With the rest, they made their way to the mountain, climbing up to a plateau. Cliffs loomed on two sides, and in tunnels and rocky defiles splitting into the side of the mountain, these creatures made their homes.
CHAPTER FOUR
A Race With the Nova
The machine men were given over for inspection by hundreds of the great creatures which they had automatically designated as Ajirs. Tiring of the inspection, the brutes handed them back to their original owners.
Professor Jameson was carried into a cavern and unceremoniously thrown on a rocky ledge with a strange collection of objects which had evidently caught the fancy of the Ajir.
There were bright bits of fused metal, evidently of volcanic origin, and odd-shaped bones littered the ledge. Most curious of all was an entire skeleton about twice the professor's size. As soon as the cavern's owner went out and left him alone, he fell to examining it. The skeleton was entire, each bone loosely interlocking with another so that it was impossible to remove one of them, except by force. The skeleton had been that of a four-legged animal.
The professor found that his companions had met with fates similar to his own. They communicated with one another and decided that for the present it was best to bide their time—never letting the Ajirs know that they were living creatures—and watch for the first good chance to escape.
In the several days that followed, the machine men learned many things about their captors and the world on which they lived.
The Ajirs were partly vegetarians. They sometimes set traps for the great birds which came down from the mountain heights. The Ajirs voiced a syllable in reference to the birds which the machine men interpreted as Quar, and from that time on they referred to the birds collectively as Quari.