Valley of Pretenders. John Russell Fearn
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everybody!” roared the chief steward, through his wrist-microphone. “We can’t afford to take chances.”
“He’s right there,” Mart muttered, catching the girl’s arm. “We’d better—”
“Help!”
It wasn’t a very audible call; in fact, it would probably have missed being heard altogether had not Mart and Eda been at that particular part of the clearing. They turned sharply, startled and even as they did so it came again.
“It’s coming from somewhere near that smoke column!” Eda cried.
Mart glanced back towards the ship. Nobody else seemed to have heard the cry: they were all too busy dashing for the ship in case the fire developed into a genuine conflagration.
“We’ve got to help,” he stated briefly. “You go back to the ship and—”
“Rats!” Eda cut in tersely. “I married you until death do us part. This may be the break I’m waiting for.…”
Without waiting, she turned and headed into the jungle with Mart immediately behind her. With the lesser gravity to aid them, they progressed in immense leaps, floating across considerable distances, coughing as the smoke grew denser and surged into their lungs.
“Hey! Where are you?” Mart yelled, pausing a moment.
“Here! Here! Quick—!”
“It’s Lemon Pan all right,” Eda gasped, then she jumped back as the foliage of a nearby tree began to sizzle and wither in a blighting shaft of flame shooting up its length. All the groundwork of a forest fire was laid.
The smoke was a fog now, but the two blundered forward again, to come suddenly on Judge Walbrook and Emmot standing in the middle of a little clearing, tugging oddly enough at their own legs, while around them the flames of burning vegetation were spurting dangerously close.
“Keep away!” Emmot cried, as Mart prepared to leap forward. “You’ll be as bad as we are if you come here. We’re stuck!” he wailed dismally.
“But—but you can’t be!” Mart yelled. “You’re not in a bog; you’re on solid ground. What sort of a game is this? Come on!”
Ignoring the warning, he jumped forward, Eda beside him, but the moment they landed they felt themselves gripped by something of viselike power. They couldn’t move one foot beyond the other.
“You see?” Walbrook bleated, more crinkled than ever now he was alarmed. “This is the fault of my learned friend. I told him not to scatter his pipe ashes in the vegetation—” He broke off with a yelp as a crackling runner of fire spat towards him.
Mart coughed violently and tugged at his feet. It was useless; he was rooted. Then he started suddenly as Eda came to his side in her stockinged feet. Her shoes lay behind her, zipped wide open.
“Take your shoes off, smart guys!” she suggested tartly. “This stuff’s magnetized, or something—holds the steel soles of our shoes. You two do the same.” She gazed witheringly at the best brains in British law, then helped to rip open the zippers.
“But this is perfectly preposterous!” Sir Basil cried, stumbling free of the danger area. “I cannot reconcile the fact that—”
“Never mind reconciling facts,” the girl said practically. “We’ve got to head back to the ship before we’re cut off. If we can!” she finished in dismay. “Look, Mart!”
She jabbed an arm at the pouring flood of choking smoke, the crackling advance of flames. The way back was ruthlessly cut off by a solid, raging wall.
But Mart wasn’t looking. He was on his knees staring at the sticky substance whereon the four pairs of shoes were still immovably riveted.
“Say, this stuff is magnetite!” he exclaimed in astonishment, glancing up. “Natural lodestone—like the Swedish deposits on Earth. Magnetic oxide of iron.”
“So what?” demanded Eda impatiently. “Take a look at the fire.”
He sprang up from his futile efforts to dislodge the shoes, stumbled backwards, and cursed as a sharp bramble stabbed his besocked feet. In dismay he stared at the beating, torrid wall of flame moving inwards.
“Come on—we’ve got to travel,” he panted. “That way.…”
Stumbling helplessly, he led the way to the opposite side of the clearing with Eda and the legal men picking their way behind him.
CHAPTER II
Only when the holocaust was some two hundred yards behind them did they stop.
“Now what?” Eda demanded, wiping her smutty, greasy face. “How do we get back to the ship? We’re heading away from it all the time. Besides, this jungle is no place to hike around without shoes.”
“What do you suggest?—that we walk through the fire like a collection of Hindu fakirs?” Mart asked tartly. “We’ve got to keep moving until it dies down, or the ship’s crew extinguishes it. Come on—it’s catching up again.”
He began to resume the advance, but Walbrook caught his arm.
“Listen to me, young man!” he panted. “Back on the Earth I have to preside over the case of Andrews-v-Interplanetary, and it is quite unthinkable that my learned colleague and I—”
“Forget your briefs and follow me,” Mart snapped out. “That fire’s gaining.…”
Onrushing flame made further argument impossible. Floundering wildly in the slight gravity, stabbed by barbs and vicious thorned roots, the quartet blundered on, they knew not where, all sense of direction hopelessly at sea, the smoke of the forest fire formed into a dense, impenetrable fog behind them.
They became aware of other things too—the bellowing of enigmatic beasts, the shriek of unknown birds, all stampeded by the conflagration. Here and there through the rifts were glimpses of incredible objects plunging and plowing through the undergrowth.
“Looks like we loosed some kind of zoo around here,” Eda said breathlessly, rubbing her gashed feet painfully. “And if you, my learned friend,” she went on bitterly, glaring at Sir Basil, “had taken care where you parked your pipe ash, this wouldn’t have happened. Of all the darned crazy things to do! Here!”
The Counsel’s veiny brown eyes protruded nauseatingly.
“But, my dear young lady—”
“Don’t ‘dear young lady’ me! You ought to start a Nicotine Abolition Act with that profound brain of yours— Gosh, Mart, what’s that?” Eda finished with a scream, and the others looked up in time to see a vast pair of saucer eyes staring at them malevolently from a hundred-foot high body.
“Some sort of dinosaur,” Mart panted. “Can’t try conclusions with that brute. This way—”
He swung off to the right, clutching the girl’s arm. Together they vaulted the nearest five-foot high row of bushes, but they did not strike solid ground beyond. Instead they found themselves in the midst of warm, fast-moving water, struggling desperately amidst a jammed, screaming mass of animals, none of which resembled anything Earthly.
Two splashes from the rear announced that Judge and Counsel had also landed. Walbrook rose up screaming words not entirely legal and finally choked out that he couldn’t swim.
“But I can, m’lud,” Emmot gaspingly assured him. “Leave everything to me.”
He clutched the older man tightly and struck out towards Mart and Eda. His bald head looked like an emerald bladder with scum draped round it.
“Most belittling,” he groaned, as he came level. “The dignity of the law, upheld by—”
“Watch yourself!” Mart interrupted him, gaze darting around him at the fighting creatures. “A flick from one of those supertails and it’ll be