Perilous Planets Part 29

Pattern, George thought. The thing was designed to make use of more than one nervous system. It arranged them in an orderly fas.h.i.+on, with the brains inward for greater protec-tion - and perhaps for another reason.. Maybe there was even a provision for conscious cooperation among the pa.s.sengers: a matrix that somehow promoted the growth of communica-tion cells between the separate brains. If that were so, it would account for their ready success with telepathy. George wished acutely that he could get inside and find out.

Vivian's pain was diminis.h.i.+ng. Hers was the brain opposite George's and she had taken most of the effect of the rock splin-ters. But the fragments were sinking now, slowly, through the gelid substance of the monster's tissues. Watching carefully, George could see them move. When they got to the bottom, they would be excreted, no doubt, just as the indigestible part of their clothing and equipment had been.

George wondered idly which of the remaining two brains was McCarty's and which was Gumb's. The answer proved easy to find. To George's left, as he looked back toward the center of the mound, was a pair of blue eyes set flush with the surface.

They had lids apparently grown from the monster's substance, but thickened and opaque.

To his right, George could make out two tiny openings, ex-tending a few centimeters into the body, which could only be Miss McCarty's ears. George had an impulse to see if he could devise a method of dropping dirt into them.

Anyhow, the question of returning to camp had been settled, at least for the moment. McCarty said nothing more about growing a set of speech organs, although George was sure she was determined to keep on trying.

He didn't think she would succeed. Whatever the mechan-ism was by which these changes in bodily structure were accomplished, amateurs like themselves probably could succeed only under the pressure of considerable emotional strain, and then just with comparatively simple tasks which involve one new structure at a time. And as he had already told McCarty, the speech organs in Man were extraordinarily diverse and complicated.

It occurred to George that speech might be achieved by creating a thin membrane to serve as a diaphragm, and an air chamber behind it, with a set of muscles to produce the necessary vibrations and modulate them. He kept the notion to himself, though, because he did not want to go back.

George was a rare bird: a scientist who was actually fitted for his work and loved it for its own sake. And right now he was sitting squarely in the middle of the most powerful re-search tool that had ever existed in his field: a protean organ-ism, with the observer inside it, able to order its structure and watch the results; able to devise theories of function and test them on the tissues of what was effectively his own body - able to construct new organs, new adaptations to environment!

George saw himself at the point of an enormous cone of new knowledge and some of the possibilities he glimpsed humbled and awed him.

He couldn't go back, even if it were possible to do it without getting killed. If only he alone had fallen in - No, then the others would have pulled him out and killed the monster.

There were, he felt, too many problems demanding solu-tions all at once. It was hard to concentrate; his mind kept slipping maddeningly out of focus.

Vivian, whose pain had stopped some time ago, began to wail again. Gumbs snapped at her. McCarty cursed both of them. George himself felt that he had had very nearly all he could take, cooped up with three idiots who had no more sense than to squabble among themselves.

'Wait a minute,' he said. 'Do you all feel the same way? Irritable? Jumpy? As if you'd been working for sixty hours straight and were too tired to sleep?'

'Stop talking like a video ad,' Vivian said angrily. 'Haven't we got enough trouble without-'

'We're hungry,' George interrupted. 'We didn't realize it, because we haven't got the organs that usually signal hunger. But the last thing this body ate was us, and that was a whole day ago. We've got to find something to ingest. And soon, I'd say.'

'Good Lord, you're right,' said Gumbs. 'But if this thing only eats people - I mean to say-'

'It never met people until we landed,' George replied curtly. 'Any protein should do.'

He started off in what he hoped was the direction they had been following all along - directly away from camp. At least, he thought, if they put enough distance behind them, they might get thoroughly lost.

III.

They moved out of the trees and down the long slope of a valley, over a wiry carpet of dead gra.s.ses, until they reached a watercourse in which a thin trickle was still flowing. Far down the bank, partly screened by clumps of skeletal shrub-bery, George saw a group of animals that looked vaguely like miniature pigs. He told the others about it, and started cautiously in that direction.

'Which way is the wind blowing, Vivian?' he asked. 'Can you feel it?'

She said, 'No. I could before, when we were going downhill, but now I think we're facing into it.'

'Good. We may be able to sneak up on them.'

'But we're not going to eat animals, are we?'

'Yes, how about it, Meister?' Gumbs put in. 'I don't say I'm a squeamish fellow, but after all-'

George, who felt a little squeamish himself - like all the others, he had been brought up on a diet of yeasts and syn-thetic protein - said testily, 'What else can we do?

You've got eyes; you can see that it's autumn here. Autumn after a hot summer, at that. Trees bare, streams dried up. We eat meat or go without - or would you rather hunt for insects?'

Gumbs, shocked to the core, muttered for a while and then gave up.

Seen at closer range, the animals looked less porcine and even more unappetizing than before. They had lean, segmented, pinkish-gray bodies, four short legs, flaring ears, and blunt scimitar-like snouts with which they were rooting in the ground, occasionally turning up something which they gulped, ears flapping.

