The Aliens

Thing from the Sky

MAYBE THE THING from the sky landed where it did because rain had fallen in Seco Valley for the second recorded time in sixty years. Or maybe that was only coincidence. The rainfall did bring Steve Hansun to the valley, though he hardly expected to find anything but sun-scorched rock and sun-baked sand and such impossible desert conditions that even lizards and rattlesnakes would stay away from it. Seco is Spanish for dry, and Seen Valley is hell on earth. Even Death Valley-forty miles away-is a place of' lush vegetation and flowing fountains by comparison. But there had been a rainfall in Seen Valley, and for hours the parched, dust-caked rocks showed many colors and the sand drank greedily of pelting raindrops. For a space there was a steaming mist over the driest place on earth. Maybe the thing from the sky was drawn by it.

Maybe.

Steve Hansen heard about the rain after it happened. He was Research Assistant in the Arid-Area Plants Section of a college which shall be nameless. He was working on a possible variation of the prickly pear-it was to be without prickles-which could thrive in desert regions and serve as cattle-food without each pod having to have its spines seared off with a gasoline torch. He knew Death Valley, and Seco Valley too, and he'd made a bargain with a hard-rock miner named Brady who stubbornly worked a claim some ten miles north from Seen Valley and seven thousand feet higher above sea-level.

So… On a certain day the hard-rock man, Brady, saw clouds banking up all over the area of which Seen Valley was a part. It was freakish. Presently there was a parting of the clouds and Brady could see that rain was failing… Death Valley has rain-a good rain-as often as once in ten years. Naturalists and biologists gloat over the plants which spring up instantly after it and bloom for a couple of weeks before they shrivel and go back to dust in Death Valley's normal desiccation. But nobody had ever seen plants in Seen Valley.

It never rains there. So Brady made amazedly sure that it was raining, and then headed across the mountains to keep the terms of his bargain with Steve.

That was one day-Wednesday. He sent a telegram to Steve about the rain and got an answer as fast as the wires could bring it. Steve was on the way~ That was Thursday. Brady hung around the town of San Felice waiting for Steve's arrival. That was Friday. Friday night the thing from the sky arrived.

It wasn't a thing that could fly, itself, though something that could fly must have been involved in its arrival. It appeared over Seen Valley by night, dangling from a slender thread which reached up through a cloud-bank, and up through the stratosphere, and on up past the tropopause, and nobody can guess how many miles beyond that. The thread was very remarkable. It wasn't more than a quarter of an inch thick, but it sustained its own weight in a length that would have snapped steel cable like string and it held up, be-sides, an oval, nearly globular object that was five feet in diameter and had windows and hatches underneath.

The ovoid shape came through the last layer of cloud-stuff in deep darkness. The clouds were higher than the mountains above Seen Valley, just then, but they cut off all sight of the moon or stars. The thing from the sky descended, and seemed to see the jagged mountaintops. It may have had some sort of drive in it, permitting it to maneuver at the end of its string It sheered away from the mountains and went down and down-bobbing a little as if the thread were slightly elastic-until it was a bare five hundred feet above the valley floor. There it paused, and' presently dropped another hundred feet, and then a hundred and fifty, and then quite slowly until it hung wavering in the darkness not more than forty feet or so above the valley-bottom. There it became still, as if thinking deeply or preparing for something important. Nobody saw it. The only human dwelling within thirty miles was Brady's shack, and he was over in San Felice waiting for Steve. Nobody heard it. Not even lizards or rattlesnakes or such. There weren't any. There had been rain here two days ago, but no trace of moisture remained. There was nothing living in the valley.

There came a small noise in the air. It was a faint, wavering, far-away muttering that gradually increased in volume. It rose to a droning hum, and the hum became a growl and the growl became a roar. Then the Chicago-to-Los-Angeles plane roared into view above the mountains to the east. It was well above the peaks, but barely below the ceiling of cloud. It was invisible, of course-merely a highup bellowing of motors and two winking wing-tip lights of red and green which swam toward the zenith while the thing from the sky hung motionless above the desolation of Seco Valley. Up aloft, apparently something happened. There was a momentary check, perhaps, in the sound of one of the four motors. But the plane did not check or swerve. A propeller hitting an impossible cord in mid-air and cutting through it with a whirling blade, might make such a momentary pause. But the plane drove on.

