Part 1

LAST RUN ON VENUS

By JAMES McKIMMEY, JR.

_It wasn't love of adventure that forced Caine onto Venus' forbidden Purple Plateau. Oh, no. But there was a wench named Cice--a five-imaged wench--who could make the heart of any pilot leap crazily through the Galaxy._

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories May 1953. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

This was Nicholas Caine's last run and he didn't like it. It didn't look right or feel right or taste right. Even the small jetcopter felt sluggish to his touch. He was getting it down too fast and up too slow. But that, he knew, was really caused by his nerves. Usually he was as cold about these jaunts as a piece of newly chipped ice; this was his business. But today was different.

This was the end of it and tomorrow it wouldn't be his business anymore. A man absorbed so much and he couldn't absorb anymore. He got to the point finally when he kicked it over and he said, "Thank you and to hell with it," and then he left.

And that was what Caine was doing. Only he still had this last run and it was wrong. He knew it. It was all wrong.

He glanced at the mirror that reflected the cabin behind him.

The girl with the brown hair and the white teeth winked at him.

Caine looked away quickly and thin muscles rippled along his jaw. He didn't know which of them was getting on his nerves more, the girl or the insane kid who was with her.

It was certain that between them they were getting him, and he jambed a hand forward. The ship whipped down through the air like an Earth sea gull, skimming the tops of the vine-trees of the Venusian jungle.

"Oh, lookee, lookee!" screamed the thin twitching boy with the blond hair. "Swamp and jungle, snakes and lizards! Are there devils down there, Driver? Are there spooks and ghosts and witches? Hey, Driver?"

Caine didn't answer. He looked again to the mirror.

The girl was laughing and shaking her brown hair. The boy was using his camera, leaning over the edge of the open-topped cabin. He was about twenty-one, Caine judged. Six years younger than Caine, but he acted like he was twelve or thirteen. Caine hadn't liked him from the start and he hated him right now. He was just another rich kid who thought the whole system was a playground.

And he kept calling Caine, "Driver." If he did it once more, Caine promised himself, he'd kill him.

Only he wouldn't, he knew. He wouldn't do anything. Caine had asked for this job, taking people with too much money on sight-seeing hops over the wilds of the Venusian country. It was a long way for both Caine and his jetcopter from the days when he was out at the tip of the finger of exploration, when the American Colony had been only a rugged square on the flatland.

Now that was over and he was leaving Venus. And the reason why he was leaving, was because of people like the two in back of him. The stupid, blind, selfish people who had ruined every chance for a decent relationship between the Colonists and the Venusians.

Because the Venusians were kind and honest and good, these people had swept over them like hail hitting flower petals. They had slashed and gouged and broken everything in their way: the earth, the vegetation, the Venusians themselves. Everything went down in front of the Colonist's hand. And then they laughed and spent the money they made and damned near tickled themselves to death with their own superiority.

Caine brought the ship up with a wrench, swearing under his breath. Well, this was the last time he'd have anything more to do with them. Tomorrow, he'd be on a rocket and this time he'd find a place where he wouldn't see another damned tourist the rest of his life. The only good thing about this was that he would use their money to do it. He wasn't a sucker like the Venusian. He knew how to charge six times over for a trip like this.

The boy was chattering and the girl was laughing and Caine made a slow sweeping circle over the yellow and green and purple jungle.

The boy was jerking finished three-dimensional pictures out of the camera and squinting at them. "Oh, Lord," he would say, giggling as he looked. Then he would throw the picture over his shoulder and grab another. "Oh, heavens." And that one would go over his shoulder.

"Hey, Driver!" the boy yelled. "Let's go down again."

Caine set his teeth and spiraled slowly in the cloud-dull air.

He felt a touch against his right arm. He glanced down and found the girl's small foot beside his arm. She wiggled a sandaled toe and tapped him again with her foot.

* * * * *

Caine saw her small ankle and after that, the neat swell of her calf. She wore no stockings and her skin was tanned the color of golden wheat--from long hours, Caine knew, lying in an artificially sunlit patio.

He looked at her in the mirror.

