that a good many times on his long trip acrossthe swamp, but he had worried more about how to dispose of his ownstones before Relegar got hold of him. He would of course have to usedeception. But how? If he could hide the stones some place he could goon into The Pass empty-handed and pretend that he'd had the usual lackof luck. Then he could see Netse, the Jovian fence, and make a dealfor protection. He'd have to give up half, but that was the easiestway out, for Relegar would keep hands off if Netse got there first.
But where could he hide the stones? There was too much continualvolcanic subterranean activity in the swamp, and on what little dryland Venus had it was doubtful that any hiding-place could be calledpermanent. It might be solid today and swallowed by an earthquaketomorrow.
The only real solution was to have somebody else keep them for awhile, Grant thought, and that was a discouraging thought, for whomcould he trust in The Pass even if he could reach them? For thatmatter, who in The Pass would risk his life to help out Grant Russell,the Hard-Luck Man of the Swamp?
He'd been known as a hard-luck man as far back as he could remember.His parents had been killed in a rocket crash on a trip to Mars; he'dbeen raised by one relative after another and they'd each one gottenrid of him as soon as they could. Finally he had married a nice girland they had been happy until their daughter was born. Then the motherhad died.
Grant had gone to pieces for a while. When he came to, he was broke,hungry, ragged. Then when it was too late he had become frantic overthe safety of his small daughter, Beth. He found that she was safe ina child welfare home in New Jersey, but they would not release her tohim until he could pay what he owed for her care and have enough leftover to establish himself as a substantial citizen.
He had told her goodby. She was the image of her mother, and she hadheld onto his hand as long as she could and said between sobs, "Daddy,can we have a farm some day, and raise strawberries, and have just ustwo? I don't want to be an orphan." He had gulped and said, "Sure,"and then he had come to Venus. It was a new planet, largelyunexplored, full of opportunity.
That had been three years ago. Things had been tough at times but nowhe could afford to smile. He'd hit the jackpot--a million-year-oldnest of the echindul, with sixteen pairs of stones. He put the onestone safely back in his watch-pocket. He was keeping that one. Whenhe sold the others he would have the dealer pick out the mate to thisone, and he and Beth would keep this pair. They would be well able toafford it.
He felt the bag at his side. The stones didn't weigh much, perhaps acouple of ounces apiece, but the famous telepathic stones of Venuswere well known on Earth. Wealthy young lovers would carry a pair, ifthey could get them, so that each could know what the other wasthinking.
Scientists said the stones were matched crystals so that each pair, ineffect, was tuned in together. They said also that the stones werelittle more than nature's ultimate extension of man's feeble attemptsat radio communication.
Grant Russell knew little about that. What he did know was that thosestones were worth half a million dollars. He gathered up his patcheddiving-suit and packed it, from long habit. He raised his head and sawanother eye watching him from the swamp. He watched the eye andlistened to the rasping of the bone-plates in the constrictor'sthroat.
Ordinarily he would have tried to kill the big saurian, for its skinhad the property of turning slightly radioactive after death and itwas worth a couple of hundred dollars delivered in Aphrodite, but athought occurred to him. He watched the saurian and began to smile.The constrictor could be worth a lot more than two hundred dollars tohim.
He flipped a handful of green sand at the eye in the swamp and itwithdrew abruptly into the water. He ran, making a wide circle aroundthe constrictor's powerful tail. He darted in to the head and stoodabove the lidless eye. Three years ago he would not have walked thisclose to a _dead_ constrictor, but now--well, he'd learned not to bescared until there was need of it. He bent down. The fish was wellinside the saurian's mouth. The constrictor's jaws were distended andit was helpless.
Grant whipped the bag of stones from inside of his jacket and tied theleather thong to one leg of the fish. He made sure he had the onesingle stone in his watch-pocket. That one he had to keep to be ableto find the others. He went back to the edge of the swamp and waiteduntil he saw an eye come up, whereupon he flipped another handful ofsand at it.
