Chapter X

Judged by any Earthly standards, the planet Trenco was--and is--a peculiar one indeed. Its atmosphere, which is not air, and its liquid, which is not water, are its two outstanding peculiarities and the sources of most of its others. Almost half of that atmosphere and by far the greater part of the liquid phase of the planet is a substance of extremely low latent heat of vaporization, with a boiling point such that during the daytime it is a vapor and at night a liquid. To make matters worse, the other constituents of Trenco's gaseous envelope are of very feeble blanketing power, low specific heat, and of high permeability, so that its days are intensely hot and its nights are bitterly cold.

At night, therefore, it rains. Words are entirely inadequate to describe to any one who has never been there just how it does rain during Trenco's nights. Upon Earth one inch of rainfall in an hour is a terrific downpour. Upon Trenco that amount of precipitation would scarcely be considered a mist; for along the equatorial belt, in less than thirteen Tellurian hours, it rains exactly forty-seven feet and five inches every night--no more and no less, each and every night of every year.

Also there is lightning. Not in Terra's occasional flashes, but in one continuous, blinding glare which makes night as we know it unknown there--in nerve-wracking, battering, sense-destroying discharges which make ether and subether alike impenetrable to any ray or signal short of a full-driven power beam. The days are practically as bad. The lightning is not so violent then, but the bombardment of Trenco's monstrous sun, through that outlandishly peculiar atmosphere, produces almost the same effect.

Because of the difference in pressure set up by the enormous precipitation, always and everywhere upon Trenco there is wind--and what a wind! Except at the very poles, where it is too cold for even Trenconian life to exist, there is hardly a spot in which or a time at which an Earthy gale would not be considered a dead calm; and along the equator, at every sunrise and at every sunset, the wind blows from the day side to the night side at the rate of a trifle over eight hundred miles an hour!

Through countless thousands of years wind and wave have planed and scoured the planet Trenco to a geometrically perfect oblate spheroid. It has no elevations and no depressions. Nothing fixed in an Earthly sense grows or exists upon its surface; no structure has ever been built there able to stay in one place through one whole day of the cataclysmic meteorological phenomena which constitute the natural Trenconian environment.

* * * * *

There live upon Trenco two types of vegetation, each type having innumerable subdivisions. One type sprouts in the mud of the morning; flourishes flatly, by dint of deeply sent and powerful roots, during the wind and the heat of the day; comes to full fruit in late afternoon; and at sunset dies and is swept away by the flood. The other type is free-floating. Some of its genera are remotely like footballs; others resemble tumbleweeds; still others thistledown; hundreds of others have not their remotest counterparts upon Earth. Essentially, however, they are alike in habits of life. They can sink in the "water" of Trenco; they can burrow in its mud, from which they derive part of their sustenance; they can emerge therefrom into the sunlight; they can, undamaged, float in or roll along before the ever-present Trenconian wind; and they can enwrap, entangle, or otherwise seize and hold anything with which they come in contact which by any chance may prove edible.

Animal life, too, while abundant and diverse, is characterized by three qualities. From lower to very highest it is amphibious; it is streamlined; and it is omnivorous. Life upon Trenco is hard, and any form of life to evolve there must of stern necessity be willing, yes, even anxious, to eat literally _anything_ available. And for that reason all surviving forms of life, vegetable and animal, have a voracity and a fecundity almost unknown anywhere else in the galaxy.

Thionite, the noxious drug referred to earlier in this narrative, is the sole reason for Trenco's galactic importance. As chlorophyll is to Earthly vegetation, so is thionite to that of Trenco. Trenco is the only planet thus far known upon which this substance occurs, nor have our scientists even yet been able either to analyze or to synthesize it. Thionite is capable of affecting only those races who breathe oxygen and possess warm blood, red with haemoglobin.

However, the planets peopled by such races are legion, and very shortly after the drug's discovery hordes of addicts, smugglers, peddlers, and out-and-out pirates were rushing toward the new bonanza. Thousands of these adventurers died, either from each other's ray guns or under an avalanche of hungry Trenconian life; but, thionite being what it is, thousands more kept coming. Also came the patrol, to curb the evil traffic at its source by beaming down ruthlessly any being attempting to gather any Trenconian vegetation.

