Part 1

THE WAR-NYMPHS of VENUS

By RAY CUMMINGS

The voluptuous golden civilization of Arron was doomed. Licentious laughter echoed through the water-kingdom, unmindful of the relentless, clanking invasion of the Gorts. What fools, this handful of warrior-maidens led by a puny Earthman, to pit their thin strength against Tollgamo's iron army!

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

I was fishing for tarpon, lolling back in the stern of my small boat. The outboard motor, running at trolling speed, was a puttering purr in the drowsing watery silence. It was sunset of a summer evening of 1948. The Gulf of Mexico, out beyond the mouth of the little Florida bayou inlet across which I was heading, was a glassy expanse, blood-red in the light of the huge setting sun.

To the south lightning was playing along the orange sky. I recall that a vague uneasiness was upon me. Because a storm might be coming? Surely it was not that. I was within three miles of the small island where young Jack Allen and I were camping. It was my intention to head for there presently, especially as there had been no sign of tarpon. Allen had been too lazy to come fishing; he had said he would loaf and have supper ready for us at dark.

My name is Kent Fanning. Jack Allen and I were of an age--twenty-four, that summer. With our business in New York, we were here on vacation, having a permit to fish and to camp on the small, uninhabited island.

The intermittent lightning at the southern horizon rose higher. Faint muttering thunder was audible. A massive grey-white cloud was down there now, a thunderhead, coming northward with the storm behind it. I had decided to pull in my line and head for the island when suddenly I had a strike, the big reel humming as the line went out. A tarpon? I hooked it, shut off the motor, sat erect with my stout rod braced in the leather socket of my belt. I was prepared for a long struggle.

And then, two hundred yards or so from me, the water broke with a floundering splash. I gasped, stared numbed. A floundering, oblong pink-white thing was there at the end of my line. A slim white arm flailed up as the thing turned, swimming on the surface frantically away from me. Pink-white limbs gleaming in the moonlight. Streaming tawny hair, like seaweed--hair in which my hook seemed to be caught.

A girl! I had her at the boat in a moment, floundering in the moonlight, gasping, still trying to twist around and disentangle my hook from her long streaming hair. A small, slim figure, white-limbed yet flushed like moonlit coral. There was a brief dangling robe wetly clinging to her. It was of gleaming lustrous green as though perhaps it was a fabric of softly woven metal, painted green by the sea.

An extraordinary yet very human girl.

Just a few seconds of my stricken amazement. I recall that I gasped inanely.

"Well--why good Heavens--"

Her gasping laugh rippled like the splashing water in the moonlight. "Sorry! I got some frightened to be confused."

English! Strangely intoned with little rippling liquid syllables. Like nothing I had ever heard before and yet my own language.

She had pulled my hook from the gleaming tawny tresses of her hair. Then she flung up a coral-white arm. I bent, seized her wrist, drew her up and she came with a nimble, skilled little leap and landed on her feet in the boat beside me!

II

I find myself now somewhat at a loss accurately and yet succinctly to depict that next hour or two. You who read this of course have heard much of the strange affair from newscasters and from the public prints. Garbled reports, some of them. Others pedantic with technical details of science. I am no scientist. It is my purpose here merely to give a factual account of the weird incidents which brought to me, Kent Fanning, a person certainly of no importance save perhaps to myself, a sudden prominence not in one world, but in two.

Queer that throughout my lifetime there had always been talk that some day, here on Earth, scientists would discover the secret of spaceflight; that then intrepid adventurers would journey out into space. But as you all know now, the reverse, so seldom anticipated, was true. Another world came to us, in the person of this strange Venus girl; came indeed by utter chance, or destiny if you will; to me.

Venus; the Earth. Of all known planets, the two most close, and most alike. There are things brewing in the Universe of which none of us can be aware, of course. A myriad things. And here was one of them. Unknown to us, Venus and the Earth already were intermingled, fused into the beautiful little person of this strange girl--the blood of Venus, the blood of Earth flowing in her veins.

