Part 2

Once, for a heart-stopping moment, they thought they had found their desire. Rounding a bend, they came upon a cavern alive with color; towering vines and trees laden with great clusters of grapes; bushes aflower with myriads of gorgeous buds. Dorothy sprang forward with a cry of joy--but when she touched one of the mock roses it shattered to fine, white, powdery snow; upon investigation the trees, the vines and "grapes" turned out to be of the same, perishable nature.

And Tim remembered their name. "Oulopholites," he said. "Sulphate of magnesia and gypsum. Mother Nature _does_ repeat herself, you see. She uses the same forms, but these are lifeless mimicry." And he looked at his watch. "Guess we'd better turn back, eh, skipper? We've been two hours on the prowl, and there doesn't seem to be anything in this direction. Shall we go back and try another corridor?"

Lane nodded slowly.

"I suppose so. But--Oh, while we're this far, we might as well peek into that next cavern. Won't take but a minute. And if there's nothing there--"

The words died on his lips. As he spoke them, they had moved through a short archway; the yellow circle of his flashlight had swung about a cavern larger than any in which they had yet stood. The floor of this cavern sloped sharply downward, narrowing into a funnel. And at the end of that funnel....

"Great gods of space!" whispered Captain Lane, awestruck. "Am I crazy? Do you see what I see?"

For that upon which his lightbeam had ended, the incredible structure from which its glow was now reflecting in shimmering clarity, was--_a massive door of bronze_! Golden in sheen, strong and secure, obviously the work of intelligent craftsmen, it met their wondering stares with bland imperturbability.

And Tim gave a great shout.

"A door! Venusians! We're all right now. Food and rest ... they'll tell us how to get back to civilization...."

And then--

"Quiet!" rasped Captain Lane. His flashlight beam faded abruptly, darkness closed in about them like a shroud. But only for an instant. Because a new effulgence lit the scene. The massive door was slowly swinging open--and from its widening groove came a pallid, greenish glow. Like some monstrous, hungry mouth the door opened wider and yet wider. Dim shapes were shadows behind it, vague at first, dark and sinister....

And then, out of the ghoulish semi-gloom, suddenly two figures stood limned in stark relief. But they were not the figures of Earthmen, neither were they fat, friendly shapes of Venusians. They were tall, lean creatures, thin-faced and hungry-fanged, garbed with what appeared to be huge mantles covering them from their shoulder-blades to the tips of their long, prehensile fingers!

Two wobbling, awkward steps they took from the now completely opened door; for an instant Tim heard the shrill, piping chatter of their speech--then their "mantles" spread and became huge, jointed wings on which they soared straight across the cavern toward the spellbound trio!

Captain Lane's cry was thick with horror.

"Good God, Mallory! Shoot, and shoot quick! We've found the gates of hell. They're the bat-men--the Vampires of Venus!"

* * * * *

Even as he spoke, he was tugging his own needle-gun from its holster; now its fiery beam lanced squarely at the foremost of the two attackers. Nor was Tim Mallory slow in heeding. His weapon was out in one swift movement; its beam slashed a hole in the gloom as it sought one of the silently winging creatures above.

But they might as well have taken aim at a will-o'-the-wisp. The dim glow from beyond the open door illumined only a portion of the cavern; the heights above were a well of jet, against which the crepuscular creatures were all but invisible. Again and again the two heat-beams stabbed black shadows, once Tim thought he heard a brief, whimpering cry, but no winged creature, charred in death, hurtled from the eyrie point of vantage. Only the sound of great wings beating persisted--and once an ebon shape flung itself from an ebon shadow to rake sharp claws gratingly across Tim's bulger helmet. It had glided away again, mockingly, before he could spin to flame a shot after it.

Then Lane's free arm was thrusting at him. Lane's voice was sharp, incisive.

"Out of here! Dorothy first! Maybe there are just two of these devils--_Ooow!_ Damn your rotten hide!"

He had turned to speak over his shoulder. In that moment of inattention, one of the bat-men had rocketed down upon him, slashed viciously at his gun-arm with clawed hands. Metal clattered on rock; Captain Lane went swiftly after the lost gun, groping for it blindly, down on his knees.

Tim had taken a backward step; now he moved forward again to cover the frenzied fumbling of the older man. His eyes were suddenly dazzled as Lane, desperate, used his flash to search for the weapon. And the skipper groaned.

"It's gone! It fell down that fissure! Mallory--quick! Do you have another gun? They're closing in--"

Beads of cold sweat had suddenly sprung out on Tim Mallory's forehead. Not only did he _not_ have another gun--but the one he now held was about to become useless! A dim shape wheeled above him; he pressed the trigger, but no red flame leaped from the muzzle. Just a spluttering, ochre ray that simmered into nothingness a few feet above his head!

