The Flying Flowers
It was several miles back of the shore to where the green grassland
rose from the jungle to slope up to the cliffs of gleaming blue. I had
ceaselessly searched the plains and the jungles for a sign of life or
intelligence; but, so far, I had seen nothing save the weird flying
monster of which I had caught a glimpse.
But suddenly a huge winged thing arose from the jungle strip! In a
moment two more had joined it from the shore! In a few minutes a score
of vast weird monsters were circling over the beach ahead! They were
strange things, incredible, almost. I might have doubted my eyes but
for Sam's warning of the strange things we might encounter. Their
colors were bright. The wings were plainly green and of a spread of
many yards! They flew with slow and regular wing-beats.
It was some time before I got one focused clearly in the glasses and
then I gasped in astonishment and terror at the weird creature that
seemed to spring at me from the lenses. It was neither bird nor winged
reptile! It was not an animal at all!
It was a winged plant!
The great flapping wings were broad and green, braced with white veins
like the leaf of a plant. The long body was plated with coarse brown
scales, and tapered to a green-fringed tail. Eight long blood-red
tentacles dangled in pairs below the body. They were thick, and the
coils of each must have measured many yards in length. Each bore at the
end a single terrible claw. _And instead of a head, the thing carried
on the forward end--a flower!_ It was huge, of many petals, brightly
colored! Out of the calyx were thrust three dead-black, knobbed
appendages that must have been organs of sense!
It was a vast thing--unbelievable! It was as large as an airplane! It
was terrible--a nightmare monster! I could scarcely believe my sight,
though, after what Sam had said, I might have expected such a thing.
I do not remember calling Sam. I was too much amazed. But suddenly he
climbed up beside me, and took the binoculars from my unconscious hand.
With a fearful gaze, I watched him raise and focus the instrument,
trying to read in his lean, tanned face the meaning of the astounding
things.
I saw keen interest reflected there, surprise, intense concentration,
but nothing of the strange terror I felt. A sensation of immense relief
came over me, and I made a half-hearted effort to smile as he lowered
the glasses and looked at me, grinning.
"Don't let it get you, Mel," he said. "I was expecting something of
the sort--or more so. They are no more terrible than the old winged
saurians, probably. At any rate, the Omnimobile can take care of
herself. We're likely to meet something worse before we're through."
"I hope not!" I said, piously. "But the things are plants!"
"Possibly. But the idea of animated plants is nothing new to science.
The line of division between the plant and animal kingdoms is rather
vague, and it seems that both developed from a common ancestor. Even
today there are living things that can be classified neither as plant
nor animal. Take, for instance, _Euglena Viridis_, the microscopic
organism that colors green scum on fresh-water ponds. It is a plant,
because it contains chlorophyll, and utilizes sunlight in the
manufacture of food from carbon dioxide and it absorbs salts dissolved
in the water. It is an animal because it can swim about very actively,
and because it can absorb particles of food that it finds in the water.
Carry the evolution of such a thing to the nth degree, and you have the
flying things before us!"
Again, I had to admit that Sam had advanced a most plausible
explanation for an amazing thing, but still I prefer my plants fastened
to the ground.
It soon became evident that the monsters had discovered us. They
approached and circled close above, green wings slowly beating the
air, and the great blooms that were like heads seeming to flicker with
varied colors. The thick, red tentacles coiled below the great brown
shark-like bodies, with terrible talons drawn back threateningly.
"The things may be feeling unpleasant," Sam suggested. "It might be a
good thing to fix 'em a hot welcome."
That had already occurred to me. I let Sam have the controls, and ran
out and loaded the little cannon. Through the thick windows of the
little conning-tower I watched the monsters flying above us. They
followed as we kept up our deliberate advance toward the jungle-covered
shore.
Suddenly one of them dived down upon us. The impact of its heavy,
shark-like body shook the machine, and its great claws grated over the
metal plates with an unpleasantly suggestive sound, as it strove vainly
to rip them open. I felt some alarm. For sheer fighting power I would
match one of those flying plants against any animal that ever walked on
earth. In wing-spread it was fully as long as the Omnimobile, though
the machine was, of course, many times heavier.
I slipped into gear the machinery that revolved the turret, and as
soon as a portion of that rough, armored brown body was fairly before
the gun, I let fire with an explosive shell. The whole machine rocked
with the force of the explosion, and the side of that vast scaly brown
body was torn off. A viscid green fluid gushed out, dyeing the deck and
tinting the water alongside. The terrible grasp of the thing relaxed,
and it slipped off into the sea.
The others were hovering low, but in a moment Sam had submerged the
machine, and we made for the shore under water. In five minutes we
struck a soft, muddy bank. He shifted the caterpillar tread into gear.
The machine waddled up the muddy slope through the fringe of strange
plants, and broke into the weird jungle.
The unearthly radiance of the sky filtered through the jungle roof in a
dull crimson light. In the vague, ominous twilight, huge and monstrous
tree-trunks rose all about us, as much like great fungoid growths as
like normal trees. We pushed through thickets of weird purples and
strange metallic hues, under vast masses of hanging green vines, all
hung with gigantic incredible blooms that were so bright they seemed to
light the dusky forest with their vivid flames of crimson and yellow
and blue!
For perhaps three miles the Omnimobile smashed her deliberate way
like a gigantic reptilian monster through that strip of weird rotting
jungle. Then we emerged on higher ground of a different vegetation.