Part 4

Barry had no doubts who was fomenting talk of the demons. Komso.

But if the Venusians had once been air-breathers and had deliberately become water-breathers there was still a chance that somehow he could become completely human again. At least his condition was not completely hopeless.

He could escape. His practice sessions had taught him to remain out of water nearly three hours, as nearly as he could judge, and that should be sufficient to re-establish contact with the Colony. But escaping alone, leaving Xintel behind, was something he knew he could never do.

"How did the Place Of Change work?" he asked. "On what principles? Did your Ancients actually understand how to generate Sigma radiations on the surface of a planet? Or was the change accomplished in other ways?"

Xintel shook her head. "That knowledge has fallen into the hands of the Chosen and been destroyed. Knowledge, except for themselves, is according to the Chosen against the will of the Gods."

"Is there nothing left?" Barry insisted, grasping at straws.

"The Place still remains amid the ruins of Last City," Xintel answered unexpectedly. "But it is wrecked and useless."

"How do you know?"

Xintel smiled sadly. "I have been there, twice. Soren once took me as a little girl, and once I went alone."

"But how?"

"Long since have the creatures of deadly smallness exterminated each other. Soren knew, and I know, and Komso knows. But Komso will not tell the people that one can go to the Above for a short time and not die."

Immediately Barry wanted to see for himself the remains of Last City and particularly the Place Of Change, but the Venusian girl demurred. The trip was perilous, she said, and if they were to leave Tana now, going into the Outside and toward the Above, it would only confirm in the minds of the people that Barry was a demon. Anything that would precipitate open action before they were able to take countermeasures against Komso's plots would be a fatal mistake.

Reluctantly Barry put the idea aside, but he did not abandon it. Instead he doubled his practice sessions in the oxygen at the top of the cavern, driving himself until his chest burned and throbbed. He was still a member of the Five Ship Plan whose duty was to the colony, and besides he had a frightening surety that without outside help Komso would eventually encompass his death.

* * * * *

One day when they were returning from the fields in the far reaches of the cavern they saw a man swimming away from their house. Barry put on an angry burst of speed, but the distance was great and the furtive figure vanished.

Xintel went through the three rooms inch by inch, checking all her possessions--but nothing was missing and nothing seemed to have been disturbed.

"We must have frightened him away before he could steal anything," Barry commented.

The girl frowned and bit her lip. "No. I do not think thievery was his object."

"What then?"

"I--I do not know," she admitted uneasily.

Komso finally took official cognizance of the talk of demons. He selected ten young men, not of the Chosen, and led them forth to reconnoiter in the Above. The men went heavily armed, but still superstitious dread would have prevented them from venturing to the myth-haunted surface without the high priest's mystic protection.

Barry grew acutely uneasy when he heard of the expedition. It boded no good for anyone except Komso. Hour after hour the underwater city hummed with speculation. For Barry and Xintel it was a nerve-wracking wait.

Then Komso returned--and with him came only three of the ten.

With lightning rapidity the story spread. There were demons in the Above, and despite Komso's great powers they had turned overwhelmingly potent weapons against them.

The mates of the slain were loud in their lamentations, and as though following prepared instructions, the Chosen spread the rumor that Barry, and Xintel too, were responsible for the slaughter. Barry was a demon spy, and Xintel had turned against her own people to mate with him.

Barry felt certain the priest had deliberately led his men into disaster for the psychological effect. He had been building hatred, and to one of Komso's mentality, seven deaths would be a negligible price for this crowning touch.

Drawn together by a spreading terror the people massed near the center of the city, each seeking company to stem their rising panic of helplessness. Their mutterings increased, their mood grew uglier.

But with dramatic suddenness Komso appeared in the doorway of his cave-temple and swam slowly forward. The murmuring died, then broke out again with a questioning undertone. The priest raised his arms so the sacred bracelets of office on his thick wrists flashed in the cold yellow light. Then slowly, deliberately he began to speak.

He expressed regret for the deaths of those who had followed him aloft. He had underestimated the malignancy of the demons, he admitted.

A shocked silence fell over the crowd, broken only by the grief stricken sobs of one of the widows. He glared at the woman, and his eyes made her cower.

