Part 2

He moved slowly, unscrewed the back panel, wriggled into the confines of the rocket chambers in the tail of the ship. He shook his head dully, when he discovered the fused catalyst feed. So seldom was such an accident, the ship's repair locker held nothing that could replace the feed.

He crawled back into the control cabin, slumped in the pilot's seat, fumbled for a cigarette. He felt whipped then, felt beaten in a way that he had never sensed. And then, moments later, he ground out the cigarette, opened the weapon cabinet.

He buckled on the twin hand guns at his waist, slung a disruptor rifle over his shoulder, then filled his pockets with condensed food. He filled a canteen, looped it over his free shoulder, stood for a long moment peering around the safety of the cabin.

Then he uncogged the entrance port, dropped lightly to the spongy ground. He crouched where he had fallen, his eyes flicking through the tangled growth, the twin guns in his hands, as he waited for the slight sound that might betoken a hidden enemy. He felt perspiration gathering on his forehead, dashed it away with the back of one hand. The air was sweet in his nostrils after the renewed air of the ship, and when he came slowly to his feet, he felt a surge of power in his body such as he had never known, due to the weakness of the gravity.

He moved from the safety of the ship, flicked the control of one gun until it gave only a narrow, slicing beam. He used the gun as an Earth native might use a bush knife, the pale beam cutting a path soundlessly before him. He moved swiftly along the path he created, alert for the first signs of danger, glancing now and then at the compass strapped to his wrist.

For minute after minute he walked, his mind intent with the problem that faced him. No longer was it a simple attempt to rescue three people from an unfriendly planet; now, if he failed, his life would be forfeit along with the others. His only chance of success lay in finding the others' ship and removing its catalyst feed for replacement of his wrecked one. That is, if the expedition's ship was so damaged that it could not fly, which was self-evident.

Val Kenton spat thoughtfully, paced steadily forward. He sensed vague superstitious terror tugging at his mind when he felt the matted jungle pressing at him from all sides. He peered about, wonder in his eyes, when he saw the gigantic ferns and strange unreal trees that grew in lush aboriginal splendor. He stopped in horror, when the blood-red blossom of a monster plant bent toward him, recognizing that it must be some weirdly evolved cousin of the fly-trap plant on Earth.

He side-stepped instinctively, stopped with his back against the scaly trunk of a giant fern. For the plant stretched toward him to the full extent of its pale stem, and he could see, deep within the orifice of the crimson blossom, an oozing of juices from back in the cup.

Val Kenton gagged at the simple horror of the blind insensate greed of the plant. He lifted his disruptor, drew the knife edge of its beam in a slashing movement across the stem. There was the faint vibration of a shrill note from the plant, then sap spurted from the severed stem--pumping as though from a beating heart!

"My God!" Val Kenton whispered to himself. "It's alive--like an animal."

And then, even as he watched, corruption bloated the carnivore plant and it collapsed into itself. Val Kenton grimaced, turned away. He swung his disruptor, clearing more path, jumped startledly when he felt something clutch at his ankle. He sprang aside, whirled, his weapon ready. He froze again into motionlessness.

For the monster plant was growing with incredible speed from the roots still imbedded in the swampy ground. A blind creeper swung like a cobra's head in a stealthy search for its prey, and then lifted high, a new monster blossom springing into being from the tip of the creeper. Within seconds, another flower surged against its stem in a futile attempt to reach the Earthman.

Val Kenton wiped the perspiration from his face, backed away from the plant. He shuddered involuntarily, blasted the entire plant out of existence with a sudden movement of his disruptor. Then, his eyes searching the jungle for more alien dangers, he began again to cut a path toward the expedition ship far across the island.

A shadow crossed his vision, and he glanced up to see something that looked like a cross between a fish and a bat flash between the heavy fronds of the fern-tops high overhead. He watched it for a moment, wondering if it were dangerous, then shrugged ruefully. If it were vicious, he would find out about it sooner or later.

His disruptor cleared a path then into a small clearing. He stepped out of the jungle, rested for a moment from the heavy walking, rechecking his compass bearing. It was then that he heard the startled cracks of high-powered disruptor rifles firing from a short distance away.

