In the Beginning (41 page)

The rain lasted fifteen minutes, though there were moments when Marshall felt it was going to go on forever, cascading in endless sheets. They were soaked to the skin by the time it was over. Their clothing, already shredded and soiled after three days of jungle life, clung to their skins as if pasted there. Gnatlike insects came to hover around the bedeviled Earthmen, stinging and buzzing and flying into ears and eyes and noses and mouths. A glorious rainbow arched across the sky, glowing in the golden-green sunlight, but none of the Earthmen were in any mood to appreciate its beauty. They were wet and sticky and miserable. After a while, their clothes dried somewhat, though the humidity assured that nothing would ever dry completely. By noontime that day, colorful molds were already beginning to form on the soaked clothing. By the time they finished the trip, Marshall thought, their clothes would have rotted completely away.

The prospect of regular drenchings of this sort was not an appealing one. But, in the middle of the afternoon, a new problem presented itself. The stream that they had been following most of the day had widened suddenly into a river—and the river had taken a broad swinging curve out in front of them, where it blocked the eastward passage completely.

Marshall shaded his eyes and looked upriver. “Think we ought to try heading north for a while?” he asked.

Garvey shook his head. “Don’t think it’s wise to leave course, Marshall. We’d better build a raft.”

It took them most of the rest of the day to complete the raft, with Garvey, as the best hand craftsman of the group, directing the work. The raft, when it was finished, was a crude but serviceable affair—several dozen logs lashed solidly together by the tough, sinewy vines that grew everywhere in the jungle. The river that had so unexpectedly blocked their route was almost a mile wide. The Terrans huddled together while Marshall and Garvey poled the rickety raft across.

They were midway across when Kyle, who was holding the blaster, suddenly pointed and shouted: “L—look!”

A snout was rising from the river’s murky depths. Turning, Marshall saw the head that followed it—a head about the size of a large basketball, and mostly teeth. The neck came gliding up from the water next, yards of it. Ten, fifteen feet of neck rose above them, and still more lurked beneath the water—along with who knew how many feet of body.

The head was swaying from side to side, looming above the raft and rocking gently as if getting into the rhythm of a spring. Kyle’s trembling hands held the blaster. The river creature followed smoothly along the side of the raft, studying the five people aboard, deciding which one would make the juiciest morsel.

“For God’s sake, fire!” Marshall called. “Shoot, Kyle, shoot!”

But Kyle did not shoot. With a muttered curse, Marshall sprang forward, nearly upsetting the delicate balance of the raft, and snatched the blaster from the financier’s numb fingers. He lifted and fired. The river-serpent’s head vanished. The long sleek neck slipped gracefully into the water. A trail of blood eddied upward toward the surface.

Lois gasped and pointed toward the water. It boiled with activity: Creatures were coming from all over to devour the dead monster.

“I’m sorry,” Kyle muttered thinly. “I had the gun—I tried to fire it—but I couldn’t shoot, I just couldn’t. I was too scared. Marshall, dammit, I’m sorry!”

“Forget it,” Marshall said. “It’s dead and no harm was done.” But he made a mental note to the effect that Kyle could not be trusted to act in an emergency. In the jungle, you were either quick or you were dead.

***

They reached the other side of the river without further mishap, and, abandoning the raft where it had beached itself, they continued inland.

During the next five days, they plodded steadily along. Marshall figured they had covered about a hundred miles—which sounded like a great deal, until he realized it was only one tenth of the total journey.

The five of them were changing, in those five days. Becoming less prissy, less civilized. The barriers of restraint were rapidly breaking down. They ate foods they would never have dreamed of eating normally, ripping and rending almost raw meat to assuage their hunger. They ate less frequently, too, and from day to day they grew leaner, tougher. In the past few years Marshall had let himself get slightly out of shape, but that roll of flesh around his middle had disappeared utterly in only a few days. Muscles that had not worked for many years came into regular play.

