Neale knew what to do now. He rose and went to his supply chest, and filled a small flask with orange-yellow fluid from a larger container. The label on the larger container said STYROTHENE, and below that was the familiar skull-and-crossbones symbol of danger.
Styrothene was a nerve poison. In diluted solutions—one part in five hundred was the usual ratio—it was a highly efficient anesthetic, which blocked off neural impulses throughout the body and allowed for the most delicate surgery. In its pure concentrated form, it was the fastest acting poison known to man. Hardly did the liquid touch the tongue when death came.
Smiling now, because he was prepared, Neale adjusted the cork on the flask and put it in his jacket pocket. Next he checked the charge-case of his blaster. There was only one charge left.
He waited. Five minutes, ten went by. Then came the knock on the door that he was expecting.
With trembling fingers he slid back the bolt and opened the door. “Hello, Laura. Come in, won’t you?”
She stepped inside, and he bolted the door again.
“Working late again tonight, Mike?” she asked, in her normal voice.
He nodded. “There was a lot to be done.”
His stomach was a cold mass of fear. She stood before him, smiling, speaking to him as she had always spoken to him through the fifteen years of their happy marriage. Brutally he thought, The parasite has achieved full control over her vocal cords now. She doesn’t stutter. She can’t fight back any more.
She was saying, “I’ve been looking for you all over the place. It’s past 0200. It’s time to go to bed, Mike, dear. I’m so tired.”
“You are, aren’t you, Laura. Tired. Well, I’m tired too. It’s been a busy night.”
She extended her arms to him. “Come, Mike. Let’s go upstairs, shall we?”
“Not just yet,” he said tightly.
It was like a dream, a dream in which none of this had ever happened, in which Gamma Crucis VII had proved to be as safe as all the other worlds they had visited, in which there were no parasites, no unit-mind, no death.
The urge welled up within him to go to her, to forget his resolution. He was wavering, now. He realized the change was almost upon him, that it was his turn now, at last. At last.
“Mike—”
“No. You’re not Laura. You used to be Laura, and I loved you then.”
He raised the blaster. With shaking hands he fired, once, and looked away. After a moment he was able to look back, and he saw that she was dead.
It was very quiet now.
He put down the gun and sat quietly behind his desk. He picked up pen and paper and began to write, a brief, concise account of the strange parasite that had infected the nerve channels of the Earthmen on Gamma Crucis VII. This was to be his final report, and he chose his words with care, working thoughtfully.
The unit-mind, he wrote, is certainly an incredible organism worthy of detailed scientific study, as my few conclusions here have tried to show. Unfortunately, it is impossible to carry out this detailed study at present, since no adequate defense against the effects of the corporate mind exists, and the rate of absorption appears to approach one hundred percent, I think—
He put down the pen, frowning. Whatever it was he thought, he had forgotten it. But it made little difference, he realized. No one would ever read this report. Earthmen would never land on Gamma Crucis VII again. Laura was dead, and all the others, but at least Earth was safe, and this world would be left to itself for all eternity. If they were wise, he thought, they would blast Gamma Crucis VII out of the skies. They would do well to—
Neale felt very tired. The pen went rolling across the desk and fell to the floor, and he ignored it.
Something squirmed within his mind.
At last, he thought, with un-mixed relief. Gamma Crucis VII is claiming me, too. Now he could rest.
He reached for the bottle in his pocket. The thing within him clung to his arm, trying to restrain him, but its control was too new, too weak. Neale drew out the bottle, un-corked it, lifted it to his lips. At least, he thought, the planet-mind would have no Earthmen among its numbers.
He drank. He sensed the outraged cry of the thing within him as it realized it was to be cheated, and then consciousness left him.
