"If we land in the jungle we will never leave it"—Worsel's thought did not slow the incredible tempo of his prodigious pinions—"but it makes little difference whether I die now or later."
"It does to us, you pessimistic croaker!" flared Kinnison. "Forget that dying complex of yours for a minute! Remember the plan and follow it! We're going to strike the jungle, about ninety or a hundred meters in. If you come in with us you die at once, and the rest of our scheme is all shot to pieces. So when we let go, you go ahead and land in the woods. We'll join you there, never fear; our armor will hold long enough for us to cut our way through a hundred meters of any jungle that ever grew—even this one. Get ready, Bus. Leggo!"
They dropped. Through the lush succulence of close-packed upper leaves and tentacles they crashed—through the heavier, wooded main branches below, through to the ground. And there they fought for their lives; for those voracious plants nourished themselves not only upon the soil in which their roots were embedded, but also upon anything organic unlucky enough to come within reach. Flabby but tough tentacles encircled them; ghastly sucking disks, exuding a potent corrosive, slobbered wetly at their armor; knobbed and spiky bludgeons whanged against tempered steel as the monstrous organisms began dimly to realize that these particular titbits were encased in something more resistant far than skin, scales, or bark.
But the Lensman and his giant companion were not quiescent. They came down oriented and fighting. VanBuskirk, in the van, swung his frightful space ax as a reaper swings his scythe—one solid, short step forward with each swing. And close behind the Valerian strode Kinnison, his own flying ax guarding the giant's head and back.
Masses of that obscene vegetation crashed down upon their heads from above, revolting cupped orifices sucking and smacking; and they were showered continually with floods of the opaque, corrosive sap to the action of which even their armor was not entirely immune. But, hampered as they were and almost blinded, they struggled indomitably on; while behind them an ever-lengthening corridor of demolition marked their progress.
"Ain't we got fun?" grunted the Dutchman, in time with his swing. "But we're quite a team at that, chief—brains and brawn, huh?"
"Uh-huh," dissented Kinnison, his flying weapon a solid disk of steel to the eye. "Grace and poise; or, if you want to be really romantic, ham and eggs."
"Rack and ruin will be more like it if we don't break out before this confounded goo eats through our armor. But we're making it—the stuff's thinning out and I think I can see trees up ahead."
"It is well if you can," came a cold, clear thought from Worsel, "for I am sorely beset. Hasten or I perish!"