The lights went out. The Earthman was at his side, leading him out. He
was given his heat-gun. "But what--why?--I don't understand," Grant
said, bewildered.
His escort looked at him, opened his mouth, and showed Grant he was
tongueless. He positioned Grant on the square and a moment later Grant
was back on the sidewalk.
Discouragement was on him like a great weight. It deadened him. It
smothered him. He paced the streets and eventually found himself
before a restaurant. He remembered then that he had not eaten for a
long time. He went in and ordered oysters. That was about the only
meat you could buy in The Pass and be sure of not eating some sentient
being. Then, waiting, he sat in a booth with his head between his
hands.
It was apparent they didn't want him to have any part of his
stones--the stones he had spent six months and risked his life
for--the stones that meant so much to him and to Beth. They wanted all
of his stones. The dirty Shylocks. They weren't willing to take half,
or two-thirds, or three-fourths. They wanted all. They weren't willing
for him to have any part of them. He would have settled for ten per
cent, which would have been over fifty thousand dollars, but they
didn't offer him ten per cent. They offered nothing. They wanted all.
Netse must have been contacted by Relegar and told to keep hands off.
That was why Grant had wanted to see Netse first. But he had not
dreamed that Netse would refuse him entirely. He had thought it would
be merely a matter of the price.
Now what could he do? He didn't dare let the constrictor have more
than three day's head-start, for the saurian would finish digesting
the fish in about five days. That meant Grant would have to start back
to the swamp tomorrow. But Relegar's spies would report every move.
The minute he set out, Relegar would be notified. And Relegar would
come after him. Grant shuddered. Where his hands touched his face his
finger tips were cold.
Relegar would find him. The spider had a locator sense that was
infallible. He could set out days later and find Grant unerringly. And
how could one fight the Uranian when they met? Relegar's nervous
system was so constructed that he was practically impossible to kill.
You could boil him or freeze him without injuring him. Uranians had
been boiled alive in prussic acid for forty hours without ill effects.
You could cut off legs and even sever the head and they would still
live. So what could a man do?
There was only one thing Grant knew. That was to go after the stones.
They were his and he would never give them up. They might take the
stones away from him, but he would never give them up.
So the next morning he overhauled his suit and patched it. He got
fresh oxygen and bought a meager supply of food. He had one more good
meal and started out south again with the single stone in his
watch-pocket.
It took him seven hours to reach the place where he had left the
constrictor. It was gone, of course. How far, he could not know. He
took the one telepathic stone from his pocket. He found a spot where
he could sit in the open, cross-legged, with his eyes fixed on the
stone. From the corner of his eye he saw a brown detached eye on a
stalk pop up from the surface of the water, but he paid no attention.
He concentrated on the stone.
The stone had a fair polish. He looked at its surface and shut out all
the normal sounds from his ears. The stone seemed to be in motion on
the inside, and presently that motion communicated itself to his mind.
He had a picture of a constrictor, lying sleepily in a pool of brown
water surrounded by heavy, deep grass that hung over the banks and
grew down into the water.
He heard now the distant bellow of a swamp-ox, the buzzing of aquatic
bees. Slowly he turned the stone on its edge and revolved it
carefully. When the picture was clearest in his mind he picked out an
orientation point in the distant mountains. Then, well pleased, he put
the stone in his pocket, got into his diving-suit, screwed on the
helmet, adjusted the oxygen, and stepped off into the brown water of
the swamp.
The bottom here was steep but it was good. It was hard and not more
than knee-deep in mud. He traveled carefully, freezing on occasion
when huge shadows moved above him. He was in fifty feet of water and
he liked that better because it was easier to go unnoticed. He avoided
a patch of electric cactus, for the spines would have electrocuted him
even through the suit, and he went far around an area of white
bull-root, shaped like women's legs, because he knew the bull-root was
always infested with swamp-razors that would cut through the seams of
his diving-suit.
When he came out of the water he found his orientation point and kept
going. He came to a wide stretch of water, and with the wind at his
back, made fast time by climbing on an island of floating grass and
going straight across. This was important. He needed to find the
constrictor by the time Relegar started after him.