George counted thirty of them, grouped fairly closely in a little s.p.a.ce of clear ground between the bushes and the river. They moved slowly, but their short legs looked powerful; he guessed that they could run fast enough when they had to.

He inched forward, keeping his eye-stalks low, stopping instantly whenever one of the beasts looked up. Moving with increasing caution, he had approached to within ten meters of the nearest when McCarty said abruptly: 'Meister, has it occurred to you to wonder just how we are going to eat these animals?'

'Don't be foolish,' he said irritably. 'We'll just-' He stop-ped, baffled.

Did the thing's normal method of a.s.similation stop as soon as it got a tenant? Were they supposed to grow fangs and a gullet and all the rest of the apparatus?

Impossible; they'd starve to death first. But on the other hand - d.a.m.n this fuzzy- headed feeling - wouldn't it have to stop, to prevent the tenant from being digested with his first meal?

'Well?' McCarty demanded.

That guess was wrong, George knew, but he couldn't say why; and it was a distinctly unpleasant thought. Or, even worse, suppose the meal became the tenant, and the tenant the meal?

The nearest animal's head went up, and four tiny red eyes stared directly at George. The floppy ears snapped to atten-tion. It was not time for speculation.

'He's seen us!' George shouted mentally. 'Run!'

One instant they were lying still in the p.r.i.c.kly dry gra.s.s; the next they were skimming across the ground, with the herd galloping away straight ahead of them.

The hams of the nearest beast loomed up closer and closer, bounding furiously; then they had run it down and vaulted over it.

Casting an eye backward, George saw that it was lying motionless in the gra.s.s - unconscious or dead.

They ran down another one. The anesthetic, George thought lucidly. One touch does it. And another, and another. Of course we can digest them, he thought, with relief. It has to be selective to begin with or it couldn't have separated out our nervous tissue.

Four down. Six down. Three more together as the herd bunched between the last arm of the thicket and the steep river-bank; then two that tried to double back; then four stragglers, one after the other.

The rest of the herd disappeared into the tall gra.s.s up the slope, but fifteen bodies were strewn-behind them.

Taking no chances, George went back to the beginning of the line and edged the monster's body under the first carca.s.s.

'Crouch down, Gumbs,' he said. 'We have to slide under it ... that's far enough.

Leave the head hanging over.'

'What for?' barked the soldier.

'You don't want his brain in here with us, do you? We don't know how many this thing is equipped to take. It might even like this one better than any of ours. But I can't see it bother-ing to keep the rest of the nervous system, if we make sure not to eat the head.'

'Oh!' said Vivian.

'I beg your pardon, Miss Bellis,' George said contritely. 'It shouldn't be too unpleasant, though, if we don't let it bother us. It isn't as if we had taste buds or-'

'It's all right,' she said. 'Just please lets not talk about it.'

'I should think not,' Gumbs put in. 'A little more tact, don't you think, Meister?'

Accepting this reproof, George turned his attention to the corpse that lay on the monster's glabrous surface, between his section and Gumbs's. It was sinking, just visibly, into the flesh. A cloud of opacity was spreading around it.

When it was almost gone and the neck had been severed, they moved on to the next.

This time, at George's suggestion, they took aboard two at once. Gradually their irritable mood faded; they began to feel at ease and cheerful, and George found it possible to think consecutively without having vital points slip out of his reach.

They were on their eighth and ninth courses, and George was happily engaged in an intricate chain of speculation as to the monster's circulatory system, when Miss McCarty broke a long silence to announce: 'I have now perfected a method by which we can return to camp safely. We will begin at once.'

Startled and dismayed, George turned his eyes toward McCarty's quadrant of the monster. Protruding from the rim was a stringy, joined something that looked like - yes, it was! -a grotesque but recognizable arm and hand. As he watched, the lumpy fingers fumbled with a blade of gra.s.s, tugged, up-rooted it.

'Major Gumbs!' said McCarty. 'It will be your task to locate the following articles as quickly as possible. One, a sur-face suitable for writing. I suggest a large leaf, light in color, dry but not brittle, or a tree from which a large section of bark can be easily peeled. Two, a pigment. No doubt you will be able to discover berries yielding suitable juice. If not, mud will do. Three, a twig or reed for use as a pen. When you have directed me to all these essential items, I will employ them to write a message outlining our predicament. You will read the result and point out any errors, which I will then correct. When the message is completed, we will return with it to the camp, approaching at night, and deposit it in a conspicuous place. We will retire until daybreak, and when the message has been read, we will approach again. Begin, Major.'

'Well, yes,' said Gumbs, 'that ought to work, except -I sup-pose you've figured out some system for holding the pen, Miss McCarty?'

'Fool!' she replied. 'I have made a hand, of course.'

'Well, in that case, by all means. Let's see, I believe we might try this thicket first- ' Their common body gave a lurch in that direction.

