by William Tenn
They were Hallock, Ransom remembered now. Ten thousand infernally grotesque caricatures—all the faces of the Brood Mother—were Wells W. Hallock's own face. And in that last moment, as he stepped into the creature, Hallock must have known it!
They came to rest in the midst of dazzling whiteness. They shut their eyes against the glare, opened them cautiously again. The glare subsided. Objects appeared indistinctly, became clearer, resolved into the sharp outlines of reality.
Then—no more obscene shapings, no more distorted vision. They were back in the hospital room, all of them, Ransom and Nila still shuddering with excitement. Dr. Pertinnet was unbuttoning the restraining blanket. He placed it carefully around the gory, broken mess on the bed.
"I—I'll get some sedatives for all of us," he said at last. Risbummer followed him through the door.
"Dr. Pertinnet and his sedatives!" Nila cried hysterically.
Ransom crossed to the table and lifted the small ivory chest. "This may not be in the best interests of scientific investigation, Nila, but I think we should destroy what's left of this stuff."
She grabbed the chest from him. "We certainly should," she agreed. "I'll dump it into the hospital incinerator. I'm through with dates for the rest of my life. But—of course—I'll settle for rice."
"A deal." He grinned at her. "If anyone should ask, a character by the name of Ransom Morrow has now had enough adventure to last clear through his grandchildren!"
She walked unsteadily through the door. A moment later Ransom heard the incinerator door open. He lit a cigarette and smiled at the cat. It was lucky not to have a human memory.
Then he stopped smiling. Because the cat had something round and black in its teeth. And it wasn't a mouse.
RICARDO'S VIRUS
Graff Dingle stolidly watched yellow mold form around the stiletto hole in his arm. He smelled the first faint jasmine odor of the disease and glanced up to where the sun glowed unhappily behind a mass of dirty clouds and wind-driven rain.
Dingle kicked morosely at the Heatwave thug left behind to ambush him, and the charred body turned soughingly in the mud. "Be seeing you, bully-boy, in about five and a half hours. Your electroblast may have missed me, but it cooked my antiseptic pouch into soup. It made that last knife-thrust really rate."
There was a dumb dryhorn blunder, Graff reflected, sneering at himself out of a face that was dark from life-long exposure to a huge sun. Bending over an enemy before making certain he was burned to a crisp.
But he'd had to search the man's clothing for a clue to the disappearance of Greta and Dr. Bergenson and—even above Greta—the unspeakably precious cargo of lobodin they'd been flying in from Earth.
So I'll pay for my hurry, he thought. Like you always do in the Venusian jungle.
Ricardo's Virus was viciously prompt: six hours after its light, saffron globules had formed in an open wound, you were dead. And no frantic surgery, no pathetic attempts at drainage, could save you. Graff should know. His parents, his brothers and sisters had been a small fraction of the New Kalamazoo death totals due to cuts and scratches observed too late for antisepsis. The virus had accounted for most of three generations of Venusian colonists, including Vilfredo Ricardo himself, the first man to set hesitant foot on the swampy planet. Ricardo had merely skinned his hand on his new flagpole.
Nasty to die of the filthy mold before he knew what had happened to the Bergensons. Not that he had a personal interest in the matter any more, for Greta wouldn't be marrying a corpse when she could pick any one of a hundred extremely live and woman-hungry pioneers. But her father was the only doctor in the tiny settlement. And the loss of the lobodin meant Ricardo's Virus would tuck many more New Kalamazoo colonists into seepy graves before the year was out.
A speck grew large in the sky. Graff involuntarily moved into the shade of a giant rosebush as his oversharp instincts asserted themselves.
Yes, it was a terry all right. Friendly?
The pterodactyl landed lightly on a frond of the opposite fern. Its absurd, leathery forehead wrinkled at him. Graff noted that it was barely out of range of his electroblast. Intelligent, sure enough, and an unusually fearless specimen to perch this close to man.
At any other time, he would have been intrigued by the opportunity of making friends with one of the intelligent winged reptiles who had learned to speak man's languages and, with good reason, shun his works. Now, he had other things on his mind.
