Title: The ionian cycle
Author: Tenn, William
Language: English
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                           THE IONIAN CYCLE

                            BY WILLIAM TENN

                          A SPACEWAYS NOVELET

           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
                 Thrilling Wonder Stories August 1948.
         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]



                               CHAPTER I

                         _Spaceship Survivors_


The tiny lifeboat seemed to hang suspended from its one working rear
jet, then it side-slipped and began to spin violently downwards to the
sickly orange ground of the planet.

Inside the narrow cabin, Dr. Helena Naxos was hurled away from the
patient she was tending and slammed into a solid bulkhead. The
shock jolted the breath out of her. She shook her head and grabbed
frantically at an overhead support as the cabin tilted again. Jake
Donelli glared up from the view-screen where the alien earth expanded
at him and yelled across the control table:

"Great gravities, Blaine, soft jet! Soft jet before we're pulped!"

The tall, balding archaeologist of what had once been the First Deneb
Expedition waved tremulous hands at the switches before him.

"Which--which button do you press?" he quavered. "I f-forget how y-you
soften those forward things."

"You don't press any--oh, wait a minute."

The spaceman tore the restraining straps away and bounded out of his
seat. He seized the projecting edges of the table and made his way
strainingly around it as the lifeboat spun faster in great swoops.

Dr. Archibald Blaine was squeezed against the back of his chair when
Donelli reached him.

"I forgot the button," he mumbled.

"No button, doc. I told you. You jerk this toggle--like so. You haul
this switch over--like so. Then you turn the little red wheel around
twice. Does it. Whew! Now things are smoother!"

Donelli let go of the table as the forward softening jets caught on and
straightened the vessel into a flat glide. He walked back to the main
control bank, followed by Blaine and the woman biologist.

"The sea?" Helena Naxos asked at last, lifting her eyes from the
view-screen. "That _is_ the sea?"

"Nothing else but," Donelli told her. "We used up all but about a
cupful of fuel trying to avoid falling into this system's sun--if you
can call two planets a system! We're operating the cupful on the one
main jet left unfused when the _Ionian Pinafore_ blew up. Now
we've overshot the continent and riding above the sea without a paddle.
Good, huh? What'd he say the sea was made of?"

Dr. Douglas Ibn Yussuf propped himself on his uninjured elbow and
called from his bunk:

"According to the spectroscopic tabulations you brought me an hour ago,
the seas of this planet are almost pure hydrofluoric acid. There is a
good deal of free fluorine in the atmosphere, although most of it is in
the form of hydrofluoric acid vapor and similar combinations."

"Suppose you save some of that good news," Donelli suggested. "I know
all about hydrofluoric acid being able to eat through almost anything
and its grandmother. Tell me this: how long will the Grojen shielding
on the hull stand up under it? An estimate, Doc."

       *       *       *       *       *

With puckered brow, the Egyptian scientist considered. "If not
replaced, say anywhere--oh, anywhere from five terrestrial days to a
week. Not more."

"Fine!" the pale spaceman said happily. "We'll all be dead long before
that." His eyes watched the view-screen.

"Not if we find fuel for the converter and tanks," Blaine reminded him
sternly. "And we know there's contra-Uranium on this world--a little,
at any rate. The spectroscope showed it. That's why we headed here
after the disaster."

"So we know there's fuel here--good old compact Q. Okay, if we landed
on one of the continents maybe we'd have scratched a miracle on the
chest and found some Q before the converter conked out. Then we could
have repaired the other jets and tried to get back to a traffic lane,
powered up the transmitter and radioed for help, done all sorts of nice
things. But now that we're going to do our fall on the first island I
see, what chance do you think we have?"

Blaine looked angrily at his two colleagues and then back at the small,
squat spaceman with whom destiny and a defective storage tank aboard
the _Ionian Pinafore_ had thrown them.

"But that's ridiculous!" he said. "Landing on an island will reduce
our chances of finding contra-Uranium from an improbability to an
impossibility! It's rare enough in the universe, and after we've been
fortunate enough to find a planet containing it, Jake, I demand--"

"You demand nothing, Doc," Donelli told him, shoving belligerently
up against his lean academic frame. "You demand nothing. Back on the
expedition ship maybe the three of you were big-time operators with
your degrees and all, and I was just Jake--broken from A.B. to Ordinary
Spaceman for drunkenness when we lifted from Io. But here, I'm the only
man-jack with a lifeboat certificate and the laws of space put me in
supreme command. Watch your language, doc: I don't like to be called
Jake by the likes of you. You call me Donelli from here on in, and
every once in a while, you call me _Mr._ Donelli."

There was a pause in the cabin while the archaeologist's cheeks puffed
out and his frustrated eyes tried to pluck a reply from the overhead.

"_Mr._ Donelli," Helena Naxos called suddenly. "Would that be your
island?" She gestured to the view-screen where an infinitesimal blot
upon the sea was growing. She smoothed her black hair nervously.

Donelli stared hard. "Yeah. It'll do. Suppose you handle the forward
jets--uh, Dr. Naxos. You saw me explaining them to Blaine. I wouldn't
trust that guy with a falling baseball on Jupiter. 'I forgot which
button,'" he mimicked.

She took her place on the opposite side of the control table as Blaine,
with tightened facial muscles, went over to Ibn Yussuf's bunk and
whispered angrily to the injured man.

"You see," Donelli explained as he moved a lever a microscopic
distance. "I don't want to hit an island any more than you folks do,
Dr. Naxos. But we can't afford to use up any more fuel crossing an
ocean as big as this. We may be able to make another continent, yes,
but we'll have about fifteen minutes of breathing time left. This way,
the converter should run for another two, three days giving us a chance
to look around and maybe get some help from the natives."

"If there are any." She watched a dial needle throb hesitantly to a red
mark. "We saw no cities on the telescanner. Although, as a biologist, I
confess I'd like to investigate a creature with a fluorine respiration.
By the way, Mr. Donelli, if you will allow me to call you Jake, you may
call me Helena."

"Fair enough--hey, you watching that dial? Start softening jets. That's
right. Now over to half. Hold it. Hold it! Here we go! Grab something
everybody! Dr. Yussuf--lie flat--flat!"

He flipped the lever over all the way, slammed a switch shut and
reached frantically for the two hand grips on the control table.

