A knife wound can be a serious matter on Earth. On
Venus, it's a six-hour flow into vilest eternity.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories March 1953.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Graff Dingle stolidly watched yellow mold form around the stiletto holein his arm. He smelled the first faint jasmine odor of the disease andglanced up to where the sun glowed unhappily behind a mass of dirtyclouds and wind-driven rain.
Dingle kicked morosely at the Heatwave thug left behind to ambush him,and the charred body turned soughingly in the mud. "Be seeing you,bully-boy, in about five and a half hours. Your electroblast may havemissed me, but it cooked my antiseptic pouch into soup. It made thatlast knife-thrust really rate."
There was a dumb dryhorn blunder, Graff reflected, sneering at himselfout of a face that was dark from life-long exposure to a huge sun.Bending over an enemy before making certain he was burned to a crisp.
But he'd had to search the man's clothing for a clue to thedisappearance of Greta and Dr. Bergenson and—even above Greta—theunspeakably precious cargo of lobodin they'd been flying in from Earth.
So I'll pay for my hurry, he thought. Like one always does in theVenusian jungle.
Ricardo's Virus was viciously prompt: six hours after its light,saffron globules had formed in an open wound, you were dead. And nofrantic surgery, no pathetic attempts at drainage, could save you.Graff should know. His parents, his brothers and sisters had beena small fraction of the New Kalamazoo death totals due to cuts andscratches observed too late for antisepsis. The virus had accounted formost of three generations of Venusian colonists, including VilfredoRicardo himself, the first man to set hesitant foot on the swampyplanet. Ricardo had merely skinned his hand on his new flagpole.
Nasty to die of the filthy mold before he knew what had happened to theBergensons. Not that he had a personal interest in the matter any morefor Greta wouldn't be marrying a corpse when she could pick any one ofa hundred extremely live and woman-hungry pioneers. But her father wasthe only doctor in the tiny settlement. And the loss of the lobodinmeant Ricardo's Virus would tuck many more New Kalamazoo colonists intoseepy graves before the year was out.
A speck grew large in the sky. Graff involuntarily moved into the shadeof a giant rosebush as his oversharp instincts asserted themselves.
Yes, it was a terry all right. Friendly?
The pterodactyl landed lightly on a frond of the opposite fern. Itsabsurd, leathery forehead wrinkled at him. Graff noted that it wasbarely out of range of his electroblast. Intelligent, sure enough, andan unusually fearless specimen to perch this close to man.
At any other time he would have been intrigued by the opportunity ofmaking friends with one of the intelligent winged reptiles who hadlearned to speak man's languages and, with good reason, shun his works.Now, he had other things on his mind.
Like dying painfully in a few hours.
Graff looked up sharply as enormous bat-like wings ceased their rustle.
The lizard-bird's long, sloping forehead wrinkled even further. Itsbeak opened and closed several times. It cleared its throat.
"City?"
Then it was civilized, too. What had induced it to leave its communaleyrie in the San Mountains? The terries had avoided men for over fiftyyears. Many was the time that Graff, intent on stalking meat forthe colonists, had been startled by a flock of pterodactyls wingingoverh