Moving mechanically, he covered the remaining distance to the ship, sprung the hidden lever that lowered the catwalk, climbed up the metal ladder into the entry hatch fifty feet above the ground. The hatch door slid hissingly closed behind him.
He made his way toward the signal compartment.
The subradio set occupied nearly one entire wall of the compartment. Its pilot light glinted redly, indicating that the set was ready for use at any time. With shaking fingers, Rayner began to set up the pattern of balanced forces that would hurl Ehrenfeld’s message across the light-years to the sensitive trans-space receptors on the dome of the Colonial Forces building in Geneva, on Earth.
He stopped.
Briefly conflict swirled in his mind. He had been trained to loyalty; it was more than a pattern of action for him, it was a way of life. He had never even so much as thought of countermanding an order given by a superior officer before.
But this was different. The superior officer was insane.
The pertinent section of the Regulations drifted into his mind:
14b sub-three: When a commanding officer is rendered unable to serve by virtue of disease or other impedance, his place shall be taken by the officer of next highest rank. Orders given by such a commanding officer during his period of disability are to be considered null and void unless countersigned by the acting commanding officer who has replaced him.
Rayner drew from his pocket the text of Ehrenfeld’s message, unfolded it, and read it through once again. Only a madman could have written such a message, he thought. A madman—or one who was under some external influence.
Such as that of the Tree.
There was little doubt in his mind of what he should do. It was impossible to transmit the message as it stood. Ehrenfeld’s object had clearly been to bring more Earthmen to Maldonad, where they too might fall under the influence of the Tree. Rayner knew he would have to block any such thing from happening.
With unquivering fingers he completed the connection and waited for Earthside to respond with the acknowledgement. After a moment it came: the pattern of buzzes that meant, We read you, go ahead.
Rayner lifted the code microphone to his lips. “I’m speaking from the ship Examiner Eleven, landed on the planet Maldonad as part of our examination tour. I wish to report that the other four members of my team have fallen victim to a strange alien sentient vegetable life-form.”
In quick, terse sentences he explained what had happened to the original colony planted on Maldonad, and then outlined the behavior of Magda and Killian during the past several days. He finished by reading the text of Ehrenfeld’s message in the light of conditions on Maldonad. He then offered his conclusions about the nature of the Tree, and added a warning that further investigations on Maldonad were to be considered only with great precautions.
Finally he said, “That sums it up. I’ll try to broadcast again tonight if I get the chance. Over. Out.”
He rose. Now Earth had the full report. But there remained one thing for him to do, to make sure that no Earthmen fell prey to the Tree ever again. He left the signal compartment and headed back through the spaceship’s narrow companionway to the weapons compartment.
Dust covered the racks of weapons. An Examination Squad only rarely made use of the arsenal it carried. Rayner looked around the storeroom until he found what he wanted: the flamethrower. Not even the Tree could stand up to the deadly neutron barrage of the flamethrower for long.
Cradling the bulky weapon in his arms, he made his way down the catwalk again and into the forest. It was past noon. Birds sang cheerfully.
By nightfall things would be different on Maldonad, he thought. After I’ve destroyed the Tree.
By the time he reached the village, the sun had begun to dip toward the horizon, and there was the first faint chill of night in the air. Goggle-eyed, the chattering hybrids stared at him as he walked down the wide street carrying the neutronic flamethrower.
He entered the building where the Earthmen had been quartered, and put a cupped hand to his lips.
“Ehrenfeld?”
A moment parsed; no response came. “Ehrenfeld?” he called again. “Killian? Bryson?”
Still no reply. “Magda? Are you in there? Is anybody in there?”
An alien voice at his elbow said softly, “The other Earthmen are in the forest. Why are you not in the forest with them?”
Rayner turned and saw Smissun. “A good question,” he said. “I guess I’ll go to the forest right now. I’ll go join my friends.”
“They have been worried about you. You did not yield to the Tree.”
