Both Henry and Martia looked at their companions in growing amazement,
_because the others acted exactly as if there had been no interlude
whatsoever_! Yet Henry and Martia, when they looked into each other's
eyes, knew that _they_ remembered!
"Wait!" cried Henry. Everyone looked at him, including Weston and his
gang. "Something has happened! Doesn't anybody remember?"
"Remember _what_!" exclaimed Weston, impatiently.
"The city! All those warships and planes!"
They all looked at him, blankly, and he and Martia returned their
stares, anxiously.
"The Major who called us Texanian spies! The space ship! The firing
squad--I mean, those machine guns!"
Again, the blank, uncomprehending looks.
"The kid's cracking up!" said Weston. "Let's get on with this! Now I'm
running things and I'll tell you what we're going to do!"
Just then Martia and Henry grasped each other's hands, their eyes wide
with consternation.
"Henry, do you--"
"Yes!" he hissed, cautioning her to silence. "I hear it!"
_The ringing was in their heads._
"Henry," said Uncle Andy, "what in the world were you saying about a
city?--and about this--er--space ship?"
Henry grasped his uncle's arm and signalled to Valerie, and Peggy
Hollenbeck. "Follow me quickly!" he said.
The two young women looked at Uncle Andy and he studied Henry and
Martia gravely. Then he turned to them and nodded. They all followed.
Henry and Martia both put their fingers to their lips, admonishing them
to silence.
They were about fifty feet away from the group when Weston yelled at
them. "Hey! Where you think you're going?"
Henry grabbed Martia's arm and told her to scream and flail about,
which she did instantly.
"The girl's out of her head!" answered Uncle Andy, catching on.
"Psycho! We'll be back in a minute!"
"Well--hurry it up!"
When they gained a clump of verdure that cut off their view of the
others, Henry motioned them into the woods. They all ran in to hide,
only to be overtaken by Pee Bee.
"What done happened to dat girl?" he asked, panting.
"Nothing," said Henry.
"Then why are we here?" asked Peggy, the air hostess.
Henry looked at them squarely. "It's that alien," he said. "He is close
by."
"The alien!" exclaimed Valerie. "How do you know?"
Pee Bee went bug-eyed again. "You mean dat Missing Link is back? Man,
where's mah feet!"
"Stay here!" said Henry. "I believe he is searching for the main group.
We can go back through the jungle and watch from hiding."
"Oh no!" exclaimed Pee Bee. "Dis am de point of no return! Ah just lost
mah reversin' equipment and can only head straight for the no'th pole!"
But they all went back and looked.
* * * * *
Just as they arrived at their hidden point of observation, a bedlam of
sound smote their ears. Screams, yells, swearing--the sound of running
feet.
"Wait a minute!" they heard Weston shouting. "Hold on, all of you! I'll
handle this!"
The sound of running stopped. The bedlam subsided.
They saw Weston making gestures at his bowmen to take up a new
position. With tense motions and sober faces, the men obeyed, fixing
arrows to their bowstrings while the rest of the camp watched them--and
something else that stood just on the edge of the jungle.
There, towering a head above the tallest man, was the alien, staring
at all of them with his one, baleful eye. Across his chest, near the
breathing orifice in the middle, he wore several patches of something
that looked like plasters, or bandages, where Scarface had shot him. He
looked weak. His shoulders slumped, and his arms dragged almost to the
ground.
"What's the matter, Merman?" yelled Weston.
Merman had been one of the first to run. Now he stood at a considerable
distance from the group, looking back.
"You were willing to have a small bunch of guys tackle this freak in
the lounge on board the plane," Weston shouted. "But now when you're
face to face with him you run! Don't go yellow, Merman! I said I was
taking charge, and I _am_!"
Weston looked at the crowd of castaways and grinned, contemptuously.
"This was our 'common goal,' wasn't it? Now I've got it my way! If it
was up to you guys, you'd all put on your best ties and sit down to
have a conference. Not me! I say--_get_ him!"
Whereupon, he led his men toward the alien, axe in hand.
"No, wait!" cried Dr. Bauml. "Don't harm him or we'll never know!"
When the alien saw Weston and his gang approach, he did nothing. He
only stood there and watched them come. He still wore the same pack
of apparatus on his back and the controls at his waist. The tendrils
around his double wrists flicked nervously. And many there were who
wondered what had become of Scarface--the man with the gun.
Weston stopped in front of the alien, about five feet from him, which
was approximately just beyond the other's reach.
"Now talk, damn you!" he said. "You got us into this and you're going
to get us out of it!"
But the alien gave no answer. Nor did his single, multi-faceted eye
move from its fixed focus upon the man who addressed him. It glared in
its concentration, indefinably.
Weston turned to his men. "He's dead beat," he said. "Those bullet
wounds made him weak. We gotta capture him, but don't mess him up too
much. We'll just get him down and tie him up. Somebody get some rope!"
