IV

The black birds darted at Harker, but the compulsion that sent them

flickered out too soon. The ferns and creepers shook, and then were

still, and the birds flew heavily away. Matt Harker stood up.

He thought he might have a little time. The flower-people probably

kept in pretty close touch mentally, but perhaps they wouldn't notice

Button's absence for a while. Perhaps they weren't prying into his own

thoughts, because he was Button's toy. Perhaps....

He began to run, toward the cliffs where the finish-place was. He kept

as much as possible in the open, away from shrubs. He did not look

again, before he left, at what lay by his feet.

He was close to his destination when he knew that he was spotted.

The birds returned, rushing down at him on black whistling wings. He

picked up a dead branch to beat them off and it crumbled in his hands.

Telekinesis, the power of mind over matter. Harker had read once that

if you knew how you could always make your point by thinking the dice

into position. He wished he could think himself up a blaster. Curved

beaks ripped his arms. He covered his face and grabbed one of the birds

by the neck and killed it. The other one screamed and this time Harker

wasn't so lucky. By the time he had killed the second one he'd felt

claws in him and his face was laid open along the cheekbones. He began

to run again.

Bushes swayed toward him as he passed. Thorny branches stretched.

Creepers rose like snakes from the grass, and every green blade was

turned knife-like against his feet. But he had already reached the

cliffs and there were open rocky spaces and the undergrowth was thin.

He knew he was near the finish-place because he could smell it. The

gentle withered fragrance of flowers past their prime, and under that

a dead, sour decay. He shouted McLaren's name, sick with dread that

there might not be an answer, weak with relief when there was one. He

raced over tumbled rocks toward the sound. A small creeper tangled his

foot and brought him down. He wrenched it by the roots from its shallow

crevice and went on. As he glanced back over his shoulder he saw a thin

white veil, a tiny patch in the distant air, drifting toward him.

He came to the finish-place.

It was a box canyon, quite deep, with high sheer walls, so that it

was almost like a wide well. In the bottom of it bodies were thrown

in a dry, spongy heap. Colorless flower-bodies, withered and grey, an

incredible compost pile.

Rory McLaren lay on top of it, apparently unhurt. The two packs were

beside him, with the weapons. Strewn over the heap, sitting, lying,

moving feebly about, were the ones who waited, as Button had put it,

to stop. Here were the aged, the faded and worn out, the imperfect and

injured, where their ugliness could not offend. They seemed already

dead mentally. They paid no attention to the men, nor to each other.

Sheer blind vitality kept them going a little longer, as a geranium

will bloom long after its cut stalk is desiccated.

"Matt," McLaren said. "Oh, God, Matt, I'm glad to see you!"

"Are you all right?"

"Sure. My leg even feels pretty good. Can you get me out?"

"Throw those packs up here."

McLaren obeyed. He began to catch Harker's feverish mood, warned by

Harker's bleeding, ugly face that something nasty was afoot. Harker

explained rapidly while he got out one of the ropes and half hauled

McLaren out of the pit. The white veil was close now. Very close.

"Can you walk?" Harker asked.

McLaren glanced at the fleecy cloud. Harker had told him about it. "I

can walk," he said. "I can run like hell."

Harker handed him the rope. "Get around the other side of the canyon.

Clear across, see?" He helped McLaren on with his pack. "Stand by with

the rope to pull me up. And keep to the bare rocks."

McLaren went off. He limped badly, his face twisted with pain. Harker

swore. The cloud was so close that now he could see the millions of

tiny seeds floating on their silken fibres, thistledown guided by the

minds of the flower-people in the valley. He shrugged into his pack

straps and began winding bandages and tufts of dead grass around the

bone tip of a recovered spear. The edge of the cloud was almost on him

when he got a spark into the improvised torch and sprang down onto the

heap of dead flower-things in the pit.

He sank and floundered on the treacherous surface, struggling across

it while he applied the torch. The dry, withered substance caught. He

raced the flames to the far wall and glanced back. The dying creatures

had not stirred, even when the fire engulfed them. Overhead, the edges

of the seed-cloud flared and crisped. It moved on blindly over the

fire. There was a pale flash of light and the cloud vanished in a puff

of smoke.

"Rory!" Harker yelled. "Rory!"

