question of power. I’ve got only a few minutes of free flight left in my battery, and with
your mass, you must be just about out. Come to think of it, didn’t you land a trifle hard
when we sat down here?”
“Fairly-I went into the ground up to my knees.”
“I thought so. We’ve got to get some power, and the nearest city-out of the
question or not-is the best place to get it. Luckily, it isn’t far.”
VanBuskirk grunted. “As far as I’m concerned it might as well be on Mars,
considering what’s between here and there. You can take my batteries and I’ll wait
here.”
“On your emergency food, water, and air? That’s out!”
“What else, then?”
“I can spread my field to cover all three of us,” proposed Kinnison. “That will give
us at least one minute of free flight-almost, if not quite, enough to clear the jungle. They
have night here, and, like us, the Delgonians are night-sleepers. We start at dusk, and
tonight we recharge our batteries.”
The following hour, during which the huge, hot sun dropped to the horizon, was
spent in intense discussion, but no significant improvement upon the Lensman’s plan
could be devised.
“It is time to go,” Worsel announced, curling out one extensile eye toward the
vanishing orb. “I have recorded all my findings. Already I have lived longer and, through
you, have accomplished more, than anyone has ever believed possible. I am ready to
die-I should have been dead long since.”
“Living on borrowed time’s a lot better than not living at all,” Kinnison replied, with
a grin. “Link up . . . . Ready? . . . . Got”
He snapped his switches and the close-linked group of three shot into the air and
away. As far as the eye could reach in any direction extended the sentient, ravenous
growth of the jungle, but Kinnison’s eyes were not upon that fantastically inimical green
carpet. His whole attention was occupied by two all-important meters and by the task of
so directing their flight as to gain the greatest possible horizontal distance with the
power at his command.
Fifty seconds of flashing flight, then.
“All right, Worsel, get out in front and get ready to pull!” Kinnison snapped. “Ten
seconds of drive left, but I can hold us free for five seconds after my driver quits. Pull !”
Kinnison’s driver expired, its small accumulator completely exhausted, and
Worsel, with his mighty wings, took up the task of propulsion. Inertialess still, with
Kinnison and vanBuskirk grasping his tail, each beat a mile-long leap, he struggled on.
But all too soon the battery powering the neutralizers also went dead and the three
began to plummet downward at a sharper and sharper angle, in spite of the Velantian’s
Herculean efforts to keep them aloft.
Some distance ahead of them the green of the jungle ended in a sharply cut line,
beyond which there was a heavy growth of fairly open forest. A couple of miles of this
and there was the city, their objective-so near and yet so far !
“Well either just make the timber or we just won’t,” Kinnison, mentally plotting the
course, announced dispassionately. “Just as well if we land in the jungle, I think. It’ll
break our fall, anyway-hitting solid ground inert at this speed would be bad.”
“If we land in the jungle we will never leave it,” Worsel’s thought did not slow the
incredible tempo of his prodigious pinions, “but it makes little difference whether I die
now or later.”
“It does -to us, you pessimistic croaker!” flared Kinnison. “Forget that dying
complex of yours for a minute! Remember the plan, arid follow itl We’re going to strike
the jungle, about ninety or a hundred meters in. If you come in with us you die at once,
and the rest of our scheme is all shot to hell. So when we let go, you go ahead and land
in the woods. We’ll join you there, never fear, our armor will hold long enough for us to
cut our way through a hundred meters of any jungle that ever grew-even this one . . . .
Get ready, Bus . . . . . Leggo!”
They dropped. Through the lush succulence of close-packed upper leaves and
tentacles they crashed, through the heavier, woodier main branches below, ‘through to
the ground. And there they fought for their lives, for those voracious plants nourished
themselves not only upon the soil in which their roots were imbedded, but also upon
anything organic unlucky enough to come within their reach. Flabby but tough tentacles
encircled them, ghastly sucking disks, exuding a potent corrosive, slobbered -wetly at
their armor, knobbed and spiky bludgeons whanged against tempered steel as the
monstrous organisms began dimly to realize that these particular tid-bits were encased
in something far more resistant than skin, scales, or bark.
