Venus was a world enslaved. And then, like
an avenging angel, fanning the flames of
raging revolt, came a warrior-princess in
whose mind lay dread knowledge--the knowledge
of a weapon so terrible it had been used
but once in the history of the universe.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories May 1943.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
"Purple!" Mark Denning almost sobbed. "A purple Josmian!" Forgetting
the sweat in his eyes and the insufferable heat about him, his
clutching hand held up the mud-dripping globe the size of a baseball,
iridescent in the Venusian night.
The phosphorescent glow that bathed the endless swamp in ghastly
green, struck myriad shimmering rainbows from the dark sphere.
"Two more of those and you're free, lower species!" It was an ironic
voice, with the resonant sweetness of a cello in its depths, that
issued from the haze nearby.
Frantically Mark reached down into the tepid mud, where he had felt the
swaying stems of Josmian lilies whip about his knees. Another globe met
his hand. He tugged and twisted until it tore from the stem, but when
he raised it to the surface, it was white.
Immediately it began to shrink. It would continue until it became the
size of a small marble, when it would either rot, as the majority did,
or begin to crystallize into a priceless Venusian pearl. But that
happened only with one in ten thousand. It was different with the
purple ones, they never failed to crystallize into a violet globe of
unearthly beauty and incalculable value. Less than a hundred of the
purple had ever been found. They were so rare that any prisoner who
harvested three, was granted freedom.
"Pretty!" the cello voice taunted, behind Mark. "In a few hours it will
be rotting and stinking to high heaven!"
"Cut it, Aladdo!" Mark growled. He tossed the white Josmian into
the basket he pushed before him across the mud; the purple one he
placed carefully in his trouser pocket. He pushed on, searching the
pungent-smelling mud that came up to his thighs.
Suddenly the warm ooze rose to his waist and crept inexorably higher.
For an instant, Mark clawed at the mud. It was surging up to his
armpits now, as he floundered in the tenacious sink hole. He shook his
head to get the sweat out of his eyes and the numbness from his brain.
He stopped thrashing about, for he knew that was futile. He threw back
his head and gave a shout in which was more than a note of sheer terror.
[Illustration: _Mark clawed at the mud surging up to his armpits._]
At least a dozen men were moving near him, waist deep in the Venusian
mud. At his cry, they stopped and stared at him dully, fatalistically.
They could easily have formed a chain and pulled him out, but none
moved. They'd seen too many repetitions of this tragedy to care
anymore. It happened every day; a new man, a little careless, caught in
one of the deadly sink holes ... it happened even to the veterans of
this Venusian prison camp, sometimes deliberately, as they became weary
of a hopeless existence.
The mud was almost to Mark's chin now; only his forearms and his blond
head were visible. Hatred came into his eyes as he glared at the men
about him, most of them Earthmen like himself, who would not help him.
Again he struggled, tried to hoist himself upward.
"Don't struggle, you fool!" came the resonant voice from behind him.
"Be still; every movement helps to sink you!" Then, in an undertone,
"No human was ever able to think clearly, anyway."
Mark smiled despite his predicament, then he urged: "Hurry
Aladdo--hurry!"
* * * * *
Over the expanse of hellish, green-lit muck, a tiny figure inched
toward Mark. Scarcely five feet in height, Aladdo's arms and legs were
now outspread, to distribute his weight over as much area as possible.
The rescuing figure was like an imp from hades, clad as it was in a
tight-fitting garment of metallic blue, which even the clinging mud
failed to dull; while membraneous wings of a lighter hue began at its
wrists, joined to the entire under-arm and the sides of its body all
the way to its feet, much as the wings of a bat.
Swiftly it crawled and wriggled toward the Earthman, and without a word
grasped him with both tiny hands by the arms. It braced itself on its
wings, and heaved. A few inches of Mark Denning emerged from the mud
with a sucking sound. Again Aladdo made a prodigious effort, and again
the Earthman came up from the mud a few more inches.
The winged figure held him there, while it gasped for breath. "Now,
spread your arms on the mud and stiffen your neck, sub-species!" The
winged one laughed.
Swiftly it cupped its seemingly fragile hands under Mark's chin, and
slowly but surely began to pull him back and out. Most of an hour went
by before the Earthman's superb torso had emerged and was able to help
the rescuer. At last he was out of the sink hole, panting, almost
exhausted and half nude.
