Adventures on Other Planets Read online

  “I never got farther than Sea City,” Walt said. "1 lost my nerve, Bruce—when the time came, Earth didn't seem like home any more. Everything there is already cut and dried and laid away in mothballs. Its too damned quiet there.”

  “I know,” Lowry said.

  He did know. Venus was treacherous and unpredictable with her steaming marshland bogs and torrential floods and sudden howling sunspot hurricanes, but she offered a commodity obtainable nowhere on Earth—isolation.

  “You and Walt are kindred souls,” Gail said. "In the old days you'd have been frontiersmen, beating your way about with a flintlock rifle and a bag of salt. Bruce, I think you like the kind of risk you just rani”

  She lit a cigarette for him and the three of them sat in comfortable silence. Neither questioned Walts explanation, though neither was deceived by it; their ready acceptance of the situation as it existed was characteristic of the understanding between them.

  Marvin Pascal came in from the kitchen with a bottle of Lowry’s slender whisky stock in one hand and a half-filled glass in the other, and his entrance shattered the easy feel of companionship in the room. Pascal was a big sandy man, taller and heavier than Lowry, a restless egotist ridden by a perpetual discontent that kept his heavy shoulders stirring under his open-collared shirt. He met Lowry’s look and chuckled without humor, his light blue eyes curiously bright and aggressive.

  “You’re a fool for luck,” he said. “You should have known better than to buck a howler, Lowry. I wouldn't have tried it myself, even."

  And if you couldn’t do it, Lowry thought, nettled, then no one can. Braggart!

  Aloud he said, “I wasn't too lucky. Venusian Fisheries will have some pretty pointed things to say about the skimmer I lost."

  Pascal stared. “Don't try to tell me you swam back— no one could make headway against a sea like that! How the hell—”

  Walt Griswold said wearily, “Take it easy, Pascal. Bruce has had a rough time. He'll tell us about it when he's ready.”

  Lowry stubbed out his cigarette, his taste for tobacco gone. He had never liked Pascal. The big man’s pointless arrogance had made him universally despised among the fishers; it had alienated him long ago even from the regard of his wife, whom he treated in a cat-and-mouse fashion that had driven her to look elsewhere for understanding.

  Lowry was considering how he should tell his improbable tale when Nadine Pascal came in from the kitchen and brought him coffee. He watched her speculatively, feeling a touch of pity when her eyes went first to Walt Griswold, shyly, and then to her husband to gauge his present temper. It must go hard with her, he thought, to be cooped up for weeks on end with that sullen devil.

  He took the coffee and relaxed, putting away all outside concerns.

  “A ship went down out there,” he said. “Gail will have told you about that. I took the skimmer out to pick up any survivors who might have bailed out, and found none. The howler struck before 1 could turn back, and the skimmer went down."

  He put down his coffee cup, frowning faintly when they waited without comment. He was on the point of saying, “And that's all," when it came to him belatedly that it was not all. There was still the near-miracle of his escape.

  It was not until then that he remembered the sea-beast he had seen in the water, and recalled his odd conviction that it was not hostile.

  “There was a creature of some sort floating in the water just before the skimmer went under,” he said slowly. “It ignored the howler completely, something I’ve never known a Venusian sea-beast to do. I never saw anything like it before, for that matter—it was something pretty outlandish/'

  He broke off, understanding at last what quality it was about the thing that had caught his attention at so tense a moment.

  “It was intelligent, too,” he said. “I couldn’t mistake that It had the look.”

  Gail put a light hand on his shoulder, her face suddenly concerned. Walt Griswold said uncertainly, “What happened to it, Bruce? Did you see it after the howler struck?” “I didn't see anything after that,” Lowry said, “But I know what you're thinking. Whatever the thing was, it could take care of itself even in a howler, believe me. And I think it brought me ashore—God knows I'd never have made it alonel”

  Pascal laughed scornfully. "Why make a mystery of it? Why not admit that you passed out from fright and were washed up by accident? Don't take us for fools, Lowry—” In spite of himself Lowry lost his temper. He stood up —and fell back heavily when Gail's hand pulled at his shoulder, detaining him. The trifling pressure against his bruised flesh brought a disproportionate agony that made the room spin dizzily.

