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Title: The Lost Tribes of Venus


Author: Erik Fennel

Illustrator: Kelly Freas

Release date: December 1, 2020 [eBook #63932]

Language: English

Credits: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net


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Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online
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                       THE LOST TRIBES OF VENUS

                            By ERIK FENNEL

                _On mist-shrouded Venus, where hostile
                 swamp meets hostile sea ... there did
                 Barry Barr--Earthman transmuted--swap
                 his Terran heritage for the deep dark
                   waters of Tana; for the strangely
               beautiful Xintel of the blue-brown skin._

           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
                       Planet Stories May 1954.
         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]


Evil luck brought the meteorite to those particular space-time
coordinates as Number Four rode the downhill spiral toward Venus. The
football-sized chunk of nickel-iron and rock overtook the ship at a
relative speed of only a few hundred miles per hour and passed close
enough to come within the tremendous pseudo-gravatic fields of the
idling drivers.

It swerved into a paraboloid course, following the flux lines, and was
dragged directly against one of the three projecting nozzles. Energy
of motion was converted to heat and a few meteoric fragments fused
themselves to the nonmetallic tube casing.

In the jet room the positronic line accelerator for that particular
driver fouled under the intolerable overload, and the backsurge sent
searing heat and deadly radiation blasting through the compartment
before the main circuit breakers could clack open.

The bellow of the alarm horn brought Barry Barr fully awake, shattering
a delightfully intimate dream of the dark haired girl he hoped to see
again soon in Venus Colony. As he unbuckled his bunk straps and started
aft at a floating, bounding run his weightlessness told him instantly
that Number Four was in free fall with dead drivers.

Red warning lights gleamed wickedly above the safety-locked jet
room door, and Nick Podtiaguine, the air machines specialist, was
manipulating the emergency controls with Captain Reno at his elbow. One
by one the crew crowded into the corridor and watched in tense silence.

The automatic lock clicked off as the jet room returned to habitable
conditions, and at Captain Reno's gesture two men swung the door open.
Quickly the commander entered the blasted jet room. Barry Barr was
close behind him.

Robson Hind, jet chief of Four and electronics expert for Venus Colony,
hung back until others had gone in first. His handsome, heavy face had
lost its usual ruddiness.

Captain Reno surveyed the havoc. Young Ryan's body floated eerily in
the zero gravity, charred into instant death by the back-blast. The
line accelerator was a shapeless ruin, but except for broken meter
glasses and scorched control handles other mechanical damage appeared
minor. They had been lucky.

"Turnover starts in six hours twelve minutes," the captain said
meaningfully.

Robson Hind cleared his throat. "We can change accelerators in two
hours," he declared. With a quick reassumption of authority he began to
order his crew into action.

It took nearer three hours than two to change accelerators despite
Hind's shouted orders.

At last the job was completed. Hind made a final check, floated over to
the control panel and started the fuel feed. With a confident smile he
threw in the accelerator switch.

The meter needles climbed, soared past the red lines without pausing,
and just in time to prevent a second blowback, Hind cut the power.

"_There's metal in the field!_" His voice was high and unsteady.

       *       *       *       *       *

Everyone knew what that meant. The slightest trace of magnetic material
would distort the delicately balanced cylinder of force that contained
and directed the Hoskins blast, making it suicidal to operate.

Calmly Captain Reno voiced the thought in every mind.

"It must be cleared. From the outside."

Several of the men swore under their breaths. Interplanetary space
was constantly bombarded, with an intensity inverse to the prevailing
gravitation, by something called Sigma radiation. Man had never
encountered it until leaving Earth, and little was known of it
except that short exposure killed test animals and left their bodies
unpredictably altered.

Inside the ship it was safe enough, for the sleek hull was charged with
a Kendall power-shield, impervious to nearly any Sigma concentration.
But the shielding devices in the emergency spacesuits were small
and had never been space-tested in a region of nearly equalized
gravitations.

The man who emerged from the airlock would be flipping a coin with a
particularly unpleasant form of death.

Many pairs of eyes turned toward Robson Hind. He was jet chief.

"I'm assigned, not expendable," he protested hastily. "If there were
more trouble later...." His face was pasty.

Assigned. That was the key word. Barry Barr felt a lump tightening
in his stomach as the eyes shifted to him. He had some training in
Hoskins drivers. He knew alloys and power tools. And he was riding Four
unassigned after that broken ankle had made him miss Three. He was the
logical man.

"For the safety of the ship." That phrase, taken from the ancient
Earthbound code of the sea, had occurred repeatedly in the
indoctrination manual at Training Base. He remembered it, and
remembered further the contingent plans regarding assigned and
unassigned personnel.

For a moment he stood indecisively, the nervous, unhumorous smile
quirking across his angular face making him look more like an untried
boy than a structural engineer who had fought his way up through some
of the toughest tropical construction camps of Earth. His lean body,
built more for quick, neatly coordinated action than brute power,
balanced handily in the zero gravity as he ran one hand through his
sandy hair in a gesture of uncertainty.

He knew that not even the captain would order him through the airlock.

But the members of the Five Ship Plan had been selected in part for a
sense of responsibility.

"Nick, will you help me button up?" he asked with forced calmness.

For an instant he thought he detected a sly gleam in Hind's eyes. But
then the jet chief was pressing forward with the others to shake his
hand.

Rebellious reluctance flared briefly in Barry's mind. Dorothy Voorhees
had refused to make a definite promise before blasting off in Three--in
fact he hadn't even seen her during her last few days on Earth. But
still he felt he had the inside track despite Hind's money and the
brash assurance that went with it. But if Hind only were to reach Venus
alive--

       *       *       *       *       *

The blazing disc of Sol, the minor globes of the planets, the unwinking
pinpoints of the stars, all stared with cosmic disinterest at the tiny
figure crawling along the hull. His spacesuit trapped and amplified
breathing and heartbeats into a roaring chaos that was an invitation
to blind panic, and all the while there was consciousness of the
insidiously deadly Sigma radiations.

Barry found the debris of the meteorite, an ugly shining splotch
against the dull superceramic tube, readied his power chisel, started
cutting. Soon it became a tedious, torturingly strenuous manual task
requiring little conscious thought, and Barry's mind touched briefly on
the events that had brought him here.

First Luna, and that had been murderous. Man had encountered Sigma
for the first time, and many had died before the Kendall-shield was
perfected. And the chemical-fueled rockets of those days had been
inherently poor.

Hoskins semi-atomics had made possible the next step--to Mars. But men
had found Mars barren, swept clear of all life in the cataclysm that
had shattered the trans-Martian planet to form the Asteroid Belt.

Venus, its true surface forever hidden by enshrouding mists, had been
well within one-way range. But Hoskins fuel requirements for a round
trip added up to something beyond critical mass. Impossible.

But the Five Ship Plan had evolved, a joint enterprise of government
and various private groups. Five vessels were to go out, each fueled
to within a whiskered neutron of spontaneous detonation, manned by
specialists who, it was hoped, could maintain themselves under alien
conditions.

On Venus the leftover fuel from all five would be transferred to
whichever ship had survived the outbound voyage in best condition.
That one would return to Earth. Permanent base or homeward voyage with
colonists crowded aboard like defeated sardines? Only time would tell.

Barry Barr had volunteered, and because the enlightened guesses of the
experts called for men and women familiar with tropical conditions,
he had survived the rigorous weeding-out process. His duties in Venus
Colony would be to refabricate the discarded ships into whatever form
was most needed--most particularly a launching ramp--and to study
native Venusian materials.

Dorothy Voorhees had signed on as toxicologist and dietician. When the
limited supply of Earth food ran out the Colony would be forced to
rely upon Venusian plants and animals. She would guard against subtle
delayed-action poisons, meanwhile devising ways of preparing Venusian
materials to suit Earth tastes and digestions.

Barry had met her at Training Base and known at once that his years of
loneliness had come to an end.

She seemed utterly independent, self-contained, completely intellectual
despite her beauty, but Barry had not been deceived. From the moment
of first meeting he had sensed within her deep springs of suppressed
emotion, and he had understood. He too had come up the hard way, alone,
and been forced to develop a shell of hardness and cold, single-minded
devotion to his work. Gradually, often unwillingly under his
insistence, her aloofness had begun to melt.

But Robson Hind too had been attracted. He was the only son of the
business manager of the great Hoskins Corporation which carried
a considerable share in the Five Ship Plan. Dorothy's failure to
virtually fall into his arms had only piqued his desires.

The man's smooth charm had fascinated the girl and his money had opened
to her an entirely new world of lavish nightclubs and extravagantly
expensive entertainments, but her inborn shrewdness had sensed some
factor in his personality that had made her hesitate.

Barry had felt a distrust of Hind apart from the normal dislike of
rivalry. He had looked forward to being with Dorothy aboard Three, and
had made no secret of his satisfaction when Hind's efforts to have
himself transferred to Three also or the girl to Four had failed.

But then a scaffold had slipped while Three was being readied, and with
a fractured ankle he had been forced to miss the ship.

He unclipped the magnetic detector from his belt and ran it inch by
inch over the nozzle. He found one spot of metal, pinhead-sized, but
enough to cause trouble, and once more swung his power chisel into
stuttering action.

Then it was done.

As quickly as possible he inched back to the airlock. Turnover had to
start according to calculations.

       *       *       *       *       *

Barry opened his eyes. The ship was in normal deceleration and Nick
Podtiaguine was watching him from a nearby bunk.

"I could eat a cow with the smallpox," Barry declared.

Nick grinned. "No doubt. You slept around the clock and more. Nice job
of work out there."

Barry unhitched his straps and sat up.

"Say," he asked anxiously. "What's haywire with the air?"

Nick looked startled. "Nothing. Everything checked out when I came off
watch a few minutes ago."

Barry shrugged. "Probably just me. Guess I'll go see if I can mooch a
handout."

He found himself a hero. The cook was ready to turn the galley inside
out while a radio engineer and an entomologist hovered near to wait on
him. But he couldn't enjoy the meal. The sensations of heat and dryness
he had noticed on awakening grew steadily worse. It became difficult to
breathe.

He started to rise, and abruptly the room swirled and darkened around
him. Even as he sank into unconsciousness he knew the answer.

The suit's Kendall-shield had leaked!

Four plunged toward Venus tail first, the Hoskins jets flaring ahead.
The single doctor for the Colony had gone out in Two and the crewmen
trained in first aid could do little to relieve Barry's distress.
Fainting spells alternated with fever and delirium and an unquenchable
thirst. His breathing became increasingly difficult.

A few thousand miles out Four picked up a microbeam. A feeling of
exultation surged through the ship as Captain Reno passed the word, for
the beam meant that some Earthmen were alive upon Venus. They were not
necessarily diving straight toward oblivion. Barry, sick as he was,
felt the thrill of the unknown world that lay ahead.

Into a miles-thick layer of opacity Four roared, with Captain Reno
himself jockeying throttles to keep it balanced on its self-created
support of flame.

"You're almost in," a voice chanted into his headphones through
crackling, sizzling static. "Easy toward spherical one-thirty. Hold it!
Lower. Lower. CUT YOUR POWER!"

The heavy hull dropped sickeningly, struck with a mushy thud, settled,
steadied.

Barry was weak, but with Nick Podtiaguine steadying him he was waiting
with the others when Captain Reno gave the last order.

"Airlock open. Both doors."

Venusian air poured in.

"For this I left Panama?" one of the men yelped.

"Enough to gag a maggot," another agreed with hand to nose.

It was like mid-summer noon in a tropical mangrove swamp, hot and
unbearably humid and overpowering with the stench of decaying
vegetation.

But Barry took one deep breath, then another. The stabbing needles in
his chest blunted, and the choking band around his throat loosened.

The outer door swung wide. He blinked, and a shift in the encompassing
vapors gave him his first sight of a world bathed in subdued light.

Four had landed in a marsh with the midships lock only a few feet above
a quagmire surface still steaming from the final rocket blast. Nearby
the identical hulls of Two and Three stood upright in the mud. The
mist shifted again and beyond the swamp he could see the low, rounded
outlines of the collapsible buildings Two and Three had carried in
their cargo pits. They were set on a rock ledge rising a few feet out
of the marsh. The Colony!

Men were tossing sections of lattice duckboard out upon the swamp,
extending a narrow walkway toward Four's airlock, and within a few
minutes the new arrivals were scrambling down.

