CHAPTER 6

"I guess that's the Sharkey place over there," mumbled Major Connel to

himself, banking his jet launch over the green jungles and pointing the

speedy little craft's nose toward the clearing in the distance. The

Solar Guard officer wrenched the scout around violently in his approach.

He was still boiling over the Venusian Delegate's indifference toward

his mission.

The launch skimmed the jungle treetops and glided to a perfect stop near

the largest of a group of farm buildings. Cutting the motors, Connel sat

and waited for someone to appear. He sat there for ten minutes but no

one came out to greet him. Finally he climbed out of the launch and

stood by the hatch, peering intently at the buildings around him, his

eyes squinting against the glare of the fiery sun overhead. The

plantation seemed deserted. Reaching back into the launch and pulling

out a paralo-ray gun, he strapped its reassuring bulk to his side and

stepped toward the building that was obviously the main house. Nothing

else moved in the hot noon sun.

As he strode purposefully toward the house, eyes alert for any sign of

life, he thought for a moment everyone might be taking a midday nap.

Many of the Venusian colonists adapted the age-old custom of the tropics

to escape the intense heat of midday. But he dismissed the thought

immediately, realizing that his approach in the jet would have awakened

the deepest of sleepers.

Entering the house, he stopped in the spacious front hall and called:

"Hello! Anybody home? Halloo!"

The only answer was the echo of his own voice, vibrating through the

large rooms.

"Funny," muttered the spaceman. "Why is this place deserted?"

He walked slowly through the house, opening doors and looking into all

the rooms, searching the whole place thoroughly before returning to the

clearing. Going to the nearest of the outbuildings, he opened one of the

wide doors and stared into the gloomy interior. With his experienced eye

he saw immediately that the building had been used to house a large jet

craft. There was the slightly pungent odor of jet fuel, and on the floor

the tire marks of a dolly used to roll the craft out to the launching

strip. He followed the tracks outside and around to the side of the

building where he saw the dolly. It was empty.

Shaking his head grimly, Connel made a quick tour of the remaining

buildings. They were all deserted but the last one, which seemed to be

built a little more sturdily than the others. Unlike the others, it was

locked. He looked for a window and discovered that the walls were solid.

There were no openings except the locked door. He hesitated in front of

the door, looking down at the ground for a sign of what might have been

stored in the building. The surrounding area revealed no tracks. He

pulled out a thick-bladed pocketknife and stepped to the lock, then

suddenly stopped and grinned.

"Great," he said to himself. "A Solar Guard officer about to break into

private property without a warrant. Fine thing to have known back at the

Academy!"

He turned abruptly and strode back to the scout. Climbing into the

craft, he picked up the audioscriber microphone and recorded a brief

message. Removing the threadlike tape from the machine, he returned to

the house and left it on the spool of the audioscribe-replay machine

near the front door.

A few moments later the eerie silence of the Sharkey plantation was once

again shattered by the hissing roar of jets as the launch took off and

climbed rapidly over the jungle. Air-borne, Connel glanced briefly at a

chart, changed course, and sent the launch hurtling at full speed across

the jungle toward the Sinclair plantation.

* * * * *

"How far do you think we've come?" asked Tom sleepily.

Astro yawned and stretched before answering. "I'd say about fifteen

miles, Tom."

"Seems more like a hundred and fifteen," moaned Roger who was sprawled

on the ground. "I ache all over. Start at the top of my head and work

down, and you won't find one square inch that isn't sore."

Tom grinned. He was tired himself, but the three-day march through the

jungle had been three of the most exciting days in his life. Coming from

a large city where he had to travel two hours by monorail to get to open

green country, the curly-haired cadet found this passage through the

wildest jungle in the solar system new and fascinating. He had seen

flowers of every color in the spectrum, some as large as himself; giant

shrubs with leaves so fine that they looked like spider webs; Venusian

teakwood trees fifty to a hundred feet thick at the base with some

twisted into strange spirals as their trunks, shaded by another larger

tree, sought a clear avenue to the sun. There were bushes that grew

thorns three inches long, hard as steel and thin as needles; jungle

creepers, vines two and three feet thick, twisting around tree trunks

and strangling them. He saw animals too, all double the size of anything

on Earth because of the lighter Venusian gravity; insects the size of

rats, rats the size of dogs, and wild dogs the size of ponies. Up in the

trees, small anthropoids, cousins to the monkeys of Earth, scampered

from limb to limb, screaming at the invaders of their jungle home.

