by Jerry
By the grace of God, five of us live to see this great moment. But only at the price of others whose names will go down, forever in the history of man.
Martian Expedition Number One signing off.
TIDAL MOON
Stanley G. Weinbaum
BOB AMHERST shivered a little despite the heated interior of the autobus, but grinned none the less as he made out the frosty towers of Hydropole. He was always glad to return to the polar city, if only for the pleasure of staring up at buildings piled story upon story like those of his native Syracuse on a gray planet some half a billion miles sunward.
Hydropole, south polar city of Jupiter’s third major moon, Ganymede, was a chilly town at all seasons with its thirty degree Fahrenheit mean, and its variation of only ten degrees. But it was certainly the only settlement on the satellite that was worthy of the title of city.
Amherst had served four terrestrial years on the watery planet as collector for Cree, Inc., moving from town to town gathering the precious medicinal moss, to take it finally to Hydropole, the rocket port, for transshipment to Earth.
He was one of the hundreds of such collectors for the giant company, each with his own route, each picking his own way from town to town, riding his hipp (the sea-horse of Ganymede, Hippocampus Catamiti) through the wild torrents of the afterfloods, past mountains whose locked valleys were apt to spill countless millions of tons of water upon him with no warning save the crash of the bursting mountain walls.
Only in Hydropole was there safety. Situated on the south pole, it escaped the great wash of water which, due to the strong gravitational pull of Jupiter, every three months encircled the tiny moon.
As a result, only in, and for a few miles around Hydropole, was there vegetation. Save for the strange moss, cree, which clung so close to the rocky crevices of the mountain that even the raging tides could not pry it loose, not a living plant broke the great, gray expanse of rock.
So, on Ganymede, all life revolved about the blue moss, cree. Ages back, the Nympus, natives of Ganymede, had carried it deep underground where, piled layer after layer on the solid rock around the doomed villages, it served as earth. There, with seeds garnered from the small area about Hydropole, they grew the small variety of food on which they lived.
Above ground the moss had a deep, blue color. As litmus paper, colored by the Earth lichen, rocella tinctoria shows the presence of acid or alkali by its color change, so Ganymedian cree reacted to the ammoniated atmosphere of the planet. The air underground, however, artificially produced, had little ammonia content, and there the moss was red. Indeed, even the mountain cree, after being washed by the hydrogen containing waters of the flood, for a short time showed red.
Up to a short time ago, the gatherers had had only a limited time in which to pick the moss. Red cree lacked the medicinal quality of the blue in which, partly because of its chemical reaction to the ammoniated air and partly due to the latent eggs it harbored, lay the curative power so much in demand on Earth. Now, however, Carl Kent had evolved a formula by which cree picked red might be endowed with the healing power of the blue. So, in the area around his small trading station in Aquia, red as well as blue cree was gathered.
The autobus turned silently down the wide street of Hydropole. Robot-guided, insulated from noise and cold, it was certainly preferable to traveling by hipp. But hipp travel was unavoidable from here on. The trip to Aquia verged on the wet side of the planet—the side from which burst the mighty floods. So, added to steep, rocky drops, impassable by autobus, were the dank, muddy flats which only the hipp could traverse.
Amherst zipped the parka-like garment closed about his long, muscular body, pulling the sillicellu visor before his rugged features before he stepped from the autobus. The cold was penetrating. Even vacuum suits—misnamed, for they did not work on the principle of the thermos bottle but had the inner layer held from the outer by thin, radium-warmed wires—were scant enough protection.
Turning, he watched the Nympus unload the autobus. There was something revolting about them as they waddled about on their short legs, jointed only at hip and ankle; their heads, flaring into strange mushroom tops almost hiding their noseless faces; their arms, long and webbed to their bodies.
“Umhurr.” He turned to the queer, throaty croak. It was the Nympus’ version of his name.
“Yes?”
“Go see.” One long, webbed arm pointed in the direction of the rocket port office.
“Oh, thanks.” He walked toward the circular glass dome, under which MacGowan sat looking, for all the world, like some giant god’s experiment under a bell jar.
