Chapter II

Around them was the fantastic skyline. From below, in the teeming streets, came a rising buzz like the droning activity of a hive of angry bees. Above, rose the city-wide dome of fused quartz, its crystalline concavity faintly iridescent as it reflected the questioning beams of giant searchlights. North, between the fugitives and the older native quarters of Castarona, were the gigantic systems of airlocks, and below that, the sprawling tangles of dockland.

Ferris led his companions in a tortuous route that covered miles of angled and uneven rooftops. Realizing that his ident-cards must have come through, he knew that police and security officials must be turning the city inside out in a wild scramble to locate and deal with him. Speed was essential, and more than his personal safety depended upon the outcome of the wild chase over the jagged skylines.

Knots of wary policemen and determined security soldiers invaded the rooftops and began searching the hundreds of square miles. In case the escaped prisoners had descended from the high levels, even business blocks were being turned out. The whole city was undergoing systematic scouring. Officialdom was desperate and badly frightened. Mechanical trackers had already been sent for. Never before had they been used so early in the game. The man, or whatever he was, Bat Ferris must be found at once, slain if possible. The hunt was on, full cry.

After two near brushes with patrols, Ferris finally decided that it would be safer to descend to the streets. Dragnets spread over the world above the city, and only luck had kept the trio from being sighted a dozen times. They were near the edge of the city where the half-bubble of the dome comes down into a series of cones which are the great airlocks protecting the city-atmosphere from the troubled violence and noxious fumes of outer Venus.

Like shadows the fugitives descended, going down darkened spirals of stairways, stealing elevators, moving furtively among dark, twisting alleyways, crawling under vast landing stages and skirting heaps of exotic Venusian produce ready for shipping to the nine inhabited worlds. In the cluttered dockland areas they collided blindly with an armed patrol.

Angel, acting on pure instinct, leaped high, then swooped down like a striking hawk. The rustle of his opened wings was like the flapping of wind-whipped flames. His outstretched arms gathered two of the four man patrol and crushed life from them before they sensed danger. Ferris was almost as quick. He leaped and strangled, and a man died in swift, deadly silence. Pao Chung, unused to managing his own violence, was clumsier. A blaster went off. Then Angel took over the difficulty. The soldier broke and ran, screaming, firing his blaster twice more without aiming.

The uproar would bring help. But the soldier was beyond help. Angel soared and dived. There was no fight.

Now armed, the fugitives fled swiftly. Pao Chung took over the lead. By devious streets and crooked alleys, they went in the extremes of haste.

Further caution was useless. Now that the alarm had been given, speed was the only hope. Pao Chung knew every secret rat-run in the old native quarter. He used most of them. If the passage of the fugitives caused a ripple of excitement among the polyglot denizens of that forbidding area, they did not know it, nor heed it. All three knew the natives well enough to be certain that the police could expect no favors from that source. All Venusians are natural anarchists, born outlaws and rebels against authority. The trail would die on stubborn tongues unless mechanical trackers were used.

Even then, unless the police and security squads came in massed force, there would be incidents to delay pursuit. Natives, and the human debris of nine worlds which had found refuge in the quarter, had no reason to love authority. In one sense, the area was an armed camp within the walls. Uneasy truce at best existed between these motley dwellers and the intruding minions of the nominal officialdom. While the hunted could expect no actual help from the guerrilla forces of Castarona's underworld, there was the certainty of hindrance to the hunters.

Patrols and searching squads converged on the freight-dock stages, drawn by radioed reports of a clash. From there a trail of sorts led straight into the native quarter. As the soldiers and police massed on the fringes of the area, sparks of trouble began to develop, were quickly fanned to flame, and quenched only by continuous violence and the arrival of overwhelming forces.

Pao Chung led his companions into a dark, zigzagging alley.

"Not far now," he gasped hoarsely, struggling for breath.

From close behind came a rising uproar.

* * * * *

The alley ended abruptly against a high, blank, curving wall of reinforced concrete. Pao Chung's raw, burning throat refused speech, but he gestured over the wall. There was no gate. Angel sprang lightly to the top and gave his partners in crime a hand up. They dropped into darkness on the far side. Light writhed and flickered curiously on the great dome overhead. Tumult died away behind them as they fled across a wide open space, then rose to shocking crescendos. Reflections flared in the dome.

Uproar dwindled to uneasy silence, as if the massed forces of law and order had found the native quarter stickier going than expected, and had been forced to retire in disorder.