Barry paid little attention to the noisy greetings and excited talk.
Impatiently he trotted toward the rock ledge, searching for one
particular figure among the men and women who waited.

"Dorothy!" he said fervently.

Then his arms were around her and she was responding to his kiss.

Then unexpected pain tore at his chest. Her lovely face took on an
expression of fright even as it wavered and grew dim. The last thing he
saw was Robson Hind looming beside her.

By the glow of an overhead tubelight he recognized the kindly, deeply
lined features of the man bending over him. Dr. Carl Jensen, specialist
in tropical diseases. He tried to sit up but the doctor laid a
restraining hand on his shoulder.

"Water!" Barry croaked.

The doctor held out a glass. Then his eyes widened incredulously as his
patient deliberately drew in a breath while drinking, sucking water
directly into his lungs.

"Doctor," he asked, keeping his voice low to spare his throat. "What
are my chances? On the level."

Dr. Jensen shook his head thoughtfully. "There's not a thing--not a
damned solitary thing--I can do. It's something new to medical science."

Barry lay still.

"Your body is undergoing certain radical changes," the doctor
continued, "and you know as much--more about your condition than I do.
If a normal person who took water into his lungs that way didn't die of
a coughing spasm, congestive pneumonia would get him sure. But it seems
to give you relief."

Barry scratched his neck, where a thickened, darkening patch on each
side itched infuriatingly.

"What are these changes?" he asked. "What's this?"

"Those things seem to be--" the doctor began hesitantly. "Damn it, I
know it sounds crazy but they're rudimentary gills."

Barry accepted the outrageous statement unemotionally. He was beyond
shock.

"But there must be--"

Pain struck again, so intense his body twisted and arched
involuntarily. Then the prick of a needle brought merciful oblivion.


                                  II

Barry's mind was working furiously. The changes the Sigma radiations
had inflicted upon his body might reverse themselves spontaneously, Dr.
Jensen had mentioned during a second visit--but for that to happen he
must remain alive. That meant easing all possible strains.

When the doctor came in again Barry asked him to find Nick Podtiaguine.
Within a few minutes the mechanic appeared.

"Cheez, it's good to see you, Barry," he began.

"Stuff it," the sick man interrupted. "I want favors. Can do?"

Nick nodded vigorously.

"First cut that air conditioner and get the window open."

Nick stared as though he were demented, but obeyed, unbolting the heavy
plastic window panel and lifting it aside. He made a face at the damp,
malodorous Venusian air but to Barry it brought relief.

It was not enough, but it indicated he was on the right track. And he
was not an engineer for nothing.

"Got a pencil?" he asked.

He drew only a rough sketch, for Nick was far too competent to need
detailed drawings.

"Think you can get materials?"

Nick glanced at the sketch. "Hell, man, for you I can get anything the
Colony has. You saved Four and everybody knows it."

"Two days?"

Nick looked insulted.

He was back in eight hours, and with him came a dozen helpers. A
power line and water tube were run through the metal partition to the
corridor, connections were made, and the machine Barry had sketched was
ready.

Nick flipped the switch. The thing whined shrilly. From a fanshaped
nozzle came innumerable droplets of water, droplets of colloidal size
that hung in the air and only slowly coalesced into larger drops that
fell toward the metal floor.

Barry nodded, a smile beginning to spread across his drawn features.

"Perfect. Now put the window back."

Outside lay the unknown world of Venus, and an open, unguarded window
might invite disaster.

A few hours later Dr. Jensen found his patient in a normal sleep. The
room was warm and the air was so filled with water-mist it was almost
liquid. Coalescing drops dripped from the walls and curving ceiling
and furniture, from the half clad body of the sleeping man, and the
scavenger pump made greedy gulping sounds as it removed excess water
from the floor.

The doctor shook his head as he backed out, his clothes clinging wet
from the short exposure.

It was abnormal.

But so was Barry Barr.

With breathing no longer a continuous agony Barry began to recover some
of his strength. But for several days much of his time was spent in
sleep and Dorothy Voorhees haunted his dreams.

Whenever he closed his eyes he could see her as clearly as though
she were with him--her face with the exotic high cheek-bones--her
eyes a deep gray in fascinating contrast to her raven hair--lips that
seemed to promise more of giving than she had ever allowed herself to
fulfil--her incongruously pert, humorous little nose that was a legacy
from some venturesome Irishman--her slender yet firmly lithe body.

After a few days Dr. Jensen permitted him to have visitors. They came
in a steady stream, the people from Four and men he had not seen since
Training Base days, and although none could endure his semi-liquid
atmosphere more than a few minutes at a time Barry enjoyed their visits.

But the person for whom he waited most anxiously did not arrive. At
each knock Barry's heart would leap, and each time he settled back with
a sigh of disappointment. Days passed and still Dorothy did not come
to him. He could not go to her, and stubborn pride kept him from even
inquiring. All the while he was aware of Robson Hind's presence in the
Colony, and only weakness kept him from pacing his room like a caged
animal.

Through his window he could see nothing but the gradual brightening
and darkening of the enveloping fog as the slow 82-hour Venusian day
progressed, but from his visitors' words he learned something of
Venusian conditions and the story of the Colony.

Number One had bumbled in on visual, the pilot depending on the smeary
images of infra-sight goggles. An inviting grassy plain had proved to
be a layer of algae floating on quicksand. Frantically the crew had
blasted down huge balsa-like marsh trees, cutting up the trunks with
flame guns to make crude rafts. They had performed fantastic feats of
strength and endurance but managed to salvage only half their equipment
before the shining nose of One had vanished in the gurgling ooze.

Lost in a steaming, stinking marsh teeming with alien creatures that
slithered and crawled and swam and flew, blinded by the eternal fog,
the crew had proved the rightness of their choice as pioneers. For
weeks they had floundered across the deadly terrain until at last,
beside a stagnant-looking slough that drained sluggishly into a warm,
almost tideless sea a mile away, they had discovered an outcropping of
rock. It was the only solid ground they had encountered.

One man had died, his swamp suit pierced by a poisonous thorn, but the
others had hand-hauled the radio beacon piece by piece and set it up
in time to guide Two to a safe landing. Houses had been assembled, the
secondary power units of the spaceship put to work, and the colony had
established a tenuous foothold.

Three had landed beside Two a few months later, bringing
reinforcements, but the day-by-day demands of the little colony's
struggle for survival had so far been too pressing to permit extended
or detailed explorations. Venus remained a planet of unsolved mysteries.

The helicopter brought out in Three had made several flights which
by radar and sound reflection had placed vague outlines on the blank
maps. The surface appeared to be half water, with land masses mainly
jungle-covered swamp broken by a few rocky ledges, but landings away
from base had been judged too hazardous.

Test borings from the ledge had located traces of oil and radioactive
minerals, while enough Venusian plants had proven edible to provide an
adequate though monotonous food source.

Venus was the diametric opposite of lifeless Mars. Through the fog
gigantic insects hummed and buzzed like lost airplanes, but fortunately
they were harmless and timid.

In the swamps wildly improbable life forms grew and reproduced and
fought and died, and many of those most harmless in appearance
possessed surprisingly venomous characteristics.

The jungle had been flamed away in a huge circle around the colony to
minimize the chances of surprise by anything that might attack, but the
blasting was an almost continuous process. The plants of Venus grew
with a vigor approaching fury.

Most spectacular of the Venusian creatures were the amphibious armored
monsters, saurian or semi-saurians with a slight resemblance to the
brontosauri that had once lived on Earth, massive swamp-dwellers that
used the slough beside the colony's ledge as a highway. They were
apparently vegetarians, but thorough stupidity in tremendous bulk made
them dangerous. One had damaged a building by blundering against it,
and since then the colony had remained alert, using weapons to repel
the beasts.

The most important question--that of the presence or absence of
intelligent, civilized Venusians--remained unanswered. Some of the men
reported a disquieting feeling of being watched, particularly when near
open water, but others argued that any intelligent creatures would have
established contact.

       *       *       *       *       *

Barry developed definite external signs of what the Sigma radiation had
done to him. The skin between his fingers and toes spread, grew into
membranous webs. The swellings in his neck became more pronounced and
dark parallel lines appeared.

But despite the doctor's pessimistic reports that the changes had not
stopped, Barry continued to tell himself he was recovering. He had
to believe and keep on believing to retain sanity in the face of the
weird, unclassifiable feelings that surged through his body. Still
he was subject to fits of almost suicidal depression, and Dorothy's
failure to visit him did not help his mental condition.

Then one day he woke from a nap and thought he was still dreaming.
Dorothy was leaning over him.

"Barry! Barry!" she whispered. "I can't help it. I love you even if you
do have a wife and child in Philadelphia. I know it's wrong but all
that seems so far away it doesn't matter any more." Tears glistened in
her eyes.

"Huh?" he grunted. "Who? Me?"

"Please, Barry, don't lie. She wrote to me before Three blasted
off--oh, the most piteous letter!"

Barry was fully awake now. "I'm not married. I have no child.
I've never been in Philadelphia," he shouted. His lips thinned.
"I--think--I--know--who--wrote--that--letter!" he declared grimly.

"Robson wouldn't!" she objected, shocked, but there was a note of doubt
in her voice.

Then she was in his arms, sobbing openly.

"I believe you, Barry."

She stayed with him for hours, and she had changed since the days
at Training Base. Long months away from the patterned restraints of
civilization, living each day on the edge of unknown perils, had
awakened in her the realization that she was a human being and a
woman, as well as a toxicologist.

When the water-mist finally forced her departure she left Barry joyous
and confident of his eventual recovery. For a few minutes anger
simmered in his brain as he contemplated the pleasure of rearranging
Robson Hind's features.

The accident with the scaffold had been remarkably convenient, but
this time the ruthless, restless, probably psychopathic drive that had
made Robson Hind more than just another rich man's spoiled son had
carried him too far. Barry wondered whether it had been inefficiency or
judiciously distributed money that had made the psychometrists overlook
some undesirable traits in Hind's personality in accepting him for the
Five Ship Plan.

But even with his trickery Hind had lost.

He slept, and woke with a feeling of doom.

The slow Venusian twilight had ended in blackness and the overhead
tubelight was off.

He sat up, and apprehension gave way to burning torture in his chest.

Silence! He fumbled for the light switch, then knelt beside the mist
machine that no longer hummed. Power and water supplies were both dead,
cut off outside his room.

Floating droplets were merging and falling to the floor. Soon the air
would be dry, and he would be choking and strangling. He turned to call
for help.

The door was locked!

He tugged and the knob came away in his hand. The retaining screw had
been removed.

He beat upon the panel, first with his fists and then with the metal
doorknob, but the insulation between the double alloy sheets was
efficient soundproofing. Furiously he hurled himself upon it, only to
bounce back with a bruised shoulder. He was trapped.

Working against time and eventual death he snatched a metal chair
and swung with all his force at the window, again, again, yet again.
A small crack appeared in the transparent plastic, branched under
continued hammering, became a rough star. He gathered his waning
strength, then swung once more. The tough plastic shattered.

He tugged at the jagged pieces still clinging to the frame. Fog-laden
Venusian air poured in--but it was not enough!

He dragged himself head first through the narrow opening, landed
sprawling on hands and knees in the darkness. In his ears a confused
rustling drone from the alien swamp mingled with the roar of
approaching unconsciousness.

There was a smell in his nostrils. The smell of water. He lurched
forward at a shambling run, stumbling over the uneven ground.

Then he plunged from the rocky ledge into the slough. Flashes of
colored light flickered before his eyes as he went under. But Earth
habits were still strong; instinctively he held his breath.

Then he fainted. Voluntary control of his body vanished. His mouth hung
slack and the breathing reflex that had been an integral part of his
life since the moment of birth forced him to inhale.

Bubbles floated upward and burst. Then Barry Barr was lying in the ooze
of the bottom. And he was breathing, extracting vital oxygen from the
brackish, silt-clouded water.


                                  III

Slowly his racing heartbeat returned to normal. Gradually he became
aware of the stench of decaying plants and of musky taints he knew
instinctively were the scents of underwater animals. Then with a shock
the meaning became clear. He had become a water-breather, cut off from
all other Earthmen, no longer entirely human. His fellows in the colony
were separated from him now by a gulf more absolute than the airless
void between Earth and Venus.

