Chapter III

There was darkness and furtive movement ahead. There was the nervous oppression one feels in deep caverns. There was silence and shadowy impressions of movements as soundless and nerve-wracking as the silence.

Tiny pressed a hand radilume into Wilding's fingers.

"From here on, nobody knows the way," she said, an odd gentleness in her voice. "I wish I dared go all the way with you. Shall I wait here?"

"No," Wilding answered uneasily. "Take the girl back safely. I will find my way, or perhaps the Pit Men will show me...."

Tiny's laugh was gruesome. It echoed among the silent rocks and came back magnified. While the sound still clattered back and forth from the confining rock walls, Wilding left the women and went on.

He went through darkness and more silence. Flickering ghosts of movement paced his progress. He knew the Pit Men were all around him, watching, curious, waiting to spring and overwhelm him. His hand-light made a narrow rent in the solid curtain of blackness. He could see the path and the vague outlines of the passage for a few paces ahead. He went on for a long time.

Finally, he stood still and waited. Movement ceased around him. He shut off the radilume and shifted his position slightly. Again he waited. He stood still, scarcely breathing. Movement began again, and oddly, it seemed to move away from him. But one fragment of the movement drew closer. It edged toward him and stopped. It came on, slowly, softly, warily. Wilding could see nothing, scarcely hear the cautious breathing. But his instincts sensed the creature and placed it exactly. It was curious.

Suddenly Wilding leaped. There was quick, huddled violence in the darkness. The thing seemed all body. Wilding could find no arms or legs for leverage. But its strength was no match for his. Wilding overpowered the creature, felt it fall under him. In a flash, he was down on top of it, holding it against the rock floor, straddling a furry bulk, pinioning its struggles. The thing writhed feebly, then subsided and lay still. Wilding hoped he had not killed or seriously injured the Pit Man. He eased the pressure, and felt the soft body stir slightly. Relieved, he eased the strain a little more, but held his advantage.

His fingers clicked the radilume switch. Light was momentarily blinding after the darkness. Wilding ventured a quick glance at the captured Pit Man and turned away in revulsion. How could people eat such things!

Wilding sat on the prostrate Pit Man and felt very unhappy about the capture. The Pit Man goggled out of excited eyes and geysered an insane gibberish of sound. There were no recognizable words, and not even an indication that the sounds were words. It was like the notes of a curious, chittering birdsong, chromatic, waveringly melodic and set to vague rhythms, but it resembled no speech Wilding had ever heard.

Easy enough to carry out his plan to speak to the Pit Men, but what language did one use? Wilding tried slum Venusian, two Earth languages, a smattering of canal Martian dialects. He got nowhere. The Pit Man stayed put and bird-sounds sprayed from him. Wilding straddled the creature and spoke words in every language he knew. That was all.

A similar difficulty had baffled trained semantics men. Even the cipher experts, though admitting that the birdsong sounds seemed to have a musical or mathematical basis, could go no further. No dictionaries or word-books exist, and the language, if it were even a language, seemed not phonetic. No actual words had ever been distinguished, let alone their meanings.

Nor was the language the only mystery about the Pit Men. No anthropologist ever studied the race, catalogued its social patterns, recorded its history. The Pit Men were non-human, their origins lost in darkness beyond the dawn of time. In the chronicles of the early (Martian) spacemen, there is mention of a fungus-people inhabiting some of the larger asteroids, particularly the rogue asteroids and those with a high content of radioactive ores. First explorations by solar survey ships from Earth found the fungus life-forms existing much as they still do, inhabiting deep caves in the honey-combed interiors of some asteroids.

Practically nothing definite was ever learned about them. These mobile, intelligent fungus-growths clung to their impregnable isolation and lived among deposits of low grade radioactive ores, worthless to mine and difficult to transport. In murky, dim-lit caverns, they lived out their strange lives, eating if they eat, sleeping if they sleep, and worshipping gods as ancient and strange as themselves. At first contacts Pit Men proved friendly and harmless, if not molested--but deadly dangerous if aroused or mistreated.

But communication always stopped dead beyond a few meager words the more intelligent Pit Men deigned to learn and use.

Wilding got up, releasing the Pit Man. With a shudder, he helped the creature to the horny pads which passed for its feet. The thing retreated to the edge of the light cone and stood, half in shadows, trembling. Wilding took a long look at the goggling alien, then wished he had not.

* * * * *

It was a stubby, waddling horror of gray-green and fishbelly white, oddly manlike, even birdlike as legend specified, but with no resemblance to any particular bird life of the known worlds. The head was huge in proportion, round and smooth as a polished plastic ball. A long slender trunk or tentacle extended from the almost featureless face. Limbs were not arms, but something between wings and flippers. Folded membranes, like the gliding surfaces of flying squirrels connected the flipper-wings to the plump, obscene body. In texture, the skin was not slick, furry or feathered, but dusty, like the wings of a moth-miller.

