Storm stared at her.
“You mean to say—these vegetables can reason?”
“Yes. They can. They possess intelligence, Ryder. I don’t profess to know what kind, or what sort of nervous system produces it. But they have it. And experiments prove that they are occasionally mobile; they can move from place to place as animal things can. That means they could move from dry spots to moist ones, from barren ground to fertile.”
She stopped and frowned.
“That’s odd,” she said, looking down between rows of enormous, weaving flower stalks. “There was a bed of giant peonies in here. I don’t see them now.”
“They may have evolved right out of the picture,” Storm grunted.
Laura took the sentence seriously. “No. I stopped the rapid growth-span of these plants at this perfect stage. The proper chemicals are in their peat moss bed, but they must have the violet light for rapid evolution.”
She pointed upward.
“As you see, the violet ray tubes are not on. Only ordinary sunlight tubes. So the peonies could not have completed their evolutionary span while I was away—”
AGAIN she stopped. Her eyes widened.
“Ryder—something is wrong in here! I can feel it—”
“Yes, I think something is!” Storm exclaimed. “And I think I can tell you where your peonies are! Look!”
He pointed to a great plant. The big yellow bloom was closed. But from the tight-closed rim a wilted green length trailed. It was like a vine tendril trailing from the mouth of a tightly closed sack. Or like the tail of a small serpent protruding from the swallowing jaws of a larger, cannibalistic one!
“Your sweet flowers,” Storm said grimly, “your beautiful plants which will some day make this a better world—seem not to be so peaceful after all. There goes the last of your peonies. The lilies have devoured them!” Laura’s hand was at her throat. Her face was like death, as she saw the limp roots of the lesser plant slowly and grimly drawn into the beautiful bloom of the larger.
To her this was supreme tragedy. For half her life she had built her ideas on the thought that some day the world would be governed by things of peace—plant-things among which there would be none of the wars and destruction practiced by humans. She had dreamed of a brighter, better day; and, dreaming, she hadn’t cared in the least what happened to humankind including herself.
And now—one species of her superplant had warred on another! Had warred and won, and devoured the losers!
Storm, guessing her tragic thoughts, took her hand in his.
“Don’t feel like that,” he said gently. “You’re a great scientist, but you’ve made the mistake so many pacifists make. That is, to ignore the rule that life is a battle. Nothing lives that doesn’t have to fight something else for its life. In your future, which turns out to be not so sublime after all, the lilies are crowded by the peonies, so they war on them and the war can only end in the extinction of one or the other. In the present, the yellow race feels crowded by the white, so there is a war that can end only in—”
He stopped. His hand tightened over hers.
“What is it?” Laura asked apathetically.
“The door. Look toward the door.”
Laura turned. Slowly the desperate disillusion in her eyes was replaced by an emotion that had nothing to do with intellect: the emotion of stark fear.
Between them and the door, where there had been a wide, clear aisle, there was now a weaving triple row of gigantic day-lilies!
“Ryder! What does it mean?”
Storm had his arm defensively around her shoulders.
“The things have surrounded us—to give us the same fate as the peonies! It means they’re so warlike that they’ll attack anything moving and living within their range!”
“But it can’t be! I’ve been in here many times before, alone, and they haven’t acted like this.”
“Probably because they were weakened and dull from too rapid growth. You have now slowed their growth to normal, and they have gathered normal strength—and mobility!”
He stared at the nearest lily, nerves crawling in his body.
The roots of the thing were slowly withdrawing from the peat moss. Like bloodless worms creeping, they came out of the bed; and when they were bared, the plant they supported moved teeteringly toward them.
NEAR the door the lily stalks all stood on exposed roots. They joined in the slow march toward Laura and Storm.
Intelligence? Yes, they did have some sort of intelligence. Must have it! Only reason could have made them move between the man and woman and their one way of exit.
“They’re coming closer—” whispered Laura, primeval fear in her eyes. “What can we do?”
“Have you an ax?” asked Storm, keeping his voice calm.
“Not in here. There are some in the general living quarters, but there are two locked metal doors between us and them. We can’t get out because of the lilies. Help can’t come to us because of the locks—”
All the great flowers had their roots exposed now. And all were advancing, rank on rank, closing in on the two.
“I’ll try to get to the door,” said Storm, with his forced calm. “These things can’t be able to move fast.”
He walked toward the front rank of the plant-things that had got between them and the exit. He leaped forward, big arms driving to tear a way between the stalks.
Like a flash the nearest stalks whipped down. Green tentacles coiled around his arms and body.
“Ryder!” screamed the woman.
But Storm was only too desperately aware of what had just happened. With their swift moves, the plants had dropped the big flowers from their stalks. Like giant toads, the blooms hit the moss-covered cave floor with a dreadful soft plopping sound. But they did not lie there.
With the instant of their landing, they began to move on weaving fringes toward the big red-bearded man.
“Ryder—”
One of the separated blooms enveloped him to the hips. Its curling, lovely cup sucked tight. From sections of its vast rim came slow trickles of some sort of digestive acid.
