by Anthology
The miniature forest of arms waved delicately and exploringly in the air as if trying to locate the source of a new disturbance. Then the fantastic thing rushed unerringly at the Carlyle party.
All the hunters leaped for cover and let the juggernaut roll past. It stopped a few yards beyond with another waving of cilia, as if listening intently. Gerry pumped a hypodermic bullet at it, but the charge ripped glancingly off the armourlike lorica.
"Rotifer," said Strike shortly. "Something like the tiny animalcules back on Earth, magnified many times and adapted for land travel. Venus is largely aqueous and was even more so at one time. Much of its terrestrial life developed from lifeforms originally dwelling in the water --"
He stepped aside again casually as the rotifer rumbled by. "They have their uses, though. That half-hidden mouth of theirs takes in everything it contacts. They're the scavengers of this planet. We call 'em Venusian buzzards."
The party scattered for a third time as the blind devourer sought to catch them once more. Barrows looked appealingly at his leader.
"They may have their uses," admitted the sub-pilot, "but this baby'll be a nuisance if we have to spend the rest of the trip dodging him."
There was truth in that, so the rotifer was dispatched with a cathode bolt. But as they crowded around to examine this curious bit of protoplasmic phenomena, a shrill scream as shocking as the shriek of a wounded horse tore through from the upper air. They swiveled about to gaze upon the most terrifying of all products of Venusian vertebrate evolution.
Fully fifty feet the monster towered into the mist, standing upright on two massive legs reminiscent of the extinct terrestrial Tyrannosaurus rex. A set of short forelegs were equipped with hideously lethal claws. The head was long and narrow resembling a wolf's snout, with large ears and slavering fangs.
Everything about the nightmare creature was constructed for efficient annihilation, particularly of those animals who mistakenly sought safety in the tops of the tall trees.
"A whip!" yelled Strike, turning to the cathode-gun carriers, sudden apprehension stabbing him deep. "It's a whip! Let him have it, quick!"
The crew looked uncertainly to Gerry Carlyle, who promptly countermanded the order.
"Not so fast. I want this one alive. They've nothing like him in London."
She flipped up her rifle, fired at a likely spot. Strike groaned as the monstrous whip squealed shrilly again and again, staring down at the tiny Earthlings from fiery eyes.
Then from that wolfish snout uncurled an amazing fifty-foot length of razor-edged tongue, like that of a terran anteater. Straight at Gerry Carlyle it lashed out, cracking sharply. Strike's rush caught her from behind sprawling her on the spongy earth.
"Curl up in a ball," he yelled in her ear, "so it can't get any purchase with that tongue!"
Gerry obeyed and Strike turned to warn the others as the whip swished over her ducking head.
"Scatter!" he cried. "Don't --"
But too late. That coiling sweep of flesh rope struck Barrows glancingly across the head, shearing off the lobe of one ear. Blood spurted as the sub-pilot staggered away, one hand to his face.
The rest of the bearers darted alertly away in all directions, seeking the shelter of the fog. But the man who was burdened with the heavy equipment paused momentarily to shed himself of it. It cost him his life. Straight and sure that incredible tongue snaked out to wind itself around the man's twisting form. Instantly he shot into the air toward the gaping fanged jaws.
The fellow struggled, screaming. In vain. One arm was pinioned. He hadn't a chance to defend himself. Before his surprised companions could bring their guns to bear on the whip, there was a swift crunch, a hideous splattering of crimson stuff bright and horrible against the drab background, and it was all over. The expeditionary force was reduced by one.
All possibility of rescue being gone, the reserve gunners lowered their deadly guns and allowed the hunters to go about the job of subduing the monster.
Little snapping reports sounded in rapid succession -- three, four, five.
And presently the whip reeled like a tower in an earthquake. It swayed. A few wavering steps described a short half circle. Then quietly it flopped awkwardly down and passed into insensibility.
Strike stood upright and pulled Gerry to her feet. He wiped cold sweat from his brow.
"Whew! That was too close for comfort!"
