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Title: The Stellar Legion
Author: Leigh Brackett
Release Date: April 15, 2020 [EBook #61844]
Language: English
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THE STELLAR LEGION
By LEIGH BRACKETT
No one had ever escaped from Venus'
dread Stellar Legion. And, as Thekla
the low-Martian learned, no one
had ever betrayed it and--lived.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Winter 1940.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Silence was on the barracks like a lid clamped over tight-coiled
springs. Men in rumpled uniforms--outlanders of the Stellar Legion,
space-rats, the scrapings of the Solar System--sweated in the sullen
heat of the Venusian swamplands before the rains. Sweated and
listened.
The metal door clanged open to admit Lehn, the young Venusian
Commandant, and every man jerked tautly to his feet. Ian MacIan, the
white-haired, space-burned Earthman, alone and hungrily poised for
action; Thekla, the swart Martian low-canaler, grinning like a weasel
beside Bhak, the hulking strangler from Titan. Every quick nervous
glance was riveted on Lehn.
The young officer stood silent in the open door, tugging at his fair
mustache; to MacIan, watching, he was a trim, clean incongruity in this
brutal wilderness of savagery and iron men. Behind him, the eternal
mists writhed in a thin curtain over the swamp, stretching for miles
beyond the soggy earthworks; through it came the sound every ear had
listened to for days, a low, monotonous piping that seemed to ring
from the ends of the earth. The Nahali, the six-foot, scarlet-eyed
swamp-dwellers, whose touch was weapon enough, praying to their gods
for rain. When it came, the hot, torrential downpour of southern Venus,
the Nahali would burst in a scaly tide over the fort.
Only a moat of charged water and four electro-cannons stood between
the Legion and the horde. If those things failed, it meant two hundred
lives burned out, the circle of protective forts broken, the fertile
uplands plundered and laid waste. MacIan looked at Lehn's clean,
university-bred young face, and wondered cynically if he was strong
enough to do his job.
Lehn spoke, so abruptly that the men started. "I'm calling for
volunteers. A reconnaissance in Nahali territory; you know well enough
what that means. Three men. Well?"
Ian MacIan stepped forward, followed instantly by the Martian Thekla.
Bhak the Titan hesitated, his queerly bright, blank eyes darting from
Thekla to Lehn, and back to MacIan. Then he stepped up, his hairy face
twisted in a sly grin.
Lehn eyed them, his mouth hard with distaste under his fair mustache.
Then he nodded, and said; "Report in an hour, light equipment." Turning
to go, he added almost as an afterthought, "Report to my quarters,
MacIan. Immediately."
MacIan's bony Celtic face tightened and his blue eyes narrowed with
wary distrust. But he followed Lehn, his gaunt, powerful body as
ramrod-straight as the Venusian's own, and no eye that watched him go
held any friendship.
Thekla laughed silently, like a cat with his pointed white teeth. "Two
of a kind," he whispered. "I hope they choke each other!" Bhak grunted,
flexing his mighty six-fingered hands.
In his quarters, Lehn, his pink face flushed, strode up and down while
MacIan waited dourly. It was plain enough what was coming; MacIan felt
the old bitter defensive anger rising in him.
"Look," he told himself inwardly. "Books. Good cigars. A girl's picture
on the table. You had all that once, you damn fool. Why couldn't
you...."
Lehn stopped abruptly in front of him, grey eyes steady. "I'm new here,
MacIan," he said. "But we've been Legion men for five generations, and
I know the law; no man is to be questioned about his past. I'm going to
break the law. Why are you here, MacIan?"
MacIan's white head was gaunt and stubborn as Tantallon Rock, and he
kept silent.
"I'm trying to help," Lehn went on, "You've been an officer; every man
in the barracks knows that. If you're here for any reason but failure
in duty, you can be an officer again. I'll relieve you of special duty;
you can start working for the examinations. No need to waste you in the
ranks. Well?"
