Gwynn was wavering. “How long will you be gone?”
Powell noted he said “will” instead of “would.” Grinning, he shrugged.
“Not long, I think. When I get back, you won’t regret it.”
Gwynn was scribbling something on a scratch pad. He threw the slip at Powell.
“If you cross me,” he declared, “I’ll fire you like a shot, so help me. This time I mean it. I’ll blacklist you all over the System.”
Powell left the chief still making admonitory threats, and took the elevator down to the bar. Hector was busy with a collins. From the tangled wilderness of his face a long, curving tongue was flashing in and out, lapping up the liquor with frightful avidity. Powel! collared his assistant and sent him off to charter a two-man space ship.
That done, he turned his attention to the bartender and went about the business of stocking the vessel’s larder for the voyage.
“Venus is a wet planet,” he explained, “but there’s nothing but water. A few bottles of nectar won’t go amiss.”
“Nectar?” the bartender asked. “We don’t stock it. Got some Minga-liqueur, though, just in from Mars.”
“Whiskey will do,” Powell said.
SPACE traveling, via rocket, isn’t a cinch, despite the centuries of study and experiment engineers have devoted to the problem. Since the days of the early Tiling, Mirak, and Repulsors, since Schmiedl’s V12 and the Goddard designs, the rocketeers studied and planned and improved. But, as always, fuel remained the great problem. Waste energy held up progress for decades. In a planetary atmosphere an ordinary propeller is more efficient than a rocket, up to speeds of 500 m. p. h. It is only in the vacuum of space that the rocket craft displays its powers.
Since early times there has been rivalry between “wets” and “drys”—advocates of powder or liquid fuels. The wets won, at first with oxy-hydrogen mixtures, and then with new and marvelously improved explosives, safe and compact. But, even so, most of the space within the shell is devoted to carrying fuel-tubes. The vast distances between the worlds cannot be easily bridged.
Landing is another problem. The slight gravity and thin atmosphere of Mars minimizes it there; Venus is as yet too uncivilized to permit the construction of the satellite-stations that circle around Earth. Approximately fifty miles above our planet, equidistant, two artificial moons revolve—great asteroids painstakingly blasted from their courses and brought in over a period of decades.
On these space stations landing crews live, in artificial atmospheres in caverns below the surface. By landing on these satellites, rockets approaching Earth save days of circling and braking before entering Earth’s atmosphere at a safe speed. Superstratocars take the passengers and cargo down.
Two other smaller satellites revolve more than eighty miles above the third planet. These, beyond the Heaviside Layer, are vast radio and television stations, relaying their messages to and from the inner moons by visual signals. Since no radio waves can penetrate the Heaviside Layer, this arrangement makes communication between planets possible. Rocket ships revolving in orbits around Venus and Mars perform the same service.
Cloudy Venus is still an outpost. Over sixty-seven million miles from the Sun, with a humid, enervating climate and the everlasting rainfall that drizzles from the great cloud-blanket, the planet has an evil reputation. Few Earthmen live there. It is being colonized slowly, chiefly at the temperate polar regions (which are hotter than Sumatra or Java), and, curiously, practically all the vegetation is in the huge, rolling seas that cover most of the planet.
EONS of rainfall have destroyed the watershed. Most of the soil has long since been washed down into the great waters, baring the undersurface of rock. A few odd plant-forms, feeding directly on minerals, exist on the small continents. The oceans are not navigable, save by flat-bottomed, sledlike craft that skim over the tangled Sargasso. Denizens of upper waters are serpentine and eel-like, and can slip easily in and out of the intricate growth, which, hidden eternally from the sun, is bleached and transparent.
The depths of the oceans, locked by the surface growth, is an unknown mystery, though there are legends of a submarine, semi-intelligent race dwelling on the bathysphere’s floor.
White, shrouding mist hides most of the surface. The atmosphere, despite too much carbon dioxide, is breathable, but refrigerated suits are almost a necessity. Infra-red goggles are owned by each inhabitant. There is no truly intelligent life indigenous to Venus.
