Venus was a fluffy cotton ball hanging motionless in bottomless
space. Far to the left, Mercury gleamed like a polished diamond in
the sunlight. Kerry Blane cut the driving rockets, let the cruiser
sink into a fast gravity-dive, guiding it only now and then by a brief
flicker of a side jet.
Splinter Wood watched breathlessly from the vision port, his long face
eager and reckless, his eyes seeking to pierce the clouds that roiled
and twisted uneasily over the surface of the planet.
Kerry Blane glanced tolerantly at his young companion, felt a nostalgic
tug at his heart when he remembered the first time he had approached
the water-planet years before. Then, he had been a young and reckless
firebrand, his fame already spreading, an unquenchable fire of
adventure flaming in his heart.
Now, his aged but steady fingers rested lightly on the controls,
brought the patrol cruiser closer to the cloud-banks on the line of
demarcation between the sunward and sunless sides of the planet. He
hummed tunelessly, strangely happy, as he peered ahead.
"Val Kenton died there," Splinter whispered softly, "Died to save the
lives of three other people!"
Kerry Blane nodded. "Yes," he agreed, and his voice changed subtly.
"Val was a blackguard, a criminal; but he died in the best traditions
of the service." He sighed. "He never had a chance."
"Murdered!"
Kerry Blane smiled grimly. "I guess I used too broad an interpretation
of the word," he said gently. "Anyway, one of our main tasks is to
destroy the thing that killed him."
His lean fingers tightened unconsciously.
"I'd like nothing better than to turn a Zelta-blaster on that chunk of
living protoplasm and cremate it."
Splinters shivered slightly. "Do you think we'll find it?" he asked.
Kerry Blane nodded. "I think it will find us; after all, it's just an
animated appetite looking for food."
He turned back to the controls, flipped a switch, and the cutting of
the nose rocket dropped the ship in an angling glide toward the clouds
a few miles below. Gravity was full strength now, and although not as
great as Earth's, was still strong enough to bring a sense of giddiness
to the men.
"Here we go!" Splinter said tonelessly.
The great cottony batts of roiling clouds rushed up to meet the ship,
bringing the first sense of violent movement in more than a week of
flying. There was something awesome and breath-taking in the speed with
which the ship dropped toward the planet.
Tendrils of vapor touched the ports, were whipped aside, then were
replaced by heavier fingers of cloud. Kerry Blane pressed a firing
stud, and nose rockets thrummed in a rising crescendo as the free fall
of the cruiser was checked. Heat rose in the cabin from the friction of
the outer air, then dissipated, as the force-screen voltometer leaped
higher.
Then, as though it had never been, the sun disappeared, and there was
only a gray blankness pressing about the ship. Gone was all sense of
movement, and the ship seemed to hover in a gray nothingness.
Kerry Blane crouched over the control panel, his hands moving deftly,
his eyes flicking from one instrument to another. Tiny lines of
concentration etched themselves about his mouth, and perspiration
beaded his forehead. He rode that cruiser through the miles of clouds
through sheer instinctive ability, seeming to fly it as though he were
an integral part of the ship.
Splinter Wood watched him with awe in his eyes, seeing for the first
time the incredible instinct that had made Kerry Blane the idol of a
billion people. He relaxed visibly, all instinctive fear allayed by the
brilliant competence of his companion.
Seconds flowed into moments, and the moments merged into one another,
and still the clouds pressed with a visible strength against the
ports. The rockets drummed steadily, holding the ship aloft, dropping
it slowly toward the planet below. Then the clouds thinned, and,
incredibly, were permeated with a dim and glowing light. A second
later, and the clouds were gone, and a thousand feet below tumbled and
tossed in a majestic display of ruthless strength an ocean that seemed
to be composed of liquid fluorescence.
Kerry Blane heard Splinter's instant sigh of unbelief.
"Good Lord!" Splinter said, "What--"
His voice stilled, and he was silent, his eyes drinking in the weird
incredible scene below.
