“But never before had we undertaken to approach a sun closely, let alone actually enter one. And evidently there was something lacking in his screen, admitting an unknown vibration; for a peculiar mutation occurred in both brain and body.”
Jasper’s thoughts appeared troubled for a moment, before his discourse continued.
“THIS wasn’t noticed for some time after his return. But when he divided — we follow the same lines of development as the unicellular creature in regards to division by fission — the effects became at once apparent. The two smaller beings became almost invisible, reflecting only the infrared vibrations, and absorbing all the higher ones.
“They also became carnivorous. An unheard-of thing, for we Jaspers respect the right of all living creatures to exist without interference. And to make this change even more horrible, the Mad Ones took to devouring their own brothers, when they were unable to find other animal food.
“They are becoming quite a problem, for since the mutation occurred they have multiplied at a much faster rate than normal Jaspers, and now number almost one-tenth of our population. And all of our ingenuity has failed to find a means of returning the Mad Ones to normal.”
Slim looked thoughtfully over the rim of his glass of tomato juice.
“You mentioned ‘brothers,’ ” he observed. “I can easily see how beings who reproduce as you do, would all be brothers — or perhaps fathers or uncles. Is that why it has never occurred to you to exterminate these Mad Ones?”
Jasper didn’t answer immediately. Although he possessed no features with which to express emotion, it was evident that Slim’s words had shocked him, and probably started a train of thought in an unexplored direction.
“I can see that such a course would be natural to a race of beings who developed under a more competitive environment,” he finally said. “But you must understand that such a thing would be abhorrent to my people. We have never known strife; not even mild competition. We have never been faced with the need for fighting with any of the myriad forms of life with which we have come in contact.
“Whenever a Jasper is attacked by a carnivorous life-form, he merely rises and moves to a place where he is safe. So naturally the instinct to kill when menaced has never been developed in us.”
“You wouldn’t even fight when you know that eventually these Mad Ones will multiply to the point where the planet will be uninhabitable for you?”
“I’m afraid not. I know that I could not kill a Mad One, even if he were eating me. And therefore no other Jasper could, for we are all alike.”
“That certainly is a sad state of affairs,” Slim commiserated.
“And it looks as if nothing we could think of would be of any help. We’re too barbaric.”
“Without any intention of offending, I’m afraid you are. And it is not likely that you could help solve the problem in the only way acceptable to us — that of correcting the mutation. For our civilization is millions of years older than yours, and we have spent that time profitably, not in war and strife. And so our minds are much better equipped to reason logically.
“Yet we have failed. Therefore, let us drop the subject and return to the point where we were interrupted yesterday.”
The two men looked blankly at each other.
“You were going to tell me what you came here for,” supplied Jasper. “You said, ‘Maybe this gent knows the answer.’ ”
Slim grinned broadly and then proceeded to expound volubly on the solar system’s metabolism trouble.
“We Jaspers were afraid of that,” said the amoeba.
“Then you know what caused the phenomenon. Tell us.”
“WE CAUSED it,” admitted Jasper. “In fact we caused your race to come into existence, though of course we didn’t plan it that way. I’ll explain.
“Millions of years past, when the pulsations of our luminary were of much shorter duration, my race came into conscious existence. The property of levitation was ours even then, and to that gift is given credit for our rapid advancement in becoming sentient beings.
“For as we became larger and multicelled, we could avoid the terrible heat of our sun, during its intense periods, by flying through the air and continually keeping on the night side of the planet.
“This enabled the race to continue its mental development, while lesser creatures were forced to go into periods of hibernation when the sun was hot, and spend all of their time stuffing themselves with food when the sun was cool. Our periods of flying became periods of study and mental communion, during which great advancement took place.”
“Pardon me a moment,” Slim interrupted. “You mean that you flew for days at a time, keeping pace with the planet’s rotation? Wouldn’t that require a terrific amount of energy?”
“Quite the contrary. Our levitation mechanism operates on the same principle as the gravity drive of your ship. And it takes almost no energy to maintain a warp in the gravitational lines of force of a planet. The chief difference lies in the fact that the mechanism is a normal bodily function with us.
“But to continue. As time went on, and our population increased, it became apparent that new worlds would have to be found. At that time our numbers were doubling — by division, of course — every hundred years, and it was estimated that before another ten thousand years had passed, this planet would become uncomfortably crowded.
AND it was decided that we would choose, for the overflow, a world in some solar system where it would not be necessary continually to dodge the waxing periods of a pulsating sun.
“Such a world we thought we had found in your own planet. But we knew that your sun gave off but few of the emanations that made life possible to us. I refer to the cosmic rays. Accordingly we set up a tremendous projector at our south pole, which always faces toward your system, to compensate for the deficiency.
“It was necessary to make this projector powerful enough to manufacture many times the quantity of rays that any one Cepheid emits. This, of course, to compensate for the greater distance.
“We were still faced with the problem of taking care of our immediate increase, for it would be many times ten thousand years before your planet would be suitable for us.
