It was as he had imagined it would be. Around the tropical waist of Banaldar the vegetation was lush. Vast temperate plains were covered with grasses and he could see the waves that went across them as the winds blew. The seas were deep blue, rimmed with white surf. He found a desert and frowned, making plans as to how to correct it, then remembered with empty heart that this planet was not his.
He felt no need of sleep. He cruised on the edge of night, adjusting his speed to the planet rotation so that for many hours he was in perpetual dawn, the sun behind him.
At last he remembered that he was looking for the Free Lives. He had seen no sign of habitation but then he hadn’t been searching diligently. Remembering their penchant for nudity he limited his search to the semi-tropical regions. The dense tropics would be too alive with the insects which had been released, the more temperate regions would be too cool.
He dropped to two thousand feet for his search. Exhaustion came before success. He fell asleep at his task and the launch settled slowly, landing with a gentle jar that did not awaken him.
After many hours he awoke refreshed, ate with new hunger and continued the search. And at last he found them. It angered him to see where they had settled. Right on the spot that he had once picked as potentially the finest on the planet. His judgment had proved to be right. The wide green-tinted river emptied down into the blue sea. The grasses were high. Dotted here and there were the scars of their fires and a haphazard arrangement of several hundred brush huts.
Timothy set the launch in the middle of the crude village. The little motor chattered busily as it unwound the port. He restored full gravity and felt the launch sink a few inches into the ground.
Timothy took a deep breath and stepped out onto the planet, stepped out onto his broken dream, stepped out to feel the sun warmth on his face, to smell growing things, to taste the spiced breeze against his lips. He turned quickly toward the launch and for a few moments he wept. Then, squaring his shoulders, he turned back and walked toward the nearest hut.
“Hallo!” he called. “Hallo there!”
No answer. He frowned and walked to the hut, noting that the grasses seemed to be recapturing the paths that wound through them. The crude doorway was low and the hut was windowless but tiny spots of sunshine slipped through holes in the brush and made yellow coins on the packed dirt floor.
Grass was beginning to sprout from the floor itself. A wide bed of grasses in the corner was parched and dry.
He called again and again, going from hut to hut, his voice loud in the great silence. At last he admitted to himself that the village, for some reason, was deserted. He found eight crude graves, a hundred small piles of sun-whitened animal bones, a listless attempt at the cultivation of wild grains, a broken bow.
In four days he had covered all of the rest of the planet and a new wild hope began to fill him. The Free Lives seemed to have disappeared from the surface of Banaldar. The impossible and improbable had happened. He whistled and sang as he searched. He made little poems about the personal habits of the Free Lives, admiring himself when they scanned.
And, finding nothing, he returned to the village to look for clues as to what might have happened.
Trees have leaves. That is a normal thing and thus a thing which is not noticed. Timothy had not noticed the leaves during his first look at the village. He noticed them the second time. He looked casually at the trees and looked away, then swiveled back. The trees had leaves! Those five hundred foot monsters had leafed!
He realized at once what had happened. Throughout the long dead years before Transgalactic had arrived to give the planet life again a thin feeble germ of life had remained in those monster trees, the root system reaching far enough down to tap the limited moisture. And now, with the new atmosphere and the warmth it brought, with the rains started again, with the whole planet stirring with life, the trees had come back.
It made him feel humble to think of the remarkable tenacity those aged giants had displayed. The mere idea of computing their age dizzied him.
For a little time his thoughts of the Free Lives were forgotten. Timothy walked through the waist-high grass toward the row of trees. Of twenty-one huge trees, only three had failed to come back.
They had leafed densely, making blots of shadow so dark that the grass was failing around the trunks. The wind had torn a leaf loose. He picked it up by the edge. It was a full yard across, colored a deep satin green. The stem of the leaf was as big around as his thumb.
He stood in the tree shadows and a curious feeling of peace came over him. It made him feel as though he had come home after a long, wearying journey.
He stood and tilted his head back and his glance ran up the trunk, up to the dark and secret places under the umbrella of overlapping leaves. Up there was rest and surcease and the soft happy end of striving and wanting and trying. In the gloom he could make out the clusters of fruit, pale fruit, swaying heavily, and he heard a warm sighing that was pleasant to his ears.
He yawned so deeply that he shuddered and, without conscious thought, he walked to the trunk of the tree, found the places to put his hands and feet and began climbing methodically up the trunk, not looking back, his eyes on the heavy darknesses above him. There was a happy song in him.
Not much longer now. This is where I belong. This place has been waiting in the back of my heart. Climb a bit faster and then it will come sooner. Climb faster. It’s been waiting a long time. There’s the first limb, just overhead. Move over to the side now and climb up even with it, beyond it, up and up and up into the darkness and the beauty and the perfection...
He went higher, climbing as though with long practice, his hands finding the holds before his eyes saw them. He realized he was waiting for something.
When he saw it he seemed to recognize it. It was a long flexible green-ribbed stalk, as big around as his wrist, the blunt end of it cupped and damp. He stopped climbing and clung to the bark. He smiled at the stalk. It brushed his shoulder, nuzzled like a puppy at his neck. He saw the pale fruit.
They hung in clusters, the Free Lives. They hung white and fat and soft, the green stalks entering the backs of their necks. They swayed a little in the breeze as they hung there. Their eyes were almost closed and their faces wore a look of utter and ineffable content.
Their fat-ringed arms and legs hung limp and their pallor was of a whiteness faintly tinged with green. From their parted lips came the soft minor-key sighing that he had heard from the ground, a sighing of ecstasy. Somehow the children were the worst. And all of them were incredibly bloated.
Horror broke the spell. The thing that nuzzled at the back of his neck had begun to nibble with a million little needle-teeth. Clinging with one hand Timothy struck it away, felt the tearing pain, felt the wetness run down between his shoulder blades. In his haste he nearly fell as he clambered down. The stalk reached down and hit him a bruising blow across the shoulders.
Timothy, gasping and sweating in panic, climbed down and down. He had lost the ease with which he had climbed up. When he was well out of the reach of the stalk, the feeling of peace and well-being suddenly became intensified. It was a siren song. He clung motionless, wanting to climb back up. But he looked up at the white fruit, shut his teeth hard, continued descending.
Fifteen feet from the ground his hold slipped. He fell heavily, rolled to his feet and ran in panic away from the trees. A hundred yards away he dropped and lay panting, half-sobbing.
Back in the launch he dressed the circular wound in his neck and then stretched out on the bunk.