LAST RUN ON VENUS

                        By JAMES McKIMMEY, JR.

               _It wasn't love of adventure that forced
              Caine onto Venus' forbidden Purple Plateau.
              Oh, no. But there was a wench named Cice--a
              five-imaged wench--who could make the heart
            of any pilot leap crazily through the Galaxy._

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


This was Nicholas Caine's last run and he didn't like it. It didn't
look right or feel right or taste right. Even the small jetcopter felt
sluggish to his touch. He was getting it down too fast and up too slow.
But that, he knew, was really caused by his nerves. Usually he was as
cold about these jaunts as a piece of newly chipped ice; this was his
business. But today was different.

This was the end of it and tomorrow it wouldn't be his business
anymore. A man absorbed so much and he couldn't absorb anymore. He got
to the point finally when he kicked it over and he said, "Thank you and
to hell with it," and then he left.

And that was what Caine was doing. Only he still had this last run and
it was wrong. He knew it. It was all wrong.

He glanced at the mirror that reflected the cabin behind him.

The girl with the brown hair and the white teeth winked at him.

Caine looked away quickly and thin muscles rippled along his jaw. He
didn't know which of them was getting on his nerves more, the girl or
the insane kid who was with her.

It was certain that between them they were getting him, and he jambed a
hand forward. The ship whipped down through the air like an Earth sea
gull, skimming the tops of the vine-trees of the Venusian jungle.

"Oh, lookee, lookee!" screamed the thin twitching boy with the blond
hair. "Swamp and jungle, snakes and lizards! Are there devils down
there, Driver? Are there spooks and ghosts and witches? Hey, Driver?"

Caine didn't answer. He looked again to the mirror.

The girl was laughing and shaking her brown hair. The boy was using his
camera, leaning over the edge of the open-topped cabin. He was about
twenty-one, Caine judged. Six years younger than Caine, but he acted
like he was twelve or thirteen. Caine hadn't liked him from the start
and he hated him right now. He was just another rich kid who thought
the whole system was a playground.

And he kept calling Caine, "Driver." If he did it once more, Caine
promised himself, he'd kill him.

Only he wouldn't, he knew. He wouldn't do anything. Caine had asked for
this job, taking people with too much money on sight-seeing hops over
the wilds of the Venusian country. It was a long way for both Caine and
his jetcopter from the days when he was out at the tip of the finger of
exploration, when the American Colony had been only a rugged square on
the flatland.

Now that was over and he was leaving Venus. And the reason why he
was leaving, was because of people like the two in back of him. The
stupid, blind, selfish people who had ruined every chance for a decent
relationship between the Colonists and the Venusians.

Because the Venusians were kind and honest and good, these people had
swept over them like hail hitting flower petals. They had slashed and
gouged and broken everything in their way: the earth, the vegetation,
the Venusians themselves. Everything went down in front of the
Colonist's hand. And then they laughed and spent the money they made
and damned near tickled themselves to death with their own superiority.

Caine brought the ship up with a wrench, swearing under his breath.
Well, this was the last time he'd have anything more to do with them.
Tomorrow, he'd be on a rocket and this time he'd find a place where he
wouldn't see another damned tourist the rest of his life. The only good
thing about this was that he would use their money to do it. He wasn't
a sucker like the Venusian. He knew how to charge six times over for a
trip like this.

The boy was chattering and the girl was laughing and Caine made a slow
sweeping circle over the yellow and green and purple jungle.

The boy was jerking finished three-dimensional pictures out of the
camera and squinting at them. "Oh, Lord," he would say, giggling as
he looked. Then he would throw the picture over his shoulder and grab
another. "Oh, heavens." And that one would go over his shoulder.

"Hey, Driver!" the boy yelled. "Let's go down again."

Caine set his teeth and spiraled slowly in the cloud-dull air.

He felt a touch against his right arm. He glanced down and found the
girl's small foot beside his arm. She wiggled a sandaled toe and tapped
him again with her foot.

       *       *       *       *       *

Caine saw her small ankle and after that, the neat swell of her calf.
She wore no stockings and her skin was tanned the color of golden
wheat--from long hours, Caine knew, lying in an artificially sunlit
patio.

He looked at her in the mirror.

"Vanny wants to go down again," she said, smiling insolently. She shook
the soft brown hair and her eyes danced. She had dark blue eyes, Caine
noticed, and they sparkled and flirted. And Caine wanted none of it. He
wanted to get this over and he wanted to get away.

She was making him more nervous than the boy was, only it was a
different kind of nervousness. It was the kind that got into your blood
and found your heart and your breath, and it was more dangerous.

"Down, down!" the boy was yelling.

"All right," Caine said. "All right."

He spiraled the ship toward the jungle.

"You know," he could hear the girl say, "I don't think Driver likes
you, Vanny. I don't think he likes me, either. Why don't you like us,
Driver?"

Caine concentrated on his flying.

"You know," said the girl in her husky voice, "maybe he doesn't like it
because we call him Driver. Do you, Driver?"

Caine accelerated the ship and cut at the tips of the vine-trees. He
heard the clicks of the boy's camera and his crazy yelling.

The girl touched his arm with her toe again. "What is your name,
Driver?"

Caine looked up at the mirror and stared at the girl's eyes. She bent
forward, her smile a quirk at each corner of her red mouth. She wore a
thin blue dress that matched the color of her eyes, and its neckline
was cut so that, as she leaned forward, Caine could see that she was
probably tanned all over.

She smiled her white smile and her teeth were even and small. "Name,"
she said.

"Caine," he snapped.

"First name."

"Nicholas."

"Do they call you Nick?"

"My friends call me Nic. N-i-c. Pronounced like Nick. My friends call
me that."

"That's what I'll call you, Nic."

He stared at her in the mirror, his mouth tight.

"Aren't I your friend, Nic?" she said, wiggling her toe.

Caine swung the ship. "Let's call it a day."

"Wait a minute!" said the boy. "Wait a minute!" He stumbled past the
girl into the empty seat beside Caine. His thin mouth was suddenly
hard. "I'm paying quite a little money to see this rotten country and I
want to see it."

"We've been up an hour," Caine said.

"All right," the boy said sarcastically. "We'll stay up six hours then,
friend."

Caine felt his hands turn wet in the palms.

