Alexander Kazantsev - The Destruction of Faena

In an attempt to head him off, Ave Mar rushed to the transition hatch, tore through the common cabin and disappeared into the lower airlock. He shinned down the vertical ladder, hardly touching the rungs on the way.

But however agile Ave Mar may have been, Gor Terr had time on his side.

Ave Mar was only just getting out of the lower airlock when the escapee was already clinging to the end of the home-made rope. No rational Faetian would ever have risked jumping from such a height. But Gor Terr was not being rational. He dropped to the ground in front of Ave Mar, jumped up below him, as if on springs, and made a dash for the forest.

Without realising what he was doing, Gor Terr ran into the forest straight on to the path beaten by the animals on their way to the watering place. It was sodden after the rain and his feet slipped and slithered apart. But he was conscious of only one thing: he was being pursued. He leaped aside into a small glade, unrecognisable after the rain, since it was covered with muddy puddles that disappeared into the mist. Gor Terr never suspected that there was a bog hidden underneath the wet green surface. He dived into a cloud of mist hanging over the grass and disappeared.

Ave Mar, who had been following on his heels, stopped dead. Then he immediately dashed forward. His feet sloshed through the slime. He took several careful, squelching steps and suddenly saw Gor Terr in the mist. He looked as if he was sitting down on the green grass. Only his head and torso were visible above it. It took Ave Mar a moment to realise that Gor Terr had sunk waist-deep into a quagmire.

Until recently, Ave Mar, used to dwelling in the civilised cities of Faena and to driving a steamcar along magnificent highways, had never suspected that it might be possible to sink up to the waist in the soil like that. Ave had wandered into this bog a few days back when the rain had started pouring down. But his instinctive caution, aroused by the foul, stinking mud that was squelching underfoot, had saved him, making him skirt the deceptive glade with its murky puddles. This time, however, he could not back away; he rushed to Gor Terr’s assistance. He immediately sank knee-deep into the quagmire. He made a movement to extricate himself and realised that he was sinking into the mire himself. Fortunately, he was not as heavy as Gor Terr; moreover, he was nearer to the edge of the bog. Avoiding sudden movements, he lay down and began to extricate himself by crawling, as if swimming over a shallow surface covered with wet grass.

Once he felt himself on firmer ground, Ave stood up, glanced over his shoulder and saw Gor Terr. Now only his head was showing above the grass and his outstretched hands, with which he was clutching at some roots. Gor managed to turn his head and look at Ave Mar, his bulging, glazed eyes staring out of the mist. Every movement he made sucked him down still further.

Ave Mar felt his horror physically and stopped in spite of himself, but read such reproach in the doomed man’s eyes that he shuddered. Ave abruptly turned back, crawled out a little way and, although he hardly felt himself on firm ground, jumped to his feet, ran to the nearest tree and tore off a dangling liana.

When he returned to the cloud of mist hanging over the grass, he had some difficulty in making out the shaggy head and the outstretched hands.

At the sight of Ave Mar, Gor Terr’s rounded eyes came to life again and shone with entreaty, hope and even joy.

Ave Mar threw the end of the liana to the sinking man. Understanding glimmered in Gor Terr’s eyes and he grabbed at the line.

Ave Mar was now faced with the impossible—to drag the gigantic Gor Terr out of the quagmire. Ave Mar had nothing like the strength to do such a thing. But with the liana he had brought a crooked branch which he had broken off a tree. He drove it into a firm mound and began winding the liana onto it as if onto a windlass.

Turn by turn, he gradually pulled Gor Terr out so that the latter finally managed to lie flat and crawl along, as Ave had done before him. At last, a mud-plastered Gor Terr rose to his full height in front of Ave.

“You’re not bad as an engineer, Ave Mar,” he said. “Thank you.”

These words meant more to Ave Mar than any diagnosis. He now realised that the deadly danger to which Gor Terr had been subjected in the bog had administered the nervous shock needed to save him from insanity. Gor Terr had come back to his senses.

“What happened? How did I end up here? Weren’t we out hunting together? Who undressed me? Your wife will take me for a Faetoid.”

“She’ll be happy! You’ve been seriously ill.”

“R-really?” Gor Terr was astonished. “But I’ve certainly been having nightmares. I dreamt the Dictator had thrown me into prison.”

“That’s all over. Don’t think about it any more. There are more important things to be done. We can’t live in the rocket any longer. We have to deliver food and water to the top. The Elder can’t go outside.”

“Then we’ll have to build a house in the forest.”

“I must admit I don’t know how to do that. I’m only a theoretician.”

“But the theoretician figured out how to rig up a windlass quickly enough. With a helper like you, it would be easy to knock up a house in the forest. I can already see how to set about it.”

Mada couldn’t believe her eyes when she saw Ave Mar and the recently crazed Gor Terr chatting amiably together on the way back.

“I don’t understand this at all,” whispered Toni Fae. “Oughtn’t we to help Ave Mar tie him up?”

“No, certainly not!” exclaimed Mada.

With the instinct of a Sister of Health, she had grasped that years of training and care couldn’t have given as good a result as what had happened in the forest.

…The unfamiliar thudding of axes was heard in the forest.

The enormous, round-shouldered Dzin, wringing out her wet ginger hair with her long hands, crept up to the spot where the mighty stranger, who had put paid to a Spotted Horror and to many of Dzin’s fellow tribesmen, was now slaying trees. And yet he wasn’t eating them.

Hidden in a thicket, squatting on her haunches and holding her heels with her forepaws, she was watching as he and another, who had hair only on his head, were hitting the trees with strange sticks that had what looked like wet, glittering ends. Their strength was so great that the tree fell down like a slain beast. Then the strangers skinned the trees with their clubs, breaking off all the branches, and the tree became straight and smooth. They shortened the tree with a screaming stick, then dragged it over to the other slain trees and forced them to fit together.

In this way, they helped to raise from the ground a huge tree that was empty inside. It looked like a cave.

Almost as soon as the strangers had finished banging their sticks, Dzin would hide in a thicket so as to come to the summons of the thudding noise on the next day.

Ave Mar and Gor Terr never suspected that their work was being watched. They knocked together a frame thought up by Gor Terr without any metal fixings. The work was nearing its end.

Many instruments and much equipment had to be transferred to the house into which the astronauts had to move.

Gor Terr and Ave Mar went to the ship to fetch all these things. So as not to disturb Dm Sat by hammering in the common cabin, they went straight up to the control cabin. Assisted by Ave Mar, Gor Terr began breaking off the levers and rods on which the electromagnetic communications apparatus was secured.

At this point, the always quiet and tactful Toni Fae flew off the handle.

“Gor Terr and Ave Mar can kill me first,” he screamed hysterically, “but I won’t let anything in the spaceship be damaged.”