The Seed of Earth

'Why did you say yes when I picked you?'

'What else could I do? I didn't want any of the others, the older men. You looked like somebody I could talk to, somebody I'd be happy with. Even if you are a little younger than me. It's better than going with one of those older ones.'

'I hope we're happy together, Carol.'

'I hope so, too. But - Mike, I'm afraid—'

There were tears in the edges of her eyes. Dawes realized that she was rapidly losing her nerve and might well go off into wild hysterics any moment. That wasn't the way he cared to spend his wedding night. And he wouldn't know how to handle her if she burst in tears.

He said as firmly as he could, 'We're going to have to make the most of things, Carol. You know what I mean. It's going to be this way, now that our number came up. You and me, together on Osiris, and no turning back. Not ever.'

She nodded. And then, after a frozen moment of silence, he found himself moving toward her, putting his arms round her thin shoulders, kissing her. It was a tender, tremulous sort of kiss, a tentative contact of dry lips, and it had hardly begun when it was interrupted suddenly by a harsh yell coming from the general direction of Noonan's bubble at the left.

He pulled back from her. 'Did you hear something a shout?'

'It sounded like it was Noonan. Do you think he's having trouble with Cherry?'

'I don't know. But—'

The shouts came again. And this time the words were unmistakable. Noonan was bellowing. 'Hey! Dawes! Dawes! Help!'

'Let's go see what's happening,' Dawes suggested.

He stepped outside the bubble, into solid moonless blackness. He blinked, trying to see.

After a moment his eyes adjusted to the darkness, and he saw what was taking place.

Noonan and Cherry were outside their dome. They were surrounded by dark shapes, black forms against the blackness. Noonan was flailing at the shapes and shouting.

'Get away from me!' the big man cried. 'Hey, Dawes!

Run! Get help!'

Dawes froze, not knowing which way to turn. He heard Carol catch her breath sharply. His eyes, growing more accustomed to the dark, picked out the scene clearly now.

Six or seven dark stubby figures - unhuman figures clustered around the struggling forms of Noonan and Cherry Thomas. Dawes saw hunched, neckless heads, thick shoulders, corded arms. He was too sick to run. He stood where he was, listening to Noonan's cursing, Cherry's fear-sharpened voice, and the occasional croaking grunt of a smitten attacker.

Then he felt something cold and hairy touch him, and he heard Carol scream.

Other colonists were coming. Dawes fought, fought for the first time since forgotten childhood. He fought with arms and legs, whirled and butted with his shoulders, kicked out at chunky, heavily furred figures he could only partially see. His nails clawed into a musky-smelling hide.

He squirmed, wriggled, kicked again. And then he could fight no more. He was held tight, solidly clamped by thick alien arms.

'Mike!' Carol whimpered.

He felt a pang of inadequacy. 'I can't do anything, Carol. Not a thing. They've got me, too.'

'It's the aliens,' came Noonan's angry voice. 'The ones Matthews saw. Hostile aliens.' His booming cry seemed to carry all over the colony ground. 'Aliens I'

Dawes felt himself being hoisted from the ground.

Two powerful hands gripped his ankles, two his shoulders. He tried once again to resist, but it was like trying to break loose from the grip of a hydraulic press.

He swayed. He realized he was moving.

Dark shapes, and darker jungle. He was being carried toward the forest. He could see nothing, neither Carol nor Noonan nor Cherry.

After a while, he stopped trying to break free. The aliens were handling him gently enough. He simply could not move, but they were carrying him along at a steady pace. Too bad there was no moon, he thought. He could make out the shadowy shapes of trees bending above him, but all else was indistinct. He heard night-birds crowing harshly, mocking him from the treetops. Fear enshrouded him; he was too frightened even to be afraid, any more. Carried along in the soft alien grip, he offered himself up to fate, knowing he had no alternative.

The journey went on for more than an hour. Perhaps it was two hours; it might just as well have been two months. Dawes lost all sense of the passage of time. The forest was surprisingly thick for such a cold continent.

Dangling vines brushed his face, one of them leaving a nauseous trail of slime. His hands were in alien control; he could not even wipe his face. After a while the trail of slime, running down the left side of his face from eyebrow to the corner of his mouth, began to burn - whether for imaginary reasons or because of some chemically corrosive effect, Dawes could not tell. He twisted his head around and managed to rub some of the slime off on the shoulder of his shirt. But an inch or two remained, just to the left of his eye, tormenting him by its inaccessibility. He wondered if it would leave some sort of mark, perhaps a white scar or a puckering of the skin.

At last the trek through the forest came to its end. The aliens broke from the thicket and Dawes could see the bald, bare faces of jutting cliffs, the up thrust fangs of black rock that had looked so forbiddingly Gothic when he had first viewed them from the lip of the Gegenschein's hatch.