Presently the bottom suddenly dropped away a foot or more; he stepped off the edge; lost his balance and thrashed around; recovered himself and scrambled back up on the ledge, congratulating himself that he had not gotten his face and eyes into the stuff.
He heard a shout and almost at once the sound of water striking a hot stove, enormously amplified. Ten feet away from him a cloud of steam lifted from the water’s surface, climbed lazily into the mist. He cringed and wanted to dodge, but there was no way to dodge. The shouting resumed and the sounds carried clearly across the water muffled by the fog but still plain: “Over here! Over here! He’s taken to the water.”
Much more distantly he heard the answer: “Coming!”
Most cautiously Don moved forward, felt the edge of the drop off, tried it and found that he could still stand beyond it, almost up to his armpits but still wading. He was moving, forward slowly, trying to avoid noise and minding his precarious, half-floating balance, when he heard the sibilant sound of the beam.
The soldier back on the bank had imagination; instead of firing again at random into the drifting mist he was fanning the flat surface of the water, doing his best to keep his beam horizontal and playing it like a hose. Don squatted down until his face alone was out of the water.
The beam passed only inches over his head; he could hear it pass, smell the ozone.
The hissing stopped abruptly to be followed by the age-old, monotonous cursing of the barrackroom. “But, sergeant—” someone protested.
“I’ll ‘sergeant’ you! Alive—do you hear? You heard the orders. If you’ve killed him, I’ll take you apart with a rusty knife. No, I won’t; I’ll turn you over to Mr. Bankfield. You hopeless fool!”
“But, sergeant, he was escaping by water; I had to stop him.”
“‘But sergeant!’ ‘But sergeant!’—is that all you can say! Get a boat! Get a snooper! Get a two-station portable bounce rig. Call base and find out if they’ve got a copter down.”
“Where would I get a boat?”
“Get one! He can’t get away. We’ll find him—or his body. If it’s his body, you’d better cut your throat.”
Don listened, then moved silently forward—or away from the direction the voices seemed to come from. He could no longer tell true direction; there was nothing but the black surface of water and a horizon of mist. For some distance the bottom continued fairly level, then he realized that it was again dropping away. He was forced to stop, able to wade no further.
He thought it over, trying to avoid panic. He was still close to Main Island with nothing but mist between himself and the shore. It was a certainty that with proper search gear—infra-red or any of the appropriate offspring of radar—they could pin him like a beetle to cork. It was merely a matter of waiting for the gear to be brought up.
Should he surrender now and get out of this poisonous swill? Surrender and go back and tell Bankfield to find Isobel Costello if he wanted the ring? He let himself sink forward and struck out strongly, swimming breast stroke to try to keep his face out of the water.
Breast stroke was far from being his strongest stroke and it was made worse by trying so hard to keep his face dry. His neck began to ache presently the ache spread through his shoulder muscles and into his back. Indefinite time and endless gallons later he ached everywhere, even to his eyeballs—yet for all he could tell about it he might have been swimming in a bathtub, one whose walls were grey mist. It did not seem possible that, in the archipelago which made up Buchanan Province, one could swim so far without running into something…a sand spit, a mud bar.
He stopped to tread water, barely moving his tired legs and fluttering his palms. He thought he heard the rushing sound of a powered boat, but he could not be sure. At that moment he would not have cared; capture would have been relief. But the sound, or ghost of a sound, died away and he was again in a grey and featureless wilderness.
He arched his back to shift again to swimming and his toe struck bottom. Gingerly he felt for it—yes, bottom…with his chin out of water. He stood for a moment or two and rested, then felt around. Bottom dropped away on one side, seemed level or even to rise a little in another direction.
Shortly his shoulders were out with his feet still in the muck. Feeling his way like a blind man, his eyes useless save for balancing, he groped out the contour, finding bits that rose, then forced to retreat as the vein played out.
He was out of water to his waist when his eyes spotted a darker streak through the fog; he went toward it, was again up to his neck. Then the bottom rose rapidly; a few moments later he scrambled up on dry land.
He did not have the courage yet to do anything more than move inland a few feet and place between himself and the water a clump of Chika trees. Screened thus from search operations conducted from boats he looked himself over. Clinging to his legs were a dozen or more mud lice, each as large as a child’s hand. With repugnance he brushed them off, then removed his shorts and shirt, found several more and disposed of them. He told himself that he was lucky not to have encountered anything worse—the dragons had many evolutionary cousins, bearing much the same relationship to them that gorillas do to men. Many of these creatures are amphibious—another reason why Venus colonials do not swim.
Reluctantly Don put his wet and filthy clothes back on, sat down with his back to a tree trunk, and rested. He was still doing so when he again heard the sound of a power boat; this time there was no mistaking it. He sat still, depending on the trees to cover him and hoping that it would go away.
It came in close to shore and cruised along it to his right. He was beginning to feel relief when the turbine stopped. In the stillness he could hear voices. “We’ll have to reconnoiter this hunk of mud. Okay, Curly—you and Joe.”
