Read The wind's twelve quarters - vol 2 for Free Online Page B

you?'
    'No',
Porlock said. 'It was coming down at me, through the branches, fast. When I
turned it took off again, away and upward. It made a noise,
a sort of crashing. If it wasn't an animal, God knows what it could have been!
It was big - as big as a man, at least. Maybe a reddish color. I couldn't see,
I'm not sure.'
    'It
was Osden,' said Jenny Chong, 'doing a Tarzan act.' She giggled nervously, and
Tomiko repressed a wild feckless laugh. But Harfex was not smiling.
    'One
gets uneasy under the arboriformes,' he said in his polite, repressed voice.
'I've noticed that. Indeed that may be why I've put off working in the forests.
There's a hypnotic quality in the colors and spacing of the stems and branches,
especially the helically-arranged ones; and the spore-throwers grow so
regularly spaced that it seems unnatural. I find it quite disagreeable,
subjectively speaking. I wonder if a stronger effect of that sort mightn't have
produced a hallucination...?'
    Porlock
shook his head. He wet his lips. 'It was there,' he said. 'Something. Moving
with purpose. Trying to attack me from behind.'
    When
Osden called in, punctual as always, at 24 o'clock that night, Harfex told him
Porlock's report. 'Have you come on anything at all, Mr Osden, that could
substantiate Mr Porlock's impression of a motile, sentient life-form, in the
forest?'
    Ssss, the
radio said sardonically. 'No. Bullshit,' said Osden's unpleasant voice.
    'You've
been actually inside the forest longer than any of us,' Harfex said with
unmitigable politeness. 'Do you agree with my impression that the forest
ambiance has a rather troubling and possibly hallucinogenic effect on the
perceptions?'
    Ssss. 'I'll
agree that Porlock's perceptions are easily troubled. Keep him in his lab,
he'll do less harm. Anything else?'
    'Not
at present,' Harfex said, and Osden cut off.
    Nobody
could credit Porlock's story, and nobody could discredit it. He was positive
that something, something big, had tried to attack him by surprise. It was hard
to deny this, for they were on an alien world, and everyone who had entered the
forest had felt a certain chill and foreboding under the 'trees.' ('Call them
trees, certainly,' Harfex had said. 'They really are the same thing, only, of
course, altogether different.') They agreed that they had felt uneasy, or had
had the sense that something was watching them from behind.
    'We've
got to clear this up,' Porlock said, and he asked to be sent as a temporary
Biologist's Aide, like Osden, into the forest to explore and observe. Olleroo
and Jenny Chong volunteered if they could go as a pair. Harfex sent them all
off into the forest near which they were encamped, a vast tract covering
four-fifths of Continent D. He forbade side-arms. They were not to go outside a
fifty-mile half-circle, which included Osden's current site. They all reported
in twice daily, for three days. Porlock reported a glimpse of what seemed to be
a large semi-erect shape moving through the trees across the river; Olleroo was
sure she had heard something moving near the tent, the second night.
    'There
are no animals on this planet,' Harfex said, dogged.
    Then
Osden missed his morning call.
    Tomiko
waited less than an hour, then flew with Harfex to the area where Osden had
reported himself the night before. But as the helijet hovered over the sea of
purplish leaves, illimitable, impenetrable, she felt a panic despair. 'How can
we find him in this?'
    'He
reported landing on the riverbank. Find the aircar; he'll he camped near it,
and he can't have gone far from his camp. Species-counting is slow work.
There's the river.'
    There's
his car,' Tomiko said, catching the bright foreign glint among the vegetable
colors and shadows. 'Here goes, then.'
    She
put the ship in hover and pitched out the ladder. She and Harfex descended. The
sea of life closed over their heads.
    As
her feet touched the forest floor, she unsnapped the flap of her holster; then glancing
at Harfex, who was unarmed, she left