by H. B. Fyfe
When she began to smile dreamily, Kolin backed away.
The corners of his mouth felt oddly stiff; they had involuntarily drawn back to expose his clenched teeth. He glanced warily about, but nothing appeared to threaten him.
“It’s time to end this scout,” he told himself. “It’s dangerous. One good look and I’m jetting off! What I need is an easy tree to climb.”
He considered the massive giant. Soaring thirty or forty meters into the thin fog and dwarfing other growth, it seemed the most promising choice.
At first, Kolin saw no way, but then the network of vines clinging to the rugged trunk suggested a route. He tried his weight gingerly, then began to climb.
“I should have brought Yrtok’s radio,” he muttered. “Oh, well, I can take it when I come down, if she hasn’t snapped out of her spell by then. Funny…I wonder if that green thing bit her.”
Footholds were plentiful among the interlaced lianas. Kolin progressed rapidly. When he reached the first thick limbs, twice head height, he felt safer.
Later, at what he hoped was the halfway mark, he hooked one knee over a branch and paused to wipe sweat from his eyes. Peering down, he discovered the ground to be obscured by foliage.
“I should have checked from down there to see how open the top is,” he mused. “I wonder how the view will be from up there?”
“Depends on what you’re looking for, Sonny!” something remarked in a soughing wheeze.
Kolin, slipping, grabbed desperately for the branch. His fingers clutched a handful of twigs and leaves, which just barely supported him until he regained a grip with the other hand.
The branch quivered resentfully under him.
“Careful, there!” whooshed the eerie voice. “It took me all summer to grow those!”
Kolin could feel the skin crawling along his backbone.
“Who are you?” he gasped.
The answering sigh of laughter gave him a distinct chill despite its suggestion of amiability.
“Name’s Johnny Ashlew. Kinda thought you’d start with what I am. Didn’t figure you’d ever seen a man grown into a tree before.”
Kolin looked about, seeing little but leaves and fog.
“I have to climb down,” he told himself in a reasonable tone. “It’s bad enough that the other two passed out without me going space happy too.”
“What’s your hurry?” demanded the voice. “I can talk to you just as easy all the way down, you know. Airholes in my bark—I’m not like an Earth tree.”
Kolin examined the bark of the crotch in which he sat. It did seem to have assorted holes and hollows in its rough surface.
“I never saw an Earth tree,” he admitted. “We came from Haurtoz.”
“Where’s that? Oh, never mind—some little planet. I don’t bother with them all, since I came here and found out I could be anything I wanted.”
“What do you mean, anything you wanted?” asked Kolin, testing the firmness of a vertical vine.
“Just what I said,” continued the voice, sounding closer in his ear as his cheek brushed the ridged bark of the tree trunk. “And, if I do have to remind you, it would be nicer if you said ‘Mr. Ashlew,’ considering my age.”
“Your age? How old—?”
“Can’t really count it in Earth years any more. Lost track. I always figured bein’ a tree was a nice, peaceful life; and when I remembered how long some of them live, that settled it. Sonny, this world ain’t all it looks like.”
“It isn’t, Mr. Ashlew?” asked Kolin, twisting about in an effort to see what the higher branches might hide.
“Nope. Most everything here is run by the Life—that is, by the thing that first grew big enough to do some thinking, and set its roots down all over until it had control. That’s the outskirts of it down below.”
“The other trees? That jungle?”
“It’s more’n a jungle, Sonny. When I landed here, along with the others from the Arcturan Spark, the planet looked pretty empty to me, just like it must have to— Watch it, there, Boy! If I didn’t twist that branch over in time, you’d be bouncing off my roots right now!”
“Th-thanks!” grunted Kolin, hanging on grimly.
“Doggone vine!” commented the windy whisper. “He ain’t one of my crowd. Landed years later in a ship from some star towards the center of the galaxy. You should have seen his looks before the Life got in touch with his mind and set up a mental field to help him change form. He looks twice as good as a vine!”
