'Did you see that?' exclaimed Freddy. 'It looked like some sort of huge dragonfly.'
'It was an odaani,' said the Tuuntu. 'When fried in oil they make delicious eating. You would be amazed.'
'Does much of your food come from the jungle?' asked Charles. 'I had assumed you had farms and orchards on your mountaintops.'
'No, Mr Prendergast, we do not need to waste our time on such things. The jungle provides all our wants. That is the beauty of Venus.'
'And who gathers them? Your slaves, I suppose.'
'Why of course, who else?'
'Isn't there a risk that they'll run away?'
The Tuuntu shook his head. 'They serve their goddess. I do not understand why you ask about them; they are not interesting.'
While the humans chatted, their perspiring crew laboured mightily to catch up with the other boat. It was only after coming to a long, open stretch of river that they realised something had gone wrong.
'Can't see them,' said Freddy, peering into the distance. 'They can hardly have got that far ahead.'
'Then we must somehow have overtaken them,' said Charles, not without a hint of satisfaction. 'They've probably got themselves lost among those islands we passed.'
Huft clearly thought so too, for he now brought the canoe to a halt, his weary companions gratefully resting on their paddles. Even then they were not greatly concerned. It was simply rather annoying. They were just discussing how best to meet up again, and coming to much the same conclusions as Wilfred had done, when they noticed their guide behaving in a most peculiar manner. He had bared his worn and blackened teeth in a horrible grimace and was noisily sniffing. Suddenly he leant far over the gunwale and immersed his head entirely in the river.
'I say, are you all right, old fellow?' asked Freddy solicitously. 'You haven't overdone it, I hope?'
'I told you — he is ijaanu,' declared the Tuuntu contemptuously. 'He should be beaten and dismissed. Instead we allow him to lead us up the backside of Maaltuth.'
Huft came up for air, puffing heavily. 'Stass!' he hissed, and immediately plunged in again.
'You see? Ijaanu, without a doubt. I do not believe in this Tuun Loriji. I do not believe in Torris Verga. If such a place existed, we should certainly have heard of it.'
'Sir, stass is their word for hush,' said Agnes politely. 'I think he wants us to stop talking.'
For a full minute they sat and gazed wryly at each other. Then, just as they thought he must surely drown, the old fisherman fairly exploded out of the water.'Krit!' he cried. 'Atapo pana, ban!'
Tired as they were, the thaalid needed no urging and immediately began paddling desperately for the nearest bank, at that point some fifty yards away.
'See, it comes!' cried the Tuuntu. In an instant the Venusian's languid manner had quite gone and there was real fear in his eyes. They all stared upriver where a fast-moving shape could dimly be seen, just beneath the surface of the water.
'If that's our beast, it's going to be a close race,' observed Charles. 'How big did you say they were?'
But even before the Tuuntu could reply, the krit was upon them, showering them with spray as it reared up out of the water. They had seen some strange creatures since arriving on Venus but nothing could have prepared for them for such a bizarre visitation. As Freddy was to tell later, it almost defied description.
'Thirty feet long if it was an inch, old boy. Looked like on a slug on legs. Nothing you could properly call a head, just a socking great gob, surrounded by tentacles. Never saw any eyes. Don't think it had any.'
With the quick instinct of the sportsman he had managed in the few preceding moments to load his rifle. Standing up, he now discharged both barrels into the creature at point-blank range, though with no noticeable effect. He was dimly aware of Agnes' screams, of the Tuuntu tumbling overboard, of Charles struggling in a mass of tentacles, and then Huft was beside him plunging straight into that terrifying maw and firmly jamming his paddle there. At this, the creature gave a hideous, choking roar and bringing a massive foot down on the canoe smashed it in two.
Freddy, an indifferent swimmer, was relieved to find the water only waist-deep. He had just managed to struggle ashore, half-dragging Agnes with him, when there was a loud crack, like a pistol-shot, and the enraged krit expelled the broken paddle.
