“Flexible glass,” Thurm said, his voice muffled. “And the liquor is drugged. In a few moments you’ll both be unconscious, and we can search you for the gem.”
“Lang,” Griffin snapped. “Come on! The lifeboat—” He sprang to the door by which they had entered. But it was locked.
The Selenites watched silently, Griffin turned, drove his shoulder against the transparent barrier. It gave slightly, but the tough resilience of the material checked him.
“Why waste your strength?” Lang asked. He was still sitting cross-legged on the cushions, sipping at a drink. “This liquor’s good, if it is drugged. Wait till they’re off their guard—wait, Mister! Don’t forget . . . I’m a clever little fellow . . . The Venusians have a . . . proverb . . .”
His eyes glazed. He collapsed in a limp heap. Griffin’s muscles were watery; he made a futile effort to stay erect and failed. He went down into velvety blackness.
GRIFFIN woke up to find himself prone in a bunk, with the star-misted depths of space visible through a porthole in the further wall. The ringed splendor of Saturn shone coldly.
Flat on his back in a bunk across the room was Lang, painfully manipulating his shoulder. He smiled wryly as he saw Griffin’s eyes fixed on him.
“Awake, Mister?”
“Yeah,” Griffin said. “How’d you sleep?”
“Not for long,” Lang smiled crookedly. “They woke me up and took the Lifestone. It was—”
“I know. In your armpit, under the skin.”
The other’s eyes widened. “Oh, you knew? You’re pretty smart, too.”
“Thanks. But what are they going to do with us?”
“I have found out—a little. Very little. There are only two men on the ship besides Elander and Thurm. Robot control, mostly. What they intend to do with us—I’m not sure. I tried to induce ’em to let me join their party, but only succeeded in giving them a new idea. You know Selenites—gamblers.”
“They’d bet their last cup of water on the flip of a coin,” Griffin said. “Yeah, I know. So what?”
“So they don’t want to split the money they can get for the Lifestone’s return. The fat lad said, ‘One of us can handle this as easily as two. And the profit will be twice as big for that one.’ That got their gambling blood up—jumping Jupiter, Mister, imagine it! Staking a fortune like that on a chess game.”
“They always do it,” Griffin declared. “They’ll never take a dare. I remember—”
The door opened; a Selenite stood on the threshold, his drab coat of feathers showing that he was a worker. In his hand he gripped a needle gun. He jerked it commandingly.
Under the weapon’s menace Lang and Griffin preceded the Selenite back to the violet-draped room where they had first encountered Thurm and Elander. The two were relaxed on cushions, an intricate three-dimensional chessboard between them.
“Who won?” Lang asked.
“A draw game,” Thurm informed him, his fat face alight with keen interest. “Elander and I have devised a new contest. Another kind of chess—with human pawns.”
COLD foreboding gripped Griffin—a premonition of what was to come. Elander said, “Mr. Lang. I’ve drawn you as my pawn. Thurm sponsors Captain Griffin. You’ll be set down on Titan, weaponless, and will fight a duel. The survivor will be landed safely not far from Ganymede City. If you win, Mr. Lang—if you kill Captain Griffin, I’ll take the Lifestone and set you down on Ganymede. Alive, incidentally.”
“How do I know you’ll keep your word?” Lang asked. A mask had dropped over his round, youthful face; the brown eyes were hawk-watchful.
“You don’t. You’ll have to take a chance. But I think you’d rather take that chance than be shot out of a torpedo tube. One dies quickly in space without armor.”
“You’re crazy,” Griffin broke in. “This is—well, it’s ridiculous. You can’t—”
“But we can!” Thurm beamed with delight, ran spatulate fingers through his feathery, iridescent hair. “You have no choice, you see. We’re slanting down to Titan now, and in a few minutes the game will begin.”
Griffin was silent. Titan, sixth moon of Saturn, was an outpost of the system.
There was life there, but not human life. The air, though thick, was breathable; yet there was no reason for men to brave the perils of this world. It was poor in minerals, possessed nothing that could not be secured more cheaply on other planets. It was unmapped, uncharted, a fantastic wilderness of teeming, alien life.
