Public-domain ebook
by Carl Selwyn
Language: en331 downloads on Project Gutenberg
Subjects
In: Science-Fiction & Fantasy·Adventure
Public-domain ebook sourced from Project Gutenberg #61798.
The story opens on a rain‑soaked Venusian swamp where two hard‑boiled trappers, Charlie and Flip Miller, argue over a map that promises a lucrative xanite mine. Their banter, thick with slang and the gritty details of otter‑trapping life, quickly gives way to a sudden intrusion: a fierce, green‑eyed woman, Captain Vixen, accompanied by armed men, demanding the map that has driven Flip’s misadventures across the solar system. The narrative thrust is immediate, thrusting the reader into a hostile, mud‑filled frontier where the stakes are survival, betrayal, and the shifting value of a once‑rich mineral deposit.
Written in a fast‑paced, colloquial style that blends pulp adventure with early twentieth‑century science‑fiction tropes, the prose is peppered with period‑specific jargon and vivid, almost cinematic descriptions of Venus’s bleak landscape. Readers who enjoy sardonic, hard‑boiled dialogue, speculative mining escapades, and the swaggering bravado of classic space‑opera heroes will find the novel’s mix of humor, danger, and off‑world frontier life compelling. Its rough‑edge voice and richly imagined setting appeal especially to fans of vintage adventure tales that revel in larger‑than‑life characters and exotic planetary backdrops.
The opening · free to read
Noted for his wild-goose chases and wilder ideas, Flip Miller was always running into trouble. In fact it was just two months ago that the Space Patrol found him marooned on Pallas. He had one pint of air left when they found him, said he fell out of his plane while looking for diamonds. The Patrol took him to Mars. There, he immediately got in a poker game and made a fortune--and immediately got in another and lost it all. That is, all except a doubtful map of a Venusian xanite mine which nobody else would accept as stakes. Which was his reason for being here, if Flip ever needed a sane reason for being anywhere.
For once however his screwball ventures panned out.
"And I've been here all these years without knowing a billion dollars was in my back yard," said Charlie who considered the matter very funny. "Leastwise it was a billion till--"
"Shut up, you blinking old veedle-chaser," said Flip. People always laughed at his misfortunes. Maybe it was because he did too....
Charlie's island was in the middle of the Black Swamp. The mine was a few hundred miles east. Fused with asphalt and deep in the mire, thousands of miles from nowhere, it was small wonder it had lain there unvisited since its original discovery. The map had passed through the hands of sundry dissolute, short-lived sourdoughs till the location became as dubious as other bar-room talk. It was Flip's luck that the map eventually got around to him. He was probably the only man in the system who would have believed in it.
Filled with quick visions, he'd figured his treasure up on the spot. It would cost about fifty dollars a ton to get it out of the swamp, smelt the asphalt and ship the ore to Earth. On Earth xanite ore was worth over a thousand dollars a ton.
Then the fates ran amuck.
His plane's fuel tank sprang a leak. Flip lost every drop of the reserve that was to carry him back to the mainland. The mainland was 25,000 miles away. Then his sending set blew a transformer and he couldn't radio for help. Last, while trying to ascertain his position on the receiving set, he heard that I.M.C.--Interstellar Metallurgical Company--had just opened a gigantic xanite deposit on Mars. The Market quoted xanite now at twenty dollars a ton. Venusian xanite suddenly wasn't worth swamp water.
"It shore is too bad," continued Charlie with smiling sympathy.
"You probably wished it on me," said Flip, "so you could have company on this mildewed damn island."
That was the one blessing in his barrage by malevolent fates--he'd glided to Charlie's island and the old fellow, one of many of his kind in the Venusian swamps, had placed his metal shack, his canned beans and his loku at Flip's disposal. To all of which he was doomed till the supply ship came around after the rains--forty days ahead.
"I wish one of your pirates would show up," mused Flip. "I might could bum a ride out of here."
"Don't wish that, boy," said Charlie with quick seriousness. "I've been pretty lucky so far but I told you about the fellow who used to be here--he's buried out yonder in the mud. These here Venusian pirates're about the meanest critters you find anywheres."
"They come around during the nights, huh."
"Yeah, when the season's catch is ready for packing. They kill the fellow and take his pelts. You quit talking about pirates, boy. They'd just as soon skin you as an otter."
