Donald A. Wollheim (ed)

by The Hidden Planet

  "Beyond doubt," replied Pat. "If any higher form existed, it would long ago have exterminated those fierce devils."

  But she was utterly wrong.

  Within the span of four days they had exhausted the possibilities of the tumbled plain around the rocket. Pat had accumulated a variegated group of specimens, and Ham had taken an endless series of observations on temperature, on magnetic variations, on the direction and velocity of the Underwind.

  So they moved their base, and the rocket flared into flight southward, toward the region where, presumably, the vast and mysterious Mountains of Eternity towered across the ice barrier into the dusky world of the night side. They flew slowly, throttling the reaction motors to a bare fifty miles an hour, for they were flying through night, depending on the beam of the forward light to warn against looming peaks.

  Twice they halted, and each time a day or two sufficed to indicate that the region was similar to that of their first base. The same veined and bulbous plants, the same eternal Underwind, the same laughter from bloodthirsty trioptic throats.

  But on the third occasion, there was a difference. They came to rest on a wild and bleak plateau among the foothills of the Greater Eternities. Far away to the westward, half the horizon still glowed green with the false sunset, but the whole span south of the due-west point was black, hidden from view by the vast ramparts of the range that soared twenty-five miles above them into the black heavens. The mountains were invisible, of course, in that region of endless night, but the two in the rocket felt the colossal nearness of those incredible peaks.

  And there was another way in which the mighty presence of the Mountains of Eternity affected them. The region was warm—not warm by the standards of the twilight zone, but much warmer than the plain below. Their thermometers showed zero on one side of the rocket, five above on the other. The vast peaks, ascending into the level of the Upper Winds, set up eddies and stray currents that brought warm air down to temper the cold breath of the Underwind.

  Ham stared gloomily over the plateau visible in the fights. "I don't like it," he grunted. "I never did like these mountains, not since you made a fool of yourself by trying to cross 'em back in the Cool Country."

  "A fool!" echoed Pat. "Who named these mountains? Who crossed them? Who discovered them? My father, that's who!"

  "And so you thought you inherited 'em," he retorted, "and that all you had to do was to whisde and they'd lie down and play dead, and Madman's Pass would turn into a park walk. With the result that you'd now be a heap of clean-picked bones in a canyon if I hadn't been around to carry you out of it."

  "Oh, you're just a timid Yankee!" she snapped. "I'm going outside to have a look." She pulled on her parka and stepped to the door, and there paused. "Aren't you—aren't you coming, too?" she asked hesitantly.

  He grinned. "Sure! I just wanted to hear you ask." He slipped into his own outdoor garb and followed.

  There was a difference here. Outwardly the plateau presented the same bleak wilderness of ice and stone that they had found on the plain below. There were wind-eroded pinnacles of the utmost fantasy of form, and the wild landscape that glittered in the beams from their helmet lamps was the same bizarre terrain that they had first encountered.

  But the cold was less bitter here; strangely, increasing altitude on this curious planet brought warmth instead of cold, as on the Earth, because it raised one closer to the region of the Upper Winds, and here in the Mountains of Eternity the Underwind howled less persistently, broken into gusts by the mighty peaks.

  And the vegetation was less sparse. Everywhere were the veined and bulbous masses, and Ham had to tread carefully lest he repeat the unpleasant experience of stepping on one and hearing its moaning whimper of pain. Pat had no such scruples, insisting that the whimper was but a tropism; that the specimens she pulled up and dissected felt no more pain than an apple that was eaten; and that, anyway, it was a biologist's business to be a biologist.

  Somewhere off among the peaks shrilled the mocking laughter of a triops, and in the shifting shadows at the extremities of their beams, Ham imagined more than once that he saw the forms of these demons of the dark. If there they were, however, the light kept them at a safe distance, for no stones hummed past.

  Yet it was a queer sensation to walk thus in the center of a moving circle of light; he felt continually as if just beyond the boundary of visibility lurked Heaven only knew what weird and incredible creatures, though reason argued that such monsters couldn't have remained undetected.

  Ahead of them their beams glistened on an icy rampart, a bank or cliff that stretched right and left across their course.

