Craig asked Tim Anderson for his report. The young man’s voice sounded more steady now than when he had first answered the group call. No doubt, Barney reflected, their prosaic reports had calmed him.
‘I’m in a sort of dell,’ he said. ‘There’s a small cliff at one end, cutting off the view. The dell’s damp – lot of bright flowers, all odourless, lot of really ingenious climbers. And – and I’ve found out something about the centaurs! They must have some powerful parasites on them – micro-organisms. Craig, I’m frightened … I was observing some ants, squatting down, quite still. The ants, by the way, move very slowly, like everything else here – except the micro-organisms. As I was squatting there, a centaur came around the little cliff at the end of the dell.’
He paused. Both the older men caught the tension in his voice.
‘About how far apart were you?’ Craig asked gently.
‘About … oh, twenty-five yards, I suppose. Each of us was startled at the sight of the other. I got over the shock first – better reaction time, probably. I pulled my blaster and shot the creature down. That was a mistake, wasn’t it?’
‘If it was, we all make ’em,’ Craig replied reassuringly. ‘Carry on.’
‘I hit the creature,’ Tim’s voice said. ‘After waiting for a couple of minutes, to make sure it was dead, I got up and went to it. It – she was a female: two breasts, udders, low on the torso, two pendants under the body. A healthy, young specimen, by the looks of her. When I had inspected it, I … I rolled it over with my foot … Oh Lord, Craig – the underside of it, which had been pressed against the ground, the underside was already well decayed. It – well, it just turned me sick!’
He paused. Both the others felt something of his sense of shock.
‘What did you do then, Tim?’ Barney asked.
‘I’m afraid I turned tail. Panic. I shut myself in the overlander and took a disinfectant shower. It must have been something so virulent, you see, to wreak that amount of damage on a carcass within five minutes of death. The face … was all eaten away. And the underside of the breasts.’
‘Any … flies or suchlike about the body?’ Craig inquired, in a detached tone.
‘Not that I noticed,’ Tim said. ‘Perhaps it’s something comes out of the ground.’
‘Have you been outside since the incident?’ inquired Barney sharply.
‘No,’ Tim confessed. ‘I’m sorry. I’ll have pulled myself together by daylight.’
‘Don’t worry, son. Get drunk! Remember we’re only eighty miles away, if you want us. Next routine call, twelve noon tomorrow. Adios and out.’
A subsidiary duty of the PEST fieldworkers was to send back full reports of their work to PEST HQ for more fully equipped scientists to use later as the basis of further study. Their main duty was to check on a planet’s fitness for colonists. A planet, even if it was uninhabited by intelligent beings (according to galactic definition of that term), often had another species, known as the Plimsol Species, which made the world unsafe for peaceful farmers or their herds.
PEST’s task was to discover if a Plimsol Species existed and, if so, suggest a way of eliminating it without upsetting the entire ecological balance of the world. This second part of the business was often the more difficult; it looked as if it were not going to be easy on Lancelyn II, Barney thought grimly, smoking his fifth successive cheroot and glancing out into the blue moonlight.
Sexton beetles? A virus? Bugs? If one of those three constituted a Plimsol Species, it could never be eradicated.
Suddenly he laughed harshly, spat his butt end aside, and got up to prepare a lasso for the morning. Then he threw himself contentedly onto his bunk.
He was up with the sun, standing at the door of his igloo, combing his beard, and sniffing the fresh air as dawn brightened. Behind him, frying liver and eggs smelled equally good.
It was an hour later, when Barney had finished his breakfast, that he observed some centaurs. Two males, a female, and a baby came slowly through the wood, cropping low bushes on their way. The female and the child were diverging further and further from the males. Owing to the thickness of the vegetation, when the female emerged onto the perimeter of the Plot, the two males were out of sight.
At his first glimpse of them, Barney seized up his tackle and ran like mad, bent low, to intercept them. As the female broke cover, he stood up only twenty feet from her. She stood frozen, staring at him without attempting to move, as he raised the blaster and fired; she dropped to the ground at once, without uttering a sound.
The child gave a bleat of puzzlement, circled its mother, and then began to head for the undergrowth, breaking into an uncertain jog-trot.
