Lost on Venus v-2

by Edgar Rice Burroughs

  A faint smile touched Duare's lips. "I am believing that it will not be necessary for you to look like him," she explained. "These people are very ignorant. Probably only a few of the common warriors saw Moosko when he arrived. Those same men would not be on watch now. Furthermore, it is night, and with the darkness and the rain the danger that your imposture will be discovered is minimized."

  "It is worth trying," I agreed; and, going to the body of Moosko, I found the ring and removed it from his finger. It was too large for me, as the ongyan had gross, fat hands; but if any one was stupid enough to accept me as the ongyan he would not notice so minor a discrepancy as an ill-fitting ring.

  Now Duare and I crept silently out of the chamber to the head of the stairs, where we paused, listening. All was dark below, but we heard the sound of voices, muffled, as though coming from behind a closed door. Slowly, stealthily, we descended the stairs. I felt the warmth of the girl's body as it brushed mine, and a great longing seized me to take her in my arms and crush her to me; but I only continued on down the stairway as outwardly cool and possessed as though no internal fire consumed me.

  * * * * *

  We had reached the long hallway and had groped our way about half the distance to the door that opened upon the street, a feeling of optimism enveloping me, when suddenly a door at the front end of the corridor opened and the passageway was illuminated by the light from the open doorway. I saw a portion of the figure of a man standing in the doorway of the room he was about to quit, he had paused and was conversing with someone from the room beyond. In another moment he might step into the corridor.

  At my elbow was a door. Gingerly I tripped the latch and pushed the door open; the room beyond was in darkness, but whether or not it was occupied I could not tell. Stepping through the doorway I drew Duare in after me and partially closed the door again, standing close to the aperture, watching and listening.

  Presently I heard the man who had been standing in the other doorway say, "Until to-morrow, friends, and may you sleep in peace," then the door slammed and the hallway was plunged into darkness again.

  Now I heard footsteps; they were coming in our direction. Very gingerly I drew the sword of Moosko, the ongyan. On came the footsteps; they seemed to hesitate before the door behind which I waited; but perhaps it was only my imagination. They passed on; I heard them ascending the stairway.

  Now a new fear assailed me. What if this man should enter the room in which lay the dead body of Moosko! He would spread the alarm. Instantly I recognized the necessity for immediate action.

  "Now, Duare!" I whispered, and together we stepped into the corridor and almost ran to the front door of the building.

  A moment later we were in the street. The drizzle had become a downpour. Objects were undiscernable a few yards distant, and for this I was thankful.

  We hastened along the street in the direction of the wall and the gate, passing no one, seeing no one. The rain increased in violence.

  "What are you going to say to the sentry?" asked Duare.

  "I do not know," I replied candidly.

  "He will be suspicious, for you can have no possible excuse for wishing to leave the safety of a walled city on a night like this and go out without an escort into a dangerous country where savage beasts and savage men roam."

  "I shall find a way," I said, "because I must."

  She made no reply, and we continued on toward the gate. It was not at a great distance from the house from which we had escaped and presently we came upon it looming large before us through the falling rain.

  A sentry, standing in the shelter of a niche in the wall, discovered us and demanded what we were doing aboard at this hour of such a night. He was not greatly concerned, since he did not know that it was in our minds to pass through the gateway; he merely assumed, I presume, that we were a couple of citizens passing by on our way to our home.

  "Is Sov here?" I demanded.

  "Sov here!" he exclaimed in astonishment. "What would Sov be doing here on a night light this?"

  "He was to meet me here at this hour," I said. "I instructed him to be here."

  "You instructed Sov to be here!" The fellow laughed. "Who are you to give instructions to Sov?"

  "I am the ongyan, Moosko," I replied.

  * * * * *

  The man looked at me in astonishment. "I do not know where Sov is," he said, a little sullenly, I thought.

