by Brian Aldiss
Pleased speculation filled Craig. Here was something he had not met with before – a man could ask for no more than that. On first sight Askanza VI had threatened to be dull; now he knew it would not be.
The PEST ship had landed several hours ago on a high tableland beyond the mountains through which Craig Hodges had driven. Craig and his two colleagues, Barney Brangwyn and young Tim Anderson, made their usual preliminary ride-around before splitting up. They had seen little but barren land, curious rock formations, some stunted trees and a large number of surprisingly symmetrical boulders; Askanza VI was no beauty spot. Then they had separated to take up their customary positions eighty miles apart at the three corners of an equilateral triangle, Tim staying by the ship, Barney and Craig moving off in their overlanders.
Thus did the PEST work. Briefly, their job was a two-fold one: to discover if a new planet harboured any species which would unduly menace the farmers and other colonists; and – if such a species existed – to suggest how it might best be dealt with without destroying the ecological balance of the planet. Time had shown that the most economical way of making the necessary observations was to have three trained men sitting eighty miles apart from each other, interpreting what they saw. Old exploratory methods of hacking one’s way round a planet until one eventually blundered into trouble had been superseded long ago.
When he had made a careful survey of the pillars, Craig put down his binoculars. He estimated one to every seventy-five square yards of shallow sea, but their irregular placing made it difficult to be accurate.
Now most of the rain had cleared, and for the first time Craig saw into the valley below him. It was full of moving creatures!
Climbing out of the cab, Craig jumped down and went forward for a closer look. He was now almost the required eighty miles from base, so that this busy valley might well be regarded as his Plot for investigation. Fantastic rocks outcropped from the ground as he descended. As before, there was no plant nor flower anywhere, nor even a blade of grass; although a few mosses grew by the rocks. The heavy clayey ground ran right down to the water’s edge.
When Craig found a suitable vantage point down the slope, he stopped to observe, raising the glasses again to his eyes.
From the complex nature of their activity, the creatures might be reckoned to possess intelligence, although it was difficult to decide what they were doing. At the far end of the beach they had raised a high earthwork which looked unmistakeably like a defence. The creatures themselves varied in size but not in shape. Craig mentally labelled them turtles, for it was to that reptile they bore most resemblance with their huge carapaces and flipper-like extremities. From the chunky shell, six limbs and a head protruded. One pair of limbs were legs and feet, another arms and hands, while the intermediate pair served the intermediate purpose, being used sometimes to handle objects, sometimes to be walked on. Their heads were large and clumsy, with one eye and a beaky mouth. The mouths, as Craig could see, contained big teeth. Since these creatures when erect stood about five feet high in their armour plating,
their total appearance was formidable.
Many of these turtle-like beings worked about a structure which was a baffling mixture of rock and metal. Others were parading about the strip of beach. Some dug in the ground, some stood as if in contemplation.
At a sound behind him, Craig turned.
He saw now that the outcropping rocks he had passed had been hollowed out on their seaward side for some depth. Turtles were coming out at him, moving fast, some on two legs, some on four.
Seen this close, they were daunting. For all their speed, they looked enormously heavy. Their flippers, thick and closely scaled, would have been capable of felling a man. They charged at Craig with snapping jaws, a small bony antenna flicking on their foreheads. Craig did not stop for a second look.
A few of the creatures who came charging out bore cup-like objects in their flippers. As Craig turned, the first cup was thrown at him.
It came hard, flung with force and accuracy.
Craig dodged and it shattered on the ground nearby. He slipped on the clayey slope, and began to run back to the overlander as fast as he could. The turtles were after him. They made no cries, but already other turtles were hurrying up from the valley. They moved fast, jaws snapping.
The overlander was only a few yards away. As Craig reached the door, one of the cups struck him on the shoulder. It broke, splashing liquid over his uniform. He whirled; the turtle who had thrown it was almost on him. Reluctantly, even in the heat of the moment, Craig pulled out his gun and fired. The shot caught the creature full in the breastplate and bowled it over backwards as Craig swung himself up to safety. Gunning the engine, he backed away. Another fiercely-flung cup struck the door as he did so.
