Brushing past us, Jay bore his burden into our tiny surgery where Wally Simcox-Sam’s sidekick-started working on the patient. The victim’s buddy hung around outside the door and looked sick. He looked considerably more sick when Captain McNulty came along and stabbed him with an accusative stare before going inside.
After half a minute, the skipper shoved out a red, irate face and rapped, “Go tell Steve to recall that lifeboat at once-Sam is urgently needed.”
Dashing to the radio-room, I passed on the message. Steve’s eyebrows circumnavigated his face as he flicked a switch and cuddled a microphone to his chest. He got through to the boat, told them, listened to the reply.
“They’re returning immediately.”
Going back, I said to the uneasy duck-on-the-rock enthusiast, “What happened, Stupid?”
He flinched. “That bush made a target of him and filled his area with darts. Long, thin ones, like thorns. All over his head and neck and through his clothes. One made a pinhole through his ear. Luckily they missed his eyes.”
“Yeah!” said Brennand.
“A bunch of them whisked past me on my left, fell twenty feet behind. They’d plenty of force; I heard them buzz like angry bees.” He swallowed hard, shuffled his feet around. “It must have thrown a hundred or more.”
McNulty came out then, his features somewhat fierce. Very slowly and deliberately he said to the escapee, “I’ll deal with you later!” The look he sent with it would have scorched the pants off a space cop. We watched his portly form parade down the passage.
The victim registered bitterness, beat it to his post at the stern. Next minute the lifeboat made one complete circle overhead, descended with a thin zoom ending in a heavy swish. Its crew poured aboard the Marathon while derricks clattered and rattled as they swung the boat’s twelve-ton bulk into the mother ship.
Sam remained in the surgery an hour, came out shaking his head. “He’s gone. We could do nothing for him.” “You mean he’s-dead?”
“Yes. Those darts are loaded with a powerful alkaline poison. It’s virulent. We’ve no antidote for it. It clots the blood, like snake venom.” He rubbed a weary hand over his crisp, curly hair. “I hate having to report this to the skipper.”
We followed him forward. I stuck my eye to the peephole in the starboard airlock as we passed, had a look at what the Martians were doing. Kli Dreen and Kli Morg played chess with three others watching them. As usual, Sug Farn snored in one corner. It takes a Martian to be bored by adventure yet sweat with excitement over a slow-motion game like chess. They always did have an inverted sense of values.
Keeping one saucer eye on the board, Kli Dreen let the other glance idly at my face framed in the peephole. His two-way look gave me the creeps. I’ve heard that chameleons can swivel them independently, but no chameleon could take it to an extreme that tied your own optic nerves in knots. I chased after Brennand and Sam. There was a strong smell of trouble up at that end.
The skipper fairly rocketed on getting Sam’s report. His voice resounded loudly through the partly open door.
“Hardly landed and already there’s a casualty to be entered in the log … utter foolhardiness … more than a silly prank … blatant disregard of standing orders … sheer indiscipline.” He paused while he took breath. “Nevertheless the responsibility is mine. Jay, summon the ship’s company.”
The general call blared as Jay pressed the stud. We barged in, the rest following soon after, the Martians arriving last. Eyeing us with an air of outraged authority, McNulty strutted to and fro, lectured us to some length.
We’d been specially chosen to crew the Marathon because we were believed to be cool, calculating, well-disciplined individuals who had come of age, got over our weaning, and long outgrown such infantile attractions as duck-on-the-rock.
“Not to mention chess,” he added, his manner decidedly jaundiced.
Kli Dreen gave a violent start, looked around to see whether his tentacled fellows had heard this piece of incredible blasphemy. A couple indulged in underbreath chirrupings as they stirred up whatever they use for blood.
“Mind you,” continued the skipper, subconsciously realising that he’d spat in somebody’s holy water, “I’m no killjoy, but it is necessary to emphasise that there’s a time and place for everything.” The Martians rallied slightly. “And so,” continued McNulty, “I want you always to-”
A ‘phone shrilled, cutting him short. There were three ‘phones on his desk. He gaped at them in the manner of one who has every reason to suspect the evidence of his ears. The ship’s company stared at each other to see if anyone were missing. There shouldn’t have been: a general call is answered by the entire company.