"I'm paying for this," the boy went on, his voice taunting, "and you're
just the driver. You don't want to forget that. Now if I want to fly
over this crap from now until Christmas you're going to do it. Isn't
that right, friend?"

Caine's heart was hammering and he knew the anger was showing in his
face. Any other time he would have handled this with a crack of his
voice, or, if he had to, a crack of his fist. But not today. Today he
didn't want any trouble. He wanted nothing to go wrong. All he wanted
was to get it over and to get out.

"Did you hear me, friend?" the boy said.

"Yes, I heard you," Caine said.

"All right," said the boy, grinning meanly. "That's fine. We understand
each other. Put her down again."

Caine snapped the nose of the ship down and the boy tumbled back into
the cabin. "Hey!" he yelled. "Lookee, lookee!"

Caine cut between the tips of the tree-vines. He nearly touched his
wheels against a clearing. He climbed. He dropped. He fought the anger.

The boy worked his camera and the girl watched Caine through the
mirror. There was a different look in her eyes now, Caine saw. A kind
of mocking look that made the anger inside of him swell and beat
against his temples.

He knew she was going to start and he asked himself, "Why? Why couldn't
they leave him alone just this one day, this one time, so that nothing
would go wrong?"

But he knew this had been that kind of a day from the time it started.
He knew as surely as he was flying the jetcopter that nothing was going
to be right about this day.

She said it: "I think Nic's afraid of Vanny."

He licked his lips and his tongue was dry.

"I mean," she said. "Isn't that queer? A great big strong man like Nic
afraid of a little boy like Vanny? Why is that, I wonder?"

Caine took his hands from the controls and rubbed them against his
knees. He could feel it breaking apart. He couldn't hang onto it.

Then the boy yelled and scrambled to the opposite side of the cabin.
The girl's feet went up and Caine caught the flash of her tan legs. She
laughed and shook her hair.

"Lookee!" cried the boy. "A purple plateau."

Caine straightened the ship and began moving swiftly away.

"No, no!" screamed the boy. "Put her down there! On the ground!" He
waved his hands and pointed at the purple-colored rise of land. "Did
you hear me, Driver? Put her down, put her down!"

"This is Venusian land," Caine said grimly, "and I wouldn't put this
ship down anyplace but Colony land."

       *       *       *       *       *

The boy was behind Caine, his thin fingers digging into Caine's
shoulder, "I'll tell you what to do, friend. You just do it."

Caine turned and looked at the boy's white, unhealthy-looking face. The
boy's lips curled again.

"If you want to fly," Caine said, "I'll fly you all day. But if you
want to land in Venusian territory you get yourself another driver." He
accented the word, driver.

The boy clutched at Caine's shoulder and hopped behind his seat. "Put
her down on that purple plateau!" the boy yelled. "Damn you, I don't
want to listen to your stupid voice! Just put her down, do you hear me,
Driver?"

Caine could feel the fingers pinching his shoulder and he could see the
white crazy face bobbing beside him. He wanted to lift just one of his
hands and slap the screaming boy across the cabin. But if he did there
would be much trouble when they got back.

The girl's father, Caine knew, was the Treasurer of the Colony. This
boy was her guest. They could make a lot of trouble for him.

He knew it wouldn't help, but he made one try: "Look," he said, "We've
got a written agreement with the Venusians to stay off this part of the
land. Don't you understand?"

"Oh, hell!" the boy shouted, "Oh, hell! Damn the Venusians! Put her
down there, Driver. Do you hear me?"

Caine swept the ship in a slow circle. He felt the slim foot at his arm
again. "Did you hear him, Driver?" asked the girl, her eyes mocking him
through the mirror.

Caine dropped the ship.

The boy plunged back through the cabin, chattering, giggling, clicking
his camera.

Caine looked at the purple plateau. It was not a plateau, really, it
was a rather flat hill in the midst of the thick swampy jungle. Around
it he could see the reflection of liquid and then the shimmering
slick-looking vine-trees.

The boy's reaction to the fact that this was Venusian territory was
what was wrong with this whole planet, Caine thought as he examined the
purple hill.

"Damn the Venusians," was the slogan for the Colony. Damn them this
way, damn them that way. Write a treaty with them, wink, and forget
about it. Get them going and coming and sideways. Because their skin
was green and their heads were round and hairless, that meant they were
stupid and inhuman and thus to be taken advantage of.

They were not stupid, Caine knew, nor were they inhuman. And how much
more advantage could be taken of them, Caine didn't know. There was a
point of resistance to everything, even to Venusians. And Caine did not
doubt that sooner or later the Colonists would push the Venusians to
it. What then, only God knew.

Right now, however, all Caine cared about was getting away from here so
he wouldn't have to watch this thing anymore. He was sick of it. Sick
to the core. The months and months he'd spent trying to help establish
Earth's civilization on this planet appeared now like having driven
around in a constant circle, and finally realizing that neither he nor
anyone else had gone anywhere.

And all because of people like the two behind him.

Caine swore bitterly to himself and circled the purple hill once more.

"Down, down!" the boy was screaming, and Caine could hear the girl
laughing.


                                  II

The nearest Colony post, Caine judged, was thirty miles away. That
meant no one would observe his silver ship dropping into the forbidden
jungle. But even breaking the treaty would be no worse than inflicting
the wrath of a guest of the Treasurer. Or the Treasurer's daughter.

He drifted slowly above the hill. At least, he hoped, there would be no
Venusians around this part, although you couldn't tell. If there were,
probably they wouldn't do anything, Caine decided, because they did not
believe in violence or in physical conflict.

But there was a matter of honor, and Caine for one, especially Caine,
did not want to be responsible on this, his last day on the planet, for
breaching that honor with these native people.

The perils of the swamp was a thing he saved for final consideration.
They would go no further than the boundaries of the small hill. But
in reality, Caine hoped that something might be down there, waiting
to scare the stupidity out of the loud kid who was forcing him down.
Caine didn't know what that might be, because you could never tell what
waited for you in the Venusian jungle. It was all strange, unexplored
land, and this land, Caine had learned, produced many very weird and
awful things.

They would soon find out.

He dropped the ship slowly, aiming for the center of the gradually
sloping hill. The boy was like a crazy bird locked in a cage. The girl
shook her hair, her teeth shining whitely while she laughed, but Caine
could feel her eyes watching him, watching him.

