The Year's Greatest Science Fiction & Fantasy 2 - [Anthology]

by Edited By Judith Merril

  “But we were the agents that arranged for the mingling. We landed on the planet and were coated with pollen. Remember the blooms closing? That must have been just after they released their pollen; and that’s what was making us sneeze, too. Then we landed on the other planet and knocked the pollen off our clothes. A new hybrid strain will start up. We were just a pair of two-legged bees, Chouns, doing our duty by the flowers.”

  Chouns smiled tentatively. “An inglorious role, in a way.”

  “Hell, that’s not it. Don’t you see the danger? Don’t you see why we have to get back home fast?”

  “Why?”

  “Because organisms don’t adapt themselves to nothing. Those plants seem to be adapted to interplanetary fertilization. We even got paid off, the way bees are; not with nectar, but with Gamow sighters.”

  “Well?”

  “Well, you can’t have interplanetary fertilization unless something or someone is there to do the job. We did it this time, but we were the first humans ever to enter the cluster. So, before this, it must be nonhumans who did it; maybe the same nonhumans who transplanted the blooms in the first place. That means that somewhere in this cluster there is an intelligent race of beings; intelligent enough for space travel. And Earth must know about that.”

  Slowly Chouns shook his head.

  Smith frowned. “You find flaws somewhere in the reasoning?”

  Chouns put his head between his own palms and looked miserable. “Let’s say you’ve missed almost everything.”

  “What have I missed?” demanded Smith angrily.

  “Your crossfertilization theory is good, as far as it goes, but you haven’t considered a few points. When we approached that stellar system our hyper-atomic motor went out of order in a way the automatic controls could neither diagnose nor correct. After we landed we made no effort to adjust them. We forgot about them, in fact; and when you handled them later you found they were in perfect order, and were so unimpressed by that that you didn’t even mention it to me for another few hours.

  “Take something else: How conveniently we chose landing spots near a grouping of animal life on both planets. Just luck? And our incredible confidence in the good will of the creatures. We never even bothered checking atmospheres for trace poisons before exposing ourselves.

  “And what bothers me most of all is that I went completely crazy over the Gamow sighters. Why? They’re valuable, yes, but not that valuable—and I don’t generally go overboard for a quick buck.”

  Smith had kept an uneasy silence during all that. Now he said, “I don’t see that any of that adds up to anything.”

  “Get off it, Smith; you know better than that. Isn’t it obvious to you that we were under mental control from the outside?”

  Smith’s mouth twisted and caught halfway between derision and doubt. “Are you on the psionic kick again?”

  “Yes; facts are facts. I told you that my hunches might be a form of rudimentary telepathy.”

  “Is that a fact, too? You didn’t think so a couple of days ago.”

  “I think so now. Look, I’m a better receiver than you, and I was more strongly affected. Now that it’s over, I understand more about what hap­pened because I received more. Understand?”

  “No,” said Smith harshly.

  “Then listen further. You said yourself the Gamow sighters were the nectar that bribed us into pollination. You said that.”

  “All right.”

  “Well, then, where did they come from? They were Earth products; we even read the manufacturer’s name and model on them, letter by letter. Yet, if no human beings have ever been in the cluster, where did the sighters come from? Neither one of us worried about that, then; and you don’t seem to worry about it even now.”

  “Well—”

  “What did you do with the sighters after we got on board ship, Smith? You took them from me; I remember that.”

  “I put them in the safe,” said Smith defensively.

  “Have you touched them since?”

  “No.”

  “Have I?”

  “Not as far as I know.”

  “You have my word I didn’t. Then why not open the safe now?”

  Smith stepped slowly to the safe. It was keyed to his fingerprints, and it opened. Without looking he reached in. His expression altered and with a sharp cry he first stared at the contents, then scrabbled them out.

  He held four rocks of assorted color, each of them roughly rectangular.

  “They used our own emotions to drive us,” said Chouns softly, as though insinuating the words into the other’s stubborn skull one at a time. “They made us think the hyperatomics were wrong so we could land on one of the planets; it didn’t matter which, I suppose. They made us think we had precision instruments in our hand after we landed on one so we would race to the other.”

  “Who are ‘they’?” groaned Smith. “The tails or the snakes? Or both?”

  “Neither,” said Chouns. “It was the plants.”

  “The plants? The flowers?”

  “Certainly. We saw two different sets of animals tending the same species of plant. Being animals ourselves, we assumed the animals were the masters. But why should we assume that? It was the plants that were being taken care of.”

  “We cultivate plants on Earth, too, Chouns.”

  “But we eat those plants,” said Chouns.

  “And maybe those creatures eat their plants, too.”

  “Let’s say I know they don’t,” said Chouns. “They maneuvered us well enough. Remember how careful I was to find a bare spot on which to land.”