The peril was dire, he warned. One demon had already penetrated the sacred boundaries of Tana and others were gathering in the Above. Soon they would descend and overwhelm the city unless the people of Tana followed his leadership unquestioningly.

But the mission had not been in vain. Komso had discovered the demons' plans--and their vulnerability.

"We killed one demon!" he boasted.

Barry gasped. Komso was too clever to tell an outright lie when there were three surviving witnesses to check his story.

"Kill the demons! Kill all the demons!" A Chosen One began the chant, and it was taken up and echoed by the crowd.

It sounded so absurd that a group of aquatic semi-savages could hope to attack a surface settlement defended by the finest weapons of Earth that Barry almost laughed. But he remembered Xintel's account of the Venusian downfall, and was not so sure. Komso's forces would not have to breach the defense perimeter of the colony to achieve their objective. Bacterial warfare ineffective under water, could render the surface uninhabitable again.

And the colony had no inkling of such a threat.

"Damn him," Barry thought. It was all so stupid and useless.

He fumed while Komso's words calmed, influenced, and finally controlled with hypnotic completeness the emotions of his listeners.

"The demons shall die!" Komso orated. "I, Komso, shall call upon the powers of the Gods Of The Deeps. Beasts of the marshlands shall come at my command, smashing and overturning the houses and forts of the demons in the Above! And then shall the Unseen Death smite them!"

The people roared their approval, and while they were still shouting the priest turned away in abrupt dismissal.

Barry and Xintel looked at each other, their faces white and set, each wondering what they could do.

A hundred thoughts flashed through Barry's mind at once, dominated by the knowledge it was his duty to warn the colony. He had become a freak through accident, but he was still an Earthman. But to make his warning really valuable he must know more of Komso's methods. He thought momentarily of invading the cave-temple to steal information or even assassinate the priest, but discarded the notion. Komso would be expecting such an attempt and have his Chosen Ones waiting.

* * * * *

They were still discussing the situation hours later when Xintel suddenly raised her hand for silence. A puzzled frown appeared on her face and she dropped to the lower room. Barry, watching her peer around the door curtain, saw her body grow tense. He listened, and his ears caught a confused sound of voices.

"What is it?" he demanded.

"Men are coming this way, and they are led by Sanlan, the brother of that Czerki."

"Komso's work?"

"Naturally."

Barry reached for a spear. "They won't touch you as long as I'm alive," he promised.

The sounds outside grew louder.

"Go in through the door," he heard a voice command. "Chase the demon and his woman upward and out. Lart and I will attend to them."

Xintel leaped to the upper room and began tossing down baskets.

"Block the hatchway," she directed. "We will hold the middle room."

Quickly Barry piled them across the opening, thrusting extra spears through the wovenwork and into the material of the floor. It was a flimsy barricade but better than nothing.

Xintel loaded her crossbow. Barry stood beside her with a spear ready.

"Now!" the voice outside boomed.

Men poured into the lower room, shouting to keep up their courage. Xintel, her face pale, squinted along her crossbow and thumbed the trigger. A man screamed. A spear thwacked upward into the baskets as the girl put her strength against her weapon's reloading ratchet.

"Can you hold them off a minute?" Barry whispered.

She nodded, and he leaped to the upper room. One basket remained, and he found that by standing on it his head was just below the roof's lower surface. With his knife he began cutting into the matted fibers of the roof. He was nearly through when a whisper from above made him pause.

"Psst! Lart, be very sure your thrust misses."

That was Sanlan, Barry guessed.

The other Venusian growled under his breath.

"Komso will have your skin if you disobey," Sanlan warned.

"But why?"

Sanlan chuckled. "Have you no faith?"

Barry resumed cutting, puzzled and suspicious, opening a hole just large enough to admit his head. He had guessed his position well, for Sanlan and Lart were standing with their backs toward him while they watched the hatchway.

The Earthman withdrew silently, taking no chances that Sanlan's talk had been a trick to draw him out.

Xintel glanced up as he dropped to the middle room. A confused discussion was in progress below, for no man wanted to be the first to rush the barricade.

