"What a guy!" interjected vanBuskirk. '"Did you ever see his top for looking at the bright side of life?"
"Only in conversation," the Lensman replied. "When the ether gets crowded, you notice, he's right in there, blasting away and not saying a word. But to get back to the question of power. I've got only a few minutes of free flight left in my battery, and with your mass, you must be just about out. Come to think of it, didn't you land a trifle hard when we sat down here?"
"Fairly—I went into the ground up to my knees."
"I thought so. We've got to get some power, and the nearest city—out of the question or not—is the best place to get it. Luckily, it isn't far."
VanBuskirk grunted. "As far as I'm concerned it might as well be on Mars, considering what's between here and there. You can take my batteries and I'll wait here."
"On your emergency food, water, and air? That's out!"
"What else, then?"
"I can spread my field to cover all three of us," proposed Kinnison. "That will give us at least one minute of free flight—almost, if not quite, enough to clear the jungle. They have night here, and, like us, the Delgonians are night– sleepers. We start at dusk, and tonight we recharge our batteries."
The following hour, during which the huge, hot sun dropped to the horizon, was spent in intense discussion, but no significant improvement upon the Lensman's plan could be devised.
"It is time to go," Worsel announced, curling out one extensile eye toward the vanishing orb. "I have recorded all my findings. Already I have lived longer and, through you, have accomplished more, than anyone has ever believed possible. I am ready to die—I should have been dead long since."
"Living on borrowed time's a lot better than not living at all," Kinnison replied, with a grin. "Link up…Ready?…Got"
He snapped his switches and the close–linked group of three shot into the air and away. As far as the eye could reach in any direction extended the sentient, ravenous growth of the jungle, but Kinnison's eyes were not upon that fantastically inimical green carpet. His whole attention was occupied by two all–important meters and by the task of so directing their flight as to gain the greatest possible horizontal distance with the power at his command.
Fifty seconds of flashing flight, then.
"All right, Worsel, get out in front and get ready to pull!" Kinnison snapped. "Ten seconds of drive left, but I can hold us free for five seconds after my driver quits. Pull!"
Kinnison's driver expired, its small accumulator completely exhausted, and Worsel, with his mighty wings, took up the task of propulsion. Inertialess still, with Kinnison and vanBuskirk grasping his tail, each beat a mile–long leap, he struggled on. But all too soon the battery powering the neutralizers also went dead and the three began to plummet downward at a sharper and sharper angle, in spite of the Velantian's Herculean efforts to keep them aloft.
Some distance ahead of them the green of the jungle ended in a sharply cut line, beyond which there was a heavy growth of fairly open forest. A couple of miles of this and there was the city, their objective—so near and yet so far!
"Well either just make the timber or we just won't," Kinnison, mentally plotting the course, announced dispassionately. "Just as well if we land in the jungle, I think. It'll break our fall, anyway—hitting solid ground inert at this speed would be bad."
"If we land in the jungle we will never leave it," Worsel's thought did not slow the incredible tempo of his prodigious pinions, "but it makes little difference whether I die now or later."
"It does—to us, you pessimistic croaker!" flared Kinnison. "Forget that dying complex of yours for a minute! Remember the plan, arid follow itl We're going to strike the jungle, about ninety or a hundred meters in. If you come in with us you die at once, and the rest of our scheme is all shot to hell. So when we let go, you go ahead and land in the woods. We'll join you there, never fear, our armor will hold long enough for us to cut our way through a hundred meters of any jungle that ever grew—even this one…Get ready, Bus…Leggo!"
They dropped. Through the lush succulence of close–packed upper leaves and tentacles they crashed, through the heavier, woodier main branches below, 'through to the ground. And there they fought for their lives, for those voracious plants nourished themselves not only upon the soil in which their roots were imbedded, but also upon anything organic unlucky enough to come within their reach. Flabby but tough tentacles encircled them, ghastly sucking disks, exuding a potent corrosive, slobbered wetly at their armor, knobbed and spiky bludgeons whanged against tempered steel as the monstrous organisms began dimly to realize that these particular tid–bits were encased in something far more resistant than skin, scales, or bark.
But the Lensman and his giant companion were not quiescent. They came down oriented and fighting. VanBuskirk, in the van, swung his frightful space–axe as a reaper swings his scythe—one solid, short step forward with each swing. And close behind the Valerian strode Kinnison, his own flying axe guarding the giant's head and back. Forward they pressed, and forward—not the strongest, toughest stems of that monstrous weed could stay vanBuskirk's Herculean strength, not the most agile of the striking tendrils and curling tentacles could gain a manacling hold in the face of Kinnison's flashing speed in cut, thrust, and slash.
Masses of the obscene vegetation crashed down upon their heads from above, revoltingly cupped orifices sucking and smacking, and they were showered continually with floods of the opaque, corrosive sap, to the action of which even their armor was not entirely immune. But, hampered as they were and almost blinded, they struggled on, while behind them an ever–lengthening corridor of demolition marked their progress.
"Ain't we got fun?" grunted the Dutchman, in time with his swing. "But we're quite a team at that, chief—brains and brawn, huh?"
"Ooh uh," dissented Kinnison, his weapon flying. "Grace and poise, or, if you want to be really romantic, ham and eggs,..
"Rack and ruin will be more like it if we don't break out before this confounded goo eats through our armor. But we're making it—the stuff's thinning out and I think I can see trees up ahead. "
"It is well if you can," came a cold, clear thought from Worsel, "for I am sorely beset. Hasten or I perish!"
At that thought the two Patrolmen forged ahead in a burst of even more furious activity. Crashing through the thinning barriers of the jungle's edge, they wiped their lenses partially clear, glanced quickly about, and saw the Velantian. That worthy was "sorely beset" indeed. Six animals—huge, reptilian, but lithe and active—had him down. So helplessly immobile was Worsel that he could scarcely move his tail, and the monsters were already beginning to gnaw at his scaly, armored hide.
"I'll put a stop to that, Worsel!" called Kinnison, referring to the fact, well known to all us moderns, that any real animal, no matter how savage, can be controlled by any wearer of the Lens. For, no matter how low in the scale of intelligence the animal is, the Lensman can get in touch with whatever mind the creature has, and reason with it.
But these monstrosities, as Kinnison learned immediately, were not really animals. Even though of animal form and mobility, they were purely vegetable in motivation and behavior, reacting only to the stimuli of food and of reproduction. Weirdly and completely inimical to all other forms of created life, they were so utterly noisome, so completely alien that the. full power of mind and Lens failed entirely to gain rapport.
Upon that confusedly writhing heap the Patrolmen flung themselves, terrible axes destructively a–swing. In turn they were attacked viciously, but this battle was not long to endure. VanBuskirk's first terrific blow knocked one adversary away, almost spinning end over end. Kinnison took out one, the Dutchman another, and the remaining three were no match at all for the humiliated and furiously raging Velantian. But it was not until the monstrosities had been gruesomely carved and torn apart, literally to bits, that they ceased their insensately voracious attacks.