MacIan's eyes were hidden, but his voice was harsh. "What's behind
this, Lehn? What the hell is it to you?"
The Venusian's level gaze wavered; for a moment the boy looked through
the man, and MacIan felt a quick stab in his heart. Then all that was
gone, and Lehn said curtly.
"If you find the barracks congenial stay there, by all means.
Dismissed!"
MacIan glared at him half-blindly for a moment, his fine long hands
clenching and unclenching at his sides. Then he 'bout faced with
vicious smartness and went out.
* * * * *
Nearly an hour later he stood with the Martian Thekla on the
earthworks, waiting. The monotonous pipes prayed on in the swamp;
MacIan, looking up at the heavy sky, prayed just as hard that it would
not rain. Not just yet. Because if it rained before the patrol left,
the patrol would not leave; the Nahali would be on the march with the
very first drop.
"And my chance would be gone," he whispered to himself.
Thekla's bright black eyes studied him, as they always did; an
insolent, mocking scrutiny that angered the Scot.
"Well," he said dryly. "The perfect soldier, the gallant volunteer. For
love of Venus, Thekla, or love of the Legion?"
"Perhaps," said Thekla softly, "for the same reason you did, Earthman.
And perhaps not." His face, the swart, hard face of a low-canal outlaw,
was turned abruptly toward the mist-wrapped swamp. "Love of Venus!" he
snarled. "Who could love this lousy sweatbox? Not even Lehn, if he had
the brains of a flea!"
"Mars is better, eh?" MacIan had a sudden inspiration. "Cool dry air,
and little dark women, and the wine-shops on the Jekkara Low-canal.
You'd like to be back there, wouldn't you?"
To himself, he thought in savage pleasure, "I'll pay you out, you
little scum. You've tortured me with what I've lost, until I'd have
killed you if it hadn't been against my plan. All right, see if you can
take it!"
The slow dusk was falling; Thekla's dark face was a blur but MacIan
knew he had got home. "The fountains in the palace gardens, Thekla;
the sun bursting up over red deserts; the singing girls and the _thil_
in Madame Kan's. Remember the _thil_, Thekla? Ice cold and greenish,
bubbling in blue glasses?"
He knew why Thekla snarled and sprang at him, and it wasn't Thekla he
threw down on the soft earth so much as a tall youngster with a fair
mustache, who had goaded with good intent. Funny, thought MacIan, that
well-intentioned goads hurt worse than the other kind.
A vast paw closed on his shoulder, hauling him back. Another, he saw,
yanked Thekla upright. And Bhak the Titan's hairy travesty of a face
peered down at them.
"Listen," he grunted, in his oddly articulated Esperanto. "I know
what's up. I got ears, and village houses got thin walls. I heard the
Nahali girl talking. I don't know which one of you has the treasure,
but I want it. If I don't get it...."
His fingers slid higher on MacIan's shoulder, gripped his throat. Six
fingers, like iron clamps. MacIan heard Thekla choking and cursing; he
managed to gasp:
"You're in the wrong place, Bhak. We're men. I though you only
strangled women."
The grip slackened a trifle. "Men too," said Bhak slowly. "That's why
I had to run away from Titan. That's why I've had to run away from
everywhere. Men or women--anyone who laughs at me."
MacIan looked at the blank-eyed, revolting face, and wondered that
anyone could laugh at it. Pity it, shut it harmlessly away, but not
laugh.
Bhak's fingers fell away abruptly. "They laugh at me," he repeated
miserably, "and run away. I know I'm ugly. But I want friends and a
wife, like anyone else. Especially a wife. But they laugh at me, the
women do, when I ask them. And...." He was shaking suddenly with rage
and his face was a beast's face, blind and brutal. "And I kill them. I
kill the damned little vixens that laugh at me!"
He stared stupidly at his great hands. "Then I have to run away. Always
running away, alone." The bright, empty eyes met MacIan's with deadly
purpose. "That's why I want the money. If I have money, they'll like
me. Women always like men who have money. If I kill one of you, I'll
have to run away again. But if I have someone to go with me. I won't
mind."
