Luckily for \u201cHam\u201d Hammond it was mid-winter when the mud-spout came. Mid-winter, that is, in the Venusian sense, which is nothing at all like the conception of the season generally entertained on Earth, except possibly, by dwellers in the hotter regions of the Amazon basin, or the Congo.<\/p>\n
They, perhaps, might form a vague mental picture of winter on Venus by visualizing their hottest summer days, multiplying the heat, discomfort and unpleasant denizens of the jungle by ten or twelve.<\/p>\n
On Venus, as is now well known, the seasons occur alternately in opposite hemispheres, as on the Earth, but with a very important difference. Here, when North America and Europe swelter in summer, it is winter in Australia and Cape Colony and Argentina. It is the northern and southern hemispheres which alternate their seasons.<\/p>\n
But on Venus, very strangely, it is the eastern and western hemispheres, because the seasons of Venus depend, not on inclination to the plane of the ecliptic, but on libration. Venus does not rotate, but keeps the same face always toward the Sun, just as the Moon does toward the earth. One face is forever daylight, and the other forever night, and only along the twilight zone, a strip five hundred miles wide, is human habitation possible, a thin ring of territory circling the planet.<\/p>\n
Toward the sunlit side it verges into the blasting heat of a desert where only a few Venusian creatures live, and on the night edge the strip ends abruptly in the colossal ice barrier produced by the condensation of the upper winds that sweep endlessly from the rising air of the hot hemisphere to cool and sink and rush back again from the cold one.<\/p>\n
The chilling of warm air always produces rain, and at the edge of the darkness the rain freezes to form these great ramparts. What lies beyond, what fantastic forms of life may live in the starless darkness of the frozen face, or whether that region is as dead as the airless Moon\u2014those are mysteries.<\/p>\n
But the slow libration, a ponderous wabbling of the planet from side to side, does produce the effect of seasons. On the lands of the twilight zone, first in one hemisphere and then the other, the cloud-hidden Sun seems to rise gradually for fifteen days, then sink for the same period. It never ascends far, and only near the ice barrier does it seem to touch the horizon; for the libration is only seven degrees, but it is sufficient to produce noticeable fifteen-day seasons.<\/p>\n
But such seasons! In the winter the temperature drops sometimes to a humid but bearable ninety, but, two weeks later, a hundred and forty is a cool day near the torrid edge of the zone. And always, winter and summer, the intermittent rains drip sullenly down to be absorbed by the spongy soil and given back again as sticky, unpleasant, unhealthy steam.<\/p>\n
And that, the vast amount of moisture on Venus, was the greatest surprise of the first human visitors; the clouds had been seen, of course, but the spectroscope denied the presence of water, naturally, since it was analyzing light reflected from the upper cloud surfaces, fifty miles above the planet\u2019s face.<\/p>\n
That abundance of water has strange consequences. There are no seas or oceans on Venus, if we except the probability of vast, silent, and eternally frozen oceans on the sunless side. On the hot hemisphere evaporation is too rapid, and the rivers that flow out of the ice mountains simply diminish and finally vanish, dried up.<\/p>\n
A further consequence is the curiously unstable nature of the land of the twilight zone. Enormous subterranean rivers course invisibly through it, some boiling, some cold as the ice from which they flow. These are the cause of the mud eruptions that make human habitation in the Hotlands such a gamble; a perfectly solid and apparently safe area of soil may be changed suddenly into a boiling sea of mud in which buildings sink and vanish, together, frequently, with their occupants.<\/p>\n
There is no way of predicting these catastrophes; only on the rare outcroppings of bed rock is a structure safe, and so all permanent human settlements cluster about the mountains.<\/p>\n
H<\/strong><\/span>am Hammond was a trader. He was one of those adventurous individuals who always appear on the frontiers and fringes of habitable regions. Most of these fall into two classes; they are either reckless daredevils pursuing danger, or outcasts, criminal or otherwise, pursuing either solitude or forgetfulness.<\/p>\n Ham Hammond was neither. He was pursuing no such abstractions, but the good, solid lure of wealth. He was, in fact, trading with the natives for the spore-pods of the Venusian plant xixtchil<\/em>, from which terrestrial chemists would extract trihydroxyl-tertiary-tolunitrile-beta-anthraquinone, the xixtline or triple-T-B-A that was so effective in rejuvenation treatments.<\/p>\n He was pursuing no such abstractions, but the good, solid lure of wealth.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Ham was young and sometimes wondered why rich old men\u2014and women\u2014would pay such tremendous prices for a few more years of virility, especially as the treatments didn\u2019t actually increase the span of life, but just produced a sort of temporary and synthetic youth.<\/p>\n Gray hair darkened, wrinkles filled out, bald heads grew fuzzy, and then, in a few years, the rejuvenated person was just as dead as he would have been, anyway. But as long as triple-T-B-A commanded a price about equal to its weight in radium, why, Ham was willing to take the gamble to obtain it.<\/p>\n He had never really expected the mudspout. Of course it was an ever-present danger, but when, staring idly through the window of his shack over the writhing and steaming Venusian plain, he had seen the sudden boiling pools erupting all around, it had come as a shocking surprise.<\/p>\n For a moment he was paralyzed; then he sprang into immediate and frantic action. He pulled on his enveloping suit of rubberlike transkin; he strapped the great bowls of mudshoes to his feet; he tied the precious bag of spore-pods to his shoulders, packed some food, and then burst into the open.<\/p>\n The ground was still semisolid, but even as he watched, the black soil boiled out around the metal walls of the shack, the cube tilted a trifle, and then sank deliberately from sight, and the mud sucked and gurgled as it closed gently above the spot.<\/p>\n Ham caught himself. One couldn\u2019t stand still in the midst of a mudspout, even with the bowllike mudshoes as support. Once let the viscous stuff flow over the rim and the luckless victim was trapped; he couldn\u2019t raise his foot against the suction, and first slowly, then more quickly, he\u2019d follow the shack.<\/p>\n So Ham started off over the boiling swamp, walking with the peculiar sliding motion he had learned by much practice, never raising the mudshoes above the surface, but sliding them along, careful that no mud topped the curving rim.<\/p>\n It was a tiresome motion, but absolutely necessary. He slid along as if on snowshoes, bearing west because that was the direction of the dark side, and if he had to walk to safety, he might as well do it in coolness. The area of swamp was unusually large; he covered at least a mile before he attained a slight rise in the ground, and the mudshoes clumped on solid, or nearly solid, soil.<\/p>\n He was bathed in perspiration; and his transkin suit was hot as a boiler room, but one grows accustomed to that on Venus. He\u2019d have given half his supply of xixtchil pods for the opportunity to open the mask of the suit, to draw a breath of even the steamy and humid Venusian air, but that was impossible; impossible, at least, if he had any inclination to continue living.<\/p>\n One breath of unfiltered air anywhere near the warm edge of the twilight zone was quick and very painful death; Ham would have drawn in uncounted millions of the spores of those fierce Venusian molds, and they\u2019d have sprouted in furry and nauseating masses in his nostrils, his mouth, his lungs, and eventually in his ears and eyes.<\/p>\n Breathing them wasn\u2019t even a necessary requirement; once he\u2019d come upon a trader\u2019s body with the molds springing from his flesh. The poor fellow had somehow torn a rip in his transkin suit, and that was enough.<\/p>\n The situation made eating and drinking in the open a problem on Venus; one had to wait until a rain had precipitated the spores, when it was safe for half an hour or so. Even then the water must have been recently boiled and the food just removed from its can; otherwise, as had happened to Ham more than once, the food was apt to turn abruptly into a fuzzy mass of molds that grew about as fast as the minute hand moved on a clock. A disgusting sight! A disgusting planet!<\/p>\n T<\/strong><\/span>hat last reflection was induced by Ham\u2019s view of the quagmire that had engulfed his shack. The heavier vegetation had gone with it, but already avid and greedy life was emerging, wriggling mud grass and the bulbous fungi called \u201cwalking balls.