  “I felt no such urge.”

  “You weren’t at the controls; they weren’t worried about you. Then, too, remember that we never noticed the pollen, though we were covered with it —not till we were safely on the second planet. Then we dusted the pollen off, on order.”

  “I never heard anything so impossible.”

  “Why is it impossible? We don’t associate intelligence with plants, because plants have no nervous systems; but these might have. Remember the fleshy buds on the stems? Also, plants aren’t free-moving; but they don’t have to be if they develop psionic powers and can make use of free-moving ani­mals. They get cared for, fertilized, irrigated, pollinated, and so on. The animals tend them with single-minded devotion and are happy over it be­cause the plants make them feel happy.”

  “I’m sorry for you,” said Smith in a monotone. “If you try to tell this story back on Earth, I’m sorry for you.”

  “I have no illusions,” muttered Chouns, “yet—what can I do but try to warn Earth. You see what they do to animals.”

  “They make slaves of them, according to you.”

  “Worse than that. Either the tailed creatures or the snake-things, or both, must have been civilized enough to have developed space travel once; other­wise the plants couldn’t be on both planets. But once the plants developed psionic powers (a mutant strain, perhaps), that came to an end. Animals at the atomic stage are dangerous. So they were made to forget; they were reduced to what they are. —Damn it, Smith, those plants are the most dangerous things in the universe. Earth must be informed about them, be­cause some other Earthmen may be entering that cluster.”

  Smith laughed. “You know, you’re completely off base. If those plants really had us under control, why would they let us get away to warn the others?”

  Chouns paused. “I don’t know.”

  Smith’s good humor was restored. He said, “For a minute you had me going, I don’t mind telling you.”

  Chouns rubbed his skull violently. Why were they let go? And for that matter, why did he feel this horrible urgency to warn Earth about a matter with which Earthmen would not come into contact for millennia perhaps?

  He thought desperately and something came glimmering. He fumbled for it, but it drifted away. For a moment he thought desperately that it was as though the thought had been pushed away; but then that feeling, too, left.

&nbs
p; He knew only that the ship had to remain at full thrust, that they had to hurry.

  * * * *

  So, after uncounted years, the proper conditions had come about again. The protospores from two planetary strains of the mother plant met and mingled, sifting together into the clothes and hair and ship of the new animals. Almost at once the hybrid spores formed; the hybrid spores that alone had all the capacity and potentiality of adapting themselves to a new planet.

  The spores waited quietly, now, on the ship which, with the last impulse of the mother plant upon the minds of the creatures aboard, was hurtling them at top thrust toward a new and ripe world where free-moving creatures would tend their needs.

  The spores waited with the patience of the plant (the all-conquering patience no animal can ever know) for their arrival on a new world—each, in its own tiny way, an explorer—

  <>

  * * * *

  ALL ABOUT “THE THING”

  (A PARODY IN VERSE)

  by Randall Garrett

  ... speaking of monsters, Hollywood horrors, and alien intelligences...

  The monster here belongs to John W. Campbell, Jr., editor of Astounding Science Fiction—a little horror he created back in 1938 in his alter ego of Don A. Stuart in a novelette entitled “Who Goes There?”

  Some ten or twelve years later, Hollywood heard that science-fiction was a coming thing. “Who Goes There?” was one of the first stories sold to the movies in the early “boom,” and after a publicity campaign to end all, THE THING stalked through the moving picture palaces of the country in a positive horror of a picture.

  Randall Garrett, as alien an intelligence as I have known, apparently felt that the record needed setting straight, so he wrote the story all over again (in simplified form, designed for reading by creature-movie fans).

  * * * *

  Here’s a tale of chilling horror

  For the sort of guy who more or

  Less thinks being an explorer

  Is the kind of life for him.

  If he finds his life a bore, he

  Ought to read this gory story,

  For he’ll find exploratory

  Work is really rather grim.

  For the story starts by stating

  That some guys investigating

  The Antarctic are debating

  On exactly what to do

  With a monster they’ve found frozen

  Near the campsite they have chosen,

  And the quarrel grows and grows, un-

  Til they’re in an awful stew.

  There’s a guy named Blair who wants to r-

  Eally check up on this monster

  And dissect it. To his conster-

  Nation, everyone’s in doubt

  So, of course, he starts in pleading,

  And the rest of them start heeding

  All his statements, and conceding

  That the Thing should be thawed out.

  So they let this Thing of evil

  Start to melt from its primeval

  Sheath of ice; they don’t perceive a l-

  Ot of trouble will ensue.

  When the Thing is thawed, it neatly

  Comes to life, and, smiling sweetly,

  It absorbs some men completely,

  Changing them to monsters, too!

  Now we reach the story’s nub, ill

  Uminating all the trouble:

  Each new monster is a double

  For the men they each replace.