Thekla showed his pointed teeth. "Try strangling a Nahali girl, Bhak.
Then we'll be rid of you."
Bhak grunted. "I'm not a fool. I know what the Nahali do to you. But I
want that money the girl told about, and I'll get it. I'd get it now,
only Lehn will come."
He stood over them, grinning. MacIan drew back, between pity and
disgust. "The Legion is certainly the System's garbage dump," he
muttered in Martian, loud enough for Thekla to hear, and smiled at the
low-canaler's stifled taunt. Stifled, because Lehn was coming up, his
heavy water-boots thudding on the soggy ground.
* * * * *
Without a word the three fell in behind the officer, whose face had
taken on an unfamiliar stony grimness. MacIan wondered whether it was
anger at him, or fear of what they might get in the swamp. Then he
shrugged; the young cub would have to follow his own trail, wherever it
led. And MacIan took a stern comfort from this thought. His own feet
were irrevocably directed; there was no doubt, no turning back. He'd
never have again to go through what Lehn was going through. All he had
to do was wait.
The plank bridge groaned under them, almost touching the water in the
moat. Most ingenious, that moat. The Nahali could swim it in their
sleep, normally, but when the conductor rods along the bottom were
turned on, they literally burned out their circuits from an overload.
The swamp-rats packed a bigger potential than any Earthly electric eel.
Ian MacIan, looking at the lights of the squalid village that lay below
the fort, reflected that the Nahali had at least one definitely human
trait. The banging of a three-tiered Venusian piano echoed on the
heavy air, along with shouts and laughter that indicated a free flow
of "swamp juice." This link in the chain of stations surrounding the
swamplands was fully garrisoned only during the rains, and the less
warlike Nahali were busy harvesting what they could from the soldiers
and the rabble that came after them.
Queer creatures, the swamp-rats, with their ruby eyes and iridescent
scales. Nature, in adapting them to their wet, humid environment, had
left them somewhere between warm-blooded mammals and cold-blooded
reptiles, anthropoid in shape, man-sized, capricious. The most
remarkable thing about them was their breathing apparatus, each
epithelial cell forming a tiny electrolysis plant to extract oxygen
from water. Since they lived equally on land and in water, and since
the swamp air was almost a mist, it suited them admirably. That was why
they had to wait for the rains to go raiding in the fertile uplands;
and that was why hundreds of Interworld Legionnaires had to swelter on
the strip of soggy ground between swamp and plateau to stop them.
MacIan was last in line. Just as his foot left the planks, four heads
jerked up as one, facing to the darkening sky.
"Rain!"
Big drops, splattering slowly down, making a sibilant whisper across
the swamp. The pipes broke off, leaving the ears a little deafened with
the lack of them after so long. And MacIan, looking at Lehn, swore
furiously in his heart.
The three men paused, expecting an order to turn back, but Lehn waved
them on.
"But it's raining," protested Bhak. "Well get caught in the attack."
The officer's strangely hard face was turned toward them. "No," he
said, with an odd finality, "they won't attack. Not yet."
They went on, toward the swamp that was worse in silence than it had
been with the praying pipes. And MacIan, looking ahead at the oddly
assorted men plowing grimly through the mud, caught a sudden glimpse of
something dark and hidden, something beyond the simple threat of death
that hung always over a reconnoitering patrol.
* * * * *
The swamp folded them in. It is never truly dark on Venus, owing to the
thick, diffusing atmosphere. There was enough light to show branching,
muddy trails, great still pools choked with weeds, the spreading
_liha_-trees with their huge pollen pods, everything dripping with the
slow rain. MacIan could hear the thudding of that rain for miles around
on the silent air; the sullen forerunner of the deluge.
Fort and village were lost in sodden twilight. Lehn's boots squelched
onward through the mud of a trail that rose gradually to a ridge of
higher ground. When he reached the top, Lehn turned abruptly, his
electro-gun seeming to materialize in his hand, and MacIan was startled
by the bleak look of his pink, young face.
