His opponent somersaulted in air, and fell with a heavy squashing thump upon the root-tangled floor of the trail. In a flash, Planter was up. He jumped with both feet. Bones broke under the impact. A second Skygor was down—dead or dying—
“Aside!” the girl was calling, and he obeyed, flattening against a cross-weaving of vine stems. She was risen upon one knee, crossbow to shoulder. It twanged, flashed, and once again its successful charge sounded its chock. Planter glanced down the trail in time to see a fourth and last Skygor drop down.
He found that he was gasping for air, and trembling as though the danger were still to come instead of past. The girl rose, came to him, and touched his arm. She smiled, her eyes shone. Gone was the contempt, the superiority. She only admired, completely and frankly.
“Sink me, you’re a fighter,” she said. “Ecod! I saw only the flight of fists, and a Skygor went down, and another! You saved my life—and we have four Skygors to strip, with none to boom about where we went from here. Your name, friend?”
“Planter,” he said. “David Planter.”
“David Planter,” she repeated. Her “A” was very broad, so that she made the name almost “Dyvid.” Again she smiled. “A king’s name, is’t not? I am called Mara. Come, help me take what is valuable from this carrion.”
Planter’s heart warmed to her. “Thanks for your kind words,” he smiled back. “But I did what any man would do.”
“All men are slaves,” she surprised him by saying. “You will amaze the other girl-warriors, when I bring you to the Nest.”
Disbro, standing on the glass port-pane that was now floor for the control-room, labored and cursed at his keyboard. He pressed one, two, an octave. The nosed-over ship stirred, but did not rise.
“Max!” bawled Disbro to the upper hatch. “Pressure!”
“Giving you all there is,” Max informed him timidly.
Disbro turned from his controls, shrugging in disgust.
“Those bow-tubes are jammed or displaced,” he cursed. “We can’t clear off till we get her up and clean them—and we can’t get her up and clean them until they work. Huhh!”
Max’s big, diffident face framed itself in the hatchway, registering a small hope.
“We’re floating,” he volunteered. “Close to those trees and things.”
Disbro showed interest. “Then we’ll get our feet on solid ground, or nearly solid. That tentacle-thing won’t be sloshing around.” He beckoned. “Come down.”
Max obeyed. From a locker Disbro took a pressure squirt of waterproofing liquid. He sprayed Max’s clothes, then his own. “That’ll shed rain,” he said. “Buckle on a pistol, if you’re smart enough to use one. And give me two.”
Once more the hammocks in the lower chamber, and the levers in the higher, gave them a ladder-way up. Disbro, emerging first into the damp, warm mist, saw at once that they had visitors.
The ship, as Max said, floated close to the mat of growth that fringed the muddy pool. Here the jungle consisted of meaty stems, straight, thick and close-set, with tangled fermiform foliage. A little above mud-level, gnarled roots wove into a firm footing, and upon it, pressing from the thickets toward the ship, were huge biped creatures in gleaming metal harness.
These had chopped down spongy trunks and branches, on which to venture over the mud-surface as on rafts. Coming near the ship, they had passed cables of grease-clotted metal wire around it, mooring it fast to thicker trunks. As Disbro stared down, several of them began to converse in tones that rang and boomed like great gongs. Half-deafened, Disbro still could perceive that their voices had inflection and sense. Harness, concerted action, tools, a language—here was a master race, comparable to Terrestrial humanity.
One of them turned a bulging black eye upward, and saw Disbro. Its flat face split across, and a mouth like an open Gladstone bag shouted its discovery. One green paw, webbed but prehensile, snatched a weapon from a metal-linked waist belt, and aimed it at the Terrestrial.
But Disbro, too, was quick on the draw. His gang-rule on Earth had necessitated shooting skill as well as leadership. His own automatic sprang into his hand. “No, you don’t!” he snapped, and shot the weapon out of the Venusian’s flipper.
It screamed in a voice that vibrated the steamy air, and its companions started and shrank back in startled wonder. Disbro drew a second pistol, leveling it at them.
“I’ll shoot the first one that moves,” he promised, as if they could understand; and understand they did. Up went shaky flipper-hands.
“No! No!” they boomed in thunderous humility. “Don’t! Don’t!”
He had not the time to wonder that they spoke words he knew. He swung his weapons in swift arcs, covering them all. Max, behind, had sense enough to level the long barrel of a repeating rifle. “Please!” roared a Venusian who seemed to be a leader. “We do naught to you!”
“Better not,” cautioned Disbro loftily. “We’re more profitable as friends than as enemies.”
“Friends!” agreed the leader. “Friends!”
“If you try any funny business—” went on Disbro. “Well, watch!”
He snapped his right-hand gun up and fired. The bullet snipped away a leaf the size of an opened umbrella. As the great green blob drifted down, Disbro fired again and again, until, ripped to rags, the leaf fell limply among the Venusians. They moaned, like awestruck fog horns.
“Understand?” taunted Disbro. “Savvy? I could kill you all as easy as look at you.”
“Friends!” promised the leader again.
“Max,” muttered Disbro, “these birds quit very easily without a fight. But keep me covered from up here.”
Planter’s rope still dangled along the hull. Disbro slid down, coming to his feet on the raft-heap below. The Venusians gave back in wary confusion. Disbro allowed himself to smile upward.
“See what an ape you are, Max?” he chuckled. “You got a look at one of these, and thought it was a girl! You’re not much of
