by Don Wilcox
“Wellington has picked his beneficiaries with care. You and your sisters are among the lucky ones. How about you, Brother Winkle?”
Hefty was still looking at the map. “It looks like a good country. But you’re not going to get away with these high-handed methods. Shooting guards on sight is not the way to do business, my friend.”
Dick’s very pleasant smile accompanied his sarcastic tone. “So you know how this deal should be operated? We’ll see. I’ll take care of my end. Your part will be to handle your friend Stupe.”
“In what way?”
“Study this map,” said Dick. “If you influence your friend to see any advantages for himself here, then we’ll be able to do business.”
For the first time Hefty began to see Dick Bracket in a new light. Perhaps all of this rash action was something more than boyish impulsiveness after all. At first it had seemed that a return to the Venusian capital would be impossible for Dick, after those two cold-blooded murders. But now Hefty wondered. Could the captain work fast enough to fix things?
Hefty looked into the black sky and wished for morning. It had been a dismal night ever since they crossed the Divide. If only a star would show—if only that certain planet called the Earth would peek through the clouds—
How was Stupe spending this night, he wondered. His memory drifted back to that long trek in the Andes when he and Stupe had risked their lives in an attempted rescue. In the end, the lost party had found its way out before he and Stupe arrived.
“History repeats itself,” Hefty thought. Again Stupe was tramping over an uncharted wilderness looking for someone who wasn’t there.
Now in the rear of the cabin the bottles and glasses were clinking. The Fiddle brothers and their young leader were drinking to the new Wellington empire. An ugly trio, those three men. Two brothers, brawny fellows with hard faces and gangster manners. One boy of twenty or so, sharp featured, alert, a clever talker.
They offered Thelma a drink. She refused. She was lost in her own thoughts. The illuminated dials reflected a green light in her eyes.
Dawn came with a sky of solid gray.
“Fog,” Thelma said. She turned to Hefty and for the first time he saw something in her expression, however cynical, that give him hope. It was a faint hint that privately she might resent this ugly business as much as he.
CHAPTER XVI
Before Stupe Smith’s startled eyes, under a shaft of sunlight, the apparition appeared, as clear cut as any statue. The real thing! Alive, moving, splashing through the water!
On the instant Stupe forgot to swim. He stared through the opening in the mist, he held his breath, he felt his muscles go tense with excitement. The girl—the girl of the sea—the weird beautiful creature who lived in the oceans of Venus! This was the prize he had come to find.
“Like a ghost coming to life!” he gasped, voiceless.
His eyes had been turned in exactly the right direction to catch this view when the path broke through the mist, for the splash of hoofs in the water had become audible as soon as the drone of the plane, lost in the gray, had faded in the distance.
“I knew it! I knew it!” He was much too excited to know what he was saying. The fact was, only a few minutes earlier he had almost convinced himself that his brain had gone bleary with hallucinations. The mist. The long swim. The recent spell of hunger. The dismal weather. The loneliness and dizziness of wandering through this strange land.
The misty clouds, pressing down upon the waters, were about to shut off his view again, and so he called, loud, huskily.
“Hellooooo!”
The girl was no more than fifty yards distant. The sun had for a moment highlighted the golden brown of her flowing hair and etched her shoulders with lines of pink. The bright green of her abbreviated garments shone with the added glitter of gems that matched the sparks of sunlight from the splashing waters.
“Hellooooo!”
Stupe’s muscles tightened. The girl hadn’t turned. At least not enough to see him. Yet she must have heard. The white stallion she was riding had certainly caught his voice, for that handsome fellow turned his classic white head far enough that Stupe caught the flash of his eye and the flare of his pink nostril.
Now they were turning, horse and rider, the hoofs thrashing in the water, sinking not more than a foot deep. As the mist closed in, Stupe saw them from a full side view, poised with such strength and grace as would have delighted any sculptor.
“Helloooo!”
At last Stupe’s call met with some response. The white stallion turned swiftly, and Stupe thought he could hear the swish of the girl’s flowing jeweled skirt. She was turning to face him. Her head high, her fearless face lighted with an expression that seemed to ask the question, Why are you following me? What is your game? What do you want with me?
Then, as for a moment the mist thinned, he saw in the sharpness of her eyes a look of recognition. As if to say, Of course, it’s you. I should have known.
She slapped her mount on the neck and the big white fellow went plunging down into the sea. The waves swallowed them up, horse and rider. A spray of diamonds, a flash of pink shoulders, and the gray mist lingered as a retained image in Stupe’s eyes. And one thing more. The girl’s upraised arm.
At the very instant of disappearing, she had waved.
For many minutes, Stupe simply swam. Not in any particular direction. He was simply swimming to give his thoughts a chance to clear.
The gray waters were beginning to sap his strength slowly. The ocean’s temperature was a few degrees too warm. Now the mists gathered into bunchy little clouds with pink edges, and all around there were straight shafts of sunlight beaming down through the steamy atmosphere. No shore appeared however, though Stupe was continually searching, more or less unconsciously, for some stopping place.