"Stop right there," said Lehn quietly. "Keep your hands up. And don't
speak until I'm finished."
He waited a second, with the rain drumming on his waterproof coverall,
dripping from the ends of his fair mustache. The others were obedient,
Bhak a great grinning hulk between the two slighter men. Lehn went on
calmly.
"Someone has sold us out to the Nahali. That's how I know they won't
attack until they get the help they're waiting for. I had to find
out, if possible, what preparations they have made for destroying our
electrical supply, which is our only vulnerable point. But I had a
double purpose in calling this party. Can you guess what it is?"
MacIan could. Lehn continued:
"The traitor had his price; escape from the Legion, from Venus, through
the swamp to Lhiva, where he can ship out on a tramp. His one problem
was to get away from the fort without being seen, since all leaves have
been temporarily cancelled."
Lehn's mist-grey eyes were icy. "I gave him that chance."
Bhak laughed, an empty, jarring road. "See? That's what the Nahali girl
said. She said, 'He can get what he needs, now. He'll get away before
the rains, probably with a patrol; then our people can attack.' I know
what he needed. Money! And I want it."
"Shut up!" Lehn's electro-gun gestured peremptorily. "I want the truth
of this. Which one of you is the traitor?"
Thekla's pointed white teeth gleamed. "MacIan loves the Legion, sir.
_He_ couldn't be guilty."
Lehn's gaze crossed MacIan's briefly, and again the Scot had a fleeting
glimpse of something softer beneath the new hardness. It was something
that took him back across time to a day when he had been a green
subaltern in the Terran Guards, and a hard-bitten, battle-tempered
senior officer had filled the horizon for him.
It was the something that had made Lehn offer him a chance, when
his trap was set and sprung. It was the something that was going to
make Lehn harder on him now than on either Bhak or Thekla. It was
hero-worship.
MacIan groaned inwardly. "Look here," he said. "We're in Nahali
country. There may be trouble at any moment. Do you think this is the
time for detective work? You may have caught the wrong men anyway.
Better do your job of reconnoitering, and worry about the identity of
the traitor back in the fort."
"You're not an officer now, MacIan!" snapped Lehn. "Speak up, and I
want the truth. You, Thekla!"
Thekla's black eyes were bitter. "I'd as well be here as anywhere,
since I can't be on Mars. How could I go back, with a hanging charge
against me?"
"MacIan?" Lehn's grey gaze was levelled stiffly past his head. And
MacIan was quivering suddenly with rage; rage against the life that had
brought him where he was, against Lehn, who was the symbol of all he
had thrown away.
"Think what you like," he whispered, "and be damned!"
* * * * *
Bhak's movement came so swiftly that it caught everyone unprepared.
Handling the Martian like a child's beanbag, he picked him up and
hurled him against Lehn. The electro-gun spat a harmless bolt into
empty air as the two fell struggling in the mud. MacIan sprang forward,
but Bhak's great fingers closed on his neck. With his free hand, the
Titan dragged Thekla upright; he held them both helpless while he
kicked the sprawling Lehn in the temple.
In the split second before unconsciousness took him, Lehn's eyes met
MacIan's and they were terrible eyes. MacIan groaned, "You young fool!"
Then Lehn was down, and Bhak's fingers were throttling him.
"Which one?" snarled the Titan. "Give me the money, and I'll let you
go. I'm going to have the money, if I have to kill you. Then the girls
won't laugh at me. Tell me. Which one?"
MacIan's blue eyes widened suddenly. With all his strength he fought to
croak out one word: "Nahali!"
Bhak dropped them with a grunt. Swinging his great hands, forgetting
his gun completely, he stood at bay. There was a rush of bodies in
the rain-blurred dusk, a flash of scarlet eyes and triangular mouths
laughing in queer, noseless faces. Then there were scaly, man-like
things hurled like battering-rams against the Legionnaires.