“He’s very handy,” agreed Kolin politely. He groped for a foothold.
“Well…matter of fact, I can’t get through to him much, even with the Life’s mental field helping. Guess he started living with a different way of thinking. It burns me. I thought of being a tree, and then he came along to take advantage of it!”
Kolin braced himself securely to stretch tiring muscles.
“Maybe I’d better stay a while,” he muttered. “I don’t know where I am.”
“You’re about fifty feet up,” the sighing voice informed him. “You ought to let me tell you how the Life helps you change form. You don’t have to be a tree.”
“No?”
“Uh-uh! Some of the boys that landed with me wanted to get around and see things. Lots changed to animals or birds. One even stayed a man—on the outside anyway. Most of them have to change as the bodies wear out, which I don’t, and some made bad mistakes tryin’ to be things they saw on other planets.”
“I wouldn’t want to do that, Mr. Ashlew.”
“There’s just one thing. The Life don’t like taking chances on word about this place gettin’ around. It sorta believes in peace and quiet. You might not get back to your ship in any form that could tell tales.”
“Listen!” Kolin blurted out. “I wasn’t so much enjoying being what I was that getting back matters to me!”
“Don’t like your home planet, whatever the name was?”
“Haurtoz. It’s a rotten place. A Planetary State! You have to think and even look the way that’s standard thirty hours a day, asleep or awake. You get scared to sleep for fear you might dream treason and they’d find out somehow.”
“Whooeee! Heard about them places. Must be tough just to live.”
Suddenly, Kolin found himself telling the tree about life on Haurtoz, and of the officially announced threats to the Planetary State’s planned expansion. He dwelt upon the desperation of having no place to hide in case of trouble with the authorities. A multiple system of such worlds was agonizing to imagine.
Somehow, the oddity of talking to a tree wore off. Kolin heard opinions spouting out which he had prudently kept bottled up for years.
The more he talked and stormed and complained, the more relaxed he felt.
“If there was ever a fellow ready for this planet,” decided the tree named Ashlew, “you’re it, Sonny! Hang on there while I signal the Life by root!”
Kolin sensed a lack of direct attention. The rustle about him was natural, caused by an ordinary breeze. He noticed his hands shaking.
“Don’t know what got into me, talking that way to a tree,” he muttered. “If Yrtok snapped out of it and heard, I’m as good as re-personalized right now.”
As he brooded upon the sorry choice of arousing a search by hiding where he was or going back to bluff things out, the tree spoke.
“Maybe you’re all set, Sonny. The Life has been thinkin’ of learning about other worlds. If you can think of a safe form to jet off in, you might make yourself a deal. How’d you like to stay here?”
“I don’t know,” said Kolin. “The penalty for desertion—”
“Whoosh! Who’d find you? You could be a bird, a tree, even a cloud.”
Silenced but doubting, Kolin permitted himself to try the dream on for size.
He considered what form might mos
t easily escape the notice of search parties and still be tough enough to live a long time without renewal. Another factor slipped into his musings: mere hope of escape was unsatisfying after the outburst that had defined his fuming hatred for Haurtoz.
I’d better watch myself! he thought. Don’t drop diamonds to grab at stars!
“What I wish I could do is not just get away but get even for the way they make us live…the whole damn set-up. They could just as easy make peace with the Earth colonies. You know why they don’t?”
“Why?” wheezed Ashlew.
“They’re scared that without talk of war, and scouting for Earth fleets that never come, people would have time to think about the way they have to live and who’s running things in the Planetary State. Then the gravy train would get blown up—and I mean blown up!”
The tree was silent for a moment. Kolin felt the branches stir meditatively. Then Ashlew offered a suggestion.
“I could tell the Life your side of it,” he hissed. “Once in with us, you can always make thinking connections, no matter how far away. Maybe you could make a deal to kill two birds with one stone, as they used to say on Earth….”
