With a startled oath, he snatched an oxygen mask from an overnight bag, clamped it on his face and rushed to the window. Throwing the casement wide, he strode out on the railed observation platform which half-encircled Gleason’s towerlike dwelling.
* * * *
Beneath him stretched the foothills of the mightiest mountain range on Luna. Coruscating in the light of brittle stars, they arose precipitously from an ash-strewn plain, and though the smallest of them would have dwarfed a full-fledged mountain on Earth they seemed of pygmy dimensions when his gaze swept upward over the Gargantuan peaks beyond.
A strangled sound came from behind him. He swung about, his lips tightening. Vera was standing just outside the window.
“John,” she choked. “That scream came from downstairs. You can’t see anything from here. The wobblies wouldn’t be visible in this glare.”
The scream came again. It was audible now on the platform, a hideous, tormented wailing which seemed to drift up from below.
“It’s coming from Gleason’s sleeping turret,” Carstairs said. “He sleeps with his oxygen mask on and his windows flung wide. I just wanted to make sure.”
“Then why are we standing here?” Vera choked. “Oh, he’s dying!”
“Get back inside,” Carstairs rapped. “You ought to have more sense than to come out here without a mask.”
“John, are the wobblies attacking him?”
“It couldn’t be the wobblies. They’re not carnivorous, and their nettles merely irritate the skin a little. Now get back, before your lungs buckle into folds.”
Vera obeyed. She didn’t stay in Carstairs’ turret, but ran breathlessly through the door, and down a cold-lighted corridor to a spiraling flight of black plastic stairs. Down them she raced, oblivious to the torment in her lungs. Carstairs descended in slower strides, but the length of his legs kept him constantly at her side. With almost simultaneous movements he had thrown off the blankets, pushed the oxygen mask back over his forehead and wrapped a dressing gown around his rangy bulk.
“Take it easy, Vera,” he cautioned. “If you drop dead, you’ll be sorry later on.” On dim walls on both sides of the stairway loomed imaginative paintings. Segrelles’ Mountains of theMoon and Degrasse’s Seas of Saturn. The tower was richly furnished, dark and awesome from its observatory roof to the deep cellars underground where Gleason’s choicest wines were stored. In one aspect of his personality Gleason was an epicure, almost a sybarite. A scientific Gleason had welcomed the director of the Interplanetary Gardens to the Lunar Apennines, but Carstairs knew that there were other, more riotous Gleasons. There was a Gleason who devoutly admired chorus girls from the Twenty-first Century follies, a Gleason who went on periodic binges, and a Gleason who liked to gamble for high stakes over stacked chips at midnight.
Gleason’s sleeping turret was at the end of a long, winding corridor on the third floor of the tower. Vera got to the door a split second ahead of Carstairs. Although it did not seem to be locked, the barrier creaked noisily and resisted her frantic tuggings.
“John, you’d better put your shoulders to it,” she whispered hoarsely. “It seems to be stuck. Oh, John, I’m frightened.”
Carstairs needed no urging. Bracing himself, he hurled his massive shoulders against the portal. There was a grinding crunch, and something clattered to the floor inside the turret. His face purpling, Carstairs pushed the door vigorously inward.
Vera pressed in after him, so closely that her breath fanned his neck. His shoulders half-blocked her view, but she could see chairs, a dresser and the upper portion of Gleason’s bed. She could see Gleason sitting upright in his bed.
Her vision was superior to Carstairs’, and wider in scope. She could see obscurely in the dark, and sharply in a dim light. The turret was bathed in a pale, sickly radiance. A cry rasping in her throat, she reeled forward and gripped Carstairs’ shoulders with both hands.
CHAPTER II
Flight and Pursuit
In the center of the turret stood three huge wobblies. Their tendrils were weaving about in the gloom, and they had grouped themselves in a semicircle around the rigidly distorted figure of Gleason. Like plant ghosts they hovered above him, their body-roots glowing with a faint, spectral radiance. Unutterably terrifying they seemed, but what drove the blood in torrents from Vera’s heart was Gleason’s bulging eyes, and gruesomely sardonical grin.
