The Alien by Raymond F. Jones (best summer reads of all time TXT) 📖

closed door. Even Dreyer's calm was deserting him as he wondered what would happen if he could not grasp instantly what was expected of him.

Jandro suddenly flung the door wide and ushered them in. "You will wish to be alone," he said. "I will await you."

He closed the door.

None of them had any preconceived idea of what they might see, nor could they have imagined the sight that met their eyes. The room was large and the walls were lined with shelves from floor to ceiling, like a fantastic library.

It was the objects on those shelves that held their attention. Square glass jars, completely identical, filled the spaces, and in each jar was a reddish-brown organ exactly like that taken from the corpse aboard their ship by Jandro. A clear, transparent preservative liquid surrounded the specimens, and the containers were sealed.

But in a small space before them a table stood, and on it rested a single jar with a fresh-looking specimen. Instinctively, they knew it was the one they had seen excised that morning.

Terry expelled a lungful of air. "Well, this is something. A morgue for extinct livers, kept by an amateur surgeon who rides a bike to work. What the devil do you make of it?"

Illia was examining the specimens closely. "All of them weren't as good surgeons as Jandro. Most of these look as if they'd been out with a meat axe. Some of them look as if they've been here since the beginning of time."

"Some sort of ancestor worship," said Underwood. "The apologetics must be some form of social rite offered to the ancestors of a friend, all of it interesting but quite useless for our purposes at the moment."

"It's not that simple," said the semanticist. "Consider the fact that even though Jandro understands we are from another world, he believes us familiar with all of this. He therefore believes these things familiar to all humanoid beings. There could be a scientifically valid reason behind it."

"What?" said Underwood.

"I don't know, but I'm going to find out."

Jandro was waiting for them when they emerged. He showed them to the table where a meal was prepared and waiting.

For Underwood and Illia it was a strange meal, for they could not communicate with their hosts in the slightest degree. Phyfe and Terry were entering gradually into the interchange.

There was awkwardness due to the oversize furniture and eating equipment, but tolerant allowances were made on both sides. The two women had difficulty in dropping their stiff reserve, but by the end of the meal they seemed to have forgotten that the men were anything but old acquaintances in for a visit.

It was then that Jandro said, "I suppose you would like to see our resa and the installation of the abasa?"

Without a sign of incomprehension, Dreyer repeated the question.

"I'm willing to see anything there is to see," said Underwood. Though he was restless, he knew they must give more time for the Terrestrian fleet to get away.

They left the house and crossed the city afoot, Jandro leading the way toward one of the major jewels in that sparkling city. It was a large building of blood-red glass standing apart from other structures.

"I should have explained," said Jandro. "This is where my duties are performed. I am an installer. Today I am not working, but operations are being performed, so that you will be able to witness our methods as well as the mother-flesh of the abasa."

He led them through the winding corridors of the magnificent structure of glass. By some means, Underwood observed, the glistening floors had a high friction co-efficient without losing any of their sheen. Abruptly, they came into a chamber that formed a small amphitheater, similar in some respects to the operating amphitheaters of Terrestrian hospitals. With something of a shock, they discovered that was exactly what it was.

They took seats by the protective railing. Below them, on a table where a pair of surgeons worked, an infant lay with a large abdominal incision. One of the surgeons lifted a small, fleshy object from a nearby bath and skillfully inserted it through the incision. They watched in spell-bound amazement as the organ was sutured into place, tiny blood vessels were spliced and nerves from adjacent organs were slit and led into the new mass.

Illia clutched Underwood's arm. She whispered, "They're grafting in those strange organs we haven't identified. They aren't born with them at all!"

"But where do they get them?" Terry muttered. "Maybe that's why they take them out after death—to use them over again. But that couldn't be because they pickle them. I give up. This is too much for me."

Illia's eyes were only for the skilled hands below that were working such miracles with living tissue. Once she looked aside at the calm features of Jandro and recalled his passing remark that he was an "installer." If this was the sort of thing he did, he could stand with the greatest of Earth's surgeons.

The operation was a long one. When the two surgeons finally closed the incision, they began a similar operation at the base of the brain, grafting in a fragment of shapeless flesh there.

The Earthmen could not comprehend how the infant could stand the shock of such radical surgery, yet if they were to believe the evidence, this was performed on every child born on the moon.

Jandro said, "You have seen our technique. How does it compare with yours?"

Dreyer nodded noncommittally. "Very similar, except that we have found it advisable to delay the brain operation. It relieves shock and appears to help recovery."

"The tri-abasa, you mean? So that is the explanation. I will be frank. I've been attempting to detect your epthalia since your arrival. I have wondered about your reasons for concealment, but of course that is your own concern. It seemed impossible, however, that you should prevent me from detecting."

"Yes," Dreyer replied sagely. He reported the double talk to his companions. "I don't think we can keep this up much longer, and I don't believe it would be a good idea to disclose our lack of these organs. Jandro assumes all humanoid life requires it. He would be likely to consider us sub-human if he knew."

Underwood nodded. "Tell him we'll be on our way, then."