You had not heard of George Peters, doubtless. Nor had I! A research chemist and physicist, in New York City, about 1930. He was a young man then; I think, twenty-eight. He sought no publicity. A wealthy man. With some twenty companions, all of them scientists, some of them older than himself, he was working, not on the secret of spaceflight, but with a ray--a vibration--which he hoped might reach some distant planet, as a means of communication if there should be inhabitants there.

Ironically he did not know he had succeeded! And it was men from Venus--the villainous Tollgamo of whom now you have heard so much--who was attracted by his signals and came to him; abducting him and his companions so that all that was known, here on earth was that one morning George Peters' laboratory was found wrecked, and he and his companions were gone.

"George Peters, that is my father," the girl was telling me now as I headed the small open boat for the island where young Allen and I were camping.

And she had come to Earth--the first time in her sixteen years that she had been off Venus; stolen a small spaceflight cylinder from her father. Her Venus people needed help from the threat of Tollgamo. All that was good and beautiful on Venus and in her Arone world of love and music and beauty, was to be destroyed by the monstrous threat of this Dictator from his mechanized realm of the Gorts.

"Wait," I said, as she poured it at me, at times only half coherent. "You came here to Earth, for help? You came alone?"

"Yes. You have not, father thinks, yet discovered the secret of spaceflight. He was sending the cylinder, with drawings and scientific details of how spaceflight was accomplished by Tollgamo and his evil men. And so I came. We want that you should build a spaceship and come to Venus. Your men, and some of your weapons of war, to help us fight Tollgamo."

And she had dropped here into the Gulf of Mexico, wrecked the little one-man space-vehicle so that she barely escaped with her life. And it sank, with its secret of spaceflight obliterated by the sea, even if by some chance the little metal mechanisms themselves could be recovered.

I think that she had given no thought to that realization as she swam to save herself and suddenly found my trolling hooks entangled in her hair. Nereid of the sea. Far more like her Venus mother than her Earth father, water was almost her natural element, since her blood did not need the replenishment of oxygen so quickly as ours, so that for ten minutes or more she need not breathe.

* * * * *

I learned only fragmentary details of all this that Midge Peters had to tell, there in the boat as we headed for the island. Surely I must admit that the weirdness of it startled me, and for just a moment perhaps, it vaguely occurred to me that here was some trickster, or a mentality unbalanced. But to look at her, was to know that certainly here was no Earth girl!

I had to believe her. But I must admit, I gave little thought, there in the boat, to any menace to her world, or to the ironic fact that she had brought to Earth the treasured secret of spaceflight and already had lost it so that she was marooned here. Here was the amazing, beautiful little creature herself in the boat beside me, and what she was saying of Venus dwindled into insignificance with the stirring of my pulses as I stared at her. Slim little body, hardly matured, but fashioned with almost a normal earthly beauty. Yet there was a strangeness that made her different. The flush of pink coral to her flesh; her shimmering robe with moonbeams rippling on it like moonrays on green rippled water; her long tawny tresses, drying now in the wind.

But most of all, I think, the strangeness was in her eyes. The sea was there in the green depths of her eyes. Eyes that mirrored the soul of a strange girlhood; eyes that had seen things strange to me, reflecting now the thoughts, emotions of another world.

"You look at me so queerly," she said suddenly. "Why is that?"

"Well you--you--" Suddenly it was hard to say anything of my conflicting thoughts. "You--well, why wouldn't I be startled? A little sea nymph. You should have been named Nereid."

Again her laugh rippled.

"Nereid? Why yes, my father calls me that, though my mother named me Midge. That was when she learned English. So I am not like Earth-girls? My father has said it many times. But you--"

Her gaze at me was earnest, direct. "You do not look queer to me," she added. "You look much in the fashion of my father, grown younger."

Surely I have given only a vague picture indeed of that half hour in the boat with Nereid as the puttering little outboard motor drove us to the island where Jack Allen would be waiting for me. Half an hour, so crowded with my first jumbled impressions of what Nereid's weird Venus-world must be like.

"That is your island?" Nereid said suddenly. "Why--it looks very pretty."