'Run for your lives!' cried the Tuuntu. With surprising speed and agility for one of such sedentary habits he was already scaling a dead tree, which not having the space to fall entirely over was leaning drunkenly against its neighbours. The others swiftly followed, disposing themselves among the grey and leafless branches. So large was the krit that it could surely have reached up and plucked them from this doubtful sanctuary, but it seemed confused by the turn of events and contented itself with taking up station below.
Rather to his surprise, Freddy found himself still gripping his gun, though he had only a half dozen cartridges in his pocket. 'Where do I put the shot?' he demanded. 'Don't want to spoil it; make a nice trophy, what?'
'Your primitive projectiles appear only to anger it,' said the Tuuntu dismissively. 'They are not intelligent creatures; it will soon lose interest in us.'
'Then how do you kill them? With a ray gun I suppose.'
'That would be unsporting. A krit must be killed in the traditional manner. While his companions distract it, the hunter will climb upon its back and drive a poison-tipped lance into one of its blowholes. He does not leave until it dies.'
'Doesn't sound very sporting to me,' said Freddy.
'Would you care to demonstrate?' asked Charles.
'As you see, I have no lance,' said the Tuuntu. 'Besides, it is forbidden; I am not of sufficient rank.'
All that evening and the following night they clung to the tree and to each other, not daring to fall asleep. It was only at dawn that the krit eventually tired of its vigil and took itself off, slipping back into the water and disappearing as swiftly as it had come.
'Look at these,' complained Charles, as they climbed stiffly to the ground. 'I'm covered in sucker-marks.'
'They are marks of honour,' said the Tuuntu, sounding a little envious. 'Only the boldest of hunters go close enough to receive such wounds.'
'Has anyone seen old Huft?' asked Freddy, gazing around him. 'Dashed brave thing he did with that paddle. Saved our lives, very likely.'
But though they searched high and low there was no sign of the ancient popoti.
'My guess is he's inside the krit,' said Charles at last. 'A better way to go, at all events, than the jalaapa tree.'
At this remark Agnes rushed away to the water's edge, where she could be seen sobbing miserably. Casting a reproachful glance at Charles, Freddy followed her. 'There, there, Aggie dear, don't take on,' he said. 'Here, have my hanky. It's a bit muddy, I'm afraid.'
'I hate him!' sniffed Agnes. 'He doesn't care about anybody.'
'Now Aggy, you mustn't say that,' admonished Freddy. 'You can't possibly know what Mr Prendergast thinks or feels. It's not done to show it, you know. We have to be brave for your sake and Miss Daphne's. And the Migraani's, of course.'
'Well he doesn't care about the thaalid,' said Agnes. 'He shows that right enough. He thinks they're stupid and dirty and they're not.'
Since Charles's dislike of the thaalid was evident to all, Freddy had no ready answer. Instead he gave the little maid a hug and a pat until she stopped crying and said she was all right now, thank you very much, and she was sorry she'd said anything. It made him feel quite sentimental, for it was a good many years since he'd had to comfort a young lady, albeit under rather different circumstances.
'This really is most inconvenient,' said the Tuuntu, as they returned to the others. 'Without that old fool we have no idea where to go.'
'Yesterday you claimed he didn't know either,' Charles reminded him.
One of their crew – a thickset, oddly piebald individual named Effan – now approached them, talking urgently. Everyone turned to Agnes, who asked him to repeat hims
elf but more slowly. She was now their sole interpreter and it was perhaps this responsibility that was to keep her from despair in the terrible days that lay ahead. 'He's saying we must go inland,' she said, 'before the rain comes.'
'But why?' asked Charles. 'We can always go back up the tree. If we move away from the river, the others will never find us.'
The dead tree had been the most wonderful piece of luck, for with only their slimy aerial roots at ground level, the forest giants were normally impossible to climb. The thaalid, however, were most eager to impress upon the humans that their only hope lay in a forced march, to get out of the river valley and onto higher ground while they still had the strength to do so. To wait for rescue would be madness since it might never come. Remembering all too well another great tree being washed away, and with it their entangled spaceship, the humans reluctantly acquiesced.
