Battle on Venus

Characteristically, she began right away. Leep took her to the door of the steel room upstairs. He indicated the positions of the murderous safeguards. She felt around the door with supersensitive finger-tips and probed cautiously with her knife.

At last, she said: “I’m sure I can nullify these traps and open the lock. But I need some lengths of thread.”

Her knife flashed. Before he realized it, Leep lost one sleeve of his grimy tunic. Expertly, Mara began pulling threads from it. Leep said, unexpectedly: “And I need some water.”

He disappeared quietly downstairs.

When he returned, some time later, he was carrying two small flasks, one empty, one filled with water.

Mara had rendered the thief traps impotent and was manipulating, like a puppeteer, some dozen threads she’d inserted in the lock. Soon, three almost simultaneous clicks sounded.

“It’s open,” she announced.

Leep sighed. He put the flasks in his pockets, grasped the door handle with both hands, and heaved with his enfeebled strength. The thick door swung open. A cloud of yellow fog rushed out at them with a faint whoomph. Its acrid tang invaded their nostrils and brought tears to their eyes. For a few moments of strangulation they shared the same belief: that they’d sprung the ultimate deathtrap, the room itself full of poison gas, under pressure.

Then the gas, heavier than air, settled to waist-level, then knee-level, and drifted slowly along the passage floor.

And left them alive, but gasping and semi-blinded by tears. Leep wheezed: “Sorry, Mara, my faculty missed that trick. I hope there aren’t any more.”

She gasped: “Why didn’t it kill us?”

“It may yet—by delayed action. But that could save us.”

He pointed. In the room, now almost clear of the fog-like gas, was a grey metal table. On it stood a small glass bottle, three-quarters full of a liquid colorless as water.

“The elixir of life,” said Leep, and went to examine it. Satisfied, he poured the liquid carefully into his empty flask. Then filled the bottle to the same level with water from his other flask, and recapped it.

He said: “This dodge was to make it appear nothing had been touched if Senilde happened to check up. Little point to it now, though—he’d notice the gas had been released.”

He returned the flasks to his pockets and came out to watch Mara removing the threads from the door.

She said: “I can’t leave these here or he will check up. When the door is shut and locked again, he should have no reason to be suspicious.”

“Ah, but I am suspicious,” said Senilde’s voice right behind them. They spun around. He’d climbed the stairs silently and was grinning at them.

“I was always a suspicious man,” he continued. “Hence my little mechanical watchdogs. You seem to have muzzled most of them, but I imagine the gas surprised you. It’s harmless stuff, though—I didn’t wish to have poison gas billowing around the house merely because of some stupid thief. Not that it would have harmed me, but I used to have guests in those days… No, it’s only a scent to spread the alarm. Enough flowed downstairs to irritate my sense of smell and awaken me—I’m a light sleeper. Of course, I knew it meant someone was attempting to steal my elixir. Now, just move away there.”

They moved back, and Senilde came to peer into the room.

“Good,” he said, seeing the bottle on the table. “I caught you before you—”

Mara’s shoulder, with all her weight behind it, caught him by surprise before he had time to switch on his protective stunner. He staggered through the doorway, tripped and fell against the table. It overturned. The bottle smashed on the floor.

His cry of angry surprise was cut short as Mara and Leep together slammed the steel door. It locked itself automatically with rapid triple clicks. Leep and Mara exchanged smiles.

“That,” said Leep, “has simplified your escape greatly. Now Senilde won’t be able to set any of the war machines hunting after you. He can stay in there and rot for ever.”

“Oh, Leep, you couldn’t be so cruel!”