Short Fiction · Venus Enslaved (5/7)

“There’s what I’m driving at!” Planter broke in, forgetting Glanfil’s council to be cautious. “They not only enslaved you, they took your ideas and improved themselves. I’ll wager they were savages to begin with! And you’re actually grateful for the chance to crawl at their big, webbed feet!”

“This world belongs to the Skygors,” spoke up one of the women as she washed dishes. “Without them we would be shelterless and foodless, like the weaklings they drove forth.”

Planter refrained to tell what he knew of the crossbow-girls. Plainly he was up against an attitude of content from which it would be hard to free his new companions⁠—harder than to free them from guards and prison walls.

He slept that night in a hammock-like bed, and next day worked at the machine. His toil was long, but not sapping, and food was good. Once a Skygor came to take his clothing, shoes and possessions, giving him a sleeveless shirt and shorts instead. Otherwise he was not bothered by the masters of the city. For days⁠—perhaps ten⁠—he followed this routine, masking his feeling of revolt.

Then came a Skygor messenger to lead him away along underwater corridors to someone who had sent. At the end of the journey he entered an office. There sat the person he least expected to see.

Disbro.

“You rat,” Planter began, but Disbro waved the insult aside.

“Don’t be a bigger ape than usual,” he sniffed. “I’ve been able to do you a favor.”

“You didn’t do me much of a one when I was captured,” reminded Planter.

“How could I?” argued Disbro, in the charming fashion he could sometimes achieve. “I was only on probation. If I’d tried to help you then, we’d both be dead, instead of both on top of this Turkish Bath world. Sit down.” They took stools on opposite sides of a heavy, wooden table. “Planter, how would you like to help me run Venus?”

“You’re going to get away from these Skygors?”

Again Disbro waved the words away. “Why should I? I’ll run them, too. Look, we landed safely, didn’t we? Observations on Earth will show that, won’t they?”

“Right,” agreed Planter, mystified. “There’ll be more ships coming, to look for us and maybe set up a colony.”

“That’s it. We’ll ambush those ships.”

“Ambush?” repeated Planter sharply. “Losing your mind, Disbro?”

“No. I’m only thinking for all of us. Ships will come, I say. Loaded with supplies, valuables all sorts of things. We can overwhelm them as they land. Some of their crews will join us⁠—the others can be rubbed out. And the law can’t touch us, Planter! Not for a minute!”

“What are you driving at?” Planter demanded.

“I’m the law,” said Disbro, tapping his chest. “Just now I string with the Skygors. Later I may knock ’em off. But anyway, I’m the commander of the first expedition to land on Venus. I have a right to take possession, in my own name.” He got up, his voice rising clear and proud. “Possession, like Columbus! Not of a continent⁠—of a whole world!”

Planter, leaning forward on his stool, clutched the edge of the table so strongly that his knuckles whitened.

“And what,” he asked slowly and quietly, “do you want me to do?”

“I’m coming to that,” said Disbro, smiling with superior craftiness. “You’re going to help me solidify these loud-mouthed Skygors.”

“They hold me for a slave,” reminded Planter harshly, for he did not like the life as well as Glanfil and the others who toiled among the clockwork. But Disbro brushed the complaint aside.

“That’s because they don’t know what I know. Your lady friends, I mean.”

Planter glanced up sharply. Disbro chuckled.

“I talk a lot with these Skygors. Not bad fellows, if you muffle your ears. Anyway, they tell me about a herd of wild girls that bushwacks them constantly, and which they hope I’ll find and destroy. Lately some of those girls have been scouting around, yelling for something. The Skygors haven’t the best of English, and don’t know what the words mean. But I do. Those girls are calling your name. David Planter.”

Mara had come back for him, then. She braved the terrors of the Skygor fortress, trying to get him back. Planter felt warmth around his heart. He faced Disbro and shook his head.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said. “You must be getting drunk with your Skygor friends.”

“They don’t have any kind of liquor, only some sort of sniff-powder I wouldn’t touch. And you’re a cheerful liar, Planter. You know all about those girls, and you’re probably good friends with them. Don’t be a fool, I’m offering you a slice of my empire!”

“Empire!” echoed Planter, honestly scornful. “You really think you’ll go through with this idea of grabbing Venus for yourself?”

“I know all the angles. Back on Earth I was boss of quite an organization.”

“And ended up in jail, buying your way out by gambling your life on this voyage!” Planter rushed those words into speech, but made them clear, biting and passionate. “You’re a case for brain doctors, not jail wardens. I don’t know why I listen to you.”

“I know why,” hurled back Disbro. “Because I’m already quite a pet among these Skygors. I can kill you or save you. Meanwhile, we’re changing the subject. I want you to lead me to these wild girls, and after we’re solid with them, a bunch of Skygors will come⁠—”

“Nothing doing!”