The woman brushed herself off and stared the trader in the eye. "Hereafter, Mr. Strike, please remember that in a real emergency such as this, one of our cardinal rules is every man for himself. The principle of throwing away two lives in a futile effort to save one is not encouraged among us. No more heroics, if you please!"
Strike's face flamed. No one likes to be bawled out when he's expecting warm gratitude. But even more Strike was angry at the apparent callousness.
"Then you don't think much of your assistants," he snapped, looking significantly at the bloody muzzle of the whip.
No emotion disturbed the serenity of her face.
"On the contrary. I regret Blair's passing very much. He was a well-trained and valuable man. But he can be replaced."
"Good God, woman!" cried Strike. "Haven't you any feelings. A friend of yours has just been done to death horribly on an alien planet, far from his home and family. And you -- " He stopped, suddenly ashamed of his outburst of sentiment.
Gerry said simply, "We never sign on family men."
Then she turned her back on Strike and snapped orders to prepare the whip for transportation back to The Ark. But in the last tiny instant as she turned away Strike glimpsed something in her eye which provided him with sudden and complete revelation.
It explained at once the reason for Gerry Carlyle's shell of impersonal reserve and callousness. She was a woman walking in a man's world, speaking man's language, using man's tools.
As a constant companion of men she had to train herself to live their life, meet them on their own terms. To command their respect she felt she had no right to use the natural endowments of charm and beauty which nature had given her.
Indeed, she dared not use them, for fear of the consequences. To give way to feminine emotion would be, she feared, to lose her domination over her male subordinates. She was, in short, that most beleaguered of beings -- a woman who dared not let herself be a woman.
All this Tommy Strike guessed and his feelings toward Gerry Carlyle began to change from dislike to pity and perhaps to something warmer. For he was certain he had seen real tears unshed.
Chapter III.
The Murris
The succeeding days passed swiftly as specimen after weird specimen was subdued and carried to the rapidly filling hold of The Ark.
Strike's only worry was the ever-approaching hour when he must produce a Murri or face Gerry's wrath. And although he knew it was coming, still the demand arrived too suddenly for him on the morning of the sixth day.
"Mr. Strike." Not once had the young woman dropped her shield of formality. "I've been pretty patient with your repeated sidetracking of my request for a Murri. But our visit here is almost over. We leave in forty-eight hours. To remain grounded during a Venusian night would mean a tiresome and dangerous journey home. Come on -- no more stalling."
Strike looked at her. "What if I refuse?"
Gerry smiled glacially. "Your company would hear about it at once. You were ordered to assist us in every way, you know."
The trader nodded, shrugged.
"All right. Just a second while I --"
The rest of his sentence was lost in a clatter of footsteps as Ransom came down the metal stairs with a curious piece of apparatus in his hands.
"Thought you'd be needing this, Tommy," he said significantly with a disgusted glance at Gerry.
"Yeah, I sure do." Strike fitted the contrivance to his body by shoulder straps.
"Now what?" Gerry wanted to know. "Do you need special equipment to find a Murri? What's that contraption for, anyhow?"
Strike was willing to explain.
"The power unit of this 'contraption' consists of a vacuum tube oscillator and amplifier and the receiver unit of an inductance bridge and vacuum-tube amplifier. There's also a set of headphones" -- he held them up in classroom style -- " and an exploring coil.
"The bridge is energized by a sinusoidal current, brought to balance by appropriate resistance and inductance controls. If a conductive body comes within the artificially created magnetic field of the coil, eddy currents set up in the conductive mass will reduce the effective inductance of the exploring coil, serving to unbalance the bridge. This condition is indicated in the headphones --"
"Stop! Stop!" Gerry covered her ears with her hands. "I know an ore-finding doodle-bug when I see one! I just wanted to know why you're carrying it with you now."
"Oh, for protection."
"Protection against what?"
"The natives."
Gerry stared. "Natives. Those scaly, fish-faced things that skulk around just out of sight in the fog? Why, those timid little creatures wouldn't hurt us -- they couldn't. Besides, how'll your doodle-bug protect us against them?"
