"Well, if we sell some of your antique firearms--"
"Sell them?" I cried. "But they're the only way to hunt, Harry. You
know that. They're the real way to hunt. It's no contest with a
blaster--the local fauna don't have a chance."
"If we just had one customer."
"A little while longer, Harry," I pleaded. "You're right. All we need
is one customer, just to spread the word. We've got a virgin paradise
for hunters here and--"
"I've heard that song before."
"Well," I said stubbornly, "it's the truth."
Just then someone knocked at the door. Harry and I shared a small cabin
in the Venus on the Half Shell stockade. It wasn't much of a cabin and
it doubled as office and sleeping quarters. A knock on the door meant
either the leader of the Venusians or Talbot Kramer, our has-been
hunter who so far had been content to sit around drinking our whiskey.
* * * * *
I opened the door. It was Talbot Kramer, complete with week's growth
of beard, red-rimmed eyes, mouldly, swamp-smelling clothing and a
man-sized scowl.
"Natives are through," he said, and laughed. It may have meant a lot to
me and Harry, but it meant nothing to him.
"Through?" I said. "What the hell did they quit for?"
"Wompan," Kramer said.
"Which?" Harry asked him.
"Wompan," I repeated. I was excited. "Don't you know what a Wompan is?"
"Not me," Harry said. "Guess I was too busy studying unpaid bills.
What's a Wompan?"
"I quit too," Talbot Kramer said suddenly. "You can't expect a hunter
to hang around when the bearers have quit on you. Not anyways, with a
Wompan around camp."
"Will somebody please tell me," Harry begged, "what a Wompan is?"
"I'll take the swamp-buggy," Kramer said, getting ready to go outside.
"The hell you will," Harry and I both said together.
"Listen. You guys owe me some wages. I know you don't have the cash,
but I'm not complaining. I'll take the swamp-buggy. Hell, its the only
way out of here anyways."
"Some friend," said Harry. "We won't have any way out ourselves. We'll
be trapped in this damn swamp."
"Trapped?" Kramer said incredulously. "Did you say trapped? It's your
place of business. There's all the food you need--in the swamp. What's
your hurry to leave? Besides, Mr. Gil Roberts here told himself: one
of these days you're going to get a lot of rich customers coming in
with their own spaceships. Well, got to be going now."
We went outside with him and over to the squat, ugly shape of the
swamp-buggy. The treads were a foot deep in mud, a normal state of
affairs for the swamp-buggy. It would run, though. It would take Talbot
Kramer, ex big-game hunter with a reputation and not much else, back to
an outpost of civilization. And leave us without a guide if we ever got
any customers.
"If you give us a little time," I said as Kramer climbed into the buggy
through the roof hatch.
"Sorry, boys," he said, smelling of our liquor. "There was a letter for
me on this week's mail rocket. A job in Kenya."
"Kenya, Africa, Earth?" I said, as if I were addressing a letter.
"That's right," Kramer said, lowering himself through the hatch. In a
moment the swamp-buggy shuddered and made growling noises and shook
itself clear of the mud. Out of habit, Harry and I waved as the buggy
churned across a hundred feet of thick mud and moved ponderously toward
the stockade gate. We stood there and watched the buggy fade into the
green twilight swamps of Venus. It was very hot out there in the
open and Harry and I were drenched with sweat before the sound of the
buggy's motor faded entirely.
"A hunter's paradise," Harry said.
"Aw, lay off," I told him.
Nearby, the buggy suddenly roared again, its motor racing.
"Is he coming back?" Harry asked hopefully.
"It wasn't the buggy," I said.
"Are you kidding. I'd know that motor anywhere. She needs a valve job
like we need customers."
"That," I said without smiling, "was the Wompan."
"You're joking."
"I wish I was," I said, closing the gate.
"It sounded just like the swamp-buggy."
"I know. Probably looks like it too--for now."
"Are you nuts?"
"Why do you think the natives ran away--and Kramer too. Wompan's deadly
dangerous game."
"So stop smiling about it."
"I think it's funny," I said, "being left alone like this. You know
what Wompan means in the Ringin dialect?"
Harry said he did not.
"It means, mimic."
"Oh," Harry said. He seemed relieved. "You mean it can imitate
sounds--like the swamp-buggy's motor?"
"Yeah," I said. "It can imitate sounds. And other things. It can look
like a swamp-buggy or the video star Laura Laurene or maybe Talbot
Kramer or even you. It's a mimic."
"What does it look like in real life?"
"No one ever saw one in real life. Only in real death."
"Very funny."
"No. I mean it, Harry. The Wompan assumes its own shape when its
killed. If it's killed because that's rare. Then it looks like a
shapeless, jelly-like mass of protoplasm."
"Then what's so dangerous about it?"
"It can mime anything. A swamp-buggy. A man. A blaster."
"A blaster?"
"It can make like a blaster and blast the hell out of you," I said. "It
can make like a beautiful woman and then strangle you when you're at
your weakest. It can--"
"Did you lock the gate?" Harry asked. I felt a little sorry for him.
Maybe I'm no Frank Buck, but Harry wasn't cut out for the frontier at
all.
I told him I locked it. We went back to the cabin and had lunch out
of cans. When we were working on a dessert of canned peaches, the
spaceship came down.
* * * * *
I beat Harry outside by three steps. The spaceship, a small sportster,
sank, on its keel tubes in the mud. It would be a devil of a job
getting her airborne again, but we would worry about that later.
I looked at Harry. Harry looked at me. "Customers?" I said in a small
voice.