  Blue vegetation, red insect-men, hideous [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from "No sign of the Indra!" shouted Rurak Dun, with an angry toss of his wet hair away from his aching forehead. It was hot there in the tiny cabin of the wing with the rocket blasts thrumming behind them. Rurak dropped the sweat-sticky circle of his radiophone and peered down at the foul blueness of the swampland. A range of low hills shouldered aside the oozy floor of liquid mud, and blue jungle crept high up along their rocky slopes almost to their barren upper tips. Beyond the hills he could see where the outer limits of the coastal swamp ended and the level stretches of the Mossy Plains spread away endlessly. Insect-men, or Yzaps, with almost human intelligence and organization inhabited Earth—or more properly Soora in the Martian tongue—and bat-like monstrosities swarmed thick above the rocky uplands between the blue swamplands and the plains of moss that stretched now before his gaze. Rurak Dun felt the sweat bead on the tip of his nose. The thick humid air of Terra choked him and he wondered. After so many years would there be any shred of the wreckage left above the lush foliage of the jungle? After the light-helioed message that the Indra was about to crash on Earth there had been no other message from Prince Hudar Kel and his party. And now, seventeen years later, another space ship had been sent to search for Prince Kel. His father, the Emperor, had died and within three days both his elder brothers succumbed to the same mysterious malady that had taken their father's life. Before the New Year a new ruler must be found ... and Earth and Mars were again in apposition! "Nidan," clicked the mandibles of the hideous insect man who shared the cabin with Rurak Dun, "I see a ship-from-the-Sky." Rurak's gray eyes narrowed in the golden flesh of his sweating face. Then he shouted and snapped on his radiophone. "Gor!" he shouted, "Gor." "Uh?" grunted a lazy voice in his receiver. "I've found them," Rurak told him swiftly. "On a level hilltop in the swamp! The Indra seems rather battered—trees growing up through one section of her hull—but there are signs of life about her. Probably Yzaps who have built a village there. Going down to investigate." "Nidan!" shrieked the Earthling Tis, brandishing the old metal knife the Tekna's cook had given him, "thuftars attacking! Many thuftars!" Rurak dropped the mouthpiece and swung his visual scope around the horizon. Scores of vast green thuftars were circling above and about him, their hideous green shapes, travesties of the human form, gathering for a concerted attack upon his frail wing. They wheeled easily through Earth's atmosphere, although no wings or any other evidence of how they maintained flight was visible. Their scaly bodies terminated in horny, reptilian hands and feet, and their triple-spiked ears lent the ultimate in grotesquerie to their appearance. The thuftars' shrill whistling skirled hideously and constantly as they dove in toward the wing. Rurak tripped the guns again and again as he dove and climbed among that circling swarm of scaly harpies and many a thuftar's greenish blood sprayed from its burst body over its fellows. Tis had climbed into the gun turret in the cabin's narrow rear but he understood nothing of how to fire that weapon. Rurak regretted that he had not brought along one of his own comrades. Perhaps together they could have driven off the thuftars. The wing bucked and spun in a tight circle while Rurak let his guns spray at their ultimate capacity. Thuftars fell, many of them, but scores of them remained. They were too many. Rurak dove away then, sounding for the ground. Perhaps under the trees of the hilltop beside the Indra he could take shelter—drive the scaly beings off. Blue lacy fronds of the hilltop forest were almost beneath his landing gear when he felt the first impact of a diving thuftar's weight. Again and again the wing quivered as more thuftars struck and clung. The controls were frozen. Slowly the wing nosed over and sideslipped, and then the upper branches of the forest swallowed them all. Rurak saw a network of interlacing great branches and thick vines snaking through them. A wall of blue jungle came smashing inward against the wing's frail cabin and then a prolonged splintering crash sounded as though from a great distance. Curiously he watched himself grope feebly among the shattered debris of what had been the instrument panel for the radiophone. He laughed even as he watched. The wing was a hopeless wreck. Tis, the Yzap