Various Fiction Page 10

  “We could blast it down,” Oliver said.

  “Hmm.” Salzman touched the nearest boulder wall, then glanced at the sun. It was low on the horizon, and long shadows were stretching across the red land.

  “Too late.” He Licked on his radio. “Magglio?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Haul out the scouter and bring us in. No blondes today.” He signed off and turned to Oliver. “We’ll try another village tomorrow. I don’t think it’ll be too hard to find someone.”

  l

  Five days later, Salzman decided he had been too optimistic. With the scouter rocket-plane they covered every village and town in a fifty mile radius—a total of twelve. In each, it was the same. Deserted streets, empty houses—with still-burning fires to show that the natives had detected them minutes before they arrived. By air they caught tantalizing glimpses of human shapes, diving into concealment in the red forest. When they landed, even the glimpse was gone.

  On the fourth day they returned to the first village. It showed unmistakeable signs of having been reinhabitated while they were away. But again, the natives had managed to find out just when they were coming, and to get out perhaps half an hour before the Earthmen arrived.

  The remaining hours of the fourth day were spent in the village, looking for some sign of electrical equipment. It seemed that the natives had some system of keeping informed on their exact movements, almost down to the minute. But the only mechanical device in the village was a wheel. Smoke signals and drums were obviously out. Magglio suggested carrier pigeons, but they still hadn’t seen any birds.

  Before sunrise on the fifth day they took the scouter to the far side of the continent. Oliver estimated they covered four thousand miles in something like five and a half hours. They roared down to a village full-jet, decelerating so rapidly in the last few hundred feet that they were almost plastered against the scouter’s walls. All in all, from the time they appeared as a dot in the sky to the time they landed in the middle of the village, not more than three minutes could have elapsed.

  But the natives had had their usual fifteen-minute-plus head start.

  THEY DIDN’T stop to figure out how, this time. In line with a plan they had arranged the night before, Salzman and Oliver set out after the trail of the fleeing natives. Magglio took the scouter up again and circled around, trying to spot the bunch.

  “They’re about a mile and a half ahead,” Magglio’s voice said, sharp in the earphones. “Bear a little more right—that’s good!”

  Salzman grunted as he climbed the mountain slope. He paused on a ledge and gave Oliver a hand up. The weeks in free-fall hadn’t been very good for their muscles, he thought. In the sky he could see the little scouter Magglio was piloting, hovering overhead. Stretched beneath them was red forest, broken here and there by ragged mountains.

  “They’re still going in a straight line,” Magglio told them. “A couple hundred of them, heading toward another section of forest.”

  The two men moved on. It seemed to Salzman that two grown men should be able to move faster than an entire village—with old men and women, and children. But they seemed unable to overtake the natives, or even come close.

  “Hey chief,” Magglio radioed. “I spotted a way you can cut them off. Take a right at the next cut—” Another hour passed as they labored through the winding shortcut. Magglio’s ship hovered overhead, careful not to give away their position. The sun beat down on the plastic as they scrambled over rocks and between trees.

  “This is a hell of a note,” Oliver grumbled. He had run out of swear words, having called the natives everything he could think of—except human beings. “I could have stayed in Montana and done this. My lord, we push a tin can across sixteen light years of space, just to find someone not from Earth to talk to. We just went to be friends, and this suspicious bunch of—”

  “Hey chief,” Magglio called. “They must have spotted you! They’re bearing away again, relative to your position!”

  “Spotted us!” Salzman shouted into the earphone. “Again? How could they?”

  “I don’t know,” Magglio’s voice said in his ears. “I can swear not a person has left the main bunch.”

  “You sure there aren’t a few of them you can’t see?” Salzman asked, sitting down on the ground.

  “Sure as sure,” Magglio told him. “The forest is thin around here. I could spot a cat. As far as I . . . Chief, are you and Oliver sitting down?”

  “Yes, why?”

  “Because the whole bunch of them sat down a moment ago!” Magglio said.