But the Lensman and his giant companion were not quiescent. They came down
oriented and fighting. VanBuskirk, in the van, swung his frightful space-axe as a reaper
swings his scythe-one solid, short step forward with each swing. And close behind the
Valerian strode Kinnison, his own flying axe guarding the giant’s head and back.
Forward they pressed, and forward-not the strongest, toughest stems of that monstrous
weed could stay vanBuskirk’s Herculean strength, not the most agile of the striking
tendrils and curling tentacles could gain a manacling hold in the face of Kinnison’s
flashing speed in cut, thrust, and slash.
Masses of the obscene vegetation crashed down upon their heads from above,
revoltingly cupped orifices sucking and smacking, and they were showered continually
with floods of the opaque, corrosive sap, to the action of which even their armor was not
entirely immune. But, hampered as they were and almost blinded, they struggled on,
while behind them an ever-lengthening corridor of demolition marked their progress.
“Ain’t we got fun?” grunted the Dutchman, in time with his swing. “But we’re quite
a team at that, chief-brains and brawn, huh?”
“Ooh uh,” dissented Kinnison, his weapon flying. “Grace and poise, or, if you
want to be really romantic, ham and eggs,..
“Rack and ruin will be more like it if we don’t break out before this confounded
goo eats through our armor. But we’re making it-the stuff’s thinning out and I think I can
see trees up ahead. ”
“It is well if you can,” came a cold, clear thought from Worsel, “for I am sorely
beset. Hasten or I perish !”
At that thought the two Patrolmen forged ahead in a burst of even more furious
activity. Crashing through the thinning barriers of the jungle’s edge, they wiped their
lenses partially clear, glanced quickly about, and saw the Velantian. That worthy was
“sorely beset” indeed. Six animals-huge, reptilian, but lithe and active-had him down.
So helplessly immobile was Worsel that he could scarcely move his tail, and the
monsters were already beginning to gnaw at his scaly, armored hide.
“I’ll put a stop to that, Worsel!” called Kinnison, referring to the fact, well known to
all us moderns, that any real animal, no matter how savage, can be controlled by any
wearer of the Lens. For, no matter how low in the scale of intelligence the animal is, the
Lensman can get in touch with whatever mind the creature has, and reason with it.
But these monstrosities, as Kinnison learned immediately, were not really
animals. Even though of animal form and mobility, they were purely vegetable in
motivation and behavior, reacting only to the stimuli of food and of reproduction.
Weirdly and completely inimical to all other forms of created life, they were so utterly
noisome, so completely alien that the. full power of mind and Lens failed entirely to gain
rapport.
Upon that confusedly writhing heap the Patrolmen flung themselves, terrible
axes destructively a-swing. In turn they were attacked viciously, but this battle was not
long to endure. VanBuskirk’s first terrific blow knocked one adversary away, almost
spinning end over end. Kinnison took out one, the Dutchman another, and the
remaining three were no match at all for the humiliated and furiously raging Velantian.
But it was not until the monstrosities had been gruesomely carved and torn apart,
literally to bits, that they ceased their insensately voracious attacks.
“They took me by surprise,” explained Worsel, unnecessarily, as the three made
their way through the night toward their goal, “and six of them at once were too much
for me. I tried to hold their minds, but apparently they have none.”
“How about the Overlords?” asked Kinnison. “Suppose they have received any
of our thoughts? Bus and I may have done some unguarded radiating.”
“No,” Worse! made positive reply. “The thought-screen batteries, while small and
of very little actual power, have a very long service life. Now let us go over again the
next steps of our plan of action.”
Since no more untoward events marred their progress toward the Delgonian city,
they soon reached it. It was for the most part dark and quiet, its somber buildings