Fletcher Pratt

by Alien Planet

  He had gathered a number of articles into a pack which he proceeded to adjust for me; not on the shoulders as I have always carried packs in the woods, but so that the weight was carried on the hips by a system of leather thongs running round the body and over the shoulders. After a short time I found it more comfortable than the familiar system.

  I was also given one of the swords captured in the fight of the night before; a short, heavy blade shaped like the illustrations show Roman swords to have been, and better suited for close-range cutting than thrusting. Each of the others carried a duplicate of this weapon and a bow as well. In place of the latter, I was supplied with three or four javelins, and we set out.

  Ashembe and I plodded along together, threading our way carefully through the trees. Our new friend disappeared into the growth at the right, arrow on string, and I did not see her again until we halted for rest, when she suddenly materialized out of the scrub with the carcass of a small animal slung over her shoulders.

  The need for hurry had passed, and we moved slowly through the forest, halting to examine suspicious clumps of trees. Once or twice a rustling sound would bring us to the alert, but always Ashembe lowered his bow with the announcement that it was only an animal of some kind.

  "Don't you have any birds?" I asked.

  Ashembe shook his head. "No birds on this whole planet," he said. "They represent a peculiar order of evolution on your own planet. Never have I seen anything like. We have avian animals, in character similar to your bats, though of further development, but nothing like your birds." *

  * Odd in view of the doctrine laid down by Ashembe that similar causes always produce similar effects. But perhaps the cause was lacking on Murashema. We know nothing of the underlying reason for the evolution of the bird on Earth.

  We halted by another of the canyon-cutting streams, just back from the edge as we had on the previous night, and Tandana Kabu popped suddenly in on us with the results of her hunting for the meal. I gathered dry wood while our companion skinned and prepared the animal for cooking. We dined merrily enough, with the sun warming our backs and an Octoberish tang in the air that lent comfort to the campfire.

  I expected Ashembe to press on at once after we had eaten, but after exchanging a few words with Tandana Kabu, he sprawled out under a tree and went incontinently to sleep, while she slipped off with her bow to stand guard. It was not till some time later that I discovered that he found the clear, bright autumn-like noon uncomfortably warm.

  The rest of our journey through the hunting ground was a repetition (or nearly so) of that one. Twice we ran across footprints and on the second occasion Ashembe, after running back along the trail for some distance and giving the marks a prolonged study, changed direction abruptly and put us on a forced march of half a day. "Raiding party from a predatory association," he explained, "at least four well-armed people."

  The encounter was a real danger. It came one afternoon, when Ashembe was going on some little distance in the lead with Tandana Kabu out at one side and myself at the rear of the procession—a triangular formation with each just out of sight but within hearing of the others. Dusk was coming on when I heard a low whistle from the right—Tandana Kabu's signal.

  As rapidly and silently as possible I made for the spot, holding a javelin in readiness. As I rounded a clump of the bush-like trees, I caught sight of the girl, poised like Diana behind a small trunk, her face pale, an arrow drawn to the head on her bowstring, and just beyond her among the trees a yellow-brown form that moved rapidly in and out. As I emerged on the scene, there was a snarl of animal ferocity; Tandana Kabu let drive the shaft and at the same moment the yellow-brown animal leaped. She dodged, but not quite clear. I saw her tumble, saw the beast swing round to hurl itself upon her, and not daring to throw, hurled myself upon it with a shout, driving my javelin into the furry back, and snatching for my sword.

  The animal switched suddenly round, jerking the javelin past my head. I fended off the force of his rush with the other javelins in my left hand, taking a long, diagonal scratch down the arm as I did so, and struck furiously at the snapping head with my sword—once, twice, three times. I got another scratch, everything was covered with blood, and my antagonist collapsed suddenly, giving me a final back-hand swipe, just as Tandana Kabu picked herself up.

