Chapter II

Jupiter started cautiously for the river, his feet kicking up little puffs of the powdery ash left by the jets. When he reached the jungle, he halted again, unpleasant memories of the cannibal plants of Sirius III in the back of his mind. Then, setting his jaw, he forged ahead.

It was hot and green in the jungle. Sweat coursed down his face, plastered his tunic to his back.

He had gone less than thirty meters when he broke into a well traveled trail paralleling the river.

Jupiter Jones' nostrils flared. He came to an abrupt halt. Although he wasn't yet thirty-five, he was known as an old man in the special corps. He had survived partly because of an instinct of danger that was almost psychic.

He sensed it now in the sudden dryness of his mouth, the hammering of his heart as his adrenal glands surcharged his blood. Then away in the distance, he heard the winding of a horn!

At least, it sounded like a horn. His hands tightened about the carbine and he held his breath. But though he listened for some time, the sound wasn't repeated.

Gradually, the valley narrowed. Tall cliffs towered above him like the jaws of a vise. He had gone about five miles, the limit he had set himself for the first day, when he caught the sound of splashing mingled with laughter.

He stopped in midstride, his nerves atingle. The sounds went on punctuated by giggling screams. He slid the safety off the carbine, crept forward.

A hundred meters upstream the jungle on the opposite bank gave way to meadows that swelled up to meet the talus at the foot of a towering thousand foot cliff.

Where the meadow dipped down to the stream there was a little gravel beach, and a band of women and children were splashing in the shallow water.

Jupiter stood stock still, peering out from the forest like a tiger.

The women were tall, brown-skinned, their hair wet and glistening like seals. Naked children squealed and played among the pebbles of the beach.

His glance strayed beyond them to the cliffs, which were pitted by cave mouths, broken by ledges. He could distinguish the figures of men and women in breechclouts and skins clinging to the face of the rock like flies.

These people had neither the brutish look of the green-skinned slaves he'd seen last night, nor yet the ferocity of the warriors. He felt the hot sluggish breeze shift, blowing from him towards the bathers.

Instantly, the women were thrown into a panic. Those with children snatched them up, and the whole pack broke from the water, fled screaming towards the cliffs!

Jupiter Jones narrowed his eyes in alarm. Their sense of smell must be keen as a hound's! He could see the males leaping down the cliffs, brandishing clubs. It reminded him of a disturbed colony of baboons he'd seen once. Gad, but he'd stirred up a hornet's nest! He began to back warily from the river bank.

* * * * *

There was a grunt behind him; a branch snapped. He tried to whirl around, bringing up his carbine. A pair of arms wrapped around him, seized him in a crushing grip!

Shock closed Jupiter's throat. He twisted, wrenched frantically.

The arms tightened like steel cables. There were more grunts, triumphant shouts, the crashing of underbrush.

Across the river the caveman had come to a halt. Then suddenly he saw them turn and flee, scampering up the cliffs like terrified monkeys, tearing at each other in their efforts to get away from the thing that had him in its grip.

Jupiter Jones was a powerful man--doubly so on this planet of mild gravity. Furthermore he'd been in too many tight scrapes to be overly bothered with scruples.

Recovering from his first shock, he twisted the carbine over his shoulder until he felt the muzzle prod into flesh and pulled the trigger.

The flat vicious "craack!" of the rifle slapped back from the cliffs. The arms relaxed. He wrenched himself free, spun around.

One glance told him these were the lean red-haired savages he'd seen last night. He was already pulling the trigger as he recognized them. The shot knocked the nearest brute off his feet.

The others hesitated, ringing him in like a pack of wolves. Down the trail, the two green tinted porters stood nervously, the litter perched atop their shoulders.

The glittering purple-shelled octopod was sitting bolt upright in the litter. At this distance it looked like a huge snail--an obese snail that has grown out of its shell. Perched on one of its tentacles was a kite-like thing.

Jupiter jerked the gun around. But at that moment the purple-shelled monstrosity tossed the kite-thing into the air where it spread enormous membrane wings.

With a shock, he realized that the kite was alive--a huge, flying, web-like bird!

He put a bullet through it. But if the shot had the least effect, it wasn't apparent. The creature swooped at him suddenly like a hawk dropping on a rabbit.

He shot again, then tried to hurl himself aside, but the pack hampered his movements. One moist wing snared him, slapped around him like wet rubber. He twisted, squirmed, toppled to the ground, rolling over and over.

The other wing lapped around him, binding his arms to his side, squeezing, squeezing.

The pain was intolerable.

As if from a distance, he could hear shouting. The savages had closed around him, snarling, baying triumphantly like hounds at the kill, but he was only dimly conscious of them.

The octopod on the litter put a silver tube to its mouth. A loud mourning note wound through the jungle.

The horn! It was the horn he'd heard earlier. It was also the last sound that he heard, for the terrible constriction never relaxed. Blackness welled up suddenly behind his eyes, blotted out everything.

* * * * *

When Jupiter Jones struggled back to consciousness, he was lying in a cage like a wild animal.

The realization shocked him.

The cage, he saw, was about two and a half meters long, very narrow and barely high enough for him to sit up in. It was only one of a whole row of such cages, and they were all occupied by men and women like himself.

