The Second Murray Leinster Megapack (41 page)

Two hundred yards away, he set up the picturescope and touched its button. It began to function. There were two children waving out of it—evidently the children of the murdered man to whom the picturescope had belonged. The scene changed, and a woman smiled and spoke. That went on for a space, and there was the interior of a living room, with the woman and the children moving about—

Caxton cast sidewise glances at the flowers about him. A few had turned from their fascinated contemplation of himself to look at the picturescope. Others turned twitchily as he watched. A blossom drooped jerkily to approach the screen. Others drooped to join it. They crowded to contemplate it. They almost jostled each other.

Caxton went back toward the wrecked ship. Three times he stopped to survey the scene behind him. The plants paid no attention to his retreat. Every one within hundreds of yards of the picturescope turned and faced it. Within ten yards, they drooped and seemed to strain toward it. Caxton reached the great furrow, his expression very queer indeed.

“These flowers are conscious!” he said abruptly, to the others. “They’ve got intelligence of a sort. Look at them looking at that picturescope!”

Burton said sourly, “What good’s that?”

There was a simultaneous movement of all the blossoms within sight. They stirred and by tiny twitching movement faced to the northwest. Unanimously. The men held their breaths. Presently the thin air brought them a faint, faint sound which was the deep-throated roar of a space drive in atmosphere. But it was very faint, and after only seconds it died away.

“They heard that before we did,” said Caxton calmly, “or else they knew it—another way.”

Then he looked where he’d left the picturescope. The flowers about it had straightened up and turned to face the inaudible sound. But as he watched those about the busily working small machine turned again, and those nearest it dropped toward it until there was a small depression, about the picturescope, in the otherwise perfectly level field of flower heads.

The small white sun was very low upon the horizon. It drooped down and was not. Night fell. Hannet built up the fire with more litter from inside the
Copernicus
. Palmer began to cook.

“Slade’s pals know the ship crashed, now,” said Burton, seething. “They had trouble believin’ it at first, maybe. Odds too big against it. But they know it now! And now they’re huntin’ it, cussin’ because the Bridewell’s stopped sendin’. They’ll find us, though! They’re quarterin’—”

Hannet said bitterly, “And we haven’t got a thing to fight with when they do catch up on us!”

Palmer snapped, “You think we don’t know that? Even if we go off an’ hide, they’ll know somebody was alive around here! So they’ll bake the ship just to spoil our grub, an’ there’s nothin’ to eat on the whole planet except what’s in the ship.”

Caxton said meditatively, “I think we’ve got to ask for some help.”

The others blinked at him. He waved his hand around, at the white-fringed flower faces now again regarding the fire and the men with an effect of captivated interest.

“These things are intelligent after a fashion. I don’t know how intelligent, but—”

“Huh!” snapped Burton; “You’re goin’ to get a pack o’ flowers to help fight off a gang of murderers?”

“I don’t know,” said Caxton. “But it’s the only chance we’ve got.”

Hannet grunted. Palmer said belligerently, “What could flowers do—even if they had brains?”

He poured out barely-warm coffee and Caxton said, “I don’t know what they can do. But I can guess what they’ve done.” Men grunted skeptically.

“They’ve wiped out every other life-form on the planet,” Caxton pointed out. “They haven’t bothered us, to be sure, but we haven’t bothered them. In landing, we killed a good many, but it was an accident. We couldn’t help it. Maybe they know it. Anyhow they wiped out all competitors before us. There’s no other sort of plant and there are no animals and not even an insect. You can’t tell me there was never but the one line of evolution! These plants are highly organized. They’re specialized! If they’d had no competition, they’d have stayed primitive. But they’ve developed to what they are because they did have competition which they’ve now wiped out! They’ve even arranged to divide up what’s left among themselves. Every one has the same amount of space—no more, no less. They’re the dominant race on this planet. They have senses—hearing, at least, and certainly sight, and I insist that I had those queer dreams of having the flowers tell me that Slade was here—and he is.”

