by Jerry
Somehow, we couldn’t see how they got there, but minute by minute there were more of them. There didn’t seem to be any pattern. They were scattered hit-or-miss all around us over an area several acres big, but there didn’t seem to be much doubt that we were the reason for the assembly. We were in the middle.
“If they get much thicker,” Pegleg said, “we won’t be able to get the jeep out.” It was a statement of fact, as though appearing and disappearing stones were a regular part of everyday life. If Pegleg felt any panic, he hid it remarkably well.
Lindy, too, retained her presence of mind. She had unclipped her tiny tape-camera and was hand-operating it, sweeping it slowly over that rainbow-colored, geometrically perfect boulder field. In her lab back in the Stardust, what it saw was being noiselessly recorded on film, ready for the evening’s report.
I fell in line. I walked from cube to cube, running my fingers over their surfaces, tilting them on edge and even lifting a couple. I could have carried one if I’d had to, but just barely. And that’s all the information we could get.
We reassembled by the jeep.
“Since none of this makes sense,” Pegleg said, “it’s evident that it makes a lot of sense. These cubes are being assembled here by some intelligent agency. They don’t seem to have any potential to damage us, but that’s simply because they haven’t done any. If one fell from above, instead of appearing on the ground, it could smash us flat.”
“You can’t see them appear,” I pointed out, “yet they’re bright, heavy and plenty tangible.”
“They make lovely seats,” Lindy contributed and demonstrated her point, sinking with a sigh onto the nearest one and wiggling to make herself comfortable. It was the black one that I had dipped with the hammer. The next instant she shrieked and leaped straight up into the air, grasping at her derriere with both hands. Her face flamed with shock and embarrassment.
“It bit me!” she said furiously. When things are funny, you laugh. The unusual and the bizarre become commonplace, and a healthy Earthman keeps his sense of humor regardless of the backdrop it has to operate against. Lindy evidently wasn’t hurt, so I laughed. In fact, I fairly yelled. Pegleg didn’t seem to find it so amusing, and Lindy’s fine face was indignant. But I laughed until the tears came, then collapsed weakly onto the nearest cube.
Then I stopped laughing. Not because something happened to me, though. I realized that I was sitting on a cube and that it hadn’t “bit” me. I wiggled cautiously on the cube, patted its sides gently.
“I don’t feel a thing,” I said.
“I sat on the black one,” Lindy said. “Try it.”
“That,” I remembered, “is the one I hit with the hammer. Wonder if there’s any connection?”
“Try it,” Lindy repeated. She looked grim.
IV
I’d have done it, too, but there was another interruption. It was real, it was dynamic, and it made no more sense than what had happened before. Something was sweeping up the hill. Below us along the slope the cubes began to vanish, like lights winking out. Then those closer went away, then those around the jeep. The last to go was the black cube, and I’d have sworn it went reluctantly, as if it had unfinished business.
The thing that seemed to cause this swished past. There was no doubt as to what it was. The hole below us no longer held a wheel. It came by so fast we had no time to move, and as it passed the jeep it released a spurt of whitish fluid that spattered a tire. It swept in a wide circle on the slope above, then made another run at us. Lindy and Pegleg jumped for the jeep. I jerked out my rock hammer, and as it went by I took a swipe at it. It leaned away as sweetly as a bicycle going around a curve, spat the white fluid all over my feet, and I hit nothing but empty air. This time, though, it kept going.
It rolled across the valley, through the stream and on out of sight over the next ridge. Against that painted landscape it looked exactly like an animated cartoon.
Once again we looked at an empty world. No movement other than the stream ripples below us, no sign of life.
“Well!” Pegleg said. He must have liked the sound of it, for he said it again. “Well!”
“Nicely put,” Lindy said drily. “So what do we do now?”
Pegleg sat down on the running-board of the jeep.
“They aren’t stones and they aren’t germs,” he said, “so that lets out you and me, Lindy. Looks like it’s up to the ecologist, Roscoe.”
I was down on one knee in the lettuce, carefully scraping the white stuff off my sandals and bare toes. It had dried and became chalky, and was easily removed. I put a good sample in a specimen vial.
