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I write this narrative, not with the idea of contributing anyadditional scientific data to the discovery of Vulcan, but to put uponthe record the real facts of our truly-amazing space voyage.

The newscasters have hailed me as a modern Columbus. Surely I would notwant to appear ungracious, unappreciative of all the applause thathas been heaped upon me. But I do not deserve it. I did my job for myemployers. The Society sent me to make a landing upon Vulcan—if thelittle planet existed. I found that it does exist; it was exactly whereI was told it ought to be. I carried out my instructions, returned andmade my report. There is no great heroism in that.

So I am writing the facts of what happened. Just a bald, factualaccount, without the imaginative trimmings. The real hero of thediscovery of Vulcan was young Jan Holden. He did his job—did itwell—and he did something just a little extra.

I'm Bob Grant, which of course you have guessed by now. PeterTorrence—the third member of our party—is in the Federal Prison upthe Hudson. I had to turn him in.

We were given one of the smaller types of the Bentley—T-44—an alumitecylindrical hull, double-shelled, with the Erentz pressure-currentcirculating in it. It was a modern, well-equipped little spaceship.In its thirty-foot length of double-decked interior we three wereentirely comfortable.... The voyage, past the orbit of Venus andthen Mercury as we headed directly for the Sun—using the Sun's fullattraction—was amazingly swift and devoid of incident beyond normalspace-flight routine. Much of our time was spent in the little forwardcontrol turrent—the "green-house," where below, above and to the sidesthe great glittering abyss of the firmament is spread out in all itsamazing glory.

Vulcan, if it existed, would be almost directly behind the Sun now.We had no possible chance of sighting it, we knew, even when, headinginward, we cut the orbit of Mercury. Torrence, almost from the start ofthe trip, figured we should follow into the attraction of Mercury whichwas then far to one side.

"From that angle we'll see Vulcan just that much sooner," he argued.

"They told me to head straight in, to twenty-nine million miles," Isaid. "And that's what I'm doing—obeying orders."

I held our plotted course. Torrence never ceased grumbling about it,and I must admit there was a lot of sense in his argument. He is a bigfellow—burly, heavy-set and about my own height, which is six feetone. He had close-clipped hair and a square, heavy face. He's justturned thirty, I understand. That's five years older than I—and I wasin charge. Perhaps that irked him. He is unquestionably a headstrongfellow; self-confident. But he obeyed orders, though with grumbling.And as a mechanical technician—no one could do better. He knew thetechnical workings of the little ship inside out.

"We follow orders?" young Jan Holden said. "And when we reachtwenty-nine million miles from the Sun—then we're on our own?"

"Yes," I agreed.

"Then, when we head off to round the Sun, if Vulcan is where they thinkit is we ought to sight it in a few days?"

"I certainly hope so, Jan."

"I wonder if it's inhabited. I wish it would be." His dark eyes wereshining. His thin cheeks, usually pale, were flushed with excitement.He was just eighteen—only a month past the legal minimum age forInterplanetary employment. A slim, romantic-looking boy, he was willingand eager to help in every way. A good cook, expert in handling hiscramped quarters and preparing the many synthetic foods with which wewere equipped.

"You hope it's inhabited, Jan?" I asked.

"I sure do."

I grinned at him. "Well, if it is, you'll be disappointed to find I'llbe doing my best to keep away from whatever living creatures are there.That's a job for a larger expedition than ours."

"Yes, I suppose it is."

Jan often sat with me through our long vigils up there in thegreen-house. Sometimes he wouldn't speak for an hour—just sittingthere dreaming. Sometimes he would talk of the ill-fated Roberts andKing Expedition—the only exploratory flight which ever had headed inthis close to the Sun. That was five years ago. Roberts and King, witha crew of eight, had never been heard from since.

"I just think they found Vulcan," Jan said once, out of one of his longsilences.

"They were told to return after a routine landing," Torrence put in.

"Well then, suppose they crashed their ship," Jan said. "Suppose theycan't get back—"

"What we ought to do is sight Vulcan, round it and go home," Torrencesaid. "To the devil with orders to land. I'd go back and tell them thatin my judgment—"

"We'll land," I said. "Determine gravity—meteorologicalconditions—secure samples of soil, vegetation—what-nots—you know thespecifications, Torrence."

If indeed there was any Vulcan. If a landing upon what might be a fierysurface were physically possible....

Another day passed. And then another and another. We were all threetense, expectant. There was little apparent motion in the great starrycyclorama spread around us—just the slow dwindling of Earth and Venus,the monstrous Sun shifting slowly to the right with the starfieldbehind it progressively becoming visible.

"We're chasing a phantom," Torrence said, on the fourth day, withthe Sun now almost abreast of us and some twenty-four million milesdistant. "This damned heat! They sent us out for a salary that's a merepittance—and give us inadequate equipment. No wonder there's been noexploration so close in here."

Bathed in the full, direct Sun-rays our interior air had heated into atorrid swelter. Stripped to the waist, with the sweat glistening on us,we sat in the shrouded green-house.... And then at last I saw Vulcan! Alittle round, lead-colored blur. Just a dot, but in a few hours it wasclear of the intervening Sun. No question of its identity. Vulcan. Thenew world.

"We did it!" Jan murmured. "Oh, we did it."

It was a busy time, for me especially, those next ninety-six hours.I was soon enabled to calculate, at least roughly, that Vulcan was aworld of some eight hundred miles diameter, with an orbit approximatelyeighteen million miles from the Sun.

"It has an atmosphere?" Jan murmured anxiously.

"Yes, I think so." We kept away from the Sun for a time; and then atlast we were able to head directly for Vulcan.

The atmosphere presently was visible. No need for us to use thepressure-suits. I envisaged at first that upon such a little worldgravity would be very slight. But now the heavy, metallic quality ofits rock-surface was apparent. A world, doubtless much denser thanigneous Earth.

It was my plan to land on the side away from the Sun.

We rounded Vulcan at some two million miles out. The clouds werefairly dense in many places; sluggish, slow-moving. There were fireson the Sun side—a temperature there which would make it certainlyuninhabitable to any creatures resembling humans....

It was the ninth day after the sighting of Vulcan that quite by chanceI discovered itsallurite. We were now fairly close over the darkhemisphere, with the Sun occulted behind it. At a thousand miles ofaltitude, we were dropping slowly down upon the spreading dark discwhich now occupied most of our lower firmament. I had been making aseries of routine spectro-color-graphs to file with my reports.

Jan heard my muttered exclamation and came crowding to gaze over myshoulder at the dripping little color spectrograph.

"What is it, Bob? Something important?"

"That bond-line there—see it? That's a metal on Vulcan—shining of itsown light—radioactive type-A."

That much, I could determine. Then Jan and I looked it up in theHughson list of Identified Spectrae. It wasallurite.

"That's valuable?" Torrence murmured. "Pureallurite—"

I laughed. "It certainly would be, if we could find any sizabledeposits here. On Earth, it takes some seventeen tons of the veryrichestallurium to get maybe a grain of pureallurite. We'll takea look around, try and get a sample of the ore here. If it pans outrich enough, they can send a well-equipped mining expedition."

"We ought to get a bonus for this," Torrence said. "If you don't tell'em so, I will."

