* * * * *
The two men climbed slowly up the slope that had been the wave front of molten rock. Chet found his pistol by the path and picked it up.
"We'll get more ammunition up top," he told Harkness, "and we will toss some down to Kreiss. He can have the extra gun you brought for Schwartzmann, too."
He stopped suddenly. He had reached the level top of the lava flow. Here was where they had stood when the beasts attacked; where Harkness had dropped the boxes of ammunition and the pistol--and except for a few scattered bodies of unbelievable reptiles and for a stain of blood where his own wound had bled, there was nothing to show where they had been.
"He got 'em!" Chet exclaimed. "That son-of-a-gun Schwartzmann got the gun and shells. I saw him scrambling around on the rock. I thought he was just scared to death; but no, he wasn't too frightened to grab the gun and the ammunition while one of his own men was being killed. And that's not so good, either!"
A dozen paces beyond was a huddle of clothing that stirred idly in the breeze. "The poor devil!" exclaimed Chet, and moved over beside the body of the man who had gone down under the red swarm's attack.
It lay face down. Chet stooped to turn the body over, though he knew there was no hope of life. He stopped with a gasp of dismay.
Two eyes still stared in horror from a face that was colorless--a drained, ghastly white face! No tint remained to show that this ever had been a living man. More dreadful than the waxen pallor of death, here was a bleached, bloodless flesh that told of the nameless horror that had overwhelmed this man, beaten him down and drained him of every drop of blood.
"Vampires!" Chet heard Harkness saying in a horrified whisper. "Those beaks that were like tubes! And they--they--" He stopped as if in fear of the words that would tell what they themselves had escaped.
Chet turned the body to its former position; that dreadful face beneath a pitiless sun was a sight no other eyes should see. "Let's go on to the ship," he said. "We'll get some ammunition, go back and get Diane--"
* * * * *
He did not finish the thought. Before him he saw the lifeless body moving; it rolled and shuddered as if life had returned to this thing where no life should be. Chet raised one hand in an unconscious gesture as if to ward off some new horror that the body might disclose. It was a moment before he realized that the rock was shaking beneath his feet, that he was dizzy and that from no great distance a rumbling growl was sounding in his ears.
The moving body had shaken Chet's mental poise as had the earthquake his physical equilibrium. Harkness had not seen it; he was looking off across the level plateau.
"Look!" he exclaimed; "another vent has opened! See it spout?"
Some hundred yards distant were clouds of green vapor that rolled into the air. At their base a fountain of mud sputtered and spouted and fell back to build up a cone. The green cloud whirled sluggishly, then was caught by the breeze and began its slow, rolling progress across the flat rock. It was coming their way, rolling down toward the ship, and Chet gripped suddenly at his companion's arm.
"Come on!" he said! "I'm going away from here, and I'm going now. We'll get Diane and Kreiss: remember what a whiff of gas did to him this morning."
He was drawing Harkness toward the face of the rock; he wondered at his slowness. Walt seemed fascinated by the oncoming cloud.
"Wait!" Harkness paused at the top of the descending slope. Chet turned, to look where Harkness was watching.
The green cloud moved slowly. As he turned to stare it touched the bow of their ship; it flowed slowly, sluggishly, along the sides, and then swept up and over the top. The lookouts of the control room were obscured, and the port from which they had come!
"Cut off!" breathed Harkness, his voice heavy with hopeless conviction. "We can't get back! And now we're on our own past any doubt!"
* * * * *
"It may not last," Chet was urging an hour later, when, with Kreiss and Diane, they stood on high ground to look down on the ship.
The sparkling sheen of the metal cylinder had changed from silver to pale green. The cloud that enveloped it was not heavy, but it was always the same. Yet still Chet insisted: "It may not last."
"Sorry to disappoint you," replied Kreiss, "but there is little ground for such a belief." Again he was the professor instructing a class. "These fumeroles, in my opinion, are venting a region far below the surface. It is possible that further seismic disturbances may alter conditions; a rearrangement of the lower rock strata may close existing crevices and open others like this you have seen; but, barring that, I see no reason for thinking that this emission of what appears to be chlorine with other gases may not continue indefinitely."
Chet looked at Diane. Was it a twinkle that appeared and vanished in her eyes as Herr Professor Kreiss concluded his remarks. She would laugh in the very face of death, Chet realized, but her tone was entirely serious as she offered another suggestion.
"If this wind should change," she said, "and if it blew the gas in another direction, the ship could be cleared. One of us could go in long enough to switch on the air generators full."
But now it was Chet who shook his head in a negative. "Remember," he told her, "when we were here before? All of the time while Walt was gone for the ship--how did the wind blow then?"
"The same as now," she admitted.
"And it never changed."
"No,"--slowly--"it never changed."
* * * * *
Chet turned to Walt and Kreiss. "That's that," he said shortly. "Any other good ideas in the crowd? Can anyone go through that gas and get to the ship? I'll make a try."
"Suicide!" was Kreiss' verdict, and Harkness confirmed his words.
"I saw things that moved up in the trees," he said. "Lord knows what they were; Birds--beasts of some sort! But they were alive till the gas touched them. I saw it drift among the trees when we left, and those things up there came plopping down like ripe apples."
Diane Delacouer looked up at Harkness with wide, serious eyes. "Then," she shrugged, "we are really--"
"Castaways," Harkness told her. "We're on our own--off on a desert island--shipwrecked--all that sort of thing! And you might as well know the worst of it; you, too, Kreiss.
"Our good friend, Schwartzmann, is at large, and he has the pistol and ammunition we brought out from the ship. He is armed, and we are not; he has food, and we have none. And I'll have to admit that I didn't have any breakfast and could use a little right now."
"There are seven shells left in my pistol," said Diane. She held the weapon out to Harkness; he took it carefully.
"Seven," he said; "it is all we have. We must kill some animals for food, my dear, but not with these; we must save these for bigger game."
"But we cannot!" expostulated Kreiss. "To kill game with our bare hands--impossible! We are doomed!"
And now Chet caught Diane's glance brimming with mirth that was undisguised. Truly, Diane Delacouer would have her laugh in the face of death.
"Doomed?" she exclaimed. "Not while Chet and I know how to make bows and arrows!... Do you suppose we can find any of their old spears, Chet? They made gorgeous bows, you remember."
And Chet bowed low in an exaggeration of admiration that was not entirely assumed. "Lead on!" he said. "You are in command. The army is ready to follow."
CHAPTER