by Eando Binder
“They furnish them their native air,” Miribel explained. “For that toadman, they pumped in a mixture of chlorine and hydrogen sulfide.”
“Ugh,” Thane said, “That last one is the odor of rotten eggs.”
“To him it’s a fresh sweet breeze. But you’ll never guess the atmosphere in the next glass booth, where that stoneman is taking nourishment.”
Thane stared. “Man” was a courtesy, for the creature was closer to being a pile of rocks held together by some unknown glue. At the top was a rounded stone with three glistening square patches of crystal that Thane assumed were his eyes. But it had no nose or mouth.
“Don’t tell me they pumped the air out and left a vacuum?”
“Right, Thane. He comes from an airless world. And his ‘food’ is… can you guess?”
Thane noticed the various small boxes he opened, out of which shone glows. “Radiations?”
“Right again, dear. From radioactive products. On their airless world, just as on your moon, their sun’s fierce radiations beat down and are absorbed by their crystalline bodies.”
“Hmm. Sort of solid-state men, eh?” Thane grinned at his joke. “But I mean it. They must be made of some mineral that we use for transistors and diodes. Otherwise, how could they ‘rectify’ the radiations and make them one-way rays that go in but don’t leak out?”
“Thane, your intuitive leaps amaze me,” said Miribel admiringly. “Their bodies actually contain crystalline salts of germanium and silicon.”
“Are any of the stonemen members of the Galactic Vigilantes?”
“Oh, yes,” Miribel nodded. “We could hardly do without them. They can be rushed in to battle an enemy using ray-guns. Each shot at them is a shot in their arm, so to speak. Instead of killing them, the rays ‘feed’ them. And if their ship is riddled full of holes, no air leaks out; there’s already a vacuum inside. They say one maverick world’s warship crews all went mad when they poured everything they had into the stonemen’s ships and they kept coming.”
Chapter 13
Thane put down a cup of nectar tea and eyed her. “Sometimes I think you’re pulling my leg, gal, way out to here.”
“No, Thane,” Miribel said sincerely. “If you think that’s weird, I could tell you stories you’d never believe. But some other time, when you’re ready for them. Shall we go?”
Thane arose and started to pull out his wallet, then slapped his forehead. “Don’t look now but I have only Earth-money along. That wouldn’t be good here. How do I pay for this meal?”
“Silly, you don’t pay. Just walk out.”
“Huh? It’s for free?”
“Everything is on Unita,” Miribel smiled, enjoying Thane’s dumbfounded look. “Also on my world, Zyl, and on most advanced worlds. Money was long ago eliminated as a means of exchange. Material things are free, and are easily produced. Only services count. And each man or woman has his duty to perform. So long as he does not shirk them, he is entitled to whatever he wants or needs, without paying.”
“That’s the pay-off,” Thane punned. “Come the day when money-grubbing Earth stops the presses at the mint and turns Fort Knox into a museum. Think we’ll ever get there, kid?”
“Yes, in about 100,000 years,” Miribel said seriously.
“Ouch. Well, in spite of that, there’s no place like your home world.”
“You mean Wart?” Miribel said mischievously. “Thanks a lot,” Thane growled. “But just remember you’re married to a Wartman and the joke’s on you.”
It was good for them to laugh. It helped to keep away the memory of their recent experiences fighting the Vexxans, and the unknown deviltry they were planning against Earth. Thane felt depressed whenever his thoughts flew back home. If the Morlians had been tough customers to deal with, the Vexxans were twice as mean, nasty, and secretive. Would the analysis of the Seed give them any clue to their alien plot?
Thane shook the gloomy thoughts out of his mind as Miribel led him into a huge dome. “The interstellar zoo,” she said. “You’ll see creatures stranger than the mythical dragon or unicorn of Earth.”
Each of the creatures was in its individual, sealed cage or compartment of plastic, in which was duplicated its native atmosphere, temperature, and other conditions. Thane stared unbelievingly at a creature who seemed on fire, with flames leaping all over its horny body.
