Adventures in Time and Space

by Raymond J Healy

  We started off, Jay in the lead, McNulty and the burly Armstrong following. Immediately behind them, two men carried Jepson who could still use his tongue even if not his legs. Two more bore the body which our attackers had brought all the way from the ship. Without opposition or mishap we got a couple of hundred yards into the forest and there we buried the remains of the man who first set foot on this soil. He went from sight with the limp, unprotesting silence of the dead while all around us the jungle throbbed.

  In the next hundred yards we were compelled to bury another. The surviving duck-on-the-rock player, sobered by the dismal end of his buddy, took the lead as a form of penance. We were marching slowly and cautiously, our eyes alert for a possible ambush, our wits ready to react to any untoward move by a dart-throwing bush or a geo-smearing branch.

  The man in front swerved away from one tree that topped an empty greenie abode. His full attention remained fixed upon the dark entrance to that house and thus he failed to be wary of another tree under which he was moving. Of medium size, this growth had a silvery green bark, long, ornamental leaves from which dangled numerous sprays of stringy threads the ends of which came to within three or four feet of the ground. He brushed against two of the threads. Came a sharp, bluish flash of light, a smell of ozone and scorched hair, and he collapsed. He had been electrocuted as thoroughly as if smitten by a stroke of lightning.

  Mist or no mist, we carried him back the hundred yards we’d just traversed, interred him beside his comrade. The job was done in the nick of time; that crawling vaporous leprosy had reached near to our very heels as we resumed our way. High in the almost concealed sky the sun poured down its limpid rays and made mosaic patterns through overhead leaves.

  Giving a wide berth to this newest menace, which we dubbed the voltree, we hit the end of what passed for Main Street in these parts. Here we had an advantage in one respect but not in another. The houses stood dead in line and well apart; we could march along the centre of this route beneath the wider gap of sky and be beyond reach of this planet’s bellicose vegetation. But this made us so much the more vulnerable to attack from any direction by natives determined to oppose our escape. We would have to do the trip, one way or another, with our necks stuck out a yard.

  As we trudged stubbornly ahead, mentally prepared to face whatever might yet come, Sug Farn said to me, “You know, I have an idea well worth developing.”

  “What is it?” I asked, enjoying a thrill of hopefulness.

  “Suppose that we had twelve squares a side,” he suggested, blandly ignoring present circumstances, “we could then have four more pawns and four new master pieces per side. I propose to call the latter ‘archers’. They would move two squares forward and could take opponents only one square sidewise. Wouldn’t that make a beautifully complicated game?”

  “I hope you swallow a chess-set and ruin your insides,” I said, disappointed.

  “As I should have known, your mental appreciation accords with that of the lower vertebrates.” So saying, he extracted a bottle of hooloo scent which somehow he’d managed to retain through all the ructions, moved away from me and sniffed at it in a calculatingly offensive manner. I don’t give a hoot what anybody says-we don’t smell like Martians say we do! These snake-armed snoots are downright liars!

  Stopping both our progress and argument, Jay Score growled, “I guess this will do.” Unhitching his portable radio, he turned it, said into its microphone, “That you, Steve?” A pause, followed by, “Yes, we’re waiting about a quarter of a mile on the river side of the glade. There’s been no opposition-yet. But it’ll come. All right, we’ll stay put awhile.” Another pause. “Yes, we’ll guide you.”

  Turning his attention from the radio to the sky, but with one earpiece still held to his head, he listened intently. We all listened. For a while we could hear nothing but that throb-throb-throb that never ended upon this crazy world, but presently came a faraway drone like the hum of a giant bumble-bee.

  Jay picked up the microphone. “We’ve got you now. You’re heading right way and coming nearer.” The drone grew louder. “Nearer, nearer.” He waited a moment. The drone seemed to drift off at an angle. “Now you’re away to one side.” Another brief wait. The distant sound suddenly became strong and powerful. “Heading correctly.” It swelled to a roar. “Right!” yelled Jay. “You’re almost upon us!”

