by Ray Bradbury
self by the river forks so I brought my plane down a little and used my binoculars.
"Then, down there in a clearing by the river, I saw something glisten and saw—the things. I tell you, they were incredible, but just the same I saw them clear! I forgot all about the river-forks in the moment or two I stared down at them.
"They were big, glistening things like heaps of shining jelly, so translucent that I could see the ground through them. There were at least a dozen of them and when I saw them they were gliding across that little clearing, a floating, flowing movement.
"Then they disappeared under the trees. If there'd been a clearing big enough to land in within a hundred miles I'd have landed and looked for them, but there wasn't and I had to go on. But I wanted like the devil to find out what they were and when I took the story to you two, you agreed to come up here by canoe to search for them. But I don't think now you've ever fully believed me."
WOODIN looked thoughtfully into the fire. "I think you saw something queer, all right, some queer form of life. That's why I was willing to come up on this search."
"But things such as you describe, jelly-like, translucent, gliding over the ground like that—there's been nothing like that since the first protoplasmic creatures, the beginning of life on earth, glided over our young world ages ago."
"If there were such things then, why couldn't they have left descendants like them?" Ross argued.
Woodin shook his head. "Because they all vanished ages ago, changed into different and higher forms of life, starting the great upward climb of life that has reached its height in man.
"Those long-dead, single-celled protoplasmic creatures were the start, the crude, humble beginnings of our life. They passed away and their descendants were unlike them. We men are their descendants."
Ross looked at him, frowning. "But where did they come from in the first place, those first living things?"
Again Woodin shook his head. "That is one thing we biologists do not know and can hardly speculate upon, the origin of those first protoplasmic forms of life.
"It's been suggested that they rose spontaneously from the chemicals of earth, yet this is disproved by the fact that no such things rise spontaneously now from inert matter. Their origin is still a complete mystery. But, however, they came into existence on earth, they were the first of life, our distant ancestors."
Woodin's eyes were dreaming, the other two forgotten, as he stared into the fire, seeing visions.
"What a glorious saga it is, that wonderful climb up from crude protoplasm creatures to man! A marvelous series of changes that has brought us from that first low form to our present splendor.
"And it might not have occurred on any other world but earth! For science is now almost sure that the cause of evolutionary mutations is the radiations of the radioactive deposits inside the earth, acting upon the genes of all living matter."
He caught a glimpse of Ross' uncomprehending face, and despite his raptness smiled a little.
"I can see that means nothing to you. I'll try to explain. The germ-cell of every living thing on earth contains in it a certain number of small, rod-like things which are called chromosomes.
"These chromosomes are made up of strings of tiny particles which we call genes. And each of these genes has a potent and different controlling effect upon the development of the creature that grows from that germ-cell.
"Some of these genes control the creature's color, some control his size, some the shape of his limbs, and so on. Every characteristic of the creature is predetermined by the genes in its original germ-cell.
"But now and then the genes in a germ-cell will be greatly different from the genes normal to that species, and when that is so, the creature that grows from that germ-cell will be greatly different from the fellow-creatures of its species. He will be, in fact, of an entirely new species. That is the way in which new species come into existence on earth, the method of evolutionary change.
"Biologists have known this for some time and they have been searching for the cause of these sudden great changes, these mutations, as they are called. They have tried to find out what it is that affects the genes so radically.
"They have found experimentally that X-Rays and chemical rays of various kinds, when turned upon the genes of a germ-cell, will change them greatly. And the creature that grows from that germ-cell will thus be greatly changed, a mutant.
"Because of this, many biologists now believe that the radiation from the radioactive deposits inside earth, acting upon all the genes of every living thing on earth, are what cause the constant change of species, the procession of mutations, that has brought life up the evolutionary road to its present height.
"That is why I say that on any other world but earth, evolutionary progress might never have happened. For it may be that no other world has similar radioactive deposits within it to cause by gene-effect the mutations. On any other world, the first protoplasmic things that began life might have remained forever the same, down through endless generations.
"How thankful we ought to be that it was not so on earth! That mutation after mutation has followed, life ever changing and progressing into new and higher species, until the first crude protoplasm things have advanced through countless changing forms into the supreme achievement of man!"
WOODIN'S enthusiasm had carried him away as he talked but now he stopped, laughing a little as he relit his pipe.
"Sorry that I lectured you like a college freshman, Ross. But that's my chief subject of thought, my idée fixé, that wonderful upward climb of life through the ages."
Ross was staring thoughtfully into the fire. "It does seem wonderful the way you tell it. One species changing into another, going higher all the time—"
Gray stood up by the fire and stretched. "Well, you two can wonder over it but this crass mataerialist is going to emulate his remote invertebrate ancestors and return to a prostrate position. In other words, I'm going to bed."
He looked at Ross, a doubtful grin on his blond young face, and said, "No hard feelings now?"
"Forget it," the aviator grinned back. "The paddling was hard today and you fellows did look mighty skeptical.
