"Fuvina?" The hunter repeated it with a frown. He knew the names of
most of Heatwave's big shots; some were political criminals, escaped
from Earth. Others were former residents of his own town who had left
in search of an easier living than the continual struggle with marshy
soil and carnivorous jungle.
But he couldn't recall any Fuvina. Possibly a new arrival; possibly one
of the smaller fry who had recently killed and looted his way to the
top of bloody Heatwave society. Fuvina? Fuv--
Of course! The not-quite-flexible pterodactyl beak was incapable
of labial sounds like _p_ and _b_, and transformed them into the
labiodentals _f_ and _v_. Pubina! Max Pubina had left New Kalamazoo
in a hurry three years ago after cutting some farmer's throat in a
boundary dispute and, by combining organized raids on isolated families
with the smuggling of the illicit Venusian dunging drug to Earth, had
become a power of sorts.
"You mean Pubina?"
"This I said. Fuvina. He and other Heatwave men took man and girl
from shif and placed them in own shif. Also took vig green vottle.
Left one Heatwave man hidden here. Then flew that way in own shif." A
fantastically large and fleshy wing gestured south. "Them I follow.
Where Heatwave men stof, I see. Then I come vack."
The terry drew an immense swallow of air to compensate for his long
speech and shook himself. The great fern trembled in sympathy.
* * * * *
Graff stepped forward from the rosebush and inspected his informant
closely. "Thanks. But I don't see why you're interested."
The toothed beak, which was half as long as a man, opened uncertainly.
"Vecause," the lizard-bird explained in a low voice, "Heatwave men have
caftured my mate vefore attacking New Kalamazoo sky-shif. In cage they
fut her for shivment to Earth. This I can do nothing about fy myself.
Vut them I follow, hofing to find way to rescue her."
"And you figure that if you help me find my friends, I'll help you save
your mate from the sideshows on Earth? Well, I will, _if_--"
A big, complex _if_, with as many tendrils as sucking ivy. If he lived
long enough, and, if he did, if he would be sane enough--considering
the agonizing last hour of Ricardo's Virus infection--to do anything
constructive once he arrived at Pubina's jungle hideout. If a man,
guided by a pterodactyl flying overhead, could pick his way on foot
through a completely unexplored section of swamp and have enough juice
left in him when he emerged to take the prize of the century away from
the toughest collection of cutthroats on an extremely tough planet.
He clenched his fist as the cramps began in his left hand--the cramps
that would spread slowly throughout his body until they ended in fatal
convulsions some five hours from now. If a one-armed man could do all
this, and do it with just one portable electroblast....
He cursed sharply, suddenly, as he realized he'd been holding the
electroblast in his hand ever since he'd given the Heatwave thug that
finishing jolt. That was after he'd been stabbed, after the man's first
wild blast had burned Graff's antiseptic pouch into a mess of fused
glass vials and blackened fabric. Without immediate application of the
ten different antiseptic solutions.
But now! He inspected the bright metal of the coils anxiously.
Might still do. Just might. He bolstered the blaster with infinite
tenderness and stooped over the blackened body that had almost
disappeared into the mud. The man's electric gun was far too wet to be
of any use but Graff fumbled around in the soggy soil until he located
the stiletto.
He straightened and grinned at the long blade, its steel already
reddening from the pervasive rust of Venus.
"Where is the ship?" he asked. "The ship my friends were in?"
The terry nodded at a flat and soggy expanse. "Under there. Heatwave
sky-shif wait here high uf. When New Kalamazoo shif come, Heatwave shif
fly down fast ufon it. New Kalamazoo shif hit mud hard. This I see.
Then Heatwave men take your friends away and New Kalamazoo shif sink in
mud. Altogether are four Heatwave men, vesides Fuvina. You kill one,
so now are only three, vesides Fuvina." The flying reptile breathed
heavily again. Its scaly claws moved restlessly about on the branch.
_Call that a break_, Graff decided. Four men to handle. Might have been
twenty. Either Pubina had a smaller gang than had been believed, or he
was playing the whole thing really smart. Toughs, especially Venusian
ones, would really chop each other to merry hell over the first
laboratory sample of a vaccine that promised immunity from Ricardo's
Virus. A break to balance the loss of the ship.
Or was it? All he had was the terry's word. Could be that the entire
yarn about his mate being captured for export to the terran amusement
parks was nothing more than a story made up by Pubina to play on a
colonist's sympathy. The terry might be working for Pubina some way
or other. Who knew anything about pterodactyls? Who knew if they
experienced anything like love or loyalty?
