“Bosh! That is the way hostilities start. Think you we are going to come here and depart without stopping to investigate these inhabitants? We must investigate their flora and fauna, take motion pictures, learn their language, their tribal beliefs, their family life. We can’t do all that by starting a fight.
“Their clothes look like silk. Do you know, I believe those eyes can penetrate the fog. You’ll notice there’s a reddish tinge to the light. The violet rays are absorbed in the upper layers of atmosphere.
“That’s the chief there in front. He’s coming this way. Hold up your hands, palms outward. Hang him, can’t he tell a gesture of friendship? And look at their joints. See how they bulge. That’s probably caused by generations of rheumatism. Gradually they’ve become immune to it, probably, but the joints are remarkably enlarged. They average about four feet. Almost dwarfs, but—”
The line swung at the ends, became a half circle, swept about, darted inward, and the trio found themselves crowded out from their entrance, walled in by the little creatures who surveyed them in austere silence.
“Hello, howdy. We come for a visit.”
Professor Wagner smiled, waved his hands, bowed.
The circle made no motion.
“More men coming out from the forest, Professor,” warned Click in an undertone.
“They’re our friends,” said the professor, and smiled again.
A man stepped forth from the circle.
“That will be the chief. He’s an old man, yet there’s no wrinkling of the skin. Notice how they all appear to be of about the same age,” muttered the professor. “But the chief has certain unmistakable indications of age. He has knotted veins in his temples, and the teeth are worn down. Then there’s his neck. The neck glands are almost invariably deficient in aged persons. Why, look out — the beggar’s hostile!”
“Look out, Father!” shrieked the girl.
For the chief’s lips had twisted back from his gums. He opened his mouth, barked a single shrill word, and lunged forward.
The circle closed. Hands reached out.
Click swung a terrific blow.
To his surprise, the little man side-stepped that blow with an agility that would have done credit to a monkey. Strong hands darted forward, seized his wrists, and Click knew then that these men were incredibly muscular, for the hands bit deeply into his skin, held with a grip of iron.
A twisted strand of some light substance appeared from nowhere, was looped about his hands and twisted over his neck.
From behind him he could see the others were being similarly treated.
The chief opened his mouth again. Another single sound issued forth. And, with that sound, he turned abruptly. Some of the men remained behind with the shell. The others accompanied the chief. And the captives followed, persuaded by a single jerk of the rope that had been placed around their necks.
“We’re going to be taken into the forest. Now we shall see how the men live,” purred the professor.
Chapter 7
Captives on Venus
“Has it occurred to you that they show no surprise at our appearance?” asked the girl abruptly. “They should be surprised at the color of our skins, at our eyes, at our clothes, at our height. But they take us for granted.”
“By George, that’s so!” agreed the professor. “Ah, here’s where they have their village. Notice the manner in which the trees protect them from surprise attacks from above. What enormous trees they are! That one is thirty feet in diameter. It must stretch up for five hundred feet, perhaps more.
“And here are the women. Ugh! How ugly! Evidently they’re closely allied to the animals of our globe as far as sex beauty is concerned. The males have the beauty.”
Click made no comment. His startled eyes surveyed the drab spectacle in the cheerless, dripping forest. Little huts had been made, thatched with broad leaves, lashed with thongs. Overhead a tangled mass of branches dripped globules of moisture in endless cadence upon the echoing leaves.
Ferns had been cleared away to make a little circle before the houses. About this circle the women had gathered. They were even smaller than the men, and their appearance was startling.
They showed as squat, dish-faced creatures, thick of lip, dark of skin, round of eye, low of forehead. Their faces were expressionless, and they made no sound. But Click noticed a peculiar twitching of the nostrils, as though they were sniffing some faint odor.
The chief led the way to a hut. The dwarfs who pulled the prisoners followed. They led the trio inside, gave a deft loop of the neck rope about their ankles, knotted it, and backed out.
There was no sound of conversation coming into the hut from those who clustered in the village. Occasionally a sound of motion, the thud of bare feet on the ground, a hacking cough, would attest to their presence, but there was no conversation.
Professor Wagner closed his eyes, sighed. Click tried to sleep, and could not. There was an atmosphere of tense waiting about the place that was as omnipresent as the everlasting fog.
Steps sounded without the hut.
“I wonder,” began the professor, then suddenly broke off. For to the ears of the men came a strange sound, the sound of a human voice talking as men on the earth talked, although the words were indistinguishable.
“Good heavens!” snapped the professor, and struggled to a sitting posture. “That’s the German language, or I don’t know it when I hear it. What’s this? What’s this?”
“I told you,” reminded his daughter, “that they didn’t show any curiosity. They’ve seen people like us before.”
“Tut, tut,” snapped the professor. “We’re the first earth mortals ever to set foot on Venus.”
But his voice lacked assurance, and made up in irritability what it lacked in conviction.
The door darkened with moving bodies, bearing a shuffling burden. They swayed and tottered with the weight of it as they formed a congested group in the doorway.
Then they crowded through.
They carried a species of stretcher made of saplings across which had been stretched a network of cords. Upon that stretcher a huge form reclined, heaving restlessly, grumbling.
They up-ended the stretcher, and Click found himself gazing into the face of a man, pop-eyed, blond, frightfully obese, the skin bleached of color.
The man sputtered a stream of German at them.
Professor Wagner rattled a reply in English.
“We don’t speak German. Do you speak English? How did you happen to arrive here? When did you arrive? How? What are these people? Do they have a language? Do you speak it? Are you a captive, or are you treated as a guest?”
The fat neck rolled the huge head from side to side.
“Nein, nein, nein. Ach Gott, nein!”
“Can you speak any German?” demanded Professor Wagner.
Click Kendall shook a reluctant head. It was a language of which he knew nothing. And that ignorance seemed in a fair way to shut them out from all understanding with the strange creatures who held them captive.
“The man evidently isn’t held as a captive. He’s treated with some respect,” muttered Click.
“Crippled with rheumatism,” added the professor. “Notice the enlarged joints, the peculiar posture of the fingers. It’s a bad case, and the heart is evidently impaired. You can see the blue lips, the discolored finger nails. Truly this is a great disappointment, to think that our remarkable voyage has been anticipated by other scientists, and that these scientists are of another nation.”
“Look, Father! He’s trying to make signs.”
The man on the stretcher slowly and laboriously raised an arm. He tried to make a gesture, but broke off in a groan. Perspiration stood out upon the forehead. The pop eyes puckered in agony.