“What does this guy look like, corporal?”
“Now, I’ll tell you—the captain didn’t say. He’s a young fellow, though, about your age. You just arrest anything that walks. He’s not armed.”
“I wish I was back in Birmingham.”
“Get going.”
Don got going, too—in the other direction, as fast and as silently as possible. The island was fairly well covered; he hoped that it was large as well—a precarious game of hide-and-seek was all the tactics he could think of. He had covered perhaps a hundred yards when he was scared out of his wits by movement up ahead; he realized with desperation that the boat party might have landed two patrols.
His panic died down when he discovered that what he was seeing were not men but gregarians. They spotted him, too, and came dancing up, bleating welcome, and crowding up against him.
“Quiet!” he said in a sharp whisper. “You’ll get me caught!”
The move-overs paid no attention to that; they wanted to play. He endeavored to pay no attention to them but moved forward again, closely accompanied by the whole group, some five. He was still wondering how to keep from being loved to death—or at least back into captivity—when they came out into the clearing.
Here was the rest of the herd, more than two hundred head, from babies that butted against his knees up to the grey-bearded old patriarch, fat in the belly and reaching as high as Don’s shoulder. They all welcomed him and wanted him to stay a while.
One thing that had worried him was now cleared up—he had not swum in a circle and blundered back onto Main Island. The only move-overs on Main Island were half-domesticated scavengers such as those which had hung around the restaurant; there were no herds.
It suddenly occurred to him that it was barely possible that he might turn the ubiquitous friendliness of the bipeds into an advantage rather than a sure give-away. They would not let him be; that was sure. If he left the herd, some of them were certain to trail along, bleating and snorting and making themselves and him conspicuous. On the other hand—
He moved straight out into the clearing, pushing his friends aside as he went. He shoved himself right into the center of the herd and sat down on the ground.
Three of th
e babies promptly climbed into his lap. He let them stay. Adults and half-grown bucks crowded around him bleating and snuffling and trying to nuzzle the top of his head. He let them—he was now surrounded by a wall of flesh. From time to time one of the inner circle would be shouldered out of the way and would go back to grazing but there were always enough around him to block out his view of his surroundings. He waited.
After a considerable time he heard more excited bleating from the fringe of the herd. For a moment he thought his personal guard would be seduced away by this new excitement, but the inner circle preferred to keep their privileged positions; the wall held. Again he heard voices.
“For Pete’s sake—it’s a whole flock of those silly billies!” Then—“Hey! Get down! Quit licking my face!”
Curly’s voice replied, “I think he’s fallen in love with you, Joe. Say—Soapy said to arrest anything that walks: shall we take this one back to him?”
“Stow it!” There were sounds of scuffling, then the high bleating of a move-over both surprised and hurt.
“Maybe we ought to burn one and take it back anyway,” Curly went on. “I hear they are mighty tasty eating.”
“You turn this into a hunting party and Soapy will haul you up before the Old Man. Come on—we got work to do.”
Don could follow their progress around the edge of the herd. He could even tell by the sounds when the two soldiers managed to cuff and kick the most persistent of the creatures off their trail. He continued to sit there long after they were gone, tickling the chin of a baby which had gone to sleep in his lap, and resting himself.
Presently it began to grow dark. The herd started to bed down for the night. By the time it was fully dark they were all lying down except the sentries around the edge. Because he was dead tired and completely lacking in any plan of action Don bedded down with them, his head cradled on a soft and velvety back and himself in turn half supporting a couple of youngsters.
For a while he thought about his predicament, then he thought about nothing.
The herd stirred and he awakened. There was much snorting and stomping mixed with the whimpering complaints of the young, still not fully awake. Don got his bearings and got to his own feet; he knew vaguely what to expect—the herd was about to migrate. Gregarians rarely grazed the same island two days in a row. They slept the first part of the night, then moved out before dawn when their natural enemies were least active. They forded from one island to another, using paths through the water known—possibly by instinct—to the herd leaders. For that matter, gregarians could swim, but they rarely did so.
Don thought: well, I’ll soon be rid of them. Nice people—but too much is too much. Then he thought better of it—if the move-overs were moving to another island it was sure that it would not be Main Island and it would certainly have to be farther away from Main Island than was this one. What could he lose?
He felt a bit light-headed but the logic seemed right; when the herd moved out he worked his way up near the van. The leader took them down the island about a quarter of a mile, then stepped off into the water. It was still so nearly pitch dark that Don was not aware of it until he too stepped into it. It was only up to his ankles and did not get much deeper. Don splashed along almost at a dogtrot, trying to stay inside the body of the herd so that he would run no chances of blundering into deeper water in the darkness. He hoped that this was not one of the migrations involving swimming.
It began to grow truly light and the pace quickened; Don was hard put to keep up. At one point the old buck in the lead stopped, snorted, and made a sharp turn; Don could not guess why he had turned, for the morning mist was very thick and one piece of water looked exactly like another. Yet the way chosen turned out to be shallow. They followed it for another kilometer or more, twisting and turning at times, then at last the leader clambered up a bank with Don on his heels.
