Complete Short Fiction, page 14
“Back!” Corliss thundered. “Back for our lives! Head for the beach! Beach the boat on the sand! They’re trying to turn us over!”
The water swirled and boiled; the motor snarled with power; the boat shuddered and squealed in every thin, hard plank, and overhead the reaching blackness of clouds swelled malignantly over the farthest sky. The first blast of wind, like a blow from a sledge hammer, spewed water at them as they frantically dragged the boat onto the upper heights of the sandy beach. Corliss shouted:
“We’ve got to hurry, hurry! Grab the loose stuff and head for the bunkhouse at top speed. We left Denton and Tareyton alone with the devil himself. They haven’t a chance because they don’t know what they’re up against.”
A solid sheet of. rain struck his face and body, and nearly knocked him to the ground before he could turn his back to it. The rain and the wind lashed their backs with whiplike savagery as they ran, a long, thin line of men, desperately striving to escape that hell of raging storm.
THE HOWLING of the wind outside came to the thing as it sat with stiffened muscles and taut nerves in the bunkhouse. To its straining, infuriated senses, bent only on escape, the dim world of wooden bunks was an unreal, fantastic place. Weird yellow shadows flickered on the walls as the yellow light from the lamps that hung down from the ceiling waxed and waned in the raging drafts that squeezed through the cracks in the walls of the poorly constructed building.
And then the rain came, a battering roar of it that threatened to smash the very roof above them. But the roof, at least, was snugly built, and no leaks started. The seeking, frenzied mind of the creature flashed from the thought of the storm to the men who were out in that hideous tempest—who must be coming toward the cabin by now—if they had escaped. It felt no real hope that they had not escaped the peril of the water monsters.
That thought, too, was smashed aside; and, once again, the whole abnormal power of the thing’s mind concentrated on the two men who stood between it and safety, two men who must die within two minutes, if the escape was to be made before Corliss and the others returned.
Two minutes! The monster turned its chill gaze on the two men, appraising for the hundredth time in less than half an hour the situation they created.
The man Denton sat on the edge of his bunk, small, chunkily built, inordinately nervous, shifting his feet, twisting his body, his fingers manipulating with ceaseless energy the glinting revolver he held. He caught the measured gaze of the thing and stiffened; the words that barked from his lips only confirmed the creature in its opinion of the grim capabilities of this little Englishman.
“Yeah!” the man snapped. “There’s a look in your eyes that says you want to start something. Well, don’t! I’ve been around these seas for twenty years, and believe me I’ve handled tough customers in my time. I don’t have to be told you’ve got the strength to tear me apart—I saw you handle Progue this morning and I know what you can do—but just remember this little piece of steel cuts you right down to my size.”
He waved the revolver with an easy confidence, and the thing thought tensely: “If I changed to my true shape, I could kill him in spite of the gun, but, I couldn’t change back again and couldn’t get out of this cabin. I’d be trapped!”
It grew aware that the American was speaking. “What Denton said goes double for me, see! There ain’t nuthin’ I ain’t done in my time, an’ to my way of thinkin’ Perratin was a damn good fellow, and I don’t like the way he died. I’m just achin’ for you to start somethin’ so Denton here—an’ me—can watch the lead tearin’ into your brain. You know, Denton”—he half turned, his brown eyes gleaming, his flattened nose dilating—“why not just make a target outa him, and tell Corliss he tried to escape?”
“Naw!” Denton shook his head. “Corliss ought to be here any minute with the gang. Besides, I don’t go for straight murder.”
“Bah!” Tareyton grunted ferociously. “ ’Tain’t murder to kill a murderer!”
The thing watched Denton uneasily. He had the revolver, and nothing else mattered. It said, with a horrible effort at casualness:
“You men must be fools, or cowards. Here we are, all of us, on an island. There’s no way for any of us to get off. If I leave this cabin, I go out into the naked storm—and I’d spend a miserable, rotten night, and in the morning you’d find me, anyway. What’re you going to do—sit up and watch me all night?”