An emery wheel seemed to reach up and scrape the bottom of the hull.
The emery wheel scraped harder and the whole ship groaned. The scrape
spread along the entire bottom half of the lifeboat, rose to an
unbearably high scream in sympathy to which every molecule in their
bodies trembled. Then it stopped and a vicious force snapped their
bodies sideways.

       *       *       *       *       *

Donelli unstrapped himself. "I've seen chief mates who did worse on
the soft jets--Helena," was the comment. "So here we are on good
old--What's the name of this planet, anyway?"

"Nothing, so far as I know." She hurried over to Dr. Ibn Yussuf who
lay groaning in the cast which protected the ribs and arm broken in
the first explosion of the _Ionian Pinafore_. "When we passed
the system on our way to Deneb a week ago, Captain Hauberk named the
sun Maximilian--after the assistant secretary-general of the Terran
Council? That would make this planet nothing more than Maximilian II, a
small satellite of a very small star."

"What a deal," Donelli grumbled. "The last time I had to haul air out
of a wreck, I found myself in the middle of the Antares-Solarian War.
Now I get crazy in the head and ship out on an expedition to a part of
space where humanity's just thinking of moving in. I pick a captain
who's so busy buttering up to scientists and government officials that
he doesn't bother to check storage tanks, let alone lifeboats. I haul
air with three people--no offense, Helena--who can't tell a blast from
the Hole in Cygnus and they get so cluttered up trying to seal the
air-locks that, when the secondary explosion pops off from the ship, it
catches us within range and blooies most of our jets and most of our Q.
Then, to top it off, I have to set down on a planet that isn't even on
the maps and start looking for the quart or two of J that may be on the
surface."

She eased the scientist's cast to a more comfortable position and
chuckled.

"Sad, isn't it? But ours was the only boat that got away at that. We
were lucky."

Donelli began climbing into a space suit. "We weren't lucky," he
disagreed. "We just happened to have a good spaceman aboard. Me. I'll
scout around our island and see if I can find any characters to talk
to. Our only hope is to get help from the folks here, if any. Sit tight
till I get back and don't touch any equipment you don't understand."

"Want me to come with you--er, Donelli?" Dr. Blaine moved to the
space suit tack. "If you meet anything dangerous--"

"I'll make out better alone. I've got a supersonic in this suit. And
Doc--you might forget which button. Great gravities!"

Shaking his helmeted head, Donelli started the air-lock machinery.

The orange ground was brittle underfoot, he found, and flaked off as
he walked. Despite the yellow atmosphere, he could see the complete
outline of the island from the hill near the ship. It was a small
enough patch of ground pointing reluctantly out of an irritated sea of
hydrofluoric acid.

Most of it was bare, little dots of black moss breaking the heaving
monotony of orange. Between the ship and the sea was a grove of larger
vegetation: great purple flowers on vivid scarlet stems that held them
a trembling thirty feet in the stagnant air.

Interesting, but not as interesting as fuel.

He had noticed a small cave yawning in the side of the hill when he
climbed it. Sliding down, now, he observed its lower lip was a good bit
from the ground. He started to enter, checked himself abruptly.

There was something moving inside.

With his metal-sheathed finger, he clicked on the searchlight imbedded
in his helmet and with the other hand, he tugged the supersonic pistol
from its clamps in the side of his suit and waited for its automatic
adjustment to the atmosphere of the planet. At last it throbbed
slightly and he knew it was in working condition.

They needed favors from the inhabitants and he didn't intend to do any
careless dying, either.

Just inside the cave entrance the beam of his light showed a score of
tiny maggot-like creatures crawling and feeding upon two thin blankets
of flesh. Whatever the animals they were eating had been, they were no
longer recognizable.

Donelli stared at the small white worms. "If you're intelligent, I
might as well give up. I have an idea we can't be friends. Or am I
prejudiced?"

Since they ignored both him and his question, he moved on into the
cave. A clacking sound in his headphones brought him to a halt again,
squeezing a bubbling elation back into his heart.

Could it be? So early and so easy? He drew the screen away from the
built-in Geiger on his chest. The clacking grew louder. He turned
slowly until the flashlight on his head revealed a half dozen
microscopic crystals floating a few inches from one wall.

Contra-Uranium! The most compact, super-fuel discovered by a
galactic-exploring humanity, a fuel that required no refining since,
by its very nature, it could occur only in the pure state. It was a
fuel for whose powerful uses every engine and atomic converter on every
spaceship built in the past sixty years had been designed.

But six crystals weren't very much. The lifeboat might barely manage a
take-off on that much Q, later to fall into the hydrofluoric sea.

"Still," Donelli soliloquized, "it's right heartening to find some so
near the surface. I'll get an inerted lead container from the ship and
scoop it up. But maybe those crystals have a family further back."

The crystals didn't, but someone or something else did.

Four large, chest-high balls of green, veined thickly with black and
pink lines, throbbed upon the ground at the rear of the cave. Eggs? If
not eggs, what were they?



                              CHAPTER II

                            _Weird Beings_


Donelli skirted them warily, even though he saw no opening in any of
them. They were anchored to the ground, but they were unlike any plants
he had seen in nine years of planet-jumping. They looked harmless, but--

"Well, grow me tentacles and call me a Sagittarian!"

The back of the cave divided into two tunnels which were higher and
wider than their parent hollow. Smooth all around, Donelli might have
taken them for the burrows of an immense worm, had he not noticed the
regularly-spaced wood-like beams crossed upon each other at intervals
in both shafts. The tunnels extended a good distance ahead, then curved
sharply down and away from each other.

This was mining, this was engineering! Primitive, but effective!

Donelli hated to use up power in his helmet-transmitter, but he might
run into trouble and it was essential that the three scientists learn
of even the small amount of Q in the cave. After all, the creatures who
built these tunnels might not know enough chemistry to appreciate his
inedibility before they sampled him.

He turned on his headset. "Donelli to ship! Good news: I've found
enough Q to keep us breathing until _after_ this atmosphere burns
through our Grojen shielding. We'll be able to sit around in our space
suits for at least three days after the ship is eaten out from under
us. Nice? You'll see the crystals about halfway into the cave. And
don't forget to use an inerted lead container when you pick them up."

"Where are you going, Jake?" He recognized Helena's voice.