Elander turned to a port. “A valley—here. I shall land you, Captain Griffin, at one end; Mr. Lang at the other. You will be unarmed, save for a rocket flare apiece. There are no rules. The man who survives will be the one who goes back to Ganymede. As soon as your task is accomplished, fire the rocket. We shall then descend and view the result.”
Thurm murmured an order; the space ship drove down. Suddenly giant, sickly yellow vegetation was all around them. The vessel grounded with a gentle jar.
The door swung open; Thurm pointed. “Here you leave us, Captain Griffin. Your rocket—” He gave it to the man. “Is everything clear?”
Griffin glanced around quickly. Thurm’s finger hovered over the lever that would lift the barrier of flexible glass. The needle gun still pointed at him, held unwaveringly by the dull-feathered Selenite.
Shrugging, Griffin stepped out of the ship. The door clanged; with a scream of displaced air the vessel raced up.
Above him the gigantic ringed globe of Saturn hung ominously. The stir and rustle of alien life murmured on the hot, oppressive wind.
CHAPTER THREE
The Hunt
A STRANGE world, Titan—teeming with life, animal and vegetable, yet supplying no food fit for human consumption. Griffin wiped his face. He thrust the rocket into his belt, scanned his surroundings.
Yellow plants, gigantic, draped with long festoons of delicate tracery. A vaguely sulphurous odor crept into his nostrils. From the distance a deep, hollow boom sounded, and the rush of cleft air. The ground slanted down at his left, and he cautiously moved forward.
The first thing now was to find Lang. Not to kill him—Griffin’s eyebrows drew together as he thought of the Selenites. They had overlooked the fact that their pawns were human beings, not helplessly inanimate objects to be moved at the whim of the players. Together he and Lang might be able to find some means of escape—arrange some trap for Thurm and Elander.
In the deep indigo sky Saturn swung, attended by a horde of glowing, tiny discs—the other moons. The ring was a shining, splendid setting for the jewel-like planet. Among the trees Griffin caught a flicker of movement, a vaguely-glimpsed, small shape that darted away and vanished.
He went on cautiously.
The trees thinned. At his feet a rocky plain stretched down steeply to a broad, dully shining ribbon, a river that flowed sluggishly between steep banks. Beyond it the forest began again, sweeping toward the high cliffs that bordered the valley. There was no sign of the space ship.
A noise strangely like the blare of an automobile horn made Griffin jump.
“Phonk—phonk!”
Bright eyes peered at him from the dark recesses of the undergrowth. As he turned it resolved itself into a mass of furry green, of indeterminate shape. Griffin waited.
Very slowly the creature came forth, staring inquisitively. It was about a foot high, with a plump globe of a body surmounted by an almost wedge-shaped head. Bulbous eyes, on short stalks, watched. A growth of cilia fringed the gaping mouth, and dwarfing the little head was a long, bladder-like nose that drooped disconsolately. It padded forward on stumpy legs; the arms were apparently boneless, ending in tiny fringes which seemed to serve as hands.
“Phonk!” the thing said mournfully.
Griffin put out a tentative hand. The creature scurried back, and as the man still advanced, it indulged in a curious stunt. The elongated nose suddenly swelled to monumental proportions, inflated with air until it was much larger than the being’s head. The little ar
ms came up and began to pound against the taut skin of the nose.
Immediately a low thunder of hollow boomings sounded, so loud and unexpected that Griffin jumped. He waited a moment, but as the drumming showed no signs of ceasing, he shrugged and turned toward the river. Halfway down the slope the booming died, and a loud, triumphant phonk reached his ears.
“Go on, laugh,” Griffin muttered “You’re apt to be my dinner tomorrow if I’m still on Titan. Though how I’m going to get off this crazy world—”
The sluggishly flowing stream didn’t look much like water. Occasionally inexplicable bumps would appear on its surface. Griffin hesitated, wondering how he was to cross.
A ND suddenly he knew that eyes were watching him—intent, curious eyes. Lang?
He turned, looked around swiftly. The phonking animal was gone; no one else was in sight. Faintly there came a deep explosion, and something skimmed up above the trees in the distance, pale against the purple sky, glided down and vanished.
