SAVAGE GALAHAD

                            By BRYCE WALTON

                Tons of sinuous muscle, buried in fetid
                Venusian slime, he knew how to survive.
             Equipped with an ageless brain and lightning
                  instincts, he also knew how to die!

           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
                      Planet Stories Winter 1946.
         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

He stirred slightly, the ponderously long, yet smoothly-flowing lines
of his body, trembling vaguely with the undulating rhythm of the tall
pale watergrass. Dim and monstrous shadows floated past, then suddenly
spurted in frenzied speed to devour or be devoured. And the dark blue
tint of the swamp water browned in wavering veins of blood.

An alien organism had come to his world. Its strange radiations pierced
his brain in waves of bizarre beauty. Its uniqueness was disturbing
the long sleep he was enjoying in the warm soft slime. A being from a
far world, which he read symbolized in her confused mind as EARTH. And
facing certain death, she was utterly disoriented with terror.

She reacted mentally to his world. The name she applied to it was
Venus, Planet of the Morning and that was beauty of expression. She
was beauty and so were her thoughts; her world must have been of that
nature, too. His world had no beauty anywhere in it; beauty would be
alien here, yet he was tired of ugliness.

His massive brain circuit contacted hers in its subtle supersonic
way, knowing everything she had known or could know, thinking as she
thought, reacting as she reacted far above him where she wandered
alone along the vaporous fringe of his swamp. And he suddenly realized
how alien she really was, for here on his world she was like a bubble
floating beneath the surface of his lake, on the edge of countless
dangers, confronted by a thousand deaths, but completely unaware of
their nearness or exact nature. This was not her world. It would never
be a world for her species. And abruptly he wanted to see her, touch
her. Touch this beautiful bubble before it burst. For he had never
known beauty before, and he was hungry for it.

One giant flipper moved softly, and the ponderously sleek form, long
and pointed and glistening through the water, lanced upward, streaking
the depths in a silent blurring arc.

       *       *       *       *       *

He studied her with curious and new emotions through the thick,
heavy-hanging mists, his long serpentine form curled out along the
global swamp, undulating between the spongy swaying trunks of two
bulbous trees, half-buried in the thick iridescent mud, and effectively
hidden from her alien eyes by interlocking crinoids and gigantic
towering ferns.

Monstrous insects droned broodingly through the sultry vapors and
ventured to light on his gleaming hide. A quick twitch of long steely
tendons blotted them out in lightning grips. But his thickly lidded
eyes remained fixed on the girl who had come from Earth.

He was not disappointed in her beauty of form. It had a soft, rhythmic
smoothly-flowing curvature. It seemed to him a perfect aesthetic
creation of its kind. The contrast, too, impressed him--her frail,
delicate form treading so fearfully among gigantic flora and fauna of
endless varieties, each vying with the others in size and ferocity.
Because of this contrast she seemed more beautiful here, perhaps, than
she might on her own world. But she should not be here; she would find
only death here. She did not understand this world, and she never would.

He felt the pangs of an emotion utterly strange to him. He plunged
the supersonic fingers of his brain deeply into hers and found an
expression there that would vaguely define that emotion. LOVE. It was
an abstract symbol that on her own world meant the crystallization of
celestial ideals.

_And that is what I must feel for this alien creature_, he mused. LOVE.

The many other emotions that accompanied the symbol, LOVE, on her
world--hate, jealousy, hope, ambition, despair, courage--these did
not enter his massive neural circuits. She felt this great emotion
for another being somewhat like her, very close by. This other
being, he examined only briefly for he was ugly, a frantic figure
pacing nervously in something they both knew as a SHIP that rested
not far away in the swamp. She had wandered away from the SHIP and
could not find her way back to it through the mists. And this other
organism--MAN--was being driven into complete disintegration with
anxiety and fear for her.

But he knew that the man would never find her. There was no jealousy or
hate or envy as he curled through the swamp, watching her. That would
spoil the beauty of this moment. She would be destroyed soon; other
emotions must not distract from the few moments he had in which to
absorb this aesthetic thrill of her movements.

_Gruoon!_ The symbol was etched in his mind as a blob of dark dread.
His body tensed into rippling steel. The _Gruoon_ was dropping down
through the mist; his brain could follow every flapping motion of
its great leathery shape as it dropped in a straight driving plunge
directly for the girl.