  Pat gestured suddenly toward it. "Look there!" she exclaimed, holding her light steady. "Caves in the ice—burrows, rather. See?"

  He saw—little black openings as large, perhaps, as a manhole cover, a whole row of them at the base of the ice rampart. Something black skittered laughing up the glassy slope and away—a triops. Were these the dens of the beasts? He squinted sharply.

  "Something's there!" he muttered to Pat. "Look! Half the openings have something in front of them—or are those just rocks to block the entrance?"

  Cautiously, revolvers in hand, they advanced. There was no more motion, but in the growing intensity of the beams, the objects were less and less rocklike, and at last they could make out the veinings and fleshy bulbousness of life.

  At least the creatures were a new variety. Now Ham could distinguish a row of eyelike spots, and now a multiplicity of legs beneath them. The things were like inverted bushel baskets, about the size and contour, veined, flabby, and featureless save for a complete circle of eye spots. And now he could even see the semitransparent lids that closed, apparently, to shield the eyes from the pain of their lights.

  They were barely a dozen feet from one of the creatures. Pat, after a moment of hesitation, moved directly before the motionless mystery.

  "Well!" she said. "Here's a new one, Ham. Hello, old fella!"

  An instant later both of them were frozen in utter consternation, completely overwhelmed by bewilderment, amazement, and confusion. Issuing, it seemed, from a membrane at the top of the creaure, came a clicking, high-pitched voice.

  "Hello, fella!" it said.

  There was an appalled silence. Ham held his revolver, but had there been need, he couldn't have used it, nor even remembered it. He was paralyzed; stricken dumb.

  But Pat found her voice. "It—isn't real," she said faintly. "It's a tropism. The thing just echoes whatever sounds strike it. Doesn't it, Ham? Doesn't it?"

  "I—I—of coursel" He was staring at the lidded eyes. "It must be. Listen!" He leaned forward and yelled, "Hello!" directly at the creature. "It'll answer."

  It did. "It isn't a tropism," it clicked in shrill but perfect English.

  "That's no echo!" gasped Pat. She backed away. "I'm scared," she whimpered, pulling at Ham's arm. "Come away —quick!"

  He thrust her behind him. "I'm just a timid Yankee," he grunted, "but I'm going to cross-question this living phonograph until I find out what—or who—makes it tick."

  "No! No, Ham! I'm scared!"

  "It doesn't look dangerous," he observed.

  "It isn't dangerous," remarked the thing on the ice.

  Ham gulped, and Pat gave a horrified little moan.

  "Who—who are you?" he faltered.

  There was no answer. The lidded eyes stared steadily at him.

  "What are you?" he tried again. Again no reply.

  "How do you know English?" he ventured. The clicking voice sounded: "I isn't know English." "Then—uh—then why do you speak English?" "You speak English," explained the mystery, logically enough.

  "I don't mean why. I mean how!"

  But Pat had overcome a part of her terrified astonishment, and her quick mind perceived a clue. "Ham," she whispered tensely, "it uses the words we use. It gets the meaning from us!"

  "I gets the meaning from you," confirmed the thing ungrammatically.

/>   Light dawned on Ham. "Lord!" he gasped. "Then it's up to us to give it a vocabulary."

  "You speak, I speak," suggested the creature.

  "Sure! See, Pat? We can say just anything." He paused. "Let's see— 'When in the course of human events it—'"

  "Shut up!" snapped Pat. "Yankeel Remember you're on English territory now. 'To be or not to be; that is the question just—'"

  Ham grinned and was silent. When she had exhausted her memory, he took up the task: "Once upon a time there were three bears—"

  And so it went. Suddenly the situation struck him as fantastically ridiculous—there was Pat carefully relating the story of Little Red Riding Hood to a humorless monstrosity of the night-side of Venus! The girl cast him a perplexed glance as he roared into a gale of laughter.

  "Tell him the one about the traveling salesman and the farmer's daughter!" he said, choking. "See if you can get a smile from him!"

  She joined his laughter. "But it's really a serious matter," she concluded. "Imagine it, Ham! Intelligent life on the dark side! Or are you intelligent?" she asked suddenly of the thing on the ice.