* * * * *

Whirling, he went in the direction of the sound, his twin guns clearing tangled vines and creepers from his path so swiftly that he went forward at a run. Cold sweat bathed his body, but his mind seemed to be a detached entity that watched the entire happening with a calm unhurried interest.

He didn't know why he ran; he had no particular reason to race to the rescue of the Earthpeople ahead--but the instinctive reactions of years of being a patrolman would not be denied.

He stumbled as he ran, his feet slipping and sliding in the ooze that lay but a few inches beneath the surface of the ground. His breath grew ragged in his throat, and a pain knifed at his side, but he kept up his steady running for minutes.

At last, he burst from the matted jungle into a clearing that led to the water's edge. He came to a stop, the sudden cessation of movement sending him to his hands and knees. From that position, he rolled until he was sitting, and the twin guns roared a steady stream of death at the fantastic creatures surging toward the half-buried space ship close at hand.

The Venusian creatures were like things out of a nightmare. They scuttled toward the ship like crabs on great jointed legs. Their bodies were covered with hair, and the marine worms within the hair made the beasts glow like great fluorescent lights.

Each had a globular body, from which a great pupilless eye stared blindly at the ship. They attacked in wave after wave, their numbers rolling from the turbulent sea in an apparently inexhaustible stream. The only sound they made was an almost inaudible scream that drove through Val Kenton's brain like a needle of fire.

He swung his guns, blasting creature after creature out of existence, shuddering at the horribleness of the scene, wondering if the creatures could ever be stopped.

Disruptors roared from the ship; but the angle made by the ship's landing was such that accurate firing was impossible. The shots flashing from the control cabin's ports could cover but a small portion of the attackers.

Val Kenton fired with increasing speed, the disruptor ray clearing a ragged hole in the monsters. In a detached sort of way, he saw one of the furry crabs clamber up the side of the ship. He saw it squat and a blue liquid pour from its body. He blew the creature into atoms, gaped in amazement when he saw the hole the liquid had eaten in the Permalloy metal of the ship. Incredulity lay deep in his eyes--for he knew only too well that even hydrofluoric acid had no effect on the metal of which patrol cruisers were made.

And then he was too busy to think. The Venusian beasts turned as though by an instinctive command and hurtled toward himself. He lifted his guns, erased the leaders as fast as they came. One gun went dead in his hand, and the ray of the other paled into redness. He came to his feet, dropped the hand guns, whipped the rifle from his back. He drew the muzzle flame like a spray of water across the screaming horrors that plunged at him, his mouth open in a soundless snarl, his eyes narrowed and vicious.

And so suddenly that he did not comprehend it for a moment, the attack was over, the nightmarish Venusians streaming back into the sea. Within a split-second, except for the obscene twitching of dead beasts on the steaming ground, the beach was empty.

* * * * *

Val Kenton sank onto his heels, unclamped his stiff fingers from the rifle. He fumbled for a cigarette, lit it, his breath hard and shallow. He felt reaction set in, and momentarily wished that he had a whiff of gailang gas to steady his nerves.

There was the clanging of metal on metal from the ship, and a man's head came cautiously into view. It stayed that way for a moment, and then a man in the uniform of a Patrol Captain clambered out of the port.

"Good God!" the Earthman heard the Captain say, "It's Val Kenton who was doing the damage outside!"

Val Kenton laughed then, chuckled with a dryness that was rather horrible to hear. Never, had he expected again to find himself a welcome friend of a Space Patrolman. And the fact that he had this Captain owing him gratitude struck him as ironically amusing.

But his laughter stilled almost instantly, when he saw the remembered features of the Captain. And the hate that had lain so deep within him for years flared into a white heat that seemed to cramp the muscles of his body.

"It's Val Kenton," he called. "And you owe me your life, you damned squealer!"

In that one instant, it took every bit of his self-control not to lift the rifle in his lap and blow the other into nothingness.

