by Anthology
Strike shook his head.
"No. That tough little Carlyle is over there in her ship learning a mighty bitter lesson. She won't leave now. She won't leave for some time," he predicted. "Wait and see."
But only to himself did he admit that he wanted badly to see that incredible woman again.
Chapter IV.
The Stolen Shrine
Strike was right. As the absolute darkness of Venusian night dragged its black cloak over the trading post light footsteps ran up the stairs outside. Knuckles beat on the metal door which Ransom opened. Gerry Carlyle pushed in.
"Mr. Strike," she said and there was a worried crease between her eyes, "neither of the Murris will eat. We can't force anything down their throats. And if we free them they immediately have one of those terrible fits!"
The trader shrugged. "So why come to me?"
"Can't you suggest anything to do? They'll starve themselves to death. And dead Murris have no market value. I've sworn I wouldn't return without at least one healthy Murri, so you've got to help me!"
"Nobody can do anything. You'll never take them back alive. I told you that before. Presently you'll believe it. If there's any mercy in you you'll return those two to their home while they're well."
Gerry's eyes flashed blue fire.
"I'm trying to be merciful without compromising my conscience. If humanly possible I'm taking those Murris home alive. Now -- if you'll only help -- we're going to try feeding through a stomach tube. If that fails, with injections. I thought you'd be able to help us in the food selection."
"It's hopeless. Rogers tried that too. When you take a Murri away from its home he undergoes such a nervous shock that his metabolism goes haywire. He just can't assimilate anything."
Gerry went away furious but was back within twenty-four hours. She was beginning to show the strain. Her hair was awry, her eyes blood-shot from lack of sleep.
"Strike," she begged, "can't you suggest anything? They're growing thinner by the hour. You can see them waste away. If you've been holding something back just to-to discipline me I'll say, 'Uncle.' Only please --"
Strike seized the chance to turn the knife in the wound.
"You flatter yourself if you think I'd sacrifice even a couple of Murris for the sake of softening you a little."
But the thrust missed its mark. Gerry was lost within herself, absorbed in her battle to bend two insignificant caricatures to her will. "Drat them!" she flared. "They're doing this to spite me. But I'll make them live. I'll make them live!"
Forty-eight hours later she was back again, banging frantically to Strike's sturdy arm. The Murri silent martyrdom had broken her completely. She was a nervous wreck.
"Tommy," she wailed. "I can't stand it any longer. They just sit there, so helpless, so frail, without a sound, and stare at me. Those pathetic brown eyes follow me wherever I go.
"They-they're mesmerizing me. I see them in darkness -- I see them in my dreams when I manage to get to sleep. It's pitiful -- and horrible. Even the crew goes around now with silent accusation in their faces. I can't stand it."
Strike's heart went out to this bewildered woman.
"You see now why Rogers and the others wouldn't talk about their experience with the Murris? Why I said you wouldn't believe me even if I told you?"
"Yes. I understand. Rogers was ashamed to admit what he thought was a weakness. Embarrassed to have anyone think a funny little Venusian monkey could soften him up by just staring at him with those hypnotic brown eyes.
"I-I sent the boys out to find that tree and dig it up whole, Murris and all to transport back to earth. I thought that might solve the difficulty. But I see now it wouldn't."
"What!" Strike roared in sudden apprehension. The fools! Not content with stealing the natives' local gods, now they intended to desecrate the whole shrine! "Out there in the darkness? It's suicide!"
The trader leaped for his furs and heating pads, dressing quickly for a sortie into the bitter Venusian night. Gerry looked surprised.
"How do you mean? Are they in danger?"
"The natives have brought nothing here for trading in the last seventy hours," he returned grimly. "That means trouble. Plenty!"
"But surely they're not out at night! The temperatures!"
"Doesn't affect them. They evolved from an aqueous lifeform and like it cold. Fewer natural dangers for them at night too."
He strapped on the gold-detector and radio receiver, strode for the door. "You stay here. Roy! Get the beam working!" He seized a light and barged out.