The thing from the sky, though, jerked violently upward. It lunged, and went careening off to one side, and then fell like a plummet to the floor of the valley. It crashed. Something crackled. There was a sound like an explosion, only wrong. It wasn't air expanding from high pressure, but air expanding into a near-vacuum. Then there was silence, and then a hurried, pattering noise as thousands upon thousands of feet of quarter-inch line came leaping down out of the night sky. It coiled over the smashed ovoid. It went wavering in huge loops and tanglings over a space a hundred feet across. The plane's navigation-lights swam across the sky. They went beyond the western mountain-tops and vanished. The sound of motors went down from a bellow to a growl, to a drone, to a hum, and then to a faint, faint muttering. Then it could not be heard any longer. There was silence in Seco Valley for a long time. Ultimately; though, something crawled painfully out of the smashed oval shape, and went helplessly around its outside. It tugged hopelessly at this and that. Then it waited, watching the sky. Nothing happened, though it waited by its shattered vehicle until almost daylight-until false dawn showed it the mountains all about. But when dawn came there was merely a cryptic mass of plastic wreckage, and thousands of feet of plastic cord-and nothing else. And nothing living was to be seen in Seen Valley.

That was Saturday. Sunday morning Steve Hansun arrived, with Brady and two burros and Brady's dog Gyp. They got to the edge of the valley while life in it was still conceivable-within an hour or two of sunrise. By eight o'clock the valley was warm, and by nine it was hot, and by ten it was like an oven heated by carbon arcs. After that it really got torrid. It wouldn't have been a joke to fry an egg on a sunbaked stone at midday. It would have been a practical method of cookery if any man could imagine eating in such heat. There were mirages, and the rocky hillsides beyond the valley danced insane sarabands from the heat, and the fact that rain had fallen here seemed merely an historical oddity. It had nothing to do with present fact.

Steve Hansun hoped differently. Botanists still find it amazing that plants can live as bone-dry seeds in Death Valley for ten years, and then sprout and blossom and fruit and go to seed again after just one of the decennial rainstorms. Seen Valley was drier still. If Steve could find plants which had survived thirty years of absolute aridity; if he could find plants springing up in Seen Valley after a rain, he would have made an important scientific discovery and could write a paper about it for a scientific publication which nobody would ever read. That was why he'd come.

He saw the wreckage out near the middle of the valley.

The two burros, then, were picking their way down a rocky trail that probably had never been used two dozen times since time began. Steve stared, and saw sunlight reflected from something polished, and a whitish indefinite something all around. He couldn't make out what he saw.

"What's that yonder?" he asked. "Could it be a crashed plane?'

Brady squinted, and said nothing.

"We'll take a look," said Steve. "There might be somebody still alive us it."

Brady didn't reply in words. The burros followed patiently to the valley floor. Gyp, the dog, sniffed at a sunbaked rock.

But he'd been in desert country before. He restrained himself.

The two men and the burros and the dog struck out across Seen Valley toward the wreckage.

The ground was uneven. They came upon wind-eroded boulders which barred their way. The had to back-trail and go around them. They came to dunes of powdery stuff and their feet sank into them as if into volcanic ash. By nine-when it was first really hot-they were only well started out from the valley's edge. By ten they were only part-way to the wreckage. The burros looked irritatingly resigned. Gyp panted heavily and his tail already drooped. By eleven, the dog was utterly dispirited. He trailed the burros in bitter misery, loping gingerly across scorching sand to find a bit of shadow where he could stand without singeing his paws, and then looking miserably for another place to which he could make another dash. The sun was a ball of intolerable fire. Exposed flesh stung when in full sunlight. Steve said:

"Nobody could live long in that plane."

Brady said:

"Ain't a plane. I saw it clear a while back."

Steve didn't ask what it could be. It was too hot to talk. As a botanist, he kept his eyes open for signs of vegetation. In Death Valley, the improbable dryland-plants appear as green threads on the third or fourth day after the once-a-decade rainfall. The rain here had been not quite three days since. Nothing showed, yet. But Steve watched carefully as the walked.

Everything was barren. Everything was desiccated past belief. The only sign of the rainfall was that in two or three places sheltered from the sun the ground still showed the pittings of raindrops. Once, too, Steve dug at a hollow place between two hillocks. A foot down he came to very, very faintly dampish soil. He continued to dig, and a foot further down came upon dryness again. There was a thin, underground layer of moisture from the rain. Nothing more.

He got up without words and followed after Brady. He noticed Gyp, his tail drooping, suffering miserably from the scorching sand beneath his paws.

It was half-past twelve when Brady came to a halt beside the thing they had headed for. He grunted expressively. Steve stared. It wasn't the plane he'd guessed at. He didn't know what it was. He saw some thousands of feet of thin, quarter-inch line. It wasn't woven of small fibres. It was one fibre. He saw a smashed object he couldn't reconstruct in his mind, because he wasn't prepared to imagine a plastic globe of five-foot diameter smashed flat in Seco Valley. He did see some piles of spilled or dumped stuff that looked like ashes. Only he thought absurdly of seeds.