  "Well, never mind," I told him; "he will be here presently; and in the meantime, open up the gate, for we shall want to hurry on as soon as he arrives."

  "I cannot open the gate without orders from Sov," replied the sentry.

  "You refuse to obey an ongyan?" I demanded in the most ferocious tones I could command.

  "I have never seen you before," he parried. "How do I know you are an ongyan?"

  I held out my hand with the ring of Moosko on the index finger. "Do you know what that is?" I demanded.

  He examined it closely. "Yes, Ongyan," he said fearfully, "I know."

  "Then open the gate, and be quick about it," I snapped.

  "Let us wait until Sov comes," he suggested. "There will be time enough then."

  "There is no time to be lost, fellow. Open up, as I command. The Vepajan prisoner has just escaped, and Sov and I are going out with a party of warriors to search for him."

  Still the obstinate fellow hesitated; and then we heard a great shouting from the direction from which we had come, and I guessed that the fellow who had passed us in the corridor had discovered the dead body of Moosko and given the alarm.

  We could hear men running. There was no more time to be lost.

  "Here comes Sov with the searching party," I cried. "Throw open the gates, you fool, or it will go ill with you." I drew my sword, intending to run him through if he did not obey.

  As finally, he turned to do my bidding, I heard the excited voices of the approaching men grow louder as they neared us. I could not see them yet for the rain, but as the gate swung open I glimpsed the oncoming figures through the murk.

  Taking Duare by the arm I started through the gate. The sentry was still suspicious and wanted to stop us, but he was not sure of himself.

  "Tell Sov to hurry," I said, and before the man could bolster his courage to do his duty, Duare and I hastened into the outer darkness and were lost to his view in the rain.

  It was my intention to reach the coast and follow along it until daylight, when, I hoped and prayed, we should sight the Sofal off shore and be able to contrive a means of signaling to her.

  We groped our way through the darkness and the rain during all that terrible night. No sound of pursuit reached our ears, nor did we come upon the ocean.

  The rain ceased about dawn, and when full daylight came we looked eagerly for the sea, but only low hills and rolling country dotted with trees and a distant forest where we had thought the sea to be rewarded our straining eyes.

  "Where is the sea?" asked Duare.

  "I do not know," I admitted.

  Only at sunrise and at sunset, for a few minutes, is it possible to differentiate between the points of the compass on Venus; then the direction of the sun is faintly indicated by a slightly intensified light along the eastern or the western horizon.

  And now the sun was rising at our left, when it should have been upon our right were we going in the direction that I believed the ocean to be.

  My heart sank in my breast, for I knew that we were lost.

  Chapter 5—Cannibals

  DUARE, WHO HAD been watching my face intently, must have read the truth in the despair of my expression.

  "You do not know where the sea lies?" she asked.

  I shook my head. "No."

  "Then we are lost?"

  "I am afraid so. I am sorry, Duare; I was so sure that we would find the Sofal and that you would soon be out of danger. It is all my fault, the fault of my stupidity and ignorance."

  "Do not say that; no one could have known the direction he was going durin
g the darkness of last night. Perhaps we shall find the sea yet."

  "Even if we could, I am afraid that it will be too late to ensure your safety."

  "What do you mean—that the Sofal will be gone?" she asked.

  "There is that danger, of course; but what I most fear is that we may be recaptured by the Thorists. They will certainly search along the coast for us in the locality where they found us yesterday. They are not so stupid as not to guess that we will try to reach the Sofal."

  "If we can find the ocean, we might hide from them," she suggested, "until they tire of the search and return to Kapdor; then, if the Sofal is still there, we may yet be saved."

  "And if not, what?" I asked. "Do you know anything about Noobol? Is there not some likelihood that we may find a friendly people somewhere in this land who will aid us to reach Vepaja again?"