Smooth-furred animals that looked like deer, their horns curling

overhead, scampered about the cadets like puppies, nuzzling them,

nipping at their heels playfully, and barking as though in laughter when

Astro roared at them for getting in the way.

But there were dangerous creatures in the jungle too; the beautiful but

deadly poisonous brush snakes that lurked unseen in the varicolored

foliage, striking out at anything that passed; animals resembling

chipmunks with enlarged razor-sharp fangs, whose craving for raw meat

was so great that they would attack an animal ten times its size;

lizards the size of elephants with scales like armor plate that rooted

in swampy ground for their food, but which would attack any intruder,

charging with amazing speed, their three horns poised; and, finally,

there were the monsters of Venus--giant beasts whose weights were

measured in tons, ruled over by the most horrible of them all--the

tyrannosaurus.

Fights to death between the jungle creatures were common sights for the

boys during their march. They saw a weird soundless fight between a

forty-foot snake and a giant vulture with talons nearly two feet across

and a beak resembling a mammoth nutcracker. The vulture won,

methodically cutting the reptile's body into sections, its beak slicing

through the snake as easily as a knife going through butter.

More than once Astro spotted a dangerous creature, and telling Roger and

Tom to stand back, he would level his shock rifle and blast it.

So far they had seen nothing of their prey--the tyrannosaurus. Tracks

around the steaming swamps were as close as they had come. Once, late in

the evening of the second day they caught a fleeting glimpse of a

plant-eating brontosaurus lumbering through the brush.

All three of the boys had found it difficult to sleep in the jungle. The

first two nights they had taken turns at staying on guard and tending

the campfire. Nothing had bothered them, and on the third night out,

they decided the fire would be enough to scare off the jungle animals.

It was risky, but the continual fight through the jungle underbrush had

tired the three boys to the bone and the few hours they stood guard were

sorely missed the next day, so they decided to chance it.

Roger was already asleep. Astro had just finished checking his rifle to

be ready for instant fire, when Tom threw the last log on the campfire

and crawled into his sleeping bag.

"Think it'll be all right, Astro?" asked Tom. "I'm not anxious to wake

up inside one of these critter's stomachs."

"Most of them have never seen fire, Tom," Astro said reassuringly. "It

scares them. Besides, we're getting close to the big stuff now. You

might see a tyranno or a big bronto any time. And if they come along,

you'll hear 'em, believe me. They're about as quiet as a squadron of

cruisers on battle emergency blasting off from the Academy in the middle

of the night!"

"O.K.," replied Tom. "You're the hunter in this crew." Suddenly he

laughed. "You know I really got a bang out of the way Roger jumped back

from that waddling ground bird yesterday."

Astro grinned. "Yeah, the one thing in this place that's as ferocious as

a kitten and he pulls his ray gun like an ancient cowboy!"

A very tired voice spoke up from the other sleeping bag. "Is that so!

Well, when you two brave men came face to face with that baby lizard on

a tree root, you were ready to finish your leave in Atom City!" Roger

unzipped the end of the bag, stuck his blond head out, and gave his unit

mates a sour look. "Sack in, will you? Your rocket wash is keeping me

awake!"

Laughing, Astro and Tom nodded good night to each other and closed their

sleeping bags. The jungle was still, the only movement being the leaping

tongues of flame from the campfire.

An hour later it began to rain, a light drizzle at first that increased

until it reached the steady pounding of a tropical downpour. Tom awoke

first, opening the flap of his sleeping bag only to get his face full of

slimy water that spilled in. Spluttering and coughing he sat up and saw

that the campfire was out and the campsite was already six inches deep

in water.

"Roger, Astro!" he called and slapped the nearest sleeping bag. Astro

opened the flap a little and peered out sleepily. Instantly he rolled

out of the bag and jumped to his feet.

"Wake Roger up!" he snapped. "We've got to get out of here!"

"What's the matter?" Roger mumbled through the bag, not opening it. "Why

the excitement over a little rain?"

"The fire's out, hotshot," said Astro. "It's as dark as the inside of a

cow's number-four belly. We've got to move!"

