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r r
gorilla were confident. He glimpsed the mottled hide, aimed. He stopped in time.
Golly! the amplifier!
He turned it down. The sound would have beat a hole in his head. He aimed
again, pulled the trigger. A section of the jungle became a globe of empty space,
with seared, bruised boundaries.
Joe turned the volume of the amplifier back up and continued. He walked three
hours, killing five snakes with his torch and two more gorillas. At times he had to
turn loose his power-knife, so thick was the tangle of shoots and vines. And after
three hours the jungle looked no different from the jungle where he had set out.
Thud, thud, thud, sounded in his ear. Blaine stood still, waited. The Molly
appeared, halted, looked at him with blind-looking pink eyes. Blaine could see no
expression or sign of surprise.
"Skeek," said Joe. "Hello."
"Keek, keek" returned the native. It stepped around Blaine, continued down the
path. Joe shrugged, moved on.
A moment later he broke out into a clearing a hundred yards wide. In the center,
a conical gray mound built of woven twigs and plastered with mud like a wasp's
nest rose an amazing two hundred feet. It had been built around a living tree;
from the apex the trunk extended and held an umbrella of foliage out into the
sunlight.
Joe Blaine halted. The five hundred Mollies ambling around the clearing paid
him no heed. And Joe had no interest in their simple occupations other than the
source of the stench. Cautiously he opened the gate in his head-dome. He reeled,
slammed it shut, eyes swimming. An odor so ripe, so putrid, so violently strong, it
seemed impossible that the air could remain clear.
Where did it come from?
Across the clearing he glimpsed a depression, a wallow, where several dozen
Mollies lay, moving languidly. Blaine approached, watched. A dozen Mollies
appeared from the shadows of the forest, bearing crude baskets. About half held
pulpy black balls; others, gray-green slugs six inches long; others, pink cylinders
that looked as if they were cut from watermelon hearts.
The Mollies turned the baskets over into the wallow. Then they stood back,
looked intently at the piles. And the black balls burst, the green slugs melted, the
red cylinders spread out like oil. A moment later they were a mixture
homogeneous with the rest of the wallow.
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r r
So, thought Joe, here it is. Food and chemical warfare from the same trough. He
went to the depression, inspected it. The occupants gave him no heed. He dipped
a quantity of the thick green-black ooze into a jar, sealed it. This would be enough
for a test. Fast work, he thought. Now back to the hotel.
He looked across the clearing - stared. Through a gap in the trees gleamed a
patch of brilliant white and, beyond, a bright blue. Could it be ... He crossed the
clearing, looked through the gap. It was the beach, the ocean. A half-mile to his
right the hotel rose. Joe beat his head-dome with furious fists. Three hours of
plodding through the jungle!
Blaine found Woolrich in the office. Lucky looked up in surprise.
"Hello. Didn't expect you back so soon." He wrinkled his nose. "You don't smell
so good, Joe."
"I got it," Blaine said. "Here it is, the real magoo. If that don't keep them away,
my name's not Joe Blaine."
"Get it out of here," said Lucky in a stifled voice. "I can smell it through the
bottle."
"Must have got some on the outside," said Blaine. And he told Lucky his
adventures.
Lucky's thin face still looked skeptical. "And now?"
"Now we test the stuff. One of us paints himself with it, wanders around the
beach. The other stands guard with a grenade-rifle just in case. If the dragons
come down, and shy off, we'll know for sure."
Lucky tapped his fingers on the desk. "Sounds good. Well," he said carelessly,
"since you already got some of the stuff on you, you might as well be the decoy."
Joe stared unbelievingly. "Are you crazy, Lucky? I got to run the camera. You
know that. It's got to be you."
After a half-hour's debate, they finally selected Magnus Ridolph to serve as the
guinea pig.
"He won't like it," said Woolrich doubtfully.
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r r
"He's got to like it. What are we paying him for? He hasn't turned a hand so far.
He ought to be glad we've solved the problem for him."
"He might not see it that way."
Joe opened a drawer in the desk, pulled out a metal can.
"See this? It's a somnol spray, to be used on drunks and roughnecks. We'll give
him a dose, and he won't even know what's happening. Where is he now?"
"In the engine room. He's been puttering around all morning, working on the
lathe."
Blaine sneered. "Now, isn't that the limit? He's supposed to be the brains, the
trouble-shooter, and he leaves it to us. Well, we'll fix that. He'll earn his money,
whether he wants to or not."
Lucky reluctantly rose to his feet. "Maybe if we asked him - "
"Better this way," said Joe. "It's not as if there's any danger. We know the stuff
works. Don't the Mollies run around scot-free? And besides, we'll be standing
right there with guns."
They found Magnus Ridolph in the workshop, polishing a metal tube with a piece
of crocus cloth. As they entered he looked up, nodded, and fitted the tube through
a hole in a metal cup. He coupled a hose to the tube, set the apparatus in a jig,
turned a valve. There came a hiss of air, a thin blowing sound.
Magnus Ridolph gazed at the pattern on an oscillograph. "Hm," he muttered.
"That's about right, I should say."
"What are you doing, Mr. Ridolph?" asked Blaine jocularly, one hand close
behind his back.
Magnus Ridolph gave him a cool glance, then returned to his apparatus and
detached it from the jig.
"I'm refining a certain musical principle..."
S-s-s-s, went the somnol bomb. A fine mist surrounded Magnus Ridolph's
distinguished head. He gasped, stiffened, slumped.
"Did you hear him, Lucky?" Joe kicked at the metal tube Magnus Ridolph still
clutched in his hand. "Fooling around with music, when we're in a jam."
Lucky said, "I guess that musical kaleidoscope sort of went to his head. He used [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]