"Couple of tunnels at the rear of the cave here have regulation
cross-supports. That's why we didn't see any cities when we came down.
The smart babies on this world live underground. I'm going to try to
talk them into a reciprocal trade treaty--if we have anything they want
to reciprocate with."

"Wait a minute, Donelli," Blaine shouted breathlessly. "If you meet
any intelligent aliens, it's more than possible they won't understand
Universal Gesture-Diagram. This is an unexplored fluorine-breathing
world. I'm an experienced archaeologist and I'll be able to communicate
with them. Let me join you."

Donelli hesitated. Blaine was smart, but he sometimes fumbled.

Helena came back on. "I'd suggest you take him up on it," her steady
voice said. "Archibald Blaine may get switches confused with buttons,
but he's one of the few men in the galaxy who knows all nine of
Ogilvie's Basic Language-Patterns. If these miners of yours don't
respond to an Ogilvie Pattern--well, they just don't belong in our
universe!"

As Donelli still hesitated, she developed her point. "Look Jake,
you're our commander and we accept your orders because you know how
to cuddle a control board and we don't. But a good commander should
use his personnel correctly and, when it comes to dealing with unknown
extra-terrestials, Blaine and I have training that you've been too busy
to acquire. You're a spaceman; we're scientists. We'll help you get
your Q, then we'll take orders from you on how to use it."

A pause. "All right, Blaine. I'll be moving up the right-hand tunnel.
And Helena--see that his space suit is all buttoned up before he leaves
the ship? He can catch an awful cold in that yellow air."

The squat, pale spacehand took a firm grip on his sound pistol and
walked delicately into the shaft. The ground here was of a firmer
consistency than that on the surface: it supported his weight without
either chipping or sagging. That was good. Nothing could come at him
through the walls without his detecting it first.

He ducked under a cross-beam, his light momentarily pointing down. When
he straightened again, he saw he had company.

At the far end of the tunnel, where it slanted down, several long,
segmented beings were moving slowly toward him. There was only the
faintest rustle in his headphones as they approached.

Donelli noticed with relief that only one of them had a weapon, a crude
hand-ax without a handle. Come to think of it, though, an ax-head
thrust forcefully might penetrate not his suit but--what was more
dangerous--the Grojen shielding, leaving the metal exposed to the
corrosive atmosphere. Not so good. But they didn't seem hostile.

       *       *       *       *       *

As they arrived within a few feet of him, their speed decreased almost
to immobility but their three pairs of three-clawed limbs pushed them
to his side. Then they stopped, and the long thin hairy appendage on
their heads brushed against his suit inquiringly and without fear.
Their toothless mouths opened and made low gobbling sounds to each
other.

They evidently had a language. Donelli saw the flat membrane on their
backs that was obviously an ear, but he looked in vain for eyes. Of
course, living underground in darkness, they were blind. A fat lot of
help Universal Gesture-Diagram would be, even if they could understand
it.

Something about the sectioned length of the bodies stretching behind
them, something about their rich ivory color, was familiar. Donelli's
mind tugged at his memory.

A terrific crash sounded in his ear phones. The three burrowers
stiffened around him. Donelli turned and swore.

Blaine had entered the tunnel and smashed into one of the cross-beams.
He was stepping over the fallen log now. His space suit seemed
undented, but his self-confidence had not fared so well. Also a little
bubble of earth formed over the area which had rested on the beam end.

The natives had rubbed their head filament upon the ground as if
examining its intentions. Now, before Donelli could get started, they
scampered down the tunnel toward the fallen support. Working in perfect
coordination, without any apparent orders, they quickly lifted and
inserted it in its former position. Then they began brushing against
Blaine.

"Deep space, Doc," Donelli moaned as he came up.

"Sh-h-h--quiet!" The archaeologist had bent over the nearest burrower
and was clicking his metal-enclosed fingers in an odd rhythm over its
ear patch. The animal curved away for a moment, then began a low,
hesitant gobbling to the same rhythm as the finger-clicks.

"Can--can you talk to it?" Donelli found it difficult to see the old
man as anything but a doddering ineffectual.

"Ogilvie Pattern Five. Knew it. _Knew_ it! Those three-clawed feet
and the sharp curve of the ax. Like to investigate the material of
the ax--noticed the pointed tip right off. Had to be an Ogilvie Five
language. Can I talk to it? Of course! Just need a minute or two to
establish the facets of the pattern."

The spaceman's respect for the academic life grew rapidly as he saw the
other two aliens edge under the metallic hand and commence gobbling in
turn.

They were joining the conversation, or the attempt at one.

Blaine began to stroke the side of one of the creatures with his other
hand. The gobbling acquired a note of surprise, became staccato.

"Amazing!" Blaine said after a while. "They mine everything, and
completely refuse to discuss the existence of surface phenomena. Most
unusual, even for an Ogilvie Five. Do you know where they get their
supporting beams? From the roots of plants. At least, that's what they
seem to be from their description. But--and this is what the Galactic
Archaeological Society will consider significant--they cannot seem to
grasp the concept of plant blossoms. They know only of the roots and
the base of the stem. Their social life, now, is strangely obscure for
so elementary a culture. But perhaps it might better be termed simple?
Consider the facts--"

"You consider them," Donelli invited. "I'm thinking of the Q we
need. All this space suit power drain is cutting so many hours off
our total breathing time. Find out what they'd consider a good trade
and ask them to move up into the cave ahead so that I can show them
what contra-Uranium looks like. We'll supply them with inerted lead
containers for picking up the stuff. How far do their tunnels run?"

"All around the planet, I gather. Under the sea and under the
continents in a crossing, branching network. I don't anticipate any
difficulty. Being the dominant intelligent life-form of the planet, and
not particularly carnivorous, they're really quite friendly."

       *       *       *       *       *

Blaine's fingers clicked questioningly at the nearest alien and he
stroked its side with short and long rolls of his hand. The creature
seemed confused and gobbled to its companions. Then it moved back.
Blaine clicked and stroked once more.

"What's the matter, doc? They look angry now."

"My suggestion of the cave. It's evidently under the strongest of
taboos. These are barbarians, you understand, just emerging into
a religious culture-matrix, and a powerful taboo takes precedence
over instinct. Then, too, living in the tunnels, they are probably
agoraphobic--"

"Look out! They're trying to pull some fancy stuff!"

