Much more distantly he heard the answer: "Coming!"
Most cautiously Don moved forward, felt the edge of the drop off, tried it and found that he could still stand beyond it, almost up to his armpits but still wading. He was moving, forward slowly, trying to avoid noise and minding his precarious, half-floating balance, when he heard the sibilant sound of the beam.
The soldier back on the bank had imagination; instead of firing again at random into the drifting mist he was fanning the flat surface of the water, doing his best to keep his beam horizontal and playing it like a hose. Don squatted down until his face alone was out of the water.
The beam passed only inches over his head; he could hear it pass, smell the ozone.
The hissing stopped abruptly to be followed by the age-old, monotonous cursing of the barrackroom. "But, sergeant-" someone protested.
"I'll `sergeant' you! Alive-do you hear? You heard the orders. If you've killed him, I'll take you apart with a rusty knife. No, I won't; I'll turn you over to Mr. Bankfield. You hopeless fool!"
"But, sergeant, he was escaping by water; I had to stop him."
" `But sergeant!' `But sergeant!'-is that all you can say! Get a boat! Get a snooper! Get a two-station portable bounce
rig. Call base and find out if they've got a copter down."
"Where would I get a boat?"
"Get one! He can't get away. We'll find him-or his body. If it's his body, you'd better cut your throat."
Don listened, then moved silently forward-or away from the direction the voices seemed to come from. He could no longer tell true direction; there was nothing but the black surface of water and a horizon of mist. For some distance the bottom continued fairly level, then he realized that it was again dropping away. He was forced to stop, able to wade no further.
He thought it over, trying to avoid panic. He was still close to Main Island with nothing but mist between himself and the shore. It was a certainty that with proper search gear-infra-red or any of the appropriate offspring of radar-they could pin him like a beetle to cork. It was merely a matter of waiting for the gear to be brought up.
Should he surrender now and get out of this poisonous swill? Surrender and go back and tell Bankfield to find Isobel Costello if he wanted the ring? He let himself sink forward and struck out strongly, swimming breast stroke to try to keep his face out of the water.
Breast stroke was far from being his strongest stroke and it was made worse by trying so hard to keep his face dry. His neck began to ache presently the ache spread through his shoulder muscles and into his back. Indefinite time and endless gallons later he ached everywhere, even to his eyeballs-yet for all he could tell about it he might have been swimming in a bathtub, one whose walls were grey mist. It did not seem possible that, in the archipelago which made up Buchanan Province, one could swim so far without running into something... a sand spit, a mud bar.
He stopped to tread water, barely moving his tired legs and fluttering his palms. He thought he heard the rushing sound of a powered boat, but he could not be sure. At that moment he would not have cared; capture would have been relief. But the sound, or ghost of a sound, died away and he was again in a grey and featureless wilderness.
He arched his back to shift again to swimming and his toe struck bottom. Gingerly he felt for it-yes, bottom... with his chin out of water. He stood for a moment or two and rested, then felt around. Bottom dropped away on one side, seemed level or even to rise a little in another direction.
Shortly his shoulders were out with his feet still in the muck. Feeling his way like a blind man, his eyes useless save for balancing, he groped out the contour, finding bits that rose, then forced to retreat as the vein played out.
He was out of water to his waist when his eyes spotted a darker streak through the fog; he went toward it, was again up to his neck. Then the bottom rose rapidly; a few moments later he scrambled up on dry land.
He did not have the courage yet to do anything more than move inland a few feet and place between himself and the water a clump of Chika trees. Screened thus from search operations conducted from boats he looked himself over. Clinging to his legs were a dozen or more mud lice, each as large as a child's hand. With repugnance he brushed them off, then removed his shorts and shirt, found several more and disposed of them. He told himself that he was lucky not to have encountered anything worse-the dragons had many evolutionary cousins, bearing much the same relationship to them that gorillas do to men. Many of these creatures are amphibious-another reason why Venus colonials do not swim.
Reluctantly Don put his wet and filthy clothes back on, sat down with his back to a tree trunk, and rested. He was still doing so when he again heard the sound of a power boat; this time there was no mistaking it. He sat still, depending on the trees to cover him and hoping that it would go away.
It came in close to shore and cruised along it to his right. He was beginning to feel relief when the turbine stopped. In the stillness he could hear voices. "We'll have to reconnoiter this hunk of mud. Okay, Curly-you and Joe."
"What does this guy look like, corporal?"
"Now, I'll tell you-the captain didn't say. He's a young fellow, though, about your age. You just arrest anything that walks. He's not armed."
"I wish I was back in Birmingham."
"Get going."
Don got going, too - in the other direction, as fast and as silently as possible. The island was fairly well covered; he hoped that it was large as well-a precarious game of hideand-seek was all the tactics he could think of. He had covered perhaps a hundred yards when he was scared out of his wits by movement up ahead; he realized with desperation that the boat party might have landed two patrols.
His panic died down when he discovered that what he was seeing were not men but gregarians. They spotted him, too, and came dancing up, bleating welcome, and crowding up against him.
"Quiet!" he said in a sharp whisper. "You'll get me caughtl"
The move-overs paid no attention to that; they wanted to play. He endeavored to pay no attention to them but moved forward again, closely accompanied by the whole group, some five. He was still wondering how to keep from being loved to death-or at least back into captivity-when they came out into the clearing.
Here was the rest of the herd, more than two hundred head, from babies that butted against his knees up to the grey-bearded old patriarch, fat in the belly and reaching as high as Don's shoulder. They all welcomed him and wanted him to stay a while.
One thing that had worried him was now cleared up-he had not swum in a circle and blundered back onto Main Island. The only move-overs on Main Island were half-domesticated scavengers such as those which had hung around the restaurant; there were no herds.
It suddenly occurred to him that it was barely possible that he might turn the ubiquitous friendliness of the bipeds into an advantage rather than a sure giveaway. They would not let him be; that was sure. If he left the herd, some of them were certain to trail along, bleating and snorting and making themselves and him conspicuous. On the other hand...
He moved straight out into the clearing, pushing his friends aside as he went. He shoved himself right into the center of the herd and sat down on the ground.
Three of the babies promptly climbed into his lap. He let them stay. Adults and half-grown bucks crowded around him bleating and snuffling and trying to nuzzle the top of his head. He let them-he was now surrounded by a wall of flesh. From time to time one of the inner circle would be shouldered out of the way and would go back to grazing but there were always enough around him to block out his view of his surroundings. He waited.
After a considerable time he heard more excited bleating from the fringe of the herd. For a moment be thought his personal guard would be seduced away by this new excitement, but the inner circle preferred to keep their privileged positions the wall held. Again he heard voices.