Item, there were no small rocks or stones around.
Item, there was a tremendous steel shaft, rising to a height of at least half a mile, exact height to be determined when the new pictures were developed. Although there was no sign of a machine culture, the shaft was obviously the product of one. Someone must have built it and put it there.
“Throw it all together and what have you got?” Kilpepper asked.
“I have a theory,” Morrison said. “It’s a beautiful theory. Would you care to hear it?”
Everyone said yes except Aramic, who was still brooding over his inability to learn the native language.
“The way I see it, this planet is man-made. It must be. No race would evolve without bacteria. It was made by a super race, the race who put that steel spire there. They built it for these animals.”
“Why?” Kilpepper asked.
“This is the beautiful part,” Morrison said dreamily. “Pure altruism. Look at the natives. Happy, playful. Completely devoid of violence, rid of all nasty habits. Don’t they deserve a world to themselves? A world where they can romp and play in an eternal summer?”
“That is beautiful,” Kilpepper said, stifling a grin. “But—”
“These people are here as a reminder,” Morrison continued. “A message to all passing races that man can live in peace.”
“There’s only one flaw in that,” Simmons said. “The animals could never have evolved naturally. You saw the X-rays.”
“That’s true.” The dreamer struggled briefly with the biologist, and the dreamer lost. “Perhaps they’re robots.”
“That’s the explanation I favor,” Simmons said. “The way I see it, the race that built the steel spire built these animals, also. They’re servants, slaves. Why, they might even think we ‘re their masters.”
“Where would the real masters have gone?” Morrison asked.
“How the hell should I know?” Simmons said.
“And where would these masters live?” Kilpepper asked. “We haven’t spotted anything that looks like a habitation.”
“They’re so far advanced they don’t need machines or houses. They live directly with nature.”
“Then why do they need servants?” Morrison asked mercilessly. “And why did they build the spire?”
That evening the new pictures of the steel pillar were completed and the scientists examined them eagerly. The top of the pillar was almost a mile high, hidden in thick clouds. There was a projection on either side of the top, jutting out at right angles to a distance of eighty-five feet.
“Looks like it might be a watchtower,” Simmons said.
“What could they watch that high up?” Morrison asked. “All they’d see would be clouds.”
“Perhaps they like looking at clouds,” Simmons said.
“I’m going to bed,” Kilpepper stated in utter disgust.
When Kilpepper woke up the next morning, something didn’t feel right. He dressed and went outside. There seemed to be something intangible in the wind. Or was it just his nerves?
Kilpepper shook his head. He had faith in his premonitions. They usually meant that, unconsciously, he had completed some process in reasoning.
Everything seemed to be in order around the ship. The animals were outside, wandering lazily around.
Kilpepper glared at them and walked around the ship. The scientists were back at work trying to solve the mysteries of the planet. Aramic was trying to learn the language from a mournful-eyed green and silver beast. The beast seemed unusually apathetic this morning. It barely muttered its songs and paid no attention to Aramic.
Kilpepper thought of Circe. Could the animals be people, changed into beasts by some wicked sorcerer? He rejected the fanciful idea and walked on.
The crew hadn’t noticed anything different. They had headed, en masse, for the waterfall, to get in some swimming. Kilpepper assigned two men to make a microscopic inspection of the steel shaft.
That worried him more than anything else. It didn’t seem to bother the other scientists, but Kilpepper figured that was natural. Every cobbler to his last. A linguist would be bound to attach primary importance to the language of the people, while a botanist would think the key to the planet lay in the multi-fruit bearing trees.
And what did he think? Captain Kilpepper examined his ideas. What he needed, he decided, was a field theory. Something that would unify all the observed phenomena.
What theory would do that’ Why weren’t there any germs? Why weren’t there any rocks? Why, why, why. Kilpepper felt sure that the explanation was relatively simple. He could almost see it—but not quite.
He sat down in the shade, leaning against the ship, and tried to think.