The storm still was rising in the south--occasional bursts of lightning and rolling, reverberating thunderclaps. But the starlight and moonlight was over us. It silvered the island palms; it lay like white metal on the sand of the island's shore.

I headed us into the little cove. A small dilapidated dock was there. On a little rise behind the palmetto fringe, under the palm trees, a shaft of moonlight gleamed on the white of our tent. I thought that young Allen would have heard the putt-putt of my motor and be down at the dock now to greet me. But there was no sign of him.

I shut off the motor. Silence leaped at us.

"Queer," I said. "Jack promised he'd have supper ready."

The glow of campfire beside the tent was visible. In the silence I could hear the murmur of music from our little portable radio. Allen must have been here only a few minutes ago. I called,

"Oh Jack--Jack, where are you?"

There was only the roll of my words, echoing into silence. Very queer.

Nereid was in the bow of that boat. "Fend us off," I said as we glided to the dock.

This weird girl. Water, almost her native element so that suddenly she dove over the bow. Flash of coral limbs, green-sheathed little body and streaming tawny hair. There was hardly a splash as she slipped into the water and then was swimming backward against our gliding little boat. It slid to the dock, gently eased up, and Nereid was gone.

For a moment I held my breath, with my heart pounding. Foolish apprehension. Abruptly she appeared, out in the middle of the cove, head and shoulders bobbing up as she shook the water from her tresses and flung up an arm to greet me.

"Come back here," I called.

The silent cove echoed with the ripple of her laugh. With weaving limbs, incredibly swiftly her body slid through the water; submerged again, and she came up laughing, like a dog shaking herself as she jumped to the dock.

"Some day we will swim together, Kent." Again she flung me that sidelong glance of coquetry. "And if you swim like my father, without much trouble I could drown you. You think so?"

"No argument on that," I said. Queerly I seemed to feel, just for that instant, almost a vague resentment. Resentment of a man at the superior prowess of a woman. Instinctive, of course.

She seemed to understand it, and she laughed again. "Our young men of Venus are like that," she said, "for they, too, cannot swim very well." And instantly her face clouded. "That, too, is part of the trouble of my world--the men who would have their mates kept from the water so that the man may be in everything the master. Our virgins do not like that."

She clung to my hand as we went up the palmetto-lined path to the camp. And suddenly she seemed frightened. An aura of sudden menace was here. I, too, could feel it. Allen had started supper. The things were out; food was in the frying pan, burning now in a charred mass over the campfire flames.

"Kent--something wrong--"

* * * * *

We stood tense. Like animals abruptly scenting danger, yet having no least idea what it was, or from whence it could come.... And abruptly in the silence, the murmuring little radio here changed from music to a newscaster's flash.

"Nereid listen--news of you--" I murmured.

Something had been seen, late this afternoon, dropping swiftly from the sky--something, a meteorite?--the few eyewitnesses differed in trying to describe it. "_Mysterious missile drops into the Gulf ten miles off lonely Palmetto Key._" The newscaster drew on his imagination, conjecturing what the round shining thing could have been, which two fishing boats had reported seeing coming hurtling down from the afternoon sky, dropping into the glassy Gulf.

I smiled at Nereid as for a moment we stood listening. Her little falling space-cylinder already was causing comment. I could envisage the incredulous amazement of the authorities at Tampa when I took her there, told them who she was. The world would ring with it. Blaring newscasters: "_Stranded Venus girl! Marooned on Earth! Venus inhabited! Venus threatened with bloody revolution! Appeals to Earth for help! Daughter of two worlds brings secret of spaceflight to Earth, and loses it on her arrival!_"

And some would try to be humorous: "_Girl from Venus brings gift of spaceflight secret, and loses it before she can give it to us! Isn't that what you would expect of a woman?_" "_Kent Fanning and weird girl try to hoax scientists--_"

Somehow as I thought of it, resentment sprang within me at what this would do to the gentle little Nereid. Allen and I, tomorrow when the storm was over, would have to take her to Tampa, of course. Or perhaps we would take her to some scientific Society, with less publicity. And an effort would be made to recover her cylinder, with its precious secret.