Like dying painfully in a few hours.
Graff looked up sharply as enormous bat-like wings ceased their rustle.
The lizard-bird's long, sloping forehead wrinkled even further. Its beak opened and closed several times. It cleared its throat.
"City?"
Then it was civilized, too. What had induced it to leave its communal eyrie in the San Mountains? The terries had avoided men for over fifty years. Many was the time that Graff, intent on stalking meat for the colonists, had been startled by a flock of pterodactyls winging overhead and shouting curses down at him in the three languages of the early settlers.
"City?" the question was repeated more insistently. "Heatwave or New Kalamazoo?"
"New Kalamazoo."
A relieved nod of the triangular head. "This I thought. You wish knowledge which Heatwave man has man and girl from shif?"
Graff's whole body tensed. "Yes! Do you know?"
Another nod. "This I know. Name is Fuvina."
"Fuvina?" The hunter repeated it with a frown. He knew the names of most of Heatwave's big shots; some were political criminals, escaped from Earth. Others were former residents of his own town who had left in search of an easier living than the continual struggle with marshy soil and carnivorous jungle.
But he couldn't recall any Fuvina. Possibly a new arrival; possibly one of the smaller fry who had recently killed and looted his way to the top of bloody Heatwave society. Fuvina? Fuv—
Of course! The not-quite-flexible pterodactyl beak was incapable of labial sounds like p and b, and transformed them into the labiodentals f and v. Pubina! Max Pubina had left New Kalamazoo in a hurry three years ago after cutting some farmer's throat in a boundary dispute and, by combining organized raids on isolated families with the smuggling of the illicit Venusian dunging drug to Earth, had become a power of sorts.
"You mean Pubina?"
"This I said. Fuvina. He and other Heatwave men took man and girl from shif and placed them in own shif. Also took vig green vottle. Left one Heatwave man hidden here. Then flew that way in own shif." A fantastically large and fleshy wing gestured south. "Them I follow. Where Heatwave men stof, I see. Then I come vack."
The terry drew an immense swallow of air to compensate for his long speech and shook himself. The great fern trembled in sympathy.
Graff stepped forward from the rosebush and inspected his informant closely. "Thanks. But I don't see why you're interested."
The toothed beak, which was half as long as a man, opened uncertainly. "Vecause," the lizard-bird explained in a low voice, "Heatwave men have caftured my mate vefore attacking New Kalamazoo sky-shif. In cage they fut her for shivment to Earth. This I can do nothing about fy myself. Vut them I follow, hofing to find way to rescue her."
"And you figure that if you help me find my friends, I'll help you save your mate from the sideshows on Earth? Well, I will, if—"
A big, complex if with as many tendrils as sucking ivy. If he lived long enough, and, if he did, if he would be sane enough—considering the agonizing last hour of Ricardo's Virus infection—to do anything constructive once he arrived at Pubina's jungle hideout. If a man, guided by a pterodactyl flying overhead, could pick his way on foot through a completely unexplored section of swamp and have enough juice left in him when he emerged to take the prize of the century away from the toughest collection of cutthroats on an extremely tough planet.
He clenched his fist as the cramps began in his left hand—the cramps that would spread slowly throughout his body until they ended in fat
al convulsions some five hours from now. If a one-armed man could do all this, and do it with just one portable electroblast...
He cursed sharply, suddenly, as he realized he'd been holding the electroblast in his hand ever since he'd given the Heatwave thug that finishing jolt. That was after he'd been stabbed, after the man's first wild blast had burned Graff's antiseptic pouch into a mess of fused glass vials and blackened fabric. Without immediate application of the ten different antiseptic solutions.
But now! He inspected the bright metal of the coils anxiously. Might still do. Just might. He holstered the blaster with infinite tenderness and stooped over the blackened body that had almost disappeared into the mud. The man's electric gun was far too wet to be of any use, but Graff fumbled around in the soggy soil until he located the stiletto.