Around midday Aramic, the linguist, walked over. He threw his books, one by one, against the side of the ship.
“Temper,” Kilpepper said.
“I give up,” Aramic said. “Those beasts won’t pay any attention now. They’re barely talking. And they’ve stopped doing tricks.”
Kilpepper got to his feet and walked over to the animals. Sure enough, they didn’t seem at all lively. They crept around as though they were in the last stages of malnutrition.
Simmons was standing beside them, jotting down notes on a little pad.
“What’s wrong with your little friends?” Kilpepper asked.
“I don’t know,” Simmons said. “Perhaps they were so excited they didn’t sleep last night.”
The giraffe-like animal sat down suddenly. Slowly he rolled over on his side and lay still.
“That’s strange,” Simmons said. “First time I saw one of them do that.” He bent over the fallen animal and searched for a heartbeat. After a few seconds he straightened.
“No sign of life,” he said.
Two of the smaller ones with glossy black fur toppled over.
“Oh Lord,” Simmons said, hurrying over to them. “What’s happening now?”
“I’m afraid I know,” Morrison said, coming out of the ship, his face ashen. “Germs.”
“Captain, I feel like a murderer. I think we’ve killed these poor beasts. You remember, I told you there was no sign of any microorganism on this planet? Think of how many we’ve introduced! Bacteria streaming off our bodies onto these hosts. Hosts with no resistance, remember.”
“I thought you said the air had several disinfecting agents?” Kilpepper asked.
“Evidently they didn’t work fast enough.” Morrison bent over and examined one of the little animals. “I’m sure of it.”
The rest of the animals around the ship were falling now and lying quite still. Captain Kilpepper looked around anxiously.
One of the crewmen dashed up, panting. He was still wet from his swim by the waterfall.
“Sir,” he gasped. “Over by the falls—the animals—”
“I know,” he said. “Get all the men down here.”
“That’s not all, sir,” the man said. “The waterfall—you know, the waterfall—”
“Well, spit it out, man.”
“It’s stopped, sir. It’s stopped running.”
“Get those men down here!” The crewman sprinted back to the falls. Kilpepper looked around, not sure what he was looking for. The brown forest was quiet. Too quiet.
He almost had the answer…
Kilpepper realized that the gentle, steady breeze that had been blowing ever since they landed had stopped.
“What in hell is going on here?” Simmons said uneasily. They started backing toward the ship.
“Is the sun getting darker?” Morrison whispered. They weren’t sure. It was mid-afternoon, but the sun did seem less bright.
The crewmen hurried back from the waterfall, glistening wet. At Kilpepper’s order they piled back into the ship. The scientists remained standing, looking over the silent land.
“What could we have done?” Aramic asked. He shuddered at the sight of the fallen animals.
The men who had been examining the shaft came running down the hill, bounding t
hrough the long grass as though the Devil himself were after them.
“What now?” Kilpepper asked.
“It’s that damned shaft, sir!” Morena said. “It’s turning!” The shaft—that mile-high mass of incredibly strong metal—was being turned!
“What are we going to do?” Simmons asked.
“Get back to the ship,” Kilpepper muttered. He could feel the answer taking shape now. There was just one more bit of evidence he needed. One thing more—
The animals sprang to their feet! The red and silver birds started flying again, winging high into the air. The giraffe-hippo reared to his feet, snorted and raced off. The rest of the animals followed him. From the forest an avalanche of strange beasts poured onto the meadow.
At full speed they headed west, away from the ship.
“Get back in the ship!” Kilpepper shouted suddenly. That did it. He knew now, and he only hoped he could get the ship into deep space in time.
“Hurry the hell up! Get those engines going!” he shouted to the gawking crewmen.
“But we’ve still got equipment scattered around,” Simmons said. “I don’t see any need for this—”
“Man the guns!” Captain Kilpepper roared, pushing the scientists toward the bay of the ship.
Suddenly there were long shadows in the west.
