Part 1

SPAWN OF THE VENUS SEA

By HARRY WALTON

What was this ghastly inhabitant of Venus' Dead Sea--this multiple-life monstrosity.

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Fall 1941. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

With a tremendous snap, the taut steel cable humming in over the stern sheaves suddenly leaped high. The winch screamed briefly as the cable skipped its guides. Before power could be shut off it had snarled badly, and the frayed end of it had thrashed a splintery dent into the _Mermaid's_ deck.

By this time, Second Mate Stanley Kort reflected grimly, the net itself had probably bottomed on the floor of Venus's largest ocean--the _Molo Ivrum_, or Deadly Sea, thus named for the paradoxical reason that it teemed with life, most of it decidedly unpleasant.

Hands clenched, Kort stared from the plaskon windows of the wheelhouse. Through the thin haze blanketing the deck he could see net tenders and seamen stolidly staring forward. The cable lay in a vicious tangle between winch house and stern. Nobody looked at it.

They were waiting for orders, as they always waited when Kort held deck command. Were Hodge up here, or even Pratt, the third mate, the net tenders would have laid hold of the snarled steel by now. With Kort it was different.

Or was it he who was different, he who hadn't been trained in the hard school of this sort of seamanship? A man who'd won his papers in passenger service wasn't wanted aboard a floating cannery. Kort wished he had known a month ago how it would be. He should have left Venus after being discharged from the _Corinthia_, instead of trying to start anew in the cannery service.

His clenched fist opened.

"Break out a magnetic!" The deck speakers amplified his voice to stentorian volume, galvanized the crew into sullen action. Men untangled the steel, spliced a new length to it, and swung the magnetic grapple over the side.

With the grapple magnets drawing two hundred amps, the ship swung in a clumsy circle. Half an hour passed, marked only by the screech of cannery boilers popping off every five minutes. From forward came the stench of cleaning platforms, the "clop-plop" of trimming machinery.

Then the rain, pelting down in drops big as grapes. They splashed roaringly upon the deck, drummed upon the wheelhouse windows like furious fingers. The _Mermaid_ seemed to squat lower in the water under the weight of the storm.

Abruptly a red lamp flashed. Kort was out of the pilot house almost before the engine room, answering his signal, had reversed the turbines. In helmet and plaskon overalls he fought his way aft.

At the stern rail Kort watched the cable come in, dripping steel curl itself over the drums. Finally the grapple broke the frothy surface of the sea. To it clung the lost net, and Kort felt a moment of amazed gratitude for that bit of luck. For once the _Mermaid_ had been fortunate. Ships sometimes spent hours in futile grappling.

Tenders seized the net, spread it as the winch hauled in. It was nine tenths up when Kort, watching for anything that might jam the rollers, signaled the winch-man to stop.

* * * * *

The thing might have been a giant slug. Thick as a man's arm, it was so entangled in the net that any estimate of its length was sheer guesswork. One end tapered to a featureless snout, the other flattened to a broad, finned tail. Its color was a dingy, bloodless white. Kort had never seen anything like it before.

"Get a trident, Simms!" he bawled over the fury of the storm, and the man obediently lifted one of the implements from its rack. Simultaneously a net tender climbed over the rail and, clinging to the mesh, lowered himself hand over hand. The man with the trident looked gravely on. Kort felt himself flush, yet hesitated to order the other man back. Possibly the thing in the net was familiar to the others, its disposal a simple matter which his interference might make difficult.

The tender leaned down, chopped at the white monstrosity with a heavy knife. There was a solid _thunk_ of metal as the edge bit chain mesh. Kort would almost have sworn that the thing moved. It was incredible that the man could have missed it otherwise.

Suddenly uneasy, Kort drew his electro-gun. With a grimace the tender leaned farther over, raised his knife again.

Before it fell, before anyone could move or shout warning, the white trunk flashed out, magically freed itself from the net, coiled about the man, and in one convulsive movement vanished with him beneath the sea. There was a single sharp splash, muted by the drumming rain.

Kort had not dared to fire. Incredulously he stared at the spot where the thing had been enmeshed an instant before. The undamaged net, slimy with the detritus of the sea, hung empty under the ship's stern.