  Gail knelt beside him, her eyes enormous with strain. “Bruce, what is it? Are you hurt?”

  “My shoulder,” he said numbly. “I must have struck something in the water. Will you take a look at it?”

  She stripped off his shirt and cried out sharply at the circle of purple bruises that marked the point of his shoulder. Walt Griswold bent to look and cursed softly.

  “They look like finger marks,” he said. “But whoever made them would have had to squeeze hard enough to crush the bones—and he'd have needed seven fingers, besides I”

  They looked at each other blankly. Pascal laughed, and the sound fell harsh and jarring on their silence.

  “The mystery deepens," he gibed. “The two of you sound like Chapter Nine of a juvenile phonovision thriller: What alien form lurks in these dark waters? What sinister being. ..."

  Walt turned on him angrily. “Do you have to play the bumptious ass always, Pascal? Why don’t you sober up?”

  Pascal’s smile was an empty grimace stretching his face to no purpose. He glanced sidewise at his wife and laughed grittily at the entreaty in her eyes.

  “Perhaps I’m not the ass you think,” he said. He dropped his attempt at derision and began to tremble violently. His voice shook. “Well go into that later, Griswold, when the time is right. When I’m sure enough about you and Na—"

  Lowry stood up, brushing Gail aside when she tried to hold him back again.

  “This has gone far enough,” he said. “Shut up, PascaL I won’t have you making trouble here.”

  Nadine had not been watching them; her eyes, embarrassed and unhappy, had wandered to the dome’s forward port. Suddenly she started back and cried out shrilly. Lowry whirled, wondering vaguely if a long-delayed hysterical reaction to her husband’s boorishness had at last struck her. Walt Griswold moved toward her.

  “The port," she whispered. “Outside. ...”

  They recoiled in unison from the thing that clung to the outer surface of the port, spread-eagled against the smooth glass by the hurricane’s force. Water sluiced over it, distorting its grotesque outlines but doing nothing to soften the enormity of its alienness.

  Walt found his tongue first. “Good God," he breathed “Bruce, what is it?'

  “It’s my sea-beast,” Lowry said.

  Through the port it looked exactly as it had in the water of the bay, red eyes glowing contemplatively against its blank, tendriled face. Its multiple flippers clung to the wet glass, holding the pinkish body snail-fashion to the smooth curving surface. Its single boneless hand made a curious insistent motion, a repeated gesture of grasping and twisting.

  Gail held Lowry’s good arm, pressing so tightly against him that the trembling of her body was transmitted to his. “Bruce, what does it want?”

  “It wants to come inside,” Lowry said. He shook himself, throwing off the first shock of its appearance. “It pulled me out of the howler. Now it wants inside, out of the storm— a favor for a favor—and I think it’s earned the right to ask.” They turned on him incredulously.

  “You can’t be serious,” Walt protested. “Bruce, you don’t know what the thing is—you can’t know what it might do! You don’t even know that it helped you.”

  Lowry pulled back his shirt to show the bruises on his shoulder.

  “A seven-fingered hand made those marks. The
creature out there has a hand with seven fingers, and it was on the spot when I went down. What if it isn’t human? I’ve got to give it shelter.”

  Gail shivered. “But it’s a sea-creature, Bruce! Why should it want inside the dome?”

  “It’s no sea-beast,” Lowry said patiently. “It’s something from Outside, Gail. Maybe the pilot of the ship that crashed in the plankton beds. It’s tougher than we are or it couldn’t have lasted this long out there in the howler, but nothing can take that sort of punishment forever. It wants shelter.”

  Marvin Pascal said forcibly, “I won't allow that brute in the dome, Lowry. If you won’t consider your own wife's safety—”

  “It wouldn’t have helped me if it had been hostile,” Lowry cut him off. “I’m going to let it in. If you don’t feel safe you can lock yourself in your bedroom.”

  Pascal moved back, his face working with temper. “I warn you, Lowry. I won't permit itl”

  Lowry ignored him and went to the port. He had to raise his head a little to look up into the alien face outside.

