“We are almost there,” she whispered. “Look well.”
She rose, and again they took up the journey. After a time she paused again, and pointed.
Just beyond them the branches thinned out over a great open space in the jungle. Under a far-flung canopy of white vapors lay the swamp-city of the Skygors.
Planter, gazing in wonder at the strange city, thought of old Venice, or of a beaver colony in a diked pond. Before and beneath him was a quiet greeny-clear body of water. Around its rim grew shrubs, bushes and huge reeds, their roots clasping the great facing of white rock which apparently paved the banks and bottom of the pool. In the water itself, poking above the surface in little pointed clusters and plainly visible where they extended beneath, were the houses of the Skygors.
They were of some kind of soil or clay that had been processed to a concrete hardness, and were tinted in various colors. Some of the smaller dwellings were roughly spherical, and crowned with cone-shaped roofs. Others, larger, protruded well above the water in cylindrical form. Here and there travel-ways connected the clustered groups.
But it was beneath the surface that the town was complex and great. It seemed to lie tier above tier, closely built and grouped, with here and there protruding arms or wings of building, like coral budded from the main mass. In those depths swam myriads of Skygors, plainly at home under water. More of them, at the window-holes of the upper towers or paddling on the surface, boomed and roared to each other in their deafening language. From on high, Planter saw them as smaller and less to be dreaded. They might have been slight fantasy things, water-elves or super-intelligent frogs.
“Look you, David Planter,” prompted Mara, at his elbow.
From a tunnel-like hole in the jungle, a group of Skygors emerged. Among them were two human figures, clad like Planter in loose overalls and helmets.
“Your friends?” Mara questioned.
“Right,” snapped Planter grimly. He drew the pistol-weapon and glared.
Disbro and Max, the latter stooping under a great bale of goods from the ship, had paused on the brink of the water. A Skygor was thundering to them, in words of English which Planter, across the water, found hard to catch. Other Skygors motioned at the pool, and one or two jumped in and struck out for nearby buildings.
“They want your friends to dive,” Mara informed him. “See, the slim one shakes his head.”
Planter rested the pistol on his forearm, and sighted on the Skygor who harangued Disbro. Meanwhile, other Skygors were bringing up what appeared to be a small, inflated boat, that operated with a paddle-wheel arrangement behind.
Mara saw what Planter was doing. “No!” she gasped. “Don’t, David!”
“I’m going to,” he told her.
“We’ll be next!”
“Nonsense! Those flapper-footed devils can’t climb! They’re too heavy, too clumsy!”
She caught at his weapon wrist, but he had fired.
The Skygor weapon was a wondrous one. Even an indifferent shot like Planter could not miss with it. The Skygor beside Disbro seemed to burst into flame around his flat, bushel-mouthed face, and then he collapsed and lay still. His companions swarmed to his side, rending the air with their horrid yells.
Planter chuckled, and Mara moaned. The man moved forward among the branches, to a place where he could be seen.
“Hai, Disbro!” he trumpeted, as loudly as any Skygor. “Max! It’s David Planter! Run while you have the chance, I’ll pick those toads off!”
But neither of his friends offered to escape. They only stood and gazed at him.
“You idiots!” blazed Planter, and then saw that two of the Skygors on the inflated boat were aiming weapons at him. He sent a silver pen at their craft, and it melted abruptly as its air escaped from the puncture. A third shot took one of the Skygors splashing in the water. “Run, you two!” Planter bade his companions once more.
He felt a grip on his ankle, and glanced down. Mara had crouched low, was trying to pull him back from view. As soon as she had his eye, she let him go, and thrust both fingers into her ears in some sort of a sign he did not comprehend.
Understanding dawned suddenly, and too late.
The mist trembled and swirled at a sudden outburst of sound louder than even a Skygor chorus. Planter dropped his weapon, began to lift his hands to his ears in imitation of Mara. But he could not!
The noise possessed him, as a rush of electric current might course through a body, paralyzing and agonizing it. He swayed and floundered among the branches. His hair bristled, his ears rang, his blood coursed, every fiber of him vibrated. Yet something about it was vaguely familiar, as though it was something he had experienced, or a magnification of such a something.
Yes, of course … the uneasiness that Mara called the “spell.” Some device made a noise-vibration, normally sub-audible but unpleasant enough to warn aliens away. In a time like this, when attack came, it could be intensified to the point of striking the enemy stupid.
Meanwhile, he was falling, through branches and leafage, to splash clumsily into the water of the pool. Abruptly the noise ceased. The Skygors were around him, their flipper-hands fastening upon him, and he was too wrung out, too grateful for silence, to resist.
He may have fainted. Later on, he could not be sure. But his next clear memory was of lying in one of the inflated paddle-boats, in which sat Skygors with weapons. There also sat Disbro, watching him intently.
“Disbro!” muttered Planter. “They got you, too?”
“No, they didn’t get me, too,” mimicked Disbro. “I’m in the racket with them, understand?”
Planter sat up, and two Skygors half-drew their weapons to warn him. “I thought you were captured,” he mumbled.
“Not me. I do things neatly. Showed I could be an enemy, but would rather be a friend. You butted in, killing two of them. Someone says you got two others earlier today. They’re holding you a prisoner,
