"It's something," the Captain replied softly. "Had the composition of the air been different—without oxygen—my mistake would have killed all of you."
"What?" The Cyberneticist almost dropped his cup.
"And myself as well. We wouldn't have had one chance in a billion. Now we have."
There was silence.
"Does the presence of oxygen mean plants and animals?" asked the Engineer.
"Not necessarily," said the Chemist. "On the Alpha planets of Canis Minor there is oxygen but no plants or animals."
"What is there, then?"
"Photoids."
"Luminescent bacteria?"
"No, they're not bacteria."
"It's not important," the Doctor said. He put the utensils and cans of food away. "We have other worries now. We can't activate the defenses—am I right?"
"We can't even get to them," the Cyberneticist acknowledged. "All the robots came loose from their moorings. We'd need the two-ton hoist to clear away all the scrap, and it's lying at the very bottom."
"But what do we do for weapons?" asked the Doctor.
"There are the jectors," said the Cyberneticist.
"And what are you going to charge them with?"
"There's no current in the control room? We had current before!"
"There must have been a short circuit in the accumulator," said the Engineer.
"Why aren't the jectors already charged?"
"Orders. We can't carry them charged," the Engineer muttered.
"Orders! Damn—"
"Cut it out!"
Hearing the Captain's voice, the Cyberneticist shrugged in exasperation. The Doctor walked out. The Engineer had taken a light nylon knapsack from his cabin, and was stuffing K rations into the pockets when the Doctor reappeared, holding a short oxidized cylinder that ended in a valve.
"And what is that?" the Engineer asked with interest.
"A weapon."
"What does it shoot?"
"Sleeping gas."
The Engineer burst out laughing.
"What makes you think that your gas can put to sleep anything living on this planet?"
"If you were attacked, you could always anesthetize yourself," said the Chemist. Everyone laughed, including the Doctor.
"This should knock out any oxygen-breathing creature," he said. "And if there's an attack—watch!"
He pulled a trigger at the base of the cylinder. A needle-thin stream of vapor shot into the darkness of the corridor.
"Well, for lack of anything better…" said the Engineer doubtfully.
"Shall we go?" asked the Doctor, slipping the cylinder into one of the pockets of his suit.
"Let's go."
The sun was high overhead—small and distant, yet hotter than the Earth's. But what struck them most was that the sun was not completely circular. They observed it through the cracks of their fingers and through the semitransparent red paper used for wrapping the individual antiradiation packs.
"It's flattened because of the velocity of its revolution around its axis, is that right?" the Chemist asked the Captain.
"Yes. The flattening was more noticeable during the flight. You don't remember?"
"But, you see, I wasn't paying attention then…"
They turned away from the sun and looked at their ship. The white cylindrical hull jutted obliquely from the low hill in which it was embedded, resembling a gigantic cannon. Its surface—milky white in shadow and silvery in sunlight—appeared undamaged. The Engineer approached the spot where the ship had entered the ground, stepped over the rim of upthrown soil that surrounded the hull like a collar, and ran his hand along the plating.
"Not bad material, this ceramite," he said, not turning around. "If I could just have a look at the funnels…" He looked wistfully up at the jets suspended above the plain.
"We'll do that later," said the Physicist. "But now let's reconnoiter."
The Captain had reached the top of the elevation. The others hurried after him. Smooth and buff-colored, the sun-drenched plain stretched unvaryingly in all directions. The slender silhouettes that they had observed the day before rose in the distance, but in the bright sunlight it was clear that these were not trees. The sky, overhead as blue as Earth's, took on a distinctly greenish tinge at the horizon. To the north, faint cirrus clouds moved slowly. The Captain was checking directions on the small compass strapped to his wrist. The Doctor bent over and began poking at the soil with his foot.
"Why isn't anything growing here?" he asked, amazed.
They were all struck by that. The plain was bare as far as the eye could see.