Pao Chung stopped as if checking directions, then led off at a sharp tangent. The way went through fields. Diffused light from the tall city-buildings filtered in here and gave some sense of the ground surface, which was fortunate. Numerous small fences of wire hummed and sputtered on insulator-posts. Electrified guard-fences. Pao Chung hurdled them carefully, but they were low enough to trip and incinerate an incautious trespasser, unaware of their existence and unused to their spacing.

Oppressive silence brooded over the place. Atmosphere was thick with pungent and exotic odors that lingered with unpleasantly alien tang in the nostrils.

Ahead loomed a high stockade of chrome-steel pilings, pierced by a single monstrous gate.

Pao Chung ran up and hammered on the gate. Its reverberations roused thunderous echoes in the night. A curious echo persisted and increased in volume.

On Venus, if one climbs a fence, rings a doorbell, or bangs on a locked gate at night, it is adventure. You never know who or what will answer your summons. The door swings slowly open, and you brace yourself to look. Will it be maid or monster--or both?

This was Khaljean's....

The gate swung open a scant double handspan, checked by a short length of sturdy chain. A head poked through the aperture. An interesting head, even in the difficult light. Details were obscure, but there was a flash of curd-white skin, fine-modeling of feature, a delicate oval face framed in a swinging bell of dark hair.

In this case, the summons was answered by, presumably, a maid. Khaljean's daughter, Teucrete, herself something of a legend.

A woman can be described in terms of anatomical rhapsody. Or one may dwell endlessly upon sweetness of disposition, upon quaint and unique charms of personality. A potential lover may fashion poetic conceits upon the lilting moonbeam qualities in her voice, compare her skin to flower-petals, her eyes to gemfires, liken the graceful movements of limbs and body to the liquid symphonies of swirling water. Or these matters may be left wholly to the imagination and the girl described obliquely by reference to her effect upon the male population in her immediate vicinity.

The effect was jarring enough.

"Go away!" she said inhospitably. She leaned further through the opening to snarl fluent imprecations in Venusian billingsgate at the nocturnal callers.

Pao Chung braved the storm. "Shut up!" he said evenly.

Teucrete's eyes fixed on him savagely, and she took a sharp breath with the obvious intention of renewing her tirade. Then she thought better of it and restrained her outrage long enough to throw a taunt in his face.

"Is Pao Chung so desperate for money that he comes now in the middle of the night? You're two days early for your payment. Come back then."

"Call your father," ordered the Venusian.

"Khaljean is not here. He's ... hunting. Come back after noon tomorrow if you must see him."

The head withdrew inside. The gate crashed shut. Bolts grated.

"Shall I fly over the stockade and throttle her?" asked Angel, rippling his wings.

Pao Chung hammered the gate again. As before, the racketing animal chorus repeated the sound, with variations. Pao Chung kept pounding until the gate was opened again. This time the head did not appear, but a wiry female voice addressed them from the inside darkness.

"Still here? The police must be hunting you."

"They are."

"Good! I will point you out and stay to watch the kill."

Pao Chung chuckled evilly. "Do that. The record of Khaljean's background and illegal activities is in my safe. My will provides for publication of all such papers upon my death."

The voice hesitated. "It might be worth humiliation or disgrace to be rid of you permanently."

"It might," agreed Pao Chung. "Many people have thought so. I wonder if Khaljean will be one of them."

With a scrape of bare metal, bolts retreated into sockets and the chain was removed. Crack widened enough to permit entrance.

"Come in, then," Teucrete said wearily. "I will let my father decide when he returns. For tonight, you can stay. But I won't answer for your safety. The animals are roused and nervous. I am not sure I can control them with strangers here."

* * * * *

Beastly cacophonies greeted the entrance of the fugitives. An atmosphere of alien and indescribable uneasiness pervaded the vast compound with its rows and piled banks of cages. The atmosphere was the emotion of night-hauntings, and the sound was its voice.

No sign above the gate proclaimed, _Here Dwells Nightmare_, nor, _Through These Portals Pass the Most Incredible Life-Forms in the Known Universe_. There was no circus atmosphere. Just a nameless blending of sounds and smells and alien vibrations that stirred the imagination like evil flames licking at forgotten folk memories. On Venus, the term _unearthly_ has naturally lost meaning, but here was a hint of dreadful abysses beyond even the exotic fecundity of the cloud-veiled planet. Here were half-audible chords beyond all the known octaves. Here, in the troubled darkness one sensed symbols of instincts, minds and feelings that man was never meant to know or understand. Here was the final question mark of evolution--whence, and to what dreadful purpose?

