Five hours and approximately 1,800 airline miles from Quanta City,
Alston switched back from rocket power to the atomic motors. Not daring
to use radar for navigation or altitude soundings, he was not certain
exactly where he was. Climbing swiftly into the murk, he flew blindly
by dead reckoning, and most of the journey was accomplished in or above
the miles-deep canopy of dust and vapor which eternally shrouds Venus
from all view of other worlds.
On the silver, skimming over the limitless expanse of cloud banks,
rainbow-tinted with reflected light, the ship had a view of
breath-taking extent. They were somewhere over the Tihar Forest, he
knew, and within striking distance of his destination. But until he
descended below the obscurity of unbroken mist-seas, the exact position
was guesswork. Blades flailing in the thin, stratospheric air, the
'copter slanted downward, settling swiftly. It hovered for seconds
above a roil surface of blinding brilliance, then churning grayness
enveloped them, limiting vision to a few yards radius.
Temptation to use the sounding device was overwhelming, but he knew
that hundreds of spotters were tuning detectors eagerly, hoping
for just such a lapse, to triangulate his position. With muttered
profanity, he restrained the impulse.
Sparing a moment from peering anxiously below, he eyed Kial Nasron
resentfully.
"You should have 'chuted down when I gave you the chance," he told her
morosely. "It was a better risk than this."
"I wanted to come," she replied, with a toss of head. "This is the
Tihar Forest, isn't it?"
He grinned. "I think so. We'll know in a few minutes if the ceiling is
high enough to give me a chance to pull this crate out of the fall. If
not, I don't think we'll care."
"I'm an easy pick-up, but hard to shake. Since we're landing, you might
untie my hands."
"And have you get foolish notions of grabbing the controls?"
"What good would that do me? I can't fly a 'copter."
Alston stared through the viewports. The ship appeared to be descending
a well of infinite depth with featureless gray walls in which flickered
eery light.
"You're a bigger fool than I thought," he admitted. "I had a vague idea
of turning you loose with the ship, later on, after I'd smashed the
radar and wireless. How d'you expect to get back?"
"We'll figure that out when we come to it," the girl said confidently.
"Maybe we can still make a deal. If we find my sister and take us both
back, you'll have something to bargain with. My father will make them
meet any terms you say."
Alston disillusioned her brutally. "Don't count on it, sister. I'm
on a one-way ticket. The penalty for attempted escape is death, in
the disintegrators. I've added kidnapping, stealing a ship, and some
assorted violence to my record. The least I'd get is life in the deep
mines, and I'd prefer the disintegrators to that. You'll have to find
yourself another hero."
Kial Nasron fell silent while Alston returned his attention to the
controls. Dark rifts appeared in the grayness, became restless mobile
patterns, like smoke swirling in a glass. The rotating blades overhead
caught denser air and set up curious disturbance areas in the mist.
Except for the lessened gravity, like the first moments in a rapidly
descending elevator, there was no sense of motion at all. The ship
might have been suspended in a dim, mist-shrouded pocket of space.
Tense at the controls, Alston did not turn as she spoke again.
"Perhaps, then, I can make contact with the searching parties, and
bargain with them. You don't know my father's influence. He can protect
you."
Alston grunted savagely. "No, thanks. I've had dealings with your
father. Maybe you don't remember. You were just a kid, away at school
on Earth. He helped railroad me. Figured I was not good enough for
Annelle, and that was one way to be rid of me. As if I had a chance,
anyhow. That was the joke. They called it sabotage, when the charge
should have been negligence under extenuating circumstances. Annelle
stood by and let him do it."
* * * * *
He was conscious of her voice, but it sounded distant, unreal.
"Then you did remember. I didn't know much about it. You were a
forbidden topic in the house. But you're wrong about Annelle. She cried
a lot before she forgot, and even Father talked of having the case
re-opened. Nothing came of it. I supposed you were guilty."