Burton snorted scornfully. The feeling of utter helplessness ad hopelessness made all their tempers short. They would be found tomorrow by the ship they’d heard, which was hunting for the
Copernicus
to loot it of twelve million stellars’ worth of iridium. Forty-three men had already died for that iridium. Four more would die tomorrow because, whether the pirate ship killed them in cold blood, or merely turned a heat ray on the wreck and turned all their food to charcoal, they would die. Almost any argument would be maintained to avoid thinking of their infuriating helplessness.

“How’d those flowers fight animals, if there was any?” demanded Burton.

“How did men fight them?” asked Caxton. “Was there ever any single way? Men used their brains. Man specialized in intelligence, and became dominant on Earth. These plants may have done the same thing. At least they’re dominant here!”

“Okay,” said Burton in heavy sarcasm. “Talk to ’em, then. Tell ’em we’ll bring ’em a load of fertilizer if they’ll wipe out Slade an’ his gang so we can go home in his ship!”

“That,” said Caxton meditatively, “is just about what I’ve got to try.”

“Crazy!” rasped Burton.

“Quite likely,” admitted Caxton, “but I can’t think of any with sense to it that gives us a chance.”

* * * *

The stars on Aiolo were very bright. The air was very thin and very cold. The men in their sleeping bags lay still, and the campfire burned brightly until there were only embers left, and those embers glowed with the brightness of coals in almost pure oxygen. One by one they went out, leaving only ash. But all the men were not in the gouged-out earthen furrow behind the shattered
Copernicus
. One man lay among the flowers, twenty yards and more from the ship.

It was easy to locate him, even in the starlight, though he could not be seen among the flowers. For many feet around him, every flower stalk was bent toward him. His sleeping bag was almost hidden by hovering blossoms—most of which were clustered as close as possible to his head.

The ground was utterly flat, and it reached out to a horizon utterly without break or projection. It was a monstrous plain, completely filled with the omnipresent flowers. Nearby one could see between white-petaled blooms to reedy stalks and stringy leaves below. But at a distance the absolutely level sea of blossoms formed a sheet of snowy white.

At what would correspond to ten o’clock in the morning, the book of the vast expanse of flowers changed. From one horizon to the other, the plants stirred. They moved in tiny jerkings. They faced in one direction.

“This will he it,” said Caxton evenly. “They’ll find us now.”

There was yet no sign of the pirate ship, neither of sight nor of sound. Three of the four men clenched their fists, raging. They might be killed. They might be mocked and left to die. They were filled with an impotent rage at their inability even to offer battle.

Caxton waited with an odd expression on his face. A dull roaring came from very far away. It grew louder. It grew thunderous. They saw the spaceship as a tiny speck of light; a moving mote of brightness which was the reflection of the sun from its chromium-bright outer plating. They regarded it in suffocating fury. It went hurtling onward—and suddenly shifted its course. Its momentum carried it on, but it swung toward the crashed
Copernicus
. It turned again. It made a wide half-circle and headed back toward the wreck and the great furrow in the earth, descending as it came. It was a small ship, much less than the freighter it had come to loot. Concealed ports opened in its bow and guns peered out.

Caxton ran back in the furrow and waved violently, trying to cause it to land where there were no plants. It ignored him. One of the bow guns flashed briefly. An acre of flowers exploded in steam, and only blackened stalks and seared earth remained behind. There was a strange, tiny, extraordinarily shrill sound which ran all over the plain of blossoms, as if the flowers themselves had uttered it in rage or horror. All the way to the horizon there was the seeming of commotion, of the agitated twitchings of reedy stalks.

The strange space vessel landed. It had the swollen, obese look of a space tug. It settled heavily upon the newly-charred ground. It was still. Then the gun muzzle swiveled. Another brief flare. Another burst of steam and thin shrill screaming noise. A path of charred emptiness opened from the space tug to the battered, broken wreck. Figures in spacesuits appeared carrying weapons. They walked negligently toward the
Copernicus
.

Caxton went to meet them. The first face he saw in a space helmet was strange to him. The second was Slade’s.

