World Without Chance

by John Russell Fearn

  “Why, it’s—it’s an iguanodon!” she cried in horror, but Arch shook his head.

  “Not exactly it, but very much like it. Herbivorous, of course.… You know, it’s just beginning to dawn on me what’s wrong with this planet—why life on it is so crazy.”

  “Well, although I’m glad to hear the brain has finally started to function, I’m still anxious to get back to the ship,” the girl said worriedly. “We can risk the monsters. That herb-eater is harmless enough, anyhow.”

  “But it won’t be the only type,” Arch reminded her grimly. “There’ll be all kinds of things abroad—perhaps as frightful as our own one-time diplodocus and allosaurus.”

  “You mean we stop here?” Joyce’s eyes were on the gray head. The swarming plant life had now almost hidden it.

  “Until man comes, anyhow,” Arch said reflectively.

  At that the girl twisted round from the doorway and stared at him amazedly.

  “Until man comes!” she echoed. “Now I know you’re crazy! If you think I’m going to sit here while these playboys grow up through millions of years you’re mistaken! I’m heading back right now for the ship!”

  “In what direction?” Arch asked sweetly, and she pursed her lips.

  “I’ll find it!” Her tone was defiant. “I’ve got a wrist compass just the same as you have!”

  Arch shrugged and leaned more comfortably against the doorway. For a while he heard the determined little bustling movements of the girl behind him—then her activity slowed down a little. At length he found her beside him.

  “Maybe you’re right,” she admitted, with a rueful pout. “But at least you might tell me what you’re getting at.”

  “It’s simple enough. Evolution on this world is straightforward, fast though it is. The only way it differs is in that it passes through its mutations all at one sweep of existence instead of dying and being born again, in a more adaptive style. The giant creatures of this moment are the very same insects and millipedes we saw last night—same minds, only changed outwardly by an amazing mutational process. Since this planet has such a weird orbit, it probably accounts for it. Its close approach to the sun at perihelion produces Carboniferous Age conditions: as it recedes further away, the condition will cool to normal, finally reaching a frozen glacial state compatible only with Earth’s last days. What I’m wondering is, what will happen when we reach that zigzag part in this planet’s orbit. May be trouble.”

  The girl puzzled for a moment. “Oddly enough, Arch, I believe your mutational idea is dead right, though how you figured it out all by yourself is beyond me, What became of the First Glacial Epoch, though? That should have appeared between the insect and mammalian stages.”

  “Because it happened on Earth doesn’t say it must happen here. In fact, it’s wholly unlikely. Life here will simply progress from warmth to cold, and during that period we’ll have a pretty good simile of the lines Earthly evolution will take. This planet being practically the same in mass and atmosphere, it isn’t unusual that similar life to Earth’s should evolve.”

  Joyce looked out over the changing forest, her brows knitted. For an instant her gaze caught the gray hurtling form of a monstrous archaeopteryx—a natural helicopter.

  “Evolution like that seems so, impossible,” she muttered.

  “Why?” Arch objected. “On the contrary, it’s very sensible. Death, and thereby a possible break in the continuity of knowledge, is done away with. Besides, there is a biological parallel to bear it all out.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Meaning that a human embryo before it is born undergoes in nine months all the primeval states. The fertilized egg form from which the human biped develops is in the first instance, a primeval amoeba. In the nine months of its genesis it performs, unseen except by X-ray, the very incredible fast evolution we see here in actual fact. First the amoebical cell, the clustered cells like a mulberry—a globular animalcule. It then moves on to the first stage and shows visible gills: it traverses the scale of the lower invertebrates. Fishes, amphibians, reptiles, lower mammals, semi-apes, human apes, and lastly Homo sapiens are all passed through. Then the child is born. If it can happen invisibly to a human embryo, why not here in the form we behold? Maybe it is the only way Nature can operate. Being pressed for time, as it were.”

  “You think then that man will appear in, say, two days?” the girl questioned thoughtfully.

  “Not quite so soon, perhaps, but certainly before very long. It may represent inconceivably long generations to this life, but we measure time by the hours on our watches. The ship won’t hurt in the interval. It’s safely locked anyhow. When this forest dies down to give place to new forms, we’ll be able to find it easily enough.”

  She nodded agreement and settled herself down again to await developments.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The Storm

  The day was uneventful save for occasional showers of amazing rapidity, and a certain cooling of the air that could only be explained by the amazing planet’s rapid orbital recession from the Sun.

  During the brief two hours there were multi-alterations, and when the night fell again, it was alive with change.

  The two listened fearfully to a myriad unfamiliar noises—the screech of unknown birds as they flew close over the camp; the monstrous, avid bellowing of forty-ton beasts—the ground-shaking concussions of their colossal feet. Somewhere something chattered with the hysterical abandon of a hyena.

  At brief intervals the two slept from sheer strain and fatigue, until near the time for dawn when they were aroused by a sudden deep bass rumbling in the ground.

  “Whatever is it?” Joyce gasped in alarm, leaping up. “Sounds like an explosion.…”

  She jumped to the door and wrenched it open. Outside, rain was descending in hissing, blinding sheets.

  “More like an earthquake,” came Arch’s sober voice from the gloom. “Here—grab the provisions and pack in case we have to make a dash for it!”

  He snatched at the girl’s baggage and thrust it on her shoulders, but almost before he had slipped into his own equipment they were both flung off their feet by a terrific earth tremor.

  “It’s that zigzag deviation in this planet’s orbit!” Arch gasped, scrambling up again. “We must have reached it. Let’s get out of here quick, before the whole camp comes down on top of us!”

  “But where do we go?” the girl asked helplessly. “It’s raining a deluge outside—”

  “Can’t help that!” he returned briefly, and hugging her to him they plunged out into the raging dark.

  Lucky it was that his foresight had guided him, for they had hardly gained the clearing’s center before another tremendous convulsion of the earth overthrew them. A visible ripple raced along the ground in the dawn light, ploughed down swaying trees and shelter in one all-inclusive sweep.

  Raging, cyclonic wind gripped them as they staggered helplessly towards the rain-lashed jungle. Clutching each other, soaked to the skin, they were whirled along in the midst of crashing trees and ripping, tearing plants. The whole planet seemed to have suddenly gone insane.

  Simmering volcanic forces had abruptly come into life, undoubtedly created by that orbit deviation swinging the globe out of normalcy.

  Panting and drenched, they halted finally in the jungle’s depths, crouching down in the rain-flattened bushes as a herd of crazed animals thundered past. Mighty brutes, overpowering in their mad hugeness. It was a vast parade of armored plates, horns, laniary teeth, beaks and claws—the stampeded herd of an incredible saurian age on the verge of yet another weird metamorphosis.

  “What do we do next?” Joyce panted, as the earth heaved violently beneath them.

  “Only stop as we are until we get a break!” Arch looked worriedly at the sky. Not only was it thick with lowering rain clouds, but there also drifted across it the thick acrid smoke columns of volcanic eruption. Somewhere a crater had burst into being.

  He turned back to the girl
with a remark, but at that exact moment there came a roaring and crashing from the jungle to the rear. He was just in time to, see a vast wall of water plowing forward, bearing everything before it in a towering deluge of driftwood and tumbling vegetation—then he and the girl, clinging frantically to each other, were lifted on high and hurled wildly into the foaming chaos.

  They went deep, locked tightly in each others’ embrace, rose up again gasping and struggling for air, threshing wildly in the driftwood as the weight of their packs pulled upon them. In the half-light it was difficult to distinguish anything. On every hand there was din and confusion; the piercing shrieks of drowning monsters split the screaming air.

  “O.K.?” Arch yelled, clutching the girl to him, and she nodded her plastered head quickly.

  “Sure—but I could think of better places to play water polo—What’s that ahead? Land?” She stared through the smother.

  “Of sorts,” Arch threw back—and in three minutes they struck shelving ground from which all traces of forest had been blasted by earthquake and tempest.

  For a space they could do nothing but lie flat on their backs and gasp for breath, staring at the clearing sky—then little by little it came home to them that the earthquake and tidal wave were spent.

  The heaving and trembling had ceased; the mad little world was itself again. For the first time sunshine filtered down through the densely packed clouds, gathering strength and intensity until the wet ground was steaming with the intense heat.

  Joyce sat up at last and thankfully lowered the pack from her back.

  “Well, thank Heaven neither water nor space can get through these,” she remarked gratefully. “We can still survive a bit longer, though I certainly have a lurking suspicion that it isn’t going to be easy to find the old spaceship after this! Incidentally, Arch, doesn’t it seem to you that it almost matches up—in a shorter version—with the Deluge and terrific repatterning Earth underwent in the early stages?”

  He nodded rather gloomily, staring out over the newly formed ocean.

  “Very like it,” he admitted. “Nature’s law operating in a slightly different way—eliminating vast numbers of the giant beasts and permitting only a few to remain. Since they possess the powers of adaptation without death or heredity, they will presumably pattern themselves on a smaller scale now. Everything large will probably have passed away—those things that resembled the dinosaurs, ichthyosauri, and pteranodonyes of Earth.

  The girl made a wry face. “Boy, can you sling jaw-crackers around!” she murmured, scrambling to her feet. “Still, I guess you’re right. Seems to me we’d better move before some sort of sun fever gets a hold on us, though at the rate this place moves, I hardly think it’s possible to get ill— Well, what do you know about that!” she finished in astonishment, and pointed to the flat plain behind them.

  Arch rose beside her and stood gazing in amazement. The plain was no longer a barren mass, but was already thickly wooded in the glare of sunshine, backed at the rear by a newly risen mountain range. They stood looking on foliage that was vaguely familiar, almost earth-like—which, considering the planet’s resemblance to the home world wasn’t very surprising.

  Dark plane trees, waving oaks, beeches—they were all sprouting and growing upwards rapidly. Amidst the branches there flitted the first signs of birds, the first visible feathered things. A steady humming presently proceeded from the forest—the low and ordered note of bees, dragonflies, moths, butterflies; and here and there as they watched a stinging specimen of the anthropoid genus came into mystic being, chirped loudly, and sped swiftly away into the sunny silences.

  “Do things move on this planet!” Arch whistled at length, tentatively fingering his gun. “An hour or two ago they were giant monsters; now they’ve changed again and resolved into the smaller classes— And look at that!” he finished, in a yell of amazement.

  Joyce hardly needed his directions. Her eyes were already fixed in astonishment upon a profusion of scampering but nonetheless recognizable creatures. There were marsupials, waddling armadillos, changing even as they were watched, with incredible swiftness, into rodents and hoofed animals. The birds too, as they flew. merged astoundingly into new specimens, slipped swiftly by wild mutations into bats and insect-eaters.

  “Pretty little playmates!” Joyce murmured at last. “I guess we might take a closer look. We’re literally between the devil and the deep sea, so what about it?”

  Arch nodded. The Sun was already curving down swiftly towards the horizon. Very soon it would be night. The forest, for all its wild and peculiar life, was a safer and more understandable proposition. Anything might emerge out of the ocean at the coming of nightfall.

  They turned and strode forward purposefully. When they reached the forest, it seemed to have already attained maximum limit. Yet despite its dense profusion, only blasted clear by the flame guns, it was nowhere near the solid impregnability of the earlier jungles—was more natural, more beautiful, subtropical.

  Darkness fell with its usual blanketing suddenness. Afraid to pause, the two went on steadily, beheld things they could not have thought possible. Rats of astounding size occasionally flitted across their vision: some attempted to attack until they were shattered to dust with the guns. In other directions unclassifiable monstrosities lurked in the twisted grass, stared out with great diamond-like eyes or scuttled away into the friendly blackness. The whole place was infested with weird life, some very earthly, some very alien.

