Dying is an uncomfortable business, unless a man is drugged or
insensible. Vanning found it so. Moreover, he wasn't the sort of man
who would give up without good cause. Weak as he was, nevertheless he
was still too strong to lie in the dark, waiting.
Laboriously, he got to his hands and knees and commenced a circuit of
the pit. He expected nothing. But, at the southern end of his prison,
he was astounded to find a hole in the wall easily large enough to
admit his body.
Feeling into the blackness, he discovered the smooth floor of a
passage. Good Lord! It had been there all the time, during his tortured
imprisonment in the pit. If he had only searched before--
But he could not have done so, of course. Not with the North-Fever
flaming in his veins.
The tunnel might lead anywhere. All the chances were against its
leading to safety. Sooner or later, there would probably be a dead
end. Nevertheless, there _was_ a chance. That chance grew brighter as
Vanning's fingers discovered that the walls bore the marks of tools.
The tunnel had been made by--perhaps not humans, but at least by some
intelligent race!
It grew higher as he went on, but Vanning was too weak to rise. He
realized dimly that the passage made a sharp hairpin turn.
Through the dark the distant clangor of a bell roared.
Vanning hesitated, and then resumed his weak crawl. There was nothing
else to do.
The ground dropped from beneath him. He went rolling and slipping down
an inclined slide, to stop with a jolt against a softly padded surface.
The shock was too much for his exhausted mind and body. He felt
consciousness leaving him.
But he realized that it was no longer dark. Through a pale, luminous
twilight he caught a glimpse of a mask hovering over him--the mask of
no human thing. Noseless save for tiny slits, gap-mouthed, round-eyed,
the face was like that of a fish incredibly humanized--fantastically
evolved. A patina of green scales overlaid the skin.
The gong thundered from nearby. The monstrous mask dissolved into the
blackness that swept up and took Vanning to its heart. Nothing existed
but pain, and that, too, was wiped out by the encompassing dark....
* * * * *
He was very sick. Complete exhaustion had almost killed him. He was
lying on a soft pallet, and from time to time the stinging shock of a
needle in his arm told him that he was being fed by injection. Later,
water trickled down his throat. His swollen tongue resumed its normal
shape. Sleep came, tormented by dreams. The mask of the fish-like thing
swam at him from gray shimmering light. It gave place to a great bell
that roared deafeningly.
Then the face of a girl, pale, lovely, with auburn ringlets clustering
about her cheeks. Sympathetic blue eyes looked into his. And that, too,
was gone....
He awoke to find--something--standing above him. And it was no
nightmare. It was the thing of his dreams--a being that stood upright
on two stocky legs, and which wore clothing, a shining silver tunic
and kirtle. The head was fish-like, but the high cranium told of
intelligence.
It said something in a language Vanning did not know. Weakly he shook
his head. The fish-being launched into the Venusian dialect.
"You are recovered? You are strong again?"