The descent upon Vulcan took another twenty-four hours. Then at last wehad passed through a cloud-bank and, at some twenty thousand feet, thenew world stretched dark and bleak beneath us. It certainly looked—toJan's intense disappointment—wholly uninhabited. It was a tumbled,rocky landscape, barren and forbidding. Beneath us there were blackravines and canyons, little jagged peaks and hill-top spires, some ofthem sharp as needle-points. Off at one of the distant horizons thetiered land, rising up, stretched into the foothills of serrated ranksof mountain peaks which loomed over the jagged dark horizon line.

A great metal desert here. In the fitful starlight, and the mellowlight of little crescent Mercury which hung over the mountains like afalling, new moon, the metallic quality of the rock was obvious—sleek,bronzed metal ore, in places polished by erosion so that it shonemirror-like. In other places it was mottled with a greenish cast.

"Well," Jan murmured, "not very hospitable-looking, is it? Don't yousuppose there's any moisture, or any vegetation?"

There was no sign of any living creatures beneath us as we drifteddiagonally downward. But presently, at lower altitude, I could seegleaming pools of water in the rock-hollows. The remains of a rainstormhere. Then we saw what looked like a great fissure—an open scarrifted in a glistening, polished metallic plateau. Grey-black steamwas rising, condensing in the humid night-air. The hidden fires ofthe bowels of the little planet seemed close at this one point. Aswe stared, a red glow for a moment tinged the steam with a red andgreenish reflection of some subterranean glare, far down.

Nothing but metal desert. But presently, as we slid forward, no morethan a few thousand feet above the rocky surface now, Jan murmuredsuddenly,

"Look off there. Like a little oasis, isn't it?"

There was a patch of what seemed to be rocky soil. Just a few hundredacres in extent, set in a cup-like depression with little buttes andneedle-spires and the strewn boulders of the metal waste surroundingit. A clump of tangled vegetation covered it—a fantastic miniaturejungle of interlaced, queerly shaped little trees, solid with air-vinesand pods and clumps of monstrous, vivid-colored flowers. It was anamazing contrast to the bleakness of the bronze desert.

"Well, that's more like it," Jan exclaimed. "Not all desert, Bob. Seethat?"

Torrence, with his usual efficient practicality, had been busygetting our landing equipment in order. He paused beside me in thegreen-house, where I sat at the rocket-stream controls which now werein operation for this atmospheric flight.

"Where you figure on landing?" he asked. "Somewhere about here? Youwant to locate thatallurite?"

"Yes," I agreed.

It is not altogether safe, handling even so small a space-flight shipas ours, in atmosphere at low altitudes. Especially over unknownterrain. It seemed my best course now to make the landing here, securemy rock-samples and make my routine observations. I did not needTorrence to tell me that we were not equipped for extensive explorationof an unknown world. A trip on foot of perhaps a day or two, using thespaceship as a base, would suffice for my records.

"There's a better chance of finding sizable deposits of allurium herethan anywhere else?" Torrence suggested. "Don't you think so?"

With that, too, I agreed. He prepared us for a night and a few meals ofcamping—a huge pack for himself, which with a grin he declared himselfamply able to carry; a smaller one for Jan; and my instruments andelectro-mining drills for me.

We dropped down within an hour or two, landing with a circular swinginto a dim, cauldron-like depression of the desert where the polishedground was nearly level and free of boulders.

That was a thrill to me—my first step into the new world—even thoughI have experienced it several times before. Laden with our packs, weopened the lower-exit pressure porte. The night air, under heavierpressure than we were maintaining inside, oozed in with a littlehiss—moist, queer-smelling air. It seemed at first heavy, oppressive.The acrid smell of chemicals was in it.

The night-temperature was hot—sultry as a summer tropic night onEarth. With the interior gravity shut off as we opened the porte, atonce I felt a sense of lightness. But it was not extreme. DespiteVulcan's small size, its great density gives it a gravity comparable toEarth's.

In a little group we stood on the rocky ground with a dark, immenseheavy silence around us—a silence that you could seem to hear—andyet a silence which seemed pregnant with the mystery of theunknown. Somehow it made me suddenly think of weapons. Besides ourutility-knives, we each had a small, short-range electro-flash gun. Isaw that Torrence had his in his hand.

"Put it away," I said. "There's nothing here."

With a grin, he shoved it back into his belt. "Which way?" he demanded."What will the ore ofallurium look like? Green and red spots insand-colored streaks of rock, that Hughson book says."

I figured that I could recognize it, though I am far from a skilledgeologist. Certainly I agreed with Torrence that our most importantjob was to find some sizable lodes ofallurium, measure its probableextent, and take average samples of it back with us.

We climbed out of the little cauldron. In the tumbled darkness wepicked our way among the crags. An Earth-mile, then another. LittleJan, like an eager hound was generally ahead of us, with his tinysearch-glare sweeping the jagged rocks. We crossed a narrow windingcanyon, inspected a slashed cliff-face. It was arduous going. Despitethe sense of lightness and our tropic black-drill clothes of shorttrousers, thin jackets and shirts, we were panting, bathed in sweatwithin an hour. Silently, Torrence plodded at my side. It was myfirst trip with him; and I could see he did not altogether trust myefficiency.

"You can find the way back to the ship?" he demanded once. "To get lostin a place like this—"

I had marked it; little twin spires above the cauldron. They werevisible now, looming against the dark sky behind us.

I showed him. "I saw them," he said. "I could lead us back. My idea is,if we cover about ten miles and then camp—"

A cry from Jan interrupted us. He was standing on a little ridge ofrock like a bronze metal wave frozen into solidity. Against the deeppurple sky his slim figure was a silhouette of solid black. He wasstaring off into the distance; his arm waved with a gesture as hecalled to us.

"Something off there! Something lying on the rocks—come look!"

We ran to join him. About a quarter mile distant there was a broadgully. A dark blob was visible lying at the bottom of it—a sizableblob, something forty or fifty feet long. We picked our way there;climbed down into the ragged, thirty-foot ravine. It was a spaceshiplying here—with its sleek alumite hull resting on its side with one ofits rocket-stream fins bent and smashed under it.

"The Roberts-King ship," Torrence exclaimed. "So they got here. Crackedup in the landing."

There seemed no doubt of it. This was unquestionably the Roberts-Kingvehicle—an older version of our own vessel. We stood staring at itblankly—at its little bow pressure port which was wide open, a narrowrectangle with the interior blackness behind it.

Then I saw that here on the rocks near the doorway, a litter of toolsand mechanisms were strewn; and a section of one of the gravity plateswhich had been disconnected and brought out here.

"Trying to repair it," I said to the silently staring, awed Torrence."Five years ago. Now what do you suppose—"

A startled cry from Jan interrupted me.

The body was lying on the rocks, just beyond the bow of the ship. Itwas Jonathan Roberts—stocky, middle-aged leader of the expedition.Clad in a strange costume of thin brown material, seemingly animalskin, he lay crumpled. I had never met him, but from his publishedportraits I could recognize him at once. In the starlight here his deadface with staring eyes goggled up at us.

"Why—why—" Torrence gasped. "Five years—"

There was no great look of decay about the body. Roberts had diedhere, certainly not five years ago. I was bending down over the body;I shoved at one of the shoulders and turned it over. Stricken Jan,Torrence and I stared numbed. A thin bronze sliver of metal—fin-tippedlike a metal arrow—was buried in Roberts' back!

