"Oh, yes. Matter of fact, the general belief still is that Sol is
unique in possessing planets, and that Sol Three, otherwise Earth, is
unique in possessing life, particularly intelligent life."
Rohan swore, and then he laughed. "I never heard of such conceit.
I thought you said Earthmen were civilized. Only savages have that
wonderful conception of their own importance."
Armed with curved knives and big sacks of a thin plasticoid substance
as flexible as cloth but air tight when it was sealed, the men spread
out through the fungoid jungle. They kept more or less together in
small groups. Trehearne could hear them talking, a confusion of voices
over the helmet phone. He talked a lot himself, not about anything in
particular, just talking for the sake of hearing something human. There
was a strange and increasingly unpleasant feeling of isolation, locked
up in his armor, breathing artificial air, unable to see much because
of the helmet that restricted his field of vision. He moved with
difficulty over spongy dust that sucked him down almost to the knees
at every step. The light was lurid and hard on the eyes, and the ugly
growths grew uglier by the minute, their vivid colors more revolting.
It was hard to tell who was near him, with everyone masked out of human
semblance by the shapeless suits. He tried to keep close to Yann and
the two youngsters, checking them by voice.
"Don't bother with the big ones," Yann told him. "They aren't any good.
Here, see the little pretties just coming up? Those are what we want."
Trehearne looked doubtfully at the size of his sack, and then at the
nasty little mushroom-like heads thrusting up from the ground. "It'll
take a long time to fill this thing."
"Hours. Might as well dig in."
Trehearne began patiently to work, bent over double or squattering
clumsily along on his knees. The uncleanness of the place began to get
on his nerves. Unavoidably he broke the adult growths from time to time
and was showered with sooty black, or liverish pink, or ugly red and
yellow dust, or was enveloped in clouds of spores. He tried to watch
the others, but he lost track of them now and then. Sometimes they did
not answer when he called them. A slow claustrophobia grew on him and
had to be fought down. He sweated heavily inside his armor. His muscles
tired, and still the huge sack was not filled.
The light of the cumulid star began visibly to fade.
Trehearne looked around. A wall of leprous color closed him in. There
was no one in sight. "Yann?" he called. "Perri?"
"Hoi!" That was Perri. "Dull work, isn't it?"
"Disgusting. Where's Yann?"
"I don't know. Yann?"
"Here, damn it. If you'd pick more and talk less we'd be out of this
pleasure garden sooner."
Trehearne could not place their positions. They sounded alike, all
as though they spoke inside his own helmet. He worked on, hoping to
catch sight of someone. The sick sun had worn out its burst of energy
and was sinking into exhaustion, dimmer, redder, with the effect of
an abnormal sunset. A kind of shadowy dusk crept between the feet of
the tall distorted growths. Trehearne began to feel uneasy. He knew it
was only the cumulative effect of the surroundings and the prisoning
armor. He refused to pay attention to it. But it would not go away.
It came in waves, with a prickling of nerve-ends and a lifting of the
hair. He continued doggedly to throw the small fungi into his sack. He
wanted to talk now more than ever, but he was afraid to, afraid that
his unreasoning fear would show in his voice and disgrace him. He began
to make long swings back and forth, trying to find somebody, but he
could not, though he knew they must be close by. He was very hot, but
his back turned cold and trickles of icy moisture ran down it. The
unhealthy dusk grew thicker, and the shadows were red. He began to see
movement out of the tail of his eye, as though something or someone
walked stealthily just out of sight behind the screening growths.
"Yann?"
"What?" The bodiless, distanceless voice, speaking thinly in his ear.
"There's no life here, is there? I mean, outside of these stinking
mushrooms."
"Not that anyone knows about. Why?"
"Nothing. It was only a trick of the shadows, I guess."
"Getting nervy, little Earthling?"
"Listen, the hell with you and your smart cracks."
"Think nothing of it," Yann said unabashed. "We all get nervy. I'm
almost finished. How about you?"
"Pretty soon."
"Well, hurry up."
