Part 2 (2/2)

That last item was a weak point, a very weak point, but there was nothing he could do about it now. He could not wait for a plan. He had to go ahead and trust his own ingenuity to devise a means of getting to Aphrodite later. If he could keep Relegar from going back to The Pa.s.s until he himself could get through The Pa.s.s, then he would be unmolested, for Relegar was master of The Pa.s.s, and no ent.i.ty of any sort, not even as powerful a one as Netse, would touch any being in whom Relegar was interested unless Relegar himself should order it.

If Grant could get through The Pa.s.s and across Division Street he would be safe, for Aphrodite proper was under the jurisdiction of the Planetary Police, and even Relegar respected them.

Grant found the constrictor on the second day, lying in a shallow pool with only its dorsal spines showing. Working slowly and carefully and entirely under water, he located the saurian's head, concealed in a clump of floating gra.s.s. The reptile was still in something of a torpor from its meal, and Grant had no difficulty in approaching it through the water and attacking it with the heat-gun on the soft part of the neck below the head.

The first bolt must have gone through and severed its spinal column, but Grant risked destruction from the thres.h.i.+ng body long enough to burn the head off entirely. He got out on solid ground and waited until sundown for the monster's contortions to die. Then he worked fast. The flying scavenger-foxes were already settling on the constrictor's back and tearing out great chunks of flesh. He went back under water and cut out the saurian's gizzard with the heat-ray. He dragged it off to one side and tremblingly cut it open with his knife, and he was relieved and exultant when he recovered all fifteen of the stones. The bag had disintegrated, but he put the stones carefully in his pockets.

Then he went back once more. He cut off a piece of the hide two feet square. He took only the outer hide, which was dry and which held the great iridescent scales that formed isotopes after death. From some marsh-bamboo and some wire-vines he formed a s.h.i.+eld. By that time it was midnight. He turned his light on the pool where the saurian had been, and shuddered. The water was dull red, and alive with creatures fighting each other to get to the carca.s.s. The surface was covered with flying things, some small, some huge, all fighting, fighting.

Life on Venus was an eternal, b.l.o.o.d.y fight. This slaughter, once started, would go on for weeks, until the fighting creatures in this immediate area of the swamp were exhausted.

Grant snapped off the light as clouds of flying things arose. He started down the neck of dry land and walked all night, going as far as he could without submerging, getting out of range of the holocaust around the dead constrictor. Eventually he came to a lavawood tree. He examined it carefully, then climbed it. He found a crotch in the limbs. He lay down and hung his arms and legs over the limbs, pulled the s.h.i.+eld over him, and went to sleep.

From the brilliant, blinding light of the sun even through the clouds, and the vapor arising from the surface of the swamp, he knew it was mid-afternoon when he awoke. He started up, but long habit stopped him almost as soon as he moved. He opened his eyes and was fully awake, listening for the sound that had awakened him. He heard it, a rasping noise like the sound of a knife-blade sc.r.a.ped against the grain of a fresh hog-skin. He looked across the swamp. Less than fifty yards away was Relegar, walking toward him on the water. The sound came from the sc.r.a.ping of his gray poison-mandibles against each other.

Relegar's mouth, as wide as his body, was open. The two bulbous eyes gleamed like pieces of polished metal. They saw Grant. The spider's sixteen jointed legs, that held his purple body three feet above the water, moved too fast for Grant to follow them. The Uranian skittered across a hundred feet of water and walked out on the land.

His bone-sc.r.a.ping voice came to Grant in the tree. ”I'll take the stones now.” It was a sinister voice. Grant felt a crawling, instinctive horror as the spider came toward him, its jointed legs moving delicately. ”You've saved me some trouble by finding them.”

Grant overcame his paralysis and reached for the heat-gun. Relegar saw the motion and stopped. ”You can't hurt me with that heat-projector,”

he said. ”You might shoot off a leg, but I'd have you half eaten before you could fire a second bolt.”

The knowledge hit Grant with what was almost a shock that there was some way he could get the best of Relegar, otherwise the big spider would not have spoken at all. He well knew that he couldn't kill Relegar with the heat-gun. He could burn off a leg, yes, but he doubted that the infra-rays would affect the spider's body at all. He moved a little on the limbs, got a hold on the snake-skin s.h.i.+eld, and dropped to the ground.

Relegar darted forward to meet him. But ten feet away the spider stopped, and Grant knew he had felt the radiation from the snake-skin.

Relegar's mouth hung open, his white fangs gleaming in the red maw.

The two bulbous eyes were suddenly shot with the red fire of anger.

Grant did not hesitate. As he landed on the ground he fired a heat-bolt at one of Relegar's left legs. It smoked. There was an odor of burned hair. The queer material of the leg glowed white for an instant and then burned in two and the bottom part dropped off.

Relegar squealed. His two eyes almost exploded in a rage of red. He wasn't permanently injured--he would grow a new leg--but he was furious because he dared not come close to the s.h.i.+eld. The radiation would paralyze him within a couple of seconds. Grant saw his body sag a little on the corner where the leg had been, and then he had one of those flashes of intuition that every being had to have, to live long in the swamp. He knew how to win this fight. He trained the heat-gun on the second leg on the same side and pressed the trigger. That leg burned in two and Relegar's body sagged still more.

Grant started on the third one. A feeling of triumph was growing in him. Then Relegar charged.

Grant hadn't expected that. There was little he could do but hold the s.h.i.+eld frantically before him to try to ward off the fangs and the mandibles.

He had had no idea that the Uranian's body was so heavy. It seemed to Grant the thing must weigh three or four hundred pounds. It thundered into him and knocked him over as if he had been a straw. The heavy hoofs galloped over him. He was surprised, but he rolled on over and came to his feet, shooting.

He got the fourth and fifth legs this time. Relegar's body sagged considerably, but the spider, his entire body turning red with rage, spun around and charged again. This time the great mouth was open, the fangs ready, and the mandibles were extended. Grant left himself open until he could feel the spider's fetid breath in his face, then he flung out his s.h.i.+eld.

The sharp fangs struck it. Relegar turned into a tornado of fury for perhaps a second, trying to shake the skin from his teeth. But it was too late. The skin came loose, but the radiation had paralyzed the spider. He sank feebly to the ground with the s.h.i.+eld under him. His eyes glared with unutterable malignant hate, but that was all. His muscles were impotent.

Grant stood a few feet away, getting his breath, feeling the trip-hammer in his temple slow down to normal. Then he aimed. The sixth, seventh, and eighth legs burned off. He put the pistol in its holster.

”I'm not going to try to kill you,” he said. ”I suppose that's impossible anyway, short of cutting you up into small pieces, and I don't relish that idea. But I'll leave you the snake-skin. It will have pa.s.sed the peak of its radioactivity by tomorrow and you can start back for The Pa.s.s. But you won't go back very fast. You've got legs on only one side. It's going to be slow navigating, especially on water. In fact, I think maybe you'll have to wait until you grow some new legs.”

He patted his pockets filled with half a million dollars' worth of echindul stones. ”Long before that I'll be in Aphrodite depositing my stones at the First Interplanetary Bank.”

He watched Relegar's eyes turn dead, cold black, then he screwed on his helmet, adjusted the oxygen, and stepped off into the brown water.

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