Astounding Science Fiction Stories Vol 1

by Anthology

  Barrows looked uneasily at the guests, but Strike reassured him.

  "Don't worry. They can't affect us. I brought 'em because sometimes they're useful. Like homing pigeons; keep 'em in one place a few hours and they'll come right back to it!"

  A touch of the starter and the plane's powerful engine burst into muffled thunder. No need for much warm-up in those temperatures, so almost at once Barrows guided the plane down the illimitable beach which unrolled like an endless ribbon from an invisible spool always just out of vision's range. Presently it dropped away, narrowed as it rushed more and more swiftly beneath them, then veered magically away and was replaced by leaden waves. Straight northwest over the Mare Gigantum the stubby Arkette headed, seeking the Lost Continent of Venus.

  The three little strangers squalled plaintively in fright. The first one covered his ears at the unfamiliar engine-roar; the second took one look out at the vanishing beach and put his paws over his eyes in panic; the third clapped one paw over his mouth in a ludicrous expression of astonishment. It was too much, even for Strike's surly mood.

  "See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil!" yelled Tommy Strike hilariously, and both crew members bellowed with laughter.

  Strike always said afterward that the finding of the so-called Lost Continent was anti-climax, they accomplished it so easily. In fact, it gave him an uneasy qualm or two, almost as if the place deliberately revealed itself to them, enticing them down to some subtle snare.

  Barrows was still at the controls after an hour's steady flying, when Strike noticed the curious behavior of some of the instruments.

  "That's odd. Must be some sort of radiation nearby. This should mean land."

  He was right; it did mean land. Directly ahead, just coming into focus on the visual screen. Barrows throttled down, confused by his erratic instruments, and circled about cautiously. Almost at once he spotted a large level clearing. A rift in the fog allowed him to set the Arkette down easily. And almost at once there came a terrific thunderclap, the sizzling crackle of a bolt of electricity. There was the hiss of molten metal, the smell of ozone.

  Barrows and Strike exchanged a startled glance. Ionized air had transmitted to them a partial shock, but both were insulated somewhat by their rubberized Venusian costumes and the rubber floor mat. Strike peered out cautiously.

  By the nose of the plane was a curious plant growth, the sole living thing in the entire clearing. It had three parts: there were two upright stems of tough, leathery stuff, one rising on each side of the plane; in between was a large, flat cup oozing a sticky substance from its walls. As Strike watched, the two stems moved slowly about as if seeking a more vulnerable spot. Again the dazzling bolt crashed from one stem to the other, apparently straight through the motor.

  "By Jupiter!" Strike exclaimed. "It's an electric plant! The two stems act as poles. It generates juice galvanically, like an electric eel, and shoots its bolt from one pole to the other! Anything it hits naturally drops into the nasty looking cup to be digested forthwith!"

  "Yes, sir."

  Strike gingerly opened one window.

  "Get a load of that smell!" It was a heavy musklike odor-spiced with mint. "Lures things with the smell, probably has a network of sensitive rootlets to register the approach of a victim, then gives 'em the hot seat! Good name for this jigger would be the Circe plant, eh?"

  "Very apt name, sir."

  "Though you'd think, the plant being grounded, that its charge would all leak away. Must have some way of sealing off its cells before generating the electricity."

  "Yes, sir."

  Strike turned scowling.

  "Damn it, Barrows! Don't sit there yessing me dizzy! Contribute something to the conversation or else shut up!"

  "Very well, sir. I suggest we take steps to eliminate the plant before it eliminates us. If it's not too late." Barrows' voice was bitter.

  "What d'you mean 'too late'?"

  "Just that every electrical instrument on the dash is ruined."

  Tommy Strike wasn't the man to bother much about disaster until it actually struck. "So what?" he wanted to know. "Our acousticons are all right. We can just follow the beam back to the ship. We know there're no obstacles sticking out of the sea on our course, to crack up on."

  He drew his heat-ray gun and leaned out, careful not to touch any of the metal of the plane, and beamed the electric plant into smoking, twisted extinction. The two clambered out and looked around.