The gun's charge was practically exhausted. Battle with the proto-balls ... the constant drainage of raying their route-turns ... these had done it! There were fresh capsules in his ammunition kit, but in the length of time required to recharge the gun....

"A minute!" he cried. "Fight 'em off a minute! I have to--"

And he reached for a new capsule. But the skipper, misunderstanding, impatient, turned peril into disaster with his next, impetuous move.

"Don't stand there like an idiot, you Earthlubber!" he howled. "Here--give that to me!"

And he jerked the useless weapon from Tim's hand!

For a stark instant, Tim was wrenched in a vise of indecision. To fight the winged demons without a weapon was madness. Wisdom lay in hurrying back to the ship, equipping themselves with new guns. But--but Lane had said these bat-men were vampires. The Vampires of Venus, he had said. And Tim had heard stories ... the word "vampire" meant the same in any language, on any planet.

But there was Dorothy to consider, too. He groaned aloud. His instinct bade him plunge forward, weaponless or not; common sense advised the other course.

And then, in a split-second, the decision became no longer his to make. For as if the victory of the first two bat-men had determined the action of the entire clan, out of the bronze gateway flooded a veritable host of the sickening winged creatures!

Then a battering-ram smashed him crushingly and he choked, gasped, felt the weakness of oblivion well over him like a turgid, engulfing cloud. He was conscious of raking talons that gripped his armpits, of sudden, swift and dizzy flight ... of a vast, aching chaos that rocked with hungry, inhuman mirth.

* * * * *

Captain Lane's voice was an aeon away, but it came closer. It said, "--be all right now. You must have been in a hell of a fight, boy!"

And Dorothy was beside him, too. There were tears in her eyes, but she shook them away and tried to smile as Tim pushed himself up on one elbow. Tim's head was one big ache, and his body was bruised and sore from the buffeting of the bat-men's hard wings. He looked about him dazedly.

"Wh-here are we?"

The room was a low-ceilinged, square one. It had but one door, a bronze one similar in design, but smaller, than the gateway that had led to the city of the Vampires. Elsewhere the walls were hewn from solid rock.

"Where are we?" he repeated. He started to unscrew his face port, but the skipper stayed his hand.

"Don't, Mallory! We tried that. It's impossible. The air's so ammoniated it would kill you. From that."

He pointed to a trough-like depression in the room. A curious arrangement. Probably for purposes of sanitation. Liquid ammonia, or something akin, entered the trough from a gushing tube set low in one wall, transversed the room, and exited through a second circular duct. These were the only openings in the chamber, save for--Tim glanced up, noticed several round holes. He studied these curiously. Lane answered his unspoken query.

"Yes, that's right. Ventilation. These devils may be inhuman in form but they're clever. They've built this underground city, equipped it with heat, light, ventilated it to maintain circulation--"

There was something wrong there. Tim frowned.

"Ventilation? Yet you say that stream is ammoniated enough to kill a man. Then how do they live?"

"They're not men," replied Lane bitterly. "They're vampires. Heaven knows how they can breathe this atmosphere, but they can. The ingenious, murdering..."

* * * * *

He didn't complete the sentence. For at that instant there came the scrape of movement outside their dungeon door. The door swung open. A bat-man entered. His hooked claw signalled them to come forth. Tim glanced at the older man. Lane shrugged resignedly.

"There's nothing else to do. Maybe we can strike a bargain with them. Our freedom for something they want."

But there was no hope in his voice. Tim threw an arm about Dorothy's shoulders. They followed their guide out of the room. There a cordon of other bat-creatures circled them, and Tim, for the first time, got an opportunity to see his captors at close range.

They weren't much to look at. They were such stuff as nightmares are made of. Tall, angular, covered from head to toe with a stiff, glossy pelt of fur. Their faces were lean and hard and predatory; their teeth sharp and protruding. Their wings were definitely chiropteric; the wing-membranes spanned from their shoulders to their claws, falling loosely away when not in use, and were anchored to stiff, horny knobs at clavicle and heel.

They walked now, guarding their captives, but it was apparent that flight was their usual method of locomotion. Anything else would be awkward, for their knees bent backward as did the knees of their diminutive Earthly prototype.

They turned, at last, into a huge chamber. And before them, perched obscenely on a platform elaborately laid with jewels and tapestries, was the overlord of the Harpies.

* * * * *

No man, by the wildest stretch of the imagination, could have considered any of the vampires attractive. But of all they had seen, this monster was the most repugnant. It was not only that his frame was tauter, skinnier, than that of his fellows; it was not that his furry body was raw and chafed, as if from ancient, unhealed sores; it was not only that his pendulous nose-leaf perpetually snuffled, pulsed, above a red-lipped, vicious mouth. It was the unclean aura of evil about him that made Tim feel dirty. As though by merely looking on this thing he had profaned himself in some strange, inexplicable fashion.