native, crawled out of the shattered turret and helped Rurak to climb into the vine-latticed branches about them. He hoped that Rurak would remember to take along his rocket pistol and some shells and was pleased to see Rurak obediently follow his will. It was strange to float here impartially a few feet above his own dazed body. There was no pain, just a dull aching void far back in his brain. He watched the figures of Rurak Dun and Tis slowly descending and somehow he was descending with them. They dropped a last few feet to the mossy soil beneath the great trees and he felt the jar jolt up to his brain. The misty something that seemed to have separated him from his body was dissolving. He could feel pain and taste the salty warmth of sweat in his mouth. An ominous black wall of metal reared itself out of the jungle a few yards away and he sensed that here was the handiwork of some intelligent creature. There was an oval window of transparent material staring like some empty eyesocket out of the wall at him. Memory jabbed feebly at him and presently he recalled what this must be.... The Indra! Voices were shouting something in a tongue that was familiar; whether Yzap or Rurak's own beloved Martian he could not tell. And then he saw a knot of dark shapes, red insect men, crawling toward him through the blue jungle. But it was not the sudden appearance of these creatures that made Rurak gape in wonderment. For circling to a landing above the heads of the insect men was a small golden chariot drawn by two gigantic crimson birds. And standing in the sky-chariot was the most beautiful woman Rurak Dun had ever seen. As the queer conveyance swooped gracefully to rest in the small clearing the girl stepped out and walked swiftly toward them. Her amazingly golden hair floated freely about her rounded, shapely shoulders as she approached the dumb-founded group. Rurak Dun remembered that he was still gaping rudely. He colored, and started an apology, but with upraised hand, the girl brushed it aside. "I am Nitha Kel, daughter of Hudar Kel," she explained tersely. Now he could see that her brief vest of golden cloth and her short skirt were made of the carefully tanned hide of some Earthly beast. Sandals of thick hide were upon her shapely feet and there was a regal unconscious poise to her whole body that stamped her as the princess that she claimed to be. "And I," he said, forcing himself to speak, "am Rurak Dun, fifth officer of the Tekna, come to rescue your royal father if he yet lives." "Father is alive," she said puzzled, "and is even now fighting off the attack of one of our renegade crew and his party of Yzaps. But why this sudden interest in our whereabouts? Is it only because our two planets are in apposition? Surely a third son of a Martian emperor is not worthy of a special expedition?" "Your father is now our Emperor," said Rurak gravely, "if he returns to claim his throne before the New Year. And the time is drawing short. Will you take me to him at once?" She nodded, then turned and ran back to her strange conveyance. A word of command, and the two giant birds rose gracefully into the air. They did not disappear, but hovered above Nitha Kel and Rurak Dun as they made their way on foot through the jungle. "They are attacking the South Cliff today," Nitha told Rurak as they walked along. "Jokar Ged and his ferocious Inpo warriors are climbing ladders of lashed poles and young trees to try to take this hilltop. We will beat them back of course but many of our brave Yzaps will die." "Why do you fight?" Rurak wanted to know. "What does Jokar Ged desire so greatly here upon the hilltop—the wrecked Indra?" Nitha laughed. "He desires me," she said. "I am the only woman on Earth. My mother died soon after I was born and since then all of the six members of our crew, save Jokar Ged, have cared for me. Last year Jokar Ged tried to take me away with him but I escaped and reported his treachery to Father. There has been war between them since that hour." "I do not wonder that Jokar Ged was in love with you," Rurak Dun said boldly. "You are lovelier than all the beautiful women of Mars." Nitha's clear blue eyes looked coldly into Rurak's admiring gray eyes and he knew that he had offended her. So in silence they hurried along the forest ways with Tis and the friendly insect men of the hilltop trailing along behind them, and the crimson birds circling above. It happened so suddenly they had no chance to seek cover. One moment they were crossing a round hilltop, surrounded by the strange, jagged blue peaks of this unbelievable world. The