‘Come back, you little dodger, I want you too!’ Barney called, blundering after it.
He easily outpaced it, seized its shoulder, and turned it back toward the Plot. Taking a length of rope from one of the containers of his harness, Barney put a halter around the little thing’s neck, whereupon it followed him docilely enough, mewing its bewilderment.
When they reached the mother again, Barney slipped his lasso over her head, paying out the line as he returned with the child to his igloo. There he drew the line tight and fixed it to an alarm system, after which he was free to examine the youngster he had caught.
‘You’re a pretty little beast,’ Barney said, ‘and no more than a couple of days old, I’m sure. Wait and I’ll get you a lump of sugar. H’m, blind in one eye! Well, that’s hard old Mother Nature for you … Don’t let it worry you.’
He continued to talk gently and meditatively to the little animal. Its shivering stopped; it seemed to lose its fear. Standing no higher than Barney’s massive knee, it looked more like a mixture of shaggy dog and monkey than pony and human: its little face was wrinkled; its teeth, just appearing through its gums, were the wide, blunt kind which indicates vegetarian habits. It had an instinctive way of springing sideways to Barney, presenting him with its good eye, but it turned about submissively enough when he handled it.
Highly pleased with his catch, Barney was still fondling the creature when his alarm bell rang. Dashing to the door, he was in time to see his corpse rising to its feet.
With a shout, he abruptly changed direction and headed for the overlander, where he sent out a call to Craig and Tim Anderson to come back to base at once.
Craig Hodges’ leisurely voice responded within a matter of seconds. There was no reply from Tim, even after several minutes. Barney held the microphone as if he would wring its neck and swore into it.
‘What’s the matter with him?’ he asked. ‘What’s the boy doing? Why doesn’t he answer?’
‘Do you think those microbes he was afraid of have got him, Barney?’ Craig asked.
Barney could detect the faint mockery in the other’s voice. He knew if he answered ‘yes’ his reputation would go down several notches; this made him wonder how much of the puzzle the leader of the expedition had already worked out for himself.
‘There should be a simple explanation of why Tim doesn’t answer,’ he said, with a hint of surliness. ‘He may be on his way back here now, in which case he would probably not have bothered to leave the line open.’
‘Check,’ Craig conceded. ‘A very large herd of centaurs passed near here in the night, heading in Tim’s direction. Maybe he didn’t like their company; personally, I don’t think they are very agreeable creatures either.’
‘Have you seen any close by as yet, Craig?’ Barney could not forbear to ask.
‘No,’ Craig said, with a mysterious chuckle of triumph in his voice. ‘Be with you inside two hours, Barney. Adios and out.’
Ninety minutes later, Tim Anderson’s overlander sped into view and drew up by the spaceship. Barney strolled over to meet it, hands in pockets. Tim sat in the driving cabin, windows closed, his face white as a sheet; only his nose had any colour.
‘Better stay away from me, Barney,’ he advised thickly, shouting through the window, ‘just in case you haven’t caugh
t the plague yet.’
‘Plague? What plague would that be?’ Barney asked mildly.
‘The plague that’s carried by every centaur on Lancelyn II,’ Tim said. ‘I’m thick with it, better keep off!’
‘If you’ve got the plague, why come back here?’
‘I couldn’t bear to die alone!’
‘You’re crazy, Tim! Come on, get out of that buggy. There’s nothing more the matter with you than a common cold. Fresh air’s what you need!’
The boy made a despairing gesture behind the glass.
‘I tell you I’ve got something I caught off the centaurs,’ he persisted. ‘Listen, Barney, early this morning a terrific herd of centaurs passed over the downs just beyond my dell. When I flashed the headlights onto them, all the ones touched by the beam dropped down dead. I didn’t hang around to examine them, but obviously they are infected by a parasite in the nervous system which kills and then devours them when their adrenalin flow increases.’
‘You’re off the beam, son,’ Barney said kindly. ‘Come out and let me show you something.’
By the time he had finally persuaded Tim to climb out, Craig had also arrived. When he had heard Tim’s protestations, he shook his head in disagreement.
