Part 3

"Sounds incredible," said Venard. "But, Jhongan, I believe you. We'll do it, of course. But I wish I knew why."

Jhongan said, "This is a point to regard--the reason is quite simple. You could figure it out, Venard, if you tried hard enough. Therefore, don't even try to evolve an answer. If you're captured by the Martians, you must know nothing."

"But if that's the case," said Venard suddenly, "then you--"

* * * * *

The Martian trembled violently. A loud commotion suddenly spilled through the cave opening. Two men and a woman were leaping toward them. One wore a tattered Guardsman's uniform. The other man and woman were dressed in drab civvies.

"They're psychos who've escaped from the sanitarium," yelled La Crue. "They're Martophobes; they're after Jhongan! Stop 'em."

The mad Guardsman had a long alloy knife which Guardsmen formerly carried more for uniform decoration than for utilitarian purposes. He raised it as he leaped at Jhongan. The screaming woman and shouting man were also headed for Jhongan with clutching hands. The man's eyes gleamed insanely. The woman screeched, "Martie dog! Dirty, filthy Martie devil!"

Before either Venard or La Crue could intercept the man with the knife, he had thrown himself upon Jhongan's unresisting body. With screaming nerves, Venard saw the knife rise and fall again and again, savagely. He saw the green life juices spurt like a monstrous fountain. He heard himself swearing madly as he pulled the death-drenched Guardsman off Jhongan's twitching body, felt his fists crunch and saw the psycho topple away, his face crushed in.

Venard and La Crue were leaning over Jhongan's punctured body sack. "He's dying," said La Crue hoarsely. "They die fast in Earth atmosphere. There's nothing anyone can do."

A tentacle reached up slowly, wrapped itself around Venard's hand. Venard heard the funny slurred tones of the Martie say in a dying whisper, "You promised. Don't fail. Promise you won't fail, Karl, old friend?"

"Yes," Venard gripped the tentacle. It went lax, plopped lifelessly down onto the cold damp stone.

"That's his answer," said Venard as he straightened wearily but with a stony resolution of face.

"Answer?" said La Crue. "To what?"

"I was going to ask him what would happen if he were captured by Martians. He knows the reason for this plan of helping transplant the Zharkon's brain. He answered that." He looked down at Jhongan. "He could have gotten away. He let the psycho kill him. Perhaps it was better that way. It saved him from having to kill himself."

La Crue, after a long silent moment, said, "How could anyone have planetary prejudice when a Martie is capable of such magnificent heroism for all civilized species?"

"They won't, someday," assured Venard, his jaw tense. "Someday, every species in the system will be judged only by their individual worth rather than by their physical appearance--thanks to the complete unselfishness of men like Jhongan."

"Anyway," said La Crue, "we know now that Jhongan's plan must be sound, if he believed in it so completely."

"Yes," said Venard, "we know now." He saw Larson stagger a little as he emerged from a tunnel mouth into the cavern with a half-emptied plastic bottle of _stihn_ in one hand. Hanging on the little man's other arm was a rather shapely girl. She was looking at Larson with curiosity more than interest.

When Larson saw Jhongan, dead, the bottle of _stihn_ bounced on the stone floor. The girl whirled away from him, uttering a sharp cry of protest that died as she saw Larson's violent reaction.

Then he came up close to Venard, cold sober now, and waited. He was ready now, ready for anything.

Abruptly, Venard said, "We're going to Venus. Tonight. Come on!"

"Okay, just a minute while I--what? Venus? Why?" Larson stared. His little eyes shifted to Jhongan. "About that plan of his, huh? I'm ready. Let's go."

Venard told him everything he knew, with intermittent injections from La Crue.

"It's about as clear as that Venusian mud's gonna be," said Larson.

"You need a left hand. That'll get us inside S.S.C. or rather get you inside. We hope. A few have taken advantage of their body bank facilities; but S.S.C. doesn't encourage it. There are stories of horror coming out of S.S.C. And you know the one I was telling you about the concept of an alien God."

"Yeah," breathed Larson. "That alien god. I don't like that."

La Crue cut in, "A small Scouter's ready to blast off from a subterranean cradle near here. The Underground has several of them cradled at strategic points for emergencies."