next, with a sound of rushing wind, one of the hideous green thuftars was in their midst. Before Rurak could draw his ray-gun and fire, he felt the creature's scaly, lizard fingers wrapped about the protective collar of his throat. The world spun crazily, then began slowly to go black before his eyes. He was dimly aware of Nitha's voice. "Trak! Odap! Down, quickly," and the beating of pinions as the mighty birds settled to earth. Then miraculously the pressure about his throat was gone, and he shook his head to clear his sight. Blurred at first, then stronger he saw a startling scene. Nitha had mounted her chariot, and now, sharp spear poised stiffly before her, had sent her weird team into a headlong charge at the thuftar. The enraged beast tried to launch itself into the air to parry the attack, but he had waited too long. There was the sound of metal against a scaly breast, then Nitha and her bird-chariot had passed by, and the thuftar was clawing futilely at the shaft of the long spear that was buried deep within its body. With a last convulsive effort, he tore it loose, and foul green blood gushed from the jagged hole. He staggered a few steps, then fell gasping to the rocky ground. He twitched convulsively once, then lay still. Nitha again descended, and ran swiftly to Rurak. He raised himself on one knee and elbow, still breathing gaspingly. The insect men crowded about him with queer clacking noises. He staggered weakly to his feet. "I'm—I'm all right," he gasped. "Let's get on before more of them come." He smiled twistedly. "And thanks for the favor. I guess I wasn't much help." Nitha waved aside his thanks perfunctorily, and once again the little party moved forward. They came abruptly to the brink of a sheer cliff that dropped away perhaps thirty feet to a rock-strewn brushy slope. Down there a burly golden man, his massive chest and arms shaggy with a tangled mat of reddish hair, led a hideous horde of Yzaps from the distant Mossy Plains on to the attack. Ladders, a dozen or more of them constructed of massive limbs of wood and stout saplings for uprights, leaned against the cliff almost at its top. Sprawling heaps of Yzaps, their glistening black exoskeletons spattered with their own yellowish blood, attested to the failure of the preceding assaults. But this time the Yzaps carried heavy shields of sticks two or three layers in thickness before them as they advanced. Spears drove up from below and other spears smashed down into the attackers' crude shields without doing any apparent damage. Rurak shot a quick glance along the cliff-top on either hand and saw that a thin line of fierce looking Yzap warriors, with here and there a golden Martian to direct their defense, held firm. None of the Martians, however, was armed with anything save crude spears and crossbows such as Martian boys have constructed since time immemorable. Then the insect men of Jokar Ged swept up to the ladders and swiftly mounted toward the hilltop above. Crossbow bolts and spears could not drive back that swarming horde. The defenders tried with poles to fend off the ladders and their loads of bloodthirsty Yzaps but spears from below soon put an end to their endeavor. Then they hurled great rocks down upon the enemy, sweeping many of them off but never for an instant halting that dogged advance. Rurak Dun saw that the tide was turning against the defenders of the hilltop even as he slipped his rocket pistol over the rim of the cliff and started picking off the attackers one by one. Fear of the explosion as much as the sudden death that struck among them made the Plains' Yzaps falter and then come to a halt. "Only a popgun!" Jokar Ged was bellowing as he dashed among his startled followers. "Will you be driven back by a little stick that spits lead? Come along, up the ladder with you." His heavy fists were lashing out, trying to beat courage into the insect men. Rurak shot at him again and again but the luck of Droog must have protected his evil carcass from death. All around him the Yzaps were falling dead with bullets in their heads. The weapons of the other defenders now increased their fire and shortly the demoralized ranks of the renegade Martian's party were straggling away among the brushy cover that the lower slopes afforded. For the time there would be respite from battle. "A Martian!" a hearty voice boomed beside Rurak Dun and he spun about to face a grag-bearded giant of a man, "a Martian come to rescue us at an opportune moment. Jokar Ged grows more cunning with every fresh attack and soon this little hilltop will fall before his