Ten (Stories) to The Stars

by Raymond Z. Gallun

  Those bubble cavities were not empty. Sealed in them—from the original steam of violent creation—there was water, not lying flat as in a pond, but formed into clinging dewdrops. Magnified, they were great ovoids, bearing in their limpid clearness inverted images of things beyond them. Here, in these minute caves, there were almost landscapes—slopes were like hillsides, tufted with shaggy green, over an underlayer of almost transparent gelatin in slow, surging motion that made the green tufts tremble. That quivery stuff was everywhere; the deeper cavities were full of it. Deeper still, the view was cut out.

  Tom Lisky snorted like an angry animal. Some investigators had long ago claimed to have found traces of simple, anerobic life in the crevices of certain meteorites. But whether this was true or not, such cosmic wreckage was still mainly dead stone and iron.

  Yet within this glassy lump from space there was green color, as in plants. There was movement. Protoplasm, the jelly of life, too was recognizable. Besides, only what lived could die. In these cavities a sere brown was intruding, shrivelling the shaggy cilia that writhed as if in pain. In some caverns there was more of this brown of death than in others; but it was everywhere, as if it were slowly engulfing a multitude.

  Struggling to understand what he saw, Lisky noted that the bubble-cavities were joined; the silica between each and its neighbors was eaten through as if by an organic acid, making little connecting channels through which ran fine threads of gelatin, as if the whole of the latter formed a unified mass. Some channels even penetrated the surface of the spheroid. Their exits were sealed with mineral, which somehow reminded Lisky of what he had read about how the shells of mollusks were formed—deposited from solutions secreted by their skin.

  Beyond the obvious, Lisky was aware that he did not really know what he looked on, except that it was utterly bizarre and new to human experience. How valuable did that make it? . . . Maybe it was true that Tom Lisky had a certain keenness for natural things. Still, he could only guess at a thousand questions, and the guesses and thoughts were like varicolored paints that at first only boiled in chaos. He still heard the eerie crying tumult brought within range of his ears by the sound-probe, and that was part of the same . . .

  He thought of the body of a man—one individual, and yet a countless multitude of joined cells. He felt the burning on his neck and the sickness in him, as if he were under attack by defensive and organized skills and planning.

  Perhaps his chinking went beyond reasonable bounds; still he wondered if he looked on primitive, unknowing life, here, or if it was something much more. To the civilizations of humans and of the beings that had peopled the Asteroid Planet there was much equivalent detail—machines, buildings, instruments. But how could it be the same inside a tiny sphere such as this, in spite of the evidence of order—of countless tunnels drilled, even? How, for example, could machines be made on such a completely tiny scale? Metals became relatively far too hard, for one thing. So, of course, it hadn't been done.

  A science would have to be different, utterly. Maybe there was a clue. Lisky had read that on Mars there were cactiform growths which seemed to have a science of their own, developed inside the limitations and advantages of plants. They could not use metal or fire. They worked with life. The defending venom in their sharp spines was not always of the same kind. They could change or improve it, as if their own tissues were intelligence-controlled laboratories. From their own substance they created new allergies, viruses, germs, even—to protect themselves from enemies. Was it the same, here? Maybe partly. Lisky did not mean, even to himself, that he had run into another culture on the same order as that obscure modern Martian one, which had succeeded the vaguely human one of the far planet. He was simply far beyond his depth, and groping.

  In this meteorite only the fundamentals of life seemed the same as on Earth—protoplasm, and the need for oxygen, water, warmth, and light.

  Again Tom Lisky heard Snowdrop howl, and his own primitive nerves understood the dog's reaction. Against the unnamed, with which his experience had so little that was comparable, bristling wariness was coldly inevitable.

  Now there was a pounding on the door of the lab-cubby, and Helpern's voice yelling: "Open up, Tom! Come out and look at the floor by the lockers . . ."

  Lisky let them in.

  "Well—what is the thing?" Thorne asked him shakily.