  Since it seems a man’s own mother

  Couldn’t tell one from the other,

  These guys all watch one another,

  Each with fear upon his face.

  And so then the men are tested

  To see who has been digested,

  And who’s been left unmolested.

  But the test don’t work! It’s hexed!

  So each man just sits there, shrinking

  From the others, madly thinking,

  As he watches with unblinking

  Gaze, and wonders—Who Goes Next?

  Now, they’ve found that executing

  Monsters can’t be done by shooting;

  They require electrocuting,

  Or cremation with a torch.

  When they find these Things, they grab ‘em;

  They don’t try to shoot or stab ‘em;

  With high-voltage wires, they jab ‘em

  ‘Til their flesh begins to scorch.

  So the entire expedition

  Eye each other with suspicion,

  For they’re in a bad position,

  And there’s no denying that!

  Now, to clear this awful scramble,

  The ingenious Mr. Campbell,

  Suddenly, without preamble,

  Pulls a rabbit from the hat.

  Here’s the way they solve the muddle:

  They discover that a puddle

  Of a pseudo-human’s blood’ll

  Be a little monster, too!

  With this test for separating

  Men from monsters, without waiting,

  They start right in liquidating

  All the monsters in the crew.

  Thus, the story is completed,

  And the awful Thing’s defeated,

  But he still was badly treated;

  It’s a shame, it seems to me.

  Frozen since the glaciation,

  This poor Thing’s extermination

  Is as sad as the cremation

  Of the hapless Sam McGee.

  <>

  * * * *

  PUT THEM ALL TOGETHER, THEY SPELL MONSTER

  by Ray Russell

  In 1948-49, book publishers discovered science-fiction; in 1950-51, Hollywood confirmed the Great Discovery; in the fall of ‘52, in the company of a couple of hundred others, like myself, who had wangled press invitations to a special preview of “Destination Moon” at the Hayden Planetarium, I sat crick-necked and happy, gazing upward at the film projected on the planetarium dome, experiencing the fulfillment of a group dream. We actually saw space travel. And we also saw the emergence of what had been an esoteric— even crackpot—interest into the broad field of mass entertainment.

  “Destination Moon” was good. We forgot about “The Thing,” and waited for the spate of s-f movies to come. They came, all right—right in the footsteps of that “Thing.” (What hurts, you see—way deep down—is that the mud-daubed parade of shambling papier-mâché monsters is still called “science-fiction.”) The following article, somewhat foreshortened, is editor Ray Russell’s report to Playboy readers on the “creature-movie” situation five years later.

  * * * *

  “Have you a better animal?” inquired a Columbia producer of a screenwriter via interoffice memo earlier this year. “They gave up gorillas at Universal and created the creature from beneath the sea, and it gave horror pictures new life.”

  The screenwriter, a good friend of the present chronicler, passed on the memo for my delectation. Being a rabid monster enthusiast from way back, I was at once seized by nostalgia for the simple horror films of yore; the days of the common, or garden, monster that could be whipped up in one’s home laboratory or discovered, after a little shopping around, in a friendly neighborhood graveyard. Being of delicate temperament, and rather highly strung, I grew a bit dizzy at this latest example of the growing complexity of modern living. Gasping desperately for breath, I reeled once, then struck a tragic posture and went to my bed with a raging fever of chagrin, “Frankenstein!” I apostrophized in my delirium, “thou shouldst be living at this hour. Dracula! Jekyll! Hyde! Dost thou he so low? And Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, George Zucco, Lionel Atwill, Lon Chaney, Lon Chaney Junior! Whence? Whither? Where are the ghouls of yesteryear?” A sea of titles swam before my eyes: Them, It (Came from Outer Space), It (Came from Beneath the Sea), The Thing (from Another World), The Day (the Earth Stood Still), The Day (the World Ended), The Beast (from 20,000 Fathoms), The Phantom (from 10,000 Le
agues), The Creature (from the Black Lagoon), The Creature (from the Gray Flannel Lagoon ... I was, you see, far gone). Finally, moaning incoherently, I sank into sleep—a sleep fitful and beset by dreams.

  I was in a theatre (in my pajamas, of course, bottom half only, let the Freudians make of that what they will), and a box of popcorn was in my hand. Among the other spectators, I recognized several friends of mine, an old flame, my dentist, my old flame’s dentist, Marilyn Monroe and John Quincy Adams, all in their pajamas, with the single exception of Miss Monroe: she was in the top half of mine. I doubt the significance of these details and pass them on only in the interests of documentation and good fellowship. A newsreel was in progress (I seem to remember something about Johnny Weissmuller being inaugurated President of the United States), but it was soon over and the main attraction smote the screen with an annihilating blast of neo-Stravinsky. The title was:

  THE

  And the subtitle: