*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 64507 ***

                            RICARDO'S VIRUS

                            By WILLIAM TENN

          _A knife wound can be a serious matter on Earth. On
          Venus, it's a six-hour flow into vilest eternity_.

           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
                      Planet Stories March 1953.
         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]


Graff Dingle stolidly watched yellow mold form around the stiletto hole
in his arm. He smelled the first faint jasmine odor of the disease and
glanced up to where the sun glowed unhappily behind a mass of dirty
clouds and wind-driven rain.

Dingle kicked morosely at the Heatwave thug left behind to ambush him,
and the charred body turned soughingly in the mud. "Be seeing you,
bully-boy, in about five and a half hours. Your electroblast may have
missed me, but it cooked my antiseptic pouch into soup. It made that
last knife-thrust really rate."

There was a dumb dryhorn blunder, Graff reflected, sneering at himself
out of a face that was dark from life-long exposure to a huge sun.
Bending over an enemy before making certain he was burned to a crisp.

But he'd had to search the man's clothing for a clue to the
disappearance of Greta and Dr. Bergenson and--even above Greta--the
unspeakably precious cargo of lobodin they'd been flying in from Earth.

_So I'll pay for my hurry_, he thought. _Like one always does in the
Venusian jungle._

Ricardo's Virus was viciously prompt: six hours after its light,
saffron globules had formed in an open wound, you were dead. And no
frantic surgery, no pathetic attempts at drainage, could save you.
Graff should know. His parents, his brothers and sisters had been
a small fraction of the New Kalamazoo death totals due to cuts and
scratches observed too late for antisepsis. The virus had accounted for
most of three generations of Venusian colonists, including Vilfredo
Ricardo himself, the first man to set hesitant foot on the swampy
planet. Ricardo had merely skinned his hand on his new flagpole.

Nasty to die of the filthy mold before he knew what had happened to the
Bergensons. Not that he had a personal interest in the matter any more
for Greta wouldn't be marrying a corpse when she could pick any one of
a hundred extremely live and woman-hungry pioneers. But her father was
the only doctor in the tiny settlement. And the loss of the lobodin
meant Ricardo's Virus would tuck many more New Kalamazoo colonists into
seepy graves before the year was out.

A speck grew large in the sky. Graff involuntarily moved into the shade
of a giant rosebush as his oversharp instincts asserted themselves.

Yes, it was a terry all right. Friendly?

       *       *       *       *       *

The pterodactyl landed lightly on a frond of the opposite fern. Its
absurd, leathery forehead wrinkled at him. Graff noted that it was
barely out of range of his electroblast. Intelligent, sure enough, and
an unusually fearless specimen to perch this close to man.

At any other time he would have been intrigued by the opportunity of
making friends with one of the intelligent winged reptiles who had
learned to speak man's languages and, with good reason, shun his works.
Now, he had other things on his mind.

Like dying painfully in a few hours.

Graff looked up sharply as enormous bat-like wings ceased their rustle.

The lizard-bird's long, sloping forehead wrinkled even further. Its
beak opened and closed several times. It cleared its throat.

"City?"

Then it was civilized, too. What had induced it to leave its communal
eyrie in the San Mountains? The terries had avoided men for over fifty
years. Many was the time that Graff, intent on stalking meat for
the colonists, had been startled by a flock of pterodactyls winging
overhead and shouting curses down at him in the three languages of the
early settlers.

"City?" the question was repeated more insistently. "Heatwave or New
Kalamazoo?"

"New Kalamazoo."

A relieved nod of the triangular head. "This I thought. You wish
knowledge which Heatwave man has man and girl from shif?"

Graff's whole body tensed. "Yes! Do you know?"

Another nod. "This I know. Name is Fuvina."

"Fuvina?" The hunter repeated it with a frown. He knew the names of
most of Heatwave's big shots; some were political criminals, escaped
from Earth. Others were former residents of his own town who had left
in search of an easier living than the continual struggle with marshy
soil and carnivorous jungle.

