“Right now, Henry. Right this very minute.” Her cheeks flushed with enthusiasm.
“All right then. Come on.” He started off at a half-run, dragging her along.-And then a thought occurred to him and he stopped short.
He turned to her fiercely, “ I’ll show you if I’m afraid.” His arms were suddenly about her and her little cry of surprise was muffled effectively.
“Goodness,” said Irene, when in a position to speak once more. “How thoroughly brutal! ”
“Certainly. I’m a very well-known brute,” gasped Henry, as he uncrossed his eyes and got rid of the swimming sensation in his head. “Now let’s get to those Phibs; and remind me, when I’m president, to put up a memorial to the fellow who invented kissing.”
Up through the rock-lined corridor, past the backs of outward-gazing sentries, out through the carefully camouflaged opening, and they were upon the surface.
The smudge of smoke on the southern horizon was grim evidence of the presence of man, and with that in mind, the two young Tweenies slithered through the underbrush into the forest and through the forest to the lake of the Phibs.
Whether in some strange way of their own the Phibs sensed the presence of friends, the two could not tell, but they had scarcely reached the banks when approaching dull-green smudges beneath water told of the creatures’ coming.
A wide, goggle-eyed head broke the surface, and, in a second, bobbing frogheads dotted the lake.
Henry wet his hand and seized the friendly forelimb outstretched to him.
“Hi there, Phib.”
The grinning mouth worked and made its soundless answer.
“Ask him about the Earthmen, Henry,” urged Irene. Henry motioned impatiently.
“Wait a while. It takes time. I’m doing the best I can.”
For two slow minutes, the two, Tweenie and Phib, remained motionless and stared into each other’s eyes. And then the Phib broke away and, at some silent order, every lake-creature vanished, leaving the Tweenies alone.
Irene stared for a moment, nonplussed, “What happened?”
Henry shrugged, “I don’t know. I pictured the Earthmen and he seemed to know who I meant. Then I pictured Earthmen fighting us and killing us-and he pictured a lot of us and only a few of them and another fight in which we killed them. But then I pictured us killing them and then a lot more of them coming-hordes and hordes-and killing us and then-”
But the girl was holding her hands to her tortured ears, “Oh, my goodness. No wonder the poor creature didn’t understand. I wonder he didn’t go crazy.”
“Well, I did the best I could,” was the gloomy response. “This was all your nutty idea, anyway.”
Irene got no further with her retort than the opening syllable, for in a moment the lake was crowded with Phibs once more. “They’ve come back,” she said instead.
A Phib pushed forward and seized Henry’s hand while the others crowded around in great excitement. There were several moments of silence and Irene fidgeted.
“Well?” she said.
“Quiet, please. I don’t get it. Something about big animals, or monsters, or-” His voice trailed away, and the furrow between his eyes deepened into painful concentration.
He nodded, first abstractedly, then vigorously.
He broke away and seized Irene’s hands. “I’ve got it-and it’s the perfect solution. We can save Venustown all by ourselves, Irene, with the help of the Phibs-if you want to come to the Lowlands with me tomorrow. We can take along a pair of Tonite pistols and food supplies and if we follow the river, it oughtn’t to take us more than two or three days there and the same time back. What do you say, Irene?”
Youth is not noted for forethought. Irene’s hesitation was for effect only, “Well-maybe we shouldn’t go ourselves, but -but I’ll go-with you.” There was the lightest accent on the last word.
Ten seconds later, the two were on their way back to Venustown, and Henry was wondering, if on the whole, it weren’t better to put up two memorials to the fellow who invented kissing.
The flickering red-yellow of the fire sent back ruddy highlights from Henry’s lordly crest of hair and cast shifting shadows upon his brooding face.
It was hot in the Lowlands, and the fire made it worse, yet Henry huddled close and kept an anxious eye upon the sleeping form of Irene on the other side. The teeming life of the Venusian jungle respected fire, and the flames spelt safety.
They were three days from the plateau now. The stream had become a lukewarm, slowly-moving river, the shores of which were covered with the green scum of algae. The pleasant forests had given way to the tangled, vine-looped growths of the jungle. The mingled sounds of life had grown in volume and increased to a noisy crescendo. The air became warmer and damper; the ground swampier; the surroundings more fantastically unfamiliar.