Again the alert Jan was gazing at the dim, fantastic night-scene aroundus. Abruptly his hand gripped my arm as he gasped,

"Why—good Lord—what's that? Over there—"

In the blackness down the gully, perhaps a hundred feet from us, alittle spiral of fire had appeared. A tiny wisp of red-green flame. Itseemed to hover in the air a few feet above the rocky gully floor. Likea phantom wraith of fire, it silently leaped and twisted.

"My God—it's coming toward us!" Torrence suddenly gasped.

In the darkness the silent wisp of fire had swayed sidewise, and thencame along the edge of the gully, a disembodied conflagration inmid-air, as though wafted by a rush of wind we could not feel.

II

For a moment of startled horror we stood motionless. The floatinglittle flame seemed bounding now, just over the rocks. Bounding?Abruptly I seemed to see a dark shape of solidity under it—somethingalmost, but not quite invisible in the blackness. A tangible thing? Acreature—burning? Thoughts are instant things. I recall that in thatsecond, I had the impression of a four-legged thing like a huge dog,bounding toward us over the rocks. The flame in which it was enveloped,had spread—it was a blob of flame, but solidity was there.

All in a second. My little electro-gun was in my hand. And then frombeside me, Torrence fired—his flash with a whining sizzle splittingthe blackness of the gully with its pencil-point of hurled electrons.His hasty aim quite evidently was wild. I saw the little splash ofcolored sparks where his charge hit the rocks. Too high.

My gun was leveled. But in that split-second, the oncoming blob offire abruptly had been extinguished. There was only the faint blurredsuggestion of the dog-like thing. It had stopped short, and thensuddenly was retreating. My shot, and Jan's, followed it. In anotherfew seconds there was no possibility of hitting it. Silently it hadvanished. There was only the black silent gully around us, with theblurred crags standing like menacing dark ghosts.

My instinct then, I must admit, was for us to retreat at once to ourship. In the heavy empty silence we stood blankly gazing at each other.Torrence was grim; Jan was shaking with excitement and the fear all ofus felt.

"You heard that whistle?" I murmured.

"I heard it," Jan exclaimed. "Something—somebody—human—" There wereweird, hostile inhabitants on Vulcan—no question of that now! Andhere was Roberts' body with a metal sliver of arrow in its back, muteevidence of what we were facing. And already our presence here had beendiscovered. I stared around at the rocky darkness, every blurred cragnow seeming to mask some unknown menace.

"That whistle," Torrence murmured, "calling off that flamingthing—started at our shots. Something is around here, watching us now,undoubtedly."

The yawning dark doorway of the wrecked spaceship was near us.Something seemed lying just beyond its threshold.

"You two stay here," I told Torrence and Jan. "Don't let them surpriseus again. We'll have to get back to our ship—"

The port doorway led into a little pressure chamber. On its darksloping floor, as the wrecked ship lay askew, I stood with myflashlight illumining so ghastly a scene that my blood chilled in myveins. It was a bloody shambles of horror. For a moment I gazed; andas I turned away, sickened, I found Jan at my elbow. He too, had beenstaring. He clutched at me, white and shaken, and I turned away mylight.

"The rest of them," he murmured.

"Yes. Looks that way. All of them—"

The bodies were strewn, clothing and flesh ripped apart so that herewere only the bones of men, with pulpy crimson—

"No humans did that, Jan."

"No," he shuddered. "That Thing in flames that came at us—"

His words died in his throat. Outside there was a scream—a shrill,eerie human cry. The high-pitched scream of a woman! Gun in hand, withJan close behind me, I ran outside. The dimness of the rocky gullyseemed empty. The cry had died away.

"Torrence! You Torrence—what in the devil—"

My low vehement words wafted away. There was no Torrence. Cautiously Iran around the bow of the wrecked ship, gazed down its other side.

"Torrence—Torrence—"

The nearby rocks seemed to echo back my words, mocking me.

"Why—why—" Jan gasped, "I left him right out here. He was juststanding, looking down at Roberts' body with the arrow in it. I justthought I'd go inside with you for a minute."

I pulled him down to the ground. We crouched, close against the side ofthe ship. "That scream," I whispered, "wasn't far away. A few hundredfeet down the gully."

"It sounded like a girl. It did, didn't it? Bob, if they got Torrencethat quickly—an arrow in him—"

I peered, tense. The rock shadows were all motionless. In the heavyblank silence there was only my startled breathing, and Jan's; and thethumping of my own heart against my ribs. Had this weird enemy gottenTorrence so swiftly, so silently? Something not human, that had soquickly seized him and dragged him away? Or one of those metal arrowsin his back, so that his body was lying around here somewhere, maskedby the darkness. Jan and I had certainly not been inside the ship morethan a minute or two—

A sharp clattering ping against the alumite side of the wrecked shipstruck away my thoughts. A metal arrow! It bent against the hull-plateand dropped almost beside me! The still-hidden sniper had seen us, thatwas evident, for the arrow had whizzed only a foot or so over our heads.

"Jan—lower—"

We almost flattened ourselves against the bulge of the hull, with alittle pile of boulders in front of us. My gun was leveled, but therewas nothing to shoot at. Then from diagonally across the gully againthere came a sharp human cry! A girl's voice? It was soft this time, abursting little cry, half suppressed.

Thoughts are instant things. I was aware of the cry and with it therewas another whizz. Another arrow. This one was wider of the mark; ithit far to one side of us, up near the bow of the ship.

"Jan! Wait!" His little flash gun was up in the crevice of the rocksin front of us. In another second he would have fired. I saw histarget—two dim blobs across the gully. For just that second they werevisible as they rose up out of a hollow. A man; and the slighterfigure with him seemed that of a girl. Her hair, glistening like spunmetal in the dim light, hung over her shoulders.

The two figures were struggling. There was the sound of the girl's lowcry, and a grunt from the man.... My low admonition stopped Jan fromfiring and in another second the shapes across the gully had vanished.

"That girl," I murmured. "She tried to keep him from killing us. Seemedthat way, don't you think?"

"Well—"

We waited. From across the gully there was no sound. I could see nowthat there was a little ridge in the broken, littered gully floor,behind which the two figures had vanished. A lateral depression wasthere, with the ragged, broken cliff-wall some ten feet behind it.

"Do you suppose there's only one of them?" Jan whispered. "One man—andthat girl—"

"And that—that Thing in flames—"

There was no sign of the animal-like creature. For another moment wecrouched tense, peering, listening. A loose stone the size of my fistwas here beside us. I picked it up. It was weirdly heavy for its size.Then I flung it out into the gully to the right of us. It fell with aclatter.

Our enemy was there all right. An arrow whizzed in the darkness andstruck near where the stone had fallen.

Jan laughed with contempt. "Dumb enough—that fellow. Bob, listen,we've got flash-guns. That fellow with no brains—and just witharrows—"

True enough. "You stay here," I whispered.

"What's the idea?"

"You wait a couple of minutes. Then throw another stone off to theright—about the same place. Understand?"

"No, I don't."

"Well, you do it, anyhow."

There seemed a line of shadow to the left of us, a shadow whichextended well out into the gully. The ground dropped down in thatarea—a slope strewn with crags, broken with little crevices. Crouchinglow, I crept to the bow of the ship, to the left away from Jan; sankdown, waited. There was no sound; evidently I had not been seen. Istarted again, picking my way down the slope.

