Transcriber's Note:
This etext was produced from Planet Stories July 1952. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.
The WEALTH OF ECHINDUL
By NOEL LOOMIS
Though he carried with him the loot of the ages, who in ThePass—that legalized city of vice and corruption—would darerisk his neck to help Russell, the Hard Luck Man of theSwamps?
e came up out of the Great Sea-Swamp of Venus like old FatherNeptune. He was covered with mud and slime. Seaweed hung from hischeap diving-suit. Brine dripped from his arms that hung limp andweary; it ran from his torso and made a dark trail in the sand.
A flash of intuition hit Russell. He knew now how towin this fight.Without even looking back, he stood for a moment as if fighting tokeep on his feet, while the brine made a small puddle in the greensand. Finally he unscrewed the helmet and took it off. He turnedaround slowly and looked back across the two hundred miles of deadlyswamp, at the flaming craters of the Red Lava Range from which he hadcome.
With fingers that would hardly function from weariness he took off hisdiving-suit and straightened up. His stooping shoulders were free ofthat weight for the first time in forty days. He was a small man,hardly over four feet tall, and not well formed. It seemed incrediblethat he had crossed the Great Sea-Swamp on foot.
And as he looked back at the distant rim of green fire that marked themountains it seemed incredible to him too. A great sigh of relief andgratefulness shook his unsymmetrical body, and all the nerve andcolossal will-power that had carried him for six months, suddenlyflowed out of him in a single wave and left him empty. He forgot aboutthe ordeal that still lay ahead. He forgot everything. He pitchedforward on his face in the sand, and slept.
Some hours later a whistling noise awoke him. He rolled over, awakeinstantly, for in past months his ears had saved his life as often ashad his eyes. High in the sky he picked out a cannibal fish from theAcid Sea. It had set its great wings in a dive.
He raised his heat-gun, fired once, saw the feathers burst into blueflame, saw it falling; then he rolled over and went back to sleep. Noteven the thud of its heavy body on the sand disturbed him, but an hourlater he heard another warning—a rasping sound—and through thestench of the ancient swamp he smelled a fetidness that meant danger.
This time as he turned he rolled to his feet. He saw the huge coils ofthe Venusian water-constrictor. One lidless phosphorescent eye gleamedevilly at him, but its great jaws were spread and the dead fish washalf-way down its bone-plated throat.
Grant Russell relaxed. Ordinarily he would have been scared to deathto be within miles of the big saurian. But now for a few hours, withthe fish in its throat it would be comparatively harmless.
Grant rubbed his eyes and stretched. How wonderful sleep could be! Forsix weeks he had been in the swamp where he never had dared to takeoff his diving-suit even when he was resting on a clump of floatinggrass, for fear it would suddenly sink and drop him into a hund