There was, nevertheless, a good deal of wistful looking back as they moved, Indian-file, into the gloom of the jungle. They had little more than the clothes they stood up in, having lost everything when the canoe was smashed. Freddy had his rifle, and the thaalid their bronze knives and the little leather bags they wore always at their waists, but their spear-paddles and bows and arrows had all floated away. No-one was under any illusion about their chances of survival, for they had all been regaled with grisly tales of unarmed adults and young, lost only yards from home with nothing to be found of them next day but their bones.
Forcing their way along a barely visible game trail they managed perhaps half a mile before the rain began. It had taken them hours even to get that far. Unlike the riverbank near the thaalids' village, the ground here remained swampy and densely reeded however far they pushed inland, with the slimy roots of the trees rising around them like the columns of a crypt.
By the time the first drops penetrated the forest canopy they were already knee-deep in water and within minutes it was up to their armpits. It would, indeed, have submerged the diminutive Agnes entirely had not one of the thaalid taken her onto his back. Even here they struggled to retain a foothold against the fierce current, but somehow they managed to cling to the rubbery reeds until the flood once again subsided, leaving them caked in foul-smelling mud and beset by the ubiquitous giant leeches, which attached themselves to any patch of bare flesh.
That night the thaalid made a fire with their little spindles and carefully preserved tinder, not for warmth but to keep away the forest animals, whose glowing, omnifarious eyes swiftly encircled them. One of these creatures made the mistake of coming too close, and quick as the flash it was seized and dispatched. It proved to be a poor thing, hideous of aspect and consisting mostly of arms and legs, but somehow they managed to live off it for almost a week, scrupulously sharing out the brains and entrails and even cracking the bones to get at the marrow.
Nowhere was there any clean water to drink, though they were able to wring a foul-tasting liquor from the reeds. After a while, the humans began to suffer from terrible running sores that refused to heal, and by the third day they were so exhausted that they would gladly have lain down where they stood, probably to die there. But always the thaalid drove them mercilessly onward, stopping only when the darkness made it too dangerous to continue. The Tuuntu, Freddy noticed, suffered no less than he and Charles, and it occurred to him how helpless the Venusians' earliest known forebears must have been in very similar conditions, and how much they owed to the despised creatures who had saved and sheltered them.
It is doubtful if Agnes would have survived this nightmare but for the thaalids' tender care. They were not ill disposed towards the humans, even Charles, but they plainly loved the girl almost as much as her mistress and would vie with each other to carry her, even when it was not strictly necessary. For her own part, the little maid was rapidly becoming quite fluent in their outlandish tongue so that they chattered and even laughed together for hours at a time. It was also she, high on Effan's broad shoulders, who first saw the land rise suddenly and steeply ahead.
At last they were allowed to rest. A makeshift shelter was constructed and while the humans slept, the indefatigable thaalid set about hunting for food. They were considerably hampered in this by their lack of weapons and had to rely on a brightly-coloured lure and a simple trap to entice something resembling a giant leathery woodlouse. Baked with a special kind of root, to draw out the poison, these were better than nothing, but did little to assuage their hunger.
After a few days' rest, a decision had to be made; whether to make an attempt to reach their destination or to somehow return whence they came. There was no doubt as to where Vanapop lay, for with their uncanny sense of direction the thaalid could readily point towards it. That did not mean, however, that it would be easy to get there, and should they succeed in doing so they would have to set out all over again. It seemed altogether more sensible to try and find the fabled Torris Verga, especially since it could not now be more than a few miles away.
'I vote we go on,' said Charles, to general agreement.
'I don't think I could face going back, anyway,' said Freddy. Like the Professor, he was well into his fifth decade and had perhaps suffered more than his companions from their ordeal. Indeed, it was doubtful if his old sporting pals would any longer have recognised him. The once portly bon-viveur had grown so thin that his tattered clothing hung about him in folds, while his formerly rubicund features were now almost as transparently pale as the Tuuntu's. Like the others, he was slowly starving to death and thought of little except food.
