Short Fiction · Venus Enslaved (2/7)

It took a second staring study to realize that a whiplike strand of something that gleamed and tightened was snapped around Disbro’s ankle.

“Rope, Max,” snapped Planter. He made a quick hitch around a rocket-tube, and lowered himself in a rush. His free hand grasped a heavy automatic pistol. He paused in his descent just above Disbro, studying the black, shiny tether.

It protruded from the semi-glutinous mud, which stirred and quivered around the protrusion. A sense was there of rigid grasp and slowly contracting pressure. It was squeezing the captured ankle, it was shortening itself to pull Disbro down. Disbro said nothing because he had caught his breath for an effort at wrenching free. But he could not do that. His strong, lean fingers were beginning to slip on the grab iron. He turned horror-widened eyes toward Planter.

“Hang on,” muttered Planter, and aimed his pistol. No sure shot, he nevertheless was close to his target. He fired a .50 caliber slug, another and another. Two of them hit the tail, tentacle or proboscis.

At once it let go of Disbro, gesticulating wildly. Blood sprang forth on its shiny integument⁠—Venusian blood was red, mused Planter, even as Venusian herbage was green. Disbro gave a choking gurgle that might have been thanks, relief or effort. A moment later he was swarming up Planter’s rope like a monkey.

But Planter did not follow. The appendage he had wounded was drawing out of sight, like a worm into its hole; but two more just like it had fastened upon his foot and knee.

He lost his grip and fell into the mud. It was like a dip into thick gravy. The stuff lapped and closed over his head, and he let go of the pistol to try to swim. A couple of laborious strokes brought him back to the surface, gasping and blowing away thick lumps from nose and mouth. A moment later two more tentacles were groping and seizing at his shoulder and waist. Four bonds now tightened upon him, like lariats.

Planter seemed to be thinking in two compartments. One set of thoughts dictated his floundering, desperate struggle. The other considered the situation with a curiosity dispassionate and almost mild. The creature that snared him was just what he might have expected⁠—something on the octopus order. How many science fiction stories had dealt with such monsters on strange worlds? The creepy writhings of tentacles appealed to fantasy writers⁠—the neat, simple, active structure of the brute was logical to the great mechanic who devised Nature. The thing had him, in any case, if he could not kick or struggle or cut free.

Cut free! That was it. He had a knife, in the side pocket of his coveralls.

He dug for it, almost dropped it from his muddy fingers, then yanked open the biggest blade. He slashed at the nearest tentacle, the one around his waist. It parted like a cane-stalk before a machete. The other arms quivered and slackened, plainly shocked by pain. Planter rolled out of their grip, started to swim away anywhere.

He looked over his shoulder and saw his enemy as it humped itself partially into view.

Not such an octopus, after all.

The dispassionate part of Planter’s brain called the thing an animated tall tree. The slender tentacles sprouted from a thicker trunk, that could curve and writhe and wallow, but not so readily. It was of a rubbery gray-brown, and at the upper end, nested among the tentacle-roots, was what must be its mouth. That mouth opened and shut in almost wistful hunger. Planter swam furiously. He wanted to reach and climb the stern of the rocket ship, but the thing knew his wish, and moved to head him off. He kicked and fought his way toward the far mass of leaves that bordered this mud-pit.

From among those leaves glowed for an instant a sort of splinter of yellow light. A small object sang over Planter’s helmeted head like a bee, and struck behind him with a little chock. It must have found lodgment against the hall-tree thing, which paused in its pursuit to flop and spatter the mud with its tentacles. Planter blessed the diversion, whatever it was, and strove nearer to the shore.

The forest was alive, he suddenly decided. Out of its misty tangle a great leafy branch swung knowingly toward him. He clutched at it, brought away a fat, moist handful of strange-shaped leaves. His other hand made good its hold on the branch itself, and with the last of his strength he dragged himself to where roots hummocked above the mud.

Then he saw where the branch had come from. A slim, active figure stood among the stems, pressing with both hands upon the base of the branch to make it move into the open. As Planter scrambled to safety, the figure relaxed its helpful shoving, and the branch moved back toward the perpendicular.

Planter gazed in utter lost unbelief at this stranger.

It was a woman, young, fair, fine-limbed. She wore the briefest of garments, belted around with strange weapons, and her feet were shod in cross-gartered buskins. Upon her tumble of golden curls rode a metal helmet that reminded him of Grecian antiquity. Her bare arms, round but strong, cradled something with a stock and butt of a musket, but with a short, tight-strung bow at its muzzle⁠—surely the pattern of a medieval crossbow.

Her face was of a flawless pink-and-white beauty, just now stamped with utter disdain. Its short, rosy mouth opened, and formed words.

