We'll find a healthier place to land."

Like Harkness, Chet Bullard held his pistol ready in his hand.

"Something else?" he inquired. "You saw something?" And Harkness nodded grimly.

They retraced their steps. A half-mile, perhaps. It had seemed long as they ventured forth, and was no shorter now. And the gleaming, silvery shape of the s.h.i.+p was entirely lovely to their eyes as they approached.

Harkness circled the blunt bow with its open exhaust high above his head. On the far side was the port where they had emerged; its open door would be welcome in its promise of safe seclusion. His sigh of relief was echoed by the two who followed, for the horror and apprehension had been felt by all. But the breath choked abruptly in his throat.

Before them was the door, its thick metal wide-swung as they had left it. But the doorway itself, where warm darkness should have invited, was entirely sealed by a web of translucent stuff.

Harkness approached to look more closely. The substance was glistening and smooth--yellowish--almost transparent. It was made up of a tangle of woven cords which clung tightly to the metal sides. Harkness reached out in sudden fury to grip it and tear it loose. He grasped the slippery stuff, stumbled--and hung suspended by a tenacious hold that gripped his hand where it had touched, and would not let go.

His arm swung against it, and his shoulder. They were instantly immovable. And he knew in a single terrifying instant his utter helplessness. He saw Chet Bullard's hands come up, and he found his voice in time to scream a harsh warning to him.

"Tear me loose!" he commanded, "but don't touch the d.a.m.ned stuff!" It took the combined strength of the pilot and the girl to free him, and Harkness had to set his teeth to restrain an exclamation of pain as his hand came slowly from the web that clung and clung and would not let go.

From his place upon the ground he saw Chet raise a broken piece of rock. It was like metal, and heavy, as the pilot's efforts proved, though it was surprisingly small in size. He saw Chet raise it above his head and crash it upon the thick web that filled the door. And, as his own aching arm had been held, the rock was seized in the tough strands, which gave back only slightly under the blow.

Harkness scrambled to his feet. The fury that had possessed him made the hurt of his arm unfelt. What devil's work was this that barred them from the safety of the s.h.i.+p? The memory of that other menace, half-seen among the rocks, was strong upon him.

"Stand back!" he shouted to Chet and the girl, and he raised his pistol to send a charge of detonite into the unyielding ma.s.s. Here was power to tear the clinging-stuff to atoms.

He felt Chet's body plunge upon him an instant before he fired, and his pistol was knocked up and flew outward from his hand. He heard the pilot's voice.

"Walt!" Chet was saying. "For G.o.d's sake come out of it! Are you crazy? You might have wrecked that door-port so we never could have fixed it; or the bullet could have gone on through to explode inside the s.h.i.+p. Either way we would never get back: no leaky hull would ever let us make the trip home!"

Chet was right: Harkness knew it in a moment. He knew the folly of what he would have done, yet knew, too, that desperate measures were needed and needed quickly. The eyes of a devil had held his own from the darkness of the rocks, and the same rock wall came close to where they stood. He was in command; it was up to him--

The moment of indecision ended as a ma.s.s of viscous fluid splashed heavily against the s.h.i.+p. Harkness whirled about to face the rocks. He was calm now and controlled, but under his quiet courage was a fear that gripped him. A fear of what he should find! But the reality was so far beyond any imagined terror as to leave him cold.

Above them and thirty feet away on a rocky ledge was a thing of horror. Basilisk eyes in a hairy head; gray, stringy hairs; and the fearful head ended in narrow, outthrust jaws, where more of the gray hairs hung like moss from lips that writhed and curled and sucked at the air with a whistling shrillness. Those jaws could crush a man to pulp. And the head seemed huge until the body behind it came into view.

The suddenness with which the great body rose showed the strength of the beast. A prodigious sack, like black leather, with markings of crimson and copper!--and the straggling, ropy hairs on it were greenish-gray like the l.u.s.tre of the rocks at its back.

It stood upright on great hairy legs. The eyes shot forward on protruding antennae. The sack-like body flexed to bring the rear part under and forward. It was aiming at them.

Harkness seized the slim figure of the girl who stood, mute with horror, beside him. He threw her roughly to the ground, for the meaning of the viscous splash was plain.

