Chapter I: Front Matter

DERELICTS of URANUS

By J. HARVEY HAGGARD

_Here is Adventure and Danger.
Mud-fishers, and a girl,--and a
quasi-human looking for trouble._

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Comet May 41.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

Lonny Higgens, once of the earthly planet, stretched out in the conning-tower of his mud-submarine, an aquatic monstrosity of globular reinforced steel that was at home either above or below the surface of the squirming mud seas of Uranus, and sighed lazily.

"Blast it!" he moaned sleepily and almost regretfully. "There's something about this planet that makes you have spring fever the year round, and it gets worse and worse! Lonny Higgens, you're a lazy, nogood fool!--and you'll never get around to the things you used to dream about."

The circular hatch was open over his head, showing a patch of black swirling mists through which dark midges maneuvered in tiny swarms. Just as he was dozing comfortably, forgetful of the humming insects on the outside and the occasional flopping sounds made by things that squirmed in the muddy ocean, something dropped from the mist, falling plunk on his forehead. He jerked sidewise, just as another pellet of balled mud struck him on the end of his nose. He glimpsed a tiny visage, half insect and quasi-human, peering over the hatch rim for an instant.

"Baron Munchy!" exclaimed Lonny irritably, recognizing this curious specimen of Uranusian life. "Cut that out, or I'll wring your little neck. I haven't got time for any of your monkey-shines."

A winged thing soared down from the mists, landing on the chair beside his couch, and "Baron Munchy", like a dragon-fly come to mysterious humanlike life, folded his transparent wings back like a cloak and paced back and forth.

"Me mad! Me plent' mad," rasped Baron Munchy, who produced his tones by a vibration of his wings.

"Ah, beat it," snorted Lonny, turning his head away. The small being had brought with him the dank, stagnant aroma of the outer swamps, and that reminded him of untended netlines hanging in the mud. He was bored with Baron Munchy and his endless lying and conniving. When he had first come to Uranus, two years before, the little rascal had showed up on the landing deck, more dead than alive from a terrific beating at the hands of several of his fellows. Baron Munchy was a born fighter. He survived under the ministrations of the lonely terrestrial and had become attached to the mud-submarine. But he dearly loved to stir up trouble, and nothing pleased the little demon more than to shout insults at mud-monkeys until they fought among themselves. "Go way. I'm tired of listening to your silly chatter."

"Me mad as heck!" cried Baron Munchy, sitting down on the edge of the chair like a tiny mannikin and doubling his tiny fists beneath his chitinous chin. "That man say the Boss no good. He say the Boss one big blonde devil. He say--"

"Shut up," protested Lonny. "Raeburn's all right. He's just a mud-fisher like me, and has got to get along. It's natural that he doesn't like a rival, and I'm not a bit riled by your chatter."

He was presently snoring and Baron Munchy looked across the space through squinting, calculating eyes. For a moment the mischievous glitter in his faceted eyes became dulled, and then he soared across the bed and sat astride Lonny's neck, using the adam's apple for a saddle. Lonny roused with a start and gulped. The small insectlike visage was thrust grimly down to the end of his nose, and a tiny finger was raised emphatically.

"He say he knock the holy feather from you, Boss," he chirped grimly. "He say you fish for pearls in mud that belong him. He say that girl make him one fine cook, and--"

"Huh!" demanded Lonny Higgens. "What girl! Oh, he probably means Lana. Blast it, Munchy, can't you let a guy sleep? If she wants to fall for a flat tire like Raeburn, it's no business of mine."

Grunting reluctantly, Lonny got up and stretched, cursing in a fervent undertone, at which Baron Munchy looked hopeful.

"Good Lord, Munchy," he growled. "Why I ever put up with you and your stirring up trouble is more than I know." Yet he knew that the little creature's chatter had helped to break the deadly monotony of the long winter hours in which he had managed to teach pidgin English to the Uranusian.

He climbed up the ladder, through the hatch, just as a rocking movement was apparent in the hull of the mud-submarine. Down past the oblong landing he saw great circular movements in the mud, where his nets had been a few moments before. Tiny midges were falling into the mud and being drawn into the gyrating vortices.

Now thoroughly awake, he leaped down and across the landing. In a few seconds he stood cursing at the broken strands of the anchor-lines where his nets had been ripped away.

"Damn you Whirl-Rays," he cursed, shaking his fist in the direction of the whirlpools that surged in and out like living things, which of course they were, under their coating of slimy mud. The Whirl-Rays had a way of forcing a stream of mud in a downward spout and creating a resultant whirlpool which sucked everything into its voracious clutches. "That's my tenth set of nets you've got that way."

Baron Munchy fluttered out from below and landed on the railing, preening his wings. There was an I-told-you-so expression on his insectivorian countenance ... when he saw the angry expression on the terrestrial's face and heard the flow of vitriolic words, he hopped up and down with impish ecstacy.

"My goodness, Boss," he chirruped. "You heap mad! Maybe somethin' goin' happen now, huh? Maybe you whip tar out of Raeburn, huh?"

Lonny swatted at Baron Munchy with his open palm, but the blow never landed. Out of the mists, coming soddenly from somewhere across the squirming quagmire, came the sounds of a human being crying in desperation.

"Help! Help!" sounded the voice, and the thing that so startled Lonny Higgens was that the words were unmistakably feminine.

"Good Lord!" he exploded. "Do you suppose Raeburn really has got Lana in his mud-submarine! Damn it, Baron Munchy, why didn't you say so before you spoke?"