"This path--what is it? Did you make it? Tell me things." He made a
gesture of appeal, for she was putting on that look of contempt once
more. "You see, I'm no more than an hour old on this planet--"
"Od so! Your brain is younger than that. Leave me, I have no time for
idiots."
Abruptly she stiffened, widened her eyes, lifted a finger to her red
lips for silence. The two of them stood close together in the misty
rain, their ears sharpened. Planter heard what she had heard--a
rustling, crunching approach, along some other angle of the jungle path.
The girl wrenched apart two sappy lengths of vine, and with a jerk
of her head bade Planter slip through into the great thicket. He did
so, and she followed. Turning, her lithe body close against his, she
brought her crossbow to the ready.
"Danger?" whispered Planter, and she nodded bleakly.
The approach was coming near. Planter judged that whatever threatened
them was two-legged, weighty, and great-lunged--many yards off, it
wheezed like a faulty engine. His companion's ears were better than
his, or more experienced. She gauged the nearness of the stranger, and
the crossbow went to her shoulder like a rifle. Planter saw that it
operated on a spring trigger that would trip a latch and release the
string. The bow, violently recovering from its bending, would force the
missile along a groove in the top of the stock. All parts--stock, bow,
and string--were of some massive dark metal, apparently treated with
grease to save it from the constant dampness. The missile itself was
not an arrow, but seemed the size and shape of a silvery fountain pen.
Planter burned to ask questions about it; but the enemy was in sight by
now, something of mottled green and black that shouldered upright along
the way between the thickets.
Planter felt his companion's body grow tense against his shoulder. Her
finger touched the trigger lightly. The metal string twanged, and with
a waspy hum the missile leaped toward its target. At the same time, a
little burst of flame showed from it, bright yellow. _Chock!_ the shot
went home, as that other shot against the thing called a muck-worm.
Down floundered the green-spotted form. At once the girl was out of
hiding, and stooping above her quarry.
Planter, following, peered with wonder and caution. He saw a body
larger than himself, and grotesquely of the same build. A dumpy torso
on massive back-bent legs like a cricket's; wide flapper feet, a
round, low head with a monstrous slash of mouth, big eyes now filming
with death, no nose at all--the creature was very like a nightmare
frog. But this frog wore garments, of linked and plaited metal wire
and rubbery-looking fabric. It had a silver belt, with pouches and
holsters. These pouches and holsters the girl was now plundering.
"Quick," she snapped at Planter over her rosy shoulder. "Take the
spoil. He will have friends, and they must not find us."
* * * * *
Her tone was still reminiscent of Disbro speaking to Max. Planter's
ravenous curiosity was at last completely overridden. "Young lady," he
said flatly. "I'm not prepared to endure any more--"
She suddenly screamed, not like a warrior but like any girl who is
mortally frightened.
Planter had the time to realize that she saw something just beyond him.
He pivoted and set himself as another of the froggy beings charged.
"More Skygors!" he heard a cry behind him, and he knew that it was
Skygors he faced.
Planter was a boxer of sorts, strong if not brilliant, and his
unthinking reflex was to plant his feet, bend his knees, and crouch
for attack or defense. That reflex shortened his height by several
inches, and saved his life. The Skygors that rushed him had pointed a
pistol-form weapon, from which came yellow flame as from the crossbow.
A silvery object meant to scatter his brains only sang above his head
with millimeters to spare. Before the pistol-like weapon could aim and
spit again, Planter had charged in.
It was all he could do, but it was enough. He jabbed viciously with his
left fist, followed with his right to the abdomen. The left knuckles
slashed soft flesh about the wide mouth, his right hand almost broke
on a hard belt-buckle. Both blows were staggering to the wheezing
adversary, who dropped its pistol and yelled with a voice like a steam
whistle. It made words, each of them almost deafening to Planter. To
silence it more than anything else, Planter drove in closer still and
lifted an uppercut as though it were a shovelful of gravel.