  He glanced expectantly upward and we did the same like one man. The next instant the pinnace raced across the sky-gap at such a pace that it had come and gone in less time than it takes to draw a breath. All the same, those aboard must have seen us for the little boat zoomed around in a wide, graceful arc, hit the main stem a couple of miles farther along, came back up it at terrific speed. This time we could watch it all the way and we bawled at it like a gang of excited kids.

  “Got us?” inquired Jay of the microphone. “Then make a try on the next run.”

  Again the pinnace swept round, struck its former path, tore the air as it shot toward us. It resembled a monster shell from some oldtime cannon. Things fell from its underside, bundles and packages in a parachuted stream. The stuff poured down as manna from heaven while the sower passed uproariously on and dug a hole in the northern sky. But for these infernal trees the pinnace could have done even better by landing and snatching the lot of us from danger’s grasp.

  Eagerly we pounced on the supplies, tearing covers open, dragging out the contents. Spacesuits for all. Well, they’d serve to protect us from various forms of gaseous unpleasantness. Needlers, oiled and loaded, with adequate reserves of excitants. A small case, all sponge rubber and cotton wool, containing half a dozen midget atomic bombs. An ampoule of iodine and a first-aid pack per man.

  One large bundle had become lodged high up in the branches of a tree, or rather its parachute had become entangled and left it dangling enticingly by the ropes. Praying that it contained nothing likely to blast the earth from under us, we needled the ropes and brought it down. It proved to hold a large supply of concentrated rations plus a five gallon can of fruit juice.

  Packing the chutes and shouldering the supplies, we started off. The first mile proved easy; just trees, trees, trees and houses from which the inhabitants had fled. It was on this part of the journey I noticed it was always the same type of tree that surmounted a house. No abode stood under any of those goo-slappers or electrocuters of whose powers we were grimly aware. Whether these house-trees were innocuous was a question nobody cared to investigate, but it was here that Minshull discovered them as the source of that eternal throbbing.

  Disregarding McNulty, who clucked at him like an agitated hen, Minshull tiptoed into one empty house, his needler ready for trouble. A few seconds later he reappeared, said that the building was deserted but that the tree in its centre was booming like a tribal tomtom. He’d put his ear to its trunk and had heard the beating of its mighty heart.

  That started a dissertation by McNulty on the subject of our highly questionable right to mutilate or otherwise harm the trees of this planet. If, in fact, they were semisentient, then in interstellar law they had the status of aborigines and as such were legally protected by subsection so-and-so, paragraph such-and-such of the Transcosmic Code governing planetary relations. He entered into all legalistic aspects of this matter with much gusto and complete disregard for the fact that he might be boiled in oil before nightfall.

  When eventually he paused for breath, Jay Score pointed out, “Skipper, maybe these people have laws of their own and are about to enforce them.” He pointed straight ahead.

  I followed the line of his finger then frantically poured myself into my spacesuit. The record time for encasing oneself is said to be twenty-seven seconds. I beat it by twenty, but can never prove it. This, I thought, is the pay-off. The long arm of justice was about to face me with that poor guppy and one can of condensed milk.

  Awaiting us half a mile ahead was a vanguard of enormous snakelike things far thicker than my body and no less than a hundred fe
et in length. They writhed in our general direction, their movements peculiarly stiff and lacking sinuosity. Behind them, also moving awkwardly forward, came a small army of bushes deceivingly harmless in appearance. And behind those, hooting with the courage of those who feel themselves secure, was a horde of green natives. The progress of this nightmarish army was determined by the pace of the snakish objects in the lead, and these crept forward in tortuous manner as if striving to move a hundred times faster than was natural.

  Aghast at this incredible spectacle, we halted. The creepers came steadily on and somehow managed to convey an irresistible impression of tremendous strength keyed-up for sudden release. The nearer they came, the bigger and nastier they looked. By the time they were a mere three hundred yards away I knew that any one of them could embrace a bunch of six of us and do more to the lot than any boa constructor ever did to a hapless goat.