Don threw himself down, exhausted. The old buck stopped, plainly puzzled, while the herd gained the land and crowded around them. The leader snorted and looked disgusted, then turned away and continued his duty of leading his people to good pasture. Don pulled himself together and followed them.
They were just coming out of the trees that hedged the shore when Don saw a fence off to the right. He felt like singing. “So long, folks!” he called out. “Here’s where I get off.” He headed for the fence, while the main herd moved on. When he reached the fence he reluctantly slapped and swatted his attendants until he managed to shoo them off, then headed along the wire. Eventually, he told himself, I will find a gate and that will lead me to people. It did not matter much who the people were; they would feed him and let him rest and help him to hide from the invaders.
The fog was very thick; it was good to have the fence to guide him. He stumbled along by it, feeling feverish and somewhat confused, but cheerful.
“Halt.”
Don froze automatically, shook his head and tried to remember where he was. “I’ve got you spotted,” the voice went on. “Move forward slowly with your hands up.”
Don strained his eyes to see through the fog, wondered if he dared to run for it. But, with a feeling of utter and final defeat, he realized that he had run as far as he could.
XIII
Fog-Eaters
“SNAP out of it!” the voice said, “or I shoot.”
“Okay,” he answered dully and moved forward with his hands over his head. A few paces advance let him see a man’s shape; a few more and he made out a soldier with a hand gun trained on him. His eyes were covered by snooper goggles, making him look like some bug-eyed improbability from another planet.
The soldier halted Don again a few steps from him, made him turn around slowly. When Don turned back he had shoved the snoopers up on his forehead, revealing pleasant blue eyes. He lowered his gun. “Jack, you’re sure a mess,” he commented. “What in the name of the Egg have you been doing?”
It was only then that Don realized that the soldier was wearing not the mottled green of the Federation but the tans of the Ground Forces of Venus Republic.
The soldier’s commanding officer, a Lieutenant Busby, tried to question him in the kitchen of the farm house inside the fence, but he saw very quickly that the prisoner was in no shape to be questioned. He turned Don over to the farmer’s wife for food, a hot bath, and emergency medical attention. It was late that afternoon that Don, much refreshed and with the patches left by the mud lice covered with poultices, finally gave an account of himself.
Busby listened him out and nodded. “I’ll take your word for it, mainly because it is almost inconceivable that a Federation spy could have been where you were, dressed the way you were, and in the shape you were in.” He went on to question him closely about what he had seen in New London, how many soldiers there seemed to be, how they were armed, and so forth. Unfortunately Don could not tell him much. He did recite “Emergency Law Number One” as closely as he could remember it.
Busby nodded, “We got it over Mr. Wong’s radio.” He hooked a thumb at the corner of the room. He thought for a moment. “They played it smart; they took a leaf from Commodore Higgins’ book and played it real smart. They didn’t bomb our cities; they just bombed our ships—then they moved in and burned us out.”
“Have we got any ships left?” Don asked.
“I don’t know. I doubt it—but it doesn’t matter.”
“Huh?”
“Because they played it too smart. There’s nothing left they can do to us; from here on they’re fighting the fog. And we fog-eaters know this planet better than they do.”
Don was allowed to rest up the balance of that day and the following night. By listening to the gossip of the soldiers he came to the conclusion that Busby was not simply an optimist; the situation was not completely hopeless. It was admittedly very bad; so far as anyone knew all the ships of the High Guard had been destroyed. The Valkyrie, the Nautilus and the Adonis were reported bombed and with them Commodore Higgins and most of his men. There was no word
of the Spring Tide—which meant nothing; what little information they had was compounded of equal parts rumor and Federation official propaganda.
The Middle Guard might have saved some of their ships, might have them hidden out in the bush, but the usefulness at this time of superstratospheric shuttles which required unmovable launching catapults was conjectural. As for the Ground Forces a good half of them had been captured or killed at Buchanan Island Base and at lesser garrisons. While the enlisted survivors were being released, the only officers still free were such as Lieutenant Busby, those who had been on detached duty when the attack came. Busby’s unit had been manning a radar station outside New London; he had saved his command by abandoning the now-useless station.
The civil government of the baby republic was, of course, gone; almost every official had been captured. The command organization of the armed forces was equally out of action, captured in the initial attack. This raised a point that puzzled Don; Busby did not act as if his commanding generals were missing; he continued to behave as if he were a unit commander of an active military organization, with task and function clearly defined. Esprit de corps was high among his men; they seemed to expect months, perhaps years of bush warfare, harrying and raiding the Federation forces, but eventual victory at the end.
As one of them put it to Don, “They can’t catch us. We know these swamps; they don’t. They won’t be able to go ten miles from the city, even with boat radar and dead-reckoning bugs. We’ll sneak in at night and cut their throats—and sneak out again for breakfast. We won’t let them lift a ton of radioactive off this planet, nor an ounce of drugs. We’ll make it so expensive in money and men that they’ll get sick of it and go home.”