SLAVES OF THE TREE
(1957)
I missed few opportunities to provide W.W. Scott with lead novelets for Super-Science. Exactly two months after I turned in “Planet of Parasites,” I was back in his office with the next 12,000-worder, “Slaves of the Tree,” which I delivered in October, 1957 for his June, 1958 issue. (I had spent the intervening month writing a batch of crime stories for Trapped and Guilty.) This one, though not very different in structure from the previous issue’s “Calvin M. Knox” novelet, ran under my “Eric Rodman” pseudonym.
“Slaves of the Tree,” the title and theme of which may have been tenuously related to a 1951 Jack Vance novella, “Son of the Tree,” that probably had lodged somewhere in the back of my mind, starts right off in full Super-Science mode: “There was something about the planet that Rayner did not like.” (Rule number one of pulp-fiction plotting: get your hero in trouble fast.) Rayner is a member of the Examination Squad, which has arrived on the planet of Maldonad, a place with “warm, slightly sickly air”, to find out what has happened to the descendants of the seven hundred colonists from Earth who had come there two hundred years previously. They are in a mess, of course—they are hardly even recognizable as human—and as Rayner and his fellow members of the Examination Squad attempt to find out what strange power it is that has transformed the colonists into the weird hybrid creature they have become, they too are drawn into—
Well, it’s a Super-Science novelet, so by this time you know a priori that the outcome for Rayner and his shipmates isn’t going to be good. But I did introduce one twist toward the end that varied the formula a bit.
——————
There was something about the planet that Rayner did not like. He knew it immediately, as soon as he had dropped the last three feet from the catwalk of the ship to the ground. The other four members of the Examination Squad had already left the ship, and were wandering around the clearing, breathing deeply, taking in the warm, slightly sickly air of Maldonad.
Rayner stood by the edge of the clearing, looking around. He felt ill at ease. Foolish, he thought. This is an A-one Earthtype planet. The Examination won’t take long. Just a routine once-over.
Ehrenfeld, the Squad head, was looking at him strangely. “You all right, Rayner?”
“Yeah. I’m okay.”
“Come on, then. The charts say we’re five miles from the settlement. We’d better go announce ourselves.”
Rayner nodded; it was silly to stand here and search one’s mind for the causes of groundless fears. This was just another colonized planet, out here in the Sixth Decant, just another world on which Earth had left some of her sons and now which had to be re-examined.
Two hundred years had gone by since the colonization of Maldonad by Earthmen. This was the third time a Terran ship had landed on the planet’s surface.
First had been the survey scoutship; the records showed that a scout team had come by Maldonad in 2614, and had marked it suitable for human colonization after the usual cursory tests.
It had taken a while to get the colony organized; in 2627, finally, a huge Colonial Force ship containing seven hundred settlers made the second landing on Maldonad. Seven hundred pioneers, volunteers to open up the new world. They were part of the great mushroomlike outward expansion of Terra to the stars. Thousands of worlds lay waiting; the stardrive had placed them within man’s reach.
Colonial Force regulations called for a two hundred year period of development, in which a newly settled world was to be left strictly alone. It must develop through its own devices, with no contact whatsoever with the main stream of galactic culture. And after two centuries had passed, regulations prescribed that an Examination Squad of five Ea
rthmen should visit the world and certify it for admission into the Council of Worlds, if its ten generations of colonists had proved themselves worthy of admission.
Two hundred years had gone by, and in 2827 it was Maldonad’s turn to undergo Examination. Mark Rayner shrugged and followed the others through the forest. It was always a tense business, making first contact with the descendants of the settlers two hundred years later.
Sometimes they forgot their heritage. Sometimes they had forgotten the fact that they were human. In his seven years as an Examiner, Rayner had seen some chilling sights on the colony worlds. He wondered about Maldonad. He had never put much faith in extra-sensory perception, but the feeling of uneasiness was too strong for him to leave entirely out of consideration.
He caught up with the rest of the group, as they wheeled the equipment through the forest path. Ehrenfeld was in front, as a squad leader should be. He was a small wiry man with remarkable strength for his size; right now he wore the neutral blue and gray uniform of the Examination Squad, and the back of his blouse was stippled with sweat-spots. Maldonad was a warm world. The mean daily temperature, according to the records two hundred years old, was 93 degrees Fahrenheit. Right now it was closer to a hundred.
