Fire Brand, page 1
Fire Brand!
A. BERTRAM CHANDLER
Pulse-Pounding Feature-Length Novelet of Vengeance on Venus!
Could this then be the notorious Firbrand, and the thing at her slim waist the notorious, blood Weapon? This small dark woman with hair cropped almost like a man's—could she have pirated the Terran spaceliner? But Fleming knew he'd have his answers perhaps sooner than he wished. . . .
CHAPTER I
HE CAME slowly out the door of the trading post. He was mopping his brow with a large, gaudily patterned hankerchief. It was hot inside the garish, shoddy building, in spite of all the efforts of the air conditioning plant. It was hotter outside. And the trader cursed softly, without enthusiasm, as a matter of routine. He cursed the heat, the humidity, the perspiration that dripped from the tip of his high-bridged nose, that ran in clammy rivulets down his smooth, hairless body, that saturated the loin-cloth that was his only clothing.
It was almost sunset.
The blur of light—hazy, diffuse—that was all that was ever seen of the sun from Venus, hung low above the western horizon, turning the sullen yellow of the sky to hot gold. Eastward, darkly ominous shadows were already creeping up the eternal overcast. And there was a faint flicker of lightning, a low growl of thunder, sensed rather than heard.
Inland from the post stretched the marshy plains, the lush, low jungle. Distant, more than half shrouded by mists, were the unpretentious undulations of the smooth hills. And to the north was the sea—like the sky above it, a dirty yellow. Little tired wavelets collapsed in utter exhausttion upon the grey beach, well below the line of oozing, gelatinous scum that was high water mark. And there was a brief flurry of foam as something big and black broke surface, threshed the water with tail and fins, then vanished.
The trader stood at the root of the jetty, stared out to the north-west. Now and again he raised his hand absently, brushed away the little winged insects that hovered in a dancing cloud around his close-cropped blond head. But all his attention was given to the distant skyline. Vague it was, and misty. And nothing solid broke the indeterminate union between sea and sky. It seemed that nothing ever had broken it—that nothing ever would. But the trading post, the jetty, were evidence that ships had sailed these seas. Had sailed. . . . .
Already Aphrodite, the little freighter operated by the Venus Trading Corporation, was a week overdue. Long since, the trader would have called Port Lanning to make enquiries, but for the fact that among the cargo that Aphrodite should have been bringing were spares to replace certain burned out components of his radio.
He was worried. This had never happened before. Aphrodite, until now, had always arrived with clockwork regularity. And the long talk, the drinking session, with her skipper had been one of the few, welcome breaks in his monotonous routine, one of the things that helped to keep him sane. And the natives were talking, he knew. He had seen them looking out to sea, had heard them muttering among themselves in their croaking, incomprehensible language. And the drums had been beating in the low hills, had been rapping their intelligence from peak to insignificant peak, from island to island.
He was a man alone—one lone alien among hostile myriads. His weapons commanded respect but he knew that, if it came to a showdown, he could not hope to stand off assault, siege, indefinitely. He allowed himself a momentary disloyalty to the Corporation, a dull resentment against their policy of economy, retrenchment, that had reduced the staffs of the trading posts from two or three to one. With two men to stand watch and watch the post would be practically impregnable. With two men to man the launch the dangers of the hazardous voyage to Port Lanning would be more than halved.
He was a man alone—and he almost felt that he was the last of his kind upon this steaming world. There were times when he would have thought so save for the fact that, once or twice in the last three days, he had heard the drumming of rockets, the distant, whistling scream of jet-propelled aircraft, above the clouds.
The sun went down, and the gold faded to yellow, to green, and the indigo shadows crept across the sky, and the lightning was dazzlingly violet, running down in rivers of vivid flame from the zenith. And where the little waves lapped listlessly at the sand was a dim, pallid fire, and where the line of scum lay along the high water mark was a brighter light, shining with the luminescence of decay, of rottenness. And in the hills and in the jungle drum answered drum, the staccato, coded melody drowned ever and again by the crashing thunder, fading and swelliing as the rising, gusty wind veered and shifted.
The first rain began to fall.
For long moments the trader stood in the downpour grateful for the refreshing, clearing coolness. And then his body shook with a slight chill, and he remembered that his alarms were yet to be set and tested, and that he would be a good target against the glow from the door of the post, and that his pale body would stand out against the darkness in vivid relief with each lightning flash.
Walking slowly, striving to ignore the uncomfortable feeling in his shoulder blades as he walked to the open door, turned his back to the hostile marsh and jungle, he went inside. And the door shut, and there was no longer any light save that of the lightning and the phosphorescence of the sea; and the post, shrouded in rain and darkness, its garish colours forgotten, loomed like a fort.
It was a fort.
There was a brief rattle of fire from the cupola on the roof as the trader tested his guns against the coming night.
And the drums, distant but insistent, answered.
THE TRADER pushed aside his plate, fumbled in the pouch at his belt for his cigarettes. One more carton, he thought. I shall have to go easy .. And his mind, as he brooded over this last deprivation, was that of a filially devoted but unjustly punished child. I have always been a loyal servant of the Corporation, he thought. The trite phrase pleased him, and he repeated it aloud. And his memory, as he smoked the rationed cigarette, ran over the countless instances in which he had proved his loyalty—petty economies, shrewd bargains, frank and unashamed swindling.
He sighed, rose from the table. He carried the dirty plates, the debris of his meal, into the little scullery. The debris of the last meal was still there, and that of the meal before—but until it became offensive he would take no steps to dispose of it. He returned to his living room, got out his Log and his account books. And there he sat until the scratching of his pen was drowned by the shrilling of the alarm.
His first action when he reached the cupola was to open the switch that put the guns on automatic fire.
Had he not done so they would have blasted, in a very few seconds, the figure that was staggering through the rain, over the short, sodden, grass-like vegetation towards the post. The stranger, wavering like a white moth in the beam of his searchlight, was indisputably human. Here was no scaly monstrosity, no Disney frog trying to look like a man, no batrachien undecided whether to walk erect or hop.
The trader cursed. It was obvious, in spite of the teeming rain, the downpouring torrent that turned the beam of his searchlight into liquid silver, that his visitor was a woman. Again he swore—but his oaths lacked any real weight. It was a full month since his last leave in Vennsburg, since his immersion in the mercenary delights, the commercialized ecstacies, of that city. And he was hungry for the sound of a female voice, the sight of a female face and figure, the feel of soft woman-flesh against own.
But suddenly he became aware that the beating of the drums was no longer distant, was no longer confined to the distant hills. The thunder and the lightning had ceased, and there was no sound but the incessant beat of the rain—the beat of the rain and the beating of the drums. From all around it came, from the south and the east and the west. And the fringe of the jungle from which the girl had run seemed to waver, to put out pseudo-pods, to creep out over the pallid marshland.
There was a flicker of fire, then, along the jungle verge. And there were great gouts of spray tossed up at the girl's feet. And she weaved as she ran—and the trader realized that her unsteady gait was not altogether the result of fatigue, that she was putting the unseen marksmen behind her off their aim.
A flick of the hand—and the searchlight was on manual control. Another deft motion and the door of the post was opened. And then the beam swept up, and along the tide of dark, glistening bodies, showed with pitiless clarity the horde of Venusian Swamplanders, pointed them out to the questing tracer of the heavy machine gun. The attack surged forward over its own debris. And the flashes of fire along its front became more frequent, and the strange thudding made by the rifle bullets as they struck the thick, tough plasti-glass of the cupola.
But it couldn't go on for long. Savages the Venusians may have been—but they were intelligent savages. Nonhuman they were—but, like humankind, each individual placed a definite value upon his own life.
And so the tide withdrew, and the marsh was presently splotched by the great, pallid bodies of the scavenger worms that oozed up from out the sodden soil, and the song of the drums grew distant and still more distant, and drum answered drum from peak to insignificant peak, and rattling, incomprehensible messages ran all the long, straggling length of the Van Dusen Archipelago.
And the trader put his weapons, his searchlight, once again on automatic control, tested his circuits, and went down from the cupola to meet his unexpected guest.
CHAPTER II
SHE WAS SMALL, this woman and darkly brunette, her hair closely cropped, almost like a man's. And the face was neither beautiful nor even conventionally pretty, but it had a charm, a vivac
Her upper garment was in rags, and the smooth skin, from shoulder to waist, from thigh to broken sandals, was a network of scratches, evidence of the thorns and brambles through which she had forced her way. And the blood oozed still from the shallow wounds, spread in a wet film over the wet, smooth skin.
Above the bedraggled loincloth was a belt, and from it depended a holster, and from the holster protruded the butt of a heavy pistol. Sight of the weapon, of its gained wood grip worn smooth and polished by long handling, did much to inhibit the emotions that were stirring in the woman-starved man. And as he shifted his gaze to her cool grey eyes, his own faltering uneasily under the steadiness of her regard, she spoke.
"Thank you," she said simply.
It was gratitude—but it was gratitude such as might be displayed by royalty in the acknowledgement of some service performed by a courtier. There was some power, in her or behind her, that demanded assistance as though by divine right.
The trader's glance fell to her feet, to the pools of water that were slowly growing on the thick pile of the carpet.
"In there," he said with a gesture towards the door, "you'll find some dry clothes. . . And ointment for your scratches. There is some danger of infection."
"I know."
The voice, a contralto that could have been sultry, was cool, almost disinterested. The man was at a loss. This woman was altogether outside his experience. But he went to his bedroom, picked up a pile of garments almost at random, gave them to her with a hint of shyness, of apology. And he went to a cupboard, brought out his last precious bottle of whisky, set it, with two glasses, on the table. And he emptied the contents of two whole packets of cigarettes into an ornamental box that was but rarely used. And he ran his hand over his chin, and wished that he had shaved. And then he went back into his bedroom and changed his plain none-too-clean loincloth for one that was patterned with gay flowered designs, that to his mind had always suggested palm trees, guitars, a full tropical moon. And when the girl came out he was disappointed to see that she was still wearing her gun.
