CHAPTER XVIII
Besieged!
"I've felt it for some time," Chet confessed. "I've wakened and known I had been dreaming about that damnable thing. And, although it sounds like the wildest sort of insanity, I have felt that there was something—some mental force—that was reaching out for our minds; searching for us. Well, if there is anything like that—"
He was about to say that the trail made by Kreiss and the apes who tracked him would have given this other enemy a direction to follow, but Kreiss himself dropped down beside Chet where he and Walt sat before the front of Diane's shelter. The pilot did not finish the sentence. Kreiss had meant it for the best; there was no use of rubbing it in. But that thing in the pyramid would never be fooled as Schwartzmann and the apes had been.
Chet had told Kreiss of the attack and had shown him the body of the ape-man. "Council of war," he explained as Kreiss rejoined them, but he corrected himself at once. "No—not war! We don't want to go up against that bunch. Our job is to plan a retreat."
Harkness turned to look inside the hut. "Diane, old girl," he asked, "how about it? Are you going to be able to make a long trip?"
Within the shelter Chet could see Diane's hands drawn into two hard little fists. She would force those tight hands to relax while she lay quietly in the dark; then again they would tremble, and, unconsciously, the nervous tension would be manifested in those white-knuckled little fists. For all of them the shock had been severe; it was hardest on Diane.
She answered now in a voice whose very quietness belied her brave words.
"Any time—any place!" she told Walt. "And—and the farther we go the better!"