Rayner nodded. “That’s all over with, now. I feel the Tree calling. I must go.”
Smissun pointed to the flamethrower and said, “What is that?”
“An offering for the Tree,” Rayner said curtly.
He found the forest path that led down by the river toward the Tree, and followed it. After a while the great bulk of the Tree became visible above the treetops. Rayner felt a little quiver of apprehension.
There’s nothing to be afraid of, he told himself. The Tree’s big, but it can’t move. It can’t defend itself. And I don’t feel its radiation.
He moved on through the noisy forest.
Fifteen minutes later he was at the edge of the clearing of the Tree; he looked about warily, not wanting to run into any of the aliens until he had done what he intended to do. He eyed the monster speculatively. It would take at least ten minutes of full-power thrust to cut completely through that vast trunk.
He moved round the Tree, calculating angles for the job of felling the great thing. Finally he was satisfied; he would make a small cut on one side, then one on the opposite side, and so maneuver things that the Tree fell sideways into the river.
A press of a lever released the tripod on which the flamethrower rested. Rayner settled down comfortably behind it. It was no problem to center the huge trunk in the weapon’s sights, and he adjusted the thrust controls with cool hands.
Just press the stud, he thought. A picture sprang to his mind, of red atomic flame leaping from the shielded muzzle of the thrower, of the bark and sap and wood of the ancient Tree melting away before the impact, of the mighty old giant toppling defenselessly. All I do is press the stud.
He jabbed down on the firing key. A tongue of flame burst forth, ripped into the side of the Tree. It seemed to him that a voiceless scream of agony echoed in the forest, soundless, just a shivering impulse of pain radiating from the wounded tree. He prepared for a second burst.
“Rayner!” a voice shouted suddenly.
He glanced up and saw Killian coming toward him over the clearing. There was a wild, ragged expression in the biologist’s eye. Rayner cursed; he might never get the job done now.
Springing up from the flamethrower, he ran to meet Killian’s attack. The biologist was nearly a foot shorter than Rayner, but broad and muscular; thick hands grasped Rayner’s wrists, and he struggled to break loose.
Foam was dripping from Killian’s lips. His face was pale and almost inhuman. Rayner wrestled with him, swung him around, fought to hurl him to the ground. Killian hung on viciously.
Suddenly Rayner managed to break his hold; he swung Killian aloft, threw him crashing to the ground. The biologist rolled over dizzily without getting up. Rayner whirled. A great gaping hole had appeared in the side of the Tree; if only he could finish the job before any of the others—
Too late.
They were all around him suddenly, Magda and Ehrenfeld and even withered old Bryson, and as if in response to unvoiced commands from the wounded Tree they were surging in frenzied activity.
“Murderer…vandal…” Magda cried, in hasty gasps, as she assailed Rayner, raking her nails down the side of his face, ripping away flesh. He struggled to get past her, to reach the flamethrower.
Bryson was crouched over it, efficiently ripping away the connecting chambers, tearing up the delicate sighting mechanism, prying the thrower ap
art and rapidly turning it into so much junk. Killian stirred and scrambled to his feet. Ehrenfeld, eyes raging maniacally, advanced on Rayner and seized his arms.
“You’re all crazy!” Rayner cried. “That Tree—it’s got you under control! Can’t you understand it?”
Laughing hideously, Bryson hurled fragments of the shattered flamethrower at Rayner. In a cold inhuman voice Ehrenfeld said, “You didn’t respond to the Tree, and so you tried to destroy it. But the Tree warned us! We got here nearly in time. Plenty of time to save the Tree.”
“No,” Rayner shouted frantically. “You’re human beings! This is all wrong!”
“Wrong?” Magda screamed. “You—you android! A synthetic man sent along because the law forced us to take you, a laboratory thing without emotions or feelings—and you tell us we’re human?”
Rayner saw that a crowd had gathered—alien and hybrid alike, come to see the desecrator of the Tree punished. They were chanting wordlessly now, a frenzied and wild song of vengeance.