"Give me both your tube-weapons," Barry demanded.

She turned her hips, allowing him to take them from her belt without putting down her crossbow or relaxing her vigilance.

"Come at once when you hear me call," he directed. "We can't hold out forever. It's run or die."

"Run? Where?"

"Outside. It is our only chance."

He leaped to the upper room again.

A tube gun in each hand, he thrust his wrists through the hole he had cut. Sanlan and Lart were still waiting.

"Perhaps you should have others break through the walls," Lart suggested impatiently.

Sanlan shook his head. "There is plenty of time."

But Sanlan's own time ran out just then as Barry triggered the weapon in his left hand. He died instantly.

Lart whirled. Barry fired the other tube. Lart screamed and doubled over in agony.

"Xintel!" Barry called.

She came up with a rush.

Lart was still alive, and he screamed as they emerged onto the roof. Answering yells came from below.

"Let's go!" Barry barked as attackers began to swarm out of the house.

They swam desperately, side by side. The members of the mob trailed after them, but although they split the water with bloodthirsty yells they were reluctant in their efforts to close with the fugitives. Xintel had taught them respect during the battle inside the house, and Barry was a dread demon.

Barry broke his stroke to point. A large crowd had gathered around the mouth of the tunnel.

"Women there too," Xintel panted.

As they drew nearer he could see she was right. Women and unarmed men predominated in the group around the portal. They made no hostile moves, but nevertheless Barry drew his knife.

And then, off to one side, he saw the unmistakable figure of the priest.

Komso watched their headlong flight with a thin smirk of satisfaction, and as they drew near he pointed one arm at them in a ritualistic gesture and began a resonant chant. A deadly hush fell over the watchers.

"Accursed be ye!" Komso intoned. "Manifestations of evil who presume to flaunt those the Gods have appointed to rule, be ye accursed by the Gods Of The Deeps!

"Gods Of The Deeps, heed thy servant! Send thou thy creatures that they may feed, that they may rend the flesh and grind the bones and destroy utterly those whom I have cursed in thy mighty names!"

* * * * *

Barry felt a crawling prickle of fear along his spine at the confidence of Komso's manner. Xintel's face twisted in terror as she remembered how that self-same curse had brought death to her father. The Earthman felt an almost overwhelming urge to swerve aside, to swing in a suicidal dive upon the priest and his Chosen guards. But remembrance of his duties to the colony and to Xintel overcame blind fury.

It seemed too good to be true when he and Xintel plunged into the dark passageway without interference. The armed mob followed, shouting to the noncombatants to move aside--but they were in the clear. They emerged from the tunnel mouth into the open, deadly, faintly luminous sea of the Outside.

"Hold!" They heard Komso's shouted command behind them. "Follow and you too shall be accursed!"

He did not have to repeat his order, for the Venusians were never too eager to venture into the Outside. Instead they massed at the portal to witness the fate of the demon and his traitorous mistress.

Suddenly the girl gasped in horror, clutching Barry's arm and pointing upward and outward. Against the background of dim luminosity, far in the distance, two bright pinpoints showed. Then three. Four. And then more than he could count.

"Torvaks!" she gasped.

Barry stared aghast. As though summoned by Komso's words the terrible undersea monsters were gathering from all directions.

Xintel's forehead wrinkled in desperate concentration.

"The Cleft!" she said suddenly.

Barry followed blindly as she dove toward the rocky, irregular bottom. Each time he risked a glance over his shoulder the monsters were nearer. And there were more of them. His muscles ached, but those trails of ominous light acted as a powerful stimulant.

The girl led him along the bottom, paying no attention to landmarks but relying solely on an intuitive sense of direction which all Venusians possessed. Soon Tana was lost to sight.

How long the nightmare chase lasted Barry was never to know. Seconds grew to ages and minutes to throbbing eternities. He concentrated on swimming, swimming, swimming for his very life, and hardly heard Xintel's words of encouragement.

"Just--a--little--further!"