He stayed there for two hours, until the bag of stones was well downthe saurian's throat. Then he set out for The Pass. He was painfullyhungry now, but he was light-hearted. Never again would he have torisk the death that infested the Great Sea-Swamp. Within thirty dayshe would be home--home on Earth. He and Beth would get a little houseout in the country and have a little garden, and he could relax andwatch his daughter grow up. She was only seven now. It wasn't toolate.
* * * * *
It was dark when he got to The Pass, the sinister city where he'd seenmen killed for a twenty-dollar bill, where girls had been sold overthe counter for fifty. He knew better than to go directly to Netse,for the Jovian and the Uranian had a sort of throat-cuttingpartnership in the underworld, and while Grant was sure Netse wouldhelp him directly to get a bigger cut, he knew also that Netsewouldn't want to be too obvious about it.
So Grant, by this time weary in the shoulders from carrying hisequipment, turned down Thorium Avenue toward Nellie's Boarding House.But under the first streetlight he was stopped by a grimy boy. Thiswas notable, because the boy was an Earthman. There weren't too manyEarthmen in The Pass.
"Where you been, Hard-Luck Russell?" the boy asked insolently.
Grant's throat was dry. He knew what that meant. Nobody who knewHard-Luck Russell would bother to stop him unless they had orders todo it--orders that came from Relegar.
"In the Swamp," Russell said, swallowing hard.
The kid stared at the diving-suit in Grant's hand, stared at Grant'sface with a sharp, penetrating, unashamed inquisitiveness that madeGrant use all of his will-power to stare back. The kid suddenlydisappeared.
Grant forced himself not to walk faster. The kid had put the finger onhim. It was the first time Relegar had ever done that. Those damnedeyes! Relegar must know what Grant had found, and the knowledge thatthe Uranian knew about the stones made him weak. Relegar was a badspider.
Grant's impulse was to run but he forced himself to be steady. Now hedidn't dare go straight to Netse. He went on to Nellie's place andhammered on the door. "Oh, it's you. Come on in." Nellie opened thedoor. Nellie was a Martian, a century-plant, and nobody knew whetherit was he or she or whether it made any difference, but they called it"she" and they called it "Nellie."
Grant went in. Nellie's leaves rustled and that queer whispery voicecame from her. "Do you want a cot?"
"I'll have a room this time," said Grant. "How much?"
"A buck," said Nellie's leaves. "Pay now."
She collected. He took his diving-suit to the room. He didn't like thesmell of cabbage and garlic, and the fumes of chlorine were so stronghe nearly choked. A Saturnian must be pickling insects somewhere up onthe second floor. He sat down. He was starved but he didn't want to gooutside until he had a chance to figure things out. He thought maybethe first thing to do was to see Netse.
From the sounds he thought the two girls across the hall were gettingready to go out. He lay down on the bed to rest.
At ten o'clock they left, jabbering. It was good to hear Earth-peopletalk, even if it was French, which he didn't understand. As soon asthe front door closed after the girls he tiptoed across the hall andtried the doorknob. It was locked. He opened it with his skeleton key.The room was dark and he did not turn on a light. He opened the windowand dropped softly to the ground in a narrow space between twobuildings.
A grating voice said, "Where you going, punk?"
Grant froze. He wanted to run but couldn't. He turned. Back at thealley, in the light, was a medium-size, solidly built man with blackhair and a long scar on his left cheek. Grant wheeled, but stoppedshort. In front of
him, at the street end, was a huge Neptunian. Itwas ten feet high. Grant shuddered. He didn't want that thing tooclose to him with its razor-sharp teeth and its fondness for blood. Hewalked toward the Earthman.
* * * * *
They took him into a snow-joint over on Chloride Street. The man led,the Neptunian followed. They went down many flights of stairs carvedin the solid purple lava and finally into an elevator. They wentfarther down.
This, then, was Relegar's headquarters. The Uranian couldn't standradiation for any length of time. Out on Uranus they had almost none,and so Venus, with its very heavy clouds that filtered the sunlight,was one of the few planets where a Uranian could live. Even so, theUranians on Venus, having an instinctive dread of sunlight becausesunlight