Then, across the stream, Griffin saw a little animal running toward him—a scaled and glittering thing that moved swiftly on six spidery legs. No larger than his hand, it raced forward, and behind it came a larger one of the same species. The first darted to the water’s edge, leaped—and continued its flight over the surface of the water. The other hesitated, paused.
No, this wasn’t H2O—not with a surface tension that would support a such a creature. The scaled thing ran on.
Around it a group of bumps bulged the stream. Something burst up into the light, fastened on the spidery animal, and dragged it down. Almost simultaneously a dozen other creatures had leaped up from the depths, were wrestling with their prey, struggling desperately on the surface of the river. They looked like fish—but modified. The tails were muscular, shaped like those of seals. The pectoral fins were greatly elongated, the spines seemingly as flexible as fingers. The fish were jet-black, about as long as Griffin’s arm.
In a moment the spider-creature was torn apart and devoured. The fish seemed to hesitate—and their heads turned toward the man. The water’s surface bulged with innumerable bumps. Several more of the things popped up from the depths, and began to propel themselves shoreward with a peculiar humping movement, their tails and pectoral fins being brought into use.
“Hi! Look out for the skippers!”
The cry came from behind him. Griffin swung around to see a slim figure at the top of the slope, waving to him. Not Lang—for red-gold hair cascaded to the girl’s shoulders.
Did she mean the fish? The little things were humping toward him rapidly, like black slugs converging on a feast. Certainly they were ferocious enough, and, remembering the deadly Terrestrial piranhas of South American rivers, Griffin hastily began to climb the slope. Behind him a murmur of whistling gasps sounded.
The girl waited. She was wearing a glimmering, delicate web of some sort that billowed with each breath of wind. Tattered black leather showed beneath it.
“Lucky Jimmy brought me here,” she said breathlessly. “Those skippers would have eaten you alive in another minute. Whew!”
Gray eyes examined Griffin as he sought for an answer. “Am I glad you came along! I’ve been here nearly three months!”
“Oh, Lord,” Griffin said, his heart dropping. “Don’t tell me you’re a castaway.”
“You guessed it. I was on the Cyclops when the tanks exploded. Two weeks in a lifeboat, and we never knew the pilot didn’t know how to navigate till Titan caught us. The crash killed everybody but me and another chap—and he died in a week. Where’s your ship?”
Griffin explained in full detail. The girl looked sick.
“My luck,” she said bitterly. “The famous Kirk luck. I’m Frances Kirk.”
GRIFFIN didn’t answer. He was staring at the shining cloak the girl wore. It wasn’t a garment, and the slow, ceaseless ripple of movement that shook it spoke of life. And it seemed to grow from the back of the girl’s neck.
“Jumping Jupiter!” he said. “What’s that thing?”
She chuckled, touched it with slim fingers. “That’s my meal-ticket. Didn’t you know there’s nothing to eat on Titan?”
“But it’s alive!”
“Sure. It’s a parasite. As near as I can figure out, it uses a little of my blood whenever it feels like it. But it feeds me, too—proteins, carbohydrates, and so forth. Not a full course dinner, but it keeps me alive. It lives on minute organisms—the air’s full of ’em.”
Symbiosis! The true give-and-take between parasite and host—allied to the partnership of the anemone and the hermit crab. In Terrestrial seas the anemone, with its poisonous tentacles, protects its host, and in return helps itself to the food caught by the crab. Amazing and a little horrible—but a phenomenon not unfamiliar to science. The cloak-like organism supplied the vital enzymes—but what might it not take in return?
“How long have you been using that thing?” Griffin asked.
“Since I landed here—less a week.”
“And you don’t feel any ill effects?”
“Not any. Why? D’you think it’s dangerous?”
“Maybe not,” Griffin admitted. “But there’s no telling. Can you take it off?”
“Sure.” She tugged at the iridescent cape; a shimmer of movement shook it, and it came free in her hand. Two tiny punctures were visible on the back of her neck—clean wounds, on which two droplets of blood appeared.
“I’d starve without it,” the girl said. “So will you.”
“Not if we can get off Titan pronto,” Griffin told her. “Right now the first thing I’ve got to do is find Lang.”