It found the point where a Terrestrial man would have a chin. Down
floundered the clumsy body, and Planter, with no thought of referees
or rules, set his heavy boot on the face and bashed it in. He stepped
across the subsiding form, in time to encounter another.
This one got great flappy hands upon him. Their grip was knowing,
powerful, wicked. The Skygor plucked him close, its mouth grinned into
a gape. It had teeth, it was going to bite.
He was held by the shoulders, and doubted if he could break away.
Instead of trying, he put his own hands to the thing's elbows, drew
his right knee tight to his chest and planted a toe in a metal-clad
midriff. Then, even as the open paw sought to seize his face, he threw
himself backward. Landing flat on his shoulder blades, he drew down
with his hands and hoisted with his feet.
His opponent somersaulted in air, and fell with a heavy squashing thump
upon the root-tangled floor of the trail. In a flash, Planter was up.
He jumped with both feet. Bones broke under the impact. A second
Skygor was down--dead or dying--
"Aside!" the girl was calling, and he obeyed, flattening against a
cross-weaving of vine stems. She was risen upon one knee, crossbow to
shoulder. It twanged, flashed, and once again its successful charge
sounded its _chock_. Planter glanced down the trail in time to see a
fourth and last Skygor drop down.
He found that he was gasping for air, and trembling as though the
danger were still to come instead of past. The girl rose, came to him,
and touched his arm. She smiled, her eyes shone. Gone was the contempt,
the superiority. She only admired, completely and frankly.
"Sink me, you're a fighter," she said. "Ecod! I saw only the flight of
fists, and a Skygor went down, and another! You saved my life--and we
have four Skygors to strip, with none to boom about where we went from
here. Your name, friend?"
"Planter," he said. "David Planter."
"David Planter," she repeated. Her "A" was very broad, so that she made
the name almost "Dyvid." Again she smiled. "A king's name, is't not? I
am called Mara. Come, help me take what is valuable from this carrion."
Planter's heart warmed to her. "Thanks for your kind words," he smiled
back. "But I did what any man would do."
"All men are slaves," she surprised him by saying. "You will amaze the
other girl-warriors, when I bring you to the Nest."
* * * * *
Disbro, standing on the glass port-pane that was now floor for the
control-room, labored and cursed at his keyboard. He pressed one, two,
an octave. The nosed-over ship stirred, but did not rise.
"Max!" bawled Disbro to the upper hatch. "Pressure!"
"Giving you all there is," Max informed him timidly.
Disbro turned from his controls, shrugging in disgust.
"Those bow-tubes are jammed or displaced," he cursed. "We can't clear
off till we get her up and clean them--and we can't get her up and
clean them until they work. Huhh!"
Max's big, diffident face framed itself in the hatchway, registering a
small hope.
"We're floating," he volunteered. "Close to those trees and things."
Disbro showed interest. "Then we'll get our feet on solid ground,
or nearly solid. That tentacle-thing won't be sloshing around." He
beckoned. "Come down."
Max obeyed. From a locker Disbro took a pressure squirt of
waterproofing liquid. He sprayed Max's clothes, then his own. "That'll
shed rain," he said. "Buckle on a pistol, if you're smart enough to use
one. And give me two."
Once more the hammocks in the lower chamber, and the levers in the
higher, gave them a ladder-way up. Disbro, emerging first into the
damp, warm mist, saw at once that they had visitors.
The ship, as Max said, floated close to the mat of growth that fringed
the muddy pool. Here the jungle consisted of meaty stems, straight,
thick and close-set, with tangled fermiform foliage. A little above
mud-level, gnarled roots wove into a firm footing, and upon it,
pressing from the thickets toward the ship, were huge biped creatures
in gleaming metal harness.
These had chopped down spongy trunks and branches, on which to venture
over the mud-surface as on rafts. Coming near the ship, they had
passed cables of grease-clotted metal wire around it, mooring it fast
to thicker trunks. As Disbro stared down, several of them began to
converse in tones that rang and boomed like great gongs. Half-deafened,
Disbro still could perceive that their voices had inflection and sense.