The spider could travel much faster than Grant for it walked on water
where Grant was forced to wade on the bottom. But Relegar would wait a
while. He wouldn't want to be on the surface of Venus any longer than
necessary, even for half a million dollars, so he would give Grant
plenty of time, since there was no danger of his getting away.
Grant was encouraged by the fact that the constrictor did not appear
to be far away. Everything here depended on his reaching the saurian
two days ahead of Relegar. Not that he expected to run. That was
hopeless. But he did have a partial plan. He thought he knew how to
recover the stones and to face the Uranian without being immediately
killed. And he hoped for some now unforeseen development that
subsequently would help him to get through The Pass.
That last item was a weak point, a very weak point, but there was
nothing he could do about it now. He could not wait for a plan. He had
to go ahead and trust his own ingenuity to devise a means of getting
to Aphrodite later. If he could keep Relegar from going back to The
Pass until he himself could get through The Pass, then he would be
unmolested, for Relegar was master of The Pass, and no entity of any
sort, not even as powerful a one as Netse, would touch any being in
whom Relegar was interested unless Relegar himself should order it.
If Grant could get through The Pass and across Division Street he
would be safe, for Aphrodite proper was under the jurisdiction of the
Planetary Police, and even Relegar respected them.
* * * * *
Grant found the constrictor on the second day, lying in a shallow pool
with only its dorsal spines showing. Working slowly and carefully and
entirely under water, he located the saurian's head, concealed in a
clump of floating grass. The reptile was still in something of a
torpor from its meal, and Grant had no difficulty in approaching it
through the water and attacking it with the heat-gun on the soft part
of the neck below the head.
The first bolt must have gone through and severed its spinal column,
but Grant risked destruction from the threshing body long enough to
burn the head off entirely. He got out on solid ground and waited
until sundown for the monster's contortions to die. Then he worked
fast. The flying scavenger-foxes were already settling on the
constrictor's back and tearing out great chunks of flesh. He went back
under water and cut out the saurian's gizzard with the heat-ray. He
dragged it off to one side and tremblingly cut it open with his knife,
and he was relieved and exultant when he recovered all fifteen of the
stones. The bag had disintegrated, but he put the stones carefully in
his pockets.
Then he went back once more. He cut off a piece of the hide two feet
square. He took only the outer hide, which was dry and which held the
great iridescent scales that formed isotopes after death. From some
marsh-bamboo and some wire-vines he formed a shield. By that time it
was midnight. He turned his light on the pool where the saurian had
been, and shuddered. The water was dull red, and alive with creatures
fighting each other to get to the carcass. The surface was covered
with flying things, some small, some huge, all fighting, fighting.
Life on Venus was an eternal, bloody fight. This slaughter, once
started, would go on for weeks, until the fighting creatures in this
immediate area of the swamp were exhausted.
Grant snapped off the light as clouds of flying things arose. He
started down the neck of dry land and walked all night, going as far
as he could without submerging, getting out of range of the holocaust
around the dead constrictor. Eventually he came to a lavawood tree. He
examined it carefully, then climbed it. He found a crotch in the
limbs. He lay down and hung his arms and legs over the limbs, pulled
the shield over him, and went to sleep.
From the brilliant, blinding light of the sun even through the clouds,
and the vapor arising from the surface of the swamp, he knew it was
mid-afternoon when he awoke. He started up, but long habit stopped him
almost as soon as he moved. He opened his eyes and was fully awake,
listening for the sound that had awakened him. He heard it, a rasping
noise like the sound of a knife-blade scraped against the grain of a
fresh hog-skin. He looked across the swamp. Less than fifty yards away
was Relegar, walking toward him on the water. The sound came from the
scraping of his gray poison-mandibles against each other.
Relegar's mouth, as wide as his body, was open. The two bulbous eyes
gleamed like pieces of polished metal. They saw Grant. The spider's
sixteen jointed legs, that held his purple body three feet above the
water, moved too fast for Grant to follow them. The Uranian skittered
across a hundred feet of water and walked out on the land.
