Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction
June 1956. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S.
copyright on this publication was renewed.
One thing Man never counted on to take along into space with
him was the Eternal Triangle--especially a true-blue
triangle like this!
"What's the matter, darling?" James asked anxiously. "Don't you like the
planet?"
"Oh, I love the planet," Phyllis said. "It's beautiful."
It was. The blue--really blue--grass, blue-violet shrubbery and,
loveliest of all, the great golden tree with sapphire leaves and pale
pink blossoms, instead of looking alien, resembled nothing so much as a
fairy-tale version of Earth.
Even the fragrance that filled the atmosphere was completely delightful
to Terrestrial nostrils--which was unusual, for most other planets, no
matter how well adapted for colonization otherwise, tended, from the
human viewpoint, anyway, to stink. Not that they were not colonized
nevertheless, for the population of Earth was expanding at too great a
rate to permit merely olfactory considerations to rule out an otherwise
suitable planet. This particular group of settlers had been lucky,
indeed, to have drawn a planet as pleasing to the nose as to the
eye--and, moreover, free from hostile aborigines.
[Illustration]
As a matter of fact, the only apparent evidence of animate life were the
small, bright-hued creatures winging back and forth through the clear
air, and which resembled Terrestrial birds so closely that there had
seemed no point to giving them any other name. There were insects, too,
although not immediately perceptible--but the ones like bees were devoid
of stings and the butterflies never had to pass through the grub stage
but were born in the fullness of their beauty.
However, fairest of all the creatures on the planet to James Haut--just
then, anyhow--was his wife, and the expression on her face was not a
lovely one.
"You do feel all right, don't you?" he asked. "The light gravity gets
some people at first."
"Yes, I guess I'm all right. I'm still a little shaken, though, and you
know it's not the gravity."
* * * * *
He would have liked to take her in his arms and say something
comforting, reassuring, but the constraint between them had not yet been
worn off. Although he had sent her an ethergram nearly every day of the
voyage, the necessarily public nature of the messages had kept them from
achieving communication in the deeper sense of the word.
"Well, I suppose you did have a bit of a shock," he said lamely.
"Somehow, I thought I had told you in my 'grams."
"You told me plenty in the 'grams, but not quite enough, it seems."
Her words didn't seem to make sense; the strain had evidently been a
little too much. "Maybe you ought to go inside and lie down for a
while."
"I will, just as soon as I feel less wobbly." She brushed back the long,
light brown hair which had got tumbled when she fainted. He remembered a
golden rather than a reddish tinge in it, but that had been under the
yellow sun of Earth; under the scarlet sun of this planet, it took on a
different beauty.
"How come the preliminary team didn't include--_it_ in their report?"
she asked, avoiding his appreciative eye.
"They didn't know. We didn't find out ourselves until we'd sent that
first message to Earth. I suppose by the time we did relay the news, you
were on your way."
"Yes, that must have been it."
The preliminary exploration team had established the fact that the
planet was more or less Earth-type, that its air was breathable, its
temperature agreeably springlike, its mineral composition very similar
to Earth's, with only slight traces of unknown elements, that there was
plenty of drinkable water and no threatening life-forms. Human beings
could, therefore, live on it.
It remained for the scout team to determine whether human beings would
_want_ to live on it--whether, in fact, they themselves would want to,
because, if so, they had the option of becoming the first settlers. That
was the way the system worked and, in the main, it worked well enough.
After less than two weeks, this scout team had beamed back to Earth the
message that the planet was suitable for colonization, so suitable that
they would like to give it the name of Elysium, if there was no
objection.
There would be none, Earth had replied, so long as the pioneers bore in
mind the fact that six other planets had previously been given that
name, and a human colony currently existed on only one of those. No need
to worry about a conflict of nomenclature, however, because the name of
that other planet Elysium had subsequently been changed by unanimous
vote of settlers to Hades.
