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THE VICIOUS CATWOMEN OF PLANET VENUS!

GreatBritainBill (aka DeadCerberus)

The dense jungles of Venus dripped with an ever present

moisture, even though it hadn’t rained in days. The air was so

heavy with water that just breathing felt like opening your

mouth in the public pool and was about as pleasant.

From the sky and the forest floor came the hoots and screams

of thousands of unseen animals. Perhaps that one a five-winged

Gullywren, or that one a three tailed Cytherean Howler. And that

one…

*SHWING!*

The sharp ringing of a Durinium Steel machete broke through the

hoots and hollers of the jungle life. With a few

lightning fast slices a whole section of the jungle undergrowth

fell to the ground, almost seeming to start decomposing as soon as it

was cut. The bright shine of the blade lead the way through,

followed by the curvaceous form of its wielder.

Stepping through the hole she had made came the legendary (in

her own mind at least) Miss Victoria Ingram, fresh off the

Atomic rocket from Cambridge to Venus.

“Excuse me! That’s Dr. Victoria Ingram of Cambridge! Thank you

very much.”

Sorry, Dr. Victoria (your PhD was in philosophy, geez). Fresh

off the rocket, though the Cytherean humidity was quickly

working to change that, and already diving into the dense jungle

that surrounded the spaceport.

Humanity was less than five years on the second planet, having first

endeavoured to to traverse Mars, come the invention of the Nuclear Accumulator rocket

engine. Only after landing on the red planet and entreating with

the native Barsoomian’s did mankind's eyes turn to the cloud

shrouded planet.

But Venus resisted them. Unlike the dusty plains and dry

canals of Mars, easily traversed on wheel or with a Barsomian

flying skiff, the jungle of Venus ate up men and their machines

alike. All the expected jungle problems were present. The damp

humidity rotting clothes off the back and rusting exposed metal.

The vacuum tubes of robots becoming waterlogged and destroyed no

matter how well sealed. The slow progress of reclaiming

buildable land from the tree’s.

And of course, disease.

Cytherean Green Fever could take down a healthy man in hours

and even with modern medicine was fatal around half the time.

But then there were the things that hadn’t been anticipated.

Man sized plants with an appetite for flesh. Great, scaly, batlike

things that had come to be called Aparxians that could

carry off an entire cow, and then there was the disquieting fact

that men sometimes just wandered off into the forest and vanish

without a trace.

None of that really mattered to Victoria though, or rather she

hadn’t paid attention to the safety briefing on the flight over.

Her mind was focused on one thing and one thing only.

Treasure.

It had been only a few weeks since the news had leaked out.

One of the surveyors on the planet had found something. Not a

new plant, or species of insect, which the survey was

practically tripping over, but an arrowhead. A piece of clearly

worked technology. This was a massive shock as prior to then,

there had been no sign of intelligent life on Venus.

Even before Mars had been reached it was widely known that something

intelligent lived there, as their canals could be seen all the

way from earth, even if the telepathic emanations they used to

communicate could not be detected like radio waves could. But

while Venus was clearly overflowing with life, nothing like the

Barsoomians had presented themselves, and the planets thick jungle

and near constant cloud cover precluded much survey from the

air.

The arrowhead though, was clear evidence, and soon several more

pieces were discovered in the same area. The remains of some

clothes, made out of native leather, some clay pots that seemed

to have once contained a kind of alcoholic drink, and a crude

necklace made of woven twine with a brilliant orange gem the

size of an egg as its centrepiece. The discovery had sent

shock waves across the scientific and art world. Who were these

inhabitants? Did they still exist or had they gone extinct? Did

they build cities or just live in the jungle? Just WHAT did they

look like?