"I was. There was a choice of following orders or saving the ship. I
waited too long to decide. Men died. They were my friends. That was
important, the rest isn't. You're welcome to both your father and your
sister. I could even enjoy your predicament if I cared. But I'm past
that, long ago. None of you even exist to me."
"Then you won't mind if I try to reach the searching parties? They
could take me back--"
He laughed grimly. "And have you lead them to me? I'd be a fool to
trust you. Besides, none of them will get this far. None on the
surface. And the air patrols can't land. You're stuck with me, sister.
And don't expect any favors. I'm not in the mood."
Dark curtains parted suddenly below.
Immensity of somber desolation spread in all directions. The scene
was savage, monstrous, rich in vegetation, fitfully lighted by
distant volcanic flares. Jungle had stormed and over-run the visible
countryside. Like a vast green map it unrolled below them. Directly
beneath the plunging 'copter, and perilously close at hand, was a
jagged upthrust of bare rock, miles-high, towering almost into the gray
ceiling of mist.
Frantically, Alston worked at the controls. Airscrews whined, shrilled,
blasted. The muted thunder of atomic engines rose into deafening
crescendo. The blades overhead vibrated in frenzy of rotation.
The 'copter pulled from its steep fall, jerked forward like a startled
animal, then hesitated. One of the blades grazed the high pinnacle of
rock with a jarring crash. The ship rebounded, poised like a dancer,
then fell away, floundering in a crazy rhythm.
Fighting the wheel and stick, Alston was wrenched from his strapped
pilot-seat and wedged violently among the control bars.
The damaged blade broke loose and beat itself to exploding tatters
on the fuselage cabin. Gyrating, plunging end over end, the ship was
tearing itself to pieces. Extricating himself, the man shut off the
motors and switched to rocket power. Jets flamed and sputtered. Ground,
like a solid green wall, rose up toward the stricken ship. Thundering
jets painted a crazy pattern of brilliant crimson.
Righting the ship, Alston tried vainly to jettison the blades, but they
were lodged fast in the keys. Banshee wail of tortured brace wires rose
shrill and thin. In a sickening glide, the ship struck. By instinct,
Alston cut the power. Then, darkness....
Green, roaring avalanches engulfed the hurtling ship, wiped away the
landing gear. Upper branches grasped at the breaking fuselage, ground
at its metal plates with tearing force. Twice it broke clear, bounded
high in the air, and struck again. In a high tangle of treetops, it
lodged for seconds, then toppled and fell a sheer hundred feet before
coming to rest in a snarled webbing of vines and main limbs. Like a
broken moth, twitching and swaying, it hung there.
A band of natives found the wreckage. Like agile monkeys they swarmed
up the trees, found the occupants still unconscious, and lowered them
gently to the forest floor. The native leader solved this problem
with primitive directness. Taking a large mouthful of water from his
snakeskin canteen, he blew hard, spraying Alston's face liberally, then
repeating the process with the girl.
Water showering Alston jerked him instantly awake. Dazed and bruised,
he raised himself on one elbow and looked about. It was impossible that
he had survived the crash, but he seemed painfully alive. He sat up,
blinking.
A group of fox-headed natives surrounded him, their large ears flapping
excitedly. They waved spears and danced, chirping noisily, faceted eyes
on stalks protruding from their foreheads writhing and flickering with
curiosity and interest. Alston spoke to them in their own language of
weird, chirping monosyllables.
* * * * *
Kial Nasron was rousing. She showed less signs of battering than he
did, but evidently her return to consciousness was not an unmixed
blessing. Her cultured voice made unladylike comments.
Suddenly aware of the natives, Kial leaped to her feet and started
running like a frightened _yarnab_. The native leader hurled a
spear-shaft between her legs and brought her down heavily. His
followers carried her back.
"What will they do to us?" she wailed, shuddering as she looked at the
half-human creatures.
"Shut up," he ordered. "These are friends."
