Philip Farmer - Venus on the Half-Shell

Simon began worrying that he had done the wrong thing. Dogs will eat poison if it’s wrapped up in a steak. Perhaps the elixir’s perfume overrode the odor of dangerous elements.

A minute later, he had forgotten his concern. The viewscreen flashed the information that the ship was approaching a star with a planetary system. The Hwang Ho dropped down into sublight speed, and two days later they were entering an orbit around the sixth planet of the giant red star. This was Earth-size, and its air breathable, though its oxygen content was greater than Earth’s.

The only artificial object on the planet was the gigantic candy-heart-shaped tower of the Clerun-Gowph. Simon flew the ship around it a few times, but, on finding that it was as invulnerable as the other, he left it. This planet showed no sign of intelligent life, of beings who used tools, grew crops, and constructed buildings. It did have some curious animal life, though, and he decided to get a close look at it. He gave the landing order, and a few minutes later stepped out onto the edge of a meadow near the shore of an amber sea.

The grass was about two feet high, violet-colored and topped with yellow flowers with five petals. Moving through and above these were about forty creatures which were pyramidshaped and about thirty feet high. Their skins or shells—he wasn’t sure which they were—were pink. They moved on hundreds of very short legs ending in broad round feet. Halfway up their bodies were eyes, two on each side, eight in all. These were huge and round and a light blue, and the lids had long curling eyelashes. At the top of each pyramid-shaped body was a pink ball with a large opening on two opposing sides.

It was evident that their mouths were on their bottoms, since they left a trail of cropped grass behind them. He could hear the munching of the grass and rumblings of their stomachs.

Simon had put the ship into a deep ravine beyond a thick wood so he could sneak up on the creatures. But purple things in the sky were moving out to sea and turning in a sweeping curve so they could come in downwind toward him. These were even stranger than the creatures browsing on the flowers. They looked from a distance like zeppelins, but they had two big eyes near the underside of their noses and tentacles coiled up along their undersides about twenty feet back of the eyes. Simon wondered how they ate. Perhaps the curious organs at the tips of their noses were some kind of mouth. These were bulbous and had a small opening.

Just above the small bulb was a hole. This did not seem to be a mouth, however, since it was rigid. There was another hole at the rear, and a number of much smaller ones spaced along the underside.

Their tail assemblies were just like zeppelins’. They had huge vertical rudders and horizontal elevators, but these sprouted yellow and green feathers on the edges.

Simon figured out they must use some sort of jet propulsion. They took in air through the front hole, which was rigid, and squeezed it out of the rear hole, which was contracting and dilating.

The huge creatures dropped lower as they neared the meadow, and the first one, emitting short sharp whistles, came in about thirty feet above the ground. It passed between a line of the pyramid-things, and then it eased its bulbous nose into an opening in the ball on top of one. This closed around the bulb and held the zeppelin-thing.

The pyramid-thing was a living mooring mast.

A moment later, the flying animal was released. It headed toward the bush behind which Simon was crouched. After it came the other fliers, all whistling. The pyramid-things crowded together and faced inward. Or were they facing outward, like a bunch of cows threatened by wolves? How could they face anything if they had eyes on all sides and no faces? In any event, they were forming a protective assembly.

Simon stepped out from his cover with his hands held up. The foremost zeppelin-creature loomed above him, its huge eyes cautious. Its tentacles reached out but did not touch Simon. He was almost blown down as the thing eased forward toward him. The stench was terrible but not unfamiliar. He had batted .500 in his guess about its method of propulsion. Instead of taking in air, compressing it with some organ, and shooting it out, it drove itself with giant farts. Its big stomachs—like a cow it had more than one— generated gas for propulsion. Simon figured out that its stomachs must contain enzymes which made the gas. At this moment, it hung about ten feet above the surface, bobbing up and down as it expelled gas from the hole in front to counteract the wind.

Simon stood there while the thing whistled at him. After a while he caught on to the fact that the whistles were a sort of Morse code.

Simon imitated some of the dots and dashes just to let them know that he, too, was intelligent. Then he turned back and went to his ship. The zeppelins followed him above the trees and watched him go into the ship. Through the viewscreen he could see them hovering over the ship and feeling it with their tentacles. Maybe they thought it was a strange living creature, too.

Simon went out the next day to the edge of the meadow. The living mooring masts got alarmed again, and once more the fliers came down. But after a few days they got used to him. Simon walked closer to them each day. By the end of the week, he was allowed to stroll around among the pyramids. A few days later, however, the pyramids were gone. He walked around until he found them in another meadow. Evidently, they had eaten up all the grass and flowers in the other place.

Simon found it difficult to learn the language of the zeppelin-things. Most of them were too busy in the daytime to talk to him. When dark came, the fliers locked into the balls on the top of the pyramids and stayed there until dawn. When they did speak—or whistle—to him, the stench they expelled was almost unbearable. But then he found out that the pyramids could whistle, too. They did this, not through the mouths on their undersides but through one of the openings in the balls at the tops. These emitted a stench, too, but he could endure it if he stood upwind. And, being females, the pyramids were more loquacious and better suited to teach him zeppelinese.

They liked Simon because he gave them someone to talk to and about. The males, it seemed, spent most of their time playing and carousing in the air. They came down at noon for a meal but wouldn’t hang around to talk. When night fell, they landed, but this was for supper and a short session of sexual intercourse. After which, they usually dozed off.

“We’re just objects to them,” said one female. “Nutrition and pleasure objects.”

The ball on top of the females was a curious organ. One opening was a combination mooring lock, gruel nipple, and vagina. The females browsed on the meadow, digested the food, and fed it through a nipple inside the ball into the tips of the males’ noses. This opening also received the slender tongue-like sex organ of the male. The opening on the other side of the ball was the anus and the mouth. This could be tightened to emit the whistling speech.

Simon didn’t want to get involved in the domestic affairs of these creatures. But he had to show a certain amount of interest and sympathy if he was to get information. So he whistled a question at the female whom he’d named Anastasia.

“Yes, that’s right,” Anastasia said. “We do all the work and those useless sons of bitches do nothing but play around all day.”

Anastasia didn’t actually say “sons of bitches” but Simon translated it as such. What she said was something like “farts in a windstorm.”

“We females talk a lot among ourselves during the day,” she said. “But we’d like to talk with our mates, too. After all, they’ve been up in the wild blue yonder, having a great time, seeing all sorts of interesting things. But do you think for one moment that they’ll let us in on what’s going on outside these meadows? No, all they want to do is to be fed and have a quickie and be off to dreamland. When we complain, they tell us that we wouldn’t understand it if they did tell us what they saw and did. So here we are, ground-bound and shut up in these little meadows, working all day, taking care of the children, while they’re roaming around, zooming up and down, having a good old time. It isn’t fair!”