\u201d And all around a million little slimy creatures slithered across the mud, eating each other rapaciously, being torn to bits, and each fragment re-forming to a complete creature.<\/p>\n A thousand different species, but all the same in one respect; each of them was all appetite. In common with most Venusian beings, they had a multiplicity of both legs and mouths; in fact some of them were little more than blobs of skin split into dozens of hungry mouths, and crawling on a hundred spidery legs.<\/p>\n A thousand different species, but all the same in one respect; each of them was all appetite.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n All life on Venus is more or less parasitic. Even the plants that draw their nourishment directly from soil and air have also the ability to absorb and digest\u2014and, often enough, to trap\u2014animal food. So fierce is the competition on that humid strip of land between the fire and the ice that one who has never seen it must fail even to imagine it.<\/p>\n The animal kingdom wars incessantly on itself and the plant world; the vegetable kingdom retaliates, and frequently outdoes the other in the production of monstrous predatory horrors that one would even hesitate to call plant life. A terrible world!<\/p>\n In the few moments that Ham had paused to look back, ropy creepers had already entangled his legs; transkin was impervious, of course, but he had to cut the things away with his knife, and the black, nauseating juices that flowed out of them smeared on his suit and began instantly to grow furry as the molds sprouted. He shuddered.<\/p>\n \u201cHell of a place!\u201d Ham growled, stooping to remove his mudshoes, which he slung carefully over his back.<\/p>\n He slogged away through the writhing vegetation, automatically dodging the awkward thrusts of the Jack Ketch trees as they cast their nooses hopefully toward his arms and head.<\/p>\n Now and again he passed one that dangled some trapped creature, usually unrecognizable because the molds had enveloped it in a fuzzy shroud, while the tree itself was placidly absorbing victim and molds alike.<\/p>\n \u201cHorrible place!\u201d Ham muttered, kicked a writhing mass of nameless little vermin from his path.<\/p>\n He mused; his shack had been situated rather nearer the hot edge of the twilight zone; it was a trifle over two hundred and fifty miles to the shadow line, though of course that varied with the libration. But one couldn\u2019t approach the line too closely, anyway, because of the fierce, almost inconceivable, storms that raged where the hot upper winds encountered the icy blasts of the night side, giving rise to the birth throes of the ice barrier.<\/p>\n So a hundred and fifty miles due west would be sufficient to bring coolness, to enter a region too temperate for the molds, where he could walk in comparative comfort. And then, not more than fifty miles north, lay the American settlement Erotia, named, obviously, after that troublesome mythical son of Venus, Cupid.<\/p>\n Intervening, of course, were the ranges of the Mountains of Eternity, not those mighty twenty-mile-high peaks whose summits are occasionally glimpsed by Earthly telescopes, and that forever sunder British Venus from the American possessions, but, even at the point he planned to cross, very respectable mountains indeed. He was on the British side now; not that any one cared. Traders came and went as they pleased.<\/p>\n Well, that meant about two hundred miles. No reason why he couldn\u2019t make it; he was armed with both automatic and flame-pistol, and water was no problem, if carefully boiled. Under pressure of necessity, one could even eat Venusian life\u2014but it required hunger and thorough cooking and a sturdy stomach.<\/p>\n It wasn\u2019t the taste so much as the appearance, or so he\u2019d been told. He grimaced; beyond doubt he\u2019d be driven to find out for himself, since his canned food couldn\u2019t possibly last out the trip. Nothing to worry about, Ham kept telling himself. In fact, plenty to be glad about; the xixtchil pods in his pack represented as much wealth as he could have accumulated by ten years of toil back on Earth.<\/p>\n No danger\u2014and yet, men had vanished on Venus, dozens of them. The molds had claimed them, or some fierce unearthly monster, or perhaps one of the many unknown living horrors, both plant and animal.<\/p>\n Ham trudged along, keeping always to the clearings about the Jack Ketch trees, since these vegetable omnivores kept other life beyond the reach of their greedy nooses. Elsewhere progress was impossible, for the Venusian jungle presented such a terrific tangle of writhing and struggling forms that one could move only by cutting the way, step by step, with infinite labor.<\/p>\n Even then there was the danger of Heaven only knew what fanged and venomous creatures whose teeth might pierce the protective membrane of transkin, and a crack in that meant death. Even the unpleasant Jack Ketch trees were preferable company, he reflected, as he slapped their questing lariats aside.<\/p>\n Six hours after Ham had started his involuntary journey, it rained. He seized the opportunity, found a place where a recent mudspout had cleared the heavier vegetation away, and prepared to eat. First, however, he scooped up some scummy water, filtered it through the screen attached for that purpose to his canteen, and set about sterilizing it.<\/p>\n Fire was difficult to manage, since dry fuel is rare indeed in the Hotlands of Venus, but Ham tossed a thermide tablet into the liquid, and the chemicals boiled the water instantly, escaping themselves as gases. If the water retained a slight ammoniacal taste\u2014well, that was the least of his discomforts, he mused, as he covered it and set it by to cool.<\/p>\n He uncapped a can of beans, watched a moment to see that no stray molds had remained in the air to infect the food, then opened the visor of his suit and swallowed hastily. Thereafter he drank the blood-warm water and poured carefully what remained into the water pouch within his transkin, where he could suck it through a tube to his mouth without the deadly exposure to the molds.<\/p>\n Ten minutes after he had completed the meal, while he rested and longed for the impossible luxury of a cigarette, the fuzzy coat sprang suddenly to life on the remnants of food in the can.<\/p>\n An hour later, weary and thoroughly soaked in perspiration, Ham found a Friendly tree, so named by the explorer Burlingame because it is one of the few organisms on Venus sluggish enough to permit one to rest in its branches. So Ham climbed it, found the most comfortable position available, and slept as best he could.<\/p>\n It was five hours by his wrist watch before he awoke, and the tendrils and little sucking cups of the Friendly tree were fastened all over his transkin. He tore them away very carefully, climbed down, and trudged westward.<\/p>\n It was after the second rain that he met the doughpot, as the creature is called in British and American Venus. In the French strip, it\u2019s the pot \u00c3 colle<\/em>, the \u201cpaste pot\u201d; in the Dutch\u2014well, the Dutch are not prudish, and they call the horror just what they think it warrants.<\/p>\n Actually, the doughpot is a nauseous creature. It\u2019s a mass of white, dough-like protoplasm, ranging in size from a single cell to perhaps twenty tons of mushy filth. It has no fixed form; in fact, it\u2019s merely a mass of de Proust cells\u2014in effect, a disembodied, crawling, hungry cancer.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a mass of white, dough-like protoplasm, ranging in size from a single cell to perhaps twenty tons of mushy filth.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n It has no organization and no intelligence, nor even any instinct save hunger. It moves in whatever direction food touches its surfaces; when it touches two edible substances, it quietly divides, with the larger portion invariably attacking the greater supply.<\/p>\n It\u2019s invulnerable to bullets; nothing less than the terrific blast of a flame-pistol will kill it, and then only if the blast destroys every individual cell. It travels over the ground absorbing everything, leaving bare black soil where the ubiquitous molds spring up at once\u2014a noisome, nightmarish creature.<\/p>\n Ham sprang aside as the doughpot erupted suddenly from the jungle to his right. It couldn\u2019t absorb the transkin, of course, but to be caught in that pasty mess meant quick suffocation. He glared at it disgustedly and was sorely tempted to blast it with his flame-pistol as it slithered past at running speed. He would have, too, but the experienced Venusian frontiersman is very careful with the flame-pistol.<\/p>\n It has to be charged with a diamond, a cheap black one, of course, but still an item to consider. The crystal, when fired, gives up all its energy in one terrific blast that roars out like a lightning stroke for a hundred yards, incinerating everything in its path.<\/p>\n The thing rolled by with a sucking and gulping sound. Behind it opened the passage it had cleared; creepers, snake vines, Jack Ketch trees\u2014everything had been swept away down to the humid earth itself, where already the molds were springing up on the slime of the doughpot\u2019s trail.