Read Ebook: Genesis! by Winterbotham R R Russell Robert Morey Leo Illustrator

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Ebook has 228 lines and 9518 words, and 5 pages

There was a trace of bitterness in Renzu's voice.

"I wouldn't be too sure, Renzu," Arlen said. "If the laws of physics apply on Venus, as well as the earth, why couldn't biological and psychological laws apply there also. Even the lowest of creatures show understandable reactions on earth. Why not on Venus?"

"Because Gheal has been made differently," Renzu said, with a repulsive grin.

Hour by hour Captain Arlen watched Venus grow in size. The planet expanded from a glowing crescent to the size of the moon as seen from the earth; soon it floated large in space, filling half the sky ahead of the ship, a billowing, fluffy ball of shining clouds. Its surface was entirely obscured by its misty atmosphere.

Arlen began braking the ship and he called Renzu into the control room for a conference on where to pierce the cloud blanket.

Renzu, huge and muscular, overdid himself in graciousness as he greeted Arlen in the control room. The scientist seemed to radiate exaltation and he strained himself to appear congenial.

The man was excited, Arlen decided, for Arlen himself was thrilled at the prospect of adventure, of seeing strange sights on a strange planet. But the reaction was different in Arlen. Where Renzu swelled and swaggered, Arlen looked dreamily into the clouds ahead.

"I'm bringing the ship around to the sunward side," Arlen said. "It's best to land about noon--that is the noon point. The planet turns once in thirty hours and that will give us a little more than seven hours of daylight to orient ourselves after the landing."

Renzu nodded in agreement. All this had been threshed out before.

"Very well," he said, "but it is best that you pierce the clouds at about forty-five degrees north latitude. There's ocean there that nearly circles the planet and there's fewer chances of running into mountains beneath the clouds. Once we're through the cloud belt, we'll have no difficulty. The clouds are three or four miles above the surface and there's plenty of room to maneuver beneath them."

Arlen twisted the valves and the deceleration became uncomfortably violent. Renzu's first trip had determined the existence of a breathable atmosphere on the surface of Venus, although the cloud belt was filled with gases given off by Venusian volcanoes, and many of these gases were poisonous to man.

In a few minutes the rocket ship stood off just above the cloud belt. McFerson checked the landing mechanism and made his final report to the captain. Arlen checked the gravity gauge, which now would be used as an altimeter during the blind flying in the Venusian clouds.

"Okay!" Captain Arlen called.

"Okay!" echoed McFerson.

The ship settled slowly through the clouds. The mist completely obscured everything outside the craft and Arlen flew blind, trusting his meteor detection devices to warn him of mountain peaks, which he feared despite Renzu's assurance that there were no high ranges at this latitude.

At last the craft dropped through the wispy canopy to float serenely over a calm ocean which bulged upward toward them in the solar flood tide.

To the northwest was a dim coastline. High mountains were faintly visible against the horizon.

"Perfect!" said Renzu. "That is my continent--our destination. Sail toward it."

The ship zoomed toward the land at the comparatively slow speed of five hundred miles an hour. In a few minutes it was decelerating again, with the continent before them.

The high mountain range clambered up from a narrow plain that skirted the sea. This plain was sandy, a desert waste, but Renzu indicated it was the spot for the landing.

As far as his eyes could see were barren rocks and sand: there were no trees, no grass, no signs of life. The planet was as sterile as an antiseptic solution. Even seaweed and mosses were missing from the seashore.

"Maybe you know what you're doing, Renzu," Arlen said, "but it looks to me as if you've directed us to the edge of a desert."

"'Tain't no small desert, either," chimed McFerson.

"My dear Arlen," Renzu replied, cracking his lips in another of his irritating smiles, "this is one of the most fertile spots on the entire planet. You must remember, Venus is much different from the earth."