Thus between the patrol and the drug syndicate there rages a bitterly continuous battle to the death. Arrayed against both factions is the massed life of the noisome planet, omnivorous as it is, eternally ravenous, and of an individual power and ferocity and a collective aggregate of numbers none of which is to be despised. And eternally raging against all these contending parties are the wind, the lightning, the rain, the flood, and the hellish vibratory output of Trenco's enormous, malignant, blue-white sun.

* * * * *

This, then, was the planet upon which Kinnison had to land in order to repair his crippled Bergenholm--and in the end how well it was to be that such was the case!

"Kinnison of Tellus, greetings. Tregonsee of Rigel IV calling from Trenco space port. Have you ever landed on this planet before?"

"No, but what----"

"Skip that for a time; it is most important that you land here quickly and safely. Where are you in relation to this planet?"

"Your apparent diameter is a shade under six degrees. We are near the plane of your ecliptic and almost in the plane of your terminator, on the morning side."

"That is well; you have ample time. Place your ship between Trenco and the sun. Enter the atmosphere exactly fifteen G-P minutes from ... check ... at twenty degrees after meridian, as nearly as possible on the ecliptic, which is also our equator. Go inert as you enter atmosphere; for a free landing upon this planet is impossible. Synchronize with our rotation, which is twenty-six point two G-P hours. Descend vertically until the atmospheric pressure is seven hundred millimeters of mercury, which will be at an altitude of approximately one thousand meters. Since you rely largely upon that sense called sight, allow me to caution you now not to trust it. When your external pressure is seven hundred millimeters of mercury your altitude will be one thousand meters, whether you believe it or not. Stop at that pressure and inform me of the fact, meanwhile holding yourself as nearly stationary as you can. Check so far?"

"QX. But do you mean to tell me that we can't locate each other at a _thousand meters_?" Kinnison's amazed thought escaped him. "What kind of----"

"I can locate you, but you cannot locate me," came the dry reply. "Every one knows that Trenco is peculiar, but no one who has never been here can realize even dimly how peculiar it really is. Detectors and spy rays are useless, electromagnetics are practically paralyzed, and optical apparatus is distinctly unreliable. You cannot trust your vision here. Do not believe all that you see. It used to require days to land a ship at this port. But with our Lenses and my "sense of perception," as you call it, it will be a matter of minutes."

Kinnison had flashed his ship to the designated position.

"Cut the Berg, Thorndyke, we're all done with it. I've got to build up an inert velocity to match the rotation, and land inert."

"Thanks be to all the gods of space for that." The engineer heaved a sigh of relief. "I've been expecting it to blow its top for the last hour, and I don't know whether we'd ever have got it meshed in again or not."

"QX on location and orbit," Kinnison reported to the as yet invisible space port a few minutes later. "Now, what about that Lensman? What happened?"

"The usual thing," came the emotionless response. "It happens to altogether too many Lensmen who can see, in spite of everything we can tell them. He insisted upon going out after his zwilniks in a ground car, and, of course, we had to let him go. He became confused, lost control, let something--possibly a zwilnik's bomb--get under his leading edge, and the wind and the Trencos did the rest. He was Lageston of Mercator V--a good man, too. What is the pressure now?"

"Five hundred millimeters."

"Slow down. Now, if you cannot conquer the tendency to believe your eyes, you had better shut off your visiplates and watch only the pressure gauge."

"Being warned, I can disbelieve my eyes, I think." For a minute or so communication ceased.

* * * * *

At a startled oath from VanBuskirk, Kinnison glanced into the plate. It needed all his self-control to keep from wrenching savagely at the controls. For the whole planet was tipping, lurching, spinning, gyrating madly in a frenzy of impossible motions.

"Sheer off, Kim!" yelled the Valerian.

"Hold it, Bus," cautioned the Lensman, "That's what we've got to expect, you know. I passed all the stuff along as I got it. Everything, that is, except that a zwilnik is anything or anybody that comes after thionite, and that a Trenco is anything, animal or vegetable, that lives on the planet. QX, Tregonsee--seven hundred, and I'm holding steady--I hope!"