  A moment later Ashembe was with us, and the two looked at my injured arm and the animal I had killed, talking excitedly in Murasheman. The beast bore a certain resemblance to a kangaroo, but the head was heavy, lupine and infinitely more savage than that of any kangaroo. The ears were short, and where I had laid its face open with one of my blows, there was a double rank of the most savage-looking teeth.

  "She says," said Ashembe, bandaging my arm, "you are very valiant, but I do not think so. I think you are only ignorant. This animal is an apya, and is considered more than a match for men armed with primitive weapons. Observe that you have given it several wounds, any one of which should be mortal, but they are so tenacious of life that even after such wounds they frequently kill people.*

  * Professor Grummett expresses surprise over this statement. There is nothing astonishing about it. The grizzly bear has been known to do the same.

  After this incident, Tandana Kabu's gratitude became so pronounced as to be actually embarrassing. She set aside for me all the tidbits at our meals; she tried to relieve me of my share of the carrying; and I had the greatest difficulty in persuading her to wake me up to take my turn at watching our camp at night instead of doing her own share and mine as well. On all these proceedings Ashembe looked with an amused tolerance. "She is very young and romantic," he said. "That is why we put young people in the hunting ground. They grow out of this."

  We had journeyed for nearly ten days, when one night I saw along the horizon the haze of distant lights like an aurora and quite different from the inefficient illumination with which the two diminutive moons of Murashema furnished us from time to time.

  "That is the border of the hunting ground," said Ashembe when I asked. "It is Atargol city."

  Tandana Kabu had seen it too, and after a few moments she turned to Ashembe with a remark, then looked expectantly at me while he translated.

  "She says," he declared, "that if you will remain in the hunting ground with her until her time is up, she will have a child by you and after coming out of the hunting ground she will remain with you if the eugenic committee permit.

  I should advise against it. The affections of these young persons are not fixed. Moreover, it would be a most un-eugenic proceeding. If you emerged from the hunting ground in safety, the eugenists would be almost certain to remove any child you had. And I doubt whether they would permit you to live together afterward. You have not passed any of the necessary tests. I suggest it would be well to promise her to return if possible. You had better at least see our cities first."

  I was not prepared to agree with him as to Tandana Kabu's fickleness; but at the same time it was true that I was more desirous of seeing Murasheman civilization than of plunging into a life of idyllic barbarism. "Tell her that I'll think it over and let her know in the morning," I said.

  Ashembe translated rapidly; I saw her face fall from eager expectancy to dark disappointment. She stepped forward, made the gesture of salutation and disappeared in the gathering darkness.

  XIII

  THE NEXT DAY, about evening, we toiled up a long, low hill, and from the summit looked down a backslope, perhaps half a mile wide, to where a deep, swift river curled round the walls of a city—the first buildings I had seen since, my God! how long since I left New York for my summer vacation at Joyous Gard with Merrick Wells.

  For a moment we stood at gaze, Ashembe like myself struck dumb with the glory of the prospect. Above the river a congress of lights sent long penciled beams up and down the stream as far as the eye could reach. And up and up, as far as the eye could reach, also in the uncertain light, the buildings towered immensely, white and glorious, their terraced sides hold
ing the last rays of the sun from behind us, with arched windows and doorways breaking the monotony of the plane surfaces. Above the soaring towers one could just make out tiny black dots that hovered and dropped or moved here and there with the rapid vivacity of flies. The whole scene was utterly silent, like a picture in a dream.

  For a moment we gazed, then Ashembe led the way down the hill and across the sand to the river's brim. A beam of light, paler and yellower than those that searched the surface of the water, detached itself from the wall near us and smote our faces. Ashembe tossed his arms aloft in a gesture of triumph and began to signal with his hands.

  He finished; and the light about us turned redder till it was like the setting sun, and we walked the last three hundred yards of our journey bathed in a fiery glow. Save for the light there was no sign from the silent city till we reached the very edge of the river. Then a boat of some kind, unmanned as far as I could see, shot out from the opposite bank.

