“In the desert?”
“Bandages, you fool—bandages! Wrap yourself up in these. Travel by night if you have to, after you reach the surface.”
Silently Jacklyn began to don the garments. He said without expression, “It will kill me.”
Desquer threw him an armful of clothes and grinned. “You’ll live long enough to get help. If the Copts break out of Sub-Sahara, it’ll be like rounding up a thousand fleas. Besides, I don’t know what’s back of this—but it’s nothing small, I can promise you. If—”
He leaped like a panther. His shod foot came down with a sickening crunch on flesh and bone. Tony, startled by the sudden movement, saw that Desquer had sprung upon the Coptic priest, from whose hand a ray-projector had dropped. The priest’s blood-smeared face, twisted in agony, lifted toward the ceiling as he cried out.
“Not dead, eh?” Desquer whispered, his voice taut with savage fury. “Well—you soon will be.”
He drew back his foot. But the priest’s lifted arm somehow halted him. The Copt dragged himself half erect. His thin voice shrilled, “Go down to Alu, fools! But you will be too late. Isis has risen—and with her the gods who dwell in Alu. Before the opening to the outer world can be cleared again, we shall have triumphed—and the Earth will tremble before the power of the Ancients! Aye—the Ancients who ruled over the Four Rivers before their sons fled to Egypt!
“Go down to Alu, fools! You shall find death!”
The priest fell back—and died.