The Planet with No Nightmare, Page 4

No, the whale was not native tothis world.

  Then what, if anything, did this flying alien behemoth have to do withthe pseudo-death of the local pig creatures?

  I'll never know, Ekstrohm told himself. Never. Ryan and Nogol will neverbelieve me, they will never believe in the flying whale. They'reexplorers, simple men of action, unimaginative. Of course, I'm anexplorer too. But I'm different, I'm sensitive--

  Ekstrohm was riding for a fall.

  The traction-scooter was going up a slope that had been eroded concave.It was at the very top of the half-moon angle, upside down, standingEkstrohm on his head. Since he was not strapped into his seat, he fell.

  As he fell he thought ruefully that he had contrived to have an accidentin the only way possible with a traction-scooter.

  Ekstrohm's cranium collided with the ground, and he stopped thinking....

  * * * * *

  Ekstrohm blinked open his eyes, wondering. He saw light, then sky, thenpigs.

  Live pigs.

  But--the pigs shouldn't be alive. When he was this close they should bedead.

  Only they weren't.

  Why ... why ...

  He moved slightly and the nearest pig fell dead. The others went on withtheir business, roaming the plain. Ekstrohm expected the dropping of thepig to stampede the rest into dropping dead, but they didn't seem topay any attention to their fallen member.

  I've been lying here for hours, he realized. I didn't move in on them.The pigs moved in on me while I was lying still. If I keep still I canget a close look at them in action.

  So far, even with video, it had been difficult to get much of an idea ofthe way these creatures lived--when they weren't dead.

  Observe, observe, he told himself.

  There might be some relationship between the flying whale and the pigs.

  Could it be the whales were intelligent alien masters of these herds ofpigs?

  Ekstrohm lay still and observed.

  Item: the pigs ate the soft, mosslike grass.

  Item: the pigs eliminated almost constantly.

  Item: the pigs fought regularly.

  Fought?

  _Fought?_

  Here was something, Ekstrohm realized.

  Why did animals fight?

  Rationalizations of nature-lovers aside, some fought because they hadplain mean nasty dispositions--like some people. That didn't fit thepigs. They were indolent grazers. They hadn't the energy left over forsheer-cussedness. There had to be a definite goal to their battles.

  It wasn't food. That was abundant. The grassy veldt reached to allhorizons.

  Sex. They had to be fighting for mates!

  He became so excited he twitched a foot slightly. Two more pigs droppeddead, but the others paid no heed.

  He watched the lazily milling herd intently, at the same time keeping aneye out for the flying whales. Back on Earth porpoises had been taughtto herd schools of fish and of whales. It was not impossible anintelligent species of whale had learned to herd masses of land animals.

  But Ekstrohm knew he needed proof. He had to have something to link thepseudo-death of the wart-hogs to the inexplicable presence of thewhales. Perhaps, he thought, the "death" of the pigs was the whales' wayof putting them into cold storage--a method of making the meat seemunattractive to other animals, on a world perhaps without carrionscavengers....

  Something was stirring among the pigs.

  * * * * *

  One under-sized beastie was pawing the dirt, a red eye set on thefattest animal in sight. Then Shortie charged Fatso. But abruptly alarge raw-boned critter was in Shortie's path, barring him from Fatso.

  Faced by Big Boy, Shortie trembled with rage and went into a terribletemper tantrum, rolling on the ground, pawing it in frenzy, squealing inmaddened rage. Then Shortie was on his feet, desperate determinationshowing in every line of his body. With heedless, desperate, foolhardycourage he charged Big Boy.

  Big Boy took the headlong charge in his side with only a trifling grunt.

  Shortie bounced ten feet in the light gravity, and grimly wallowed tohis feet. He leveled an eye at Big Boy, and his legs were pumping infrenzied fury again.

  Big Boy shifted his kilos of weight casually and met Shortie head on.

  The tremendous _ker-rack_ reverberated from the bluff behind Ekstrohm.

  Shortie lay on the ground.

  No, Ekstrohm thought, he isn't dead. His sides were pumping in and out.But he was knocked cold.