"It seems to be a region subject to increasingly steppe-like conditions," said the Chemist uncertainly. "Farther on, there to the west—see those patches?—it gets yellower. That must be desert. And the wind blows the sand here. Because this knoll is clay."
"That we certainly know," said the Doctor.
"We need a plan of some sort for our expedition," the Captain began. "The supplies we're taking with us will last two days."
"Not even that—we don't have much water," the Cyberneticist said.
"We'll ration the water until we locate some here. Where there's oxygen, there's water. I suggest we proceed as follows: from the base we go in a straight line, and only so far that we can return safely and without haste."
"A maximum of fifteen miles in any direction," the Physicist said.
"Agreed. The only question is the kind of reconnaissance."
"Wait," said the Engineer, who had been standing apart as though mulling something over. "Don't you think this is a little crazy? We've crashed on an unknown planet, we've just managed to crawl out, and instead of doing the most important thing, instead of concentrating all our energies on repairing what can be repaired, on digging the ship out, and so on, we're going exploring—with no arms, no means of defense, and no idea at all of what we will find here."
The Captain heard him out in silence, looking around at the men. They were all unshaven, and their three-day's growth had begun to give them a wild look. The Engineer's words made an obvious impression, but no one spoke, as if they were all waiting to see what the Captain would say.
"Six men can't dig out a spaceship, Henry," he said, weighing his words carefully. "You know that perfectly well. As things now stand, we can't even tell how long it will take to get the smallest unit operating. The planet is inhabited. Yet we know nothing at all about it. We didn't even circle it before the crash. We approached from the nightside and by error fell into its tail. As we fell, we reached the terminator. I was lying near the last screen to go. I saw, or at least I thought I saw, what resembled … a city."
"Why didn't you tell us?" the Engineer asked slowly.
"Yes, why?" the Physicist also asked.
"Because I wasn't certain. I don't even know in which direction to look for it. The ship was spinning. But there is a chance, a small chance, that we will receive help. You all know how desperate our situation is. We need water. Most of it flooded the lower level and is contaminated. So I think we can allow ourselves to take risks."
"I agree," said the Doctor.
"So do I," said the Physicist.
The Cyberneticist moved off a few paces and faced south, as though not wanting to hear what the others said. The Chemist nodded. The Engineer walked down the knoll, put on his knapsack, and asked, "Which way?"
"North," said the Captain. The Engineer began walking, and the others joined him. When they looked back a few minutes later, the knoll was barely visible—only the ship's fuselage stood against the sky.
It was hot. Their shadows grew shorter the farther they walked. Their boots sank in the sand, and the only sounds were their footsteps and their breathing. As they approached one of the slender shapes that in the twilight had resembled trees, they slackened their pace. Out of the buff-colored soil rose a perpendicular trunk, as gray as an elephant's hide and with a faint metallic luster. The trunk, no thicker at the base than a man's arm
, developed, at the top, into a flattened cup-shaped structure some seven feet above the ground. It was impossible to see whether or not the calyx was open at the top. It was completely motionless. The men stopped about twenty feet from this extraordinary growth, but the Engineer continued toward it and was lifting his hand to touch the "trunk" when the Doctor cried, "Stop!"
The Engineer drew back reflexively. The Doctor pulled him away by the arm, then picked up a small stone and tossed it high into the air. The stone described a steep arc and dropped straight into the flattened top of the calyx. They all gave a start, so sudden and unexpected was the reaction. The calyx began undulating and closed; there was a brief hissing sound, like gas escaping, and the whole grayish column, now trembling feverishly, sank into the earth as if sucked in. The hole that was created was instantly filled by a greasy, foaming brown substance. Then particles of sand began to float on the surface, the coating of sand became thicker, and in a few seconds no trace of the hole remained: the ground was smooth and unbroken. They were still standing there in amazement when the Chemist shouted, "Look!"
They lifted their heads. Before, they had been surrounded, at a distance of a few hundred feet, by three or four similar tall and slender growths—now there was not one.
"They all disappeared!" exclaimed the Cyberneticist.