“This stuff doesn’t seem caustic,” I observed. “I don’t feel any general effects, either.” I raised an eyebrow. “You two don’t seem to realize that I have been assaulted with, I have no doubt, deadly intent. Hand me some water, Pegleg.”
The water washed the material off readily. Lindy hung over me with delayed solicitude, but I was convinced that it wasn’t toxic, at least not to me.
“If it had been a rattlesnake bite, I’d be in a coma by now,” I grumbled. Then I brightened. “Let’s pretend it was a rattlesnake. Pegleg, the bottle!”
The bottle held good bourbon. It had been distilled on a lovely little Grade B planet seventy light-years away, in a gracious land called Kentucky. We each took a good belt of it and felt more cheerful, though the homesickness came back a little.
“They’re alive,” I said suddenly, apropos of nothing. “They aren’t remote-controlled anythings. The cubes feed on we don’t know what, and the millstones prey on the cubes. They both may be exceedingly complex. They may even be intelligent.”
“Uh-huh,” Pegleg said, and I could tell that it sounded reasonable to him. “So where do they go when they’re invisible?”
“I have no details, Dr. Williams,” I said loftily. “Merely an hypothesis. You are familiar with hypotheses, Dr. Williams?”
Pegleg opened his mouth (one of his best holds), but the jeep radio came alive and beat him to it.
V
“Dr. Williams! Dr. Peterson! Dr. Kissinger!” It was Stony Price, the communications chief, reading one of his formal communiques. “Dr. Rasmussen requests the pleasure of the entire staff’s company at dinner. Appetizers at 1800. And be on the nail, chums!” The last, naturally, was not on the sheet. The speaker went dead before we could answer. Stony was on another wavelength, calling the mapping crews, the meteorologists, or maybe Ursula Potts.
“I think,” Lindy said, “that I have enough to think about for one day. I would like to go back to the ship and sit in my lab and think. Then I think I will take a nap, for I think Johannes Rasmussen’s dinner will be dull and will require all my stamina.” She misted her brown eyes at Pegleg. “Could you take me back, Dr. Williams?”
“Does the sign over your desk say ‘think’ ?” Pegleg growled. “Let’s all go. What we do next calls for some planning.”
“Thinking,” I amended.
Lindy clambered into the back seat of the jeep and ignored us both.
Research Director and Expedition Chief Rasmussen’s dinners weren’t so bad, once you got past the formalities. They occurred about every two weeks, on an average. Full staff, and, get this, full dress. At that, maybe it was good for us. We wore field clothes (and in the case of the men it was shorts and sandals and an unkempt look) all the rest of the time. Johnny Rasmussen simply reminded us from time to time that we were a highly civilized, competent and profound group of scientists, and that between us and the varied worlds we explored there was a great gulf fixed. Culture-wise, that is. And to an Englishman, nothing expresses this better, to this day, than dressing for dinner. Rasmussen, despite his name, was as English as the shade of old John Bull himself.
So we dressed and showed up in the big dining salon at 1800, as directed. And Rasmussen, his lean face clean-cut and distinctive, his mustaches waxed to points, greeted us with his usual formula.
“Good evening, ladies and
gentlemen!” He stood tall and correct at the head of the long table, and he bowed and smiled slightly as he pronounced each name in turn.
“Captain Griffin. Dr. Ames. Dr. Peterson. Miss Potts. Dr. Kissinger . . .” He went right around the table, and when he got back to himself, he said: “I am delighted to have you here this evening. Won’t you be seated?”
Then everybody sat, Johnny picked up his appetizer spoon, and the formalities were over. Silver and china clinked. The conversation hum gradually built up to a subdued roar.
Ursula Potts sat next to me. She wore a grim-looking purple sheath for a dinner dress, her gray bun of hair was in order for once, and her earrings were garish pendants of red seeds from some place we had visited. She shoveled in the chow like a harvest hand.
“Well, Ursula,” I said. “Nothing to paint this stop, eh? No life. No action. No color.”
