Harlan Ellison: Ellison Wonderland

I slipped into my air-suit, not bothering to put on the pressure shell. There was barely enough gravity on the planet to keep me comfortable, and occasionally I got stiff pains in my chest. But with the heating circuits printed into the material of the air-suit, I was in no real danger. I strapped the oxygen unit to my back, and slipped the bubble onto the yoke, dogging it down over my head with ease. Then I inserted the hose between oxygen unit and bubble and sealed it tightly with a wrench, so I would lose no air from leakage.

Then I went out.

It was twilight, as the sky dimmed on Hell. I had had three months of light already, since I had landed in the safety hutch, and I assumed perhaps two months of light had passed before I came. That left me with a month, roughly, before Secondmoon slipped completely across the face of the tiny red sun which I had not named. Even now, Secondmoon was coming across its disc, and I knew it would be darkness for a full six months by that moon, then another six from Firstmoon, then light again for a brief six.

It had not been difficult to chart orbits and eclipse periods during the past three months. What else had I to do?

I started walking. It was difficult, and I found that by taking long hops, I could cover distances three times as great as those possible.

The planet was nearly barren. No great forests, no streams or oceans, no plains with grain standing on them, no birds, and no other life but mine and When I first saw them, I was certain they were trumpet flowers, for they had the characteristic bell-shaped perianth with delicate stamen projecting slightly from the cup. But as I drew nearer I realized nothing so Earthlike— even in outward appearance—could occur here. These were not flowers, and on the spot, in the muffled breathing of my helmet, I called them Fluhs.

They were a brilliant orange on the outside of the bell, fading down into a bluish-orange and then a simple marine blue on the stem. Inside the cups they seemed not so much orange as golden, and the blue of the pistils was topped by anthers of orange. Quite colorful they were, and pleasant to look upon.

There were perhaps a hundred of these plants, growing at the base of rock formations that were highly unnatural: tall and leaning at angles, and all smooth and sharp-edged, like spikes, flattened off at the tops. Not so much like rocks, but like the image of salt crystals or glass, under ultramagnification. The entire area was covered with these formations, and with an instant’s loss of reality, I seemed to see myself as a microscopic being, surrounded by great flat-edged, flat-topped crystals that were in reality merely dust or microspecks.

Then my perspective returned, and I stepped closer to the Flubs, to examine them more closely, for this was the only other life that had managed to exist on Hell, apparently, drawing sustenance from the thin, nitrogen-laden atmosphere.

I leaned over to stare deeper into the trumpet-blossoms, resting on one of the slanting pillars of pseudo-rock for support. That was one of my first mistakes, nearly fatal, and to color my life on Hell.

The pillar crashed—it was a semiporous volcanic formation, almost scorialike in composition—and loosened other rocks that had rested on it. I fell forward, directly atop the Flubs, and the last thing I felt was my oxygen helmet shattering about my head.

Then the blackness that was not as deep as space slid down over me.

I should have been dead. There was no reason why I should not have been dead. But I was living; I was…breathing! Can you understand that? I should have been with my wife, but I was alive. My face was pressed into the Flubs.

I was drawing oxygen from them.

I had stumbled and fallen and cracked open my helmet, and should have died, but because of strange plants that sucked the nitrogen from the thin atmosphere, circulated it and cast it back out as oxygen, I was still alive. I cursed the Fluhs for depriving me of quick, unknowing surcease. I had come so close to joining her, and had lost the chance. I wanted to stagger away from the Fluhs—out into the open where they could not give me air—and gasp away my stolen life. But something stopped me. I was never a religious man, and I am not now. But there seemed to be something miraculous in what had happened. I can’t explain it. I just knew there was a Chance that had thrown me down into that patch of Flubs.

I lay there, breathing deeply.

There was a soft membrane around the base of the pistils that must have held in the oxygen, allowing it to leak out slowly. They were intricate and wonderful plants.

…and there was the smell of midnight.

I can’t describe it any more clearly. It was not a sweet smell, nor was it a sour smell. It was a tender, almost fragile odor that reminded me of one midnight when I had first married her, and we were living in Minnesota. Crisp, and pure and uplifting that midnight had been, when our love had transcended even the restrictions of marriage, when we first realized we were more in love than in love with love itself. Does that sound foolish or confused? No, to me it was perfectly clear. And so was the smell of midnight from the Flubs.

It was the smell perhaps, that made me go on living.

That, and the fact that my face had begun to drain.

As I lay there, I had time to think about what this meant: the bottleneck in oxygen-lack is the brain. After five minutes of oxygen starvation, the brain is irreversibly damaged. But with these Flubs, I could wander about my planet without a helmet—were I able to find them everywhere in such abundance.

As I lay there thinking, gathering strength for the run back to the ship, I felt my face draining. It was as though I had a great boil or pus-sac on my right cheek, and it was sucking blood down into it. I felt my cheek, and yes, even through the glove I could feel a swelling. I grew terrified then, and plucking a handful of Fluhs—close to the bottom of their stems—I thrust my face into them and ran frantically back to the ship.

Once inside, the Fluhs wilted and falling down over my fist, they shriveled. Their brilliant colors faded, and they turned gray as brain matter. I threw them from me and they lay on the deckplate for a few minutes, then they crumbled to a fine ash.

I pulled off my air-suit and my gloves, and ran to the recirculator that was constructed of burnished plasteel; my reflection lived there clearly. My right cheek was terribly inflamed. I gave a short, sharp squeal of terror and pawed at my face, but unlike a pimple or boil, there was no soreness, no pain. Just the constant draining feeling. What was there to do? I waited.

In a week, the sac had taken shape almost completely. My face was like no human face, drawn down and puffed out on the right side so that my eye had been pulled into a mere slit of light shining through. It was like a gigantic goiter, a goiter that was not on the neck, but the face. The sac ended just at the jawbone, and it did not impair my breathing a bit. But my mouth had been dragged down with it, and when I opened it, I found I had a great cavernous maw instead of the firm lips that had formed my mouth. Otherwise, my face was completely normal. I was a half-beast. My left side was normal, and my right was grotesquely pulled into a drooping, rubbery parody of humanity. I could not bear to look at myself for more than an instant or two, each “day.” The flaming redness of it had gone away, as had the draining, and I did not understand it for many weeks.

Until I ventured once more onto the surface of Hell.

The helmet could not be repaired, of course, so I used the one that my wife had used when she was with me. That set me thinking again, and later, when I had steadied myself, and stopped crying, I went out.

It was inevitable that I should return to the spot where my deformity had first occurred. I reached the spikes- -as I had now named the rock formations—without event, and sat down among a patch of Flubs. If I had drawn off their life-giving oxygen, they seemed no worse for it, for they had continued to grow in brilliance and were, if anything, even more beautiful.