* * * * *

For a long minute he stood there, coughing, strangling in thick smoke,

feeling the rushing heat crisp his skin. Then, when it was almost

too late, McLaren's sweating face appeared above him and the rope

snaked down. Tongues of flame flicked his backside angrily as he ran

monkey-fashion up the wall.

They got away from there, higher on the rocky ground, slashing

occasionally with their knives at brush and creepers they could not

avoid. McLaren shuddered.

"It's impossible," he said. "How do they do it?"

"They're blood cousins. Or should I say sap. Anyhow, I suppose it's

like radio control--a matter of transmitting the right frequencies.

Here, take it easy a minute."

McLaren sank down gratefully. Blood was seeping through the tight

bandages where Harker had incised his wound. Harker looked back into

the valley.

The flower people were spread out in a long crescent, their bright

multi-colored heads clear against the green plain. Harker guessed that

they would be guarding the pass. He guessed that they had known what

was going on in his mind as well as Button had. New form of communism,

one mind for all and all for one mind. He could see that even without

McLaren's disability they couldn't make it to the pass. Not a mouse

could have made it.

He wondered how soon the next seed-cloud would come.

"What are we going to do, Matt? Is there any way...." McLaren wasn't

thinking about himself. He was looking at the valley like Lucifer

yearning at Paradise, and he was thinking of Viki. Not just Viki alone,

but Viki as a symbol of thirty-eight hundred wanderers on the face of

Venus.

"I don't know," said Harker. "The pass is out, and the caves are

out ... hey! Remember when we were fighting off those critters by the

river and you nearly started a cave-in throwing rocks? There was a

fault there, right over the edge of the lake. An earthquake split. If

we could get at it from the top and shake it down...."

It was a minute before McLaren caught on. His eyes widened. "A slide

would dam up the lake...."

"If the level rose enough, the Swimmers could get out." Harker gazed

with sultry eyes at the bobbing flower heads below.

"But if the valley's flooded, Matt, and those critters take over, where

does that leave our people?"

"There wouldn't be too much of a slide, I don't think. The rock's

solid on both sides of the fault. And anyway, the weight of the water

backed up there would push through anything, even a concrete dam, in a

couple of weeks." Harker studied the valley floor intently. "See the

way that slopes there? Even if the slide didn't wash out, a little

digging would drain the flood off down the pass. We'd just be making a

new river."

"Maybe." McLaren nodded. "I guess so. But that still leaves the

Swimmers. I don't think they'd be any nicer than these babies about

giving up their land." His tone said he would rather fight Button's

people any day.

Harker's mouth twisted in a slow grin. "The Swimmers are water

creatures, Rory. Amphibious. Also, they've lived underground, in total

darkness, for God knows how long. You know what happens to angleworms

when you get 'em out in the light. You know what happens to fungus

that grows in the dark." He ran his fingers over his skin, almost with

reverence. "Noticed anything about yourself, Rory? Or have you been too

busy."

McLaren stared. He rubbed his own skin, and winced, and rubbed again,

watching his fingers leave streaks of livid white that faded instantly.

"Sunburn," he said wonderingly. "My God. Sunburn!"

Harker stood up. "Let's go take a look." Down below the flower heads

were agitated "They don't like that thought, Rory. Maybe it can be

done, and they know it."

McLaren rose, leaning on a short spear like a cane. "Matt. They won't

let us get away with it."

Harker frowned. "Button said there were other ways beside the seed...."

He turned away. "No use standing here worrying about it."

* * * * *

They started climbing again, very slowly on account of McLaren. Harker

tried to gauge where they were in relation to the cavern beneath.

The river made a good guide. The rocks were almost barren of growth

here, which was a godsend. He watched, but he couldn't see anything

threatening approaching from the valley. The flower people were mere

dots now, perfectly motionless.

The rock formation changed abruptly. Ancient quakes had left scars in

the shape of twisted strata, great leaning slabs of granite poised

like dancers, and cracks that vanished into darkness.

Harker stopped. "This is it. Listen, Rory. I want you to go off up

there, out of the danger area...."

"Matt, I...."

"Shut up. One of us has got to be alive to take word back to the ships

as soon as he can get through the valley. There's no great rush and

you'll be able to travel in three-four days. You...."

