by E. C. Tubb
Deep thoughts but, at least, there was comfort in a flower.
She smelt the perfume even as she thought of the bloom. It embraced her like a cloud, tantalising odours filled with the nostalgia of long-lost days. The scent of violets and roses, of the clean crispness of sheets and the rich, dark scent of tar, the thin, slightly acrid smell of petrol, the ineffable fragrance of lilacs and carnations, of mint and sage and tobacco plants, of places she had known and events now barely remembered.
It was natural to lift her face and no surprise to see the bloom hanging from its stalk and suspended just above like a gathered curtain of lace filled with the soft effulgence of twilight and vagrant beams of golden illumination which touched and gilded and turned beauty into a heart-stopping loveliness for which she could find no words only feeling.
And natural to stand while the great flower dropped lower to enfold her face and head in aroma and softness.
To stand and wait while memory spun and danced like the upstreaming sparks from a fire fanned by a sudden rush of wind so that all the universe became a thing of pleasure so intense that it verged on the unbearable.
And time became one long, drawn-out moment of exquisite ecstasy.
CHAPTER 10
The flooding had failed, the chilling, the heating, the darkness and the light, the blasting with added energies, the irradiation, the sonic impulses directed from carefully designed projectors.
The plants were as good as dead.
Boardman looked at them, his face betraying his disappointment, one that grew as workers removed the screens and partitions. Regan shared his sense of failure; despite his initial objections the growing of the seeds had become a challenge and, in any conflict in which Moonbase was involved, he was filled with the urge to win.
“Are they all like this, Trevor?”
Boardman looked at the wilted leaves and shrunken boles and shrugged. “I’m afraid so. Carrie runs the checks and she reported they were all the same. There is no point in maintaining the screens and wasting energy any longer. It was a chance and it failed.”
“Did you retain any of the seeds?”
“No,” admitted Boardman. “There seemed little point. Either they would grow or they wouldn’t and we are limited as to possible environments. And we had no way to tell how many were viable. As it was less than fifty per cent of the batch germinated.” Again his shoulders lifted in a shrug. “Well, we can’t be successful all the time. We simply have to accept failure now and again.”
A fact that life had taught him. But for Regan there was and could be no excuse for failure. He could accept it, but he would never be able to like it.
Now, as the workers cleared the site, he looked at the bared plot and frowned. The plants reminded him of something but, for a moment, he couldn’t tell what. Then it came to him, an old painting he had once seen in a museum during one of his rare vacations. A scene of men standing, some lying, all stooped, weary, broken with struggle and fatigue.
“A battlefield,” he said, wonderingly. “Trevor, it looks like a battlefield.”
Almost totally cleared of the partitions the plot was a mass of leaves, boles, flowers which had shed petals, roots that lifted above the ground to writhe like boneless fingers. Some, he noted, seemed to be strangling others and the boles, taller than a man, held a humanoid appearance, the wilted flowers the crests of helmets, the fallen petals patches of blood, the elegant traceries the markings of gaudy uniforms. The accoutrements of men who had once marched defiantly into battle, more concerned with how they looked than the possibility of mutilation and death.
Almost he could hear bugles.
“Trevor?”
“A battlefield,” admitted Boardman. “You are right, Mark, but that is exactly what it is. Those plants must have fought for the maximum of food and water, or room in which to expand, of sunlight to call their own. The law of the jungle, kill or be killed, live or die. A survival trait, which even a plentiful supply of water and fertilizers couldn’t eradicate. And we must have missed something, some essential element or ingredient they needed in order to survive.” His hands clenched in frustrated anger. “If only we had known what it was!”
His anger was a betrayal of the anguish of the dedicated scientist who has new knowledge within his grasp only to lose it because of a little ignorance.
Regan said, “Has Lucy thought of taking cuttings, Trevor?”