Silence. An occasional burst of voices over the helmet phones,
confusing, jumbled. The men weren't talking so much now. They were
tired, and the place oppressed them. Their spirits were going down
like the light of the sun, sprawling hugely over half the sky with the
red light running out of it like blood. Trehearne watched the shadows
constantly, turning uneasily round and about with a blind feeling
at his back. His nerves still pricked and rippled, and would not be
quieted.
His sack was nearly full. He thought about the ship, about lights and
familiar faces and getting off the suffocating armor. There was a
monstrous fan-shaped growth glaring crimson in the sinking glow. It
was flanked on one side by a bloated puffball colored black, and on
the other by a crinkled, convoluted monster blotched with brown and
yellow. It had at its feet a brood of little ones, enough to fill the
remaining space in Trehearne's sack. He walked toward it, brushing by
the blotched and convoluted thing. He felt at his back a sudden tug and
a snapping. He turned, floundering in the soft mould with his heavy
boots. He turned as fast as he could but there was no one, nothing,
and then it dawned on him what had happened. His oxygen line had been
ripped loose.
He began to shout. He didn't mind using his breath. He had very little
left to use. He shouted in wild panic and began to run, nowhere in
particular, butting and stumbling into the fungi, searching desperately
for someone to help him before he died. "Where are you?" the voices
were clamoring in his helmet. "Where are you?" And he kept screaming,
"Here!" as though the word had any meaning, as though they could tell
from the sound of his voice whether he was ten feet or half a mile
away. The automatic valve-seal had closed at once to prevent the escape
of what air there was in the armor, but it was getting hard to breathe.
His lungs would exhaust the last of the oxygen in a minute or two, and
then he could either suffocate in his armor, or rip off his helmet and
burn his insides out with the methanated poison this world used for
atmosphere. It was a lousy way to die and he didn't like it, and he
couldn't figure out how it had happened. He must have fouled his line
on some part of the fungus, that nasty one that looked like a monstrous
brain. He must have passed too close to it and got hooked on some tough
projection.... It was getting dark and he was sick at his stomach and
his lungs were pumping, laboring, achieving nothing.
He tried to yell again, and couldn't make it. His knees caved under
him and he fell, almost into the arms of a shapeless but human figure
that was saying a lot of things he couldn't understand. He felt himself
rolled over. There was a moment when the darkness closed down almost
completely and then a stream of oxygen, pure and fresh, poured into his
helmet. The mechanism that had so nearly stopped began to work again,
not smoothly, with a good deal of gagging and choking, but working.
Somebody's voice penetrated to him, telling him for God's sake not to
get sick in his helmet, and he managed to sit up and look around.
Two men were bending over him, and a third stood behind them. He could
recognize them through their face-plates. None were his bunkmates.
There was somebody else behind him, holding him up. Voices were still
clattering inside his helmet, demanding to be answered. He thought he
heard Rohan and Perri, but he wasn't sure. "Who's that behind me?" he
asked. His own voice came out as though there were hooks on it. His
throat hurt. "Who's there?"
"Me. Yann. Welcome back, Trehearne. I thought for a minute you'd gone
over the edge."
"Damn near it." His tongue felt like a feather bolster. "I don't know
what happened...."
"Your air-line got snagged," said one of the men helpfully, telling
Trehearne no news. He grunted and said,
"But how? I thought I must have hooked it on one of these ugly brutes,
but they break so easily...."
"They toughen up as they age. Look here." The man reached out and took
a horny protuberance in his hand. "Plenty of resistance, especially if
your coupling was not properly tightened."
He didn't remember any such protuberances, and the blotched
brain-shaped thing had looked bright and youthful. But he let it drop.
He didn't know quite what other answer there could be, and right now
he didn't want to think about it any more. Everything was lost in an
overpowering desire to get back to the ship. He started to flounder up
onto his feet, and Yann's powerful arm helped him. "Anyway," he said to
the men in front of him, "thanks for saving my neck."
"Thank Yann. He had your air-line recoupled by the time we came. You
were running right toward us, but you might not have made it if he
hadn't found you first."