The Wealth of Echindul

He had one more goodmeal and started out south again with the single stone in hiswatch-pocket.

  It took him seven hours to reach the place where he had left theconstrictor. It was gone, of course. How far, he could not know. Hetook the one telepathic stone from his pocket. He found a spot wherehe could sit in the open, cross-legged, with his eyes fixed on thestone. From the corner of his eye he saw a brown detached eye on astalk pop up from the surface of the water, but he paid no attention.He concentrated on the stone.

  The stone had a fair polish. He looked at its surface and shut out allthe normal sounds from his ears. The stone seemed to be in motion onthe inside, and presently that motion communicated itself to his mind.He had a picture of a constrictor, lying sleepily in a pool of brownwater surrounded by heavy, deep grass that hung over the banks andgrew down into the water.

  He heard now the distant bellow of a swamp-ox, the buzzing of aquaticbees. Slowly he turned the stone on its edge and revolved itcarefully. When the picture was clearest in his mind he picked out anorientation point in the distant mountains. Then, well pleased, he putthe stone in his pocket, got into his diving-suit, screwed on thehelmet, adjusted the oxygen, and stepped off into the brown water ofthe swamp.

  The bottom here was steep but it was good. It was hard and not morethan knee-deep in mud. He traveled carefully, freezing on occasionwhen huge shadows moved above him. He was in fifty feet of water andhe liked that better because it was easier to go unnoticed. He avoideda patch of electric cactus, for the spines would have electrocuted himeven through the suit, and he went far around an area of whitebull-root, shaped like women's legs, because he knew the bull-root wasalways infested with swamp-razors that would cut through the seams ofhis diving-suit.

  When he came out of the water he found his orientation point and keptgoing. He came to a wide stretch of water, and with the wind at hisback, made fast time by climbing on an island of floating grass andgoing straight across. This was important. He needed to find theconstrictor by the time Relegar started after him.

  The spider could travel much faster than Grant for it walked on waterwhere Grant was forced to wade on the bottom. But Relegar would wait awhile. He wouldn't want to be on the surface of Venus any longer thannecessary, even for half a million dollars, so he would give Grantplenty of time, since there was no danger of his getting away.

  Grant was encouraged by the fact that the constrictor did not appearto be far away. Everything here depended on his reaching the sauriantwo days ahead of Relegar. Not that he expected to run. That washopeless. But he did have a partial plan. He thought he knew how torecover the stones and to face the Uranian without being immediatelykilled. And he hoped for some now unforeseen development thatsubsequently would help him to get through The Pass.

  That last item was a weak point, a very weak point, but there wasnothing he could do about it now. He could not wait for a plan. He hadto go ahead and trust his own ingenuity to devise a means of gettingto Aphrodite later. If he could keep Relegar from going back to ThePass until he himself could get through The Pass, then he would beunmolested, for Relegar was master of The Pass, and no entity of anysort, not even as powerful a one as Netse, would touch any being inwhom Relegar was interested unless Relegar himself should order it.

  If Grant could get through The Pass and across Division Street hewould be safe, for Aphrodite proper was under the jurisdiction of thePlanetary Police, and even Relegar respected them.

  * * * * *

  Grant found the constrictor on the second day, lying in a shallow poolwith only its dorsal spines showing. Working slowly and carefully andentirely under water, he located the saurian's head, concealed in aclump of floating grass. The reptile was still in something of atorpor from its meal, and Grant had no difficulty in approaching itthrough the water and attacking it with the heat-gun on the soft partof the neck below the head.

  The first bolt must have gone through and severed its spinal column,but Grant risked destruction from the threshing body long enough toburn the head off entirely. He got out on solid ground and waiteduntil sundown for the monster's contortions to die. Then he workedfast. The flying scavenger-foxes were already settling on theconstrictor's back and tearing out great chunks of flesh. He went backunder water and cut out the saurian's gizzard with the heat-ray. Hedragged it off to one side and tremblingly cut it open with his knife,and he was relieved and exultant when he recovered all fifteen of thestones. The bag had disintegrated, but he put the stones carefully inhis pockets.