The Pit Man trembled and waited, while Wilding's nerves shrank from remembrance of its foul contact.

Impatiently, with a recognition of futility, Wilding gestured for it to go. Without language, communication was impossible, and there was no hope of making a deal with the Pit Men. Birdmen or animals, plants or parasites, the things were too alien.

He would have to manage his plan somehow without their help.

By signs, Wilding tried helplessly to convey a minimum of apology for the outrage of capture and attempted kidnapping. He might as well have waved his hand against the wind.

The fungus-thing goggled and trembled and waited, making no move to leave, none toward Wilding. Treble sounds spilled from the orifice of its waving trunk, almost made words, hinted at resemblances, at possible meanings. Wilding thought he made out a corrupt and garbled enunciation of a red Martian word.

"Tza-tchagalok," which means either priest or temple, depending upon the tone in which it is spoken.

The Pit Man slid away. He came back. He retreated to the dark areas, returned again. His flippers gyrated excitedly. He reminded Wilding of a dog dumbly trying to lead a man to a discovery. The parallel was obvious. He wanted Wilding to follow.

Wilding shrugged and went along. There was nothing to lose. If it were a trap, he was already in it.

The darkness grew lighter, but oddly misty, as if some radiant vapor swirled and flowed in the caves. He could now see surroundings but as if through a veil of dancing dust motes. Light increased as they moved forward, ever deeper into the rock heart of the asteroid. Wilding felt his skin tingling as if he bathed in a thick liquid full of sparks. Fatalistically, he wondered how much exposure to this a man's body could stand.

The cavern opened out, became an immense chamber. Walls fell back and the floor sloped into an abyss swimming with blinding mist. The ceiling lifted and lost itself in vaulted brightness overhead. Pit Men swarmed in the great cavern like bees crowding a giant hive. They paid no attention to Wilding or his companion.

There was music, or at least unholy sound. It swelled and flowed in monstrous organ notes, lingering on chords, measured by an alien off-beat rhythm. The Pit Men wavered like shoals of fish caught in powerful undertows. Their bodies swayed and bobbed in response to the movements of sound. Even the light flared and faded like a visual echo of the music.

Wilding's late captive, now his guide, paused indecisively and made abortive motions with his flippers. Again the bird-sounds chimed and whickered. Again, Wilding snatched at the Martian word for priest or temple.

"Tza-tchagalok.... Tza-tchagalok...."

The Pit Man pointed a flipper upward. Suspended in mid-air, without visible support except for the streaming pillars of light, was an elaborate structure. Wilding studied it. There were bars studded with prisms which shattered the streaming light to rainbow effects. It was like an immense jewelled cage.

Wilding sensed movement within the cage. He was curious how the creatures reached the staging, since there was no ladder, no ramp, no stairs.

He learned quickly. The Pit Man took flight, lurching clumsily into the air and floundering about on his flippers and the stretched membrane. It was a combination of swimming and gliding. The thing poised, as if waiting for the man to follow. Wilding did actually make the attempt. With the light gravity and the heavily pressured air, such swimming flight seemed almost possible. Wilding's attempt ended in ludicrous failure. He sprawled in flailing trajectory and fell awkwardly into web-like nets of glittering metal.

Pit Men gathered about and helped extricate him. Their birdlike vocals chittered in ear-splitting showers.

His guide and two others whisked him off his feet and soared upward through the mists. Once aloft, his low-gravity weight seemed no burden to them. In flight, their awkwardness vanished quickly, and they swam about with ease and grace. The approach to their temple may have been ritual; it was certainly not direct.

Wilding's senses spun. He felt nauseated and alarmed.

The Pit Man trio swooped down and deposited Wilding solidly on a platform built into the cage.

On the platform, paddling about mysterious ceremonies, was a very old, very gray, and very dusty Pit Man. He looked more like an owl than anything else. He goggled and waddled ponderously. He made a bobbing obeisance to a gigantic image, and to Wilding the ritual posturing was both solemn and impressive.

So was the idol. It was towering, of some burnished red metal, and represented a being completely non-anthropomorphic, like those strange and morbid Pzintar images Wilding had seen on Mars. Ancient Mars had worshipped beings neither birds nor serpents, but mending qualities and appearances of both. This idol was like those, though not an exact duplication. It represented something utterly alien to man, infinitely wise, infinitely benevolent, infinitely sad. There was no suggestion of good or evil; there was only calm acceptance and understanding of things as they are, and a serene certainty in things as they should be....