<\/p>\n The alley led nearly in the direction Ham wanted to travel; he seized the opportunity and strode briskly along, with a wary eye, nevertheless, on the ominous walls of jungle. In ten hours or so the opening would be filled once more with unpleasant life, but for the present it offered a much quicker progress than dodging from one clearing to the next.<\/p>\n It was five miles up the trail, which was already beginning to sprout inconveniently, that he met the native galloping along on his four short legs, his pincerlike hands shearing a path for him. Ham stopped for a palaver.<\/p>\n \u201cMurra<\/em>,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n The language of the natives of the equatorial regions of the Hotlands is a queer one. It has, perhaps, two hundred words, but when a trader has learned those two hundred, his knowledge of the tongue is but little greater than the man who knows none at all.<\/p>\n The words are generalized, and each sound has anywhere from a dozen to a hundred meanings. Murra,<\/em> for instance, is a word of greeting; it may mean something much like \u201chello,\u201d or \u201cgood morning.\u201d It also may convey a challenge\u2014\u201don guard!\u201d It means besides, \u201cLet\u2019s be friends,\u201d and also, strangely, \u201cLet\u2019s fight this out.\u201d<\/p>\n It has, morever, certain noun senses; it means peace, it means war, it means courage, and, again, fear. A subtle language; it is only recently that studies of inflection have begun to reveal its nature to human philologists. Yet, after all, perhaps English, with its \u201cto,\u201d \u201ctoo,\u201d and \u201ctwo,\u201d its \u201cone,\u201d \u201cwon,\u201d \u201cwan,\u201d \u201cwen,\u201d \u201cwin,\u201d \u201cwhen,\u201d and a dozen other similarities, might seem just as strange to Venusian ears, untrained in vowel distinctions.<\/p>\n Moreover, humans can\u2019t read the expressions of the broad, flat, three-eyed Venusian faces, which in the nature of things must convey a world of information among the natives themselves.<\/p>\n But this one accepted the intended sense. \u201cMurra,<\/em>\u201c he responded, pausing. \u201cUsk?<\/em>\u201c That was, among other things, \u201cWho are you?\u201d or \u201cWhere did you come from?\u201d or \u201cWhere are you bound?\u201d<\/p>\n Ham chose the latter sense. He pointed off into the dim west, then raised his hand in an arc to indicate the mountains. \u201cErotia,\u201d he said. That had but one meaning, at least.<\/p>\n The native considered this in silence. At last he grunted and volunteered some information. He swept his cutting claw in a gesture west along the trail. \u201cCurky,<\/em>\u201c he said, and then, \u201cMurra<\/em>.\u201d The last was farewell; Ham pressed against the wriggling jungle wall to permit him to pass.<\/p>\n Curky<\/em> meant, together with twenty other senses, trader. It was the word usually applied to humans, and Ham felt a pleasant anticipation in the prospect of human company. It had been six months since he had heard a human voice other than that on the tiny radio now sunk with his shack.<\/p>\n T<\/strong><\/span>rue enough, five miles along the doughpot\u2019s trail Ham emerged suddenly in an area where there had been a recent mudspout. The vegetation was only waist-high, and across the quarter-mile clearing he saw a structure, a trading hut. But far more pretentious than his own iron-walled cubicle; this one boasted three rooms, an unheard-of luxury in the Hotlands, where every ounce had to be laboriously transported by rocket from one of the settlements. That was expensive, almost prohibitive. Traders took a real gamble, and Ham knew he was lucky to have come out so profitably.<\/p>\n He strode over the still spongy ground. The windows were shaded against the eternal daylight, and the door\u2014the door was locked. This was a violation of the frontier code. One always left doors unlocked; it might mean the salvation of some strayed trader, and not even the most dishonorable would steal from a hut left open for his safety.<\/p>\n Nor would the natives; no creature is as honest as a Venusian native, who never lies and never steals, though he might, after due warning, kill a trader for his trade goods. But only after a fair warning.<\/p>\n Ham stood puzzled. At last he kicked and tramped a clear space before the door, sat down against it, and fell to snapping away the numerous and loathsome little creatures that swarmed over his transkin. He waited.<\/p>\n It wasn\u2019t half an hour before he saw the trader plowing through the clearing\u2014a short, slim fellow; the transkin shaded his face, but Ham could make out large, shadowed eyes. He stood up.<\/p>\n \u201cHello!\u201d he said jovially. \u201cThought I\u2019d drop in for a visit. My name\u2019s Hamilton Hammond\u2014you guess the nickname!\u201d<\/p>\n The newcomer stopped short, then spoke in a curiously soft and husky voice, with a decidedly English accent. \u201cMy guess would be \u2018Boiled Pork,\u2019 I fancy.\u201d The tones were cold, unfriendly. \u201cSuppose you step aside and let me in. Good day!\u201d<\/p>\n Ham felt anger and amazement. \u201cThe devil!\u201d he snapped. \u201cYou\u2019re a hospitable sort, aren\u2019t you?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cNo. Not at all.\u201d The other paused at the door. \u201cYou\u2019re an American. What are you doing on British soil? Have you a passport?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cSince when do you need a passport in the Hotlands?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cTrading, aren\u2019t you?\u201d the slim man said sharply. \u201cIn other words, poaching. You\u2019ve no rights here. Get on.\u201d<\/p>\n Ham\u2019s jaw set stubbornly behind his mask. \u201cRights or none,\u201d he said, \u201cI\u2019m entitled to the consideration of the frontier code. I want a breath of air and a chance to wipe my face, and also a chance to eat. If you open that door I\u2019m coming in after you.\u201d<\/p>\n An automatic flashed into view. \u201cDo, and you\u2019ll feed the molds.\u201d<\/p>\n Ham, like all Venusian traders, was of necessity bold, resourceful, and what is called in the States \u201chard-boiled.\u201d He didn\u2019t flinch, but said in apparent yielding:<\/p>\n \u201cAll right; but listen, all I want is a chance to eat.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWait for a rain,\u201d said the other coolly and half turned to unlock the door.<\/p>\n As his eyes shifted, Ham kicked at the revolver; it went spinning against the wall and dropped into the weeds. His opponent snatched for the flame-pistol that still dangled on his hip; Ham caught his wrist in a mighty clutch.<\/p>\n Instantly the other ceased to struggle, while Ham felt a momentary surprise at the skinny feel of the wrist through its transkin covering.<\/p>\n \u201cLook here!\u201d he growled. \u201cI want a chance to eat, and I\u2019m going to get it. Unlock that door!\u201d<\/p>\n He had both wrists now; the fellow seemed curiously delicate. After a moment he nodded, and Ham released one hand. The door opened, and he followed the other in.<\/p>\n A<\/strong><\/span>gain, unheard-of magnificence. Solid chairs, a sturdy table, even books, carefully preserved, no doubt, by lycopodium against the ravenous molds that sometimes entered Hotland shacks in spite of screen filters and automatic spray. An automatic spray was going now to destroy any spores that might have entered with the opening door.<\/p>\n Ham sat down, keeping an eye on the other, whose flame-pistol he had permitted to remain in its holster. He was confident of his ability to outdraw the slim individual, and, besides, who\u2019d risk firing a flame-pistol indoors? It would simply blow out one wall of the building.<\/p>\n So he set about opening his mask, removing food from his pack, wiping his steaming face, while his companion\u2014or opponent\u2014looked on silently. Ham watched the canned meat for a moment; no molds appeared, and he ate.<\/p>\n \u201cWhy the devil,\u201d he rasped, \u201cdon\u2019t you open your visor?\u201d At the other\u2019s silence, he continued: \u201cAfraid I\u2019ll see your face, eh? Well, I\u2019m not interested; I\u2019m no cop.\u201d<\/p>\n No reply.<\/p>\n He tried again. \u201cWhat\u2019s your name?\u201d<\/p>\n The cool voice sounded: \u201cBurlingame. Pat Burlingame.\u201d<\/p>\n Ham laughed. \u201cPatrick Burlingame is dead, my friend. I knew him.\u201d No answer. \u201cAnd if you don\u2019t want to tell your name, at least you needn\u2019t insult the memory of a brave man and a great explorer.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThank you.\u201d The voice was sardonic. \u201cHe was my father.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAnother lie. He had no son. He had only a\u2014\u2014\u201d Ham paused abruptly; a feeling of consternation swept over him. \u201cOpen your visor!\u201d he yelled.<\/p>\n Ham paused abruptly; a feeling of consternation swept over him. \u201cOpen your visor!\u201d he yelled.