* * * * *

It was still raining, but, as though some oceanic deity had accepted a living sacrifice, the _Mermaid's_ luck had changed. Nets came up laden with the _Molo Ivrum's_ rampant life. Sorters tossed the edible, bulbous _gwai_ upon conveyor belts for the cannery machines to clean and pack. The remainder of the catch was thrown back into the sea. The finless, two-mouthed _gwai_ alone was wanted for its incredible nutritive value, twice that of the finest synthetic foodstuffs, which had made this tiny denizen of Venusian seas a staple article of diet wherever supplies had to be taken in concentrated form.

Kort watched the work somberly, feeling himself responsible for the tender's death. Even Pratt would have ordered the man back. The men were right; he was a gold brick, not worth his salt aboard the _Mermaid_. He'd have to get off. Not that there could be any going back to the passenger runs for him, after the tragedy of the _Corinthia_. They allowed a man only one mistake there. He had made his by failing to report a brother officer unfit for duty.

A steward brought his lunch--fried _gwai_, native tapioca, and strong synthetic coffee. While he was eating Hodge entered. The first mate poured himself a cup of the brew and dismissed the idle helmsman with a nod. The _Mermaid_ lay becalmed in the downpour.

Kort felt the mate's eyes upon him. Hodge was a grizzled giant of a man, at least thirty years older than he.

"Taking it a bit hard, aren't you, son?"

"I should have ordered him back," said Kort tightly.

"Maybe," retorted Hodge, stuffing a biscuit between his teeth. "And maybe he shouldn't have played the fool. Never give the sea bigger odds than you can help. They do say the critter was all tangled up with the net to the last second--and then it wasn't."

"That's true."

"Reminds me of them native magicians you can see in Dana T'resa. But the sea's full of surprises. We'll never outguess her--well, D'loo?"

The pilot house door had been flung open as by a tempest. One of the stokers, a squat green-skinned Venusian, stood breathless and wild eyed before the two officers.

"Steady, boy," rumbled Hodge. "What's up?"

The native's broad ears twitched. "_Twahna ekeh-il!_ Twahna is dead!" He lapsed into chattering dialect, his eyes almost idiotic with fright.

"He says Twahna was killed by the ghost-snake," muttered Hodge. "Sounds like a lie to cover up some liquor stealing, but we'd better go see. Have Pratt take over; it's almost his watch anyway."

The third officer, flushed of face and glaring resentfully, answered Kort's telephoned summons by appearing on the bridge. He slouched on the leather bench behind the wheel, pulled a bottle from his hip even before the others left.

The chattering Venusian led them to the second forecastle reserved for native seamen. Half a dozen other natives, all off duty for the present, were huddled in the passageway outside. The low room was deserted. A single fluorescent bulb glowed bluishly between the tiers of bunks. Almost directly beneath sprawled Twahna.

His face was cupped in both hands as though to shut out the sight of death. Kort rolled him over and got the shock of his life. The Venusian was dead white, his flesh drained of color. His hands stayed up before his face and Kort tried to put them down.

"He's frozen!" Kort marveled. "Frozen stiff. Feel him."

Hodge touched the man. "It wasn't liquor," he rumbled. "Alcohol will kill a native quick enough, but it won't do that. D'loo says a snake came through the bulkhead while they were getting dressed for their watch, and wrapped itself around Twahna. It was between D'loo and the door, so he had to stay until the thing went back through the bulkhead. And he's too scared to be lying."

There was a clatter of footsteps on the ladder. Kort looked up into the flushed face of Pratt, and knew there was more trouble. Nothing less could have induced him to leave the comfort of the wheelhouse.

"Well, mister?" asked Hodge.

"A--a net tender's been killed," the third mate stuttered. "They say--they say he's the second."

"The third, mister," said Hodge harshly. "Anything queer about the net tender?"

"Yes--yes, he was frozen. Frozen blue. I thought I'd better call you."

* * * * *

They went up together, leaving behind them a sorely frightened group of Venusians. The moment they reached the deck Kort knew that something else had happened since Pratt had left. It had stopped raining, although the last of the water was still sluicing from the scuppers. But not a man was in sight. Winch house, stern deck, and sorting platforms were deserted.