"Why, they're very clever at hiding in the mist and this metal indicator will reveal their presence if they get too close. You see, all the natives in this sector wear gold teeth!"
Someone tittered and Gerry flushed. "If you please, Mr. Strike, let's stick to business and keep the conversation on an intellectual plane. A good joke has its place but --"
"That's no joke," Strike said with a touch of bitterness. "It's a fact. Ever since Murray made his first trip to Venus the natives have gone for gold teeth in a big way. They took Murray for a god, you know, and emulated him in many ways.
"He had several gold teeth, relics of childhood dentistry, so the natives promptly scraped up some of the cheaply impure gold that's found around here and made caps for their teeth. As for their not hurting us, Miss Carlyle, that remains to be seen.
"It has always meant trouble when one of you animal-catchers tries to mess around with the Murris. You'll understand me better in a few minutes." He shrugged and twitched his eyebrows. "I'm just being prepared."
"Rats! Mystery, generalities, trouble -- but no explanations. Your evasive hints of reasons not to touch the Murris just fascinate me all the more. I wouldn't drop the hunt now for all the radium on Callisto!"
"All right," Strike capitulated curtly. "Let's go." He struck off straight through the mist as if knowing exactly where he meant to go. In five minutes he halted before a mighty cycad peppered with twelve-inch holes which housed a colony of at least fifty of the famous Murris.
"There you are," said Strike with resignation. "Pseudo-simia Murri."
Gerry completely forgot to be indignant at Strike's holdout. She was swept away in a gale of merriment that overcame the party at sight of the strange creatures.
Perhaps half of the colony was in constant motion, scrambling round and round the huge bole of the tree, up and down, popping in and out of their holes out along the mighty frondlike branches and back frantically. The others simply sat watching in solemn indifference, occasionally opening their pouting lips to ask sorrowfully -- "Murri? Murri? Murri?"
They were well named. Though soft and grayish-brown, with scanty hair growth on their backs, their size and antics did resemble terrestrial simians. With their tremendous nasal development, they looked much like the Proboscis monkey.
And this very de Bergerac beak of a nose made their name even more appropriate, for Sidney Murray, Stanhope's co-explorer, was famous throughout the System for having the hugest and ugliest nose extant.
The Pseudo-simia Murri colony presented to the eyes of the fascinated watchers a hundred facial replicas of Sidney Murray, spinning and dancing fantastically around the tree.
"Oh!" gasped Gerry finally, wiping laughter's tears from her cheeks. "Oh, but this is wonderful! Who-who named them?"
Strike looked solemnly at her. "Murray himself named 'em. He has quite a sense of humor."
"Sense of humor! Oh, it's colossal!" She took a deep breath. "What a sensation a dozen of these cute little butterballs will make in London. What a prize!"
"You haven't got them in London yet," Strike pointed out, keeping one uneasy eye on the indicator of his "doodle-bug."
"If you think anything's going to stop me now you don't yet know Gerry Carlyle." Again she was the arrogant, self-willed expedition commander.
They moved up to the cycad and examined the Murris at close quarters. They were quite tame. The close inspection revealed three facts of interest.
The first was the presence of short, prehensile tail equipped with a vicious-appearing sting near the tip. "Only a weak defensive mechanism," Strike explained, "a Murris live almost exclusively on the datelike fruits of the tree they live in. The sting's no worse than a bee sting." He extended one knotty forearm, showing a small pockmark where he had once been stung.
The second was the large brown eyes possessed by the Murri which stared at the intruders unblinkingly with a heart-wringing hypnotic expression of sorrow. "They look as if they'd seen all the trouble and woe in the Universe," Barrows said. "Makes me feel like a louse to take them away from their home!"
The third was a heap of strangely incongruous junk piled at the base of the big tree. There were cheap clocks, gewgaws, matches, children's fireworks, odds and ends. "Offerings by the natives," explained Strike. "That's the legal tender up here. Medicinal weeds and rough gems in exchange for those things." He gestured at the pile of trash. "Anything fire-producing is especially valuable. The Murri is the natives' god -- because of his resemblance to Sidney Murray, the First God."
