"Never saw this done before, Emmons. It's a mighty cute trick!" Jeffers
examined the route on the finder-tape. "But how does this guide us?"
"You'll see. We set up a circuit and run this directly to the
rocket-feeds! We can't go astray."
At last all was ready. With Lorine again at the controls, the spacer
rose into the heavy shrouding clouds. It was ticklish business, and
Curt admired the way she upped gravs.
Here there was no dawn. Morning had come as a mere paling of the mists,
but hot rain blanketed them as the little spacer drove forward.
Tor Ekkov began an endless, nervous pacing, but Curt and the others
huddled over the tape, watching its undeviating movement. In a matter
of minutes, Curt realized, they'd reach the place where the unknown
spacer had berthed. Perhaps it were best if they didn't set down too
near--
Within ten minutes their guiding tape had nearly run its course. Curt
hurried to Lorine, spoke something, and she nodded. They began the
descent, broke through an under-strata of clouds and were speeding over
a limitless expanse of vegetation.
Curt began to understand what Lorine meant. Nowhere could he see a
break in the corrupted fungi-growth and giant, spiked ferns that
reached above the blanketing steam. Some of those ferns were large
enough to impale a spacer!
But luck was with them. As they began a criss-crossing route Curt spied
a thinning area through the haze. A narrow, slate-dark opening appeared
in the jungle roof, deep and straight as though made by the slice of a
giant hand.
Steadying in its course, the ship nosed toward it. There was little
room to spare. A yellowish-green gloom engulfed them as they levelled
off with a thrust of underhull rockets. Mud and matted vegetation
sprayed high about the ports. They sloughed to a stop.
"Nice landing," Curt commented.
"Any landing here is a nice one," Lorine said wryly. She glanced at the
totally dark ports. "I wonder if we're below the Swamp! Jeffers, turn
off those rocket-feeds!"
Once more they donned the protective suits and helmets. Lorine opened a
locker, handed each of them an electro pistol.
"I'll feel better with this," Jeffers said grimly, lifting a long
duralloy cylinder with a lens-covered bore. "Radiant-gun," he
explained. "Transforms matter into radiant energy, by an instantaneous
stripping of electrons. Landreth used to have these at Io Base, but I
worked out this smaller model myself."
* * * * *
They stepped down into soft, glutinous muck. Vision stopped five yards
away. Curt expected the gloom to come alive with motion and sound and
unseen terrors, but there was none of that here. A terrible quiet
enfolded them.
The matted-walled chasm seemed to extend interminably. They proceeded
along it, finding their vision gradually improved. Curt hurried
forward, stayed close beside the girl.
"You mentioned something about a region where these--these Phibians
wouldn't go. Did you ever find out why?"
Lorine nodded. "They claimed that far in the Swamp was a god that spoke
to them! They were afraid of it."
"Spoke to them?"
"Yes. With the voice that has no sound. Warning them back."
Curt was startled. "The voice that has no sound. Telepathy! But it's
strange we've felt nothing!"
There was no sight or sound of a living thing, but hot blasts of wind
from above brought a miasmic swamp odor. It became almost an opiate to
their senses.
Curt noticed the tangled walls on either side were beginning to widen
away. And there was something else, as he felt his mind preternaturally
alert despite the cloying odors. He imagined he felt the faintest
thought-impression impinging on him, subtle and eerie, almost a feeling
of being under surveillance. He glanced about at the others. They were
feeling it too.
Suddenly the loom of jungle broke. They emerged into a downward sloping
place that seemed all swamp; a vast circular area black and quiescent,
with jungle rising on all sides. Descending toward it, they noticed a
vague glistening shape protruding just above the area of muck.
"The spacer!" Tor Ekkov exclaimed. "Must be the one you saw, Emmons--it
crashed here!"
Curt peered closer, then shook his head. He pointed out greenish swamp
tendrils entwining over and about the hull, mute evidence of time.
"It's a spacer all right," Jeffers was taut with excitement. "It's the
one Landreth boarded near Io, three years ago! By all that's holy,
we've found it!" They could only make out the stern, but the very size
of it indicated that the rest of the hull must be gigantic, far beneath
the primordial ooze.
Lorine clutched at Curt's arm, pointing. The Swamp moved. The black
surface was surging up in a horrible turgid mass. In one place and
then another, dark tentacles broke the surface. A central body began
to emerge, huge and bulbous beyond belief! It was octopoid--ghastly
and gelatinous, the body itself some fifty feet across, with tentacles
sprawling the entire diameter of the swamp. It pulled its greenish-gray
shape toward the protruding stern of the spacer. Like an ominous
guardian it draped itself entirely around and over the polished hull.
There it lay, pulsing gently, lord of all it surveyed.
And it surveyed them well! Curt found himself staring into
orange-tinted eyes a yard in diameter. Clammy uneasiness took hold of
him. Those eyes were bright and alert with meaning!
Curt felt overtones across his mind, saw Rikert's hand flash to his
electro. But never reached it. A huge tentacle lashed out. Curt fell
prone as it slashed over his head, Rikert ducked away too--but the
tentacle seized Jeffers, tightened, lifted him in a sweeping arc.
The others hurried out of danger as more tentacles lashed out. Curt
rolled from beneath one of them, threw up an arm against another, and
felt his arm go numb from the impact. He stumbled over the radiant
cylinder which Jeffers had let fall. Curt seized it, took careful aim.
Radiant energy, Jeffers had said. The beam that lashed from the
lens-covered bore was radiant indeed, and it saved Jeffers' life! Curt
slashed it squarely across the octopoid bulk and across the eyes.
They blanked out in a flash of disorganized electrons. Jeffers came
plummeting down, scrambled to safety as Curt swept the radiant beam
with devastating effect. In a matter of minutes the haughty guardian of
the swamp ceased to move ... then a strange thing happened.
[Illustration: _Curt swept the radiant beam with devastating effect._]
From the tangle of disrupted flesh and shredded integument, a tiny
globule of light rose lazily up. Electric-blue, sentient, scarcely a
few inches in diameter, it hung poised and gently pulsing.
Rikert took careful aim. Curt whirled, knocked his hand aside. "Don't
fire! I want to see where it goes!"
Seeming to lose interest in them, the light drifted, still pulsing,
toward the far edge of the swamp. There seemed to be a clearing of
some sort. Suddenly the strange light dipped toward the ground and
disappeared.
"Should've let me take a shot at that thing," Rikert growled.
"That was an intelligent entity! It may lead us to something."
* * * * *
They circled the swamp area in the direction the light had taken.
There was still an eeriness about the place, a brooding overtone they
couldn't shake off. At last they reached the opposite side, saw a
smooth aisle extending into the jungle. But that's not what brought
them up short, staring.
A hundred yards beyond was a milky-white mistiness reaching from wall
to jungle wall. And this was not Venusian fog! It remained quiescent.
An unearthly blue radiance seemed to shine beyond, giving an impression
of vast distance.