Seas of Venus(91)

If the frog had not been there—

"That's enough!" Brainard ordered. "Go back, get your packs, and prepare to move out. Watch yourselves!"

He looked at the motorman. "Leaf, light the warhead. But don't get in the way."

In order to give himself a moment to catch his breath, Leaf deliberately fumbled with the multitool slung beneath his armpit. The hot, humid air his lungs dragged in wasn't much help. The suit suffocated him, but it was his only hope of staying alive. . . .

The warhead was a black steel dome twenty-three inches in diameter. It lay sideways on the skid with its flat base pointing in the direction of the jungle. Caffey and Wheelwright had unbolted the thin baseplate, exposing the cream-colored barakite.

They'd also removed the fuze from its pocket in the nose.

Heat alone wouldn't set off barakite. Heat would set off the booster charge in the fuze, and that would detonate the unburned portion of the barakite. The blast would kick what was left of the hovercraft back out to sea, let alone what it did to the crew.

The motorman's powered multitool was a compact assortment of grippers, drivers, cutters—and an arc welder. Leaf snapped the arc live and touched it to the upper surface of the exposed barakite.

The white spark went blue. A puff of vapor spurted from the explosive. Leaf stepped aside.

Not far enough. Ensign Brainard grabbed his shoulder and pulled him, just in time.

A billow of flame with a blue heart roared outward in all directions. The barakite burned back so that the casing could direct the blaze. After a moment, it steadied into a forward-rushing jet. Combustion products from the explosive and the plasticizer which made it malleable boiled outward in a vast white cloud.

"Don't breathe that!" the CO shouted from a vast distance. He released Leaf's shoulder and strode back toward the packs waiting on the torpedoboat's deck.

Leaf didn't move. He had sucked in a double lungful of the poisonous vapors. He viewed his world from multiple viewpoints.

The initial gush of fire baked a wide fan of marsh to the consistency of a cracked brick. The reeds had vanished. Now that the flames had steadied, green tendrils were already breaking their way to the surface at the fringes of the cleared area.

The warhead was designed to release all its energy in a microsecond flash, shattering battleship armor and sending a spout of seawater a thousand feet in the air. When the barakite was ignited instead of being detonated, the energy release spread over a minute of furious burning—but there was just as much energy involved.

A twenty-three inch hose of blue-white flame roared into the jungle. It vaporized everything in its direct path and shriveled vegetation ten feet to either side.

Leaf watched:

A man-sized salamander lunged up as the concealing leaf mold burned away. It bit at the gout of flame as though it were a quivering serpent. The salamander's head vanished in the 2,000o heat, but the tail and body writhed away.

Reeds, stunned by the fire's temperature, recovered enough to squirm over Leaf's boots. They were looking for entrance to his flesh as he stood transfixed.

A bright golden reptile sailed from a tree top and performed three consecutive loops. The diameter of the loops increased as the creature's feathery scales burned away. It finally plunged toward the sea, trailing smoke behind it.

Crewmen caught the packs Yee tossed them from the hovercraft's deck. They began to waddle toward the jungle again.

Marshy soil humped a few inches upward in a line that extended toward Leaf at the speed of a slow walk. Reeds bowed aside from the intrusion among their roots.

"Leaf!" Ensign Brainard shouted from the hovercraft. "Are you all right?"

A free-standing walnut tree burned furiously on the side toward the devastation pouring from the warhead. Its branches flailed downward, stabbing the flames with hollow tips through which herbicide squirted. This enemy could not be poisoned. The branches added fuel to the self-devouring blaze.

OT Wilding dropped his pack and began to run toward Leaf. He tugged his pistol awkwardly from its holster.

Most of the barakite had burned. The tongue of flame shrank back and curled, like a tiger clearing away traces of a recent meal.

Leaf's boots had sunk six inches into the muck. The line of raised soil was within a yard of him.

Wilding fired into the ground. He was almost close enough to touch his target. The first bullet splashed mud a hand's breadth from the motorman's ankle; the second round was lost somewhere in the unburned jungle.

The third shot punched through the side of the mound. Six feet of mud slid upward from an iridescent surface. Blunt horns extended from the front end as the creature nuzzled the oozing bullet wound.

Leaf came to in an eyeblink. Suction and the questing reeds gripped his feet firmly. He triggered the welding arc of his multitool and raked it in a long line across the slimy surface of the monster.