V
Slow reddish dawn brightened over the Forest. Garth felt someone shaking him. He grunted, stirred, and opened his eyes to see Paula’s white face, and, behind her, Sampson.
“Yeah. What’s wrong?” He scrambled out of his blankets, blinking. The girl, pale to the lips, pointed toward a recumbent figure.
“Carver. Captain Brown. He’s—I don’t know!”
Sampson said gruffly, “Looks like he’s dead. The men on guard duty said he didn’t move once all night.”
Icy bands constricted suddenly around Garth’s heart. Without answering he got his kit and went over to examine Brown. The man lay motionless, his breathing normal, but a deep flush on his brown cheeks.
“It isn’t the Plague, is it?” Sampson asked, his voice not quite under control.
Garth shook his head. “Hell, no! It’s—” He hesitated.
Paula caught his arm. “What? Some insect poisoned him—one of those butterfly-things?”
Garth carefully repacked his kit. He didn’t look up.
“He’s got a dose of the Noctoli pollen. That’s all. It’s not fatal. He’ll come out of it after he leaves the Forest, or after he builds up immunity.”
“How long would that take?”
“A month or more.”
Garth bent over the apparently sleeping man. “Get up, Brown,” he said insistently. “Hear me? Get up?”
The Captain stirred. His eyes opened, blank and unseeing. He drew himself from his blankets and rose, looking straight ahead. Paula shrank back with a little gasp. There was a flurry of movement among the men in the background.
“He’ll be all right tonight. The poison only works in the daytime—I’ve told you that.”
“We can’t march at night,” Paula said. “Not—here!”
“I know. It’s impossible. Our lights would attract the butterflies—and plenty of other things.”
Sampson whirled on the others. “Pack your equipment! We’re getting out of here, fast!”
They hurried to obey. Paula got in front of Sampson as he turned, and the giant stopped, blinking at her.
“You can’t leave the Captain here, Sampson.”
“We’ll carry him, then. But we’re getting out.”
Garth moved to Paula’s side. “You won’t need a litter. He can walk. Noctoli poison works like hypnotism. You’re semiconscious, but your will’s in abeyance. If anyone tells Brown to follow us, he’ll do it.”
Paula was biting her lip. “We can’t go back now. We’ve only three days to go.”
“Look,” Sampson said grimly, “why in hell should we commit suicide? Suppose we head on for three days. We reach this lost city of yours, or whatever it is. What then? We’re in the middle of the Black Forest. Another thirteen days to get out! It’s too much of a gamble. We’re leaving now, and you can come along or stay here—suit yourself!” He turned away.
Left alone, Paula looked helplessly from the motionless, staring figure of Brown to Garth.
“Carver!”
He didn’t move. Garth grinned wryly.
“He’ll obey commands, that’s all. He won’t wake up till tonight.”
Paula clenched her hands. “We’ve got to go on! We’ve got to! If we go back now—”
“Commander Benson will clap us in the brig, eh?”
She looked at him angrily. “It isn’t only that. We’d lose our chance. You were right, Garth—we’re after the power-source of the Ancients. The secret’s hidden here, in the Black Forest. That cipher from Chahnn proved that—to me, anyway. Earth needs power, more than you can imagine. Without it, civilization will collapse—soon, too.”
“Suppose we go on,” Garth said slowly. “I didn’t tell you this, but the reason the poison hit Brown was because my antitoxin was too old. He had a short dose, too. The other men—well, they’ll go under themselves in a day or so. You, too.”
Blue smudges showed under the girl’s eyes. “Oh,” she said after a moment. “So it’s like that.”
“Just like that.”
Paula’s stubborn chin tilted up. “I don’t care—there’s still a way. We’ll be all right at night, you said. Well, we’ll do our traveling and fighting by night.”
“Fighting?”
“The Zarno. Garth, we’ve got to do it, somehow. Once we find that power-source, we can use it! There’ll be weapons the Ancients left, I’m sure of it. The murals at Chahnn showed they had weapons, strong enough to conquer the Zarno. If we can get those—”
“You’re crazy,” Garth said. “Plain crazy. What the hell do you expect me to do about it? Sampson would knock my block off if I tried to stop him now.”
But he was thinking: we’re losing more than a chance to find the Ancient’s power-source. I’m losing my chance to find the cure for the Silver Plague.
“No,” he said stubbornly.
Paula’s lip curled. “I should have known better than to ask you for help. I’ll handle this myself.” She unholstered her gun.
Garth looked at her. She’d fail. She couldn’t handle these ten hard-shelled fighters, headed by Sampson. She’d fail. And, in the end, she’d go back to Earth, in the brig, back to the certain death of the Silver Plague. Oh, it might miss her, of course. But it might not.
Paula would die as Moira had done, years ago.
Garth shrugged and slapped the girl’s weapon down. “Stay out of this,” he commanded, and turned away, walking across the clearing to where Sampson and the others were shouldering their kits.
The red-haired giant looked up at Garth’s approach. “Step it up,” he said. “We’re in a hurry.”