  She shook her head. "I know little about Noobol," she replied, "but what little I have heard is not good. It is a sparsely settled land reaching, it is supposed, far into Strabol, the hot country, where no man may live. It is filled with wild beasts and savage tribes. There are scattered settlements along the coast, but most of these have been captured or reduced by the Thorists; the others, of course, would be equally dangerous, for the inhabitants would consider all strangers as enemies."

  "The outlook is not bright," I admitted, "but we will not give up; we will find a way."

  "If any man can, I am sure that it is you," she said.

  Praise from Duare was sweet. In all the time that I had known her she had said only one other kind thing to me, and later she had retracted that.

  "I could work miracles if only you loved me, Duare."

  She straightened haughtily. "You will not speak of that," she said.

  "Why do you hate me, Duare, who have given you only love?" I demanded.

  "I do not hate you," she replied, "but you must not speak of love to the daughter of a jong. We may be together for a long time, and you must remember that I may not listen to love from the lips of any man. Our very speaking together is a sin, but circumstances have made it impossible to do otherwise.

  "Before I was stolen from the house of the jong no man had ever addressed me other than the members of my own family, except a few loyal and privileged members of my father's household, and until I should be twenty it were a sin in me and a crime in any man who should disregard this ancient law of the royal families of Amtor."

  "You forget," I reminded her, "that one man did address you in the house of your father."

  "An impudent knave," she said, "who should have died for his temerity."

  "Yet you did not inform on me."

  "Which made me equally guilty with you," she replied, flushing. "It is a shameful secret that will abide with me until my death."

  "A glorious memory that will always sustain my hope," I told her.

  "A false hope that you would do well to kill," she said, and then, "Why did you remind me of that day?" she demanded. "When I think of it, I hate you; and I do not want to hate you."

  "That is something," I suggested.

  "Your effrontery and your hope feed on meager fare."

  "Which reminds me that it might be well for me to see if I can find something in the way of food for our bodies, too."

  "There may be game in that forest," she suggested, indicating the wood toward which we had been moving.

  "We'll have a look," I said, "stand then turn back and search for the elusive sea."

  * * * * *

  A Venusan forest is a gorgeous sight. The foliage itself is rather pale—orchid, heliotrope and violet predominate—but the boles of the trees are gorgeous. They are of brilliant colors and often so glossy as to give the impression of having been lacquered.

  The wood we were approaching was of the smaller varieties of trees, ranging in height from two hundred to three hundred feet, and in diameter from twenty to thirty feet. There were none of the colossi of the island of Vepaja that reared their heads upward five thousand feet to penetrate the eternal inner cloud envelope of the planet.

  The interior of the forest was illuminated by the mysterious Venusan ground glow, so that, unlike an earthly forest of similar magnitude upon a cloudy day, it was far from dark or gloomy. Yet there was something sinister about it. I cannot explain just what, nor why it should have been.

  "I do not like this place," said Duare, with a little shudder; "there is no sight of animal, no sound of bird."

  "Perhaps we frightened them away," I suggested.

  "I do not think so; it is more likely that there is something else in the forest that has frightened them."

  I shrugged. "Nevertheless, we must have food," I reminded her, and I continued on into the forbidding, and at the same time gorgeous, wood that reminded me of a beautiful but wicked woman.

  Several times I thought I saw a suggestion of movement among the boles of distant trees, but when I reached them there was nothing there. And so I pressed on, deeper and deeper; and constantly a sense of impending evil grew stronger as I advanced.

  "There!" whispered Duare suddenly, pointing. "There is something there, behind that tree. I saw it move."

  Something, just glimpsed from the corner of my eye, caught my attention to the left of us; and as I turned quickly in that direction something else dodged behind the bole of a large tree.

  Duare wheeled about. "There are things all round us!"

  "Can you make out what they are?" I asked.

  "I thought that I saw a hairy hand, but I am not sure. They move quickly and keep always out of sight. Oh, let us go back! This is an evil place, and I am afraid."

