Star Science Fiction 1 - [Anthology]

by Edited By Frederik Pohl

  But a scientist had no time for superstition. A scientist just thrust himself forward.

  He stepped off the ladder into the great mouth. Beneath him, the jaw was slippery. His feet slid out from under him, and then his momentum carried him forward, and he glided smoothly down the yawning gullet. It was like going down a Martian hillside on a greased sled, the low gravity making the descent nice and easy. He noticed that the cords around his waist, as well as the oxygen lines, were descending smoothly after him. He reached the turn, threw his body away from the gray wall, and continued sliding. Another fifty feet, and he landed with a small plash in a pool of liquid.

  The stomach? Never mind what you called it, this was probably the beginning of a digestive tract. He’d have a chance now to see how resistant his suit was.

  He was immersed in the liquid now, and he sank slowly until his feet touched more solid flesh again. By the beam from his flashlight, he saw that the liquid around him was a light green. The portion of the digestive tract on which he stood was slate gray, with bright emerald streaks.

  A voice spoke anxiously in his ears. “Doctor Meltzer! Are you safe?”

  “Fine, Captain. Having a wonderful time. Wish you were here.”

  “What’s it like in there?”

  “I’m standing at the bottom of a pool of greenish liquid. I’m fascinated, but not greatly instructed.”

  “See anything that might be wrong?”

  “How the devil would f tell right from wrong in here? I’ve never been in one of these beasts before. I’ve got sample bottles, and I’m going to fill them in various places. This is going to be sample one. You can analyze it later.”

  “Fine, Doctor. You just keep on going.”

  He flashed the beam around him. The liquid was churn­ing gently, possibly because of the splash he himself had made. The gray-green walls themselves were quiet, and the portion underfoot yielded slightly as he put his weight upon it, but was otherwise apparently undisturbed by his presence.

  He moved ahead. The liquid grew shallower, came to an end. He climbed out and stepped cautiously forward. “Doctor, what’s happening?”

  “Nothing’s happening. I’m just looking around.” “Keep us informed. I don’t think there’s any danger, but—”

  “But in case there is, you want the next man to know what to watch out for? All right, Captain.”

  “Lines all right?”

  “They’re fine.” He took another step forward. “The ground—I suppose I can call it the ground—is getting less slippery. Easier to walk on. Walls about twenty feet apart here. No sign of macroscopic flora or fauna. No artifacts to indicate intelligent life.”

  The Captain’s voice sounded pained. “Don’t let your sense of humor carry you away, Doctor. This is important. Maybe you don’t realize exactly how important, but—”

  He interrupted. “Hold it, Captain, here’s something interesting. A big reddish bump, about three feet across, in the gray-green wall.”

  “What is it?”

  “Might be a tumor. I’ll slice some tissue from the wall itself. That’s sample number two. Tissue from the tumor, sample number three.”

  The wall quivered almost imperceptibly as he sliced into it. The fresh-cut surface was purple, but it slowly turned red again as the internal atmosphere of the beast got at it.

  “Here’s another tumor, like the first, this time on the other side of the wall. And here are a couple more. I’m leaving them alone. The walls are getting narrower. There’s still plenty of room to walk, but—wait a minute, I take that back. There’s some kind of valve ahead of me. It’s opening and closing spasmodically.”

  “Can you get through?”

  “I’d hate to take a chance. And even if I did make it while it was open, it could crush the oxygen lines when it closed.”

  “Then that’s the end of the road?”

  “I don’t know. Let me think.”

  He stared at the great valve. It moved rapidly, opening and closing in a two-second rhythm. Probably a valve separating one part of the digestive system from another, he thought, like the human pylorus. The green-streaked gray flesh seemed totally unlike human muscle, but all the same it appeared to serve a similar function. Maybe the right kind of drug would cause muscular relaxation.

  He pulled a large hypodermic syringe from one of the sealed pockets of his diver’s uniform. He plunged the needle quickly into the edge of the valve as it paused for a fraction of a second before closing, shot a pint of drug solution into the flesh, and ripped the needle out again. The valve closed once more, but more slowly. It opened, closed again, opened once more—and stayed open.

  How long before it recovered, and shut off his retreat? He didn’t know. But if he wanted to find out what was on the other side, he’d have to work fast. He plunged forward, almost slipping in his eagerness, and leaped through the motionless valve.

  Then he called up to tell the Captain what he had done.

  The Captain’s voice was anxious. “I don’t know whether you ought to risk it, Doctor.”

  “I’m down here to learn things. I haven’t learned much yet. By the way, the walls are widening out again. And there’s another pool of liquid ahead. Blue liquid, this time.”

