THE PLANET BECKONED THEM FROM SPACE —and closed round them like a Venus Fly Trap!
Assailed by strange perils and even stranger temptations, the little group stumbled towards its destiny—Mike Ross, the pilot, Sara Foster, the big game hunter, blind George Smith, and the odious Friar Tuck.
Before them was a legend made flesh, around them were creatures of myth and mystery, close behind them stalked Nemesis. The doll, the little wooden painted doll, was to be their salvation. Or their damnation, for each might choose, and find, his own Nirvana.
OTHER SCIENCE FICTION NOVELS
BY CLIFFORD D. SIMAK
AVAILABLE IN BERKLEY MEDALLION EDITIONS
STRANGERS IN THE UNIVERSE
(Selections)
THE WEREWOLF PRINCIPLE
THE GOBLIN RESERVATION
OUT OF THEIR MINDS
Copyright © 1971 by Clifford D. Simak
All rights reserved
Published by arrangement with the author's agent
SNB 425-02103-3
BERKLEY MEDALLION BOOKS are published by Berkley Publishing Corporation 200 Madison Avenue New York, N.Y. 10016
BERKLEY MEDALLION BOOKS ® TM 757,375
Printed in the United States of America
BERKLEY MEDALLION EDITION, JANUARY, 1972
ONE
The place was white and there was something aloof and puritanical and uncaring about the whiteness, as if the city stood so lofty in its thoughts that the crawling scum of life was as nothing to it.
And yet, I told myself, the trees towered over all. It had been the trees, I knew, when the ship started coming down toward the landing field, riding on the homing beam we'd caught far out in space, that had made me think we'd be landing at a village. Perhaps, I had told myself, a village not unlike that old white New England village I had seen on Earth, nestled in the valley with the laughing brook and the flame of autumn maples climbing up the hills. Watching, I had been thankful, and a bit surprised as well, to find such a place, a quiet and peaceful place, for surely any creatures that had constructed such a village would be a quiet and peaceful people, not given to the bizarre concepts and outlandish mores so often found on an alien planet.
But this was not a village. It was about as far from a village as it was possible to get. It had been the trees towering over the whiteness of it that had spelled village in my mind. But who would expect to find trees that would soar above a city, a city that rose so tall one must tilt his head to see its topmost towers?
The city rose into the air like a towering mountain range springing up, without benefit of foothills, from a level plain. It fenced in the landing field with its massive structure, like an oval of tall bleachers hemming in a playing field. From space the city had been shining white, but it no longer shone. It was white, all white, but soft satiny, having something in common with the subdued gleam of expensive china on a candle-lighted table.
The city was white and the landing field was white and the sky so faint a blue that it seemed white as well. All white except the trees that topped a city which surged up to mountain height.
My neck was getting tired from tilting my head to stare up at the city and the trees and now, when I lowered my head and looked across the field, I saw, for the first time, there were other ships upon the field. A great many other ships, I realized with a start—more ships than one would normally expect to find on even some of the larger and busier fields of the human galaxy. Ships of every size and shape and all of them were white. That had been the reason, I told myself, I'd not spotted them before. The whiteness of them served as a camouflage, blending them in with the whiteness of the field itself.
All white, I thought. The whole damn planet white. And not merely white, but a special kind of whiteness—all with that same soft-china glow. The city and the ships and the field itself all were china-white, as if they had been carved by some industrious sculptor out of one great block of stone to form a single piece of statuary.
There was no activity. There was nothing stirring. No one was coming out to meet us. The city stood up dead.
A gust of wind came from somewhere, a single isolated gust, twitching at my jacket. And I saw there was no dust. There was no dust for the wind to blow, no scraps of paper for it to roll about. I scuffed at the material which made up the landing surface and my scuffing made no marks. The material, whatever it might be, was as free of dust as if it had been swept and scrubbed less than an hour before.
Behind me I heard the scrape of boots on the ladder's rungs. It was Sara Foster coming down the ladder and she was having trouble with that silly ballistics rifle slung on a strap across one shoulder. It was swinging with the motion of her climbing and bumping on the ladder, threatening to get caught between the rungs.
I reached up and helped her down and she swung around as soon as she reached the ground to stare up at the city. Studying the classic planes of her face and mop of curling red hair, I wondered again how a woman of such beauty could have escaped all the softness of face that would have rounded out the beauty. She reached up a hand and brushed back a lock of hair that kept falling in her eyes. It had been falling in her eyes since the first moment I had met her.
"I feel like an ant," she said. "It just stands there, looking down at us. Don't you feel the eyes?"
I shook my head. I had felt no eyes.
"Any minute now," she said, "it will lift a foot and squash us."
"Where are the other two?" I asked.
"Tuck is getting the stuff together and George is listening, with that soft, silly look pasted on his face. He says that he is home."
"For the love of Christ," I said.
"You don't like George," said Sara.
"That's not it at all," I said. "I can ignore the man. It's this whole deal that gets me. It makes no sort of sense."
"But he got us here," she said.
"That is right," I said, "and I hope he likes it."
