Big Book of Science Fiction (23 page)

I looked at him, trying to figure
out what he was driving at. Was he suggesting that I try out this mandragoreum
of his? And why me? Surely, if there were anything in it— 

“You doubt me? I grant it sounds
incredible. Your scientists, as they call themselves, would laugh. But here,
try it for yourself. It is the authentic mandragoreum of Bacon.” He seized the
flask into which the alembic had discharged is contents and thrust it into my
hand.

I hesitated, sniffing. The odor
was rather pleasant than otherwise, spicy as though it were some form of
liqueur. When I touched a drop of it to my tongue, the flavor confirmed this
diagnosis. So genial a beverage could hardly be dangerous. And after all, he
believed me a fellow student of Roger Bacon. I seated myself in the one chair
the room afforded, and sipped.

At once the room and surroundings
were blotted out in an immense burst of light, so brilliant that I closed my
eyes to shield them from it. When I opened them again, the light was still
there all about me, but it seemed to be gathering into me from an outside
source, as though my own body were draining it away to leave everything else
dark. At the same time there was a wonderful sensation of lightness and
freedom.

As my eyes became accustomed to
the surrounding dimness, I perceived to my astonishment that I was no longer in
the room. There was no trace of a room; I was out under the winter sky,
floating along over the lights of New York like a cloud. Beneath and behind me
a long trail of phosphorescence like a comet’s tail led back to the roof of one
of the buildings, I supposed that from which I had come. It was not a
hallucination; I have been over New York in a plane, and everything was in the
right position and right proportions. I was actually seeing New York from the
air; but that phosphorescent trail held me like a tether, I could not get free
from it, nor go farther. I felt someone touching my hand, and as the light
around me seemed to burn down, there was another flash, and I was back in the
room.

The old man with the long hands
was smiling into my face.

“An experience, is it not?” he
said. “You did not drink enough to gain the full effect. Would you care to try
again? Mandragoreum is not easy to make, but I have enough for you.”

This time I tilted my head back
and took a long pull from the flask.

Again the unbearable flash of
light, a sense of swift motion. When I opened my eyes, New York City was far
beneath, receding into the distance as I seemed to gather speed. The long cord
of light that had bound me to the room trailed off behind me; but either its
farther end became so small as to be invisible or I had taken enough of the
drug altogether to break the connection. In the single glance backward that my
speed allowed, I could not even tell toward what part of the city it led.

Clear and bright as I rose, Venus
hung like a lamp against the vault of. the sky. If I could direct my course, I
decided it would be thither, to the most mysterious of the planets. Old Friar
Bacon had promised that his drug would “let hys spirit vade . . . toe many a
straunge and horrid earthe beyond the bounds of ocean,” and surely Venus met
such a definition better than any other place.

I looked back. The earth seemed
to be beneath me, fading to a black ball, on which land and sea were just
barely visible in the darkness. My speed was still mounting. Suddenly I reached
the limit of the earth’s shadow; the sun flashed blazingly from behind it, and
I beheld the skies as no one on earth has ever seen them—except perhaps Roger
Bacon. The nearer planets stood out like so many phases of the moon against the
intense blackness of space. The moon itself was a tiny crescent, just visible
at the outer edge of the sun, on whose huge disk the earth had sunk to a black
spot; yet I found that I could bear to look directly into that glare.

When I turned to look ahead
again, however, it was as though my sense of direction had shifted. Venus,
growing from the size of a moon to that of a great shield of silver, was no
longer overhead, but beneath me, and I was diving downward to a whirling,
tossing mass of clouds that reflected the sunlight with dazzling brilliance.
Now it was a sea of clouds that seemed to take the shape of a bowl; I reached
them, cleft the radiant depths, and at once was in a soundless and almost
lightless mass of mist, with no knowledge of my direction except that I seemed
to be following the straight course that had brought me here.

The cloud-banks lifted behind me,
and I experienced a sense of deep disappointment, for below I saw nothing but
an endless ocean, heaving slowly under the heavy groundswell and dotted with
drops of rain from the clouds I had just left. The planet of mystery was all
one vast ocean, then, inhabited by fishes if by anything, and we men of earth
were the only intelligent form of life in the solar system, after all.

I found that I could direct my
flight by moving my shoulders and arms, but as I soared across the Venerian
ocean, my progress was much slower than it had ever been before. I can only
explain this now by the fact that much of the sun’s light was cut off by the
omnipresent clouds. Roger Bacon’s drug undoubtedly makes use of some property
of light, that form of energy which is so little understood. I do not know what
it can be and my scientific friends laugh at the idea.

But that is wandering from my
story. At the time, the slowness of this exploratory voyage gave me no special
concern, except that it was becoming monotonous until I perceived in the
distance a place where the clouds seemed to touch the surface of the sea. I
moved toward it; it soon became clear that this was not the clouds coming down
but a thin mist rising up like steam from the surface of a patch of land. But
what a land!

It was a water-logged swamp, out
of which coiled a monstrous vegetation of a sickly yellow hue, quite without
any touch of the green of earthly growths. Here were gigantic mushrooms, that
must have been twenty or thirty feet tall; long, slender reedlike stems that
burst out at the top into spreading tangles of branches; huge fungus growths of
bulbous shape, and a vinelike form that twisted and climbed around and over the
reed-trees and giant fungi.

