Authentic Science Fiction, No. 23 — page 14: what you’re looking at

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

24. THE SINGING SPHERES “Force-beams? They come naturally to us. We project them to do our work. Watch—” _L warned the others over the inter-com. “Look out—he’s giving us a demonstration—”’ A, small stone ten feet away was lifted into the air, brought across without visible means and deposited gently at my feet. “Suffering Sirtus!” gasped Hartnell. ““How did he do that?” A large, flat rock, perched on end, slowly over-balanced and tilted forward, finally to crash in a cloud of brown dust. “It must be a trick,” said Tubby, goggle-eyed but sceptical. “A trick—probably done with mirrors!” However it was done, we were all suitably impressed. “The force-beams are our hands,” said Fuzzy-bubble. “How otherwise could we manipulate materials? Or oper- ate the Wise Ones’ wonderful machine?” And the more we came to think about matters the more humble we felt. Throughout inhabited planets of the known universe there is one great envy among intelligent creatures— the hands of Man. With these hands he can raise vast build- ings and construct great space-ships; he can operate intricate and delicate apparatus; he can make tools and turn a screw; he can grasp an object to crush it or caress the scales on a butterfly’s wing. No other manual appendages are half so strong, so adaptable or so sensitive. Yet here were strange, shining, tenuous spheres possessed of a natural instrument capable of performing many tasks beyond the capabilities of four fingers and a thumb. Force-: beams could reach into a radio-active furnace to mould material there; they could hold white-hot beryllium in place beneath an electronic forging-hammer; most wonderful of all they could perform manipulative surgical operations inside a body without breaking the skin. But one other thought brought me out in a sweat—a cold sweat of apprehension this time, by way of a change. What would be the effect of a force-beam directed against the Mattus? Might it not strike the operator into madness? And couldn’t they also upset radio receivers or gravity-re- actors. Luckily, to take my mind from such morbid reflections, we passed at that moment a large, circular hole in the cliff-face —an aperture which was definitely of artificial construction, for the funnel-like sides, narrowing to a black hole about ten feet in diameter, were perfectly smoothed. THE SINGING SPHERES 25 “Entrance to the Grand Halls,” said Fuzzy-bubble, without waiting to be asked. “Therein lie the assembly rooms and the salon of our honoured ruler, Makkub. Yet first you shall be permitted to see the nursery—only one now remaining on Kardoon. It is a place most jealously guarded, for it con- tains our hope for the future.” Again I sensed that strange, ineffable sadness. For a further half-mile we skirted the cliff-face, still working a way round that circular, enclosed plain, until another narrow defile broke the jagged embrasure. Upon the brink of a deep, irregular basin which fell away suddenly from this approach, we found ourselves gazing upon a scene of fantastic beauty. The boulders and rough rocks which lined this depression were crowded with spheres of all sizes and colours. Under the pinkish sky they continually glowed and shimmered with an almost dazzling radiance. Now and again one floated free from the crowded masses, rising hesitantly into the air to be tenderly greeted by others apparently hovering over the area for just such a purpose. They bustled it carefully into a tun- nel-mouth cutting the far side of the basin. “These are our children,” said Fuzzy-bubble, with wistful pride. “See—there is another born now. The nurses take it to the incubator, where the history and learning of our race will be.imparted to him—” If we had never previously been certain that the strange, maddening whistle which afflicted the inter-com was due to Kardoon’s spheres, we knew it now, as we stared at those glistening clusters on the bare, rough stone. For in addition to the persistent singing sound—still so loud that only fascina- tion of the surroundings enabled us to half-close our ears— there now came faintly in the background a delicate whisper- ing and chirping, like the ‘“cheeps” of newly-hatched chickens. “From the rocks?” demanded Tubby, incredulously, when I translated. “They sprout from the bare rocks? But that’s impossible—” | Frankly, I felt like agreeing with him. In our various travels we had encountered many forms of life—yet every one needed nutriment of various kinds, even if they took such substances direct from the soil, as did the intelligent plants of Orbis. But stones—mere chunks of silica, without carbon. oxygen, potassium, carbon, magiiesium, or any other chemical elements necessary for life? Eomichbooks:com