Jupiter started cautiously for the river, his feet kicking up little
puffs of the powdery ash left by the jets. When he reached the jungle,
he halted again, unpleasant memories of the cannibal plants of Sirius
III in the back of his mind. Then, setting his jaw, he forged ahead.
It was hot and green in the jungle. Sweat coursed down his face,
plastered his tunic to his back.
He had gone less than thirty meters when he broke into a well traveled
trail paralleling the river.
Jupiter Jones' nostrils flared. He came to an abrupt halt. Although
he wasn't yet thirty-five, he was known as an old man in the special
corps. He had survived partly because of an instinct of danger that was
almost psychic.
He sensed it now in the sudden dryness of his mouth, the hammering of
his heart as his adrenal glands surcharged his blood. Then away in the
distance, he heard the winding of a horn!
At least, it sounded like a horn. His hands tightened about the carbine
and he held his breath. But though he listened for some time, the sound
wasn't repeated.
Gradually, the valley narrowed. Tall cliffs towered above him like
the jaws of a vise. He had gone about five miles, the limit he had
set himself for the first day, when he caught the sound of splashing
mingled with laughter.
He stopped in midstride, his nerves atingle. The sounds went on
punctuated by giggling screams. He slid the safety off the carbine,
crept forward.
A hundred meters upstream the jungle on the opposite bank gave way to
meadows that swelled up to meet the talus at the foot of a towering
thousand foot cliff.
Where the meadow dipped down to the stream there was a little gravel
beach, and a band of women and children were splashing in the shallow
water.
Jupiter stood stock still, peering out from the forest like a tiger.
The women were tall, brown-skinned, their hair wet and glistening like
seals. Naked children squealed and played among the pebbles of the
beach.
His glance strayed beyond them to the cliffs, which were pitted by cave
mouths, broken by ledges. He could distinguish the figures of men and
women in breechclouts and skins clinging to the face of the rock like
flies.
These people had neither the brutish look of the green-skinned slaves
he'd seen last night, nor yet the ferocity of the warriors. He felt the
hot sluggish breeze shift, blowing from him towards the bathers.
Instantly, the women were thrown into a panic. Those with children
snatched them up, and the whole pack broke from the water, fled
screaming towards the cliffs!
Jupiter Jones narrowed his eyes in alarm. Their sense of smell must
be keen as a hound's! He could see the males leaping down the cliffs,
brandishing clubs. It reminded him of a disturbed colony of baboons
he'd seen once. Gad, but he'd stirred up a hornet's nest! He began to
back warily from the river bank.
* * * * *
There was a grunt behind him; a branch snapped. He tried to whirl
around, bringing up his carbine. A pair of arms wrapped around him,
seized him in a crushing grip!
Shock closed Jupiter's throat. He twisted, wrenched frantically.
The arms tightened like steel cables. There were more grunts,
triumphant shouts, the crashing of underbrush.
Across the river the caveman had come to a halt. Then suddenly he saw
them turn and flee, scampering up the cliffs like terrified monkeys,
tearing at each other in their efforts to get away from the thing that
had him in its grip.
Jupiter Jones was a powerful man--doubly so on this planet of mild
gravity. Furthermore he'd been in too many tight scrapes to be overly
bothered with scruples.
Recovering from his first shock, he twisted the carbine over his
shoulder until he felt the muzzle prod into flesh and pulled the
trigger.
The flat vicious "craack!" of the rifle slapped back from the cliffs.
The arms relaxed. He wrenched himself free, spun around.
One glance told him these were the lean red-haired savages he'd seen
last night. He was already pulling the trigger as he recognized them.
The shot knocked the nearest brute off his feet.
The others hesitated, ringing him in like a pack of wolves. Down the
trail, the two green tinted porters stood nervously, the litter perched
atop their shoulders.
The glittering purple-shelled octopod was sitting bolt upright in the
litter. At this distance it looked like a huge snail--an obese snail
that has grown out of its shell. Perched on one of its tentacles was a
kite-like thing.
Jupiter jerked the gun around. But at that moment the purple-shelled
monstrosity tossed the kite-thing into the air where it spread enormous
membrane wings.
