The Halfling and Other Stories

by Leigh Brackett

  Sherbondy came to see him.

  “I feel responsible for all this,” he said. “If I hadn’t advised that trip—”

  “It would have happened sooner or later,” Flin said. “To us or to somebody else. Your world’s got a long way to go yet.”

  “I wish you’d stay,” said Sherbondy miserably. “I’d like to prove to you that we’re not all brutes.”

  “You don’t have to prove that. It’s obvious. The trouble now is with us—with Ruvi and me.”

  Sherbondy looked at him, puzzled.

  Flin said, “We are not civilized anymore. Perhaps we will be again some day. I hope so. That’s one reason we’re going home, for psychiatric treatment of a kind we can’t get here. Ruvi especially….”

  He shook his head and began to stride up and down the room, his body taut with an anger he could only by great effort control.

  “An act like that—people like that—they foul and degrade everything they touch. They pass on some of themselves. I’m full of irrational feelings now. I’m afraid of darkness and trees and quiet places. Worse than that, I’m afraid of your people. I can’t go out of my rooms now without feeling as though I walk among wild beasts.”

  Sherbondy sighed heavily. “I can’t blame you. It’s a pity. You could have had a good life here, done a lot—”

  “Yes,” said Flin.

  “Well,” said Sherbondy, getting up, “I’ll say good-bye.” He held out his hand. “I hope you don’t mind shaking my hand—”

  Flin hesitated, then took Sherbondy’s hand briefly. “Even you,” he said, with real sorrow. “You see why we must go.”

  Sherbondy said, “I see.” He turned to the door. “God damn those bastards,” he said with sudden fury. “You’d think in this day and age—Oh, hell… .Good-bye, Flin. And the best of luck.”

  He went away.

  Flin helped Ruvi with the last of the packing. He checked over the mass of equipment the weather-control group had brought with them for demonstration purposes, which he would be leaving behind for his successor.

  Then he said quietly, “There is one more thing I have to do before we go. Don’t worry about me. I’ll be back in plenty of time for the take-off.”

  She looked at him, startled, but she did not ask any questions.

  He got into his car and drove away alone.

  He spoke as he drove, grimly and bitterly, to someone who was not there.

  “You wanted to teach me a lesson,” he said. “You did. Now I will show you how well you taught me, and how well I learned.”

  And that was the real evil that had been done to him and Ruvi.

  The physical outrage and the pain were soon over, but the other things were harder to eradicate—the sense of injustice, the rankling fury, the blind hatred of all men whose faces were white.

  Especially the hatred.

  Some day, he hoped and prayed, he could be rid of that feeling, clean and whole again as he had been before it happened. But it was too soon. Far too soon now.

  With two fully charged miniseeders in his pockets he drove steadily toward Grand Falls….

  THE SHADOWS

  For countless numbers of its years there had been no sight or sound or sense of man upon the world of the little blue star. But now, without warning, a remembered thing had come suddenly into the air again—a quiver, a subtle throbbing that meant only one land of life. The shadows felt it, the shadows that had waited so long and patiently. They began to stir among the ruined walls. They rose and shook themselves, and a soundless whisper ran among them, a hungry whisper, wild and eager. “Man! Man! Man has come again!”

  The galactic survey ship lay in an expanse of level plain, ringed on one side by low mountains and on the other by a curving belt of forest. A river ran across the plain and there was much grass. But nothing cropped it, and there were no tracks in the mud of the riverbank to show that anything had.

  Hubbard sniffed the warm air and dug his feet into the soil, which was rich and dark. He grinned broadly. “This is something like it,” he said. “A pretty world. Real pretty.”

  He was a young man. His field was anthropology, and this was his first voyage out. For him, the stars still shone brightly. Barrier looked at him between envy and sadness. He said nothing. His gaze roving off across the plain and the forest, studied the sky—a suspicious, somber gaze. He was old enough to be Hubbard’s father and he felt every year of it, pressed down and running over.

  “Of course, the colors are all wrong,” said Hubbard, “but that’s nothing. After they’d lived with a blue sun for a while people would think it was the only kind to have.”

  Barrier grunted. “What people?”

  “Why, the colonists, the people that will live here some day!” Hubbard laughed suddenly. “What’s the matter with you? Here at last we’ve found a beautiful world, and you’re as glum as though it were a hunk of dead rock.”

  “I guess,” said Barrier slowly, “That I’ve seen too many hunks of dead rock, and too many beautiful worlds that—”

  He broke off. This was no time to talk. In fact, it was not his place to talk at all. If he didn’t like what he was doing anymore he could go home to Earth and stay there, and leave the stars to the young men who had not yet lost their faith.

  The mountains, the plain, and the forest were very still in the bright blue morning. Barrier could feel the stillness. No wing cut the sweet air, no paw rustled the tangled grass, no voice spoke from among the curious trees. He moved restlessly where he stood, looking rather like an old hound that scents danger where there should be game. That was Barrier’s job, his science, the oldest science of mankind—to venture into strange country and feel the invisible, sense the unknown and survive. He was head of the Ground Exploration team, and an expert on exploring. He had been at it all his life. Too long.

