Edgar Burroughs: Escape on Venus

However erroneous the theory upon which the cartographers evolved their maps, mine were not entirely useless; though they required considerable mental mathematical gymnastics to translate them into usable information, even without the aid of the theory of the relativity of distance, expounded by the great Amtorian scientist, Klufar, some three thousand years ago, which demonstrates that the actual and the apparent measurements of distance can be reconciled by multiplying each by the square root of minus one!

So, having a compass, I flew a little north of west with reasonable assurance that I should eventually raise Anlap and Korva. But how could I foresee that a catastrophic meterological phenomenon was soon to threaten us with immediate extinction and literally hurl us into a series of situations as potentially lethal as that from which we had fled on Vepaja?

Duare had been very quiet since we had taken off. I could understand why, and I could sympathize with her. Her own people, whom she loved, and her father, whom she worshipped not only as her father but as her jong, had condemned her to death because she had mated with the man she loved. They all deplored the stern law of the dynasty as much as she, but it was an inexorable commandment that not even the jong himself might evade.

I knew what she was thinking; and I laid my hand on hers, comfortingly. “They will be relieved when morning comes and they discover that you have escaped—they will be relieved and happy.”

“I know it,” she said.

“Then do not be sad, dear.”

“I love my people; I love my country; but I may never return to them. That is why I am sad, but I cannot be sad for long; because I have you, and I love you more than I love my people or my country—may my ancestors forgive me it.”

I pressed her hand. We were silent again for a long time. The eastern horizon was lighting faintly. A new day was breaking on Venus. I thought of my friends on Earth, and wondered what they were doing and if they ever thought of me. Thirty million miles is a great distance, but thought travels it instantaneously. I like to think that in the next life vision and thought will travel hand in hand.

“What are you thinking?” asked Duare.

I told her.

“You must be very lonely sometimes, so far from your own world and your friends,” she said.

“Quite the contrary,” I assured her. “I have you; and I have many good friends in Korva, and an assured position there.”

“You will have an assured position in that Heaven of yours of which you have told me, if Mephis ever gets hold of you,” she said.

“I forgot. You do not know all that transpired in Korva,” I said.

“You have told me nothing. After all, we haven’t been together for very long—”

“And just being together seemed enough, didn’t it?” I interrupted.

“Yes, but tell me now.”

“Well, Mephis is dead; and Taman is now jong of Korva.” I told her the whole story in detail and of how Taman, having no son, adopted me in gratitude for my having saved the life of his only daughter, the Princess Nna.

“So now you are tanjong of Korva,” she said, “and if Taman dies you will be jong. You have done well, Earthman.”

“I am going to do even better,” I said.

“Yes! What?”

I drew her to me and kissed her. “That,” I said. “I have kissed the sacrosanct daughter of an Amtorian jong.”

“But you have done that a thousand times. Are all Earthmen as silly?”

“They all would be if they could.”

Duare had put her melancholy from her; and we joked and laughed, as we flew on over the vast Amtorian sea toward Korva. Sometimes Duare was at the controls, for by now she was an excellent pilot, and sometimes I. We often flew low to observe the strange and savage marine life which occasionally broke the surface of the sea—huge monsters of the deep, some of which attained the dimensions of an ocean liner. We saw millions of lesser creatures fleeing before fearsome carnivorous enemies. We saw titanic battles between monstrous leviathans—the age-old struggle for survival which must exist upon every planet of the Universe upon which life exists; the reason, perhaps, why there must always be wars among nations—a cosmic sine qua non of life.

It was mid-afternoon. The thing that was to change our lives was about to happen. The first intimation of it was a sudden lightening of the sky far ahead. We noticed it simultaneously.

“What is that?” asked Duare.

“It looks as though the Sun were trying to break through the cloud envelopes of Amtor,” I said. “I pray Heaven that he doesn’t succeed.”

“It has happened in the past,” said Duare. “Of course our people knew nothing of the Sun of which you tell me. They thought it the all-enveloping fire which rose from the molten mass upon which Amtor is supposed to float. When a break came in our protective cloud envelopes, the flame struck through, destroying all life beneath the cloud rift.”

I was at the controls. I banked sharply and headed north. “I am going away from there,” I said. “The Sun has broken through one of the cloud envelopes; he may break through the other.”

We watched the increasing light upon our left. It illumined the whole sky and the ocean, but it was intensest at one spot. As yet it resembled only bright sunlight such as we are accustomed to on Earth; then, suddenly, it burst through like blinding flame. There had been coincidental rifts in both cloud envelopes!

Almost instantly the ocean commenced to boil. We could see it even at a distance. Vast clouds of steam arose. The heat increased. It was fast becoming unendurable.

“The end,” said Duare, simply.

“Not yet,” I replied, as, with throttle wide, we raced toward the north. I had chosen flight to the north because the rift was a little southwest of us and the wind was from the west. Had I turned back toward the east, the wind borne heat would have followed us. In the north lay what hope we had.

“We have lived,” said Duare. “Life can hold nothing better for us than that which we have enjoyed. I am not afraid to die. Are you, Carson?”

“That is something that I shall never know until it is too late,” I said, smiling down at her, “for while I live I shall never admit the possibility of death. Somehow, it doesn’t seem to be for me—at least not since Danus injected the longevity serum into my veins and told me that I might live a thousand years. You see, I am curious to know if he were right.”

“You are very silly,” she said, “but you are also reassuring.”

Enormous clouds of steam blotted out everything in the southwest. They rose to the clouds, dimming the sunlight. I could imagine the devastation in the sea, the myriad of living things destroyed. Already the effects of the catastrophe were becoming plainly discernible below us. The fleeter reptiles and fishes were fleeing the holocaust—and they were fleeing north! Instinct or intelligence, or whatever it was, it filled me with renewed hope.

The surface of the ocean was alive with them. Mortal enemies raced side by side. The stronger creatures pushed the weaker aside, the fleeter slithered over the tops of the slower. How they had been warned, I cannot guess; but the flight was on far ahead of us, though our speed was greater than the swiftest of the creatures racing with us from death.

The air was becoming no hotter; and I had hopes that we should escape unless the cloud rift enlarged and the Sun took in a larger area of Amtor’s surface; and then the wind changed! It blew in a sudden furious gust from the south, bringing with it stifling heat that was almost suffocating. Clouds of condensing vapor whirled and swirled about us, drenching us with moisture and reducing visibility almost to zero.