It was my swift flow of thoughts as for that moment the newscaster droned on. And suddenly his voice changed. He had been describing the mysterious falling of what quite evidently had been Nereid's little vehicle. And now another Press Bulletin had reached him.

"_Mysterious airship descends from the stratosphere, lands in the Gulf near Palmetto Key, off west coast of Florida. At sunset tonight--_"

Nereid gripped me with a little gasping cry as we listened. A gleaming metal thing, flatly oblong with a turret globe at bow and stern, had been distantly seen by a tramp freighter which was heading westward into the Gulf, bound for Mexico. A metal ship--blood-red with the sunset on it--slowly floating down; rotating slowly, weirdly on its horizontal axis.... It had been seen to land on the Gulf surface. And then slowly submerge, heading shoreward like a plunging submarine as it vanished!

Nereid murmured, "Tollgamo, he has a ship like that! But my father has none! Oh Kent--"

A spaceship from Venus! Was it that? Following Nereid here to seize her; to prevent her from giving the secret of Interplanetary transportation to Earth! The newscaster was saying something about U.S. Coast Guard Cutters being ordered from Tampa to investigate.

And from here on little Palmetto Key, young Allen had disappeared! The implication of that struck at me. For a second I stared at Nereid, the firelight gleaming soft and warm on her dripping little body; tinting her pink-coral face which now was stamped with terror.

But we had no more warning than that. The storm was at hand now, and the wind was lashing the upper fronds of the palms; purple darkness here on the island with a flash of lightning and almost simultaneous thunderclap. For that second the palmetto shrubs were whitely illumined by the electric glare. Fifty feet away a big, dark upright shape abruptly was visible. And another--and another! Men stalking us!

The glare died. There was only turgid windy darkness. I must have muttered something to Nereid; my arm went around her as we turned to run back to our boat in the cove. Too late! From the palm woods behind us a violet beam of light stabbed out. It caught us; bathed us. There was a guttural shout; the sound of a little pop and something whizzing with a whining hum through the air. I felt something strike my legs. A little blob which with its impact abruptly uncoiled, and then coiled again as it wrapped itself around my legs so that I crashed heavily to earth face down.

And another had hit my neck. Ghastly thing--quivering steel spring. It felt like that; thin quivering metal encircling my throat. Almost like a thing alive, gripping me with its metal fingers ... strangling me. I was aware that Nereid, too, had fallen. My groping fingers clutched at the strangling band; its sharp edges cut my fingers as futilely I tried to tear it loose. I recall that I lay threshing, lunging, with my legs pinned and my breath gone. Dark figures were standing over me now. Guttural chuckling voices mingled with the roaring torrent of Niagara in my ears. Then the dancing spots before my bulging eyes blurred the gathering dark shapes.

III

The roaring in my ears came first as my consciousness struggled back. My fumbling fingers felt my throat. The band was gone; the skin was swollen there. Then I knew that I was bathed in the cold sweat of weakness and was lying on the metal grid of a floor. The murmur of voices sounded around me; and I opened my eyes to find myself in a dimly starlit, circular turret room. The control room of a spaceship. It hummed with a throbbing rhythm of its current. But save for that it was queerly still, vibrationless.

We were in space. Through the round, transparent turret walls I could see the blazing stars in a black firmament to one side. The other was shrouded with metal blinds, through the chinks of which dazzling sunlight was showing, so that I knew we had already left the giant cone of the Earth's shadow. Heading partly toward the Sun. Heading for Venus? It seemed so.

Men were here around me. Huge, burly, strangely garbed men--one at the controls, where banks of levers and dials with quivering indicators were ranged in rows with a line of little fluorescent globes diagonally across them. Two other men sat softly talking together; guttural, unintelligible words. Weird figures indeed. At first glance they could have been towering robots; wide, square shoulders, rectangular bodies, round tubular, jointed legs. The starlight glinted on their burnished, grey-white metal casements. Then as they moved, I saw that their garments were of flexible woven metal.