MacIan's gun spat blue flame; two Nahali fell, electrocuted, but there
were too many of them. His helmet was torn off, so that his drenched
white hair blinded him; rubber-shod fists and feet lashed against
reptilian flesh. Somewhere just out of sight, Thekla was cursing
breathlessly in low-canal argot. And Lehn, still dazed, was crawling
gamely to his feet; his helmet had protected him from the full force of
Bhak's kick.
The hulking Titan loomed in the midst of a swarm of red-eyed
swamp-rats. And MacIan saw abruptly that he had taken off his clumsy
gloves when he had made ready to strangle his mates. The great
six-fingered hands stretched hungrily toward a Nahali throat.
"Bhak!" yelled MacIan. "_Don't_...!"
The Titan's heavy laughter drowned him out; the vast paws closed in
a joyous grip. On the instant, Bhak's great body bent and jerked
convulsively; he slumped down, the heart burned out of him by the
electricity circuited through his hands.
Lehn's gun spoke. There was a reek of ozone, and a Nahali screamed
like a stricken reptile. The Venusian cried out in sudden pain, and
was silent; MacIan, struggling upright, saw him buried under a pile of
scaly bodies. Then a clammy paw touched his own face. He moaned as a
numbing shock struck through him, and lapsed into semi-consciousness.
* * * * *
He had vague memories of being alternately carried and towed through
warm lakes and across solid ground. He knew dimly that he was dumped
roughly under a _liha_-tree in a clearing where there were thatched
huts, and that he was alone.
After what seemed a very long time he sat up, and his surroundings were
clear. Even more clear was Thekla's thin dark face peering amusedly
down at him.
The Martian bared his pointed white teeth, and said, "Hello, traitor."
MacIan would have risen and struck him, only that he was weak and
dizzy. And then he saw that Thekla had a gun.
His own holster was empty. MacIan got slowly to his feet, raking the
white hair out of his eyes, and he said, "You dirty little rat!"
Thekla laughed, as a fox might laugh at a baffled hound. "Go ahead and
curse me, MacIan. You high-and-mighty renegade! You were right; I'd
rather swing on Mars than live another month in this damned sweatbox!
And I can laugh at you, Ian MacIan! I'm going back to the deserts and
the wine-shops on the Jekkara Low-canal. The Nahali girl didn't mean
money; she meant plastic surgery, to give me another face. I'm free.
And you're going to die, right here in the filthy mud!"
A slow, grim smile touched MacIan's face, but he said nothing.
"Oh, I understand," said Thekla mockingly. "You fallen swells and your
honor! But you won't die honorably, any more than you've lived that
way."
MacIan's eyes were contemptuous and untroubled.
The pointed teeth gleamed. "You don't understand, MacIan. Lehn isn't
going to die. He's going back to face the music, after his post is
wiped out. I don't know what they'll do to him, but it won't be nice.
And remember, MacIan, he thinks you sold him out. He thinks _you_ cost
him his post, his men, his career: his honor, you scut! Think that over
when the swamp-rats go to work on you--they like a little fun now and
then--and remember I'm laughing!"
* * * * *
MacIan was silent for a long time, hands clenched at his sides, his
craggy face carved in dark stone under his dripping white hair. Then he
whispered, "Why?"
Thekla's eyes met his in sudden intense hate. "Because I want to see
your damned proud, supercilious noses rubbed in the dirt!"
MacIan nodded. His face was strange, as though a curtain had been drawn
over it. "Where's Lehn?"
Thekla pointed to the nearest hut. "But it won't do you any good. The
rats gave him an overdose, accidentally, of course, and he's out for a
long time."
MacIan went unsteadily toward the hut through rain. Over his shoulder
he heard Thekla's voice: "Don't try anything funny, MacIan. I can shoot
you down before you're anywhere near an escape, even if you could find
your way back without me. The Nahali are gathering now, all over the
swamp; within half an hour they'll march on the fort, and then on to
the plateaus. They'll send my escort before they go, but you and Lehn
will have to wait until they come back. You can think of me while
you're waiting to die, MacIan; me, going to Lhiva and freedom!"
