Barry's mind was working furiously. The changes the Sigma radiations
had inflicted upon his body might reverse themselves spontaneously, Dr.
Jensen had mentioned during a second visit--but for that to happen he
must remain alive. That meant easing all possible strains.
When the doctor came in again Barry asked him to find Nick Podtiaguine.
Within a few minutes the mechanic appeared.
"Cheez, it's good to see you, Barry," he began.
"Stuff it," the sick man interrupted. "I want favors. Can do?"
Nick nodded vigorously.
"First cut that air conditioner and get the window open."
Nick stared as though he were demented, but obeyed, unbolting the heavy
plastic window panel and lifting it aside. He made a face at the damp,
malodorous Venusian air but to Barry it brought relief.
It was not enough, but it indicated he was on the right track. And he
was not an engineer for nothing.
"Got a pencil?" he asked.
He drew only a rough sketch, for Nick was far too competent to need
detailed drawings.
"Think you can get materials?"
Nick glanced at the sketch. "Hell, man, for you I can get anything the
Colony has. You saved Four and everybody knows it."
"Two days?"
Nick looked insulted.
He was back in eight hours, and with him came a dozen helpers. A
power line and water tube were run through the metal partition to the
corridor, connections were made, and the machine Barry had sketched was
ready.
Nick flipped the switch. The thing whined shrilly. From a fanshaped
nozzle came innumerable droplets of water, droplets of colloidal size
that hung in the air and only slowly coalesced into larger drops that
fell toward the metal floor.
Barry nodded, a smile beginning to spread across his drawn features.
"Perfect. Now put the window back."
Outside lay the unknown world of Venus, and an open, unguarded window
might invite disaster.
A few hours later Dr. Jensen found his patient in a normal sleep. The
room was warm and the air was so filled with water-mist it was almost
liquid. Coalescing drops dripped from the walls and curving ceiling
and furniture, from the half clad body of the sleeping man, and the
scavenger pump made greedy gulping sounds as it removed excess water
from the floor.
The doctor shook his head as he backed out, his clothes clinging wet
from the short exposure.
It was abnormal.
But so was Barry Barr.
With breathing no longer a continuous agony Barry began to recover some
of his strength. But for several days much of his time was spent in
sleep and Dorothy Voorhees haunted his dreams.
Whenever he closed his eyes he could see her as clearly as though
she were with him--her face with the exotic high cheek-bones--her
eyes a deep gray in fascinating contrast to her raven hair--lips that
seemed to promise more of giving than she had ever allowed herself to
fulfil--her incongruously pert, humorous little nose that was a legacy
from some venturesome Irishman--her slender yet firmly lithe body.
After a few days Dr. Jensen permitted him to have visitors. They came
in a steady stream, the people from Four and men he had not seen since
Training Base days, and although none could endure his semi-liquid
atmosphere more than a few minutes at a time Barry enjoyed their visits.
But the person for whom he waited most anxiously did not arrive. At
each knock Barry's heart would leap, and each time he settled back with
a sigh of disappointment. Days passed and still Dorothy did not come
to him. He could not go to her, and stubborn pride kept him from even
inquiring. All the while he was aware of Robson Hind's presence in the
Colony, and only weakness kept him from pacing his room like a caged
animal.
Through his window he could see nothing but the gradual brightening
and darkening of the enveloping fog as the slow 82-hour Venusian day
progressed, but from his visitors' words he learned something of
Venusian conditions and the story of the Colony.
Number One had bumbled in on visual, the pilot depending on the smeary
images of infra-sight goggles. An inviting grassy plain had proved to
be a layer of algae floating on quicksand. Frantically the crew had
blasted down huge balsa-like marsh trees, cutting up the trunks with
flame guns to make crude rafts. They had performed fantastic feats of
strength and endurance but managed to salvage only half their equipment
before the shining nose of One had vanished in the gurgling ooze.
Lost in a steaming, stinking marsh teeming with alien creatures that
slithered and crawled and swam and flew, blinded by the eternal fog,
the crew had proved the rightness of their choice as pioneers. For
weeks they had floundered across the deadly terrain until at last,
beside a stagnant-looking slough that drained sluggishly into a warm,
almost tideless sea a mile away, they had discovered an outcropping of
rock. It was the only solid ground they had encountered.
One man had died, his swamp suit pierced by a poisonous thorn, but the
others had hand-hauled the radio beacon piece by piece and set it up
in time to guide Two to a safe landing. Houses had been assembled, the
secondary power units of the spaceship put to work, and the colony had
established a tenuous foothold.
Three had landed beside Two a few months later, bringing
reinforcements, but the day-by-day demands of the little colony's
struggle for survival had so far been too pressing to permit extended
or detailed explorations. Venus remained a planet of unsolved mysteries.
The helicopter brought out in Three had made several flights which
by radar and sound reflection had placed vague outlines on the blank
maps. The surface appeared to be half water, with land masses mainly
jungle-covered swamp broken by a few rocky ledges, but landings away
from base had been judged too hazardous.
Test borings from the ledge had located traces of oil and radioactive
minerals, while enough Venusian plants had proven edible to provide an
adequate though monotonous food source.
