Literature · Science Fiction & Fantasy

Brood of the Dark Moon (A Sequel to "Dark Moon") 11

Chapter 11

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The Sacrificial Altar

"I am off the trail," Harkness admitted. "Towahg guided me before; I wish he were here to do it now."

They had pushed on for another short day, Harkness leading, and Chet bringing up the rear and casting frequent backward glances in a vain effort to catch a glimpse of some other moving figure.

Smothered at times in a dense tangle of vegetation, where they sweated and worked with aching muscles to tear a path; watching always for the flaming, crimson buds on grotesque trees, whose limbs were waving, undulating arms and from which came tendrils like the one that had nearly ended Diane's life, they fought their way on.

They had seen the buds on that earlier trip; had seen the revolting beauty of them--the fleshy lips that opened above a pool of death into which those reaching arms would drop any living thing they touched. They kept well out of reach when a splash of crimson against the white trees flashed in warning.

Again they would traverse an open space, where outcropping rocks would send Kreiss into transports of delight over their rich mineral contents. But always their leader's eyes were turned toward a range of hills.

"It is beyond there," he assured them, "if only we can reach it." Harkness pointed to a scar on a mountainside where a crystal outcrop in a sheer face of rock sparkled brilliantly in the sunlight. "I remember that--it isn't so very far--and we can look back down the valley from there and see our ship."

"But we'll never make it to-night," said Chet; "it's a case of making camp again."

They had gained an altitude of perhaps a thousand feet. No longer did the jungle press so hard upon them. Even the single file that had been their manner of marching could be abandoned, and Harkness drew Diane to his side that he might lend her some of his own strength.

Again the soft contours of the rolling ground had been disturbed: a landslide in some other century had sent a torrent of boulders from the high slopes above. Harkness threaded his way among great masses of granite to come at last to an opening where massive monoliths formed a gateway.

It was an entrance to another valley. They did not need to enter, for they could skirt it and continue toward the high pass in the hills. But the gateway seemed inviting. Harkness took Diane's hand to help her toward it; the others followed.

The fast sinking sun had buried itself behind a distant range, and long shadows swept swiftly across the world, as if the oncoming night were alive--as if it were rousing from the somnolence of its daytime sleep and reaching out with black and clutching hands toward a fearful, waiting world.

"No twilight here," Chet observed; "let's find a hide-out--a cave, by choice--where we can guard the entrance and--"

A gasp from Diane checked him. "Oh!" she exclaimed. "It is not real! C'est impossible!"

Chet had been busied with the matter of a secure footing; he looked up now and took a step forward where Harkness and Diane stood motionless in a gateway of stone. And he, too, stopped as if stunned by the weird beauty of the scene.

A valley. Its length reached out before them to end some half mile away. Sides that might once have sloped evenly seemed weathered to a series of great steps, and an alternation of striations in black and white made a banding that encircled the entire oval. Each step was dead-black stone, each riser was snow-white marble; and the steps mounted up and up until they resembled the sides of a great bowl. In the center, like an altar for the worship of some wild, gargantuan god, was a stepped pyramid of the same startling black and white. Banded like the walls, it rose to half their height to finish in a capstone cut square and true.

An altar, perhaps; an arena, beyond a doubt, or so it seemed to Chet. He was first to put the impression in words.

"A stadium!" he marvelled; "an arena for the games of the gods!"

"The gods," Diane breathed softly, "of a wild, lost world--" But Chet held to another thought.

"Who--who built it?" he asked. "It's tremendous! There is nothing like it on Earth!"

Only Kreiss seemed oblivious to the weird beauty of the spectacle. To Professor Kreiss dolomite and black flint rock were dolomite and black flint; interesting specimens--a peculiar arrangement--but nature must be permitted her little vagaries.

"Who built it?" He repeated Chet's question and gave a short laugh before answering in words. "The rains, Herr Bullard, and the winds of ages past. Yes, yes! A most remarkable example of erosion--most remarkable! I must return this way some time and give it my serious attention."

Harkness had not spoken; he was shaking his head doubtfully at Kreiss' words. "I am inclined to agree with Chet," he said slowly. "But who could have built a gigantic work like this? Have there been former civilisations here?"

