"One of them bit her. Help me."
He floundered up with her, a hundred feet above the tree-tops of that
horrible forest. The little lanterns of eyes down there had all winked
out. The open starlight was over us.
Anita came swimming, then Venza stirred. She murmured, "... all
right."
She had fainted. It seemed nothing more; but I found her upper arm
swelling. She tried to bend her body and sit up; but it threw us all
out of balance.
"Lie straight," Snap murmured. "Venza, are you all right?"
"Yes. Why not?" And then she laughed. It sent a shuddering chill over
me. "What's the fuss about? Let's get away from here. Somebody will be
coming."
She was swimming now and we let her loose, but stayed close by her.
The reddish firmament was like an inverted bowl. The curving Wandl
surface gave us a narrow little vista, the forest rolling up from the
horizon in front. Then we saw where the forest seemed to end. Water
was beyond it: a ribbon like a broad river, and beyond that, frowning
mountains, terraced and spired with jagged peaks.
Snap and I suddenly recalled the gravity ray projectors. We tried
them; found that they would fling little beams of two varieties.
Pencil points of radiance, they seemed to have an effective range of
no more than a few hundred feet.
I let myself drift downward, experimenting. The tiny beam struck the
forest-top. I felt the projector pulling violently downward in my
hand. I clung to it. I was being drawn swiftly down by the attractive
gravity force of the ray. The forest rose rapidly under me: I was all
but flung upon it before I could find the other controls.
Then the ray altered its nature; the projector in my hand pulled me
steadily up. But after a few hundred feet, I felt I was mounting only
of my own momentum, with gravity and air-friction retarding me.
Snap had tried similar experiments. We rejoined the swimming girls. I
stared into Venza's face; it was pale but she did not seem distressed.
She winked at me.
"How's your arm, Venza?"
"It hurts, but I guess it's all right."
I turned to Snap. "I guess we can work these things. Get Venza to
cling to you."
Our progress now was far less difficult. Venza clung to Snap's ankles
and Anita to mine. With the repulsing rays directed downward, we had a
strong upward and forward thrust. We went forward with great
thousand-foot bounds. The forest rolled back under us. We came over
the gleaming river. It seemed several miles broad. It appeared to have
a swift current.
I saw sunlight upon the mountain ahead. The darkness had been paling.
Now day suddenly burst upon us. The sun, smaller than on Earth,
mounted swiftly up. It was a flattened, distorted, dull-red disc,
blurred by Wandl's strange atmosphere. We were in a dim red daylight.