Sweat beaded Storm’s forehead. The muscles of his arms and barrel chest writhed as he fought to tear free. Death stared at him. Then, with a cracking of shoulder tendons, be wrenched his arms from the green coils. He fell back over the blossom that had clamped his legs together, and rolled away.
Laura ran to him. With raking nails she clawed at the ferocious flower cup. Its walls were thin but tough, like orange-enamelled patent-leather. They defied her hands. But some of the rim reached hungrily for her, and with that slight lessening of the deadly grip, Storm tore free.
His eyes thanked her for the help—probably the first destructive move she had ever made. But he only said jerkily:
“That tank! Run, before they cut us off from that too!”
Behind them was the glass experimental tank, noted before by Storm. Empty, unused, it offered a forlorn haven.
A whipping stalk looped down before them as they ran for the tank. The flower dropped from it, to plop on the moss and start inching toward them. Storm seized the thick stalk and wrenched at it. He did not succeed in tearing it in two, but the whole plant shivered and jerked back, leaving the way clear for a few seconds.
THE tank had a glass top as well as glass sides. The top was hinged, a glass lid. Storm lifted it up. “In, Laura!”
The woman climbed in. Storm slithered after her. The lid banged down.
The two stared at each other with eyes in which horror was only a little lessened. The tank was a haven for the moment. It would probably be their coffin in a little while!
Moving with amazing quickness on their wormlike roots, the giant stalks had surrounded the tank. On all sides, the big orange blooms crawled toward the glass, separated from their stems. They piled up around the case, sucking at it with acid-dripping rims, trying to reach the two. And then they proved again that they were able somehow to see and reason.
These two creatures had entered the glass case through an uplifted lid—promptly the tough stalks felt along the top to lift the lid, too, and get in to them!
The blunt, flowerless end of one of them found the overhang of the lid. It moved up, with the lid opening as it moved.
“We’ll fix that,” Storm said thickly.
He motioned Laura to the side of the case on which was the lid hinge. He leaned powerfully against the glass wall, and she added her weight to his. The glass tilted, fell on its side. The green coil which had entered was wrenched out by the movement of the case. Again—and the glass tank lay on its top, sealing the lid shut with its own weight.
“They can’t get in now.”
No, they could not get in. But neither could the two victims get out!
Storm exclaimed suddenly. His clothes from the waist down were beginning to smoke. The skin of his legs felt as though bathed in liquid flame.
The digestive acid dripped by the first flower cup was eating in.
He tore the garments from him, then ripped off the tunic of his shirt and wiped the deadly stuff from his legs. He straightened, big torso bared from the waist up, and his breath hissed between his teeth.
Flower cups were clustered against the glass tank like bees on honey. From each dripped the viscous stuff they secreted for absorption of victims. And under the slow drip of that stuff the unbreakable glass was turning milky—and was pitting!
“They can actually disintegrate glass!” Storm exclaimed. “See those pits! They’ll be through in an hour or less!”
Laura Hart nodded in a dazed sort of way. Her eyes were filled with despair.
“We’re going to die in this tank. We’re going to be killed and eaten—by the creations I thought so peaceable and superior to humanity.”
She began to shudder, almost rhythmically. Storm held her close. “We’re not dead yet.”
Then he thrust her from him. He cursed deep in his throat, at himself, curses that sounded like prayers. “What an idiot! There is a way—”
HE caught Laura’s shoulder. “Where is the switch controlling the overhead ultra-violet-tubes?”
“The violet-tubes?” repeated Laura. “Yes. Listen—You said you had slowed the evolution of these damnable things by shutting off the violet rays overhead.”
Laura nodded, eyes mystified.
“All right. Suppose we could switch them on again. The rapid growth-span of the plants in here would be resumed, wouldn’t it? They’d pick up their quick progress in evolution wouldn’t they, with each plant dying and being replaced by a new plant every three seconds?”
“Yes. But—”
“In human beings,” Storm said swiftly, “there is such a thing as race memory. Recollection of an event is handed from one generation to the next. But eventually that recollection gets lost in the mists of time. Now, these things are attacking us, eager to devour us. But if their growth-span were quickened, the attackers would die in a few seconds, the next generation would not be so keenly aware that we are a trapped enemy to be overpowered—and as each generation succeeded the last and the race memory died out, that awareness should fade. Don’t you see?”
Hope flamed in the woman’s eyes. “You mean they might forget what they are fighting for?”
“Exactly. Just as in a thousand years of war men might finally forget who had started a fight against whom, and why. Besides, the rapid evolutionary process can’t help but weaken the plants. Laura, where’s that switch?”
Hope dulled again in her sea-blue eyes.
“It’s over on that panel.” She pointed toward the wall of the subterranean laboratory forty feet away. “We can’t possibly reach it. There are dozens of the things between this tank and it.”
“But we can reach it! We can get to it simply by rolling this tank over and over toward it. We rolled it over on its top to clamp the lid shut, didn’t we? Then why couldn’t we roll it some more—to reach a definite goal?”
“Ryder—” Laura’s fingers bit into his arm. “I really think we could. But if we can do that, why not simply roll to the door and escape?”
