Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 Part 15

"Now," he said gruffly, "go to sleep."

He pressed her head upon his shoulder and kept it there. After a long time she slept. He stirred, much later, and she opened her eyes again.

"What is it?"

"d.a.m.n these mosquitos," growled Bell. "I can't keep them off your face!"

CHAPTER X

For four hours after sunrise Bell worked desperately. With the few and inadequate tools in the plane he took apart the oiling system of the motor. It was in duplicate, of course, like all modern air engines, and there were three magnetos, and double spark plugs. Bell drained the crankcase beneath a sun that grew more and more hot and blistering, catching the oil in a gasoline can that he was able to empty into the main tanks. He washed out innumerable small oil pipes with gasoline, and flushed out the crankcase itself, and had at the end of his working as many small sc.r.a.ps of metal as would half fill a thimble. He showed then to Paula.

"And the stars in their courses fought against Sisera," he quoted dryly. "Any one of these, caught in just the right place, would have let us down into the jungle last night."

She smiled up at him.

"But they didn't."

"No.... G.o.d loves the Irish," said Bell. "What's that thing?"

Paula was fishing, sitting on a fallen tree in the cloud of smoke from a smudge fire Bell had built for her. She was wearing the oily flying suit he had found in the shed with the plane, and had torn strips from her discarded dress to make a fishing line. The hook was made out of the stiff wire handle of one of the extra gasoline tins. "Hook and leader in one," Bell had observed when he made it.

He was pointing to a flat bodied fish with incredible jaws that lay on the gra.s.s, emitting strange sounds even in the air. It flapped about madly. Its jaws closed upon a stick nearly half an inch thick, and cut it through.

"It is a _piranha_," said Paula. "The same fish that bit your hand. It can bite through a copper wire fastened to a hook, but this hook is so long...."

"Pleasant," said Bell. Something large and red pa.s.sed before his eyes.

He struck at it instinctively.

"Don't!" said Paula sharply.

"Why?"

"It's a _maribundi_ wasp," she told him "And its sting.... Children have died of it. A strong man will be ill for days from one single sting."

"Still more pleasant," said Bell. "The jungle is a charming place, isn't it?" He wiped the sweat off his face. "Any more little pets about?"

She looked about seriously.

"There." She pointed to a sapling not far distant. "The _palo santo_ yonder has a hollow trunk, and in it there are usually ants, which are called fire-ants. They bite horribly. It feels like a drop of molten metal on your flesh. And it festers afterwards. And there is a fly, the _berni_ fly, which lays its eggs in living flesh. The maggot eats its way within. I do not know much about the jungle, but my father has--had a _fazenda_ in Matto Grosso and I was there as a child. The _camaradas_ told me much about the jungle, then."

Bell winced, and sat down beside her. She had Ribiera's pearl handled automatic within easy reach. She saw him looking at it.

"I do not think there is any danger," she said with a not very convincing smile, "but there are _cururus_--water snakes. They grow very large."

"And I asked you to fish!" said Bell. "Stop it!"

She hauled the line ash.o.r.e, with a flapping thing on the end of it.

Bell took the fish off and regarded her catch moodily.

"I'd been thinking," he said moodily, "that Ribiera suspects we're dead. I'd been envisioning ourselves as marooned, yes, but relatively safe as long as we were thought to be dead. And I'd thought that if we lived a sort of castaway existence for a few weeks we'd be forgotten, and would have a faint chance of getting out to civilization without being noticed. But this...."

"I will stay," she said steadily. "I will stay anywhere or go anywhere, with you."

Bell's hand closed on her shoulder.

"I believe it," he said heavily. "And--if you noticed--I had been thinking of letting down the Trade. I'd been thinking of not trying to fight The Master any longer, but only of getting you to safety. In a sense, I was thinking of treason to my job and my government. I suspect"--he smiled rather queerly--"I suspect we love each other rather much, Paula. I'd never have dreamed for anyone else. Go over to the plane and don't fish any more. I'll rustle the food for both of us."

She stood up obediently, smiling at him.

"But kill that _piranha_ before you try to handle it," she advised seriously.

Bell battered the savage thing until it ceased to move. He picked it up, then, and sniffed the air. Paula had been in a cloud of acrid smoke. She could not have detected the taint in the air he discovered.

He went curiously, saw a broken branch overhead, and then saw something on the ground.

He came back to the plane presently, looking rather sick.

"Give me one of the machetes, Paula," he said quietly. "We brought them, I think."

"What is the matter?"

He took the wide-bladed woods knife.

"A man," he said, nauseated. "He either fell or was thrown from somewhere high above. From a plane. He was United States Secret Service. There's a badge in his clothes. Don't come."

He went heavily over to the spot beyond the smudge fire. He worked there for half an hour. When he came back there were earth stains on his hands and clothing, and he carried a very small brown package in his hand.

"He had a report ready to send off," said Bell grimly. "I read it.

It's in code, of course, but in the Trade...."

He set to work savagely on the engine, rea.s.sembling it. As he worked, he talked in savage, jerky sentences.

"The Service man at Asuncion. One of the seven who vanished. He'd learned more than we have. He was caught--poisoned, of course--and pretended to surrender. Told a great deal that he shouldn't, in order to convince The Master's deputy. The key men in nearly every republic in South America are in The Master's power. Paraguay belongs to him, body and soul. Bolivia is absolutely his. Every man of the official cla.s.s from the President down knows that he has two weeks or less of sanity if The Master's deputy shuts down on him--and he knows that at the crook of the deputy's finger he'll be a.s.sa.s.sinated before then. If they run away, they go murder mad. If they stay, they have to obey him. It's h.e.l.lish!"

He stopped talking to make a fine adjustment. He went on, somberly.

"Chile's not so bad off, but the deputy has slaves nearly everywhere.

Ecuador--well, the President and half of Congress have been poisoned.

The man I found was trying to get a sample of the poison for a.n.a.lysis.

He'd learned it was unstable. Wouldn't keep. The Master has to send fresh supplies constantly all over the continent. That accounts for the deputies remaining loyal. If The Master had reason to suspect them, he had only to stop their supply.... They couldn't stock up on the deadly stuff for their own use. So they're as abjectly subject to The Master as their slaves are to them. No new slaves are to be made in Paraguay or Bolivia, except when necessary. It's believed that in six months the other republics will have every influential man subjected. Every army officer, every judge, every politician, every outstanding rich man.... And then, overnight, South America will become an empire, with that devil of a Master as its overlord."