He addressed the leader and the chirping discussion went on. Partially
reassured, the girl examined the eery beings with curiosity which they
openly returned, picking at her garments, touching her skin, laughing
among themselves and making comments which she could not understand.
Vaguely manlike in form, the inhabitants of Tihar were spindly and
barrel-chested, with long, multiple-jointed limbs. Their slate gray
skin, covered with fine golden down, blended easily with the ocher moss
of the forest.
"Something is wrong," Alston told her finally. "These people are badly
frightened. They're leaving the forest and heading west into unknown
country. I don't understand it, and Tuluk is vague about the actual
danger. He's warning us to leave at once. And Tuluk doesn't scare
easily, so it must be something out of the ordinary."
The leader glanced apprehensively about as he talked, his voice rising
and falling in the birdlike cadences of his speech. Alston gestured
toward the wrecked ship, then the girl, shook his head in negation, and
shrugged eloquently.
Gesticulating, chirping wildly, the native chief rounded up his
followers and melted swiftly into the shadowed gloom of the forest.
"What was that all about?" asked Kial uneasily.
Alston snorted. "I still don't know. I explained that we could not go
in the ship. He wanted us to come with him. I told him that was equally
impossible, that you wouldn't last ten miles the way they travel.
Don't worry about it. There's danger, but we knew that. Besides, these
natives don't always make sense. They've different mental processes
from ours. Not quite human. What scared them might mean nothing to us.
Volcano, earthquake, food shortage. They're superstitious, too. Maybe a
god growled at them."
"What are we going to do?"
Alston grinned. "Hole up. I know where I am now. I hoped to get guide
service, but we won't need it. Tuluk told me how to get where we're
going. I spotted the place a while back on one of my survey trips.
Seems like a good place to hide for a while. I have a cache of supplies
there. Three hours of rough going, though. One hour, Tuluk said, but
that means three for us. Messy job, pawing through this muck."
Alston climbed into the trees and rummaged in the shattered 'copter
for usable equipment. His total find amounted to a pair of radilume
flashbeams, some tablets of food concentrate, water in a self-cooling
canteen and his heat gun. He scrambled back to the ground and struck
out boldly through the jungle.
It was Kial Nasron's first experience of Venusian forest. She wondered
how Alston could keep his directions at all. To her it was a vast
nightmare, staggering, impressive, but without order or definite form.
Here was nothing of the cultivated parklands of Earth. Titanic trees
towered upward and lost themselves in gloom, their knotted trunks like
the columns of a giant's temple. Overhead was a blank mass of foliage
so dense that practically no light filtered down from the uneasy gray
glare of sky.
Colossal tree-ferns and gigantic mushrooms gave the place a goblin
aspect, like the background of some sinister fairy-tale, and underfoot
the ground moved queasily as if she trod upon the crust of quagmire.
Coarse, thorny scrub and a moldering confusion of rotting tree trunks
blocked the aisles, and higher up interwoven vines and trailing
beards of moss knotted together the dense growth of trees in complex
tapestries of shadow. Footing was treacherous, although a luminosity
hovered above the sinks of decaying vegetation, and by this tricky
light, they made frequent detours to avoid bogholes and the bubbling
sinks of steaming-hot water. The air was thick, moist and nauseous with
the foulness of gas rising from the layers of mold. Each step was an
adventure.
After two hours of tramping and stumbling through choked aisles of
sodden jungle, Kial Nasron was out on her feet.
* * * * *
Fortunately, they had reached higher ground. Outcroppings of
lichen-crusted rock broke the morass of soft, unsteady ground, and she
fell less often. Alston paid no heed to her or her difficulties. He
marched steadily on, and, gasping and perspiration-soaked, she made
shift to keep up. A terror of being abandoned in the awesome wilderness
urged her faltering muscles.
They climbed a rise and came out on a flat, shelving rock at the top of
a watershed.
