“But that’s what we have to tell you about,” Katie said. “The Medusa that’s got Anya—it’s calving.”
Jack stopped and turned around. “It’s doing what, now?”
“What Katie means is, it’s having babies,” Rachel explained.
Jack let loose with an impressive string of English swear words, some of which Rachel didn’t know. When he finished, he whistled and Karolla bounded back.
“Earthlings are so slow, how you don’t all get eaten I do not know,” he said.
“N’Bialy rush in where angels fear to tread,” Jack retorted. “Listen, you big galoot, is this Medusa spawning season?”
“I do not understand, Jack my man.”
“Aw, cripes. Are big Medusas making little ones now, you furbrain?”
“N’Bialy brains are not made of fur,” Karolla retorted. “The history textbooks Anya brought from Mars, I study with her. She is so patient, she’s teaching me to read English real well. Although I still find it hard to spell.”
“But not to make annoying rhymes,” said Jack. “Anya’s studying history?”
Rachel also looked surprised, but then her lips curled in a smile.
“Now’s not the time of studies to be dreaming. I can hear Anya screaming!”
“I don’t hear anything,” Jack said, but just then a distant shriek echoed through the jungle, and he moved faster than Rachel or Katie had ever seen a man run before. They did their best to keep up as he charged after Karolla, dashing down a gentle slope, splashing through a creek, and climbing a tuft of grass along the opposite bank, until they found themselves standing on a blasted patch of ground at least fifty yards across. In the center squatted the Greater Venusian Medusa, every bit as horrible as Rachel had imagined and then some. It was that thing in nightmares that grabs you from behind and lifts you slowly, oh so slowly off the ground while your parents and your friends watch with frozen, terror-stricken faces as you struggle to turn in its grasp and get a glimpse of it, and just when you’re about to succeed you wake up with your throat too tight even to scream. The Medusa had tentacles in profusion, yes, and claws like giant scimitars that gleamed in the occluded sunlight, and fangs where no fangs ought to be, and malevolent yellow eyes and wicked-looking spines and…and…and it took up half the clearing, and in its center (if the thing could be said to have a center) wriggled a tall, slim woman with flame-red hair dressed in what looked like a filmy white nightgown. Her face was bruised and thin rivulets of blood ran down her arms, chest and legs, staining her toga or whatever it was.
Jack unholstered his zap-gun. “Unhand her, you brute!” he cried.
“That’s a little corny, Rachel,” Katie said in an undertone.
“It’s how heroes are supposed to talk! Duck!” Rachel shouted as something whizzed through the air. Katie dodged and the thing crashed into a tree and fell to the ground with a sickening plop, waving claws and tentacles frantically until Karolla bounded into the clearing and stomped on it with the sound of a sledgehammer smashing a snail shell. That was the signal for half an hour of frenzied yelling, stomping and splattering, all mixed up with the sizzling noise of Jack’s zap-gun cauterizing various Medusa limbs. Katie had reason to be grateful for her tough work boots, while Rachel found a wharsawa stick and grunted every time she crushed a larva’s carapace. At last the mama Medusa let out a squealing bellow, like a woolly mammoth with its foot caught in a bear trap, flung Anya at Jack’s feet and scrabbled off into the jungle, followed by all the surviving larvae, which were chittering angrily as they retreated.
“My love.” Jack lifted Anya to her feet. “Are you all right?”
“Never better, Jack darling,” she gasped. And they kissed for a long time, while Rachel and Katie stood with folded arms and watched.
“You sure do know how to write a love scene,” Katie murmured after a while.
“Not really,” Rachel said out of the corner of her mouth. “I’ve, uh, I’ve never been kissed. I think Jack and the princess figured it out for themselves.”
When the lovers surfaced for air the Martian princess looked around, waved shyly at Karolla, and narrowed her eyes when she saw the girls. “Jack, who are these people?”
“They’re Earthling tourists who somehow got themselves lost in the jungle. I’m just taking them back to their tour group,” Jack said.
But Anya hardly seemed to hear his explanation. Her eyes remained narrowed, focused on Rachel, who promptly broke out in a fresh sweat.
“What? What is it? What’s wrong?”
Anya walked up to Rachel, placed her hands on her Rachel’s shoulders and said something in a foreign language.
“What? What was that?” Katie asked.
Jack said, “You never talk Martian to me, honey.”
“That’s because you’re lousy at languages, my love.” Anya stared into Rachel’s eyes. “I called her my sister.”
“In Polish,” Rachel said.
“Oh, yeah,” Katie looked from one to the other. “You do look alike. A lot alike! You could be twins, almost! You both got that long, curly red hair and green eyes, and.…” She stopped because Rachel was blushing furiously.
“In N’Bialy we say peggishah mishpakh’teet,” Karolla said approvingly. “A family reunion, how sweet.”
Jack cleared his throat. “Well, when you finish the reunion, ladies, could you please explain to me what you meant about my brother, Rachel?”
“Oh yes,” she said, shaking herself. “It’s simple enough. It was going to be in my next story. Jim is alive and well, but he’s being held captive on Mars by Lord Ares.”
“Then,” Jack said grimly, “we must rescue Jim, and free Mars from the awful tyranny of Lord Ares! Come with me!” And he strode forth without looking back to see if anyone was following him. But of course, they all were, Jack and the three dames and the furry Venusian monster.
Chapter 2
The walk back through the jungle was difficult going for Rachel, who envied Katie’s seemingly effortless stride, especially when every root hidden under wet, fallen leaves seemed to be lying in wait for her, and she was still sticky with joowallah sap, though her sweat had washed some of that away. But the going was even tougher for the princess, who had grown up in Mars’s low gravity, so Jack and Karolla adjusted their pace accordingly. Jack offered to carry Anya over the creek that bordered the Medusa’s blast zone and several other rivulets they crossed in the next few hours, but she declined with dignity, though sweat poured from her delicate limbs. Katie worried about being caught outside after dark, but Jack laughed and said sunset wouldn’t be for another 80 Earth days.
“Besides,” he said, “on this planet, the things that hunt in the daytime are much more dangerous than the night-stalkers.”
“Gee, thanks, mister, I feel so much better now,” Katie said.
“Not at all, missy.”
“The name’s Katie, mister.”
“Katie Mister? That’s a funny name.” Jack gallantly handed over a canteen. Katie gulped, followed by Rachel, while Jack and the princess took turns sipping from a second canteen and gazing into each other’s eyes.
When they were under way again and Jack seemed safely out of earshot, Katie whispered to Rachel, “You didn’t make him the sharpest tack in the drawer, did you?”
“He has unexplored depths,” Rachel said. “I didn’t have enough time to get into all of them. Besides, I had an uncle from Chelm who was just as immune to sarcasm as Jack.”
An enormous