* * * * *
After this somewhat sinister piece of information, Earth had added the
more cheerful news that the wives and families of the scouts would soon
be on their way, bringing with them the tools and implements necessary
to transform the wilderness of the frontier into another Earth. In the
meantime, the men were to set up the packaged buildings with which all
scout ships were equipped, so that when the women came, homes would be
ready for them.
The men set to work and, before the month was out, they discovered that
Elysium was neither a wilderness nor a frontier. It was populated by an
intelligent race which had developed its culture to the limit of its
physical abilities--actually well beyond the limit of what the astounded
Terrestrials could have conceived its physical abilities to be--then,
owing to unavoidable disaster, had started to die out.
The remaining natives were perspicacious enough to see in the
Terrestrials' coming not a threat but a last hope of revivifying their
own moribund species. Accordingly, the Earthmen were encouraged to go
ahead building on the sites originally selected, the only ban being on
the type of construction materials used--and a perfectly reasonable one
under the circumstances.
James had built his cottage near the largest, handsomest tree in the
area allotted to him; since there were no hostile life-forms, there was
no need for a closely knit community. Everyone who had seen it agreed
that his house was the most attractive one of all, for, although it was
only a standard prefab, he had used taste and ingenuity to make it a
little different from the other unimaginative homes.
And now Phyllis, for whom he had performed all this labor of love, for
whom he had waited five long months--the tedium of which had been broken
only by the intellectual pleasure of teaching English to a sympathetic
native neighbor--Phyllis seemed unappreciative. She had hardly looked at
the inside of the cottage, when he had shown her through, and now was
staring at the outside in a blank sort of way.
The indoctrination courses had not, he reflected, reconciled her to the
frontiersman's necessarily simple mode of living--which was ironic,
considering that one of her original attractions for him had been her
apparent suitability for the pioneer life. She was a big girl, radiantly
healthy, even though a little green at the moment.
* * * * *
He just managed to keep his voice steady. "You don't like the house--is
that it?
"But I _do_ like it. Honestly I do." She touched his arm diffidently.
"Everything would be perfect if only--"
"If only what? Is it the curtains? I'm sorry if you don't like them. I
brought them all the way from Earth in case the planet turned out to be
habitable. I thought blue was your favorite color."
"Oh, it is, it is! I'm mad about the curtains."
Perhaps it wasn't the house that disappointed her; perhaps it was he
himself who hadn't lived up to dim memory and ardent expectation.
"If you want to know what _is_ bothering me--" she glanced up
apprehensively, lowering her voice as she did--"it's that tree. It's
stuck on you; I just know it is."
He laughed. "Now where did you get a preposterous idea like that, Phyl?
You've been on the planet exactly twenty-four hours and--"
"--and I have, in my luggage, one hundred and thirty-two ethergrams
talking about practically nothing but Magnolia this, Magnolia that. Oh,
I had my suspicions even before I landed, James. The only thing I didn't
suspect was that she was a _tree_!"
"What are you talking about, honey? Magnolia and I--we're just friends."
"Purely a platonic relationship, I assure you," the tree herself agreed.
It would have been silly for her to pretend not to have overheard, since
the two were still standing almost directly underneath her. "Purely
platonic."
"She's more like a sister to me," James tried to explain.
* * * * *
Phyllis stiffened. "Frankly, if I had imagined I was going to have a
tree for a sister-in-law, I would have thought before I married you,
James." Bursting into tears, she ran inside the cottage.
"Sorry," he said miserably to Magnolia. "It's a long trip out from Earth
and an uncomfortable one. I don't suppose the other women were
especially nice to her, either. Faculty wives mostly and you know how
they are.... No, I don't suppose you would. But she shouldn't have acted
that way toward you."
"Not your fault," Magnolia told him, sighing with such intensity that he
could feel the humidity rise. "I know how you've been looking forward to
her arrival. Rather a letdown, isn't it?"