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n He saw the lips of the other, dim through the transkin, twitch into a sarcastic smile.<\/p>\n \u201cWhy not?\u201d said the soft voice, and the mask dropped.<\/p>\n Ham gulped; behind the covering were the delicately modeled features of a girl, with cool gray eyes in a face lovely despite the glistening perspiration on cheeks and forehead.<\/p>\n The man gulped again. After all, he was a gentleman despite his profession as one of the fierce, adventurous traders of Venus. He was university-educated\u2014an engineer\u2014and only the lure of quick wealth had brought him to the Hotlands.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2014I\u2019m sorry,\u201d he stammered.<\/p>\n \u201cYou brave American poachers!\u201d she sneered. \u201cAre all of you so valiant as to force yourselves on women?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBut\u2014how could I know? What are you doing in a place like this?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s no reason for me to answer your questions, but\u201d\u2014she gestured toward the room beyond\u2014\u201dI\u2019m classifying Hotland flora and fauna. I\u2019m Patricia Burlingame, biologist.\u201d<\/p>\n He perceived now the jar-enclosed specimens of a laboratory in the next chamber. \u201cBut a girl alone in the Hotlands! It\u2019s\u2014it\u2019s reckless!\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI didn\u2019t expect to meet any American poachers,\u201d she retorted.<\/p>\n He flushed. \u201cYou needn\u2019t worry about me. I\u2019m going.\u201d He raised his hands to his visor.<\/p>\n Instantly Patricia snatched an automatic from the table drawer. \u201cYou\u2019re going, indeed, Mr. Hamilton Hammond,\u201d she said coolly. \u201cBut you\u2019re leaving your xixtchil with me. It\u2019s crown property; you\u2019ve stolen it from British territory, and I\u2019m confiscating it.\u201d<\/p>\n He stared. \u201cLook here!\u201d he blazed suddenly. \u201cI\u2019ve risked all I have for that xixtchil. If I lose it I\u2019m ruined\u2014busted. I\u2019m not giving it up!\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBut you are.\u201d<\/p>\n He dropped his mask and sat down. \u201cMiss Burlingame,\u201d he said, \u201cI don\u2019t think you\u2019ve nerve enough to shoot me, but that\u2019s what you\u2019ll have to do to get it. Otherwise I\u2019ll sit here until you drop of exhaustion.\u201d<\/p>\n Her gray eyes bored silently into his blue ones. The gun held steadily on his heart, but spat no bullet. It was a deadlock.<\/p>\n At last the girl said, \u201cYou win, poacher.\u201d She slapped the gun into her empty holster. \u201cGet out, then.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cGladly!\u201d he snapped.<\/p>\n He rose, fingered his visor, then dropped it again at a sudden startled scream from the girl. He whirled, suspecting a trick, but she was staring out of the window with wide, apprehensive eyes.<\/p>\n H<\/strong><\/span>am saw the writhing of vegetation and then a vast whitish mass. A doughpot\u2014a monstrous one, bearing steadily toward their shelter. He heard the gentle clunk<\/em> of impact, and then the window was blotted out by the pasty mess, as the creature, not quite large enough to engulf the building, split into two masses that flowed around and merged on the other side. Another cry from Patricia. \u201cYour mask, fool!\u201d she rasped. \u201cClose it!\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cMask? Why?\u201d Nevertheless, he obeyed automatically.<\/p>\n \u201cWhy? That\u2019s why! The digestive acids\u2014look!\u201d She pointed at the walls; indeed, thousands of tiny pinholes of light were appearing. The digestive acids of the monstrosity, powerful enough to attack whatever food chance brought, had corroded the metal; it was porous; the shack was ruined. He gasped as fuzzy molds shot instantly from the remains of his meal, and a red-and-green fur sprouted from the wood of chairs and table.<\/p>\n The two faced each other.<\/p>\n Ham chuckled. \u201cWell,\u201d he said, \u201cyou\u2019re homeless, too. Mine went down in a mudspout.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYours would!\u201d Patricia retorted acidly. \u201cYou Yankees couldn\u2019t think of finding shallow soil, I suppose. Bed rock is just six feet below here, and my<\/em> place is on pilons.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWell, you\u2019re a cool devil! Anyway, your place might as well be sunk. What are you going to do?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cDo? Don\u2019t concern yourself. I\u2019m quite able to manage.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cHow?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s no affair of yours, but I have a rocket call each month.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYou must be a millionaire, then,\u201d he commented. \u201cThe Royal Society,\u201d she said coldly, \u201cis financing this expedition. The rocket is due\u2014\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n She paused; Ham thought she paled a little behind her mask.<\/p>\n \u201cDue when?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhy\u2014it just came two days ago. I\u2019d forgotten.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI see. And you think you\u2019ll just stick around for a month waiting for it. Is that it?\u201d<\/p>\n Patricia stared at him defiantly.<\/p>\n \u201cDo you know,\u201d he resumed, \u201cwhat you\u2019d be in a month? It\u2019s ten days to summer and look at your shack.\u201d He gestured at the walls, where brown and rusty patches were forming; at his motion a piece the size of a saucer tumbled in with a crackle. \u201cIn two days this thing will be a caved-in ruin. What\u2019ll you do during fifteen days of summer? What\u2019ll you do without shelter when the temperature reaches a hundred and fifty\u2014a hundred and sixty? I\u2019ll tell you\u2014you\u2019ll die.\u201d She said nothing.<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019ll be a fuzzy mass of molds before the rocket returns,\u201d Ham said. \u201cAnd then a pile of clean bones that will go down with the first mudspout.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBe still!\u201d she blazed.<\/p>\n \u201cSilence won\u2019t help. Now I\u2019ll tell you what you can do. You can take your pack and your mudshoes and walk along with me. We may make the Cool Country before summer\u2014if you can walk as well as you talk.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cGo with a Yankee poacher? I fancy not!\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAnd then,\u201d he continued imperturbably, \u201cwe can cross comfortably to Erotia, a good American town.\u201d<\/p>\n Patricia reached for her emergency pack, slung it over her shoulders. She retrieved a thick bundle of notes, written in aniline ink on transkin, brushed off a few vagrant molds, and slipped it into the pack. She picked up a pair of diminutive mudshoes and turned deliberately to the door.<\/p>\n \u201cSo you\u2019re coming?\u201d he chuckled.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m going,\u201d she retorted coldly, \u201cto the good British town of Venoble. Alone!\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cVenoble!\u201d he gasped. \u201cThat\u2019s two hundred miles south! And across the Greater Eternities, too!\u201d<\/p>\n Patricia walked silently out of the door and turned west toward the Cool Country. Ham hesitated a moment, then followed. He couldn\u2019t permit the girl to attempt that journey alone; since she ignored his presence, he simply trailed a few steps behind her, plodding grimly and angrily along.<\/p>\n For three hours or more they trudged through the endless daylight, dodging the thrusts of the Jack Ketch trees, but mostly following the still fairly open trail of the first doughpot.<\/p>\n Ham was amazed at the agile and lithe grace of the girl, who slipped along the way with the sure skill of a native. Then a memory came to him; she was<\/em> a native, in a sense. He recalled now that Patrick Burlingame\u2019s daughter was the first human child born on Venus, in the colony of Venoble, founded by her father.<\/p>\n Ham remembered the newspaper articles when she had been sent to Earth to be educated, a child of eight; he had been thirteen then. He was twenty-seven now, which made Patricia Burlingame twenty-two.<\/p>\n Not a word passed between them until at last the girl swung about in exasperation.<\/p>\n \u201cGo away,\u201d she blazed.<\/p>\n An hour later the mudspout caught them. Without warning, watery muck boiled up around their feet, and the vegetation swayed wildly.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Ham halted. \u201cI\u2019m not bothering you.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBut I don\u2019t want a bodyguard. I\u2019m a better Hotlander than you!\u201d<\/p>\n He didn\u2019t argue the point. He kept silent, and after a moment she flashed:<\/p>\n \u201cI hate you, Yankee! Lord, how I hate you!\u201d She turned and trudged on.