Venus in Danger Read online

  A Geiger counter. Their adversaries were surveying the dangerous contamination of radioactivity.

  Deringhouse did not have much time to think about the best tactic. If he had used his impulse-beamer he would have killed the man, but he preferred to get some information.

  Cautiously he raised himself up from behind his cover. The stranger's back was halfway turned toward him. Deringhouse leaped across the short distance with his long legs and before the man knew what happened, he was hit over the head with the butt of Deringhouse's weapon. His knees buckled and he fell limply to the ground.

  "Come over here!" Deringhouse called without raising his voice. "I've got him!"

  • • •

  Maj. Lysenkov was careful not to let his men notice anything but he could no longer keep it a secret from himself. If this uncertainty should last more than a few hours, he would be sure to suffer a nervous collapse.

  Before him on the compacted floor of the primitive hut—none of the tents were saved—lay a rough map of the area where Gen. Tomisenkov's military force had landed. According to the best estimates he and his men had arrived at, Lysenkov had marked the map with the line of the withered strip and the point of excessive radio-activity where the war missiles had melted.

  As chance would have it, the hot dividing path was at its narrowest point in this location. He planned to take the risk and make his men run across the centerline at this spot in another three hours. In their predicament it was not of prime importance that every man get across as long as he, the leader of the group, was fast enough to remain unscathed.

  But there was this contaminated patch. If the atomic fallout did not sink rapidly enough to a tolerable

  level, they would have to wait until the hot lane had cooled off sufficiently at another, wider place. Even Maj. Lysenkov was not immune from atomic radiation.

  He had sent out a man to check the fallout. Lysenkov looked at his watch. What was the matter with that slowpoke? The major got up and left his hut. He walked in the direction from which the scout had to return. He treaded his way between the dense hanging vines and listened.

  Steps.

  Lysenkov stopped. The thicket in front of him began to move and a shadow loomed up.

  "Where have you been all this time?" Lysenkov snarled at the figure.

  The man stood still and gave no answer.

  "Come here!" Lysenkov ordered.

  The man took a few steps toward him.

  "Why were you so long?" Lysenkov repeated. "Answer me!"

  At the moment he finally became suspicious, because the man standing before him was so much smaller than the one he had dispatched, it was already too late.

  Leaping like a jungle cat, Okura was at the major's throat. A solid blow with the butt of his impulse-beamer finished the fight before it had begun.

  Okura sounded a high-pitched whistle and half a minute later Deringhouse and the corporal joined him.

  The Japanese pointed to Lysenkov's motionless body. "Seems to be the boss," he whispered.

  Deringhouse nodded. "Tie him up and gag him!" he ordered. "We'll leave the man here for now."

  Son Okura walked ahead of them. On the path Lysenkov had taken into the jungle, they came upon the little lean-to. In a radius of about 150 feet, Okura made out three more, somewhat larger huts under the trees of the forest. Deringhouse estimated the number of occupants in the crude shelters at about 30 people.

  He called in the rest of his group and explained precisely where to land. The radioactive source was a very convenient reference point. Eight minutes later the vehicles set noiselessly down on a little spot not far from Lysenkov's hut where the brush had been cleared.

  Deringhouse gave brief instructions. Before he had finished, a dark silhouette appeared in front of the hut. Deringhouse looked up in surprise.

  "Kto tam?" the man inquired.

  The sound of the foreign language made Deringhouse react in a flash. Before the guard realized whether or not the suspicion which had brought him over was justified, Deringhouse had shot him with his impulse-beamer. The thermo-shock acted so fast that the soldier did not even have a chance to scream.

  The rest was simple. Single guards were posted before each of the huts. They were quickly overwhelmed with a minimum of noise. The sleepy soldiers inside the huts were unable to offer any resistance. The entire action took no longer than 15 minutes and Deringhouse had made 27 more prisoners, one of whom told him that there were no others left on this side of the divider. Deringhouse dispatched two of his detachment to bring in the soldier they had captured first and who had given them the information about his present position.

  A storm began to rage over the jungle as Deringhouse continued his interrogation. However, it took an hour and the storm was calming down again before he learned the full extent of his catch. The tornado produced by the Stardust had demolished the greatest part of their atomic weapons and Deringhouse's crew had seized the last five atomic rockets so that the enemy was only left in possession of nuclear weapons with less explosive force than one megaton of TNT. Such armament was presumably as defense on board the few spaceships which had been saved by Tomisenkov, whose name had meanwhile become familiar to Deringhouse.

  The worst danger had thus been eliminated.

  Deringhouse immediately gave his report on the results of his investigation by hyper-wave radio to Rhodan.

  5/ THE HOUR OF THE HURRICANE

  Whereas Deringhouse and his companions had suffered no ill effects from the passing storm, it had brought severe distress to Tomisenkov and his column which he had joined again with his aide.