"Down!" he shouted to Chet. "Down on the ground!" And he felt the swish of another liquid ma.s.s above his head as he obeyed his own command.

He felt for his pistol, then remembered it was gone--lost when Chet sprang upon him. But Chet had his.

"Shoot!" he ordered. "Shoot the d.a.m.ned thing, Chet! Kill the spider!"

Spider! He had named it unconsciously. But the name was inadequate, for here was a thing of horror beyond even a spider of prodigious size. This peaceful valley!--and here was its ruler, frightful, incredibly loathsome!

He waited for the sound of a shot. A cursing, instead, was the only reply: Chet was not firing! Harkness whirled to see the pilot pinned by one arm to the web.

The fluid had caught him; he had not dropped quickly enough. And his right hand that had been raised, and the pistol it held, were clamped fast to the awful stuff.

There was no word of appeal, no call for help, yet Chet Bullard must have known what this meant. But neither did Harkness wait for that word. One spring, and he had the pilot by the waist, and he felt the weight of the girl's slim body added to his as her arms went about him to help. Chet's face went chalk-white as the hand tore loose. The pistol remained buried in the clinging stuff.

From the corner of his eye, Harkness saw the monster crouched to spring. He was half dragging the other two as he stooped and ran for the bow of the s.h.i.+p. The monstrous body thudded against the metal hull behind them.

The leap was prodigious. He saw the sack-like body fall inert, the great, hairy legs shaking. For the moment, the attacker was helpless: but the respite was brief, as the glaring eyes plainly told.

Below the ledge where the beast had been was an opening in the rocks--a bit of black shadow that was darker than the l.u.s.trous metal of the cliff. There was a chance--

"I can make it," Chet was saying, as Harkness dragged him on; "help Diane!" But the girl had sprung before them to gain a foothold and extend a helping hand. And they were back in the darkness of a rocky cave before the sunlit entrance was blocked by a hairy head and a horrible, slavering mouth on a body too huge to enter.

CHAPTER VII

_In the Labyrinth_

Spent and shaken, the three pa.s.sed onward into the cave. Harkness searched his pockets for his neolite flash; found it--a tiny pencil with a tip of gla.s.s--and the darkness of the inner cave was flooded with light.

A box of food tablets was in a pocket of Chet's jacket, and there was water that trickled in a tiny stream out of the rocks. It could have been worse, Diane pointed out with forced gaiety. But Harkness, who had gone back for a final look at the entrance to the cave, found it difficult to smile.

He had found the entrance an opening no longer: it was sealed with a giant web of ropy strands--a network, welded together to a glutinous mesh. They were sealed in as effectively as if the opening were closed by a thick door of steel.

They gathered fungus that grew in thready clumps on the walls, and this served as a mattress to soften the rocky floor that must be their bed. And Harkness sat silent in the darkness long after the others were asleep--sat alone on guard, to think and to reach, at last, a conclusion.

A cleavage in the rocks made a narrow crack to the outside world, and through it the starlight filtered dimly. The thread of light grew brilliantly golden--moonlight, a hundredfold more bright than moonlight on Earth. And he realized that the source of light was their own globe, Earth, s.h.i.+ning far through s.p.a.ce!

It lighted the cave with a mellow glow. It shone upon the closed eyes of the sleeping girl, and touched lightly upon the rounded softness of a lovely face beneath a tangle of brown curls. Harkness stared long and soberly at the picture she made, and he thought of many things.

No parasite upon society was this girl. He had known such; but her ready wit, her keen grasp of affairs, had been evident in their talks on the journey they had made. They had stamped her as one who was able to share in the work and responsibilities of a world where men and women worked together. Yet there was nothing of the hardness that so many women showed. And now she was altogether feminine, and entirely lovely.

Not far away, Chet Bullard was sleeping heavily. His hand, injured painfully when they tore it from the clinging ma.s.s, had been bandaged by Diane. It troubled him now, and he flung one arm outward. His hand touched that of the girl, and Harkness saw the instant quiet that came upon him at the touch. And Diane--her lips were smiling in her sleep.

They had been much together, those two; theirs had been a ready, laughing comrades.h.i.+p. It had troubled Harkness, but now he put all thought of self aside.