"Vanny wants to go down again," she said, smiling insolently. She shook the soft brown hair and her eyes danced. She had dark blue eyes, Caine noticed, and they sparkled and flirted. And Caine wanted none of it. He wanted to get this over and he wanted to get away.

She was making him more nervous than the boy was, only it was a different kind of nervousness. It was the kind that got into your blood and found your heart and your breath, and it was more dangerous.

"Down, down!" the boy was yelling.

"All right," Caine said. "All right."

He spiraled the ship toward the jungle.

"You know," he could hear the girl say, "I don't think Driver likes you, Vanny. I don't think he likes me, either. Why don't you like us, Driver?"

Caine concentrated on his flying.

"You know," said the girl in her husky voice, "maybe he doesn't like it because we call him Driver. Do you, Driver?"

Caine accelerated the ship and cut at the tips of the vine-trees. He heard the clicks of the boy's camera and his crazy yelling.

The girl touched his arm with her toe again. "What is your name, Driver?"

Caine looked up at the mirror and stared at the girl's eyes. She bent forward, her smile a quirk at each corner of her red mouth. She wore a thin blue dress that matched the color of her eyes, and its neckline was cut so that, as she leaned forward, Caine could see that she was probably tanned all over.

She smiled her white smile and her teeth were even and small. "Name," she said.

"Caine," he snapped.

"First name."

"Nicholas."

"Do they call you Nick?"

"My friends call me Nic. N-i-c. Pronounced like Nick. My friends call me that."

"That's what I'll call you, Nic."

He stared at her in the mirror, his mouth tight.

"Aren't I your friend, Nic?" she said, wiggling her toe.

Caine swung the ship. "Let's call it a day."

"Wait a minute!" said the boy. "Wait a minute!" He stumbled past the girl into the empty seat beside Caine. His thin mouth was suddenly hard. "I'm paying quite a little money to see this rotten country and I want to see it."

"We've been up an hour," Caine said.

"All right," the boy said sarcastically. "We'll stay up six hours then, friend."

Caine felt his hands turn wet in the palms.

"I'm paying for this," the boy went on, his voice taunting, "and you're just the driver. You don't want to forget that. Now if I want to fly over this crap from now until Christmas you're going to do it. Isn't that right, friend?"

Caine's heart was hammering and he knew the anger was showing in his face. Any other time he would have handled this with a crack of his voice, or, if he had to, a crack of his fist. But not today. Today he didn't want any trouble. He wanted nothing to go wrong. All he wanted was to get it over and to get out.

"Did you hear me, friend?" the boy said.

"Yes, I heard you," Caine said.

"All right," said the boy, grinning meanly. "That's fine. We understand each other. Put her down again."

Caine snapped the nose of the ship down and the boy tumbled back into the cabin. "Hey!" he yelled. "Lookee, lookee!"

Caine cut between the tips of the tree-vines. He nearly touched his wheels against a clearing. He climbed. He dropped. He fought the anger.

The boy worked his camera and the girl watched Caine through the mirror. There was a different look in her eyes now, Caine saw. A kind of mocking look that made the anger inside of him swell and beat against his temples.

He knew she was going to start and he asked himself, "Why? Why couldn't they leave him alone just this one day, this one time, so that nothing would go wrong?"

But he knew this had been that kind of a day from the time it started. He knew as surely as he was flying the jetcopter that nothing was going to be right about this day.

She said it: "I think Nic's afraid of Vanny."

He licked his lips and his tongue was dry.

"I mean," she said. "Isn't that queer? A great big strong man like Nic afraid of a little boy like Vanny? Why is that, I wonder?"

Caine took his hands from the controls and rubbed them against his knees. He could feel it breaking apart. He couldn't hang onto it.

Then the boy yelled and scrambled to the opposite side of the cabin. The girl's feet went up and Caine caught the flash of her tan legs. She laughed and shook her hair.

"Lookee!" cried the boy. "A purple plateau."

Caine straightened the ship and began moving swiftly away.

"No, no!" screamed the boy. "Put her down there! On the ground!" He waved his hands and pointed at the purple-colored rise of land. "Did you hear me, Driver? Put her down, put her down!"