"Steady enough, but you are too far away for our landing bars. Direct a thought, rotating the prime axis of your Lens while inclining it somewhat downward.... Stop! Mark that line on your circles. Now think of the alignment of your ship in relation to that line. Swing your prow away from that line, clear around, to approach it from the other side ... slow ... hold it! Apply normal acceleration...."

In a few minutes the crew felt a gentle, snubbing shock, and Kinnison again translated to his companions the stranger's thoughts: "We have grasped you with our landing bars. Cut off all your power and set all controls in neutral. Do nothing more until I instruct you to come out."

Kinnison obeyed; and, released from all duty, the three visitors stared in fascinated incredulity into the visiplate. For that at which they stared was and must forever remain impossible of duplication upon Earth, and only in imagination can it be even faintly pictured. Imagine all the fantastic and monstrous creatures of a delirium-tremens vision incarnate and actual. Imagine them being hurled through the air, borne by a dust-laden gale more severe than any the great American "dust bowl" or Africa's Sahara Desert ever endured. Imagine this scene as being viewed, not in an ordinary, solid, distorting mirror, but in one whose falsely reflecting contours were changing constantly, with no logical or intelligible rhythm, into new and ever more grotesque warps. If imagination has been equal to the task, the resultant is what the three patrolmen tried to see.

At first they could make nothing whatever of it. Upon nearer approach, however, the ghastly distortion grew less and the flatly level expanse of sun-baked mud took on a semblance of rigidity. Directly beneath them they made out something that looked like an immense, flat blister upon the otherwise featureless terrain. Their ship was drawn toward this blister.

* * * * *

A port opened, dwarfed in apparent size to a mere window by the immensity of the structure. Through this port the vast bulk of the space ship was wafted upon the landing bars, and behind it the mighty bronze-and-steel gates clanged shut. The lock was pumped to a vacuum; there was a hiss of entering air; a spray of vaporous liquid bathed every inch of the vessel's surface, and Kinnison felt again the calm voice of Tregonsee, the Rigellian Lensman.

"You may now open your air lock and emerge. If I have read aright, our atmosphere is sufficiently like your own in oxygen content so that you will suffer no ill effects from it. It may be well, however, to wear your armor until you have become accustomed to its considerably greater density."

"That'll be a relief!" growled VanBuskirk's deep base, when his chief had transmitted the thought. "I've been breathing this thin stuff so long I'm getting light-headed."

"That's gratitude!" Thorndyke retorted. "We've been running our air so heavy that all the rest of us are thick-headed now. If the air in this space port is any heavier than what we've been having, I'm going to wear armor as long as we stay here!"

Kinnison had opened the air lock, found the atmosphere of the space port satisfactory, and now stepped out, to be greeted cordially by Tregonsee, the Lensman.

This--this apparition was at least erect, which was something. His body was the size and shape of an oil drum. Beneath this massive cylinder of a body were four short, blocky legs upon which he waddled about with surprising speed. Midway up the body, above each leg, there sprouted out a ten-foot-long, writhing, boneless, tentacular arm, which toward the extremity branched out into dozens of lesser tentacles, ranging in size from hairlike tendrils up to mighty fingers two inches or more in diameter. Tregonsee's head was merely a neckless, immobile, bulging dome in the center of the flat, upper surface of his body--a dome bearing neither eyes nor ears, but only four equally spaced toothless mouths and four single, flaring nostrils.

But Kinnison felt no qualm of repugnance at Tregonsee's monstrous appearance, for embedded in the leathery flesh of one arm was the Lens. Here, the Lensman knew, was in every essential a _man_--and probably a superman.

"Welcome to Trenco, Kinnison of Tellus," Tregonsee was saying. "While we are near neighbors in space, I have never happened to visit your planet. I have encountered Tellurians here, of course, but they were not of a type to be received as guests."