His bone-scraping voice came to Grant in the tree. "I'll take the
stones now." It was a sinister voice. Grant felt a crawling,
instinctive horror as the spider came toward him, its jointed legs
moving delicately. "You've saved me some trouble by finding them."
Grant overcame his paralysis and reached for the heat-gun. Relegar saw
the motion and stopped. "You can't hurt me with that heat-projector,"
he said. "You might shoot off a leg, but I'd have you half eaten
before you could fire a second bolt."
The knowledge hit Grant with what was almost a shock that there was
some way he could get the best of Relegar, otherwise the big spider
would not have spoken at all. He well knew that he couldn't kill
Relegar with the heat-gun. He could burn off a leg, yes, but he
doubted that the infra-rays would affect the spider's body at all. He
moved a little on the limbs, got a hold on the snake-skin shield, and
dropped to the ground.
Relegar darted forward to meet him. But ten feet away the spider
stopped, and Grant knew he had felt the radiation from the snake-skin.
Relegar's mouth hung open, his white fangs gleaming in the red maw.
The two bulbous eyes were suddenly shot with the red fire of anger.
Grant did not hesitate. As he landed on the ground he fired a
heat-bolt at one of Relegar's left legs. It smoked. There was an odor
of burned hair. The queer material of the leg glowed white for an
instant and then burned in two and the bottom part dropped off.
Relegar squealed. His two eyes almost exploded in a rage of red. He
wasn't permanently injured--he would grow a new leg--but he was
furious because he dared not come close to the shield. The radiation
would paralyze him within a couple of seconds. Grant saw his body sag
a little on the corner where the leg had been, and then he had one of
those flashes of intuition that every being had to have, to live long
in the swamp. He knew how to win this fight. He trained the heat-gun
on the second leg on the same side and pressed the trigger. That leg
burned in two and Relegar's body sagged still more.
Grant started on the third one. A feeling of triumph was growing in
him. Then Relegar charged.
Grant hadn't expected that. There was little he could do but hold the
shield frantically before him to try to ward off the fangs and the
mandibles.
He had had no idea that the Uranian's body was so heavy. It seemed to
Grant the thing must weigh three or four hundred pounds. It thundered
into him and knocked him over as if he had been a straw. The heavy
hoofs galloped over him. He was surprised, but he rolled on over and
came to his feet, shooting.
He got the fourth and fifth legs this time. Relegar's body sagged
considerably, but the spider, his entire body turning red with rage,
spun around and charged again. This time the great mouth was open, the
fangs ready, and the mandibles were extended. Grant left himself open
until he could feel the spider's fetid breath in his face, then he
flung out his shield.
The sharp fangs struck it. Relegar turned into a tornado of fury for
perhaps a second, trying to shake the skin from his teeth. But it was
too late. The skin came loose, but the radiation had paralyzed the
spider. He sank feebly to the ground with the shield under him. His
eyes glared with unutterable malignant hate, but that was all. His
muscles were impotent.
Grant stood a few feet away, getting his breath, feeling the
trip-hammer in his temple slow down to normal. Then he aimed. The
sixth, seventh, and eighth legs burned off. He put the pistol in its
holster.
"I'm not going to try to kill you," he said. "I suppose that's
impossible anyway, short of cutting you up into small pieces, and I
don't relish that idea. But I'll leave you the snake-skin. It will
have passed the peak of its radioactivity by tomorrow and you can
start back for The Pass. But you won't go back very fast. You've got
legs on only one side. It's going to be slow navigating, especially on
water. In fact, I think maybe you'll have to wait until you grow some
new legs."
He patted his pockets filled with half a million dollars' worth of
echindul stones. "Long before that I'll be in Aphrodite depositing my
stones at the First Interplanetary Bank."
He watched Relegar's eyes turn dead, cold black, then he screwed on
his helmet, adjusted the oxygen, and stepped off into the brown water.
He felt rather good, wading through the mud at the bottom of the
swamp. He was somewhat astonished that it had fallen to him, a nobody,
to be the means of breaking up Relegar's hold on The Pass. But it was
a very satisfactory feeling. He thought about Beth and New Jersey and
strawberries with fresh cream. He sighed happily. His luck had
changed.
* * * * *