by Perry Rhodan
Ron nodded with satisfaction. "Good. That's where we'll look for a place to land."
Lofty squirmed a bit uncomfortably in his seat. "You're sure that defense screen is all it's cracked up to be?"
"Yes, of course. Why?"
"I mean so even the little varmints can't get through like the Passa beetles, for example."
Ron shook his head. "Not even an air molecule, Lofty. Does that make you feel better?"
"It certainly does. It's just that it's hard for outsiders to really appreciate the dangers that lurk here in the forest. There's a lot of obnoxious crits here. Many of them are so small you'd figure they couldn't do anything. Until they've crept under your skin and start wandering around inside your carcass. Then the victim is lucky if he finds a doctor in time who understands Passa medicine. Otherwise it's over with in a hurry."
Ron did not reply. Far ahead the channel of the predicted river appeared as a dark line in the blue-shimmering forest. The brilliant white glare of daylight had subsided by now and the turquoise ball on the horizon cast the world under a spell of unreality. But there where the shadows of night should have been rising was a reddish patch of sky that grew brighter from minute to minute, adding a new profusion of coloration to the sky. This was the harbinger of the giant red sun which would be rising an hour after its blue companion had set.
Larry brought the glider slightly higher in order to obtain a better overview of the terrain. A few minutes later the small river lay directly beneath them like a long, twisted worm. The narrow ribbon of water was black in the midst of a turquoise splendor.
Small peninsulas had been built up by the winding course of the river and Ron chose one of these for their camping place. Larry dropped the glider into such a steep descent that Lofty began to complain. Just as the blue sun touched the horizon the aircraft's small thermo-beams, started to work. They burned away the strange, glass-like growths below until finally the peninsula was completely cleared and the glider had a level, flat place to land.
After Lofty had gotten out and stretched his legs, his first concern was for the protective screen which he quite obviously still distrusted. Swarms of insects were buzzing about in the warm air over the water. It was twilight now and when he turned on a hand-lamp they came in a cloud toward the source of the light. Lofty was satisfied when he saw the eager, humming little creatures suddenly stop in mid-flight as they came up against an invisible barrier. They danced and tumbled about as though in a drunken stupor for awhile; then they tried another assault and again failed to penetrate that something in the air which to them was both invisible and incomprehensible. Yet in spite of this, Lofty got down on his knees and felt of the invisible wall suspiciously.
"That's pretty good," he said finally with approval. "An energy screen like this is a fine invention."
Larry set about preparing an evening meal. He opened up a number of containers which spontaneously heated their own contents, causing an enticing aroma to pervade the screened-in area of the camp. They had a full, leisurely meal while the river made a soft sound of rushing water past the end of the peninsula and the still warm air was suffused by a pale brown twilight as the blue sun disappeared and the sky gradually reddened in an opposite direction.
The forest behind them and across the river was full of other strange sounds. Larry suddenly tensed and gulped when he thought he heard eerie laughter ringing out close behind him. Lofty's eyes twinkled in amusement at the startled expression of his inexperienced companion.
He finally explained. "That's a 'night chuckler'. You'd be amazed if you could see it. It's not any bigger than my hand and as ugly as evolution can make a creature—half frog, half locust. Of course it doesn't make that noise with its mouth. It rubs its thick forelegs together."
Some time later the night air suddenly vibrated with a dull, thundering sound. It was something like the roaring of an antiquated jet plane strafing the ground at close range. According to Lofty it was nothing more than the battle cry of a 'glass buffalo'. And he explained that in spite of the impressive name the author of the sound was no larger than a rabbit.
Thus the time passed while the two agents listened to the forest sounds and Lofty continued to describe their various sources. Until suddenly the drumming began.
Actually no one but Lofty was in a position to identify this new sound. It began with a deep, vibrating tone as if someone had struck a giant bell somewhere in the distance. Lofty listened keenly to the reverberations. Larry was about to say something but the old man hastily motioned him to silence.
The bell-like drumming swelled louder. Then the pitch suddenly changed to a higher note. Shortly after that it lowered again but not as deeply as the original sound. And thus it continued. The sound kept changing in volume and pitch at irregular intervals. Lofty still gave his undivided attention to the strange symphony.
The drumming finally ended although in a short while it started up again more faintly as though from a greater distance. And now Lofty seemed ready to explain what it was all about.
"It's the Evergreens," he said with a note of excitement in his voice. "They're sending signals. They use a kind of drum when they do it. Actually they use a number of long, hollow glass trunks supported on a framework. I understand a little of their drum talk," he continued. "They express certain meanings with different tones and volumes. Naturally it's a primitive sort of language and its range of meanings isn't very great. But it's enough for them."
Ron nodded. "Alright then, Lofty—what did you get from it?"
Lofty scratched his head. "Well now, if I hadn't heard it with my own ears and somebody else had told me about it I would have thought he was out of his mind. But it sure looks as if the Evergreens have really found themselves a god or an idol of some kind and somewhere back in the forest they worship the thing. The drums seem to say that the god should not lose its patience and leave them. They say they'll soon manage to bring more sacrifices to it."