SHE HAD achieved a sarong effect with the clothes that he had given her. It suited her. All that she lacked was an hibiscus flower behind the ear. Ugly, incongruous, was the broad leather belt, the holster, the heavy pistol. And so was the case or pouch that hung on her right hip, that was bulging with what had the appearance of papers.
The trader, mute enquiry in his eyes, poured whisky into her glass. When it was almost full she signalled[sic] to him to stop. Before he could fill his own she had raised hers, had swallowed its contents with almost a single gulp.
She said: "I needed that."
"You really must have." The man was shallowly sympathetic. Then—"My name is Fleming, Peter to my friends. And this place is Howard's Landing."
"Howard's Landing? Tell me, Fleming, how can I get to Port Lanning?"
"By sea. There is a launch. But Aphrodite should be in at any moment now. She is a week overdue already."
"She'll never come. But how soon can we leave? It is imperative that I get to the port as soon as possible."
"Not, so fast," ejaculated Fleming. There was too much secrecy—even though it was unintentional—too much high-handed demanding. "Before we go any further—who are you? What are you? What are you doing here? And—" he had just realised the calm certainty with which she had made her statement "—what do you know about Aphrodite?"
"Don't you know?" It was the girl's turn to be surprised.
"No. Both my transmitter and receiver burned out two days before the ship was here last. She should have been bringing spares . . . "
There was a little silence, broken only by the steady drumming of the rain on roof and walls, by the distant drums calling from hill to hill, from island to island, all along the straggling length of the Van Dusen Archipelago. And there was a sound that could have been rifle fire, but it was too far away to bring any hint of immediate menace.
The girl looked at the trader, at the useless radio set along the further wall. She got to her feet, sagging a little, for she was very tired. And she went to the receiver, tinkered a while with dials and switches, satisfied herself that the apparatus was in truth inoperative. Then—
"You must have heard of me. I am Elspeth Van Dusen. And Aphrodite will not be coming because she has been seized by us, has been converted into a gunboat."
Fleming said, harshly: "You are talking in riddles. But I have heard of you. The Van Dusen woman. The firebrand. And there is a reward for you."
"Yes." The girl's hand fell to the polished butt of her pistol. Her face told of some mental struggle, of a decision struggling to be made, of alternatives weighed and balanced. The exact nature of the struggle the man was never to know—whether or not to hand out to him the same line of propaganda that had been handed out to the other traders, that had won most of them to the rebel cause; whether or not to count on the dangerous, two-edged weapon of her sex.
And the tension in the room was intensified as some shift of wind, some freak of conductivity, brought again the rhythmic throbbing, the coded melody, drum calling drum from peak to unpretentious peak, drum answering drum all along the straggling length of the archipelago.
PERHAPS it was the drums that decided her. It was the low throbbing, beating in time with her pulse, the rhythm of her blood, that told her that, here and now the use of her womanly weapons would be dangerous to herself. And she was tired, and she doubted her ability to keep the situation under control should she allow it to develop.
"This is how things stand," she said, her voice crisp, official. We, the colonists, have risen against the Corporation. Most of the cities are with us, the bulk of the traders. And some of the Corporation police have deserted to us, bringing their arms. We hold the Macrae Coast from Port Lanning to just south of Venusburg. There is fighting in De Kuyper's Land. There has been a naval action in the Rynin Straits, with heavy losses on both sides. And neither of us has air superiority—neither of us has any air force to boast about. Most of the rockets and jet planes were destroyed on the ground, by sabotage..."
And Earth. . . ?"
"Earth is neutral. Earth will intervene only if either side uses atomic weapons. The Commissioner announced that his duty was merely to protect the interests of Terran nationals. And—under corporation law—there are no Earth nationals on Venus. Only the commissioner, his staff, and the crews of the two space liners still at Port Lemaire."
"And you say that most of the traders are with you?"
The girl looked at his face; puzzled it was, incredulous, but not unintelligent. Dispassionately she analysed him. He has a brain, she told herself with a flash of insight, but no mind... With distaste, but almost with sympathy, she applied the rules of the science, the art, she had learned when she was a student of psychology, the skill that had been of such value to her as a propagandist. And she saw on what fertile ground the seeds of Corporation indoctrination had fallen. The Corporation was more than bread and butter—it was mother and father, it was Earth. And it was the friend of the little man who would be king, of the type not sufficiently able, or just a little too unlucky, to rise to high rank on any of the democratic worlds. That was it. Under its rule the Corporation gave kingship. True—it was only the rule of a few square miles of swamp, of jungle, over a few hundred or a few thousand non-human savages. But it was power, the authority to be a just or an unjust judge, the sole arbiter in disputes, to kill or spare without question. For, so long as the Corporation's posts showed a profit, no questions were asked. And the traders, neither merchant nor civil servant nor bureaucrat, but a little of all three, held undisputed sway over most of the area of Venus outside the cities.
And they hated the people of the cities—the intellectuals, the masterless men. They hated them for their enmity to the Corporation. They hated them for their intention to raise the far from brainless Swamplanders to human cultural levels. For they had long been monarchs by Divine Right—and the Corporation was their god.