“Captain. We haven’t completed our investigation yet—”
“You’ll be lucky if you live through this,” Kilpepper said as they entered the bay. “Haven’t you put it together yet? Close that bay! Get everything tight!”
“You mean the turning shaft?” Simmons said, stumbling over Morrison in the corridor of the ship. “All right, I suppose there’s some super race—”
“That turning shaft is a key in the side of the planet,” Kilpepper said, racing toward the bridge. “It winds the place up. The whole world is like that. Animals, rivers, wind—everything runs down.”
He punched a quick orbit on the ship’s tape.
“Strap down,” he said. “Figure it out. A place where all kinds of wonderful food hangs from the trees. Where there’s no bacteria to hurt you, not even a sharp rock to stub your toes. A place Filled with marvelous, amusing, gentle animals. Where everything’s designed to delight you.
“A playground!”
The scientists stared at him.
“The shaft is the key. The place ran down while we made our unauthorized visit. Now someone’s winding the planet up again.”
Outside the port the shadows were stretching for thousands of feet across the green meadow.
“Hang on,” Kilpepper said as he punched the take-off stud. “Unlike the toy animals, I don’t want to meet the children who play here. And I especially don’t want to meet their parents.”
THE ODOR OF THOUGHT
Leroy Cleevy’s real trouble started when he was taking Mailship 243 through the uncolonized Seergon Cluster. Before this, he had the usual problems of an interstellar mailman; an old ship, scored tubes, and faulty astrogation. But now, while he was taking line-of-direction readings, he noticed that his ship was growing uncomfortably warm.
He sighed unhappily, switched on the refrigeration, and contacted the postmaster at Base. He was at the extreme limit of radio contact, and the postmaster’s voice floated in on a sea of static.
“More trouble, Cleevy?” the postmaster asked, in the ominous tones of a man who writes schedules and believes in them.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Cleevy said brightly. “Aside from the tubes and astrogation and wiring, everything’s fine except for the insulation and the refrigeration.”
“It’s a damned shame,” the postmaster said, suddenly sympathetic. “I know how you feel.”
Cleevy switched the refrigeration to full, wiped perspiration from his eyes, and decided that the postmaster only thought he knew how he felt.
“Haven’t I asked the Government for new ships over and over again?” The postmaster laughed ruefully. “They seem to feel that I can get the mail through in any old crate.”
At the moment Cleevy wasn’t interested in the postmaster’s troubles. Even with the refrigeration laboring at full, the ship was overheating.
“Hang on a moment,” he said. He went to the rear of the ship, where the heat seemed to be emanating, and found that three of his tanks were filled not with fuel, but with a bubbling white-hot slag. The fourth tank was rapidly undergoing the same change.
Cleevy stared for a moment, turned, and sprinted to the radio.
“No more fuel,” he said. “Catalytic actions, I think. I told you we needed new tanks. I’m putting down on the first oxygen planet I can find.”
He pulled down the Emergency Manual and looked up the Seergon Cluster. There were no colonies in the group, but the oxygen worlds had been charted for future reference. What was on them, aside from oxygen, no one knew. Cleevy expected to find out, if his ship stayed together long enough.
“I’ll try 3-M-22!” he shouted over the mounting static.
“Take good care of the mail,” the postmaster howled back. “I’m sending a ship right out.”
Cleevy told him what he could do with the mail, all twenty pounds of it. But the postmaster had signed off by then.
Cleevy made a good landing on 3-M-22, exceptionally good, taking into consideration the fact that his instruments were too hot to touch, his tubes were warped by heat, and the mail sack strapped to his back hampered his movements. Mailship 243 sailed in like a swan. Twenty feet above the planet’s surface it gave up and dropped like a stone.
Cleevy held on to consciousness, although he was certain every bone in his body was broken. The sides of the ship were turning a dull red when he stumbled through the escape hatch, the mail sack still Firmly strapped to his back.