Then stabbing, biting, burning pain seared his throat. Almost intolerable. But Xintel was guiding him straight down into a narrow fissure in the bottom. Her legs stopped their flutter-kick and she allowed momentum to carry her bottomward. Barry too ceased his exertions in a state of near collapse.

"Perhaps--they--won't follow!" Xintel panted.

Both looked upward. The monstrous shapes--they could see the gross, hideous bodies now--seemed unwilling to follow their prey into the crevice. They wheeled above in relentless circles.

One creature, like a gigantic moray with finned pectoral legs, made an abortive lunge but turned upward again a few feet above them.

Another torvak's neck shot out, its armored head striking the eel-creature a tremendous blow. Another monster swooped, fangs ripping, and for a few minutes the water grew murky with spilled blood and roiled ooze as the three huge beasts battled. The fight ended, and once more the saurians took up a restless, watchful patrol above the cowering pair.

Barry's breathing eased but the burning in his throat remained. Something in the water was irritating the tender membranes of his lungs, nose and eyes. He glanced at Xintel and saw that she too was in pain. But it was this very irritant that was preserving their lives. The monsters did not like its smell or taste.

"Maybe they'll go away," he said, not believing his own words but trying to reassure the girl.

The cleft in the ocean floor was long and narrow, deeper than it was wide, and at the bottom it tapered to a hair-thin crevice in the bedrock. The steeply slanting walls were deeply covered with a yellow-blue greasy jelly mixed with mud and silt. Barry recognized it from Xintel's descriptions as the Cleft Of Hardening where soft wooden implements were made usable. The crack in the bottom must extend deep into the heart of the planet.

"Xintel," he asked. "Are there any weapons buried here now?"

"There always are," she answered, but her voice was filled with despair.

"Where?"

She did not know. When the inhabitants of Tana buried objects to be hardened they were extremely careful to smooth the jelly over them. Otherwise prowling norus would dig them up.

Pawing into the sticky, corrosive jelly with hands and arms they began a blind search. Within minutes the girl gave a cry as she uncovered a spear. She wiped away the clinging stuff, then wept with disappointment. It had been buried only a short time and still had the soft consistency of balsa. Angrily she threw it down.

Barry recovered it. As a weapon it was worthless, but it was firm enough to use as a prod. Methodically he moved along the bottom, thrusting deeply every few inches.

"Got something!" he called, and Xintel swam to his side.

* * * * *

There were two spears and two long knives, all thoroughly hardened. Within a few more sleeps someone from Tana would have made the dangerous trip to pick them up.

Barry glanced at the shadows overhead. It felt good to have a weapon in his hand again, even though logic told him a spear could never penetrate the armored hides of those nightmare creatures. They could do absolutely nothing but wait and hope.

He found a projecting rock that was relatively free from slime and settled down. He wanted to think.

A sudden commotion overhead made him leap up. Two bodies came hurtling over the edge of the cleft some two hundred yards away, with trails of light glistening behind them. A torvak lashed out, missed, and its frustrated bellow made the water vibrate as the newcomers settled toward the bottom.

"Norus!" Xintel hissed in Barry's ear.

"They're not armed," Barry observed.

She turned on him peevishly. "But they're norus!"

Barry, not trained to hatred by a lifetime of strife with these outcasts, felt sorry for them as they crouched trembling and gasping from their flight. They eyed him furtively.

After the first few minutes, when it became evident the norus did not intend to break the unspoken truce imposed by mutual peril, the girl relaxed. Yet she did not turn her back to them.

For a long while she and Barry sat in silence. There was nothing to say, nothing worth saying in their hopeless situation. The norus watched stolidly, their eyes flicking occasionally between the pair from Tana and the monsters circling overhead.

Then in a quick move that startled Barry the girl stood up, unfastened her skirt, stepped out of the garment. She seemed entirely unaware of her nakedness.

"Fan your hands back and forth," she requested. "Make light."

Barry complied, swirling the water to brightness. The norus watched uneasily, staring hard at the girl. But Xintel was absorbed in inspecting the fabric of her skirt, going over it inch by inch. A couple of times she held it to her nose, but each time shook her head.

"Ha!" she cried suddenly, pointing to a slight, almost invisible stain.

"What is?" he asked.

