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The next morning, 29G-75 and 454ZQ2 equipped themselves and set out upon their long journey. Both 948D-21 and the professor would have liked to have gone, too, but it was their duty to stay by the ship. Had this necessity not existed, there would have been a problem presented by the two music monsters. The latter were told the strange story of the missing stalks, and how the long tendrils of the plant were really living tentacles. It would be long before the machine men would reach the edge of the fire country and as long again before they returned with companions. What if 744U-21 and the rest of the Zoromes should not be there when 29G-75 and 454ZQ2 terminated their long journey? Professor Jameson had reason to believe that the machine men would stay where they were in the land of the music monsters. At the very least, they would establish a base of communication for the lost ship and its occupants. Many possibilities presented themselves, yet the two waiting machine men realized that their adopted course was the only present solution. They hoped that 29G-75 and 454ZQ2 would reach the edge of the fire country without mishap.
They had much time during their enforced wait to observe the carnivorous plants in their various stages of evolution. Occasionally, one of them in company with the music monsters roamed far afield, penetrating to the hills where the plant-animals lived in packs within the dense brush country. It was in the lowlands, where the ship had fallen, that the plant-animals became developed. At an early phase of their development, seeds and pollen were scattered to the winds. One plant never grew more than a single stalk, and when the stalk became sufficiently developed to leave its vegetable state of existence, it disengaged its feet, gradually separated from the rest of the plant and left under cover of darkness, abandoning the plant as if it were an old chrysalis.
Whether the plants possessed eyesight during the vegetable stage, the professor was unable to accurately ascertain, but he came to believe that the older ones did when he had employed the simple experiment of holding up one of the music monsters close to the purple head of a maturing plant. The fixed eyes became animated with a subtle gream from their baleful depths, and without the usual necessity of contact the tendrils commenced to quiver excitedly and reach out for the delectable morsel. Sometimes, one of the machine men would fly alone farther than it was possible to go in company with the music monsters. Beyond the hills lay another low plain where the carnivorous plants grew both profusely and luxuriantly. Beyond the plain rose the mountains. It was in these mountains that the Eiuks resided, the machine men believed.
There were other species of animal besides the plant-things and the Eiuks, but mostly they were smaller, inferior creatures. A close, short verdure grew all over the plain, which also supported other forms of plant life, much in minority to the carnivorous species, which seemed to dominate and absorb nutrition from the ground. In the hill country, thick with bushes and other types of vegetation, there were none of these hideous plants.
Professor Jameson advanced a theory, dealing with the tremendous gravity of the end territory, that explained tentatively this strange phenomenon of the hybrid plant-animal species they had discovered.
“Life is a determined factor and cleverly surmounts almost insuperable obstacles, becoming readily adaptable to the environment in which it finds itself. Consider the fire-dwellers, for example. Their situation is no less astounding and miraculous than what we find here. A strong type of life is required in this end zone. Some of the creatures here have developed without the vegetable beginning, yet there is a peculiarity of the plant-animals, one which necessitates their start in life strictly as a plant. When young, they must be very weak and unable to start life in mobile form. The plant-animals developed like the rest of the various forms of life from a simple cellular structure, becoming first a plant and then an animal. In the early, weaker stages, the necessity of locomotion for seeking sustenance is done away with by their remaining in one spot and drawing life from the soil. They are also carnivorous. I believe we shall find that in their strictly animal stages they are entirely carnivorous.”
Arminia, more venturesome than his companion, was not satisfied until he had killed one of the plant-animals in combat and brought the carcass back to the spaceship, incidentally winning a bet his comrade had made on the assumption that he could not do it and would have to fall back upon the help of the machine men. The two music monsters had skinned their late enemies and cured the hides. They had derived much amusement in throwing chunks from the carcasses of the fire-dwellers to the carnivorous plants. Deprived of their dice and metallic squares, the two had gambled lavishly in all sorts of imaginative forms, even as to guessing the exact time the horizon would cut the rising sun in half, using instruments of the Zoromes for reckoning the time. Their funds were practically unlimited, since they had redeemed the pelts of their erstwhile enemies, and they gambled to their hearts’ content, fortune and prosperity smiling first on one and then on the other.
After their first clash with the machine men, the separated stalks kept away from the vicinity of the spaceship, staying in their hill country. The night following the killing of so many of the plant-things, they had returned and found the carcasses of the brethren. When the sun rose again, the dead were gone.
Time passed, and sunset followed sunset. The music monsters commenced to fail in health from the tremendous attraction of gravity, despite the degravitators they always wore and those they kept installed in their living quarters. It was still much too early to expect the return of the machine men. When they came, the professor intended that Arminia and his companion be carried on the wing to the not so distant area of lowest gravity. They would recover rapidly there, for the resistance would be even less than in their own country, which represented the antipode of the facet on which dwelled the Ooaurs.