There was no clear line where
shore and sea met. The swamp began with a tangle of branches reaching out of
the ocean and the growths simply became larger and more dense as one
progressed. But at last the ground seemed to be rising; I could catch glimpses
of something that was not water among the trunks and vines.

It had occurred to me that where
there was such abundant vegetable life, there might be something animal, but up
to this point I had seen no sign of anything that might move by its own will
under the ceaselessly falling rain and rising mist. But at last I caught sight
of a growth resembling the round balls of the fungoids, but too large and too
regular to be a fungus. I swung my shoulders toward it; it was a huge ball that
seemed made of some material harder and more permanent than the vegetation amid
which it rose. I circled the ball; at one side, low down, there was the only
opening, a door of some sort. It stood open.

I slid in. The room in which I
found myself was very dim and my progress was slow. The light was a kind of
phosphorescence like that on the sea at night, issuing from some invisible
source. I looked round; I was in a vast hall, whose ceiling vaulted upward
until it reached a vertical wall at the other end. From the looks of the
outside I had not realized that it was so large. There was no other
architectural feature in the place save a hole in the center of the floor, set
round with a curbing of some sort.

Slanting toward this with some
difficulty of movement, I saw that the hole was a wide well, with the sheen of
water visible below. Down into this well went a circular staircase, the stairs
of which were broad and fitted with low risers.

From behind the vertical wall at
the far end, I was conscious of, rather than heard, a confused shouting, and as
I drew near to it I saw that it was pierced by several doors, like the one I
had entered by, very thick and heavy. These doors bore horizontal rods which I
took to be the Venerian equivalent of doorknobs, and over the terminations of
the rods were a series of slits which I took to be approximations of keyholes. I
do not know of any sight that would have pleased me more at the moment.
Something of the order of cave-men could conceivably have set up such a
building; savages might have dug the well and lined it with stairs: but only a
fairly intelligent and fairly well-civilized form of life would have doors that
locked. We were not alone in the solar system after all.

One of the doors toward the end
was open; I drifted through. I don’t know what I expected to find inside, but
what I did find was beyond any expectation. It was another hall, larger if
anything than the first, but not as high, since it was roofed over about
halfway up. At each corner a circular staircase, with the same wide, low steps
as the well ran up to pierce this ceiling.

The room was filled with an
endless range of tables, wide and low, like those in a kindergarten. They were
composed of a shimmering metal which may very well have been silver, though it
may also have been some alloy of which I am ignorant. At these tables, in
high-backed chair-like seats of the same metal sat rows of—the people of Venus.
They were busy eating and talking together, like a terrestrial crowd in a busy
cafeteria, and their babble was the noise I had sensed.

The Venerians bore a cartoonist’s
resemblance to seals. They had the same short, barrel-like body, surmounted by
the same long, narrow head, but the muzzle had grown back to a face and the
forehead was high enough to contain a brain of at least the size of our own.
The nostrils were wide and very high, so that the eyes were almost behind them.
There were no outer ears, but a pair of holes, low down and toward the back, I
took to be orifices for hearing.

The legs of the Venerians are
pillar-like muscular appendages, short and terminating in flat, spiny feet,
webbed between the four toes. I may mention here that while swimming they trail
these feet behind them, using them both for propulsion and changes of
direction.

The greatest shock was to see
their arms—or rather, the appendages that served them for arms, since they
really had no arms at all. Instead there were tentacles in groups; two groups
beginning at the place where the short, thick neck joined the trunk, on the sides,
and a third, smaller set springing from the center of the back, high up. These
tentacles reached nearly to the floor when a full-grown Venerian was standing
at his height of nearly four feet. Each of the three groups contained four
tentacles; all the tentacles were prehensile and capable of independent action,
giving the Venerian not only an excellent grip on anything, but also the power
of picking up as many as twelve objects at a time. I am inclined to think that
the tentacles at the back were less functional than the rest; only once did I
see a Venerian use one of them.

The Venetians in the hall were
entirely innocent of clothing, and all were covered with rough, coarse hair,
except for their faces, and of course, the tentacles. Most of them were wearing
a type of bandolier, or belt, supported by a strap around the neck, and in turn
carrying a series of pocket-like pouches, held shut by clasps. When a Venerian
wished to open one, he thrust two of his tentacles into slits in the clasps; I
do not know how they operated.

Some of them carried weapons in
their belts; short spears or knife-blades, with the handles set T-shape for
better grasping in Venerian tentacles. There were also what I later found to be
explosive weapons, with a tube springing out from the T-shaped handle. Every
tool and weapon was of metal; clearly there could be little wood in this world
where the clouds were never broken.

The Venerians were eating with
little metal spades, sharpened at the outer end for cutting. Their food came up
to them from beneath, through the tables, when they pulled handles set in front
of them. The food itself seemed to be the same throughout the hall, some kind
of stew, with solids floating in sauces.

I had come in to find the meal
nearly over, with Venerians all over the room rising to leave the table and
move down the hall with quick, shambling steps. I followed a pair of the
weapon-bearers who were talking animatedly together. They went straight to the
door into the other hall, crossed it to the well, which they descended till
they were about waist-deep, then turned suddenly and dived. I hesitated, then
followed; in my envelope of light there was no sense of wetness, and below I
found the well turning into a long underwater passage, lit by the same dim radiance
that illuminated the hall.