 THE LEACH by Philips Barbie. A visitor should be fed, but this one could eat you out of house and home, literally. The leach was waiting for food. For millennia it had been drifting across the vast emptiness of space. Without consciousness it had spent the countless centuries and the void between the stars. It was unaware when it finally reached a sun. Life-giving radiation flared around the hard dry spore. Gravitation tugged at it. A planet claimed it with other stellar debris, and the leach fell, still dead-seeming within its tough spore case. One speck of dust among many, the winds blew it around the earth, played with it, and let it fall. On the ground it began to stir, nourishment soaked in, permeating the spore case. It grew and fed. Frank Connors came up on the porch and coughed twice. "'Say, pardon me, Professor,' he said. The long, pale man didn't stir from the sagging couch. His horn-rimmed glasses were perched on his forehead, and he was snoring very gently. "'I'm awful sorry to disturb you,' Connors said, pushing back his battered felt hat. "'I know it's your resting-week, and all. But there's something damn funny in the ditch. The pale man's left eyebrow twitched, but he showed no other sign of having heard.' Frank Connors coughed again, holding his spade in one purple-veined hand. "'Did you hear me, Professor?' "'Of course I heard you,' Michael said in a muffled voice. His eyes still closed. "'I found a pixie.' "'A what?' Connors asked, squinting at Michael's. "'A little man in a green suit. Feed him milk, Connors. "'No, sir, I think it's a rock.' Michael's opened one eye and focused it in Connors' general direction. "'I'm awfully sorry about it,' Connors said. Professor Michael's resting-week was a ten-year-old custom, and his only eccentricity. All winter, Michael's taught anthropology, worked on half a dozen committees, dabbled in physics and chemistry, and still found time to write a book a year. When summer came, he was tired. Arriving at his worked-out New York State Farm, it was his invariable rule to do absolutely nothing for a week. He hired Frank Connors to cook for that week, and generally make himself useful, while Professor Michael slept. During the second week, Michael's would wander around, look at the trees, and fish. By the third week, he would be getting a tan, reading, repairing the shreds, and climbing mountains. At the end of four weeks, he could hardly wait to get back to the setting. But the resting-week was sacred. "'I really wouldn't bother you for anything small,' Connors said, apologetically. But that damn rock melted two inches off my spade.' Michael's opened both eyes and sat up. Connors held off the spade. The rounded end was sheared cleanly off. Michael swung himself off the couch, and slipped his feet into battered moccasins. "'Let's see this wonder,' he said. The object was lying in the ditch at the end of the front lawn, three feet from the main road. It was round, about the size of a truck tire, and solid throughout. It was about an inch thick, as far as he could tell, grayish-black and intricately vanged. "'Don't touch it,' Connors warned. "'I'm not going to. Let me have your spade.' Michael's took the spade and prodded the object experimentally. It was completely unyielding. He held the spade to the surface for a moment, then withdrew it. Another inch was gone. Michael's frowned, and pushed his glasses tighter against his nose. He held the spade against the rock with one hand. The other held close to the surface. More of the spade disappeared. "'Doesn't seem to be generating heat,' he said to Connors. "'Did you notice any the first time?' Connors shook his head. Michael's picked up a clot of dirt and tossed it on the object. The dirt dissolved quickly, leaving no trace on the gray-black surface. A large stone followed the dirt and disappeared in the same way. "'Isn't that just about the damnedest thing you ever saw, Professor?' Connors asked. "'Yes,' Michael's agreed, standing up again. "'It just about is.' He hefted the spade and brought it down smartly on the object. When it hit, he almost dropped the spade. He had been gripping the handle rigidly, brazed for a recoil, but the spade struck that unyielding surface and stayed. There was no perceptible give, but absolutely no recoil. "'Whatcha think it is?' Connors asked. "'It's no stone,' Michael said. He stepped back. "'A leech drinks blood. This thing seems to be drinking dirt and spades.' He struck it a few more times, experimentally. The two men looked at each other. On the road, half a dozen army trucks rolled past. "'I'm going to fund the college and ask a physics man about it,' Michael said, or a biologist. "'I'd like to get rid of that thing before it spoils my lawn.' They walked back to the house. Everything fed the leech. The wind added its modicum of kinetic energy, ruffling across the grey-black surface. Rain fell, and the force of each individual drop added to its store. The water was sucked in by the all-absorbing surface. The sunlight above it was absorbed, and converted into mass for its body. Beneath it the soil was consumed, dirt, stones, and branches broken down by the leech's complex cells, and changed into energy. Energy was converted back into mass, and the leech grew. Slowly, the first flickers of consciousness began to return. Its first realization was of the impossible smallness of its body. It grew. When Michael's looked the next day, the leech was eight feet across, sticking out into the road and up the side of the lawn. The following day it was almost eighteen feet in diameter, shaped to fit the contour of the ditch, and covering most of the road. That day the sheriff drove up in his Model A, followed by half the town. "'Is that your leech thing?' Professor Michael's sheriff flan asked. "'That's it,' Michael said. He had spent the past days looking unsuccessfully for an acid that would dissolve the leech. "'We've got to get it out of the road,' flan said, walking truculently up to the leech. "'Something like this. You can't let it block the road, Professor. The army's got to use this road.' "'I'm terribly sorry,' Michael said with a straight face. "'Go right ahead, sheriff, but be careful. It's hot.' The leech wasn't hot, but it seemed the simplest explanation under the circumstances. Michael's watched with interest as the sheriff tried to shove a crowbar under it. He smiled to himself when it was removed, with half a foot of its length gone. The sheriff wasn't so easily discouraged. He had come prepared for a stubborn piece of rock. He went to the rumble-seat of his car and took out a blowtorch and a sledgehammer, ignited the torch and focused it on one edge of the leech. After five minutes there was no change. The gray didn't turn red or even seem to heat up. Sheriff Linn continued to bake it for fifteen minutes, then called to one of the men. "'Hit that spot with the sledge, Jerry.' Jerry picked up the sledgehammer, motioned the sheriff back, and swung it over his head. He let out a howl as the hammer struck unyieldingly. There was an affraction of recoil. In the distance they heard the roar of an army convoy. "'Now we'll get some action,' Linn said. Michael's wasn't so sure. He walked around the periphery of the leech, asking himself what kind of substance would react that way. The answer was easy. No substance. No known substance. The driver and the lead jeep held up his hand, and the long convoy ground to a halt. A hard, efficient-looking officer stepped out of the jeep. From the star on either shoulder, Michael's knew he was a brigadier general. "'You can't block this road,' the general said. He was a tall, spare man, and suntans, with a sunburned face and cold eyes. Please clear that thing away.' "'We can't move it,' Michael said. He told the general what had happened in the past few days. "'It must be moved,' the general said. This convoy must go through. He walked closer and looked at the leech. You say it can't be jacked up by a crowbar. A torch won't burn it.' "'That's right,' Michael said, smiling, faintly. "'Driver,' the general said over his shoulder, right over it. Michael started to protest, but stopped himself. The military mind would have to find out in its own way.' The driver put his jeep in gear and shot forward, jumping the leeches four-inch edge. The jeep got to the center of the leech and stopped. "'I didn't tell you to stop,' the general bellowed. "'I didn't, sir,' the driver protested. The jeep had been yanked to a stop and had stalled. The driver started it again, shifted to four-wheel drive, and tried to ram forward. The jeep was fixed immovably, as though set in concrete. "'Pardon me,' Michael said. "'If you look, you can see that the tires are melting down.' The general stared, his hand creeping automatically toward his pistol-belt. Then he shouted, "'Jump, driver. Don't touch that gray stuff.' Right-faced, the driver climbed to the hood of his jeep, looked around him, and jumped clear. There was complete silence as everyone watched the jeep. First its tires melted down, and then the rims. The body, resting on the gray surface, melted too. The aerial was the last to go. The general began to swear softly under his breath. He turned to the driver. "'Go back and have some men bring up hand grenades and dynamite.' The driver ran back to the convoy. "'I don't know what you've got here,' the general said, but it's not going to stop a U.S. Army convoy.' Michael's wasn't so sure. The leech was nearly awake now, and its body was calling for more and more food. It dissolved the soil under it at a furious rate, filling it in with its own body, flowing outward. A large object landed on it, and that gained food also. Then suddenly a burst of energy against its surface, and then another, and another. It consumed them gratefully, converting them into mass. Little metal pellets struck it, and their kinetic energy was absorbed, their mass converted. More explosions took place, hoping to fill the starving cells. It began to sense things. Controlled combustion around it, vibrations of wind, mass movements. There was another, greater explosion, a taste of real food. Gratefully it ate, growing faster. It waited anxiously for more explosions, while its cells screamed for food. But no more came. It continued to feed on the soil and on the sun's energy. Night came, noticeable for its lesser energy possibilities, and then more days and nights. Vibrating objects continued to move around it. It ate, and grew, and flowed. Michael stood on a little hill, watching the dissolution of his house. The leech was several hundred yards across now, lapping at his front porch. Good-bye, home, Michael's thought, remembering the ten summers he had spent there. The porch collapsed into the body of the leech. Bit by bit, the house crumpled. The leech looked like a field of lava now, a blasted spot on the green earth. Pardon me, sir, a soldier said, coming up behind him. General O'Donnell would like to see you. Right, Michael said, and took his last look at the house. He followed the soldiers through the barbed wire that had been set up in a half-mile circle around the leech. A company of soldiers was on guard around it, keeping back the reporters and the hundreds of curious people who had flocked to the scene. Michael's wondered why he was still allowed inside. Probably he decided, because most of this was taking place on his land. The soldier brought him to a tent. Michael stooped and went in. General O'Donnell, still in his suntanse, was