“By golly!” snapped Tareyton. “There’s an idear. Let’s turn him out, lock the door from the inside, and we’ll all get some sleep.”
THE THING’S brain leaped high with hope, then sank leadenly as Denton shook his head. “Naw, I wouldn’t do that to a mad dog. But what he said gave me an idea.” His voice became mocking: “Tareyton, show the gentleman what we’re gonna do with him. Take the rope from that nail behind you and tie him up. I’ll watch the whole business with this little gim, so there’ll be no funny business. Mind that, you, or I’ll let you have it.”
The thing rasped: “What a fool I’d be to attack Tareyton and have you put a bullet, in my back—”
But with horrendous eagerness, it thought: The American would block the gun for one fraction of a second. Even if he didn’t, it wouldn’t matter. He’d be close, the first time either of them had come close, and that was all that was needed. Neither had the fainter, inkling of the strength they faced and—
Now!
With tigerish speed, it leaped at Tareyton. It had a flashing vision of his distorted eyes, mouth gaping to cry out, and then it had ripped him from the floor and flung him, all in one lightning movement, straight at Denton.
The hoarse, startled bellow of Denton mingled with the dismayed, baritone cry of Tareyton in one blended scream of agony, as they smashed together sickeningly and crashed in a contorted heap against the nearest wall.
The thing ached to leap upon them and tear them to bits, but there was no time even to see if they were lead. Already the two minutes of grace were ages past. It was too late—too late for anything but instant flight.
It snatched open the door and bumped with headlong, body-jarring force into Corliss. It was flung back off its balance. And in that moment of dismay it saw the towering Progue beyond the leader. And there were other men crowding forward.
THE MOMENT seemed an eternity there in that night of mad storm. The yellow-orange light from inside the bunkhouse did crazy, ghastly things to the faces of the startled men who crouched low against the nightmare blasts of tempest; a jagged spur of lightning showed them the lean, dark, wolfish face of the thing as it struggled to right itself.
Surprise was equal, but the infinitely harder, steelier muscles recovered first.
The thing struck at Corliss, one smashing, hate-driven blow that caught him glancingly and sent him staggering back against Progue—and then it was darting out into the night, out into the fury of unrelenting wind and rain.
One assault it made against the wild strength of the storm, head bent, body straining against that ferocious pressure, and then, in a flare of caution, as it realized its slow progress made it an easy target for rifles fired from the bunkhouse, it ceased, bucking the wind and, instead, ran with it toward where the waters glinted black in the near east—black and boiling with unholy frenzy of wind-lashed waves.
As it ran, it began to tear off its clothes—shirt, trousers, shoes, stockings—and the men saw it for an instant silhouetted against a spasm of sheet lightning, tall and gleaming naked against the briefly brilliant sky.
They saw it once more after that, a shining, unconquerable shape, as it poised on the rocky brink of the Stygian sea. And then it was gone—a white, flash diving into the pounding black waters beyond. Corliss found his voice.
“We’ve got him!” he bellowed above the shriek of the tempest. “We’ve got the damn thing where it can’t get away.”
Before he could speak further, he was swept into the bunkhouse by the Aide of men that poured through the open doorway: The door was shut, and it was Progue who breathlessly snapped:
“What the devil do you mean . . . got him? The damn fool committed suicide. You bet your life it can’t get away after that.”
Corliss pulled himself together, but when he started to explain, a literal gush of words flooded from him. “I tell you,” he finished, “that’s proof! Brains was right. That damned thing out there is the shark god in “human form—and I tell you we’ve got him—if we hurry!” His voice took on a machine-gun quality: “Don’t you see? There’s no outlet to the, sea where he jumped into the, lagoon, except through the channel we use for our boats. At one point, that channel hugs the shore, and that’s where we’ve got to stop him from getting to the safety of the open sea. Brains!”
“Yes, sir!” The tall, thin, intellectual-looking Englishman jumped forward briskly.
