He pulled loose from the Norbie’s hold and staggered to the pine, his hands fondling its bark. The scent of the needles, or the resin, was stronger in his nostrils than the more exotic odors about him. It was true this was a pine, standing at the apex of a triangle of mixed Terran vegetation. And with the bole of the tree to steady him, Storm looked ahead, to see the brilliance of roses in full bloom, tassels of lilacs, familiar, unfamiliar, all aflower, all scented, in an unbelievable mixed array.
“What is it?” Logan joined the Terran, his bruised face turned toward the mass of flowers and green as if he too felt some healing quality in it.
“From Earth!” Storm used the old word, sweeping his arms wide. “These are all from my world! But how did they come here?”
“And where and what is here?” Logan added. “Those surely aren’t Terran too—” His hand fell on Storm’s arm and he drew the other part way around to face, across a narrow path of the alien black stuff, another mixed garden. And the Arzoran was very right. The oddly shaped—to Terran eyes—bushes with their bluish, twisted leaves, the striped flowers (if those flat plates were flowers) were not Terran—not from any world Storm knew.
Gorgol came across the open glade where the horses were. His fingers moved to express his own wonder—
“Many growing things—all different—”
Storm turned again, still putting one hand to the pine as an anchor, not only because of his tired body, but also because the wonder of its being here still made this all part of a strangely satisfying dream.
There were two more gardens or garden plots wedging out from the section directly before the gate grill, and each of them was widely different in the life it supported, save that odd and weird as the growing things appeared, they shared two attributes, none were truly ugly and all were sweet scented.
Logan rubbed his forehead with his bandaged hands and blinked.
“There is something about all this—” He swung about slowly as Storm had done. A flight of brilliant patches that the Terran had thought firmly attached to a bush of ivory white stalks floated free, moved double wings, and skimmed to new perches. Birds? Insects? They could be either.
“They have places on some worlds,” Logan pursued his own explanation, “where they keep wild animals—call ’em zoos. It looks to me as if this place were meant to keep specimens of vegetation from a lot of different planets. One, two, three, four,” he counted the separate plots about them. “And these are just about as different from each other as you can get.”
He was right, Storm could agree to that. Gorgol put out a hand and touched with gentle hesitation one of the ivory stems that had supported the flying flowers. He withdrew his fingers and sniffed at them with some of the same pleasure Surra had shown when she drank in the perfume of the purple cups.
Surra? Storm glanced around, seeking the cat. But she was gone, vanished somewhere into this scented wilderness. He sat down at the foot of the pine, leaning his back against its trunk, his hands flat against the earth that felt like home earth, moist, but firm under his flesh. He could close his eyes now to the riot of those other gardens and their weird beauty, or look up into the tent of green over him and be back again—
Gorgol and Logan drifted away. Storm was glad to be alone. Slowly he slid down the length of the pine bole until he was curled on a mat of needles and he slept, dreamlessly, completely relaxed, though the semblance of day about him never changed to evening.
“—biggest mixture you ever saw.” Logan lay on his back, sharing the bed under the pine, while Gorgol dug his fingers back and forth through the same needle padding, shifting the brown harvest of years. It was still day by the light, though they must have been many hours in the cavern.
“I’d say,” the Arzoran settler continued, “that a whole mountain was hollowed out to hold this. We counted about sixty different gardens—including two which are mostly water. And then there are the fruit orchards and vines—” He gestured at the remains of their recent meal, a small collection of pits and rinds. “I tell you—this is fabulous!”
“No animal life—?”
“Birds, insects—no animals, except that cat of yours. We caught her rolling in a big patch of gray mossy stuff and acting as if she were wild. Ran away from us as if we were Xiks stalkin’ her with one of those pop guns of theirs.”
“But how could all this keep growing without any attention for years, maybe centuries?” marveled Storm. “You are right, it is, it must have been intended as a botanical garden of specimens gathered from all over the galaxy. This”—he pulled a curl of flame-orange rind between his fingers—“was an Astran ‘golden apple.’ And the black and white berries were from Sirius Three. But you’d think the place would have grown into a wilderness when it was left. Something continued to control it, kept the growth right, nourished everything properly—”
“Maybe the light is part of it,” Logan suggested. “Or the atmosphere. I’ve noticed one thing.” He held out his hand. The bandages were gone and the wounds and burns Storm had tended were not only closed, they were almost healed.
“Show him your arm,” Logan signed to Gorgol and the Norbie presented his wounded forearm for inspection. The arrow tear was only a reddish mark, and the native used the limb freely with no sign of discomfort.
“How do you feel?” Logan demanded of Storm.
The Terran stretched. He had not really noticed before but, now that Logan had drawn the matter to his attention, he was aware that the weight of exhaustion that had ridden him into this Eden was gone. In fact Storm had not awakened so contented with life for a long time—for years. Like Surra he wanted to roll on the ground and purr his pleasure aloud.
“See?” Logan did not seem to expect an articulate answer. “It’s in the air here, all around us. Growth—making us feel alive and vigorous, healed of our hurts, too. Perhaps this place was designed for other uses besides just botanical display.”
“Does it also have a door out?”
“We found three doors,” Logan returned. “Two are grills, but the third looks the most promisin’.”
“Why?”
“Because it has been walled up. The legends of the Sealed Caves suggest it might be an outlet to the outside—”
Storm supposed he should get up and go to inspect that doorway. But for the first time in years a kind of languorous laziness held him in its grip. Just to lie here under the pine, to watch Rain and the other horses at their ease, Logan and Gorgol beside him as relaxed as himself, none of them driven by a need for immediate action—it was wonderful, perfect! He and the others had found a small section of Paradise, why be in a hurry to leave it?
Gorgol sat up, brushed the pine needles from the fringes of his belt. He turned his head, gazing about him with a slow measurement and within Storm a faint, very faint apprehension awoke.
The native’s yellow-red fingers moved in short sweeps, with pauses between, as if the importance of what he had to say was making the Norbie doubly careful of his choice of signs.
“This—trap—big trap.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Trap?” repeated Logan without much interest. But the languor that held Storm was pierced by a fast-growing doubt. Perhaps because he had known a variety of traps—and very ingenious ones—in the past, the Terran did not only listen but was receptive to such a warning.