“I’m not going.”
Sampson’s furry brows drew together. “The hell you’re not. We need you!”
There was a band of ice around Garth’s middle. “I know that. You can’t get through without me. You’ll never get out of the Forest alive. That’s tough. Paula and I are going ahead, with Captain Brown. We’re finishing what we started.”
“You lousy so-and-so!” Sampson roared. His big hand reached out, clutching. Garth stepped back, drawing his pistol.
“Take it easy,” he said under his breath. But there was a gun in Sampson’s hand now. Behind the giant, the other men stirred angrily.
“You’re coming with us!”
“Not alive. I won’t be much good to you dead, will I?”
After a moment Sampson re-holstered his gun. He looked around at the others.
Someone said, “We can get along without that son.”
Sampson growled at him. “Shut up. We can’t. You’d have been sucked dry by that spider-thing yesterday if Garth hadn’t seen it in time. He knows where to walk in this hellhole.”
Garth didn’t say anything. He waited, holding his gun with casual lightness.
Sampson glared. “What do you want, then?”
“I want you to keep going—finish what you started.”
“Then what?”
“We may find weapons—and other things.”
“Suppose we don’t?”
“Then we’ll come back. I got you in here, and I’m the only man on Ganymede who can get you out.”
Sampson’s eyes narrowed. “Suppose we say yes. You can’t keep a gun on us all the time. We might jump you. There are ways of making a man do things he doesn’t want to do.”
“Sure,” Garth admitted, “you could torture me. Only that wouldn’t help.”
Sampson’s gaze flicked past to the girl. Garth said quickly, “That wouldn’t help either. Here’s why. The antitoxin I gave you was too old. It isn’t working the way it ought. Captain Brown was the first man to go under. But within three days, at the latest, every damn one of you will have Noctoli poison!”
Garth thought Sampson was going to shoot him then and there. A yell went up from the men.
Sampson’s lifted hand quieted them. The giant was pale under his spaceburn.
“Is that straight?”
Garth nodded. “It’s on the beam. Yeah. It’ll take you a week to get out of the Forest, and you won’t last that long, even if you force me to guide you. I don’t think you can do that, anyway. But even if you did—within three days you’ll be like the Captain. Walking dead men! You’ll be okay at night, but you can’t travel at night. By day you’ll be living statues, sitting in the Forest waiting for the bloodsucker plants to come along and drain your blood, waiting for the poisonous butterflies to paralyze you and lay their eggs under your skin, waiting—you’ve seen what sort of things live in the Forest. Every day you’ll be helpless. You can’t run. Some night you’ll wake up with your legs chewed off, or the butterfly maggots eating you alive. Like that? Well, that’s what you’ll get—and I’m the only guy that can save you!”
The faces of the men told Garth that his shots had gone home. The deadly menace of the forest, lurking always in the background, had worked into their nerves. Sampson’s big hands clenched.
“Damn you!” he snarled. “You can’t—”
Garth went on quickly. “I’m handing this to you straight. We’re in a spot, sure, but we can get out of it. I can make more antitoxin, but it’ll take a while. I can’t do it while we’re traveling. I need equipment. Here’s what I’m proposing—we all keep going, the way we started. I’m immune to the pollen. If we move fast, we’ll reach the lost city, or whatever it is, before you go under. Then I can start making antitoxin. We’ll have to trap some small animals and allow time for incubation. But I’ll be able to make fresh shots and neutralize the Noctoli pollen.”
“It’s too long a shot,” Sampson said.
“Okay,” Garth told him. “Suit yourself. Play it my way, or commit suicide.” He turned and walked toward Paula, who had not moved from Brown’s side.
Her eyes were steady on his. “Thanks. That was nice going—plenty nice, if you pull it off.”
“It’s suicide either way,” Garth grunted. He began packing Brown’s kit and his own.
Footsteps sounded. Garth didn’t turn. He heard Sampson’s deep voice, hoarse with repressed fear and rage.
“We’re playing it your way, Garth. God help you if you make any boners!”
Sudden relief weakened Garth. He tried not to show it, though he realized that his hands were trembling.
“Fair enough,” he said. “We’ll march in ten minutes. Get the men ready.”
Sampson muttered something and retreated. Garth slipped the pack on Brown’s shoulders. The Captain, looking blankly ahead, didn’t seem to notice.
“Keep your eye on him,” Garth told Paula. “He’ll be between us. He’ll keep marching till we tell him to stop. See?”
She nodded, moistening her lips. “Y‑yes. Is—that—going to happen to all of us?”
Garth said nothing. There wasn’t anything to say.
But he knew, as he led the party away from the camp, how long a gamble he was undertaking. There were so many chances that he might fail! The odds were plenty tough—yet the stakes were equally high.
Had he known how difficult those odds were, Garth might not have risked it. For the Noctoli poison worked faster than he had guessed.
Meantime he guided ten sullen, fearful men, a walking corpse, and a girl deeper into the unexplored heart of the Black Forest. The Noctoli flowers breathed their poison from the underbrush, deadly and relentlessly.