It was a stifling mass of green. He could see nothing. He probed about, futilely. There was not even a trace where the Venusian's body might have been dragged.
Spike was climbing up when he came down.
"There's nothing there! I—!"
Spike shrugged. "Let's go," he said impassively. He kicked aside the plants, struck off into the vegetation.
Rusty tarried, gazing up into the foliage. There was nothing he could do. There was nothing up there. That made two. Men had never survived this place. How long before it would be his turn?
He followed the three disappearing figures.
The heat closed in and the world swam, a green daze, before his eyes. His body moved by sheer will. His mind was far away, a cub reporter on his first assignment. He shook his head savagely as the Tele-news office appeared before him, a wavering hallucination.
It was several miles before they noticed that the Martian was gone.
Rusty looked back and there was only the dark jungle, quiet and ominous, green with a mirage-like beauty of fresh life, but a beauty of silent death. What things watched unseen from those thick masses? Watched their every move, ready to spring upon them? First the Martian killed by a spider. Then the little Venusian. Now another—to what death? God, if a man must die let him die seeing, not a swift vanishing to unknown terrors.