“She’s thought of everything, Mark, but it simply isn’t possible to do as you suggest. Every plant examined so far shows the same deterioration. They are dying, are dead despite their appearance. The internal tissue is contracting, the sap has ceased to run, the roots are nothing more than extensions of inert tissue. I—” He broke off as the last partition was removed. “Mark!”
Regan had seen it.
A plant standing tall and firm among the others, the flower a disc of lambent colour, the bole swollen and graced with red and yellow.
One plant, the victor, and again he almost heard bugles.
“But how?” Boardman shook his head. “The girl reported they were all the same. She must have lied or been mistaken. But how could she have missed seeing that plant. Mark! You realise what this means?”
His hopes restored, a second chance of success, the door to fresh knowledge again set ajar. But Regan didn’t look at him nor at the exotic growth but at the girl who came from behind the plant.
“Carrie!”
She took a step forward as he called. Against the rich darkness of the distended bole she looked very slight and very pale.
For a moment she wavered and then, taking another step forward said, in a small voice, “You mustn’t hurt it. You won’t hurt it, will you? Promise not to hurt it.”
“The plant?”
“You mustn’t touch it. I’ve had to keep it hidden. I won’t let you hurt it.” The thin, small voice rose to a scream. “I won’t let you hurt it. I—please! Please! Please! Please…!”
Regan caught her as she fell.
*
Elna closed the file lying on the desk before her, leaned back in her chair, palmed her eyes and, as she lowered her hands said, “I don’t begin to understand this, Mark, but Carolyn Markson is apparently suffering from the terminal stages of pernicious anaemia.”
“Anaemia?”
“It seems incredible, doesn’t it?”
“Could there be a mistake?” Regan was baffled. “When did she have her last physical?”
“Ten days ago. She worked with radioactive isotopes and I checked her for any contamination. Results negative. Since then she has been working full-time with the Botanical Section under Lucy Cochran. I’ve checked and she hasn’t been anywhere near a source of radioactivity. In any case the anaemia wouldn’t have progressed so fast and so far and, had it been due to contamination, there would have been other symptoms. As I said, Mark, I don’t begin to understand it.”
“Can you cure her?”
A question Malcolm Edmunds repeated as, together with Doctor Mandela, she and Regan joined him where he waited patiently beside the patient’s bed. He was, Regan noticed, sitting very close, the thin fingers of the girl held fast in his own.
“We can save her,” promised Elna. “It will take massive transfusions of fresh blood and she will need care and rest but she’ll be all right given time. The main thing is to prevent a recurrence of the condition. You know her well, I understand.”
“I’m in love with her.”
“Which makes her a very fortunate young woman. You then, naturally see her often. When was the last time?” Elna frowned at the answer. “So long? Did your duties keep you apart?”
“No, it’s just that for days now she hasn’t wanted to see me. She claimed that she was busy all the time with those damned plants—I’m sorry, Commander, Doctor.”
“Forget it,” said Regan. “So she said she was too busy to see you. Was she? I mean, did you check in any way?” Then, as the young man hesitated, he said, “I’m not accusing you
of violating her privacy but only of acting like a man in love. Did she spend much time with the plants?”
“All of it.” Edmunds looked at where the girl lay. “She wasn’t lying in the sense that she was busy, but only in the sense that she didn’t have to be. She didn’t have to actually work if she hadn’t wanted to be with me. She didn’t have to lie. I wouldn’t have liked it and I would have argued a little, but, hell, I love her and what she wants is all I care about. Doctor Mitchell, if there’s anything I can do?”
“There isn’t at the moment. You haven’t the same type blood so I can’t use you as a donor, but we have all we need. Just leave her with us now. When she’s better she’ll want to see you, I’m sure. Rob?”
Mandela said, “Come on, lad. Let’s get on with the job. And how about you? Haven’t you anything to take care of?”
Work was the best anodyne for grief. Regan said, “Report to Maintenance, Malcolm. They could use a hand in stripping a Pinnace and you’re good at the job. And Carver’s running a simulator-course. Ask him nicely and maybe he’ll let you sit in on it.”
