“No. Not fair.” Mikhail cast a cold glare at him. “Chocolate for a world … not a fair trade at all.”
“Yeah, well … look who got ’em hooked on it in the first place.” Noticing Ronson’s quizzical look, Angelo sneered. “You mean you don’t know? Chocolate is addictive to frogheads. Like cocaine, maybe even worse. Once they’ve had a taste, they gotta get more. And guess who got ’em started on it?”
“You lie!” Mikhail’s face was red. “I was not the first to do this! One of my shipmates …”
“O, sure. Maybe it wasn’t you, but you’re their number one pusher.” Angelo tossed the remnant of his sandwich overboard, wiped his hands against his shorts. “And if you’re not, then why don’t you toss over those candy bars you brung?”
Mikhail looked away, avoiding the accusation Angelo had made. Ronson wondered if it was true. “One day, we will pay for what we have done here,” he said quietly.
“Yeah, well … you’re paying me for this trip and the day ain’t getting any shorter.” Angelo stood up from the barrel, headed for the wheelhouse. “Tell the froggies to rise and shine. I want to find this place and go home.”
The captain didn’t get his wish. At the end of the day, the frogheads still hadn’t reached their destination, forcing Aphrodite to seek another island where it could anchor for the night. Again, the frogheads found a place to rest on its mossy, vine-covered banks.
As darkness fell on the ocean, Angelo opened a locker on the aft deck and pulled out a large net. Ronson thought at first that he intended to go trawling, but instead Angelo told him and Mikhail to rig the net above the boat, from the wheelhouse roof to poles erected at the stern, until the deck was completely covered. Angelo then switched off the deck lamps, and once the three of them went below he closed the curtains in the cabin portholes.
They’d barely finished dinner when Ronson discovered the reason why the captain had taken such precautions. From somewhere outside came the sound of wings flapping, punctuated by high-pitched shrieks. Mikhail explained that they belonged to one of Venus’s few avian species: night shrikes, nocturnal raptors not much larger than the pelicans they vaguely resembled but dangerous nonetheless. The shrikes hunted in flocks, seeking prey near the islands where they nested; they had little fear of humans, and had been known to gang up on unwary sailors who ventured out on deck after dark. The nets would keep them away, and if that didn’t work, a Taser shot was sufficient to drive them off. Still, the best defense was to remain inside until daybreak.
Through the night, long after the three of them had crawled into their bunks, Ronson heard the shrikes prowling around the boat. Distant thunder and lightning flashes glimpsed around the edges of the porthole curtains told of an approaching storm. It came in around midnight, and although it only rocked the boat a bit and threw rain against the portholes, it kept Ronson awake for a while. He lay in his bunk, Taser beneath his pillow, listening to the shrikes and the storm.
Venus was a dangerous world.
Yet the morning was calm. The rain had slackened to a mild drizzle, the sun a hot splotch half-seen through the clouds. The frogheads were croaking impatiently beside the boat when Ronson and the others emerged from the cabin. Mikhail gave chocolate bars to two of the aborigines—as before, their leader refused to accept any—while Angelo and Ronson took down the net and hoisted the anchor. Then the captain started the engine and Aphrodite set out again, the frogheads once more taking the lead.
The floating isles had become bigger and less far apart by then, and for the first time, Ronson saw forests on the larger ones. Slickbark trees looked like palmettos but grew in dense jungle clusters, their broad trunks strangled by vines, their broad, serrated leaves casting shadows across the surrounding water.
Around midmorning, Aphrodite came within sight of a larger vessel going the other way: a lumber ship the size of a small freighter, its deck loaded with cut and trimmed tree trunks. The lumber ship blew its horn as it went by, but Angelo didn’t respond to the hail.
“A yaz runner wouldn’t do that,” the captain explained.
“Yaz runner?” Ronson asked. “You mean, like someone who’s …”
“Out to purchase yaz, uh-huh.” Angelo gave him a sidelong look. “That’s what we’re going to pretend to be once we get to this place … because, believe me, there ain’t no way they’re gonna let us live if they don’t think we’re here to buy dope.”
Ronson was still coming to grips with this when the frogheads suddenly turned to the right and started heading for a large island only a kilometer away. As Aphrodite approached the island, the three men spotted thin lines of smoke rising from its forest. Angelo handed a pair of binoculars to Ronson, and through them he saw a couple of boats about Aphrodite’s size tied up at a floating dock.
“It’s a yaz camp, all right,” Angelo said, then he looked off to the side. “Hey! What the hell are they doing?”
Ronson followed his gaze. The three frogheads had suddenly turned and were swimming back toward the boat. “I think they want to talk,” Mikhail said.
Angelo throttled down the engines. “So talk to ’em,” he muttered with an annoyed shrug.
As the boat came to idle, the Russian walked back to the stern. By then, the frogheads were dog-paddling along the starboard side, their faces visible above the water. The leader warbled something to Mikhail; he listened for a few moments, then turned to Ronson.
“She says this is the place where we will find the man we are looking for,” Mikhail said, “but they refuse to go any farther. They will remain here until they see us leave, then they will follow us.”
Ronson was puzzled as to why the Water Folk wouldn’t escort them the rest of the way to the island, but he wasn’t about to argue. As the boat began moving again, he went below, where he found the Taser he’d left beneath his bunk pillow. He had just slid its holster on his belt, though, when Mikhail followed him into the cabin.
“Leave that behind,” the Russian said. “If the yaz croppers see you wearing it, they’ll think we mean trouble.”
Ronson stared at him. “Then how the hell am I supposed to rescue the kid?”
Mad Mikhail hesitated. “We will think of something,” he said at last. “Let me do the talking, yes?”
Again, Ronson didn’t have a choice. As the boat came closer to the island, though, he came out on deck with the Taser beneath the nylon rain jacket he’d put on. When no one was looking, he carefully hid the weapon behind the net locker where it couldn’t be seen yet could be easily reached.
Men on the island had seen Aphrodite coming. Two yaz croppers were waiting on the dock as the boat glided up beside it. They grabbed the lines Mikhail and Ronson tossed to them and pulled the fishing boat alongside their own craft, then a thickset man with grey, brush-cut hair rested a foot on Aphrodite’s gunnel, arms folded across his bare chest.
“Priv’et,” he said, gruff yet not entirely hostile. “Kak vas tibut?”
“Mikhail Kronow,” Mad Mikhail replied. “Vy gavarti pa angliski?”
The other Russian looked over at his companion, a younger man with a shaved head and a goatee beard. “I do, mate,” he replied, an Australian accent to his voice. “So who the hell are you, eh?”
“He is gospodin Ronson, an American friend.” Mikhail barely glanced at Ronson. “Thank you for speaking English … his Russian is very bad.” The Aussie laughed but the Russian remained silent, apparently not understanding a word they were saying. “We are here to do some business, yes?”