"Poke hands in soft middle," he grinned. "Pull insides out!"
Spike laughed uproariously. He stepped toward the plants.
They laugh, thought Rusty, and one of us is dead! They'll laugh when the next one dies. Who will it be? All? He looked into the green walls and the question arose from fact, not pessimism. He had thought those two Plutonian months had hardened him. Could he stand this new world of new terrors?
Warily moving around the body of the shuddering insect, Rusty followed them into the jungle.
The great moon's vast vegetal areas were a monotony of green. Pools of water, matted plants, glaucous mire underfoot, even the atmosphere was a virescent mist, tinted by an unknown gas. But the life there had not the monotony of the scene.
Pluto was a dying world; the moon, still upon its first step along the timeless path of evolution. Every mile brought new terrors. Carnivorous beetles. The purple Gux dragon, twenty feet long, daggered with venomous fangs. And the white spiders. The little gnats, slightly smaller than an Earthian hornet, followed constantly, raised deep sores upon bare faces and arms.
Slow against the resisting foliage, Rusty followed the maddening pace and considered every step his last. Snatching at strange fruit, pausing at shallow pools for unrefreshing sleep, they lost all conception of time. There was no distinct night and day, no restful blackness, only a change of hue in the tinted air and painted sky; a green which deepened to a phosphoric glow, then faded again as the strange sun burned redly over the jungle. Weary to falling, sick of mind with the heat and the moist air, Rusty plodded along at Spike's side, marveled at his fellow Earthian's endurance. But pirating about every planet of the system, had hardened Spike to anything the Universe could inflict. The little Venusian was not affected at all, but rather thrived in the dank heat which was little different from his native world. And immuned on a world that spun ceaselessly from hot to cold, his native Vulcan, nothing fazed the mighty Lothar.
The Martian, however, fared worse than the rest. His body, covered with thick, red hair, was matted with a viscous perspiration. His large ears drooped as he struggled along, spindling form bent as he slid one weary, primate foot after the other.
Rusty wondered how they knew the right direction. Dizzy with the heat, he did not realize he had even asked the question.