Perilous Planets

by Brian W Aldiss

  He couldn’t go back, even if it were possible to do it without getting killed. If only he alone had fallen in—No, then the others would have pulled him out and killed the monster.

  There were, he felt, too many problems demanding solutions all at once. It was hard to concentrate; his mind kept slipping maddeningly out of focus.

  Vivian, whose pain had stopped some time ago, began to wail again. Gumbs snapped at her. McCarty cursed both of them. George himself felt that he had had very nearly all he could take, cooped up with three idiots who had no more sense than to squabble among themselves.

  ‘Wait a minute,’ he said. ‘Do you all feel the same way? Irritable? Jumpy? As if you’d been working for sixty hours straight and were too tired to sleep?’

  ‘Stop talking like a video ad,’ Vivian said angrily. ‘Haven’t we got enough trouble without—’

  ‘We’re hungry,’ George interrupted. ‘We didn’t realize it, because we haven’t got the organs that usually signal hunger. But the last thing this body ate was us, and that was a whole day ago. We’ve got to find something to ingest. And soon, I’d say.’

  ‘Good Lord, you’re right,’ said Gumbs. ‘But if this thing only eats people—I mean to say—’

  ‘It never met people until we landed,’ George replied curtly. ‘Any protein should do.’

  He started off in what he hoped was the direction they had been following all along—directly away from camp. At least, he thought, if they put enough distance behind them, they might get thoroughly lost.

  ==========

  III

  They moved out of the trees and down the long slope of a valley, over a wiry carpet of dead grasses, until they reached a watercourse in which a thin trickle was still flowing. Far down the bank, partly screened by clumps of skeletal shrubbery, George saw a group of animals that looked vaguely like miniature pigs. He told the others about it, and started cautiously in that direction.

  ‘Which way is the wind blowing, Vivian?’ he asked. ‘Can you feel it?’

  She said, ‘No. I could before, when we were going downhill, but now I think we’re facing into it.’

  ‘Good. We may be able to sneak up on them.’

  ‘But we’re not going to eat animals, are we?’

  ‘Yes, how about it, Meister?’ Gumbs put in. ‘I don’t say I’m a squeamish fellow, but after all—’

  George, who felt a little squeamish himself—like all the others, he had been brought up on a diet of yeasts and synthetic protein—said testily, ‘What else can we do? You’ve got eyes; you can see that it’s autumn here. Autumn after a hot summer, at that. Trees bare, streams dried up. We eat meat or go without—or would you rather hunt for insects?’

  Gumbs, shocked to the core, muttered for a while and then gave up.

  Seen at closer range, the animals looked less porcine and even more unappetizing than before. They had lean, segmented, pinkish-gray bodies, four short legs, flaring ears, and blunt scimitar-like snouts with which they were rooting in the ground, occasionally turning up something which they gulped, ears flapping.

  George counted thirty of them, grouped fairly closely in a little space of clear ground between the bushes and the river. They moved slowly, but their short legs looked powerful; he guessed that they could run fast enough when they had to.

  He inched forward, keeping his eye-stalks low, stopping instantly whenever one of the beasts looked up. Moving with increasing caution, he had approached to within ten meters of the nearest when McCarty said abruptly:

  ‘Meister, has it occurred to you to wonder just how we are going to eat these animals?’

  ‘Don’t be foolish,’ he said irritably. ‘We’ll just—’ He stopped, baffled.

  ==========

  Did the thing’s normal method of assimilation stop as soon as it got a tenant? Were they supposed to grow fangs and a gullet and all the rest of the apparatus? Impossible; they’d starve to death first. But on the other hand—damn this fuzzy-headed feeling—wouldn’t it have to stop, to prevent the tenant from being digested with his first meal?

  ‘Well?’ McCarty demanded.

  That guess was wrong, George knew, but he couldn’t say why; and it was a distinctly unpleasant thought. Or, even worse, suppose the meal became the tenant, and the tenant the meal?

  The nearest animal’s head went up, and four tiny red eyes stared directly at George. The floppy ears snapped to attention. It was not time for speculation.

  ‘He’s seen us!’ George shouted mentally. ‘Run !’