He straightened up and shook himself free from the effects of the wild, barbaric scene.

"And you needn't come back," he told Kreiss; "you can have a look now, to-night, by moonlight. We can't go on. I think we'll be safest on that big altar rock; nothing will get near us without our knowing."

Chet felt Diane Delacouer's hand on his arm; her other hand was gripping at Harkness. The shiver that passed through her was plainly perceptible. "I'm afraid," she confessed in a half-whisper; "there's something about it: I do not like it. There is evil there--danger. We should not enter."

Walt Harkness gently patted the hand that trembled on his arm. "I don't wonder that you are all shot to pieces," he assured her. "After last night, you've a right to be. But I really believe this is the safest spot we can find."

He stepped forward beyond the great stones that were like a gateway from one wildly impossible world to another. A rock slide, it seemed, had smoothed off the great steps from where they stood, for there was a descending slope that gave easy footing. He took one step, and then another, to show the girl how foolish were her fears; then he started back. In the fading light something had flashed from the jungle they had left. Across the rocky expanse it came, to bury itself in the loose soil and rubble, not two paces in advance of the startled man. An arrow!--and it stood quivering in silent warning on the path ahead.

Chet quietly unslung his bow where he had looped it over one shoulder, but Harkness motioned him back. The pistol was in his hand, but after a moment's hesitation he returned that to his belt. His voice was low and tense.

"Listen," he said: "we're no match for them with our bows. They are hidden; they could pick us off as we came. And I can't waste a single detonite shell on them while they keep out of sight. We can't go back; we must go ahead. We will all make a break for it and run as fast as we can toward the big altar--the pyramid. From there we can stand them off for a while. And we will go now and take them by surprise."

He seized Diane firmly by one arm and steadied her as they dashed down the slope. Chet and the professor were close behind. Each spine must have tingled in anticipation of a shower of arrows. Chet threw one hasty look toward the rear; the air was clear; no slender shafts pursued them. But from the cover of the jungle growth came a peculiar sound, almost like a human in distress--a call like a moaning cry.

They slackened their breath-taking pace and approached the great pyramid more slowly. As they drew near, the great steps took on their real size; each block was taller even than Chet, and he had to reach above his head to touch the edge of the stone.

They walked quickly about; found a place where the great blocks were broken down, where the slope was littered with debris from the disintegrating stone that had sifted down from above. They could climb here; it was almost like a crudely formed set of more normally sized steps. They made their way upward while Chet counted the courses of stone. Six, then eight--ten--and here Harkness called a halt.

"This--will do," he gasped between labored breaths. "Safe enough here. Chet, you and Kreiss--spread out--watch from all--sides."

The pilot was not as badly winded as Harkness who bad been helping Diane. "Stay here," he told Harkness; "you too, Kreiss; make yourselves comfortable. I will go on up to the top. The moon--or the Earth, rather--will be up pretty soon; I can keep watch in all directions from up there. We've got to get some sleep; can't let whoever it is that is trailing us rob us of our rest or we'll soon be no good. I'll call you after a while."

The great capstone projected beyond the blocks that supported it; that much had been apparent from the ground. But Chet was amazed at the size of the monolith when he stood at last on the broad step over which this capstone projected like a roof.

The shadows were deep beneath, and Chet, knowing that he could never draw himself to the top of the great slab whose under side he could barely touch, knew also that he must watch from all sides. The shadowed floor beneath the big stone made a shelter from any watchful eyes out there in the night; here would be his beat as sentry. He walked slowly to the side of the pyramid, then around toward the front.

It was the front to Chet because it faced the entrance, the rocky gateway, where they had come in. He did not expect to find that side in any way differing from the first. Each side was twenty paces in length; Chet measured them carefully, astounded still at the size of the structure.

"Carved by the winds and rains," he said, repeating the opinion of Professor Kreiss. "Now, I wonder.... It seems too regular, too much as if--" He paused in his thoughts as he reached the corner; waited to stare watchfully out into the night; turned the corner, and, still in shadow, moved on. "Too much as if nature had had some help!"

His meditation ended as abruptly as did his steady pacing: he was checked in midstride, one foot outstretched, while he struggled for balance and fought to keep from taking that forward step.