seated at a small desk. He motioned Michael's to a chair. I've been put in charge of getting rid of this leech, he said to Michael's. Michael's nodded, not commenting, on the advisability of giving a soldier a scientist's job. You're a professor, aren't you? Yes, anthropology. Good. Smoke. The general lighted Michael's cigarette. I'd like you to stay around here in an advisory capacity. You were one of the first to see this leech. I'd appreciate your observations on, he smiled, the enemy. I'd be glad to, Michael said. However, I think this is more in the line of a physicist or a biochemist. I don't want this place cluttered with scientists, General O'Donnell said, frowning at the tip of his cigarette. Don't get me wrong. I have the greatest appreciation for science. I am, if I do say so, a scientific soldier. I'm always interested in the latest weapons. You can't fight any kind of war anymore without science. O'Donnell's sunburn face grew firm. But I can't have a team of long hairs poking around this thing for the next month, holding me up. My job is to destroy it, by any means in my power, and at once. I am going to do just that. I don't think you'll find it that easy, Michael said. That's what I want you for, O'Donnell said. Tell me why, and I'll figure out a way of doing it. Well, as far as I can figure out, the leech is an organic mass energy converter and a frighteningly efficient one. I would guess that it has a double cycle. First it converts mass into energy, then back into mass for its body. Second, energy is converted directly into the body mass. How this takes place, I do not know. The leech is not protoplasmic. It may not even be cellular. So we need something big against it, O'Donnell interrupted. Well, that's all right. I've got some big stuff here. I don't think you understand me, Michael said. Perhaps I'm not phrasing this very well. The leech eats energy. It can consume the strength of any energy weapon you use against it. What happens, O'Donnell asked, if it keeps on eating? I have no idea what its growth limits are, Michael said. Its growth may be limited only by its food source. You mean it could continue to grow probably forever? It could possibly grow as long as it had something to feed on. This is really a challenge, O'Donnell said. That leech can't be totally impervious to force. It seems to be. I suggest you get some physicists in here. Some biologists also have them figure out a way of nullifying it. The general put out his cigarette. Professor, I cannot wait while scientists wrangle. There is an axiom of mine, which I'm going to tell you. He paused impressively. Nothing is impervious to force. Muster enough force and anything will give. Anything. Professor, the general continued, in a friendlier town, you shouldn't sell short the science you represent. We have, Mast under North Hill, the greatest accumulation of energy and radioactive weapons ever assembled in one spot. Do you think your leech can stand the full force of them? I suppose it's possible to overload the thing, Michael said doubtfully. He realized now why the general wanted him around. He supplied the trappings of science without the authority to override O'Donnell. Come with me, general O'Donnell said cheerfully, getting up and holding back a flap of the tent. We're going to crack that leech in half. After a long wait, rich food started to come again, piped into one side of it. First there was only a little, and then more and more. Radiations, vibrations, explosions, solids, liquids and amazing variety of edibles. It accepted them all. But the food was coming too slowly for the starving cells, for new cells were constantly adding their demands to the rest. The ever-hungry body screamed for more food, faster. Now that it had reached a fairly efficient size, it was fully awake. It puzzled over the energy impressions around it, locating the source of the new food, Mast in one spot. Effortlessly, it pushed itself into the air, flew a little way and dropped on the food. Its super-efficient cells eagerly gulped the rich radioactive substances, but it did not ignore the lesser potentials of metal and clumps of carbohydrates. The damn fools, general O'Donnell said, why did they have to panic? You'd think they'd never been trained. He paced the ground outside his tent, now in a new location three miles back. The leech had grown to two miles in diameter. Three farming communities had been evacuated. Michaels, standing beside the general, was still stupefied by the memory. The leech had accepted the mass power of the weapons for a while, and then its entire bulk had lifted in the air. The sun had been blotted out as it flew leisurely over North Hill and dropped. There should have been time for evacuation, but the frightened soldiers had been blind with fear. 67 men were lost in operation leech, and general O'Donnell asked permission to use atomic bombs. Washington sent a group of scientists to investigate the situation. Haven't those experts decided yet, O'Donnell said, halting angrily in front of the tent? They've been talking long enough. It's a hard decision, Michaels said. Since he wasn't an official member of the investigating team, he had given his information and left. The physicists consider it a biological matter, and the biologists seem to think the chemists should have the answer. No one's an expert on this, because it's never happened before. We just don't have the data. It's a military problem, O'Donnell said harshly. I'm not interested in what the thing is. I want to know what can destroy it. They'd better give me permission to use the bomb. Michaels had made his own calculations on that. It was impossible to say for sure, but taking a flying guess at the leeches mass energy absorption rate, figuring in its size and apparent capacity for growth, an atomic bomb might overload it, if used soon enough. He estimated three days as the limit of usefulness. The leech was growing at a geometric rate. It could cover the United States in a few months. For a week, I've been asking permission to use the bomb, O'Donnell grumbled, and I'll get it, but not after those jackasses in their damn talking. He stopped pacing and turned to Michaels. I am going to destroy the leech. I am going to smash it. If that's the last thing I do, it's more than a matter of security now. It's personal pride. That attitude might make great generals, Michael thought, but it wasn't the way to consider the problem. It was anthropomorphic of O'Donnell to see the leech as an enemy. Even the identification, leech, was a humanizing factor. O'Donnell was dealing with it as he would any physical obstacle, as though the leech were the simple equivalent of a large army. But the leech was not human, not even of this planet. Perhaps. It should be dealt with in its own terms. Here come the bright boys now, O'Donnell said. From a nearby tent, a group of weary men emerged, led by Allinson, a government biologist. Well, the general asked, have you figured out what it is? Just a minute, I'll hack off a sample, Allinson said, glaring through red-rimmed eyes. Have you figured out some scientific way of killing it? Oh, that wasn't too difficult. Moriarty, an atomic physicist, said Riley, wrap it in a perfect vacuum. That'll do the trick, or blow it off the earth with anti-gravity. But failing that, Allinson said, we suggest you use your atomic bombs and use them fast. Is that the opinion of your entire group? O'Donnell asked, his eyes glittering. Yes. The general hurried away. Michaels joined the scientists. He should have called us in at the very first. Allinson complained. There's no time to consider anything but force now. Have you come to any conclusions about the nature of the leech? Michaels asked. Only general ones, Moriarty said. And they're about the same as yours. The leech is probably extraterrestrial in origin. It seems to have been in a sports stage until it landed on earth. He paused to light a pipe. Incidentally, we should be damn glad it didn't drop in an ocean. We'd have had the earth eaten out from under us before we knew what we were looking for. They walked in silence for a few minutes. As you mentioned, it's a perfect converter. It can transform mass into energy and any energy into mass, Moriarty grinned. Naturally, that's impossible. And I have figures to prove it. I'm going to get a drink, Allinson said. Anyone coming? Best idea of the week, Michaels said. I wonder how long it'll take O'Donnell to get permission to use the bomb. If I know politics, Moriarty said, too long. The findings of the government scientists were checked by other government scientists. That took a few days. Then Washington wanted to know if there wasn't some alternative to exploding an atomic bomb in the middle of New York State. It took a little time to convince them of the necessity. After that, people had to be evacuated, which took more time. Then orders were made out and five atomic bombs were checked out of a cachet. A patrol rocket was assigned, given orders, and put under General O'Donnell's command. This took a day more. Finally, the stubby scout rocket was winging its way over New York. From the air, the grayish-black spot was easy to find. Like a festered wound, it stretched between Lake Placid and Elizabeth Town, covering Keen and Keen Valley and lapping at the edges of Jay. The first bomb was released. It had been a long wait after the first rich food. The greater radiation of day was followed by the lesser energy of night many times as the leech ate away the earth beneath it, absorbed the air around it, and grew. Then, one day, an amazing burst of energy. Everything was food for the leech, but there was always the possibility of choking. The energy poured over it, drenched it, battered it, and the leech grew frantically, trying to contain the titanic dose. Still small, it quickly reached its overload limit. The strain cells, filled to association, were given more and more food. The strangling body built new cells at lightning speed, and it held. The energy was controlled, stimulating further growth. More cells took over the load, sucking in the food. The next doses were wonderfully palatable, easily handled. The leech overflowed its bounds, growing, eating, and growing. That was a taste of real food. The leech was as near ecstasy as it had ever been. It waited hopefully for more, but no more came. It went back to feeding on the earth. The energy, used to produce more cells, was soon dissipated. Soon it was hungry again. It would always be hungry. O'Donnell retreated with his demoralized men. They camped 10 miles from the leech's southern edge, in the evacuated town of Shroon Lake. The leech was over 60 miles in diameter now, and still growing fast. It lay sprawled over the Adirondack Mountains, completely blanketing everything from Serenac Lake to Port Henry, with one edge of it over Westport and Lake Champlain. Everyone within 200 miles of the leech was evacuated. General O'Donnell was given permission to use hydrogen bombs, contingent on the approval of his scientists. What have the bright boys decided, O'Donnell wanted to know? He and Michaels were in the living room of an evacuated Shroon Lake house. O'Donnell had made it his new command post. Why are they hedging, O'Donnell demanded impatiently. The leech has to be blown up quick. What are they fooling around for? They're afraid of a chain reaction, Michaels told him. A concentration of hydrogen bombs might set up in the earth's crust, or in the