On the far side, the ledge overlooked a circular depression miles in
extent. Here, Alston halted. The strength went out of Kial, and she
collapsed weakly on the bare rock. Alston gave her food and water and
seemed bitterly amused by her plight.
"We're almost there," he said. "Better get used to it. We're home."
On the near side, the hollow was rimmed by sheer cliffs, across its
expanse, perhaps fifty miles away, was a chain of high, smoking
volcanoes, their red glare reflected from the overcast, drenching the
plain with hellish light. Hundreds of feet below was the pit floor,
fairly level and carpeted with flowing grass or the ocherous moss.
Before them, sloping from a wedge-like salient of the precipice, a
stone-flagged pathway lay straight across the plain toward the city!
At first, in the crimson splendor, it seemed less like a man-made
fabric than some curious natural formation rising from the rust-tinted
grasslands. In shape it was like a tangle of oddly regular hills and
the vegetation swarming over it added to the illusion. But a closer
look showed too much geometry for accidental weathering.
Gradually the outlines assumed form. City-size, it seemed to be the
complex ramifications of a single building, terraced, overgrown with a
thick matting of vines until the place resembled a hanging garden.
Kial Nasron suppressed a shiver, for there was an utterly alien quality
about the megalithic structure that both depressed and frightened
her. Over both city and hollow rose an aura of something dreadful and
unholy, as if the ghosts of some ancient dwellers brooded in forgotten
solitudes within.
As they descended the rough pathway and moved along the stone flagging
toward the abandoned megalopolis, both man and girl were conscious
of a quiver which ran through ground and air. Stopping, Alston knelt
and placed a hand flat on the ground. Even through the thick moss, a
vibration was perceptible, and something like a weak electric shock ran
up his arm, numbing wrist, elbow and the shoulder joint. Now he was
aware of a muted throbbing, like the beat of a heavy, steady pulse.
Nearer the city, ground tremors were stronger, and his ears caught
a clearly audible echo from the vibrating air. Had he been wrong in
believing the city was deserted? On the previous visit he had seen
nothing nor felt any awareness of an alien presence.
Before them, the path shone in the rubrous light, and the city wall
rose like a sheer cliff, casting a black shadow toward them like a
reaching hand.
Now the ruin seemed more complete than before, and a vanguard of the
forest reached out a dark arm, encircling the edifice.
"Looks as if the previous tenants had been careless with the fixtures,"
Kial Nasron said in mock bravado. "At least they did not forget the red
carpet."
"Quiet neighborhood," Alston echoed her thought. Suddenly he knew what
was different.
The silence. This time there was no hum of insect life, no rustling
as the wind moved through the grass. No sense of movement as the wild
things prowled at will within the dark labyrinths of the ancient city.
There was silence, complete, profound, blanketing and smothering every
sound save one, the muted throbbing.
Penetrating deeply into the shadow, they stood at last before a tall
gateway. As they hesitated, a long green snake of vine-creeper writhed
down from the stone frame, darting, coiling, lashing at them like a
living serpent.
Alston struck at it, then whipped out the heat gun and pressed the
stud. A pencil beam of dazzling brilliance leaped out. With a scorched
stench the tentacle withdrew, squirming hideously.
"Watch those things," he warned Kial Nasron. "Some of them are
dangerous. Their poison is a swift corrosive."
Inside the gateway was both sound and movement. A convulsive stirring
ran along the vine-covered walls, and a sound between a hiss and a
soft rustling struck their ears. Here, too, the pulsing throb was
more pronounced. It was as if the plant-things of the deep jungle had
over-run and conquered the city, turning it to some evil purpose of
their own. The city might be dead, but the forest was alive, watching,
waiting. Every wall and column was encrusted with dark masses of
greenery, every avenue an alley garlanded with vines and moss. Ugly,
twisting fungi and monstrous tree-ferns grew from the broken pavement.
Sinister ripples of movement coursed the man and girl. The city reeked
with fear.