He staggered a hundred yards, eyes closed. Then the ship exploded and knocked him flat on his face. He stood up, took two more steps, and passed out completely.
When he recovered consciousness, he was lying on a little hillside, face down in tall grass. He was in a beautiful state of shock. He felt that he was detached from his body, a pure intellect floating in the air. All worries, emotions, fears remained in his body, he was free.
He looked around and saw that a small animal was passing near him. It was about the size of a squirrel, but with dull green fur.
As it came close, he saw that it had no eyes or ears.
This didn’t surprise him. On the contrary, it seemed quite fitting. Why in hell should a squirrel have eyes or ears? Squirrels were better off not seeing the pain and torture of the world, not hearing the anguished screams of…
Another animal approached, and this one was the size and shape of a timber wolf, but also colored green. Parallel evolution? It didn’t matter in the total scheme of things, he decided. This one, too, was eyeless and earless. But it had a magnificent set of teeth.
Cleevy watched with only faint interest. What does a pure intellect care for wolves and squirrels, eyeless or otherwise? He observed that the squirrel had frozen, not more than five feet from the wolf. The wolf approached slowly. Then, not three feet away, he seemed to lose the scent. He shook his head and turned in a slow circle. When he moved forward again, he wasn’t going in the right direction.
The blind hunt the blind, Cleevy told himself, and it seemed a deep and eternal truth. As he watched, the squirrel quivered; the wolf whirled, pounced, and devoured it in three gulps.
What large teeth wolves have, Cleevy thought. Instantly the eyeless wolf whirled and faced him.
Now he’s going to eat me, Cleevy thought. It amused him to realize that he was the first human to be eaten on this planet.
The wolf was snarling in his face when Cleevy passed out again.
It was evening when he recovered. Long shadows had formed over the land, and the sun was low in the sky. Cleevy sat up and flexed his arms and legs experimentally. Nothing was broken.
He got on one knee, groggy, but in possession of his senses. What had happened? He remembered the cra
sh as though it were a thousand years ago. The ship had burned, he had walked away and fainted. After that he had met a wolf and a squirrel.
He climbed unsteadily to his feet and looked around. He must have dreamed that last part. If there had been a wolf, he would have been killed.
Glancing down at his feet, he saw the squirrel’s green tail and, a little farther away, its head.
He tried desperately to think. So there had been a wolf, and a hungry one. If he expected to survive until the rescue ship came, he had to find out exactly what had happened, and why.
Neither animal had eyes or ears. How did they track each other? Smell? If so, why did the wolf have so much trouble finding the squirrel?
He heard a low growl and turned. There, not fifty feet away, was something that looked like a panther. A yellow-brown eyeless, earless panther.
Damned menagerie, Cleevy thought, and crouched down in the tall grass. This planet was rushing him along too fast. He needed time to think. How did these animals operate? Instead of sight, did they have a sense of location?
The panther began to move away.
Cleevy breathed a little easier. Perhaps, if he stayed out of sight, the panther…
As soon as he thought the word “panther,” the beast turned in his direction.
What have I done? Cleevy asked himself, burrowing deeper into the grass. He can’t smell me or see me or hear me. All I did was decide to stay out of his way…
Head high, the panther began to pace toward him.
That did it. Without eyes or ears, there was only one way the beast could have detected him.
It had to be telepathic!
To test his theory, he thought the word “panther,” identifying it automatically with the animal that was approaching him. The panther roared furiously and shortened the distance between them.
In a fraction of a second, Cleevy understood a lot of things. The wolf had been tracking the squirrel by telepathy. The squirrel had frozen—perhaps it had even stopped thinking! The wolf had been thrown off the scent—until the squirrel wasn’t able to keep from thinking any longer.
In that case, why hadn’t the wolf attacked him while he was unconscious? Perhaps he had stopped thinking—or at least, stopped thinking on a wavelength that the wolf could receive. Probably there was more to it than that.
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