After Ehrenfeld came Bryson and Killian, the anthropologist and the biologist, a remarkable pair of opposites. Bryson was close to the retirement age of eighty, a tall withered old man with hardly an ounce of surplus flesh anywhere on his lean body. Killian was half a century younger, short, chunky, brash. They were pushing the main equipment barrow.
Behind them walked Magda Hollis, the squad’s one female. Rayner eyed her appraisingly as he drew near. She was no youngster, but still attractive at thirty-five. Her specialty was sociology and political theory. In the muggy warmth she had chosen to wear a plastifab halter and shorts that clung skin-tight to her slim body.
On the journey from Barriella, the previous world on the squad’s schedule, she and Killian had been carrying on a torrid shipboard romance. But evidently Magda and the chunky biologist had had a falling-out; since making the landing on Maldonad, the two of them had ignored each other as completely as if they had been sexless androids.
Rayner matched his pace to hers and said, “Nervous?”
She glanced at him. “Why should I be nervous, Rayner? I’m not normally a nervous person, am I?”
“I didn’t mean that. But I always find it an anxious moment—just before we’ve made contact with the people we’ve come to pass judgment on. It’s—it’s as if the planet lies hidden in a dark box, and we’re shining a light into that box, never knowing what weird thing we might find inside. You mean you never feel that way?”
Magda looked at him queerly. “Not at all. This is the sixteenth world we’ve visited on this tour of duty, and I haven’t felt anything of the sort. Maybe someone like you, Rayner—”
He cut her off before she could make the acid comment. She always had had an acid-tipped tongue, Rayner thought. He had wondered how Killian had been able to stand the woman’s biting sarcasms simply for the sake of an attractive body. He probably gave her back some of her own medicine, finally, he thought. And that’s why they haven’t been speaking to each other.
“On Morripar, though,” Rayner said. “Finding that blood-drinking cult. That was a fine thing to happen to Earthmen in two hundred years, wasn’t it? And the legal murders in the Wimli law-code?”
“Isolated developments,” said Magda. “Only to be expected in view of the nature of those worlds. But what of it? Why be nervous?”
“Maybe I have too much faith in the human species,” Rayner said. “Maybe it upsets me to see the strange things that sometimes happen to human beings when they’re left alone on an alien world for two hundred years.”
She snorted contemptuously. “You—having faith in the human species? Don’t make me laugh too hard, Rayner. It’s too hot here for laughing.”
He scowled and said nothing. He despised her, and he knew that she loathed him, barely troubling to keep her hatred below the surface. It was the same with all of them. Ehrenfeld had fought unsuccessfully to keep him off the squad, when the original assignment had been made; Killian held him in open derision, while old Bryson managed to ignore him as much as possible.
The team had been together for seventeen months, now. Rayner frowned bitterly. Seventeen months while a trained ecologist served as whipping-boy for a squad of neurotics. But it would have been the same anywhere else, Rayner thought, and this was the work he was most suited for, the work he most deeply enjoyed. He had never regretted applying for a position in the Examination Corps.
You never had to stay long on one world, in the Corps. You never had to put down roots. And that suited Rayner. As long as he could wander from world to world, he could put up with the scorn of his teammates. At least he was free.
A jewel-bodied insect with gleaming wings flew hummingly past his nose. The thick-ranked trees of the forest seemed to be bent over from the heat. Rayner heard Killian mutter something about the humidity.
Rayner hoisted his pack a little higher on his shoulders and walked on. It wouldn’t be long before they’d be reaching the Terran settlement. Tremors of nervous anticipation ran through him, and he moistened his suddenly dry lips.
The settlers’ village stood at the edge of a giant forest, in a clearing provided by nature near the mouth of a great river. The Examination Squad paused as they came to the settlement.