  These were the wild ones of a fast and semisentient forest. I knew it instinctively and I could hear them faintly mewing as they advanced. These, then, were my bright green tigers, samples of the thing our captors had battled in the emerald jungle. But apparently they could be tamed, their strength and fury kept on tap. This tribe had done it. Veritably they were higher than the Ka.

  “I think I can just about make this distance,” said Jay Score when the intervening space had shrunk to two hundred yards.

  Nonchalantly he thumbed a little bomb that could have made an awful mess of the Marathon or a boat twice its size. His chief and most worrying weakness was that he never did appreciate the power of things that go bang. So he carelessly juggled it around in a way that made me wish him someplace the other side of the cosmos and just when I was about to burst into tears, he threw it. His powerful arm also whistled through the air as he flung the missile in a great arc.

  We flattened. The earth heaved like the belly of a sick man. Huge clods of plasma and lumps of torn green fibrous stuff geysered high, momentarily hung in mid-air, then showered all around. Getting up, we raced forward a hundred yards, went prone as Jay flung another. This one made me think of volcanoes being born alongside my abused ears. Its blast shoved me down in my boots. The uproar had scarcely ceased when the pinnace reappeared, dived upon the rear ranks of the foe and let them have a couple there. More disruption. It tied me in knots to see what went up even above the treetops.

  “Now!” yelled Jay. Grabbing the handicapped Jepson, he tossed him over one shoulder and pounced forward. We drove with him.

  Our first obstacle was a huge crater bottomed with tired and steaming earth amid which writhed some mutilated yellow worms. Cutting around the edges of this, I leaped a six-foot length of blasted creeper that, even in death, continued to jerk spasmodically and horribly. Many more odd lengths squirmed between here and the next bomb-hole. All were green inside and out, and bristled with hairlike tendrils that continued to vibrate as if vainly seeking the life that had gone.

  The one hundred yards between craters were covered in record time, Jay still in the lead despite his awkward burden. I sweated like a tormented bull and thanked my lucky stars for the low gravity that alone enabled me to maintain this hectic pace.

  Again we split our ranks and raced around the ragged rim of the second crater. This brought us practically nose to nose with the enemy and after that all was confusion.

  A bush got me. Sheer Terrestrial conditioning made me disregard the darned thing in spite of recent experiences. I had my attention elsewhere and in an instant it had shifted a pace to one side, wrapped itself around my legs and brought me down in full flight. I plunged with a hearty thump, unarmed, but cursing with what little breath I had left. The bush methodically sprinkled my spacesuit fabric with a fine grey powder. Then a long, leatherish tentacle snaked from behind me, ripped the bush from my form, tore it to pieces.

  “Thanks, Sug Farn,” I breathed, got up and charged on.

  A second antagonistic growth collapsed before my needler and the potent ray carried straight on another sixty or seventy yards and roasted the guts of a bawling, gesticulating native. Sug side-swiped a third bush, scattered it with scorn. The strange powder it sprayed around did not seem to affect him.

  By now Jay was twenty yards ahead. He paused, flung a bomb, dropped, came to his feet and pounded ahead with Jepson still bouncing on one shoulder. The pinnace howled overhead, swooped, created wholesale slaughter in the enemy’s rear. A needle-ray spiked from behind me, sizzled dangerously close to my helmet and burned a bush. I could hear in my helmet-phones a constant and monotonous cursing in at least six voices. On my right a great tree lashed around and toppled headlong, but I had neither the time nor inclination to look at it.

  Then a snake trapped Blaine. How it had survived in one piece, alone among its torn and tattered fellows, was a mystery. It lay jerking exactly like all the other bits and pieces but still existed in one long lump. Blaine jumped it and at the same instant it curled viciously, wound itself around him. He shrieked into his helmet-microphone. The sound of his dying was terrible to hear. His spacesuit sank in where the great coils compressed it and blood spurted out from the folds between. The sight and sound shocked me so much that involuntarily I stopped and Armstrong blundered into me from behind.

