Donald A. Wollheim (ed) (26 page)

"And
her eyes are hidden, and they have to see them. They have to look into her eyes
or go crazy, so they follow her."

The
sad little blue-grey cloud stirred in the dark water. Golden eyes looked down
at him.

"How did you know? Do
you follow her, too?"

Lundy
took a deep, slow breath. The palms of his hands were wet. "Yes. Yes, I
followed her, too."

"We feel your thought
. . .."
They came down close around him. Their delicate
membranes fluttered like fairy wings. Their golden eyes were huge and soft and
pleading.

"Can you help us? Can you bring our mates back safe? They've
forgotten
eveiything
. If The Others should come
..."

"The
Others?"

Lundy's brain was drowned in stark and
terrible fear. Pictures came through it. Vague gigantic dreams of nightmare .
. .

"They come, riding the currents that go
between the hot cracks in the mountains and the cold deeps. They eat. They
destroy." The
litde
woman-things were shaken
suddenly like leaves in a gust of wind.

"We hide from them in the buildings. We
can keep them out, away from our seed and the
litde
new ones. But our mates have forgotten. If The Others
come
while they follow Her, outside and away from safety, they'll all be killed.
We'll be left alone, and there'll be no more seed for us, and no more
litde
new ones."

They pressed in close around him, touching him with their small
blue-grey
forefins
.

"Can
you help us? Oh, can you help us?"

Lundy closed his eyes. His mouth twitched and set. When he opened his
eyes again they were hard as agates.

"I'll help you," he said, "or die trying."

It was dark in the great square, with only
the pale sand-glow seeping through the gates. For a moment the little blue-grey
woman-creatures clung around him, not moving, except as the whole mass of them
swayed slightly with the slow rhythm of the sea.

Then they burst away from him, outward, in a
wild surge of hope—and Lundy stood with his mouth open, staring.

They weren't blue-grey any longer. They
glowed suddenly, their wings and their dainty, supple bodies, a warm soft
green that had a vibrant pulse of life behind it. And they blossomed.

The long, slender, living petals must have
been retracted, like the fronds of a touch-me-not, while they wore the sad
blue-grey. Now they broke out like coronals of flame around their small heads.

Blue and scarlet and gold,
poppy-red and violet and flame, silver-white and warm pink like a morning
cloud, streaming in the black water.
Streaming from small green bodies that
rolled and tumbled high up against the dark, dreaming buildings like the butterflies
that had danced there before the sunlight was lost forever.

Quite suddenly, then, they stopped. They
drifted motionless in the water, and their colors dimmed. Lundy said,

"Where are they?"

"Deep in the city, beyond our buildings
here—in the streets where only the curious young ones ever go. Oh, bring them
back! Please bring them
backl
"

He left them hovering in the great dark
square and went on into the city.

He walked down broad paved streets channeled
with wheel-ruts and hollowed by generations of
sandalled
feet. The great water-worn buildings lifted up on either side, lighted by the
erratic glare of the distant fissure.

The window-openings, typical of most
Venusian
architecture, were covered by grilles of marble
and semi-precious stone, intricately hand-pierced like bits of jewelry. The
great golden doors stood open on their
uncorroded
lunges. Through them Lundy could watch the life of the
litde
plant-people being lived.

In some of the buildings the lower floor had been covered with sand.
Plant-women hovered protectively over them, brushing the
sa"
nd
smooth where the water disturbed it. Lundy
guessed that these were seed beds.

In other places there were whole colonies of
tiny flower-things still rooted in the sand; a pale spring haze of green in the
dimness. They sat in placid rows, nodding their pastel baby coronals and
playing solemnly with bits of bright weed and colored stones. Here, too, the
plant-women watched and guarded lovingly.

Several times Lundy saw groups of young
plantlings
, grown free of the sand, being taught to swim by
the woman-creatures, tumbling in the black water like bright petals on
a
spring wind.

All the women were the same sad blue-grey,
with their blossoms hidden.

They'd stay that way, unless he, Lundy, could
finish the job Special had sent him to do. The job he hadn't been quite big
enough to handle up to now.

Farrell, with the flesh flayed off his bones,
and not feeling it because
She
was all he could think of. Jackie
Smith,
drowned in a flooded lock because
She
wanted
to be free and he had helped her.

Was this Lundy guy so much bigger than
Farrell and Smith, and all the other men who had gone crazy over
Her
? Big enough to catch The Vampire Lure in a net and keep
it there, and not go nuts himself?

Lundy didn't feel that big.
Not anywhere near that big.

He
was remembering things. The first time he'd had
It
in
a
net. The last few minutes before the wreck, when he'd heard
Her
crying for freedom from inside the safe. Jackie Smith's
face when he walked in with the water from the flooded lock, and his, Lundy's,
own question—Oft
Lord,
what did he see before he drowned?

