In the jungle above, a stolid-faced Indian was squatting beside a small pool whose surface, mysteriously, was never still. Things appeared on that surface continually, moved to the other side, bobbed down and were never seen again. But the Indian was not concerned with this. He was getting a drink, scooping up ice-cold water in his hands.
In the black depths of the pool something moved. The Indian darted back. Two hands came up from the water, then a head and face. The Indian stared in a mixture of horror and superstitious awe.
The face was as white and still and dead as something carved from limestone. In the face were awful, colorless eyes that transfixed the Indian like lances of light. A god! An evil god! Or a monster!
Yelling, the Indian clubbed down toward the head with a length of wood his hands touched at random. And then the Indian knew it was a god. No man could have moved so fast.
White, steely fingers caught the descending club easily, jerked. The Indian toppled forward toward the pool, and the figure drew itself dripping from the water with the same move. A right hand clubbed against the side of his jaw, and the white, steely fingers of the dripping figure’s left hand caught him by the throat.
The Indian consigned himself to his fathers as he felt consciousness leave him. A monster had arisen in the Pool-to-the-heart-of-the-world, and killed him.
Dick Benson released the nerve pressure at the Indian’s throat that should hold him unconscious for several hours but would mercifully not kill him. He looked around. He was in a shadow caused by something other than the trees. In a moment he saw that it was caused by a rock wall shutting off the sun. A rock ridge that was like, and yet unlike, the ridge they had seen when he set the plane down.
He was at the foot of the ridge on which the huge natural statue was set — but on the other side. The underground river had borne him clear under it.
Off a little distance, Benson could see the spiral of smoke marking a fire. That would be the camp of Borg and his men.
Benson stared at the unconscious Indian. He was one of the seedy modern descendants of the once lordly Aztecs. He wore the ragged remnants of pants he had gotten long ago from some village store, and an even more ragged jacket of cotton. He carried with him an ancient rifle.
Benson didn’t seem to think out his next move at all, so instantly did he set to work. Yet the plan was suddenly in his mind to the last detail.
The red-barked trees were plentiful nearby. He stripped yards of the shaggy bark from the trunks, soaked them in the water of the pool. Hot water would have been better, but he didn’t dare build a fire. And enough of the cold suffice. It softened the inner layer of bark to a sort of slimy skin.
Looking into the pool, Benson rubbed the softened bark on his white, still face and tanned body. He got the color fairly well, reddish-brown. Then he appropriated the Indian’s pants and jacket and the ancient gun.
A native of the poorest nomad sort, he started toward the fire of Borg’s camp. As he went, he had recourse to a trick that had saved him once in Tibet among dark-eyed people. He jabbed his eyes with his thumbnail till they were bleared and reddened and their pale flares were a little disguised.
Across the ridge, he could hear the spatter of machine-gun fire. It was puzzling, quite out of place here. Where would several machine guns come from? Brought with Borg in his plane? Benson didn’t think so. He knew most pieces of ordnance by ear; and he spotted these, not as sub-machine guns, but the full-grown army variety, six hundred or more shots to the minute.
He gave up the puzzle. Those guns were being turned against Smitty and Mac and Nellie and Chandler, of course. But there was nothing Benson could do about that just then.
The camp showed before him — a plane camouflaged as his own had been; a clearing with a fire in it, and three men. Two of the men were at a distance from it because of the heat. The third was sweltering and cursing as he made coffee.
One of the three was Borg. Another was the man with the reddish hair. The third, near the fire, was one of the ratlike brothers.
Borg was saying: “How they got outta that rat hole I bottled them in, I can’t figure out. One of these natives said he saw a tree fall down, and they came up from the roots. Baloney! Anyhow, they got out. But we’ll get ’em with the guns and gas.”
“We better!” snarled the man with the reddish hair. “Hey — visitors—”
Benson walked calmly and evenly across the little clearing and up to them. There was an Indian with them, vicious-looking, squatting on his hams near the fire and seeming impervious to the heat. Benson kept his gaze on the Indian. It was from him that the greatest danger lay.
Benson directed a stream of native dialect at Borg, gesturing with his hands as he did so. The squatting Indian stared hard and listened harder.
“What’s he tryin’ to say?” Borg snapped impatiently. “Who is he? What’s he want?”
As Benson had said, he had charted the territory all through here for the Mexican government. He had done it when just out of school. At the time, he had picked up some of the language, but it was a dialect in use farther south, in Yucatan. It seemed all right here, however.
The squatting Indian said:
“Him want job. From south five days. Saw fire and white men and came to see.”
“Tell him to beat it!” snapped Borg.
The Indian interpreted. Benson burst into even more volubility.
“Him say saw you blow up dirt. Bang! Blow up white man’s sky bird. Bang! Want food and an ax or maybe tell what him see.”
“Why, the coffee-colored stool pigeon!” flared the man with the reddish hair. “I’ll—”
His gun was in his hand. Borg caught his arm.
“Wait, Pete. Not so good to bump him off. We got four working for us, and they might get sore if we drill a brother Indian. Let him hang around if he wants, till we beat it. Then we’ll see.”
Pete put the gun up reluctantly. Borg said with an oily smile:
“Tell him okay. Make himself useful. Get some firewood first.”
The Indian relayed the message. Benson grunted, laid the ancient rifle down carefully, and collected dry wood. He brought it back, and squatted on his hams near the Indian. The native disdained speaking to him. Natives are no more apt to do a brother act with strangers than white men.
The afternoon deepened. A shaft of shadow from the great statute on the ridge began to lengthen into the jungle as, in the morning on the other side, it had shortened with the climbing sun.
Benson got up and moved a little way into the jungle. No one was paying any attention to him. He went off, in the shadow of the shaft.
He walked slowly, as the shaft advanced, with his pale, all-seeing eyes on the ground. He saw that there were no prints on the soft earth, and no broken twigs. None from the camp had investigated through here.
The shadow lengthened before him like a pointing finger. It touched a tangle of branches formed by half a dozen trees leaning inward on each other around a small sunken ring, as if space in the center had collapsed a little, letting the rimming trees sag together.
Benson glanced back. There was no one in view. He investigated the small sunken spot. There was a crude arc of metal in the center. He scraped around it, and found it was a ring of massive copper, oxidized greenish-black.
The ring was set in a stone slab, he saw, as he scraped a little more. Benson put his two hands in the ring and heaved.
Only an average-sized man, weighing little more than a hundred and sixty. But there was that mysterious explosive quality to his muscles.