And then the moment was over, and he was coming to his feet, feeling the thudding of his heart in his chest, as Elise Barber came through the port and dropped lightly to the ground.

"Val!" Elise cried, and the gladness of her tone brought an agony of pain to the emotion he had thought he had stifled forever.

Val Kenton picked up his dropped guns, holstered them. He went forward slowly, the rifle swinging in one relaxed hand. Despite himself, he felt a thrill of companionship at the warmth of Tony Andrews' handshake.

"Hello, Tony," he said quietly.

"Hello, Val," the Patrolman answered. "Man, it's good to see you!"

Elise caught Val Kenton's hand, drew him toward the ship.

"Let's not stand out here," she said impulsively. "Come inside, where we can talk." She drew a deep breath, her blue eyes sparkling. "Oh, it's good for the three of us to be together again!"

Val Kenton's smile was stiff and mechanical, as they clambered through the port into the ship's interior. He, too, felt the completeness of the moment; yet, deep in his mind, he knew that the old days of friendly camaraderie were gone forever.

* * * * *

They sat in the comparatively large cabin of the expedition ship, cigarettes glowing, each trying to ease the tension that lay within them all. Val Kenton sat in the co-pilot's seat, the lines of five years of dissipation clearly etched in his tired face, his clothes torn and stained. He talked jerkily, trying to avoid the bad points of the past few days, striving to make the situation appear more bearable.

"It will be a fairly simple job to fix my cruiser," he said slowly. "Tony and I will use the catalyst feed from this ship to replace my fused one."

Tony Andrews grinned, laughter wrinkles in the corners of his clear eyes. He was trim and fit in his uniform, and there was an air of competence and adventurousness in his compact body.

"We could use this entire ship for spare parts," he said ruefully. "It will never fly again, after the damage those blasted Venusians did to it with that super digestive juice they discharged."

Johnson, the expedition's chemist, glanced up from a sheet of notes he had taken from his pocket. His eyes were mild and calm as he peered at Val Kenton.

"Most amazing thing I've ever seen," he commented. "The digestive juices of those crab-creatures will eat through glass as fast as water will move through tissue paper." He frowned. "It's just possible," he finished, thoughtfully, "that the liquid is in the nature of a weapon--particularly so, since those animals used it in an effort to reach us within the ship."

Elise shuddered. "Please," she said, "talk about something more cheerful! I can still see those hideous eyes staring at us just the way they did during that attack."

Val Kenton nodded cheerfully, filling his senses with the beauty and radiance of the girl. It came to him now as never before how much he had lost when he had turned traitor to himself and his oath.

"Well, for a starter, what did you discover before you were disabled?"

Johnson came to his feet, picked up a rifle. "I'll take a look at some of those bodies outside," he said. "I'm just a chemist, but maybe I can pick up a few facts that will be of some use to the next expedition to visit here."

He clambered through the port, the sounds of his shoes on the metal strangely loud. Behind him, he left a rather strained silence, which was broken at last by Tony Andrews.

"This is the story," he began quietly. "The trip to Venus was just routine. We dropped through the clouds, following," he nodded at Val Kenton, "your directions. We were over such a sea as we had never seen before. There was no sign of life or land. I dropped floats, to determine the currents, and then swung the ship toward the North. We found the first island within an hour. I landed the ship, intending to explore, and such was our incredible luck landed almost on top of the first expedition ship to touch Venus."

Val Kenton drew in a sharp breath. "What did you find inside?"

Tony Andrews shook his head ruefully. "Not a thing," he admitted, "I searched the ship, which was split and ruptured beyond description, and didn't find a scrap of paper or clothing--or a vestige of human remains."

"The crabs?" Val Kenton asked.

Tony Andrews shrugged. "It's possible! Well, the discovery excited us, and we took the ship aloft again, without exploring the island further. For hours, we went from island to island, seeking for signs of life. We found the wrecked remains of three other ships, and all of them as completely empty as the first. We didn't know what to make of it; we couldn't figure out any logical reason for the ships having been so completely gutted."

"You don't think the survivors could have set up a hidden camp somewhere to wait for rescue?" Val Kenton asked grimly.