Dorothy felt it, too. She choked once, turned her face away. And Captain Lane growled a disgusted curse.

"Lord, what a filthy beast! Mallory, I wouldn't mind dying if I could get one shot at that pot-bellied horror first!"

He did not expect--none of them could have expected--that which happened then. There came a high, simpering parody of laughter from the thing on the dais before them. And the words in their own tongue--

"But you cannot, Man! For here _I_ am the Master!"

Lane's jaw dropped; his eyes widened. Tim Mallory felt the small hairs at the nape of his neck tighten coldly. The bat-thing could speak! Was speaking again, its cruel little mouth pulled into a grimace remotely resembling a grin.

"You are surprised that I speak your language? Ah, that is amusing. But you are just the first of many who will soon discover how foolish it was to underestimate the intellect of our ancient race.

"With fire and flame you forced us to the caverns, Man-thing. But we are old and wise. We built our cities here, warmed them against the dreadful damp and cold. Soon we shall burst forth in all our might. And when we do--"

He stopped abruptly; the tensing of his claws told the rest more eloquently than words. He rapped a command to one of the guards.

"Take off their garments! I would see what prizes have stumbled into our refuge!"

Obediently, the bat-creature shambled forward; his talons fumbled at Captain Lane's face-port. Tim cried out, "No! Don't let him! The atmosphere--"

The vampire overlord grinned at him cunningly.

"Fear not, Earthman. The air in this chamber will not harm you. We have other plans--" His wet, red tongue licked his lips.

Then Lane's headpiece was removed, and his bulger was stripped from him. A dazed expression swept across his forehead. He said, "Mallory--it--it's _hot_ in here! And the air is breatheable!"

But by that time, Tim, too, had been removed of his space-suit; he, too, had felt the sultry, oppressive heat of the cavern. It was incredible but true. The vampires had found a way to make their underground city warm as the surface from which men had hunted them. That then--it came to Tim with sudden, startling clarity--that was why--

The overlord was speaking again. His tone was one of gratification.

"The men will do. We shall feast well tonight--_very_ well! The woman--" He gazed at Dorothy speculatively. "I wonder?" he mused in a half whisper. "I wonder if there is not a better way of undermining Earthmen than just crushing them? A new race to people Venus? A race combining our ancient, noble blood and that of these pale creatures?" His eyes fastened on Dorothy's suddenly flaming loveliness. "That is a matter I must consider.

"That will do!" He motioned to his followers even as Tim, white of lip and riotous with rage, took a forward step. "Allow them to don their clumsy air-suits again; take them back to their dungeon. We shall bring them forth again when the time is ripe."

Strong claws clutched Mallory, staying him. Short minutes later, surrounded by their guards, they were once more on their way to the nether prison.

* * * * *

It was a grim-faced Captain Lane who paced the floor of their dungeon. There was anger in his eyes, and outrage, too. But beneath those surface emotions was a deeper one--fear! The dreadful, haunting fear of a powerless man, caught in a trap beyond his utmost devising.

"If there were only something we could do!" he raged savagely. "But we're weaponless--helpless--we can't even die fighting, like strong men. I'd rather we had all died in the _Orestes_ than that this should happen. You and I, Mallory, a feast for such foul things. Dorothy--"

He stopped, shaken, sickened. Dorothy's face was pale, but her voice was even.

"There is one thing he overlooked, Daddy. We still have the privilege of dying cleanly. Together. We can take off our suits. Here. Before they come for us."

Lane nodded. He knew what death by asphyxiation meant; he had seen men die in Earth's lethal chambers. But anything, even that, was better than meek surrender to the overlord's mad, lustful plan.

"Yes, Dorothy. That is the only way left to us." He thought for a moment. "There is no use delaying. But before we--we _go_, there is one thing I must say--" And he looked at his daughter and her lover in turn. "I was wrong in forbidding your marriage. You're a _man_, Mallory. It's too bad I had to learn that under such circumstances. But I want you to know--at the end--that if things had turned out differently, I--I'd change my mind."

Tim said quietly, "Thank you, sir." But his thoughts were only half upon the older man's admission. There was a tiny something scratching at the back of his mind. Something that had occurred to him, dimly, in the hot chamber above. He couldn't quite place his finger on it, but--

"I still find it in me to wish," said Captain Lane, "that you had been a spaceman. But there's no use talking about that now. What might have been is past. There remains only time to acknowledge past faults, and then--and then--"

He faltered. And Dorothy took up the weighty burden of speech.

"Shall we ... do it now?"

Her hands lifted to the pane of her helmet. For an instant they hesitated, then began to turn. And then--

"_Stop!_" cried Tim. He struck her hands away, spun swiftly to the older man. "Don't do it, Skipper! I've got it! Got it at last!"

Lane stared at him dazedly. "Wh-what do you mean?"

