There were footprints—many of them. The detective ignored them, moving in a straight line away from Venus Landing. Here and there were blazed mola trees, some with buckets hung to collect the dripping sap. The footprints grew fainter. At last only one set remained visible.
“A man. Pretty heavyset, too. Wearing Earth shoes, not sandals like most of ours. Callahan, probably.”
Vanning nodded. “He didn’t come back by this route.”
“He didn’t come back,” Goodenow said shortly. “This is a one-way trail.”
“Well, I’m going after him.”
“It’s suicidal. But—I suppose I can’t talk you out of it?”
“You can’t.”
“Well, come back to town and I’ll find you an outfit. Supplies and a hack-knife. Maybe I can find some men willing to go with you.”
“No,” Vanning said. “I don’t want to waste time. I’ll start now.” He took a few steps, and was halted by Goodenow’s restraining grip.
“Hold on,” the consul said, a new note in his voice. He looked closely into Vanning’s face, and pursed his lips in a soundless whistle.
“You’ve got it,” he said. “I should have noticed before.”
“Got what?”
“The North-Fever, man! Now listen to me—”
Vanning’s headache suddenly exploded in a fiery burst of white pain, which washed away and was gone, leaving his brain cool and … different. It was like a—like a cold fever. He found his thoughts were moving with unusual clarity to a certain definite point. … North. Of course he had to go north. That was what had been wrong with him all day. He had been fighting against the urge. Now he realized that it should be obeyed, instead.
He blinked at Goodenow’s heavy, worried face. “I’m all right. No fever. I want to find Callahan, that’s all.”
“Like hell it is,” the consul said grimly. “I know the symptoms. You’re coming back with me till you’re well.”
“No.”
Goodenow made a movement as though to pinion Vanning’s hands behind his back. The detective writhed free and sent a short-arm jab to Goodenow’s jaw. There was power behind that blow. The consul went over backwards, his head thumping against a white tree-bole.
He lay still.
Vanning didn’t look at the motionless body. He turned and began to follow Callahan’s trail. But he wasn’t watching the footprints. Some instinct seemed to guide him.
North … North!
His head no longer hurt. It felt strangely cool, numb and stinging almost pleasantly. The magnetic pull drew him on. Deeper and deeper into the jungle. …
Distantly he heard Goodenow’s shout, but ignored it. The consul couldn’t stop him. But he might try. Vanning ran for a while, lightly and easily, till the wilderness of Venus had swallowed him without trace. Then he slowed down to a walk. He would have been grateful for a brief rest, but he could not stop. Not now. …
The fog closed in. Silver mist veiled the strange, ghostly forest. Then it was torn away as a gust of wind drove down from the upper air. Above, the clouds twisted in tortured writhings; but Vanning did not look up. Not once did he turn his head. He faced north … he plodded north … he slogged through mushy, stinking swamp that rose at times to his waist. …
A sane man would have skirted the bog. Vanning floundered across, and swam when he could no longer walk. Somewhere to the left he heard the coughing mutter of a swamp-cat’s engine, but he did not see the machine. His vision was restricted to a narrow circle directly ahead.
Dimly he felt pain. The clinging, soft nettles of Venus ripped at his clothing and his skin. Leeches clung to his legs till they fell off, satiated. Vanning went on. He was a robot—an automaton.
In silence the pale forest slipped by in a fantastic procession. Lianas often made a tangled snare where Vanning fought for minutes before breaking through. Luckily, the vines had little tensile strength, but soon the man was exhausted and aching in every limb. Far above, the clouds had thickened and darkened into what passed for night on fog-shrouded Venus. But the trees gave a phosphorescent light of their own. Weird beyond imagination was the scene, with the bloody, reeling figure of the man staggering on toward the north—
North. Ever north. Until overtaxed muscles refused to bear the burden longer, and Vanning collapsed into exhausted unconsciousness.
He did not know when he awoke. Presently he found himself walking again. Nothing had changed. The jungle was denser, and the cool light from above filtered down once more. Only the light was cool. The air itself was sticky and suffocating.
He went on into hell.
Days and nights merged into a fantastic pattern of dull torture. Some distantly sane portion of his brain held back and watched, but could not help. Days and nights. There was no food. There was water, for as Vanning splashed through shallow pools he would bend his head to drink of the foul liquid. Once his feet crunched on the green-moulded bones of a human skeleton. Others had taken this way before him. …
Toward the end, a fleshless, gaunt thing that had once been a man dragged itself laboriously toward a range of mountains that lifted from the swamp toward the north. They extended to left and right as far as he could see, and seemed unscalable. But they were V-shaped, and Vanning headed toward the point of the V—the inner point. The terrible drive within him drove him on relentlessly.
That night a sulphurous crimson glow lit the sky beyond the mountains. Vanning did not see it. He slept.
By morning he was on his way again, staggering into the funnel of the peaks. They were bare rock, eroded by eons of trickling water from the clouds. He could not climb them, even had he possessed the strength. He went on, instead, into the narrowing valley. …
It ended in a sheer cliff of weathered stone. Vanning reeled toward the barrier. He could not return. The North-Fever drove him on remorselessly. He had to climb that wall