  Then he went back once more. He cut off a piece of the hide two feetsquare. He took only the outer hide, which was dry and which held thegreat iridescent scales that formed isotopes after death. From somemarsh-bamboo and some wire-vines he formed a shield. By that time itwas midnight. He turned his light on the pool where the saurian hadbeen, and shuddered. The water was dull red, and alive with creaturesfighting each other to get to the carcass. The surface was coveredwith flying things, some small, some huge, all fighting, fighting.Life on Venus was an eternal, bloody fight. This slaughter, oncestarted, would go on for weeks, until the fighting creatures in thisimmediate area of the swamp were exhausted.

  Grant snapped off the light as clouds of flying things arose. Hestarted down the neck of dry land and walked all night, going as faras he could without submerging, getting out of range of the holocaustaround the dead constrictor. Eventually he came to a lavawood tree. Heexamined it carefully, then climbed it. He found a crotch in thelimbs. He lay down and hung his arms and legs over the limbs, pulledthe shield over him, and went to sleep.

  From the brilliant, blinding light of the sun even through the clouds,and the vapor arising from the surface of the swamp, he knew it wasmid-afternoon when he awoke. He started up, but long habit stopped himalmost as soon as he moved. He opened his eyes and was fully awake,listening for the sound that had awakened him. He heard it, a raspingnoise like the sound of a knife-blade scraped against the grain of afresh hog-skin. He looked across the swamp. Less than fifty yards awaywas Relegar, walking toward him on the water. The sound came from thescraping of his gray poison-mandibles against each other.

  Relegar's mouth, as wide as his body, was open. The two bulbous eyesgleamed like pieces of polished metal. They saw Grant. The spider'ssixteen jointed legs, that held his purple body three feet above thewater, moved too fast for Grant to follow them. The Uranian skitteredacross a hundred feet of water and walked out on the land.

  His bone-scraping voice came to Grant in the tree. "I'll take thestones now." It was a sinister voice. Grant felt a crawling,instinctive horror as the spider came toward him, its jointed legsmoving delicately. "You've saved me some trouble by finding them."

  Grant overcame his paralysis and reached for the heat-gun. Relegar sawthe motion and stopped. "You can't hurt me with that heat-projector,"he said. "You might shoot off a leg, but I'd have you half eatenbefore you could fire a second bolt."

  The knowledge hit Grant with what was almost a shock that there wassome way he could get the best of Relegar, otherwise the big spiderwould not have spoken at all. He well knew that he couldn't killRelegar with the heat-gun. He could burn off a leg, yes, but hedoubted that the infra-rays would affect the spider's body at all. Hemoved a little on the limbs, got a hold on the snake-skin shield, anddropped to the ground.

  Relegar darted forward to meet him. But ten feet away the spiderstopped, and Grant knew he had felt the radiation from the snake-skin.Relegar's mouth hung open, his white fangs gleaming in the red maw.The two bulbous eyes were suddenly shot with the red fire of anger.Grant did not hesitate. As he landed on the ground he fired aheat-bolt at one of Relegar's left legs. It smoked. There was an odorof burned hair. The queer material of the leg glowed white for aninstant and then burned in two and the bottom part dropped off.

  Relegar squealed. His two eyes almost exploded in a rage of red. Hewasn't permanently injured--he would grow a new leg--but he wasfurious because he dared not come close to the shield. The radiationwould
paralyze him within a couple of seconds. Grant saw his body saga little on the corner where the leg had been, and then he had one ofthose flashes of intuition that every being had to have, to live longin the swamp. He knew how to win this fight. He trained the heat-gunon the second leg on the same side and pressed the trigger. That legburned in two and Relegar's body sagged still more.

  Grant started on the third one. A feeling of triumph was growing inhim. Then Relegar charged.

  Grant hadn't expected that. There was little he could do but hold theshield frantically before him to try to ward off the fangs and themandibles.

  He had had no idea that the Uranian's body was so heavy. It seemed toGrant the thing must weigh three or four hundred pounds. It thunderedinto him and knocked him over as if he had been a straw. The heavyhoofs galloped over him. He was surprised, but he rolled on over andcame to his feet, shooting.

  He