Harness, concerted action, tools, a language--here was a master race,
comparable to Terrestrial humanity.
One of them turned a bulging black eye upward, and saw Disbro. Its flat
face split across, and a mouth like an open Gladstone bag shouted its
discovery. One green paw, webbed but prehensile, snatched a weapon from
a metal-linked waist belt, and aimed it at the Terrestrial.
But Disbro, too, was quick on the draw. His gang-rule on Earth had
necessitated shooting skill as well as leadership. His own automatic
sprang into his hand. "No, you don't!" he snapped, and shot the weapon
out of the Venusian's flipper.
It screamed in a voice that vibrated the steamy air, and its companions
started and shrank back in startled wonder. Disbro drew a second
pistol, leveling it at them.
"I'll shoot the first one that moves," he promised, as if they could
understand; and understand they did. Up went shaky flipper-hands.
"No! No!" they boomed in thunderous humility. "Don't! Don't!"
He had not the time to wonder that they spoke words he knew. He swung
his weapons in swift arcs, covering them all. Max, behind, had sense
enough to level the long barrel of a repeating rifle. "Please!" roared
a Venusian who seemed to be a leader. "We do naught to you!"
"Better not," cautioned Disbro loftily. "We're more profitable as
friends than as enemies."
"Friends!" agreed the leader. "Friends!"
"If you try any funny business--" went on Disbro. "Well, watch!"
He snapped his right-hand gun up and fired. The bullet snipped away a
leaf the size of an opened umbrella. As the great green blob drifted
down, Disbro fired again and again, until, ripped to rags, the leaf
fell limply among the Venusians. They moaned, like awe-struck fog horns.
"Understand?" taunted Disbro. "Savvy? I could kill you all as easy as
look at you."
"Friends!" promised the leader again.
"Max," muttered Disbro, "these birds quit very easily without a fight.
But keep me covered from up here."
Planter's rope still dangled along the hull. Disbro slid down, coming
to his feet on the raft-heap below. The Venusians gave back in wary
confusion. Disbro allowed himself to smile upward.
"See what an ape you are, Max?" he chuckled. "You got a look at one of
these, and thought it was a girl! You're not much of a picker, Max."
To the Venusian chief he said: "I think I'll muscle in on your
territory."
* * * * *
Mara, the crossbow-girl, brought Planter to the place she called the
Nest.
It was hollowed out in the thickest part of the towering jungle, as a
rabbit's form is hollowed among tall grasses. The floor was of plaited
and pressed withes, supported on stumps and roots of many tall growths.
Rounding upward and outward from this were walls, also of wooden poles
and twigs, woven into the growing tangle. The roof was similarly made,
but strengthened and waterproofed with earth, dried and baked by some
sort of intense heat.
The space thus blocked off was shaped like the rough inside of a hollow
pumpkin, and in size was comparable to the auditorium of a large
theater. Within it were set up smaller huts and bowers. There were
common cooking-fires, in ovens of stone and mud-brick, and a great
common light suspended from the ceiling by a long heavy chain. This was
a metal lamp, fed by oily sap from some sort of tree.
Finding the Nest was difficult. Mara had picked a careful way through
mazes of thick vegetation, paying special attention to the rearranging
of leaves and branches behind them. Sagely she explained that the
Skygors, when hunting her kind, were thus completely lost. Even at the
very doorstep of the Nest, the tangled vines, branches and leaf-sprays
obscured any hint of such a place at hand.
The dwellers in the Nest were all women.
They came cautiously forward, twenty or so, as Mara ushered Planter
inside. They were active specimens, dressed scantily and attractively,
like Mara. Most of them were young, several comely. All were fair of
skin and hair, a logical condition in the cloudy air of Venus. They
wore daggers, hatchets, ammunition pouches. Even at home, they all
carried crossbows.
"What does this man here?" demanded a lean, harsh-faced woman of middle
age. "Is he not content with servitude?"
Mara shook her head. "He's like none we know. He fights more fiercely
than we--Ecod, shouldst have seen him! Bare-handed, he o'ercame two
Skygors. I slew two more. Look at our trove!"