He stepped back as the young man left the ward and orderlies came forward wheeling equipment. As Mandela set to work he gestured Elna to her office.
“Anaemia,” he said when they were inside. “It’s almost like saying the girl has a fit of the vapours. How long has it been since you treated a case of anaemia?”
“A long time, Mark.”
‘Which means it’s rare?”
“No. It means that now it’s very easy to treat. We cure it by means of injections of liver extract and vitamin B 12. I’m talking of normal anaemia, you understand, not that caused by cancer such as leukaemia.”
“And there’s no doubt the girl isn’t suffering from that?”
“None.” Her voice hardened a little. “I appreciate your concern, Mark, but I do know my job.”
“Did I say you didn’t?” He flared with a sudden anger quickly suppressed. “I’m sorry, Elna, but I need to be certain. The thing’s a mystery. She didn’t do anything or go anywhere aside from tending those plants. And you didn’t see her as I did. Dazed, crazed, too weak to stand. Something caused her to act like that and I have to find out what it is. How long will it be before she can be questioned?”
“Not long, Mark. I’ll let you know.”
*
The battlefield was deserted, the workers gone, the entire area empty aside from watchful security guards. On the plot of ground the alien plants looked withered, shrunken, many missing where the botanists had reaped their harvest, boles and flowers and tissues taken to be sectioned and sealed and put by for later examination. Specimens snatched from dissolution, a poor reward against what might have been.
Regan could not help but be impressed.
The single survivor had been shrouded in a room of its own, plastic sheeting hiding it from casual view, the upper transparency allowing the passage of actinic light which Lucy Cochran was certain was essential to its continued development.
“Now that it is nearing maturity it will need all the energy it can get. Water too, of course, and nutrients, but nothing can replace actual light. It is obvious now that it uses photosynthesis just as our own plants do. Now if only it were possible to isolate the incredible growth-factor then we would have solved the problem of a food supply for all time.”
She glanced at the plant, lost in a dream, her eyes filled with the reflected thoughts of wheat as high as trees, of potatoes as large as pumpkins and grown in a matter of days.
Boardman was engrossed in something else.
“I’ve been monitoring the internal sounds, Mark,” he said as Regan joined him where he stood beside the great bole. “Whatever’s happening in there is very active. Listen.” Attaching a suction microphone to the wall of the bole he threw a switch and, from the speaker of the amplifier he held, Regan heard a series of oddly disturbing noises. They resembled liquid gushings, slithers, murmurs, the beat of something that could have been a heart.
“Pumps?”
“Possibly,” said Boardman. “Plants normally circulate their fluids by osmosis but this obviously has developed a different system. It could account for the phenomenal continuance of growth after the initial stages.”
“Didn’t you spot any pumping mechanism before?” Regan listened again to the sound. “Something like a heart?”
“No. Mark, we didn’t. And the sound you are now hearing is comparatively recent. It could be that the pumping system previously used was of a different order, perhaps a series of small impulses that would merge into a common blur. And that’s another thing. The plant seems to be growing in a series of metabolic jumps. It’s almost as if it changes its nature as it goes along. Like a beetroot, which turns into a potato, a pea, an ear of wheat, a melon. I’m exaggerating, but the analogy holds. It’s almost as if it’s adapting to fit its environment.”
“Adapting?” Regan was thoughtful. “As a cactus, say, would adapt to a moist climate in order to survive?”
“Exactly.”
“And is this common?”
“I don’t know, Mark.” Boardman spread his hands in a helpless gesture. “I’m not a botanist. Some of the lichens, perhaps, but I’m only guessing.”
Lucy Cochran corrected his guess.