It had been fruitless, he thought. He didn't know what Dreyer had expected of their diversionary visit among these people, but as far as Underwood could see it had accomplished nothing. He had become rather attracted to Jandro, however, in their few hours together, recognizing in him something of the same rebellion against the conventions of his world that Underwood felt on Earth. Perhaps, on the trip to the Dragboran planet, they could become acquainted.

Jandro led them from the chamber. "You must see the mother-flesh. It will only take a few moments. It has never once died, and now is far older than our historical records."

The Earthmen followed through the winding corridors again to a door that opened only after a complicated code system, and then by being drawn wholly inward. As they walked through the opening, they observed the walls were nearly four feet thick, of solid glass of a lead-gray hue.

"The protection is necessary to guard the mother-flesh against natural disturbances and the occasional unfortunates among us whose will is to destroy. No force of which we are aware could penetrate the barrier."

Underwood's interest was aroused concerning the nature of this mysterious mother-flesh. He suspected the meaning of the name, but the nature of the substance was impossible to guess at.

The room into which they came was very large and equipped as a laboratory, with wooden and glass instruments on every side.

The central feature of the room, however, was a large, dome-covered container about twenty feet in diameter. Inside it, rising about halfway to the top, was a shapeless mass of flesh, grayish for the most part, but shot through with livid streaks of red. It pulsed as if some quiescent, sleeping life possessed it.

"This is our mother-flesh," said Jandro.

Illia shuddered faintly at the sight. "It looks almost like an enormous cancer," she said.

They peered into the vat, the base of the mound of flesh being hidden by a thick, soupy liquid.

A technician approached as they neared the dome. He carried a long-handled instrument which he had just removed from a sterilizer. As they watched, he opened a port in the dome and thrust the instrument quickly into the mound of flesh and turned it. The mass quivered and recoiled, but the instrument withdrew, holding a core from deep within the mass. Slowly, the wound closed and the thick, dark blood ceased flowing.

The technician dropped the core into a container and carried it across the room to one of several hundred cagelike units about a foot square.

"There you see it," said Jandro. "The primeval flesh is cut out and placed within its forming box where surgical manipulation and radiation will cause the formation of the specialized cells that will turn it into one of the three abasa."

"I'd swear that is cancerous tissue," said Illia. "Whatever the purpose of these strange organs developed from it, it may be that these people have succeeded in perfecting the mutation that nature has been struggling with on Earth for thousands of generations."

"But what could be the purpose of it?" Underwood demanded. "What abilities do these organs give that we do not already possess? I don't see any evidence in Jandro nor did I see any in Demarzule, showing the results of these organs."

"Who knows?" said Dreyer. "But I believe Illia may be right. Among us, cancerous formation has all the appearance of a mutation gone wild, yet it seems to be one that nature insists on. Perhaps with Jandro aboard the ship we can find out what these organs do."

They returned to Jandro's house. There Jandro bade good-by to his mother and his sister. They seemed curiously unmoved by what must be an event of tremendous significance in their history, Underwood thought.

Jandro mounted behind Underwood on the scooter. They rose high in the air and set a straight course for the spot where the Lavoisier lay. Jandro gave no outward sign that such flight was unusual for him.

Within a few minutes they spotted the ship, and groups of the crew gathered outside, some at a distance of a mile or two. They circled and landed, returned the scooters to the locks.

Mason came up as if greatly relieved to see them. "The men are anxious to be on the way," he said. "The fleet of Demarzule is definitely returning to Earth, even more rapidly than they came here. There appears to be no more reason for delay."

Underwood went to the control room to check the observations. Before his eyes the mighty fleet was melting into the depths of space toward Earth. He checked their velocity, and frowned. What purpose was there in this sudden retreat? Did it signify a trap that had been prepared for the scientists on the Dragboran planet?

There was no way of knowing—and no way of combating the unknown.

Underwood stood up from the viewing plates and nodded. "Let's go."

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

As if awaiting the completion of the final step in his long journey to destiny, Jandro watched the stars swing past the field of his vision as the Lavoisier turned sharply to get into the shadow of the planet to prevent observation by the fleet.

Underwood watched the alien individual, trying to fathom the mystery of Jandro and his people. What was the truth about their myth of a fall from Heaven World, which Jandro admitted he did not believe? How had the strange mass of flesh originated, from which they perpetuated the unknown organs within their own bodies? Underwood wondered if Illia were right, if it were the harnessing of some cancerous mutation that had occurred long ago in some forgotten individual and perfected for the whole race.

Most important of all, could Jandro and his people have any bearing on the problem that had brought the scientists across the vastness of space?

To Underwood it seemed unlikely. They had come in search of a strange and deadly weapon, hinted at only in scant records half a million years old. Jandro's people knew nothing of the vast techniques of producing metallic instruments and equipment. They were wizards in glass technology, and in surgery, but it was doubtful if they even knew of the existence of electricity.

The journey was only a matter of hours from the moon to the planet, but it seemed the longest part of the trip to the scientists who crowded about the scanning plates turned up to their highest sensitivity.

From a quarter of a million miles away, the faint details of the ancient cities began to be recognizable on the large screens. The sharpness with which they were revealed was awe-inspiring, for the airless