old girl," he asked,
"how about it? Are you going to be able to make a long trip?"

Within the shelter Chet could see Diane's hands drawn into two hard
little fists. She would force those tight hands to relax while she lay
quietly in the dark; then again they would tremble, and, unconsciously,
the nervous tension would be manifested in those white-knuckled little
fists. For all of them the shock had been severe; it was hardest on
Diane.

* * * * *

She answered now in a voice whose very quietness belied her brave words.

"Any time--any place!" she told Walt. "And--and the farther we go the
better!"

"Quite right," Harkness agreed. "I am satisfied that there is something
there we can never combat. We don't know what it is, and God help anyone
who ever finds out. How about it, Chet? And you, too, Kreiss? Do you
agree that there is no use in staying here and trying to fight it out?"

"I do not agree," the scientist objected. "My work, my experiments I
have collected! Would you have me abandon them? Must we run in fear
because an anthropoid ape has come into this clearing? And, if there are
more, we have our barricade; our weapons are crude, but effective, and I
might add to them with some ideas of my own should occasion demand."

"Listen!" Chet commanded. "That anthropoid ape is nothing to be afraid
of: you're right on that. But he came from the pyramid, Kreiss, and
there's something there that knows every foot of ground that messenger
went over. There's something in that pyramid that can send more ape-men,
that can come itself, for all that I know, and that can knock us cold in
half a second.

"It's found us. One arrow went straight, thank God! It has given us a
stay of execution. But is that damnable thing in the pyramid going to
let it go at that? You know the answer as well as I do. It has probably
sent twenty more of those messengers who are on their way this minute, I
am telling you; and we've got two days at the most before they get
here."

Kreiss still protested. "But my work--"

"Is ended!" snapped Chet. "Stay if you want to; you'll never finish your
work. The rest of us will leave in the morning. Towahg will be back here
to-night.

"Nothing much to get together," he told Harkness. "I'll see to it; you
stay with Diane."

* * * * *

Their bows, a store of extra bone-tipped arrows, and food: as Chet had
said there was not much to prepare