  Ekstrohm had to sympathize with him. He had never seen a more valianttry against insurmountable odds.

  Big Boy was ambling over towards Fatso, apparently to claim his prize.Fatso apparently was the sow.

  But Big Boy stalked on past Fatso. She squealed after him tentatively,but he turned and blasted her back with a bellowing snort.

  Ekstrohm watched the scene repeated with other actors several timesbefore he was sure.

  The older males, the Big Boys, _never_ collected the favors of the haremfor themselves.

  Instinctively, the pigs were practicing _birth control_. The older malesabstained, and forced the younger males to do the same.

  On a world like this, Ekstrohm's first thought was of death.

  He thought, these pigs must be like lemmings, deliberately trying todestroy their own race, to commit geno-suicide.

  But that didn't answer any of the other questions, about the_pseudo_-death, the alien whales ...

  And then Ekstrohm thought not of death but of _life_.

  IV

  The traction-scooter was where he had left it, hanging upside down onthe underside of the concave slope. It had stopped automatically whenhis weight had left the seat. He reached up, toggled the OVERRIDE switchand put it manually into reverse.

  Once straightened out, he was on his way back to the base.

  I feel good, he thought. I feel like I could lick my weight inspacemen.

  Only then did he realize why he felt so good.

  What had happened had been so strange for him, he couldn't realize whatit had been until now.

  While he had been knocked out, he had been asleep.

  Asleep.

  For the first time in years.

  Sleep. He felt wonderful. He felt like he could lick all of hisproblems....

  Ekstrohm roared back into the base. The motor was silent on thetraction-scooter, of course, but the air he kicked up made its ownracket.

  Ryan and Nogol came out to greet him sullenly.

  "Listen," he told them, "I've got the answer to all of this."

  "So have we," Ryan said ugly. "The first answer was the right one. We'vebeen scaring pigs to death and watching them, scaring and watching. Welearned nothing. You knew we wouldn't. You set us up for this. It's likeyou said. You fed all of these beasts your stuff in advance, somethingthat acts when they get excited...."

  It didn't make sense, but then it never had. You couldn't argue withprejudice. He was "different." He didn't act like they did. He didn'tbelieve the same things. He was the outsider, therefore suspect. Thealien on an alien world.

  Ekstrohm sighed. Man would always be the final alien, the creature manwould never understand, sympathize with or even tolerate.

  There was no point in trying to argue further, Ekstrohm realized.

  "You'll never understand, Ryan. You could have seen all the things I sawif you'd bothered to look, but you were too anxious to blame me. But ifI can't make you understand, I can at least beat you into acceptance."

  "Huh?" Ryan ventured.

  "I said," Ekstrohm repeated, "that I'm going to beat some sense intoyour thick skull."

  Ryan grinned, rippled his massive shoulders and charged.

  * * * * *

  Ekstrohm remembered the lesson Shortie had taught him with Big Boy. Hedidn't meet the captain's charge head on. He sidestepped and caught Ryanbehind the ear with his fist. The big man halted, puzzled. Ekstrohm sankhis fist into the thick, s
olid belly.

  Slowly, Ryan's knees gave way and he sank towards the ground.

  When his chin was at the right level of convenience, Ekstrohm put hisweight behind his right.

  Ryan swayed dreamily backward.

  But he threw himself forward and one ham of a fist connected high onEkstrohm's cheek. He was shaken to his toes, and the several hours' oldpain in the back of his head throbbed sickeningly. One more like thatwould do for him.

  Ekstrohm stood and drove in a lot of short punches to Ryan's body,punches without much power behind them because he didn't have it. But heknew better than to try a massive attack on a massive target.

  When he couldn't lift his arms any more, Ekstrohm stopped punching. Herealized Ryan had fallen on his face a few seconds before.

  Then he remembered, and whirled. He had left his back exposed to Nogol.

  Nogol smiled. "I'm not drawing Hazard Pay."

  After a while, Ekstrohm stopped panting and faced Nogol and the captainwho was now sitting, rubbing his jaw. "Okay," he said,