"Let's go, Kewpie Doll," snapped Venard. "And don't try to guess why. Although in your case, I can't see the danger."

"Goodbye," said La Crue as a Guard appeared to lead them through secret tunnels to their waiting Scouter. "And good luck...."

IV

There are no adventures in space. Either a space-flight is safe monotony, or quick death. But as the two Guardsmen approached the vast mysterious dome of S.S.C. somewhere in the Mesozoic nightmare, the vaporous, steaming, endlessly stretching rain-forest of Venus, they stumbled with wracking weariness. Reptile-infested swamps and steaming seas, foul-smelling, rotten--it was an incredibly perilous planet.

For five hours they had burned their way through giant flora and fauna and sweat, H-guns hot with almost steady usage. And then Venard finally parted some phosphorescent, glowing lichen and there the gigantic dome rose up and up and lost itself in thick mist. But between them and their goal was a hellish nightmare barrier, spilling stinking muck into a placidly steaming sea.

Larson mopped at mud and sweat-slimed face, stared in fearful awe. Venard swore. They were blocked by a moat, a green, oozing mud-river, flowing oilily. From out of it, projected huge spines, ribs, and warts covering towering, brilliant, multi-colored mounds--that _moved_! Scaly mountains of shifting, radioactive lime. "Giant mollusc bed!" gasped Venard. Low tide now, but during high tide the sea on their right would back up this far. But high tide was hours distant.

There were thousands of the molluscs, every size, shape and color. Venard's head went quickly to either side. "It goes out of sight both ways, Kewpie Doll. Into the sea and into the swamp. Trapped!"

Larson squirmed, muttering, "Them bivalves are flesh-eaters. Look!"

A _gruoon_, a flying reptile, had started a dive across the thick air toward the fungus-covered dome of S.S.C. A giant bivalve, at least fifty meters wide, snapped open. Its lifting shell-half dripped an avalanche of tendrils and muddy slime. A pliable snout whipped upwards. On its end, a formless pliant mouth full of row after row of rasp-like teeth, closed on the _gruoon_, sucked it into the pallid grey pulsating interior of the bivalve. Its shells closed with slow certainty on the writhing, screaming _gruoon_.

"We can't make that trek on foot, Kewpie Doll. Got to get back to the ship. We landed on the wrong side. Got to rush things though, and get the Zharkon's brain before the Marties try illegal entry and ruin everything. Come on. I'll get you inside S.S.C., don't worry."

"I'll worry either way--hey, listen!" He froze. His eyes rolled up and followed the sound droning invisibly above the impenetrable envelope of mist--the long _hissshowwww_ of a decelerating Martian war-ship.

"That's the boys," growled Venard darkly. His jaw knotted. "Not time to go back to the ship. Probably five hours--if we made it at all." His eyes studied the hundred meter-wide barrier of quivering, snapping, hungry molluscs. "I wonder," he murmured, "if we could do it?"

But Larson, moaning and trembling, was already waist-deep in the iridescent slime. Venard grinned and followed jerkily. "We'll try to crawl from one to the other," he managed to say. "So keep your remaining hand free. Don't draw your blaster unless you have to."

Followed by Larson, now behind him, Venard started climbing gingerly up the jagged, weirdly-glowing mollusc. Larson puffed painfully, swearing. They were half way across the shell before it shifted. They crouched down, hanging on desperately. Around them, shells snapped open and shut hungrily. Mouthed probosci were snaking about, dragging things out of the air.

"If we can stay on these things," gasped Venard. "Haven't seen any of them interested in each other. This baby has a keen sense of taste and smell; not much sense of touch, though."

Their shell suddenly rocked violently. The two Guardsmen squeezed themselves between two roughly porous spines for support, drew their blasters. The top half of the bivalve was slowly lifting.

They clung precariously by friction alone while the shell shook, rose higher and higher. It shifted, and fell so that its hinge was uppermost. Larson yelped, slipped, almost fell within reach of the pulsing pink-tissued maw. His face was dead white.

The gigantic pinkish foot of the mollusc was oozing out and out, away from them toward the opposite embankment. It stopped almost across the bed; and when it withdrew toward them, in short contracting jerks, it left behind, cemented against the shell of another mollusc, a long strand of fleshy cable as big around as Larson's arm.