For I didn't like it. Something about the bigness and the whiteness and the quietness of it. Something about no one coming out to greet us or to question us. Something about the directional beam that had brought us to this landing field, then no one being there. And about the trees as well. No trees had the right to grow as tall and big as those that rose above the city.
A clatter broke out above us. Friar Tuck had started down the ladder and George Smith, puffing with his bulk, was backing out the port, with Tuck guiding his waving feet to help him find the rungs.
"He'll slip and break his neck," I said, not caring too much if he did.
"He hangs on real good," said Sara, "and Tuck will help him down."
Fascinated, I watched them coming down the ladder, the friar guiding the blind man's feet and helping him to find the rungs when he happened to misjudge them.
A blind man, I told myself—a blind man and a footloose, phony friar, and a female big game hunter off on a wild goose chase, hunting for a man who might have been no man at all, but just a silly legend. I must have been out of my mind, I told myself, to take on a job like this.
The two men finally reached the ground and Tuck, taking the blind man's arm, turned him around so he faced the city.
Sara had been right, I saw, about that silly smile. Smith's face was wreathed in beatitude and a look like that, planted on his flabby, vacant face, reeked of obscenity.
Sara touched the blind man's arm with gentle fingers.
"You're sure this is the place, George? You couldn't be mistaken?"
The beatitude changed to an ecstasy that was frightening to see. "There is no mistake," he babbled, his squeaky voice thickened by emotion. "My friend is here. I hear him and he makes me see. It's almost as if I could reach out and touch him."
He made a fumbling motion with a
pudgy hand, as if he were reaching out to touch someone, but there was nothing there to touch. It all was in his mind.
It was insane on the face of it, insane to think that a blind man who heard voices—no, not voices, just a single voice— could lead us across thousands of light years, toward and above the galactic center, into territory through which no man and no human ship had been known to pass, to one specific planet. There had been, in past history, many people who had heard voices, but until now not too many people bad paid attention to them.
"There is a city," Sara was saying to the blind man. "A great white city and trees taller than the city, trees that go up and up for miles. Is that what you see?"
"No," said George, befuddled by what he had been told, "No, that isn't what I see. There isn't any city and there aren't any trees." He gulped. "I see," he said, "I see . . ." He groped for what he saw and finally gave up. He waved his hands and his face was creased with the effort to tell us what he saw. "I can't tell you what I see," he finally whispered. "I can't find the words for it. There aren't any words."
"There is something coming," said Friar Tuck, pointing toward the city. "I can't make it out. Just a shimmer. As if there were something moving."
I looked where the friar was pointing and I caught the shimmer. But that was all it was. There was nothing one could really see. Out there, at the base of the city wall, something seemed to be moving, an elusive flow and sparkle.
Sara was looking through her glasses and now she slipped the strap over her shoulder and handed them to me.
"What do you think, captain?"
I put the glasses to my eyes and moved them slowly until I caught the movement. At first it was no more than a moving blur, but slowly it grew in size and separated. Horses? I wondered. It didn't make much sense that there'd be horses here, but that was what they looked like. White horses running toward us—if there were horses, of course they would be white! But very funny horses and, it seemed, with very funny feet, not running the way a normal horse would run, but with a crazy gait, rocking as they ran.
As they came closer I could make out further detail. They were horses, all right. Formalized horses—pert upright ears, flaring nostrils, arched necks, manes that rose as if the wind were blowing through them, but manes that never moved. Like wild running horses some crummy artist would draw for a calendar, but keeping the set pose the artist had given them, never changing it. And their feet? Not feet, I saw. Not any feet at all, but rockers. Two pair of rockers, front and rear, with the front ones narrower so there'd be no interference as the horses ran—reaching forward with the rear pair and, as they touched the ground, rocking forward on them, with the front pair lifted and reaching out to touch the ground and rock in turn.
Shaken, I lowered the glasses and handed them to Sara.
"This," I said, "is one you won't believe."
She put the glasses up and I watched the horses coming on. There were eight of them and they all were white and one was so like the other there was no telling them apart.
Sara took down the glasses.
"Merry-go-round," she said.
"Merry-go-round?"
"Sure. Those mechanical contraptions they have at fairs and carnivals and amusement parks."
I shook my head, bewildered. "I never went to an amusement park," I told her. "Not that kind of amusement park. But when I was a kid I had a hobbyhorse."
The eight came rushing in, sliding to a halt. Once they halted, they stood rocking gently back and forth.
The foremost of them spoke to us, employing that universal space argot that man had found already in existence when he'd gone into space more than twenty centuries before, a language composed of terms and phrases and words from a hundred different tongues, forged into a bastard lingo by which many diverse creatures could converse with one another.
"We be hobbies," said the horse. "My name is Dobbin and we have come to take you in."
No part of him moved. He simply stood there, rocking gently, with his ears still perked, his carven nostrils flaring, with the nonexistent breeze blowing at his mane. I got the impression, somehow, that the words he spoke came out of his ears.
"I think they're cute," Sara cried, delighted. And that was typical; she would think that they were cute.