atmosphere. It might do any of half a dozen things. Perhaps they'd like me to order a bayonet attack, O'Donnell said contemptuously. Michael sighed and sat down in an arm chair. He was convinced that the whole method was wrong. The government scientists were being rushed into a single line of inquiry. The pressure upon them was so great that they didn't have a chance to consider any other approach but force, and the leech thrived on that. Michaels was certain that there were times when fighting fire with fire was not apple cobalt. Fire, Loki, God of Fire, and of trickery. No, there was no answer there. But Michael's mind was in mythology now, retreating from the unbearable present. Allyson came in, followed by six other men. Well, Allyson said, there's a damned good chance of splitting the earth wide open if you use the number of bombs our figures show you need. You have to take chances in war. O'Donnell replied bluntly, shall I go ahead? Michael saw suddenly that O'Donnell didn't care if he did crack the earth. The red-faced general only knew that he was going to set off the greatest explosion ever produced by the hand of man. Not so fast, Allyson said. I'll let the others speak for themselves. The general contained himself with difficulty. Remember, he said, according to your own figures, the leech is growing at the rate of 20 feet an hour. And speeding up, Allyson added, but this isn't the decision to be made in haste. Michael's found his mind wandering again to the lightning bolts of Zeus. That was what they needed, or the strength of Hercules. Or he sat up suddenly, gentlemen, I believe I can offer you a possible alternative, although it was a very dim one. They stared at him. Have you ever heard of Antaeus? He asked. The more at the leech ate, the faster it grew, and the hungrier it became. Although its birth was forgotten, it did remember a long way back. It had eaten a planet in that ancient past, grown tremendous, ravenous. It had made the journey to a nearby star and eaten that, replenishing the cells, converted into energy for the trip. But then there was no more food, and the next star was an enormous distance away. It sat out on the journey, but long before it reached the food, its energy ran out. Mass, converted back to energy to make the trip, was used up. It shrank. Finally, all the energy was gone. It was a spore, drifting aimlessly, lifelessly in space. That was the first time, or was it? It thought it could remember back to a distant, misty time when the universe was evenly covered with stars. It had eaten through them, cutting away whole sections, growing, swelling, and the stars had swung off in terror, forming galaxies and constellations. Or was that a dream? Methodically, it fed on the earth, wandering where the rich food was. And then it was back again, but this time above the leech. It waited, but the tantalizing food remained out of reach. It was able to sense how rich and pure the food was. Why didn't it fall? For a long time the leech waited, but the food stayed out of reach. At last it lifted and followed. The food retreated up from the surface of the planet. The leech went after it as quickly as its bulk would allow. The rich food fled out into space, and the leech followed. Beyond, it could sense an even richer source. The hot, wonderful food of a sun. O'Donnell served champagne for the scientists in the control room. Official dinners would follow, but this was a victory celebration. A toast, the general said, standing. The men raised their glasses. The only man not drinking was a lieutenant, sitting in front of the control board that guided the drone's spaceship. To Michaels, for thinking of, what was it again, Michaels? Anteus. Michaels had been drinking champagne steadily, but he didn't feel elated. Anteus, born of G, the earth, and Poseidon, the sea. The invincible wrestler. Each time Hercules threw him to the ground, he arose refreshed, until Hercules held him in the air. Moriarty was muttering to himself, figuring with slide-roll, pencil, and paper. Allyson was drinking, but he didn't look too happy about it. Come on, you birds of evil omen. O'Donnell said, pouring more champagne. Figure it out later, right now, drink. He turned to the operator. How's it going? Michaels' analogy had been applied to a spaceship. The ship, operated by remote control, was filled with pure radioactives. It hovered over the leech until, rising to the bait, it had followed. Anteus had left his mother, the earth, and was losing strength in the air. The operator was allowing the spaceship to run fast enough to keep out of the leech's grasp, but close enough to keep it coming. The spaceship and the leech were on a collision course with the sun. Fine, sir, the operator said. It's inside the orbit of Mercury now. Men, the general said, I swore to destroy that thing. This isn't exactly the way I wanted to do it. I figured on a more personal way, but the important thing is the destruction. You will all witness it. Destruction is at times a sacred mission. This is such a time. Men, I feel wonderful. Turn the spaceship. It was Moriarty who had spoken. His face was white. Turn the damn thing. He shoved his figures at them. They were easy to read. The growth rate of the leech, the energy consumption rate, estimated, its speed in space, a constant. The energy it would receive from the sun as it approached an exponential curve, its energy absorption rate, figured in terms of growth, expressed as a hyped-up, discontinuous progression. The result? It'll consume the sun, Moriarty said, very quietly. The control room turned into a bedlam. Six of them tried to explain it to Adonal at the same time. Then Moriarty tried, and finally, Allyson. Its rate of growth is so great, and its speed so slow, and it will get so much energy that the leech will be able to consume the sun by the time it gets there, or at least to live off it until it can consume it. Adonal didn't bother to understand. He turned to the operator. Turn it, he said. They all hovered over the radar screen, waiting. The food turned out of the leech's path and streaked away. Ahead was a tremendous source, but still a long way off. The leech hesitated. Its cells, recklessly expending energy, shouted for a decision. The food slowed, tantalizingly nearer. The closer source, or the greater. The leech's body wanted food, now. It started after it, away from the sun. The sun would come next. Put it out at right angles to the plane of the solar system, balanced and said. The operator touched the controls. On the radar screen, they saw a blob pursuing a dot. It had turned. Relief washed over them. It had been close. In what portion of the sky would the leech be? O'Donnell asked, his face expressionless. Come outside. I believe I can show you, an astronomer said. They walked to the door. Somewhere in that section, the astronomer said, pointing. Fine. All right, soldier. O'Donnell told the operator, carry out your orders. The scientists gasped in unison. The operator manipulated the controls, and the blob began to overtake the dot. Michael started across the room. Stop, the general said, and his strong, commanding voice stopped Michael's. I know what I'm doing. I had that ship especially built. The blob overtook the dot on the radar screen. I told you this was a personal matter, O'Donnell said. I swore to destroy that leech. We can never have any security while it lives. He smiled. Shall we look at the sky? The general strolled to the door, followed by the scientists. Pushed the button, soldier. The operator did. For a moment nothing happened. And the sky lit up. A bright star hung in space. Its brilliance filled the night, grew, and started to fade. What did you do? Michael's gasped. That rocket was built around a hydrogen bomb, O'Donnell said, his strong-faced triumphant. I set it off at the contact moment. He called to the operator again. Is there anything showing on the radar? Not a spectator. Then the general said, I have met the enemy, and he is mine. Let's have some more champagne. But Michael's found that he was suddenly ill. It had been shrinking from the expenditure of energy when the great explosion came. No thought of containing it. The leech's cells held for the barest fraction of a second, and then spontaneously overloaded. The leech was smashed, broken up, destroyed. It was split into a thousand particles, and the particles were split a million times more. The particles were thrown out on the wave-front of the explosion, and they split further, spontaneously, into spores. The spores closed into dry, hard, seemingly lifeless specks of dust, billions of them scattered, drifting. Unconscious, they floated in the emptiness of space. Unconscious of them waiting to be fed. End of The Leech by Phillips Barbie. The old man had that look of intense glee on his face that meant someone was in for a very rough time. Since we were alone it took no great feat of intelligence to figure out it would be me. I talked first, bold attack being the very best defense and so forth. I quit. Don't bother telling me what dirty job you have cooked up because I have already quit and you do not want to reveal company secrets to me. The grin was even wider now, and he actually shortled as he thumbed a button on his console. A thick legal document slid out of the delivery slot and onto his desk. This is your contract, he said. It tells how and when you will work, a steel and vanadium bound contract that you couldn't crack with a molecular disrupter. I leaned out quickly, grabbed it and threw it into the air with a single motion. Before it could fall I had my solar out and with a wide angle shot burned the contract to ashes. The old man just pressed a button again and another contract slid out on his desk. If possible the smile was still wider now. I should have said a duplicate of your contract, like this one here. He made a quick note on his secretary plate. I have deducted thirteen credits from your salary for the cost of the duplicate, as well as a one hundred credit fine for firing a solar inside of a building. I slumped, defeated, waiting for the blow to land. The old man fondled my contract. According to this document you can't quit, ever. Therefore I have a little job I know you'll enjoy, a repair job. Then Centauri Beacon has shut down. It's a Mark III Beacon. What kind of Beacon, I asked him. I have repaired hyperspace beacons from one arm of the galaxy to the other and was sure I had worked on every type or model ever made. But I'd never heard of this kind. Oh, it's a Mark III. The old man repeated practically chorkeling. I had never heard of it either, until records dug up the specs. They found them buried in the back of their oldest warehouse. This was the earliest type of beacon ever built. By earth, no less. Considering its location on one of the Proxima Centauri planets it might be very well the first beacon. I looked at the blueprints he handed me and felt my eyes glazed with horror. It's a monstrosity. It looks more like a distillery than a beacon. Must be at least a few hundred meters high. I'm a repairman, not an archeologist. This pile of junk is over two thousand years old. Just forget about it and build a new one. The old man leaned over his desk, breathing into my face. It would take a year to install a new beacon, besides being too expensive and this relic is on one of the main routes. We have ships making fifteen light-year detours now. He leaned back, wiped his hands on his handkerchief, and gave