Swinging in a wide arc, Craig began to head his vehicle for the slopes. His shoulder was burning painfully; he ignored it, so angry was he with himself for his carelessness. He had fallen into the elementary error of anticipating Earth-like behaviour from an Earth-like creature. These things
which looked like turtles had a ferocity and certainly a turn of speed unknown to the beings they most nearly resembled on Earth.
The overlander reached the foot of the mile long slope and stopped, its wheels slithering in mud brought down by the recent rain. Cursing quietly, Craig switched to caterpillar, shutting down the drive as the retractable tracks came into position. As he opened up again, there was a grinding noise outside while the vehicle lurched forward and then fell back again. Something had jammed the tracks. He was stuck.
Another attempt to move on dual drive failed.
Leaning half out of the cab window, Craig saw that one of the turtles was wedged with its shell broken between the track plates. Its feeble movements awoke compassion in him, even as he cursed it, for he would have to dislodge it before the overlander would move again.
He jumped out hurriedly. This turtle must have hung on and taken an uninvited ride, or it would have been left behind with the others. It was too bad for all concerned that it had attempted to meddle with the tracks.
Grabbing a crowbar from an external kit locker, Craig levered at the creature’s shell. His shoulder was paining him badly. The main body of turtles was now only a hundred yards away, coming up fast. To add to Craig’s troubles, night was coming on, Askanza’s dull light thickening into dusk. The planet had an eleven and three quarters hour long day, which meant only about six hours of daylight in these latitudes. Not, Craig thought, the happiest of places, even for colonists.
The injured turtle gave a creaking groan as Craig applied pressure. Its shell was formidably tough and would not budge, locked as it was between plates and against a drive wheel. Craig could see he would need a sledge hammer to break it up. He climbed back into the overlander: there was no time now to do more – the other turtles had caught up with him again. A minute later, some fifty of them were grouping round the vehicle. They hammered and slapped against it until the interior echoed with sound. The light was exceedingly bad now; Crain switched on an upper searchlight to see what was happening outside. Certainly the light rattled the turtles. They hurried out of the beam but did not retreat far. In the reflected light, their eyes glittered emerald green. Their antennae flicked about alertly.
The overlander was, among other things, a mobile fortress. Craig could have wiped out every creature present by half a dozen means, but killing was not to his taste or his policy. He sat for a moment high up in the cab, watching to see what would happen next.
Obviously the turtles were curious about the vehicle. They were hostile, yes, but something more than mere blind hostility directed their actions. On the edge of the gloom, they waited now with the impatient patience of reasoning beings.
Grunting with the pain of his shoulder, Craig retreated into the small room at the back of the cab. If they disliked light, light they should have. Pressing a wall stud, he sent an arc light rising ten feet above the overlander’s roof on a telescopic leg.
When he switched on, brilliance poured in through the windows at him.
With a pounding of flippers, the turtles retreated again, some still flinging cups against the vehicle.
‘Splendid!’ Craig said, and retired to the lab to treat his shoulder.
It was red and blistered, from his collar bone down to his elbow. A simple test satisfied Craig that he had been bombarded with a fairly strong solution of sulphuric acid. He anointed himself, bandaged himself, and went to view his visitors through the overhead blister.
The turtles kept their distance in a ring some forty yards off, milling about impatiently.
‘I’m still within acid-cup throwing range,’ Craig said to himself.
He loaded the flare rifle, setting its timer to fire every fifty seconds and its altitude at two hundred feet. As soon as the first flare burst overhead, he climbed outside with a sledgehammer.
Green light bathed the land as the temporary star burned viridian-fierce overhead. While the turtles fled from the brightest light Askanza VI had ever seen, Craig got to work, hammering at the wedged carapace. He was dragging the last chunk of shell from the track as the third flare went up. By now the unfortunate turtle was dead. Taking up its great head and a chunk of shell and body, Craig climbed back into his vehicle once more, switched off the flare rifle and arc light and started
moving.
The overlander responded without trouble now, dragging itself easily out of the mud and heading up the slope. As it did so, the turtles closed in again and began to follow. Their persistence was impressive.
Ignoring them, Craig climbed the slope. Glancing at his watch, he saw it was time for his group call with Tim and Barney. He had, of course, no intention of returning to the ship. His Plot had its little problems; but it was problems he was here to investigate.
After driving half a mile, he halted and switched on his overhead arc again. In three minutes, the first of the pursuing turtles thudded up, to stand at a respectful distance outside the circle of light.
By now it was almost completely dark, the stuffy unpunctured darkness that had covered the face of Askanza every night since it was created.
Craig went below to the wireless, turned onto Frequency Modulation and called Tim. In a short while, both Tim’s and Barney’s voices came through, Tim quiet and deferential as usual, Barney full of bounce.
‘Nothing very exciting to report here,’ Tim said. ‘No life at all visible, except through a microscope. Well, that’s not strictly true; I have found a worm fifty millimetres long! How fortunate that a day so dull should be so brief. I’ve occupied myself taking soil samples and borings. The crust of the planet is loaded with ore. Its mineral wealth will make Askanza VI an industrial bonanza in a decade, heaven help it. Seems funny to think of the millions of years of peace it’s had, and in ten years’ time it’ll be lusty and brawling with materialism. … It’s been pouring here ever since you two left, a steady acidic shower – I’ve kept figures, since they vary slightly from hour to hour.’
‘Just as well the ship and vehicles are fully proofed,’ Barney grunted.
‘Despite that, the soil’s okay,’ Tim went on. ‘Nature seems to have preferred the inorganic to the organic here, but with implantations of suitable microorganisms I see no reason why Earth-type crops shouldn’t be grown here in a year or two. Rice probably, in this climate!’
‘It’s dry in this region,’ Barney said. ‘I’m sheltered by the mountains, tucked in a valley, and fourteen miles from what the radar shows to be ragged coast. It’s been so mild I ate my meal in the open.’
‘What have you been doing besides eating, Barney?’ Craig inquired.
‘Since you ask, I’ve been fiddling with the search radio, among other chores. As you can hear, our reception at 85 Mc/s is brilliant, but some of the other frequencies are surprisingly congested. There’s some curious mush on the short waves – sounds almost like musique concrete at times. If nothing better offers itself tomorrow, rather than waste my time here I’ll return to you, Tim, and use the ship’s radio equipment to chart the various sky layers. If the colonists come here poor guys, they’ll need wireless, so a few preliminary findings won’t hurt – that is, if it’s okay with you, Craig?’
Craig hesitated.
‘The sky’s not our job, Barney, nor is wireless reception,’ he said. ‘If there are no reflecting layers at all topside, the colonists can still use direct wave, as we are doing. Have you found nothing of interest on the ground?’
Back in his own vehicle, Barney twiddled a curl of his beard round a finger and studiously kept any irritation out of his voice as he replied.
‘There are some six-legged things crawling about – look like turtles with large heads,’ he said. ‘They seem to move very intermittently, and are sluggish when they do move. Ugly devils, but harmless for all their array of teeth. I’m afraid I just can’t see them in the role of Plimsol Species, Craig. Fodder for Colonists I’d call them, until they all get killed off and eaten.’
Craig stared incredulously at his amplifier.
‘They … drag themselves round on all six legs?’ he asked.
‘Yes. When I went over to them and kicked them, they retracted into their shells. The heads don’t retract, being a bit too big for that. When in that position they look like boulders. What have you been doing, Craig? Seen any boulders walking about?’