  "No wonder this clearing is so large and barren," commented Strike. "Nothing will grow anywhere near a devilish plant like that."

  Barrow's conscience, and worry over their situation, had made him nervous. He was anxious to get the business over with. He disappeared into the plane again, reappearing loaded down with equipment. He handed Strike a rifle and hypo cartridges, and the cathode-gun to stick into his waist-band. About his waist he strapped the anti-gravity outfit, and carried by hand the portable electronic Iscope.

  "Shall I start the radio, sir? We'll need a beam to travel on."

  "Nope." Strike became more genial as action grew imminent. "We'll take a compass just as good as that." He pointed to See-No-Evil, Hear-No-Evil, and Speak-No-Evil, scampering about the plane. "They'll bring us back safe. We used them often at the trading post when they were handy,"

  Barrows began to sweat. All his years of training with Gerry Carlyle had drilled deep into his soul the need for every precaution, rigid discipline, strict routine. This casual young man who wandered off into the Venusian mists with nothing but three potentially insane duncerabbits to bring him back was too much.

  "But suppose something should happen to them, sir. What, then?"

  "Well, we're still on the beam from The Ark. That'll bring us back to the general neighborhood of the plane."

  "Yes, air, but it's so simple just to start the automatic radio beam. It would ease my mind."

  "If you must know, Barrows, someone thoughtfully removed the tubes from the radio before we left. I have my suspicions about that. But in any case, it's a total loss now. So let's get going. I certainly don't want to get caught out here at night."

  "Very good, sir."

  They moved off through the thickly sluggish fog, with all its weird smells and sly noises, in the peculiar sliding gait of the experienced Venusian traveler that keeps the feet from driving very hard into the spongy earth. At the edge of the clearing a lizard scuttled past them into the scant undergrowth. It was an ordinary Venusian lizard in most respects, except that there were two of him, joined together like Siamese twins. Strike stared.

  "Say! Did you see that? A freak. Might be worth taking back as a curiosity." He poked the rifle barrel into a clump of bushes. Instantly a whole horde of the scaly things rushed out in all directions. The whole lot of them were twins, joined! The dumfounded Strike forgot to catch any.

  "Well, I'm damned. A race of twin lizards! We must have a few of those, Barrows. Keep an eye out for another batch!"

  They pushed on, making careful observations through the portable 'scope. When they ran across a baby shovelmouth feeding, it was not one, but two of them, identical in appearance and markings. The land-crabs all moved in pairs, frequently joined shell to shell by a chitinous bridge. Even the occasional trees and shrubs grew two by two.

  Strike soon saw the light.

  "It's a dual world!" he breathed in awe. "Everything here is born twins!"

  "I've been thinking about that, sir," the sub-pilot answered thoughtfully. "Remember how funny the instruments acted before we landed? A radiation of some kind, you thought. Why not one that affects the egg-cell, causing it to divide, or affecting the genes to cause the division, to produce twins?"

  "You've guessed it. Earthly scientists have done it in the labs. Why shouldn't it occur in nature? In fact --"

  Strike stopped, eyes narrowed at a pair of slim, rubbery trees a few feet away. Normally they stood about fifteen feet high. But --"

  The young space explorer hesitated for a moment.r />
  "As we've stood here talking, Barrows, one of those trees wrapped about the top of the other and pulled its mate back. Like a slingshot."

  He detected a stealthy movement in the skimpy foliage, and suddenly grabbed Barrows' arm. and dragged him back out of danger. There was a creaking, a sharp rustle, and a vicious whip-crack as the rubbery trunk lashed out at them like a catapult. The two men were out of harm's way, but the duncerabbit Hear-No-Evil was struck squarely across the back. Nearly every bone in his little body was broken, and he collapsed like an empty sack on the ground'.

  The sling-shot tree moved very deliberately toward its victim, turning like a sunflower, touched the shattered creature delicately like a cat sniffing garbage, then slowly withdrew.

  "That was wanton!" Strike said slowly. "Cruel. I don't expect mercy on Venus, but I never yet saw killing up here that wasn't for sake of survival, food or self-defense. This Lost Continent is a nasty place."