The mussel's foot contained a narrow groove ending at a gland which exuded a sticky substance, much like liquid glue. This hardened almost instantly when exposed to air. Their shell had placed this foot against the other mollusc, and the sticky material was forced along the groove, touched the other mollusc, adhered and hardened. Then by slowly drawing back the foot, their own shell had, with astounding speed, spun a strong cable almost across the moat.

"An anchor," shuddered Larson. "It's put out an anchor just like a ship."

"That cable's more than just an anchor, Kewpie Doll. Evolution's given him such a weak foot compared to its body weight; it has to throw out a cable and drag itself from one place to another."

The cable was tightening. The pitted shell to which they miraculously clung began to shift slightly as the cable stretched taunt. "This is too lucky a break," groaned Larson. "Getting a free ride across like this. There's a catch to it, somewhere. Venus ain't operatin' no free ferry service."

"And that's the catch!" Venard pointed. "We fastened to that other mollusc. Instead of us moving, we're pulling that other oyster out of its bed!"

Their living anchor base lifted upward slowly with a long sucking sound. Their own mollusc wasn't making enough headway even to pull himself up over other shells. Its anchor base was too weak. But not passive. It reacted violently.

"Watch out!" screamed Larson, shrinking.

The mollusc to which the cable was fastened suddenly opened its giant shells, snapped them shut with a thunderous crack. The effect was to send its great weight in a flying jump to the right about fifteen meters. The cable parted with a sighing whine, whipped out, round and back in a deadly arc. Larson screamed again. Only once. The cable swept him away into the mud. Multicolored, squid-like faces sprouting thousands of powerful filaments, writhed hungrily toward him as he struggled briefly.

A choking, helpless horror went through Venard as he saw the bivalve snap open, and then, a snaking proboscis with the filamented mouth whip out and close on Larson's twisting body to jerk him down with lightning swiftness into that pulsating abyss of hungry flesh.

It had happened awfully fast to the toughest little guy in the System.

* * * * *

Too fast for Venard even to try against invincible odds to avert his death. Eaten alive by a clam. He tried to think of things that would compensate as the mollusc spun another cable. He concentrated his eyes and thought on the taut flesh cable the bivalve had spun, the one remaining link with S.S.C. and the fulfillment of Jhongan's unknown plan. First Jhongan, then the Kewpie Doll.... He had to keep on to make their sacrifice seem worth while. Theirs and billions of others throughout the System.

The mollusc had reached the end of the cable. Its unpredictable nerve centers had decided, however, to settle down right there. Its migration was over, maybe for years. And Venard was still about fifty feet from the other side of the moat.

Acting on impulse, Venard hooked his arms over the cable and leaped toward the bank. He slid wildly, with little friction, along the new slickness of the cable strands, plopped into the mud. He crawled frantically up onto the thick vegetation just as a univalvular mouth missed him by inches, tried again. He burned it and the charred snout curled away.

He was across, lying against the mossy slimy uprising shell of S.S.C. But so what? He had two hands. Larson, their entry ticket, was gone. He steeled himself, didn't let himself think about it anymore. He brought the H-gun on down in a quick savage gesture across his left wrist....

He didn't lose consciousness. It was just a quick, jabbing, burning agony. He looked at the charred stub--and then quickly swallowed five para-pills. They calmed him, enabled him to climb to his feet and follow the elevated ramp until he came to the ingress to the scanning chamber.

He stood inside, before the wall, his legality being checked. The chromoplex room was barren except for the telescreen and the opening of the tubecar that would plunge him through the magnetized vacuum tube into the heart of S.S.C.--and to what?

Tendrils of a vague fear oozed insidiously into his mind. He couldn't shake free from a superstitious sensing of evil hidden danger. He heard the faint murmuring of concealed photo-electric mechanisms and relays. He was being thoroughly scanned.

A milky opalescense filled the screen, and coalesced; a misty outline solidified, looked stoically at Venard. Recognition shocked the Guardsman. It was Bronlen, greatest Solar physicist Terra had ever produced. Bronlen had been summoned to S.S.C. ten years ago to become its Director. Consequently, like all who came here, he had dropped out of all sight and sound. But how he had changed! Only a few among the allied worlds had ever come to S.S.C. for a long time now, even for such a vitally needed thing as a body part transplantation. S.S.C. had become a place of mystery and strange fear. A place shunned and hated.

