“We don’t have time for this,” Rosemary growled. Pulling a strip of rough fabric from the limp body, she cocked her head toward Lamont. “Oy, see if you can clean those off.”
“No, Miss Wells!” Captain Carter grunted as he held the young medic back from a sudden forward lunge. The discharged automatic lay on the cave floor only a pace away.
“I’ve got to try to help him!” Rosemary protested.
“You shot him!” The captain hissed.
“I know,” Rosemary acknowledged, taking advantage of a momentary relaxation in Carter’s grip to wriggle free. Ignoring the discarded pistol, she ran to the side of Lamont, who was crouched helplessly over the form of the mortally injured pygmy. “Help me get him out of the water,” She ordered the newspaperman, stripping off the captain’s oversized coat.
Lamont obeyed numbly, supporting the back of the miniature man while Rosemary held his legs. He was roughly the size and weight of a ten-year-old boy, and it took little physical effort to move him about a yard away from the pool. Then, Lamont stepped back while Rosemary crouched over the wounded savage to examine him. The small man’s eyes were closed now, and blood trickled from his mouth as he struggled for shallow, gurgling breaths. Lamont noticed with morbid interest that the body of the dying native was within arm’s reach of Rex’s, and roughly parallel to it.
“Get my bag,” Rosemary ordered, nodding her head toward the satchel that lay open not far from Rex’s colorless body.
Lamont stepped around, picked it up, and looked inside the open flap. “It’s empty,” he announced.
Rosemary spat a curse.
“The natives must have scavenged it,” Carter said tightly. He walked in a wide circle around the morbid scene and placed himself in the space between his crewmates and the natives who huddled at the edges of the cavern. He kept his arms wide, raised to the level of his chest with palms open, demonstrating that he was unarmed. Lamont winced, imagining a volley of radioactive darts piercing the captain’s vulnerable body, but so far, the small figures remained fixed in place.
“I need bandages, sutures!” Rosemary said, her voice quavering with desperation as she struggled to pull off the cobbled-together scraps of the native’s outfit.
Very slowly, Carter gestured to the empty satchel dangling from Lamont’s hand and began to make weaving and winding motions with his hands. “We need the things you took from this bag,” He said in an even tone.
The natives watched him from the shadows, wide-eyed and motionless.
“We don’t have time for this,” Rosemary growled. Pulling a strip of rough fabric from the limp body, she cocked her head toward Lamont. “Oy, see if you can clean those off.”
Dropping the bag, Lamont set to work pulling off the trinkets that were hooked and tied to the unevenly cut garments. Palming the bits of bone, stone and metal, he stuffed them absently in one of the large pockets of his coat and began to rinse the rags in the faintly glowing water of the pool. The patch on his sleeve maintained a lavender color, reassuring him that the radioactivity of the water was no higher than the ambient levels in the cave, so the glow must be the effect of some native bioluminescence.
Rosemary bit down hard on her lower lip as she tried to wrap the rags as tightly as she could around the small man’s side, from which blood was still flowing freely into black rivulets on the cave floor. But Lamont could see that it was too late. The native had stopped breathing.
Something had changed in the atmosphere. He watched Rosemary hesitate momentarily before pressing her lips to those of the native, her hands pressed hard against his small chest. What was it? Slowly, it dawned on him that the people huddled at the fringes of the cavern were no longer silent. They had begun a quiet, rhythmic chant.
Next: Spectre of Death
While it's not clear which way this will go, I cannot help but feel this is ominous