McNulty decided that to answer the ‘phone might be the simplest way of solving the mystery. Grabbing an instrument, he gave it a hoarse and incredulous, “Yes?” One of the other ‘phones whirred again, proving him a bad chooser. Slamming down the one he was holding, he took up another, repeated, “Yes?”
The ‘phone made squeaky noises against his ear while his florid features underwent the most peculiar contortions. “Who?” “What?” he demanded. “What awoke you?” His eyes bugged. “Somebody knocking at the door?”
Planting the ‘phone, he ruminated in faint amazement, then said to Jay Score, “That was Sug Farn. He complains that his siesta is being disturbed by a hammering on the turnscrew of the starboard airlock.” Finding a chair, he flopped into it, breathed asthmatically. His popping eyes roamed around, discovered Steve Gregory. He snapped, “For heaven’s sake, man control those eyebrows of yours.”
Steve pushed one up, pulled one down, let his mouth dangle open and tried to look contrite. The result was imbecilic. Bending over the skipper, Jay Score talked to him in smooth undertones. McNulty nodded tiredly. Jay came erect, addressed us.
“All right, men, go back to your stations. The Martians had better don their helmets. We’ll install a pom-pom in that airlock and have the armed lifeboat crew standing by it. Then we’ll open the lock.”
That was sensible enough. You could see anyone approaching the ship in broad daylight but not once they’d come close up: the side ports didn’t permit a sharp enough angle so that anyone standing right under the lock would be shielded by the vessel’s bulge.
Nobody was tactless enough to mention it, but the skipper had erred in holding a revival meeting without maintaining watch. Unless the hammerers saw fit to move outward, away from the door on which they were thumping, we’d no means of getting a look at them except by opening the door. We weren’t going to cook dinner and tidy the beds before discovering what was outside, not after that last nasty experience when hostile machines had started to disassemble the ship around us.
Well, the dozing Sug Farn got poked out of his corner and sent off for his head-and-shoulder unit. We erected the pom-pom with its centre barrel lined on the middle of the turnscrew. Something made half a dozen loud clunks on the outside of the door as we finished. It sounded to me like a volley of flung stones.
Slowly the door spun along its worm and drew aside. A bright shaft of green light showed through and with it came a stream of air that made me feel like a healthy hippopotamus. At the same time old Andrews’ successor, Chief Engineer Douglas, switched off the artificial gravity and we all dropped to two-thirds normal weight.
We gazed at that green-lit opening with such anxious intentness that it became easy to imagine an animated metal coffin suddenly clambering through, its front lenses glistening in unemotional enmity. But there came no whirr of hidden machinery, no menacing clank of metal arms and legs, nothing except the sigh of this strangely invigorating wind through distant trees, the rustle of blown grasses and a queer, unidentifiable, faraway throbbing that may or may not have emanated from jungle drums.
So deep was the silence that Jepson’s breathing came loud over my shoulder. The pom-pom gunner crouched in his seat, his keen eyes focused along the sights, his finger curled around the trigger, his right and left
hand feeders ready with reserve belts. All three of the pom-pom crew were busy with wads of gum while they waited.
Then I heard a soft pad-pad of feet moving in the grass immediately below the lock.
We all knew that McNulty would throw a fit if anyone dared walk to the rim. He nursed annoyed memories of the last time somebody did just that and was snatched out. So like a gang of dummies we stayed put, waiting, waiting.
Presently there sounded a querulous gabble beneath the opening. Next moment a smooth rock the size of a melon flew through the gap, missed Jepson by a few inches, shattered against the back wall.
Skipper or no skipper, I became fed up, hefted my needler in my right hand, prowled half bent along the footwalk cut through the threads of the airlock worm. Reaching the rim which was about nine feet above ground level, I thrust out an inquiring face. Molders pressed close behind me. The muffled throbbing now sounded more clearly than ever, yet remained just as elusive.