First, of course, he tried to find out if anything human remained in the wreckage. He found nothing except some plastic items which were rather like machinery-except that machinery isn't made of plastic-and were part of the smashed globe. Gyp hunted for shade, and then suddenly began to growl. His growlings changed to snarling barks. He was suffering from the heat, but this was even more compelling. He faced an opening in the cryptic thing of plastic and snarled and growled and barked all at once, working himself almost up to hysterics. Steve bent over to look into the hole. It wasn't a big opening. Something could have gotten out through it, but nothing remained inside. As he bent over, staring, he caught a faint whiff of an absolutely indescribable odor. It wasn't pleasant or unpleasant. It was simply unparalleled. He'd never smelled anything even remotely like it.

"Brady!" he said, puzzled. "What's this smell?'

Brady came. He smelled. He spat and grunted.

Gyp backed away from the hole in the plastic, his hackles raised, snarling and barking and growling furiously. He found a trail. He trotted along it, making infuriated noises. He stopped and looked at his master. He forgot even his scorching feet. He made noises of unseemly indignation and rage.

"Now-what the hell?" said Steve.

Brady regarded his dog, frowning.

"Something he never smelled before," he said curtly. "Nor me either. That's the trail, though. Follow it?"

"It doesn't make sense!" protested Steve. "What's this thing, anyhow? And these things that look like seeds…

He picked up a handful from a pile. There was a tiny hard core to each one. There was a fluffy substance about the core, rather like a strand of cobweb made frizzy and wrapped loosely around something. They were seeds. Wind would carry them anywhere. Steve frowned in concentration. He looked at the small, shining piles. Then he blinked and bent down. The seeds at the very edges of the pile looked different, somehow. He picked up a few, with sand. From each seed a filament as thin as the thinnest cobweb penetrated the sand. Gossamer seemed to trait from Steve's fingers. He knelt and dug carefully.

A foot and a half down he came to the ever-so-faintly-moistened layer which was the result of the first rain in Seco Valley for thirty years. He found something else there, too. Each thread of gossamer enlarged in the dampish soil into a root. The separate rootlets looked like worms the color of beef-fat. And Steve knew what they were, but it took him time to believe it. Presently he said painfully:

"Brady, those things are seeds! They put a feeler down into the moisture, and they've started to grow. But there simply aren't any plants like those!"

Brady jerked his thumb at the line which was not woven or twisted, but was one single strand of a single substance.

"Ain't any rope like that, either," he observed. Then he looked at Gyp. "Nor any smell like he wants to trail.-Try it?'

Steve hesitated. He tucked a handful of the nacreous small seeds into an envelope and put it in his pocket. He examined the other piles. All were alike. He filled wide-mouthed glass specimen containers with the seeds and capped them. He put them back in the burro-packs.

"We might as well," he said uneasily. "It looks like there was something alive in there, and it came out and has gone off. It doesn't seem like it could have been a man, though. It might have been a child-but that's not right, either!"

It didn't make sense. Not any of it. Brady poured out water from the supply a burro carried. He offered it to Gyp. The dog drank with feverish thirst. Then he licked Brady's hand and went back to the trail. Again he barked and snarled and growled at it.

The two men followed him toward the hills.

Brady frowned as Gyp went on over the desert, using bad language all the way. Gyp did not usually make such a racket on a trail. The scent was evidently one which agitated him unreasonably. Presently he led the men to a sheltered spot where there was shade. The surface of the ground was slightly crusted from the vanished rain, and there were tracks. More-something had rested on the sand.

Gyp barked and snarled until he seemed to scream hatred at the place where something had apparently lain down. Steve looked. Brady scowled.

"Just what," asked Steve, "would you say made that, Brady?"

"There ain't anything that makes that kinda trail, or that kinda print when it lays down," said Brady curtly. "I'd admire to see that thing. -It ain't big," he added. "A .45 bullet would stop it, sure. I'd like to look it over."

"No bird or animal or lizard," said Steve, as if arguing with himself. "It came from that-wreckage out in the valley. Hmm... We'll track this down, Brady but we don't shoot too quick."

Brady grunted. They went on. At four in the afternoon Gyp was a badly whipped dog. He was beaten by the heat and the awful dryness. Steve had drunk two canteens of water, despite rigorous self-denial. But Brady had known what to expect. Each of their burros carried water as a full half of its burden. They could go a week and longer without coming upon a water-hole. But they were a silent, dogged crew, the two men and two burros and the dog as they trudged across a waste of incandescent heat and sunshine, with a cloud of fine dry dust rising behind them. They reached the far side of Seco Valley just at sunset, Glorious colorings filled the sky. Without a word, they began the ascent of the hills. Gyp could barely drag one paw before the other. Brady halted and gave him water. The dog drank as if he would never stop. Then he went back to the trail, growling again.

"Never seen him like this before," said Brady uncomfortably. "He hates whatever he's trailin'. He don't feel like that about mountain lions or anything else. What is it, anyways?"

