"Let's go, Kewpie Doll," snapped Venard. "And don't try to guess why. Although in your case, I can't see the danger."
"Goodbye," said La Crue as a Guard appeared to lead them through secret tunnels to their waiting Scouter. "And good luck...."
IV
There are no adventures in space. Either a space-flight is safe monotony, or quick death. But as the two Guardsmen approached the vast mysterious dome of S.S.C. somewhere in the Mesozoic nightmare, the vaporous, steaming, endlessly stretching rain-forest of Venus, they stumbled with wracking weariness. Reptile-infested swamps and steaming seas, foul-smelling, rotten—it was an incredibly perilous planet.
For five hours they had burned their way through giant flora and fauna and sweat, H-guns hot with almost steady usage. And then Venard finally parted some phosphorescent, glowing lichen and there the gigantic dome rose up and up and lost itself in thick mist. But between them and their goal was a hellish nightmare barrier, spilling stinking muck into a placidly steaming sea.
Larson mopped at mud and sweat-slimed face, stared in fearful awe. Venard swore. They were blocked by a moat, a green, oozing mud-river, flowing oilily. From out of it, projected huge spines, ribs, and warts covering towering, brilliant, multi-colored mounds—that moved! Scaly mountains of shifting, radioactive lime. "Giant mollusc bed!" gasped Venard. Low tide now, but during high tide the sea on their right would back up this far. But high tide was hours distant.
There were thousands of the molluscs, every size, shape and color. Venard's head went quickly to either side. "It goes out of sight both ways, Kewpie Doll. Into the sea and into the swamp. Trapped!"
Larson squirmed, muttering, "Them bivalves are flesh-eaters. Look!"