Ron and Larry were not too much surprised.
"Now we know where the Sssst is located," Larry muttered.
"Does it have a name?" Ron asked.
"I can't say," Lofty answered. "That drum talk is different from the regular language of the Evergreens. For example their spoken worduuuuchi is just another drum tone when they convert it. You can pick up concepts but there are no actual words."
"I see," said Ron thoughtfully. "There's no relationship between the drum talk and the phonetic system of their everyday language."
"Yeah, you might put it that way," Lofty admitted.
Ron listened for awhile to the eerie sound of the distant drumming and then asked: "Do they say anything about us?"
Lofty shook his head. "Not a hint so far."
"I have another question," interjected Larry. "Would the Evergreens mention something about us if they knew we were here in their forest?"
Lofty answered without hesitation: "You can bet on it."
"Then since they don't say anything about us," pursued Larry, "wouldn't that mean that they aren't aware of our arrival?"
"Yes, I'm sure of that."
Larry nodded, satisfied. "That's good," he growled. "I wouldn't like their strange god to become aware of us too soon. Otherwise it could make some trouble for us."
He winked at Ron when he said this and Lofty suddenly had the impression that there was a secret between the two that he didn't know about.
• • •
Long after the blue sun had gone down and the red orb began to rise, the Evergreen Ron had spoken to remained sitting on the ground behind Andy Lever's house.
He had no perception of the renewing splendor of his world as the deep red light of the mighty sun flooded over the land and the great ball of fire rose as big as a moon into the yellowing sky. In the first place he was accustomed to such a sight because Passa was his habitat and all his life, other than the blue star, he had not seen anything else than this giant red one there in the yellow sky. And in the second place he was busy ra
cking his brains about something.
He remembered that he was supposed to do something. He was supposed to get up and continue on his way. So why didn't he go? He tried to rise up but didn't succeed. Something wasn't as it should be. He must have forgotten something.
But what was it?
• • •
The next morning before the blue sun came up, Ron took the controls and lifted the glider from the peninsula. Lofty had given him to understand that he had never been farther than this particular river and that now they were penetrating a region where no Terran had ever set foot.
Beyond the river there were not even any more names to go by. The river was called Windside—why, nobody knew—and it was the last westerly point of topographical reference with any name at all. Which meant that in the course of the colony's history on Passa no one had come farther than this even in a glider.
Farther west was unexplored territory. After an hour's flight the mountains that emerged above the horizon were also nameless. Fifty-four years ago the survey units of the Terran Fleet had flown over them and had only noted their position on a general map of the planet. They had left the naming of such landmarks to the settlers since this was their prerogative but the settlers had never come this far.
Lofty's information caused Ron Landry to have new misgivings concerning the possible success of the expedition. Fresh in his mind were Nike Quinto's admonishments, reminding him that the Springers had no doubt infiltrated here and that they would probably use any one of a number of their famous tricks in order to break up the friendly relations between Terrans and the native inhabitants. If this were actually the case, then the 3-man glider team was liable to run into some very respectable opposition, once the goal was reached.
Once beyond the mountains they would be more than 1000 km from Modessa, which was the nearest city. Of course distance itself was not a prime factor if it should become necessary to send a distress signal. Froyd Coleman and Maj. Bushnell could be informed immediately of what was going on out here in the unexplored hinterlands of the forest country. But Bushnell was only just now in the process of re-deploying his surveillance fleet so that a part of it could be called upon for help, if worse came to worst. In a matter of five or six days he might even be able to send in a few destroyers as backup if Ron should call for them. In the interim they were dependent upon what Froyd Coleman could do—and presumably that wouldn't be much more than the dispatch of 20 or 30 gliders with two or three hundred men, which would require a day and a half to get to the target area, and maybe a pair of planes that wouldn't be able to do much in the rugged mountain terrain.
It was not possible to wait until Bushnell took care of his redeployment tactics. Every day of inaction would give the Springers more of a chance to strengthen their position. They had to be attacked as soon as possible.
And besides, Bushnell's fleet destroyers were to be used as a last resort, because the Evergreens must not be frightened. It was a cornerstone of the colonial psychological policy that the superiority of Terran technology was never to be demonstrated to the natives in any destructive sense. Experience had shown that from that moment on the native relationship to Terrans would be based solely on fear rather than on friendship.
So no matter from what angle the situation was regarded, the small expedition's prospects did not appear to be particularly rosy. Actually they had only one advantage they might rely on in this case: this idol or god thing that was no doubt something concocted by the Springers was still unaware of their approach.
Perhaps the element of surprise would be a means of solving the problem in a hurry.
• • •
By the time the blue sun was again high in the sky, the Evergreen was still sitting where Ron and Larry had left him. He sensed hunger and thirst and his skin began to itch because it was starting to be the time for moulting. However, he couldn't shed his skin because for that he needed the branch of a glass tree where he could hang by his tail with his head toward the ground. How was he supposed to do that when he couldn't move?