In the shelter of the capstone was a darker shadow; there was a blackness there that could mean only the opening of a cave--a cavern, whose regular outlines and square-cut portal dismissed for all time the thought of a natural opening in the rock. But it was not this alone that had brought the man up short in his stealthy stride: it had jolted him as if he had walked head on into the great monolith itself. It was not this but a flat platform before the cave, a raised stone surface some two feet above the floor. And on it, pale and unreal in the first light of the rising Earth was a naked, human form--a face that grimaced with distorted features.

Chet had known the ape-men on that earlier visit: he knew that while most of them were heavily covered with hair there were some who were almost human in their hairlessness. The body before him was one of these.

It lay limply across the stone platform, the listless head hanging downward over one edge. It had high cheekbones, a retreating forehead, glassy, staring eyes, and grinning teeth that projected from between loose lips. And the evening wind stirred the black, stringy hair while it touched lightly upon the ends of a short length of vine about the ape-man's neck, where only the ends could be seen, for the rest of the pliant vine was sunk deeply into the flesh of the neck. It had been the instrument of death; the ape-man had been strangled.

Chet tore his fascinated eyes from the revolting features of that purple face; he forced himself to look beyond at what else might be on this sacrificial stone. And, as he saw the assortment of fruit that was there on a green mat of leaves, the surprise was even greater than would have followed a repetition of the first discovery.

A naked, murdered man!--and ripe fruit! What was the meaning of this? Chet asked himself a score of questions and found the answer to none. But one thing he knew now beyond a doubt: Herr Professor Kreiss had been wrong. This was truly an altar for the performance of unknown and savage rites, and the altar itself and the whole encircling arena had been created by some intelligence. People--things--embodied intelligences of some sort had carved these stones. Chet was oppressed by a feeling of impending danger.

His thoughts came back sharply to the things on the stone: the absurdly contrasting exhibits: a naked body and fruit! But were they so different? he asked himself, and knew in the same instant that they were not. They were one and the same; they differed only in kind. They were both food!

From the darkness beyond came a shuffling of feet. From the black passage someone was coming--drawing near to the portal--and coming slowly, steadily through the dark. The pad of animal feet would have been unnerving--or the stealthy footfalls of an approaching savage--but this was neither; it was a scuffing, shuffling sound. The sweat stood out in beads on Chet's forehead and a trickle of it reached his eyes. He dashed it away with the back of his hand while he drew silently into the shadow of the overhanging stone. He held his breath as he watched in the darkness.

His pistol came noiselessly from his belt. Yet, how could he fire it? he asked himself in a moment of frantic planning. Only seven cartridges left!--they would need them all; and to fire now would bring more enemies upon them. He returned the gun to his belt and stooped to weigh a fragment of stone in his hand: this must serve him as a weapon.

The dragging footsteps were near, where the passage mouth loomed black. The light of a distant Earth, struck slantingly across to leave this face of the pyramid in half-darkness. From that far and peaceful world the light poured floodingly down; it shone in under the projecting capstone; it struck upon the raised altar and revealed in ghastliest detail the gruesome offering there. And surely the strangest sight of all that that Earth-light disclosed was when it shone golden upon a black and hairy body of a beast that was half man, half ape. The creature moved slowly forward, walking erect, with its furry arms stretched gropingly ahead. In the full light it went shuffling on like one who is blind or who walks in the dark, until it stopped before the altar stone and stood rigidly waiting.

Waiting for what? Chet was making demands upon his reason that was already taxed beyond its capacity. He heard nothing, and he knew with entire certainty that there was no audible call, yet he sensed the message at the instant the ape-man moved.

"Flesh!" said the message. "Bring flesh! Bring it now!"

And, with glazed, wide-open eyes which plainly saw, but could not comprehend, the ape-thing stared at the altar-stone. It bent forward, took the fresh-killed body by the throat, and slung it across one shoulder as easily as a child might handle a doll; then it turned and vanished once more into the waiting dark.

"God!" breathed Chet when the vision had passed. "God help us! What does it mean?"

He took one backward step, then another, and made his way in silence along the path he had come. He must get back to the others to tell them of what he had seen; to help them to flee from this place of horror that was more terrible for its qualities of the unknown.

