Chapter II

Real powerful, said the man. What an understatement! But the day I was set adrift in that sea of frozen ammonia clouds mixed with nice cozy methane gas I sure prayed for it to be powerful, and I clutched that tiny bottle like that boy Aladdin clutching his little old lamp.

I'd had a lot of cooperation getting that far. An Earth patrol had slipped down onto the Red Desert of Mars and picked up the Killicut Emeralds from where Pard Hoskins had cached them; and safe out in space again, we had pored over that string of green headlights practically slobbering. But the Big Sneer of the S.S.C., the fellow that had got me into this caper, was right there to take the joy out of it all and to remind me that this was public service, strictly.

"These--" he had proclaimed with a disdainful flourish, like a placer miner pointing to a batch of fool's gold--"These jewels are as nothing, Ritter, compared with the value of the secret you are to buy with them. And be assured that if you're man enough to effect the trade--" He paused, his long nose twitching cynically--"IF you succeed, your reward will be triple what you could get for them in any market. Added to which, IF you succeed, you will be a free man."

That twitch of the nose riled me no little. "I ain't failed yet!" I snarled at him. "Just you wait till I do, feller!" I slipped the string of emeralds back into its little safe. "Instead of sniping at me, why don't you get that brain busy and set our rendezvous?"

With that we got down to business and fixed a meeting point out on Jupiter's farthest moon; then they took me in to the edge of Jupiter's ice-cloud and turned me loose in a peanut of a space boat with old Jupe looming ahead bigger than all outdoors and the Red Spot dead ahead. I patted my pretty enameled suit, which was a study in paris green and passionate purple.

I patted the three hundred pounds of arsenic crystals for Akroida and anyone else I might have to bribe. I anxiously examined my suit's air and water containers and the heating unit that would keep them in their proper state. I had already gone over the space boat. Yeah, I was as nervous as a cat with new kittens. Feeling again for my little bottle of horrid stench, I breathed a prayer to the god of idiots and spacemen, and headed in. The big ship was long gone, and I felt like a mighty small and naked microbe diving into the Pacific Ocean.

That famous Red Spot was that big, too. It kept expanding until the whole universe was a fierce, raw luminous red. Out beyond it at first there had been fringes of snow-white frozen ammonia, but now it was all dyed redder than Mars. Then I took the plunge right into it. Surprise! The stuff was plants! Plants as big as meadows, bright red, floating around in those clouds of frozen ammonia like seaweed! Then I noticed that the ammonia around them wasn't frozen any more and peeked at the outside thermometer I couldn't believe it. It was above zero. Then I forgot about the temperature because it dawned on me that I was lost. I couldn't see a thing but drifting ammonia fog and those tangles of red floating plants like little islands all around. Cutting down the motor, I eased along.

But my green boat must have showed up like a lighthouse in all that red, because it wasn't long until I spotted a purple and green hopper-scorp traveling straight toward me, sort of rowing along with a pair of stubby wings. He didn't seem to be making much effort, even though he was climbing vertically up from the planet. In fact, he didn't seem to be climbing at all but just going along horizontally. There just wasn't any up or down in that crazy place. It must be that anti-grav field, I concluded. The air was getting different, too, now that I was further in. I'm no chemist, and I couldn't have gotten out there to experiment if I had been, but those plants were certainly doing something to that ammonia and methane. The fog thinned, for one thing, and the temperature rose to nearly forty.

Meanwhile the hopper-scorp reached the ship. Hastily I squirted some of my Scorpion-Come-Hither lure on the chest of my spacesuit, opened the lock, and popped out, brave as could be. Face to face with that thing, though, I nearly lost my grip on the handle. In fact, I'd have fainted dead away right there if Pard Hoskins hadn't been there already and lived. If that little shrimp could do it, I could, too.

I braced up and tapped out the greeting Pard had taught me. My fiendish-looking opponent tapped right back, inquiring why the hell I was back so soon when I knew that Akroida was all set to carve me into steaks for just any meal. But the tone was friendly and even intimate--or rather, the taps were. There was even a rather warm expression discernible in the thing's eyes, so I took heart and decided to ignore the ferocious features surrounding those eyes. After all, the poor sinner's map was made of shell, and he wasn't responsible for its expression.

I tapped back very politely that he must be mistaking me for someone else. "I've never been here before, and so I've never met the charming lady," I informed him. "However, I have something very special in the way of jewels--not with me, naturally--and the rumor is that she might be interested."

