IMAGINATION'S PLACE
FICTION
JOURNEY TO THE LIGHT
By; Speaker Gerald Polley
All rights reserved.
Chapter 28
They landed on what Carol thought may have been an
ancient river bed near what might have been a lake. All along it
was grass, and what appeared to be the beginnings of other
plants. Carol got right down and started examining it.
"Looks like grass," she remarked, "feels like grass, even smells like
grass!" She dug a little bit in the soil. "No sprouts," she
muttered, "what appears to be a small tube going deeper into the
ground. Look how they reach out to each other, hook onto each
other to form a mat. The wind would have a very hard time blowing
them away. Let's dig here on the edge. I want to follow
these tube things down and see how far they go."
They couldn't believe how far they went, a good
seven feet! "Well, this is how they survived the solar wind!"
Carol explained. "Not too much is going to reach them
down....ICE! Ice! There's ice here! It must be ages
old! And there's...what in the hell are these?" She
continued to dig while others got the dirt away from her. She
exposed two objects about the size of basketballs. "The tubes go
into them," Carol remarked, "hundreds of them! Somehow they
sensed the moisture up there and sent the tubes up, but this is how
they survived down here, getting moisture from the ice and shielded
from the radiation. They're warm! Somehow they generate
heat. Give me a scope. I'm going to make a very small penetration
and look inside."
Carol poked a small hole in one of the bulbs.
Her incision sealed up so fast she could barely get the scope in.
"Light!" she cried. "There's light inside, organisms that produce
heat and light. Damn, nature's tenacious! Once life evolves it
finds ways of keeping it going. Absolutely fantastic!
There's little versions of the plants above inside. And I would
lay odds they can send out tubes to each other exchanging fluid and
pollen. It's phenomenal, just absolutely phenomenal! Now
that the planet's warming up they're sending shoots to the
surface. They may pull back into the ground at night. Well,
I'm gonna take these two back up with us and then we've gotta cover the
rest back up. It may be too cold at night for them, still. I
think they're beginning to reproduce. There's little things in the
ground here that look like the bigger ones, but they're hard.
Where there's enough warmth and water it may be triggering a spurt of
growth. We don't want to kill them."
They got back to the ship and Carol put her
treasures in a cooler. "We'll set up an environment later and see
if they'll open up. But right now I want to study all these
readings."
Carol worked long into the night, then finally her
husband insisted she come to bed. She was just waking up in the
morning when her aid came in.
"Plants!" he cried, "You've got to come see, I can't explain it."
Carol quickly dressed, grabbed a muffin, and hurried
after him. When she got to the cooler everyone was looking in the
window. As she came up they parted and she looked in. The two
balls had separated from each other, pulled to opposite sides of the
shelf, probably. They had opened up and all their plants were
reaching for the lights. "It's cold in there!" one of the
technicians remarked.
"To us," Carol answered, "to them it's probably
quite comfortable. Anything above freezing they probably function
in. I'd lay odds they've got some kind of natural anti freeze.
Get something to cover this window. I want to try something. I'm
going to turn out the lights and leave them undisturbed for a few
hours, in total darkness."
The aids nodded. Carol headed back to her
apartment. As she came in her husband remarked "You might want to
listen to this. I just recorded it."
A reporter was standing outside the remains of
a smoldering building. "Federal agents," he began, "arrived
here in Point Herald, Alaska last night and raided a fertility clinic,
apparently having something to do with the string of murders that's
been happening around the country, that's it's estimated over 5,000
people have been killed. Nobody's talking. But the doctor
who ran the clinic and, her staff, did not want to be taken
prisoner. There's a belief by some, they were Hallies, but rumors
of their sexual practices make people wonder about that. Still,
there are no survivors. And eight federal officers are
dead. We may never know exactly what was happening here.
Some people say it might have something to do with the rash of murders
that started occurring around here about ten years ago, and the
disappearance of ten teenagers believed to be victims of the
murders. People just aren't talking. And the ones that really
knew what was going on are talking to others someplace else, if they
managed to get there! Give you back to our broadcast
center."
"They're covering it up," Carol muttered.
"They don't want people to know, trying to keep others from doing it.
They'll fail. There'll be other lunatics."
Her husband only nodded. "I got a message," he
said. "It simply said 'Got all left diary, taking action.'
I think that was the action."
Carol shivered. "I think they should let
people know," she sighed. "Maybe it'll keep others from being so
stupid. They shouldn't cover it up."
"You're probably right," her husband agreed, "but I
don't think anybody in authority would listen. Heard you made
quite a find!"
"Yes!" Carol agreed, "But I think we'd better build
a facility on the surface and mess with it down there. I don't think
it's something we can handle on the ship. It could get out of control
real fast!"
Her husband nodded. At the end of the day she
peeked in the window. All the shoots were almost back to the
balls and they were reshaping. Apparently they were able to
maintain their moisture. The next day she took them back down to
the surface. They sat up some emergency shelters so they could maintain
the temperature, and put the balls in it. Within two days the
bottom of the shelter was completely covered! Not only that, the
plants had penetrated through its floor and were into the ground!
"They are tenacious!" Carol sighed, "But I think
they like that the shelter maintains temperature, doesn't get as cold
at night. They're not trying to bust out of it. I think we
can get some samples and find out if these plants are of any use to
us. I want to feed some of them to experimental animals and see
if they do them any harm."
The weeks passed and Carol's experiments were very
satisfying. The bigger plants produced berries that were perfectly
edible. The only problem was after passing through them the seeds
would start to germinate in the waste disposal systems! It only
took the addition of some new equipment to solve that problem. It
was also noticed that the plants in the shelter were quickly losing the
ability to ball as a stable environment was made available. "Well
it's served its purpose!" Carol remarked.
One afternoon as she was getting ready to head back
for the ship, she picked up a leaf that fell on the shelf where she was
working. At first she went to throw it away. Then she noticed
something on it, and looked at it very carefully. Embedded in the
leaf were the words "Would you mind having the others leave? I'd
like to talk in private." Carol stared at the leaf and looked
around, stared at the leaf again then snapped "Would everyone please go
outside and not bother me for a few minutes?"
Everyone looked around startled, but then quickly went outside.