“Suppose it isn’t. I’ll take a look at that dome. I’ve been trying for ten days to adjust our gravity engine, without result. If there are intelligent beings, and if they’re friendly, I can get the data from them. Or at least a few pointers about this crazy universe’s laws.”
Vera looked worried when he turned to leave.
“You’re unarmed, Tony, and on a strange world. Please be careful.”
“I won’t take any chances,” he promised. “Well keep in telepathic rapport all the time I’m away.”
Clad in his spacesuit, equipped with oxygen and temperature, control, Anton York moved off into what had become semi jungle. As he suspected, the life around him was unstable. The trees were so pulpy that they fell apart at a push. A little spidery-legged creature with feathers ran against his boot. The soft blow killed t. It’s body withered away on the spot. In its place, transparent grass shot up six inches in a minute and then crumbled in a gust of wind.
Swift life and swift decay was the rule here.
York plodded on He felt like some wanderer in a ghost forest, or a jungle-man treading primeval wastes. All the science, weapons, command of natural forces that he had wielded in his own universe were nothing here. He was unarmed, helpless. In direct ratio to his distance from the ship, he grew more worried. What if that dome actually did hold the ruthless aliens who had annihilated the Three Eternals without a second’s hesitation?
For the first time in 2,000 years, York felt insecure. Before, visiting hundreds of worlds, he had felt himself at least the equal of any other beings.
He resolved to use extreme caution when he reached the dome.
“That’s right, Tony,” came Vera’s clear telepathic voice. Slumberingly-is thoughts. “At the slightest sign of danger, race back.”
York came upon the dome suddenly. It was fringed about by rampant life blooming under the maximum rays of the Cepheid sun. He gasped. Of clear transparent material, its arc of curvature indicated that it must be at least ten miles in diameter and a thousand feet high at the peak. Only intelligence could have built, the structure—first-class intelligence!
A second shock came when he looked in. He had expected a city, a mass of buildings, dwellings, busy crowds performing their daily tasks, bustling civilization, protected under the dome from the constantly changing environment outside. Such should be the logical explanation for this mighty, arcing shell.
But instead—attack.
The scene inside was that of another world. Not a city, it was simply a stretch of rocky greenish ground, with patches of red vegetation. Here and there tall, red-needled trees, like weird pines, blocked the view. The atmosphere around was misty. The whole scene was in stark contrast to that outside the dome.
Did the intelligent race prefer to live in such a back—to nature setting? Why should a titanic dome, the product of super-science, enclose a queer bit of pastoral scenery? Was it a park perhaps, or some sort of a playground?
York found no answer as he trudged halfway around the dome. It was all the same inside, and apparently untenanted. That was most puzzling of all. But suddenly he saw movement. He strained his eyes through the distortions of the transparent medium.
Two furry creatures were slinking among a group of trees, within a half-mile of York’s position. He could barely make them out as apelike, walking erect on two legs. Their beads were remarkably large, denoting intelligence. Hand in hand, male and female apparently, they stumbled along. They glanced back at times, as though being stalked.
Abruptly another form lunged from behind a patch of red-berried bushes. It was a monstrous form, blubbery of body, revoltingly naked. Little stumpy legs moved it forward lumberingly—It had no claws. Its small head, bearing two saucer eyes, was perched on a long serpentine neck, giving it a periscopic view in all directions.
It looked, somehow, like a cross between a snake and walrus. It was repulsively ugly, but not formidable.
York watched as the two ape beings caught sight of the monster and ran with obvious fear. The beast lumbered after them clumsily. York, unconsciously loyal to the two beings more like himself, breathed in relief for them. They could easily outrun the horror.
But strangely their steps faltered. As though they had run into an invisible lake of syrup, they slowed down, their bodies straining futilely. At last the ape-man faced about, flinging the woman creature behind him. He awaited the attack of the monster.
“The ape-man will win,” York told Vera by telepathy, having transmitted the episode. “The monster, though large, has no claws, or biting jaws, or any air of strength. The ape-man should have faced it in the first place. One twist of his powerful hands on that long, thin neck and he can tear the beast’s ridiculous head, off. The beast is the one who should run.”
The ape-man, as though under York’s orders, leaped forward to grasp the thin neck with his gorilla like hands. But again something dogged his efforts. His arms fell helpless. He stood rigid. He made no move to escape as the beast whipped out a rubbery tentacle, wrapped it around his neck, and choked him lifeless. Then the tentacle’s end probed into the corpse like a proboscis, and drained the dead ape-man to a bloodless husk.
3
ANTON YORK tried to break his gaze from the revolting scene. He saw the woman-creature stalk forward like a robot and submit herself to the choking tentacle and draining of blood.
With a final effort, York wrenched his eyes away. In the act, he knew why it was so hard.
“Hypnosis!” he breathed. “That horrible monster fascinates his prey as a snake does a bird, and the victim is doomed.”
“But why do the builders of the dome, who must be higher life-forms than the ape-creatures, allow that to go on?” Vera’s telepathic tone was shocked, unbelieving.
“I don’t know,” returned York. “There’s some amazing mystery behind this. The dome-builders might be those same aliens of the patrol ship. I just glimpsed another dome, Vera, a few miles away. I’m going to that one and find out what I can.”
“Tony, I’m worried. There is a terrible menace in all this. Please come back!”
But Vera knew that her husband wouldn’t. Quite aside from his own problems and danger, York’s scientific curiosity had been aroused. He had never, in all their travels among strange worlds, left a mystery unsolved.
The second dome, when York arrived, was exactly like the first in size and shape, enclosing a space about ten miles in diameter.
But the scene inside was vastly different. The ground was sandy and speckled with clumps of oddly shaped cacti life. The air seemed thin and clear, with heat ripples streaming down from the peak of the dome, where a huge gleaming apparatus hung suspended.
York quickly discovered mangy, lean creatures similar to Earthly wolves. They loped after and caught smaller animals, in this cross-section of an alien desert.
Suddenly, from behind a towering rock formation, stabbed a hissing—ray. It struck a wolf creature, electrocuting it. York stared as the wielder of the electric gun ran from concealment.
At first glance, York understood why its movements were stiff and awkward, why its skin glinted metallically. York knew it be a silicon being, one with silicon atoms replacing those of carbon. Intelligence reposed in the flint-scaled face, though it was dead of expression.
The silicon-man took out a sharp knife and began slicing the carcass. With a flint he struck fire, feeding it with twigs of dried cactus. He rolled a strip of flesh in the sand, then toasted it over the fire, finally gobbling it down with relish. Within his stomach, York surmised, some strange chemistry of digestion replaced the carbon atoms in the flesh-food with silicon atoms from the sand “salt.”