A minute. I was well out into the gully now, ten feet or so down, sothat I could not see the wrecked ship where Jan was crouching. Fromhere the opposite cliff-wall showed dark and ragged. Occasionally ityawned with openings, like little cave-mouths. The place where thefigures had been crouching should be visible from here. The broken,lower side of the little ridge behind which they had dropped was inview to me now. It was dark with shadow, but there seemed nothing there.

Slowly, cautiously, I crossed the gully. Two minutes since I had leftJan? I melted down beside a rock, almost at the edge of the cliff-wall.And then, out in the gully, far to the right, I heard the stone clatteras Jan threw it.

There was no answering arrow-shot this time.... One can be veryincautious, usually at just the wrong moment. I recall that I stoodup to see better, though I flattened myself against a boulder. Andsuddenly, close behind me, I was aware of a padding, thudding rhythmicsound on the rocks. I whirled. I had only a second's vision of a darkbounding animal shape coming at me. My sizzling little flash went underit as it rose in one of its bounding leaps.

I had no time to fire another shot. Frantically I pulled thetrigger-lever, but the gun's voltage had not yet rebuilt to firingpressure. Futilely I flung the gun into the creature's face as it boredown upon me.

The impact of the dark oblong body knocked me backward so that I fellwith it sprawling, snarling upon me. In the chaos of my mind there wasonly the dim realization of a heavy body as big as my own; spindlylegs, like the legs of a huge dog. There seemed six or eight legs,scrambling on me.

Wildly I fought to heave it off. There was a face—a ring of glaringgreen eyes; fang-like jaws of a long pointed snout which opened,snarling with a gibbering, gruesome cry. I shoved my left forearm intothe jaws as they came at my face. They closed upon my arm, ripping,tearing.

But somehow I was aware that I had lunged to my feet. And the Thingreared up with me. It was a Thing almost as heavy as myself. My leftarm had come loose from its jaws and as its scrambling weight pressedme I went down again. A Thing of rubber? It seemed boneless, the shapeof it bending as I seized it. A gruesomely yielding body. My flailingblows bounded back from it. Then I knew that I was gripping it by thehead, twisting it. The snarling, snapping jaws suddenly opened widewith a scream—a scream that faded into a mouthing gibber, and in mygrip the Thing went limp. I cast it away and it sank to the rocks,quivering.

For an instant I stood panting, trembling with nausea sickening me.On my hands the flesh of the weird antagonist was sticking likeviscous, gluey rubber. Hot and clinging. Hot? I stared at my handsin the dimness. For a second I thought it was phosphorescence. Thenyellow-green wisps of flame were rising from my hands. Frantically Iplunged them into my jacket pockets. The tiny flames were extinguished.I stripped off my jacket, flung it away and it lay with a little smokerising from it where the weird stuff was trying again to burst intoflame.

The skin of my hands was seared, but the contact with the flames hadbeen only momentary and the burns were not severe. It had all happenedin a minute or two. I recall that I was standing trembling, staringat the yawning mouth of a cave entrance which was nearby in thecliff-face. A movement in there? A moving blob? Then I was aware thatthere was a light behind me. Off across the gully there was a blob oflight-fire. A red-green blob, swirling, scrambling. And the sound of adistant, gibbering snarl....

The singing whizz of an arrow past my head made me turn again. My humanadversary! I saw him now. He was coming at a run from the mouth of thecave—a wide-shouldered, grotesquely-shaped man with a brown hairygarment draped upon him. He swayed like a gorilla on thick bent legs.In one hand he held what seemed an arrow-sling. In the other he carrieda long narrow segment of rock, swinging it like a club. He was no morethan ten feet from me. In the dimness I could see his huge round headwith tangled, matted blank hair. As I whirled to meet him, his voicewas a bellow of guttural roar, like an animal bellowing to intimidateits enemy.

I turned, jumped sidewise. And abruptly from a rock-shadow anothershape rose up! Slim, small white body, brown-draped with long, gleamingtawny hair. The girl! Her voice gasped,

"You run! He kill you! In here—this way—"

The bellowing savage had turned heavily in his rush and was chargingus. In her terror and confusion the girl gripped me, shoving me towardthe cave. As we ran I flung an arm around her, lifting her up. Sheweighed hardly more than a child. Then we were in the blackness of atunnel-passage. I set her down.

"Lie down. Be quiet," I whispered vehemently. She understood me; shecrouched back against the side wall. There seemed a little light here,a glow which I realized was inherent to the rocks, like a vague, faintphosphorescence. But it was brighter outside. The charging savage hadevidently paused at the entrance. As I stared now, his bulky figureloomed there, grotesque silhouette. Then doubtless he saw me. Withanother bellow he came charging in.

I stood waiting, like a Toreador, in front of a heavily charging bull.It was something like that, for as he rushed me, swinging his club andplunging with lowered head of matted hair, nimbly I jumped aside. I hadseized a rock half as big as my head. He had no time to turn and poisehimself as I jumped on him, crashing the rock at the side of his broadugly face as he straightened and swung around.

Ghastly blow. His face smashed in as the rock seemed to go into it.For a second his hulking body stood balanced upon the crooked legs andbroad flat bare feet. Gruesome dead thing with the face and top of thehead gone, it balanced on legs suddenly turned rigid. Then it toppledforward and thudded against the passage wall, sliding sidewise to theground where it lay motionless.

In the phosphorescent dimness, I dropped beside the girl. She waspanting with terror, shuddering, with her hands before her face.

"It's all right," I murmured. "Or at least, maybe it isn't all rightwith you, but he's dead, anyway."

Utterly incongruous, the delicately formed bronze-white girl—and thathulking, grotesque, clumsy savage.

"Oh—yes," she murmured. "Dear—yes—"

"You speak English—strange, here on Vulcan—"

"But from your Captain Roberts—he was the fren' of mine—of all theSenzas—"

"He's dead. An arrow in him—lying over there by his wrecked ship—therest of them, dead inside—"

"Yes. I know it. That was these Orgs. I was caught—just the last timeof sleep. Tahg—surely it seems it must be Tahg who sent this Org totake me from my father's home—"

A captive! And she had fought with her savage captor to stop him fromsending an arrow into me. Then, in his absorption as he tried to stalkme, she had broken loose from him.

"Just this one Org?" I murmured. "Is he the only one around here? Heand that—animal-thing which I killed?"

"That—a femalemime—you—you—"

She was huddling beside me, clinging to me, still shuddering. "Two Orgsthere were," she whispered. "And another mime—a fire-male—"

The flame-creature! Queerly, it was not until that instant that Ithought of Jan. Out there across the gully, that swirling swaying blobof light-fire! Those snarling sounds! Jan had been attacked by anotherof the savages, and by the weird flaming creature! The mime fire-male,as the girl called it.

I jumped to my feet. "What—what you do?" she demanded.

"You stay here. What's your name?"

"Ama. Daughter of Rohm, the Senza. He my father. He very good fren' ofthe Captain Roberts—good fren' of all the Earthmen. Like you? You areEarthman?"

"Yes. Now Ama, listen—I came here with another Earthman—with twoothers, in fact. One of them is over there by the Roberts' ship.... Youwait here—"

"No!" she gasped. I had dashed toward the tunnel entrance, but I foundher with me. "No—no, I stay with you."

