WHERE THE GODS DECIDE
By JAMES McKIMMEY, Jr.
In the webbed hands of the stolid, green-faced
ones rests the Screece gem. Some say it's a
fabulous diamond; some an emerald; some a
ruby ... but Caine guessed it was death itself.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories July 1953.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
High above the wet plains and muggy jungles, above the slick rocksand shiny leaves, rests a temple. Like most shrines of ancient orderits narrowing spires point to the sky. Men, Venusian men, walk quietlythrough the restricted labyrinth of this temple, green fingerswebbed beneath the long sleeves of their gray capes; green facesexpressionless beneath the sanctity of their gray hoods. There ismovement, and these caped men circle a silver orb that lies in deadcenter of the golden walls. They pace, each flat step a soundlessmotion. The green fingers unmesh, spread, and come together again."Screece," says a flute-like voice. "Screece," says another. Thesilver orb rests like a cloudy fist-sized tinsel globe, unsparkling,while a dozen minds search out through the vastness of Venus, probingfor the cores of evil and purity. Feet pace, faces are immobile, andthrough the thick air comes a shrill rising scream from the throat ofa giant black cat with deep orange eyes. The motion ceases, lidlessstares meet. "Grith?" pronounces one. "Grith?" pronounces another. Andthe pacing continues, while green lips quirk the slightest bit. Mindssearch....
It was that season when the jungle of Venus turned into a vapid,steaming swamp. Sleet buds glistened like long, thin snakes, andleaves hung limp and wet from the vine-trees. Nicholas Caine felt thesweat prickle upon his forehead and slide down the sides of his face.Fairchild, he noticed, was sweating, too, so that the man's shirt hadturned dark, and the close-clipped gray hair curled on his head. Onlythe woman still looked fresh in her white shirt and shorts.
She was standing beside Caine's jetcopter, drinking plain Scotch froma silver glass. Her husband, Fairchild, was drinking, too, as he satsilently in a folding chair beneath the tip of the ship's left wing.
This is going to be a sweet thing, Caine thought, it really is.
The air was dead of breeze, and soggy clouds hung above them like animmense stifling blanket. The man stared at his knees and the womanswirled the Scotch in her glass. Caine kept his palms flat against thearm rests of his chair.
He watched the woman closely. There was too much brightness inside ofher, too much nervousness, as though she were burning inside and shehad to keep moving, laughing, insulting, enticing, because she wasalive with that burning, and she couldn't stop. It wasn't the liquor,Caine knew, because they had just started that, a few minutes after hehad brought the ship down.
They were approximately four-hundred miles from the Colony, and in thewild stretches of this Venusian jungle, four-hundred miles was like thedistance from day to night. Here was the dark, the strange, the weirdand the wild.
Kiitz birds screamed in the distance, and their sound was like thesound a man makes when he is touched by fire. A thick, muddy river wentover a cliff above and behind them, hitting transparent rocks with asteady crashing noise that thrummed against Caine's ears like thunderin a distant sky.
Teewh birds with black wings and curling yellow beaks came out of thesultry sky and skimmed the t