The spider could travel much faster than Grant for it walked on water where Grant was forced to wade on the bottom. But Relegar would wait a while. He wouldn't want to be on the surface of Venus any longer than necessary, even for half a million dollars, so he would give Grant plenty of time, since there was no danger of his getting away.
Grant was encouraged by the fact that the constrictor did not appear to be far away. Everything here depended on his reaching the saurian two days ahead of Relegar. Not that he expected to run. That was hopeless. But he did have a partial plan. He thought he knew how to recover the stones and to face the Uranian without being immediately killed. And he hoped for some now unforeseen development that subsequently would help him to get through The Pass.
That last item was a weak point, a very weak point, but there was nothing he could do about it now. He could not wait for a plan. He had to go ahead and trust his own ingenuity to devise a means of getting to Aphrodite later. If he could keep Relegar from going back to The Pass until he himself could get through The Pass, then he would be unmolested, for Relegar was master of The Pass, and no entity of any sort, not even as powerful a one as Netse, would touch any being in whom Relegar was interested unless Relegar himself should order it.
If Grant could get through The Pass and across Division Street he would be safe, for Aphrodite proper was under the jurisdiction of the Planetary Police, and even Relegar respected them.
rant found the constrictor on the second day, lying in a shallow pool with only its dorsal spines showing. Working slowly and carefully and entirely under water, he located the saurian's head, concealed in a clump of floating grass. The reptile was still in something of a torpor from its meal, and Grant had no difficulty in approaching it through the water and attacking it with the heat-gun on the soft part of the neck below the head.
The first bolt must have gone through and severed its spinal column, but Grant risked destruction from the threshing body long enough to burn the head off entirely. He got out on solid ground and waited until sundown for the monster's contortions to die. Then he worked fast. The flying scavenger-foxes were already settling on the constrictor's back and tearing out great chunks of flesh. He went back under water and cut out the saurian's gizzard with the heat-ray. He dragged it off to one side and tremblingly cut it open with his knife, and he was relieved and exultant when he recovered all fifteen of the stones. The bag had disintegrated, but he put the stones carefully in his pockets.
Then he went back once more. He cut off a piece of the hide two feet square. He took only the outer hide, which was dry and which held the great iridescent scales that formed isotopes after death. From some marsh-bamboo and some wire-vines he formed a shield. By that time it was midnight. He turned his light on the pool where the saurian had been, and shuddered. The water was dull red, and alive with creatures fighting each other to get to the carcass. The surface was covered with flying things, some small, some huge, all fighting, fighting. Life on Venus was an eternal, bloody fight. This slaughter, once started, would go on for weeks, until the fighting creatures in this immediate area of the swamp were exhausted.
Grant snapped off the light as clouds of flying things arose. He started down the neck of dry land and walked all night, going as far as he could without submerging, getting out of range of the holocaust around the dead constrictor. Eventually he came to a lavawood tree. He examined it carefully, then climbed it. He found a crotch in the limbs. He lay down and hung his arms and legs over the limbs, pulled the shield over him, and went to sleep.