Technically, of course, it wasn’t the trees that sang. Wade knew that, but he did not think about it often. He would rather it had been the trees alone. He seldom thought of the music other than belonging to the trees, disregarded the little entities inside the trees that really made the music, using the trees for their sounding boards. Entities? That was all he knew. Insects, perhaps, a colony of insects to each tree—or maybe even nymphs or sprites or some of the other little folk that run on skipping feet through the pages of children’s fairy books. Although that was foolish, he told himself—there were no sprites.
Each insect, each sprite contributing its own small part to the orchestration, compliant to the thought-vibrations of the conductors. The conductors thought the music, held it in their brains and the things in the trees responded.
It did sound so pretty that way, Wade told himself. Thinking it out spoiled the beauty of it. Better to simply accept it and enjoy it without explanation.
Men came at times—not often—men of his own flesh and blood, men from the trading post somewhere on the planet. They came to record the music and then they went away. How anyone could go away once they had heard the music, Wade could not understand. Faintly he remembered there was a way one could immunize one’s self against the music’s spell, condition one’s self so he could leave after he had heard it, dull his senses to a point where it could not hold him. Wade shivered at the thought. That was sacrilege. But still no worse than recording the music so Earth orchestras might play it. For what Earth orchestra could play it as he heard it here, evening after evening? If Earth music lovers only could hear it as it was played here in this ancient bowl!
When the Earthmen came, Wade always hid. It would be just like them to try to take him back with them, away from the music of the trees.
Faintly the evening breeze brought the foreign sound to him, the sound that should not have been heard there in the Bowl—the clank of steel on stone.
Rising from his squatting place, he tried to locate the origin of the sound. It came again, from the far edge of the Bowl. He shielded his eyes with a hand against the setting sun, stared across the Bowl at the moving figures.
There were three of them and one, he saw at once, was an Earthman. The other two were strange creatures that looked remotely like monster bugs, chitinous armor glinting in the last rays of Sigma Draco. Their heads, he saw, resembled grinning skulls and they wore dark harnesses, apparently for the carrying of tools or weapons.
Groombridgians! But what would Groombridgians be doing with an Earthman? The two were deadly trade rivals, were not above waging intermittent warfare when their interests collided.
Something flashed in the sun—a gleaming tool that stabbed and probed, stabbed and lifted.
J. Edgerton Wade froze in horror.
Such a thing, he told himself, simply couldn’t happen!
The three across the Bowl were digging up a music tree!
The vine sneaked through the rustling sea of grass, cautious tendrils raised to keep tab on its prey, the queer, clanking thing that still rolled on unswervingly. Came on without stopping to smell out the ground ahead, without zigzagging to throw off possible attack.
Its action was puzzling; that was no way for anything to travel on this planet. For a moment a sense of doubt trilled along the length of vine, doubt of the wisdom of attacking anything that seemed so sure. But the doubt was short lived, driven out by the slavering anticipation that had sent the vicious vegetable from its lair among the grove of rifle trees. The vine trembled a little—slightly drunk with the vibration that pulsed through its tendrils.
The queer thing rumbled on and the vine tensed itself, every fiber alert for struggle. Just let it get so much as one slight grip upon the thing—
The prey came closer and for one sense-shattering moment it seemed it would be out of reach. Then it lurched slightly to one side as it struck a hump in the ground and the vine’s tip reached out and grasped, secured a hold, wound itself in a maddened grip and hauled, hauled with all the might of almost a quarter mile of trailing power.
Inside the ground car, Don Mackenzie felt the machine lurch sickeningly, kicked up the power and spun the tractor on its churning treads in an effort to break loose.
Back of him Bradford Smith uttered a startled whoop and dived for an energy gun that had broken from its rack and was skidding across the floor. Nellie, upset by the lurch, was flat on her back, jammed into a corner. The Encyclopedia, at the moment of shock, had whipped out its coiled-up taproot and tied up to a pipe. Now, like an anchored turtle, it swayed pendulum-wise across the floor.
Glass tinkled and metal screeched on metal as Nellie thrashed to regain her feet. The ground car reared and seemed to paw the air, slid about and plowed great furrows in the ground.
“It’s a vine!” shrieked Smith.
Mackenzie nodded, grim-lipped, fighting the wheel. As the car slewed around, he saw the arcing loops of the attacker, reaching from the grove of rifle trees. Something pinged against the vision plate, shattered into a puff of dust. The rifle trees were limbering up.
Mackenzie tramped on the power, swung the car in a wide circle, giving the vine some slack, then quartered and charged across the prairie while the vine twisted and flailed the air in looping madness. If only he could build up speed, slap into the stretched-out vine full tilt, Mackenzie was sure he could break its hold. In a straight pull, escape would have been hopeless, for the vine, once fastened on a thing, was no less than a steel cable of strength and determination.
Smith had managed to get a port open, was trying to shoot, the energy gun crackling weirdly. The car rocked from side to side, gaining speed while bulletlike seeds from the rifle trees pinged and whined against it.
Mackenzie braced himself and yelled at Smith. They must be nearing the end of their run. Any minute now would come the jolt as they rammed into the tension of the outstretched vine.
It came with terrifying suddenness, a rending thud. Instinctively, Mackenzie threw up his arms to protect himself, for one startled moment knew he was being hurled into the vision plate. A gigantic burst of flame flared in his head and filled the universe. Then he was floating through darkness that was cool and soft and he found himself thinking that everything would be all right, everything would be … everything—
But everything wasn’t all right. He knew that the moment he opened his eyes and stared up into the mass of tangled wreckage that hung above him. For many seconds he did not move, did not even wonder where he was. Then he stirred and a piece of steel bit into his leg. Carefully he slid his leg upward, clearing it of the steel. Cloth ripped with an angry snarl, but his leg came free.
“Lie still, you lug,” something said, almost as if it were a voice from inside of him.
Mackenzie chuckled. “So you’re all right,” he said.
“Sure. I’m all right,” said Nicodemus. “But you got some bruises and a scratch or two and you’re liable to have a headache if you—”
The voice trailed off and stopped. Nicodemus was busy. At the moment, he was the medicine cabinet, fashioning from pure energy those things that a man needed when he had a bruise or two and was scratched up some and might have a headache later.
Mackenzie lay on his back and stared up at the mass of tangled wreckage.
“Wonder how we’ll get out of here,” he said.
The wreckage above him stirred. A gadget of some sort fell away from the twisted mass and gashed his cheek. He swore—unenthusiastically.
Someone was calling his name and he answered.
The wreckage was jerked about violently, literally torn apart. Long metal arms reached down, gripped him by the shoulders and yanked him out, none too gently.