I turned the rising ship towards the sea. Again I looked back, just in time to see the others running towards a form which lay huddled on the sand. Close beside it they stopped and looked up. They shook wild, impotent fists in the direction of my retreating Nuntia.
THE MYSTERIOUS VALLEY
After a few hours I began to grow seriously worried. There must be other land on this planet but I had seen none as yet. I began to have a nasty feeling that it would end with the Nuntia dropping into the sea, condemning me to eventual death by starvation should I survive the fall.
She was not intended to be run single-handed. In order to economize weight many operations which could easily have been automatic were left to manual control on the assumption that there would always be one or more men on engine room duty. The fuel-pressure gauge was dangerously low, but the controls required constant attention, preventing me from getting aft to start the pressure pumps.
I toyed with the idea of fixing the controls while I made a dash to the engine room and back but since it was impossible to find a satisfactory method of holding them the project had to be abandoned. The only thing I could do was to hold on and hope land would show up before it was too late.
In the nick of time it did – a rockbound inhospitable-looking coast but one which for all its ruggedness was fringed to the very edges of the harsh cliffs with a close-pressed growth of jungle. There was no shore such as we had used for a landing ground on the island.
The water swirled and frothed about the cliff-bottom as the great breakers dashed themselves with a kind of ponderous futility against the mighty retaining wall. No landing there. Above, the jungle stretched back to the horizon, an undulating, unbroken plain of tree tops.
Somewhere there I would have to land, but where?
A few miles in from the coast the Nuntia settled it for me. The engines stopped with a splutter. I did not attempt to land her. I jumped for one of the spring acceleration hammocks and trusted that it would stand the shock.
I came out of that rather well. When I examined the wrecked Nuntia, her wings torn off, her nose crumpled like tinfoil, her smooth body now gaping in many places from the force of the impact, I marvelled that anyone could sustain only a few bruises – acquired when the hammock mountings had weakened to breaking point – as I did.
There was one thing certain in a very problematical future – the Nuntia's flying days were done. I had carried out Metallic Industries' instructions to the full and the telescopes of I.C. would nightly be searching the skies for a ship which would never return.
Despite my predicament (or perhaps because I had not fully appreciated it as yet) I was full of a savage joy. I had struck the first of my vengeful blows at the men who had caused my family such misery. The only shadows across my satisfaction was that they could not know that it was I, not Fate, who was against them.
It would be tedious to tell in detail of my activities during the next few weeks. There is nothing surprising about them. My efforts to make the Nuntia habitable – my defences against the larger animals – my cautious hunting expeditions – my search for edible greenstuffs – were such as any man would have made. They were makeshift and temporary.
I did only enough to assure myself of moderate comfort until the Metallic Industries ship should arrive to take me off. So for six months by the Nuntia's chronometers I idled and loafed and though it may sometimes have crossed my mind that Venus was not altogether a desirable piece of real estate, yet it was in a detached impersonal way that I regarded my surroundings.
It would be a wonderful topic of conversation when I got home. That 'when I got home' coloured all my thoughts. It was the constant barrier which stood between me and the life about me. This planet might surround me but it could not touch me as long as the barrier remained in place.
At the end of six months I began to feel that my exile was nearly up. The M.I. ship would be finished by now and ready to follow the Nuntia's lead. I waited almost a month longer, seeing her in my mind's eye falling through space towards me. Then it was time for my signal.
I had arranged the main searchlight so that it would point vertically upwards to stab its beam into the low clouds and now I began to switch it on every night as soon as the darkness came, leaving it's glare until near dawn. For the first few nights I scarcely slept, so certain was I that the ship must be cruising close by in search of me.
I used to lie awake, watching the dismal sky for the flash of her rockets, straining my ears for their thunder. But this stage did not last long. I consoled myself very reasonably that it might take too much searching to find me. But all day too I was alert, with smoke rockets ready to be fired the moment I should hear her.
After four months more my batteries gave out. It is surprising that they lasted so long. As the voltage dropped, so did my hopes. The jungle seemed to creep closer, making ominous bulges in my barrier of detachment.
For a number of nights after the filaments had glowed their last I sat up through the hours of darkness, firing occasional distress rockets in forlorn faith. It was when they were gone that I sensed what had occurred. Why I did not think of it before, I cannot tell. But the truth came to me in a flash — Metallic Industries had duped me just as
International Chemicals had duped my father.
They had not built – never intended to build – a spaceship. Why should they, once I.C. had lost theirs? That, I grew convinced, was the decision which had been taken in the Board Room after my withdrawal. They had never intended that I should return.
I could see now that they would have found it not only expensive but dangerous. There would be not only my reward to be paid but I might blackmail them. In every way it would be more convenient that I should do my work and disappear. And what better method of disappearance could there be than loss upon another planet?
Those are the methods of Earth – that is the honour of great companies as you will know to your cost should you have dealings with them. They'll use you, then break you.
I must have been nearly crazy for some days after that realization. My fury with my betrayers, my disgust with my own gullibility, the appalling sense of loneliness and above all the eternal drumming of that almost ceaseless rain combined to drive me into a frenzy which stopped only on the brink of suicide.
But in the end the adaptability of my race asserted itself. I began to hunt and live off the land about me. I struggled through two bouts of fever and successfully sustained a period of semi-starvation when my food was finished and game was short.
For company I had only a pair of six-legged, silver-furred creatures, which I had trained. I found them one day, deserted in a kind of large nest and dying with hunger. Taking them back with me to the Nuntia I fed them and found them friendly little things. As they grew larger they began to display remarkable intelligence. Later I christened them Mickey and Minnie – after certain classic film stars at home – and they soon got to know their names.
And now I come to the last and most curious episode, which I confess I do not yet understand. It occurred several years after Nuntia's landing. A foraging expedition upon which Mickey and Minnie accompanied me as usual had taken us into country completely unknown to me. A scarcity of game and a determination not to return empty-handed had caused me to push on farther than usual.