Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930, Various [best novels to read txt] 📗
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e was pointing to a flat bodied fish with incredible jaws that lay on the grass, emitting strange sounds even in the air. It flapped about madly. Its jaws closed upon a stick nearly half an inch thick, and cut it through.[334]
"It is a piranha," said Paula. "The same fish that bit your hand. It can bite through a copper wire fastened to a hook, but this hook is so long...."
"Pleasant," said Bell. Something large and red passed before his eyes. He struck at it instinctively.
"Don't!" said Paula sharply.
"Why?"
"It's a maribundi wasp," she told him "And its sting.... Children have died of it. A strong man will be ill for days from one single sting."
"Still more pleasant," said Bell. "The jungle is a charming place, isn't it?" He wiped the sweat off his face. "Any more little pets about?"
She looked about seriously.
"There." She pointed to a sapling not far distant. "The palo santo yonder has a hollow trunk, and in it there are usually ants, which are called fire-ants. They bite horribly. It feels like a drop of molten metal on your flesh. And it festers afterwards. And there is a fly, the berni fly, which lays its eggs in living flesh. The maggot eats its way within. I do not know much about the jungle, but my father has—had a fazenda in Matto Grosso and I was there as a child. The camaradas told me much about the jungle, then."
Bell winced, and sat down beside her. She had Ribiera's pearl handled automatic within easy reach. She saw him looking at it.
"I do not think there is any danger," she said with a not very convincing smile, "but there are cururus—water snakes. They grow very large."
"And I asked you to fish!" said Bell. "Stop it!"
he hauled the line ashore, with a flapping thing on the end of it. Bell took the fish off and regarded her catch moodily.
"I'd been thinking," he said moodily, "that Ribiera suspects we're dead. I'd been envisioning ourselves as marooned, yes, but relatively safe as long as we were thought to be dead. And I'd thought that if we lived a sort of castaway existence for a few weeks we'd be forgotten, and would have a faint chance of getting out to civilization without being noticed. But this...."
"I will stay," she said steadily. "I will stay anywhere or go anywhere, with you."
Bell's hand closed on her shoulder.
"I believe it," he said heavily. "And—if you noticed—I had been thinking of letting down the Trade. I'd been thinking of not trying to fight The Master any longer, but only of getting you to safety. In a sense, I was thinking of treason to my job and my government. I suspect"—he smiled rather queerly—"I suspect we love each other rather much, Paula. I'd never have dreamed for anyone else. Go over to the plane and don't fish any more. I'll rustle the food for both of us."
She stood up obediently, smiling at him.
"But kill that piranha before you try to handle it," she advised seriously.
Bell battered the savage thing until it ceased to move. He picked it up, then, and sniffed the air. Paula had been in a cloud of acrid smoke. She could not have detected the taint in the air he discovered. He went curiously, saw a broken branch overhead, and then saw something on the ground.
e came back to the plane presently, looking rather sick.
"Give me one of the machetes, Paula," he said quietly. "We brought them, I think."
"What is the matter?"
He took the wide-bladed woods knife.
"A man," he said, nauseated. "He either fell or was thrown from somewhere high above. From a plane. He was United States Secret Service. There's a badge in his clothes. Don't come."
He went heavily over to the spot beyond the smudge fire. He worked there for half an hour. When he came back there were earth stains on his hands and clothing, and he carried a[335] very small brown package in his hand.
"He had a report ready to send off," said Bell grimly. "I read it. It's in code, of course, but in the Trade...."
He set to work savagely on the engine, reassembling it. As he worked, he talked in savage, jerky sentences.
"The Service man at Asunción. One of the seven who vanished. He'd learned more than we have. He was caught—poisoned, of course—and pretended to surrender. Told a great deal that he shouldn't, in order to convince The Master's deputy. The key men in nearly every republic in South America are in The Master's power. Paraguay belongs to him, body and soul. Bolivia is absolutely his. Every man of the official class from the President down knows that he has two weeks or less of sanity if The Master's deputy shuts down on him—and he knows that at the crook of the deputy's finger he'll be assassinated before then. If they run away, they go murder mad. If they stay, they have to obey him. It's hellish!"
e stopped talking to make a fine adjustment. He went on, somberly.
"Chile's not so bad off, but the deputy has slaves nearly everywhere. Ecuador—well, the President and half of Congress have been poisoned. The man I found was trying to get a sample of the poison for analysis. He'd learned it was unstable. Wouldn't keep. The Master has to send fresh supplies constantly all over the continent. That accounts for the deputies remaining loyal. If The Master had reason to suspect them, he had only to stop their supply.... They couldn't stock up on the deadly stuff for their own use. So they're as abjectly subject to The Master as their slaves are to them. No new slaves are to be made in Paraguay or Bolivia, except when necessary. It's believed that in six months the other republics will have every influential man subjected. Every army officer, every judge, every politician, every outstanding rich man.... And then, overnight, South America will become an empire, with that devil of a Master as its overlord."