  Salzman jumped to his feet, pulled Oliver up, and started again on a run.

  “They just got up again,” Magglio told them. “They’re running—now they’ve stopped—they’re sitting again.”

  Salzman had sat down again.

  “That ties it,” he said to Oliver in a quiet voice. “Either they’ve got scanners built into every tree—or they’re telepathic!”

  Magglio picked them up in the scouter and brought them back to the ship. Oliver sat quietly, looking as though his best friend had kicked him in the teeth. Salzman was cursing steadily, beating one fist into his thigh. It was all he could do to keep from hitting Oliver or Magglio. To come so far, and find a pack of telepathic rabbits masquerading as human beings!

  By the time they reached the ship he had regained his calm completely. He was determined to keep it from now on, no matter what happened. The trees could start running away, he felt, and he wouldn’t be surprised any more.

  AFTER SUPPER that evening the three men stretched out on the purple grass around the ship. They had discarded the plastic armor, since there was nothing to arm against, but kept their blasters as a safety measure.

  “I noticed something else,” Magglio told them. “I saw what looked like animals—they bolted like mad too, whenever you came inside of about a mile or two of them. Also a few birds. Not a living thing stayed less than a mile away.”

  “Everything’s probably telepathic on this planet,” Salzman said. “It ties in. But if they’re telepathic—if they can read our minds—then why do they run? They know we’re just here to establish communication.” He paused. “Have you been thinking about their women?” he accused Magglio.

  “Who me?” Magglio was highly indignant. “Not on your life. I been thinking about my girlfriend at home; I’m faithful, see?”

  “If they can read our minds,” Salzman went on, more to himself than to the others, “then they know we want to be friends. We’re not here to colonize, we’re not going to rob them—since we can’t carry five pounds extra weight on the ship. We’re here, damn it, to bridge the gap between the stars. To talk. What’s wrong with them?”

  “Maybe they just want to be left alone,” Oliver offered.

  “Then why run? Why not ignore us? No, I think they must be afraid of something.”

  “Monsters,” Magglio said.

  “I thought of that—but not if they can read our minds. We’re not angels, but our intentions are good.” Salzman remained deep in thought, his head bent forward on his chest.

  “Tomorrow,” he said at last, “we’re rounding up a native. I hadn’t thought of the telepathy angle before, but I think this’ll work.” Briefly, he told them what they were to do.

  “Now go to bed,” he finished shortly.

  l

  In his bunk, Salzman tried to fit the pieces together. It was no use. But he was sure he could clear it up tomorrow. Once they could talk to the natives . . . Intelligent life! That was the important thing. He had been excited by the idea since childhood; otherwise he wouldn’t be out in space, spending his manhood in a metal spheroid.

  Sleep wouldn’t come at once. Salzman rolled and tossed for an hour or more, trying to get comfortable. Finally he dozed off fitfully, thinking of Serbens and Visties. Magglio’s Ufangies and Oliver’s hordes of aliens.

  He was in the forest. Only it had altered. Instead of the soft reds, pinks and purples of the day, ever
ything was a bloody crimson. Blood dripped from the leaves, and the roots and branches oozed blood. He was being chased, by a horrible mangled thing that screamed and moaned and crashed through the underbrush after him, now racing upright on two legs, now down on all fours like a dog, and constantly coming closer, until—he awoke, cursing.

  “What’s up?” Oliver asked, from the next bunk.

  “Nightmare,” Salzman answered. “Overexcited, I guess.” It annoyed him. It was his first dream in years, and his first nightmare since childhood. Were Magglio’s monster stories getting him down, he wondered?

  Finally sleep came again.

  THE NEXT morning was as hot as the previous ones. The men piled into the scouter quickly.

  “Think pleasant thoughts,” Magglio reminded them mockingly, as he poured on the jets. “Think about having a pint of beer with the chief’s daughter. If they’ve got a chief, and if he’s got beer and a daughter.”