  But unpleasant place or not, Strike was there to capture a real prize -- confound that self-sufficient fiance of his -- and make himself some money. So he detoured around the sling-shot tree and thrust forward into the murk. Within three minutes after leaving The Arkette, they both spotted what they realized would fit every requirement -- a specimen spectacular, weird, typical of the Lost Continent, something for which Von Zorn would pay well. It was Barrows who saw it first.

  "Mr. Strike," he whispered. "Straight ahead. D'you see what I see?"

  Strike peered at the telescope's screen, sucked in his breath in sudden delight.

  "Oood Oood!" he murmured. "What is it?"

  That was a question Barrows couldn't answer. It was easily one of the strangest animals he had ever seen in five years expeditionary work with Gerry Carlyle. The thing had a perfectly round body some four feet high, and it ran on four legs. But amazingly, it carried eight spare legs. One set of four protruded from the left side of its back at a forty-five degree angle; the other set protruded from the right side at a similar angle. In the center of its head was a mouth surrounded by three eyes forming the points of a triangle. The thing was triplets! No matter how it rolled, or which side was undermost, it would always be upright!

  Strike quivered with anticipation. He could see Von Zorn's face when he brought this beauty home. He could see Gerry's face, slightly green, as he showed her his check. He could see --

  "Hey! He's moving off. Don't let him get away!" Tommy pumped a shell into the chamber and slogged rapidly through the fog. He and Barrows caught up with their quarry in time to see a strange duel.

  It was very brief, over in a few seconds, this contest between the twelve-legged monster and another of the deadly sling-shot trees. As the animal trotted slowly along a dimly marked game trail, there sounded a swish and crack as the tree attacked. But the dodecaped simply allowed himself to be knocked rolling off to one side, came up on another set of legs, and trotted serenely on just beyond the baffled grasp of the tree.

  Strike hugged himself in delight; this was marvelous.

  "Nature's balance," he hissed. "Everything has its match somewhere --"

  "Yes, sir; I know. But he's getting away again. Give it to 'im!"

  Strike whipped up the hypo rifle and fired. Twelve-legs whirled, nipped at the wound, then began to gallop heavily away. Barrows and Strike ran after him. In a minute or so the drug began to take effect, and the victim stopped with head hanging, wobbling at the knees.

  "Got 'em!" yelled Strike in triumph. But too soon. Twelve-legs rolled over onto another set of legs and started off like a sprinter.

  "What!" yammered Strike. "That's impossible. He can't do that!"

  "If he's three animals rolled into one," cried Barrows, throwing his own reserve gun to his shoulder, "each part may be more or less separate from the other. So while the drug paralyzes one-third of 'im, it takes longer to penetrate to the other two-thirds."

  Barrows fired just as the dodecaped dissolved into the mist. The two men ran ahead and soon caught sight of him again, wavering weakly on very unsteady legs. And for the second time he rolled awkwardly onto his third set of legs and ambled off. Not so vigorously this time: the drug was already beginning to affect the last one-third. Strike finished the job with a final bullet. Twelve-legs lay quietly down to sleep.

  It was the work of a moment to slip the anti-gravity bands around him, adjust the power to the exact balance between gravitation and centrifugal force. The captive hung in the air, gently tugging on his leash, like a gigantic potato sprouting weirdly in every direction.

  Strike thrashed about in the undergrowth until he found Speak-No-Evil and See-No-Evil, then started back in the general direction of the plane. At once the duncerabbits seemed to understand, and frolicked ahead of the hunters with an uncanny sense of direction. They had nearly reached the clearing again when Barrows, who was leading, stopped so suddenly that Strike catapulted into him from behind. Twelve-legs also floated, up and gently nudged the two of them.

  "What the devil?" Strike wondered.

  Barrows pointed with a nervous finger. "It's a man, by Jupiter! It's a man!"

  Chapter VII.