* * * * *
The ocean was a shifting, white-capped wash of silvery light that
gleamed with a bright phosphorescence of a hundred, intermingled,
kaleidoscopic colors. And the unreal, unearthly light continued
unbroken everywhere, reflected from the low-hanging clouds, reaching
to the far horizon, bathing every detail of the planet in a brilliance
more bright than moonlight.
Splinter turned a wondering face. "But the official reports say that
there is no light on Venus," he exclaimed. "That was one of the reasons
given when exploration was forbidden!"
Kerry Blane nodded. "That was merely a pretext to keep foolhardy
spacemen from losing their lives on the planet. In reality, the
ocean is alive with an incredibly tiny marine worm that glows
phosphorescently. The light generated from those billions of worms is
reflected back from the clouds, makes Venus eternally lighted."
He turned the ship to the North, relaxed a bit on the air bunk. He
felt tired and worn, his body aching from the space bends of a few
hours before.
"Take over," he said wearily. "Take the ship North, and watch for any
island."
Splinter nodded, rested his long hands on the controls. The space
cruiser lifted a bit in a sudden spurt of speed, and the rocket-sound
was a solid thrum of unleashed power.
Kerry Blane lit a cigarette, leaned toward a vision port. He felt again
that thrill he had experienced when he had first flashed his single-man
cruiser through the clouds years before. Then the breath caught in his
throat, and he tapped his companion's arm.
"Take a look!" he called excitedly.
They fought in the ocean below, fought in a never-ending splashing of
what seemed to be liquid fire. It was like watching a tri-dim screen of
a news event, except for the utter lack of sound.
One was scaly, while the other was skinned, and both were fully three
hundred feet long. Great scimitars of teeth flashed in the light, and
blood gouted and stained the water crimson whenever a slashing blow was
struck. They threshed in a mad paroxysm of rage, whirling and spinning
in the phosphorescent water like beings from a nightmare, exploding
out of their element time and again, only to fall back in a gargantuan
spray of fluorescence.
And then the scaly monster flashed in a half-turn, drove forward with
jaws agape, wrenched and ripped at the smooth black throat of the other
creature. The second creature rippled and undulated in agony, whipping
the ocean to foam, then went limp. The victorious monster circled the
body of its dead foe, then, majestically, plunged from sight into the
ocean's depths. An instant later, the water frothed, as hundreds of
lesser marine monsters attacked and fed on the floating corpse.
"Brrrr!" Splinter shivered in sudden horror.
Kerry Blane chuckled dryly. "Feel like going for a swim?" he asked
conversationally.
Splinter shook his head, watched the scene disappear from view to the
rear of the line of flight, then sank back onto his bunk.
"Not me!" he said deprecatingly.
Kerry Blane chuckled again, swung the cruiser toward the tiny smudge of
black on the horizon. Glowing water flashed beneath the ship, seeming
to smooth into a gleaming mirror shot with dancing colors. There was no
sign of life anywhere.
Thirty minutes later, Kerry Blane circled the island that floated
free in the phosphorescent ocean. His keen eyes searched the tangled
luxuriant growth of the jungle below, searching for some indication
that the protoplasmic monster he seeked was there.
"I don't see anything suspicious," Splinter contributed.
"There's nothing special to see," Kerry Blane said shortly. "As I
understand it, anyway, this chunk of animated appetite hangs around an
island shaped like a turtle. However, our orders are to investigate
every island, just in case there might be more than one of the
monsters."
Splinter buckled on his dis-gun, excitement flaring in his eyes.
"Let's do a little exploring?" he said eagerly.
Kerry Blane shook his head, swung the cruiser north again.
"Plenty of time for that later," he said mildly. "We'll find this
turtle-island, make a landing, and take a look around. Later, if we're
lucky enough to blow our objective to Kingdom Come, we'll do a little
exploring of the other islands."
"Hell!" Splinter scowled in mock disgust. "An old woman like you should
be taking in knitting for a living!"
