They let an hour of torment pass, and although Xintel tried gamely to
keep her face composed she could not hide an occasional grimace of pain
as the caustic jelly ate at the more tender portions of her skin.
The swarm of monsters still held patrol above the cleft with
dull-witted reptilian patience. The two norus had settled down,
squatting lumpishly, with only their eyes active.
At last Barry pulled himself from his uncomfortable bed. His body was
red and chapped from head to foot. Xintel was in the same condition.
"I hope this works," he said.
He climbed toward the rim, nearly to the top, and still the beasts
paid no attention. He made no sudden movements and their eyesight was
apparently dull.
"Barry! That's enough! Come back!" Xintel called.
Deliberately he waved his arms. A swimming torvak turned in its own
length and plunged toward him, and Barry barely evaded its rush.
"If we try to escape they'll see us," Xintel said.
Barry nodded sadly. Even though Komso's curse had been voided they
could still only wait and hope.
The nomads who had found refuge with them unwittingly solved his
dilemma. As once more the age-old envious hatred of the homeless ones
for the city dwellers came to the fore they whispered to each other.
For a moment Barry and Xintel grew inattentive. The norus had been
waiting for just that. They dashed forward, intent on snatching the
weapons that to them represented great wealth. Xintel shouted in alarm
and one of the savages struck at her with a webbed fist.
Barry's knife flashed and a noru died. As the survivor swerved to evade
Xintel's spear, Barry was upon him from behind.
His knife descended, this time not in a killing stroke. Deliberately he
carved a long, shallow gash down the savage's back, a wound that would
bleed copiously. Then he shouted and roared ferociously. The wounded
noru fled.
Xintel streaked in pursuit, a grim expression on her face and a
spear poised, but Barry reached out one arm and caught her ankle.
Instinctively she twisted and her fingernails raked his face.
He slapped her hard.
"No!" he barked. "Let the noru go!"
She looked at him in furious disgust as the nomad churned in
panic-stricken flight toward the rim.
"He's bleeding!" Barry snapped.
A great dark shadow swooped at the noru, missed, and Xintel looked
admiringly at Barry as she understood.
The water above the cleft grew streaky with light as the monsters
abandoned the tenuous remnants of the lure to follow a trail of fresh
blood. The noru gibbered in horror as he dodged along the rocky bottom.
"Let's go!" Barry barked. "_Straight up!_"
It was a long, tiring swim. At last they floated just below the
surface.
"Can you find the colony?" Barry asked.
"We go to the nearest shore, near Last City," Xintel corrected. "We are
not safe here over deep water."
They swam again, this time horizontally, guided once more by Xintel's
compass sense. Once Barry raised his head, but all he could see was
a narrow circle of rippled water upon which the ever-present mists
pressed heavily. A slight rosy glow overhead, dim and diffuse, was the
only indication of the sun.
Finally the girl stopped. "We are almost to the edge of the Above," she
said.
Barry put his head up again but still could see nothing but water and
mist. They swam a few strokes more, and then he and the girl lowered
their feet to a bottom of soft mud.
When he stood up in the neck-deep water and emptied his lungs there was
an interval of wracking coughing and gasping. But then he found with
elation that he was breathing without too much difficulty. His practice
sessions in the cavern were paying off.
Xintel too stood up and gasped in the warm, stench-filled air,
floundering beside the taller Earthman as they waded toward a dimly
seen bank ahead. The water had shoaled to her waist, when without
warning, she staggered and collapsed.
Barry caught her as she fell, and with Earth habits returning, cradled
her in his arms with her face above water.
"Xintel! What's wrong?"
She stirred in his arms and her eyes opened.
"Put me down," she requested.
Then she noticed the frightened expression on his face.
"I'll be all right soon," she assured him. "Just--tired. And air--too
suddenly."
Tenderly he laid her in the shallow water.
"Sure you're all right?" he asked solicitously.
She nodded.
For a few minutes he waited beside her, thinking of the colony. He
understood now Komso's reference to the beasts of the marshlands
overturning the houses of the demons, and the priest's plan of battle.
His lure would attract the monsters with which the colony had already
had trouble. And when the colonists were forced outside by the
hypervirulent bacteria of the Unseen, death would strike.
