Grag flexed mighty metal limbs. “What are we waiting for?”
Presently the quartet was moving through the jungle of giant ferns. All about them was silence in the heavy gathering twilight. The bright sword of the Beam was fading, angling away as the opening in the crust was rotated away from the Sun.
Newton knew the direction of the Belt, that seared blackened strip in which the terrible heat of the Sun’s single shaft permitted nothing to live. He steered their course to head around the end of the Belt.
Again a beast-scream came from far away. There seemed no other sound in the fern jungle. But presently the Brain spoke softly. “We are being followed”, he said.
Curt Newton nodded. Simon’s micro— phonic ears, far more acute than any human auditory system, had picked up faint rustlings of movement among the ferns. Now that he was listening for it Newton could hear the stealthy padding of many naked feet, moving with infinite caution.
“I don’t understand it”, he murmured. “These Vulcanian natives were friendly before. This furtiveness —”
“Shall we stop and have it out with them?” Otho demanded.
“No, let’s go on. We have to find that citadel before dark. But keep alert — a thrown spear can be jus t as final as a blaster.”
“Not to me it can’t”, rumbled Grag.
“Curt didn’t mean you — he meant us humans”, gibed Otho.
“Listen, plastic-puss”, Grag began wrathfully. “I’m twice as human as you and —”
“That’s enough”, Newton rapped. “You can carry on that old argument some other time.”
They went on and the unseen escort went with them. Soon they encountered the end of the Belt.
Black calcined soil, smoking rocks, a wave of dull heat from the ground itself attested to the awful heat of the Sun whose single great ray once each day traveled across this strip of Vulcan’s interior.
They made Captain Future feel again the terrible power of the gigantic solar orb so close by that could reach in through a single loophole and wreak this flaming devastation where it touched.
They crossed the end of that blackened strip, Curt and Otho hastening over the hot rocks, Grag plodding stolidly, Simon gliding ahead.
Before them the fern jungle rose into olive-colored hills, growing dark as the dusk deepened. Almost at once Newton noticed something on the slope of the nearest hill. It was a raw lumpy scar where a landslide had recently occurred.
“Simon, look at that landslide! Notice anything?”
The Brain hovered, his lens-eyes surveying the dusky hillside. “Yes, the outline. Definitely unnatural.”
Otho and Grag were staring now, too. “I don’t see anything unnatural about it”, boomed the metal giant.
“It covers a building that stood on that hillside”, Newton informed him. “Look at the symmetry of it, even masked by soil — the central cupola, the two wings.”
Otho’s bright eyes flashed. “The citadel Carlin mentioned?”
“Perhaps. Let’s have a look.”
They moved on. In a brief time they were climbing the slope to that great lumpy scar of new soil.
Newton looked back down at the jungle. No one had followed them out of it onto the bare slope. The giant ferns stretched far away and he could catch the tawny gleam of Yellow Lake in the distant dusk.
Through the twilight jungle, the Belt stretched like a stygian river of deepest black. He could see no building or ruin of any kind on his side of the ebon strip.
“This must be the citadel Carlin meant”, he said. “Apparently a landslide has covered it since he was here. We’ll have to dig a way in.”
They found flat stones in the loose soil of the slide. Using them as hand-spades Newton and the android and robot began pushing aside the ocher soil above the cupola of the buried building.
Something flashed and hissed in the dusk. Curt Newton whirled. A long quivering spear stuck in the slope some distance below them.
“I thought the Vulcanians were still with us!” Otho muttered.
Newton said quietly, “Just stand still. Let me talk to them.”
He faced down the slope toward the fern jungle. He called out in the language he had learned on his first visit to this lost world — a debased form of the once— beautiful language of the Old Empire, sunk now into barbarism like the men who spoke it.
“Show us your faces, my brothers! We come as friends and our hands are empty of death!”
There was utter silence. In the distance the fading shaft of sunlight lay like a tarnished sword across the dusk. The dense jungle below was untouched by wind or motion of any kind. Even the beasts were stilled by that strong human voice, speaking out across the desolation.
Newton did not speak again. He waited. He seemed to have endless patience, and complete assurance. After a time, half furtively and yet with a curious and touching pride, a man came out of the jungle and looked up at them.
He was clad in garments of white leather and his skin was white and the falling mane of his hair was white and his eyes were pale as mist. His only weapons were a knife and a spear.
In his carriage, in the fine modeling of his head, Newton could still see lingering traces of the heritage that had given the men of the Old Empire supremacy over two galaxies. And it seemed sad that this man should look up at him with the shy feral untrusting eyes of a wild thing.
Simon Wright said quietly, “Do you not know him, Curtis?”
“Of course.” In the Vulcanian dialect Newton said, “Is the memory of Kah so short that he does not know his brothers?”
They had had dealings with Kah before. He was lord over a third of the tribes of Vulcan and had proved a man of his word, aiding the Futuremen in many ways. But now the suspicious catlike eyes studied them, utterly without warmth or welcome.
“Kah remembers”, said the man softly. “The name of the great one is Grag — and you are the flame-haired one who leads.”
Behind him, by twos and threes, his men gathered silently at the foot of the slope. They were all the same tall snow-haired stock, wearing the white leather, bearing the sharp spears. They watched, and Newton saw that their eyes dwelt in wonder upon the towering Grag. He remembered that they had been much impressed by Grag before.
Kah said abruptly, “We have been friends and brothers, and therefore I have stayed my hand. This place is sacred and forbidden. Leave it while you still live.”
Newton answered steadily, “We cannot leave. We seek a friend who came here and was lost.”
The Vulcanian chieftain voiced a long, harsh Ah-h! and every man with him lifted his spear and shook it.
“He entered the forbidden place”, said Kah, “and he is gone.”
“Gone? You mean he’s dead?”
Kah’s hands shaped an age-old ritual gesture. Newton saw that they trembled. The Vulcanian turned and pointed to the fading Beam, which was to him a symbol of godhead.
“He has gone there”, Kah whispered, “along the path of light. He has followed the Bright Ones, who do not return.”
“I do not understand you, Kah!” said Newton sharply. “Is the body of my friend in this buried place? What happened? Speak more clearly.”
“No, I have talked too much of forbidden things.” Kah raised up his spear.
“Go now! Go — for I have no wish to slay!”
“You cannot slay, Kah, for your spears will not fly this far. And the great one called Grag will be as a wall against your coming.”
Rapidly, under his breath, Newton spoke to the robot. “Keep them back, Grag! They can’t harm you, and it’ll leave us free to dig.”
Clanking ponderously down the slope, a terrifying gigantic form in the dusk, Grag advanced on the Vulcanians. And Newton cried aloud to Kah, “We will not leave this place until we have found our friend!”