The Earth In Peril

by Donald A Wollheim (ed)

  Hartville was that village in the central Pennsylvanian mountains from which the first reports of changes in plant life had come, and in the succeeding days the changes that were taking place over all earth seemed more advanced at Hartville than at any other place. The village itself was made up of one or two straggling streets of homes, with some three or four hundred inhabitants, and with a few places of business. It lay at the bottom of a deep valley between two spurs of the eastern Appalachians, and all about it stretched the thick green forest, covering the mountains on each side, even over their flat summits, lapping over the deep valley like a green sea of vegetation in which the village and its clearing were the only island. There were few farms in that section, most of the villagers being retired farmers from farther up the valley.

  The changes in plant life had been first observed by these villagers in their gardens and in the surrounding forest, and in the days that had followed, while those changes were taking place over all earth, it had been clearly evident that they were farther advanced always in the region about Hartville. The plant life there was losing its roots faster, was developing more tendrils, was acquiring a greater power of slow crawling movement. They had reported, too, that almost all plant life save the larger trees was tending to change into what seemed a single form, so far as could be seen—an octopus-like plant-mass, a thick rootless stem with many branching tendrils. Many of these plants had been seen crawling very slowly and blindly through the forests about the village.

  And these plant-masses, they asserted, had developed also another curious power, more unusual even than that of movement, being none other than the power of catching and devouring insects. This, of course, had always been a power of certain plants such as the sundew and Venus flytrap and others, but now it was shared by all the plant-masses about the village. Observation showed that they accomplished this by grasping with their tendrils any beetle or insect which settled upon them, gripping it so tightly as to kill it at once. Held thus, a green and sticky fluid was exuded from the tendril walls upon the dead insect. This had the effect of swiftly disintegrating and decaying the body of the creature held, so swiftly indeed that within an hour or less almost all of it would have been drawn down into the stem of the plant-mass through the hollow tendrils, those tendrils then releasing whatever shell or bone or hard part of the body was left.

  It was this new phase of the phenomenon, certainly the most sensational so far, that took Dr. Holm and me to Hartville on the day after that on which we heard of it.

  “Something strange there is in that Hartville region, Harley,” he had said to me. “Why should the changes of plant life have occurred there first? Why should they be farther advanced there than over the rest of earth, unless it is there that the gaseous compounds are pouring into earth’s atmosphere?”

  “But that seems impossible,” I said. “Those gases are supposed to be coming from volcanic craters of fissures, and none have opened there—”

  “Impossible—perhaps so,” he said, thoughtfully, “but perhaps something which we would deem even more impossible is going on there now—something that may mean dread menace to our earth. I’ll not explain now, Harley, but we leave for Hartville in the morning.”

  So it was that late on the next afternoon we entered Hartville, pressing along the rough mountain roads and up the narrow valley between the looming bulk of the mountains on either side until we drove at last into the village. A peaceful spot it seemed to Dr. Holm and me, a neat little mass of white-painted frame buildings lying deep between the giant-like mountains that rose to east and west, with all about it the forest’s encircling thickness. We found it, though, in a state of very perceptible excitement, knots of conversing villagers gathered along its street. And when Dr. Holm had announced his identity and was recognized as the famous botanist, some fifty of them gathered about us, eager to show us at once the extraordinary things going on about them.

  And extraordinary they were, we found, when we accompanied our numerous guides to the edge of the forests that lapped the village round on all sides. For though Dr. Holm and I had noted something of the unusual character of those forests on our drive to the village, we realized now for the first time their truly fantastic appearance. They seemed like the forests of another planet, the greater trees leafless, bearing upon every branch masses of tendrils. And here and there inside the forest’s edge were crawling slowly and gropingly a few of the plant-masses that had been described. Some were but a few inches in diameter, and some were all of six feet, but great or small they seemed all of the same form, octopus-like masses of tendrils on thick rootless stems, groping blindly and very slowly about. Farther back in the encircling forests, we were told, there were believed to be great numbers of the things, but since one or two dogs of the village had failed to return from a venture there a day before none of the villagers had been hardy enough to desire further exploration of them for the time being.