  The Twin Race

  It wasn't a man, as closer inspection revealed. But anything that stands upright on Venus is easily mistaken for human in the eternal misty shroud. And the stranger certainly stood upright; he could scarcely do otherwise with his six legs. They grew at evenly spaced intervals from around his waist, long and slim. Two of them apparently served also as arms, judging from the way he scratched at his rounded abdomen, hanging like a ripe fruit inside the forest of legs.

  From the waist down he reminded Strike of an earthly octopus, or a spider. But from the waist up the creature was definitely manlike, with conventional torso, neck, and head.

  "That," said Barrows uneasily, "could be a dangerous customer. See those claws, and the armor-plate all over his body, and the fangs!"

  "Yes, but look at his face. He's bound to be peaceful because he's a congenital idiot. Just look at the expression!"

  Both men stared fascinated at the play of emotion across the thing's countenance. Expressions succeeded each other fleetingly with the rapidity of a motion picture-exhilaration, fear, surprise, anger, boredom, love, and sometimes just plain nothing. Like a ham actor trying to register everything he could in the shortest possible time.

  "Apparently he's prey to every emotion in the book," Barrows suggested. "No selectivity. No brains at all."

  Strike raised a palm in the universal gesture of friendship.

  "Hi, fella," he called tentatively. No result. The stranger was joined by three more of his kind, and they milled around in aimless curiosity.

  Strike tried a few syllables of the native lingo he had learned as a trader in the southern latitudes. No response. Presently the four creatures wandered off haphazardly through the fog. They fought, showed affection, sulked, and pranced in bewildering inconsistency.

  After about five minutes of random circling, the four beings suddenly raised their heads simultaneously, stood a moment as if listening intently, then loped off in a straight line. Strike scooped up the two duncerabbits and stuffed them inside his tunic so as not to lose them, and followed. Barrows tagged along perforce.

  "Funny how they all decided to go the same direction at once. I didn't hear anything, did you, Strike?"

  Strike grunted. This running around in the stifling Venusian atmosphere was making him pant like an ancient steam engine. He was also faintly concerned about getting entirely off the beam from The Ark. Already the steady tone faded down to an intermittent warning note. The duncerabbits might not be infallible, of course, and if they moved further to the side --

  Fortunately they did not. The four creatures led them only a short way, stopping soon before a structure with the appearance of a giant bee-hive punctured by numerous entrances. It seemed to be a sort of community igloo built of several individual mud huts joined in a cluster. There were perhaps a store of doorways, and before each opening sat
the amazing counterparts of the six-legged morons. They were counterparts in physical structure, that is, but not in mental capacity. For their enormous brain cases and haggard expressions indicated obviously that here were beings whose sole aim in life was to cerebrate. As each of the original four took position beside a different one of the thinkers, Strike saw the; light.

  Strike cried out.

  'Twins again!" he exclaimed delightedly. "See? Each pair is twins. You can tell if you examine 'em feature by feature. One is entirely emotional. Get it, Barrows? Evolution's greatest experiment. Complete divorce between the intelligence and the emotions, so the former can work unhampered by the vestigial remnants we call emotions! It's what earthly philosophers have dreamed of for centuries!"

  "I'm going to dream of it for some time myself. It's a nightmare."

  "You don't see the beauty of it, Barrows. Look. The Intellectuals think things out to a perfect conclusion by pure, unadulterated reason, then instruct their emotional-counterparts to carry out their decision. The Emotionals must be the active, executive half of the combination, to be used only when there's work to be done. That's why they're so fully equipped, fang and claw, to do battle. It's their job to bring food, protect the home, reproduce.

  "See? If the Intellectuals decide something ought to be destroyed, they probably tell the Emotionals to generate a lot of hate and go out to do the job. If they reason it's time to mate, they pull out the love stops on the twins, who-er --"

  "Yes, but how does this communication take place? I haven't heard an audible syllable yet."

  "Telepathic control, of course. If any individuals are more nearly en rapport than others, it's twins."

  "Hm-m. It occurs to me we may be a little reckless, Captain. We don't have any idea what's going on in those brains until the action starts. And judging from the head size, some pretty potent thoughts may be boiling around in there."