“You’d better have a weapon. I’ve a revolver in the ship—shall we get it?”
Griffin nodded, and they turned back into the forest. The ground grew steeper as they proceeded, till at last they came out on a little bluff overhanging the river. The wreck of a lifeboat was there, warped and broken. Something peered out from the port and drew back hastily.
“What’s that?” Griffin asked.
“It’s Jimmy. He made friends with me after I’d fed him a few times. A native of Titan—come on out, fella! Come on: Want some candy?”
The furry, wedge-headed creature Griffin had already seen emerged. It jumped to the ground, stalked eyes wary.
“Phonk?”
“Candy, Jimmy! Come on.” The girl gave Griffin a bit of chocolate, said, “That finishes the larder. Feed him and he’ll be your friend for life. I’ll get the gun.”
She hurried into the ship, and Jimmy, after a tentative expansion of his balloonlike nose, hurriedly seized the candy and retreated, phonking with the air of one who has shrewdly outwitted an opponent. Griffin chuckled.
“Hi, Mister!”
It was Lang. He stood knee-deep in the underbrush a dozen feet away, his round face twisted with pain. He grinned crookedly.
“Found you at last.” His gaze examined the wreck. “What’s this?”
“A boat from the Cyclops,” Griffin said. “Where’s the Selenite ship?” He watched Lang closely, but the other made no hostile move. Instead he made a tentative step forward, staggered, and nearly collapsed. A crude crutch under one arm supported him.
“Ankle’s broken,” he explained. “I—give me a hand, will you?”
Griffin hurried forward. Too late he saw his mistake. Jimmy phonked warning.
The crutch came up, and the lower end was sharpened. The improvised spear thrust straight at Griffin’s unprotected throat. He tried to dodge, slipped and fell. Lang, no longer shamming lameness, sprang at him, the spear-point driving down.
To Griffin, flat on his back, the scene seemed to move with incredible slowness—the round face of Lang, looming against the purple sky, the sombre yellow foliage around him, the deadly weapon coming closer and closer . . .
CHAPTER FOUR
The Cannon-Flower
A GUN barked. The spear shattered, was torn from the hand that gripped it. Lang almost overbalanced, but caught himself in time an
d, with a glance of startled amazement, leaped away. The underbrush swallowed him.
Quickly Griffin got to his feet, turned to see Frances Kirk standing by the ship, smoke coiling up lazily from the revolver she held. Her face was pale. Jimmy was hiding behind her ankles, his stalked eyes horrified.
“Thanks,” Griffin said, and took the gun. “Brother Lang intends to play the Selenites’ game, I guess.”
“Looks like it,” the girl whispered, her voice not quite steady.
A hollow booming explosion sounded from not far away, and a huge shadow darkened the summit of the bluff momentarily. Griffin glanced up.
“I’ll have to keep my eyes open for him. It just makes things a bit harder, but—what was that noise, Miss Kirk?” A fantastic idea had suddenly flashed into his mind.
“The cannon-flowers—Captain Griffin.” Her tone held amusement. “This is a swell place to be formal! Call me Fran.”
“Okay. Spencer’s the label . . . cannon-flowers? What—” Griffin’s stare was watchful, but there was no sign of Lang. Abruptly he caught sight of the man far down the hill, near the river.
“Flowers as big as houses, almost. Those are their seeds you see flying around. They shoot ’em out, like some Earthly plants, and the seeds are built like gliders. The noise used to keep me awake till I got used to them.”
“Yeah,” Griffin said slowly. “That’s swell. I’ve a hunch . . .” He took out the rocket tube in his belt, eyeing it speculatively. “Do any of those cannon-flowers grow around here—not too close?”
“Why, yes. I’ll show you—”
Frances Kirk led him down the other side of the cliff. It overhung the river at one spot, and, looking down, the girl shuddered.
“Those skippers—I’m afraid of them, Spence. They watch me. whenever they can. Horrible things.”
Griffin looked down. Rocks bordered the river at this point, and a horde of the tiny monsters was visible. Black dashes against the white sand, they were humping themselves along, rapidly climbing the stones, and diving head-first into the stream, where they vanished.
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