MacIan didn't answer. The rhythm of the rain changed from a slow
drumming to a rapid, vicious hiss; he could see it, almost smoking
in the broad leaves of the _liha_-trees. The drops cut his body like
whips, and he realized for the first time that he was stripped to
trousers and shirt. Without his protective rubber coverall, Thekla
could electrocute him far quicker even than a Nahali, with his service
pistol.
The hut, which had been very close, was suddenly far off, so far he
could hardly see it. The muddy ground swooped and swayed underfoot.
MacIan jerked himself savagely erect. Fever. Any fool who prowled the
swamp without proper covering was a sure victim. He looked back at
Thekla, safe in helmet and coverall, grinning like a weasel under the
shelter of a pod-hung tree-branch.
The hut came back into proper perspective. Aching, trembling suddenly
with icy cold, he stooped and entered. Lehn lay there, dry but stripped
like MacIan, his young face slack in unconsciousness. MacIan raised a
hand, let it fall limply back. Lehn was still paralyzed from the shock.
It might be hours, even days before he came out of it. Perhaps never,
if he wasn't cared for properly.
MacIan must have gone a little mad then, from the fever and the shock
to his own brain, and Thekla. He took Lehn's shirt in both hands and
shook him, as though to beat sense back into his brain, and shouted at
him in hoarse savagery.
"All I wanted was to die! That's what I came to the Legion for, to die
like a soldier because I couldn't live like an officer. But it had to
be honorably, Lehn! Otherwise...."
He broke off in a fit of shivering, and his blue eyes glared under
his white, tumbled hair. "You robbed me of that, damn you! You and
Thekla. You trapped me. You wouldn't even let me die decently. I was
an officer, Lehn, like you. Do you hear me, young fool? I had to
choose between two courses, and I chose the wrong one. I lost my whole
command. Twenty-five hundred men, dead.
"They might have let me off at the court-martial. It was an honest
mistake. But I didn't wait. I resigned. All I wanted was to die like a
good soldier. That's why I volunteered. And you tricked me, Lehn! You
and Thekla."
He let the limp body fall and crouched there, holding his throbbing
head in his hands. He knew he was crying, and couldn't stop. His skin
burned, and he was cold to the marrow of his bones.
Suddenly he looked at Lehn out of bright, fever-mad eyes. "Very well,"
he whispered. "I won't die. You can't kill me, you and Thekla, and you
go on believing I betrayed you. I'll take you back, you two, and fight
it out. I'll keep the Nahali from taking the fort, so you can't say I
sold it out. I'll make you believe me!"
From somewhere, far off, he heard Thekla laugh.
* * * * *
MacIan huddled there for some time, his brain whirling. Through the
rain-beat and the fever-mist in his head and the alternate burning and
freezing that racked his body, certain truths shot at him like stones
from a sling.
Thekla had a gun that shot a stream of electricity. A gun designed for
Nahali, whose nervous systems were built to carry a certain load and
no more, like any set of wires. The low frequency discharge was strong
enough to kill a normal man only under ideal conditions; and these
conditions were uniquely ideal. Wet clothes, wet skin, wet ground, even
the air saturated.
Then there were metal and rubber. Metal in his belt, in Lehn's belt;
metal mesh, because the damp air rotted everything else. Rubber on his
feet, on Lehn's feet. Rubber was insulation. Metal was a conductor.
MacIan realized with part of his mind that he must be mad to do what he
planned to do. But he went to work just the same.
Ten minutes later he left the hut and crossed the soaking clearing
in the downpour. Thekla had left the _liha_-tree for a hut directly
opposite Lehn's; he rose warily in the doorway, gun ready. His sly
black eyes took in MacIan's wild blue gaze, the fever spots burning on
his lean cheekbones, and he smiled.