His triple-lidded eyes could not see it, but that was not necessary;
because of his supersonic brain, he was a ruler of this swamp world,
and that was why he would survive the dull grey aeons that stretched
ahead. So long as his supersonic brain guided his actions he would rule.

He tensed, arched high in taut waiting, while the _Gruoon_ plummeted
down in a sighing blur of speed.

Now he could sense the _Gruoon's_ naked, yellow-scaled claws
outstretched, its toothed beak yawing, and its red-disked eyes shining
with that insatiable blood-thirst that was the scourge of this world.
The scourge of all but himself.

He tensed the full length of his mighty corded body, his twelve
flippers digging into the glowing mud, his gigantic corded tail curled
in feral silence around into a taut S that could spring outward in a
blinding explosion of power.

She was experiencing great fear, but still not as much as she should.
This surprised him. Now that he knew how completely helpless and alien
she was on this world of his, how frail and delicate she was, and how
she belonged on a much different sphere than this one. She had no
conception that the _Gruoon_ was even now falling down upon her like a
comet. That those poisonous claws would wrap about her creamy body and
rip her to shreds and carry her away into the smoking peaks.

She was ignorant of all the countless dangers surrounding her. Fifty
_kimm_ away, hardly more than the length of his own body, was the SHIP
which she was trying to find. But she had not the dimmest concept of
where it was. Such appalling lack of basically protective intuition was
incomprehensible to him.

She knew nothing of the _Vreed_, and its painless bite which bloated
a living organism rapidly until it burst. And the venomous stinging
of the _Kristons_ that paralzyed to a slow unmoving death. Or the
semi-organic _Trumask_ tree that waited for her approach even now,
immobile, without any visible sign to its victims that its crimson
appendages could suddenly whip into action to trap them, dragging them
into its trunk that opened to reveal a slightly pulsating cavern full
of half-devoured forms. These were only a few of an endless horde of
huge and hideous things, yet she suspected none of the things waiting
in the mists. She could only believe what she saw through her beautiful
eyes. And the mist was thick.

Suddenly the taut S of his body unleashed itself, whipping straight
upward in an unbending line. His sharp snout speared up through the
swirling vapor until he was balanced momentarily on the tip of his
stiffened tail. Then, at the apex of his spring, his three-jawed mouth
unhinged, gaped and crunched shut on the _Gruoon_. The vapor was
whipped into fretful whirls. The girl sank down, her eyes searching
upward, but blindly through the gloom.

He sank down once more on his scaled belly, wriggled deeper in the mud.
He dropped the mangled leathery blob that had been a _Gruoon_. Then he
turned his eyes once more on the bit of strange beauty which he had
preserved a little while longer for his aesthetic pleasure.

       *       *       *       *       *

Her eyes kept searching above her. Now the dread silence that had
followed, for an instant, after the piercing shriek of the dying
_Gruoon_, seemed to affect her more than the sound had. She shook
her head, her eyes lowering to look apprehensively about her, then
back to the thick greyness above. She turned indecisively in several
directions, took a few steps in one direction, then hesitated, turned
in another; then abruptly and hysterically changed her previous course
entirely and was running directly toward him.

Yes, she was completely lost, and that was indeed a strange weakness in
an organism. Only fifty _kimm_ away was the intricate machinery that
had brought her here, and which sheltered more of her kind, including
her lover whom she ached to see again. Incredible.

And this SHIP mechanism full of her kind, aliens, were intending to
remain here on his world! It was an amazing paradox. They intended
to rely for their survival on a number of synthetic defense methods,
constructed from basic elements and powered by various energy
principles. This girl had just unsheathed such a device for her own
protection--just now, long after the _Gruoon_ had attacked and died! If
she had any inborn protective instincts at all, they were so weakened
from lack of use or by heredity that only now had they gotten around to
warning her.

And these beings had mechanical detectors based somewhat on his organic
equipment. But they were utterly inadequate to meet the predatory
ferocity of his world. Why had these irrational creatures ventured from
their own comparatively safe world to this? If they actually intended
to remain, their chances of survival depended on almost immediate
adaptation. But that would be impossible, of course.

He watched her with a lonely and hungry eagerness. She had slowed her
pace to a walk and had already begun edging unwittingly to the right
in what would prove to be a long erratic circle leading away from the
SHIP. But she would not go far, even on the wrong course. She was
walking headlong and blindly into the silently waiting arms of the
bloated, motionless _Trumask_.

