by Ray Cummings
13
The forest swarmed with living things. Here in the dark they had beencrawling upon us. Every branch of this leafy tree-top angle hadsomething staring at us; the darkness was suddenly glowing with amyriad little green torches which were their eyes. They all winked onin an instant, as though at a signal, or at the sound of Snap's shoutand the hiss of his bolt.
Insects? I suppose I should call them that. With a glance I saw thatthey were of many sizes and shapes; tiny little things with eyes likelanterns; things of many legs, finger-length, hand-length, and some aslong as my forearm. Brown-shelled things, with eyes glowing on stems.There was one quite near us, a smooth, brown-shelled body; a roundhead on top, as big as my fist. And these things had heads like littledistended brains.
What horrible jest of nature this was, with miniatures of the Wandlworkers, crawling here, unable to stand erect, groping with littlepincers. And miniature brains with naked, shriveled bodies.
It seemed that the eyes of that little brain were fixed on me with abaleful green glare in the darkness. Anita and Venza were flounderingto their feet in horror. They all but slipped from the limb. Theweapons and devices they had arranged there slid off and went downinto the darkness unheeded. From above us came Snap's horrified shoutsand the hiss of his bolts.
"Here!" I gasped. "My hand--Anita, Venza, jump!"
I shoved Anita upward. The little eyes suddenly were all in movement,advancing upon us. Anita floundered, fluttered, got into the air andmounted toward Snap. Again Venza slipped off the limb. I lunged anddrew her up. Green eyes nearest us came swooping. I did not dare firea bolt; it was too close to Venza. I flung the entire weapon at thegreen eyes, but I missed.
The little thing bit Venza's arm. She screamed and her flailing handhit the tiny distended head. Its hideous little scream mingled withhers. It floated downward, massed and purple-red with gushing blood.
I struggled upward with the inert form of Venza under one arm. Anitawas mounting, free. Snap came lunging down.
"Fired every bolt in the damn weapon!" He saw the unconscious Venza."Good God, Gregg!"
Never have I heard such anguish in his tone. "Gregg, she isn't...."
"One of them bit her. Help me."
He floundered up with her, a hundred feet above the tree-tops of thathorrible forest. The little lanterns of eyes down there had all winkedout. The open starlight was over us.
Anita came swimming, then Venza stirred. She murmured, "... allright."
She had fainted. It seemed nothing more; but I found her upper armswelling. She tried to bend her body and sit up; but it threw us allout of balance.
"Lie straight," Snap murmured. "Venza, are you all right?"
"Yes. Why not?" And then she laughed. It sent a shuddering chill overme. "What's the fuss about? Let's get away from here. Somebody will becoming."
She was swimming now and we let her loose, but stayed close by her.The reddish firmament was like an inverted bowl. The curving Wandlsurface gave us a narrow little vista, the forest rolling up from thehorizon in front. Then we saw where the forest seemed to end. Waterwas beyond it: a ribbon like a broad river, and beyond that, frowningmountains, terraced and spired with jagged peaks.
Snap and I suddenly recalled the gravity ray projectors. We triedthem; found that they would fling little beams of two varieties.Pencil points of radiance, they seemed to have an effective range ofno more than a few hundred feet.
I let myself drift downward, experimenting. The tiny beam struck theforest-top. I felt the projector pulling violently downward in myhand. I clung to it. I was being drawn swiftly down by the attractivegravity force of the ray. The forest rose rapidly under me: I was allbut flung upon it before I could find the other controls.
Then the ray altered its nature; the projector in my hand pulled mesteadily up. But after a few hundred feet, I felt I was mounting onlyof my own momentum, with gravity and air-friction retarding me.
Snap had tried similar experiments. We rejoined the swimming girls. Istared into Venza's face; it was pale but she did not seem distressed.She winked at me.
"How's your arm, Venza?"
"It hurts, but I guess it's all right."
I turned to Snap. "I guess we can work these things. Get Venza tocling to you."
Our progress now was far less difficult. Venza clung to Snap's anklesand Anita to mine. With the repulsing rays directed downward, we had astrong upward and forward thrust. We went forward with greatthousand-foot bounds. The forest rolled back under us. We came overthe gleaming river. It seemed several miles broad. It appeared to havea swift current.