"But you'll see To-morrow we'll be at the forks of the Little Whale and then I'll bet we won't scout an hour before we run across those jelly-creatures."
"I hope so," said Woodin yawningly. "Then we'll see just how good your eyesight is from a mile up, and whether you've yanked two respectable scientists up here for nothing."
Later as he lay in his blankets in the little tent, listening to Gray and Ross snore and looking sleepily out at the glowing fire embers, Woodin wondered again about that.
What had Ross actually seen in that fleeting glimpse from his speeding plane? Something queer, Woodin was sure of that, so sure that he'd come on this hard trip to find it. But what exactly?
Not protoplasmic things such as he described. That couldn't be, of course. Or could it? If things like that had existed once, why couldn't they—couldn't they—
Woodin didn't know he'd been sleeping until he was wakened by Gray's cry. It wasn't a nice cry, it was the hoarse yell of someone suddenly assaulted by bone-freezing terror.
He opened his eyes at that cry to see the Incredible looming against the stars in the open door of the tent. A dark, amorphous mass humped there in the opening, glistening all over in the starlight, and gliding into the tent. Behind it were others like it.
Things happened very quickly then. They seemed to Woodin to happen not consecutively but in a succession of swift, clicking scenes like the successive pictures of a motion picture film.
Gray's pistol roared red flame at the first viscous monster entering the tent, and the momentary flash showed the looming, glistening bulk of the thing, and Gray's panic-frozen face, and Ross clawing in his blankets for his pistol.
THEN the scene was over and instantly there was another one, Gray and Ross both stiffening suddenly as though petrified, both falling heavily
over. Woodin knew they were both dead now, but didn't know how he knew it. The glistening monsters were coming on into the tent.
He ripped up the wall of the tent and plunged out into the cold starlight of the clearing. He ran three steps, he didn't know in what direction, and then he stopped. He didn't know why he stopped dead but he did.
He stood there, his brain desperately urging his limbs to fly, but his limbs would not obey. He couldn't even turn, could not move a muscle of his body. He stood, his face toward the starlit gleam of the river, stricken by a strange and utter paralysis.
Woodin heard rustling, gliding movements in the tent behind him. Now from behind, there came into the line of his vision several of the glistening things. They were gathering around him, a dozen of them it seemed. He now could see them quite clearly.
They weren't nightmares, no. They were real, poised here around him, humped, amorphous masses of viscous, translucent jelly. Each was about four feet tall and three in diameter, though their shapes kept constantly changing slightly, making dimensions hard to guess.
At the center of each translucent mass was a dark, disk-like blob or nucleus. There was nothing else to the creatures, no limbs or sense-organs. He saw that they could protrude pseudopods, though, for two, who held the bodies of Gray and Ross in such tentacles, were now bringing them out and laying them down beside Woodin.
Woodin, still quite unable to move a muscle, could see the frozen, twisted faces of the two men, and could see the pistols still gripped in their dead hands. And then as he looked on Ross' face he remembered.
The things the aviator had seen from his plane, the jelly-creatures they had come north to search for, they were the monsters around him! But how had they killed Ross and Gray, how were they holding him petrified like this, who were they?
"We will permit you to move but you must not try to escape."
Woodin's dazed brain numbed further with wonder. Who had said those words to him? He had heard nothing, yet he had thought he heard.
"We will let you move but you must not attempt to escape or harm us."
He did hear those words in his mind, even though his ears heard no sound. And now his brain heard more.
"We are speaking to you by transference of thought impulses. Have you sufficient mentality to understand us?"
Mind? Minds in these things? Woodin was shaken by the thought as he stared at the glistening monsters.
His thought apparently had reached them. "Of course we have minds," came the thought answer into his brain. "We are going to let you move, now, but do not try to flee."
"I—I won't try," Woodin told himself mentally.
At once the paralysis that held him abruptly lifted. He stood there in the circle of the glistening monsters, his hands and body trembling violently.
There were ten of them, he saw now. Ten monstrous, humped masses of shining, translucent jelly, gathered around him like cowled and faceless genii come from some haunt of the unknown. One stood closer to him than the others, apparently spokesman and leader.
Woodin looked slowly around their circle, then down at his two dead companions. In the midst of the unfamiliar terrors that froze his soul, he felt a sudden aching pity as he looked down at them.
Came another strong thought into Woodin's mind from the creature closest him. "We did not wish to kill them, we came here simply to capture and communicate with the three of you.
"But when we sensed that they were trying to kill us, we slew quickly. You, who did not try to kill us but fled, we harmed not."
"What—what do you want with us, with me?" Woodin asked through dry lips.
There was no mental answer this time. The things stood unmoving, a silent ring of brooding, unearthly figures.
Woodin felt his mind snapping under the strain of the silence and he asked the question again, screamed it.
This time the mental answer came. "I did not answer, because I was probing your mentality to ascertain whether you are of sufficient intelligence to comprehend our ideas.