  Dr. Holm was very silent, solemn almost, as we walked back down the village street with our excited guides. I saw him glancing up with a puzzled air toward the forested summits of the mountains and heard him discussing some feature of them with those about him. He did not confide to me, though, whatever thoughts filled him, telling those of the village only that we would make a comprehensive investigation of the forests on the morrow. And when we had returned to the little frame hotel and sat upon its veranda after dinner watching the sunset purple and darken over the western mountains, Dr. Holm was silent still. Gazing out toward those mountains over the dark masses of the forest about us, my own thoughts were not on the morrow’s plans but on the crawling plant-masses that had formed here, that would be beginning to form over all the world. What could be causing these stupendous changes? And what was to be their end?

  Darkness had lain over the village for but a few hours when Dr. Holm and I rose to retire. Already, I saw, the yellow-lighted windows scattered about us were going black, one by one, and by the time I parted from Holm at his door and entered my own room to gaze forth from its window, darkness lay almost completely over the sleeping village. Sleeping there in the white starlight it lay, its encircling forests dark about it, its bordering mountains brooding above it, and for minutes I gazed forth over it, with strange thoughts. When I did turn and enter my bed, however, I found myself so drowsy from our day’s rough journey that I fell almost at once into a dreamless sleep.

  A village sleeping—a world sleeping—as its doom crept upon it. . . .

  It was a scream that brought me back to wakefulness hours later, a wild scream from the village street that was followed instantly by others and that brought me erect in bed, trembling. All was still dark about me, and I sensed that it was but an hour or so before dawn. Then as I sat there, tense, there came a final terrible scream from the street, followed by a series of choking gasps, and then by silence. I gazed forth, trembling more with amazement than any other emotion, but could see nothing in the darkness outside, so sprang from bed, hastily donning my clothes, and aware as I did so that a rising tumult was sounding across the village—an opening of doors and windows, a sound of hoarse shouts, and of more screams of terror. By then I was at Holm’s door, but when I flung it open it was to find his room empty, his bed apparently not slept in. Stunned by his absence, I heard the hoarse voice of the hotel’s proprietor beneath me, raced down the stairs with him, and then as he opened the door there met our eyes in the street outside, under the pale starlight, a sight that to this day chills me with terror to remember. The street was full from end to end with hundreds of slow-crawling plant-massesl”

  Plant-masses in hordes, in hundreds, in thousands, that thronged thick in the street before me, that swarmed through all the village. Plant-masses that had gathered in a mass at one place in the street, their numberless tendrils gripping the dead, crushed body of one of the villagers, exuding sticky green fluid upon it. Plant-masses that had swiftly gripped with those tendrils the astounded, half-clad people who had ventured into the str
eet in answer to those wild screams, and who now were themselves screaming as the hordes of plant-things pulled them down. Motionless I gazed, my mind reeling with horror, and then the crawling masses beneath, before me, had brushed against me, had felt my presence there and that of the man beside me, and before we could draw back had whipped forth with myriad tendrils to catch and hold us, to draw us down toward them.

  Never afterward have I been able to collect into coherent form my memories of the moments that followed. ,1 remember screaming like a trapped animal, screaming as the hotel owner beside me was screaming, as we were drawn resistlessly downward by those clutching tendrils. I remember struggling madly in their grip, and of being aware, even in that nightmare-like moment of struggle, of the things about me; of the men and women and children caught by those crawling masses that swarmed about them, drawn down and inward by their clutching tendrils; of dead bodies held within those tendrils’ grip and covered rapidly with exuding green fluid.