I saw sunlight upon the mountain ahead. The darkness had been paling.Now day suddenly burst upon us. The sun, smaller than on Earth,mounted swiftly up. It was a flattened, distorted, dull-red disc,blurred by Wandl's strange atmosphere. We were in a dim red daylight.
Anita twitched at my ankles. "Look back of us!"
We were going up. Venza and Snap, behind us, were in a descending arc.Above them, far back in the direction from which they had come, twoblobs were visible up against the reddish day sky.
Pursuit? It seemed so. The blobs went down, but came up again,traveling with rays, like ourselves.
I called to Snap, "Someone after us! Two figures back there!"
He was shouting, "Gregg! Gregg, help!"
My gaze had been on the distant figures. I saw now that at the bottomof his arc, and starting upward again, Snap had lost Venza. Theimpulse of his ray had twitched his ankle from her grasp. Or had shelet loose? He was about a hundred feet above the river, and Venza,with acceleration downward unchecked, was falling into it.
"Gregg, help! Venza, swim up!" His frenzied call reached me as I usedthe attractive ray and Anita and I whirled over and lunged downward.
"Gregg, help! Venza use your arms! Swim!"
She was lying inert, making no effort to keep from falling. Her bodyturned slowly, end-over-end. She struck the swiftly-flowing riversurface but did not sink; instead, she half emerged, came up and layin a crumpled heap; and with its rapid current, the river carried heraway.
It was several minutes before we could reach Venza. Snap was alreadythere, floundering on the water, awkwardly maintaining his balance,bending over Venza. "Gregg, she's unconscious. Fainted again."
The bite of that insect! The thought of it turned me cold.
The river surface was like a very soft rubber mattress. The waterclung to us, wet us. We could not kneel or stand erect; but in sittingdown only a few inches of our bodies were submerged. We floated likecorks, we were so light, and so little water did we displace.
We struggled with Venza across the gluey river surface. She had fallennear the further shore. Rocks, crags and strewn boulders were passingas the current swept us along at a speed of about ten miles an hour.She lay in our arms, eyes closed, her face pallid but calm. She seemedto breathe rapidly; but that on Wandl was normal.
We landed on the rocky shore. It was still daylight. The blurred sunwas winging across the zenith so swiftly that its movement wasvisible. Wandl had been suddenly endowed with axial rotation. Even inthese few minutes, the day was past its noon. On the distant mountainpeaks looming above the nearby horizon; it seemed that the sheen ofcoming night was mingled with the red sunlight.
Anita and Snap laid Venza on the rocks. I suddenly remembered the twoblobs in the sky behind us, which had seemed to be following. I stoodgazing across the river. The red sky there seemed empty.
"Thank God, she's reviving!" Snap called at me and I joined them.Venza was stirring. Color was coming into her cheeks. Her lips weremurmuring as though she were talking in her sleep.
Then she opened her eyes. Her gaze fixed on us as we bent over her."Why, what's the matter? Where are we? I thought we were in thetree-tops. Snap, don't look at me like that, dear. I'm all right--onlyconfused."
She could remember nothing since that gruesome thing bit into her arm,but the attack of its poison in her veins seemed definitely over. Wesat with her, soothing her
, explaining what had happened. And she waswholly rational. Her strength came back; her mind cleared.
The brief red day came to its close. The sun plunged below thehorizon; the stars winked into being. The red-purple Wandl nightagain was here. And now we saw that the whole firmament was swinging,the rotation made visible.
The darkness leaped around us. Shadows filled the rock hollows. Thecaves and recesses of this rocky shore turned black with darkness. Andin the sky now we saw another of those familiar opalescent beams. Thiswas the one from Mars: we could identify the red disc of the planet.
And then, from the mountains ahead of us but still below our horizon,the Wandl control station shot its attacking beam upward. Again therewas that conflict in the sky. The axis of Mars was being altered, itsrotation slowed.
We could see now that we were much nearer than before to the controlstation. It seemed only about twenty miles ahead of us. The screamfrom it was deafening.
The Wandl beam died presently. The electrical scream from the controlstation was stilled.
The Earth's axis had been altered. Now Mars; and next would be Venus.A few more of these gravitational attacks and then the helplessplanets, with rotation checked, would be towed away by Wandl, out intothe deadly cold of interstellar space.
Anita abruptly gave a startled outcry. The four of us, sitting in agroup, had no time to rise. From behind a dark crag nearby, twofigures appeared. The starlight showed them clearly.
Molo and Wyk! They lunged forward at us.