He kept wondering vaguely, what would happen if a two-ton snail would crawl off the shore into the water? Would it float, a raft of red gelatin, or would it sink and become fish food?
And what of the fish in this sea? Might there be any Venus water life comparable to earth’s sharks?
He was still drawing the tiny raft, and for this reason felt that he was making slow progress, and again he complained mentally of the warmth of the water.
“It wouldn’t do to tire out,” he thought. And then, “She waved at me.” And again his heartbeat quickened.
Everything that passed through his mind was light and inconsequential, it seemed, compared to that one dominating fact. She had waved at him.
She had waved and plunged into the sea. And now where was she?
Sometimes he thought he could detect paths of luminous dream dust on the surface. But whenever he swam toward them they thinned into nothingness. He hooked an elbow over his tiny raft and rested. Resting, he ate a few bites of the precious store of food he had brought.
“In all this sea, I could never find her again,” he said to himself. “I can’t hope to pursue her. This is her world. A man would have to have a submarine. And even then I doubt—”
But there was that one consoling mental image of a girl’s hand waving, her pink fingers spreading slightly as they slipped into the water.
“The battle is half won,” he thought. “To know that she’s here, in flesh and blood—to know that it’s no myth—that she’s the real McCoy—”
Stupe drew a deep breath, and his nickname, Stupendous flashed through his mind to make him smile. The party would drink to this occasion when he told them.
“If I can make her be friends with me—that’s the thing. The only thing. Nobody could ever plough down through those waves and capture her. But if she’ll make friends—”
Suddenly his throat was dry so that it was hard to gulp his food. What did such things mean? Was he, the honest and honorable Stupendous Smith, planning to trick this girl into a friendship so that be could capture her?
“Don’t be having a conscience at a time like this.” He spoke aloud. But his words sounde
d too weak against the shrill thin cries of that still small voice within him. So he repeated his words, shouting them in a heavy voice.
“Don’t be having a conscience at a time like this.”
A voice within a few feet of him spoke, clear and bell-like, with a strange accent.
“What is a conscience?”
CHAPTER XVII
The girl and her white charger had risen out of the depths as silently and treacherously as any submarine, Stupe thought.
“Huh?” he stumbled for words. “Huh—er—well! What a funny party we are. Three heads poking out of the water, and not an island in sight.”
“What is a conscience?”
The girl’s lips were touched with a faint smile. The curiosity of her wide eyes was upon him, pressing him for an answer.
“Where on earth did you learn to speak English?” he asked.
“Where do you learn to talk?” she returned. “Do you learn to talk from the wingmen?”
So that was it. The wingmen. She had listened to them using the language they had stolen from earth men. She had stolen it too.
But she knew other languages. She came a little closer, jabbering the musical words that might have been the original wingman tongue. He was at a loss to understand. He began to laugh.
“Cease firing, please. Stop until I catch my breath, my fairy princess. What are you saying?”
“Fairy princess?” she repeated. “Am I a fairy princess?” The sound of the words fascinated her. She was quick, all right. And she was thoroughly enjoying herself too, Stupe decided. Watching him with eyes that had begun to twinkle, she drew herself to the stallion’s neck, pressing her head sidewise against the white mane. “What is fairy princess?”
“You’re the princess of the sea, lady,” said Stupe. “I don’t know how you came to be. In fact, I don’t know anything about you—least of all how you and your horse can ride down into the depths of the ocean and up again without—”
But the girl had interrupted with more rapid-fire wingman talk, and Stupe had no choice but to stand by in silence and awe. He was treading water leisurely, with one band on the raft. He hoped that her mysterious words had something to do with an island.
“Princess, if you could put that in English—”
“I was asking you again, like I asked you before—what is a conscience?”
“Oh, that.” Stupe lifted his eyebrows and made a wry face. There was that guilty feeling again. But now that he was talking with her on a friendly basis, it seemed less serious. He laughed at himself. “Listen carefully, Princess, and I’ll try to explain.”
“Listen,” she said. She was daringly beautiful, smiling that way. Much too attractive, Stupe thought. Those fierce bright eyes of the stallion were warning him, it seemed, against gazing at her too intently. That beast looked as if he would go charging off at the slightest excuse.
“All right,” said Stupe. “A conscience is—well, suppose someone starts out to capture someone else—to make someone a prisoner—”
“Why?”
“Because—er—because a prisoner is needed.”
“Yes, a prisoner is needed.” The girl nodded. “That is exactly it. I understand. But the conscience?”
“Then someone decided to be friends with the person who was about to be the prisoner.”
“Being friends—yes,” she was watching him anxiously, her smile fading. “You know?”
“Wanting to be friends, someone can’t make someone a prisoner,” Stupe said. And then he thought, how dreadful a thing to say. He was about to betray his own cause.
“And that is conscience?” she asked.
“That’s it,” he said weakly. “It’s an awful thing to have.”
“Yes,” she nodded eagerly, and her pretty mouth became much too serious over it all. “To have conscience makes someone forget someone’s duty.”
“Say, you’re quick, all right.”
