"Hell," said Jarl Gare, "I'll go down and show you."
Jarl Gare's wiry, whip-scarred body slid down the limb on which they
stood until it reached the crotch of the huge tree. He started down the
trunk. Waltk watched him quietly.
Jarl Gare stopped suddenly. Then, slowly, he inched his way back up the
trunk to the limb where the Jovian stood.
"I see what you mean," he said. "This was something I hadn't figured
on." He sat down on the limb, letting his legs dangle.
Whatever had them hemmed in wasn't intangible. It was real. His foot
had touched it. It had felt cold and gave slightly. Jarl Gare brought
the foot up and looked at the toes. They looked unharmed, but seemed
numb.
He pinched them and felt no more sensation than if they had grown numb
from loss of circulation. They were cold to his touch.
Was that force thin-skinned like a balloon or solid as a plasticine
ball?
"Waltk," he said, "Break me off a good-sized branch."
The Jovian slid farther out on the limb, snapped off a branch the
thickness of his wrist and about three feet long and brought it to Jarl
Gare.
"Watch it closely," he ordered Waltk.
He dropped the heavy branch. It fell about twenty feet, and stopped
abruptly. Then slowly, like a ruptured duralloy canoe, it started
downward again, but gaining speed. It struck the ground, but neither
Waltk nor Jarl Gare could hear it strike.
Then the force wasn't solid.
He became aware that the foot which had touched the force was beginning
to tingle. The power it released to numb was only temporary then.
Jarl Gare chuckled. Their bodies might be numbed for a while, but they
would be free of the force.
Quickly, he slid down the branch again. At approximately the same spot
where he'd stopped before, he halted again and reached out tentatively
with his toes, touching the numbness.
He looked back at Waltk. "Follow me," he ordered.
Then Jarl Gare jumped. It was like leaping into frigid water from a
steaming shower bath. The shock wiped the consciousness from Jarl
Gare, but not before he felt his body falling freely. He didn't feel
the lesser shock as his body struck the spongy sward of the jungle.
* * * * *
Awareness that his face hurt came to Jarl Gare first. It was a
recurring pain. First it stung, then the pain retreated. Then it stung
again....
He realized that someone was methodically slapping his face. He opened
his eyes. Waltk stopped slapping him.
The big Jovian was grinning. "It is all above us now," he said.
Jarl Gare stood up, and almost fell down again, staggering, feeling no
sensation in his legs.
Waltk supported him. "It will leave. My body is tingling only
pleasantly now."
Sensations came back quickly. Even Jarl's eyes began to tingle in
harmony with the thousand prickles that coursed over his body.
Finally he could limp along and as the power returned to his muscles he
began to step out briskly.
"What was it?" Waltk asked.
Jarl Gare shrugged. "I don't know for sure, but it must have been some
sort of thin force field--able to resist concerted pressure, but not
quick, sharp shocks like our leaping bodies."
The tangled jungle finally dwindled away and the pair were striding
across fields rich with vegetation.
"It is beautiful," Waltk declared. "Such bright colors shining like
jewels through this fog."
Jarl Gare glanced at Waltk sharply, and then at the gray vegetation.
He grinned. "I wish I had your eyes, Waltk, or been raised on Jupiter
where I'd have to develop such keen perception."
Waltk shrugged his big shoulders. "You Earthmen have good eyes, too,
but you do not need them as much as we do."
"Are we still heading right?" Jarl Gare asked.
Waltk nodded. They plodded on.
That night they supped on a queer animal that Waltk had run down and
throttled with his bare hands. It tasted like beef-steak. Waltk ate
prodigiously, but Jarl Gare, who wanted to be sharp and quick on the
morrow, ate sparingly.
During the night, Jarl awakened several times, his nerves on edge for
the test he knew lay ahead, but Waltk slept heavily.
When they awakened the Chameleon men were there.
[Illustration: _When they awoke the Chameleon men were there._]
Waltk was on his feet instantly, his great hands reaching out. Jarl
came to his feet more slowly, wondering that the Chameleon men had not
slain them while they slept.
The skins of the Chameleon men were a mottled gray, colored to match
the gray background in which they lived, he observed. There were a
dozen of them ranged around the big Jovian and the slight Earthman.
Their barbed two-pronged spears were held lightly in their webbed
hands, and their lidless eyes stared blankly at the naked pair.
Jarl Gare waited quietly, one hand on the powerful biceps of his
companion.
Finally, he became aware of a picture growing in his mind. Of a vine
and tree-latticed river spouting out of a jungle into a deep pool. All
around the edges of the pool were stacked great piles of huge oyster
shells.
The surface of the pool broke regularly, conical heads popped out
and the mottled bodies swam toward shore, depositing the huge shells
where they were taken by other Chameleon men, expertly split open and
examined.
One out of three yielded a pulsating pearl.
Then into Jarl Gare's mind came another picture. He and Waltk leaping
through the trees, then jumping through the force field, finally coming
to the fields, leaving the jungle behind. Then a picture of the pearl
beds again. Now a picture of strange men--wrestling with the Chameleon
men, throwing great weights, leaping, diving into the pool, racing
against the Chameleon men in their own element.
A great sigh lifted Jarl Gare's breast.
"Waltk," he cried. "We have passed all but the final test. One more,
and the pearls are ours."
The Chameleon men nodded and turned, to march ahead of them across the
fields.
Jarl Gare was exulting. "I will win a pearl--a glorious gray pearl
pulsing with life and beauty. I have no weakness, Waltk. My quest is
almost over."