The one at the controls was bareheaded, a round bullet head of close-cropped black hair. His face was heavy; skin queerly grey-white. Weird features, with a protruding chin and long hawk nose so that the mouth was a greylipped slit, depressed between the projections of his nose and lower jaw. And he had deep-set, round dark eyes under shaven black brows.

Men of science. Humans whose life was of such efficient, mechanical rigidity that they themselves had the aspect of machines. Worshipers of precision; of mechanization. The aura of it was on them.

I saw that one of them was sitting impassive, stiffly erect in his metal garments with his gaze roving me like a guard. Strange, jewel-like little weapons were at his waist and in pouches of his metal jacket. On his head was a metal, peaked helmet--its peak fashioned in the form of a hawk-like bird, poised for screaming flight. Across the starlit circular room, another of the men was sitting, gazing out at the firmament. A man? I stared with a new amazement. The same square, jointed metal garments. But the hips were wider, the shoulders more narrow. A woman, of this mechanized race of Gorts. Her breast swelled beneath her mailed tunic. Her hair was black, long to the base of her neck, covering her ears. A shining black metal band was around her forehead, holding the hair from her eyes.

Strange, powerful Amazon. She was a good six feet tall; her face was hawk-nosed like the men, but with lips that were fuller, of a reddish tinge. Then as I stared, the man at the controls called to her:

"Garga--"

She rose; moved to him. Her dangling weapons, and a huge metal ornament on her bosom, clanked as she walked. At the control table the leader gave her orders; guttural crisp words unintelligible to me. She nodded; went to a small table across the room, where with charts and computations she seemed figuring the course of our flight.

Garga, woman of the Gorts. Mechanized womanhood, with all that womanhood stands for in my own world submerged within her so that she was a mere female machine. And suddenly my mind, still dazed now in these first moments of my returning consciousness, swept back to Nereid. Strange world, this Venus, to hold two such contrasting types of female! What a gulf between them!

Where was Nereid now? Had she been killed in that attack upon us? Anxiety swept me. I had struggled up on one elbow. The watching Gort saw me; he muttered an exclamation and the man at the controls came clanking to his feet. A giant fellow, well over six feet. His slit of mouth widened with a grin like a gash between his nose and chin as he bent down over me.

"You--still alive?" he greeted. "What your name?"

I sat up, still rubbing my bruised throat. "Kent Fanning," I said. "So you talk English? There was a girl with me, back there on that island. Where is she?"

He gestured blandly. "She safe. Daughter of Peters. Tollgamo wants her not injured. He will like you too, I think perhaps. You have scientific skill of Earth science?"

I would be kept alive for the knowledge I might have. "Well, maybe," I said. "Where is Peters' daughter? I want to see her. Where are you taking us? To Venus?"

"You ask too much quick questions," he retorted. His grey knuckles rapped his mailed chest. "I am Rhool, second to Tollgamo. I talk with you some else time. Maybe you teach me more the English? Eh?"

"Where is Peters' daughter?" I insisted. I was on my feet, still dizzy; and as I staggered a little, I clutched Rhool's metal clothed arm. It angered, or perhaps startled him. With a sweeping gesture, incredibly powerful, his arm flung me aside. His guttural barking command brought the woman Garga with a pounce.

I have not mentioned that I am a bit under six feet in height; slim and dark. Not very powerful; but I have, my friends tell me, a temper somewhat flaring so that in a rough and tumble fight I usually can take care of myself. But the glare in Rhool's eyes warned me that this was a time when discretion certainly was better than valor. The woman Garga towered an inch or so over me; her fingers gripped my shoulders.

"So?" she muttered. "You think to cause trouble?"

I summoned a grim smile. "I do not. I want to be taken to Peters' daughter. Where is she?"

Rhool, back at his instrument table now, barked a command; and the metal-clad Gort woman shoved me. "You come with me. I take you."

To Nereid? I hoped so. Docilely I preceded Garga along a glowing humming little metal corridor of the spaceship. She said nothing more, but flung open a small metal door after unbarring its fastenings, shoved me in and banged it upon me.