Gerry's mouth thinned out as she slipped her fur cape over her head and determinedly followed Strike down the stairway. There was a brief argument ending with the trader's angry capitulation.
"We can't debate it now. At least make yourself useful. Carry this." He handed her the powerful searchlight and they moved off together.
A new world was revealed in the gleaming swath of the light, everything covered with a thick frost, utterly lifeless and still. Each breath was a chill knife in their lungs. In the intense quiet they heard the faint sounds of the work party hard at the task of removing the Murri tree.
A quick run brought them to the clearing. Stationary lights made a ring about the workers, who had already fastened antigravity plates to the tree and were loosening the frozen soil. Strike's voice rang out.
"Stop work, men! Grab your tools and beat it back -- " He paused. The needle on the detectors dial was jerking spasmodically.
"Quick!" yelled Strike. "The natives are close by! Run for it!"
But the work party, blinded by the lights, gaped stupidly about and called out questions. Strike ran at them, shouting furiously, but his words were lost as he witnessed an incredible sight. One by one the members of the digging party were falling, wriggling and twisting amazingly.
One of them thrust his feet straight into the air and made grotesque walking motions. Another dug his face into the dirt trying to walk right down through the earth. The only one remaining upright turned round and round in tight little circles like a pirouetting ice-skater.
"Good heavens!" cried Gerry unsteadily. "What's wrong with them?"
Strike seized her about the waist. "Gas! Don't breathe! The natives get it from one of these devilish Venusian plants. Gets into the nervous system. Localizes in the semi-circular-canals. Destroys the sense of balance!" He started back through the mist toward the station.
But with the third step Strike's world reeled sickeningly about him. He dropped Gerry, fighting desperately with outstretched arms for balance. The ground heaved beneath him. Wherever he strove to put his feet it seemed successively to be the sky, the perpendicular bole of a tree, nothingness.
His eyes began to throb intolerably. Terrible nausea shook him and he retched violently several times. He thrashed about so wildly in his efforts to stand upright that his equipment was scattered about the clearing, much of it smashed.
Strike forced himself to lie quietly while the visible world rocked like a storm-lashed ship. He was conscious of the frightened yells of the stricken workmen, a rush of feet, the monosyllabic squeaks and rasps of the Venusians, whose gilllike breathing system filtered out all the poisonous elements of the atmosphere.
Then Gerry's startled scream knifed his consciousness. Just one outcry, no begging for help. But the sounds of her struggle were plain as she was carried away.
Strike sat up. His smarting eyes took in a confused blur of moving figures. The man who had been standing was down now, a literal pin-cushion, bristling with poison-dipped native spears. Already the body was bloating. None of the others, apparently, were injured. Then a horrid vomiting welled up in Strike's throat, and he rolled over to be sick again.
But Strike, on the extreme edge of the clearing, had inhaled only a little of the gas. He lay with his face close to the frozen earth, breathing cautiously, testing every lungful for tell-tale odors, then exhaling vigorously.
Gradually the earth slowed its spinning as the stuff worked
off. Strike became conscious of a splitting headache as if every nerve-end in his skull were raw and throbbing. But as he took in the scene before him all thought of his own discomfort vanished in a wave of horror. The natives were out for revenge and Gerry Carlyle was their intended victim!
Strike had underestimated the natives' intelligence. Smarter than he thought, they had recognized somehow in the antigravity plates fastened to the tree trunk the greatest threat to the Murris. Further, their sluggish wits had puzzled out cause and effect and had gone unerringly to the control unit with its deadly switch, ready to unleash its power with the touch of a finger.
Gerry lay in a limp bundle on the ground, jerking now and then. About her slim body were clumsily fixed at least a half dozen of the anti-gravity plates. And the leader of the Venusians was bending over the switch.
Strike started up in a frenzy, yelling. Rubbery knees promptly sent him to the ground again. Not yet. No strength. He whispered a prayer for something to delay that outstretched native finger hovering over the power unit.