The austere, smoothly-aged face seemed, somehow, not human. Unalive, a dull conscienceless face that shouldn't be Bronlen at all. The bloodless lips parted.

"You may enter, barbarian. You are entitled to have your left hand replaced, thought it's too bad you decided to annoy us, and didn't resign yourself to your barbaric fate of one-handedness like most other barbarians of the System have wisely decided to do. However, upon completion of the transplantation, you will be transported immediately and directly back out of S.S.C. Now the tubecar will take you directly to the hetero-transplant ward."

The screen faded and Venard, boiling with inner rage and hatred, entered the tubecar. Then, desperate helplessness as he felt the tingling numbness settling over his brain. Concealed hypnotic frequencies. They were blanking him out!

V

Sometime later he was violently awakened by hands shaking him. "Karl!... Karl!" There was a terrible urgency in the low, rich voice. But this was mad dreaming! He'd never really expected to hear this voice again. Subconsciously, buried deep down, he had perhaps entertained the idea that he might see her again, but--

"Karl, hurry and wake up, for the love of Heaven! They're coming back. I've got to explain before they get here!"

Venard opened his eyes, sat bolt upright on a kind of operating table. It was her all right. Vale. She was bending over him. Strangely, she didn't seem to have changed much. She appeared older, a little, with some of the blue fire gone from her eyes. "Hello, Vale," he finally managed to say rather thickly. He didn't want to sound that way. He wanted to sound cynical, tough. He didn't at all.

In her drab grey interne's robe and cap she stood trembling above him, eyes wild with fear. She shoved his H-gun at him. "I don't know why you came here, but take this gun. You'll need it. I know you didn't come here just for another hand."

Wordlessly, he took the gun, hid it under his tunic. He flexed his--yes, they had transplanted the hand. He clenched his new fist on the H-gun. The whole transplantation process probably hadn't taken more than an hour. Incredibly advanced healing acceleration--amazing bio-chemical and surgical science. Just an example of the knowledge held imprisoned inside S.S.C. Knowledge that should have been given out to the Federation.

"Vale. You don't seem the same. Why didn't you come back? You promised."

Her eyes shone wetly, and her full lips quivered. "Oh, how I wanted to come back. I tried. But it completely ended my free agency of will and mind." Then her voice became harsh and urgent.

He swung around as she said tautly, "No time for reminiscence. I know you. You're here for some desperate, mad reason or other. But it won't go here, Karl. S.S.C. is completely under its power. You haven't a chance, nothing human has a chance against it. That's why I never even tried to get word to you at first, while I still had a chance. I knew that if you came here to help me, it would only get you too. None of us here can do anything now, or ever. We're all mindless slaves."

"Except you," commented Venard sarcastically. "I.Q. Saunders. But then, you always did have a mind of your own."

Her eyes darted wildly down toward the paneled door of the operating room. "That puzzles me, Karl. My full mental faculties returned to me seven days ago, Earth time. It was a flash of white flame. And it's hold over me dropped away. But it's influence is coming back, creeping in again. Oh, it's horrible, horrible! Karl, you've got to--"

Venard felt a chill of alien cold. Seven days ago, Earth time. "The memory-crystal," he whispered. "That's the night I smashed the Venusian memory-crystal."

"Don't talk mystical nonsense," she said frenziedly. "When they come to send you out of S.S.C., don't try any mad scheme. Just go, and please say or do nothing. Just leave S.S.C. without question. Please Karl."

He liked to hear that kind of talk, especially from Vale. He stood up; he was a little weak. "I came here to get that preserved Zharkonian brain from the body banks. I'm going to give it to the Martians and they're going to replace the present Zharkonian ruler's injured brain with it. You can believe anything, even that I'm a spy working for the Marties, if you want to. Jhongan said--"

Vale interrupted. "That's the brain we have preserved here. That of the first Zharkon. An experiment in bio-chemistry. They actually succeeded in developing a synthetic brain." Her lips twisted thoughtfully. "Yes, I can see Jhongan's reasons. Ingenious, and it probably would work, but--listen!"

