We scattered, all of us, hunting for a way out. There was only one door
leading to the back, and it was stoppered tight with men cursing and
fighting to get through. Gow was crouched in a corner by the splintered
wall.
I pulled Bucky along, thinking we might get in back of the _cansins_
and sneak out. I wondered what they wanted. And I wondered where in
heck you could hide a thing as big as Gertrude and keep anybody from
finding out.
Somebody screamed briefly. I saw one of the strange _cansins_ toss the
bartender aside like a dry twig. Gow rose up in front of me with a
queer staring look in his eyes.
"Somethin's wrong," he said. "All wrong. I...." His mouth twitched. He
turned sharply and started to scramble through the wrecked hall. Bucky
and I were right on his heels. I think Melak and some of his lobbygows
were crowding us, but nobody was thinking about things like that any
more.
I knew what was eating Gow. The fear that had looked out of Kapper's
eyes. The fear that was riding me. Fear that had nothing to do with
anything physical.
Bucky cursed and stumbled beside me. And suddenly the four _cansins_
let go a tremendous thundering scream. The hair rose on my neck, and I
turned to look. I just had to.
Gertrude had turned away from the booth. They stood, the four of
them, their huge black shoulders touching, their crests like rows of
petrified flame, staring at what Gertrude held in her arms.
It was Kapper's body.
Slowly, with infinite gentleness, she began to strip him. He hung loose
in the cradle of one great arm, his flesh showing blue-white against
her blueness. Her free hand ripped his clothes away like things made of
paper.
I don't know why nobody tried to shoot the beasts after the first
second. Sheer panic, I guess. We could have killed them all, then.
But we just stood looking, fascinated by the slow, intent baring of
Kapper's body.
And the strange fear. It was on us all.
Kapper lay naked in her black arms. She raised him slowly over her
head, her eyes blind green fires deep under bony brows. The others drew
closer, shivering, and I could hear them whimper.
Strangers from the deep swamps with no stink of man on them. I thought
of the Nahali woman laughing in the hot rain. Death from the deep
swamps, because something had been taken, and they were angry.
There was a little black box strapped to Kapper's thin white belly.
Gertrude shifted her hands a little. The blood hammered in my ears. I
was sick. I didn't want to look any more. I couldn't help it. Bucky
Shannon caught a hard, sobbing breath.
Gertrude broke Sam Kapper's body in two.
* * * * *
I can still hear the noise it made. The blood ran dark and sluggish
down her arms. It worried me that Kapper's face didn't change
expression. The little black box on his belly split with the rest of
him.
Something rose out of it. Something no bigger than my forefinger that
carried a cold green blaze around it like a ball of St. Elmo's fire.
Gertrude threw Kapper away. I heard the two flopping thuds of him
hitting the floor. Some guy was down on his knees close to me. His lips
moved. I don't know if he could remember his prayers. Somebody else was
vomiting, hard. I wanted to, but my stomach felt frozen.
The cold green fire had a shape inside it. I couldn't make it out
clearly, except that it looked horribly human. It put out four thin
green filaments. Don't ask me if they were physical things like
tentacles, or just beams of light, or maybe thought. I don't know.
Whatever they were, they worked.
They connected with the four black, snaky heads of the female
_cansins_. I felt the shock of them connecting with my own nerves. And
it was like something had welded those four brutes together into one.
They had been four. Separate, with hard outlines. Now they were one.
One single interlocking entity. I guess it was just my being so scared
and sick, but I thought I saw their outlines blur a little.
Gow spoke suddenly. His voice was pretty loud, and calm.
"That was it," he said, as though it was the only thing in the world
that mattered. "They ain't complete by themselves. Like the _zurats_
back home on Mercury. They got a community brain. No wonder Gertrude
was lonesome."
His voice broke the spell. Somebody screamed, and everybody started to
move at once, clawing in blind panic for the openings. And we all knew,
then, what we were afraid of.
We were afraid of the little thing in the black box, the thing in a
cloak of fire that had risen from the ruins of Kapper's body, and the
power that lived in it.
I suppose we thought we were going to fight it, all right. But outside,
where we could breathe. Not in here, with the hugeness of the females
smothering us, penned in with the last male _cansin_ in creation.
I knew then why Kapper had broken, and why he hadn't told, in spite of
the _selak_. The thing hadn't let him. And it had called to its kind,
from the deep swamps and Buckhalter Shannon's Imperial Circus.
* * * * *
The deep indigo night of Venus had settled down, in the smell of mud
and jungle and the hot rain. Lights flared crazily here and there out
of open doorways. People were yelling, the tight, animal mob-yell of
fear.
There was no place to run in Nahru. The jungle held it. The thick green
jungle built on quicksand and crawling with death. Behind us the four
_cansins_ raised a wild whistling screech.
It was answered, out of the hot night between the little shacks of
Nahru. Brute voices, singing their hate. Suddenly I remembered what Gow
had said. "_She busted a lot of cages...._"
God knew what was loose in that town.
Bucky Shannon spoke beside me. We were still running, slipping and
floundering in the mud, making toward the ship from sheer instinct. He
gasped,
"We got to get those babies rounded up. Gow! Gow, you hear me? We got
to get 'em back!"
Gow's voice came sullenly. "I hear you, boss." We slowed down. It was
suddenly important to hear what more Gow had to say.
"Don't you get it?" he asked slowly. "Gertrude let 'em out. She wanted
'em--to help her. They know it. They ain't going back."
Somewhere behind us a plastic shack cracked open like an eggshell.
Human cries were drowned in a whistling screech. Off to the right the
Mercurian cave-cat began to laugh like a crazy woman.
Slow, patient, animal hate, walled around them, waiting. The feel and
smell of hate in the brute tank. I could feel and smell it now, in
Nahru, only it wasn't patient and waiting any more.
The time it had waited for was here. Gertrude had set it free.