Wind Read online

domes protruded from the earth,indicating that the dwellings of Rathole were, appropriately, partlyunderground.

  * * * * *

  He drove into the place. There were no streets, as such, but there wereavenues between lines of heavy chains strung to short iron posts,evidently as handholds against the wind. The savage gale piled dust andsand in drifts against the domes, then, shifting slightly, swept themclean again.

  There was no one moving abroad, but just inside the community Jan foundhalf a dozen men in a group, clinging to one of the chains and waving tohim. He pulled the groundcar to a stop beside them, stuck his pipe in apocket of his plastic venusuit, donned his helmet and got out.

  The wind almost took him away before one of them grabbed him and he wasable to grasp the chain himself. They gathered around him. They wereswarthy, black-eyed men, with curly hair. One of them grasped his hand.

  "_Bienvenido, senor_," said the man.

  Jan recoiled and dropped the man's hand. All the Orangeman blood heclaimed protested in outrage.

  Spaniards! All these men were Spaniards!

  * * * * *

  Jan recovered himself at once. He had been reading too much ancienthistory during his leisure hours. The hot monotony of Venus wasbeginning to affect his brain. It had been 500 years since theNetherlands revolted against Spanish rule. A lot of water over the damsince then.

  A look at the men around him, the sound of their chatter, convinced himthat he need not try German or Hollandsch here. He fell back on theinternational language.

  "Do you speak English?" he asked. The man brightened but shook his head.

  "_No hablo ingles_," he said, "_pero el medico lo habla. Vengaconmigo._"

  He gestured for Jan to follow him and started off, pulling his wayagainst the wind along the chain. Jan followed, and the other men fellin behind in single file. A hundred meters farther on, they turned,descended some steps and entered one of the half-buried domes. Agray-haired, bearded man was in the well-lighted room, apparently theliving room of a home, with a young woman.

  "_El medico_," said the man who had greeted Jan, gesturing. "_El hablaingles._"

  He went out, shutting the airlock door behind him.

  "You must be the man from Oostpoort," said the bearded man, holding outhis hand. "I am Doctor Sanchez. We are very grateful you have come."

  "I thought for a while I wouldn't make it," said Jan ruefully, removinghis venushelmet.

  "This is Mrs. Murillo," said Sanchez.

  The woman was a Spanish blonde, full-lipped and beautiful, with goldenhair and dark, liquid eyes. She smiled at Jan.

  "_Encantada de conocerlo, senor_," she greeted him.

  "Is this the patient, Doctor?" asked Jan, astonished. She looked in thebest of health.

  "No, the patient is in the next room," answered Sanchez.

  "Well, as much as I'd like to stop for a pipe, we'd better start atonce," said Jan. "It's a hard drive back, and blastoff can't bedelayed."

  The woman seemed to sense his meaning. She turned and called: "_Diego!_"

  A boy appeared in the door, a dark-skinned, sleepy-eyed boy of abouteight. He yawned. Then, catching sight of the big Dutchman, he openedhis eyes wide and smiled.

  The boy was healthy-looking, alert, but the mark of the Venus Shadow wason his face. There was a faint mottling, a criss-cross of dead-whitelines.

  Mrs. Murillo spoke to him rapidly in Spanish and he nodded. She zippedhim into a venusuit and fitted a small helmet on his head.

  "Good luck, _amigo_," said Sanchez, shaking Jan's hand again.

  "Thanks," replied Jan. He donned his own helmet. "I'll need it, if thetrip over was any indication."

  * * * * *

  Jan and Diego made their way back down the chain to the groundcar. Therewas a score of men there now, and a few women. They let the pair gothrough, and waved farewell as Jan swung the groundcar around and headedback eastward.

  It was easier driving with the wind behind him, and Jan hit a hundredkilometers an hour several times before striking the rougher ground ofDen Hoorn. Now, if he could only find a way over the bluff raised bythat last quake....

  The ground of Den Hoorn was still shivering. Jan did not realize thisuntil he had to brake the groundcar almost to a stop at one point,because it was not shaking in severe, periodic shocks as it had earlier.It quivered constantly, like the surface of quicksand.