Graff stared at the unwinking reptilian eyes, at the tapering ugly
beak, both completely devoid of expression. Add another _if_.
"All right, MacDuff," he said at last. "Lead on."
"We go in vig curve," the terry told him, flapping its wings
monstrously in preparation for flight. "Eight, nine hours for you.
Other way take half time, vut--"
"Vut nothing!" Graff broke in. He massaged his left forearm, which had
begun aching in sympathy with the hand. "Let's use the short cut."
"It too hard for you, too dangerous! River cuts across--"
"So I'll get my feet wet. I'm not in a position to be worried by
pneumonia. Let's head for the straight and narrow, MacDuff. I'm in a
hurry."
* * * * *
The animal cocked its head to one side, dropped its wings in a gesture
like a shrug and moved off the fern in a soaring glide southward. When
it was about three hundred feet up, it circled back to make certain
that Graff was following.
Now if you ever go to Venus, the Polar Continent is probably where
you'll live for the duration of your stay. Not only is its temperature
and annual rainfall the lowest on the planet (which makes it just a
shade more uncomfortable than the Amazonian Jungle), but also it is the
most heavily populated stretch of land--averaging close to one person
every thirty square miles.
But if you find yourself on the Polar Continent you will be advised,
and well-advised, to stay away from the Southern Peninsula. This is
not merely because it is a dank and deadly swamp. But chiefly because
of the Black River which winds through the peninsula, doubling back on
itself, crossing through itself and becoming a tributary of itself a
dozen times over, like a living surrealist corkscrew.
The Black River rises somewhere in the unscalable peaks of the San
Mountains and comes roaring into the flatlands with a tremendous
velocity. Just before reaching the peninsula, however, it is joined by
the Zetzot River, and the two of them make a combination that is really
in a hurry. Even if there were no rain at all (which is definitely
not the case!), there would be a perpetual mist over the Southern
Peninsula. And by the time the Black gets through doubling back on
itself, giving itself a shove, so to speak--well, the reason no one
knows exactly where the river empties into the Jefferson Sea is because
the entire area is completely obscured by an opaque steaming fog which
boils about for miles on either side.
Nor is that all. Certain animals like to wallow in the swamp created
by the Black. And most of them are very large. Creatures which can
survive in the swamp of the Southern Peninsula are quite tough, quite
dangerous and most uniquely suited to their environment. There are
snakes and insects and carnivorous plants galore, not to mention the
huge creatures who live in quicksand and have yet to be classified.
One of the smallest animals of the peninsula is a dark little fish
which swims back and forth in the Black itself. Venusian colonists
have christened it the sardine, possibly because it is the size of a
terrestrial sardine. Its habits, however, resemble those of the South
American piranha. It travels in large schools and eats its way through
anything.
All in all, the Southern Peninsular Swamp is an ideal home for a baron
of crime who wants to get away from it all. The _all_ doesn't include
law, of course. On Venus, each man writes his own code of laws with the
weapon he finds handiest.
The trouble was, Graff Dingle reflected, as he found a ford and leaped
across the screaming waters to the opposite bank, the trouble was
that his folks and people like them had come to Venus to get away
from lawlessness of the international kind only to hit the inevitable
individual lawlessness of a frontier.
Ordinarily a frontier is slowly and surely transformed from rowdy
wide-openness into suburban quietude by the increase in population--but
population doesn't increase in really dangerous spots; that's why
the people of New Kalamazoo worked so hard and so long to make their
settlement large enough to merit the establishment of a university.
A university would mean laboratories and research facilities to
investigate Ricardo's Virus and all the lesser plagues peculiar to
Venus, the plagues which took more lives yearly than jungle monsters
and murderous Heatwavers combined; and a university would mean an
increase in population, and law and order.
But Earth hadn't been interested. The study of Venusian diseases was an
exotic subject hardly touched upon in Terran medical schools. Earth had
been far too busy manufacturing artificial diseases to supplement atom
bombs and hydrogen bombs.
Earth had, however, investigated the Venusian plagues with a view to
their use in biological warfare. And out of the investigation, as an
accident, as a by-product, had come lobodin. A vaccine, not a serum.
No good for Graff right now, for he was almost two full hours into the
yellow death.