  Fifteen minutes after the horrible mishap in the lake the third officer in Tomisenkov's retinue had become a casualty when he tried to push a thick and stubborn liana out of his general's way and noticed too late that he had tangled with a snake.

  The snake with the dimensions of a boa constrictor escaped quickly across the shoulders of the young officer who had slashed it with his machete, and disappeared in the jungle. To all appearances it had ended well and the officer seemed to be none the worse except for the fright which had shaken Tomisenkov and his aide almost as much as him.

  However, a few minutes later the young man suddenly collapsed. Tomisenkov came to his assistance; His neck, the only spot which had been touched by the snake, was swollen so badly that it was larger than the circumference of his head.

  Another few seconds and the man was dead.

  The aide took the machete out of his hand and continued hacking out a passage. In this manner they moved forward about a mile an hour.

  At sunset they noticed that the path cleared by the troop marching ahead of them became less overgrown and the tracks looked more recent. Indeed they caught up in 45 minutes with a group of five lightly wounded men carrying two litters with disabled comrades.

  Almost at the same time the aide, who carried his radio on a strap around his neck received a call from another group marching ahead of them that they had found a suitable camping ground in unobstructed terrain. Tomisenkov did not hesitate for a moment to leave behind the little group they had just met, although the litter bearers could have used a little well-deserved help with their heavy load. He was anxious to reach the camp before complete darkness set in and hurried forward as fast as he could.

  "We'll break the path for you," he consoled his wounded soldiers.

  Shortly after sundown they came to the foot of a rocky mesa from where they had received the message of the vanguard.

  It did not take them long to reach the camp which had been pitched by the soldiers who had arrived before them.

  The camp was located within a 100-foot clearing on flat land with low brushes. Close by was a spring with water running in a little creek down the gentle slope. The water was fresh and potable with an unmistakable high iron content. They took advantage of the opportunity to administer medical treatment to the serious cases whose conditions were aggravated by the difficult transport and the muggy heat.
..

  Then the storm broke out.

  In the preparatory stage of his expedition Tomisenkov had been advised that due to the extremely slow rotation of Venus great differences of temperature would occur between the day and night phases of the planet giving rise to unusually strong atmospheric disturbances at sunrise and at sundown. But 'unusually strong atmospheric disturbances' did not convey an adequate concept to Tomisenkov and he, therefore, ignored the warning and simply decided to wait and see what took place.

  Had he been told that dusk and dawn would be ushered in with hurricanes, he would have exercised more caution.

  When the first howling of the storm commenced from the easterly direction he was only mildly apprehensive and did not let it show when he became more concerned. When they fully comprehended that the howling presaged an acute threat, it was too late for preventive countermeasures.

  The hurricane struck the camp with a giant fist. For a second time in the day Tomisenkov felt as though gripped by a cruel hand and catapulted into the air. He was flung into a patch of nettles—or what must have been something similar to the stinging variety on earth, since his face and hands soon started to burn painfully. He felt like crying, but, being a tough man, especially with himself, he did not give in.

  The storm raged on above him, ripping out the bushes and making it impossible to breathe as long as he faced in the direction of the wind. He turned around and pressed his body hard against the rocky ground.

  He was lying there for a few minutes, which seemed like hours, until his eyes got used to the darkness. He saw something crawling out from under the bushes. The glittering, tough-skinned mass of insects looked like something akin to ants, only each of them was two inches long.

  Hundreds were crawling along the ground toward him. Paralyzed by fright, he waited till the first one reached his outstretched hand. The insect reacted to the foreign substance, lowered its head and took a bite. Tomisenkov screamed in pain, pulled back his hand and shook it until the ant fell off. A small blood-red spot remained on the back of his hand. The incident seemed to have aroused the ants. They quickened their pace and came to attack him.

  Seized by panic he jumped up. He had forgotten about the storm which, however, took a hold of him with irresistible force, lifted him out of the bushes and swirled him around like a leaf. Far to the west, the gust suddenly released its grip and dropped him down. The impact of the fall knocked Tomisenkov out cold.

  • • •

  Rhodan and his cadre spent the hour of the hurricane at dusk on safe ground in the jungle. Rhodan knew from his prior visit to Venus that the high wall of trees offered the best protection in the forest. The jungle was so dense and the growth so flexible and resilient that the gales were felt only as an annoying noise in Rhodan's provisory camp. The camp was situated at the foot of a peculiar stony slope rising gently toward the south and covered with low brush.

  Rhodan intended to resume his advance at the end of the storm and to attack the vanguard of the enemy at the earliest opportunity. But he had not the slightest inkling that Tomisenkov himself—whose name he knew from Deringhouse's report—was at this moment no more than a mile and a half away from him on the other side of the ridge formed by the rock 500 feet above the plain of the jungle.

