Chapter IV

"Guess we'll have to wait a bit longer," Jim murmured. "But it seems to be easing, don't you think?"

In a sheltered recess of the forest we were crouching, forced to wait for the weird storm to pass. There had been no possible chance of finding the fleeing Jahnt. We could only hope now that he would go on to the broken city. The storm seemed to be lessening but still it was a roar of wind which cracked through the spindly giant trees, often bringing down great segments of branches which it had torn loose.

A lull came at last, and through a ragged, littered forest Jim and I pushed our tortuous way. Meeta could fly now. She guided us, and with little forays hummed ahead and to the sides, seeking some signs of Jahnt and Venta. But there were none.

The storm had been a torture of delay. In my heart now I had no thought that we would be able to locate Jahnt and Venta. I could only hope that they might be in the broken city. Had Curtmann received news of the Venus weapons? My mind was upon Venta, but still I could envisage that bloodthirsty band of Earth cutthroats advancing upon the Forest City.

"I say, is it much further?" Jim demanded suddenly of Meeta. "This is tough going for us."

"Master, no. It is ahead, just down that slope."

The dim forest glade was descending into a great shallow area of deeper shadow. And presently we could see the ruins of tumbled, broken buildings lying here, half buried by the rank forest growth. In the turgid dimness, with a faint orange luminosity that seemed inherent to the great trees, it was an eerie place of colored shadows. Great buildings were everywhere around us now, weird of shape and substance, some of them still partly erect with the spindly trees growing through them.

It was a place of the ghosts of Venus' past.

"It is down in here," Meeta said, pointing.

A littered rocky depression was before us. A ruined amphitheatre, with its walls almost gone and the forest like a monstrous clump in its middle. We descended into it. The ground in places was rocky. Some natural cataclysm must have torn this ground since the original arena was built.

Then we saw the cache of weapons. It was half a demolished room in some broken structure that now was unrecognizable; an apartment partly open at the top, of some two hundred feet diameter. A little light filtered down from the lurid greenish-yellow storm-clouds high overhead.

"No one here ahead of us, Jim?" In the darkness, with Meeta perched again upon my shoulder, we stood peering and listening. There was only silence.

"Where are the weapons?" Jim demanded.

Meeta led us. "There in that little recess, Master. Many old broken boxes are filled with them."

We stood before the rock-shelves, numbed with disappointment and horror. The crumbling old metal boxes were here. But they were strewn about; broken open; empty! The weapons were gone!

* * * * *

"Gone!" Jim gasped. "That damned Jahnt!"

Abruptly Meeta cried, "Look! He is over there!"

With his hiding place discovered, Jahnt leaped suddenly erect from the shadows of a rocky niche. A knife was in his hand. I was nearest to him. I leaped. But I had miscalculated my abnormal heaviness. I hit the rocks a few feet short of him, stumbled, almost went down. As my arms flailed I saw him over me, his pointed face demoniac with lustful triumph, his knife stabbing at my chest.

There was a whirring of wings, and a glistening body went past my head. Meeta. The ten inches of her elfin form flapped and struck Jahnt in the face. He hit wildly at her with his left hand, went off balance, with his knife-thrust going wild; and collided against me so that I was able to fling my arms around him. Then my left hand caught his wrist, twisted and the knife fell away. We went down, locked together, rolling. And suddenly I felt the knife hit my hand. Meeta with swift agility had retrieved it and brought it to me. The lithe Jahnt, far stronger than he looked, was momentarily on top of me. I seized the knife, stabbed upward into his chest; and with a choked cry he went limp, fell forward on me.

I scrambled to my feet. Jahnt wasn't quite dead, but obviously dying. Jim and I bent over him.

"You got away with the weapons?" Jim muttered. "Or are they still around here?"

"Curtmann has them. My little Midge flew to him, and came back with some of Curtmann's men. They left just a little while ago. I--showed them how to use the weapons. You will--be defeated by Curtmann. You damned--"

Again little Meeta suddenly called us. "Here! Here is Venta!"

She was lying, bound and gagged, but unharmed in the recess of some crags nearby. Jim and I rushed to her.

The three spacesuits were with her. Jim had gone back to the dying Jahnt and he called me. Blood was gushing now from Jahnt's mouth; he was gasping, but still he was trying ironically to smile.