He waited, too, watching her. Somehow she seemed more a thing of beauty
as she approached death. Death lent a sadness that added to her beauty
a kind of poignancy. His eyes half-lidded dreamily as the full softness
of the emotion flowed through him.

The synthetic defensive mechanism was held out in front of her as she
edged along. She was beautiful as she moved. And on this world of his,
no warmth or softness of her kind could exist. It would die. On his
world the only living thing that remotely suggested this girl from
another planet to his hungry mind was the delicate soft petal of the
_Minon_ blossom. But on close inspection of the unwary or forgetful,
even this spit out a deadly white venom.

He slid his long writhing length, slithering soundlessly between the
_Trumask_ and the girl.

       *       *       *       *       *

Her deeply buried instinct functioned better this time, but not nearly
quickly enough. Not for this environment. She paused, her head jerking
from side to side, the weapon in her hand clutched tightly and swinging
with the direction of her head. But her eyes swept unsuspectingly past
the _Trumask_. Seemingly, on her world, only organisms promised real
danger.

A strange world, that--a soft, slow-turning world of dream more than
reality; of hope rather than realization; of delusion taking the place
of struggle.

Slime strung down from the tentacles of the _Trumask_ as they writhed
toward her in undulating evil shudders. The trunk gaped open.

All of the girl's reactions went through his brain, and he was amazed
by their pointless complexity. A thousand fragments jostled each other
in her mind. Memories of the past, forgotten mistakes, hopes for the
future with no regard for probability, visions of the lover who waited
in the SHIP. All these and many more, equally irrelevant to this dire
situation. She should be concentrating on one thing--escape. Yet she
was not moving. She was in a kind of paralysis he could not understand.

Now, _now_, she was acting, but, as usual, far too late. She was trying
to employ the weapon. But one of the bloated red tentacles flipped it
from her hand. She sagged down, her mouth mumbling incoherent symbols.
She dropped on her knees in the oozing scum, digging down frantically
in a sobbing attempt to find the weapon; but three of the viscuous
tentacles encircled her. They dragged her toward the maw of the trunk
that now gaped to its full, cavernous capacity. Her terrified eyes
could see an unrecognizable amorphous shape still struggling weakly
down in that pulsating well.

He acted as lightning strikes, instinctively. Later he would know why.
In his world thought had to follow action. His huge jaws closed on a
number of the thick tentacles, severed them. They whipped free of the
girl, jerking and contorting, slashing the murky vapor in aimless death
patterns. The girl somehow had staggered out of reach of the remaining
ones.

He dropped down again, out of sight, writhing away to bury himself
again in mud and fog. He searched her mind. Had she seen him? She must
have. Strange that he could find no reaction. There seemed to be a
kind of shock. She had seen him. Then some mental defense mechanism had
blinded her memory to him. Did she find him ugly? Why? Should not he be
possessed of some kind of beauty, also? He had within him the capacity
to appreciate beauty. At least she should be sympathetic and grateful
and kind to him if she knew he was saving her from death, and pain.
Yet--her mind would not accept him. She had seen him briefly, then
forgotten.

Her terror and nervous disintegration was acute now. He could save
her from physical dangers, but he could not protect this soft strange
mind and nervous system from breaking apart and losing its balance of
function.

Yet her beauty still remained, and that was his chief interest. The
fluid motion, contour, symmetry and rhythm remained as before; was the
justification for her continued existence in his eyes.

Her motions did not follow her mental direction at all now. She reached
her hands out as though trying to part thick mist like a solid web. She
groped about in small circles. Then she stopped, her eyes parted wide,
and she screamed. Through the holocaust of sound--the cries, bellows,
and screeches and hisses of the swamp--her scream was almost soundless.
Yet its mental significance cut into his great brain like a wound.

_Torrg!_

The scream's effect had detracted even his wondrous instinctive
mechanism for an instant. During that second the _Torrg_ heaved itself
up almost beneath her. Something slithered through his brain, rippling
down his long curved length--the closest emotion to fear his nervous
system could approach. He hesitated, flinching away.

He knew what to do. Why then, did he hesitate before the _Torrg_?

The girl stood stiff with terror, mindless, muscles drawn tight, nerves
twitching.

