Part 2 (1/2)

”Eliot, you've got to go to some place of safety until this is all over. You too, Eclipse, to take care of him. Let me see.... There's Cairnes, and Wilson.... Wilson's the one. He should be at his ranch now. You remember it: Ban Wilson's ranch, on the Great Briney Lake?

Right. Both of you will go there and wait. I'll meet you there when I'm finished. And at that time I'll either have the papers or know that Ku Sui has found the laboratory.”

Again on his feet, the old Master Scientist regarded anxiously this slender, coldly calculating man who was his closest friend. He was afraid. ”Ca.r.s.e,” he said, ”you're going back alone into probable danger. The papers--the laboratory--they're important--but not so important as your life.”

There was visible now in the Hawk's face that hard, unflinching will-to-do that had made him the spectacular adventurer that he was.

”Did you ever know me to run from danger?” he asked softly. ”Did you ever know me to run from Ku Sui?...” And Eliot Leithgow knew that the course was set, no matter what it might hold.

Ca.r.s.e again glanced at Jupiter, hanging ma.s.sive in the blue overhead.

”About three hours of daylight left,” he observed. ”Now, close face-plates. We must go up--far up--to get our bearings.”

Alt.i.tude swept back the horizon as they arrowed up through the warm, glowing air. From far in the heavens, perhaps twenty miles, Ca.r.s.e saw what he looked for--a bright gleam of silver in the monochrome of the terrain, where Jupiter's light struck on the smooth metal hides of a group of s.p.a.ce-s.h.i.+ps resting in the satellite's lone port, p.o.r.no.

Eighty, a hundred miles away--some such distance. Into the helmet's tiny microphone he said:

”That's p.o.r.no, over to the 'north,' and there to one side is the Great Briney. It's not far: you won't have to hurry, Eliot. Head straight for the lake and follow the near sh.o.r.eline toward p.o.r.no, and you'll come to Ban Wilson's ranch. Now we part.”

The three clinging, giant forms separated. The direction-rods for horizontal movement were out-hinged. A last touch of mitten-gloves on the bloated suits fabric; a nod and a smile through the face-plates; and a few parting words:

”Good luck, old comrade!”--in Leithgow's soft voice; and the Negro's deep, emphatic ba.s.s: ”Don't know how far these little sets work, suh, but if you need me, call. I'll keep listenin'!”

And then white man and black were speeding away in the ruddy flood of Jupiter-light, and Hawk Ca.r.s.e faced the danger trail alone, as was his wont.

Caution rather than speed had to mark his journey, Ca.r.s.e knew. Several ranches lay scattered in the jungle smother between him and the port--stations where the weed isuan was collected and refined into the deadly finished product. They were worked for the most part by Venusians allied with Ku Sui: the Eurasian practically controlled the drug trade; and therefore, if any alarm had been broadcast, many men would already be on the lookout for him.

So the Hawk dropped low, and chose a course through the screening walls of the jungle. It did not take him long to attain full mastery of the suit's controls, and soon he was gliding cleanly through the hollows created by the mammoth outthrusting treetops in a course crazy and twisted, but one which kept him pointing always towards p.o.r.no.

Presently he found an easier highway and a faster--a sluggish, dirty yellow stream, quite broad, which ended, he was sure, in a swamp within a mile of his destination.

Flanked by the jungle growth which sprouted thickly from each bank, a gray, ghostly shape in the shadows lying over the water, he sped through the dying afternoon. He kept at least ten feet above the surface, well out of reach of such water beasts as from time to time reared up through the placid surface to scan him. Once a huge gantor, gulping a drink from the bank, snorted and went trumpeting away at the grotesque sight of him--flying without wings!--and once too, on rising cautiously above the treetops to reconnoiter, Ca.r.s.e saw life far more perilous to him: a small party of men, stooping over a swamp-brink and plucking the ripe isuan weed. At this he dived steeply and fled on; and he knew he had gone un.o.bserved, for there came no outcry of discovery from behind.

Jupiter lowered its murky disk as the miles streamed past, breeding a legion of shadows welcome to the fabric-clad monster skimming through them and to the creatures who blinked and stirred as night approached.

The stream broadened into shallow pockets; patches of swamp appeared and absorbed the stream; and Ca.r.s.e knew he was close to his destination.

He cut his speed and glanced around. Ahead, the dark spire of a giant sakari tree climbed into the gloom. It would be a good place. The man rose slowly; like a wraith on the wind he lifted into its top-most branches; and there, in the broad, cuplike leaves, he warily ensconced himself. For man-sounds came into his opened helmet, and through a fringe of leaves, across a mile of tumbled swamp and marsh, he could see the guarding fences of the cosmetropolis of p.o.r.no.

A last slice of blotched, flaming red, the rim of setting Jupiter, still silhouetted p.o.r.no, sprawled inside its high, electric-wired fences, and the flood of fading light brushed the town with beauty.

The rows of tin shacks which housed its dives, the cl.u.s.tered, nondescript hovels, the merchants' grim strongholds of steel--all merged into a glowing mirage, a scene far alien to the brooding swamp and savage jungle in whose breast it lay. Here and there several s.p.a.ce-s.h.i.+ps reared their sunset-gilded flanks, glittering high-lights in the final glorious burst of Jupiter-light....

The planet's rim vanished abruptly, and p.o.r.no returned to true character.

For a moment it appeared what it was: a blotched, disordered huddle, ugly, raw, fit companion of the swamp and jungle. Then beads of light appeared, some still, some winking, one crooked line of flaring illumination marking the Street of the Sailors, along which the notorious kantrans flourished, now ready for their nightly brood of men who sought forgetfulness in revelry. Soon, Ca.r.s.e knew, the faint man-noises he heard would grow into a broad fabric of sound, st.i.tched across by shrieks and roars as the isuan and alkite flowed free. And all around the lone watcher in the sakari tree the night-monsters were crawling out in jungle and swamp on the dark routine of their lives as, in the town, two-legged creatures even lower in their degradation went abroad after the dope and liquor which gave them their vicious recreation.

The night flowed thicker around him.