me lecture forty-four on company duty and my troubles. This department is officially called Maintenance and Repair, when it really should be called Troubleshooting. Hyperspace beacons are made to last forever, or damn close to it. When one of them breaks down it is never an accident, and repairing the thing is never a matter of just plugging in a new part. He was telling me, the guy who did the job while he sat back on his fat paycheck in an air-conditioned office, he rambled on. How I wish that were all it took, I would have a fleet of partships and junior mechanics to install them. But it's not like that at all. I have a fleet of expensive ships that are equipped to do almost anything, manned by a bunch of irresponsibles like you. I nodded moodily at his pointing finger. How I wish I could fire all of you. Combination space jockeys, mechanics engineers, soldiers, con men, and anything else it takes to do the repairs. I have to browbeat, bribe, blackmail, and bulldoze you thugs into doing a simple job. If you think you're fed up, just think about how I feel. But the ships must go through. The beacons must operate. I recognized this deathless line as the curtain speech crawled to my feet. He threw the Mark III file at me and went back to scratching in his papers. Just as I reached the door, he looked up and impaled me on his finger again. And don't you be getting any fancy ideas about jumping your contract. We can attach that bank account of yours on Algal 2 long before you could draw the money out. I smiled a little weakly, I'm afraid. As if I had never meant to keep that account a secret. His spies were getting more efficient every day. Walking down the hall, I tried to figure a way to transfer the money without his catching on and knew at the same time he was figuring a way to out-figure me. It was all very depressing. So I stopped for a drink and then went on to the spaceport. By the time the ship was serviced, I had a course charted. The nearest beacon to the broken-down Proxima Centauri beacon was on one of the planets of Beta Sirkenus. And I headed there first, a short trip of only about nine days in hyperspace. To understand the importance of the beacons you have to understand hyperspace. Not that many people do, but it's easy enough to understand that in this non-space the regular rules don't apply. Speed and measurements are a matter of relationship, not constant facts like the fixed universe. The first ships to enter hyperspace had no place to go and no way even to tell if they had moved. The beacon solved that problem and opened the entire universe. They are built on planets and generate tremendous amounts of power. The power is turned into radiation that is punched through into hyperspace. Every beacon has a code signal as part of its radiation and represents a measurable point in hyperspace. Triangulation and quadrature of the beacons works for navigation. Only it follows its own rules. The rules are complex and variable, but they are still rules that a navigator can follow. For a hyperspace jump, you need at least four beacons for an accurate fix. For long jumps, navigators use as many as seven or eight. So every beacon is important and everyone has to keep operating. That is where I and the other troubleshooters came in. We travel in well-stocked ships that carry a little bit of everything, only one man to a ship, because that is all that takes to operate the overly efficient repair machinery. Due to the very nature of our job, we spend most of our time just rocketing through normal space. After all, when a beacon breaks down, how do you find it? Not through hyperspace. All you can do is approach as close as you can by using the other beacons and then finish the trip in normal space. This can take months and often does. This job didn't turn out to be quite that bad. I zeroed in on the beta-circuitous beacon and ran a complicated eight-point problem through the navigator, using every beacon I could get an accurate fix on. The computer gave me a course with an estimated point of arrival, as well as a built-in safety factor I could never eliminate from the machine. I would very much rather take a chance of breaking through near some star than spend time just barreling through normal space. But apparently Tech knows this too. They had a safety factor built into the computer, so you couldn't end up inside a star no matter how hard you tried. I'm sure there was no humanness in this decision. They just didn't want to lose the ship. It was a twenty-hour jump, ship's time, and I came through in the middle of nowhere. The robot analyzer chuckled to itself and scanned all the stars, comparing them to the spectra of Proxima Centauri. It finally rang a bell and blinked a light. I peeped through the eyepiece. A fast reading with the photo cell gave me the apparent magnitude, and a comparison with its absolute magnitude showed its distance. Not as bad as I had thought, a six-week run. Give or take a few days. After feeding a course tape into the robot pilot, I strapped into the acceleration tank and went to sleep. The time went fast. I rebuilt my camera for about the twentieth time, and just about finished a correspondence course in nucleonics. Most repairmen take these courses. Besides they're always coming in handy, the company grades your pay by the number of specialties you can handle. All this was some oil painting and freefall workouts in the gym past the time. I was asleep when the alarm went off that announced planetary distance. Yet too, where the beacon was situated according to the old charts, was a mushy-looking wet kind of globe. I tried to make sense out of the ancient directions and finally located the right area. Staying outside the atmosphere, I sent a flying eye down to look things over. In this business, you learn early when and where to risk your own skin. The eye would be good enough for the preliminary survey. The old boys had had enough brains to choose a traceable site for the beacon, equidistant on a line between two of the most prominent mountain peaks. I located the peaks easily enough and started the eye out from the first peak and kept it on a course directly toward the second. There was a nose and tail radar in the eye and I fed their signals into a scope as an amplitude curve. When the two peaks coincided, I spun the eye controls and dived the thing down. I cut out the radar and cut in the nose orthocon and sat back to watch the beacon appear on the screen. The image blinked focused and a great damn pyramid swam into view. I cursed and wheeled the eye in circles scanning the surrounding country. It was flat, marshy bottom land without a bump. The only thing in a ten-mile circle was this pyramid and that definitely wasn't my beacon. Or wasn't it? I dived the eye lower. The pyramid was a crude looking thing of undressed stone without carvings or decorations. There was a shimmer of light from the top and I took a closer look at it. And the peak of the pyramid was a hollow basin filled with water. When I saw that something clicked into my mind. Locking the eye in a circular course I dug through the Mark III plans and there it was. The beacon had a precipitating field and a basin on top of it for water. This was used to cool the reactor that powered the monstrosity. If the water was still there the beacon was still there inside the pyramid. The natives who of course weren't even mentioned by the idiots who constructed the thing had built a nice heavy thick stone pyramid around the beacon. I took another look at the screen and realized that I had locked the eye into a circular orbit about twenty feet above the pyramid. The summit of the stone pile was now covered with lizards of some type. Apparently the local life form. They had what looked like throwing sticks and arrow blasts and they were trying to shoot down the eye. A cloud of arrows and rocks flying in every direction. I pulled the eye straight up and away and threw in the control circuit that would return it automatically to the ship. Then I went to the galley for a long strong drink. My beacon was not only locked inside a mountain of handmade stone but I had managed to irritate the things who had built the pyramid. A great beginning for a job and one clearly designed to drive a stronger man than me to the bottle. Normally a repairman stays away from native cultures. They are poison. Anthropologists may not mind being dissected for their science but a repairman wants to make no sacrifices of any kind for his job. For this reason most beacons are built on uninhabited planets. If a beacon has to go on a planet with a culture it is usually built in some inaccessible place. By this beacon had been built within the reach of the local claws I had yet to find out. But that would come in time. The first thing to do was to make contact. To make contact you have to know the local language. And for that I had long before worked out a system that was foolproof. I had a pry eye of my own construction. It looked like a piece of rock about a foot long, once on the ground it would never be noticed. Though it was a little disconcerting to see it float by, I located a lizard town about a thousand kilometers from the pyramid and dropped the eye. It swished down and landed at night in the bank of a local mud wallow. This was a favorite spot that drew a good crowd during the day. In the morning when the first wallowers arrived I flipped on the recorder. After about five of the local days I had a sea of native conversation in the memory bank of the machine translator and had tagged a few expressions. This was fairly easy to do when you have a machine memory to work with. One of the lizards gargled at one another and the second one turned around. I tagged this expression with the phrase, hey George! And waited my chance to use it. After the same day I caught one of them alone and shouted, hey George! At him! It gurgled out through the speaker in the local tongue and he turned around. When you get enough reference phrases like this in the memory bank, the empty brain takes over and starts filling in the missing pieces. As soon as the empty could give a running translation of any conversation it heard I figured out it was time to make a contact. I found him easily enough. He was a Centaurian version of a goat boy. He herded a particularly loathsome form of local life in the swamps outside of the town. I had one of the working eyes dig a cave in an outcropping of rock and waited for him. When he passed the next day I whispered into the mic, welcome, oh goat boy, grandson! This is your grandfather's spirit speaking from paradise. This fitted in with what I could make out from the local religion. Goat boy stopped as if he had been shot. Before he could move I pushed a switch and a handful of the local currency, Wampum type shells, rolled out of the cave and landed at his feet. Here is some money from paradise because you have been a good boy. Not really from paradise. I had lifted it from the treasury the night before. Come back tomorrow and we will talk some more. I called after the fleeing figure. I was pleased to notice that he took the cash before taking off. After that grandpa in paradise had many heart to heart talks with grandson who found the heavenly loot more than he could resist. Grandpa had been out of touch with things since his death and goat boy happily filled him in. I learned all I needed to know of the history, past and recent and it wasn't nice. In addition to the pyramid