It is an outpost—a roaring, brawling hell, where even the polar cities are lawless bordertowns, where men live hardily and die easily. But for the exposed, valuable minerals, Venus would be uninhabitated.
The ship Powell followed was headed for Venus. During the voyage the cameraman several times attempted to communicate with his quarry, without success.
All space craft, entering the atmosphere of Venus, describe a narrowing spiral toward the planet. But Eberle’s vessel did not attempt this. It drove down into the cloud-blanket and was lost. Despite driving the rocket ship to the utmost, Powell was still far behind. But his instruments marked the destination of his quarry fairly accurately, with the satellite radio ships and the poles as guide marks. Eberle had landed, apparently, near the shore of Mare Inferum, one of the oceans.
Entering the atmosphere, Powell threw out a great, braking parachute behind his ship. It lowered until he could pump out wing-drags. In spite of them it was hours before the vessel halted its headlong rush enough so Powell could use his propellers. He located a radio beam, got his position by it, and headed for Mare Inferum.
BUT more than a day had passed since Eberle’s landing. Would there be any trace, any clue? Powell could not tell, could not even guess whether the ship he sought was still visible. The waters might have swallowed it.
“I’m taking a long chance,” he told Hector. “By rights I should have located authorities and told them where to find the Eberle ship. But we’ve got competitors spotted on Venus. I’m not going to talk myself out of a scoop.” Hector giggled.
At last, however, more by luck than skill, Powell found his quarry, or at least a trace of it. Very close to shore his instruments detected the presence of a large bulk of metal. A spot of oil still floated on the surface, and as Powell watched a bubble rose and broke.
“It’s down in the weed,” the cameraman said glumly. “Wonder if Eberle got out?”
He used autogyro props and lowered the space craft toward the oil-marked, slowly rolling surface below. Through his infra-red goggles he could see the steaming waters fifty feet down, in a prescribed circle bounded by white fog. Though the seas looked transparent, Powell could not see any sign of the space ship’s outline.
“What now?” Hector asked.
“I don’t know how deep the ocean is here. Can’t take soundings through the weed. But the ship will sink slowly in spite of its weight until it breaks through the vegetation. Then it’ll plummet. I wonder—”
The Martian rubbed steam from a porthole. “What, Boss?”
“We’ve space suits aboard. I’m going down.”
“In water? In weed?”
Powell nodded.
“Crazy,” Hector said. “You die damn and quick, Boss.”
CHAPTER V
Descent Into Green Hell
POWELL made his preparations.
Instead of carrying a bulky regulation underwater camera, he took a compact magnafilm machine. It used a spool of magnetized tape to record pictures, instead of sensitized celluloid.
The cameraman slid his machine into a socket on the front of his space suit, made the necessary connections, and donned the glassite helmet.
Powell added a small box of chemicals to his equipment, attached a rubber tube to it, seized a sharp-bladed knife resembling a machete, and was ready. No air-hose was necessary; oxygen was automatically renewed within the suit. An almost unbreakable line secured Powell to a windlass within the ship, grounded on an out-jutting of rock over the water.
With a
casual wave, Powell clambered out. The Martian slowly paid out the line, and the cameraman’s feet, legs, thighs, and body slipped into the water. No sensation came through the insulated suit. Green darkness took Powell.
The waters seethed with gigantic, squirming protozoa, rotifers. Vertebrate, serpentine fish coiled swiftly through the weeds. Almost immediately Powell was entangled. He could not repress a sudden chill. Many an Earthman had died in the strangling Sargasso of Mare Inferum, captured and prisoned by the weeds.
Transparent vegetation, invisible, yet clinging and tenacious, clutched him. Powell had to use his knife. The weights on his shoes kept him upright, but he did not sink far. The weed was too thick.
He gripped the nozzle of his chemical hose and directed a spray of biting acid downward. Under the onslaught the weed became visible as it blackened and shriveled. Fish, coming within the circle of death, struggled and collapsed. As Powell’s chemicals ate away the springy floor beneath him he sank down slowly, through a shaft of darkening sinuous sea-plants.
