Seas of Venus(121)

Brainard shouted. The laser communicator was at his feet. He picked it up by the strap and swung at the monitor's head.

The heavy mace crunched when it hit. The lizard's right foreleg twisted up and back to probe the point of impact. Wilding lost his grip on the rifle and fell down.

Brainard tottered as he tried to lift the communicator for another blow. "Geddown!" screamed Caffey from behind him. Brainard lost his footing as he looked back in surprise.

Caffey's machine-gun roared out a fifty-round burst that emptied the drum magazine and heated the barrel white. Blue-gray smoke from the flash suppressant in the gunpowder spurted around the scene in a bitter cloud.

Blood speckled the monitor's yellow maw and the bullet-drilled dimples in its scales. Several rounds sparked as they punched through the alloy receiver of the rifle in the lizard's mouth. The prop folded as the jaws began to close.

Newton and Wheelwright knelt/sprawled beside Caffey. They were firing also, but their shots were lost in the storm of heavier bullets from the machine-gun.

The injuries might be fatal . . . but a lizard this size would take days to die, even if some of the bullets were lucky enough to penetrate the bone-armored brain. Before that happened—

Leaf stepped forward. He thrust, rather than threw, a blob of burning barakite left-handed into the reptile's mouth as the jaws closed. The long, yellow-gray neck spasmed. The lizard's autonomic nervous system caused the throat muscles to squeeze and carry the lethal cargo toward the belly.

Brainard rose into a crouch. He'd lost his pistol, but the butt of Wilding's sidearm still protruded from his holster. Brainard would take that and—

A muffled blast knocked all the humans down.

The monitor lizard's writhing body hurtled downslope in a series of convulsions. The monster's head had vanished. A cloud of liquified blood, bone, and flesh covered everything in a fifty-yard circle with pink slime.

The men roused themselves to sitting positions. Everybody seemed to be all right, even Wilding. Hell, even Brainard, except for the ringing in his ears.

Nobody spoke or tried to stand. Below them, the monitor lizard thrashed through the jungle beside the track the cypress had cleared. The beast rolled onto its back repeatedly. The motion flashed its mud-smeared belly scales against the less reflective green-brown mottling of its back and sides.

"I always heard," said Leaf finally, "that if you stepped on barakite while it was burning, it'd blow your goddam foot off. Guess it's not a good idea t' swallow it, neither."

Brainard swallowed. His conscious mind was totally disconnected from his body, but instinct braced him upright and started to bring his feet under him. "I thought I told you to use all the explosive on the cypress," he heard himself say. "So we were sure it went over."

"Sorry sir," the motorman said. "I guess I was in a hurry."

"That's okay," said Brainard.

He stood up and looked toward the top of the ridge. He couldn't imagine how they'd avoided breaking their necks on the steep, muddy slope. There was no way in hell that they could climb it again; nor was there any reason to do so now.

"Right," Brainard said. "We'll head for the other hovercraft now. If we move fast, we ought to be safe enough following where the tree slid."

He eyed a fig that stepped slowly toward them across the cleared swath. The plant tottered forward by extending one slanting root after another, like the legs of a man walking.

"But we better be fast," he added.

"Sir?" asked Wheelwright as he locked a loaded magazine into his rifle. "Is there going to be crew on the boat?"

"No," said Brainard flatly. "There isn't. The vines got them. There may be a working laser communicator, though."

He toed the unit he had carried from K67. The monitor lizard's claws had punched three finger-deep holes through the unit's tough outer casing.

"The other hovercraft . . . ," the ensign added softly, " . . . is K44."

* * *





August 2, 381 AS. 0212 hours.




He was dreaming:

The wand of honeysuckle wavered vertically against the opalescent dawn. A seaman fired at it. Three bullets slapped the tough vines and blew away scraps of foliage.

The bolt locked open. The seaman ejected the spent magazine and reached for a fresh one. His ammunition pouches were empty. He began to cry.

The honeysuckle toppled forward. Its upper end scrunched over the hovercraft's bow, forming a bridge to the great mass of the plant trembling across the narrow stretches of sand and surf.

Leaves uncurled from the tip of the bridge. The speed at which the plant moved when driven by the rising sun was as unexpected as it was horrible.

The coxswain stepped close and slashed with a cutting bar. The multistranded vines resisted, but the shrill whine of the bar laid a swatch of the questing tendrils on the deck.