<\/p>\n An hour later the mudspout caught them. Without warning, watery muck boiled up around their feet, and the vegetation swayed wildly. Hastily, they strapped on their mudshoes, while the heavier plants sank with sullen gurgles around them. Again Ham marveled at the girl\u2019s skill; Patricia slipped away across the unstable surface with a speed he could not match, and he shuffled far behind.<\/p>\n Suddenly he saw her stop. That was dangerous in a mudspout; only an emergency could explain it. He hurried; a hundred feet away he perceived the reason. A strap had broken on her right shoe, and she stood helpless, balancing on her left foot, while the remaining bowl was sinking slowly. Even now black mud slopped over the edge.<\/p>\n She eyed him as he approached. He shuffled to her side; as she saw his intention, she spoke.<\/p>\n \u201cYou can\u2019t,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Ham bent cautiously, slipping his arms about her knees and shoulders. Her mudshoes was already embedded, but he heaved mightily, driving the rims of his own dangerously close to the surface. With a great sucking gulp, she came free and lay very still in his arms, so as not to unbalance him as he slid again into careful motion over the treacherous surface. She was not heavy, but it was a hairbreadth chance, and the mud slipped and gurgled at the very edge of his shoe-bowls. Even though Venus has slightly less surface gravitation than Earth, a week or so gets one accustomed to it, and the twenty per cent advantage in weight seems to disappear.<\/p>\n A hundred yards brought firm footing. He sat her down and unstrapped her mudshoes.<\/p>\n \u201cThank you,\u201d she said coolly. \u201cThat was brave.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019re welcome,\u201d he returned dryly. \u201cI suppose this will end any idea of your traveling alone. Without both mudshoes, the next spout will be the last for you. Do we walk together now?\u201d<\/p>\n Her voice chilled. \u201cI can make a substitute shoe from tree skin.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cNot even a native could walk on tree skin.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThen,\u201d she said, \u201cI\u2019ll simply wait a day or two for the mud to dry and dig up my lost one.\u201d<\/p>\n He laughed and gestured at the acres of mud. \u201cDig where?\u201d he countered. \u201cYou\u2019ll be here till summer if you try that.\u201d<\/p>\n She yielded. \u201cYou win again, Yankee. But only to the Cool Country; then you\u2019ll go north and I south.\u201d<\/p>\n T<\/strong><\/span>hey trudged on. Patricia was as tireless as Ham himself and was vastly more adept in Hotland lore. Though they spoke but little, he never ceased to wonder at the skill she had in picking the quickest route, and she seemed to sense the thrusts of the Jack Ketch trees without looking. But it was when they halted at last, after a rain had given opportunity for a hasty meal, that he had real cause to thank her.<\/p>\n \u201cSleep?\u201d he suggested, and as she nodded: \u201cThere\u2019s a Friendly tree.\u201d<\/p>\n He moved toward it, the girl behind.<\/p>\n Suddenly she seized his arm. \u201cIt\u2019s a Pharisee!\u201d she cried, jerking him back.<\/p>\n None too soon! The false Friendly tree had lashed down with a terrible stroke that missed his face by inches. It was no Friendly tree at all, but an imitator, luring prey within reach by its apparent harmlessness, then striking with knife-sharp spikes.<\/p>\n Ham gasped. \u201cWhat is it? I never saw one of those before.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cA Pharisee! It just looks like a Friendly tree.\u201d<\/p>\n She took out her automatic and sent a bullet into the black, pulsing trunk. A dark stream gushed, and the ubiquitous molds sprang into life about the hole. The tree was doomed.<\/p>\n \u201cThanks,\u201d said Ham awkwardly. \u201cI guess you saved my life.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re quits now.\u201d She gazed levelly at him. \u201cUnderstand? We\u2019re even.\u201d<\/p>\n Later they found a true Friendly tree and slept. Awakening, they trudged on again, and slept again, and so on for three nightless days. No more mudspouts burst about them, but all the other horrors of the Hotlands were well in evidence. Doughpots crossed their path, snake vines hissed and struck, the Jack Ketch trees flung sinister nooses, and a million little crawling things writhed underfoot or dropped upon their suits.<\/p>\n Once they encountered a uniped, that queer, kangaroolike creature that leaps, crashing through the jungle on a single mighty leg, and trusts to its ten-foot beak to spear its prey.<\/p>\n When Ham missed his first shot, the girl brought it down in mid-leap to thresh into the avid clutches of the Jack Ketch trees and the merciless molds.<\/p>\n On another occasion, Patricia had both feet caught in a Jack Ketch noose that lay for some unknown cause on the ground. As she stepped within it, the tree jerked her suddenly, to dangle head down a dozen feet in the air, and she hung helplessly until Ham managed to cut her free. Beyond doubt, either would have died alone on any of several occasions; together they pulled through.<\/p>\n Yet neither relaxed the cool, unfriendly attitude that had become habitual. Ham never addressed the girl unless necessary, and she in the rare instances when they spoke, called him always by no other name than Yankee poacher. In spite of this, the man found himself sometimes remembering the piquant loveliness of her features, her brown hair and level gray eyes, as he had glimpsed them in the brief moments when rain made it safe to open their visors.<\/p>\n At last one day a wind stirred out of the west, bringing with it a breath of coolness that was like the air of heaven to them. It was the underwind, the wind that blew from the frozen half of the planet, that breathed cold from beyond the ice barrier. When Ham experimentally shaved the skin from a writhing weed, the molds sprang out more slowly and with encouraging sparseness; they were approaching the Cool Country.<\/p>\n They found a Friendly tree with lightened hearts; another day\u2019s trek might bring them to the uplands where one could walk unhooded, in safety from the molds, since these could not sprout in a temperature much below eighty.<\/p>\n Ham woke first. For a while he gazed silently across at the girl, smiling at the way the branches of the tree had encircled her like affectionate arms. They were merely hungry, of course, but it looked like tenderness. His smile turned a little sad as he realized that the Cool Country meant parting, unless he could discourage that insane determination of hers to cross the Greater Eternities.<\/p>\n He sighed, and reached for his pack slung on a branch between them, and suddenly a bellow of rage and astonishment broke from him.<\/p>\n His xixtchil pods! The transkin pouch was slit; they were gone.<\/p>\n Patricia woke startled at his cry. Then, behind her mask, he sensed an ironic, mocking smile.<\/p>\n \u201cMy xixtchil!\u201d he roared. \u201cWhere is it?\u201d<\/p>\n She pointed down. There among the lesser growths was a little mound of molds.<\/p>\n \u201cThere,\u201d she said coolly. \u201cDown there, poacher.\u201d<\/p>\n Rage actually made him tremble. He glared at her; the light struck through the translucent transkin, outlining her body and slim rounded legs in shadow. \u201cI ought to kill you!\u201d he muttered tensely.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n \u201cYou\u2014\u2014\u201d He choked with rage.<\/p>\n \u201cYes. I slit the pouch while you slept. You\u2019ll smuggle no stolen wealth from British territory.\u201d<\/p>\n Ham was white, speechless. \u201cYou damned devil!\u201d he bellowed at last. \u201cThat\u2019s every cent I had!\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBut stolen,\u201d she reminded him pleasantly, swinging her dainty feet.<\/p>\n Rage actually made him tremble. He glared at her; the light struck through the translucent transkin, outlining her body and slim rounded legs in shadow. \u201cI ought to kill you!\u201d he muttered tensely.<\/p>\n His hand twitched, and the girl laughed softly. With a groan of desperation, he slung his pack over his shoulders and dropped to the ground.<\/p>\n \u201cI hope\u2014I hope you die in the mountains,\u201d he said grimly, and stalked away toward the west.<\/p>\n A hundred yards distant he heard her voice.<\/p>\n \u201cYankee! Wait a moment!\u201d<\/p>\n He neither paused nor glanced back, but strode on.<\/p>\n H<\/strong><\/span>alf an hour later, glancing back from the crest of a rise, Ham perceived that she was following him. He turned and hurried on. The way was upward now, and his strength began to outweigh her speed and skill.<\/p>\n When next he glimpsed her, she was a plodding speck far behind, moving, he imagined, with a weary doggedness. He frowned back at her; it had occurred to him that a mudspout would find her completely helpless, lacking the vitally important mudshoes.<\/p>\n Then he realized that they were beyond the region of mudspouts, here in the foothills of the Mountains of Eternity, and anyway, he decided grimly, he didn\u2019t care.