He reared back at that, and reaching up, plucked his right eye out of the socket and reeled it out to the end of a two-foot tentacle, and then he examined me with it just like an old-time earl with one of those things they called monocles. Pard hadn't warned me about those removable eyes, for reasons best known to himself. I still wake up screaming....

Anyway, when that thing pulled out its eye and held it toward me, I backed up against the side of the ship like I'd been half-electrocuted. Then I gagged. But I could still remember that I had to live in that suit for awhile, so I held on. Then that monstrosity reeled in the eye, and I gagged again.

My actions didn't bother him a bit. "Jewels, did you say?" he tapped out thoughtfully, just like an ordinary business man, and I managed to tap out yes. He drifted closer; close enough to get a whiff....

* * * * *

A shudder of ecstasy stiffened him. His head and eyes rolled with it, and he wafted closer still. Right there I began to harbor a premonition that there might be such a thing as being too popular in Scorpdom, but I thrust this sneak-thief idea back into limbo.

Taking advantage of his condition, I boldly tapped out, "How's about taking me on a guided tour through this red spinach patch to Akroida, old pal?" Or words to that effect.

He lolled his hideous cranium practically on my shoulder. "Anything! Just anything you desire, my dearest friend."

I tried to back off from him a bit, but the ship stopped me. "I'm Casey Ritter. What's your label, chum?"

"Attaboy," he ticked coyly.

"Attaboy?" Things blurred around me. It couldn't be. It was just plain nuts. Then I got a glimmer through my paralyzed gray matter. "Who named you that?"

He simpered. "My dear friend, Pard Hoskins."

I breathed again. How simple could I get? He'd already mistaken me for Pard, hadn't he? Then I remembered something else. "How come you aren't mad at him? Don't you hate yellow, too?"

He hung his silly head. "I fear I am colorblind," he confessed sadly.

Right there I forgave him for pulling that eye on me. He was the guide I needed, the one who had got Pard out alive. I almost hugged him. "Lead off, old pal," I sang out, and then had to tap it. "I'll follow in my boat."

Well, I'd met the first of the brood and was still alive. Not only alive but loved and cherished, thanks to Pard's inventiveness and to a kindly fate which had sent Pard's old pal my way. A great man, Pard Hoskins. How had he made friends with the brute in the first place?

Being once more inside my spaceboat, I raised my helmet, which was like one of those head-pieces they used to put on suits of armor instead of the usual plastic bubble. And it was rigged out with phony antennae and mandibles and other embellishments calculated to interest my hosts. Whether it interested them or not, it was plenty uncomfortable for me.

Peeking out the porthole I saw that my guide was fidgeting and looking over his shoulder at my ship, so I eased in the controls and edge after him. To my surprise a vapor shot out of a box that I had taken for a natural lump on his back, and he darted away from me. I opened the throttle and tore after him among the immense red blobs that were now beginning to be patterned with dozens of green-and-purple scorpions, all busy filling huge baskets with buds and tendrils, no doubt.

Other scorpions oared and floated about in twos and threes in a free and peaceable manner that almost made me forget that I was scared to death of them, and they stared at my boat with only a mild interest that would have taught manners to most of my fellow citizens of Earth.

It wasn't until we had covered some two hundred miles of this that something began to loom out of the mist, and I forgot the playboys and the field workers. It loomed higher and higher. Then we burst out into a clearing several miles in diameter, and I saw the structure clearly. It was red, like everything else in this screwy place, and could only have been built out of compressed blocks of the red plant.

In shape it was a perfect octagon. It hung poised in the center of the cleared space, suspended on nothing. It had to be at least a mile in diameter, and its sides were pierced with thousands of openings through which its nightmare occupants appeared and disappeared, drifting in and out like they had all the time in the world. I stared until my eyeballs felt paralyzed.

Pard was right again. These critters had brains. And my S.S.C. persecutor was right, too. That anti-grav secret was worth more than any string of rocks in the system, including the Killicut Emeralds.

Then I swallowed hard. Attaboy was leading me straight across to a window. Closing my helmet, my fingers fumbled badly. My brain was fumbling, too. "Zero hour, chump!" it told me, and I shuddered. Picking up the first hundred pounds of the arsenic, I wobbled over to the airlock.