"Say! What about this female pirate I heard about on the mainland?"
"Captain Vixen? I never seen her--never knew nobody that had. She don't come out here and the natives won't talk about her. But you can bet your Sunday space-togs she's behind this swamp raiding--she runs everything on the mainland, about ruined the big industries there. Supposed to be a native queen back in the hills; hates foreigners. They say she's nursed scorpions and killed men with her fingernails."
"Pretty tough date, huh."
And now the twilight was coming on, it was starting to rain--and soon it would be blackness and constant rain for forty dreary days.
"Oh, hell," yawned Flip. "And I didn't bring my bathing suit." He joined Charlie in a drink.
The thirty-eighth century Haliburton and the Black Swamp Bacchus were doing nicely with the sixteenth verse of Lulu Drank Loku on Pluto when one of the more technical gestures necessary to the famous ditty caused the bottle to be overturned.
"Now look what you've done," said Flip. "We've got only enough left for thirty-nine days."
"Sho shorry," said Charlie.
Flip felt in his shirt pocket for a cigarette and found the ill-starred map which had brought him here. The lines were blurred with sweat but he could still make out the circle designating the mainland port, the crow's feet designating the swamp, the large X in the upper left where the xanite was. He didn't need the map any more; for the location was stark in his mind. In fact he wished he could forget it.
"Ah, well," he said. He opened the tube-light, held the map over the hissing jet. It turned brown, then black and he crumbled the ashes in his fingers. "I sometimes wonder what'll happen to me next...."
He heard something above the wind at the door; probably a stray veedle, one of the mud-mice which infested the swamp. Then he noticed Charlie's eyes. They were very big and slowly his mouth fell open. He's gone loku loco, thought Flip. Charlie was staring past him, over his shoulder. Flip whirled around.
A woman stood in the door.
Flip dropped his glass. Behind the woman stood three men. The woman said something in Venusian. Flip couldn't understand and there was a dumb pause as he stared with eyes that grew wider. The woman wore hip-high swamp boots, two guns on her belt, a filmy shirt open at the throat. Her hair, uncovered and flowing, was golden, vaporous as the mist. Flip heard Charlie replying in the native language. The woman stepped into the room. Eyes flicking into every corner, the three men followed her. In the hand of each was an .03 pistol.
She halted before them and Flip rose from his chair like a ghost. Charlie sat very still. His face was pale, eyes narrow.
"Sit down." It was a command and Flip sank back down helplessly. In his amazement he'd probably have done anything she said. She spoke English, in the liquid tones of a native. And she was Venusian, in all its ancient connotation. Her eyes met Flip's evenly, calmly. Her eyes were emerald green.
"You are Flip Miller," she said. "You have a map. Give it to me." She held out her hand, as if refusal to her easy words was unthinkable. Flip found his voice.
"Who--?" he began. Her eyes were cold, commanding; his ego rebelled and he stood up quickly. With a swift hand, one of the men pushed him back down. Flip came up again with fists balled. A pistol was jabbed in his side.
"Jupiter's jumpers!" cried Flip. "What is this?"
"Captain Vixen...." breathed Charlie.
The .03 gun was persuasive and Flip sat down. The man was huge, ugly with a welted blue scar across his cheek. He stepped back and stood with feet wide apart, the gun pointed at Flip's chest. Another stationed himself at the door, the other stood behind Charlie. The woman leaned against the table, crossed her legs.
"The map?" she said and produced a cigarette. Bravado was the word for Flip, naturally or à la loku, and forgetting his anger he struck a match for her. She ignored him, lit the cigarette herself. Without changing his expression, Flip thumped the burning match toward the man with the gun.
"So you're Captain Vixen," he said, meeting her gaze. "Perhaps I should ask for your autograph."
"I should brand it on your mouth, Earthman. But the map, please?"
She wasn't beautiful, thought Flip; her eyes were too far apart, her lips too large--sensual. And her green eyes, her eyebrows long and slanting, her firm lithe sleekness--they were more feline than feminine. Which was dangerously feminine, thought Flip, and perhaps she was beautiful.
"Captain Vixen, the Legend does you an injustice," he observed. "The complexion! Like swamp lilies in the mist...." Then he laughed, for lovely women weren't danger to Flip Miller. Quite on the contrary. "Now what's all this about a map? My xanite mine?"
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