“John, he’s dead,” she husked, her voice like a whisper from the tomb. A convulsive contraction twisted Carstairs’ rough-hewn face. Swiftly he strode to the bed, ignoring the nettles which the tallest of the three wobblies instantly flung at him. One grazed his right cheek, another embedded itself in his shoulder.
He winced, and clawed at his flesh with his fingers, as though the downy “strawberry” had been dipped in acid, and was corroding his skin. Actually the gesture was instinctive, and on a par with nail-gnawing in a crisis.
Although Carstairs was no stranger to post-mortem appearances, his examination of the still figure was brief. Nothing can be done for a corpse, and Gleason had unmistakably stopped breathing. The risus sardonicus which distorted his features seemed to relax a little as Carstairs drew the sheets up over him. Shuddering, he turned from the bed. Vera was staring at the wobblies with terror stenciled on every lineament of her twitching face.
“John, did these ghastly things attack him?” she husked.
Carstairs shook his head. “How many times must I tell you that wobblies are not flesh-eaters,” he said chokily. “They hurl nettles to protect themselves from their natural enemies, but otherwise they’re harmless. When Gleason observed them on the mountains he took copious notes. They’re freakish, but harmless perambulating plants.”
The appearance and behavior of the wobblies seemed to belie Carstairs’ words. They now hurled themselves across the dead man’s bed, plucking with quivering tendrils at the sheets which covered him. Hideously manlike they seemed, with their gray and eroded-looking body-roots writhing against the sheets.
Tall they were, at least seven feet in height, and proportionately broad of shoulder. The fact that they had three tendrils on each side of their torsolike bodies in lieu of arms, and that they moved, when erect, on stumpy legs which caused them to wobble grotesquely did not detract from the illusion of humanness which their appearance conveyed.
Staggeringly weird they seemed when they used their nettles, for the flabby sacks in which the prickly “strawberries” grew resembled the belly pouches of kangaroos, and the nettles had to be plucked out, and hurled. Jocularly, Gleason had called Carstairs’ attention to the fact that a wobbly with its tendril arm extended, and its body twisted sharply in the act of hurling a nettle looked not unlike a pitcher in the old Earth game called baseball.
But now Gleason was no longer capable of jocularity, and Carstairs’ expression was as grim as death. He was sniffing at the air and staring at his hands, as though bewildered by his ability to flex his fingers when his spine was a column of ice, his tongue a swollen mass of jelly.
“John, what is it?” Vera whispered hoarsely. “I don’t smell anything.”
“It would be better if you did,” Carstairs husked. “Vera, this is devilish. Something utterly diabolic has occurred here. Yet there isn’t a mark on him.”
“What, John? What is it?”
“It—it defies reason. There are unmistakable evidences of foul play. Brownish mucous membranes, dilated pupils.”
He returned to the bed and bent over the still figure lying there. His nostrils quivered, flared.
“The characteristic odor,” he grunted. “But only his body exhales it.”
“Uncle always was eccentric,” said a cynical voice from the doorway. “In death as in life—peculiar, different.”
Carstairs turned about on his heels, his jaw hardening.
The youth standing in the doorway had a sickly leer on his face. He was wearing black silk pajamas and he had thrown a monogrammed bath towel about his shoulders and knotted it foppishly in front.
* * * *
Carstairs had met Gleason’s weak-chinned, dissolute nephew several times on Earth, and had hardly been able to stomach the youth’s exaggerated mannerisms, and air of knowing he would someday inherit his uncle’s wealth.
Henry Gleason Showalter was unmistakably intoxicated, but his sneering manner did not seem to emanate from the alcohol in his brain. His gaze was steady enough, and his voice had a quality of smirking contempt for the living and the dead which chilled Vera to the depth of her being. Before she could draw away from him he patted her arm. “You’re right in your element, aren’t you?” he sneered. “Helping him with his police work.”
Carstairs saw red. He advanced upon the youth in three long strides, grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him until his jaw sagged.