“You can’t yet read Galacto, the common language of the galaxy,” Miribel said, “but that sign says, THERMO BEAST OF BETA-ORION-4, and it explains that he takes baths in molten lava and eats burning wood. If the temperature falls below the melting point of iron, he ‘freezes’ to death.”
“No ice cubes in his drinks, eh?” Thane bantered, moving on. “Now I’m having a nightmare.”
Thane saw first a large purplish mass of what looked like quivering jelly. Then huge eyes formed in it, and the amorphous mass grew six legs and eight tentacles.
“THE CHANGER,” Miribel read. “Like a superamoeba, it can quickly adopt any form it chooses.”
In swift succession, the wonder beast formed itself into a pair of huge jaws, then a serpentine shape with a head at either end, and then became a winged monstrosity with a ten-foot beak.
“It’s imitating other creatures on its home world,” Miribel told him, “hoping some are around. It could get close to its unsuspecting prey and fall upon it as a huge clammy mass to devour it—or absorb it.”
“That’s one for little kiddies,” Thane said. “But skip the tame ones and show me something really horrifying.”
“You’re joking,” Miribel smiled, “but try this one on for size.”
Thane looked in now at something that was a cross between Frankenstein, the Wolfman, and the Thing from 20,000 Fathoms. It was ten feet tall and had five-inch long drooling fangs. Its bloodshot eyes glared back ferociously at Thane.
“No relative of mine,” Thane said, gulping. “What a nice pet he would make.”
“That’s right,” Miribel said, sticking her arm between the bars of its cage. Thane hadn’t noticed till now that it was not sealed off. “Miribel!” he yelled. “That thing’ll chew your arm off… huh?”
Thane stood thunderstruck, as the giant monster bent its head and let Miribel scratch its ears. “Tame as a kitten,” the girl said. “Wouldn’t hurt a fly. They say he’s especially devoted to small children and protects them from harm.”
“How do you like that?” Thane mumbled, as his panic subsided. “Something that would make a dinosaur run away screaming turns out to be harmless.”
Miribel turned to the next exhibit. “Here’s one that big-game hunters went after as a prize specimen, until it became protected under the Galactic Conservation Program of Native Life. THE LIGHTNING BEAST, it’s called.”
Thane saw a reptilian form twenty feet long, with a horny knob on its head. There was a sizzling sound and then suddenly a bolt of electricity shot straight at Thane, stopped only by the thick glassine wall. Again and again it hurled streaks of lightning all around.
“Who would want to hunt that walking dynamo?” Thane marveled.
“Men who love danger,” Miribel said. “It lets loose a million volts with each bolt, with a range of one mile. Hunters had to stalk it within an insulated tank and even then some were electrocuted. But even more elusive to hunt is this next one: THE SHRINKER. Just tap on the glassine wall.”
Thane did so, at the next enclosure. Within was a tall ungainly creature, somewhat like a hairy giraffe. It looked up, startled at the tapping. Then it was gone.
“It disappeared,” Thane gasped.
“Look down there, on the floor.”
Thane stared down and saw the same creature, but now only inches tall. “You mean it shrank down to that in one instant?”
Miribel nodded. “That is its way of escaping its
enemies. When a predator leaps for it, it shrinks and slips away like a tiny mouse.”
“That would drive a lion or tiger crazy,” Thane grunted.
As they went on, other oddities of galactic evolution on strange worlds were there to intrigue the man from Earth. The wheel-shaped creature that rolled itself around… a bear-shaped “porcupine” that threw its sharp quills as far as fifty feet… a squid whose powerful tentacles crushed boulders as if they were puffballs… a “chameleon” in a deer’s shape, that could change to any vivid color of the rainbow… an ape mermaid swimming in a water tank, with a fishtail… and a thick worm whose coils could unwind for half a mile.