Yet not utterly, for just forward of the main net locker swayed the creature from the depths, a sinuous tapering trunk, its snout uplifted like a hound's nose scenting game.

"Two of them!" gasped Pratt, pointing to a second one atop the pilot house.

"And one makes three!" muttered Hodge, for still another had appeared magically beside the first. Pratt pulled his electro-gun from its holster. Its heavy bullet splintered a hatch cover just behind the thing, but the creature showed no harm. Kort drew his own weapon and joined Pratt in pumping bullets. Wood splintered and metal clanged where the projectiles struck, but the sea slugs remained unharmed.

It seemed to Kort that the things flickered, faded from view, at the very instant he fired, only to reappear so quickly as to make him doubt his senses. Pratt was reloading furiously. He went down on all fours, crawled along one of the conveyor belts until he was no more than twelve feet from one of the things. Prone on the deck, he fired at point blank range. The soft nosed bullet smashed into planking directly behind the swaying trunk. Kort saw splinters fly at the impact, but again the sea slug had seemed to vanish for an instant, like a candle flame almost blown out by a sudden draft.

In drunken anger, Pratt seized a trident from the rail, sprang to his feet, leaped at the thing. Kort shouted a warning to which the man paid no heed. Spear-like he hurled the trident; the prongs sank a full inch into the wooden deck. The swaying trunk reared, became ominously still. Kort cried out again as Pratt, howling drunken defiance, emptied his gun at it.

Like the pounce of lightning the creature struck. One instant it was upreared before Pratt, the next its fatal helix enclosed the man. He staggered, screamed once, a howl of sheer animal pain that struck Kort like a whip across the face. It was Hodge who restrained him from tackling the thing with fists and knife.

"Too late!" the older man said grimly. "No use throwing yourself after him."

There was no sound from Pratt now. In ghastly silence the sea creature had settled down with him, his body rigid in its coiled grip, protruding eyes mirroring agony, yet already glazed with approaching death, his face slowly turning the purple of asphyxiation. Once more the gun blasted before it fell from twitching fingers. To the watchers it seemed an age before the tortured body at last went limp.

"Time the captain heard about this!" growled Hodge, "Although it ain't likely to do any good." His iron grip aroused Kort from the stupefaction of horror into which the sight of Pratt's death had plunged him. Together they went forward, giving the monsters a wide berth, past the cannery deck where most of the deck crew were gathered, to the captain's cabin.

One glimpse of the master told Kort no help might be expected from him. Spale's huge body overflowed the bunk; he was more stupefied than asleep. The cabin reeked of liquor. Hodge slammed the door on it.

"Might've known it," he grumbled. "He won't be good for thirty hours, like that. We're putting back to port, catch or no catch."

They reached the forward wheelhouse from below deck, leaving the one aft in possession of the sea monsters. Hodge pushed over the engine room telegraph. At the wheel, Kort awaited the first throb of propellers to drive the ship ahead.

For a moment there was no movement but the slow roll of the _Mermaid_ in the trough of the waves. Then the interphone crackled.

"Wellson, engine room. We have no pressure on the boilers down here. Chief Starr has gone aft to see about it. I can give you quarter speed for a few minutes."

"Quarter speed!" barked Hodge. The vessel trembled to the surge of the screws, forged slowly ahead. That moment too came the first of the wind. Kort found his hands full keeping the ship on course in the face of it.

Once he looked aft, just in time to see the last trunk vanish from atop the aft pilot house. It did not plunge overboard, but faded from sight as abruptly as a projected image when the light is snapped off.

Briefly grateful that the things had gone, he bent all efforts to keeping the _Mermaid_ on course in the face of freshening wind. Through the deck he could feel the whine of turbines inexorably slowing down.

"No steerageway, sir," he said finally, as the ship yawed.

Hodge rang the interphone savagely, without result.

"Better see what's wrong," he told Kort. "Wait--take this."

He thrust an electro-gun renewal clip into Kort's hand. With the weapon in hand Kort descended ladder after ladder to the engine deck. Amid disquieting silence something within him grew coldly alert.

