Zach Hughes - Tiger in the Stars

mechanical thing through its electric wiring. Is that the way they do it? Or do they do it with pure mental force? Along the same line, the message beams can be nothing but mental force. They travel on no physical wavelength. They travel infinite distances with no time lapse.» «A race with powerful extrasensory ability. Telepathic,» Heath said. «And what else?» «Beings that exist as powerful force fields?» Plank asked. «All around us? Laughing at us?» «No need for hardware, then,» Hara said. «Toys?» Plank asked. «Some of the constructions on the tinker-toy planet had, I swear, no practical purpose.» «As we know practical purpose,» Heath said. «There was an accelerator. It was recognizable. Now we know they're good on subatomics. In effect, they do the old alchemist's magic, transmuting one element into another. Now you'll have to admit that this is an accomplishment of some value, so why waste the materials on constructions that begin nowhere and end nowhere? A culture that uses an accelerator should be rather practical. The inconsistencies of that planet bother me.» «I think the worst thing of all is that we've always wondered if we were alone in the universe, so we've made attempts to contact others. We used to have huge observatories dedicated to alien contact. We wanted so desperately to find someone out there to whom we could say, hey, we are and you are, how about that?» She paused for a moment before going on. «I remember reading that on the first unmanned probe launched on a path that would take it outside the solar system, they put a stylized drawing of a man and woman and a simple star chart for locating old Sol in relationship to nearby pointer stars. I thought it was a very touching, very human thing, but futile, since the little probe was traveling at a snail's pace and probably won't reach the vicinity of another star for

hundreds of years yet, if it's still out there. But we were so alone. And now that we know we're not alone, I'm not sure I didn't like it best the other way.» «This is interesting,» Plank said, having completed another blink while Hara was talking. «Take a look.» He flashed a chart onto a screen. «Here we are.» He illustrated their position with a blip of light. «And here is where I first became aware that I was no longer a man, but a brain inside a machine.» Behind the blip of light indicating the ship, a zigzagging line extended back into the heart of the galaxy. An extension of that line pointed toward the planet he called Plank's World. «As I told you, it was the only world supporting a considerable amount of life. The slug things, remember?» «It couldn't be them,» Hara said. «No,» Plank agreed. «But that seems to be where we're headed.» «They seemed interested in having you search out life-zone planets,»

Heath said. «Now they're there, if we're right in believing that the relayed signals are going to them.» «Why would they be there?» Hara mused. «There are several possibilities,» Plank said. «To help. To observe. To harm.» He left his mobile extension inert. «And whatever the reason, we're going to be ready.» «To do what?» Heath asked. «To talk, to question. I hope that's all,» Plank said. «But if not, then we have enough fire power on these two ships to pulverize the planet.» He approached the planet at sublight speed. All eyes, all ears on the alert. He had transfered Hara and Heath to the dark ship since it was more heavily armored. He left the dark ship dead in space, keeping contact, while easing the Pride closer. The dark ship was always in his view, under constant monitoring. At first hint of trouble he would blink it out of there to a predetermined safe distance. He was certain he was being observed. It did not stand to reason that they, being so advanced, could be surprised. At any moment he expected contact, so he kept the communications bank aboard the dark ship open. It was reasonable to believe that they would have their weapons, at least as powerful as the weapons aboard the ships, perhaps weapons he could not even imagine. What was the power of a being who could manipulate atomic subparticles at will? Once again, he felt futility. The first man to take up spear and rock and go after the tiger must have had the same feeling. And, because he shared a common humanity with that first hunter, he pressed on. When a tiger begins to pick off your fellow villagers one by one, you take arms and go after him. You know that if you are not quick, not smart, you, too, will be tiger bait, yet you press ahead. That's the way man is. Otherwise, back on

Earth, the jungles might be still full of tigers, hip deep in them, with man a small, frightened thing running for his life and hiding in holes in the ground. The planet looked deceptively peaceful. A water and oxygen world is beautiful from space. Blues and the cover of clouds, a large storm system in the southern hemisphere. Winter in the northern temperate zone. He boarded the scout in his mobile form and blinked to within the atmosphere to begin his sweeps. He had selected the largest landmass, the one that had been populated most densely by the small, sluglike creatures—the planet's dominant form of life. Moving at low altitudes, slightly higher than 1,500 meters, he scanned the ground. The first thing that came to his attention was the total absence of the little animals. Where there had been millions, there were none. He lowered, slowed his speed. A dozen instruments found and analyzed a new substance, piled

and strewn, a reeking, oily, glutinous mass. It was in evidence all over the landscape. He did not take time to collect a sample. He returned to his high speed survey. Hours later, he was convinced that the largest landmass was not only devoid of animal life, but was empty of the presence of any alien visible to his detection instruments. Reporting his findings to the others aboard the dark ship, he flashed across an ocean to the second continental landmass. The findings were the same. Scattered islands and two subcontinental masses were yet to be searched. He chose to cover the larger area first. Once again he found that

the little slugs were no longer in evidence, only great accumulations of that glutinous material he had observed on both major landmasses. He had confined his search to daylight areas, adjusting his flight plan

to the planet's rotation. There was left only the ocean islands, some rather extensive chains in the southern oceans. He approached one of the larger islands from the sea, flying low and fast, lifting the scout over the escarpment and reading the findings of his instruments as they scanned

the hills and valleys of the interior of the island. At first, he received no life signals near the coast. Then, inland, he began to get scattered blips revealing the presence of the slugs. And, lifting over the peak of the dead volcano at the center and looking down into a small, beautiful, forested

valley, he saw his instruments leap wildly. Below him was a life-force of an astounding intensity. He slowed. He saw the thing in a jungle clearing. Its pale hump of a back towered above the tall trees surrounding it. Its bulk was, he estimated, in the hundreds of metric tons. Hovering over it, he had microseconds to assess and record. Later, when he had time to look at the visuals, he could not believe that his first instantaneous impressions had been so vividly correct. The form of the creature was a blobby globe. At the front of the globe, a huge maw as wide as the bulk and lined with hundreds of small, sharp teeth. Two armlike appendages extended forward from beside the maw; they were occupied with gathering and scooping up dozens of the slug animals, which had been herded into the clearing. The small animals waited patiently to be captured and then, unresisting, they allowed themselves to be shoveled into the maw. And behind the maw, in the hump of the globular body, huge muscles writhed with a swallowing motion. Behind the engorged belly at the rearmost extension, excrement was training out in a sort of obscene tail, even as the creature ate. In that instant, intent on destruction. Plank readied the small weapons