Something slippery and alive touched him near one armpit. He opened
his eyes in the black water and his groping hand clutched something
burrowing into his skin. With a shudder of revulsion he crushed a fat
worm between his fingers.

Then dozens of them--hundreds--were upon him from all sides. He was
wearing only a pair of khaki pants but the worms ignored his chest to
congregate around his face, intent on attacking the tender skin of his
eyelids.

For a minute his flailing hands fought them off, but they came in
increasing numbers and clung like leeches. Pain spread as they bit and
burrowed, and blindly he began to swim.

Faster and faster. He could sense the winding banks of the slough and
kept to midchannel, swimming with his eyes tightly closed. One by one
the worms dropped off.

He stopped, opened his eyes, not on complete darkness this time but on
a faint blue-green luminescence from far below. The water was saltier
here, and clearer.

He had swum down the slough and out into the ocean. He tried to turn
back, obsessed by a desire to be near the colony even though he
could not go ashore without strangling, but he had lost all sense of
direction.

He was still weak and his lungs were not completely adjusted to
underwater life. Again he grew dizzy and faint. The slow movements of
hands and feet that held him just below the surface grew feeble and
ceased. He sank.

Down into dimly luminous water he dropped, and with his respiratory
system completely water-filled there was no sensation of pressure. At
last he floated gently to the bottom and lay motionless.

Shouting voices awakened him, an exultant battle cry cutting through a
gasping scream of anguish. Streaks of bright orange light were moving
toward him in a twisting pattern. At the head of each trail was a
figure. A human figure that weaved and swam in deadly moving combat.
One figure drifted limply bottomward.

Hallucination, Barry told himself. Then one of the figures broke from
the group. Almost overhead it turned sharply downward and the feet
moved in a powerful flutter-kick. A slender spear aimed directly at the
Earthman.

Barry threw himself aside. The spear point plunged deep into the
sticky, yielding bottom and Barry grappled with its wielder.

Pointed fingernails raked his cheek. Barry's balled fist swung
in a roundhouse blow but water resistance slowed the punch to
ineffectiveness. The creature only shook its head and came in kicking
and clawing.

Barry braced his feet against the bottom and leaped. His head butted
the attacker's chest and at the same instant he lashed a short jab to
the creature's belly. It slumped momentarily, its face working.

Human--or nearly so--the thing was, with a stocky, powerful body and
webbed hands and feet. A few scraps of clothing, seemingly worn more
for ornament than covering, clung to the fishbelly-white skin. The face
was coarse and savage.

It shook off the effects of Barry's punch and one webbed hand snatched
a short tube from its belt.

Barry remembered the spring-opening knife in his pocket, and even as
he flicked the blade out the tube-weapon fired. Sound thrummed in the
water and the water grew milky with a myriad of bubbles. Something
zipped past his head, uncomfortably close.

Then Barry struck, felt his knife slice flesh and grate against bone.
He struck again even as the undersea being screamed and went limp.

Barry stared through the reddening water.

Another figure plunged toward him. Barry jerked the dead Venusian's
spear from the mud and raised it defensively.

But the figure paid no attention. This one was a female who fled
desperately from two men closing in from opposite sides. One threw his
spear, using an odd pushing motion, and as she checked and dodged, the
other was upon her from behind.

One arm went around her neck in a strangler's hold, bending her slender
body backward. Together captor and struggling captive sank toward the
bottom. The other recovered his thrown spear and moved in to help
secure her arms and legs with lengths of cord.

One scooped up the crossbow the girl had dropped. The other ripped at
her brief skirt and from her belt took a pair of tubes like the one the
dead Venusian had fired at Barry, handling them as though they were
loot of the greatest value. He jerked cruelly at the slender metallic
necklace the girl wore but it did not break.

He punched the helpless girl in the abdomen with the butt of his spear.
The girl writhed but she did not attempt to cry out.

Barry bounded toward them in a series of soaring leaps, knife and spear
ready. One Venusian turned to meet him, grinning maliciously.

Barry dug one foot into the bottom and sidestepped a spear thrust. His
own lunge missed completely. Then he and the Venusian were inside each
other's spear points, chest to chest. A pointed hook strapped to the
inside of the creature's wrist just missed Barry's throat. The Earthman
arched his body backward and his knife flashed upward. The creature
gasped and pulled away, clutching with both hands at a gaping wound in
its belly.

The other one turned too late as Barry leaped.

Barry's hilt cracked against its jawbone.

       *       *       *       *       *

Barry bent over the girl and realized with a start that she was
different.

Her skin was a strange blue-brown. Her features were delicate,
intelligent, very different from the savage faces of the males he had
battled. Her dark hair grew further down the back of her neck than was
customary on Earth, forming a short, silky mane between her shoulder
blades.

She was slender of body, except that the muscles running down her sides
from armpit to waist were amazingly well developed. Her high-set,
compactly pointed breasts were uncovered, and he could see that any
sort of upper clothing would interfere with full use of those unusual
swimming muscles. Her skirt was short and close-fitting.

Her eyes, though, were filled with hatred, defiance, terror.

"I'm not going to hurt you," he said, hoping his tone would convey the
meaning.

She seemed more puzzled than grateful as he slid the knife gently
between her ankles to sever the binding cords, and she shrank under his
touch as he rolled her over to reach her wrists.

"There you are," he said, and started to straighten up.

Something struck him from above and many hands clutched at him. Within
seconds he was flat in the mud. Two Venusians held each arm and leg.

Another stood over him with spear poised.

But the girl shouted and grasped the spearman's arm.

The girl spoke with rapid urgency, pointing from Barry to her erstwhile
captors.

Barry could not believe his ears. The sounds were familiar. He could
even understand a word here and there, and in these entirely alien
surroundings the effect was eerie.

A Venusian looked at the pink clouds of diluted blood rising from the
bodies, then gazed apprehensively up into the dimness overhead.

"Kill him quickly and let us go," he suggested. "The torvaks will soon
come."

The girl turned upon him. "He lives!" she snapped. "From what yort he
comes I know not, but assuredly he is no noru!"

Although his right arm was pinioned Barry still clutched his knife.
Now the girl stooped and touched his fist without attempting to pry it
open. Barry surrendered the weapon.

The men allowed him to sit up, but they remained wary. Meanwhile the
girl was examining the knife with intense interest.

Barry smiled at her, and being careful to make no sudden motions that
might be misinterpreted he held out his hand. Hesitantly she laid the
knife on his palm while around him his guards raised their spears and
crossbows.

He closed the blade. Then, showing her exactly how it was done, he
pressed the button that let the five-inch blade snick out. Repeating
the demonstration, he handed it back with a gesture indicating it was a
gift.

The girl smiled and spoke to him, and although most of her words were
unintelligible he gathered she was asking if he wanted to accompany
them. Emphatically he nodded, overcome with a sudden dread of being
left alone on the sea bottom.

Her suggestion created consternation among the others.

"We must consult Komso," one suggested uneasily.

The girl frowned. "We do not consult Komso," she contradicted. "I take
full responsibility."

The man shrugged. "Let us go before the torvaks come," he evaded.

Weapons were slung for carrying and the band leaped from the bottom
and began swimming. Barry followed, keeping close beside the girl.

Although he relied more on power than skill he found himself able to
maintain their fast pace. He soon caught the knack of using the webs
between his fingers and toes.

And muscles trained under Earth gravity and without water support
seemed superior to those of the Venusians.

The men talked as they swam, and Barry remembered where he had heard
those particular combinations of sounds before.

A construction job had once taken him to an almost inaccessible
mountain section of Mexico and there he had picked up a few words of
the dialect used by the native Indian laborers. Aztec? Incan? Mayan?
Something predating all three? He had no idea of its origin, but the
similarity opened astounding trails of speculation.

The girl, he learned from hearing the others address her, was named
Xintel.

       *       *       *       *       *

An undersea cliff loomed craggy and irregular ahead. As the group
slanted up toward a black hole in its face the voices of the men took
on tones of happy relief.

But the girl was frowning.

The group which had held together compactly during the long swim broke
up, each man heading for the cave mouth at top speed. Barry saw that
huge boulders had been piled one upon another to narrow the entrance
until not more than three abreast could pass.

Xintel motioned to Barry to stay close behind her. She seemed to be
anticipating trouble.

It came as they started to enter. A huge, bull-necked man with a well
fed appearance in marked contrast to the lean muscularity of the other
Venusians, stepped out and barred their passage, arms outflung. Heavy
glittering bracelets jangled on his wrists. Something in the contrived
melodrama of his gestures told Barry that unseen eyes were watching
from the darkness.

"Xintel! What is this thing you bring to the portal of Tana?" the man
asked harshly.

The girl stood her ground. "He comes with me!"

"He's an alien. He must die!" The man's tone was arrogant.

Xintel stiffened angrily. "He will not be killed, Komso. He is not a
noru."

Komso's face reddened angrily. "But he is--" he began, and then stopped
abruptly.

"You would take this one, then, into Tana itself?" His voice conveyed
the impression that such a course was unheard of.

The girl nodded, motioning Barry to follow.

"Sacrilege! Offspring of a blasphemer!" Komso shouted.

Xintel did not pause.

Komso motioned and someone in the dark tunnel behind him placed a
loaded crossbow in his hands. He swung the weapon to cover the Earthman.

"Over my dead body shall this alien thing enter Tana," he snarled.

Barry stood motionless and helpless, trying to conceal his fear.

Xintel's voice was coldly defiant. "So be it, then. Over your dead
body, if you insist."

With a movement of feline grace and speed she snatched a tube-weapon
from her belt. She was bluffing. Barry had seen the savages who had
captured her test the weapons and find them unloaded. But Komso had not.

His face grew pale but his slitted eyes glared murder. "You bring your
own death. I tried only to save you from the consequences of your
folly."

He turned and swam into the opening.

Xintel did not allow herself the vestige of a smile. Instead she
grabbed Barry's wrist and pulled him after her into the black hole. In
the darkness she passed him his knife.

The passage was several hundred yards long but the girl guided him
unerringly around its turns. The Earthman's nerves were jangling.


                                  IV

They rounded a sharp bend and Barry gasped at the vista before him. The
passage opened into a tremendous cavern.

Far below on the bowl-shaped floor sprawled a town composed of
cylindrical houses higher than they were wide, scattered in an
irregular pattern.

He looked upward for the source of the cold yellow light flooding
everything, and a few yards above his head lay a flat silvery plane.
Just below it the water glowed, like the phosphorescence that
microscopic life forms cause in the tropic seas of Earth--but a
thousand times brighter.

The men from Xintel's group had taken no part in her altercation
with Komso save to watch in uneasy silence. Now they were scattering
downward toward the houses. Nearly all had been joined by waiting
women, but Barry saw two women swimming pitifully and dejectedly alone.
The battle into which he had been precipitated had not been without its
casualties.

He stared about as Xintel led him in a long dive. On the bottom were
trees--he had no other name for them--with stiff trunks and snake-like
branches supported by air-filled knobs.

Their pale leaves were covered with minute bubbles that gave them a
frosty appearance despite the warmth of the water.

There were no streets or paths between the cylindrical houses, but in
small areas around the entrances the bright varicolored seaweed-moss
had been worn away by Venusian feet.

A few Venusians eyed them in curiosity as they swam downward, but none
approached.

They touched bottom beside one of the houses. Xintel pushed aside
a curtain covering the circular doorway. Barry saw the house was
constructed by training and grafting a number of the large trees
until they intertwined. Its foundations were the roots that clung to
irregularities in the rocks.

There were no windows, and for a moment after the girl let the curtain
fall into place it was pitch black. Then suddenly the circular room was
brilliantly lighted.

From the ceiling hung a globe a foot in diameter, the translucent
floatation chamber of some subaqueous plant. It was spinning at the end
of a twisted cord, the luminous milky fluid it contained stirred by the
motion.

Xintel sighed wearily and hung up her crossbow. Then with a graceful
leap she vanished through a hatchway in the ceiling.

She returned, floating down with a pair of pronged darts and a small
round box with bubbles dribbling upward in a steady stream through the
perforated lid. She opened it and, with a fingertip, smeared a dab of
vermilion paste on the base of each dart. Then she pushed the missiles
base first into her tube-weapons, twisting them until a latch caught.

Her weapons prepared, the girl turned back to the Earthman and made the
universal gesture of eating. Barry had no idea how long it had been
since he had eaten, and for the first time since the Sigma sickness
began he was really hungry. He nodded.

