Part 1

WHERE THE GODS DECIDE

By JAMES McKIMMEY, Jr.

_In the webbed hands of the stolid, green-faced ones rests the Screece gem. Some say it's a fabulous diamond; some an emerald; some a ruby ... but Caine guessed it was death itself._

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories July 1953. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

_High above the wet plains and muggy jungles, above the slick rocks and shiny leaves, rests a temple. Like most shrines of ancient order its narrowing spires point to the sky. Men, Venusian men, walk quietly through the restricted labyrinth of this temple, green fingers webbed beneath the long sleeves of their gray capes; green faces expressionless beneath the sanctity of their gray hoods. There is movement, and these caped men circle a silver orb that lies in dead center of the golden walls. They pace, each flat step a soundless motion. The green fingers unmesh, spread, and come together again. "Screece," says a flute-like voice. "Screece," says another. The silver orb rests like a cloudy fist-sized tinsel globe, unsparkling, while a dozen minds search out through the vastness of Venus, probing for the cores of evil and purity. Feet pace, faces are immobile, and through the thick air comes a shrill rising scream from the throat of a giant black cat with deep orange eyes. The motion ceases, lidless stares meet. "Grith?" pronounces one. "Grith?" pronounces another. And the pacing continues, while green lips quirk the slightest bit. Minds search...._

* * * * *

It was that season when the jungle of Venus turned into a vapid, steaming swamp. Sleet buds glistened like long, thin snakes, and leaves hung limp and wet from the vine-trees. Nicholas Caine felt the sweat prickle upon his forehead and slide down the sides of his face. Fairchild, he noticed, was sweating, too, so that the man's shirt had turned dark, and the close-clipped gray hair curled on his head. Only the woman still looked fresh in her white shirt and shorts.

She was standing beside Caine's jetcopter, drinking plain Scotch from a silver glass. Her husband, Fairchild, was drinking, too, as he sat silently in a folding chair beneath the tip of the ship's left wing.

This is going to be a sweet thing, Caine thought, it really is.

The air was dead of breeze, and soggy clouds hung above them like an immense stifling blanket. The man stared at his knees and the woman swirled the Scotch in her glass. Caine kept his palms flat against the arm rests of his chair.

He watched the woman closely. There was too much brightness inside of her, too much nervousness, as though she were burning inside and she had to keep moving, laughing, insulting, enticing, because she was alive with that burning, and she couldn't stop. It wasn't the liquor, Caine knew, because they had just started that, a few minutes after he had brought the ship down.

They were approximately four-hundred miles from the Colony, and in the wild stretches of this Venusian jungle, four-hundred miles was like the distance from day to night. Here was the dark, the strange, the weird and the wild.

Kiitz birds screamed in the distance, and their sound was like the sound a man makes when he is touched by fire. A thick, muddy river went over a cliff above and behind them, hitting transparent rocks with a steady crashing noise that thrummed against Caine's ears like thunder in a distant sky.

Teewh birds with black wings and curling yellow beaks came out of the sultry sky and skimmed the tips of the trees surrounding the clearing. They screeched when they dove, and they kept harmony with the unseen stationary kiitz birds. A chilling, nerve-racking harmony.

* * * * *

"Won't you have a drink with us?" said the woman, her teeth white between her smiling lips.

"Thank you, no," Caine said. The woman tipped her head and watched him. Her eyes were very blue and they mocked Caine and taunted him, while her husband just sat there, drinking and watching his bare knees.

This could go to pieces in a hurry, Caine decided, and he rubbed his palms against the arms of the chair.

Because, on the other hand, the husband was too quiet, too brooding, too deliberately unseeing of the way his wife played with Caine, with her eyes and her movements.

Her legs, Caine noticed, were the kind that would look well bare, as they were, or in nylon beneath a skirt, and she had rather full hips, although not too full. Her breasts, Caine could see, were well enough developed.

She bent to rub a finger against her left knee. "Are there insects in this part of the jungle?" she asked Caine.

"Some."

"But no grith cats?" she said, straightening.

"Not here," Caine said.

"Just where we're going tomorrow?"

