This one terrific plunge had sped the professor down ahead of the spaceship and 948D-21, and he landed to watch the falling bulk of the ship. With a musical sigh of relief, Arminia slumped to the ground, having been thoroughly scared out of his wits and never before in his life having ever felt so thankful. 948D-21 and his charge were still small objects in the. sky beside the huge spaceship. The professor believed now that the ship’s descent had slowed even more, yet he dared not feel positive, for his standing position below might have given him a deceptive perspective. 948D-21 was flying not far from the ship in concentrated spirals, waiting to land after the ship had struck.
Immovable, Professor Jameson watched fearfully as the ship neared the ground. The remaining machine men had not leaped. The professor watched for them. They did not appear. With a dull crash which the professor knew had sprung many plates and joints, the spaceship struck. 454ZQ2 and 29G-75 had elected to remain on board. Leaving Arminia to make his way as best he could, the professor hurried to the spaceship, which had plunged awkwardly into the ground and lay on one side. Dodging bushes and plants and frightening queer little animals from his path, the professor arrived at the side of the ship just as 948D-21 came to rest on the ground with the music monsters. Climbing out upon the hull came 454ZQ2 and 29G-75.
“It might have been worse,” philosophized 29G-75. “The injuries to the ship are not wholly irreparable, but we can do nothing until the others arrive.”
“Why did you stay aboard?”
“We saw that it would be comparatively safe to stay. After you leaped, the ship continued to slow down.”
The machine men were aware of a shrill, despairing melody from where the professor had left Arminia. The other music monster was first to respond, and his haste to reach his distressed comrade met with ludicrious failure. Unprepared for the strange influence of the degravitators he wore, the music monster took two or three unstable movements and tumbled into a gyrating summersault, sprawling upon the ground.
In dumbfounded despair, Arminia was trying to walk toward them. He had divested himself of the gravity nullifiers and like a man with an overwhelming burden he was staggering toward them, his muscles bulging, his eyes dilated and every lifting of his lower legs accompanied by a super-effort. His upper appendages hung limply at his sides, and his breathing came in laboring sobs.
Hurrying to where Arminia had left the gravity nullifiers, the professor retrieved them and replaced them on the ankles of the music monster. Instantly, Arminia’s fatigue disappeared as if by magic, and the change was manifested no more surprisingly than in the expression on his face. In confused relief, he started forward once more, staggered, righted himself and then walked carefully toward the spaceship with the professor. Once the professor seized him as he was about to duplicate the previous gymnastic contortions of his companion by an attempt at quickening his pace.
“Not until you two are more acquainted with the degravitators,” warned the professor. “It takes time and practice before you can become accustomed to walking with them, let alone running. You will take some bad spills unless you are careful. And if you value your lives, do not remove them as Arminia did just now.”
The two music monsters were more deliberate in their movements from then on, and not even the prospects of alleviating their hunger caused them to forget the penalties of haste. Arminia was first to reach one of the plants which towered slightly about his head. Long, drooping leaves arched away from a peculiarly marked stalk whose top rounded into a purple-tinted ball. The general color of the vegetation was brown. Here and there, the younger growth was yellowish, while slate-colored stalks were not so numerous. Many of the stalks were gone, as if they had been removed by someone or something. Arminia was going to eat, and his companion, arriving behind him, prepared to assist in breaking off the seemingly delectable stalk from its base.
Whip-like tendrils wrapped themselves sinuously about the two music monsters and the leaves folded devilishly about them. They struggled fiercely, but the tough tendrils held like steel. Emitting a weird sympony of surprise, rage and fear, the two music montsers battled and tore at the plant: Arminia ripping and tearing at the tough, leathery stalk and leaves with his hook, his companion too pinioned to permit him to reach a weapon. Where the hook sank deep, there immediately issued a thick, purple liquid that coagulated almost instantly, leaving a shining, dull surface.
“Carnivorous plants!” 29G-75 exclaimed. “We have not seen such things for many a journey!”