She gripped his shoulders. The touch did things to Venard's nervous system. Forgotten things. "But it's useless," she said, "for you to try such a scheme here, Karl. The Martians, for all their military might, are just insignificant pawns."

Venard exclaimed, "Martians--just pawns! You haven't been around lately. Those babies have taken over everything, and they intend to keep it. This other menace ... don't be so mysteriously evasive, Vale. Who, or what, is this _it_? Don't tell me the Martie desert tribes' rumors about an alien god controlling S.S.C. is authentic!"

She tried to answer, but she swayed, shut her eyes, and clenched small white fists. Her body twitched violently, blood drained from her face. He shot an arm about her waist, but she was stiff, cold and unyielding. And this was too abnormal. Her head fell back over his arm. Then she opened her eyes slowly. They were glazing, dulling, as though being seared by a minute but horrific flame. Her lips moved stiffly. "It--back--jo--jo--"

He was holding her that way when the door slid noislessly open and they filed through.

* * * * *

He hated them thoroughly--the weird polyglot of selfish recluses, without purposes here in their rotten, sequestered borough. Greatest minds of the System withholding their marvels of science. The Martie surgeon, the Mercurian medic, the Ganymedian and Saturnian, slippery, metallic and spidery. And weirdest of all, the Jovian liquescent brain in its square, black cubicle body ... a faceless, eyeless, limbless parasite. An incredibly specialized thinking formulae sentiently bubbling in the arms of the Martian medic.

On its own world, there were special mechanisms designed to carry these Jovians around. But here in S.S.C. it evidently utilized personnel for transportation. No Jovian had ever visited another world in the System, and vice versa. They were neutrals with a strict mutual code of hands off with all other planets.

They were the sociopaths of the System. They had never entered the Federation, even on paper. Isolationists who--

* * * * *

Then he knew. Without that clue from poor Vale, he might never have found out the truth until it was too late. If it wasn't already much too late.

"_Jo--Jo--_" just what she had been trying to tell him. The menace to the Solar System that made even the Martians only insignificant pawns were the unknown completely ignored Jovians!

The Martians pawns of these little--impossible. No, not impossible. The Jovians were mysteriously uncatalogued. They possessed telepathic power by which they communicated with each other. But no being of any other planet had ever been able to communicate with a Jovian--as far as anyone knew. It was said that it demanded some time for a Jovian to familiarise itself with highly individualized brain-wave patterns.

But when they did, they were supposed to be able to control that mind--

Venard shivered, uncontrollably. The horrible implication, the tremendous scope of possibility flooded open, poured fear in Venard's desperate, groping brain. Having never entered in Solar politics, having always been withdrawn, unobtrusive, and silent on their dim dark world, they had been theoretically harmless. But what if they secretly controlled key figures in the System? Here, in S.S.C., they could have enslaved the greatest weapons and knowledges of science of the entire Solar System, and from there--

Vale had stiffened in his arms, fell away from him. She was standing there coldly watching him with no warmth and no feeling, suddenly an alien antagonistic being. The others ringed him, silently waiting and watching.

Venard's semantically-trained mind reacted quickly and efficiently. The Jovian needed a certain unspecified time to solve the intricacies of Venard's highly individualized brain patterns. In that uncertain interim, he had to get the brain of Zharkon I out of S.S.C. to the waiting Martians. If they were waiting. And, if this Jovian mentality in a cube controlled S.S.C., there was only one possible action. Capture the Jovian. With the dark world being in his power, he could control S.S.C.--that is, until the Jovian familiarized itself with his brain waves, and all the complex inter-relations of the incredibly intricate switch-board of his cerebrum.

Nothing could comprehend all the circuits in its entire complexity. The Jovian power lay in its specialized ability to probe into key centers and control them. If Venard did control the Jovian, it would be only until it grasped his individualized peculiarities of rhythm and circuits. It had taken quite long, seven days, to renew its control of Vale's big I.Q. even when it had already controlled it once. But his--how long? Maybe days, hours. Maybe only minutes. He was no complex cerebral organism.

Anyway, his H-gun suddenly in his hand, he leaped for the Martian who held the Jovian. Venard had gambled often.