“Take a half dozen men, get a parcel of dynamite caps from the ammunition shack, take a searchlight, and station yourself on the shore beside the channel. Set off the dynamite at intervals under water—no fish or any living thing can stand the blast of sound made by an underwater explosion. Use the searchlight to probe the waters. It’s narrow there. You can’t and mustn’t miss! Hurry!”
After the men were gone, Progue said: “You’ve forgotten one thing, boss. There is an outlet to the sea where that damned thing jumped into the lagoon. Remember the bottleneck of water between two towering stretches of rock. A shark could just slip out there.”
Corliss shook his head grimly. “I didn’t forget, and you’re right—as far as you go. A shark could get out there. But this thing in its natural form has great, powerful flippers. And those flippers are too big for it to go through the narrow hell of water; they’d be torn off, cut to ribbons. Don’t you see what that means? The thing has to retain its human form: if it wants to go through that neck of deep water to the open sea; and in its human shape, it must be horribly vulnerable or it wouldn’t have been so cautious with us. It—”
A dull boom out of the night cut his voice off abruptly. A slow, hard smile of satisfaction twisted his heavy, powerful face.
“There went the first, explosion. That may mean the damned thing tried to get through the regular channel. Well, it knows better now. We’ve got it cornered. Either it takes the risks of swimming that hell’s gantlet in human form, or we kill it tomorrow morning, whatever its shape. And now, quick, everybody take torches and rifles and line the shore. It mustn’t get ashore!
THE SEA WAS too strong, the waves too high, the night too dark! A sense of disaster, cold and deadly, throbbed along the thing’s icy fish nerves as it struggled to keep its human body where its thin, helpless knob of human head could breathe air. It fought with bitter, ceaseless strength, but the sea thundered and roared, bellowed and churned.
The nightmare sea was a pressing wall of darkness on every side except one. And that one straight ahead, where the water glittered white—even in this darkness the white fury of the breakers was visible. In that white sea of foam-flecked death showed a single dark ribbon—the one way that was open to the safe, vast ocean beyond; a narrow ribbon of blackness, where the water was deep and twisting and incredibly fast.
And through that storm-frenzied channel, a shark was now pressing outward from the lagoon toward the ocean, showing the way.
The thing struggled to hold itself erect in the water, paddled furiously with its legs, slashed at the boiling, raging water with its arms—and strained its vision to the utmost limit, striving to follow the faint gleam of the flashing dark, triangular fin of the pilot shark as the shark made the test run of that demon channel.
The shark was struggling now, maneuvering frantically as it fought the roaring ferocity of the water that poured and belched through the writhing bottleneck to safety. The fin vanished, and then it was there again, vaguely visible against the gray-white waves.
It was thorough, safe, a dingy blur of fin that vanished instantly into the blackness of the thunderous ocean beyond.
The thing hesitated. It was its turn now, but there was no eagerness within it to storm those jagged, shaking waters in this frail human body that it wore.
It snarled in frustrated rage, a high, shrill, inhuman cry of unutterable hate—and half turned back to the shore, impelled by a wild, surging desperation to smash its way through the soft-bodied cordon of men, regardless of the danger they represented.
And then it snarled again and spat its ferocity as it saw the line of flaming torches that dotted the shore. Each torch cast a pale, flickering shadow of light even in that hell of rain and tempest, and beside each torch a man paced restlessly, carrying a rifle in alert, nervous fingers.
That way was blocked. The thing realized it even as the mad thoughts of rushing the shore stabbed through its brain. Only too well, now, it saw the trap that held it. This small section of the lagoon was blocked off as completely as if nature had waited through a million million years for this moment, to trap this deadly monster of the deep.
Escape was blocked, except—straight ahead!
Once again, the thing turned its cold, glittering fish eyes toward that deadly outlet. Steely teeth clicked in horrible defiance, lips tightened into a thin, sharkish line—and then it launched itself into those raging waters.
There was a sense of incredible velocity; instinctively it struggled to make a: twist that sight of the shark’s test run had seared into its mind. Water smashed down into its mouth; it spat, coughed, fought, and then it had a brief vision of dreadful doom—a wall Of rock feared up straight ahead, yards high, black, grim, merciless rock. Frantically, it twisted and plunged aside with maddened, reaching arms. But no muscles could fight that irresistible sea.
