The Leigh Brackett Science Fiction MEGAPACK®

Chapter 5-2

“But it’s raining,” protested Bhak. “Well get caught in the attack.”

The officer’s strangely hard face was turned toward them. “No,” he said, with an odd finality, “they won’t attack. Not yet.”

They went on, toward the swamp that was worse in silence than it had been with the praying pipes. And MacIan, looking ahead at the oddly assorted men plowing grimly through the mud, caught a sudden glimpse of something dark and hidden, something beyond the simple threat of death that hung always over a reconnoitering patrol.

The swamp folded them in. It is never truly dark on Venus, owing to the thick, diffusing atmosphere. There was enough light to show branching, muddy trails, great still pools choked with weeds, the spreading liha-trees with their huge pollen pods, everything dripping with the slow rain. MacIan could hear the thudding of that rain for miles around on the silent air; the sullen forerunner of the deluge.

lihaFort and village were lost in sodden twilight. Lehn’s boots squelched onward through the mud of a trail that rose gradually to a ridge of higher ground. When he reached the top, Lehn turned abruptly, his electro-g*n seeming to materialize in his hand, and MacIan was startled by the bleak look of his pink, young face.

“Stop right there,” said Lehn quietly. “Keep your hands up. And don’t speak until I’m finished.”

He waited a second, with the rain drumming on his waterproof coverall, dripping from the ends of his fair mustache. The others were obedient, Bhak a great grinning hulk between the two slighter men. Lehn went on calmly.

“Someone has sold us out to the Nahali. That’s how I know they won’t attack until they get the help they’re waiting for. I had to find out, if possible, what preparations they have made for destroying our electrical supply, which is our only vulnerable point. But I had a double purpose in calling this party. Can you guess what it is?”

MacIan could. Lehn continued:

“The traitor had his price; escape from the Legion, from Venus, through the swamp to Lhiva, where he can ship out on a tramp. His one problem was to get away from the fort without being seen, since all leaves have been temporarily cancelled.”

Lehn’s mist-grey eyes were icy. “I gave him that chance.”

Bhak laughed, an empty, jarring road. “See? That’s what the Nahali girl said. She said, ‘He can get what he needs, now. He’ll get away before the rains, probably with a patrol; then our people can attack.’ I know what he needed. Money! And I want it.”

“Shut up!” Lehn’s electro-g*n gestured peremptorily. “I want the truth of this. Which one of you is the traitor?”

Thekla’s pointed white teeth gleamed. “MacIan loves the Legion, sir. He couldn’t be guilty.”

HeLehn’s gaze crossed MacIan’s briefly, and again the Scot had a fleeting glimpse of something softer beneath the new hardness. It was something that took him back across time to a day when he had been a green subaltern in the Terran Guards, and a hard-bitten, battle-tempered senior officer had filled the horizon for him.

It was the something that had made Lehn offer him a chance, when his trap was set and sprung. It was the something that was going to make Lehn harder on him now than on either Bhak or Thekla. It was hero-worship.

MacIan groaned inwardly. “Look here,” he said. “We’re in Nahali country. There may be trouble at any moment. Do you think this is the time for detective work? You may have caught the wrong men anyway. Better do your job of reconnoitering, and worry about the identity of the traitor back in the fort.”

“You’re not an officer now, MacIan!” snapped Lehn. “Speak up, and I want the truth. You, Thekla!”

Thekla’s black eyes were bitter. “I’d as well be here as anywhere, since I can’t be on Mars. How could I go back, with a hanging charge against me?”

“MacIan?” Lehn’s grey gaze was levelled stiffly past his head. And MacIan was quivering suddenly with rage; rage against the life that had brought him where he was, against Lehn, who was the symbol of all he had thrown away.

“Think what you like,” he whispered, “and be damned!”

Bhak’s movement came so swiftly that it caught everyone unprepared. Handling the Martian like a child’s beanbag, he picked him up and hurled him against Lehn. The electro-g*n spat a harmless bolt into empty air as the two fell struggling in the mud. MacIan sprang forward, but Bhak’s great fingers closed on his neck. With his free hand, the Titan dragged Thekla upright; he held them both helpless while he kicked the sprawling Lehn in the temple.

In the split second before unconsciousness took him, Lehn’s eyes met MacIan’s and they were terrible eyes. MacIan groaned, “You young fool!” Then Lehn was down, and Bhak’s fingers were throttling him.

“Which one?” snarled the Titan. “Give me the money, and I’ll let you go. I’m going to have the money, if I have to kill you. Then the girls won’t laugh at me. Tell me. Which one?”

MacIan’s blue eyes widened suddenly. With all his strength he fought to croak out one word: “Nahali!”

Bhak dropped them with a grunt. Swinging his great hands, forgetting his g*n completely, he stood at bay. There was a rush of bodies in the rain-blurred dusk, a flash of scarlet eyes and triangular mouths laughing in queer, noseless faces. Then there were scaly, man-like things hurled like battering-rams against the Legionnaires.

