Murray Leinster

“ But all the same, Wentworth put a flame-pistol in his belt before he ventured into the city.
He stopped short. There was a flickering. The city was blotted out. A blank metal wall stood before him. It reared all around the flier and the men in it. Between them and the city. Shining, seamless, gleaming metal, circular and a hundred feet high. It neatly enclosed a space two hundred yards across, and hence some clumps of skit-trees with the men. "Now, where the devil did that come from?" asked Wentworth. ”

“ A solidity which was controlled by that ingenious mechanical toy could dig canals, or gather the crop from the tops of skit-trees—when enlarged in the projection to stand a hundred feet high at the shoulder—or it could tear apart a spaceship as a terrier rends a rat.
There was more. Much more. But there had been only the one small Inhabitant, who wore a space-suit on his own planet. And he was dead. Haynes' voice came from the flier at the cave-mouth. "Wentworth! What's happened? Are you alive? What's up?" ”

“ We hunted that planet with a fine-toothed comb, and we'd every reason to believe it had recently been inhabited by a highly civilized race. But we never found so much as a chipped rock or a brick or any shaped piece of metal or stone to prove it.
"We found out a civilization had existed, and it had vanished, and when it vanished it took away everything it had worked with, except that it didn't tear up its plantings or put back the dirt it had moved. Right?"
"Put dispassionately, you sound like you're crazy," said Haynes cheerfully. "But you're recounting facts. ”

“ Wentworth yawned as he listened.
"Oh, we set down the flier on a sort of dam and went to sleep," he answered. "No, nothing happened. We're used to feeling creepy. We thrive on it. Haynes says he's going to do a sculpture group of a skit-tree planter which will be just an eye peeking around a tree-trunk. No! Hang it, no!
"We photographed a couple of hundred thousand square miles of skit-trees growing in neat rows, and we photographed dams, and canals, and a whole irrigation system, but not a sign of a living creature. No cities, no houses, no ruins, no nothing. ”

“ Take a bearing from where you find me to where a fifty-foot dirt embankment sticks out from a mountain-spur to the north. Get on that line and you'll hear the static, all right.
"It's in a beam coming right here at me. Follow that static back to the mountains, and when you find where it's being projected from, you'll find some skit-tree planters with all the artifacts your little heart desires. Only maybe you'll have to blast them."
He swallowed.
"It works out to sense," he went on more calmly. "They built up a civilization based on generating instead of building the things they wanted to use. ”

“ Wentworth said painfully. "Could it be that we never found any artifacts because there weren't any? Could it be that a creature—a monstrous creature—could have developed instincts that led it to make dams and canals like beavers do, and plantings like some kind of ants do, only with the sort of geometric precision that is characteristic of a spider's web? Could we have misread mere specialized instinct as intelligence?"
Haynes blinked. ”

“ Less than a month later, though, the Galloping Cow did head for home. Haynes, unwittingly, had made it possible. Examination of the solidity-projector revealed its principles, and Haynes—trying forlornly to make a joke—suggested that he model a statuette of the last Inhabitant to be projected a mile or two high above the skit-tree plantations now forever useless. ”

“ But McRea dourly permitted the model to stand, because he was in a hurry to start.
So that, some six weeks from the morning when Wentworth had seen an impossible Thing moving in the gray dawnlight on an unnamed planet, the Galloping Cow was almost back in touch with humanity. Two weeks more, and the outposts of civilization on Rigel would be reached.
A long, skeleton tower had been built out from the old ship's battered remnant. A scanner scanned, and a beam-type projector projected the image of Haynes' modeling to form a solid envelope of force-field about the ship. ”

“ There's seven solar systems, two hundred light-years apart, and a specific species, obviously originating on only one planet, spread out over two hundred light-years. Not unless your animal could do space-travel and carry skit-tree seeds with him. ”

“ It came out of the metal wall. The skit-trees were in the wall. They came out of it. He saw another that went into it.
He went back to the flier and climbed in. He turned the communicator up to maximum power. The racket that came out of it was deafening. He punched the call-button. Again and again and again. Nothing happened. He turned the set off. The dead stillness which followed was daunting.
"Well?" said Haynes.
"It's impossible," said Wentworth, "but I can explain everything. That wall isn't real."
"Then we ram through it?"
"We'd kill ourselves!" Wentworth told him, exasperated. ”

“ I've got a theory, McRae, about what happened to the skit-tree planters."
He yawned again.
"Yeah. I think they built up a magnificent civilization and then found a snark. Snark! SNARK. Yes. And the snark was a boojum." He paused. "So they silently faded away."
He grinned at the profanity that came out of the communicator-speaker. Then—back at the irreverently nicknamed Galloping Cow which was the base ship of the Extra-Solarian Research Institute expedition to this star-cluster—McRae cut off.
Wentworth stretched, and looked out of the atmosphere-flier's windows. ”

“ It rose ten thousand feet from the skit-trees about its base. Its base was two miles square.
"They build high," said Wentworth grimly, "so they won't use any extra ground they could plant their confounded skit-trees on. I'm going to land short of it, Haynes."
The vertical jets took over smoothly as he cut the drive. The flier slowed, and two blasts forward stopped it dead, and then it descended smoothly. Wentworth had checked not more than a hundred yards from the outermost tower. It appeared to be made of completely seamless metal, incised with intricate decorative designs. ”

“ They projected solidities like we projected pictures on a screen. They projected their cities. Their tools. Probably their spaceships too! That's why we never found artifacts. We looked where installations had been, instead of where they were generated and flung to the spot where they were wanted. There's a beam full of static coming from those mountains."
Light! With all the blinding suddenness of an atomic explosion, there was light. Wentworth had a moment's awareness of sunshine on the brittle stalks of skit-trees, and then of upward acceleration so fierce that it was like a blow. ”

“ Our force-fields are globular, because the generator's inside. If you want a force-field to have a definite shape, you have to generate it differently. Their cities and their machines weren't substance, though they were solid enough. ”

“ They grew in neat rows that stretched out for miles and miles. They had patently been planted by somebody who knew what he was doing, and why.
"We also found dams, and canals, and a complete irrigation system. We found places where ground had been terraced and graded, and where various trees and plants grew in what looked like a cockeyed form of decorative planting. ”