your man’ll go hungry— and he’ll break you right off at the ankles!” She became again
the huntress, and soon saw an animal browsing steadily along the base of a hill. It was
a six-legged, deer-like creature, much larger than anything she had as yet seen. But it
was meat and her time was short, therefore she crept within range and loosed an arrow
with the full power of her hunting bow. Unfamiliar as she was with the anatomy of the
peculiar creature, the arrow did not kill. The “hex-aped”, as she instantly named it, sped
away and she leaped after it. She, like her companion, had developed amazingly in
musculature, and few indeed were the denizens of Ganymede who could equal her
speed .upon that small globe, with its feeble gravitational force.
Up the foothills it darted. Beyond the hills and deep into a valley between two
towering peaks the chase continued before Nadia’s third arrow brought the animal
down. Bending over the game, she became conscious of a strange but wonderfully
sweet perfume and glanced up, to see something which she certainly had not noticed
when the hexaped had fallen. It was an enormous flower, at least a foot in diameter and
indescribably beautiful in its crimson and golden splendor. Almost level with her head
the gorgeous blossom waved upon its heavy stem; based by a massive cluster of
enormous, smooth, dark green leaves. Entranced by this unexpected and marvelous
floral display, Nadia breathed deeply of the inviting fragrance — and collapsed
senseless upon the ground. Thereupon the weird plant moved over toward her, and the
thick leaves began to enfold her knees. This carnivorous thing, however, did not like the
heavy cloth of her suit and turned to the hexaped. It thrust several of its leaves into the
wounds upon the carcass and fed, while two other leaves rasped together, sending out
a piercing call.
In answer to the sound the underbrush crackled, and through it and upon the
scene there crashed a vegetable-animal nightmare—the parent of the relatively tiny
thing whose perfume had disabled the girl.
Its huge and gorgeous blossom was supported by a long, flexible, writhing stem,
and its base was composed of many and highly specialized leaves. There were saws
and spears and mighty, but sinuous tendrils; there were slender shoots which seemed
to possess some sense of perception; there was the massive tractor base composed of
extensible leaves which by their contraction and expansion propelled the mass along
the ground. Parent and child fell upon the hexaped, and soon bones and hair were all
that remained. The slender shoots then wandered about the unconscious girl in her
strange covering, and as a couple of powerful tendrils coiled about her and raised her
into the air over the monstrous base of the thing its rudimentary brain could almost be
perceived working as it sluggishly realized that, now full fed, it should carry this other
victim along, to feed its other offspring when they should return to its side.
* * * * *
Barely outside the door of the Forlorn Hope Stevens whirled about with a bitter
imprecation. He had already lost time needlessly—with a lookout plate he could cover
more ground in ten minutes than he could cover afoot in a week. He flipped on the
power and shot the violet beam out over the plateau to the district where he knew Nadia
was wont to hunt. Not finding her there, he swung the beam in an ever widening circle
around that district. Finally he saw a few freshly broken twigs, and scanned the scene
with care. He soon found the trail of fresh blood which marked the path of the flight of
the hexaped, and with the peculiar maneuverability of the device he was using it was
not long until he was studying the scene where the encounter had taken place. He
gasped when he saw the bones and perceived three of Nadia’s arrows, but soon saw
that the skeleton was not human and was reassured. Casting about in every direction,
he found Nadia’s bow, and saw a peculiar, freshly trampled path leading from the kill,
past the bow, and down the valley. He could not understand the spoor, but it was easily
followed, and he shot the beam along it at headlong speed until he came up with the
monstrous creature that was making it—until he saw what burden that organism was
carrying.
He leaped to the controls of the lifeboat, then dropped his hand. While the stream
of power now flowing was ample to operate the lookout plates, yet it would be many
hours before the accumulator cells would be in condition to drive the craft even that
short distance.
“It’ll take an hour to get there—here’s hoping I can check in on time”, he
muttered, as he took careful note of the location and direction of the creature’s trail and
set off at a fast jog-trot.
The carnivorous flower’s first warning that all was not well was received when
Stevens’ steel-shod feet landed squarely upon its base and one sweeping cut of his
sword lopped off the malignant blossom and severed the two tendrils that still held the
unconscious Nadia. With a quick heave of his shoulder he tossed her lightly backward
into the smooth-beaten track the creature had made and tried to leap away—but the
instant he had consumed in rescuing the girl had been enough for the thing to seize
him, and he found himself battling for his very life. No soft-leaved infant this, but a full-
grown monster, well equipped with mighty weapons of offense and defense. Well it was
for the struggling man that he was encased in armor steel as those saw-edged, hard-
spiked leaves drove against him with crushing force; well it was for him that he had his
own independent air supply, so that that deadly perfume eddied ineffective about his
helmeted head! Hard and fiercely driven as those terrible thorns were, they could do no
more than dent his heavy armor. His powerful left arm, driving the double-razor-edged
dirk in short, resistless arcs, managed to keep the snaky tendrils from coiling about his
right arm, which was wielding the heavy, trenchant sword. Every time that mighty blade
descended it cleaved its length through snapping spikes and impotently grinding leaves;
but more than once a nailing tendril coiled about his neck armor and held his helmet
immovable as though in a vise, while those frightful, grinding saws sought to rip their
way through the glass to the living creature inside the peculiar metal housing. Dirk and
saber and magnificent physique finally triumphed, but it was not until leaf had been
literally severed from every other leaf that the outlandish organism gave up the ghost.
Nadia had been tossed out into pure air, beyond the zone of the stupefying
perfume, and she recovered her senses in time to see the finish of the battle. Stevens,
assured that his foe was hors de combat, turned toward the spot where he had thrown
Nadia’s body. He saw that she was unharmed, and sprang toward her in relief. He was
surprised beyond measure, however, to see her run away at a pace he could not hope
to equal, encumbered as he was; motioning frantically at him the while to keep away
from her. He stopped, astounded, and started to unscrew his helmet, whereupon she
dashed back toward him, signaling him emphatically to leave his armor exactly as it
was. He stood still and stared at her, an exasperated question large upon his face, until
she made clear to him that he was to follow her at a safe distance, then she set off at a
rapid walk. She led him back to where the hexaped had fallen, where she retrieved her
bow and arrows; then, keeping a sharp lookout upon all sides, she went on to a small
stream of water. She made the dumbfounded man go out into the middle of the creek
and lie down and roll over in the water, approaching him and sniffing cautiously between
immersions. She made him continue the bathing until she could detect not even the
slightest trace of the sweet, but noxious fragrance of that peculiarly terrible form of
Ganymedean life. Only then did she allow him to remove his helmet, so that she could
give him the greeting for which they both had longed, and tell him what it was all about.
“So that’s it!” he exclaimed, still holding her tightly in his iron embrace. “Great
balls of fire! I thought maybe you were still a little cuckoo. Anaesthetic perfume, huh?
Hot stuff, I’d say—no wonder you bit—I would, too. It’s lucky for us I was air-tight—we’d
both be fee . . . ”
“Clam it!” she interrupted him sharply. “Forget it— don’t ever even think of it!”
“All x, ace. It’s out like the well-known light. What to do? It’s getting darker than a
hat, and we’re a long ways from home. Don’t know whether I could find my way back in