The engine room was empty. Giant mercury turbines spun lazily under a pressure head far too low to drive them at normal speed. A chill swept him at the sight of the pressure gauges. In the dim glow of failing fluorescents he headed for the stokehole.

A nameless sense of menace cautioned him. He passed the great bunkers full of kwahna wood, the rich, oily fuel that drove the _Mermaid_ and her kind across the planet's five oceans. In the last bulkhead the stokehole door stood wide, somehow sounding a chill note of warning.

Without entering he called Wellson and Starr. The names echoed hollowly from the dim reaches of the ship, but in response came only the faint roar of a blower left at half speed.

The thought that Wellson and Starr must have gone through that same door determined him against doing so. Instead he climbed to the deck above, coming out on a catwalk above the boilers, from which he could see into the stokehole.

Five men sprawled on the deck plates in the contorted postures of those dead by violence, knees drawn high, arms outflung, fingers bent into claws. By the light of his pocket flash Kort recognized the distorted features of Starr. A reddish glow from an open firebox illumined those of Wellson. The other men were native stokers. When Kort moved the flash beam horror tightened its clutch upon him. The stokehole pit seemed full of sea slugs.

By actual count he found there were five of them, alert, weaving, posturing as though to sense new victims. Oddly enough the light brought no response from them, even when flashed directly upon their dingy white bodies.

Suddenly the electro-gun seemed to burn in Kort's hand. He lifted away a section of the catwalk grid to fire through the opening thus left. Bullets howled, ricocheting from deck plates and bulkheads below. Occasionally one of the creatures seemed to flicker before a shot.

When the gun was empty Kort got to his feet. His fire had been without effect. He felt a sick sense of futility as he climbed back to the wheelhouse, where Hodge soberly listened to the tale of death he had to tell.

"We've got to get them, son," said the first mate grimly. "It's them or us. Look aport."

The sky was aflame over the horizon. Twisted ribbons of light swirled between sea and heavens, shot through now and again with flashes of crimson. Across the waters came, faintly, the rumble of thunder.

"_Kilwanni!_" grunted Hodge. "From the looks of that borealis, it's headed this way. If we lie here much longer we'll be blown out of the water."

"With the anti-grids?" Kort protested.

"Without them," Hodge answered dryly. "What're you going to use for juice? The lightning generators have almost stopped, and you can't turn the anti-grid generators on flat boilers, nor use battery juice either."

He jerked his head significantly at the wheelhouse lamps, hardly more than aglow.

"Looks like we have to lick the things or else! No good wasting more bullets, either. The things dodge 'em. See how they flicker when you put a bullet close? No wonder D'loo calls them the ghost snakes."

Kort nodded, and yet it seemed to him that Hodge's appraisal was wrong, in some vague way he couldn't himself put a finger on.

"If they dodge the bullets," the first mate went on, "then they must see 'em coming. Maybe we need something faster than bullets--a bolt blaster, maybe."

"And Spale's got one!" finished Kort.

"Only one aboard," finished Hodge. "He had a mutiny once, and a blaster saved his fat neck for him. Since then he won't let anybody else keep one aboard, curse him. I reckon we'll have to find his."

* * * * *

Five minutes later the two men trod softly away from Spale's cabin, the precious blaster, clumsy with its huge capacitor drum, ridged barrel, and pointed electrode, in Hodge's hands. Yet Kort was haunted by an unreasonable premonition of failure. Perhaps, he told himself, repeated failure had sold him on the belief that the sea slugs were invulnerable. Certainly the blaster was no common weapon. It shot a bolt of non-oscillating high amperage current, a single shattering projectile of pure energy, with the speed of light itself. What living thing could sense the approach of that flashing death?

They entered upon the catwalk after Kort's light had shown it clear of the creatures. The stokehole fluorescents were mere luminous streaks against encroaching darkness. Only dying embers glowed behind the open fire door. But the flash beam revealed four white trunks grouped before the boilers, as though attracted by the warmth. Purple faces of the dead glared up in the pallid light of the torch.