being built around the beacon there was a nice little religious war going on around the pyramid. It all began with the land bridge. Apparently the local lizards had been living in the swamps when the beacon was built. But the builders didn't think much of them. They were a low type and confined to a distant continent. The idea that the race would develop and might reach this continent never occurred to the beacon mechanics. Which is of course what happened. A little geological turnover a swampy land bridge formed in the right spot and the lizards began to wander up beacon valley and found religion. A shiny metal temple out of which poured a constant stream of magic water. The reactor cooling water pumped down from the atmosphere condenser on the roof. The radioactivity in the water didn't hurt the natives. It caused mutations that bred true. A city was built around the temple and through the centuries the pyramid was put up around the beacon. A special branch of the priesthood served the temple. All went well until one of the priests violated the temple and destroyed the holy waters. There had been revolts, strife, murder and destruction since then. But still the holy waters would not flow. Now our mobs fought around the temple each day and a new band of priests guarded the sacred font. And I had to walk into the middle of that mess and repair the thing. It would have been easy enough if we were allowed a little mayhem. I could have had a lizard fry, fixed the beacon and taken off. But I, quote, native life forms, unquote, were quite well protected. There were spy cells on my ship, all of which I hadn't found, that would cheerfully rat on me when I got back. Diplomacy was called for. I sighed and dragged out the plaster flesh equipment. Working from 3D snaps of grandson, I modeled a passable reptile head over my own features. It was a little short in the jaw, me not having one of their toothy mandibles. But that was all right. I didn't have to look exactly like them, just something close to soothe the native mind. It's logical. If I were an ignorant aborigine of earth and I ran into a spykin, who looks like a two-foot glob of dried shellac, I would immediately leave the scene. However, if the spykin were wearing a suit of plaster flesh that looked remotely humanoid, I would at least stay and talk to him. That's what I was aiming to do with the centaurians. When the head was done, I peeled it off and attached it to an attractive suit of green plastic, complete with tail. I was really glad they had tails. The lizards didn't wear clothes, and I wanted to take along a lot of electronic equipment. I built the tail over a metal frame that anchored around my waist. Then I filled the frame with all the equipment that I would need and began to wire the suit. When it was done, I tried it on in front of a full-length mirror. It was horrible, but effective. The tail dragged me down in the rear and gave me a duck waddle. But that only helped the resemblance. That night I took the ship down into the hills nearest the pyramid, an out-of-the-way dry spot where the amphibious natives would never go. A little before dawn the eye hooked onto my shoulders and we sailed straight up. We hovered above the temple at about two thousand meters until it was light and then dropped straight down. It must have been a grand sight. The eye was camouflaged to look like a flying lizard, a sort of a cardboard pterodactyl. And slowly flapping wings obviously had nothing to do with our flight. But it was impressive enough for the natives. The first one that spotted me screamed and dropped over on his back. The others came running. They milled and mobbed and piled on top of one another. And by that time I had landed in the plaza, fronting the temple. The priesthood arrived. I folded my arms in a regal stance. Greetings, O noble servers of the great God, I said. Of course I didn't say it out loud. I just whispered loud enough for the throat mic to catch. This was radioed back to the MT and the translation shot back to a speaker in my jaws. The natives chomped and rattled and the translation rolled out almost instantly. I had the volume turned up and the whole square echoed. Some of the more credulous natives prostrated themselves and others fled screaming. One doubtful type raised a spear, but no one else tried that after the pterodactyl eye picked him up and dropped him in the swamp. The priests were a hard-headed lot and weren't buying any lizards in a poke, they just stood and muttered. I had to take the offensive again. He'd gone, O faithful steed, I said to the eye and pressed the control in my palm at the same time. It took off straight up, a bit faster than I wanted, little pieces of wind-blown plastic raided down. While the crowd was ogling this ascent, I walked through the temple doors. I would talk with you, O noble priests, I said. Before they could think up a good answer, I was inside. The temple was a small one, built against the base of the pyramid. I hoped I wasn't breaking too many taboos by going in. I wasn't stopped so it looked all right. The temple was a single room with a murky-looking pool at one end. Sloshing in the pool was an ancient reptile, who was clearly one of the leaders. I waddled toward him and he gave me a cold and fishy eye and then growled something. The MT whispered into my ear, just what in the name of the 13th sin are you and what are you doing here? I drew up my scaly figure in the noble gesture and pointed toward the ceiling. I come from your ancestors to help you. I am here to restore the holy waters. This raised a buzz of conversation behind me, but got no rise out of the chief. He sank slowly into the water until only his eyes were showing. I could almost hear the wheels turning behind that lost covered forehead. Then he lunged up and pointed a dripping finger at me. You are a liar! You are no ancestor of ours, we will! Up I thundered before he got so far in that and couldn't back out. I said your ancestors sent me as an emissary. I am not one of your ancestors. Do not try to harm me or the wrath of those who have passed on will turn against you. When I said this I turned to jab a claw at the other priest, using the motion to cover my flicking a coin-grenade toward them. It blew a nice hole in the floor with a great show of smoke and noise. The first lizard knew I was talking since then and immediately called a meeting of the shamans. It of course took place in the public bathtub and I had to join them there. We jawed and gurgled for about an hour and settled all the major points. I found out that they were new priests. The previous one had all been boiled for letting the holy water cease. They found out that I was there only to help them restore the flow of the waters. They bought this tentatively and we all heaved out of the tub and trickled muddy paths across the floor. There was a bolted and guarded door that led into the pyramid proper. While it was being opened the first lizard turned to me. Undoubtedly you know of the rule, he said. Because the old priest did pry and peer it was ruled henceforth that only the blind could enter the holy of holies. I'd swear he was smiling if thirty teeth peeking out of what look like a crack in an old suitcase can be called smiling. He was also signalling to him an under priest who carried a brassiere of charcoal complete with red hot irons. All I could do was stand and watch while he stirred up the coals, pulled out the rustiest iron and turned toward me. He was just drawing a bead on my right eyeball when my brain got back in gear. Of course I said, blinding is only right, but in my case you will have to blind me before I leave the holy of holies, not now. I need my eyes to see and mend the font of holy waters. Once the waters flow again I will laugh as I hurl myself on your burning iron. He took a good thirty seconds to think it over and had to agree with me. The local torturer sniffled a bit and threw a little more charcoal on the fire. The gate crashed open and I stalked through. And then it banged to behind me and I was alone in the dark. But not for long. There was a shuffling nearby and I took a chance and turned on my flash. Three priests were groping toward me, their eye sockets red pits of burned flesh. They knew what I wanted and led the way without a word. A crumbling and crack stone stairway brought us up to a solid metal doorway labeled in archaic script, Mark III Beacon, authorized personnel only. The trusting builders counted on the sign to do the whole job, for there wasn't a trace of a lock on the door. One lizard merely had to turn the handle and we were inside the beacon. I unzipped the front of my camouflage suit and pulled out the blueprints. With the faithful priest stumbling after me I located the control room and turned on the lights. There was a residue of charge in the emergency batteries, just enough to give a dim light. The meters and indicators looked to be in good shape, if anything unexpectedly bright from constant polishing. I checked the readings carefully and found out just what I had suspected. One of the eager lizards had managed to open a circuit box and polished the switches inside. While doing this he had thrown one of the switches, and that had caused the trouble. Rather that had started the trouble. It wasn't going to be ended by just reversing the water valve switch. This valve was supposed to be used only for repairs, after the pile was damped. When the water was cut off with the pile in operation it had started to overheat and the automatic safeties had dumped the charge down the pit. I could start the water easily enough again, but there was no fuel left in the reactor. I wasn't going to play with the fuel problem at all. It would be far easier to install a new power plant. I had one in the ship that was about a tenth the size of that ancient bucket of bolts, and produced at least four times the power. Before I sent for it I checked over the rest of the beacon. In two thousand years there should be some sign of wear. The old boys had built well, I'll give them credit for that. Ninety percent of the machinery had no moving parts, and had suffered no wear whatever. Other parts they had beefed up, figuring they would wear, but slowly. The water feed pipe from the roof, for example. The pipe walls were at least three meters thick, and the pipe opening itself no bigger than my head. There were some things I could do, though, and I made a list of parts. The parts, the new power plant, and a few other odds and ends, were shooted into a neat pile on the ship. I checked all the parts by screen before they were loaded in a metal crate. In the darkest hour before dawn the heavy-duty eye dropped the crate outside the temple and darted away without being seen. I watched the priests through the pry-eye while they tried to open it. When they had given up I boomed orders at them through a speaker in the crate. They spent most of the day sweating the heavy box up through the narrow temple stairs, and I enjoyed a good sleep. It was resting inside the beacon door when I woke up. Every pair didn't take long, though there was plenty of groaning from the blind lizards when they heard me ripping the wall open to get at the power leads. I even hooked a gadget to the water pipe so their holy waters would have usual refreshing radioactivity when they started flowing again. The moment this was all finished I did the job they were waiting for. I threw the switch that started the water flowing