  “Keep going!” he roared, giving me an urgent shove. With his needler he sliced the green constricter into violently humping sections. We pushed straight on as hard as we could go, perforce leaving Blaine’s crushed corpse to the mercy of this alien jungle.

  Now we were through the fronting ranks of quasi-vegetable life and into the howling natives whose number had thinned considerably. Brittle globes popped and splintered all around our thudding feet but our suits protected us from the knock-out effects of their gaseous contents. In any case, we were moving too fast to get a deadly whiff. I needled three greenies in rapid succession, saw Jay tear off the head of another without so much as pausing in his weighty onrush.

  We were gasping with exertion when unexpectedly the foe gave up. Remaining natives faded with one accord into their protecting forest just as the pinnace made yet another vengeful dive upon them. The way was clear. Not slackening our headlong pace in the slightest, with eyes alert and weapons prepared, we pelted to the waterfront. And there, reposing in the great clearing, we found the sweetest sight in the entire cosmos-the Marathon.

  It was at this point that Sug Farn put a prime scare into us, for as we sprinted joyfully toward the open airlock, he beat us to it, held up the stump of a tentacle, said, “It would be as well if we do not enter just yet.”

  “Why not?” demanded Jay. His glowing eyes focused on the Martian’s stump, and he added, “What has happened to you?”

  “I have been compelled to shed most of a limb,” said Sug Farn, mentioning it with the casual air of one to whom shedding a limb is like taking off a hat. “It was that powder. It is composed of a million submicroscopic insects. It crawls around and eats. It started to eat me. Take a look at yourselves.”

  By hokey, he was right! Now that I came to examine it I could see small patches of grey powder changing shape on the surface of my spacesuit. Sooner or later it was going to eat its way through the fabric-and start on me!

  I’ve never felt more thoroughly lousy in my life. So, keeping watch on the nearest fringe of the forest, we had to spend an irritating and sweaty half-hour roasting each other’s suits with needlers turned to wide jet and low power. I was well-nigh cooked by the time the last pinhead louse dropped off.

  Young Wilson, never the one to pass up a public humiliation, seized the opportunity to dig out a movie camera and record our communal decontamination. I knew that this eventually would be shown to an amused world sitting in armchair comfort far, far from the troubles surrounding Rigel. Secretly I hoped that somehow a quota of surviving bugs would manage to get around to the film and lend a taste of realism to the fun.

  With a more official air, Wilson also took shots of the forest, the river, and a couple of upturned alien boats with all their bivalve paddles exp
osed. Then, thankfully, we piled into the ship.

  The pinnace was lugged aboard and the Marathon took off without delay. There’s never been a time when I felt more like a million dollars than at the moment when normal and glorious yellow-white light poured through the ports and the bilious green colouring departed from our faces. With Brennand standing at my side, I watched this strange, eerie world sink below, and I can’t say I was sorry to see it go.

  Jay came along the catwalk and informed, “Sergeant, we’re making no further landings. The skipper has decided to return to Terra forthwith and make a full report.”

  “Why?” asked Brennand. He gestured toward the diminishing sphere. “We’ve come away with practically nothing worth having.”

  “McNulty thinks we’ve learned enough to last us for a piece.” The rhythmic hum of the stern tubes filled in his brief period of silence. “McNulty says he’s conducting an exploratory expedition and not managing a slaughterhouse. He’s had enough and is thinking of tendering his resignation.”

  “The officious dope!” said Brennand, with shameful lack of reverence.

  “And what have we learned, if anything?” I inquired.

  “Well, we know that life on that planet is mostly symbiotic,” Jay replied. “It’s different forms of life share their existence and their faculties. Men share with trees, each according to his kind. The communal point is that queer chest organ.”

  “Drugs for blood,” said Brennand, showing disgust.

  “But,” Jay continued, “there are some higher than the Ka, higher than all others, some so high and godlike that they could depart from their trees and travel the globe by day or by night. They could milk their trees, transport the life-giving fluids and absorb them from bowls. Of the symbiotic partnership imposed upon them, they had gained the mastery and-in the estimation of the planet-they alone were free.”