But he couldn't recall any Fuvina. Possibly a new arrival; possibly one
of the smaller fry who had recently killed and looted his way to the
top of bloody Heatwave society. Fuvina? Fuv--

Of course! The not-quite-flexible pterodactyl beak was incapable
of labial sounds like _p_ and _b_, and transformed them into the
labiodentals _f_ and _v_. Pubina! Max Pubina had left New Kalamazoo
in a hurry three years ago after cutting some farmer's throat in a
boundary dispute and, by combining organized raids on isolated families
with the smuggling of the illicit Venusian dunging drug to Earth, had
become a power of sorts.

"You mean Pubina?"

"This I said. Fuvina. He and other Heatwave men took man and girl
from shif and placed them in own shif. Also took vig green vottle.
Left one Heatwave man hidden here. Then flew that way in own shif." A
fantastically large and fleshy wing gestured south. "Them I follow.
Where Heatwave men stof, I see. Then I come vack."

The terry drew an immense swallow of air to compensate for his long
speech and shook himself. The great fern trembled in sympathy.

       *       *       *       *       *

Graff stepped forward from the rosebush and inspected his informant
closely. "Thanks. But I don't see why you're interested."

The toothed beak, which was half as long as a man, opened uncertainly.
"Vecause," the lizard-bird explained in a low voice, "Heatwave men have
caftured my mate vefore attacking New Kalamazoo sky-shif. In cage they
fut her for shivment to Earth. This I can do nothing about fy myself.
Vut them I follow, hofing to find way to rescue her."

"And you figure that if you help me find my friends, I'll help you save
your mate from the sideshows on Earth? Well, I will, _if_--"

A big, complex _if_, with as many tendrils as sucking ivy. If he lived
long enough, and, if he did, if he would be sane enough--considering
the agonizing last hour of Ricardo's Virus infection--to do anything
constructive once he arrived at Pubina's jungle hideout. If a man,
guided by a pterodactyl flying overhead, could pick his way on foot
through a completely unexplored section of swamp and have enough juice
left in him when he emerged to take the prize of the century away from
the toughest collection of cutthroats on an extremely tough planet.

He clenched his fist as the cramps began in his left hand--the cramps
that would spread slowly throughout his body until they ended in fatal
convulsions some five hours from now. If a one-armed man could do all
this, and do it with just one portable electroblast....

He cursed sharply, suddenly, as he realized he'd been holding the
electroblast in his hand ever since he'd given the Heatwave thug that
finishing jolt. That was after he'd been stabbed, after the man's first
wild blast had burned Graff's antiseptic pouch into a mess of fused
glass vials and blackened fabric. Without immediate application of the
ten different antiseptic solutions.

But now! He inspected the bright metal of the coils anxiously.
Might still do. Just might. He bolstered the blaster with infinite
tenderness and stooped over the blackened body that had almost
disappeared into the mud. The man's electric gun was far too wet to be
of any use but Graff fumbled around in the soggy soil until he located
the stiletto.

He straightened and grinned at the long blade, its steel already
reddening from the pervasive rust of Venus.

"Where is the ship?" he asked. "The ship my friends were in?"

The terry nodded at a flat and soggy expanse. "Under there. Heatwave
sky-shif wait here high uf. When New Kalamazoo shif come, Heatwave shif
fly down fast ufon it. New Kalamazoo shif hit mud hard. This I see.
Then Heatwave men take your friends away and New Kalamazoo shif sink in
mud. Altogether are four Heatwave men, vesides Fuvina. You kill one,
so now are only three, vesides Fuvina." The flying reptile breathed
heavily again. Its scaly claws moved restlessly about on the branch.

_Call that a break_, Graff decided. Four men to handle. Might have been
twenty. Either Pubina had a smaller gang than had been believed, or he
was playing the whole thing really smart. Toughs, especially Venusian
ones, would really chop each other to merry hell over the first
laboratory sample of a vaccine that promised immunity from Ricardo's
Virus. A break to balance the loss of the ship.

Or was it? All he had was the terry's word. Could be that the entire
yarn about his mate being captured for export to the terran amusement
parks was nothing more than a story made up by Pubina to play on a
colonist's sympathy. The terry might be working for Pubina some way
or other. Who knew anything about pterodactyls? Who knew if they
experienced anything like love or loyalty?

Graff stared at the unwinking reptilian eyes, at the tapering ugly
beak, both completely devoid of expression. Add another _if_.

"All right, MacDuff," he said at last. "Lead on."

"We go in vig curve," the terry told him, flapping its wings
monstrously in preparation for flight. "Eight, nine hours for you.
Other way take half time, vut--"

"Vut nothing!" Graff broke in. He massaged his left forearm, which had
begun aching in sympathy with the hand. "Let's use the short cut."

"It too hard for you, too dangerous! River cuts across--"

"So I'll get my feet wet. I'm not in a position to be worried by
pneumonia. Let's head for the straight and narrow, MacDuff. I'm in a
hurry."

       *       *       *       *       *

The animal cocked its head to one side, dropped its wings in a gesture
like a shrug and moved off the fern in a soaring glide southward. When
it was about three hundred feet up, it circled back to make certain
that Graff was following.

Now if you ever go to Venus, the Polar Continent is probably where
you'll live for the duration of your stay. Not only is its temperature
and annual rainfall the lowest on the planet (which makes it just a
shade more uncomfortable than the Amazonian Jungle), but also it is the
most heavily populated stretch of land--averaging close to one person
every thirty square miles.

But if you find yourself on the Polar Continent you will be advised,
and well-advised, to stay away from the Southern Peninsula. This is
not merely because it is a dank and deadly swamp. But chiefly because
of the Black River which winds through the peninsula, doubling back on
itself, crossing through itself and becoming a tributary of itself a
dozen times over, like a living surrealist corkscrew.

The Black River rises somewhere in the unscalable peaks of the San
Mountains and comes roaring into the flatlands with a tremendous
velocity. Just before reaching the peninsula, however, it is joined by
the Zetzot River, and the two of them make a combination that is really
in a hurry. Even if there were no rain at all (which is definitely
not the case!), there would be a perpetual mist over the Southern
Peninsula. And by the time the Black gets through doubling back on
itself, giving itself a shove, so to speak--well, the reason no one
knows exactly where the river empties into the Jefferson Sea is because
the entire area is completely obscured by an opaque steaming fog which
boils about for miles on either side.

Nor is that all. Certain animals like to wallow in the swamp created
by the Black. And most of them are very large. Creatures which can
survive in the swamp of the Southern Peninsula are quite tough, quite
dangerous and most uniquely suited to their environment. There are
snakes and insects and carnivorous plants galore, not to mention the
huge creatures who live in quicksand and have yet to be classified.
One of the smallest animals of the peninsula is a dark little fish
which swims back and forth in the Black itself. Venusian colonists
have christened it the sardine, possibly because it is the size of a
terrestrial sardine. Its habits, however, resemble those of the South
American piranha. It travels in large schools and eats its way through
anything.

All in all, the Southern Peninsular Swamp is an ideal home for a baron
of crime who wants to get away from it all. The _all_ doesn't include
law, of course. On Venus, each man writes his own code of laws with the
weapon he finds handiest.

The trouble was, Graff Dingle reflected, as he found a ford and leaped
across the screaming waters to the opposite bank, the trouble was
that his folks and people like them had come to Venus to get away
from lawlessness of the international kind only to hit the inevitable
individual lawlessness of a frontier.

Ordinarily a frontier is slowly and surely transformed from rowdy
wide-openness into suburban quietude by the increase in population--but
population doesn't increase in really dangerous spots; that's why
the people of New Kalamazoo worked so hard and so long to make their
settlement large enough to merit the establishment of a university.
A university would mean laboratories and research facilities to
investigate Ricardo's Virus and all the lesser plagues peculiar to
Venus, the plagues which took more lives yearly than jungle monsters
and murderous Heatwavers combined; and a university would mean an
increase in population, and law and order.

But Earth hadn't been interested. The study of Venusian diseases was an
exotic subject hardly touched upon in Terran medical schools. Earth had
been far too busy manufacturing artificial diseases to supplement atom
bombs and hydrogen bombs.

Earth had, however, investigated the Venusian plagues with a view to
their use in biological warfare. And out of the investigation, as an
accident, as a by-product, had come lobodin. A vaccine, not a serum.
No good for Graff right now, for he was almost two full hours into the
yellow death.

       *       *       *       *       *

He worked his left arm around slowly, wincing with each turn, his eyes
on the terry above him circling southward in the damp murky sky. At the
same time he tried to plant the broad soles of his boots on mud that
wasn't quicksand, on rotten twigs that wouldn't crack too loudly. He
knew his blood was now completely infiltrated with the obscene little
yellow specks.

Pubina was probably trying to force Dr. Bergenson to inject the vaccine
into him, ridiculing the old man's protests that all the bottle held
was a starter culture, just enough so that with weeks of careful
tending they might have sufficient vaccine to immunize the children.

It had been so expensive and difficult for the little colony to send
Dr. Bergenson and Greta to Earth where his reputation and connections
had enabled him to wheedle a spoonful of the precious stuff out of
a government laboratory! Pubina hadn't been able to get it, for all
of his bribes and underworld contacts. But the bribes and underworld
contacts had served another purpose: Pubina had discovered when the
Bergensons were due to return--and that was all he really needed.

Graff noticed abruptly that the terry was falling rapidly back at him.
Could he be trying to warn--

A shriek gave him the answer. Less than a quarter-mile away, a
brontosaurus squatted its tremendous bulk in a shallow pool and
regarded him from the end of an undulating snake-like neck. The animal
screamed again and Graff froze.

He watched the incredibly heavy reptile scramble to its feet and
desperately tried to think. It wasn't a brontosaurus charge you had to
be afraid of, but what usually traveled in its wake. A brontosaurus was
herbivorous and, for all its size, extremely timid. It was ridiculous,
possibly, but the mountain of living flesh was probably screaming in
terror at the sight of him. You only had to control yourself and think
while the great beast charged.

Because a brontosaurus meets danger by running into it. It is so
massive that it is virtually unstoppable once in motion. You can blast
its stupid little head off and it will keep running for another twenty
minutes, powered by the bundle of nerve cells just under the spine. You
just have to stand still and remember that it is much more frightened
than you and is trying to trample you to death before you can bite it.

Graff stood his ground, bending his knees slowly, until the behemoth
was only twenty-five feet away. Then he straightened suddenly and
leaped off to the right, then again, further, and again, still further
to the right.

       *       *       *       *       *

Screaming insanely, the tons upon tons of flesh roared past, absolutely
unable to halt itself. Its momentum carried it up a small hill and
Graff could hear it bellowing down the other side. It wouldn't return.

But something else was on its way. There's always a meat-eater in the
wake of a brontosaurus. Sometimes there are several. The _kind_ of
carnivore was very important to Graff right now. He had an electroblast
which he wasn't certain would work in an emergency and whose diminished
power he'd certainly need later. And he had a stiletto.

He heard the beast thumping its way through the luxuriant weeds of the
swamp. A moment later it had broken into the clear, had seen him and
was loping toward him easily with all the confidence of a powerful
creature which sees an easy meal in sight.

A shata. No larger than a terran wolf. But if a brontosaurus can be
said to be all body-bulk and very little head, the shata is just the
reverse. Twelve rows of teeth, and jaws which open wide enough to admit
a sheep. Regretfully and a little uncertainly, Graff holstered the
electroblast and balanced the stiletto on his palm. He'd hunted lots of
shata in his time, but never with a knife.

He began weaving about, conscious of his awkwardness. The knots in his
left side constantly made him misjudge his body and slip off balance.
And here he was hoping to take four men at a time--

As he expected, the shata was confused by his peculiar motion. It
slowed to a dead stop, then slunk before him, growling. It moved in
half-circles, coming in closer each time. Graff waited until it was
directly in front of him. He stood still and immediately the shata
sprang, jaws gaping.

The palate. Just behind the palate is the brain. It means sticking half
your arm into a fearful set of jaws, but do it right.

Graff let the rigid, distended head slide off the knife and into the
mud. He wiped his blade on the green fur, standing out like so many
spikes, and grimaced. A nice specimen. Shatas were good eating, too.

Well, he wasn't a hunter any more. He was a dead man looking for a
coffin. He was swamp-bait if he collapsed in this weedy muck.

The terry skimmed by with his head turned questioningly.

"I'm fine," Graff reassured him. "How much farther?"

"Vetween one and two of your hours." The lizard-bird curved up and
ahead, leathery wings beating slowly.

Graff plodded on. He should arrive with about an hour and a half of
life left. That would give him a half-hour to an hour at most in which
to operate consciously and more or less effectively. After that there
would be half an hour of writhing agony, leading into unconsciousness.
After that he would be dead.

He'd hate to leave life. It meant leaving the thrill of tracking your
quarry on the bracing slope of Mount Catiline where the dodle breeds in
the Season of Wind-Driven Rains; it meant leaving a wild new world that
was just a-borning as far as humanity was concerned; it meant leaving
Greta Bergenson.

It also meant leaving wealth. Now that lobodin had been developed, the
colonization of Venus would begin in earnest. He was the last alive of
a numerous family who had homesteaded half the Galertan Archipelago
into their possession. He was heir to all the rich, fertile, and
deserted islands his father and brothers had claimed. With Ricardo's
Virus taken care of, future Venusian farmers would pay well for those
scattered spots of soil in the Jefferson Sea.

Following the terry, he hit the river again. He started downstream,
looking for a ford as he had before. The Black was rather wide at this
point and he wasted fifteen precious minutes before he found a bank
that curved near enough to the opposite one to permit of a leap. He
went into the weeds to get a running start.

A shadow plummeted past him.

"Vack," the terry screamed. "Get vack! Don't jumf here. Gridnik!"

Graff paused and peered across the river. Sure enough, there was the
brown and white nest on the opposite bank where he would have landed.
As he watched, a single gridnik droned out, looking like a winged red
ant but with the size and disposition of a large, cornered rat.

"Thanks, MacDuff," he muttered, moving away. Well, there was no help
for it. He didn't have time to look for another ford. He'd have to swim.

He waited on the crumbling bank until a dozen blue flashes swept past
under him. "Sardine" schools were usually far enough apart to permit a
fast swimmer to get through between them. When the tiny blue fish were
fifty feet away, he dived.

The force of the river knocked the breath out of him. He fought his way
through the torrent. His flailing hands touched a projecting piece of
rock and he hauled himself painfully up the bank.

Graff noted gratefully that his head was clearer. The gnawing headache
had diminished somewhat under the impact of the water.

The pterodactyl alighted near him. "There," it said, pointing ahead
with a yellow claw. "Fuvina."

But the hunter was interested in something else. He removed his
electroblast and examined its coils ruefully. The tight holster was
supposed to be fairly waterproof, but it had not been intended for
protecting a weapon in the Black River.

He started to throw it aside, but held it as he remembered how few
cards he held in his hand.

       *       *       *       *       *

Max Pubina's hideout was a large prefabricated job that must have cost
a medium-sized fortune to import from Earth across some thirty million
miles of empty space. The outlaw's house covered the top of a rise,
and the soil around it was sufficiently high over the swamp proper
to resemble the fine farmland of New Kalamazoo. Rich jungle growths
were held at bay by a patch of sandy ground completely surrounding the
house. It made it impossible for anyone or anything to creep up to the
walls unobserved. Graff Dingle knew how expensive it must have been to
sterilize so large an area of ground.

_Crime does not pay_, he mused. _Except on Venus._

He reconnoitered the place cautiously, keeping well under cover.
The man-made yard was empty. There was no one outside the house or
the rocket-ship hangar attached to it. He could see the blunt nose
of Pubina's sleek craft in the otherwise deserted hangar. But they
probably had guards posted at the windows.

A long white line traced a curve in his path. Graff stepped over it
gingerly, glancing to the left. Sure enough, hidden in thick bushes was
the mass of white filaments that was the bulk of the sucking ivy. Touch
the trigger-vine, however gently, with your foot....

He came back to the terry. "Listen, MacDuff," he said. "I want you to
stay out of trouble as long as possible. When I need you, I'll need
you bad. Meanwhile, on the wing or on the ground, you're a sucker for
an electroblast with that wingspread. But you could be useful as a
lookout. I wouldn't like to be outflanked."

A grave nod of the narrow beak. "This I do." The reptile soared up in a
high spiral over the house.

Now. He had to get into the house across thirty-five feet of open
ground, under the electroblasts of four highly proficient murderers.
How?

The headache returned, stronger than ever, and Graff swayed dizzily.
Red roaring fires tore up and down his left side. He'd never make it.
Swamp-bait, that's all he was, bait for the mud of the Black.

He straightened then and laughed. Bait? Well, that was one way to hunt.

The hunter strode toward the house, across the creeper of sucking ivy,
counting each step. He stopped under cover of a sweeping fern just
outside the sandy expanse.

"Pubina!" he yelled. "I've come for the Bergensons."

There was a flicker at one of the windows. "Who are you?"

"Graff Dingle of New Kalamazoo. Listen, Pubina, I'll trade the rest of
our lobodin for Greta Bergenson and her father."

A pause while they digested this. Then: "Send one of your men in and
we'll talk it over, Dingle."

"Can't. I'm alone. Send one of your men out with the Bergensons, and
I'll give you the lobodin."

No reason for Pubina to be certain that the Bergenson lobodin
represented the first and only shipment. And what he claimed to have
would raise the quantity to the point where all of the outlaws could be
vaccinated.

The terry came down behind him and whispered gently: "Three men leave
house from rear. Two coming around on left, one on right. Man on right
has clearer fath, so will ve here first."

Graff gestured assent with the electroblast. He heard the terry take
off again.

Pubina was being safe and cozy. Sending his henchmen while he held the
fort himself!

He heard a soggy clump to the right and grinned. Why, the man was
making more noise than a dryhorn freshly arrived from Terra! When he
saw the black waterproof jumper through the high weeds, he stepped out
from under the fern and moved backwards. He held the electroblast out,
as if it worked.

The outlaw's face, lined with years of dunging inhalation, broke into
a lunatic smile. Since Graff wasn't looking at him, he deduced Graff
hadn't seen him. Pubina's henchman took larger steps. Graff backed.

He counted as he retreated. He counted slowly, taking steps that were
uniform and even, looking off to the side of the outlaw, trying to keep
his tortured body from making a deadly mis-step.

There! He breathed gustily as he saw he'd passed the white line. The
outlaw crept forward, crouching, trying to get close enough for a
certain blast. He too noticed the trigger-vine, and stepped daintily
across it.

Graff whirled to face him then, electroblast at the ready. The man
jumped--and one boot dug into the creeper!

He barely had time to scream. A haze of white tendrils whipped around
him, each armed with thousands of microscopic suckers. A moment later
the bloodless husk that had been a human was being dropped from the
sucking ivy's clutches, rattling like so much paper.

The scream had been heard. Graff's jungle-trained ears caught the
whispers of the other two men on his left as they conferred worriedly.
If only he had a decent weapon. Anything besides the stiletto! He could
take such dryhorns with an old-fashioned pistol!

But he didn't have a pistol. All he had was twenty-seven years'
experience on Venus as a native-born citizen. So he began to run.

He stopped after a moment and listened. The crashes behind him
indicated he was being pursued. If he was afraid, the outlaws had
evidently decided, he was weak enough to chase. Graff ran toward the
Tuscany.

By the time he reached the river, he was weaving from side to side and
sobbing. The exertion magnified his pain a thousandfold. His pursuers
were getting closer. Desperately, he trotted downstream.

They were quite close now. He heard them chuckling and calling to each
other triumphantly--but there was the Gridnik nest!

He waited just a moment, poised on the bank of the river, until they
broke into the clear, almost within electroblast range. Then, as they
caught sight of him and increased their speed, he hurled his useless
weapon into the striped little dome--and jumped.

       *       *       *       *       *

When he came threshing out of the water, twenty feet further down the
bank, the hideous swarm of insects were still gorging themselves. Graff
crept away, nauseated. He rubbed his eyes against the darkness welling
within them.

"MacDuff!" he called, his voice crackling with agony. "MacDuff!"

The terry swept down to his side.

"Listen, pal, I haven't got much time left, so we'll have to hurry. No
more fancy stuff. Think you can fly in the rear windows or something,
by way of diversion? It'll give me time to cross the sandy stretch."

Without a word, the lizard-bird went away. Graff came to the edge of
the arid soil surrounding the pre-fab and waited.

He saw the enormous shadow tilt down behind the house and heard the
crash of breaking glass. He threw himself forward. Sand boiled away
from his boots. His head wobbled as if his neck had ceased to exist.
Must be getting close to deadline time, Graff decided. A few minutes
more at most before he caved in completely. He drew the stiletto out,
holding it with difficulty in a twitching hand.

There was a yell inside the house and the sizzle of an electroblast
bolt. As he smashed into the door, he heard the electroblast go off
again.

He saw a huge cage holding a fluttering pterodactyl as he tottered into
the living room. Dr. Bergenson and Greta were tied to chairs with long
coils of fongool vine. Greta's pink overall-jumper was ripped and there
was the mark of a man's hand on her face. Pubina stood under a charred
hole in the ceiling where his first blast had gone wild. At his feet, a
hole neatly burned in one wing, writhed MacDuff, awaiting the finisher.

Pubina whirled to face Graff, his electroblast coming up swiftly. The
hunter staggered toward him, fully conscious of his lack of speed, his
almost infantile weakness. Knots of pain pulled at his knees.

The Heatwaver's forefinger flicked down on the firing button. MacDuff
lifted himself on his one good wing and lunged at the boot before him.
His long beak closed on Pubina's ankle. There was a horrible bony
crunch and the outlaw cursed, turning to beat down at the reptile.

Graff reached them, almost falling against Pubina. For a moment he
couldn't coordinate his arm muscles enough to use the stiletto; then,
sinking his teeth deep into his own lip, he drove the thin blade ahead.
Pubina shrieked and fell, the stiletto throbbing in his side.

Deciding to let MacDuff finish him, even if the terry was making a mess
of it, Graff bent over clumsily and retrieved the electroblast Pubina
had dropped. He almost went over backwards as he straightened.

Placing one foot in front of the other intently, he walked to the
Bergensons. He slid like a man walking on banana skins. Darkness roiled
all about him now and every cell in his body seemed to writhe.

The bottle containing the vaccine was on a table, he noticed. It was
still full; the shining hypodermic beside it was empty. Good.

Very carefully, he burned off the fongool vine with the electroblast at
low power. Greta rushed toward him, but he slipped and fell at her feet.

"Darling," he heard her sob; it sounded as if her voice were on the
other side of the Jefferson Sea. "You're infected! Oh, Graff, Graff!
The lobodin won't work on an infected case!"

"I know," he muttered thickly, and let his head loll round to where the
terry was inching along the floor to the cage in the corner. The last
thing he saw was the neat little hole in the wing.

"Be seeing you, MacDuff," Graff whispered as the darkness came down,
pinpointed with multitudes of exploding yellow dots....

That was why he was so surprised when he opened his eyes to see the
terry perched by his bed with a neat patch of gauze taped to one wing.

"How in hell did you pull through, MacDuff?" he asked.

"The same way as you," the lizard-bird told him. "We are voth natives
of Venus."

"Huh?" He raised himself waveringly on one elbow. He was lying in the
Bergenson home in New Kalamazoo. They must have used Pubina's rocket
ship to fly back. "What do you mean--_native_?"

"Just what he says, Graff." Greta pushed open the screen-door and
bustled in with a pile of linen. "You were both born on Venus. Father
says that you must have had all kinds of skin abrasions as an infant:
your body developed a natural immunity to Ricardo's Virus. We'll still
use the vaccine on everybody else, including the children, just to be
on the safe side. But Father has felt for a long time that the blood of
the pioneers would adjust to its environment. When you got sick, but
didn't die, you proved it."

"Well, I'd like to point out," Graff said, as he sat up to permit Greta
to change his sheets, "that I am very, very happy to have given your
father a chance to prove that theory."

MacDuff closed a lidless eye in an assenting reptilian wink.

*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 64507 ***