But my startled gaze turned from him, for on the ground just at the edge of the swaying torchlight, I saw that two figures were lying. Two men, roped and tied into inert bundles.
They were Jan and Torrence!
V
There was a time when, roped and tied like Jan and Torrence, I was laid beside them while in the torchlight, alone with his pagan gods, the ancient Org priest stood intoning his prayers and incantations. It was then that Jan was able to tell me what had happened to him. He was lying between Torrence and me. I had little chance to talk to Torrence. Nor any great desire, for I considered him then merely a craven fellow who had deserted us at the very first of the weird attacks.
Human emotions work strangely. It was obvious now, as we lay there in the darkness, with the aged savage in the torchlight near us—obvious enough that we were doomed to something horrible which at best would end in our death. Yet Jan and I—each having considered the other dead—were for a brief time at least, pleased that we were here. No one yet alive, can normally quite give up hope of escaping death. I recall that in the darkness I was furtively trying to loosen my bonds, twisting and squirming.
"You needn't bother," Torrence muttered. "I've tried all that. And those two damned Orgs who carried you here—they're still watching us."
"Going to take us inside, I guess," Jan whispered. "Inside this temple to—to—"
His shuddering imagination supplied no words. But his idea was right, for presently the old priest was finished with his incantations. His cracked voice called a command and the two savages who had brought me here came from nearby. One by one, they picked us up and carried us inside.
I was the last to go in. The place was a single stone square room. It was lurid with a swaying torchlight. Carved gargoyle images, crude and hideously ugly—grotesque personification of the pagan Vulcan gods—where ranged along the walls. The old priest was standing now on a little dais, between the two interior torches. His arms were upraised toward me as I was carried in; behind him there was a quick stone altar, with a line of smaller images on it. His voice rose, quavering, as I was slowly carried past him; and his hands over me might have been purifying me for the coming rite.
In the center of the room, raised some five feet above the floor, there was a broad stone slab, with a big, grinning, pot-bellied stone image mounted up there. Then I saw that the slab had a broad, cradle-like depression in front of the image. Still bound, lying there side by side, with the belly of the huge image projecting partly over them, were Jan and Torrence. And now the two savages hoisted me up and rolled me among them.
The sacrificial altar. Heaven knows, I could not miss the realization now. There was a weird, acrid, nauseous smell clinging here from former ceremonies. And as I was hoisted up, I saw that the smooth sides of the altar were seared, blackened by the heat of flames which so many times before must have been here.
And the heat—the fire? Within a moment after I was rolled into the saucer-like depression of the alter—with Torrence muttering despairing curses and Jan pallid and grim beside me—outside the temple there sounded a weird gibbering chorus of baying. Ghastly, familiar sound! The mimes—the giant fire-males! Released at the temple doorway, they came bounding in—blobs of leaping red-green flame! A dozen or more of the weird creatures, all of these much larger than the male Jan had killed near the Roberts' spaceship. Fire-males trained for this ceremony. Enveloped in their lurid flames they rushed at the altar, circling it, swiftly running one behind the other so that we were encircled with a ring of leaping flames.
I heard Torrence mutter, "To roast us! Just to roast us slowly—"
The shoulders and heads of the running, circling fire-mimes were nearly as high as the altar slab on which we were lying. The flames of them swirled two or three feet higher—blobs of fire which merged one with the other. A circular curtain of mounting flame walling us in. Through it the temple interior was blurred, distorted. Vaguely the figure of the aged priest was visible. He was now on his knees, turned partly away from us as he faced his little row of god-images, supplicating them.
Curtain of swirling fire. Within a moment the heat of it was searing us. Heat slowly intensifying. It was bearable now; but the confined circle of air here was mounting in temperature; the big gargoyle image over us, the metallic-rock slab beneath us both were slowly heating. The smoke and the swirling gas-fumes would choke us into unconsciousness very quickly, I knew. And then the mounting heat would at last make this a sizzling griddle, on which we would lie, slowly roasting....
A chaos of confused phantasmagoria blurred my mind in those first horrible moments.... I saw the old priest, so solemnly, humbly supplicating his gods as he officiated at this gruesome pagan ceremony ... then I could envisage us being carried off, back to the Org village where the people, not worthy of being here in the sacred temple, were so eagerly awaiting us ... then the orgy—sacred feast, endowing its participants with what future virtues and panaceas they conceived their gods would give them....
The end, for us.... Already Jan was pitifully coughing.... But what was this? I felt a shape stir beside me; a small, slender figure with dangling hair; I felt trembling fingers fumbling at my bonds.
Ama! She had crept from a little recess under the giant bulging statue of the gargoyle god, here on the altar. Ama, who had found a chance to slip away from the wooing Tahg, and had preceded us here—hiding up here so that she might try and release us....
But it was too late now. So obviously too late! She had accomplished nothing, save to immolate herself here with us!
Into my ear her terrified voice was whispering, "I thought that the fire-males would not come so soon."
In the blurring, blasting heat and smoke, she had untied us, but of what use? "No—no chance to try and jump," she stammered. "As we fell they would leap upon us—kill us in a moment—"
The sizzling, crackling of the flames—the gibbering baying of the fire-mimes mingling with the incantations of the old priest—it was all a blurred chaos.... Then suddenly I was aware that Jan, coughing, choking, had struggled half erect on the slab. There was just an instant when I saw his contorted face, painted lurid by the flames. Wild despairing desperation was stamped there. But there was something else. An exaltation....