She leaped upward and he followed her to a second windowless room above
the first, then up through another hatchway to a third. This was the
top of the house, for through an opening in the flat roof he could look
up into open water. Several baskets, woven of strips of undersea wood
and equipped with close-fitting lids, stood along the wall. In a wooden
cage a few dozen strange fish swam sluggishly.

With her bare hands Xintel caught one and pulled it out. She picked up
a dagger of the same material as the spears--an unfamiliar substance
which Barry had had no chance to examine closely--and jumped to the
open roof. She returned a few minutes later with the fish neatly
cleaned and divided into halves.

Barry was hungry but Earth habits were still strong. The girl saw his
involuntary grimace. She looked hurt. He forced himself to take a bite
of the raw fish and to his amazement found it pleasant. Evidently his
taste organs had changed with the rest of his body.

From the baskets Xintel took other foods of vegetable origin. Barry ate
ravenously.

The cumulative effects of fatigue overwhelmed him even as he finished.
He felt a sense of dreamlike unreality and detachment, as though
nothing mattered. The girl too appeared tired but he could see she was
bursting with curiosity. He appreciated her restraint in not bombarding
him with questions. At her gesture he stepped through the hatch and
floated down to the middle room.

The light there had gone dim but she gave the globe a deft spin that
brightened it again. She motioned to a wide pallet woven of resilient
fiber, and he lay down at once. There were no coverings, no need for
them in the soothingly warm water.

Despite his tiredness Barry's nerves were still tense and twitching,
and he kept hearing soft sounds as the girl moved about the room. After
several minutes he opened his eyes again.

Xintel had removed her brief skirt and was wearing only her silvery
necklace. She was anointing herself with an oily salve that sent a
pleasantly pungent odor through the water, giving special attention
to her wrists and ankles where the cords of the norus had chafed them
and to the livid bruises that were developing on other portions of her
slender body. She paused and smiled at him, not at all embarrassed.

Finally she came toward the pallet and without hesitation lay
down beside him. She stretched and moved slightly until she found
a comfortable position, and then her breathing took on the slow
regularity of sleep while the light dimmed.

For a while Barry remained awake. Half-formed questions spun madly
through his mind but when he tried to think rationally his tired brain
balked.

       *       *       *       *       *

He woke and sat up, floated up from the pallet in the unaccustomed
support of the black water, settled back slowly while he strove to
winnow true memories from the remnants of nightmare. The girl woke and
spoke questioningly. It required great concentration on Barry's part to
understand and answer, for he had forgotten much of what he had learned
from those Mexican laborers.

"Yes, I feel better," he said hesitantly. "But--."

In the blackness their bodies touched accidentally. Her skin was warm
and smooth, soft but with the firmness of underlying muscle. After a
long moment she drew away.

Barry blinked as she spun the light into brilliance. Her dressing was
a simple and brief process, and then she turned to him with an intent
look on her face.

"You come here from the Above." It was more statement than question.

Barry nodded.

"But from what yort? And how did your people change to live in the
Above?"

"I come from Earth."

"Earth?" she repeated with a puzzled frown. "There is no yort beneath
the seas called Earth."

Trying to explain was like describing color to a man born blind. With
the surface of Venus she seemed to have a slight familiarity, but she
had never glimpsed planets or stars, never seen the sun.

"You are from the World Beyond--and yet you are alive!" she said in awe.

She smiled and seemed relieved when Barry hastily assured her there was
nothing supernatural about his place of origin, but she understood only
that he was not an undersea dweller by birth. She hurried on to other
questions.

"But why have only you of all your people come to the Here?" she asked.
"And now--Oh, tell me how!--did you cause the Place Of Change to work
again?"

Barry frowned, trying to grasp her meaning. "An accident happened to me
out in space that made me different."

"You did not come through the Place Of Change?" She seemed bitterly
disappointed. "Then how will you return?"

"I will never see my own people again, I fear," he admitted.

Xintel made a soft sound of sympathy.

"I owe my very life to you, for I would have killed myself rather than
bear a child to those norus who captured me. You can stay here in Tana,
with me--if Komso does not cause your death."

Barry knew that if he were to survive he must learn the ways of this
undersea world. Alone he would soon perish. He had no choice.

"Who is Komso?" he asked.

Xintel spat a few sibilant words that were evident obscenities.

"He is Leader of the Chosen Ones, and he fears you. If the people learn
you come from the Above they will grow dissatisfied, for there are some
who still remember the ancient promises that we may return."

Barry was silent and thoughtful, considering the implications of
the things Xintel had said. The girl watched the Earthman with a
calculating look.

"You will help me?" she asked at length.

"Help you?"

"Perhaps together we can succeed where my father failed. Perhaps
together we can overthrow Komso and break the hold of the Chosen upon
Tana."

Barry thought of the open sea and the savage norus he had battled, and
he had gathered the impression that Komso was some sort of priest or
witchdoctor who would be an adversary without mercy. All he wanted was
peace. But peace, Komso's face had told him, was something he could not
have.

"Yes," he said flatly. He had no choice.

The girl laid her hand on his arm, confident and suddenly affectionate.

"Good," she said. "There is nothing we can do now. We must wait for the
right time."

       *       *       *       *       *

There was no night in Tana and the inhabitants slept whenever so
inclined, without set intervals. After several sleeping periods Barry
lost all sense of time.

Whenever the girl was not attending to the routine tasks of daily life
he bombarded her with questions. She asked in turn about Earth and
the colony, and at some of his answers stared and giggled as though
suspecting him of concocting fantastic lies for her benefit.

At her suggestion he did not wander alone, although most of the
Venusians regarded him with suspicious curiosity rather than hostility.

"Trust no one," she warned him. "For the Chosen have spies everywhere.
Komso may know or suspect that you come from the Above but the less he
knows about you the better."

A small cave branched off from one wall of the great cavern. No houses
were placed near its black mouth and the common Venusians gave it a
wide berth.

"That is the Temple of the Chosen," Xintel explained. "To approach it
means death."

Just outside the forbidden zone several huge baskets had been anchored
to receive offerings from each inhabitant. Food, tools, clothing, a
fourth of everything produced went to the Chosen and their master.

"What would happen if the people refused to pay tribute?" Barry asked.

"The Chosen have many ways of enforcing their will," the girl replied
ominously. "And no scruples."

The thirty Chosen Ones ruled the thousand or so inhabitants of Tana
ruthlessly and arrogantly, a government of impulse and whim without
fixed laws. The rulers were immune from all work, taking whatever they
desired, subject only to Komso's word.

The situation had apparently existed so long it had been accepted as
the only possible mode of life, and the submissiveness of the people
was shocking to the Earthman. One day he saw a Chosen One approach one
of the younger woman and curtly order her to follow him. The woman
shrank back, but at a black glare choked off her sobbing and moved
docilely away. Her mate, standing nearby, made not the slightest move
to interfere.

"He will get her back when the Chosen One tires of her," Xintel told
Barry later, her normally soft voice harsh with bitterness. "That is,
if the poor creature lives, for the Chosen are often brutal to the
women they take. If her mate had so much as opened his mouth he would
have incurred the wrath of the Gods Of The Deeps as enforced by the
Chosen."

       *       *       *       *       *

Occasionally Barry found himself wishing for a cigarette. That gave him
a wry laugh, but it also impressed upon him the fact that the Venusians
had created an underwater civilization without the knowledge of fire.
An unintelligent race could never have managed, and he wondered to what
stage they might have progressed without the yoke of the Chosen about
their necks.

Metal was known in Tana only in the form of a few ornaments of greatest
antiquity, about the origin of which it was forbidden by superstition
and tradition even to speculate. Almost all were in the hands of the
Chosen.

Xintel was one of the few exceptions, and upon examining her treasured
silver necklace Barry discovered that each beautifully wrought link had
been welded. _Welded._ That implied heat, which definitely did not fit
in a subaqueous environment.

He questioned her but she only shook her head. She had no idea of the
technique.

"It came through my family from the other life before the Place Of
Change," was her only explanation.

The most common substance for tools and weapons was something with
the cellular structure of wood but the weight and feel of cast metal.
It was slightly malleable and could be sharpened by grinding against
abrasive rocks, but it fractured when stressed beyond its elastic
limit. It fascinated Barry, not only because of its unfamiliarity but
because the Venusians had no tools suitable for working such a hard
material.

But Xintel explained. The soft wood of undersea trees was carved to
the required shape, and then the implements were taken to the Outside,
across the sea bottom to the Cleft Of Hardening. There the wood
underwent a change.

She had been returning from the Cleft--the Venusians always managed to
visit the Outside in groups despite the Chosen--when Barry saved her
from marauding norus.

The norus were outcast savages, hated and feared and despised. They had
long since learned the folly of attacking Tana, but whenever possible
would ambush anyone venturing into the Outside.

Males they invariably killed for their clothing and weapons, but
females the savages preferred to capture alive. The mortality among
their own women was frightfully high, particularly during pregnancy
and childbirth when they were unable to defend themselves against the
monstrous torvaks that scouraged the deeps, so replacement slave-wives
were in constant demand.

Tana was not the only undersea city or yort, Barry learned, but the
journey across the sea bottom was so perilous that communication was
most infrequent and warfare impractical.


                                   V

Komso had not forgotten Barry. Everywhere Barry and Xintel went a
Chosen One followed, and even though their actions were not interfered
with in any way it was nerve-wracking to know their every move was
being reported. Under such continuing surveillance his temper grew
ragged.

But he heeded Xintel's repeated warnings and the watchers learned
little. Finally the Leader grew annoyed and decided this outsider,
this potential threat to his unchallenged supremacy, had existed long
enough. And so had the girl who sheltered him.

Barry was helping Xintel in the fields beyond the house, harvesting
thick, meaty leaves that were a staple article of diet. A score of
Venusians were engaged in the same task nearby.

Something prompted Barry to look up just in time to see Komso and a
large Chosen One called Czerki hanging in the water some distance
away. They looked aside a bit too ostentatiously as they noticed the
Earthman's eyes upon them.

A frown crossed Xintel's face as he nudged her.

"We avoid trouble if we can," she whispered.

But Czerki swam unhurriedly toward them and caught Xintel by the
shoulder. The girl winced as the Chosen One swung her around.

"Give me that necklace," Czerki ordered.

Xintel's face was pale as he fumbled for the catch of the ornament but
her arms remained limp at her sides. Raising a hand against a Chosen
One was sacrilege punishable by death--and she had guessed what Komso
intended.

Barry took a step forward.

"Get your hands off!" His voice was deceptively soft.

Czerki turned with a challenging sneer. "You oppose the will of the
Chosen?"

"Barry! Don't!" Xintel cried. "He has killed many."

But the sight of the Chosen One touching her slender body was more than
Barry could bear. He took another step forward, his fists clenching.

Czerki whipped out a long wood-metal knife and smiled.

"Suitable?"

Duel. Xintel had told Barry of their custom.

In a move too perfectly timed for coincidence, someone thrust a
duplicate knife toward Barry, hilt first. In that instant the Earthman
knew he had walked into a framed-up battle against an expert, and with
the expert's chosen weapons, just as Komso had planned it.

He must smash that plan. Still empty-handed he braced his feet against
the bottom and dived. The Chosen One's knife made one startled lunge
and then Barry's hand caught Czerki's wrist. For a second Earthman and
Venusian glowered face to face, the Venusian's expression of surprise
changing to pain as Barry's Earth-trained muscles tightened.

Barry clutched, digging his fingers into the tendon of Czerki's wrist.
Czerki's face contorted. His free hand clawed out, but Barry caught the
Chosen One's middle finger and forced it back.

Joints strained and the Venusian whimpered under his breath as Barry
increased the crippling pressure. The knife dropped from Czerki's
numbed fingers, and then with a twist Barry brought him helpless to his
knees.

The faces of the watching Venusians seemed to consist almost entirely
of gaping mouths and staring eyes. Barry considered the situation.
Perhaps he could do more against Komso and his Chosen by discrediting
and releasing this one than by killing him.

"Enough?" he gritted.

The Venusian nodded.

"Next time you bother Xintel you die," Barry warned.

Czerki got to his feet.

"Look out!" Xintel screamed, just as the Chosen One's hand flashed to
his belt.