"No! In the first place, the ships made better living places than any they could build; and second, we found no signs of such a habitation on any of the islands."

"What happened on this island, that you should become marooned?"

"It happened so fast, I couldn't avoid it. We landed on this beach, and were making preparations to explore, when those crabs attacked for the first time. We found out that we weren't safe, only when a great section of the rocket-tube housing gave way because of the powerful, acid-like juice the crabs exuded. I radioed for help immediately, and then the radio went dead. For the past five days, we've been fighting off those beasts at regular intervals."

Elise sighed deeply in relief, smiled at Val Kenton. "Thank heaven, it's over now," she said feelingly. "Now, after fixing the other ship, we can get back to Earth--and none too soon to please me!"

Tony Andrews flicked ashes from his cigarette, grinned. "What rescue ship did you bring, Val, one of the freighters?" he asked.

Val Kenton shook his head, his eyes diamond hard. He watched the tiny smile of happiness about Elise's curved lips for a moment, then swung his gaze to the Patrolman's hardening face.

"It's a scout cruiser, Tony," he said easily. "It was the only ship I could get."

Val Kenton laughed inwardly to himself then, laughed at the irony of the situation, knowing the horror that must be spreading through the other's mind. He rocked a bit from his inner mirth, and a savage satisfaction filled his mind momentarily.

For both he and Tony Andrews knew that, even with the full power of the rocket tubes, the single man cruiser could never carry four passengers back to safety. It might be able to lift into space with three people cramped into the one man cabin--but never with four!

One person must be left behind!

And Val Kenton had already decided who that person must be! It was to be Tony Andrews who was to be marooned to a certain death--left on Venus because of the hate Val Kenton felt for him because of the report he had made to the Patrol five years before.

* * * * *

Moments passed, moments in which no one spoke, and in which Val Kenton could see dreadful realization growing in the Patrolman's eyes. Val Kenton laughed even more to himself, seeing the fear rising in the other man, knowing the horrible terror that the other must be experiencing.

Elise sensed but dimly the thoughts that were racing through the minds of the men seated before her. She gazed from one to the other with eyes that grew wide and slightly fearful.

"Is something wrong?" she asked suddenly, "Can't the rescue ship be fixed?"

Tony Andrews smiled then, smiled with stiff lips, his eyes bright and confident. "Nothing is wrong," he said, "we'll be safe on Earth before you know it."

A disruptor rifle cracked loudly, the sound whipping in through the open port.

Tony Andrews snapped to his feet. "Trouble!" he barked, "Elise, you stay here; come on, Val!"

Val Kenton paused only long enough to slip newly charged loads into his guns, then swung through the port after the fleet patrolman. He dropped from the port onto the spongy ground, crouched there, his eyes searching the edge of the water for signs of the charging crab-beasts.

He straightened slowly, seeing no signs of danger, stared at Johnson and Andrews nearby.

"Sorry, to startle you like that," Johnson said, "one of those crabs stuck a pincer out of the water, and I took a snapshot at him."

Val Kenton laughed, relaxed with a sigh of pent-up air. "Glad it wasn't any worse than that," he said relievedly, "I'm not much in a mood for a fight."

Tony Andrews' gun snapped to his shoulder, and the concussion of the shot sounded strangely flat and deadly. In the water's edge, a furry crab floundered and threshed in savage death throes.

And then the water seemed to come alive with the Venusian crabs. They scuttled onto the bank from the silver water, their bodies glowing with eerie phosphorescent sheen, their cries ear-piercing.

Val Kenton laughed aloud, swung his twin hand guns into line, flicked their power onto full force. He stood shoulder to shoulder with Johnson and Andrews, and the combined fire of their guns cut a swathe of death in the charging ranks that broke the attack almost at its onset.

"Remember Mars, when we cleaned out the Truds?" Tony Andrews yelled over the blasting of the guns.

Val Kenton grinned, said nothing, but he felt a sharp nostalgia for those days so long gone in which he and Tony had fought side by side on far-off planets.