One glimpse of its doom, one fearless snarl of astounded, unbelieving ferocity, and then a stab of pain unutterable as its human head crushed into a pulp against steel-hard rock. Bones broke, muscles tore, flesh mashed—a tormented body was flung out into the midnight ocean.
The pilot shark smelled the fresh meat and came circling back. In a moment, it was joined by a dozen other dark, struggling shapes.
The storm pounded all through that black night. It was a cold, wet dawn that broke finally over a cold, wet, weary group of men. As Corliss headed the first boat out into the quietened waters of the lagoon, toward that narrow, still-roaring funnel of death, his face was dark with the fatigue of the long vigil, but grim with determination.
“If the thing took the chance,” he said, “we’ll never find anything. But we’ll know. There’s an undercurrent where the channel twists that only a big fish would fight. Nothing else could prevent itself being smashed.”
“Hey,” yelled Denton in alarm, his face still white from the pain he had endured, “don’t go too near that place. Tareyton and I have had enough smashing for one day.”
It was noon before Corliss was convinced that no dangerous living thing remained in the lagoon. As they headed toward the shore, tired but relieved, the southern sun was sparkling down on an emerald isle that glittered and shone in its vast setting of sapphire ocean.
REPETITION
Because a people live on a planet, it does not mean they have a civilization on that planet. First they must learn the old tricks and make them new—
HIS eyes ached! He kept blinking them as he flew, striving to keep in sight the glitter of hurtling metal that was the power-driven spacesuit of his guide.
The man was desperately hard to see against the blazing brilliance of the remote disk of sun—incredibly small and gemlike sun, rising higher and higher from the fantastic horizon of Europa. It was almost, Thomas told himself, as if the guide was deliberately holding himself into the glare of the morning sun to distract his—Thomas’—wearying mind and dull his strength.
More than a mile below, a scatter of forest spread unevenly over a grim, forbidding land. Pock-marked rock, tortured gravel, and occasionally a sparse, reluctant growth of Jupiter grass that shown as brown and uninviting as the bare straggle of forest—and was gone into distance as they sped far above, two shining things of metal, darting along with the speed of shooting stars.
Several times Thomas saw herds of the tall, dapple-gray grass eaters below; and once, far to the left, he caught the sheeny glint of a scale-armored, blood-sucker gryb.
It was hard to see his speedometer, built into the transparent head-piece of his flying space armor—hard because he had on a second head-piece underneath, attached to his electrically heated clothes; and the light from the sun split dazzlingly through the two barriers. But now that his suspicions were aroused, he strained his eyes against that glare until they watered and blurred. What he saw tightened his heavy jaw into a thin, hard line. He snapped into his communicators, his voice as cold and hard as his thoughts: “Hey, you ahead there—what’s your name? Barkett, Birkett—”
“Bartlett, sir!” a young man’s voice sounded in his communicators; and it seemed to the older man’s alert hearing that the accent on the “sir” held the faintest suggestion of a sneer, and a definite hostility. “Ray Bartlett! What is it, sir?”
“You told me this trip would be five hundred and twenty-one miles or—”
“Or thereabouts!” The reply was swift, but the sneer was stronger, the hostility more apparent, more intentional.
Thomas’ eyes narrowed to steely gray slits. “You said five hundred and twenty-one miles. The figure is odd enough to be presumed exact, and there is no possibility that you would not know the exact distance from the Five Cities to the platinum mines. We have now traveled five hundred and twenty-nine miles—more every minute—since leaving the Five Cities a little over an hour ago, and—”
“So we have!” interrupted the young man with unmistakable insolence. “Now isn’t that too bad, Mr. Famous Statesman Former Explorer Thomas.”
Thomas was silent, examining the situation for its potential menace. His first indignant impulse was to pursue the unexpected arrogance of the other, but his brain, suddenly crystal-clear, throttled the desire and leaped ahead in a blaze of speculation.