He kept on racking his brain in an attempt to discover what he had forgotten and why his muscles wouldn't obey him. A sense of panic awakened in him when he realized that if he didn't soon recall what the trouble was he could die of thirst or hunger in this isolated region or maybe even smother in his own skin. But this awareness did not improve the situation. His thoughts became confused, on the one hand being occupied with the crisis in which he found himself and on the other hand trying to remember what it was that had made him stiff and incapacitated.
What was it?
• • •
When they flew over the mountains, Ron Landry turned on the translator device and let the tape play back the conversation he had had with the Evergreen. Where the creature had referred to the Mountains of Sssst , Ron stopped the machine. He had the selector erase the hissing sound from the tape and in its place he spoke the word Midland into one of the two microphones. After that he rewound and played back again. This time the human voice of the transec spoke the corrected portion without any trace of interruption: "There in the forest. Beyond the Midland Mountains..."
Finally he entered the new word onto the map where only the mountain chain itself was indicated and thus the geography of Passa acquired a new name. In the future when anyone spoke to an Evergreen concerning the Midland Mountains he would not have to ponder over the location. Each year all positronic translator devices on Passa were processed for a coupled interchange of all new expressions. Ron himself would see to it that the name was entered onto the maps.
The name Midland had not been chosen arbitrarily. Judging from the map the mountainous formation lay fairly in the middle of the great equatorial continent.
Ron flew close to the slopes and canyons of the mountains so that he'd have a better chance of penetrating farther east without being spotted by the Springers. The glass forest grew at astonishing altitudes, even at the 16,000-foot level. Beyond that point, however, there was not even any transition zone where one might have expected the less pretentious plant forms to taper upwards into the rocky desolation of the heights. Instead the naked rock began precisely at the edge of the forest. Otherwise the same picture presented itself below them—the endless glassy mantle of the forest.
On this day the glider moved into the eastern foothills. The search for a campsite was much more time-consuming than it had been on the previous day. This time they couldn't clear a place below them with the thermo-beams because the brilliant glare had to be avoided wherever possible. Also any such noise would attract the Evergreens' attention. Lofty cautioned that the creatures had an unusually keen sense of hearing and were able to detect a quietly spoken word even at 200 meters.
So Ron kept on looking until he found a place in the glass thickets of the forest that seemed to be less overgrown than its surroundings. He let the glider down carefully while slowly bending the elastic glass trunks in all directions. Finally they were far enough below the main treetops and deep enough in the shadow of the forest so that the thermo-beams could be brought into play. They were only used in short bursts and with long pauses between so that it required almost an hour to clear the growths from an area sufficiently large enough for making camp.
On this particular evening they did not find the same kind of romantic fascination in their wild surroundings as they had on the previous night in their campsite on the river peninsula. They were in the region of their objective and here lurked the enemy. No one knew when he might strike.
• • •
When the twilight hour arrived again, the Evergreen was still pondering. Of course by now his thoughts were almost exclusively occupied with the melancholy contemplation of the fate that awaited him when his great body became so weakened by hunger and thirst and the debilitating heat that it would finally collapse, causing his moulting skin to block the normal breathing of his pores. He could hardly think anymore of the fact that he had forgotten something important or that he mi
ght be saved if he could remember it. By this time he had given up hope.
Shortly before the red sun came up, three men discovered him in this condition. They had come over the forest in a flying vehicle that was similar in operating principle to Ron Landry's glider. It was not by chance that they had come to this particular area. They knew that one of the Evergreen tribes deep in the forest was missing one of its members. And here they found him behind Andy Lever's house.
These men were tall and broad-shouldered. When they spoke their voices were so loud and unrestrained that one might have thought the entire world was their exclusive property. They laughed a lot and they even roared with laughter when they found the Evergreen in his pitiable state.
They brought with them an apparatus that was similar in its operation to the Terran transec. With this translator device they questioned the unfortunate creature, demanding to know why he didn't move and who told him he was supposed to sit there and never get up. The answers they were able to obtain were confused and incoherent. They tried to force the Evergreen to stand up but they did not succeed. His muscles appeared to be tied into knots that refused to be unloosened. The only thing they could do finally was to load him on board their vehicle by using a winch and then to start their return journey.
They had a very definite idea of what had happened to the Evergreen; it was a suspicion that was apparently so unsettling to them that they seemed to laugh much less than before. They believed that with the aid of equipment and medications in their hidden camp they would be able to restore the unhappy serpent's memory so that they could find out who had been the cause of his plight.
However, the laws of Nature came into play and upset their plans. While en route the Evergreen began to go into the final stages of moulting without their realizing it. The half-loosened old skin obstructed the breathing of the new epidermis and so when the glider finally landed the three men with their loud laughter and bellowing voices found themselves in possession of a sweet-smelling hide and something that was of far less value—the corpse of an Evergreen.