"Get on back to the hut," he said. "Be a pity if you die before the
Nahali have a chance to try electro-therapy."
MacIan didn't pause. His right arm was hidden behind his back. Thekla's
jaw tightened. "Get back or I'll kill you!"
MacIan's boots sucked in the mud. The beating rain streamed from his
white hair, over his craggy face and gaunt shoulders. And he didn't
hesitate.
Thekla's pointed teeth gleamed in a sudden snarl. His thumb snapped the
trigger; a bolt of blue flame hissed toward the striding Scot.
MacIan's right hand shot out in the instant the gun spoke. One of
Lehn's rubber boots cased his arm almost to the shoulder, and around
the ankle of it a length of metal was made fast; two mesh belts linked
together. The spitting blue fire was gathered to the metal circle, shot
down the coupled lengths, and died in the ground.
The pistol sputtered out as a coil fused. Thekla cursed and flung it
at MacIan's head. The Scot dodged it, and broke into a run, dropping
Lehn's boot that his hands might be free to grapple.
Thekla fought like a low-canal rat, but MacIan was bigger and beyond
himself with the first madness of fever. He beat the little Martian
down and bound him with his own belt, and then went looking for his
clothes and gun.
He found them, with Lehn's, in the hut next door. His belt pouch
yielded quinine; he gulped a large dose and felt better. After he had
dressed, he went and wrestled Lehn into his coverall and helmet and
dragged him out beside Thekla, who was groaning back to consciousness
in the mud.
Looking up, MacIan saw three Nahali men watching him warily out of
scarlet eyes as they slunk toward him.
Thekla's escort. And it was a near thing. Twice clammy paws seared
his face before he sent them writhing down into the mud, jerking as
the overload beat through their nervous systems. Triangular mouths
gaped in noseless faces, hand-like paws tore convulsively at scaly
breast-plates, and MacIan, as he watched them die, said calmly:
"There will be hundreds of them storming the fort. My gun won't be
enough. But somehow I've got to stop them."
No answer now. He shrugged and kicked Thekla erect. "Back to the fort,
scut," he ordered, and laughed. The linked belts were fastened now
around Thekla's neck, the other end hooked to the muzzle of MacIan's
gun, so that the slightest rough pull would discharge it. "What if I
stumble?" Thekla snarled, and MacIan answered, "You'd better not!"
Lehn was big and heavy, but somehow MacIan got him across his
shoulders. And they started off.
* * * * *
The fringe of the swamp was in sight when MacIan's brain became
momentarily lucid. Another dose of quinine drove the mists back, so
that the fort, some fifty yards away, assumed its proper focus. MacIan
dropped Lehn on his back in the mud and stood looking, his hand ready
on his gun.
The village swarmed with swamp-rats in the slow, watery dawn. They were
ranged in a solid mass along the edges of the moat, and the fort's
guns were silent MacIan wondered why, until he saw that the dam that
furnished power for the turbine had been broken down.
Thekla laughed silently. "My idea, MacIan. The Nahali would never have
thought of it themselves. They can't drown, you know. I showed them
how to sneak into the reservoir, right under the fort's guns, and stay
under water, loosening the stones around the spillway. The pressure did
the rest. Now there's no power for the big guns, nor the conductor rods
in the moat."
He turned feral black eyes on MacIan. "You've made a fool of yourself.
You can't stop those swamp-rats from tearing the fort apart. You can't
stop me from getting away, after they're through. You can't stop Lehn
from thinking what he does. You haven't changed anything by these
damned heroics!"
"Heroics!" said MacIan hoarsely, and laughed. "Maybe." With sudden
viciousness he threw the end of the linked belts over a low
_liha_-branch, so that Thekla had to stand on tiptoe to keep from
strangling. Then, staring blindly at the beleagured fort, he tried to
beat sense out of his throbbing head.
