"Did they have fog-piercers?" Jarl Gare asked.
"Yes," Waltk grunted. "I remembered what you said." He handed over a
pair of glasses and the special light. "You would not need these. I see
enough for both of us."
There was a muted splash from the river.
Waltk's great hands seized Jarl Gare about the waist and lifted him.
"Three splashes--then heave," Jarl Gare said.
The next splash was louder, the second louder and longer and, when the
third crashed into the night, Jarl Gare was flung as if from a catapult
over the fence.
As his naked body struck the river, his mind exulted. It was perfect
timing, the splash of the river beast drowning out his own.
Jarl Gare trod water, waiting. The Jovian's hurtling figure was a dark
blotch against the fog. Jarl swallowed a deep breath of air before the
splash of water from the Jovian's body struck him.
* * * * *
The two of them floated quietly, letting the river water grow sluggish
again. The splashing of the beasts grew nearer. Jarl Gare heard the big
Jovian breathing hoarsely. He said reassuringly, "They are harmless,
Waltk. I've told you so a dozen times."
"I have never seen one of them," Waltk said hoarsely. "I fear nothing I
have seen. You have only told me of them."
Only a few feet away, one of the river beasts suddenly lunged out of
the water. Waltk squealed as the huge body loomed in the air over them,
then landed between them, sending spray cascading over them.
Waltk struck out at the beast and then began to chuckle. Jarl Gare
heard the chuckle through the echoes of the splash.
The beast was gone. "Look," said Waltk, holding up one hand. It held a
blob of dripping flesh. "It is weak. I have seen it and I am unafraid."
For answer, Jarl Gare who had just donned the infra-red glasses, tapped
Waltk on the shoulder and plunged under the water. He had sighted the
ray of an infra-red light on the river.
Jarl Gare swam under water, moving with the current. He felt the
movement of the water behind him and knew Waltk was following.
He angled for the far bank. On arrival he slid his head and eyes out
carefully. The infra-red light was far up the river, following the
jumping river beasts.
Without ripple or sound, Waltk broke the surface of the river.
Their two naked bodies glistening with the water, Jarl Gare and Waltk
stepped out of the river and slid into the luxurious growth of the
jungle.
One step in the climb to freedom and wealth had been accomplished! Jarl
Gare chuckled, patting the mighty arms of his companion.
"Can you lead us in a straight line through the jungle if I give you a
pointer?" Jarl Gare asked. He knew the answer--but he liked to preen
his ego on the knowledge that his brain had evolved the plan. Waltk
grunted.
"Look back at the Hole," Jarl Gare said.
The Jovian turned, his eyes intent. "I see it," he said.
"The high radio tower?" The Jovian, grunted. "The guard's barracks?"
Again the Jovian grunted.
"Draw an imaginary line from the tower through the center of the
barracks. Our path will extend along that line."
"Come," said Waltk. He led Jarl Gare back up the river, watching the
tower. He halted finally, facing across the river, and then made an
abrupt about-face.
He closed his eyes and stood tense, unmoving as minutes dripped past.
"I have it," he said.
_Brains_, chuckled Jarl Gare to himself. _Use every weapon, every
tool. But it was easy. Waltk was of a race which had developed for
self-preservation the sense of taking a straight line between two
points. In their vast world where landmarks were absent, it was a
necessity._
Here on Venus that sense would lead Jarl Gare to freedom and wealth.
It was like a radio beam on the space lanes, but the Jovian needed no
sending station. He was the station itself, able to orient himself if
he went off course.
They started out through the jungle--naked and unarmed--aiming straight
for the Venusian pearl-beds which, by Jarl Gare's estimate, lay three
hundred miles north of the Hole. Three hundred miles between hell and
heaven.
* * * * *
Waltk was tireless, his great body immune to the ravages of the
sharp-edged undergrowth and the strangling vines. He had no need of a
path. He made his own, guided by that unfailing sense of direction.
Jarl Gare slid along in the Jovian's wake, his passage cleared by the
strength of his companion.
Jarl used his infra-red lamp sparingly, for fear Earth patrols might be
wearing the special glasses and discover the beam.
The patrols were tough and relentless. They shot first and then asked
questions.
Jarl used the lamp to reassure himself, even though Waltk grunted when
anything out of the ordinary appeared, describing it to his companion.
Their first sleep came when Jarl Gare judged they had come almost a
third of the distance to the pearl-beds. He suppressed the hunger pains
in his belly by telling Waltk again the story of the Venusian pearls.
They lay in a cradle of a great tree whose five great arms spread out
from the trunk.
"I saw one once, Waltk," Jarl Gare said, and his voice was soft. "It
was back on Earth, and it was the property of one of the richest men
on Earth--Voltane, inventor of the force field that protects space
cruisers from asteroids and space fragments. He gave half his wealth
for it. And he was rated as worth four million credits."
"Two million credits for a jewel? He was a fool," Waltk said.
"Ah, but, Waltk, you should have seen it. He displayed it once a month
in public. And the crowds that gathered.... It was gray, but it pulsed
and throbbed as it were alive."
Waltk said seriously, "I did not know the pearls were gray. I had heard
they were pink or red or orange. I never heard of a gray one."
"Nor had I," Jarl Gare nodded. "But there it was. It wasn't the color
that attracted me, but the life force that seemed to throb within it.
