Chapter VIII

They let an hour of torment pass, and although Xintel tried gamely to keep her face composed she could not hide an occasional grimace of pain as the caustic jelly ate at the more tender portions of her skin.

The swarm of monsters still held patrol above the cleft with dull-witted reptilian patience. The two norus had settled down, squatting lumpishly, with only their eyes active.

At last Barry pulled himself from his uncomfortable bed. His body was red and chapped from head to foot. Xintel was in the same condition.

"I hope this works," he said.

He climbed toward the rim, nearly to the top, and still the beasts paid no attention. He made no sudden movements and their eyesight was apparently dull.

"Barry! That's enough! Come back!" Xintel called.

Deliberately he waved his arms. A swimming torvak turned in its own length and plunged toward him, and Barry barely evaded its rush.

"If we try to escape they'll see us," Xintel said.

Barry nodded sadly. Even though Komso's curse had been voided they could still only wait and hope.

The nomads who had found refuge with them unwittingly solved his dilemma. As once more the age-old envious hatred of the homeless ones for the city dwellers came to the fore they whispered to each other. For a moment Barry and Xintel grew inattentive. The norus had been waiting for just that. They dashed forward, intent on snatching the weapons that to them represented great wealth. Xintel shouted in alarm and one of the savages struck at her with a webbed fist.

Barry's knife flashed and a noru died. As the survivor swerved to evade Xintel's spear, Barry was upon him from behind.

His knife descended, this time not in a killing stroke. Deliberately he carved a long, shallow gash down the savage's back, a wound that would bleed copiously. Then he shouted and roared ferociously. The wounded noru fled.

Xintel streaked in pursuit, a grim expression on her face and a spear poised, but Barry reached out one arm and caught her ankle. Instinctively she twisted and her fingernails raked his face.

He slapped her hard.

"No!" he barked. "Let the noru go!"

She looked at him in furious disgust as the nomad churned in panic-stricken flight toward the rim.

"He's bleeding!" Barry snapped.

A great dark shadow swooped at the noru, missed, and Xintel looked admiringly at Barry as she understood.

The water above the cleft grew streaky with light as the monsters abandoned the tenuous remnants of the lure to follow a trail of fresh blood. The noru gibbered in horror as he dodged along the rocky bottom.

"Let's go!" Barry barked. "_Straight up!_"

It was a long, tiring swim. At last they floated just below the surface.

"Can you find the colony?" Barry asked.

"We go to the nearest shore, near Last City," Xintel corrected. "We are not safe here over deep water."

They swam again, this time horizontally, guided once more by Xintel's compass sense. Once Barry raised his head, but all he could see was a narrow circle of rippled water upon which the ever-present mists pressed heavily. A slight rosy glow overhead, dim and diffuse, was the only indication of the sun.

Finally the girl stopped. "We are almost to the edge of the Above," she said.

Barry put his head up again but still could see nothing but water and mist. They swam a few strokes more, and then he and the girl lowered their feet to a bottom of soft mud.

When he stood up in the neck-deep water and emptied his lungs there was an interval of wracking coughing and gasping. But then he found with elation that he was breathing without too much difficulty. His practice sessions in the cavern were paying off.

Xintel too stood up and gasped in the warm, stench-filled air, floundering beside the taller Earthman as they waded toward a dimly seen bank ahead. The water had shoaled to her waist, when without warning, she staggered and collapsed.

Barry caught her as she fell, and with Earth habits returning, cradled her in his arms with her face above water.

"Xintel! What's wrong?"

She stirred in his arms and her eyes opened.

"Put me down," she requested.

Then she noticed the frightened expression on his face.

"I'll be all right soon," she assured him. "Just--tired. And air--too suddenly."

Tenderly he laid her in the shallow water.

"Sure you're all right?" he asked solicitously.

She nodded.

For a few minutes he waited beside her, thinking of the colony. He understood now Komso's reference to the beasts of the marshlands overturning the houses of the demons, and the priest's plan of battle. His lure would attract the monsters with which the colony had already had trouble. And when the colonists were forced outside by the hypervirulent bacteria of the Unseen, death would strike.

