The veteran trader shrugged his broad shoulders. “Nothing much could happen to him, I suppose. But this is the first time communication has failed.” He fell silent. But there was a brooding light in his steel-gray eyes, and a tense grimness about his fine bronzed features.
He stared unseeingly at the great pile of clotted spider web that filled half the trading room of the little post. A cool half million that accumulated result of half an earth year’s dickering with the natives was worth. And all it had cost Venus Mines. Inc. were some bushels of brightly colored beads and glittering gewgaws dear to the savage heart.
“There’s a Mitco post about some miles the other side of Bell’s post,” he mused aloud.
Britt Haldane turned from his contemplation of the grey bleached jungle, the dense, light-shot ceiling, the sheeted torrents of the typical Venusian landscape.
“I say, you don’t think there’s any chance of trouble from the Martians?”
Penger shot a quick glance at the fresh-colored youngster with the starry blue eyes, and the tow hair that persisted in falling over his forehead. This eighteen-year-old lad brought back memories of the time, two decades past, when he himself was taking over his first station, on Jupiter.
Those were unregenerate days, with the Board of Planetary Control yet unborn, and life made zestful by the continuous guerilla warfare with the forces of Mitco, the great Martian Interstellar Trading Company, the Earth company’s only rival.
“No, not much chance,” he drawled, in reply to the lad’s question. “They’d hardly challenge the B. P. C.’s wrath. And yet, if the stakes were great enough…” He sighed, unaccountably. “I suppose I’m just fed up on these eternal rains. I’ll be glad enough to get back to Earth when the relief ship comes, and leave you here.”
Britt’s face lit up.
“Gosh, I can hardly wait to take over. To be a real Venus trader at last, in charge of my own station.” He saw the older man’s amused smile and added hastily. “Of course, it isn’t that I want to see you go, but—you know how is it.”
Arnim nodded.
“Yes, I know how it is. I felt the same way when I took over my first assignment. It sure was a kick. Two days later I was crouched behind a barricade of ice blocks, taking pot shots at a bunch of Martians who were doing their darnedest to exterminate me and a couple of other Earthmen, and grab off the richest jovium mine on Jupiter for Mitco.
“There were no Interplanetary Filing Laws then, no taking a bunch of papers over to the office on Ganymede and thereafter being protected by the Mercurian patrol ships with their zeta-ray projectors.
“You took what you could get and held it by the power of your own guns.”
The youth’s eyes glowed.
“It must have been great! Wish I’d been in the game then!”
“You weren’t born then, young fellow.” Penger’s eyes wandered past the lad to the teeming landscape revealed by the open door.
“Hello, I don’t like that coppery tinge to the clouds down on the horizon. Looks as if we’re going to have a taste of one of the electrical storms old Venus favors us with once in a blue moon.
“Get out in one of those, and you’ll be ready to give up darn quick. Even the natives scurry to their caves when one of the big ones is on a rampage.”
His eyes narrowed as he gazed out. The dripping jungle pressed its grayness close up against the interlacing net of copper filaments that was the Curtain, the apparently frail barrier around the liquid mud clearing of this outpost of Earth’s commerce.
From the low ceiling of dun clouds poured a torrent of warm rain that might dwindle to a drizzle or increase to a devastating downpour, but which never for a moments ceased. Far away, the clouds were suffused with a reddish, ominous glare.
“Come on,” he said at last, as he sealed the door. “Work’s over for another twelve hours. Start the drying machine, and we’ll get comfortable. Then I’ll try to get Chris again. If he hadn’t borrowed the Wanderer for that trip of his I’d be tempted to hop over and find out what’s up.”
Haldane obediently swung over the lever of the artificial atmosphere machine that reproduced Earth condition for the traders during the rest-periods. As the air dried, the two stripped off the sodden working suits. Britt stretched himself luxuriously as the moisture was sucked from the bronzed skin of his body.
“This is a little bit of all right. Let it storm for all I care.”