Without a warning the unsuspecting colony would be doomed, but without
Xintel's guidance he could not reach them to give that warning.
"Barry." The Venusian girl's voice was still weak and unsteady. "The
Place Of Change is on this shore. Go look at it. Perhaps you, with a
different mind and a different knowledge, could--"
"You sure you'll be all right alone?"
She was sure, and finally Barry left her, emptied his lungs once again,
and floundered up the muddy bank.
* * * * *
His body felt heavy without the support of the water to which it had
become accustomed, but it was good to be walking like a true Earthman
again. He plodded inland, cautiously forcing his way through the thick
swamp vegetation. The ground underfoot was a tangle of roots, slime and
jagged stones.
Last City was a disappointment. Nothing was left but a few scarcely
discernible mounds almost hidden by the swamp jungle. It was impossible
to tell even what sort of buildings once existed.
He was ready to turn back when a shift in the mists disclosed the Place
Of Change.
It was a domed building, huge even by the engineering standards of
Earth, and something done in ancient times had prevented the jungle
from encroaching upon it. Half submerged in mud, tilted where the
ground beneath it had softened and shifted, the great hemispherical
shell nevertheless remained intact. Barry hastened forward, found a
circular opening, evidently once a window high on the structure but now
at ground level, and after a glance at the dimness within stooped and
entered.
He had not known what to expect--Xintel had told him only that the
Place Of Change was irreparably ruined--but certainly nothing so bleak
and disheartening. There was nothing but mud within the great building.
Whatever machinery or equipment had been used to change the Venusians
to water-breathers had vanished without a trace. Barry's shoulders
sagged as he turned back toward the window.
But then the engineering training of his years on Earth reasserted
itself, and he wondered of what material the building had been
constructed to withstand the ravages of the savage environment of the
Venus. With the flat of one hand he brushed at the greenish, clinging
slime that covered the walls. Etched into the wall were strange symbols
arranged in an orderly fashion. Writing, obviously done by the Ancients.
It was possible that the inscriptions included the technical data on
which the Place had been based.
He ran to another section of wall and wiped at it, then at random to a
third spot. More writing. It meant nothing to him, but in the colony
there were specialists who might--
His chest began to burn, bringing his mind back to his present
situation. There was nothing he could do for the present, and he
must warn the colony. There was no telling how far Komso's plans had
progressed. Perhaps the attack had already started.
He hurried out through the window, slid and stumbled through the swamp,
plunged into the water. Xintel was sitting up.
"Can you find the colony?" he asked.
She nodded, "Far along the shore, that way, I can feel the presence of
life. Your kind of life."
"That's it! Let's go!"
They followed the shoreline, and as the minutes passed a happy
excitement grew in the Earthman at the prospect of seeing his own kind
again. Xintel was silent.
When they came to the opening of the slough, Xintel pointed.
"That way. Not far."
Barry shook his head vigorously. "They'd shoot first and look later,"
he explained. "Particularly after Komso's first raid. I'll have to
approach overland."
Half a mile beyond the slough a huge tree had fallen and was lying half
in the swamp and half in the water.
"This should be far enough," he decided. "Wait here for me. And be
careful."
He stuck his head out, studying the treacherous, mist-shrouded swamp he
must cross, then ducked under again. The Venusian girl looked at him
for an instant. Her hands moved as though to detain him.
"Good-bye Barry."
He kissed her and held her close.
"It's not good-bye," he promised. "I'll come back."
Xintel smiled tremulously.
He released her and climbed to the tree trunk, emptied his lungs of
water and slogged off into the swamp. It was filthy and difficult and
dangerous traveling, but a sense of urgency was upon him.
After a while he began to sing, loudly and hoarsely and off key. He
sang the popular songs of his last days on Earth, cowboy ballads,
ribald and unprintable construction camp ditties. The sounds drifted
thinly into the enshrouding mists.
He did not sing from happiness. The colony would be an armed camp and
the songs of Earth offered his only means of identification in the fog.
At the end of each verse he paused and listened.
* * * * *
He finished a particularly lugubrious cowboy number entitled _Blood On
The Saddle_.
"Hey! Who's that out there?" A voice reached him through the mist.
"Ya-hoo!" Barry called. "Where are you?"
"Over here!" the voice replied.
