Enchantress Of Venus
By LEIGH BRACKETT
Laughing, she cast him down into the hideous
depths, beneath the seas of flaming gas, to
where dead blossoms swayed, whispering, over
strangely jumbled ruins.... But there he found
the secret of her power, and came surging back—up
from the depths, up from the seas, the tortured
swamps—to storm her forbidding shrine and seek
her within, death like a gift in his hands....
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Fall 1949.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The ship moved slowly across the Red Sea, through the shrouding veilsof mist, her sail barely filled by the languid thrust of the wind. Herhull, of a thin light metal, floated without sound, the surface of thestrange ocean parting before her prow in silent rippling streamers offlame.
Night deepened toward the ship, a river of indigo flowing out of thewest. The man known as Stark stood alone by the after rail and watchedits coming. He was full of impatience and a gathering sense of danger,so that it seemed to him that even the hot wind smelled of it.
The steersman lay drowsily over his sweep. He was a big man, with skinand hair the color of milk. He did not speak, but Stark felt that nowand again the man's eyes turned toward him, pale and calculating underhalf-closed lids, with a secret avarice.
The captain and the two other members of the little coasting vessel'screw were forward, at their evening meal. Once or twice Stark heard aburst of laughter, half-whispered and furtive. It was as though allfour shared in some private joke, from which he was rigidly excluded.
The heat was oppressive. Sweat gathered on Stark's dark face. His shirtstuck to his back. The air was heavy with moisture, tainted with themuddy fecundity of the land that brooded westward behind the eternalfog.
There was something ominous about the sea itself. Even on its ownworld, the Red Sea is hardly more than legend. It lies behind theMountains of White Cloud, the great barrier wall that hides away halfa planet. Few men have gone beyond that barrier, into the vastmystery of Inner Venus. Fewer still have come back.
Stark was one of that handful. Three times before he had crossed themountains, and once he had stayed for nearly a year. But he had neverquite grown used to the Red Sea.
It was not water. It was gaseous, dense enough to float the buoyanthulls of the metal ships, and it burned perpetually with its deep innerfires. The mists that clouded it were stained with the bloody glow.Beneath the surface Stark could see the drifts of flame where the lazycurrents ran, and the little coiling bursts of sparks that came upwardand spread and melted into other bursts, so that the face of the seawas like a cosmos of crimson stars.
It was very beautiful, glowing against the blue, luminous darkness ofthe night. Beautiful, and strange.
There was a padding of bare feet, and the captain, Malthor, came up toStark, his outlines dim and ghostly in the gloom.
"We will reach Shuruun," he said, "before the second glass is run."
Stark nodded. "Good."
The voyage had seemed endless, and the close confinement of the narrowdeck had got badly on his nerves.
"You will like Shuruun," said the captain jovially. "Our wine, ourfood, our women—all superb. We don't have many visitors. We keep toourselves, as you will see. But those who do come...."
He laughed, and clapped Stark on