brain, daughter, you should go far. obody saw anything, of course?' Beccie shook her head.
'Question is, Jix, who wants to kill us, and why?'
'Beamish. She realizes she's been gypped.'
'One hundred U.C.' s,' said Beccie softly, 'for a few lousy swampedge mining camps. It stinks, Jix. You think we should back out?'
I shrugged. 'You're the boss woman. I'm only the guy that beats off the creditors.'
'Yeah,' Beccie said reflectively. 'And I hear starvation isn't a comfortable death. Okay, Jix. Let's go sign.' She put her hand on the latch and looked at my feet. 'And - uh - Jix, I...'
I said, 'Skip it. The next time, just don't trip me up, that's all!'
We had a nasty trip to Venus. Gerty kept the brute tank on edge, and Gow, on the rare occasions she came up for air, went around looking like a disaster hoping to happen. To make it worse, Zurt the Jovian strong-man got hurt during the take-off, and the Mercurian cave-cat had kittens.
Nobody would have minded that, only one of 'em had only four legs. It lived just long enough to scare that bunch of superstitious dopes out of their pants. Circus people are funny that way.
Shannon and I did a little quiet sleuthing, but it was a waste of time. Anybody in the gang might have let those electric worms out on us. It didn't help any to know that somebody, maybe the guy next to you at dinner, was busy thinking ways to kill you. By the time we hit Venus, I was ready to do a Brodie out the refuse chute.
Shannon set the crate down on the edge of Nahru, the first stop on our itinerary. I stood beside her, looking out the ports at the scenery. It was Venus, all right. Blue mud and thick green jungle and rain, and a bunch of ratty-looking plastic shacks huddling together in the middle of it. Women in slickers were coming out for a look.
I saw Beamish's sleek yacht parked on a cradle over to the left, and our router's runabout beside it. Beccie Shannon groaned.
'A blue one, Jix. A morgue if I ever saw one!'
I snarled, 'What do you want, with this lousy dog-and-pony show!' and went out. She followed. The gang was converging on the lock, but they weren't happy. You get so you can feel those things. The steamy Venus heat was already sneaking into the ship.
While we passed the hatchway to the brute tank, I could hear Gerty, screaming.
The canvasmen were busy setting up the annex, slopping and cursing in the mud. The paste brigade was heading for the shacks. Shann¬on and I stood with the hot rain running off our slickers, looking.
I heard a noise behind me and looked around. Ahra the Nahali man was standing in the mud with his arms up and his head thrown back, and his triangular mouth open like a thirsty dog. He didn't have anything on but his blue-green, hard scaled hide, and he was chuckling. It didn't sound nephew.
You find a lot of Nahali people in sideshows, doing tricks with the electric power they carry in their own bodies. They're Venusian middle-swampers, they're not human, and they never forget it.
Ahra opened his slitted red eyes and looked at me and laughed with white reptilian teeth.
'Death,' he whispered. 'Death and trouble. The jungle tells me. I can smell it in the swamp wind.'
The hot rain sluiced over him. He shivered, and the pale skin unnder his jaw pulsed like a toad's, and his eyes were red.
'The deep swamps are angry,' he whispered. 'Something has been taken. They are angry, and I smell death in the wind!'
He turned away, laughing, and I cursed him, and my stomach was tight and cold. Beccie said,
'Let's eat if they have a bar in this dump.'
We weren't half way across the mud puddle that passed as a landing field when a woman came out of a shack on the edge of the settlement.We could see her plainly, because she was off to one side of the crowd.
She fell on her knees in the mud, making noises. It took her three or four tries to get our names out clear enough to understand. Beccie said, 'Jix – it's Sam Kapper.'
We started to run. The crowd, mostly big, unshaken miners, wheeled around to see what was happening. People began to close in on the woman who crawled and whimpered in the mud.
Sam Kapper was a hunter, supplying animals to zoos and circuses and carnivals. She'd given us good deals a couple of times, when we weren't too broke, and we were pretty friendly.
I hadn't seen her for three seasons. I remembered her as a bronzed, hard-bitten guy, lean and tough as a twist of tung wire. I felt sick, looking down at her.
Beccie started to help her up. Kapper was crying, and she jerked all over like animals I've seen that were scared to death. Some guy leaned over and put a cigarette in her mouth and hghted it for her.
I was thinking about Kapper, then, and I didn't pay much attention. I only caught a glimpse of the woman's face as she straightened up. I didn't realize until later that she looked familiar.