“Because the door happens to open inward,” Storm said. “We’d have to stop so far from it, to let the opening door clear the tank, that these hellish plants would have room to get in between and block us again. This side, Laura. Add your weight to mine.”
They surged against the glass wall facing toward the distant control panel. The glass tank tottered on its edge and fell on that side, pinning down some of the coiling green stalks, and pressing flat the separate blossoms there.
“Watch the lid!”
The maneuver was repeated, and they were ten feet nearer their goal. Two great plant stems looped viciously upward with the now exposed glass lid of the tank.
“Again!”
THE tank rolled on its side, carrying the reaching plants before it. “We’re going to make it,” panted Laura.
No one who had ever seen her as the cool, impersonal, detached scientist, or the passionless, inflexible pacifist, would have recognized her now. Her tunic was rent. Her eyes flamed with the primitive urge to preserve life by any means against the attack of aliens.
“Yes, we’ll beat the things yet!” grunted Storm, straining for the next roll of the tank.
They got to the panel. And they landed next to it with the lid underneath instead of on that side!
“Ryder—We can’t reach the switch after all—”
“Yes,” Storm ground out, “we can! But heaven help us if the race-memory of these things can persist through the generations so that they keep on attacking us. Because the only way to reach that switch is through a loophole that will let the things get in!”
He stooped and caught up the ripped strips of his shirt tunic, which were blackened and rotten with the acid he had wiped from his legs. He wound them unheedingly around his big right fist and turned to the glass tank-wall next to the control panel.
The glass was deeply pitted. Opaque from the dripped acid of the deadly flowers. He drew back his arm and crashed his fist against the section most deeply pitted.
A sledge-hammer couldn’t have cracked that glass had it been untouched. But the viscous stuff from the blooms had done fantastic damage to the molecules of the glass. With Storm’s first blow, it buckled out a little. With his next, delivered with all the power of his big body, his fist went through.
Like furious serpents the green coils of the plants’ stems writhed to fasten around the arm Storm shoved through the hole. But his hand got to the switchboard. He shoved home the switch controlling the overhead violet ray tubes, and saw with the move a slight change in the tint of light streaming down from overhead.
Literally holding their breaths, the two stared out through portions of the glass wall that had not yet been etched to opacity by the acid.
And they saw the miracle of the outer laboratory repeated.
Here, as there, the plant-growth of a season was compressed into a few seconds. On all sides of them the giant day-lilies drooped, fell to the ground, decomposed there as another crop swelled to maturity and in turn died and decomposed.
But each upspringing generation of plants reached savagely for the glass tank! With each flashing maturity, long stems crowded to get into the hole Storm’s fist had battered, and deadly blossoms sucked at the glass walls and dripped their corrosive acid.
“We’re beaten,” Storm said.
The two crouched in the tank, away from the tentacles ever writhing through the hole. But then a shout came from the man’s bearded lips that almost burst their eardrums in the confined space.
“We’re not beaten! Look!”
OUTSIDE, the surging plant-things were no longer striving so hard to penetrate the glass tank. With each quick upthrust the swelling green plants moved more indecisively, and their roots went down more solidly into the peat moss. Meanwhile, the blooms had almost ceased to move toward the thin walls protecting the man and girl.
“Whatever met
hod they have of passing history down to their descendants is failing!” cried Laura. “A hundred generations have passed. Now the new generations are losing the race memory and forgetting to fight us!”
Storm held her close and watched with her, eyes shining, red beard flaming in the queer light that was saving them.
And the time came when no stalk coiled toward the hole in the tank, and when no fallen flower inched in that direction. There was only the fantastic sea of vegetation—levelling to the ground, spiring up like a solid wave, bursting into bright orange bloom and then sinking down again in death.
White-faced, Laura and Storm took the gamble. They rolled the tank back and stepped out of it as the lid fell open.
The near plants bent vaguely toward them, like arms reaching, then shrank back as they swelled to maturity and shrank into death. But the move had in it no hint of attempt to finish a struggle almost won by distant forbears; it grew only from the innate ferocity of the things Professor Laura Hart had cultivated from ordinary flower plants through infinitely accelerated evolution.
They got to the door, stepped into the other laboratory, and locked the menace of the inner laboratory behind the massive metal panel.
Storm took his arm from around Laura’s waist. His eyes sought hers, levelly, inquiringly.
“Well?” he said, gently.
Laura managed a smile, though it shivered a little on her pale and tremulous lips.
“We might be able to use those horrible things in war against the Orient,” Storm said. “We could drop seeds of these man-eating things in their most ferocious stage of evolution They’d grow to their full size in about five weeks, and we could rain down tubes of my palsy virus to keep soldiers from hacking them down before they’d overrun the enemy sectors. We’d have victory in a month and a half, if you’d consent to work with me.”
Laura moved back into the circle of his arm.
“Yes, Ryder. With you. Beside you. The High Command may have my evolutionary product, for no human beings could be worse than those flowers!” She sighed. “I guess we’ll have to take the world as we find it in the present, and fight to preserve what we think is best in it.”
Collected Fiction Page 26
