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Kim Ivan to the green-faced Venusian. "And I'm
agreeing to Future's conditions. We can't reasonaby
expect him to achieve this feat without the help of
us all."
"It's all a lot of nonsense," shrilled old Tuhlus
25
THE FACE OF THE DEEP
Thuun skeptically. "Nobody can build a spaceship
out o' nothing. It just can't be done."
"Suppose we do manage to build a ship and get
away? What then?" Grabo demanded suspiciously.
Curt was ready for that. "Then you'll agree to set
myself and my friends down on some inhabited
world of the System."
He knew better than to demand more. If he could
once assure Joan's safety, the pursuit of the
mutineers could be taken up later.
"I agree to that, Future," said Kim Ivan
promptly. "Now how do we start?"
For a moment, even Captain Future was daunted
by that question. It made him realize to the full the
appall magnitude of the thing they were about to
attempt.
How did you start building a big, complicated
space ship when you had literally nothing but your
bare hands? He groaned mentally as he envisioned
the complexity of thousands of massive and
delicate parts which must be correctly fabricated
and assembled to form a navigable vessel.
It wouldn't do to show doubt. He quickly looked
around the hostile, alien vista of the mystery
planetoid.
"Our first step necessarily must be to establish
safe living-quarters for ourselves and investigate
for food," he declared. "Then we'll make
preliminary survey for sources of the raw materials
we'll need."
Kim Ivan assented to that with a nod. "I'm
hungry already, and getting more so by the minute."
George McClinton had opened his fiber case of
prunes. The lanky, spectacled engineer stopped
munching the dried fruit to inquire:
"Anybody w-w-want some prunes? They're very
n-n-nourishing."
"Not until I'm hungrier than I am now, will I eat
those danged things," growled Ezra Gurney. "When
you was snatchin' up somethin', why didn't you
snatch up a case of beef or somethin' like that?"
Captain Future and Kim Ivan, after a brief
colloquy, had decided that they must find a suitable
spot for a base nearer to the jungle. From the jungle
must come whatever food they could glean. And
the sulphurous air that clung over these lava-beds
made proximity to them unpleasant.
HE whole party started toward the jungle.
Its green wall was less than a half-mile
away. They could see birds or winged creatures
T
flitting above the roof of the forest, and deduced the
presence of a varied animal life from the calls and
noises they had heard during the night.
Joan asked Curt an earnest question as they
tramped forward. "Curt, is it really possible to build
a ship? I know you could do it if anybody could,
but can anybody do that?"
"Joan, I don't know," he admitted. "But our lives
hang on the answer, and it's up to us to find out."
"If we had unlimited time and materials, it might
be done," remarked the Brain pessimistically. "But
to do it in two months, with no tools to begin with
and criminals for workers --"
Grag's deep voice shouted from behind them,
interrupting. "Hey, Chief, this crazy Rollinger won't
come along."
The crazed scientist, whom Curt had deputed
Grag to keep an eye on, was refusing to accompany
the party toward the jungle. Rollinger's haggard
face was distorted by overpowering fear, and his
eyes were wild as he babbled objection.
"I won't go there!" he cried, peering terrifiedly
toward the distant jungle. "They are there -- the
mighty ones. I heard Them speaking last night, in
my mind. They know we are here, and They don't
like it."
"Who's he talking about?" Grag asked puzzledly,
as Curt and Otho and Joan came back.
"He's just raving again." Otho commented.
Rollinger's voice rose to a shrill pitch. "They
warned last night that we must not stay here, that
They will kill us if we do!"
"Pick him up and bring him along, Grag,"
ordered Curt. "We can't delay now to soothe him."
Rollinger struggled frantically, but was like a
child in the grip of the great robot.
"Do you suppose there really could be
intelligent, malign life on this world?" Joan asked
Curt.
"I doubt it. We've seen no signs of intelligent life
here so far," Captain Future replied. "Of course,
we're likely to find some very queer plant and
animal life here. For this planetoid doesn't belong
to our own System. It's a wanderer of the
interstellar void, a tiny planet that must long ago
have been torn away somehow from its parent sun."
He continued thoughtfully. "Perhaps it has
drifted through space for ages. Undoubtedly it has a
radioactive core that has furnished sufficient
warmth to support life on its surface. Evolution
might take some weird paths upon a little, isolated
26
THE FACE OF THE DEEP
worldlet like this."
The green wall of the jungle loomed before them
in the feeble daylight.
The castaways halted and stood silently looking
at the alien, grotesque forest.
It was composed chiefly of towering tree-ferns,
whose colossal fronds were interlaced by lianas and
vines. Thorny underbrush decked with brilliant
scarlet and yellow flowers, and big pale-green
mosses choked much of the space between the
trunks of the mighty ferns.
"There's some kind of a natural clearing in
there," Kim Ivan reported to Curt. "Want to go in
and look it over?"
Captain Future nodded, and he and the big
Martian pushed their way beneath the shadow of
the towering ferns. The air was hot and steamy
inside the jungle, and many transparent-winged
insects flashed about them.
"Makes you think of the Jovian forests, and yet
everything is different," Kim Ivan said soberly.
"Ah, here we are."
They emerged into the natural clearing that lay a
little within the jungle. It was actually a low knoll,
a few yards high and several hundred yards in
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