Astounding Science Fiction (UK Edition) — page 47: what you’re looking at

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

SYMBIOTICA One large bundle had become lodged high up in the branches of a tree, or rather its parachute had become entangled and it was dangling enticingly from the ropes. Praying that it contained nothing liable to blast the earth from beneath us, we needled the ropes and brought it down. It proved to hold a good supply of concentrated rations and a three-gallon can of pineapple juice. Packing the chutes and shouldering the supplies we started off. The first mile was easy; just trees, trees, trees and abandoned houses. It was on this part of the journey that I noticed that it was always the same type of tree which surmounted a house. There was no abode built around any of those goo-trees or voltrees of whose powers we now knew too well. Whether those parti- cular trees were innocuous was something nobody seemed inclined to discover, but it was here that Minshull discovered in them the source of that everlasting throbbing. Disregarding McNulty, who was clucking at him like an agitated hen, he tiptoed into one empty house, his needler held forward in readiness for trouble. A minute later he came out, said that the building was de- serted, but that the tree in its center was — booming like a tribal tom-tom. He’d put his ear to its trunk and had heard the beating of its mighty heart. That started a dissertation by McNulty, his subject being our legal right to mutilate or otherwise harm the trees of this planet. If, in fact, they were semisentient, then in law they had the status of aborigines and as such were subject to subsection so-and- sO, paragraph such ’n’ such of the Intercos- mic Code governing planetary relations. He got down to this with gusto and with typical disregard for the fact that- he might be boiled in oil by nightfall. When he paused for breath, Jay Score said, evenly, “Skipper, maybe these people have laws of their own and are about to enforce them!” He pointed straight ahead. I followed his unemotional finger, then frantically poured myself into my spacesuit. This; I thought, is it! The long arm of justice was about to face me with that poor guppy. VI. WHAT awaited us about half a mile ahead was a vanguard of enormous, snakelike things fully as thick as my body and about a hundred feet in length. They were writhing in our general direction, their movements 45 peculiarly stiff and lacking in sinuosity. Behind them, also moving awkwardly for- ward, was a small army of bushes deceiv- ingly harmless in appearance. And behind those, hooting with the courage of those who now feel themselves secure, was a great horde of natives. The progress of this night- marish crowd was determined by the pace of the snakish objects in front, and these crept forward in tortuous manner as if they were trying to move a hundred times faster than nature had intended them to move. Aghast at this crazy spectacle, we stopped. The creepers came steadily on and some- how managed to convey an impression of tremendous strength awaiting sudden re- lease. The nearer they got, the bigger they looked, and when they were a mere three hundred yards away I knew that any one of them could embrace a bunch of six of us and do more to us than any boa con- strictor ever did to a hapless goat. These were the wild ones of a vast and semisentient forest. I knew it instinctively, and I could hear them faintly mewing as they came on. These, then, were my bright green tigers, samples of the thing our cap- tors had slaughtered in the emerald jungle. ‘But they could be tamed, their strength and fury kept on tap. This tribe had done it. Veritably, they were higher than the Ka. “IT think I can just about make this dis- tance,” said Jay Score when the intervening space had shrunk to two hundred yards. Nonchalantly, he thumbed an atomic bomb which could have made an awful mess of the Marathon. His chief weakness was that he never could appreciate the power of things that go bang. So he juggled it around in a way that made me wish him some place the other end of the cosmos, and just when I was about to burst into tears, he threw it. His powerful right arm whistled in the air as he flung the missile in a great arc. We flattened. The earth heaved like the belly of a sick man. Huge clods of plasma and lumps of green, fibrous stuff geysered, hung momentarily in midair, then showered all around us. We got up, raced forward a hundred yards, went prone as Jay tossed an- other. This one made me think of volcanoes. Its blast nearly pushed me back into my boots. The uproar had scarcely ceased when the pinnace reappeared, dived upon the rear ranks of the foe, and let them have a couple there. More disruption. It tied me in knots to see what went up. 3 “Now!” yelled Jay. Grabbing the handi- comiclooks ©