From the entrance the gully showed dim and silent. Over the little riseof ground, just the top of the Roberts' spaceship was visible.

Ama clung to me. "I stay with you," she insisted.

Cautiously we picked our way across the gully, up the small ascendingslope. No sound; nothing moving. But now there was a pungent, acridchemical smell hanging here in the windless air.

"The fire-mime!" Ama whispered. "You smell the fire? Then he was angry,ready to fight—"

"He fought," I retorted grimly. "I saw it—"

"Look! Look there—"

Her slim arm as she gestured tinkled with metal baubles hanging onit.... I saw, up the slope, the blob of something lying on the rocks.Jan! My heart pounded. But it wasn't Jan. The body of one of the weirdoblong animals was lying there. Lying on its side, with its six legsstiffly outstretched. Ugly hairless thing, like a giant dog which hadbeen skinned. I could see now that the grey-green flesh had a greasy,pulpy look. What strange organic material was this? Certainly nothinglike it existed on Earth. Impervious to heat, as the human stomachtissue is impervious to the action of its own digestive juices.Evidence of the thing's flaming oxidation was here. Wisps of smoke wererising from the ground about the slack body.

Had Jan killed it? The ring of eyes above the long muzzle snout bulgedwith a glassy, goggling dead stare. The jaws were open, with a thick,forked black tongue protruding, and green, sticky-looking froth stilloozing out. The teeth were long and sharp, fangs like polished blackivory protruding from the jaw. The cause of its death was obvious. Aknife-slash had ripped, almost severed its throat in a hideous woundwhere green-black viscous ooze was still slowly dripping, with smokyvapor rising from it.

For a moment, with little Ama clinging to me, I must have stoodappalled at the weird sight of the dead fire-mime. If Jan had foughtand killed it—then where was he now? And where was that other Org,companion of the clumsy savage I had killed when it had tried toattack me?

And where was Torrence?

"Your fren'—he did this?" Ama was murmuring.

"Yes, I guess so." I raised my voice cautiously. "Jan—Oh, Jan, whereare you?"

The dark shadowed rocks mocked me with their muffled, blurred echo ofmy call. There seemed nothing here alive, save Ama and me. The wreckedspaceship lay broken and silent on the rocks, with the gruesome, strewnbodies of the Earthmen in it. And the body of Roberts still lay hereoutside, near the bow.

"Jan—Jan—"

Then Ama abruptly gasped, "The Orgs! See them—up there!"

The cliff which was the gully wall, at this point was some fiftyfeet high. I stared up to a patch of yellow light which had appearedthere in the darkness. A band of the murderous Orgs! Carrying flamingtorches, a dozen or more of the gargoyle savages stood above us on thecliff-brink. One stood in advance of them, pointing down at us. He wasthe other one, doubtless, who had originally been down here with Ama.Around them, half a dozen of the huge greenish mimes bounded, whiningwith gibbering cries of eagerness.

And in that instant, an arrow came down. I saw one of the savages slingit from a flexible, whip-like contrivance. The whizzing metal shaftsang past our heads and clattered on the rocks.

Ama was clutching me. "You come! Oh hurry—they kill us both."

There was no argument about that. I flung a last look around with thevague thought that I would see Jan lying here. Then I let Ama guideme. At a run, we headed back down the declivity and diagonally acrossthe gully. A rain of arrows came down, clattering around us, but in amoment most of them were falling short.

"Which way, Ama? Where we go?"

"My people—my village—not too far."

"Which way?"

"Through this cliff. There are passages into the lower valley."

"You know the way?"

"Yes, oh yes."

A dark opening in the opposite cliff presently was before us. The Orgswere coming down the other cliff now; their bellowing voices and thewhining cries of the mimes were a blended babble.

"A storm is coming," Ama said suddenly.

The distant sky over the lower end of the gully was shot now with weirdlurid colors. In the heavy dark silence here around us, a sudden sharppuff of wind plucked at us, tossing Ama's long tawny hair.

"This way—" she added.

My arm went around her as another wind-blast thrust us sidewise, almostknocking her off her feet. Then clinging together, fighting our wayin a rush of wind which now abruptly was a roar, we plunged into thedepths of the yawning tunnel.

III

I must recount now what happened to Jan, as he told it to me when aftera sequence of weird events, he and I were together again. When I lefthim crouching there close against the hull of the wrecked Roberts'ship, he lost sight of me almost in a moment. There was just the faintblob of me sliding into a shadow; and then the lowering ground downwhich I went hid me. Tensely he crouched, peering across the gully,listening to the heavy silence.

Two minutes, I had said; and then he must throw the rock. His handfumbled around, found a sizable rock-chunk. He understood my purpose,of course—to divert our adversary across the gully at a moment when Imight be close to jump him from the other direction.

Jan was excited, apprehensive, just an inexperienced boy. Was thecrouching savage with the girl still there across the gully? There wasno sound, no movement. Was it two minutes now?

He flung the stone at last and raised himself up a little with hisgun leveled. The stone clattered off to the right. But it provokedno whizzing arrow. No sound of me, jumping upon my adversary....Nothing.... But what was that? Jan stiffened. Distinctly he heard thesizzling puff of a flashgun shot. My gun! He knew it must be; it was tothe left, out in the gully. And following it there was a low gibberingsnarl. Faint in the distance, but in the heavy silence plainly audible.

I had been attacked! Jan found himself on his feet, with no thoughtin his mind save to dash to me.... He had taken no more than a fewscrambling leaps on the rocks. He reached the brink of the descent.Far down and out in the gully it seemed that he could see the blur ofsomething fighting.

His low incautious movement had betrayed him. From behind him there wasa low whistling. A signal! An eager whining snarl instantly resoundedto it. Jan had no more than time to whirl and face the sounds when agreat bounding grey-green shape was on him!

Jan's shot missed it, and the next second the lunging oblong bodystruck him. The impact knocked him backward. His gun clattered away.Then the huge, hairless dog-like thing sprawled upon him, its slaveringjaws snapping. They found his shoulder as he lunged and the fang-liketeeth sank in....

A miracle that Jan could have kept his wits so that he fumbled forhis knife as he fell. But suddenly he got it out, stabbed and slashedwildly with it as he rolled and twisted on the ground with the snarlingcreature on top of him.... And suddenly he was aware that the thing hadburst into flame!

It could have been only a few seconds during which Jan fought thatweird living fire. It was a wild chaos of horror.... Licking, oozingflames exuding like an aura from the sticky viscous flesh that horriblysprawled upon him. Monstrous ghastly adversary, with flesh that seemednow like burning bubbling rubber, stenching with acrid gas-fumes....

Just a few seconds, then Jan realized that somehow he had broken loosefrom the jaws that gripped his shoulder. He tried to scramble to hisfeet. The flames searing his face made him close his eyes. He washolding his breath, choking. His clothes were on fire....

Then the sprawling, lunging body knocked him down again. He was stillwildly, blindly slashing with his knife. Vaguely he was aware, overthe chaos of snapping snarls, that a human voice nearby with gutturalshouts was urging the animal to dispatch its victim. But suddenly—asJan's knife-blade ripped into its throat—the snarls went into aghastly, eerie animal scream of agony—a long scream that died into agurgle of gluey, choking blood-fluid....