  "I am intelligent," it assured her. "I am intelligently intelligent."

  "At least you're a marvelous linguist," said the girl. "Did you ever hear of learning English in half an hour, Ham? Think of that!" Apparently her fear of the creature had vanished.

  "Well, let's make use of it," suggested Ham. "What's your name, friend?"

  There was no reply.

  "Of course," put in Pat. "He can't tell us his name until we give it to him in English, and we can't do that because—oh, well, let's call him Oscar, then. That'll serve."

  "Good enough. Oscar, what are you, anyway?"

  "Human, I'm a man."

  "Eh? I'll be damned if you are!"

  "Those are the words you've given me. To me I am a man to you."

  "Wait a moment. 'To me I am—' I see, Pat. He means that the only words we have for what he considers himself are words like man and human. Well, what are your people, then?"

  "People."

  "I mean your race. What race do you belong to?" "Human."

  "Owl" groaned Ham. "You try, Pat." "Oscar," said the girl, "you say you're human. Are you a mammal?"

  "To me man is a mammal to you."

  "Oh, good heavens!" She tried again. "Oscar, how does your race reproduce?" "I have not the words." "Are you born?"

  The queer face, or faceless body, of the creature changed slightly. Heavier lids dropped over the semitransparent ones that shielded its many eyes; it was almost as if the thing frowned in concentration.

  "We are not born," he clicked.

  'Then—seeds, spores, parthenogenesis? Or fissure?" "Spores," shrilled the mystery, "and fissure." "But-"

  She paused, nonplussed. In the momentary silence came the mocking hoot of a triops far to their left, and both turned involuntarily, stared, and recoiled aghast. At the very extremity of their beam one of the laughing demons had seized and was bearing away what was beyond doubt one of the creatures of the caves. And to add to the horror, all the rest squatted in utter indifference before their burrows.

  "Oscar!" Pat screamed. "They got one of you!"

  She broke off suddenly at the crack of Ham's revolver, but it was a futile shot.

  "O-oh!" she gasped. "The devilsl They got one!" There was no comment at all from the creature before them. "Oscar," she cried, "don't you care? They murdered one of you! Don't you understand?"

  "Yes."

  "But—doesn't it affect you at all?" The creatures had come, somehow, to hold a sort of human sympathy in Pat's mind. They could talk; they were more than beasts. "Don't you care at all?"

  "No."

  "But what are those devils to you? What do they do that you let them murder you?"

  "They eat us," said Oscar placidly.

  "Oh!" gasped Pat in horror. "But—but why don't—"

  She broke off; the creature was backing slowly and methodically into its burrow.

  "Waitl" she cried. "They can't come here! Our lights—"

  The clieking voice drifted out: "It is cold. I go because of the cold."

  There was silence.

  It was colder. The gusty Underwind moaned more steadily now, and, glancing along the ridge, Pat saw that every one of the cave creatures was slipping like Oscar into his burrow. She turned a helpless gaze on Ham.

  "Did I—dream this?" she whispered.

  "Then both of us dreamed it, Pat." He took her arm and drew her back toward the rocket, whose round ports glowed an invitation through the dusk.

  But once in the warm interior, with her clumsy outer garments removed, Pat drew her dainty legs under her, lighted a cigarette, and fell to more rational consideration of the mystery.

  "There's something we don't understand about this, Ham. Did you sense anything queer about Oscar's mind?" "It's a devilishly quick one!"

  "Yes, he's intelligent enough. Intelligence of the human level, or even"—she hesitated—"above the human. But it isn't a human mind. It's different, somehow—alien, strange. I can't quite express what I felt, but did you notice Oscar never asked a question? Not one!"

  "Why—he didn't, did he? That's queerl"

  "It's darn queer. Any human intelligence, meeting another thinking form of life, would ask plenty of questions. We did." She blew a thoughtful puff of smoke. "And that isn't all. That—that indifference of his when the triops attacked his fellow—was that human, or even earthly? I've seen a hunting spider snatch one fly from a swarm of them without disturbing the rest, but could that happen to intelligent creatures? It couldn't; not even to brains as undeveloped as those in a herd of deer, or a flock of sparrows. Kill one and you frighten all."

