Joe eyed Magnus Ridolph like a housewife turning down a piece of meat at the butcher shop, then turned away and shook his head. He stiffened. A sudden grinding explosion of sound outside, a savage howling...
Lucky and Joe exchanged glances and ran for the door. High in the sky, almost overhead, two tremendous shapes flapped and tore at each other with fangs like hay-hooks. Drifting down came a roaring and fierce yelling. Blaine reached out, took Magnus Ridolph's elbow.
"There's thousands of 'em!" he yelled into Magnus Ridolph's ear. "Just waiting for somebody to set foot out on the beach. We got to get rid of them! Also the twenty-foot pincer-beetles that infest the ocean, and some half-ton gorillas that got a lot of human tendencies. Not to mention the flying snakes."
"They certainly seem a ferocious set of creatures," said Magnus Ridolph mildly.
The battle in the sky took a sudden lurch in their direction, and the three spectators jerked back involuntarily.
"Shoo!" yelled Joe. "Get outa here!"
A spatter of blood began to fall like rain. Talons ripped, yanked - brought a tooth-grinding screech. One of the forms toppled, started to fall with a tremendous slow majesty.
Lucky gave a strangling cry. Joe yelled, "No, no, no - "
End over end came the torn body, almost at their heads. It fell through the roof of the hotel, into the dining room. Glass sprayed a hundred feet in all directions. A convulsive flap of wings made further destruction. And now the victor swooped on vast leather pinions. It dropped hissing into the wreckage, began to tear at the flesh.
Joe cried in wordless anguish. Lucky turned, ran to the desk, returned with a grenade rifle.
"I'll show that overgrown lizard something." He sighted, pulled the trigger. Fragments of dragon and hotel spattered across the beach.
There was a sudden heavy silence. Then Blaine said in a crushed voice, "This is it. We're through."
-Magnus Ridolph cleared his throat mildly. "Perhaps the situation is not as bad as you think."
"What's the use? We made a mistake. Kolama is just too tough. We might as well face it, take our loss."
"Now, Joe," said Lucky, "brace up. Maybe it's not so bad after all. Mr. Ridolph thinks we got a chance."
Joe snorted.
"Couldn't you post guards in copters, and kill any that came down?" suggested Magnus Ridolph.
Blaine shook his head. "They fly high, drop down like hawks. I've watched 'em. We couldn't keep 'em out. And one or two would be as bad for business as a hundred."
Lucky pulled at his lip. "What I want to know is how come we never had trouble while the place was going up."
Joe shook his head. "Beats me. Seems like when the Mollies were around, nothing ever bothered us. As soon as they took off our grief began."
Magnus Ridolph glanced inquiringly at Lucky. "Mollies? And what are they?"
"That's what Joe calls the natives," Lucky told him. "They helped us out while we were building."
"Did the excavating," said Joe.
"Possibly you could keep natives here and there around the property," suggested Magnus Ridolph.
Blaine shook his head. "Nobody could stand the stink. It must be the stink that keeps the beasts away. God knows I don't blame 'em."
Magnus Ridolph considered the theory. "Well, possibly, if the odor were extremely strong and pungent."
"It's not anything else."
Magnus Ridolph stroked his beard thoughtfully. "Just what sort of creatures are these - 'Mollies'?"
"Well," said Joe, "think of a shrimp four feet tall, walking around on little stumpy legs. A sort of a fat gray shrimp with big stary eyes. That's a Molly for you."
"Are they intelligent? Do you have any contact with them?"
"Oh, I guess you'd call 'em intelligent. They live in big hives back in the jungle. Don't do any harm, and they helped us out quite a bit. We paid 'em in pots, pans, knives."
"How did you communicate with them?"
"They got a language of squeaks." Joe pursed up his lips. "Squeak - squick, squick." He cleared his throat. "That means 'come here.' "
"Hm," said Magnus Ridolph. "And how do you say 'go away'?"
"Squick - keek, keek."
"Hm."
"Squeak, keek, keek, keek - that means 'time to knock off for the day.' I learned that lingo pretty good."
"And you say the wild beasts never bothered them?"
"Nope. Only twice did anything even come near. Once a gorilla, once a dragon."
"And then?"
"They all stood still looking, as if asking themselves, now just what does this johnny think he's doing? And the gorilla and the dragon both turned 'round and took off " Toe shook his head. "Must have got a close whiff of them. Like skunk and sewage and half a dozen tannery vats. I had to wear a mask."
Woolrich said, "We've got movies of everything, if you think there's anything to it."
Magnus Ridolph nodded gravely, "They might be useful. I'd like to see them."
"This way," said Joe. He added glumly, "You can see them, but you can't smell them."
"Just as well," said Lucky.
The first scene showed virgin territory - the beach, the blue ocean, the sharp cliff of the jungle. On the beach sat the small prospect ship, and beside it stood Joe, self-consciously waving at the camera.
The second scene showed the Mollies excavating foundations. They worked in a crouched position with heads extended, and the sand exploded out of the trench ahead of them. They were rather more manlike than Joe had described them - gray whiskered creatures with soft segmented bodies. They had bulging pink blind-looking eyes, horny bowed legs, a concave area around their mouths.
Magnus Ridolph leaned forward. "They have a peculiar method of digging."
"Yeah," said Blaine. "It's fast, though. They blow it out."
Magnus Ridolph moved in his seat. "Run that again, please."
With a tired sigh and a helpless glance at Lucky, Joe complied. Once again they watched the crouched natives, saw the sand broken loose, thrown up and out of the ditch as if by a strong jet of air.
Magnus Ridolph sat back in his seat. "Interesting."
The scene changed. The concrete slab had been poured. A dozen natives were carrying a length of timber.
"Hear 'em talking? Listen..." And Joe turned the volume control. They heard rising and falling eddies of shrill noise.
"Squeak - squeeeek!" came a peremptory sound.
"That's me," said Joe, "telling them to look up and pose for the pictures."
There was a general turning of the conical whiskered heads.
"Keek, keek, keek," said the speaker.
"That's 'back to work,' " said Blaine. A few minutes later: "Here's where the dragon goes after them... They saw it first. See? They're excited... Then I saw it." The view swept up in the sky, showed the bottle-shaped body circling down on wings that seemed to reach across the horizon. The picture jerked, quivered, blurred, and suddenly showed the scene from a crazy angle, the view obscured by blades of grass.
"That's where I - put the camera down," said Joe. "listen to those Mollies..." And the speaker shrilled with the sound. It rose in pitch, high up through the scale, died.
"Now they're just looking at him - and now the dragon catches a whiff and man! he says, none of that for me, I'd rather chew bark off of the big trees, and he's away."The view shifted from the odd angle, resumed its normal perspective. The dragon became a blurring dot in the sky.
"The next scene is where the gorilla comes at 'em... There he is." The watchers saw a tall anthropoid with sparse brown fur, red eyes the size of saucers, a row of gland-like sacs dangling under his chin. He dropped out of a tree, came lurching toward the natives, roaring vastly. Again came the shrill squealing, gradually rising and dying, and the silent stare. The gorilla turned, flung his hands in an almost comical gesture of disgust and hurried away.