Barry leapt. His right hand, straight-arming, jolted the Venusian's
head back, and at the same instant his left whipped a deadly palm-edge
judo chop to Czerki's neck.

There was a sound like the breaking of a dry twig. Czerki's body jerked
once and the dart of his tube-weapon plowed into the bottom.

With a gesture of revulsion the Earthman dropped the limp body and
stepped back.

He looked about for Komso, angry enough now to force an immediate
showdown, but the priest had prudently withdrawn.

Xintel took his arm and smiled proudly for all to see.

"Come, Barry," she said. "It is over for now."

The uneasy stares of her people followed them, and only the
long-standing superstitious fear of appearing to criticise the Chosen
kept them from breaking into excited comment.

The stranger had not only defied a Chosen One but had killed in the
manner of a Leader, with the touch of an empty hand. All knew now he
did not come from another yort. And his companion was Xintel!

As soon as they were alone Barry turned to the girl.

"What now?" he demanded.

"Next time Komso will not underestimate you."

"What do you think he'll try?"

Xintel frowned. "Not force. One of the secret methods which have kept
the Chosen in power. Perhaps the Curse with which he killed my father."

"Your father?" Barry asked. She had never spoken of her family before.

The subject was obviously painful, but she forced herself to talk.

       *       *       *       *       *

Her father, Soren, had been an unusual individual from a family of
chronic dissidents, a doubter who despite the long indoctrination of
the Chosen still possessed the power to think independently. And in his
family there had been passed by word of mouth across the generations
all the ancient traditions of the other life which the Chosen had
nearly succeeded in consigning to the limbo of forgotten knowledge.

He had the courage to venture into the Outside alone, even into the
dread Above for short periods, to see for himself the things the Chosen
wished forgotten.

He had actually dared to organize groups for cooperative action and to
circulate whispers that the Gods Of The Deeps were a fraud perpetrated
by the Chosen for their own purposes. He had aroused doubt and become
the rallying point for all the latent forces of resistance.

For a brief but exciting time his efforts to undermine the priesthood
had been successful. But then the old priest of the Chosen had died
suddenly and Komso had succeeded to the post. Where the old priest had
been senile and vacillating, Komso took forceful action.

He had publicly named Soren a blasphemer against the Gods Of The Deeps
and had called down their Curse upon him.

A few sleeps later Soren had started with others toward the Cleft Of
Hardening. They had scarcely left the tunnel when dozens of torvaks
descended upon the group.

The others had escaped easily, the monsters paying no attention to
them. All had converged upon Soren and he died quickly.

Komso had regained unquestioned power. His curse had been fulfilled in
too dreadful a fashion for any to dispute his word.

       *       *       *       *       *

Barry developed an unwillingness to spend the remainder of his life
hiding behind Xintel's skirt. With increasing boldness, but conscious
always of the menace of the Chosen, he began to leave the house and
observe the Venusian way of life.

The undersea people bore him no grudge for killing Czerki, he
discovered. In fact the Chosen One's death was not mourned even by his
three women. But neither were the Venusians openly friendly toward this
strange outlander who spoke haltingly and killed without weapons. They
regarded him with mingled suspicion and awe.

Xintel's position in the community, he soon decided, was extremely odd.

Marriage relationships in Tana were informal, continuing only as long
as mutually satisfactory. Polygamy was an accepted institution. It was
customary for the girls of Tana to enter marriage relationships, on a
temporary basis at least, almost as soon as they developed the curves
of maturity.

Xintel was as beautiful as any female of Tana, and in addition she
owned a house and tools and weapons representing considerable wealth.
Nevertheless she was the only grown woman who did not have a mate or
ex-mate or who was not a widow.

One day he asked her outright about it, and she burst into tears.

For a minute Barry stared, nonplussed. He put one arm around her bare
shoulders.

"I didn't mean to hurt you," he said gently.

She snuggled closer in the curve of his arm.

"Don't talk about it if you don't want to," Barry urged.

She raised her head, "But you must know.

"When Komso put his Curse upon my father he could easily have killed me
too. I was but a small girl then, and my mother already dead. But he
had brought about the death of my father to display his power, and he
wanted the people to remember. I was to be a living reminder.

"But, he told the people, I shared my father's guilt of blasphemy by
being of his blood. Anyone mating with me would be contaminated, and
upon him too would fall the curse of the Gods Of The Deeps.

"The men of Tana are not cowards despite what the Chosen have done to
them. Some have faced and fought even the torvaks of the Outside. But
to act contrary to what Komso has declared the will of the Gods--that
they will not do. So although several have looked upon me with desire,
none have dared take me as mate."

There was pity in Barry's heart as he thought of the deep loneliness
to which Komso had condemned her from childhood on. More than pity,
he thought now. What had started with him as a matter of survival had
changed and deepened, become more than friendship.

"But I am not a man of Tana," he blurted impulsively. "And I love you."

Xintel lowered her eyes. "Barry, do you really like me--that way?"

"Yes."

"Then it is settled," she declared, and came into his arms. "See, it is
simple."

Later, still holding her closely, he told her, "Xintel dearest,
whatever lies ahead we shall face together."

       *       *       *       *       *

But even his newfound happiness could not curb Barry's restless
tension. Large as it was, the cavern of Tana was still confining to
one accustomed to the open sweeps of Earth, and the threat of Komso
hung like a looming storm cloud. And, despite much thinking and long,
fruitless conversations, neither Barry nor Xintel could see a way to
attack the Chosen's almost invulnerable position.

Roaming the great cave, Barry's attention turned one day to the gas
filling the upper portion. It gathered from the tiny bubbles given
off by the submarine plants, with even the living houses of Tana
contributing, and its level was nearly constant. Whenever its volume
increased beyond a certain point the excess spilled into the tunnel
leading to the open sea.

"What's up there?" he asked.

Xintel laughed. "It should do no harm to go there."

Together they swam high above the town along one insloping wall of the
cavern, passing through the thin layer where swarming microscopic life
furnished Tana's constant illumination, and reached the surface.

"Clear the water from your lungs all at once," Xintel instructed him.
"It's easier that way."

She exhaled as far as possible, water pouring from her open mouth, and
gasped in a breath of gas. He did likewise, and after some choking and
coughing, found he could breathe.

They climbed out on a slanting rock outcropping and he stared around.

"This gas must be almost pure oxygen," he said, his voice ringing
hollowly.

He looked around at the vaulted roof and irregular walls, noticing that
his breathing, while not painful, was somewhat labored. Then suddenly
the girl laughed wildly and did a few steps of a strange sinuous dance.

"What's the matter?" he asked anxiously.

She threw herself into his arms with limp abandon and squinted up into
his face as though having difficulty focusing her eyes. He believed he
understood, and besides he was beginning to cough.

She was giggling as he pushed her head under the water, but he had to
force himself to overcome his instinctive Earth reactions before he
could take that first breath of liquid.

After a few minutes Xintel gave him a shamefaced smile.

"Did I make a fool of myself?" she asked.

"Of course not," he replied gallantly but with a trace of
absentmindedness.

Slowly they let themselves drift down into the city, with Barry's mind
working furiously. He had remained out of water several minutes. He
though of the colony, and--until Xintel touched his arm--of Dorothy.

The experience gave a new purpose to his oddly timeless life. After
that during each waking period he swam up to the cavern roof. Each
time, as well as he could judge, he was able to remain out of water a
little longer.

At first Xintel scolded him bitterly, as from time immemorial wives
have scolded husbands for their own good. Upon the Venusians breathing
gaseous oxygen had the same effects as alcohol addiction on Earth. She
told him horrible stories of people who had drunkenly wandered into the
Outside and fallen afoul of norus or torvaks. She pointed out an oxygen
addict who moved jerkily and seemed half insane. Once she even resorted
to the ancient feminine weapon of contending amid loud sobs that he no
longer loved her or he would instantly cease his debauchery.

But Barry persisted, and after following him and seeing for herself
that he did not become intoxicated she finally accepted his habit,
along with his periods of silent thoughtfulness, as an inborn
peculiarity of her alien mate.


                                  VI

Gradually, so gradually he could not determine when it started, he
began to hear a new word whispered around the city.

"_Demon!_"

"The demons are not all dead!"

"The demons have returned!"

"The demons gather to attack us!"

"Only Komso can save us from the demons!"

"Is he--?"

"Perhaps her father, Soren Who Died Accursed, was a--"

"Have they found--?"

"Will the demons--?"

A shuddering uneasiness spread insidiously among the people, and their
attitude changed. Venusian men watched the Earthman with hostile
speculation in their eyes and hands close to weapon hilts. Women moved
aside as he approached, dragging their children with them.

Although not a single individual mentioned demons to Barry's face he
knew he was somehow concerned.

"Just what are these demons?" he demanded of Xintel.

He expected her to refer to some superstition, but she surprised him
with a definite answer.

"They were the last of my race to live in the Above--not devil-spirits
or supernatural beings at all. But they were outlaws and killers, and
so were not permitted to pass through the Place Of Change. Over this
there was great bitterness, and the Last Days were filled with hatred
and slaughter that is still remembered. But they are all long since
dead."

"You mean your people came here from the Above deliberately?" Barry
asked incredulously. "Why?"

Xintel nodded. "We--my forefathers--were to have come to the Here for
a short time only, for sanctuary. But our way back was closed when the
Place Of Change was destroyed. And the Chosen, gaining power, saw that
misfortune overtook those who knew the secret of the Place."

She smiled tremulously. "I hoped that you could lead us back. But you
too had lost the way of return."

"But why? What made your people come to the Here?"

The pain of ancient tragedy was in Xintel's eyes as she told the story.

"Around us nearly everywhere are creatures, living creatures, small
beyond all normal sight," she explained.

"There." She pointed to the light. "And another sort live in the paste
which produces gas. My people were always clever at making use of them.

"In the Above live many more types of these unseen creatures. My people
became too clever--but they were not as clever as they thought."

She glanced at Barry and spoke with earnest seriousness. "Some of them,
incredibly tiny as they are, are deadly. They get inside a person,
causing him to sicken and die, killing as surely as a spear thrust."

She hesitated as though expecting the Earthman to hoot in derision at
such an idea, and continued only when he nodded slowly.

"There were quarrels among factions of my people, breaking out again
and again with increasingly vicious fury.

"Ordinary weapons were not enough. With their skill my people took the
unseen things--they understood, then, a way to see them--and made them
change their natures to become more deadly still."

Barry shuddered as he guessed the rest. He remembered talk on Earth of
developing mutant, hypervirulent strains for bacterial warfare.

"The ancients used the special unseen creatures they had created to
fight their battles, and the slaughter was horrible beyond belief.
But then the creatures turned against their masters. The other tiny
creatures with which the ancient protected themselves failed, became
ineffective, and Death walked the entire Above unhindered."

It hadn't happened on Earth yet but Barry could picture bacterial
warfare out of control, spontaneous mutations loose, and no vaccines
or antitoxins to combat them. The warm, eternally moist atmosphere of
Venus offered ideal conditions. Perhaps that was why the Colony had
found only insects and quasi-reptiles. Infection could have spread from
homo Venusians to all related, warm-blooded life forms, blasting them
into extinction.

"Against that deadly smallness there was no way to fight," Xintel
continued. "And there was but one place to flee. So the Place Of Change
was built by the wisest of my race. But by the time it was completed
only a few remained to use it."

       *       *       *       *       *

Barry had no doubts who was fomenting talk of the demons. Komso.

But if the Venusians had once been air-breathers and had deliberately
become water-breathers there was still a chance that somehow he
could become completely human again. At least his condition was not
completely hopeless.

He could escape. His practice sessions had taught him to remain out of
water nearly three hours, as nearly as he could judge, and that should
be sufficient to re-establish contact with the Colony. But escaping
alone, leaving Xintel behind, was something he knew he could never do.

"How did the Place Of Change work?" he asked. "On what principles? Did
your Ancients actually understand how to generate Sigma radiations on
the surface of a planet? Or was the change accomplished in other ways?"

Xintel shook her head. "That knowledge has fallen into the hands of
the Chosen and been destroyed. Knowledge, except for themselves, is
according to the Chosen against the will of the Gods."

"Is there nothing left?" Barry insisted, grasping at straws.

"The Place still remains amid the ruins of Last City," Xintel answered
unexpectedly. "But it is wrecked and useless."

"How do you know?"

Xintel smiled sadly. "I have been there, twice. Soren once took me as a
little girl, and once I went alone."