  “No wonder they’re running, if they’re reading your thoughts,” Oliver said. Magglio grinned and winked.

  Salzman watched the red forest pass beneath them, they sped toward the area he had selected. He wondered what he would say when they rounded a native up. What right had they, to force these people out of their homes, run them through the woods like foxes, track them down and make them talk?

  What right, he asked himself—plenty of right! They had crossed sixteen light years of space to make contact with intelligent life. All Earth was waiting to hear the results of their mission. They had given their lives to the job, as a lab of love. What right—why, the right of intelligence—to make contact with other intelligences, to exchange information to better both races.

  And the silly fools ran like stampeded cattle, he thought bitterly. Wasn’t there a brave man among them?

  “Here we are,” Magglio said as they shot over a village. “And there they are.”

  “Let’s round them up,” Salzman said tightly.

  The scouter dipped over the tree-tops, then swung low over the natives. They were running in blind panic, and Salzman could see that the men were racing ahead of the women and children, in a hysterical effort to escape.

  “Land Oliver in front of them.” Salzman said. The scouter passed the crowd, and, a few hundred yards further, Oliver parachuted out.

  Immediately the natives reversed, and started in the opposite direction.

  “Now me on the flank,” Salzman said. He parachuted out. Spilling air out of his ’chute he landed in a clear space. Quickly he chucked the harness and started forward.

  “I’m landing on the other side,” Magglio said over the earphones. “We’ve got them on three sides, and they’ve got a sheer wall to their backs.” This was the maneuver they had planned at night. The scouter dipped and swung, herding the natives like sheep. Salzman ran, tearing his way through the underbrush, toward the crowd. He could hear them, panting and moaning, only a few hundred yards ahead.

  As he ran he cleared his sidearm—just in case.

  Suddenly he came to an abrupt halt.

  “Oliver—Magglio—over to me!” he called over the radio. “One of them’s coming!”

  l

  The native staggered toward Salzman, slipping and falling, and picking himself up again. He didn’t resemble any of the portraits—not now. As he got closer, Salzman could see that the man’s face was twisted and contorted; his body was jerking uncontrollably, in a series of nerve and muscle spasms that threatened to tear his bones apart. His skin was pallid and splotched in spots, cancerous looking. He resembled a corpse more than a living creature.

  Magglio and Oliver came up abruptly, then stopped, a few paces behind Salzman.

  Salzman felt something itch his mind, as the native came up to ten feet of him. Then, when it stopped, Salzman felt a thought.

  “Go away.”

  “Why?” Salzman asked out loud.

  “You are killing our minds. Take anything, but go away.”

  “We come as friends,” Salzman said soothingly. “We mean no harm, we did not mean to break any of your taboos. If you are sick we have medicine on our ship—we can cure—” The native slumped to his knees. “You are making our minds crazy.”

  “Good Lord!” Oliver gasped. “Could we have brought some disease?”

  “No,” the native thought at them. “It is your thought. They are powerful, evil thoughts—too horrible to stand. Your minds have—diseases—which we catch, if we come into contact—”

  “Thoughts?” Salzman echoed. He looked back at Oliver and Magglio. Was it possible that one of them had a pathological mind? Could he have it? Quickly he discounted the possibility. They had been screened too carefully for sanity and stability before leaving Earth. Nothing like that could have slipped by.

  The native was losing strength, but he caught the thought.

  “No,” he said. “All your thoughts. The thoughts behind.”

  Behind. Now what could that mean, Salzman wondered, staring at the panting native on the ground.

  “You are monsters,” the native’s weakening thought said. “You have hideous things in your minds. Things which eat eyeballs—horrible terrors—and other things.”

  “Space legends!” Oliver gasped. “You’ve got us ad wrong, friend. Those are only—”

  “No!” the native thought angrily. “Not those. The things behind! The horrors in the night. T secret things that you do not yourselves think about, for they would drive you insane too, and kill you. The blood-red forest—”

  Salzman had guessed it a few seconds back, but he didn’t want to believe it. Now he had no choice. “He means our subconscious minds,” he said heavily.

