P. Schuyler Miller

“ Melchizedek Hobbs was no mean orator. Now he made an appeal to our young emotions:
"How often in one's journeyings is the heart warmed and the spirit moved by the solicitude shown by even the lowliest of God's thinking creatures in the care and upbringing of its young! How appalling is the contrasting lethargy which characterizes the race of the cabbage and the vegetable marrow! With what wanton abandon does the profligate thistle scatter its plumed seeds to the four winds, yet with what loving patience does the gentle hind nurture her fawn and bring it to maturity. ”

“ Hesitant behind him, Tranda saw his skin suddenly illuminated with a crimson glare, saw him shrink, his aura pallid, his tubes writhing in pain. He too was rushing forward, out of the shelter of the ship’s opaque prow into the full glare of the Red Spot.
Thru the port it was as tho alive! Viscid vapors boiled and writhed over all its vast oval surface, like the coiling, steaming entrails of some evil monster out of hellish fable. Red light beat up out of the invisible depths beneath it, staining those vapors with the hue of spilt blood and reaching out into the void beyond. ”

“ From the beginning of time, what has been the first defense of mankind? It is the wall, the barrier which the enemy cannot climb, cannot break, cannot penetrate with their weapons. A wall of thorns against the beasts of the darkness. A boulder rolled in the mouth of a cave. Walls of sharpened stakes, of earth and stone, of human flesh and blood! Walls of fire laid down by giant guns. Walls of poisonous vapors through which no living thing can pass. Always a wall, stronger and stronger, but never perfect. I, Pierre Dampier, have made the perfect wall! ”

“ He had Tranda to think of, and Teena. His Emperor, and his mate.
Tranda’s aura was regaining color. Steepa bent over Teena’s shriveled form. Her skin and her aura were leaden, her eye-stalks retracted almost into the body of her sphere. Her slender tubes lay limp and pallid.
He gathered her to him with tender tubes. He could feel the stir of gases just beneath her skin and the fitful pulse of her diaphragm. In time the shattered atoms of her brain and vital organs would rebuild themselves and restore the delicate equilibrium of life, but there was no time! ”

“ The place was full of Zulu roses of every size and description. There were thousands of them—all different—and they filled the greenhouse with a riot of fragrance and rich color that made my head spin. Then I saw something that sent cold fingers diddling along my spine, for as Melchizedek Hobbs walked down the aisle between the banks of plants their gaudy blossoms turned on their stems to follow him, their leaves and stalks stretched out to touch him, and a soft, expectant rustle went up from thousands of straining fibres. ”

“ Dampier was hopping from one foot to the other like a hen on ice. "No, no, no, Monsieur!" he cried. "You have not heard all! You must lend another ear! There is no substance that will reflect all things; that is true. Only a fool would believe it. But what of a wall that has no substance—that has no existence in what we call reality but that is as fixed and unshakable as the roots of the universe—a wall, a discontinuity of Space itself?"
Bill stopped halfway up the stairs. "Say that again," he demanded.
The little Frenchman's hands went winging out in hopeless resignation. ”

“ Again, and yet again they hued their mad ovation, until the scarlet form of Tranda, Emperor of Tridentia and of Neptune, stepped forward on firmly placed tubes and colored his aura with the silvery hue that commanded silence.
“Neptunians,” he glowed; “you have heard the message brought from Luna by Bar Steepa and the Princess Teena. Invaders from another star threaten the safety of our planet and all the other planets of the sun. We have been asked to join with the peoples of those planets in an attempt to defend our world and theirs while there is yet time! ”

“ He made his way between the beds of oblivious lovers. They were too intent on the business of life to sense that he was there. He opened still another door.
I heard the rustle of leaves as we stepped inside. It was hostile—alarmed—like the buzz of a rattler's tail among dead leaves. He lit the lamp, and I saw that every flower-face in the place was turned toward us. I saw more: their leaves were hugged up like shielding arms, wrapped around their stalks just below the great blooms. There was something alive under those clinging leaves—something small that moved. ”

“ Their auras pulsed and glowed with a single light. Teena’s tints were soft and greyed with puzzlement as she replied.
“No bud of Steepa’s ever will feel fear, nor shall its mother now. But why do we go so far from Neptune? Why do we not remain where we can protect her from attack?”
Steepa’s aura was bright. “Just like a woman,” he boasted. “It takes a man to make war! If Ay-Artz is to be defeated, we must stop him before he can gain a foothold on some planet in our midst, and to do that the forces of every planet will be necessary. ”

“ The plants were growing in pairs, male and female, and their shameless behavior made me gasp. It was outrageous! It was incredible! It was against Nature!
Such abandoned love-making I have never seen in man, beast or bird, let alone a vegetable—and I have seen more than most. The twining stems—the caressing leaves—the squirming, kissing blossoms: I was staring like a silly girl. It was all in the most sensuous of slow-motion, for the things could move as they pleased, or very nearly so. ”

“ Monsieur Crandall recognized in me that Pierre Dampier who vanished from the world of science five years ago. It was Wilhelm Nebel who made me to flee like the wild goose. Nebel—the chief of munitions, the millionaire, the so great diplomat, whose hands reach out to every country, regardless of boundaries or the hatred of races. Even in France I was not safe! The finger of Nebel was in the pie of our government. He twisted it—poof! Spies of the police investigate me. They ask questions. They give me the degrees. But I tell them nothing. They can find nothing. ”