"I--did not tell Curtmann's men that I had Venta. Why should I be in the battle? I just thought I would stay here with Venta, and if Curtmann won, then I would join him."

"Has he started from Shan?" Jim demanded.

"Oh--yes. He and his men must be half way to the Forest City by now. I am sorry now I did not go with them."

I had a sudden thought. "Is he planning to use that spaceship of his?"

Jahnt was choking now with the blood in his throat. Then he gasped, "No--his men said they--could not handle it--so close to the ground--such a--short distance. They are on foot--in the forest--"

Venta was with us now, bending down over the dying Jahnt. His glazing eyes saw her, and he murmured, "You--if you had loved me--this would not have happened. I'm dying--you'll all die when--Curtmann uses those weapons against you. I'm--glad of that--"

His body twitched. Horribly the blood rattled in his throat, choking him; and then in another moment he was gone.

"They're half way to the Forest City," Jim muttered. "Good Lord, we've got to stop them. But how? How can we do it, Art?"

Venta was standing apart from us, with the tiny Meeta on her shoulder. They were murmuring together, and abruptly Meeta flew to me.

"She says it is right and it can be done. We Midges--serve the Gods, and surely now we know the good Gods from the evil."

* * * * *

An army of the Little People! Jim and I stood blankly listening while Venta told us what she and Meeta had been planning. A myriad of Midges could be rallied now. And they had human intelligence.... Only a foot high, or less. But, especially the females, they could fly with the agility of humming birds.

"And we can be armed," Meeta cried. She hummed away, came back in a moment. In her tiny hand there was a thorn. It was no more than two inches long, but to her it was a sword, stiff and sharp as a needle.

"The poisoned enta-thorn!" Venta exclaimed. "But I did not know that any of the enta-shrub was near here."

"I found it," Meeta said proudly. "There is much of it."

"What's that noise?" Jim abruptly demanded.

With my nerves taut, I stood tense. A faint thrumming was audible. We had left the cave where the weapons had been hidden, and were out in the broken amphitheatre with the ruined ancient buildings like spectres around us. Far overhead there was a little starlight, straggling faintly down. The thrumming grew louder. A tiny blurred shape came down through the darkness.... And then another--and another.

The Midges were arriving from Shan, expecting to carry the Venus-weapons from here to the Forest City. In a moment a dozen were here, then a hundred. They came in little groups, males and females, keeping separate in the flight. Like huge insects they thrummed around us, and then settled and stood awaiting our commands. Then Meeta was among them, telling what had happened and explaining that they must fight for the lives of the Forest City people.

For a moment there was awed silence; then a tiny blended chorus of voices, and little shapes humming away to get the thorns.

Jim gripped me. "By the Lord, it's our only chance! You can see that, Art."

"Yes. You and I in the spacesuits, if we can maneuver them. An army in the air--the Midges and you and I to plan their battle--direct them."

"And I shall be with you," Venta cried.

Vaguely I had thought to leave her here, or send her off to the Forest City on foot. She persuaded me at last.

"You talk of planning the battle," she cried. "But almost none of the Midges speak your language. I shall give your commands to them."

Once we had decided, a desperate haste was on us. Midges were arriving here now from the Forest City. Some of them had seen the oncoming columns of Curtmann's men, down in the forest. They were more than half way from Shan. Occasionally their Earth-flash weapons would stab into the forest ahead of them.

Within ten minutes or so we were ready. I had sent a few of the swiftest-flying Midges back to the Forest City to tell Prytan what had happened. His young men were to arm themselves as best they could, and take position. In a ring around the city, prepared to make a last stand, if we should fail. All the Midges now in the Forest City were to arm themselves with the poisoned thorns, and come to join us in the battle as fast as they could.

Then Venta, Jim and I had donned the spacesuits. No need to inflate them now; we only needed the anti-gravity mechanisms, and the rocket-streams for balancing and for lateral movement.

We rose presently into the air, up into the starlight with the ruined piles of the broken buildings and the forest dropping away beneath us. At five hundred feet we poised. In thrumming groups the Midges, more than two thousand of them now, circled around us. Then, with Jim, Venta and me leading, our bodies in the baggy spacesuits poised almost horizontal in the air and the Midges strung out in long thin lines like insects behind us, we plunged forward to the battle.