  “Yes,” the native said. “That is the right thought. The things you cannot let yourselves think about, for they would make you sick. But we—we must think them, when you are near.”

  He tried to tell them something else, but his weakening control snapped. For a moment there was nothing—and then a babbling lunacy of thoughts, driving the Earthmen back by their sheer intensity. There were all Magglio’s monsters, screaming and gibbering, coming out of that mad mind. The Ufangies were there, orange and black and scaly, and Oliver’s hordes of invaders swept on, hacking their way through the bleeding forest that Salzman had dreamed of, led by a faceless thing that screamed its hate for all living creatures. And behind them, from deeper in the Earthmen’s minds, were tremendous, slimy creatures compounded of all the insecurities and fears that infect young boys growing up in Earth’s superstition-infested darknesses. The things that crawl out of the black mouths of alleys were there, and the horrors that grin from open closet doors at night, when the family is asleep. And behind that, from the deep in babies’ memories, leering blindly—

  The Earthmen ran, sobbing and tripping blindly, and madness pursued them all the way to the scouter. Magglio shoved the little ship viciously into the air, with Oliver still climbing through the doorway. Salzman managed to drag him the rest of the way in, as they roared up into the clean air.

  FOR A WHILE it didn’t seem as though Oliver was going to come around. He wouldn’t talk or move, but just stared blankly into space. Lacking knowledge of psychiatry, Salzman tried a home remedy. He threw a pan of water in the engineer’s face, then knocked him flat on his back. It was crude shock-therapy, but it worked.

  “You O.K.?” Salzman asked.

  “They couldn’t let us get near them,” Oliver said dully, “they couldn’t stand our monsterous, horrible thoughts—the ones we don’t dare think out loud.” He pulled himself to his feet, holding Salzman’s arm for support. “Even the animals couldn’t stand it.”

  “Forget it,” Salzman said steadily. “It isn’t our fault.”

  “Just think,” Oliver went on in the same dull voice. “The glimpse we got of our subconscious was enough to jar our sanity, they got it full force.”

  “Forget it.”

  “I feel so dirty!”

  “Shut up!” Magglio screamed.

  The engineer
looked blank for a moment, then tried to smile. Magglio whistled tunelessly as they prepared for takeoff. “Shall we try another G-type sun, chief? Another planet?”

  “I wonder if we should,” Salzman sad.

  THE LEECH

  A visitor should be fed, but this one could eat you out of house and home . . . literally!

  THE leech was waiting for food. For millennia it had been drifting across the vast emptiness of space. Without consciousness, it had spent the countless centuries in the void between the stars. It was unaware when it finally reached a sun. Life-giving radiation flared around the hard, dry spore. Gravitation tugged at it.

  A planet claimed it, with other stellar debris, and the leech fell, still dead-seeming within its tough spore case.

  One speck of dust among many, the winds blew it around the Earth, played with it, and let it fall.

  On the ground, it began to stir. Nourishment soaked in, permeating the spore case. It grew—and fed.

  FRANK CONNERS came up on the porch and coughed twice. “Say, pardon me, Professor,” he said.

  The long, pale man didn’t stir from the sagging couch. His horn-rimmed glasses were perched on his forehead, and he was snoring very gently.

  “I’m awful sorry to disturb you,” Conners said, pushing back his battered felt hat. “I know it’s your restin’ week and all, but there’s something damned funny in the ditch.”

  The pale man’s left eyebrow twitched, but he showed no other sign of having heard.

  Frank Conners coughed again, holding his spade in one purple-veined hand. “Didja hear me, Professor?”

  “Of course I heard you,” Micheals said in a muffled voice, his eyes still closed. “You found a pixie.”

  “A what?” Conners asked, squinting at Micheals.

  “A little man in a green suit. Feed him milk, Conners.”

  “No, sir. I think it’s a rock.”

  Micheals opened one eye and focused it in Conners’ general direction.