"But why me? You're a better mountain man...."

"You're married," said Harker curtly. "It'll only take one of us to

shove a couple of those big slabs down. They're practically ready to

fall of their own weight. Maybe nothing will happen. Maybe I'll get out

all right. But it's a little silly if both of us take the risk, isn't

it?"

"Yeah. But Matt...."

"Listen, kid." Harker's voice was oddly gentle. "I know what I'm doing.

Give my regards to Viki and the...."

He broke off with a sharp cry of pain. Looking down incredulously, he

saw his body covered with little tentative flames, feeble, flickering,

gone, but leaving their red footprints behind them.

McLaren had the same thing.

They stared at each other. A helpless terror took Harker by the throat.

Telekinesis again. The flower people turning his own weapon against

them. They had seen fire, and what it did, and they were copying the

process in their own minds, concentrating, all of them together, the

whole mental force of the colony centered on the two men. He could

even understand why they focused on the skin. They had taken the

sunburn-thought and applied it literally.

Fire. Spontaneous combustion. A simple, easy reaction, if you knew the

trick. There was something about a burning bush....

The attack came again, stronger this time. The flower people were

getting the feel of it now. It hurt. Oh God, it hurt. McLaren screamed.

His loincloth and bandages began to smoulder.

_What to do, thought Harker, quick, tell me what to do...._

The flower people focus on us through our minds, our conscious minds.

Maybe they can't get the subconscious so easily, because the thoughts

are not directed, they're images, symbols, vague things. Maybe if Rory

couldn't think consciously they couldn't find him....

Another flare of burning, agonizing pain. In a minute they'll have the

feel of it. They can keep it going....

Without warning, Harker slugged McLaren heavily on the jaw and dragged

him away to where the rock was firm. He did it all with astonishing

strength and quickness. There was no need to save himself. He wasn't

going to need himself much longer.

He went away a hundred feet or so, watching McLaren. A third attack

struck him, sickened and dazed him so that he nearly fell. Rory McLaren

was not touched.

Harker smiled. He turned and ran back toward the rotten place in

the cliffs. A part of his conscious thought was so strongly formed

that his body obeyed it automatically, not stopping even when the

flames appeared again and again on his flesh, brightening, growing,

strengthening as the thought-energies of Button's people meshed

together. He flung down one teetering giant of stone, and the shock

jarred another loose. Harker stumbled on to a third, based on a sliding

bed of shale, and thrust with all his strength and beyond it, and it

went too, with crashing thunder.

Harker fell. The universe dissolved into shuddering, roaring chaos

beyond a bright veil of flame and a smell of burning flesh. By that

time there was only one thing clear in Matt Harker's understanding--the

second part of his conscious mind, linked to and even stronger than the

first.

The image he carried with him into death was a tall mountain with snow

on its shoulders, blazing in the sun.

* * * * *

It was night. Rory McLaren lay prone on a jutting shelf above the

valley. Below him the valley was lost in indigo shadows, but there was

a new sound in it--the swirl of water, angry and swift. There was new

life in it, too. It rode the crest of the flood waters, burning gold

in the blue night, shining giants returning in vengeance to their own

place. Great patches of blazing jewel-toned phosphorescence dotted the

water--the flower-hounds, turned loose to hunt. And in between them,

rolling and leaping in deadly play, the young of the Swimmers went.

McLaren watched them hunt the forest people. He watched all night,

shivering with dread, while the golden titans exacted payment for the

ages they had lived in darkness. By dawn it was all over. And then,

through the day, he watched the Swimmers die.

The river, turned back on itself, barred them from the caves. The

strong bright light beat down. The Swimmers turned at first to greet it

with a pathetic joy. And then they realized....

McLaren turned away. He waited, resting, until, as Harker had

predicted, the block washed away and the backed-up water could flow

normally again. The valley was already draining when he found the pass.

He looked up at the mountains and breathed the sweet wind, and felt a

great shame and humility that he was here to do it.

He looked back toward the caves where Sim had died, and the cliffs

above where he had buried what remained of Matt Harker. It seemed

to him that he should say something, but no words came, only that

his chest was so full he could hardly breathe. He turned mutely down

the rocky pass, toward the Sea of Morning Opals and the thirty-eight

hundred wanderers who had found a home.