Words that Planter understood!

“You fool,” said the girl with the crossbow. “You scurvy fool.”

Disbro, barely able to stir for shock and weariness, climbed only a few hand’s breadths out of danger before he must stop and wheeze for breath. At last he could make himself heard:

“Max! You pighead, help me!”

“Uhh,” came the grunt of assent from above, as the big fellow slid down in turn. He slipped a thick arm around Disbro, hoisting the tall, slender body as if it were a bundle of old clothes, and slid it across a shoulder like the jut of a crag. Then Max scaled the rope once again, to the safe top of the nosed-over rocket ship.

Disbro found his own feet, and shakily wiped his clear-cut face, still pale from exertion and terror. “That was close.”

“Say,” ventured Max, “Mr. Planter, he’s gone.”

Disbro looked around. The mud expanse around them was stirred up as if by boiling struggles, but there was no sign of Planter or the thing with the tentacles.

“That thing got him,” decided Disbro, but Max shook his heavy head.

“Huh-uh,” he demurred. “No. The girl, she got him.”

“Girl?” echoed Disbro, and scowled.

“What girl?”

Max pointed with a finger like the haft of a hammer. “She was in the trees. Got him.”

Disbro peered at the trees, then at Max. His scowl deepened. “What are you drivelling about?”

“The girl,” said Max.

Disbro snorted and skinned his teeth in scorn.

“How,” he demanded of the misty skies, “do I get mixed up with minus quantities like this? A girl, the man says! Here on Venus!”

“A girl,” repeated Max firmly.

Disbro wheeled upon him.

“Come off of that!” he commanded sharply. “Planter’s gone. Dead. You’re all I have to associate with. You’ll act sane, whether you are or not.”

Max’s big, pained eyes faltered before the glittering accusation of Disbro’s gaze. “All right,” he conceded.

“There wasn’t any girl there, you idiot!”

Max nodded. “I saw⁠—”

“Shut up!” Disbro cut him off. “No girl, I said!”

“No girl,” repeated Max obediently.

Rain began to fall, fat drops the size of marbles.

“Back inside,” commanded Disbro. “There’ll be lots of this kind of weather. We’ll have something to eat, then study another way to reach the trees yonder.”

“No girl,” said Max. “But I saw.”

The rain that drove Disbro and Max back into their shelter filtered through layers of leafage, beginning to wash the mud from Planter’s clothing. He stared again at his rescuer.

“I seem to have understood what you said,” he managed at last.

“Isn’t so strange, that?” she flung back, in words somehow run together. “E’en though you’re mad enow to sport with yonder muck-worm,” and her wide, bright blue eyes flicked toward the danger he had lately avoided, “you’ll have the tongue of mankind. Art no man?”

“Man enough, young woman,” rejoined Planter, a little nettled. “I suppose it’s like the fantasies⁠—we can read each other’s minds, or something.”

“Something,” she echoed, as if humoring a child.

“And I owe you thanks for saving my life.”

“Oh, ’twas no great matter.” She shouldered the crossbow. “Come, for the Skygors will be about our heels.”

She picked her way rapidly among the steam, with the surest and cleverest of feet. Women on Earth were never so graceful or sure, decided Planter, hurrying after. He was aware that he did not step on the muddy surface of Venus, but upon a matted over-floor, of roots, fallen stems, ground-vines, sometimes great sturdy leaves like lily-pads grown to the size of double mattresses. “Wait, young lady,” he called, “who are the Skygors, you mentioned and why should they be after us?”

She halted again, swung and studied him with more of that disdainful curiosity. “ ’Tis a gruel-brained idiot,” she decided, as if to herself. “For that they cast him out. Methought ’twas strange that a man should flee, of himself, from sure shelter and victual.”

It was raining harder. The great roof of vegetation only partially broke that downpour. It sluiced away the coating of mud from Planter, and soaked his stout garments through. He felt miserable in the dampness, but his girl guide throve, if anything, in the drops that struck and rolled down her bare arms and shoulders.

He saw, too, that she followed something of a trail among the stalks and stems. It was barely wider than his own stalwart shoulders could pass, and wound crazily here and there; but one must stick to it, for to right and left the jungle grew thicker than a basket. He called out again.

“Miss! Young lady!”

She turned, as before. “What now?”

“This path⁠—what is it? Did you make it? Tell me things.” He made a gesture of appeal, for she was putting on that look of contempt once more. “You see, I’m no more than an hour old on this planet⁠—”

“Od so! Your brain is younger than that. Leave me, I have no time for idiots.”

Abruptly she stiffened, widened her eyes, lifted a finger to her red lips for silence. The two of them stood close together in the misty rain, their ears sharpened. Planter heard what she had heard⁠—a rustling, crunching approach, along some other angle of the jungle path.

