_A knife wound can be a serious matter on Earth. On
Venus, it's a six-hour flow into vilest eternity_.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories March 1953.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Graff Dingle stolidly watched yellow mold form around the stiletto hole
in his arm. He smelled the first faint jasmine odor of the disease and
glanced up to where the sun glowed unhappily behind a mass of dirty
clouds and wind-driven rain.
Dingle kicked morosely at the Heatwave thug left behind to ambush him,
and the charred body turned soughingly in the mud. "Be seeing you,
bully-boy, in about five and a half hours. Your electroblast may have
missed me, but it cooked my antiseptic pouch into soup. It made that
last knife-thrust really rate."
There was a dumb dryhorn blunder, Graff reflected, sneering at himself
out of a face that was dark from life-long exposure to a huge sun.
Bending over an enemy before making certain he was burned to a crisp.
But he'd had to search the man's clothing for a clue to the
disappearance of Greta and Dr. Bergenson and--even above Greta--the
unspeakably precious cargo of lobodin they'd been flying in from Earth.
_So I'll pay for my hurry_, he thought. _Like one always does in the
Venusian jungle._
Ricardo's Virus was viciously prompt: six hours after its light,
saffron globules had formed in an open wound, you were dead. And no
frantic surgery, no pathetic attempts at drainage, could save you.
Graff should know. His parents, his brothers and sisters had been
a small fraction of the New Kalamazoo death totals due to cuts and
scratches observed too late for antisepsis. The virus had accounted for
most of three generations of Venusian colonists, including Vilfredo
Ricardo himself, the first man to set hesitant foot on the swampy
planet. Ricardo had merely skinned his hand on his new flagpole.
Nasty to die of the filthy mold before he knew what had happened to the
Bergensons. Not that he had a personal interest in the matter any more
for Greta wouldn't be marrying a corpse when she could pick any one of
a hundred extremely live and woman-hungry pioneers. But her father was
the only doctor in the tiny settlement. And the loss of the lobodin
meant Ricardo's Virus would tuck many more New Kalamazoo colonists into
seepy graves before the year was out.
A speck grew large in the sky. Graff involuntarily moved into the shade
of a giant rosebush as his oversharp instincts asserted themselves.
Yes, it was a terry all right. Friendly?
* * * * *
The pterodactyl landed lightly on a frond of the opposite fern. Its
absurd, leathery forehead wrinkled at him. Graff noted that it was
barely out of range of his electroblast. Intelligent, sure enough, and
an unusually fearless specimen to perch this close to man.
At any other time he would have been intrigued by the opportunity of
making friends with one of the intelligent winged reptiles who had
learned to speak man's languages and, with good reason, shun his works.
Now, he had other things on his mind.
Like dying painfully in a few hours.
Graff looked up sharply as enormous bat-like wings ceased their rustle.
The lizard-bird's long, sloping forehead wrinkled even further. Its
beak opened and closed several times. It cleared its throat.
"City?"
Then it was civilized, too. What had induced it to leave its communal
eyrie in the San Mountains? The terries had avoided men for over fifty
years. Many was the time that Graff, intent on stalking meat for
the colonists, had been startled by a flock of pterodactyls winging
overhead and shouting curses down at him in the three languages of the
early settlers.
"City?" the question was repeated more insistently. "Heatwave or New
Kalamazoo?"
"New Kalamazoo."
A relieved nod of the triangular head. "This I thought. You wish
knowledge which Heatwave man has man and girl from shif?"