He got to his knees and, still smiling, looked at his arm where the
gauze had come loose. He shook his head in wonderment. He narrowed his
eyes and examined the blood trickling from the surface wound in his
shoulder. "Well, well," he repeated, and stood up.
The woman was a mangled shape on the wet ground, and the man lay very
still. Caine looked from one to the other. "Yes, yes," he said, aloud.
He turned to the gray-caped Venusians and found the somber eyes
watching him, in their kindly way. One of them reached out and touched
Caine's shoulder above the broken arm. Others moved to the bodies of
the man and woman and bent over them, making floating motions with
their delicate green hands.
_Praying?_ Caine wondered, watching these motions. He shrugged. He
couldn't hold a thought very long.
The mist was evaporating quickly. Caine, looking up, thought he could
see a pointed outline. Then suddenly--high above--there was the golden
temple, a shimmer of towering spires of yellow beauty, splashed over by
brilliant sunshine.
Caine turned his face up to a strange sun, a blinding sun that sent its
bright life down through the leaves. And Caine was aware that the caped
figures were kneeling all around, praying in a jumble of voices, their
hands stretching up to the infrequent visitor of light.
What are they saying? Caine asked, smiling queerly. What is it they're
saying? Screece? The Sun? The most valuable gem on Venus? Is that what
they worship in the golden temple? Caine looked at the man and then at
the woman. Is that what they had come from Earth and from Mars to find?
The Sun? He felt the laughter starting in him again, as though it were
someone else laughing. But his mouth widened and his teeth glistened in
the sunlight, and he laughed long pealing laughter.
"Here it is," he said, staggering to the side of the man's body.
"Here's your gem. Do you see it, Fairchild?" He pointed to the sky.
"Give it to her," he said, laughing through his words. "No? I'll give
it to her for you then. How's that?" He turned and moved slowly to the
woman, stumbling. "Here," he said to the woman's staring eyes. "Here it
is, you see?"
He looked at her face, shadowed by a large leaf of a vine-tree. He
reached up and jerked the leaf away so that the sunlight fell full on
her white face. "There! Take it! From Charles, to you, through me.
Isn't it beautiful, so big, so brilliant, so...." The laughter was
getting in the way of his words and he could feel tears going down his
face.
Pale green hands were holding him so that he wouldn't fall. And they
were moving him away toward the temple. Caine looked at the large
kindly eyes around him, feeling the hands guiding him. He couldn't stop
laughing, only he wished to God he could, because it made the pain
worse. And he couldn't take much more pain.
The lips of one of the green faces moved. "Wress?" said the voice, the
word pronounced with difficulty.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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