“In other words, you now admit that there is such a group! And you’ll take orders, Planter. I’m still chief of the expedition.”

Planter shook his head. “I can give you arguments on that. You’ve betrayed the trust of the Foundation back home. That lets you out. You don’t have authority over me.”

He rose abruptly. “Send me back to the basement, Disbro.”

Disbro, too, jumped up. He held something in his hand. It was a gun, not a Skygor curiosity but a Terrestrial-made automatic.

“You don’t get off that easy, Planter. I need you badly. And you need your insides badly. Knuckle down, before I blow them out!”

Planter smiled, broadly and rather sunnily. Suddenly he lifted a toe. He kicked over the table against and upon Disbro. Down went the elegant, lean figure, and a bullet sang over Planter’s head as he dived in to grapple and fight.

Disbro, the lighter of the two, was wondrously agile. Almost before he struck the concrete floor, he was wriggling clear of the table. Planter’s weight threw him flat again, but he struck savage, choppy blows with the pistol he still held. Half-dazed, Planter could not get a tight grip, and Disbro got away and up. Planter, shaking the mist from his battered head, staggered after him, caught his weapon wrist and wrung the gun away. It clanged down at their feet.

“All right, Planter, if you want it that way,” muttered Disbro savagely, and took a long stride backward. He got time to fall on guard like the accomplished boxer he was.

Planter sprang after him. Disbro met him with a neat left jab, followed it with a hook that bobbed Planter’s head back, and easily slid away from a powerful but clumsy return. When Planter faced him again, he stood out of danger, smiling and lifting a little on his toes.

“How do you like it?” he laughed. “Didn’t know I was a fancy Dan, eh?”

Planter charged again. Disbro slipped right and left tries at his jaw, returned a smart peg to Planter’s belly, and then let the bigger man blunder past and fetch up against a wall. Planter was forced to lean there a nauseous moment, and Disbro hooked him hard under the ear. A moment later, Planter was crouching and backing away, sheltering his bruised head with crossed arms. He heard Disbro laugh again. “This is fun,” pronounced Disbro. “I’ve been taught by professionals, Planter. Good ones, not washouts like poor Max.”

Planter clinched at last, but Disbro’s wiry body spun loose. The two faced each other, and Planter felt some of his strength and wit come back.

He realized that he was being beaten. He must change tactics. He remembered what he could of fist-science, and abruptly crouched. Again he advanced, but not in a rush. Inch by inch he shuffled in, head sunk between his shoulders, hands lifted to strike or defend.

“You look like a turtle,” mocked Disbro, and tried with a left. It glanced off of Planter’s forehead, and Planter sidled to his left, away from Disbro’s more dangerous right. Bobbing and weaving lower still, he baffled more efforts to sting him. A moment later, Disbro was backing, and Planter had him in a corner, close in.

He struck, not for Disbro’s adroit head, but for his body. His left found the pit of the stomach, just within the apex of the shallow, inverted V where ribs slope down from breastbone. Disbro grunted in pain, and Planter put all his shoulders behind a short, heavy peg under the heart. Again to the belly, twice⁠—thrice⁠—he felt Disbro sag. A hook glanced from Planter’s jowl, but it was weak and shaky. Disbro managed to slip out of the corner, but Planter was now the stronger and surer. Across the room he followed his enemy, playing ever for the body⁠—kidneys, abdomen, heart. Disbro was hanging on, his breath came in choking grunts. Planter struggled loose, and sank one clean, hard right uppercut.

Disbro spun off of his feet, fell across the overturned table, and lay moaning and gasping.

“Had enough?” Planter challenged.

Disbro was crawling on the floor, trying to grab the pistol. Planter sprang in, stamped on Disbro’s knuckles. Disbro had only the strength and breath for one scream, and collapsed.

Abruptly Skygors entered, Skygors with hard eyes and leveled weapons. “What,” demanded one, “is this?”

Disbro, helped to his shaky feet, pointed to Planter. “He⁠—he⁠—refused,” he managed to wheeze out.

Disbro nodded, and Planter felt a sudden rush of joy. They would drive him forth, as they used to drive forth unprofitable female slaves. And he would find the Nest again, and Mara.

He was being herded along a passage, upstairs. The Skygors who guarded him kept their weapons close against his ribs. “No escape,” they promised him balefully.

He wondered at that, but only a little. Now they had brought him out upon an open, railed bridge between two buildings. Below was water, above the thick Venusian mist. “Jump,” a Skygor bade him.

“I need no second chance,” Planter replied, breezily, and dived in.

He still wore the scanty costume of a slave, and it allowed him to strike out easily for the edge of the pool. Behind him the Skygors were discussing him, but in their own guttural tongue which he could not understand. As he swam, he studied the city beneath the water.