"There was something," he whispered. "Something I was saying back
in the swamp. Something my mind was trying to tell me, only I was
delirious. What was it, Thekla?"
The Martian was silent, the bloody grin set on his dark face. MacIan
took him by the shoulders and shook him. "What was it?"
Thekla choked and struggled as the metal halter tightened. "Nothing,
you fool! Nothing but Nahali and _liha_-trees."
"_Liha_-trees!" MacIan's fever-bright eyes went to the great green
pollen-pods hung among the broad leaves. He shivered, partly with
chill, partly with exultation. And he began like a madman to strip Lehn
and Thekla of their rubber coveralls.
Lehn's, because it was larger, he tented over two low branches.
Thekla's he spread on the ground beneath. Then he tore down pod after
pod from the _liha_-tree, breaking open the shells under the shelter of
the improvised tent, pouring out the green powder on the groundcloth.
When he had a two-foot pile, he stood back and fired a bolt of
electricity into the heart of it.
Thick, oily black smoke poured up, slowly at first, then faster and
faster as the fire took hold. A sluggish breeze was blowing out of
the swamp, drawn by the cooler uplands beyond the fort; it took the
smoke and sent it rolling toward the packed and struggling mass on the
earthworks.
Out on the battlefield, Nahali stiffened suddenly, fell tearing
convulsively at their bodies. The beating rain washed the soot down
onto them harder and harder, streaked it away, left a dull film over
the reptilian skins, the scaly breast-plates. More and more of them fell
as the smoke rolled thicker, fed by the blackened madman under the
_liha_-tree, until only Legionnaires were left standing in its path,
staring dumbly at the stricken swamp-rats.
The squirming bodies stilled in death. Hundreds more, out on the edges
of the smoke, seeing their comrades die, fled back into the swamp. The
earthworks were cleared. Ian MacIan gave one wild shout that carried
clear to the fort. Then he collapsed, crouched shivering beside the
unconscious Lehn, babbling incoherently.
Thekla, strained on tiptoe under the tree-branch, had stopped smiling.
The fever-mists rolled away at last. MacIan woke to see Lehn's pink
young face, rather less pink than usual, bending over him.
Lehn's hand came out awkwardly. "I'm sorry, MacIan. Thekla told me;
I made him. I should have known." His grey eyes were ashamed. MacIan
smiled and gripped his hand with what strength the fever had left him.
"My own fault, boy. Forget it."
Lehn sat down on the bed. "What did you do to the swamp-rats?" he
demanded eagerly. "They all have a coating as though they'd been dipped
in paraffin!"
MacIan chuckled. "In a way, they were. You know how they breathe; each
skin cell forming a miniature electrolysis plant to extract oxygen from
water. Well, it extracts hydrogen too, naturally, and the hydrogen is
continually being given off, just as we give off carbon dioxide.
"Black smoke means soot, soot means carbon. Carbon plus hydrogen forms
various waxy hydrocarbons. Wax is impervious to both water and air.
So when the oily soot from the smoke united with the hydrogen exuded
from the Nahali's bodies, it sealed away the life-giving water from
the skin-cells. They literally smothered to death, like an Earthly ant
doused with powder."
Lehn nodded. He was quiet for a long time, his eyes on the sick-bay's
well-scrubbed floor. At length, he said:
"My offer still goes, MacIan. Officer's examinations. One mistake, an
honest one, shouldn't rob you of your life. You don't even know that it
would have made any difference if your decision had been the other way.
Perhaps there was no way out."
MacIan's white head nodded on the pillow.
"Perhaps I will, Lehn. Something Thekla said set me thinking. He said
he'd rather die on Mars than live another month in exile. I'm an exile
too, Lehn, in a different way. Yes, I think I'll try it. And if I fail
again--" he shrugged and smiled--"there are always Nahali."
It seemed for a minute after that as though he had gone to sleep. Then
he murmured, so low that Lehn had to bend down to hear him:
"Thekla will hang after the court-martial. Can you see that they take
him back to Mars, first?"
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