* * * *
Chief Steward Slichow paced up and down beside the ration crate turned up to serve him as a field desk. He scowled in turn, impartially, at his watch and at the weary stewards of his headquarters detail. The latter stumbled about, stacking and distributing small packets of emergency rations.
The line of crewmen released temporarily from repair work was transient as to individuals but immutable as to length. Slichow muttered something profane about disregard of orders as he glared at the rocky ridges surrounding the landing place.
He was so intent upon planning greetings with which to favor the tardy scouting parties that he failed to notice the loose cloud drifting over the ridge.
It was tenuous, almost a haze. Close examination would have revealed it to be made up of myriads of tiny spores. They resembled those cast forth by one of the bushes Kolin’s party had passed. Along the edges, the haze faded raggedly into thin air, but the units evidently formed a cohesive body. They drifted together, approaching the men as if taking intelligent advantage of the breeze.
One of Chief Slichow’s staggering flunkies, stealing a few seconds of relaxation on the pretext of dumping an armful of light plastic packing, wandered into the haze.
He froze.
After a few heartbeats, he dropped the trash and stared at ship and men as if he had never seen either. A hail from his master moved him.
“Coming, Chief!” he called but, returning at a moderate pace, he murmured, “My name is Frazer. I’m a second assistant steward. I’ll think as Unit One.”
Throughout the cloud of spores, the mind formerly known as Peter Kolin congratulated itself upon its choice of form.
Nearer to the original shape of the Life than Ashlew got, he thought.
He paused to consider the state of the tree named Ashlew, half immortal but rooted to one spot, unable to float on a breeze or through space itself on the pressure of light. Especially, it was unable to insinuate any part of itself into the control center of another form of life, as a second spore was taking charge of the body of Chief Slichow at that very instant.
There are not enough men, thought Kolin. Some of me must drift through the airlock. In space, I can spread through the air system to the command group.
Repairs to the Peace State and the return to Haurtoz passed like weeks to some of the crew but like brief moments in infinity to other units. At last, the ship parted the air above Headquarters City and landed.
The unit known as Captain Theodor Kessel hesitated before descending the ramp. He surveyed the field, the city and the waiting team of inspecting officers.
“Could hardly be better, could it?” he chuckled to the companion unit called Security Officer Tarth.
“Hardly, sir. All ready for the liberation of Haurtoz.”
“Reformation of the Planetary State,” mused the captain, smiling dreamily as he grasped the handrail. “And then—formation of the Planetary Mind!”
A TRANSMUTATION OF MUDDLES
The rugged little stellar scout ship flared down to the surface of Kappa Orionis VII about a mile from the aboriginal village. The pilot, Lieutenant Eric Haruhiku, scorched an open field, but pointed out to Louis Mayne that he had been careful to disturb neither woodland nor shoreline.
“The Kappans are touchy about those, Judge,” he explained, “They fish a lot, as you’d guess from all these shallow seas, and they pick fruit in the forests; but they don’t farm much.”
“No use provoking trouble,” Mayne approved. “It’s a long way from Rigel.”
“It’s a longer way from Sol,” said the pilot.
“Don’t I know, boy! If it weren’t, I’d be just another retired space captain, quietly struggling with my ranch on Rigel IX. As it is, to get the grant, I had to remain on call as an arbitrator.”
“Somebody has to settle these things,” said Haruhiku. “There’s not much law way out here, except what the Space Force can apply. Well, if you’ll excuse me, sir, I’ll have them get out the helicopter and take us over to the village.”
“Let me see that last message again, before you go,” Mayne requested.
The pilot extracted a sheet from his clipboard and handed it to Mayne as he left. Mayne studied the text with little pleasure.
Terran Space Force headquarters on Rigel IX wished to inform him that the long awaited envoy from Terra to Kappa Orionis VII not only had arrived but had departed two days behind Mayne.