He still found strength to feel at his trouser pocket, and was
gratified to find his purple Josmian still there. It was now about half
its original size, and soon would cease its shrinkage and begin to
crystallize.
Mark gazed into the oval face, panting next to his. The heavily fringed
eyes were closed as it breathed in labored gasps, and the slender,
fragile form shook now and then with nervous spasms. Mark never ceased
to wonder at the beauty of the Venusians, nor at their absolute and
maddening conviction that theirs was the only true intelligence in
the Universe. Now to these qualities Mark added that of indomitable
courage, as he gazed at Aladdo and marvelled.
"Well, Aladdo, thanks seems sort of a stupid word in a case like this;
I owe you my life. I don't know how I'll ever repay the debt...."
Mark's eyes roved over the weird scene, taking in the soulless,
hopeless hulks that had once been men. And it suddenly occurred to him
that he'd had enough of this hellish corner of Venus; he had been here
two months and already he was unable to think clearly, he was becoming
identified with the living death of the Venusian Prison Swamp. His
mission apparently had failed. What he had come to learn, remained a
secret, and he was slowly becoming like these shells of men who prowled
the ocean of mud, eventually to disappear beneath it.
"No need to thank me, middle order, I would have missed our discussions
had you gone." The Venusian grinned impishly.
"What? I've been promoted! You must be ill, to call me anything above
a 'lower order' or a 'sub-species'!" Mark smiled too, but seriously
wondered what crime had condemned Aladdo to a prison reserved only for
the most hardened and hopeless criminals, or for political prisoners
whose existence was a threat to the Tri-Planetary League.
"At times, you're almost intelligent," the Venusian replied placidly.
"Any one of these other men would have struggled had they been in your
place, and I would have been helpless."
"Why didn't you use _your_ brain," Mark couldn't resist prodding the
other, "and by flying above me, get to me quicker, instead of crawling
all that distance?"
The winged figure laughed mirthlessly, and for an answer held up its
arms. The azure membranes that were its wings, hung in limp folds.
"Useless, you see," he said quietly. "The tendons have been cut.
Otherwise I could fly up and out of this swamp, despite its five
hundred mile width."
* * * * *
Mark could find no words to say. Since being assigned at his own
request to this last grim haven of the damned, by the Tri-Planetary
Prison Bureau, on a special mission, there had been moments when the
horror of it all had made him doubt the wisdom of maintaining such a
ghastly place. He knew, of course, the tremendous deterrent influence
its existence exerted, besides the important revenue derived from
Venusian pearls; still it all seemed too inhuman.
"You don't seem criminal, Earthman!" the cello-like voice introduced on
Mark's thoughts. "I fail to catch the typical vibrations of the killers
and ravagers. Your crime ... was it political?"
"Why, yes!" Mark assented hurriedly. It wouldn't do for this Venusian
to suspect he was an operative. "To put it briefly, I am classified as
too individualistic for the new order of 'controlled endeavor'. Also
typed as irreconcilable--and you know what _that_ means!"
"Perfectly!" The enigmatic smile hovering on the Venusian's lips faded
slowly. "I, too, am a 'political'. My father was Bedrim, the Liberator.
All we of Venus asked was real independence instead of the mock freedom
your Earth grants us; in reality we are a vassal state with no voice
but Earth's."
"Bedrim!" Mark exclaimed, aghast. For more than a decade that name had
made history, engulfing three planets in a suicidal struggle that had
ended in a stalemate. Bedrim was dead now, Mark knew; but in Venus and
even on Mars, the name was a glorious legend. It was only with the
greatest effort and vigilance that Earth was able to enforce the peace.
"So _this_ is what became of you!" Mark said slowly, softly. "The three
worlds do not know, they still wonder--" Then he caught himself and bit
his lip.
"Yes," Aladdo murmured bitterly. "The worlds do not know. I was to be
given amnesty, I was so young; but your inner Council decided that as
long as I lived I would be a rallying point for irreconcilables of
Venus, and so I was hunted from planet to planet until ... well, here
I am on my own world, but as far away from my people as if I were on
Betelgeuse. Here I do not live."
"But surely there must be some way of convincing the Council that
you're harmless! And if that fails, well ... of getting you out of
here!"
"Out of Paradim?" Aladdo's smile had all the despairing bitterness of
a soul damned for all eternity; all the tears and the anguish and the
wracking sorrow of the condemned since the world began seemed to be
frozen for an instant in that smile. "Look about you, Earthman!"