"Oh, I'm sure it'll be all right." He tried to sound confident. "And I
know you'll like Phyllis when you get to know her."
"Possibly, but so far I'm afraid I must admit--since there never has
been any pretense between us--that she is a bit of a disappointment.
I--and my sisters also--had expected your females, when they came, to be
as upright and true blue as you. Instead, what are they? Shrubs."
The door to the cottage flew open. "A shrub, am I!" Phyllis brandished
an axe which, James winced to recall, was an item of the equipment he
had ordered from Earth before the scout team had learned that the trees
were intelligent. "I'll shrub you!"
"Phyllis!" He wrested the axe from her grip. "That would be murder!"
"'Woodman,' as the Terrestrial poem goes," the tree remarked, "'spare
that tree! Touch not a single bough! In youth it sheltered me and I'll
protect it now!'"
Good of her to take the whole thing so calmly--rather, to pretend to
take it so calmly, for he knew how sensitive Magnolia really was--but he
was afraid this show of moral courage would not diminish Phyllis's
dislike for her; those without self-control seldom appreciate those who
have it.
"If you'll excuse us," he said, putting his arm around his wife's
heaving shoulders, "I'd better see to Phyllis; she's a little upset.
Holdover from spacesickness, I expect. Poor girl, she's a long way from
home and frightened."
"I understand, Jim," Magnolia told him, "and, remember, whatever
happens, you can always count on me."
* * * * *
"I must say you're not a very admirable representative of Terrestrial
womanhood!" James snapped, as soon as the door had slammed behind him
and his wife, leaving them alone together in the principal room of the
cottage. "Insulting the very first native you meet!"
"I did not either insult her. All I said was, 'What beautiful
flowers--do you suppose the fruit is edible?' How was I to know
it--_she_ could understand? Naturally I wouldn't dream of eating her
fruit now. It would probably taste nasty anyway. And how do you think
_I_ felt when a _tree_ answered me back? You don't care that I fainted
dead away, and I've never fainted before in my life. All you care about
is that old vegetable's feelings! It was bad enough, feeling for five
months that someone had come between us, but to find out it wasn't
some_one_ but some_thing_--!"
"Phyllis," he said coldly, "I'll thank you to keep a civil tongue in
your head."
Dropping into the overstuffed chair, his wife dabbed at her eyes with a
handkerchief. "She wasn't so very polite to me!"
"Look, Phyllis--" he strove to make his voice calm, adult,
reasonable--"you happened to have hit on rather a touchy point with her.
Those trees are dioecious, you know, like us, and she isn't mated. And,
well, she has rather a lot of xylem zones--rings, you know."
"Are you trying to tell me she's old?"
"Well, she's no sapling any more. And, consideration aside, you know
it's government's policy for us to establish good relations with any
intelligent life-form we have to share a planet with. You weren't in
there trying."
Phyllis put away her handkerchief with what he hoped would be a final
sniff. "I suppose I shouldn't have acted that way," she conceded.
"Now you're talking like my own dear Phyllis," James said tenderly,
though, as a matter of fact, he had a very remote idea of what his own
dear Phyllis was like. He had met her only a couple of months before the
scout mission was scheduled, and so their courtship had been brief, and
the actual weeks of marriage even briefer. He had remembered Phyllis as
beautiful--and she was beautiful. He had not, however, remembered her as
pig-headed--and pig-headed she was, too.
"How come she hasn't a mate? I didn't think trees were choosy."
* * * * *
He wouldn't take exception to that statement, uncharitable though it
was; after all, someone whose only acquaintance with trees had been with
the Terrestrial variety would naturally be incapable of appreciating the
total tree at its highest development.
"It's a great tragedy," he told her in a hushed tone. "There was a
blight some years back and most of the male trees died off, except for a
few on the other side of the planet--well out of bee-shot, even if the
females there would let the females here have any pollen, which they
absolutely won't."
"I don't blame them," Phyllis said coldly. Of course she would identify
at once with the trees whose domestic lives seemed to be threatened.