"But how?"

"Long since have the creatures of deadly smallness exterminated each
other. Soren knew, and I know, and Komso knows. But Komso will not tell
the people that one can go to the Above for a short time and not die."

Immediately Barry wanted to see for himself the remains of Last City
and particularly the Place Of Change, but the Venusian girl demurred.
The trip was perilous, she said, and if they were to leave Tana now,
going into the Outside and toward the Above, it would only confirm in
the minds of the people that Barry was a demon. Anything that would
precipitate open action before they were able to take countermeasures
against Komso's plots would be a fatal mistake.

Reluctantly Barry put the idea aside, but he did not abandon it.
Instead he doubled his practice sessions in the oxygen at the top of
the cavern, driving himself until his chest burned and throbbed. He was
still a member of the Five Ship Plan whose duty was to the colony, and
besides he had a frightening surety that without outside help Komso
would eventually encompass his death.

       *       *       *       *       *

One day when they were returning from the fields in the far reaches of
the cavern they saw a man swimming away from their house. Barry put on
an angry burst of speed, but the distance was great and the furtive
figure vanished.

Xintel went through the three rooms inch by inch, checking all her
possessions--but nothing was missing and nothing seemed to have been
disturbed.

"We must have frightened him away before he could steal anything,"
Barry commented.

The girl frowned and bit her lip. "No. I do not think thievery was his
object."

"What then?"

"I--I do not know," she admitted uneasily.

Komso finally took official cognizance of the talk of demons. He
selected ten young men, not of the Chosen, and led them forth to
reconnoiter in the Above. The men went heavily armed, but still
superstitious dread would have prevented them from venturing to the
myth-haunted surface without the high priest's mystic protection.

Barry grew acutely uneasy when he heard of the expedition. It boded
no good for anyone except Komso. Hour after hour the underwater city
hummed with speculation. For Barry and Xintel it was a nerve-wracking
wait.

Then Komso returned--and with him came only three of the ten.

With lightning rapidity the story spread. There were demons in the
Above, and despite Komso's great powers they had turned overwhelmingly
potent weapons against them.

The mates of the slain were loud in their lamentations, and as though
following prepared instructions, the Chosen spread the rumor that
Barry, and Xintel too, were responsible for the slaughter. Barry was a
demon spy, and Xintel had turned against her own people to mate with
him.

Barry felt certain the priest had deliberately led his men into
disaster for the psychological effect. He had been building hatred, and
to one of Komso's mentality, seven deaths would be a negligible price
for this crowning touch.

Drawn together by a spreading terror the people massed near the center
of the city, each seeking company to stem their rising panic of
helplessness. Their mutterings increased, their mood grew uglier.

But with dramatic suddenness Komso appeared in the doorway of his
cave-temple and swam slowly forward. The murmuring died, then broke
out again with a questioning undertone. The priest raised his arms so
the sacred bracelets of office on his thick wrists flashed in the cold
yellow light. Then slowly, deliberately he began to speak.

He expressed regret for the deaths of those who had followed him aloft.
He had underestimated the malignancy of the demons, he admitted.

A shocked silence fell over the crowd, broken only by the grief
stricken sobs of one of the widows. He glared at the woman, and his
eyes made her cower.

The peril was dire, he warned. One demon had already penetrated the
sacred boundaries of Tana and others were gathering in the Above. Soon
they would descend and overwhelm the city unless the people of Tana
followed his leadership unquestioningly.

But the mission had not been in vain. Komso had discovered the demons'
plans--and their vulnerability.

"We killed one demon!" he boasted.

Barry gasped. Komso was too clever to tell an outright lie when there
were three surviving witnesses to check his story.

"Kill the demons! Kill all the demons!" A Chosen One began the chant,
and it was taken up and echoed by the crowd.

It sounded so absurd that a group of aquatic semi-savages could hope
to attack a surface settlement defended by the finest weapons of Earth
that Barry almost laughed. But he remembered Xintel's account of the
Venusian downfall, and was not so sure. Komso's forces would not
have to breach the defense perimeter of the colony to achieve their
objective. Bacterial warfare ineffective under water, could render the
surface uninhabitable again.

And the colony had no inkling of such a threat.

"Damn him," Barry thought. It was all so stupid and useless.

He fumed while Komso's words calmed, influenced, and finally controlled
with hypnotic completeness the emotions of his listeners.

"The demons shall die!" Komso orated. "I, Komso, shall call upon the
powers of the Gods Of The Deeps. Beasts of the marshlands shall come at
my command, smashing and overturning the houses and forts of the demons
in the Above! And then shall the Unseen Death smite them!"

The people roared their approval, and while they were still shouting
the priest turned away in abrupt dismissal.

Barry and Xintel looked at each other, their faces white and set, each
wondering what they could do.

A hundred thoughts flashed through Barry's mind at once, dominated
by the knowledge it was his duty to warn the colony. He had become
a freak through accident, but he was still an Earthman. But to make
his warning really valuable he must know more of Komso's methods. He
thought momentarily of invading the cave-temple to steal information or
even assassinate the priest, but discarded the notion. Komso would be
expecting such an attempt and have his Chosen Ones waiting.

       *       *       *       *       *

They were still discussing the situation hours later when Xintel
suddenly raised her hand for silence. A puzzled frown appeared on her
face and she dropped to the lower room. Barry, watching her peer around
the door curtain, saw her body grow tense. He listened, and his ears
caught a confused sound of voices.

"What is it?" he demanded.

"Men are coming this way, and they are led by Sanlan, the brother of
that Czerki."

"Komso's work?"

"Naturally."

Barry reached for a spear. "They won't touch you as long as I'm alive,"
he promised.

The sounds outside grew louder.

"Go in through the door," he heard a voice command. "Chase the demon
and his woman upward and out. Lart and I will attend to them."

Xintel leaped to the upper room and began tossing down baskets.

"Block the hatchway," she directed. "We will hold the middle room."

Quickly Barry piled them across the opening, thrusting extra spears
through the wovenwork and into the material of the floor. It was a
flimsy barricade but better than nothing.

Xintel loaded her crossbow. Barry stood beside her with a spear ready.

"Now!" the voice outside boomed.

Men poured into the lower room, shouting to keep up their courage.
Xintel, her face pale, squinted along her crossbow and thumbed the
trigger. A man screamed. A spear thwacked upward into the baskets as
the girl put her strength against her weapon's reloading ratchet.

"Can you hold them off a minute?" Barry whispered.

She nodded, and he leaped to the upper room. One basket remained, and
he found that by standing on it his head was just below the roof's
lower surface. With his knife he began cutting into the matted fibers
of the roof. He was nearly through when a whisper from above made him
pause.

"Psst! Lart, be very sure your thrust misses."

That was Sanlan, Barry guessed.

The other Venusian growled under his breath.

"Komso will have your skin if you disobey," Sanlan warned.

"But why?"

Sanlan chuckled. "Have you no faith?"

Barry resumed cutting, puzzled and suspicious, opening a hole just
large enough to admit his head. He had guessed his position well, for
Sanlan and Lart were standing with their backs toward him while they
watched the hatchway.

The Earthman withdrew silently, taking no chances that Sanlan's talk
had been a trick to draw him out.

Xintel glanced up as he dropped to the middle room. A confused
discussion was in progress below, for no man wanted to be the first to
rush the barricade.

"Give me both your tube-weapons," Barry demanded.

She turned her hips, allowing him to take them from her belt without
putting down her crossbow or relaxing her vigilance.

"Come at once when you hear me call," he directed. "We can't hold out
forever. It's run or die."

"Run? Where?"

"Outside. It is our only chance."

He leaped to the upper room again.

A tube gun in each hand, he thrust his wrists through the hole he had
cut. Sanlan and Lart were still waiting.

"Perhaps you should have others break through the walls," Lart
suggested impatiently.

Sanlan shook his head. "There is plenty of time."

But Sanlan's own time ran out just then as Barry triggered the weapon
in his left hand. He died instantly.

Lart whirled. Barry fired the other tube. Lart screamed and doubled
over in agony.

"Xintel!" Barry called.

She came up with a rush.

Lart was still alive, and he screamed as they emerged onto the roof.
Answering yells came from below.

"Let's go!" Barry barked as attackers began to swarm out of the house.

They swam desperately, side by side. The members of the mob trailed
after them, but although they split the water with bloodthirsty yells
they were reluctant in their efforts to close with the fugitives.
Xintel had taught them respect during the battle inside the house, and
Barry was a dread demon.

Barry broke his stroke to point. A large crowd had gathered around the
mouth of the tunnel.

"Women there too," Xintel panted.

As they drew nearer he could see she was right. Women and unarmed men
predominated in the group around the portal. They made no hostile
moves, but nevertheless Barry drew his knife.

And then, off to one side, he saw the unmistakable figure of the priest.

Komso watched their headlong flight with a thin smirk of satisfaction,
and as they drew near he pointed one arm at them in a ritualistic
gesture and began a resonant chant. A deadly hush fell over the
watchers.

"Accursed be ye!" Komso intoned. "Manifestations of evil who presume
to flaunt those the Gods have appointed to rule, be ye accursed by the
Gods Of The Deeps!

"Gods Of The Deeps, heed thy servant! Send thou thy creatures that they
may feed, that they may rend the flesh and grind the bones and destroy
utterly those whom I have cursed in thy mighty names!"

       *       *       *       *       *

Barry felt a crawling prickle of fear along his spine at the confidence
of Komso's manner. Xintel's face twisted in terror as she remembered
how that self-same curse had brought death to her father. The Earthman
felt an almost overwhelming urge to swerve aside, to swing in a
suicidal dive upon the priest and his Chosen guards. But remembrance of
his duties to the colony and to Xintel overcame blind fury.

It seemed too good to be true when he and Xintel plunged into the dark
passageway without interference. The armed mob followed, shouting to
the noncombatants to move aside--but they were in the clear. They
emerged from the tunnel mouth into the open, deadly, faintly luminous
sea of the Outside.

"Hold!" They heard Komso's shouted command behind them. "Follow and you
too shall be accursed!"

He did not have to repeat his order, for the Venusians were never too
eager to venture into the Outside. Instead they massed at the portal to
witness the fate of the demon and his traitorous mistress.

Suddenly the girl gasped in horror, clutching Barry's arm and pointing
upward and outward. Against the background of dim luminosity, far in
the distance, two bright pinpoints showed. Then three. Four. And then
more than he could count.

"Torvaks!" she gasped.

Barry stared aghast. As though summoned by Komso's words the terrible
undersea monsters were gathering from all directions.

Xintel's forehead wrinkled in desperate concentration.

"The Cleft!" she said suddenly.

Barry followed blindly as she dove toward the rocky, irregular bottom.
Each time he risked a glance over his shoulder the monsters were
nearer. And there were more of them. His muscles ached, but those
trails of ominous light acted as a powerful stimulant.

The girl led him along the bottom, paying no attention to landmarks but
relying solely on an intuitive sense of direction which all Venusians
possessed. Soon Tana was lost to sight.

How long the nightmare chase lasted Barry was never to know. Seconds
grew to ages and minutes to throbbing eternities. He concentrated
on swimming, swimming, swimming for his very life, and hardly heard
Xintel's words of encouragement.

"Just--a--little--further!"

Then stabbing, biting, burning pain seared his throat. Almost
intolerable. But Xintel was guiding him straight down into a narrow
fissure in the bottom. Her legs stopped their flutter-kick and she
allowed momentum to carry her bottomward. Barry too ceased his
exertions in a state of near collapse.

"Perhaps--they--won't follow!" Xintel panted.

Both looked upward. The monstrous shapes--they could see the gross,
hideous bodies now--seemed unwilling to follow their prey into the
crevice. They wheeled above in relentless circles.

One creature, like a gigantic moray with finned pectoral legs, made an
abortive lunge but turned upward again a few feet above them.

Another torvak's neck shot out, its armored head striking the
eel-creature a tremendous blow. Another monster swooped, fangs ripping,
and for a few minutes the water grew murky with spilled blood and
roiled ooze as the three huge beasts battled. The fight ended, and
once more the saurians took up a restless, watchful patrol above the
cowering pair.

Barry's breathing eased but the burning in his throat remained.
Something in the water was irritating the tender membranes of his
lungs, nose and eyes. He glanced at Xintel and saw that she too was in
pain. But it was this very irritant that was preserving their lives.
The monsters did not like its smell or taste.