Wilding stared upward at the gigantic symbol, and felt a stir of religious awe.

The owl-like priest spoke then. He spoke in good, cultured Martian, though his vocal apparatus massacred word sounds.

"Even the gods die," he said in whistling accents. "Or they grow bored and tired and go away. The gods are beyond understanding, and sometimes we are beyond their understanding as well."

Wilding shivered as if a blast from icy eternities blew over him.

"My time is short," he said quickly. "I came to ask help from you, but a man's bones and flesh can stand only brief exposure to this radiation. If I stay here too long, I will die."

"Perhaps you will be reborn as a Pit Man," suggested the old priest philosophically.

The possibility was no consolation to Wilding.

He talked quickly, outlining his project, stating his needs, and the possible gain to the Pit Men in co-operating with him.

"I plan to escape with the bulk of the prisoners," he said. "If you will help, you can have your asteroid to yourselves again."

"How could we help you?"

"The Pit Folk are immune to radiation that is deadly to us. We have no shielding, so we cannot handle or process the radioactive ores. We can provide equipment, if you will supply the labor. All we want is enough to power heavy machines for two weeks, and sufficient purified atomic fuel to power the space-lighter on a short voyage. It will not require much knowledge or labor for that."

The gray priest was thoughtful. "If you escape in that small lighter, not many of the prisoners can go with you."

"Not many," agreed Wilding. "Not in the lighter. I intend to seize the supply ship and take along all who wish to go."

"There will still not be space enough for all," said the priest gravely. "What of those who will remain behind?"

* * * * *

Wilding grunted. "That is not my problem. Perhaps the guards will send out and pick them up. Certainly there will be an investigation and no more prisoners will be sent here. I will leave you the means to dispose of the remaining prisoners. If they try to harm you, I leave the decision in your hands. You can destroy all of them."

"You are a more ruthless people than my race," commented the old Pit Man.

"Circumstances sometimes require me to be ruthless," Wilding replied, without apology. "It is like surgery, needed to remove cancerous tissue. Will you help?"

"I do not know," said the priest. He moved to the edge of the platform, and suddenly was surrounded by swarming hordes of the Pit Men. There was no audible consultation, no words, no waving of the flipper limbs. Music died away into silence.

Finally the gathering broke up and the Pit Men swooped away in all directions.

"What was that--a council talk?" asked Wilding.

The gray old priest goggled at him. "Not in words. Not talk in the sense you mean. My people are a symbiotic group, all parts of one personality. Each colony is group-brain, a group nervous system, the individuals are its limbs and organs. We have no speech, and communicate with each other by what you would call telepathy--though it is not that. We are not individuals at all, but parts of a great organism. Vocal sound with us is not communication, but an expression of mood-music."

Wilding looked upward at the gigantic image. "If you are still undecided, why not ask your gods?" he inquired cynically.

The priest whistled words in an eery tone. "One does not disturb the gods with questions unless he wants disturbing answers. We have already reached our decision. We will help you escape."

Wilding gave swift instructions and the priest agreed upon terms and methods of carrying them out.

Without visible or audible summons, Wilding's Pit Man guide reappeared suddenly, swooping down from the brilliance near the roof of the cavern. He settled with a flutter of membranes and a flurry of flippers.

"This one will return you to your own kind," said the priest. "You will not come here again, for this cavern is sacred to us. And there must be no more seizing and eating of Pit Men."

"There will be none," Wilding promised savagely. "Not after I warn the convicts that if any incidents occur, I will turn the human offenders over to you for punishment."

The priest shook his head. "No, we don't want that."

"I don't understand," protested Wilding.

"You must take responsibility for your own kind. That is our law. In your dealings with us, it must be yours."

Wilding shrugged, then agreed soberly. It seemed that his authority carried accumulating responsibility with it.

Return to the prison colonies of the outer caverns was without incident. Though surprised to see him alive, his fellow convicts received his news boisterously. Wilding cut short their enthusiasm and rapidly assigned tasks.

Time was short, and there was much to be done. For reasons concerned with the relative proximity to a new-type spaceship that he had previously cached in the asteroid belt, everything must be accomplished before the next scheduled arrival of the supply ship, or even sooner if an unscheduled prisoner delivery should occur. With atomic power, anything was possible. Prisoners turned to with a will as soon as radioactive ores, already processed, began to pour into the caverns, proving the Pit Men as good as their word. Grouth and Wilding oversaw the tooling of weapons and stockpiling of vital supplies. Concor supervised technical jobs.

Work went on. In any subsurface world, time is arbitrary, an artificial thing of clockwork and labor expended. It passed rapidly.