He realized that this was the finish—but at least he had warned Earth. He had done that much. And if I hadn’t been an android? he thought, as they seized him and tied his limbs together. If I had been naturally born like these, I’d be a slave of the Tree myself now. But I warned Earth.
“I didn’t send your message,” he told Ehrenfeld. “I warned Earth what the Tree was. I told them you’d all become enslaved by it. They’ll be here with bombs, Ehrenfeld. They’ll destroy your precious tree.”
But there was no use talking to them; the frenzy was on them, and they could not hear. Rayner struggled in vain as they bore his pinioned body toward the Tree, laid him on one mighty root that was wider than a man’s body. They were dancing around him now, alien and hybrid and Earthman, singing joyfully. He saw a barbed knife glinting in Ehrenfeld’s hand.
He wasn’t afraid of death. How could he be, when he was an android, a synthetic creature that had never truly lived? He closed his eyes and waited. The Colonial Force knew what it was doing when it required one android to be included in each Examination Squad, he thought. He would die, perhaps, but no more Earthmen would become slaves of the Tree.
He opened his eyes and saw Ehrenfeld poised above him for the death-stroke. The onetime squad leader looked more like a beast of the forest than like an Earthman now. Rayner managed a smile.
“Praised be the Tree!” Ehrenfeld cried.
The knife came down. “Praised be the Tree!” They were the last words Rayner heard, before he found out what it was like to die.
FRONTIER PLANET
(1957)
The same June, 1958 issue of Super Science that brought the world my novelet “Slaves of the Tree” offered a second product of my red-hot typewriter, a short story called “Frontier Planet,” which I also wrote in October of 1957 and which was published under the name of “Calvin M. Knox.”
This one is really shameless. The term “space opera,” which refers to science fiction that uses tried-and-true action-fiction formulas, was devised as a variation on the phrase “horse opera,” meaning a formula Western story, the sort of stuff involving settlers and Indians, sheriffs and cattle rustlers, card sharps and gunslingers, all that classic pulp fiction set in an Old West that probably never really existed. And, just as I had written “Harwood’s Vortex” the year before in a deliberate nod to early science fiction’s old mad scientist/beautiful daughter formula, I acknowledged space opera’s antecedents in Western fiction with “Frontier Planet,” a straightforward Western story in which the settlers happen to be living on a planet called Hannebrink IV instead of some remote corner of Arizona, the cattle are beasts with red and green stripes and long swan-like necks, and instead of hostile Navajos or Apaches the ranchers are faced with the menace of “squat ugly gray creatures, practically neckless, with leathery jointed hides that gleamed dully in the late-afternoon sunlight.” All the elements of a traditional Western story are here: the isolated farmhouse on the prairie, the brave husband out on patrol in the foothills, the valiant pioneer wife alone in the house as a mounted party of aliens swoops down to attack.
I couldn’t follow the usual downbeat structure of the typical Super-Science tale here. Having the pioneer family wiped out by the Injuns after putting up a gallant resistance would have been too much of a deviation from the Western-story template I was working with. It would have been absurd, in fact. So—this is another spoiler, I guess—be advised that “Frontier Planet” has a happy ending, as pulp Westerns customarily did. The pleasure the story afforded me, and, I hope, you, was the sly retro one of sneaking an out-and-out Western story into a science-fiction magazine, the very thing that had been standard practice in the old pulp days of science fiction but was supposedly no longer done in our field.
——————
It was a deceptively peaceful day. The hot Sol-type sun had burned away the morning clouds, leaving clear blue sky for the afternoon. A gentle but sturdy wind was blowing in from the sea, carrying with it the faintly iodized smell of the ocean, bearing the tang of the water to the small Earth settlement.
Brian Elson turned to his wife and said, “There. Have you ever seen a lovelier sight in your life than that field—our field—with our crops growing in it? And the sun coming down, and the sea-wind blowing. Could you ever find anything like that on Earth, Mae?”