One of the aliens had scuttled under Blaine's feet. The archaeologist
tottered, crashed to the ground. The other two burrowers grasped his
long arms between their claws. Blaine struggled and rolled desperately,
looking like a confused elephant attacked by jackals.

"Donelli," he gasped, "I can't talk to them while they're holding my
arms. They're--they're carrying me!"

The pair of burrowers were dragging the old man's body down the tunnel
with gentle but insistent tugs. "Don't worry, doc. They won't get by
me. That must have been one powerful taboo you broke when you mentioned
the cave."

As Donelli advanced to meet the group, the alien who had upset the
archaeologist scurried ahead to confront him. A forward claw held the
small ax-head well back for a thrust.

"Look, fella," Donelli said placatingly. "We don't want any trouble
with you, but we aren't carrying too much power right now and the doc's
suit would run down in no time if you took him any deeper. Now why
don't you act business-like and let us show you what we need?"

He knew his words carried no meaning in themselves, but he had had
enough experience of unusual organisms to know that a gentle attitude
frequently carried the conviction of its gentleness.

Not here, though. The claw snapped forward suddenly and the ax-head
spun toward his visored face with unexpected velocity. Donelli jerked
his head to one side and felt the pointed tip of the weapon scratch the
side of his helmet. The slight buzzing in his right ear was replaced
by an empty roaring: that meant the ear phone had gone dead, which
in turn meant the Grojen shielding had been chipped off leaving the
hydrofluoric vapors free to eat through the metal.

"This is no good. I guess I'll have to--" The burrower had retrieved
the ax in a lightning scamper and had it poised for another throw.
As Donelli brought his supersonic up, he marveled at the creature's
excellent aim despite its lack of vision. That long, hairy filament
waving from the top of its head evidently served to locate his
movements better than the finest radarplex on the latest space ships.

Just before he blasted, he managed to slip the intensity rod on the
top of the tube down to non-lethal pitch. The directional beam of
high-frequency sound tore down at the burrower and caught it with the
claw coming around again. It stopped in mid-throw, stumbled backwards,
and finally collapsed into unconsciousness upon the orange ground. The
ax-head rolled out of its opened claw.

Blaine protested with a grunt as he was dropped by the other two. They
ran up to the fallen burrower and edged around his body insistently.
Donelli held his supersonic ready for further developments.

What happened took him completely by surprise.

       *       *       *       *       *

In a series of movements so rapid that he could hardly follow it
visually, one of the aliens snatched up the ax-head while the other
lifted the creature Donelli had blasted to its back. They rolled up
the slope of the tunnel and scurried past him on either side, the
fluorine atmosphere almost crackling with their passage. By the time
the spaceman had whirled, they were gone down the far end of the shaft
where it dipped into the interior of the planet.

"They sure can hurry when they feel they have to," Donelli commented as
he helped the older man to his feet. "Which is what I have to do if I
want to get back to the ship before I start sneezing hydrofluoric acid."

While they sped as rapidly as the heavy suits would permit up the
tunnel and through the cave, Blaine wheezed an explanation: "They were
quite friendly until I mentioned the cave. There seems to be so much
sacredness connected with it in their minds that my mere invitation to
go there reduced me from an object of great interest to one of the
most abysmal disgust. They were indifferent to any wants of ours in
reference to the place. Any suggestion of taking them along is enough
to precipitate a violent attack."

Donelli wondered if he were imagining the smarting sensation in his
eyes. Had fluorine started to seep in already? Fortunately, they were
at the mouth of the cave.

"Not so nice," he said. "The Q around here isn't enough to make our
ship give out with a healthy cough, and we'll need their help to get
any more. But we can't tell them what we want unless they go to the
cave with us. Besides, after this fracas, they may be a trifle hard to
meet. Why were they carrying you away?"

"To sacrifice me to some primitive deity as a placative measure,
possibly. Remember they are in the early stages of barbarism. The only
reason we weren't attacked immediately is because they are easily the
dominant life-form of this world and are confident of their ability
to cope with strange creatures. Then again, they might have wanted to
investigate me--to dissect me--to examine my potentialities as food."

They rang the air-lock signal and clambered in.



                              CHAPTER III

                          _Race Against Time_


Hastily Donelli stripped off his space suit. There was a thin scar on
the metal of the helmet where the Grojen shielding had been scratched
away and HF vapor eaten in. A little longer out there and he would have
been doomed!

"Hullo!" For the first time, he noticed that almost one-third of the
cabin was taken up by a great transparent cage, one corner of which was
occupied by a relaxed red creature with folded black wings. "When did
the vampire kid arrive?"

"Ten minutes ago," Helena Naxos replied. She was adjusting a
temperature-pressure gauge at the side of the cage. "And he--she--it
didn't arrive: I carried it inside. After Dr. Blaine left, I went over
the island with the telescanner and noticed this thing flying in from
the sea. It went right to those purple flowers and began cutting off
sections of the petals and putting them in a sort of glider made out of
vines and branches that it was towing. The things obviously cultivate
vegetation. That patch out there is one of their gardens."

"Imagine!" the archaeologist breathed. "Another civilization in
embryo--avian this time. An avian culture would hardly build cities.
But this is a culture where the glider comes before the wheel."

"So you put on a space suit and went out to get it." Donelli shook his
head. "You shouldn't have done that, Helena. That creature might have
packed a wallop."

"Yes, I considered the possibility. But I didn't know if you two were
going to hit anything important, and this winged thing looked as if
it might prove to be a link between us and this world. Its ability to
fly, in particular, while we are grounded could prove valuable. It was
fairly quiet when I approached, neither scared nor angry, so I tried
the little Ogilvie I know--pattern one. Didn't work."

"Of course not," Dr. Blaine told her positively. "This is obviously
Ogilvie Language-Pattern Three. Consider the hinged wings, the
primitive glider you mentioned, the husbandry of flowers. It has to be
an Ogilvie Three."

"Well, I didn't know that, Dr. Blaine. And it wouldn't have helped
me much if I had. Ogilvie is a little too rich for a poor female
biologist's blood. At any rate, after communication broke down--or
never got started--this thing ignored me and prepared to fly away with
its loaded glider. I squeezed some supersonic at it--low-power of
course, brought it down and came in to ask Dr. Ibn Yussuf's advice on
how to build a compartment that would permit us to keep it in the ship
without killing it by oxygen poisoning."