  One instant they were lying still in the prickly dry grass; the next they were skimming across the ground, with the herd galloping away straight ahead of them. The hams of the nearest beast loomed up closer and closer, bounding furiously; then they had run it down and vaulted over it.

  Casting an eye backward, George saw that it was lying motionless in the grass—unconscious or dead.

  They ran down another one. The anesthetic, George thought lucidly. One touch does it. And another, and another. Of course we can digest them, he thought, with relief. It has to be selective to begin with or it couldn’t have separated out our nervous tissue.

  Four down. Six down. Three more together as the herd bunched between the last arm of the thicket and the steep river-bank; then two that tried to double back; then four stragglers, one after the other.

  The rest of the herd disappeared into the tall grass up the slope, but fifteen bodies were strewn-behind them.

  ==========

  Taking no chances, George went back to the beginning of the line and edged the monster’s body under the first carcass.

  ‘Crouch down, Gumbs,’ he said. ‘We have to slide under it… that’s far enough. Leave the head hanging over.’

  ‘What for?’ barked the soldier.

  ‘You don’t want his brain in here with us, do you? We don’t know how many this thing is equipped to take. It might even like this one better than any of ours. But I can’t see it bothering to keep the rest of the nervous system, if we make sure not to eat the head.’

  ‘Oh!’ said Vivian.

  ‘I beg your pardon, Miss Bellis,’ George said contritely. ‘It shouldn’t be too unpleasant, though, if we don’t let it bother us. It isn’t as if we had taste buds or—’

  ‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘Just please lets not talk about it.’

  ‘I should think not,’ Gumbs put in. ‘A little more tact, don’t you think, Meister?’

  Accepting this reproof, George turned his attention to the corpse that lay on the monster’s glabrous surface, between his section and Gumbs’s. It was sinking, just visibly, into the flesh. A cloud of opacity was spreading around it.

  When it was almost gone and the neck had been severed, they moved on to the next. This time, at George’s suggestion, they took aboard two at once. Gradually their irritable mood faded; they began to feel at ease and cheerful, and George found it possible to think consecutively without having vital points slip out of his reach.

  They were on their eighth and ninth courses, and George was happily engaged in an intricate chain of speculation as to the monster’s circulatory system, when Miss McCarty broke a long silence to announce:

  ‘I have now perfected a method by which we can return to camp safely. We will begin at once.’

  ==========

  Startled and dismayed, George turned his eyes toward McCarty’s quadrant of the monster. Protruding from the rim was a stringy, joined something that looked like—yes, it was!—a grotesque but recognizable arm and hand. As he watched, the lumpy fingers fumbled with a blade of grass, tugged, uprooted it.

  ‘Major Gumbs!’ said McCarty. ‘It will be your task to locate the following articles as quickly as possible. One, a surface suitable for writing. I suggest a large leaf, light in color, dry but not brittle, or a tree from which a large section of bark can be easily peeled. Two, a pigment. No doubt you will be able to discover berries yielding suitable juice. If not, mud will do. Three, a twig or reed for us
e as a pen. When you have directed me to all these essential items, I will employ them to write a message outlining our predicament. You will read the result and point out any errors, which I will then correct. When the message is completed, we will return with it to the camp, approaching at night, and deposit it in a conspicuous place. We will retire until daybreak, and when the message has been read, we will approach again. Begin, Major.’

  ‘Well, yes,’ said Gumbs, ‘that ought to work, except—I suppose you’ve figured out some system for holding the pen, Miss McCarty?’

  ‘Fool!’ she replied. ‘I have made a hand, of course.’

  ‘Well, in that case, by all means. Let’s see, I believe we might try this thicket first—’ Their common body gave a lurch in that direction.

  George held back. ‘Wait a minute,’ he said desperately. ‘Let’s at least have the common sense to finish this meal before we go. There’s no telling when we’ll get another.’

  McCarty demanded, ‘How large are these creatures, Major?’

  ‘About sixty centimeters long, I should say.’

  ‘And we have consumed nine of them, is that correct?’

  ‘Nearer eight,’ George corrected. ‘These two are only half gone.’

