The Bloodless Peril by Will Garth (Henry Kuttner) Read online

  each plant dying and being replaced by a

  inward,” Storm said. “We’d have to stop so new plant every three seconds?”

  far from it, to let the opening door clear the

  “Yes.

  But—”

  tank, that these hellish plants would have

  “In human beings,” Storm said room to get in between and block us again.

  swiftly, “there is such a thing as race This side, Laura. Add your weight to memory. Recollection of an event is mine.”

  handed from one generation to the next.

  They surged against the glass wall

  But eventually that recollection gets lost in facing toward the distant control panel. The the mists of time. Now, these things are

  glass tank tottered on its edge and fell on attacking us, eager to devour us. But if

  that side, pinning down some of the coiling their growth-span were quickened, the green stalks, and pressing flat the separate attackers would die in a few seconds, the blossoms there.

  next generation would not be so keenly

  “Watch the lid!”

  aware that we are a trapped enemy to be

  The maneuver was repeated, and

  overpowered—and as each generation they were ten feet nearer their goal. Two succeeded the last and the race memory

  great plant stems looped viciously upward died out, that awareness should fade. Don’t with the now exposed glass lid of the tank.

  you see?”

  “Again!”

  Hope flamed in the woman’s eyes.

  “You mean they might forget what

  THE tank rolled on its side, carrying the they are fighting for?”

  reaching plants before it.

  “Exactly. Just as in a thousand

  “We’re going to make it,” panted

  years of war men might finally forget who Laura.

  had started a fight against whom, and why.

  No one who had ever seen her as

  The Bloodless Peril

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  the cool, impersonal, detached scientist, or He shoved home the switch controlling the the passionless, inflexible pacifist, would overhead violet ray tubes, and saw with the have recognized her now. Her tunic was

  move a slight change in the tint of light rent. Her eyes flamed with the primitive

  streaming down from overhead.

  urge to preserve life by any means against Literally holding their breaths, the

  the attack of aliens.

  two stared out through portions of the glass

  “Yes, we’ll beat the things yet!”

  wall that had not yet been etched to opacity grunted Storm, straining for the next roll of by the acid.

  the tank.

  And they saw the miracle of the

  They got to the panel. And they

  outer laboratory repeated.

  landed next to it with the lid underneath Here, as there, the plant-growth of a

  instead of on that side!

  season was compressed into a few seconds.

  “Ryder— We can’t reach the switch after

  On all sides of them the giant day-lilies all—”

  drooped, fell to the ground, decomposed

  “Yes,” Storm ground out, “we can!

  there as another crop swelled to maturity But heaven help us if the race-memory of

  and in turn died and decomposed.

  these things can persist through the

  But each upspringing generation of

  generations so that they keep on attacking plants reached savagely for the glass tank!

  us. Because the only way to reach that

  With each flashing maturity, long stems

  switch is through a loophole that will let crowded to get into the hole Storm’s fist the things get in!”

  had battered, and deadly blossoms sucked

  He stooped and caught up the at the glass walls and dripped their ripped strips of his shirt tunic, which were corrosive acid.

  blackened and rotten with the acid he had

  “We’re beaten,” Storm said.

  wiped from his legs. He wound them

  The two crouched in the tank, away

  unheedingly around his big right fist and from the tentacles ever writhing through

  turned to the glass tank-wall next to the the hole. But then a shout came from the

  control panel.

  man’s bearded lips that almost burst their The glass was deeply pitted. eardrums in the confined space. “We’re not Opaque from the dripped acid of the deadly beaten! Look!”

  flowers. He drew back his arm and crashed his fist against the section most deeply OUTSIDE, the surging plant-things were pitted.

  no longer striving so hard to penetrate the A sledge-hammer couldn’t have glass tank. With each quick up thrust the cracked that glass had it been untouched.

  swelling green plants moved more

  But the viscous stuff from the blooms had indecisively, and their roots went down

  done fantastic damage to the molecules of more solidly into the peat moss.

  the glass. With Storm’s first blow, it Meanwhile, the blooms had almost ceased buckled out a little. With his next, to move toward the thin walls protecting delivered with all the power of his big

  the man and girl.

  body, his fist went through.

  “Whatever method they have of

  Like furious serpents the green coils

  passing history down to their descendants of the plants’ stems writhed to fasten is failing!” cried Laura. “A hundred around the arm Storm shoved through the

  generations have passed. Now the new

  hole. But his-hand got to the switchboard.

  generations are losing the race memory and

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  forgetting to fight us!”

  metal panel.

  Storm held her close and watched

  Storm took his arm from around

  with her, eyes shining, red beard flaming in Laura’s waist. His eyes sought hers,

  the queer light that was saving them.

  levelly, inquiringly.

  And the time came when no stalk

  “Well?” he said, gently.

  coiled toward the hole in the tank, and

  Laura managed a smile, though it

  when no fallen flower inched in that shivered a little on her pale and tremulous direction. There was only the fantastic sea lips.

  of vegetation—leveling to the ground,

  “We might be able to use those

  spiring up like a solid wave, bursting into horrible things in war against the Orient,”

  bright orange bloom and then sinking down Storm said. “We could drop seeds of these again in death.

  man-eating things in their most ferocious White-faced, Laura and Storm took

  stage of evolution They’d grow to their full the gamble. They rolled the tank back and size in about five weeks, and we could rain stepped out of it as the lid fell open.

  down tubes of my palsy virus to keep

  The near plants bent vaguely soldiers from hacking them down before toward them, like arms reaching, then they’d overrun the enemy sectors. We’d shrank back as they swelled to maturity and have victory in a month and a half, if you’d shrank into death. But the move had in it consent to work with me.”

  no hint of attempt to finish a struggle

  Laura moved back into the circle of

  almost won by distant forbears; it grew

  his arm.

  only from the innate ferocity of the things

  “Yes, Ryder. With you. Beside you.

  Professor Laura Hart had cultivated from

  The High Command may have my

  ordinary flower plants through infinitely evolutionary product, for no human beings accelerated evolution.

  could be worse than those flowers!” She

  They got to the door
, stepped into

  sighed. “I guess we’ll have to take the

  the other laboratory, and locked the menace world as we find it in the present, and fight of the inner laboratory behind the massive to preserve what we think is best in it.”