"While your mind seems of an exceptionally low order, it seems possible that it can appreciate enough of what we wish to convey to understand us.
"Before beginning, however, I warn you again that it is quite impossible for you to escape or to harm any of us and that attempts to do so will result disastrously for you. It is apparent you know nothing of mental energy, so I will inform you that your two fellow-creatures were killed by the sheer power of our wills, and that your muscles were held unresponsive to your brain's commands by the same power. By our mental energy we could completely annihilate your body, if we chose.
THERE was a pause, and in that little space of silence Woodin's dazed brain clutched desperately for sanity, for steadiness.
Then came again that mental voice that seemed so like a real voice speaking in his brain.
"We are children of a galaxy whose name, as nearly as it can be approximated in your tongue, is Arctar. The galaxy of Arctar lies so many million light-years from this galaxy that it is far around the curve of the sphere of the three-dimensional cosmos.
"We came to dominance in that galaxy long ages ago. For we were creatures who could utilize our mental energy for transport, for physical power, for producing almost any effect we required. Because of this we rapidly conquered and colonized that galaxy, travelling from sun to sun without need of any vehicle.
"Having brought all the matter of the galaxy Arctar under our control, we looked out upon the realms beyond. There are approximately a thousand million galaxies in the three-dimensional cosmos, and it seemed fitting to us that all the matter in the cosmos should in time be brought under our control.
"Our first step was to prolifeate our numbers so as to multiply our number to that required for the great task of colonization of the cosmos. This was not difficult since, of course, reproduction with us is a matter of mere fission. When the requisite number of us were ready, they were divided into four forces.
"Then the whole sphere of the three-dimensional cosmos was quartered out among those four forces. Each was to colonize its division of the cosmos and so in their tremendous hosts they set out from Arctar, in four different directions.
"A part of one of these forces came to this galaxy of yours eons ago and spread out deliberately to colonize all its habitable worlds. All this took great lengths of time, of course, but our lives are of length vastly exceeding yours, and we comprehend that racial achievement is everything and individual achievement is nothing. In the colonization of this galaxy, a force of several million Arctarians came to this particular sun and, finding but this one planet of its nine nearer worlds habitable, settled here.
"Now it has been the rule that the colonists of all these worlds throughout the cosmos have kept in communication with the original home of our race, the galaxy Arctar. In that way, our people, who now hold the whole cosmos, are able to concentrate at one point all their knowledge and power, and from that point go forth commands that shape great projects for the cosmos.
"But from this world no communications have ever been received since shortly after the force of colonizing Arctarians came here. When this was first noted the matter was deferred, it being thought that within a few more million years report would surely be made from this world too. But still no word came, until after more than a thousand million years of this silence the directing council at Arctar ordered an expedition sent to this world to ascertain the reason for such silence on the part of its colonists.
"We ten form that expedition and we started from one of the worlds of the sun you call Sirius, a short distance from your own sun, where we too are colonists. We were ordered to come with full speed to this world and ascertain why its colonists had made no report. So, wafting ourselves by mental energy through the void, we crossed the span from sun to sun and a few days ago arrived on your world.
"Imagine our perplexity when we floated down here on your world! Instead of a world peopled in every square mile by Arctarians like ourselves, descended f
rom the original colonists, a world completely under their mental control, we find a planet that is largely a wilderness of weird forms of life!
"We remained at this spot where we had landed and for some time sent our vision forth and scanned this whole globe mentally. And our perplexity increased for never had we seen such grotesque and degraded forms of life as presented themselves to us. And not one Arctarian was to be seen on this whole planet.
"This has sorely perplexed us, for what could have done away with the Arctarians who colonized this world? Our mighty colonists and their descendants surely could never have been overcome and destroyed by the pitifully weak mentalities that now inhabit this globe. Yet where, when, are they?
"That is why we sought to seize you and your companions. Low as we knew your mentalities must be, it seemed that surely even such as you would know what had become of our colonists who once inhabited this world."
The thought-stream paused a moment, then raced into Woodin's mind with a clear question.
"Have you not some knowledge of what became of our colonists? Some clue as to their strange disappearance?"
The numbed biologist found himself shaking his head slowly. "I never—I never heard before of such creatures as you, such minds. They never existed on earth that we know of, and we now know almost all of the history of earth."
"Impossible!" exclaimed the thought of the Arctarian leader. "Surely you must have some knowledge of our mighty people if you know all the history of this planet."
From another Arctarian's mind came a thought, directed at the leader but impinging indirectly on Woodin's brain.
"Why not examine the past of the planet through this creature's brain and see what we can for ourselves?"
"An excellent idea!" exclaimed the leader. "His mentality will be easy enough to probe."
"What are you going to do?" cried Woodin shrilly, panic edging his voice.
The answering thoughts were calming, reassuring. "Nothing that will harm you in the least. We are simply going to probe into your racial past by unlocking the inherited memories of your brain.