"Guess we'll have to wait a bit longer," Jim murmured. "But it seems to
be easing, don't you think?"
In a sheltered recess of the forest we were crouching, forced to wait
for the weird storm to pass. There had been no possible chance of
finding the fleeing Jahnt. We could only hope now that he would go on
to the broken city. The storm seemed to be lessening but still it was
a roar of wind which cracked through the spindly giant trees, often
bringing down great segments of branches which it had torn loose.
A lull came at last, and through a ragged, littered forest Jim and I
pushed our tortuous way. Meeta could fly now. She guided us, and with
little forays hummed ahead and to the sides, seeking some signs of
Jahnt and Venta. But there were none.
The storm had been a torture of delay. In my heart now I had no thought
that we would be able to locate Jahnt and Venta. I could only hope that
they might be in the broken city. Had Curtmann received news of the
Venus weapons? My mind was upon Venta, but still I could envisage that
bloodthirsty band of Earth cutthroats advancing upon the Forest City.
"I say, is it much further?" Jim demanded suddenly of Meeta. "This is
tough going for us."
"Master, no. It is ahead, just down that slope."
The dim forest glade was descending into a great shallow area of
deeper shadow. And presently we could see the ruins of tumbled, broken
buildings lying here, half buried by the rank forest growth. In the
turgid dimness, with a faint orange luminosity that seemed inherent
to the great trees, it was an eerie place of colored shadows. Great
buildings were everywhere around us now, weird of shape and substance,
some of them still partly erect with the spindly trees growing through
them.
It was a place of the ghosts of Venus' past.
"It is down in here," Meeta said, pointing.
A littered rocky depression was before us. A ruined amphitheatre, with
its walls almost gone and the forest like a monstrous clump in its
middle. We descended into it. The ground in places was rocky. Some
natural cataclysm must have torn this ground since the original arena
was built.
Then we saw the cache of weapons. It was half a demolished room in some
broken structure that now was unrecognizable; an apartment partly open
at the top, of some two hundred feet diameter. A little light filtered
down from the lurid greenish-yellow storm-clouds high overhead.
"No one here ahead of us, Jim?" In the darkness, with Meeta perched
again upon my shoulder, we stood peering and listening. There was only
silence.
"Where are the weapons?" Jim demanded.
Meeta led us. "There in that little recess, Master. Many old broken
boxes are filled with them."
We stood before the rock-shelves, numbed with disappointment and
horror. The crumbling old metal boxes were here. But they were strewn
about; broken open; empty! The weapons were gone!
* * * * *
"Gone!" Jim gasped. "That damned Jahnt!"