George held back. 'Wait a minute,' he said desperately. 'Let's at least have the common sense to finish this meal be-fore we go. There's no telling when we'll get another.'

McCarty demanded, 'How large are these creatures, Major?'

'About sixty centimeters long, I should say.'

'And we have consumed nine of them, is that correct?'

'Nearer eight,' George corrected. 'These two are only half gone.'

'In other words,' McCarty said, 'we have had two apiece. That should be ample.

Don't you agree, Major?'

George said earnestly, 'Miss McCarty, you're thinking in terms of human food requirements, whereas this organism has a different metabolic rate and at least three times the ma.s.s of four human beings. Look at it this way - the four of us to-gether had a ma.s.s of about three hundred kilos, and yet twenty hours, after this thing absorbed us, it was hungry again. Well, these animals wouldn't weigh much more than twenty kilos apiece at one G - and according to your scheme, we've got to hold out until after daybreak tomorrow.'

'Something in that,' Gumbs agreed. 'Yes, on the whole, Miss McCarty, I think we had better forage while we can. It won't take us more than half an hour longer, at this rate.'

'Very well. Be as quick as you can, though.'

They moved on to the next pair of victims. George's brain was working furiously. It was no good arguing with McCarty. If he could only convince Gumbs, then Bellis would fall in with the majority - maybe. It was the only hope he had.

'Gumbs,' he said, 'have you given any thought to what's going to happen to us when we get back?'

'Not my line, you know. I leave that to the technical fellows like yourself.'

'No, that isn't what I mean. Suppose you were the CO of this team, and four other people had fallen into this organism instead of us-'

'What? What? I don't follow.'

George patiently repeated it.

'Yes, I see what you mean. So?'

'What orders would you give?'

Gumbs thought a moment. 'Turn the thing over to the bio section, I suppose.'

'You don't think you might order it destroyed as a possible menace?'

'Good Lord, I suppose I might. No, but you see, we'll be careful what we say in the note. We'll point out that we're a valuable specimen and so on. Handle with care.'

'All right,' George said, 'suppose that works, then what? Since it's out of your line, I'll tell you. Nine chances out of ten, bio section will cla.s.sify us as a possible biological enemy weapon. That means, first of all, that we'll go through a full-dress interrogation and I don't have to tell you what that can be like-'

'Major Gumbs,' said McCarty strictly, 'Meister will be executed for disloyalty at the first opportunity. You are for-bidden to talk to him, under the same penalty.'

'But she can't stop you from listening to me," George said tensely. 'In the second place, Gumbs, they'll take samples. Without anesthesia. Finally, they'll either destroy us just the same, or they'll send us back to the nearest strong point for more study. We will then be Federation property, Gumbs, in a top-secret category, and since n.o.body in Intelligence will ever dare to take the responsibility of clearing us, we'll stay there.

'Gumbs, this is a valuable specimen, but it will never do anybody any good if we go back to camp. Whatever we dis-cover about it, even if it's knowledge that could save billion of lives, that will be top-secret, too, and it'll never get past the walls of Intelligence ... If you're still hoping that they can get you out of this, you're wrong.

This isn't like limb grafts. Your whole body has been destroyed, Gumbs, everything but your nervous system and your eyes. The only new body we'll get is the one we make ourselves. We've got to stay here and - and work this out ourselves.'

'Major Gumbs,' said McCarty, 'I think we have wasted quite enough time. Begin your search for the materials I need.'

For a moment, Gumbs was silent and their collective body did not move.

Then he said: 'Miss McCarty - unofficially, of course -there's one point I'd like your opinion on. Before we begin. That is to say, they'll be able to patch together some sort of bodies for us, don't you think? I mean one technical fellow says one thing, another says the opposite. Do you see what I'm driving at?'

George had been watching McCarty's new limb uneasily. It was flexing rhythmically and, he was almost certain, gradually growing larger. The fingers groped in the dry gra.s.s, plucking first a single blade, then two together, finally a whole tuft. Now she said: 'I have no opinion. Major. The question is irrelevant. Our duty is to return to camp. That is all we need to know.'

'Oh, I quite agree with you there,' said Gumbs. 'And besides,' he added, 'there really isn't any alternative, is there?'

George, staring down at one of the fingerlike projections visible below the rim of the monster, was pa.s.sionately willing it to turn into an arm. He had, he suspected, started much too late.

'The alternative,' he said, 'is simply to keep on going as we are. Even if the Federation holds this planet for a century, there'll be places on it that will never be explored. We'll be safe.'

'I mean to say,' Gumbs went on as if he had only paused for thought, 'a fellow can't very well cut himself off from civiliza-tion, can he?' There was a thoughtful tone to his voice.

Again George felt a movement toward the thicket; again he resisted it. Then he found himself overpowered as another set of muscles joined themselves to Gumbs's.

Quivering, crab-wise, the Something-or-other meisterii moved, half a meter Then it stopped, straining.

'I believe you, Mr. Meister - George,' Vivian Bellis said. 'I don't want to go back.