The water swirled and boiled; the motor snarled with power; the boat shuddered and squealed in every thin, hard plank, and overhead the reaching blackness of clouds swelled malignantly over the farthest sky. The first blast of wind, like a blow from a sledge hammer, spewed water at them as they frantically dragged the boat onto the upper heights of the sandy beach. Corliss shouted:
“We’ve got to hurry, hurry! Grab the loose stuff and head for the bunkhouse at top speed. We left Denton and Tareyton alone with the devil himself. They haven’t a chance because they don’t know what they’re up against.”
A solid sheet of. rain struck his face and body, and nearly knocked him to the ground before he could turn his back to it. The rain and the wind lashed their backs with whiplike savagery as they ran, a long, thin line of men, desperately striving to escape that hell of raging storm.
THE HOWLING of the wind outside came to the thing as it sat with stiffened muscles and taut nerves in the bunkhouse. To its straining, infuriated senses, bent only on escape, the dim world of wooden bunks was an unreal, fantastic place. Weird yellow shadows flickered on the walls as the yellow light from the lamps that hung down from the ceiling waxed and waned in the raging drafts that squeezed through the cracks in the walls of the poorly constructed building.
And then the rain came, a battering roar of it that threatened to smash the very roof above them. But the roof, at least, was snugly built, and no leaks started. The seeking, frenzied mind of the creature flashed from the thought of the storm to the men who were out in that hideous tempest—who must be coming toward the cabin by now—if they had escaped. It felt no real hope that they had not escaped the peril of the water monsters.
That thought, too, was smashed aside; and, once again, the whole abnormal power of the thing’s mind concentrated on the two men who stood between it and safety, two men who must die within two minutes, if the escape was to be made before Corliss and the others returned.
Two minutes! The monster turned its chill gaze on the two men, appraising for the hundredth time in less than half an hour the situation they created.
The man Denton sat on the edge of his bunk, small, chunkily built, inordinately nervous, shifting his feet, twisting his body, his fingers manipulating with ceaseless energy the glinting revolver he held. He caught the measured gaze of the thing and stiffened; the words that barked from his lips only confirmed the creature in its opinion of the grim capabilities of this little Englishman.
“Yeah!” the man snapped. “There’s a look in your eyes that says you want to start something. Well, don’t! I’ve been around these seas for twenty years, and believe me I’ve handled tough customers in my time. I don’t have to be told you’ve got the strength to tear me apart—I saw you handle Progue this morning and I know what you can do—but just remember this little piece of steel cuts you right down to my size.”
He waved the revolver with an easy confidence, and the thing thought tensely: “If I changed to my true shape, I could kill him in spite of the gun, but, I couldn’t change back again and couldn’t get out of this cabin. I’d be trapped!”
It grew aware that the American was speaking. “What Denton said goes double for me, see! There ain’t nuthin’ I ain’t done in my time, an’ to my way of thinkin’ Perratin was a damn good fellow, and I don’t like the way he died. I’m just achin’ for you to start somethin’ so Denton here—an’ me—can watch the lead tearin’ into your brain. You know, Denton”—he half turned, his brown eyes gleaming, his flattened nose dilating—“why not just make a target outa him, and tell Corliss he tried to escape?”
“Naw!” Denton shook his head. “Corliss ought to be here any minute with the gang. Besides, I don’t go for straight murder.”
“Bah!” Tareyton grunted ferociously. “ ’Tain’t murder to kill a murderer!”
The thing watched Denton uneasily. He had the revolver, and nothing else mattered. It said, with a horrible effort at casualness:
“You men must be fools, or cowards. Here we are, all of us, on an island. There’s no way for any of us to get off. If I leave this cabin, I go out into the naked storm—and I’d spend a miserable, rotten night, and in the morning you’d find me, anyway. What’re you going to do—sit up and watch me all night?”
“By golly!” snapped Tareyton. “There’s an idear. Let’s turn him out, lock the door from the inside, and we’ll all get some sleep.”