"It's not that so much. It's that the male trees produce so little
pollen."
"This would be a good place for people with hay fever then, wouldn't
it?"
"And even when there is fruit, so much of it tends to be
parthenocarpous--no seeds." He sighed. "The entire race is dying out."
"How is it you know so much about botany?" she asked suspiciously. "It's
not your field."
"I don't know so very much, really," he smiled. "I had to learn a
little, if I wanted to work the land, so I borrowed an elementary text
from Cutler." Had he been a trifle idealistic in quitting his snug, if
uninspiring, job on the faculty to join in this Utopian venture? So many
of the other men at the university had enrolled, it had seemed a
splendid idea until Phyllis's arrival.
"Daddy never had any trouble working his land and he doesn't know a
thing about botany. You've been boning up on it just to please _her_!"
"Phyllis! How can you jump to conclusions without a shred of evidence?"
Not that she wouldn't be able to collect such evidence later, because
the allegation happened to be correct. _If, instead of coming to
Elysium, I had merely gone to China, would she have thought it so odd
that I studied Chinese? Then why, where the natives are trees, shouldn't
I study botany? The woman is unreasonable._
* * * * *
"And will her--people let you farm?"
Now he could show her how cogently and comprehensively he could answer a
logical question. "That aspect of the situation will be all right, dear,
because only the trees are an intelligent species and, even of them,
some aren't so bright. They won't have any more objection to our eating
the other fruit and vegetables than we would have to an
extraterrestrial's eating our eggs and chickens, for example. We're
going to try to introduce some Earth plants here, though, as the higher
forms of vegetation are dying out and we're afraid the lower might
follow. Pity it's too late for a sound conservation program."
* * * * *
Phyllis said grimly, "She doesn't think it's too late for a sound
conservation program. She still has hopes--far-fetched, maybe, and I'm
not so sure they are. Mark my words, James, she's got designs on _you_."
"Don't be idiotic," he protested. "That would be--" he attempted to
introduce a light note--"it would be miscegenation."
"These foreigners can't be expected to have our standards." And she
burst into tears again. "A fine thing to go through that miserable
five-month trip only to find out a tree has alienated my husband's
affections."
"Oh, come on, Phyl!" He still was trying for a smile. "What would a tree
see in me?"
"I'm beginning to wonder what I saw in you. You never loved me; you just
wanted a wife to come out and colonize with you and b-b-breed."
What could he say? It was almost true. Phyllis was a beautiful girl and
he loved her, but, if he had planned to remain as an instructor with the
Romance Languages Department instead of joining the scout mission, he
knew he would never have asked her to be his wife ... for her sake, of
course, as well as his own. He should say something to reassure her, but
the words wouldn't come.
"I don't like it here," Phyllis sobbed. "I don't like blue leaves. I
don't like blue grass. I like them green, the way they're supposed to
be. I hate this nasty planet. It's all wrong. I want to go home."
She was very young--less than eight years younger than he, true, but he
was mature for his age. They didn't know each other very well. And,
finally, there were more men than women on the planet and he had noticed
that the bachelors had seemed readily disposed, upon her arrival the day
before, to overlook the fact that she had no college degree. So he must
be patient with her.
"There's nothing wrong about it, dear. The plants here synthesize
cyanophyll instead of chlorophyll; that's why the leaves are blue
instead of green. And, of course, there are different mineral
constituents of the soil--more aluminum and copper, for instance, than
on Earth, and some elements we haven't quite isolated yet. So, you see,
they're bound to be a little different from Terrestrial trees."
"A little different I wouldn't mind," she said sulkily, "but they're a
lot different without being nearly alien enough."
"Look, Phyllis--_dear_--those trees have been very hospitable, very
kind. We owe them a lot. They themselves suggested that we come here and
live with them in, so to speak, symbiosis."
"That's a fine idea!"
* * * * *