“But, tragically, nature solved the problem for us. There came an extended period of volcanic activity on this planet which resulted in the deaths of thousands and thousands of Jaspers. Our population fell off considerably, rather than increasing. But eventually normal circumstances returned and once again we multiplied.
“After a few million years it was decided that your planet should have by then developed the proper sort of plant life to support our race, and accordingly an expedition was sent out to investigate.
“But something had gone wrong. The earth was found to be inhabited by many forms of giant reptilian life, some of them carnivorous. The whole project was therefore a failure. The world was obviously unsuited to us. It was then necessary —”
“WHOA there!” Slim again interrupted. “You said the expedition found gigantic reptiles. The age of saurians was way back in the Triassic and Jurassic periods, almost two hundred million years ago.”
“Oh yes. The projector was built long before that — somewhere in the Carboniferous era!”
“Well why didn’t you shut the thing off, once you saw that the earth was covered with the reptiles?” Ham wanted to know.
“But we couldn’t do that!” exclaimed the amoeba, sounding a bit horrified. “The reptiles required the rays, and to cease sending them would have been murder.”
“And we invent such words as ‘altruism,’ ” was Ham’s mumbled comment.
“But the projector was no drain on our resources or our time,” Jasper said deprecatingly. “It required no effort to maintain, for it operated by transforming useless emanations of our sun into the desired ones.”
“But what finally caused it to cease functioning?” inquired Slim.
“The Mad Ones turned it off. Why, I can’t say, for in the vicinit
y of the machine there is an abundance of game, which they value. But they are quite irrational, and it is useless to conjecture on their motives. Several of my people have made attempts to start the mechanism, fearing that its failure might be causing suffering on your system; but each time they were driven away by the voracious Mad Ones.”
Slim looked at Ham and screwed his face into a ludicrous expression of thoughtfulness. After several minutes of this, he evidently came to a momentous decision.
“It looks as if we had better take a trip to the south pole,” he announced. “And the sooner, the quicker.”
Ham, who had also been giving the matter some thought, saw a few objections.
“And if the place is crawling with Jasper’s demented relatives, what do you propose to do? I’ve always been superstitious about being eaten. Don’t think I’d like it — nohow!”
“Contrariwise!” supplemented Slim. “I don’t intend to be eaten. I’ve got an idea.”
“Most anything can happen now. All right, you start the ship, and our pal will show the way. Won’t you, Jasper?”
“Of course,” agreed the amoeba. “But I don’t see how...”
“NATURALLY not. Beings with your finer instincts couldn’t possibly think the things I’m thinking. But let’s see if my idea isn’t okay. You said that the Mad Ones reflect only infra-red from the surface of their bodies. And absorb all the visual light vibrations.
“My deduction is therefore, that such beings would not be able to stand much light. It would burn them up, inasmuch as light which is absorbed becomes heat. Am I right so far?”
“Yes, I believe you are. The Mad Ones are almost entirely nocturnal creatures. They never come out in the full light of day, and only occasionally in the late afternoon, when the rays of Propus are red and weak.”
He hesitated. “But if you are contemplating the use of light rays to kill them, I think I would rather not have anything to do with such an undertaking.”
“But I assure you, my dear Jasper, I am by nature as gentle as a lamb. Which reminds me — I was bitten by a lamb once. But he, of course, was a very vicious lamb.
“Here is the situation: We, as humans, wish to start up the cosmic ray apparatus. And that is just what we intend to do. Now, if in the act of so doing we are attacked by anybody at all, we must defend ourselves. Self-preservation is the first law of nature.
“To you, that takes the form of flight. But inasmuch as we are not endowed with the gift of levitation, we would have to fight to defend ourselves. And, knowing what we might have to fight, we would naturally prepare ourselves accordingly.
“Now that doesn’t sound like premeditated murder, does it? We certainly are not asking them to attack us. In fact, we will go out of our way to avoid them.”
THERE was a long minute of silence while Jasper weighed the finer moral aspects of the situation. He finally came to a decision, but it was not so much Slim’s words as his own sense of responsibility which was the balancing factor.
On Slim’s line of reasoning alone, he would still have refrained from having any hand in an act which might result in violence. But there was the annoying thought that the beings of the solar system were suffering because of a condition which was the direct responsibility of his race. And, in all justice, he must make sacrifices to help them.
Even if it meant going counter to his own moral convictions.
In a few minutes the ship was silently winging its way southward. Slim was at the controls, with Jasper hovering at his shoulder, while Ham was busily hooking small atomic generators to a pair of powerful searchlights. When he was finished, he tried them out, producing a light to rival the sun in brilliance, but still he seemed a bit dissatisfied.
He stood surveying his handiwork for a minute, decided the lights were too heavy for easy carrying, and set about to correct the fault by attaching leather straps.
Suddenly he stopped work, partially paralyzed by an idea. “Say!” he erupted. “What are we bothering with these lights for? Why not do our dirty work in the full light of day, about noon, when the Mad Ones are under cover?”