  “Are you taking a sample?”

  “I’m a sampler from way back, Captain.”

  He waded into the blue pond, filled his sample bottle, and put it into one of his pockets. Suddenly, in front of him something broke the surface of the pond, then dived down again.

  He came to a full stop. “Hold it, Captain. There seems to be fauna.”

  “What? Something alive?”

  “Very much alive.”

  “Be careful, Doctor. I think there’s a gun in one of the pockets of that uniform. Use it if necessary.”

  “A gun? Don’t be cruel, Captain. How’d you like to have somebody shooting off guns inside you?”

  “Be careful, man!”

  “I’ll use my hypodermic as a weapon.”

  But the creature, whatever it was, did not approach him again, and he waded further into the blue pool. When his eyes were below the surface of the liquid, he saw the thing moving again.

  “Looks like an overgrown tadpole, about two feet long.” “Is it coming close?”

  “No, it’s darting away from me. And there’s another one. I think the light bothers it.”

  “Any signs that the thing is dangerous?”

  “I can’t tell. It may be a parasite of the big creature, or it may be something that lives in symbiosis with it.”

  “Stay away from it, Doctor. No use risking your life for nothing.”

  A trembling voice said, “Larry! Are you all right?”

  “Maida! What are you doing here?”

  “I woke up when you left. And then I had trouble going to sleep again.”

  “But why did you come to the space port?”

  “Ships began to flash by overhead, and I began to wonder what had happened. So I called up—and they told me.”

  “Ships overhead?”

  The Captain’s voice cut in again. “The news services, Doctor. This case has aroused great interest. I didn’t want to tell you before, but don’t be surprised if you come up to find yourself famous.”

  “Never mind the news services. Have you heard from Earth yet?”

  “No messages from Earth. We did hear from the curator of the Marsopolis Zoo.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He never even heard of a space-cow, and he has no suggestions to make.”

  “That’s fine. By the way, Captain, are there any photographers around from those news services?”

  “Half a dozen. Still, motion picture, television—”

  “How about sending them down inside to take a few pictures?”

  There was a moment of silence. Then the Captain’s voice again: “I don’t think they can go down for a while yet. Maybe later.”

  “Why can’t they go down now? I’d like to have some comp
any. If the beast’s mouth is open—” A disquieting thought struck him. “Say, it is open, isn’t it?”

  The Captain’s voice sounded tense. “Now, don’t get upset, Doctor, we’re doing all we can!”

  “You mean it’s closed?”

  “Yes, it’s closed. I didn’t want to tell you this, but the mouth closed unexpectedly, and then, when we did have the idea of sending a photographer down inside, we couldn’t get it open again. Apparently the creature has adapted to the effects of the electric shock.”

  “There must be some way of getting it open again.”

  “Of course there’s a way, There’s always a way. Don’t worry, Doctor, we’re working on it. We’ll find it.”

  “But the oxygen—”

  “The lines are strong, and the mouth isn’t closed tight enough to pinch them off. You can breathe all right, can’t you?”

  “Now that I think of it, I can. Thanks for telling me.”

  “You see, Doctor, it isn’t so bad.”

  “It’s perfectly lovely. But what happens if my uniform or the oxygen lines start to dissolve?”

  “We’ll pull you out. We’ll do something to open the mouth. Just don’t get caught behind that valve, Doctor.”

  “Thanks for the advice. I don’t know what I’d do without it, Captain.”

  He felt a sudden surge of anger. If there was one thing he hated, it was good advice, given smugly when the giver could stand off to one side, without sharing the danger of the person he was helping. Don’t let this happen, don’t get caught here, take care of yourself. But you were down here to do a job, and so far you hadn’t done it. You hadn’t learned a thing about what made this monstrous creature tick.

  And the chances were that you wouldn’t learn, either. The way to examine a beast was from the outside, not from within. You watched it eat, you studied the transfer of the food from one part of the body to another, you checked on the circulation of the body fluids, using radioactive tracers if no other methods offered, you dissected specimens of typical individuals. The Captain should have had a few scientists aboard, and they should have done a few of these things instead of just sitting there staring at the beast. But that would have made things too easy. No, they had to wait for you to come aboard, and then send you deliberately sliding down into the guts of an animal you didn’t know anything about, in the hope of having a miracle happen to you. Maybe they thought a loop of intestine or some gland of internal secretion would come over to you and say, “I’m not working right. Fix me, and everything will be fine.”

  Another of the tadpole-like creatures was swimming over toward him, approaching slowly, the forepart twitching like the nose of a curious dog. Then, like the others, the creature turned and darted away. “Maybe that’s the cause,” he thought. “Maybe that’s the parasite that’s causing the trouble.”

