The man who had leaped up was now running, like someone in a great hall of pillars. He ran and dodged between the pillars and then at last a dozen of the pillars slammed down and there was the sound a fly makes when landing upon the grill wires of an exterminator. The lieutenant remembered this from his childhood on a farm. And there was a smell of a man burned to a cinder.
The lieutenant lowered his head. “Don’t look up,” he told the others. He was afraid that he too might run at any moment.
The storm above them flashed down another series of bolts and then moved on away. Once again there was only the rain, which rapidly cleared the air of the charred smell, and in a moment the three remaining men were sitting and waiting for the beat of their hearts to subside into quiet once more.
They walked over to the body, thinking that perhaps they could still save the man’s life. They couldn’t believe that there wasn’t some way to help the man. It was the natural act of men who have not accepted death until they have touched it and turned it over and made plans to bury it or leave it there for the jungle to bury in an hour of quick growth.
The body was twisted steel, wrapped in burned leather. It looked like a wax dummy that had been thrown into an incinerator and pulled out after the wax had sunk to the charcoal skeleton. Only the teeth were white, and they shone like a strange white bracelet dropped half through a clenched black fist.
“He shouldn’t have jumped up.” They said it almost at the same time.
Even as they stood over the body it began to vanish, for the vegetation was edging in upon it, little vines and ivy and creepers, and even flowers for the dead.
At a distance the storm walked off on blue bolts of lightning and was gone.
They crossed a river and a creek and a stream and a dozen other rivers and creeks and streams. Before their eyes rivers appeared, rushing, new rivers, while old rivers changed their courses — rivers the color of mercury, rivers the color of silver and milk.
They came to the sea.
The Single Sea. There was only one continent on Venus. This land was three thousand miles long by a thousand miles wide, and about this island was the Single Sea, which covered the entire raining planet. The Single Sea, which lay upon the pallid shore with little motion . . .
“This way.” The lieutenant nodded south. “I’m sure there are two Sun Domes down that way.”
“While they were at it, why didn’t they build a hundred more?”
“There’re a hundred and twenty of them now, aren’t there?”
“One hundred and twenty-six, as of last month. They tried to push a bill through Congress back on Earth a year ago to provide for a couple dozen more, but oh no, you know howthatis. They’d rather a few men went crazy with the rain.”
They started south.
The lieutenant and Simmons and the third man, Pickard, walked in the rain, in the rain that fell heavily and lightly, heavily and lightly; in the rain that poured and hammered and did not stop falling upon the land and the sea and the walking people.
Simmons saw it first. “There it is!”
“There’s what?”
“The Sun Dome!”
The lieutenant blinked the water from his eyes and raised his hands to ward off the stinging blows of the rain.
At a distance there was a yellow glow on the edge of the jungle, by the sea. It was, indeed, the Sun Dome.
The men smiled at each other.
“Looks like you were right, Lieutenant.”
“Luck.”
“Brother, that puts muscle in me, just seeing it. Come on!” Simmons began to trot. The others automatically fell in with this, gasping, tired, but keeping pace.
“A big pot of coffee for me,” panted Simmons, smiling. “And a pan of cinnamon buns. Boy! And just lie there and let the old sun hit you. The guy that invented the Sun Domes, he should have got a medal!”
They ran faster. The yellow glow grew brighter.
“Guess a lot of men went crazy before they figured out the cure. Think it’d be obvious! Right off.” Simmons panted the words in cadence to his running. “Rain, rain! Years ago. Found a friend. Of mine. Out in the jungle. Wandering around. In the rain. Saying over and over, ‘Don’t know enough, to come in, outta the rain. Don’t know enough, to come in, outta the rain. Don’t know enough — ‘ On and on. Like that. Poor crazy fool.”
“Save your breath!”
They ran.
They all laughed. They reached the door of the Sun Dome, laughing.
Simmons yanked the door wide. “Hey!” he yelled. “Bring on the coffee!”
There was no reply.
They stepped through the door.
The Sun Dome was empty and dark. There was no synthetic yellow sun floating in a high gaseous whisper at the center of the blue ceiling. There was no food waiting. It was cold as a vault.
And through a thousand holes which had been newly punctured in the ceiling water streamed, the rain fell down, soaking into the thick rugs and the heavy modern furniture and splashing on the glass tables. The jungle was growing up like a moss in the room, on top of the bookcases and the divans. The rain slashed through the holes and fell upon the three men’s faces.
Pickard began to laugh quietly.
“Shut up, Pickard!”
“Ye gods, look what’s here for us — no food, no sun, nothing. The Venusians — they did it! Of course!”
Simmons nodded, with the rain tunneling down on his face. The water ran in his silvered hair and on his white eyebrows.
“Every once in a while the Venusians come up out of the sea and attack a Sun Dome. They know if they ruin the Sun Domes they can ruin us.”
“But aren’t the Sun Domes protected with guns?”
“Sure.” Simmons stepped aside to a place that was relatively dry. “But it’s been five years since the Venusians tried anything. Defense relaxes. They caught this Dome unaware.”
“Where are the bodies?”
“The Venusians took them all down into the sea. I hear they have a delightful way of drowning you. It takes about eight hours to drown the way they work it. Really delightful.”
“I bet there isn’t any food here at all.” Pickard laughed.
The lieutenant frowned at him, nodded at him so Simmons could see. Simmons shook his head and went back to a room at one side of the oval chamber. The kitchen was strewn with soggy loaves of bread, and meat that had grown a faint green fur. Rain came through a hundred holes in the kitchen roof.
“Brilliant.” The lieutenant glanced up at the holes. “I don’t suppose we can plug up all those holes and get snug here.”
“Without food, sir?” Simmons snorted. “I notice the sun machine’s dismantled. Our best bet is to make our way to the next Sun Dome. How far is that from here?”
“Not far. As I recall, they built two rather close together here. Perhaps if we waited, a rescue mission from the other might — “
“It’s probably been here and gone already, some days ago. They’ll send a crew to repair this place in about six months, when they get the money from Congress. I don’t think we’d better wait.”
“All right then, we’ll eat what’s left of our rations and get on to the next Dome.”
Pickard said, “If only the rain wouldn’t hit my head, just for a few minutes. If I could only remember what it’s like not to be bothered.” He put his hands on his skull and held it tight. “I remember when I was in school a bully used to sit in back of me and pinch me and pinch me and pinch me every five minutes, all day long. He did that for weeks and months. My arms were sore and black and blue all the time.
And I thought I’d go crazy from being pinched. One day I must have gone a little mad from being hurt and hurt, and I turned around and took a metal trisquare I used in mechanical drawing and I almost cut his lousy head off.
I almost scalped him before they dragged me out of the room, and I kept yelling, ‘Why don’t he leave me alone? Why don’t he leave me alone?’ Brother!” His hands clenched the bone of his head, shaking, tightening, his eyes shut. “But what do I donow? Who do I hit, who do I tell to lay off, stop bothering me, this damn rain, like the pinching, alwaysonyou, that’s all you hear, that’s all you feel!”
“We’ll be at the other Sun Dome by four this afternoon.”
“Sun Dome? Look at this one! What if all the Sun Domes on Venus are gone? What then? What if there are holes in all the ceilings, and the rain coming in!”
“We’ll have to chance it.”
“I’m tired of chancing it. All I want is a roof and some quiet. I want to be alone.”
“That’s only eight hours off, if you hold on.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll hold on all right.” And Pickard laughed, not looking at them.
“Let’s eat,” said Simmons, watching him.
They set off down the coast, southward again. After four hours they had to cut inland to go around a river that was a mile wide and so swift it