Without a warning the unsuspecting colony would be doomed, but without Xintel's guidance he could not reach them to give that warning.

"Barry." The Venusian girl's voice was still weak and unsteady. "The Place Of Change is on this shore. Go look at it. Perhaps you, with a different mind and a different knowledge, could--"

"You sure you'll be all right alone?"

She was sure, and finally Barry left her, emptied his lungs once again, and floundered up the muddy bank.

* * * * *

His body felt heavy without the support of the water to which it had become accustomed, but it was good to be walking like a true Earthman again. He plodded inland, cautiously forcing his way through the thick swamp vegetation. The ground underfoot was a tangle of roots, slime and jagged stones.

Last City was a disappointment. Nothing was left but a few scarcely discernible mounds almost hidden by the swamp jungle. It was impossible to tell even what sort of buildings once existed.

He was ready to turn back when a shift in the mists disclosed the Place Of Change.

It was a domed building, huge even by the engineering standards of Earth, and something done in ancient times had prevented the jungle from encroaching upon it. Half submerged in mud, tilted where the ground beneath it had softened and shifted, the great hemispherical shell nevertheless remained intact. Barry hastened forward, found a circular opening, evidently once a window high on the structure but now at ground level, and after a glance at the dimness within stooped and entered.

He had not known what to expect--Xintel had told him only that the Place Of Change was irreparably ruined--but certainly nothing so bleak and disheartening. There was nothing but mud within the great building. Whatever machinery or equipment had been used to change the Venusians to water-breathers had vanished without a trace. Barry's shoulders sagged as he turned back toward the window.

But then the engineering training of his years on Earth reasserted itself, and he wondered of what material the building had been constructed to withstand the ravages of the savage environment of the Venus. With the flat of one hand he brushed at the greenish, clinging slime that covered the walls. Etched into the wall were strange symbols arranged in an orderly fashion. Writing, obviously done by the Ancients.

It was possible that the inscriptions included the technical data on which the Place had been based.

He ran to another section of wall and wiped at it, then at random to a third spot. More writing. It meant nothing to him, but in the colony there were specialists who might--

His chest began to burn, bringing his mind back to his present situation. There was nothing he could do for the present, and he must warn the colony. There was no telling how far Komso's plans had progressed. Perhaps the attack had already started.

He hurried out through the window, slid and stumbled through the swamp, plunged into the water. Xintel was sitting up.

"Can you find the colony?" he asked.

She nodded, "Far along the shore, that way, I can feel the presence of life. Your kind of life."

"That's it! Let's go!"

They followed the shoreline, and as the minutes passed a happy excitement grew in the Earthman at the prospect of seeing his own kind again. Xintel was silent.

When they came to the opening of the slough, Xintel pointed.

"That way. Not far."

Barry shook his head vigorously. "They'd shoot first and look later," he explained. "Particularly after Komso's first raid. I'll have to approach overland."

Half a mile beyond the slough a huge tree had fallen and was lying half in the swamp and half in the water.

"This should be far enough," he decided. "Wait here for me. And be careful."

He stuck his head out, studying the treacherous, mist-shrouded swamp he must cross, then ducked under again. The Venusian girl looked at him for an instant. Her hands moved as though to detain him.

"Good-bye Barry."

He kissed her and held her close.

"It's not good-bye," he promised. "I'll come back."

Xintel smiled tremulously.

He released her and climbed to the tree trunk, emptied his lungs of water and slogged off into the swamp. It was filthy and difficult and dangerous traveling, but a sense of urgency was upon him.

After a while he began to sing, loudly and hoarsely and off key. He sang the popular songs of his last days on Earth, cowboy ballads, ribald and unprintable construction camp ditties. The sounds drifted thinly into the enshrouding mists.

He did not sing from happiness. The colony would be an armed camp and the songs of Earth offered his only means of identification in the fog. At the end of each verse he paused and listened.

* * * * *

He finished a particularly lugubrious cowboy number entitled _Blood On The Saddle_.

"Hey! Who's that out there?" A voice reached him through the mist.

"Ya-hoo!" Barry called. "Where are you?"

"Over here!" the voice replied.

