Quest on Phoebe

Sweat plastered Farr's shirt to his back and streamed copiously down his masklike face. It was only an hour since he had entered the jungle, but already he was beginning to tire. His wiry muscles ached and his breath came wheezily, laboriously. Wearily he sat down on a porous rock and produced a vacuum-carton from his tunic pocket. The mushy food mixture contained in the carton was tasteless, but nourishing, and he ate in contemplative silence, keeping a wary eye on the foliage around him.

Thus far he had successfully avoided contact with malignant life-forms, but he did not allow this fact to lull him into a complacence that might prove his undoing. Even though the jungle denizens had not yet manifested themselves, he knew they were there, waiting for him to grow lax in his vigilance, waiting for his eyes to close in sleep--a sleep from which he would never awaken.

The _Mumums_--the pygmy people--were still with him. They stood a few feet away, soulful eyes watching him devour his meal. Their stares vaguely irritated Farr. What made it the worse, was that they never uttered a sound, but just watched silently, fingering those crazy silver tubes, moving when he moved, freezing into immobility when he called a halt, always keeping between him and the goal toward which he progressed.

Farr uttered a sneering laugh. They couldn't stop him! Let them stare. Let their saucer eyes reproach him. He would go on and emerge from the jungle with the secret that would place the fate of the world in his hands.

He laughed again and wiped the last particles of the meal from his lips. The food was making him sleepy. Gratefully he allowed leaden lids to close over sun-dazzled eyes. A keen sense of danger prodded his drowsy mind, telling him to awake, to throw off the torpor before the perils of the jungle closed in on him.

By will-power alone, Farr forced his eyes open and strove desperately to rise. He seemed to be rooted to the rock, and the insidious lump of matter was sucking out his life-force, draining him of vitality. Where he had been prepared to face fang and claw, this inanimate foe had caught him completely off-guard and was swiftly fulfilling the purpose for which it had been placed here--the destruction of interlopers who sought the secret of immortality by way of the jungle.

A less determined man than Farr would have succumbed to that compelling force, would have fallen back on the stone and let the life flow from his exhausted body. But Farr was made of stern stuff, and as long as there was life in him, there was fight.

Sweat stood out in glistening beads on his forehead and his lips compressed in a bloodless slit as he marshaled his powers of concentration. Slowly his hand moved to his side, clutching at the blaster that hung there. Minutes passed as his fingers closed around the butt of the gun and inched it from the holster.

His thumb adjusted the weapon to a tight beam, then he was aiming it steadily at the rock. A thin finger of flame lanced out and drilled into the porous stone, devouring it hungrily. A moment later he leaped free as the chunk of mineral cracked under the heat and suddenly collapsed in a pile of jumbled fragments.

Farr was too shaken for a moment to do anything but stare in horror at the cooling pieces of the devil stone. Then, reaction over, he became his calculating, impassive self again. Reflection on the fate he had narrowly averted was not for him; he must push on. But he did marvel at the cleverness of the ancients of Saturn in placing the stone here. It had come close to getting him--too close, for he felt strangely lethargic and weak.

Groping in a pocket he brought forth a vitamin capsule and popped it in his mouth. The potent stuff went to work immediately and shortly Farr could feel his energy returning, slowly at first, then faster as the capsule's contents worked through his bloodstream.

Feeling better, he tested his legs, then moved forward once more, resuming his interrupted progress through the brooding jungle. Before him the ever-present Mumums retreated slowly, backing away through the underbrush, always with their sad eyes fixed unwaveringly on the intruder.

Farr had come to hate those eyes, in the short space of time he had known the creatures. Though he realized now that neither they nor their owners could do him harm, still he was somehow disturbed by the intent and mournful gaze.

Shrugging off the feeling, he plodded on, moving ever toward the distant goal in utter defiance of the terrors lurking around him. Farr would not be denied his triumph and, now that he knew what to look for, he kept a wary eye out for other such diabolical traps as the devil stone.

But, in spite of his caution, he had not the least suspicion of the next snare that lay in his path, and he was hopelessly enmeshed in it before his confused mind could understand what was happening.

He had been advancing on a small grassy clearing, and as he reached its edge he stopped to regard it dubiously. The wood-free tract seemed innocent enough, and its flat expanse offered no concealment for contrivances intended to dispose of meddlers. Satisfied that it was safe, he set foot on the clearing and moved quickly across it.

Halfway across, Farr felt the ground shake under him and a low muffled droning began somewhere far below. He knew then that it was a trap, and with the celerity of one pursued by a fiend, lengthened his stride into a desperate run. But it was too late.

Things suddenly went black, and with the abrupt darkness that fell over his eyes, Farr stumbled and fell face forward in the grass. Panic-stricken, he clambered to his feet and passed a hand across his face. He saw only blackness.

"My Lord!" he cried in horror. "I'm blind!"

Farr could feel his lips moving, knew that his frantic brain had commanded the vocal organs to speak the words--but he could not hear them. He was deaf, too. Blind and deaf! Walking through the glade, his footsteps had set in action machinery buried deep in the earth, machinery that emitted a penetrating ray, blanking out the senses of sight and hearing. Now, surely, his quest would end in blind groping through the forest, till some ravenous denizen would put a stop to his misery.

Flinging his head back, Farr laughed shrilly, madly. Facing the guns of the planetary police, he had never known the feel of fear, but he knew it now; fear of the darkness, fear of the silence that pressed in on him. He cried out again, but not the least sound pierced the stillness in his brain.

He suddenly lunged forward and ran screaming through the glade. He did not stop until he felt the undergrowth of the jungle whipping about his legs, then he sank to the ground in a cringing heap, sobbing out his despair and beating his fists against his temples.

For an hour he sat there, staring sightlessly into space. Frenzy gave way to apathy, and he no longer strove to fight off the implacable blackness and quiet that filled his world. Death would come soon, creeping and crawling through the brush, and he could do nothing but sit and wait for it, without hope of defending himself.