And yet there was no real danger-of that, Henry was convinced. Poisonous life was unknown on Venus, and as for the tough-skinned monsters that lorded the jungles, the fire at night and the Phibs during day would keep them away.
Twice the ear-splitting shriek of a Centosaur had sounded in the distance and twice the sound of crashing trees had caused the two Tweenies to draw together in fear. Both times, ‘I the monsters had moved away again. •
This was the third night out, and Henry stirred uneasily. The Phibs seemed confident that before morning they could start their return trip, and somehow the thought of Venustown was rather attractive. Adventure and excitement are fine and with every passing hour the glory of his scintillating bravery grew in Irene’s eyes-which was wonderful-but still Venustown and the friendly Highlands were nice to think about.
He threw himself on his stomach and gazed morosely into the fire, thinking of his twenty years of age-almost twenty years.
“Why, heck,” he tore at the rank grass beneath. “It’s about time I was thinking of getting married .” And his eye strayed involuntarily to the sleeping form beyond the fire.
As if in response, there was a flickering of eyelids and a vague stare out of deep blue eyes.
Irene sat up and stretched.
“I can’t sleep at all,” she complained, brushing futilely at her white hair. “It’s so hot” She stared at the fire distastefully.
Henry’s good humor persisted. “You slept for hours-and snored like a trombone.”
Irene’s eyes snapped wide open. “I did not!” Then, with a voice vibrant with tragedy, “Did I?”
“No, of course not!” Henry howled his laughter, stopping only at the sudden, sharp contact between the toe of Irene’s shoe and the pit of his own stomach. “Ouch,” he said.
“Don’t speak to me anymore. Mister Scanlon!” was the girl’s frigid remark.
It was Henry’s turn to look tragic. He rose in panicky dismay and took a single step towards the girl. And then he froze in his tracks at the ear-piercing shriek of a Centosaur. When he came to himself, he found his arms full of Irene.
Reddening, she disentangled herself, and then the Centosaurian shriek sounded again, from another direction,-and there she was, right back again.
Henry’s face was pale, in spite of his fair armful. “I think the Phibs have snared the Centosaurs. Come with me and I’ll ask them.”
The Phibs were dim blotches in the grey dawn that was breaking. Rows and rows of strained, abstracted individuals were all that met the eye. Only one seemed to be unoccupied and when Henry rose from the handclasp, he said, “They’ve got three Centosaurs and that’s all they can handle. We’re starting back to the Highlands right now.”
The rising sun found the party two miles up the river. The Tweenies, hugging the shore, cast wary eyes towards the bordering jungle. Through an occasional clearing, vast grey bulks could be made out The noise of the reptilian shrieks was almost continuous.
“I’m sorry I brought you, Irene,” said Henry. “I’m not so sure now that the Phibs can take care of the monsters.”
Irene shook her head. “That’s all right, Henry. I wanted to come. Only-I wish we had thought of letting the Phibs bring the beasts themselves. They don’t need us.”
“Yes, they do! If a Centosaur gets out of control, it will make straight for the Tweenies and they’d never get away. We’ve got the Tonite guns to kill the ‘saurs with if the worst comes to the worst-” His voice trailed away and he glanced at the lethal weapon in his hand and derived but cold comfort therefrom.
The first night was sleepless for both Tweenies. Somewhere, unseen in the blackness of the river, Phibs took shifts and their telepathic control over the tiny brains of the gigantic, twenty-legged Centosaurs maintained its tenuous hold. Off in the jungle, three hundred-ton monsters howled impatiently against the force that drove them up the river side against their will and raved impotently against the unseen barrier that prevented them from approaching the stream.
By the side of the fire, a pair of Tweenies, lost between mountainous flesh on one side and the fragile protection of a telepathic web on the other, gazed longingly towards the Highlands some forty miles off.
Progress was slow. As the Phibs tired, the Centosaurs grew balkier. But gradually, the air grew cooler. The rank jungle growth thinned out and the distance to Venustown shortened.
Henry greeted the first signs of familiar temperate-zone forest with a tremulous sigh of relief. Only Irene’s presence prevented him from discarding his role of heroism.