“Hello, Bob. How goes it?” MacGowan’s round, smooth-cheeked face was sharp contrast to Amherst’s rather angular, wind-beaten features.
“As always. What’s new here?”
“Nothing. Except there’s a rumor that they’ve discovered red cree on Io.”
“Io? That’s Jupiter’s first major moon.”
“Right. And a skin exporting company called Ionian Products has it tied up as tightly as Cree, Inc., has Ganymede.”
“Well, red cree is no good, Mac. There’s no curative power in it.”
MacGowan leaned back in his chair.
“You forget,” he answered, “that since Carl Kent’s discovery we pick red cree on Ganymede.”
“Yes. I did forget.” Amherst stretched his long legs before him. “I haven’t been to Aquia since the formula’s been in use there.” For a moment his thoughts dwelt on the small domed settlement, on the young girl, Carol Kent, with her pixie face and laughing eyes. “Say,” he sat up suddenly as the full implication of MacGowan’s words penetrated his mind, “that’s bad. Those birds will glut the market!”
“Well, so far it’s only a rumor. And Carl Kent is the only one who knows his formula anyway. Still, you’d better tell him when you get to Aquia. I got the dope two months ago.”
“Amherst shook his head.
“That’s ironic. In 2083, two months’ old news has to be carried by hipp. It’s like going back to post medievalism.”
“It is. But you know radio is useless on the flood belt of Ganymede. The atmosphere’s too disturbed. It’s only at Hydropole that we can get reception.” MacGowan’s eyes caught a notation on his desk. “Oh, I almost forgot. I’ve got company for you to Aquia.”
“Who?”
“Kirt Scaler.” He spoke into his desk transmitter. “Ask Mr. Scaler to come in.”
“I don’t know what he’s here for,” he continued, turning back to Amherst, “but his papers are in order and I don’t think he’ll cause you much trouble.”
Yes, Amherst agreed, as Kirt Scaler entered, this man certainly looked as if he could take the hazardous journey to Aquia in his stride. His red-brown eyes, on a level with Amherst’s own, had the serene out-flowing look of the hardened adventurer. One saw him gazing long distances, accepting danger, meeting and conquering it. His teeth flashed white against tawny skin, and the steely grip of his hand did not belie the reckless strength of his appearance.
“Business trip?” Amherst asked.
“No, just touring.”
Amherst smiled at the idea of anyone’s taking a pleasure trip on Ganymede.
“You’ve traveled by hipp, I suppose.”
“No. This is the first time I’ve left earth.”
Strange how mistaken one can be, Amherst reflected. He could have sworn this man had been hardened by such adventure as existed, nowadays, only on the planets.
“In that case,” he smiled, “you’ve got something interesting in store for you tomorrow.”
Flood time was coming near. Seasickness and Amity, the two hipps, were restless. Always, at flood time, the instinct to be free rose in them, filling them with a wild yearning to buck the mountainous tide of water, to swim fiercely to the top, there to sport with the large Gamma Rorqual, that ferocious whale-like mammal with the long spiked tooth from which only the hipps, because of their hard, outer shell, were safe.
Even when the flood was not imminent, hipps were not the easiest riding. They walked with a queer, undulating motion: the two feet forward first while the body rested on the tail, then the tail brought to meet the feet. On their twenty-foot long body, the rider had to pick his seat carefully. If he sat too near the head, the animal would not move: too near the tail meant that he would be jarred at every step. A little behind the legs was best. There he could ride with a minimum of jolting.
Night was coming on. Though the men had been out only a few hours, the sky was already darkening. Days were short in Ganymede. Thus far, they had spoken intermittently; the discomforts of travel occupied much of their attention. Scaler, it turned out, was a rather taciturn man, revealing little of his past and nothing of his reasons for touring Ganymede. He rode silently, looking neither right nor left, keeping his eyes fastened on the green-scaled back of Amity, his hipp.
