"I'm not." She shook herself. "I'm--frightened. This--night up
here--it's like a tomb, Martt."
Tomblike, indeed. A dank, chill silence brooded over the night. And
then, almost unheralded, it was not night, but day. A small, cold-red
sun leaped up from the distant black horizon. A day of dull, flat
light. It stained the snow with blood. . . .
Blood everywhere. . . .
Degg said somberly to Zee, "Always blood. It is an omen. . . . My land,
doomed----" There was a quiver in Zee's voice as she repeated his words
to Martt.
They had come now not to mistrust Degg. He seemed a well-meaning youth.
Simple-minded. He had told them something of his world--of Rokk, and
the woman Mobah. Degg, in his heart, hated and feared Rokk.
"Why?" demanded Zee.
He turned his dark, solemn eyes upon her. "You are too gentle, little
girl Zee, to understand. We have many--horrible things here in Arc. I
would not talk of them with you."
It had been Rokk's plan, Degg said, to take Leela and Frannie to the
place where he lived. Degg was to join Rokk there. . . . It was not
so very far. . . . Degg called it Rokk's mound. They were headed that
way now. Soon it would be night again--Martt could do what he thought
was best toward rescuing the two girl prisoners. And Martt promised he
would protect Degg.
Vaguely in Martt's mind had been the idea that he could use the
drugs again now--make himself still larger--catch Rokk unawares. But
the large drug would take no further effect. The maximum size had
been reached. Degg did not know why; save that these drugs were for
smallness--the large one merely an antidote to the other.
Martt was left without tangible plan. But his first desire was to get
near Rokk's mound--whatever sort of place that might be. And he would
decide then what could be done.
The blood-red sun came swiftly up in a low arc, and plunged as swiftly
down again. To Martt, it had been some half an hour of daylight. Now
came the brooding night--and in another half-hour the sun would again
make its low sweep.
Martt urged Degg forward. Eeff was leading--lurid, green-white against
the black of the ground. Then it stopped. Its eye quivered; it
screamed--a long, shuddering, half-human cry of fright.
Degg stood frozen--a statue in the gloom. And then Martt--and Zee also,
for she uttered a low, suppressed cry--saw what had frightened Eeff.
It was about a hundred feet away--a dull, glowing red as though the
blood of sunlight were upon it. A thing which might have been a long,
blood-red vine. Not animal, but vegetable. It lay on the ground--a
great, thick stem, with upflung leafy branches waving like tentacles.
At intervals, upon long stalks, were round spots of green light.
Gleaming, baleful eyes.
The thing was lying its length upon the ground. Not quiescent, but
everywhere in quivering, undulating, snakelike movement. Its eyes
seemed all turned this one way. Eyes suggesting an intelligence--a
reasoning behind them. A thing, not animal but vegetable! Its brain,
lacking even the least vestige of human or animal restraint, cast in a
mold unutterably horrible.
Eeff was crouching at Degg's feet, babbling with terror. Degg muttered,
"It is unrooted! Free! It--I told Rokk they would break free some
time--before he was ready!"
"Unrooted!" Zee echoed.
Unrooted! It was slithering, out there in the darkness. . . . It shrank
to a blood-red blur. . . . It vanished. . . .
They went on again. Degg would not talk, save to reiterate fearsomely,
"I knew they would cast off their roots! Roaming, everywhere. And Rokk
thought he dared to grow them----"
A rise of ground lay ahead. Beyond its crest only the purple sky was
visible, with stars sweeping in rapid, low arcs. Martt, Degg and Zee
were walking together, with Eeff close before them.
Eeff began whimpering again; then screamed. And ahead, from over the
crest of the hill, as though in answer came an echoing scream! Yet not
an echo! A scream, human! It drove the blood to Martt's heart; stopped
his breathing. The scream of a voice familiar--a girl's voice--Frannie!
For all the horror surging over him, Martt leaped forward. And stopped,
stricken on the hill-crest.
Beneath him in the gloom lay a shallow, bowl-like depression. The
starlight illumined it wanly. Frannie was down there, struggling in
the grip of a blood-red, vegetable thing! A segment of it was wrapped
around her, dragging her forward. The light of it drenched her with
blood; its myriad green eyes glared throughout its waving length.
[Illustration: "Frannie struggled in the grip of the blood-red,
vegetable thing."]
And ahead of it was a line of others of its kind, leading the way,
slithering up and over the opposite slope!
_CHAPTER 6_