‘Well, I’m sure I’m right,’ Tim said, blowing his nose voluminously. ‘We came to find the leading Plimsol Species, and for my money the conqueror microbe is it. Best thing is to clear out and leave the planet entirely alone.’
‘No,’ Craig said. ‘Sorry, but you’re wrong, son. I found the predominant species this morning – only it no longer predominates. It’s extinct, or nearly extinct. The buildings on the island I mentioned in my report last night were very primitive mud huts, erected by a race of winged creatures – flying monkeys. They were carrion eaters. In every hut, I found their bodies buried under the mud of the floor.’
‘Religious rite?’ Barney inquired.
‘No. Mass suicide. Piecing the evidence together, I found they had had some sort of mass self-murder pact. In every case, the deed had been done with sharp fish-bones piercing the eye and brain.’
‘I’ve never heard of such a thing before!’ Tim exclaimed, temporarily diverted from his plague. ‘Oh, lemmings, of course … But what made the flying monkeys do it?’
‘The predominant species of a planet is generally unbalanced,’ Craig said slowly. ‘Man is a case in point. It seems to be nature’s traditional penalty she extracts from the top dogs. However, before we go into all that, let’s see what excited Barney enough to make him call us back here.’
‘This isn’t pretty,’ Barney said, with relish, ‘but it will cure Tim of his plague.’
He led them to the hollow, to his temporary HQ
The baby centaur was tethered by the overlander. Close by, tied to the vehicle so that she could only stand up, was the mother centaur. She rolled an eye at the three men and mewed hopelessly as they approached. The baby showed signs of pleasure at seeing Barney again.
‘Come up, my beauty!’ Barney said, patting the mother’s flank. As she faced them, her coat was glossy and thick. Slowly, Barney pushed her around, away from the overlander, displaying her other side to Tim and Craig.
Tim gasped. The bones of her skull, on this side, shone white and green amid putrescent flesh. Her torso was savaged and torn, the exposed skin giving every appearance of corruption. Where the other side of her had been sleek, on this side her coat was slimed and foul, her ribs mere ragged carrion.
‘Camouflage,’ Barney explained. ‘If you look at her head-on, the effect is quite alarming. When you are right up close to her, looking hard, you can see it’s all a fake – all the exposed bones and putrescence just a put-up job. Very ingenious.’
Hesitantly, Tim went nearer.
‘It’s all right, she doesn’t stink,’ Barney said. ‘She didn’t carry protective mimicry that far; fortunately there was no need to. The puma, the centaur’s natural foe, has no sense of smell. And since it is farsighted, it cannot detect the difference, close up, between a real and a fake corpse. So the centaurs have this ideal way of protection – as they can’t run away, they just literally drop dead, bad side up, and get up again when they think danger is past. Fortunately, pumas won’t touch decaying flesh.’
‘Whereas the flying monkeys lived on it,’ Craig interposed. ‘I think that’s what drove them neurotic – every time they thought they’d found a rotting corpse, it got up and walked away.’
‘That can be shattering,’ Barney agreed. ‘I flushed a centaur yesterday, over by that dead log; when I went across and discovered what I thought was a corpse, I concluded two beasts were involved. It gave me nasty ideas about murderous centaurs, I tell you. I had not suspected the truth then.’
Both Barney and Craig had noticed Tim’s growing embarrassment. They turned smilingly to him as he said, ‘But the one I reported shooting in the dell yesterday – she fell camouflaged side down. That was when I began getting my plague theory.’
Barney laughed.
‘She couldn’t choose which side she landed on,’ he said, ‘because she was dead. Now when I caught this prize girl here, I fired over her head, and she dropped instinctively, carrion-side up.’
‘The herd we came across first, when we arrived, were just shamming,’ Craig said. ‘We should have had quite a shock then if the slaughtered mass had got up and walked off!’
Color grew in Tim’s cheeks. To hide it, he turned away and petted the baby centaur, which now frisked contentedly by its mother’s side.
‘I’m sorry I’ve made such a fool of myself,’ he said. ‘I guess I was way off the beam.’
