Chapter IV

I go back now to that moment when Ama and I, pursued by the roaming band of Orgs, plunged into a tunnel passage that led from the gully, near the wrecked Roberts' spaceship. It was quite evident that Ama was aware of the dangers of the wind-storms of her little world. There was a swift air-current sucking into this passage. But it was not powerful enough to do more than hurry us along. Once, where the tunnel branched, there seemed an open grotto up a little subterranean ascent to the right. It glowed with a brighter pallid light than was here in the passage. I turned that way with an interested gaze, but at once she clutched at me.

"No--no. In times of the storm, very bad sometimes in places under the ground."

There seemed no sign of pursuit behind us. "The Orgs--they run heavy," Ama said when I mentioned it. In the pale opalescent glow of the tunnel, I could see her faint triumphant smile as she gazed up at me sidewise. Strange little face, utterly foreign so that upon Earth, by Earth standards one would have been utterly baffled to identify her. But it was an appealing face, and now, with her terror gone, the sly glance she flung at me was wholly feminine.

"Those fire-mimes," I said. "Couldn't they rush ahead of their masters, trailing us?" I explained how on Earth dogs would do that, following their quarry by the scent. She looked puzzled, and then she brightened.

"I remember. The Captain Roberts told us about that. The mimes are different. The male and female both--they follow what it is they see, nothing else."

Then she told me about the weird, dog-like creatures. The male, exuding a scent--if you could call it that--a vapor which in the air bursts into spontaneous combustion as it combines with the atmospheric oxygen.

How long we ran through what proved to be a maze of passages in the honey-combed ground, I have no idea. Several Earth-miles, doubtless. Several times we stopped to rest, with the breezes tossing about us as I listened, tense, to be sure the Orgs were not coming. Then at last we emerged; and at the rocky exit I stood staring, amazed.

It was a wholly different looking world here. The pallid underground sheen was gone; and now again there was the dim twilight of the interminable Vulcan night. From where we stood the ground sloped down so that we were looking out over the top of a wide spread of lush, tangled forest. Weird jungle, rank and wild with spindly trees of fantastic shapes, heavy with pods and exotic flowers and tangled with masses of vines. Beyond it, far ahead of us there seemed a line of little metal mountains at the horizon; and to the left an Earth-mile or so away, the forest was broken to disclose a winding thread of little river. It shone phosphorescent green in the half light. The storm was over now, but still the colors lingered in the cloud sky--a glorious palette of rainbow hues up there that tinted the forest-top.

Ama gestured toward the thread of river. "The Senzas--my people and my village--off that way beyond the little water. We go quickly. But we be careful, until we get beyond the water."

"Swim it?"

"We can. But I think I remember where there is a Senza boat hidden on this side."

* * * * *

She had already told me more of what happened to her. The Senzas, primitive obviously, yet with an orderly tribal civilization, were the dominant race here on little Vulcan. The savage Orgs--a far lower, more primitive type both mentally and physically--in nomadic fashion, roamed the metal deserts and little stunted forests which lay beyond the barren regions. They were, at times of religious frenzy, cannibalistic, with weird and gruesome festival rites which Ama only shudderingly sketched.

For the most part, the clumsy Orgs and their weird mime-creatures were kept from the Senza forests. But occasionally they raided, stealing the Senza women, and roaming the lush forests for food. There had been, in the Senza village, one Tahg, a wooer of Ama. An older man, but somehow well liked by the Senza tribal leader. Repulsed by Ama, he had threatened her--and then he had vanished from the village; gone hunting, and the Senzas considered that the Orgs might have killed him.

"But I think it was Org blood in him," Ama said. "I told the Captain Roberts that--I remember just before he and his men left us to finish the repairs of their ship--and then we found later that the Orgs had killed them all."

Tahg, Ama thought, had become the tribal leader of this group of the Orgs--indulging with them in their gruesome rites.... Then, just a few hours ago, two Orgs had crept upon Ama as she slept--with extraordinary daring for an Org, had successfully seized her and carried her off. Taking her into the Org country, past the Roberts' spaceship, where they had come upon me, and Torrence and Jan....

"We be careful now," she was telling me as we stood gazing out over the forested slope. "After a storm it is when the Orgs mostly roam--the hunting here is better when the little creatures are out after the water."

The little creatures! Best of the animal foods here on Vulcan.... The red-storm quite evidently had emptied torrential rain on the forest. The fantastic trees were heavy with it. Soddenly it dripped from the overhead branches. And now as we started down the slope, I saw the little creatures. Insect or animal, no one could have said. A myriad sizes and shapes of them, from a finger-length to the size of a cat. Before our advance they scurried, on the ground, scattering with weird little outcries. Some flew clumsily into the leaves overhead; others ran up there on the vines, peering down at us as we passed. We came suddenly upon a pool of rain-water. Greedily a hundred little orange-green things, seemingly almost all head and snout, were crowding at the pool, sucking up the water. With eerie, maniacal little voices they rolled and bounced away at our approach.