Steve had been thinking. He'd hunted conscientiously enough for signs of vegetation coming from the rain of Wednesday. But he'd been thinking hard. Seeds which lay on absolutely dry sand and put out threads as fine as gossamer, which wormed their way through a foot and a half of dry soil to find dampness, and there swelled monstrously to greasy-looking rootlets. There wasn't any plant like that. There were no such seeds! And the smashed thing in the valley. It was artificial, certainly. But nobody would make anything like that. The rope-nobody could make anything like that. The scent of the interior of the smashed thing-vaguely, Steve was beginning to imagine it reconstructed into a globe was so alien that there was no word for it. And Gyp-

"I've got a hunch," said Steve abruptly. "Stop at a level place, Brady. I'm going to put one of those seeds in water. I've got an idea it will surprise us. But the idea of how is crazy! But-anyhow, did you notice how that wreckage was braced?"

Brady grunted negatively.

"It was braced against outside pressure," said Steve. "Like a submarine. The pressure-cabin of the plane I was in was braced against inside pressure pushing out. This was braced against outside pressure pushing in. Mean anything?"

Brady shook his head. They were now perhaps two hundred feet above the valley floor. Brady halted. Steve went to one of the burrows and got out a specimen-jar. He slushed it half full of water-and drank deeply of the rest. He reached in his pocket for the envelope of seeds he had brought. He tried to pull the envelope out. He had trouble.

When it came, it ripped to shreds.

A tress of cobwebby threads stretched tenaciously back to his pocket. It was elastic. It was strong. Each thread was infinitesimal, but their total strength was great. As he tagged at them he felt crawling sensations next to his skin. He gasped suddenly and tore off his clothes. The gossamer threads went through his shirt, between the weave of the cloth. Inside there were fat, worm-like objects which began in the fine, silky threads but were themselves swollen and like beef-fat in appearance. They were rootlets, each one developed from a thread from a seed. Each seed in the envelope in Steve's pocket had put out a probe which had worked through his garments to the moisture next his skin. Every thread had swollen hugely in that moisture. Some of them were half the size of a lead-pencil. The sun sank behind the mountains in a glory of rose and gold. Darkness flowed over the valley which was quite the most arid spot on earth. There was a winking glitter of reflected sunlight from polished plastic.

Steve examined his skin with fresh sweat starting out on him. But it was unbroken. None of the rootlets had made any attempt to secure moisture beyond what the unholy heat of the valley had made available as sweat.

Then Steve shivered, warm as it was from the sub-heated rocks about him. Without explanation he strapped his removed garments into a bundle and put on others from the pack. His face was pale.

"What now?" asked Brady laconically. "That trail's still good, but Gyp's pretty tired."

"I think we'd better go on," Steve told him. "I want to see whoever or whatever would travel around with seeds like that!"

Gyp lay down, panting, but when the men were ready to move on he got to his feet again. First, though, Steve dropped a seed from the sealed-up container into the half-filled jar of water. He capped it, and they climbed.

Gyp led the way unfalteringly, making angry small noises to himself. Night fell, and for a time it seemed that they might have to stop. But then the moon rose. Gyp went on, spurred by rage. It was notable that the trail they followed did not climb up precipitous places. It went only where not only the men but the burros could follow easily. They climbed two thousand feet above the valley floor. Brady observed, there:

"Never knew a wild critter to hunt so hard for easy climbin'."

"I doubt," said Steve, "that you'd call this creature wild."

"Taine, then?' grunted Brady skeptically. "Not as far as we're concerned," said Steve.

"What in hell is it?" growled Brady.

"If I told you my guess," said Steve, with care, "you'd knock me cold and sit on my head until you could tie me up to take me to a doctor. Let's look at the bottle I dropped the seed in."

They halted. Steve got out the jar with the water in it. He struck a match. But there was no longer any water in it. The jar was filled with a ropy mass, coiled and curled and twisted into strained convolutions within the confines of the glass container. All the water had vanished. There was only a greasy-seeming root that looked like suet.

Then a rock stirred overhead. It came bounding down the hillside. Other rocks joined it. A minor landslide began. It grew to a major one. Brady lashed one of the burros swiftly to the shelter of a shaft of stone. Steve followed instantly. The landslide roared by, its edges fifty feet from their place of security. Gyp screamed and howled his hate at the heights above them. The rock-slide reached a cliff edge and poured off it into space. There were far-away crashings. Then, gradually, the sound ended. For a space there were only individual stones bounding and dancing after the others. Then silence. Brady said, rumbling:

"Rockslides don't often start at night. Mostly it's daytime, when rocks get heat up an' slide."

"Something besides heat started that one," said Steve.