MacIan’s g*n spat blue flame; two Nahali fell, electrocuted, but there were too many of them. His helmet was torn off, so that his drenched white hair blinded him; rubber-shod fists and feet lashed against reptilian flesh. Somewhere just out of sight, Thekla was cursing breathlessly in low-canal argot. And Lehn, still dazed, was crawling gamely to his feet; his helmet had protected him from the full force of Bhak’s kick.

The hulking Titan loomed in the midst of a swarm of red-eyed swamp-rats. And MacIan saw abruptly that he had taken off his clumsy gloves when he had made ready to strangle his mates. The great six-fingered hands stretched hungrily toward a Nahali throat.

“Bhak!” yelled MacIan. “Don’t...!”

Don’tThe Titan’s heavy laughter drowned him out; the vast paws closed in a joyous grip. On the instant, Bhak’s great body bent and jerked convulsively; he slumped down, the heart burned out of him by the electricity circuited through his hands.

Lehn’s g*n spoke. There was a reek of ozone, and a Nahali screamed like a stricken reptile. The Venusian cried out in sudden pain, and was silent; MacIan, struggling upright, saw him buried under a pile of scaly bodies. Then a clammy paw touched his own face. He moaned as a numbing shock struck through him, and lapsed into semi-consciousness.

He had vague memories of being alternately carried and towed through warm lakes and across solid ground. He knew dimly that he was dumped roughly under a liha-tree in a clearing where there were thatched huts, and that he was alone.

lihaAfter what seemed a very long time he sat up, and his surroundings were clear. Even more clear was Thekla’s thin dark face peering amusedly down at him.

The Martian bared his pointed white teeth, and said, “Hello, traitor.”

MacIan would have risen and struck him, only that he was weak and dizzy. And then he saw that Thekla had a g*n.

His own holster was empty. MacIan got slowly to his feet, raking the white hair out of his eyes, and he said, “You dirty little rat!”

Thekla laughed, as a fox might laugh at a baffled hound. “Go ahead and curse me, MacIan. You high-and-mighty renegade! You were right; I’d rather swing on Mars than live another month in this damned sweatbox! And I can laugh at you, Ian MacIan! I’m going back to the deserts and the wine-shops on the Jekkara Low-canal. The Nahali girl didn’t mean money; she meant plastic surgery, to give me another face. I’m free. And you’re going to die, right here in the filthy mud!”

A slow, grim smile touched MacIan’s face, but he said nothing.

“Oh, I understand,” said Thekla mockingly. “You fallen swells and your honor! But you won’t die honorably, any more than you’ve lived that way.”

MacIan’s eyes were contemptuous and untroubled.

The pointed teeth gleamed. “You don’t understand, MacIan. Lehn isn’t going to die. He’s going back to face the music, after his post is wiped out. I don’t know what they’ll do to him, but it won’t be nice. And remember, MacIan, he thinks you sold him out. He thinks you cost him his post, his men, his career: his honor, you scut! Think that over when the swamp-rats go to work on you—they like a little fun now and then—and remember I’m laughing!”

youMacIan was silent for a long time, hands clenched at his sides, his craggy face carved in dark stone under his dripping white hair. Then he whispered, “Why?”

Thekla’s eyes met his in sudden intense hate. “Because I want to see your damned proud, supercilious noses rubbed in the dirt!”

MacIan nodded. His face was strange, as though a curtain had been drawn over it. “Where’s Lehn?”

Thekla pointed to the nearest hut. “But it won’t do you any good. The rats gave him an overdose, accidentally, of course, and he’s out for a long time.”

MacIan went unsteadily toward the hut through rain. Over his shoulder he heard Thekla’s voice: “Don’t try anything funny, MacIan. I can shoot you down before you’re anywhere near an escape, even if you could find your way back without me. The Nahali are gathering now, all over the swamp; within half an hour they’ll march on the fort, and then on to the plateaus. They’ll send my escort before they go, but you and Lehn will have to wait until they come back. You can think of me while you’re waiting to die, MacIan; me, going to Lhiva and freedom!”

MacIan didn’t answer. The rhythm of the rain changed from a slow drumming to a rapid, vicious hiss; he could see it, almost smoking in the broad leaves of the liha-trees. The drops cut his body like whips, and he realized for the first time that he was stripped to trousers and shirt. Without his protective rubber coverall, Thekla could electrocute him far quicker even than a Nahali, with his service pistol.

lihaThe hut, which had been very close, was suddenly far off, so far he could hardly see it. The muddy ground swooped and swayed underfoot. MacIan jerked himself savagely erect. Fever. Any fool who prowled the swamp without proper covering was a sure victim. He looked back at Thekla, safe in helmet and coverall, grinning like a weasel under the shelter of a pod-hung tree-branch.

The hut came back into proper perspective. Aching, trembling suddenly with icy cold, he stooped and entered. Lehn lay there, dry but stripped like MacIan, his young face slack in unconsciousness. MacIan raised a hand, let it fall limply back. Lehn was still paralyzed from the shock. It might be hours, even days before he came out of it. Perhaps never, if he wasn’t cared for properly.

MacIan must have gone a little mad then, from the fever and the shock to his own brain, and Thekla. He took Lehn’s shirt in both hands and shook him, as though to beat sense back into his brain, and shouted at him in hoarse savagery.