again. There were a few minutes while the water began to gurgle down through the dry pipe. Then a roar came from outside the pyramid that must have shaken its stone walls. Shaking my hands once over my head I went down for the eye-burning ceremony. The blind lizards were waiting for me by the door and looked even unhappier than usual. When I tried the door I found out why it was bolted and barred from the other side. It has been decided, a lizard said, that you shall remain here forever and tend the holy waters. We will stay with you and serve your every need. A delightful prospect eternally spent in a locked beacon with three blind lizards. In spite of their hospitality I couldn't accept. What you dare interfere with the messenger of your ancestors? I had the speaker on full volume and the vibration almost shook my head off. The lizards cringed and I set my solar for a narrow beam and ran it around the door jam. There was a great crunching and banging from the junk piled against it and then the door swung free. I threw it open. Before they could protest I had pushed the priest out through it. The rest of their clan showed up at the foot of the stairs and made a great ruckus while I finished welding the door shut. Running through the crowd I faced up to the first lizard in his tub. He sank slowly beneath the surface. What lack of courtesy, I shouted. He made little bubbles in the water. The ancestors are annoyed and have decided to forbid entrance to the inner temple forever. Though out of kindness they will let the waters flow. Now I must return on with the ceremony. The torture master was too frightened to move so I grabbed his hot iron. A touch on the side of my face dropped a steel plate over my eyes under the plastic skin. Then I jammed the iron hard into my phony eye sockets and the plastic gave off authentic odors. A cry went up from the crowd as I dropped the iron and staggered in blind circles. I must admit it went off pretty well. Before they could get any more bright ideas I threw the switch and my plastic pterodactyl sailed in through the door. I couldn't see it, of course, but I knew it had arrived when the grapples in the claws latched onto the steel plates on my shoulders. I had got turned around after the eye-burning and my flying beast hooked on to me backward. I had meant to sail out bravely, blind eyes facing into the sunset. Instead I faced the crowd as I soared away. So I made the most of a bad situation and threw them a snappy military salute. Then I was out in fresh air and away. Then I lifted the plate and poked holes in the seared plastic. I could see the pyramid growing smaller behind me, water gushing out of the base, and a happy crowd of reptiles sporting in its radioactive rush. I counted off on my talons to see if I had forgotten anything. 1. The beacon was repaired. 2. The door was sealed, so there could be no more sabotage, accidental or deliberate. 3. The priest should be satisfied. The water was running again, my eyes had been duly burned out, and they were back in business, which added up to… 4. The fact that they would probably let another repairman in under the same conditions if the beacon conked out again. At least I had done nothing, like broochering a few of them, that would make them antagonistic toward future ancestral messengers. I stripped off my tattered lizard suit back in the ship, very glad that it would be some other repairman who would get the job. End of The Repairman by Harry Harrison. 2. Second Landing This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Linda Dodge. Second Landing by Floyd Wallace. A gentle fancy for the Christmas season. An off-told tale with a wistful twistful of something that left the earth with a wing and a prayer. Earth was so far away that it wasn't visible. Even the sun was only a twinkle. But this vast distance did not mean that isolation would endure forever. Within the ship intercepted radio broadcast and within the hour early TV signals. Machines compiled dictionaries and grammars and began translating the major languages. The history of the planet was tabulated as facts became available. The course of the ship changed slightly. It was not much out of the way to swing near earth. For two days the two within the ship listened and watched with little comment. They had to decide soon. We've got to make or break. Said the first alien. You know what I'm in favor of. Said the second. I can guess. Said Ethanuel, who had spoken first. This place is a complete mess. They have never done anything except fight each other and invent better weapons. It's not what they've done, said Baal, the second alien. It's what they're going to do with that big bomb. There's no more reason for stopping, said Ethanuel. The big bomb can destroy them. Without our help they may just do that. I may remind you that in two months twenty-nine days we're due in willifors, said Baal. Without looking at the charts I can tell you we still have more than a hundred light years to go. A week. We can spare a week and still get there on time. A week, said Baal, to settle their problems. They've had two world wars in one generation, and that the third and final one is coming up. You can't help feeling in everything they do. It won't take much, said Ethanuel. The wrong diplomatic move or a trigger happy soldier could set it off. And it wouldn't have to be deliberate. A meteor shower could pass over and their clumsy instruments could interpret that as an all-out enemy attack. Too bad, said Baal. We'll just have to forget there ever was such a planet as Earth. Could you forget so many people? I'm doing it, said Baal. Just give them a little time and they won't be here to remind me that I have a conscious. My memory isn't convenient, said Ethanuel. I asked you to look at them. Baal wrestled, flicking the screen intently. Very much like ourselves, he said at last. A bit shorter, perhaps. Most certainly incomplete, except for the one thing they like. And that's quite odd. They seem exactly like us. Is that what you wanted me to say? It is. The fact that they are an incomplete version of ourselves touches me. They actually seem defenseless, though I suppose they're not. Tough, said Baal. Nothing we can do about it. There is. We can give them a week. In a week, we cannot negate their entire history. We can't begin to undo the effect of the big bomb. You can't tell, said Ethanuel. We can look things over. And then what? How much of authority do we have? Very little, conceded Ethanuel. Two minor officials on the way to Villa Force. And we went directly into a problem no one knew existed. And when we get to Villa Force, we'll be busy. It will be a long time before anyone comes this way again. It will be a very long time. There's nothing in this region of space our people want, said Ethanuel. And how long can Earth last? 10 years? Even 10 months? The tension is building by the hour. What can I say, said Baal? I suppose we can stop and look them over. We're not committing ourselves by looking. They went much closer to Earth, not intending to commit themselves. For a day, they circled the planet, avoiding radar detection, which for them was not difficult. Testing and sampling. Finally, Ethanuel looked up from the monitor screen. Any conclusions? What's there to think? It's worse than I imagined. In what way? Well, we knew they had the big bomb. Atmospheric analysis showed that as far away as we were. I know. We also knew that they could deliver the big bomb. Presumably by some sort of aircraft. That was almost a certainty. They'd have no use for the big bomb without aircraft. What's worse is that now I find they also have missiles range 1,000 miles and upward. They either have or are near a primitive form of space travel. Bad, said Ethanuel. Sitting there wondering when it's gonna hit them, nervousness can set it off. It could, and the missiles make it worse, said Bell. What did you find out at your end? Nothing worthwhile. I was looking at the people while you were investigating their weapons. You must think something. I wish I knew what to think. There's so little time, Ethanuel said. Language isn't the difficulty. Our machines can translate their languages easily. And I've taken a cram course in two or three of them. But that's not enough. Looking at a few plays, listening to advertisements, music, news bulletins. I should go down and live among them, read books, talk to scholars, work with them, play. You could do that and you'd really get to know them. But that takes time and we don't have it. I realized that. A flat yes or no, said Bell. No, we can't help them, said Ethanuel. There is nothing we can do for them, but we have to try. Sure, I knew it before we started, said Bell. It's happened before. We take the trouble to find out what a people are like. When we can't help them, we feel bad. It's gonna be like that again. He rose and stretched. Well, give me an hour to think of some way of going at it. It was longer than that before they met again. In the meantime, the big ship moved closer to Earth. They no longer needed their instruments to see it. The planet revolved outside vision ports. The southern plains were green, coursed with rivers. The oceans were blue and much of the northern hemisphere was glistening white. Ragged clouds covered the pole and a dirty paw spread over the mid-regions of the North. I haven't thought of anything brilliant, said Ethanuel. No, I, said Bell. We're going to have to go down there cold and it will be cold. Yes, it's their winter. I did have an idea, said Bell. What about going down as supernatural beings? Hardly, said Ethanuel. A hundred years ago, it might have worked. Today, they have satellites. They are not primitives. I suppose you're right, said Bell. I did think we ought to take advantage of our physical differences. If we could, I'd be all for it. But these people are rough and desperate. They wouldn't be fooled by anything that crude. Well, you're calling it, said Bell. All right, said Ethanuel. You take one side, I'll take the other. We'll tell them bluntly what they have to do if they're going to survive, how they can keep their planet in one piece so they can live on it. Well, that'll go over big. Advice is always popular. Can't help it. That's all we have time for. Special instructions? None. We leave the ship here and go down in separate landing craft. You can talk with me any time you want through our communications, but don't unless you have to. They can't intercept the beams we use. They can't. Even if they did, they wouldn't know what to do with our language. I want them to think that we don't need to talk things over. I get it. Makes us seem better than we are. They think we know exactly what we're doing even though we don't. If we're lucky, they'll think that. Bell looked out of the port at the planet below. It's going to be cold where I'm going. You too. Sure, we don't want to change our plans and land in the southern hemisphere. It's summer there. I'm afraid not. The great powers are in the north. They are the ones we have to reach to do the job. Yeah, but I was thinking of that holiday you mentioned. We'll be running straight into it. That won't help us any. I know. They don't like their holidays interrupted. It can't be helped. We can't wait until it's over. I'm aware of that, said Bell. Fill me in on the holiday. Anything I ought to know, perhaps religious in origin, that's so. It was religious long time ago, said Nathaniel. I didn't learn anything exact