  “I can’t open the port," he said. "The wind would turn the dome inside out. Youll have to come around to the rear entrance, where you left me.”

  It slid aside and was gone from the glass. Gail’s stifled cry reinforced the chill that prickled Lowry’s scalp: “Bruce, it understood you I”

  Walt Griswold let out his breath shakily. “She's right, Bruce. You know what that means?”

  “I know,” Lowry said, and wondered if he did. "It means that the thing is intelligent. Probably a hell of a lot more intelligent than we are.”

  He saw then that Pascal had left the common room, but he had no time to wonder where the big man had gone.

  The port alarm over his communications desk rang stridently. Lowry turned on it in frozen disbelief, and found the bulb under the clamorous bell glowing redly. A rush of damp air whispered up from the storage level, bringing with it the powerful bass howl of the storm.

  “It’s keener than we thought,” Lowry said. "It didn’t wait for us—it’s let itself in.”

  He ran for the lower level stairwell, throwing an order back to Walt Griswold: “Close the port and stay with Gail and Nadine. I’ll go down and check.”

  He had reached the foot of the stairway when Pascal came out of the crawler garage. The big man had taken a hand gun from his machine, a heavy lead-pellet belt pistol of a type used against smaller Venusian land animals.

  "I warned you,” Pascal said. '"When it comes inside under the lights I’m going to kill it.”

  He worked the slide that threw the weapon into firing order. His eyes watched the dark garage doorway warily, their stare curiously bright and fixed.

  "Put the gun away,” Lowry ordered. “The thing is inside already—you fool, do you want to get us all killed?” The alien came out of the darkness of the crawler garage and stood in the full glare of overhead light, its single seven-fingered hand raised toward them.

  It had changed shape greatly during the short time elapsed. Lowry had a disturbed impression of a squat bipedal body without tendrils or flippers, its dripping skin glistening with the raw, wet pinkness of a freshly skinned carcass. Its round red eyes stared without blinking, mirroring the play of thought as alien as its outlandish form.

  Pascal opened fire wthout warning.

  The storeroom racketed to the sound, explosions reverberating deafening from metal walls. Lowry cried out in horror and ran at Pascal, knocking up his arm.

  He was too late—three of Pascals bullets had caught the alien squarely in the middle. It went down slowly while Lowry closed in and wrestled with Pascal for the gun.

  There was no reason left in the man. He fought first to break free and finish the writhing thing on the floor; failing that, he turned on Lowry, screaming incoherencies, and struck at him viciously with the pistol.

  Lowry did not hesitate. He drove a knee with all his strength into Pascal's groin and let him fall, retching, at the foot of the stairwell. Lowry stepped over his twitching body to the alien on the floor.

  It was motionless when Lowry knelt beside it. The feel of it under his hands was like tough gelatin, a fibreless and utterly plastic stuff held in shape by a thin transparent membrane. From the holes in its middle oozed a thick pinkish liquid, a viscous flow that dwindled and ceased while Lowry watched.

  The wounds closed. The thing did not breathe— Lowry had a disconceming conviction that it never had—but there was mside it a powerful beat of life, a pulse unaffected by the tearing shock of Pascal's bullets.

  Walt Griswold came from somewhere to kneel beside Lowry and stare palely at the thing on the floor.

  “It didn't die,” Lowry said. “Maybe it won’t. Well have to get it upstairs and see what can be done.”

  At the stairwell Pascal groaned and sat up unsteadily.

  He had lost his gun in the fight; he made no move to find it now. but sat and watched Lowry with sick, too-bright eyes, hating him.

  “We can't take this thing up to Gail and Nadine,” Walt said protestingly. “Bruce, if bullets won’t kill it. . . .

  “It meant no harm,” Lowry said. “If it lives, maybe it will understand that we mean none. Walt, don’t you see what this may mean? This is no sea-beast—it's the first intelligent alien ever to show itself to men, and we can’t afford to let it die! We’ve got to find out where it came from, what its culture is like, a thousand things . . . This could be the beginning of something bigger than we ever dreamed of—interstellar flight.”

  Walt moved uneasily. “I don't know , . . Bruce, I've great confidence in your judgment, but this—I say it's too damned weird! How can we trust a thing that looks like that?”