  Hubbard said, “I wish Kendall would come back. I want to get started.”

  “What do you think you’re going to find?”

  “How do I know? That’s the fun of it. But on a world like this there’s bound to be life of some kind.”

  “Human life?”

  “Why not?”

  Again Barrier grunted, and again he said nothing.

  They waited. Other men were scattered about the plain and the riverbank, taking samples of soil, rock, water, and vegetation. They stayed close to the ship, and all were armed. The technical staff, after checking solar radiation, atmospheric content, temperature, gravitation, and the million and one other things that go to make a world habitable or otherwise for Earth-men, had rated this planet Earth-Type A, and in obedience to Survey ruling the ship had landed to determine surface conditions. So far, they had all been favorable. So far.

  Barrier fidgeted, and listened to the silence.

  Presently a speck appeared far off in the sky. It gave off a thin droning, coming closer, and developed into a small ’copter which settled down beside the ship, a gnat alighting beside a whale. Kendall and his observer and cameraman got out.

  Barrier went up to him. “What did you find?”

  “More of the same,” said Kendall, “and nothing in it. Except—” He hesitated.

  “Except what?”

  “Over there beyond the forest. I thought it might be the ruins of a city.”

  “There!” cried Hubbard. “You see?”

  Kendall shrugged. “The boys said no, it was just a bunch of rocks grown over with the woods. I don’t know. You can decide for yourselves when you see the pictures.”

  The men who were out on the plain and the riverbank had come running up. They were all young men, like Hubbard. Only the Captain, the chief of Technical, a couple of research scientists and Barrier were old. There was an uproar of voices, all talking at once. The Survey ship had made few landings, and it had been a long time since the last one. They were like youngsters let out of confinement, bursting with excitement and pride at what they had found.

  Barrier went with them into the ship, into the main salon
. There was a brief wait while the film, which had been developed automatically on exposure, was fed into the projector. The lights were cut. The small screen came to life.

  They all watched, with intense interest. The panorama unfolded in natural color, like and yet unlike Earth. On closer inspection, the forest trees were not trees at all, but monstrous flowers with stems as thick as trunks, bearing clusters of brilliant and improbable blooms. Barrier caught a glimpse of something that might have been a butterfly or a drifting petal, but other than that, nothing moved.

  He asked, “Were there any signs of animal life?”

  Kendall shook his head. “No.”

  Impatiently, Hubbard said, “The ’copter probably frightened it away.”

  “Frightened things run,” said Barrier. “There’s nothing running.”

  Hubbard swore under his breath, and Barrier smiled. It had become a personal necessity for Hubbard to discover life here, and no wonder. He had had very little chance to practice his anthropology, and the voyage was almost over. His insistence on animals arose from the fact that without them there were not likely to be men.

  “There,” said Kendall, and held up his hand. The film was stopped on a frame showing an area of tree-flowers and clambering vines rather more open than the forest proper. Humps and ridges of stone showed here and there among the tangled growths.

  “You see what I mean,” said Kendall, and gestured again. The film rolled, repeating the long low swings the ’copter had made across the area. “I got as close as I could, and I still couldn’t figure it.”

  “It sure looks like a city,” said Hubbard. He was quivering with excitement. “Look there. See how regular those lines are, like streets, with houses fallen down on either side.”

  Two other voices spoke up. Aiken, the expert on planetary archaeology, admitted cautiously that it might be a city. Caffrey, the geologist, said that it might just as well be a natural rock formation.

  “What do you think, Barrier?” asked Captain Verlaine.

  “Can’t tell from the picture, sir. I’d have to examine the stones.”

  “Well,” said Verlaine, “that seems to settle it. Make that area your first objective. Don’t you agree, Cristofek?”

  Cristofek, who was Chief of Technical, nodded emphatically. “And Barrier, in case it does turn out to be a ruin, make every effort to discover what sort of inhabitants it had and, above all, what happened to them.”

  Barrier stood up. “All right,” he said. “Let’s be on our way.”

  The seven men of his team joined him—all, like Hubbard, specialists, young men picked for physical condition and trained in the use of arms. Aiken and Caffrey were among them, also a lad named Morris who was in charge of the walkie-talkie. Barrier consulted Kendall about bearings, and then went with the others to get his gear. Within a quarter of an hour they were marching off across the plain.

  Barrier felt a twinge of nostalgia so strong as to be a physical pain—nostalgia for the days when he had been green and eager like the rest, leaving the ship, which he hated, for the uncrossed horizons of new worlds, full of a shivering fascination, full of hope. The hope had been the first to go, and then the fascination.

  Now, looking at the bright landscape, beautiful in spite of its unearthly tints, he found himself thinking that he would like to be in a certain bar he remembered in Los Angeles, not worrying about anything, not pondering meanings and significances and the shapes of alien leaves, forgetting completely the dark conviction that had grown in him over the years.

  Schmidt, the entomologist, was chattering with Gordon, whose field was zoology, about worms and insect forms, of which many had been found. Hubbard speculated with Aiken on The City. They already called it that. The high grasses swished against their boots. The wind blew softly and the sun was warm. But apart from the eight invading humans there was nothing sentient to enjoy these blessings. Barner disliked the empty silence. It was unnatural in such a lush and joyous setting.

