My gaze had been on the distant figures. I saw now that at the bottom
of his arc, and starting upward again, Snap had lost Venza. The
impulse of his ray had twitched his ankle from her grasp. Or had she
let loose? He was about a hundred feet above the river, and Venza,
with acceleration downward unchecked, was falling into it.
"Gregg, help! Venza, swim up!" His frenzied call reached me as I used
the attractive ray and Anita and I whirled over and lunged downward.
"Gregg, help! Venza use your arms! Swim!"
She was lying inert, making no effort to keep from falling. Her body
turned slowly, end-over-end. She struck the swiftly-flowing river
surface but did not sink; instead, she half emerged, came up and lay
in a crumpled heap; and with its rapid current, the river carried her
away.
It was several minutes before we could reach Venza. Snap was already
there, floundering on the water, awkwardly maintaining his balance,
bending over Venza. "Gregg, she's unconscious. Fainted again."
The bite of that insect! The thought of it turned me cold.
The river surface was like a very soft rubber mattress. The water
clung to us, wet us. We could not kneel or stand erect; but in sitting
down only a few inches of our bodies were submerged. We floated like
corks, we were so light, and so little water did we displace.
We struggled with Venza across the gluey river surface. She had fallen
near the further shore. Rocks, crags and strewn boulders were passing
as the current swept us along at a speed of about ten miles an hour.
She lay in our arms, eyes closed, her face pallid but calm. She seemed
to breathe rapidly; but that on Wandl was normal.
We landed on the rocky shore. It was still daylight. The blurred sun
was winging across the zenith so swiftly that its movement was
visible. Wandl had been suddenly endowed with axial rotation. Even in
these few minutes, the day was past its noon. On the distant mountain
peaks looming above the nearby horizon; it seemed that the sheen of
coming night was mingled with the red sunlight.
Anita and Snap laid Venza on the rocks. I suddenly remembered the two
blobs in the sky behind us, which had seemed to be following. I stood
gazing across the river. The red sky there seemed empty.
"Thank God, she's reviving!" Snap called at me and I joined them.
Venza was stirring. Color was coming into her cheeks. Her lips were
murmuring as though she were talking in her sleep.
Then she opened her eyes. Her gaze fixed on us as we bent over her.
"Why, what's the matter? Where are we? I thought we were in the
tree-tops. Snap, don't look at me like that, dear. I'm all right--only
confused."
She could remember nothing since that gruesome thing bit into her arm,
but the attack of its poison in her veins seemed definitely over. We
sat with her, soothing her, explaining what had happened. And she was
wholly rational. Her strength came back; her mind cleared.
The brief red day came to its close. The sun plunged below the
horizon; the stars winked into being. The red-purple Wandl night
again was here. And now we saw that the whole firmament was swinging,
the rotation made visible.
The darkness leaped around us. Shadows filled the rock hollows. The
caves and recesses of this rocky shore turned black with darkness. And
in the sky now we saw another of those familiar opalescent beams. This
was the one from Mars: we could identify the red disc of the planet.
And then, from the mountains ahead of us but still below our horizon,
the Wandl control station shot its attacking beam upward. Again there
was that conflict in the sky. The axis of Mars was being altered, its
rotation slowed.
We could see now that we were much nearer than before to the control
station. It seemed only about twenty miles ahead of us. The scream
from it was deafening.
The Wandl beam died presently. The electrical scream from the control
station was stilled.
The Earth's axis had been altered. Now Mars; and next would be Venus.
A few more of these gravitational attacks and then the helpless
planets, with rotation checked, would be towed away by Wandl, out into
the deadly cold of interstellar space.
Anita abruptly gave a startled outcry. The four of us, sitting in a
group, had no time to rise. From behind a dark crag nearby, two
figures appeared. The starlight showed them clearly.
Molo and Wyk! They lunged forward at us.
14
We were unarmed. I had flung my weapon at the thing in the forest; and
Snap had exhausted all his bolts firing at the multitude of green
eyes. Molo and Wyk came with a dive through the air. Two tiny flashes
leaped from them to the rocks behind them, and flung them forward.
Snap and I seized Venza and Anita. It was a second of confusion; then
I saw we would not be able to rise in time. The driving, oncoming
figures were no more than twenty feet away.
"Protect Venza, Snap! Get her behind you!"
Snap shoved Venza behind him; I got myself in front of Anita. We had
almost gained our feet. I tried to thrust Anita and myself violently
upward. We rose, but only a few feet. And then we were struck by the
oncoming body of Wyk, like a huge, light-shelled, three-pound insect
lunging in mid-air against us. The two longest tentacle arms wrapped
around us. Anita twisted and kicked. The gruesome, goggling face of
Wyk thrust itself almost into mine. The hollow voice panted, "I have
you fast."
One of my arms was free and I struck with my fist at the gaping,
upended mouth. There was a crack. My fist sank through the shell; a
cold, sticky ooze spurted out.
Wyk screamed. His encircling arms fell away. The grisly smashed face
was white with ooze and pulp where my fist had gone in.
We had sunk back to the rocks. I kicked the dead body of Wyk away.
"Anita! Swim up!"
"No!"
Sinking beside us were the flailing bodies of Molo, Snap and Venza
were drifting down. They seemed intermingled. Snap was shouting: "No
you don't! Drop that!"
I leaped for them. Something long and thin and glowing was dangling
from Molo's hand. He broke loose from the struggling Snap and Venza;
his feet struck the rocks and he shoved himself backward. My leap had
carried me too high. I saw that in his hand was a six-foot length of
glowing wire. He whirled it. The weight on its end described an arc,
and then he flung the handle. The weighted wire struck Venza and Snap
just as their repulsive ray shot down against the rocks and shoved
them upward. The whirling wire wrapped itself around them, bound them
together. Its glow vanished. Snap had been shouting, "Gregg, come up."
But it died in his throat.
All this while, in those few seconds, I was vaulting over Molo, trying
to get back to the ground to leap again. I saw that Anita was crawling
on the rocks. My gravity cylinder was at my belt. I had jammed it
there to leave my hands free just as Wyk struck me.
I saw that Snap and Venza, wrapped together by the wire, had dropped
their gravity projector. Their entwined figures went up some fifty
feet and stopped; then began drifting down.