He gave his companions the story in staccato sentences. "And the ape-man was unconscious," he concluded; "he was an automaton only, directed by another brain. I know it. I got that message, I tell you; it was radioed by someone or by something--sent direct to that big ape's brain.

"Now let's get out of here. Diane had it right when she said that the place was evil. But she didn't make it strong enough. It's foul with evil! It's damned! Come on, I'm leaving now!"

Chet's whispered words were uttered with all the emphasis that horror could instill. He knew that he spoke truth. But he could not know how mistaken was his last positive assertion.

"I'm leaving now!" Chet had said, and how desperately he wanted to put this place behind him only he himself could know. He took one step toward the place where they could descend; then Harkness' hand pulled him roughly to his knees.

"Down!" Harkness was commanding; "get down, Chet! They're coming--a swarm of them--through the gate!"

The pilot heard them before he saw them. They began a chant as they poured through the entrance, a weird, wailing note like the cry of a stricken animal that cries on and on. Then he saw the swarm.

They came in a cataract of black bodies that spilled through that stone portal and down the long slope. They formed a ragged column on the ground and came on toward the pyramid, where, unseen, three men and a girl from another world were crouching.

"Back!" Chet ordered in a whisper. "Keep low--in the shadow! Get around in back of the pyramid. We can make a run for it!"

They crept swiftly along the rocky step where the deep angle was in shadow. They reached the rear slope where Chet had climbed. And each one knew without the speaking of a word that retreat was not to be considered. The open arena!--the high bank of great steps in their bold markings of black and white! They could never hope to scale them; they would never even reach them alive, for the savage horde would overwhelm them before they had crossed the Earth-lit ground.

"All right," said Chet in acceptance of their unspoken thoughts, "up it is! Here's a hand, Diane--up you go! Now watch your step, and climb as if a thousand devils were after you, for there's all of that!"

The wave of bodies was washing against the pyramid's base when Chet drew Kreiss, the last of the four, into the shadow of the huge capstone. The noise of their climbing had been covered by the wailing cry that came piercing shrilly from the throng far below. And they had been unseen, Chet was sure; unless the one furtive shadow that he had seen draw away from the crowd and slip around toward the rear of the pyramid meant that some one of the tribe had found their trail.

From the front of the shadowed top came the shuffling of heavy, dragging feet on the stone. It was the same as before. Chet had held some vague idea of fighting off the horde from the top of the steps, for here was the only place where they could ascend. He had forgotten this other one for the moment, and he realized in a single flashing instant that here was a worse menace than the pack.

Only one, it was true, one ape-man who would be no match for them! But Chet remembered those blind, staring eyes and the message that had come to him. Those eyes had seen the horrible food upon the altar; some other brain had seen it too. The ape-man was an instrument only; there was some hidden horror in back of him, something that saw with his eyes, something that must never see them, cowering and huddled in the shadow of that great stone.

The shuffling was coming from the right; Chet clutched silently at the others to draw them away and toward the left. They retreated to the corner, turned it, and went on toward the front; then stopped in silent waiting where the shadow ended. The front, where the altar stood, was in the full glare of Earth.

For the moment they were safe, but what of the time when the ape-man returned? He had descended to the ground; when he climbed back again would he retrace his steps? Or would he come this side and trap them here where the light of their own Earth made any forward step impossible?

Below them the wailing ceased. Chet leaned forward to see the black horde, silent and motionless. Approaching them was the "big ape" he had seen at the altar. His hands were reaching blindly before him and he moved as would a human when entranced.

He reached the huddled blacks; his groping hands hovered hesitantly above a cowering, hairy form. Presently the ape-man passed on to the next, and his hands rested on the creature's face. From the massed figures there rose a moan, and Chet felt poignantly the animal misery of it. Suddenly all emotion was transformed to startled attention. From the slope at the rear had come the rattle of loose stones!

Far below, in plain view, was the one who had descended--Chet knew that his eyes could never mistake that blind, groping figure--but from the slope they could not see, from around the far edge of the pyramid, a clicking stone sent a repeated warning.

Chet laid a hand on Harkness' arm. "Get set, Walt!" he warned. "Get ready for trouble. There's something coming: it may come this way!"

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