Of course none of those questions were why Victoria had sold

most of her (admittedly merger) possessions and hopped the first

shuttle to Venus. All she cared about was how much MONEY this

discovery could make her. When the Barsoomian’s had been

discovered years earlier it had set off an explosive fashion

movement back on earth, and of course the well to do didn’t just

want to imitate alien styles, they wanted to own alien artifacts

and jewellery to show off at their latest parties. For a while

even basic or cheep Maritain artifacts could fetch a ridiculous

price back on Earth, so it stood to reason that the same thing

was about to happen with Venus.

So with only the (admittedly small, damn clerk had gotten her

sizes wrong) clothes on her back, a cheep Durinium Steel,

machete, a canteen, and her trusty Radium Gun at her belt,

Victoria set off into the jungle.

—————————————————————————————————————————

Progress was… slow. The rumours she’d heard about the density

of Venus’ jungles had not been exaggerated at all. She was

spending more time cutting then walking and her machete arm was

getting sore.

"Out here for three hours and I doubt I’ve even walked two

kilometres will all these damn plants blocking my way." Victoria

thought, taking a pause to swig from her canteen. "And if that

wasn’t bad enough my canteen is almost empty. Ugh this is not

going a smoothly as I thought it would be."

Standing up from her quick break, Victoria started scanning

around. She’d heard plenty of jokes about not drinking the water

in the jungle but some of Venus’ fruits were apparently edible.

Maybe she could find some of those to stretch her merger

supplies further.

"Now if I were a fruit where would I be? Well up in a tree

obviously but…"

The forest was a riot of colour and flowers everywhere, but

not a piece of (identifiable)fruit in sight.

"They’re probably up in the canopy, with the Venus monkeys or

tree spiders or whatever horrible creature they have here. Which

means I either need to climb all the way up or find some that's

fallen to the ground and… hello, what’s this?"

While scanning the ground in search of some plump, juicy fruit,

something had caught her eye. Through the deep undergrowth

several plants had had their stems bent or snapped, and it

wasn’t anywhere Victoria had walked yet. Crouching down to take

a closer look something else came into view. A footprint, or

something that looked kinda like a footprint at least. Whatever

it was from they clearly weren’t wearing any kind of shoes. The

foot seemed longer and thinner than a average humans but it still

had five toes, though off the end of each mark there was a small

triangular depression. How odd.

But they were clearly not human, as if any sensible person

would go without shoes in the jungle, and they were heading off

into the underbrush. So Victoria was left with a dilemma. Did

she continue searching for sustenance or even head back to the

spaceport to resupply? Or did she foolishly stride off into the

undergrowth after what could be nothing and risk…

“ADDDDVVEENNTURE!”

…and she’s already sprinted off. Of course.

Plunging through the branches and brambles now, while keeping

her eyes on the elusive tracks, was of course a dumb idea. She

could have just walked and not had her clothes torn up by

numerous little cuts, but she didn’t listen to me and now in

addition to to being hot, sweaty, and running low on water,

Victoria was showing about 30% more skin than before.

“For an inner voice you have no sense of adventure, you know?”

Narrator, thank you very much. Though if we're are going to

continue with this stupidity I suppose we should get right back to it.

The tracks led ever deeper into the jungle, though how much further

was hard to determine. One moss and vine covered tree looked

very much like another. Sometimes the tracks would disappear

altogether, only to pick back up after a few meters.

Sometimes they veered left or right with no apparent obstacles in the way,

or doubled back on themselves. There seemed to be no pattern to

it. The trail just continued on for who knows how long. A day

on Venus lasting more than a year so the only reliable way to tell

time was by the consumption of resources, and in Victoria’s case it

wasn’t that long before she swallowed down the last of her water.

Not long before her canteen was rattling empty like a pair of

dry bones, not long until the last of her precious, life giving water was all but…

well you get the point.

And if that wasn’t bad enough, the tracks had disappeared

again, and a quick search of the area had failed to turn them

up.

“Well, shit” came the amateur plunderers exasperated outburst. “Ok, no reason

to panic now, lets go with the old plan. Find some sweet, water

rich fruit and not die from dehydration.”

