"Got us," Duroh muttered. "Gosh, look at them."
There seemed a hundred or more of the little white forms materializing in the starry whiteness of the Zurian night. The protective coloration of nature. They were hardly visible except when they moved. The group that gripped us were fending off their crowding fellows now as they milled forward, wildly jabbering, peering to see these four strange beings which they had captured.
"Well, they don't seem to want to hurt us," I said. I peered down into the face of the one who was at my side, his small white hands, with long, thin fingers strong as little pincers, gripping my arm. "Take it easy," I said. "Let's be friends."
I tried grinning at him. Perhaps he vaguely understood the grin. The skin on his round white face was hairless, perhaps poreless, sleek as gray-white, polished marble. But it wrinkled with his grimace. I saw that he had no eyelids. The slits of the two sockets suddenly opened wide, so that I could see his huge round white eyeballs, with a very big purple-black lens in their center. It was a grotesque face, but suddenly I realized that it was not unintelligent.
Then we were being shoved forward. For an instant the big Duroh, towering head and shoulders over his little captors, made resistance.
"Don't be an idiot," I shouted at him. "Let them have their way."
The crowd milled around us as we were shoved along the base of the cliff. I could see Alan, pale, silent, with his bloodstained face; the grim, tight-lipped, pallid Carruthers; and Duroh, docile now. And it occurred to me then, as I caught a look of frightened appeal from Duroh, how different things may be, all in a moment or two. I had been captive of Duroh and Carruthers and Alan, just a moment ago. Murderous cut-throats, they would have dispatched me, no doubt, when I had helped them all they needed. But now they looked to me as though we four earthmen were allied here against this fantastic enemy. And it was apparent that, like many bloodthirsty villains, Carruthers and Duroh were terrified. Cowards at heart.
We were being separated in the crowd. "Take it easy," I shouted. "Don't anger or frighten them—they'll kill us all." Certainly I had no wish to have Duroh go into a wild panic, with the Zurians killing me as well as the rest of us. We were all four unarmed now. They had searched us. One or two of them were carrying Duroh's and Carruthers' weapons, carrying them gingerly, awed and puzzled by them.
Where were they taking us? We came to an end of the little ice-cliff, rounded it, and I saw a dark yawning hole, like a cave-entrance in the honeycombed cliffside. The little white Zurians who were leading us plunged into it. I was shoved forward more swiftly now, with the darkness engulfing me—darkness filled with jabbering little voices and the patter of their huge bare feet.