Life on other planets -- Fiction; Science fiction; Venus (Planet) -- Fiction
Through the maze of obstacles Cabot toiled all day long.
Oh, to reach the radio station established by his enemy Yuri, and get
into touch with his own continent. Thus he could learn what was
happening in Cupia, and also give word of his own safe arrival on the
planet. Safe, hm! He smiled grimly at the word.
“I _must_ reach that station,” he thought, “and then, when I have talked
with Cupia, I must secure a Formian plane by hook or by crook, and brave
the boiling seas. If ants have crossed those seas safely, if Yuri has
safely crossed them twice, then why cannot I, the Minorian?”
As he communed thus with himself, a faint pink flush appeared in the
sky. Slowly, painfully he continued his way. Gradually the pink light
turned to crimson in the west and then darkened to a royal purple.
Gradually the black night crept up out of the east. But also gradually
the boulders became smaller and smaller as he clambered upward, until
just as darkness finally enveloped the planet, the tired man gained the
smooth rocks of the summit, and lay down amid some leaves.
He had had nothing to eat or drink since his breakfast of green milk
that morning. He had undergone an exhausting journey. His feet were
bruised and cut, his body covered with innumerable scratches, and he was
weary, thirsty and hungry. But he had almost reached the point which he
had been seeking, and this thought comforted him as his eyes closed in
healthy and dreamless sleep.
Next morning early he was up, rested, parched and ravenous. As the first
faint pink tinged the eastern sky Myles Cabot shook off the leaves and
completed the ascent.
It only required a few moments for him to reach the top, a narrow
plateau, about a mile in length, near the farther end of which there
stood a small cabin with its two towers and aerial.
With a cry of joy—which he knew the earless Formians could not hear—he
raced toward it. The huge chain and lock, which secured its door on the
outside, indicated that it was unoccupied, and a glance through the
narrow slitlike windows confirmed this.
The glance through the window also revealed the presence of a complete
radio sending and receiving set of the same general hook-up which he
himself had adapted for the use of Cupians and Formians on the other
continent.
“Imitation is the most insulting form of flattery,” as Poblath, the
Cupian philosopher, used to say. Yet Cabot was willing to brook the
insult, until suddenly it dawned on him that the set had no earphones
nor microphone!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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