He hesitated. He had about gained the maximum from her beauty. It was a
passing thing. He could not possibly go on appreciating it much longer;
she was a limited art form. And the _Torrg_--even _he_ was apprehensive
of that one. Even _he_ had never challenged the ferocious deadliness
of the giant _Torrg_. It was a mighty, mindless machine of destruction,
and so difficult to kill. Its thick leathery body, slick with green
scum, was almost impossible to pierce, and any one of its twenty
writhing arms was a pounding, sucking, smashing bludgeon of power. He
had five _amphos_ to live ... but if he tried to keep the _Torrg_ from
this alien creature....

       *       *       *       *       *

He searched her mind, as the _Torrg_ raised up higher and higher from
the thick nest of its pool. Vaguely, beneath her terror-stricken mind,
he saw the symbol SQUID, enlarged many times. Its great green-colored
caudal fins swayed impatiently, fanning huge swirling spirals of
vapor, like smoke, throwing drops of swamp weed and mud until the
groveling girl's beauty was almost buried in the steaming stench.

Why had she reacted so adversely to that brief sight of him? Why was
he so uncertain about his course of action? If he had a form suitable
for her eyes, if he could look forward to having her always to watch
its perfect rhythm of movement; if he were only assured of her beauty
going on forever, flowering for his pleasure in this world of teeming
ugliness, if--

The _Torrg_ acted almost too quickly for his reaction. But that
unexpectedness of the _Torrg's_ move decided him. His instinct guided
him again, guided him in a blinding streaking flash of sheer power.

He took the muddy squirming figure of the girl between his unhinged
jaws, delicately, but firmly. He accomplished this in an incomparable
burst of energy, continuing on through the finish of the move without
a stop. His body shot beneath the whipping tentacles of the _Torrg_,
toward the SHIP that waited helplessly for her return.

He felt the _Torrg's_ suckers close on his back as he passed. There was
no pausing to understand why he was exposing himself to certain defeat.
One must get in the initial blow in his world, or lose. His instinct
was guiding him. It had never yet failed him. Later, if he survived, he
could reason out the problem.

He sat the girl down gently, an inert lump just beneath the bow of the
SHIP. Then he twisted around to try and rake the _Torrg_ from his back.
He had put himself wholly into the mad mindless power of the _Torrg's_
blood-thirst. He kept trying to turn, but it seemed too late for that.
He felt its twenty arms wrap about his throat and belly and flippers.
Its monstrous weight crawled up his back. Two more of its appendages
clinched about his jaws--his only means of destruction.

He coiled and uncoiled, unleashing the full force of his great power.
His body twisted, jerked over and over in lightning-fast, explosive
arcs. Simultaneously he rolled in the direction of his swamp lake, at
the bottom which he had lived for all his lonely life.

Disengaged appendages of the _Torrg_ swung and slapped thunderously
against the swamp surface. Then the two were sliding down through the
thick black depths of his swamp lake.

In the tepid bubbling water their individual differences were largely
canceled. Here they could battle to the ultimate decision.

They sank down through the murky, swirling deeps, and he was curling
and snapping his fifty _kimm_ until the entire expanse of his swamp
lake churned and frothed, surging and boiling as though a steam fissure
had blown open beneath it. Dead things floated up past them toward the
surface and were promptly devoured by serpentine things.

[Illustration: This was his last battle. His instinct told him that.]

This was his last battle. His instinct told him that. Somehow, though,
his instinct had failed him this time. Taking the girl back to her SHIP
had been an error of instinct. He would never know why he had done it,
because he would not have time to study the psychology of it.

He felt the great holes being ripped in his belly where his flippers
had been torn out. He felt his thick cold blood streaming out in
rivers, thickening the swamp lake. He noted the darting lusting hunger
of the intent school of killer snakes that were already swimming into
the current of that blood, following up the direction of the final
feeding.

This knowledge drove him to the great effort that partially dislodged
the appendages from about his jaws. His long sharp head speared around,
closed about that part of the _Torrg_ from which its many eyes stared
cold and lidless.

They settled together that way into the crawling mud of the lake
bottom. The _Torrg's_ death threshings, the final contracting of its
arms, crushed him, squashing his insides out into the thirsting water.
His jaws were locked about the _Torrg_ in a grip even death could not
undo....

Until weakness drove the last spark of reason from his great supersonic
circuit he was reflecting on the psychology of it, of why his instinct
had proven false. Glimmerings of the cause appeared, but then the
ancient brain that had survived so many countless _amphos_ abruptly
ceased to exist.
{'title': 'Savage Galahad by Bryce Walton', 'source': 'Project Gutenberg', 'lang': 'en'}