Jack Sharkey

“ The man who found it was an engineer, a man of high intelligence. For, building on the moon was a perilous undertaking. A man had to know stresses and strains, had to be able to read gauges that warned of vacuum pockets beneath the crust of the moon that—if broken into—could suck the life-giving gases from the metal caissons within which the men laid the foundations of new Domes. Had it been on Earth, and the workman unionized and possibly unlettered, it would have had the fate of a dandelion that stands in the path of a growing subway tube. ”

“ Scientists on the moon—being as singleminded as scientists anywhere—became ecstatic. At last the mystery of the ages was solved: Who put the pocks in the face of the moon? A Peter W. Merrill Moonplant, of course! They looked down in rapture as meteor after meteor—drawn across the countless miles of space by the pulsating gravity fields, plunged into the Earth, leaving pocks visible to the naked moondweller's eye. And darned if each meteor didn't strike dead center of each plant network. ”

“ The cities soared upward in glinting, stalagmitic pinnacles whose tapering ends seemed to threaten the fabric of the Domes themselves, but were in reality still far below the blue-white curving surface. ”

“ That means that once the final meteor lands, the Peter W. Merrill Moonplant will be dead, and we can get some of the crowd off this place. Earth's a bit ragged-looking, but after all, it's Home."
"Funny," said one of the younger scientists, "that the moonplant went so far afield for meteors, and yet did not disturb the delicate gravitational balance between Earth and the moon, its own Satellite."
"Let us hope," said an older scientist, "that this enormous Australian network has not been saving itself for us." ”

“ It's more as though each plant, through the positioning of its roots, and the coiling of same, plus a heavy concentration of iron in its physical makeup, has managed to make itself—or, rather, the stump of itself, since all such plants were cut down, a short while back—to make itself the center of an artificial gravity field. This field seems to grow—Rather, these many fields seem to grow in strength by the hour, and they have a tendency to topple things, the gravitational 'tug' being most disastrous near the centers of the fields. ”

“ Through his head passed notions of cutting it in two, then polishing the twin cut surfaces, and studying the cell structure, so that he might compare its construction with similar—if there were any—plants of Earth, and then write a learned thesis about it which would be read only by other eminent botanists, who would all then curse their luck for not having been friends with any engineers on the moon. The whole procedure—taking the cosmic view—was almost pointless, but it would make the botanist happy, at least. ”

“ The prospect didn't seem too much fun, and people started selling their homes and such, and booking passage to the moon, where life was controlled, but carefree, and free of annoying vibrations and rolling oranges. ”

“ By this time, of course, at the farthest reaches of Pete's root network, duplicate Petes were popping up above ground, quietly and unostentatiously (Pete stood barely five inches high) , and much like their parent. They, too, began sending out spoke-like root networks. Some of them, stronger than others, sent roots for a radius of a hundred miles, others for a few leagues and no more. ”

“ Eventually, Pete Senior reached an age where his body cells died more rapidly than they were replaced, that is, he achieved old age, and he passed from his life, leaving a wife, three children, and an unpaid fertilizer bill. ”

“ It was a feeble pulse, to be sure, and one that a man, unless he could observe it for a thousand years without blinking, would not be aware of. As the normal human heart beats seventy-two times a minute, so did this tiny swelling of tube contract once each hundred years ”