He straightened and grinned at the long blade, its steel already reddening from the pervasive rust of Venus.
"Where is the ship?" he asked. "The ship my friends were in?"
The terry nodded at a flat and soggy expanse. "Under there. Heatwave sky-shif wait here high uf. When New Kalamazoo shif come, Heatwave shif fly down fast ufon it. New Kalamazoo shif hit mud hard. This I see. Then Heatwave men take your friends away and New Kalamazoo shif sink in mud. Altogether are four Heatwave men, vesides Fuvina. You kill one, so now are only three, vesides Fuvina." The flying reptile breathed heavily again. Its scaly claws moved restlessly about on the branch.
Call that a break, Graff decided. Four men to handle. Might have been twenty. Either Pubina had a smaller gang than had been believed, or he was playing the whole thing really smart. Toughs, especially Venusian ones, would really chop each other to merry hell over the first laboratory sample of a vaccine that promised immunity from Ricardo's Virus. A break to balance the loss of the ship.
Or was it? All he had was the terry's word. Could be that the entire yarn about his mate being captured for export to the terran amusement parks was nothing more than a story made up by Pubina to play on a colonist's sympathy. The terry might be working for Pubina some way or other. Who knew anything about pterodactyls? Who knew if they experienced anything like love or loyalty?
Graff stared at the unwinking reptilian eyes, at the tapering ugly beak, both completely devoid of expression. Add another if.
"All right, MacDuff," he said at last, "lead on."
"We go in vig curve," the terry told him, flapping its wings monstrously in preparation for flight. "Eight, nine hours for you. Other way take half time, vut—"
"Vut nothing!" Graff broke in. He massaged his left forearm, which had begun aching in sympathy with the hand. "Let's use the shortcut."
"It too hard for you, too dangerous! River cuts across—"
"So I'll get my feet wet. I'm not in a position to be worried by pneumonia. Let's head for the straight and narrow, MacDuff. I'm in a hurry."
—|—
The creature cocked its head to one side, dropped its wings in a gesture like a shrug, and moved off the fern in a soaring glide southward. When it was about three hundred feet up, it circled back to make certain that Graff was following.
Now if you ever go to Venus, the Polar Continent is probably where you'll live for the duration of your stay. Not only is its temperature and annual rainfall the lowest on the planet (which makes it just a shade more uncomfortable than the Amazonian jungle), but also it is the most heavily populated stretch of land—averaging close to one person every thirty square miles.
But if you find yourself on the Polar Continent, you will be advised, and well-advised, to stay away from the Southern Peninsula. This is not merely because it is a dank and deadly swamp, but chiefly because of the Black River, which winds through the peninsula, doubling back on itself, crossing through itself and becoming a tributary of itself a dozen times over, like a living surrealist corkscrew.
The Black River rises somewhere in the unscalable peaks of the San Mountains and comes roaring into the flatlands with a tremendous velocity. Just before reaching the peninsula, however, it is joined by the Zetzot River, and the two of them make a combination that is really in a hurry. Even if there were no rain at all (which is definitely not the case!), there would be a perpetual mist over the Southern Peninsula. And by the time the Black gets through doubling back on itself, giving itself a shove, so to speak—well, the reason no one knows exactly where the river empties into the Jefferson Sea is because the entire area is completely obscured by an opaque steaming fog which boils about for miles on either side.
Nor is that all. Certain animals like to wallow in the swamp created by the Black. And most of them are very large. Creatures which can survive in the swamp of the Southern Peninsula are quite tough, quite dangerous, and most uniquely suited to their environment. There are snakes and insects and carnivorous plants galore, not to mention the huge creatures who live in quicksand and have yet to be classified. One of the smallest animals of the peninsula is a dark little fish which swims back and forth in the Black itself. Venusian colonists have christened it the sardine, possibly because it is the size of a terrestrial sardine. Its habits, however, resemble those of the South American piranha. It travels in large schools and eats its way through anything.
All in all, the Southern Peninsular Swamp is an ideal home for a baron of crime who wants to get away from it all. The all doesn't include law, of course. On Venus, each man writes his own code of laws with the weapon he finds handiest.