“You cold-blooded little rotter,” he grated. “Your uncle is dead. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”
“In his present condition, how could it mean anything?” asked a silky voice from the doorway. “He’s been drinking steadily for hours.”
Mona Clayton looked hard, cynical. She looked infinitely more cynical than Gleason’s nephew, but she had more strength of character than the weak-chinned youth, and knew when and how to keep her thoughts to herself. The fact that she was that youth’s fiancée had amazed Carstairs at first, but after conversing with her in Gleason’s presence he had decided she was nobody’s fool. She was marrying young Showalter for the money he’d eventually inherit. A gold-digger, if ever there was one. A hard, calculating little minx.
Behind her in shadows hovered Lee Chan, Gleason’s Chinese butler, his once yellow face drained of all color.
“The master is dead,” he wailed, wringing his hands. “He was the kindest man I ever knew. The very kindest man.”
Vera crossed to Carstairs’ side and tugged urgently at his arm. “John, control yourself!” she pleaded thickly. “Set him down.”
“Would you rather I squeezed the rottenness out of him?” Carstairs grunted. “Just say the word.” There was a sudden, deafening roar, and an energy pellet thudded into the wall behind Carstairs’ head, shaking the entire turret. Mona Clayton screamed, and Carstairs leaped backward with a startled oath, carrying the youth with him.
Two more blasts came in staccato sequence. The window flamed orange, and a thin ribbon of smoke drifted into the turret from the darkness beyond.
Carstairs knew that a Gierson automatic pistol held five energy pellets. He also knew that Interplanetary Patrol regulations prohibited fancy weapons on the moon. The chances seemed to favor a Gierson, and a nearly exhausted clip.
Carstairs hurled Showalter from him with a snort of disgust. Three furious strides carried him to the window; a raised right foot and a leverage jounce from his left heel lifted him over the sill into the cold lunar night.
From the ventilator turbines at the base of the tower thin currents of scorching air ascended, to be instantly moderated by the cold of space. His shoulders etched in Earthlight, a cloaked figure was running along the observation platform toward what appeared to be a mistily weaving spiral of light. Pulling his oxygen mask down over his face, Carstairs pounded after him, his breath congealing on the frosty air. His energy carried him on with incredible speed. The moon’s light gravity put wings on his heels, and lengthened his strides till his dressing gown swirled up about his shoulders, and streamed out behind him like a wind-lashed cloak.
His lips were contorted with savage mutterings when the spiral resolved itself into the stern light of a small vacuum plane. The machine was poised at the edge of the platform, its forward struts gleaming in the Earthlight, its magnetic traction vanes humming.
* * * *
Even as Carstairs’ gaze swept over it, the fleeing figure heaved itself into the pilot’s seat and bent sharply forward. There was a sudden, vibrant roar, and the plane zigzagged along the edge of the platform, and took off so abruptly that Carstairs nearly lost his grip on the strut toward which he had literally dived.
Clinging with both hands, he let his long legs dangle, and cursed himself for a madman. The plane rose sharply and then swooped, descending toward the foothills below in a graceful, hawklike glide. Carstairs looked down, his spine congealing. Sheer height, when viewed from a solid structure, is seldom terrifying, but it is quite otherwise when the observer is clinging to the thrumming struts of a circling plane. Beneath him yawned a dizzying gulf of emptiness, walled with darkness and substructured with peaks which looked like stalactites in reverse, each one of which seemed capable of impaling him, and rotating him in squirming agony till the end of time.
“Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea,” he muttered between clenched teeth, tightening his grip on the strut. Down the plane swooped and down. It had ceased to descend gracefully, had begun to gyrate. Like a wounded bladder-bird, it swooped to right and left and quivered from beak to stern. Carstairs’ nerves were shrieking when it settled to the ground in a deep gulch between two peaks and glided to a halt with a barely perceptible jolt. White-lipped, he dropped to the ground, and tore around the front of the plane to the pilot compartment.
It was a reckless thing to do, for the emerging pilot blasted from the hip the instant he discovered that he had a passenger. He stood half-out of the pilot seat, grasping the strut with one hand, and emptying his automatic in Carstairs’ direction.