They strained their eyes but could see no trace of the calyxes. The sun was growing stronger; the heat was hard to bear. They moved on.
After an hour they had spread out in a long file, like a caravan. First came the Doctor, now carrying his knapsack under his arm; behind him was the Captain; the Chemist brought up the rear. They had all opened their suits, rolled up their sleeves. Bathed in sweat, their mouths parched, they slowly dragged themselves across the plain. A long horizontal strip loomed on the horizon. The Doctor halted and waited for the Captain.
"How far do you think we've gone?"
The Captain looked back into the sun, in the direction of the ship. It was no longer visible.
"The planet has a smaller radius than Earth's," he said, wiping his face with a handkerchief. "I'd say about five miles."
The Doctor squinted, his eyelids swollen. His black hair was covered with a cloth cap. Every now and then he dampened the cap with water from his canteen.
"This is madness, you know," he said, as they both looked at the spot on the horizon where, not long before, the ship had stood, a faint oblique line. All they could see there now were the slender silhouettes of the calyxes, pale gray in the distance. The calyxes had re-emerged behind them. The other men came up, and the Chemist threw his tent roll on the ground and sat on it.
"Strange, that there are no signs of civilization," said the Cyberneticist, rummaging in his pockets. He found some vitamin pills in a crumpled packet and offered them around.
"You wouldn't find such desolation on Earth," the Engineer agreed. "No roads, no aircraft of any kind."
"What, you expect to find a replica of Earth's civilization?" the Physicist snorted.
"This system is stable," the Doctor began, "so a civilization on Eden could be older than on Earth, and therefore…"
"Assuming it's a civilization of anthropoids," the Cyberneticist said.
"Let's get moving," said the Captain. "In half an hour we ought to reach that." And he pointed at a thin purple strip on the horizon.
"What is it?"
"I don't know. Water, maybe."
"Shade would be enough for me right now," the Engineer croaked. He rinsed his mouth and throat with a gulp of water.
There was a squeaking of straps as they hoisted their packs onto their shoulders, and the group spread out once more and resumed its trek across the sand. They passed a dozen more calyxes and several larger growths that appeared to be supported by lianas or creepers, but none of these was closer than six hundred feet, and they had no wish to deviate from their line of march.
The sun was at its zenith when the landscape changed. There was less sand. Red, sun-scorched earth began to show in long, low ridges overgrown here and there with clumps of gray moss. When the men nudged the moss with their boots, it crumbled like burned paper. The purple strip, they saw, was made of separate groups of squat shapes, and its color was now clearer—more a green sprinkled with faded blue. A northerly breeze brought a delicate fragrance, which the men drew into their nostrils with cautious curiosity. As they neared a bent wall of tangled shapes, the men in front slowed so that the others could catch up, and the whole group finally came to a halt before a motionless façade of bizarre forms.
From a hundred feet, the forms still looked like scrub, like a bluish thicket full of birds' nests—not so much because of any true resemblance as because of the eye's endeavor to find the familiar in the alien.
"Are they spiders?" the Physicist asked hesitantly, and everyone saw spiders with small spindle-shaped bodies covered with thick bristles, standing motionless on extraordinarily long legs tucked under them.
"They're plants!" exclaimed the Doctor, drawing nearer to one of the tall gray-green creatures. In fact, its "legs" turned out to be stalks, whose thickened, hair-covered nodes could easily be taken for the joints of an arthropod. These stalks, emerging from the mossy ground in groups of six, seven, or eight, converged, archlike, to form a "body" that, surrounded by thin gossamer threads glittering in the sun, resembled a flattened arachnid abdomen. The vegetable spiders grew fairly close together, but it was possible to pass between them. Here and there on the stalks were brighter offshoots, almost the color of Earth leaves, and they ended in closed buds. Once again the Doctor threw a pebble into the "abdomens" suspended twenty feet above the ground; when nothing happened, he examined one of the stalks and finally nicked it with his knife. Out came tiny drops, a bright-yellow sap that immediately began to foam, turning orange, red. In a few moments it coagulated to form a thick resin with an intense aromatic odor that they all liked at first but soon found sickening. Beneath this curious shrubbery it was a little cooler than on the plain.