Caine knew then, in that split second before the wheels of the ship
touched the purple hill, that it hadn't been the boy's demand that
had forced him down, but the girl, watching him through the mirror,
taunting him, daring him, that had made him do this.

He looked up at her and the look she returned made a shiver dance along
his spine.

The wheels touched ground.

The boy clawed at the door. "Lookee, lookee, lookee!" he yelled.

Caine's hand snapped out and struck the boy's fingers away from the
lock of the door.

"Hey!" said the boy, spinning. "Watch out, Driver. Watch out with that.
You don't want to make me mad now, friend. Do you, friend? Do you?"

Caine looked at the narrow glittering eyes of the boy. "No," he said
quietly. "I don't want to make you mad."

"That's fine," the boy said, nodding. "That's fine."

The girl reached over and touched the boy. "You tell him, Vanny. You
tell him anything you want to. He'll listen and nod and say yes to
anything. He's a very sweet fellow, Nic is."

Caine jambed his seat back and stood up. He took out his holstered
pistol from the small compartment beneath the instrument panel. He
strapped the holster to his waist and turned around.

"I don't want either one of you going beyond the boundary of this hill.
I don't like being down here. I'll tell you that before we get out. And
so I don't want any trouble. Get out and look and that's all. In five
minutes I'm taking off. If you're not in this ship you can walk back.
Do you understand?"

The girl raised her eyebrows and whistled. "Listen to the captain."

The boy yanked at the door. "I don't want to hear your damned speeches,
Driver. Open the door that's all, before I get mad."

Caine hit the lock and the boy spilled out to the purple-colored
surface.

Caine looked at the girl. She sat there, legs crossed, smiling at him.
"I asked you your name. You didn't ask me mine. Don't you want to know,
Captain?"

"No," Caine said.

"It's Cice. Isn't that pretty? Cice? Doesn't it sound nice with Nic?"

"No," said Caine, "it doesn't."

She pursed her lips and stood up suddenly. "All right, Driver. Let's
look at the jungle."

Caine climbed out and turned to help the girl. He held up a hand and
caught hold of her fingers. He looked up at her and waited for her to
come down into his arms.

She didn't. She threw his hand away and leaped to the ground, a flash
of gold and blue. She was like a cat, and there was no loss of dignity
or presence when she landed beside Caine. Caine turned away and walked
to the tip end of the ship's right wing.

He reached down and felt of the moss-like substance covering the hill.
It was like a thick carpet, but spongier, and it was moist. The air was
moist, too, and it was in the soft breeze that touched Caine's face and
made the slippery leaves around the hill swing and slide together.

The boy was spinning like a gyroscope, snapping pictures this way and
that, jerking the finished prints out, looking at them, and throwing
them away.

The girl had walked to the front of the ship and stood there, very
straight and perfect, letting the wind ripple her blue dress.

Suddenly, the boy swung around and vaulted to the short thin wing of
the jetcopter. He crouched there, clicking his camera, while the ship
tipped.

Caine yelled, and then as though the center had been split out of the
huge moss carpet, it began to slide toward the canal of liquid around
the hill. The ship swung partially sideways, while the white-faced boy
with the camera pranced on its wing. Caine felt himself moving with the
sliding moss and he jumped forward. The girl had fallen to her knees
and was reaching for the solid rock-like surface beneath the moss.

       *       *       *       *       *

The boy had frozen against the surface of the ship now, and as the tail
jets hit the liquid, the silver metal melted and disappeared in the
shimmering stuff like soft lead going into fire.

Caine let out a yell and scrambled over the shifting carpet and yanked
the girl to the exposed rock. Then he jumped back and grabbed at the
hook of the ship's nose, knowing even as he did it that it was a
senseless action. The ship kept sliding.

Foot by foot it disintegrated, as though the liquid were an acid. Still
the boy hung like a frightened animal to the silver wing. Caine lunged
for the boy's hand, but he slipped to his knees and felt himself
sliding toward the liquid.

He reached up to the wing, now sticking in the air like a broken arm.
He pulled himself to his feet and it was like standing on shifting
grease. He found the boy's arm and yanked hard. The boy came flying
off the wing and hit the slipping moss, the camera swinging around his
neck, his arms fighting.

The ship had nearly melted in the liquid and the right wing, the last
of it, crumpled and slid into the shining acid and disappeared.

Caine fought along the edge of the hill, trying to push the boy to the
exposed rock that had lain beneath the moss-like surface.

The boy screamed and flailed his arms and legs, and the movement was
making them slide toward the waiting liquid. Caine gritted his teeth
and leaped ahead, pulling the boy with him. He found solid rock as the
final covering of the purple carpet slid into the liquid.

Caine lay on the rock, breathing hard, his hands clutching the boy's
jacket.

The boy shook himself loose and he was no longer screaming. "Take your
filthy hands off of me," he said to Caine.

Caine's face flushed and his eyes thinned.

The boy stared back at Caine for a long moment, then he stood up and
examined his camera.

Caine got to his feet and went up the incline to where the girl waited.
"Are you all right?" he asked her.

There was a different look in her eyes. There was no mocking or
sarcasm. "Yes," she said, shaking her hair and smiling a little. "I'm
all right, Nic."

"Well, that's damned fine," Caine said, a line cutting between his
eyebrows. "That's really damned fine because my ship isn't. Have you
noticed? Three years of sweat and blood gone down the sewer. Isn't that
fine?"

Her smile flickered and she touched his arm. "I'm sorry, Nic. It was
our fault--"

He shook himself away from her touch. "Yes, it was your fault and it
didn't need to happen, only you and the screaming idiot had to do it.
Ships are a dime a dozen to you but not to Nic Caine."

Her smile had vanished and there was a bright glinting light in her
eyes. She stood very straight and met Caine's furious stare. "I'll buy
you a new one when we get back, Driver. I don't want to see you cry.
Wipe the tears away, honey ..." she reached to pat his shoulder and he
slapped her hand away.

"Keep your hands away from me and don't use that tone of voice when
you're talking to me. I'll take that ship from you when we get back. If
we do get back. And you can count on that. In the meantime don't push
me anymore, or I'll...."