“No plant, and that includes the lichens and even the algae, can change like that, Commander. They are governed as we are by their genetic structure. You wouldn’t expect a man to grow wings in order to adapt to a mountainside life, would you? Or claws? Or develop webbed feet because he lives in a marsh? No, of course not, and a plant is as rigid in its development. Some things they can do—they can be dormant for long periods of time waiting for a favourable environment. They can apparently die and spring to life from encysted spores—and now I am talking about the simplest plants, you understand. But they can’t change from one species to another.”
“As this alien does?”
“As it appears to do,” she corrected. “We don’t have any information as to its natural growth progression so all we can make are intelligent guesses. And,” she added, pointedly, “some of them aren’t so intelligent.”
“Like the thing developing a heart?”
“Plants don’t have hearts,” she snapped. “Don’t let your imagination run away with you, Commander. Plants don’t have hearts no matter what you may hear from inside.”
No hearts and no insect vitamins either, but this thing contained elements only to be found in animal and other forms of life. He thought of the Lepidoptera, the order that contained butterflies and moths, the larvae of which fed on plants. Did this thing contain another parasite? Was Moonbase about to be menaced by an alien creature almost impossible to destroy?
“Mark!” Boardman had seen his face, the expression it carried. “Is something wrong?”
“I don’t know, Trevor, but there could be.” Regan lifted the communicator from his belt. “Security? Send extra men to Rural Area One. Personal armour and heavy equipment. Have semi-portable lasers set up at the entrance to the cavern and at strategic points inside.” He added, after a moment, “And set mines in the entrance ready to explode on order. I want charges heavy enough to bring down the roof.”
“You’re afraid of something,” said Boardman as Regan lowered the instrument. “But, Mark, it’s only a plant. It can’t hold anything really dangerous. For one thing it isn’t big enough.”
“How large is a virus, Trevor?”
“It’s very small, Mark.” Boardman got the point. “But it can kill despite its size. You’re right, of course, we mustn’t take chances. But look at it.” He gestured towards the plant. “It has a unique beauty. How can such a thing hold terror?”
A question only time could answer, but, guided by the gesture, Regan’s eyes studied the alien growth with a sharpened suspicion. The leaves, once edged with saw-like teeth, now hung like a drape of silken veils at the foot of the bole. The great flower drooped on the end of its stalk, the petals frayed
like tassels, the colours those of old tapestries. The bole, darkly green, seemed to have enhanced the contrast of the elegant traceries, the patterns of red and yellow more prominent now, deeper, wider.
Like the cracks starring the shell of an egg and growing even as he watched.
“Mark!” Boardman stared his disbelief. “It’s opening! The bole is opening!”
Splitting along a thousand lines of fracture, the pieces supported now only by a delicate inner membrane, the entire side of the bole facing them now starred and flaking.
“Lucy?”
“It could have reached fruition, Commander. Don’t get too close. Many plants have some form of ejection mechanism for their seeds. This could be one of them.”
Accumulated gases used to literally fire the seeds far from the parent growth. Organic springs that would fling them like stones from a sling. Vapours, even, designed to stun or kill any hungry predator—who could tell what defence mechanisms had been developed on an alien world?
They should run, but nothing would have dragged the botanist from where she stood busy with her camera. Nothing would have pulled Boardman from the chance to observe something that had never been seen by man before. And he, like the others, was expendable should the worst happen and the security guards be forced to destroy the cavern and all it contained.
“Look!” breathed Boardman, entranced. “Look!”
A flake fell from the bole, another, a rain of thick, green particles which rustled as they fell to form a mound on the drape of leaves. An opening showed, widening even as they watched, an oval space over six feet in height and four in width. A gaping orifice, which revealed an inner compartment lined with strands softer than any silk forming a roseate nest that cradled the incredible.
“A woman!” Shocked, Lucy Cochran lowered her camera. “A woman—but in God’s name, how?”
Regan said nothing, watching, looking at the shape held snugly in the cradle of roseate moss. A girl—the loveliest he had ever seen.
CHAPTER 11
They named her Enalus—the child, if not of the sea, then of space, that great ocean of emptiness between the stars—and she was beautiful.