Perhaps he would move it the wrong way and -- but Strike went cold all over at the thought. He wasn't sure, but wouldn't that smash Gerry into a bloody pulp, grind her into a shapeless mess?
Strike began to crawl grimly toward the lighted circle and the pile of weapons belonging to the disarmed work party. It was far, too far. He'd never make it. He paused to be sick again, less violently this time. His head was clearing rapidly but too late. He had to delay things somehow.
Strike's hand bumped against his pocket, dipped in and swiftly out again holding his pipe. Still half full of tobacco. He snatched out a lighter and applied the flame, sucking vigorously, fighting the giddiness, blowing great clouds of pungent smoke all about him. The pipe dropped from nerveless fingers and he hunched down in a prayerful attitude, hoping, waiting tensely. Had he failed?
Zin-n-ng! Plock! It worked! Strike ducked and curled up into as small a ball as possible. In a split second the air resounded with the shrill whines of hundreds of the tiny whiz-bang beetles, armor-protected against the cold, as they hurtled in a cloud to the source of their favorite scent.
Few flew low enough to hit Strike and those were glancing blows that simply left red welts across his back. He saw perfectly the entire scene as his unwitting allies, the whiz-bangs, stormed into the clearing.
It was as if someone had loosed a series of shotgun charges at the natives. The leader of the Venusians dropped as if cathoded when several of the armored beetles rifled into his most vulnerable spot, the throat.
The natives set up a hideous thin wailing. They ducked. They flailed about them with vigorous futility. Finally they broke and ran wildly away into the dark, dropping even their weapons.
For awhile the whiz-bangs zoomed back and forth across the clearing but eventually they too vanished as Strike's now buried pipe gave forth no more enticing scents. Presently Strike stood up, brushed himself off and grinned. This was his moment! Like a conquering hero he strode into the clearing to gaze on the devastation wrought.
The workmen were still prone, sensibly waiting for the effects of the gas to wear off. Gerry leaned like an old rag against the tree, staring with dazed eyes at her deliverer. Her fingers trembled so that Strike had to help her unfasten the anti-gravity plates.
She tried to stand erect but her knees betrayed her and she fell into the trader's ready embrace. He tried to look stern.
"Well, young lady, I trust you've learned two lessons this night. One, that even a Gerry Carlyle can't always have her way -- especially with the Murris. Two, that a mere man, even if only to make an occasional unwanted sacrifice, can sometimes come in pretty handy."
Gerry became acutely conscious of her position and she tried to free herself with no great earnestness. Strike laughed. She turned a furious crimson and he laughed at her again.
"Simply a vaso-motor disturbance," she explained frigidly.
"Is that what you call it? I rather like it. I want to see more." Strike kissed her and Gerry's vaso-motor system went completely haywire.
From far up in the invisible branches of the Murri-tree one of its inhabitants, disturbed by the night's hullabaloo, leaned out and inquired sleepily through his nose -- "Murri? Murri-murri-murri?"
* * *
Contents
THE SEVEN SLEEPERS
By Arthur K. Barnes
Call of the Comet
THE GREAT lens in the Mount Everest Observatory had withstood the stresses of the coldest climate and the highest altitude on Earth. Nobody had foreseen that Gerry Carlyle would ever use it. But when she did, the baleful gleam in her eye was enough to chip the telescopes beryllium steel.
Gerry was mad. She had flown into a fury to keep from crying. As Catch-'em-Alive Carlyle, the Solar System's greatest explorer, she dared never in her own estimation, be considered guilty of feminine weaknesses. What she wanted, she got, by virtue of a keen, alert, indomitable courage, and experience that covered practically every one of the Sun's planets.
Now, watching on the huge telescope visiplate the glowing fires of Almussen's Comet, she realized that she was losing the biggest scoop of her wild career.
The worst of it was that Gerry needed that scoop. The London Zoo paid her chiefly on commission. But she had to provide good, regular salaries for her staff. And she had never saved much, for there was always new equipment to buy, expensive research to pay for. The upkeep of The Ark alone was staggering. For months now Gerry hadn't found a new monster. The Ark was being completely overhauled and modernized, and money was getting low.