Jan was aware that the creature had fallen from him with its flamesdying. On the rocks he rolled away from it, with his scorched handswildly brushing his clothes to extinguish them. Then he was on hisfeet, staggering, choking, coughing. But his knife, its blade drippingwith an oozing flame, still wildly waved.

And then he was aware that twenty feet away, a heavy, grotesqueman-like shape was standing with a club and arrow-sling. But with hisflame-creature dead and the sight of the staggering, triumphant Janwaving his flaming knife-blade—the watching savage suddenly droppedhis club and let out a cry of dismay and fear. And then he ran.

For a moment Jan, wildly, hysterically laughing, went in pursuit. Butin the rocky darkness the fleeing savage already had vanished....

Then reaction set in upon Jan. His burned face and hands stung asthough still fire was upon him. He was still gasping, choking from thefumes of his smoldering clothes. His eyes, with lashes singed, smarted,watering so that all the vague night-scene was a swaying blur.... Hefound himself sitting down on the rocks....

And then suddenly he remembered me. Where had I gone? What hadhappened?...

Vaguely Jan recalled that I had left him and gone across the gully....Where was I now?... Then he seemed dimly to recall that he had heard myshot....

In the dimness suddenly it seemed to Jan that he saw me, far up thegully to the right, up on the cliff-top. For just a moment he wassure that it was the shape of me, silhouetted against the sky.... Thesight gave him strength. Still staggering, he ran wildly forward....A quarter of a mile; certainly it seemed that far. He had crossed thegully by now. The figure up above had vanished.... Queer. What was Idoing up there? Chasing the savage?...

Jan climbed the little cliff, which was ragged, and lower here thanelsewhere. It led him to the undulating, upper plateau, crag-strewn,dim under a leaden sky. But there was enough light so that he couldsee the distant figure. It was only two or three hundred yards away,plodding on, apparently not looking back....

Jan ran after it. And then he was calling:

"Bob! You Bob—"

The figure turned. Started suddenly back, and called:

"Is that you? Jan?"

It was Torrence! He came back at a lumbering run now—Torrence,bare-headed, gun in hand. But he obviously hadn't had any encounter.His jacket was buttoned across his shirt; he looked just as he had whenJan had last seen him, out there at the bow of the wrecked spaceshipwhen Jan had gone inside to join me.

Torrence stared at the burned Jan. "Why—good Heavens," he gasped."You—I saw that thing killing you. I was up here—I started down, buttoo late—"

"Where's Bob?"

"Bob? Why—he was killed. Burned—like you. I tried to help him—toolate—the damned things—"

The lameness of it was lost on the still-dazed Jan at that moment. Ihad been killed! It struck him with a shock. And as he stood wavering,trembling, Torrence drew him to a rock.

"Too bad," Torrence murmured sympathetically.

"Where—where were you?" Jan said at last. "We came out of theship—couldn't find you."

"I was attacked by one of those cursed Things. Like the one that nearlygot you—like the one that killed Bob. I chased it; shot at it when Igot up here. But I shouldn't have come up—then I saw you and Bob—toolate to get back to you. So I was starting for our ship. It's off thisway, not so very far."

For a little time Jan sat there numbed, and Torrence satsympathetically, silently beside him.

"When we get back," Torrence murmured at last, "you can put in yourreport with mine. We did our best—but there isn't any use now, ustackling this thing."

Jan must have been wholly silent, thinking of me, dead, burned, backthere in the darkness of the gully.

"You all right now, lad?"

"Yes," Jan said. "Yes—I'm all right."

"When we get back, we ought to get a bonus," Torrence said. "Don'tworry, Jan—I'll see you get plenty. Your report and mine—to tell themthe hazards of this trip—"

"We should go back?" Jan said.

"Yes, certainly we should. Get back to Earth as fast as we can. Nochance of doing anything else—"

Torrence gazed apprehensively around them in the darkness. That muchat least—the reality of his apprehension as they sat there on theopen plateau—that was authentic enough. And Jan also felt that at anymoment one of the flaming creatures might attack them.

"You strong enough to start now?"

"Yes, sure I am," Jan agreed.

They started, picking their way along. Jan tried to remember how far wethree had come from our own ship until we had discovered the Roberts'vessel.... For ten or fifteen minutes now he and Torrence clamberedover the rocks.

"You think you know the way?" Jan asked at last.

"Yes—or I thought I did." Torrence's tone was apprehensively dubious.And that, too must have been authentic. Certainly it would be adesperate plight to be lost here on Vulcan. "It was Bob who was sure heknew the way back—"

"I think we are all right," Jan agreed. "That big rock-spire offthere—I remember it."

As they progressed, Jan was aware now that the sky behind them wasbrightening. They turned and stared at it.

"Weird—" Torrence muttered.

"Yes—some sort of storm. If it's bad—you suppose we ought to takeshelter? It's pretty open up here."

The sky was certainly weird enough—a swirl of leaden clouds backthere, shot now with lurid green and crimson. And suddenly there camea puff of wind. Then another. Stronger, it whined between the nearbynaked crags. In a little nearby ravine it caught an area of loosemetallic stones, whirled them before it with a tinkling clatter.

"We came through that ravine, coming out this way," Jan said suddenly."I'm sure of it."

Torrence remembered it also. Another blast of wind came; and withit blowing them, they scurried into the ravine. The lurid storm-skypainted it with a crimson and green glare, so that the narrow cut inthe rocky plateau was eerie. To Jan it seemed suddenly infernal. Heclutched at the larger, far more bulky Torrence as they hurried alongwith the wind blasting them.

Loose metallic stones were blowing around them now with a clatter.Then suddenly the sky seemed riven by a darting, jagged red shaft oflightning. And then red rain was pelting them.

"Got to find some place," Torrence panted. He had to shout it above theroar as the wind tore at his words and hurled them away.

"Over there?" Jan gestured. "Looks like a cave."

The sides of the ravine were rifted in many places with verticalcrevices. They headed toward a wider slit of opening which seemedto lead well back underground. A place of shelter until this stormpassed....

To Jan, what happened then was weirdly terrifying. He suddenly realizedthat as they approached the opening, they were being pulled at it. Intoit! A suction, as though somewhere down underground this storm hadcreated a partial vacuum—a far lesser pressure so that the air of thelittle ravine was rushing into it!

Terrified, both of them now were fighting to keep away. But it was nouse. Like wind-blown puffs of cotton they were sucked into the yawningopening. A sudden chaos of roaring horror. Jan felt that he was stillclutching at Torrence. Then both of them fell, sliding, sucked forwardas a plunger cylinder is sucked through a pneumatic tube. The groundhere in the passage felt smooth as polished marble.

For how long they plunged forward Jan had no conception. Roaring,sucking darkness. Then it seemed that there was a little light. Aneffulgence; a pallid, eerie glow, like phosphorescence streaming fromthe rocks. The narrow passage was steadily widening; and then abruptlythey were blown out into emptiness.

It was a vast grotto, with smooth metallic floor almost level. Theeffulgence here was brighter, so that an undulating, vaulted ceilingglistened far overhead. For a moment the nearer wall was visible,smooth, burnished metal rock. Eroded by the winds of centuries, all therock here was burnished until it shone mirror-like.