  These things flashed before my vision in that moment as I was drawn downward by the tendrils that held me. Then with a sudden revulsion that awoke me from the stupefaction of horror that had made my struggles weak, I struck out with all my force at the things that held me, strove to tear from me the clinging tendrils that had coiled about me. But those tendrils were like tough ropes holding me, and while I tore one loose two others were grasping me, so that steadily I was being drawn downward, still other plant-masses swarming about me. I saw that the man beside me had been pulled to the ground by three great plant-masses and that with their deadly grip about him his wild threshing was swiftly ceasing, the green sticky fluid from them coating him swiftly as they held him in their grip still, while four others of the great octopus-like things had gripped me. Against that deadly grip my struggles were useless, 'Sfnd even as I tore at the things that held me I knew myself weakening, surrendering. Then, with a sudden last inspiration, my hand went to the long pocket at my thigh, jerked from it and opened the long, thin and keen botanical knife which that pocket held.

  The next moment I had cut with wild slashes the dozen or more tendrils that held me, and as they waved blindly about, dripping green fluid, I reeled to one side from them. Along the starlit street the wild screams of those captured by the plant-masses had lessened, almost ceased, and as I staggered to one side now I saw that I was all but alone living among the hordes of thick-swarming plant-things that filled the village, though here and there and everywhere masses of them were clutching dead bodies, coating them with their green disintegrating fluid, settling to devour them. And at that sight- the last remnants of reason left my horror-stunned mind, and I staggered into the street mindless of the plant-masses that crawled in hundreds within it, slashing my way with blind, crazed fury through them as 1 staggered on.

  On—on—dazedly, insanely, gripped by tendrils of the plant-masses that swarmed about me and that I slashed wildly away, reeling on without knowledge of direction or purpose, throwing myself frenziedly forward with whirling blade until the village was behind On I staggered, into the encircling forests and up the forested slopes, as even then the few survivors of the village behind me were staggering north and south to carry the word of Hartville’s doom to the world.

  The gray light of dawn was filtering through the forest about me when I came at last to my senses, when the mists of horror lifted at last from my brain. I gazed about me. I was high on the forested slope of the great mountain west of Hartville, I found. Around me rose the silent ranks of the great trees, trees the sight of which renewed my horror, since I saw now that the great roots they had formerly had were fast dwindling to stubby projections, and that the masses of tendrils they bore upon their branches were waving slowly about with hideous life. Soon they too would be able to crawl forth at will, great plant-monsters that with the smaller plant-masses would spread untold horror before them I

  I gripped myself, though, striving to consider my situation. Impossible it was to return to Hartville, for that was swarming now with the hordes of the plant-masses that had swept all life from it. To remain in the forests was equally impossible, since with every hour the great trees about me were gaining in horrible life and power. I could not expect help from the outside world, I knew, since even now the terrible metamorphosis that had taken place about Hartville would be taking place over all earth. It was the revolt of all earth’s plant life that was going on, the plant revolt that had begun here at Hartville and that by now would be sweeping the world!

  “Holm!” I whispered, my thoughts shifting suddenly to my friend. “Holm gone—and I—”

  Abruptly I made my decision, swiftly turned. My one chance was to escape from the forest about me to some more barren region, at least, and since I dared not return down into the valley I must surmount the mountain summit, strike out into the country beyond. I started up the slope toward the summit far above, hoping against hope that I might glimpse from that summit some plantless region where I might find refuge from this mighty plant revolt that was springing into being over all the world.

  The time that followed, the hours of that day that I toiled unceasingly upward, I do not like to reflect on now. It was an interminable period in which I struggled up the steep slope through forests fantastically like a dream. Through forests of great trees whose tendrils leaned toward me as I passed them, striving to grip me; through forests of trees stirring with hideous life among which roamed plant-masses large and small that crawled toward me with ever-increasing speed, apprised by some strange sense of my presence, and from which I was hard pressed to escape; on and on upward I toiled, with tree-monsters and plant-masses ever increasing in power and in rapidity of movement about me, until I came at last with sunset to the last thinly-forested slope that led up to the mountain’s flat summit.