This weird forest! Abruptly I was aware that there were places where the rope-like vines and leafy branches of the underbrush shrank away from us as we advanced--slithering and swaying little vines in sudden movement before us. Sentient vegetation. There are plants on Earth which shrink and shudder at a touch. Others which snap and seize an unwary insect enemy. But here it was far more startling than that. I saw a vine on the ground rise up upon its myriad little tendrils; the pods, like a row of heads upon it were quivering, puffing. The extended length of it, like a snake slithered from my threatening tread.

"It fears every human," Ama said. "A strange thing to you Earthmen?"

"Well, slightly," I commented. "Suppose it--some of this vegetation got angry--" Fantastic thought, but the reality of it--a looping, swaying vine over our heads, as thick as my arm--that was a stark reality. "Would a thing like that attack us, Ama?"

She shrugged. "There is talk of it. But I think no one is ever truthful to say it really happened."

We were in the depths of the forest now. In the humid, heavy darkness it was sometimes arduous going. That thread of river--we could not see it now, but I judged it still must be half an Earth-mile away. Once we sat down in a little open glade to rest. In the thick silence the throbbing voice of the forest, blended of the scurrying life and the rustling vines, was a faint steady hum. Then suddenly I saw that Ama was tense, alert, sitting up listening. She looked startled, abruptly frightened.

"What is it?" I whispered.

"Off there--the vines, they are frightened. You hear?"

* * * * *

It seemed that somewhere near us, the vine-rustling had grown louder. A scurry, mingled with little popping sounds from the pods. Someone coming? I recall that the startled thought struck me. Then from a thicket near at hand a group of little creatures came dashing. They saw us, wheeled and scurried sidewise. I was on my feet, peering into the shadowed leafy darkness. I thought I heard a low, guttural voice. Whether I did or not, the whizz of an arrow past me was reality enough.

A wandering band of the Orgs were stalking us! At the whizz of the arrow I made a dash sidewise. My gun was gone; I jerked out my knife. Ama was up, and another arrow barely missed her--an arrow that came from a totally different direction so that I knew we must be already surrounded.

"Ama--lie down! Down--"

A woman under some circumstances can be a terrible handicap. She didn't drop to the ground; she stood gazing around her in terror, and then she came running at me, clutching me so that I was futilely struggling to cast her off. Another arrow sang past our heads, and then from several directions, the Orgs were bursting into the glade.

I tore loose from Ama, but it was no use. Whatever effective fight I might have put up, it could have brought a rain of arrows which might, probably would, have killed the girl.

"Quiet," I murmured. "They've got us. No chance to fight."

I stood trying to shield her as in the dimness the Orgs crowded around us. Ten or more of them, jabbering at us, seizing me and presently shoving us off through the forest.

Two or three others seemed to join us in a moment; and abruptly Ama gasped:

"Tahg! There is Tahg--"

The renegade Senza, quite obviously a leader here, shoved past his jabbering, triumphant men and confronted us. He was seemingly startled, and then triumphant at seeing Ama here. Then his gaze swept to me. He was a big, muscular, but slender fellow. He was clad in a brief brown drape; but his aspect was wholly different from the heavy, misshapen, clumsy-looking Orgs. His thick dark hair fell longish about his ears, framing his hawk-nosed, thin-lipped face. And his narrow dark eyes squinted at me as he frowned.

"Well," he said, "Earthman? New one?" His English was evidently less fluent than Ama's, but it was understandable enough.

"Yes," I agreed. "Friendly--like all Earthmen."

He had signaled to the Orgs, and two of them had shuffled forward and taken Ama from me.

"Jus' good time," Tahg said ironically. "Org gods pleased tonight to have Earthmen--"

Earthmen! The plural! I had little opportunity to ponder it. Roughly I was shoved onward through the forest, back to where it thinned into a stretch of metal desert--and beyond that into a new terrain of stunted, gnarled trees and rope vines on a rocky ground. To me it was an exhausting march. Ama, with Tahg beside her, usually was behind me. Once we stopped and food and water were given me. When we started again, I saw that, at Tahg's direction, one of the savages had hoisted Ama to his back, carrying her in a rope-vine sling. Occasionally other small bands of Orgs joined us, until there were fifty or more of them, triumphantly returning to their village. Their torches were burning now, and a little ahead of us a pack of the huge green-grey mimes were leaping.

Then Tahg came toward me. "Good-bye," he said. "You look more good to me when I see you next time. The gods prepare you now."

* * * * *

He turned and was lost in the darkness. My ankles had been fettered with a two-foot length of rope; my wrists were crossed and lashed behind me. No one was with me now but my two captors who urged me forward, impatient at my little jerky steps. The village and its jabbering turmoil and lights was in a moment hidden by a rise of the rocky ground. Then I saw before me a fairly large, square building of stone, flat-roofed, with a cone-shaped stone-pile on top like a crude church spire.

An Org temple. It was windowless; some twenty feet high from ground to its roof. A narrow, rectangular slit of doorway was in front, where two huge torches, like braziers one on either side, were burning. An Org stood between them, with the torchlight painting him--an aged savage in a long, white skin drape which was fantastically ornamented. He was thin and bent, his round brown skull almost hairless, his body shriveled, parched with age. His skinny arms were upraised, outstretched to welcome me.

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!