"You'll what?" she said, her white smile shining at him. "You'll do
what? I'm interested. Say what you're going to do. Or better yet, just
do it. I'm ready."

Her smile was a shimmering thing and her eyes danced like bright stars.
Caine felt of his strength by clamping his hands into fists.

He hardened his arm muscles and his shoulder muscles, but he knew he
didn't have at that moment enough strength to meet her smile and her
eyes and her tanned smooth skin. He could strike her half-way across
the rock, but she was stronger and he could see in her eyes that she
knew it.

But that was her strength right now.

He would test it later and see how it was. And he would test his own,
because if they were going to get out of this jungle, they would need
all the strength they could find.

Caine whirled. "What do you want?" he asked the boy who had come up
behind him.

"I want to know how you're going to get us out of here, Driver." The
boy's face still held the same stretched sarcastic look, but his eyes
were no longer sharp and insolent. The fright showed easily, and behind
the fright, Caine knew there was panic.

"I'm not going to get you out of here," Caine said, his voice suddenly
soft. "I'm going to leave you right here to think about your stupidity."

"Listen, listen!" the boy screamed. "You don't talk that way to me,
friend. You listen, you don't talk to me that way, do you hear?"

Caine's voice was a quick snapping sound. "Shut up!" He stood there,
body tense, his eyes glaring at the frantic youth.

The boy turned and ran a few feet across the hill where he fell down
on his knees and crouched, his eyes darting like those of a penned
wildcat. He lifted his camera, released the shutter, and yanked out the
finished picture to throw it into the waiting liquid.

The picture skipped and then floated.

Caine stared at the floating picture. It lay on the surface for a long
minute and then slowly it disappeared.

He turned and looked at the liquid where his ship had disintegrated.
Bobbing near the surface was the plastic of the seats. Caine frowned.

The boy was running at him again, arms flailing, and Caine felt the
sting of the boy's fists striking him. He pushed the boy back so that
he fell sprawled on the rock surface.

"It's all around us!" the boy screamed. "The damned stuff is all around
us. You get us out of here, Driver. Do you hear, you get us out of
here!"

The girl stood over the wild boy. "You know, Vanny, you're really a
jolly fellow."

"You keep your mouth shut!" he yelled at her.

The girl turned away and looked at Caine. "What do we do, just stand
here?"

Caine watched the contained look on her face. He knew she was
frightened and feeling the panic that was so obvious in the boy. But
she stood very straight and her voice was very steady. She would not
show her fear.

Caine pointed at the plastic. "The seat covering didn't disintegrate
and neither did the picture. Only the metal of the ship."

"So?" she said.

"So maybe we wouldn't disintegrate either."

Caine walked down the hill and crouched at the edge of the liquid. The
girl followed and waited a few feet behind him.

The boy still lay sprawled near the top of the hill, his darting eyes
watching them.

Caine took a handkerchief from his pocket and dropped it into the
liquid. It floated until it was soaked through and then it sank.

"All right," the girl said. "How do we find out what it does to human
flesh?"

Caine looked back at the boy.

The boy slammed his palms back against the rock and his body tightened
so that the cords of his neck stuck out. His lips trembled.

Caine kept his eyes upon the boy, flexed his fingers, and then drove
his hand into the liquid.

The girl screamed and her hand flew against her mouth. The boy lay
twitching against the rock, his eyes upon Caine's submerged arm.

Caine brought his hand out of the liquid.

The metal snap that had fastened his sleeve at the wrist was gone and
so was the small gold ring he had worn on his little finger. But there
was no trace of effect on his skin.

Caine stood up.

There was only the sound of the whispering leaves and in the sky an
infrequent sun appeared and edged toward the tops of the trees, sending
its glittering reflection into the depths of the moat-like liquid
around them.

Caine pointed to the vine-trees at the other side. "There's the
direction of the nearest post. We'd better start."

The boy scrambled to his feet. He stood, feet spread, like a thin
scarecrow. "You're not going to get me into that stuff! You can't make
me do that. Do you hear me?" His voice was a screeching whine that rose
and fell through the peace of the thick jungle.

"I'm not going to make you do anything," Caine said, unbuckling his
holster. "You can stay here and starve. It'll be nobody's loss. Stay
here. Both of you," he said, looking at the girl.

Her teeth caught her underlip and her eyes glinted. "Thank you," she
said. "Thank you very much."

"You're welcome," Caine said, and then he turned and stepped into the
liquid.

His nerves jumped inside of him and he wanted to leap out of the stuff
and run and lie against the protection of the rock the way the boy had
done. But he set his teeth and took one step after another, holding his
pistol high above his head.

He felt his jacket open as the metallic snaps disintegrated, and the
liquid seeped against his chest. His belt fell loose as the buckle went
away, but his trousers, cut in the Venusian Colony style, hugged his
hips tightly. The nails in his boots disappeared, and he could feel his
soles coming off. The floor of the liquid was like soft clay against
his stocking-covered feet.

The liquid crawled up until it was even with his chest and Caine kept
moving, one step after another, forcing his muscles to work. The liquid
touched his shoulders. If it crawled any higher it would get in his
mouth and melt the fillings out of his teeth. Caine thought about that
and he kept going. He reached the center and the liquid rose no higher.

When he reached the opposite bank he looked at his body. His skin was
not harmed. He jerked the useless boots off and threw them away. Then
he hung his holstered pistol on the branch of one of the vine-trees to
wait until his body had dried of the deadly liquid.

He looked back to the hill.

The girl was stepping into the liquid.


                                  III

The sun gleamed against her hair, and her eyes were very blue and
steady as they watched Caine. She took one step and then another, her
eyes never wavering from Caine. The blue dress disappeared into the
liquid, inch by inch, and Caine noticed the glitter of the silver
buttons that ran down the front of it.

The girl moved slowly, and the liquid reached her shoulders and her
chin, and then it was rippling against her lower lip. She was half-way.

She came up carefully. Her eyes were still steadily watching Caine.

It was a moment when the tenseness disappeared out of him, and the time
and situation went out of his mind. It was a moment when there was
nothing but the girl with the steady eyes and the shining hair, coming
slowly out of the liquid, dress open, and golden-tan body rippling with
each movement. Time stopped and silence hung in the air, broken only by
the sound of her bare legs going through the liquid.

