Read Ebook: Menace of the Mists by Gold H L Horace Leonard Doolin Joseph Illustrator

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Ebook has 248 lines and 10060 words, and 5 pages

Menace of the Mists

A nameless horror poured from the sea-bottoms of Venus, driven by a soulless intelligence that could not be beaten. Four Earthmen stood in the way of the voracious horde, knowing they could not escape--but swearing they would not admit defeat.

MacAloon rose in the stirrups of his saddle-lizard. His guide, a Venusian fishman, trembled nervously at the mount's side and pointed straight ahead. MacAloon followed the direction of the quivering four-jointed, scaly arm.

"See, bossmac?" the reptilian native hissed in fright. "Bosslimpy speak truth. Cen'pedes ready to march. Soon they attack us. Then is all over."

On the other lizard, little Al Birchall tried to peer through the bright white fog of Venus. It was like attempting to gaze through a bedsheet.

MacAloon lifted a pair of infra-red binoculars to his eyes. Instantly, the glasses dispelled the blinding mist.

"See anything, Mac?" Birchall asked.

Mac stared ahead without answering. Before him lay the black, motionless ocean which covered all the planet except a few hundred large islands. At the shore he saw movement, an enormous inky wave that flowed ponderously up over the land and steadily inched forward.

Countless thousands of foot-long creatures were swarming out of the water and falling into dense marching ranks. The beasts, like huge centipedes, each had dozens of swift legs. The front half was legless, though, and looked like the human part of a centaur. It wasn't only the posture that made the resemblance. They had round heads, shaped like skulls, with deadly mandibles; and clever arms and hands grew out of their shoulders.

Centaurpedes--even more than the heat, the mud and the fog, they were man's most murderous enemy on Venus.

Silently, Mac handed the binoculars to Al Birchall.

"Bossmac," the fishman pleaded, "we go 'way, not fight cen'pedes? They kill and eat us; nothing we can do."

Mac watched Al lower the glasses from his eyes. He did it very slowly at first, then grinned when he caught Mac's gaze, and flipped the binoculars across.

"They sure look dangerous," he said.

"They are," Mac answered quietly. "They can strip the flesh off our bones in three minutes flat."

Below them, between the tall bulk of the two mounts, the fishman's long, flat head turned from Mac's face to Al's.

"Bossal, tell bossmac we not able fight cen'pedes," he begged sibilantly. "They come--" The thin, scaled hands waved excitedly, "like biggest army you ever see, make war on mine. You kill and kill, more come. Please, we go to man city!"

MacAloon jerked his lizard's reins around in the direction of the mine. Al's mount came alongside. The fishman groaned, then began trotting before them on swift webbed feet. They splashed over the eternal mud, through the ever-present white fog.

Should they give up the fight against the shrewd, heartbreakingly persistent vermin? If they did, they would have to abandon the mine which had become their lifework. They would have to blow up the place before retreating.

For all life on Venus was amphibious, but centaurpedes were deliberately trying to quit the water, knowing their semi-civilization could reach its mechanistic goal only on land.

Unable to prop the porous native rock with the brittle, primitive plastics they used instead of metals, they were striving to take over an iron mine that had already been started by human engineers. Then, with the metal they could produce, they would make tools and raise cities ... and manufacture weapons with which to push men clear off the planet.

Their forays had forced a number of mines out of existence. Two years ago, before Al Birchall became the fourth partner here, an undersea colony of 'pedes swarmed down on this place. Surrounded on all sides, the men had put up a long, bitter fight. If Adonis City, half around the globe, hadn't finally sent a rocket ship, they would have been lost.

In the rocket, Mac had tried flame-strafing with the bow jets, swooping back and forth across the black mass of besiegers. But the wily animals merely dug deep in the mud and waited till he passed overhead, then continued the attack. Since he couldn't be everywhere at once, part of the army was always surging forward. At best, the strafing only slowed down the assault.

But then Limpy Austin, up in the lookout tower, sighted foraging parties in the rear, dragging up food supplies in the form of gigantic dead meat-eaters. Mac had rocketed over the rear of the army, burning the food into useless charred fragments. Starving, the attackers were at last forced to retreat to their ocean city, but only until they could figure out a new strategy.

Mac said, "We'll stick."

Otherwise, he knew, he'd have to go back to ferrying fruit boats between South America and Antarctica. Birchall would revert to his old confidence games all over the System. Swede Steffansen would have to manipulate a freight crane on Mercury again. And Limpy Austin--well, there wasn't much a semi-cripple could do, outside of being lookout and radio operator for his friends.

The two riders approached the mine enclosure which struggled into visibility through the smothering haze. The fishman, fleeter than the lumbering saddle-lizards, had already reached the high wire fence. He gestured wildly at the guard nearest him, an alert armed Venusian who stood on a stilt-platform that overlooked the fence to the mud flats beyond.

The guard pressed a button that opened a gate in the wire barricade. The mounted men pounded through, and over the wide muddy stretch to the concrete wall.

Deeply embedded in the ooze, with the rock bed for a foundation, the wall paralleled the outer fence and closed in the entire mining grounds. Its polished outer face was deeply indented, like a sharply curved concave lens. No joints showed in the smooth surface.

But Limpy Austin, up in the glass-walled lookout room atop the stilt blockade house, saw them. He opened a tightly fitting door in the concrete rampart. They rode through into the compound, dismounted near the closed-cabin freight tractor that stood beside the smelter.

"The 'pedes are coming, aren't they?" asked a slow, heavy voice behind them. Swede Steffansen came around the lizards. He was a big, placid man, but his sky-blue eyes--blue as the heaven of Earth, not this white hell--were troubled now. He said: "I could tell by the way the pack animals are acting. They're touchy."

"They caught the scent," Mac answered. "The attack's due in about two hours. Let all the animals out. We don't want them stampeding during the battle."

Swede nodded, slogged off toward the corral.

"Tell the fishmen we're in for a fight with 'pedes," Mac ordered Birchall. "Weed out the weak sisters. They'd only get in our way, anyhow."

Stepping high to avoid splashing, Al bounded off in the direction of the tipple at the mine entry. MacAloon went into the blockade house and climbed to the lookout room.

Limpy Austin was standing at the infra-red glass wall. His left arm and leg were shriveled, and one side of his face was twisted up in a sardonic leer. Mercurian Paralysis, that strange disease which immobilizes either half of a person depending on whether it is contracted at the Day or Night Side, had made a hopeless cripple of him.

He turned around when Mac came in. "Well?" he asked.

"They're coming, all right," Mac grunted. He leaned over the control panel, pushed the button that clanged the cease-work alarm down in the mine. Then he threw the lever that halted the ore cars to bring the men to the surface.

"How do things look?" Limpy pursued.

Mac shrugged. "We ought to have a better chance than before. There are four of us this time."

Limpy shuffled to the radio. With his slender, sensitive right hand, he twisted the dials.

"Adonis City," he said harshly into the microphone. "Limpy Austin calling Adonis City...."

There was a squeal of static. "Adonis City," replied a harried voice. "Come in, Austin, but make it short!"

"What's up?"

"'Pede attack on every damned mine. How about you? Aren't they--"

"Yeah," Limpy cut in. "That's why I'm calling. Send over a ship. Ours is wrecked."

The weary voice cursed. "I can't, Austin. We figured you had a boat, so we shipped them all to the other mines."

"Okay," Limpy shrugged. "Then we'll have to do without."

"Why don't you guys blow up the place and leave?"

"Maybe we'll have to. I don't know. When you get a chance--"

"Yeah," the man replied hastily. "The first ship that comes in, you guys get. So long, and good luck!"

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