We got Kapper inside the shack. It turned out to be a cheap bar, with a couple of curtained booths at the back. We got her into one and pulled the curtain in a lot of curious faces. Kapper dragged hard on the cigarette. The woman that gave it to hers was gone.
Beccie said gently, 'Okay, Sam. Relax. What's the trouble?'
Kapper tried to straighten up. She hadn't washed. The lean hard lines of her face had gone slack and her eyes were bloodshot. She was covered with mud, and her mouth twitched like a sick old woman's.
She said thickly, 'I found it. I said I'd do it, and I did. I found it and brought it out.'
The cigarette stub fell out of her mouth. She didn't notice it. 'Help me,' she said simply. 'I'm scared.' Her mouth drooled.
'I got it hidden. They want to find out, but I won't tell 'em. It's got to go back. Back where I found it. I tried to take it, but they wouldn't let me, and I was afraid they'd find it...'
She reached suddenly and grabbed the edge of the table. 'I don't know how they found out about it, but they did. I've got to get back. I've got to...'
Beccie looked at me. Kapper was blue around the mouth. I was scared, suddenly. I said, 'Get what back where?'
Beccie got up. 'I'll get a doctor,' she said. 'Stick with her.' Kapper grabbed her wrist. Kapper's nails were blue and the cords in her hands stood out like guy wires.
'Don't leave me. Got to tell you – where it is. Got to take it back. Promise you'll take it back.' She gasped and struggled over her breathing.
'Sure,' said Beccie. 'Sure, we'll take it back. What is it?'
Kapper's face was horrible. I felt sick, listening to her fight for air. I wanted to go for a doctor anyway, but somehow I knew it was no use. Kapper whispered,
'Cansin. Female. Only one. You don't know...! Take her back.'
'Where is it, Sam?'
I reached across Beccie suddenly and jerked the curtain back.
Beamish was standing there. Beamish, bent over, with her ear cocked. Kapper made a harsh strangling noise and fell across the table.
Beamish never changed expression. She didn't move while Beccie felt Kapper's pulse. Beccie didn't need to say anything. We knew.
'Heart?' said Beamish finally.
'Yeah,' said Beccie. She looked as bad as I felt. 'Poor Sam.'
I looked at the cigarette stub smoldering on the table. I looked at Beamish with her round dead baby face. I climbed over Shannon and pushed Beamish suddently down into her lap.
'Keep this guy here till I get back,' I said.
Shannon stared at me. Beamish started to get indignant. 'Shut up,' I told her. 'We got a contract.' I yanked the curtains shut and walked over to the bar.
I began to notice something, then. There were quite a lot of women in the place. At first glance they looked okay–a hard-faced, muscular bunch of miners in dirty shirts and high boots.
Then I looked at their hands. They were dirty enough. But they never did any work in a mine, on Venus or anywhere else.
The place was awfully quiet, for that kind of place. The bartender was a big pot-bellied swampnedger with pale eyes and thick white hair coiled up on top of her bullet head. She was not h
appy.
I leaned on the bar. 'Lhak,' I said. She poured it, sullenly, out of a green bottle. I reached for it, casually
'That guy we brought in,' I said. 'She sure has a skinful. Passed out cold. What's she been spiking her drinks with?'
'Selak,' said a voice in my ear. 'As if you didn't know.'
I turned. The woman who had given Kapper the cigarette was standing behind me. And I remembered her, then.
Circus people get around a lot, and the Law supplies us with Wanted sheets. I remembered this guy from the last batch they handed us on Mars. Mela Thompson was her name, and she had a reputation.
She had a face you wouldn't forget. Dark and kind of handsome, with the Drylander blood showing in the heavy bones and the tilted green eyes. Her mouth was smiling and brutal. She nodded at the booth.
'Let's take a walk,' she said.
We took a walk. The women sitting at the dirty tables were still silent, and still not miners. I began to sweat.
The booth was a little crowded with us all in there. I sat jammed up against Sam Kapper's body. Beccie Shannon's grey-green eyes were sleepy, and there was a vein beating on her forehead.
Beamish said to Mela, 'Kapper's dead. Dead, without talking.'
'That's tough.' Mela shook her dark head. 'We was gentle with her.'
'Yeah,' I said. Kapper had been a good guy, and I was mad. 'Feed anybody enough selak, and you can afford to be. It's a dirty death.'
