"We haven't seen her. But our mates have. She came a little while ago
and walked through the streets, and all our mates left us to follow
her. They say she's beautiful beyond any of us, and...."
"And her eyes are hidden, and they have to see them. They have to look
into her eyes or go crazy, so they follow her."
The sad little blue-grey cloud stirred in the dark water. Golden eyes
looked down at him.
"How did you know? Do you follow her, too?"
Lundy took a deep, slow breath. The palms of his hands were wet. "Yes.
Yes, I followed her, too."
"We feel your thought...." They came down close around him. Their
delicate membranes fluttered like fairy wings. Their golden eyes were
huge and soft and pleading.
"Can you help us? Can you bring our mates back safe? They've forgotten
everything. If The Others should come...."
"The Others?"
Lundy's brain was drowned in stark and terrible fear. Pictures came
through it. Vague gigantic dreams of nightmare....
"They come, riding the currents that go between the hot cracks in the
mountains and the cold deeps. They eat. They destroy." The little
woman-things were shaken suddenly like leaves in a gust of wind.
"We hide from them in the buildings. We can keep them out, away from
our seed and the little new ones. But our mates have forgotten. If
The Others come while they follow Her, outside and away from safety,
they'll all be killed. We'll be left alone, and there'll be no more
seed for us, and no more little new ones."
They pressed in close around him, touching him with their small
blue-grey fore-fins.
"Can you help us? Oh, can you help us?"
Lundy closed his eyes. His mouth twitched and set. When he opened his
eyes again they were hard as agates.
"I'll help you," he said, "or die trying."
It was dark in the great square, with only the pale sandglow seeping
through the gates. For a moment the little blue-grey woman-creatures
clung around him, not moving, except as the whole mass of them swayed
slightly with the slow rhythm of the sea.
Then they burst away from him, outward, in a wild surge of hope--and
Lundy stood with his mouth open, staring.
They weren't blue-grey any longer. They glowed suddenly, their wings
and their dainty, supple bodies, a warm soft green that had a vibrant
pulse of life behind it. And they blossomed.
The long, slender, living petals must have been retracted, like the
fronds of a touch-me-not, while they wore the sad blue-grey. Now they
broke out like coronals of flame around their small heads.
Blue and scarlet and gold, poppy-red and violet and flame, silver-white
and warm pink like a morning cloud, streaming in the black water.
Streaming from small green bodies that rolled and tumbled high up
against the dark, dreaming buildings like the butterflies that had
danced there before the sunlight was lost forever.
Quite suddenly, then, they stopped. They drifted motionless in the
water, and their colors dimmed. Lundy said,
"Where are they?"
"Deep in the city, beyond our buildings here--in the streets where only
the curious young ones ever go. Oh, bring them back! Please bring them
back!"
"If I come back myself," said Lundy, "I'll bring them."
He left them hovering in the great dark square and went on into the
city.
* * * * *
He walked down broad paved streets channelled with wheel-ruts and
hollowed by generations of sandalled feet. The great water-worn
buildings lifted up on either side, lighted by the erratic glare of the
distant fissure.
The window-openings, typical of most Venusian architecture, were
covered by grilles of marble and semi-precious stone, intricately
hand-pierced like bits of jewelry. The great golden doors stood open on
their uncorroded hinges. Through them Lundy could watch the life of the
little plant-people being lived.
In some of the buildings the lower floor had been covered with sand.
Plant-women hovered protectively over them, brushing the sand smooth
where the water disturbed it. Lundy guessed that these were seed beds.
In other places there were whole colonies of tiny flower-things still
rooted in the sand; a pale spring haze of green in the dimness. They
sat in placid rows, nodding their pastel baby coronals and playing
solemnly with bits of bright weed and colored stones. Here, too, the
plant-women watched and guarded lovingly.
Several times Lundy saw groups of young plantlings, grown free of the
sand, being taught to swim by the woman-creatures, tumbling in the
black water like bright petals on a spring wind.
All the women were the same sad blue-grey, with their blossoms hidden.
They'd stay that way, unless he, Lundy, could finish the job Special
had sent him to do. The job he hadn't been quite big enough to handle
up to now.
Farrell, with the flesh flayed off his bones, and not feeling it
because _She_ was all he could think of. Jackie Smith, drowned in a
flooded lock because _She_ wanted to be free and he had helped her.
Was this Lundy guy so much bigger than Farrell and Smith, and all the
other men who had gone crazy over Her? Big enough to catch The Vampire
Lure in a net and keep it there, and not go nuts himself?
