CHAPTER TWO Vortex Buster Robert Ryder, Bachelor of Hydroponics from the University of Newspoke, was also, maritally, a bachelor. For a year or so after graduation, while he was making good with Tellurian Pharmaceutical, Inc., he had no reason to be dissatisfied with that state of affairs. However, Mother Nature went to work upon him in her wonted fashion, and, never averse to feminine society, he began to go in for girls in a large and serious way. In the hydroponics office there was an eminently personable and yet level-headed young filing clerk named Jacqueline Comstock, who was all unconsciously--or was it?--working much more toward her Mrs. degree than for the good of the firm. It was inevitable, then, that these two should single each other out; that each should come to behold in the other all that made life worth while. They planned, breathtakingly happy. They saved their money, instead of indulging in expensive amusements; they took long hikes. Thus they discovered many choice spots affording the maximum of privacy, of comfort, and of view; thus they came to know almost as individuals the birds and beasts and reptiles in the far-flung pens. They sat blissfully, arms around each other, upon a rustic seat improvised from rocks, branches, and leaves. Below them, almost under their feet, was a den of venomous serpents, but they did not see the snakes. Before them, equally unperceived, there extended the magnificent vista of stream and valley and mountain. All they saw, however, was each other--until their attention was literally wrenched to a man who was climbing frantically toward them with the aid of a stout cudgel which he used as a staff. The girl gazed briefly, stared, and then, with a half-articulate moan, shrank even closer against her lover's side. Ryder, even while his left arm tightened around his Jackie's waist, felt with his right hand for a club of his own and tensed his muscles in readiness for strife--for the climbing man was all too apparently mad. His breathing was horrible. Mouth tight-clamped, in spite of his terrific exertion, he was sniffing--sniffing loathsomely, lustfully, each whistling inhalation filling his lungs to bursting. He exhaled explosively, as though begrudging the second of time required to empty himself of air. Wide-open eyes glaring fixedly ahead, he blundered upward, paying no attention whatever to his path. He tore through clumps of thorny growth; he stumbled and fell over logs and stones; he caromed from boulders, as careless of the needles which tore clothing and skin as of the rocks which bruised his flesh to the very bone.