"Yes." Caine looked back to the man. He was about fifty, Caine judged, at least twenty years older than the woman. His face was lean and sad, and there were thin lines traveling out from the corners of his eyes and mouth that contrasted with the youthful cut of his wiry hair.

These two had come to Caine because his reputation in the Colony was established. He had been flying tourists into the jungle for more than three years, and while he could not predict all of this country, he at least knew the general traits of those sections within a reasonable radius of the Colony.

"Did you ever shoot a grith cat?" the woman asked, looking at Caine over her glass.

"No," said Caine.

"But you've heard that they're pretty horrible and dangerous?"

"Yes." Caine wiped a hand at the sweat on his forehead. The woman was working at the cats, her eyes shifting to look at her husband with every word, to see how he was reacting. So far he had done nothing, said nothing, only sat there and drank.

However, the cats were not the reason the couple were in the Venusian jungle. Hunting animals was a dead sport for them, something done in the past and something which had become boring.

They were looking for bigger game now. The Screece gem. And they had flown all the way from Earth to Mars, from Mars to Venus, to find it. The Screece gem was a myth, Caine was certain, a bit of fantasy out of ancient Venusian lore. But they paid him well for the trip, and he would ask no questions.

The woman stayed with the cats. "How big are these grith cats, Mr. Caine?"

"Eight to ten feet long," Caine said. "About like a large horse."

"Only they're cats, with the claws and the fangs and all."

"Essentially."

Caine felt himself tightening inside a little. The woman was trying to break through her husband's armor, because somewhere, sometime, he must have had trouble hunting a cat-like animal. Tiger. Or panther. The Martian frynx, perhaps. But she had not found her target, yet.

The man raised his head and spoke for the first time since they had landed. "How far away is this temple, would you say, Mr. Caine?"

"Fifty miles," Caine said.

"How close to it can we land?"

"Eight or ten miles, I imagine."

"Can't we get closer than that?" the man asked.

"I don't think so," Caine said. "The temple is on top of a fairly sheer rise of land, and I can't put the ship down there. The nearest clearing we'll find will be about eight or ten miles away."

Mrs. Fairchild walked to her chair and sat down. "That means, then, that we'll have to go through that much country where the cats are?"

Caine didn't answer, and the man returned to gazing at his knees. Time moved slowly in the thick wet jungle.

"Show Mr. Caine your scar, Charles," the woman said, her voice sudden out of the silence.

Fairchild picked up his glass from the arm of his chair and held it tightly in front of his waist. The muscles along his bare forearms were ridged and his knuckles paled as he held the glass.

"Don't be bashful," the woman said, smiling. "I'm sure Mr. Caine would like to see what a cat can do."

She looked at Caine as though she were about to tell him a delightfully domestic story that had been, until now, nurtured between just her husband and her. "This was a leopard, Mr. Caine. A long vicious leopard. Mr. Fairchild, you see, didn't hit him right, and so he got Charles from about here," she tapped herself just below the neck, "to here." She touched her waist. "It's a long scar, Mr. Caine. Isn't it, Charles? About three inches wide, and...."

The man brought his glass down against the arm of the chair. "Shut up, Janet. I'll tell you nicely. Just shut up!"

"_Charles_," she said, blinking in exaggerated surprise. "I just wanted to tell Mr. Caine, because he's hunted, too, and while I don't know if these grith cats are anything like leopards...."

The man's eyes had become wide and angry. "I won't tell you again, Janet."

"I'm sorry, Charles." She smiled at him assuringly and blinked again. "We're just excited about tomorrow, I guess, aren't we?"

Fairchild returned his stare to his glass, noticed it was empty, and filled it.

"Can't I interest you in a drink, yet, Mr. Caine?" Mrs. Fairchild said.

"Not right now," Caine said.

"Oh." Her voice pouted. "But I think we should celebrate. Here Charles and I have come all this way to find the Screece gem, and we're sitting within fifty miles of it, and I think we all ought to celebrate."

* * * * *

Fairchild spoke to Caine without raising his head. "Maybe Mr. Caine doesn't really believe in the existence of the Screece gem. Do you, Mr. Caine?" he said, looking up.

Caine took a cigarette from a package in his shirt. "I'm just paid to get you to a temple, not to think."