"Why?" asked Tom, not understanding the big cadet's sudden nervous

excitement. "What's the matter with staying right where we are? Why go

trooping around in the dark?"

"We can't light a fire anywhere," added Roger, finally sticking his head

out of his sleeping bag.

"We've got to get on high ground!" said Astro, hurriedly packing the

camping equipment. "We're in a hollow here. The rain really comes down

on Venus, and in another hour this place will be a pond!"

Sensing the urgency in Astro's voice, Roger began packing up his

equipment and in a few moments the three boys had their gear slung over

their shoulders and were slogging through water already knee-deep.

"I still don't see why we have to go tracking through the jungle in the

middle of the night," grumbled Roger. "We could climb up a tree and wait

out the storm."

"You'd have to wait long after the rain stops," replied Astro. "There is

one thing in this place nothing ever gets enough of, and that's water.

Animals know it and hang around all the water holes. If a small animal

tries to get a drink, he more than likely winds up in something's

stomach. When it rains like this, hollows fill up like the one we just

left, and everything within running, hopping, and crawling distance

heads for it to get a bellyful of water. In another hour our camp will

be like something out of a nightmare, with every animal in the jungle

coming down for a drink and starting to fight one another."

"Then if we stayed there--" Roger stopped.

"We'd be in the middle of it," said Astro grimly. "We wouldn't last two

minutes."

Walking single file, with Astro in the lead, followed by Roger and then

Tom, they stumbled through the pitch-black darkness. Astro refused to

shine a light, for fear of being attacked by a desperate animal, more

eager for water than afraid of the light. They carried their shock

blasters cocked and ready to fire. The rain continued, increasing in

fury until they were enveloped in a nearly solid wall of water. In a

little while the floor of the jungle became one continuous mudhole, with

each step taking them ankle-deep into the sucking mud. Their climb was

uphill, and the water from above increased, washing down around them in

torrents. More than once one of the cadets fell, gasping for breath,

into the dirty water, only to be jerked back to more solid footing by

the other two. Stumbling, their hands groping wildly in the dark, they

pushed forward.

They were reaching higher ground when Astro stopped suddenly.

"Listen!" he whispered hoarsely.

The boys stood still, the rain pounding down on their plastic headgear,

holding rifles ready and straining their ears for some sound other than

the drumming of rain.

"I don't hear anything," said Roger.

"_Shhh!_" hissed Astro.

They waited, and then from a distance they heard the faint crashing of

underbrush. Gradually it became more distinct until there was no

mistaking its source. A large monster was moving through the jungle near

them!

"What is it?" asked Tom, trying to keep his voice calm.

"A big one," said Astro. "A real big one. And I think it's heading this

way!"

"By the craters of Luna!" gasped Roger. "What do we do?"

"We either run, or stay here and try to blast it."

"Whatever you say, Astro," said Roger. "You're the boss."

"Same here," said Tom. "Call it."

Astro did not answer right away. He strained his ears, listening to the

movements of the advancing monster, trying to ascertain the exact

direction the beast was taking. The noise became more violent, the

crashing more sharply defined as small trees were crushed to the ground.

"If only I knew exactly what it is!" said Astro desperately. "If it's a

tyranno, it walks on its hind legs and has its head way up in the trees,

and could pass within ten feet of us and not see us. But if it's a

bronto, it has a long snakelike neck that he pokes all around and he

wouldn't miss us at a hundred feet!"

"Make up your mind quick, big boy," said Roger. "If that thing gets any

closer, I'm opening up with this blaster. He might eat me, but I'll sure

make his teeth rattle first!"

The ground began to shake as the approaching monster came nearer. Astro

remained still, ears straining for some sound to indicate exactly what

was crashing down on them.

Above them, the shrill scream of an anthropoid suddenly pierced the dark

night as its tree home was sent crashing to the ground. There was a

growing roar and the crashing stopped momentarily.

"Let's get out of here," said Astro tensely. "That's a tyranno, but he's

down on all fours now, looking for that monkey! Keep together and make

as little noise as you can. No talking. Keep your blasters and emergency

lights ready. If he discovers us, you shine the light on his face Roger,

and Tom and I will shoot. O.K.?"

Tom and Roger agreed.

"All right," said Astro, "let's go--and spaceman's luck!"