There was more laughter, but subdued this time as the party realized that removing one or more Murris would be to commit Venusian sacrilege.
"I see now what you meant by 'causing trouble,"' Gerry said. "But it can't be too much for you to handle. It's happened before, I assume, and always blew over. These primitives -- if that's your only reason for dissuading us to capture a few --"
"That's not the only reason." But Strike would explain no further.
"More mystery!" Gerry snorted and supervised the set-up of a big net under one of the longer overhanging branches.
Then two well-directed shots snapped the limb and catapulted a half dozen astonished Murris into the net. With incredible agility most of them bounced into the air and scrambled to safety. But one was caught in the tricky meshes. The ends of the net were quickly folded together to form a bag.
"Got him!" exulted Gerry. "Why, that was easy!"
"Sure. But he isn't in London Zoo yet nor even back to the ship."
Gerry gave Strike a withering look, then peered into the net. The Murri lay quiescent, staring up with enormously round-eyed amazement.
"Murri-murri-murri?"
Gerry laughed again at this fantastic miniature of the great Murray, mumbling earnestly to himself. "Back to The Ark, boys," she cried. "We'll have a lot of fun with this little dickens!"
The party turned to retrace its steps and then trouble broke out for fair. When the Murri had been removed about ten yards from its home tree a violent fit of trembling seized him. He screamed shrilly two or three times and from the Murri tree came a hideous shrieking clamor in response.
The little captive burst into a flurry of wild activity, struggling with unbelievable fury to escape. He twisted, clawed, spat, bit. As the carriers bore him inevitably further away from his home he seemed to go absolutely mad, stinging himself repeatedly with barbed tail in an outburst of insane terror.
After a series of heart-rending cries of despair he gave a final frenzied outburst that ended with a gout of pale straw-colored blood from his mouth.
The entire party stopped to stare appalled at the little creature. Gerry Carlyle's shell of reserve was punctured. She looked badly shaken. It was some moments before she could force herself to open the net and examine the quiet little body.
"Dead," she pronounced t
hough everyone knew it. "Internal hemorrhage. Burst a blood vessel."
Strike answered her bewildered glance with melancholy triumph.
"Agoraphobia. Murris are the most pronounced agoraphobes in the System. They spend their whole lives on and around the particular tree in which they're born. Take 'em a few yards away and they have a nervous breakdown ending in convulsion and death."
He indicated the dead body in the net. "I could have told you but you wouldn't have believed me. You'd have come to find out for yourself anyhow."
Gerry shook herself like a fluffy dog that has just received an unexpected ice-water shower.
"So that's what you meant when you said I'd never bring one back alive, is it?"
"Partly."
"Partly! You mean there's something else queer about these --"
Strike nodded gloomily. "You'll find out before long. I know what you're going to do. Capture another. Cut off his tail so he can't sting himself. Tie him up like a Christmas package so he can't move hand or foot. Anything to keep him from killing himself by struggling. Right?"
"Right!" Gerry determined.
"Rogers tried all that when he was here, yet he failed."
"And so?"
The trader shrugged. "So you'll fail, too. But don't let me stop --"
"You won't stop me, Mr. Strike. Don't ever think it."
Together with Kranz, the woman rigged up two makeshift straight jackets to hold the captive Murris rigidly unmoving. Meanwhile, the other hunters spread the big net again and shot down another branch full of the curious Murris. The healthiest pair were quickly strapped up tightly and the party left to the accompaniment of a terrific yapping and hissing and yammering from the survivors of the colony.
Strike and Ransom spent the remainder of the lingering Venusian day resting from their exertions. Activity in that vicious climate quickly sapped the most rugged strength and Strike particularly felt that he had been drained of all energy.
As the light imperceptibly faded Ransom suggested, "I guess The Ark will be leaving soon. Now's the best time for 'em to take off. Conjunction."