Two blasts echoed between hollow peaks as Carstairs clambered over a heated vane, and gripped the wrist of his assailant. “You’re a bum pilot, Bowles,” he panted. “You’re also a bum marksman. It stands to reason, doesn’t it, that you can’t be good at this?”
He struck the other on the jaw as he spoke, rocking his head back. To his amazement the eyes opposite him did not glaze. Instead, fury flamed in them, and the jaw that he had jolted seemed to stiffen.
“That’s what you think!” came in a hoarse bellow.
Limbs interlocked, the two men dropped to the ground and rolled over. The fact that Carstairs’ had recognized his assailant as George Bowles, Gleason’s huge and taciturn gardener, was no help to him. The man was six feet six, and as strong as an ox.
He twisted Carstairs’ arm back, and bit him in the shoulder.
“Fight clean, Bowles,” Carstairs gibed, concealing his agony with a grin which increased the other’s rancor. Furiously he pummeled Carstairs, ignoring the angular knee which the still grinning botanist rammed into his stomach and the shower of fisticuffs which spattered against his close-cropped head, rocking it to and fro.
Bitterly Carstairs realized that he had underestimated his adversary. The man could take it, and he could ladle it out. He could absorb so much punishment that Carstairs’ plight was not an enviable one. He was flat on his back, and Bowles was trying viciously to break his arm, and almost succeeding. Worse, the big gorilla’s punches were packed with dynamite, and coming faster and faster. Carstairs fought with all his strength, but gradually he felt himself growing weaker. In desperation he squirmed and twisted, dragging himself over the ground, his shoulders jerking. He reached a jagged outcropping of rock on the slightly sloping floor of the ravine, where he furiously endeavored to raise his shoulders when Bowles began violently to shiver. The half-Nelson which he had thrown about Carstairs relaxed, and a convulsive shudder shook him.
Stunned, Carstairs wrenched his arm free, twisted about and raised his fist for a crushing blow that wasn’t needed. Bowles had rolled over on his side, and was lying utterly rigid, a bubbling froth on his lips. Clinging to his neck was a small, strawberry-colored nettle.
Horror struck, Carstairs stared at it, unable to believe his eyes. It was in all respects an exact duplicate of the one which was still clinging to his own shoulder, e
xcept for one thing. It was scarcely one-fourth as large.
CHAPTER III
Blood Pressure of a Plant
A shrill ululation caused Carstairs to raise his eyes and glance startlingly about him. The wobbly he saw was one-fourth the normal size. A baby wobbly, an unmistakable fledgling of the species which Gleason had captured and studied was standing a few feet away, its tendrils fluttering in the hot air currents from the tower’s turbines which were swirling down into the gulch in erratic gusts, its small root-body quivering in infantile panic.
Lifting Bowles’ limp body in his arms, and carrying it to the vacuum plane was a nerve-racking ordeal, because Car-stairs was sure he had another corpse on his hands. It wasn’t until he was back in the tower, with a stirring and groaning Bowles clutching at his sleeve, that the truth struck him like a bolt from the blue, rocking him back on his heels and shedding dazzlement in all directions. The big, pugnacious bruiser was allergic to nettles! So allergic that the shock of one entering his flesh had brought on a convulsion and laid him out limp. It wasn’t such a rare mishap from a medical point of view, but it left Carstairs stunned and gasping. That big, husky giant—brought low by a nettle flung by a baby wobbly!
Carstairs deposited Bowles on the floor of Gleason’s sleeping turret, directly under a dim cold light bulb. The big, rectangular chamber had quieted down, for Vera Dorn had not been idle in Carstairs’ absence. She had sprayed a narcotizing vapor over the three wobblies, and locked them up in a metal herbarium. She had sent Mona Clayton back to her sleeping turret on the floor below, and turned on Showalter a glance so withering that he had slunk furtively into shadows. The nephew was standing now in a dim recess behind Gleason’s bed, his eyes boring holes in the gloom.
The Frank Belknap Long Science Fiction MEGAPACK®: 20 Classic Science Fiction Tales Page 13