"Maybe they'll go away," he said, not believing his own words but
trying to reassure the girl.

The cleft in the ocean floor was long and narrow, deeper than it
was wide, and at the bottom it tapered to a hair-thin crevice in
the bedrock. The steeply slanting walls were deeply covered with a
yellow-blue greasy jelly mixed with mud and silt. Barry recognized it
from Xintel's descriptions as the Cleft Of Hardening where soft wooden
implements were made usable. The crack in the bottom must extend deep
into the heart of the planet.

"Xintel," he asked. "Are there any weapons buried here now?"

"There always are," she answered, but her voice was filled with despair.

"Where?"

She did not know. When the inhabitants of Tana buried objects to be
hardened they were extremely careful to smooth the jelly over them.
Otherwise prowling norus would dig them up.

Pawing into the sticky, corrosive jelly with hands and arms they
began a blind search. Within minutes the girl gave a cry as she
uncovered a spear. She wiped away the clinging stuff, then wept with
disappointment. It had been buried only a short time and still had the
soft consistency of balsa. Angrily she threw it down.

Barry recovered it. As a weapon it was worthless, but it was firm
enough to use as a prod. Methodically he moved along the bottom,
thrusting deeply every few inches.

"Got something!" he called, and Xintel swam to his side.

       *       *       *       *       *

There were two spears and two long knives, all thoroughly hardened.
Within a few more sleeps someone from Tana would have made the
dangerous trip to pick them up.

Barry glanced at the shadows overhead. It felt good to have a weapon
in his hand again, even though logic told him a spear could never
penetrate the armored hides of those nightmare creatures. They could do
absolutely nothing but wait and hope.

He found a projecting rock that was relatively free from slime and
settled down. He wanted to think.

A sudden commotion overhead made him leap up. Two bodies came hurtling
over the edge of the cleft some two hundred yards away, with trails
of light glistening behind them. A torvak lashed out, missed, and its
frustrated bellow made the water vibrate as the newcomers settled
toward the bottom.

"Norus!" Xintel hissed in Barry's ear.

"They're not armed," Barry observed.

She turned on him peevishly. "But they're norus!"

Barry, not trained to hatred by a lifetime of strife with these
outcasts, felt sorry for them as they crouched trembling and gasping
from their flight. They eyed him furtively.

After the first few minutes, when it became evident the norus did not
intend to break the unspoken truce imposed by mutual peril, the girl
relaxed. Yet she did not turn her back to them.

For a long while she and Barry sat in silence. There was nothing to
say, nothing worth saying in their hopeless situation. The norus
watched stolidly, their eyes flicking occasionally between the pair
from Tana and the monsters circling overhead.

Then in a quick move that startled Barry the girl stood up, unfastened
her skirt, stepped out of the garment. She seemed entirely unaware of
her nakedness.

"Fan your hands back and forth," she requested. "Make light."

Barry complied, swirling the water to brightness. The norus watched
uneasily, staring hard at the girl. But Xintel was absorbed in
inspecting the fabric of her skirt, going over it inch by inch. A
couple of times she held it to her nose, but each time shook her head.

"Ha!" she cried suddenly, pointing to a slight, almost invisible stain.

"What is?" he asked.

"It may be--Give me your knife."

She cut away the stained cloth and wrapped it around the unhardened,
useless spear.

"What are you doing?"

She ignored his question.

"Take this and go part way up," she directed. "But be careful, very
careful, dearest--and throw it over the rim."

Trusting her knowledge of this undersea world, he climbed the slippery
wall. Halfway up he found a foothold. He tensed his muscles, heaved the
weapon with the peculiar pushing gesture he had learned was the only
way to throw under water. As the spear made a high arc he abandoned his
exposed position in a headlong dive.

Xintel shouted happily. "Look! Barry! Look!"

Above the cleft the water was whipped to intense brilliance as the
nightmare monsters converged on the spot where the spear had fallen.

"What is it?" Barry yelped.

Xintel laughed and threw her arms around his neck. "The curse, Barry!
The curse Komso put upon us!"

"Huh?" he grunted.

"Everyone knows those beasts follow the smell of blood, and that a man
wounded in the Outside is as good as dead. They follow other smells
too!"

At once he understood. "So Komso's curse is some powerful lure that
will bring every monster within miles to attack, but has a smell we
ourselves can't detect."

She nodded. "That one we saw leaving our house--he did it."

Xintel put down her skirt and even unclasped her precious metal
necklace. Stark naked and unarmed she started up the slope.

"Come back!" he yelled as he sensed her intention.

She paused, but then continued upward.

A shadow swooped.

"Look out!" Barry screamed. But Xintel had been alert and had thrown
herself into a plunging dive.

"Oh!" she sobbed as she pulled herself up beside him. "It's no good. It
has gotten into my skin. Probably yours too."

But after his burst of renewed hope Barry refused to surrender. "This
corrosive jelly might counteract it," he suggested.

Xintel's eyes were somber. "We have nothing to lose," she agreed.

They scooped out two troughs in the greasy jelly and buried themselves
with only their heads projecting, but at Xintel's suggestion they took
positions where they could keep an eye on the norus.

"Rub some on your face," Barry advised the girl. "In your hair too."

"It stings!" she complained.

"I know. But it's our only chance."


                                 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.


                                  IX

"As I was saying, gentlemen. Using the electric secondaries from the
ships, with submerged electrodes, you can set up a high-voltage,
low-amperage barrier across the slough that will stun without killing.
If this first attack can be warded off without killing, perhaps we can
establish friendly relations."

"What makes you think they could be friendly?" a man asked suspiciously.

"Because of a girl named Xintel who would undoubtedly become their
leader if Komso were killed or discredited. She saved my life, and
since then we have lived together and fought side by side. She is
waiting on the edge of the swamp now, an outcast from her own people
because she dared help me."

Dorothy understood more from his tone than his words alone conveyed.
Her face paled.

"Barry," she began, her voice strained. "You--?"

The door opened again and three men crowded into the room. One was
Robson Hind. The electronics expert's face went gray as he saw his
supposed victim still alive. Barry itched to get at him but for the
moment too much was at stake to permit personal revenge.

"Rig the shock charges at once," he suggested. "Xintel and I will do
our best to head off the attack under water."

There were objections. Some considered it too dangerous. A heated
argument broke out, but at last the council of captains nodded
agreement. A sublethal current was to be used, but it was to be
backstopped by mortars, machine guns and flame throwers. Any creature
showing its head above water was to be blasted on sight.

"I'll attend to the power supply," Hind suddenly volunteered.

Barry guessed what was really in his mind. From Hind's unbalanced,
paranoid viewpoint it was essential he be removed to forestall an
investigation. He turned to the spaceship captains.

"I most strongly urge that someone other than Robson Hind take charge
of the work."

"Why?" Captain Reno snapped.

"My reasons are valid, believe me. I'll explain later."

"The man's crazy!" Hind spluttered.

Captain Reno looked at his fellow officers and they nodded.

"Podtiaguine, take charge of the installation," Reno commanded.

The dry air was hurting Barry's lungs; Komso might attack at any
moment; and Xintel was all alone where hostile swamp met hostile sea.

"I've got to get out," he declared. "Give me a pair of liquid fire
pistols."

A storekeeper hurried to get them, and as Barry buckled the holster
belt around his waist he looked for Dorothy. She was gone.

"Remember," he warned. "No killing unless absolutely necessary, but
watch out for tricks. If my luck holds I'll be back. I have things to
settle."

He looked meaningfully at Hind, then turned abruptly and strode down
the hall, his ragged trousers flapping damply, his Venusian sandals
squishing at every step. The warm, stench-filled Venusian mist closed
around him, revivifying him and soothing his tormented lungs as he
started toward the swamp.

"Barry!" It was Dorothy.

"Barry, I want a straight answer."

"Yes?"

"Have you stopped loving me?"

His answer was unhesitating. "No, and I never will. But I have no right
since I became--like this."

She made a sound between a gasp and a sob.

"But that Venusian girl?"

Barry fumbled for words. "I--I love her too. It's just that
I--well--you and she belong in different worlds and I'm--I'm part of
both but not fully of either."

"Oh! But you'll come back--for short periods at least?"

"If I live through what's coming," he answered soberly.

She smiled with an effort. "Be careful, Barry dear, and--good luck!"

She turned, running back toward the buildings, and he plunged into the
reeking swamp, backtracking along his own trail of muddy footprints and
crushed vegetation.

He emerged at the fallen tree, dived in, and with a sense of relief
filled his lungs with water.

"Xintel!" he called.

"Here!" He swung around. The bank beneath the tree trunk had been
hollowed out by the action of ripples on the soft mud, and she crouched
there, protected on three sides.

"I was so afraid you weren't coming back!"

"I told you I'd return."

"Barry?" Her voice trembled. "Did you see--her?"

He nodded.

"And yet you came back to me!" She spoke as though she could hardly
believe it.

"Listen closely," he broke in. "What do the women of Tana think of
Komso's plans?"

"They know many of their men will never return."

"Do you think you could--?"

"Perhaps I could sneak back into Tana. But what good would that do?"

Barry frowned thoughtfully. "Could you persuade some of them, as many
as possible, to follow the war party and overtake their men? When they
see you're alive, that Komso's curse didn't work--"

Xintel shook her head. "Most have never been outside Tana in their
lives. Even to save their men they would be too fearful of the sea
dangers and of Komso's wrath. They would never follow me."

Barry drew one of his fire pistols and moved aside.

"Watch this," he told her. The liquid charge was self-oxidizing and
should burn under water, but there was a distinct danger the gun would
backfire. His nerves were screaming as he squeezed the trigger.

Scarlet fire lanced from the muzzle with a sizzling roar that nearly
broke their eardrums.

The water surged and heaved.

Xintel pressed her hands to her ears; her eyes were round with
amazement.

"What was that?" she gasped.

"That was fire," Barry answered, handing her both weapons. "Now you
have magic to surpass anything of Komso's. Would that help persuade the
women?"

Xintel smiled grimly. "They will follow me or else--And if Komso or a
Chosen One should interfere, would it--?"

"It would. And tell the women that if your people and mine can meet as
friends there will be guns like this for everyone. Norus and torvaks
will hold no more terrors."

"But you?" she asked.

"I must wait at the mouth of the slough and stop Komso there."

"But--?"

"Waste no more time! Hurry!"

       *       *       *       *       *

After she was gone he swam along the shore to the slough and settled
on the bottom. He waited interminably it seemed before he spotted the
distant streaks of light left by Komso's men, perhaps a hundred of them
in a close group.

He remained crouched, waiting until they were just beyond crossbow
range. Then he stood up, waving his arms to create enough light to
make his identity unmistakable. He had decided his only course lay in
turning Komso's own propaganda against him.

"Stop!" he commanded.

For a moment there was confusion in the ranks, and those in front
backed water.

"Come forth, Komso, and look upon me!" Barry called. "You are a
trickster and a fraud, and your curses are without power!"

Komso's jaw went slack and his face grew crimson. The priest spoke
softly to a Chosen One.

"Men," he declared. "Only a demon could survive the curse of the Gods
Of The Deeps--but even a demon can die!"

Barry almost missed seeing the Chosen One raise his crossbow, but some
instinct warned him just as the weapon twanged. He sidestepped and the
missile whizzed by. It had been close. If they were to open upon him
in volleys--

"Komso's curses are powerless but mine are not!" he declared loudly,
concealing his nervousness. "You are forgiven this time, but the next
man who raises a weapon against me will feel my wrath. He shall die
screaming in slow agony!"

"Rush him! Kill him!" Komso ordered, attempting to rally his wavering
ranks. But Barry's boast, and their belief that he was a demon, held
them back.

Barry scanned the sea for the patch of light that would indicate Xintel
approaching with the women of Tana. Nothing. Stalling was his only
chance.

"Men of Tana," he began. "If you follow Komso you go to certain death.
Already you have seen that his so-called curse means nothing. And now I
shall tell you how--"

"Close your ears!" Komso shrieked. "Listen to this infidel and the
curse of the Gods will be upon you too!"

The men trembled, torn between fear of the demon and fear of their own
leader.

"Those from Above would be your friends," Barry argued. "They are not
demons, but men very like yourselves."

"Liar!" Komso bellowed. "The people of Tana are the only true men!"