Down and down he went. How thick was the layer of vegetation? Powell could not guess. The waters darkened. He turned on a searchlight, spoke briefly to Hector via a tiny radio.
Below, the weed became less tangled. Here it had not yet closed in above the sinking ship. But Powell could get no glimpse of the craft.
Yes! There it was, an apparently motionless shadow beneath him. Suppose the vessel was shut, the doors locked? Powell might contrive to open one of them, but that would release a flood of water into the ship. Eberle would drown, if, indeed, he had not already succumbed. Then, remembering the patch of oil on the surface and the bubble that had driven up from the depths, Powell shook his head. The ship was not locked. It would not have sunk so quickly.
The squat projectile lay careened on its side, tilted at a grotesque angle. A mat of weed had formed under it. There was no light within. Powell sank down, meeting little obstruction now, till his feet grated on the metallic hull. He saw a black, circular gap not far away. He made his way toward it.
INSIDE the space ship, it was midnight dark. But the searchlight’s beam dispelled the gloom. Carefully, Powell let himself down into the interior. Then he gasped in surprise.
The control room, filling half the vessel, was a wreck. An explosion had obviously torn it apart. Scarcely a single object remained whole in the chamber. Metal was twisted and torn beyond recognition; even the quartzite ports were smashed and shattered. Fish busily devoured small red fragments floating in the prisoned waters. Powell felt sick. He managed to pry open a door and enter the ship’s other compartment. It, too, was wrecked.
But this was curious. The door separating the two rooms had been shut. Had two identical explosions taken place?
Powell captured one of the floating fragments of raw flesh and put it in a container at his belt. Then he made a swift examination of the ship. At the end of his search he had come to a conclusion.
He had found no trace of motive power. Certainly Eberle used no rockets. That was obvious. But Powell decided definitely that the ship had been dismantled before the explosion. Someone had removed all clues as to the means of propulsion. Certain vital instruments had been crushed, others removed without trace.
Eberle might have been responsible, unless his shattered body drifted piecemeal within his own ship. But, in that case, why hadn’t Eberle left the vessel while it was still in space? If he wished to avoid detection—That was it, of course. Telescopes of other craft might have been trained on the ship, and the thick fogs of Venus would hide any dirty work. But why? What was behind this enigma?
Powell thought he knew.
A sickening jar and a lurch threw him hard against a wall. He swayed up, keeping his footing with difficulty. A curious sense of motion appalled him.
The ship had broken through the bottom of the seaweed layer. Unhindered, it was plunging down through the bathysphere, into the unknown depths of Mare Inferum. And the cameraman’s line, connecting him to his own vessel, had parted under the strain.
He had to get out of the ship, and in a hurry. He stumbled to the open port. He felt the suction of the ship drawing him down in its wake. He kicked off the weights on his shoes. Instantly he shot up—but not far.
There was a brief upward rush through green luminous dimness. Faraway, pale, shining lights swirled and moved eerily. Powell had a glimpse of titanic shapes that swam in the secret waters. Then they were gone, and the invisible weeds closed around him. Powell was caught at the bottom of the weed layer.
Despite his buoyancy, it was difficult to determine which way was up. No light filtered from the surface. Powell scanned the surrounding green vagueness with the aid of his flash, searching for the broken line. He could not see it.
FROM his belt the cameraman took a metallic tube. First he shut off the camera which had been grinding automatically ever since his descent began. The steel capsule, thin-walled, was airtight and buoyant. Powell tied a short, thin line to it and attached the other end to his helmet. He let the tube shoot up to the end of the line.
Thus guided toward the surface, he used his chemicals and machete to slash and bum his way up through the weed. The growth had already closed in the tunnel made by his descent. Going up was far harder than fighting down. He couldn’t maintain an upright position. Twisting, straining, cursing, inch by inch he fought his way up behind the floating capsule.