Already, Professor Jameson was hurrying to the rescue of the hopelessly entangled music monsters. He played his heat ray upon the base of the plant, knowing that as soon as it was cut from the ground it would weaken and die. The plant writhed and whipped its leaves frantically like a creature in pain, the tendrils constricting with such strength as to choke off the music monsters’ weird cacophony and turn them blue in the face. And then came the unexpected. It surprised the machine men and left them strangely impressed. The plant screamed.
Its leaves in a frenzy of motion, an opening in the purple ball appeared, and from it there issued an indescribable scream, one of the most awesome sounds ever to fall upon the mechanical hearing of the machine men. If the fire-dwellers had proved difficult to kill with the heat ray, the case of these carnivorous plants proved quite the opposite. In a final frenzy, with a dying screech, which chilled the blood of its two prospective victims, the plant sagged and commenced to wilt, its tendrils releasing their grip and jerking spasmodically, falling to the ground bent away from the spot where the professor had applied his heat ray.
Shaken and unnerved, the two music monsters were speechless, for once without a song, while they got back their breath. It was the closest either of them had ever come to dying, although Arminia had thought the plunge from the sky the most horrible sensation he had ever experienced. The humor of the near tragedy became apparent to the professor.
“You came to eat them; they nearly ate you. They are of a vegetable character and prefer a diet of flesh and blood; you are flesh and blood and are strict vegetarians. What contrasts!”
“You can eat now,” observed 29G-75.
“I am not hungry,” said Arminia. “I seem to have lost my appetite.”
The music monsters did, however, eat of the fallen plant later on, after more of the strange plants had been examined, and they found their repast both delectable and satisfying after their fast on the spaceship. Careful examination of the tall plants, which grew quite numerous over the plain, showed that many creatures had been captured and digested, their white bones strewn about the base of the plants. The carnivorous species of vegetation did not, however, seem to find such an animal diet necessary, for those not fortunate enough to have captured an animal seemed healthy and luxuriant. Partly digested remains of a small animal gripped by one of the plants illustrated how the victims were digested. A sticky juice was exuded from the tendrils which enwrapped the repast securely.
Again, the machine men noticed the different stages in color and growth. The small, young ones were yellow. Most of the mature plants were brownish in color, with the purple top strangely suggestive of a head. Older and more advanced. What they did find difficult to explain were the dead, abandoned plants without stalks.
“Some creature around here is more powerful than these plants and robs them of their stalks,” observed 29G-75 reflectively. “It is a good thing to know. We shall have to be on the watch for them.”
“The plants themselves possess tremendous strength,” Arminia reminded them.
“Anything here that could live under these conditions would have to be strong,” said 948D-21, “just as the Ooaurs were so much stronger than the Uum.”
“There is one piece of evidence that stands against the plants being subdued by force,” the professor stated. “The leaves are intact, showing that there could have been no struggle. It is possible that the stalks are removed after the plant dies.”
The machine men made another startl
ing discovery as they wandered among the placid-appearing plants waiting so silently and quietly for victims. They recognized familiar shapes, globular and possessing many small tentacles, entangled in the twines of the carnivorous plants. They were Eiuks.
“Evidently they are capable of living here, too,” the professor observed. “Their remarkable qualities of becoming living balloons during the day make them resistant even to the gravity here.”
In examination of the various exhibits consisting of the living plants and their dead victims, 454ZQ2 stepped too close to the plant they were examining, brushing the long arched leaves with his tentacles. Instantly he was seized and gathered to the deadly embrace of the vicious plant, the tendrils playing, writhing and clutching over him in joyous ecstasy. The professor leaped forward with his heat ray, yet hesitated to see what 454ZQ2 might be able to do, realizing that here was no danger such as had menaced the music monsters. The strength of the plant was amazing, yet here in this plant there was no hard exterior such as had characterized the fire-dwellers. The metal tentacles bit into the tendrils until the machine man was empurpled with the plant’s fluid. Jerking and flailing his tentacles, 454ZQ2 ripped the leaves into ribbons and belabored the plant to a purple welter with kicking feet and lashing tentacles.