superior forces. "But tell me, stranger," he went on, "how you came here. Did you come to find where my ship crashed, or are you merely carrying out a routine exploration of this planet? What has happened on Mars?" "You are Prince Hudar Kel?" inquired Rurak. "Yes," nodded the bearded giant. "Then I have news for you, my Emperor," Rurak told him, "that will perhaps not be pleasant. Your father, the Emperor, and your two brothers have all died. We have come to find you and take you back to Mars before the New Year." The bearded giant's hard fingers sunk convulsively into Rurak's shoulder and he said nothing for a time. Then his tall body stiffened proudly and he smiled gravely down at the young Martian. "I am ready to return and assume my duties," he said simply. "Two days we have been floating down this stinking river," squat Elko Sohm groaned as he wielded his crude native paddle. "Two days with the blistering hot rain scalding our poor backs and the stench of mouldering purple vegetation in our nostrils. Hurry, you tell me, that we may reach the Tekna before she blasts off again for Mars. "If you ask me we'd better have stayed with the old Indra and waited for them to find us. For seventeen long years, figuring by the shorter year of this soggy hell of a planet, we lived there on that hilltop. There was no danger from the swampland monsters and only the green-scaled thuftars could get near us. And now you take me, a warped wreck of an old man, and plunge into the thick of this unknown hell." Rurak grinned crookedly through lips that insect-bites had swollen grotesquely. Ahead of him the glistening form of Tis dipped his paddle rhythmically into the liquid scum that floored the sluggish river. Tis was at home here in the watery blue marshes and liquid mud flats of the continent's eastern shore. Somewhere ahead the huge bulk of the Tekna wallowed atop a marshy island not far from one of the myriad crystalline growths that dotted this three-tailed continent's marshy places. Seeking always the marshy seaboards or inland rivers and lakes these colonies of linked, silicon-based, crystalline cells—sometimes called the "cities" of Earth by imaginative astronomers—spread over miles of area and soared in fantastic towers and spires hundreds of feet into the thick moist air of Earth's heavens. And toward that crystal signboard beside the Great Sea they were driving their rude dugout to carry the glad news that the new Emperor was found. Two days had they waited for another flying wing to contact the hilltop and on the second night old Elko Sohm, Tis, and Rurak had slipped away in the darkness and headed eastward. Past native villages of thatch and mud floating upon living rafts of vegetation they raced and through dense water-lanes where the blue and purple of foliage shut off the murky light of the swollen sun.... "Elko Sohm! Rurak Dun!" the cry sounded faintly from the foggy depths of the river behind them. Tis guided the clumsy boat into the arched cave of a swamp tree's roots and picked up his spear. Elko Sohm grunted as he stripped the oiled leather case from about his sturdy crossbow. "The voice of a woman," he announced resignedly. "Nitha has for some reason trailed us this far." "Elko!" the voice called again and now they could see another smaller dugout, stolen perhaps from the same Yzap village where they had found theirs, with but two passengers aboard. "Here," announced Elko Sohm sadly, "under this tree's roots with water dripping from the moss down along my raw-fleshed back and the swamp vermin chewing away at the little hair left upon my skull." The tiny craft followed their own ragged trail through the bluish broken scum upon the river and shortly the two dugouts were warped side by side. Nitha was there, well smeared with the sticky blue gum of a swamp tree against the onslaught of insects and with her golden hair bound tight within an ugly skin cap, and with her was an Yzap from the village, called Thod. Nitha laughed as she saw the swollen features of the two Martians and handed a leaf-wrapped gob of the sticky blue gum that she had smeared upon her own skin. "Not very attractive," she admitted, "but very effective." "And now," Rurak demanded, "why did you follow us? This journey is dangerous enough without a woman trailing along." "Ill bred young man isn't he?" asked Nitha of Elko Sohm. "However I suppose I might as well tell you all about it, Elko. He can listen in if he really wants to know. "The same night you left," she went on, "Jokar Ged and his Yzaps came in the darkness and attacked the village. All who could