* * * * *
He worked his left arm around slowly, wincing with each turn, his eyes
on the terry above him circling southward in the damp murky sky. At the
same time he tried to plant the broad soles of his boots on mud that
wasn't quicksand, on rotten twigs that wouldn't crack too loudly. He
knew his blood was now completely infiltrated with the obscene little
yellow specks.
Pubina was probably trying to force Dr. Bergenson to inject the vaccine
into him, ridiculing the old man's protests that all the bottle held
was a starter culture, just enough so that with weeks of careful
tending they might have sufficient vaccine to immunize the children.
It had been so expensive and difficult for the little colony to send
Dr. Bergenson and Greta to Earth where his reputation and connections
had enabled him to wheedle a spoonful of the precious stuff out of
a government laboratory! Pubina hadn't been able to get it, for all
of his bribes and underworld contacts. But the bribes and underworld
contacts had served another purpose: Pubina had discovered when the
Bergensons were due to return--and that was all he really needed.
Graff noticed abruptly that the terry was falling rapidly back at him.
Could he be trying to warn--
A shriek gave him the answer. Less than a quarter-mile away, a
brontosaurus squatted its tremendous bulk in a shallow pool and
regarded him from the end of an undulating snake-like neck. The animal
screamed again and Graff froze.
He watched the incredibly heavy reptile scramble to its feet and
desperately tried to think. It wasn't a brontosaurus charge you had to
be afraid of, but what usually traveled in its wake. A brontosaurus was
herbivorous and, for all its size, extremely timid. It was ridiculous,
possibly, but the mountain of living flesh was probably screaming in
terror at the sight of him. You only had to control yourself and think
while the great beast charged.
Because a brontosaurus meets danger by running into it. It is so
massive that it is virtually unstoppable once in motion. You can blast
its stupid little head off and it will keep running for another twenty
minutes, powered by the bundle of nerve cells just under the spine. You
just have to stand still and remember that it is much more frightened
than you and is trying to trample you to death before you can bite it.
Graff stood his ground, bending his knees slowly, until the behemoth
was only twenty-five feet away. Then he straightened suddenly and
leaped off to the right, then again, further, and again, still further
to the right.
* * * * *
Screaming insanely, the tons upon tons of flesh roared past, absolutely
unable to halt itself. Its momentum carried it up a small hill and
Graff could hear it bellowing down the other side. It wouldn't return.
But something else was on its way. There's always a meat-eater in the
wake of a brontosaurus. Sometimes there are several. The _kind_ of
carnivore was very important to Graff right now. He had an electroblast
which he wasn't certain would work in an emergency and whose diminished
power he'd certainly need later. And he had a stiletto.
He heard the beast thumping its way through the luxuriant weeds of the
swamp. A moment later it had broken into the clear, had seen him and
was loping toward him easily with all the confidence of a powerful
creature which sees an easy meal in sight.
A shata. No larger than a terran wolf. But if a brontosaurus can be
said to be all body-bulk and very little head, the shata is just the
reverse. Twelve rows of teeth, and jaws which open wide enough to admit
a sheep. Regretfully and a little uncertainly, Graff holstered the
electroblast and balanced the stiletto on his palm. He'd hunted lots of
shata in his time, but never with a knife.
He began weaving about, conscious of his awkwardness. The knots in his
left side constantly made him misjudge his body and slip off balance.
And here he was hoping to take four men at a time--
As he expected, the shata was confused by his peculiar motion. It
slowed to a dead stop, then slunk before him, growling. It moved in
half-circles, coming in closer each time. Graff waited until it was
directly in front of him. He stood still and immediately the shata
sprang, jaws gaping.
The palate. Just behind the palate is the brain. It means sticking half
your arm into a fearful set of jaws, but do it right.
Graff let the rigid, distended head slide off the knife and into the
mud. He wiped his blade on the green fur, standing out like so many
spikes, and grimaced. A nice specimen. Shatas were good eating, too.
Well, he wasn't a hunter any more. He was a dead man looking for a
coffin. He was swamp-bait if he collapsed in this weedy muck.
The terry skimmed by with his head turned questioningly.
"I'm fine," Graff reassured him. "How much farther?"
"Vetween one and two of your hours." The lizard-bird curved up and
ahead, leathery wings beating slowly.
Graff plodded on. He should arrive with about an hour and a half of
life left. That would give him a half-hour to an hour at most in which
to operate consciously and more or less effectively. After that there
would be half an hour of writhing agony, leading into unconsciousness.