Mae Elson shook her yellow-haired head in reluctant disagreement. She was ten years younger than her husband, at twenty-three. She had been hardly more than a girl when she married him, and not much past twenty-one when they left Earth to become settlers on the frontier planet of Hannebrink IV.
“I’ve never said it wasn’t lovely, Brian. It is. It’s the loveliest sight in the universe. But—”
“But what, Mae?”
She turned to him, looking up at his tanned face with its work-coarsened features. “Out there,” she said, pointing to the jagged range of hills that served as the wall between the settlement and the wilderness beyond. “Back of the hills. The aliens—plotting, scheming, getting ready to sweep down and kill us.”
“Mae—”
“No!” It was an old argument between them, one that had never died since the discovery that Hannebrink IV was inhabited by intelligent humanoids in a pre-technological culture pattern. Humanoids who ran naked through the virgin forests to the west, and who threatened constantly to drive the Earthmen from their planet. “You keep telling me the aliens are afraid of us, that they won’t ever attack. What about Mark Brannon, though?”
“He went too far from the settlement. The idiot was prospecting for uranium, I guess, and some wild beast must have killed him.”
“And some wild beast carefully cut off his hands and feet and smashed his equipment?” Mae asked. “No, Brian. He was murdered by the aliens. The same way they’re going to murder us, some day. In our sleep, maybe.”
Elson sighed deeply, turned, let his hands rest lightly on his wife’s shoulders. “We’ve been through this a million times, Mae. Let’s not discuss it any more.”
“Don’t I ever count?”
He frowned. “We discussed this step very carefully before we left Earth. We agreed there might be dangers—but we decided it would be worth whatever dangers there were, if only to get away from the muck and filth of Earth. Remember? It cost us five thousand credits to get here—and if we went back to Earth we’d be in debt to the spacelines for the next ten years.”
“I want to have children, Brian. I don’t want to have to live in constant fear of what might come down on us from behind those hills.”
“Would you rather have your children grow up on Earth?” he wanted to know. “On a planet of twelve billion people, where there isn’t room for a man to turn around without apologizing? And you know we’d be in debt if we went back. Your children would grow up in poverty. At least here they’ll be free—tall strapping boys and girls who know what it’s like to be a human being, instead of a sardine crammed into a can.”
Mae stared at his
broad, ruggedly unhandsome face a long moment. They had had this discussion so many times before, and always Brian had won. Inwardly she had to admit that he was right, that their children would be happier here on Hannebrink IV.
Except for the aliens. They cast a menacing cloud over every aspect of settlement life.
“All right,” she said, defeated. “We won’t talk about it any more.” She glanced out toward the field. “I guess lunch hour’s over. You’d better get out there and finish up. I’ll get busy round the house again.”
It was a regular routine of chores. Most of the time she was so busy she had no time to think, worry, brood. She just worked, and she was happy.
Life on Hannebrink IV was incredibly different from life on Earth. She had been born on the west coast of North America, in the population area known as the Pacifica—a sprawling, brawling, jam-packed area that spread from Washington southward to the tip of California, and held seventy-five million people. Somehow she had been singled out of all that mass by Brian, and he had married her, three years back, in 2762.
They had lived for a time in the allotted compartment for newly-married couples in the Eleventh Income Stratum—that is, in a one-room cubicle with adjoining semi-private toilet facilities and community kitchen, on the eighty-seventh floor of a hundred-fifty story housing development in what had once been the City of Los Angeles before the unification of Pacifica.
They had lived there two months. Then, one night, Brian had come home from his job with Central Transport bearing a sheaf of glossy folders and booklets. It was data on the colony-worlds.
There were over five hundred of them, new, unspoiled worlds out in the stars, pleading for colonists. Life was clean and fresh out there, but hard—and the worlds of Zyma and Vannevar VII and Leswick and Carbley and Hannebrink IV needed colonists, brave men and women willing to give up their jobs and homes and forsake the overcrowded mother world forever.