Peachy looked blank. But then Peachy had no way of looking otherwise,
so Myra said:
"Where do you come from?"
"Siykul." He waved his two free arms vaguely. "Over there."
"He means he's a Martian," explained Steve. "Aren't you, Peachy?"
"No," he said.
"Venerian?"
"No."
"Mercurian, Jovian, Saturnine, Platonic?"
"No."
"Oh." Steve looked incredulous. "Solar System?"
"Not this one." He pointed, more specifically this time. "That is my
home. In your words it is called Bungula, in Centauri. I lived on the
second planet, Siykul."
"Pleased to meet you," said Myra. "Now that the formalities are over
with, let's get to the point. To what do we owe the pleasure, as we
say, of your visit?"
"I have been on a quest," said Peachy. "I have traveled through
several solar systems looking for two subjects for experimentation. All
that I visited, however, I found far too intelligent for my purposes.
Now, at last, I am successful."
"_Wh-at?_" said Steve.
"Imagine," said Myra softly. "This little one-legged, three-armed,
potato-headed, noseless squirt of fuzz came um-teen trillion miles just
to insult us. Imagine!"
* * * * *
Peachy's home, the second of five planets that circled the sun,
Bungula, in the constellation of Centauri, was a world about the size
of Mars, but more nearly resembling Earth in every other respect.
Seven-eighths of its surface was covered with water. The atmosphere
they breathed was essentially Earth air. There were two continents
on Siykul, on opposite sides of the globe, as well as minor islands
scattered here and there in the seas. The poles were covered with ice
the year round.
There were two dominant races on Siykul, one on each continent.
According to Peachy, each was covetous of the other's land. His race
was young, brilliant, industrious and ingenious. Their technicians,
inventors and mechanics were unequaled anywhere in the cosmos, so far
as he knew.
Theirs were great cities, factories, ships of the sea, land and air.
Buildings stretched scores of tiers into the sky and down into the
ground as far again. Rich in minerals and raw materials, their race was
one with a brief past, but a promising future.
The other continent, however, was shockingly primitive. Vast forests
and jungles stretched from one sea to the other. Aircraft passing
overhead could make out only scattered and far apart settlements that
might, possibly, house life. There were hundred-mile stretches in which
no trace of a living thing could be found. The inhabitants, glimpsed
occasionally, were immense, red, spidery things, evidently very savage.
Steve and Myra interrupted Peachy's story long enough to make
themselves comfortable on chairs and choose fresh cigarettes.
"About how tremendous are these creatures, compared, say--to me?"
asked Steve.
"They're about your size."
"Enormous," admitted Steve to the compact two-footer. "Go on."
Peachy didn't seem to be made for any position other than an upright
one. He shifted his communication wire to another hand and continued:
"A few years ago my people began to realize that our continent would
not be big enough to hold us very much longer. We are already utilizing
every available inch of space in our country and we must have more
room, otherwise many of our people will starve.
"Spurred on thus, we quickly built a small fleet of extraplanetary
ships to seek habitation on other worlds. The fleet became useless
when it left our atmosphere, and the eight ships crashed. But we had
profited by our mistakes, and the next fleet successfully navigated the
upper air."
Steve looked incredulous. "Do you mean to say those were the first
space ships you ever made?"
"Yes," said the Siykulan simply. "We had never needed them before."
Steve whistled.
"Look," said Myra. "What was the idea of dashing all over the Solar
System for this elbow room, when you have all you needed on the other
continent?"
"We had no way of getting there," said Peachy.
"Nonsense," said Steve, "you just finished telling us about your
airships, and boats and marvelous inventions--"
"You don't understand," said their tiny guest patiently. "There was
no _physical_ hardship involved. We had no trouble flying over the
continent, or approaching it from the ocean. But the moment we tried to
land, from the sea or air, disaster overtook us."
"What sort of disaster?" asked Myra.
"Insanity."
* * * * *
Every so often, it seemed, the Siykulans sent an expedition to their
neighboring continent. And once in a while--not so often--a member or
two of the expedition would return, to babble crazily of monsters and
blackness and throbbings in their heads.
They had lost some of their best minds that way before they gave up.
Except for one further experiment. They outfitted a remote control
ship with an assortment of animals and sent this to the neighboring
continent, accompanied by a ship manned by a higher-order Siykulan who
directed the animal craft without himself going close enough to the
other continent to be affected.
The animal ship was landed while the controlling vessel hovered high
above to note reactions. After a time, the first ship took off and the
two sped back to Siykul.
Tests previously conducted had proven that animals could be made insane
by inaudible notes of music and by scientifically-induced frustration.
But these animals had not been affected by their exposure to whatever
it was that had driven their more intelligent neighbors into idiocy.
It was therefore assumed that the malignant aura which hung over the
green continent could affect only the brainy, possibly because the aura
was electrical in nature and in some way short-circuited the brain
through thought, which is another form of electricity.
Hence the pilgrimage of the little Siykulan. Provided with what might
best be described as a brainmeter, or intelligence-tester, he had
roamed the spaceways in his golden ship searching for a race with a
modicum of intelligence, but not too much.