Two hundred years, and an original allotment of three hundred fifty couples. By now, anywhere from two thousand to five thousand humans should be on Maldonad.
Neatly-aligned streets greeted them. There was no paving, and the design of the buildings was curiously alien, but generally the village resembled all the other villages Rayner had seen in the past year and a half of visiting colonial planets. There did not seem to be any mechanical vehicles. At the edge of the street stood a cart laden down with vegetables, and hitched to it was an alien equivalent of a draft-horse. The animal was sway-backed and scaly, with thick legs ending in splayed hooves, and bright glittering green-gold eyes. It surveyed them lazily and swished its fleshy tail from side to side.
“It looks okay,” Ehrenfeld said. “Let’s go introduce ourselves.”
Rayner felt a twinge of nervousness as they stepped out into the quiet street. It was midday, and the big golden G2-type sun was high overhead. None of the inhabitants were to be seen.
“Obviously they’ve developed the custom of taking a noontime siesta,” Magda Hollis commented.
“Or else they saw us coming and are hiding in their cellars,” Rayner said.
Suddenly the silence was broken by the sound of footfalls. Rayner glanced across the street and saw someone—something—scuttling back into hiding behind the side of a house.
“What was that?” Killian demanded.
“It looked like a child,” Bryson said. “But what kind of child?”
“I’ll go have a look,” Rayner said. No one argued with him. He hitched up his pack and crossed the broad sunbaked street.
Quietly he circled the house; then, catching sight of his prey, he darted out a quick hand and caught it. He lifted it, and stared, astonished.
It was a child, and at a distance it might have seemed to be a human child. But, close up, the differences became apparent. Its skin was deep green and of a pebbly texture. Its high, domed head was virtually hairless. There was something froglike about the child’s face, and the batrachian characteristic was fully borne out by the firm webs between each of its bare toes. As for the eyes, they were the warm, liquid green-gold eyes of the alien beast of burden.
The child wriggled, squirmed, spat curses at him in an incomprehensible tongue. Rayner struggled with it. It seemed to be about nine, and naked except for a cloth round its middle. It had a definite musky odor, unpleasant, dank, sea-like.
“Hey! Come over here and see what I found!” Rayner yelled to his companions.
But at that moment the li
ttle creature broke from his grasp, snarled defiantly at him, and dashed away at a lightning speed, vanishing rapidly in the distance. Rayner stared at his hands. They felt slimy.
Shaken, he crossed the street again. “Did you see that thing?” he wanted to know.
Ehrenfeld said, “What was it?”
“Some sort of alien humanoid creature. A young one, unless they’re a race of midgets.”
“The survey chart says there’s no intelligent alien life on Maldonad,” Killian remarked truculently, as if he were trying to prove Rayner a liar.
Rayner glared down at the muscular biologist and said, “Maybe the survey team was wrong. Either that or the settlers here are having some mighty peculiar children.”
He rubbed his hands on his uniform trousers and shuddered. This was only the first surprise Maldonad held, he thought. But there were going to be many more, most likely.
They moved on a hundred feet further into the town, and abruptly the people began to appear. They filed out of the ramshackle old standard-type houses, tiptoeing into the hot streets, standing in tense little circles, staring at the Examination Squad, pointing, whispering, murmuring things to each other.
“Look at them!” Rayner said in horror.
Some of them looked almost human. Those were the ones with long hair, thick limbs, dark eyes. They might have been pure Terran-type humans, except for the greenish cast to their skin and the slight domed shape of their skulls. They looked different, but not alarmingly so.
There were others, though. Some of them were light green in color, almost hairless, with slim delicate bodies and human eyes. Others had the jewel-like eyes of the aliens. It was difficult to point to one of them and say, he was human, or he was an alien. They all seemed to be in a point of transition between the human and alien states. Hybrids.
Rayner’s throat felt dry.
He looked around, at the webbed feet of some of them, the domed heads, the lithe bodies. Then he turned and stared at his companions.