And then another gun added its fire from the port of the ship; and the crabs scuttled back toward the water.

"Hurrah for us!" Elise cried gaily from over their heads, and then her voice broke in sudden horror.

For rising from the ocean, coming out of the water as though the water itself was rising in a great lump, came SOMETHING!

It had no shape, no arms, no features--yet it was alive. It moved sluggishly toward the bank like a great solidified wave that towered a hundred feet in the air. It glowed with the phosphorescent fire of the ocean, and preceding it came a tangible aura of unspeakable menace.

"God!" Johnson croaked, "what is it?"

Val Kenton holstered his handguns, caught up his rifle, blasted a charge of unleashed energy into the vast bulk rising from the ocean. The thing seemed to jump, and the flame of the shot glowed deep within its bulk.

Then it settled again, without sound, moved closer to the beach.

"It's alive!" Val Kenton gasped, and knew instinctively why the other expeditions' ships were crushed and empty hulls on Venus.

The thing was a great blob of gelatinous substance that quivered and shook as it approached the land. Val Kenton fired twice more, gaped in incredulous surprise when the atomic fire did absolutely nothing in the way of stopping it.

He backed slowly from the water's edge, the other men moving backward as though by common consent; and they stopped only when their shoulders touched the ship.

The sea-thing was almost at the beach now. It halted its forward movement momentarily; and a pseudopod flicked from its glowing surface and settled over the shattered body of a great crab. One second the pseudopod settled there, and then was withdrawn with incredible speed.

And where the crab had been was nothing.

"Protoplasm!" Johnson gasped, "it's living protoplasm!"

Val Kenton felt a dull horror clutching at his heart. He had seen experiments with tiny bits of living protoplasm, and he knew the insatiable appetite of the mindless thing. But never in even his most horrible of dreams had he visioned a blob of sentient life that was fully a hundred yards in diameter and which must have weighed hundreds of tons.

The protoplasm touched the beach, seemed to flow out of the water. Living ropes of itself flipped out of itself, settled over the living and dead crabs; and an instant later the pseudopods flipped back and the ground was bare and sterile.

Val Kenton fired again and again, then stopped in sheer futility. For although his shots had blown bits of the creature away--each of the bits moved with insatiable greed the moment it lit, always flowing toward the nearest source of food.

And then the crabs were gone, and the protoplasm was flowing like warm, whitely-glowing tar toward the four Earth people and their ship.

* * * * *

Val Kenton whirled, took charge of the situation as though he was still the patrolman he had once been. He jerked his head toward the open port.

"Tony," he snapped, "get inside and bring out that catalyst feed. We can't fight this thing for long; we've got to make a run for it."

The patrolman moved without hesitation, swinging into the port, leaving his guns outside. His face was strained and white as he cast one last look at the hungry horror that moved so slowly, so implacably, up the beach.

Val Kenton set the control on his rifle. "Set your guns for flame," he said sharply, whirled and helped Elise to the ground, "we haven't enough power for atomic fire for any length of time; our only hope lies in holding that thing at bay until Tony gets the feed."

They stood, the three of them, shoulder to shoulder at the ship's side, and their guns hissed like high pressure jets as they fired in unison at the insensate monster.

Steam rose and swelled from the protoplasm, and the great blob seemed to draw back. Val Kenton felt a flame of exultation flare momentarily in his heart.

"Maybe?" he whispered to himself.

Then the weird cohesive slime surged forward again. The three guns raved and wailed with unleashed power, and the steam and horrible odor filled the air. Great areas of the protoplasm disappeared under the continuous fire, but the power of the guns was not enough to stop the horror from its relentless advance.

It moved faster now, seeming to have had new energy released within it from the dozens of crab bodies it had assimilated, and its pseudopods were great flicking blind loops of death questing before it for further sustenance.

The rifles went dead, and the two men and the girl lifted the hand guns. The flame from the guns did not have the power of the rifles, and the terror moved even closer. A four foot blob of protoplasm shot from the main body, smashed into the ship, dropped toward the three below. Johnson flicked it out of existence with full power from his gun, and the gun went dead.