"Queer," I said. "Jack promised he'd have supper ready."
The glow of campfire beside the tent was visible. In the silence I
could hear the murmur of music from our little portable radio. Allen
must have been here only a few minutes ago. I called,
"Oh Jack--Jack, where are you?"
There was only the roll of my words, echoing into silence. Very queer.
Nereid was in the bow of that boat. "Fend us off," I said as we glided
to the dock.
This weird girl. Water, almost her native element so that suddenly she
dove over the bow. Flash of coral limbs, green-sheathed little body and
streaming tawny hair. There was hardly a splash as she slipped into the
water and then was swimming backward against our gliding little boat.
It slid to the dock, gently eased up, and Nereid was gone.
For a moment I held my breath, with my heart pounding. Foolish
apprehension. Abruptly she appeared, out in the middle of the cove,
head and shoulders bobbing up as she shook the water from her tresses
and flung up an arm to greet me.
"Come back here," I called.
The silent cove echoed with the ripple of her laugh. With weaving
limbs, incredibly swiftly her body slid through the water; submerged
again, and she came up laughing, like a dog shaking herself as she
jumped to the dock.
"Some day we will swim together, Kent." Again she flung me that
sidelong glance of coquetry. "And if you swim like my father, without
much trouble I could drown you. You think so?"
"No argument on that," I said. Queerly I seemed to feel, just for that
instant, almost a vague resentment. Resentment of a man at the superior
prowess of a woman. Instinctive, of course.
She seemed to understand it, and she laughed again. "Our young men of
Venus are like that," she said, "for they, too, cannot swim very well."
And instantly her face clouded. "That, too, is part of the trouble of
my world--the men who would have their mates kept from the water so
that the man may be in everything the master. Our virgins do not like
that."
She clung to my hand as we went up the palmetto-lined path to the camp.
And suddenly she seemed frightened. An aura of sudden menace was here.
I, too, could feel it. Allen had started supper. The things were out;
food was in the frying pan, burning now in a charred mass over the
campfire flames.
"Kent--something wrong--"
* * * * *
We stood tense. Like animals abruptly scenting danger, yet having no
least idea what it was, or from whence it could come.... And abruptly
in the silence, the murmuring little radio here changed from music to a
newscaster's flash.
"Nereid listen--news of you--" I murmured.
Something had been seen, late this afternoon, dropping swiftly from the
sky--something, a meteorite?--the few eyewitnesses differed in trying
to describe it. "_Mysterious missile drops into the Gulf ten miles
off lonely Palmetto Key._" The newscaster drew on his imagination,
conjecturing what the round shining thing could have been, which
two fishing boats had reported seeing coming hurtling down from the
afternoon sky, dropping into the glassy Gulf.
I smiled at Nereid as for a moment we stood listening. Her little
falling space-cylinder already was causing comment. I could envisage
the incredulous amazement of the authorities at Tampa when I took her
there, told them who she was. The world would ring with it. Blaring
newscasters: "_Stranded Venus girl! Marooned on Earth! Venus inhabited!
Venus threatened with bloody revolution! Appeals to Earth for help!
Daughter of two worlds brings secret of spaceflight to Earth, and loses
it on her arrival!_"
And some would try to be humorous: "_Girl from Venus brings gift of
spaceflight secret, and loses it before she can give it to us! Isn't
that what you would expect of a woman?_" "_Kent Fanning and weird girl
try to hoax scientists--_"
Somehow as I thought of it, resentment sprang within me at what this
would do to the gentle little Nereid. Allen and I, tomorrow when the
storm was over, would have to take her to Tampa, of course. Or perhaps
we would take her to some scientific Society, with less publicity. And
an effort would be made to recover her cylinder, with its precious
secret.
It was my swift flow of thoughts as for that moment the newscaster
droned on. And suddenly his voice changed. He had been describing the
mysterious falling of what quite evidently had been Nereid's little
vehicle. And now another Press Bulletin had reached him.
"_Mysterious airship descends from the stratosphere, lands in the Gulf
near Palmetto Key, off west coast of Florida. At sunset tonight--_"
Nereid gripped me with a little gasping cry as we listened. A gleaming
metal thing, flatly oblong with a turret globe at bow and stern, had
been distantly seen by a tramp freighter which was heading westward
into the Gulf, bound for Mexico. A metal ship--blood-red with the
sunset on it--slowly floating down; rotating slowly, weirdly on its
horizontal axis.... It had been seen to land on the Gulf surface. And
then slowly submerge, heading shoreward like a plunging submarine as it
vanished!
Nereid murmured, "Tollgamo, he has a ship like that! But my father has
none! Oh Kent--"
A spaceship from Venus! Was it that? Following Nereid here to
seize her; to prevent her from giving the secret of Interplanetary
transportation to Earth! The newscaster was saying something about
U.S. Coast Guard Cutters being ordered from Tampa to investigate.
And from here on little Palmetto Key, young Allen had disappeared! The
implication of that struck at me. For a second I stared at Nereid, the
firelight gleaming soft and warm on her dripping little body; tinting
her pink-coral face which now was stamped with terror.
But we had no more warning than that. The storm was at hand now, and
the wind was lashing the upper fronds of the palms; purple darkness
here on the island with a flash of lightning and almost simultaneous
thunderclap. For that second the palmetto shrubs were whitely illumined
by the electric glare. Fifty feet away a big, dark upright shape
abruptly was visible. And another--and another! Men stalking us!
The glare died. There was only turgid windy darkness. I must have
muttered something to Nereid; my arm went around her as we turned to
run back to our boat in the cove. Too late! From the palm woods behind
us a violet beam of light stabbed out. It caught us; bathed us. There
was a guttural shout; the sound of a little pop and something whizzing
with a whining hum through the air. I felt something strike my legs. A
little blob which with its impact abruptly uncoiled, and then coiled
again as it wrapped itself around my legs so that I crashed heavily to
earth face down.
And another had hit my neck. Ghastly thing--quivering steel spring. It
felt like that; thin quivering metal encircling my throat. Almost like
a thing alive, gripping me with its metal fingers ... strangling me.
I was aware that Nereid, too, had fallen. My groping fingers clutched
at the strangling band; its sharp edges cut my fingers as futilely I
tried to tear it loose. I recall that I lay threshing, lunging, with my
legs pinned and my breath gone. Dark figures were standing over me now.
Guttural chuckling voices mingled with the roaring torrent of Niagara
in my ears. Then the dancing spots before my bulging eyes blurred the
gathering dark shapes.