Thane was most startled at a giant pen in which great dinosaurs lazed around, when Miribel said where they came from.
“From Earth?” Thane asked. “We even have an exhibit here?”
“Remember the Vigilantes visited earth as long as seven-hundred-and-fifty million years ago, long before humans arose. Dinosaurs were brought back for this interstellar zoo, being rather unique among galactic creatures. They have been bred here so that there are always more specimens to display.”
“Our dinosaurs get to Unita,” Thane grunted unhappily, “long before Earth will be invited to the United Worlds Councils. Kind of a joke on Earth-people.”
“Speaking of UW Councils…” Miribel went out of an exit and hailed an aerial taxicab that took them to a gigantic building of imposing marble pillars and golden statues. Inside, along with other tourists—some human, some not—they reached a gallery overhanging a colossal room.
“This is a meeting of the UW delegates from more than three million worlds,” Miribel said.
Thane’s head swam as he looked over the sea of small seated figures below. “You mean all three million are represented here?”
“Oh, no. Not more than 10,000 delegates are here in person. But notice those TV screens all around the walls?”
Thane ran his eye over the innumerable rows of screens. Each one reflected the face of a delegate. Some of the faces were non-human types—fish, bird, even insect-like. Some faces had multiple eyes, or no eyes at all. Mouths and noses were missing on others. Some faces were so nightmarishly alien that Thane quickly looked away.
“The delegates seated plus those in the screens make up the full three million,” Miribel said. “The TV cameras are on their home-worlds, but are hooked into a common closed-circuit system here at the voting hall. The TV signals are transmitted via the Nth dimension and therefore are instantaneously received at either end.”
“It’s all ‘live’ in other words,” Thane murmured, still awed by this fantastically huge gathering of delegates, whether in person or by TV-proxy. “But I don’t hear anything being debated or discussed. Are they in session?”
“Here, try this ESP-phone,” Miribel said, handing him a pair of what seemed to be earphones. When Thane put them on, he heard a babble of telepathic voices. Then a clear-cut voice rang out authoritatively.
“Gentleman. Come to order. This is the United Worlds Open Council Meeting number…”
Thane didn’t catch the number but it was somewhere in the hundreds of millions. That was to be expected during the billion years the UW had existed.
“We are to vote on the admission of five-hundred-and-forty-six new worlds,” went on the Chairman’s voice, “which have achieved the standards of true civilization and have applied for membership. You have all previously read the comprehensive data about each world. The applicant planets will be voted in as a bloc, as usual. But first, if any world is under question by anyone, please state your reasons now.”
Another telepathic voice requested to be heard by the chair and was granted permission. “I, the delegate from Krazzak, question the credentials of applicant world number eighty-eight, which had warfare only one thousand standard years ago. It may have been their last war, or it may not. What assurance is there that they have achieved true everlasting peace?”
“The assurance,” responded the chair, “comes from the Vigilante unit assigned to that sector of space. They have observed the political structure of that world’s society closely and see no signs of degeneration in their anti-war ideals.”
“In that case, I withdraw my objection.”
Another voice arose to debate some other world’s qualifications but Thane took off his ESP-phones, shaking his head. “So Earth won’t qualify unless it has had at least one thousand years of peace, eh? What a long way we’ve got to go before we’re invited into the UW. Earth ought to be called ‘Warp,’ not ‘Wart.’ A warped society.”
Miribel put a sympathetic hand on his arm. “Don’t feel bad about it. Every world has to go through the same slow painful evolution of society before all the bugs are eliminated—the bugs of war, injustice, racial strife, economic maladjustment, and all the rest. Some worlds never make it at all and go down in decay. Or they become one of the Maverick Worlds that spurn joining the UW.”
“Such as Morli and Vexxa? You told me once there are about 128,000 Maverick worlds.”
Miribel nodded. “For reasons of their own, those worlds defy the UW and continue to seek power and the conquest of other worlds. It is all the Galactic Vigilantes can do to circumvent their plots.”
