Chet was beside the port; a breath from outside came to him sweetly fragrant. A shadow was moving across the smooth lava rock. "A bird!" he thought. Then a flash of red in startling vividness swept past the open door: it was like a quick flicker of living flame. He could not see what it was, but it was alive—and this answered his question.
"Send 'em along," he said; "it seems all right now." He stepped through the opening in the heavily insulated walls.
It was early morning, yet the sun was already hot upon the smooth expanse of the lava flow. Some ancient eruption from the distant peaks that hemmed in the valley had sent out this flood of molten rock; it was hard and black now. But, to the right, where the valley went on and up, and rose gently and widened as it rose, a myriad of red flames and jets of steam told of the inner fires that still raged.
These were the fumeroles where only a month before he and Harkness and Diane had found clustering savages who were more apes than men; they had been roasting meat at these flames. And below, where the lava stopped, was the open glade where the little stream splashed and sparkled: in the high rock walls that hemmed the glade the caves showed black. And, beyond the open ground, was the weird forest, where tree-trunks of ghostly white were laced with a network of red veining. They grew close, those spectral columns, in a shadow-world beneath the high roof of greenery they supported.
Here was the scene of an earlier adventure. Chet was swept up in the flood of recollections born of familiar sights and scents. Herr Schwartzmann, cursing steadily in a guttural tongue, came from the ship to bring Chet's thoughts back to the more immediate problem.
There were five others who followed—the pilot and Schwartzmann's four men. There had been another, but his body lay huddled upon the bare lava. He had followed his master far—and here, for him, was the end.
Kreiss' pistol was still in his hand as he came after. Harkness and Diane were last.
Harkness pointed with his gun. "Over there!" he ordered. "Get them away from the ship, Chet. Line them up down below there; all the ape-men have cleared out since we had our last fight. Get them down by the stream. Diane and I will bring them some supplies, and then we can send them off for good."
Chet sent Kreiss down first, where an easy slope made the descent a simple matter; it had been the bow-wave of the molten lava—here was the end of that inundation of another age—and the slope was wrinkled and creased. Schwartzmann followed; then the others. The last man was ready to descend when Diane and Walt came back.