"You're evading the question," Fairchild said. His eyes were narrow now, and a bit glazed.

Caine lit his cigarette and blew smoke into the damp air. He kept his voice non-committal. "I've heard about it. Everybody in the Colony has heard about it."

"Correction," said Fairchild. "Everybody in the System has heard about it."

"It's a very popular myth," Caine agreed.

The man stood up. "It is not a myth, Mr. Caine. It exists and it's in that temple, do you hear me? There is no dammed myth about it, just cold hard fact, and I'm going to find it and take it out of there! Is that clear?"

Caine watched the man's taut figure. He inhaled his cigarette. "I told you, Mr. Fairchild, I'm just paid to fly the ship and I'm not paid to think. I'm responsible for getting you to the temple. That's all."

"Listen," Fairchild said, crossing to Caine and reaching for the front of Caine's shirt. "Don't get insolent with me...."

Caine slapped the man's hand away.

"Charles!" the woman said.

The man blinked and touched his slapped hand against his chest. "Sorry, Mr. Caine," he said, finally. "Didn't mean to fly off that way. Little nervous, you see. All that time in space, searching around this way. We're just this close, and I'm getting too nervous." He turned back to his chair and sat down. His face became very sad again, and the lines about his mouth and eyes seemed deeper.

The woman laughed lightly. "You don't want to pay any attention to Charles when he's this way," she said to Caine. "It's just that this means so much to him, finding the Screece gem. It's worth the wealth of the System, they say, and so Charles has to have it, Mr. Caine. Because he hasn't got any more money."

"For heaven's sake, Janet," the man pleaded.

"Are you ashamed of being poor?" she asked with false concern. She stood up and began pacing back and forth, and Caine noticed the easy way she moved, her hips swaying, the muscles of her long legs rippling. "No, he's not ashamed of being poor," she said, looking at Caine. "He's _afraid_ of it, aren't you, Charles?"

Fairchild tipped his glass to his lips, and when he brought it down, Caine could see that it was empty again.

The man refilled the glass and held it in front of him, looking into it, as though he might find another world there, a peaceful world, where there weren't any cats or beautiful women with reddish hair, a world where there might be peace and no fear. He raised the glass, trying to taste of that world. His eyes were getting filmy.

"I'll tell you why he's afraid of being poor, Mr. Caine," the woman went on. "It's because not only is Charles a yellow punk when it comes to cats, but he's frightened of losing his wife, aren't you, Charles?"

Caine felt himself tensing under the cutting lilt of the woman's voice. He was observing something, he knew, that should have been contained in the seal of marital privacy. But here he was, caught in the middle of it, while the woman swung back and forth, and the man seemed to crumple further into his chair, hanging on to the glass of Scotch, as though that were all he had left to hang on to.

And tomorrow they had ten miles of grith country to span on foot. Sweet, Caine repeated to himself, really sweet.

II

"Charles, you see," the woman said, stopping and turning to Caine, "thinks the only way he can hold me is with money. And now he's put every penny he had left into this hunt so that he can find the Screece gem and keep his lovely wife. And do you know what, Mr. Caine?" She placed her hands gently on her hips, and Caine could see the faintest swinging movement in them. "He's right, you see."

Caine remained very silent.

"He _has_ to find the Screece gem," the woman said, smiling whitely, "or lovely Janet is gone, slipped right out of his hands. And Charles is just a poor little sheep with gray hair and a two inch scar, who'll be cold and alone, while Janet--"

"Stop it, damn it!" Fairchild said, but he didn't get up and his voice was thick.

"--while Janet," the woman said, her voice even and relentless, "will be sleeping with someone else who can afford her, and poor old Charles will shiver in his damned freezing bed, all alone, thinking about that, wondering who it is, burning up his ancient jealous liver!" The woman whirled to face her husband.

The man tightened both hands around his glass, and Caine could see the whiteness about his mouth. The woman began to laugh, a soft, pealing laugh that got into Caine's brain because of the very softness of it.

She walked back to her chair and lifted her own glass. Her laughter stopped while she drank, and then it started again. She turned to look at her husband, and her eyes danced and her lips curved. Her body shook with the laughter.