Tim's sudden laughter was almost hysterically triumphant. "I mean that this is one time a 'groundhog engineer' knows more than a spaceman. There's no time to explain now, but quick!--you have some gun-capsules, haven't you?"

"Y-yes, but--"

"Give them to me! All you have. And hurry!"

* * * * *

As he spoke, he was emptying his own capacious ammunition pouch. Capsule after capsule poured from it, until he had an overflowing double handful. With frenzied haste he broke the safety-tip off the first, tossed the cartridge into the stream that ran through their prison. As it struck, it hissed faintly; bubbles began to rise from the fluid, and a thin, steamy film of vapor rose whitely.

"Do that to all of them. Toss them in there! I'm right! I know I am. I _have_ to be!"

Bewilderedly, Captain Lane and Dorothy began doing as he ordered. A dozen, a score, twoscore of the heat-gun cartridges were untipped, thrown into the coursing stream. The white film became a cloud, a fog, a thick, dense blanket about them, through which they could barely see each other. And still Tim's voice cried, "More! Faster! All of them!"

Then the last capsule had been tossed into the fluid, and their only contact with each other was by speech and the sense of touch. They were engulfed in rolling billows of white; vapor that frosted their view-panes, screened the world from view.

For half an hour they stood there waiting, turn with a thousand mingled doubts. Until, at last--

"I can't stand it any longer, Tim!" cried Dorothy. "What is it? What do we do? What is this wild plan?"

The vapor had thinned a trifle. And through gray mists, she saw a form loom before her. It was Tim's shape, and his hand stretched out to her. His voice was tense.

"Now--" he said. "Now we walk from our prison!"

And he flung open the door.

"Careful!" cried Captain Lane. "The guards, son! 'Ware the Harpy guards!"

But no guards sprang forward to bar their passage. There were guards, a dozen of them. But not a single one of them moved.

And Dorothy, wiping a sudden veil of hoar-frost from her view-pane, saw them and gasped.

"Dead!" she cried. "Tim--they're all dead!"

Tim shook his head.

"Not dead, darling. Just--sleeping! And now let's hurry. Before they waken again!"

* * * * *

When they had reached the uppermost corridor of the caverns, they paused for a moment's rest. It was then that Captain Lane found time for the question that had plagued him.

"You were right, Tim. They were sleeping. I could see that overlord's nose-leaf quivering with slow breath just before I shot him. But--but what caused it? Anesthetic? I don't understand."

"No," grinned Tim, "it was not an anesthetic. It was a simple matter of remembering a biological trait of bats, and applying a little technical knowledge. The knowledge--" He could not resist the dig. "The special knowledge of what you called a 'hot-and-cold' expert. Refrigeration!

"Bats are hibernating creatures. And hibernation is not merely a matter of custom, tradition, desire to sleep--it is a physical reflex which cannot be avoided when the conditions are made suitable.

"Bats, like many other hibernating mammals, are automatically forced into slumber when the temperature drops below 46°F. Knowing this, and realizing that was the reason the Harpies--bat-like in form and habit--kept their underground chambers superheated I applied an elemental principle of refrigeration to cool their city below that point!"

Dorothy said, "The--the ammonia--?"

"Exactly. The set-up was perfect. Our apparatus was, perforce, crude, but we had all the elements of a refrigerating unit. Ammoniated water, running in a constant stream, capsules of condensed and concentrated heat from our needle-guns--a small room which was connected, by ventilating ducts, with the rest of the underground city.

"The principle of the absorption process depends on the fact that vapors of low boiling point are readily absorbed in water and can be separated again by the application of heat. At 60°F, water will absorb about 760 times its own volume of ammonia vapor, and this produces evaporation, which, in turn, gives off vapor at a low temperature, thereby becoming a refrigerator abstracting heat from any surrounding body. In this case--the rooms above!

"It--" Tim grinned. "It's as simple as that!"

Captain Lane groaned.

"Simple!" he echoed weakly. "The man says 'simple'! I don't understand a word of it, but--it worked, son! And that's the pay-off."

"No, sir," said Tim promptly.

"What? What's that?"

"The pay-off," persisted Tim, "comes later. When we get back to civilization. You said something about removing your objections to our marriage, remember?"

Captain Jonathan growled and stood up. "Confound it, do you think of everything? Well--all right, then. I'm a man of my word. But when we get back to civilization may be a long time yet."

"I can wait," grinned Tim. "But I've got a feeling I won't have to wait long. Maybe I'm psychic all of a sudden. I don't know. But somehow I've got a hunch that when we get to the cave-mouth, we're going to find a rescue party waiting for us up there. I just _feel_ that way."

"Humph!" snorted Lane. "You're a dreamer, lad! A blasted, wishful dreamer!"

But it was a good dream. For the hunch was right.