"Must have used up an awful lot of Q, Helena! I notice you have pretty
elaborate temperature and pressure controls as well as HF humidifiers
and in-grav studs. And that loud-speaker system is wasteful."

Dr. Ibn Yussuf groaned up in his bunk and called across the cabin. "It
does reduce our supply of contra-Uranium to the danger point, Donelli,
but, under the circumstances, we thought we were justified. Our only
hope is to get aid from the inhabitants of this planet, and we can't
get aid unless we can hold them long enough to explain our position
and wants to them."

"You have something there," Donelli admitted. "I should have made a
stab at bringing back one of those specimens we ran into, not that
it would have done much good from the way they acted. Hope you have
more luck with this avian character. Treat him--her--it lovingly for
he--she--it's our last chance."

Then he and Blaine told her about the burrowers.

"I wish I had been with you," she exclaimed. "Think of it: two
barbaric civilizations--one on the surface and the other in the
tunnels--developing in complete unconsciousness of each other on the
same planet! The burrowers know nothing of the avians, do they Dr.
Blaine?"

"Absolutely nothing. They even refuse to discuss the matter. Surface
life is a completely alien concept to them. Their agoraphobia--fear of
open places--probably has much to do with their reluctance to accompany
us to the cave or even the tunnel entrance. Agoraphobia--_Hm-m-m_.
Then these winged creatures might well be claustrophobic! That would be
a catastrophe! We'll find out in a moment. It's opening its eyes. Where
is that loud-speaker arrangement?"

Helena moved competently to the microphone and tucked a lever past
several calibrations. "You may know its Ogilvie Pattern, doctor, but
it takes a biologist to give the sound frequency at which it can hear
best!"

       *       *       *       *       *

As Blaine began experimental dronings and buzzings into the instrument,
the creature inside the transparent cage opened its wings in a series
of hinged movements and revealed the whole rich redness of its small
body. It crawled under the loud-speaker and spread open a mouth that
was slit up and down instead of sideways. The black wings beat slowly
as it gained interest, reflecting cheerful yellow streaks in their
furrows. The two tentacles under its jaw lost their stiffness and
undulated in mounting excitement.

This would take some time. Donelli walked to the telescanner and faced
Dr. Douglas Ibn Yussuf.

"Suppose we get this fellow to cooperate. Where's a good place to tell
it to look for Q?"

The chemist lay back and considered. "You are familiar with Quentin's
theory of our galaxy's origin? That once there were two immense stars
which collided--one terrene, the other contra-terrene? That the force
of their explosion ripped the essence of space itself and filled it
with ricocheting terrene and contra-terrene particles whose recurring
violence warped matter out of space to form a galaxy? According to
Quentin, the resulting galaxy was composed of terrene stars who are
touched every once in a while by contra-terrene particles and go nova.
The only exception is contra-Uranium, the opposite number of the last
element in the _normal_ periodic table, which will not explode as
long as it is isolated from the heavy elements near its opposite number
on the table. Thus in a fluorine atmosphere, with a bromide soil and--"

"Look, Doc," Donelli said wearily. "I learned all that in School
years ago. Next you'll be telling me that it's thousands of times
more powerful than ordinary atomic fuels because of its explosive
contra-terrene nature. Why is it that you scientists have to discuss
the history of the universe before you give a guy an answer to a simple
question even in a crisis like this?"

"Sorry, son. It's difficult to break the habits of an academic
lifetime, even in times of a deadly emergency. That's your advantage:
you're accustomed to operate against time, while we like to explore a
problem thoroughly before attempting a mere hypothesis. Science is a
caution-engendering discipline, you see, and--

"All right. I won't digress into a discussion of the scientific
attitude. Where would you find contra-Uranium on a planet that's been
shown to possess it? Near the surface, I'd say, where the lighter
elements abound. You've already found some in a cave on this island?
That would indicate that it was forced explosively to the surface, the
only place it could exist, when the planet was in a formative state. If
there is other contra-Uranium on this world, there must be other caves
like the one here."

Donelli waved him to silence and bent over the telescanner. "Good
enough. Deep space and suppressed novas, Doc. That was _all_ I
wanted to know! Now I'll see how much I can find out before I use up
the dregs of our power."

He swept the beam across the sickly sea and up the coast-line of the
continent until he saw a dark spot in the orange ground. Then, nudging
the telebeam into the cave, he saw at last the few shimmering crystals
that meant precious Q. He tried other apertures here and there,
convincing himself that, while there was little enough in any one cave,
the planet as a whole possessed more than they required. The sight of
all the unobtainable Q on the telescanner screen made Donelli sweat
with exasperation.

He made another discovery. Leading down, in the rear of every cave was
at least one tunnel that denoted the presence of the burrowers.

"If only we could have made them understand," Donelli murmured. "All of
our problems now would have been orbital ones."

He rose and turned to see how his shipmates were doing with the winged
alien. "Great gravities, what did you _do_ to it?"

The avian was back in a corner of the fluorine-filled compartment,
its hinged black wings completely screening its body from sight. The
wings pressed down harshly as if the creature were attempting to shroud
itself out of its environment.

       *       *       *       *       *

Dr. Archibald Blaine, his hands cupped over the microphone, was
_chuk-chuking_ urgently, droning repetitiously, humming
desperately. No apparent effect. The black wings squeezed tighter into
the corner. A fearful, muffled gulping came over the loud-speaker in
the wall.

"It was the mention of the cave, again," Helena Naxos explained,
her pleasant face betraying worry. "We were doing fine, going from
'howd'yedo's' to 'how'veyebeen's'--the girlie was beginning to tell us
all about her complicated love-life--when Dr. Blaine asked if she had
ever been inside the cave. Period. She crawled away and started to make
like the cover of a hole."

"They can't do this to us!" Donelli yelled. "This planet is practically
crawling with Q which we can't get because we don't have the Q to cross
a hydrofluoric acid sea. The only way we can get it is for these babies
to haul it over, either underground through tunnels or across the sea.
And every time Blaine starts talking about the caves where the Q is
lying around, they go neurotic on him. What's the _matter_ with
the caves? Why don't they like them? _I_ like the caves!"

"Take it easy, Jake," Helena soothed. "We're up against a basic taboo
in two separated cultures. There must be a reason for it. Find the
reason and the problem is solved."