There was, however, not much to look at. If one excepted the scattered stilt houses in the flats, nothing broke the monotony of mountains, rocks and mudholes. Still, Amherst reflected, stilt houses ought to be interesting to a man from Earth. He remembered the first time he had seen the square boxlike hives made of compressed cree, standing on twenty-foot poles—how he had wondered if, indeed, they could survive the flood. No one had stayed above ground long enough to find out.
Carl Kent, however, with his inquiring mind, had found out how they worked. At the first ten feet of water, the Nympus drew the stilts up through the sides of the house, allowing it to float. But no one, save the Nympus who lived inside one, could say for sure whether it survived the flood, for the water carried it so far from the original starting point that there was no way of checking.
Suddenly a scream broke the air—a raucous, harsh scream, but, unmistakably, a scream of pain. They were rounding down a mountain and, as they covered the next turn, they came upon a hideous struggling mass of flesh. While from a slimy, flat body long tentacles gripped the rock, others clung to the writhing form of a Nympus. Creeping, in the manner of a snake, they encircled his flailing arms, drawing the heavy body with its long center spear greedily toward the native.
Scaler stared horrified, his face paling behind the visor. The animal looked like some grotesque nightmare. Amherst drew his gun and fired. There was a soft hiss, before the thing collapsed, spilling its yellowish blood on the rock.
The Nympus sprang to his feet, chattering wildly, then, rushing to a crevice in the mountain where the cree showed blue, placed a handful of the wet moss on his wounds.
For a moment the tentacles waved feebly; then, falling into the sticky mess which had once been a body, lay still. Only the long spear retained definite shape.
“There,” Amherst said, “is evolution in a nutshell.”
“It hadn’t evolved very far,” Scaler breathed deeply. “It looked like a jelly fish with a horn.”
“Perhaps it was once jelly fish,” Amherst returned. “It’s hard to tell now. It has metamorphosed too often from its original form. Like the butterfly which goes through successive stages from egg to larva, larva to chrysalis, chrysalis to butterfly, this, starting out as an amoeba-like protoplasm and, like the amoeba, absorbing food at every part of its body, changes form each time it surrounds its prey.”
“You mean it doesn’t absorb, it becomes what it eats?”
“Exactly. This amoeba attaches itself to a higher form of life and becomes that form, always, however, retaining its original power of becoming its next prey. But, here’s the strange thing: certain characteristics of its previous meal may remain even after it has adopted another form. This one, for example, was part Gamma Rorqual, as you can see from the spike, part land leet—it had land leet tentacles—and if we hadn’t come along, it would have been part Nympus as well.”
“Funny planet,” Scaler remarked.
Slowly, they continued down the mountain, reaching now and then a bleak plateau which wind and water had swept to glassy smoothness. The flying mammals which always heralded the flood swooped overhead.
As they crossed one of the plateaus, above the roar of the wind they heard a loud beating. A mammoth bird, jet black against the mountain, its two sets of wings flapping alternately at a spread of thirty feet, came toward them. Flying the gale, it neared them quickly. For a second, the men sat transfixed; then, wrenching themselves from the coma of fear, drew guns. Seasickness beat her tail frantically, jolting Amherst’s gun from his hand.
“Don’t shoot, Scaler,” he yelled, diving after the spinning weapon. “You’ll never kill it.”
Before Amherst could reach his gun, Scaler fired. His shot, far to the right, missed the body. Yet the bird dropped, thrashing, to the ground. Again he fired and, with a scream so shrill it hurt their eardrums, it lay still.
“Whew! That was close,” Amherst said. “Say, how did you know?”
“Know what?”
“Know enough to break the wing muscle.”
“It’s a Blanket Bat,” Scaler answered. “It doesn’t kill, but it draws electrical energy from its prey and leaves it weak to the point of helplessness. That’s the only way you can ground them too. There’s a similar species on Io.”
“Right.” Amherst looked speculatively at his companion. “But I was sure a man with no planetary experience would have aimed left, at the heart. That would have been unfortunate. For, as you undoubtedly know inasmuch as you hit it squarely on your second shot, the heart of the Blanket Bat is in the center.”