She opened a parcel of great leaves, and showed dozens of the silver
pens that were ammunition for both the Skygor pistols and the
human crossbows. Planter also showed what he had brought from the
battlefield--several belts, numerous harness fastenings, and two of the
guns. These latter made the crossbow-girls nervous.
"We stand by these," Mara said, tapping her crossbow.
Planter fiddled with a pistol. Its mechanism was strange but
understandable, and he flattered himself that he could learn to use
it. As for the pen-missiles, they seemed to contain a charge that
burned violently on exposure to air. The trigger-mechanism, whether of
pistol or crossbow, punctured it, set it afire, and the vehemence of
combustion not only propelled it but destroyed the target completely.
The older woman, whose name was Mantha, nodded her head over a decision.
"Let the man have the dag," she granted, with an air of authority. "If
he fights as Mara says, he may be of aid. Yet he is unlike those we
know, in hue and aspect."
True enough, Planter was dark of complexion, with black curls and ruddy
tan jaws. He spoke to Mantha, respectfully, for the others called her
"Mother" and treated her as a commander.
"I'm not of your people," he said. "I come from another planet. Earth."
"Earth?" she repeated. "You come from there? Why, so do we all."
* * * * *
Down a trail went a patrol of Skygors. Among them, not much under
them in size, tramped Max. His broad shoulders bore a great burden of
supplies from the ship. At the head of the procession, next to the
chief, walked Disbro.
As someone else was saying to Planter at almost the same moment, the
chief Skygor boomed to Disbro: "You are not like men we know."
"Naturally not," agreed Disbro. "Your race is more like a bunch of
freak reptiles."
"Not my race," demurred the chief Skygor. "Men. Slaves."
Disbro understood only part, and took exception to that. "I'm no slave
of yours," he warned.
"No. Equal. We have long needed equal men, to kill off the wild girls."
"You see, Mr. Disbro?" chimed in Max from behind.
* * * * *
David Planter was embarrassed.
Inside the Nest, he sat on a crude chair opposite Mantha, the Mother.
The overhead light burned dim, and damp-banishing fires in the ovens
mingled red glows. Planter asked questions, but was distracted by
the crossbow-girls, who watched him with round eyes, whispering and
giggling. Mara, near by, scowled at the noise-makers.
"This Venus world has much that's unknown," Mantha said. "Here in the
north can we dwell. Not many days off the steam is thick, the heat
horrid, the jungle dreadful. None go there and return."
"Mother, if you are called that, enlighten me," begged Planter. "You
say you come from Earth."
"Our fathers came. Lifetimes agone."
Planter's good-looking face showed his amazement. Interworld flight was
new, he had thought. But some unknown expedition might have tried it,
succeeded, and then never returned to report.
"'Twas for fear of black Cromwell," Mantha enlarged.
"Cromwell!" echoed Planter. "The Puritan leader who fought and wiped
out the English Cavaliers?"
Mantha seized on one word. "Cavaliers. Yes. Our lives were forfeit. We
flew hither."
It explained everything--human beings in a world never meant for
anything but amphibians, their fair complexions, their quaint but
understandable speech, the crossbows that would be familiar weapons to
Shakespere, Drake or Captain John Smith. Yes, it explained everything,
except how pre-machine age Britishers could succeed on a voyage where
eight space-ships before Planter's had failed.
"How did you fly?" demanded Planter, amazed.
Mantha shook her graying locks. "Nay, I know not. 'Twas long ago, and
all records are held in the Skygor fastness."
"They stole from you?"
"After our fathers made landfall, there was war," Mantha said, her
voice bitter. "The Skygors were many, and would have slain all, but
thought to hold slaves. And as slaves our fathers dwelt and died, and
their children after them."
"But you aren't slaves," protested Planter.
"'Tis Skygor fashion to keep all men, and such women as are hale enow
for toil. Others who seem weak they cast forth to die, like us!"