The vegetation here was quite different from that in the river valley, its foliage more open and airy, with welcome glimpses of silvery-grey sky. The forest trees, no longer subject to a daily flooding, now had proper trunks and branches, and for the first time since they arrived on Venus they heard what they took to be birdsong. There was also a good deal of aerial crashing and gibbering, suggesting that while the forest floor might be bare of animal life, some at least was to be found tantalisingly high above their heads. Hunger being a splendid sharpener of the senses, it wasn't long before they spotted a plump, furry creature, about the size of a cat, staring curiously down at them.
'Worth a shot, do you think?' whispered Charles. 'We're not likely to get a better chance.'
'You do it,' Freddy told him. 'I'm so weak I don't trust myself.'
It so happened that at that moment the thaalid had fallen a few yards behind, but just as Charles pulled the trigger there came a great shout from Effan and much frantic whistling and arm-waving from the others.
'What the blazes is the matter with them?' complained Charles. 'They quite put me off my aim!' He must have hit his quarry however, or perhaps the branch on which it stood, for it now came plummeting downwards to land almost at their feet.
For a moment there was silence, the thaalid gazing at the stricken creature in various attitudes of horror and disbelief. The merest glance was enough to show why, for clearly defined on the snowy white fur of its belly was an all-too-familiar pattern of interlocking purplish stripes.
'Oh please, let this not be happening,' groaned Freddy. 'We've only gone and killed a bally voor!'
Effan turned and faced them, his eyes blazing with anger. For a moment he appeared about to strike Charles but instead he grabbed the rifle and smashed it violently against the ground. Then, with the tears coursing down his muzzle he prostrated himself in grief before his totem animal. One by one the others joined him.
Crouching beside them, Agnes diffidently reached out to touch the soft, dense fur. She seemed almost as moved by this disaster as her friends. 'They're terribly rare you see,' she explained. 'Every thaal's dream is to capture one for his village. It gives them enormous . . .' She paused, searching for the right word.
'Prestige?' suggested Freddy.
'Yes, that's right, sir — prestige.'
'Who told you all that?' asked Charles.
'Why, Hurf, of course, the one you call the witch doctor. He knows everything.' Suddenly she frowned and le
ant forward. 'But it's still alive!' she cried. 'Look, it's breathing!'
Soon a cage was made from woven branches, with two long poles to enable it to be carried. The creature was to be taken back to Vanapop, there to be nursed, if possible, back to health.
'But they can't do that,' protested Freddy. 'What about the Voorni? Don't they care about her? This is just an animal. Agnes, tell them!'
But despite all entreaties, Effan was quite unmoved. It was clear to him where his duty lay and if the humans didn't want to help, there must be a parting of the ways. His companions were already disappearing into the jungle as he took Agnes by the hand and tried to hoist her onto his back. He seemed genuinely surprised when she protested, but after a short altercation he let go of her and without a backward glance followed the others. The whole thing, from beginning to end, had taken less than an hour. They were now alone.
Chapter 17
Too weary to continue without rest, they had established an encampment high on a sparsely wooded watershed between two broad valleys. From this elevated position they could at last see, though it was still some way off, the rocky range of hills that must surely mark their journey's end.
'If we stick to this ridge, we at least stand some chance of keeping our feet dry,' said Freddy. 'The hunting's better up here, anyway.'
Their only weapon was a kind of bayonet, made by jamming the Tuuntu's knife into the barrel of their now useless gun, but with it they had managed to kill a large sloth-like creature they found hanging from a low branch. This they had achieved by falling suddenly upon it and pinning down the fiercely struggling animal by main force while Agnes repeated stabbed at it with the blunt blade. Its flesh had lasted many days and its fine, greenish pelt had furnished a serviceable, if rather exiguous, garment for the now filthy and blood-spattered little maid, her once-smart, black and white uniform having all but rotted away. Sitting cross-legged inside their makeshift shelter, the Tuuntu was now working industriously with the remaining scraps of fur, piercing them with a sharp fragment of bone and joining them with sinew.
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