"Orders are orders!" Kerry Blane shrugged.
* * * * *
He swung the cruiser in a wide arc to the north, trebling the flying
speed within minutes, handling the controls with a familiar dexterity.
He said nothing, searched the gleaming ocean for the smudge of
blackness that would denote another island. His gaze flicked amusedly,
now and then, to the lanky Splinter who scowled moodily and toyed with
the dis-gun in his long hands.
"Cheer up, lad," Kerry Blane said finally. "I think you'll find plenty
to occupy your time shortly."
"Maybe?" Splinter said gloomily.
He idly swallowed another vitamin capsule, grinned, when he saw Kerry
Blane's automatic grimace of distaste. Then he yawned hugely, twisted
into a comfortable position, dozed sleepily.
Kerry Blane rode the controls for the next three hours, searching the
limitless ocean for the few specks of islands that followed the slow
currents of the water planet. Always, there was the same misty light
surrounding the ship, never dimming, giving a sense of unreality to the
scene below. Nowhere was there the slightest sign of life until, in the
fourth hour of flight, a tiny dot of blackness came slowly over the
horizon's water line.
Kerry Blane spun the ship in a tight circle, sent it flashing to the
west. His keen eyes lighted, when he finally made out the turtle-like
outline of the island, and he whistled softly, off-key, as he nudged
the snoring Splinter.
"This is it, Sleeping Beauty," he called. "Snap out of it!"
"Huh? Whuzzat?" Splinter grunted, rolled to his elbow.
"Here's the island."
"Oh!" Splinter swung his feet from the bunk, peered from the vision
port, sleepiness instantly erased from his face.
"Hot damn!" he chortled. "Now we'll see a little action!"
Kerry Blane grinned, tried to conceal the excitement he felt. He shook
his head, his fingers flickering over the control studs.
"Don't get your hopes too high, lad," he counseled. "With those super
Zelta guns, it won't take ten minutes to wipe out that monster."
Splinter rubbed his hands together, sighed like a boy seeing his first
circus. "Listen, for ten minutes of that, I'd ride this chunk of metal
for a year!"
"Could be!" Kerry Blane agreed.
He peered through the port, seeking any spot clear enough for a landing
field. Except for a strip of open beach, the island was a solid mass of
heavy fern-like growth.
"Belt yourself," Kerry Blane warned. "If that beach isn't solid, I'll
have to lift the ship in a hell of a hurry."
"Right!" Splinter's fingers were all thumbs in his excitement.
Kerry Blane set the controls for a shallow glide, his fingers moving
like a concert pianist's. The cruiser yawed slightly, settled slowly
in a flat shallow glide.
"We're going in," Kerry Blane said quietly.
He closed a knife switch, seeing too late the vitamin capsule that was
lodged in the slot. There was the sharp splutter of a short-circuit,
and a thin tendril of smoke drifted upward.
"Damn!" Kerry Blane swore briefly.
There was an instant, terrific explosion of the stern jets, and the
cruiser hurtled toward the beach like a gravity-crazed comet.
Kerry Blane said absolutely nothing, his breath driven from him by the
suck of inertia. His hands darted for the controls, seeking to balance
the forces that threw the ship about like a toy. He cut all rockets
with a smashing swoop of his hand, tried to fire the bow rockets. But
the short had ruined the entire control system.
For one interminable second, he saw the uncanny uprush of the island
below. He flicked his gaze about, saw the instant terror that wiped
all other expression from his young companion's face. Then the cruiser
plowed into the silvery sand.
Belts parted like rotten string; they were thrown forward with crushing
force against the control panel. They groped feebly for support, their
bodies twisting involuntarily, as the ship cartwheeled a dozen times in
a few seconds. Almost instantly, consciousness was battered from them.
With one final, grinding bounce, the cruiser rolled to its side,
twisted over and over for a hundred yards, then came to a metal-ripping
stop against a moss-grown boulder at the water's edge.