Penger looked estimatingly at the young fellow. Was he going to stand the gaff, he wondered, alone with the treacherous natives, and the eternal rains, and the horrible loneliness? The loneliness—that was it. Would this fresh-faced, eager youth break under the strain of the long months with no one of his own kind to talk to, to look at? Well, Chris Bell would be only a few miles away. That reminded him, he still hadn’t got through to old Chris. He turned the transmitter.
But as he did so there was a crash, and the neon lights went out. Their cold white light was replaced by a blinding blue glare as the outer world was illumined by a tremendous lightning flash. Then it was pitch dark, as over the muttering rumble of the diminishing growl and the pound of the torrential rain on the roof, came the high whining signal of the field receiver.
Arnim sprang to the instrument. Unerringly his fingers sought and found the switch and thrust it home. Out of the blackness a voice sounded, a precise, clipped English voice, yet strained and urgent, shot through with pain and exhaustion.
“Penger, Arnim Penger, are you there? Penger, Penger, help, Penger!”
Arnim snatched up the transmitter.
“Chris, Chris. I’m listening. It’s Arnim Penger. What’s the matter? Quick, man! What’s happened to you?”
The far-off, disembodied voice seemed to be dying out.
“Arnim. Thank God—you answered at last. It’s hours. Help—help he-e-lp!” It died out to a whisper, then, abruptly, it was gone.
“Chris, what’s the matter? What happened?” The trader was shouting into the transmitter, but only the rattle of the raindrops, and a crash of thunder, answered.
The lights came on. Haldane was standing just behind him, white-faced. Penger gazed at him, unseeing, his eyes steely flames, his great fists clenched.
“Britt,” he snapped, “Take over!” He went out in the anteroom, struggled into a fresh suit of corduroys, pulled on his banta waterproof.
As his face appeared out of the black folds it was set, grim.
“If you don’t hear from me by the time the relief ship gets here, have ’em send a force over to Bell’s post. No trading. Heaven knows what the Venusians are up to.” He was strapping on the high mud-shoes.
Britt came out of his daze in a tumbling rush. He fairly stuttered in his eagerness.
“I say, you can’t do that—I mean you can’t go alone. I’ll go with you—otherwise—good Lord, you know what I mean.” He fell into a sudden silence, but his eyes pleaded for him.
Penger shot one glance at him.
“You’ll do,” he said laconically. “Hop into your clothes.”
Haldane blushed with pleasure at the veteran’s endorsement even as he dived hastily into his clothing, Arnim stood in the doorway, waiting impatiently. The younger man snapped the elastic of his respirator-mask over his head, settled his hood down over the goggled eyepieces.
“I’m ready, air.” The mouthpiece of the mask muffled his tones strangely.
They were outside, in a world gone mad. From black clouds that seemed not fifty feet over their heads, forked lightning shot incessantly, shot and stabbed at them as if the elements themselves had risen in wrath to oust these beings from an alien world. To the continuous roll of thunder was added the crash of the nearly solid sheets of water that beat down upon the Earthmen, strangling them despite their masks, striving to drive them into the viscid mud that oozed fluid beneath their widespreading mud-shoes.
In the flickering blue light beyond the Curtain, the tall ferns were flatten
ed down over the tangle of writhing vines and lush wire-grass till the thicket seemed a solid mass, compressed by the weight of tons of water, lashed by a wind of hurricane force.
Haldane gasped, and paled. Even Penger, veteran though he was, hesitated for an instant; It was the height of insanity to dare the long journey in this chaos. No one could live through it. But then he remembered that call, coming eerily out of the darkness.
“Help, Penger, help!”
Chris Bell was in trouble, needed him! Chris, who had fought at his side on Jupiter, a score of years ago. He hunched his shoulders, thrust his massive head before him, and bored into the wind that was a solid wall. He’d get to Chris despite all!
Britt was lifted from his feet by the wind, thrown against the heavier form of his companion. Arnim shouted something. The lad could see his lips moving, but could hear nothing above the tornado’s roar. A dripping arm gestured to the door of the little building they had just quitted. Penger wanted him to go back, thought this storm would lick him. It was dry there, dry and safe.