THE THING’S brain leaped high with hope, then sank leadenly as Denton shook his head. “Naw, I wouldn’t do that to a mad dog. But what he said gave me an idea.” His voice became mocking: “Tareyton, show the gentleman what we’re gonna do with him. Take the rope from that nail behind you and tie him up. I’ll watch the whole business with this little gim, so there’ll be no funny business. Mind that, you, or I’ll let you have it.”
The thing rasped: “What a fool I’d be to attack Tareyton and have you put a bullet, in my back—”
But with horrendous eagerness, it thought: The American would block the gun for one fraction of a second. Even if he didn’t, it wouldn’t matter. He’d be close, the first time either of them had come close, and that was all that was needed. Neither had the fainter, inkling of the strength they faced and—
Now!
With tigerish speed, it leaped at Tareyton. It had a flashing vision of his distorted eyes, mouth gaping to cry out, and then it had ripped him from the floor and flung him, all in one lightning movement, straight at Denton.
The hoarse, startled bellow of Denton mingled with the dismayed, baritone cry of Tareyton in one blended scream of agony, as they smashed together sickeningly and crashed in a contorted heap against the nearest wall.
The thing ached to leap upon them and tear them to bits, but there was no time even to see if they were lead. Already the two minutes of grace were ages past. It was too late—too late for anything but instant flight.
It snatched open the door and bumped with headlong, body-jarring force into Corliss. It was flung back off its balance. And in that moment of dismay it saw the towering Progue beyond the leader. And there were other men crowding forward.
THE MOMENT seemed an eternity there in that night of mad storm. The yellow-orange light from inside the bunkhouse did crazy, ghastly things to the faces of the startled men who crouched low against the nightmare blasts of tempest; a jagged spur of lightning showed them the lean, dark, wolfish face of the thing as it struggled to right itself.
Surprise was equal, but the infinitely harder, steelier muscles recovered first.
The thing struck at Corliss, one smashing, hate-driven blow that caught him glancingly and sent him staggering back against Progue—and then it was darting out into the night, out into the fury of unrelenting wind and rain.
One assault it made against the wild strength of the storm, head bent, body straining against that ferocious pressure, and then, in a flare of caution, as it realized its slow progress made it an easy target for rifles fired from the bunkhouse, it ceased, bucking the wind and, instead, ran with it toward where the waters glinted black in the near east—black and boiling with unholy frenzy of wind-lashed waves.
As it ran, it began to tear off its clothes—shirt, trousers, shoes, stockings—and the men saw it for an instant silhouetted against a spasm of sheet lightning, tall and gleaming naked against the briefly brilliant sky.
They saw it once more after that, a shining, unconquerable shape, as it poised on the rocky brink of the Stygian sea. And then it was gone—a white, flash diving into the pounding black waters beyond. Corliss found his voice.
“We’ve got him!” he bellowed above the shriek of the tempest. “We’ve got the damn thing where it can’t get away.”
Before he could speak further, he was swept into the bunkhouse by the Aide of men that poured through the open doorway: The door was shut, and it was Progue who breathlessly snapped:
“What the devil do you mean . . . got him? The damn fool committed suicide. You bet your life it can’t get away after that.”
Corliss pulled himself together, but when he started to explain, a literal gush of words flooded from him. “I tell you,” he finished, “that’s proof! Brains was right. That damned thing out there is the shark god in “human form—and I tell you we’ve got him—if we hurry!” His voice took on a machine-gun quality: “Don’t you see? There’s no outlet to the, sea where he jumped into the, lagoon, except through the channel we use for our boats. At one point, that channel hugs the shore, and that’s where we’ve got to stop him from getting to the safety of the open sea. Brains!”
“Yes, sir!” The tall, thin, intellectual-looking Englishman jumped forward briskly.
“Take a half dozen men, get a parcel of dynamite caps from the ammunition shack, take a searchlight, and station yourself on the shore beside the channel. Set off the dynamite at intervals under water—no fish or any living thing can stand the blast of sound made by an underwater explosion. Use the searchlight to probe the waters. It’s narrow there. You can’t and mustn’t miss! Hurry!”