Hodge swore feelingly, leveled the blaster. The weapon spat a lurid, creamy-white bolt that pierced the nearest trunk. Kort held his breath. The flash seared his sight, seeming of longer duration than it really was, and limned the sea thing starkly against the blackness of the stokehole. The light of his torch seemed feeble after it.

But in that light the creature swayed, unhurt, untouched. Hodge cursed it furiously, fired again and again. The crash of bolts was thunderous in that confined space. Fringes of electrical fire leaped from metal at their touch. Ozone stung Kort's nostrils.

But when the blaster clicked emptily not four, but five trunks swayed languidly before the boilers, curving their supple bodies in undulating motion that at times gave them the shape of huge, animated question marks.

"Drum's empty," said Hodge quietly. "Let's go topside."

Kort felt his calmness in strange contrast to the fury raging within himself--fury that mindless things from the sea should set at nought the intelligence and courage of some fifty men. What price intelligence? An ameoba, incapable of sensing the approach of death, was better off than they who could foresee, and fear, and do nothing at all to escape, extinction. What was the _kilwanni_--the coming storm--but a conglomeration of ions, dead and unintelligent, possessed of no will either benevolent or malevolent, yet destined for all that to shatter the _Mermaid_ and commit them to death in the freezing sea--those who escaped a fiery but swifter death from the storm itself.

He followed Hodge silently back to the pilot house. Two seamen waited there, grim faced.

"Three of them by the cannery boilers," one man said. "They got Sanderson before he could clear out."

That was all. They stared at Hodge, waiting for him to speak. The grizzled first mate shook his head.

"I know," said Kort suddenly, and all eyes turned to him. "The bullets were too slow--but the blaster was too fast. A bolt lasts only a few micro-seconds."

"How d'you mean?"

"You remember when D'loo first talked about a ghost snake? He hadn't seen the one on the net, but only the one that killed Twahna, and _nobody had fired a shot at it_."

"But he saw it come through the bulkhead," Hodge pointed out.

"That's what threw us off the track, but that wasn't the only reason D'loo called it the 'ghost snake.' Nor was it because they flicker before bullets. Have you ever known a native who cared to see ordinary cinema films?"

"Nope," grunted Hodge, plainly mystified. "Nor one who'd let a newsreel man photograph him. They call 'em the ghost pictures. Say--!"

"There you are. They fight shy of the films because they don't get the illusion of motion, as we do. All they see is a quick-fading succession of stills, because the natives don't have persistence of vision, as we have. The films don't fool them as they do us. Nor do those things out there. To us they look solid. To D'loo they flicker constantly--ninety-nine percent of the time they literally aren't there. They have a vibratory existence, like the image we seem to see on the cinema screen. Back in the twentieth century it was shown that the probability wave representing an electron extended, theoretically, to infinity. In these things free will--the life force--enters to control that mathematical probability. They can literally be two places at once--on the bottom, three miles down, and on our deck--at the same time.

"They're _here_ only at intervals, and persistence of vision bridges the time gap between those intervals. The blaster bolts last only a few micro-seconds, a far shorter time than their natural period. A bolt comes and goes while the thing you fire at actually _isn't there_. It would be sheer luck if the bolt should coincide to hit it at the instant it's actually materialized--sheer luck, because our eyes can't help us. Even a Venusian wouldn't be able to synchronize a bolt--there isn't that quick co-ordination between brain and muscle. The odds would always be against us."

* * * * *

The seamen looked blank. Hodge drummed the chart table with a huge fist. "If you're right, we need a faster bullet or a slower bolt."

"Or _timing_!" finished Kort. "Have Sparks rig a stroboscope out of spare parts. You know how moving parts can be made to look as if they're standing still, in an intermittent light that flashes only when they are at one point in their movement. With all other lights off, a stroboscope wouldn't show us the things at all, except when we have it exactly synchronized with their vibratory period. Rig the blaster in series with the light circuit, and it would have to fire at exactly the right time. That'll get them."

One of the seamen cleared his throat. "Maybe it would--or maybe not. This is no time for theories. We're speaking for all the men now. We don't mean to stay aboard to be blasted by the _Kilwanni_ or strangled by these damned snakes. We want to take the launches."