Caine watched, feeling his pulse beating in his temples and the girl
stood before him at the edge of the liquid, her tan skin wet and shiny.

She took a quick breath and Caine felt his nails bite his palms.

Then she swept the dress together and held out her hand. "Give me your
belt, Driver." Her face was expressionless.

He slipped the clasp-less belt from his trousers and handed it to her.
She circled it around her waist and tied the ends together.

They both turned and looked back to the thin creature crouched on the
hill across the acid canal.

Again the still silence of the jungle was heavy and each movement of a
leaf or the bend of a vine stalk echoed and magnified its echo through
the wild growth. The sun reached the tips of the vine-trees.

"We'll give you three minutes," Caine called to the boy. "If you don't
get over by then you can stay there by yourself."

The boy leaped up and ran to the edge of the liquid. His face was a
white flashing movement and his hands flew as though the joints in his
arms had turned to rubber. His voice screeched. "You won't leave me,
damn you. You won't leave me!" He moved along the edge of the liquid as
though he were doing a crazy dance.

"One minute," Caine said. "Two to go."

The boy skittered up the side of the hill and held his camera against
his eye, pointing it at Caine. He ripped the picture out and ran back
to the bottom of the hill, throwing it at Caine. It fluttered short,
drifting for a moment on the liquid, and disappeared. The boy fell on
his knees and hammered his fists against the rock.

"Two minutes gone," Caine said.

"Oh, you're rotten, curse you!" the boy yelled, and Caine could see
tears glistening on the shallow cheeks. The boy crouched then, frozen,
his eyes and tears glittering, his hands like claws against the rock.

"Three," said Caine, swinging around.

The boy's cry went into the air, a long, shrill whine. He stood up and
through his open mouth came the cry, steady, monotonous. A weird crazy
cry that stung Caine's brain and made him want to crash through the
liquid all over again, to squeeze the skinny throat until the sound was
gone.

The girl clenched her fists and Caine waved his hand at the thick green
growth behind them. "Let's go," he said.

All at once the boy was in the liquid, hands clutching his camera in
the air, moving, his screaming voice rising, piercing the air until
there was nothing else but the hysterical sound. His eyes widened and
his mouth was open and he kept screaming. It was a pulsating sound,
like a siren, over and over. The liquid splashed and the boy moved, and
finally he found the opposite edge of the liquid and he fell onto the
ground and lay there, still screaming.

Caine watched him for a moment while the girl stood, as though frozen
out of motion by the terrible sound.

Suddenly Caine stepped forward, jerked the boy up by the collar and
slapped his hand back and forth across the wet, insane face.

The screaming stopped, and Caine let the boy drop back to the ground.

"I didn't make you mad, did I?" Caine said, his lips against his teeth.

The boy huddled, his eyes narrow darting slits.

Caine turned to the girl. "Do you want to go with me, or do you want to
stay here with your jibbering friend?"

The girl met his stare. "You're really tough, aren't you, Driver?"

"Like steel," Caine said, and he jerked his holster from the branch and
snapped it around his waist. The sun was making long quivering shadows
over the hill and the liquid and there was a cooling of the air. Caine
strode into the tangled growth and began moving through the jungle.

"Nic...." He heard the sound behind him, a quick, involuntary word that
she tried to stop by shutting her teeth together.

A little weakness, he thought, somewhere in the midst of the strength.
He let his teeth show, without really smiling. "Are you coming?"

She came after him.

They moved together through the darkening entanglement of leaves and
vines. Behind them now, they could hear the cashing, erratic sound of
the boy, following them.

The light was dim as they penetrated the thick growth. There was a
sweet moist smell to the air, and around them the yellow and green and
purple leaves showed their colors vaguely in the Venus twilight.

Here and there sharp-edged plants with thick round bases and knife-like
leaves quivered in the breeze like waiting swords.

       *       *       *       *       *

Once Caine tripped and as he caught himself, his hand whipped against
one of the plants, and he found his palm slit thinly. He wiped the
blood against his jacket and touched the razor-sharp plant carefully.
It was like a slim piece of honed steel.

Light disappeared, and Caine led the way through the maze of foliage.
Slippery tongues of green softness, swirled around his ankles and
slowed each step. Following direction was difficult, and the razor
leaves kept nipping at him. A chill went into the air and a thick
blanket of moisture fell around them.

Caine stopped. The girl waited behind him and Caine could hear the
movement of the boy nearing him.

The girl was a misty outline in Caine's vision, but he could see the
white of her eyes and when she breathed, he could see the fine line of
whiteness that was her teeth. Her dress was a blue veil and the tan
skin of her body blended into the darkness and the mist and the solid
growth of the jungle.

The bobbing form of the boy appeared, finally, and he crouched a few
feet away.

"We'll stay here," Caine said.

He could hear the click of the boy's teeth going together. The white
gaunt face wavered and Caine could hear the swinging motions of the
boy's arms. "You stay here," the boy yelled. "I'm not going to lie in
this muck and dung! I'm not--"

"Don't then," Caine said softly. "Go on alone."

The boy was suddenly silent, and Caine watched his shape through the
darkness. There was no more sound from him, and Caine knelt to the
thick floor of greenness. He explored the soft growth with his fingers,
and finally he stretched out, relaxing each muscle to fight the
chilling penetration of the cooling night.

The girl lay down beside him. Caine could see her, the outline of her
body, her eyes that watched him. He felt the touch of her fingers
against his bare chest. "Nic ..." she said.

Caine turned over and faced the other direction.

Sleep came swiftly. His mind dimmed and his body went limp and there
was only blackness.

The cold light of dawn was in his eyes and he woke up swearing. His
right hand swung out and caught air. He jumped up and leaped forward,
but his hands caught nothing. The boy was away from him, twisting
backwards into the undergrowth. Caine knelt, still cursing, one hand
on his empty holster. He could see the glint of the pistol in the boy's
hand.

"What are you going to do with it," he asked the boy, "now that you've
got it?"

"Kill you, Driver."

"Sure," Caine said. "And then who leads you back to your crib?"