  ‘In other words,’ McCarty said, ‘we have had two apiece. That should be ample. Don’t you agree, Major?’

  George said earnestly, ‘Miss McCarty, you’re thinking in terms of human food requirements, whereas this organism has a different metabolic rate and at least three times the mass of four human beings. Look at it this way—the four of us together had a mass of about three hundred kilos, and yet twenty hours, after this thing absorbed us, it was hungry again. Well, these animals wouldn’t weigh much more than twenty kilos apiece at one G—and according to your scheme, we’ve got to hold out until after daybreak tomorrow.’

  ‘Something in that,’ Gumbs agreed. ‘Yes, on the whole, Miss McCarty, I think we had better forage while we can. It won’t take us more than half an hour longer, at this rate.’

  ‘Very well. Be as quick as you can, though.’

  ==========

  They moved on to the next pair of victims. George’s brain was working furiously. It was no good arguing with McCarty. If he could only convince Gumbs, then Bellis would fall in with the majority—maybe. It was the only hope he had.

  ‘Gumbs,’ he said, ‘have you given any thought to what’s going to happen to us when we get back?’

  ‘Not my line, you know. I leave that to the technical fellows like yourself.’

  ‘No, that isn’t what I mean. Suppose you were the CO of this team, and four other people had fallen into this organism instead of us—’

  ‘What? What? I don’t follow.’

  George patiently repeated it.

  ‘Yes, I see what you mean. So?’

  ‘What orders would you give?’

  Gumbs thought a moment. ‘Turn the thing over to the bio section, I suppose.’

  ‘You don’t think you might order it destroyed as a possible menace?’

  ‘Good Lord, I suppose I might. No, but you see, we’ll be careful what we say in the note. We’ll point out that we’re a valuable specimen and so on. Handle with care.’

  ‘All right,’ George said, ‘suppose that works, then what? Since it’s out of your line, I’ll tell you. Nine chances out of ten, bio section will classify us as a possible biological enemy weapon. That means, first of all, that we’ll go through a full-dress interrogation and I don’t have to tell you what that can be like—’

  ‘Major Gumbs,’ said McCarty strictly, ‘Meister will be executed for disloyalty at the first opportunity. You are forbidden to talk to him, under the same penalty.’

  ‘But she can’t stop you from listening to me,” George said tensely. ‘In the second place, Gumbs, they’ll take samples. Without anesthesia. Finally, they’ll either destroy us just the same, or they’ll send us back to the nearest strong point for more study. We will then be Federation property, Gumbs, in a top-secret category, and since nobody in Intelligence will ever dare to take the responsibility of clearing us, we’ll stay there.

  ‘Gumbs, this is a valuable specimen, but it will never do anybody any good if we go back to camp. Whatever we discover about it, even if it’s knowledge that could save billion of lives, that will be top-secret, too, and it’ll never get past the walls of Intelligence… If you’re still hoping that they can get you out of this, you’re wrong. This isn’t like limb grafts. Your whole body has been destroyed, Gumbs, everything but your nervous system and your eyes. The only new body we’ll get is the one we make ourselves. We’ve got to stay here and—and work this out ourselves.’

  ‘Major Gumbs,’ said McCarty, ‘I think we have wasted quite enough time. Begin your search for the materials I need.’

  ==========

  For a moment, Gumbs was silent and their collective body did not move.

  Then he said: ‘Miss McCarty—unofficially, of course—there’s one point I’d like your opinion on. Before we begin. That is to say, they’ll be able to patch together some sort of bodies for us, don’t you think? I mean one technical fellow says one thing, another says the opposite. Do you see what I’m driving at?’

  George had been watching McCarty’s new limb uneasily. It was flexing rhythmically and, he was almost certain, gradually growing larger. The fingers groped in the dry grass, plucking first a single blade, then two together, finally a whole tuft. Now she said: ‘I have no opinion. Major. The question is irrelevant. Our duty is to return to camp. That is all we need to know.’

  ‘Oh, I quite agree with you there,’ said Gumbs. ‘And besides,’ he added, ‘there really isn’t any alternative, is there?’