With a shock, he realized that the kite was alive--a huge, flying,
web-like bird!
He put a bullet through it. But if the shot had the least effect, it
wasn't apparent. The creature swooped at him suddenly like a hawk
dropping on a rabbit.
He shot again, then tried to hurl himself aside, but the pack hampered
his movements. One moist wing snared him, slapped around him like wet
rubber. He twisted, squirmed, toppled to the ground, rolling over and
over.
The other wing lapped around him, binding his arms to his side,
squeezing, squeezing.
The pain was intolerable.
As if from a distance, he could hear shouting. The savages had closed
around him, snarling, baying triumphantly like hounds at the kill, but
he was only dimly conscious of them.
The octopod on the litter put a silver tube to its mouth. A loud
mourning note wound through the jungle.
The horn! It was the horn he'd heard earlier. It was also the last
sound that he heard, for the terrible constriction never relaxed.
Blackness welled up suddenly behind his eyes, blotted out everything.
* * * * *
When Jupiter Jones struggled back to consciousness, he was lying in a
cage like a wild animal.
The realization shocked him.
The cage, he saw, was about two and a half meters long, very narrow and
barely high enough for him to sit up in. It was only one of a whole row
of such cages, and they were all occupied by men and women like himself.
His gun was gone. His pack, even his clothes had been taken away from
him. He grasped one of the bars, pulled himself to a sitting posture.
His neck felt stiff and for a moment his head swam dizzily. Then the
scene jarred into focus.
Afternoon sunlight overlaid everything like an angry orange wash.
Striped tents had been pitched along the river bank. Four of the
purple-shelled octopods squatted about a cloth spread on the ground
beneath the largest pavilion.
Its sides had been raised to permit the free flow of air, and he could
see the creatures plucking food from strange vessels and goblets with
their snakey tentacles.
All about the tents green men and copper-skinned hunters milled in a
senseless jostling confusion like a circus breaking its stand.
Suddenly, his eyes narrowed. The octopods were being waited on by a
hairless pink-skinned species of human. That made four distinct races
he'd observed since landing. He ticked them off on his fingers--the
cave people, the red-haired fighting men, the green and stolid porters.
Now these bald, hairless white slugs of men.
The white men were doing most of the work, herding the porters about,
packing chop boxes. Jupiter frowned. An odd little protuberance, he
discovered, sprouted from the backs of all their necks.
The protuberances varied in size, some no larger than a small snail
shell, others as big as a tangerine. They were plum-colored and looked
as if they were made of horn. What the devil could the things be?
He shifted his eyes to a lank, coppery fighting man and saw that he
bore one of the things on the back of his neck also. They all did, he
realized with a sudden dryness of mouth.
All along he'd been aware vaguely of the stiffness in his spine. With
a thrill of alarm, he felt the back of his neck, touched a knob-like
thing just below the base of his skull.
The shock of the discovery left him sick at his stomach.
He examined it gently with his finger tips. It was small, hard. He had
the uncomfortable conviction that it was alive, feeding off of him like
a leech.
He tugged at it, but it was firmly anchored, the flesh about it quite
numb. In panic he tried to twist it off.
Instantly a blinding flash of pain seared through him like acid
tingling out to the very tips of his fingers. He pitched forward,
cracked his head on the bars of his cage, slid to a prone position.
For moments he lay there unable to lift a finger although his brain was
clear, lucid. It was as if the thing had perceived his intention and
had paralyzed the voluntary motor centers of his brain!
* * * * *
With mounting horror, Jones realized that the mollusk-like organism
must be fastened directly to his spinal cord. He had best not meddle
with it again until he learned more about it.
"_Za'min--car?_" he heard a voice say behind him.
He sat up, looked around, realized with a start that the paralysis was
gone, leaving no appreciable ill effects.
There was a girl in the next cage watching him out of wide yellow
eyes. She was one of the cave people, he recognized with a scowl of
suspicion. It was impossible to mistake the air of wildness about
her--like a caged leopard.
She was quite naked, crouching in her cell with her uncombed black hair
hanging down to her sturdy brown shoulders.
"Za'min--car?" she repeated.
He shook his head. What the devil was the girl driving at?