Seas of Venus(46)

"Oh," said the rifleman. He took the heavy flamethrower Sergeant Britten held out to him. "Oh."

Johnnie turned and vomited off the side of the trail.

"Lead element, are you able to proceed?" Uncle Dan demanded from his position back with the rear guard.

Johnnie spat, then wiped his mouth and swallowed. "Roger, lead element proceeding," he said in a voice he didn't recognize as his own.

That was the first time he'd seen a man die.

It wouldn't be the last.

* * *

Dawn was a blaze of heat and enough additional light that the enhancement circuitry in the helmet visors was no longer necessary. Colors became real—and therefore more boringly uniform, black/green/gray, than the computer had made them for the sake of contrast.

The expedition was making very slow progress; but they had time, since there was nothing they could do when they reached the harbor shore except wait until midnight.

The trail met a creek, black with tanin and decay products. Track and watercourse together twisted off to the southeast, away from the harbor. The shallow banks were less than ten feet apart, an easy jump for the men if they hadn't been carrying their loads of weapons and equipment.

"Force Prime," Johnnie said as he eyed the water. It didn't look very deep, but they were going to have to check that before they entered it. "We've reached a stream. We'll need fencing."

The heavy equipment—the three boats, the mats for soft ground, and the fences to block a safe pathway through running water—were in the relatively-safe center element. Those burdened troops were almost defenseless, but their two unladen guards needed to watch only the flanks.

"Roger, I'll send some forward," Uncle Dan replied calmly . . . as calmly as Lead Prime, Johnnie himself. "What width do you—"

There was a roar and screams, audible through the air as well as over the helmet radios. Rifles ripped out their magazines in single, barrel-melting bursts. A pair of back-pack rockets added their whack-SLAP! sounds to the jungle-muffled din.

Johnnie's men spun around, staring vainly through the undergrowth. A few of them started to move toward the sound of the guns.

"Lead element, circle around Lead Prime!" Johnnie ordered sharply. "The sound will bring—"

And it did, sweeping like a flying carpet ten feet high above the water of the creek: head grotesquely small against the forty-foot expanse of flattened ribs on which it glided, but still wide enough to swallow a man whole.

It was genetically a snake, but the skill with which evolution had molded its body into an airfoil permitted it to fly for more than a mile if it found a tall enough tree from which to launch its attack.

Johnnie fired a grenade, but the creature banked and presented its body edge-on as he did so. The projectile sailed harmlessly above it and detonated in a mass of vegetation which hid even the flash.

The snake wasn't heading for the lead element but rather for the commotion which had caught its attention. Sergeant Britten raised and swung his flamethrower, but the weapon was too heavy to track at the speed of the flying target.

Johnnie sighted on the saffron scales of the snake's underside and slid an embroidery of three-shot bursts along them, working from mid-section to head as the target flashed past. The creature suddenly buckled in the air, braking its flight just long enough for Britten to whack the flat body in half with his rod of ravening flame.

The pieces fell separately, on to either side of the stream. As they did so, Green One punched a rocket through the front half.

"God almighty . . . ," Sergeant Britten muttered again. He took his right hand from the flamethrower's grip and waggled it in the air. The fine hairs were singed off the back of his fingers. The weapon's nozzle glowed orange from the long stream he'd fed through it.

"Keep watching the front and sides," Johnnie ordered in a pale, distant voice. "Somebody else will take care of what's behind us."

He fumbled with the fresh magazine. He'd gripped the rifle so hard that his fingers were almost numb.

The roars from the following elements had died away. It took repeated orders from Force Prime before the shooting there stopped, however.

"Lead Prime," Uncle Dan reported, "the fence is coming forward now. We won't be able to recover all of it, so try not to cross any more creeks, okay?"

Johnnie could hear men panting up the trail toward him. "Ah . . . Force Prime, what's the problem with the fencing?" he asked.

"No problem with the fence," his uncle said bluntly. "We just don't have the men to carry it any more."

Sergeant Britten had fitted his flamethrower nozzle to a full container of fuel. The container he'd used, completely empty, lay on the ground beside him. Rootlets were beginning to explore it for the possibility of food.