What incredible virtuosity of the Unknown Creator had brought these unthinkable beings into multiform existence? And why? What purpose did they serve in the plan of Creation? Or was there any purpose? Was there even a plan?

Bat Ferris remembered such thoughts from his lonely, monastic youth on Mars, and during the schooling period on Earth. One had time for long unhappy thoughts in such a segregated childhood and some of them still reverberated deep inside him.

The girl drew back to let them enter, flashing the beam of a hand radilume on each in turn. Her glance flicked each of them in examination sharp enough to draw blood. She received them in silence, for Teucrete's mind was not on the duties of a hostess to unexpected guests.

"Wait here," she ordered crisply. Then she went among the tangled avenues between cages and spoke soothingly to the caged brutes. Her voice crackled, purred, coughed, roared, hissed.

The bird people were the first to heed. Their bright, nervous chittering subsided into occasional geysers of chirping. Surly sand leopards from Mars paced their cages and vented sounds like needles caught in the grooves of antique disc recordings. Partially gaseous life forms from Saturn had no vocal apparatus, but showed their uneasy displeasures by flaring into sullen crimsons and bruised purples of luminosity.

Ferris followed the girl closely on her rounds, his eyes staring in wonder at the caged monsters revealed when her light bathed the barred cubicles. Some cages were not cages in the ordinary sense at all. Behind barriers of streaming light crouched protoplasmic entities of no set form. Moondogs sported aimlessly in pools of ionized gas. Wireflies battered themselves against invisible net barriers. Complex mysteries of Plutonian life-forms floated in magnetic fields. Metallic crystals built themselves into coral-like colonies resembling miniature castles.

Less _outre_ creatures inhabited the myriads of cell-blocks--the ordinary and extraordinary varieties of apes and cats and dogs, the bovines and marsupials, the squeaking rats and trumpeting elephants, the endless species of sea-creatures, the tree-haunters and the desert dwellers, the burrowers and the flyers. There were supposedly extinct saurians, and examples of tomorrow's freaks and mutants. There were brute clowns and tragedians. There were--

But Khaljean's has been described often enough in magazine articles, sometimes with tri-dimensional pictures in color. Any reader so inclined may look into the back files of _Inter-Planetary Magazine_ and stupefy himself with the famous issue of July, 2091.

Teucrete sensed that she was followed, but with pointed insolence, ignored Ferris and continued her rounds. Gradually, her eerie tones brought calm to the multiform excitements of the compound. She returned eventually to Pao Chung and Angel.

"I will take you back through the laboratories to the inner maze," she said irritably. "Move quietly and do not stumble in the dark. Some of the protection barriers are fragile, and a few exist only in the minds of the creatures in them. If excited too much, they can break through. Many are man-killers."

"One man-killer runs loose in here," observed Angel drily.

Teucrete disposed of the intended compliment with a sneer. "Pao Chung has long had such ideas. Through pressure on my father he has tried to ... to buy or barter for me. Such disposal is mine to make, not my father's. I have my price, but it is high."

It is evidence of Teucrete's more obvious charms that three masculine minds went into gear, calculating resources.

Teucrete laughed viciously. "The first item is Pao Chung's head on a platinum platter."

"A platinum platter is not unobtainable," said Angel speculatively.

Pao Chung was not offended. He chuckled unpleasantly. "Such fire as yours would bring a high price in the slave marts of Yabn," he said. "My head would bring more, locally. Should we not move further from the gates? A scanner could pierce several layers of metal as thin as this stockade. Perhaps I can bring your price down, or my offer up. But another occasion for bargaining would suit both of us better."

"If there are other occasions for any of us," Ferris put in bitterly.

From outside came the sounds of many movements, the rustle and clatter of questing men, hoarse shouts and a confusion of crowd sounds. Above all, like a thin thread of sound, binding the other noises together, was a high, ear-piercing, nerve-wracking drone.

Angel flittered to the top of the stockade and peered warily through the razor-edged metal pilings. He swooped down to his companions with whispered verification of their suspicions.

"The mechanical trackers," he said.

"Perhaps there is still a deal open," muttered Pao Chung. He bowed with sardonic malice toward Teucrete. "We have one possession of greater value than my head or your body. My young friend here--"

Teucrete snorted contemptuously. "Him!" But her glance lingered on Ferris momentarily. "What do you mean?"

"Ferris is a gamma-man," said Pao Chung. Even Angel gasped with shock. Teucrete's eyes widened in incredulity, horror and fear.