"That day I decided I would have one--though I knew there were only
four of them on Earth. But there was no way for me to get to Venus--"
"I know," said Waltk, "You have told me. You were Earthbound because
you had been in Earth police custody too often. But you made a plan.
Earthmen convicted of treason, murder and other high crimes were sent
to The Hole. So you killed a man--"
"And was sent to the Hole. But for you, Waltk, my plan would have
failed. I needed your strength--your instinct--your eyes. I promised
you a pearl, too."
"You have already given it to me," Waltk said quietly. "Freedom from
The Hole, if only for a while. Because you led me from the Hole, I will
help you until your quest is ended. I swear it."
Jarl Gare chuckled to himself. _The simple-minded brute! He thinks he's
free. For the moment, sure, but when he meets the Venusians he's done.
Good riddance. A tool should be discarded if there's no more use for
it._
* * * * *
The gentle touch of Waltk's big hand on his shoulder awakened him. "The
Chameleon men," Waltk whispered.
Hastily, Jarl Gare slipped on the glasses and seized the light.
"Where?" he asked.
"They are in a circle about the tree."
Jarl Gare swerved the light around the tree. A hundred yards away
was the edge of the circle. The infra-red showed them--dark, hunched
figures.
"They just seem to be waiting for something," Jarl Gare said.
"Us," Waltk said laconically.
Jarl Gare went through the card-catalog of his brain. The Chameleon
men, the Venusian natives, evolved from reptiles who walked upright,
were intelligent but could converse with men only through thought
pictures. They were the guardians of the pearl-beds.
Their vision in their fog world was as good if not better than Waltk's.
They needed no infra-red rays to penetrate the fog as the Earthmen did.
They had fought viciously against colonization by Earthmen. Despite
punitive measures by Earth, they were not conquered and finally there
had been an Earth-Venus treaty.
Earthmen were permitted access to the oil fields and were allowed to
create The Hole. In token of the great pact, the Earth had given its
largest, most perfect diamond to Venus. Venus, ruled by its hierarchy
of the Guardian Priests, had given a pearl.
The pearl had touched off cupidity on Earth--and adventurers by the
score had attempted to wrest others.
Earth at first had sought to halt the adventurers, but Venus had
replied cryptically. "Let them come. If they can obtain a pearl, they
have won it fairly."
Of the hundreds who had tried, only three had won through successfully.
Only three had been strong enough to pass the test of weakness.
If an Earthman made it to the pearl-beds, he was given the test of
weakness. If he passed it, he went free with a pearl of his choice. If
he lost, he disappeared.
Only three ... and Jarl Gare chuckled. Soon there would be four. Jarl
Gare.
The Venusians were sluggish moving and web-footed, perfectly at home on
their spongy earth. But in the trees?
Jarl Gare spoke quietly to Waltk. "We can escape them by traveling
through the trees."
"I could," said Waltk, "but you would be too slow. They would capture
you."
Jarl Gare looked at Waltk appraisingly. "On your back, I would not slow
you too much."
Waltk grinned widely, his moon face wrinkling. He laughed throatily.
"You would not slow me at all. I had not thought of that."
Jarl Gare's ray gun swept the circle again. "I wish I could see them,"
he said. "I'd like to know what they looked like if I met them face to
face."
Waltk's eyes turned to one of the waiting figures. "They are as tall
as you. Their heads are conical, set on sloping shoulders without much
neck. Their bodies are mottled green and red and brown. They carry
two-pronged spears. Their feet are webbed."
"I have seen pictures of them," Jarl Gare said. "But they weren't
colored. I remember reading that they can change the colors of their
skin to blend with surroundings."
"They blend well," Waltk said. "It was difficult for me to see them at
first after I had sensed them."
Waltk slung Jarl Gare on his back. A tensing of his mighty thews and
one leap took them to a tree thirty feet away. Then they were swinging
swiftly through the upper reaches of the forest, propelled by the
Jovian's strength, made even more powerful by the lesser gravitational
pull of Venus.
A mile away Waltk halted, while Jarl Gare swept the forest behind him
with the infra-red ray. He laughed. "They're still sitting there,
waiting for us."
"Good," said Waltk. "It is easier to travel in the trees."
He resumed the role of carrier, and went plunging on.
* * * * *
The hours of flight through the trees seemed hardly to touch the
reserves of the Jovian's strength.
But suddenly, abruptly, he halted.
"We cannot go further through the trees," he said to a puzzled Jarl
Gare.
"The end of the forest ahead?" Jarl Gare asked. "That means we're less
than a hundred Earth miles from the beds."
"No," Waltk said. "Not the end of the forest. There is something I
don't understand. I feel a pressure ahead of us ... as if some horrible
fate awaits us."
Jarl Gare's first reaction was to brush away Waltk's fears as if merely
caused by not understanding what lay ahead. It was like Waltk's fear
of the water beasts. But then he remembered the intuitive sense the
Jovians had.
"We'd better go down, then," Jarl Gare decided.
"No," said Waltk. "It is the same there."
"Then we'll go around it. Come on."
An ironic smile blossomed on Waltk's moon face.
"It is the same everywhere," he said. "To either side, above, below,
ahead and behind us."
Jarl Gare, whose fierce desire for a Venusian pearl had lifted him
above panic, felt only a twinge of exasperation.
"I feel nothing," he said, irritated. "Why can't we keep going?"