"You—run—" he gasped.
And then he jumped. A wild, desperate leap, upward and outward.... It carried him through the curtain of flame and out some ten feet to the temple floor. The thud of his crashing body mingled with the gibbering yelps of the fire-mimes as they whirled and pounced upon him—all of them in a second, merged into a great blob of flame out there on the temple floor where they fought, scrambling over him, ripping—tearing—
Gruesome horror.... I knew in that second that already Jan was dead.... And then I was aware that the other side of the altar, behind the gargoyle image, was momentarily completely dark. All the flaming creatures were fighting over Jan's body. Torrence, too, had realized it. I saw him stagger up and jump into the darkness. I shoved at Ama; rolled and tumbled her off the slab. We fell in a heap and scrambled erect. The pawing, snarling group of fire-mimes, twenty feet away with the big altar slab intervening, intent upon their scattering fragments, for that moment did not heed us. On his little dais by the wall, the old priest had turned and was standing numbed, confused. There was no one else in the sacred temple. The single doorway was a vertical slit of darkness. Already Torrence was running for it. I clutched at Ama and we ran.
Out into the rocky blackness. I recall that I had the wits to turn us away from where the Org village lay nearby, behind the hillock.... Then, suddenly, from behind a crag, a dark figure rose up. Tahg! Tahg, who had been crouching here, evidently impatient for his feast so that he would be the first to see us as we were brought from the temple....
He stood gasping, startled; and in that same second I was upon him, my fist crashing into his face so that he went backward and down. With desperate haste I caught up a rock from the ground—pounded it on his head—wildly pounding until his skull smashed.... Then I was up, clutching Ama. Torrence already was ten or twenty feet ahead of us in the darkness. We ran after him; he heard us coming and waited.
"Which way?" he gasped. "She ought to know. Our spaceship—that would be best—"
At the door of the temple the old priest now was standing screaming. From behind the little hill, answering shouts were responding....
"Is it closer to your village, or to our ship?" I demanded of Ama.
"Why—why to your ship, I think."
"You know the way?"
"Yes—yes, I think so. Not to where you landed—that I do not know. But to the Roberts' ship—"
And the Orgs doubtless would consider that we would head into the Senza country. The forests in that direction would be full of roaming Orgs hunting us....
She and I and Torrence ran, plunging wildly forward in the rocky darkness, with the lights and the turmoil behind us presently fading away into the heavy blank silence of the Vulcan night....
I think that there is little I need add. It was a long, arduous journey, but we reached our little spaceship safely. And in a moment, with the rocket-streams shoving downward and with the lower-hull gravity plates in neutral, slowly we were rising into the cloudy darkness.
"You will take me to my people?" Ama said anxiously. "You did promise me—"
"Yes, of course, Ama—we'll land you near your village—"
Queerly enough, it was not until that moment after all the tumultuous events which had engulfed us, that suddenly I remembered the deposits ofalluritewhich we had hoped to locate upon Vulcan. If I could take back samples of the ore—to my sponsors that doubtless would be considered the major success—the only success indeed—of my expedition.... It occurred to me then that we could land at the Senza village, and for a little time, prospect from there....
But even that plan was doomed to frustration. I mentioned it to Torrence. "We should head for Earth," he said dogmatically. "I have had enough of this."
It was then, before we had gone far toward the Senza country, that I noticed the rocket streams were acting queerly. A seeming lack of power.... Torrence had gone down into the hull; he came back presently to the turret.
"The Pelletier rotators are slowing," I said. "What's the matter?"
He shook his head. "I noticed it," he said. "Haven't found out yet. You want to come and look?"
I locked the controls, left Ama and went down into the hull with Torrence. In the dim mechanism cubby, as I bent over the Pelletier mechanisms, suddenly Torrence leaped on me! It came as quickly, unexpectedly as that. The culmination of his brooding, murderous, cowardly plans. His heavy face was contorted, his eyes blazing. In his hand he held a sliver of metal arrow. It was bent, doubled over, so that all this time he had been able to keep it hidden in his clothes. The arrow he had taken from Roberts' body, as it lay there near the bow of the wrecked spaceship! The little light in the mechanism cubby gleamed on it now; glistened on the green and red spots of the sleek, sand-colored metal.Allurite!The precious substance—not an alloy, not a low-gradealluriumore, butalluritein its pure state! On Earth this single bent little arrow could be worth a fortune!
And the frenzied Torrence was gloating: "See it, you damn fool—yourallurite—right under your nose all the time! And now it's mine—" In that second he would have plunged the needle-sharp arrow-point like a stilletto into my heart. But his own frenzied, murderous hysteria defeated him. My fist struck his wrist, knocked his stab-thrust away, with the arrow clattering to the floor. And then I had him by the throat, strangling him until he yielded and I tied him up....
As you who read this, of course, already know from the news reports, I dropped Ama near the edge of the Senza village. I recall now how she stood in the Vulcan night, in the torchlight with the excited crowd of her people behind her; the last I saw of Vulcan was the little figure of her waving at me as I rose into the leaden sky and headed back for Earth.... Maybe—just maybe—I'll return someday to that land where Jan gave his life that his friends might live.