Selak's made from a Venusian half-cousin of henbane, which is what scopolamine comes from. It has a terrific effect on the heart. And Kapper had simply torn herself apart trying to keep from talking while she was under the influence.
Beccie Shannon made a slow, ugly move to get up. Beamish said, 'Sit down.'
There was something in her voice and her bland blue eyes. Shannon sat down. Mela was looking at Beamish, still grinning.
'Well,' she said, 'I guess your idea was pretty good after all.'
I had a sudden inspiration. The burns were still sore on my body, and Kapper's tortured face was close to mine, and I took a wild shot at something I wasn't even sure I saw.
'Yeah,' I said. 'A swell idea. Why did you try so hard to butch it, Mela?'
She stopped grinning. Beamish looked forward a little. My tongue stuck in my mouth, but I managed to say.
'You get it, Beccie. A female cansin, Kapper said. The only one in captivity, maybe even on Venus.Wyrth its weight in credit slips.That's why Beamish was so happy to overpay us to get us out here – because she thought Gerty could find his boyfriend fast, even if Kapper didn't talk.'
I turned to Mela again. 'A swell idea. Why did you have those vapor snakes turned loose on us? Did you think Kapper was enough?'
She struck me, pretty hard, across the mouth. My head banged against the booth wall and for a minute I couldn't see anything but spangles of fire shooting around. I heard Beamish say, from a great distance,
'How about it, Mela?'
It was awfully still in the booth. I swallowed some blood and blinked my eyes clear enough to see Beccie Shannon poised across the table like a bow starting to unbend. And suddenly, somewhere far off over the drum of rain on the flimsy roof, there began to be noises.
I hadn't been comfortable up till then. I'm no Superman, nor one of those guys you read about who can stare Death in the eye and shatter her with a light laugh.
But all of a sudden I was afraid. Afraid so that all the fear I'd felt before was nothing. And it was funny, too. I didn't know what it was, then, but I knew what it wasn't. It wasn't Beamish or Mela or those hard guys beyond the curtains, or even Kapper's body pressed up against me.
I didn't know what it was. But I wanted to get down on the floor and hide myself in a crack, like a cockroach.
The others felt it, too. I remember the sweat standing out on Beccie Shannon's forehead, and the suddening tightening of Beamish's jaw, and the glitter in Mela's green eyes.
Beyond the curtains there was an uneasy stirring of feet.The confused, distant noise grew louder. Somewhere, not very far away, a man began to scream.
Beamish said softly, 'You dirty double-crossing rat.' Her face was stiII dead-pan, only now it was like something beaten out of iron. Her hauds were out of sight under the table.
Mela smiled. I could feel her body shift and tense beside me. 'Sure,' she said. 'I double-crossed you. Why not? I planted a guy in the circus hammer gang and she crawled in the sewage lock and tried to get these punks. I'm glad now she bungled it. Kapper had guts.'
Beamish whispered, 'You're a fool. You don't know what you're playing with. I've done research, and I do.'
'Too bad you wasted the time,' said Mela. 'Because you're through.'
She threw herself suddenly aside, lifting the table hard into Beamish. The curtains ripped away and she rolled in them, twisting like a snake. I yelled to Beccie and dropped flat. Beamish had drawn a gun under the table. The blast of it seared my face.
The next second four heavy blasters spoke at once. Beamish's gun dropped on the floor. Then it was quiet again, and I could hear the man screaming, outside in the beating rain.
Mela got up. 'Sure I double-crossed you,' she said softly. 'Why should I split with anybody? obody knows about it but us. Kapper couldn't send word from the swamps when she caught it, and she couldn't send word from here because she wasn't let.
'That critter'll bring anything I ask for it. Why should I split with you?'
Beamish didn't answer. I don't think Mela thought she would.
The noise from outside was geting louder. Beccie groaned.
'It's coming from the pitch, Jix. Trouble. We've got to...'
The table was yanked from over us. We got up off our knees. Mela looked at us. She was shaking a little and her green eyes were mean.
'I don't think,' she said, 'I really need you guys around, either.' She jerked her head suddenly. 'Cripes, I wish that dame would shut up!'
It was getting on my nerves, too – that monotonous, sawing screech. Mela stepped aside. 'Get 'em, girls. I don't want 'em dragging their outfit down on our necks.'
Four blaster barrels came up. My insides came up with them. I was way beyond anything, then – even panic.
Gow burst in through the doorway.
