It was raining harder. The great roof of vegetation only partially broke that downpour. It sluiced away the coating of mud from Planter, and soaked his stout garments through. He felt miserable in the dampness, but his girl guide throve, if anything, in the drops that struck and rolled down her bare arms and shoulders.
He saw, too, that she followed something of a trail among the stalks and stems. It was barely wider than his own stalwart shoulders could pass, and wound crazily here and there; but one must stick to it, for to right and left the jungle grew thicker than a basket. He called out again.
“Miss! Young lady!”
She turned, as before. “What now?”
“This path—what is it? Did you make it? Tell me things.” He made a gesture of appeal, for she was putting on that look of contempt once more. “You see, I’m no more than an hour old on this planet—”
“Od so! Your brain is younger than that. Leave me, I have no time for idiots.”
Abruptly she stiffened, widened her eyes, lifted a finger to her red lips for silence. The two of them stood close together in the misty rain, their ears sharpened. Planter heard what she had heard—a rustling, crunching approach, along some other angle of the jungle path.
The girl wrenched apart two sappy lengths of vine, and with a jerk of her head bade Planter slip through into the great thicket. He did so, and she followed. Turning, her lithe body close against his, she brought her crossbow to the ready.
“Danger?” whispered Planter, and she nodded bleakly.
The approach was coming near. Planter judged that whatever threatened them was two-legged, weighty, and great-lunged—many yards off, it wheezed like a faulty engine. His companion’s ears were better than his, or more experienced. She gauged the nearness of the stranger, and the crossbow went to her shoulder like a rifle. Planter saw that it operated on a spring trigger that would trip a latch and release the string. The bow, violently recovering from its bending, would force the missile along a groove in the top of the stock. All parts—stock, bow, and string—were of some massive dark metal, apparently treated with grease to save it from the constant dampness. The missile itself was not an arrow, but seemed the size and shape of a silvery fountain pen. Planter burned to ask questions about it; but the enemy was in sight by now, something of mottled green and black that shouldered upright along the way between the thickets.
Planter felt his companion’s body grow tense against his shoulder. Her finger touched the trigger lightly. The metal string twanged, and with a waspy hum the missile leaped toward its target. At the same time, a little burst of flame showed from it, bright yellow. Chock! the shot went home, as that other shot against the thing called a muck-worm.
Down floundered the green-spotted form. At once the girl was out of hiding, and stooping above her quarry.
Planter, following, peered with wonder and caution. He saw a body larger than himself, and grotesquely of the same build. A dumpy torso on massive back-bent legs like a cricket’s; wide flapper feet, a round, low head with a monstrous slash of mouth, big eyes now filming with death, no nose at all—the creature was very like a nightmare frog. But this frog wore garments, of linked and plaited metal wire and rubbery-looking fabric. It had a silver belt, with pouches and holsters. These pouches and holsters the girl was now plundering.
“Quick,” she snapped at Planter over her rosy shoulder. “Take the spoil. He will have friends, and they must not find us.”
Her tone was still reminiscent of Disbro speaking to Max. Planter’s ravenous curiosity was at last completely overridden. “Young lady,” he said flatly. “I’m not prepared to endure any more—”
She suddenly screamed, not like a warrior but like any girl who is mortally frightened.
Planter had the time to realize that she saw something just beyond him. He pivoted and set himself as another of the froggy beings charged.
“More Skygors!” he heard a cry behind him, and he knew that it was Skygors he faced.
Planter was a boxer of sorts, strong if not brilliant, and his unthinking reflex was to plant his feet, bend his knees, and crouch for attack or defense. That reflex shortened his height by several inches, and saved his life. The Skygors that rushed him had pointed a pistol-form weapon, from which came yellow flame as from the crossbow. A silvery object meant to scatter his brains only sang above his head with millimeters to spare. Before the pistol-like weapon could aim and spit again, Planter had charged in.
It was all he could do, but it was enough. He jabbed viciously with his left fist, followed with his right to the abdomen. The left knuckles slashed soft flesh about the wide mouth, his right hand almost broke on a hard belt-buckle. Both blows were staggering to the wheezing adversary, who dropped its pistol and yelled with a voice like a steam whistle. It made words, each of them almost deafening to Planter. To silence it more than anything else, Planter drove in closer still and lifted an uppercut as though it were a shovelful of gravel.
It found the point where a Terrestrial man would have a chin. Down floundered the clumsy body, and Planter, with no thought of referees or rules, set his heavy boot on the face and bashed it in. He stepped across the subsiding form, in time to encounter another.
This one got great flappy hands upon him. Their grip was knowing, powerful, wicked. The Skygor plucked him close, its mouth grinned into a gape. It had teeth, it was going to bite.
He was held by the shoulders, and doubted if he could break away. Instead of trying, he put his own hands to the thing’s elbows, drew his right knee tight to his chest and planted a toe in a metal-clad midriff. Then,