  His eyes roved constantly, grey eyes set in a face the color of old leather and surrounded by the complex wrinkles that come from squinting against numberless foreign suns. For a long time they saw nothing. And then, more and more, they narrowed and watched a certain sector to their left.

  Barrier lifted his hand, and the little column stopped.

  “Over there,” he said. “Do you see those shadows?”

  They all stared.

  Hubbard laughed. “Cloud shadows.”

  “There are no clouds.”

  “Well, then, it’s the wind making ripples in the grass.” He glanced sidelong at Barrier. “What’s the difference what makes them? They’re only shadows!”

  Barrier said heavily, speaking to them all, “Will you please try to remember that you are not on Earth? In a strange world anything, a shadow, a blade of grass, may be alive and deadly.”

  Their faces regarded him, intelligent, uncomprehending, trying not to show that they thought he was being a trifle ridiculous. He knew that they now felt hardened veterans of the star-worlds, with the vast experience of their four or five landings behind them, and all on planets that had had only normally dangerous life-forms. He could not make them understand the things he had seen, the inimical stealthy things that hated man.

  He motioned them on again. They had already forgotten the shadows, but he had not. There seemed to be a number of them—how do you count shadows? Smallish clots of darkness they were that flitted along some distance away, losing themselves in the waving grass, difficult to see in the brilliant sunshine, but unmistakably there. They seemed to be running parallel with the men. They looked like perfectly normal shadows and Barrier would not have given them a second thought— except that in his experience a shadow must be thrown by something, and here there was nothing, not even so much as a patch of cloud or a bird’s wing.

  They marched on across the beautiful, empty, silent plain. And then, again, Barrier called a halt.

  They had come to the edge of a stream that ran down toward the river, cutting itself a cleft in the soil of the plain. Caffrey immediately scrambled down the steep bank and began to study the layers of silt and sand and clay. Gordon followed him, casting back and forth along he discovered a hideous small creature that resembled a purple prawn. Something else, that might have been a snake or an eel, went off with a ropy slither between the wet rocks.

  Hubbard danced up and down. “I told you there was life here!”

  Barrier said gently, “I never denied it.”

  He glanced upstream. The shadows were bunched together, hovering over the cleft. They had not come any closer, but they were watching. He could not see with his eyes that they were watching, for they were only featureless blobs of gloom. But he felt it, in every nerve, in every pore of his prickling skin. There was something ugly about being watched by shadows.

  Abruptly, Caffrey began to dig like a terrier in the soft ground midway up the bank. Presently he held up an object like a blackened, broken stick that was knobbed at one end. He handed it to Gordon, who voiced a sharp exclamation and cried out for Barrier.

  “It’s a bone,” said Gordon. “The leg bone of a large deer, I should say, or a small horse. You know what I mean, the equivalents thereof.”

  Hubbard was quite beside himself. “Vertebrate life! That proves that evolution here has followed practically the same path it did on Earth.” He looked around, as though he expected to see a man materialize from among the rocks.

  Barrier said to Gordon, “How old is that bone?”

  Gordon shook his head. “It’s been in the ground a long time. How long would you say, Caffrey?”

  Caffrey squinted at the bank. “Judging from its depth under the present topsoil, I should guess five or six hundred years, maybe more. That’s only a guess of course. There are so many factors I haven’t any data for.”

  “In other words,” said Barrier, “a long time.” He frowned at the ancient bone, and then at the deserted landscape around him.

 
Morris sent word of their find back to the ship. They marched on.

  The shadows followed.

  There were several miles of the flat grassland now between them and the ship. It lay glinting dully in the blue light, Leviathan at rest. The outposts of the forest, solitary clumps and little clustered groves of the giant flowers and equally lofty ferns, sprang up around the men, gradually screening off both the plain and the sky, until they walked in a warm blue gloom shot through with the brilliant spectral colors of the blooms.

  At first they went slowly, on the watch for dangerous plantforms. Apparently there were none. Hansen, the botanist, chanted aloud with wonder at every step. Schmidt was entranced by huge butterflies and numerous insects that crept and flew and made tiny buzzings. Gordon and Hubbard peered eagerly, but there was nothing for them to see.

  Barrier walked ahead, going with a lanky noiseless stride like an Indian. His eyes were anxious, and his nerves on edge.

  It was very lovely in the forest, with the blooms of many colors nodding overhead. Barrier thought of a garden at the bottom of the sea. The glades were full of blueness like still water. There began to be wisps of mist along the ground.

  He thought for a time that they had lost the shadows. Then he saw them again, low down, slipping along between the rough, pale flower-trunks. They had changed their formation. They were all around the men now, in a circle. They had come closer. Much closer.

  Barrier made the men bunch up. He pointed out the shadows to them, and this time they were less inclined to shrug them off.

  “Better let me talk to the ship,” he said, and Morris clicked the switch on the walkie-talkie. He did that several times, repeating the call letters, and then he shook his head.