The plant abdomens offered shade, and there was more shade the deeper they went. They tried not to touch the stalks, and particularly the whitish buds at the ends of the youngest shoots, which aroused an unaccountable repugnance.
The ground was soft, spongy, and gave off a vapor that made it difficult to breathe. The shadows of the abdomens passed across their faces and hands—now larger, now smaller. Some abdomens were slender with orange spikes; others were withered, faded, with long flaccid threads dangling from them. When a wind came up, the entire thicket emitted an unpleasant hollow rustling, not the sigh of an Earthly forest but a sound like that of sandpaper. At times individual plants blocked the way with intertwined branches, and the men had to go around. Thus they proceeded even more slowly than on the plain. After a while they stopped looking up at the thorny abdomens, stopped trying to see nests, cones, or cocoons in them.
Suddenly the Doctor, who headed the column, noticed a thick black hair hanging before his face—a shiny thread, a painted wire. He was about to brush it aside with his hand, but since this was something new, he raised his eyes—and froze.
A pearl-colored, bulbous thing hanging from the stalks that converged at the base of one of the "cocoons" was watching him. The Doctor felt its gaze even though he could not locate the monster's eyes. He saw no head, no limbs—only puffy skin filled with blebs, glistening, and a dark, funnel-shaped protuberance from which dangled a thick black hair six feet long.
"What is it?" asked the Engineer, behind him. When the Doctor did not answer, he looked up and also froze.
"What's it looking with?" whispered the Engineer, and instinctively backed away, such was the revulsion he felt for the creature, which seemed to be piercing him with a greedy, extraordinarily intense gaze—though no eyes were visible.
"Disgusting!" the Chemist hissed. They were now all standing beside the Doctor, who had been the first to retreat from under the monster—the others stood as far away as the stalks allowed. The Doctor produced the ox
idized cylinder from his suit, aimed it slowly at the swollen body, which was lighter than the vegetation surrounding it, and pressed the trigger.
In the next second a great deal happened. First there was a flash that blinded them all except the Doctor, who blinked at that exact moment. A thin stream was still squirting upward when the stalks began sagging, collapsing. A puff of black vapor enveloped the men, and the creature fell with a heavy, wet smack. It lay helpless for perhaps a second, like a gray, rough balloon deflating. The black hair alone danced and whipped above it like a mad thing, cleaving the air in lightning-fast convulsions. Then the hair disappeared, and shapeless pieces of the creature began to crawl like snails in all directions on the spongy moss at their feet. Before any of the men could say or do anything, the creature's escape—or dispersal—was completed: its last pieces, as small as caterpillars, burrowed into the soil beneath the stalks and were gone. All that remained was a nasty acrid smell.
"A colony of some kind…?" the Chemist asked uncertainly. He pressed his hand to his eyes, still seeing black spots.
"E pluribus unum," the Doctor replied. "Or, rather, e uno plures, if my Latin's right. This must be the sort of multiple monster that divides in an emergency…"
"It stinks to high heaven," said the Physicist. "Let's get out of here."
"Let's," agreed the Doctor. But when they had gone about fifty feet, he said, "I wonder what would have happened if I had touched that hair."
"To find out might have cost you a lot," the Chemist suggested.
"Or possibly nothing. Evolution often gives fearsome forms to completely harmless species."
"Look, it's getting brighter over there, to the side," cried the Cyberneticist. "Let's get out of this damned spider forest!"
The sound of a brook reached their ears, and they stopped. They continued, and the sound grew louder, then fainter, then disappeared altogether. They could not find its source. The forest thinned, and the ground grew softer, almost boggy. It was unpleasant walking. Sometimes something creaked underfoot, like soaked grass, but no water was visible anywhere.
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