"Who did not die," chimed in Mara, plucking her bowstring. "We found
fruits, meat, shelter, and joined. Now we slay Skygors for their metals
and shot. Lately they slay weaklings, lest they join us."
Planter whistled. This was a harsh proof of human tenacity. The Skygors
discarding unprofitable servants and finding them a menace. "None of
you are weaklings," he said.
"Freedom brings health," replied Mantha sententiously. "Yet they are
many more than we, well fortified, and have a strange spell to whelm
those who attack." She grimaced in distaste. "We but lurk and linger,
fighting when we must and fleeing when we may. As the last of us dies--"
Things began to happen.
A tall, robust girl, very handsome, had been hitching her woven chair
close to Planter. With a pert boldness she touched his hand.
"I've seen no man since I was driven forth, a child," she informed him.
"I like you. I am Sala."
Mara rose from her own seat, swore a rather Elizabethan oath, and
slapped Sala's face resoundingly.
Sala, too, sprang up. Larger than Mara, she clutched her assailant's
shoulders and tripped her over a neatly extended foot. Mara spun
sidewise in falling, broke Sala's hold, came to her feet with a drawn
dagger.
This happened silently and swiftly, with none of the screaming and
fumbling that marks the rare battles between Terrestrial women. Planter
stared, half aghast and half admiring. Another girl whispered behind
him: "Let them fight, send them ill days! Look at me, I am not ugly."
Perhaps to flee this new admirer, Planter threw himself between the
two fighters. As Mara attempted to stab Sala, Planter caught her
weapon wrist and wrenched the knife from her. Meanwhile, Sala snatched
up a crossbow. Leaving Mara, Planter struck the thing out of aiming
line just in time. The pen-missile tore through the baskety wall of
the Nest, and Planter gained possession of the crossbow, not without
trouble.
"Are you girls fighting over me?" he demanded.
"Egad, what else?" challenged Mantha, who had also sprung forward. "Art
a man of height and presence. For any man these my manless girls would
contend."
"Aye, would we," agreed one of the bevy, with frightening candor.
"He's mine," snapped Mara, holding her own crossbow at the ready. "Step
forth who will, and I speak true."
"I'm nobody's," exploded Planter. "Anyway, I'm going--I've two friends
near here that I've got to find, and soon!"
"More men!" ejaculated Sala, forgetting her anger.
"Fighters, with weapons," said Planter, ignoring her. "They'll help you
smoke out these Skygors and set free your kinsmen."
Happy cries greeted his words.
"I'll guide you home, David Planter," offered Mara, and Mantha gestured
approval.
Mara and Planter left the Nest by a new jungle trail. Mara explained
that these tunnels were made by great floundering beasts, and served
as runways for smaller land life. The girl trod the green, fog-filled
labyrinths with assurance. Within minutes they reached the pool where
Disbro had landed the ship.
At the edge floated the limp, dead thing that Mara had killed to save
Planter. Small flutterers, like gross-winged flies but as large as
gulls, swarmed to dig out morsels. Mara called the creature a krau,
the flying scavengers ghrols. "Skygor words, for ugly beasts," she
commented. "Neither is good for food."
Planter picked his way from root to root toward the ship. "Disbro!" he
called. "Max!"
There was no answer. He scrambled up and inside, then out again.
"Something's happened," he said gravely.
Mara studied the massed logs that made a rough raft. "Skygor work. And
eke the rope of wires about your ship."
"They've been captured by Skygors? For slaves?" Planter had climbed
down again. His hand sought the Skygor pistol at his belt, his face
was tense and pale. "I'll get them back. Where's this swamp-city you
mention?"
She pointed. "Not far. But the way is perilous. The trails throng with
Skygors, and there is the spell."
"That sounds like some old superstition," snorted Planter. "I'm not
afraid of Skygors. I killed two today."
"Aye," she smiled. "They are not great fighters in these parts. But
there are more than two at the city ... come along."
"You can go back to the Nest."
She smiled more broadly. "How else will you find the way, my David? For
you _are_ my David."
"Don't start that again," he bade her, more roughly than he felt. "Lead
the way."
