“Sure?”
Colt shrugged. He grabbed the beam gun from the nearest ReplicAnt, smashed in the creature’s face, then fired in a long beam, low and wide, turning, leaving around him a circle of corpses.
“I’m pretty sure!” he said.
In the distance, there was the sound of an explosion, like thunder, but it was not thunder. Colt thought that he could see the sun, but that was impossible, on Venus. In the water, the Venusian swampmen and -women stared up at the two of them, mutely. “Sharol?”
“Yes?”
“They’re staring.”
“Right.”
Sharol came and joined him, cutting a swathe of dead and broken ReplicAnts in his wake. “You!” Colt said, addressing the Venusians in the water. They looked up at him in mute incomprehension. “Shoo!” Colt said. “Shoo!”
“Get out of here!” Sharol said. Still they did not move. He sighed, adjusted the setting on his gun, and began to fire into the water. “Go away! Get back to your villages! Hurry!”
A panic broke in the water, and the Venusians, as one, began to swim to shore. Colt and Sharol, standing side by side in the glare of the one remaining floodlight, watched them come ashore like a dark tide. Soon they were gone amidst the pyramids.
The sudden silence was broken by a human laugh, the sound of hands, clapping. “Bravo,” the voice said. Colt turned, slowly. Van Huisen was standing beside the idol, but the idol’s eyes no longer shone, and there was something indescribably alien and disgusting in Van Huisen’s face: something that used to be his eyes. “Bravo!”
“It’s still here?” Sharol said.
“Shoot it,” Colt said.
The face that had belonged to Van Huisen smiled. Colt and Sharol opened fire. Van Huisen staggered back, still smiling. Then he stopped and breathed deep. His chest inflated. He seemed to grow bigger and meaner in that time.
He took a step forward.
He was unharmed.
“Roog …” he said, softly. His tongue snaked out, red and fleshy like a Martian cactus. He licked his lips. His teeth were like stone, and there was mud leaking from his eyes and ears. He opened his mouth wide. “Roog!” he roared. His tongue snaked out and continued to emerge, a vast red snake. It looped around Sharol and pulled him to the ground. Colt fired, but the beams bounced harmlessly off of the monster. “Sharol!”
“Run! Save yourself!”
There was the sound of an explosion, closer this time. Waves lashed the platform, almost upending Colt. Van Huisen grew bigger, and bigger still. His tongue, a red pulsating tentacle, tightened over Sharol’s helpless body. Van Huisen’s weight was making the platform lean; the crane was tilting alarmingly, swinging as the platform rocked. Colt fired, helplessly, sweat pouring down his face. He threw down the gun and ran to his friend.
“Roog! Roog! Roog!”
“Go …” Sharol whispered. He reached out a hand, stroked Colt’s cheek. “Colt … go.”
“I’m not leaving you.”
“Save yourself.”
Colt shook his head. There was sweat in his eyes. He blinked. The Roog was by now enormous. Van Huisen’s body bloated outward, muscles and skin and blood vessels stretched. He towered over them, as tall as the crane now. “I am Roog! Lemuria,” he cried, “shall rise again!” Red tongues lashed out of his enormous mouth, tentacles reaching out for Colt, sinking into the lake, questing, hungering … Colt was going to get taken, the ancient god was going to devour them both. He squeezed Sharol’s hand. “At least we found it,” he said, trying to smile. “The treasure.”
“Fool,” Sharol said. The breath was leaving him. The monster’s tongue wrapped itself around Colt. There was no escape. It was slimy and wet and hot. He felt its pull, tried to fight against it. Overhead, the giant risen god’s laugh boomed across the sky.
No, Colt realized. It was a different sound, intruding on his consciousness. It was the sound of explosions, and the air felt hot and dry. The Roog stopped laughing, its head turned this way and that. It looked annoyed.
“Who dares disturb the mighty Roog?” he said. His voice had the petulance of Van Huisen still in it. His tentacle eased the pressure on Colt; just a little. He looked up.
The sun burned in the purple Venusian sky. It dispelled clouds and illuminated the night, casting shadows and reflections on the water. It was the sun the blind poet Rhysling had spoken of when he described feeling its warmth on his skin and knowing that he was back home, amidst the green hills of Earth.
And it cried. It cried out in song. It was not the sun, but …
“Sun Eater …” Sharol whispered. Colt’s eyes filled with tears as he stared into the glare, saw, amidst the flames, the lizardine body, the leathery wings of the Sun Eater. It turned enormous diamond eyes on Colt as though it could see every part of him, which perhaps it could. Then it gave a cry of anger and rushed at the bloated god.
The tentacles eased off Colt and Sharol as the Roog turned to his attacker, his mouth opening in rage. Tentacles whipped through the air, trying to wrap around the Sun Eater, but the heat from the flying creature burned them clean off and the Roog cried with anger and pain. Chunks of tongue fell down to the water, red and hissing. The Sun Eater flew at the Roog, gouging deep chunks of meat out of its grotesque human shape, which splashed down into the water, as large as pyramid blocks. Colt grabbed Sharol’s shoulders. The Roog’s attention was off them. Sharol had lost consciousness. Colt began to drag him to the edge of the platform.
Overhead, the Sun Eater was a ball of flame, but the Roog had stretched his massive lips into a nasty smile, and a new tongue appeared and licked his red flesh. His giant hands reached for the crane and tore it free. The Sun Eater, turning in a graceful swirl, was coming back at the Roog. The Roog screamed incoherent laughter and rage and swung the giant crane like a bat.
Colt could only watch, in horrified incomprehension, as the crane connected with the Sun Eater’s body with a sickening crunch. For a moment, there was silence, and the sun seemed suspended in the air. Then it fell, like dusk, slowly and inexorably, and hit the deck. The platform shook and the water rose and fell on Colt and Sharol. The swamp water found the Sun Eater and extinguished it. It was dying. Without its light, it was just a beast, one no longer even capable of flight. It turned its diamond eyes on Colt and blinked, once. Colt crawled toward it. Above his head, the Roog was laughing, laughing, growing bigger and bigger into the sky. Soon his head was level with the clouds, his legs extended down into the swamp floor. He had forgotten them.
“I’m sorry,” Colt whispered. He reached out, stroked the Sun Eater’s reptilian head. It felt warm but no longer burning. He withdrew his hand.
Then the Sun Eater imploded.
9.
IT WAS A SILENT THING. THE CREATURE’S ENTIRE MASS COMPRESSED inward, eyes and scales and wings broke up and shrank, inward.
Colt stared at the death of the Sun Eater.
Where it had been, there remained a softly glowing egg.
10.
HE CARRIED SHAROL ON HIS BACK, SWIMMING TO THE SHORE. Sharol had recovered enough to walk, by then. They leaned on each other as they walked away from the temple complex. Behind them the giant Roog was smashing up the ancient pyramids. It was like a child, playing with its toys. Soon, if it weren’t stopped, it would take over the world.
“What … happened back there?” Sharol asked.
“I saw a god rising,” Colt said. “And a Sun Eater die. Come. We must hurry.”
Sharol did not ask why. They walked away from the ancient temple, along the riverbank, before departing from it into the jungle.
“I can’t … go any farther,” Sharol said.
“You have to. Just over the next hill.”
And Sharol would comply, and Colt would make him go over just one more hill. They were not like the green hills of Earth, but they were hills, all the same, and hard to climb. Hills often are.