The girl wrenched apart two sappy lengths of vine, and with a jerk of her head bade Planter slip through into the great thicket. He did so, and she followed. Turning, her lithe body close against his, she brought her crossbow to the ready.

“Danger?” whispered Planter, and she nodded bleakly.

The approach was coming near. Planter judged that whatever threatened them was two-legged, weighty, and great-lunged⁠—many yards off, it wheezed like a faulty engine. His companion’s ears were better than his, or more experienced. She gauged the nearness of the stranger, and the crossbow went to her shoulder like a rifle. Planter saw that it operated on a spring trigger that would trip a latch and release the string. The bow, violently recovering from its bending, would force the missile along a groove in the top of the stock. All parts⁠—stock, bow, and string⁠—were of some massive dark metal, apparently treated with grease to save it from the constant dampness. The missile itself was not an arrow, but seemed the size and shape of a silvery fountain pen. Planter burned to ask questions about it; but the enemy was in sight by now, something of mottled green and black that shouldered upright along the way between the thickets.

Planter felt his companion’s body grow tense against his shoulder. Her finger touched the trigger lightly. The metal string twanged, and with a waspy hum the missile leaped toward its target. At the same time, a little burst of flame showed from it, bright yellow. Chock! the shot went home, as that other shot against the thing called a muck-worm.

Down floundered the green-spotted form. At once the girl was out of hiding, and stooping above her quarry.

Planter, following, peered with wonder and caution. He saw a body larger than himself, and grotesquely of the same build. A dumpy torso on massive back-bent legs like a cricket’s; wide flapper feet, a round, low head with a monstrous slash of mouth, big eyes now filming with death, no nose at all⁠—the creature was very like a nightmare frog. But this frog wore garments, of linked and plaited metal wire and rubbery-looking fabric. It had a silver belt, with pouches and holsters. These pouches and holsters the girl was now plundering.

“Quick,” she snapped at Planter over her rosy shoulder. “Take the spoil. He will have friends, and they must not find us.”

Her tone was still reminiscent of Disbro speaking to Max. Planter’s ravenous curiosity was at last completely overridden. “Young lady,” he said flatly. “I’m not prepared to endure any more⁠—”

She suddenly screamed, not like a warrior but like any girl who is mortally frightened.

Planter had the time to realize that she saw something just beyond him. He pivoted and set himself as another of the froggy beings charged.

“More Skygors!” he heard a cry behind him, and he knew that it was Skygors he faced.

Planter was a boxer of sorts, strong if not brilliant, and his unthinking reflex was to plant his feet, bend his knees, and crouch for attack or defense. That reflex shortened his height by several inches, and saved his life. The Skygors that rushed him had pointed a pistol-form weapon, from which came yellow flame as from the crossbow. A silvery object meant to scatter his brains only sang above his head with millimeters to spare. Before the pistol-like weapon could aim and spit again, Planter had charged in.

It was all he could do, but it was enough. He jabbed viciously with his left fist, followed with his right to the abdomen. The left knuckles slashed soft flesh about the wide mouth, his right hand almost broke on a hard belt-buckle. Both blows were staggering to the wheezing adversary, who dropped its pistol and yelled with a voice like a steam whistle. It made words, each of them almost deafening to Planter. To silence it more than anything else, Planter drove in closer still and lifted an uppercut as though it were a shovelful of gravel.

It found the point where a Terrestrial man would have a chin. Down floundered the clumsy body, and Planter, with no thought of referees or rules, set his heavy boot on the face and bashed it in. He stepped across the subsiding form, in time to encounter another.

This one got great flappy hands upon him. Their grip was knowing, powerful, wicked. The Skygor plucked him close, its mouth grinned into a gape. It had teeth, it was going to bite.

He was held by the shoulders, and doubted if he could break away. Instead of trying, he put his own hands to the thing’s elbows, drew his right knee tight to his chest and planted a toe in a metal-clad midriff. Then, even as the open paw sought to seize his face, he threw himself backward. Landing flat on his shoulder blades, he drew down with his hands and hoisted with his feet.

His opponent somersaulted in air, and fell with a heavy squashing thump upon the root-tangled floor of the trail. In a flash, Planter was up. He jumped with both feet. Bones broke under the impact. A second Skygor was down⁠—dead or dying⁠—

“Aside!” the girl was calling, and he obeyed, flattening against a cross-weaving of vine stems. She was risen upon one knee, crossbow to shoulder. It twanged, flashed, and once again its successful charge sounded its chock. Planter glanced down the trail in time to see a fourth and last Skygor drop down.