It would be so easy to let the wind blow him back. In all this time they had struggled only fifteen feet. After all, this was his post, the station he would be in charge of as soon as the relief ship picked Penger up. No one could blame him for staying behind—for obeying orders:
But—he was a “Venus, Inc.” man, one of the stalwart company that was conquering the far planets for Earth. And another “Venus, Inc.” man had called for help, off there in the storm-lashed jungle. He shook his head, thrust away the hand that was pushing him back.
Again Pengler’s hand sought his shoulder, but only to squeeze it in token of approval. They slogged into the storm again.
At last they were through the Curtain. Arnim turned, took something from the voluminous pocket of his waterproof. A tiny radio-transmitter, low-powered, sending only a long dash that varied completely in wave length for a half minute. The key to the Curtain—Penger pressed the button. A coruscation of tiny flashes snapped through the wind-tossed filaments. The power was on—that apparently frail barrier hummed now with the Grendon vibration.
Britt could see the driven rain rebound from the invisible wall. Nothing, no human body, no Venusian dart, not even a high-powered electro-bullet could pass through the net. The station was safe, protected against all intrusion until the machines that produced the vibration were stilled by another pressure on the little instrument with its secret combination of frequencies.
Into the jungle they went crawling now, through chance-found gaps in the matted chaos of the cyclone-pounded vegetation. The black quagmire sucked at their feet, clinging lianas twisted around them, clung tenaciously. Thorns ripped at them. A bolt of lightning struck, not a score of feet away, and sent a towering twisted fern into flaring destruction.
The Venusians, fish—scaled and web-footed though they were—dared not prowl abroad. The very beasts—strange amphibious creatures of a steamy, primitive world—cowered in their lairs or dug themselves deep beneath the sheltering mud of the jungle tarns.
But the Earthlings pressed forward, deafened, gasping, half-drowned, wholly exhausted. A yard, a foot, an inch at a time. Crawling, scrambling, twisting, dragging themselves through the terrific storm to answer a comrade’s cry for help. Slogging into the hurricane for hour after hour of interminable, inhuman struggle.
Two mud-covered figures reeled out from the edge of the jungle, dazed, bewildered, dizzy with exhaustion. Just ahead hung the filaments of Bell’s Curtain, intact. They were through! Through the jungle and the storm the daring adventurers had reached their goal. How long it had taken them, by what devious route they had come, they never knew.
Sometime during that endless journey the electrical storm had ended, but they had never noticed it, so stunned had they been with the turmoil of the elements. Behind them the drenched and cowering jungle was straightening. The drab cloud ceiling was shot through with light. The rain had diminished to a tenuous drizzle. Fine weather—on Venus.
Ahead, within the circling Curtain, was a sea of mud. A torpedo-shaped, two-man flier glistened in the filtering light, half-hidden behind a squat, rough hut, whose door hung open. What lay behind that door?
CHAPTER II
Through the Curtain
Penger, his banta waterproof hanging in shreds, moved forward wearily. As he came into the open, a hiss ripped the stillness, a red streak flashed past his hooded and masked head. The trader whirled, threw himself headlong to the ground.
“Down! Down, quick!” he shouted to the startled Britt. The youth dropped. “What the—”
“Shut up.” Arnim’s whisper was urgent. “Lie still.”
The lad twisted his head. His companion’s projector was in his outstretched hand, his keen eyes were darting from point to point of the thicket. Fatigue seemed forgotten. Where his waterproof had been torn away by some thorn, the cords of his neck stretched tensely.
“What’s up?” he breathed.
“See that, out in the mud.”
A tiny dart, scarlet-feathered, lay there—a Venusian poison dart. A little shiver thrilled the youth. He had seen a huge three-horned ratlos, ten feet high at the shoulder, brought down to instant death by one of those, sent with unerring skill from the blow-pipe of a native hunter.
“Came near finishing me. They’re—wah!”
The angry spat of Penger’s weapon interrupted. An acrid smell of burned flesh stung Haldane’s nostrils. “Got him!”
