The War-Nymphs of Venus

THE WAR-NYMPHS of VENUS
By RAY CUMMINGS
The voluptuous golden civilization of Arron was
doomed. Licentious laughter echoed through the
water-kingdom, unmindful of the relentless,
clanking invasion of the Gorts. What fools, this
handful of warrior-maidens led by a puny Earthman,
to pit their thin strength against Tollgamo's iron army!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Spring 1941.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

I was fishing for tarpon, lolling back in the stern of my small boat. The outboard motor, running at trolling speed, was a puttering purr in the drowsing watery silence. It was sunset of a summer evening of 1948. The Gulf of Mexico, out beyond the mouth of the little Florida bayou inlet across which I was heading, was a glassy expanse, blood-red in the light of the huge setting sun.
To the south lightning was playing along the orange sky. I recall that a vague uneasiness was upon me. Because a storm might be coming? Surely it was not that. I was within three miles of the small island where young Jack Allen and I were camping. It was my intention to head for there presently, especially as there had been no sign of tarpon. Allen had been too lazy to come fishing; he had said he would loaf and have supper ready for us at dark.
My name is Kent Fanning. Jack Allen and I were of an agetwenty-four, that summer. With our business in New York, we were here on vacation, having a permit to fish and to camp on the small, uninhabited island.
The intermittent lightning at the southern horizon rose higher. Faint muttering thunder was audible. A massive grey-white cloud was down there now, a thunderhead, coming northward with the storm behind it. I had decided to pull in my line and head for the island when suddenly I had a strike, the big reel humming as the line went out. A tarpon? I hooked it, shut off the motor, sat erect with my stout rod braced in the leather socket of my belt. I was prepared for a long struggle.
And then, two hundred yards or so from me, the water broke with a floundering splash. I gasped, stared numbed. A floundering, oblong pink-white thing was there at the end of my line. A slim white arm flailed up as the thing turned, swimming on the surface frantically away from me. Pink-white limbs gleaming in the moonlight. Streaming tawny hair, like seaweedhair in which my hook seemed to be caught.
A girl! I had her at the boat in a moment, floundering in the moonlight, gasping, still trying to twist around and disentangle my hook from her long streaming hair. A small, slim figure, white-limbed yet flushed like moonlit coral. There was a brief dangling robe wetly clinging to her. It was of gleaming lustrous green as though perhaps it was a fabric of softly woven metal, painted green by the sea.
An extraordinary yet very human girl.
Just a few seconds of my stricken amazement. I recall that I gasped inanely.
"Wellwhy good Heavens"
Her gasping laugh rippled like the splashing water in the moonlight. "Sorry! I got some frightened to be confused."
English! Strangely intoned with little rippling liquid syllables. Like nothing I had ever heard before and yet my own language.
She had pulled my hook from the gleaming tawny tresses of her hair. Then she flung up a coral-white arm. I bent, seized her wrist, drew her up and she came with a nimble, skilled little leap and landed on her feet in the boat beside me!

II
I find myself now somewhat at a loss accurately and yet succinctly to depict that next hour or two. You who read this of course have heard much of the strange affair from newscasters and from the public prints. Garbled reports, some of them. Others pedantic with technical details of science. I am no scientist. It is my purpose here merely to give a factual acco

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