Venus was the diametric opposite of lifeless Mars. Through the fog
gigantic insects hummed and buzzed like lost airplanes, but fortunately
they were harmless and timid.
In the swamps wildly improbable life forms grew and reproduced and
fought and died, and many of those most harmless in appearance
possessed surprisingly venomous characteristics.
The jungle had been flamed away in a huge circle around the colony to
minimize the chances of surprise by anything that might attack, but the
blasting was an almost continuous process. The plants of Venus grew
with a vigor approaching fury.
Most spectacular of the Venusian creatures were the amphibious armored
monsters, saurian or semi-saurians with a slight resemblance to the
brontosauri that had once lived on Earth, massive swamp-dwellers that
used the slough beside the colony's ledge as a highway. They were
apparently vegetarians, but thorough stupidity in tremendous bulk made
them dangerous. One had damaged a building by blundering against it,
and since then the colony had remained alert, using weapons to repel
the beasts.
The most important question--that of the presence or absence of
intelligent, civilized Venusians--remained unanswered. Some of the men
reported a disquieting feeling of being watched, particularly when near
open water, but others argued that any intelligent creatures would have
established contact.
* * * * *
Barry developed definite external signs of what the Sigma radiation had
done to him. The skin between his fingers and toes spread, grew into
membranous webs. The swellings in his neck became more pronounced and
dark parallel lines appeared.
But despite the doctor's pessimistic reports that the changes had not
stopped, Barry continued to tell himself he was recovering. He had
to believe and keep on believing to retain sanity in the face of the
weird, unclassifiable feelings that surged through his body. Still
he was subject to fits of almost suicidal depression, and Dorothy's
failure to visit him did not help his mental condition.
Then one day he woke from a nap and thought he was still dreaming.
Dorothy was leaning over him.
"Barry! Barry!" she whispered. "I can't help it. I love you even if you
do have a wife and child in Philadelphia. I know it's wrong but all
that seems so far away it doesn't matter any more." Tears glistened in
her eyes.
"Huh?" he grunted. "Who? Me?"
"Please, Barry, don't lie. She wrote to me before Three blasted
off--oh, the most piteous letter!"
Barry was fully awake now. "I'm not married. I have no child.
I've never been in Philadelphia," he shouted. His lips thinned.
"I--think--I--know--who--wrote--that--letter!" he declared grimly.
"Robson wouldn't!" she objected, shocked, but there was a note of doubt
in her voice.
Then she was in his arms, sobbing openly.
"I believe you, Barry."
She stayed with him for hours, and she had changed since the days
at Training Base. Long months away from the patterned restraints of
civilization, living each day on the edge of unknown perils, had
awakened in her the realization that she was a human being and a
woman, as well as a toxicologist.
When the water-mist finally forced her departure she left Barry joyous
and confident of his eventual recovery. For a few minutes anger
simmered in his brain as he contemplated the pleasure of rearranging
Robson Hind's features.
The accident with the scaffold had been remarkably convenient, but
this time the ruthless, restless, probably psychopathic drive that had
made Robson Hind more than just another rich man's spoiled son had
carried him too far. Barry wondered whether it had been inefficiency or
judiciously distributed money that had made the psychometrists overlook
some undesirable traits in Hind's personality in accepting him for the
Five Ship Plan.
But even with his trickery Hind had lost.
He slept, and woke with a feeling of doom.
The slow Venusian twilight had ended in blackness and the overhead
tubelight was off.
He sat up, and apprehension gave way to burning torture in his chest.
Silence! He fumbled for the light switch, then knelt beside the mist
machine that no longer hummed. Power and water supplies were both dead,
cut off outside his room.
Floating droplets were merging and falling to the floor. Soon the air
would be dry, and he would be choking and strangling. He turned to call
for help.
The door was locked!
He tugged and the knob came away in his hand. The retaining screw had
been removed.
He beat upon the panel, first with his fists and then with the metal
doorknob, but the insulation between the double alloy sheets was
efficient soundproofing. Furiously he hurled himself upon it, only to
bounce back with a bruised shoulder. He was trapped.
Working against time and eventual death he snatched a metal chair
and swung with all his force at the window, again, again, yet again.
A small crack appeared in the transparent plastic, branched under
continued hammering, became a rough star. He gathered his waning
strength, then swung once more. The tough plastic shattered.
He tugged at the jagged pieces still clinging to the frame. Fog-laden
Venusian air poured in--but it was not enough!
He dragged himself head first through the narrow opening, landed
sprawling on hands and knees in the darkness. In his ears a confused
rustling drone from the alien swamp mingled with the roar of
approaching unconsciousness.
There was a smell in his nostrils. The smell of water. He lurched
forward at a shambling run, stumbling over the uneven ground.
Then he plunged from the rocky ledge into the slough. Flashes of
colored light flickered before his eyes as he went under. But Earth
habits were still strong; instinctively he held his breath.
Then he fainted. Voluntary control of his body vanished. His mouth hung
slack and the breathing reflex that had been an integral part of his
life since the moment of birth forced him to inhale.
Bubbles floated upward and burst. Then Barry Barr was lying in the ooze
of the bottom. And he was breathing, extracting vital oxygen from the
brackish, silt-clouded water.