Thane suddenly sat up, his face looking drawn. “Tell me, have the Vigilantes ever lost out? Failed to save a world from another world’s machinations?”
Miribel hesitated, turning her eyes down. Then she looked up frankly. “I have to be honest with you, Thane. Yes, the Vigilantes have failed at times, but rarely. Once, a world was blown up by another vengeful world, right under the Vigilantes’ noses. Another time…”
“Never mind,” Thane muttered. “Then it is possible that the Vigilantes won’t save Earth from the Vexxan plot, whatever it is?”
“Thane, don’t look so scared. I said the Vigilantes rarely fail. The odds are well in favor of Earth being saved.”
“The odds?” Thane returned darkly. “If even one world fell by the wayside, the odds are only even.”
“Not with you on the side of the Vigilantes,” Miribel said brightly. “And I’m not just trying to lift up your ego. You were instrumental in defeating the Morlians in more ways than one. And you’ll again be the key to spoiling the Vexxan plot. I just know it.”
“Thanks.” Thane smiled wanly. “But now I have to carry Earth on my shoulders. Say…” At a sudden thought, he asked, “Why not recruit more Earthmen besides me? You know, trained detectives or counterspies. Many heads are better than one. So why not take in a picked group of motivated Earthmen and…”
“It is not permitted,” Maribel interposed gently.
“Why not?” Thane demanded.
“It is not permitted, under Galactic Law, for the Vigilantes to recruit any natives of a non-UW world.”
“Then what about me?” Thane said, baffled.
“Your case is different. On your own, you gathered unmistakable proof that UFO’s existed, down on your world. You were therefore a danger to our policy of secrecy and had to be taken into our confidence, but sworn never to reveal our presence. And we have to keep ourselves secret for the many reasons I told you…”
“Yes, I know, I know,” Thane said testily. “Well, that’s that. I continue being responsible for the fate of Earth, all by myself.”
“I’m afraid so, Thane. There were other Earthmen in past history who also stumbled on proof of the reality of the so-called flying saucers. They, too, were then ‘recruited’ among us and sworn to secrecy. But you are the only living Earthman agent today among us.”
“Well, let’s hope,” Thane said somberly, “that I’m as lucky as last time, against the Morlians. And let’s hope the analysis of that Seed we brought will clue us in to the Vexxan plot.”
Chapter 14
A week later, along with Thalkon, they we
re called in by the High Commander. He handed over the leaden box holding the Seed, and also a sheet of paper.
“A complete analysis of the Seed and its radioactive characteristics reveals that it must be part of an exploded super-nova some thousands of years old. That supernova was in Earth’s vicinity. Most of the flying bits of the scattered super-nova fell on wild, uninhabited worlds too dangerous to land on. But Earth was the one world where the Vexxans could easily gather those super-nova Seeds.”
“Have you any idea why they are called Seeds?” asked Thalkon.
The High Commander shook his head. “That remains a puzzle. However, we can inform you that each Seed has enormous energy packed into it—the energy of the super-star that burst. World-moving energy, I might add.”
Thane started. “You mean that literally?”
“Yes, literally. It may or may not be what the Vexxans plan to do with it but with a critical mass of the Seeds, they could place a gigantic magnetic warp around Earth and move it, with electro-gravitic power.”
“Move it where?” Thane gasped.
“We cannot know that,” the High Commander said. “How much is a critical mass?” Thalkon wanted to know.
The High Commander gave a weight measure that had no meaning to Thane, until Thalkon rapidly calculated and said, “About 2.4 ounces, Earth weight.”
“That little?” said Thane. “Can you estimate how many Seeds they’ve gathered so far?”
Thalkon nodded. “According to their search pattern on Earth and how soon they shifted to new areas, we figure they gathered one a week for the past twenty years.”
“That’s 1040 Seeds,” snapped Thane. “And how much does each one weigh?”
“This specimen weighs about one grain, Earth measure.”