She pointed her long nose at me. “You’re kidding, Roscoe. Plenty to paint. Big challenge.” She took a bite of melon and chewed.
“Yeah,” I said. “The slopes and the sun and the blasted lettuce!” Ursula’s sharp eyes flicked at me. “There’s a population,” she said. “Plenty of life.”
“You’ve seen some?”
She shook her head and stuffed in more melon. “Haven’t seen a thing. Felt it, though. All around us. It’ll show up when it’s ready.”
“That’s a cheery note,” I said. “A disembodied population! This is where the spirits of men wait out the time between death and the next birth.”
“Don’t blaspheme, Roscoe!” She sank her teeth into a piece of meat and worried it. “Whole setup says life. Landscape shouts it. Got to be.”
She looked like a witch and she sounded like one. Maybe she is one. Anyhow, I don’t see how she does it. I said so and added: “You’re right, you know. Today we found the life.”
Her eyes gleamed with interest, but she didn’t say anything. Just ate.
“Color,” I baited her. “You’ve never seen anything like the shades of color.”
She chewed, then wiped the grease from her thin lips. I let her stew.
“Color on what?”
“On the cubes, naturally,” I said.
Her pale, unhuman eyes left mine, swept up and down the table. Then she heat vigorously with her fork on her water tumbler. The table talk died.
“Dr. Kissinger has news,” she said wickedly. “Sounds interesting. Playing cat and mouse with me. Maybe he’ll talk to the whole staff!”
“Can’t it wait?”
“Really, Ursula! Right in the middle of dinner!” That was Lindy.
“Give you more appetite,” Ursula said complacently. “Go on, Roscoe.”
I looked at Rasmussen.
“It’s your party, Johnny. Want me to talk in the middle of it?”
The chief hesitated. “It’s not customary, but if Miss Potts thinks—”
“Miss Potts does,” Ursula said. “This sounds different. Speak up, Roscoe!”
The old witch had me. If I’d been spoofing her, this would show me up. If I hadn’t, I could prove it by making a prereport to the staff, and her curiosity wouldn’t have to wait.
So I told them about the cubes and the wheel and the hole in the ground. Pegleg added details. Lindy admitted she had color film.
The excitement we kicked up almost spoiled dessert.
VI
Later we adjourned to the lounge, where those of us who liked them had cigars. Rasmussen bad a small and guarded supply of Venusian brandy. To our surprise he brought it out. It’s wonderful stuff, with a taste quite indescribable, and it only takes a couple of nips to make you sharp, witty and proud of yourself.
We were a receptive and appreciative audience when Lindy showed her color film. There was talk from speculation to argument as to the nature of the cubes. Ursula drooled over the colors. So, after a slow start, investigation of the life on Planet Four of the star Cyrene became an investigation and not a hunt.
Planet Four had a twenty-two hour day, but it was in other ways so like Earth that I always felt a little rushed for time. Automatically I tended to adjust to an Earth tempo. It always seemed to me that I was turning in too late and out too early. Worse than that silly daylight saving they affected on Earth a hundred years or so ago. Still, I managed to get the chores done, so nobody inquired about my feelings.
For three days following what we thereafter called the Breakthrough, we saw nary a cube nor a sign of one. I haunted the study area. Pegleg and Lindy made a couple of fifty-mile jaunts over the prairie, and into and out of a dozen stream valleys. They found a couple of wheel holes with nothing in them, but otherwise—nothing.
As a final gesture, I took a mapping flight, a thing I hate to do. The miserable little rocket boats are cramped; they’re rough as Pegleg’s jeep, and they go so fast you can’t see anything. But the automatic panoram cameras pick up everything from horizon to horizon, ten clicks a second, and if you’re interested you can blow up the results until one leaf of lettuce shows clear and sharp. We made a low run the length of the Island—and that was pay dirt.
I put the film in an ampliprojector that evening. The first Island frame I looked at made me zoom up the magnification. The place was a cubic boulderfield from end to end.
The cubes, though, were different. Instead of the kaleidoscope of color we had seen before, those were all one shade, a dull, neutral gray. But they were big. If the size of the lettuce leaves on the Island was a reliable guide, some of the larger cubes must have approached four feet on a side. Enormous things. I only speculated as to how much they might weigh.