It was hoped, the communication continued, that nothing would interfere with the desired objective of coming to some friendly agreement with the Kappans that would permit Terran use of the planet as a base for spaceships. The envoy, of course, was prepared to offer trade inducements and various other forms of help to the semi-civilized natives. Mayne was requested to lay whatever groundwork he could.
In my spare time, no doubt, he reflected. I’m to settle this silly business any way at all—as long as the natives get their way. But has anybody told the government about insurance companies? If it costs money or a lawsuit, will they back me up?
He felt himself to be in a ridiculous dilemma. The Kappans were reported to have seized a Terran spaceship as it landed to trade. Naturally, the captain had squawked for help. He claimed he had crashed; his insurance company thought otherwise; the Kappans seemed to have some entirely different idea in mind. Mayne had been summoned into action to render a decision, after the rough and ready system of these settlements on the surface of Terra’s sphere of explored space.
Regretfully, he made his way now to the cubbyhole allowed him on the cramped scout, where he changed to a more formal tunic of a bright blue he hoped would look impressive to native eyes. By the time he was ready, the helicopter was waiting. He and Haruhiku entered, and the crewman at the controls took off for the scene of the dispute.
Arriving over the village, they hovered a few minutes while Haruhiku studied the lay of the land. The lieutenant had been to this world before, long enough to pick up some of the language and customs, so Mayne was content to follow his advice about landing a little way off from a spaceship that towered outside the village.
They came down about a hundred yards away, between a rutted sort of road and a long hut covered by a curved, thatched roof.
“They’re expecting us,” said Haruhiku, gesturing at the group before the hut.
It consisted of half a dozen humans and several of the Kappan natives. The latter, naturally, caught Mayne’s eye first. The most imposing individual among them stood about five feet tall. The planet being of about the same mass as Terra, the Kappan probably weighed over two hundred and fifty pounds. He was a rugged biped with something saurian in his ancestry; for his skin was scaled, and bony plates grew into a low crown upon his lon
g skull. His arms and legs were heavy and bowed, with joints obscured by thick muscles and loose skin. Mayne was struck by the fancy that the Kappan’s color, a blend of brown and olive, was that of a small dragon who had achieved a good suntan. A yellow kilt was his main article of attire, although he wore a few decorations of polished bone.
One of the Terrans stepped forward. He wore a semimilitary uniform.
“I suppose you’re Louis Mayne?” he asked.
“Right,” answered Mayne. “You would be Captain Voorhis, of the Gemsbok?”
“Check. This here is Eemakh. He’s more or less chief of the village, or tribe, or whatever you wanna call it.”
Mayne found his gaze sinking into catlike slits of jet in a pair of huge orange eyes shaded by massive brow ridges. The native made some statement in a clicking language that had a harsh, choppy rhythm.
“He welcomes you to Kappa,” Haruhiku interpreted. “He hopes the gods will not be displeased.”
“What a warm welcome!” commented Mayne. “Have you been getting along that well, Captain Voorhis?”
“Just about,” said the spacer. “One of my boys knows a few words. Rest of the time, we make signs. I gotta admit they ain’t been too unfriendly.”
“But they have seized your ship?”
“You’re damn’ right! That insurance guy they sent out don’t see it that way though.”
“Where is this representative of the Belt Insurance Company?” asked Mayne.
“Melin? His ship landed over on the other side of the village, about half a mile. He oughta be along soon. Must’ve seen you land.”
Mayne wondered whether it were necessary to await the arrival of the insurance adjustor before asking any questions. To cover his hesitation, he turned to take his first good look at the hull of the Gemsbok.
“What do they think they’re doing?” he demanded, staring.
The Gemsbok was—or had been—an ungraceful, thick starship on the verge of aging into scrap. Towering here between the village and the huge, bluish-green leaves of the Kappan forest, she was in the process of being transformed into a planet-bound object of a certain weird grace.