"No, a zwilnik is not a high type of Tellurian," Kinnison agreed. "I have often wished that I could have your sense of perception, if only for a day. It must be wonderful indeed to be able to perceive a thing as a whole, inside and out, instead of having vision stopped at its surface, as is ours. And to be independent of light or darkness, never to be lost or in need of instruments, to know definitely where you are in relation to every other object or thing around you--that, I think, is the most marvelous sense in the universe."

"Just as I have wished for sight and hearing, those two remarkable and to us entirely unexplainable senses. I have dreamed; I have studied volumes, on color and sound: color in art and in nature; sound in music and in the voices of loved ones. But they remain meaningless symbols upon a printed page. However, such thoughts are vain. In all probability neither of us would enjoy the other's equipment if he had it, and this interchange is of no material assistance to you."

* * * * *

In flashing thoughts Kinnison then communicated to the other Lensman everything that had transpired since he left Prime Base.

"I perceive that your Bergenholm is of Standard 14 Rating," Tregonsee said, as the Tellurian finished his story. "We have several spares here; and, while they all have regulation patrol mountings, it would take much less time to change mounts than to overhaul your machine."

"That's so, too. I never thought of the possibility of your having spare machines--and we've lost a lot of time already. How long will it take?"

"One night of labor to change mounts--at least eight to rebuild yours enough to be sure that it will get you home."

"We'll change mounts, then, by all means. I'll call the boys----"

"There is no need of that. We are amply equipped, and neither of you humans nor the Velantians could handle our tools." Tregonsee made no visible motion nor could Kinnison perceive a break in his thought, but while he was conversing with the Tellurian half a dozen of his blocky Rigellians had dropped whatever they had been doing and were scuttling toward the visiting ship. "Now I must leave you for a time, as I have one more trip to make this afternoon."

"Is there anything I can do to help you?" asked Kinnison.

"No," came the definite negative. "I will return in three hours, as well before sunset the wind makes it impossible to get even a ground car into the port. I will then show you why you can be of little assistance to us."

Kinnison spent those three hours watching the Rigellians work upon the Bergenholm; there was no need for direction or advice. They knew what to do and they did it. Those tiny, hairlike fingers, literally hundreds of them at once, performed delicate tasks with surpassing nicety and dispatch; when it came to heavy tasks the larger digits or even whole arms wrapped themselves around the work and, with the solid bracing of the four blocklike legs, exerted forces that even VanBuskirk's giant frame could not have approached.

As the end of the third hour neared, Kinnison watched with a spy ray--there were no windows in the Trenco space port--the leeward groundway of the structure. In spite of the weird antics of Trenco's sun--gyrating, jumping, appearing and disappearing--he knew that it was going down. Soon he saw the ground car coming in, scuttling crab-wise, nose into the wind but actually moving backward and sidewise. Although the "seeing" was very poor, at this close range the distortion was minimized and he could see that, like its parent craft, the ground car was in the shape of a blister. Its edges actually touched the ground all around, sloping upward and over the top in such a smooth reverse curve that the harder the wind blew the more firmly was the vehicle pressed downward.

The ground flap came up just enough to clear the car's top and the tiny craft crept up. But before the landing bars could seize her the ground car struck an eddy from the flap--an eddy in a medium which, although gaseous, was at that velocity practically solid. Earth blasted away in torrents from the leading edge; the car leaped bodily into the air and was flung away, end over end. But Tregonsee, with consummate craftsmanship, forced her flat again, and again she crawled up toward the flap. This time the landing bars took hold and, although the little vessel fluttered like a leaf in a gale, she was drawn inside the port and the flap went down behind her. She was then sprayed, and Tregonsee came out.

"Why the spray?" thought Kinnison, as the Rigellian entered his control room.

"Trencos. Much of the life of this planet starts from almost imperceptible spores. It develops rapidly, attains considerable size, and consumes anything organic it touches. This port was depopulated time after time before the lethal spray was developed. Now turn your spy ray again to the lee of the port."

* * * * *

During the few minutes that had elapsed the wind had increased in fury to such an extent that the very ground was boiling away from the trailing edge in the tumultuous eddy formed there, ultra-streamlined though the space port was. And that eddy, far surpassing in violence any storm known to Earth, was to the denizens of Trenco a miraculously appearing quiet spot in which they could stop and rest, eat and be eaten.