So the machine men were completely surprised when ahead of schedule some very small blots appeared in the sky. The blots materialized into two varieties, flying machine men and round globes.
“The Oaos!” 948D-21 exclaimed. “How did they happen to come?”
His question remained unanswered until eight machine men flew down from the sky, leaving the metal Oaos on high. It was 744U-21 and 6W-438 who explained matters.
“When 29G-75 and 454ZQ2 returned on the wing without the spaceship and told us where you had fallen, we knew that a long and arduous task lay before us of getting ourselves and the necessities for repair of the ship here into this isolated end territory, facing the handicap of such immense gravity. So we sent a winged courier down over the other side of the planet fragment to the land of the Urum for their aid.”
“What it would have taken us an exceedingly long time to accomplish they can expedite. We are all here, 21M-M392; that is, the remainder are at the world’s edge bordering what the Urum would probably call the Land of Greatest Exhaustion.”
“Why did they not come, too?” 948D-12 asked.
“Most of us were brought here to the edge of the end zone in the aircraft of the Urum, accompanied by the Oaos. Eight of us came on the wing equipped with the degravitators which you sent to us by 454ZQ2 and 29G-75. The Oaos came with us, directed by remote control from the airships of the Urum. The Urum dare not bring their airships into this end zone or come themselves. The Oaos, of course, operate on gaseous principles analogous to the aerial faculties of the Eiuks. The Urum and the rest of the machine men are waiting at the world’s edge.”
Soon, all the machine men were about the wrecked spaceship with the necessary material and facilities brought from Uri for its repairs. 29G-75 and 454ZQ2 had taken back with them exact, detailed accounts of the damage done the spaceship, both inside and out. The damage was greatest to the hull and compartments nearest the point where the ship had struck the ground.
Many long days and nights of intensive, untiring work were necessary. Often, the machine men were surrounded at night not only by their own illumination, but by the light of the Eiuks as well, presenting a weird scene. The animated plant stalks gazed fearfully down from the distant hills, a
s near as they dared approach the mixture of natural and unnatural brilliance. The first trip back to the base, situated at the world’s rim bordering the flat world of least gravity and the end zone, had seen the departure of the two ailing music monsters―singing their duo of melancholia. At the base, they had found many of their companions, who had accompanied the Urum and machine men in the airships. The recovery of the two music monsters was rapid as they joined their companions in jumping and skipping in gigantic leaps much Like those of the Ooaurs by the walls of Ui.
Immensely rich in the square bits of fire-dweller hide which the two music monsters had insisted in bringing out of the end zone―and thus loading down a single machine man with them and with nothing else―the music monsters made gifts among their companions and gambled so recklessly and rapidly that the fever spread to the curious and interested Disci of Uri. Long geared music monsters squatted incongruously with the diminutive Disc creatures and passed much time in gaming, the latter much impressed with admiration and wonderment at the musical innuendoes of their new friends, whom they understood only in pantomime or through the able interpretation of the Zoromes. Much to the delight of Arminia and his companion so long “imprisoned” by the necessity of wearing gravity nullifiers, their companions had brought the many pictured dice and square bits of metal.
Only once did several of the Urum, much laden with gravity nullifiers, venture into the end zone in company with similarly equipped music monsters and machine men to witness the amazing phenomena of the carnivorous plants and watch a nocturnal disengagement of a ripe stalk. The sight of the gently falling Eiuks was familiar to the Urum, though never before had they seen so many of them descend at one time. A strange sense of satisfaction enveloped them as they saw the carnivorous plants make their catches of the Eiuks who came too close. Too often had the Disci fled into their homes in terror from the nocturnal raids of the shining balls.
When the spaceship was at last capable of flight once more, the entire assemblage was taken for a trip low above the end territory of the planet fragment before once again revisiting the land of the Urum and then back to the forests bordering the fire country. With the various functions of the ship once more intact, the gravity of the end zone remained a negligible factor.
The machine men and music monsters lingered in the land of the Urum for some time, beside the gaunt, towering mountains which stretched their fingers into space, before returning to the forest retreats of the music monsters upon the facet opposite the Land of Exhausion. Here, they renewed their visit so abruptly interrupted by the unexpected raid of the fire-dwellers.
Finally there came the irresistible call of unseen worlds, the lure of the universe. With the farewell melody of the music monsters behind them and the silent star symphony before, the machine men departed from the huge, rugged, misshapen world on which they had encountered so many strange adventures among stranger forms of life. Behind them dwindled the glowing oval of soft, steady light which marked the retreating planet fragment; ahead, many light years beyond the system of worlds they were leaving, stretched a dense, black pocket of emptiness where no stars shone.
The End