“And we were going to take some of those trees to Earth!” Smith shouted. “Seven of them! So the people of the Earth could hear them. Listen to them, night after night. The whole world listening to them on the radio. A whole world being conditioned, being changed by seven music trees.”
“But why?” asked Wade, bewildered.
“Why did men domesticate animals?” Mackenzie asked. “You wouldn’t find out by asking the animals, for they don’t know. There is just as much point asking a dog why he was domesticated as there is in asking us why the trees want to condition us. For some purpose of their own, undoubtedly, that is perfectly clear and logical to them. A purpose that undoubtedly never can be clear and logical to us.”
“Nicodemus,” said the Encyclopedia, and his thought was deadly cold, “you have betrayed your own.”
Mackenzie laughed harshly. “You’re wrong there,” he told the vegetable, “because Nicodemus isn’t a plant, any more. He’s a human. The same thing has happened to him as you want to have happen to us. He has become a human in everything but physical make-up. He thinks as a man does. His viewpoints are ours, not yours.”
“That is right,” said Nicodemus. “I am a man.”
A piece of cloth ripped savagely and for an instant the group was blinded by a surge of energy that leaped from the thicket a hundred yards away. Smith gurgled once in sudden agony and the energy was gone.
Frozen momentarily by surprise, Mackenzie watched Smith stagger, face tight with pain, hand clapped to his side. Slowly the man wilted, sagged in the middle and went down.
Silently, Nellie leaped forward, was sprinting for the thicket. With a hoarse cry, Mackenzie bent over Smith.
Smith grinned at him, a twisted grin. His mouth worked, but no words came. His hand slid away from his side and he went limp, but his chest rose and fell with a slightly slower breath. His life blanket had shifted its position to cover the wounded side.
Mackenzie straightened up, hauling the pistol from his belt. A man had risen from the thicket, was leveling a gun at the charging Nellie. With a wild yell, Mackenzie shot from the hip. The lashing charge missed the man but half the thicket disappeared in a blinding sheet of flame.
The man with the gun ducked as the flame puffed out at him and in that instant Nellie closed. The man yelled once, a long-drawn howl of terror as Nellie swung him above her head and dashed him down. The smoking thicket hid the rest of it. Mackenzie, pistol hanging limply by his side, watched Nellie’s right fist lift and fall with brutal precision, heard the thud of life being beaten from a human body.
Sickened, he turned back to Smith. Wade was kneeling beside the wounded man. He looked up.
“He seems to be unconscious.”
Mackenzie nodded. “The blanket put him out. Gave him an anesthetic. It’ll take care of him.”
Mackenzie glanced up sharply at a scurry in the grass. The Encyclopedia, taking advantage of the moment, was almost out of sight, scuttling toward a grove of rifle trees.
A step grated behind him.
“It was Alexander,” Nellie said. “He won’t bother us no more.”
Nelson Harper, factor at the post, was lighting up his pipe when the visiphone signal buzzed and the light flashed on.
Startled, Harper reached out and snapped on the set. Mackenzie’s face came in, a face streaked with dirt and perspiration, stark with fear. He waited for no greeting. His lips were already moving even as the plate flickered and cleared.
“It’s all off, chief,” he said. “The deal is off. I can’t bring in those trees.”
“You got to bring them in,” yelled Harper. “I’ve already called Earth. I got them turning handsprings. They say it’s the greatest thing that ever happened. They’re sending out a ship within an hour.”
“Call them back and tell them not to bother,” Mackenzie snapped.
“But you told me everything was set,” yelped Harper. “You told me nothing could happen. You said you’d bring them in if you had to crawl on hands and knees and pack them on your back.”
“I told you every word of that,” agreed Mackenzie. “Probably even more. But I didn’t know what I know now.”
Harper groaned. “Galactic is plastering every front page in the Solar System with the news. Earth radios right now are bellowing it out from Mercury to Pluto. Before another hour is gone every man, woman and child will know those trees are coming to Earth. And once they know that, there’s nothing we can do. Do you understand that, Mackenzie? We have to get them there!”
“I can’t do it, chief,” Mackenzie insisted, stubbornly.
“Why can’t you?” screamed Harper. “So help me Hannah, if you don’t—”
“I can’t bring them in because Nellie’s burning them. She’s down in the Bowl right now with a flamer. When she’s through, there won’t be any music trees.”
“Go out and stop her!” shrieked Harper. “What are you sitting there for! Go out and stop her! Blast her if you have to. Do anything, but stop her! That crazy robot—”
“I told her to,” snapped Mackenzie. “I ordered her to do it. When I get through here, I’m going down and help her.”
“You’re crazy, man!” yelled Harper. “Stark, staring crazy. They’ll throw the book at you for this. You’ll be lucky if you just get life—”
Two darting hands loomed in the plate, hands that snapped down and closed around Mackenzie’s throat, hands that dragged him away and left the screen blank, but with a certain blurring motion, as if two men might be fighting for their lives just in front of it.
“Mackenzie!” screamed Harper. “Mackenzie!”
Something smashed into the screen and shattered it, leaving the broken glass gaping in jagged shards.
Harper clawed at the visiphone. “Mackenzie! Mackenzie, what’s happening!”
In answer the screen exploded in a flash of violent flame, howled like a screeching banshee and then went dead.
Harper stood frozen in the room, listening to the faint purring of the radio. His pipe fell from his hand and bounced along the floor, spilling burned tobacco.
Cold, clammy fear closed down upon him, squeezing his heart. A fear that twisted him and mocked him. Galactic would break him for this, he knew. Send him out to some of the jungle planets as the rankest subordinate. He would be marked for life, a man not to be trusted, a man who had failed to uphold the prestige of the company.
Suddenly a faint spark of hope stirred deep within him. If he could get there soon enough! if he could get to Melody Bowl in time, he might stop this madness. Might at least save something, save a few of the precious trees.
The flier was in the compound, waiting. Within half an hour he could be above the Bowl.
He leaped for the door, shoved it open and even as he did a pellet whistled past his cheek and exploded into a puff of dust against the door frame. Instinctively, he ducked and another pellet brushed his hair. A third caught him in the leg with stinging force and brought him down. A fourth puffed dust into his face.
He fought his way to his knees, was staggered by another shot that slammed into his side. He raised his right arm to protect his face and a sledge-hammer blow slapped his wrist. Pain flowed along his arm and in sheer panic he turned and scrambled on hands and knees across the threshold, kicked the door shut with his foot.
Sitting flat on the floor, he held his right wrist in his left hand. He tried to make his fingers wiggle and they wouldn’t. The wrist, he knew, was broken.
After weeks of being off the beam the rifle tree outside the compound suddenly had regained its aim and gone on a rampage.