  All was quiet on board the Stardust.

  • • •

  No matter how much the tornado had battered the camp and its occupants, when everything was over the discipline of the men had been maintained and they knew that it was their first duty to rescue Gen. Tomisenkov. All the aide could tell them was that Tomisenkov had been swept away toward the west.

  Taking torches along, the search party entered the brush. They ran into a swarm of oversize, light-brown ants and had sense enough to make a wide detour around them.

  After an hour, they finally found Tomisenkov. He woke up and started cursing volubly. His rib, which had been fractured by the cyclone in the wake of the Stardust, must have been completely broken in the last plunge.

  The men had to carry Tomisenkov for a while. When he had recovered sufficient strength he continued, with much grunting, under his own power, as he considered the other mode of transport beneath his dignity.

  Two of the uninjured men who had remained in the camp had meanwhile taken stock and what they found was highly alarming. The troop had consisted of 30 members—12 lightly and 18 severely wounded men. Of the latter, six had died and another six could not be found at all. The slightly wounded had suffered two dead and four had disappeared.

  The huts had to be reconstructed. Tomisenkov told his aide to radio the spaceships which had landed in the mountains. After a few futile attempts he succeeded in making the connection and Tomisenkov instructed one of the ships to leave again and pick him up. Nothing was left of his resolve to lead the men of his troop as a shining example.

  Since the men had been trained under the special conditions prevalent in the jungles of Venus, it took them only 15 minutes to erect a fairly comfortable shelter with a curtain of tightly woven vines on which Tomisenkov had insisted. He knew better than anyone that it would take several hours to get the rocket ready for the take-off and that he would have at least eight hours to recuperate before the pilot could arrive.

  He made himself comfortable on a bed of leaves and got involved in a discussion with his aide about the prospects of their enterprise. The pain from his broken rib became more tolerable and his confidence gradually returned after the horrors of the past hours. In contrast, the aide was pessimistic.

  "In my opinion we're fighting a lost cause. It has become clear during the storm that we are utterly unprepared for the vicissitudes of nature on this planet and now we're up against a superior adversary when we can't even cope with the hostile environment of Venus."

  Tomisenkov became angry.

  "You can't blame the Fleet Ministry for Rhodan's presence. They were all convinced that Rhodan was occupied somewhere far out in space. Nobody could reasonably be expected to foresee that he would show up just at the wrong time."

  The aide shrugged his shoulders and prudently chose not to contradict his superior any further.

  "What do you think about..." Tomisenkov began after a pause, but at this moment the curtain of vines started to move. "Who is it?" Tomisenkov bellowed.

  They heard a gurgling noise outside.

  "Take a look!" Tomisenkov ordered his aide.

  The officer got up, pulled the curtain aside and stared into two fiery-red glowing eyes close to his face.

  He flinched back with a shrill cry but whoever was out there was not fooling around. Tomisenkov, who had watched everything closely, saw a big claw with several toes surge through the curtain and grab his aide by the neck. The victim was dragged outside screaming at the top of his voice and the curtain was torn out with him. Outside the hut was a clumsy, weaving shadow and two fiery red eyes as big as saucers were dancing through the air.

  The shouting of the unfortunate prey, taken so gruesomely by surprise, faded away. Tomisenkov, who was scared stiff, heard tramping noises which trailed quickly off in the distance, and finally a peculiar smacking sound. Then he regained his wits. Disregarding his aching rib he jumped up from his bed of leaves and yelled:

  "Alarm! Help!"

  He was heard immediately; but it took a little longer till the summoned men could make sense out of his weird tale. They combed the entire camp ground using the last three electric searchlights left from their equipment. Nothing could be found of the aide nor the mysterious beast to which he had fallen victim. The ground in front of Tomisenkov's shed was fairly hard and there were no tracks visible.

  Tomisenkov doubled the guards. He was still busy ordering precautions when a new wild scream came from the back of the camp. The searchlight was swung around at once and revealed a bizarre and terrifying sight where the last unfinished shed stood.

  An animal which evidently moved on two legs and at first glance seemed to be almost as large as a house, had pounced onto one of
the disabled men and snapped him up in its long, pointed beak. As it was about to carry off its prey, the bright searchlight startled the beast. It closed the big red eyes in its bird-like head and remained in a fixed position as if blinded. The wounded man kept on screaming.

  "What are you waiting for?" Tomisenkov hollered. "Shoot! Shoot it!"

  The order goaded the soldiers into action. A volley of shots thundered out, the harsh rattling sounds of the carbines intermingling with the sharp metallic crack of the pistols.

  They could clearly see in the light of the beam that many of the bullets had hit their target. The leathery skin of the animal burst open and some kind of blood poured from the wounds. The injured man was suddenly quiet.