“Who did not die,” chimed in Mara, plucking her bowstring. “We found fruits, meat, shelter, and joined. Now we slay Skygors for their metals and shot. Lately they slay weaklings, lest they join us.”
Planter whistled. This was a harsh proof of human tenacity. The Skygors discarding unprofitable servants and finding them a menace. “None of you are weaklings,” he said.
“Freedom brings health,” replied Mantha sententiously. “Yet they are many more than we, well fortified, and have a strange spell to whelm those who attack.” She grimaced in distaste. “We but lurk and linger, fighting when we must and fleeing when we may. As the last of us dies—”
Things began to happen.
A tall, robust girl, very handsome, had been hitching her woven chair close to Planter. With a pert boldness she touched his hand.
“I’ve seen no man since I was driven forth, a child,” she informed him. “I like you. I am Sala.”
Mara rose from her own seat, swore a rather Elizabethan oath, and slapped Sala’s face resoundingly.
Sala, too, sprang up. Larger than Mara, she clutched her assailant’s shoulders and tripped her over a neatly extended foot. Mara spun sidewise in falling, broke Sala’s hold, came to her feet with a drawn dagger.
This happened silently and swiftly, with none of the screaming and fumbling that marks the rare battles between Terrestrial women. Planter stared, half aghast and half admiring. Another girl whispered behind him: “Let them fight, send them ill days! Look at me, I am not ugly.”
Perhaps to flee this new admirer, Planter threw himself between the two fighters. As Mara attempted to stab Sala, Planter caught her weapon wrist and wrenched the knife from her. Meanwhile, Sala snatched up a crossbow. Leaving Mara, Planter struck the thing out of aiming line just in time. The pen-missile tore through the baskety wall of the Nest, and Planter gained possession of the crossbow, not without trouble.
“Are you girls fighting over me?” he demanded.
“Egad, what else?” challenged Mantha, who had also sprung forward. “Art a man of height and presence. For any man these my manless girls would contend.”
“Aye, would we,” agreed one of the bevy, with frightening candor.
“He’s mine,” snapped Mara, holding her own crossbow at the ready. “Step forth who will, and I speak true.”
“I’m nobody’s,” exploded Planter. “Anyway, I’m going—I’ve two friends near here that I’ve got to find, and soon!”
“More men!” ejaculated Sala, forgetting her anger.
“Fighters, with weapons,” said Planter, ignoring her. “They’ll help you smoke out these Skygors and set free your kinsmen.”
Happy cries greeted his words.
“I’ll guide you home, David Planter,” offered Mara, and Mantha gestured approval.
Mara and Planter left the Nest by a new jungle trail. Mara explained that these tunnels were made by great floundering beasts, and served as runways for smaller land life. The girl trod the green, fog-filled labyrinths with assurance. Within minutes they reached the pool where Disbro had landed the ship.
At the edge floated the limp, dead thing that Mara had killed to save Planter. Small flutterers, like gross-winged flies but as large as gulls, swarmed to dig out morsels. Mara called the creature a krau, the flying scavengers ghrols. “Skygor words, for ugly beasts,” she commented. “Neither is good for food.”
Planter picked his way from root to root toward the ship. “Disbro!” he called. “Max!”
There was no answer. He scrambled up and inside, then out again. “Something’s happened,” he said gravely.
Mara studied the massed logs that made a rough raft. “Skygor work. And eke the rope of wires about your ship.”
“They’ve been captured by Skygors? For slaves?” Planter had climbed down again. His hand sought the Skygor pistol at his belt, his face was tense and pale. “I’ll get them back. Where’s this swamp-city you mention?”
She pointed. “Not far. But the way is perilous. The trails throng with Skygors, and there is the spell.”
“That sounds like some old superstition,” snorted Planter. “I’m not afraid of Skygors. I killed two today.”
“Aye,” she smiled. “They are not great fighters in these parts. But there are more than two at the city … come along.”
“You can go back to the Nest.”
She smiled more broadly. “How else will you find the way, my David? For you are my David.”
“Don’t start that again,” he bade her, more roughly than he felt. “Lead the way.”
Mara took a nearby jungle trail. After some time, she paused and studied the matted footing. “Tracks,” she pronounced. “Certain Skygors, and two pairs of feet shod like yours.”
Planter looked at the muddled marks thus diagnosed by the skilled trail-eye of Mara. “My friends and their captors?”
“Aye, that. They went this way. Come.”
She slipped aside through the close-set stems. Planter did likewise. Mara slung her crossbow behind her, and climbed a trunk as a beetle scales a flower-stalk. “ ’Tis safer from Skygors up here,” she told him over her shoulder “Follow me carefully.”
Planter did so, with difficulty. He was a vigorous climber, and the lesser gravity of Venus made him more agile. But Mara, some forty feet overhead, swung through the crisscross of limbs and vines like a squirrel. “Wait!” he called, striving to catch up.
She paused, finger to lips. As he came near, she said softly: “Not so loud! We come close. Feel you the spell?”
Hanging quietly, Planter did feel it.
Uneasiness came, chilling his back despite the steamy warmth. His hair stirred on his head, his teeth gritted, and he could not reason himself out of the mood. Mara moved ahead, and he followed. Growing accustomed to the climbing, he made progress. But the uncomfortable sense of peril grew rather than diminished.
Once in their strange journey Mara paused, and from a belt-pouch produced food. It consisted of fire-dried fruits, strange to Planter but tasty and substantial; also two meat-dumplings, made by wrapping a nut-flavored dough around morsels of flesh. For drink she plucked long spear-like leaves from a vine, and Planter found them full of pungent juice. While they munched, he heard boomings in the