  Lisky nodded toward the microscope and sound-probe. "Look and listen for yourselves," he growled. "It’s almost a sphere. It had a planetary orbit around the sun. Its freak internal structure is still as common as a piece of clinker. It doesn't need gravity to hold down an atmosphere. Because air and water are sealed up inside it. Being glassy, light can get in. And since it's full of air-cells, it should be good at holding the heat of sunshine. And there’s life in it, even. Okay—it’s just five inches in diameter—but what would you call it?"

  Lisky's hide tingled. He left his companions huddled over the microscope, and went out by the lockers. He found the little spot on the deck—fuzzy, faintly green, like mold. After a nervous minute of scrutiny, he poured concentrated disinfectant on it.

  Doing this did not end the cold tension in his nerves; nor did the injection of more chemotherapeutic solutions into his bloodstream or the application of lotion to the raised, fuzz-covered welt which had now spread down his back.

  He returned to the tiny lab. Helpern 's eyes, meeting his, were not gimlet-points now! They were haggard and confused. From what he now said, it was clear that his judgments relating to the meteorite were parallel to what Lisky's had been:

  "Any animal can fight back, can't it, Tom? Without being smart. Even snakes and ordinary bushes have poison. Still, it's like germ-war against us—because Thorne took the thing out of space. Invisibly, something microscopic must have come out of a little hole in the meteorite, to float in the air."

  "That's easy to figure," Lisky snapped, his eyes on the welt around Helpern's elbow.

  "We've got to destroy the thing, of course," Helpern went on shakily. "But that's not enough, is it, Tom? Because we're sick already. We're gonna die out here. I wouldn't mind so much, if it was in a more regular way . . . Damn, you, Thorne!"

  "Damn you yourself, Helpern!" Thorne snapped in return. "When we really find something at last, you turn ninny! That meteor is mine, anyway! I'm taking it to Ceres City. It's a freak never seen before! Scientists'll want to study it! Lord only knows what it's worth!"

  Thorne's voice was hoarse with emotion. An ugly red patch had spread up from his chest to his chin. There was terror in his face, too. But it couldn't rout cupidity in him as it had in Helpern. It was still almost comically as if the enigma that he'd plucked out of the void was some great fascinating gem that had addled his head and put a curse on him.

  Both of these men were in an hysterical state, though with opposite viewpoints.

  Suddenly Helpern lunged for the banefully gleaming spheroid, bent on doing it harm. Thorne's instant response was to grab an ore-sample, and bring it down with a thud on Helpern's skull.

  Tom Lisky became the third party of swift action. He dealt Thorne one swift blow to the jaw, his fist backed up by all the power of his own disturbed emotions. Thorne's body hurtled backward, bounced off the wall, and then, in the tiny gravity, sank to the floor like a settling wisp of cigarette smoke.

  The familiar, almost crackling, almost dry silence of the void closed in on Lisky. The mournful whine from the motor-pit—indications of Snowdrop's contact with the unknowns and half-seens of the universe—only made the lonely effect deeper.

  Lisky glowered over his fallen companions. "Peace, you guys," he muttered, still with a flash of ego. "Don't make me more trouble."

  The glinting meteorite seemed to eye him malevolently. Yet it really would have been something if the cold pucker in his flesh could have overcome completely the thought of treasure in Tom Lisky. The thing was only silicates. But value didn't refer only to chemical substance. Why, even diamonds were nothing but crystalline car
bon . . . Nevertheless, the destructive impulse was now mighty in him. It promised to answer dread and fury. Maybe he was dying. And he could have revenge.

  Lisky was jabbing needles into Helpern and Thorne. To the anti-allergics and the germ-destroying solutions, he added a sedative. Let the fools sleep. Then, with angry vigor, he applied lotions.

  Meanwhile, his mind rambled home, to his folks, the woods, his kid brother, and Hilda. Hilda was beautiful. She meant to come to the Asteroid Belt when there was a place for her . . . But the void surrounded him. He wondered if such thinking could mean much to him, anymore.

  He lifted the hatch of the motor-pit. Snowdrop bounded out, possessed of new devils of sound and excitement. Lisky shook his little dog to silence, and examined his short hair and the skin underneath. He couldn't be sure. But there was a dustiness over Snowdrop's smooth coat. He remained quiet as Lisky used the needle.