After the men were gone, Progue said: “You’ve forgotten one thing, boss. There is an outlet to the sea where that damned thing jumped into the lagoon. Remember the bottleneck of water between two towering stretches of rock. A shark could just slip out there.”
Corliss shook his head grimly. “I didn’t forget, and you’re right—as far as you go. A shark could get out there. But this thing in its natural form has great, powerful flippers. And those flippers are too big for it to go through the narrow hell of water; they’d be torn off, cut to ribbons. Don’t you see what that means? The thing has to retain its human form: if it wants to go through that neck of deep water to the open sea; and in its human shape, it must be horribly vulnerable or it wouldn’t have been so cautious with us. It—”
A dull boom out of the night cut his voice off abruptly. A slow, hard smile of satisfaction twisted his heavy, powerful face.
“There went the first, explosion. That may mean the damned thing tried to get through the regular channel. Well, it knows better now. We’ve got it cornered. Either it takes the risks of swimming that hell’s gantlet in human form, or we kill it tomorrow morning, whatever its shape. And now, quick, everybody take torches and rifles and line the shore. It mustn’t get ashore!
THE SEA WAS too strong, the waves too high, the night too dark! A sense of disaster, cold and deadly, throbbed along the thing’s icy fish nerves as it struggled to keep its human body where its thin, helpless knob of human head could breathe air. It fought with bitter, ceaseless strength, but the sea thundered and roared, bellowed and churned.
The nightmare sea was a pressing wall of darkness on every side except one. And that one straight ahead, where the water glittered white—even in this darkness the white fury of the breakers was visible. In that white sea of foam-flecked death showed a single dark ribbon—the one way that was open to the safe, vast ocean beyond; a narrow ribbon of blackness, where the water was deep and twisting and incredibly fast.
And through that storm-frenzied channel, a shark was now pressing outward from the lagoon toward the ocean, showing the way.
The thing struggled to hold itself erect in the water, paddled furiously with its legs, slashed at the boiling, raging water with its arms—and strained its vision to the utmost limit, striving to follow the faint gleam of the flashing dark, triangular fin of the pilot shark as the shark made the test run of that demon channel.
The shark was struggling now, maneuvering frantically as it fought the roaring ferocity of the water that poured and belched through the writhing bottleneck to safety. The fin vanished, and then it was there again, vaguely visible against the gray-white waves.
It was thorough, safe, a dingy blur of fin that vanished instantly into the blackness of the thunderous ocean beyond.
The thing hesitated. It was its turn now, but there was no eagerness within it to storm those jagged, shaking waters in this frail human body that it wore.
It snarled in frustrated rage, a high, shrill, inhuman cry of unutterable hate—and half turned back to the shore, impelled by a wild, surging desperation to smash its way through the soft-bodied cordon of men, regardless of the danger they represented.
And then it snarled again and spat its ferocity as it saw the line of flaming torches that dotted the shore. Each torch cast a pale, flickering shadow of light even in that hell of rain and tempest, and beside each torch a man paced restlessly, carrying a rifle in alert, nervous fingers.
That way was blocked. The thing realized it even as the mad thoughts of rushing the shore stabbed through its brain. Only too well, now, it saw the trap that held it. This small section of the lagoon was blocked off as completely as if nature had waited through a million million years for this moment, to trap this deadly monster of the deep.
Escape was blocked, except—straight ahead!
Once again, the thing turned its cold, glittering fish eyes toward that deadly outlet. Steely teeth clicked in horrible defiance, lips tightened into a thin, sharkish line—and then it launched itself into those raging waters.
There was a sense of incredible velocity; instinctively it struggled to make a: twist that sight of the shark’s test run had seared into its mind. Water smashed down into its mouth; it spat, coughed, fought, and then it had a brief vision of dreadful doom—a wall Of rock feared up straight ahead, yards high, black, grim, merciless rock. Frantically, it twisted and plunged aside with maddened, reaching arms. But no muscles could fight that irresistible sea.
