An Earthman on Venus (Originally titled "The Radio Man") by Ralph Milne Farley (trending books to read TXT) 📗
- Author: Ralph Milne Farley
Book online «An Earthman on Venus (Originally titled "The Radio Man") by Ralph Milne Farley (trending books to read TXT) 📗». Author Ralph Milne Farley
As I lay there in the bushes by the side of the road, there came to my nostrils a smell which partially revived me—a smell seemingly of griddle cakes and maple syrup. Opening my eyes again and following my nose, I discovered that this pleasant odor emanated from a large bowl-shaped leaf only a few feet away.
Upon dragging myself toward it, I discovered that in the bottom of the bowl there was a brown mass, looking very much like a stack of wheats, covered with some sticky substance. But unfortunately this delectable dish was quite obscured by little hopping lizards, now much bemired and hopping no more.
So I reached out my hand to brush them away, and instantly the leaf closed upon my arm like a steel trap.
My brain cleared at once, and I began a frantic struggle to extricate my hand; but it was too late, for with a gentle massaging motion the plant commenced to swallow my arm.
Inch by inch my arm descended into that rapacious maw. It was the steady slowness of the procedure that was so nerve-wracking, for without a pause my arm disappeared at a rate of about an inch a minute.
I braced my feet against the plant and pulled, but this cut off the circulation in my arm. Then I wiggled my fingers rapidly so as to keep my hand from going to sleep, whereupon the plant swallowed all the faster.
The mouth of the plant had closed very much like a clam shell, so, just before my shoulder disappeared, I braced my body crosswise of the jaws, in the hope that this maneuver would prevent the swallowing process from proceeding any further.
But the plant merely opened its flexible lips, and closed them the other way, taking a firm grip on my chest, and just missing getting hold of my right ear. I craned my neck as far as I could to the left, and shrieked aloud with terror.
Was it for this that I had escaped the ant-men and the spider—to be eaten alive by a plant?
The soft jaws now fastened on the back of my head and began gently drawing that in, too. At last only my nose was free. In a minute that, too, would be enveloped, then strangulation and death.
At this moment something fell upon me, and I felt the plant quiver and shake. The swallowing ceased. Then the soft lips were torn away from one side of my head, and I heard a familiar rattling sound.
A few seconds later the plant went limp, releasing my arm, and I lay upon my back, free once more, gazing upward into the eyes of my old friend and captor.
“Doggo, Doggo!” I cried with joy, but he did not seem to hear me. Nevertheless he picked me up gently in his mandibles and trotted off with me down the road.
After about a quarter of a mile, we turned aside into a field, and there was Satan, the other ant-man, standing beside a crumpled airship and the dead body of its pilot. Satan did not seem overjoyed to see me, but Doggo rummaged through the wreckage and finally produced a bowl, into which he put some water and some medicine, which revived me greatly. Then he laid me on a pile of grass, covered me with leaves and stood guard over me as the pink twilight deepened and the night fell.
As it began to grow dark I could hear an occasional tinkle like the sound of a Japanese wind bell, first on one side and then on another. This music gradually increased, until it assumed the volume of a fairy orchestra. I had never heard such dainty bewitching tunefulness in my entire life. Many weeks later I learned that this was the song of the large purple grasshoppers I had seen; but even the knowledge of its source has never robbed the sound of its sweet mystery for me.
The fading silver radiance of the sky shed a moonlike light over all below. A faint breeze sprang up, gently fanning the moist fragrant hot-house air against my cheeks. The foliage around us waved like a sea of silver grain. And the tune of that elfin melody quickly lulled me into a soft and dreamless sleep, secure in the confidence that a faithful friend was watching near.
The next morning I was awakened by Doggo stripping off my leafy coverlet. Satan was not to be seen, but grazing near us were some more of those peculiar large green insects, with long trailing antennae, which I had seen in my flight from the spider web.
As I sat up, Doggo presented me with a bowl of pale green liquid. But I was at a loss to know what to do with it. Was I supposed to wash in it, or drink it, or to rub it in my hair?
My friend solved the question by lifting it to my mouth. So I drank, and found the taste sweetish and agreeable.
All morning we stayed by the wrecked machine, apparently waiting for something. Satan did not show up. Around noon, Doggo took the bowl and approached one of the green beasts grazing near. I followed with interest.
Two horns projected upwardly from the tail of the beast, one of which Doggo proceeded to stroke with his paw; and to my surprise, a green liquid spouted from the animal, quickly filling the bowl. So that is where my breakfast had come from! Green milk from green cows! Strange! And yet how much more logical than on earth, where a red cow eats green grass under a blue sky and produces white milk, from which we get yellow butter.
Shortly after lunch I heard the hum of a motor, and presently Satan landed near us with a new plane. This strange plane of the ant-men stopped abruptly, hovered for a moment, and then settled just where it was, like a helicopter.
Doggo carried me aboard, and we started, Satan at the levers and Doggo standing guard over me. But whether this was to protect me from Satan, or to keep me from falling out again, I could not say.
We cruised along for several hours over much the same sort of country as I had seen before, except that we crossed several rivers, and once a small lake.
