Chapter 2
He confessed to a few pangs of his own. They turned their attention to looking for banana trees, and coconut palms, but they did not seem to abound in the Venerian jungle. Even small animals that might have been slain with a broken branch had contrary ideas about the matter.
At last, from sheer weariness, they stopped, and gathered branches to make a sloping shelter by a vast fallen tree-trunk.
"This will keep out the rain--maybe--" Eric said hopefully. "And tomorrow, when it has quit raining--I'm sure we'll do better."
They crept in, as gloomy night fell without. They lay in each other's arms, the body warmth oddly comforting. Nada cried a little.
"Buck up," Eric advised her. "We're back to nature--where we've always wanted to be."
* * * * *
With the darkness, the temperature fell somewhat, and a high wind rose, whipping cold rain into the little shelter, and threatening to demolish it. Swarms of mosquito-like insects, seemingly not inconvenienced in the least by the inclement elements, swarmed about them in clouds.
Then came a sound from the dismal stormy night, a hoarse, bellowing roar, raucous, terrifying.
Nada clung against Eric. "What is it, dear?" she chattered.
"Must be a reptile. Dinosaur, or something of the sort. This world seems to be in about the same state as the Earth when they flourished there.... But maybe it won't find us."
The roar was repeated, nearer. The earth trembled beneath a mighty tread.
"Eric," a thin voice trembled. "Don't you think--it might have been better-- You know the old life was not so bad, after all."
"I was just thinking of our rooms, nice and warm and bright, with hot foods coming up the shaft whenever we pushed the button, and the gay crowds in the park, and my old typewriter."
"Eric?" she called softly.
"Yes, dear."
"Don't you wish--we had known better?"
"I do." If he winced at the "we" the girl did not notice.
The roaring outside was closer. And suddenly it was answered by another raucous bellow, at considerable distance, that echoed strangely through the forest. The fearful sounds were repeated, alternately. And always the more distant seemed nearer, until the two sounds were together.
And then an infernal din broke out in the darkness. Bellows. Screams. Deafening shrieks. Mighty splashes, as if struggling Titans had upset oceans. Thunderous crashes, as if they were demolishing forests.
Eric and Nada clung to each other, in doubt whether to stay or to fly through the storm. Gradually the sound of the conflict came nearer, until the earth shook beneath them, and they were afraid to move.
Suddenly the great fallen tree against which they had erected the flimsy shelter was rolled back, evidently by a chance blow from the invisible monsters. The pitiful roof collapsed on the bedraggled humans. Nada burst into tears.
"Oh, if only--if only--"
* * * * *
Suddenly flame lapped up about them, the same white fire they had seen as they lay on the crystal block. Dizziness, insensibility overcame them. A few moments later, they were lying on the transparent table in the Cosmic Express office, with all those great mirrors and prisms and lenses about them.
A bustling, red-faced official appeared through the door in the grill, fairly bubbling apologies.
"So sorry--an accident--inconceivable. I can't see how he got it! We got you back as soon as we could find a focus. I sincerely hope you haven't been injured."
"Why--what--what--"
"Why I happened in, found our operator drunk. I've no idea where he got the stuff. He muttered something about Venus. I consulted the auto-register, and found two more passengers registered here than had been recorded at our other stations. I looked up the duplicate beam coordinates, and found that it had been set on Venus. I got men on the television at once, and we happened to find you.
"I can't imagine how it happened. I've had the fellow locked up, and the 'dry-laws' are on the job. I hope you won't hold us for excessive damages."
"No, I ask nothing except that you don't press charges against the boy. I don't want him to suffer for it in any way. My wife and I will be perfectly satisfied to get back to our apartment."
"I don't wonder. You look like you've been through--I don't know what. But I'll have you there in five minutes. My private car--"
* * * * *
Mr. Eric Stokes-Harding, noted author of primitive life and love, ate a hearty meal with his pretty spouse, after they had washed off the grime of another planet. He spent the next twelve hours in bed.
At the end of the month he delivered his promised story to his publishers, a thrilling tale of a man marooned on Venus, with a beautiful girl. The hero made stone tools, erected a dwelling for himself and his mate, hunted food for her, defended her from the mammoth saurian monsters of the Venerian jungles.
The book was a huge success.
THE END
End of Project Gutenberg's The Cosmic Express, by John Stewart Williamson