The boy's lips worked back and forth over his teeth. He shook the gun
in his hand. "I didn't say when I'd do it, Driver. You just stand up
and start moving. I'll let you know when. Do you hear me?" The boy's
voice rose to a sudden scream. The pistol swept through the air and
smashed a vine to pulpy shreds. Then it was pointing again at Caine's
stomach. "Move!" the boy yelled.

Caine straightened and began to move through the foliage. The girl
started to follow.

"No!" the boy screamed. He jumped to the girl's side and grabbed
her arm. He motioned the gun again in the crazy leaping way he did
everything.

Caine started through the jungle.

He could feel the pistol pointing at his back and he could feel the
stare of the boy's bright darting eyes. The boy was shrewd, Caine
thought, like a crazed animal. Fear had warped the already wayward
brain, and to try to charge him or bully him or anything else would
be like striking matches in a room full of explosives. He would
have to wait, Caine decided, until he found a chance to trick the
lightning-like senses of the boy.

Somehow, he would have to find a way to sweep the pistol out of the
boy's nervous fingers. And Caine was thinking of this, working it back
and forth in his brain, when they reached another circular clearing.

Yellow and green grass lay glistening in the morning dampness. Purple
and red flowers dotted the thick carpet. A wall of vines and thick
leaves bounded the clearing and the thin razor leaves extended here and
there from the thick wall like polished rapiers.

Caine walked nearly to the center of the circle and then stopped
suddenly.

He could see them, just behind the first thickness of foliage. The pale
green skin and the globular heads and the large round eyes, lidless and
soft-looking.

He turned back to the girl and the boy.

The boy waved the pistol. "Go on, damn you. Go on!"

Caine glanced back at the green-skinned creatures who waited in the
green growth.

"I told you," the boy screamed, "you go on! Do you hear me?"

       *       *       *       *       *

Caine held his hands at his sides, feeling his nerves tremble inside of
him. It wasn't fear of the Venusians that made him tense. It was the
boy with the pistol and the girl and the total of things.

They were in forbidden territory, trespassing on ground called sacred
to the native people of this planet. Caine, who had worked so hard to
help preserve the sanctity of these people's rights, had become now
like the rest of the Colonists he had hated so much. He had brought the
evil into the center of the Venusians' own private domain, and he was
responsible.

"Did you hear me?" the boy screamed.

"Yes," Caine said, closing his fingers against his palms. "I heard
you." He watched the muzzle of the gun. If the boy's eyes found the
Venusians, he would pump the gun wildly at them and there would be
death, and the impact of it could unbalance the whole structure of the
relationship that already was leaning precariously.

"Well, then, you do what I tell you."

Caine's eyes narrowed.

"Nic," the girl said. "Do what he says. He's crazy, he--"

The boy's left hand lashed out and struck the girl. She stumbled to the
ground.

"You shouldn't have done that," Caine said, stepping forward.

The boy crouched, holding the gun with both hands. "You don't move any
further. Do you hear? You don't move any further!"

Caine took another step and then he heard the movement of the Venusians
behind him. He saw the boy's eyes widen, and out of the corners of his
own eyes Caine could see the green skin of the approaching natives.

The boy cocked his head, his eyes shifting rapidly. His mouth was a
grotesque leer. He yelled, "Oh, no, you filthy ..." and then the sound
of his voice was lost in the explosion of the gun.

As though he were dreaming, Caine saw the jerking of the pistol in the
boy's hand. He heard the peculiar screams around him as the bullets
sprayed the clearing. He felt his shoulder burn as a wild slug cut his
skin. Then he was diving forward.

The boy leaped sideways out of Caine's reach, falling and climbing up
again, still firing the pistol. He yelled crazily, spinning and firing,
and all of a sudden there was an end to the sound and the movement.

The boy was facing the clearing from the edge of the enclosing growth.
His face was a surprised, contorted thing, and the pistol dropped out
of his hand. He coughed once, and looked down at the red end of the
razor leaf that had gone through his back and now showed its gleaming
point through the center of his chest.

The boy crumpled and hung on the plant like a punctured rag doll. His
head lolled at a twisted angle and his open eyes stared unseeing at the
clearing.

Caine was on his knees, his hand against the wounded shoulder. The girl
still lay on the soft grass, unhurt, but her face was pale beneath the
golden tan.

Two Venusians lay sprawled across the clearing, their large lidless
eyes staring at the sky. There was no sign of the others, and the
jungle was silent.

Caine crawled to his feet. The wound of his shoulder was slight and
already the flow if blood had diminished, but his skin felt as though
it had been razed by fire.

The girl stood up slowly and looked at him, her eyes showing that fear
had finally gotten inside of her.

Caine's eyes were hard as he stared back at her, and the hate and
indignation for what had just happened made his stomach tighten and
his hands tremble. In that instant, he detested the sight of the girl
because she was a part of the group that had bred the crazed specie
that hung now on the tip of a razor plant.

He wanted to hurt her, to make her suffer for the two green-skinned
beings that lay dead; two more victims of a sweeping cruel invasion
that cared nothing for the inherent rights of a native race; victims
because they had been naive and trusting and basically honest.

So because he wanted to hurt her, he walked quietly across the
clearing, lifted the limp body of the boy, and struck his hand across
the dead face.

Her cry was a short, shocked sound.

He snapped the body up again and drew his hand back.

"Don't!" she screamed. "Don't do that again!"

He saw the tears shining on her cheeks. Her lips were trembling and her
hands were white tight fists.

He let the body fall against the impalement of the plant. He noticed
then that the camera was still looped around the boy's neck. He held
the camera in his hand, and then he snapped the strap over the boy's
head and put it around his own neck.

"You louse," she said, her voice hissing through the small white teeth.
"Why don't you take his money, too?"

He looked at her, his eyes steady and cold. Then he dug a hand into
the pocket of the boy's jacket and drew out a wallet. He extracted a
thick packet of Colony currency, put it in his own pocket and threw
the wallet into the brush. His eyes were icy and full of hate when he
looked at her. "He forgot to pay me for this trip."

She cursed him.

Caine walked quickly across the clearing and examined the two
Venusians. Then he turned back to the girl.

"This is one they won't let go by. I'll guarantee that. Do you want to
wait for them with your friend?" Caine said, motioning toward the boy.
"Or do you want to face it with me?"

"I'll make you pay for hitting him," the girl said, controlling her
voice.