Dobbin paid her no attention. "We urge upon you haste," he said. "There is a mount for each of you and four to take the luggage. We have but a small amount of time."
I didn't like the way that it was going; I didn't like a thing about it. I'm afraid I snapped at him.
"We don't like being hurried," I told him. "If you have no time, we can spend the night on the ship and come in tomorrow morning."
"No! No!" the hobby protested frantically. "That is impossible. There exists great danger with the setting of the sun. You must be undercover by the time the sun is set."
"Why don't we do the way he says," suggested Tuck, pulling his robe tight around himself. "I don't like it out here. If there is no time now, we could come back and pick up the luggage later."
Said Dobbin, "We'll take the luggage now. There'll be no time in the morning."
"It seems to me," I said to Dobbin, "you're greatly pressed for time. If that's the case, why don't you simply turn around and go back where you came from. We can take care of ourselves."
"Captain Ross," said Sara Foster, firmly, "I'm not going to walk all that way if there's a chance to ride. I think you're being foolish."
"That may well be," I said, angrily, "but I don't like snotty robots ordering me around."
"We be hobbies," Dobbin said. "We not be any robots."
"You be human hobbies?"
"I do not know your meaning."
"Human beings made you. Creatures very much like us."
"I do not know," said Dobbin.
"The hell you don't," I said. I turned to Smith. "George," I said.
The blind man turned his puffy face toward me. The look of ecstasy still was pasted on it.
"What is it, captain?"
"In your talk back and forth with this friend of yours, did you ever mention hobbies?"
"Hobbies? Oh, you mean stamp collecting and . . ."
"No, I don't," I said. "I mean hobbyhorses. Did you ever mention hobbyhorses?"
"Until this moment," said the blind man, "I never heard of them."
"But you had toys when you were 'a child."
The blind man sighed. "Not the kind you are thinking of. I was born blind. I have never seen. The kind of toys other children had were not . . ."
"Captain," Sara said, angrily, "you are ridiculous. Why all this suspicion?"
"I'll tell you that," I said, just as angrily, "and it's an easy answer . . ."
"I know," she said. "I know. Suspicion, time and time again, has saved that neck of yours."
"Gracious lady," Dobbin said, "please believe there is great danger once the sun has set. I plead with you, I implore you, I urge you to come with us and most speedily at that."
"Tuck," said Sara, "get up that ladder and start getting down the stuff!" She swung belligerently toward me. "Have you objections, captain?"
"Miss Foster," I told her, "it's your ship and it's your money. You're paying for the show."
"You're laughing at me," she stormed. "You've laughed all the way. You never really believed in anything I told you. You don't believe at all—not in anything."
"I got you here," I told her, grimly, "and I'll get you back. That's the deal we made. All I ask is that you try not to make the job any harder than it has to be."
And immediately that I said it, I was sorry that I had. We were on an alien planet and very far from home and we should stick together and not start off with bickering. More than likely, I admitted to myself, she had been quite right; I might have been ridiculous. But right away, I amended that. Ridiculous on the surface, maybe, but not in principle. When you hit an alien planet, you are on your own and you have to keep your senses and your hunches sharp. I'd been on a lot of alien planets a
nd had always managed and so, of course, had Sara, but she'd always hit them with a good-sized expeditionary force and I'd been on my own.
Tuck, at the first word from her, had gone swarming up the ladder, with his robe tucked up underneath his belt so he wouldn't trip, and now was handing down the duffle bags and the other plunder to Sara, who was halfway up the ladder, taking the stuff from him and dropping it as gently as she could at the ladder's base. There was one thing you had to say about the gal—she never shirked the work. She was al. ways in there, doing 'her fair share and perhaps a good deal more.
"All right," I said to Dobbin, "run your packhorses over here. How do you handle this?"
"I regret," said Dobbin, "that we haven't any arms. But with the situation as it is, you'll be forced to do the packing. Just heap the luggage on top the hobbies' backs and when the load is completed, metal cinches will extrude from the belly and strap the load securely."
"Ingenious," I said.
Dobbin made a little forward dip upon his rockers, in the semblance of hewing. "Always," he said, "we attempt to serve."
Four of the horses came rocking up and I began loading them. When Tuck got through with handing down the gear, Sara came and helped me. Tuck closed the port and by the time he had climbed down the ladder, we were all set to go.
The sun was touching the city skyline and hunks were being nibbled out of it by the topmost towers. It was slightly more yellow than the sun of Earth—perhaps a K-type star. The ship would know, of course; the ship would have it all. The ship did all the work that a man was supposed to do. It gobbled up the data and pulled it all apart and put it back together. It knew about this planet and about the planet's star, it knew about the atmosphere and the chemistry and all the rest of it and it would have been more than willing to give it out to anyone who asked. But I hadn't asked. I had meant to go back and get the data sheet, but I hadn't counted on getting a reverse bum's rush by a pack of hobbyhorses. Although, I told myself, it probably made, no difference, I could come back in the morning. But I couldn't bring myself to like the fact that I'd not latched onto that data sheet.