  Once, as the flashlight circled a wall of vegetation ahead, the two caught a vision of a ridiculous thing like an ostrich running away from them in sudden fright, its bushy tail standing up like an earthly cauliflower.

  “A dinoris, or something very like it,” Arch commented. “A forerunner of a future ostrich. Like—”

  He stopped dead, muscles tensed and hand tightening on his flame gun as a pair of fiendishly malevolent green eyes blazed suddenly ahead. A body of brilliant stripes moved through the quivering changing-grass.

  “Saber-tooth tiger—a genuine pip!” he whispered, clutching the frightened Elsie to him. “No time to take chances. Here goes!”

  He fired his gun mercilessly at the very instant of the magnificent creature’s spring. It never ended its leap; simply puffed into ash in mid-air.

  “I hate to think what would happen if the guns gave out,” the girl breathed shakily. “This is sure no place for a picnic.”

  She fell silent again as they resumed the advance. By the time they had passed through the thick of the jungle and reached the base of the mountain range beyond, the dawn had come again. But it was colder, much colder, and the sun seemed smaller.…

  For a time they wandered through the midst of loose rocks, finally singling out a cave opening in the sheer wall of towering cliff. Weary and exhausted they crawled within and flung themselves down in relief, gazing back through the opening towards the rioting confusion of jungle a mile away, and, further away still, the ocean born of the tidal wave.

  “Before very long all this will pass away and maybe we’ll glimpse something of modernity—something that thinks, something that will explain why this planet behaves so queerly,” Arch said musingly. “All the same, I think my own ideas are pretty correct.”

  Joyce yawned widely. “Well, theory or no theory, I’m going to take a rest. This place is too much for me!”

  They both pulled off their packs and squatted down, Arch with flame pistol ready as instant protection—but before very long fatigue got the better of his good intentions and, like the girl, he slept soundly.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The First Man

  When they awoke again, it was to the knowledge that, according to their watches, two nights and two days had slid by. The cave was unchanged. Once they had refreshed and eaten, they crept to the opening and stared out onto the jungle.

  It was different once again—still more refined but still primeval. Here and there first new life forms were moving: bullet-like hairy bein
gs shot from tree to tree with terrific speed. The ape evolution had been gained, was speeding onwards up the scale in absolute unison with the chameleon planet’s gradual withdrawal from the Sun.

  “If this evolutionary scale is similar to Earth’s, we ought to get another Glacial Epoch around here,” Joyce murmured musingly. “It’s a good job we brought spacesuits with us. It’s getting pretty cold even as it is.”

  “There won’t be a Glacial period,” Arch said with certainty. “Earth’s ice age was responsible for the final extinction of the saurians, but here they require no extinction: they simply merge into something fresh like a tadpole metamorphosing into a frog. Those distant apes we can see will be men before we can hardly realize it. Remember that by normal evolution millions of years passed in between states of change—but the speed of ascent from ape to man could be measured in mere thousands of years. That’s why it should also go quicker here.”

  “In the meantime, we stop right here then?”

  “Sure—it’s a safe spot. Why shouldn’t we?”

  “I was thinking of the spaceship.”

  Arch laughed forlornly. “Swell thought that is! Probably it went west in the earthquake. Even if it did, there will soon be life on this amazing world quite capable of building us a new one. You can count on that.”

  Joyce became silent, staring moodily through the cave opening—then she suddenly stiffened and cried sharply.

  “Look down there. Arch! A couple of apes fighting it out to the death! And the smaller one’s getting the worst of it, too!”

  He joined her in gazing, studied the mighty hairy forms that had emerged from the forest and were battling savagely with bare hands and fighting fangs for the possession of a piece of quivering animal flesh. The speed they fought at made them mere blurs of motion. And even as they fought they were changing swiftly. The heads were broadening out; the teeth and prognathous jaws projecting less.