"Invisibility. Or its equivalent. Ever heard of protective coloration?
Camouflage? Well, the creatures of the Forest are the most perfect
camouflage experts that exist. They don't simply trick your eyes,
either. They trick the other senses. If you smell perfume, take it
easy, or you'll find yourself asleep, while your head's being chewed
off by a lizard that looks as nasty as it smells good. If you see a
path and it feels solid, don't walk too far on it. Things have made
that path. A carnivorous moss that feels exactly like smooth dirt
underfoot--till their digestive juices start working. If you hear me
yelling your name, take it easy. There are birds like harpies here that
imitate sounds the way parrots do."
Garth's grin was tight. "You'll find out. It's camouflage carried to
the last degree, for offense and defense. I know the Forest pretty
well; you don't. You haven't developed a sort of sixth sense--an
instinct--that tells you when something smells bad, even though it
looks like a six-course dinner."
"All right," the Captain said. "This is your territory, not mine. It's
up to you."
It was, Garth decided later as he led the way through the black columns
of the trees, very much up to him. Brown and the others were tough,
hard fighters, but they didn't know the subtleties of this hell-hole,
where death lurked everywhere disguised. He had got a drink from
Sampson and his nerves were less jagged, but physical exhaustion still
gripped him. He'd been on the skids for a long time, and was in rotten
bad shape. But if the girl could stand it, he could.
It was warmer in the Forest; the trees seemed to exhale heat and
moisture, and there was no snow on the ground. Great ebony pillars of
giant trees, rising hundreds of feet into the air, made the place a
labyrinth. And the deceptive reddish twilight made walking difficult,
even to Garth's trained senses.
There was trouble, though. When a gorgeously-colored butterfly,
flame-red and green, fluttered down toward Paula, Garth hastily slapped
at the insect with a thick leaf he was carrying. "Watch out for those,"
he told the girl, nodding toward the crushed body. "They're poisonous.
Bad medicine."
And once, as Brown was about to seat himself on a rounded grayish
boulder, Garth whirled the man away just in time. A hole in the rock
gaped open, and a pair of fanged mandibles snapped out, clicking
together viciously. Garth put a bullet in the thing. It heaved itself
up on spidery legs, revealing that the "rock" was a carapace covering
an insect-like body. And it took a long time to die.
There were other, similar incidents. They had a bad effect on the men,
even Sampson. The crew Brown had picked was tough, but the Black Forest
was like distilled poison. It was easier to face a charging rhino than
to travel through this ebony jungle where silent, secret death lurked
concealed, in a diabolic masquerade.
That was the first day. The second was worse. The trees were thicker,
and sometimes it was necessary to use _machete_-blades to hew through
the tangled undergrowth.
* * * * *
Another day--and another--and another, following the clues on Paula's
cipher map. They found the first guidepost, the hill honeycombed with
caves, and from there went on to the east, camping at the edge of a
ravine that dropped away into unplumbed darkness.
Camouflage-moss grew here, looking deceptively like solid ground. One
of the men ventured too close to the edge of the cleft, and the moss
crumbled beneath him, dropping him into a nest of the roots--twining,
writhing cannibalistic serpents with sucker-disks that drank blood
thirstily.
They got him out in time, luckily. But the men's nerves were jolted.
After that, day after day, constant alertness was vital. The party
walked with guns and knives in their hands. Their footsteps rang hollow
in the dead, empty silence of the Forest....
It was only Garth's knowledge of the dark wilderness that got them
through to the interior. After a week, he was further in than he had
ever penetrated before, except when he had crashed the air-car with Doc
Willard five years ago.
But they were getting closer--nearer! More and more often Garth
remembered the black notebook that might hold the cure for the Silver
Plague. For some indefinable reason he had come to feel that Paula's
goal was also his.
It was logical enough. They were searching for a lost treasure-house of
the Ancient Race, guarded, perhaps, by the Zarno. And Garth was certain
that, during that period of partial amnesia, he and Willard had been
captives of the Zarno. He had been drugged with the Noctoli poison by
day, but at night he had wakened in a bare cell with his friend--a cell
with walls of metal, he recalled. It had been windowless. Lighted by a
faint glow from one corner.
It checked. A ruin, once built by the Ancients, now inhabited by the
Zarno.