He lifted one of the oil pumps in place and painstakingly tightened the bolts that held it.
"Picture it," he said grimly. "Beasts as viceroys, already taking their pleasure. Caligulas, Neros, on viceregal thrones all over the continent.... And every man who shows promise, or shows signs of honor or courage or decency, either killed or sent mad or...."
aula was watching his face closely.
"I think," she said soberly, "that there is something worse."
Bell was silent for an instant.
"For me," he said bitterly, "it is. Before The Master dares to make his coup public, he must be sure that there will be no foreign interference. So, he must establish a deputy in Washington. A relatively few chosen men, completely enslaved, could hold back our Government from any action. Leaders in Congress, and members of the Cabinet, working, in defense of The Master because his defeat would mean their madness.... He would demand no treason of them at first. He would require simply that he should not be interfered with. But his plans include the appointment of deputies in the United States later on. I don't think he can subdue America. I don't think so. But he could—and I think he would—send whole cities mad. And if you think of that...."
e was silent, working. A long, long time later he swung on the propeller. The motor caught. He throttled it down and watched it grimly. The motor warmed up to normal, and stayed there.
"It will run," he said coldly. "Those two plugs in the crankcase may come out at any time. I've tightened them a little. They'd worked loose from the[336] vibration. But—well.... That Service man was heading for Asunción. He'd been found out. They probably shot him down in mid-air after he'd gotten away. His plane may be crashed anywhere in the jungle within a mile or so. And I've two bearings on the fazenda where Ribiera went, now. One from Asunción through here and one from Rio. I want to go back there to-night and dump burning gasoline on the buildings, to do enough damage to disorganize things a little. Then I'm going to try to make it to a seaport. We can stow away, perhaps."
He shut off the motor.
"We'll start at dusk. There'll be lights there. This report says it's nearly a city—of slaves. We want the darkness for our getaway."
Paula looked at the sky.
"We have three hours," she said quietly. "Let us cook and eat. You must keep up your strength, Charles."
She said it in all seriousness, with the air of one who has entire confidence and is merely solicitous. And Bell, who knew of at least three excellent reasons why neither of them should survive until dawn—Bell looked at her queerly, and then grinned, and then took her in his arms and kissed her. She seemed to like it.
And they lunched quite happily on piranha and pacu—which is smaller—and drank water, and for dessert had more piranha.
he long afternoon wore away slowly. It was hot, and grew blistering. Insects came in swarms and tormented them until Bell built a second and larger smudge fire. But they fastened upon his flesh when he went out of its smoke for more wood.
They talked, as well as they could for smoke, and looked at each other as well as they could for smarting eyes. It was not at all the conventional idea of romantic conversation, but it was probably a good deal more honest than most, because they both knew quite well that their chance of life was small. A plane whose motor was precariously patched, flying over a jungle without hope of a safe landing if that patched-up motor died, was bad enough. But with the three nearest nations subservient to The Master, whose deputy Ribiera was, and all those nations hunting them as soon as they were known to be yet alive....
"Would it not be wise, Charles," asked Paula wistfully, "just for us to try to escape, ourselves, and not try—"
"Wise, perhaps," admitted Bell, "but I've got to strike a blow while I can." He was staring somberly at the little plane, fast upon a mud bank, with the tall green jungle all about. "The deputies and all their slaves have their lives hanging by a thread—the thread of a constant supply of the antidote to the poison that's administered with the antidote. The deputies—Ribiera, for instance—don't realize that. Else they wouldn't dare do the things they do. But let them realize that the thread can be broken, and what their slaves would do to them before they all went mad.... You see? Let them learn that a blow has been struck at the center of all the ghastly thing, and they'll be frightened. They'll be close to mutiny through sheer panic. And there may be slip-ups."
t was vague, perhaps, but it was true. The subjection of the poisoned men and women was due not only to terror of what would happen if they disobeyed the deputies, but to a belief that that thing would not happen if they did obey. If Bell could do enough damage to the fazenda of The Master to shake the second belief, he would have shaken the whole conspiracy. And a conspiracy that is not a complete success is an utter failure.
It was close to sunset when they heard a droning noise in the distance. Bell went swiftly to the cockpit of the plane and searched the sky.
"Don't see it," he said grimly, "and it probably doesn't see us. We're all right, I suppose."[337]
But he was uneasy. The droning noise grew to a maximum and slowly died away again. It diminished to a distant muttering.
"What say," said Bell suddenly, "we get aloft now? We'll follow that damned thing home. It's going from Asunción to that place we want to find. This is on that route. Whoever's in it won't be looking behind, and it's close to darkness."
aula stood up.
"I am ready, Charles."
Bell swung out on the floats and tugged at the prop. The motor caught and roared steadily. While it was warming up, he stripped off the rest of his shirt and tore it into wide strips, and tied the rags in the handles of the gasoline tins in the two cockpits.
"For our bombs," he explained, smiling faintly. "You'll
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