The huge pallid interior roared and echoed with the tumblingwind-torrents seething in it. A lashing cauldron jumbled with eddyingblasts. Jan and Torrence tried to get to their feet. They could see nowthat they were far out from the wall—sliding, buffeted, desperatelyclinging together, hurled one way and then another. Bruised from headto foot, panting, gasping in the swiftly changing pressures, Jan felthis senses leaving him. A numbed vagueness was on him, so that therewas only the suck and roar of the winds and the feel of Torrence towhom he was clinging. They were lying prone now—

"Easing up a little—" He heard Torrence's voice as though from faraway. And then he came to his senses to find that he and Torrence hadhit against a wall of the grotto and were clinging to a projection ofrock.

Easing up a little.... The storm outside lessening.... Jan must havedrifted off again; and after another interval he was conscious thatthere was only a tossing, crazy breeze in here. It whined and moaned,echoing from one wall to another so that the pallid, silvery half-lightseemed filled with a myriad gibbering little voices.

And Jan could see now that he and Torrence had been blown into a recessof the grotto—a smaller cave. The rock formation here was as thoughthis were the heart of a monstrous crystal—vertical facets of stratathat glistened pallidly.

"We'll have to try and cross back," Torrence said, and in the confinedspace his words weirdly echoed, split and duplicated so that thereseemed many little whispering replicas of his words. "Find that passagewhere we came in—"

They were on their feet now—suddenly to Jan there was around them avast vista of pallid dimness. A glowing, limitless abyss stretching offinto shadowy nothingness, everywhere he looked.

"Why—why," he murmured, "this place—so large—"

Torrence still had his flash cylinder. He fumbled in his jacket pocket,brought it out. Amazing thing! As he snapped it on, its tiny white beamshowed mirrored in a hundred places of the paneled, crystalline walls!The blurred image of Torrence and Jan standing holding each other withtheir light-shaft before them, duplicated so that there were a hundredof them everywhere they looked! And countless other hundreds smallerand smaller in the myriad backgrounds!

With a startled curse Torrence took a few steps into what seemed pallidemptiness, and then suddenly his image was coming at him! Lost! To Jancame the rush of horror that they might, wander in here, balked atevery turn....

Another startled cry from Torrence stuck away Jan's thoughts. Neitherhe nor Torrence had time to make a move. There was suddenly everywherethe duplicated image of a thick, swaying, gargoyle savage, standinglike a gorilla on thick bent legs, with one crooked arm holding aflaming torch over his head. A myriad replicas of him everywhere! Washe close to them, or far away? And in which direction?

In that stricken second the questions stabbed into Jan's tumultuousmind. Then he was aware of something whirling in the air over hishead—something crashing on his skull so that all the world seemedto go up into a splitting, blinding roar of light. He felt his legsbuckling under him. There was only Torrence's fighting outcry and thesound of a guttural echoing voice as Jan fell and his senses slid offinto a blank and black, empty silence....

IV

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

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

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 thetunnel, I could see her faint triumphant smile as she gazed up at mesidewise. Strange little face, utterly foreign so that upon Earth, byEarth standards one would have been utterly baffled to identify her.But it was an appealing face, and now, with her terror gone, the slyglance 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, followingtheir quarry by the scent. She looked puzzled, and then she brightened.

"I remember. The Captain Roberts told us about that. The mimes aredifferent. 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, exudinga scent—if you could call it that—a vapor which in the air burstsinto spontaneous combustion as it combines with the atmospheric oxygen.

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

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

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

"Swim it?"

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

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

For the most part, the clumsy Orgs and their weird mime-creatures werekept from the Senza forests. But occasionally they raided, stealingthe Senza women, and roaming the lush forests for food. There hadbeen, 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, hehad threatened her—and then he had vanished from the village; gonehunting, 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 CaptainRoberts that—I remember just before he and his men left us to finishthe repairs of their ship—and then we found later that the Orgs hadkilled them all."

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

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

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

This weird forest! Abruptly I was aware that there were places wherethe rope-like vines and leafy branches of the underbrush shrank awayfrom us as we advanced—slithering and swaying little vines in suddenmovement before us. Sentient vegetation. There are plants on Earthwhich shrink and shudder at a touch. Others which snap and seize anunwary insect enemy. But here it was far more startling than that. Isaw a vine on the ground rise up upon its myriad little tendrils; thepods, like a row of heads upon it were quivering, puffing. The extendedlength 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 gotangry—" Fantastic thought, but the reality of it—a looping, swayingvine 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 truthfulto say it really happened."

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

"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. Someonecoming? I recall that the startled thought struck me. Then from athicket near at hand a group of little creatures came dashing. Theysaw us, wheeled and scurried sidewise. I was on my feet, peering intothe 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 thearrow 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 camefrom a totally different direction so that I knew we must be alreadysurrounded.

"Ama—lie down! Down—"

A woman under some circumstances can be a terrible handicap. She didn'tdrop to the ground; she stood gazing around her in terror, and then shecame running at me, clutching me so that I was futilely struggling tocast her off. Another arrow sang past our heads, and then from severaldirections, the Orgs were bursting into the glade.

I tore loose from Ama, but it was no use. Whatever effective fight Imight 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 aroundus. Ten or more of them, jabbering at us, seizing me and presentlyshoving us off through the forest.

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

"Tahg! There is Tahg—"

The renegade Senza, quite obviously a leader here, shoved past hisjabbering, triumphant men and confronted us. He was seemingly startled,and then triumphant at seeing Ama here. Then his gaze swept to me. Hewas a big, muscular, but slender fellow. He was clad in a brief browndrape; 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 eyessquinted at me as he frowned.

"Well," he said, "Earthman? New one?" His English was evidently lessfluent 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 andtaken Ama from me.

"Jus' good time," Tahg said ironically. "Org gods pleased tonight tohave Earthmen—"

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

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

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

An Org temple. It was windowless; some twenty feet high from ground toits roof. A narrow, rectangular slit of doorway was in front, wheretwo huge torches, like braziers one on either side, were burning. AnOrg stood between them, with the torchlight painting him—an agedsavage in a long, white skin drape which was fantastically ornamented.He was thin and bent, his round brown skull almost hairless, hisbody 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 theedge of the swaying torchlight, I saw that two figures were lying. Twomen, 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 waslaid beside them while in the torchlight, alone with his pagan gods,the ancient Org priest stood intoning his prayers and incantations. Itwas then that Jan was able to tell me what had happened to him. He waslying between Torrence and me. I had little chance to talk to Torrence.Nor any great desire, for I considered him then merely a craven fellowwho had deserted us at the very first of the weird attacks.

Human emotions work strangely. It was obvious now, as we lay there inthe darkness, with the aged savage in the torchlight near us—obviousenough that we were doomed to something horrible which at best wouldend in our death. Yet Jan and I—each having considered the otherdead—were for a brief time at least, pleased that we were here. Noone yet alive, can normally quite give up hope of escaping death. Irecall 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. Andthose two damned Orgs who carried you here—they're still watching us."

"Going to take us inside, I guess," Jan whispered. "Inside this templeto—to—"

His shuddering imagination supplied no words. But his idea was right,for presently the old priest was finished with his incantations. Hiscracked voice called a command and the two savages who had brought mehere came from nearby. One by one, they picked us up and carried usinside.

I was the last to go in. The place was a single stone square room. Itwas lurid with a swaying torchlight. Carved gargoyle images, crudeand hideously ugly—grotesque personification of the pagan Vulcangods—where ranged along the walls. The old priest was standing now ona little dais, between the two interior torches. His arms were upraisedtoward me as I was carried in; behind him there was a quick stonealtar, 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 beenpurifying me for the coming rite.