“You are the quick one,” she said. “How did you know?”
“Know what?” Stupe mumbled.
“Know that I needed a prisoner to take back to my nation?”
“You—you, Princess?”
“But when I found you asleep in your cave—” she began to smile faintly, not looking at him now, but rubbing her fingers over the stallion’s mane absently—“I decided I would not make you a prisoner, because I do not want to see you killed so soon. Even if my nation needs a prisoner, I decide to let you sleep—”
Stupe’s throat tightened. The quick little glances from her friendly eyes might have warned him. But those strange words were like knife blades.
“So I touch your eyelids with the dust of peace, and you sleep,” she said, “and I go back to my nation and say I do not yet find a prisoner to be killed.”
“Oh,” Stupe murmured, the breath going out of him.
The horse tossed his fine head impatiently. His trim legs, visible in the clear water, began to stamp and paw with eagerness. The Princess of the Sea, if such she was, knew the meanings of his every motion. Her fingertips played lightly over the graceful curve of his neck.
“Marble Boy wants to take me home,” she said. “I think he would like to take you, also.”
Stupe involuntarily backed away. “Where—which way do I swim to find the shore?”
She was laughing at his evasion. Did she detect his wariness? Did she consider him a coward? The shore? She gave a light gesture. The clouds were about to lift, and the shore would appear not far distant.
“I shall find another prisoner,” she said. The disappointment in her manner was unmistakable. “My nation would have liked you. It is a great occasion. It would make them happy to have a prisoner like you. But I think you would not like to die. Would you?”
“Frankly, no,” said Stupe. “I came here on a purpose of my own.”
“Your own—yes?”
“Correction,” said Stupe. “I’m on a mission for a millionaire.”
Her questioning look ended with a shrug. “Missions and millionaires I do not understand. But I do understand conscience, and that is why, one day in your cave, I did not make you prisoner. But I drew the circles on your map where you had marked my home.”
“Your home—those circles?”
“Would you come as a friend?” the Princess asked. “Do you also have a conscience?”
She did not tarry for an answer. Her mount, notified by some subtle signal, charged up and away, then down beneath the surface.
CHAPTER XVIII
The shore became visible through the lifting clouds. Stupe gave a low whistle. Somehow he had managed to swim several miles out to sea. The nearest promontory was the tenth finger jutting southward from the line of blue mountains that formed the northern skyline.
Suddenly he realized that fatigue was closing in on him. Fortunately there was a resting place a little further out. Another half mile of swimming . . .
The circle of light shone up out of the blue. He was crossing a rim of light—the curved line that appeared as a part of a one hundred yard circle.
The light was a band of red, shining up through the water from some hidden source.
Soon he was crossing an orange band of a second concentric circle. The bright colored waves danced in his eyes.
The innermost circle, of brilliant yellow, was so intense that he closed his eyes while swimming over. This was what he had seen from the plane, mistaking it for some natural phenomenon of reflection.
“There must be some sort of power plant down there,” he decided.
Obviously perfect curves were a part of some man-made device beneath the surface of the sea. The warmth flooded upward into his water-soaked body.
His destination was now revealed to be a little circular platform about three feet above the surface. It appeared to be made of some glass-like substance. A few minutes later he was clambering up on it and dragging his raft-load of equipment after him.
“Whew!”
The plastic surface was warm to h
is tired body. After dressing himself and eating a little, he lay down under the pleasant sunshine and rested.
He had no intention of sleeping. There was far too much to think about.
“Her home,” he murmured. “I wonder what it’s like.”
Lying on his stomach, he propped his elbows on the edge of the plastic platform and peered down into the waters. A soft, purplish illumination filled the depths.
His platform was like a twenty-foot table, supported by a central stem perhaps ten feet in diameter, which could be seen through the flat surface.
Stupe wondered if Mr. Vest had ever come this close to what was plainly the pinnacle of some under-sea chamber. Probably not, for the concentric circles of light had never been mentioned in any of the Wellington instructions.
S-s-s-swish!
The plastic platform barely vibrated. Stupe leaped to discover that it was changing shape. The stem which supported it from some under-water base was rising through it like a piston through a cylinder.
The hydraulic action, if such it was, carried the stem upward to a height of twelve or fifteen feet, and there it stopped.
“I’m standing on the rim of a big glass hat,” Stupe observed. Then he noticed something that quickened his pulse. “Oh-oh—a door!”
The inner cylinder that had risen was marked by a seven-foot door. The crystal tower contained nothing, but he could see that steps led downward into some dark depth.
“No,” Stupe said aloud. “No, I won’t.”
He was answering himself before he dared ask the question—should he try to open the door and see where the steps led?
“No—not yet. Maybe later—after I get word to Hefty.”
Nevertheless, he did try the door to see if it would open.
It swung inward at his touch. He peered in.
“No,” he repeated. The risk was too great. Hefty and twelve other persons would depend upon him to effect a capture when the time was right. They would back him to the limit—he hoped. It would be foolhardy for him to squander himself on an unnecessary risk. This doorway might be a trap. He’d better go slowly until he knew.