"It may be--Give me your knife."

She cut away the stained cloth and wrapped it around the unhardened, useless spear.

"What are you doing?"

She ignored his question.

"Take this and go part way up," she directed. "But be careful, very careful, dearest--and throw it over the rim."

Trusting her knowledge of this undersea world, he climbed the slippery wall. Halfway up he found a foothold. He tensed his muscles, heaved the weapon with the peculiar pushing gesture he had learned was the only way to throw under water. As the spear made a high arc he abandoned his exposed position in a headlong dive.

Xintel shouted happily. "Look! Barry! Look!"

Above the cleft the water was whipped to intense brilliance as the nightmare monsters converged on the spot where the spear had fallen.

"What is it?" Barry yelped.

Xintel laughed and threw her arms around his neck. "The curse, Barry! The curse Komso put upon us!"

"Huh?" he grunted.

"Everyone knows those beasts follow the smell of blood, and that a man wounded in the Outside is as good as dead. They follow other smells too!"

At once he understood. "So Komso's curse is some powerful lure that will bring every monster within miles to attack, but has a smell we ourselves can't detect."

She nodded. "That one we saw leaving our house--he did it."

Xintel put down her skirt and even unclasped her precious metal necklace. Stark naked and unarmed she started up the slope.

"Come back!" he yelled as he sensed her intention.

She paused, but then continued upward.

A shadow swooped.

"Look out!" Barry screamed. But Xintel had been alert and had thrown herself into a plunging dive.

"Oh!" she sobbed as she pulled herself up beside him. "It's no good. It has gotten into my skin. Probably yours too."

But after his burst of renewed hope Barry refused to surrender. "This corrosive jelly might counteract it," he suggested.

Xintel's eyes were somber. "We have nothing to lose," she agreed.

They scooped out two troughs in the greasy jelly and buried themselves with only their heads projecting, but at Xintel's suggestion they took positions where they could keep an eye on the norus.

"Rub some on your face," Barry advised the girl. "In your hair too."

"It stings!" she complained.

"I know. But it's our only chance."

VIII

They let an hour of torment pass, and although Xintel tried gamely to keep her face composed she could not hide an occasional grimace of pain as the caustic jelly ate at the more tender portions of her skin.

The swarm of monsters still held patrol above the cleft with dull-witted reptilian patience. The two norus had settled down, squatting lumpishly, with only their eyes active.

At last Barry pulled himself from his uncomfortable bed. His body was red and chapped from head to foot. Xintel was in the same condition.

"I hope this works," he said.

He climbed toward the rim, nearly to the top, and still the beasts paid no attention. He made no sudden movements and their eyesight was apparently dull.

"Barry! That's enough! Come back!" Xintel called.

Deliberately he waved his arms. A swimming torvak turned in its own length and plunged toward him, and Barry barely evaded its rush.

"If we try to escape they'll see us," Xintel said.

Barry nodded sadly. Even though Komso's curse had been voided they could still only wait and hope.

The nomads who had found refuge with them unwittingly solved his dilemma. As once more the age-old envious hatred of the homeless ones for the city dwellers came to the fore they whispered to each other. For a moment Barry and Xintel grew inattentive. The norus had been waiting for just that. They dashed forward, intent on snatching the weapons that to them represented great wealth. Xintel shouted in alarm and one of the savages struck at her with a webbed fist.

Barry's knife flashed and a noru died. As the survivor swerved to evade Xintel's spear, Barry was upon him from behind.

His knife descended, this time not in a killing stroke. Deliberately he carved a long, shallow gash down the savage's back, a wound that would bleed copiously. Then he shouted and roared ferociously. The wounded noru fled.

Xintel streaked in pursuit, a grim expression on her face and a spear poised, but Barry reached out one arm and caught her ankle. Instinctively she twisted and her fingernails raked his face.

He slapped her hard.

"No!" he barked. "Let the noru go!"

She looked at him in furious disgust as the nomad churned in panic-stricken flight toward the rim.

"He's bleeding!" Barry snapped.

A great dark shadow swooped at the noru, missed, and Xintel looked admiringly at Barry as she understood.