  "Very well," I agreed. "Anyway, this doesn't seem to be a particularly good hunting ground; and after all that is all that we are looking for."

  As we turned to retrace our steps a chorus of hoarse shouts arose upon all sides of us—half human, half bestial, like the growls and roars of animals blending with the voices of men; and then, suddenly, from behind the boles of trees a score of hairy, manlike creatures sprang toward us.

  * * * * *

  Instantly I recognized them—nobargans—the same hairy, manlike creatures that had attacked the abductors of Duare, whom I had rescued from them. They were armed with crude bows and arrows and with slings from which they hurled rocks; but, as they closed upon us, it appeared that they wished to take us alive, for they launched no missiles at us.

  But I had no mind to be thus taken so easily, nor to permit Duare to fall into the hands of these savage beast-men. Raising my pistol, I loosed the deadly r-ray upon them; and as some fell others leaped behind the boles of the trees.

  "Do not let them take me," said Duare in a level voice unshaken by emotion. "When you see there is no further hope of escape, shoot me."

  The very thought of it turned me cold, but I knew that I should do it before permitting her to fall into the hands of these degraded creatures.

  A nobargan showed himself, and I dropped him with my pistol; then they commenced to hurl rocks at me from behind. I wheeled and fired, and in the same instant a rock felled me to the ground unconscious.

  When I regained consciousness I was aware first of an incredible stench, and then of something rough rubbing against my skin, and of a rhythmic jouncing of my body. These sensations were vaguely appreciable in the first dim light of returning reason. With the return of full control of my faculties they were accounted for; I was being carried across the shoulder of a powerful nobargan.

  The odor from his body was almost suffocating in its intensity, and the rough hair abrading my skin was only a trifle more annoying than the motion that his stride imparted to my body.

  I sought to push myself from his shoulder; and, realizing that I was no longer unconscious, he dropped me to the ground. All about me were the hideous faces and hairy bodies of the nobargans and permeating the air the horrid stench that emanated from them.

  They are, I am sure, the filthiest and most repulsive creatures I have ever seen. Presumably they are one of
evolution’s first steps from beast to man; but they are no improvement upon the beast. For the privilege of walking upright upon two feet, thus releasing their hands from the mean servitude of ages, and for the gift of speech they have sacrificed all that is fine and noble in the beast.

  It is true, I believe, that man descended from the beasts; and it took him countless ages to rise to the level of his progenitors. In some respects he has not succeeded yet, even at the height of his vaunted civilization.

  As I looked about, I saw Duare being dragged along by her hair by a huge nobargan. It was then that I discovered that my weapons had been taken from me. So low in the scale of intelligence are the nobargans, they cannot use the weapons of civilized man that fall into their hands, so they had simply thrown mine aside.

  But even though I was disarmed, I could not see Duare suffering this ignominy and abuse without making an effort to aid her.

  I sprang forward before the beasts at my side could prevent and hurled myself upon the creature that dared to maltreat this daughter of a jong, this incomparable creature who had aroused within my breast the first exquisite tortures of love.

  I seized him by one hairy arm and swung him around until he faced me, and then I struck him a terrific blow upon the chin that felled him. Instantly his fellows broke into loud laughter at his discomfiture; but that did not prevent them from falling upon me and subduing me, and you may be assured that their methods were none too gentle.

  As the brute that I had knocked down staggered to his feet his eyes fell upon me, and with a roar of rage he charged me. It might have fared badly with me had not another of them interfered. He was a burly creature, and when he interposed himself between me and my antagonist the latter paused.

  "Stop!" commanded my ally, and had I heard a gorilla speak I could not have been more surprised. It was my introduction to a remarkable ethnological fact: All the races of mankind on Venus (at least those that I have come in contact with) speak the same tongue. Perhaps you can explain it; I cannot. When I have questioned Amtorian savants on the matter, they were merely dumfounded by the question; they could not conceive of any other condition; therefore there had never been any occasion to explain it.