  George, staring down at one of the fingerlike projections visible below the rim of the monster, was passionately willing it to turn into an arm. He had, he suspected, started much too late.

  ‘The alternative,’ he said, ‘is simply to keep on going as we are. Even if the Federation holds this planet for a century, there’ll be places on it that will never be explored. We’ll be safe.’

  ‘I mean to say,’ Gumbs went on as if he had only paused for thought, ‘a fellow can’t very well cut himself off from civilization, can he?’ There was a thoughtful tone to his voice.

  Again George felt a movement toward the thicket; again he resisted it. Then he found himself overpowered as another set of muscles joined themselves to Gumbs’s. Quivering, crab-wise, the Something-or-other meisterii moved, half a meter Then it stopped, straining.

  ‘I believe you, Mr Meister—George,’ Vivian Bellis said. ‘I don’t want to go back. Tell me what you want me to do.’

  ‘You’re doing beautifully right now,’ George assured her after a speechless instant. ‘Except if you can grow an arm, I imagine that will be useful.’

  ‘Now we know where we stand,’ said McCarty to Gumbs.

  ‘Yes. Quite right.’

  ‘Major Gumbs,’ she said crisply, ‘you are opposite me, I believe?’

  ‘Am I?’ asked Gumbs doubtfully.

  ‘Never mind. I believe you are. Now is Meister to your right or left?’

  ‘Left. I know that, anyhow. Can see his eye-stalks out of the corner of my eye.’

  ‘Very well.’ McCarty’s arm rose, with a sharp-pointed fragment of rock clutched in the blobby fingers.

  ==========

  Horrified, George watched it bend backward across the curve of the monster’s body. The long, knife-sharp point probed tentatively at the surface three centimeters short of the area over his brain. Then the fist made an abrupt up-and-down movement and a fierce stab of pain shot through him.

  ‘Not quite long enough, I think,’ McCarty said. She flexed the arm, then brought it back. ‘Major Gumbs, after my next attempt, you will tell me if you notice any reaction in Meister’s eye-stalks.’

  The pain was still throbbing along George’s nerves. With one half-blinded eye, he watched the embryonic arm that was growing, too slowly, under
the rim; with the other, fascinated, he watched McCarty’s arm lengthen slowly toward him.

  It was growing visibly, he suddenly realized, but it wasn’t getting any nearer. In fact, incredibly enough, it seemed to be losing ground.

  The monster’s flesh was flowing away under it, expanding in both directions.

  McCarty stabbed again, with vicious strength. This time the pain was less acute.

  ‘Major?’ she asked. ‘Any result?’

  ‘No,’ said Gumbs, ‘no, I think not. We seem to be moving forward a bit, though. Miss McCarty.’

  ‘A ridiculous error,’ she replied. ‘We are being forced back. Pay attention, Major.’

  ‘No, really,’ he protested. ‘That is to say, we’re moving toward the thicket. Forward to me, backward to you.’

  ‘Major Gumbs, I am moving forward, you are moving back.’

  They were both right, George discovered. The monster’s body was no longer circular; it was extending itself along the axis. A suggestion of concavity was becoming visible in the center. Below the surface, too, there was motion.

  The four brains now formed an oblong, not a square.

  The positions of the spinal cords had shifted. His own and Vivian’s seemed to be about where they were, but Gumbs’s now passed under McCarty’s brain, and vice versa.

  Having increased its mass by some two hundred kilos, the Something-or-other meisterii was fissioning into two individuals—and tidily separating its tenants, two to each. Gumbs and Meister in one, McCarty and Bellis in the other.

  ==========

  Next time it happened, he realized, each product of the fission would be reduced to one brain—and the time after that, one of the new individuals out of each pair would be a monster in the primary state, quiescent, camouflaged, waiting to be stumbled over.

  But that meant that, like the common ameba, this fascinating organism was immortal, barring accidents. It simply grew and divided.

  Not the tenants, though, unfortunately. Their tissues would wear out and die.

  Or would they? Human nervous tissue didn’t regenerate, but neither did it proliferate as George’s and Miss McCarty’s had done; neither did any human tissue build new cells fast enough to account for George’s eye-stalks or Miss McCarty’s arm.