Astounding Science Fiction (UK Edition) — page 35: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

SYMBIOTICA the surface of the semihard goo, but did no more than that. It was risky stuff to use, anyway. Frowning, Sam went back to look for something else, passed Jay. Score com- ing out to see how we were doing. Jay stumbled as he got near, a strange thing for him to do considering his superhuman sense of balance. His solid three hundred pounds nudged young Wilson between the shoulder blades and that grinning ape promptly flopped against Jepson’s legs. Wilson struggled and changed his tune, but stayed stuck. Jepson gave him the sardonic ha-ha, and the other didn’t enjoy it a bit. Picking up the dropped camera, Jay dangled it in one powerful hand, said con- tritely, “I never missed a step before. It is most unfortunate.” “Unfortunate, hell!” yelled Wilson. Same came out with a big glass jar, dribbled its contents over my gooey hands. The ghastly green covering at once thinned into a weak slime and my hands came free. “Ammonia,” remarked Sam. He needn’t have mentioned it—I could smell the pun- gent stuff. It was a good solvent, and he soon had us cleaned up. Then I chased Wilson three times around the ship. He was too fast for me. We were just about to go aboard to tell our tale to the skipper when that tree started threshing again. You could see its deadly branches beating the air and hear the violent swoosh of them even at that distance. Pausing be- neath the lock, we watched the spectacle wonderingly. Suddenly, Jay Score spoke, his voice metallic, harsh. ““Where’s Kli Yang?” None of us knew. Now I came to think about it, I couldn’t recall him being with us while we dragged Jepson home. The last I remembered of him was when he stood beside me under that tree and his saucer eyes gave me the creeps by carefully scan- ning two opposite branches at once. Arm- strong shot into the ship, came out with the report that Kli Yang definitely wasn’t there. © He own eyes as saucerlike as the missing Martian’s, Wilson said that he didn’t remem- ber Kli Yang coming out of the forest. Upon which we snatched up our needlers and made for that tree at the run. All the | while, the tree continued to larrup around like a crazy thing tied down by its own roots. Reaching the monstrous growth, we made 4 circle just beyond the sweep of its treacher- ous leaves, had a look to see where the 33 Martian was wrapped in glue. He wasn’t wrapped in glue. We found him forty feet up the trunk, five of his powerful tentacles clamped around its girth, the other-five em- bracing the green native we’d pursued. His captive was struggling wildly and futilely. all the time yelling a high-pitched stream of gibberish. Carefully, Kli Yang edged down the trunk. The way he looked and moved made him resemble an impossible cross between a college professor and an education octo- pus. His eyes rolling with terror, the native battered at Kli’s glassite helmet. Kli blandly ignored the hostility, reached the branch that had caught Jepson, didn’t descend any fur- ther. Still grasping the furiously objecting green one, he crept along the whipping limb until he reached its leafless end. At that point, he and the native were being waved up and down in twenty-five feet sweeps. Timing himself, he cast off at.the lower- most point of one beat, scuttled from reach before another eager branch could swat him. There was a singing howl from the nearer part of the forest and something that looked like a blue-green coconut shot out of the shadows and broke at Drake’s feet. The thing was as thin and brittle as an empty eggshell, had a white inner surface, and contained nothing. Kli Yang took no notice of the howls or the missile, bore his still struggling captive toward the Marathon. Hanging back, Drake peered curiously at the coconut or whatever it was, struck the fragments of shell with his boot. He caught the full benefit of something invisible that was floating up from it, sucked in his cheeks, screwed up his eyes and backed away. Then he retched. He did it so violently that he fell over as he ran. We’d the sense to pick him up and rush him after Kli without get- ting too nosy about what had bitten him. He continued to regurgigate all the way across the grass, recovered just as we came under the ship’s bulging side. “Holy smoke!” he wheezed, “what a stench! It’d make a skunk smell like the rose of the animal world.” He wiped his lips. “My stomach turned right over.” Looking up Kli, we found that his cap- tive had been conducted to the galley for a peace-making feed. Kli dragged: off his hel- met, said, ‘““That tree wasn’t so difficult for me to mount. It walloped around as I went up, but it couldn’t get at anything on its own trunk.” He sniffed, rubbed his flat, Red Planet face with the flexible tip of a great tentacle. “Don’t know how you bipeds can. CO comiicbooo S