It was nearly an hour before the cameraman found the dangling line. The jolt that disconnected it had also smashed the suit’s radio beyond repair. Powell realized he could get no help from Hector.
With the aid of the dangling line, the task was somewhat easier. No currents existed in Mare Inferum to disturb his former path. Before the suit’s oxygen gave out Powell reached the surface, with a slight margin of safety. Hector sighted his helmet, grappled, and helped his companion into the ship.
“Long time no see,” the Martian remarked, with commendable understatement. “Thought you die, yah.”
“Yah,” Powell said.
His thin face looked thinner. He seemed haggard, and his eyes were preternaturally bright. Oxygen under pressure had flushed his cheeks. He peeled off the suit, stowed the film can in a safe place. Outside again, he searched the rocky ground, sparsely covered with vegetation. A portion of this was crushed in roughly circular form.
The vines formed a springy mat underfoot, resilient and shiny, covered with scales that glittered frostily. The leaves were round and two feet or more in diameter, in order to secure as much filtered sunlight as possible. Powell scrutinized the ground carefully before he returned to his rocket ship.
“Eberle landed here,” he told Hector. “He brought a portable autogyro on the trip. That’s what he escaped in, after the space ship itself was sunk in Mare Inferum. The gyro went somewhere. What’s the nearest town?” He examined a map. “Buena Torres. A hundred and twenty miles southwest. It’s a hell-hole, a bordertown. But it’s the closest by nine hundred miles. We go there, Hector.”
The Martian swung the controls. The vessel rose and fled above the coastline. Powell, remembering the scrap of meat he had captured in Eberle’s vessel, retrieved it and used a microscope. He made a careful analysis and count. Finally he sighed with satisfaction.
“Not human blood. I thought so. Some animal. Anyone investigating was supposed to think Eberle had been killed in an explosion that wrecked his ship. Well, we’ll see what we can find in Buena Torres.”
Hector was wringing accumulated moisture from the tousled mop that veiled his face. He laughed in an inane manner. Luckily, Hector had long since been conditioned to varying atmospheres. Otherwise, because of the change from Mar’s thin air, he would have collapsed. Even so, wheezing gasps came from the blue-black tangle of hair.
BUENA TORRES was no civilized city. Tottering metal sheet lean-tos stood beside fibroid composition cabins. Seldom did Powell see a soundly constructed metal building. None was of wood. There was no wood on Venus, for one thing, and if there had b
een wooden houses, they would have warped and split in that hellish climate.
Reptiles abounded. Salamanders, chameleons, snakes, eels, worms, and frogs multiplied in the mud underfoot. These were encouraged for the havoc they wrought among the pestiferous insects.
Mercury vapor lamps set at intervals illuminated the tunnel-like street. There were no vacant lots. The town had grown painfully, shack by tumble-down shanty.
The street was crowded with men, and with women too, though prospectors never brought their wives to Venus. The polar cities were bad enough; Buena Torres was a back alley of Hades.
In place of a police force, the mining companies paid armed thugs to keep order of a sort. The one thing they feared was an uprising of miserably paid miners who might be incited to sack the mining stations and blast open the safes.
Behind the colonists came the vampires of civilization’s outposts, those who pandered to men’s vices. Gambling palaces flourished in Buena Torres.
Men lived at high tension here, and relaxed in the same way.
“Nice place,” Powell said under his breath, feeling for his gun.
His nostrils twitched at the unpleasant stench.
Barking of dogs, yelps and shouts, oaths and tinpan music, strident songs and laughter and cries made the town nerve-joltingly clamorous.
“What now, Boss?” Hector said. “Information. This bar first.” Powell steered his companion into a roaring clip joint filled with an excited mob.
He pushed his way through to a corner table, and shook his head at a man who wanted to start a game of poker.
The waiter appeared, a rubicund, bulbous man with a billy in his apron belt.
Powell ordered two whiskies neat, at the same time managing to question the waiter casually.
“They come in and they go out,” the waiter snarled. “I don’t know nothing. They all look alike to me.”
It was a bartender supplied the news.
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