"Who do you think it'll be?" she asked her husband. "If you don't find the gem?" She turned to Caine. "Mr. Caine, do you have any money? I mean, perhaps you wouldn't need as much money as Charles. I might make some compensation for virility, you know."

Caine disregarded her. "Mr. Fairchild, we have some rugged country to cover tomorrow. This is your party, of course, but if you keep on drinking...."

"If I keep on drinking?"

Caine examined the man's eyes and his slack mouth. "Nothing," Caine said. "Nothing." At least, he decided, the Scotch might stop the needling and the pressure for the man. He deserved that much, perhaps.

"You didn't answer me, Mr. Caine," the woman said. "About you and me. I'd like you to answer, so that my husband knows before he falls out of his chair, you see."

"I think we all ought to get some sleep," Caine said quietly.

"Mr. Caine, really? So sudden? I'd have to check your bankbook first, of course. Although if you give me your word...."

"If you don't mind," Caine said, his voice harsh, "I'd like to be left neutral in whatever you and Mr. Fairchild might have in conflict."

"Oh," she said. "Well, that's just because you haven't seen the full potential. Let me show you what you'd be getting for your money--the way Charles saw it." She raised her glass again, drank, and stood up to cross to the ship. She climbed the ladder to the cabin, very gracefully, and touched the switch of the radio. Music pealed into the warm air.

It was minor music, issuing from the Colony station, music that had been taken from the native Venusian melodies. It had been converted and fitted to the heavy rhythm of Earth's ancient Africa, and it seemed suddenly to become a part of this jungle of Venus.

The woman stood in the doorway, and then she moved down the ladder, as though it were one sliding motion. She remained there, her back against the silver metal of the ship, swaying her hips, moving her shoulders.

"I was a dancer, you see, Mr. Caine. I worked in a very expensive club in Habrill, on Mars. I was very popular and very good, and sweet Charles took me away from it all, didn't you, Charles?"

Fairchild, Caine could see, was having trouble focusing his eyes, but the rhythmic music was heavy in the air and it beat against the ears, and Caine knew that the man was aware of what was happening.

The woman began moving easily toward Caine, her movement a practised swinging motion of hips and shoulders. "This is what Charles took me away from, Mr. Caine, by the gentle touch of gold," she said. "'Come with me,' he said, and he fitted diamonds to my ears and rings to my fingers. 'Let me take you away from the damned searching eyes of every man on Mars. Let me hide you, so no one can see you or touch you, but me, and I'll give you all I own.' Isn't that right, Charles?" she said, looking at him with narrow gleaming eyes.

The man lifted his glass and slowly drained it. He let it fall to the ground with a breaking crunch, while the woman kept time with the rhythm, with her hips and her shoulders, slight swinging motions that only intimated.

"Only now," the woman said, "poor Charles doesn't have anything more to give, and so here I go again...."

She raised her hands over her head and cracked her palms together. Her hips swung and her shoulders shook. She caught her fingers in her hair, her teeth white and biting, while her whole body shivered. It was a rippling gyration of muscle and pink skin, building, furious.

Fairchild pushed himself out of the chair. His eyes were wild and vacant. "Don't ..." he said, and his words were meshed together so that it was a hoarse sound, full of anguish.

The woman laughed, a wild laugh that blended with the music and the frenzied movement of her body. She whirled and slapped her hands together and her body quivered.

The man staggered a step forward. "Janet, don't, please...." He fell forward, sprawling over the ground. Gradually, the woman ceased her movement, while her laughter rang through the wet jungle.

* * * * *

_The gray-caped figures hold motionless around the muddy silver orb. A green head cocks. Another. The golden walls encase them, and only a circular opening near a tip of a spire brings in dim light and a little of the wispish outside vapor. Fingers disengage and a green extends from a gray cape. The hand sweeps in a downward slice, splitting by symbol, purity from evil. A second hand imitates. A third. A dozen. Voices flute to the cloudy orb. A cat snarls. Minds probe._

* * * * *

The light was dimming, and she was a dark curving figure, standing over the crumpled figure of the man. The music pounded relentlessly. Caine stood up.