  "That's true, Pat. They're damn queer ducks, these fellow citizens of Oscar's. Queer animals."

  "Animals? Don't tell me you didn't notice, HamI"

  "Notice what?"

  "Oscar's no animal. He's a plant—a warm-blooded, mobile vegetable! All the time we were talking to him he was rooting around below him with his—well, his root. And those things that looked like legs—they were pods. He didn't walk on them; he dragged himself on his root. And, what's more, he-"

  "What's more?"

  "What's more, Ham, those pods were the same sort as the ones that the triops threw at us in the canyon of the Mountains of Eternity, the ones that choked and smothered us so—"

  "The ones that laid you out so cold, you mean." "Anyway, I had wits enough to notice them!" she retorted, flushing. "But there's part of the mystery, Ham.

  Oscar's mind is a vegetable mindl" She paused, puffing her cigarette as he packed his pipe.

  "Do you suppose," she asked suddenly, "that the presence of Oscar and his crew represents a menace to human occupancy of Venus? I know they're dark-side creatures, but what if mines are discovered here? What if there turns out to be a field for commercial exploitation? Humans can't live indefinitely away from sunlight, I know, but there might be a need for temporary colonies here, and what then?"

  "Well, what then?" rejoined Ham.

  "Yes; what then? Is there room on the same planet for two intelligent races? Won't there be a conflict of interests sooner or later?"

  "What of it?" he grunted. "Those things are primitive, Pat. They live in caves, without culture, without weapons. They're no danger to man."

  "But they're magnificently intelligent. How do you know that these we've seen aren't just a barbaric tribe, and that somewhere on the vastness of the dark side there isn't a vegetable civilization? You know civilization isn't the personal prerogative of mankind—look at the mighty decadent culture on Mars, and the dead remnants on Titan. Man has simply happened to have the strangest brand of it, at least so far."

  "That's true enough, Pat," he agreed. "But if Oscar's fellows aren't any more pugnacious than they were toward that murderous triops, then they aren't much of a menace."

  She shuddered. "I can't understand that at all. I wonder if—" She paused, frowning
.

  "If what?"

  "I don't know. I had an idea—a rather horrible idea." She looked up suddenly. "Ham, tomorrow I'm going to find out exactly how intelligent Oscar really is. Exactly how intelligent—if I can."

  There were certain difficulties, however. When Ham and Pat approached the ice ridge, plodding across the fantastic terrain, they found themselves in utter perplexity as to which of the row of caves was the one before which they had stood in conversation with Oscar. In the glittering reflections from their lamps each opening appeared exactly like every other, and the creatures at their mouths stared at them with lidded eyes in which there was no readable expression.

  "Well," said Pat in puzzlement, "we'll just have to try. You there, are you Oscar?"

  The clicking voice sounded: "Yes."

  "I don't believe it," objected Ham. "He was over more to the right. Heyl Are you Oscar?"

  Another voice clicked: "Yes."

  "You can't both be Oscar!"

  Pat's choice responded: "We are all Oscar."

  "Oh, never mind," cut in Pat, forestalling Ham's protests. "Apparently what one knows they all know, so it doesn't make any difference which we choose. Oscar, you said yesterday you were intelligent. Are you more intelligent than I am?"

  "Yes. Much more intelligent."

  "Hah!" snickered Ham. "Take that, Pat!"

  She sniffed. "Well, that puts him miles above you, Yankee! Oscar, do you ever lie?"

  Opaque lids dropped over translucent ones. "Lie?" repeated the shrill voice. "No. There is no need."

  "Well, do you—" She broke off suddenly at the sound of a dull pop. "What's that? Oh! Look, Ham, one of his pods burst!" She drew back.

  A sharply pungent odor assailed them, reminiscent of that dangerous hour in the canyon, but not strong enough this time to set Ham choking or send the girl reeling into unconsciousness. Sharp, acrid, and yet not entirely unpleasant.

  "What's that for, Oscar?"

  "It is so we—" The voice was cut short.

  "Reproduce?" suggested Pat.

  "Yes. Reproduce. The wind carries our spores to each other. We live where the wind is not steady."