Then on questioning, he admitted that the effects might be entirely owing to a hundred years exposure to damp soil.
Fawkes had constructed a fantasy that followed him even into his waking hours. It concerned an elusive race of intelligent beings dwelling underground, never being seen but haunting that first settlement a century back with a deadly perseverance.
He pictured a silent bacteriological warfare. He could see them in laboratories beneath the tree roots, culturing their molds and spores, waiting for one that could live on human beings. Perhaps they captured children to experiment upon.
And when they found what they were looking for, spores drifted silently out over the settlement in venomous clouds—
Fawkes knew all this to be fantasy. He had made it up in the wakeful nights out of no evidence but that of his quivering stomach. Yet alone in the forest, he whirled more than once in a sudden horror-filled conviction that bright eyes were staring out of the duskiness of a tree’s Lagrange I shadow.
Fawkes’ botanist’s eye did not miss the vegetation he passed, absorbed as he was. He had deliberately struck out from camp in a new direction, but what he saw was what he had already seen. Junior’s forests were neither thick nor tangled. They were scarcely a barrier to travel. The small trees—few were higher than ten feet, although their trunks were nearly as thick as the average Terrestrial tree—grew with considerable room between them.
Fawkes had constructed a rough scheme for arranging the plant-life of Junior into some sort of taxonomic order. He was not unaware of the fact that he might be arranging for his own immortality.
There was the scarlet “bayonet tree,” for instance. Its huge, scarlet flowers attracted insectlike creatures that built small nests within it. Then—at what signal or what impulse Fawkes had not divined—all the flowers on some one given tree would grow a glistening white pistil over night. Each pistil stood two feet high, as though every bloom had been suddenly equipped with a bayonet.
By the next day, the flower had been fertilized, and the petals closed shut—about pistil, insects and all. The explorer, Makoyama, had named it the “bayonet tree,” but Fawkes had made so bold as to rename it Migrania Fawkesii.
One thing the trees had in common. Their wood was incredibly tough. It would be the task of the biochemist to determine the physical state of the cellulose molecule and that of the biophysicist to determine how water could be transported through the wood’s impervious texture. What Fawkes knew from experience was that blossoms would break if pulled, that stems would bend only with difficulty and break not at all. His pocketknife was blunted without as much as making a scratch.
The original settlers, in order to clear land, had obviously had to dig out the trees, root and all.
Compared to Earth, the woods were almost free of animal life. That might be due to the glacial slaughter. Fawkes didn’t know.
The insectlike creatures were all two winged. And those wings were feathery little fronds that beat noiselessly. None, apparently, were bloodsuckers.
The only major experience with animals that they had had was the sudden appearance of a large flying creature over the camp. It took highspeed photography to reveal the actual shape of the beast, for the specimen they observed, apparently overcome with curiosity, swooped low over the tents, again and again, at speeds too great for comfortable, naked-eye observation.
It was four-winged, the forward wings terminating in powerful claws, being membranous and nearly naked, serving the office of gliding planes. The hind pair, covered with a hairlike fuzz, beat rapidly.
Rodriguez suggested the name Tetraplems.
Fawkes paused in his reminiscence to look al a variety of grass he had not seen before. It grew in a dense patch and each stem forked in three toward the top. He brought out his magnifying glass, and felt one of the stems gingerly with his finger. Like other grasses on Junior, it—
It was here that he heard the rustle behind him—unmistakable. He listened for a moment, his own heartbeat drowning the sound, then whirled. A small manlike object dodged behind a tree.
Fawkes’ breathing nearly stopped. He fumbled for the blaster he wore and his hand seemed to be moving through molasses.
Was his fantasy no fantasy at all? Was Junior inhabited after all?
Numbly, Fawkes found himself behind another tree. He couldn’t leave it at this. He knew that. He could not report to the rest: I saw something alive. It might have been the answer to everything. But I was afraid and let it get away.
He would have to make some attempt.
There was a “chalice tree” just behind the tree that hid the creature. It was in bloom, the white and cream flowers lifted turgidly upward, waiting to catch the rain that would soon fall. There was the sharp tinkle of a breaking flower and cream slivers twisted and turned downward.
It wasn’t imagination. Something was behind the tree.
Fawkes look a deep breath and dashed out, holding his blaster before him, nerving himself to shoot at the slightest sign of danger.
But a voice called out, “Don’t. It’s only I.” A frightened, but definitely human face looked out from behind the tree.
It was Mark Annuncio.
Fawkes stopped-in mid-stride and I stared. Finally, he managed to croak, “What are you doing here?”
Mark said, staring at the blaster in the other’s hand, “I was following you.”
“Why?”
“To see what you would do. I was interested in what you might find. I thought if you saw me, you would send me away.”
Fawkes became conscious of the weapon he was still holding and put it away. It took three tries to get it into the holster.
The first fat drops of rain began to fall. Fawkes said, harshly, “Don’t say anything about this to the others.”
He glared hostilely at the youngster and they walked back to camp separately and in silence.
A central hall of pre-fab had been added to the seven tents now, and the group was together within it, sitting about the long table.
It was a great moment, but a rather subdued one. Vernadsky, who had cooked for himself in his college days, was in charge. He lifted the steaming stew off the short-wave heater and said, “Calories, anyone.”
He ladled the stuff lavishly.
“It smells very good,” said Novee, doubtfully.
He lifted a piece of meat with his fork. It was purplish and still felt tough despite internal heating. The shredded herbs that surrounded it seemed softer, but looked less edible.
“Well,” said Vernadsky, “eat it. Put it in your mouth. I’ve tasted it and it’s good.”
He crammed his mouth and chewed. He kept on chewing. “Tough, but good.”
Fawkes said, gloomily, “It’ll probably kill us.”
“Nuts,” said Vernadsky. “The rats have been living on it for two weeks.”
“Two weeks isn’t much,” said Novee.
Rodriguez said, “Well, one bite won’t kill. Say, it is good.”
And it was. They all agreed, eventually. So far, it seemed that whenever Junior’s life could be eaten at all, it was good. The grains were almost impossible to grind into flour, but that done, a protein-high cake could be baked. There was some on the table now; dark and heavy. It wasn’t bad, either.
Fawkes had studied the herb life on Junior and come to the conclusion that an acre of Junior’s surface, properly seeded and watered, could support ten times the number of grazing animals that an acre of Earthly alfalfa could.
Sheffield had been impressed; spoke of Junior as the granary of a hundred worlds, but Fawkes dismissed his own statements with a shrug.
He said, “Sucker bait.”
About a week earlier, the party had been agitated by the sudden refusal of the hamsters and white rats to touch certain new herbs Fawkes had brought in. Mixing small quantities with regular rations had resulted in the death of those that fed on it.