“ In Tranda’s blurred mind was an awareness that wrote the truth. This Spot of Death that was the source of the dreadful death-dealing radiations was a gravity trap, a mass of matter so heavy that it warped the structure of space and sucked into its flaming maw all that ventured, helpless, within its reach. ”

“ Bill Porter's scribbled notes stop there. In the split millionth of a second before the twist of Nebel's fingers could throw the balanced sphere over the boundary to completion, his body shorted the power that fed the great machine. It was in time! Momentum of growth, gained in that instant of which Dampier had told me, swept Nebel and his gunmen to their death, and as the zone collapsed the incalculable energies trapped in it burst forth in a holocaust of atomic flame. ”

“ Then with a crash of livid lightnings the three ships leapt as one from their tapered cradles and vanished in the swirling vapors of the gas-strata. Winds tore at the frail balloons and whirled them dizzily above the fungoid jungle. Then all was quiet again and only the viscidly stirring gas-strata showed where the war-fleet of cloud-wrapped Neptune had vanished into space. ”

“ I have brought stranger-young to a bearing female and placed them among her brood, and they become like her. These—", he touched the tiny plants in his pockets tenderly—"these are orphans which no other plant would adopt. I have had to do so myself."
My head went around like a teetotum. The whole thing was a nightmare! Certainly I had never suspected what would follow my innocent gift of the beautiful flowers which had attracted me so in Madagascar. No wonder the town thought him mad!
We went back through the long greenhouse, and again I saw stems and blossoms twist and sway to greet him. ”

“ It was not the thing itself we saw, but the things reflected in it—a little, twisted, shining world swimming in the heart of that ball of distorted space. Peering closer, I saw that the coils which shaped it were glowing with an eerie, frosty white light. I stared, fascinated, and by what? By a half-invisible bubble, like an indoor baseball, conjured up by some legerdemain to make fools of us! It was nonsense! I jerked my eyes away—and saw them.
Three men with guns stood on the little stair, watching us. They were gentlemen, polished, clever gentlemen adroit at the art of death. ”

“ Once, too, a comet passed flaming across the stars above that burning disc. Teena shuddered, her aura suddenly cold. Somehow that curving gauze of fire, shimmering with emerald opalescence, seemed to her a warning and a menace, and she drew closer to Steepa and let his comforting tubes curl about her.
With the attraction of the great planet affecting their motion, the three commanders were forced to check their course with increasing frequency. Jupiter’s sphere now filled most of the visible heavens. ”

“ Pierre Dampier is forgotten. But not by the accursed Nebel!
"Here in America is a free country where only the dogs, the automobiles, the husbands must have licenses. There are no foolish papers to carry about, no questions to answer to the police. I can hide like a rat in the mousecheese, and be safe. But not from this son-of-an-unpardonableness Nebel! His men are everywhere. He sees everything. Only here I can protect myself. Here I can kill before I am killed! ”

“ A man wholly wrapped up in his science, lonely and misunderstood, suddenly confronted by these exotic, almost animal blossoms: no wonder his curiosity and imagination had been aroused—no wonder solicitude had become something like affection. ”

“ Hueing softly she pressed her smooth skin against his, caressing his sinewy tubes with her delicate pads. Slowly his eye-stalks curved away until they met her, and his sulky violet softened and mingled with her gentle mauve.
“You are as good a pilot as I or Tranda,” he admitted, “but there will be danger for us all. You must remain in the sheltered parts of the ship when we are fighting. Remember – you have our hue to think of as well as yourself.” ”

“ I couldn't do much but stand and watch Dampier as he bustled about, tuning up his crazy-looking machine. He talked a blue streak as he worked, but most of it went right over my head. I'm no Bill Porter. I did begin to see why Nebel, if he was behind the world's armaments racket as Dampier claimed, might be pretty anxious to get hold of such a thing before the little Frenchman began peddling it to his best customers. In the right hands it might make war very unfashionable.
Imagine an invaded nation squatting down behind a perfectly reflecting wall. They can't see out, but nothing can get in. ”

“ He turned to his mate. All his tubes went out to clasp her to him. Then he thrust her away gently.
“There must be two,” he hued. “One to pilot the ship and one to direct the power of the Trident. Will you be one, or shall Beema aid me?”
Proudly she swelled her grief-shrunken skin. Bravely she strove to bring the gold of courage to her sorrow-shaded aura.
“Command me, Bar Steepa,” she colored.
Side by side they faced the controls. Delicate indeed must be the touch that would pilot the mighty craft now, when inches separated life and death for them all. And that touch would be Teena’s. ”

“ A millionth of a second—less perhaps—but in it chance, and whatever power it is that rules chance, had checked the thing whose illimitable growth would have swept our universe before it in an avalanche of destruction. ”

“ I saw Zulu roses that were like thistles, and others that were like sunflowers. I saw them growing like water-lilies, like cactus, and like edelweiss. They weren't common, but wherever they were they seemed to be perfectly adapted to the environment they were in. Their perfume was really overpowering and not entirely pleasant, and I noted in passing that there were never any bees or other insects near them. ”

“ Teena relieved her mate at the check-points, while he drilled his men in the hollow inner shell of the great ship. They were entering the crowded inner portion of the solar system now, and any hour might bring danger. Every last sphere of them must be absolutely proficient in the use of the weapons he would man. And Steepa saw to it that every one was.
From her post at the controls, Teena could see both the other ships. Idly she let her tubes stray across the board, plucking at the plungers that would bring Steepa’s form and colors to the screen. ”