Confidently, Weston dropped his axe temporarily and hitched up his
trousers. As he did so, his arms and chest bulged and glistened
massively in the eternal light of the sky. Sceranka hulked ponderously
behind him, his ham-like paws ready for action. Five more of Weston's
best huskies closed the semi-circle before the alien.
* * * * *
Henry could feel the pulse in his arteries, and he saw a pink spider
making a web in front of him, in the timeless, geometrical design that
all such spiders made. Beside him, he could feel Martia's tenseness.
Down by the beach, the waves rolled peacefully across the sands,
sighing with the eternal voice of the sea. The jungle smelled of damp
rot and sickly sweet flowers. And he sweated.
Weston, grinning somewhat tensely now, slowly lifted up his axe again,
with the blunt end toward the alien. He took one swift step forward,
but that was all. The alien emitted a blood-curdling, monstrous roar
and waded into the gang, just as Weston reversed his axe and struck him
a blow in the neck. It was an interrupted blow, because the alien's
great arms flew up and sent Weston sailing unconscious through the
air. He then grabbed Sceranka, oblivious to three arrows in his side
and four men climbing onto him, striking, punching and tearing at him.
Sceranka's rib case popped audibly as he was instantly crushed and
mangled. Then the alien turned and tore one man's arm off and sent
another of his attackers flying after Weston, headless. The others
turned and ran.
But they did not get far.
He paralyzed them with some invisible force controlling it from his
waist. Others did not need this treatment, because they had fainted.
Then he released them from the paralysis sufficiently for them to walk,
but not to run. He motioned to all of them, making it quite plain that
they were his prisoners and were to follow him into the jungle.
Without a murmur, they obeyed like somnambulists. The alien leaned
over the ones who had fainted and did something else with the controls
at his waist. These also revived, in a state of trance, and obeyed
his silent commands. In single file they went--Merman, Nelson, the
navigator, the commissary steward, Congressman Burley, Dr. Bauml, Dr.
Edwards, Dr. Singer, Colonel Rogers, the women, the servicemen--all of
them blindly following a trail into the Unknown.
Henry and Martia turned to look at their companions. There were Uncle
Andy and Valerie and Peggy. But Pee Bee had gone. His trail of sudden
departure was marked cleanly through the otherwise impenetrable
underbrush on their right. Sizeable branches looked as though they had
been shorn clean.
Silently, these five watched their friends and enemies depart--all of
those who had not been killed--and excepting Weston, who seemed also to
be dead. He lay face down in the sand, arms pointing toward the jungle,
feet awash in the surf. He had been thrown thirty feet.
Henry felt Martia shudder.
* * * * *
It was decided that to trek aimlessly through the jungle unaware of
what they were looking for would be futile. Instead, they chose to
follow the well delineated trail of the captives in order to determine
where the alien was taking them.
Uncle Andy and Henry provided the two women with bows and arrows which
had fallen from the hands of some of the alien's attackers.
"Do you know how to use them?" he asked.
"Yes," said Valerie Roagland, "but I hope it will not be necessary."
The arrow heads were tipped with sharpened pieces of aluminum rod taken
from the plane. In fact, some of the arrows were made entirely of
aluminum rod.
"We don't know what may be in that jungle," said Uncle Andy, picking up
Weston's axe for himself. He carefully examined the blade of the axe.
There were traces of very dark blood on it. "Our Pied Piper was wounded
in the neck by Weston's blow. I wonder if he'll survive. After all,
bullet wounds, arrow wounds--and a chomp in the neck with an axe!"
"Good Heavens!" exclaimed Peggy Hollenbeck. "That ought to spell
curtains even for Superman!"
"But--" Martia started to express herself, then her eyes widened in
alarm as the full implication of her thought struck her. "He is the
only one who knows what this is all about!" she exclaimed. "He's the
conductor, the engineer and the crew! He knows how we got here and how
to get us back to where we came from--if that is possible. If he dies
now--!"
They all looked at each other in shocked silence, except for Henry. He
merely experimented with one of the bows.
"She's right," he said. "Whether friend or enemy, we've got to make
sure that creature does not die until we learn what we need to know.
But I'll tell you one thing that may be encouraging...."
Peggy Hollenbeck's chin began to tremble and her eyes misted suddenly.
"Henry, if you can say _anything_ encouraging about this whole
business, for the love of God let's have it before I crack up!" Valerie
put her arms around her and the other burst into a fit of crying, which
was a delayed reaction from what she had witnessed fifteen minutes
before.
Martia might have joined her, but the secret knowledge she shared with
Henry helped to sustain her.
"Somewhere in that jungle," said Henry, "is a time machine...."
He calculated that the shock of that statement would bring Peggy out
of her semi-hysteria, and it did. She looked at him over Valerie's
shoulder, her tearful eyes suddenly wide with surprise and wonderment.
Valerie and Uncle Andy both turned slowly to stare incredulously at the
two adolescents, both of whom appeared to share the same conviction.
And Uncle Andy thought: _What incredible thing is it these two children
share in common?_