“Hello, Slade,” said Caxton coldly. “We figured you were responsible.”

Slade grinned. “Neat job, eh? How’d it miss you?”

“Cabin,” said Caxton evenly. “Off duty. The self-sealing door worked.”

“Any others?” asked Slade negligently. He raised a weapon very casually.

“Three,” said Caxton. He added, “We hid the iridium.” Slade lowered the weapon.

“Yeah? What for?”

“To make a bargain,” Caxton told him. “We want transportation to some place where we’ll have a chance of being picked up. Promise that and we tell you where the iridium is. Otherwise—look for it!”

“We can get it outa you with a pencil beam,” he said amusedly. “One thing I do wanna know, though. The flowers don’t bother you. Why?”

“Why should they?”

“Maybe this’s a different kind,” said Slade. “Where we were waitin’ for the
Copernicus
to come along, they made some kinda smell or somethin’ that put a guy to sleep. That’s why we got on spacesuits now. Okay—where’s the other three?”

Silently, Burton and Palmer and Hannet came into view, their eyes sullenly defiant. Slade grinned at them.

“We came for the iridium,” he said in mocking politeness. “I wanna volunteer to tell me where it is, or else the first one to take the pencil beam test. Who’s gonna be nice?”

“I’ll show you,” said Caxton, without intonation. “It was silly to hide it, anyhow.”

He led the way. He pointed to where they had dug deep under the
Copernicus
’ plating to bury the precious metal for which their shipmates had died.

“Fine!” said Slade. “You men buried it. Now dig it out!”

Silently, the four men took shovels and began to dig. Slade stood over them with a blaster held negligently in his hand. Those with him explored the ship cautiously. They found no one else in hiding. They began to loot. One man carried a load of personal possessions back to the pirate ship, moving along the lane of charred, destroyed plants. Two men came back with him. More loads of loot. A shattered box of Bynarth lace had spilled half its contents in a broken-open hold. More men came from the pirate ship. The last three came without spacesuits, having been informed that since the four survivors of the wreck had had no trouble, there was no need of spacesuits here.

Caxton and his fellows unearthed the iridium. Twelve million stellars’ worth. They dragged it out to the clear space of the furrow.

“Maybe I oughta make you carry it to my ship,” said Slade, genially, “but a little exercise’ll do my gang good. So—”

He lifted his hand weapon, grinning. It bore upon Caxton. His finger tensed on the trigger.

And that was all. He ceased to move. His eyes closed. He stood rocking on his feet, breathing heavily.

There was silence. Inside and outside the wreck there was stillness. Caxton turned his head and saw two men from the pirate ship, on their way back to it with loot taken from the
Copernicus
. They stood still swaying a little on their feet. There was no movement anywhere.

“All right,” said Caxton coldly, “we’ll load up the iridium. That’ll be salvage, anyhow. Maybe we’ll come back for the rest. Maybe not.”

The four men began the transfer. When the last of the iridium was loaded, Caxton went back and took away the weapons from the seemingly paralyzed pirates.

Burton said furiously, “Ain’t you goin’ to blast ’em off?”

“I promised not to,” said Caxton grimly. “Besides, we couldn’t. Slade had his finger tensed to kill me and he was stopped. We’d be, too.”

Burton grumbled. Then he said defiantly, “Whadda we do now, then?”

“Take off,” said Caxton.

He went into the ship. Its entire company was outside. There were only the four survivors of the
Copernicus
.

The strange ship rose vertically from the ground. Caxton, in the control room, looked at the bottom visiplate. The wrecked spaceship below already grew small upon the screen, but the two blasted areas—in which thousands upon thousands of the plants of Aiolo had died—were still visible. And he saw moving dots. The men who had come to Aiolo in this ship, but now were left behind, marched somnambulistically toward the larger burned-out space in which the pirate ship had landed. But that space dwindled still more as the ship rose, until nothing could be seen at all except the illimitable expanse covered by the flowers—the plants of Aiolo.