  At the bank where we stood, it nosed gently in—a wide, shallow, high-ended craft with the bow decked over, and lacking in any visible means of propulsion or control. Following Ashembe's lead I stepped into it and seated myself. The boat swung round, and with a humming of unseen motors, drove rapidly across the current, trembling with the impact of the water. I looked up; one moment I saw through the red radiance around us the endless vista of searchlights reaching far up into the cloudless sky; the next we were moving under an archway down a dark passage where the walls came in close enough to be touched on either hand. Another moment still and we were out of the arch into the blaze of a daylight more brilliant than any I had seen on Murashema. The silence around us dissolved into a vast roar of commingled sounds.

  My senses reeling with the shock, I looked to Ashembe for moral support, but there was no help there. He sat beside me like a ramrod, stern and proud, his lips compressed. The boat was moving slowly to a white stone jetty, where a little group of people stood waiting to receive us. There was something inconceivably odd about them and it was not for some moments that my numbed senses gathered, that it was not the unfamiliarity of their clothes or the thinness and delicacy of their faces and fingers, but the fact that one and all they were hairless and hatless.

  Ashembe sprang out of the boat, extended his hand to help me up and turned to those waiting on the pier with a few rapid words, at the end of which he indicated me with outstretched hand. They bent their knees in the gesture of welcome and I bowed, then followed them across the pier and up a ramp to a platform where a circle of curved seats with arms, padded in dark material, stood in a waist-high enclosure of metal. We seated ourselves; one of the Murashemans bent forward a moment and the enclosure revealed itself as a vehicle. We moved off gently without shock or noise, swinging around an arc of a great circular street among buildings of cyclopean mass, occasionally meeting other vehicles like our own.

  Our car began to climb a ramp that branched inward from the circular street, issuing presently upon a long, straight avenue some twenty feet above the level of the pier. It stretched away before us, perfectly straight and banded with alternate streaks of light and dark where it ran under the overarching buildings. But I caught no more than a flashing glimpse of this. Our vehicle swung to the left, gathering speed at a terrific rate, and, as it did so, a series of folding arms rose out of the metal enclosure, and carrying some transparent web of material between them, met overhead to roof us in against the wind due to our speed.

  We slowed up suddenly and the car moved off the straight roadway and down a ramp to another circular street exactly like the one we had left at the pier. I caught a vista of architecture as we swept round the curve and then we were in a wide doorway that gave on a great hall. Several people were walking about, but they gave us no more than momentary attention as our vehicle crossed the hall to the farther side. Here one of the Murashemans rose and turned a key that projected from amid the decoration. A solid section of the wall slid back silently and our car passed into the gap. Another key was turned; the panel slid shut again, and we began to rise.

  An elevator ride is always long when one has been absent from cities for some time. But this one seemed exceptionally prolonged, and I felt the blood drumming in my ears with the speed and distance of the ascent. Ashembe whispered, with a smile, "Open the mouth to preserve yourself from the effects of pressure."

  A moment later we came to rest without a jar. Another panel moved open and the reception committee led us out along a long and narrow passage at the end of which a door was opened by one of the omnipresent keys. One of our guides said something to Ashembe, and he turned to me with a translation.

  "This is your apartment," he said. "You are to stay here for some several days, while I return to the place where the Shoraru has been left with a guard and remove therefrom the mercury and the records of our journey. You will find everything necessary in the apartment and your food will be sent to you. If you have any difficulty, turn this key (he indicated the second one of a row just inside the sliding panel) and someone will come to assist you. Fare thee well."

  I entered, and was left alone.

  I looked around.

  My temporary home was an apartment of three rooms, the outer walls of which, formed by the outer wall of the building, were curved to the arc of a large circle. All these outer walls were of glass (or some other transparent material—I found by experiment that it was practically unbreakable) from floor to ceiling. From them one could look out and see beyond the glass walls of the exactly similar building some hundred feet or more away, a succession of other towers, stretching off into the utmost distance.