from radio and TV. Now it seems to be chiefly a time for eating, office parties and selling merchandise. I see, it has become a business holiday. That's a good description. I didn't get as much of it as I ought to have had. I've been busy studying the people and they're hard to pin down. I see, I was thinking that there might be some way we can tie ourselves in with this holiday. Make it work for us. If there is, I haven't thought of it. You ought to know you're running this one. Bell looked down at the planet. Clouds were beginning to form at the twilight edge. I hate to go down and leave this ship up here with no one in it. They can't touch it. No matter how they develop in the next 100 years, they still won't be able to get it or damage it in any way. It's myself I'm thinking about there. Down there alone. I'll be with you on the other side of earth. That's not very close. I'd like it better if there was someone in the ship to bring it down in a hurry if things get rough. They don't think much of each other and I don't imagine they'll like aliens any better. They may be unfriendly. Ethanuel acknowledged. Now he switched a monitor screen until he looked at the slope of a mountain. It was snowing and men were cutting small green trees in the snow. I thought of a trick. If it saves my neck, I'm for it. I don't guarantee anything, said Ethanuel. This is what I was thinking of. Instead of hiding the ship against the sun, where there's a little chance it will be seen, I'll make sure that they do see it. Let's take it around to the night side of the planet and light it up. Say, pretty good, said Bell. I can't imagine we'd light up an unmanned ship, said Ethanuel. Even if the fought should have hurt one of them, they'll have no way of checking it. Also, they won't be eager to harm us with our ship shining down on them. That's thinking, said Bell, moving to the controls. I'll move the ship over where they can see it best and then I'll light it up. I'll really light it up. Don't spare power. Don't worry about that. They'll see it. Everybody on Earth will see it. Later, with the ship in position, glowing against the darkness of space, pulsating with light, Bell said, you know, I feel better about this. We may pull it off. Lighting the ship may be just the help we need. It's not we who need help, but the people of Earth, said Ethanuel. See you in five days. With that, he entered a small landing craft which left a faintly luminescent trail as it plunged toward the Earth. As soon it was safe to do so, Bell left in another craft heading for the other side of the planet. And the spaceship circled Earth, unmanned, blazing and pulsing with light, no star in the winter skies of the planet below could equal that in brilliancy. Once a man-made satellite came near, but it was dim and lost sight by the people below. During the day, the ship was as visible as a bright spot of light. At evening, it seemed to burn through the sunset colors. And the ship circled on, bright, shining, seeming to be a little peace chip from the center of a star and brought near Earth to illuminate it. Never or seldom had Earth seen anything like it. In five days, the two small landing craft that had left it arched up from Earth and joined the orbit of the large ship. The two small craft slid inside the larger one and the doors closed behind them. In a short time, the aliens met again. We did it, said Baal exultantly as he came in. I don't know how we did it and I thought we were going to fail, but at the last minute they came through, Ethaniel smiled. I'm tired, he said rustling. Me too, but mostly I'm cold, said Baal shivering. Snow, nothing but snow wherever I went, miserable climate. And yet you had me go out walking after that first day. From my own experience, it seemed to be a good idea, said Ethaniel. If I went out walking one day, I noticed that the next day the officials were much more cooperative. If it worked for me, I thought it might help you. I did, I don't know why, but it did, said Baal. Anyway, this agreement that they made isn't the best, but I think it will keep them from destroying themselves. It's as much as we can expect, said Ethaniel. They may have small wars after this, but never the big one. In 50 or 100 years we can come back and see how much they've learned. I'm not sure I want to, said Baal. Say, what's an angel? Why? When I went out walking, people stopped to look. Some knelt in the snow and called me an angel. Something like that happened to me, said Ethaniel. I didn't get it, but I didn't let it upset me, said Baal. I smiled at them and went right about my business. He shivered again. It was always cold. I walked out, but sometimes I flew back. I hope that was all right. In the cabin, Baal spread his great wings. Renaissance painters had never seen his like, but knew exactly how he looked. In their paintings, they had pictured him innumerable times. I don't think it hurt us that you flew, said Ethaniel. I did so myself occasionally. But don't you know what an angel is? No, I didn't have time to find out. Some creature of their folklore, I suppose. You know, except for our wings, they're very much like ourselves. Their legends are bound to resemble ours. Sure, said Baal. Anyway, peace on earth. End of Second Landing by Floyd Wallace. The talkative tree. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Linda Dodge. The talkative tree by Horace Brown-Fife. Dang vines? Beats all how some plants have no manners. But what do you expect when they used to be men? All things considered the obscure star, the undetermined damage to the stellar drive, and the way the small planet's murky atmosphere defied precision scanners. The pilot made a reasonably good landing. Despite sour feelings for the space service of Howartas, Steward Peter Colon had to admit that the casualties might have been far worse. Chief Steward Slitchow led his little command, less two third-class ration-keepers, thought to have been trapped in the lower hold, to a point two hundred meters from the steaming hull of the peace state. He lined them up as if on parade. Colon made himself inconspicuous. Since the crew will be on emergency watches repairing the damage, announced the chief in clipped aggressive tones, I have volunteered my section for preliminary scouting as is suitable. It may be useful to discover temporary sources in this area of natural foods. Volunteered his section, thought Colon rebelliously, like the supreme director of Howartas, being conscripted into this idiotic space fleet that never fights as bad enough without a ten-god on jets like Slitchow. Prudently he did not express this resentment overtly. His well-schooled features revealed no trace of the idea or of any other idea. The planetary state of Howartas had been organized some 15 light years from old earth, but many of the homeworld's less kindly techniques had been employed. Lack of complete loyalty to the state was likely to result in a siege of treatment that left the subject suitably, quote, re-personalized, unquote. Colon had heard of instances where in mere unenthusiastic posture had betrayed intentions to harbor reasonable thoughts. You will scout in five details of three persons each, Chief Slitchow said. Every hour each detail will send me one person in to report and he will be replaced by one of the five I shall keep here to issue rations. Colon permitted himself to wonder when anyone might get some rest, but assumed a mildly willing look. Too eager an attitude could arouse suspicion of disguising an improper viewpoint. The maintenance of a proper viewpoint was a necessity. If the planetary state were to survive the hostile plots of earth and the latter's decadent colonies, that at least was the official line. Colon found himself in a group with Jack Amit, a third cook and Eva Yurtuk, powdered food storekeeper. Since the crew would be eating packaged rations during repairs, Yurtuk could be spared to command a scout detail. Each scout was issued a rocket pistol and a plastic water tube. Chief Slitchow emphasized that the keepers of rations could hardly, in an emergency, give even the appearance of favoring themselves in regard to food they would go without. Colon maintained a standard expression as the Chief's sharp stare measured them. Yurtuk, a dark, lean-faced girl, led the way with a quiet monosyllable. She carried the small radio they would be permitted to use for messages of utmost urgency. Amit followed and Colon brought up the rear. To reach their assigned sector, they had to climb a forbidding ridge of rock within a half a kilometer. Only a sparse creeper grew along their way, its elongated leaves shimmering with bronze green reflections against the stony surface. But when they topped the ridge, a thick forest was in sight. Yurtuk and Amit paused momentarily before descending. Colon shared their sense of isolation. They would be out of sight of authority and responsible for their own actions. It was a strange sensation. They marched down into the valley at a brisk pace, becoming more aware of the clouds and atmospheric haves. Distant objects seemed blurred by the mist, taking on a somber, brooding grayness. For all Colon could tell, he and the others were isolated in a world bounded by the rocky ridge behind them and a semi-circle of damp trees and bushes several hundred meters away. He suspected that the hills rising mystically ahead were part of a continuous slope, but could not be sure. Yurtuk led the way along the most nearly level ground. Low creepers became more plentiful, interspersed with scrubby thickets of tangled spike armored bushes. Occasionally small flying things flickered among the foliage. Once a shrub puffed out an enormous cloud of tiny spores. Be a job to find anything edible here, grunted Amit and Colon agreed. Finally, after a longer hike than he had anticipated, they approached the edge of a deceptively distant forest. Yurtuk paused to examine some purple berries, glistening dangerously on a low shrub. Colon regarded the trees with misgiving. Looks as tough to get through as a tropical jungle, he remarked. I think this stuff puts out shoots that grow back into the ground to root as they spread, said the woman. Maybe we can find a way through. In two or three minutes, they reached the abrupt border of the odd-looking trees. Except for one thick trunk giant, all of them were about the same height. They craned their necks to estimate the altitude of the monster, but the top was hidden by the wide spread of branches. The depths behind it looked dark and impenetrable. We'd better explore along the edge, decided Yurtuk. Amit's now is the time to go back and tell the chief which way we're... Amit! Colon looked over his shoulder. 