Scaler shrugged.
“Even on Earth,” he answered, “those things get around.”
When they reached the bottom of the mountain, it was too dark to go further. Jupiter shone pale and ghostlike in the night sky and far off, a tiny pinprick in the black, was Earth. The wind had risen, so they tethered Seasickness and Amity to a rock and took shelter in the lee of the mountain. A few land leets, disturbed by their presence, dragged themselves slowly from the rock. Amherst, who always preferred fresh food to the concentrates of his kit, caught and cooked them in the ray stove for dinner. The octopus-like animals were good eating, so afterward the two men settled down contentedly for the night.
The next morning, as soon as the sun had risen, they started on their way. Today their travel was over the flats where, every now and then, a stilt house stood high on the bleak landscape. Once in awhile they found a Nympus lying lazily before one, but they did not stop. In the outlying sections, Nympus spoke a Ganymedian patois which few Earthmen understood.
As they splashed along, Scaler broke a long silence to ask, “By the way, Amherst, just what is cree?”
“Cree is the source of the drug crephine used in the treatment of all the malignant diseases. It not only deadens pain, but heals.”
“But there’s so much of it on Ganymede,” Scaler objected, “it doesn’t seem as if there’d be use for all of it.”
“It takes over a bale of cree to produce one ounce of crephine,’ Amherst answered, “And in the past ten years the demand for it has increased enormously. Besides, on most of Ganymede the time for picking is short.”
“You mean on account of the floods? But why most of Ganymede then? Why isn’t gathering time short on the whole planet?”
“Because,” Amherst started—then, “I was thinking of Hydropole,” he amended. “The floods don’t cover that but, of course, there’s little cree there. Yes, the time for gathering is short on account of the floods.”
“And on account of the color change after the floods?” Scaler asked slyly.
“Yes, that’s true. How did you know?”
“I guess I read it somewhere. By the way,” he asked casually, “what’s the trader at Aquia like?”
“Carl Kent? He’s a nice fellow. Lives there with his daughter, Carol.”
“Is that where we stay out the flood?”
“Yes. They’re glad enough to see a new face.”
“There’s no way of leaving the village during flood time, I suppose.”
“N
one whatever. You couldn’t open a door against the pressure of the water even if you wanted to, which no one does. Once underground, you’ve got to stay there!”
Scaler hummed to himself a few minutes before he spoke again.
“When does this next flood pass?” he asked finally.
“Let’s see.” Amherst shifted his position on Seasickness’ back. “It’s due in two days now. You can probably leave Aquia about May twelfth, terrestrial date. By the way,” he faced Scaler squarely, “how do you expect to get back to Hydropole? You’d never find your way alone.”
“Oh, I figured that out with MacGowan. I’ll wait there until you make the trip to Dripwater and Weepy Hills. You always stop at Aquia on your way back, don’t you?”
“Yes. But I can’t see what you expect to do for two months in the settlement at Aquia.”
“More sightseeing, perhaps,” Scaler smiled.
When night came on, they did not stop. Flood time was too close to waste time in rest. Now, near the wet side of the planet, mudholes occurred frequently; though the hipps braved them valiantly, progress was slow. The wind had increased and, riding against it, they were forced to hold their seats tightly.
After a few hours, they came to a mountain. Knowing the dark, rocky climb would slow them still more, Amherst decided to cut around on the flats. Riding the uncharted ground, half asleep, suddenly he felt a bright light shining on him. In the mountain’s shadow, the night was black and the unexpected glare shocked him awake. From the side a huge, black bulk, that blinding light in its center, moved toward him. A grinding sound, as of rocks rubbed one on the other, deadened his ears, above everything, he was conscious of the light.
Scaler, riding nearest the mountain, continued forward, but Seasickness suddenly switched her course, heading straight for the glare. Amherst jerked the guiding rein, but she did not turn. Then, as the beam fell full on him, he felt himself being drawn. Ahead was the light, bright, warm, hypnotizing—at either side was nothing.