The little band did not present a very imposing picture. The men had week-old beards; the women, despite sporadic attempts at self-tidiness, were growing unkempt and very unfeminine, with ragged, stringy hair and no makeup. As for clothing, it was diminishing rapidly, the effects of continual humidity and rain and jungle life. Marshall’s shirt had been so encrusted with violet and green molds that he had been forced to discard it. His trousers were frayed and tattered, and ended at the knee. Garvey looked similarly disheveled, while Kyle was even worse. The insubstantial fabrics of the women’s dresses had suffered the most. Lois’ violet synthofab dress, which had attracted Marshall so much back in Marleyville, was a bedraggled ruin. She shed it completely on the fourth day, making do with her underclothes and some foliage bound around her breasts for the sake of modesty.

But modesty mattered very little in the jungle. It was futile to maintain the old civilized taboos under such conditions. Before the end of the first week, the five of them were bathing unashamedly together, and there was no more niggling concern with modesty or other social graces that were irrelevant in the cruel world of the jungle.

Marshall became an adept hunter. The jungle abounded in strange life-forms of every description: thick furred creatures like little teddy-bears, that soared on bat-wings from tree to tree, forming easy targets in mid-glide and yielding deliciously tender white meat; big-beaked jungle birds of astonishing color, who ranged themselves in groups of a dozen along a tree-limb and obediently waited to be shot; curious amphibious creatures who looked like oildrums with eyes, and whose hind legs tasted like fine chicken; graceful fawn-like creatures that flitted through the forest like tawny ghosts, occasionally coming within range. Making the most of his two hundred blaster charges, Marshall kept the group supplied with meat. Kyle became a surprisingly able fisherman, while the women made themselves responsible for gathering fruits, nuts, and vegetables, and Garvey took care of the mechanical aspects of jungle life, the building of clearings and the fashioning of clubs and sandals and the like.

They forged forward, keeping careful track of the days and careful watch of the skies, in case a rescue ship should pass overhead. None did. But the general mood of the party was one of quiet determination. The conviction now gripped them that they would return to civilization alive. Except for occasional brushes with the larger jungle wildlife, and a few small incidents involving snakes underfoot, there had been no serious problem. The rain, the humidity, the insects—these were inconveniences which could be tolerated. There was no reason to suspect that they would get into difficulties. All they had to do was to keep on plugging ahead.

Until the ninth day. When it suddenly became clear that their eastward march had come to an unexpected halt—perhaps permanently.

It had been a coolish day, by jungle standards, and the group had been moving at a good pace all morning. They stopped at noon and feasted on a pair of the small green amphibious oildrum-creatures, and then moved on. Marshall, his blaster in his hand, led the way, with Lois at his side. The girl wore only sheer pants round her waist, but despite this she did not show the embarrassment she had displayed originally when it had been necessary for her to discard her useless city clothes. Her body was tanned and handsome.

Walking behind Marshall came Nathan Kyle, holding the flare-gun, with the Garveys bringing up the rear. On one of his recent evening watches Garvey had fashioned a bow and arrow outfit for himself, and he now wore the bow slung over his thick barrel chest. His wife carried the survival kit.

They cut their way through some reasonably open territory for about an hour after the lunch halt. Marshall, keeping his compass constantly in hand, maintained the consistent eastward course which he hoped would, in time, bring them to the coastal area where the colony of New Lisbon and the other smaller coast settlements could be found.

The course took them up the side of a small, heavily-wooded rise. Marshall strode through the thick shrubbery, ignoring as best as he could the droning insects that nipped at his bare legs, and down the other side of the low hill.

He stopped, staring ahead. His eyes ranged toward the next hill in the gently undulating series. Sudden amazement surged through him.

“Good God!” he muttered. “Look at that!”

The others came up to him and paused with him, an anxious, frightened little group. Garvey, squinting out into the distance with his keen, experienced eyes, said finally, “I’ve never seen anything like it. The beast must be fifty feet high!”

“Are you sure?” Marshall asked.

“At least that much. It’s standing in a clump of rhizome trees that grow to about forty feet, never less, and you can see the creature’s head bobbing up over the damned trees!”

