Bill Garson

“ Far off in the steaming Venusian jungle, a band of the Chameleon men halted, lifting their mottled faces in the direction of the sound. Closer in, a four-man jungle patrol of Earthmen broke as one man into a run along the trail, their swift-moving bodies swishing the clouds into ragged streamers.
At the edge of the viscous river circling the island an armed guard slipped on his infra-red glasses and began searching his area carefully, his special light traveling slowly along the river and its near and opposite banks. ”

“ Jarl Gare went through the card-catalog of his brain. The Chameleon men, the Venusian natives, evolved from reptiles who walked upright, were intelligent but could converse with men only through thought pictures. They were the guardians of the pearl-beds.
Their vision in their fog world was as good if not better than Waltk's. They needed no infra-red rays to penetrate the fog as the Earthmen did.
They had fought viciously against colonization by Earthmen. Despite punitive measures by Earth, they were not conquered and finally there had been an Earth-Venus treaty. ”

“ What test was this the Chameleon men were planning?
Finally, the hands dropped from his eyes. He turned around. The oldster was pointing at a huge pile of the oyster shells.
A picture was in Jarl Gare's mind again. So they wanted him to find the shell? That was a fine test! All the shells were gray, and the pile to which the elder pointed was approximately twenty feet high. How could he find one gray shell among so many other gray ones?
He looked up and saw Waltk grinning at him, the stumps of his arms folded.
"How can I find it?" he asked Waltk. "One gray one among so many others?" ”

“ I have no weakness, Jarl grinned to himself, except pride and the Venusians seek out physical or mental weakness—not a character weakness. He remembered the oft-told tale of the Earthman whom the Venusians had frightened to death, but that was because he showed that fear physically. ”

“ A mile away Waltk halted, while Jarl Gare swept the forest behind him with the infra-red ray. He laughed. "They're still sitting there, waiting for us."
"Good," said Waltk. "It is easier to travel in the trees."
He resumed the role of carrier, and went plunging on.
The hours of flight through the trees seemed hardly to touch the reserves of the Jovian's strength.
But suddenly, abruptly, he halted.
"We cannot go further through the trees," he said to a puzzled Jarl Gare.
"The end of the forest ahead?" Jarl Gare asked. "That means we're less than a hundred Earth miles from the beds." ”

“ Carefully they replaced the spongy earth. Then, with Jarl Gare in the lead, the pair walked upright, but quietly, to the great power-charged fence.
It went up twenty feet and down the same distance underground—Jarl Gare had learned this depth from a prisoner who had tried to dig his way out but failed and nearly drowned as liquid seeped into the hole he was digging.
The big Jovian, his thick-thewed body glimmering with sweat in the ground light, bent to pick up Jarl Gare's slight naked body.
"Wait," Jarl Gare warned. "We must wait until one of the river beasts start plunging." ”

“ He thinks he's free. For the moment, sure, but when he meets the Venusians he's done. Good riddance. A tool should be discarded if there's no more use for it.
The gentle touch of Waltk's big hand on his shoulder awakened him. "The Chameleon men," Waltk whispered.
Hastily, Jarl Gare slipped on the glasses and seized the light. "Where?" he asked.
"They are in a circle about the tree."
Jarl Gare swerved the light around the tree. A hundred yards away was the edge of the circle. The infra-red showed them—dark, hunched figures.
"They just seem to be waiting for something," Jarl Gare said. ”