"There'll be a break in the trail, I'm guessing. I think we'd better camp. And I think we'd better put Gyp on a leash."

It was all crazy, of course, but Brady turned aside. Here was as good a place as any for a dry camp. He began to' unload the burros.

"Nothin' to make a fire with," he grunted.

"No fire," said Steve. "No light. Nothing. And we tie up Gyp, and if he starts to raise Cain we get up fast."

"You got something in your head," said Brady. "What?'

"Bats," said Steve. "Craziness. Insanity. Where'd plants come from that were so crazy for water they'd start as a bone-dry seed and go down a foot and a half to where it was moist? It'd take some evolution to produce a dryland plant like that! Who ever heard of a seed in a man's pocket boring through his clothes to sweat during an afternoon's walk?

These seeds work fast! They were developed where it's really dry and water has to be grabbed quick!

Where'd you say it was?"

Brady rumbled. He got out their blankets.

"What was that wrecked thing?" he demanded.

"Call it a gizmo or a blurp or a dohinkus," said Steve. "One name's as near as another. I doubt there's any name we'd know, for it. What's your guess?"

"It hung down from that rope," said Brady, with an odd air of stubbornness. "It could ha' been somethin' danglin' from an airship. But why?"

"I'd hate to say what I think," Steve told him.

"Would it've been plantin' seeds?' asked Brady sardonically.

Nothing could be more unlikely or more unreasonable than to plant seeds in Seco Valley. But Steve jumped.

"That," he said, troubled, "that's an idea. It may be true. If it is, it's bad!"

Brady tied up Gyp. Steve lay down in his blankets. His body was exhausted, but his mind would not rest. The only possible explanation was too preposterous. He lay wide-eyed, staring at the stars while all the weariness of the day pounded at his body. Gyp slept. Brady lay still. The burros dozed patiently.

Steve didn't know when he went to sleep, but he was wakened by a crash which sounded like an impact, and then the hysterical screaming and barking of Gyp, who flung himself around frantically at the end of his tether, trying to get loose to go after something up above. Brady was fumbling around.

"Mmmmmh.!" he grunted. "Somethin' dropped a rock, Missed."

Another stone fell. And another. They were close.

"Me an' Gyp go up an' settle with that fella-"

"No!" said Steve, swallowing. "There's an overhang here.

We move back under it. That's all. Just shift camp. I-I've got an idea. If we-caught up to our friend we might have to kill him, in the dark."

"He's tryin' to kill us!" growled Brady.

"I think," said Steve unsteadily, "that a revolver-shot would scare him away. Just the noise. Try it."

There was a pause. Brady frowned heavily in the darkness. Then his gun bellowed. A .45 shot is incredibly loud in the silence of the mountains. Echoes rang. But it seemed to Steve that he heard a shrill high note that might have been a scream, save that it was so shrill that it was up at the very limit of audibility. Then Gyp went into a fresh frenzy, more terrible than before.

"He'll have run away," said Steve, as if unhappy. "I would, in his place. I-know more than I did before. He hasn't a gun or anything like it, or he'd have used them. He didn't expect to need one when he came. -Reasonable, at that. And he knows we're after him." Then Steve said shakenly, "Poor devil!"

"What is it?" demanded Brady, suspicious. "A crazy guy? It'd have to be a crazy midget by the size of the tracks an' the marks where he laid down!"

Steve said slowly:

"Look, Brady! I-I made a guess down by that wreckage.

By all the rules of common sense it was sheer lunacy. Everything that's happened so far fits into it, but it's still crazy. When I see that poor devil I'll tell you what I guessed, and you can laugh at me. But you'd be sure I was out of my head if I told you now."

There was a small noise in the air. It was a faint, wavering, far-away mutter that increased in volume. It became a hum, and then a growl, and then a roaring noise. It was high overhead. Steve jerked his head to stare skyward. The Chicago-to-Los-Angeles plane swam across a skyful of stars. It was invisible, but its red and green wing lights moved among the other lights that seemed so much akin to them.

It moved with steady deliberation across the constellations. It went across the mountains on the far side of he valley. It Went out of sight. Steve drew a deep breath.

"I was on that plane two nights ago," he said slowly. "Just about this time-and it must have been just about here-there was a funny sort of bump and one of the motors checked for an instant. Then the stewardess came through, smiling, to explain that the ship had probably run into some night-flying bird, but everything was all tight."

Brady said:

"Huh?"

"If you're right," said Steve," and the rope we saw was holding up the thing that was wrecked-why the plane ran into the rope and broke it, or a propeller cut it, or something. That caused the wreck. And-that's the answer! It looks like he was planting seeds, or getting ready to. He'd pick a desert place, of course! He wouldn't expect to be seen. He wouldn't want to be! He couldn't imagine a need for weapons. Oh, the poor devil!"