“Where? Who?”
“To the right. See, behind that S-shaped liana.”
The lad stared. At first he could see nothing, then a tiny patch of silver appeared, just beyond the arm-thick vine Arnim had indicated. The youth started to rise, but Penger’s steely clutch stopped him.
“Down, you fool! There may be others. Stay here, till I call. And don’t move, if you want to see Earth again.”
The motionless youngster watched Penger slide through the mud—so slowly that Britt looked twice to make sure he had moved at all. He disappeared beneath a dumb of brown fungi, umbrella-shaped. His black hood appeared above the toadstools, his shoulders glistening black with the dampness. Haldane clenched his fists, nervously. What an awful chance he was taking. Suppose there were other unseen hunters watching for just this chance?
“All right, lad, come along.” Penger’s call seemed to come from the ground, off to one side! Then—who was standing there? Was it Bell? The novice rose, ran forward, crouching, to where the other had suddenly appeared, without his banta cloak.
As Haldane reached his companion, the mystery of the seeming newcomer was solved. Penger was pulling his waterproof from a withered fern-frond that was supporting it. He smiled grimly at the white-faced youth’s ejaculation.
“Thought I was asking for a dart, did you? Just slipped this coat off, stuck it up and squirmed away. If there had been more of the natives around I’d have known it darn quick—maybe got a chance to take another clip at one. Let’s see what this bird I brought down looks like.”
Britt shuddered as he stared down at the prostrate savage. In spite of the low-browed, primitive face, noseless and with gills where the ears ought to be, in spite of the naked savage’s fish-scaled skin and webbed feet, the youth could not help but feel him human.
Only a few hours ago others of his kind, perhaps this very individual, had been chaffering with him at the trading post. And now he lay there, unmoving, a great gaping hole in, his chest, black-charred at the edges. Those electro-bullets did terrible execution when their high-powered radite charge was released on impact.
“Come on, Britt. He’s dead to stay. Let’s get in to Chris.”
Penger had his little combination set in his hand, had pressed the switch button. The hum of the generator from the hut in the center of the compound ceased. The two dived through the dangling filaments, and Arnim flashed on the protecting vibration again—just in time.
At the jungle edge another Venusian had appeared, pan
ting. His dart whirred from the hollow reed he raised to his mouth, fell back impotently from the Curtain.
“Nothing wrong there,” gasped Britt.
They had clumped wearily through the viscid mud, were at the hut’s entrance.
“Chris!” Arnim called, “Chris! We’re here!” Then there was a choking gasp. “Darn them, oh darn them!” It was a sob, and a prayer for vengeance.
There, on the wet, green-slimed floor, lay Chris Bell. His still thin form was contorted in agony. The sharp features were clammy white, the little black mustache blacker yet by contrast. The transmitter of his teletalker was clutched tight in his right hand, the sleeve ripped away, showed a livid red burn on the white arm.
His right foot was bare, the trouser cut away. The leg was swollen to twice, three times its natural size up to where, buried in the blackened flesh, a twisted leather thong cut in—horribly. On the floor a red-feathered dart, its tip bloodstained, told its mute story.
“Chris, old man, wake up. We’re here. Chris! He isn’t dead. He can’t be gone!” Penger’s hand was within Bell’s shirt. A faint flutter, almost imperceptible, beat against the probing finger tips.
“Whiskey! Britt—there must be some around. Find it quick!”
Haldane shot a quick glance around the little room. On a shelf he saw a familiarly shaped container, the purple B. P. C. seal unbroken. He twisted off the sealing cap. Penger had the bottle-neck between Bell’s teeth. A little rivulet dribbled out at the corners of Chris’ mouth, then he swallowed, convulsively. The eyelids flickered. A grimace of pain distorted his face. A groan, then his eyes opened.
“Arnim!” His voice was a shadow. The words were being forced out by sheer will power. “Never mind me—done for. Papers in flier—must be filed—at once. Letter too—explains. Go!”
Space Lawyers: A Collaborative Collection Page 20