The two music monsters were amazed and impressed by this demonstration. They had been helpless in the embrace of the plant which had captured them. The machine man had effected an easy victory. On the other hand, the fire-dwellers had proved to be more of a problem to the Zoromes than to the music monsters, although at no time except in the fire country were the machine men actually endangered in physical combat.
The machine men and music monsters spent the night in the spaceship. They had not yet decided what was to be done. During the night, strange noises were occasionally heard outside, yet none of them investigated beyond peering out of the spaceship. 454ZQ2 once saw dim forms flit out of range of his body lights. Pursuit was considered inadvisable under their present circumstances.
In the morning, several discoveries were made. For one thing, strange tracks were found, and another closely linking feature was the absence of several stalks from the carnivorous plants which were of the aged variety. Tracks surrounded the old plants. Evidently creatures of some kind had come in the night and had carried off several of the stalks. His curiosity aroused, the professor claimed that the next time the nocturnal sounds were heard they would turn out with the ray guns and surprise the marauders. One strange circumstance seemed especially inexplicable. One set of tracks led to a missing stalk and then disappeared. Whether the creature had been coming or going was difficult to ascertain from the strange pattern left by the feet, but there was only one set of them, and the thing, whatever it was that had robbed the plant of its stalk, had traveled in but one direction. The suggestion of 29G-75 was the most plausible.
“Whatever they are, they have wings, or else they are able to rise like the Eiuks.”
“It was certainly not the Eiuks, for they are preyed upon by the plants.”
“Perhaps,” offered 948D-21, “the old plants are unable to resist the Eiuks who rise up with the stalks.”
“It is improbable, for we should have seen the shining globes of the Eiuks had they come last night,” stated the professor. “Besides, the Eiuks do not leave tracks like those we saw, assuming that those who took the stalks made the tracks.”
Taking council, the four Zoromes decided that on the following day two of them, 454ZQ2 and 29G-75, would don the mechanical wings and the degravitators and would head back upon the long journey to the fire country upon another side of the planet fragment. Professor Jameson estimated their position as roughly sixteen thousand miles from the land of the music monsters.
“How will 744U-21, 20R-654 and the others, necessary for the repair of the spaceship, be able to get back here?” 454ZQ2 posed the ultimate consideration.
“You can carry extra mechanical wings and gravity nullifiers,” the professor instructed them. “Of course, the degravitators will be necessary only above this end of the fragment. Instead of crossing the three thousand miles of this country directly to the thicker side of the fragment, it is more advisable to go directly to the thin facet which is less than fifteen hundred miles distant and then cut diagonally over upon the thicker side of the planet. You will experience easier going and the difference in the distance will be more or less negligible.”
Again that night the strange noises were heard, this time at a greater distance, and, being prepared, the four machine men hurried out cautiously into the dark. The music monsters remained behind in the ship. For one thing, the latter possessed little stomach for the unknown terrors of this strange land, and they had to be careful about walking with the gravity nullifiers. Then, too, the professor considered it inadvisable for them to hazard running against one of the sinister plants in the dark. These plants were man-eaters, had the music monsters been men instead of what they were.
Chapter VI
The machine men did not find it necessary to risk appraising the nocturnal unknowns of their presence with use of their body lights. A strange glow which the machine men readily recognized pervaded the landscape, casting a dim, ghastly radiance upon the weird scene beneath the starlight.
The Eiuks had dropped from the sky. There were at least a hundred of them, the professor estimated, and immediately he gathered the significance of so many more of them than he had ever seen descend upon Ui. The greater gravity was sufficient to pull down many of them involuntarily when their gaseous propensities were at the lowest ebb. The machine men had never known whether the Eiuks descended voluntarily or not. Like the carnivorous plants, the Eiuks did not seem dependent on flesh and blood for sustenance, but they seemed particularly ravenous for it, when the opportunity offered. In that particular, Professor Jameson likened them to the leech and mosquito of his much earlier life.