There was only silence in the hills. But Brady said stubbornly:

"Whoever it was, he tried to kill us."

"And I wouldn't kill him for a million," said Steve wryly.

"I'm only afraid he'll make us-if I'm right. We trail him in the morning. We can take turns watching tonight, if you like, but I suspect that shot was a pretty bad experience for him. Anyhow he's unarmed and we've got Gyp. -We'll keep Gyp leashed tomorrow. That poor devil is in the worst fix anybody could imagine, and he couldn't conceive of us being willing to be friendly."

Brady growled:

"I'm gettin' an idea too. Okay, I'll play. But I ain't takin' any chances with him. And," he added deliberately, "I ain't spilhin' my guess, either."

He lay down in his blankets. Steve sat up for a long time, looking at the stars. There was no alarm. There was no sound but the faint, faint humming of wind among the heights. At daybreak, Steve examined the root-plant in the jar. It was no longer white. It was an unpleasant, tawny red. He opened the jar. Its interior was dry. Absolutely, utterly dry. Every atom of the water he had poured into it had been absorbed by the plant growing from the gossamer-covered seed. He felt the thing. Most of its weight was certainly water, but it had no feeling of liquid about it. It felt almost powdery-dry. It was solid. When Brady sat up, blinking, Steve was staring at it, his face a study.

"Huh?" said Brady.

"This plant," said Steve. "It's absorbed all the water, and it's as dry and as hard as wood! There's an ethyl cellulose that makes a solid jelly with two per cent of substance and ninety-eight per cent water. That's considered remarkable. But what per cent is this stuff? If you baked this to dryness I doubt you could weigh the ash! This is a dry-land plant that's never been dreamed about before! It used up all the water in the jar. It turned red. Now it's set to bud and flower. It works fast, this thing!"

Then his eyes narrowed. His face went grim.

"I wonder… We've got to catch our fine feathered friend today," he said with a wrench. "There's not much moisture where those other seeds are, but we can't give them time to seed! -If he gives us the slip, I'll keep Gyp and camp by the wreck while you go on to San Felice with some telegrams." Then an idea struck him and he considered soberly: "Hm… - There is a chance, at that… But let's get going! Fast."~

Brady frowned to himself. He was a big man, and he should have been clumsy, but he was wholly efficient. Within minutes they were on the move, eating out of opened cans as they went up the hillside.

"We start trailin' from where those rocks were dumped on us," he said heavily. "We act careful when we get under places where more rocks could be dumped. Huh?'

"That's all," said Steve, absorbed in his thoughts. "If we see him and he shows fight, you fire a shot. Not at him. The noise will do the trick."

Brady said hesitantly:

"Sound don't carry good when you get up real high. He ain't used to loud noises?"

"Not sharp loud ones," agreed Steve. He stared at Brady.

"Whistles carry better'n a yell, high up," added Brady, his forehead wrinkled. Then he said, "Gets cold up on a mountain-peak, too. But you can get a helluva sunburn when the air's so thin you have to boil a egg ten minutes to get it soft-boiled. This fella-uh-he'd be used to that kinda climate?"

"That-and worse," said Steve. He said after a moment, "He'd be used to air as thin as on top of Mount Everest. That's five miles up."

Gyp burst into frenzied barking. They had reached the spot from which rocks had been toppled on them… Brady held Gyp's leash.

"I-uh-I think I got it," he said slowly. "Y'know-uh-watchin' the stars an' all at night, I got kinda interested, once. I bought some books about stars an' planets an' such. Heavy readin', but I made out. Interestin'."

Then he shrugged.

"I guess we' both crazy the same way," he observed. "Now I kinda figure why you say poor devil. He's a long ways from home. I won't kill him if I can help it."

They went up and up. Again the trail led only up the gentlest grades. There was no place where it climbed a really steep incline. The burros followed placidly. Gyp settled down to straining, bitter pulling at the tether that held him fast. They were three thousand feet above the valley. They were four thousand feet up. A tiny stone clicked on a hillside. Pebbles rattled down a slope. Steve jerked his eyes up. He saw a tiny shape, a thousand feet higher stdl It moved with pathetic heaviness and desperate resolution. It was not a human shape. Brady followed his eyes. There was silence.

Then:

"That's our friend," said Steve without elation. "He knows we're on his trail. And he knows what he tried to do to us. He probably figures that the plane knocked him down on purpose."

"Yeah," said Brady. "It would look that way to him. Re come down, danglin'-an' somethin' cut the rope. He'd figure it was intended."

Steve said restlessly:

"I doubt he'll let us talk to him. He tried to wipe us all out, you know. Wipe out all the human race. I don't think he's managed it. But he'll expect to be killed. If there were only some way-"

Gyp let out a shrieking clamor. Most dogs are near-sighted, but something seemed to tell him that there above him was the creature whose scent he had followed so long. He barked. He growled. He yelped. He screamed his hatred.