At last the ship hovered and landed on top of what seemed to be a helter-skelter pile of exaggerated toy building blocks, exactly in keeping with the size of the ants. As far as the eye could see on all sides, these blocks were heaped. They resembled a group of Pueblo Indian dwellings.
Doggo and the fierce ant-man whom I called Satan now picked me up in their jaws, the former gently and the latter not so gently, and carried me out of the airplane and down an inclined runway into the interior of the edifice. The passage was long, narrow, dark and winding, but presently we emerged into a room about thirty feet square by ten feet high, lighted by narrow windows opening toward the western sky. That is, I call it “western,” for it was in this direction that the sky turned pink at eventide.
In this room I was laid on the floor. The unpleasant ant-man departed, and Doggo placed himself on guard in the doorway.
Presently two strange ant-men entered, carrying a couch, which they set down in one corner of the room. Then they walked several times around me, viewing me from all sides with evident interest, until, at a stiffening and quivering of Doggo’s antennae, they hurriedly left the room. I noticed that Doggo no longer carried the green weapon, which seemed strange, as he was evidently on guard.
Then I fell to wondering about the couch. It was a simple affair, and yet quite evidently intended for a bed. Upholstered with some kind of dark blue cloth, at that!
“What need have ants of a bed?” I mused. “Certainly they cannot lie down; and, even if they could, such a couch as this would be of little use to one of them, for this is only a man-size couch, whereas these ants are about ten feet in length!”
My perplexity was tinged with a hope that there might be human beings here.
My perplexity and my hope were both increased by the return of one of the ants who had brought the couch, this time bearing a sleeveless shirt or toga of white matted material, like very thin silk felt, reaching about to my knees, with a Grecian wave design in light blue around the bottom edge and around the neck and armholes. But what increased my perplexity still further, and at the same time destroyed most of my hope, was the presence of two vertical slits, with the same blue trimming, in the upper part of the back.
The two ant-men watched with great interest while I put this toga on, and were evidently pleased to find that I knew how to do so. The messenger ant then withdrew, and presently returned with a bowl of green milk, which I drank as usual.
By this time it had become quite dark outside, but the room still remained light, due to two long glass bulbs, set in the ceiling, and containing some sort of incandescent substance. At that time I little guessed what a part those bulbs would come to play in my life! They resembled the fluorescent lamps familiar on earth.
These lamps showed that the inhabitants of this planet were well advanced in electrical engineering. Was it not strange, then, that they had not developed radio and communicated with the earth? And yet not so strange, either, when one considers that they had no sense of hearing.
Dismissing these thoughts from my mind, I lay down on the couch. Then Doggo was relieved as sentinel by a new ant-man, who carefully and inquisitively inspected me, but from a safe distance. This guard, too, was without any green weapon.
Finally the two lights went out, and I slept, my last thoughts being to wonder what was in store for me, and what was the significance of the couch and the strange blue-and-white article of clothing.
4go to the ant, thou sluggard
As I slowly awakened the next morning, I vaguely remembered a terrible nightmare of the night before.
But no, it was no dream, for I opened my eyes upon the same plain concrete room with its slit windows. I was lying on the same couch. The same strange ant-man was standing guard at the door. During the night some one had placed over me a blanket of some sort of light fleecy wool felt.
As I lay in bed I studied the walls of the room and noticed, what I had not seen before, three dials sunk in the opposite wall close to the ceiling. Each dial had twelve numbers or letters around the edge, and also a single pointer. The pointer of the right dial was slowly revolving left-handedly; the pointer of the middle dial was turning even more slowly; while that of the left dial appeared motionless. Absent-mindedly I started to time the right-hand pointer.
“One chimpanzee. Two chimpanzee. Three chimpanzee,” I counted in sing-song; that being a formula which I had been taught as a child, to count the time between a lightning flash and the resulting thunder, in order to estimate the distance of the stroke.
For, if carefully done, each chimpanzee equaled one second of time, and each second meant one quarter-mile of distance. Of course the real object of the game was to distract the child’s mind from his fear of the lightning.
I now found that it took about fifty chimpanzees for the right pointer to move one of the twelve graduations. This fact I verified by several trials.
I fell to wondering what the device was for.
It looked and acted like a gas meter or electric meter.
Then I dismissed the meter from my mind, and considered my predicament. For some reason I thought of my father, Alden Cabot, now many years dead. The old man had been a stern puritanical character, abhorring sloth and frivolity.
How often had I heard him rebuke some act of laziness with his favorite Biblical quotation: “Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways and be wise.”
“Wouldn’t father be pleased,” thought I, “for I have certainly gone to the ant, all right! But now the big question is how to get away from them.”
By this time the sentinel noticed that I was awake, and immediately brought me my breakfast, consisting of a bowl of the sweet green liquid and a bowl of dark reddish-brown paste, about the consistency of mashed beans, and having a rich flavor not unlike beef gravy.
After breakfast Doggo took his turn as guard. I patted his head, and then went over to the windows to see the view, if any.
The windows overlooked a courtyard completely enclosed by piled-up Puéblo buildings. In the yard was
Comments (0)