"Keep yelling, and--don't--shoot!" Barry called, spacing his words for
clearness.
But sounds moved in tricky ways through the moist, opaque air and it
was only after long floundering that he saw the dim shadows of men.
"Who are you?" the voice called sharply. "What are you doing out here?"
"I'm Barry Barr."
"You lie!" someone shouted. "Barry Barr's dead!"
Barry recognized the voice.
"That's what you think, Phillips!"
He sloshed his way over to join them and they stared in amazement.
"Where you been?" one of them demanded.
"At the bottom of the sea."
"This ain't no time for kidding!" the man retorted angrily.
"I mean it," Barry declared earnestly. "But guide me in quick. There's
hell brewing."
* * * * *
He waited impatiently in the vestibule of the central building while
they peeled off their rubberized swamp suits. Then he was inside, back
in the colony he had never expected to see again.
"Call the council of captains and get the leading technical men of each
division," he snapped. "Emergency!"
He coughed, his lungs irritated by the artificially dehumidified air of
the building. Just then Dr. Jensen passed down the hallway. He saw his
erstwhile patient and came running.
"What happened to you, son?" he asked.
"Water machine stopped," Barry said shortly, unwilling to be diverted
from more pressing matters by past events. "Had to get out or die."
"The devil!" the doctor exclaimed. "It was running all right when I
came back, but the window was smashed."
For Barry that was conclusive evidence--if such were needed--that the
breakdown had been no accident. Hind had turned on the water and power
again to cover his deed.
Dr. Jensen grabbed Barry's arm. "Let me make some tests on you," he
asked eagerly.
"No time now," Barry snapped.
The four spaceship captains and as many technicians as could crowd into
the room, set up a babble of questions as Barry entered. He glanced
around quickly, searching for two faces, but neither Dorothy Voorhees
nor Robson Hind was there. He held up a hand for silence.
The noise subsided.
"Gentlemen, there is intelligent life on Venus, intelligent _human_
life of an origin common to our own. You tangled with them recently."
"My God!" a man exclaimed. "We thought it was some animal that killed
Evans."
"I told you that was a knife wound and not the mark of teeth," another
interrupted.
"We heard Fred shooting out beside the slough," someone explained. "But
by the time we got there he was dead and there was nothing in sight."
"Don't underestimate these Venusians," Barry warned. "They live under
water. No knowledge of fire or explosives--they lost those when they
went aquatic--but their bacteriology is advanced. They once staged a
full scale bacterial war. And they knew enough biological science--a
damn sight more than we know--to deliberately become water-breathers to
escape the mess their war created."
He noticed sceptical looks on some of the faces.
"Just look at me," he said. "What happens by accident can be done on
purpose. This colony is facing death. A fanatical group of Venusians
are planning to wipe us out, and the attack will come soon. They will
use a chemical that attracts every swamp beast and water monster within
miles.
"It works. I know it works," he insisted, and shuddered as he
remembered the torvaks.
"Then there will be hypervirulent bacteria. You know what that means!"
"Why should they attack us?" someone demanded.
"You're strange to them, alien, and there is a leader among them who
fears outside influences will undermine his absolute control."
"All right! Let's get ready, shoot the works, and give them what
they're asking for!" The man who spoke had been a close friend of Evans.
"No!" Barry said decisively. "That would be the worst thing possible!"
"What would you advise?" one of the captains asked.
"Many of them would be friendly if given a chance," Barry explained.
"But if you plant mines in the slough and wipe out the attacking party
it will mean enmity between colonists and the surviving Venusians for
all time to come. Both sides will be vulnerable, you to bacterial
attack, they to depth charges, and the surface of Venus will be
rendered uninhabitable for years or even centuries."
"What's the alternative?" Captain Reno demanded.
The door opened and Barry glanced around. Even in mud-streaked
coveralls Dorothy Voorhees was beautiful. He had forgotten just how
desirable she was.
"Barry!" she cried joyfully, and ran to him.
Instinctively he responded to her kiss--until he remembered Xintel and
his own condition.
"I won't be able to stay," he told her, deliberately making his voice
harsh. "I'm not cured and probably never will be."
"But--but your water machine can be fixed," she protested.
"There's more than that," he said, and with an effort turned away.