The small thing looked down. Probably-very probably-it realized that the men saw it. But it did not hasten. It moved with enormous heaviness, with a terrible weariness, across a talus-covered slope.

"Maybe we can head him off," suggested Steve, watching.

"Safer to trail him," said Brady. "How'd he try to wipe us all out?"

"Seeds," said Steve, wryly. "Those seeds are dry-land plants. They'd be like weeds, here. We haven't anything that could compete with them for water. They were developed where there isn't any rain. Not even once in centuries. The seeds would be spread by any wind. Started in a wild place-especially a desert like they're accustomed to, only infinitely less rigorous-they'd spread everywhere. Only fifteen per cent of the United States is cultivated, anyhow. They'd get a foothold in our forests and deserts and the open range so we could never wipe them out. They grow too fast. In twelve hours that thing in the bottle is ready to bud. Once, they got started, we could never catch up with them."

They went up a steep slope. The small, weary, unhuman object was out of sight. Gyp followed its trail, snarllng ferociously. They reached the slope where they'd seen it.

"I keep thinking of him, though," said Steve irrelevantly. "Suppose your weight were suddenly doubled and you were clumped into air so thick and saturated with water that you almost strangled on it. Suppose you had the choice of staying in a place that to you was at least twice as hot as the valley down below, or of climbing mountains-with your weight doubled. Bad, eh? And then suppose you were unarmed, and were being hunted by things you figured would be merciless, and you had no hope of ever seeing another human being again-It would be bad. But that's what the chap up* yonder. is up against."

"I got that," rumbled Brady. "He's got a tough break. But what harm would weeds do? We got plenty now an' we get along…"

They turned around a projecting column of a cliffside. Gyp yelped. They followed inexorably, two burros and a dog and two men, after the unhuman thing that was weary to death.

"Weeds," said Steve unhappily, "are plants that can survive in a wild state and compete with cultivated plants. You plant vegetables in a field and go away. Weeds will choke them out because the weeds grow faster, seed quicker and more lavishly, and all the rest. Suppose plants like the one I grew in that bottle last night,-suppose they started competing with our plants. They'll thrive in Seco Valley. They'll grow luxuriantly in Death Valley. What'll they do on a fertile hillside or a forest? If they took all the water, and held it, what'd happen to the grass and the bushes and the trees?"

Brady jumped.

"Mmmmmh! Like if prickly pear grew fast, crowdin' out everything else-"

"It's happened where they come from," said Steve sombrely. "Those seeds sprout. They grab moisture and hold it. My guess is that when they've grown as much as they can they flower and seed, so the seeds will be carried by the wind to where they can grab moisture and hold it. If they struck root on Earth and matured quickly enough-and they do-and seeded lavishly enough, which I don't doubt, they could cover our mountains. They could cover our plains. They could soak up all the rainfall that fell on mountains and hold it, so that our rivers would dry up and we'd have no water for irrigation. We'd have no pasture-land. And then those seeds could blow onto our farm-lands. In~ hours the one seed grew to fill the bottle and it's ready to seed now-if it can. Every inch of cultivated land could have to be weeded twice a day. Presently there wouldn't be as much rain. Maybe-I don't know what they'd do to a lake. Grow in it and turn it solid? Suppose seeds fell in the ocean. Would that turn solid? Plants like this would find all the minerals they needed in seawater. Maybe-well-maybe that's what they did to the place this fellow comes from. Maybe that's why it's dry-all the water's locked up in plants like this. He s used to that kind of environment, though, now. Maybe he and his kind Want to turn our surroundings into the kind they can live in. If they figure that way and they're right, all they'd need to do would be to plant seeds! Our world would turn tawny-red instead of green. In a few years there wouldn't be any clouds. There'd be icecaps at the poles, but no oceans or lakes or rivers. And there wouldn't be any people. This chap and his friends could just move in."

Brady scowled. He stared at Steve, who looked sick instead of frightened. He looked unhappy. He looked utterly uncomfortable. But he did not look alarmed.

"Well?" said Brady pugnaciously.

"The plant I grew in the bottle," said Steve. "It used up all the water. It held it. It got bone-dry to the touch, though it was nearly all water, actually. Then it started to bud. -It works fast. But it hasn't gone on to seed. I don't think it will, of itself. I suspect I can make it-and I suspect I'm going to because it will be good business to have a source of those seeds. But I don't think it will seed of itself. I think there's a very trivial item involved that our friend's friends couldn't figure on in advance. We can figure it, and we would, but I don't think they could."