In the center of the room, raised some five feet above the floor, therewas a broad stone slab, with a big, grinning, pot-bellied stone imagemounted up there. Then I saw that the slab had a broad, cradle-likedepression in front of the image. Still bound, lying there side byside, with the belly of the huge image projecting partly over them,were Jan and Torrence. And now the two savages hoisted me up and rolledme among them.

The sacrificial altar. Heaven knows, I could not miss the realizationnow. There was a weird, acrid, nauseous smell clinging here from formerceremonies. And as I was hoisted up, I saw that the smooth sides ofthe altar were seared, blackened by the heat of flames which so manytimes before must have been here.

And the heat—the fire? Within a moment after I was rolled into thesaucer-like depression of the alter—with Torrence muttering despairingcurses and Jan pallid and grim beside me—outside the temple theresounded a weird gibbering chorus of baying. Ghastly, familiar sound!The mimes—the giant fire-males! Released at the temple doorway, theycame bounding in—blobs of leaping red-green flame! A dozen or moreof the weird creatures, all of these much larger than the male Janhad killed near the Roberts' spaceship. Fire-males trained for thisceremony. Enveloped in their lurid flames they rushed at the altar,circling it, swiftly running one behind the other so that we wereencircled 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 nearlyas high as the altar slab on which we were lying. The flames of themswirled two or three feet higher—blobs of fire which merged one withthe other. A circular curtain of mounting flame walling us in. Throughit the temple interior was blurred, distorted. Vaguely the figure ofthe aged priest was visible. He was now on his knees, turned partlyaway from us as he faced his little row of god-images, supplicatingthem.

Curtain of swirling fire. Within a moment the heat of it was searingus. Heat slowly intensifying. It was bearable now; but the confinedcircle of air here was mounting in temperature; the big gargoyleimage over us, the metallic-rock slab beneath us both were slowlyheating. The smoke and the swirling gas-fumes would choke us intounconsciousness very quickly, I knew. And then the mounting heat wouldat last make this a sizzling griddle, on which we would lie, slowlyroasting....

A chaos of confused phantasmagoria blurred my mind in those firsthorrible moments.... I saw the old priest, so solemnly, humblysupplicating his gods as he officiated at this gruesome paganceremony ... then I could envisage us being carried off, back to theOrg village where the people, not worthy of being here in the sacredtemple, were so eagerly awaiting us ... then the orgy—sacred feast,endowing its participants with what future virtues and panaceas theyconceived their gods would give them....

The end, for us.... Already Jan was pitifully coughing.... But whatwas this? I felt a shape stir beside me; a small, slender figure withdangling hair; I felt trembling fingers fumbling at my bonds.

Ama! She had crept from a little recess under the giant bulging statueof the gargoyle god, here on the altar. Ama, who had found a chance toslip away from the wooing Tahg, and had preceded us here—hiding uphere so that she might try and release us....

But it was too late now. So obviously too late! She had accomplishednothing, save to immolate herself here with us!

Into my ear her terrified voice was whispering, "I thought that thefire-males would not come so soon."

In the blurring, blasting heat and smoke, she had untied us, but ofwhat use? "No—no chance to try and jump," she stammered. "As we fellthey would leap upon us—kill us in a moment—"

The sizzling, crackling of the flames—the gibbering baying of thefire-mimes mingling with the incantations of the old priest—it wasall a blurred chaos.... Then suddenly I was aware that Jan, coughing,choking, had struggled half erect on the slab. There was just aninstant when I saw his contorted face, painted lurid by the flames.Wild despairing desperation was stamped there. But there was somethingelse. An exaltation....

"You—run—" he gasped.

And then he jumped. A wild, desperate leap, upward and outward.... Itcarried him through the curtain of flame and out some ten feet to thetemple floor. The thud of his crashing body mingled with the gibberingyelps of the fire-mimes as they whirled and pounced upon him—all ofthem in a second, merged into a great blob of flame out there on thetemple 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 thegargoyle image, was momentarily completely dark. All the flamingcreatures were fighting over Jan's body. Torrence, too, had realizedit. 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 scramblederect. The pawing, snarling group of fire-mimes, twenty feet away withthe big altar slab intervening, intent upon their scattering fragments,for that moment did not heed us. On his little dais by the wall, theold priest had turned and was standing numbed, confused. There was noone else in the sacred temple. The single doorway was a vertical slitof darkness. Already Torrence was running for it. I clutched at Ama andwe ran.

Out into the rocky blackness. I recall that I had the wits to turn usaway 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 thathe 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, myfist crashing into his face so that he went backward and down. Withdesperate haste I caught up a rock from the ground—pounded it onhis head—wildly pounding until his skull smashed.... Then I was up,clutching Ama. Torrence already was ten or twenty feet ahead of us inthe darkness. We ran after him; he heard us coming and waited.

"Which way?" he gasped. "She ought to know. Our spaceship—that wouldbe 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. Butto the Roberts' ship—"

And the Orgs doubtless would consider that we would head into the Senzacountry. The forests in that direction would be full of roaming Orgshunting us....

She and I and Torrence ran, plunging wildly forward in the rockydarkness, with the lights and the turmoil behind us presently fadingaway into the heavy blank silence of the Vulcan night....

I think that there is little I need add. It was a long, arduousjourney, but we reached our little spaceship safely. And in a moment,with the rocket-streams shoving downward and with the lower-hullgravity plates in neutral, slowly we were rising into the cloudydarkness.

"You will take me to my people?" Ama said anxiously. "You did promiseme—"

"Yes, of course, Ama—we'll land you near your village—"

Queerly enough, it was not until that moment after all the tumultuousevents which had engulfed us, that suddenly I remembered the depositsofallurite which we had hoped to locate upon Vulcan. If I couldtake back samples of the ore—to my sponsors that doubtless wouldbe considered the major success—the only success indeed—of myexpedition.... It occurred to me then that we could land at the Senzavillage, and for a little time, prospect from there....

But even that plan was doomed to frustration. I mentioned it toTorrence. "We should head for Earth," he said dogmatically. "I have hadenough of this."

It was then, before we had gone far toward the Senza country, thatI noticed the rocket streams were acting queerly. A seeming lack ofpower.... Torrence had gone down into the hull; he came back presentlyto 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. Youwant to come and look?"

I locked the controls, left Ama and went down into the hull withTorrence. In the dim mechanism cubby, as I bent over the Pelletiermechanisms, 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 hishand he held a sliver of metal arrow. It was bent, doubled over, sothat 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 thebow of the wrecked spaceship! The little light in the mechanism cubbygleamed 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-gradeallurium ore, butallurite in its pure state! OnEarth 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 likea stilletto into my heart. But his own frenzied, murderous hysteriadefeated him. My fist struck his wrist, knocked his stab-thrust away,with the arrow clattering to the floor. And then I had him by thethroat, strangling him until he yielded and I tied him up....

As you who read this, of course, already know from the news reports, Idropped Ama near the edge of the Senza village. I recall now how shestood in the Vulcan night, in the torchlight with the excited crowd ofher people behind her; the last I saw of Vulcan was the little figureof her waving at me as I rose into the leaden sky and headed back forEarth.... Maybe—just maybe—I'll return someday to that land where Jangave his life that his friends might live.