Rushing shapes swept through the hut as football players thunder down a field.
The inert bulk of his adversary fell on him, shielded him. He could hear spears thudding into the ground, heard men falling to their death. The smell of blood was in the steaming air. The rattle of dying men sounded above the pelting roar of the rain.
Click squirmed, twisted, finally worked his way out from under the enormous body that had covered him. His hand encountered a spear thrust into the ground. He pulled it out, staggered to a corner of the hut, braced himself for attack.
But the conflict had swirled out of the hut, gone on to a more remote portion of the village.
“Professor,” he called cautiously.
There was no answer. The interior of the hut was silent.
Click felt his way forward. His feet encountered a body. His hand stretched out in exploration. Instinctively he knew it to be one of the night people. The body was huge, cold, clammy. A spear was driven clear through the breast, well into the ground.
His hand encountered another body; this time it was the night man he had knocked out with his swinging punch. The man stirred slightly.
Click’s hand went over the features. He shuddered as he felt the mort slime of wide open eyes, staring straight up, unconscious. The eyes were as big as the palm of his hand.
He pushed on. His hand encountered the side of the stretcher. He felt for the German. He encountered the outlines of the huge body, the gnarled limbs with their twisted joints. He felt for the head, and drew back in horror.
Evidently it had been some species of war club that had finished Herr Gluckner. But he was finished, completely and conclusively finished.
A sudden horror rippled Click’s spine.
“Professor! Professor!” he called, raising his voice, shouting as loudly as he could.
There was no answer.
His feet stumbled upon a body. His exploring fingers encountered clothes. It needed but a second to complete the identification. It was the body of Professor Wagner, and he was quite dead, the entire top of the head crushed by a terrific blow of a war club.
Then, over the pelting of the storm, over the hissing sound of the rushing water, the rattling leaves, the swaying, groaning branches, came a sound that was unmistakable. It was the crisp crack of a rifle. Again and again it sounded. Then there was silence once more.
Click flung himself out into the pouring darkness. Water sloshed about his ankles. The green slime of the forest had washed down to the ground, turning it into a soggy mass of slush upon which his feet slipped.
There was nothing to give him the faintest sense of direction except the general idea which he had of the location of the rifle shots. About him in the darkness there was a vague sensation of rushing forms. Occasionally he could hear grunts, groans, blows.
A spear hissed through the darkness, thudded into the bole of a tree. That spear could not have missed his body by more than inches.
From behind him sounded a wild yell, running steps. Instinctively he ducked forward, half spun, collided with a tree trunk, flung himself around it.
There was a puff of explosive sound and something spattered the tree trunk with a peculiar suggestion of vicious force. Click realized it must be a mushroom-poisoned missile from a blow gun.
He whirled, made for the dense forest, then cut in a zigzag, floundering through wet ferns, crashing into slimy trees, constantly inundated with the torrential downpour that emptied itself from the black heavens.
His slithering feet found the slimy mud of the immense clearing in which the shell had landed. He had no very good idea as to his location. Was he on the near side or the far side of that circular clearing? He had no means of ascertaining other than to keep exploring in the hope that he would stumble upon some clew. And stumble upon it he did, for he literally fell over the body of a man.
Swift exploration with his questing fingers disclosed that this was one of the night people, that a bullet hole had accounted for his death. The bullet had torn through his heart and the man had died in his tracks.
The direction of that bullet hole, the way the body was facing, all served to give Click a general idea of the direction he wanted to take.
Of a sudden he realized that it was growing lighter. There was a faint margin of visibility creeping out from the surrounding circle of darkness.
Then to his left, hardly fifteen yards away, there again sounded the deep-throated roar of a rifle. A running figure barely visible in the rapidly increasing light, jumped high in the air, flung up its arms, fell forward, twitching, jerking.
Click saw the outline of the shell, sitting upon the muddy field, the polished sides streaked with moisture, the base spattered with mud. The door was open, and standing just without the door was Badger, the rifle at his shoulder.
Had Badger lowered that rifle and turned, it must have been certain death for Click Kendall. But the cruelty of his nature was too strong. It was not enough that he had merely disabled the runner, Badger wanted to kill him. And so he waited, squinting down the sights of the rifle, his entire face twisted with a ferocious blood lust.
The native struggled to hands and knees, tried to stand, but was unable. He dropped, began to crawl. Badger slammed in another shell. The gun roared forth its summons. The native crashed to the ground, splashing water and mud in a death agony.
Badger lowered the rifle and stepped within the shell. His arm reached to the door, slammed it over.
And Click Kendall managed to just thrust a foot in that door to keep it from slamming shut. His shoulder thrust against it, sent it crashing inward, and charged. His head crashed into the pit of Badger’s stomach. For a moment they hung, locked, poised, then they crashed to the floor.
Badger whipped over his arm, tried to obtain a strangle hold. Click gave no thought to guarding, but sought rather to smash to his objective. He sent his fists in short, jabbing rocking blows, thudding home with all of his shoulder muscles behind them.
His wounded arm sent little shoots of agonized pain racing up his shoulder, stabbing into his very brain. But he persisted.
Badger rolled over, squirmed free, got to his knees. He swung with all his force and the blow caught Click as he came in.
Click felt the nauseating blackness of that blow, but fought grimly to keep his senses. Blood poured from his nose. His eye was swelling. He caught the other off balance, sent his right straight for the chin, a blow that carried momentum behind it.
The fist crashed straight to the button. Badger’s head snapped back. He flung up his hands, crashed over backward. His head thudded against the metal floor of the ship.
Click scrambled to his feet, weak, dizzy, wet.
He floundered to the door, swinging upon its metal ball-bearing hinges. The rain clouds had vanished. The same rosy-hued fog was filling every nook and cranny of the steaming world. Water glistened everywhere.
Chapter 9
Disaster
Click moved to the control table. Had the little men placed the shell out of control? He pushed the slide over to gravitation zero, felt the same sensation of lightness which enabled him to drift about the shell, and sighed his relief. He had a chance, just one chance in a hundred, but he was going to take that chance.
He moved the slide control into the negative segment. The shell slipped upward, bounced from bole to bole, swung from branch to branch as lightly as a bit of thistle. Click possessed himself of the rifle, snapped a shell into the barrel, and searched the unconscious form of Badger.
He found a couple of boxes of shells, found also several rough diamonds of the type which the natives fashioned into knives. Click found a bit of rope, proceeded to tie the man’s hands and feet. Badger fluttered his eyes, groaned.