The last factor didn't bother her too much. She had to provide for her men, of course, but the real danger was losing her commission. She hated the idea of being idle in her beloved job when all the monsters in the System had not yet been captured and caged. The thrill of pitting her brain against the resources of alien worlds and incredible beings to bring them back to the Zoo alive, the excitement of skirting the brink of death and coming back unscathed, meant everything to her.
Now one of the greatest enigmas of interplanetary deep space was coming within reach. But Gerry couldn't move. She was earthbound as the most amazing scientific adventure of her lifetime was thundering into the void as Almussen's Comet swept Sunward.
Right now Gerry stood motionless in the middle of the room, which didn't much resemble an observatory. It was a small, well-furnished cubicle, the duplicate of a dozen others, each equipped with a visiplate connected with the gigantic telescope. She looked bitterly at the pallid fires of the comet, and could have stamped in frustrated annoyance.
A small televisor in the corner buzzed. "Calling Miss Carlyle... Call from London..."
The woman swung toward the device and touched a switch. On the screen, a man's worried face appeared.
"Well?" Gerry snapped.
"I'm terribly sorry," the face said apprehensively. "But the Jan Hallek Mercury expedition can't possibly be back for at least a month. And even then his ship would have to be overhauled thoroughly and specially adapted for your purposes and --"
Furiously, Gerry switched off the communicator. She resumed her pacing, cursing a fate that seemed to chain her to the Earth, at the same time the greatest opportunity of her lifetime sailed nonchalantly past through the skies, never to return.
Occasionally the televisor buzzed, and apologetic faces reported more sad news. Then the door opened and a tall, dark young man entered. He looked hot and harassed as he slung his dress cap halfway across the room and dropped into an easy chair.
"Well, Captain Strike?" Gerry's razor tongue sliced out. "Before you fall asleep, you might inform me of your progress."
Tommy Strike grinned wryly. "You know the answer, kitten --"
"Don't call me kitten."
"Cat," Tommy amended. "The Ark is absolutely out of the picture. Every motor in her hull's been torn completely apart, for checking over. She won't be going anywhere for a long, long time... And, by the way, I can see you're in an evil temper."
"I'm not!"
"So let me warn you not to take it out on me, because I'm not feeling very gay myself. On the slightest provocation, I'm going to turn you over my knee and give you a whaling."
Gerry glanced keenly at the usually easy-going Tommy, and decided that he meant what he said. She smiled ruefully, and turned as the door opened once more.
A small man, with a face like a pallid prune, came in. Spectacles glinted from amid the wrinkles. A badly fitting toupee was askew on the head of Professor Langley of the Mount Everest Observatory.
"Um, Miss Carlyle," said Langley, in a squeaky voice. "I have collected the data you desired." He referred to a scrap of paper clutched in one hand, and began to read in a swift, monotonous voice. "Almussen's Comet is one of the largest ever to enter the Solar System. Its nucleus is eight thousand miles, almost as large as that of Donati's Comet of Eighteen Fifty-eight. And it seems to be much denser, probably dense enough to support the weight of a human being."
"Tommy!" Gerry's eyes were alight with excitement. "Do you hear?"
Strike nodded slowly, frowning. He realized that this information only made it harder for Gerry, because she couldn't take advantage of it.
"Um. The nucleus is not quite as large as our own Moon. The comet seems to be one of the long period comets, or perhaps a wanderer of space, not a part of our System at all. In other words" -- even Langley's cold voice was pained -- "we shall never see its return in our lifetimes."
Gerry chewed her lip. Strike glanced at her and then quickly looked away.
"Cyanogen is present in great quantities, also sodium, common metals, such as iron and bauxite, and the hydrocarbons."
"Hydrocarbons," Gerry said. "That may mean -- life."
Langley knitted his brows. "On a comet? Rather fantastic, Miss Carlyle."
"I've run across life-forms existing in much less probable conditions," the woman said stubbornly.
"And how would you reach the comet?" Langley asked.