escape came inside the Indra's metal shell. They built fires against the hull hoping to drive us out but the insulation prevented any great passage of heat. But there were few provisions stored there and practically no water. "With early morning I slipped out through an escape lock with Thod as my guide and at a safe distance showed myself to the horde of Jokar Ged. As I had known he would, he sent all his forces after me—it was for me that he stormed the hilltop—and my people were free to emerge from the Indra again. "I knew that you had headed for the coast to bring help and so Thod and I picked up your trail. Only now have we come up with you." "Jokar Ged?" demanded Rurak. "Close behind," the girl answered, "with ten dugouts loaded with his insect warriors." "Then shove off!" ordered Rurak. "We will bring up the rear and stand them off as best we can." Even as he spoke and the two heavy boats slid away from the sheltering tree-roots a shout of hideous triumph sounded from further upstream as a flotilla of hollowed-out logs manned by the clicking, whistling Yzaps of Jokar Ged swept into view. The fugitives bent to their paddles then and slowly the gap between ceased to narrow. Several times Rurak lifted his rocket pistol and sent a bullet crashing through a savage Yzap's head. Every time the insect men hurled a volley of spears in return that always fell woefully short. But soon Jokar Ged saw that most of his men were weaponless, save for their stone knives and short knotted clubs, and he forbade them to waste any more spears uselessly. "Floating village," clicked Tis and they swept around an abrupt wedge of jungle growth and swung back toward the left into a widening of the river. "Big one," grunted Elko Sohm. "Twenty-odd huts and a central dome. Better hug the shore. Bad medicine, these swamp Yzaps." "Too late," Tis told them. "Already warriors in round boats coming to attack." A dozen bowl-shaped craft of reeds daubed with some sticky waterproof substance were shoving off from the U shaped island of buoyant, linked water plants. Before the conical low domes of slime-smeared reeds and branches there swarmed the mates and young of the hideous Yzaps, urging their warriors on to the attack of these two hapless dugouts from further upstream. The insect men paddled their clumsy-seeming boats swiftly across the path of the Martians and their two loyal Yzaps and then started to encircle them. They closed in. The insect men swung up their spears ready to hurl them into the bodies of their five victims and in that instant two things happened that saved the Martians from death beneath those bristling shafts. From far up the river a piercing challenge of hatred and savage challenge rolled up as the Yzaps of the renegade Martian swung into view, and beneath the dugouts of the trapped ones a vast saurian bulk, dulled-yellow-scaled and vast, heaved upward. Rurak felt the hollow log spill over and in that instant caught a glimpse of the other boat in a like predicament. The bowl-boats of the Swamp Dwellers were scattered, racing madly away from the great shape emerging from the muddy thickness of the river. Then the foul scum of the water's surface closed over his head and he was fighting madly to reach the surface again. A long snaky neck, strangely pink and innocent of bony plates or scales, had sprouted from the saurian thing's vague bulk and vast ridged jaws were gaping wide just above one of the fleeing boats as Rurak's head broke through to the surface. The Yzaps whistled in wild terror and made as though to leap over the side but that enormous maw engulfed them and they disappeared from view. Only a few shreds of the bowl-boat dropped from the corners of the thing's mouth. Then it was gone. The ten dugouts of Jokar Ged swept down upon the demoralized Swamp Dwellers and soon Yzap fought Yzap in hand-to-hand combat. "Nidan!" called Tis from nearby. Now Rurak could see four more heads in the muddy stream about him. They were all safe then! Tis was swimming toward the downstream side of the artificial floating island of the Yzaps. "We hide here until night," Tis told them all as they gathered about him swimming. "No place to go ashore. Only swamp. We steal a boat tonight. Go on down river in it." "Yzaps on the island!" gasped Elko Sohm, looking like some befouled bladder-doll of the primitive Martian tribes. "They watch the battle," Tis clicked. Up to the low bank of the floating island they swam and then Tis and Thod started to slash an opening into the cheesy structure of the watery growth. For perhaps three feet they slashed