He meant to come back and assail that city some time, and there must be worthwhile secrets to note. For instance, he was now aware that this pool was artificial⁠—he made out the sluices and gates of a large dam. To one side was a spacious submarine chamber that must be the clockwork-jammed cellar where his erstwhile companions, the slaves, worked.

But something else was under water, something that moved darkly, but had arms and legs, though it was as vast as an elephant. It was approaching him swiftly, knowingly.

Now he knew why he had been told, with such a voice of doom, to jump into the water.

Planter’s blood was still up because of that brisk battle with Disbro. He was young, strong, in gilt-edge condition. His new impulse was to keep on fighting, against the thing which had the size, the intention, and apparently the appetite, to engulf him.

The huge swimmer was a Skygor, of tremendous size. Logic in the back of Planter’s head bade him not to be amazed; on this damp, fecund world, monsters of such sort were not too unthinkable. As it broke surface, he heard a hubbub like many steam sirens. The smaller Skygors, on housetops and bridges, were all chanting some sort of ear-bursting litany, waving their flippers in unison. Plainly they worshiped this giant of their race. He, Planter, was a gift⁠—a sacrifice.

He swam speedily, but his pursuer was speedier still. With ponderous overhand strokes it overhauled him. An arm as long as his body, with a flipper-hand like a tremendous scoop shovel, extended to clutch at him. A mouth like an open trunk gaped, large enough to gulp him bodily.

Only one thing to do. He did it⁠—dived at once, turning under water and darting below and in an opposite direction from the great swimmer. By pure, happy chance, his kicking feet struck the soft cushion of its mighty belly, and he heard the thrumming gasp of the wind he knocked out of it. Coming up beyond, he swam desperately toward a nearby building. If he could climb up, away, from this huge, hungry being.

“No, not here!” That was a Skygor, poking its ugly smirking face from a window-hole. He tried to seize the sill to draw himself out of the water, and it lifted a dagger to slash at his knuckles.

But then it gasped, wriggled. The paw opened, the knife fell. Planter managed to catch it as it struck the water. A moment later he saw what had happened⁠—big human hands were fastened on the slimy throat from behind. The Skygor, struggling, was pulled back out of sight. In its place showed the flat, simple features of Max.

“Huhh!” gurgled Max. “You in trouble, Mr. Planter?”

He put out a hand to help. At the same moment a monstrous flipper struck at Planter, driving him deep under water.

He filled his lungs with air at the last moment, spun and tried to kick away. His enemy had its hooked claws in his clothing and was drawing him toward the dark cavern of its mouth. Planter struck with the knife he had snatched, and buried the blade in the slimy-green lower lip of the creature. It let go, and a cloud of blood⁠—red as the blood of Earth’s creatures⁠—suddenly obscured the water, so that Planter could attempt another escape.

He reached the top once again. The giant held itself half out of the water, big and grotesque as some barbaric sculpture, one webbed hand held against its wounded mouth. As Planter came into view, its big, bitter eyes caught sight of him. Dropping its hand, it howled at him. All the Skygors at their watch-points echoed that howl and began to repeat their uncouth litany once again. The monster pursued as before.

But from his watch-window, Max threw his burly pugilist’s body.

Coarsely built Max might have been. Stupid he undoubtedly was. Cowardly and clumsy he was not. As he flung himself into space, he shifted so that his feet were down. He drove them hard between the shoulders of the huge Skygor demon, and the impact of his flying weight drove it under water.

“Get out of here!” yelled Max at Planter. “Get out!”

He had time for no more, for he, too, submerged. Planter clasped his knife in his teeth, and turned in the water. He could not desert that plucky rescuer.

Righting itself, the big Skygor grimaced under the troubled, gory surface. It was having trouble⁠—more trouble than ever before in its freakish, idle, overstuffed life as deity and champion of the community. Two alien dwarfs, of a species it had looked on hitherto as only enticing meat, were viciously attacking and wounding it. Hunger was overlaid by a stern lust for vengeance.

It spied one of the enemy very close, swimming away. Max was not as much at home in the water as Planter, and he could not dodge its grasping talons. Treading water, the thing hoisted him clear, as a child might lift a kitten. Its other paw struck him, with openwebbed palm, hard as a mule’s kick.

Max went limp. Once again that awful mouth opened to its full extent.

“No, you don’t!” cried Planter, battling his way close. For a second time he drove with the knife, sheathing it to the hilt in a slate-colored chest, close to one armpit.

A fountain of blood sprang forth, drenching his face and weapon hand. He dragged strongly downward, felt his weapon point grating on bone, then coming free. That was a terrible wound, but not a disabling one. In a frenzy of pain and rage, the Skygor giant threw Max far away into the water, and whirled to look for its other tormentor.