Beneath me stood a small band of six beings startlingly human at first appearance. Same bodily contours, same limbs and digits, similar features. They differed from us mostly in that their skins were coarse and crinkly, a dull, drab-green in colour, and they had a peculiar organ like the head of a chrysanthemum protruding from their bare chests. Their eyes were jet black, sharp, and darted about with monkeylike alertness.
For all these differences, our superficial similarity was so surprising that I stood gaping at them while they stared back at me. Then one of them shrilled something in the singsong tones of an excited Chinese, swung his right arm, did his best to bash out the contents of my skull. Ducking, I heard and felt the missile swish across my top hairs. Molders also ducked it, involuntarily pushed against me. The thing crashed inside the lock, I heard somebody spit a lurid oath as I overbalanced and fell out.
Clinging grimly to the needle-ray, I flopped into soft greenery, rolled like mad, and bounced to my feet. At any instant I expected to see a shower of meteors as I was slugged. But the alien sextet weren’t there. They were fifty yards away and moving fast, making for the shelter of the forest in long, agile leaps that would have shamed a hungry kangaroo. It would have been easy to bring two or three of them down, but McNulty could crucify me for it. Earth-laws are strict about the treatment of alien aborigines.
Molders came out of the lock, followed by Jepson, Wilson and Kli Yang. Wilson had his owl eye camera with a colour filter over its lens. He was wild with excitement.
“I got them from the fourth port. I made two shots as they scrammed.”
“Humph!” Molders stared around. He was a big, burly, phlegmatic man who looked more like a Scandinavian brewer than a space-jerk. “Let’s follow them to the edge of the jungle.”
“That’s an idea,” agreed Jepson, heartily. He wouldn’t have been hearty about it if he’d known what was coming to him. Stamping his feet on the springy turf, he sucked in a lungful of oxygen-rich air. “This is our chance for a legitimate walk.”
We started off without delay, knowing it wouldn’t be long before the skipper started howling for us to come back. There’s no man so hard to convince that risks have to be taken and that casualties are the price of knowledge, nor any man who’d go so far to do so little when he got there.
Reaching the verge of the forest, the six green ones stopped and warily observed our approach. If they were quick to take it on the run when caught out in the open, they weren’t so quick when in the shadow of the trees which, for some reason, gave them more confidence. Turning his back to us, one of them doubled himself and made faces at us from between his knees. It seemed senseless, without purpose or significance.
“What’s that for?” growled Jepson, disliking the face that mopped and mowed at him from beneath a crinkled backside.
Wilson gave a snigger and informed, “I’ve seen it before. A gesture of derision-It must be of cosmic popularity.”
“I could have scalded his seat if I’d been quick,” said Jepson, aggrievedly. Then he put his foot in a hole and fell on his face.
The green ones set up a howl of glee, flung a volley of stones that dropped short of the target. We broke into a run, going along in great bounds. The low gravity wasn’t spoiled by the thick blanket of air which, of course, pressed equally in all directions; our weight was considerably below Earth poundage so that we loped along several laps ahead of Olympic champions.
Five of the green ones promptly faced into the forest. The sixth shot like a squirrel up the trunk of the nearest tree. Their behaviour carried an irresistible suggestion that for some unknown reason they regarded the trees as refuges safe against all assaults.
We stopped about eighty yards from that particular tree. For all we knew it might have been waiting for us with a monster load of darts. Our minds thought moodily of what one comparatively small bush had done. Scattering in a thin line, each man ready to flop at the first untoward motion, we edged cautiously nearer. Nothing happened. Nearer again. Still nothing happened. In this tricky manner we came well beneath the huge branches and close to the trunk. From the tree or its bark oozed a strange fragrance halfway between pineapple and cinnamon. The elusive throbbing we’d heard before now sounded more strongly than ever.
It was an imposing tree. Its dark green, fibrous-barked trunk, seven or eight feet in diameter, soared up to twenty-five feet before it began to throw out strong, lengthy branches each of which terminated in one great spatulate leaf. Looking at that massive trunk it was difficult to determine how our quarry had fled up it, but he’d performed the feat like an adept.