"Keep yelling, and--don't--shoot!" Barry called, spacing his words for clearness.

But sounds moved in tricky ways through the moist, opaque air and it was only after long floundering that he saw the dim shadows of men.

"Who are you?" the voice called sharply. "What are you doing out here?"

"I'm Barry Barr."

"You lie!" someone shouted. "Barry Barr's dead!"

Barry recognized the voice.

"That's what you think, Phillips!"

He sloshed his way over to join them and they stared in amazement.

"Where you been?" one of them demanded.

"At the bottom of the sea."

"This ain't no time for kidding!" the man retorted angrily.

"I mean it," Barry declared earnestly. "But guide me in quick. There's hell brewing."

* * * * *

He waited impatiently in the vestibule of the central building while they peeled off their rubberized swamp suits. Then he was inside, back in the colony he had never expected to see again.

"Call the council of captains and get the leading technical men of each division," he snapped. "Emergency!"

He coughed, his lungs irritated by the artificially dehumidified air of the building. Just then Dr. Jensen passed down the hallway. He saw his erstwhile patient and came running.

"What happened to you, son?" he asked.

"Water machine stopped," Barry said shortly, unwilling to be diverted from more pressing matters by past events. "Had to get out or die."

"The devil!" the doctor exclaimed. "It was running all right when I came back, but the window was smashed."

For Barry that was conclusive evidence--if such were needed--that the breakdown had been no accident. Hind had turned on the water and power again to cover his deed.

Dr. Jensen grabbed Barry's arm. "Let me make some tests on you," he asked eagerly.

"No time now," Barry snapped.

The four spaceship captains and as many technicians as could crowd into the room, set up a babble of questions as Barry entered. He glanced around quickly, searching for two faces, but neither Dorothy Voorhees nor Robson Hind was there. He held up a hand for silence.

The noise subsided.

"Gentlemen, there is intelligent life on Venus, intelligent _human_ life of an origin common to our own. You tangled with them recently."

"My God!" a man exclaimed. "We thought it was some animal that killed Evans."

"I told you that was a knife wound and not the mark of teeth," another interrupted.

"We heard Fred shooting out beside the slough," someone explained. "But by the time we got there he was dead and there was nothing in sight."

"Don't underestimate these Venusians," Barry warned. "They live under water. No knowledge of fire or explosives--they lost those when they went aquatic--but their bacteriology is advanced. They once staged a full scale bacterial war. And they knew enough biological science--a damn sight more than we know--to deliberately become water-breathers to escape the mess their war created."

He noticed sceptical looks on some of the faces.

"Just look at me," he said. "What happens by accident can be done on purpose. This colony is facing death. A fanatical group of Venusians are planning to wipe us out, and the attack will come soon. They will use a chemical that attracts every swamp beast and water monster within miles.

"It works. I know it works," he insisted, and shuddered as he remembered the torvaks.

"Then there will be hypervirulent bacteria. You know what that means!"

"Why should they attack us?" someone demanded.

"You're strange to them, alien, and there is a leader among them who fears outside influences will undermine his absolute control."

"All right! Let's get ready, shoot the works, and give them what they're asking for!" The man who spoke had been a close friend of Evans.

"No!" Barry said decisively. "That would be the worst thing possible!"

"What would you advise?" one of the captains asked.

"Many of them would be friendly if given a chance," Barry explained. "But if you plant mines in the slough and wipe out the attacking party it will mean enmity between colonists and the surviving Venusians for all time to come. Both sides will be vulnerable, you to bacterial attack, they to depth charges, and the surface of Venus will be rendered uninhabitable for years or even centuries."

"What's the alternative?" Captain Reno demanded.

The door opened and Barry glanced around. Even in mud-streaked coveralls Dorothy Voorhees was beautiful. He had forgotten just how desirable she was.

"Barry!" she cried joyfully, and ran to him.

Instinctively he responded to her kiss--until he remembered Xintel and his own condition.

"I won't be able to stay," he told her, deliberately making his voice harsh. "I'm not cured and probably never will be."

"But--but your water machine can be fixed," she protested.

"There's more than that," he said, and with an effort turned away.