"I know. But if we don't find it soon we'll be nothing but fancy
fluorine compounds."

The woman returned to Dr. Blaine. "Is it possible you could reawaken
her interest by offering some gift? A superior glider, for example, or
power-driven flight."

"I'm working on it," he replied testily, withdrawing his mouth from the
microphone. "To creatures on the threshold of civilization, however,
superstition takes precedence over mechanical innovations. If it's
_only_ superstition--that's another thing we don't know. Could it
be the contra-Uranium crystals they're afraid of?"

Dr. Ibn Yussuf raised himself on his sound arm. "That is doubtful.
Their chemical composition contains no elements heavier than barium,
according to the spectroscope. Thus no contra-atomic chain reaction
would be set off by their bodies coming in contact with the crystals.
Perhaps the mere existence of the crystals upsets them."

Blaine frowned. "No. Unlikely. There would have to be a factor
intimately related to them in some way. If I could only attract her
attention! No matter what I say, she just lies there and gurgles."
He went back to his urgent buzzing, frantically using a lifetime of
archaeological knowledge.

Donelli looked at the fuel indicators. His lips flattened into a
grimace.

"I'll have to go out there and pick up those Q particles in the cave.
That cage you built may make that avian comfortable, but it sure
drained us dry."

"Wait, I'll go with you," Helena suggested. "Maybe I can discover what
makes these fearsome caves so fearsome."

She donned a space suit. Donelli, after a rueful glance at his corroded
helmet, dragged another metallic garment out of the locker and used its
headpiece instead. They both inspected their supersonics carefully. He
approved her casual efficiency.

"You know," her voice said into his headphones as they trudged toward
the hill, "if Dr. Blaine is able to talk some sense into that creature
and we manage to jet to a regular traffic lane and get rescued, he'll
make quite a smash before the Galactic Archaeological Society with
his two coexisting but unrelated civilizations. I'll get some fair
notice myself with the little I've been able to deduce about these
creatures biologically without resorting to dissection. Even Ibn
Yussuf, bed-ridden as he is, has been doing some heavy thinking on the
chemistry of a bromide soil. And you--well, I imagine you want to get
back to a place where you can hurry up and get drunk."

"No."

Her helmet turned toward him in surprise and question.

"No," he continued. "If we get out of this, I'm going to take advantage
of the lifeboat law. Heard of it?"

She hadn't. Her eyes glowed intently behind her visor.

"The lifeboat law's one of the oldest in space. Any spaceman--Able
or Ordinary--who, under a given set of circumstances, is entitled to
assume command of a vessel and successfully brings that vessel to
safety may, at his written request, be issued the license of a third
officer. It's called the lifeboat law because that's what it usually
pertains to. I have the experience. All I need is the ticket."

"Oh. And what would you do as a third officer? Get drunk whenever you
left Io?"

"No, I wouldn't. It's hard to explain--maybe you can't understand--but
as a third mate, I wouldn't get drunk. An A.B. or an ordinary spaceman,
now, there's so much tiresome, unimportant work facing you whenever you
leave a port that you just have to get drunk. And the longer you've
been in space, the drunker you get. As a third mate, I wouldn't drink
at all--except maybe on vacations. As a third mate, I'd be the dryest,
stiffest guy who ever was poisoned by a second cook. I'd be a terror of
a third mate, because that's the way things are."

"Look at that!" Helena had paused with her back to the mouth of the
cave.



                              CHAPTER IV

                            _Primitive War_


Jake Donelli turned and looked back at the ship. Across it, in the
grove of fleshy purple flowers, were at least a dozen winged creatures
like the one Blaine was attempting to interest in conversation. Far
over the sea, were many dots that grew larger and resolved into even
more of the avians. Some of them towed gliders lightly behind them.
Others carried light tubes. Blow-guns?

"Wonder how they knew about Susie," the spaceman mused. "Was it because
she didn't come back at the usual time that the posse was organized? Or
are they telepathic?"

"A combination, possibly. They certainly seem to know when one of them
is in trouble. You wouldn't say they're acting belligerent?"

"Nope. Just flexing what passes for their muscles. They don't know
whether we intend to serve Susie fricasseed or boiled in her _hic
jacet_. Better duck inside."

The biologist became her crisp self the moment she saw the white worms.
"Wish I could tell exactly what it is they're eating. Now suppose I
make a loose guess. Yes, it could well be. Jake, where are those other
eggs?"

"Other eggs? Back there. Funny kind of eggs."

She slipped ahead of him, her searchlight picking out the chest-high
globules. With a muttered exclamation, she bent down and examined one
closely. It was slowly splitting along a pink vein. Donelli waited
hopefully.

"No." She straightened. "It doesn't add up. Even assuming, as would
seem possible, that those small creatures in the front are the live
young of the burrowers and these are the eggs of the avians, it still
doesn't explain their relative distance from the usual habitat of their
parents. If they _were_ the young of each species, the positions
should be reversed. With their strong taboos and respective phobias,
the avians would not fly so far into the cave, and the burrowers would
not crawl so close to the surface. Furthermore, they would inevitably
have passed each other at some time and know of each other's existence.
Then too, while birth taboos are common among all primitive races,
they hardly have the force of the psychoses which seem to affect both
species relative to this and other caves. I'd need a good deal of study
and many, many careful notes to work this problem out."

"Continu-um!" he swore. "This isn't a research paper for some
scientific society or other. We're in a hurry. This is a matter of life
and death, woman! Can't you put some pressure into your thinking?"

She threw up her arms in their ungainly wrappings helplessly. "I'm
sorry, Jake. I'm trying hard, but I just don't have enough facts on
which to base an analysis of two separate unfamiliar societies. I'm
not a sociologist; I'm a biologist. So far as these creatures are
concerned, I've just reached the threshold."

"That's all we do--stand around on the threshold," Donelli muttered.
"Here are these caves, the threshold to our survival if we can get
these babies to pick up the Q and bring it to us. The avians fly around
the threshold in the underground but won't go in, while the burrowers
crawl around the threshold to the surface but won't go further if you
gave them the place."

"And both races are on the threshold to civilization. I wonder how long
they have been there?"

The spaceman slung the inerted lead container to the ground,
preparatory to catching up the crystals of contra-Uranium.