They came out upon an open space where a great, bald, rounded dome projected from the mountain as a buttress to the monster still reaching thousands of feet toward the sky. This was five thousand feet above the valley floor. Beyond the great rounded projection there was a vista of space illimitable. Mountain after mountain and valley after valley. It was magnificent. But the two men had no eyes for it. They saw only a small, non-human figure in the middle of the huge gray dome.

It was very much smaller than a man. It was grotesque by earthly standards and it was pathetic by any standard. It staggered as it moved out from the bulk of the mountain. It was exhausted, and undoubtedly it was feverish and enfeebled by temperatures which to it were incredible. And it was alone as no human being has ever yet been alone. It went staggering out from the mountain-flank upon this buttress, where there was nowhere that it could flee.

"Got 'an now!" said Brady. Gyp screamed and yelped shrilly at the staggering thing.

"Barely able to walk," said Steve soberly. "Poor devil! Brady, let me take your pistol. I can probably stun him with the noise, if I have to. I'll go out to him alone and try to make him understand we want to be friendly."

He stepped out in slow pursuit. He held up his hands in the universal human sign of peace. The thing stopped and stared fully at him, wavering on its feet. It was a bare quarter-mile away. Steve went coaxingly toward it, trying with infinite care to give the impression of peaceful intentions to a creature which had no single mental link with man. The creature turned and shamified on. Steve halted. He called after it. Then he realized that if it was the creature's voice he had heard after the shot of the night before, that his voice would be low-pitched indeed to its ears. His words would sound to it like low-toned, menacing growlings. It went on. Steve suddenly essayed to run, to head it off from the abyss before it. But the creature seemed to summon a terrible, an infinitely heart-breaking resolve. It lumbered into a wholly desperate and despairing run. The rocky dome sloped downward. The creature moved faster and faster. -. - The rock slanted down…

Steve stopped short. But the creature could not stop. It stumbled and fell and even then it did not stop. It went on, sliding, twisting, turning…

It went out of sight. But it would fall fifteen hundred to two thousand feet before it hit. Steve went desolately back to Brady.

"You saw what happened," he said tiredly. "Maybe I was stupid; But I didn't know what else to do. If we could have communicated with him, we could have made friends… Maybe we could have communicated with the ship he came from. Maybe-But what's the use?"

"No use," said Brady. His forehead was creased. "But that weed business… You think those red plants are goin' to take over as weeds, like you said?"

Steve went to the burro-pack and looked at the glass jar. He'd left the top off. The coiled, twisted, tawny-red object was exactly as he'd left it. He examined it with vast care.

"No," he said drily. "After all-not a chance. These buds haven't developed and now they won't, because these plants work fast. It went so far and no farther. -The limit of a plant's normal northward range and the time of year it blooms is determined by the amount of sunshine it needs each day before it can form a flower and seeds afterward. Spring plants don't need much. Midsummer plants need more. The critical factor is ultraviolet. We've got a thick atmosphere, here on earth. Not much ultraviolet gets through, by comparison with what arrives from the sun. But this plant developed where the air was so thin that the ultraviolet was ten or twenty tunes stronger than on Earth So this plant will never bloom or make seed on Earth unless we put it under a battery of ultraviolet lights. Which we will. We'll want more seeds than I've got."

Then Steve said in rueful satisfaction:

"But will they be swell arid-area plants! We may have to tinker with them with X-rays to get them to mutate, and we may have to propagate favorable varieties by slips, but with a plant that'll grow where these do, we'll wind up with cattle-food and maybe an industrial raw material and-and-"

Brady said:

"We'd oughta try to find that fells's body."

"Naturally," said Steve. "I wish we could have made friends…"

But there simply hadn't been any way to do it. On the way down to the foot of the mountain-buttress, Steve found himself thinking more and more regretfully about that failure. There were other matters to be attended to, of course. The wreckage had to be retrieved and investigated. That should be a government job. There might be some very useful stuff.

(There was. It's not yet publicly admitted, but four new plastics, a prime-mover principle, and something that looks like the germ of a space-drive are still top secret products of the investigation. Even the dry-area plants-there are four varieties, so far, with possibilities that look too good to be true-are not yet released. And of course the proof that intelligent life exists on other planets and that space-travel is attainable can't be officially acknowledged because it would create panic if revealed before we have adequate space-ships of our own.)

But that morning, and that day on the way out to the wreckage in Seco Valley, and the following two days on the way to San Felice to pass on what he'd found to the proper quarters-during that time Steve didn't think of the affair in technological terms. He was haunted by the end of his and Brady's hunt for the body of the creature who had plunged to his death rather than be captured by men who wished to be his friends. It was tragic that all their efforts were in vain. They found where the body fell, but they couldn't climb a vertical, seamless cliff to reach the shelf on which the poor devil of a Martian bad fallen-alone of his kind on an alien planet-and to which the buzzards were already hurrying.

THE END