"Sure," Caine said, his smile a humorless curl of the mouth. He crossed
the clearing, picked up his gun and reentered the brush. He could hear
her following.

He hurried. The remainder of the group he had seen in the clearing
would be taking care of the two bodies now, and probably, the body of
the boy. There would be no violence or physical harm, but these people
were capable of strange things, and Caine felt himself searching the
brush around him tensely.

The girl followed him stubbornly. And Caine lengthened his strides,
smashing through the thick growth, dodging the razor leaves, skirting
the muck-like pools that appeared here and there.


                                  IV

The air was getting hot and sticky, and there was the ripe sweet smell
that made him sick. At that moment, Caine realized that he hadn't eaten
since this trip began and his stomach was like a hard knot.

Ahead was a small dark opening. Caine could see there a large
scattering of the purple wild grapes out of which the common settlers
had made so much wine. He pushed into the clearing and grabbed a
handful of the rich-colored fruit.

He kept his back to the girl who had entered the clearing behind him.
He sorted out one of the ripest of the grapes and lifted it to his
mouth.

He felt his hand being caught.

The girl was beside him and her tan fingers were around his wrist.

He turned and faced her.

With her other hand, she took the grape from his fingers and held it up
to his mouth. Her eyes were deep blue sparkling lights that shone even
in the dimly filtered light. Her skin was golden and shiny, and Caine
could see the long bare V that ran from her throat to the belted waist.
The blue dress was filled with a jutting mound on either side of the V.

She took a breath and the dress drew taut.

Caine slapped the grape from her hand.

She shook her head, her hair soft and rustling. She lifted another
grape and held it to his lips. "You can't refuse it," she said.

"The hell I can't," he said, and his hand was an arcing motion that
sent the grape whirling across the clearing.

"You can't," she repeated, and she touched her fingers against his
chest.

He watched her steadily, seeing the blue eyes narrow to thin sparkling
slits, the whiteness of the small teeth as her lips parted.

"I'm paying you back, Driver."

"You're cheap. For all your money and your breeding, you're no better
than the ones who walk the streets."

"You're right, Driver," she said, and her voice was soft and husky.
"And you want to be so strong and self-contained. You want to rule
everything you touch or look at. You worship your own shrine, Driver,
only you're not strong enough to refuse this. You can slap dead kids,
only you're too damned weak to walk away from me. You hate me for that,
Driver, and you hate yourself. But you can't do anything about it
because I'm stronger than you are, and you're weak, you're really weak,
Driver."

He watched her, and her face was a golden oval that waited for him. He
swept her hands from his chest.

She stood there, hands at her sides, and still she waited. He wanted to
lash out at her face with his fist but he couldn't. All he could do was
stand there, as though he were frozen, locked by her eyes and the white
shine of her teeth and the golden smoothness of her skin.

Then he felt his hands and arms moving and he couldn't stop them. His
fingers were jerking blue cloth and touching cool skin, and her face
was in front of his, the blue eyes glittering, the white teeth shining.
He tried to fight it and when she whispered, "You weak miserable
coward," he wanted to crack her body in two.

But he didn't and all he could do was know the golden face was coming
up to his, her eyes nearly closed, her lips apart--and then all at once
he swore and sent her spinning away from him.

He stepped back feeling his heart jumping inside of him. Sweat prickled
out on his forehead.

On the ground in front of him were five girls with the tan skin and
shimmering brown hair. He heard "Nic ..." and it was a multi-voiced
echo. Five faces paled and ten eyes stared in panic. Fifty fingers
clutched at five throats. It was a quintuple exposure of the girl he
had just held in his arms, and it made his blood thin and chill in his
veins.

"For heaven's sake, Nic ..." and the echo of five voices wavered
through the jungle.

Caine stood motionless, staring.

Five hands reached out for help. Ten eyes pleaded.

His nerves were like flying charges of electricity along his spine.

Then there was a sudden swift movement and the five figures before him
meshed into one jumbled mass and began moving away from him, through
the green growth.

He watched, feeling the sweat on his forehead turn cold. This would
be the way the Venusians would do it. Not force or violence, but this.
A quiet, smooth absorption of the girl through illusion, the deadliest
power of the Venusian. A hypnotic lock of his brain and hers so that
instead of seeing four green-skinned Venusians and one girl, he saw
five girls.

And there was, he knew, no way to break through the spell. The illusion
would remain true to smell and touch as well as sight and hearing.

He heard five voices ring out together through the jungle. "Nic,
please!"

       *       *       *       *       *

He started forward. As he moved, he examined himself for one brief
moment, asking himself why he was going after a girl he told himself he
hated. And there was no answer, except the same pulling force that had
made him want her with every fiber of his body only a few seconds ago.

He knew, reasonably, that a loss of a girl who was a daughter of a
Colony official would have the same effect as a fired fuse in the
relations between the natives and the Colonizers. But even this was,
at the moment, unimportant, and it was only an emotion that drove him
forward, an emotion that got into his blood and brain. And he hated
it and he tried to free himself of it, but it drove him on, and all
he could think of was tearing the girl free from the grasp of the
creatures.

But how?

He didn't know, and he kept following the jumbled movement of tan skin
and blue cloth ahead of him. He couldn't use the gun at his side,
because he couldn't tell reality from illusion. He wouldn't know
whether he would find his bullet in a green globular head or in the
finely shaped head with the shimmering brown hair. He could only follow
and think, think of an answer.

The jungle rippled with the movement of the five forms ahead of him,
and Caine went on, swinging at the growth, swearing, sweating, driving
his brain to find the solution.

The figures stopped, finally, in a short vine-enclosed square. He
walked to the fringe of the opening and watched the five faces, pale
and frightened, staring back it him. Five hands went up to five mouths
and trembled against red lips. "Nic, please do something!" The five
voices rang against his ears.

"I'm here, Nic. Here!" The five faces pleaded with him.

He closed his hands, his eyes shifting from one face to another. He
couldn't tell. It was like trying to capture an image in a room full of
mirrors.

"Oh, God," the voices moaned, and together the figures slumped to the
ground.

They were considerate and polite even now, Caine thought. They were
letting her rest. They wouldn't hurt her physically, only move her
steadily away to the oblivion of illusion. Cultured, quiet, but because
of what had been done in a clearing miles back, deadly.