  Only—it might just as well be a creature necessary to the larger creature’s health. Again and again you were faced with the same problem. Down here you were in a world you knew nothing about. And when everything was so strange to you—what was normal, and what wasn’t?

  When in doubt, he decided, move on. He moved.

  The blue pool was shallow, and once more he came up on what he decided to call dry ground. Once more the walls grew narrow again. After a time he could reach out and touch the walls on either side of him at the same time.

  He flashed his light into the narrow passage, and saw that a dozen yards ahead of him it seemed to come to an end. “Blind alley,” he thought. “Time to turn back.”

  The Captain’s voice came to him again, “Doctor, is everything all right?”

  “Beautiful. I’ve had a most interesting tour. By the way, did you get the creature’s mouth open yet?”

  “We’re still working on it.”

  “I wish you luck. Maybe when those reports from Earth come in—”

  “They’ve come. None of the curators knows anything about space-cows. For some reason, the electric shock method doesn’t work any more, and we’re trying all sorts of other stimuli.”

  “I take it that nothing is effective.”

  “Not yet. One of the photo service men suggested we use a powerful mechanical clamp to pull the jaws open. We’re having one flown over.”

  “Use anything,” he said fervently. “But for God’s sake, get that mouth open!”

  Dr. Meltzer cursed the photo service people, to whom he meant nothing more than a series of colored lines in space. Then he added an unkind word or two for the Captain, who had got him into this mess, and started back.

  The tadpole creatures seemed to be interested in his progress. They came swarming around him, and now he could see that there were almost a dozen of them. They moved with quick flips of their tails, like the minnows he had once seen back on Earth, where he had attended med­ical school. Between each pair of flips there was a mo­mentary pause, and when they came close he was able to get a reasonably good look at them. He was surprised to see that they had two rows of eyes each.

  Were the eyes functional or vestigial? In the former case, they must spend some part of their life cycle outside the host creature, in places where they had need of the sense of sight. In the latter case, they were at least des­cended from outside creatures. Maybe I’ll try to catch one of them, he thought. Once I get it outside I can give it a real examination.

  Once I get it outside, he repeated. Provided I get outside myself.

  He waded through the pond again. As he reached the shallow part of the blue liquid, a voice came to him—this time his wife’s voice. “Larry, are you all right?”

  “Doing fine. How are the kids?”

  “They’re with me. They woke up during the excitement, and I brought them along.”

  “You didn’t tell me that before!”

  “I didn’t want to upset you.”

  “Oh, it doesn’t upset me in the least. Nothing like a nice family picnic. But how do you expect them to go to school in the morning?”

  “Oh, Larry, what difference does it make if they miss school for once? A chance to be in on something like this happens once in a lifetime.”

  “That’s a little too often to suit me. Well, now that I know they’re here, let me talk to them.”

  Evidently they had been waiting for the chance, for Jerry’s voice came at once. “Hiya, Dad.”

  “Hiya, Jerry. Having a good time?”

  “Swell. You oughtta be out here, Dad. There are a lot of people. They’re treatin’ us swell.”

  Martia cut in. “Mom, he isn’t letting me talk. I want to talk to Daddy too.”

  “Let her talk, Jerry. Go ahead, Martia. Say something to Daddy.”

  A sudden blast almost knocked out his eardrum. “Dad, can you hear me?” Martia screamed. “Can you hear me, Dad?”

  “I can hear you, and so can these animals. Not so loud, sweetheart.”

  “Gee, Dad, you oughtta see all the people. They took pictures of me and Mom. Oh, we’re so thrilled!”

  “They took pictures of me too, Dad,” said Jerry.

  “They’re sending the pictures all over. To Earth and Venus, and everywhere. We’re gonna be on television too, Dad. Isn’t it exciting?”

  “It’s terrific, Martia. You don’t know what this does for my morale.”

  “Aw, all she thinks about is pictures. Mom, make her get away from the microphone, or I’ll push her away.”

  “You’ve had your chance, Martia. Let Jerry talk again.”

  “You know what, Dad? Everybody says you’re gonna be famous. They say this is the only animal of its kind ever discovered. And you’re the only person ever went into it. Can I go down there too, Dad?”

  “No!” he yelled.

  “Okay, okay. Say, Dad know what? If you bring it back alive, they’re gonna take it to Earth, and put it in a special zoo of its own.”

  “Thank them for me. Look, Jerry, did they get the animal’s mouth open yet?”

  “Not yet, Dad, but they’re bringing in
a great big machine.”

  The Captain’s voice again: “We’ll have the mouth open soon, Doctor. Where are you now?”