Then the pain smashed into his awareness. It disappeared as suddenly. He was in agony, then there was only the foolish whirling of his brain. He turned slowly, like a limp mannequin, searching the blankness of the mist. "Where am I?" he said aloud. "About one mile from Heaven," said Fairchild behind him, holding now a rifle from Caine's cabin rack. "Janet?" the man said to the cabin. "Take one of those damn rifles. Mr. Caine is going to lead us to his happy end. The gem first," he said to Caine. "Then you. I'll let you touch it before you die." The woman came out of the cabin, a rifle in her hands. She pointed it at Fairchild. "We'll never get out of here," she repeated, in her sing-song tone. "Not without me," Fairchild said quietly, looking at the pointed rifle. He turned his back to her. The woman's face had lost its pink radiance, and it was white except where the blood trickled. "Let's go, Caine," Fairchild said. "I don't know where to go," Caine said stupidly. "Up," Fairchild said. "Just lead the way up. I don't need you to know where the temple is now. You got us much closer than we'd planned, you know. You're just bait now, Caine. Bait for the cats. Remember the cats?" "I won't go through that," the woman said, staring at the mist around them. "All right," Fairchild said. "Stay here and meet the cats alone. I'll bring the gem back to you, if there's anything left of you. But, by heck, you're going to get it, do you hear me?" He faced her again. "You're going to get that gem if I have to kill seventeen cats, and Caine, and even you. Dead or alive, you're going to get it, do you hear?" The woman was pale, sick-looking, and Caine tried to remember how she had looked the night before. It was too much effort. "Move," said the man, prodding Caine. "Move, Mr. Caine." IV Caine moved, trying to find some hate to use on himself for letting the sight of the rifle in the man's hands frighten him the way it did. But there was only a dull craziness within him, where the strength and nerve used to be. It was as though his steel had been melted and drained out of him by the drug. I'm like a fish, he thought, pushing through the foliage, a fish with a broken fin. Do cats like fish with broken fins? he wondered. And the three of them were moving in a slow silent line through the Venusian wilds. The sounds were in Caine's brain like a dozen records being played in a large echoing room. Teewh birds pointed their yellow beaks and came screaming at his head. The kiitz birds fluttered wildly out of the thickets, their frightened sound like the rake of giant fingernails across smooth slate. But there were other things in this part of the jungle. Soft, gelatinous phules, the size of a man's hand, hung to the vine-trees, and when Caine passed them they shifted off the trees to his skin and began their search for juices out of his own body. He swept them away, one at a time, and more found him.