  Tom Lisky stood up. Now he wore a leer of grim decision. "It'll only take a second, Snowdrop," he growled.

  He went to the lab. Under his touch the inside of the small testing-furnace blazed with the incandescence of a dozen electric arcs. In his gloved hand the meteorite was poised. In another instant it would be hissing and crackling and melting.

  But the finality of the now so-easy act he contemplated sharpened in his mind the truths that Lisky knew. In all things except in its ridiculous deficiency of size, the lump that he held in his hand was a planet! And perhaps the question of size was not even a legitimate part of the definition.

  Aside, Lisky wondered if this fantastically small world had been formed in the terrific flash of atomic fire, when the Asteroid Planet blew up fifty million years ago. Only fifty million? Or was it even more likely that the tiny sphere was a sister of the Earth itself, born with the other planets of the solar system four or five billion years back?

  Tom Lisky was suddenly aware that in his hand he held ages of time and development—the birth of life in a world—and the slow, passing eras vaguely comparable to those of terrestrial geology and biology. The climb of history. A moment of sentiment and questioning was forced on Lisky 's hard soul. Was there conscious thought, planning, civilization, here? Or just insensate life?

  Could separate minds exist here, where the scale was so small, unless the combined cells harbored just one mind? Somewhere Lisky had heard that the structure of matter itself was too coarse to compose thinking brains much smaller than the normal brain. But did all this make any difference? Wasn't there more thought, plan, hidden intellect, order, civilization among the countless cooperating cells in the body of an animal or a man than in anything men had conceived of, among themselves? Even yet, humans were awed and far from understanding of such complex depths.

  Lisky's skin still burned with disease. Otherwise, the situation was fantastic beyond anything he had ever heard of! For he felt sheepishly, furiously, like a sick Atlas, holding a lesser Earth in his fingers, while in his mind was the power of choice between its survival or its destruction; between all the ages of its past being made meaningless, or being allowed to go on and on!

  Tom Lisky's ugly brows crinkled almost ludicrously, as the weight of such staggering responsibility dug into him. There was a humbleness, too—a fear of doing the wrong thing. And more humbleness for being a transient human with the power of a demigod over something potentially almost eternal. His lower lip curled sadly. His tough soul was stymied. Dammit—didn't he even have the right to fight back against something that was trying to kill him, his companions, and his pooch?

  He stood there for a full minute, his forehead and scarred cheek warped by painful and furious thought and indecision. Whether he lived or died he held in his hand not only the key to possible wealth but to fame as well—as a member of the group who had discovered the strangest planet on record. Dared he throw such a chance away? Scientists could be studying this tiny world for centuries to come! The idea appealed to the not-small vanity of Tom Lisky. As for financial proceeds, Thorne would share all right!

  This was the moment for his perspective to shift—for Lisky to fight back against the almost superstitious dread that the sudden shock of eeriness could cause in a man.

  He looked at his pooch whom he had shaken to silence, and who now crouched, cowed and forlorn and reproachful, in a corner.

  "Hell—perk up, Snowdrop!" Lisky stated. "We were dopes! It’s like Thorne says—though he was scared too much, too. Lots of men have risked their necks to get something big. We should put our Great Discovery outside for a while; disinfect the interior of the ship; rig a sealable box to transport the thing in, so it can't infect us again when we're ready to start for Ceres City; take as good care of our sickness as we can . . ."

  With fresh dreams of wealth and glory singing in his rapacious mind, and with a new decision made, Lisky was galvanized into instant action. He donned his space armor quickly. He could have left Snowdrop in the ship, but the poor pooch had been cooped up long enough. Long ago it had ceased to be difficult to stuff the pup into his small vacuum covering.

  The strange meteorite—The Planet—was in Lisky's hand. Man and dog passed through the airlock. Ahead of them, on the Asteroid on which they were grounded, was a little plain—part of the surface of the old world that had been a rival of ancient Mars. The ground was lifeless dusty soil to which the stumps of eon-old vegetation still clung, preserved by space. A short distance away was a heap of stone and metal—a ruined building of odd charm. The rays of the small, naked sun were dazzling.