One glimpse of its doom, one fearless snarl of astounded, unbelieving ferocity, and then a stab of pain unutterable as its human head crushed into a pulp against steel-hard rock. Bones broke, muscles tore, flesh mashed—a tormented body was flung out into the midnight ocean.
The pilot shark smelled the fresh meat and came circling back. In a moment, it was joined by a dozen other dark, struggling shapes.
The storm pounded all through that black night. It was a cold, wet dawn that broke finally over a cold, wet, weary group of men. As Corliss headed the first boat out into the quietened waters of the lagoon, toward that narrow, still-roaring funnel of death, his face was dark with the fatigue of the long vigil, but grim with determination.
“If the thing took the chance,” he said, “we’ll never find anything. But we’ll know. There’s an undercurrent where the channel twists that only a big fish would fight. Nothing else could prevent itself being smashed.”
“Hey,” yelled Denton in alarm, his face still white from the pain he had endured, “don’t go too near that place. Tareyton and I have had enough smashing for one day.”
It was noon before Corliss was convinced that no dangerous living thing remained in the lagoon. As they headed toward the shore, tired but relieved, the southern sun was sparkling down on an emerald isle that glittered and shone in its vast setting of sapphire ocean.
REPETITION
Because a people live on a planet, it does not mean they have a civilization on that planet. First they must learn the old tricks and make them new—
HIS eyes ached! He kept blinking them as he flew, striving to keep in sight the glitter of hurtling metal that was the power-driven spacesuit of his guide.
The man was desperately hard to see against the blazing brilliance of the remote disk of sun—incredibly small and gemlike sun, rising higher and higher from the fantastic horizon of Europa. It was almost, Thomas told himself, as if the guide was deliberately holding himself into the glare of the morning sun to distract his—Thomas’—wearying mind and dull his strength.
More than a mile below, a scatter of forest spread unevenly over a grim, forbidding land. Pock-marked rock, tortured gravel, and occasionally a sparse, reluctant growth of Jupiter grass that shown as brown and uninviting as the bare straggle of forest—and was gone into distance as they sped far above, two shining things of metal, darting along with the speed of shooting stars.
Several times Thomas saw herds of the tall, dapple-gray grass eaters below; and once, far to the left, he caught the sheeny glint of a scale-armored, blood-sucker gryb.
It was hard to see his speedometer, built into the transparent head-piece of his flying space armor—hard because he had on a second head-piece underneath, attached to his electrically heated clothes; and the light from the sun split dazzlingly through the two barriers. But now that his suspicions were aroused, he strained his eyes against that glare until they watered and blurred. What he saw tightened his heavy jaw into a thin, hard line. He snapped into his communicators, his voice as cold and hard as his thoughts: “Hey, you ahead there—what’s your name? Barkett, Birkett—”
“Bartlett, sir!” a young man’s voice sounded in his communicators; and it seemed to the older man’s alert hearing that the accent on the “sir” held the faintest suggestion of a sneer, and a definite hostility. “Ray Bartlett! What is it, sir?”
“You told me this trip would be five hundred and twenty-one miles or—”
“Or thereabouts!” The reply was swift, but the sneer was stronger, the hostility more apparent, more intentional.
Thomas’ eyes narrowed to steely gray slits. “You said five hundred and twenty-one miles. The figure is odd enough to be presumed exact, and there is no possibility that you would not know the exact distance from the Five Cities to the platinum mines. We have now traveled five hundred and twenty-nine miles—more every minute—since leaving the Five Cities a little over an hour ago, and—”
“So we have!” interrupted the young man with unmistakable insolence. “Now isn’t that too bad, Mr. Famous Statesman Former Explorer Thomas.”
Thomas was silent, examining the situation for its potential menace. His first indignant impulse was to pursue the unexpected arrogance of the other, but his brain, suddenly crystal-clear, throttled the desire and leaped ahead in a blaze of speculation.