All the same, we couldn’t see him. Carefully we went round and round the tree a dozen or twenty times, gazing up past its big branches through which green light filtered in large mosaic patterns. Not a sign of him. No doubt about it, he must be somewhere up there but he just couldn’t be spotted by us. There was no way in which he could have hopped from this tree to its nearest neighbor, neither could he have come to ground again unobserved. Our collective view of this lump of alien timber was pretty good despite the peculiar, unearthly light, but the more we stared the more invisible he remained.
“This is a prime puzzler!” Stepping well away from the trunk, Jepson sought a better angle of view.
With a mighty swoosh! the branch immediately above his head drove down. I could almost hear the tree’s yelp of triumph as the swipe gave a boost to my imagination.
The spatulate leaf smacked Jepson squarely across his back and a waft of the pineapple-cinnamon smell went all over the place. Just as swiftly the branch swung up to its original position, taking the victim with it. Roaring with fury, Jepson soared with the leaf and struggled furiously while we gathered in a dumbfounded bunch below. We could see that he was stuck to the underside of that leaf and slowly becoming covered in thick, yellowy-green goo as he writhed madly around. That stuff must have been a hundred times stickier than the best bird-lime.
Together we roared at him to keep still before he got the deadly junk smeared over his face. We had to use a large dollop of decibels and some shameful invective to force his attention. Already his clothes had become covered with goo and his left arm was fastened to his side. He looked a mess. It was obvious that if he got any of it over his mouth and nostrils he’d remain up there and quietly suffocate.
Molders had a determined try at climbing the trunk and found it impossible. He edged away to have a look upward, came hurriedly inward when he noticed another leaf strategically placed to give him a dose of the same.
The safest place was beneath the unfortunate Jepson. Something over twenty feet up, the goo was now crawling slowly over its prey and I estimated that in half an hour he’d be completely covered-in much less if he wriggled around. All this time the dull pulsations continued as though sonorously counting the last moments of the doomed. They made me think of jungle drums heard through thick walls.
Gesturing toward the golden cylinder that was the Marathon lying five hundred yards away in the glade, Wilson said, “The more time we waste th
e worse it’s going to be. Let’s beat it back, get ropes and steel dogs. We’ll soon bring him down.”
“No,” I decided. “We’ll get him a darned sight faster than that.”
I stamped around a few times to check the springiness and cushioning qualities of the stuff underfoot. Satisfied, I aimed my needle-ray at the point where Jepson’s leaf joined the end of its branch.
Watching me, he let out a bellow of, “Lay off, you crack-brained moron! You’ll have me-”
The needler’s beam lanced forth at full strength. The leaf dropped off and the tree went mad. Jepson fell twenty-five feet at the incredible rate of two vulgar adjectives per foot. The leaf still fastened to his back, he landed in the undergrowth with a wild yelp and a flood of lurid afterthoughts. While we all lay flat and frantically tried to bury ourselves still deeper, the tree thrashed violently around, its gum-laden spatulates thirsting for vengeance.
One persistent branch kept beating its leaf within a yard of my head as I tried to shove said turnip below ground. I could feel the waft of it coming with rhythmic regularity and sense the pineapple-cinnamon smell permeating the air. It made me sweat to think how my lungs would strain, my eyes pop and my heart burst if I got a generous portion of that junk slapped across my face. I would far rather be needled.
After a while the tree ceased its insane larruping, stood like a dreaming giant liable to go into another frenzy at any moment. Crawling on hands and knees to Jepson, we managed to drag him out of reach, pulling him along on the leaf to which he was fastened.
He couldn’t walk, his jackboots and the legs of his pants being firmly glued together. His left arm was just as securely gummed to his side. He was in an awful pickle and complained steadily without pause for breath or thought. Before this happening we had never suspected him of such fluency. But we got him into the safety of the open glade and it was there I recited the few words he’d failed to mention.
Adventures in Time and Space Page 29