<\/p>\n For a while Ham paralleled a river, doubtless an unnamed tributary of the Phlegethon. So far there had been no necessity to cross watercourses, since naturally all streams on Venus flow from the ice barrier across the twilight zone to the hot side, and therefore, had coincided with their own direction.<\/p>\n But now, once he attained the tablelands and turned north, he would encounter rivers. They had to be crossed either on logs or, if opportunity offered and the stream was narrow, through the branches of Friendly trees. To set foot in the water was death; fierce fanged creatures haunted the streams.<\/p>\n He had one near catastrophe at the rim of the tableland. It was while he edged through a Jack Ketch clearing; suddenly there was a heave of white corruption, and tree and jungle wall disappeared in the mass of a gigantic doughpot.<\/p>\n He was cornered between the monster and an impenetrable tangle of vegetation, so he did the only thing left to do. He snatched his flame-pistol and sent a terrific, roaring blast into the horror, a blast that incinerated tons of pasty filth and left a few small fragments crawling and feeding on the debris.<\/p>\n The blast also, as it usually does, shattered the barrel of the weapon. He sighed as he set about the forty-minute job of replacing it\u2014no true Hotlander ever delays that\u2014for the blast had cost fifteen good American dollars, ten for the cheap diamond that had exploded, and five for the barrel. Nothing at all when he had had his xixtchil, but a real item now. He sighed again as he discovered that the remaining barrel was his last; he had been forced to economize on everything when he set out.<\/p>\n Ham came at last to the table-land. The fierce and predatory vegetation of the Hotlands grew scarce; he began to encounter true plants, with no power of movement, and the underwind blew cool in his face.<\/p>\n He was in a sort of high valley; to his right were the gray peaks of the Lesser Eternities, beyond which lay Erotia, and to his left, like a mighty, glittering rampart, lay the vast slopes of the Greater Range, whose peaks were lost in the clouds fifteen miles above.<\/p>\n He looked at the opening of the rugged Madman\u2019s Pass where it separated two colossal peaks; the pass itself was twenty-five thousand feet in height, but the mountains out-topped it by fifty thousand more. One man had crossed that jagged crack on foot\u2014Patrick Burlingame\u2014and that was the way his daughter meant to follow.<\/p>\n Ahead, visible as a curtain of shadow, lay the night edge of the twilight zone, and Ham could see the incessant lightnings that flashed forever in this region of endless storms. It was here that the ice barrier crossed the ranges of the Mountains of Eternity, and the cold underwind, thrust up by the mighty range, met the warm upper winds in a struggle that was one continuous storm, such a storm as only Venus could provide. The river Phlegethon had its source somewhere back in there.<\/p>\n Ham surveyed the wildly magnificent panorama. Tomorrow, or rather, after resting, he would turn north. Patricia would turn south, and, beyond doubt, would die somewhere on Madman\u2019s Pass. For a moment he had a queerly painful sensation, then he frowned bitterly.<\/p>\n Let her die, if she was fool enough to attempt the pass alone just because she was too proud to take a rocket from an American settlement. She deserved it. He didn\u2019t care; he was still assuring himself of that as he prepared to sleep, not in a Friendly tree, but in one of the far more friendly specimens of true vegetation and in the luxury of an open visor.<\/p>\n The sound of his name awakened him. He gazed across the table-land to see Patricia just topping the divide, and he felt a moment\u2019s wonder at how she managed to trail him, a difficult feat indeed in a country where the living vegetation writhes instantly back across one\u2019s path. Then he recalled the blast of his flame-pistol; the flash and sound would carry for miles, and she must have heard or seen it.<\/p>\n Ham saw her glancing anxiously around.<\/p>\n \u201cHam!\u201d she snouted again\u2014not Yankee or poacher, but \u201cHam!\u201d<\/p>\n He kept a sullen silence; again she called. He could see her bronzed and piquant features now; she had dropped her transkin hood. She called again; with a despondent little shrug, she turned south along the divide, and he watched her go in grim silence. When the forest hid her from view, he descended and turned slowly north.<\/p>\n Very slowly; his steps lagged; it was as if he tugged against some invisible elastic bond. He kept seeing her anxious face and hearing in memory the despondent call. She was going to her death, he believed, and, after all, despite what she had done to him, he didn\u2019t want that. She was too full of life, too confident, too young, and above all, too lovely to die.<\/p>\n True, she was an arrogant, vicious, self-centered devil, cool as crystal, and as unfriendly, but\u2014she had gray eyes and brown hair, and she was courageous. And at last, with a groan of exasperation, he halted his lagging steps, turned, and rushed with almost eager speed into the south.<\/p>\n T<\/strong><\/span>railing the girl was easy here for one trained in the Hotlands. The vegetation was slow to mend itself, here in the Cool Country, and now again he found imprints of her feet, or broken twigs to mark her path. He found the place where she had crossed the river through tree branches, and he found a place where she had paused to eat.<\/p>\n But he saw that she was gaining on him; her skill and speed outmatched his, and the trail grew steadily older. At last he stopped to rest; the table-land was beginning to curve upward toward the vast Mountains of Eternity, and on rising ground he knew he could overtake her. So he slept for a while in the luxurious comfort of no transkin at all, just the shorts and shirt that one wore beneath. That was safe here; the eternal underwind, blowing always toward the Hotlands, kept drifting mold spores away, and any brought in on the fur of animals died quickly at the first cool breeze. Nor would the true plants of the Cool Country attack his flesh.<\/p>\n He slept five hours. The next \u201cday\u201d of traveling brought another change in the country. The life of the foothills was sparse compared to the table-lands; the vegetation was no longer a jungle, but a forest, an unearthly forest, true, of treelike growths whose boles rose five hundred feet and then spread, not into foliage, but flowery appendages. Only an occasional Jack Ketch tree reminded him of the Hotlands.<\/p>\n Farther on, the forest diminished. Great rock outcroppings appeared, and vast red cliffs with no growths of any kind. Now and then he encountered swarms of the planet\u2019s only aerial creatures, the gray, mothlike dusters, large as hawks, but so fragile that a blow shattered them. They darted about, alighting at times to seize small squirming things, and tinkling in their curiously bell-like voices. And apparently almost above him, though really thirty miles distant, loomed the Mountains of Eternity, their peaks lost in the clouds that swirled fifteen miles overhead.<\/p>\n Here again it grew difficult to trail, since Patricia scrambled often over bare rock. But little by little the signs grew fresher; once again his greater strength began to tell. And then he glimpsed her, at the base of a colossal escarpment split by a narrow, tree-filled canyon.<\/p>\n She was peering first at the mighty precipice, then at the cleft, obviously wondering whether it offered a means of scaling the barrier, or whether it was necessary to circle the obstacle. Like himself, she had discarded her transkin and wore the usual shirt and shorts of the Cool Country, which, after all, is not very cool by terrestrial standards. She looked, he thought, like some lovely forest nymph of the ancient slopes of Pelion.<\/p>\n He hurried as she moved into the canyon. \u201cPat!\u201d he shouted; it was the first time he had spoken her given name. A hundred feet within the passage he overtook her.<\/p>\n \u201cYou!\u201d she gasped. She looked tired; she had been hurrying for hours, but a light of eagerness flashed in her eyes. \u201cI thought you had\u2014I tried to find you.\u201d<\/p>\n Ham\u2019s face held no responsive light. \u201cListen here, Pat Burlingame,\u201d he said coldly. \u201cYou don\u2019t deserve any consideration, but I can\u2019t see you walking into death. You\u2019re a stubborn devil but you\u2019re a woman. I\u2019m taking you to Erotia.\u201d<\/p>\n The eagerness vanished. \u201cIndeed, poacher? My father crossed here. I can, too.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYour father crossed in midsummer, didn\u2019t he? And midsummer\u2019s to-day. You can\u2019t make Madman\u2019s Pass in less than five days, a hundred and twenty hours, and by then it will nearly winter, and this longitude will be close to the storm line. You\u2019re a fool.\u201d<\/p>\n She flushed. \u201cThe pass is high enough to be in the upper winds. It will be warm.