"This is Venusian land," Caine said grimly, "and I wouldn't put this ship down anyplace but Colony land."

* * * * *

The boy was behind Caine, his thin fingers digging into Caine's shoulder, "I'll tell you what to do, friend. You just do it."

Caine turned and looked at the boy's white, unhealthy-looking face. The boy's lips curled again.

"If you want to fly," Caine said, "I'll fly you all day. But if you want to land in Venusian territory you get yourself another driver." He accented the word, driver.

The boy clutched at Caine's shoulder and hopped behind his seat. "Put her down on that purple plateau!" the boy yelled. "Damn you, I don't want to listen to your stupid voice! Just put her down, do you hear me, Driver?"

Caine could feel the fingers pinching his shoulder and he could see the white crazy face bobbing beside him. He wanted to lift just one of his hands and slap the screaming boy across the cabin. But if he did there would be much trouble when they got back.

The girl's father, Caine knew, was the Treasurer of the Colony. This boy was her guest. They could make a lot of trouble for him.

He knew it wouldn't help, but he made one try: "Look," he said, "We've got a written agreement with the Venusians to stay off this part of the land. Don't you understand?"

"Oh, hell!" the boy shouted, "Oh, hell! Damn the Venusians! Put her down there, Driver. Do you hear me?"

Caine swept the ship in a slow circle. He felt the slim foot at his arm again. "Did you hear him, Driver?" asked the girl, her eyes mocking him through the mirror.

Caine dropped the ship.

The boy plunged back through the cabin, chattering, giggling, clicking his camera.

Caine looked at the purple plateau. It was not a plateau, really, it was a rather flat hill in the midst of the thick swampy jungle. Around it he could see the reflection of liquid and then the shimmering slick-looking vine-trees.

The boy's reaction to the fact that this was Venusian territory was what was wrong with this whole planet, Caine thought as he examined the purple hill.

"Damn the Venusians," was the slogan for the Colony. Damn them this way, damn them that way. Write a treaty with them, wink, and forget about it. Get them going and coming and sideways. Because their skin was green and their heads were round and hairless, that meant they were stupid and inhuman and thus to be taken advantage of.

They were not stupid, Caine knew, nor were they inhuman. And how much more advantage could be taken of them, Caine didn't know. There was a point of resistance to everything, even to Venusians. And Caine did not doubt that sooner or later the Colonists would push the Venusians to it. What then, only God knew.

Right now, however, all Caine cared about was getting away from here so he wouldn't have to watch this thing anymore. He was sick of it. Sick to the core. The months and months he'd spent trying to help establish Earth's civilization on this planet appeared now like having driven around in a constant circle, and finally realizing that neither he nor anyone else had gone anywhere.

And all because of people like the two behind him.

Caine swore bitterly to himself and circled the purple hill once more.

"Down, down!" the boy was screaming, and Caine could hear the girl laughing.

II

The nearest Colony post, Caine judged, was thirty miles away. That meant no one would observe his silver ship dropping into the forbidden jungle. But even breaking the treaty would be no worse than inflicting the wrath of a guest of the Treasurer. Or the Treasurer's daughter.

He drifted slowly above the hill. At least, he hoped, there would be no Venusians around this part, although you couldn't tell. If there were, probably they wouldn't do anything, Caine decided, because they did not believe in violence or in physical conflict.

But there was a matter of honor, and Caine for one, especially Caine, did not want to be responsible on this, his last day on the planet, for breaching that honor with these native people.

The perils of the swamp was a thing he saved for final consideration. They would go no further than the boundaries of the small hill. But in reality, Caine hoped that something might be down there, waiting to scare the stupidity out of the loud kid who was forcing him down. Caine didn't know what that might be, because you could never tell what waited for you in the Venusian jungle. It was all strange, unexplored land, and this land, Caine had learned, produced many very weird and awful things.

They would soon find out.

He dropped the ship slowly, aiming for the center of the gradually sloping hill. The boy was like a crazy bird locked in a cage. The girl shook her hair, her teeth shining whitely while she laughed, but Caine could feel her eyes watching him, watching him.