Another fact was apparent. Whereas the colorful cubes were perfect geometrical figures, none of these was. All were slightly warped, misshapen, distorted. Some actually seemed to have corners off, or to be gouged. One in a thousand wasn’t a cube at all, but had seven, eight or even nine sides. It gave to think.
So we thought it over, Lindy and Pegleg and I, while we looked at one Island frame after another, and poured ourselves soothing libations from the bourbon bottle. Finally the bourbon took over completely. We woke the next morning with stiff necks and aching muscles, having slept in the study chairs all night. But our subconsciouses had been busy. We had some ideas, some explanations, some hypotheses.
We expounded them over coffee, followed by bacon and eggs. (Just because your job takes you around the galaxy is no reason to live like a savage. It’s well enough to eat what the environment affords for most of the day, but an Earth-type breakfast makes for contented investigators. Wonder if they still make Wheaties? Ugh!)
We talked well into the morning. We reached the point where talking served no more purpose, summarized our ideas, and got ready for the field again.
Lindy dictated the results of our deliberations onto her report tape:
“Hypothesis I. The cubes are living, sentient beings.
“Hypothesis II. There are two distinct species of cubes, the colorful, smaller type being dominant, and occupying most of the planet, the larger, gray, imperfect forms being confined perforce to the Island.
“Hypothesis III. There is only one species of cube, the imperfect members being relegated to the Island as they occur, the Island thus serving as sanitarium and jail.
“Hypothesis IV. The millwheels are living, sentient beings.
“Hypothesis V. For some reason the millwheels are antagonistic to the cubes and may even be able to destroy them. (Question: Is the white fluid expelled by the wheel toxic to cubes?)
“Hypothesis VI. The millwheels are predaceous and feed on the cubes. (Their apparently few numbers indicate a predator position, ecologically.)”
To this list Lindy appended a series of questions:
“Question: If living, what type or types of metabolism do the cubes and wheels have?
“Question: If living, on what do they feed?
“Question: Through what energy mechanics are the solid, heavy cubes able to appear and vanish ‘at will’ ?
“Question
: Are these energies likely to be directed against us if we continue to investigate?
“Question: Is there other life, in this same general pattern, as yet undiscovered by us?”
Lindy had just finished the tape when my intercom began to chatter. It spat a slip of paper onto my desk. It was the chem lab report on the white stuff I had scraped off my toes. They had taken their good time analyzing it.
“What gives? You think we need practice? Sodium acetyl saliciliate. Aspirin, pal. Bayer pure. If you’ve been hitting that bourbon bottle like I think you have, you probably need a local source.”
I passed the slip around. Pegleg frowned over it. Lindy giggled.
“I sometimes feel,” she said, “that it’s about time for me to go back home and start raising petunias and babies. Things are getting out of focus. They don’t make sense. Aspirin, yet!”
“I don’t know much about petunias,” I said, “but don’t forget me when you start the other project.”
I rummaged around in my desk. “Let’s stick a few aspirin tabs in a pouch and take ’em along. If the cubes get tough, they might serve better than an old-fashioned tommy-gun.”
A prophetic statement, that.
When something baffles me, I like solitude. Here, where everything was more or less puzzling, my inclination was to become a complete hermit. I was beginning to get excited, too. As I’ve said before somewhere, I’ve described and verified three evolutionary systems. Double-domes from Sol to Aroturus, most of whom haven’t even been off their own planets, quote me with reverence. (If they ever saw me at work, they’d probably faint.) So I knew I couldn’t let myself and my public down if here was a fourth system.
I left the others and went out alone, just walking. I knew by now that I wouldn’t see life if it didn’t “want” to be seen, and if it did, one place would probably turn out to be as good as another. What I needed mainly was to think. I worried briefly about leaving Pegleg and Lindy together so much, but then I figured that hanging around wouldn’t help that situation either. Lindy knew how I felt about her. I showed her again every chance that came up. We kidded and pretended, but she knew.
