Trapped animals can be very dangerous in their terror. Prokle's hold loosened and he rolled over lightly. From his distance, Garth saw Chiswell's hand come up. He glimpsed something massive in it. He cried out a warning, and Prokle twisted around.
But not in time. Garth saw the mass of rock descend, and he heard an awful crunching sound as it smashed Prokle's skull.
Chiswell bleated no longer. The bleat was a snarl as he leaped astride Prokle and without waiting to see if he were dead, gripped his neck with unbelievable strength. Garth heard the vertebrae snap sickeningly, and still the madman clung. He clung until he was quite sure Prokle wasn't going to move any more, and then his hands slowly loosened. He leaped aside, and with the mien of a sculptor surveying his masterpiece he gazed on the thing at his feet. Then, uttering horrible little throat noises he grasped Prokle's hands and dragged him to the cave and into the darkness beyond.
Garth staggered blindly to his feet and stood there swaying. Prokle was dead, but there was something else. A semblance of thought and reason was trying to flow back to his brain, but it came too slowly.
Garth moved toward the cave just as Chiswell emerged. If there had been any doubt before that the man was mad there could not be now. As Garth approached him he stood there half erect, gibbering, ghastly in the pale ghost-light of the sun that was just beginning to reach down into the chasm.
Garth stood before the disgusting thing that was no longer a man. His fist moved only a foot and caught the thing in the throat. On Chiswell's face as he sailed backward there was a look of mild surprise, as if he could not quite understand how it happened or why; but when he hit the rocky wall he crumpled and lay still.
Garth looked at his fist wonderingly. He passed a hand across his brow. That's what he had needed. Clear, concise thought was coming back. He entered the cave and stood a full minute there in the darkness, before he remembered the torch at his side. He lifted it, and was about to flood the cave with light.
Then that familiar premonitory "awareness" was with him again; abruptly, startlingly, vividly it came, engulfing him. It told him not to click on that light.
Garth stood stock still for a moment, hand half lifted, indecision creeping on him.
Prokle's body was in here, he knew that. But—yes, that's what had brought the numb fear a minute ago! That's why this was different!Why had that madman dragged Prokle in here?
For the first time in his life Garth disregarded his warning premonition.
He clicked on the torch.
Out on the Station, in the long dreary days to come, Garth was to remember that scene.
His torch remained on for only about ten seconds. But in those seconds he remembered telling Prokle, "Some of the party may have been lost in space somewhere"—but now he knew none of them had been.
He recalled telling about the lichen and moss here, which desperate men might conceivably use as food—but now he knew Chiswell had not.
His ears rang again with the madman's words, "All mine!"—and now he knew their horrible purport.
He remembered when the fire had flared up and they had glimpsed dim masses of something along the sides of the cave, something that was not rock, something that was seemingly sacks of gold—but now he knew those dim shapes were not sacks of gold.
It was not gold that Chiswell guarded so viciously, for there was no gold here.
In those few seconds before he clicked off the torch Garth felt his mind slowly slipping away into a chaos of vertiginous horror, but he caught it on the brink. He retained enough of sanity to realize why he must not leave his dead friend here.
He emerged with the body of Prokle into the palely creeping sunlight. He saw the thing that was Chiswell stir and breathe and try to sit up. Garth reached for his ray-pistol, aimed it and tried to press the button. Then he let his hand drop. That was strange—he had thought he felt sorry for the thing there before him, but now he didn't feel sorry. He simply didn't feel anything.
Buthehad Prokle! With the body lightly across his shoulders Garth began the ascent of the cliff to where the cruiser waited. He did not once look back. An idiotic desire to laugh seized him, but he did not laugh; he knew that if once he laughed it would be wildly, and he could never stop, and he'd become as mad as the thing down there....