The Planet with No Nightmare
Page 3
couldn't.
* * * * *
There was no way he could prove, even to himself, that he had notdisposed of those alien remains and then come back to his bubble,contented and happy at the thought of fooling those smug idiots whocould sleep at night.
"How much longer do we have to wait?" Nogol asked. "We've been here ninehours. Half a day. The bodies are right where I left them outside. Theredoesn't seem to be any more question."
Ekstrohm frowned. There was one question. He was sure there was onequestion.... Oh, yes. The question was: How did he know he was sane?
He didn't know, of course. That was as good an answer as any. Might aswell accept it; might as well let them do what they wanted with him.Maybe if he just gave up, gave in, maybe he could sleep then. Maybe hecould ...
Ekstrohm sat upright in his chair.
No. That wasn't the answer. He couldn't know that he was sane, but thenneither could anybody else. The point was, you had to go ahead living asif you were sane. That was the only way of living.
"Cosmos," Ryan gasped. "Would you look at that!"
Ekstrohm followed the staring gaze of the two men.
On the video grid, one of the "dead" animals was slowly rising, gettingup, walking away.
"A natural phenomenon!" Ekstrohm said.
"Suspended animation!" Nogol ventured.
"Playing possum!" Ryan concluded.
Now came the time for apologies.
Ekstrohm had been through similar situations before, ever since he hadbeen found walking the corridors at college the night one of the girlshad been attacked. He didn't want to hear their apologies; they meantnothing to him. It was not a matter of forgiving them. He knew thesituation had not changed.
They would suspect him just as quickly a second time.
"We're supposed to be an exploration team," Ekstrohm said quickly."Let's get down to business. Why do you suppose these alien creaturesfake death?"
Nogol shrugged his wiry shoulders. "Playing dead is easier thanfighting."
"More likely it's a method of fighting," Ryan suggested. "They play deaduntil they see an opening. Then--_ripppp_."
"I think they're trying to hide some secret," Ekstrohm said.
"What secret?" Ryan demanded.
"I don't know," he answered. "Maybe I'd better--sleep on it."
III
Ryan observed his two crewmen confidently the next morning. "I did somethinking last night."
_Great_, Ekstrohm thought. _For that you should get a Hazardous Dutybonus._
"This business is pretty simple," the captain went on, "these pigssimply play possum. They go into a state of suspended animation, whenfaced by a strange situation. Xenophobia! I don't see there's much moreto it."
"Well, if you don't see that there's more to it, Ryan--" Nogol begancomplacently.
"Wait a minute," Ekstrohm interjected. "That's a good theory. It mayeven be the correct one, but where's your _proof_?"
"Look, Stormy, we don't have to have proof. Hell, we don't even have tohave theories. We're explorers. We just make reports of primary evidenceand let the scientists back home in the System figure them out."
"I want this thing cleared up, Ryan. Yesterday, you were accusingme of being some kind of psycho who was lousing up the expeditionout of pure--pure--" he searched for a term currently in use inmentology--"_demonia_. Maybe the boys back home will think thesame thing. I want to be cleared."
"I guess you were cleared last night, Stormy boy," Nogol put in. "We sawone of the 'dead' pigs get up and walk away."
"_That didn't clear me_," Ekstrohm said.
The other two looked like they had caught him cleaning wax out of hisear in public.
"No," Ekstrohm went on. "We still have no proof of what caused thesuspended animation of the pigs. Whatever caused it before caused itlast night. You thought of accusing me, but you didn't think it throughabout how I could have disposed of the bodies. Or, after you found outabout the pseudo-death, how I might have caused _that_. If I had somedrug or something to cause it the first time, I could have a smallerdose, or a slowly dissolving capsule for delayed effect."
The two men stared at him, their eyes beginning to narrow.
"I could have done that. _Or either of you could have done the samething._"
"Me?" Nogol protested. "Where would my profit be in that?"
"You both have an admitted motive. You hate my guts. I'm 'strange,''different,' 'suspicious.' You could be trying to frame me."
"That's insubordination," Ryan grated. "Accusations against a superiorofficer ..."
"Come off it, Ryan," Nogol sighed. "I never saw a three-man spaceshipthat was run very taut. Besides, he's right."
Beet-juice flowed out of Ryan's swollen face. "So where does that leaveus?"
"Looking for _proof_ of the _cause_ of the pig's pseudo-death. Remember,I'll have to make counter-accusations against you two out ofself-defense."
"Be reasonable, Stormy," Ryan pleaded. "This might be some deepscientific mystery we could never discover in our lifetime. We mightnever get off this planet."
That was probably behind his thinking all along, why he had been soquick to find a scapegoat to explain it all away. Explorers didn't_have_ to have all the answers, or even theories. But, if they everwanted to get anyplace in the Service, they damned well _better_.
"So what?" Ekstrohm asked. "The Service rates us as expendable, doesn'tit?"
* * * * *
By Ekstrohm's suggestion, they divided the work.
Nogol killed pigs. All day he did nothing but scare the wart-hogs todeath by coming near them.
Ryan ran as faithful a check on the corpses as he could, both by eyeballobservation and by radar, video and Pro-Tect circuits. They lacked theequipment to program every corpse for every second, but a representativejob could be done.
Finally, Ekstrohm went scouting for Something Else. He didn't know whathe expected to find, but he somehow knew he would find _something_.
He rode the traction-scooter (so-called because it had no traction atall--no wheels, no slides, no contact with the ground or air) and hereflected that he was a suspicious character.
All through life, he was going around suspecting everybody and now_everything_ of having some dark secret they were trying to hide.
A simple case of transference, he diagnosed, in long-discreditedterminology. He had something to hide--his insomnia. So he thoughteverybody else had their guilty secret too.
How could there be any deep secret to the pseudo-death on this world? Itwas no doubt a simple fear reaction, a retreat from a terrifyingreality. How could he ever _prove_ that it was more? Or even exactlythat?
Internal glandular actions would be too subtle for a team of explorersto establish. They could only go on behavior. What more in the way ofbehavior could he really hope to establish? The pattern was clear. Thepigs keeled over at any unfamiliar sight or sound, and recovered whenthey thought the coast was clear. That was it. All there was! Why did hestubbornly, stupidly insist there was more to it?
Actually, by his insistence, he was giving weight to the idea of theothers that he was strange and suspicious himself. Under the normal,sane conditions of planetfall the phobias and preoccupations of a spacecrew, nurtured in the close confines of a scout ship, wouldn't be takenseriously by competent men. But hadn't his subsequent behavior givenweight to Ryan's unfounded accusations of irrational sabotage? Wouldn'tit seem that he was actually _daring_ the others to prove his guilt? Ifhe went on with unorthodox behavior--
That was when Ekstrohm saw the flying whale.
* * * * *
Tension gripped Ekstrohm tighter than he gripped the handlebars of hisscooter. He was only vaguely aware of the passing scenery. He knew heshould switch on the homing beacon and ride in on automatic, but itseemed like too much of an effort to flick his finger. As the tensionrose, the capillaries of his eyes swelled, and things began to white outfor
him. The rush of landscape became blurred streaks of light and dark,now mostly faceless light.
The flying whale. He had seen it.
Moreover, he had heard it, smelt and felt it. It had released a jet ofair with a distinctive sound and odor. It had blown against his skin,ruffled his hair. It had been real.
But the flying whale _couldn't_ have been real. Conditions on thisplanetoid were impossible for it. He knew planets and their lifepossibilities. A creature with a skeleton like that could have evolvedhere, but the atmosphere would never have supported his flesh and hide.Water bodies were of insufficient size.