with their knives and then broke through into a low, moist tunnel. "Trak's burrow," Tis explained. "The floating islands and low rises of mud are honeycombed with them." Tis and Thod cleared out the soggy passages that underlay the floating island and found a way that led to the upstream side. Five of the many-legged traks they encountered and killed with the thrust of a shortened spear or a skilfully wielded knife, shoving the gruesome lizard carcasses into the gaping watery pits that opened along the low tunnels they traversed. Rurak left Elko to guard Nitha and crept on hands and knees after the two Yzaps. He came up with them just as they had pierced an eyehole through the living wall of the island's upper side. "Jokar Ged is being beaten!" Tis clicked. "More of the Swamp Dwellers are coming from the island and from the swamps. There are many of them. They kill the Yzaps of Jokar Ged with spears and fishing harpoons. "Jokar Ged is wounded! Blood, red blood, comes from his body! His boats are turning.... They paddle away up the river. Spears thrown by the Swamp People strike among them.... A boat overturns...." "Let me see, Tis," ordered Rurak. A glimpse of the fleeing knot of dugouts, five of them now, with the circling score or more bowl-boats closing in, was all that Rurak could see before the wedge-shaped arm of jungle just upstream blotted out vision. He saw Jokar Ged sagging weakly in one of the fleeing boats, the spear that had wounded him yet hanging in the wound. Then he saw the overturned dugout drifting toward the island. He turned to the Earthmen. "Could one of you swim out there and steer that boat around to the lower side of the island?" he demanded. "Yes, Nidan," clicked Thod and with a slash of his crude stone knife he made an opening and was gone. Rurak waited until he saw the derelict craft shift its drifting course and move away downriver and then he led the way back to the others. If they could sink the boat or conceal it under the bulk of the island until darkness came.... "A close shave that," Elko Sohm growled as he paddled the boat along a salty watercourse parallel with the Great Sea, "if the Yzaps had come back before Thod reached us and we hid the boat we would all be dead. I'm thinking yet we should have remained on the hilltop. A foolhardy undertaking this." "All that happened a week ago," Nitha laughed up into Elko's stubby, filthy, moon of a face, "and still you're grumbling. We got away didn't we?" "Almost there," Rurak said to Elko. "Around the second loop ahead of us lies the edge of the crystalline horde near which we landed. Before long we will be with our friends and then back to Mars. Home again, Elko!" Abruptly the ominous hushed sounds of the swamplands, the hum of insects and the raucous cries of the flying lizards among the treetops, was smashed across by a vast explosion. It was a continuous explosion that swelled louder as it continued, a rapid series of controlled blasts. "The Tekna!" cried Rurak in despair, "blasting off for Mars!" A long gleaming pencil of metal soared on a long slant into the sky overhead; the flame of her rocket jets boomed a thunderous farewell, and then the Tekna was gone. Half-heartedly the five passengers of the little dugout took up their makeshift paddles and held to their course. At least there would be the plastic dome they had erected beside the Tekna to prevent the overcrowding of the ship and perhaps there would be a stock of provisions and weapons left behind for Rurak if he should ever find his way back to the coast. The dome was still standing although blackened somewhat by the blast of the takeoff. Into the dome the Martians hurried to find it well stocked with all sorts of provisions and equipment. There was a message left there too in a heavy transparent case bolted to one of the uprights supporting the dome. "Listen to this, Nitha!" cried Rurak. "They made contact with your father's crew after all. The time was too near for them to wait for us—the New Year you know—so they blasted off for Mars with your father. And next year, or the year after, another expedition will come to Earth. Until then...." "Yes," asked Nitha, smiling, "until then?" Rurak felt the warmth of her woman's body beside him as he looked around the snug little dome. Tis and Thod were clicking softly together near the entrance and Elko Sohm was squinting along the sights of an automatic rocket rifle. "Two more years in this blue hell," he groaned hopelessly. "An old man like me abandoned here on this sponge of a world!" |
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