Marshall was conscious of Lois pressing up against him, her hand gripping his arm in sudden fright. He put his free arm around her to steady her. But he was frightened himself. He had never seen anything quite like the beast that stood squarely in their path, no more than five hundred yards ahead.

The creature was vaguely humanoid in shape—that is, if it had any meaning to describe such a monster as humanoid. It towered above the trees, but through the shrubbery Marshall could see that it stood on two massive legs that seemed almost like treetrunks themselves. The being was covered entirely with thick, metallic-looking scales that glinted blue-green in the sunlight. Its immense head consisted mostly of mouth; fangs more than six inches long were visible. The eyes were like blazing beacons, as big as dishes—but they were not the eyes of a beast. There was unmistakable intelligence in them.

As they watched, one gigantic arm swooped upward through the air. For an instant, eight huge fingers were spread wide. Then they closed tight, imprisoning a bat-like flying reptile the way a man might pounce on a small insect. The trumpeting sound of the frightened pterodactyl echoed for a moment in the forest; then, the mouth yawned, the arm went toward it.

The mouth closed. The monster had devoured an appetizing morsel—a pleasant midday snack. As if to signal its pleasure it rumbled groundshakingly, a fierce bellow of content. Then it turned, and, sending saplings crashing all around, began to stride toward the group of humans huddled at the foot of the hill.

***

Marshall was the first to react. “Come on,” he said harshly. “Maybe it senses us. Let’s split up before we all wind up as lunch for that thing.”

With a rough shove, he sent Nathan Kyle plunging away into the underbrush. Garvey needed no hint; he and his wife faded off the road into a sheltered spot. Marshall glanced at him, saw him stringing his bow and nocking an arrow into place.

Marshall and Lois crouched down behind a thick shrub and waited. He gripped the blaster tight, holding it in readiness, but even as he opened the safety he paused to think that the blaster was a futile weapon to use against a monster of this size.

Lois whispered, “What
is
that thing? I’ve never heard of a life-form that size.”

“Neither have I. This is just something that’s lurked in this unexplored jungle without ever getting seen from the air. And it’s just our luck to be the ones to discover it!”

“Does it know where we are?”

Marshall shrugged. “Something that size probably doesn’t have very highly developed sense organs. But it may have seen us. And it may be hungry.”

“I hope not.”

The creature was getting closer. Marshall could feel the ground quivering as each ponderous foot descended to the jungle floor. It was like a distant drumbeat….
boom….boom….boom….boom….

Abruptly the booming stopped. That meant, Marshall thought, that the monster had to be very close—and perhaps was pausing a few yards away, searching for the small creatures it had seen from the distance. He held his breath and warily looked over his shoulder.

Two legs were planted like treetrunks no more than twenty yards from him. He caught his breath sharply. Lois turned to see what he was looking at; her mouth widened as if she were about to scream, and Marshall instantly slapped his hand over it.

She relaxed. He lifted his hand from her mouth and put a finger to his lips, indicating silence.

They turned round to see the creature.

***

It did not seem to notice them. Marshall’s gaze rose, up the giant legs, past the thick midsection of the body, to the head. Yes, there was no doubt about it—there was intelligence in those eyes. But an alien intelligence. And it was the face of a carnivorous creature that would hardly stop to wonder before devouring them.

It had come to a halt and was peering round, spreading the brush apart with its monstrous paws, hunting for the hidden Earthmen. Marshall prayed that Garvey, on the other side of the creature, would not decide to open fire with his bow. The monster evidently had a poor sense of smell, and the humans were well hidden under the shrubbery. With luck, they might avoid being seen. Perhaps the creature, cheated of its prey, would simply continue on its way through the jungle, allowing them to move along toward New Lisbon without harm.

Long moments passed. The creature, with seemingly cosmic patience, was still standing there, probing the underbrush with its enormous fingers. Marshall kept the blaster cocked and ready in case he should be uncovered. No doubt Garvey was waiting, too, with his wife.

How about Kyle? Marshall remembered the way Kyle had choked up when the sea-serpent had risen from the depths of the river. How was the financier reacting now, with hideous death looming not far overhead?