The faces of the men told Garth that his shots had gone home. The deadly menace of the forest, lurking always in the background, had worked into their nerves. Sampson’s big hands clenched.
“Damn you!” he snarled. “You can’t—”
Garth went on quickly. “I’m handing this to you straight. We’re in a spot, sure, but we can get out of it. I can make more antitoxin, but it’ll take a while. I can’t do it while we’re traveling. I need equipment. Here’s what I’m proposing—we all keep going, the way we started. I’m immune to the pollen. If we move fast, we’ll reach the lost city, or whatever it is, before you go under. Then I can start making antitoxin. We’ll have to trap some small animals and allow time for incubation. But I’ll be able to make fresh shots and neutralize the Noctoli pollen.”
“It’s too long a shot,” Sampson said.
“Okay,” Garth told him. “Suit yourself. Play it my way, or commit suicide.” He turned and walked toward Paula, who had not moved from Brown’s side.
Her eyes were steady on his. “Thanks. That was nice going—plenty nice, if you pull it off.”
“It’s suicide either way,” Garth grunted. He began packing Brown’s kit and his own.
Footsteps sounded. Garth didn’t turn. He heard Sampson’s deep voice, hoarse with repressed fear and rage.
“We’re playing it your way, Garth. God help you if you make any boners!”
Sudden relief weakened Garth. He tried not to show it, though he realized that his hands were trembling.
“Fair enough,” he said. “We’ll march in ten minutes. Get the men ready.”
Sampson muttered something and retreated. Garth slipped the pack on Brown’s shoulders. The Captain, looking blankly ahead, didn’t seem to notice.
“Keep your eye on him,” Garth told Paula. “He’ll be between us. He’ll keep marching till we tell him to stop. See?”
She nodded, moistening her lips. “Y‑yes. Is—that—going to happen to all of us?”
Garth said nothing. There wasn’t anything to say.
But he knew, as he led the party away from the camp, how long a gamble he was undertaking. There were so many chances that he might fail! The odds were plenty tough—yet the stakes were equally high.
Had he known how difficult those odds were, Garth might not have risked it. For the Noctoli poison worked faster than he had guessed.
Meantime he guided ten sullen, fearful men, a walking corpse, and a girl deeper into the unexplored heart of the Black Forest. The Noctoli flowers breathed their poison from the underbrush, deadly and relentlessly.
VI
That day they met a new enemy: jet-black lizards, five feet long, that clung to the black tree-boles, perfectly camouflaged, till the party came close. Then the reptiles flashed toward them, fanged jaws gaping. Constant alertness was all that saved them—that, and the blazing guns that killed the monsters.
Presence of the lizards was no respite from the other perils. The bloodsucker plants were more numerous, and the camouflage-moss made deceptively inviting paths through the red gloom. By dark, everyone was nearly exhausted, nerves worn to rags. Garth knew it would not take much for the men to explode into furious resentment against him.
Luckily, an hour after they had made camp, Captain Brown woke from his drugged trance, perfectly normal. But it took a while to make him understand what had happened.
For the first time Garth saw Brown lose his iron self-control, and then it was only for a moment. A flash of stark horror showed on the Captain’s lean, hard face, to be gone instantly.
He lit a cigarette, his eyes brooding on Paula and Garth. Briefly he glanced past them to the men, preparing their rations.
“Uh-huh. Not so good. I suppose it’s useless to think of traveling by night.”
“It’s impossible,” Garth told him.
“You can make more antitoxin?”
“Sure—but not here. It’s too dangerous. We’ve been safe so far because we’ve moved fast, camping at a different spot every night. If we holed up, we’d have a gang of monsters down on us in no time.”
Brown considered. “It’s a nasty business, having my own body go back on me. A bit of a shock. Well—” He let smoke drift from his nostrils. “Two more days ahead of us, eh? Then we reach the lost city.”
“If it is a city. We don’t even know that.”
“But we do know there may be Zarno around. We’ll have to arrive there soon after dark, so I’ll be … conscious. If there’s a fight, I want to be in on it. Why the devil didn’t you test that antitoxin, Garth?” His voice was harshly angry.
Garth didn’t answer. Brown had given him the rush act, but he wasn’t making any excuses.
Paula said, “This isn’t the best time to quarrel. You’d better talk to the men, Carver, so there’ll be no trouble tomorrow.”
“Yeah. Yeah, I suppose so.”
Even the rebellious Sampson was convinced by Brown’s well-chosen remarks.
They slept uneasily, with guards replaced every two hours, and the next day woke to find Captain Brown once more sunk into his Noctoli-trance. A few of the men complained of headaches.
By mid-morning Paula succumbed to the poison. Garth did not realize at first what had happened. Then, turning, he saw the girl’s blank face and wide eyes fixed straight ahead as she marched along, and knew that she was entranced by the Noctoli till nightfall. The exercise of walking, speeding metabolism, had hastened the action of the virus.
They went on. An hour later another man went under. Then another. By noon only five men, including Garth and Sampson, were still conscious.
Their difficulties increased proportionately. They had to be on guard every second. The Noctoli victims walked quietly in line, but they did not react to danger. If the tentacles of a bloodsucker plant flashed out, they wouldn’t try to escape. Their instinct of self-preservation had been dulled and blanketed.
The afternoon was pure hell.