  The ground far ahead of him had a strange color to it. Jan, watching forthe cliff he had to skirt and scale, had picked up speed over somefairly even terrain, but now he slowed again, puzzled. There wassomething wrong ahead. He couldn't quite figure it out.

  Diego, beside him, had sat quietly so far, peering eagerly through thewindshield, not saying a word. Now suddenly he cried in a high thintenor:

  "_Cuidado! Cuidado! Un abismo!_"

  Jim saw it at the same time and hit the brakes so hard the groundcarwould have stood on its nose had its wheels been smaller. They skiddedto a stop.

  The chasm that had caused him such a long detour before had widened,evidently in the big quake that had hit earlier. Now it was a canyon,half a kilometer wide. Five meters from the edge he looked out overblank space at the far wall, and could not see the bottom.

  Cursing choice Dutch profanity, Jan wheeled the groundcar northward anddrove along the edge of the abyss as fast as he could. He wasted half anhour before realizing that it was getting no narrower.

  There was no point in going back southward. It might be a hundredkilometers long or a thousand, but he never could reach the end of itand thread the tumbled rocks of Den Hoorn to Oostpoort before the G-boatblastoff.

  There was nothing to do but turn back to Rathole and see if some otherway could not be found.

  * * * * *

  Jan sat in the half-buried room and enjoyed the luxury of a pipe filledwith some of Theodorus Neimeijer's mild tobacco. Before him, Dr. Sanchezsat with crossed legs, cleaning his fingernails with a scalpel. Diego'smother talked to the boy in low, liquid tones in a corner of the room.

  * * * * *

  Jan was at a loss to know how people whose technical knowledge was asskimpy as it obviously was in Rathole were able to build thesesemi-underground domes to resist the earth shocks that came from DenHoorn. But this one showed no signs of stress. A religious print and asmall pencil sketch of Senora Murillo, probably done by the boy, wereawry on the inward-curving walls, but that was all.

  Jan felt justifiably exasperated at these Spanish-speaking people.

  "If some effort had been made to take the boy to Oostpoort from here,instead of calling on us to send a car, Den Hoorn could have beencrossed before the crack opened," he pointed out.

  "An effort was made," replied Sanchez quietly. "Perhaps you do not fullyrealize our position here. We have no engines except the stationarygenerators that give us current for our air-conditioning and ourutilities. They are powered by the windmills. We do not have gasolineengines for vehicles, so our vehicles are operated by hand."

  "You push them?" demanded Jan incredulously.

  "No. You've seen pictures of the pump-cars that once were used onterrestrial railroads? Ours are powered like that, but we cannot operatethem when the Venerian wind is blowing. By the time I diagnosed theVenus Shadow in Diego, the wind was coming up, and we had no way to gethim to Oostpoort."

  "Mmm," grunted Jan. He shifted uncomfortably and looked at the pair inthe corner. The blonde head was bent over the boy protectingly, and overhis mother's shoulder Diego's black eyes returned Jan's glance.

  "If the disease has just started, the boy could wait for the next Earthship, couldn't he?" asked Jan.

  "I said I had just diagnosed it, not that it had just started, _senor_,"corrected Sanchez. "As you know, the trip to Earth takes 145 days and itcan be started only when the two planets are at the right position intheir orbits. Have you ever seen anyone die of th
e Venus Shadow?"

  "Yes, I have," replied Jan in a low voice. He had seen two people die ofit, and it had not been pleasant.

  Medical men thought it was a deficiency disease, but they had not traceddown the deficiency responsible. Treatment by vitamins, diet,antibiotics, infrared and ultraviolet rays, all were useless. The onlything that could arrest and cure the disease was removal from the dry,cloud-hung surface of Venus and return to a moist, sunny climate onEarth.

  Without that treatment, once the typical mottled texture of the skinappeared, the flesh rapidly deteriorated and fell away in chunks. Thevictim remained unfevered and agonizingly conscious until thedegeneration reached a vital spot.

  "If you have," said Sanchez, "you must realize that Diego cannot waitfor a later ship, if his life is to be saved. He must get to Earth atonce."