"What's the matter with them anyway that they're so afraid of the
caves? What do they think will happen to them after they cross the
threshold?"

"What--do--they--think--will--happen," Helena repeated slowly. "What
are we all afraid of, the fear intrinsic to any living animal? But
how--the eggs--why, of course! _Of course!_"

She bent toward him briefly and Donelli felt his helmet _clang_.

"Sorry," she said. "I forgot. I tried to kiss you. What beautiful
reasoning, Jake!"

"Huh?" He felt absurdly clumsy in his ignorance--and guilty.

"I'll have to work the details out as I go. Dr. Blaine--once I give him
your premise--he'll be able to help. Isn't it wonderful how removal
of one stone from the pyramid of obscurity sends the whole structure
tumbling down? Now, Jake, do you think you could go into those tunnels
and fetch me a live but slightly stunned burrower? We'll need one, you
know."

"I--I guess I can. Where do you want him?"

"It, Jake, _it_! Bring it right here to the middle of the cave.
I'll be waiting for you. Hurry!"

       *       *       *       *       *

She ran out of the cave toward the ship. Donelli watched her go,
decided he couldn't recall any particularly clever remarks he had made,
set his supersonic for its lowest frequency and moved to the tunnels.

He paused before the intersection. He and Blaine had had their little
scrap with the burrowers in the right-hand one, and an elaborate trap
might have been set there against their return: accordingly he chose to
walk down the shaft on his left.

It was much like the other shaft. Carefully carved cross-beams were set
up at intervals, while the sides were smooth and round. He came to the
sharp slope and moved more cautiously. If he slipped into a hole, there
was no telling how far he might fall.

The slope became steeper. Donelli's helmet light suddenly exposed
another, more complicated intersection ahead in the form of six tunnel
entrances. In front of one, two burrowers were chipping the end of a
large root out of the tunnel ceiling.

As his search beam hit them, they whirled simultaneously and waved the
hairy appendage at him for the barest fraction of a second. Then, both
sprang for the tunnel entrance in a flicker of ivory bodies.

Donelli thought he had missed. He had brought up his weapon just as
they leaped. But one fell to the floor, the ax-head dropping. The
creature was not completely unconscious, gobbling weakly at him as he
approached. Donelli slung it over his shoulder and started back. The
creature squirmed limply in his grasp.

There was an odd, insistent patter behind him, a sound of many legs.
Pursuit. Well, they wouldn't dare follow him into the cave. He wished
the suit weren't so heavy, though. He kept turning his head to look at
the empty shaft to the rear. Nasty to be overcome from behind, under
the suffocating earth of an alien planet.

Even though the burrower stiffened with fear when he reached the cave,
he felt better. The pattering grew louder, stopped, came on slowly.

Helena Naxos and Blaine were squatting near the four large veined
balls, the avian, weakly fluttering, between them. They held a
supersonic over it. The winged creature had evidently had a dose of
sound like that of Donelli's captive. Blaine was speaking persuasively,
in that hum-drone language, with little apparent effect.

"Put it right down here, next to the other one," Helena ordered. "With
a little time and a little imagination, we may get out of this fix. Too
early to tell just yet. Jake, you'll have to act as sort of armed guard
at this conference. We mustn't be disturbed. Susie's playmates are too
frightened to come in, but they've been making all kinds of fuss since
we carried her out of the ship and into the cave."

"I'll take care of it," the spaceman promised.

He gasped with sheer astonishment when he reached the entrance of the
cave. The saffron sky was obscured by multitudes of black winged avians
dipping in short angry circles. A swarm of the avians had surrounded
the lifeboat and, as he watched, they lifted it slightly off the ground
in the direction of the sea. This was no attempt to placate a deity, he
decided, but sheer vindictiveness--revenge for the unspeakable tortures
they imagined the humans were venting on the prisoner.

The supersonic low-power beam rolled them off the ship in a huge
stunned mass. Their places were immediately taken by others. Donelli
sprayed them off too.

They left the ship alone after that, and came in flying low at him with
their blow tubes in their mouths. Jagged darts shrilled nastily all
around him. He felt one bounce off his chest and hoped vaguely that
they were less effective than the weapons of the burrowers on Grojen
shielding. He moved back into the shadow of the cave.

Helena, Dr. Blaine and the two aliens came up behind him and gathered
round the white worms near the entrance.

"Pretty dangerous here," he told them. "These avians of yours are an
accurate bunch of snipers."

"No help for it," she replied. "We're getting close. I don't think
they'll keep blowing darts after they get a glimpse of Sister Susie.
We'll be safe so long as we're near her. Suppose you do something about
the other side. Those burrowers are throwing an awful lot of stuff
awfully far."

       *       *       *       *       *

He moved past them toward the rear, noting that both the winged and
clawed creature were no longer under the influence of the supersonics
but were listening intently to Dr. Blaine as he alternately hummed at
one and clicked at the other. They almost watched Helena gesture to the
white worms and their grisly meal and back to them.

At least we've got their interest, Donelli thought grimly.

He began to cough. No mistake this time, there was HF vapor seeping
into his suit through some scratch. Fluorine was eating at his lungs.
Well, he didn't have time to feel sick.

The ivory-colored animals had rigged up a primitive ballista just a
few feet from the end of the tunnel and were pegging ax-heads into
the cave at fairly respectable velocities. The missiles were easy to
side-step; but Donelli's head was getting heavy and he lost his footing
once or twice. As fast as his supersonic would sweep them away from
the ballista, they would crowd back again with stubborn determination.
A slow, evil fire built itself in Donelli's chest and spread nibbling
fingers along his throat.

He looked over his shoulder. No more darts were coming in at the rapt
group near the cave mouth. Evidently the avians were possessed of more
love for one of their number than the burrowers. He had just started
to turn his head, when a heavy object struck the back of his helmet.
He dimly perceived he was falling. It seemed to him that the burrower
which he had captured leaped over him and rejoined its fellows, and
that Susie flew out to a clustered bunch of avians and that they all
buzzed and hummed like idiots.

What a waste of time, he thought as the fire began to consume his
brain. Helena let them go.

It seemed to him that Helena and Dr. Blaine were hurrying to his side
through a shimmering mist of yellow agony. It also seemed to him that
one of the chest-high balls split up along a pink vein and something
came out.