And he would have to fight it the same way. Against everything he had
tried to do here, he was finally ending it up, forced to fight the
people he had tried to protect and defend. He hated the memory of the
boy and he hated the girl, but he was drawn into it as though he were
being swept into a sucking, swirling whirlpool.

Caine kneeled down, his eyes watching the trembling figures in front
of him, each of the forms precise images of the girl. He was tired,
and even in the tenseness of the moment he could feel his hunger. But
there was no time now, except to try to break through this armour of
hypnotism.

"Cice," he said, listening to his voice saying her name for the first
time. "When I say move, put your right hand out in front of you."

Five faces watched him.

"Move," he said.

Five hands extended into the air.

"What's my name, Cice?"

Five voices said, "Nic."

He worked his fingers. It was his own brain creating a mirage, and it
was Cice's, too. The Venusians were sitting there, digging into each of
their brains, creating this terrible block that couldn't be penetrated.

She was crying now, and the sound of it, magnified five times, ground
against Caine's nerves. "Please, Nic," said the voices. "Please do
something!"

He struck his fist against his knee, and the movement juggled the
camera that was still around his neck. He grabbed it angrily and began
to throw the loop off. Suddenly he paused.

He remembered the frantic boy, ripping picture after picture out of
the compact black mechanism. He dropped to his haunches, keeping his
eyes upon the five images of the girl. They could make illusions of
themselves to Caine's brain, but could they trick a camera?

His right hand slowly unloosened his pistol in its holster. Then he
began talking to Cice, saying anything, to keep the sound of his voice
over the click of the camera's shutter. He drew the camera up against
one knee, as though he were making an unconscious nervous gesture, so
that the lens pointed at the five figures.

He released the shutter, and it seemed as though the sound of it were
magnified ten times.

He lifted the edge of the picture that appeared from a slot in the
upper part of the camera, and finally he dropped his glance. He saw in
the shiny photograph Cice and four green-skinned Venusians. Cice was
the second figure from the left.

His pistol was out of its holster and in his hand, and the jungle
screamed with the sound of the explosions and the cries and the
ricocheting bullets.

When it was over, four Venusians lay sprawling, visible now to Caine's
eyes, their hypnotic spell broken and their brains dead.

The girl, her hands against the sides of her face, was still on the
ground, but her body had stiffened with fright and she was trembling
all over.

"Oh, Nic," she said, over and over.

       *       *       *       *       *

Caine stood up and looked at the bodies of the creatures he had just
killed. The sweat that had formed while he had carefully trapped the
Venusians turned cold on his skin. He unlooped the camera from his neck
and dropped it on the ground. Then he stood there, staring at the dead
green bodies, his face tight and mask-like.

The girl stood up unsteadily. She walked slowly to his side and touched
his arm. He jumped away, as though he had been struck by a needle. A
shudder went through the muscles where she had touched him.

"Nic, you...."

"Don't talk to me," he said, trying to keep his voice even and not
trembling, "and don't touch me. I don't want to hear you or feel you
again. I'll lead you back to the post, but don't come near me or I'll
kill you like I killed those poor creatures."

"You can't blame me for this, Nic," she said and there were thin lines
of tears on her cheeks. "I wouldn't have asked for this."

"Oh, yes, you would. You did. That's why it happened. You asked for it
when you needled me into coming down here. You asked for it when you
couldn't remember that an agreement with these people was something
valid and honest. You and your sweet dead friend, you're what's the
matter with this planet! You can't understand what decency and respect
are, so you step on anything that gets in your way, and if that won't
work you kick it or shoot it. But you destroy it and you don't really
give one simple damn, just so you enjoy yourself and get a laugh out
of it. And for me, I'm sick of it, and I'm going to get on the first
rocket I can find, so I can breathe again and feel clean and not get
sick to my stomach every time I look around."

He hoped she could not keep up with him.

But she did, and he could hear her behind him, gasping now and then,
crying once. But she followed him and when the jungle had turned dark
and he finally saw the yellow lights of the outpost, she was still
behind him, calling him.

He stopped and turned.

She leaned against a thick vine and Caine could see in the yellow light
from the windows of the houses, that her hair had been ruffled and
matted and that her dress was torn in a dozen places. A thin trickle of
blood was coming from a cut above her left eye. She was barefoot, Caine
noticed for the first time, and he knew what her feet must be like.
But the beauty was still there and the bearing, and although lines of
fatigue had been etched into her face, there was still the life and the
fire.

"What do you want?" he said flatly.

She clutched at the vine and Caine could see her biting the inside of
her lip. "I wanted to tell you, Nic, that I was wrong about you."

He waited motionless, keeping his eyes thin and hard.

"I thought you were strong, Nic. I thought you were the strongest man
I'd ever seen. You were a challenge and I wanted to see that strength
break. That's why I did what I did in that clearing back there. Only
just before the Venusians came I knew you were going to love me, hating
me at the same time. I didn't want you that way.

"It wasn't just a challenge then," she said, her white teeth gritting.
"It was _you_, because I suddenly thought you were noble and honest and
because I thought the strength was real. But I was wrong, Nic."

Caine wiped his palms slowly back and forth against his jacket.

She shook her head. "You haven't got any real strength. And you just
carry your nobility and your honesty around like a sign. They're not
inside of you. You scream for the rights of Venusians, you swear at
injustice. You damn the people who've colonized this planet, and you
hold yourself up like you thought you were a god. Only you're not.
You're not anything. You're just another cheap screamer with wide
shoulders and no guts. And instead of trying to do something about
what you're screaming against, you climb into the first ship going out
because you can't stand the sight of blood. You're not strong, you're
weak. I thought I loved you, only I can't love a weak man, and you're
weak." Her hand slipped from the vine and she crumpled to the ground.

Caine stood watching her for a long moment, then he walked slowly back
and picked her up. He held her in his arms. With his left hand, he
lifted her head so that he could see her face, and he saw the fatigue
there that had finally made her collapse and he saw the blood that was
still trickling along her cheek.

He bent down and kissed her lips, gently, and then he began to walk
toward the yellow light and the warmth and the rest. She was light and
soft in his arms, and he liked the feeling of her there. And so he took
his time, step by step, because he knew he wasn't going anywhere, not
for a long time.