New goal in mind the search began, and quickly stalled out as

the only fruits she could find close by had clearly fallen ages ago.

“Not a problem, lets kill two birds with one stone. If there’s

nothing to be found down here, let’s just go up to the source.

Hopefully spotting where the spaceport is at the same time.” Victoria wasn’t

exactly a proper monkey back home but how hard could it be?

With a quick bit of finagling her belt was off, shorts

now a bit looser. Hey, if it works in the movies. Swinging the

belt around the tree trunk the arduous climb began.

She was about halfway to the canopy when Victoria started

thinking that this all looked a lot easier in movies, and those

characters didn’t seem to worry about their belts snapping from

the pressure or abrading on the tree bark. They also didn’t…

“Mrrrrrw”

“Oh shit was that the leather of the belt groaning, about to

snap?” Victoria froze in place, the strain of holding on causing

her arms to shake badly. “Ok, snap decision. Try to lower myself

down, or scramble for the top? If I go down I might not be able

to get back up and then I’ll have no fruit and still be lost.

But if I get to the top then…”

“Row, Murrr, Mrrow”

That was… definitely not the belt that time. In fact it

sounded like it came from above her. Craning her neck back while

trying to not to shift her centre of balance wasn’t easy, and

the glare from the sunlight that diffused through the clouds

made it hard to see, but after a few seconds her eye’s adjusted a

bit and the canopy came into view.

As well as three pair of bright yellow eyes looking straight at her.

“Oh shit, down it is!”

Now the funny thing about rapidly trying to descend anything

is that going down is often paradoxically harder than getting

up, see any cat that ever climbed a tree then got stuck in it

(not that these things seemed to have that issue). Particularly

hard was that the belt didn’t really feel like smoothly sliding

down the uneven bark of the tree. The result being that after a

few awkward and hurried shuffles, the belt decided it it had

gone far enough, thank you very much, and lodged itself into a

bit of bark.

Victoria, on the other hand, kept going down. Down fast now,

for a few seconds at least.

—————————————————————————————————————————

“Irz per whu? There must be some way I can raise my grade

Maam”

It was a good thing that there was plenty of soft foliage

foliage to break her fall, otherwise she’d be seeing a lot less

than Tweety birds right now. Flat on your back from a 20 foot

fall was not a good way to go. But everything was OK now. She

was back in Cambridge and the soft (and furry?) hands of her

strikingly beautiful, yet unavailable, literature teacher Ms.

Lovelace were pulling her to her feet.

Perhaps she could feign a bout of weakness so the professor would escort

her to the nurses office, which would of course be mysteriously empty.

Then, while Ms. Lovelace turned to look for the nurse, a button

or two of her blouse would strategical pop open revealing - hang

on, her blouse did just pop open. And she could feel several…

hands(?)all over her body.

What?

Her confusion was compounded by the loud “MRRRRW” in her ear.

2, 4, 6, 8, yep that was eight fuzzy… hands? No, paws, roaming

all over her body. Eyes fluttered open again, things were still

blurry but she was definitely standing up now, supported by two

bodies positioned behind her. Victoria’s head dipped down again,

she just felt so tired. Only, looking down there was… someone

looking up at her? A face? No, two faces!

Victoria jerked, instinctively trying to get away from the

things that had chased her down here, but the arms from behind

held her firm. Vision clearing the strange beings finally came

into focus. They were… cats? Catlike certainly. Triangular

pointed ears? Check. Thick dirty blond fur all over? Check. Paws

with retractable claws? That were currently roaming all over her

body? And… tugging down her shorts?!?

It was just at that moment that Victoria noticed something

else about the cat-creatures. They seemed to have various bauble

and trinkets all over their (shapely) bodies. Rings, piercings,

and even necklaces made out of twine and sporting curious orange

stones.

Well, it looked like she had found the natives.