‘Then listen further. You said yourself the Gamow sighters were the nectar that bribed us into pollination. Thu said that.’
‘All right.’
‘Well, then, where did they come from? They were Earth products; we even read the manufacturer’s name and model on them, letter by letter. Yet, if no human beings have ever been in the cluster, where did the sighters come from? Neither one of us worried about that, then; and you don’t seem to worry about it even now.’
‘Well—’
‘What did you do with the sighters after we got on board ship, Smith? You took them from me; I remember that.’
‘I put them in the safe,’ said Smith defensively. ‘Have you touched them since?’
‘No.’
‘Have I?’
‘Not as far as I know.’
‘You have my word I didn’t. Then why not open the safe now?’
Smith stepped slowly to the safe. It was keyed to his fingerprints, and it opened. Without looking he reached in. His expression altered and with a sharp cry he first stared at the contents, then scrabbled them out.
He held four rocks of assorted color, each of them roughly rectangular.
‘They used our own emotions to drive us,’ said Chouns softly, as though insinuating the words into the other’s stubborn skull one at a time. ‘They made us think the hyperatomics were wrong so we could land on one of the planets; it didn’t matter which, I suppose. They made us think we had precision instruments in our hand after we landed on one so we would race to the other.’
‘Who are ‘they’?’ groaned Smith. ‘The tails or the snakes? Or both?’
‘Neither,’ said Chouns. ‘It was the plants.’
‘The plants? The flowers?’
‘Certainly. We saw two different sets of animals tending the same species of plant. Being animals ourselves, we assumed the animals were the masters. But why should we assume that? It was the plants that were being taken care of.’
‘We cultivate plants on Earth, too, Chouns.’
‘But we eat those plants,’ said Chouns.
‘And maybe those creatures eat their plants, too.’
‘Let’s say I know they don’t,’ said Chouns. ‘They maneuvered us well enough. Remember how careful I was to find a bare spot on which to land.’
‘I felt no such urge.’
‘You weren’t at the controls; they weren’t worried about you. Then, too, remember that we never noticed the pollen, though we were covered with it – not till we were safely on the second planet. Then we dusted the pollen off, on order.’
‘I never heard anything so impossible.’
‘Why is it impossible? We don’t associate intelligence with plants, because plants have no nervous systems; but these might have. Remember the fleshy buds on the stems? Also, plants aren’t free-moving; but they don’t have to be if they develop psionic powers and can make use of free-moving animals. They get cared for, fertilized, irrigated, pollinated, and so on. The animals tend them with single-minded devotion and are happy over it because the plants make them feel happy.’
‘I’m sorry for you,’ said Smith in a monotone. ‘If you try to tell this story back on Earth, I’m sorry for you.’
‘I have no illusions,’ muttered Chouns, ‘yet-what can I do but try to warn Earth. You see what they do to animals.’
‘They make slaves of them, according to you.’
‘Worse than that. Either the tailed creatures or the snake-things, or both, must have been civilized enough to have developed space travel once; otherwise the plants couldn’t be on both planets. But once the plants developed psionic powers (a mutant strain, perhaps), that came to an end. Animals at the atomic stage are dangerous. So they were made to forget; they were reduced to what they are. -Damn it, Smith, those plants are the most dangerous things in the universe. Earth must be informed about them, because some other Earthmen may be entering that cluster.’
Smith laughed. ‘You know, you’re completely off base. If those plants really had us under control, why would they let us get away to warn the others?’
Chouns paused. ‘I don’t know.’
Smith’s good humor was restored. He said, ‘For a minute you had me going, I don’t mind telling you.’
Chouns rubbed his skull violently. Why were they let go? And for that matter, why did he feel this horrible urgency to warn Earth about a matter with which Earthmen would not come into contact for millennia perhaps?
He thought desperately and something came glimmering. He fumbled for it, but it drifted away. For a moment he thought desperately that it was as though the thought had been pushed away; but then that feeling, too, left.
He knew only that the ship had to remain at full thrust, that they had to hurry.
So, after uncounted years, the proper conditions had come about again. The protospores from two planetary strains of the mother plant met and mingled, sifting together into the clothes and hair and ship of the new animals. Almost at once the hybrid spores formed; the hybrid spores that alone had all the capacity and potentiality of adapting themselves to a new planet.
The spores waited quietly, now, on the ship which, with the last impulse of the mother plant upon the minds of the creatures aboard, was hurtling them at top thrust toward a new and ripe world where freemoving creatures would tend their needs.
The spores waited with the patience of the plant (the all-conquering patience no animal can ever know) for their arrival on a new world-each, in its own tiny way, an explorer—
Let’s Get Together
A kind of peace had endured for a century and people had forgotten what anything else was like. They would scarcely have known how to react had they discovered that a kind of war had finally come.