Already, several of the shining globes had met the misfortune of falling into the eager clutches of the tall plants, and they represented a weird appearance as the tendrils and leaves embraced their brilliance, tinting the ground about them with a purple glow as if shades of the same color had been drawn upon the brilliance of the Eiuks. The latter presented a weak resistance, and soon their bright glow waned as death claimed them and the plants eagerly sapped and drained their vitality into the tendrils and leaves.
To this the machine men paid but scant, secondary consideration. The ghostlike, flitting forms among the vegetation riveted their attention. Ominous and of sinister, evil portent, they scampered excitedly among the falling globes. Each one seized an Eiuk and started off for the distant hills, bouncing away as the alarmed denizens of the upper air tried to break free. Instinctively, aware of their peril, the rest of the shining globes rose and bounced about, trying to escape the clutches of the snatching, leaping creatures. Between them and the horrid, waiting embrace of the plants, the Eiuks were hard set, but now they were becoming more difficult to capture.
Creeping closer, unobserved, the four Zoromes watched the deadly contest and were impressed by a strange coincidence of the carnivorous plants and the creatures from the hills both intent on capturing the Eiuks. When one of the slinking creatures seized an Eiuk, there came the flash of purple light shining through the clutching arms, similar to its manner of glowing through the leaves and tendrils of the plants. The machine men wondered why the plants did not catch these other marauders as well as the Eiuks, yet they had previously figured that it was these same marauders who had carried off the stalks from the plants.
There was much to be understood, and to understand it better, the machine men walked closer to the scene of the chase, stepping into the aura of pale radiance hanging about the vicinity of the Eiuks like a transparent fog. They were immediately seen by several roving hunters who had not yet made their captures. The rest were in a long line of the things scampering off toward the hills, each lighted by a living torch held high, so that their path of retreat became
marked by a bobbing, serpentine column of gradually dwindling globes of light. Before the machine men could fairly have their ray ejectors ready for the inevitable, the unburdened things charged down upon them viciously. Most of them fell before the blazing death which swept into their vitals, but a few reached the machine men unscathed and wrestled with them.
Cold, curling tentacles, snakelike, wound about the four Zoromes and roved feelingly over their metal heads and bodies, showing surprising strength and tenacity in their grip as they sought to drag down the machine men and choke and smother them―at least, such was the professor’s fleeting impression. If this was the expectation of the strange things, the anticipation became rudely shattered.
It was all over so soon, it had happened so rapidly, that the machine men were surprised to find themselves standing alone among the scattered dead upon whom shone the ghastly, funereal radiance of the bobbing Eiuks. The machine men had their first opportunity for a close examination of the evil-intentioned things they had previously seen only as indistinct shadows.
Professor Jameson was met with one of the greatest surprises of his entire career among the machine men of Zor. The dead forms scattered over the ground, fallen before the terrible heat rays and in actual combat with the Zoromes, were the missing stalks from the carnivorous plants! They had been alive, sentient and capable of locomotion! Here was the reply to the question of the missing stalks. For several moments, the machine men were too stunned with this electrifying discovery to reason out the solution.
“Are they plant or animal?”
“Both.”
“No―they are animal now; they were once plants.”
“They grew as plants―”
“And became animals at the proper time of evolution.”
The lower half of the stalks branched off into four legs possessing tiny, round feet. When drawn together, they appeared as a solid pillar. The machine men recollected striated lines running the length of the stalks, but they had attached no peculiar significance to them, partly hidden as they were by the broad, arching leaves. Now they knew why the plants had screamed. It had been surprising that the plant-animals had made no outcry during the recent fray, yet the machine men had burnt them down and throttled them so quickly that their silence had been more or less enforced. They noticed something else now that they had not seen before: the purple head possessed several small knobs which the machine men identified as optics. The purple liquid, the life-blood of the things, had impressed them from the first with its thick qualities so divergent from usual plant life. But they had catalogued it merely as a characteristic peculiar to this type of plant. The machine men now wondered if the plants were watching with their beady eyes. The tall stalks had taken on a new and ominous significance.
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