His gun was gone. His pack, even his clothes had been taken away from him. He grasped one of the bars, pulled himself to a sitting posture. His neck felt stiff and for a moment his head swam dizzily. Then the scene jarred into focus.

Afternoon sunlight overlaid everything like an angry orange wash. Striped tents had been pitched along the river bank. Four of the purple-shelled octopods squatted about a cloth spread on the ground beneath the largest pavilion.

Its sides had been raised to permit the free flow of air, and he could see the creatures plucking food from strange vessels and goblets with their snakey tentacles.

All about the tents green men and copper-skinned hunters milled in a senseless jostling confusion like a circus breaking its stand.

Suddenly, his eyes narrowed. The octopods were being waited on by a hairless pink-skinned species of human. That made four distinct races he'd observed since landing. He ticked them off on his fingers--the cave people, the red-haired fighting men, the green and stolid porters. Now these bald, hairless white slugs of men.

The white men were doing most of the work, herding the porters about, packing chop boxes. Jupiter frowned. An odd little protuberance, he discovered, sprouted from the backs of all their necks.

The protuberances varied in size, some no larger than a small snail shell, others as big as a tangerine. They were plum-colored and looked as if they were made of horn. What the devil could the things be?

He shifted his eyes to a lank, coppery fighting man and saw that he bore one of the things on the back of his neck also. They all did, he realized with a sudden dryness of mouth.

All along he'd been aware vaguely of the stiffness in his spine. With a thrill of alarm, he felt the back of his neck, touched a knob-like thing just below the base of his skull.

The shock of the discovery left him sick at his stomach.

He examined it gently with his finger tips. It was small, hard. He had the uncomfortable conviction that it was alive, feeding off of him like a leech.

He tugged at it, but it was firmly anchored, the flesh about it quite numb. In panic he tried to twist it off.

Instantly a blinding flash of pain seared through him like acid tingling out to the very tips of his fingers. He pitched forward, cracked his head on the bars of his cage, slid to a prone position.

For moments he lay there unable to lift a finger although his brain was clear, lucid. It was as if the thing had perceived his intention and had paralyzed the voluntary motor centers of his brain!

* * * * *

With mounting horror, Jones realized that the mollusk-like organism must be fastened directly to his spinal cord. He had best not meddle with it again until he learned more about it.

"_Za'min--car?_" he heard a voice say behind him.

He sat up, looked around, realized with a start that the paralysis was gone, leaving no appreciable ill effects.

There was a girl in the next cage watching him out of wide yellow eyes. She was one of the cave people, he recognized with a scowl of suspicion. It was impossible to mistake the air of wildness about her--like a caged leopard.

She was quite naked, crouching in her cell with her uncombed black hair hanging down to her sturdy brown shoulders.

"Za'min--car?" she repeated.

He shook his head. What the devil was the girl driving at?

She looked puzzled then touched her breast, said: "Lete."

"Lady?"

"Lete--Lete--Lete," she insisted, jabbing herself in the chest each time.

She had small flashing white teeth, a pretty face, brown as sepia. In fact she was sepia all over, a warm rich tint that made Jupiter Jones uncomfortably conscious of the fish-belly whiteness of his own skin.

But it was her eyes that caught his interest. The iris was large, yellow, flecked with green like a cat's eye. The pupil wasn't round but a narrow slit.

He wondered if Lete was her name or the name of her tribe or what. He pointed at another captive, said:

"Lete?"

The girl revolved her right shoulder with an impatient gesture that fascinated him.

"Io. Io. Ca'min 'Kagan'!" she said, or so the words sounded. Then she touched her breast. "Na'min 'Lete'."

Obviously the girl was trying to tell him that the cave people were called "Kagan", but that her name was "Lete".

Pointing eagerly at the scaly octopods beneath the pavilion he said, "What are they?" in a questioning tone.

For an instant fear mirrored itself in Lete's yellow eyes. She shuddered, then she seemed to grasp what he wanted and said: "Anolyn."

"Anolyn," he repeated, "Anolyn." Next he pointed at the fighting men. They were "Nehogans", the porters were "Rik'gans".

Lete was an enthusiastic teacher and Jupiter began to acquire a sizable vocabulary. He didn't know how long they kept it up. Hours possibly. They were interrupted by the sudden opening of his cage door.

He stared at it in amazement, for it had swung back apparently of its own volition. There was no one within a dozen feet. There had been a "click", and then it had opened.

Before he could grasp what was happening, he found himself crawling out of the cage and standing up. Then he started for the pavilion where the purple-shelled octopods--the Anolyns as Lete called them--were waiting.

His brain reeled. He tried to stop. He couldn't! He had absolutely no command over his muscles!

It was like a nightmare. And yet his conscious mind wasn't in the least affected.

He entered the pavilion stooping slightly and stopped--like a machine subject to its operator's whim.

The Anolyns made no sound. They regarded him in utter silence, their tentacles waving in the air like the feelers of a cricket.

"What do you want?" Jupiter tried to ask and found that his tongue clove to the roof of his mouth. He'd been struck dumb!

The sweat popped out on his face, but his expression remained as unchanged as a wooden mask.