Caine knew then, in that split second before the wheels of the ship touched the purple hill, that it hadn't been the boy's demand that had forced him down, but the girl, watching him through the mirror, taunting him, daring him, that had made him do this.

He looked up at her and the look she returned made a shiver dance along his spine.

The wheels touched ground.

The boy clawed at the door. "Lookee, lookee, lookee!" he yelled.

Caine's hand snapped out and struck the boy's fingers away from the lock of the door.

"Hey!" said the boy, spinning. "Watch out, Driver. Watch out with that. You don't want to make me mad now, friend. Do you, friend? Do you?"

Caine looked at the narrow glittering eyes of the boy. "No," he said quietly. "I don't want to make you mad."

"That's fine," the boy said, nodding. "That's fine."

The girl reached over and touched the boy. "You tell him, Vanny. You tell him anything you want to. He'll listen and nod and say yes to anything. He's a very sweet fellow, Nic is."

Caine jambed his seat back and stood up. He took out his holstered pistol from the small compartment beneath the instrument panel. He strapped the holster to his waist and turned around.

"I don't want either one of you going beyond the boundary of this hill. I don't like being down here. I'll tell you that before we get out. And so I don't want any trouble. Get out and look and that's all. In five minutes I'm taking off. If you're not in this ship you can walk back. Do you understand?"

The girl raised her eyebrows and whistled. "Listen to the captain."

The boy yanked at the door. "I don't want to hear your damned speeches, Driver. Open the door that's all, before I get mad."

Caine hit the lock and the boy spilled out to the purple-colored surface.

Caine looked at the girl. She sat there, legs crossed, smiling at him. "I asked you your name. You didn't ask me mine. Don't you want to know, Captain?"

"No," Caine said.

"It's Cice. Isn't that pretty? Cice? Doesn't it sound nice with Nic?"

"No," said Caine, "it doesn't."

She pursed her lips and stood up suddenly. "All right, Driver. Let's look at the jungle."

Caine climbed out and turned to help the girl. He held up a hand and caught hold of her fingers. He looked up at her and waited for her to come down into his arms.

She didn't. She threw his hand away and leaped to the ground, a flash of gold and blue. She was like a cat, and there was no loss of dignity or presence when she landed beside Caine. Caine turned away and walked to the tip end of the ship's right wing.

He reached down and felt of the moss-like substance covering the hill. It was like a thick carpet, but spongier, and it was moist. The air was moist, too, and it was in the soft breeze that touched Caine's face and made the slippery leaves around the hill swing and slide together.

The boy was spinning like a gyroscope, snapping pictures this way and that, jerking the finished prints out, looking at them, and throwing them away.

The girl had walked to the front of the ship and stood there, very straight and perfect, letting the wind ripple her blue dress.

Suddenly, the boy swung around and vaulted to the short thin wing of the jetcopter. He crouched there, clicking his camera, while the ship tipped.

Caine yelled, and then as though the center had been split out of the huge moss carpet, it began to slide toward the canal of liquid around the hill. The ship swung partially sideways, while the white-faced boy with the camera pranced on its wing. Caine felt himself moving with the sliding moss and he jumped forward. The girl had fallen to her knees and was reaching for the solid rock-like surface beneath the moss.

* * * * *

The boy had frozen against the surface of the ship now, and as the tail jets hit the liquid, the silver metal melted and disappeared in the shimmering stuff like soft lead going into fire.

Caine let out a yell and scrambled over the shifting carpet and yanked the girl to the exposed rock. Then he jumped back and grabbed at the hook of the ship's nose, knowing even as he did it that it was a senseless action. The ship kept sliding.

Foot by foot it disintegrated, as though the liquid were an acid. Still the boy hung like a frightened animal to the silver wing. Caine lunged for the boy's hand, but he slipped to his knees and felt himself sliding toward the liquid.

He reached up to the wing, now sticking in the air like a broken arm. He pulled himself to his feet and it was like standing on shifting grease. He found the boy's arm and yanked hard. The boy came flying off the wing and hit the slipping moss, the camera swinging around his neck, his arms fighting.