The
tight cold knot was back in Lundy's belly again, and this time it had spurs on.

He
left the colony behind him, walking down empty streets fit by the rhythmic
flaring of the volcanic fissure. There was damage here. Pavements cracked and
twisted with the settling, towers shaken down, the carved stone jalousies
split out of the windows. Whole walls had fallen in, in some places, and most
of the golden doors were wrecked, jammed wide open or gone entirely.

A dead city.
So dead and silent that you couldn't breathe
with it, and so old it made you crawl inside.

A swell place to go mad in, following a dream.

After a long time Lundy saw them—the mates of
the little seaweed women.
A long, long trail of them like a
flight of homing birds, winding between the dark and broken towers.

They looked like their women.
A little bigger, a
litde
coarser, with
strong tough dark-green bodies and brilliant coronals.
Their golden eyes
were fixed on something Lundy couldn't see, and they looked like the eyes of
Lucifer yearning at the gates of Heaven.

Lundy began to run against the water, cutting
across a wide plaza to get under the head of the procession. He unhooked the
net from his belt with hands that felt like a couple of dead fish.

Then he staggered suddenly, lost his footing,
and went sprawling. It was as though somebody had pushed him with a strong
hand. When he tried to get up it pushed him again, hard. The golden glare from
the fissure was steadier now, and very bright.

The trail of little man-things bent suddenly
in a long whipping bow, and Lundy knew what
was the matter
.

There was a current rising in the city.
Rising like the hot white winds that used to howl in from the sea, carrying the
rains.

"They
ride the currents that go between the hot cracks in the mountains and the cold
deeps. They eat. They destroy."

The Others.
The
Others
, who were cannibals . . .

She
led the bright trail of plant-men between the towers, and there was a
current rising in the streets.

Lundy got up. He balanced himself against the
thrust of the current and ran,
foll»wing
the
procession. It was clumsy work, with the water and his leaded boots. He tried
to gauge where
If—
or
She—
was from the focus of the plant-men's eyes.

The hot light flared up brighter. The water
pulled and shoved at him. He looked back once, but he couldn't see anything in
the shadows between the towers. He was scared.

He
shook the net out, and he was scared.

Funny that
It—or
She
—
didn't see him. Funny
It
didn't sense his mind, even though he tried to keep it closed. But he
wasn't a very big object down there in the shadows under the walls, and
creating an illusion for that many minds would be a strain on anything, even
creature from outer space.

He'd had the breaks once before, when he
caught up with Farrell. He prayed to have them again.

He got them, for what good it did him.

The current caught the procession and pulled
it down close to Lundy. He watched their eyes. She was still leading them. She
had a physical body even if you couldn't see it, and the current would pull it,
no matter how tiny it was.

He
cast his net out, fast.

It bellied out in the black water and came swooping back to his pull,
and there was something in it.
Something tiny and cylindrical
and vicious.
Something alive.

He drew the net tight, shivering and sweating
with nervous excitement. And the plant-men attacked.

They swooped on him in a brilliant cloud.
Their golden eyes burned. There was no sense in them. Their minds shrieked and
clamored at him, a formless howl of rage—and fear, for
Her
.

They beat at him with their little green
fins.
Their coronals blazed, hot angry splashes of colored
flame against the dark water.
They wrenched at the net, tore at it,
beating their membranes like wings against the rising current.

Lundy was a solid, muscular little guy. He
snarled and fought for the net like a wolf over a yearling lamb. He lost it
anyway. He fell on his face under a small mountain of churning man-things and
lay gasping for the breath they knocked out of him, thankful for the
vac
-suit that saved him from being crushed flat.

He watched them take the net. They clustered
around it in a globe like a swarm of bees, rolling around in the moving water.
Their golden eyes had a terrible stricken look.

They couldn't open the net. Lundy had drawn it tight and fastened it,
and they didn't have fingers. They stroked and pawed it with their fins, but
they couldn't let
Her
out.

Lundy got up on his hands and knees. The
current quickened. It roared down between the broken towers like a black wind
and took the swarm of man-things with it, still clutching the net.

And
then The Others came.

IV

L
undy
saw them a long way off
.
For a moment he didn't believe it. He thought they must be shadows cast by the
fitful glare of the fissure. He braced himself against a building and stood
watching.

Stood
watching,
and then seeing as the rushing
current brought them closer. He didn't move, except to lift his jaw a little
trying to breathe. He simply stood, cold as a dead man's feet and just as numb.

They looked something like the giant rays
he'd seen back on Earth, only they were plants. Great sleek bulbs of kelp with
their leaves spread like wings to the current. Their long teardrop bodies ended
in a flange like a fishtail that served as a rudder and they had tentacles for
arms.