"Each time I make one of these trips," he said, looking at the motionless form of Fairchild, "I promise myself it'll be the last, and I'm promising myself again, right now."

The woman stood silent, and there was just her smiling mouth and the white teeth and the reddish hair. "But this one isn't over, yet, Mr. Caine. We still have a long way to go." Her eyes danced.

"That's right, Mrs. Fairchild," Caine said, bending to lift the man. "Unfortunately, that's right."

He picked the man up while the woman watched, and he carried him to the ship. He climbed to the cabin, working against the surprising weight of the smaller man. For his age, Fairchild was a very tough, sinewy man who looked as though he had spent most of his life fighting through strange and varied wilds, constantly in search of new adventures and thrills.

Caine laid the man across a bunk built into the rear of the ship's cabin. The tip end of the wide scar was visible now, showing above Fairchild's open shirt, and the thin lines about the eyes and mouth were like written entries in his face, telling of too much Scotch and perhaps too much of the reddish-haired woman. All that he lacked, Caine thought wryly, was the empty bank account to show the price he had paid for the love of the devilish woman.

Caine straightened and walked back through the cabin, snapping off the radio.

He jumped to the ground. The light was very dim now, and the woman was only an outline. The screams of kiitz birds were in the air again, and in the distance, the thrumming monotony of the falls.

"You can use the cabin with your husband, Mrs. Fairchild," Caine said briskly. "I'll get some blankets and sleep out here."

"Aren't there animals?"

"Not around here," Caine said. "I'll make a fire. If you want something to eat I'll get it out of the cabin for you."

"No, thank you, Mr. Caine," the woman said, sitting down in her chair. "I'll just enjoy the rest of my drink, if you don't mind."

"It's up to you," Caine said shortly. He was very careful to keep his eyes away from her. You handled a woman like that best, he knew, by keeping your eyes away from her.

He gathered wood from beneath the wet outer layer of the jungle floor. He bent to light the fire just as the darkness enveloped the clearing. The flames flickered and licked upward, sending their shifting yellow light into the surrounding foliage.

Caine straightened from the fire.

"Do you like my dance?" the woman asked, softly.

"I didn't see it for your husband, Mrs. Fairchild," Caine said, and he returned to the ship where he got several blankets. He placed them near the fire.

"He's not around now," the woman said.

Caine looked at her finally. "He is as far as I'm concerned."

"You're so noble, Mr. Caine."

"I'm not anything," Caine said. "I'm just a guide who gets paid for taking people where they want to go. Nothing more, do you understand, Mrs. Fairchild?"

"No," she said, smiling at him.

Caine walked to his chair and sat down. "We have a tough day ahead of us, Mrs. Fairchild, and we'll need all the strength we have to get through that stretch of jungle. This is a different jungle than you've seen before. Venus breeds some terrible country, and where we're going is that kind of country. I haven't been there myself, so I can't even predict what it'll be like. But I've circled it in the ship and it's thick and alive. I don't trust it. So you can stay up, if you like, and I'll be glad to stay awake myself, but I'd advise some sleep right now."

Mrs. Fairchild stood up slowly, her fingers drifting over her waist. "I'll tell you, Mr. Caine. You're not the kind of man I like to argue with. I've had just enough liquor to feel perfectly agreeable to anything, anyway. So I'll get ready for bed, but I'm sorry you didn't enjoy my dance. Let's do this. You wait while I get ready, and then we'll have one nightcap together, a sort of dancing nightcap. Are you interested, Mr. Caine?"

Caine lit a cigarette slowly, watching the blaze of his lighter. He snapped the lighter shut. "I'm interested in both you and your husband, Mrs. Fairchild."

"To hell with my husband," she said, her teeth showing between her lips. She lifted her glass and drank all that was in it. "Relax, Mr. Caine," she said, walking toward the ship. "Enjoy yourself."

Caine noticed that the liquor had taken hold of the way she walked, so that she swayed a little, but there was still the grace there and the swing, and it was hard to disregard.

I hope she doesn't come out of there, Caine thought. I hope she just falls asleep and leaves me alone, and that tomorrow goes very quickly and smoothly.

* * * * *