After that he would be dead.
He'd hate to leave life. It meant leaving the thrill of tracking your
quarry on the bracing slope of Mount Catiline where the dodle breeds in
the Season of Wind-Driven Rains; it meant leaving a wild new world that
was just a-borning as far as humanity was concerned; it meant leaving
Greta Bergenson.
It also meant leaving wealth. Now that lobodin had been developed, the
colonization of Venus would begin in earnest. He was the last alive of
a numerous family who had homesteaded half the Galertan Archipelago
into their possession. He was heir to all the rich, fertile, and
deserted islands his father and brothers had claimed. With Ricardo's
Virus taken care of, future Venusian farmers would pay well for those
scattered spots of soil in the Jefferson Sea.
Following the terry, he hit the river again. He started downstream,
looking for a ford as he had before. The Black was rather wide at this
point and he wasted fifteen precious minutes before he found a bank
that curved near enough to the opposite one to permit of a leap. He
went into the weeds to get a running start.
A shadow plummeted past him.
"Vack," the terry screamed. "Get vack! Don't jumf here. Gridnik!"
Graff paused and peered across the river. Sure enough, there was the
brown and white nest on the opposite bank where he would have landed.
As he watched, a single gridnik droned out, looking like a winged red
ant but with the size and disposition of a large, cornered rat.
"Thanks, MacDuff," he muttered, moving away. Well, there was no help
for it. He didn't have time to look for another ford. He'd have to swim.
He waited on the crumbling bank until a dozen blue flashes swept past
under him. "Sardine" schools were usually far enough apart to permit a
fast swimmer to get through between them. When the tiny blue fish were
fifty feet away, he dived.
The force of the river knocked the breath out of him. He fought his way
through the torrent. His flailing hands touched a projecting piece of
rock and he hauled himself painfully up the bank.
Graff noted gratefully that his head was clearer. The gnawing headache
had diminished somewhat under the impact of the water.
The pterodactyl alighted near him. "There," it said, pointing ahead
with a yellow claw. "Fuvina."
But the hunter was interested in something else. He removed his
electroblast and examined its coils ruefully. The tight holster was
supposed to be fairly waterproof, but it had not been intended for
protecting a weapon in the Black River.
He started to throw it aside, but held it as he remembered how few
cards he held in his hand.
* * * * *
Max Pubina's hideout was a large prefabricated job that must have cost
a medium-sized fortune to import from Earth across some thirty million
miles of empty space. The outlaw's house covered the top of a rise,
and the soil around it was sufficiently high over the swamp proper
to resemble the fine farmland of New Kalamazoo. Rich jungle growths
were held at bay by a patch of sandy ground completely surrounding the
house. It made it impossible for anyone or anything to creep up to the
walls unobserved. Graff Dingle knew how expensive it must have been to
sterilize so large an area of ground.
_Crime does not pay_, he mused. _Except on Venus._
He reconnoitered the place cautiously, keeping well under cover.
The man-made yard was empty. There was no one outside the house or
the rocket-ship hangar attached to it. He could see the blunt nose
of Pubina's sleek craft in the otherwise deserted hangar. But they
probably had guards posted at the windows.
A long white line traced a curve in his path. Graff stepped over it
gingerly, glancing to the left. Sure enough, hidden in thick bushes was
the mass of white filaments that was the bulk of the sucking ivy. Touch
the trigger-vine, however gently, with your foot....
He came back to the terry. "Listen, MacDuff," he said. "I want you to
stay out of trouble as long as possible. When I need you, I'll need
you bad. Meanwhile, on the wing or on the ground, you're a sucker for
an electroblast with that wingspread. But you could be useful as a
lookout. I wouldn't like to be outflanked."
A grave nod of the narrow beak. "This I do." The reptile soared up in a
high spiral over the house.
Now. He had to get into the house across thirty-five feet of open
ground, under the electroblasts of four highly proficient murderers.
How?
The headache returned, stronger than ever, and Graff swayed dizzily.
Red roaring fires tore up and down his left side. He'd never make it.
Swamp-bait, that's all he was, bait for the mud of the Black.
He straightened then and laughed. Bait? Well, that was one way to hunt.
The hunter strode toward the house, across the creeper of sucking ivy,
counting each step. He stopped under cover of a sweeping fern just
outside the sandy expanse.
"Pubina!" he yelled. "I've come for the Bergensons."