It was true. Mark had to acknowledge the psychological genius who
had devised the Venusian Prison System. For five hundred miles the
swamp Paradim extended in either direction, impassable, pitted with
sink holes into which a man would disappear without trace. And beyond
were the impenetrable jungles, alive with lurking carnivora, lurking
monsters of the night, red in tooth and claw. Only on the opposite
hemisphere were the two larger and hospital continents of Venus.
Here, on this tiny continent, the prison ship came once a month, to
hover over the tiny islet in the middle of the swamp, the only spot of
firm ground for untold miles. Here it dropped supplies and food, and
occasionally picked up the little heaps of fabulous Venusian pearls.
There were no guards and none were needed, for at night when the
awful humidity increased, the men worked or died. With night came the
dreaded fog, lurid in the ghostly illumination of the _igniis fatui_,
the phosphorescent radiance of this vast graveyard. And the idle died.
Decomposition of the blood set in; essential salts within their bodies
were dissolved, cellular activity ceased, and their bodies bloated.
Not many, however, were idle.
Escape? For years it had been thought a virtual impossibility. The very
thought would have brought smiles to the grim faces of that august
body, the Tri-Planetary Bureau of Prisons. And yet--a notorious killer
who had been sent to this swamp only a year ago, had recently been
found dead--out in space!
* * * * *
A patrol ship had found the body floating a few thousand miles off
Callisto, an atom-blast hole drilled neatly through the forehead. There
was not the slightest doubt that this was the same man. How had this
criminal been able to escape the swamp and travel to Callisto, millions
of miles away? It was a mystery and above all, a challenge. Apparently
the Venus Prison had ceased to be impregnable. And that was why Mark
Denning, the Prison Bureau's leading investigator, was here.
"Guard your pearl, middle species," Aladdo's voice was ironic once
more. "Escape, and with it you may buy a pardon!" Without a backward
glance, the Venusian moved on with nightmare slowness through the
swirling mists, pushing his basket into which the Josmian globes were
loaded.
Escape, Mark thought, following the Venusian. He did not need to
escape, he could signal the prison ship to pick him up the next time
it arrived. He wondered if he should. He had been here two months, and
they were an eternity that dwarfed any concept of hell. But he hadn't
any clue to the mystery of the escaping convicts, and he could hardly
return with a confession of failure.
He looked ahead through the mists, at the slender body of Aladdo in its
tight-fitting sheath of metallic blue. "I _would_ miss Aladdo," Mark
whispered to himself; "and if he can stand it here, I should be able
to!"
"What are you mumbling about to yourself?" Aladdo's mocking voice
came back to him. "That lowers you from the middle species to the sub
species again." He held up a Josmian globe against the greenish swamp
glow. "White," he said contemptuously and threw it into the basket.
Pushing through the muck with his tremendous strength, Mark cut the
distance that separated them. "You may have my purple one, Aladdo. I
will not need it, and perhaps you ... with it you might...."
"If I were to gather a hundred purple ones, I could not buy my
release." The Venusian was staring at Mark peculiarly, as if wondering
why he should have made that offer. "Do you suppose, Earthman, any of
the other men saw you find it? They would kill you for it--cheerfully."
"No, I think not; no one saw me bring it up but you."
"Then guard it." Aladdo eyed Mark's powerful frame critically. "Guard
it with your life, for you may have to fight for it soon."
"Telepathy! You've caught someone's thought vibrations?" Mark asked in
a whisper. He well knew that telepathy, although not commonly used, was
an established fact among the Venusians.
But Aladdo's long lashes rested against pallid cheeks, veiling eyes
that were abrim with something Mark could not understand. "No," the
winged one said at last, "it wasn't a thought vibration--not that
clear--perhaps a vibration of evil! Be alert, Earthman. I can say no
more."
"All right, thanks, Aladdo." But inwardly Mark cursed the inherent
Venusian mania for ultra-reserve, for making a mystery of even the most
commonplace affairs. "Let's head for the island, it's almost dawn."
Above, the cloud-cap was prismatic with color as the sun tried feebly
to penetrate the grayness and then gave up the attempt, as if it had
tried many times before and failed. Slowly the vast swamp's contours
came into view, with their small island a faint green line against the
horizon's rim. And as the grayish dawn light increased, suffusing the
grim morass, Mark and Aladdo made their slow way toward it.