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWarm! Yes\u2014warm with lightning.\u201d He paused; the faint rumble of thunder rolled through the canyon. \u201cListen to that. In five days that will be right over us.\u201d He gestured up at the utterly barren slopes. \u201cNot even Venusian life can get a foothold up there\u2014or do you think you\u2019ve got brass enough to be a lightning rod? Maybe you\u2019re right.\u201d<\/p>\n Anger flamed. \u201cRather the lightning than you!\u201d Patricia snapped, and then as suddenly softened. \u201cI tried to call you back,\u201d she said irrelevantly.<\/p>\n \u201cTo laugh at me,\u201d he retorted bitterly.<\/p>\n \u201cNo. To tell you I was sorry, and that\u2014\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t want your apology.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBut I wanted to tell you that\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cNever mind,\u201d he said curtly. \u201cI\u2019m not interested in your repentance. The harm\u2019s done.\u201d He frowned coldly down on her.<\/p>\n Patricia said meekly: \u201cBut I\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n A crashing and gurgling interrupted her, and she screamed as a gigantic doughpot burst into view, a colossus that filled the canyon from wall to wall to a six-foot height as it surged toward them. The horrors were rarer in the Cool Country, but larger, since the abundance of food in the Hotlands kept subdividing them. But this one was a giant, a behemoth, tons and tons of nauseous, ill-smelling corruption heaving up the narrow way. They were cut off.<\/p>\n Ham snatched his flame-pistol, but the girl seized his arm.<\/p>\n \u201cNo, no!\u201d she cried. \u201cToo close! It will spatter!\u201d<\/p>\n P<\/strong><\/span>atricia was right. Unprotected by transkin, the touch of a fragment of that monstrosity was deadly, and, beyond that, the blast of a flame-pistol would shower bits of it upon them. He grasped her wrist and they fled up the canyon, striving for vantage way enough to risk a shot. And a dozen feet behind surged the doughpot, traveling blindly in the only direction it could\u2014the way of food.<\/p>\n They gained. Then, abruptly, the canyon, which had been angling southwest, turned sharply south. The light of the eternally eastward Sun was hidden; they were in a pit of perpetual shadow, and the ground was bare and lifeless rock. And as it reached that point, the doughpot halted; lacking any organization, any will, it could not move when no food gave it direction. It was such a monster as only the life-swarming climate of Venus could harbor; it lived only by endless eating.<\/p>\n The two paused in the shadow.<\/p>\n \u201cNow what?\u201d muttered Ham.<\/p>\n A fair shot at the mass was impossible because of the angle; a blast would destroy only the portion it could reach.<\/p>\n Patricia leaped upward, catching a snaky shrub on the wall, so placed that it received a faint ray of light. She tossed it against the pulsing mass; the whole doughpot lunged forward a foot or two.<\/p>\n \u201cLure it in,\u201d she suggested.<\/p>\n They tried. It was impossible; vegetation was too sparse.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat will happen to the thing?\u201d asked Ham.<\/p>\n \u201cI saw one stranded on the desert edge of the Hotlands,\u201d replied the girl. \u201cIt quivered around for a long time, and then the cells attacked each other. It ate itself.\u201d She shuddered. \u201cIt was\u2014horrible!\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cHow long?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cOh, forty to fifty hours.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI won\u2019t wait that<\/em> long,\u201d growled Ham. He fumbled in his pack, pulling out his transkin.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat will you do?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cPut this on and try to blast that mass out of here at close range.\u201d He fingered his flame-pistol. \u201cThis is my last barrel,\u201d he said gloomily, then more hopefully: \u201cBut we have yours.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe chamber of mine cracked last time I used it, ten or twelve hours ago. But I have plenty of barrels.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cGood enough!\u201d said Ham.<\/p>\n He crept cautiously toward the horrible, pulsating wall of white. He thrust his arm so as to cover the greatest angle, pulled the trigger, and the roar and blazing fire of the blast bellowed echoing through the canyon. Bits of the monster spattered around him, and the thickness of the remainder, lessened by the incineration of tons of filth, was now only three feet.<\/p>\n \u201cThe barrel held!\u201d he called triumphantly. It saved much time in recharging.<\/p>\n Five minutes later the weapon crashed again. When the mass of the monstrosity stopped heaving, only a foot and a half of depth remained, but the barrel had been blown to atoms.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ll have to use yours,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Patricia produced one, he took it, and then stared at it in dismay. The barrels of her Enfield-made weapon were far too small for his American pistol stock!<\/p>\n He groaned. \u201cOf all the idiots!\u201d he burst out.<\/p>\n \u201cIdiots!\u201d she flared. \u201cBecause you Yankees use trench mortars for your barrels?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI meant myself. I should have guessed this.\u201d He shrugged. \u201cWell, we have our choice now of waiting here for the doughpot to eat himself, or trying to find some other way out of this trap. And my hunch is that this canyon\u2019s blind.\u201d<\/p>\n It was probable, Patricia admitted. The narrow cleft was the product of some vast, ancient upheaval that had split the mountain in halves. Since it was not the result of water erosion, it was likely enough that the cleft ended abruptly in an unscalable precipice, but it was possible, too, that somewhere those sheer walls might be surmountable.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve time to waste, anyway,\u201d she concluded. \u201cWe might as well try it. Besides\u2014\u201d She wrinkled her dainty nose distastefully at the doughpot\u2019s odor.<\/p>\n S<\/strong><\/span>till in his transkin, Ham followed her through the shadowy half dusk. The passage narrowed, then veered west again, but now so high and sheer were the walls that the Sun, slightly south of east, cast no light into it. It was a place of shades like the region of the storm line that divides the twilight zone from the dark hemisphere, not true night, nor yet honest day, but a dim middle state.<\/p>\n Ahead of him Patricia\u2019s bronzed limbs showed pale instead of tan, and when she spoke her voice went echoing queerly between the opposing cliffs. A weird place, this chasm, a dusky, unpleasant place.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t like this,\u201d said Ham. \u201cThe pass is cutting closer and closer to the dark. Do you realize no one knows what\u2019s in the dark parts of the Mountains of Eternity?\u201d<\/p>\n Patricia laughed; the sound was ghostly. \u201cWhat danger could there be? Anyway, we still have our automatics.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s no way up here,\u201d Ham grumbled. \u201cLet\u2019s turn back.\u201d<\/p>\n Patricia faced him. \u201cFrightened, Yankee?\u201d Her voice dropped. \u201cThe natives say these mountains are haunted,\u201d she went on mockingly. \u201cMy father told me he saw queer things in Madman\u2019s Pass. Do you know that if there is life on the night side, here is the one place it would impinge on the twilight zone? Here in the Mountains of Eternity?\u201d<\/p>\n She was taunting him; she laughed again. And suddenly her laughter was repeated in a hideous cacophony that hooted out from the sides of the cliffs above them in a horrid medley.<\/p>\n She paled; it was Patricia who was frightened now. They stared apprehensively up at the rock walls where strange shadows flickered and shifted.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat\u2014what was it?\u201d she whispered. And then: \u201cHam! Did you see that?\u201d<\/p>\n Ham had seen it. A wild shape had flung itself across the strip of sky, leaping from cliff to cliff far above them. And again came a peal of hooting that sounded like laughter, while shadowy forms moved, flylike, on the sheer walls.<\/p>\n \u201cLet\u2019s go back!\u201d she gasped. \u201cQuickly!\u201d<\/p>\n As she turned, a small black object fell and broke with a sullen pop before them. Ham stared at it. A pod, a spore-sac, of some unknown variety. A lazy, dusky cloud drifted over it, and suddenly both of them were choking violently. Ham felt his head spinning in dizziness, and Patricia reeled against him.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s narcotic!\u201d she gasped. \u201cBack!\u201d<\/p>\n But a dozen more plopped<\/em> around them. The dusty spores whirled in dark eddies, and breathing was a torment. They were being drugged and suffocated at the same time.