50 meters away, Amit sat beside the bush with the purple berries, utterly relaxed. He must have tasted some, exclaimed Colon. I'll see how he is. He ran back to the cook and shook him by the shoulder. Amit's head lulled loosely to one side. His rather heavy features were vacant, lending him a doped appearance. Colon straightened up and back into Yurtuk. For some reason, he had trouble attracting her attention. Then he noticed that she was kneeling. I hope she didn't eat something stupid too, he grumbled, trotting back. As he reached her, whatever Yurtuk was examining came to life and scooted into the underbrush with a flash of greenish fur. All Colon saw was that it had several legs too many. He pulled Yurtuk to her feet. She pawed at him weakly, eyes as vacant as Amit's. When he let go in sudden horror, she folded gently to the ground. She lay comfortably on her side, twitching one hand as if to brush something away. When she began to smile dreamily, Colon backed away. The corners of his mouth felt oddly stiff. They had involuntarily drawn back to expose his clenched teeth. He glanced warily about, but nothing appeared to threaten him. It's time to end this scout, he told himself. It's dangerous, one good look and I'm jetting off. What I need is an easy tree to climb. He considered the massive giant, soaring 30 or 40 meters into the thin fog and dwarfing other growth. It seemed the most promising choice. At first, Colon saw no way, but then the network of vines clinging to the rugged trunk suggested a route. He tried his weight gingerly and then began to climb. I should have brought Yurtuk's radio, he muttered. Oh well, I can take it when I come down if she hasn't snapped out of her spell by then. Funny, I wonder if that green thing bit her. Footholds were plentiful among the interlaced Leonas. Colon progressed rapidly. When he reached the first thick limbs, twice head height he felt safer. Later at what he hoped was the halfway mark, he hooked one knee over a branch and paused to wipe sweat from his eyes. Peering down, he discovered the ground to be obscured by foliage. I should have checked from down there to see how open the top is, he mused. I wonder how the view will be from up there. Depends on what you're looking for, sunny, something remarked in a softened wheeze. Colon, slipping, grabbed desperately for the branch. His fingers clutched a handful of twigs and leaves which just barely supported him until he regained a grip with the other hand. The branch quivered resentfully under him. Careful there, whooshed the eerie voice. It took me all summer to grow those. Colon could feel his skin crawling along his backbone. Who are you, he gasped? The answering sigh of laughter gave him a distinct chill, despite its suggestion of amiability. Names, Johnny Ashlew, kinda thought you'd start with what I am. Didn't figure you'd ever seen a man grown into a tree before. Colon looked about, seeing a little bit leaves and fog. I have to climb down, he told himself in a reasonable tone. It's bad enough that the other two passed out without me going space happy too. Watch your hurry, demanded the voice. I can talk to you as easy all the way down, you know. Air holes in my bark, I'm not like an earth tree. Colon examined the bark of the crotch in which he sat. It did seem to have assorted holes and hollows in its rough surface. I never saw an earth tree, he admitted. We came down from Harta's. Where's that? Oh, never mind, some little planet. I don't bother with them all since I came here and found out I could be anything I wanted. What do you mean anything you wanted, asked Colon? Testing the firmness of a vertical vine. Just what I said, continued the voice, sounding closer in his ear as his cheek brushed the ridged bark of the tree trunk. And if I do have to remind you, it would be nicer if you said, Mr. Ashlew, considering my age. Your age, how old? Can't really count it in earth years anymore, lost track. I always figured being a tree was just a nice, peaceful life, and when I remembered how long of some of them live. Oh, that settled it, Sonny. This world ain't all it looks like. It isn't Mr. Ashlew, asked Colon, twisting about in an effort to see what the higher branches might hide. No, most everything here is run by the life, that is by the thing that first grew big enough to do some thinking and said its roots down all over till till it had control. That's the outskirts of it down below. The other tree's that jungle. It's more than a jungle, Sonny. When I landed here along with the others from the Arcturian spark, the planet looked pretty empty to me, just like it must have to. Watch it there, boy. If I didn't twist that branch over in time, you'd be bouncing off my roots right now. The thanks, grunted Colon, hanging on grimly. Dog on vine, commented the windy whisper. He ain't one of my crowd. Landed here years later in a ship from some star towards the center of the galaxy. You should have seen his looks before the life got in touch with his mind and set up a mental field to help him change form. He looks twice as good as a vine. He's very handy, agreed Colon politely. He grew up for a foothold. Well, matter of fact, I can't get through to him much, even with the life's mental field helping. Guess he started living with a different way of thinking. It burns me. I thought of being a tree, and then he came along to take advantage of it. Colon braced himself securely to stretch his tiring muscles. Maybe I better stay a while, he muttered. I don't know where I am. You're about 50 feet up, the sighing voice informed him. You ought to let me tell you how the life helps you change form. You don't have to be a tree. No, uh-uh. Some of those boys that landed with me wanted to get around and see things. Lots changed, animals or birds. One even stayed a man on the outside anyway. Most of them have to change as the bodies were out, which I don't. And some made bad mistakes, trying to be the things they saw on other planets. Oh, I wouldn't want to do that, Mr. Ashlew. There's just one thing. The life don't like taking chances on word about this place getting around. It sort of believes in peace and quiet. You might not get back to your ship in any form that can tell tales. Listen, Colon blurted out. I wasn't so much enjoying being what I was that getting back matters to me. Don't like your home planet? Whatever that name was? Hartos. It's a rotten place, a planetary state. You have to think and even look the way that standard 30 hours a day, a sleeper awake. You get scared to sleep for fear you might dream trees and then they'll find out somehow. Woo-ee. I heard about them places. Must be tough just to live. Suddenly, Colon found himself telling the tree about life on Hartos and of the officially announced threats to the planetary state's planned expansion. He dwelt upon the desperation of having no place to hide in case of trouble with the authorities. A multiple system of such worlds was agonizing to imagine. Somehow the oddity of talking to a tree were off. Colon heard opinions spouting out which he had prudently kept bottled up for years. The more he talked and stormed and complained, the more relaxed he felt. If there was any other fellow ready for this planet decided the tree named Ashley, you're it, sonny. Hang on there while I signal the life by route. Colon sensed a lack of direct attention. The rustle about him was natural caused by an ordinary breeze. He noticed his hands shaking. Don't know what got into me talking that way to a tree, he muttered. If your talk snapped out of it and heard, I'm just as good as repersonalized right now. As he brooded upon the sorry choice of arousing a search by hiding where he was or going back to bluff things out, the tree spoke. Maybe you're all set, sonny. The life has been a thinking of learning about other worlds. If you can think of a safe form to jet off in, you might make yourself a deal. How'd you like to stay here? I don't know, said Colon, the penalty for desertion. Whoosh, who'd find you? You could be a bird or a tree or even a cloud. Silenced but doubting, Colon permitted himself to try the dream on for size. He considered what form might most easily escape the notice of search parties and still be tough enough to live a long time without renewal. Another factor slipped into his musings. Mere hope of escape was unsatisfying after the outburst that had defined his fuming hatred for Harta's. I'd better watch myself, he thought. Don't drop diamonds to grab at stars. Well, what I wish I could do is not just get away but get even for the way they make us live, the whole damn setup. They could just as easy make peace with the Earth colonies. You know why they don't? Why, wheezed Ashley. They're scared that without talk of war and scouting for Earth fleets that never come, people would have time to think about the way they have to live and who's running things in the planetary state. Then the gravy train would get blown up and I mean blown up. The tree was silent for a moment. Colin felt the branches stirved meditatively. Then Ashley offered a suggestion. I could tell the life your size of it, he hissed. Once in with us, you can always make thinking connections, no matter how far away. Maybe you could make a deal to kill two birds with one stone as they used to say on Earth. Chief Steward Slitchow, paced up and down beside the ration crate, turned up to serve him as the field desk. He scowled in turn, impartially at his watch and at the weary stewards of his headquarters detail. The latter stumbled about stacking and distributing small packets of emergency rations. The line of crewmen released temporarily from repair work was transient as to individuals, but immutable as to length. Slitchow muttered something profane about disregard of orders as he glared at the rocky ridges surrounding the landing place. He was so intent upon planning greetings with which to favor the tardy scouting parties that he failed to notice the loose cloud drifting over the ridge. It was tenuous, almost a haze. A close examination would have revealed it to be made of myriads of tiny spores. They resembled those cast forth by one of the bushes Colin's party had passed. Along the edges, the haze faded raggedly into thin air, but the units evidently formed a cohesive body. They drifted together, approaching the men as if taking intelligent advantage of the breeze. One of Chief Slitchow's staggering flunkies stealing a few seconds of relaxation on the pretext of dumping an armful of light plastic packing wandered into the haze. He froze. After a few heartbeats, he dropped the trash and stared at the ship and men as if he had never seen either. A hail from his master moved him. Coming chief, he called, but returning at a moderate pace, he murmured, my name is Frazier. I'm a second assistant steward. I'll think as unit one. Throughout the cloud of spores, the mind formerly known as Peter Colin congratulated itself upon its choice of form. Nearer to the original shape of life than Ashlew got, he thought. He paused to consider the state of the tree named Ashlew, half immortal, but rooted to one spot, unable to float on a breeze or through space itself on the pressure of light. Especially it was unable to insinuate any part of itself into the control center of another form of life as a second spore was taking charge of the body of Chief Slitchow at that very instant. There are not enough men, thought Colin. Some of me must drift through the airlock. In space I can spread through the air system to the command group, repairs to the peace state and the return to Harta's past like weeks to some of the crew, but like brief moments in infinity to other units. At last the ship parted the air above headquarters city and landed. The unit known as Captain Theodore Kessle hesitated before descending the ramp. He surveyed the field, the city and the waiting team of inspecting officers. Could hardly be better, could it? He chuckled to the companion unit called security officer Tarth. Hardly, sir, all ready for the liberation of Harta's. Reformation of the planetary state, used the captain, smiling dreamily as he grasped the handrail and then formation of the planetary mind. End of the talkative tree by Horace Brown-Phyton.