  “How would you expect an alien to look?” Lowry countered. “You can’t apply ordinary human prejudice in a case like this! Will you help me get it upstairs now, or must I call the women?”

  Walt flushed and stiffened. “I’ll help."

  Together they lifted the limp body, shrinking a little in spite of themselves at the cold gelatinous feel of it, and carried it up the stairway past the silently glaring Pascal.

  In the common room they found the two women waiting, standing close together as if drawing reassurance each from the other’s uneasiness.

  “We heard the shots,” Nadine said hesitantly. "Bruce, did Marvin—is he all right?”

  Lowry caught the tightening of Walt's face as they stretched the limp alien on the couch, and it occurred to him that Walt, perhaps without formulating the idea wholly, had half hoped that Pascal would be killed. The understanding left Lowry with a firmer sympathy for his friend and fired his impatience against Pascal.

  “I had to rough your husband up a little,” Lowry said. "But he’s not hurt. He’ll be around soon, in our hair again.” He turned back to the pinkish, pulsating body on the

  couch, but could not recall the thousand speculations the thing had aroused in him before the shooting. Thoughts of Pascals unaccountable violence kept recurring; remembering the fixed glitter of his eyes, Lowry wondered if he might have committed a dangerous blunder in leaving the big man alone on the lower level.

  The dome's slender arsenal was there, occupying its own small niche among the rows of freezing tanks and supply crates: explosive grenades for discouraging the titanic sea-beasts that harassed fishers at their nets, gas-powered harpoon launchers for coastline hunting, and the blunt two-handed electrobolt guns that fired high-voltage charges at fantastic amperages.

  Pascals sidearm had proved ineffective against the alien. If the fool should break out one of the electrobolt guns and come back—

  As if on cue to the thought Pascal came up out of the stairwell, an electrobolt gun in his hands. His eyes had a savage glassy shine, and his face was strained tight with purpose.

  “I warned you,” Pascal said thickly. "Stand away from that monster, Lowry—I'm going to burn it.”

  Lowry moved back, cursing himself for his stupidity. The others stood frozen behind him, sensing
that Pascal’s obsession had run past the point of sanity. Only Nadine tried to reason with him.

  “Please, Marvin,” she begged. "It isn’t dangerousl Bruce says—”

  "Bruce says too damned much,” Pascal cut her short. “Stand back, all of you, unless you want—”

  The alien came off the couch too fast for the eye to follow, struck the floor without straightening and darted in a blurred pinkish streak behind the communications desk. Lowry, stunned, was left with a vague impression that it had moved on a double row of short, scuttling legs that could have sprouted only at the instant of its spring.

  Pascal fired involuntarily, unable to halt the constriction of his finger on the firing stud. The blue-white electrobolt discharge crashed across the room, thunderously; the air reeked of ozone, blinding the eyes, searing the nostrils.

  The couch burst apart in a shower of charred fragments. The alien, as if understanding that Pascals gun was single-fire and must be recharged, broke from behind the communications desk and rushed past him down the stairwell.

  Caught in a confusion of relief and dismay, Lowry found himself thinking: It wasn't really hurt from the first. It lay there and studied us, maybe reading our minds. . . .

  Pascal jammed a fresh charge-hull into his gun and went after the alien down the stairwell. Lowry followed them both.

  Pascal had found the master switch for the storage room lights before Lowry reached the bottom of the stairway. The harsh white glare made the place brighter than any Venusian day, throwing surrealistic patterns of black angular shadows between ordered rows of plankton tanks and supply crates.

  Lowry spotted Pascal at once, prowling down an alleyway with his electrobolt gun held at ready. The big man was bent far over in a crouch, searching the shadows with a feral side-to-side swinging of his head. Lowry caught a Glimpse of his eyes, pale and unnaturally intent, and shivered in spite of himself.

  There was no trace of the alien.

  Pascal moved on, alternately vanishing and reappearing through random patterns of light and shadow. The storage room lay silent as a vault, the only sounds a faint hissing from the refrigeration units and the soft scrape of Pascals shoes on the stony floor.