The City and the Stars Page 0,92

appeared placid and uneventful. It was flat, to within a few inches, right out to the horizon; and seemed to be covered with a thin, wiry grass. Though they descended to within fifty feet of it, there was no sign of any animal life, which Hilvar found somewhat surprising. Perhaps, he decided, it had been scared underground by their approach.

They hovered just above the plain while Alvin tried to convince Hilvar that it would be safe to open the air lock, and Hilvar patiently explained such conceptions as bacteria, fungi, viruses, and microbes-ideas which Alvin found hard to visualize, and harder still to apply to himself. The argument had been in progress for some minutes before they noticed peculiar fact. The vision screen, which a moment ago ha been showing the forest ahead of them, had now becom blank.

"Did you turn that off?" said Hilvar, his mind, as usu just one jump ahead of Alvin's.

"No," replied Alvin, a cold shiver running down his spin as he thought of the only other explanation. "Did you turn it off?" he asked the robot.

"No," came the reply, echoing his own.

With a sigh of relief, Alvin dismissed the idea that t robot might have started to act on its own volition-then he might have a mechanical mutiny on his hands.

"Then why is the screen blank?" he asked.

"The image receptors have been covered."

"I don't understand," said Alvin, forgetting for a m ment that the robot would only act on definite orders or questions. He recovered himself quickly and asked: "What's covered the receptors?"

"I do not know."

The literal-mindedness of robots could sometimes be as exasperating as the discursiveness of humans. Before Alvin could continue the interrogation Hilvar interrupted.

"Tell it to lift the ship-slowly," he said, and there was a note of urgency in his voice.

Alvin repeated the command. There was no sense of motion; there never was. Then, slowly, the image reformed on the vision screen, though for a moment it was blurred and distorted. But it showed enough to end the argument about landing.

The level plain was level no longer. A great bulge had formed immediately below them-a bulge which was ripped open at the top where the ship had torn free. Huge pseudopods were waving sluggishly across the gap, as if trying to recapture the prey that had just escaped from their clutches. As he stared in horrified fascination, Alvin caught a glimpse of a pulsing scarlet orifice, fringed with whiplike tentacles which were beating in unison, driving anything that came into their reach down into that gaping maw.

Foiled of its intended victim, the creature sank slowly into the ground-and it was then that Alvin realized that the plain below was merely the thin scum on the surface of a stagnant sea.

"What was that-thing?" he gasped.

"I'd have to go down and study it before I could tell you that," Hilvar replied matter-of-factly. "It may have been some form of primitive animal-perhaps even a relative of our friend in Shalmirane. Certainly it was not intelligent, or it would have known better than to try to eat a spaceship."

Alvin felt shaken, though he knew that they had been in no possible danger. He wondered what else lived down there beneath that innocent sward, which seemed to positively invite him to come out and run upon its springy surface.

"I could spend a lot of time here," said Hilvar, obviously fascinated by what he had just seen. "Evolution must have produced some very interesting results under these conditions. Not only evolution, but devolution as well, as higher forms of life regressed when the planet was deserted. By now equilibrium must have been reached and-you're not leaving already?" His voice sounded quite plaintive as the landscape receded below them.

"I am," said Alvin. "I've seen a world with no life, and a world with too much, and I don't know which I dislike more."

Five thousand feet above the plain, the planet gave them one final surprise. They encountered a flotilla of huge, flabby balloons drifting down the wind. From each semitransparent envelope clusters of tendrils dangled to form what was virtually an inverted forest. Some plants, it seemed, in the effort to escape from the ferocious conflict on the surface had learned to conquer the air. By a miracle of adaptation, they had managed to prepare hydrogen and store it in bladders, so that they could lift themselves into the comparative peace. of the lower atmosphere.

Yet it was not certain that even here they had found security. Their downward-hanging stems