But he was sure of nothing, but the painful, choking darkness into
which his body twisted, nothing but the agony in his chest....

[Illustration: Dimly Donelli heard Helena utter a cry as he toppled
forward.]

He woke with a spaceman's certain knowledge of riding a smooth jet. His
body felt deliciously light. He tried to sit up, but he was too weak
to do more than turn his head. Two men had their backs to him. After a
while he identified them as Dr. Archibald Blaine and Dr. Douglas Ibn
Yussuf. Dr. Yussuf was out of his cast and was arguing in an animated
fashion with Blaine over a white ax-head imprisoned in a plastic block.

"Why, I'm in Dr. Yussuf's bunk," Donelli muttered stupidly.

"Welcome back," Helena told him, moving into range of his watery eyes.
"You've been pretty far away for a long, long time."

"Away?"

"You ate enough hydrofluoric acid to etch a glass factory out of
existence. I made my biological education turn handsprings to save
that belligerent life of yours. We used up almost every drug on the
ship and Dr. Yussuf's organic deconverter-and-respirator, which he
built and used on you, is going to make him the first physical chemist
to win a Solarian Prize in medicine."

"When--when did we take off?"

"Days ago. We should be near a traffic lane now, not to mention the
galactic patrol. Our tanks are stuffed with contra-Uranium, our
second jet is operating in a clumsy sort of way and our converter is
functioning as cheerily as any atomic converter ever did. After the
help we gave them with their own lives, the population of Maximilian II
was so busy bringing us Q that we ran out of inerted lead containers.
From considering us the personifications of death, they've come to the
point where they believe humans go around destroying death, or at least
its fear. And it's Jake Donelli who did that."

"I did, did I?" Donelli was being very cautious.

"Didn't you? That business about the threshold of life and death being
the caves was what I heard you develop with my own ears. It was the
only clue I needed. The caves related not only to the sacredness of
birth, but--more important to the primitive mind--to the awful terror
of death. A threshold, you called it. And so it was, not only between
life and death, but between the burrowers and the avians. Once I had
that, and with a little scientific guessing, it was simple to figure
out why the eggs were laid in apparent reverse order--that of the
burrowers near the front, and that of the avians at the rear--and why
they had never met each other."

       *       *       *       *       *

The spaceman thought that over and then nodded slowly.

"Simple," Donelli murmured. "Yes, that might be the word. This little
shred of scientific guessing you did, just what did it amount to?"

"Why, that the avians and the burrowers were different forms of the
same creature in different stages of the life-process. The winged
creatures mate just as their powers start to decline. Before the young
hatch, the parents seek out a cave and die there. The young, those
white worms, use the parental bodies as food until they have grown
claws and can travel down to the tunnels where they become adolescent
burrowers.

"The burrowers, after all, are nothing but larva--despite the
timbering of their shafts and their mining techniques which Drs. Blaine
and Yussuf consider spectacular. They can be considered sexless.
After several years, the burrower will return to the cave. In the
belief of its fellows it dies there, since it returns no more. It
spins a cocoon--that's what those large green balls were--and remains
a chrysalis until the winged form is fully developed. It then flies
out of the cave and into the open air where it is accepted by the
so-called avians as their junior. It evidently retains no memory of its
pre-chrysalis existence.

"Thus you have two civilizations unaware of each other, each different
and each proceeding from the same organism. So far as the organism
was concerned in either stage, it went to the cave only to die, and,
from the cave, in some mysterious fashion, its own kind came forth.
Therefore, a taboo is built up on both sides of the threshold, a taboo
of the most thoroughgoing and binding nature, the mere thought of whose
violation results in psychosis. The taboo, of course, has held their
development in check for centuries. Interesting?"

"Yeah!"

"The clue was what was important, Jake. Once I had it, I could relate
their life-cycle to the _Goma_ of Venus, the _Lepidoptera_ of
Earth, the _Sislinsinsi_ of Altair VI. And the clincher was that
one of the winged forms hatched out of a cocoon just after I'd finished
explaining what was up to that moment only my hypothesis."

"How did they take it?"

"Startled at first. But it explained something they were very curious
about and swept away an immense weight of ugly fear. Of course, they
still die in the caves to all intents and purposes. But they can see
their lives as a perfect reproductive circle with the caves as a locus.
And what a reciprocity they can work out--they are working out!"

"Reciprocity?" Donelli had almost moved to a sitting position.

Helena wiped his face with a soft cloth. "Don't you see? The burrowers
were injuring the avian gardens by nibbling at the roots. They will now
use only the roots of old, strong plants which the surface creatures
will designate and set aside for them. They will also aid avian
horticulture by making certain the roots have plenty of nourishing
space in which to grow. In return, the avians will bring them surface
plants which are not available to tunnel creatures, while the burrowers
provide the surface with the products of their mines and labors
underground. To say nothing of the intelligent rearing they can now
give their young, though at a distance. And when the fluorescent light
system that Dr. Ibn Yussuf worked out for them becomes universal, the
avians may travel freely in the tunnels and guide the burrowers on the
surface. The instinctual and haphazard may shortly be supplanted by a
rich science."

"No wonder they broke their backs getting Q. And after working that out
for them, all you did was repair the ship, fix me up, take off and set
a course for the nearest traffic lane?"

She shrugged her shoulders. "Dr. Blaine helped quite a bit with the
take-off. This time he remembered the buttons! By the way, as far as
the record is concerned, he and I maneuvered the ship off the ground
under your direct supervision."

"Oh, so?"

"Just so. Right, Dr. Blaine?"

The archaeologist looked up impatiently. "Of course. Of course! There
has not been one moment, since the disaster aboard the _Ionian
Pinafore_, when I have not been under Mr. Donelli's orders."

There was a pause in which Dr. Blaine muttered to Dr. Yussuf over the
ax-head.

"How old are you, Helena?" Donelli asked.

"Oh--old enough."

"But too clever, eh? Too educated for me?"

She cocked her head and smiled at him out of a secret corner of her
face. "Maybe. We'll see what happens after we get back to the regular
traffic lanes. After we're rescued. After you get your third mate's
ticket. Here--what are you laughing at?"

He rumbled the amusement out of his throat. "Oh, I was just thinking
how we earned our Q. By teaching a bunch of caterpillars that
butterflies bring babies!"



*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The ionian cycle" ***


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