* * * * *
Mara took a nearby jungle trail. After some time, she paused and
studied the matted footing. "Tracks," she pronounced. "Certain Skygors,
and two pairs of feet shod like yours."
Planter looked at the muddled marks thus diagnosed by the skilled
trail-eye of Mara. "My friends and their captors?"
"Aye, that. They went this way. Come."
She slipped aside through the close-set stems. Planter did likewise.
Mara slung her crossbow behind her, and climbed a trunk as a beetle
scales a flower-stalk. "'Tis safer from Skygors up here," she told him
over her shoulder "Follow me carefully."
Planter did so, with difficulty. He was a vigorous climber, and the
lesser gravity of Venus made him more agile. But Mara, some forty feet
overhead, swung through the criss-cross of limbs and vines like a
squirrel. "Wait!" he called, striving to catch up.
She paused, finger to lips. As he came near, she said softly: "Not so
loud! We come close. Feel you the spell?"
Hanging quietly, Planter did feel it.
Uneasiness came, chilling his back despite the steamy warmth. His hair
stirred on his head, his teeth gritted, and he could not reason himself
out of the mood. Mara moved ahead, and he followed. Growing accustomed
to the climbing, he made progress. But the uncomfortable sense of peril
grew rather than diminished.
Once in their strange journey Mara paused, and from a belt-pouch
produced food. It consisted of fire-dried fruits, strange to Planter
but tasty and substantial; also two meat-dumplings, made by wrapping a
nut-flavored dough around morsels of flesh. For drink she plucked long
spear-like leaves from a vine, and Planter found them full of pungent
juice. While they munched, he heard boomings in the distance, which
Mara identified as Skygor speech.
"We are almost there," she whispered. "Look well."
She rose, and again they took up the journey. After a time she paused
again, and pointed.
Just beyond them the branches thinned out over a great open space in
the jungle. Under a far-flung canopy of white vapors lay the swamp-city
of the Skygors.
* * * * *
Planter, gazing in wonder at the strange city, thought of old Venice,
or of a beaver colony in a diked pond. Before and beneath him was a
quiet greeny-clear body of water. Around its rim grew shrubs, bushes
and huge reeds, their roots clasping the great facing of white rock
which apparently paved the banks and bottom of the pool. In the water
itself, poking above the surface in little pointed clusters and plainly
visible where they extended beneath, were the houses of the Skygors.
They were of some kind of soil or clay that had been processed to a
concrete hardness, and were tinted in various colors. Some of the
smaller dwellings were roughly spherical, and crowned with cone-shaped
roofs. Others, larger, protruded well above the water in cylindrical
form. Here and there travel-ways connected the clustered groups.
But it was beneath the surface that the town was complex and great. It
seemed to lie tier above tier, closely built and grouped, with here and
there protruding arms or wings of building, like coral budded from the
main mass. In those depths swam myriads of Skygors, plainly at home
under water. More of them, at the window-holes of the upper towers
or paddling on the surface, boomed and roared to each other in their
deafening language. From on high, Planter saw them as smaller and less
to be dreaded. They might have been slight fantasy things, water-elves
or super-intelligent frogs.
"Look you, David Planter," prompted Mara, at his elbow.
From a tunnel-like hole in the jungle, a group of Skygors emerged.
Among them were two human figures, clad like Planter in loose overalls
and helmets.
"Your friends?" Mara questioned.
"Right," snapped Planter grimly. He drew the pistol-weapon and glared.
Disbro and Max, the latter stooping under a great bale of goods from
the ship, had paused on the brink of the water. A Skygor was thundering
to them, in words of English which Planter, across the water, found
hard to catch. Other Skygors motioned at the pool, and one or two
jumped in and struck out for nearby buildings.
"They want your friends to dive," Mara informed him. "See, the slim
one shakes his head."
Planter rested the pistol on his forearm, and sighted on the Skygor
who harangued Disbro. Meanwhile, other Skygors were bringing up
what appeared to be a small, inflated boat, that operated with a
paddle-wheel arrangement behind.