Seas of Venus(3)

"This system's got about everything!" Johnnie answered with pride as the gray walls dissolved into a mass of stems, leaves, and dim green terror. As the holographic simulation appeared, the climate control raised sharply the temperature and humidity of the air it pumped into the environment.

They were on the edge of a clearing, a dimpled expanse of yellow-brown mud. The surface was too thin to provide purchase for any plants save those which crawled about slowly on feather-fringed roots. Creatures with armored hides had trampled a path around the periphery of the clearing, through the brambles that were now curling to reclaim the terrain.

A bubble rose from the mud and burst flatulently.

"The trouble with the simulator," Johnnie said in a whisper, "is that you know there's something there in the mud."

The air was still and as moist as a sponge.

"Which makes it exactly like the land anywhere on Venus' surface," said his uncle, also speaking quietly. "Go on, then."

Johnnie took a step forward. If he'd been expecting to run a jungle sequence, he'd have equipped himself with a powered cutting-bar and a more powerful handgun. . . .

His left arm brushed aside a curtain of gray tendrils, roots hanging from an air plant to absorb water from the atmosphere—and entangle small flying creatures whose juices would be absorbed to feed the plant. The simulator couldn't duplicate the touch of vegetation, but a jet of air stroked Johnnie's sleeve to hint at the contact.

A swamp-chopper exploded toward them from the oozing muck.

Johnnie drew and fired. His thumb rocked the grip's feed-switch forward even as the first two rounds of explosive bullets cracked out, shattering the creature's stalked eyes.

Johnnie threw himself sideways. He fired the remainder of the magazine as solids which could penetrate the swamp-chopper's armored carapace while the blinded monster thrashed in the vegetation where Johnnie had been.

Genetically, the swamp-chopper was a crab, but ionizing radiation and the purulent surface of Venus had modified the creature's ancestors into man-sized predators. They retained lesser arthropods' unwillingness to die. Despite 18 rounds into its thorax, the creature was still trying to claw through the bole of the holographic tree with which it had collided in its blind rush.

Johnnie slapped a fresh magazine into his pistol and aimed.

Dan put a hand on his arm. "Forget it," he said. "Don't worry about the ones that can't hurt you. Let's—"

"Cooke?" boomed an amplified voice. "Cooke! What are you doing here?"

Both men turned. The red light which glowed in the heart of a thicket of holographic bamboo indicated that someone was in the simulator's anteroom.

"Duty calls, lad," said Dan, rising to his feet. Johnnie shut the system down, just as something green, circular, and huge sailed toward them from the middle canopy.

Dan opened the door. Senator Gordon stood in the anteroom with his legs braced apart and his hands in the pockets of his frock coat. He neither stepped forward nor offered to shake hands.

Dan offered an ironic salute. "Good to see you again, Senator," he said.

"If I'd known you had nothing on your mind but playing foolish games with my son, Commander Cooke," Gordon said, "I wouldn't have bothered making time in my schedule to see you. Particularly at this juncture."

Dan ostentatiously shot his cuff to look at the bioelectrical watch imprinted onto the skin of his left wrist. He didn't bother to say that he was still twenty-three minutes early for his appointment because Gordon was already well aware of the fact.

"The games I've come to discuss aren't silly ones, Senator," Dan said coolly.

"For that matter—" he added with a raised eyebrow "—these simulations aren't silly either. Which is why I offered to buy Johnnie a membership to a commercial range."

"Yes, of course," the Senator said. When he was angry, as now, a flush crept up his jowls and across the hair-fringed expanse of his bare scalp. "You'd have had John spending all his time in the warehouse district. No thank you, Cooke. I can afford to accommodate my son's whims in a less destructive way."

"Right," said Johnnie in a brittle voice that sounded years younger than that in which he had been speaking to his uncle. "You got me the simulator, all right. After you knew Dan had already taken out a membership for me at Action Sports!"

"Something I've learned over the years," Dan said mildly, "is that the reasons don't matter so long as the job gets done."

He smiled at his nephew, but his face cleared to neutrality as he focused on Senator Gordon again. "But that's not what we're here to discuss . . . and I think your office would be a better location."