“Because there isn’t any full light of day,” Slim informed. “The place we are headed for is the south pole, and as you should have noticed, this planet rotates on an axis perpendicular to the plane of the ecliptic.
“Which means, of course, that the south pole region has a night and day of the same duration as at the equator, but receives very little light, even at high noon. Therefore, the Mad Ones are able to travel around without any discomfort all day long.”
Ham went back to work, muttering to himself. There was one more thing he wanted to know, but he would be darned if he’d say anything and give Slim a chance to pop out the answer in his superior manner. But Jasper came to the rescue without being asked.
Chapter 5
“I SUPPOSE you have both been wondering why this planet does not possess the usual polar ice-caps that would be expected on a planet so far from its luminary,” he telepathed.
“The reason has to do with our failure to find a suitable world to colonize. I told you that shortly after setting up the cosmic ray projector we were subjected to a long period of intense volcanic activity. This had two effects. Vast quantities of carbon dioxide were released, causing the average temperature of the planet to rise. And the added heat caused prolific vegetable growths, most of them unsuitable for our consumption.”
Jasper waxed happily professorial.
“So abundant was the undesirable plant life that it choked out most of the sort of vegetable food we require. As a result, and this in spite of our decreased numbers, there came a shortage of food.
“To beings of our sort, however, this is not really serious, for when we eat less, we merely lessen our bodily activity. And we found it very easy to do this, for the volcanoes caused a thick cloud blanket to cover the planet, nullifying the pulsations of Propus, and removing the necessity for our periodic flying excursions.
“But perhaps the greatest result of the activity was to teach us that we needn’t ever multiply to such numbers that the planet cannot hold us. For with the lessened food consumption and lessened activity we found that our division period was lengthened to more than a thousand years.
“And inasmuch as our mental keenness was not impaired by slowing down our bodily activity, it was decided to continue at the new rate, even after food became plentiful.”
“How about the sun’s pulsations, after the volcanic activity had ceased?” Ham inquired.
“We had learned our lesson,” replied Jasper. “And thereafter we took steps to control our climate so that all portions of the planet are ideal for our own existence. It was simply a matter of the amount of suspended dust particles in the atmosphere, and providing means of controlling the proper percentage of carbon dioxide.
“That is why we have no terrifically hot torrid zone, and also no polar ice-caps. The machinery for maintaining this ideal climate is housed in those hemispherical structures you were so curious about, and is completely automatic and self-repairing.”
THE ship terminated its swift flight in a land of broad plains covered by dense, but stunted, shrubbery. The light of Propus was dim and reddish, coming from such an oblique angle that it lost most of its brightness in the thick blanket of atmosphere through which it passed.
Slim set the ship down a short distance from a structure similar in general appearance to the one they had intended to cut into the day before. This one, Jasper assured them, contained the cosmic ray projector.
It differed from the other buildings in two respects. For one thing, it had a small opening in its lower rim — left there, Jasper told them, so that they could gain entrance to make adjustments in the apparatus.
He explained that while this planet would continue to face its south pole toward the solar system for many ages to come, there was a slow, continual shift taking place, which necessitated correcting the aim of the projector every few millions of years.
Th
e other difference was that the upper portion of the dome was made of a darker colored substance — a better conductor of the rays, they were informed.
Once outside of the ship, Ham strapped one of the lights on Slim’s chest, and showed him where to turn on the switch. Slim, in turn, strapped the other on Ham.
There were no blobs of shadow in sight, and they decided that the Mad Ones were temporarily elsewhere. But to warn them of any unexpected attack, Jasper hovered in the air behind them as they headed for the opening in the structure. His brain, keen in telepathic reception, could pick up the jumbled thoughts of the Mad Ones, long before the two men could detect their presence by the sense of sight.
And besides acting as lookout, it was necessary for him to go along to start the machinery of the projector. He had decided against attempting to explain its intricacies, so that they could do it themselves.
But short as the distance to the building was, and clear of menace as the plain seemed to be, there was nevertheless plenty of time for distant Mad Ones to detect their presence and propel themselves to the spot. Like Jasper, they could attain terrific speeds.
The trio had barely gone twenty feet when Slim and Ham were again almost knocked senseless from the intensity of the horror emanations from Jasper’s agitated mind.
“Protect yourselves!” he shrilled, the terror thoughts waning and in their stead coming sensations of urgency and desperation.
The two men whirled and darted their eyes all over the landscape, trying to see the shadows that would reveal the Mad Ones. Possibly only a few seconds passed until they saw the inky blobs, hurtling toward them, but those seconds were stretched into minutes by their terrified minds.
But if their brains were temporarily paralyzed by the strength of Jasper’s emotions, the condition didn’t continue once they had sighted the enemy.
Twin beams of blinding light centered on the nearer of the shadows. When it struck them, clearly outlining their dead-black forms, they seemed to shrivel, hesitate for an instant, and madly plummet to the ground below.
The Best of Argosy #2 - Minions on the Moon Page 15