Salazar could have drawn his pistol and shot Peters, but then Peters would have fallen into the sea, document case and all. Instead, Salazar launched himself in a flying tackle. He was no expert at that athletic feat, but his life in the outback had hardened him, and the surge of adrenaline at the prospect of losing his research gave him abnormal strength and adroitness. He and Peters slammed to the deck together.
The case, which Peters had clutched to his bosom, flew out of his grasp, skittered across the deck, and vanished into the water astern.
Damn, thought Salazar, I might as well have shot the bastard, after all! He reached the fantail, where the deckhands had not replaced the movable section of rail. The case bobbed ghostly on the slight swell. Salazar dove in, came up spitting dirty harbor water, and struck out for the case. His garments hampered his swimming, but he grimly plowed on until he had a grip on the case.
Peters, too, rose. He took two steps and launched himself in a leap toward the pier. But the distance had widened since Salazar had downed him. Peters struck the edge of the pier with his shins and, with a yelp of pain, fell into the water near Salazar.
Salazar swam a one-armed back stroke toward the receding Ijumo. At a shout from the captain, the paddle wheels stopped turning and a rope was thrown from the deck. Salazar looped the end of the rope around the case and tied the loop.
"Pull that up first!" he sputtered.
When Salazar was finally hauled aboard, Ritter said: "Kirk, I wish I were on the committee you'll take your orals from! If there ever was a dedicated scientist, you're it!"
Salazar shrugged. "I couldn't waste a season's research." He glanced astern, where a pair of Kooks were hauling Peters up on the pier. "I could pick him off ... but better not. Things are complicated enough, and my gun's wet. But why the devil should that woman want to get her hands on a mass of records of the ethology of Cusius brachiurus?"
Ritter shrugged in turn. "Maybe in hope of luring you back on shore, where her boys could grab you, or to extort something from you. She knows you value it." He spread his hands. "I suppose you could go back to Sunga and ask her."
"I'll do that when Kashani comes back from the dead! As Choku says, with Terrans one never knows what crazy thing they'll do next." He sneezed. "Now excuse me. I need to get dry."
On the pier at Oõi, the Ritters watched as a small, blond young woman and Kirk Salazar threw themselves into each other's arms. When they came up for air, Salazar said:
"Do you know Calpurnia Fisker? These, darling, are the Doctors Ritter, Hilbert and Suzette. My best friends on the trip."
"Delighted," said Ritter. "Miss Fisker, this young man is remarkable. He's not so big as some or so handsome as others, but he has something more important in the long run."
"I know he's smart!"
"No, though that's also important. I mean he has character. Inside that modest, mousy fellow is a hero struggling to get out."
"Oh, I've known that all along," said Calpurnia. "He looks years older with that sprouting beard. He even looks taller."
"Sunga matured him," said Ritter. "He'll have lots of adventures to tell you."
"Oh, bilge!" said Salazar. "Flattery will get you everywhere. I'm just another apprentice professor and would-be scientist, trying to do his job." To himself he added: There is one adventure that I won't even mention!
Ritter continued: "How did you happen to be here to meet the ship?"
"Kirk wrote he would probably come on this one," said Calpurnia. "He said he had something important to say, so I—I ..."
"Came four days by train to make sure he said it." Ritter turned to Suzette. "Come on, darling. They want us in the customs shed."
Watching Salazar and Calpurnia walk off with arms around each other, Salazar pressing his record case firmly under his other arm, Suzette said: "I hope they make it."
Ritter replied: "Nobody knows the future, but I'd say their chances were as good as anybody's. Let's find the table with the R's."
About the Author
L. Sprague de Camp, who has over ninety-five books to his credit, writes in several fields: historicals, SF, fantasy, biography, and popularizations of science. But his favorite genre of literature is fantasy.
De Camp is a master of that rare animal called humorous fantasy. As a young writer collaborating with the late Fletcher Pratt, he set forth the world-hopping adventures of Harold Shea and the delightfully zany Tales from Gavagan's Bar, a book that has remained in print for forty years.
In 1976, at the thirty-fourth World Science Fiction Convention, he received The Gandalf-Grand Master Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Field of Fantasy. The Science Fiction Writers of America presented him with their Grand Master Nebula Award of 1978. Alone, and with his wife and sometime collaborator, Catherine, de Camp has been a welcome guest of honor at fan conventions throughout the United States.
The de Camps live in Texas. They have two sons: Lyman Sprague and Gerard Beekman, both of whom are distinguished engineers.
Book information
FALLING FOR A WOMAN
"Mistress," the Kook said to Alexis. "I have concluded that your arguments are sound enough to overbear those against them. So command us, and we shall obey."
"Then grab that man!" Alexis commanded, pointing straight at Salazar.
The Kook bodyguards approached Salazar, who gripped his knife and aimed an underhand thrust at the nearer Kook with a lunge that would have disemboweled a Terran opponent. But before Salazar's thrust sank home, the Kook's scaly hand gripped his wrist and stopped his attack. Another Kook seized his other arm, while the first assailant twisted the knife out of Salazar's grip.
Then the Kooks were dragging Salazar toward the crater to throw him into the volcano. Salazar could hear Alexis calling to him.
"Good-by, Salazar! No hard feelings!"
THE
VENOM
TREES
OF SUNGA
L. Sprague de Camp
A Del Rey Book
BALLANTINE BOOKS • NEW YORK
Sale of this book without a front cover may be unauthorized. If this book is coverless, it may have been reported to the publisher as "unsold or destroyed" and neither the author nor the publisher may have received payment for it.
A Del Rey Book
Published by Ballantine Books
Copyright © 1992 by L. Sprague de Camp
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States of America by Ballantine Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 92-90617
ISBN 0-345-37551-3
Manufactured in the United States of America
First Edition: November 1992
Cover Art by Darrell K. Sweet
To Caleb B. Laning,
Rear Admiral, USN (Retired)