The trouble was, Graff Dingle reflected as he found a ford and leaped across the screaming waters to the opposite bank, the trouble was that his folks and people like them had come to Venus to get away from lawlessness of the international kind, only to hit the inevitable individual lawlessness of a frontier.
Ordinarily, a frontier is slowly and surely transformed from rowdy wide-openness into suburban quietude by the increase in population—but population doesn't increase in really dangerous spots; that's why the people of New Kalamazoo worked so hard and so long to make their settlement large enough to merit the establishment of a university. A university would mean laboratories and research facilities to investigate Ricardo's Virus and all the lesser plagues peculiar to Venus, the plagues which took more lives yearly than jungle monsters and murderous Heatwavers combined; and a university would mean an increase in population, and law and order.
But Earth hadn't been interested. The study of Venusian diseases was an exotic subject hardly touched upon in Terran medical schools. Earth had been far too busy manufacturing artificial diseases to supplement atom bombs and hydrogen bombs.
Earth had, however, investigated the Venusian plagues with a view to their use in biological warfare. And out of the investigation, as an accident, as a byproduct, had come lobodin. A vaccine, not a serum. No good for Graff right now, for he was almost two full hours into the yellow death.
He worked his left arm around slowly, wincing with each turn, his eyes on the terry above him circling southward in the damp murky sky. At the same time, he tried to plant the broad soles of his boots on mud that wasn't quicksand, on rotten twigs that wouldn't crack too loudly. He knew his blood was now completely infiltrated with the obscene little yellow specks.
Pubina was probably trying to force Dr. Bergenson to inject the vaccine into him, ridiculing the old man's protests that all the bottle held was a starter culture, just enough so that with weeks of careful tending they might have sufficient vaccine to immunize the children.
It had been so expensive and difficult for the little colony to send Dr. Bergenson and Greta to Earth, where his reputation and connections had enabled him to wheedle a spoonful of the precious stuff out of a government laboratory! Pubina hadn't been able to get it, for all of his bribes and underworld contacts. But the bribes and underworld contacts had served another purpose: Pubina had discovered when the Bergensons were due to return—and that was all he really needed.
Graff noticed abruptly that the terry was falling rapidly back at him. Could he be trying to warn—
A shriek
gave him the answer. Less than a quarter-mile away, a brontosaurus squatted its tremendous bulk in a shallow pool and regarded him from the end of an undulating snake-like neck. The animal screamed again, and Graff froze.
He watched the incredibly heavy reptile scramble to its feet and desperately tried to think. It wasn't a brontosaurus charge you had to be afraid of, but what usually traveled in its wake. A brontosaurus was herbivorous and, for all its size, extremely timid. It was ridiculous, possibly, but the mountain of living flesh was probably screaming in terror at the sight of him. You only had to control yourself and think while the great beast charged.
Because a brontosaurus meets danger by running into it. It is so massive that it is virtually unstoppable once in motion. You can blast its stupid little head off and it will keep running for another twenty minutes, powered by the bundle of nerve cells just under the spine. You just have to stand still and remember that it is much more frightened than you and is trying to trample you to death before you can bite it.
Graff stood his ground, bending his knees slowly, until the behemoth was only twenty-five feet away. Then he straightened suddenly and leaped off to the right, then again, further, and again, still further to the right.
—|—
Screaming insanely, the tons upon tons of flesh roared past, absolutely unable to halt itself. Its momentum carried it up a small hill, and Graff could hear it bellowing down the other side. It wouldn't return.
But something else was on its way. There's always a meat-eater in the wake of a brontosaurus. Sometimes there are several. The kind of carnivore was very important to Graff right now. He had an electroblast which he wasn't certain would work in an emergency and whose diminished power he'd certainly need later. And he had a stiletto.
He heard the beast thumping its way through the luxuriant weeds of the swamp. A moment later it had broken into the clear, had seen him, and was loping toward him easily with all the confidence of a powerful creature which sees an easy meal in sight.