Immediately after the landing all hands, including Renzu, were busy with the routine duties that the expedition required. Gheal was given simple tasks, such as unpacking boxes of equipment to be used by the expedition, but the Venusian seemed to attend to these in a preoccupied manner. He worked in sort of a daze, frequently whimpering like a sick dog, and turning his globular eyes from time to time out of the porthole at the landscape of his native planet.

"He's homesick," McFerson suggested to Arlen. "But look! What's he got in his hand?"

It was a long white bar of metal. Arlen quickly seized the bar and examined it. It was pure silver. Gheal had been unpacking a box crammed with silver bars of assorted lengths and thicknesses, ranging from the size of small wire up to rods half an inch thick and a foot or more in length. A fortune in silver had been transported to Venus.

"Well, that's Renzu's business, not mine," Arlen decided.

He returned to his duties. There was much to do: the engines had to be recharged, preparatory to a quick takeoff, should conditions arise to make the planet untenable for earthmen.

Tests of the soil revealed utter sterility of all forms of life. It was baffling. Some sort of bacteria should have been in the soil, even though the place was only a desert.

Arlen opened the arms chest and issued small but powerful atomic disintegrators to McFerson, Renzu and himself. He did not give Gheal one of the weapons, for Gheal did not appear to have the skill necessary to operate it. His uncanny ignorance was so obvious.

The disintegrators were simple magnetic mechanisms capable of collapsing atoms of atmosphere and sending the resultant force of energy in a directed stream toward a target. Fire from disintegrators could melt large rocks almost instantly and it could destroy any living creature known to man.

Renzu strapped his weapon at his side and turned to Arlen.

"I'm going outside for a walk with Gheal," he said. "Gheal seems nervous and uneasy. Perhaps his actions are due to his return to his native land. A walk might make him happier, in his own peculiar way."

Arlen nodded and went back to the control room to talk to McFerson. He found the engineer looking out of a porthole.

"Look!" McFerson said, pointing out the porthole.

Trudging along the beach, carrying the case containing the silver rods, were Renzu and Gheal. The Venusian was walking with difficulty, but as he faltered, Renzu would kick him unmercifully and force him on.

"The devil!" Captain Arlen said. "He doesn't dare beat Gheal when he knows I'm watching."

McFerson shook his head.

"Maybe he's right, treating Gheal that way," he said. "After all, Renzu is a scientist and he knows more about Gheal than we do. Maybe he's right in saying beating is the only treatment Gheal understands. Besides, I don't know if I trust Gheal. Since we've landed he's acted like a tiger in a cage. Gheal's a Venusian and Venusians are supposed to have murdered Renzu's partner on the first expedition."

"But even the worst creature on earth--except man, perhaps--doesn't kill without a reason. And even man sometimes has a reason, when apparently he hasn't."

Darkness descended rapidly on Venus and Renzu did not return. The two spacemen decided it was unnecessary to stand guard and turned in. Renzu knew how to operate the space locks from the outside of the ship and could enter when he returned. Gheal, whose clumsy fingers were too unwieldly even to operate a disintegrator gun, would not be able to operate the locks, nor would any creature like him.

It was still dark when Arlen awakened. The long, fifteen-hour Venusian night was completed and still Renzu had not returned.

The captain awakened McFerson. They ate a light breakfast and did minor chores on the ship until daylight suddenly lighted the landscape.

"Do you suppose we ought to look for them? Maybe Gheal went haywire. Maybe something's happened."

Arlen considered. Renzu was armed, while Gheal was not. Renzu claimed complete mastery over the Venusian, yet something might have happened to give Gheal the upper hand. Not that Renzu didn't deserve it.

"I'll go outside and look around," Arlen said.

Arlen stepped through the locks. The warm Venusian air was invigorating. He took a deep breath.

A shuffling sound behind him caused the captain to turn. There, rounding the end of the ship was a creature, fully naked, staring at him with gland-like eyes and baring his teeth in a vicious snarl.

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