Seas of Venus(124)

"Beautiful . . . ," Wilding murmured again.

"The end shoots will regenerate as soon as we get within fifty feet of them," Brainard said. "Mr Wilding can tell you."

Wilding tittered. His mind did not think that his lips made any sound.

Brainard pointed toward the bridge of honeysuckle with the first and second fingers of his left hand. Fresh leaves gleamed green against the ropes of brown stems. They moved very slowly, as if only the wind animated them.

"Look what's happening already," he said. "We'd get aboard, but we'd never get back. Believe me. To grow, that plant can pump food through its veins at the speed of a firehose."

Leaf looked at the hard-faced ensign. "You seen it, then, sir?" the motorman asked in puzzlement.

Wilding watched the other humans; watched the hovercraft; and watched the frogs overhead. The three images were pallid except where one chanced to encompass part of another. Overlaid viewpoints had rich colors and sharp lines.

"Yeah," said Ensign Brainard. "I've seen it."

The sea's gentle, back-and-forth motion hardened with stalked eyes, then claws stained shades of blue and lavender. Crabs edged sideways onto the sand, skittering a yard forward and half that distance back.

Their spike-edged shells were three feet across. There were already dozens of them on shore. More eyes peeked out of the water.

"Bet it'll burn," suggested Caffey. "The vine, I mean, dry as it is now. The boat, it's fireproof t'anything up to a thousand degrees."

The frogs flew by rhythmic motions of the skin stretched from their wrists to their hind feet. They retained their fore-paddles as canard rudders which allowed them to turn and bank with astonishing quickness in pursuit of their prey.

"You wouldn't think an amphibian could fly without drying out, would you, Leaf?" Wilding heard his voice say. "Even in an atmosphere as saturated as this is. Isn't nature wonderful?"

"If it burns," protested Leaf, "then how do we get aboard? Have them carry us?"

He gestured toward the crabs with his multitool.

One of the crustaceans scuttled ten feet closer to the humans, then raced back toward the sea in a spray of sand.

Newton raised his rifle. He fired at the crab. His bullets cracked the carapace and broke the lower jaw of one pincer so that the saw-toothed edge hung askew on its fibers of internal muscle.

"Dumb shit!" Caffey shouted. "How much ammo you think we got left?"

The injured crab reached the edge of the sea before the weight of her fellows brought her down. They flailed the water in their haste to rend the sudden victim. Successful crabs raised long strips of pale meat in their claws, then sidled away to shred their sister further in their swiftly-moving mouth parts.

"Look," growled Newton. "I hate 'em. Okay? Just keep off my back!"

A facet of Wilding's mind giggled at the fire discipline which the trek had hammered into K67's crew; a facet watched the wheeling frogs; and the facet in control of his muscles for the moment said crisply, "No, that was right. They would have rushed us very soon. Newton provided something else to occupy them."

The coxswain looked at Wilding and grinned shyly. Newton's stolid strength was so great, even now, that he hadn't bothered to shrug off his pack while they paused for consideration. "Thanks sir," he said. "Things with claws, I just. . . ."

"Fish is right," said Ensign Brainard, returning to the problem at hand. "The core stems are still full of sap in case there's a chance to grow. They won't burn, so we'll have the bridge to cross on. But all the tendrils will go, and that should slow down the regrowth. A lot. I think enough."

"It's a jungle out there," Officer-Trainee Wilding said to the crabs furiously demolishing their fellow. "It's a jungle everywhere, did you know?"

This time the laugh was internal but he spoke aloud the words, "It's a jungle in the Keeps, too. Especially in the Keeps."

"Right," said Brainard, putting the cap on his thoughts in his usual, coldly decisive fashion. "To make sure it ignites, we'll need to get a flame into the really dry portion, but it'll blaze back very quickly. What we need is a wad of barakite we can throw. Leaf, do we have any more?"

A machine could act as decisively; but no machine intelligence could process the scraps of available data into the survival of six human beings under the present conditions. . . .

The motorman winced as though he had been struck. "Sir, I'm sorry," he said, "but I cleaned out ever'body else when we blew up the tree, and the last bit. . . ."

"Don't apologize for following my orders, Technician," Brainard snapped.

The sand quivered slowly down the beach toward the humans. If Wilding had been limited to a single viewpoint, he would not have noticed it. When two images merged like a stereo pair, the trembling line was evident.