‘It happens to the best of us, especially at first,’ Barney replied. ‘Come on inside and have some coffee. It’ll do your cold good.’
‘The centaur foal looks okay on both sides,’ Tim said, following them into the igloo. ‘I suppose the camouflage develops as the shaggy baby coat falls off?’
‘It must be so,’ Barney agreed. ‘You notice it already has a nasty-looking dead eye on one side. And watch its trick of springing around so that an observer sees only its good side – like a card-player concealing his trump card as long as possible.
‘Nature has some strange devices … The centaurs are fairly close mammalian parallels to earthly flatfish – the flounder or the sole, for instance, which start life much like ordinary fish, with an eye on each side of their heads. As they develop, they flatten, and one eye actually travels across the forehead. If you’ve ever watched the transition filmed by high-speed photography, it’s more impressive for a naturalist than a comet crossing the sky.’
He served the coffee, handed around cheroots, and sat back, grinning across the table at Craig.
‘Well then, old-timer,’ he said mock-pugnaciously, ‘you obviously aren’t much impressed by my lucid exposition of the wonders of Carrion Country! I suppose you beat me to the punch, eh?’
Craig nodded his massive head and blew smoke from his nostrils, grinning in self-deprecation.
‘While you were doing your trapper’s hill-billy act,’ he remarked, ‘I was solving the problem by scientific deduction à la Sherlock Holmes. It’s this fatal difference in our temperaments, Barney, which makes us the best PEST in the galaxy.’
‘No compliments, please,’ Barney begged. ‘They make my beard wither. Let’s hear how you found out about these two-faced centaurs.’
‘I told you I shot a puma last night, and collected the parasites from its body,’ Craig said. ‘Chief among these was a flea whose appearance strongly resembled the common rabbit flea, spilopsyllus cuniculi. Now the body temperature of the puma is low – only eighty-five degrees.’
‘Agreed,’ Barney said. ‘Its whole metabolism is low, by Earth standards.’
‘I found that by enclosing these fleas in a container at eighty-five, and then raising the temperature ten degrees, the fleas were forced into the next stage of their lifecycle. On my way back here just now, I trapped a centaur to check my results, and f
ound its body temperature was ninety-five, as I had suspected. That proved to me that the bodies we had seen could not really have been dead.’
Tim threw a lump of sugar to the small, inquiring nose thrust around the igloo door.
‘This isn’t my lucky day, Craig,’ he confessed. ‘How does that prove anything? I don’t see it.’
‘Parasitology proves anything,’ Craig said, winking at Barney. ‘The fleas use pumas and centaurs as hosts. As you know, both sides of the predator–prey relationship are frequently utilised by parasites. These particular fleas transfer from one to the other at the moment when the puma is nuzzling disgruntledly around what it thinks is a dead, rotting body. They leave the pumas because their life-cycle impels them to seek a higher temperature – ninety-five degrees, in fact – for their next metamorphosis. Well, did you ever know a corpse to retain a temperature of ninety-five degrees? The fleas aren’t fooled by the centaurs’ act, even if the pumas are.’
‘The moral of which is, we are all looking for something different in life,’ said Barney.
‘Well, it seems as if we’ve found what the colonists are looking for, after all,’ Tim remarked. ‘A nice, safe world with nothing very ferocious to scare them – once they’ve got used to the gruesome looks of the camouflage experts.’
‘The colonists are welcome to Lancelyn,’ Craig said, draining his coffee mug and rising. ‘Once you get to the bottom of it, it’s a pretty dead-and-alive hole.’
‘Complete with a dead-and-alive animal,’ Barney agreed. ‘Depending on which way you look at it!’
Equator
I
EVENING shadows came across the spaceport in long strides. It was the one time of day when you could almost feel the world rotating. In the rays of the sinking sun, dusty palms round the spaceport looked like so many varnished cardboard props. By day, these palms seemed metal; by evening, so much papier mâché. In the tropics, nothing was itself, merely fabric stretched over heat, poses over pulses.
The palms bowed stiffly as Scout Ship AX25 blasted up into the sky, peppering them with another spray of dust.
The Complete Short Stories- The 1950s - Volume One Page 52