She was soaked to the skin, tattered, bleeding, and wild-eyed. She yelled, 'Boss! Gerty...' Then she saw the guns and stopped.
It was very still in the place. Outside there was sound rising like a sullen tide against the walls. The man's screaming became something not human then stopped, short.
Gow said, almost absently, 'Gerty went nuts. We'd brought his cage up from the tank for the show and he – broke out. There wasn't nothin' we could do. He busted a lot of cages and then disappeared.'
Mela snarled something, I don't know what. The wall behind Gow jarred, buckled, and split open around the doorway. Bamboo fragments clattered on the floor. Somebody yelled, and a blaster went off.
Gerty stood in the splintered opening. He looked at us with cold, mad green eyes, towering huge and blue against the low roof, his hands swinging and his crest erect.
He let go one wild, whistling screech and came straight toward the booth. Beccie Shannon touched my arm.
'Climb into your brassies, kid,' she muttered. 'Here's our chance!' I caught her shoulder. She followed the line of my pointing, and I felt her tremble.
Gerty was coming at us like a rocket express. Behind his wet and glistening from the hot rain, came three more just like him.
III
WE scattered, all of us, hunting for a way out. There was only one door leading to the back, and it was stoppered tight with women cursing and fighting to get through. Gow was crouched in a corner by the splintered wall.
I pulled Beccie along, thinking we might get in back of the cansins and sneak out. I wondered what they wanted. And I wondered where in heck you could hide a thing as big as Gerty and keep anybody from finding out.
Somebody screamed briefly. I saw one of the
strange cansins toss the bartender aside like a dry twig. Gow rose up in front of me with a queer staring look in her eyes.
'Somethin's wrong,' she said. 'All wrong. I...' Her mouth twitched. She turned sharply and started to scramble through the wrecked hall. Beccie and I were right on her heels. I think Mela and some of her lobbygows were crowding us, but nobody was thinking about things like that any more.
I knew what was eating Gow. The fear that had looked out of Kapper's eyes. The fear that was riding me. Fear that had nothing to do with anything physical.
Beccie cursed and stumbled beside me. And suddenly the four cansins let go a tremendous thundering scream. The hair rose on my neck, and I turned to look. I just had to.
Gerty had turned away from the booth. They stood, the four of them, their huge black shoulders touching, their crests like rows of petrified flame, staring at what Gerty held in his arms.
It was Kapper's body.
Slowly, with infinite gentleness, he began to strip her. She hung loose in the cradle of one great arm, her flesh showing bluenwhite against his blueness. His free hand ripped her clothes away like things made of paper.
I don't know why nobody tried to shoot the beasts after the first second. Sheer panic, I guess. We could have killed them all, then. But we just stood looking, fascinated by the slow, intent baring of Kapper's body.
And the strange fear. It was on us all.
Kapper lay naked in his black arms. He raised her slowly over him head, his eyes blind green fires deep under bony brows. The othners drew closer, shivering, and I could hear them whimper.
Strangers from the deep swamps with no stink of woman on them. I thought of the Nahali man laughing in the hot rain. Death from the deep swamps, because something had been taken, and they were angry.
There was a little black box strapped to Kapper's thin white belly.
Gerty shifted his hands a little. The blood hammered in my eas. I was sick. I didn't want to look any more. I couldn't help it. Beccie Shannon caught a hard, sobbing breath. Gerty broke Sam Kapper's body in two. I can still hear the noise it made. The blood ran dark and sluggish down his arms. It worried me that Kapper's face didn't change expression. The little black box on her belly split with the rest of her.
Something rose out of it. Something no bigger than my forefinger that carried a cold green blaze around it like a ball of St. Elmo's fire.
Gerty threw Kapper away. I heard the two flopping thuds of her hitting the floor. Some guy was down on her knees close to me. Her lips moved. I don't know if she could remember her prayers. Somebody else was vomiting, hard. I wanted to, but my stomach felt frozen.
The cold green fire had a shape inside it. I couldn't make it out clearly, except that it looked horribly human. It put out four thin green filaments. Don't ask me if they were physical things like tentacles, or just beams of light, or maybe thought. I don't know. Whatever they were, they worked.
They connected with the four black, snaky heads of the male cousins. I felt the shock of them connecting with my own nerves. And it was like something had welded those four brutes together into one.
They had been four. Separate, with hard outlines. Now they were one. One single interlocking entity. I guess it was just my being so