A globular monstrosity had thrust pseudopodia deep into the boiling dirt. Other limbs now shot out, grasping a tumbleweedlike growth. The latter fought back viciously, but could make no impression upon the rubbery integument of the former. Then a smaller creature, slipping down the polished curve of the shield, was enmeshed by the tumbleweed. There ensued the amazing spectacle of one half of the tumbleweed devouring the newcomer, even while its other half was being devoured by the globe!

"Now look out farther--still farther," directed Tregonsee.

"I can't. Things take on impossible motions and become so distorted as to be unrecognizable."

"Exactly. If you saw a zwilnik out there, where would you shoot?"

"At him, I suppose. Why?"

"Because if you shot at where you think you see him, not only would you miss him, but the ray might very well swing around and enter your own back. Many men have been killed by their own weapons in precisely that fashion. Since we know, not only what the object is, but exactly where it is, we can correct our beams for the then existing values of distortion. This is, of course, the reason why we Rigellians and other races possessing the sense of perception are the only ones who can efficiently police this planet."

"Reason enough, I'd say, from what I've seen."

Silence fell. For minutes the two Lensmen watched, while creatures of a hundred kinds streamed into the lee of the space port and killed and ate each other. Finally, something came crawling upwind, against that unimaginable gale--a flatly streamlined creature somewhat resembling a turtle, but shaped as was the ground car.

Thrusting down long, hooked flippers into the dirt it inched along, paying no attention to the scores of lesser creatures who hurled themselves upon its armored back, until it was close beside the largest football-shaped creature in the eddy. Then, lightninglike, it drove a needle-sharp organ at least eight inches into the leathery mass of its victim. Struggling convulsively, the stricken thing lifted the turtle a fraction of an inch--and both were hurled instantly out of sight; the living ball still eating a luscious bit of soil.

"Good Lord, what was that?" exclaimed Kinnison.

"The flat? That was a representative of Trenco's highest life form. It may develop a civilization in time. It is quite intelligent now."

"But the difficulties!" protested the Tellurian. "Building cities, even homes and----"

"Neither cities nor homes are necessary, nor even desirable, here. Why build? Nothing is or can be fixed on this planet, and since one place is exactly like every other place, why wish to remain in any one particular spot? They do very well, in their own mobile way. Here, you will notice, comes the rain."

The rain came--forty-four inches per hour of rain--and the lightning. Such rain and such lightning must be seen to be even dimly appreciated; there is no use in attempting to describe the indescribable. The dirt first became mud, then muddy water being driven in fiercely flying gouts and masses.

The water grew deeper and deeper, its upper surface now whipped into frantic sheets of spray. The structure was now afloat, and Kinnison saw with astonishment that, small as was the exposed surface and flatly curved, yet it was pulling through the water at frightful speed the wide-spreading steel sea anchors which were holding its head to the gale.

"With no reference points how do you know where you're going?" he demanded.

"We know not, nor care," responded Tregonsee, with a mental shrug. "We are like the natives in that. Since one spot is like every other spot, why choose between them?"

"What a world--_what_ a world! However, I am beginning to understand why thionite is so expensive." And, overwhelmed by the ever-increasing fury raging outside, Kinnison sought his bunk.

* * * * *

Morning came, a reversal of the previous evening. The liquid evaporated; the mud dried; the flat-growing vegetation sprang up with shocking speed; the animals emerged and again ate and were eaten.

And eventually came Tregonsee's announcement that it was noon; and that now, for an hour or so, it would be calm enough for the space ship to leave the port.

"You are sure that I would be of no help to you?" asked the Rigellian, half pleadingly.

"Sorry, Tregonsee, but you would fit into my matrix just as I would into yours here. But here's the spool I told you about. If you will take it to your base on your next relief you will do civilization and the patrol more good than you could by coming with us. Thanks for the Bergenholm, which is covered by credits, and thanks a lot for your help and courtesy, which can't be covered. Good-by." The now entirely spaceworthy craft shot out through the port, through Trenco's noxiously peculiar atmosphere, into the vacuum of space.