Steve put out his cigarette.
"It's been a very interesting story, Peachy," he said, "if not very
complimentary, but I'm sorry we can't oblige you. We have a date on
Jupiter."
"Yes," said Myra. "We're sorry to have to chase you out like this, but
we must be getting on. Drop in to see us again any time you're in the
neighborhood."
Although there was no change in the demeanor of the Siykulan, or in the
inflection of the voice that came from him through the black box, he
seemed to them suddenly stern and, ridiculous though it seemed in one
his size, awesome.
"You must do what I say. You don't seem to understand that upon you
rests the fate of five hundred million people...."
"... like you," said Myra scornfully.
"Like me," said Peachy proudly. "They are depending on me, and I shall
not fail them. You need have no fear of not being compensated--"
"It's not compensation," said Steve. "I don't know what your life span
is, but ours is roughly a hundred years, and we aren't anxious to waste
any of it on a trip to Centauri."
"So!" said Peachy triumphantly, "since that is your only objection, you
will--"
"It's _not_ our only objection," said Myra, but Peachy went on
inexorably.
"--you will be glad to know that we are already in the atmosphere of my
planet."
"Don't be silly," said Steve. Then, uncertainly, "We couldn't be."
"You shall see," said Peachy. He dropped his wire and glided to his own
ship. He returned in a moment and with a grandiloquent motion of his
hand, indicated the opaque, glass-like bubble.
As they watched, it wavered and grew transparent, then disappeared.
The Horn's space-launch and the meteor ship of the Siykulan were
drifting a scant ten miles above an alien planet from which immense
buildings, for as far as they could see, reached up to them like greedy
fingers.
* * * * *
Steve Horn flicked cigarette ashes onto the floor of what seemed to be
the room of a Siykulan hotel.
"I don't like it one little bit," he said. "It isn't the delay so much
as the affront to our intelligence."
"Yes, darling," soothed Myra. "We should have shown them our diplomas
and degrees. Or challenged them to a spelling bee!"
"You're not funny," said her husband. "Do you realize that we've been
in this hole for a week? Do you realize that Art Wilder and everyone on
Jupiter and Earth will think we're dead?" He paused. "Not that we won't
be."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean if they stick us in one of those ships of theirs to go explore
that mad-aura continent and find out what's behind all the mystery,
we'd be better off dead than crazy."
Myra laughed. "What an ego you must have, my husband. It won't permit
you to think that it's possible these peach-people have bigger and
better brainwaves than we."
A bell sounded and a blue light went on and off above the door.
"Open it yourself," shouted Steve irritably. "I don't know how."
The door opened. Peachy entered.
Accompanying him was a strictly utilitarian piece of robot machinery.
Headless, it consisted of a long steel body terminating in a balled
foot at one end and two triple-jointed arms at the other. At the end of
each arm was a murderous looking spiked ball, both of which swung idly
and menacingly at the thing's sides.
Peachy beckoned to them. When they hesitated, the robot clanged its
spiked fists together with an unpleasant ringing sound, then raised
them menacingly in the air.
Steve and Myra blanched, and meekly followed Peachy through the door.
They walked outside, followed Peachy to a space-ship and entered.
Myra looked at Steve a trifle uncertainly.
"Resistance would have been futile, I suppose?"
Steve tried to make himself comfortable on a tiny seat of the cabin.
"I think so, considering that our only hope of ever getting back to
our own System lies in playing ball with these fuzzy Fascists. There
may not be much chance of our succeeding in this screwball expedition,
but the important thing is that there is _some_. Putting up a fight
might have been gratifying to the ego, but I doubt that it would have
convinced these gangsters that they ought to send us back home."
"I suppose you're right, Steve. But just what exactly do you think our
chances are, this way?"
"Looking at it from the scientific angle, we're pretty well off. Here
we are scootling along at Lord knows what speed, in what may well be
the most up to date ship in the universe, with nothing to do but push
Button X when we get to Point Q on--what the hell'd I do with that
chart?"
"It's all right," said Myra. "I've got it."
"--And we land without fuss or bother. Providing...." A worried look
crept into Steve's face.
"Providing we don't go nuts," supplemented Myra.
"We do have to put an awful lot of faith in Peachy's theory that we're
subnormal enough, mentally, to escape the spider-people's batty beam.
Then all they ask is that we put the beam out of business, or show them
how they can."
"Steve!" Myra's eyes reflected inspiration. "Why don't we escape? I
mean really escape. Get out of this whole business!"
"You mean off the planet?"
Myra nodded.
"Peachy paid a touching tribute to our allegedly minus intelligence by
warning me against any such ideas--for our own good. Our fuel would
last, and our food might, and even we might, since it'd take years
without Peachy's space-annihilator. The only thing that stands in
our way is the fact that this ship isn't space-proof. It leaks air.
Compared to our Skypiercer," Steve clutched at a simile, "it is as a
hotfoot compared to a holocaust."
"Well," Myra shrugged philosophically, "no one can say Lady Horn ever
leaves a stone unturned."
"If you've stopped blowing your own, Horn," said Steve recklessly,
"come look at the view. It makes me homesick."