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WAR OF THE MARSH-MEN
By W. Malcolm White
NEW Chicago had been destroyed overnight! During the deep Venusian darkness—which lasted for twenty hours out of the strange planet's day of forty-great flares of crimson rocket trails had been seen coming from the south. Then, with terrible roaring and crashing, huge rockets loaded with high explosives had blown the small colonial city to pieces. The few survivors were able to give the direction the rockets had come from—but that was all they knew.
We of the interplanetary Patrol stationed on Earth's polar colonies on that cloudy hot planet heard of it as soon as we had returned from our latest mission. We had been far up beyond the stratosphere cruising slowly over the huge and eternal cloud-bank that covers the second planet. We were looking for I missing pleasure-plane, said to have been piloted by Verna Jenson, daughter of Governor-General Jenson of Earth's colonies.
Verna had left the day before to fly across the equatorial clouds to the South Pole Station. But she had never arrived. No word had been heard from her-hut that was not surprising, for radio waves do not easily penetrate the electric static of the Venusian atmosphere.
We eased our little cruiser into port at North Pole Base. When we got off, hoping to have a rest, it was our Captain Birch who came running back to us with the news of the New Chicago disaster.
"But who was it?" "Where did the bombs come from?" "Why?" the members of our small crew asked. But he did not know. Nobody knew. We were ordered to take off at once. All the sky-cruisers of the command stationed there were out, looking for the unknown enemy.
We hastily piled into our rocket ship and again headed upwards over the clouds. We would go south, towards the unknown equatorial region, looking for the bomb-senders.
Venus is a planet of mystery. Covered eternally with thick clouds. There are huge sections of it that are utterly unknown. Explorers can safely travel only on its extreme northern and southern polar parts. Because Venus is millions of miles closer to the sun than the Earth, its middle regions are far too hot and super-tropical. No one can survive there for long. Even the parts we live on, the polar regions where New Chicago was situated, were like Deepest Africa on Earth. Yet they were considered "cool"!
What strange beings may inhabit the equator of Venus no one knew. On our parts there were no natives, though there were unusual animals in plenty. So we had no idea of what we were looking for. It was the opinion of us all that Venusians did exist and evidently they were starting now to destroy all Earth's people on their world.
Our cruiser raced south over the-huge sea of mist, our super-radar operating steadily to show us what lay beneath the clouds. Radar could show tn some things—it showed where land and rivers were, and where the boiling oceans. But as you got nearer the equator, land and water seemed to merge and a vast belt of hot Swampland was believed to exist there. In that mystery terrain, the radar could not distinguish details.
Captain Birch was watching the radar in the control room and shaking his head. It had been the same in our search for Verna Jenson's ship yesterday—the farther south you got, the less you could see. Now we were over the vast marshes and our instruments showed only an uninterrupted flatness beneath the clouds.
Then suddenly our alarm bells went off. Captain Birch jumped to the window. A huge robot-rocket was heading up out of the clouds towards us! Birch shouted an order. The man at the controls jammed over the rocket levers and the ship jumped wildly to one side. We held our breath—and the mystery rocket grazed past us, missing us by a matter of inches!
Lieutenant Williams, at the rear gun, managed to get his weapon working. A steady stream of atomic bullets flew from the muzzle of his wicked looking weapon. I saw them hit the strange black painted rocket, and explode. I was thrown from my feet by the terrible shock that followed.
We had hit the enemy rocket and it had exploded, but it had been too close to us when it went off. We were falling, out of control, falling into the clouds, into the marshes below!
Captain Birch struggled to straighten the ship. He fought with the controls as the ship whirled and tossed in the air currents. Still we fell. Down, down, through the grey clouds, and then, at last we steadied, rode down to the surface below. came to a halt in the swampy marshes of unknown Venus.
The ship was somewhat damaged, it could be repaired fast though . . . and Birch ordered the men at it. Meanwhile we would have to wait there for a little while. Birch, Williams, and I opened the side port and looked out.
The ship was floating in a mass of muddy, marshy stuff, pools of dirty oily water, covered with green and yellow growing things. Great bubbles of blackish muck kept boiling up about us. Here and there hummocks of mossy land stood out. Great ugly looking trees stuck up in odd places. It was truly a dismal sight.
"Look!" cried Williams excitedly and pointed into the distance. Our eyes followed and we saw a huge six-legged monster leaping through the swamp towards us. "There's someone riding it!" shouted Birch.
Sure enough, perched on the ugly creature's back was a slim, lightly clad figure. We strained our eyes as the animal dashed on in our direction. "It's Verna!" shouted Williams.
We recognized the figure of the Governor-General's daughter. Evidently she was trying to reach our ship and now we could see why—she was being pursued! Running after her, coming with great jumps and leaps through the marsh, sometimes in the water, sometimes leaping from hummock to hummock, were men—huge greenish monster-men, ten, twelve feet tall, horrible marshmen, the mystery inhabitants of the planet.
Verna's weird animal seemed winning, when one of the marshmen stopped, aimed an odd pistol-shaped weapon at it and fired. A burst of black smoke, and the animal jumped, gave a hideous scream and fell, almost at our ship's door. Verna scrambled off its back and we reached for her, hauled her up into the ship's entranceway.
The marshmen were right on her tracks. One leaped, went deep into the water and managed to get a hold on her leg. Birch shot him. Others were coming from all directions. The ship rocket and I shot a glance overhead. One marshman, horrible and slimy green, had come up on us from behind and was climbing over the ship.
We rushed inside, slammed the steel door just in time. Verna collapsed into a hammock. Birch ran to the controls. Fortunately the repairs had been mostly made, an emergency system had been rigged up. and we were able to take off before the marshmen now swarming about could do any damage.
Up we shot into the steamy air above the swamp. We dropped a bomb and had the satisfaction of finishing off those fiends who had been surrounding the spot we had left.
Verna recovered her strength enough to take her place beside Birch. "There, go that way," she pointed a direction to us and out ship followed her finger. There was the city of the monsters.
It rose from the swamps just a little beyond the spot we had been forced down. It was a low sprawling city of ugly mushroom-shaped houses, hidden in the marshes. We could see several ugly rocket-launching racks just outside it and many huge black cylinders waiting to be fired at the rest of our cities.
Verna told us she had come down in the marshes for a slight repair when her little pleasure ship had trouble the day before. She had come down by accident on the hidden city of the marshmen and they had made her prisoner. They had long been planning to attack us and now they decided to attack at once. That very night the dreadful rockets had gone out that had destroyed New Chicago.
Verna had taken advantage of their confusion when our shots blew up the rocket bomb they had last launched. She had seized one of their domesticated animals— the monster we had seen her riding-and had ridden away towards where she had heard our rocketship descending.
"The marshmen could have destroyed us all, colony by colony, and we would never have been able to hit back," Verna said to us. But that was no longer to be, for l heard Birch now on the radio-beam, sending back to the North Pole Base the directions that would enable our huge battleships of space to blast the marshmen out of existence forever.