  Halting with panting lungs at that slope’s bottom, I saw that about me were no more of the plant-masses. The trees about me, though—naturally stunted trees whose gnarled and looped trunks were unnatural to begin with—seemed even further endowed with terrible life than any I had yet seen.

  Reeling from exhaustion, I labored upward, through the tree-things upon the slope, slashing aside their reaching tendrils that touched and grasped me, upward until I was clambering onto the broad flat summit of the mountain. Even as I had climbed a dim, dull roaring sound had been coming to my ears, and now as I clambered up onto the summit’s surface that roar came to me much louder. For the moment, though, I heeded it not, gazing about me, a light of sunset now full before me.

  The summit on which I stood was flat and irregular of outline, seeming to me about half a mile across. Upon it there were numbers of thick, gnarled trees like those on the slopes, tree-monsters whose massed tendrils shot menacingly toward me as I advanced between them. By quick movements, though, I managed to stumble between them, and then was through them, had reached the edge of a circular clearing that had been made there at the flat summit’s center, a clearing that occupied the greater part of its surface and that was ringed round completely by the writhing, ten-driled tree-monsters. As I stumbled out from the menace of those reaching tendrils into that clearing the dull roaring sound I had heard before burst upon my ears loudly. And as I did so I stopped short, stunned, heedless for the moment of the reaching tree-things behind me.

  For at the center of the flat clear space before me there was a pit of a thousand feet in diameter, whose rock walls sank downward and out of the line of my vision, apparently to great depths. And it was from this mighty pit that there came the roaring sound I had heard; for up from that pit was rushing a terrific torrent of wind or air or gases that I knew must be of awful speed and power. At the same time there came to my nostrils a strong and acrid odor of chemicals that I had already noticed on the slope below, an odor of mingled gases. The great change that had taken place in all earth’s plant life, that had taken place here most rapidly of all places—the great man-made pit or shaft before me that was flinging terrific quantities of gaseous compounds into the atmosphere
unceasingly—my mind staggered beneath the import of these things, and stunned, dazed, I gazed farther about me.

  Scattered throughout the clearing were several buildings, most of them the type of makeshift shack that is seen around construction sites. But I noticed one building, especially, because it seemed of an incredible solidity and sturdiness for so barren and remote a place. As I gazed at it, won-deringly, the fact dawned on me, so stunning and horrible at first, that I could scarcely comprehend it. This strange building could have but one function: to house an atomic pile.

  The crimson sunset illumined all things about me, and dazedly I stared, until a sound behind me made me whirl around with suddenly renewed terror. It was but the great tree-monsters behind me, though, straining their twisting tendrils out toward me in a vain attempt to reach me. They could not reach me, but all the terror that they inspired in me returned, and I turned quickly away from them toward the makeshift building to my right. Stealthily I approached it, keeping out of line of the open door and the open window, and finally I was crouching beneath that window. And as I reached it, as I crouched silently beneath it, a voice from within came clearly out to me.

  “—and make you see, Holm, what chance you had of preventing me, of preventing what I have decreed for the destiny of the world!”

  Holm! At that name I gasped, and then I raised myself, slowly, silently, until my eyes were above the level of the window beneath which I crouched. Two men were in the room into which I was gazing, I saw instantly; two men, one of whom sat against the wall opposite me, arms and legs bound tightly, and whom I recognized as Holm. He sat silent there, despair upon his face, and facing him, back toward me, was another man, a tall, big-shouldered man with tawny hair, a pistol in his belt. Even as I saw him that man turned slightly toward me, and as I glimpsed the strong profile, the burning gray eyes, I could hardly repress my cry. For it was Mandall. That former associate of Holm's whose fame as Dr. Jackson Mandall, the brilliant botanist, had been world-wide until his disappearance two years before.