Lundy didn't feel that big. Not anywhere near that big.
He was remembering things. The first time he'd had _It_ in a net.
The last few minutes before the wreck, when he'd heard Her crying
for freedom from inside the safe. Jackie Smith's face when he walked
in with the water from the flooded lock, and his, Lundy's, own
question--_Oh Lord, what did he see before he drowned?_
The tight cold knot was back in Lundy's belly again, and this time it
had spurs on.
He left the colony behind him, walking down empty streets lit by the
rhythmic flaring of the volcanic fissure. There was damage here.
Pavements cracked and twisted with the settling, towers shaken down,
the carved stone jalousies split out of the windows. Whole walls had
fallen in, in some places, and most of the golden doors were wrecked,
jammed wide open or gone entirely.
A dead city. So dead and silent that you couldn't breathe with it, and
so old it made you crawl inside.
A swell place to go mad in, following a dream.
After a long time Lundy saw them--the mates of the little seaweed
women. A long, long trail of them like a flight of homing birds,
winding between the dark and broken towers.
They looked like their women. A little bigger, a little coarser, with
strong tough dark-green bodies and brilliant coronals. Their golden
eyes were fixed on something Lundy couldn't see, and they looked like
the eyes of Lucifer yearning at the gates of Heaven.
Lundy began to run against the water, cutting across a wide plaza to
get under the head of the procession. He unhooked the net from his belt
with hands that felt like a couple of dead fish.
* * * * *
Then he staggered suddenly, lost his footing, and went sprawling. It
was as though somebody had pushed him with a strong hand. When he tried
to get up it pushed him again, hard. The golden glare from the fissure
was steadier now, and very bright.
The trail of little man-things bent suddenly in a long whipping bow,
and Lundy knew what was the matter.
There was a current rising in the city. Rising like the hot white winds
that used to howl in from the sea, carrying the rains.
"_They ride the currents that go between the hot cracks in the
mountains and the cold deeps. They eat. They destroy._"
The Others. The Others, who were cannibals....
_She_ led the bright trail of plant-men between the towers, and there
was a current rising in the streets.
Lundy got up. He balanced himself against the thrust of the current and
ran, following the procession. It was clumsy work, with the water and
his leaded boots. He tried to gauge where _It_--or _She_--was from the
focus of the plant-men's eyes.
The hot light flared up brighter. The water pulled and shoved at him.
He looked back once, but he couldn't see anything in the shadows
between the towers. He was scared.
He shook the net out, and he was scared.
Funny that _It_--or _She_--didn't see him. Funny _It_ didn't sense his
mind, even though he tried to keep it closed. But he wasn't a very
big object down there in the shadows under the walls, and creating an
illusion for that many minds would be a strain on anything, even a
creature from outer space.
He'd had the breaks once before, when he caught up with Farrell. He
prayed to have them again.
He got them, for what good it did him.
The current caught the procession and pulled it down close to Lundy. He
watched their eyes. She was still leading them. She had a physical body
even if you couldn't see it, and the current would pull it, no matter
how tiny it was.
He cast his net out, fast.
It bellied out in the black water and came swooping back to his pull,
and there was something in it. Something tiny and cylindrical and
vicious. Something alive.
He drew the net tight, shivering and sweating with nervous excitement.
And the plant-men attacked.
They swooped on him in a brilliant cloud. Their golden eyes burned.
There was no sense in them. Their minds shrieked and clamored at him, a
formless howl of rage--and fear, for _Her_.
They beat at him with their little green fins. Their coronals blazed,
hot angry splashes of colored flame against the dark water. They
wrenched at the net, tore at it, beating their membranes like wings
against the rising current.
Lundy was a solid, muscular little guy. He snarled and fought for the
net like a wolf over a yearling lamb. He lost it anyway. He fell on
his face under a small mountain of churning man-things and lay gasping
for the breath they knocked out of him, thankful for the vac-suit that
saved him from being crushed flat.
He watched them take the net. They clustered around it in a globe like
a swarm of bees, rolling around in the moving water. Their golden eyes
had a terrible stricken look.
They couldn't open the net. Lundy had drawn it tight and fastened it,
and they didn't have fingers. They stroked and pawed it with their
fins, but they couldn't let _Her_ out.
Lundy got up on his hands and knees. The current quickened. It roared
down between the broken towers like a black wind and took the swarm of
man-things with it, still clutching the net.
And then The Others came.