The ship had nearly melted in the liquid and the right wing, the last of it, crumpled and slid into the shining acid and disappeared.

Caine fought along the edge of the hill, trying to push the boy to the exposed rock that had lain beneath the moss-like surface.

The boy screamed and flailed his arms and legs, and the movement was making them slide toward the waiting liquid. Caine gritted his teeth and leaped ahead, pulling the boy with him. He found solid rock as the final covering of the purple carpet slid into the liquid.

Caine lay on the rock, breathing hard, his hands clutching the boy's jacket.

The boy shook himself loose and he was no longer screaming. "Take your filthy hands off of me," he said to Caine.

Caine's face flushed and his eyes thinned.

The boy stared back at Caine for a long moment, then he stood up and examined his camera.

Caine got to his feet and went up the incline to where the girl waited. "Are you all right?" he asked her.

There was a different look in her eyes. There was no mocking or sarcasm. "Yes," she said, shaking her hair and smiling a little. "I'm all right, Nic."

"Well, that's damned fine," Caine said, a line cutting between his eyebrows. "That's really damned fine because my ship isn't. Have you noticed? Three years of sweat and blood gone down the sewer. Isn't that fine?"

Her smile flickered and she touched his arm. "I'm sorry, Nic. It was our fault--"

He shook himself away from her touch. "Yes, it was your fault and it didn't need to happen, only you and the screaming idiot had to do it. Ships are a dime a dozen to you but not to Nic Caine."

Her smile had vanished and there was a bright glinting light in her eyes. She stood very straight and met Caine's furious stare. "I'll buy you a new one when we get back, Driver. I don't want to see you cry. Wipe the tears away, honey ..." she reached to pat his shoulder and he slapped her hand away.

"Keep your hands away from me and don't use that tone of voice when you're talking to me. I'll take that ship from you when we get back. If we do get back. And you can count on that. In the meantime don't push me anymore, or I'll...."

"You'll what?" she said, her white smile shining at him. "You'll do what? I'm interested. Say what you're going to do. Or better yet, just do it. I'm ready."

Her smile was a shimmering thing and her eyes danced like bright stars. Caine felt of his strength by clamping his hands into fists.

He hardened his arm muscles and his shoulder muscles, but he knew he didn't have at that moment enough strength to meet her smile and her eyes and her tanned smooth skin. He could strike her half-way across the rock, but she was stronger and he could see in her eyes that she knew it.

But that was her strength right now.

He would test it later and see how it was. And he would test his own, because if they were going to get out of this jungle, they would need all the strength they could find.

Caine whirled. "What do you want?" he asked the boy who had come up behind him.

"I want to know how you're going to get us out of here, Driver." The boy's face still held the same stretched sarcastic look, but his eyes were no longer sharp and insolent. The fright showed easily, and behind the fright, Caine knew there was panic.

"I'm not going to get you out of here," Caine said, his voice suddenly soft. "I'm going to leave you right here to think about your stupidity."

"Listen, listen!" the boy screamed. "You don't talk that way to me, friend. You listen, you don't talk to me that way, do you hear?"

Caine's voice was a quick snapping sound. "Shut up!" He stood there, body tense, his eyes glaring at the frantic youth.

The boy turned and ran a few feet across the hill where he fell down on his knees and crouched, his eyes darting like those of a penned wildcat. He lifted his camera, released the shutter, and yanked out the finished picture to throw it into the waiting liquid.

The picture skipped and then floated.

Caine stared at the floating picture. It lay on the surface for a long minute and then slowly it disappeared.

He turned and looked at the liquid where his ship had disintegrated. Bobbing near the surface was the plastic of the seats. Caine frowned.

The boy was running at him again, arms flailing, and Caine felt the sting of the boy's fists striking him. He pushed the boy back so that he fell sprawled on the rock surface.

"It's all around us!" the boy screamed. "The damned stuff is all around us. You get us out of here, Driver. Do you hear, you get us out of here!"

The girl stood over the wild boy. "You know, Vanny, you're really a jolly fellow."

"You keep your mouth shut!" he yelled at her.

The girl turned away and looked at Caine. "What do we do, just stand here?"