  Though it had been evening outside the city when we crossed the river, I noticed no trace of night here; a soft light, like that of a brilliant but cloudy day, suffused everything, and when I stepped to the window to look up I could see only an overarching roof of what appeared to be bright clouds, far above me. Up to this cloudy source of light the buildings around me soared, to be truncated abruptly where they met it, and when I looked down, I saw that though the tops of the buildings were far above, streets were just barely visible below.

  The floor of the central room of the three, to which I had been admitted first, was covered with a soft brown material not unlike a carpet for flexibility under foot; apparently it was a composition of some sort forming the floor. The walls were decorated in a geometrical pattern of yellow and dark gray, with a pleasing irregularity of design. Near the door, as I have said, was a row of keys; over each a plate of white metal bore Murasheman characters. Against one of the inner walls, near where they slanted toward each other at the narrowest part of the apartment just by the door, a table stood against the wall. Like all the other furnishings, it was a dark metal, its supports decorated with the same tasteful geometric arrangement as the walls, and its top quite bare.

  Against the opposite wall, a row of seats like those in the car was placed, and scattered about the room were several more chairlike seats, the seat curving up to form the arms. They had flattened arms on which one might conceivably rest a notebook, and a single band across the back, just below shoulder height.

  This completed the furnishings of the main room. Near the glass outer walls, doors led right and left to the other rooms of the apartment. Both of these stood open, though one was closed off by a curtain, and at the side of each was one of the keys, with its accompanying metal plate hanging on the wall. These were, as I correctly assumed, for the purpose of opening and closing the doors.

  The doorknob is a device unknown on Murashema.

  I tried the door at my left first. The room it gave on was smaller, the floor bright and hard. Three of the chairlike seats were arranged against the wall here, and there were two more in the room. Over against the wall seats stood a table, simpler than that in the living room, and covered with a white substance of soft texture. In the opposite wall was the usual row of keys, and instead of the yellow and gray of the living room, this one had large panels in blue and cream. Save f
or the tables and chairs, it was quite empty. I conjectured that it might be the kitchen or dining room.

  The room on the opposite side was totally different. Instead of the cheerful blue and cream and yellow and gray, it was decorated in a neutral green and save for two chairs, was quite devoid of furniture. There was an unusually long row of keys just inside the door. It might have been a bedroom had any bed been visible; and as I thought of this, I remembered that nowhere in the apartment had I seen such an article. For the present, my chief need was food, and I returned to the room I thought was a kitchen, fully intending to try each of the keys until I got what I wanted.

  I tried the key at the left end of the line first, with the idea of seeing what I could get for myself without summoning an attendant. One of the blue and cream panels slid to one side, giving place to a screen of shining metal. Upon it appeared a picture of an ornate goblet filled with a sparkling red liquid. A wonderfully clear voice said a few words in Murasheman; the goblet turned round without any visible agency directing it, and before I could decide what it meant, disappeared, to be replaced by a plate piled high with a jelly-like substance in green and blue stripes. Like the other, this picture was accompanied by a brief speech, and like the other it presently disappeared.

  It was interesting, but inconclusive. For something like ten minutes I gazed at this Barmecide feast, while dish after dish was presented to my gaze and then withdrawn. Then, before I could decide how I ought to go about expressing my desire for the viands, the last dish vanished, the panel closed again with a click, and the key was returned to its position automatically.

  Clearly, in order to bring the meal to materialization, some definite act on my part was needed. I tried the key again; and when the panel slid back on the representation of a bowl filled with a steaming amber-colored liquid, I quickly snapped the second key. A smaller panel near the ceiling opened and from it issued the sound of a stringed instrument, being played in a series of the most execrable screeches and squawks I have ever heard in my life. I hastily returned the key to the first position, closing the panel, and tried the next one as the soup vanished from the screen in favor of a platter of rather delicious looking buns. This time I got a voice, engaged in a lecture of oratorical character. I shut this one off, and gave my attention to the screen where the food was appearing again. I was looking at some round red objects swimming in a brown sauce.