‘My boulders walk on their hind legs,’ Craig replied. With typical caution, he kept his report very brief, saying only that he had seen large numbers of the turtles. He made no mention of the fact that he was still surrounded by them, although he warned Barney and Tim about the acid throwing.
‘This little habit would be a considerable menace to colonists without overlanders to retreat into,’ he said.
‘You must have hold of a different species there, Craig,’ Barney said after a pause. ‘My babies haven’t learned to walk upright yet, never mind throw acid. Sulphuric acid, you say? Where would they get that from? You don’t suppose they build their own Glover towers?’
Tim answered his question.
‘I’ve found samples of normal salts that would be useful in preparing the acid – barytes for one – but you’re not suggesting these creatures have enough intelligence to –’
‘I’m trying to avoid suggesting anything at the moment,’ Craig said dryly.
Recognising the note in his voice, Barney dropped that line of approach and tackled Tim.
‘What do your turtles do, Tim? Are yours vertical or horizontal?’
There was a second’s silence, and then Tim said in a strained voice, ‘I haven’t seen any round here at all. … Hang on, will you? Something’s moving outside. …’
He went off the air. Craig sat where he was, eighty miles away over the mountains, drumming his fingers and trying to visualise what was happening. He knew, with a half-mystical certainty, that any planet was a different place by night from its daytime self; ask any child on Earth and they would say the same thing. The atmosphere changed. …
By now the darkness was total. Thunder grunted disconsolately round the horizon like distant gunfire.
Tim’s voice came back in a minute, a note of relief in it.
‘Hello, Craig and Barney. I’ve got the turtles too! Most curious. There must have been a crowd of them hereabouts, but during the daylight they were absolutely doggo. I took them for big stones – your boulders, Barney. Now they’re getting up and walking about.’
‘See they don’t pinch the space ship,’ Barney said. ‘Are yours travelling on all-sixes?’
‘No. They’re walking on their hind legs – or on their two hind pairs, like Craig’s. They’re pretty busy, too. Some of them are trying to investigate the overlander. What do I do?’
‘Shine a bright light and they’ll keep their distance,’ Craig advised.
‘I’ve already discovered that.’
‘Good boy.’ Craig had to suppress an urge to be fatherly to Tim; his voice sounded very young over the
FM. He could not resist adding, ‘And don’t let them throw acid at you. It’s painful.’
‘Are you keeping something back from us, Craig?’ Barney growled. ‘You’re not having some sort of trouble with these critters, are you?’
‘You sleep tight, Barney, and don’t worry. I’m fine. We’ll buzz each other at eight tomorrow morning. Adios and out.’
So they closed down. Barney scratched his head, feeling sure Craig was holding something back. He knew Craig of old. Both Craig and Tim sounded like they were having a more interesting time than he was himself. Promising himself that tomorrow he would go hunting turtle eggs and try a little private research, Barney settled down to read a book.
It was a collection of Conrad’s tales. To Barney Brangwyn’s mind, only Conrad of all the old authors conveyed the sense of a planet as a planet. He read: ‘… Nothing moved. The fronds of palms stood still against the sky. Not a branch stirred along the shore, and the brown roofs of hidden houses peeped through the green foliage, through the big leaves that hung shining and still like leaves forged of heavy metal. This was the East of the ancient navigators, so old, so mysterious, resplendent and sombre, living and unchanged, full of danger and promise. …’
As another sort of ‘ancient navigator’, Barney knew that what Conrad had written almost exactly six and a half centuries ago contained a true vision of the universe: that behind all the sunlight, however vivid, lay an impenetrable darkness which could be expressed in scientific terms as energy or in religious terms as God. Whatever he or the turtles might do, that darkness remained – yet he could hold that concept in his mind and at the same moment hope to outdo Craig.
Before Craig retired to his bunk, he took a look at the creatures surrounding his overlander. They were still outside the circle of light, still active, though perhaps less so than they had been when down by the shore.
He stood for a long while, stolid and unmoving, looking out. The thunder was dying now as night fully established itself.