The warriors nodded, accepting the oft-repeated dogma as indisputable
truth. Barry realized it was useless to argue. He waited, hoping
something would swing the balance. Meanwhile Komso deployed his forces
in a crescent across the mouth of the slough. To Barry it looked like
preparation for a rush that would overwhelm him.

Each warrior, he saw, carried a large sealed wooden cylinder. They
handled them gingerly. Barry guessed their purpose. They contained
the hypervirulent bacterial cultures with which the colony was to be
exterminated. But of course, to the Venusians themselves, they were
magic.

Just when it seemed Komso's men were rallying from their fright, Barry
sighted a speck of brightness far out to sea. One of the men saw it too
and called the priest's attention to it. Komso's stare of puzzlement
changed to fury as he made out the forms of thirty women.

Xintel darted ahead of the group, past Komso's men, and before the
priest could give an order, she had reached Barry's side.

"I had to use all the fire," she said in a low voice. "There were
torvaks, and it killed them."

Barry squeezed her hand, although he wished she had saved one charge
with which to impress the war party.

Komso's forces were disorganized. Several of the men had left ranks
to join their frightened, panting mates and a series of shrill family
quarrels were in progress despite all the priest's efforts. Men cursed
their wives for leaving Tana and were in turn cursed for everything the
near-hysterical females could lay tongue to.

"Hear me!" Komso bellowed. "Hear me!"

The quarreling stopped abruptly.

"I challenge the demon to single, bare-handed combat!"

Barry gulped. He had wanted for a long time to get his hands on Komso,
and now the opportunity was here.

"I accept!" he said firmly.

Xintel's face was ashen; her lips were trembling.

"Barry! My father believed the Leaders used poison under their
fingernails; the slightest scratch means death," she whispered.

Barry dared not back down now. He watched Komso advance.

       *       *       *       *       *

The priest swam upward and stopped, slight motions of arms and legs
holding him there. Barry recognized it as a clever move. Komso had seen
what the Earthman's muscles could do when he was able to plant his feet
solidly.

"Come meet your doom, Demon!" Komso taunted.

Barry sensed the interest of the watchers. Many times they had seen
Komso's powers displayed, and they were waiting for the demon to flee
or die.

Suddenly Barry launched himself from the bottom in a headlong rush.

Komso dodged and his hands came out in a clawing, scratching reach. In
that instant Barry knew Xintel had been right.

He knocked Komso's arm aside and whipped his fist toward the smirking
face. It struck, but only a glancing blow. It left him floundering off
balance. The water around them glowed with increasing brightness as
they twisted and turned.

Again and again Komso's poisoned nails reached out, but each time Barry
managed to escape. He tried to maneuver the battle toward the bottom,
but Komso stayed above and made short, threatening swoops. Barry was
forced to move upward again or remain entirely on the defensive. He did
not dare grapple.

In desperation he relaxed his guard and tried a judo chop at Komso's
shoulder muscles. The priest uttered a cry of pain, but the blow had
not disabled. Fingernails scraping along his neck filled him with blind
panic. Luckily they failed to break the skin.

Komso drew away, dove in again, this time low, clawing at Barry's legs
and keeping clear of his punishing fists.

Barry drew his legs up, and as the Venusian passed under him, pumped
them down with all his strength.

One foot struck Komso's side. Barry felt something shatter beneath his
heel.

Komso pulled up from his rush. He turned, unhurt, prepared to dive
again. And then one hand went to his side, feeling through his
clothing. His face went greenish; his jaw sagged. His eyes rolled and
he screamed in utter despair. Barry was too startled to follow up his
advantage.

Seconds passed, and then there was a whizzing, hissing sound moving
through the water at tremendous speed. A streak of light. Barry barely
glimpsed the shark-like creature that burst through the ranks of
Komso's men. Straight as an arrow it came, ignoring those it knocked
aside.

Komso's third scream broke in the middle, unfinished. Then there was
only a spreading pink stain and a few remnants.

The dead silence that followed was broken by a yell of horror. Out to
sea specks of light grew brighter by the second. Warriors and women
alike milled in confusion, leaderless, and when one man started a
panic-stricken dash up the slough, the others dropped their weapons and
followed.

Barry hung in the water, still not comprehending, until Xintel shook
him out of his stunned inaction.

"Quick, Barry!"

Her legs churned the water at top speed and she guided him with
occasional touches. Once he glanced over his shoulder, and the glow
around the slough's mouth disclosed huge black shapes gathering.
Torvaks!

The girl swam close to shore where the water was thick and muddy and
fetid with the reek of decay. After a while she cut her speed so he
could come up beside her. No Venusians were in sight.

"His own curse!" she said.

Barry understood. Komso had been carrying a vial of his secret lure.
Barry's random kick had broken it, saturating the priest's clothing.
The beasts of the ocean had done the rest, and now, in addition, they
had the smell of fresh blood to attract them.

"I've got to get ashore at once!" Barry panted.

Trapped between the electric barrier and the monsters prowling the
slough, the Venusians would be doomed. With their leader dead, and
ravening death at their heels, they would have forgotten all about
attacking the colony, Barry hoped.


                                   X

Once more they reached the spot where the tree lay at the water's edge.

"Wait here, darling," Barry said hurriedly, and climbed out.

He lay on the tree trunk a moment, coughing the water from his lungs.
When he glanced up Robson Hind was standing there. Under his arms was a
submachine gun.

"You damned degenerate fish-man!" he said.

Barry could only stare helplessly as Hind's trigger finger tightened.
The man looked mad.

A shot barked from the swamp and at the same instant a slender arm from
the water caught Hind's ankle and jerked. The submachine gun roared an
unaimed burst as he toppled backwards. His head thwacked dully against
the wood, and then there was a splash as he sank.

Barry stood up trembling.

A coveralled and hooded figure emerged from the swamp, carrying a
carbine from which a wisp of smoke still curled.

"Barry, did I--?" Under the smears of mud Dorothy's face was pale.

"What are you doing here?" he demanded.

"I saw him following your trail, and I guessed--"

A head broke water beside the log. Dorothy fired, but Barry knocked the
muzzle skyward just in time to deflect the bullet. Then he knelt to
give Xintel a hand up.

The Venusian girl cleared her lungs, rubbed one webbed hand across her
eyes, then gave Dorothy a long, level stare.

"He breathes like you?" she asked.

"No."

"Good. Did she kill him or did I?"

"Is that your Venusian girl?" Dorothy interrupted. "And what are you
two talking about?"

Barry switched to English. "Hell's still loose. Got to get to
headquarters immediately."

He started off, looked back with a worried frown. Xintel had drawn a
tube-weapon to match Dorothy's rifle. The slender, coveralled Earthgirl
and the more fully curved Venusian, dressed in only a torn skirt, were
eying each other like two alley cats. He could almost feel the crackle
of emotion between them. He winced.

       *       *       *       *       *

"It's murder if you don't!" Barry raged.

Captain Stanley of Ship Two was in charge of the slough sector of
defense. He shook his head regretfully.

"Must have the approval of the other captains first," he said.

"Well, in God's name, get them!"

Barry strained his eyes, but the mist had settled down thickly. Only
the vaguest hints of heaving, convulsive movement were discernible
beneath the water. The air-masked crews of the machine guns and mortars
and flame throwers set up to supplement the stun barrier were tense and
jittery as they waited.

The radio handpiece crackled with static that drowned all
communication, so Captain Stanley sent a runner to summon the others.

Anger and despair contended in Barry's mind. They would be too late.
The heavy cables sprawled into the black water like great snakes,
lifeless in appearance, but he knew the torturing forces with which
they were filling the slough. And he alone of all the colony knew the
full horror of the torvaks.

Through the mist he could just see the building where Nick had set
up the switchboard, and he hoped he would be watching for orders.
Otherwise--

With deceptive calm he walked to one of the flame throwers, snapped the
latch releasing the bulky mechanism from its tripod, picked it up in
both arms.

"What are you doing?" Captain Stanley demanded.

"I'm going in," Barry declared.

The watching men were too dumfounded to stop him as he ran downstream.

Through the mist he saw something move just below the surface. A
Venusian woman, her muscles twitching in spastic convulsions as the
electric current ripped at her nerves. And then a few yards away a
shadow, misshapen and unbelievably huge.

Barry stopped, cradling the heavy flame thrower in his arms.

"Turn off that current!" he pleaded once again.

Without waiting for an answer he leaped.

The weight of the weapon took him instantly to the bottom. He sprawled
in the ooze. He had miscalculated. A million fiends were stabbing
with red-hot knives, and his muscles twitched and squirmed in insane
convulsions. His chest was clamped in a gigantic vise that kept him
from filling his lungs with the water that meant life.

But he was still conscious, still able to see the screaming forms of
Venusians who, in their flight from the monsters, had ventured too deep
into the charged area.

An ugly creature came toward Barry. It was shaking its huge body, but
it was coming on nonetheless. Its scaly hide and low-grade nervous
system made it at least partially immune to the electrical charge; its
killer instincts forced it to disregard the discomfort. Through the
reek of decaying vegetation Barry got a whiff of the acrid odor he had
learned to identify as fresh blood.

He struggled to raise his flame thrower, but he was unable to
coordinate his movements.

And then at the last possible moment the twitchings of his body ceased.
Someone, Captain Stanley or Nick, had pulled the main switch.

He brought the nozzle of the flame thrower around. Flame blossomed and
ricocheted through the water in burning globules. Concussion and shock
wave threw him face down in the mud, dazzled and deafened.

He picked himself up, gagging and retching at the taint of charred
flesh. The creature was still twitching in its death throes, stirring
the water to opacity. Through the silt Barry could see several Venusian
survivors moving feebly.

"Follow me!" he yelled, fearful that at any instant the current would
be turned on again.

Then he went down the slough in great leaping bounds while a howling
lust to kill mounted within him. The flame thrower, designed to be used
from a fixed mount, made a clumsy burden in his arms. Monsters, dozens
of them of all sizes and shapes, had come to kill. They remained to be
killed instead.

Time after time the flame thrower sent its blazing cone licking forth.
The water grew thick and uncomfortably hot, but little by little he
cleared a path to the sea.

Once he looked back. The Venusians were following, and on each face was
a look of adoration. Barry knew then he had made himself the new leader
of Tana. They crowded close, anxious to get away from the bewitched
waters. He motioned them to keep a safe distance.

And then suddenly he reached open water and the last of the monsters
died in fire. Barry looked down at the pressure gauges. The tanks were
empty.

The Venusians gathered around but kept a respectful distance from his
person.

"Get back to Tana, all of you!" he commanded. "Remain there until
either Xintel or I tell you otherwise!"

Without further questioning they obeyed.

       *       *       *       *       *

He would have missed the half submerged tree entirely except
for something white on the bottom, something from which small
carrion-eaters scuttled at his approach. Hind's skeleton, already half
buried in the ooze. Gunshot or drowning? Dorothy or Xintel? What matter?

The two women were still watching each other warily on the bank. But,
he saw with relief, they had laid their weapons aside.

Together, each in her own language, they bombarded him with questions.

He managed a faint smile although the skin of his face felt stiff and
scorched from the flame thrower's heat.

"No war," he said.

That should have finished it, and all he wanted now was rest.

But again they spoke at once. Their languages were different but their
meanings were the same.

"Barry, I want to talk to her."

Wearily he slumped down, nodding.

But as the conversation progressed he fidgeted uneasily. With the
amazing frankness of two strong-willed females, they were settling his
future while he translated. It was like a distorted dream.

They finally reached an agreement. Neither liked it entirely, but
both were unselfish enough to consider Barry's welfare. And both were
realists.

Barry blinked and blushed as he translated, but could not suppress a
feeling of relief.

"I really don't mind--too much," Dorothy addressed him directly. "But
if you ever tell anyone up here you're still carrying on with this bare
breasted fish-girl I swear you'll be sorry."

Xintel spoke. "I understand. She is of your own people. But please,
Barry, those of Tana do not need to know."

Dorothy and Xintel were watching him, waiting for his answer.

Two women in his life, both determined to remain. Either they would
resent each other, and through jealousy, make his life hell, or they
would become firm friends. He could easily become the most henpecked
man on all Venus. But to choose between them--

Well, boredom was one thing he need never fear.

He nodded.

       *       *       *       *       *

[Transcriber's Note: No Section VII heading in original text.]






        
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