  Lisky's eyes searched for a hiding place for the glittering chunk of mystery and wonder in his gantletted fingers. Concealing it was best, in case Helpern and Thorne became unreasonable again. Looking at the thing, he wondered if the brown color had encroached further on its blues and greens. It was easy to guess why there was creeping death inside this tiny world. Lack of sunshine. Sunshine was vital, especially to life with any of the qualities of Earthly planets.

  Lisky had really known, of course. But now the knowledge came to the fore. He saw the poison disease which must have come from this little freak of the solar system more in the same light as a trapped snake's use of its fangs, or a captive bird's pecking at a small boy's finger.

  All this hit Lisky in a sentimental spot, and formed a further bridge between the feelings of his earliest years and the events of the hour that had passed: the wild chirping heard through his instruments—a multitude crying. The bubble-cavities he had seen, full of living gelatin; the green cilia waving; the vistas that were like landscapes. The illusion of descent into that weirdly beautiful environment . . .

  So maybe Tom Lisky 's mood became a bit maudlin. Into it entered some of the essence of country urchin and pup-dog exploring a field. His chain of thought went much further—to a scientists' lab somewhere, and to a picture of The Planet now in his hand always under microscopes, always in the power of giants. Maybe it would be good for the life that was here. Yet it was repellent, too, to a principle of the wilds that Lisky had learned as a brat.

  There was still more to what was brewing inside Lisky’s head: ego, vanity, perversity, recklessness—all these things doubtless were at least minor ingredients.

  He was Tom Lisky, the tough character with the instincts of an antique pirate, who was among the Asteroids for what he could get out of them. But he was more than that. Perhaps a less vigorous man wouldn't have done what he now contemplated. Maybe he was even dying. Yet that can be a humbling thought.

  First he looked sheepish. Then he chuckled richly.

  "We were wrong again, Snowdrop," he said. "Just wait here."

  His shoulder-jet flamed blue, and he arced far up off the Asteroid. A few miles away from it, while he hurtled in the line of the Belt’s orbital motion, Lisky made like a baseball pitcher.

  Scientists would have shrieked had they known, bemoaning their loss and this utter stupidity. Thus Tom Lisky threw away both money and a reputation as a co-discoverer. Nonetheless, he whom it was perhaps not safe to trust one's valuables
with had his Big Moment. When he turned around and braked his speed with his jet, the miniature five-inch planet was quickly lost to his backward glance. The toy world was back in a huge orbit around the sun.

  Lisky laughed, as if in defiance of the scientists—as if they were fumbling, soulless dopes. And what did he care that Thorne would squawk like hell, and that he might even have to give him his own share of this trip's haul of ore and relics to restore a semblance of peace?

  In the best of Tom Lisky's blood itself there was a swagger. His self-satisfied grin was so smug that it was comic. For a murky wish for some super-adventure, seldom thought of as more than a wild, substanceless dream, had been fulfilled for him. How many men had ever been that lucky?

  Who, except Thorne and himself, had ever held a whole world, and a whole history, in his hand? And who was it who, granted such power, had done the right thing? Where had any one man been so deeply important? Lisky's pride was almost ludicrous.

  Maybe the skin of his shoulders and neck were burning less, now. But here Lisky placed no trust in the thought that this meant the calling off of an attack—if an infection ever could be recalled. Life, in most of its forms, was too fierce for gratitude. Lisky had much more faith in the man-made drugs he had used. Still, he was not bitter.

  He jetted back to the Asteroid, landing near his dog. "Yep, I was sort of like Atlas, wasn't I, Snowdrop?" he bragged. "It was more than luck that let Thorne find The Planet at all. People who think that they will ever locate it again, just don't know how big space is. But we do, don't we?"

  Snowdrop regarded Lisky with his head cocked to one side, asking for a romp and another exploration of the plundered ruin which stood near. A spacesuit and a bizarre environment didn't change basic canine traits. Doubtless Snowdrop was already forgetting recent unparalleled events.