* * * * *
Tollgamo! My first sight of him. And like Allen, for just a second I
stood numbed, awed by the power, the dominance that radiated from him.
He was quietly smiling. His hand went up to wave the girls away.
"Tollgamo! Tollgamo!" The name went like a wave, back from the shore,
so that the merrymakers gasped, stood stricken. For that second it was
a tableau, with only the smiling Tollgamo in movement. Slowly he was
backing, drawing the fighting, struggling Nereid with him. Backing
toward the thick clump of palms.
Then I was aware that I was dashing forward, shouting. It was only
fifty feet. From one of Tollgamo's hands, a spit of tiny blue light
hissed at me. Missed. Then Venta and two of the other girls had cast
off their white robes. Slim little creatures, like Nereid, greenly
clad. Soon Tollgamo was struggling with all four of them. He flung them
off, still trying to hold Nereid.
It was only a second or two as I plunged at them. Then in a group they
went over the little promontory and hit the water with a splash. Almost
simultaneously I dove. The green opalescent water closed over me.
Somewhere near at hand I could see the blurr of the struggling figures.
But I could not reach them. With all my strength I swam, but then I had
to come up for air. I dove again. Accursedly helpless. Then on another
try I met a girl coming up, then another and another--all four of them
bobbing to the surface with me. All panting; unhurt, but angry that
they had not captured Tollgamo!
Then Venta and the other two girls swam away on their errand. Nereid
drew me forward as we swam, to avoid the commotion of gathered people
on the bank. Tollgamo was gone. His plan had been, quite evidently, to
dive into the water with Nereid here. Some twenty feet down, as the
girls attacked him, he had tried to shove Nereid through a rock-rift,
which obviously opened again to some cave where air was trapped.
"I got away from him," Nereid was saying. "A man, even Tollgamo, is so
clumsy in the water, so quick to smother. I could have followed him but
he blocked the little passage with a rock."
"And maybe he's trapped down there?"
She shook her head. "There are so many passages, and all lead out to
the sea. Of course he had a cylinder-boat under there."
Together we swam out into the open lagoon, diagonally across it to
where, beyond the lights of the festival, Nereid had a little surface
boat in which we could get now to the Water City.
"My boat is about a mile from here. Can you swim so far?"
"Yes. I guess so." I had always counted myself a strong swimmer; a
mile was not too much for me. But I was like a puffing tugboat now,
laboriously splashing along. Nereid was laughing at my efforts; trying
to tow me; then giving it up, swimming around me, under me.
Occasionally, while we were still in the light-glare, other girls came
dashing up, with questions of Tollgamo; and of me. Once a group of them
dashed at me, with shouts of laughter trying to seize me, but Nereid
drove them off. Then we were swimming alone in the luminous opalescent
night; and at last we reached the little boat. Nereid was already in
it; waiting impatiently to haul me aboard as I came panting.
It was a narrow, canoe-like surface craft; some twenty feet long, of
dull white metal. Its hooded mechanisms were in bow and stern--water
electrolysis. Soon we had attained a considerable speed, silent,
vibrationless. And then we were on the open sea, with the lights of
Arron fading behind us.
* * * * *
Venus night at sea. It was weirdly beautiful. The low-hanging curtain
of heavy clouds was luminous with pale blue and silver sheen. The
water, silver-rippled by a gentle night-breeze, was opalescent as our
little craft hurled up a bow wave, with a gleaming phosphorescent wake
behind us. Off to the right, for a time, the faint blurred outlines
of metal mountains were visible on a promontory near the land of the
Gorts. Then we passed it; and the forest to the left had faded away to
be just a blur.
Beside me, Nereid sat grim and silent, staring ahead as she steered
our boat. The breeze tossed her tawny tresses against me. My mind went
back to that other night, back on Earth when she had sat in my little
fishing boat, with its outboard motor puttering. How long ago that
seemed. And like that other night, my hand went now to a lock of her
hair, beside us on the seat.
"Nereid, when this is over, this war--"
Her face turned toward me. She was faintly, whimsically smiling.
"I think my father will like you," she murmured.
"And you, Nereid?"
There was no impishness, this time. Her gaze met mine, shyly, and she
nodded.
But a moment later we were again both thinking of Tollgamo. And we were
wondering about Allen, and Nereid's brother, Leh. Had Tollgamo put them
to death, in vengeance for our escape from Rhool's spaceship?
Then at last, to our left, the outlines of the lush forest shore were
close at hand.
"The Water City," Nereid murmured.
It was built in what seemed a partly submerged area of the jungle.
Tangled tree-tops projecting from the water, with little houses of
thatch and wood built like birds' nests between them. Or queer little
dwellings of woven blue rush, built on platforms that floated on the
water and were lashed between the protecting tree-trunks. Narrow arcade
bridges connected the houses; and the little balcony platforms where
boats were moored.
There were a few dots of lights. Then we passed the first group of
houses. Very queer. Nereid stared at me. Queer indeed. It was far into
the time of sleep, but still there should have been someone attracted
to the house doorways as we passed.
We had slackened now, with the houses, most of them dark, clustering
all about us.
"There is Venta's home," Nereid murmured. "Her father and brother will
be there."
We drifted under an arching bridge. The figure of a man was lying on
it. Asleep? Nereid called softly to him, but he did not move. Then I
was aware of a queer, acrid smell here. Choking smell. Nereid coughed
suddenly.
The boat landed at a low platform dock of Venta's home. We jumped to
the platform. Two men were here. Venta's father and brother. They lay
in a heap, one half upon the other. Dead! The opalescent sheen of the
glorious night was ghastly on their dead faces; mouths goggling with
blackened, protruding tongue; eyes staring with the agony and death.
And from here we could see other house balconies. Inert forms on them.
All dead.
In that stricken second, as we stood shuddering on the little platform
with the sea lapping under it, a new horror suddenly assailed us. There
was a tangle of vegetation here, tree branches overhead; air-vines with
redolent flowers and pods on them, dangled, swaying in the breeze. And
abruptly I realized that the dangling, rope-like vines were visibly
growing! At an edge of the platform one of them was slithering like a
serpent!
And Nereid gasped: "That smell! The gas of nitro-carbon in some
terrible concentration!"
I stood numbed. Nitrogenous gas-fumes, sprayed here on the night-breeze
by what deadly means I could not guess, had asphixiated the people of
the little Water City. Most of them asleep, they were quickly overcome
by the insidious fumes. An intensification of the gas which was
normally used by the Arones to stimulate vegetation growth, as we on
Earth use fertilizer. Nitro-carbon--deadly to humans; stimulating to
plant-life!
And the air-vines here were growing with a deadly acceleration!
In that same second, as we stood momentarily confused, one of the
dangling, swaying vines, grown monstrous now to be as thick as my arm,
struck against Nereid. Sentient vegetation! With the contact, the
damnable dangling vine suddenly wrapped itself around her, its powerful
sinuous blue feelers gripping her slender white throat, strangling her!
And in the night-silence an imbecile was gibbering, with triumphant,
maniacal laughter!