<\/p>\n Ham had a sudden inspiration. \u201cMask!\u201d he choked, and pulled his transkin over his face.<\/p>\n The filter that kept out the molds of the Hotlands cleaned the air of these spores as well; his head cleared. But the girl\u2019s covering was somewhere in her pack; she was fumbling for it. Abruptly she sat down, swaying.<\/p>\n \u201cMy pack,\u201d she murmured. \u201cTake it out with you. Your\u2014your\u2014\u201d She broke into a fit of coughing.<\/p>\n He dragged her under a shallow overhang and ripped her transkin from the pack. \u201cPut it on!\u201d he snapped.<\/p>\n A score of pods were popping.<\/p>\n A figure flitted silently far up on the wall of rock. Ham watched its progress, then aimed his automatic and fired. There was a shrill, rasping scream, answered by a chorus of dissonant ululations, and something as large as a man whirled down to crash not ten feet from him.<\/p>\n The thing was hideous. Ham stared appalled at a creature not unlike a native, three-eyed, two-handed, four-legged, but the hands, though two-fingered like the Hotlanders\u2019, were not pincer-like, but white and clawed.<\/p>\n And the face! Not the broad, expressionless face of the others, but a slanting, malevolent, dusky visage with each eye double the size of the natives\u2019. It wasn\u2019t dead; it glared hatred and seized a stone, flinging it at him with weak viciousness. Then it died.<\/p>\n Ham didn\u2019t know what it was, of course. Actually it was a triops noctivivans<\/em>\u2014the \u201cthree-eyed dweller in the dark,\u201d the strange, semi-intelligent being that is as yet the only known creature of the night side, and a member of that fierce remnant still occasionally found in the sunless parts of the Mountains of Eternity. It is perhaps the most vicious creature in the known planets, absolutely unapproachable, and delighting in slaughter.<\/p>\n At the crash of the shot, the shower of pods had ceased, and a chorus of laughing hoots ensued. Ham seized the respite to pull the girl\u2019s transkin over her face; she had collapsed with it only half on.<\/p>\n Then a sharp crack sounded, and a stone rebounded to strike his arm. Others pattered around him, whining past, swift as bullets. Black figures flickered in great leaps against the sky, and their fierce laughter sounded mockingly. He fired at one in mid-air; the cry of pain rasped again, but the creature did not fall.<\/p>\n Stones pelted him. They were all small ones, pebble-sized, but they were flung so fiercely that they hummed in passage, and they tore his flesh through his transkin. He turned Patricia on her face, but she moaned faintly as a missile struck her back. He shielded her with his own body.<\/p>\n T<\/strong><\/span>he position was intolerable. He must risk a dash back, even though the doughpot blocked the opening. Perhaps, he thought, armored in transkin he could wade through the creature. He knew that was an insane idea; the gluey mass would roll him into itself to suffocate\u2014but it had to be faced. He gathered the girl in his arms and rushed suddenly down the canyon.<\/p>\n Hoots and shrieks and a chorus of mocking laughter echoed around him. Stones struck him everywhere. One glanced from his head, sending him stumbling and staggering against the cliff. But he ran doggedly on; he knew now what drove him. It was the girl he carried; he had<\/em> to save Patricia Burlingame.<\/p>\n Ham reached the bend. Far up on the west wall glowed cloudy sunlight, and his weird pursuers flung themselves to the dark side. They couldn\u2019t stand daylight, and that gave him some assistance; by creeping very close to the eastern wall he was partially shielded.<\/p>\n Ahead was the other bend, blocked by the doughpot. As he neared it, he turned suddenly sick. Three of the creatures were grouped against the mass of white, eating\u2014actually eating!\u2014the corruption. They whirled, hooting, as he came, he shot two of them, and as the third leaped for the wall, he dropped that one as well, and it fell with a dull gulping sound into the doughpot.<\/p>\n Again he sickened; the doughpot drew away from it, leaving the thing lying in a hollow like the hole of a giant doughnut. Not even that monstrosity would eat these creatures.[1]\n But the thing\u2019s leap had drawn Ham\u2019s attention to a twelve-inch ledge. It might be\u2014yes, it was possible that he could traverse that rugged trail and so circle the doughpot. Nearly hopeless, no doubt, to attempt it under the volley of stones, but he must. There was no alternative.<\/p>\n He shifted the girl to free his right arm. He slipped a second clip in his automatic and then fired at random into the flitting shadows above. For a moment the hail of pebbles ceased, and with a convulsive, painful struggle, Ham dragged himself and Patricia to the ledge.<\/p>\n Stones cracked about him once more. Step by step he edged along the way, poised just over the doomed doughpot. Death below and death above! And little by little he rounded the bend; above him both walls glowed in sunlight, and they were safe.<\/p>\n At least, he<\/em> was safe. The girl might be already dead, he thought frantically, as he slipped and slid through the slime of the doughpot\u2019s passage. Out on the daylit slope he tore the mask from her face and gazed on white, marble-cold features.<\/p>\n I<\/strong><\/span>t was not death, however, but only drugged torpor. An hour later she was conscious, though weak and very badly frightened. Yet almost her first question was for her pack.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s here,\u201d Ham said. \u201cWhat\u2019s so precious about that pack? Your notes?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cMy notes? Oh, no!\u201d A faint flush covered her features. \u201cIt\u2019s\u2014I kept trying to tell you\u2014it\u2019s your xixtchil.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhat?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYes. I\u2014of course I didn\u2019t throw it to the molds. It\u2019s yours by rights, Ham. Lots of British traders go into the American Hotlands. I just slit the pouch and hid it here in my pack. The molds on the ground were only some twigs I threw there to\u2014to make it look real.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBut\u2014but\u2014why?\u201d<\/p>\n The flush deepened. \u201cI wanted to punish you,\u201d Patricia whispered, \u201cfor being so\u2014so cold and distant.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI?\u201d Ham was amazed. \u201cIt was you!\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cPerhaps it was, at first. You forced your way into my house, you know. But\u2014after you carried me across the mudspout, Ham\u2014it was different.\u201d<\/p>\n Ham gulped. Suddenly he pulled her into his arms. \u201cI\u2019m not going to quarrel about whose fault it was,\u201d he said. \u201cBut we\u2019ll settle one thing immediately. We\u2019re going to Erotia, and that\u2019s where we\u2019ll be married, in a good American church if they\u2019ve put one up yet, or by a good American justice if they haven\u2019t. There\u2019s no more talk of Madman\u2019s Pass and crossing the Mountains of Eternity. Is that clear?\u201d<\/p>\n She glanced at the vast, looming peaks and shuddered. \u201cQuite clear!\u201d she replied meekly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In 1935 Stanley G. Weinbaum gave us an utterly alien view of the late 21st century frontier of Venus. Although the planet seems outlandish now, it was supported by the known science of the time. — ed. N.E. Lilly<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":546,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3,5],"tags":[22],"media":[299],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spacewesterns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spacewesterns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spacewesterns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spacewesterns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spacewesterns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.spacewesterns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1214,"href":"https:\/\/www.spacewesterns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14\/revisions\/1214"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spacewesterns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/546"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spacewesterns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spacewesterns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spacewesterns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14"},{"taxonomy":"media","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spacewesterns.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?post=14"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Part II.<\/h2>\n
Part III.<\/h2>\n
[1. It was not known then that while the night-side life of Venus can eat and digest that of the day side, the reverse is not true. No day-side creature can absorb the dark life because of the presence of various metabolic alcohols, all poisonous.<\/em>]<\/blockquote>\n